Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Turner’s Dairy at the corner of Ontario Street and West 17th Ave

Turner’s Dairy is a new collection of townhomes located at the corner of Ontario Street and West 17th Ave, Vancouver. This project will offer 13 contemporary townhouses, Sizes ranging from 695 square feet to 1,636 square feet. Contemporary and efficient living, designed for the modern family. Progressive meets heritage in these sleekly crafted and thoughtfully created homes. The building’s open and expansive spaces, high ceilings, and vast casement style windows harken back to the lofts and offices that were inhabited by generations of industrial businesses, starting with Turner’s Dairy.

The post Turner’s Dairy at the corner of Ontario Street and West 17th Ave appeared first on Vancouver New Condos.



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Strength in the Teenage Years: An Overlooked Long-Term Athletic Development Competitive Advantage

Monday, July 30, 2018

Being an (Uncomfortable) Prophet

“Prophets are respected everywhere except in their own hometown and by their relatives and their family” — Jesus of Nazareth.

 

imagesIt’s true, isn’t it? Except in policing it’s not only in one’s hometown or by relatives and family, it can be among almost all police across the nation.

It’s not easy being a police critic (I’ll call it being an honest “helper”). Critics express unfavorable opinions — and it often doesn’t matter if what they are saying is  helpful.

We shouldn’t be surprised by this. Few of us appreciate the unfavorable opinions of others; even when they come from people with experience; even those who have served and now are suggesting there might be ways to do things. An effective critic, however, is one who not only criticizes, but identifies a problem and offers a creative solution.

As a critic or helper, I am doing what police simply cannot do on a day to day basis — that is being able to consider the big picture of what’s happening across the nation. When I was a chief, I spent most of my time putting out fires, managing internal conflicts and discipline, along with struggling with elected officials, community leaders, and the press trying to explain )and defend) what we were doing. What I didn’t have time for was to step back, reflect, and think about ways in which we could do an even better job and, most importantly, be supported and trusted by more people in our community.

No one urged me to be an informed voice on matters of police, the same kind of passion I had when I wore a badge continued on into my retirement — I care about police.

But when someone offers to help and what that person is suggesting challenges the status quo, the full force of the subculture comes down upon that person and suddenly he or she is no longer a welcome member of the police club. It’s just the way it is, they way it’s always been.

So, if you, as a senior retired officer, want to make improvement suggestions, you must be prepared for a major pushback. It’s uncomfortable. You will be ignored (seldom will you get thoughtful responses to your suggestions). You will be overlooked, not invited to police events and no longer considered to be part of the brethren; the “community of police.” You will, in effect, be shunned because you violated the code.

I have recently been thinking about the continually and current discussion surrounding “warrior-guardian” roles in policing. I think there is more to this than has met the eye or the ear. We all know that police cannot be solely one or the other. It’s a matter of proportionality. How much of the time do you, as a police officer, work in a “warrior” mode versus that of a “guardian?” On most days, being a guardian is 90+% of what you do. But you also have to have warrior skills in reserve.

Let’s look at the “guardian” role. In it rests two important behavioral choices — two methods of policing. How one guards is very crucial to this discussion.

The first method is to get the job done as quick as possible and the person using this method does this by being authoritative and coercive (and, ultimately, imposing fear on others).

Officers using this method believe that to be effective they need to be totally, and at all times, in control. This is accomplished by having a “command presence” and voice. These officers further believe that compliance to an order or request is based on the receiver understanding very quickly that something bad will happen if they do not comply with the order or request. It is fear-based and coercive. It is also very short-term thinking and detrimental to building trust and relationships.

Officers using the second method get the job done by being courteous and respectful. They use this approach because they believe respect comes by treating others fairly and respectfully (remember the Golden Rule?). These officers are committed to practicing what is called Procedural Justice; that is, they listen to others, treat them with dignity, and are helpful and fair in their decisions.

Do police sometimes have to get coercive and impose fear on others? Yes. But when and how they do it is the point here. (And here’s where Emotional Intelligence comes into play; the ability to regulate one’s emotions (especially fear and anger), and being self-aware. The good news is that contrary to our I.Q., Emotional Intelligence can be significantly improved through learning what it is, why it is important in relationships, and practicing it.

I grew up policing the street in the 1960s. In the mid-60s, I had to make a decision and it was a very personal one. If I was to return home safe after work, I had to understand what was going on around me (the anger and hostility of the civil rights and anti-war movements) and not to take it personal or be overly defensive. I knew I had to improve my E.Q! I listened to those who were criticizing me and my fellow officers. I came to learn that I needed to change my approach to others. And what worked for me was being respectful, controlled in my use of force and coercion (including the speech I used) and treating all people fairly.

I admit that at first it was a survival mode. Years later, this approach was empirically affirmed by the work of Prof. Tom Tyler at Yale University (see this video and book).

I carried my learning into my time as a detective. I found that one can “capture more bears with honey than a stick.” Suspects are often lonely when they were in jail. And when I listened to them, was respectful, and made fair decisions concerning them, I received cooperation, information, and solved a lot of crimes.

Good policing then and today involves using the second method. These practices helped me as a police officer, detective, and leader (police officers, as well as other community members, appreciate the use of Procedural Justice by those who have fate control over them). They don’t appreciate being led by men and women who do not listen, disrespect them, use coercion to carry out their orders, make poor decisions affecting them, and are not helpful to them.

This learning is not rocket-science. It goes back to our earliest value-training; e.i., the Golden Rule). But it does challenge a certain type of police method and behavior that should have been left back in the 1930s when it was first identified by the Wickersham Commission  as improper and illegal:

“In the desperate effort to compel obedience to law, experience has shown that those charged with the high function of enforcing the law sometimes stoop to attain their ends by means as illegal as the acts they seek to punish or suppress.”

images-1Smart cops do not act this way. They do not use coercion because they have come to understand it is ineffective in either dealing with community members or leading police officers and they do not act illegally because their job is to honor the law and what it requires from all of us.

What do you think? If you are a police officer, what kind of Guardian are you?



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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 7/30/18

Interview With Sergey Thomas, Mobile Team Programming Lead, Paraben

Sergey, you're Mobile Team Programming Lead at Paraben. Tell us about your role; what does a typical day in your life look like? My main role is to organize the development process to make sure we are innovating with each release. We strive to work with a balance between research of brand-new features (zero-day exploits, new rooting technics) and bugfix of the current features. It’s always difficult to control this balance because we like to do it all. My typical day is living between code and reading about forensics. For our development teams I am the main bridge in the space that allows them to really understand the need behind a feature. This is a few hours and then the rest is on doing specific projects in the code and emails. We always try to answer all of our team’s questions within one day so no one is left hanging waiting for an answer. Read More

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Thursday, July 26, 2018

Owning Our Racial Injustices

“The thing about the past is that it’s not the past!”

  

The following article from “The American Prospect” captures what I have been trying to say since the tragic and watershed days of Ferguson — police must reconcile with black America and that begins with a sincere, heartfelt apology.

There is an old Irish saying (with some attribution to Wm. Faulkner) that applies to today’s situation, “The thing about the past is that it’s not the past!”

