Inclusive Policing Through Data and Education

Published Date September 18, 2024
News Type Public Address

(From left) Police officers from Seattle learn about Columbus Dialogue Team actions with explanations from Columbus Police Sgt. Kolin Straub, center and Glenn College Professors Cliff Stott and Russell Hassan during this summer’s Pride March. (Credit: Joan Slattery Wall)

By Joan Slattery Wall 

Glenn College Professor Russell Hassan says the reason he’s interested in community-focused and evidence-based policing research is simple: It’s public service.

“This is one of the college’s main goals. It’s one of those wicked problems. It’s not just police having to respond; it’s social issues,” said Hassan. “For example, the issue of delinquent youth is as much a policing issue as a social issue — why a 13-year-old kid would have a gun. It’s a policing issue, but it’s a broader community issue.” 

Aiming to enhance police legitimacy and create a framework to professionalize policing, Hassan, the Ambassador Milton A. and Roslyn Z. Wolf Chair in Public and International Affairs, and Clifford Stott, a visiting faculty member and crowd behavior expert from the Keele Policing Academic Collaboration at Keele University in England, and the Columbus Division of Police are working to enhance data analysis and officer education.

Strengthening Police Legitimacy and Public Safety

Glenn College and Columbus police develop an evidence-based approach to safeguard constitutional rights and build trust between officers and the community.

Through the examination of routine police data as well as data from external sources such as census, crime and public health data, the initiative aims to uncover the potential for analyzing underlying causes of racial and ethnic disparities in policing.

Solidifying the collaboration between Columbus police, the Glenn College and the City of Columbus, the project also will seek academic-practitioner partnerships to bridge gaps between academic research, operational leadership and excellence in policing. Namely, it will set out processes for the Glenn College to offer accredited postgraduate continuous education tailored for police officers. 

Advancing Police Data Insight

Hassan explained that the overarching goal of analyzing and improving police data is to assess Columbus’ readiness for 21st Century Policing that is evidence-based. The project will start with an analysis of Columbus police traffic stops and use of force incidents.

In collaboration with data scientists and researchers from Ohio State and Keele Universities, the program will undertake preliminary analysis and derive a framework of actionable insights to guide future analysis and inform current strategies for rebuilding trust and reducing disparities in policing outcomes.
 

At the community level, a big concern is that a lot of policing outcomes disproportionately impact low-income, minority populations. 
 

Professor Russell Hassan
Glenn College

“So one thing we want to understand is why that is the case. What are the root causes that drive that?” said Hassan, the Ambassador Milton A. and Roslyn Z. Wolf Chair in Public and International Affairs. 

Traffic stops, he said, are where most community members interact with the police, so perceptions of legitimacy and unfairness could stem from how police handle these incidents. 

Examining use of force data could shed light on whether force is used appropriately, whether it’s proportionate and where it happens more often. 

“What we want to do is identify communities where we see more uses of force and then go back to see what community conditions and other things are driving that,” Hassan said. “Uses of force are linked with police legitimacy.”  

(From left) Professors Russell Hassan and Cliff Stott speak with Columbus police Lt. Amber Rich during the Glenn College Public Safety Leadership Academy. (Credit: Ohio State Highway Patrol)

The researchers will also examine neighborhood conditions and the socioeconomic environment as well as crime patterns in the city. 

“We need to bring in all those types of data together to understand policing patterns and outcomes with the hope that will help Columbus police take measures to change the situation proactively,” he said. 

Other Ohio State researchers joining Hassan and Stott on this project include sociology Professor Paul Bellair, director of the Criminal Justice Research Center; Distinguished Professor Chris Browning, sociology, who has conducted research on youth and police interaction as well as health outcomes and spatial analysis; and, in the Glenn College, Assistant Professor Victor St. John and former postdoctoral scholar Darwin Baluran, now an assistant professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. 

The project also will develop a survey instrument to measure community members’ perceptions of policing within their neighborhood specifically as well as neighborhood conditions, such as whether they feel safe or whether feel in control of their lives.  

“Our hope is the city will administer this survey on a regular basis and build a dataset,” Hassan said. “Some of this data can be made available on a dashboard so council members, community leaders and police leadership can see within in a specific area how community members feel about things as sort of a performance indicator.” 

Fostering Academic and Police Partnerships

Stott, Hassan and Columbus police are working to build academic-practitioner partnerships that bridge gaps between academic research, operational leadership and excellence in policing. 

“Our goal is to eventually grow a network of people who do what we do,” said Columbus Police Commander Duane M. Mabry, who has taught crowd control for 15 years.

What we want to change is the culture of law enforcement from coast to coast to this new model.

Commander Duane M. Mabry
Columbus Division of Police

Strategic Command and Urban Disorder Training 

The Glenn College will offer a new professional development training in advanced crowd management and First Amendment policing for police commanders and executives. Participants will engage with world-leading academic experts and seasoned practitioners to explore the critical role of communication and dialogue in maintaining police legitimacy, de-escalating conflict and effectively managing public order. 

“Russell’s background in organizational design and Cliff’s background in the science is a great pairing for how we train our leaders,” Mabry said. 

Already they’ve trained 65 Columbus police officers and officers from another 29 law enforcement agencies in dialogue policing, and they’ve traveled the country giving presentations about it. In addition, they have assisted departments at First Amendment events in other cities and states, whose officers plan to attend future training developed by Columbus Police, Stott and Hassan.  

They’re working to set out the required processes necessary for the Glenn College to offer accredited, postgraduate, continuous education tailored for police officers. 

Christi Scott Bartman, Glenn College senior instructor and capstone director for the Public Safety Leadership Academy, assists participating officers in producing a project of value for their police department. (Credit: Ohio State Highway Patrol)

A foundation already exists in the college’s Public Safety Leadership Academy for Law Enforcement, an intensive, 11-week, residential training program for senior law enforcement officers from around Ohio.  

“What we want to try to do, going back to the idea of 21st century policing, is to ensure there is a provision provided to police officers to educate them about theory, research and evidence that comes out of our work,” Stott said. “It’s a drive toward professionalizing the police. It’s an idealistic one and ambitious for the one year we have, but we’re trying to understand the dynamics of what needs to be done to take us in that direction.” 

Read the latest edition of Public Address, the Glenn College magazine.