U. S. Department of Justice

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services 

In s t i t u t e o n Ra c e a n d Ju s t ic e
Suggested Citation:

Institute on Race and Justice, Northeastern University. Promoting Cooperative Strategies to Reduce 

Racial Profiling. COPS Evaluation Brief No. 1. Washington, D.C.: Office of Community 

Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice, 2008.
COPS Evaluation Brief No. 1

Promoting Cooperative Strategies

to Reduce Racial Profiling

Northeastern University 

Institute on Race and Justice

Jack McDevitt, Ph.D.

Amy Farrell, Ph.D.

Russell Wolff, M.S.

2008

This project was supported by Cooperative Agreement Number 2003-HS-WX-K048 awarded by the Office of Community 

Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions contained herein are those of the authors and do not 

necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific companies, 

products, or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, 

the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues.

Acknowledgments

We thank the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (the COPS Office), including Senior 

Policy Analyst Albert Antony Pearsall III and former Deputy Directors Pam Cammarata and Ellen 

Scrivner for their perspective on the history of the “Promoting Cooperative Strategies to Reduce Racial 

Profiling” project, thoughtful feedback on our analytic model, and guidance throughout the project. We 

also worked closely with our partners at the Lowell Police Department. Special thanks to Cindy Callahan, 

Sharon Hanson, Jennifer Ball, and former Chief Edward Davis for their leadership and perspective. 

We also express our appreciation for the support of Dean Chester Britt and Jack Greene, the former 

Dean of Northeastern’s College of Criminal Justice. In addition, we thank members of the Northeastern 

University research team who assisted in various stages of the project including Erica Champaign, 

Lauren Giordano, Robert Hoyt, Nicholas Nunes, and Deborah Vegh. 

In addition, we extend our gratitude to the law enforcement agencies discussed in this report for taking 

the time to provide additional information about “Promoting Cooperative Strategies to Reduce Racial 

Profiling” and to answer our questions about their projects. This report would not have been possible 

without their assistance.

Finally, our thanks goes to COPS Office contractors Judith E. Beres, for editing this publication, and 

Ayonna Johnson, for the design. 

iii

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Jack McDevitt, Ph.D.

Dr. McDevitt is the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Criminal Justice 

at Northeastern University and also directs the Institute on Race and Justice and the Center for Criminal 

Justice Policy Research. The coauthor of three books—Hate Crimes: The Rising Tide of Bigotry and Bloodshed; 

Hate Crime Revisited: American War on Those Who Are Different (both with Jack Levin); and Victimology (with 

Judy Sgarzy)—he has additionally published numerous articles on a wide variety of topics in criminal 

justice. He is the coauthor of a number of reports on racial profiling, including a monograph for the 

U.S. Department of Justice and statewide reports from Rhode Island and Massachusetts on the levels 

of disparity in traffic enforcement. Dr. McDevitt has spoken on hate crime, racial profiling, and human 

trafficking both nationally and internationally and has testified as an expert witness before the Judiciary 

Committees of both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives and as an invited expert at 

the White House.

Amy Farrell, Ph.D.

Dr. Farrell is an Assistant Professor in the College of Criminal Justice and the Associate Director of 

the Institute on Race and Justice at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on disparity in the 

criminal justice system. Primary interests include racial and gender differences in traffic enforcement, 

disparate prosecution and sentencing outcomes in state and federal criminal justice, and bias crime 

reporting. Recently, she conducted research on local law enforcement responses to human trafficking 

and is leading the development of a national human trafficking data-collection program for the Bureau 

of Justice Statistics. Dr. Farrell is a co-recipient of the National Institute of Justice’s W.E.B. DuBois 

Fellowship on crime justice and culture. 

Russell Wolff, M.S.

Mr. Wolff is a Senior Research Associate in the Institute on Race and Justice and Center for Criminal 

Justice Policy Research at Northeastern University. His research interests include police management 

and accountability, youth and gang violence, and urban public policy. Currently, he is part of the 

Northeastern University research team working with the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts’s 

multiagency collaboration to prevent and respond effectively to youth gang violence. Mr. Wolff is also 

pursuing a Ph.D. in criminology and justice policy at Northeastern. 

v

About the Authors

Letter from the Director

Dear Colleagues:

The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (the COPS Office) is proud of its record as a 

federal leader in helping local law enforcement agencies strengthen their integrity programs and systems. 

Public concern over racial profiling in the late 1990s fueled many jurisdictions to begin collecting data 

and to enacting legislation to address this issue. In fact, addressing community concerns about the 

possibility of racial bias in traffic stops became a top priority of law enforcement across the country. 

In response, the COPS Office in established the Promoting Cooperative Strategies to Reduce Racial 

Profiling (PCSRRP) program. 

The PCSRRP initiative funded 21 local law enforcement agencies to develop strategies under the 

following topic areas: recruitment and selection, training and education of police and community 

members, minority community engagement initiatives, accountability and supervision, collecting and 

analyzing traffic stop data, and using technology to reduce racial profiling and increase officer safety. 

Funded agencies were challenged to develop best practices and technical assistance approaches to help 

other police agencies reduce racial profiling. 

This report, COPS Evaluation Brief No. 1: Promoting Cooperative Strategies to Reduce Racial Profiling, was a 

developed through a collaborative partnership with the Lowell, Massachusetts, Police Department and 

Northeastern University, Boston, to examine the initiative and inform the COPS Office of the benefits 

of the program and individual successes and challenges faced by grantee agencies.

The COPS Office understands the importance of learning from the experience of others. It is in this 

spirit that we are pleased to present this study of local approaches to addressing concerns about racial 

bias in policing. We hope you will find this publication helpful in your local efforts, and we encourage 

you to share this publication, as well as your successes, with other law enforcement practitioners.

Sincerely,

Carl R. Peed

Director

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services

vii

Letter from the Director

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS............................................................................ iii

ABOUT THE AUTHORS ............................................................................ v

LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR .............................................................. vii

Section 1. Background and Evaluation Objectives ................. 1

Public Concern About Racial Profiling......................................................... 1

Promoting Cooperative Strategies to Reduce Racial Profiling ......................... 3

Evaluation Methodology........................................................................... 4

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major

 Observations.................................................................................... 7

Accountability ....................................................................................... 7 

Potential Benefits ........................................................................... 8

Limitations and Caveats .................................................................. 8

Case Studies ................................................................................ 9

Arlington, Texas ............................................................................. 9

St. Paul, Minnesota ...................................................................... 10

Denver, Colorado ......................................................................... 11

Challenges and Lessons Learned .................................................... 12

Recruitment and Hiring ........................................................................ 14

Potential Benefits ......................................................................... 15

Limitations and Caveats ................................................................ 15

Case Studies .............................................................................. 16

Jersey City, New Jersey ................................................................ 16

Indianapolis, Indiana ...................................................................... 17

Lansing, Michigan ........................................................................ 18

ix

Contents
Contents

Challenges and Lessons Learned .................................................... 19

Minority Engagement ........................................................................... 20

Potential Benefits ......................................................................... 21

Limitations and Caveats ................................................................ 22

Case Studies .............................................................................. 22

Buffalo, New York ......................................................................... 22

Rochester, New York .................................................................... 24

New Haven, Connecticut ............................................................... 25

Challenges and Lessons Learned .................................................... 26

Using Technology ................................................................................ 27

Potential Benefits ......................................................................... 28

Limitations and Caveats ................................................................ 29

Case Studies .............................................................................. 30

Redlands, California ...................................................................... 30

Tacoma, Washington .................................................................... 31

Austin, Texas ............................................................................... 32

Challenges and Lessons Learned .................................................... 32

Training ............................................................................................. 34

Potential Benefits ......................................................................... 35

Limitations and Caveats ................................................................ 35

Case Studies .............................................................................. 36

Brookline, Massachusetts ............................................................. 36

Metropolitan Nashville, Tennessee .................................................. 37

Phoenix, Arizona .......................................................................... 38

x

Contents
xi

Contents

Challenges and Lessons Learned .................................................... 39

Data Collection ................................................................................... 41

Potential Benefits ......................................................................... 42

Limitations and Caveats ................................................................ 42

Case Studies .................................................................................. 42

Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina ............................................ 42

Dothan, Alabama ......................................................................... 44

Kansas City, Missouri ................................................................... 45

Oakland, California ........................................................................ 46

Challenges and Lessons Learned .................................................... 47

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing

 Racial Profiling ........................................................................... 51

Common Themes Across Strategy Areas ................................................ 54

Organizational Buy-In .................................................................... 54

Community Involvement ................................................................ 55

Managing Technology and Planning Issues ....................................... 57

Keeping the Project’s Focus ........................................................... 58

Understanding if Strategies to Reduce Racial Profiling Are Working Tables ... 64

Table 1. Benefits, Limitations, and Caveats of Strategies for 

 Reducing Racial Profiling ............................................................. 51

Table 2. Lessons Learned from the Field: Strategies for 

 Reducing Racial Profiling ............................................................. 59

References ....................................................................................... 65

Case Study Participants ................................................................ 69

1

Section 1

During the past 2 decades, public agencies—including law enforcement—have become increasingly 

concerned about ensuring organizational integrity and accountability. During this same period, 

concerns about racial profiling or bias-based policing threatened to undermine the integrity of law 

enforcement nationally. Although there have long been allegations of police targeting people of 

color, aggressive crime-control strategies used by police in an effort to reduce crime during the last 

2 decades have heightened perceptions that police may use pedestrian or traffic stops as a pretext 

for conducting disproportionate numbers of investigations of Black or Hispanic individuals. As a 

result of such perceptions, addressing racial profiling has become vital to law enforcement’s efforts 

to ensure and promote integrity. This publication identifies a number of promising strategies 

supported by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (the COPS Office) program 

titled “Promote Cooperative Strategies to Reduce Racial Profiling” (PCSRRP) that law enforcement 

can use to identify, address, and prevent concerns about racial profiling in their agencies. 

The PCSRRP grant program was part of a larger initiative from the COPS Office to promote 

cultures of integrity in law enforcement following the adoption of community policing models. 

During more than a decade, the COPS Office has supported the development of creative and 

innovative strategies to strengthen integrity in state and local law enforcement organizations. 

In 1996, the COPS Office and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) were joint sponsors of a 

symposium attended by law enforcement executives and community representatives that helped 

move the discussion around integrity “from a narrow focus on police officers’ behavior and internal 

investigations of corruption to an understanding of the importance of other factors” (Gaffigan 

and McDonald, 1997:iii). The symposium made the issue of organizational integrity a high priority 

and opened the door for law enforcement agencies to begin experimenting with different models 

for enhancing integrity. 

Public Concern about Racial Profiling 

The issues of police misconduct that emerged in the late 1990s because of media attention to highprofile events suggested a strong racial component to acts of misconduct such as excessive use 

of force (incidents involving Rodney King, Abner Louima, and Amadou Diallo), racial profiling 

(New Jersey State Police, evidence of the Drug Enforcement Agency [DEA] profile in Operation 

Pipeline), and invasive searches of nonwhite drivers and pedestrians (Wilkins v. Maryland State 

Police). In June 1999, the Department of Justice brought civil rights, police, and other government 

leaders together at the “Strengthening Police-Community Relationships” conference to address 

the subject. The participants identified five main priority areas of integrity on which to focus in 

the coming years: 1. Racial profiling, 2. Police use of force, 3. Accountability, 4. Citizen complaint 

processes, and 5. Recruitment and hiring. This COPS Evaluation Brief addresses specific responses 

to the problem of racial profiling. 

Section 1. Background and Evaluation Objectives 
2

1. Three high-profile 

cases—the 1996 Soto 

decision from the 

southern New Jersey 

Turnpike, the 1992 

Wilkins case from I-95 

in Maryland, and the 

April 1998 shooting 

incident on the 

northern New Jersey 

Turnpike—largely 

defined the early 

public discourse on 

racial profiling.

2. State legislative 

efforts are 

documented at the 

Institute on Race 

and Justice’s online 

Racial Profiling Data 

Collection Resource 

Center, http://www.

racialprofilinganalysis.

neu.edu/legislation/

index.php.

3. Such data 

collection efforts are 

documented at the 

Institute on Race 

and Justice’s online 

Racial Profiling Data 

Collection Resource 

Center, http://www.

racialprofilinganalysis.

neu.edu/background/

jurisdictions.php. 

Section 1: Background and Evaluation Objectives

The term “racial profiling” is derived from the “profile” of drug couriers developed by the 

DEA during the mid-1980s to interdict interstate drug trafficking. The use of criminal profiling 

techniques was promoted as part of a specific strategy to apprehend interstate drug traffickers 

through routine traffic stops. While the original DEA profile did not explicitly include race, 

evidence emerged that some local and state law enforcement agencies were applying the profile 

in race-specific ways. The line between criminal profiling based on individual behavior in concert 

with known offender characteristics, and racial profiling based primarily on the use of race as 

the basis for suspicion, is not always clear to officers. While most professionals agree that police 

may not use racial or ethnic stereotypes to select whom to stop and search, they may use race or 

ethnicity to determine whether a person matches a specific description of a particular suspect. 

There is less agreement about how race can be lawfully considered when investigating a particular 

crime problem committed by a group of individuals who share racial or ethnic characteristics. 

Clear policies, training, and monitoring by supervisors are often required to help officers navigate 

such challenging, but fundamentally important, decisions. 

Public concern over racial profiling became so common in the late 1990s that the practice became 

popularly labeled “driving while black” or “driving while brown.” Today, racial profiling is 

generally understood as the practice of targeting or stopping a person based primarily on the 

person’s race, rather than on any individualized suspicion. The Department of Justice’s A Resource 

Guide on Racial Profiling Data Collection Systems defines racial profiling as “any police-initiated action 

that relies upon the race, ethnicity, or national origin of an individual rather than the behavior of 

an individual or information that leads the police to a particular individual who has been identified 

as being, or having been, engaged in criminal activity” (Ramirez, McDevitt, and Farrell, 2000:3). 

While no clear consensus exists about the severity and prevalence of biased enforcement, the 

widely held concerns about racial profiling represent a significant threat to police legitimacy. 

In the wake of high-profile cases in New Jersey and Maryland,1

 dozens of states enacted legislation 

banning racial profiling and requiring mandatory data collection,2

 hundreds of jurisdictions 

voluntarily began collecting traffic stop data,3

 community groups and police departments started 

working together to develop strategies to identify and prevent racial profiling, social scientists began 

conducting research on how to measure racial profiling, and attorneys began pursuing both civil 

and criminal litigation based on racial profiling claims. Indeed, addressing community perceptions 

about racial bias in traffic stops became a top priority for law enforcement professionals across 

the country. The support provided by the COPS office for innovative strategies to reduce racial 

profiling shaped many of these responses. 
3

4. The cooperative 

agreements 

provided grantees 

with additional 

oversight. COPS 

project managers held 

monthly conference 

calls with the PCSRRP 

recipients. Various 

subject matter experts 

were invited to talk 

with agencies in 

different strategy areas. 

The COPS Office 

held six monthly 

conference calls with 

cooperative agreement 

departments. 

Section 1. Background and Evaluation Objectives 

Promoting Cooperative Strategies to Reduce Racial Profiling 

The COPS Office took a position of national leadership by developing strategies to help police 

departments respond to concerns about racial profiling. As the Department of Justice Civil Rights 

Division investigated and filed legal suits against a number of police departments for a “pattern or 

practice” of racial profiling, the COPS Office provided support to agencies to proactively address 

the issue through a variety of initiatives: 

• The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) received support to publish a guide 

outlining departmental responses to biased-based policing. The substantive chapters 

from the PERF publication Racially Biased Policing: A Principled Response (Fridel et 

al. 2001) provided the basis for subsequent COPS Office funding areas under the 

PCSRRP grants described in more detail below. 

• The Regional Community Policing Institutes (RCPI) received funding to develop 

curriculums and training materials related to racial profiling issues. Each RCPI has its 

own signature emphasis in curriculum development. 

• The COPS Office sponsored local law enforcement agencies, such as the Boston 

Police Department, to produce roundtables on ethics and integrity. These roundtables 

brought together a number of law enforcement executives and researchers to discuss 

issues of integrity with a special focus on race. 

 As part of its comprehensive strategy in responding to racial profiling, the COPS Office entered 

into 21 cooperative agreements with law enforcement agencies throughout the country to support 

the development of new racial profiling-prevention strategies.4

 While many ideas existed about 

the best way to deal with the racial profiling issue, the cooperative agreements funded projects 

that demonstrated some of the most promising practices for local law enforcement agencies. The 

PCSRRP projects include six main areas for intervention:

1. Recruitment and selection. 

2. Training and education of police and community members. 

3. Minority community engagement initiatives. 

4. Accountability and supervision. 

5. Collecting and analyzing traffic stop data. 

6. Using technology to reduce racial profiling and increase officer safety. 
4

Section 1: Background and Evaluation Objectives

To help other agencies learn from the experiences of PCSRRP recipients, the COPS Office 

partnered with the Lowell, Massachusetts, Police Department through a Police as Problem 

Solvers/Peacekeepers grant to provide technical assistance to the grantees in preparing a technical 

assistance guide with recommendations and considerations for other departments contemplating 

similar strategies. The guide would also serve as a final report to the COPS Office. Four other 

agencies, Tampa, Florida; Sacramento, California; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Colorado Springs, 

Colorado, were also awarded problem-solving grants to provide different kinds of technical 

assistance to PCSRRP grantees across the county. 

To better understand the value of the PCSRRP grants in providing promising approaches to 

improving integrity in law enforcement agencies, the COPS Office supported a research 

partnership between the Lowell Police Department and the Institute on Race and Justice (IRJ) 

at Northeastern University to conduct a national evaluation of the programs funded through the 

PCSRRP program. 

