Chief Herold Recognized Nationally for Evidence-Based Policing

BOULDER, Colo. – The Boulder Police Department is proud to announce that Chief Maris Herold was inducted into the Evidence-Based Policing Hall of Fame this week in recognition of her lifelong efforts implementing evidence-based strategies from Cincinnati to Boulder.

“I began my career as an emergency psychiatric intake worker and social worker, serving diverse urban populations. My frustration with state- and county-run bureaucracies that failed to adequately serve vulnerable populations led me to transition into a profession that I believed was more responsive to community needs: policing,” Chief Herold said. “These early experiences ultimately shaped my understanding and vision as a police executive. I am committed to the principles of equity, effectiveness, and ethical policing, driven by evidence-based policing.”

The Hall recognizes innovative law enforcement practitioners who have been central to the implementation of a high-quality research program in their agency and are also relentless champions of institutionalizing evidence-based practices. These leaders of evidence-based policing not only help make high-quality police scholarship possible but also advance significant reforms in policing by utilizing science in their decision making.

In her nomination, individuals wrote that Chief Herold’s efforts “have changed the individual agencies and communities in which she has worked and significantly advanced the law enforcement field both nationally and internationally. She is a national thought-leader in the areas of problem-solving, place-based policing strategies, and violence reduction.”

Here are just a few of the examples highlighted in her induction:

• While serving at Cincinnati Police, she developed problem-solving projects and evaluations that overhauled their antiquated crime analysis format that is still used today
• In Boulder, Chief Herold has pushed for greater transparency, use of data, and the application of crime science in response to crime problems by implementing open datasets of offenses, calls for service, and several other notable police records to the public. She also contracted the building of an internal portal to make crime, calls for service, staffing, and other data more accessible to every police department member. She is currently evaluating the implementation of the ICAT model, which is a departure from previous use of force models to better measure the data and handle accordingly. She is also leading the department’s efforts to achieve the 30 by 30 Initiative, which aims to have all police agencies be 30 percent female by 2030. Boulder Police are currently at 22 percent.

Chief Herold said she was honored to be selected and it was standing room only as the Hall presented her with this recognition in Fairfax, Virginia. She is pictured here with former Attorney General Eric Holder, who presented her with the recognition.

The Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy (CEBCP), housed within the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University, seeks to make scientific research a key component in decisions about crime and justice policies. The CEBCP carries out this mission by advancing rigorous studies in criminal justice and criminology through research-practice collaborations, and proactively serving as an informational and translational link to practitioners and the policy community.

Chief Herold began her professional career as a social worker, serving as a sexual assault investigator and a juvenile psychiatric intake worker, before joining the Cincinnati Police Department in 1993. Throughout her tenure at CPD, Chief Herold developed and implemented several notable initiatives, including mental health response teams, numerous place-based crime reduction efforts, and ethical and constitutional responses to address community needs associated with homelessness and substance abuse issues.

Chief Herold has received several awards for her community collaboration and large-scale problem-solving projects to reduce crime and improve services for at-risk populations, including the 2016 Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement and Problem-Solving Award, and the 2017 and 2022 Herman Goldstein Awards for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing.

Read more at https://cebcp.org/hall-of-fame/maris-herold/