Early Warning Systems: Responding to the Problem Police ...

1 Department of JusticeOffice of Justice ProgramsNational Institute of JusticeR e s e a r c h i n B r i e fNational Institute of JusticeJuly and FindingsDiscussed in this Brief:A system-atic study of Early Warning systemsdesigned to identify officers whomay be having problems on the joband to provide those officers withthe appropriate counseling or train-ing. The findings are based on asurvey of 832 local law enforce-ment agencies and site visits tothree departments with establishedearly Warning issues:A growing body of evi-dence indicates that in any policedepartment a small percentage ofofficers are responsible for a dispro-portionate share of citizen com-plaints. Early Warning systems helpsupervisors identify these officers,intervene with them, and monitortheir subsequent though Early Warning systemsare becoming more popular amonglaw enforcement agencies, littleresearch has addressed the effec-tiveness of such programs.

2 ThisBrief reports on a study that estab-lishes a baseline description of earlywarning system programs and askssome fundamental questions: Are Early Warning systems effec-tive in reducing Police officer mis-conduct? Are some types of Early warningsystems more effective than others? What impact do Early warningsystems have on the departmentsin which they operate? Do Early Warning systems haveunintended and undesirableeffects?Key findings:Twenty-seven percent of local law enforcementagencies serving populations of atleast 50,000 had an Early warningIt has become a truism among policechiefs that 10 percent of their officerscause 90 percent of the problems. Inves-tigative journalists have documenteddepartments in which as few as 2 percentof all officers are responsible for 50 per-cent of all citizen phe-nomenon of the Problem officer wasidentified in the 1970s: Herman Goldsteinnoted that Problem officers are wellknown to their supervisors, to the topadministrators, to their peers, and to the residents of the areas in which theywork, but that little is done to alter theirconduct.

3 2In 1981, the Commissionon Civil Rights recommended that allpolice departments create an Early warn-ing system to identify Problem officers,those who are frequently the subject ofcomplaints or who demonstrate identifi-able patterns of inappropriate behavior. 3An Early Warning system is a data-basedpolice management tool designed to iden-tify officers whose behavior is problemat-ic and provide a form of intervention tocorrect that performance. As an earlyresponse, a department intervenes beforesuch an officer is in a situation that war-rants formal disciplinary action. The system alerts the department to theseindividuals and warns the officers whileproviding counseling or training to helpthem change their problematic 1999, 39 percent of all municipal andcounty law enforcement agencies thatserve populations greater than 50,000people either had an Early Warning sys-tem in place or were planning to imple-ment one.

4 The growing popularity ofthese systems as a remedy for policemisconduct raises questions about theireffectiveness and about the various pro-gram elements that are associated witheffectiveness. To date, however, little hasbeen written on the Briefreports on the first indepth investigationof Early Warning systems. The investiga-tion combined the results of a nationalsurvey of law enforcement agencies withthe findings of case studies of threeagencies with established prevalent are earlywarning systems?As part of the national evaluation ofearly Warning systems, the PoliceExecutive Research Forum funded bythe National Institute of Justice and theOffice of Community Oriented PolicingServices surveyed 832 sheriffs officesand municipal and county Police depart-ments serving populations of 50,000 orEarly Warning Systems: Respondingto the Problem Police Officerby Samuel Walker, Geoffrey P.

5 Alpert, and Dennis J. KenneySupport for this research was provided through a transfer of funds to NIJ from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. COMMUNITY ORIENTED POLICING DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE2R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f system in 1999; another 12 per-cent were planning to establishsuch a agencies were more likelythan smaller agencies to use anearly Warning system. Amongagencies with 1,000 or moresworn officers, 79 percent had orplanned to have an Early warningsystem; only 56 percent of agen-cies with between 500 and 999sworn officers had or planned tohave such a program. No standards have been estab-lished for identifying which offi-cers should participate in earlywarning programs, but there isgeneral agreement that a numberof factors can help identify prob-lem officers: citizen complaints,firearm-discharge reports, use-of-force reports, civil litigation,resisting-arrest incidents, andpursuits and vehicular from the three case-studyagencies (in Miami, Minneapolis,and New Orleans) indicate the following: In spite of considerable differ-ences among the programs, eachprogram appeared to reduceproblem behaviors significantly.