Evaluation Methodology 

Using the technical assistance guides submitted to the COPS Office as the primary source of 

data, the Lowell/IRJ evaluation team constructed a series of case studies that described the major 

components of each project supported under the PCSRRP program. This methodology highlights 

details of a program from the viewpoint and experiences of the participants. The case studies in 

this COPS Evaluation Brief describe the real-life contexts in which interventions have occurred. A 

benefit of this kind of evaluation is that it can identify the positive as well as the negative aspects 

of the various programs and provide concrete examples of challenges encountered by agencies. 

The limit of this approach is that the experiences of agencies adopting each approach may not 

be generalized for all police agencies throughout the country. Additionally, there are limits on the 

type of conclusions that can be drawn from such a study. The evaluation strategy used here largely 

describes and assesses the processes that agencies undertook to implement each grant program. 

Agencies were not expected to conduct an evaluation or to provide evaluation results to Lowell/

IRJ; therefore, it is not always possible to measure the impact of these programs in reducing racial 

profiling. This COPS Evaluation Brief, however, identifies a number of common challenges and 

successes that grantees encountered using different strategies to reduce racial profiling. 
5

Section 1. Background and Evaluation Objectives 

Section 2 describes the six strategy areas funded under the PCSRRP program. The following 

format presents information about each strategy area:

• A short description of the strategy 

• Identification of the positive aspects of the particular strategy 

• Identification of the limitations of the particular strategy 

• Examples of the strategy in practice 

• Identification of the challenges of implementing such a strategy. 

 The final section of this guide compares and contrasts programs across the six strategy areas and 

offers a common set of suggestions about how to implement strategies to address and reduce 

racial profiling most successfully. 

7

Section 2

This section describes the strategy areas and projects funded under the Promote Cooperative 

Strategies to Reduce Racial Profiling (PCSRRP) initiative. For each subsection, we provide (1) 

an explanation of the strategy, the potential benefits offered, and limitations and caveats, (2) 

summaries of the projects implemented by the grantees, and (3) important challenges and lessons 

learned during implementation. 

Accountability 

Accountability means holding officers responsible for their conduct, making sure that their 

behavior advances the goals of the department, and, at some level, making the actions of the 

officers and the values of the organization answerable to the wider community. Police officers 

work under conditions of low visibility and high discretion, which provide them with a great deal 

of leeway to make decisions. In return, they must be able to explain and justify their decisions if 

they are questioned by supervisors or members of the community. It is the perception of most 

police officials that in most agencies a small number of officers may be responsible for a large 

share of the actions that community members perceive as racially biased. For departments seeking 

to reduce racial profiling, ensuring the accountability of individual officers or groups of officers 

through an early intervention system (EIS) has been identified as a positive strategy for reducing 

or preventing racial profiling. 

Early intervention is a data-driven management process that allows managers to identify officers 

who have recurring problematic behavior and to intervene through counseling and additional 

training (Walker, 2000). The idea behind EIS is that officers may not recognize problematic 

behavior unless it is identified and brought to their attention by supervisors. Once identified, 

officers have the ability to improve their performance and correct the conscious or unconscious 

behavior-causing problems, such as racially biased traffic enforcement. The data collected by 

these systems also offer an overall picture of an officer’s activity that can provide context when 

addressing allegations of biased policing and can indicate that racial disparities are associated with 

factors other than an officer’s bias, for example, deployment allocations. 

Early intervention systems generally consist of five main steps: 

1. Selection of the various aspects of officer performance to track or measure. 

2. Identification of officers whose performance indicators exceed an agreeable threshold 

for departmental concern (e.g., more than three force incidents during a given period). 

3. Determination of whether intervention is warranted by a supervisor through review of 

existing information on, and trends of, officer activity. 

4. Intervention, if necessary, to address the officer’s specific performance problem, which 

often consists of counseling, training, close supervision, more frequent performance 

review, or reassignment. 

5. Post-intervention monitoring and ongoing assessment of the intervention’s effectiveness, 

during which data collection and monitoring continue. 

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 
8

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

Potential Benefits 

EISs are thought to provide law enforcement agencies with a practical tool to address allegations of 

racial profiling that complement traditional data collection and analysis mechanisms. Even though 

traffic stop data may reveal racial disparities in traffic enforcement, agencies may not know if such 

disparities are driven by the activities of a few officers or by institutional or department-wide 

practices. By identifying and concentrating training and intervention efforts on the officers whom 

data indicate may be engaged in racially biased policing, the department can address the potential 

problematic behavior in a more efficient manner and subsequently monitor officers’ activities 

across assignments. Positive change through monitoring and intervention, when necessary, may 

reduce citizen complaints and agency liability. 

Although an EIS generally examines a broad variety of policing activities, traffic stop data can be 

incorporated into preexisting systems, or a system can be built around traffic stop data already 

being collected. If a department is concerned about an officer who may have biased tendencies, 

it is likely that the officer in question would act in biased ways in a number of different situations. 

For example, a biased officer may be more likely to stop and search African-American drivers, 

use force against African-American citizens, and may also be more likely to receive complaints 

from members of the African-American community in his or her jurisdiction. By including 

these sources of data in a single early intervention system, a department may be in a position to 

identify potential problem officers even earlier than if only traffic stop activity was monitored. 

Early intervention broadens the departmental focus beyond racial profiling. It addresses multiple 

accountability and supervisory issues at once and provides incentives for individual, unit, and 

supervisory accountability throughout the department. In addition, data from the system can help 

guide agency policies, trainings, and responses to community concerns. 

Limitations and Caveats 

Implementing an EIS can require a significant commitment from agencies in effort and resources. 

Well-designed systems call for high levels of technology capacity and commitment of resources. 

Agencies looking for less-expensive, off-the-shelf products need to be aware that these systems 

may not provide the ability to monitor all indicators that a department deems important, including 

the monitoring of traffic and/or pedestrian stops. Agencies also must carefully determine 

thresholds for alerts and intervention. There is no magic level at which officer activity should 

trigger monitoring or intervention; more effective systems use a rate of activity (such as number 

of stops per week) compared with other officers working within the same area or assignment. 

A discussion of agency priorities will be needed to decide what these thresholds should be. It 

is important to understand that the value of an EIS is limited unless agencies are willing to use 

information to identify and address organizational explanations—as well as those of individual 

officers—for troubling patterns. 
9

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

Case Studies 

Arlington, Texas 

The Arlington Police Department developed and trained officers on a new early intervention 

program (EIP) to identify behaviors that may indicate racial profiling and other police misconduct. 

Previously, the department collected a large amount of data on employee activities, including data 

related to traffic stops, but no central repository existed for this information to be linked and 

made available for analysis and intervention when necessary. 

Project Components 

Measurement and Thresholds. The EIP collects data on use-of-force incidents, open 

internal affairs cases, citizen complaints, summary discipline, unexcused sick days, pursuits, and 

commendations. The information collected in the database is managed by the department’s 

Internal Affairs (IA) Unit. Supervisors and administrators developed the EIP thresholds. They 

agreed that if one of the following occurred within a rolling 90-day period an intervention would 

be warranted: three use-of-force incidents, two IA cases, three citizen complaints, two summary 

disciplines, four unexcused sick days, two pursuits, or receipt of two racial profiling complaints. 

The department subsequently increased the use-of-force threshold to six incidents in 90 days 

because stringent reporting policies governing use of force were generating too many unnecessary 

alerts. Arlington is also looking into a software upgrade that would allow the system to provide 

alerts based on combinations of events. 

Intervention. The intervention process consists of several steps. First, the program alerts IA staff, 

who notify the officer’s supervisor. The supervisor investigates the incidents and discusses them 

with the officer. Following this meeting, the supervisor reports to the deputy chief, and together 

they decide the outcome and, if necessary, develop an intervention program for the officer. In 

addition, an officer who receives two commendations is similarly identified and brought to the 

attention of these same parties. In this way, the system not only identifies officers with potential 

problems but notifies supervisors of officers who deserve acknowledgement and praise for doing 

a good job. 

Training Evaluation. All commissioned Arlington officers attended training to learn about the 

purpose, policy, and procedures of the EIP. The training program was offered by the Tampa, 

Florida, Police Department, which was operating under a COPS Office Police as Problem Solvers 

and Peacemakers grant initiative that provided technical assistance to PCSRRP grantees. A 

separate training was provided for supervisors. 
10

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

After the training, officers filled out a 16-item survey designed to capture their attitudes and 

perceptions toward the EIP. Overall, the survey showed that officers felt that the training 

provided officers and supervisors with important information about the use and protections of 

EISs. In response to a survey finding that nonsupervisory personnel held less-positive views of 

the prospective system than supervisory personnel, the department worked with employee groups 

to promote the program and overcome this perception. The IA commander made presentations 

to employee associations, invited association leadership to the supervisory training, and provided 

opportunities for officers and supervisors to offer input on types of behaviors tracked and 

threshold settings. Although the department was unable to implement the EIP before the end of 

the grant period, the system is up and running. 

 

St. Paul, Minnesota 

The city of St. Paul initiated a program to increase police accountability and decision making as 

part of an agreement with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 

(NAACP) following community concern about racially biased policing. As part of the mediated 

settlement, the department developed and implemented an integrated early intervention system 

(EIS) to identify officers engaged in biased policing. The department also wanted to decrease 

the likelihood of hiring individuals who would engage in racial profiling. To this end, the St. Paul 

Police Department partnered with the community to identify the positive characteristics they 

would want an officer to possess. 

Project Components 

Measurements and Thresholds. Prior to this grant, St. Paul’s EIS was fragmented. In the 

previous system, information on internal affairs complaints, number of sick days used, and 

disciplinary actions was collected manually. The department contracted with a software 

development company to integrate information from various sources to enhance the existing EIS. 

The new system captures information on officers engaged in inappropriate behaviors (e.g., abuse 

of sick time, excessive use of force). 

Officer Characteristics and Community Expectations. In conjunction with developing the 

EIS, the department decided to reexamine its hiring practices (see the section on Recruitment and 

Hiring in this report for information about this strategy area) and identify positive characteristics 

that would be integrated into both the hiring and officer accountability systems. It is the 

department’s belief that racial profiling could be minimized if it hired people who represent the 

positive ethics and goals of the police and more closely represent the community they serve. To 

achieve this goal, the department conducted interviews and focus groups with community leaders 

to determine the characteristics and attributes believed to epitomize the ideal community policing 

officer. 
11

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

The results of the interviews and focus groups showed that the best candidate would personify 

15 characteristics: enthusiastic, fair, possessed of good judgment, creative, self-motivated, selfconfident, courageous, tenacious, respectful, compassionate, honest, loyal, responsible, a team 

player, and unafraid to engage the community. Community members’ definitions of these 

characteristics were also culled from the focus groups. Three psychologists refined the model by 

comparing more recently hired officers against the model characteristics. The department planned 

to contract with an organizational development consulting firm to further review and modify 

hiring practices based on this model. The firm researched the hiring practices and psychological 

assessment tools of more than a dozen law enforcement agencies, consulted experts in the 

field of psychological assessment, and conducted a literature review in support of developing 

recommendations for the department. Although the best candidate characteristics were not 

explicitly connected to the agency’s EIS, such linkages are a longer term goal. 

 

Denver, Colorado 

In 2000, the Denver Police Department created a community task force to promote a healthy 

relationship between the department and the community through mutual accountability. To address 

the task force’s concerns about the department’s ability to identify and prevent racial profiling, 

the department sought to enhance its existing Professional Performance Review program. This 

system suffered from limited identification processes, requiring more manual analysis than the 

department was able to conduct. Under this initiative, the department designed a new system that 

was intended to more effectively identify officers engaging in high-risk behaviors. 

Project Components 

Research, Development, and Contracts. The Denver Review Board, whose members include 

representatives from the City Attorney’s Office, police administration, and the police labor union, 

investigated existing early intervention system models used by other departments across the county. 

Board members visited the Phoenix Police Department to observe its highly regarded EIS, and 

Denver subsequently contracted with Phoenix’s project manager with the hope of benefiting 

from his experience. To ensure that the new system would operate in the current network, the 

department created a system in Microsoft Visual Basic, which would ride on a Microsoft SQL 

server platform. The officer’s badge number served as the link in all relevant databases. 

Measurements and Threshold. The Denver Police Department’s Early Identification and 

Intervention System (EIIS) is able to capture a large amount of human resource information 

including personnel assignments, leave, overtime, and limited duty. The system can also track 

and monitor several performance indicators such as arrest data, computer-aided dispatch (CAD) 

information, citation data, commendation information, civilian complaints, civil liability violation 

complaints, use-of-force incidents, informal incident investigations, and police vehicle accidents. 
12

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

It is also able to track and monitor officers’ offense reports, pursuits, court appearances, and 

training and education received. At the end of the grant period, Denver had not yet determined 

thresholds for generating alerts concerning officer behavior. After thresholds were established, 

the chief suspended their use in December 2004 following a review of Denver’s EIIS reports and 

feedback from across the department. He noted that the discretionary arrest data collected had 

too broad a scope and was too loosely defined, and the system was not sufficiently able to compare 

triggers based on such factors as assignment, shifts, and districts. In 2006, the Denver command 

staff, union representatives, Citizen Oversight Board, and representatives from the Office of the 

Independent Monitor developed a plan to address these issues. Specifically, first-line supervisors 

rather than the chief ’s office would be responsible for identifying potential problem behavior; and 

system thresholds would be based on comparisons between officers in similar work situations. 

Officer Buy-In. To address officers’ negative perceptions that the information could be misused, 

the department created several layers of security to prevent inappropriate access. A number of 

tests were conducted on each screen and each control to ensure that they would protect against 

security breaches. Once the debugging was completed, a final draft of the system was presented 

to the chief and command staff. During this process, the department decided that the system’s 

importance as a supervisory tool meant that it should not be used to facilitate media or open 

record requests. Requests would be fulfilled through accessing the original source database rather 

than the EIIS. 

Training. Following training for the chief and command staff, supervisory staff members were 

instructed on the system policies and received hands-on training on the program. Training was 

mandatory for all officers of the rank of sergeant and above; it was voluntary for all other officers. 

Since the system was implemented, more than 230 officers have been trained. 

Challenges and Lessons Learned: Accountability Case Studies 

The following issues were identified as being common across the accountability case studies or 

were particularly important to one grantee. They represent challenges encountered when trying 

to implement accountability and are not necessarily the limitations related to decreasing racial 

profiling, which will be addressed in more detail in Section 3. The issues may help agencies to 

identify and prepare for challenges they might face in adopting similar types of accountability 

programs. 

Officer Resistance. Implementing an EIS is commonly met by resistance from the rank-andfile officers who fear that the system will unfairly identify officers for punishment. To overcome 

this resistance, it is important to include patrol officers in planning and implementing these 

systems. Arlington’s survey, which found nonsupervisory personnel more wary of the coming 

EIS than supervisory personnel, illustrates the importance of overcoming officer resistance in 
13

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

EIS development. The Denver police recognized the need for top-down support and effective 

communication with officers through training and supervisors to change negative perceptions of 

the agency’s disciplinary process and promote the EIS. St. Paul has regularly invited the union 

to participate in various departmental initiatives and enjoys a productive relationship with line 

officers as a result. Demonstrating that the administration will not use the system for formal 

discipline may also improve attitudes toward the system. Agencies should take great care to ensure 

that the EIS does not incorrectly identify officers based on inaccurate data because the process 

may never be judged as fair. In addition, first-line supervisors will need specific training to help 

them accurately and consistently interpret data assembled by the EIS and to conduct effective 

interventions with employees when it is determined that such action is necessary. 

Stakeholder Involvement. The community is a stakeholder in public safety and expects 

accountability from its police department. In some cases, however, getting to the point where 

the community is willing to work productively with the agency takes considerable effort. In St. 

Paul, early collaborative meetings were marked by antagonism, and in some instances community 

members would bring up other topics and concerns for discussion. By scheduling additional 

meetings and forums with community members and making the effort to listen, the department 

was able to mold criticism into positive action steps and obtain valuable feedback from the 

community. 

Managing Technology. Hiring a program manager with the appropriate level of experience, 

as Denver did by contracting the Phoenix EIS manager, can be indispensable in implementing 

the most cost-effective system and keeping the project on track. Many complex challenges are 

involved in merging various forms of information, particularly if they are on different platforms. 

There are also limitations with off-the-shelf products that agencies should fully understand before 

purchasing one of them. Before starting a technology program, departments should refer to the 

COPS Office Law Enforcement Tech Guide: How to plan, purchase, and manage technology (successfully!). 

(Harris and Romesburg, 2002.) 

Privacy Concerns. An EIS collects large amounts of data on individual officers, much of 

which may be considered confidential, which can be a cause for concern for many line officers. 

As the Denver police recognized, minimizing the number and types of people who could view 

the information through layered security can prevent inappropriate access and assuage officer 

concerns. Agencies considering an EIS should be careful about confidentiality and check the 

status or legality of the data collected, especially regarding the public record. 

Navigating the Bureaucracy. Cutting through the red tape can be extremely time-consuming, 

but including it in the timeline may help lessen frustration and delays. Denver’s experience 

shows how time-consuming navigating the city bureaucracy can be. After receiving the grant 

award and before the city attorney began preparing the contract with the program developer, the 
14

5. 42 USC Sec. 

2000e-2(a)(2).

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

department needed to obtain approval from the city’s e-government leaders team (top managers) 

and e-government operational leaders team (top technology officials), requiring explanations of 

other options and why the department chose this one. The department had to submit its plans 

to the City Council Safety Committee for review. Finally, the draft contract was sent to the 

developer for review, resulting in several discussions between the developer and city attorney. 

Understanding the administrative steps necessary for implementation as fully as possible before 

starting will reduce delays and frustration. 

Recruitment and Hiring 

Recruiting talented and dedicated officers has long been understood as central to the success 

of a law enforcement agency. As American society has grown more diverse, law enforcement 

professionals have begun to recognize the important role a diverse workforce plays in the 

successful administration of justice. Additionally, during the past 60 years, the legal landscape 

has changed dramatically, protecting the rights of persons seeking employment and enabling 

applicants facing discrimination to seek compensatory and punitive damages from employers or 

potential employers. 

• Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act: An employer cannot “limit, segregate, or classify his 

employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any 

individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, 

because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” (§ 703 (a) (2)).5

 

• The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972: Amended Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights 

Act created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and bans discrimination on 

the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex in all terms and conditions of employment. 

Employers may face liability if they do not establish employment standards, such as written exams, 

that apply to all applicants without a purposefully disparate effect. 

• The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990: Amended Title VII by prohibiting impermissible 

consideration of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, or disability. It also allows for 

compensatory and punitive damages based on membership in one of these groups, whereas 

previously this recourse had been available only to racial and ethnic minorities. 

Regardless of the legislation in place to ensure equality and allow for civil litigation, “the main 

incentive for hiring a diverse group of officers is that by maintaining a police department that 

reflects the community, agencies are able to practice more effective policing” (Gascón and 

Schaefer, 2001:2). Recruiting and hiring a police force that represents the community which it 

serves has been recognized as a strategy that helps reduce racial profiling by conveying a sense of 

equity in departmental practices and increasing understanding between the police and members 
15

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

of diverse communities (Fridell et al., 2001). The most successful campaigns have targeted a 

specific population group in the community and have been promoted by the highest levels of 

police administration. 

Potential Benefits. One of the greatest challenges to diversifying law enforcement organizations 

has been the long-standing history of mistrust between the police and minority communities. 

After highly publicized and racially charged police incidents in New York City and Los Angeles 

in the early 1990s, police departments nationally have made a concerted effort to diversify their 

workforces. Additionally, law enforcement has begun to recognize that diverse workforces are 

a central component of community policing, which expects police agencies to solicit input and 

participation from citizens and communities. Agencies’ efforts to solicit these communities have 

led to numerous creative strategies to increase agency diversity and better reflect community 

demographics. 

Appropriate minority representation in the police force can be an important asset helping police 

departments gain the trust of minority community members who might not otherwise serve in a 

police-community partnership. Increasing the diversity of officers and employees can convey a 

sense of equity in agency practices and enhance community trust in the organization. Diversity in 

hiring also creates opportunity for a positive culture change within the agency. 

Limitations and Caveats. Recruiting minority communities with less-positive perceptions about 

law enforcement may be challenging, both for changing institutional practices as well as courting 

members of the community. Despite widespread acceptance of, and support for, diversifying 

the law enforcement profession, the majority of law enforcement agencies continue to struggle 

with issues of recruiting a diverse workforce—particularly people of color and women. This 

area of ability is still a concern among those in administrative positions in police departments 

(IACP, 1998). Recruiting minority candidates is hampered by higher levels of distrust toward the 

profession of policing in minority communities as well as educational and/or legal requirements 

such as drug testing and background checks, which often disproportionately disqualify interested 

minority applicants. 

In addition to the challenge of recruiting minority and women candidates, agencies often find 

it challenging to retain a diverse workforce. The life experiences of women and minorities can 

vary widely from the conventional model of a police officer, limiting the probability of female 

or minority members being promoted into the department’s upper echelons. Agencies need to 

recognize that increased recruitment and hiring of diverse pools of candidates does not ensure 

that minorities will stay with the agency. It is also crucial to understand that increasing the racial and 

gender diversity of employees does not automatically result in the changes in cultures necessary 

to prevent racial profiling because internal norms are frequently adopted by the small number of 

female and minority officers. These factors all need to be understood and addressed, which may 

require wide-scale organizational change. 
16

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

Case Studies 

Jersey City, New Jersey 

The goal of the Jersey City Police Department was to find qualified candidates within the city’s 

minority communities who could serve as bridges between the department and the community. 

In 1999, the department created the Office of Minority Recruiting and allocated time and 

resources specifically for this endeavor. In an effort to become more representative of the city’s 

demographics, Jersey City used its PCSRRP grant to refine its recruiting practices to increase 

the number of minorities joining the force. A secondary goal was to ensure that, more generally, 

department recruits had not been involved in any negative, racially charged incidents. Through the 

investigation of any such incidents, departmental accountability would be reinforced to minority 

communities. To enhance their already existing program and to engage these communities, the 

department developed a marketing campaign to encourage applications. 

Project Component 

Education and Marketing Campaigns. The Jersey City Police Department sought to accomplish 

its goals through a multipronged campaign to reintroduce the police department to the community 

and facilitate a connection between the community and the department by focusing on the “human 

side” of law enforcement. One part of the initiative involved recruitment officers speaking with 

community and high school groups about policing as a positive career option. A media campaign 

intended to target all citizens of Jersey City used several media outlets to reach this mass audience. 

Advertisements were played on cable television, strategically placed on billboards throughout 

the city, and printed in several minority newspapers. The department also distributed flyers in 

supermarkets, malls, churches, and block association meetings, and mailed job applications to 

citizen contacts of the department. Additionally, the department offered a free seminar open to 

all applicants to give them more information on, and help them prepare for, the entrance exam. 

Through the media campaign, the department was able to educate and provide a new level 

of understanding to the public. This new knowledge and awareness led to the department 

successfully enrolling more minorities in the 2003 recruit class than in any class since the 1970s. 

The department continues to use the media to promote recruitment endeavors, particularly to 

reach eligible applicants from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Posters and newspaper articles have 

been successful methods of reaching a larger pool of eligible applicants who are representative of 

the community. Ensuring that majority applicants have not previously been involved in negative 

racial incidents has been institutionalized as part of the department’s investigatory background 

check process. 
17

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

Indianapolis, Indiana 

Before it was awarded funding, the Indianapolis Police Department had implemented many 

successful approaches that increased the number of women and minorities on its force. Despite 

these efforts, minorities were still underrepresented. The chief and top administrators decided 

that a multipronged recruitment strategy would be the most beneficial approach to building a 

police force mirroring the racial, ethnic, and cultural composition of the community. By doing 

so, they hoped that excessive force, cultural insensitivity, and racial profiling would be stopped, 

negative perceptions of the police department could be eradicated, and trust between the police 

and community could be cultivated. 

Project Components 

Marketing. The Indianapolis Police Department contracted a marketing firm to help the department 

create a recruitment campaign, produce and organize events, and disseminate information to the 

local media and community at large. The campaign, centering on the theme of police as “everyday 

heroes,” was kicked off with a press conference outside the city-county building to make the event 

accessible to all citizens. During the campaign’s run, advertisements conveyed the messages on 

television (local and cable channels) and radio, on billboards, and through a grassroots marketing 

campaign. 

Ministers’ Breakfast. To reach out to African-Americans, Latinos, and women, the Indianapolis 

Police Department and Christamore House (a neighborhood community center) co-hosted 

a ministers’ breakfast. The department explained the need for minority officers and offered 

suggestions on how ministers could help in the outreach to minority recruits. Despite a disappointing 

turnout, the event was considered a success because it reached a much larger audience by being 

broadcast on the local access television channel. 

Virtual Academy. The Virtual Academy exposed the public to positions and opportunities 

available in the Indianapolis Police Department. The sessions included a welcome from the 

chief of police, an orientation about departmental opportunities, and physical agility and scenario 

training. Select officers participated in one-on-one mentoring, where they escorted interested 

candidates to mid-shift roll call and on ride-alongs. Participation exceeded expectations: 86 

individuals, almost all African-American, Latino, or women, attended. Most attendees had already 

completed applications to join the police force. 

Tutoring. Interested candidates were paired with department officers who became their tutors. 

The officers received training in tutoring and provided participants with lessons to help them pass 

the different components of the hiring process, including the written assessment, oral exams, and 

physical agility test. 
18

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

According to the department, the proportion of African-Americans doubled from 10 percent of 

the pre-grant recruit class to 21 percent of the post-grant class, the proportion of other minorities 

tripled from 4 percent to 12 percent, and the portion of women remained constant at 24 percent 

following program installation. The mentoring component appears to be particularly valuable in 

helping participants pass to the next stage as they proceed through the hiring process.

Lansing, Michigan 

In 2001, the Lansing Police Department made a commitment to its citizens to address and 

prevent racially motivated traffic stops. To begin this process, the department collected data using 

Management Analysis of Traffic Stops (MATS) forms that provided basic information on who 

was stopped by the police. In addition to the data collection procedures, the department wanted 

to recruit minority candidates who would better reflect the community the department serves. In 

an effort to achieve this goal, the department decided to target youths in their community with 

recruiting outreach. 

Project Components 

Outreach. The Lansing Police Department trained a young, diverse group of officers and cadets in 

recruiting strategies, including public presentations and effective ways to interact with area youth. 

Teams of officers and cadets placed booths in schools where interested students could obtain 

information, brochures, and interactive CD-ROMs on choosing a career in law enforcement. 

Contact information was obtained from each student who visited the booths and was used to 

follow up with interested candidates. 

Student Surveys. To build an effective advertising campaign, the department used a survey 

created by researchers at Michigan State University to question 11th graders in two of the three 

city high schools about their backgrounds, interest in a policing career, and their stereotypes and 

perceptions of police officers. 

Analysis of the survey revealed that 20 percent of all respondents indicated that they could see 

themselves becoming a police officer. This represented 24 percent of White youths and 16 

percent of minority youths responding to the survey. Across racial groups, students reported that 

the ability to help others was the most attractive characteristic of a career in law enforcement. The 

findings helped shape the department’s new recruitment strategy. 

Focus Groups. The department held focus groups, one with law enforcement and six with 

students, to obtain information about effective recruiting methods that could be used within its 

community. Law enforcement personnel were asked about what attracted them into the field, 

while the six student groups concentrated on future plans and the stereotypes they held regarding 

police officers. 
19

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

Marketing. Several advertising strategies were used to market law enforcement as a career. With 

the help of a public relations company and the survey and focus group data, the department 

developed a campaign targeted to local youths. The youngest and most diverse group of officers 

were the face of the campaign in hopes of attracting youthful and minority candidates. Television 

and radio commercials and printed advertisements in newspapers and on billboards were also 

used. The television and radio commercials aired during programs and on stations that targeted 

a teenage audience, and the newspaper advertisements were printed in several papers including 

those that are published for audiences in minority communities. The billboards were strategically 

placed throughout the city. Unfortunately, budget cuts limited the extent to which the recruitment 

campaign could be implemented. 

Challenges and Lessons Learned: Recruitment and Hiring Case Studies 

The following issues were identified as being common across the recruitment and hiring case 

studies or were particularly important to one grantee. They represent challenges encountered 

when trying to implement recruitment and hiring programs and are not necessarily the limitations 

related to decreasing racial profiling, which will be addressed in more detail in Section 3. The 

issues are intended to help agencies to identify and prepare for challenges they might face in 

adopting similar types of recruitment and hiring programs. 

Officer Buy-In. All agency constituencies may not initially be on board with project goals. The 

Jersey City Police Department notes in its technical assistance guide that when the Minority 

Recruitment Unit was established in 1999, the unit did not find support coming from all 

quarters. The department conducted an education campaign within the department and provided 

opportunities for officers to contribute input and suggestions about hiring and outreach strategies. 

Paying attention to the perspectives of representatives from all units in the department may build 

a stronger program that can deliver consistent messages in outreach to the community. 

Community and Stakeholder Involvement. It is essential that recruitment efforts go directly 

to the groups the agency is attempting to attract. Tailoring marketing to specific communities, 

targeting media sources seen by these communities, and working with community leaders can be 

effective methods for reaching out to members of these groups. 

Emphasizing the positive aspects of a career in law enforcement is vital when addressing members 

of the African-American, Latino, or Asian communities, who previously may not have considered 

the benefits of such a career. Focusing on leadership, problem solving, and community service 

may do more to promote positive images than emphasizing apprehending criminals. Jersey 

City emphasized officers’ human side as people who live and work in the community, coach 

sports teams, and hold positions in their churches. The Indianapolis campaign, created by the 

community-police grant team, focused on officers being everyday heroes. 
20

6. The term “minority” 

is used here because 

it was part of the 

original COPS Office 

grant solicitation.

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

Ensuring that the message is reaching the right people is an important part of the story because 

the best argument for joining the police force is worthless if nobody hears it. All three sites 

targeted recruitment advertising to minority community members using media outlets focusing on 

those communities. Where necessary, multilingual media campaigns should be conducted. 

Involvement of a broad array of local key community leaders is essential. They can help 

communicate as well as provide legitimacy to the messages the department is attempting to send. 

Indianapolis hosted a ministers’ breakfast to reach out to African-Americans, Latinos, and women. 

Getting buy-in and support from faith or secular minority community leaders can help bridge the 

divide between the community and the agency. 

Mentoring. It is the experience of many departments that it is important to do more than 

simply recruit to help people succeed in getting into the department. Mentoring recruits through 

the written, oral, and physical agility exams, as Indianapolis did, can increase the likelihood of 

their success, both in passing the entrance requirements and retaining employment with the 

department. 

Keeping the Focus. Planning and implementing an effective recruitment strategy to diversify 

police agencies represent long-term commitments. Often, the effects of these programs will not 

be seen for some time. Effective programs take a substantial amount of time to get off the 

ground, often at least 2 years to recruit, screen, tutor, test, select, train, and place the hired officers 

on the streets. In most cases, it is too early to determine whether diverse workforces actually 

decrease perceptions of racial profiling. Once a diverse group of officers has had time in the field, 

the department should begin to evaluate whether hiring more minority officers had an effect on 

racial profiling. 

Minority Engagement 6 

Race is one of the most consistent predictors of attitudes toward, and reported experiences of, 

the police and other criminal justice institutions. The reality that these attitudes and experiences 

are often negative has been a serious problem for law enforcement throughout its history in the 

United States. The authors of the Kerner Commission Report noted that “rigid social, economic, 

and educational barriers” have prevented African-Americans in particular from “fully participating 

in the mainstream of American life” (Report of the United States National Advisory Commission 

on Civil Disorders [Kerner Commission], 1968: 207). They specifically note the damage done 

when members of minority communities perceive that the police are stopping minorities without 

an obvious reason (p. 303). The expression “driving while black” reflects the deep suspicion 

with which many in these communities continue to view the police. The danger is that when 

laws are enforced in a discriminatory or insensitive manner—or are perceived as so—traditional 

enforcement strategies may fuel this perception. 
21

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

Given the potency of negative experiences, the police cannot rely on a majority of positive 

interactions to overcome the few negative interactions. They must consistently work to overcome 

the negative image that past policies and practices have cultivated. Being viewed as fair and just 

is critical to successful policing in a democracy. When the police are perceived as unfair in their 

enforcement, it will undermine their effectiveness. According to the National Research Council’s 

(2004) review of research on policing since 1968, “people obey the law not just because they are 

afraid of being punished or because they believe the law is morally right, but also because they 

believe that the law and its enforcement are fairly administered” (p.6). Legitimacy is at the heart 

of democratic law enforcement. An integral part of policing, then, is the effort to demonstrate 

to the public that the law and its enforcement are indeed fair and unbiased. Engaging minority 

communities in meaningful ways facilitates this process. By “engaging communities,” we are 

referring to strategies that give communities voice and input in departmental decision making on 

policy or other important initiatives, establish ongoing and meaningful opportunities for dialog 

between communities and law enforcement, and provide communities with current information 

on issues of importance to them. 

Potential Benefits 

Well-designed community engagement programs can help reduce negative public perceptions of 

the police by demonstrating a willingness to value minority community members’ input and innate 

worth. If the effort is seen as being made in good faith, the community may come to view the 

inevitable biased-appearing situation as an aberration rather than business as usual. 

Race can mediate perceptions of the police in various ways. A recent study suggests that highprofile incidents of police misconduct may have a negative influence on African-Americans’ 

views of the police in general, whereas the negative perceptions by Whites attach only to the 

officers actually involved in the incident (Chermak et al., 2006). Similarly, Weitzer and Tuch (2005) 

found that minorities are more likely than Whites to view discrimination in policing (and other 

arenas) as representing a more pervasive problem rather than as isolated incidents. Improving 

minority community members’ opinions of law enforcement is possible, however, and may have 

an effect on their perceptions of the prevalence of racial profiling specifically. In a recent study 

of perceptions of the New York City Police Department, Reitzel and Piquero (2006) found that 

while non-Whites were more likely to believe that racial profiling was widespread, people who 

approved of the department were much less likely to believe that racial profiling was widespread, 

regardless of race. This is not to say that biased policing is a figment made real through general 

dissatisfaction with the police. It is more likely that the perception of biased policing is correlated 

with how much people approve of the department. When perceptions are negative, however, 

the likelihood that any stop will be perceived as justified declines. Establishing an ongoing dialog 

with minority communities may increase public understanding of police goals and policies, which 

may encourage a willingness to comply with officers’ instructions during stops and increase the 
22

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

public’s willingness to work with law enforcement to increase public safety. Engaging immigrant 

populations can also improve public safety. Developing relationships with these communities 

may help mitigate their fears of law enforcement brought with them from countries where the 

police are tied to oppressive regimes, and help increase their willingness to report crime. By 

understanding how immigrant communities’ cultural norms for interacting with law enforcement 

differ, agencies can work with community leaders to communicate officers’ expectations, which 

may help to resolve police-immigrant encounters more safely. 

Limitations and Caveats 

Given the longstanding negative attitudes of many minority communities that stem from prior 

experience and as well as repeated incidents of misconduct, racism, and abuse, strategies for 

engaging members of the minority community in an effort to reduce racial profiling should not be 

viewed as quick fixes. Engagement strategies need to be long-term, ongoing efforts to be effective. 

Enhanced interactions between the groups it is hoped will lead to a deeper understanding between 

the police and local minority groups and eventually reduce the perception of racial profiling. 

