Members of the Smart Policing Initiative program participated in two sessions at the 2017 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) Annual Meeting March 21-25, 2017 in Kansas City, MO. These included a panel titled "New Findings from SPI" and a roundtable titled "Making SPI Happen: Facing Challenges in Police Agency Organizational Change", both participated in by the Milwaukee, WI, Brooklyn Park, MN, Roanoke County, VA, and Kansas City, MO SPI sites.
The panel on new findings included evaluation and crime reduction results related to implementation of body worn cameras, hot-spot policing, police responses to mental illness, and social network analysis. The roundtable discussion focused on the research methodologies employed in several SPI sites, the challenges encountered with implementing sound research designs in operational settings, and the ways in which the SPI sites are meeting and overcoming those challenges.