6 Early Warning systems encour-age changes in the behavior ofsupervisors, as well as of theidentified officers. Early Warning systems are high-maintenance programs thatrequire ongoing caveat is in order about the find-ings reported here. The researchdesign was limited in a number ofways, and each of the Early warn-ing systems studied operates in thecontext of a department s largercommitment to increased account-ability. It is impossible to disentan-gle the effect of the department sculture of accountability from thatof the Early Warning audience:State and locallaw enforcement administrators,planners, and policymakers;researchers; and and responses were receivedfrom 571 agencies, a response rate of 69 percent. The response rate was signifi-cantly higher for municipal agencies thanfor sheriff s one-fourth (27 percent) ofthe surveyed agencies had an Early warn-ing system in 1999.

7 One-half of thesesystems had been created since 1994,and slightly more than one-third had beencreated since 1996. These data, combinedwith the number of agencies indicatingthat a system was being planned (another12 percent), suggest that such systems willspread rapidly in the next few Warning systems are more preva-lent among municipal law enforcementagencies than among county sheriffs does an Early warningsystem work? Early Warning systems have three basicphases: selection, intervention, andpostintervention monitoring. Selecting officers for the standards have been established for identifying officers for Early Warning programs, but there is general agreementabout the criteria that should influencetheir selection. Performance indicatorsthat can help identify officers with prob-lematic behavior include citizen com-plaints, firearm-discharge and use-of-forcereports, civil litigation, resisting-arrestincidents, and high-speed pursuits andvehicular a few departments rely only oncitizen complaints to select officers forintervention, most use a combination ofperformance indicators.

8 Among systemsthat factor in citizen complaints, most(67 percent) require three complaints in a given timeframe (76 percent specify a 12-month period) to identify an with the pri-mary goal of Early Warning systems is tochange the behavior of individual officerswho have been identified as having prob-lematic performance records. The basicintervention strategy involves a combina-tion of deterrence and education. Thetheory of simple deterrence assumes thatofficers who are subject to interventionwill change their behavior in response to aperceived threat of assumes that officers not sub-ject to the system will also change theirbehavior to avoid potential Warning systems also operate on the assumption that training, as part ofthe intervention, can help officersimprove their most systems (62 percent), the initialintervention generally consists of a reviewby the officer s immediate of the Responding agencies (45 percent) involve other command offi-cers in counseling the officer.

9 Also, thesesystems frequently include a training classfor groups of officers identified by the sys-tem (45 percent of survey respondents).Monitoring the officer s subsequent all (90 percent) theagencies that have an Early Warning sys-tem in place report that they monitor anofficer s performance after the initialintervention. Such monitoring is generallyinformal and conducted by the officer simmediate supervisor, but some depart-ments have developed a formal process of observation, evaluation, and half of the agencies (47 percent)monitor the officer s performance for 36months after the initial intervention. Halfof the agencies indicate that the followupperiod is not specified and that officers are monitored either continuously or on a case-by-case e s e a r c h i n B r i e f Limitations of the surveyfindingsThe responses from the national surveyshould be viewed with some law enforcement agencies mayhave claimed to have an Early warningsystem when such a system is not actu-ally functioning.

10 Several Police depart-ments created systems in the 1970s,but none of those appears to have sur-vived as a permanent from three case studiesThe research strategy for the casestudies was modeled after the birthcohort study of juvenile delinquencyconducted by Wolfgang and found that a smallgroup within the entire cohort ( per-cent of the total) were chronic delin-quents and were responsible for halfof all the serious crime committed bythe entire cohort. The Early warningconcept rests on the assumption thatwithin any cohort of Police officers, asmall percentage will have substan-tially worse performance records thantheir peers and, consequently, willmerit departmental intervention. Theresearch was designed to confirm orrefute the Police departments were cho-sen for the case study investigation:Miami Dade County, Minneapolis, andNew Orleans. The three sites representlarge urban areas, but the size of eachpolice force varies considerably: Atthe time of the study, Miami Dade had2,920 sworn officers, New Orleans had1,576 sworn officers, and Minneapolishad 890 sworn three sites were chosen for sever-al reasons.