Longevity is important to the process, and engagement programs that fold after a few months are 

likely to be potent symbols that the agency does not take these goals seriously. Engagement needs 

to involve meaningful opportunities for input and partnership, while poorly designed programs 

may exacerbate existing tensions or create new ones. Community trust depends on officer 

willingness to engage the community and to be open to community concerns. This is perhaps 

the most difficult part of an engagement program. It shows the community that the agency’s 

leadership is serious and is committed to ongoing and positive engagement with the community. 

 

Case Studies 

Buffalo, New York 

Bringing the community together with law enforcement to study issues around racial profiling, 

the Buffalo Police Department partnered with United Neighborhoods, an organization with 

experience both in collaborating with other community-based organizations and conducting study 

circles in the community. 

Project Components 

Planning and Training. The Study Circle Resource Center helped with facilitator training and 

provided guides and other materials that the Buffalo project partners modified to address racial 

profiling specifically. The Buffalo Police Department initiated a pilot study circle, which the 

project team assessed and modified. The research partner and Buffalo’s project coordinator 
23

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

trained study circle facilitators and recorders in part through mock study circle sessions critiqued 

by the trainers. A second training provided helpful hints on how to keep the group focused and 

to engage the participants in topics concerning racial profiling. 

Study Circles. After a kickoff event to introduce the program and its community-based and 

academic partners to the community, United Neighborhoods sent letters to its member block 

clubs and contacted previous study circle participants to recruit for this project. Buffalo defines 

study circles as “facilitated discussion groups, comprised of approximately 10 to 12 persons 

who gather to discuss an issue, usually a social or community concern, with the two-fold goal 

of increasing people’s understanding of the issue as well as providing recommendations and 

developing action plans for addressing the issue.” To engage the individuals most affected by and 

concerned about racial profiling in their neighborhoods, United Neighborhoods used its existing 

relationships to recruit people from different neighborhoods, including minority youth and the 

local Muslim community. Four study circles were held once a week for 4 consecutive weeks. 

Among the positive findings were the results of surveys conducted after each group that showed 

that 80 percent of participants said their ability to discuss issues openly and frankly increased. 

To appeal to the youth of the community, the department held an all-day summit at which the two 

Chicago police officers who founded the Slick Boys Rap Group and Slick Boys Youth Foundation 

gave the keynote address. This summit provided an opportunity for the participants to discuss 

with the police the problems faced by young people in their neighborhoods and concluded with 

an open mike where teens could perform. In another event, United Neighborhoods and Late Nite 

Noise developed a competition called Community Feud, an adaptation of the television game 

show Family Feud. The teams consisted of youths and police officers who were asked questions 

ranging from teen trivia to more serious questions about racial issues, prompting active dialogs 

between the groups. These competitions were held at various youth-oriented events and venues. 

Action Forum. The department presented the study circle recommendations to the public and 

policy makers at an action forum. The forum began with Dramatic Solutions, a theatrical group 

that addresses organizational issues through scenario performances, enacting some of the issues 

and concerns that arose from group discussions. The first scenario illustrated an officer interacting 

with a youth and making judgments based on his appearance and clothing, a problem that was 

brought up in at least two study circles. Based on the success of the discussions at the action 

forum, the Dramatic Solutions group was contracted to train the Buffalo Police Department on 

how to approach youth-police encounters. 
24

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

Rochester, New York 

After meeting with prominent community leaders to discuss strategies for improving community 

relations, the Rochester Police Department implemented a comprehensive approach that built on 

existing programs using PCSRRP funding. Strategies included enhancing community education 

programs, improving communication between police and community constituencies, and recruiting 

qualified minority candidates. 

Project Components 

Cadet Program. Funding helped the department to provide additional information to high schools 

to guide recruitment of appropriate candidates to the cadet program and to expand the program 

from one high school to all high schools in the Rochester School District as well as to students at 

the local community college. The program’s purpose was to guide and train students for a career 

in law enforcement. It gave participants an opportunity to work with various police department 

units, participate in a physical fitness-training program in preparation for the civil service exam, 

and receive mentorship from officers. Although the program is no longer in operation because 

of a lack of funding, a Public Safety Aid program at the community college level offers students 

a part-time paid position and mentoring by Rochester police officers. 

Clergy Response Team. Before receiving the grant, the Rochester Police Department collaborated 

with clergy members when responding to critical incidents and addressing community issues. 

Response team members were called into action to help the department react to crisis situations 

in the community. Members of this team must have graduated from the Clergy Police Academy, 

where participants are trained in how the team is “activated” or called into action, along with 

response team duties, protocol, and policy, as well as crime scene management and evidence 

preservation. The team was supported by the department’s Family and Victim Services Unit as a 

part of the Family Crisis Intervention Team. Members of the Family Crisis Intervention Team 

were provided with pagers and jackets and shirts so that line officers could identify them. 

Officer and Community Interaction. In partnership with medical students from the University 

of Rochester, the police department educated community members and youths on the conflict 

resolution strategies and the criminal consequences and medical effects of drug use. Additionally, 

officers worked with local places of worship on various programs, such as the Friends and Families 

of Murdered Children initiative, through which officers assisted grieving family members, and the 

poster campaign, for which officers worked with families and volunteers to gather information 

regarding recent homicides. 
25

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

Review of Internal Processes on Race Relations. The department also conducted an internal 

review of race relations, recruitment and promotion of minority officers, and the complaint 

process. First, 15 minority officers were interviewed about current organizational practices as 

well as their perceptions of what is working well and what needs improvement. Subsequently, 

two focus groups explored the issues raised in the interviews. Participants were also led through 

an exercise to create a vision for the Rochester Police Department

. 

New Haven, Connecticut 

The New Haven Police Department engaged Latino and African-American communities through 

an initiative called the “Community Justice Dialogue Project” that provided opportunities 

for officers to communicate with and educate community members, as well as to learn about 

community members’ perceptions and concerns. 

Project Components 

Participant Recruitment. The project was guided by an advisory board consisting of community 

members, police officers, NAACP representatives, community advocacy groups, Yale University, 

the state’s Attorneys Office, and the Board of Police Commissions. Word of mouth greatly 

encouraged minority participation, while more formal presentations at departmental meetings 

were needed to inform officers about the aim of the program and when these dialogs would be 

held. 

The Dialogs. The objective of the dialogs was to allow individuals from all backgrounds to talk 

about racial profiling, its effect on the communities, and how problematic interactions between 

the police and community members could be minimized. In addition to providing an open forum 

for discussion, the sessions also afforded the officers an opportunity to educate the community 

participants on the nuances and challenges of police work. 

The dialogs addressed participants’ personal experiences of race, the history of the problem of 

racial profiling, issues needing to be addressed for progress to be made, the roles of institutions 

and groups in the change process, and action steps for moving forward to combat racial profiling 

in the community. Dialogs were also targeted at certain groups (e.g., males, youths, Spanishspeaking). The dialog format was expanded to include nearby cities and towns to actively engage 

other communities that could also be affected by racial profiling. Approximately 180 community 

members and approximately 42 officers participated in dialog sessions in seven New Haven 

community locations as well as in the neighboring jurisdictions of East Haven, West Haven, and 

Hamden. 
26

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

Action Forum. The results of the dialog sessions were presented at a 3-hour community Action 

Forum attended by 105 people from both the community and law enforcement. Information 

obtained through the dialogs had been compiled into recommended action steps in the following 

broad categories: 1) Ways for the community to help itself; 2) Interactions between the police 

and community to build trust and understanding; 3) How to improve police training, education, 

and recruitment; and 4) Ways to educate citizens about their rights and police procedures. Along 

with presenting the action steps, there were several artistic performances (e.g., dance and poetry 

readings) by members of the community, as well as personal testimonials by program participants 

of their experiences with the dialogs. 

Challenges and Lessons Learned: Minority Engagement Case Studies 

The following issues were identified as being common across the minority engagement case 

studies or were particularly important to one grantee. They represent challenges encountered 

when trying to implement minority engagement programs and are not necessarily applicable to 

alternative strategies for dealing with decreasing racial profiling, which will be addressed in more 

detail in Section 3. The issues may help agencies to identify and prepare for challenges they might 

face in adopting similar minority engagement programs. 

Officer Buy-In. Initiatives that give community members input into departmental operations, 

particularly on issues involving race, can be difficult for some officers to accept. The grantees in 

this area had to deal with officers’ concerns about the implications of the program and found that 

it was essential that police leadership clearly communicate program goals to the line officers. . 

In New Haven, more than 40 officers participated in dialogs with the community. The officers 

were recruited through the recommendation of agency or community leaders or through selfselection. Those who participated in a discussion introducing them to the study circle process 

raised several concerns, including that study circles could turn into “cop-bashing” sessions, that 

information shared could be used against officers, and that certain community members may come 

with hidden agendas. Trainers addressed all of the issues raised, and officers were encouraged to 

participate on a voluntary basis. 

Initially, officers in Buffalo were not adequately briefed on their role in the study circles. Some 

officers reasonably assumed they were there to answer community members’ questions rather 

than participate in the discussion. The project coordinator and the Buffalo Police Department 

chief of staff subsequently discussed the project at roll calls, which helped to better prepare 

officers and further publicize the program among members of the department. 

Recognizing that members of the department possessed valuable insight, the Rochester police 

conducted interviews and focus groups with minority officers to explore their views on race 

relations in the agency and what was and was not working, as well as to involve them in creating a 

strategic vision for the department. 
27

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

Community and Stakeholder Involvement. Effectively involving the community is obviously 

paramount to a successful minority engagement initiative. Several issues were prominent, including 

recruiting participants, facilitating discussions, and clearly communicating the project goals. 

Recruiting for a forum on racial profiling can prove difficult, especially if no instigating event 

has occurred. Citizens may feel uncomfortable discussing their feelings and perceptions in front 

of police officers. Buffalo and New Haven worked with community leaders to build trust in the 

process. 

In Buffalo, once participants were recruited many wanted to talk about other issues facing the 

community. The partners decided to strike a balance, discussing these issues as well as racial 

profiling, so that the community felt that their concerns were being heard. In this way, the 

department was able to get the information it needed while providing a broader opportunity 

for the community to raise additional issues that were also important to them. Nevertheless, 

departments should be careful not to let the discussion widen so greatly that the focus on racial 

profiling is lost. 

Focusing Efforts. Agencies need to focus their efforts on engaging communities and segments 

of communities most affected by racial profiling. Buffalo realized that recruiting block clubs or 

geographic neighborhoods for study circle groups, rather than individuals specifically interested in 

the issue of racial profiling, tended to be concerned with more general crime and safety issues and 

did not view racial profiling as a pressing issue. For subsequent circles, project organizers recruited 

individuals who were more likely to have been affected by racial profiling, such as minority youths 

and members of the local Muslim community. Youths are a special population within the minority 

community whose impact and perceptions are important but often are misplaced in the realm 

of the adult world. Focusing events around their interests and engaging them will provide a 

perspective not often heard but still vital to community-police relations. 

Training Consultants. It is important that those who lead focus groups or study circles understand 

the issue of racial profiling. Using the most up-to-date and relevant information will not only 

explain the basics of the issue but will also provide context. This will help participants appreciate 

the broader implications of racial profiling and will provoke conversation. 

Using Technology 

For much of the modern history of policing, law enforcement agencies have looked to new 

technologies to improve public safety and their internal administration and management. Earlier 

revolutions in law enforcement’s use of technology, such as the transition to automobile patrol 

and the use of two-way radio communication, are today considered basic necessities as well as 

the foundation for more recent innovations (e.g., computer-aided dispatch, mobile data terminals) 
28

7. For example, the 

MORE (Making 

Officer Redeployment 

Effective) and 

ISTEP (Information 

Systems Technology 

Enhancement Project) 

programs.

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

that continue to change the way policing is carried out. Some have noted, however, that these same 

innovations have also created problems. Walker (1998), for example, describes how the public’s 

use of the telephone to summon the police served to boost officers’ workload enormously. This 

led to increased reliance on new equipment, which contributed to more calls for service, creating 

a vicious circle and serving to raise public expectations that calling the police is the appropriate 

response to even the smallest concerns. Regardless of one’s viewpoint, it is undeniable that during 

the last 20 years technology has changed radically in policing. 

By speeding the retrieval and processing of information, new technology creates opportunities 

for law enforcement to become more efficient and analytical in its approach to community 

problems. The widespread adoption of community-oriented policing, with its emphasis on datadriven decision making and evaluation in many recent implementations, has made technology 

(particularly information technology) indispensable to the business of policing in the modern 

world. Police, particularly those in larger urban areas, are now are more accountable for knowing 

where, when, and how they intervene. One example of a major strategy to fill this need is 

CompStat (computer statistics) a management accountability process developed by the New York 

City Police Department in 1994 that has since been adopted in varying forms by a large number 

of law enforcement agencies across the United States. The CompStat program collects crime 

statistics from every precinct in the city and the data are used to monitor the performance of each 

precinct and to hold precinct commanders personally accountable for decreasing crime in their 

areas. The commanders are required to develop and carry out intervention strategies to address 

these problems and demonstrate measurable results or explain why their efforts have not been 

successful. 

It should be noted, however, that the availability of technology is an opportunity for, rather than a 

cause of, organizational change (Chan, 2001). Before the advent of community policing, strategic 

and tactical decisions relied almost exclusively on calls for service and crime reports. Today, 

the need for performance measurement, problem solving, and accountability—initiatives vital to 

community policing—drives the acquisition of new technologies and information sources. Since 

its establishment in 1994, the COPS Office has funded the procurement of technology within 

thousands of police agencies throughout the United States to promote organizational change 

toward community policing.7

 

Potential Benefits 

In addition to enhancing public safety strategies, technology offers the opportunity for law 

enforcement to monitor and address concerns about police misconduct and civil rights. Concern 

over the existence of racial profiling has emerged as one of the most prominent examples 

because it requires police to begin systematically collecting information on traffic stops, data 

that historically have not been collected. Technology offers tools to facilitate collecting and 
29

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

analyzing data. Well-designed systems, using tools like hand-held computers or in-field reporting 

on mobile data terminals, make collecting data faster and easier for officers in the field and can 

ease the task of cleaning the data in preparation for analysis. Technology can offer a means 

of identifying disparities between the proportion of drivers of a particular group stopped and 

their representation in some benchmark population, as well as for identifying officers who may 

be engaged in disparate stop practices to target for intervention or assistance. Appropriately 

reported data can also increase transparency to the public. 

Limitations and Caveats 

While there are many advantages to using technology, it is important to note that technology can 

be viewed as a double-edged sword. Although various tools can be used to promote departmental 

accountability and integrity, they may have the potential to foster public distrust in the police as 

well as officer distrust in the agency’s administration. The distinction lies in the way in which the 

technology is deployed rather than the tool itself. The technologies being used in these PCSRRP 

grants are no different. Critics question whether the use and sharing of certain data violate 

individuals’ civil liberties or whether those actions could, if they are not adequately constrained, be 

used to target certain groups. At times within law enforcement, officers have been critical of early 

intervention systems because they dislike the idea of being “tracked” and fear that the information 

gathered will be used to punish them. Often, the department can achieve buy-in from the rankand-file officer if management takes special steps in how it introduces the technology to the 

officer. Including officers in the development of the technology, for example, can demonstrate 

to patrol that there is no hidden agenda and an opportunity for officers to provide input on how 

the technology will be used. Likewise, the public needs to be educated and given meaningful 

assurances that there is a legitimate reason for collecting certain data and, most important, that 

their personal information will not be used inappropriately. 

On a more technical level, the commitment to technological solutions should be recognized 

as significant. Implementing traffic-stop data-collection technology requires a commitment to 

training (at least initially), information technology expertise, and resources and must be integrated 

with other existing data systems within the agency. 

Finally, it must be understood that technology is only a tool; proper data analysis is necessary to 

identify meaningful solutions. Traffic stop data analysis requires specialized knowledge and may 

necessitate assistance from outside research consultants. Part of the analytical process requires 

agencies to determine benchmarks against which stops will be compared. This decision is crucial 

in determining whether disparities will be identified and the degree of the disparities. Ultimately, 

analysis may identify disparities but often does not definitively identify whether racial profiling is 

actually occurring. 
30

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

Case Studies 

Redlands, California 

The Redlands Police Department sought to establish a common set of expectations for police 

officers and community members during traffic stops. The goal was to reduce the potential for 

racial profiling while increasing officer safety. Using advanced technology, specifically hand-held 

iPAQ computers and digital recording systems, the department collected data on discretionary 

motor vehicle traffic stops and implemented a voice and video recording system that would 

provide valuable information if allegations of bias were made. The department also found other 

uses for, and advantages of, the iPAQ technology and successfully integrated the new technology 

with the existing computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system. 

Project Components 

Community Advisory Board. The Redlands Police Department convened a community 

advisory board composed of local members of under-represented community groups that would 

be involved in the entire project. The board met frequently throughout the planning phase, 

attended all training sessions for officers, and listened to the research team explain data analysis 

and methodology. Also, the board distributed an informal community survey at the end of the 

project to determine community response to the police efforts to curb racial profiling. 

Data Collection. Redlands partnered with Hewlett-Packard, a leading technology company that 

built software specifically for the iPAQ hand-held units and customized the software with dropdown menu options to suit data collection needs. Hewlett-Packard also developed a solution 

for transferring stop data from the iPAQs to a database accessible to officers and department 

supervisors with seven access points to “synch-up” the data on the handheld computers. The 

iPAQ technology was chosen because it is small in size, convenient, and easy to use by officers. It 

also came equipped with a built-in voice recording function to record all traffic stops, which was 

complemented by the installation of in-car digital video recorders. The department also found that 

the iPAQ hand-held computers could be used for many purposes beyond simply collecting racial 

profiling data, such as giving officers access to crime bulletins and maps and generally reducing 

paperwork. According to the department, officers view the iPAQ as an important tool that will 

be increasingly useful. In fact, the department organized an iPAQ development committee to 

identify additional uses for the device. 

