By Earl Sweeney
It is not given to man to foretell the future. It was, therefore, with some trepidation that the IACP Highway Safety Committee undertook to build on the excellent spadework done by the Police Executive Research Forum and attempt to make recommendations that both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the law enforcement community would find useful as they plot their respective courses toward an uncertain tomorrow.
This document should be thought of, at best, as a bridge - a bridge between today and tomorrow, a bridge between two centuries and even more significantly, between two millennia. It was begun in one century and completed in another, begun in one millennium and completed in another.
Our subcommittee that worked on this project heard from futurists, police administrators, traffic commanders, engineers, and others, but we cannot say for certain what the future holds - there are too many “ifs.”
IF the economy remains stable, IF the world’s oil supply lasts another four or five decades, IF we are able to develop new sources of energy, IF the problems of global warming are not understated, IF declining birth rates and death rates in the developed nations and rising birth rates and economies in the emerging nations continue at the same pace, IF the world remains free of major wars, and IF there is not a marked change in what many have described as a declining sense of morality worldwide, we know what we can expect.
We can expect more vehicles and more roads and highways, more traffic jams and more interruptions in the traffic flow due to construction and reconstruction. We can expect that vehicle operation will become more automated, as artificial intelligence is increasingly applied to vehicles and highway systems. We can expect a continued drive to produce more fuel efficient motor vehicles that pollute the air less.
We can expect technology to help solve such problems as stopping high speed pursuits and the enforcement of speed laws and traffic light violations. We can expect more elderly drivers on the roads, a new wave of teenagers raised on a culture of violence, impatient and prone to aggressive driving and road rage.
We can expect continued problems with drugs and alcohol, which were the bane of societies in the previous millenium, not to mention the previous century. We can expect deepening divisions between the world’s “haves and have nots,” major changes in the cultural composition of our population, and as both the police and criminals increase their use of leading-edge communications technology, fierce debates as to what checks and balances should exist on governmental intrusion into personal privacy on the one hand, and the need for the police to be able to monitor terrorists, drug cartels and other organized crime groups on the other.
These expectations could change dramatically overnight, however, with a war, a disruption in the Mideast oil supply, a global climate change, or some cosmic event such as a meteor strike. We live in uncertain times.
Because of these uncertainties, in focusing our discussions and crafting our recommendations, we have devoted this section of of this report to some of the future trends that we feel must be taken into account by law enforcement agencies in developing their strategies over the next five to seven years. In the second section, we call attention to the most significant and successful strategies of the last few years, providing a checklist for police administrators to see if their current tactics and procedures represent current best practices.
Throughout it all, one thing will remain constant - that the business of policing is first and foremost a “people business.” People, with all their human frailties and flaws, are our profession. Some will serve with bravery and distinction as police officers, firefighters, medical professionals and public officials.
Some will live out their lives as good citizens and role models. Others will live their lives in such a careless and even criminal manner that others will be hurt by their activities. In the highly mobile society of today and the even more mobile society of tomorrow, the police will be depended upon to ensure that travel is safe, and that criminals are caught, whether on foot or in a vehicle. It is to those police officers of today and tomorrow that this document is dedicated.
As the study of human populations, demographics can contribute greatly to our understanding of the economy, business, society, and our professions. It can predict business trends, school and college enrollments, demands on the social security system, electricity and fossil fuel use, markets for various products, and crime and crash trends.
By itself, demographics may cause people to make some misleading conclusions. It is not an exact science, and depends on such outside factors as wars, climate changes, and the impact of technology.
It is useful in planning for the future to look at birth cohorts. For example, people born in the U.S., Canada, or Australia between 1946 and 1964 are classified by demographers as baby boomers. The baby boom occurred after World War II when veterans returned home after postponing having children until after the war. A strong economy gave couples the confidence to start a family. By 1957, the average U.S. family had nearly four children. Many young immigrants, primarily from Europe, also entered the U.S.
Postwar prosperity, the Cold War that began in 1948, and the advent of television that changed the entire landscape of activities within the home helped to shape this generation. Television penetrated nearly every household and brought with it a greater understanding of what was happening around the world, from the Vietnam War to the Kennedy assassinations to the civil rights movement to Elvis Presley and the beginnings of rock and roll. This generation is now entering the ranks of senior citizens.
From 1965 to 1976 came a baby bust, with 15% fewer babies born than during the prior decade, and the number of families with children at home dropped by six percent, along with fewer children per family. This group is often known as Generation X. They entered the labor force during a period of economic downturn with good educations, but looking forward to unemployment rates as high as 10.8% by 1982, and lower starting salaries. They were the first U.S. generation that felt they would have fewer opportunities than their parents. Now reaching middle age, this generation is very media-conscious and the first segment of the population to be prolific computer and Internet users.
