Kris Henning: It's rare in academia where you come up across something that's so conclusively positive. Robel Shiferaw: We've had this unique opportunity to really engage with the community. Brad Yakots: Confidence in police, building legitimacy between the police and community. We did that. Christopher McDonald: This is actually a way to help people, which when I signed up for this job is what I wanted to do. Brad Yakots: In 2018, North Precinct with our research partners at Portland State University, applied for this grant through the Department of Justice. Portland State University is a great research partner. Their criminology department is one of the best in the country, and so we partnered with them to go over our numbers. Kris Henning: The way that my partnership with the Portland Police Bureau works is that it's once we form a team, we're all part of the same team. Brad Yakots: The community based Crime reduction grant, it was awarded to us in 2019. We started the work preparing to focus on four major goals. 2020 rolled around, we had the civil unrest in Portland. We also, right before that, had the pandemic, therefore we had to pivot. Kris Henning: We pivoted in two major ways. One was that rather than doing in-person visits to crime victims, we focused on online reporting. Christopher McDonald: No problem Jacob. Brad Yakots: Also, providing walking beats in the Parkrose Hollywood neighborhoods. Jo Schaefer: Good morning. Brad Yakots: Those two goals were attainable for multiple reasons during the pandemic, because the walking beats one were outside and the victim follow ups were over the phone or email. Kris Henning: Portland Police Bureau, like many large police departments across the country, have added online reporting and more and more crimes are being reported through there. Currently about half of Portland's property crimes are reported through the online portal. An earlier study that was done by the National Policing Foundation in Portland found that victims using the online system were much less satisfied than victims who actually talked to an officer. Christopher McDonald: Hello Leslie. This is Officer McDonald with the Portland Police Bureau. Brad Yakots: When the officer contacts the crime victim, they have a scripted communication strategy that they use. It is embedded with procedural justice tenants. It shows concern for the victim and it has crime prevention strategies that the community member can use so that they're not victimized again. Kris Henning: We know from research that once somebody's house has been burglarized, their car has been busted into that they're actually at increased risk to experience another crime for a short period of time. Christopher McDonald: I can send you some crime prevention tips. Would you be interested in those? It's been a little cathartic actually. Just being able to speak to people, listen to what's actually going on with them. That's like why I originally did this job was to have a more positive impact on the public and I feel like I can attain that in an easier way through this than I can in patrol. You too. Bye. Brad Yakots: Once the communication is completed, once the call is completed, we send them a survey asking them how they felt about the police before, how they feel about the police now. Kris Henning: Once we started this process, it became pretty clear that "Hey, people seem to like these and appreciate these calls." Baseline satisfaction with the police handling of the online report is 15%. 15% being satisfied is not very good. With this intervention, this outreach that the officers are doing by phone, by email, it goes up to roughly 45% satisfied. Once we saw that, we started actually expanding the number of neighborhoods that are receiving the intervention. Christopher McDonald: I think most people just overall are just very surprised and we even call them back. It's nice to hear from people that they appreciate the attention they're getting when we make these callbacks. Kris Henning: As a police researcher, I have never seen any published work, an intervention that moves satisfaction with a police from 15% to 45%. This is a huge impact. It's rare in academia where you come up across something that's so conclusively positive. Brad Yakots: Right now, with the ending of this grant, we're hoping that city leadership, community members see a need for this and continue it. Speaker 8: Hello. Robel Shiferaw: Ron. Speaker 9: How you doing? Kris Henning: Terms of the other interventions and the other pivots. We were able to eventually start to deliver additional foot patrols to Parkrose and Hollywood. Jo Schaefer: Let's go look. Brad Yakots: Most Wednesdays in the Parkrose and Hollywood neighborhoods. We have officers and community members walking around performing traditional walking beats and the entire business community, the residents, community members, they know them by name. They stopped to say hi. Jo Schaefer: Good morning. Jo Schaefer: We were scheduled to walk with the officers once a week for an hour and a half, and we just walk around the neighborhood and we've been able to identify stolen cars. We're giving out security cameras, steering wheel locks. We've gradually gotten more and more people to walk with us on Wednesdays and more and more people chase us down and say "Thank you." Zach and I have been called warriors. There's when people were like "It's our warriors walking down the street." It's been pretty funny, but the response overall's been really good. Robel Shiferaw: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 11: I know Target has issues with stuff too. Robel Shiferaw: We've had this unique opportunity to really engage with the community. Me, Officer Eder, and Jo Schaefer have basically got out of our cars and walked the beat the old fashioned way and going door to door, business to business, building relationships and meeting people. Jo Schaefer: Here we go. Kris Henning: Police community relations and the perception of whether or not the police are legitimate and trustworthy is a critically important thing. There's a large body of theory and research that suggests one of the main reasons people comply with the law and partner with the police in helping to try to prevent crime is because the police are perceived as legitimate and trustworthy. When people don't have positive relationships with the police, then they're not as likely to report crimes, help police identify suspects, testify. We know from lots and lots of research that it's important for the police to have positive relations with the community. The police can do their job better when they have trust and positive relationships with members of the community. Speaker 8: Hello. Robel Shiferaw: We've actually been provided the time to engage with the community and this is something that officers want to do. Christopher McDonald: It's just good to have the amount of time to actually have a conversation with someone, hear what their problems are, and then maybe you can actually help fix whatever that happens to be. Brad Yakots: Confidence in police, building legitimacy between the police and the community. We did that. During the civil unrest, the pandemic, work was being done on this grant inside off the radar to make 2021 and 2022 very successful and we built confidence and legitimacy between the police and the community. Christopher McDonald: This is actually a way to help people, which when I signed up for this job is what I wanted to do.