Community Violence as a Population Health Issue Proceedings of a Workshop (2017) / Chapter Skim
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6 Public Health and Law Enforcement Collaborations
6 Public Health and Law Enforcement Collaborations
Pages 57-72
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John Markovic, senior social science analyst in the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)
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As a nation of creativity and innovations, there is often a desire to move quickly to scale interven 1 This section is the rapporteurs' synopsis of the presentation made by Steve Marans, the Harris Professor and director of the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence/ Childhood Violent Trauma Center at the Yale Child Study Center, and director of the trauma service and professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, and the statements have not been endorsed or verified by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
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The general symptoms of trauma are reexperiencing the index event, avoidance, and hyperarousal. One lesson learned about trauma, said Marans, is that it is perhaps the most significant public health crisis the United States faces.
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Today, all police officers in New Haven and the other communities where this program has been implemented are trained on the intersection of child development, human functioning, trauma, and community policing, and participating clinicians are trained in the basics of policing. Similar to the police, clinicians are on call 24 hours per day and respond with police when notified there has been some potentially traumatic event.
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From page 61... ...
The goal, he said, is to train police officers who respond to these horrific and potentially traumatic situations with something to offer the affected individuals that can benefit their lives. Too often, police responding to tragedies believe there is nothing they can do to help the innocent victims of these highly traumatic events.
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Except for 2009, when stimulus funds were allocated for hiring more police officers, COPS hiring grants per year have averaged between $200 million and $400 million. COPS also has a community policing development program and a grant program to promote demonstration projects, training, and research on advancing community policing.
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Markovic noted that since the early days of COPS, its hiring programs emphasized recruiting and hiring police officers motivated by a spirit of service rather than a call to "action." A public health approach to violence reduction can be integrated with policing practices, said Markovic. He noted that among the several existing frameworks that consider violence as a public health issue, a common thread is to focus on those who are most likely to be affected by violence and promote action as something that will benefit the common good, rather than as a strict law enforcement action.
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Markovic noted that maps of violence hot spots and comorbidities such as low education levels, a shortage of services, obesity, and cardiovascular disease usually overlap in distressed communities down to the block level. Social network analysis is used as an advanced analytics tool to enable a focused deterrence approach to addressing community violence.
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Medina Henry, an associate director for training and technical assistance at the Center for Court Innovation, described the 3-year Minority Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. Howard explained that the official goals of the project are to • reduce violent crimes against minority youth; • reduce community violence and crimes perpetrated by minority youth; • improve academic outcomes for participants; • reduce negative encounters with law enforcement; • increase access to public health and/or social services; and • improve coordination, collaboration, and linkages among agencies.
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From page 66... ...
Some interventions target antisocial behaviors such as bullying, gang activities, violent crimes, homicides, and trauma. All sites focus on prosocial behavior, whether through police athletic league mentoring, healthy living, or other recreational activities.
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At some of the sites, such as in Cincinnati, law enforcement officers serve as the facilitators, leading workshops and physical recreational activities and acting as formal or informal mentors. In Cincinnati, a youth organization provides police officers, who largely come from the youth services unit, with training on mentorship.
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DISCUSSION Ted Corbin started the discussion by asking how such amazing examples of collaborations at the local level between health care and public safety and at the federal level between health and justice come to be. Marans replied, "Being in pain and having humility," and Markovic said
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He also noted that in the early 2000s, the New York Police Department had a courtesy, professionalism, and respect training program. Customer satisfaction surveys showed that even when people received traffic tickets or citations for other violations, they reported feeling they had been treated fairly by the police.
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Instead, they experience a steady diet, day in and day out, of confrontations and failures of life that can lead to the feeling that they are ineffective. "If we equip police officers to be able to be effective and feel effective, it is stunning the extent to which the blinders come off and the roles of being effective agents and supporting people getting back on their feet, and protecting lives is mobilized," said Marans.
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From page 71... ...
An unidentified workshop participant remarked that the programs Henry described seem to be working hard to build solidarity and break down the "us versus them" mentality between young people and police officers. She then asked Henry if the programs are also working to connect these young people to employment or training opportunities, and Henry replied that every one of the nine sites has a component that connects young people to educational support and internships.
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