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In the constantly evolving world of law enforcement, connecting police officers with the latest research is crucial for effective, evidence-based decision-making. Yet, traditional academic publications are often inaccessible, both in cost and in technical language. Applied Police Briefings (APB) steps in to bridge this gap, providing law enforcement with free, practical and concise summaries of cutting-edge research. By transforming academic findings into easily digestible briefs, APB empowers officers and departments to stay informed and apply data-driven strategies in their everyday duties.
In this episode of the Policing Matters podcast, host Jim Dudley speaks with APB founders Craig Bennell and Kirk Luther about their mission to make police-relevant research accessible and impactful. Both established academics and passionate advocates for evidence-based policing, Bennell and Luther saw firsthand how critical findings were failing to reach those in the field. Through APB, they’re addressing this need by curating essential studies, stripping away complex jargon, and presenting them in a format that is meaningful and useful for officers and police leaders alike.
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About our guests
Professor Craig Bennell, Ph.D., is the director of the Police Research Lab at Carleton University. Craig received his B.Sc. in Psychology from the University of Alberta (Canada) and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Liverpool (UK), where he studied under the supervision of Professor David Canter.
Craig is currently a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University with a cross-appointment to the School of Linguistics and Language Studies. In addition, he is a member of the Forensic Psychology Research Centre at Carleton University. He is a previous President of the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology, a previous Editor of the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, and sits on the editorial boards of numerous journals in the fields of police and forensic psychology. He is a member of the Research Advisory Committee and Use of Force Committee for the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and a member of The Working Group on Mental Health and Policing for the Royal Society of Canada. He is also a founding member of the Crime Linkage International Network based out of Birmingham, UK.
Together with a great group of graduate and honours students, Craig studies four primary issues: (1) evidence-based policing, (2) police de-escalation and use of force, (3) police responses to people in crisis, particularly mental health crises, and (4) the reliability, validity, and usefulness of psychologically-based investigative techniques.
Connect with Craig on LinkedIn.
Assistant Professor Kirk Luther, Ph.D., is the director of the Investigative Interviewing Research lab at Carleton University. Kirk received his PhD from Memorial University where he studied under the supervision of Dr. Brent Snook, Director of the Psychology and Law lab. Following his PhD, Kirk spent a few years as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Psychology at Lancaster University in the UK. During his time at Lancaster University, Kirk was also a member of Security Lancaster and CREST.
Kirk is current an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University and is a member of the Forensic Psychology Research Centre. He is also the current editor for Investigative Interviewing: Research and Practice, the official journal for the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group, and on the Editorial Board for Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. He is also a founding member of the Cold Case Network – a group of academics and practitioners working on cold case related research.
Connect with Kirk on LinkedIn.
Key takeaways
- Accessible research for officers: APB provides free, concise summaries of significant police-related research, helping officers bypass costly and complex academic journals.
- Practical applications: Each brief follows a straightforward format, covering key points and practical applications for law enforcement, ensuring officers can quickly understand and apply findings.
- Community and feedback: Bennell and Luther value input from the police community, allowing practitioners to review and refine the briefs. This approach ensures the information remains relevant and actionable.
- Fostering connections between academics and police: APB’s founders aim to create sustainable dialogue between researchers and officers, believing this collaboration leads to better-informed policing and improved public safety.
- Plans for growth: With expanding readership and international interest, Bennell and Luther hope to reach an even larger audience through partnerships, potential podcasts, and innovative media formats.
Research interests
Kirk’s research interests include safeguarding legal rights for adults and youth, and advancing research and practice on investigative interviewing. Specifically, his research works toward (1) developing a theoretical model of the cognitive, social, and language factors that moderate and mediate individual’s comprehension of complex information (i.e., legal rights), and (2) developing a theoretical model of the cognitive and social factors that promote information provision in investigative interviews.
Resources
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Episode transcript
Jim Dudley: Welcome back! If you’re listening, or hopefully you’re watching as well on the YouTube channel. Well, everyone listening has heard of an APB – an all points bulletin. It’s the lexicon of law enforcement for important information to say, “Listen up, got something important to say.” Well, it also stands for a new publication for law enforcement professionals called “Applied Police Briefings.” Their website is apb.com, and it is described here: “APB is designed to be more accessible. There will be no cost associated with APB, so it can be read by anyone, anytime, for free. Each issue of the APB will showcase short, two to three-page briefs of published research articles. Each brief will be written using highly accessible language, omitting the jargon that often characterizes typical academic articles.”
Wow, that is music to my ears. I teach four different classes in crime data, analysis, research methods, and writing in law enforcement, and wow, what a godsend for students. And, you know, I’m really thinking how important this is for line officers. Well, I want to welcome to “Policing Matters” Craig Bennell and Kirk Luther, founding editors of APB, Applied Police Briefings. Welcome, guys!
Craig Bennell: Thanks very much for having us. Happy to be here.
Kirk Luther: Thanks, Jim, really happy to be here.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, what a terrific publication! I subscribe to it. I’m going through some of these briefings, and, you know, I’m trying to get students to take a look at an abstract to decide whether or not they’re going to use an article. But even sometimes, the abstracts are a little bit abstract. How did you guys decide to do this? How did you see the need? What’s your background?
