In this episode, PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler interviews the co-chairs of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing - former Commissioner Chuck Ramsey (Philadelphia Police Department) and Laurie Robinson (Professor Emerita at George Mason University, and former Assistant Attorney General, DOJ Office of Justice Programs). They discuss how the national landscape of police-community trust has changed since the Task Force published its report in 2016 and the lessons learned that are still relevant today.
Speakers (5) in order of appearance:
Resources mentioned in episode:
This podcast series is part of the Critical Issues in Policing series, supported by the Motorola Solutions Foundation.
Thanks for listening to PERFcast, the official podcast of the Police Executive Research Forum. For more information on PERF, visit www.policeforum.org.
In this episode, PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler interviews the co-chairs of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing - former Commissioner Chuck Ramsey (Philadelphia Police Department) and Laurie Robinson (Professor Emerita at George Mason University, and former Assistant Attorney General, DOJ Office of Justice Programs). They discuss how the national landscape of police-community trust has changed since the Task Force published its report in 2016 and the lessons learned that are still relevant today.
Speakers (5) in order of appearance:
Resources mentioned in episode:
This podcast series is part of the Critical Issues in Policing series, supported by the Motorola Solutions Foundation.
Thanks for listening to PERFcast, the official podcast of the Police Executive Research Forum. For more information on PERF, visit www.policeforum.org.
Welcome to PERFcast, the official podcast of the Police Executive Research Forum.
Rachel Apfelbaum:I'm Rachel Apfelbaum, a senior research associate at PERF. Thank you for listening to this podcast series on building public trust. In this episode, PERF's executive director, Chuck Wexler, sits down with the co-chairs of the 2015 White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Laurie Robinson and Chuck Ramsey. They discuss the task force's work and the lessons and recommendations that hold true today. Here is former President Barack Obama introducing Chuck and Laurie and discussing the mission of the task force.
President Barack Obama:Last year, the events in Ferguson and New York exposed a deep-rooted frustration in many communities of color around the need for fair and just law enforcement. And so back in December, I announced the Task Force on 21st Century Policing, chaired by two outstanding leaders who are respected both in law enforcement and in civil rights service, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and former Assistant Attorney General Laurie Robinson. And I asked them to help to form a task force made up of community leaders, law enforcement leaders, academics, practitioners, and to come up in 90 days with a very specific set of recommendations that would allow us to continue to drive crime down, to continue to deal with issues of community building, but would begin to build the kind of trust that we need in order to continue to make progress in the future.
Rachel Apfelbaum:Here is the conversation between Chuck Wexler, Laurie Robinson, and Chuck Ramsey, where they'll discuss the work of the task force and how law enforcement, activists, and academics came to alignment on how to build trust and increase public safety.
Chuck Wexler:Chuck Ramsey and Laurie Robinson, in 2015, you both headed the 21st Century Policing Task Force, a White House initiative. Do you remember when you first were asked to do this? Who called you and how did they explain it? Laurie, would you go first?
Laurie Robinson:Sure. I remember it very well, because it was Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and my cell phone rang. It was a blocked call. And I thought, well, that's interesting, one of my law enforcement friends is calling. I picked it up. It was the President's counsel, Neil Eggleston. I knew Neil from the my days with the American Bar Association. And then he said, the President wants to appoint a task force to look at policing and community relations. And he's asked Chuck Ramsey, who was then of course the police commissioner in Philadelphia, to co-chair it, and he'd like you to be the other co-chair. And he said the mission is going to be about building trust between communities and law enforcement, not to look into any particular incidents. This was shortly after the grand jury in Missouri had come back with no charges in the case of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri. And there had been demonstrations and unrest, as you may recall, not just in Missouri but around the country. And after a brief conversation, I agreed to do it, in part because of Chuck Ramsey. I admired Chuck so much. I knew he had tremendous knowledge about law enforcement. I had worked on many issues in criminal justice, but I knew Chuck was such an in-depth expert.
