Team Vallejo

Executive Summary

We're building tools that will support more trusting relationships between police and city residents

The City of Vallejo asked Code for America fellows to help them "increas[e] trust between the police department and residents," particularly by involving clergy, youth, and neighborhood watch group members in our process. The City Manager, Daniel E. Keen, expressed that he hoped for us to build digital tools that would produce improved internal processes, proactive engagement, and data analytics.

We initially focused our first few months on learning from people living and working in Vallejo (with the understanding that trust is built by people, not mobile apps nor websites). After over 53 hours of interviews with residents, 18 shadowing sessions with the police department, and review of 120 database tables with City records, we saw opportunity to help the City by building tools that would improve communication, efficiency, and the community's ability to access information.

Team

Problem Statement

Code for America and Vallejo's mission

"Engage residents to improve the public safety... and transform the relationship between the community and the police department."

Our City partner expressed concerns about strained relations between Vallejo residents and the City’s police department, citing violent incidents during the past five years between police and residents that have caused death and injury on both sides.

Other identified concerns included a general dissatisfaction with police department due to limited resources to investigate property crimes. Vallejo has experienced extremely challenging financial and economic times, particularly between 2008 and 2011(post-municipal bankruptcy), during which the City had the smallest police officer to resident ratio in the State of California, at just one officer for every 1,320 residents (the standard is 1.2 officers for every 1,000 residents). This ratio has increased slightly, but the City remains, according to a recent Governing.org study, the eighth lowest per capita in the United States. While the City currently has a balanced budget, the City has very limited staff capacity in every department, especially public safety. Lower staffing levels place an additional burden on both the City and residents, fewer officers to respond to calls and to an earlier point, fewer individuals to build relationships which require personal contact.

In response to and with support of the City, residents have become increasingly organized through neighborhood watch groups to address safety concerns that the City has been unable to meet. The landscape into which we entered was complex in that there were many reasons for for tension between residents and government, generally.

Our city partner suggested that we might be able to work toward this goal by involving clergy, youth, and neighborhood watch group members in our process. Additionally, the City also expressed a desire for improved internal processes, proactive engagement, and data analytics.

Context

The Recent History of Vallejo

Vallejo has had a complex recent history. Notably, in 1996, the federal government shut down the Mare Island naval shipyard, which, until closure had been the largest employer in the City. One impact of the closure was a decrease in City revenue from property taxes. This financial stress on the City’s budget was complicated by a period of high turnover of city managers. The U.S. financial crisis amplified the City’s budgetary problems, and the City filed for bankruptcy in 2008.

The bankruptcy had a profound impact on the City’s ability to provide services to residents, the effects of which continue to be felt today, despite the City having exited bankruptcy in 2011. Many cuts were made during bankruptcy, including reducing staffing levels by about 40% in the police department; currently, the department is still about 50 sworn officers’ less than pre-bankruptcy levels.

In 2011, Officer Jim Capoot was shot and killed in the line of duty while chasing a bank robbery suspect. Capoot was a 19-year veteran of the department and his death was a tragic loss for the police department and the community. According to what we read and heard, Capoot was well-liked by city residents, and his death was a blow to the City, the department and the community. He continues to be memorialized throughout the City.

In 2012, the City experienced a period of increased violent crime, which many related as a consequence of an understaffed police force. Reviewing just statistics, there was a fourfold increase in the number of murders in 2013 compared to 2006, two years post and prior to bankruptcy. The same year, there were six fatal officer involved shootings. People that we spoke to indicated that the emotional scars related to these violent incidents run deep and that current national conversations regarding violent police activity in other parts of the country cause many to remain cautious and mistrustful of the police and of government generally.

Goals

We recognize that trusting relationships are built by people, not by digital tools. We also recognize that all personal relationships suffer when there is lack of communication, understanding, and responsiveness on both sides.

During our time in Vallejo, we experienced times in which the Police Department, limited by tight resources, struggled to connect with the community. We also saw significant new efforts by the Department to become more involved engaged with the Vallejo community and to strengthen the positive relationship between the police department and diverse members of Vallejo’s community.