Too often, white America’s response (and its police) to movements like “Black Lives Matter” is that they/we, white America, thinks the past is past – and “Why can’t these people get over it?” The reason is that the past it’s not the past.

I have excerpted some salient parts of a July 18, 2018 article in “The American Prospect” entitled, “American Police Must Own Their Racial Injustices.”


American Police Must Own Their Racial Injustices

Samuel Kuhn and Stephen Lurie

“To improve relationships with communities of color, a reconciliation movement has begun in several cities, in which police brush up on their history, admit past mistakes, and listen to frank talk and hard truths.

“Americans rarely discuss racial injustice. When they do, many people treat the subject like an exorcised demon, a distant past without present-day legacies. But Americans still live in a country characterized by racial hierarchy that infuses its institutions and organizations. Lawmakers, reflecting the will of a sizeable portion of the public, set the laws that made slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration possible. Schools, hospitals, businesses, and municipal agencies implemented those measures. And law enforcement exacted the consequences for disobeying them.

“Police have been central to American racial injustice since our nation’s founding, when nascent police forces enforced slave codes. Today, the wars on crime and drugs continue to produce disproportionate and destructive enforcement in black and brown neighborhoods. Communities’ of color deep distrust of law enforcement is multi-generational and well-founded. And as the recent “living while black” incidents show, many white people still view police as instruments of control over those communities, especially African American ones.

“The effects of racially disparate policing remain imprinted on us as a people. Today, however, some police departments and leaders have moved to the front lines of America’s racial reckoning by explicitly recognizing historical racial injustice and committing to collaborative change in the communities most harmed by the structural racism their institutions have been so crucial in shaping.

“Unlike popular community policing efforts, these reconciliation processes, particularly the police acknowledgement of harm, may meet a deeper need for moral alignment on historical and contemporary challenges

“As we cover in our recent report, some police agencies and communities are engaged in unprecedented efforts to engage with and remedy fundamental historic harms and ongoing sources of mistrust. After reviewing dozens of examples of reconciliation endeavors, and from our work advising six cities—Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, Birmingham, Gary, and Stockton, California—on piloting full reconciliation processes, we believe reconciliation offers something that other reform efforts don’t: a path towards mutual respect that enables sustainable improvement to public safety practices.

“Our definition of reconciliation, developed at the National Network for Safe Communities and the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, is ‘a process whereby police and community engage in joint communication, research, and commitment to practical change to foster the mutual trust essential for effective public safety partnerships.’ This process has four core elements: acknowledgment of harm; listening and narrative sharing; fact-finding; and policy and practice change.

“This work begins when police leaders engage residents by acknowledging the decades of harm caused by institutional flaws, and committing themselves and their departments to improvement that is largely guided by their partnership with harmed parties. Holding listening sessions with law enforcement leaders and community members and collecting local narratives—similar to testimony collected by truth and reconciliation commissions around the world—allow these two groups to air experiences and feel the moral weight of a collection of individual stories. To ground a healing process, communities also create authoritative records of the local history that has led to the need for reconciliation. Ultimately, these narratives and facts should not only help identify core areas for policy and practice change, but encourage mutual commitment to those changes.

“In the six pilot sites of the National Initiative, police and communities are embarking on reconciliation processes as part of a systemic rethinking of public safety. The Stockton Police Department, in particular, has demonstrated what reconciliation can look like in practice. Since 2016, Police Chief Eric Jones has held dozens of ‘listening sessions’ with historically marginalized groups, including local Black Lives Matter activists, Latino community and East Asian immigrant groups, LGBTQIA leaders, organizations serving people returning from incarceration, and at-risk youth…

“Individual police officers are often unfamiliar with the history of their department or institution, especially as it concerns race relations. Most training academies don’t teach the darker sides of policing history, so America’s general amnesia about racial oppression means those who become police officers often have little knowledge of the checkered record of their profession.

“The Trump administration’s break with the criminal justice reform movement, coupled with its practice of stoking racial resentment, may make the prospect for these efforts seem even more bleak. Every new incident of excessive force and police shooting make clear that reconciliation is far away for many of the thousands of American police agencies.

“Nonetheless, some local law enforcement agencies are still taking on racial reconciliation processes because they recognize their necessity. When they do, they won’t find a cure-all for the problems that still plague American policing: over-enforcement of petty offenses, under-protection of the highest violence areas, and failure to oversee and discipline abusive officers. These all require intentional, persistent focus. But cities can find in reconciliation a method for establishing a foundation for eventual transformative change. And as law enforcement has been at the front of enforcing racial injustice, perhaps it can now stand at the front of communal healing.”


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What is your community doing to make active and visible steps toward racial reconciliation? These steps must involve the willing and active participation of police.

  • Read the full article from “The American Prospect” HERE.

See also what I have posted over the years about the importance – and absolute necessity — of police making reconciliation efforts with their communities of color black to build trust, confidence and a safer community for everyone. While reconciliation begins with apology it is also important to identify the injustices present today in our policing systems and practices.



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Atola TaskForce Wins Appreciation As The Most Capable Portable Imaging Tool

Atola TaskForce’s compact format and multiple connectivity options make it an easily portable device that is capable of imaging 15TB/hour in the lab or in the field. As the company gets feedback from the tool’s first users and potential customers, the value of this innovative tool becomes obvious: it dramatically expedites evidence acquisition tasks for crime scene examiners, financial investigators and tactical forces.

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Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Review Of MacQuisition From BlackBag Technologies

Reviewed by Scar de Courcier, Forensic Focus BlackBag Technologies was co-founded by Ben Charnota and Derrick Donnelly - both ex-Apple employees who also happen to come from law enforcement backgrounds. With their combined experience, it's no wonder BlackBag is a world leader in Mac forensics. The only company with an end-to-end solution for the new Apple File System (APFS), BlackBag offers four forensic products: 1. BlackLight analyzes data from Windows, Mac, Android and iOS systems. 2. Mobilyze is an Android and iOS triage solution aimed at frontline law enforcement officers. 3. MacQuisition is a powerful 3 in 1 solution for live data acquisition, targeted data collection, and forensic imaging. 4. Softblock is a write-blocking tool for Mac OS X forensic analysis machines. Read More

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Magnet Forensics Acquires Tracks Inspector

Magnet Forensics, a global leader in developing digital investigation software for smartphone, cloud, and computer examinations, today announces its acquisition of Tracks Inspector from Tracks Inspector B.V., a software company based in The Hague, Netherlands. With the acquisition of Tracks Inspector, Magnet Forensics adds a robust review platform for non-technical stakeholders of an investigation to its product portfolio. Tracks Inspector offers an intuitive, web-based solution that puts digital investigations into the hands of detectives, analysts, and case officers, enabling easy review of digital evidence early in an investigation and allowing forensic specialists to conduct targeted forensic analysis.

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Forensic Email Collector v3.3 By Metaspike Has Been Released

Metaspike has released v3.3 of Forensic Email Collector with exciting new features and numerous improvements. The highlights of this release are (see changelog): * Exchange / Office 365 delegation support. * Email notifications for completed acquisition sessions. * Automatic detection of the target Exchange server version. * Population of file system timestamps based on server dates. Learn more about Forensic Email Collector.

