What do people want from Law Enforcement in their Communities
Abstract:
At present US Law Enforcement* is facing an acute pressure to change. It is important to discuss the direction in which change should occur. Collating information from news articles, polling data, data repositories, and more, this article highlights that the majority of Americans do not want to see the law enforcement agencies in their communities taken off the streets but instead want law enforcement officers to focus their time on criminal investigations and crime prevention. Further, a majority of Americans agree that policing has become harder and support redirecting police funding towards social and community resources or a new apparatus that takes responsibilities away from law enforcement officers. While this publication will not reference the difference in opinion regarding the role of policing in communities that is held by different races and ideological backgrounds, the author recognizes those differences and has chosen rather to reference data pertaining to the more inclusive dataset of citizens of the United States. Multiple articles could be, and should be written, from a micro perspective on what different communities expect from their law enforcement officers.
Introduction:
In the United States today, Law Enforcement Officers are generally tasked with traditional law enforcement activities such as crime prevention, criminal investigations, and traffic enforcement as well as a number of nontraditional duties that many would not consider law enforcement related. These nontraditional duties include everything from community service, such as providing services for the elderly or infirm, to providing medical treatment during medical emergencies, and providing basic counseling to community members that are in crises. Given the large number of duties that have fallen to law enforcement officers and that law enforcement is seeing an acute drive for change and evolution, a question to ask to better drive that evolution is: “What do people want from Law Enforcement in their communities?”
Discussion:
Recent events have put pressure on US police departments to change at a more rapid rate. Change should not be done simply for the sake of change, the age old adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” comes to mind, but according to Gallup, an analytics agency, 58% of Americans believe that “major changes” are needed to make policing better. With this level of consensus, it is apparent that something is broken and indeed needs fixing. But what are the “major changes” that Americans are looking for?
An idea that received significant media attention in the United States in 2020 was to defund law enforcement agencies. That idea never coalesced into a firm proposal, and it remains unclear whether that means abolishing law enforcement agencies, as campaigners in the city of Minneapolis put on the ballot in 2021, or just redirecting their funding. Two years on, it seems that most Americans do not support the idea of abolishing law enforcement agencies, the ballot initiative in Minneapolis failed with 56% of the voters voting against it, or even reducing the number of law enforcement officers in their communities. According to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, 90% of Americans oppose cutting the number of police officers in their communities and 67% of Americans reported being satisfied with their interactions with police. In fact, according to an article in the Washington Post, 55% of Americans believe that increasing funding for police departments will decrease crime.
An agreement on whether or not to change the spending priorities of law enforcement agencies and how to do so seems to be a bit more elusive. To start out with, an article from the news organization Slate highlighted that 57% of Americans support shifting money in law enforcement agencies towards community policing and social services. According to an article from the news publication Vox, 63% of Americans support reallocating money to first responders for mental health or addiction services and according to the same Slate article mentioned above, 63% of Americans also support shifting money away from police departments along with responsibilities. According to the same Washington Post article mentioned above, 65% of Americans support using social workers to help defuse situations involving people suffering from mental health crises. While these statistics seem to run contrary to each other, they are similar in that a majority of Americans believe that law enforcement officers do not have enough resources to properly address what they are called upon to confront. The breakdown is in whether to provide more resources to law enforcement agencies, or to take away responsibilities from agencies.
There is a current and continuing increase in the level of concern over the perceived rise in crime in the United States. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, murder and violent crime has been receding since 1990, with spikes at various times in those decades. Murder and violent crime has been on the rise in 2019 and 2020 with 2020 seeing similar murder rates as those in 1998 and similar violent crime rates as those in 2016 and 2010. According to Gallup, 53% of Americans worry a great deal about crime and violence in the United States. Drawing again from the Cato Institute, 78% of Americans believe that law enforcement agencies should be focused on investigating violent crime, 64% believe that law enforcement agencies should be protecting citizens from crime, and 58% believe that law enforcement agencies should be investigating property crimes. Only 19% think that law enforcement should be enforcing traffic laws and only 12% think that they should be enforcing nuisance laws. Contrary to the concerns about rising crime and the statistics on what Americans think law enforcement agencies should be focused on, police departments spend a majority of their time focusing on noncriminal matters. Taking data from calls for service in 2021 in a variety of jurisdictions including Cincinnati Ohio, Mesa Arizona, Montgomery County Maryland and Portland Oregon, the top three ways agencies spend their time is on traffic enforcement/accidents, suspicious circumstances/well being checks, and disturbances.
