Assignment #2
Strayer University
James Crews
Introduction to Criminal Justice – CRJ 100
Professor Michael Sherwin
January 24, 2013

“The new paradigm of “evidence-based medicine” holds important implications for policing. It suggests that just doing research is not enough and that proactive efforts are required to push accumulated research evidence into practice through national and community guidelines. These guidelines can then focus in-house evaluation of what works best across agencies, units, victims, and officers (Sherman, 1998).”
One of the advantages of applying evidence-based policing is that police can root their decisions upon findings and proven methods of investigation. Furthermore, they can form on previous evidence and move onto other procedures through innovations based on the experience other of police officers.
A disadvantage of evidence-based policing is that polices and procedures, or regulations and events (another way of looking at it), will only be taken for the research that was founded on the subject. In many cases, people that found the information may not be acceptably thorough with their statements, retrieved data, experimenting methods. If any of these subjects are negative, the conclusions that came from that research may be a contradiction. It just goes to show that many police officers may not be sufficiently versed in research methods to properly implement these strategies; or qualified for the today’s standards. Lastly, people have to be careful when they simply attach the term "evidence-based" to policy decisions. By doing that it can lead to giving evidence-policing a bad reputation and it may give the community a false reading of security that existing policies are, instead its really the best and most effective. “A good example of a contemporary evidence-based resource-management issue, and one in which I have become personally involved, is calls-for-police-service concerning burglar

alarms. In police departments across the nation, research has consistently found that patrol officers spend massive amounts of time responding to burglar alarms, while over 95 percent of total alarm calls are ultimately found to be false; either accidental or faulty. Faced with evidence of this nature, common sense tells us that if we spend an overwhelming amount of officer time on any activity that is predictably due to human or mechanical errors, we need to intervene in a way that is suitable to all stake-holders. Many have implemented alarm ordinances that penalize alarm users for false alarms and the ultimate result has been that false alarm calls have been drastically reduced and as a result and thousands of hours of police patrol time can be directed toward proactive crime prevention activities. Our widespread success in this area can be attributed to proper sustainable research of police calls for service (Flynn, 2010).” So basically it seems as though the enforcement units are caught on the wrong things. Instead they should be worrying about the important crimes that are taking place. In the time that is wasted through the false things such as house alarms and prank 911 calls, they should be focused on the thing that can be dealt with and brought to justice.
Here is another example of how evidence-based policing plays a role:
George Gascon took over as the Chief of the San Francisco Police Department in July of 2009. “George Gascon took over as the Chief of the San Francisco Police Department in July of 2009. Early on in his tenure he realized that there might be a problem with the Department’s use of force policy. San Francisco is one of the few major American police agencies that does not use conducted energy devices (Tasers). This creates a gap in terms of the use of force options

available to San Francisco Police officers – a gap that Gascon perhaps thought might be resulting in the overuse of the deadly force option.
Instead of simply relying on intuition and making a unilateral move to introduce conducted energy devices to fill the apparent gap he ordered that the issue be studied.
The study undertaken by Assistant Chief Morris Tabak* used an evidence based approach to study the issue. Tabak reviewed a total of 15 files that involved the use of deadly force by San Francisco police officers between 2005 and 2009.
File data revealed that police actions resulted in the death of the suspect in 8 of the 15 cases; the other 7 cases resulted in serious injury but the suspects survived. Tabak concluded that the existing use of force policy (which did not include the use of conducted energy devices) was complied with in all 15 cases. Under the existing policy the use of deadly force was justified as no less lethal option existed.
Most, if not all, use of force policies do not consider the use of less than lethal force as an option in situations where the suspect is armed with a gun. Seven of the 15 cases in question involved suspects armed with guns.
The review centered on the remaining 8 cases that involved suspects not in possession of firearms. Based on information in the case files it was concluded that in 5 of the remaining 8 cases the use of less than lethal force such as a conducted energy device would have been a viable option without endangering the lives of police officers. The study in essence superimposed a policy template that included a less than lethal force option over 5 real life scenarios to determine how the police response in those 5 cases would have been affected had such an option existed.

The study produced evidence (data) that adds clarity to the issue and can be used by decision makers to debate and decide the issue on its merits. This is an example of how evidence can be used to diminish arbitrariness in the decision-making process.
Based on the findings, Chief Gascon will be recommending that the use of force policy be amended to include a less than lethal option and that officers be issued with conducted energy devices. The San Francisco Police Commission will have at its disposal research based evidence when this issue is debated and decided later this month.” (Zacharias, 2009).
So once all of the facts were conducted, it came out to be another conclusion. Instead of only relying to deadly force or hand cuffs, the electronic devices (teasers) could be effective too, at the proper time.

References
Flynn, D. (February 10, 2010). Evidence-based policing Hall of Fame. Management of Police Resources.
Retrieved from http://gemini.gmu.edu/cebcp/HallofFame/Flynn.html
L. W. Sherman. (July, 1998). Ideas in American Policing, Evidence-Based Policing. Retrieved from http://www.policefoundation.org/content/evidence-based-policing
Zacharias, M. (Feb 3, 2009). San Francisco Police – Making Force Option Decisions Based on Evidence San Francisco Police review police shootings and use of force policy. Retrieved from http://mennozacharias.com/2010/02/03/san-francisco-police-making- force-option-decisions-based-on-evidence/