Brooklyn Park Smart Policing Project

The Smart Policing Initiative seeks to build upon the concepts of offender-based and place-based policing and broaden the knowledge of effective policing strategies. The most convincing research demonstrates that place-based or hotspot policing reduces violent crime and neighborhood disorder. This initiative addresses the need for effective policing that requires a tightly focused, collaborative approach that is measurable, based on sound, detailed analysis and includes policies and procedures for accountability. This grant program seeks to build upon data-driven, evidence-based policing by encouraging state and local law enforcement agencies to develop effective, economical, and innovative responses to precipitous or extraordinary increases in crime, or in a type or types of crime within their jurisdictions.

The City of Brooklyn Park/Brooklyn Park Police Department (BPPD) grant will focus on building collective efficacy in crime hot-spots as a long-term method of enlisting community social controls in the fight against crime. Brooklyn Park, a large suburb of Minneapolis, MN, is a highly diverse community characterized by mixed land use, high population density and heterogeneity, and population turnover. Much of the city's crime is concentrated at locations associated with these features, specifically low-income public housing and low-rent apartments.

The BPPD will develop and rigorously evaluate an innovative collective efficacy-based hot-spots policing approach in Brooklyn Park. The BPPD will help build collective efficacy in high-crime locations through a modified problem-solving approach that emphasizes bringing together relevant community members to address community issues rather than focusing only on disorder. This strategy will leverage patrol officers' discretionary time rather than relying on specialist units to make community-building a key part of regular police work. The BPPD and their research partner will collaborate to analyze the connection between low collective efficacy and crime in Brooklyn Park, develop a collective efficacy-focused training program for patrol officers, track officers' activities in the community, and implement a block-randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of the program at increasing collective efficacy and reducing crime. The BPPD aims to reduce crime while enhancing trust and collaboration between the community and police.

CA/NCF