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Category: Police Early Warning System

Investing in a Police Force that’s Poised for Leadership

Posted on by Amy Vracar

The following is part 2 of 2 in our IACP Leadership Series conversation between Benchmark CEO Ron Huberman and the legendary Chuck Ramsey, former Chief of Police, Washington, DC; former Police Commissioner of Philadelphia; and Co-Chair of the Task Force on 21st Century Policing. In this entry, Mr. Ramsey underscores the importance of knowing one’s community as well as the importance of creating a culture that reflects what is expected and will not be tolerated.

RH: Chuck, let’s say you wake up tomorrow, and you look around and you have a uniform on and you’re a chief again in a major city in America. I think certainly from my dialogue with chiefs across the country – and you talk to chiefs every day – it’s probably never been harder to be a police chief — but here you are. You got a large police force. You have all the challenges that every city has, whether it’s Chicago or Baltimore or Philly or DC or you name it. What do you do? How do you start to lead in the current environment? It might be the same playbook, but what is on your list of  ‘I have got to get these things right from the start’?

CR: First of all, let me just say that I think the tougher job than being a police chief in today’s environment is being a police officer in today’s environment. At least as a police chief, you have some way of influencing the current and the future. Whereas as a police officer, you’re at the whim of whatever it is that’s going on. I just want to just say that because it’s tough, very tough for the men and women that are out there trying to do the job the best they can. I think it starts with communication, both internal and external. I think it starts there.

I think it’s important to have those lines of communication with people, even those people whose opinion and whose views may be totally – in fact, it’s even more important – totally opposite from what you believe and what you feel. You have to at least try to establish lines of communication. Take a serious look at where you are and what it is that you’re doing as an agency, and you might need to have someone from the outside come in and take a critical look because when you’re a part of it, you’re so close to it, you don’t always see it. What are we doing? How are we managing our personnel? Do we really know what’s going on out there? Are we really stepping in?

Let’s take early intervention for an example. If an officer has a history of engaging in certain kind of misconduct…and it may not be use of force. Could be verbal. Could be anything, but it’s not consistent with policy. Do we know who they are? I’ve often said the good news is you can identify them; the bad news is you’ve identified them now you’ve got to do something with it. The key is, now that we know, what do we have in place to change the behavior of the individual? Because police agencies are primarily punishment-driven and giving a person three days off doesn’t necessarily change behavior. What is it that we’re going to do if that’s really the goal?

Early intervention, having an information system or personnel management system that will identify individuals at your earliest possible point…put in place those mechanisms to be able to intervene early on and say, ‘Hey, we just don’t do that’. Do it in a way in which it goes beyond just that one officer but the other officers too — because to me, real change in a police department isn’t going to come from whoever’s sitting on top or a software. It’s going to be when the culture of the organization itself will not tolerate certain behaviors that are out of the norm because that’s not what the agency stands for. It’s not what the culture stands for, but you have to use these tools to get you there. That’s the ultimate goal. That’s the kind of thing I’d be focused on right now.

Learn from those that have experience. Learn from Minneapolis. Learn from these other cities. Even back in the days when we were more concerned with terrorist attacks…if it occurred somewhere else, I would ask my people, ‘Okay, if that happened here, how would we handle it? What are our resources? What are our capabilities? What can we do? Do we actually know what we can do, and more importantly, what we’re incapable of doing’? You have to do that sort of thing. If that officer was a problem, how come they didn’t identify him? If he was a member of our department, would we have identified him? If we had identified him, what we would have done with him?

RH: The one thing that just struck me so much when I came back to Benchmark after running the Chicago Public School System…I spent an inordinate amount of time asking the question, “How do we make our teachers more effective?” We had some phenomenal talent, unbelievably great teachers. We had some teachers who struggled. Ultimately, the idea was never let’s be punitive…let’s go be disciplinary with the teachers who are struggling. The collective question of the organization was, ‘How do we invest in these teachers to become effective’? In the world of policing in the year 2020, in the history of humankind, if you were to say show me an evidence base of interventions that help police be better…that enabled them to do what is an incredibly hard job more effectively — it doesn’t exist. I’m excited to say, we’re trying in partnership with our academic partners and others to develop it, but we’ve got a long way to go in the profession in supporting the frontline in that way. These are super important things you’ve always talked about.

Regarding culture — something that I’ve heard you talk about over and over again with tremendous passion is the role of that frontline supervision…your street sergeants and others. Can you talk about what you did and what you would do as a chief to get that supervision? The command staff is easier. You’re not talking about 500 people. You’re talking about folks you can directly talk to. But when you start getting down to lieutenants and sergeants who are ultimately in charge for all practical purposes more than almost anyone else, how do you win over those ranks in terms of your vision, your values, where you want the culture to go?

CR: There are a couple things. You point out a critical rank in the department. That’s that first line supervisor. That’s that sergeant. Because I remember, when I was a young police officer, I cared more about who my sergeant was than I cared about who the district commander was because I had to deal with the sergeant every day. District commander was pretty much a picture on the wall. If I was unlucky, I’d be walking down the hall at the same time he was, and you turn your head so he didn’t pay any attention to you. We’ve got to invest in our people in terms of their training and education, and there’s just not enough of it.

Some departments have pre-service training, let’s say, for sergeants. They put them through all the things — your roles, your responsibilities, and so forth. Some go so far as to even have an FTO system for new sergeants where they match them up with veteran sergeants for a period of time to learn what’s going on. I think all those things are important, but there’s a basic flaw in the system of policing in our promotional system.

The only way you can make more money in the average police agency is through the promotional process, which means that you’ve got people who are smart enough to pass a multiple-choice exam, but they have no interest in leading others. They have no interest in supervising, but they need more money. How do you carve out those folks and have people that truly are committed to leadership, truly are committed to that? You mentioned that at the top it’s easier – maybe in some ways but in other ways not so much – because we don’t do anything in policing to develop the next generation of leaders, or at least not enough. We have 18,000 police departments. Do you honestly think you’ve got 18,000 good police chiefs and sheriffs? I know we don’t. Until we really address the issue of really grooming people and preparing them, not only for the current role that they’re going to be in but get them ready for the next step.

When I went to DC, and I’ve seen it in other agencies, they didn’t even have a good job description for any rank above police officer, entry-level. We had to create one for sergeant, create one for lieutenant, create one for captain. In the Washington DC police department, they did not have it. What was the knowledge, skills, and ability needed for this rank, assuming that you have all that when you make the new rank, but what’s different? What is it that you need? How do we prepare you in advance? Not wait until you get there and then find out you can’t handle it. Now we got to try to bury you somewhere. What do we do in order to try to prepare you? It’s complicated. It’s complex, but it’s fixable. It’s going to really take an effort to really get serious about leadership development in police agencies, and don’t wait until somebody makes sergeant. From the time a person comes in and you know this person has their eye on not staying at that level forever, what are we doing to enhance their abilities?

RH: One of the things I think we make very hard on ourselves is we let the lawyers have too much of a voice because ultimately, what has happened is promotional exams in too many places have been reduced to what you said, which is a multiple-choice exam. A multiple-choice exam doesn’t identify ethics. It doesn’t identify leadership. You can usually answer policy right. You might be able to answer situational awareness questions right, but test taking and leadership are two completely different pieces. If you don’t make sergeant, you’re not going to make chief.

