Reducing Crime

In this episode of the ReducingCrime Podcast, host Jerry Ratcliffe interviews Terry Cherry, a recruiting officer with the Charleston South Carolina Police Department. Cherry discusses her evidence-based approach to police recruitment and retention, as well as her work with academic colleagues. She emphasizes the importance of treating recruitment like a business, understanding the competition, and systematizing the recruitment process. Cherry also highlights the need for police departments to provide good customer service, care about the well-being of applicants, and create an inspirational aspect to recruitment. She shares her experience in creating evidence-based recruitment videos and the importance of focusing on social impact in attracting potential candidates. Cherry also discusses the changing expectations of recruits, the need for police departments to adapt to societal changes, and the potential consequences of failing to do so.

Andrew Lemieux manages the Problem-Oriented Wildlife Protection program for LEAD Ranger – an organization that supports wildlife park rangers around the world. Dr. Lemieux is also the editor-in-chief of the Wilderness Problems Resource Portal, an open-source collection of guides and manuals specifically written for field teams and hosted by the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing. We talk about poaching, wildlife crime, habitat management and problem-solving in these unique and diverse wilderness places.

Mark Evans, OBE is the Executive Lead for Future Policing with the New Zealand Police (NZP), and Vice President of the Australia and New Zealand Society of Evidence Based Policing. He is the chair of the independent advisory board at the Royal New Zealand Police College and has an operational portfolio focused on fair and equitable policing outcomes, evidence-based policing, and the future use of new technologies. In a previous career, he reinvigorated crime and intelligence analysis in the Police Service of Northern Ireland. We discuss what he has learned about change and innovation in policing in large agencies.

Dr. Steve James is now an assistant professor in the Department of Translational Medicine and Physiology at Washington State University, having previously served for over 20 years in the British military. He has since become one of the US’s foremost experts on the effects of fatigue and sleep deprivation on law enforcement. He outlines a range of practical ways police officers can manage their sleep, coffee and stimulant intake, overtime, and seasonal changes.

Ken Pease, OBE is a British crime prevention legend, and the pioneer who directed the Kirkholt repeat burglary prevention project. He is currently a visiting professor at University College London, the University of Manchester, and Huddersfield University. We discuss the Kirkholt project, as well as his time teaching in Canada, having his class bombed by the provisional IRA, repeat victimization, and misleading government graphics.

Vera Bumpers is the police chief for the Houston Metro Transit Authority Police Department. She has served as the president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives and is this year’s winner of the Woman Law Enforcement Executive of the Year Award. We talk about mentorship, community outreach, and her role encouraging other women in policing.

Scott Payne served in law enforcement for 28 years, primarily with the FBI in a long-term undercover capacity. We discuss his role infiltrating outlaw motorcycle gangs, sacrificing goats to gain access to white supremacist, neo-Nazi groups, and playing Lynyrd Skynyrd songs at Ku Klux Klan rallies. He also talks honestly about the mental and physical toll it took on him and his personal relationships.

Jeff Asher is a nationally recognized crime data analyst and co-founder of the data analytics firm AH Datalytics. Jeff spent years as a crime analyst with both the City of New Orleans and Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, and prior to that he worked on spook street, as an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense. Jeff’s analyses have appeared nationally on data journalism website FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and more. Jeff holds a MA from George Washington University and a BA from the University of Texas. We discuss the spectacular failure that has been the launch of the National Incident-Based Reporting System and how we might be able to fix it.

Art Acevedo is the interim police chief in Aurora, Colorado, and has been a chief with the California Highway Patrol, in Austin, Texas, Houston, Texas, and for a short tumultuous tenure, Miami, Florida. We talk about his career, his viral public address after the murder of George Floyd, and what needs to change in police leadership.

Stijn Ruiter is a Dutch sociologist who specializes in environmental criminology and why crime happens where it does. Since 2009, he has worked at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement. We chat about translating policing research across national boundaries, and in particular his role as research program leader for a new initiative – what works in policing – towards evidence-based policing in the Netherlands.