Analysis. A consulting group trained the officers on the importance of both racial profiling 

data collection and benchmarking. Benchmarking is an alternative population group used in lieu 

of census data to compare with data collected. Redlands conducted stationary road surveys to 

determine a more realistic driving population, compared the results with the racial profiling data, 

and generated an analysis of the comparisons. 
31

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

Tacoma, Washington 

The Tacoma Police Department sought to prevent racial profiling and increase officer safety while 

building trust between the police and the community. In addition to creating a community/law 

enforcement task force and holding several public forums, the department planned to develop a 

data collection system to analyze the characteristics of traffic stops by its police force and develop 

an early intervention system. 

Project Components 

Minority Community Engagement. A Racial Profiling Task Force, composed of community 

and police department representatives, developed a data collection tool and system for reporting 

on racial profiling in the city of Tacoma. To design a community survey, the task force researched 

the nature of racial profiling and its indicators and asked members of the minority community for 

their perceptions and concerns. An independent consultant analyzed the data and provided the city 

council and the public with a report of its findings and recommendations. The department also 

held several public forums that helped the department understand the perspectives of members of 

the multicultural minority community in Tacoma. The forums were advertised in the six languages, 

other than English, that are common in the local population—Russian, Korean, Lao, Cambodian, 

Spanish, and Vietnamese. Each forum featured interpreters in at least one of these languages to 

provide essential communication and clarification of the concerns posed by community members. 

This feedback, particularly the frequent disconnect between the expectations of the police and 

members of different immigrant communities, provided important content for subsequent officer 

training. 

Data Collection and Analysis. Following completion of its research and the public forums, 

the Racial Profiling Task Force, in close partnership with noncommissioned union members, 

compiled a 19-variable survey. Factors compiled for analysis included the reason, time, and date 

of stop; the perceived age and race of the driver; and the duration and result of the stop. All police 

officers were notified of the data collection effort, trained in the use of the data collection cards, 

and directed to complete them at each traffic stop or pedestrian traffic violation. Tracking the 

officers’ efforts added another layer of accountability and supervision. An independent statistical 

analyst helped with developing the format of the survey and analyzing the data. Additionally, the 

department mounted computers on its motorcycles to allow for mobile data records access. 

The agency experienced some challenges when implementing these efforts. Initially, data collection 

had to be accomplished manually because of hardware delivery delays. The department, however, 

was able to deploy mobile data terminals for data access from the field. Plans for systematically 

tracking officers’ compliance with the data collection effort were dropped when responsibility 

shifted from the Administrative Services Bureau to the Operations Bureau, which had not been 
32

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

involved in the project and was not invested in the initiative. Additionally, the computers had 

been mounted on the motorcycles in a way that constituted an officer safety hazard and had to 

be removed. With the input of the union, city safety committee, motorcycle manufacturer, and 

agency IT staff, the computers were reinstalled in a more appropriate location. 

Austin, Texas 

In April 2000, the Austin Police Department held candid discussions on racial profiling with 

community leaders and took steps to document police-citizen interactions. Pursuant to its COPS 

Office grant application, the department designed a framework for collecting and analyzing 

information from pedestrian and traffic stops to determine whether officers were engaged in biased 

enforcement practices. To collect these data, the department had to develop new technology to 

allow officers to enter information about stops using hand-held data devices. 

Project Component 

Procuring Hand-Held Devices. In an effort to gather uniform data on racial profiling, the 

department proposed the purchase of hand-held devices with which its officers would collect 

the required standardized data from the site of each incident or stop. The data then would be 

transmitted to the department’s field observation database through a wireless connection. 

Unfortunately, this initiative found itself entangled in an interagency struggle that resulted in 

significant project delays and the withdrawal of funding by the COPS Office. 

Although the department worked hard to determine the type of data to collect and develop a data 

collection instrument, the project ultimately was sidetracked by a local controversy within the city 

about technology. In the process of gaining city approval to move forward with the procurement 

of hand-held devices, the department was confronted with strenuous objections from Austin’s 

municipal court staff. The court staff had previously approached the department to request the 

use of hand-held devices for issuing citations but the request had been denied because of costs. 

The scope of the COPS Office grant project was different and the court staff had not been 

notified that hand-held devices were being considered for this initiative. Once they found out, 

they voiced strong objections and as a result, formal approval of the initiative was taken off the 

city council agenda. Ultimately, the department was unable to purchase the technology necessary 

for automated traffic and pedestrian stop data collection. 

Challenges and Lessons Learned: Technology Case Studies 

The following issues represented common challenges across the technology projects or were 

particularly important to one grantee. They represent challenges encountered when trying to 

implement technology projects and are not necessarily the limitations related to decreasing racial 
33

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

profiling, which will be addressed in more detail in Section 3. The issues may help agencies identify 

and prepare for challenges they might face in adopting similar technology-driven programs. 

Officer Buy-In. No officer wants change that brings more paperwork. One advantage of the 

Redlands use of the hand-held computers is that the traffic stop data collection form is easily 

accessible and is not a paper that has to be saved. In addition to holding the form, the device 

functions as a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) providing access to crime bulletins, electronic 

maps, and other information in the field that can increase officers’ safety and efficiency. 

The inclusion of the police union from the project’s inception was a major contribution to the 

ability of the Redland Police Department to incorporate the hand-held units and digital video 

recording technologies into its existing systems. To cite one example, to reassure the rank and file, 

the department promised not to view recordings randomly to find fault with an officer’s behavior. 

Because officers were involved throughout the entire process, the department experienced a high 

level of officer buy-in and trust in the technology. 

Community and Stakeholder Involvement. The Redlands and Tacoma police departments 

created advisory groups that explicitly included the community in a decision-making capacity. 

In Redlands, the Community Advisory Board, composed of community leaders of minority 

constituencies, participated in the initial discussion about what information to collect, attended 

officer data collection training sessions, and plays an active role in determining project strategy. 

The Tacoma Racial Profiling Task Force consisted of agency personnel and community members 

and addressed the specific details of the design and implementation of the data collection system. 

Tacoma also made specific efforts to include the city’s immigrant populations by advertising public 

forums in the six primary languages other than English spoken by members of these groups and 

by providing interpreters at the forums. Austin’s police department has sponsored discussions on 

racial profiling with community leaders and created a community-based oversight committee to 

address the issue. 

Planning. Effective communication and coordination and adequate staff time are essential for 

project success. One recommendation is either to assign a project coordinator or develop an 

interagency project team with the technological and fiscal knowledge, experience, and authority 

to carry out the project. This can prove to be essential when undertaking a project that involves 

interagency collaboration. To prevent unnecessary delays, early efforts should be made to determine 

whether other agencies or departments (e.g., the city’s information management division) need to 

be involved, what existing tools cost, how closely they appear to reflect department needs, and 

which vendors are appropriate and reputable. Austin’s experience with interagency conflict and 

miscommunication is particularly instructive. 
34

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

Managing Technology. All technology has limitations and departments should expect these 

imperfections. How the department responds is often more important than being able to foresee 

and prevent all implementation problems. By being up front, honest, and responding quickly 

when a problem with the technology arises, officers may be more likely to support the endeavor 

instead of deciding that it is a waste of time. Testing the technology in a variety of settings before 

a full rollout is a vital complement to the planning process. 

Managing technology involves navigating bureaucratic relationships, as well. Austin’s project 

experienced delays when court and police personnel clashed over an unresolved issue involving the 

proposed use and scope of the hand-held devices. The subsequent review of the issue exacerbated 

the delay but appears to have resulted in a more robust system. The department recommends 

creating a formal interagency grant project team to prevent such problems in the future. 

Redlands recognized that technology is a tool and not the solution to racial profiling or other 

important issues. The department notes that nontechnological policy development, training, and 

citizen input must accompany implementation of technology. 

Equally important to the successful integration of technology was the relationship the departments 

shared with their technology vendors. For example, the Redlands Police Department recommends 

that other departments attempting a similar project should include a successful integration clause 

in the vendor contract to ensure that new systems are up and running without difficulty before the 

vendor contract expires. Redlands also learned that it is important to inspect the main database 

often to ensure that the technology is working properly and to verify that the data in the database 

are accurate. 

 

Training 

The complexity of policing in a democracy is embedded in the tension between the protection 

of individuals’ civil liberties and the protection of public safety. Officers must understand the 

importance of each and learn how to balance both mandates. This balance requires sound 

judgment in the use of discretion, a foundation for which is found in the training provided for 

police recruits and ongoing, in-service instruction. 

Although all police training tends to include basic training for new recruits, in-service training, 

and advanced training for specialized areas (Kratcoski, 2004), the specific nature and focus of 

individual trainings vary widely across the United States. Despite this wide variation, practically 

all officers in the United States receive some level of training related to race and policing. The 

Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports that in 2002, “Ninety-six percent of law academies 

addressed racially-biased policing as part of their basic training program. Ninety-three percent 

addressed this topic during academic training, 40 percent during practical skills training, and 31 
35

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

percent during field training” (Hickman, 2005). The specific content and rigor of this training is 

not known. Additionally, the report does not indicate the degree to which these subjects are part 

of in-service training. 

The advent of “pattern or practice” legislation in the mid-1990s has bolstered the impetus for 

agencies to provide adequate training on equitable traffic enforcement. Settlements stemming 

from these Department of Justice investigations often require agencies to develop and implement 

new policies and procedures on traffic stops. Training is necessary for these new rules to be 

inculcated and followed. Training officers to avoid using racial, ethnic, or gender characteristics 

when making traffic stops can help prevent not only the actual practice, but the perception of this 

practice, by members of the community. This may also help an agency avoid a Justice Department 

investigation and possibly mitigate the severity of negative investigative findings. In addition, 

it will help the agency be more effective in its traffic enforcement practices because targeting 

minorities has proved to be an ineffective crime-control strategy (Fridell et al., 2001). 

Potential Benefits 

Not only does training provide the basic knowledge and foundation for exercising particular skills 

(e.g., de-escalation techniques, firearms instruction, interview strategies), it offers an opportunity 

to instill positive organizational values at the beginning of an officer’s career as well as to reinforce 

them through ongoing, in-service instruction. Training is particularly important for agencies that 

have undertaken significant organizational change in response to community policing. Officers 

need to understand the new responsibilities involved in their roles as “proactive problem solvers, 

resource catalysts, and communicators responsive to quality of life issues” (Palmiotto et al., 2000). 

Although some of this training will involve discussing these values explicitly, teaching officers 

the skills to actively solicit input from the community, analyze problems and prepare appropriate 

responses, and avoid using race as justification for suspicion, may provide a more profound 

illustration of what is important within the agency. Additionally, training sessions can be an 

opportunity for agencies to provide a forum for members of the public to share their experiences 

and perceptions with law enforcement. 

Limitations and Caveats 

Addressing racial profiling in training is challenging and can be confrontational, so great care 

should be taken when choosing a training curriculum and facilitator. There is also no guarantee 

that officers will adhere to the lessons from relating to reducing racial profiling and biased policing. 

Additional monitoring may be needed to ensure that officers engage in the behavior promoted by 

training. Training should be part of a comprehensive program of organizational change. 
36

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

Case Studies 

Brookline, Massachusetts 

The Brookline Police Department has incorporated the philosophy of police integrity into its 

training and daily operations and has engaged the community through its Citizen Police Academy 

and Community Emergency Response Team. In keeping with its philosophy of integrity, fairness, 

cultural awareness, and involvement with the community, Brookline developed training films for 

its officers to ensure that they fully comprehend the department’s policy against discriminatory 

practices and are willing and able to work with the jurisdiction’s diverse population. 

Project Components 

SimulationTraining Development. The department purchased the Range 3000 XP4 Force 

Control Simulator, an interactive training system from IES Interactive Training that can film, 

capture, and edit scenarios in keeping with the department’s unique training requirements and 

goals. The FBI uses the simulator at its National Academy. Three Brookline officers who were 

trained on the system also attended a 2-week advanced training curriculum at the IES facility in 

Littleton, Colorado, where they learned how to use the film-making and editing functions as well 

as the finer points of the system. The COPS Office award also provided the funding for video 

cameras, an editing computer, and training. 

Officer Training. Training on the system is mandatory for sworn officers during in-service training 

and for academy recruits. The in-service training consists of a 2-hour classroom component 

during which officers learn about, and are tested on, Massachusetts general law and departmental 

policy as they apply to racial profiling This is followed by a practical application of the knowledge 

through testing on the simulator. The decision-making elements can involve shoot/don’t shoot 

scenarios as well as other nonforce scenarios. Depending on the officer’s response, the system 

operator can adjust the difficulty through “branching” (the ability to access different filmed 

sequences). During and/or after the scenario, questions appear on the screen that the officer 

answers interactively, applying his or her knowledge of state law and Brookline police policy to 

the situation at hand. Participants in the Citizen Police Academy also have the opportunity to use 

the system. 

Training Films. Using the knowledge gained at the advanced training in Colorado, the Brookline 

Police Training Division made numerous training films, including several on issues related to racial 

profiling. The department annually produces a half-dozen scenarios with several “branches” for 

each so that officers do not encounter the same scenarios repeatedly. Film topics include traffic 

stops, burglary, shoplifting, stop-and-frisk, threshold inquiry, Fourth Amendment, and use of 

force. 
37

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

Community Involvement. The department included several minority students from Brookline High 

School, minority members of the town’s Building Department, and various community members 

in the films. The students received “citizen credits” from their school for their participation. 

 

Metropolitan Nashville, Tennessee 

The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department developed a racial profiling training program for 

in-service officers, new recruits, and the public. By teaching officers the importance of avoiding 

racial profiling and by educating the community on police practices and policies when making 

traffic stops, the department hoped that the two groups would be able to achieve a more complete 

understanding of each other’s viewpoints on racial profiling. 

Project Components 

Steering Committee. The department formed a steering committee composed of community 

leaders from a cross section of the population and law enforcement officers from all levels of 

the department. The committee set the goals of the training program, established the definition 

of racial profiling, and contracted with local universities to conduct focus groups with both the 

community and the police to identify the key concerns about of racial profiling. 

Officer Training. The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department selected the Safe and Legal 

Traffic Stops (SALTS) training curriculum developed by the Florida-based Institute of Police 

Technology and Management. SALTS covers the importance of public and police racial 

profiling education, cultural misperceptions during traffic stops, perceptions of police officials 

by the motoring public, law enforcement officers as role models, conducting ethical traffic stops, 

pertinent court issues, and department policy and procedure in traffic stops. The program was 

first presented to sworn in-service classes and will also be used in recruit training. 

Community Training. The department used the interactive program Perspectives on Profiling 

from the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles to teach the public about the difference between 

criminal profiling and racial profiling, probable cause, use of statistics for predicting behavior, racial 

overtones in a police agency, and escalation avoidance in racially charged stops. The software asks 

participants to make choices in a variety of real-life scenarios relating to bias-based policing. The 

sessions, held at community locations rather than police or government buildings, included both 

community members and sworn personnel in civilian clothing to make the community participants 

feel more comfortable. One sworn police officer and one community representative conducted 

the training; each had gone through a train-the-trainer program. 
38

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

Analysis. Researchers from Vanderbilt University conducted focus groups with community 

members and police officers to analyze the effects of the training program. The sessions revealed 

five main areas of concern: 1. Limited and negative police-resident interactions; 2. Differential 

service delivery; 3. Lack of police officer respect toward members of certain communities; 4. 

Bias-based policing; and 5. The need for targeted recruitment, selection, and training of officers. 

Recommendations included cultivating new opportunities for positive police-resident interactions 

and collaborations, establishing department-wide relationships with community organizations, and 

providing additional training and in-services sessions on diversity, community policing practices, 

and communication. 

Phoenix, Arizona 

The Phoenix Police Department used a multipronged strategy to reduce the probability of racial 

profiling through a process of information-seeking, processing and refinement, and developing a 

set of promising prevention strategies. The process involved interviewing internal stakeholders on 

the nature and causes racial profiling and strategies for prevention, conducting internal stakeholder 

group workshops (called Knowledge Cafés), and holding internal and community stakeholder 

public forums and focus groups (study circles). 

Project Components 

Internal Stakeholder Assessment. In structured interviews, officers offered their perceptions 

on the nature, pervasiveness, and causes of racial profiling, as well as how the department had 

addressed racial profiling in the past. Officers’ input about the opportunities and strategies they 

thought would be successful for prevention (e.g., officer monitoring, diversity training, involvement 

in the community) had a direct effect on the curriculum content of the group workshops under 

development and guided the wider prevention strategy development process. 

Knowledge Cafés. Officers and supervisors subsequently participated in group workshops, 

or Knowledge Cafés, 3-hour workshops of 20 to 25 supervisors from three or more precincts. 

Each workshop began with a survey about the officers’ perceptions of various aspects of racial 

profiling in their department and then shifted to a training mode using the Perspectives on 

Profiling curriculum. Participants’ responses to an evaluation of the workshops indicated that 

approximately 90 percent of officers rated the experience positively. 

Youth and Community Forums. The department held two forums to promote dialog and to 

discuss perceptions of the police. One, focusing on youths from 13 to 21 years of age, included 

a role-playing exercise depicting various traffic stop scenarios and a discussion in which the roleplayers shared their experiences and perceptions. The other forum brought together community 

representatives, the media, advocacy organizations, and law enforcement to obtain perspectives on 
39

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

the nature, causes, and prevention of racial profiling. The panels ended by recommending various 

racial-profiling prevention strategies that were discussed in more depth during study circles held 

by the police department. 

Focus Groups. The previous components led to the final phase of the Phoenix Police 

Department’s strategy. Three study circles (focus groups) were held to develop, prioritize, and 

codify recommended racial-profiling prevention strategies, given the information gathered from 

the Knowledge Cafés and forums to generate a best practices guide for preventing racial profiling. 

