Community Safety Web Podcast: Recent Episodes
Darrel Stephens & Brian Stephens
The Community Safety Web Podcast is about creating safe communities through collaboration between the police, private security, criminologists, and the public to develop and evaluate evidence-based policy to guide safety decisions.
Today we will be talking about Organized Retail Crime. It is not just shoplifting; it is a large-scale effort to steal retail merchandise and resell it for financial gain. It is not a new topic; it has been a problem for the retail industry for many years.
Although reliable statistics is a challenge, there are indications the problem has increased in recent years. The results of a 2023 National Retail Federation national survey of 63 retailers showed that losses from shrink was $112 billion in 2022. In increase of 20% over 2021. External theft accounted for 36% of the losses and internal theft 29%.
A recent case in North Carolina illustrates the challenge in dealing with organized retail theft. When authorities entered the home of a couple they were investigating, they discovered over a million dollars in stolen merchandise from Lowe’s home improvement and other retailers in the area. The couple was selling the merchandise online that several others had stolen for them – which is typically how organized retail theft works. The couple was convicted of the thefts and served 9 months in prison.
In June 2023 the Fairfax County Police Department announced they were focusing on retail crime as a part of their Summer Crime Initiative.
We are fortunate to have with us today the Chief of the Fairfax County Police Department - Kevin Davis. He was appointed Chief in April 2021. Previously he served as the City of Baltimore’s police commissioner from 2015 to 2018, chief of the Anne Arundel County, MD, and as assistant chief of the Prince George’s County, MD police department where he started his career in 1992.
Today, we will be talking about Capital Region Real Time Crime Center in Tallahassee, Florida that was launched in February 2023. The first real time crime center was established by the NYPD in 2005. It was originally designed to operate 24/7 to provide information support to patrol officers and detectives in real time – as they were responding to and investigating events on the street. The concept has evolved over the past 18 years to take advantage of a wide range of technology resources. RTCC’s have been adopted by police agencies across the country. Many of them integrate technology such as cameras, gunshot detectors, license plate readers and analytical software to provide operational information support to field operations.
In a unique partnership Florida State University hosts the Capital Region Real Time Crime Center in which the FSU Police Department, Leon County Sheriff’s Office, Tallahassee PD, Capitol Police and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are working together to provide information and analytical support as they respond to calls and investigate crime in the field. The RTCC includes an in-house learning lab in which students and researchers from FSU’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice can provide immediate analysis of crime trends.
We are fortunate to have with us today Professor Brian Stults from the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University where he has been a faculty member since 2006. He is also the Director of Research and Evaluation for the RTCC. Brian’s research addresses issues of race, crime, and community in urban areas, with a particular focus on residential segregation, racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and spatial and temporal patterns of crime.
Also joining us is Leslie Rabon who is the Executive Director of the Capitol Region RTCC. She began her career with the Leon County Sheriff’s Office in 2004 when she was hired as the agency's first Intelligence and crime analyst. Leslie has been involved in the development of strategies related to intelligence, data-driven approaches, gang enforcement, prevention, and intervention on a local, state, national, and international level. Mrs. Rabon holds a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and a master’s degree in critical incident management from St. Leo’s University.
In this Episode we discus the Allied Universal World Security Report published in September 2023. The report – Allied’s first - is based on a survey of 1,775 Chief Security Officers from large global companies in 30 different countries.
Some of the key findings in the 54-page report include:
· 88% of the CSOs report that company leaders are more concerned with cyber security than physical security.
· 80% of the CSOs believe that recruitment and retention of security professionals will be a major problem over the next five years.
· 90% of the CSOs indicate that it is more important for security professionals to have technological capabilities and a high level of customer service training.
· More than $1 trillion dollars in revenue was lost in 2022 from internal and external physical security incidents in 2022.
The report is filled with interesting insights into the growing challenges of private security. We only have time to touch on a few of them, so we encourage you to read the report. You can find it here: https://www.worldsecurityreport.com/
Today we will be talking about Police Vehicle Pursuits. Police pursuits have been the subject of controversy for many years because they often end with crashes that result in serious injury or death to those involved, and frequently innocent motorists and pedestrians not involved in the chase. The US Department of Transportation’s Center for Statistics and Analysis reports that pursuits ending in death increased 41% from 2001 to 2021 – 36% of the deaths were innocent bystanders.
