Pillar 2

Citizens have a constitutional right to freedom of expression, including the right to peacefully demonstrate. The issues addressed in the first pillar of this report, building trust and legitimacy between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve, underlie all questions of law enforcement policy and community oversight. If police are to carry out their responsibilities according to established policies, these policies must be reflective of community values and not lead to practices that result in disparate impacts on various segments of the community. They also need to be clearly articulated to the community and implemented transparently so police will have credibility with residents and the people can have faith that their guardians are always acting in their best interests. Paramount among the policies of law enforcement organizations are those controlling use of force. Not only should there be policies for deadly and nondeadly uses of force but a clearly stated “sanctity of life” philosophy must also be in the forefront of every officer’s mind. This way of thinking should be accompanied by rigorous practical ongoing training in an atmosphere of nonjudgmental and safe sharing of views with fellow officers about how they behaved in use of force situations. At one listening session, Geoffrey Alpert described Officer-Created Jeopardy Training, in which officers who had been in situations where mistakes were made or force was used came to explain their decision making to other officers. Some explained what they did right and how potentially violent situations were resolved without violence. Other officers told what they did wrong, why they made mistakes, what information was missing or misinterpreted, and how they could have improved their behavior and response to suspects.30 Data collection, supervision, and accountability are also part of a comprehensive systemic approach to keeping everyone safe and protecting the rights of all involved during police encounters. Members of the Division of Policing of the American Society of Criminology recently wrote, “While the United States presently employs a broad array of social and economic indicators in order to gauge the overall ‘health’ of the nation, it has a much more limited set of indicators concerning the behavior of the police and the quality of law enforcement.”31 That body noted that Section 210402 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 requires the U.S. Attorney General to “acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers” and to “publish an annual summary of the data acquired under this section.”32 30. Listening Session on Policy and Oversight: Use of Force Research and Policies (oral testimony of Geoffrey Alpert, professor, University of South Carolina, for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Cincinnati, OH, January 30, 2015). 31. “Recommendations to the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing,” Listening Session on Training and Education (written testimony of Anthony Braga et al., Ad Hoc Committee to the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Division of Policing, American Society of Criminology, February 13–14, 2015). 32. Ibid. But the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has never been allocated the funds necessary to undertake the serious and sustained program of research and development to fulfill this mandate. Expanded research and data collection are also necessary to knowing what works and what does not work, which policing practices are effective and which F i n a l R e p o r t o f t h e P r e s i d e n t ’ s T a s k F o r c e o n 2 1 s t C e n t u r y P o l i c i n g 2 0 ones have unintended consequences. Greater acceptance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) National Incident-Based Reporting System could also benefit policing practice and research endeavors. Mass demonstrations, for example, are occasions where evidence-based practices successfully applied can make the difference between a peaceful demonstration and a riot. Citizens have a constitutional right to freedom of expression, including the right to peacefully demonstrate. There are strong examples of proactive and positive communication and engagement strategies that can protect constitutional rights of demonstrators and the safety of citizens and the police.33 33. Listening Session on Policy and Oversight: Mass Demonstrations (oral testimony of Garry McCarthy, chief of police, Chicago Police Department, for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Cincinnati, OH, January 31, 2015); Listening Session on Policy and Oversight: Mass Demonstrations (oral testimony of Rodney Monroe, chief of police, Charlotte-Mecklenberg [NC] Police Department, for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Cincinnati, OH, January 30, 2015). 