Pillar One
Building Trust and Legitimacy
• Role of policing in past injustices • Culture of transparency and accountability • Procedural justice: internal legitimacy •Positive non-enforcement activities
• Research crime-fighting strategies that undermine or build public trust • Community surveys • Workforce diversity •Decouple federal immigration enforcement from local policing
1. Change the culture of policing – adopt a guardian versus warrior culture of policing. (Rec. 1.1)
a. Adopt procedural justice framework as for internal and external policies and practices to guide police interactions with the citizens they serve. (Rec. 1.4)
b. Incorporate restorative justice practices into policing using community-based organizations.
2. Publicly address the role of policing in past injustices. (Rec. 1.2)
a. Ensure police training includes accurate depiction on the history of policing.
3. Make all departmental policies and procedures available online (Rec. 1.3)
4. Task Force should conduct regional listening sessions, coupled with community surveys, by the end of the summer to seek public input in the final report.
a. Require agencies to periodically track the level of trust in police by their communities just as they measure changes in crime. Annual community surveys, ideally standardized across jurisdictions and with accepted sampling protocols, can measure how policing in that community affects public trust. (Rec. 1.7)
5. Examine police officers’ interactions with individuals with a mental, intellectual, or physical disability.
a. Ensure resources are available for diversionary programs
6. Ensure each officer commits to 500 hours of community engagement activities within Connecticut’s major urban centers as prior to receiving initial officer certification.
a. Explore residency requirement for police officers
7. Duty to intervene
a. Make it mandatory that officers report misconduct and intervene when they see wrongdoing, with criminal penalties if they fail to do so.
b. All officers complete a mandatory Peer Intervention Program at the academy and receive annual refresher Peer Intervention Training.
i. A successful peer intervention program has been EPIC. It stands for Ethical Policing Is Courageous. The core concepts of the program were developed by a Holocaust survivor. After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Police Department in collaboration with other community partners developed a comprehensive and mandatory peer intervention curriculum for all their officers to promote a culture of high quality and ethical policing.
ii. A Peer Intervention program not only puts the onus and oversight on the officers, but it continues drives home the message that they have a duty to act when a fellow police officer engages in misconduct. The training reinforces the officer’s role as active bystanders and diminishes the power of the police culture that emphasizes the so called “blue wall of silence”.