Expanding the Scope of Evidence‐Based Policing

• Published date: 01 February 2016
• Author: Cody W. Telep
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12188
• Date: 01 February 2016

POLICY ESSAY

MICRO-ECOLOGY OF DEADLY FORCE

Expanding the Scope of Evidence-Based

Policing

Cody W.Telep

Arizona State University

In “Race, Crime and the Micro-Ecology of Deadly Force,” Klinger, Rosenfeld, Isom, and

Deckard (2016, this issue) argue for the creation of a national database on police shootings

that would ideally allow for “the development of a truly evidence-based approach . . . to

how police agencies train and guide their officers in the critical area of the use of deadly

force.” This analysis of deadly force incidents in St. Louis, Missouri, is timely, and as Klinger

et al. allude to, it is surprising and concerning that there is scant prior research that has

examined the geographic context of police use of deadly force.

Scholars should take seriously this call for evidence-based policies and training on police

use of deadly force. These areas have not traditionally fallen in the scope of the evidence-

based movement. With some exceptions, the use of the term “evidence-based policing” to

date has referred to using rigorous empirical evidence on the crime-control effectiveness

of the police to influence policy and practice. There is no doubt that this focus on crime

control has had important impacts, but it is also clear that crime control alone cannot be

viewed as the only outcome of interest for policing evaluation research.

My main argument here is that the field should think more broadly about evidence-

based policing moving forward. Policing practice encompasses a range of outputs and

outcomes, many of which are not captured with a focus largely on calls for service and

incident reports. As Klinger et al. (2016) point out, President Obama createdThe President’s

Task Force on 21st Century Policing in late 2014 because of a series of high-profile events

raising concerns about police use of force and police–community relations. Although the

TaskForce’s (2015) final report discussed the importance of crime control, crime reduction

is just one part of one of the six pillars of the report, and it is discussed largely in conjunction

with community policing, a strategy that would not likely be categorized by most policing

scholars as evidence based for reducing crime (Gill, Weisburd, Telep, Bennett, and Telep,

Direct correspondence to Cody W. Telep, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University,

411 N. Central Ave., Suite 600, Phoenix, AZ 85004 (e-mail: cody.telep@asu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12188 C2016 American Society of Criminology 243

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 15 rIssue 1