LPRC - Episode 28 – Improving Critical Outcomes: Evidence-Based Policing ft. Sgt. Renee Mitchell, Ph.D. (ASEBP)

Episode Date: July 31, 2019

We welcome Sgt. Renee Mitchell, Ph.D. (ASEBP) to talk Evidence-Based Policing, including key steps in the process, how its currently being used, the future goals of the ASEBP, and more with co-hosts Dr. Read Hayes (LPRC) and Tom Meehan (CONTROLTEK).  The post Episode 28 – Improving Critical Outcomes: Evidence-Based Policing ft. Sgt. Renee Mitchell, Ph.D. (ASEBP) appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi everyone, welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we aim to explore the science of crime and the practical application of the science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. Co-host Dr. Reid Hayes of the Loss Prevention Research Council and Tom Meehan of Control Tech discuss a wide range of topics with industry experts, thought leaders, solution providers, and many more. In this episode, we welcome Sergeant Renee Mitchell to talk evidence-based practice in law enforcement, including key steps in the process, how it's currently being used, the future goals of the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing, and much more. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Be a leader in loss prevention by implementing integrated solutions that enhance safety, reduce shrink, and help to improve merchandising, operations, and customer service. Bosch Integrated Security and Communications Solutions spans Zones 1 through 4 in the LPRC's Zones of Influence while enriching the customer experience and delivering valuable data to help increase retail profitability. Learn more by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com.

All right, everybody. Welcome to another episode of LPRC and UF's Crime Science Podcast. Today, of course, as always, joined by my esteemed co-host, Tom Meehan of Control Tech, longtime LPAP practitioner. And today, we're really excited to be joined by Renee Mitchell, PhD, also a sergeant at Sacramento PD and a leader in that department as well. But really critically for the United States and for the world, Renee is one of the founders and leaders of the American Society of Evidence-Based Practice and Policing. And so the ASEBP, American Society of Evidence-Based Policing in this case. And so we're going to spend a little time with Renee and kind of explore, you know,

how we got here, what the ASEBP and other initiatives are striving for, you know, what's next. So, Renee, thank you for joining us today on Crime Science. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. All right. So what I thought we'd do is we've got a lot of interest around the topic for obvious reasons. Our organization was founded, as you all know, 20 years ago by 10 vice presidents of asset protection or loss prevention with an eye toward evidence-based practice. practice? How do we help them make sense of their problems, their theft, their fraud, their violence issues, and then help them become more focused, but most importantly, more effective or impactful with what they do about it so that they can suppress, reduce these issues that are not only creating dangerous conditions at times and harming the brand at times, but are just precluding them from doing

business the way that they would like to, particularly their C-suite leaders. So without further ado, Renee, if I could, let me just go to you real quickly. How did you become interested in evidence-based practice? Well, mine's like this long tail that I always tell, and nobody has time for that. But ultimately, it was one of those chance meetings that I happened to be at a conference where Jim Bierman was at. He's the retired chief from Redlands PD, and then now he's the retired president of the National Police Foundation. And he had been doing evidence-based practices for a while. So he, you know, explained to me what evidence-based policing was. I think I was 12 years into my career, had no idea, always prided myself on knowing all the case law, you know, knowing all

my general orders, like making sure I was really well educated as a cop. And to get 12 years into my career and have this whole field unknown to me, I was very upset with myself. I'm like, I should know this stuff. And at the time, I was headed out to England to do a Fulbright with the London Metropolitan Police Service. I met Jim September of 2009. And I was leaving in January of 2010 to do my Fulbright. And he had mentioned, hey, would you like Cambridge University to be your host university? And I was like, heck, yeah, I want Cambridge to be my host university. So he introduced me to Larry Sherman, you know, essentially the godfather of evidence based policing. And Larry was a wonderful host. While I did my Fulbright, I sat in on his two

weeks of his master's course. So he runs a master's for applied criminology and police management. And it's a two year course, but were, he was running one of the courses for the two weeks while I was there. So I sat in and listened and kind of just absorbed. And then, you know, Larry met with me quite a few times, making sure I understood what evidence-based policing was. And that pretty much was it for me. I was sold because I had run several like projects and programs in my police agency, but I realized then that I didn't know if they were really effective or efficient or creating any harm. So for me, I was like, evidence-based policing is what we need. We have to understand

what we're doing in the field. And then I went back home, ended up in crime analysis, ended up meeting quite a few people in the field, Cynthia Lum, David Weisberg. And we ended up and Chris Coper. And then I reached out to them when I became the crime analysis sergeant and said, hey, I'm now in charge of a unit where I could do something possibly evidence based. where I could do something possibly evidence-based. And David Weisberg ended up mentoring me and Cynthia and Chris on doing my own randomized controlled trial on hotspots policing. So that's kind of my entry down the rabbit hole, and I've been learning ever since.