From 1977 to 1997 came the Baby Boom Echo, as the baby boomers, who had postponed childbirth until their thirties and forties, began having children, when the economy turned around and their hopes and expectations along with it.
Currently, a cohort known to merchandisers as NexGen, called by Don Tapscott, author of Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation, as NetGen, and by others as Generation Y, is entering the work force. Some 88,000,000 strong, between the ages of three and 23 as the new millennium began, they are now the biggest demographic group in North America. They have a different outlook on work, responsibility, teamwork, and desired reward than their parents. This cohort and their views will dominate the 21st century.
This is the first generation that knew more about some things than their parents did. Those “some things” are the computer and the Internet. Raised on video games and “wired” to computers at school, their parents have had to depend on them to advise them on matters ranging from how to buy a computer and peripherals to how to build a Web page. This generation has grown up surrounded by digital devices, from digital cameras to video games to CD-ROMs to downloadable music. Electronic devices are no more intimidating to them than a TV set was to the previous generation - they have grown up with them and assimilated them, rather than having to learn them anew. They play, work, and create communities and friends in cyberspace. The computer and the Internet are truly the single most powerful force shaping this generation.
Because of their experiences on-line, NexGenners do not regard their parents, or even their supervisors at work, who usually know less than they do about the new technology, as having more knowledge or wisdom. After all, the world’s collected knowledge lies just a mouse click away for them, on the World Wide Web. Because of the interactive nature of the devices they play and study with, they tend to want to be users, not just viewers or listeners as the baby boomers did with the advent of television. They see a shrinking world, and their experience with the Internet has exposed them to a media where there are very few rules and still fewer controls on people’s behavior. They use computers for entertainment, studying, shopping, and communicating, through chat rooms, computer use groups, and Web sites. Two-thirds of U.S. children now use the Internet from home, school, the library, or another location. They are part of a Web-based culture that includes many opportunities to be exposed to history’s collected wisdom and knowledge, but also to cynicism, unhealthy sexual fantasies, and nihilism. Their social skills may be limited in some ways by a lack of face-to-face contact and hours spent chatting or playing games on-line rather than directly with peers. At the same time, some experts feel the writing and critical thinking skills of this generation may be enhanced by evaluating the sometimes conflicting information at their fingertips, and by reading and writing many more messages than their parents and grandparents ever did.
There is also a concern that there will be a world of electronic haves and have-nots, a digital divide, and that children and nations that have little or no access to this digital world, or lack the money to constantly update to keep pace with changes in this technology, will be developmentally and economically disadvantaged. Recent evidence seems to show that rather than narrowing with new advances in technology, this digital divide is actually widening. There were one billion children born in the last decade of the 20th century, and 95% of them were in developing countries with primitive living conditions - in fact, more than one-half of the 1.2 billion children aged six to 11 have never placed a phone call!
Along with this technological gap has come a severe gap in wealth between segments of society, even in the U.S. The top 20% of households, with incomes of $180,000 a year or more, command 80% of the collected wealth in the United States and 49% of the total income earned, and this figure has grown by one-fifth in the past decade, compared with only a 1% growth rate for all households combined. As the world’s leading economy, the United States also leads in widening this internal gap. One out of four children under the age of six now live in poverty, making our child poverty rate the highest in the developed world.
If left to run its course, this gap in knowledge and wealth is expected to polarize nations and create dangers on the world stage, and polarize groups and cultures within our own country, boding ill for cross-cultural relations.
Already, members of this new generation seem to be exhibiting a different set of values than their predecessors. They know more and can access more knowledge than any previous birth cohort, care deeply about some social issues, and have strong beliefs about privacy and rights to information. They are optimistic, but free-thinking and alienated from the formal political structure.
Because of the way they have been taught in school and their use of computers, they do well collaborating with others in small, cross-functional work groups, but tend to disdain close supervision and micro-management. They are innovators, and want things to move fast, having little patience for bureaucratic routines or deferred gratification. Because there has been little distinction in their lives between working, learning, and playing (they have done it all in cyberspace), they are hard workers but often prefer to be entrepreneurs or to work from their homes and telecommute.
If the U.S. economy continues to boom for knowledge workers, people who hire them should be prepared for the fact that they may have little attachment to a single employer or career, because so many opportunities are open to them. Employers may have to be prepared to make a number of concessions if they are to retain the “best and the brightest” on their payrolls. It may not be feasible to supervise them in the previously accepted sense. They are accustomed to working in non-hierarchical ways.
