The Bainbridge City Council has been woefully inactive on policing matters, despite widespread recognition that problems exist at the BIPD and the community wants to address them. We are obliged, by necessity, to seek ideas from other places. Fortunately, other places have city councilmembers that have thought quite a bit about community/police relations. With this post, ICP will start a new practice of highlighting policing ideas from other jurisdictions.
First up: a white paper from Seattle City Councilmember (and former Seattle police officer) Tim Burgess on "A New Policy for Policing." Many of his ideas are not relevant to our small city. Many of them are. Of particular interest:
-The importance of understanding crime statistics (and asking for the right statistics)
-What a culture of "inquiry and innovation" looks like in a police department
-The nexus between hiring, training, and high quality policing (and why today's officers need a new skill set than what's worked in the past)
-how civilian employees (and volunteers?) can enhance policing efforts
Link to the paper here
