Reducing Crime

Charles Ramsey is one of the most revered leaders in American policing. He joined the Chicago Police Department as a cadet in 1968 and rose to lead both the Washington DC Metro police department and the Philadelphia Police Department. He co-chaired President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing. The discussion covers 1960s racism in policing, recruitment, leadership, dealing with bad news, working with academics, compassion fatigue, identifying and promoting talent in the department, and mental health of police leadership when facing deaths in the ranks.

Don Weatherburn is now a Professor at Australia's National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, but for most of his career ran the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in Sydney. There he played a pivotal role informing crime and policing policy at the highest levels of government. We talk about his experience and insights working with practitioners in such a high profile public capacity. He is on twitter @DonWeatherburn

Natalie Hiltz is an inspector with Peel Regional Police Service in Ontario Canada and an advocate for evidence-based policing across the country. Inspector Hiltz was instrumental in organizing the first Evidence-Based Policing Conference in Canada in partnership with the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police and The Cambridge Centre for Evidence Based Policing. We talk about the emergence of evidence-based policing in Canada and her research into the overlap of violent crime offenders and victims in her community.

Dr Ian Stanier was the head of the human intelligence unit at the UK’s National Counter-Terrorism Policing Headquarters. He is now an academic involved in research and training on the recruitment, management and elicitation of information from covert human intelligence sources. We chat about the challenges of informant recruitment and management during the pandemic, and the different motivations that drive source recruitment.

Bill Bratton has been chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, chief of the New York City Transit Police, commissioner of the Boston Police Department, and New York City Police Department commissioner twice. For the last twenty-five years, he has been one of the most high profile police leaders in America. We talk about his career and his new book (written with Peter Knobler) "The Profession: A Memoir of Community, Race, and the Arc of Policing in America"

Katy Barrow-Grint is a Superintendent with the UK's Thames Valley Police. She is currently the Head of Specialist Operations for Thames Valley, running covert policing for the force. We talk about her research on domestic abuse, her work developing an internal evidence-based policing journal, becoming the inaugural Editor in Chief of the College of Policing Publication ‘Going Equipped’, and being a lead on #WeCops, a popular UK policing weekly twitter debate forum.

Carmen Best served with the Seattle police department for 28 years, rising through the ranks to take over as chief in August 2018. She led the department through the turbulence of the George Floyd protests culminating in the more-than-three-week occupation of the Capitol Hill neighborhood in what became the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Best resigning in protest when Seattle City Council voted to downsize the department by about 100 officers. We talk about all of that - and more - in this episode. A US Army veteran and graduate of Western Illinois University and Northeastern University, Best was the first African American woman to lead the Seattle police department. Having filled many policing roles, as chief she focused on diversity hiring and community engagement. Her professional education includes courses with the FBI National Executive Institute (NEI), the FBI National Academy, and the Major Cities Chiefs Association Police Executive Leadership Institute.

Ed Maguire is a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University, where he also serves as director of the Public Safety Innovation Lab. We chat about the challenges involved in policing protests and demonstrations, and balancing an appropriate response in highly dynamic situations. Maguire shares his knowledge and experiences working with police in the US, the United Kingdom, and Sweden, and we discuss demonstrations including the Occupy movement, Black Lives Matter, and the January 6th Capitol riot.

Tanya Meisenholder is the Deputy Commissioner of Equity and Inclusion for the New York City Police Department (NYPD). We talk about hiring and retaining a diverse workforce, engaging underrepresented groups within the police service, and what she learned about being "black and blue" in a post-George Floyd world.

Jennifer Wood is a Professor of Criminal Justice at Temple University, and a criminologist with expertise in policing, regulation and public health. Our discussion covers the role law enforcement plays in the policing of mental health, addition and vulnerability, and the need to provide police with better structures, tools and options to help address these challenges. The detrimental impacts on officer health are also raised.