Transportation safety problems at the beginning of the 21st century are still numerous and raise some concerns about the safety of vehicles and the qualifications of drivers, despite much progress in recent years.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, breathtaking changes in transportation have brought about the globalization of the economy, changed the way the world does business with just-in-time delivery, opened economic development to previously remote parts of the United States, helped revitalize American cities, and become one of the engines for unprecedented economic expansion.
Transportation today represents 10% of the total U.S. economy. Twice as many passengers fly today as 25 years ago, vehicle miles traveled have doubled since 1975, and transit systems now carry 8.6 billion passengers annually. Air cargo shipments have tripled in recent years. Seat belts, air bags, child safety seats and other improvements to vehicles and highways have reduced highway fatalities by 3,000 lives a year. Safety belt usage now hovers at about 70% nationwide, with only one state currently without some form of mandatory seat belt law for adults, and all states requiring them for children. Economic deregulation of the transportation industry and the advent of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, opening our borders to additional truck traffic from Canada and Mexico, have resulted in major structural changes.
The air traffic control system is in need of a complete modernization. More than 5,000 traffic deaths take place annually from crashes involving heavy commercial vehicles. Hundreds of rail crossing crashes still occur, especially in rural areas. High-speed trains sharing tracks with freight trains and high-speed rail using tracks not built for this purpose pose safety concerns.
Made possible by the interstate highway system, suburbia has become the dominant lifestyle in the United States. As more women have entered the workforce and their own automobile has been seen as a necessity for high school students, the number of vehicles per household, the number of licensed drivers, and the time and distance spent commuting has increased. Suburban sprawl has become a quality-of-life problem rivaling some inner city problems. The future will see legislative efforts to reduce congestion and increase mass transit ridership, including new roads, alternative transportation systems, “congestion pricing,” new land use restrictions, better congestion management systems, and the Intelligent Vehicle/Intelligent Highway infrastructure.
The growth of e-commerce over the Internet is expected to triple the value of air cargo by 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. This new method of procuring goods, along with telecommuting, may reduce the number of trips by vehicle and reduce some of the strain on the highway infrastructure, but it may lead to even more heavy truck traffic to support shifting demands of a “just in time” economy.
Global positioning systems from 2002 on, by virtue of NDGPS, the Nationwide Differential Global Positioning System, will provide drivers, trucking industry dispatchers, and emergency services personnel with an ability to provide real-time location information on vehicles, increasing the safety and efficiency of the system.
Two countervailing trends have affected the growth and development of our cities. Suburbanization, or the flight of upper and middle class families from the inner cities to the suburbs began after World War II and has continued to the present day. The once all-white suburbs became much more culturally diverse as minorities improved their economic situation and overcame discrimination in the real estate market to join their white counterparts in the suburbs. The result was some inner cities mostly populated with economically disadvantaged citizens, often newly arrived immigrants. Along with individuals, retail establishments moved out of the inner cities to shopping malls, and other businesses and manufacturing establishments relocated to the suburbs to provide shorter commuting times for their suburban workers and what was perceived as a better quality of life. The residents of inner cities were forced to depend more on social services, the quality of schools declined due to adverse impact on the tax base, and a deterioration of housing and lack of recreation and other services created a climate where crime, drugs, and gangs flourished, preying on inner city citizens.
In the last decade of the 20th century, however, violent crime in the cities recorded a precipitous drop - in some cases, double-digit decreases. Sociologists are unsure of the reasons for the drop - some attribute it to community policing strategies and more police on the streets due to federal anti-crime programs, others credit the low unemployment rate and strong economy, and still others feel that the drop in crime was due to the aging of the population and consequent reduction in the numbers of people in the most crime-prone ages.
As our cities became safer, upper-income families began to move back. Developers and individuals increasingly purchased old, historic buildings, renovating them for upscale housing. This process, known as “gentrification,” led to many improvements in the infrastructure of formerly deteriorated neighborhoods. It also resulted in an even greater shortage of low and moderate-cost housing for the poor, which has increased the number of homeless in some cities. Each of these demographic changes has affected traffic flow and patterns.
There is scarcely a U.S. city without a downtown parking problem. Enforcement of parking regulations falls on the police in most communities and casts officers in an unpopular role. Developing the economy of many communities, and especially restoring the vibrancy of downtown business areas, depends on the willingness of city governments to provide ample and reasonably priced on-street and off-street parking. Urban parking areas lend themselves to certain crimes such as muggings and car-jackings and are a particular problem to police. Video camera surveillance of these areas, along with increased bicycle and foot patrols, will be increasingly important in order for people to feel safe as they park and retrieve their vehicles.
