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NCLB Implementation Guide
The Law Enforcement

Implementation Process

Step 1:         Establishing the Law Enforcement or Preventive Subcommittee for the NCLB process

Roles and responsibilities
Early in the planning process, the Steering Committee establishes a Law Enforcement Subcommittee to oversee the law enforcement component of the local No Community Left Behind strategy. The subcommittee is responsible for developing and implementing the law enforcement strategy and coordinating with the Community Policing component (in particular). Other responsibilities that may be assigned to the subcommittee include coordinating law enforcement activities, resolving implementation problems, determining what works, and changing courses of action when necessary. Roles and responsibilities may vary depending on the circumstances and needs of the site.

Membership
Members of the subcommittee represent mostly the OPS staff, local community leaders, and staff from partnering agencies.

At the local level, OPS officers who work in or oversee the designated neighbourhood serve on the subcommittee. A community-policing officer is also a member to bridge any gaps between the Correctional and Prevention aspects of the approach.

Special consideration is given to making community members part of the subcommittee. Members of the law enforcement community might resist having community members at the table when planning and coordinating law enforcement operations; protection of sensitive personal information discussed may preclude unfettered information sharing with the community members on the subcommittee. The decision on membership on the sub-committee and whether it should be formal or informal depends to some extent on the structure of the local NCLB organization and the concerned CHRC staff. The subcommittee is put together in a way that works best for the site.

In a community policing environment, whether it be corrective or preventative, it is the community’s role and responsibility to work with police to identify the policing issues that need to be resolved, identify potential solutions and resources to be committed towards the resolution of the identified issues, whenever possible to be involved in the implementation of the identified solutions and assess and evaluate whether the policing issues have been resolved. 

In some cases, the committee may not be very formally structured, but the concerned staff from OPS, the partnering agencies and the community members do meet from time to time to come up with agreed-upon actions and required mechanism for follow-up and accountability. Sometimes, a planning committee looks into the law enforcement component along with other core components: Social, physical and economic. Law enforcement comes under service provisions.

Frequency of meetings
During the planning process, the subcommittee meets frequently until the law enforcement strategy is drafted and reviewed by the Steering Committee. The planning process requires a great deal of work — identifying local crime problems, setting priorities, developing goals and objectives, and establishing an implementation plan and schedule. The roles and responsibilities of all concerned are clearly defined. During the implementation phase, the subcommittee considers meeting less often.

Step 2:         Reviewing the Needs Assessment
To Identify Law Enforcement Issues of Greatest Priority

Needs assessment
Subcommittee members assist in the needs assessment process by identifying what they believe are the most serious or intractable crime problems and providing data and information which explain the nature of these problems.

It may be difficult to get detailed police data on the designated area because of No Community Left Behind site’s boundaries which may not correspond to the boundaries of OPS divisions and sub-divisions. Usually, however, existing data helps subcommittee members define and understand local crime problems. Data sources may include calls for service, crime arrests or incidents and youth data. Before setting priorities, the subcommittee carefully reviews the results of the needs assessment.

Members are not only apprised of the most serious local crime problems as identified in the community assessment but also consider the community’s perspective on issues of greatest concern and signs of neighbourhood deterioration, such as high unemployment and high dropout rate. All these factors are considered when developing law enforcement priorities for the NCLB site.

Community perspectives
Community participation is a fundamental principle of the No Community Left Behind process. The views of local community members must be considered and integrated into decision-making, including strategy development. The Law Enforcement Subcommittee can include community opinion in numerous ways. Members can review the results of the needs assessment to identify resident views on a host of neighbourhood issues. A community survey may have been administered or focus groups conducted as part of the assessment process, which can also be reviewed to determine public opinion on local crime-related issues.

The subcommittee also considers the views of the Steering Committee, which comprises the various stakeholders in the designated neighbourhood. Because these stakeholders live or work in the area, they may hold opinions that differ from the law enforcement perspective. Other sources of community input may be available from the OPS. Proceedings from recent police-community meetings and other community relations activities may provide insight into the community’s concerns about crime and disorder priorities.

Priority setting
Based on the activities discussed above, the subcommittee reaches consensus on law enforcement issues of greatest priority. Three to five priorities are established to guide the strategy development process. Examples of priorities are

1.  Violent youth crime;
2.  Youth gang activity;
3.  Street-level drug sales;
4.  Drug trafficking and criminal organizations;
5.  Crimes committed with guns;
6.  Domestic violence;
7.  Community members under correctional supervision;
8.  Coordination among law enforcement agencies.

Step 3:         Establishing Law Enforcement Goals, Objectives and Tasks
The law enforcement strategy clearly articulates ways for effectively addressing the law enforcement issues of greatest priority, goals and the long and short term objectives, and the specific actions and activities that the law enforcement agencies undertake to meet the objectives.

Collaboration and coordination
In developing the strategy, subcommittee members consider the goal of building long-term working relationships among law enforcement and security agencies. The strategy emphasizes collaboration rather than differences between city and local law enforcement and focus on coordination and information sharing among all law enforcement agencies operating in the designated neighbourhood.

