NCJ Number
89865
Date Published
1982
Length
99 pages
Annotation
The Nebraska Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found police-community relations problems in the Omaha Police Department (Neb.) in the following areas: minority recruitment, employee selection practices, inservice human relations training, the police use of force, and a lack of police-citizen interaction.
Abstract
This study of police-community relations in Omaha involved interviews with a wide range of persons from May 1981 to December 1981, including the mayor, chief of police, police officers, other city officials, and concerned citizens. It was found that efforts by the city to recruit minorities and women, have not been sufficient to meet the terms of the 1980 consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Midwest Guardians, an organization of black police officers. As a result, the mayor should direct the city personnel department and police division to develop and implement a joint recruitment program. Only one of the employment selection devices used by the police division was found to have been validated for job relatedness. Also, many people appear to lack confidence in the fairness and impartiality of the selection devices, particularly the polygraph examination and oral interviews. The personnel department is urged to validate all portions of the selection process and to complete its review of the polygraph examination and oral interview as soon as possible. Further, the police division should add more human relations courses to its training programs. The police division has not established guidelines for escalation in the use of nondeadly force; the division is encouraged to adopt the model rules published by the International Association of Chiefs of Police regarding the use of force. The division should also review the current status of the community services bureau, evaluate its activities, and develop a coordinated program to improve police-community relations. The chief of police should make clear that division policy encourages informal contacts between police and citizens, since there appears to have been too little contact between the police and community. Finally, the city needs to establish a citizen complaint process that balances the rights of police officers and citizens, and a public information campaign should be used to inform citizens about the complaint process. The appendixes contain model rules for police use of nondeadly force, a model penal code on the use of deadly force, and remedies for citizens.