Three (3) essential steps in changing the culture of a police department.

Some police departments are steeped in tradition and comprised of several generations of employees with common family ties.  The department might have been operating for years with practices contrary to even its own written policies and procedures.  Marginal officers may have been avoided by supervisors and managers and allowed to remain a cancer within the agency.  Malignant officers may have been successful in eluding termination by effective discipline challenges or simply moving on to another unsuspecting agency.  There are some successful steps that might change history for this type of police agency and effectively change the culture of the agency.

Develop a cadre of concerned officers.  In all police departments problem employees are the minority.  But the majority of the officers who do the right thing will remain silent by a belief that management is inept in successfully disciplining these malignant officers.  There also is a realistic belief that the retaliation of coming forward will target them…the good officers who stand up and break the “Code of Silence.”  It’s this majority of well meaning, professional and dedicated officers who have to be encouraged and supported to come forward and band together to create a new base for the department.  These officers know the ones who are abusing their oath of office and tarnishing the reputation of the agency.  These officers need to stand up and say they will no longer idly stand by and keep their mouths shut or avoid and evade being forced to confront the misdeeds of the few malignant officers in the agency.  But these good officers need to believe that the Chief or Sheriff will support them and provide the required commitment to change the past and get rid of the few malignant officers.

Many chiefs of police lately have been bemoaning the trend to throw them out of office earlier than in past years.  They contend it’s because of crime increases.  That’s really absurd.  For years we’ve taken the credit when crime went down and pointed the finger at societal issues when it went up.  Countless cases have demonstrated that the pressure on troops has lead to the manipulation of crime stats.  The real task for chiefs and sheriffs, however, is to inspire their troops to do good, professional work.  As former management guru Peter Drucker contended, managers spent 80 percent of their time with the 20 percent non-performers rather than the bulk of their time with the performers.  When is the last time you saw your chief or sheriff in a patrol car with an officer during the graveyard shift?  How many of you can recall when any chief or sheriff rewarded an employee who blew the whistle on police misconduct or corruption?  Chiefs and sheriffs seem more secure when no one makes ‘waves’ and brings an agency’s warts out in the open.

The chief or sheriff doesn’t make the image of the police department.  The uniformed officers in the community, the plainclothes crime impact teams, and the investigators who conduct the menial tasks of follow-up work on minor crimes create this image in the eyes of the community.  Why should a citizen come forward with information about criminal behavior, when we can’t even encourage our own officers to come forward and help root out misconduct? 

Fill your station(s) with members from the community.  “To know us is to love us,” many have found to be true when community members are brought into the department and have the ability to interact with police employees.  Some of the more common techniques are Citizen Police Academies, community oriented committees, Senior Volunteers, and a layered Reserve/Auxiliary program.  Other recent successful inroads have been made by the community collaborations in programs such as the one in Cincinnati.  Bringing in a cross section of members of your community will allow them to see the policing operation first hand and their presence can create a subduing atmosphere within the day-to-day operations of the police agency.  When the local police station becomes “my station,” they will become a positive force to support this cultural change.

I recall a couple of unique uses of senior volunteers.  In one agency these dedicated volunteers were use to conduct call backs to victims of crimes that really had no leads for follow-up.  The victim didn’t know these weren’t investigators.  They were simply identified as working the detective bureau and were concerned about the victim’s loss and whether there might be any further information they had which could be added to the investigative reports.  To the victim it meant the agency cared, even for their lost porch plant or vandalized fence.  Another agency was using an retired IT person to develop and maintain its intelligence computer system.  Of course, many agencies use these types of volunteers in the property and evidence room.  We’ve seen other being used to enforce “handicap” parking provisions.  Our tasks are not so secret that we can’t effectively use vetted volunteers.

Cut the consequence of past employment practices.  Reading the large volume of police employment cases that seemingly always seem to go against the police department discipline decisions says we’re doing something wrong.  Most of these focus on two failures.  The first is that we don’t adequately articulate our ‘rational reasoning’ for the discipline decision.  This task takes time and effort, but seems to be the essential key to success.  It paints a good picture for anyone beyond the agency who might be evaluating your discipline decision during an appeal.  Too often we act in haste when dealing with an inexcusable or egregious act of misconduct.  In these extreme cases where the probable disciplinary action will be termination it’s time to pump the brakes, use administrative leave until you’re ready to finalize this extreme action, take time to organize and articulate your rational reasoning.  Resist any effort to make your paperwork “short and sweet.”  Arbitration and court decisions frequently expound on this rational reasoning when their rulings are supportive of the agency. 

The second failure is our lack of consistency in our discipline and the failure to upgrade or create written policies that reflect the current challenges we’re facing with our current employees.  It’s important to determine the common areas of police discipline and develop specific written policies and in-service training to introduce these changes to each and every member of the community.  The employees need to be put on notice that there are new provisions/rules in place and the agency won’t be guided by past conduct and disciplinary decisions.  As an example, sexual misconduct is a known potential area of police impropriety.  Relying on a generic misconduct charge of conduct unbecoming, moral turpitude or “idling and loafing” is no longer adequate.  Create realistic training and specific policies that fully describe the misconduct act.  Your agency has to monitor rates of discipline to ensure that there is some orderly consistency to these decisions.  These actions can effectively cut the cord from past practices and create a new playing field for your employees, agency and those who may be tasked with evaluating the employee’s appeal.

