When Professor Karen Heimer of the University of Iowa Department of Sociology and Criminology realized how the COVID-19 pandemic might limit the opportunities of her students in their senior year on campus, she began to search for what options she could provide for them to feel connected.
What she found was a partnership with the Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities (IISC), a campus program that connects students, faculty and staff to communities across the state for sustainable enhancement projects. Together with the IISC, Heimer assembled a research team of undergraduate and graduate students whom she had taught in her courses. In addition, the team received support from the UI Public Policy Center, and all members are PPC student research fellows.
Composed of 10 criminology majors and minors, the team began its research in the fall — assessing current approaches by police in Waterloo to citizens with mental-health concerns and developing recommendations to improve those responses based on best practices elsewhere.
Members of the team include Anjali Puranam, Aurora Palmillas, Cecelia Bonilla, Myah Rhodes, Kaitlin Abshire, Konstadina Spanoudakis, Antonio Woodard, Alexandra Skores, Omar Lopez, and Natalie Grodnitzky.
“It’s great because they all have different strengths and they all bring something different to the table, and so it’s been amazing,” Heimer said.
A year later, on April 28, 2021, the team presented its findings to the UI Public Policy Center. The presentation will also be shared next month with various Waterloo officials.
“[They shared] research that does help local leaders and administrators think about policy or program or procedural changes, and — around a topic like policing and mental health — that’s a really quickly evolving story,” IISC Director Travis Kraus said. “Any kind of additional assistance is actually just going to be incredibly helpful at this point.”
Unlike most of the projects that IISC has completed statewide, this one was not simply requested by the Waterloo community, but created in close collaboration with city officials by the UI students on the team.
“This is an issue that needs to be handled, and that we feel like we have a good grasp on, that we can make better,” team member Myah Rhodes said with regard to why the team settled on mental-health reform as its research topic.
The first few months of research involved interviews with leaders in mental health and the sheriff and police departments in Waterloo to identify what issues existed around policing and mental health.
The research team then used that information to create a survey for Waterloo police that would assess their knowledge of crisis intervention, such as how to de-escalate situations concerning mental health, and determining what alternatives to arrest exist for officers who encounter someone with a chronic mental illness.
“We’re very happy,” Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony Thompson said. “They’ve been nothing but professional. They’ve been very on top of their game, and all the feedback that I’ve gotten from the community as well as from the folks that they’ve had the opportunity to interact with [is positive]—we very much look forward to the product of their work.”
Students involved in the project have had the opportunity to see some very inventive and creative ingenuity in Black Hawk County, Thompson said, which they then measured against the methods of other law-enforcement entities.
“We’ve given these undergraduate students a peek behind the curtain, so to speak, and so they’re seeing a little bit of programmatic and budgetary and functional response to a cutting-edge issue that doesn’t go away for law enforcement,” Thompson said. “It doesn’t go away for the criminal-justice system as a whole. This is one of those driving issues that’s pervasive across the nation.”
Heimer said she really wanted the students to shape the project, so she met with them just for a couple of hours each week to hear about their research plans, discuss the data and give advice on how to best analyze it.
She said that, with the help of Major Joe Leibold at the Waterloo Police Department, some students have also joined officers in ride-alongs, toured the jail, or attended a typical crisis-intervention training to experience what they were researching firsthand.
Thompson added that the students have had a more scientific approach to the research than the sheriff’s office or the Waterloo Police Department, because they are not as immersed in it, so they have the opportunity to get the bigger picture.
“There’s a lot more work to be done,” Thompson said. “And this is just that next step in the battle.”
Team member Cecelia Bonilla emphasized that one of the most important aspects of this project is its timeliness, as it has taken place amid a general call for change in policing practices.
“I think that gives us an opportunity that most research projects don’t have, which is to be a part of real change in the real world currently,” Bonilla said. “And so, I think that choosing a specific area, and a specific community to look at and help, is the most significant piece of the project itself.”
Rhodes agreed, saying the project felt unique to her because it would really affect people’s lives.
“I think that’s the kicker of it all,” Rhodes said. “We can do so much research, but I think the end is where we really have to sit down and really sit with ourselves and actually consider these peoples’ everyday lives—make changes that are not just good on paper, but that the police feel they can actually implement, and that they feel are safe enough.”
This research is also unique, Heimer said, because it’s meant to benefit the students and also the community of Waterloo. She said one of her favorite aspects of the project has been seeing students realize how fun and interesting research can be, especially when it’s as real and tangible as it is when they are connecting with a community.
“I think a lot of people get into research just for the experience, but this for me is more than that,” team member Konstadina Spanoudakis said. “I think I’ve met incredible people in my group, and I think we’re doing something that’s really important and that’ll make a difference.”
Because most of the students involved in the research project specialized in different areas of study in addition to their criminology major or minor, Heimer said they all contributed with different skills.
“Professor Heimer says that we each have different superpowers, and so each of us working together is really great,” Bonilla said. “All of our different majors and interests and previous knowledge coming together for one project that will give legitimate recommendations to the city of Waterloo, that will affect actual people’s lives and the community, is just kind of an insane process to think about.”
—by Katie Ann McCarver