2.1 recOmmendatiOn: Law enforcement agencies should collaborate with community members to develop policies and strategies in communities and neighborhoods disproportionately affected by crime for deploying resources that aim to reduce crime by improving relationships, greater community engagement, and cooperation. The development of a service model process that focuses on the root causes of crime should include the community members themselves because what works in one neighborhood might not be equally successful in every other one. Larger departments could commit resources and personnel to areas of high poverty, limited services, and at-risk or vulnerable populations through creating priority units with specialized training and added status and pay. Chief Charlie Beck of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) described the LAPD’s Community Safety Partnership, in which officers engage the community and build trust where it is needed most, in the public housing projects in Watts. The department has assigned 45 officers to serve for five years at three housing projects in Watts and at an additional housing project in East Los Angeles. Through a partnership with the Advancement Project and the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, the program involves officers going into the housing developments with the intent not to make arrests but to create partnerships, create relationships, hear the community, and see what they need—and then work together to make those things happen.34 The work in Watts has been documented in an Advancement Project report presented to the task force.35 2.1.1 Action Item: The Federal Government should incentivize this collaboration through a variety of programs that focus on public health, education, mental health, and other programs not traditionally part of the criminal justice system. 2.2 recOmmendatiOn: Law enforcement agencies should have comprehensive policies on the use of force that include training, investigations, prosecutions, data collection, and information sharing. These policies must be clear, concise, and openly available for public inspection. 2.2.1 Action Item: Law enforcement agency policies for training on use of force should emphasize de-escalation and alternatives to arrest or summons in situations where appropriate. 34. Listening Session on Policy and Oversight: Civilian Oversight (oral testimony of Charlie Beck, chief, Los Angeles Police Department, for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Cincinnati, OH, January 30, 2015). 35. Rice and Lee, Relationship-Based Policing (see note 22). 2 1 P i l l a r 2 . P o l i c y & O v e r s i g h t As Chuck Wexler noted in his testimony, In traditional police culture, officers are taught never to back down from a confrontation, but instead to run toward the dangerous situation that everyone else is running away from. However, sometimes the best tactic for dealing with a minor confrontation is to step back, call for assistance, de-escalate, and perhaps plan a different enforcement action that can be taken more safely later.36 Policies should also include, at a minimum, annual training that includes shoot/don’t shoot scenarios and the use of less than lethal technologies. 36. Listening Session on Policy and Oversight: Use of Force Investigations and Oversight (oral testimony of Chuck Wexler, executive director, Police Executive Research Forum, for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Cincinnati, OH, January 30, 2015). 2.2.2 Action Item: These policies should also mandate external and independent criminal investigations in cases of police use of force resulting in death, officer-involved shootings resulting in injury or death, or in-custody deaths. One way this can be accomplished is by the creation of multi-agency force investigation task forces comprising state and local investigators. Other ways to structure this investigative process include referring to neighboring jurisdictions or to the next higher levels of government (many smaller departments may already have state agencies handle investigations), but in order to restore and maintain trust, this independence is crucial. In written testimony to the task force, James Palmer of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association offered an example in that state’s statutes requiring that agency written policies “require an investigation that is conducted by at least two investigators . . . neither of whom is employed by a law enforcement agency that employs a law enforcement officer involved in the officerinvolved death.”37 Furthermore, in order to establish and maintain internal legitimacy and procedural justice, these investigations should be performed by law enforcement agencies with adequate training, knowledge, and experience investigating police use of force. 37. Listening Session on Policy and Oversight (written testimony of James Palmer, executive director, Wisconsin Professional Police Association, for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Cincinnati, OH, January 30–31, 2015). 2.2.3 Action Item: The task force encourages policies that mandate the use of external and independent prosecutors in cases of police use of force resulting in death, officer-involved shootings resulting in injury or death, or in-custody deaths. Strong systems and policies that encourage use of an independent prosecutor for reviewing police uses of force and for prosecution in cases of inappropriate deadly force and in-custody death will demonstrate the transparency to the public that can lead to mutual trust between community and law enforcement. 