Arlington, TX: A Community Policing Story Arlington, TX - A Community Policing Story | Page 27

Takeaways and Next Steps

Engage in public trust-building activities
Law enforcement agencies, in establishing public trust as a formal metric of success, should
invest not only in community-based policies, practices, and programs but also in an agency-
wide framework that supports and ultimately sustains trust building as a priority. These
external activities could, for example, include positive, non-enforcement activities in commun­
ities with high rates of investigative and enforcement actions; public distribution of departmental
policies and data regarding stops, summonses, arrests, and crime; community involvement in
the process of proposing, developing, and evaluating departmental policies; and transparent
communication with communities regarding instances of serious police misconduct.
Establish public trust as departmental priority
To establish trust building as organizational prerogative, law enforcement agencies should
incorporate public trust principles and practices into management, strategic planning, and
decision-making; personnel hiring, training, evaluation, and promotion; and information
systems. Moreover, agencies should implement mechanisms to measure and analyze levels of
public trust (such as perceptions of institutional legitimacy) by, for example, administering
annual community surveys or coordinating neighborhood-based listening sessions. Models
include Vera Institute of Justice’s CompStat 2.0, 37 National Police Research Platform’s
RespectStat, 38 and New York City Police Department’s sentiment meter. 39
Promote procedural justice as organizing principle
Law enforcement agencies may consider adopting procedural justice as a guiding principle for
internal and external priorities, policies, and practices. This effort, at the most fundamental
level, should also include investment in training. Agencies should also administer to both
personnel and community members evaluations of existing policies, practices, and procedures
and specifically inquire about the impact of those policies, etc. on internal and external
perceptions of procedural justice. Moreover, consistent messaging from executive leadership,
members of command staff, and other supervisors with respect to rank-and-file officers should
reinforce procedural justice as principle: for example, supervisors could consider procedural
justice in performance evaluations, thereby reinforcing an agency culture grounded in
community engagement as opposed to enforcement.
37. Rebecca Neusteter, “CompStat 2.0,” Projects, Vera Institute of Justice, accessed January 9, 2018,
https://www.vera.org/projects/compstat-2-0.
38. Garry F. McCarthy, “From CompStat to RespectStat: Accountability for Respectful Policing,” Police Chief (August 2015),
http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/from-compstat-to-respectstat-accountability-for-respectful-policing/.
39. Kevin Rizzo, “The NYPD’s New Plan to Measure Community Safety: Will It Work?” Law Street Media, May 10, 2017,
https://lawstreetmedia.com/blogs/crime/nypd-new-measure-community-safety/.
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