Craig Bennell: Yeah, I mean, I think Kirk and I probably have similar stories. I mean, the reason I thought this was a good idea, to be honest, was a personal experience I had. I did grad school in England, and I came to Carleton University in Ottawa in 2002. I did what all academics do, right? I was doing my research, thinking it was pretty good, thinking that it… you know, I’m an applied police researcher, so I thought the research I’m doing is going to have an impact.
I was publishing away in the peer-review journals that we all publish in as researchers, and, sort of, you know, the incentive structure at a university is really pushing towards these peer-reviewed publications. So I think, you know, in reality, we were doing good research, good quality research, it was rigorous research, we were doing all the stuff that we should be doing, and I thought we were producing results that would matter and change the way it was looking at investigative issues at the time.
We were changing the way that investigators sort of investigate serial crime situations. So I was publishing away, and we probably did about six different articles on the topic. I was hearing from, you know, the five other people in the world that study that issue, and they thought it was great. And that absolutely, this is going to be a game changer here. But I would never hear from the police professionals I was trying to impact.
After probably six research articles on the same topic over the course of two years, hearing from no one other than my close colleagues, we decided to write a summary of that research. I think it was two or three pages, and we published it in a magazine in Canada called “Blue Line,” which is one of Canada’s leading law enforcement magazines that I know was read by police professionals.
We published that three-page summary after publishing for probably three or four years on the topic. And literally within about two weeks, I heard from – it must have been 20 or 25 police officers from across the country – that were feeling the same things we were writing about, and had some frustrations about what we were writing about. They reached out, and they engaged with us, and we started to have really meaningful conversations.
They thought the research was great, but they also had ways they could improve it. It seems ridiculous sort of looking back on it, but it was really eye-opening to me that the people that we wanted to impact, police officers in my case, were not reading, getting access to the research we were publishing. And if they did, they probably wouldn’t be able to understand it, given all the statistical jargon and so on.
So it was really that personal experience that was the seed of, “We need to do something different.” Academics… there’s a lot of policing researchers out there that want to impact policing, and what we’re doing is not working. And what the university incentivizes is not working. So that ultimately led to this idea that what we need to do is publish in different sources, make it free, take it from behind paywalls that you often get when you try to access articles and journals, and simplify the language.
Get rid of the statistical jargon, get rid of all the scientific talk that nobody seems to understand, and to be honest, only about five people would understand even in my own field what I’m talking about. And change the way we do things. Kirk, I don’t know if you had similar experiences, but that certainly was the origin for me of the idea to do something like APB.
Kirk Luther: Yeah, absolutely, Craig. One of the reasons that we got into this type of research, into these jobs, these careers, is that we want to make a difference, we want to help in some way, shape, or form. And like Craig said, we thought we were doing that in terms of doing research that we thought would be meaningful to police and to help inform and change policy and practice. But the research just wasn’t getting there.
So, echoing much of the same points as Craig, we would often try to do things like write summaries of our own articles in “Blue Line” magazine, or write summaries of other articles, just to try and get the science out there to the people that need to know it. And then when Craig came to me with this idea for Applied Police Briefings, it just really struck a note with me in terms of, “This is what we need to start doing if we really want to make a difference.”
The job that police have, it’s complicated and complex enough without trying to get them to read these really complex and complicated articles that, you know, I can’t understand half the time. I probably shouldn’t say that. We can edit that out, right, Jim?
And so, by trying to get the science into the hands of people that will be using it is our ultimate goal. A lot of my favorite research ideas come from talking with practitioners, figuring out what issues they are facing. We can bring that back to the lab or do some field research and try to get some answers to them. And so I think this is just one part in a larger movement or idea where we can really get science into practitioners’ hands.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, I think, you know, we’ve tried to make these inroads before and we start out with the best intentions. There’s the American Society of Criminology, and we have all these different versions of essentially evidence-based policing. American Society of Evidence-Based Policing, I just heard of Australia & New Zealand Society of Evidence-Based Policing, of course, the UK. And I think, like I said, we start out with these best intentions, and then we fall back into the old habits of talking the jargon that turns people off.
But from the articles that I’ve read, you guys do just such a great job of breaking it down that, you know, you don’t have to go back to the thesaurus and think, “What does that mean?” Or go back to trying to understand the geometry of statistics. I’m thinking about how great it’s going to be moving forward, and hopefully there’s no backsliding back into, you know, the scientific jargon.
How do you choose the articles? How do you break them down? Do you have some trusted authors who will break it down for you? And is there some sort of template that you use to gauge it? How’s that working?
Craig Bennell: Yeah, I think there’s a variety of different ways that we get briefs, people. You know, one way is that researchers like Kirk and I, as Kirk said, there’s a lot of us that are passionate about trying to use our research to improve policing. So one way we get briefs is that the authors of the original articles themselves say, “I’ve done a good piece of research, I think, and I think it has some potential to positively impact policing.” But they recognize it’s not getting there in the same way that Kirk and I have. So they themselves can submit a brief of their own research, and so on.