That's fantastic. It's a great illustration. And I think, you know, i would bet that many of us whether we're a practitioner in law enforcement or loss prevention or medicine or whatever field education and so on that all of a sudden the light clicks on for whatever reason and it's interesting i think uh lawrence or larry sherman was my inspiration coincidentally, going back years and years ago at ASC, American Society of Criminology's annual conference. He was the keynote, and that's what he talked about. And he did a deep dive in his presentation on randomized controlled trials over 20 years ago. And bingo, that was the starting point for me as well, Renee.

So that's pretty neat. And bingo, you know, that was the starting point for me as well, Renee. So that's pretty neat. So I think the next thing is, you know, discuss if you can. I know it's early there in California, like 6 a.m. early. But what are some of the steps from your perspective in the evidence-based practice and the process that's used? What's the process in your mind? I mean, we look at sort of four steps, but there could be 40 and there could be two.

Do you mean like doing your own evidence-based practices or like learning about this stuff? Well, no, it's good clarification. I think, you know, from your perspective, what are the steps? I mean, we look at what's the problem? Let's frame the question now and let's see if we can't find some evidence, particularly if it's rigorous and so on. Right. What are the steps that you would look at as a practitioner and as now, you know, a doctor of philosophy in criminology? Well, sometimes I do think, you know, some people will be like, well, what's the difference with POP, you know, the SARA model? And to me, sometimes

I'm like, it's not really, evidence-based policing isn't far off the SARA model. Really what I think policing has done is done the SARA model for years and years and years, and then never got to the, you know, assessment part. And to me in policing or in evidence-based policing, we skip the analyze part. And we also do like this pre-post data. And I keep, like when I teach about evidence-based policing, I actually like teach some fundamental statistics first, and I teach a little bit about heuristics and Kahneman's thinking one and thinking two, his systems of thinking, because to me, what we've done in the past is say, oh, and in policing, I try to use the same

model, I guess, because in policing, we're like, oh, I have a problem. Here's my solution. Like we do a two step analysis of an issue, which usually tends to be, oh, there's an uptick in this type of crime. Now I'm going to saturate the area with cops like we don't have too big of a variety. So now to me, it's it should be like, well, what's your problem? to me, it should be like, well, what's your problem? And then is it a chronic problem? Is it an intermediate term problem? Is it a short term problem? Because then I think the next step is to really determine, okay, with whatever problem you're facing, if it's a violence problem, it's a robbery, burglaries, auto theft, you know, whatever the issue is. Then to me, you should really look into, you know, the evidence based policing, like Bible, like what works, what doesn't. And I know that policing, it's more difficult for us to access research articles because the paywall.

But like Cynthia Lum and Chris Coper wrote a book on evidence-based policing and they have a lot in there. Um, it's like a cookbook that they made up, you know, that they have different things that work and, and don't work. So you could easily go in there and find a few things. Once you figure out like, you know, the problem, the solution you're going to apply, I think where we've, if we've analyzed or assessed like our outcomes, like to figure out if it works or doesn't work, the thing we've done in policing is either we haven't done it at all, that step, or the only step we did is here is my crime trend before I

did this intervention. Now here's my crime trend after. And that's and this is why I teach the basic statistics, because you have to understand regression to the mean to understand that that is not a really good evaluation of whether that intervention works worked. And the other thing that we fail to do in policing is a lot of times we do multiple interventions. So you really don't know what intervention worked. You know, we throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. So to me, it's to do one intervention and then to have a comparison group. So I think I've got Larry's quote on my one slide that basically said that the fundamental, like the lowest, how does he, I can't remember his exact quote, but something to the effect that like the bare minimum of evidence based policing is a comparison group that without a comparison group, you really have no understanding. If your data is just like wandering back down to the average, it's always been at because we often don't notice in policing that things are going up until they've hit their peak. And by the time we, you know, get an intervention going in the field, it's already coming back down towards that average.

So like that to me, I guess, I don't know that I was eloquent in like the four steps, but it's similar to Sarah. You just kind of, you have to add a couple extra things in there. And then to me, like when I talked about the chronic, intermediate and like short term, I think each of those things are very different. So to me, when you have something that just pops up, you could probably do a hotspots approach and get high visibility policing, which is, to me, efficient and effective and usually, you know, pretty effective over a short period of time. It kind of combats whatever's going on. But if you have an area that's a long-term

chronic problem, that's really, to me, where you've got to employ that problem-solving model because it's been going on for years and years and years. So what is generating crime in that area? years and years. So what is generating crime in that area? And doing some like risk assessment as far as like what is, you know, is it liquor stores? Is it a transit hub? You know, what is there that's really making this area chronic? And then what do we know about the research to implement some solutions for those types of issues? I don't know how many steps that was in there. I think probably four, but maybe five. I think I've got one extra in there.