Many cities across the country have seen increases in both violent crime and traffic injuries and deaths following the pandemic. In response, some police agencies have relaxed their vehicle pursuit policies resulting in an increase in pursuits. In Milwaukee for example, policy changes in 2015 and 2017 contributed to pursuits increasing from 414 in 2017 to 1083 in 2018 – injuries tripled. In 2021, the California Highway Patrol reported 12,500 pursuits with 20% resulting in a crash and 7% in a fatality or injury. Pursuits increased by 7% in 2021 over 2020. Twenty-seven percent of the deaths and 31% of the injuries were innocent bystanders.
The Police Executive Research Forum recently released a new report funded by the US Department of Justice that provides guidelines for police agencies. The Chair of the Pursuit Working Group for the report is Professor Geoff Alpert from the University of South Carolina Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. We are very fortunate to have him with us today.
He is an internationally known and respected researcher who has made enormous contributions to improving policing through his research, teaching, consulting, and writing over his 50+ year career. He has published 26 books and monographs and authored or co-authored 120 articles and book chapters. He has written 3 books on police vehicle pursuits. His research covers a wide range of subjects, including the use of force, reducing officer-involved collisions, and discretion.
This episode of the Community Safety Web Podcast continues our series highlighting emerging security technologies that are dynamically addressing community safety issues and problems. In this episode, we embark on an exciting journey into robotics in policing and private security.
Over the years, science fiction has tantalized our imaginations with visions of robotic law enforcement and security systems. From the cybernetic police officers of "RoboCop" to the AI-driven sentinels of "Minority Report," the idea of machines protecting our streets and communities has captured both our fears and our hopes.
What once seemed like a distant future is rapidly becoming our present reality. Robotics, driven by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and sensor technology breakthroughs, are transforming the landscape of policing and private security. These advancements offer unprecedented opportunities to enhance public safety, streamline operations, and address the challenges that have plagued these sectors for decades.
Dean Kamen, Founder of DEKA Research and Development Corporation, helps us explore the evolving capabilities of this groundbreaking technology and the myriad of long-standing problems it can address while considering some common concerns and misconceptions.
Today we will be discussing Sentinel Event Reviews in policing. Sentinel events are incidents with undesirable outcomes that may signify underlying systemic weaknesses, likely the result of multiple contributing factors and may identify ways to strengthen the system or process and prevent future negative outcomes. A sentinel event review is an examination involving all stakeholders of the system in which the error occurred. It aims to prevent similar errors in the future rather than assigning blame and punishing those making the error.
Sentinel event reviews have their roots in the manufacturing environment and have become widely used in other high-risk fields like aviation and health care. Over the past 10 years the police have begun to utilize the sentinel event review process. Although not widespread, police departments in Seattle, Tucson, Madison, Milwaukee, New York, and Tempe have conducted sentinel event reviews.
We are pleased to have Michael Scott with us today. He is a Clinical Professor and Director of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, School of Criminology & Criminal Justice (CCJ) at Arizona State University. Mike began his career in policing as a police officer with the Madison, WI police department. His career in policing has been both as a practitioner serving as a policer chief and special advisor to the chief in St. Louis and the NYPD Commissioner. He was a Senior Researcher at PERF and clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Law. He is a 1987 graduate of Harvard Law School where he received his Juris Doctorate.
Mike is also involved with a project at Arizona State University to explore the development of a statewide system for conducting sentinel event reviews of police use of force, particularly among vulnerable populations.
Today we are excited to bring you the first in a series of episodes focused on specific innovative and evolving security and safety technology solutions that are solving problems and reducing risk. As we begin this series it should be noted that the Institute and hosts of this podcast are not endorsing these technologies or the companies who have created them. Rather we see this is an opportunity to explore technology solutions that can have significant impact on ongoing security and safety challenges.
It is a widely accepted fact, and a topic of a previous episode, that gun violence in the US continues to be a tragic epidemic. Gun violence is a leading cause of premature death in the U.S. killing more than 38,000 people and causing nearly 85,000 injuries each year. Police and security professionals and community leaders have long searched for ways to prevent, mitigate and reduce these crimes. The technology we are highlighting today aims to do that through identifying weapons before they can be used.
Today we are happy to be joined by Mike Ellenbogen – the founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Evolv Technologies. Started in August, 2013, Evolv is a growth stage company focused on protecting people from gun and bomb violence by fusing innovative new sensors and advanced AI.