But another way we do it is that we keep our eyes out for research that’s being published that we think is important. So one of the things that we do is, you know, obviously Kirk and I read a lot of research, and we’ll keep an eye on things that are really resonating with us, that we think would be important for the broader police community to read about. So we’ll spot an article that we’ve read, and we’ll reach out to the authors and say, “Hey, you know, this is a new initiative that we’ve put in place. Does that interest you?” And the reception from them has been great.
We’ve also looked at when journal articles are published. Oftentimes, on the website for the journal where the article is published, there are various metrics that the journal will keep track of. For example, they’ll track the most downloaded or the most viewed articles. So we can use those metrics to get a sense of articles that are really catching people’s eyes, really interesting, maybe controversial, or valuable. So we’ll look at those and reach out to those authors.
And for me, at least, I’m fairly active not necessarily as a poster but as a consumer on social media – Twitter, or X, or whatever it’s called nowadays. There are people on Twitter who are academics, but to be honest, most of them were police officers in their previous lives and have turned academics, people like Jerry Ratcliffe or Ben Aspey in the UK. They often post about articles that they feel are really important and they want to get the word out. Following those individuals and seeing what articles they’re talking about, I tend to agree with them that, yeah, this is something it would be great for the police community to know about. So again, we just cold call those authors and see if they’re willing to put something together and get the word out.
Kirk Luther: Yeah, so to add to that – and Jim, I really like your point in terms of making sure we don’t slide back as well and get back into that jargon where people have no idea what we’re trying to get across again. So we really rely on the audience to keep us on our toes. We do our best to engage with readers in terms of inviting or soliciting feedback from people, whether that’s through X or LinkedIn or just through informal conversations when we meet them at conferences.
We are all ears. We want this to be a useful resource to people, and we’ll talk about in a bit some future plans we have for it. But once we receive a brief from whether it’s the main authors or someone else that has done a brief on someone else’s work, Craig and I will then review that article ourselves, and we’ll also send it out for review to at least one academic and one practitioner.
We want to make sure that the science is coming across in the correct manner, and that from practitioners, they see the use or value of it, and that everything that is being said or written is comprehensible to the audience we’re trying to get at.
Craig Bennell: I found those reviews from the police practitioners are the best reviews. I don’t know if it’s just a personality trait of officers or if it happens to be the folks that we’ve gotten on our practitioner review board, but I find they’re quite happy to tell us when we’re going off the rails. Those reviews are the best reviews, not discounting the value of the academic reviews, but in terms of making sure we don’t backslide and that we’re staying true to our mission of writing stuff that’s going to resonate with the police community, be understandable, and focus on the practical implications.
Sometimes, I feel like my students, I get reviews back and it’s all red, you know, and the police officer or practitioner we’ve sent it out for has just gone to town on it. And they’re absolutely right. So they call us out when it’s not clear, it’s not going to resonate, and it’s not going to fly. Some of them seem to take great joy in doing that, and they think it’s hilarious. It really has put me in the student’s shoes, giving me an understanding of what my students feel like when they get back something with a bunch of track changes in it and revisions we now have to make. They’ve been a critical part of the success of this for sure – both the academics and the practitioners – but the practitioner feedback has been extremely valuable in ensuring we don’t slide back into old ways.
Kirk Luther: Yeah, so Jim, I want to give a shout-out to all the authors that have contributed so far as well. One of the worries that Craig and I had at first was, “Are we going to get enough people to want to submit to this?” Because, as Craig mentioned earlier, about the academic incentives, they’re not getting that peer-reviewed publication in a top-tier scientific journal. But what we found is that people are so enthusiastic to submit to APB. They’ve been really great about the review process and trying to edit the articles to make them fit with what we’re trying to achieve. So yeah, this would not be possible at all without all the dedicated people who have submitted articles so far.
Jim Dudley: That’s awesome. I love the fact that you have the academic, but you also bring in the practitioner, and we have that sort of overlay of “pracademics.” You mentioned Jerry Ratcliffe – what a great guy. He’s been on the show. I saw him in Boston last week, and he was running around – the guy’s always busy. So it’s not surprising that he’s working with you as well. He really has a good sense, as you know, he was a cop for 10 years in the UK, so he has that sense of not only the position of the academic, but also how’s it works practically.
I find, you know, conflict sometimes with my own colleagues at San Francisco State University, where, you know, they’re PhDs, they’ve done the research, but there’s sometimes a disconnect when they’re talking about things like de-escalation. There’s this expectation that somebody who’s been running around naked, doing drugs, and smeared himself with his own feces, that at some point, he’s going to be rational and subscribe to your commands. And as somebody who’s dealt with those situations, it’s so impossible. That doesn’t happen sometimes.
To make the connection and say, yeah, in a best-case scenario, this kind of de-escalation might work, but in some, you just have to resort to keeping your distance or using force in some of those situations. So to have that reconciled between the academic and the “pracademic,” I think that’s so valuable, especially to working cops.
