New from COPS
Bridging the Language Divide: Promising Practices for Law Enforcement
The report details numerous promising practices in overcoming language barriers in law
enforcement agencies. Changing demographics across the country have led to a need for
law enforcement agencies to be able to communicate more effectively with the people in
their jurisdiction. The COPS Office and the Vera Institute of Justice partnered to
identify and disseminate promising practices that agencies have implemented so that
others can model programs after these practices to address language barriers they face.
http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/ResourceDetail.aspx?RID=518.
Community Policing: Looking to Tomorrow
The publication is based on a series of roundtable discussions held across the country,
where police chiefs, sheriffs, and other leaders shared their views on the current state of
community policing. The voices of the police leaders heard in this report are varied and
reflect a broad policing experience; however, what they have in common is a continuing
interest in delivering the best quality police service to the communities they serve.
Section I of the publication presents the
roundtable participant’s views about what community policing looks like today and the
challenges it faces, and summarizes their predictions about how community policing may
evolve in the future. Section II of the document provides suggestions, based on the
meetings, about how police departments and city leaders can work together to enhance
their community policing efforts and continue to strive to take community policing to the
next level.
http://cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/ResourceDetail.aspx?RID=520.
Geography and Public Safety Volume 2, Issue 1, May 2009
The May 2009 issue focuses on how mapping and spatial analysis can help jurisdictions understand
the effects of restrictions on where sex offenders are allowed to live. Specifically, it
discusses how residency restrictions affect recidivism—whether they hamper offenders’
reentry process and make it less likely that they will get treatment and services. Articles
include a discussion of whether residency restrictions are a good idea, a study of
residency restrictions in Minnesota, a report on the use of GPS monitoring for sex
offenders in Florida, and a description of a spatial analysis technique for tracking sex
offenders piloted by California Department of Corrections data.
http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/ResourceDetail.aspx?RID=517.
A Policymaker’s Guide to Building Our Way out of Crime
Local elected officials and police departments across the United States are discovering
that communities can “build” their way out of persistent crime problems that often cannot
be solved just through arrests. The new COPS publication, A Policymaker’s Guide to
Building Our Way out of Crime: The Transformative Power of Police–Community
Developer Partnerships, addresses efforts to reduce crime and improve economic vitality
in communities through partnerships comprising elected and appointed officials at all
levels of government, community development leaders, financial industry investment
strategists, private foundation executives, and law enforcement. This Policymaker’s
Guide provides evidence that police–community developer partnerships can convert crime hot spots that
ruin entire neighborhoods into safety-generating community assets.
http://cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/ResourceDetail.aspx?RID=519.
Advancing Community Policing Through Community
Governance:
A Framework Document
As law enforcement agencies strengthen and advance their community
policing efforts they often call on their colleagues in other departments of their own
city government to assist with problem-solving efforts in the community. Many city
administrators and elected officials are also seeking ways to increase community
involvement in local government matters in a more systematic way that results in a
more transparent government structure that stresses accountability and
responsiveness to the community. Cities that pursue these collective efforts are
beginning to adopt a philosophical approach to local governance referred to as
“community governance,” which is collaborative across agencies and service
oriented. Advancing Community Policing Through Community Governance details the
community governance philosophy and describes its implementation in five
communities across the country.
http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/ResourceDetail.aspx?RID=521.