The focus groups generated five prevention strategies: 1) Increase observation by supervisors to 

ensure that officers comply with policies; 2) Develop a mentorship program in which experienced 

officers mentor new officers and community youth; 3) Take educational programs to middle and 

high schools to teach youth how to interact with police; 4) Train community members on their 

legal rights and how to interact with police; and 5) Extend community service in the communities 

where officers work. 

Challenges and Lessons Learned: Training Case Studies 

The following issues were identified as being common across the training projects or were 

particularly important to one grantee. They represent challenges encountered when trying to 

implement training programs and are not necessarily the limitations related to decreasing racial 

profiling, which will be addressed in more detail in Section 3. They may help agencies to identify 

and prepare for challenges they might face in adopting similar types of training programs. 

Officer Buy-In. Including personnel from a wide variety of divisions across the department can 

increase officer buy-in. The Metro Nashville Project Steering Committee, for example, came from 

a wide swath of the agency, including the Training Division, Strategic Development Division, 

Behavior Health Division, Office of Professional Responsibility, Fraternal Order of Police, and 

Black Officers Association. The leadership of the agency believed that this broad participation 

was a key element in the success of the initiative. 

The Phoenix Police Department engineered an intensive campaign to involve all internal 

departmental stakeholders. Through interviews, focus groups, group workshops, and dialog with 

external stakeholders such as community members and the media, the department worked hard to 

prevent internal resistance from patrol or other constituencies. 

Community and Stakeholder Involvement. The inclusion of community stakeholders in an 

advisory capacity throughout the development as well as during the presentation of training can 

help build credibility and legitimacy for the initiative. Each grantee involved the community in its 

training programs. Metro Nashville and Phoenix, in particular, used community constituencies 

in fundamental ways, through participation on steering committees and by providing meaningful 

opportunities to influence the development and delivery of the training 
40

These initiatives provide the impetus for law enforcement and the community to engage one 

another and build positive relationships that will be reflected in trainings. All initiatives were highly 

interactive and, in many cases, the trainings were opportunities for both law enforcement and 

community members to speak candidly and educate each other through presentations, dialogs, and 

workshops. Grantees went to great lengths to be inclusive, having both agency and community 

representation. 

Agencies should not assume that they understand community members’ perspectives on racial 

profiling. It is also helpful to learn more about how officers within law enforcement agencies 

view the issue. In addition to their training programs, Phoenix and Metro Nashville conducted 

focus groups with both groups to obtain information on their perceptions. By recruiting a 

cross section of the community and officers of all ranks, it is possible to obtain the views and 

perceptions and identify the concerns and perceptions of the public and police needed to educate 

and train both interested parties. 

Internal versus External Training. Departments struggle with the decision of whether to bring 

in a curriculum or trainers from outside the organization to provide the training or to develop 

or implement the training internally. There are good reasons to support each approach, such 

as the expertise available externally and the ability to tailor a training to the specific concerns 

of a particular community. In these communities, the agencies chose to begin with externally 

generated curriculum or technology and to adapt that technology to the specific issues of racial 

profiling in their communities. While resources may not be available in all agencies to adapt 

existing curriculum, this approach may be the best option for agencies with the capacity to use it. 

Keep the Focus. Creating true collaborations can help keep projects on track through difficult 

stages. Metro Nashville’s Project Steering Committee, made up of several units, including the 

union, and community organization leaders, were dedicated to the success of the initiative even 

when changes in the department’s organization and the city’s manner of conducting business 

changed dramatically. When delays occurred, the committee stayed in contact with project 

partners, kept them informed on the reasons for the delays, and renewed everyone’s commitment 

to the initiative. 

Use a Comprehensive Approach. The grantees recognized that training alone is not enough 

to create the change necessary to reduce racial profiling. Integrating training into the overall 

mission of the agency is important to the success of the training’s goal. Observing the subsequent 

behavior of officers and providing reinforcement when needed should be thought of as inherent 

components of any training endeavor. The agency may find it valuable to complement training 

initiatives with direct supervision of officer behavior as well as programs to deal with identified 

problem officers. 

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations
41

Measure the Effects of the Training. The best way to know if training worked is to for the 

agency to measure actual changes in behavior. This can be done through a formal evaluation or 

through an accountability mechanism such as an early intervention system. It is important to 

determine at the outset of training what specific behaviors the agency wants to change. Wellcrafted training curricula will address the steps that lead to these behaviors. 

Accountability Measures. By identifying the actual behaviors to change, an agency can determine 

which members of the agency should be responsible for ensuring that officers adhere to the lessons 

put in place to effect this change. Supervisors and other managers should be held accountable for 

observing their officers and intervening with support when necessary. 

Data Collection 

In response to allegations of racial profiling, jurisdictions around the country began to track 

information about individuals who are stopped, searched, ticketed, and/or arrested by police 

officers during routine traffic encounters. These data collection efforts are an attempt to provide 

the reliable numbers that will enable police and community leaders to better understand their 

policing activities. With this information, departments will be able to examine and revamp 

policing strategies based on effectiveness, reconfigure deployment of police resources, or take 

other measures to reduce the instances or perception of racial profiling. 

Data collection includes both obtaining information on stops and objectively analyzing the data, 

which is often done through a partnership between the police department and outside experts. 

Once a law enforcement agency begins to gather traffic stop data, the question then becomes what 

steps should be taken to understand and interpret the data. By themselves, the demographics of 

traffic stops are difficult to interpret (Fridell, 2005). External benchmarks involve developing an 

estimate of the percentages of persons of various racial and ethnic groups who are at risk for 

being stopped on roads that are patrolled by the law enforcement agency in question. 

In addition to external comparisons, a jurisdiction that collects information on officer identification 

can compare traffic stop data for the same unit (or the same officer) over time or could compare 

that data for several units (or several individual officers) that patrol the same area (or similar areas). 

Additionally, data on speeding tickets and searches may be analyzed to determine if minority 

drivers are disproportionately ticketed or searched. Finally, data on searches may be analyzed 

to compare the percentages of persons searched, by race, with the corresponding hit rates (i.e., 

searches producing contraband) for different racial groups. 

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 
42

Potential Benefits 

Data collection has the ability to provide departments with important information about the 

characteristics of different types of stops being made by officers, the proportion of police time 

spent on high-discretion stops (those stops for minor violations, e.g., license plate light out), and 

the results of such stops (Farrell et al., 2005). This information can be used to help shape and 

develop training programs to educate officers about racial profiling and interactions with the 

community. Additionally, data can be used by agencies to develop police and community dialog to 

assess the quality and quantity of police-citizen encounters. Data on traffic stops also allow law 

enforcement agencies to be able to address questions about the effectiveness of their traffic stop 

enforcement activity, often for the first time. Historically, most police agencies have not recorded 

information or systematically analyzed traffic enforcement data to see what works. These data, 

while collected to address concerns about racial profiling, can also help law enforcement agencies 

understand the effectiveness of one of their most frequent activities, traffic enforcement. 

The data analysis process can facilitate law enforcement collaboration with community stakeholders 

through public presentations and discussion of the results. These efforts provide valuable 

opportunities to improve police-community dialog and increase officer accountability. 

Limitations and Caveats 

While jurisdictions can derive many benefits from implementing data collection systems, they 

also face several potential hindrances. Concerns about budgetary expenditures associated with 

collecting data are a common preliminary challenge. There certainly is the fear that data collection 

will be a burden to officers in the course of their normal activities. As a result, some agencies have 

concerns about police disengagement from their duties, which may lead to officers scaling back on 

the number of legitimate stops they make. Departments also need to audit these records to ensure 

that officers will comply fully with data collection. Finally, understanding and interpreting data 

that are collected to measure racial disparities in traffic enforcement is a challenging undertaking. 

Agencies may be concerned that the data analysis challenges will produce incomplete or misleading 

findings. 

Case Studies 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina 

In anticipation of a mandate by the North Carolina General Assembly that would require every 

police agency in the state to collect data on traffic stops, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police 

Department began the process of racial profiling data collection. With PCSRRP funding, the 

department was able to implement a data collection system using advanced technology, collect a 

substantial amount of valid data, and work with a research team to analyze the data collected. 

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations
43

Project Components 

Project Development. In early 2000, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department drafted a 

policy and outlined a project plan to address “arbitrary profiling,” the department’s term for 

“an officer’s use of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, age, citizenship, sexual orientation, or any 

other arbitrary classification in conducting a police activity that is motivated by discrimination” 

(Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Technical Assistance Guide). The draft policy and 

data collection plan were developed through a series of meetings with officers from all ranks. 

Representatives from 14 community organizations met with the department and reviewed 

the policy, data collection forms, and methodology. This joint meeting provided a forum for 

community and police to work together to shape this initiative in an effort to build trust and 

reduce incidents of racial profiling. 

Data Collection. The department researched several methods of data collection and determined 

that an Intranet-based system could easily be integrated with the already existing department 

technology. Initially, however, the state would not accept agencies’ data submitted electronically 

and required them to submit paper forms or enter data at the state’s web site. Following efforts 

by Charlotte-Mecklenburg and other large state law enforcement agencies to change this policy, 

at the state’s request, Charlotte-Mecklenburg developed a program that validates agencies’ data 

before submission through the Internet to the state and the state validates the data a second time 

when received.. 

The department collects data on both vehicle and pedestrian stops. Officers using the automated 

data collection system do so from laptops in their cruisers, while officers on motorcycle, bicycle, 

and foot patrols use a paper-based system. 

Training. An extensive training program launched by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police 

Department, which included a supporting message from the chief, taught commanding officers 

the legal ramifications associated with racial profiling. A detailed manual provided information 

on how to complete both the electronic and paper stop-data forms. Supervising officers were 

ordered to take the knowledge they learned from the course and train the officers under their 

command. 

Field Testing. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department used a systematic phase-in 

approach by testing the both the online and paper systems in a single district. The department 

made changes based on officer concerns and as system obstacles arose. Once the officers in 

this district had adapted to the new procedure, the technology was implemented in each patrol 

district. 

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 
44

Analysis. After collecting data for 1 year, the department contracted with a research team at 

North Carolina State University to produce a data analysis report that would provide information 

about traffic stop practices within the department, assess causes of disparate traffic stop activity, 

and address the issue of racial profiling both internally and with the community. The department 

issued public final reports in 2002, 2003, and 2005 and planned to generate internal reports for 

management purposes. In addition to preparing the agency for future legislation requiring data 

collection on traffic stops, Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s efforts to develop electronic data collection 

systems have served as a model for statewide practices. 

Dothan, Alabama 

The Dothan Police Department believed that bias-based policing can occur at any level of policing, 

not just in traffic stops. In light of this, the department upgraded existing technology to record 

extensive data on every police-citizen encounter in the jurisdiction. The department hoped the 

data could be used not only to address the issue of racial profiling but to serve as a management 

tool for supervisors to monitor officers’ behavior and to provide officers with bias awareness 

training, among other uses. 

Project Components 

Steering Committee. A steering committee composed of community representatives and 

members of the police department, along with a local university and a private consulting firm, 

designed the data collection system and a bias awareness training program for officers to ensure 

accurate data collection. The steering committee focused its efforts on three specific initiatives: 

1. Identify data collection requirements and capabilities, 2. Establish oversight and accountability 

goals and procedures, and 3. Finalize outcome and benchmark decisions. The department chose 

to gather information on reported incidents of excessive force and citizen complaints as a baseline 

to determine whether the data collection reduced incidents of racial profiling. 

Technology. The department initially used PDAs to collect traffic stop data, but officers found 

it difficult to use such a small device. Entering large amounts of data was time-consuming, using 

the keyboard was difficult while wearing gloves in cold weather, and at night officers needed to 

use their interior lights, decreasing their outside visibility. Additionally, some data connectivity 

problems were experienced with the PDA system: Wireless coverage was spotty, and the city’s 

technological infrastructure was problematic. These issues resulted in low officer buy-in. Later, 

tablet PCs were purchased to replace the smaller PDAs. Equipped with a wireless modem and 

tracking software, the tablet PCs were tested and approved by officers, using the equipment in the 

field. Connectivity and coverage continued to be problems, however. 

Dothan notes five key issues that affected the outcome of its project: 1. Lack of change 

management efforts; 2. Shifting project definition; 3. Minimal training efforts; 4. Lack of 

mechanisms and strategies to hold personnel accountable at various levels in the organization; 

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations
45

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

and 5. Inadequate pilot testing periods for technology solutions before their purchase. Because 

information technology (IT) staff were not involved in the planning stages of the project or 

alerted to the need for their expertise early on, the project was delayed 9 months because of other 

IT department commitments. 

Kansas City, Missouri 

Following the Missouri Legislature’s passage of legislation mandating all law enforcement agencies 

to collect traffic stop data in 2000, the Kansas City Police Department decided to collect more 

data than required by law and extended its efforts to all discretionary stops. The department 

hoped to glean a more complete picture of stop activity and to show the community that it was 

willing to address the issue of racial profiling openly and directly. 

Project Components 

Community Involvement. The Kansas City Police Department realized that internal organizational 

communication on issues related to race and diversity would need to be strengthened, along with 

communication between the department and public. As a result, the department identified two 

goals for the forums that it would convene: 1. “Identify, address, and resolve minority issues within 

the department” and 2. “Identify, address, and resolve minority issues between the department 

and the community, a part of which is racial profiling perceptions and allegations” (Kansas City 

Police Department Technical Assistance Guide). Forums were held with command staff to talk 

about race and diversity and areas needing improvement within the agency. Additionally, the 

chief of police assembled 33 representatives from a variety of community organizations and 22 

department members of various ranks to discuss racial issues in and around Kansas City. The 

group, constituting the participants of the police-community forums, identified three major areas 

of concern: minority recruitment, youth programs, and accountability. This group of police 

and community members continued to meet periodically throughout the entire data collection 

project. 

Data Collection. The Kansas City Police Department found considerable room for improvement 

with the state’s manual data recording forms and explored different data collection methods. The 

department determined that it could improve existing technology by purchasing racial profiling 

data collection software. To meet the goal of giving every officer in the department the ability to 

collect traffic and pedestrian stop and check data electronically, handheld computers (iPAQ) were 

purchased and integrated with the existing mobile data terminals (MDT) and desktop computers. 

The software and technology would allow every officer to record data at the time of a stop, and at 

the end of a shift, officers would synch up and upload the data to a server for storage, reference, 

and retrieval. 
46

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

Training and Phase-In Approach. Following 1 year of project design and development, 

representatives from each department division were trained on the new technology and software 

in a hands-on training curriculum provided by the software vendor. Participants were charged 

with sharing what they learned with the officers in their bureau, acting as a liaison during data 

collection implementation and attending each roll call during the implementation phase. The 

department tested the new program in the Central Patrol Division, which had a high number 

of both MDT and iPAQ users. After 1 month of testing and working through problems that 

arose, the department moved on to the Special Operations Division, followed by the rest of the 

department. The department wanted to ensure continuity, standardization, and accurate data 

collection throughout the process; therefore, it took this systematic approach so that each division 

and each officer had the same information and knowledge of the new technology and software. 

Although the department did not conduct a formal evaluation, user accounts indicated that the 

new data collection method was beneficial. The shift from filling out paper bubble forms to using 

computerized technology eased data collection and improved accuracy of the data. 

Oakland, California 

The Oakland Police Department established a racial profiling task force comprising a cross 

section of community representatives to develop a departmental policy on racial profiling and 

a comprehensive data collection program. The department recruited members from nine local 

and national organizations, all of whom had proven to be successful partners in earlier policecommunity projects. Because the department recognized that other constituencies would want 

to be involved, it held public meetings to obtain input and feedback from other community 

constituencies that were not part of the original task force. 

Project Components 

Training. At the outset of the task force, the group identified common goals and objectives and 

met at least once a month throughout the project. Task force members participated in various 

formal training courses to gain experience and understanding of a broad range of viewpoints on 

the subject of racial profiling and went on ride-alongs with Oakland police officers. 

Understanding the Problem. Once trained, the task force held a Bay Area workshop on racial 

profiling to educate the public and make it aware of the Oakland Police Department’s efforts 

to address concerns about racial profiling. The task force also administered two surveys, one 

measuring community perceptions of racial profiling by the department, the other addressing 

officers’ perceptions of the problem of racial profiling. The results showed a large gap between 

the perceptions of the two groups, demonstrating the need for data collection and analysis to 

address racial profiling. Two vendors, Scantron Corporation and the RAND Corporation, worked 

with the Oakland Police Department to identify the type and format of information to collect on 

stops and to plan a strategy and protocol for the collection process. 
47

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

Data Collection. The Oakland Police Department’s new racial profiling policy outlined the data 

collection process. Data would be collected on all stops (vehicle, pedestrian, and bicycle). No 

arbitrary consent searches would be allowed; instead officers would be required to complete a 

field contact form to identify the reason for a search. Supervisors would be required to closely 

monitor those under their command, and biannual reports were to be submitted to the chief. 

Two different systems would be used to collect data on all traffic stops: paper forms and handheld PDAs. The department developed a system to manually scan paper forms and translate the 

data into a statistical software program. Officers using the PDAs would synch up to the main 

database at the station at the end of their shift to download all data on stops. These two methods 

of collection were merged into one file where the data could be analyzed and reports could be 

generated. 

Analysis. During almost 6 months, officers recorded 7,607 stops. Through their partnership, 

RAND and the Oakland Police Department analyzed the data and published their findings to 

share with the community as well as with other departments across the country. Using U.S. 

Census Bureau figures for Oakland, the researchers found disparities in stops but did not conclude 

that such disparities were evidence of racial profiling. An interesting feature of the analysis was 

that the researchers compared the disparities between officer perceptions of the race of drivers 

and the census figures both during the day and at night, when officers would be unlikely to identify 

the race of the driver prior to the stop. Researchers suggested that because rates of disparities 

between the race of drivers stopped and the race of the census figures were consistent across 

daytime and nighttime stops, it was unlikely that that stops made under conditions where officers 

could see the race of the driver would be attributable to bias. 

