Smart Stops: Toward More Strategic Proactive Policing

• In Event: Investigatory Stops by Police

Abstract

Investigatory stops are simultaneously one of the most fundamental tools that police officers have to enforce the law and one of the most controversial. Conventional police wisdom holds that proactive policing is an effective crime control tactic, and the findings of social research have for the most part supported this proposition. That proactive policing has crime control benefits does not imply that more proactive policing is better, however, nor does it imply that each stop has the same marginal benefits regardless of where, when, and of whom they are made. Stops by their nature involve a trade-off of personal freedom for the public good. We believe that police might do better in guiding and encouraging officers to make “higher-value” stops – those that are more likely to serve crime control purposes, including stops in high-crime places, of high-risk people, or with successful enforcement outcomes. With historical data on over 200,000 pedestrian and vehicle stops by the Albany (NY) police between 2000 through 2013, we illustrate the extent to which stops have met these three criteria. Only 40% of stops meet any of the three objectives, with the majority of those being stops at high crime micro-places.

Authors

• Robert E. Worden, University at Albany, SUNY

• Sarah J. McLean, The John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety, Inc.

• Andrew Palmer Wheeler, The University of Texas at Dallas