It is not only in our cities and suburban shopping malls that motorists often feel unsafe. Some rest areas on our interstate highways are in a deteriorated condition, frequently are not staffed by attendants on a 24-hour basis, and have become havens for illicit drug transactions, public sex acts, assaults, and car-jackings. With the public fearful and reluctant to use these rest areas, an increasing number of fatigued drivers ply our highest-speed highways. Problem-solving community policing techniques involving Departments of Transportation working with state and local agencies must be applied to rid these locations of undesirable elements and increase the public’s confidence to use them.
As more knowledge-based workers work at least part of the week out of their homes and interact with their jobs via telephone and computer modem, there is more incentive for businesses to locate in concentric rings around major cities. This results in “edge cities” springing up, and heretofore suburban communities becoming bustling areas that offer a variety of new services, so that today’s telecommuter does not have to venture into the big city and fight traffic to obtain services and entertainment.
As community policing becomes the standard way that many local and county police and sheriff’s departments operate, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is practiced by the police, often in partnership with urban planners. CPTED uses regulation of building and renovation projects and, through thoughtful designs of streets and public areas, enhances natural surveillance by both police and citizens. The more activities that are open to additional sets of “eyes and ears,” the less likely crime is to be committed in those areas. The more inviting streets are to average citizens, the less likely they are to be taken over by the criminal element. A sense of territoriality and of neighborhood coalesces citizens together to resist crime and cooperate with police neighborhood watches and other crime prevention efforts. In some high-crime areas with no distinct neighborhood characteristics or boundaries, police departments have artificially “created” neighborhoods with jersey barriers, cul-de-sacs, one-way streets and other design features that make it more difficult for drug dealers, gang members and others to move quickly into an area, commit a crime, and flee just as easily without being observed. Police departments must be alert to the possibility of using these same techniques to reduce the frequency of traffic crashes. Portable speed bumps are available from some police supply houses. Devices such as these and even mid-block stop signs to slow down traffic are examples of how problem-solving community policing techniques will applied to future traffic problems as well as crime problems.
With the wealthy segment of the nation becoming wealthier in an improved economy in the late 1990s, many of the wealthiest families relocated to private communities patrolled by civilian guard forces, where people coming in and out must stop at a gate house and identify themselves.
This trend toward gated communities poses many potential problems for the police. Private security agencies hired by the residents of these communities may have various motives to cover up crimes that happen within their environs. The residents of these exclusive enclaves, because they are already paying for private security, may become less willing to support an adequate level of funding for local police and sheriff’s departments. The traditional reluctance of public law enforcement agencies to reach out to the private police sector has led to overlooking a valuable source of intelligence information.
There are already more private security employees than public police in the U.S., and this trend is continuing.
Many of our streets and highways, including interstates and toll roads, were built shortly after World War II, and have deteriorated over the ensuing years. They are seeing traffic volumes far in excess of what they were designed to handle. Many of the nation’s bridges are reportedly in critical need of repair. The result is an explosion of highway construction, which will continue into the foreseeable future. Motorists are increasingly impatient when faced with delays caused by construction, and work zone crashes are on the increase. As more road contractors rely on paid overtime details by state and in some cases local police to provide increased work zone safety, this in itself has created another set of problems. Many of today’s officers value their leisure time more than the increased income that comes from working special details. This makes it difficult to fill all the construction details that are available. Fewer officers working these details means an increased number of fatigue-related problems for officers. It also leads to abuses where some officers are making so much money working details, their supervisors say that they have come to regard their regular shifts as simply places to rest before the next detail. These are all problems that will increasingly confront the 21st century police manager.
Traffic volumes have increased nearly everywhere. What once was a leisurely commute to work in a rural or suburban area has become a horn-honking and patience-trying battle with traffic that outstrips the design capacity of the road. As these traffic volumes increase, aggressive driving and incidents of violence behind the wheel have risen. It is increasingly difficult for police to single violators out, divert them from the traffic stream, and adequately enforce the traffic laws during commuter rush hours, which now last well into the early evening in some places.
The 55-mph national maximum speed limit of the 1960s that was imposed more as a fuel-saving measure than a safety measure, was extremely unpopular. It may have drained police resources away from the least safe roads to the interstates, which had the best safety record, and undermined selective enforcement. The NMSL was never accepted by the public, who mistrusted it and often regarded it as a revenue-raising device rather than a safety-enhancing device. Generations of fathers and mothers drove their children around with radar detectors on the dashboard of their cars, and many of today’s generation of drivers are predisposed to regard speed limits with skepticism and contempt.
