Enhancing Law Enforcement Response to Victims:
Designing a 21st Century Strategy

Project Goal:
The substantial obligations placed on law enforcement agencies, especially in a post 9/11 era, can leave them challenged to fully understand and comprehensively respond to the needs of those who have been victimized by crime. With funding from the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) at the Office of Justice Programs within U.S. Department of Justice, the IACP initiated this project in an effort to help law enforcement respond more effectively to crime victims. The project, based on the community policing model, is designed to create a cultural “sea change” within America’s law enforcement community, helping to move toward a philosophy and practice of enhanced victim response.

Strategy Evolution:
During the 2004-05 planning phase, a series of tasks were undertaken by the IACP in partnership with OVC and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC) Police Department to develop a draft national strategy for state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies to establish a systematic, community oriented and comprehensive approach to meeting the needs of victims.

The draft evolved with input from many collaborative sources such as the project’s multi-disciplinary advisory group consisting of law enforcement representatives, victims, and victim advocates; participants from four national forums including two multi-disciplinary forums, a law enforcement training professionals forum and a law enforcement leaders forum, as well as a meeting with members of the U.S. Army Community and Family Support Center who shared their insights into victim service programs and culture change strategies already in place in the military.

The pilot phase of the project that started in the spring of 2006, has focused on field-testing draft strategy concepts in three agencies including large (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC), medium (Beaverton, OR) and small (Mundelein, IL) police departments. Leadership approaches, department policies and training curricula at each pilot site have been assessed, strengthened and refined in accordance with the draft strategy guidelines.

Strategy Finalized:
Critical lessons learned from the pilots have been implemented into the final strategy and two draft companion documents - the Implementation Guide and the Resource Toolkit.

The Strategy outlines the benefits, challenges and core elements (leadership, partnering, training and performance monitoring) of enhancing response to victims, as well as roles and responsibilities of law enforcement and community partners. It contains an inspiring message from the Chiefs of the three pilot agencies, a brief overview of the evolution of law enforcement response to victims of crime, and a summary of the project history and cycle.

Draft Implementation Guide consists of four sections outlining practical steps law enforcement can take to implement the strategy. It includes a description of pre-requisites to enhancing response to victims, such as community policing, problem solving, and existing partnerships. It also describes various approaches to gathering and analyzing data about status of current victim response (phone and mail-out surveys, focus groups, interviews); techniques for identifying strengths, gaps and opportunities; methods for defining short-term and long-range goals and developing action plans; mechanisms for sustaining momentum and monitoring progress; and the means for documenting and publicizing achievements and learning from challenges.

Draft Resource Toolkit contains sample documents, materials and templates that were developed by the pilot sites and project staff during the field testing phase. It is organized by tabs to match each of the four sections in the Implementation Guide and is available on a CD-ROM. Examples of the documents include revised mission statements; project event agendas, schedules and process descriptions; public safety and victim surveys; key stakeholder interview questions; action plan formats and sample action plans; MOU’s and Partnership Agreements; policies and procedures relating to victim response; steps toward staff buy-in and performance appraisals; informational brochures provided to crime victims; as well as press releases, Web site samples and links to numerous victim-related resources.

The final strategy document, draft Implementation Guide, and Toolkit were introduced to law enforcement executives at the 114th Annual IACP Conference in New Orleans, LA October 13-17, 2007. The validation phase began after the conference.

Validating the Implementation Guide and the Toolkit:
Current, validation phase will focus on testing the strategy and its accompanying volumes in a larger variety of environments and functions to further validate its operational value across all levels of law enforcement spanning the spectrum from urban to rural, state to municipal, tribal to college and university police and sheriff’s departments.

The following agencies applied and have been selected to serve as validation sites:

• New York State Police, NY
• Denver Police Department, CO
• City of Flint Police Department, MI
• Sumner Police Department, WA
• Hastings Police Department, NE
• Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, VA
• Broken Arrow Police Department, OK
• University of California San Bernardino Police Department, CA

Once validated, finalized, and approved by the sponsoring agency, the new 21st Century Strategy for Enhancing Law Enforcement Response to Victims will be released for national implementation.

For more information, please contact Suzanne E. Jordan at jordans@theiacp.org or 800-843-4227 ext. 803