2.2.4 Action Item: Policies on use of force should also require agencies to collect, maintain, and report data to the Federal Government on all officer-involved shootings, whether fatal or nonfatal, as well as any in-custody death. In-custody deaths are not only deaths in a prison or jail but also deaths that occur in the process of an arrest. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) implemented the Arrest Related Deaths data collection in 2003 as part of requirements set forth in the Deaths in Custody Reporting Act of F i n a l R e p o r t o f t h e P r e s i d e n t ’ s T a s k F o r c e o n 2 1 s t C e n t u r y P o l i c i n g 2 2 2000 and reenacted in 2014. Although states receiving grants under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program are required to provide this data to BJS, the Arrest Related Deaths data collection is a voluntary reporting program for law enforcement agencies. Access to this data is important to gain a national picture of police use of force as well as to incentivize the systematic and transparent collection and analysis of use of force incident data at the local level. The agencyreported data should include information on the circumstances of the use of force, as well as the race, gender, and age of the decedents. Agency data should be reported to the U.S. Department of Justice through the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting System or an expansion of collections managed by the BJS. 2.2.5 Action Item: Policies on use of force should clearly state what types of information will be released, when, and in what situation, to maintain transparency. This should also include procedures on the release of a summary statement regarding the circumstances of the incident by the department as soon as possible and within 24 hours. The intent of this directive should be to share as much information as possible without compromising the integrity of the investigation or anyone’s rights. 2.2.6 Action Item: Law enforcement agencies should establish a Serious Incident Review Board comprising sworn staff and community members to review cases involving officerinvolved shootings and other serious incidents that have the potential to damage community trust or confidence in the agency. The purpose of this board should be to identify any administrative, supervisory, training, tactical, or policy issues that need to be addressed. 2.3 recOmmendatiOn: Law enforcement agencies are encouraged to implement nonpunitive peer review of critical incidents separate from criminal and administrative investigations. These reviews, sometimes known as “near miss” or “sentinel event” reviews, focus on the improvement of practices and policy. Such reviews already exist in medicine, aviation, and other industries. According to the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), a sentinel event in criminal justice would include wrongful convictions but also “near miss” acquittals and dismissals of cases that at earlier points seemed solid; cold cases that stayed cold too long; wrongful releases of dangerous or factually guilty criminals or of vulnerable arrestees with mental disabilities; and failures to prevent domestic violence within at-risk families. Sentinel events can include episodes that are within policy but disastrous in terms of community relations, whether or not everyone agrees that the event should be classified as an error. In fact, anything that stakeholders agree can cause widespread or viral attention could be considered a sentinel event.38 38. James M. Doyle, “Learning from Error in the Criminal Justice System: Sentinel Event Reviews,” Mending Justice: Sentinel Event Reviews (Special Report from the National Institute of Justice, September 2014): 3–20. What distinguishes sentinel event reviews from other kinds of internal investigations of apparent errors is that they are nonadversarial. As task force member Sean Smoot has written, For sentinel event reviews to be effective and practical, they must be cooperative efforts that afford the types of protections provided in the medical context, where state and federal laws protect the privacy of participants and prevent the disclosure of information to anyone outside of the sentinel event review . . . . Unless the sentinel event 2 3 P i l l a r 2 . P o l i c y & O v e r s i g h t process is honest and trustworthy, with adequate legal protections—including use immunity, privacy, confidentiality, and nondisclosure, for example—police officers, who have the very best information about how things really work and what really happened, will not be motivated to fully participate. The sentinel event review approach will have a better chance of success if departments can abandon the process of adversarial/punitive-based discipline, adopting instead “education-based” disciplinary procedures and policies.39 2.4 Recommendation: Law enforcement agencies are encouraged to adopt identification procedures that implement scientifically supported practices that eliminate or minimize presenter bias or influence. 