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Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Forensic Focus Forum Round-Up

Welcome to this month’s round-up of recent posts to the Forensic Focus forums. Forum members discuss the reality behind the Making A Murderer series. Can you help vdhee with RAID recovery? The new Windows 10 Timeline feature attracts some attention - have you come across it yet? How would you bypass this Windows 10 password? Forum members discuss how to extract and analyse data from CCTV hard drives.

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Webinar - Griffeye 101: A Crash Course In Visual Media Investigations

A new webinar, Griffeye 101: A Crash Course In Visual Media Investigations, is available to view here. The explosion and volume of digital images and videos captured by CCTV, smartphones, tablets, digital cameras, body worn cameras, and dash cams presents significant challenges to analysts, investigators, and forensic examiners. In this webinar, students will learn about: - Pre-categorization based on known hashes - Processing vast amounts of multimedia data collected from multiple sources and forensic tools - Automatically eliminating and prioritizing information - Detecting critical clues through automated routines and visual navigation - Identifying relationships between files based on their EXIF - The basics of “Fuzzy hashing” - Photo matching in the absence of EXIF data - Object recognition in videos Join the forum discussion here. View the webinar on YouTube here. Read a full transcript of the webinar here.

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Monday, July 23, 2018

Random Thoughts on Long-Term Fitness Industry Success – Installment 11

It's time for a new edition of my thoughts on the business of fitness. Before I get to it, just a friendly reminder that we're hosting our second-ever Cressey Sports Performance Business Building Mentorship on October 15. You can learn more HERE.

Now on to some business concepts...

1. It might take years for someone to become a customer.

Just a few weeks ago, I released my newest product, Sturdy Shoulder Solutions. One interesting thing about my newsletter/product management set-up is that I can tell how long someone has been a "prospect" before becoming a customer. Basically, I know the date they signed up for my newsletter, and then I can check that out to see what products they've purchased and when.

During this launch, I had multiple people purchase this resource as their first purchase with me after over 3,000 days on my list. Yes, that means they "window shopped" for over eight years prior to taking the plunge.

Very few people purchase on the first exposure to a marketing message. Or the second. Or the third. It actually takes load of opportunities for them to perceive your expertise, and usually over the course of an extended period of time. They need to know, like, and trust you - and some people take a long time to get to trusting you enough to initiate a transaction.

Be persistent, but patient. It's harder than ever to be seen and heard.

2. It's a very small world; watch your social media behavior.

I made this post on Twitter yesterday, and it got quite a bit of attention.

 Beyond the obvious moral issues of saying cruel things to pro athletes (or celebrities - or anyone else, for that matter), you should be cognizant of the fact that it can very quickly come back to bite you in the butt. Some of the agencies who represent these players may also represent others - athletes, actors, musicians, speakers, or coaches - who could be potential future clients for you. One of your followers could be an old friend or teammate of the athlete. It's an incredibly small world, so chasing a few retweets isn't worth sacrificing a relationship or potential client down the road.

3. Investments are different from expenses.

This is one of the most misunderstood accounting/economics concepts in all industries, and certainly in the fitness business.

An investment has the potential to appreciate in value. Maybe you spend money on a continuing education event, buy a DVD for some new training strategies, put money into a retirement account, or purchase some equipment that allows you to deliver a higher-quality product to your clients. Perhaps you hire a consultant to fine-tune your business, or decide to buy your building instead of continuing to pay rent. Additionally, from an accounting standpoint, investments are usually (but not always) tax deductible.

Expenses are like setting money on fire. They're the $5 you spend at Starbucks each morning, or the Porsche you bought on credit when you were making $20,000/year (is that even possible?). They don't appreciate, and there is a huge opportunity cost to these expenditures. Some are necessary and even tax deductible (e.g., rent), but they always need to be heavily scrutinized. Can that expense be reduced or somehow shifted into an investment?

Fitness businesses are notoriously bad at understanding the difference between the two, or understanding that one's financial situation may dictate what is and isn't acceptable. If you're grossing $5,000/month, paying $1,000/month to a cleaning service probably isn't a good expense; clean the gym yourself. Do you really need to buy seven different types of leg curl machines when you're already $300,000 in debt? And, why do you have payroll expenses when you've only got three clients?

Most businesses (and individuals, in their personal finances) would be wise to go through every cash expenditure and figure out how each one can be categorized. Growing gross revenue is always a priority, but many businesses can be even more profitable if they learn to appropriately trim the fat.

If you've found value in these insights, I think you might enjoy the upcoming Business Building Mentorship Pete Dupuis and I will be hosting on Monday, October 15th. It's a tax deductible expense if you're a fitness business owner, and we'd guarantee that the lessons learned will more than pay for the cost of attendance. Plus, registration in the mentorship includes free attendance at our fall seminar on October 14.

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BlackLight 2018 R2 Is Now Available From BlackBag

BlackLight 2018 R2 is officially released and is now available. This release includes the top three most popular customer requests and provides new support for Spotlight artifacts. What's New and Improved? - Ability to view and filter across multiple devices - Enhanced email support for EMLX parts and email reporting - Auto-adjust time zones for Daylight Savings Time - Ability to parse macOS Spotlight Indexes To learn more about the latest BlackLight release and watch a five minute features overview video, click here.

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Digital Forensics News July 2018

Magnet Forensics have released a new white paper showing how to acquire and parse data from iOS 11 devices. Griffeye's Analyze 18.1 can now perform facial recognition in both images and videos. How do you make sure your paper gets accepted to a conference? There are no guarantees, but in his latest blog post Lee Holmes shares some tips. Registration is open for Techno Security TX in September. Forensic Focus readers can get 30% off the ticket price by entering the code FFOCUSTX18 at the checkout. MSAB are the latest company to join the CASE initiative, a community-developed standard designed to serve the digital forensic industry. Susteen have released a new field acquisition device, which allows immediate acquisition of of evidence from mobile phones in the field.

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Friday, July 20, 2018

Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 7/20/18

Passware Decrypts New Apple File System

Passware announced the anniversary release of the all-new Passware Kit 2018 v1! The new version of Passware Kit Forensic features a redesigned user interface and the ability to decrypt Apple File System (APFS) disks and macOS High Sierra Keychains. Memory analysis now works as a one-step, streamlined process for multiple evidence types and encryption artifacts, while optimized algorithms provide faster password recovery for TrueCrypt, Android, Zip, and many other types of files. Passware Kit 2018 v1 can be used side-by-side with Passware Kit 2017.