There is an obvious disparity between what Americans are reporting they want from law enforcement and what law enforcement has been spending their time doing. That being said, given that the data on how law enforcement is spending its time is taken from calls for service, or calls directly to law enforcement agencies requesting law enforcement action, which is the better barometer for what people want from law enforcement? Polling data or calls for service? The calls for service data implies that Americans are more interested in law enforcement handling traffic accidents, checking on people’s welfare, and investigating suspicious circumstances.
Solution:
How to handle this disparity? Many law enforcement agencies are tackling this problem by coming up with solutions such as using non law enforcement officer employees to respond to community service calls like well being checks or traffic assistance so that sworn officers can respond to criminal or emergency calls for service. Neighborhood Assistance Officers in Charleston West Virginia and Auxiliary Officers in Bel Air Maryland are examples of these types of programs. Other agencies have established relationships with crisis intervention programs like Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS) in Eugene Oregon and the Healthy Streets Operation Center (HSOC) in San Francisco California to help with community members who may be in crisis. Programs like these and many others in theory allow law enforcement agencies to continue to provide the community services that people call for, while also freeing up law enforcement personnel to focus on crime prevention and investigation that Americans desire.
In addition to these programs, law enforcement could also enhance its mediation and conflict management training to better provide the services they are being called upon to render. Given the consensus mentioned above in which most Americans support providing resources, whether to law enforcement agencies or other entities, for social services and community policing, providing training to enhance those skills in officers would be prudent. According to the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, law enforcement officers in the United States receive a median of 18 weeks of basic training, not including field training. In that training, only an average of eight hours is spent on mediation skills and only about 39% of law enforcement agencies require their law enforcement officers to go through conflict management training. Law enforcement training as it currently stands is more driven by officer safety (firearms and self defense training) than it is towards conflict resolution, crises management, or community engagement.
Conclusion:
In the United States, there appears to be broad support for law enforcement in that most Americans do not want to see less law enforcement officers or see their funding cut. There is also a consensus that law enforcement needs to change. The consensus breaks down over how law enforcement should change. Americans agree with the statement that law enforcement has become harder. There is support for directing funding towards community or social services and even reducing the responsibilities law enforcement agencies shoulder and that can be better addressed by different service organizations that are better able to manage some of the complexities that are currently falling on the shoulders of law enforcement agencies (mental health services, addiction services, homelessness). Most Americans also believe that crime is on the rise and wish to see law enforcement agencies focus their efforts and resources on the prevention and investigation of crime.
Seemingly, the answer is simple. However, when taking actual calls for service into consideration, Americans continue to call on law enforcement to handle the situations that they place the least amount of value on, tying up resources that could be used in other ways.
Law enforcement agencies that can think dynamically and come up with programs that use their limited resources more creatively to address this disparity will be more successful in serving their communities. There are a number of law enforcement agencies across the country that have already invested in programs that leverage civilian volunteers, other city/government resources, or charities/non-governmental organizations. Programs like these should be taken up more broadly by law enforcement agencies not only to better serve their communities, but also to relieve some of the strain on law enforcement officers who are often placed in situations that they receive little or no training on how to handle and to free up resources that can go towards traditional law enforcement duties like crime prevention and investigation.
* Law Enforcement is defined in this article as police officers, sheriff’s deputies, state troopers, constables, and any other first responders whose primary duties are the prevention of crime.
** Welfare checks include a variety of actions by law enforcement that may include responding to the home of an elderly citizen, checking on someone who may be experiencing a medical emergency (someone sleeping in public for example), checking on someone who might be suffering from a mental health crises, or even checking on a child who doesn’t appear to have parental supervision. Investigating suspicious circumstances could include checking on an open door at a business or home, checking on someone who appears to be acting outside of normal standards (looking into cars in a parking lot for example) or even checking on someone going door to door in a neighborhood.
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