Should You Leave Your Lights On At Night? It Depends

Installing security lights and leaving lights on at night are common tactics for deterring home burglaries.  In fact, that’s what the DC Police recommend on their website: “Burglars hate bright lights. Install outside lights and keep them on at night. Motion-detector lights can be particularly effective.”

But lighting up might not be an effective solution if you don’t mimic human activity and involve your neighbors, as this NPR story discusses:

http://www.npr.org/2016/02/23/466603833/should-you-leave-your-lights-on-at-night-it-depends?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160223&utm_campaign=npr_email_a_friend&utm_term=storyshare

 

DC Police Community Engagement Academy: Seeking Applicants for Spring Program

MPD is currently seeking nominations for the Spring 2016 Cohort of its Community Engagement Academy, a twenty-eight hour program (over six weeks) that provides interested community members the opportunity to learn firsthand about police operations and gain a personal view of the positive aspects and challenges that confront officers on a daily basis.

Click here for more information, the point of contact for questions, photo gallery, and to submit an interest card.  (Note that Participants must undergo a basic background check prior to participation.)

Here’s the tentative Spring schedule:

Tuesday, March 8, 2016 (6-8 pm) – Overview of the Metropolitan Police Department

Saturday, March 12, 2016 (8-2 pm) – Joining the Department (Standards and Process), A Day in the Life of A MPD Recruit, and Juvenile/Youth Investigations/Youth Creating Change

Wednesday, March 16, 2016 (6-9 pm) – OUC Discussion & Tour & SLU Presentation

Saturday, March 26, 2016 (8-2 pm) – Patrol Operations (Officers, Sergeant, Detectives) and District Cell Block Tour

Wednesday, April 6, 2016 (4-8 pm) – Specialized Policing (i.e., Harbor Patrol, K-9 Demonstration, EOD Demonstration)

Saturday, April 9, 2016 (8a-4 pm) – Role of Police Officers in the Community – in partnership with the United States Holocaust Museum Memorial

Activity [March 16 – April 9] – Ride Along

Monday, April 18, 2016 (4-8pm) – Tactical Training Center – Scenarios and Use of Force Discussion

Thursday, April 21, 2016 (6-8 pm) -Presentation of Certificates and Photograph with COP

Background:

The MPD Community Engagement Academy was launched in 2015 by Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier.  On July 16, 2015, the Department graduated its first cohort with 20 community members from all seven police districts. Three cohorts are held annually (Summer, Fall, and Spring).

Effective Policing: Helping Police Build Community Trust

New Guides Aimed at Helping Police Build Community Trust
BY JEN KINNEY | FEBRUARY 16, 2016
https://nextcity.org

The Vera Institute of Justice released three guidebooks last week, aimed at helping police build trust with diverse communities and better protect them in the process.

Police Perspective Guidebook Series: Building Trust in a Diverse Nation (Vera Institute of Justice, Feb. 12, 2016)

Law enforcement officers must be able to fairly and effectively engage with all communities in their jurisdiction. As the country continues to diversify, officers must cultivate trust and collaboration with communities that have various languages, cultures, and customs, to ensure public safety for all. Since 2014, the nation has focused on how police respond to contentious encounters, how and when they use force, and the disparate impact of policing on people of color. This three-part series—written for police, by police—seeks to fill the knowledge and practice gap in effective policing, highlighting practical, field-informed approaches to building trust with multiracial, multiethnic communities.

Download [PDF]

Police Perspectives – How to Increase Cultural Understanding
Police Perspectives – How to Serve Diverse Communities
Police Perspectives – How to Support Trust Building in Your Agency

DC Crime Makes the National News: Three Times in One Day

Violent crime in DC made the national news three times yesterday, for three different issues (see links below).  To stay informed, follow @DCSafetyNet on Twitter.  For a comprehensive archive of news coverage of DC crime, visit the DC Crime in the News page of DC SafetyNet’s website.  To help make DC safer, join the DC SafetyNet coalition.

Assaults on Metro

String of assaults on D.C.’s Metro has common thread: teen suspects (USA Today, Feb. 17, 2016)

A recent string of violent attacks in D.C. has officials searching for suspects, following at least eight attacks since late November at Metro stations and bus stops, most involving small gangs of teenagers and young adults.

Problems with D.C. Emergency Medical Services

Nation’s Capital Grapples With EMS Challenges (US News & World Report, Feb. 17, 2016)

“How did we miss a gunshot wound?” D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman, asked incredulously Wednesday at an oversight hearing of the council’s Committee on the Judiciary called to examine the abrupt departure of the agency’s medical director, Dr. Jullette Saussy, who quit last week in frustration after just seven months on the job.

