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Service Standards in the Colorado Springs Police DepartmentLuis Velez, Chief of Police and Thomas Paine, Planning Manager
In today’s environment of scarce resources and high expectations, police agencies must continually seek ways to demonstrate accountability to their communities for public funds and police services. The Colorado Springs Police Department (CSPD) is building on the foundation of police accreditation and our well-established community policing philosophy to further raise the threshold of accountability to our citizens. CALEA® Accreditation represents compliance with professional law enforcement requirements and practices. Demonstrating our accountability with these rigorous standards, the CSPD has proudly displayed the CALEA® logo on its patrol cars since 1991. As we seek to further enhance police accountability in Colorado Springs, the CSPD has developed standards of police service performance. The standards represent local measures of policing success and address both police and community outcomes.
Using a research and evaluation model developed by the SPD and Ms. Mora Fiedler, Principal Analyst and Grants Unit Supervisor, called PASS (Police Accountability and Service Standards), we are gaining a better understanding of police service delivery needs and expectations from officers and citizens. With a focus on police service outcomes, we are identifying what really matters to our stakeholders.
Police performance has traditionally been gauged by narrow measures that mask as much as they reveal about the true picture of the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of police services in a community. For example, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) measures have long been accepted as the gauge of serious crime in a community. It is a composite total of selected “serious” crimes as identified in 1929. The crimes making up the UCR are murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. As a measure of police effectiveness however, the UCR has several major weaknesses: it is only a single measure; it includes only those crimes reported to the police; it uses a hierarchical rule that omits lesser crimes in one criminal episode; and it includes many minor crimes. The UCR is actually driven by its largest category: larceny, which includes many minor crimes such as thefts from vending machines and shoplifting. Community disorder symptoms such as fear, intimidation, graffiti, drug dealing, and vandalism are absent. Other incomplete measures of police performance include arrests, traffic tickets, and drug seizures.
Therefore, in order to demonstrate policing effectiveness, particularly in a community policing environment, law enforcement must go beyond the traditional, and often flawed, measures of performance. The police must work with their communities to determine police service expectations, including the types and levels of those services, and identify valid measures of success for those services.
As part of developing a long-range plan for police services, the CSPD established a committee to identify police service standards. This group, called the SNAP (Service Needs Assessment for Policing) Committee, consisted of sworn and civilian members selected from all areas of the department. From the beginning, the group felt that it was important to identify service standards that were results oriented and reflected the needs and desires of our citizens and elected officials. For a year, committee members carefully reviewed the goals, objectives, and performance measures historically used by the department, examined police performance measurement in other law enforcement agencies, and reviewed the professional literature. Existing standardized measures of police performance, such as the International City/County Management Association’s (ICMA) Comparative Performance Measurement Program, were explored. The committee found that much available information on this topic was academic, lacking practical application in our community. The ICMA program was the most comprehensive attempt we found to measure and compare police services and operations. However, we were unable to identify other police agencies incorporating service standards into an organizational strategic planning and evaluation framework.
Proposed police service standards were presented for review and input to a cross section of police and community focus groups representing a wide range of interests. The focus groups represented business, criminal justice, local government, social services, non-profits, seniors, minorities, faith groups, youth, schools, and gays. There was also a focus group of police officers. The department solicited public participation and review. Subsequently, the public input was incorporated and the draft of the police service standards was again made available to the community for a final review. Ultimately, City Council adopted the service standards as a goal for police services in Colorado Springs. Now the police department can cite City Council approved service standards when additional resources are requested for police services.
Seven categories of police service standards were established in Colorado Springs:
Police service standards depict those high-level organizational outcome goals for police service that the Colorado Springs community expects. Our service standards reflect the city’s strategic plan and the police department’s vision, mission, and values. To the extent possible, service standards are described in terms of quality, quantity, cost, or time.
The seven service standards above reflect areas of police services that are important in Colorado Springs—they may be different in other communities. For example, while community safety is reflected in all the service standards, crime rates were not specifically identified as a service standard. Crime rates in Colorado Springs are well below the national average for cities our size, so crime does not rise to the level of concern as it may in other cities. The CSPD is very attentive to crime response, investigation, and prevention. However, because of the central role that the police have in crime control, we are presently examining a means to define another service standard that more directly measures police effectiveness in crime control.
A long-range plan for police services uses the service standards to make future resource estimates to implement the service standards. For example, in order to meet the 8-minute police emergency response time standard, our resource allocation models document the need for additional officers. Given the current economic conditions the city’s general fund budget cannot support additional officers. However, the Colorado Springs citizens recently passed a public safety sales tax increase that is providing additional officers over and above the city’s baseline budget. These additional officers have resulted in a drop of previously increasing emergency police response times.
The long-range plan and its corresponding police service standards serve to:
Performance measures are being established for each of the service standards, some examples of which are included in the checklist at the end of this article.
A comprehensive citizen satisfaction survey, also designed by Ms. Mora Fiedler in collaboration with the University of Colorado at Denver, is used to gauge and monitor citizen expectations of police services. Through inferential statistics, we have honed the service standard for “Citizen Satisfaction with Police Services” by identifying significant performance indicators. These indicators are our accountability measures for determining police effectiveness in reducing fear of crime, rating police work in the neighborhood, and satisfaction of quality policing in their neighborhood. The survey measures the following:
A private market research firm conducting random telephonic questionnaires administers the citywide survey. The survey results are used to assure that we are directing our resources to meet citizens’ expectations. Survey enhancements are made each year to assure reliability and validity.
The CSPD is currently developing a CD-ROM and training manual as an implementation guide for the PASS Model. The U.S. Department of Justice, COPS Office is funding this project and the training materials will be available at no cost to law enforcement agencies by the end of this year. Should you desire additional information on the PASS Model, please contact Ms. Mora Fiedler, Principal Analyst, Colorado Springs Police Department at (719) 444-7806.
To achieve true accountability to the community, the police and the community must define police services and the level at which the services are provided. They must also identify measures of success for those services as viewed by their local communities. And finally, the police must be open to being held accountable by the community for the measures of success agreed upon. Such an open dialogue between the police and the community will help gain the trust and confidence of all of our stakeholders, police and citizens alike.
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