Since February, we have met with diverse members of the Vallejo community and have set up bi-weekly meetings with the Police Department. We have also consulted with criminal justice experts and civic technologists since returning to San Francisco, as this topic is front and center in a national context as of late. We decided that we'd be able to make the most impact by:

• increasing public access to information regarding police protocols and police resources for citizens;
• increasing efficiency in how the police department responds to resident calls for service; and
• increasing lines of communication between police and Vallejo residents

Strategy

There are three main components to our approach to this project: (1) community participation, (2) understanding police operations, and (3) harnessing police data early in preparation of building tools that incorporate data about 911 calls for service and police patrolling.

Community Participation

The underlying principle guiding our project is community participation. Unlike other civic technology projects that seek to streamline a narrowly defined technical issue within a particular governmental process, this project began with very personal issues and with very little technical definition. Therefore, we dedicated two months toward establishing relationships with diverse community leaders, with the idea that by doing so, we would establish pathways into these communities for future participation in our project.

Since February, we have been performing community outreach and approached this with consideration of Vallejo’s diversity. While we connected with the police department and with neighborhood watch members working to reduce crime in their neighborhoods, we also developed relationships with the Vallejo Chapter of the NAACP and the local Public Defenders office. We spoke with a wide range of residents, older and younger, religious, and ethnically and economically diverse. We listened to the concerns of homeowners as well as renters residing in subsidized housing complexes.

Additionally, we examined geographically what we were hearing and from where. There are over 200 neighborhood watch groups within the City of Vallejo - all representing distinct communities within the City. Some neighborhoods are very established and have strong engagement, while others are newer to the process and their practices are more fluid. Still, there remain communities where neighborhood watch activity has not yet permeated despite strong efforts of select residents and the City. As an example, South Vallejo is identified as a place where neighborhood watch and other community program (i.e. participatory budgeting) activity remains low despite increased, targeted outreach efforts. Knowing this, we looked at our own outreach efforts to learn where our most engagement came from.

By comparing our survey respondents' reported neighborhoods to available census data, we are able to identify underrepresented demographic sections from our outreach. By applying a mapping tool created by Code for America’s tech team to results from a survey that we distributed to residents via our identified community leaders we learned that our responses came mostly from particular neighborhoods. This information helps us understand where we need to focus outreach efforts in the future.

Community participation can take many forms. We thought a lot about what we wanted participation to look like and how we might develop tools that would support community efforts to actively shape relationships with law enforcement and build upon the foundations already set by both the community and the City.

We also examined where the voices that we heard came from geographically. There are over 200 neighborhood associations that have sprouted within the City of Vallejo - all representing distinct communities within the city. Some neighborhoods have established organizations and strong engagement, while others are newer to the process and their practices are more fluid. Still, there are communities where neighborhood watch activity has not yet been able to permeate. South Vallejo is discussed as a place where neighborhood watch and participatory budgeting activity remains low despite outreach efforts, for example. Knowing this, we looked at our own outreach efforts to learn where our most engagement came from.

Understanding Police Operations

We wanted to understand the many different circumstances in which police and residents interact. To this end, we shadowed several police department staff who work in differing capacities to experience and witness how they do their jobs. We rode along with sworn police officers on patrol as well as officers from the Police Department's Community Services Section and the City's Code Enforcement Division, while they responded to quality of life concerns reported by residents. We also sat with police staff at the station lobby, at the records department, in dispatch, and in evidence. Additionally, we spoke with attorneys and detectives from the prosecutor's and the public defender's offices. To keep our findings consistent, three of us used a standard form to collect relevant information from our observations.

Harnessing Data Early

Finally, we wanted to incorporate police department data into our work since the Vallejo Police Department generously gave us access to data regarding 911 calls placed by residents and activity by officers on patrol. In early March, before we had clear project ideas, Andrew began working with Greg Taylor, Vallejo's Chief Information Officer, to understand the availability of data and other technical aspects of the City's IT infrastructure that would be relevant in the long run.