Craig Bennell: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a knowledge issue, right? Where academics simply don’t understand the reality of policing. I’ve never been a police officer. I’ve done tons of ride-alongs, I work with police officers, but I’ve never been a police officer. I’ve never had to be in the field de-escalating, so there’s a lack of knowledge of the reality. Of course, the only way I can learn that is by interacting and exposing myself to the real world of policing through ride-alongs, collaborations, and going to training that officers receive, and so on.
And I’ve got to say, there is also – and I don’t think it’s unique to policing – there’s also an arrogance in many academic circles. That’s the really dangerous part – that they don’t, in reality, know, but they feel they do. One of the things I’ve been so pleased with in this, as Kirk just mentioned, is that I’ve not seen that level of arrogance amongst the people that are willing to contribute here. They want to engage meaningfully with the police community, they recognize that they think they have something to contribute, but by posting in these sorts of journals, they’re going to hear back from police officers, and it will create a meaningful dialogue. That can only be a good thing, right?
It improves the quality of the research, improves the relevance of the research, and when we get that to the police community, they’re able to take action they wouldn’t be able to if we did this sort of “ivory tower” research. One of my main hopes is that APB will create that dialogue and contribute to that dialogue. Obviously, there are other sources and forums where that’s happening as well, but this can be an additional way of increasing the degree to which we’re talking to each other, learning from each other, doing better research on our side, and hopefully, on the other side, consuming that research and trying to implement it to improve the way that police officers do their job.
Kirk Luther: Yeah, and to add to Craig’s point, one of the things that I think is incredibly important is that we’re hoping this will be another stepping stone to building that kind of sustainable collaboration between academics and police officers. We want research that’s informed by practice, and we want practice that’s informed by research. We can’t do that if we don’t talk to each other or work with each other. And while I’m not thinking that APB is going to solve this issue, this is just another way to build that bridge and have that connection with a group we need to work with if we want evidence-based practices.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, I mean, we’ve been doing it for a while in the industry. Once a police officer reaches the level of captain and above, they look at a 32-page research study and want that one-pager or two-pager executive summary, right? We’ve been doing it to some degree, but what you’re doing is not just that 30,000-foot overview; you get into some of the meat of the studies. How do you choose which ones you want to publish? Do you come out monthly?
Craig Bennell: That’s right. We’ve decided at least at the outset that we’re going to do four times a year. I think it’s March, June, September, and December, and we’ve settled on publishing about 22 briefs in each issue. Across the year, we’re talking about 88 briefs, hopefully covering a wide variety of areas that will hopefully have an impact.
So there are a lot of other sources that do what we do, but sort of not at the same volume. We’re hoping to create that volume and get a lot of good research into the hands of the police community.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, and how do you prioritize? Are you looking for something related to search and seizure, use of force, technology – what’s your pecking order?
Craig Bennell: It’s a good question. In all honesty, and Kirk may disagree with me, right now, I think we’ve been mostly guided by the quality and relevance of the research rather than sticking to specific themes. There are hot button topics, like police-community relations, use of force, etc., and we know those are contemporary challenges for police services, so we naturally gravitate towards covering those. But right now, our approach has mostly been, “Let’s look for good research, regardless of the area it covers, and try to get that research into the hands of the police community.”
But moving forward, I do think we could be more strategic. For example, it’s clear to me at least that the whole AI movement is now finding its way into policing in a meaningful way. Whether that’s using AI to manage the massive volume of data from body cams, assist with report writing, or predictive analysis – that’s an area I don’t think we have a brief on yet. Moving forward, we’re definitely going to identify good research on that topic, to start informing that discussion.
Kirk Luther: Yeah, and to Craig’s point, when we were putting together the first issue, we even talked about grouping the articles by theme. But a couple of things came up. First, we didn’t want to bias readers in terms of what Craig and I thought was important. Policing is incredibly complex, with so many facets, and we didn’t want to alienate readers who might not be as interested in certain topics. By mixing articles within an issue, we hope readers might discover relevance in areas they didn’t realize were connected to their own work.
So we’ve gone back and forth on whether we should categorize the briefs we publish by themes. So far, it’s working well without strict categorization, but again, we’re open to feedback from the audience on how we might improve.
Craig Bennell: Yeah, one thing we have done is track the number of views and downloads for each brief, and we can see that on a 30-day, monthly, or even daily basis. That’s useful information because it helps us identify topics that are really resonating. For example, briefs on women in policing, promotional challenges, and advice for women officers have risen to the top very quickly. I knew that topic would get interest, but I didn’t realize how quickly it would rise to the top.
So, based on that, we’re putting out more articles related to women in policing, and in the December issue, we’re including another article on that topic. There are also briefs we thought would take off but didn’t, which might be more niche. So, we’re using those indicators to understand what resonates and guide our future topics.
Jim Dudley: And legal aspects – I know some of your articles deal with legal aspects, like law changes, constitutional rights for searches, the Second Amendment for firearms, etc. Do you have a legal advisor or attorney who reviews those kinds of articles?