Videotapes: Can law enforcement come together on this pressing issue?

The issue is ‘how will officers be allowed to use police incidents captured by video?’  Currently most everyone, including law enforcement personnel, is divided on this issue.  This is even more apparent when the police incident involves a ‘critical incident’ such as a use of force, pursuit, officer-involved shooting or custody death.  I believe the officers should be allowed to use this video evidence just like any other piece of evidence.  If we in law enforcement don’t take a consistent, united stand on this issue, someone else will ram an unacceptable practice down our throats.  But, let’s take a moment and look at some of the more obvious areas of controversy.

Criminal suspects don’t get to review video evidence before they give a statement is an issue raised by outsiders.  This really is totally irrelevant.  Criminal suspects aren’t required to write reports concerning their actions and they aren’t compelled to give statements to the police agency.  Actually they will eventually have access to this evidence during discovery in their criminal proceedings and before they make the decision to grant an interview or testify in court.  Police officers don’t have that protection unless they personally are being investigated criminally for their conduct and refuse to give a statement.  But, even then the involved officer can be compelled to write reports and give a statement during any administrative investigation regarding the exact same incident.

Officers may change their version of events if they are allowed to view this video evidence before they write reports or give a statement.  Yes, that may happen.  But, in the end, our ultimate goal is to get the best account of what occurred.  If evidence, whether it’s video or some other form, will assist in reaching that goal we should pursue it.  Few persons say the officer can’t use contemporaneous notes s/he may have made, reflections from a walk through conducted, scene observations after the event concluded, or extemporaneous statements made at the scene.  Even civilian complainants who have made allegations of police employee misconduct should be allowed to view video evidence that may refute or mitigate their allegations before they are questioned further in the administrative interview.  We shouldn’t be playing a game of ‘gotch ya!’ with either these civilian complainants or our own officers. 

Officers currently use a variety of evidence in preparing their reports and giving compelled statements.  A police officer regularly will use available evidence when preparing contemporaneous reports of any police incident, including his/her use of force.  Audio recorders, CAD documentation, photographs of injuries or equipment damage, training documents and written policy/procedures are commonly used by a well-trained officer. What makes video evidence any different?  Nothing and we should resist any effort to carve out an exception on this value piece of evidence. 

Will an officer’s knowledge of evidence, including video, necessarily slant his/her version of the events?  Some state police officer bill of rights legislation and collective bargaining agreements mandate that the entire administrative  investigative file be open to the accused officer before s/he is compelled to give a statement.  In reality if we haven’t made the case before the compelled statement, it’s rare that it will be made by the admissions of the officer during the compelled statement.  Police officers frequently meet with their representatives, including attorneys, and discuss their upcoming compelled statement.  An officer’s representative would be remiss if they didn’t discuss the events with the involved officer in an effort to more factually present the circumstances of the officer’s involvement.  If the action of the officer is inexcusable, any review of the video evidence won’t let that officer off the hook.  S/he still will be accountable for his/her action or lack of action.

Would this give an officer the opportunity to lie about the circumstances of the police incident?  I don’t believe that would be true in nearly all circumstances.  We need to address this issue with the assumption that all officers are professional and want to conduct themselves appropriately.  We shouldn’t create our policies on this critical issue based on what the minority, unprofessional officer might do at the expense of our good officers.  Our investigative techniques are adequate to ferret out those who may abuse their position.  Most of our officers are good and want to prepare reports and give statements that are as accurate as possible.  Access to all of the evidence directly connected to their role in a police incident is the best course to assist these officers in this task.  Consider these examples: “During the shooting I shot until the threat stopped.  At the time of the shooting I really didn’t count the number of rounds I fired.  It was only after my magazine was checked that I realized I had fired eight rounds.”  Or, “During the shooting I believed I remained in one location.  It was only after I viewed my body camera video that I realized I moved several steps to the right while firing my weapon.”  Any concern with these more accurate accounts?

The ‘appearance of evil’ is often worst than the evil itself.  We’re got to be concerned with those who will attack the credibility of our good officers.  This often occurs when the officer is required to write a report, give one or more statements even when compelled, followed through a walk-through, and then evaluated against mounds of evidence found later.  Resist this urge.  Involved officers should be required to give only one compelled statement after they have had the opportunity to review all relevant evidence.  If we don’t allow this, there will undoubtedly be variations in the officer’s account, however slight, that gives reviewers (even our own personnel) the belief that the officer is not being fully truthful.  We want the most factual account from the officer who is now facing potential criminal (state and federal), civil and administrative charges.  Let’s not handcuff our good officers at the expense of those few who might abuse their badges or others who might hide in the shadows exhibiting ‘hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil.’