That's good, and I think we kind of abbreviate to a certain extent as well. In our opinion, it's, you know what, I think in evidence-based practice, we should ask why questions. Why is this happening? How? Before we start proposing how actions. So that's kind of ours. Ask the why questions before the proposing how actions rather than the other way around. Okay, this is happening. Let's do this, this, this, and this.

Okay, wait a minute. Let's find out what's going on. Why is this happening and how? And I don't know if it's urban legend or not, but didn't they ask Einstein that? Like if you had an hour to solve the world's problems or some big world problem, like what would you do? And he said, I'd take 55 minutes to think about it and five minutes coming up with a solution.

I think in policing, we do the reverse. We take five minutes to think about the problem and then 55 minutes creating an elaborate plan. And it's just in the literature, when you read, this is probably more human nature. And it happens not just in law enforcement or loss prevention. It happens everywhere. All right, I see something, let's go.

And it is important to make a quick and clear decision, but maybe an extra second or minute or however many minutes Einstein believes would be helpful. So, and particularly when we're talking about life safety, you know, we're talking about in our case as well, and when we work in the commercial setting is, you know, people aren't coming here anymore, or when it's convenient for them, they now can get on their phone or go somewhere else. So we've got to be more precise and effective, and most importantly as well, cost effective in some cases. Right, yeah. That's interesting. some cases. So that's interesting. I think another thing I was going to ask you, you mentioned high visibility, saturated patrol. And I know there is evidence, strong evidence out there that supports that. But you also said something that I thought, you know, is obviously key that

for a while, it works for a while. And what are your thoughts on that? I mean, and I know you and I in our discussions before we've talked about whether there's this onset of action of whatever effort we make any treatment we implement you know and that that's got to reach some therapeutic level and that could take a minute or that could take weeks um and then there's some peak effect and then there's going to be some duration of that action but um and that's really the heart and soul of it. Well, how long does it last?

And, you know, like if I eat a donut in the morning versus protein. So what are your thoughts on that part? I thought that was huge, what you teased out there. Well, and it's funny. Somebody gave me a hard time because I've been reading James Q. Wilson, thinking about crime like from the 70s, you know, and somebody tweeted at me, so like, is it 1975? But I'm like, if you read his book, like, you know, this to me is a foundational book about like, where we were, you know, in the 60s and 70s. But he, you know,

some of those things we knew way back then, and he talks about that, about how, you know, you implement these solutions and then people adjust. Like the criminals, the offenders adjust. So he was, you know, he mentions like street lighting. Yeah, you know, you've got this dark and scary looking area. And then you go in, you get street lighting, you know, you get it cleaned up, crime drops off. But then people get comfortable with their surroundings. I think this is all, you know, you get it cleaned up, crime drops off, but then people get comfortable with their surroundings. I think this is all, you know, human nature. It's the same way, you know, you start a new job, you start a new school, you start anything new that you're always uncomfortable

at the beginning. And then once you get familiar with your surroundings and the people around you, you get comfortable again. So I actually think other than like the long term solutions where you're spending some money, so like lighting, of course, you can't you don't want to take that away again and be like, oh, let's make it dark again. But I do think like if you're a police agency, some of your technique should be like moving things in and out. So when it comes to hotspots, policing and like high visibility, we know a lot now. Some of the things that I was working on and I know Simon Williams over, now he's at the New Zealand Police Services building a whole evidence-based policing center in New Zealand for the whole country. But both he and I did work on like, is it how many visits you are, you know, at a hotspot or how many minutes you're there? Like, what is it that gets you the most bang for your buck? And we both showed that like visits were

like the amount of visits during the day were more effective than like staying there for a long time. So I actually like wanted to expand on that because I wonder, you know, if you're going to do some type of high visibility policing, is it better to randomly assign, you know, when you're there and when you're not? So we did that a little bit with my study, but I think over days, like I don't know that you have to be there every day. So I think there's ways to maybe lengthen what you're doing with certain solutions. So like if you're going into an area and you're hot spotting it every day for 30 days, well, should you back off and only do it, you know, randomly assigned like you're doing it, you know, day one, then day three, then day nine, then day 10, you know, then day 13, where they're not really sure where you're coming or going so there's like ambiguity right because then they can't to me offenders people can't

adjust to a pattern if it's completely random and I actually mean letting a computer generate it because often as you know like when people say oh here's a random assignment well if a human being made it up most likely it's not random there's going to be a pattern to it or I've also thought about you know that if you're going to do high visibility in one area and you get crime down well like go away let like, sit at whatever level it's at, and when it upticks, go back. So once again, you're adding that ambiguity in there, because I think if you're just hotspotting all the time or doing something all the time, everybody adjusts around it. And you can't help but have patterns. So with my hotspot study, I said, I'm sure they're hitting, even though it's supposed to be like every two hours, I'm sure they're hitting their hotspots at roughly the same time.