One of the research projects that we have going on at Benchmark with our partners is this — because we have people’s performance data, how do they actually do as the police. Can they navigate with good de-escalation skills? Can they navigate where they have good activity? Do they navigate in a way where there is powerful community engagement and the like? Can we use that data where the baseline for promotion becomes your performance on the job where there’s never a promotional exam? Because we have everything we need to know who’s the leader today, and let’s use that information as a way to understand promotion versus a one-time high stakes exam that ultimately may or may not pay off for folks.

CR: The other thing, if I could just add one thing. Most systems are geared toward identifying people who aren’t doing things right as opposed to identifying people who are doing things right and then going back and digging a little deeper to find out what are those characteristics…what are those traits…what are those things about people who are able to successfully de-escalate situations? People who really show good leadership — what is it about them that distinguishes them from the person who’s one of our frequent fliers, who’s always into something that they got no business being in?

You could say some of this is recruitment and hiring and all that, but it’s more than that once you’re on the job, I think. I think if we focus more on that and at least make that a big part of the picture…because when you really stop and think about it, what would a good 21st-century police officer look like? What are those skills and abilities? What are those talents that they need to bring to the table? We need to be building that image, and I think if we did that and if we had a system that could actually help us do that, that would be absolutely remarkable.

RH: Here’s what I would tell you, Chuck. This is my thesis on it. I can tell you as a research organization – and for those who don’t know, we were born out of research done at the University of Chicago – is I would argue we know that today, meaning we have ways that we can assess what is the community’s perception, community engagement for someone. We know their activity level. We know how they use force. We know whether they get citizen complaints. We know if they’re effective depending on the job they’re in, if they’re effective preliminary investigators. We see it because we can baseline.

We know, here’s what the average officer does. Here’s what someone does, and if they do it in a way where folks don’t get hurt and they’re able to still be an effective police officer, there is a pathway to say we can find the best and brightest among us and find a way that we put them on a trajectory to great leadership. Because ultimately, I’m agreeing with you, Chuck, every time you said it. Today is Chuck Ramsey’s greatest hits that I’ve heard over many, many years of being someone who has followed you, is we can change the equation. Because, as you’ve said, those frontline supervisors, if we pick the right ones, every officer in their command is ultimately going to get to the right place because ultimately, it’s their watch. Everyone else is a picture on the wall.

CR: That opens the door for better education of police chiefs to know what that 21st-century cop should look like. What are the skills and abilities? Because that drives your recruiting…because if you know that, then that’s who you go after. If you look at many police departments, we say we want people who are community-oriented. We want people who have good de-escalation skills. We want diversity. We list all this stuff. Play the recruitment video of that same department. What are they showing? SWAT knocking down the door…helicopters…boats going down the river or lake. It’s all the Type A personality stuff. Who do you think you’re going to get to apply?

It’s not that you don’t need some people who can do that stuff because you do, but is that what an average police officer does on a regular basis? No. We have that information. We know it, but we got to share it and make sure that everybody is aware because that drives so much if we really want to change. Because who you hire today is who you’re stuck with for the next 30 years. You better make a good decision upfront because if all you’re relying on is being able to fire somebody or discipline him for the next 30 years, is that really what you want to do? I don’t think so.

RH: We are grateful for your service to our nation. We’re grateful for what you’ve done for policing. We’re certainly grateful for your role here at Benchmark. We appreciate your time and your ability to share all that great expertise and experience you built over all those years. Thank you, Chuck.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

A Historical and Holistic Perspective on Police Force Management

Posted on by Amy Vracar

The following is part 1 of 2 in our IACP Leadership Series conversation between Benchmark CEO Ron Huberman and the legendary Chuck Ramsey, former Chief of Police, Washington, DC; former Police Commissioner of Philadelphia; and Co-Chair of the Task Force on 21st Century Policing. In this entry, Mr. Ramsey expands on his belief in a holistic approach to police training, education, management and accountability…and stresses the need for officers having an understanding of the history of policing in America.

RH: Chuck, it’s 2020. We’re in a global pandemic. Back in March, I think folks would’ve said, ‘Wait, there’s going to be a global pandemic? I’m finding that hard to believe.’ But once they would wrap their head around that…I think if we would have told them that ultimately we would have a summer of civil unrest, and it would be tied to police misconduct in terms of the perception of police misconduct, the perception of brutality. What happened? What in your perspective, Chuck, made this moment or this summer what it was?

CR: There were a series of very high-profile events that took place, captured on video. George Floyd obviously is one, but there were several others as well that really put police use of force on trial. We live in a world now where we are so connected that it doesn’t matter where something occurs. We saw that really with Ferguson and Michael Brown. It affects us all across the country.

And so, an event can happen, let’s say, in Ferguson, Missouri or Minneapolis, Minnesota…you could be in Austin, Texas, you’re going to have fallout from it. You’re going to have something happen in terms of demonstrations or what have you because people get upset and understandably so. No question about it. Which really makes the need for police leaders to be more proactive in terms of having a holistic approach in dealing with management and early intervention — and to do it in a way that really saves time, saves resources…and understanding that that’s not only a benefit to you as a police chief, it’s a benefit to the community as well. The faster you can identify issues and problems in your department, the better off you’re going to be, both short-term and long-term, which is why I’m so enthusiastic about Benchmark and what you bring to the table.

RH: Chuck, you said police use of force was on trial, right? What have we gotten right over the last few police reforms? You’ve been through all of them, Chuck. We had the professional model, problem-oriented policing, community policing… CompStat was in that mix…up to today. What would you give a high-letter grade for on the police, and what would you say, ‘Hey, folks, we just got to get better at’?

CR: I think we’re bringing better people into policing than we did before for the most part. Again, nothing’s absolute. There are 18,000 police departments in the United States…but just in general and from my experience having worked in Chicago, DC, and Philadelphia, I think the quality of individuals we’re bringing into our ranks are a lot better. I also think that unlike it was when I started, we see the community differently than we used to.

When I first started, at best you refer to community as just the eyes and ears. They had absolutely no voice, no role on anything, but through problem-oriented policing, community-oriented policing, that changed. Now, here’s where we didn’t get it quite right…because we started to build relationships, especially in some of our more challenged communities, but I think we underestimated how fragile those relationships really are.

There was a period of time when we moved away from community-oriented policing, that was the dominant policing philosophy. And because of the tremendous success – this isn’t a knock on New York – but it certainly was something that really changed thinking in policing. They had such tremendous success in lowering their crime through CompStat, through a data-driven approach, that many departments started to then try to copy that. But what they lost sight of is the human part of policing. It’s more than just dots on a map. It’s about human beings — and so you can’t lose those relationships. I think in many instances, and I was guilty of it myself, you become so focused on just putting cops on the dots and so forth that you lose sight of those relationships that really need a lot of care. As a result, when controversy started to surface, those relationships that you would’ve normally relied on weren’t there or at least they weren’t as strong as they could have been.

RH: Chuck, what is it about those relationships that made them so tenuous and that they weren’t robust? What’s the history of it? What is it? Then how do we fix that? Is it fixable?

