OUR PLAN TO SETUP POLICE FOUNDATION IN NIGERIA

HISTORY
Every citizen has a stake in the success of American policing. The police are the crucial link in the nation’s system of crime control and the local agency of government on duty 24 hours a day to protect lives, homes, and property. Everywhere in the nation, police can be the catalyst for community crime prevention efforts.

The purpose of the Police Foundation is to help the police be more effective in doing their job, whether it be deterring robberies, intervening in potentially injurious family disputes, or working to improve relationships between the police and the communities they serve. To accomplish our mission, we work closely with police officers and police agencies across the country, and it is in their hard work and contributions that our accomplishments are rooted.

THE BEGINNING

On July 22, 1970, Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy held a press conference in New York City to announce the establishment of a Police Development Fund to foster improvement and innovation in American policing. Bundy outlined the reasons for this effort:

The need for reinforcement and change in police work has become more urgent than ever in the last decade because of rising rates of crime, increased resort to violence, and rising tension, in many communities, between disaffected or angry groups and the police.

The 1965 Presidential Commission report, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, recommended far-reaching improvements, and later reports from the Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission) and the Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (the Eisenhower Commission) added significant observations on the need for more effective policing. In establishing the Police Development Fund, which was immediately renamed the Police Foundation, the Ford Foundation observed:

We leave to the police many of society’s problems, whether or not they are equipped to handle them. We have neither articulated a precise role for them in combating crime, nor structured their broader role in the community. Nevertheless, whenever the lid blows, we call the police.

Independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit, the Police Foundation works to improve American policing and enhance the capacity of the criminal justice system to function effectively. Motivating all of the foundation’s efforts is the goal of efficient, humane policing that operates within the framework of democratic principles and the highest ideals of the nation.

WHAT WE DO

Research & Evaluation

While its advice is widely sought and its findings widely applied, the foundation is first and foremost an organization that tests new ideas and helps police agencies apply the lessons of that testing. Critical to its success is its reputation among law enforcement executives as an independent, nonpartisan, and professionally skilled ally in the never-ending quest for ways to improve the delivery of police services.

James Q. Wilson
James A. Collins Chair, Professor Emeritus
The Anderson School, UCLA
Police Foundation Board Member, 1970-1993
Board Chairman, 1984-1993

The Ford Foundation was not alone in 1970 in raising questions about the role of the police. Policy makers, academics, the public, and, most importantly, the police themselves, wanted to know: what are we doing? why are we doing it? can we do it better? what works? how do we experiment and measure?

Social experiments are the hardest kind because they deal with people. When the Police Foundation began its work, social experimentation was not a well-established discipline, but rather a developing art. The foundation has established and refined the capacity to define, design, conduct, and evaluate controlled experiments testing ways to improve the delivery of police services. The development of this method, its execution in the real world, and the dissemination of what it has learned constitute a unique contribution to policing and is a central reason for the foundation’s existence.

It was the foundation that first brought researchers into a lasting, constructive partnership with law enforcement. It was the foundation, in cooperation with police departments all across the country, that engendered a questioning of the traditional model of professional law enforcement and the testing of new approaches to policing.

Since it is the spirit of experimentation rather than a specific set of tactics that the foundation seeks to encourage, there can never be an end to the process. What works in one city may not work in another. Policing constantly faces new challenges, so there is an endless process of discovery and testing, trying new ideas in changing circumstances, and testing them by the most rigorous and objective standards in real-world experiments.

Professional Services

Over the Police Foundation’s history, its leadership has insisted that the organization’s work have a practical impact on policing, that the knowledge gained through empirical investigation be such that it could be applied outside the "laboratory," with the end result being improvement in the way that police do their work.

In addition to defining, designing, conducting, and evaluating controlled experiments, the foundation offers a range of professional services, including training, technical assistance, and technology. Training programs are custom designed to meet the needs of the individual law enforcement agency.

The Police Foundation’s Crime Mapping and Problem Analysis Laboratory provides training, technical assistance, and consulting services to law enforcement agencies, promotes the substantive application of problem analysis, crime analysis, and crime mapping, and works to develop the physical and theoretical infrastructure necessary for further innovations in police and criminological theory.

The Houston Police Department has often sought the expertise of the Police Foundation in efforts to improve the quality of police service offered to the community.

Elizabeth M. Watson
Former Chief of Police, Houston, TX

Its comprehensive research on police use of force led the foundation to launch a multi-year research and development effort to create technologies to help police agencies monitor officers whose behavior places departments at risk, erodes public confidence, increases liability, and undermines effectiveness. More than an early-warning system, The RAMS™ (Risk Analysis Management System) offers a comprehensive approach to ensuring proper training, accountability, quality service, and community satisfaction with police services.

As a partner in the Community Policing Consortium, along with four other leading national law enforcement organizations, the foundation plays a principal role in the development of community policing research, training, and technical assistance. Since 1993, the foundation has provided community policing education, training, and technical assistance to more than 1,000 law enforcement agencies and communities.

Communications

Unconstrained by partisan imperatives, the Police Foundation speaks with a unique and objective voice. Its focus and perspective is the whole of American policing, rather than any single facet.

A guiding tenet of the foundation is that to advance, policing–like other public services–deserves the best of thorough, objective study, and the impetus of new ideas that have the widest possible dissemination.

Since its inception in 1970, the foundation has stressed the importance of helping to create a new body of knowledge about policing. The quality and quantity of its research reports have helped make the Police Foundation a catalyst for change in American policing.

By disseminating as widely as possible the publications that result from its work, the foundation seeks to ensure that the knowledge it has gained reaches the broader criminal justice community, including law enforcement practitioners, policy makers, and scholars.

The president of the foundation speaks out on issues important to policing and serves as a source of advice and information to police officers and executives, public officials responsible for the quality of policing, and to members of the news media who cover criminal justice.