You know, you get out a roll call, and if there aren't calls pending, you'll probably go get your cup of coffee and go hit a hotspot. So you're hitting that every time the same time of day. And eventually, the people in the area will adjust around that pattern. the people in the area will adjust around that pattern. So I think to me the biggest thing is to whatever you're doing is try to create something where there's no pattern to it and people can't adjust. I love it. And the dosing conversation is always big around here, as you know. How we do things is greater than what we do.

But just doing something in a targeted way is better than not doing that. So no, that's a great discussion. Let me do this. If I could, Tom, go over to you. What are your initial questions or comments with Renee today? Well, first, Renee, thanks for joining us again. It was great to talk to you after the Impact Conference. It was exciting to have you back on. Thank you for having me. I love doing this stuff. I'm always very interested in some of the things that you're involved in otherwise. Could you tell the listeners a little bit about the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing,

what it's about, how it started, and how people can learn about it and possibly get involved? Yeah. Well, and it's a funny – well, I don't know if it's a funny story, but how it actually got started is I was talking to one of my friends on the phone who was just getting involved in the Cambridge Master's program. And he and I didn't know each other before he started the program. He actually found me online and said, hey, I know you went to this program. Can I talk to you about it? And he happened to be a local cop.

He was only a county away or two counties away from me. So as he's starting his master's program, he and I are talking. And at the end of our conversation, he says, hey, can I have a set schedule to talk to you? Like maybe get on your calendar every two weeks or so. He's like, because I have nobody to talk to about this stuff. He's like, nobody in my organization, you know, even knows what evidence based policing. And I was like, yeah, sure. And a week later, I was talking to a different friend of mine on the East Coast.

And he said something similar. Like, hey, can I get, you know, a monthly phone call with you so we could just, you know, discuss ideas, philosophize, whatever. And I was like, yeah. And then I was thinking, you know, this is really sad that both of you need to talk to me about this stuff because you don't have anybody else. So and I was explaining the two of like to my second friend, I was telling him, I'm like, yeah, my other friend just asked me the same thing. I'm like, I think there's more of us that should get together and not just use me as like your linchpin, that we all should get together and talk about this stuff. So we expand our knowledge.

And he was like, hey, why don't you call Jim Bierman at the Police Foundation and see if he'll fund. And we were thinking like a junior executive program, you know, how they have the executive program at Harvard and they get together and it's like a little think tank and they write papers. Like we're thinking like a mid-level, you know, sergeants, lieutenants, maybe captains getting together once a year and, you know, thinking about these issues and then writing some papers or doing something like that. Well, when I called Jim Bierman at the Police Foundation, he essentially said, yeah, I will fund you, but you have to start the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing. And at the time, I was dumb enough to say, well, yeah, sure, that sounds easy. I'll do that. So that's actually how we got started.

And I just ended up calling a handful of my friends, half that had been through the master's program in Cambridge. And the other group of people I just knew from, like, ASC conferences, and I knew that they were advanced when it comes to like crime analysis or statistics. We started with a crime analyst in our group, too. And we all just got together down in San Diego and kind of sat and said, what are we trying to do? So now that's five years later. I think that was 2014. And I always say, you know, the first year didn't count because all we did was talk a lot.

We actually didn't do much. And our first conference was in 2016 at Arizona State University. So I think what, like, encapsulates who we are and what we do is we are a bunch of really frontline officers, you know, of all ranks. I should say all ranks, like mid-level officers and a little bit above who understand research. So we call ourselves pracademics because we're practitioners in the field. understand research. So we call ourselves pracademics because we're practitioners in the field, but we are like working academics that we know how to do a research design. We know how to run RCTs in the field. We can, you know, give pretty good advice. For those of us in the group that, you know, maybe aren't as advanced, we have connections in the field for like beta gov through NYU with Angela Hawken and

Maureen Hillhouse. You know, we use them as like mentors. And sometimes, like one of the people in our group, Jason Potts, he'll use them to do his analysis for him. You know, they're helping me on a project right now. So we use basically our network to help us run some of our studies, because I'm sure as you guys know like running the data like at the you know doing hierarchical linear modeling which I can't even say half the time you know we're that's not something I do every day like I don't want to sit down and do that so I'm I want to partner with somebody that could do a little bit more advanced statistical analysis than me you know so I think that's kind of the mold that we've come from.

