Putting the Brakes on Wandering Cops
Policy recommendations to address the issue of problem officers
Who should be responsible for addressing the problem of wandering cops? How should they go about doing so? As the research on wanderers has continued to develop and the problems associated with wanderers have gotten more attention, a handful of policy recommendations have emerged as particularly worthy of consideration:
- Make decertification easier to achieve by POSTs.
- Expand participation in the National Decertification Index (NDI).
- Launch more state-based decertification indexes.
- Ensure that state indexes report other contextualizing information (beyond certification status) that will allow departments to make better decisions when considering certified officers who left previous employers under a disciplinary cloud.
- Include decertification index inquiries in police background-check processes.
- Require POSTs to report on both “delisting” and decertification.
Continue reading the entire piece here at American Police Beat
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Dorothy Moses Schulz is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute’s Policing and Public Safety Initiative, emerita professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, and a retired MTA-Metro North Railroad Police captain who has served as a safety and security consultant to transit agencies across the country. Based on a recent report.
This piece originally appeared in American Police Beat