CR: It’s fixable. I think everything is fixable, but it’s not going to be an easy fix. I think a few things have to happen. One, from a policing side, I think one of the things we don’t do well in most police academies – not necessarily all, but certainly in the ones I’ve been exposed to – we don’t spend a lot of time educating our officers on the history of policing in the United States. The history of policing, especially in challenged communities, communities of color, has not always been positive. We haven’t been seen as being protectors and guardians. In fact, we’ve been seen as part of the problem…not just historically, but even in some instances today, which was illustrated in some of the high-profile events I mentioned earlier.

I think the people that are being hired today, they don’t have any sense of that history. They weren’t alive, or they were so young. They certainly don’t remember it. They need to be reminded as to why people look at police differently in different communities depending on that history and trying to get officers to understand it. In fact, I’ve often said, if we can get police officers to see policing through the eyes of those being policed, that would be a major hurdle that we will have overcome. In other words, empathize with what some people are going through.

The second part of that on the community side, where’s your crime taking place? For the most part it’s confined to areas with high concentrations of poverty, lack of educational opportunities, job opportunities, lapidated housing, you name it. If it’s bad, it probably exists in that particular community. Where do you put your police officers when you’re deploying? You put most of your resources where you have most of your crime, particularly violent crime, and then that sets up a clash if you’re not careful.

One of the things that I thought was important that we were able to do in Philadelphia was to introduce foot patrol, which is an old concept, but we lost sight of that along the way in policing. All new recruits coming out of the Philadelphia Police Department start on foot patrol in some of our most challenged communities, not along commercial corridors, but right in the neighborhoods where you have crime committed in open space. What does that do?

One, there is a study that showed it had a direct impact on crime – 22% reduction – but even more important than that, officers learned very early on that even in the most challenged communities, there are more decent law-abiding people living there than there are criminals. You don’t know that when you’re driving down the street at 40 miles an hour in a Crown Vic with your windows up. You know it if you’re out there on foot walking up and down the street, and you see people sitting on the front porch. You engage in casual conversation. You meet young people who want the same things you want and the same thing your kids want. They’re just trapped in an environment that may not necessarily be conducive to a positive outcome.

Understanding that from an early part of your career I think will pay huge dividends in the future as we start to really understand from both sides what it is that’s going on and what’s really needed in order to make our community safe. We need to be able to respect and understand different points of view. Even if we don’t agree with it, at least understand where someone is coming from. If you can do that, then you go a long way toward trying to bridge that gap, strengthen relationships. Think about it, Ron. Let’s take the George Floyd incident.What if people in your city looked at that and said, ‘Oh my God, that’s terrible, but our cops would never do anything like that’? Because that’s the level of confidence and trust they have in your department. We’re a heck of a long way from that, but that’s what you have to strive for.

RH: For sure. Chuck, speaking of foot patrols in Philadelphia, when you were the chief in DC, you did things as well that I remember at the time struck me as very powerful. You used a resource right in your community, the Holocaust Museum. Can you share a little bit about that for the folks who don’t know what you did?

CR: When I was a brand, new police chief in 1998, when I left Chicago PD to take over as chief in DC…and anyone who’s ever taken over a police department – especially if you’re an outsider – everybody’s trying to get to know you. ‘I want you to come to different meetings’, and so forth. I got a letter from an individual who I did not know but has since become a very close personal friend, David Friedman, who at the time was executive director of ADL in Washington, DC. He sent me a letter inviting me to visit the museum at the invitation of course of the museum, and I accepted.

I was visiting the Smithsonian and trying to really learn a little bit about Washington anyway, and so I said okay, and it was on my schedule. It was the most powerful experience that I had to that date. I had the honor of actually walking through the museum with an actual survivor, Irene Weiss, who told me her personal story as we were walking through the museum. And, to make a long story short, it was a haunting experience. When I left, something was eating away at me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I flew to Chicago to visit family and when I came back, I went back to the museum unannounced. When I went back through, right at the beginning of the experience, I saw a picture, and it was a picture of a German police officer with a soldier, a member of the SA. They had this dog, German shepherd on a leash with a muzzle, and he had this crazed look in his eye. What struck me was, ‘Wait a minute. I always thought the Holocaust was just involving Nazis and German soldiers’. I didn’t realize police played a role. As I went through, I kept looking for that, and it made me think — what is the role of police in a democratic society, and what happens when you lose sight of those responsibilities and constitutional obligations? Because Germany had been a democratic society prior to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.

I thought that was an approach – not to call cops Nazis let’s make that clear – but to understand the important role that police play in a democratic society and how we actually help hold together the very fabric of democracy. When we lose sight of that, then the ultimate horror can take place. It was a backdoor way of getting at those critical issues: stop and frisk, biased policing, all those things. If you start taking rights away from one group of people, who’s next?

RH: When I first heard that, it was many years ago, Chuck. It always, always stayed with me what you did and the fact that you had police go through there. You sent recruits through or did you send everyone through?

CR: Everybody, it started with the command staff, then we sent recruits. Then we sent veteran officers, and since then now, all the federal agencies sent people through. Members of the military go through. Teachers go through. There have been almost 200,000 law enforcement people alone that have gone through that program.

RH: It struck me, Chuck, for a lot of reasons. It’s also very personal. I lost my grandfather in the Holocaust…never met him. Just a family history there and the fact that you would think of that way as trying to build in police an additional piece of consciousness from knowing history, our own nation’s history as well as others — super powerful.

CR: We did something else in Philadelphia, where we have the National Constitution Center. We visited there and learned they have a course where they teach the evolution of democracy from 1776, the signing of the Declaration of Independence up till today. I asked if they could trace the history of policing in America during that same period of time and even though early on there were no formal police departments…but you may have been, let’s say, catching slaves on a plantation if you were in the South — a police-like function. If you fast forward to the civil rights movement, who was waiting on the other side of the Pettus Bridge when civil rights marchers walked across? It was police. Understanding our own history here in the United States is important. This is the baggage we carry as a profession, and we need to acknowledge it and do things to make sure that that’s not our future. Maybe our past. We can’t change the past, but we can influence the future. The future begins now today, not tomorrow, but today.

RH: It speaks to why I think the trust issue is so hard, because it’s not just getting someone to trust you as the chief or your officers. They need to trust the institution. The institution has a lot of work to do, and I think it’s what is so – from my observation, Chuck – so hard today is you’re not just building trust from here forward, which you have to do…or the trust that’s been built which so many people work so hard on building that trust in the proper way. But you also need to do it in a profound enough way where the institution now rises and people look up to them.

CR: This kind of gets to the whole idea of what is legacy. Legacy isn’t about what you do as an individual; it’s what you leave behind in others. If you want something to survive long-term, it can’t be just built around an individual…because we come and go. It’s what happens after you go when nobody even remembers how you got there — but just what you do because it’s part of the culture now. That’s part of it. That’s a big part of it, and that’s how it lasts.

Don’t miss Part 2 in our post Investing in a Police Force that’s Poised for Leadership, where Mr. Ramsey discusses community engagement, cultural norms within a department and investing in the development of promotional systems.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Go Beyond a Standalone Software Application with a Law Enforcement Software Suite

Posted on by Amy Vracar

Law enforcement software has changed immensely over the past decade. We have seen software innovations that help improve administrative workflows, such as use of force or internal affairs reports, as well as software that captures and utilizes data to help police chiefs make decisions on how to best serve their communities. More often than not, these innovations are presented as single-point solutions — versus as part of an integrated, holistic suite of offerings.

