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Our Role
DPSST's Center for Policing Excellence (CPE) develops and delivers training and resources that promote the use of research, data, and evaluation to address public safety challenges such as crime and disorder, community livability, and public trust. CPE provides leadership development programs both on-site and regionally, and facilitates collaborative efforts between researchers and practitioners to support evidence-based decision making. CPE is also responsible for ensuring DPSST's criminal justice training programs reflect the needs of Oregon's public safety communities, utilize effective educational strategies, and accurately assess learning and performance.
Our History
CPE was created in 2013 with the passing of Oregon House Bill 3194 - Criminal Justice Reform and Reinvestment Act. The Act tasked CPE with training updated skills in policing based on scientific research, as well as promoting partnerships between researchers and criminal justice practitioners. The scope of CPE has grown to include developing and maintaining up-to-date curriculum for public safety academies and building statewide resources for local behavioral health and crisis response programs.
In 2014, CPE started offering leadership classes again to Oregon public safety with the reintroduction of the Supervisory Leadership Academy (SLA). A year later, the Oregon Knowledge Bank was launched and the 1st Annual Oregon Problem-Oriented Policing Conference was hosted at DPSST. From 2016 to 2018 a micro-grant program was launched, providing funding to agencies around the state to implement innovative, evidence-based public safety strategies in their communities. Most recently, CPE has embarked on a modernization of the Basic Police Curriculum in an effort to make it more evidence-based, both from learning and police science perspectives.
Because of its unique role in Oregon Public Safety and efforts to support police agencies through research, curriculum, and behavioral health, CPE was named a National Institute of Justice Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Science (L.E.A.D.S.) Agency in 2017.