My Short Take on the Reducing Lethal Violence symposium at Loyal University

I attended the symposium on preventing violent crime at Loyal University on Friday.  I planned on attending the whole day, but got caught up having to take care of other responsibilities during the lunch break that took a while.  I listened to the some of the second half of David Kennedy's talk, but unfortunately missed Nikki Jones' talk.  Female crime and violence is an under-studied area of criminology and she's making some good contributions.  I saw Ronal Serpas, Robert Sampson and Karen DeSalvo speak.

I haven't heard many police chiefs speak or address the public, but I get a sense that Serpas does more than most, and he's willing to accept the limitations of policing for solving violent crime way better than most.  There's no doubt room for improvement, but he's pretty good for what's usually the case.  At the beginning of his talk an audience member called out a question on police brutality.  It's a necessary question, and while it was the wrong time to ask such a question it brought up an important issue.  While Serpas didn't answer his question then, during the Q&A period he discussed recent work to create a new form of assessment within the police department that is more closely aligned with the department's goals of better "customer service." This might help address what that questioner yelled out.  Regardless, the question brought up the need of constant oversight of the police department.  Institutions that formally give people power over others, such as the police, are inherently susceptible to abuse and need to be independently monitored.  The city has an independent police monitor, but from what I've heard, she doesn't have much power to do anything.