Contemporary Approaches for Responding Effectively to Community-Defined Disorder

Course Overview: Contemporary Approaches for Responding Effectively to Community-Defined Disorder (CARE CDD) consists of two separate eLearning courses, one designed for law enforcement practitioners and one geared specifically for executives, that examine successful initiatives around the country. These initiatives include homeless outreach teams, mental health crisis intervention, domestic abuse harm reduction, substance use disorder treatment, gang violence prevention, and more—demonstrating a “community care” framework for responding effectively to a variety of disorder and crime problems. The courses examine the role of law enforcement officers and agencies in developing, implementing, sustaining, and evaluating these types of community-based problem-solving strategies. 

Public safety agencies recognize that many types of harm can affect the health of a community—not just the major crime incidents that dominate headlines, but also the everyday disorder problems that negatively impact community members and generate frequent calls for service. In many cases, past efforts to manage disorder have focused on enforcement actions targeting low-level offenses. However, research and practice indicate that aggressive, enforcement-focused order maintenance strategies are ineffective and can undermine relationships between law enforcement and community members.  

Increasingly, public safety professionals recognize the need for innovative problem solving to address disorder and crime problems, which occur disproportionately in under-resourced neighborhoods and are often rooted in economic and social inequities. Responding to complex problems requires law enforcement to form partnerships with community stakeholders and other agencies to enact multi-faceted initiatives. Such efforts represent a fundamental change in the way we think about public safety, emphasizing the collaborative role of police and other law enforcement practitioners as caretakers of their communities.  

To help connect principles to practice, a series of field-driven video case briefings provides insight on innovative practices that law enforcement practitioners and executives can apply in their own communities. The case studies feature interviews with subject matters experts currently engaged in community-oriented programs to manage disorder problems in their jurisdictions.  

Learning Objectives:

• Explain how the principles and practices of community policing can be applied to address community-defined disorder
• Describe the role of law enforcement in managing community-defined disorder
• Differentiate between varying approaches to order maintenance
• Identify the principles of community policing
• Analyze case studies to identify strategies that can be applied in your community
• Apply problem-solving methods to identify, define, and respond to community-defined disorder problems
• Describe the benefits of proactive, collaborative problem solving
• Explain how to identify and define disorder problems that require intervention
• Identify strategies for developing effective responses to disorder problems
• Analyze case studies to identify strategies that can be applied in your community
• Identify collaboration and communication strategies to support effective problem solving  
• List benefits of using a collaborative model to improve quality of life in the community
• Explain how to establish a community of practice
• Identify structures to promote collaboration among organization members
• Analyze case studies to identify strategies that can be applied in your community
• Describe how problem-solving initiatives to address disorder can be sustained for long-term success 
• Identify factors that may influence the sustainability of problem-solving initiatives
• Describe appropriate methods for evaluating the success of problem-solving initiatives
• Explain the role of discretion when managing disorder in the community
• Analyze case studies to identify strategies that can be applied in your community

Target Audience: This course is designed as a professional development program for law enforcement practitioners representing agencies of all sizes and demographics. This course may also be a valuable tool for non-law-enforcement community stakeholders to enhance their awareness of law enforcement efforts.

Cooperative Partners: This tuition-free online training was developed by the National Center for Policing Innovation (NCPI), formerly known as Virginia Center for Policing Innovation, and was originally supported by cooperative agreement 2018-CK-WXK-018 by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).

Learning Hours: 4 hours including the pre-test and post-test.