Challenging the Status Quo pt 1: Use of Quantitative Statistics in Officer Productivity

In the first of a series titled “Challenging the Status Quo”, I will examine the ethical challenge in the use of comparative officer productivity statistics.

Any officer that has been on the job for more than a minute has heard the ever famous complaints of “why aren’t you catching real criminals?”, or “isn’t there something better you could be doing?” In this topic of discussion I will be examining the ethical and moral purposes behind tracking officer productivity, and how police leadership can quickly destroy officer morale and create questionable ethical situations. In this discussion I will be using several terms, the definitions of which are necessary for understanding. “Productivity” is a broad based term categorizing the gamut of proactive police function, to include ticket writing, officer initiated detentions, and any citation generating function. Often, this topic can quickly dilute down to a discussion on ticket writing. Without resorting to such narrow focus, I will endeavor to keep my base definition of productivity to tickets and officer generated arrests. Notwithstanding the legitimate law enforcement function of promoting public traffic safety through the enforcement of traffic laws, the ethical challenge comes into context when officers are pressured to produce beyond such pretenses.   

Applying basic ethical principles to the topic of officer productivity, law enforcement leadership is often judged on its ability to reduce crime. Consequentialist Theory, or Utilitarianism, holds that actions are “right” or “just” only in so far as they have beneficial consequences. Therefore, laws and actions are neither inherently right or wrong, but are only morally judged by the outcome they produce; the ends justify the means. On the other hand, the Deontological Perspective shifts attention away from the effects of our actions by focusing on the actions themselves. Unlike the utilitarian approach, which holds the consequences of our actions as the primary factor to determining ethical action, deontology holds that our actions should be informed by relevant moral duties rather than judgement by consequence. In other words, under utilitarianism the ends justify the means, and under deontology the means are judged independent of the ends. The question that I’m sure most readers are asking themselves right now, is how does any of this have to do with police productivity? Follow along on this journey and I will endeavor to impress how police leadership and the focus on officer productivity becomes detrimental.   

As with the nature of law enforcement, the proficiency of a department is judged by its ability to control crime. Communities with low crime contribute such to a “successful” police force, whereas departments of high crime cities are unfairly critiqued as inefficient and/or inept. Even within the same department, senior leaders are judged by their ability, or lack thereof, to “control” the crime in their particular purview. In order to create the evaluative criteria necessary to gauge this judgement, there must be some quantitative means to examine crime occurrences. This is where computer based statistics (COMPSTAT) comes into play. Tracking of crime occurrences within designated areas gives precinct commanders the ability to determine hot spots and crime trends within their zone of influence. The compilation of these statistics is then used by senior level leadership in the judgement of mid-level leadership on their ability to control rates of crime. Before continuing, I must clarify that the use of COMPSTAT in directing limited police resources is not the problem in itself. The use of the data is in keeping with maintaining the most efficient and effective use of taxpayer resources. The problem, however, comes into play when COMPSTAT data becomes the basis for comparative analysis at the individual level. It is at this point that the avenues for corruptibility begin to form their dangerous precedent.

My station commander, for example, is criticized weekly on the level of crime within our precinct, compared in terms of last years data. On a weekly year-to-date analysis, if any precinct that demonstrates a higher rate of crime than the previous year, the senior leadership of that station is criticized for not doing enough to reduce crime. Reduction in reported crime becoming the primary focus, station commanders are now faced with the consequentialist justification of doing any and all means necessary to reduce the numbers. Within my station, this has correlated in overtime details designated as “burglary details”, but are little more than ticket writing venues. If an individual officers assigned to the detail does not produce enough statistics to pacify the powers at be, than they are prohibited from future details, or the funding allocation is given to another shift. The easiest method of developing these stats is through traffic tickets, rather than addressing the burglary component from which the detail was originally developed. This has resulted in my station writing hundreds of citations every week, with no statistically significant rate of crime reduction. When I addressed this concern with my leadership, I was given the excuse that the mere presence of the officers enforcing traffic laws within these high burglary communities will help deter the burglars from committing their offenses. The statistical backing of such claim is non-existent, as there is no quantifiable manner to determine that the presence of traffic stops leads to a reduction in Part I crimes. In addition, our weekly crime statistics tracker has shown no correlating evidence to justify the claim that the details have done anything to curb burglary. Yet, the senior leadership continues to push traffic ticket details because it produces statistics that are then used as pacification to show that we are doing “something” to reduce crime. As the crime increases, so does the pressure to increase individual officer productivity, to the point that the “service” aspect of the job is lost to the pressure of producing greater and greater amount of productivity; quickly correlating in a loss of officer discretion to the pressure of statistics production. Why spend the time to find non-arrest alternative options for handling a dispute, when I am judged by the number of arrests I make? Likewise, traffic citations easily become a statistic generating faucet beyond the legitimate purpose of promoting public safety. When an individual officer is ONLY issuing citations as measure to appease higher leadership, and NOT because of the promotion of highway safety, the legitimate and ethical purposes behind our profession are lost. In turn, this fixation on quantitative statistics quickly creates a toxic work environment where the protection of the community, and the service nature of the law enforcement profession becomes clouded by the lense of quantitative statistics.

To tie this into a personal example, my ward partner and myself have two very different approaches to our methods of policing. As a younger officer, I don’t mind getting out and kicking the proverbial hornets nest to make a few arrests; most particularly I enjoy the satisfaction of hunting out felony fugitive warrants. My partner, on the other hand, grew up in the neighborhood we patrol, and spends much of his day talking to the residents and continuing associative relationships. As a result, when a major incident occurs in our ward, he will often beat the detectives in developing the suspect; the combination of our approaches is effective in maintaining control of our ward. However, on our monthly statistics tracker, my partner is routinely “ranked” far below me. We simply cannot judge individual officers by their desire or ability to generate certain statistics. True leadership comes from embracing the skills and abilities of each individual to harness the benefit that comes from collective efforts. Criticizing officers by use of comparative statistics sets the stage for ethical challenges. Officer productivity becomes determined by their ability to enforce law upon the citizenry absent of whether or not such effort even creates the desired effect. In turn, pressure is created for officers to change classifications of crimes to reduce Part I numbers, thus creating the false illusion in crime reduction. This impossible standard and constant pressure quickly destroys officer morale and removes their desire to assess situations and critically develop non-arrest alternatives. Why spend extra time developing alternative options when I can simply effect an arrest and move on? More dangerously, what is stopping an officer from violating constitutional rights during self-generated arrests if the means by which he/she uses to accomplish the arrest are second in priority to end state statistical production? Instead, law enforcement supervisors must re-learn to embrace the leadership practices of extracting the best qualities of each individual officer on a qualitative basis. Critique each officer on the quality of their work, on the ability to think and act critically, and on their ability to correlate their duty as a service to the community, with arrests and citations being conducted as options rather than the primary goal itself.  

Next article will focus on salvaging officer morale, getting away from evaluating officers on statistics, and divert energy towards a Problem-Oriented Policing model.

~Rooster