Kirk Luther: Given that they are kind of briefs or summaries of existing research, we kind of rely a little bit on that initial peer review process, and then Craig and I do our best when there are specific or certain kind of legal issues that come up within the articles. So, while we’re not lawyers by any stretch of imagination, we don’t have a lawyer on staff either. We kind of rely on our understanding of case law to provide a bit of nuance if we’re dealing with a law out of Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., Canada, and then how that could be applied to other countries. We make it very clear throughout the issues that, you know, this isn’t concrete legal advice, but we’re talking about how the research maybe aligns with or presents challenges or buzzes up against existing law in different countries.
Craig Bennell: I think that’s a great point. You know, adding some legal representation on the review boards for those specific briefs where there is that sort of component... again, hopefully, throughout the process that was in place to get that published, editors of those journals sort of took care of that. Certainly, I’ve published pieces where we’ve been encouraged to get feedback from lawyers about some of the content in our journals by the editor, and we’ve done that throughout that process. I think it’s a great idea to include that in our review board so that for those briefs where there is that sort of concern, making sure that things are tight. We can send it to those people for a more experienced opinion than our own. I’m writing notes throughout the podcast, Jim—things you can implement. That’s great.
Jim Dudley: Hey, I want to ask you about the first couple of editions and some of the articles you’ve written about, but first, I’d like to take a moment to thank our sponsor... And we’re back! I’m speaking with Craig Bell and Kirk Luther, founding editors of the APB, Applied Police Briefings. Sometimes I’ll find articles or speakers talking about something interesting for the show. Often, I get a note from my dear editor, Nancy Perry, and she’ll suggest people like you guys. A while back, she sent me something on contagion fire, and I thought, “What does that have to do with me?” But then, of course, I realized, and I should have looked through it—I didn’t even read the abstract, right? One of my friends, Jason Potts, Director of Public Safety at Las Vegas, was showing researchers John DeCarlo, Doug Galinski, and some others who collaborated on this study about what we used to call ‘sympathy fire’ or ‘sympathetic fire,’ where officers fire because other officers fire. At IACP, they presented some of that study on how officers may tend to fire when they see nearby officers firing at a suspect. So, are you guys just reading abstracts, or are you reading through the whole articles before you’re making your decision? Are you talking directly with the authors themselves?
Craig Bennell: Yeah, so both Kirk and I are on the same page here. Our primary goal is to impact the police community by getting research out there, but we also want to make sure the research we’re selecting for briefs is high quality. There’s a spectrum of quality in the evidence-based policing world, so we’re quite selective in terms of what we’re happy to submit. Before I reach out to any author or commit, I read the article and ensure I’m comfortable with the quality and that it was done in a rigorous fashion. Throughout the process, we have conversations with the authors, and, you know, we go back and forth and provide edits, and sometimes there’s questions about those edits and so on. We certainly don’t want to, you know, what we don’t want to do, and this is why we have the academic reviewers, what we don’t want to do is sort of change the research to such an extent in the summarization process, change it to such an extent that the research is no longer valid, or that we’re not being factually correct in the final product.
So, you know, I read the articles to make sure that that’s not happening, because that’s a risk. We want to balance sort of clarity and engagement with academic rigor. So, yeah, I’m quite careful myself when I select. Oftentimes, I know of the authors, and I know that they have a good reputation for doing good research. I’ve read other work that they’ve done. Oftentimes, the journal that the original work was published in is a good indicator of that. Most journals that publish policing research have a pretty rigorous review process, so, you know, one of the upsides for us is that a lot of that work has been done. The ultimate article that was published in the journal is probably of pretty good quality, because those authors in the original process might have gone through one, two, even three rounds of revision.
So, yeah, reading it thoroughly, conversing with the authors, making sure that we’re on the same page with things, working with them to try to make it simpler without changing their findings. It’s actually, you know, I was surprised at how hard that is. The very first issue, the very first brief we wrote—this was done strategically—was a paper that I’m on, and it was the second study in a Ph.D. dissertation of one of my students. And I chose it strategically because I knew it was going to be a total gong show. This was when we were working out the process. So, I needed an author that was going to be friendly and patient, and we probably went through, I’m not exaggerating, I chose a police reviewer that also I knew was going to be patient, but also brutally honest, and he was brutally honest, Jason Boutcher, who’s a police officer in Waterloo, here in Ontario, smart guy, honest guy, not a problem telling me how it is. We probably went through six reviews for that one piece to sort of get down the process, and it was quite a complicated review. It was about physiological arousal in use-of-force situations and the relationship between an officer’s physiological arousal and their performance and decision-making, and so on, and the measures that we used in that study were quite complicated measures. So, it was a good test case for, like, how can we take what is statistically and conceptually a very complicated piece of research and can we turn that— and I think the original article was probably 35 pages in Microsoft Word—can we take a long piece of very complicated research and turn it into something two pages that someone’s going to understand? It was super challenging, yeah, and took a lot of work with the original authors.