These standalone software applications are designed to address one specific agency need, such as training management, performance evaluations, or Covid-19 personnel tracking. While these systems capture and track information for the task they were built for, in the end they are disparate cogs in a machine that requires seamless integration and connectivity.

The Complexities of Standalone Software Applications
Until recently, the market has driven how agencies are able to purchase software solutions for their myriad of needs. And by that we mean, one by one: one platform for early warning and intervention . . . one platform for training . . . one for Covid-19 tracking . . . and so on and so on. And while these single-point purchases solve individual challenges in the short-term, over time they can lead to increased complexities within the agency and its administrative process.

The Benefits of a Single-Provider Software Suite

For example, agencies that utilize multiple software applications can experience integration challenges and find it difficult to compare and correlate data across applications. As a result, many administrative hours are spent on manual processes or even spreadsheets, in order to link information together from these different standalone systems. This takes valuable team time away from conducting more important core duties. And on top of all that, by the time all the information is integrated as needed, it may already be outdated and inaccurate. The unintended consequences? Agencies possibly making critical decisions based on inaccurate information . . . or making a hasty and potentially risky decision without benefit of the full information picture . . . OR, in lieu of that complete picture, taking no action at all.

Additionally, IT departments spend time and money maintaining, upgrading or acquiring new versions of each standalone application. When one application has a new version, it may require additional integration and maintenance with the other standalone systems in order for it to work, which in the end leads to an increase in hours and costs to maintain. All this, and we still see some agencies “make do” with multiple software applications, even if that strategy may not serve their various stakeholders in the most efficient and effective way possible.

The Benefits of a Single-Provider Software Suite
A single-provider software suite is a collection of software applications that have correlative features and functionality for law enforcement agencies. These suites also share a similar user interface and have the ability to easily exchange data with each other. Agencies who utilize a single-provider software suite experience numerous benefits. Here are a few below:

  • Data in one place.
    The key to avoiding manual work and time-consuming tasks is to ensure your agency has the ability to create, update, or modify data all in one place. For example, with standalone systems, personnel may need to log into several different applications to complete functions. With a single-provider software suite, individuals can utilize any portion of the system and input data that can be easily shared across other portions of the suite — saving valuable administration time. The Benefits of a Single-Provider Software SuiteAdditionally, the right software suite can seamlessly integrate all data, automate data processes and update information in real-time —  making it is easy to generate reports and compare data. Automating such processes also allows agencies to minimize personnel time spent on data-mining activities.
  • Decreased redundant IT tasks.
    Agencies with several standalone systems consume valuable IT time managing, maintaining and upgrading each individual system. A single, holistic software suite streamlines efficiency and minimizes redundancy in IT tasks.
  • Consistent experience.
    Standalone systems will have their own unique user interface designs. With a single-provider software suite, agencies get a consistent UX, which can minimize confusion, reduce learning time and increase overall usability.

Ultimately, with a single-provider software suite, agencies achieve transparency, streamline data, and manage department functions in one place. For these and other reasons, leading agencies are turning to Benchmark Analytics and its suite of personnel management software, which includes the Benchmark Management System® (BMS), First Sign® Early Intervention and Case Action Response Engine® (C.AR.E.).

BMS is a comprehensive software suite that features seven analytics-driven modules, which include: 1) Training 2) Use of Force 3) Internal Affairs 4) Activity 5) Officer Profile 6) Performance Evaluation and 7) Community Engagement. These seven integrated modules capture critical data and departmental reports that are easy to view in the BMS dashboard.

First Sign then leverages the data in BMS and analyzes it to identify officers who are exhibiting both on-track and off-track behavior. Once off-track behavior has been identified in First Sign, Benchmark expedites thoughtful and effective early intervention with C.A.R.E. — a proactive, targeted support program that features research-based case management modules for officer-specific interventions.

To learn more about the Benchmark Analytics Software Suite, visit: https://www.benchmarkanalytics.com/police-force-management-blueprint/

Or, contact us today at https://www.benchmarkanalytics.com/public-safety-demo/

Meaningful Police Reform Includes an Early Intervention and Warning System

Posted on by Amy Vracar

Every day we witness extraordinary acts of bravery from those sworn to serve and protect — and who are deserving of our respect and appreciation. But we’ve also witnessed firsthand the impact even a single, negative incident can have on an entire organization. And while that dynamic is not exclusive to policing – and almost certainly exists within most any workplace environment – the consequences can be just so much deeper and more tragic.

Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) aptly stated, “the vast majority of this country’s law enforcement officers are principled men and women who provide professional service to the communities they serve. Their responsibilities are great, and the expectations from their communities are high. Unfortunately, there are times when officers’ performance fall short of agency expectations for any number of reasons.”

Police ReformNever before have we as a country had such a sustained national dialogue on police transparency, accountability and yes, reform. While police reform is complex, the idea’s essence is that policing requires transformation in order for today’s agencies to continue to meet the challenges of their profession and better serve their communities. Such transformation requires a vested commitment from police departments for sure, but also from community leaders and elected officials. And the burden is on all to understand what can be done to pre-empt and prevent one more incident from happening in their neighborhoods and on their streets.

Meaningful police reform should include early intervention and warning systems
A law enforcement early intervention and warning system is a police force management tool designed to identify officers whose behavior is concerning, or problematic, at the earliest possible stage so that intervention and support can be offered in an effort to re-direct performance and behaviors toward agency goals.

(Source: Best Practices in Early Intervention System Implementation and Use in Law Enforcement Agencies)

According to an article in Police Chief Magazine, “EISs are a staple in U.S. police departments—a 2007 survey showed that 65 percent of surveyed police departments with 250 or more officers had an EIS. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies, the U.S. Department of Justice, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Police Foundation have all recommended departments use these systems. Most federal consent decrees require a department to use an EIS.”

With that said, there are different types of EI systems to consider. The most common are threshold-based systems, that are reliant on fairly simple triggers. For example, if an officer has had three use-of-force incidents in the last six months . . . or if they’ve taken more than 10 days of sick leave in the last two months . . . a flag gets raised. And the problem with that simple system is that it’s almost always inaccurate. It also creates two types of critical errors — false positives and false negatives.

A research-based system evaluates total behavior patterns including context of activity and peer group, by utilizing algorithms to provide risk scores for officers across the department. This predictive model not only identifies patterns of police officer conduct that lead to problematic behavior, but also identifies patterns of behavior that lead to exceptional conduct. Further, it evolves and gets smarter over time as new insights, lessons learned, innovative practices and technical advancements are uncovered.

The impact of a research-based EIS
As part of an agency’s larger effort to support and improve officer performance and identify and address officers before a serious problem occurs, a research-based system – such as Benchmark’s First Sign® Early Intervention – can enhance accountability and transparency as well as the overall integrity of the agency’s performance.Research EIS

Powered by evidence-based research and analytics, First Sign is preventative by design to notify you at the ‘first sign’ of a real need to intervene. First Sign leverages data captured on officer performance and behaviors and allows supervisors and commanders to review and compare data for individual officers, units and watches. Supervisors can assign intervention actions early on for potentially problematic behavior in need of correction, as well as make recommendations for exceptional performance deserving recognition.