Speed limits on urban interstates are still arbitrarily based on the population of the surrounding area rather than highway conditions. The concept of “85th-percentile speeds,” where engineers conducted traffic surveys and set speed limits at the speed that 85% of drivers drive at or under during good conditions, in fact, may no longer be valid because there has been no recent research to validate it. Many of today’s impatient drivers routinely operate their vehicles at speeds greater than the laws of physics and the effectiveness of the safety devices in their vehicles permit, and thus the “85th percentile” in some locations may in fact be an unsafe speed.
Much research at the state and national level must go into how to set realistic, enforceable speed limits.
Much more practical than trying to set a single speed limit for some stretches of road, is the concept of variable speed limits indicated by signs controlled by a computer at police headquarters or a DOT facility. These signs can be programmed to reduce speeds during conditions of low visibility, slippery roads, heavy traffic, etc. We expect to see more widespread use of this concept in the future.
Many improvements in these areas are on the horizon. “Smart” traffic signals with sensors can delay a green light, when the speed of an oncoming vehicle on a side street is too fast to permit it to stop, and delaying the green light can avert a collision. Larger sign markings and clearer, more understandable legends can accommodate elderly drivers and non-English speakers. Stop signs and yield signs that broadcast an alert tone over a motorist’s audio system can warn the driver that he or she is about to “run” the sign. Electronic rumble strips can warn fatigued, inattentive or otherwise impaired drivers to stay in their designated lane or prevent them from traveling the wrong way on off-ramps and thus avert serious and fatal crashes.
The United States currently imports more than half its petroleum supply, a higher percentage than during the 1970s, leaving us vulnerable to events in and policies of the oil-producing nations. As fossil fuels become more scarce and concerns over global warming due to depletion of the Earth’s ozone layer increase, fuel prices are bound to increase, causing pressure on vehicle manufacturers to make more fuel-efficient vehicles. The tide of SUVs, pickup trucks, and large luxury vehicles may then be abated. The danger for highway safety of more fuel-efficient vehicles is that frequently, manufacturers make their vehicles smaller and lighter so they will consume less fuel. When these vehicles mix with heavy commercial vehicles and other larger vehicles in the traffic flow, the laws of vehicle dynamics are such that the occupants of the smaller, lighter vehicles have decreased survivability in the event of a crash.
Mass transit could solve many problems of congestion, including parking problems. However, America’s love affair with the car continues, and mass transit remains an unpopular option with many drivers, as witnessed by the overcapacity of most “ride share” parking lots and the under-utilization of HOV lanes.
Attempts continue to restore passenger train service through high-speed rail initiatives. Freight trains, still prevalent in some parts of the nation, face stiff competition from ever-larger and heavier commercial trucks. With fewer trains around, motorists have become more careless about crossing railroad tracks. Efforts to educate motorists and police alike about trains and the importance of observing railroad crossings must continue.
Departments of Transportation are progressing rapidly in developing intelligent vehicles and intelligent highways. Soon, it will be possible in urban areas to virtually put a vehicle on “autopilot” during commuter rush hours. Built-in radar and other electronic devices will keep vehicles from following one another too closely and even control speeds to prevent the speed variation that is the cause of most speed-related crashes.
This new technology has the potential of halting dangerous high-speed pursuits, spotting stolen vehicles, and directing lost motorists. However, many privacy advocates fear police involvement in ITS, and the police community has not been given enough meaningful input into the design of these systems. Means must be developed to bring about a greater police input and participation into the development of this new technology.
Along with engineering and enforcement, education has always been, and must remain, a vital component of highway safety.
Police departments in many communities now have Internet Web sites that the public can access. Resources such as IACP Net make tremendous volumes of research and information available to police planners and executives. However, we have scarcely scratched the surface of this powerful tool to spread the police message of traffic safety.
Police departments must increasingly use their Web sites to provide information to drivers on such topics as the purpose of traffic enforcement, how to behave when stopped by the police, how to pay or contest a ticket, the meaning of penalty points on driver’s licenses, safety messages, notification of safety checkpoints, etc.
With the increasing trend toward putting police officers on duty in our public schools, their value in spreading the traffic safety message cannot be overlooked. The traffic-related duties they can help with include guest appearances at driver education classes, safety lectures and bicycle rodeos for younger children, classes in child safety seats and seat belts at home economics classes, discussion of traffic offenses at “law day” and “youth and the law” classes, voluntary safety inspection of students’ cars, and prohibition of offending students from bringing their vehicles on school campuses if they are apprehended driving dangerously at or near the school grounds.
Community policing officers in inner cities have an opportunity to promote highway safety among new immigrants and assist in teaching persons for whom English is a second language how to survive in traffic in this country. Departments of Motor Vehicles and Departments of Education must increasingly team with the police in the future, to improve the skills of non-English speaking drivers.