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Giving Back In DFIR

by Jessica Hyde, Magnet Forensics A few months back I was on my way to BSides NoVa, having a conversation with someone competing in the CTF about where his team would donate the prize money to if they won. I suggested some organizations related to helping young people learn about Information Security. A few hours later, I was relaying the story to a friend and she mentioned that she wasn’t aware of many of the groups that I was referencing. At that point, I realized that information needed to be shared. A few months later I was at BSidesRoc and heard an incredible keynote by Matt Mitchell: Practical Security: Real World Lessons. In this presentation, Matt talked about a gamut of ways that Information Security professionals could use their skills to help others. He spoke about work that he and other hackers do that has meaning in different ways. I was inspired and started looking for ways that we can use our skills as Digital Forensic professionals to give back. Read More

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Thursday, July 19, 2018

Oxygen Forensics Brings iCloud Extractions Back Online

Oxygen Forensics has released a maintenance update to Oxygen Forensic® Detective v. 10.3.2 to add support within Oxygen Forensic® Cloud Extractor for the latest Apple security standards protecting iCloud account data. Recent changes made by Apple to its security standards halted extractions of data from iCloud accounts by DFIR experts, resulting in incomplete case files in legal proceedings and investigations. Now, Oxygen Forensics customers using Oxygen Forensic® Detective may fully resume their investigations involving Apple devices and accounts. In addition to support for the latest iCloud protocols, v10.3.2 includes support for iOS 12, currently in testing by a beta community.

from Forensic Focus https://ift.tt/2muglij

Interview With Tina Wu, DPhil Cyber Security Student, University of Oxford

Tina, you're a DPhil student in Cyber Security at the University of Oxford. What was it that first sparked your interest in digital forensics and cyber security? I first became interested in forensics when in college, I have always had an interest in science and law subjects and found forensic science a good combination of these. I found the CSI programs fascinating and this encouraged me to take my degree in Forensic Science. Whilst at university my interest in computing developed when I built my own PC and setup a home network, this prompted me to undertake a master's in Digital Forensics and computer security. Read More

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Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Wilson by BlueSky in Burnaby

Wilson by BlueSky is a new 39-storey residential highrise development located located at 5977 Wilson Avenue, Burnaby. This project will offer 287 studio, 1- to 3-bedroom condominiums, and 6 townhomes. To compliment the garden-like setting of the Central Park East Neighbourhood, Wilson will boast substantial progressive landscaping with publicly-accessible pedestrian and cycling linkages to local greenspaces.

The post Wilson by BlueSky in Burnaby appeared first on Vancouver New Condos.



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Cressey Sports Performance Business Building Mentorship – October 15, 2018

We’re excited to announce that on Monday, October 15, we’ll be hosting our second CSP Business-Building Mentorship, a day of learning with Pete Dupuis and me. This event will take place at our Hudson, MA location the day after our annual fall seminar. Pete and I have spent nearly a decade crafting the operational systems and strategies that fuel CSP today, and we’re excited to pull back the curtain for fellow gym owners.

It is our intention to foster an environment conducive to learning and the exchanging of ideas, so we will be limiting participation to 25 individuals.

Here’s a look at our agenda for the day:

8:30am: Registration & Coffee

Morning Session – Lead Generation & Conversion

09:00am – 09:30am: Introduction: The Four Pillars of Fitness Business Success
09:30am – 10:30am: Lead Generation: Strategic Relationship Development, Identifying & Connecting with Opinion Leaders, Social Media Strategies
10:30am - 11:00am: Q&A
11:00am - 12:00pm: Lead Conversion: CSP Selling Strategy & Methodology
12:00pm - 01:00pm: Lunch (provided)

Afternoon Session – Business Operations & Long-Term Planning

01:00pm – 02:00pm: Operations: Accounting for Gym Owners – Guest Lecture from CSP’s CPA, Tom Petrocelli
02:00pm – 02:30pm: Operations: Internship Program Design & Execution
02:30pm – 03:00pm: Operations: Hiring Protocols, Staff Development & Continuing Ed.
03:00pm – 03:30pm: Long-Term Planning: Lease Negotiation Considerations
03:30pm – 04:30pm: Long-Term Planning: Strategic Brand Dev., Evaluating Opportunities, SWOT Analysis
04:30pm – 06:00pm: Q&A

Cost: $699.99 (includes free admission to CSP Fall Seminar on Sunday, October 14)

Click here to register using our 100% secure server!

Please keep in mind that the previous offering of this event sold out, so don't delay in signing up. We hope to see you there!

 



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Register Now for the 7th Annual Cressey Sports Performance Fall Seminar!

We're very excited to announce that on Sunday, October 14, we’ll be hosting our seventh annual fall seminar at Cressey Sports Performance. As was the case with our extremely popular fall event over the past six years, this event will showcase the great staff we're fortunate to have as part of our team. Also like last year, we want to make this an affordable event for everyone and create a great forum for industry professionals and fitness enthusiasts alike to interact, exchange ideas, and learn. We're happy to have Perform Better as our official sponsor again this year as well.

Here are the presentation topics:

Guest Keynote Speaker: Pat Rigsby -- The Future of Fitness Business: The Blueprint for Success in a Changing Market

In this presentation, you'll discover how you can position yourself to succeed now and in the future within the fast-evolving fitness industry. You'll learn what you must do to stand out from the competition, earn more and take advantage of your strengths to design a business that will thrive for the long-term. If you want to command higher rates, enjoy better retention and grow a business you enjoy, don't miss this session.

Eric Cressey -- The Overhead Athlete Evolution

Cressey Sports Performance opened in 2007 and quickly became known as a destination for baseball players from around the country looking to improve. This niche gave rise to specific expertise with this demographic. Interestingly, development of the overhead athlete has changed drastically during the past 11 years, and Eric will outline the new challenges we face and strategies that must be employed to keep arms healthy. While the presentation will focus on overhead athletes, the overwhelming majority of lessons will also be applicable to everyday fitness clients as well.

Pete Dupuis -- The Secrets of Our Industry's Top Performing Fitness Businesses

In this presentation, Pete will bring you inside the strategic mindset of some of our industry's most successful fitness business owners. He's interviewed a series of industry influencers and will share the most under appreciated components of their established and immensely profitable operations. Takeaways will include tips for upgrading branding strategy, fine-tuning employee development, maximizing the effectiveness of social media efforts, and more.

Kyle Driscoll -- Simplifying Coaching Cues for High Speed Movements

Kyle will discuss why training rotational power, especially via medicine ball work, is important for everybody. Coaching high speed movements can, however, be difficult to see - and even more difficult to coach. The higher speed the movement is, the more simple the cues needs to be.

Chris Howard -- Shoulder Pain: What Causes It and What Can We Do About It?

Nearly every fitness professional has encountered an athlete or client dealing with shoulder pain or discomfort. In this presentation, Chris will blend his experience of anatomy and muscular referred pain patterns with strength and conditioning and soft-tissue strategies to illustrate how he addresses clients experiencing shoulder pain. Whether you are new to strength and conditioning, or a seasoned veteran, you will see shoulder pain from a new perspective following this presentation.

John O'Neil -- Stress Application and The Principles of Load Management: What Every Coach Needs to Know

In this discussion, John will cover how he as a strength coach for training clients who have multiple variables that affect their ability to handle applied stress within a gym setting, including how to manage these principles in conjunction with a sport coach. This information will include both theoretical aspects of load management in addition to very specific examples used at Cressey Sports Performance.

Cole Russo -- Creating a System for Movement Progressions

Many strength and conditioning coaches have a collection of sprint and agility drills they like to utilize, but no organized framework of how to apply them. In this presentation, Cole will define a system for teaching your athletes movement. This presentation will include both a lecture on movement progressions, coaching tips, and crucial movement competencies; as well as a following practical/movement session.