And then now as we're growing, like our conference we have every year, next year it's being hosted by American University, June 1st and 2nd. The feedback that we get is we're one of the few conferences where it is a really good mix of practitioners and academics. You know, they're presenting on good, solid research. They're presenting like, you know, for the not I shouldn't say for the first time, but a lot of really like exciting research projects. I really try to find the cops in the field that have done their own research. to find the cops in the field that have done their own research. So, you know, even if it's like a small RCT or something that was only run for like my project, you know, 90 days, I want them

presenting because I want them to show an example of, yeah, I'm not the perfect academic and I'm not the perfect researcher, but I know how to find those tools to run my own research. So now our membership, like New Zealand Police Service is going to become part of our membership too. So we've grown to like over 300 members. We try to get information out to all of our members. So one of the things we do is we know that there's a paywall on a lot of this literature so that the officers can't get it in the first place because they're not going to pay $30 for an article. But secondly, you know, the journal articles, the statistics are so dense and then the reading is like 30 to 40 pages. You know, a cop's not going to sit down to read through all that literature.

So we're doing research briefs where we get I have writers that take the research articles and translate them into layman's terms and into a two to three page brief. And then usually we run it by one of the authors that wrote the paper to say, hey, is this accurate? Did we did we accurately translate what you what your research says into layman's terms? And all of the academics we've worked with so far have been great. You know, they'll run through it, do track changes for us and then send it back. And so we send out those briefs biweekly. And those all those briefs are centered around like police, police research. So not really the theory, um, you know, no lifetime assistance or anything like that. We want to do like the hotspot policing, um, anything on, you know, pop anything on, um,

implicit bias, procedural justice, all those issues that policing has. Those are the briefs we're trying to translate. And then we're also building like this good dialogue, I would guess, I would say. Like right now we just have a listserv. But on that listserv you have people that reach out. So the other day we just had an assistant chief reach out and say, hey, I've heard about this Vision 100 program. And I'm not sure I'm getting the name right, but it was a traffic program. And he's like, is there any research on this anywhere?

And I think he got back like seven emails of saying, oh, here's what we do in the UK. This is our program. This is the evaluation that's been done so far. And then other people who jumped in and said, hey, I know so-and-so is doing it out in this city. I don't know where they're at with their evaluation. So you just, to me, it's nice because if you want to start doing work in your police organization from an evidence-based platform, you should be a member of ASEBP because there's people there that will help walk you through this stuff. And everybody is very generous with their time. And we all know that we're learning, too.

So it's a really good learning environment. You know, nobody's on our listserv, you know, acting like they know everything. Everybody's on the listserv basically saying, hey, we're learning. And does somebody else know about this that could teach me a little? So that's kind of, you know, we run our conference once a year. We do the research briefs and the discussion forum. And like our membership, it's $40 a year. It's very cheap, I think, when it comes to membership for what we offer.

And we're getting a lot of support from, you know, the National Institute of Justice. They have a program called Leads, which is law enforcement, advancing data and science scholars, you know, and with like the businesses that help support us. So quite a few, you know, groups from around the country as far as like Microsoft, Mark 43, Esri, you know, Versaterm is interested in us. They actually, to me, what I like about everybody who is approaching us really just believes in our vision and they're not in it to make like a dime for themselves or to market themselves.

They're really there to support us. And Arnold Ventures is another group that helped support our conference last year. But that's what I really enjoy about the groups that are aligning with us is I don't feel like they're trying to, that they're in it for themselves. I feel like that everybody that's part of this is in it because it's how they believe police should be heading. Great. So if someone wants to join, what's the best way for them to get some info and to join? Well, that's really easy because it's www.americansebp.org. And it just on our first page, it has, you know, if you want to become a member, click here, and it just runs you through our website, you know, and it won't take you any more than five minutes.

And then we just automatically assign you to the general listserv, you know, and we have, you know, besides the listserv or the research briefs, like, we also run a blog. So we have academics write on our blog. We have practitioners write on our blog. You know, that gets sent out once a month. And then we also do these EBP digests that Jason Potts sends out. And those are really just like thought-provoking emails about, hey, have you seen this article or seen this video or seen this link? Because our whole purpose is really to help inform people. And if there's ever any issues with our website, you know, I'm at renee

at americanscbp.org, you know, and most people I found, you know, they'll find me on Twitter. They, my email address, I'm I'm easily Google Googleable. Can if that's can we make that a word? So like all my information's out there. So I've had people, you know, reach out across the world and just say, hey, I found you on the Internet. Like, how do I become a member? How do I get information? And I think our whole I think, like I said, I think everybody who's involved with ASDVP is really because they believe in this so strongly, they take their time with other people to help them with whatever issues they have. So, yeah, just the website is the best way. That's great. If I could, Renee, what are some of the barriers that you all are picking up to the expansion of evidence-based policing?

