Highlights
We must decide what we want from law enforcement before we lose thousands of additional cops and endanger public safety.
At the moment, proactive policing is the only modality we have providing hard evidence of reduced crime.
This article is available as a podcast on YouTube.
Author
Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.
Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention and Statistics for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of Criminology and Public Affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former police officer. Retired federal senior spokesperson.
Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Produced successful state anti-crime media campaigns.
Thirty-five years of directing award-winning (50+) public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed thousands of times by every national news outlet, often with a focus on crime statistics and research. Created the first state and federal podcasting series. Produced a unique and emulated style of government proactive public relations.
Certificate of Advanced Study-The Johns Hopkins University.
Author of ”Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization” available at Amazon and additional booksellers.
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Article
I get questions regarding the connection between the police, crime control, and public safety. The answers take some explanation as to the role of cops “and” whether their crime control strategies are effective.
Is there a national consensus as to what we want from law enforcement? Are our crime control messages to police officers clear and concise? Is the lack of a consensus hurting us?
San Francisco
“A small business owner in San Francisco’s Richmond District is beyond frustrated after his shop was targeted in four smash-and-grab burglaries involving vehicles ramming into the front door within six months. The latest incident has left him and neighbors questioning whether police could have done more to stop the suspects.”
“Despite nearly 20 security cameras capturing the thefts, suspects have continued to evade arrest. Surveillance footage from the latest burglary shows two San Francisco police officers arriving on the scene, lights flashing. They exit their police cruiser, guns drawn as the suspects load cartons into a getaway vehicle. The officers do not approach the suspects who then flee the scene in two vehicles.”
“I don’t think cops are protecting them,” said Cavan. “I don’t think cops take it seriously. I don’t feel like anything is being done.” ABC7 Bay Area
A Reluctance To Engage?
Data from the US Department of Justice suggest that US police officers are making millions of fewer stops. Arrests and crimes solved have plummeted.
Research from Pew indicates that officers are reluctant to make stops after use of force protests and immense negative media publicity.
My questions: Are today’s police officers too reluctant to be proactive or to confront offenders when they have the legal right to interact?
If so, is this a result of confusion over what a city or society wants police officers to do?
I fear that incidents like the San Francisco example above are happening in multiple cities. That wasn’t the case years ago. Cops were expected to confront when they had the legal right through probable cause or reasonable suspicion. At the academy, we were taught that constitutional proactive policing controls crime. It was our job.
Can Cops Control Crime?
When I left policing and went to college, my university professor told the class that there was little empirical proof (based on research) that police operations made people safer. But the interesting part is when he said, “Although there’s not a lot of data connecting cops to reduced crime, take them away and see what happens.”
Other professors said that police officers on routine patrol don’t have that much of an impact on crime and that people who beat their spouses or buy stolen items or engage in interpersonal violence is a more of a societal issue. A cop occasionally cruising a neighborhood has little control over what happens in residential spaces among people who know each other.
When I went to the police academy, my instructors told me that much of my job would mimic social work. Paraphrasing, they suggested that the enforcement of laws was often secondary to helping people in crises.
First, my professors from decades ago were correct. There wasn’t a lot of research indicating that police strategies made that much of a difference in crime at that time.
But to put that into context, there’s not a lot of research on anything regarding successful crime reduction strategies. Most of the available data suggests that what we do in the larger justice system isn’t effective “but” there are endless advocates who will tell you that they have numbers indicating that their favorite crime control strategy IS successful.
They are routinely wrong. Some take flimsy data and declare success. To others, it’s a devotion more to a philosophy than a hard look at good, solid research.
What Does The Literature Say?
There are two major research efforts funded by the US Department of Justice examining hundreds of individual studies focusing on:
Criminal rehabilitation
Police and crime control
Proactive policing showed reductions in crime but there were questions as to the degree of success.
Criminal rehabilitation programs mostly failed to reduce recidivism and when they did, the results were small.
The proactive policing study (an exhaustive literature review) was offered by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2017. It was financed by the US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice. NIJ-funded research carries robust quality controls; questionable research projects are excluded.
The lesson? At the moment, proactive policing is the only modality we have providing evidence of reduced crime. All other crime control efforts lack multiple high-quality research results.
For example, it doesn’t matter if you believe that violence interrupters (people on the street interacting with offenders) are the greatest thing since nickel beer, there’s just no evidence to prove it based on good, independent, replicated research. The issue regarding violence interrupters isn’t a matter of supporting or liking the concept. It’s a matter of proof.
It doesn’t matter that you believe we should focus on the root causes of crime. There’s no high-quality, independent, replicated research indicating that we know how to do that, and there’s no consensus on the root causes beyond poverty. We need to acknowledge that millions of people grew up in disadvantaged neighborhoods who didn’t engage in crime. It’s the same with mental health or drug use. Correlations do not equal causation.
“More than fifty years of RCT (Randomized Control Trials-the gold standard of social research) evidence shows the limits in our ability to engineer change with this type of intervention.” The essence of the argument is that it’s tough (unlikely?) to engineer social change through programs.
It’s not a matter of trying new tactics regardless of what those tactics are. New initiatives should be employed and independently evaluated. But criminology is filled with initial results that when duplicated failed to live up to the hype. Project Hope in Hawaii was nationally celebrated for its wonderful results for those on community supervision but when replicated in other jurisdictions, it failed to deliver the same results.