**Bonus 3:00PM Saturday Hands-on Session**

Frank Duffy -- Neanderthal No More 2.0: Reviving a Classic

Whether you’re a high-level professional athlete or a desk jockey, at the end of the day, you’re a human being. In this hands-on presentation, Frank will outline the “big rocks” you should consider integrating on a daily basis and how to modify them to align with your own capabilities and goals.

Location:

Cressey Sports Performance
577 Main St.
Suite 310
Hudson, MA 01749

Cost:

Early Bird (through 9/14) Regular Rate – $129.99, Regular Rate (after 9/14) $159.99

Early Bird (through 9/14) Student Rate – $99.99, Regular Rate (after 9/14) $129.99

Date/Time:

Sunday, October 14, 2018
Registration 8:30AM
Seminar 9AM-5PM

**Bonus session Saturday, October 13 at 3:00pm.

Continuing Education

National Strength and Conditioning Association CEUs pending (each of the previous six CSP fall seminars have been approved)

Click Here to Sign-up (Regular)

or

Click Here to Sign-up (Students)

We’re really excited about this event, and would love to have you join us! However, space is limited and most seminars we’ve hosted in the past have sold out quickly, so don’t delay on signing up!

If you have additional questions, please direct them to cspmass@gmail.com. Looking forward to seeing you there!

NOTE: Pete and I will be hosting our CSP Business Building Mentorship on Monday the 15th. If you sign up for this event, admission to the fall seminar is included.

PS - If you're looking for hotel information, The Extended Stay America in Marlborough, MA offers our clients a heavily discounted nightly rate of just under $65.00. Just mention "Cressey" during the booking process in order to secure the discount. Their booking phone number is 508-490-9911.



from Eric Cressey | High Performance Training, Personal Training https://ift.tt/2LsKfOu

Webinar: Using Griffeye Technology To Increase Efficiency And Results

August 28, Griffeye is hosting a webinar on how to create more efficient workflows using the Griffeye Technology. You will learn how to use different techniques and tools to reduce workload and generate better results.

from Forensic Focus https://ift.tt/2NsScEf

Police Reform: A Lost Cause?

“Lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for.” — Clarence Darrow

I have to admit I can get pretty despondent over the pace of police reform in our country — is it a lost cause? (I have studied, worked in, and been part of this system and its problem for nearly 60 years!)

I don’t want to think of police reform in a free society as a “lost cause.” Yet if I still wore a set of dog tags from my days as a Marine I would add the tag “Hope springs eternal” to remind me that we have a strong, resilient government and that “this, too, shall pass.”

So, what have I learned over the years about the cause for which I profess? I have learned that improving a system like policing (especially on a national basis which involves about 600,000 police in 18,000 agencies) takes time and much longer than most of us (including elected officials and community leaders) are willing to give.

The problem is that we look at change in America in 4-year segments — terms of elected office. And that’s simply too short a period of time to change much of anything. In my experience, to significantly alter the culture and practices of an organization’s culture and practices like a police department takes at least seven and more likely ten. But we seem to never talk about it this glaring fact of life.

So, mayors and commissions, not thinking about this fact of life, pick nice, capable, often charismatic police leaders who are short on how to actually implement needed change and have been too immersed in the culture in which they developed their ideas about leadership. Actually, there are too few police leaders in our nation who understand the change process and what it takes. This is not a prescription for police reform.

Of course, reform is not just about the man or woman on top, it’s about the organization, its values and practices which can implement the right values of justice and fairness in our society, along with leaders who are mature, emotionally intelligent, and value human persons. It’s also about those leaders having the passion, patience and persistence to embody those values during the upward climb in their careers and, have been able to influence those around them to the way they do policing.

I have to admit after watching what happened after the report of the 1967 President’s Commission and the 2015 Task Force Report, that the only way I see for significant and continuing reform is some kind of intervention and regulation by the federal government which is designed to work with failing police agencies and their communities. Much along the lines that we have seen the U.S. Department of Justice do with a number of our nation’s police agencies.

That has been most commonly done through consent decrees oriented toward improving the constitutionality of policing practices and after an investigation found done blatant civil rights violations.

What does that record look like? Since 1994, over 60 cities and counties have come under a federal consent decree. Twenty police agencies are currently under a consent decree which involves a federal court-appointed monitor and oversight by that court.

Consent decrees are, however, a mixed bag as to how effective this type of reform is. Has it improved policing in those cities? For example, Michael Wood, a self-described police management scholar and former Baltimore police officer makes the argument that even consent decrees cannot bring about the reform that is needed today.

For example, Cincinnati is the city that has been longest under federal oversight. It’s been over 15 years now and I think it is fair to say that reform has been slow – but, perhaps, a fairer question might be, what would Cincinnati be today without this intervention?

Whatever way you come out on the effectiveness of consent decrees, you have to admit that it is one heck of a way to run a police department. Wouldn’t a well-trained, emotionally intelligent, and experienced police leader be a better approach?

Of course, anyone who follows national politics and police will know that the option of using federal consent decrees to improve police is now a moot point under the current administration as U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, appears adamantly opposed to such intervention into a “local matter” – even with a well-founded suspicion of long-term and egregious civil rights violations by that local police department. After all, is not policing and its improvement a local matter that is best undertaken by the community? But we all know too well that policing ceases to be a local matter when a person’s civil rights are ignored.

So where does that leave police improvement and reform? This is what I have learned about it:

  1. Change takes time; sustaining any of the improvements made takes even longer.
  2. The central factor (but not only one) in police reform is the chief of police. He or she must be experienced, mature and with strong internalized constitutional and ethical values.
  3. It is not enough to have a chief with these characteristics, he or she must also be able to show they can practice what I call “Quality Leadership;” a collaborative, data-based servant-style of leadership that is focussed on the community and not solely on the police department. This will also require those leaders to have strong Emotional Intelligence.
  4. As Jim Collins wrote a number of years ago in his book, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t” (2001), it’s important to put the right people “on the bus” and be able to get those of the bus who aren’t willing to be on the improvement team. (And that requires a leader who has wide latitude in police officer hiring, assignment, and promotion.)
  5. Collins also identified the best leaders as “Level 5 Leaders;” those “who display a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will. They’re incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the cause, for the organization and its purpose, not themselves.”
  6. Changing and improving police, however, is not a singular, top-down effort. Reform police chiefs must have a mayor, city council members and community leaders in their corner. Without community-wide support and understanding why improvement needs to happen, change will either never begin or soon falter.
  7. Within the department, formal and informal leaders must be able to be the values professed. It’s also important for them to see there can be self-interest in what is  trying to be accomplished; to see that improvement can benefit them as well as the community at large. For without understanding what is being proposed is best for them as well and the road on which they are asked to travel, needed changes will never be sustained.
  8. Leading a change process takes constant, informed, and energetic cheerleaders for reform. That requires leaders who are able to “tell, sell, persuade” others; rank and file officers, elected officials, and the community at large, that what is being proposed is good for everyone. A good example is the practice of what is called Procedural Justice. (PJ). When building trust between citizens and police, trust is a primary police objective and it can be periodically measured. Measurement enables improvements to be given some substance. When community members report they were treated with dignity and respect during a police contact a deposit is made in the police “trust bank.” And when PJ is also practiced within the ranks of the police department, police officers will sense they are working in a fairer, more-rewarding and safer environment. The beneficiaries of PJ are not only to citizens who encounter police, but also police officers in their daily work. That is because in order to make PJ work it must also be practiced within the ranks of the police agency as well as the community.
  9. I would add to my learning that which I have written in two of my books (where I explain this in greater detail and illustrate an actual successful and sustained process of change).