During strategy development, subcommittee members consider the resources that the province, city and local law enforcement agencies can offer the NCLB process and the experience these agencies have had  dealing with illegal drugs, gangs, and violence. The ensuing information helps develop strategies that encourage collaboration and coordination and offer some promise for crime reduction.

Law enforcement efforts.   Law enforcement agencies have expertise that can be applied to specific local issues in any neighbourhood. Relevant agencies can play a role in the law enforcement strategy and are considered as partners if crime problems warrant their involvement.

At the local levels, the following law enforcement strategies prove effective on the street level that NCLB sites with crime prevention as a top priority may want to consider implementing as part of the law enforcement strategy.

Drug enforcement. Successful drug enforcement efforts at the local level use various tactics. Because drug traffickers rapidly adapt to particular enforcement approaches, no single tactic is continually effective. A successful strategy includes different tactics, used at different times, for the greatest impact on drug trafficking and drug-related crime.

Career criminal or repeat offender programs. These programs focus on the apprehension, prosecution and incarceration of the most serious offenders in a community. The premise is that a few offenders commit a disproportionate amount of crime. By concentrating on removing repeat offenders, law enforcement significantly affects the overall level of crime in a community.

Gangs. Gangs are a constant source of illegal activity. Various law enforcement tried and tested approaches  are used for gang identification and intervention, including combining police and probation patrols, communicating and implementing a zero tolerance policy for gang violence, restricting gang activities through injunctions, increasing the swiftness of sanctions against gang members, focusing on major offenders, implementing gun-seizure programs, and using witness protection programs.

Prosecution. Law enforcement officials are aware of different prosecution strategies that have been effective in combating and suppressing crime.

Information sharing
Law Enforcement Subcommittee or planning sub-committee (if the law enforcement committee is not formed formally) members consider the importance of intelligence information and crime analysis to the NCLB strategy’s goals and objectives. Collection and analysis of data can drive decisions about which tactics to use and which crimes and locations to target. Law enforcement agencies from every level of government have intelligence information. Studies show that breaking down the traditional barriers that keep agencies from sharing their information results in greater cooperation and more success in identifying, apprehending and prosecuting offenders.

Information such as crime rates, calls for service, and the number of community members under supervision is gathered as part of the needs assessment process; this information becomes part of the intelligence database. As crime suppression efforts proceed, new data about the neighbourhood is obtained — new violators and targets appear and previously unknown connections between criminal elements may surface. Crime hotlines, information sharing with the community about crime stoppers program, for example, may generate new names, addresses and license plate numbers to track and lead to discovery of patterns of drug and gang activity.

An intelligence database coordinated across agencies support the crime suppression activities by facilitating more sophisticated crime analysis and making it possible to identify patterns and criminal connections.

Step 4:         Identifying Additional Resources
for the Law Enforcement Strategy
Some law enforcement strategies require the involvement of officials from the court system, correctional services, probation and parole, victim services, youth justice, and other areas of the Criminal Justice System. The participation of court administrators or service providers enables partners in this process to more effectively address the needs of specific offenders such as drug users and minor offenders. Drug courts, community courts, and teen courts, which provide special case processing and alternative adjudication practices, are examples of these efforts undertaken elsewhere and can be tried under the broader umbrella of the City of Ottawa’s Community Development Framework (CDF) under the guidance of its leadership table. A site’s law enforcement strategy may include establishing such a program or coordinating efforts with an existing program.

Corrections and Probation and Parole services may be particularly important when many community members in the designated neighbourhood are under supervision or many offenders are expected to return to the neighbourhood after serving their sentences. These offenders may require a range of services (e.g., vocational/employment training, remedial education, housing, counseling, drug treatment etc.) to prevent their return to criminal activity, or they may require greater supervision. In either case, coordination between law enforcement, corrections and community is an important component of the NCLB’s law enforcement strategy.

In the case of youth crime, the need for input and participation from the concerned youth justice officials is considered. Targeted enforcement of youth offenders is undertaken immediately, and long-term plans are coordinated to offer assistance to youths in the form of prevention and intervention services. Wherever possible, youth justice officials are consulted while planning the strategy and the Law Enforcement Subcommittee is expanded to include these officials during implementation.

The criminal justice efforts undertaken depend on the local circumstances. NCLB sites may choose to initially focus on police and prosecution tactics to make inroads on the crime problem. They focus on other strategies later in the process to reduce long-term criminal behavior.

Step 5:         Developing an Implementation Plan
for the Law Enforcement Strategy
The implementation plan requires identification of the agencies, community responsible for each major task and activity in the strategy, role, success indicators and their start and completion dates.

One of the keys to success is the coordination and collaboration of different units within the law enforcement agency. The more different units collaborate with each other, the easier it becomes to take action on the selected priorities (which mostly come from the community) and the more the law enforcement agency is able to establish trust and build bridges to the affected communities.

 

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Centre de Sante Communautaire du Sud Est D'Ottawa

Contact: Abid Jan Tel./ Tél: (613) 737-5115 Ext. 2403  Fax/Télé: (613) 739-8199

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