• 18

  Shadowing sessions with Vallejo PD

• 53

  Hours of interviews with community members

• 900

  Unique visitors to codeforvallejo.org

• 120

  City database tables investigated

Research Insights

Since February, we have conducted qualitative research in Vallejo by meeting with community members and City staff to learn about how they see issues relevant to our project. Qualitative research is commonly used in social science fields such as sociology, anthropology and psychology for the purpose of gaining insight into how people act around and understand certain issues. Our research has included casual conversations over coffee, structured interviews and exercises, observation sessions, and group activities. We have focused on learning from people how they see Vallejo and how they behave in particular circumstances. Unfortunately, in the short period of time that we have been working on this project, we understand that the voices we have heard only represent a small portion of people who live and work in Vallejo.

This section is divided into two parts:

• Qualitative insights that we gained from our time spent with residents and advocates; and
• Qualitative insights that we gained from those within the police department

Insights from residents and advocates

Many Vallejo Residents Are Already Actively Trying to Transform Their City

We came to Vallejo knowing that neighborhood watch groups were increasingly active. After spending time in the Vallejo, we learned about many other engaged communities including the active artist community, young adults organizing discussions about justice, organizing within Vallejo's Spanish-speaking community, and Vallejo's Participatory Budgeting Program led by the City and a Steering Committee of Vallejo residents and organization representatives. In a city with approximately 120,000 residents, the engaged communities that we met are a small minorty. But still, small and active communities often spur great change and we saw momentum for civic engagement across different segments of the City's population, which was exciting.

You guys are more powerful than the whole city combined. Come together and use it.

- Neighborhood watch leader

Some residents are disappointed with the police department's inability to respond quickly to non-emergencies

Some residents feel the police department cannot help them when they really need it. Incidents of calling the police for help with non-emergency situations and having to wait a very long time, in a few cases for up to 4 or 5 hours, were shared during our research. Residents acknowledged the bankruptcy and many told stories of speaking to officers who have told them that there just are not enough officers to respond quickly to every non-emergency call. Living in higher crime areas and not feeling that they can rely on the police department to help makes some residents feel desensitized and apathetic to calling the police for help at all.

Stories of fear and distrust influence community perspectives

Consistently people have wanted to talk with us about the national conversations around policing that they hear about on the news and via social media. Disturbed by recent events in Missouri, New York, Baltimore, and other cities, Vallejo residents that we met with communicated to us that they were afraid about miscommunications with police that could lead to unwanted violence. Members of advocacy organizations told us that people living in low income communities of color in Vallejo find ways to resolve interpersonal problems without involving the police. For example, one resident told us he would not call the police if two African American males were having a dispute because he thinks the police might make it worse and hurt someone.

Consistently strongly emotional stories were told to us by residents in Vallejo of their interactions with police, some from personal experience and others from relayed stories of the negative experiences of others they know and/or care about. This illustrates the strength of stories and emotions over numbers and statistics from those living and working in the city. The power of strongly negative experiences some residents have had with the police spread to others in their community, so that even those who have not had directly negative experiences with the police still feel similarly to those who have.

Residents want more access to information

As investigations around police brutality in other cities appear in the news and social media, people that we speak with in Vallejo say that they want more access to information about police operations in their own town. During research sessions with diverse community members, everyone communicated that they wanted to learn more about when officers use force against residents. During our shadowing session in the police station's lobby, we saw individuals come in to ask about procedures that they could not find information about elsewhere. A handful of Spanish-speaking residents that we met at the Centro Latino’s anniversary celebration told us that it is hard for them to communicate with the Vallejo Police Department because the website is not in Spanish and very few people in the department speak Spanish. Note that the police lobby has limited hours of operation so there are times when residents feel that they have nowhere else to go other than to call 911.

Insights from the Police

The police department's new chief is implementing new programs to increase community participation

In our bi-weekly meetings with the chief and police department representatives, we learn about continually evovling efforts by the department to work in partnership with community members to improve the quality of life in Vallejo. The chief created a new advisory board to the police, and appointed veteran officer and Vallejo resident, Brent Garrick, as a Community Engagement Sergeant.

Representatives from the Department and the City have stated to us that they want to make their City government more transparent and open. Since we began working with the City in February, the City Manager’s office and the Police Department have begun issuing reports and using social media platforms to this end. We have consulted with them about their use of social media and their interest in using mobile applications to better connect with City residents who need their help. In response to resident needs for more responsiveness to reports of property crimes, the Department has expanded their Community Services Section (“CSS”) through which they have become increasingly involved in the neighborhood watch programs in collaboration with existing neighborhood groups. The Police Department is working with the City Attorney’s Office Neighborhood Law Program and the Code Enforcement Division, to address distressed and dangerous properties and have expressed interest in our ideas about helping these groups work more closely with new communication tools.