Agencies across the U.S. continue to choose First Sign as part of their police reform strategy, because its data-driven system proactively and pre-emptively identifies potentially problematic officer behavior so supervisors can take corrective action. Ron Huberman, CEO of Benchmark Analytics, stated in a recent article “The whole idea behind what we do is to allow police leaders to get in-front of problematic situations before they occur. What makes it predictable is that officers who are engaged in problematic conduct rarely ever do we see it occur from a single incident, where they had one problematic incident. Typically, it’s a cluster or pattern of problems.”

To learn more about First Sign, visit our page at https://www.benchmarkanalytics.com/first-sign-early-intervention/

To learn more about why your agency should consider an early intervention system, download our Must-Have Checklist for Meaningful Reform: 6 Critical Criteria of an Early Intervention System.

Early Intervention Systems that Meet Law Enforcement Accreditation Standards

Posted on by Amy Vracar

In recent weeks, conversations on law enforcement accreditation have increased among municipal and state law enforcement leaders. For example, Massachusetts is promoting a bill that develops a Police Officer Standards and Accreditation Committee that will create unified requirements on officer certification and misconduct. In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine is encouraging more agencies to pursue law enforcement accreditation, and in Virginia, the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police outlined positive reforms for police departments which includes Virginia agencies to achieve either state or national accreditation.

But what is law enforcement accreditation?
In our post, Accreditation 101: The Benefits of State and National Police Accreditation, we shared that law enforcement accreditation is a self-initiated, voluntary process and is based on standards which are reflective of best practices in law enforcement.

Agencies can become nationally accredited through The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc (CALEA), or receive accreditation through a state program. Whether an agency becomes accredited through CALEA or a state program, the accreditation process requires an in-depth review of an agency’s organization, management, operations and administration – often known as standards.

What are accreditation standards?
Accreditation standards increase an agency’s credibility and provide performance norms against agency processes and procedures.  These standards cover roles and responsibilities; relationships with other agencies; organization, management and administration; law enforcement operations, operational support and traffic law enforcement; detainee and court-related services; and auxiliary and technical services.

What is an early intervention system’s role in law enforcement accreditation?
CALEA Standards Chapter 35 emphasizes that a law enforcement agency must be able to depend on the satisfactory work performance of each employee, and this includes having a standardized performance evaluation as well as a personnel early intervention system.

EIS Research

CALEA Standard 31.1.9 specifically states “If an agency has an EIS, a written directive establishes a Personnel Early Intervention System to identify agency employees who may require agency intervention efforts. The directive shall include: a. definitions of employee behaviors or actions to be included for review; b. threshold or trigger levels to initiate a review of employee actions or behavior; c. a review of identified employees, based on current patterns of collected material, that is approved by the agency CEO or designee; d. agency reporting requirements of conduct and behavior; e. documented annual evaluation of the system; f. the responsibility of supervisors; g. remedial action; and h. some type of employee assistance such as a formal employee assistance Program, peer counseling, etc.”

Additionally, as part of CALEA’s standard on EIS, the National Police Foundation shares that “the failure of the agency to develop a comprehensive system can lead to the erosion of public confidence in the agency’s ability to investigate itself, while putting the public and agency employees in greater risk of danger.”

State accreditation programs design standards that capture both CALEA-recognized and state-specific best practices for law enforcement agencies. For example, The Arizona Law Enforcement Accreditation Program (ALEAP) Chapter 16 contains standards on performance evaluations and includes standards on annual performance evaluations, as well as probationary employees. The Illinois Law Enforcement Accreditation Program (ILEAP) has two accreditation tiers for departments, but both contain standards regarding officer performance. Therefore, whether a department is seeking national or state accreditation, it is important for agencies to have an EIS in place that provides a framework for establishing review processes, as well as delivers accurate officer data, in order to meet performance accreditation standards.

What early intervention system (EIS) is required to meet accreditation standards?
Not all EIS are the same.

Early Intervention SystemFor example, threshold-based EIS systems rely on basic activity thresholds, so that when an officer reaches an arbitrary threshold, the officer is flagged for an investigation. The problem with these types of systems is that they aren’t reliable for identifying a real problem that requires intervention; in fact, based on academic research, threshold-based systems result in:

As a result, a threshold system does not necessarily help agencies accurately review officer performance, in order to meet accreditation standards, and provide them the intervention and training plans when needed. Instead, a data-driven early intervention system, like First Sign® Early Intervention, analyzes cumulative officer data on an ongoing basis and allows supervisors to review and compare data for individual officers, units and even watches. This allows supervisors to make recommendations for exceptional performance deserving of recognition or assign intervention actions for concerning behavior.

Research shows there are over 25 indicators that impact an officer’s performance, and fall in four conceptual groups: Event, Organization, Officer, and External/Wellness. As an example, Event information includes: missed court appearances; officer-involved injuries; commendations received; officer training; and community engagement work. Agencies using First Sign work with Benchmark’s data science team to conduct a detailed data exercise which allows each agency to identify the most valuable, accessible, and relevant indicators for their department. Each indicator is then broken into subdomains and analyzed.

The result is having a data-driven EIS in place that serves as a predictive model that identifies patterns of problematic behavior and patterns of exceptional conduct — thus, providing the information agencies need to successfully meet officer performance accreditation standards.

What are next steps?
To learn more about the importance of a data-driven early intervention system, watch our presentation from the 2019 International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference on “What Every Police Chief Needs to Understand about Early Intervention/Warning Systems.”

To learn more about First Sign from a Benchmark representative, fill out the form here.

I Was the Mayor of Minneapolis and I Know Our Cops Have a Problem

Posted on by Amy Vracar

Note: The following article is reprinted by permission of POLITICO LLC, and originally appeared on June 2, 2020.

___________________________________________________________________________

I Was the Mayor of Minneapolis and I Know Our Cops Have a Problem

Racism permeated the culture of the department. But there are ways to change that culture that other cities can copy.

By R.T. Rybak

The searing images from the past several nights of anger and violence in dozens of cities across the country have shocked and horrified the nation. But there is one image that we need to keep fixed in our minds, the one that started it all:

A human being, staring calmly off into the middle distance, while his knee slowly suffocates another human being.

Our repulsion should boil over as we realize that the white police officer, who took an oath to protect and serve that person on the ground, who is black, would not have acted so brutally if the man he was restraining were white. Until every one of us can see that image for what it is—an example of a two-tiered justice system that treats black and white people differently—we cannot move another inch forward. We need to acknowledge that on some level, every one of us had a role in keeping this inequity in place.

I’ll go first, because after living in Minneapolis all my life, covering the Minneapolis Police Department as a Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter and, more directly, serving 12 years as mayor of this city, I should.

My own efforts to change a police department and its culture failed badly. That starts with appointing three different police chiefs who all made change but not enough. It includes attempts to diversify the force, to change practices in mental health and numerous efforts to work with individual officers on softening their approach so they could empathize more deeply with community. These failures will haunt me for the rest of my life, and it should. As each of us sees and acknowledges our own part it can be paralyzing. It was for me.

