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500 Matthew J. Hickman racially biased policing. To the extent that the police have truly adopted place-based strategies (i.e., the notion that places are the targets of their efforts, not people), the racial characteristics of offenders seem to become less relevant. Of course, the key assumption is that targets are objectively selected for intervention. Place-based policing suggests that selection would be based on quantitative hot-spot type analyses, which should reinforce objectivity. A second and related area is the need for wholesale change in the way local police departments measure and assess their performance. No longer should we concern ourselves primarily with monthly and annual fluctuations in UCR offenses known to the police. To be sure, crimes and offenders are the bread and butter of policing, and law enforcement strategy and resource allocations should be designed around these key facets of law enforcement. But first and foremost the police need to know how their officers are enforcing the law. Public opinion needs to become part of performance evaluation. This means more than an annual or sporadic survey; a much more significant marketing approach will be necessary if the police are to be effective at the management of public perceptions of the police. Finally, the process of democratic policing requires consistent public reporting on fairness in law enforcement. I would like to challenge every local police department, in their next annual report (and if they don’t have an annual report, they ought to start doing one), to try leaving the crime statistics for the appendix. Instead try leading the publication with statistics on the number of citizen complaints and complaint dispositions, official use-of-force incidents, and to the extent possible, provide data by race and ethnicity. Provide the racial demographics of arrests and traffic stops. This doesn’t mean that we are emphasizing the “bad” in policing; rather we are trying to establish a baseline regarding officer behavior, and initial public reaction (which can then be managed), then steer it toward an emphasis on the “good.” Take the wind out of the sails of those who would claim racial bias; collect, analyze , and disseminate the data, and make it publicly available. Lay all the cards on the table and let the debates run. No one can justly punish a police department for being forthcoming on these issues. As the controversy surrounding the PPCS statistics aptly demonstrates, you only draw more attention (and negative attention, at that) by trying to hide or ignore it. Perhaps most important, you can’t fix a problem you don’t know to exist. And denying the existence of a problem doesn’t make the problem go away; it only suggests ignorance, which may become the basis for legal action. In discussing some practical reasons for police departments to collect information on police behavior, Kane notes that it enables them to identify problem officers and practices, identify policies that work and those that do not, and insulate themselves to some degree from pattern or practice lawsuits (where poor record-keeping practices may result in negative outcomes).44 Kane notes that in his experience defending police departments, when he could acquire data, the analyses more often than not demonstrated equitable practices with regard to disciplinary and other matters. In this regard, he suggests that “by collecting and allowing public access to data on coercive processes and outcomes, police departments might dispel several myths and stereotypes that some members of the public erroneously maintain of the police.”45 This alone is worth the investment. Democratic Policing 501 N o t e s 1. Skolnick, 1999. 2. National Advisory Commission, 1973, p. 330. 3. Tyler, 2002, p. 80. 4. Bayley, 2006. 5. Ibid. 6. U.S. Agency for International Development, 2005. 7. Hume & Miklaucic, 2005. 8. ICITAP, 2008. 9. Manning, 1977. 10. Weitzer, 2002. 11. The foregoing discussion of the perceptual component of policing is drawn from Hickman , 2006a. 12. Tyler, 2002. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Meares, 2007, p. 3. 16. Ibid., p. 5. 17. Ibid., p. 6. 18. Hickman and Reaves, 2003. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Fyfe, 2002, p. 99. 22. Kane, 2007, p. 776. 23. For detail, see James, 2004. 24. Hickman, Piquero & Garner, 2009. 25. Ibid. 26. See Hickman, 2006b. In my previous career as a statistician at BJS, I became interested in different possible methods for collecting national data on police use of force. I was motivated by the dearth of national data, but more so by Fyfe’s...

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