By Tristan Bonn
The world is changing. As we transition from the end of the 19th century to well into the 21st century, from an industrial revolution to an information revolution, every field, industry, and profession must change or perish. Just ask the management and labor of “Twinkies,” here today-gone tomorrow – Poof! This adage applies to policing and police unions just as it does to every other field. But, have the Omaha Police Department and Union changed? Not at all.
Let’s look and see. In the olden days, policing relied on the following practices to detect, deter, and solve crime. First, “Random patrols” were the strategy that most departments used to detect ongoing crime. That is, just drive around “blind” in your cruiser until an officer “sees” something “suspicious,” then responds. Second, if a crime was reported, drive like a “bat out of hell” to get to the crime scene – a quick response to reported crime was the preferred method of crime-solving. These “Response times” were all the rage for years. The idea was, the sooner you could get to the crime scene – the greater likelihood the criminal would be caught. Finally, police relied on “Follow up investigations” to solve crimes. Turn the “crime reports” over to a detective whenever you got to it and see if a “follow up” investigation could solve the crime – fat chance.
Here’s the problem with each of these tactics. First, “Random patrols” are dragnets and dragnets are unconstitutional. The police end up pulling over law-abiding citizens because these traffic stops are too broad and ensnare lawful folks. This type of police contact is commonly referred to as “racial profiling” and while it does not typically pull over people just because they are a minority, it does unlawfully ensnare many minorities who live in a minority neighborhood in these types of pretext stops.
Second, Rapid response times almost never interrupt a crime or arrive when a suspect is on the scene. It is the rare case where a silent alarm may allow the police to surprise a perpetrator; the police rarely arrive in time to catch a criminal in action. Lastly, by the time crime reports are turned over to a detective to do a Follow up investigation, you might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack – it‘s just too late.
In addition, this kind of old-fashioned policing gives rise to all type of lore and wives-tales, like “a family member is almost always responsible for a child abduction or disappearance.” Just tell that story to the family of Jon Benet Ramsey or to Amber Harris’, for that matter. The many recent cases of stranger abductions have eradicated that old yarn. The same is true of many other old investigative adages. If that is so, what has replaced these now debunked practices so often relied upon in past criminal investigations? It is simple: crime data.
Data-driven policing – that is – the acquisition, assortment, and access to all sorts of crime data has allowed police to replace old hunches and gut feelings with actual statistical data of trends and pattern of crimes that make the prediction and apprehension of perpetrators, solution of crimes, and detection of modus operendi available before new crimes occur possible, and that, my friends, is the whole gig – that is what has changed so dramatically in policing. Data-driven policing, new technology, policing strategies like community policing, and problem oriented policing have been the game changers in modern policing.
As a police department, you either have adapted to these changes, you are in the process of adapting to these changes, or you are without a clue. Some police departments have been dragged into change by a reform chief, mayor, or perhaps a visionary City Attorney. Other departments have been sued into reform or have had a visit from the Department of Justice. Either way, the road map to modern policing is there – ignore it at your own peril. The lesson or warning is clear: time to change. Ignore the current data and information and you risk lawsuits for negligence. Yikes!
So, where is OPD? On a scale of one to ten, one being oblivious to modern policing and ten being a fully modernized police department- OPD is a 2- yes a 2. And that isn’t even close, folks.
www.omahapoliceauditor.com
Tristan, I am a bit confused. You describe random patrols as driving around looking for suspicious activity, then later refer to this activity as a dragnet.
If a cop patrols– drives around– a neighborhood and observes someone entering a building or house through a window, how is that a dragnet? A random patrol, sure, but I don’t see how this is a dragnet.
A roadblock in which cars are stopped and checked en masse certainly might be described as a dragnet, and may well be unreasonable, depending on the circumstances. But I am not sure about “random patrols”.
Am I misreading this?
huh?
Did/Does Omaha still try to follow a Community Policing method? Cops live and work their own neighborhoods, etc.? I thought we were trying to institute that. What ever happened with that concept and what are you proposing they specifically do differently?
Congrats Chris!
Roger,
Good question. I could probably have added another sentence to explain – it is a bit inside baseball.
When police drive around on random patrols and don’t find anything unlawful, they often resort to “pretextual traffic stops.” Generally, you can find some type of traffic violation on virtually any vehicle that will justify a traffic stop. Often after a shooting or crime event, OPD will “pull over everything that moves” – they use a traffic stop to do so when they are really randomly looking for criminal activity. These “saturation patrols” a form of “random patrols” result in the dragnets a.k.a. “racial profiling.” This used to be clearly unconstitutional and still often leads to unconstitutional searches – in addition, they seldom if ever result in any “hit” – a traffic stop that yields drugs, contraband, weapons or a bench warrant, which would be acceptable. OPD does not do a very good job of tracking this “hit” information on traffic stops so they have a difficult time establishing any pretext stop as legitimate, instead they just inflame the communities wherein they deploy these tactics.
Random patrols are a shot in the dark – their cousin pretextual traffic stops often result in “pretextual traffic stops” that are really criminal dragnets – hope that’s clearer.
Pat,
The new Chief is touting a “modern” police department and claims it will be community policing based (As auditor, I made this recommendation repeatedly starting 12 years ago to no avail. From time to time, OPD SAYS it is community policing, but it is not). OPD is about 20 to 30 years behind the times when it comes to modern policing. You need good training, good technology, and data-driven problem solving – none of which is in existence at OPD today.
The roadmap to a modern police department can be found on the massive COPS website devoted to community oriented policing. There is also a “pop center” which espouses problem-oriented policing and numerous other websites from within policing and the criminal justice field that have hundreds of suggestions on how to police in this way. You have to ask why OPD does not and has not availed itself to these resources – they are clearly the best policing practices and failure to institute them increases the likelihood of liability.
The more the public learns about this type of policing and how wanting OPD is, the more we can demand change.
Hope that helps.
Of course WE have coirtnbuted to the formation of gangs. Guys with low self-esteem but quick witted and with some smarts that haven’t been honed so he feels secure in himself will go and seek out other guys in his same situation and reign havoc and mayhem on the society they see have neglected them and thrown them aside. Crazy you say but it is a part of the many and varied reasons gangs form. We have turned a blind eye to domestic, physical and financial abuse; we’ve pretended that its a pretty situation when you can’t feed em you shouldn’t breed em by having baby showers and pretending that having children out of wedlock is NOT a sin; we don’t lobby for laws to deal with sperm-donors; we drive past kids walking to/from school who are from the lower rungs of society; we forgot to teach them to say grace for their meals; we forgot that what made us unique and kept us special was:- IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILD. We forgot that each child; whether biological or not is OURS; just look at the havoc OUR younger residents caused two weeks ago!! Wouldn’t it have been better for Gov’t and private sector to have given those that needed/wanted vocational and technical training the assistance they needed rather than have the devil occupy their minds and time? YES we have failed. We as a nation has failed the test and I give an F as a grade!! BUT we can go back to the drawing board and re-do some of the ways we have been doing business with our future investments and just may save most of the next generation. God help us as we work together to make amends for the ills we have created and may He continue to bless the Cayman Islands