39. Sean Smoot “Punishment-Based vs. Education-Based Discipline: A Surmountable Challenge?” in Mending Justice: Sentinel Event Reviews (Special Report from the National Institute of Justice, September 2014): 48–50. A recent study by the National Academy of Sciences, Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification, studied the important role played by eyewitnesses in criminal cases, noting that research on factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness identification procedures has given an increasingly clear picture of how identifications are made and, more important, an improved understanding of the limits on vision and memory that can lead to failure of identification.40 Many factors, including external conditions and the witness’s emotional state and biases, influence what a witness sees or thinks she sees. Memories can be forgotten, reconstructed, updated, and distorted. Meanwhile, policies governing law enforcement procedures for conducting and recording identifications are not standard, and policies and practices to address the issue of misidentification vary widely. 40. Samuel R. Gross et al., “Rate of False Conviction of Criminal Defendants who are Sentenced to Death,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111, no. 20 (2014): 7230–7235. http://www.pnas.org/ content/111/20/7230.full.pdf+html. Barbara O’Connor, President of the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives, speaks during a panel on diversity in law enforcement, Cincinnati, January 30, 2015. PHOTO: DEBORAH SPENCE F i n a l R e p o r t o f t h e P r e s i d e n t ’ s T a s k F o r c e o n 2 1 s t C e n t u r y P o l i c i n g 2 4 2.5 recOmmendatiOn: All federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies should report and make available to the public census data regarding the composition of their departments including race, gender, age, and other relevant demographic data. While the BJS collects information on many aspects of police activities, there is no single data collection instrument that yields the information requested in this recommendation. Demographic data should be collected and made available to the public so communities can assess the diversity of their departments and do so in a national context. This data will also be important to better understand the impact of diversity on the functioning of departments. Malik Aziz, National Chair of the National Black Police Association (NBPA), reminded the task force that the NBPA not only urges all departments to meet the demographics of the community in which they serve by maintaining a plan of action to recruit and retain police officers of color but also has called for the DOJ to collect the annual demographic statistics from the 18,000 police agencies across the nation. “It is not enough to mandate diversity,” he stated, “but it becomes necessary to diversify command ranks in departments that have historically failed to develop and/or promote qualified and credentialed officers to executive and command ranks.”41 41. Listening Session on Policy and Oversight: Law Enforcement Culture and Diversity (oral testimony of Malik Aziz, chairman, National Black Police Association, for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Cincinnati, OH, January 30, 2015). 2.5.1 Action Item: The Bureau of Justice Statistics should add additional demographic questions to the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey in order to meet the intent of this recommendation. 2.6 recOmmendatiOn: Law enforcement agencies should be encouraged to collect, maintain, and analyze demographic data on all detentions (stops, frisks, searches, summons, and arrests). This data should be disaggregated by school and non-school contacts. The BJS periodically conducts the Police-Public Contact Survey, a supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey. The most recent survey, released in 2013, asked a nationally representative sample of U.S. residents age 16 or older about experiences with police during the prior 12 months.42 But these surveys do not reflect what is happening every day at the local level when police interact with members of the communities they serve. More research and tools along the lines of Lorie Fridell’s 2004 publication, By the Numbers: A Guide for Analyzing Race Data From Vehicle Stops—to help local agencies collect and analyze their data, understand the importance of context to the analysis and reporting process, and establish benchmarks resulting from their findings—would improve understanding and lead to evidence-based policies. 42. Lynn Langton and Matthew Durose, Police Behavior during Traffic and Street Stops, 2011, Special Report (Washington, DC: Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2013), NCJ 242937; Matthew Durose and Lynn Langton, Requests for Police Assistance, 2011, Special Report (Washington, DC: Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2013), NCJ 242938. 2 5 P i l l a r 2 . P o l i c y & O v e r s i g h t 2.6.1 Action Item: The Federal Government could further incentivize universities and other organizations to partner with police departments to collect data and develop knowledge about analysis and benchmarks as well as to develop tools and templates that help departments manage data collection and analysis. 