With fewer states mandating periodic motor vehicle safety inspections, there is an opportunity for police, in cooperation with auto dealers and reputable repair shops, to provide voluntary low- or no-cost vehicle safety inspections along with existing clinics that teach people how to properly install and use child safety seats. These programs can be made available at roadside, at the police station, or at shopping malls and are an excellent way for the police to reach out to the public in a non-threatening manner.
Using volunteers from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and other similar groups, police can sponsor voluntary driver education for older drivers, to teach them how to cope with declining vision, hearing and reflexes.
Motor vehicle licensing authorities in the days and years ahead must make more frequent use of periodic driver re-examination of older drivers, and have greater utilization of medical review boards. It is difficult to get busy medical professionals to participate in these boards, and public safety personnel need to develop a closer liaison with these individuals in order to increase the level of mutual understanding and cooperation.
It takes skill to drive in today’s congested, fast-moving traffic. Police and motor vehicle licensing authorities, along with the traffic courts, must team up to identify drivers who lack certain basic skills, and funnel them into remedial driver education courses.
Statistics indicate that certain ethnic group members are less likely to use safety belts and child safety seats. When these groups are targeted for selective enforcement, group members may mistake these efforts for “racial profiling.” Still, minority group advocates have been proven in opinion polls to strongly support seat belt enforcement. Police departments must be sure that any enforcement efforts in the minority community are preceded by and accompanied with effective educational programs.
With community policing the preferred policing tactic of the final decade of the 20th century, thoughtful police officials discovered that one important component of the police mission was being neglected - traffic enforcement. In community after community when citizens were surveyed by the police, they told their police departments that their number one or two quality of life concern was traffic. More people are killed and injured and the economic loss to society is greater from traffic crashes than that from crime, and police departments that are proactive in traffic enforcement have lower crime rates as well as lower traffic crash statistics, because traffic enforcement leads to the discovery of criminals and the recovery of drugs and weapons. Due to the efforts of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and others, police departments have developed operating strategies that recognize and integrate traffic enforcement as an important component of the community policing effort. These efforts must continue into the future.
An effective policing tactic in many communities is to establish small, community police stations in shopping malls, storefronts and elsewhere, to bring police services into neighborhoods where they might otherwise be inaccessible.
Often overlooked, however, is the presence of a marked police cruiser parked in a strategic location in a neighborhood surveilling traffic. In fact, the police car serves as a “mobile substation.” With a marked unit staffed by a friendly officer, adults and children feel free to approach the officer and exchange information and discuss neighborhood problems. One of the objectives of community policing is not only to reduce crime, but to reduce the fear of crime and provide the public with a greater sense of security and safety. Visible police presence in strategic locations observing stop signs and yield signs, watching solid center lines, running radar, or watching a school bus shelter, can enhance the public’s sense of security and well-being.
Modern developments have carried the concept of selective traffic enforcement to a new level through the use of computer technology and real-time availability of data. The New York City Police Department pioneered the COMPSTAT (computer comparison statistics) process. There, evolving crime patterns are tracked city-wide on a week-by-week basis and district commanders held accountable for problem-solving strategies. The COMPSTAT process has since been used by other cities. Research and experimentation to adapt this process to communities of various sizes and include a strong traffic component will be important.
Increased workloads and labor shortages in the ranks of law enforcement agencies sometimes make it difficult to mount intensive, targeted, traffic enforcement efforts that require permanent or temporary deployment of specialized units. Where an individual department or agency is unable to muster sufficient strength to address a problem that is shared by other jurisdictions, consideration should be given to forming a regional, multi-jurisdictional effort. Each agency then contributes one or two individuals to a team that operates across jurisdictional lines and addresses common problems.
Analysis of crash data indicates that certain offenders account for a large proportion of traffic violations and crashes. Youthful drivers, inexperienced in both life and in driving, are involved in a disproportionate number of crashes, and have been found to benefit from graduated licensing systems. Drivers who continue to drive while their licenses are under suspension or revocation defeat the purpose of motor vehicle driver improvement programs. Intensive probation supervision and electronic monitoring such as is practiced by the criminal courts should be adopted by traffic courts to reduce the incidence of driving after revocation and suspension.
Existing data indicates that certain age and occupational groups are more likely to be involved in driving-while-intoxicated offenses, while some ethnic groups have lower rates of compliance with safety belt laws. Educational messages from the law enforcement community can be designed and targeted to reach these groups. In developing offender-targeted strategies, police must be careful not to adopt practices that lead to racial or ethnic profiling as the basis for traffic stops.
