Evidence-Based Policing at Work in Smaller Jurisdictions BY TIM HEGARTY, L. SUE WILLIAMS, SHAUN STANTON, AND WILLIAM CHERNOFF Tim Hegarty is a captain in the Riley County, Kansas, Police Department, where he currently oversees its Administration Division. L. Susan Williams is an associate professor of sociology at Kansas State University. Shaun Stanton is formerly a crime analyst with RCPD, and William Chernof is a doctoral student in sociology at Kansas State University T he police profession has been traditionally hesitant to accept a leading role in reducing crime, evidenced by the slow adoption of emerging best practices in crime reduction. Smaller agencies, in particular, rarely accept the risks of attempting new strategies, either because they fear failure or because they believe that these strategies, usually developed in large urban areas, simply cannot be translated to the non-urban landscape. he Riley County Police Department (RCPD) in Manhattan, Kansas, was no diferent. In 2008, a transition in leadership in RCPD brought about a change in thinking by publicly committing itself to a new mission of reducing crime and improving its citizen’s quality of life. he question it faced was how. For most of its existence, RCPD has relied on the traditional model of modern policing that decades of research show is inefective for crime control: “random patrol, rapid uniformed response, deployment of oicers to crime investigation once an ofense has been detected, and reliance on law enforcement and the legal system as the primary means of trying to reduce crime.” 1 So RCPD’s leadership decided to focus on evidence-based strategies that were efective in reducing crime, particularly those that addressed high crime places. In this article, we describe our eforts at applying evidence-based policing in a smaller jurisdiction. Moving Forward with Evidence-Based Policing In early 2010, RCPD implemented Operation Impact, an initiative to reduce crime by focusing on high-crime macro places (neighbor- hoods). A research team from Kansas State University (KSU) assessed the efect of Operation Impact on three categories of burglary: residential, commercial, and automotive. 2 hey found a statistically signiicant reduction in total burglaries from 2009 to 2010 in each of the impact zones. 3 In late 2012, RCPD reined its strategy to incorporate the latest crime and place research, which suggested that crime concentrates at micro places (smaller than neighborhoods, that is, street segments no more than a city block in length). Following an experiment con- ducted by the Sacramento, California, Police Department, which found that increasing police presence in high-crime micro places for short periods (12 to 15 minutes—the Koper Principle) results in reduced crime and calls for service, 4 RCPD developed a similar strategy for Manhattan, Kansas, named Initiative: Laser Point, again in partnership with KSU researchers. he RCPD study was innovative for two reasons. First, the hot spots policing literature had not been applied to smaller jurisdictions such as Manhattan (population 53,000). Lum and Koper note that only a single study in their Evidence-Based Policing Matrix was conducted in a true nonurban or metropolitan environment. 5 Second, and more important, little research has assessed behavioral practices of police oicers in hot spots. RCPD sought practical and experimental insights into these issues for both its own agency and other agencies of similar size and situation. 1 Weisburd, D., & J. Eck. (2008). What Can Police Do to Reduce Crime, Disorder, and Fear? Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 593 (2004), 43-65, quoted in Jerry Ratclife, Intelligence-Led Policing. Portland: Willan, 65. 2 Williams, L. S., & D. Kurtz. (2011). “Initial Assessment Report” Manhattan, Kansas. 3 Ibid. 4 Telep, C. W., R. J. Mitchell, & D. Weisburd. (2012). How Much Time Should Police Spend at Crime Hot Spots? Answers from a Police Agency Directed Randomized Field Trial in Sacramento, California. Justice Quarterly (published online). 5 Lum, C., & C. Koper. 2013. Evidence-Based Policing in Smaller Agencies: Challenges, Prospects, and Opportunities. he Police Chief 80, 42-47. Tim Hegarty L. Susan Williams 14 www.cebcp.org