Critical Response Technical Assistance Beat Intro Voiceover 00:00 This is the Beat—a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation. Interview Tawana Waugh 00:08 This is Tawana Waugh with the COPS Office. With us today is James “Chips” Stewart, Senior Fellow for Law Enforcement at the CNA Corporation. Chips is here to talk with us about critical response technical assistance. Good afternoon, Chips. James “Chips” Stewart 00:24 Good afternoon, Tawana. Tawana 00:25 Can you share with us what you’re doing with the COPS Office in terms of technical assistance? Chips 00:31 The COPS Office has created an entirely new approach to critical response technical assistance. For instance, an agency facing a crisis that they don’t have the experience or have never done before, can reach out to the COPS director and request some very high-quality technical assistance to deal with the unique and unforeseen situations. As an example, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department had a strong community reaction to several controversial officer- involved shootings. In fact, the NAACP and the ACLU filed a patterns and practices complaint with the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and requested a consent decree by imposing an independent monitor to ensure constitutional policing. As a new initiative, the COPS director authorized CNA to conduct an independent review of the situation, to identify the core problem, and to make recommendations and those recommendations were done in collaboration with the leaders of the LVMPD to improve the situation. They worked with our analysts and police experts to immediately change their policies, procedures, and training rather than wait for a report to be issued. Tawana 01:51 How can a consent decree affect a law enforcement agency? Chips 01:56 A consent decree is an order that is approved and authorized by a federal court. Basically, it reduces a department’s autonomy and professional control over discretionary policing authority. The consent decree imposes, basically, external performance requirements to correct policies, procedures, and practices that the parties to the consent decree have agreed are unconstitutional activities. It also requires oversight of an independent monitor who can impose changes on the agency. It’s very expensive. It runs $1 to $2 million a year. The consent decrees usually last a minimum of five years. Many have lasted eight or 10 years. There’s a lot of millions of dollars that go in. Those dollars do not come out of the general fund. Those dollars do not come out of the general fund but comes out of the police budget. That can have a dire impact on a law enforcement agency’s ability to deploy. Tawana: 03:05 How does technical assistance support an agency? Chips 03:09 Technical assistance really, first off, it works with the agency’s leaders and the people that are making the decisions and implementing the training and supervising and actually doing the work. They work cooperatively with the agency. Unlike a consent decree—which is imposed from the outside—the technical assistance partners with the department to make the changes organically within the department, using the department’s people, so it’s sustainable and is not an external imposition by a court order. Tawana 03:45 What are some steps that an agency can proactively take so they never have to face the possibility of a consent decree? Chips 03:54 Well, when they get citizen complaints, they need to assure themselves by a very careful and high quality investigation review that the issues involving the Constitutional protection of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments are not being violated or appear to be violated. They have to be sure that their training procedures and policies are Constitutionally based. The way to do that is to have, really engage, in a constant review of the court cases that come out. Then every year have a review done to ensure they are in compliance with the latest interpretations of the Constitution by the U.S. Supreme Court and also by the District Courts that are in their particular jurisdictions. And also to engage with the community. If you’re engaged with the community, it’s unlikely that a lot of the community are going to complain about police conduct. As long as there is transparency, and when the police have engaged in something that’s controversial, that that information is provided quickly and transparently to community members who can help translate it so that there’s not continuing antagonism against the department that has been unaddressed. Tawana 05:18 Traditional technical assistance is usually when an organization comes in, does an analysis, gives the information, and then leaves. In this case, you did collaborative reform with the Las Vegas Metropolitan PD. Can you talk about how you moved from an independent assessment to the collaborative reform model? Chips 05:43 First, the independent assessment: we needed to be able, not only to look at the data, but we had to meet with the stakeholders and interview them individually and collectively. For instance, in the police department you had the command officers, you had the line officers, and you had the labor organizations. Also, outside the department you had community groups and you had advocacy organizations like the NAACP and the ACLU. We needed to establish an independent and objective analysis of the perspective that each one of these groups brought to us and record that information. From that, we were able to reach some conclusions and compare it to national best practice standards. Once we did the comparison and the analysis, we came up with some recommendations. At that time, we then worked both internally with a working group called the Office of Internal Oversight—which is not Internal Affairs, but is an oversight agency responsible for innovation—and we also engaged in a collaboration with the NAACP and community groups in terms of specific recommendations and implementation. The department worked on the implementation. The communities helped approve and validate the recommendations. The recommendations were not based on what the community asked for; it was also based on best practices nationally. Our work, and the reason it’s called the collaborative reform effort, is because it engages them as real partners in making the changes and building sustainable policies that, once we leave and there is no further assessment going on, that these will stay in place and the Civil Rights Division will not have to come in, say a year later or two years later, with a consent decree because of the complaints of the continuing patterns and practices of the behaviors that were unconstitutional. Tawana 07:54 Thank you so much, Chips, for providing us with your expertise and your time. Chips 07:59 Thank you, Tawana. Beat Exit Voiceover: 08:01 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice COPS Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems. Disclaimer 08:17 The opinions contained herein are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific agencies, companies, products, or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues. ####END OF TRANSCRIPT#### 1