In light of their expressed interest in increasing community engagement, during our time working with Vallejo, the Police Department has been responsive to us and our efforts to build tools that will increase opportunities for community participation in Vallejo’s safety and justice work. They have been generous with our requests for data as well as our efforts to work closely with them during our fellowship year. Members of the police department have arranged shadowing sessions to ensure that we understand their internal operations and upper level management has continuously been available to meet with us and support us as we need. Most recently, members from the Police Department and the City Manager’s office participated in a collaborative workshop at Code for America in which we explored the meaning of “trust” and “distrust” in the policing context. They have invited us to partner with them in upcoming community events in July and August.

The Police Department is making efforts to create positive experiences with Vallejo community

The Police Department has created a number of new initiatives to connect with younger community members and to change the public perception of law enforcement in the City. Examples include the Department’s new Midnight Basketball program,Friendly Faces program, Coffee with the Cops program, and the Summer of Success program led with the New Dawn Vallejo Corp.

The Police Department struggles with inefficient technologies when responding to crime

During our ride alongs with officers, all three of us independently learned that patrol officers were struggling to efficiently enter information into their record management system ("RMS") while out in the field.

We thought that we might be able to identify a quick fix and scheduled a training session to learn how the RMS worked, hoping that we might understand the problem better. During this session, we asked basic questions about the process (such as, "What does this field mean?" "Why does this work that way?") and our trainers started to tell us the ways in which the system does not serve the City’s needs. As an example, they then showed us how residents can file online property crime reports. The three of us left for a quick coffee break and came back to find all three of our trainers going through their online property crime reporting system and identifying problems with the system without our prompting. “Wow, this experience could be so much better for those trying to file online reports!” they said to us.

Police are afraid that they'll face violence on the job

The Police Department’s Command staff reiterated the concerns of officer safety while on the job citing the death of veteran Officer Capoot in 2011 while on duty. Officers have communicated with us that they understand there is always a possibility that something may happen to them while on the job, especially in communities where they know trust in the police is low and fear is high. Officers reported feeling discouraged and heightened when entering neighborhoods known for high crime and low trust in the police. During one ride-along, one patrol officer said that, with the pressure of the current national conversation he often feels like he is “doing the walk of shame”. Although he and his fellow officers want things to be better in their relationship with the community, it feels like they are fighting an uphill battle.

Officers feel misunderstood and that the community does not appreciate what their jobs entail

Patrol officers spoke of feeling isolated from the community because only police know what it’s really like to be a police officer and enter heightened situations everyday. Additionally, some patrol officers that we spoke with told us that residents often ask them for help with things that are not within their scope of responsibility.The City has emphasized its need to help educate residents about what officer’s responsibilities are and what services the police department provides.

We need to educate the community on what the police can and cannot do.

Early Ideations

We initially explored the feasibility of a tool that would allow a resident to track a 911 call and see how long they might expect to wait until an officer would arrive at their house. From the reports of frustration around wait times after calling 911 for less serious crimes in Vallejo, we thoerized that knowing how long it would take for an officer to arrive would set expectations.

We spoke with several residents to gauge interest in this prototype, and we came away with two main findings. First, most indicated little desire in the ability to receive an estimated wait time. Secondly, the amount time these individuals reported having no problem waiting for was greater than the average of the department's responses to most crimes of lesser severity. These findings, coupled with the technical limitations of estimating arrival time - there are many factors that can greatly influence time to arrival - led us to focus on other prototypes.

We also explored answering the followigng question: What if the community could be updated regularly with information on recently police activity and new information? From our first round of research, we identified that there is a need for more clear and transparent information in police activity that we hypothesized would increase community trust in the department because they would feel that they were more open and they know what’s going on. To test the value of this idea, we sat with residents and did a card sort with them, asking them to sort cards of police data they would find useful or interesting. Then we talked with them about how they might use this in their everyday lives.

What we learned: Different people want different information depending on the community they most relate to, their goals, and their own personal experiences. We kept all the insights that we gained from this prototype and used it to inform the projects we’re moving forward with today.