So, for the moment, we only have proactive policing as a successful crime control modality with a solid research base, and that depends on having sufficient staffing.
Loss Of 25,000 Cops
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States lost 25,076 local government police personnel when viewing a high point of 434,698 from November 2019 to November 2023, 409,662.
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States lost 18,004 local government police personnel from the calendar year 2019 (431,666) to 413,662 in 2023.
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States lost 2,116 state government police personnel from the calendar year 2020 (102,493) to 100,377 in 2022.
Police officers and their families insist that their leaving involved an array of issues from massive disrespect on the part of society after police use of force demonstrations to endless negative media articles about policing to politicians and departments not giving them the support they need to endless additional duties imposed (i.e., school security, event security, red flag laws [removing firearms from someone potentially dangerous per a court order], immigration enforcement, etc.) plus controversy or uncertainty over what the public wants from their police officers.
And all these conflicting and additional duties are coming at a point where there are cities (i.e., Philadelphia-others) with close to 1,000 officers below authorized strength.
The good news is that, per the Bureau Of Labor Statistics, the number of police officers now seems to be growing.
Declines In Police Staffing Are A Good Thing?
LA Times: “New projections included in the department’s (Los Angeles) fiscal year 2026 budget proposal show that between recruiting shortfalls and attrition, leaders expect to lose more than 150 cops, leaving a force of about 8,620 by June 30, 2026. That would mark the lowest deployment in roughly 30 years (emphasis added), records show.”
“Yet even as the LAPD has gotten smaller, by some measures the city is becoming safer — despite public perception to the contrary. Police Department data show that many types of violent crime are down, especially homicides and shootings, continuing a years-long decline after increasing during the pandemic.”
“LAPD leaders have long debated how many officers are necessary to patrol the city’s sprawling territory, stretching from Wilmington to the San Fernando Valley. Although the push has historically been for more manpower, the latest crime trends have left some wondering whether the recent declines in staffing have actually led to a right-sizing of the department” (emphasis added).
So the Los Angeles Times, a respected national newspaper begets the question of whether sufficient police staffing is essential to crime control “and” endless additional duties. By the way, there were media accounts of police officers assisting firefighters during recent massive wildfires. Cops manned hoses and searched for vulnerable citizens or victims throughout the Los Angeles area.
Traffic Safety
We now have an intense national debate over the enforcement of traffic laws. Advocates are insisting that traffic control laws are discriminatory and need to stop or be greatly restricted.
The Atlantic: “Ever wonder what would happen if the police just stopped enforcing traffic laws? New Jersey State Police ran a sort of experiment along those lines, beginning in summer 2023—about a week after the release of a report documenting racial disparities in traffic enforcement. From July of that year to March 2024, the number of tickets issued by troopers for speeding, drunk driving, and other serious violations fell by 61 percent.”
“The drop, The New York Times reported last month, “coincided with an almost immediate uptick in crashes on the state’s two main highways.” During 2024 as a whole, roadway fatalities in New Jersey jumped 14 percent even as they dropped slightly nationwide. The obvious conclusion: The withdrawal of enforcement in the Garden State led some motorists to drive more recklessly. For better or worse, law enforcement is necessary for traffic safety.”
For the record, in my traffic stops as a police officer, in the great majority of those instances, I had no idea as to the race or ethnicity of the driver.
Conclusions
What do we want cops to do? Wait a minute and it seems to change. Is there any wonder why tens of thousands of police officers have left the job? One day, you were told to engage in constitutional aggressive policing. The next day you are criticized for doing so. A couple of years ago, there was a defund the police movement. That resulted in millions of fewer stops and officers reluctant to enforce laws of consequence per Pew.
Firearm-related death is more acute for Black and Latino men than deployed U.S. soldiers. Females now have higher rates of violence than males which traditionally wasn’t the case. Fear of crime is at record highs per Gallup. Crime is the major reason for moving. Most crimes are not solved. Arrests have plummeted. People are buying firearms in record numbers. Lessing traffic enforcement in cities means more motorists and neighborhood children are killed or injured.
Now, many cities are demanding more aggressive cops and increased staffing. They want safety. They are massively tired of disorder, crime, and grime.
We have just experienced the largest increase in violent crime in our nation’s history, a 44 percent increase in rates per the Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey. Yes, crimes reported to law enforcement have decreased but the overwhelming majority of crimes are NOT reported to the police.
Fewer cops mean that in some cities, it’s taking over an hour for officers to respond to a crime scene meaning that fewer crimes are reported.
There is a point where the endless debate over what we want cops to do and the immense negative publicity attached to police officers doing stupid or illegal acts thus branding all cops as brutal or corrupt has real consequences for crime control and public safety.
There is a point where we need to decide what we want from law enforcement while providing constitutional protections and equal, ethical enforcement. There is a point where society needs to understand that crime control is a collective responsibility. There is a point where stereotyping over a million police employees as negative elements of our society has real consequences. There is a point where we need more and better research. We don’t provide our police officers with non-lethal means to do their jobs.
Based on US Department of Justice data, we need to acknowledge that residents who initiated their most recent contact with police were asked about their perception of cops. Approximately 88% reported that they were satisfied with their police response, with 93% saying they would be more or as likely to contact police again in the future. The use “or” threat of force was extremely rare.
We need to decide what we want before we endanger our safety. We need to decide before we lose thousands of experienced cops.
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