2.7 recOmmendatiOn: Law enforcement agencies should create policies and procedures for policing mass demonstrations that employ a continuum of managed tactical resources that are designed to minimize the appearance of a military operation and avoid using provocative tactics and equipment that undermine civilian trust. Policies should emphasize protection of the First Amendment rights of demonstrators and effective ways of communicating with them. Superintendent Garry McCarthy of the Chicago Police Department detailed his police force training and operations in advance of the 2012 NATO Summit at the height of the “Occupy” movement. The department was determined not to turn what it knew would be a mass demonstration into a riot. Police officers refreshed “perishable” skills, such as engaging in respectful conversations with demonstrators, avoiding confrontation, and using “extraction techniques” not only on the minority of demonstrators who were behaving unlawfully (throwing rocks, etc.) but also on officers who were becoming visibly upset and at risk of losing their composure and professional demeanor.43 43. Listening Session on Policy and Oversight (oral testimony of Garry McCarthy, Chicago Police Department, to the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Cincinnati, OH, January 30, 2015). 2.7.1 Action Item: Law enforcement agency policies should address procedures for implementing a layered response to mass demonstrations that prioritize de-escalation and a guardian mindset. These policies could include plans to minimize confrontation by using “soft look” uniforms, having officers remove riot gear as soon as practical, and maintaining open postures. “When officers line up in a military formation while wearing full protective gear, their visual appearance may have a dramatic influence on how the crowd perceives them and how the event ends.”44 2.7.2 Action Item: The Federal Government should create a mechanism for investigating complaints and issuing sanctions regarding the inappropriate use of equipment and tactics during mass demonstrations. There has been substantial media attention in recent months surrounding the police use of military equipment at events where members of the public are exercising their First Amendment rights. This has led to the creation of the President’s Interagency Law Enforcement Equipment Working Group. That group has been tasked by the Executive Order 13688 of January 16, 2015 with a number of issues, including ensuring that law enforcement agencies adopt organizational and operational practices and standards that prevent the misuse or abuse of controlled equipment and ensuring compliance with civil rights requirements resulting from receipt of federal financial assistance. 44. Listening Session on Policy and Oversight (written testimony of Edward Maguire, American University, for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Cincinnati, OH, January 30, 2015). F i n a l R e p o r t o f t h e P r e s i d e n t ’ s T a s k F o r c e o n 2 1 s t C e n t u r y P o l i c i n g 2 6 2.8 recOmmendatiOn: Some form of civilian oversight of law enforcement is important in order to strengthen trust with the community. Every community should define the appropriate form and structure of civilian oversight to meet the needs of that community. Many, but not all, state and local agencies operate with the oversight or input of civilian police boards or commissions. Part of the process of assessing the need and desire for new or additional civilian oversight should include input from and collaboration with police employees because the people to be overseen should be part of the process that will oversee them. This guarantees that the principles of internal procedural justice are in place to benefit both the police and the community they serve. We must examine civilian oversight in the communities where it operates and determine which models are successful in promoting police and community understanding. There are important arguments for having civilian oversight even though we lack strong research evidence that it works. Therefore we urge action on further research, based on the guiding principle of procedural justice, to find evidence-based practices to implement successful civilian oversight mechanisms. As noted by witness Brian Buchner at the Policy and Oversight Listening Session on January 30, Citizen review is not an advocate for the community or for the police. This impartiality allows oversight to bring stakeholders together to work collaboratively and proactively to help make policing more effective and responsive to the community. Civilian oversight alone is not sufficient to gain legitimacy; without it, however, it is difficult, if not impossible, for the police to maintain the public’s trust.45 45. Listening Session on Policy and Oversight (oral testimony of Brian Buchner, president, National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Cincinnati, OH, January 30, 2015). 2.8.1 Action Item: The U.S. Department of Justice, through its research arm, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), should expand its research agenda to include civilian oversight. NIJ recently announced its research priorities in policing for FY 2015, which include such topics as police use of force, body-worn cameras, and procedural justice. While proposals related to research on police oversight might fit into several of these topical areas, police oversight is not highlighted by NIJ in any of them. NIJ should specifically invite research into civilian oversight and its impact on and relationship to policing in one or more of these areas. 