Finally, using various components of the police department's data, we developed a prototype to help patrol supervisors and other management personnel understand the patrol operations by way of analysis and data visualization. For example, by plotting a histogram of the arrival time to calls for service by time of day, we were able to clearly see a pronounced dip in arrivals during shift changes. We expected such a tool would have value when making strategic decisions.

After demostrating this prototype in front of members of the police department, a main concern was that, given staffing levels, it wasn't clear the department would have the time to make use of such a tool. We recognized this as a design constraint and have since kept in mind that tools we develop for the department will need to fit into existing work flows.

Current Projects

The prototypes we're moving forward with

1. A tool to identify systemic quality of life issues in neighborhoods and mobilize residents and the police department to take action where problems start.

While shadowing the Community Services Section(CSS) of the police department, who deal with reports of quality of life issues and nuisance properties in resident’s neighborhoods, we witnessed them spending copious amounts of time during intake. They receive about 200 calls to their voicemail inbox a week and write them down on a paper notepad in between service calls. We realized this process could be more efficiently handled through technology.

Additionally, we noticed that often they’re dealing with problems after they’ve already happened in neighborhoods, but what if we could help target the source of the problem? We’re now looking into not only making the reporting process less tedious, but also in gathering information on targeting the issues where they begin, when property owners neglect their properties and leave their houses open for causing nuisance and safety issues in neighborhoods.

By providing tools that help police and residents work together to target the source of the problems, residents might feel a stronger sense of trust in the police’s ability to help them prevent problems before they happen.

2. A tool that helps the police department stay coordinated, see where they can strategize their efforts, and send crime prevention strategies to residents whose neighborhood shows higher calls for service.

We sat along with dispatchers in the police department many times in the past 6 months and noticed that they suffer from mapping constraints with the technology they are currently using. This makes it hard to coordinate information between patrol officers on the ground, slowing down their ability to respond to and help residents in need.

We also have access to tons of rich data collected through the police’s RMS system, every time a residents calls in to 911 or an officer inputs information into their computer in the field. We want to use this information to help officers coordinate between each other, and analyze trends in neighborhoods where residents might be in greater need for crime prevention strategies.

3. A tool that provides a central place for residents to go when they need to know what to do when the police may not directly be able or available to help them.

A common theme throughout our work with Vallejo residence this year was the lack of useful information on what to do when they need help or where to go to find resources. We observed countless citizens visiting the front lobby of the police department just to ask a question and reports of residents not taking action on something that was important to them, simply because they didn’t know where to start.

We are now working on building a central place where residents can go online, ask a question, and find clear and straightforward answers to those questions. Police officers and other community members will be able to contribute to answers and keep a dialogue going about the biggest needs in the community. We want to make it a collaborative tool where the police department and the community can all work together to make sure everyone is always informed.

Next Steps

The rest of the fellowship and beyond

This report details our work in Vallejo from January until now, mid-June. We’ve lived in Vallejo, done research with residents and police, identified where distrust lies and named goals that we think can help make steps in the direction towards a better relationship between both parties, and now have three projects that we’re working to build and launch by November. Through our build, testing, and refining cycles, any one of these projects may change based on things we will continue to learn from Vallejo residents and police.

Development

We’ll be working on developing our projects on the web, testing it with the people who will be using it once it’s built, and refining each project based on the things we learn in these cycles. Currently, we're focusing on developing and deploying the smallest components ("minimum viable products") of each project, in order to prioritize user feedback.

User Growth

We’ll be making sure the community and police know about the projects that we built and will be working with them to make sure it fits their needs and is practical to use in their everyday lives. We're currently strategizing on how to work with the large number of city residents and employees we've established relationships with in order to generate user growth. We hope to collaborate with the police department to use several of their summer community-focused gatherings as opportunities for "product launches." We'll likely host similar events ourselves for the same purpose.

Sustainability

It's our hope that our final products remain in use for some time beyond the end our engagement with the city. With this goal in mind, over the coming months we'll be focusing on: short development cycles and frequent iterations, doucmentation for public code repositories, and close collaboration with the City's IT staff to develop a sensible deployment strategy.

Timeline

A deeper look at our year