The use of global positioning systems and crime mapping software should be expanded to better track the locations of traffic crashes and aggressive driving violations and match these with the locations where citations are issued. This will enable police supervisors to ensure that their officers are deployed in the most effective manner to intercept violations in progress and reduce crashes.
The universal adoption of the 21-year-old drinking age in the U.S. has resulted in a substantial reduction in the number of alcohol-related crashes involving teenagers. The effectiveness of this law would be enhanced by reducing teenage access to alcohol. Compliance checks and “stings” to identify and act against licensed establishments that sell alcohol to teens have proven effective. Jurisdictions should look to refine and improve these tactics and remove any legal impediments against them.
Widespread consumption of alcoholic beverages on college campuses, at house parties and at sporting events often involves persons of teen age obtaining kegs of beer. Through the efforts of the Century Council and others, keg identification systems are available and should be utilized to track the source of kegs that are detected through enforcement activities, to permit follow-up enforcement.
Alcoholic beverages are available through various Internet sites and persons below the legal drinking age can purchase them with a credit card and have them delivered to their homes. Some states have passed legislation that requires package delivery services to identify the nature of the product on the outside of the package and require the signature of an identified adult before making a delivery. These laws should become more widespread in the future.
The use of statistical probabilities and tactics utilized by the most successful officers in interdicting and seizing drugs in motor vehicles have proven to be efficient strategies in stemming the flow of illegal drugs. However, the improper application of these strategies has led to concerns with racial and ethnic profiling in traffic stops.
In the future, more intensive training of officers in civil rights concerns, constitutional law, cultural diversity, and interpersonal communications in conjunction with data collection and analysis of the role of race and ethnicity in traffic stops and violations will alleviate many of these concerns.
The DEC (Drug Evaluation and Classification) program developed jointly by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has provided a powerful tool for the detection of drug-impaired drivers - the use of trained police Drug Recognition Experts (DREs).
Another program developed by the IACP and NHTSA, standardized field sobriety testing, enables officers at the roadside to turn reasonable suspicion for a stop into probable cause for a DWI arrest.
Unfortunately, some local courts still do not recognize and accept the scientific basis for this technology. Further, some law enforcement agencies do not refresh and update their officers in this training. In the years to come, much more effort must be put into educating judges and court personnel in this technology, and ensuring that officers have these skills refreshed on a regular basis.
In many areas of the country, police officers are the first persons to arrive at the scenes of life-threatening medical emergencies. Automatic external defibrillators and other equipment and techniques if deployed within the first few minutes of a crisis can lead to saving more lives and preventing disabling injuries. Future cooperative relationships among police and health care professionals hold great promise for enhancing the effectiveness of both groups.
The involvement of police cars and other emergency response vehicles in traffic crashes that occur while proceeding to the scenes of emergencies and engaged in vehicular pursuits occasionally results in deaths and injuries to citizens, officers and violators.
It is impractical to ban police pursuits because violators including those who have committed serious criminal acts and who if allowed to remain at large would be a danger to society would know they need only flee from an officer to avoid capture. Rapid response of public safety vehicles to the scenes of emergencies is often vital to the preservation of life itself.
Although out-of-control motor vehicles cause more injuries than firearms, police officers typically qualify once or twice a year with their firearms but rarely are given additional driver training after they graduate from the basic police academy. Over the next decade, public safety agencies need widespread access to simulator technology and driver training vehicles and facilities.
The federal and various state governments should make highway trust funds available to support this effort.
In every state and local jurisdiction, there is a significant amount of unpaid court fines, and drivers who continue to drive after their licenses are suspended or revoked. This leads to disrespect for the law, and unequal punishment because most people pay their fines and abide by restrictions on their licenses but a significant and growing number do not. Planning and research efforts to develop legal strategies to address this problem must be intensified.
The administrative license suspension system was envisioned as a system that would remove dangerous driver from the road more quickly and streamline the DWI adjudication process. However, in some jurisdictions it does not seem to be working. Hearings examiners sometimes apply the law in a hyper-technical sense that is inappropriate to administrative adjudication, and some motor vehicle hearings have become more cumbersome than criminal court trials, taking officers away from their patrol duties for inordinate amounts of time. Law enforcement agencies and prosecutors should proactively develop legislative strategies to address these problems.
Jurisdictions have experienced varying degrees of success in providing for the forfeiture and sale of vehicles involved in certain offenses such as leaving the scene of a crash, driving while under the influence of liquor or drugs, transporting illegal weapons or controlled drugs, and driving after license revocation. Research should be conducted to determine the effectiveness of these laws, and in particular whether the passage of such statutes may encourage more persons to flee the police and result in an increased number of vehicular pursuits.
