25March
2020

National Police Foundation launches real-time situational awareness tool for law enforcement to track COVID-19 officer exposures and PPE impacts

MARCH 25, 2020—In response to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and its impact on law enforcement and other first responders, the National Police Foundation (NPF), in collaboration with the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG) Foundation and Esri, has developed a real-time COVID-19 situational awareness tool for law enforcement agencies. The tool, featuring a real-time dashboard, provides critical insights for executives, commanders, administrators and other decision-makers to better assess and monitor the impact of COVID-19 on our nation’s first responders, including officer exposures, diagnoses, workforce impacts, and personal protective equipment (PPE) needs and projections.

The interactive tool allows agencies to provide confidential, real-time updates that are instantly incorporated into the national dashboard and map. The dashboard identifies the number of officers exposed, officially tested with a positive diagnosis, placed in off-duty status due to exposure, and that are self-isolating due to symptoms or off-duty exposure. The dashboard also estimates the availability of necessary PPE, the most critical PPE that agencies are lacking, and current and projected shortages of PPE. The data is then aggregated and mapped at the state-level in order to show impacts across the country. Individual agencies will not be identified. Law enforcement agencies can then compare impacts in their state with those of other states.

Screenshot of the National Police Foundation’s COVID-19 Law Enforcement Impact Real-Time Surveillance Dashboard. (Photo by: National Police Foundation)

Read More & Share

12March
2020

Passing of longest-serving, former Police Foundation President Hubert Williams

MARCH 12, 2020—The National Police Foundation extends heartfelt condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of Hubert Williams, who passed away earlier this week on Tuesday, March 10, 2020. Williams served as the president of the National Police Foundation (formerly Police Foundation) from 1985-2012—becoming the longest serving president in the organization’s 50-year history.

Williams—a Harvard Law Fellow, Graduate of Rutgers Law School, a founding member and former first President of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement (NOBLE), and the youngest and first African American to serve as Police Director in Newark, NJ—was a trailblazer and influential leader in the policing profession.

Williams was appointed Police Foundation president in 1985, following the retirement of NYPD Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy. Prior to his appointment as president of the Police Foundation, Williams served as police director in Newark, New Jersey, from 1974 to 1985, and under his leadership the Newark Police Department served as the laboratory for two groundbreaking Police Foundation studies pivotal to the evolution of community policing—The Newark Foot Patrol Experiment and the NIJ-funded reducing fear of crime experiment.

Read More & Share

11March
2020

National Law Enforcement Roadway Safety Program Training Sessions Postponed

Program Logo

Due to ongoing COVID-19 concerns, all scheduled trainings for the National Law Enforcement Roadway Safety Program (NLERSP) have been postponed until further notice. The trainings will be tentatively rescheduled for the summer of 2020. Further details will be provided once the trainings are rescheduled. We apologize for the inconvenience.

To receive up-to-date information on future NLERSP scheduled trainings, you can opt-in to our mailing list (and indicate your interest in training opportunities) or visit the NLERSP web page at LEOroadwaysafety.org.

2March
2020

National Police Foundation, Partners host executive workshop to improve officer safety on the roadway

Law enforcement executives from several local agencies gathered to learn about tactics, model policies, and best practices for roadway safety.    

The National Police Foundation, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and the Institute for Intergovernmental Research (IIR), recently held the first training session as part of the newly launched National Law Enforcement Roadway Safety Program (NLERSP), one of three programs launched under BJA’s National Officer Safety Initiatives (NOSI).

The NLERSP provides a suite of no-cost training, technical assistance, and resources to local, state, and tribal law enforcement agencies with the goal of reducing the number of officers seriously injured and killed on the nation’s roadways.

The NLERSP offers in-person, interactive courses for executives, patrol officers, and trainers that teach attendees about the risk factors for officer-involved collisions and struck-by incidents and identify a variety of interventions and technological innovations that can reduce the likelihood of their occurrence. The evidence-based courses—developed by a national working group of subject matter experts from law enforcement, government, and academia—draw heavily from the success of the Las Vegas Police Department’s comprehensive crash prevention program, as well as widely-recognized traffic incident management (TIM) principles, to provide attendees with actionable steps, skills, and resources to improve officer safety on the roadways.

Read More & Share

2March
2020

National Police Foundation to conduct new research study examining crisis intervention response models within small law enforcement agencies

MARCH 2020—The National Police Foundation, with funding support from Arnold Ventures, will conduct a new research study that will examine how small law enforcement agencies (10-70 sworn) respond to incidents involving persons with mental illness or substance abuse issues.

