Evaluation of an Early Intervention System at a Law Enforcement Agency. Robert Scott Russell, 2014: Applied Dissertation, Nova Southeastern University, Abraham S. Fischler School of Education. ERIC Descriptors: Computer Software Evaluation, Crime Prevention, Law Enforcement, Police Community Relationship, Program Evaluation. The problem addressed through this program evaluation was that no formal study had been conducted regarding the implementation and effectiveness of the BlueTeam Program (BTP) within the law enforcement agency (LEA) serving as the study site. The BTP is a program that utilizes a computer application to track officer behaviors and alert administrators to potential trends in officer misconduct and complaints against officers. The program evaluation was guided by the process and product segments of Stufflebeam's (2003) content, input, process, and product model. To conduct the evaluation, the researcher used a mixed methods approach for analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data. The perceptions of LEA stakeholders regarding the BTP, such as the sufficiency of staffing, budget, training, and ongoing support for effective implementation, were first collected. Quantitative data, consisting of archived, deidentified indicators of officer misconduct and complaints against officers acquired through the BTP, were then analyzed. Findings of the study were that the BTP was effective in reducing incidents of officer misconduct and complaints against officers and for use in identifying which alerts were valid indicators of misconduct and complaints against officers. The one concern of stakeholders involving the BTP was limited nighttime vision; the recommendation for program improvement is that this shortcoming be addressed to determine possible solutions. Recommendations for future research involve the need for initial determinations, as well as formative evaluations, pertaining to the following three areas: (a) ascertaining the way in which the early intervention system will be used, (b) identifying the indicators of misconduct that will be tracked, and (c) determining the threshold at which the system will issue an alert.

The traumatic and cumulative stresses associated with a law enforcement career are well documented both empirically and anecdotally. While previous generations have acknowledged and coped with these stressors with varying levels of success, research shows that the millennial generation has reported more mental health issues than any generation in history. Since suicide is the single leading cause of death for United States law enforcement officers in recent years, addressing mental health should be a priority of all agencies. The introduction of millennial generation law enforcement officers creates the potential for increased mental health needs within the field. 25 millennial-aged Florida law enforcement academy recruits were interviewed in an effort to develop an understanding of their perception of mental health and suicide within the law enforcement career field. Developing an understanding of the perceptions of mental health and suicide from the perspective of millennial generation recruit officers offers insight into this birth cohort. This insight can begin to identify practices and procedures that have the potential to reduce the stigma associated with mental health and ultimately reduce the number of officer suicides. This study identifies training and policy needs which can be adopted by law enforcement agencies to mitigate mental health concerns. Additionally, this study offers suggestion for future research which may change police culture and its perceptions on mental health and suicide.

Jerome Skolnick’s (2011) "symbolic assailant" is a result of police attributing particular demeanor, gestures, language, and a style of dress to people they believed were most likely to commit violent crimes. The challenge became when police applied these characteristics to specific groups such as juveniles. Literature published before and after Skolnick (2011) indicated police were more likely to stop, arrest, interrogate, or surveille juveniles based on their demeanor, gestures, style of dress, lack of respect, deference to authority, the severity, and remorse for their offenses in addition to race. However, current research indicated race, gender, and Socioeconomic Status (SES) determined if police perceived juveniles as the symbolic assailant regardless of offense type. The current research also suggested the symbolic assailant is the foundation for related theories such as racial profiling and the “juvenile offender type-script.” Thus, this dissertation sought to determine if juveniles’ demeanor, gestures, race, gender, and offense type predicted if police perceived them as having characteristics analogous to the symbolic assailant. The researcher conducted a nonexperimental predictive correlational research design analyzing secondary data from Connecticut’s Effective Police Interactions with Youth’s Pretest Survey. The results showed weak to moderate relationships between the predictor and criterion variables such as police believed juveniles’ fidgeting, pacing, and mouthing off as signs of guilt indicated a weak relationship. The strongest predictor was a combination of race and offense type as the patrol officers responded all races and ethnicities were most likely to carry weapons equally in the past 30 days, which differed from the current symbolic assailant and related literature.