11. Over the years, the successful process of improving a police agency is all about what a learned professor told me years ago, “It’s not what you say, it’s what comes out the spout!” And the spout for me has been a police organization staffed my mature, educated, well-trained, emotionally controlled men and women who are committed to working with and respecting community members in solving problems they, the community, identify.

12. Finally, I have learned that community-identified problems are the problems on which police need to work (and not the problems they think need addressing). As a primary example, the problem the community sees with police use of deadly force needs to be addressed openly, respectfully, and honestly with the community. It is there and then they will find how to use less-than-deadly methods to contain persons NOT threatening with a firearm. Once that problem is addressed and the numbers go down I am confident community trust in their police will rise. In the meantime, police must connect and stay connected with those whom they serve — all of them — and continue to assure fellow citizens by example that they are primarily in the business of protecting and saving lives.

I pray that the proper and effective policing of a free society is not a lost cause, that it is possible and inevitable. And that after I no longer walk upon the earth, there are young men and women today who will carry this cause across the finish line and hear the community raise their voice as one:

“Yes, we have a learned, trusted, effective, and respected police of which we all support and take pride in.”



from Improving Police https://ift.tt/2LhRTP3

Monday, July 16, 2018

Face Recognition In Griffeye Analyze DI Pro – Now For Both Images And Videos

What started as a side project for one of the developers at Griffeye is now a highly appreciated and requested new feature in Griffeye Analyze DI Pro. A month ago Face Recognition for images was introduced – and in the latest release it is now also possible to recognize faces in video material.

from Forensic Focus https://ift.tt/2uxQWaW

What Can Be Learned from Research? A Lot!

Reducing Fatal Police Shootings as System Crashes: Research, Theory, and Practice

By Lawrence W. Sherman

Annual Review of Criminology. 2018. 1:421–49

[Ed. Note: Excerpts follow from a very fine and necessary article by Larry Sherman in the Annual Review of Criminology. I have to admit that much of what I have argued since Ferguson is included in this paper. What Sherman is proposing (after his many years as a police researcher in our country and in the U.K.) needs discussion (and eventual implementation). I have highlighted some sections that I thought extremely important to consider.]

__________________

Reducing Fatal Police Shootings as System Crashes:

Research, Theory, and Practice

lawrence_shermanBy Lawrence W. Sherman

“America has reduced fatal police shootings once before, with criminology playing a key role in what can be called the First Great Awakening1of both public and scholarly sentiment against avoidable police shootings. From 1970 through 1985, 50 cities of more than 250,000 residents each took actions that cut in half the annual total count of citizens killed by police in those cities from 353to 172 per year.

“As big-city homicide rates spiked, criminologists and national news media seemed unaware that police killings of citizens went back up in the early 1990s, when many police agencies shifted from revolvers to semiautomatic pistols with large ammunition clips. The influence of the US Supreme Court decision In Graham v. Connor (1989) is also blamed for reversing the benefits garner-cause in Graham the Court ruled that police could justify killing people if they reasonably believed that the person shot was putting a life in danger.

“Yet Fyfe and Sherman both concluded, independently, that merely changing [deadly force] policies was not enough. Other elements of organizational change seemed to be essential, including external demands and internal leadership, both ensuring that policies are implemented and enforced.

“The evidence suggested that although policy restrictions made some difference, the rhetorical messages from the Mayor and Police Commissioner produced effects that overrode the policy content.

“After a series of murders of [Victoria] city police in the 1980s, a new training emphasis on danger to police apparently encouraged more preemptive use of force, with a sharp increase in fatal shootings of citizens. That led, in turn, to a public outcry—including the State Coroner’s criticism of a culture of bravery leading to rapid confrontations rather than delay and negotiation. The new response in the early 1990s was to launch Project Beacon: A new 5-day training project for all operational officers, underpinned by a ‘safety-first’ philosophy: safety for officers, safety for the community and safety for the suspect…. The immediate impact of this training was remarkable, and a culture of safety first had effectively permeated through all levels of Victoria Police.

“Fatal police shootings statewide by police in Victoria dropped by 50% in the short run after Project Beacon. By a few years later, however, the numbers began to climb again, with mentally ill suspects comprising almost half of persons killed. This echoes the conclusion from US case studies: that there is no single intervention that is likely to have a lasting effect on fatal shootings. Nonetheless, the first wave of US research featured substantial attention to policy interventions. That is more than can be said of most recent research

“[Research by Frank Zimring (When Police Kill. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2017) found that:

  1. Proportionate to the national population, African Americans are 2.3 times more likely to be killed than whites, and Native Americans are twice as likely; there is no elevated rate of death for Hispanic over non-Hispanic whites.
  2. The most common situations in which police killed people were disturbances (23%), of which approximately half were domestic.
  3. There was no firearm present in 44% of fatal police shootings.
  4. A firearm or knife was in the decedent’s possession in 72% of deaths.
  5. More than one officer is present in most police killings (65%), but 37% of killings by officers who are alone kill suspects who have no guns, compared to 11% of deaths occurring with multiple officers present.
  6. In the limited portion of cases reporting the number of bullets fired, police fired four or more bullets at the suspect in 32% of cases, thus increasing the risk of death.

“The Philadelphia study found significantly, but not substantially, higher levels of likelihood to shoot among officers with less self-control, as measured by a range of noncompliant behavior such as traffic violations.

“Zimring reports (but does not relate to the organizational hypothesis of a leadership change): The 62 shootings in the year before Charles Ramsey became police commissioner (in January 2008) were reduced to 42 in his first year and (with fluctuations) down to 23 in 2015, his last year as head of Philadelphia police.

“As a matter of context, the continuing effects of change in leadership, such as the appointment of Commissioner Ramsey, are important to consider understanding how to implement any systemic changes in the causal pathways to police shooting practices… more restrictive policies appeared to reduce the use of force.

“Perhaps the greatest gap in post-Ferguson criminology is what might be called preventative imagination. It is one thing to say that policies should be more restrictive. It is quite another to say exactly what should be restricted and how compliance with those restrictions should be achieved… broad visions for policing in general, not ideas aimed at police shootings in particular.

“[Zimring’s] four ways to save lives is a clear starting point:

  1. Fewer shooting incidents,
  2. Fewer bullets fired,
  3. Immediate medical attention,
  4. Immediate transportation to a trauma center.

Just having more rules and threats of punishment may not be enough to reduce deaths. Understanding how to change police agencies can only come from studying when they do or don’t change, and the many factors affecting such changes.