Kirk Luther: Just building on Craig’s point, you know, while I can’t speak for academics around the world, one of the issues that we faced in our training to become academics is that we were taught to write in this complicated way because we have to lay everything out so things are replicable and reproducible. And so most of us, I would argue, were not taught to kind of condense things in this easily accessible, digestible manner. And so we kind of had to relearn a lot of the things that we’ve been taught for so long, we’ve been doing for so long. And again, you know, the authors that we’ve been working with, they’re patient with us in their process and seeing how complicated it is to turn these 30, 40-page manuscripts into a two-page document that’s easily accessible. It takes a lot of time and a lot of work, but I think, yeah, we’re much better for it.
Craig Bennell: And the two-page briefs were very deliberate. I mean, it was exactly what you said, Jim. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told by academics or by police officers, you know, my chief is not going to read this unless it’s two pages or less. Like, they just don’t have the time. I’ve been told that throughout my career. Thankfully, you know, I work with some of my grad students who work within policing, so they’re sort of great at writing briefs, and I’ve learned a lot from them about this process. But the two pages was very deliberate, and it was really based on that feedback that we—I think both of us have received that, you know, I’m quite happy writing a 40-page report and sending it into my colleagues and saying, you know, let me know what you think. That’s not happening, you know. So, yeah, it’s, yeah, again, you know, it’s largely the reviewers that have really helped us accomplish this, this final two-page brief that hopefully is understandable.
Jim Dudley: Well, I think there’s a great funding opportunity for you. You guys could make a version of Google Translate from academic speech to real language. So, we mentioned some of the other publications, the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing, Jerry Ratcliffe’s own, you know, primer on evidence-based policing. We’ve got great academics for academics at John Jay out, you know, on the East Coast, all, you know, doing their own things. Any alliances with any of them?
Craig Bennell: Yeah, so right now, no. I mean, alliance in spirit, for sure, in terms we’re all trying to accomplish the same thing. In terms of formal strategic alliances, no, not for any lack of desire, more for, you know, just the amount of work it’s taken to sort of get us to this point, to get an operational website up, to, for two issues, to work with the authors to get those briefs for those issues. So I think, again, Kirk and I have chatted a lot about the future of this, and I think it’s just been for lack of time right now. You know, there are, as you say, societies in Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand, UK, and some, you know, I believe the US society sort of does something like this for its members. They also publish briefs. So, again, we’re not suggesting that this is a completely unique sort of venture.
I do think there’s a lot of strategic value in sort of partnering with them in some way, and certainly I think a plan that we have in the near future is to reach out to each of those organizations and explore if there’s any interest, what that might look like, and how our efforts fit with their efforts. And so I have no idea what that would look like. And there’s also organizations beyond the societies for evidence-based policing. You know, in Canada, for example, we have the Canadian Association of Police Educators. We have the Canadian Police Knowledge Network that focuses on providing online training. There’s a lot of groups that are sort of in the same space where we’re trying to have a positive impact on what officers and leaders and trainers can do in policing. So I think, you know, there’s a lot of potential here.
I think now that we had no idea whether this was going to be successful, we had, you know, I was half expecting that, you know, we’d publish the first issue and 20 cops would read it, right? We’re at about, through the two issues, we’re at about 5,000 views and downloads. So that certainly has exceeded my expectations. It may be low compared to some other things going on, but that exceeded my expectations. So now that we know that, A, we can do it, we have the systems in place and the processes in place, and it seems to be getting some traction, I think now it’s about moving to that next level. And I think, for me, it’s about increasing the readership. And I’m not sure there’s much that Kirk and I can do alone, any more than we’re doing now to do that. I think it’s about expanding and creating these partnerships and getting the word out, doing podcasts like this. We have another podcast coming up to talk about similar issues over in Europe, going to conferences, and, you know, we talked about IACP and putting on a panel talking about these issues. I think that’s the next, for me, the next evolution, which will hopefully take it to the next level. And who knows, you know, maybe in the future we will have a sort of issue per month by doing that stuff.
Kirk Luther: And like Craig mentioned, we’re incredibly thrilled at the reception that we’ve received so far. I mean, we didn’t know if the proof of concept would work at all. We just do one issue, and then it kind of flops, and we’d be done. So, like Craig mentioned, I think it’s, you know, we’ve been talking a lot about the future and what APB can do, and kind of collaborating with these other groups and figuring out how we can make this bigger and better, and, you know, constantly doing that, and so seeing how we can really create this meaningful capacity for change.
Jim Dudley: I think the more people hear about it, I think your audience will grow exponentially. And you guys are doing it on a shoestring budget or a no-string budget. How are you doing it? You take no payments to subscribe? How are you supporting this great work?
Craig Bennell: Yes, so we’re totally committed to, you know, I think one of the first things we agreed on is that this has to be free, right? It has to be free to the reader. I’m not suggesting that, you know, I think every police officer is trying to get access to journal articles to inform what they do, but I have heard frequently of officers or managers or leaders or trainers trying to get access to something that’s published and that’s behind a paywall. And the reality is, unless you’re affiliated in some way with a university, it’s really hard to access journal articles. You know, thankfully, our universities pay the subscription so that we get free access, but most police officers don’t. So, you know, we were adamant that this has to be free.