But I was heartened by something a colleague at the Minneapolis Foundation said to me the other day. Chanda Smith Baker grew up and raised a family as an African American in north Minneapolis, and for years has lead the Pillsbury United Communities. She has seen so many more of the consequences of our deep, endemic racism than I ever will. But as we surveyed the damage and pain in our community she said simply: “We have no choice but to act.”

So we are acting. Our foundation, which has been centered on racial equity for decades, is granting $1 million in the next few weeks to community-based solutions that strive for justice and healing in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in police custody. Knowing we need to have tough conversations about race and culture, we launched our “Conversations with Chanda” podcast that will give our community, which has avoided those tough conversations for too long, the space to “go there.”

Like everyone in this city, we know that is still not enough. A very well-intentioned friend asked me what one thing he could do to make this situation better. I had to say, “There’s no one thing.” You can’t fully stop racism in policing without understanding the racism in the laws we ask our police to enforce, the racism in a criminal justice system that over-incarcerates black men, the racism in how we white Americans perceive a threat when we see someone who is black. An unjust economic system matters, and so does the issue where I focus most these days: the intolerable racial inequities in education. So does the classism that allows so many of us with privilege to have someone else’s child put on a police uniform and walk into tough situations so we can safely, mindlessly go about our lives.

But, right now, nothing matters more in Minneapolis than reforming the city’s police. An obvious first step would be to demilitarize the department. As a mayor who took office right after 9/11, I quickly saw that the community-based preventive programs like Bill Clinton’s “cops on the streets” initiative lost funding while we seemingly had a blank check for equipment and weapon systems that too often have the officers we want to “protect and serve” separated from their communities by shields and armored turtle suits.

Fortunately, we don’t need to invent a solution from scratch. We already have the Obama administration’s “21st Century Policing Plan,” which lays out in detail how our country’s police departments can be rebuilt around six pillars: building trust and legitimacy, policy and oversight, technology and social media, community policing and crime reduction, training and education and officer safety and wellness.

One of the most important values I took from that plan is something I learned on a deeply personal level as a mayor: Police officers are human beings. We then train them, put them with others we have trained into cultures that develop around the job and expect them to perform in the most high-stress situations imaginable.

We also know a lot about what makes that human being performing as a police officer thrive in the job or become a headline from a searing incident we could have prevented. The Center for Data Science and Public Policy at the University of Chicago has studied officer conduct over time in major departments and analyzed what actions signal when behavior starts to go off track. This helps us act more quickly when we need to intervene so that officers can be retrained or treated, and get back on track.

When I first saw this research, I realized that if, as mayor, the police chief and I, and the department’s supervisors, had known early when our officers needed our help and attention, we could have saved tens of millions in settlements costs and scores of lives. The problem was we never had the technology or tools to connect in real time what was happening with each officer and we didn’t have access to what we now know about how to step in.

That’s why I joined the founding board of Benchmark Analytics, which is now using that work in 60 cities and the state of New Jersey to connect department internal personnel systems to that deep research so mayors and chiefs can do what I never could to prevent the next tragic incident.

There are many more specific actions that can be taken but above all we need to address police culture. I have never been a police officer, so my experience is limited to what I have seen as a reporter and mayor. But I have come to know so many officers and continue to struggle with how I can know so many truly committed people whose collective actions I don’t recognize. In my city, at least, we have a majority of officers who let a minority of officers create an us-vs.-them culture that over time dehumanizes the people and neighborhoods the officers are supposed to protect and serve. Throw race into this toxic mix and you end up with behavior that often has to be named for what it is: racism. It plays itself out when a knee stays on the neck of a human being treated like he’s not human.

Much has been written by people who know more than I about police culture, but I do know it can be reformed only from within. That means the majority of officers need to rise up and take control of their culture. To the many good officers I know exist, I say this: I know the consequences of being shunned by your co-workers, but I also know you know in your heart that George Floyd should not be dead. Your silence is deafening and this city, and this country, cannot move forward until we hear your voices.

There is good news. We have stood at this place before, in Minneapolis and across the country. Yes, this might seem like the beginning of a familiar and dispiriting cycle: a terrible incident, a few days of promises and then, as the attention fades, so does the hope of change. But I also know that this is not a predestined conclusion. Change is possible. I know because I have seen it before in this very city.

Forty-one years ago, I was a young crime reporter. Night after night, I covered a police department that had deep issues of trust with two communities: residents who were black, and residents who were gay.

All these years later, one of those groups has seen enormous change. The Minneapolis police, which back then routinely beat and humiliated gay residents, is now one of the most gay-friendly departments in the country with openly gay officers serving in every part of the force, including at one point, the role of chief. There was no one action that made that possible, instead, in thousands of interactions, that wall creating an us vs. them turned into a we because each group recognized we are human beings on the other side.

The fact that we have seen so much progress with gay residents and almost none with black residents says a lot about the perniciousness of racism. We need to own that. But it does also say that change is possible, and now we have to prove that is true.

Copyright 2016 POLITICO LLC.

The Evolution of Law Enforcement Data

Posted on by Amy Vracar

The first documented use of data and analysis in American policing was in 1906 by August Vollmer in Berkeley, California. Vollmer organized patrol beats based on reviewing police reports and pin-mapping crimes.
(Source: Increasing Analytic Capacity of State and Law Enforcement Agencies: Moving Beyond Data Analysis to Create a Vision for Change by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Law Enforcement Forecasting Group).

Data in Policing

Data and analysis have now been part of American policing for more than a century – evolving from Vollmer’s pin-mapping to comparative data tables; from simple patterns analysis and batch processing on mainframe computers to user interface with real-time analysis; and eventually to more flexible and sophisticated analysis.

From Undefined to Predictive
Considering the growth of information today, as well as expansion of technology solutions, it is critical for public safety agencies to understand their organization’s data. However, data and analysis vary from agency to agency, and this can best be described in the five stages of transformative management for law enforcement.

Transformative Management is how agencies oversee processes and data related to police force management, to improve the effectiveness of both their civilian and sworn personnel. The stages start at Undefined and move along a pathway  to Manual, Digital, Analytic and Predictive. At the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) 2019 Annual Conference, Nick Montgomery, Chief Research Officer at Benchmark Analytics, shared with attendees what each stage meant:

  • Undefined: An agency is at the Undefined stage when they have not begun implementing data-collection systems and have no operational initiatives to utilize data in decision-making.IACP 2019 Presentation
  • Manual: An agency is at the Manual stage when they have defined processes — though the processes are often managed by manually logging data into spreadsheets and using rudimentary analysis.
  • Digital: At the Digital stage, agencies start automating manual processes and source programs to develop data management workflows.
  • Analytic: In order to analyze data, agencies need to be able to “read” it. At the Analytic stage, an agency has the data and is beginning to understand what it means.
  • Predictive: Law enforcement agencies can benefit from developing an analytic capacity, and this is demonstrated in the Predictive stage. The Predictive stage is when agencies use the data, reports, and analytics to make meaningful decisions – optimizing the outcomes they aim to achieve through transformation.

Montgomery also shared that agencies often achieve these stages in two milestones. The first milestone is Undefined to Digital. The second milestone is Digital to Predictive.