Challenges and Lessons Learned: Data Collection Case Studies 

The following issues with data collection were identified as being common across the data collection 

projects or were particularly important to one grantee. They represent challenges encountered 

when trying to implement data collection programs and are not necessarily the limitations related 

to decreasing racial profiling through data collection, which will be addressed in more detail in 

Section 3. The issues are intended to help agencies identify and prepare for challenges they might 

face in adopting similar types of data collection programs. 

Officer Buy-In. The integration of new technologies often necessary for data collection requires 

a strong, detailed project plan with support from the chief down to the line officers. Without 

administrative support, officer buy-in at all levels, IT team support, and a good training program, 

a project of this magnitude may not succeed. Officer buy-in is crucial to the success of a racial 

profiling data collection initiative. The Dothan Police Department recommends developing a 

change management plan in part to put into place a well-considered strategy for obtaining buy-in 

from internal constituencies. 
48

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department involved officers from the start and made 

modifications based on their comments and concerns. In one case, officers were concerned that 

they could be unfairly accused of profiling and wanted to be able to provide additional information 

on the collection instrument. As a result, new data collection fields were added to the database 

to capture reasons for the stop as well as for the search, if it was performed. A function to allow 

officers to enter data in stages rather than begin again each time was also added to save time. The 

ability to address this concern and modify the data collection instruments helped increase officer 

support. 

To adequately research technological equipment and readily identify problems from an early stage, 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg recommends working closely with the agency’s technology division. The 

agency’s Computer Technology Services Division worked with officers to develop a system that 

met their needs as well as state mandates. 

Community and Stakeholder Involvement. Each strategy area is, in addition to its own stated 

purpose, an opportunity for law enforcement to forge relationships with community members 

and to increase transparency and accountability. With data collection, bringing the community 

to the table with law enforcement to address the issue together is apt to pay more dividends than 

trying to create and administer a data collection system without community input. In fact, without 

doing so could further exacerbate community perceptions that they are not valued by the agency. 

Each data collection grantee included the community in fundamental ways during the initiative. 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Dothan, and Oakland established steering committees with members of 

the community and law enforcement, and Kansas City held several focus groups and community 

forums to discuss the issue of racial profiling. Kansas City has continued to work with these 

constituencies on issues of race and diversity. 

Planning Issues. A solid project plan and room for modification in the project timeline are 

important. The project should be viewed as more than just producing an analysis report; it is a 

long-term process that must have support from all levels of the agency and from the community. 

Within the project, careful preparation and planning for each meeting with a task force or the 

community are essential for maintaining a productive working relationship and achieving project 

goals. Racial profiling is an extremely sensitive topic for both police and community members to 

address; therefore, meeting plans with defined goals and parameters are helpful to keep members 

focused on the tasks at hand. Creativity can yield unexpected benefits. For example, the Oakland 

police decided to hire one of the task force members to draft its racial profiling policy. The hiring 

of a civilian was rare, but the task force and the department felt that the member’s objectiveness 

and experience led to the cultivation of a solid policy of which all involved were proud. 
49

Section 2. Funded Program Areas and Major Observations 

Technical Issues. Thoroughly investigating technical issues during the planning process is 

essential to avoid obstacles. Budgeting for any technology necessary for traffic or pedestrian stop 

data collection can be challenging. Changes in functionality and price can occur quickly and result 

in delays caused by having to rewrite budgets, obtain administrative approval, and other factors. 

Several of the grantees realized during their initiatives that the technological tools they selected 

were inappropriate for the task or had limitations for which they were not prepared. 

It is important to test procedures and all other aspects of the new collection system before starting 

to collect data to work out the kinks and allow time for officers to become accustomed to using the 

new technology. Audits can be useful to ensure that the data collection procedures are followed 

and that the data are accurate. 

Determining the proper benchmark for comparison to collected traffic stop data was a major 

challenge for all grantees. Each agency considered competing methodologies and often sought 

advice from external research consultants before deciding on a benchmarking methodology. 

Working with Consultants. Frequent communication between the police and research 

contractors or other vendors enabled the departments to answer questions quickly, ensure that the 

report addressed all necessary issues, and increase the chances that all parties will be happy with 

the report. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department worked with the agency’s consultant 

in an iterative process to make sure that all of the agency’s questions were answered and that the 

report was clear for a law enforcement and public audience. 

51

Section 3

Many lessons have been learned through the Promoting Cooperative Strategies to Reduce Racial 

Profiling (PCSSRP) program about the ways in which law enforcement agencies can address racial 

profiling. To help clarify these lessons, this section identifies common themes that emerged as 

PCSSRP grantees implemented various kinds of programs designed to reduce racial profiling. 

Some issues and challenges that sites grappled with overlap with issues endemic to organizational 

change and may be familiar to readers. This section elaborates on the experiences most pertinent 

to the goal of reducing racial profiling, discusses challenges that remain to be addressed, and 

offers recommendations for future efforts to reduce racial profiling based on the experiences of 

the PCSRRP grantees. 

Table 1 is a concise summary of the benefits, limitations, and caveats of each strategy for reducing 

racial profiling. It includes information on accountability, recruitment and hiring, minority 

engagement, training, and technology and data collection. Technology and data collection are 

combined because of the overlap between them. The technology projects focused on ways to 

facilitate data collection and the data collection initiatives required the development or enhancement 

of an agency’s technology. As a result, these grantees encountered the same types of issues. 

Table 1: Benefits, Limitations, and Caveats of Strategies for 

Reducing Racial Profiling. 

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling 

 Benefits Limitations and Caveats

• Creates systems that allow 

for increased supervisory 

monitoring of officer 

conduct related to traffic and 

pedestrian stops. 

• Allows monitoring of 

officers’ activity across 

assignments. 

• Data from system can 

help guide agency policies, 

trainings, and responses to 

community concerns. 

• Broadens agency focus 

beyond racial profiling 

to address multiple 

accountability and 

supervisory issues. 

• Monitoring may reduce 

citizen complaints and agency 

liability. 

• Well-designed EIS systems 

require higher levels of 

technology capacity and 

commitment of resources. 

• Off-the-shelf products may 

not facilitate monitoring of 

traffic and/or pedestrian 

stops. 

• Agencies must carefully 

determine thresholds for 

alerts and intervention. 

• The value of an EIS 

system is limited unless 

agencies are willing to use 

information to identify and 

address organizational as 

well as individual officer 

explanations for troubling 

patterns.

Accountability (Early 

Intervention System [EIS])
52

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling

• Creative strategies are necessary to 

increase agency diversity and better 

reflect community demographics. 

• Increasing diversity of officers 

and employees can convey a sense 

of equity in agency practices 

and enhance community trust in 

organization. 

• Diversity in hiring also creates 

opportunity for positive culture 

change within the agency. 

• Recruiting minority communities 

holding less-positive perceptions 

about law enforcement may be 

challenging. 

• Well-designed programs can help 

reduce negative public perceptions 

of the police, particularly by minority 

group members. 

• Can facilitate more sensitive and 

empathetic responses of law 

enforcement to particular community 

challenges. 

• May increases public willingness to 

comply with officers’ instructions 

during stops and increase their 

willingness to report crimes and work 

with the police to solve public safety 

problems. 

• Engagement strategies need to be 

long-term, ongoing efforts to be 

effective. 

• Increasing personnel racial 

and gender diversity does 

not automatically lead to the 

cultural changes necessary to 

prevent racial profiling. 

• Increased recruitment and 

hiring of diverse pools of 

candidates does not ensure 

comfort and retention of 

minority groups in an agency. 

• Engagement needs to involve 

meaningful opportunities 

for input and partnership; 

poorly designed programs may 

exacerbate existing tensions 

and create new ones. 

• Community trust depends 

on officer willingness to 

engage the community and 

demonstrate change visible to 

the community.

Recruitment and Hiring

Minority Engagement
53

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling

• Provides tools to teach specific 

skills related to traffic and 

pedestrian stops and addresses 

problematic behavior in a 

systematic way. 

• Offers opportunities to express 

organizational priorities 

concerning racial profiling and 

biased-based policing, reinforce 

these priorities, and work toward 

changing organizational processes. 

• Offers a forum for the public 

to share experiences with law 

enforcement. 

• Addressing racial profiling in 

training is challenging and can 

be confrontational; training 

curriculum and facilitators/

instructors must be chosen 

carefully. 

• Well-designed systems make 

collecting data faster and easier for 

officers in the field. 

• Appropriately reported data 

can increase transparency to the 

public. 

• Well-designed data collection and 

analysis can provide agencies with 

empirical data on stop patterns 

to identify specific areas of 

concern and forge organizational 

responses. 

• Data can help identify specific 

officers who may be engaged in 

disparate stop practices to target 

for intervention or assistance. 

• Additional post-training 

monitoring may be needed to 

ensure that officers engage in 

behavior promoted by training. 

• Implementing traffic stop data 

collection technology requires 

training, information technology 

expertise, and resources. 

• Traffic stop data collection 

technology works best when it is 

integrated with other existing data 

systems in agency. 

• Technology to facilitate data 

collection is only a tool; proper 

data analysis is necessary for 

solutions. 

• Agencies must determine 

benchmarks against which stops 

will be compared. 

• Traffic stop data analysis requires 

specialized knowledge and may 

necessitate assistance from outside 

research consultants.

• Ultimately, analysis may identify 

disparities but often does not 

definitively identify whether racial 

profiling is actually occurring. 

Training

Technology and Data 

Collection
54

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling 

Common Themes Across Strategy Areas 

While each of the six selected strategies in the PCSRRP program have been useful for addressing 

a number of integrity- and accountability-related problems within organizations, it was unclear at 

the outset of this project how well they would address the challenge of racial profiling specifically. 

It is not possible to measure whether specific programs reduced or prevented racial profiling 

entirely; however, what we do know from the review of these PCSRRP grantee experiences is 

that numerous lessons can be learned about the best practices for adopting and implementing 

programs to address racial profiling. 

When reviewing the lessons identified by the grantee sites, we observed that while the specific 

focus may shift depending on the strategy, most lessons appear to fall under four themes: 1. 

Organizational buy-in; 2. Community involvement; 3. Managing technology and planning issues; 

and 4. Keeping the project’s focus. These themes are not mutually exclusive, but they provide broad 

categories that may form a useful framework for agencies to consider when developing similar 

strategies to address racial profiling. What follows is a discussion of the four themes, focusing on 

the ways they affect initiatives targeting racial profiling. Table 2 following these discussions breaks 

down the themes across strategy areas, with specific examples from the grantees’ projects. 

1. Organizational Buy-In.

When developing and implementing programs geared toward addressing and reducing racial 

profiling, issues of organizational buy-in are critical. The issue of racial profiling is highly volatile 

with officers and with members of the community. The experiences of the grantees indicate that 

the support and active participation of line officers and union leadership are important factors 

affecting the success of these initiatives. For data collection and technology projects, the agency’s 

information technology (IT) staff can also be critical partners in the process. 

Although the involvement of rank-and-file officers is important to most agency initiatives, the 

highly charged nature of racial profiling raises the stakes. The utility of initiatives may be diminished 

significantly when line officers are not supporting the endeavor. All strategies seeking to reduce 

or prevent racial profiling must embrace the legitimate uses of discretion by police officers. As 

research has shown, at the interface between officers and members of the public, perceptions 

of how fairly the police handle the situation are even more important to the resulting level of 

satisfaction than the actual outcomes of the interaction. When officers will not acknowledge the 

perception that racial profiling may be occurring, none of these strategies is likely to be effective. 

Efforts to obtain buy-in should focus on two levels—internally within the agency and externally 

with the community constituencies who are the focus of the initiative. Inside the organization, 

command staff and project teams should strive to obtain support for both the goal of reducing 

racial profiling and the perception that racial profiling occurs, as well as the manner in which this 
55

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling

goal is pursued. Agencies can emphasize the benefits for officers of addressing racial profiling: 

working to increase trust and cooperation between the agency and the public can enhance officer 

safety during stops as well as to increase the likelihood that, more generally, community members 

will provide police with information, the lifeblood of an investigation. Showing unequivocal topdown support for the initiative may also work to emphasize the worthiness of the goal. 

Even if they approve of the goal, officers may be wary of the manner in which it is pursued. 

The disconnect between the goals and perspectives of management and workers has been welldocumented in many kinds of organizations; however, given the volatility of emotions surrounding 

the issue of racial profiling, aligning the culture of the line officers with this organizational priority 

may be particularly challenging. If there is a high level of distrust between the rank and file and 

command staff, line officers may be suspicious of the motives driving the initiative and worry 

about what it will mean for their careers. Will they be more easily subject to discipline? Will their 

workload increase dramatically? To persuade line officers to embrace the initiative, the experiences 

of the grantees strongly suggests that involving these officers and their representatives in all stages 

of development and implementation is vital. Giving line officers meaningful opportunities to 

contribute and help guide the process may make the process feel less suspect and will allow them a 

voice if they believe certain project elements are not in their best interest. If done well, this strategy 

may assuage feelings that the initiative is politically motivated rather than designed to address an 

important issue of professionalism and effectiveness. It is also incumbent on supervisors and 

managers to demonstrate how a program will likely benefit individual officers or at least will not 

have a negative effect on them. 

On initiatives requiring new sophisticated technology or enhancements of existing technological 

tools, bringing members of the IT unit to the table can be extremely beneficial. These personnel 

can offer their expertise on a very complex subject. IT staff may know what other agencies 

experienced when implementing various kinds of technology, what systems will work best with 

the agency’s current infrastructure, and the challenges likely to be encountered. Their involvement 

offers the potential for enormous savings in time and money, as well as avoiding problems that can 

hinder the project’s momentum. 

2. Community Involvement. 

Like organizational buy-in, community involvement is a common issue that becomes increasingly 

salient when addressing racial profiling. In our system of democracy, a law enforcement agency’s 

legitimacy depends in large part on its ability to persuade public stakeholders that it is working 

in their interest, a particularly important point in this context because racial profiling often is a 

problem of perception. In fact, as mentioned earlier, research has found that satisfaction with 

the police is not related to the actual outcome of the traffic stop. Drivers’ perceptions of how 

fairly and respectfully they are treated by an officer during the stop is more important to their 
56

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling 

assessment of the stop. An agency with a reputation for stopping minorities unfairly may find that 

minority drivers have difficulty getting beyond perceptions of the unfairness of the stop even if 

the officer is acting appropriately and respectfully. 

Involving the community when addressing the issue of racial profiling is particularly important 

because the most common police-public contact is traffic stops. Efforts to improve public 

perceptions of officer behavior during traffic stops, therefore, are vital to an agency’s legitimacy. 

How this translates to an officer’s daily responsibilities is that, without public support, the police 

are less effective. Community members will be less inclined to provide law enforcement with 

information, which is essential particularly for agencies implementing community policing. 

A major challenge is the often contentious relationship between the police and various community 

constituencies. These groups may have fixed negative opinions of each other that can be relatively 

impervious to contradictory information or evidence. As Farrell et al. (2000) note, “Police and 

community discussion of the racial profiling controversy often resembles a frozen account; the 

same anecdotes are repeated on both sides, with only slight variations as to the factual details...

Without an effort to reduce the rhetoric between opposing parties, data on traffic stops may 

become another tool used by either side when it is most politically expedient.” One powerful 

way of interrupting these narratives is to offer community members meaningful opportunities to 

influence agency policy and procedure. 

The grantee agencies used numerous strategies to solicit input from their communities and to 

involve them fundamentally in the development and implementation of their initiatives. Histories 

of antagonism simply will not disappear once an agency decides it is ready to work with that 

community. In some cases, just getting community members to engage with the police at all may 

take substantial work. Investing the time to bring these groups to the table can help demonstrate 

that the agency is serious about involving them and forging relationships that may extend beyond 

the parameters of the immediate initiative. Agencies should try to involve the public in every stage 

of development and implementation, rather than at a single point, and give them real opportunities 

to influence the process and goals, perhaps through membership on a steering committee or task 

force. Like some grantees, agencies may be able to use their initiatives as an opportunity to 

develop more regular contact with community groups. 

Agencies can show a willingness to learn about the values held by targeted communities. For 

instance, agencies that understand that minority communities may not identify with the traditional 

reasons for seeking a career in law enforcement can craft a message that taps into the ideas and goals 

that are important to them. Advertising in targeted media produced in groups’ native languages 

and reaching out to respected community leaders may also benefit efforts to demonstrate good 

faith. Other gestures like holding meetings outside of government buildings and accommodating 

community members’ schedules when organizing meetings or events possess positive symbolic 

value. 
57

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling

In addition to improving perceptions of inclusion and equity, inviting members of immigrant 

communities can help the department understand the expectations that people may be bringing 

from their countries of origin and teach members of these communities how to respond to an 

officer during a traffic stop. 

3. Managing Technology and Planning Issues. 

Planning and management issues, particularly around technology when it was involved, were 

important to the sites’ implementation of racial profiling reduction programs. These concerns can 

be more clearly conceptualized as falling under the umbrella of the two themes discussed above: 

organizational buy-in and community involvement. If technology that is central to an initiative 

fails, it can undermine confidence in the initiative itself. If people, both inside the agency and in 

the community, feel left out of the process, bridging conflict becomes more difficult. To avoid 

these pitfalls, effective planning and project management are a necessity; indeed, fundamental. 

New technology is extremely useful for addressing community concerns about racial profiling. 

Answering community members’ questions in a way that demonstrates that the agency is taking 

their concerns seriously requires most agencies to collect and manage new data. Such initiatives 

demand sophisticated tools, many of which will be new to the agency. Obtaining useful data, 

whether on traffic stops or officer activities, can be a complex endeavor. Agencies will need to 

clearly understand their objectives and what methods and technology will best allow them to meet 

these objectives. Traffic stop data collection projects are perhaps the most complicated strategy 

technologically, but these issues are no less important when implementing an early intervention 

system or launching an enhanced interactive web site. 