But yeah, you’re right. Right now, it’s, you know, everyone, myself and Kirk, and our editorial assistant, and the reviewers, both the academic and the police officers, the authors submitting stuff, there’s no payment to any of those people. Everyone’s doing it for free, and, I mean, I guess all I can say is certainly for Kirk and I and the people that are directly involved with the journal as, you know, helping us put together the issues and reviewing it, are doing it for the same reason, right? The motivation is that we want to get this research out there, we want to have a positive impact, and, thankfully, people have been extremely generous with their time. And again, you know, it takes a lot of work on the author’s part to do this.
Again, some people, you know, even my kids, you know, when they were younger, you know, “How much do you get paid to do that article?” “I don’t get paid nothing.” “Like, what are you doing then?” So again, you know, there may be misconceptions that authors that are submitting stuff are somehow getting some reward other than getting their research out, and that’s not true. And again, you know, I know we’ve thanked people already, but the amount of work that it takes to do these reviews, it’s not a trivial task, and all of the people we ask have day jobs. You know, we’re asking professors to do it on top of what they already do, we’re asking police officers and police trainers to review for us on top of a long day of policing. So it’s impressive, and it’s, to me, sort of gratifying, heartwarming to know that there are a lot of people out there that are really interested in the common vision of trying to improve policing, trying to make the job easier, both for police officers but also obviously for the public that they serve, and making sure that everyone’s doing the best job they can do.
So you’re right, everything’s a huge thanks to everyone. At some point, I think Kirk and I know we’re going to have to do something. We’re going to have to buy everyone dinner, like we’re going to have to pay them something, beer or dinner or, I don’t know, something. But so far, everyone’s been doing it for free.
Kirk Luther: We’re going to have to create those challenge coins, Craig, to motivate people. But yeah, so, Jim, just building up on Craig’s points, that intrinsic desire to see your work leading to some form of change is a really strong motivation for a lot of people. And you know, beyond the people that Craig mentioned and thanked, we also have the benefit of being associated with Carleton University, and our library staff have been so incredible, very patient with us as well in terms of helping us get the website set up, the journal submission portal set up, answering all of our questions, stuff that we had never even considered around DOIs and ISBNs and all these acronyms that we had no idea that we’d have to even think about. And so there’s just been this really, really big team effort, and everyone has been so enthusiastic. And like Craig said, it’s just incredibly heartwarming to see.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, and it should be a testament to our listeners and viewers to show that these articles are really worthy of review. It’s great stuff, things cops should know about in their everyday duties, at least give them some, you know, hope for the future that these studies are showing how the job is changing, that people are paying attention, they’re doing the work to help support the job that they do. So I appreciate it. I found value in everything I’ve read so far. I plan on continuing, I sure hope you do. And before we close, I want to maybe, if you could, tick off a couple of the subjects that you’re writing about or that you’re reviewing for future readers, and your future issues. Are you going to stay with the current format? I think it’s very reader-friendly, gives the introduction, talks a little bit about the authors, and then goes right into breaking down the article. Any conversation about changing it, or are you going to stick with the format you’ve got?
Craig Bennell: Yeah, I think the structure, I think we’re happy with. So again, each brief is two pages. Each brief has, we start with take-home messages right at the front end. We try to stick to two or three – this is what you need to know from the brief. So even if that’s all the time you have and you’re just quickly glancing at it, at least you get some information. And then, you know, the structure, just so, I’m just looking at a brief right now, the structure is basically four questions are asked, and the authors go through those questions. So, you know, why did the researchers conduct the study, how did the researchers conduct the study, what did the researchers find, and how can the police use these findings? So across two pages, you get very concise information to answer those four questions. I think that has worked. I think the feedback we’ve received is that that structure is good, the two-page limit is good, the structure is good, so I don’t anticipate any sort of future changes there.
We are looking to get some funding for this, not necessarily to pay people, but to sort of elevate it. So right now, it’s largely digital, and I think that works for most people. I think most people are consuming things digitally, but I do think it would be nice to have some hard copies. And thankfully, Kirk’s had some money where we can do a few hard copies just to take to conferences and send to some key folks. There have been some key police leaders, you know, Chief Rich Johnston, who works for the Barrie Police Service, he’s the chief down there. He’s a massive evidence-based policing advocate, very involved internationally in evidence-based policing. You know, he’s been a real champion for us, so being able to send him a few copies so that he can take it around on his travels. So I think that will be a change. If we can get some grant money to help us print copies of this and so on, that would be valuable. Certainly attending podcasts like this, we’re going to plan to do. And we’re also talking a lot about developing a podcast ourselves around issues. And we’re exploring – I don’t know if you’ve looked at it, Jim, but we’re exploring AI-generated podcasts. Obviously, not as good as a real thing and can’t take the place of people like you. But we have played around with them, and I’ll tell you, it’s – they’re scary good, some of them. And you can actually upload a brief, and it will create a dialogue between individuals.
