Charleston Police Department: Problem-Oriented Policing Initiative (POPI) Assessment

The City of Charleston Police Department (CPD) in South Carolina proposes to implement a place-based community problem-oriented policing (CPOP) strategy during its FY2023 Smart Policing Initiative. The goal is to address a recent increase in violent and property crime as well as traffic collisions while simultaneously reducing enforcement activities.

The project will include developing an action plan to guide the project (Deliverable 1), CPOP implementation tracking system, improving CPD’s data collection and analysis infrastructure, training CPD personnel across the organization on how to implement CPOP, implementing and tracking the strategy, executing a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the strategy, and writing a final report (Deliverable 2) detailing the strategy and its impact as well as a formal policy (Deliverable 3) to help sustain CPOP.

CPD plans to implement the CPOP strategy in roughly 3 hot spots across its 6 Patrol Teams. CPD will partner with the University of Cincinnati to develop and evaluate the strategy.