You know, what are reasons that all law enforcement agencies and their leadership and many of their practitioners in the field are not thinking about, much less using or even maybe resisting evidence-based practice? Well, that's a hard one. So, you know, it's human nature. I mean, I don't think this is by any means like a policing issue. I went down, I did a field trip down to Stanford University because it's only a couple hours away from where I live to see Dr. Iannidis. And Dr. Iannidis is a big early adopter of evidence-based medicine. So I sat with him because, you know, this was kind of like my holy pilgrimage to, you know, the other like, you know, the Larry Sherman of evidence-based medicine to me. And, you know, when I sat with him, I had this image of medicine in my mind,

and I was like, you know, how have you guys done this? You know, because we've come so far. And it was a really good conversation because I told him, I said, half my reason for, like, meeting you is really like a pep talk. I just need to know that we're eventually going to get there. We're going to change the way policing thinks. I don't know. I need a little enlightenment or something. And one of the things he's like, Renee, you know we're not.

He's like, you know we're still working on getting doctors to wash their hands. to wash their hands. He's like, so as much as we look like we're evidence-based, he's like, a lot of doctors are still ingrained into their old practices because medicine and policing are very similar. He's like, you know, we're at the beginning of our careers, we're trained in our skillset. He's like, so for a surgeon, you know, an oncologist or whoever, whatever field that they're working in, he's like, they've been trained a specific way, potentially 30 years ago. He's like, and then when the research comes out for new practices or new ways of doing things, he's like, they don't stay up to date on it. He's like, especially nowadays with medicine, he's like, there's thousands of RCTs that come out, you know, on a monthly, you know, yearly basis. He's like, there's a huge

amount of research. He's like, so besides, you know, just keeping up on it, he's like, now we're inundated with it. He's like, but it's human nature. He's like, there's people that just resist it because it's different and it's uncomfortable and they have to relearn. He's like, so when you're 20 years into your career, he's like, and you're being told that what you did all those years before is ineffective. He's like, that's hard to stomach. You know, and a perfect example in medicine. I've had multiple knee surgeries taking my meniscus out. I've I've injured my knee multiple times, like when I was young.

And then as a police officer, they're they're essentially saying like medicine nowadays is like, don't do knee surgery. But I've just had a friend like two months ago that their doctor was telling them, yeah, you know, you need to get your meniscus taken care of. And I was like, can you please read the research? It's an unnecessary surgery. They've done RCTs showing like they do sham surgeries now where they just give you like the stitches versus real surgeries. There's no alleviation. There's no difference between the treatment and control group when it comes to alleviation of pain. It's just in your mind. So anyway, so to me, like when it comes to policing, I think we face those same barriers is you have cops have been cops for a very long time. They don't see outside of what they see on

the street every day. and they think their street experience is um the most important experience and a researcher is an outside person like telling them what to do which i always try to explain they're not telling you what to do they're taking your data and evaluating it and then giving you information back you know and i try to i try to explain the difference between like like, the best, oh, I don't know if it's the best analogy, but one of the analogies I try to use is, like, being a cop in the field means that you're in the phenomenon.

I said, so it's like saying I've had cancer, so I know how to treat cancer because I went and did cancer. You know, I did chemo. I did radiation. I went and did cancer. You know, I did chemo. I did radiation. I went to doctor appointments. Now I understand how to combat cancer because I've dealt with it. I'm like, the difference is with a researcher, they're outside of the phenomenon. So they collect all the data across multiple cancer patients with that same kind of kind of cancer. And they compare all those outcomes of certain types of treatment to other people that have different types of treatment.

I'm like, policing is the same way. We're in the phenomenon of crime, community, or whatever's going on. So it's not the same as a researcher standing outside collecting data all across your city or all across the country and looking at these interventions and how it affects crime outcomes. You're not a computer. You know, so I try to, but I don't, I don't think, I don't think it resonates some of the time because, I mean, we're human beings. So when we feel something, like I feel like this works, it's very hard to get away from. And I think the best example we have, and I'm pretty sure he's okay with talking about it. But at Austin PD, they were looking at their juvenile curfew ordinance and they were talking about it was

coming up for a vote and whether they were going to vote to maintain it or to roll it back. And one of the assistant chiefs, you know, reached out to me about the research. And I knew that Mimi Stiles, who runs Measure Austin, which is like a police, they're an advocacy group that argues for evidence-based practices. I knew Mimi had the research and I helped Mimi find the research. And the police department was kind of saying, you know, I found this one study that says that this actually works. And I'm like, you can't take one study when you have 20 that say it doesn't work. But when Brian Manley, the chief, was shown all the research and when he went to city council, you know, his feeling on it was like, I'm really uncomfortable as a father saying that we're not

