Policymakers

Explore and Evaluate Alternatives to Traditional Traffic Enforcement and Roadway Safety Approaches

Alternative approaches to enforce traffic laws and improve roadway safety should be explored, including civilian-based organizations to enforce minor traffic and vehicle violations and respond to non-injury traffic collisions. Alternative strategies should be rigorously and independently evaluated for their impact on outcomes, including public safety and racially disparate impacts.

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Change Laws and Policies Regarding the Use of Pretextual (Investigative) Stops

Policies and laws that encourage or allow pretextual stops for minor safety violations, such as items hanging from mirrors, lights out, and other minor mechanical issues, should be changed.

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Abolish Performance Incentives and ‘Quotas’ Based on the Volume of Traffic Stops

Agencies must stop the use of traffic stop volume as a performance measure. Agencies should instead rely on problem-solving approaches that use stops when and where data suggests that traffic-safety issues (collisions, complaints) or crime may be prevalent.

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​Reduce Reliance on Traffic Stops

Traffic stops, while not always improving driver and pedestrian safety, must be reduced to decrease the criminalization of community members and racial and economic disparities. Alternative traffic-safety strategies focusing on high-risk behaviors, including automated tools and civilian-led traffic-safety enforcement. Alternative strategies should be rigorously evaluated to determine their effectiveness in reducing disparate impact and negative police-community…

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Participate in Federal Data Collection Efforts

Wherever possible, agencies should voluntarily send data to federal data collection systems designed to better inform law enforcement agencies and communities and offer critical, comprehensive, and data-driven evidence to improve the effectiveness and transparency of policing activities. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) collects voluntarily reported data on officer use of force and…

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Design and Implement Data Collection Systems and Processes

Data collection and analysis capacity must be prioritized and funded to achieve the transparency that the public desires.

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Maximize the Value of Data by Ensuring Its Consistency

To maximize the understanding of regional, state, and national public safety as well as policing trends, data must be in a consistent format. Funding partners and researchers to make data consistent and unifying and merging data sets to allow comparison with other data sources will help maximize the value of policing data.

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Develop a Data Collection, Analysis, and Dissemination Plan

To increase transparency, a comprehensive plan should be developed for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating data, at the incident level, on traffic stops, pedestrian stops, crime incidents, arrests, use of force events, and community complaints. The plan, with input from the community, should include: Performance measures: Agency-wide and unit-specific performance measures that consider input from the…

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Research and Minimize the Potential for Negative Impact of School-Based Law Enforcement

Additional research is needed to develop strategies that mitigate the potential negative impacts of school-based law enforcement officers on academic achievement, discipline, violence prevention, crime reduction, and police-youth relations. Placement of officers in schools below the high school level should be based on evidence of criminal threats involving the school and should be reviewed annually…

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Articulate the Role of School-Based Officers

The role of school-based officers should be clearly defined and limited to addressing serious crimes and threats involving students or the school itself. Officer involvement in non-criminal or public safety emergency matters on school grounds should be avoided, as they are best handled outside of the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

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