Transparency
Essential elements of contemporary policing must be incorporated in all academies, in-service, and field training. These elements include procedural justice, de-escalation, active bystandership, respect for all persons, sanctity of life, value of diversity, fair and impartial policing, and interpersonal and communication skills. To ensure that trainees understand and can implement these elements, the time spent…
MORE ▸The organizational and operational culture of law enforcement agencies must be assessed, and community perspectives should be incorporated, redefining what the culture should be for their community. This should be done through a structured review of agency goals, data and outcomes, officer and leadership perspectives, and organizational climate.
MORE ▸To help promote a culture of transparency and accountability, law enforcement agencies should engage the community in the development and implementation of regulations, policies, and practices that govern the use of body-worn cameras, including protecting the privacy of the public and the storage of video footage.
MORE ▸Detailed data on officer traffic stops should be collected at the agency and state levels and submitted to a centralized state repository. These data should include the time, date, and precise location of the stop, the reason for the stop, and the outcomes, including searches and searches incidental to arrest, contraband recovery, arrests and charges, and the…
MORE ▸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…
MORE ▸Every law enforcement agency should issue an annual report and include data on key activities, traffic and pedestrian stops and arrests, and document any impact and outcomes, including disparate impacts to the community. The report should describe actions taken to address disparities and be included with all funding requests.
MORE ▸Data collection and analysis capacity must be prioritized and funded to achieve the transparency that the public desires.
MORE ▸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.
MORE ▸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…
MORE ▸Strategies, policies, and stop activity data should be reported to the community. Community input should be solicited and, where appropriate, incorporated into policies and procedures regarding the use of pedestrian stops as a public safety strategy.
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