going to have a juvenile curfew because, and he was, and I love his honesty because he was like, because it doesn't feel right. You know, he's like, as a dad, I want to protect the children of my city. He's's like but if you're showing me research that says this has disparate impacts especially on minority children then I've got to follow what the research says and they repealed the ordinance but it's because they followed the research but he had to overcome his feelings about it you know and it didn't sit right and so far you know there's been no like you know the and it didn't sit right. And so far, you know, there's been no, like, you know, the city hasn't fallen apart. The juveniles aren't taking over the nighttime, you know, economy and running wild. You know, there's just, you know, I don't, and I don't know

that they're like looking at the outcome scientifically, but I think that's what we're combating is that those feelings and beliefs that cops have about how crime works and what's, feelings and beliefs that cops have about how crime works and what is effective. No, that's a really good illustration and response. And I think we tend to agree with you that the resistance by myself or others to somebody else's insights or their opinion, even if it's based on a lot of rigorous evidence, can be tough sometimes. And particularly if we've experienced things like, wait a minute, I've been through this. This is what I saw. But what's happened here, and that's why this organization was founded, because a few of these guys said, wait a minute.

I think I've got a good opinion because of my expertise, my experience, networking and benchmarking with others. But at the end of the day, we haven't really reduced our losses and our problems here as an industry or even as a chain sometimes. So how can we start making that incremental difference here and going forward? But, you know, to us, of course, evidence-based practice makes more sense. And I learned it because my dad had, you know, he was a primary care doc, but as a physician, you know, he would have all these journals open. And of course, they have those summaries in them, and he'd have them paperclip, but he had to read cardiology and dermatology and everything else. But he did it, you know, he'd come in, he'd read through an article, make a couple notes,

make some patient calls, go back out, see the patients, and so on. He just had a routine. And so he was that guy, I guess, even though he loved to play, still does at 86, play tennis, go out with his bird dogs, and go out on his boat and everything else. He was semi-retired, but he was always on the evidence, up on the evidence. And he didn't look at it any differently than, hey, these guys are on top of this stuff. Now where I am for the last 20 years, you know,

I'm around academic medicine, and that's all that they do. I mean, they are all over the literature, and okay, here's the latest. But you and I, too, know now as scientists that to infer to an individual criminal crime situation or patient, it's actually illogical if we literally interpret from what the data overall show probabilistically. So that's where the art comes in. Okay, on average, this is what we're seeing. Probabilistically, this is probably.

So let's look at you, and that's where that precision medicine or precision crime control or loss prevention comes from, that now we're going to, we're now interrogating the literature, we're incorporating the literature, but we're not, slaves are bound to that finding. Right. Good. Wow. And that's, to me, two things with that.

Like, one, ASCVP, like like our goal is to stay true to the research. So people have asked, like me, they'll be like, well, what's ASEBP's opinion on this? Or, you know, how does ASEBP feel about whatever issue they bring up? And I still shy away from some of those questions, only because like I want to make sure like if I'm going to speak for our organization, like I want to make sure like if I'm going to speak for our organization that I'm completely accurate and sometimes I don't quite have the time to review all the literature for their question but I always my biggest response to those things is we will always stay true to the research so ultimately if you the research shows or you know something like right now I'm a big proponent of not doing critical incident stress debriefing anymore because there's a ton of literature that shows that there is potentially a backfire effect.

But at the least, that it's just ineffective and policing spends a lot of time doing these CISD debriefs. But to me, if eventually there's more research that shows that this is beneficial, like, I will change my mind. Like, I'm ASDBP. We want to stay rigorous to the evidence. And, like, if something changes, so like the whole, you know, egg controversy. So if in the 70s it says no eggs and then, you know, come the 90s they say, hey, you can have this many eggs. To me, that's how ASDBP should change. And I know sometimes people go, oh, look, science, you know, changed their mind. It's like, well, that's what we're supposed to do. You know, as rational human beings,

as we do more studies, as we do testing, things that we thought were accurate in the 80s or 90s may not be today because we're learning as a species, you know. So to me, the organization as a whole, we will always try to stick with exactly that. That's excellent. Tom, any more questions from your angle for Renee today? Yeah, I think it's been really great to listen to everything and kind of in my head, I'm relating it to what the larger portion of our office of our audience is as asset protection professionals. If you could, and I know it's probably a loaded question, what advice would you give to folks that in our world in the private sector in the security world of what could they learn from your organization to help adopt to their daily use? Because I know that the LPRC really has impressed on all of us,

the evidence-based piece. But as a listener of this, what would be a takeaway for them? What's a learning for them as a private sector? You know, and I don't know if it's a learning thing, because I think with having you guys as a resource, LPRC, I was actually just out with one of the managers of Rite Aid in my area. And she got connected with me through a conference last year. So her and I were going over, you know, all the evidence base. And actually, Reed, I was going to reach out to you because we had like a couple questions.

