How Westland Strengthened Community Trust with Arx
Community leaders were demanding transparency regarding perceived unnecessary use of force. The Chief of Police needed a way to show their data to their community and engage in discussions on improvement plans in order to regain their trust.
THE CHALLENGE
Community Leaders Wanted Immediate Transparency
The Westland police were experiencing a difficult situation when an officer was accused and later found guilty of using excessive force during an armed robbery arrest. Community leaders were upset and putting pressure on the Mayor and Police Chief to provide better insight into what they were doing to ensure this wasn’t systemic and wouldn’t happen again.
The truth was, Westland’s law enforcement leaders weren’t tracking this information in a way that they could easily prove to the community their performance and efforts to improve. Incidents were being tracked in a manual spreadsheet. They just didn’t have a way to get the information they needed in a format to ensure accountability.
THE SOLUTION
Arx Provided Public Data Transparency in Just 6 Weeks
The first thing Arx did was to integrate with Westland’s existing data sources and digitize their manual processes to bring all their data into one place. Arx Alert has a flexible forms capability built-in which allowed Westland officers to easily begin to enter use of force, complaints and training data so that the data could be continuously reported on.
This data was then funneled into Arx Community with a transparency dashboard that was hosted in the cloud for easy access by the Westland community members. The dashboard was customized for Westland to include their police department information and display the data according to their preferences. It includes their official Policing Policy as well as the most recent Biased-Based Policing Report.
The Westland Arx Community dashboard includes:
- Citations – trends and demographic breakdowns
- Arrests – trends and demographic breakdowns
- Training – hours by category
- Use of Force – types, reasons, and demographic breakdowns
- Complaints – disposition, type, and demographic breakdowns
- Pursuits – reasons, termination, and demographic breakdowns
- Calls for Service – trends and priority
Police Chief Jedrusik has been thrilled with the result and feels it is a must have for police departments across the country as he stated during an award ceremony for launching Arx. “I believe the Arx Community transparency dashboard is exactly what communities have been asking for throughout the entire country. This public dashboard provides up to date information about the police department to the public.”
Westland continued their journey to improving officer accountability by adopting the full capabilities of Arx Alert. With this modern accountability management system, supervisors can easily get a clear view of officer behavior in order to take appropriate actions. Westland supervisors can:
- Review and approve forms
- See team activity for traffic citations, arrests, calls for service and overtime
- Understand their team’s data according to demographics
- See alerts for possible wellness or behavior issues of individual officers
- Manage internal reviews and remediation efforts
THE RESULTS
Westland Called a Trailblazer in Police Accountability
Westland let their community know about the transparency dashboard and the response was incredible. The press called Westland Police “trailblazers” and praised their transparency and innovation. Furthermore, the same community leaders that were asking for change saw this and publicly commended their efforts, In fact, the local NAACP awarded the Westland Police Chief with a Community Partner award.
John Hearn, the 2nd VP of the local NAACP stated in the award presentation, “This award is to recognize their commitment to community service, to diversity within the department and to recognize the outreach and transparency in their policing duties that take place within the city.”
Hearn went on to say that what Westland has done is exactly what needs to be done by all police departments. He stated that Westland is “setting an example for other departments in the area. Showing they are accountable to the citizens that they serve.”
Investing in Arx technologies has been a game changer for Westland. To those skeptical about showing less than perfect data, Lt. Robert Wilkie stated in a TV interview, “Offering this information is so much better than not offering it. It’s real and is working to instill trust in our community.”
Department Benefits
- Positive PR is driving an atmosphere of renewed trust in policing
- Police Chief and Mayor jobs are secure and look promising for re-election
- Police officers are excited about the technology and digitization of data which is saving them time on “paperwork”