2.8.2 Action Item: The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) should provide technical assistance and collect best practices from existing civilian oversight efforts and be prepared to help cities create this structure, potentially with some matching grants and funding. 2.9 recOmmendatiOn: Law enforcement agencies and municipalities should refrain from practices requiring officers to issue a predetermined number of tickets, citations, arrests, or summonses, or to initiate investigative contacts with citizens for reasons not directly related to improving public safety, such as generating revenue. Productivity expectations can be effective performance management tools. But testimony from Laura Murphy, Director of the Washington Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties Union, identifies some of the negative effects of these practices: One only needs to paint a quick picture of the state of policing to understand the dire need for reform. First, there are local and federal incentives that 2 7 P i l l a r 2 . P o l i c y & O v e r s i g h t instigate arrests. At the local level, cities across the country generate much of their revenue through court fines and fees, with those who can’t pay subject to arrest and jail time. These debtors’ prisons are found in cities like Ferguson, where the number of arrest warrants in 2013—33,000—exceeded its population of 21,000. Most of the warrants were for driving violations.46 2.10 recOmmendatiOn: Law enforcement officers should be required to seek consent before a search and explain that a person has the right to refuse consent when there is no warrant or probable cause. Furthermore, officers should ideally obtain written acknowledgement that they have sought consent to a search in these circumstances. 46. Listening Session on Trust and Legitimacy (oral testimony of Laura Murphy, director of the Washington Legislative Office, American Civil Liberties Union, for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Washington, DC, January 13, 2015); Joseph Shapiro, “In Ferguson, Court Fines and Fees Fuel Anger,” NPR.com, last updated August 25, 2014, http://www.npr.org/2014/08/25/343143937/ in-ferguson-court-fines-and-fees-fuel-anger; In For A Penny: The Rise of America’s Debtors’ Prisons (New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2010), http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/InForAPenny_web.pdf. 2.11 recOmmendatiOn: Law enforcement agencies should adopt policies requiring officers to identify themselves by their full name, rank, and command (as applicable) and provide that information in writing to individuals they have stopped. In addition, policies should require officers to state the reason for the stop and the reason for the search if one is conducted. 2.11.1 Action Item: One example of how to do this is for law enforcement officers to carry business cards containing their name, rank, command, and contact information that would enable individuals to offer suggestions or commendations or to file complaints with the appropriate individual, office, or board. These cards would be easily distributed in all encounters. Co-chair Laurie Robinson asks a panelist a question, Phoenix, February 13, 2015. PHOTO: DEBORAH SPENCE 2.12 Recommendation: Law enforcement agencies should establish search and seizure procedures related to LGBTQ and transgender populations and adopt as policy the recommendation from the President’s F i n a l R e p o r t o f t h e P r e s i d e n t ’ s T a s k F o r c e o n 2 1 s t C e n t u r y P o l i c i n g 2 8 Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) to cease using the possession of condoms as the sole evidence of vice. 2.13 recOmmendatiOn: Law enforcement agencies should adopt and enforce policies prohibiting profiling and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, age, gender, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, immigration status, disability, housing status, occupation, or language fluency. The task force heard from a number of witnesses about the importance of protecting the safety and dignity of all people. Andrea Ritchie noted that gender and sexuality-specific forms of racial profiling and discriminatory policing [include] . . . . Failure to respect individuals’ gender identity and expression when addressing members of the public and during arrest processing, searches, and placement in police custody.47 47. Listening Session on Training and Education (oral testimony of Andrea Ritchie, founder of Streetwise and Safe, for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Phoenix, AZ, February 14, 2015). Invasive searches should never be used for the sole purpose of determining gender identity, and an individual’s gender identity should be respected in lock-ups and holding cells to the extent that the facility allows for gender segregation. And witness Linda Sarsour spoke to how an issue plaguing and deeply impacting ArabAmerican and American Muslim communities across the country is racial and religious profiling by local, state, and federal law enforcement. We have learned through investigative reports, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and lawsuits that agencies target communities by religion and national origin.48 2.13.1 Action Item: The Bureau of Justice Statistics should add questions concerning sexual harassment of and misconduct toward community members, and in particular LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming people, by law enforcement officers to the Police Public Contact Survey. 