Brutal Assault at a Downtown McDonald’s

Decorated Marine vet attacked, robbed at Washington DC McDonald’s, police say (Fox News, Feb. 17, 2016)

Authorities worked Wednesday to identify at least four people who attacked and robbed a decorated former Marine at a Washington, D.C. McDonald’s, leaving him in the restaurant unconscious.

D.C.’s 911 center is getting more calls, but it’s not always getting them right

Washington Post, February 3, 2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/dcs-911-center-is-getting-more-calls-but-its-not-always-getting-them-right/2016/02/03/2410b5d0-c51b-11e5-9693-933a4d31bcc8_story.html

DC Council Unanimously Approves Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results Amendment Act of 2016

Excerpt from constituency email from Ward 6 Council Member Charles Allen, Feb. 3, 2016

Yesterday, the Council voted unanimously to approve a comprehensive public safety omnibus bill. The “Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results Amendment Act of 2016″ (NEAR Act), which I co-introduced with Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, Chair of the Council’s Judiciary Committee, offers a multipronged approach to addressing and reducing crime in our neighborhoods.

The NEAR Act has two focal points — one, providing immediate efforts to address urgent public safety issues and accountability when a crime does occur; and two, making strategic investments to prevent crime from occurring in the first place. The Act also includes improvements to community policing and data analysis, as well as provisions to help ensure better success for returning citizens by reducing recidivism.

Below is a summary of the NEAR Act as passed by the Council yesterday. If you have any further questions though, please let me know and I welcome your feedback.

Immediate efforts to improve public safety:

• Gives the DC Superior Court the ability to revoke pretrial release for up to 72 hours if an individual violates a stay-away order or tampers with a GPS tracking device.
• Makes permanent my legislation to create a rebate program to help residents and businesses install security cameras on the exterior of their property and register them with MPD.
• Allows the Department of Forensic Science to hire retired officers, enabling the Department to bring experienced staff into the Crime Scene Sciences division, freeing up patrol officers.
• Authorizes officer retention and recruitment incentives – critical to crime intervention and prevention, as well as helping ensure we keep an adequate number of officers on the force.

Long-term investments to reduce crime:

• Integrates behavioral and mental health professionals into MPD units to better combat crimes linked to substance abuse and mental health conditions, as well as connect those individuals to services and substance abuse treatment.
• Creates a new Office of Neighborhood Engagement to identify teenagers and young adults at the highest risk for committing or being a victim of violent crimes. After establishing a similar program in Richmond, California, the city experienced a 76% reduction in firearm-related homicides between 2007 and 2014.
• Establishes an Office of Violence Prevention and Health Equity to develop a public health approach to services coordination to combat the spread of violence, including placing clinicians in hospital emergency rooms to respond to victims of violent crime and prevent retaliatory violence.

Reforms to Community Policing:

• Creates a 10-member working group to examine national best practices on community policing.
• Revises the problematic definition of Assault on a Police Officer and codifies Resisting Arrest.
• Expands data collection and reporting by MPD in several areas and directs the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice to annually analyze trends associated with MPD felony crime statistics, utilizing several specific data points.

Pathways to success for returning citizens:

• Enables jail inmates to earn more “good time credits” when pursuing education and participating in rehabilitation programs, which provides more positive tools for successful re-entry.
• Allows low-risk detainees to participate in work release programs and education programs, which helps keep residents employed and connected to their families, while also on track to complete education.

This legislation was subject to lengthy and extensive public review, including a public hearing with nearly one hundred witnesses giving feedback. To give you an idea of the work that went into it, the committee report is 1,048 pages long. You can read Councilmember McDuffie’s full committee report by clicking here.

But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how long the legislation is or how many people testified at a hearing. What matters is whether these legislative reforms will make our neighborhoods safer – and I believe this will. I think this law helps improve accountability when a crime does occur, but more importantly, focuses on proven strategies to prevent that crime from occurring in the first place – which is ultimately what we want.

As always, I welcome your feedback and am happy to hear additional ideas. I continue to work with neighbors to look at other public safety reforms and crime prevention measures.

Thanks,
Charles Allen

P.S. If you’d like to join me for a conversation tonight, there is a Ward 6 Town Hall taking place with myself, Mayor Bowser, Councilmember Anita Bonds, and others beginning at 6:30 pm at Friendship Charter School – Chamberlain Campus, 1345 Potomac Ave, SE. It is hosted by some Ward 6 organizations and is open to the public. All are welcome.