In the first milestone, agencies reach the Digital stage and have automated manual processes, as well as start to bring in data. However, agencies may not know how to utilize the data yet. In the second milestone, agencies reach the Predictive stage because they engage in multiple data sources, as well as use robust reporting tools, to hone in on the data that matters most— in order to better serve their personnel and surrounding community.

Reaching the Predictive Stage
Agencies should incorporate technology solutions that can help them reach the Predictive stage in transformative management, such as:

  • Early Intervention Systems (EIS)
    EIS platforms are used by many agencies — but most are trigger-based systems that regularly produce inaccuracies. In Montgomery’s IACP presentation, he shared that trigger-based Early Intervention systems typically flag the wrong officers and can produce a high rate of false negatives and false positives in a department.

    A research based EIS utilizes machine learning, has the ability to learn patterns in data as well as to use those patterns to make predictions. As a result, agencies significantly reduce the number of incorrect flags and, instead, can take a proactive and preventative approach when identifying officers that may require additional training, counseling or intervention.

    Learn more about how Early Intervention Systems have evolved, as well as view the full IACP presentation here.

  • Personnel Management Software
    Personnel management software, like the Benchmark Management System®, is designed to capture all day-to-day operational information in one location. It also provides agencies an all-encompassing, fully automated management tool – essential for capturing critical data, as well as departmental reports and forms. For example, BMS provides custom Exposure Forms, used to monitor all interactions related to coronavirus – to help identify trends, facilitate proactive intervention and help keep law enforcement agencies safe.

    The BMS reporting dashboard also provides agencies with a fully-automated administrative backbone – acting as a workforce multiplier to help your agency do more with less.

  • Training Management System (TMS)
    It is critical for agencies to have the tools to deliver up-to-date training organization-wide, especially during the evolving coronavirus pandemic. A TMS allows departments to train virtually, track completion and send updates in a way that best prepares officers to serve successfully and safely. Additionally, a TMS tracks training activities crucial for managing certifications to meet mandatory compliance.

    Learn about how a TMS can help your agency in our post: The Benefits of a Learning Management System for Today’s Public-Sector Organizations.

If you would like to know more about what Benchmark can do to help your agency reach the Predictive stage, visit us at Ready to do more with your data?

Choosing an Early Intervention System for Your Department

Posted on by Bob Tulini

You’re no doubt familiar with Early Intervention Systems (EIS) used by law enforcement agencies to identify off-track behavior in officers. However, in recent years, agencies have sought a more proactive and preventative solution that can identify officers before they’re involved in a career-damaging adverse incident.

They’ve found that little has changed in traditional EIS platforms since the initial days of trigger-based systems. How they look has barely kept up with other technology, and the way they work hasn’t been updated since the 70’s.

The emergence of modern problems leads many agencies to reevaluate their current EIS and consider investing in a modern one.

Old technology and new technology

Non-Disciplinary by Design

Far from being a means to discipline, EIS platforms were intended to be non-disciplinary by design. However, using triggers to identify officers in need of additional support has since been found to create situations where EIS platforms are used as hindsight-driven, punitive tools, if they’re used at all.

Unlike classic EIS platforms, a modern EIS is configured to capture and analyze indicators beyond the simple mechanism of triggers and thresholds. This enables them to provide insight that can be used to address an officer before they have an incident that could require disciplinary action. It also provides a greater depth of insight into an agency’s overall health, including officers deserving of recognition, and individuals who have been exposed to a critical number of stressful events.

An EIS is intended to be an objective, smart, and automated mechanism that supports the health, safety and efficacy of your officers. Still, the idea of trusting an algorithm to interpret officer data can be off-putting to those who prefer a human touch. However, a truly modern EIS blends seamlessly with your department, informing and amplifying the impact of your frontline supervisors rather than replacing them.

Similar to the communication and tactical improvement brought about by two-way radios, an EIS extends your supervising staff’s ability to respond to officers in need of support. Furthermore, in recent years agencies have been using EIS to identify officers worthy of recognition for exceptional service.

How Do Early Intervention Systems Work?

Initially, EIS platforms were called “Early Warning” systems. While “Intervention” and “Warning” are sometimes used interchangeably, the latter has gradually fallen out of favor. Consider this –a warning will tell supervisors something is wrong, but it won’t tell supervisors how to help the officer who triggered it.

According to the National Police Foundation, using intervention terminology “emphasizes the role of the agency in providing officers with support and resources to address problems at their earliest stage.” Most police executives would agree helping officers is preferable to punishing them.

The important part, regardless of what term you use, is that you are aware an officer is exhibiting behavior pre-determined to be atypical, enabling your supervisory team to take preventative actions that “promote officer safety, health and wellness, and success.”

old typewriter new computer

The first generation of EIS platforms relied heavily on the mechanics of triggers and thresholds. Agencies would select a set of indicators and then define thresholds for each one. For example, if an officer had three use-of-force instances in a single month, that would trigger an alert for a supervisor.

Though innovative at the time, recent advancements in technology allow for the development of sophisticated systems that refine triggers to allow for truly preventative action. A peer-reviewed study from our partners at the University of Chicago identified that most trigger-based systems result in a 78% false positive and 90% false negative rate.

These trigger-based systems can often orient the attention of supervisors in the wrong direction, wasting time and introducing the risk that officers in need of support will slip through the cracks. Beyond that, they often aren’t configured to provide an early enough warning.

Regardless, an EIS is an essential part of any modern agency’s personnel management toolkit for myriad reasons.

For more information about alternatives to a trigger-based approach, such as using analytics to convert data into insights, check out First Sign®.

Why would your agency want an EIS?

In a report on EIS best practices, the National Police Foundation defined one as “a personnel management tool designed to identify potential individual or group concerns at the earliest possible stage so that intervention and support can be offered in an effort to re-direct performance and behaviors toward organizational goals.”

In other words, an EIS can help you know where to focus your management efforts. Most companies and organizations have some type of support system or tool in place to position employees to succeed. Usually this falls under the purview of human resources. Agencies can apply some of these existing principles to how they think about supporting officers. EIS platforms are particularly well-suited to support agencies and their officers in the following ways.

Protect Your Officers (and Their Careers)

Law enforcement officers regularly must adapt to high-stress, complex (often unfamiliar) situations. They’re also expected to thoroughly document these events, including everything from when use of force is required to vehicle pursuits. This makes their profession unusual in that a lot of data is produced but not much is done with it to help personnel.

Early EIS platforms worked off indicators chosen through intuition. While this gets agencies part of the way towards a system that can help prevent officers from drifting into adverse behavior, these indicators alone simply aren’t enough to make sense of all the data generated by today’s LEOs.

A modern EIS allows supervisors and police executives to take truly preventative action, without getting bogged down in false positives and false negatives.

Accreditation Compliance

CALEA offers multiple tiers, but table stakes for accreditation include guidance on EIS usage. According to CALEA standard 35.1.9, agencies with an EIS must also have a “written directive” to provide structure around definitions of behavioral indicators, reviews of identified employees, remedial action, and so on. In CALEA’s own words, “the failure of an agency to develop a comprehensive system can lead to the erosion of public confidence in the agency’s ability to investigate itself, while putting the public and agency employees in greater risk of danger.”