“Perhaps the best theory that criminology can apply to reducing police shootings is not inherently criminological but organizational: one that helps to provide change in operational systems rather than hold more individuals blameworthy.

“System accidents: The broader term of art [Perrow] chose for these events is system accidents, emphasizing complexity rather than individual fault or blame as the root cause of the catastrophes

“Hence, this review proposes to adapt, modify, and rename the original concept of system accidents as system crashes. This evolution in both content and label is consistent with recent histories of the word accident as one developed by factory owners to avoid blame for injuries to workers caused by unsafe factory systems.

“So, what does it mean to call police shootings system crashes and why does it matter? It matters because it signals a shift from a blame culture to a learning culture. It means that we can study not only who, if anyone, was at fault but also what processes went wrong and how we can fix them.

“As Braithwaite suggests, it is important to confront individuals and organizations with the harm that their conduct causes. But it is equally important to do it in a way that allows them to express remorse and seek redemption by launching a new course of action.

Braithwaite’s graphic model is: Confrontation ⇒ Truth ⇒ Prevention.

“But the success of such confrontations depends on the emotional content of the language the confronters employ.

“Any confrontation with a person being held accountable for harm can easily come across as a statement that ‘you are a bad person’ rather than that ‘we know you are a good person, but your actions are harmful, and we must learn together how to stop them.’  It is worth trying to shift national and local dialog on police shootings from blame to learning.

“The central point Perrow made in defining the concept of system accidents is that the urge to blame individuals often obstructs the search for organizational solutions.

If a system-crash perspective can help build a consensus that many dimensions of police systems need to be changed to reduce unnecessary deaths… police and their constituencies might start a dialog over the details of which system changes to make.

“Perrow shows how the post-incident reviews rarely identify the true culprit: It is the complexity of the high-risk systems that causes extreme harm.

“Similarly, fatal police shootings shine the spotlight on the shooter rather than on the complex organizational processes that recruited, hired, trained, supervised, disciplined, assigned, and dispatched the shooter before anyone faced a split-second decision to shoot

“The good news in Perrow’s analysis is that some kinds of systems (like air travel) begin with high rates of accidents, but accident rates are lowered by redesigning the systems to reduce their interactive complexity. Airway safety is a particular success story, in which ‘experience, better designs, equipment, and procedures appeared…the unsuspected interactions were avoided, and the tight coupling reduced.’

Which type of system is policing? Reformers quoted by Kennedy suggest that policing has failed to build a culture of safety comparable to that found in commercial passenger airlines, from which not one passenger died in a US plane crash in either 2015 or 2016, despite almost 912 million passenger journeys in 2016. Yet in the long run, whether policing can become as safe as air travel may depend on how well police innovators can apply Perrow’s concepts. What follows is a first attempt to suggest detailed systemic applications of Perrow’s framework.

Interactive complexity in policing arises in many kinds of interactions, such as those between police and citizens face to face, among officers dealing with the same citizen, among officers dealing with each other, and between organizational practices and individual officers. Crucially, complexity arises whenever police face citizens who do not comply with police orders.

“There are myriad ways in which people can fail to obey police orders, which makes the next steps of those people unexpected—or at least difficult to predict with certainty. The diverse ways people can defy police authority vary on a continuum of conduct that may appear more or less threatening to the safety of police and bystanders. What also varies, as generations of systematic observation have shown, is the conduct of police officers in response to noncompliance: their discretion to use force, make arrests, call for backup, and let suspects runaway to catch them on another day.

“A graphic model might look like this:

Citizen Noncompliance ⇒ Police Response ⇒ Citizen Threatens Police ⇒ Force?

“The two variables of citizen noncompliance and officer discretion are central to the (still untested) idea of de-escalation training, giving police skills in how to calm people down when they are upset. Using such skills may be a kind of emergency brake against police anger (or fear) escalating in response to citizen anger—a dynamic many observers see in events leading up to police shootings that may have been avoidable

“What may be far more important are interactions among police officers and their formal organizations, especially those that create production pressures that make tight coupling even tighter when police encounter noncompliant individuals.

“Two kinds of production pressures are familiar to policing, both of which cause tight coupling. One is the pressure to move on: any production pressure to finish the present task to attend to the next task. The other is the pressure to contain risk: to ensure that the present situation is limited to the initial participants and does not spill over to affect more people or escalate to an injury to police themselves. Both forms of pressure create a sense of urgency in police work and work against a strategy of patient de-escalation

“Police dealing with any kind of incident are highly conscious of the need to complete their task so that another task can be addressed very soon thereafter.

The pressure to keep up production, if only to be available for a new dispatch, can create an organizational contradiction between doing the present task well and getting it over with as soon as possible.

“They hear their own counterfactual question of what else should I be doing now that could be more important than this petty job?

“The result is a dominant occupational culture theme of police work best described as urgency: a strong sense of duty to (a) finish each task in order to (b) resume readiness to provide immediate assistance elsewhere to those who need it most, wherever they may be.

“[Camden Police]… formed a cordon around a knife-wielding man: their tactic uncoupled the behavior of the man from its potential for hurting bystanders as well as from hurting police… imposing themselves as a human shield that bought time for further negotiation.

“When citizens are noncompliant, police may rightly say they do not have all day. Shooting people certainly takes less time than arresting them without injury. Yet given the potentially catastrophic costs of speed, a safer system would make it possible for police to do just that: wait all day, if that is what it takes to avoid a lethal confrontation.

“A US Park Police officer emerged, ran over to [five] other officers already dealing with the man and immediately shot the homeless man twice… This difference suggests not only production pressures but also a further system problem of excessive decentralization, in which no one is in command at the scene of a life-or-death standoff.

“Some readers, however, may challenge the claim that police shootings are rare, so let us consider whether they are rare enough for system-accident theory.

“The 2008 PPCS [Police-Public Contacts Survey of the National Criminal Victimization Survey of US residents] is the latest detailed report to provide information on the number of contacts each respondent has. Using the percent of respondents who had one versus two or more contacts leading to a mean of 1.7 contacts per person who had a police contact, we can conservatively estimate the number of contacts by multiplying 1.7 times the 40 million who had any contact at all, which results in 68 million contacts. On that basis, we can estimate the risk of any resident being fatally shot in a police encounter is 1 in 68,000. By contrast to air passenger safety, where 912 million people flew every day without any fatalities in 2015 or 2016, encountering a police officer is at least 26,000 times more dangerous than boarding an aircraft.

“From the standpoint of 18,000 police agencies, the mean would be one fatal shooting every 18 years, with many if not most agencies having never killed anyone in living memory.

“It is clear from Perrow that different systems have different rates of failure, from missile-launching (high) to plane-landing (low). The estimates we have for fatal police shootings are certainly within those ranges.

“The consequences for public trust in the police agency can also be devastating; Skogan demonstrates with survey data that one bad event can outweigh many good deeds. Even bad publicity about police conduct in another city may depress crime reporting to police in African-American neighborhoods in cities around the country.