Evolv’s stated mission is to “return confidence and peace of mind to people visiting public spaces”. Evolv has created a touchless screening system to identify weapons and health related threats. Through a combination of technologies that include advanced sensors, machine learning, cloud analytics and centralized data storage; the Evolv platform identifies guns, knives and explosives without disrupting people movement and flow.
Unlike traditional metal detectors, x-rays and manual bag checks Evolv’s process allows individuals to walk freely through their portals without stopping. The technology allows for the screening of 4000 people an hour in a single lane.
Today we will be talking about stress and burnout among police chiefs. Serving as a police chief has always been a demanding and stressful job. The past several years has been even more challenging as chiefs have dealt with significant declines in staffing, higher levels of mistrust in the community, spikes in homicides, a pandemic and widespread protests directed at the police themselves. Chiefs from the largest cities in the US turnover in less than five years, and in many cases are just exhausted from the relentless demands of the job.
We are fortunate to have Dr. Kandi Wiens with us today to help us better understand stress and burnout in police executives. She is the co-director of the Penn Master’s in Medical Education program, co-director of the Health Professions Education certificate program, and co-academic director of the Penn Chief Learning Officer executive doctoral program. Dr. Wiens is an executive coach, national speaker, and organizational change consultant. Her coaching practice is deeply grounded in emotional intelligence, burnout, and resiliency research and methods.
Kandi is also a member of the Major Cities Chiefs Association Police Executive Leadership Institute faculty. In addition to her classroom work, she provides individual coaching to each member of the class on a 360-degree assessment. She has also been engaged with research on stress and burnout among police executives which she uses to provide advice and guidance on stress management.
Today we will be discussing strategic communications for police executives. The police continue to wrestle with significant challenges in their effort to serve their communities effectively. Increases in violent crime, loss of public confidence, and understaffing because of the inability to fill vacant positions are among them. External and internal communications are also enormous challenges for the police. They work in a fast-paced 24/7 world that requires police executives to ensure communication is strategic, timely, and accurate.
We are fortunate to have Dr. Julie Hill with us today to share her extensive experience in working on communications strategy in local government and policing. Julie has more than three decades of experience helping organizations think strategically about their communication activities and providing support to develop and execute communication plans. She has held executive-level positions overseeing the communication and public affairs operations for cities and law enforcement agencies in Charlotte, NC, and Virginia Beach, VA. She successfully guided communication responses to a range of manmade and natural disasters as the lead communication strategist, spokesperson, and senior advisor to elected and appointed officials.
I had the pleasure of working with and learning from Julie in my nine years as police chief in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Since then, we worked together on several projects, including a book on strategic communication practices for police executives, a soon-to-be-published guide on branding, and a guide on officer safety and wellness campaigns.
We will be discussing law enforcement leaders making a career transition to corporate security. Typically, a career in law enforcement is 20 to 30 years depending on the retirement program. A young man or woman that begins their career in their early 20s reach retirement eligibility in their early 50s if not before. In addition, many police leaders find themselves looking to make a career change before the traditional end of a first career.
Many turn to the private sector to seek positions in corporate security, safety, and resiliency, a seemingly natural transition.
We have two great resources with us today to talk about the transition from policing to private security.
The first is Cathy Lanier, Senior Vice President of Security for the National Football League. She has served in that capacity since September 2016 when she retired from the Washington DC
Metropolitan Police Department in where she served as Chief for nine years – one of the highest profile and most challenging police chief positions in the country. She started her career in 1990 with DC Metro and quickly through the ranks. She served in all areas of the MPD including the Commander of the Office of Homeland Security and Counterterrorism which was established after the 9/11 attacks. She holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degree in management from Johns Hopkins University. Also, a Master of Arts in national security studies from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
Second is our co-host, Brian Stephens. In addition to his work at Florida State University he is the Senior Managing Director of Security Risk Advisory at Teneo, a Global CEO advisory firm. He served as Bank of America’s Chief Security Officer where he led a team of over 450 security professionals and 5000 private contractors. He began his career with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and moved to the Bank of America in July 2001 to establish a strategic planning function for security. After 9/11 he led the development of the Bank’s Enhanced Security Program in which advance security standards, technology and procedures were implemented. His work in the ensuing years resulted in his appointment as the Chief Security Officer.