Relationship with Community

A survey of nearly 2,000 residents of U.S. metro areas, “found that 75% of white respondents and 80% of Black and Hispanic respondents favored the use of early warning systems as an accountability mechanism within police agencies.” As communities continue to ask for more transparency and insight into how police agencies identify and address officers whose behavior does not align with their expectations, modern EIS platforms offer a solution that signals an agency is investing in not only the well-being of their officers, but the well-being of the community.

start here

6 Baseline Functions to Look for in an EIS

As you prepare to either reevaluate your existing early intervention system or consider purchasing one for your agency, here are some baseline functions you should seek.

Trigger or Threshold Mechanisms

Though research indicates these mechanisms are no longer enough (and can often mislead supervisors), they still provide some insight into the frequency of certain events. Though you might find yourself

A Research Base

While it’s great to gain insight into your officers, there’s only so much you can do comparing your agency against itself. Implementing an EIS built on top of a longitudinal research base helps you understand your officers in the context of policing across a variety of departments.

21st Century Analytics

Data without analytics isn’t very useful. If your EIS doesn’t come with advanced analytics, your team will be left to crunch the numbers on their own. And at the rate that law enforcement produces data, it’s nearly impossible for an individual to derive any meaningful insight without the help of modern technology.

Situational Evaluation

Your EIS should be able to interpret information based on situational data. This is critical to avoiding false positive and false negatives. If your EIS can’t process data in the context of a situation, the results won’t differentiate between a justifiably active officer and an off-track one.

Temporal Evaluation

When something occurred should also factor into the information you receive from your EIS. Whether a series of events happened during third watch, on the weekend, in the morning, or during a large event should factor into which officers are flagged, if any.

Command Channel Review Support

While all agencies have some review process, our experience has revealed that each one is unique. That’s why it’s key for your EIS to be flexible enough to align with your command channel review.

Choosing an EIS is an important decision for an agency. Consider seeking out a partner who understands the complexities of policing who can also leverage the power of advanced analytics.

People Data: What It Is and How Police Departments Can Use It

Posted on by Bob Tulini

People produce a lot of data. How much is a lot of data? Research company IDC, “estimates that by 2025, approximately 80 billion devices will be connected to the internet and the total amount of digital data generated worldwide will hit 180 zettabytes.”

To put that in context, an officer’s body-worn camera produces about 11.6 gigabytes of data every month. A single zettabyte contains a trillion gigabytes.

Folks in the tech space often refer to data as the “new oil.” This might be a nod to the great quantities of data all around us, unseen; or that all of the software and applications we use would be impossible without it. Another way to interpret the analogy is through data’s valuable byproducts (oil’s go into 6,000 items): instead of the rubber for basketballs, data yields insights we can use to make decisions.

With both internal and external factors driving change in police departments, using data to develop a holistic view of your officers will be crucial to your agency addressing its unique challenges.

What Types of Workforce Data Can Police Departments Capture?

There’s no shortage of technology in police departments but most of it is focused on policing and not the police as employees. Software like Computer Aided Dispatch and Records Management Systems make it easier to help the communities they serve. However, they don’t provide insight into your sworn and civilian personnel.

on-duty-officer-dataYou can’t have the benefits of people analytics without having people data to analyze. Through research conducted by the University of Chicago, seven performance areas have emerged that are both rich in data and critical to effective police force management. If you’re interested in using data to innovate your police department, here’s where to start.

Training and Certifications

Beginning with the academy, officers must continually demonstrate and hone their tactical skills. Training is essential to good policing, but it can be hard to understand holistically across an officer’s entire career. Implementing systems to track the training data generated by officers is a good first step to gathering people data.

An Officer’s On-Duty Activity

This area includes the daily on-duty activities that make up an officer’s career; everything from pedestrian and traffic stops to accolades and administrative notices. This type of people data is essential to police leadership. Without it, front-line supervisors could struggle to understand and evaluate officer activity across the department.

Use-of-Force Incidents

Many departments already track use-of-force incidents but do so in a way that makes analysis incredibly difficult, especially when it comes to understanding connections between your officers’ training, your leadership, and the outcomes your officers produce in the field.

Other important areas to begin tracking:

  • Internal Affairs Command Channel Review and Case Management
  • Community Engagement
  • Performance Evaluations
  • Officer Profile – a LEO’s historic and holistic record

How Can You Use People Data?

Essentially, people data, sometimes called workforce data, is any of the information you can capture about your employees. Certifications, absences, complaints, accolades, performance reviews, etc. Tracking these areas across all of your employees yields a mountain of information.

Unless you’re secretly a computer, that massive amount of data won’t yield much, especially if you’re trying to derive insights from years of workforce activity. This gap between data capture and data insight is bridged by analytics, which is the process of running raw people data through software designed to find signals in the noise. These signals are what we refer to as insights, patterns in the data that can be used to make informed predictions about future results.

For example, a company might use people data to measure overall employee sentiment or the internal net-promoter score (i.e., how many people would recommend working there versus not), where before they might have had an outdated spreadsheet and some water-cooler talk to inform its solution to high turnover. People analytics can be used to predict overall productivity or perhaps a surge in turnover; it can also be used to intervene ahead of negative consequences.

Executives view people data as a strategic advantage in an age where high expectations and high employee churn are rules rather than exceptions. Police leadership is facing similar stressors when it comes to recruiting, training, retaining, and developing their officers.

In our next post, we’ll further explore how police leadership can use people data. If you’re wondering whether your agency could benefit from a better understanding of people data, let us know and we’d be happy to discuss it with you.

Tips for Assessing Your Professional Standards and Early Intervention Systems

Posted on by Bob Tulini

Have you ever taken a self-assessment exercise? Often times the first thing you’re told is that there are no right or wrong answers – the objective is to become more aware of the totality of characteristics that comprise your identity. Makes sense, right? But unfortunately, that same principle does not apply to organizational self-assessment – there are right answers and there are definitely wrong answers.

Consider, for example, your current police force management provider. Are you getting the most technologically advanced solution possible? It should Tips for Assessing Your Professional Standards and Early Intervention Systemsbe fully automated and configurable to your specific needs. That includes meeting the specific polices of your agency, as well as your collective bargaining agreement. Also, is it scalable to integrate with other systems as needed – and holistic to provide you with the most visibility possible on your officer activity?

And what about your early intervention system? Is it preventative by nature – or does it feel like you’re always playing catch up? The true value of a professional standards solution should be to allow you to get ahead of issues before they become real problems . . . proactive vs. reactive, if you will. That means being able to intervene on off-track behavior before careers are jeopardized and issues are escalated to community and media exposure.

Something else to ask yourself – what role does research and analytics play in your police force management and early intervention systems? We know that across almost all professions and industries, evidence-based research and advanced analytics play a major role in human capital management. The same should be said for law enforcement, where we need the most reliable and actionable information possible to make informed decisions related to both on-track and off-track behavior.

These are just a few examples of things you should be considering, but you get the idea. Self-assessment can be easy when you know the right questions to ask. If you’re not sure, do a little bit of research – the information you need is out there.

You can also click here to take a quick, 6-question online assessment from Benchmark. Or, download the full assessment, compiled from our years of real-world policing experience, best-in-class technology expertise, as well as research and analytics background.