“Seen from a broad perspective on police organizations in relation to their environments, fatal police shootings seem appropriate for analysis with a theory of rare organizational catastrophes. But other considerations remain: whether it is ever correct to call them accidents (probably not) and whether they can be better prevented by focusing on failures of complex systems rather than just on individual actions (probably).

“One illustration of how much difference police system characteristics can make is found in a comparison of two police agencies, each of them dispatching officers to deal with a reportedly armed suspect. In the following comparison, police in Cleveland killed an unarmed boy, suffering international notoriety and criticism. Police in Camden, however, averted killing a man with a knife. One of these police agencies, Camden, had adopted a well-developed system-crash prevention strategy. The other, Cleveland, had not.

“As the county prosecutor described this case, it was a perfect storm of ‘human error, mistakes and communications by all involved that day.’ In other words, it was a system crash.

“More than 15 officers did exactly what Chief J. Scott Thomson had trained them to do under what the New York Times called his ‘Hippocratic ethos of policing: minimize harm and try to save lives:’ Officers are trained to hold their fire when possible, especially when confronting people wielding knives and showing signs of mental illness, and to engage them in conversation when commands of ‘drop the knife’ don’t work. This sometimes requires backing up to a safer distance or relying on patience rather than anything on an officer’s gun belt.

“For several minutes, the officers formed a cordon around the man and walked with him for a few blocks, trying to clear traffic ahead and periodically instructing him to drop the knife. The crisis ended when the man did just that.

“The Times also reported that had the episode taken place a year before, ‘we would more than likely have deployed deadly force and moved on,’ Chief Thomson said. The chief said he had stressed to his officers that the department ‘does not treat repositioning as retreating,’ and that backing up to put a car between a suspect and an officer ‘is not an act of cowardice.’

Note that this case does not require the reengineering of an entire police agency. All it required was a focus on patience. What Camden did can arguably be attempted in any police agency any size in the United States, until research falsifies that hypothesis.

Any research agenda for saving lives must start with the question of whether police systems were even designed to save the lives of people who police shoot. The evidence suggests the systems were not so designed. Unlike commercial airline passengers, whose safety has been steadily increased by better systems designs, people who are noncompliant with police authority have not generally been seen as customers to be protected—at least in the prevailing view of police and many elected officials.

“Policing so that all lives actually matter therefore requires that police, scholars, and the public go back to the drawing board to design a system specifically aimed at placing preservation of life on an equal (and often higher) level with swift enforcement of the law.

“As Zimring points out, the number of people who die from police shootings is approximately determined by at least four successive decision points, all occurring closely in time:

  1. Whether police will shoot at all.
  2. When to stop shooting (and after how many bullets shot).
  3. What medical care police themselves will render immediately to all persons they shoot.
  4. Whether police cars will immediately transport to a hospital persons shot by police rather than waiting for an ambulance or emergency medical technician to arrive.

“The fact that most of the 18,000 US police agencies appear to have no clear policies on decision points 2, 3, and 4 speaks volumes about the lack of design for the organizational behavior affecting the fatality rate outcomes of police shootings. At minimum, it suggests that system designs for saving lives are incomplete. Most shootings do not result in death. The fastest way to reduce fatal shootings may be to increase life-saving first aid after each shooting occurs… [battlefield-grade hemostatic bandages… but officers cannot be expected to apply those bandages if the department does not issue them along with police weapons.

“Officers can save lives of severely injured gunshot-wound victims if they place wounded persons in their police cars for immediate transport to the hospital, but they may be barred from doing so unless they have been trained and authorized by a local system designed to save lives

“Officers are also unlikely to know how to decide when enough bullets have been fired unless they are trained to make that decision on clear principles.

“Those policies, in turn, must be designed not in isolation from other dimensions of a policing system but rather in full light of the coupling and interactions with all relevant dimensions—from training and supervision to dispatchers and health-care systems.

“[Some pertinent questions the author suggests that must be asked:]

Redesigning Core Functions to Generate Fewer Confrontations

 “Starting with the core-functions issues, criminologists could address the following questions:

  1. Can production pressures on police to act quickly be reduced to slow down decision-making in every citizen encounter—thus leaving time to avoid split-second decisions?
  2. What do many officers or police chiefs do to avoid shooting people despite legally sufficient provocation and justification (averted shootings), and how can we find links to other parts of the system that may inhibit their success?
  3. Do police records show some police officers to be predictably more at risk than others to shoot illegally or unnecessarily, such that evidence-based decisions could be made to remove them from street encounters with civilians?
  4. Do certain kinds of training raise the risk of avoidable shootings so that such training can be discontinued in favor of other training tools that save more lives?
  5. Can on-the-scene protocols safely divert authority to shoot civilians from officers to super-visors (as in high-speed chases)?
  6. Can organizational incentives offered to encourage delay and de-escalation (bring-them-back-alive medals) help to reduce avoidable shootings?

Designing Innovations to Reduce Deaths when Confrontations Occur

“Once police engage in a lethal confrontation, Zimring’s decision points show that there are still many opportunities to save lives. Criminologists could therefore work with police agencies to answer such questions as these:

  1. Can cease-fire protocols limit the number of bullets fired by police under clear circumstances?
  2. How many lives can be saved by police applying hemostatic bandages to civilians immediately after a shooting by police?
  3. How many lives can be saved by requiring police to drive wounded civilians in police cars to hospitals as soon as they have received first aid?
  4. Should every accidental or intentional gunshot wound caused by a police officer be subject to a peer review process located outside of the shooter’s organizational unit?
  5. Can police leaders build more community trust after shootings by various statements of regret or efforts at reconciliation?

“The central obstacle to research and development for the majority of fatal police shootings is a key state-level policy: the vast decentralization of US police agencies. Any attempt to reduce fatal police shootings would be better targeted on the agencies in smaller communities, where the majority of all fatal shootings occur and where the rates of shootings are highest. Any attempt to introduce innovations in those communities will likely require the support of state legislatures and the police training boards that most states have created.

“FN: The idea of RJCs [Restorative Justice Conferences] about fatal police shootings has a relevant precedent in Montgomery, AL, where police failed to protect a Freedom Rider civil rights group from beatings by a white mob in 1961. Five decades later, Montgomery Police Department Chief Kevin Murphy took an opportunity to apologize for this harm on behalf of his police agency. The apology was something Chief Murphy had planned to do since his first days as some Montgomery police officer decades after the mob attack. The apology was delivered on camera to Congressman John Lewis of Atlanta, who had marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in Montgomery.

“Foremost among the ideas that could be developed is interagency cooperation within states, i.e, ways in which smaller agencies can share in specialist expertise for life-saving tactics and strategies—with or without cooperation from state police or even nearby cities over 100,000.These strategies could include first-aid and psychological training for police in treating gunshot wounds they have effected themselves, protocols for equipping police cars to transport shot persons to hospitals, and in hostage negotiations or siege situations—all of them introduced with careful impact evaluation research.


I encourage you to read Sherman’s full article and think about ways in which your police agency (either as a police or community leader) can take these recommended steps to ensure everyone, police and citizens, gets home safely at the end of the day or shift. The current problem of deadly force can be addressed and solved.



from Improving Police https://ift.tt/2uBxFWg