The grantees discovered just how difficult technology can be. Determining exactly what the 

agency’s needs are and how to integrate new forms of technology seamlessly can be challenging. 

But if these steps are not taken, the agency is more likely to purchase a system or hire a vendor that 

does not fit its needs. Testing the hardware, software, and the process of collecting and managing 

the data are important steps to take before formally launching a data collection program. For 

example, if a newly implemented early intervention system starts generating alerts for people who 

haven’t crossed any thresholds, any efforts by the agency to promote the system internally may be 

undermined. 

In addition to technical issues, there are concerns about how it will be used. Ensuring sufficient 

privacy of information can help make personnel more accepting of agency efforts. Community 

members may feel more affinity for data collection efforts and technological tools if the agency 

takes steps to provide clear reasons for their use and satisfactory explanations for what happens to 

the information collected. Testing the systems used and efforts to make new tools as user-friendly 

as possible also appeared to increase the likelihood that the initiative would be implemented 

successfully. Taking steps to understand the level of time and resources needed will prevent 
58

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling

delays as well as communicate to both agency personnel and the community that the issue is being 

addressed seriously. And although the main goal may be to gather information that enables a dialog, 

the efforts an agency puts into getting to this point will not go unnoticed by the community. 

On a less technical note, effective planning and management have the potential to enhance the 

benefits of an initiative and can help agencies avoid unnecessary pitfalls. For example, one 

grantee found that having focus group facilitators who are knowledgeable about the issue of 

racial profiling improved the quality of the information gleaned from the groups. Another agency 

realized that the cadet program was suffering because it did not communicate program standards 

clearly enough with the school administrators responsible for referring students to the program. 

Checking on how the law applies to data privacy can help an agency avoid having to rethink a 

system that failed to account for this issue. Although mistakes can never be avoided entirely, 

careful planning and flexibility can mitigate the consequences. 

4. Keeping the Project’s Focus. 

The strategies implemented by the grantees are complex endeavors requiring the coordination of 

many different resources. Agencies can encounter several obstacles when implementing one of 

these strategies while staying focused on the end goal of addressing and, if found to be occurring, 

reducing racial profiling during traffic and pedestrian stops. 

One obstacle is the distraction of mission creep, where the project loses sight of the goal when 

the parameters of the project are expanded too far. Community forums, for example, can be less 

effective if the communities most concerned by perceptions or experiences of racial profiling 

are not targeted. Discussions could be allowed to drift to other topics that are important to the 

public but not germane to racial profiling per se. This is not to say that these issues should not 

be discussed. But agencies need to be adept at steering the conversation back to the subject of 

racial profiling. 

It is important to recognize that implementing a project successfully does not equal project success. 

While certainly a necessary step toward achieving the desire outcome, simply measuring traffic 

stops or increasing an agency’s diversity does not automatically reduce racial profiling. Initiatives 

that are somewhat removed from the process of measuring traffic stop disparities are even more 

prone to lose sight of the goal, because agencies will need to engage in additional efforts, namely 

data collection, to learn whether new recruitment, training, community engagement, or internal 

accountability programs have affected the nature of traffic enforcement. But even data collection 

programs can get off track if they merely culminate in a report issued to the community with no 

additional dialog with the public, no changes to policy and procedure, no alterations to training, 

and no follow-up efforts. Agencies should view these initiatives as long-term investments that 

cannot stand alone. 
59

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling

Table 2 breaks down each strategy by these four areas and provides examples of how grantees 

addressed them. 

Table 2. Lessons Learned from the Field: Strategies for 

Reducing Racial Profiling. 

• Demonstrating that the EIS 

is not intended for formal 

discipline may improve 

officers’ attitudes toward the 

system. 

• Minimizing the number 

and types of people who 

could view the information 

through layered security as 

Denver did, can prevent 

inappropriate access and 

help to address some 

concerns. 

• Preparing first-line 

supervisors to engage in 

mentoring and coaching 

and how to interpret data 

generated from the EIS 

accurately and consistently 

can be important to the 

strategy’s success

• Community involvement 

at every stage allows for 

a different perspective, 

such as inviting the 

community to discuss the 

ideal characteristics of 

officers and information 

dissemination, as St. Paul 

did. 

Organization Buy-In

Community 

Involvement

• Training and re-educating 

the entire agency on its role 

within the community and 

the collaborative effect of 

working together with the 

public may assist in reaching 

consensus, signifying a 

united approach. 

• As each agency 

implementing this strategy 

understood, recruiting a 

diverse workforce requires 

marketing efforts specific 

to the communities being 

targeted. 

• As was done in Rochester, 

conducting an internal 

review of minority 

employees’ perceptions of 

agency race relations may 

help not only obtain vital 

information concerning 

how to engage particular 

communities, but 

demonstrate to officers that 

their input is valued as the 

effort moves forward. 

• Giving officers with a can 

help prevent perceptions 

of one-sidedness; in 

New Haven, the police 

held dialogs between 

community members and 

law enforcement where the 

community could relate 

experiences and police 

could educate community 

members on the realities of 

police work. 

• Citizens may feel 

uncomfortable discussing 

their feelings and 

perceptions in front of 

police officers; holding and 

facilitating meetings on 

neutral ground can assist in 

mitigating this apprehension. 

Accountability (EIS) Recruitment and Hiring Minority Engagement
60

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling

• Indianapolis directly 

engaged faith leaders in 

the African-American 

community to demonstrate 

the agency’s commitment 

to their diversity goals; 

such relationships can 

promote partnership beyond 

combating racial profiling. 

• When addressing community 

members who may not have 

previously considered the 

benefits of a career in law 

enforcement, focusing on 

leadership, problem solving, 

and community service may 

do more to promote positive 

images than primarily 

discussing apprehending 

criminals; Jersey City 

focused on the “human 

side” of law enforcement 

while Indianapolis centered 

their campaign on “everyday 

heroes.” 

• Several grantees noted that, 

for a successful recruitment 

of a diverse workforce it is 

important to do more than 

simply recruit to help people 

succeed in getting into the 

department. Mentoring 

recruits through the 

written, oral, and physical 

agility exams increases the 

likelihood of their success. 

• As in Buffalo, individuals 

recruited by an agency 

to discuss racial profiling 

may want to talk about 

other issues facing the 

community; without losing 

focus, agencies should 

try to strike a balance in 

opening discussion to topics 

important to the community. 

• Focusing events around the 

interests of minority youth 

will provide a perspective 

not often heard but vital to 

community-police relations; 

the Buffalo police offered 

an entertainment-based 

opportunity for youths to 

interact with police and for 

both groups to engage in 

serious discussion, as well. 

• If trust is established, 

event participants may give 

first-hand explanations 

of personal experiences, 

including cultural norms 

and expectations for 

recently arrived groups; this 

information can enhance 

understanding of behavior 

during traffic and pedestrian 

stops. 

• It is important that those 

who lead focus groups or 

study circles understand 

the issue of racial profiling; 

this will help participants 

appreciate the broader 

implications of racial 

profiling and will provoke 

conversation . 

• It is essential to test and 

validate the data from the 

various components of 

the system. If officers 

are incorrectly identified 

based on inaccurate data, 

the process may be seen 

as unfair and may never 

recover. 

Community 

Involvement (cont.)

Managing Technology 

and Planning Issues
61

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling

• This kind of program takes 

a substantial amount of 

time to get off the ground, 

requiring at least 2 years 

to recruit, screen, tutor, 

test, select, train, and place 

officers. 

• Successful implementation 

doesn’t necessarily lead to 

reductions in racial profiling. 

Once the officers have had 

time in the field, agencies 

should evaluate whether 

hiring a more diverse 

workforce had an effect on 

racial profiling 

• Without a focus on a specific 

area or group, resources and 

timely information can be 

lost because individuals do 

not see general issues of 

police community relations 

as immediately relevant to 

their lives. 

 • An EIS collects large 

amounts of data on 

individual officers, much 

of which can be considered 

confidential; agencies 

considering implementing 

an EIS should check the 

status or legality of the 

data collected, especially 

concerning the public 

record. 

• Through the use of 

technology, it is possible to 

do too many things at once 

and lose the original purpose 

of the system, in this case 

reducing racial profiling. 

• Most agencies experience 

some difficulties in 

determining thresholds 

of reliable indicators of 

biased based policing. 

Focusing on your agency’s 

specific mission and goals 

should help the successful 

identification of appropriate 

thresholds and the creation 

of intervention strategies to 

address misbehaviors. 

Managing Technology 

and Planning Issues 

(cont.)

Keeping Focus

• The Rochester police learned 

that the success of cadet 

program partly involved 

clearly communicating 

expectations both to and 

from participants from the 

start

• This kind of program takes 

a substantial amount of 

time to get off the ground, 

requiring at least 2 years 

to recruit, screen, tutor, 

test, select, train, and place 

officers. 

• Successful implementation 

doesn’t necessarily lead to 

reductions in racial profiling. 

Once the officers have had 

time in the field, agencies 

should evaluate whether 

hiring a more diverse 

workforce had an effect on 

racial profiling 

• Without a focus on a specific 

area or group, resources and 

timely information can be 

lost because individuals do 

not see general issues of 

police community relations 

as immediately relevant to 

their lives. 
62

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling

• As in Redlands, involving 

patrol throughout the 

entire process can decrease 

officers’ apprehension 

about new technology and 

suspicions about how it will 

be used by management 

• To ensure internal buy-in, 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg 

drafted a data collection 

policy and project plan 

outline in conjunction with 

officers of all ranks. 

• The agency’s information 

technology staff may be able 

to offer guidance in selecting 

a vendor and already may 

be working well with a 

particular vendor. Involving 

them from the start can be 

extremely helpful. 

• As the experiences of 

Tacoma, Redlands, and 

Dothan show, engaging the 

community in fundamental 

ways—through steering 

committees or task forces—

shows the community that 

the agency is taking the issue 

of racial profiling seriously, 

incorporates important 

perspectives in the process, 

and helps to publicize the 

agency’s efforts. 

• Phoenix conducted 

structured interviews with 

officers to obtain their views 

on various issues related to 

racial profiling. 

• Each grantee conducting 

training provided 

opportunities for both 

sworn officers and 

community members to be 

involved. This gives both 

groups the chance to offer 

their perceptions as well as 

to listen to the other group’s 

perspectives. 

• Including community 

stakeholders in an advisory 

capacity throughout 

the development and 

presentation of the training 

will assure credibility and 

legitimacy for what is 

ultimately delivered. Metro 

Nashville conducted focus 

groups with community 

members and involved them 

directly in training.

Organizational Buy-Ins

Community 

Involvement

Training Technology Data Collection
63

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling

• The contract process 

can be cumbersome for 

all parties and can delay 

the analysis phase of the 

project considerably. Plan 

accordingly. 

• Methodically testing 

procedures before 

implementing technology 

and data collection can 

help test all aspects of the 

new collection system, 

work out the kinks, and 

allow time for officers to 

become accustomed to 

using the new technology. 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg and 

Kansas City used a phasein approach, implementing 

the technology in one 

district and fixing problems 

before rolling it out in other 

districts. 

• Being involved to an extent 

in the preparation of the 

final report will enable 

the department to answer 

questions quickly, ensure 

that the report addresses 

all necessary issues, and 

increase the chances that all 

parties will be happy with 

the final product.

• Including room for 

modification in the project 

timeline can be useful when 

navigating the budget and 

contract processes. The 

project should be viewed as 

a long-term process—rather 

than as merely producing an 

analysis report—that must 

have support from all levels 

of the agency and from the 

community.

• Holding training sessions in 

neutral locations rather than 

government buildings can 

help make the community 

participants feel more 

comfortable interacting with 

law enforcement. This is 

what Metro Nashville did 

during the Perspectives on 

Profiling training involving 

both community members 

and law enforcement. 

• By being up front and 

honest with officers when a 

problem with the technology 

arises and responding 

quickly, they may be more 

likely to support the 

endeavor instead of deciding 

it is a waste of time. 

• Training can be effective 

only if it is part of a 

more comprehensive 

approach to eliminating 

racial profiling, is 

complemented by direct 

supervision of the 

behavior of officers, 

has programs to deal 

with officers identified 

as having problems, and 

continues community 

engagement to identify 

current concerns. 

Managing Technology 

and Planning Issues

Keeping Focus
64

Understanding if Strategies to 

Reduce Racial Profiling Are Working 

Although this evaluation was not intended to measure the direct impact of these programs on the 

incidence of racial profiling, the following are a few comments about how agencies may begin to 

evaluate the effectiveness of various strategies for reducing racial profiling. 

One thing that becomes clear through this analysis is that, although sites may have implemented 

their initiative successfully, even establishing trusting relationships with community constituencies 

or diversifying their workforces, outcome evaluations that follow such programs over a longer 

course are needed to see whether racial profiling was occurring and, if so, whether it was actually 

reduced. At the outset, departments should think about any evaluation strategy as trying to 

measure 1) whether racial and ethnic traffic stop disparities change following the implementation 

of a strategy, and 2) whether community perceptions of racial profiling decline in a particular 

jurisdiction following program implementation. These questions require agencies to collect data 

on traffic stops and community perception and to monitor those results over time. 

Through the review of PCSRRP grantees it appears likely that multiple strategies may need to be 

implemented together or in some sequential order to address the issue of racial profiling most 

effectively. Many of the agencies that were most successful at making change adopted multiple 

strategies or created holistic approaches to the problem; for example, the introduction of data 

collection as a tool was often accompanied by training about the issue of racial profiling. More 

work is needed to understand if these strategies should be used in a particular order, such as 

should an agency make recruitment and hiring changes before engaging the minority community. 

In addition, more research is necessary to identify whether implementing programs together or in 

particular sequences are more or less successful at reducing both the practices and perceptions of 

racial profiling. It is critical for agencies to continue sharing information and best practices as they 

replicate the strategies outlined in this report and build new, locally driven responses to concerns 

about racial profiling. 

Section 3. The Challenges of Addressing Racial Profiling
65

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69

Participants

Case Study Participants

Personnel, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses listed here were valid as of June 2007. Neither 

the authors nor the COPS Office can vouch for their current validity. 

Accountability 

Arlington Police Department 

620 W. Division Street 

Arlington, TX 76011 

Lieutenant Jeff Petty 

817.459.5625 

pettyj@ci.arlington.tx.us 

Denver Police Department 

1331 Cherokee Street 

Denver, CO 80204 

Lieutenant Rhoda Jones 

720.913.6013 

jonesr@ci.denver.co.us 

St. Paul Police Department 

367 Grove Street 

St. Paul, MN 55101 

Amy Brown 

651.266.5507 

amy.brown@ci.stpaul.mn.us 

Recruitment 

Indianapolis Police Department 

50 North Alabama Street 

Indianapolis, IN 46204 

Liz Allison 

317.327.3452 

a3663@indygov.org 

Jersey City Police Department 

8 Erie Street 

Jersey City, NJ 07302 

Sergeant Jaclyn Baljko 

201.547.4736 

jbaljko@jcnj.org 

Lansing Police Department 

120 West Michigan Avenue 

Lansing, MI 48933 

Lieutenant Bruce Ferguson 

517.483.4682 

bferguson@ci.lansing.mi.us 

Minority Engagement 

Buffalo Police Department 

74 Franklin Street 

Buffalo, NY 14202 

Maureen Oakley 

716.851.4444 

maoakley@bpd.ci.buffalo.ny.us 

New Haven Police Department 

1 Union Avenue 

New Haven, CT 06519 

Chief Francisco Ortiz 

203.946.6333 

Rochester Police Department 

185 Exchange Boulevard 

Rochester, NY 14614 

Michael Bialaszewski 

585.428.7141 

mike.bialaszewski@cityofrochester.gov 

Using Technology 

Austin Police Department 

P.O. Box 689001 

Austin, TX 78768-9001 

Yuki Miyamoto 

512.974.5853 

yuki.miyamoto@ci.austin.tx.us 
70

Case Study Participants

 

Redlands Police Department 

30 Cajon Street 

Redlands, CA 92373 

Captain Tom Fitzmaurice 

909.798.7613 

tfitzmaurice@redlandspolice.org 

Tacoma Police Department 

3701 South Pine Street 

Tacoma, WA 98409 

Sergeant Dennis Kieffer 

253.591.5583 

dkieffer@cityoftacoma.org 

Training 

Brookline Police Department 

350 Washington Street 

Brookline, MA 02445 

Officer David O’Lauglin 

617.730.2409 

davidolaughlin@usa.net 

Metropolitan Nashville Police Department 

200 James Robertson Parkway 

Nashville, TN 37201 

Lieutenant Jim Stephens 

615.880.2850 

jstephens@police.nashville.org 

Phoenix Police Department 

620 W. Washington Street 

Phoenix, AZ 85003 

Sharyn Zlotnick 

602.534.2036 

sharyn.zlotnick@phoenix.gov 

Data Collection 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department 

601 East Trade Street 

Charlotte, NC 28202 

John Couchell 

704.336.8782 

jchouchell@cmpd.org 

Dothan Police Department 

210 N. Saint Andrews Street 

Dothan, AL 36303 

Captain Jim Smith 

334.793.0419 

Kansas City Police Department 

1125 Locust Street 

Kansas City, MO 64106 

Captain Diane Mozzicato 

816.234.5459 

dmozzicato@kcpd.org 

Oakland Police Department 

455 Seventh Avenue 

Oakland, CA 94607 

Candace Jessie 

510.238.7140 

cjessie@oaklandnet.com 

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services

1100 Vermont Avenue, N.W.

Washington, DC 20530

To obtain details about COPS programs, call the

COPS Office Response Center at 800.421.6770

Visit COPS Online at www.cops.usdoj.gov

e08086157

In s t i t u t e o n Ra c e a n d Ju s t ic e