Mass shootings have increased across America in the past few years to the point where we seemingly can’t go a couple of days without one occurring. Although they represent a small portion of overall gun violence, they have an enormous impact on the public’s sense of safety. The tragic shooting in Highland Park at the Independence Day Parade in which 6 people were killed and 30 injured sent shock waves around the country on the heels of the Uvalde School Shooting that took the lives of 19 students, and two teachers and injured 17 others. Against a backdrop of increasing violent crime in many cities, people are searching for both an understanding of the violence and solutions.
Solutions often become highly political and hotly debated. This episode will focus on empirical research on gun violence and mass shooting with a noted expert in the field.
Joining us today is Dr. Emma Fridel, a criminologist from the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University. Thank you for being with us today.
Emma received her Ph.D. in Criminology and Justice Policy from Northeastern University. She primarily studies violence and aggression with a focus on homicide, including school violence. Homicide-suicide, serial and mass murder, and fatal officer-citizen encounters. Her work has been published in Criminology, Social Forces, and Justice Quarterly. She is a co-author of Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder.
Police Reform has been the topic of passionate debate across America since the 2014shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer. Over the years other incidents such as the horrific killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer have fueled the debate on the steps police should take to ensure equity in the treatment of all members of the community.
In this episode we talk with Charles Ramsey about his career in policing, accomplishments of the President’s Task Force, his thoughts on police reform and recent gun legislation and his work with the MCCA Police Executive Leadership Institute.
He began his career with the Chicago Police Department in 1968 as an 18-year-old cadet. He quickly rose through the ranks as he served in a variety of position. He was a key champion of community policing a led the efforts to implement it in the CPD. He left the CPD in 1998 to take the Chief’s job in Washington Metropolitan PD where he would serve with distinction for nine years. He then took the Commissioner’s job in Philadelphia where he served for eight years. He served as the President of both the MCCA and PERF at the same time. In December 2014 President Obama asked him to co-chair the Task Force on 21st Century Policing. He has been one of the most well-respected national leaders in policing over the past 25 years.
Technology is transforming policing and security in America. Technology has been a fixture policing for many years – CAD/RMS, crime labs, and radio communication have made important contributions to improving efficiency. Over the past 25 years the use of technology dramatically expanded its reach and at a pace that has been difficult to keep up with. A recent PER/RTI study indicates that 70% of agencies are using in-car cameras, 68% information sharing platforms, over a third use body cameras, cell phone tracking and investigative management systems. 81% of agencies with more than 250 officers are using GIS and 70% use ALPRs. Agencies also reported that they planned to use predictive analytics software, acquire body worn cameras, next generation 911 and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Axon CEO and Founder Rick Smith join us today. A pioneer of technology with the vision of making the bullet obsolete, Rick founded the original company, TASER, in 1993. As the TASER device became ubiquitous in law enforcement, Rick pushed the company beyond weapons technology and towards a broader purpose of matching technology to public safety needs to make the world a safer place. Rick was winner of the Ernst and Young 2002 Entrepreneur of the Year. Rick graduated from Harvard with a B.S. in Neuroscience (Cum Laude) and later earned a master’s degree in international finance from the University of Leuven in Belgium and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Rick is also the author of The End of Killing – a book that outlines his vision for making the bullet obsolete.
In this episode we talk with Dr. Thomas Blomberg, Dean and Sheldon L. Messinger Professor of Criminology at the Florida State University College of Criminology and Criminal Justice. He has been a national leader in the field of criminology and a longtime advocate of translational criminology. In fact, the College’s brand “Research Brought to Life” that conveys a vision of striving to provide cutting edge research and teaching that ultimately contributes to improving society. In recent years he has begun to focus on the impact of politics on the adoption of evidence-based policy and practice.
Police and Private Security face enormous challenges in filling vacant positions. This episode outlines the problem and presents approaches that seem to be making getting better results. Special guest Drew Levine, Chief Operating Officer for the East Division of Allied US shares his experience and views on meeting these challenges. Allied is the largest private security company in the world.
This is the first episode of the Community Safety Web. Co-hosts Darrel Stephens and Brian Stephens describe the newly created Policing, Security Technology and Private Security Research Policy Institute in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University. The podcast talks about the goals of the Institute and some of the challenges facing the police and private security.