In response to CALEA accreditation requirements and/or public allegations of racial profiling, many law enforcement agencies have begun to track the race, ethnicity, and gender of those who are stopped, searched, arrested, and/or were the subject of a use of force by officers.
If not researched and written properly, these reports have the potential to be misinterpreted by the media or community groups, needlessly damage the public image of your agency, undermine the legitimacy of your agency with the public, and lower officer morale. This workshop offers crucial skills necessary to present the information in your report in a manner that minimizes the risk of misinterpretation or manipulation, and presents the work of your agency in the most accurate and professionally responsive manner possible.
This workshop addresses critical reporting issues, such as: the best order in which the collected information should presented, how and why data should be reported by beats and units rather than agency-wide, separating pro-active and reactive officer activity, finding and using valid benchmark comparisons, and understanding the disproportionality index.
Course Objectives:
- Public perceptions
- Repercussions for police legitimacy
- Legal repercussions for police agencies
- Types of mandates for reporting
- Types of information to report
- External versus internal evaluations
- Overall agency response to ethics and fairness
- Overall agency efforts toward diversity and inclusion
- Stop data is only a part of the report
- What is it?
- How is it calculated?
- What does it mean?
- Reporting data by district rather than agency-wide
- Reporting special unit data separately
- Separating proactive and reactive activities
- The numerous problems with using Census statistics
- Understanding how the wrong benchmark hurts the entire study
- Ensuring the benchmark matches the activity targeted police activity
- Importance of officer buy-in and training
- Importance of data collection instruments
- The potential sources of invalid data
- How to truly detect biased policing among the ranks
- Comparing officers against their peers
- Ruling out legitimate reasons for disparities
- Sources of technical assistance
- Screening outside researchers
- Developing in-house expertise
Chief Academic Officer, Dolan Consulting Group
| Dr. Richard Johnson
Richard R. Johnson, PhD, is a trainer and researcher with Dolan Consulting Group. He has decades of experience teaching and training on various topics associated with criminal justice, and has conducted research on a variety of topics related to crime and law enforcement. He holds a bachelor's degree in public administration and criminal justice from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) at Indiana University, with a minor in social psychology. He possesses a master's degree in criminology from Indiana State University. He earned his doctorate in criminal justice from the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati with concentrations in policing and criminal justice administration.
Dr. Johnson has published more than 50 articles on various criminal justice topics in academic research journals, including Justice Quarterly, Crime & Delinquency, Criminal Justice & Behavior, Journal of Criminal Justice, and Police Quarterly. He has also published more than a dozen articles in law enforcement trade journals such as the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, Police Chief, Law & Order, National Sheriff, and Ohio Police Chief. His research has primarily focused on police-citizen interactions, justice system responses to domestic violence, and issues of police administration and management. Dr. Johnson retired as a full professor of criminal justice at the University of Toledo in 2016.
Prior to his academic career, Dr. Johnson served several years working within the criminal justice system. He served as a trooper with the Indiana State Police, working uniformed patrol in Northwest Indiana. He served as a criminal investigator with the Kane County State's Attorney Office in Illinois, where he investigated domestic violence and child sexual assault cases. He served as an intensive probation officer for felony domestic violence offenders with the Illinois 16th Judicial Circuit. Dr. Johnson is also a proud military veteran having served as a military police officer with the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard, including active duty service after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Before that, he served as an infantry soldier and field medic in the U.S. Army and Army National Guard.