And I actually played one of them for my kids, and they could not tell that it was AI-generated. There were interruptions, there was tone. I mean, they’re solid. So, you know, we’re playing around with that because we don’t have the resources right now to do a lot on the podcast front. But as a sort of something that could be used in the classroom or just a different way of listening to it if you don’t have time to read, just to chuck it on in the car, to have a podcast for a particular brief or for an issue. They’ve turned out to be accurate, and I kind of find it quite frightening how good they actually are. So we’re sort of exploring those sorts of issues and so on. Lots of different things we’re thinking about. I don’t know if you have anything to add to that?
Kirk Luther: Yeah, so I mean, we’re constantly looking to just up our game and make this the most valuable resource that we can. And so one of the things that we want to do when applying for funding is to try and up the design a little bit of it. So this is created by myself and Craig and an editorial assistant that we have, and so we don’t have any design training or anything like that. We think it looks good, but of course, you know, it could be better with some professional expertise. And then we also want to bring in things like, you know, case studies to kind of lead to more discussions or conversations around things that maybe worked for some organizations, some individual officers, things that didn’t work, so try and get that knowledge sharing happening as well as trying to perhaps – and this is, Jim, where your point comes in about, you know, having a lawyer kind of working with us as well – is to take new case law that comes out and try and distill that, because, you know, that dictates a lot of what police can and cannot do. And so by talking about maybe perhaps new or controversial case law and trying to distill that in a digestible manner as well.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, awesome. Well, I’ve agreed with everything you’ve said so far, except for the AI podcast hosts. Totally opposed to that.
Kirk Luther: Don’t worry, Jim, I won’t let Craig talk you out of a job.
Jim Dudley: All right, yeah, because you would cheat my listeners out of their drinking games, where every time Jim Dudley says something dumb, they have to drink. Or if I say “uh,” they have to drink. So yeah, what fun is there? Hey, thanks so much for taking time. What’s next for you guys? Anything, any personal publications or projects you’re working on?
Craig Bennell: Yeah, well, the big project in our lab right now, which we’re coming to the conclusion of, is we’ve been asked by our local police service, the Ottawa Police Service, to work actually with their dispatchers. And so we’re just – we’re in the final stages of developing training for 911 dispatchers here, and we’re planning on rolling it out across Canada because I think there is a need, so that they can better manage mental health crisis calls that they receive. In Canada at least, there isn’t a lot of training on that. The training that dispatchers do receive is really designed for frontline officers. And while there is some valuable nuggets that they can take away from that, what the dispatchers tell us is that a lot of what they’re learning in those classes doesn’t really translate to on the phone, where you have no non-verbals, right? It’s all just what you can hear, and it doesn’t necessarily translate to being able to sort things out in five minutes rather than 45 minutes.
So they’re taking that training, but they’re just finding it doesn’t translate to having to get information quickly from people over the phone. So we’re just in the final stages of training. It’s very much based on scenario-based training, and we’ve just run a pilot with a small group of the dispatchers here to get feedback, and we’re having a train-the-trainer session at the end of November, and then they’re rolling it out in February. And that is from my understanding, talking to other services across the country, that is a gap that exists for many dispatchers. They’re just not getting dispatcher-specific training to deal with mental health or substance use crises on the phone. How to identify the issues, specific communication, you know, if someone’s hallucinating or having delusions, what are some specific communication strategies. So that’s, I guess, our big project, and it’s been great and very collaborative with the Ottawa Police Service.
Kirk Luther: Thanks, Jim, for having us on. Really, really appreciate it, and thanks as well for the opportunity to allow us to plug something. I’ll just plug one thing because, as an academic, I love to hear myself talk, and so it could go on too long. But one of the big projects that we’re working on now is around cold cases. So there’s not a whole lot of research out there specifically tapping into kind of my background and expertise on investigative interviewing. So we want to find out why cases go cold, what factors lead to them being reopened, and what factors are associated with the solvability of a cold case. And we know police organizations across the country, across North America, they’re strapped for resources – time, money, personnel – and so whatever we can kind of do to help that and provide justice for the victims and their families, we’re really, really interested in this area now, and really keen to explore it more. So I’d encourage any listener, just get in touch with me and we can chat more about it. I’d love to hear their perspectives on things as well.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, awesome. Love to have you back when you guys have updates. Thank you, Kirk and Craig. That’s honorable work, helping out the dispatchers. You know, they’re often neglected, and they’re so important; they have such an important role in policing. Appreciate what you’re both doing. It is a great project. Again, you’ve got a fan in me. I hope our listeners check it out. We’re going to post the links in our show notes. Thanks again. Appreciate your time. And to our listeners, I hope you enjoyed the show. I hope you check out APB and see what they’re bringing up. I’m sure you’ll find interest in some of the articles, if not all of them, and I’m sure they’d love to get your feedback as well. So let me know how we’re doing and what you thought of our guests today, Craig Bennell and Kirk Luther, founding editors of APB, the Applied Police Briefings. Drop me a line at policingmatters@police1.com. And hey, have a great day. I hope you’re taking care of yourself. Stay safe, and hope to talk to you again real soon. Take good care.
