Proactive Engagement in Traffic Enforcement Training
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), National Sheriff’s Association (NSA), and International Association of Police Chiefs (IACP) have all expressed their commitment to engaging communities in more meaningful ways.
NHTSA changed the name of its campaign from “High Visibility Enforcement” to “High Visibility Engagement,” an important semantic distinction that needs to be fulfilled through proactive community outreach efforts. Evidence-based approaches, such as Data-Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety (DDACTS), provide a foundation but will not be as effective unless they dovetail with purposeful efforts to build trust, meaningful engagement, and community legitimacy.
Safe Night introduces our innovative relationship-based model and a multi-component approach to reach community stakeholders that have been difficult to reach and develop new strategies that build genuine relationships with the community and improve safety outcomes.
Safe Night Utilizes RTM as our Primary Tool for Assessment
Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM)
“RTM is risk assessment for places. It’s a data analysis technique. And it’s a diagnostic tool. When used for crime analysis, RTM identifies environmental conditions that contribute to crime problems. Different crime incident locations can have common underlying causes. That is, events may be unrelated, but attractive settings for them may share similar qualities. RTM sheds light on why crimes pattern the way they do. It puts the focus on places, not people."
- Dr. Joel Caplan, Co-creator of Risk Terrain Modeling, Professor at Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice and Chief Operating Officer of Simsi.
Proactive Engagement in Traffic Enforcement and Safety Report
To address the need for genuine engagement, Safe Night released Proactive Engagement in Traffic Enforcement and Safety in partnership with Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility. Our report aims to address genuine engagement in the context of traffic safety and the law enforcement response, making clear and specific recommendations for state and local law enforcement agencies. Considerations for NHTSA and State Highway Safety Offices (SHSOs) are also provided to support law enforcement as they incorporate these recommendations. Each section includes relevant research, current effective strategies, innovative approaches, and potential contributions to traffic enforcement.
Governors Highway Safety Association