2.13.2 Action Item: The Centers for Disease Control should add questions concerning sexual harassment of and misconduct toward community members, and in particular LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming people, by law enforcement officers to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. 2.13.3 Action Item: The U.S. Department of Justice should promote and disseminate guidance to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies on documenting, preventing, and addressing sexual harassment and misconduct by local law enforcement agents, consistent with the recommendations of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.49 2.14 recOmmendatiOn: The U.S. Department of Justice, through the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and Office of Justice Programs, should provide technical assistance and incentive funding to jurisdictions with small police agencies that take steps towards shared services, regional training, and consolidation. 48. Listening Session on Training and Education (oral testimony of Linda Sarsour, Advocacy And Civic Engagement coordinator for the National Network for Arab American Communities, for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Phoenix, AZ, February 14, 2015). 49. IACP, Addressing Sexual Offenses and Misconduct by Law Enforcement: Executive Guide (Alexandria, VA: International Association of Chiefs of Police, 2011). 2 9 P i l l a r 2 . P o l i c y & O v e r s i g h t Half of all law enforcement agencies in the United States have fewer than ten officers, and nearly three-quarters have fewer than 25 officers.50 Lawrence Sherman noted in his testimony that “so many problems of organizational quality control are made worse by the tiny size of most local police agencies . . . less than 1 percent of 17,985 U.S. police agencies meet the English minimum of 1,000 employees or more.”51 These small forces often lack the resources for training and equipment accessible to larger departments and often are prevented by municipal boundaries and local custom from combining forces with neighboring agencies. Funding and technical assistance can give smaller agencies the incentive to share policies and practices and give them access to a wider variety of training, equipment, and communications technology than they could acquire on their own. 50. Brian A. Reaves, Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2008, Bulletin (Washington, DC: Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011), NCJ 233982. 51. Listening Session on the Future of Community Policing (oral testimony of Lawrence Sherman, Cambridge University, for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Washington, DC, February 24, 2015). Table 1. Full-time state and local law enforcement employees, by size of agency, 2008 Size of agency Number of agencies Total number of full-time employees All agencies 17,985 1,133,915 1,000 or more officers 83 326,197 500–999 89 94,168 250–499 237 133,024 100–249 778 174,505 500–99 1,300 136,390 25–49 2,402 124,492 10–24 4,300 98,563 5–9 3,446 32,493 2–4 3,225 11,498 0–1 2,125 2,585 Source: Brian A. Reaves, “State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies” (see note 50). 2.15 recOmmendatiOn: The U.S. Department of Justice, through the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, should partner with the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training (IADLEST) to expand its National Decertification Index to serve as the National Register of Decertified Officers with the goal of covering all agencies within the United States and its territories. The National Decertification Index is an aggregation of information that allows hiring agencies to identify officers who have had their license or certification revoked for misconduct. It was designed as an answer to the problem “wherein a police officer is discharged for improper conduct and loses his/her certification in that state . . . [only to relocate] to another state and hire on with another police department.”52 52. “National Decertification Index—FAQs,” accessed February 27, 2015, https://www.iadlest.org/Portals/0/Files/NDI/FAQ/ndi_faq.html. Peace Officer Standards and F i n a l R e p o r t o f t h e P r e s i d e n t ’ s T a s k F o r c e o n 2 1 s t C e n t u r y P o l i c i n g 3 0 Training (POST) boards can record administrative actions taken against certified police and correctional officers. Currently the criteria for reporting an action on an officer is determined by each POST independently, as is the granting of readonly access to hiring departments to use as part of their pre-hire screening process. Expanding this system to ensure national and standardized reporting would assist in ensuring that officers who have lost their certification for misconduct are not easily hired in other jurisdictions. A national register would effectively treat “police professionals the