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[pt] Esta dissertação investiga o impacto de sanções ambientais sobre mudanças florestais na Amazônia brasileira. Examinamos o papel da dissuasão geral na mudança do comportamento dos agricultores, alterando suas percepções sobre o risco de violar as leis florestais após serem punidos ou testemunharem a punição de fazendas adjacentes. Usando a estratégia de diferença em diferenças e novos dados espaciais, mostramos que as sanções reduzem o desmatamento em 48 por cento nas fazendas punidas e em 21 por cento nas fazendas adjacentes, enquanto aumentam o reflorestamento em 15 por cento e 6,5 por cento, respectivamente. Análises de heterogeneidade revelam que mesmo sanções sem componentes de incapacitação levam a mudanças comportamentais substanciais e que a responsividade dos fazendeiros às sanções coincide com o compromisso geral à aplicação das leis florestais. Não há evidências de deslocamento espacial ou tentativas de fugir do monitoramento. Em um cenário contrafactual sem sanções, o desmatamento dos fazendeiros aumentaria 29 por cento. Esses resultados sugerem que a dissuasão geral pode tornar as sanções ambientais uma ferramenta poderosa para combater o desmatamento e promover o reflorestamento em escala. / [en] This dissertation investigates the impact of environmental sanctions on forest changes in the Brazilian Amazon. We examine the role of general deterrence in changing farmers behavior by altering their perceived risk of violating forest laws after being punished or witnessing the punishment of adjacent farms. Using a difference-in-differences strategy and novel spatial data, we show that sanctions decrease deforestation by 48 percent in punished farms and 21 percent in adjacent farms while increasing reforestation by 15 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that even sanctions lacking incapacitation components lead to substantial behavioral changes and that farmers responsiveness to sanctions coincides with the overall commitment to forest law enforcement. There is no evidence of spatial displacement or attempts to elude monitoring. In a counterfactual scenario without sanctions, farmers deforestation would increase by 29 percent. These findings suggest that general deterrence can make environmental sanctions a powerful tool for combating deforestation and promoting reforestation at scale.

Automatic vehicle locator (AVL) systems, utilizing military's global positioning system, may impact response time to law enforcement calls for service. In order to evaluate the impacts of AVL on response time to calls for service at the Altamonte Springs Police Department (ASPD), computer aided dispatch (CAD) data from years 1999 to 2003 were analyzed. The analysis of each of the data sets consisted of an initial sequence chart, an analysis of variance (ANOVA), a means plot and a linear regression. Interviews of ASPD personnel were conducted to understand user perceptions of AVL. Based on the ANOVA results, trends indicate that weekly response time was significantly lower during the AVL partial implementation period than during the pre or post AVL stages across all categories of data analyzed. Based on the regression results, trends indicate that the overall impact of AVL on response time for all categories analyzed is flat and show AVL as having no overall impact on response time across all calls for service analyzed. An exception to this is the findings related to Priority 3 calls for service; however this exception can be attributed to performance during the pre AVL implementation stage. These results do not suggest a capability for AVL to reduce response time to calls for service in a meaningful comprehensive way. Thus, the study's hypotheses are not supported.

An important post-9/11 objective has been to connect law enforcement agencies so they can share information that is routinely collected by police. This low-level information, gathered from sources such as traffic tickets, calls for service, incident reports and field contacts, is not widely shared but might account for as much as 97% of the data held in police records systems. U.S. policy and law assume that access to this information advances crime control and counterterrorism efforts. The scarcity of functioning systems has limited research opportunities to test this assumption or offer guidance to police leaders considering investments in information sharing. However, this study had access to FINDER, a Florida system that shares low-level data among 121 police agencies. The user-level value of FINDER was empirically examined using Goodhue's (1995) Task-Technology Fit framework. Objective system data from 1,352 users, user-reported "successes," and a survey of 402 active users helped define parameters of user-level success. Of the users surveyed, 68% reported arrests or case clearances, 71% reported improved performance, and 82% reported improved efficiency attributed to FINDER. Regression models identified system use, task-fit, and user characteristic measures that predicted changes in users' individual performance. A key finding was that FINDER affirmed the importance of sharing low-level police data, and successful outcomes were related to its ease of use and access to user-specified datasets. Also, users employed a variety of information-seeking techniques that were related to their task assignments. Improved understanding of user-defined success and system use techniques can inform the design and functionality of information sharing systems. Further, this study contributes to addressing the critical requirement for developing information sharing system metrics.