Office of the Chief

JIM BUEERMANN, Chief of Police
Joined Redlands Police Department in 1978
Promoted to Chief of Police in 1998
Graduate - California Command College (1998)
Masters Degree - University of Redlands (1987)
Bachelors Degree - Cal State University, San Bernardino (1980)
United Way - "Building a Generation" committee
San Bernardino County Drug and Gang Task Force
Charter Member, Society of Police Futurists International
Member, California Peace Officers Association
Interests: Photography, reading, gardening, my kids
Married with two sons.
E-mail: chief@redlandspolice.org
Phone: 335-4744
Fax: 798-7675

Chief's Corner

August Podcast
July Podcast

2-15-08

Real Smart or Fake Smart: Evidence-Based Policing is the Remedy

One of the many wonderful things about being a parent is the way our children keep us grounded and appropriately humble. Take my teen-age sons for example. The other day I was driving with my kids when Alex (my youngest) asked me what I was “really good at” as a police officer. Wanting to impress Alex and his brother Jack – who was awaiting my response with an obvious degree of teen skepticism – I thought deeply before responding.

“Well,” I said, “I am an excellent detective. In fact, I’m a better detective than either Sherlock Holmes or Fenton Hardy (from the Hardy Boys Mysteries series). Truth be known young citizens, I’ve never had a case I didn’t solve!”

Any parent with teen-agers can probably predict my kids’ immediate response. Jack rolled his eyes (I didn’t know he could roll them ALL the way up into his head) and snorted, “yeah, right,” while nodding his head in rhythm to the song playing on his iPod. Alex, not wanting to miss his turn in the Dad vs. teen debate, informed me that Sherlock and Fenton were obviously better detectives than I was because NOBODY had written any books about MY investigative adventures.

After a few minutes of spirited debate, Alex declared, “Dad, you’re faking it and we could prove it if we didn’t have better things to do (yeah, like playing video games, talking on the phone, eating ALL the food in the refrigerator!) sooo, just give up!” Not wanting to end the conversation without invoking the sacred parental privilege of having the last word, I stated unequivocally, “OK, perhaps Holmes and Hardy are pretty good detectives, but I do work with the world’s best detectives and they’re at the Redlands Police Department!”

This memorable discussion got me thinking about how those of us in critical policy-making positions make decisions – both good and bad – and try and influence public opinion. One of the best terms I’ve ever come across to describe this is what one of the smarter people in America has termed the difference between being “real smart” or “fake smart.”

Real smart people really do know what they are talking about. Through experience or research, these folks have a deep knowledge of a particular topic or issue and are not simply talking through their hats. Fake smart people, on the other hand, are those individuals who can speak in an authoritative manner, convincing many of the correctness of their claims. The problem is, they don’t know anything “real” about that on which they pontificate.

We’ve all seen them. We’ve all had to endure them. And we’ve all been taken in by them.

Fake smart people come in all shapes and sizes, from all fields of endeavor. They’re everywhere. Most of the time they’re just annoying. But when they are in a position to make policy that affects us, then just annoying is what we wish they would simply be. I can’t begin to count the number of decisions I have witnessed in my life that were made by very smart people, acting in a very fake smart manner.

To be fair, not all fake smart people mean to be malicious in their actions. In fact, I’d like to suggest that there is a category of “fake smartness” into which many well-intending governmental policy-makers fall. Today, American policing experiences the persistent malady of fake smartness for which, fortunately, there is a remedy. That remedy is called “evidence-based policing.”

Police departments across America utilize strategies that are generally well-intended and thoughtful. That doesn’t mean they always work.

The initial iteration of the school-based, substance-abuse prevention program DARE was one of those efforts that was intended to do good things (keep kids off drugs) but was found to be ineffective. This is why I discontinued DARE as an RPD program. So why did so many police departments pursue DARE when several scientific evaluations of the program underscored its ineffectiveness?

Police departments are frequently driven by their organizational culture. Tradition, the beliefs and personal paradigms of police leaders and community or political mandates also contribute to policies and practices that may ultimately prove to be suspect. In addition, a lack of research into specific crime problems frequently leaves policing leaders at a loss to do anything but what they think is best for their communities, in spite of having no real sense of what really works to solve the problem in question.

Lawrence Sherman, one of the world’s preeminent criminologists, has coined the term Evidence-Based Policing to describe a thoughtful process of using solid, credible research findings (evidence) to drive policing practices. It has its genesis in our country’s experience with health care, which I think is very insightful due to the many parallels between crime and public health issues.

Before physicians treat patients for a particular ailment, with a particular treatment, there has usually been significant research that indicates the treatment is effective. The idea is that what your doctor does to treat you is the result of evidence that shows the treatment actually works.

In policing, one analogy to health care might be the manner in which most police officers are deployed. Theoretically, before patrol officers are deployed there should be a thoughtful analysis and review of the pertinent research that guides the deployment if “controlling crime” is the intended goal. The Kansas City Preventative Patrol Experiment resulted in evidence that speaks directly to this issue.

This landmark study found that uniformed police officers, evenly deployed in specified geographic areas (we call them “beats”), who drive around those areas looking for criminal activity without specific information or direction, have the same crime control potential as officers waiting in a police station and responding only after they receive a call for service. In other words, randomly driving around, hoping to catch a burglar climbing in an open window is ineffective. It just doesn’t work well enough to justify this as a predominant patrol strategy. (I’m still waiting to catch my first burglar in this manner!) Yet, most police departments continue to use this as a method for deploying their patrol officers.

What is effective, as confirmed by the Kansas City study and subsequent Minneapolis Hotspots Study, is police deployment that is directed to areas where crime analysis indicates crimes are occurring. In other words, putting cops where, and when, crimes are being committed as much as possible.

I don’t mean to imply that every policing strategy not informed by research is flawed. Frequently, police chiefs don’t have the luxury of commissioning expensive research into a problem they are facing before they react to it. Policing is a business with a distinct bias for action. When people are being victimized we have to react. Right now! I truly believe that my fellow police chiefs do a pretty darn good job with the resources they have available to them. We just need more evidence about the things that really work to control crime if we are to be better stewards of taxpayers’ investments in public safety.

Next month I will discuss this issue further and explain how the RPD tries to turn available evidence into effective policing practices to help us crime control in Redlands. This is an all encompassing notion that implies we need to further our Knowledge Management Initiative, further develop meaningful performance measures and structure the department in a manner that promotes evidence-based policing practices.

You, the true owners of the RPD, deserve to have a police department that breaks free from fake smartness and strives, every day, to be real, real smart.