Published by the Office for Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), this report provides the Rochester (New York) Police Department’s (RPD) and the Rochester Institute of Technology’s collaboration to analyze the RPD’s records of use-of-force incidents to help improve the public’s understanding and the department’s policy and training. To create a dataset for analysis, the research team first needed to develop methods for making use of data that was not digitized, stored in inaccessible formats, or had incomplete metadata. This report, “Learning from Inaccessible Data: Natural Language Processing on Police Use of Force Reports,” is intended to help other agencies replicate this project with their own use-of-force data. It presents both findings about the deployment and effectiveness of various use of force tactics by the RPD and detailed methodology on how these findings were produced. The report concludes with recommendations for agencies and researchers considering similar projects.

Hosted by the Justice Clearinghouse and funded by the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing, this webinar focuses on how police departments can leverage crime statistics and patterns to reduce violent crime in their neighborhood. Researchers from the University of Texas at San Antonio developed a comprehensive violent crime reduction strategy for the Dallas Police Department in May 2021. The strategy has three components: hot spots policing, problem-oriented place-based policing, and focused deterrence. Now in its third year in Dallas, the violent crime reduction strategy has been implemented in three other cities.
 

During this webinar, the researchers will discuss:

• Results from years one and two in Dallas and year one in Tacoma, Washington; Salt Lake City, Utah; and San Antonio, Texas.
• Hot spots policing based on narrowly focused, deterrent methods in the cities’ most vulnerable areas.
• Problem-oriented policing involving a police-led, multi-disciplinary group of city government stakeholders that work together to address the underlying causes of crime in persistently violent places.
• Lessons drawn from partnerships between researchers and agencies of varying sizes, each with their own set of unique challenges surrounding violent crime.

When: Thursday, February 15, 2024
Time: 3:00 p.m. – 4:15 p.m., ET
 

Funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance and hosted by the Council of State Governments Justice Center this webinar highlights the significance of how states are critical partners with local service systems in using data to identify and coordinate care for community members who have frequent contact with criminal legal systems, crisis and health care services, and housing systems. States can uniquely help local partners accelerate learning about implementing evidence-based practices, remove barriers, and scale successful approaches across jurisdictions and geographies. This webinar addressed how New Mexico and Georgia draw on the strengths of multidisciplinary state and local practitioners and leaders to create sustainable collaboration, drive meaningful system change, and measure the impact of their efforts to inform future decisions.

As directed by Executive Order 14074, Advancing Effective, Accountable Policing and Criminal Justice Practices to Enhance Public Trust and Public Safety, the Justice Department launched the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD), a centralized repository of official records documenting instances of misconduct as well as commendations and awards for federal law enforcement officers. NLEAD is accessible only to authorized users to help determine suitability and eligibility of candidates for law enforcement positions.

Funded by the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) as part of the OVC-funded Enhanced Collaborative Model Human Trafficking Task Force Training Catalog and hosted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, this webinar will discuss what familial trafficking looks like and how multidisciplinary human trafficking task force members can better identify and respond to this type of trafficking. Familial trafficking occurs when a family member (a father or mother, sibling, grandparent, uncle, or aunt) or a guardian (a foster parent or intimate partner of the parent) facilitates the trafficking. This webinar will discuss why this type of trafficking is difficult to identify, how familial trafficking differs from other types of human trafficking, opportunities for identification and response, and ways to increase collaboration between systems such as child welfare, education, and healthcare. 

When: Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Time: 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m., ET