Persistent lack of community-based mental health resources available to people in crisis has resulted in frequent need for police intervention. Law enforcement agencies across the country are turning to Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) and other specialized police response models that focus on cross-sector collaboration between law enforcement, mental health agencies, and advocates. While these efforts have proliferated and show promise in meeting goals, they are largely typical of medium and large departments. However, the vast majority of police agencies are small and may not have the resources to fund CIT training, may not have mental health resources close at hand, nor receive the numbers of calls involving persons with mental illness or substance abuse issues to justify expensive programs.

Read More & Share

18February
2020

New Publication Released: How to Conduct an After Action Review – A Guidebook for Agencies of All Sizes

The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) and the National Police Foundation will soon be releasing a guidebook detailing how to conduct an after action review (AAR). The guidebook defines the AAR process following incidents and exercises of all sizes and provides an overview of their importance to law enforcement and public safety agencies committed to creating a culture of learning. It also identifies common themes and brief summaries of key findings, recommendations, promising practices, and lessons learned from 20 AARs of mass violence and mass demonstration incidents. It concludes with a detailed step-by-step guide for law enforcement agencies and relevant stakeholders to conduct an AAR with explanations of each step, how the steps tie into the larger process, and additional guidance.

The guidebook also lays out evidence supporting the need to incorporate the AAR process into everyday activities and provides a solid framework and suggestions for undertaking this work in law enforcement agencies of all sizes. AARs are critical to organizational learning and strengthening responses in an evolving and increasingly complex environment. Creating and instilling a culture that encourages continuous learning is vital to ensuring first responder safety and wellness and building effective responses to enhance community safety.

As part of the COPS Office’s effort to provide guidance and education about AARs, a new eLearning course designed for all levels of police practitioners—developed by the Virginia Center for Policing Innovation (VCPI)—has also been released on the COPS Office Training Portal.

To access the AAR Guidebook, visit the COPS website at https://cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/Publications/cops-w0878-pub.pdf, and to sign up for the eLearning course, visit the COPS Office Training Portal at https://copstrainingportal.org/after-action-review-and-reporting-an-introduction/. For more information about conducting an AAR, the AAR process, and a library of mass violence and mass demonstration AARs visit https://www.policefoundation.org/critical-incident-review-library/.

5February
2020

National Police Foundation hosts conference on police body-worn cameras

Dr. Cynthia Lum, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University and National Police Foundation Board Member, provides an overview of current research findings on police body-worn cameras.

The National Police Foundation (NPF) recently hosted a one-day conference: “Police Body Cameras: What Have We Learned Over 10 Years of Deployment?” The purpose of the conference was to share police body-worn camera research findings with practitioners, as well as to hear directly from practitioners whose agencies have deployed the technology and what challenges and opportunities body cameras bring to their agencies and communities.

The conference featured several presentations from researchers, including a presentation by Dr. Cynthia Lum, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University, on an overview of current police body camera literature and findings. In addition, Sean Goodison, Police Executive Research Forum, Daniel Lawrence, Urban Institute, and Kalani Johnson, National Police Foundation, presented on findings from three recent Arnold Ventures studies that have examined how body cameras affect citizen satisfaction with police encounters and implications for law enforcement. David Makin, Washington State University, also presented on whether BWCs capture a true picture of events, providing an overview of research synthesized by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics lab, which has shown that different people view body camera recordings in idiosyncratic ways and that reliance on video recordings may not provide a full or accurate presentation of an event.

Read More & Share

15January
2020

Now available: 2019 Annual Report

The National Police Foundation’s 2019 Annual Report is now available. The report highlights the work the Foundation is doing in four key areas: harnessing the power of science to advance policing, encouraging responsible innovation, protecting the protectors and those they serve, and strengthening trust between police and communities to keep communities safe. Click here to view the report. A digital version of the report can be found at: www.npfannualreport.org.

19December
2019

Best-selling author highlights multiple National Police Foundation policing experiments in his most recent book

As 2019 comes to a close, we find ourselves reflecting on the impact we’ve had throughout the year and contemplating what more we can accomplish in the new year. This year, we were honored to see several of the National Police Foundation’s historic policing experiments highlighted in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know.

In the book, Gladwell describes our efforts to engage with strangers in various contexts in society. As he puts it, “In all of these cases, the parties involved relied on a set of strategies to translate one another’s word and intentions. And, in each case something went very wrong.” Gladwell uses case studies to examine the strategies that motivated or guided each interaction and questions their origins and effectiveness.

Read More & Share