And so I was like, hey, you know, read, we'll probably know like the difference between this or this and I'll ask him. Um, but I also told her, I said, you know, I'll talk to a lieutenant in the area. I'm like, just cause off the top of my head, I'm like, here's some things we could try or do, um, with some of the issues that you're having. Because the location of the store was near a huge homeless camp. They moved the homeless camp, but it's still remaining in the area. So they're still having these issues out in the parking lot. And as a matter of fact, when I was there talking to the store managers and the small group, we had a customer come in and say, hey, that

guy just hit me with something. And it was a transient that had asked her for money and she wouldn't give it. And so he threw like a empty bottle at her, you know, and those are the kind of things where it's like she's not going to write it like she doesn't want to report. She doesn't want me to arrest him for assault. She just doesn't want to be bothered when she goes shopping. You know, and I went outside to move the guy, you know, down the road since we were in the middle of the meeting, you know, and he's obviously mentally ill, you know, screaming,

talking to himself, you know, pushing a shopping cart, you know, and to me, it's like, okay, that's, that is a chronic problem that we have in this area because we have so many mentally ill and transients. You have to have a different solution other than like a hotspotting type thing. is I think when you have all these different sources, like really pushing for evidence-based practices, because to me, some of the issue is going to be, you know, the LPRC has taught the industry, you know, like the sales industry, that business portion of, you know, the United States to say, hey, we want evidence-based practices. We want to know if we're spending our money in the right place. And my hunch would be they probably come up against a lot of police departments that

are like, I don't know what that research is. And I don't know, you know, I haven't heard of this, you know, whatever it is. I hope they've heard about hotspots, you know, by now, but also doing things with, you know, having the camera pods in the parking lot and how effective that is or a different type of presence and using like third party policing or what have you. Like to me, the benefit of like having everybody kind of on the same page is that you force police agencies into using evidence based practices or at least learning about what they are. practices or at least learning about what they are. So that's where I think, like, also besides, you know, being a part of the membership is also that it's just that community of being able to have a conversation of like, hey, I'm having these issues in this area. Like, what have you guys been

doing? I think it just really connects people. And that's why in a way, like this kind of started out as an emotional support group. But I still feel like in some and a lot of ways it really is because you have early adopters of evidence based practices. And ASCBP really gives them that support to be able to say, oh, yeah, I get that. I understand the research design. I understand. Like, here's the literature on that. I understand like here's the literature on that. And by as we grow and we're getting so many people that have diverse experience, you know, in in different research areas like that program I was telling you about the Vision 100. I vaguely knew what it was, but, you know, traffic stuff is not my area of research. But there was seven other people who that was that was an area where they've done, you know, they were either implementing the project or they knew who did the evaluation. So you're just getting that support

where you have a group of people who basically understand the English that you're speaking, because when it comes to talking about research, you know, it's a whole new language. So to me, that's like, that's where the membership is the most beneficial, is just you're really bringing together law enforcement, you know, you're bringing together people in the field as far as like loss prevention, you'd be bringing them in with a whole new area of research. And you're just broadening our ability to learn about evidence-based practices on a whole new scale. We really appreciate that insight from you, Renee. It makes a ton of sense.

And the parallels are almost eerie between what's happening in the asset protection and the law enforcement communities, that's for sure. But both seem momentum and it's exciting with artificial intelligence and other tools and things coming online are becoming more accurate. It's a pretty fertile field. I know at the National Institute of Justice, the new director,

that at first there was consternation or concern about the new director, but it turns out that he is all about evidence-based practice, Dr. Mulhausen. evidence-based practice, Dr. Mulhausen. So many of us in the field are pretty excited that this new director is going to really prioritize evidence-based research projects with grants and things like that. So I wanted to thank you today as we move on for your very valuable time, your incredible insights. And you know that I, at the University of Florida, our team here as well as the Laws of Invention Research Council and our 160 corporate members

are excited to work with you and yeah with you and and the law enforcement community, particularly the American Society for Evidence-Based Policing, and we look forward to further collaboration. So you have a great weekend, and thank you so much, Renee, for your time and insights. No, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. All right, I appreciate it. And on behalf of Tom Meehan, Kevin Tran, our producer, the team here at the LPRC and at UF,

thank you, everybody, for listening. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security. If you enjoyed today's episode, everybody for listening.