Crashes caused by reckless or intoxicated drivers place an unnecessary strain on public safety resources and a burden on public budgets. Some jurisdictions have enacted statutes and ordinances that permit state and local governments to recover these costs from the driver whose illegal acts caused the problem.
Changes in society now and in the future demand that we take a fresh look at our executive and mid-management training programs and reorient them to emerging issues. The police executive of tomorrow may need to reinvent him/herself to function more effectively in an atmosphere where supervisors and managers increase their coaching and mentoring roles and train their subordinate employees to make more decisions on their own.
The community with which a police executive deals is no longer a single, homogeneous entity. In fact, the term “community” often consists of a chorus of voices, sometimes competing and sometimes agreeing, depending upon the issue. The successful police executive of the future will be the one who can build a consensus among these diverse groups, and who demonstrates an awareness of how to respond to sensitive issues in a manner that promotes unity rather than divisiveness.
The emerging police executive can no longer view his or her agency as an independent island. Rather, the law enforcement agency must be viewed and operated as an important but interdependent component of the state or local government. The police executive will be working more closely with the heads of the public works department, the fire department, the building department, the schools, and a variety of private and non-profit agencies.
The skills required to function successfully in such a collegial atmosphere differ from those that have been required in the past to operate in a profession that in the past considered itself, partly because of its paramilitary nature, separate and apart from the rest of government.
Beginning in the private sector, various emerging management strategies have been developed to “flatten the organizational pyramid” and make organizations more responsive by reducing the distance that issues and concerns must travel in order for decisions to be made. This has involved in some cases eliminating duplicative levels of command, clarifying the respective roles of staff and line positions, and facilitating horizontal communications between divisions, bureaus, and units through cross-functional, self-directed work teams and similar strategies.
Tomorrow’s police executives must be cognizant of these strategies and adept at functioning in this new milieu.
Some people have called into question the traditional paramilitary nature of police organizations. Efforts in the past to eliminate uniforms and visible trappings of rank have failed for various reasons.
It is generally agreed that certain aspects of the paramilitary model must be retained in the police service, in order to provide effective command and control in emergency situations and provide adequate discipline and oversight in a profession that is a frequent target of civil litigation. On the other hand, as with all organizations of the future, law enforcement agencies must be able to respond quickly and in an innovative, non-traditional manner to emerging problems and willing to take moderate risks to empower their employees at all levels to think creatively and operate with a minimum amount of supervisory oversight rather than under continual close observation.
The executive of the future must be visible not only within but also outside the organization. This will require the maximal utilization of time management techniques.
Managers and supervisors must create opportunities to interact with their employees both formally and informally and become familiar with the pulse and problems of the agency and the individual capabilities of their subordinates. They must be willing to freely communicate and act as a sounding-board for their own upper management. They must also be prepared to act as advocates for their agency to the community, and willing to listen to the community’s concerns and recognize that the community has a role to play in making its concerns known to the police.
As part of an information-based society, law enforcement agencies typically collect and store a vast amount of data concerning their operations. Unfortunately, this data in some agencies is simply stored and forgotten, rather than put to good use in detecting problems and trends and more effectively deploying resources.
Tomorrow’s police executive must be committed to real-time use and analysis of data, and to communicating this information downward and sideways throughout the organization and insisting that others employ it in making strategic decisions.
Most modern organizations have developed mission statements that inform the community and their employees what the organization is all about. Some have gone beyond this and created a vision of their ultimate aims. With the perceived general decline in moral values, it is more incumbent than ever on each criminal justice organization to identify and commit to a formal set of values and beliefs that are not only advocated but modeled by members of the organization from the top on down, and to which its members are held. This is essential in order to prevent the erosion of public confidence in government.
Operating a value-centered organization involves numerous ongoing initiatives. Among the most important are addressing these values on a regular basis in the hiring and new employee orientation process, during recruit and in-service training, in policy development and implementation, in the disciplinary system, and in the organization’s public pronouncements, everyday activities, and the behavior of its individual members.
The history of humankind has taught us that in trying to predict the future we are only “looking through a glass, darkly.” There are too many variables that are out of the control of one organization, profession, nation, or even humankind itself, that can affect the very status of life on earth to state with certainty what tomorrow holds in store for us, to say nothing of the next week, next decade, or next cenury. The best we can do is took at history and emerging trends and come up with probabilities.
That is what we have attempted to do in this section. In the section that follows, we present a series of strategies that have been effectively employed by the most effective law enforcement agencies in the country, along with a series of thoughtful challenges and other considerations designed to help you adapt them to emerging trends.