Convening Leaders to Explore Innovative Solutions to Public Safety Problems

In October 2024, the GPL invited a group of 21 public safety leaders to the Harvard Kennedy School for an Executive Workshop on Public Safety and Police Accountability. Participants in the workshop included current and former mayors, executive staff in mayor’s offices, police chiefs, sheriffs, and Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) board members.  

Over the two-day workshop, leaders discussed ongoing challenges in their respective jurisdictions, including difficulty measuring outcomes on public safety initiatives and managing progress on core public safety goals. Leaders also shared promising solutions that they have been testing or that they would be interested in testing to address these challenges, which we have grouped into four main findings: 

1. Designing a community-based definition of public safety and designing tools to track progress on stated goals.  
2. Defining the core functions of the police and expanding opportunities for alternative models of emergency response. 
3. Defining and measuring a positive model of policing to incentivize desired performance. 
4. Designing effective mechanisms to deter police misconduct. 

Finding #1: Designing a community-based definition of public safety and designing tools to track progress on stated goals. 

Mayors and other local leaders consistently say that public safety is among their most urgent priorities, but they need better tools to measure how improving public safety impacts residents lived experiences. Traditionally, leaders have had to rely on law enforcement crime statistics, which often over-anchor on metrics such as number of arrests, but fail to capture resident perceptions of safety. Without resident insights, local leaders say it is difficult to track whether their policy and budget decisions meaningfully improve public safety. 

Promising Solutions: Leaders at the Police Accountability Workshop proposed ways to build a more comprehensive definition of public safety and to develop tools to monitor perceptions of safety, including: 

• Using innovative approaches to gauge perceptions of safety, including resident activity in public spaces (e.g., jogging, children playing in the park unsupervised). 
• Expanding tools available to leaders to better measure resident behavior through non-traditional data sources (e.g., cell phone location data, 311 call data, community ambassadors). 
• Increasing coordination across local agencies, especially to address safety concerns that are outside the core mandate of police (e.g., street clean-up efforts, homelessness outreach). 
• Addressing the gap between crime data and residents’ perceptions and feelings of safety, including exploring the role of social media and news coverage. 

Finding #2: Defining the core functions of the police and expanding opportunities for alternative models of emergency response.       

Public safety leaders say that to improve police accountability, they first must clearly define what is and is not within the scope of police duties. There’s currently no clear definition of what police do, which makes it difficult or impossible to assess whether they are doing it well. One reason for this is the reliance on police to respond to a large set of responsibilities and respond to a wide array of 911 calls, many of which do not pose an imminent threat to public safety. In previous conversations with mayors, leaders have also said that an overreliance on police to handle a wide range of public safety concerns makes it harder to define the core functions of police and hold police accountable to that core set.  

Promising Solutions: Leaders proposed ways to clearly define the core functions of police and identify potential areas for non-police response, including: 

• Prioritizing police response to address serious crimes, such as assaults and incidents requiring specialized crime units. 
• De-prioritizing nonessential duties such as enforcement of civil laws and administrative work (e.g., traffic enforcement). 
• Continuing to develop a wide range of successful alternative response programs staffed by unarmed professionals, including behavioral and mental health response and crisis coordination. 

Finding #3: Defining and measuring a positive model of policing to incentivize desired performance. 

Research indicates that a lack of data and accountability mechanisms for police officers are barriers to promoting positive police behavior and holding police accountable.  This research also found a disconnect between the types of activities that police are typically assigned and rewarded for and the behaviors that impact public safety and community trust.  

Promising Solutions: Leaders proposed ways to increase police accountability by incentivizing positive behavior, including: 

• Clearly defining a model for police behavior to support better hiring practices and pathways to promotion. 
• Implementing systematic solutions to recognize individual officers performing well, based on this model. 

Finding #4: Designing effective mechanisms to deter police misconduct.  

Leaders report dealing with a range of barriers to police accountability that are often understudied, including limitations on executive leader authority, misaligned incentives to hold police accountable, and the cost of political capital that leaders expend taking on police reform. With these constraints in mind, the GPL took a targeted approach to discussing areas where leaders can advance police accountability within the limitations of their role, and the type of system-level changes they find most promising to meaningfully shift police culture and practice. 

Promising Solutions: Leaders proposed ways to strengthen systemic solutions to prevent and address police misconduct, including:  

• Leveraging affordable technologies, such as an early-warning system to monitor and respond to officer conduct and shape training and intervention strategies. 
• Expanding the role of state-level Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) boards to enforce professional standards through the certification and decertification process and to shape local department policy.