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Considerations for Specialized Units: A Guide for State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies to Ensure Appropriateness, Effectiveness, and Accountability

Throughout 2023, the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and the National Policing Institute (NPI) convened a series of meetings to discuss specialized units in state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement agencies and create guidance for those agencies’ leadership to consider when forming, managing and disbanding such units. This report includes sections on identifying the need for a specialized unit; selecting the unit’s membership and leadership; managing the unit; establishing its policies, procedures, and end date; holding the unit…

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Building Trust One Traffic Stop at a Time

Published by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), this article spotlights the Preventing Violence Against Law Enforcement and Ensuring Officer Resilience and Survivability (VALOR) Safer Together training program, an initiative aimed at building positive partnerships between police officers and the communities they serve to reduce crime and ensure safety and wellness for all. Community safety doesn’t start with a traffic stop – it begins with building trust. That’s just one of the lessons Lieutenant James Jefferson III of the Louisiana…