Chuck Wexler:And Chuck Ramsey, do you remember that phone call? What did you hear and how was it explained to you what your role would be?
Chuck Ramsey:Well, very similar to what Laurie just said, it was Thanksgiving weekend, and a call came from the White House general counsel, Neil Eggleston, and the conversation was pretty straightforward. The President was thinking about forming a task force to look at policing issues. This was in the wake of Ferguson, Missouri, and also Eric Garner in New York had just occurred as well. And he wanted this task force to take a look at critical issues facing policing. Building trust is certainly one of the most important areas. And of course, I agreed to do it. And then they told me, we want to ask Laurie Robinson to serve as co-chair. Do you know Laurie? And I said, Well, yes, we've met before, and had worked together. I have a lot of respect for her. And I think that's an excellent choice. And that's how it happened. It was just a verbal agreement to do it with more information to follow.
Chuck Wexler:You know, one of the interesting things, and part of the story that maybe you two will share, is the composition of the task force was by itself, fairly novel. How did you build trust within the task force to develop the kind of recommendations that you did? I mean, can you talk a little bit about the composition? Because maybe I'm reading into something here, but it seems to me that you had your work cut out. In some ways you were a microcosm of building trust in the country.
Chuck Ramsey:If I can just start off, Laurie? You're absolutely right, Chuck. First of all, your observations are correct, because the White House chose the participants. I recommended a couple of people, law enforcement people, to be members. But other than that, that was it. So we had civil rights attorneys, we had activists, both from New York, fresh off the picket line for the Eric Garner death. We had someone right off the picket line in Ferguson, Missouri. And we had a couple of academics and former police chiefs, so it was a strange mix. And if I can just be totally candid with you, when I saw the list of names, people that I really didn't know, but just backgrounds, I had concerns as to whether or not we were going to be able to reach consensus on all the different things that we were going to be looking at. And to my very pleasant surprise, we were closer together than we actually thought and reached consensus on every single recommendation that you find in that document. Although at first, I was a little skeptical, but it really did turn out with conversation, with people getting to know one another and not being afraid to talk to one another, we were able to reach consensus. So it was a good group.
Chuck Wexler:Laurie, what do you think?
Laurie Robinson:We had initially hoped that we would have six to nine months or even a year to do this. We ended up, as you may recall Chuck Wexler, in having only two months--by the time that the task force was appointed and the Christmas holidays had passed that year--to actually do the work of the task force, hold some hearings around the country, and prepare the report. I think if we'd had a longer time we might not have been able to reach consensus. People would have gone back and wanted to revisit issues. But in those two months, it was as if we were in a bunker together. And we ate together. We had drinks together. And we had to get that report before the President by March 1. After we had met with the President, Chuck and I in the Oval Office on December 1, 2014, we had a 100-page report in his hands on March 1. That was incredibly short time to do that work. And the personalities on that task force, in addition to the diversity of backgrounds, very strong personalities, very strong views. So these were not kind of compliant people. And despite that, there were--interesting considering that we were acting in Washington--there were no press leaks. There were no leaks of any kind out of it because people really bonded together. And as Chuck said, we also came to consensus on everything.
Chuck Wexler:I do remember the short time frame. Do you think sometimes that's a good thing that gives projects like this a sense of urgency? Sometimes, you know, things that take so long and you are almost like a jury, weren't you sequestered away and you had to come up with recommendations? How do you build trust with people you don't know?
Laurie Robinson:Yeah, well, by the way, I definitely agree with you that that the brevity underlined the urgency, and made it much more possible for us to come to consensus.
Chuck Ramsey:I was gonna say we were very fortunate, we had a very skilled facilitator guiding us through the process, Jim Copple. And Jim is very skilled, and he knows how to maneuver through tricky areas. And if there is conflict, or disagreement, he's able to really bring the parties to a point where they can kind of see one another's point of view. And I think that's very important. If you take time to listen to one another, whether you ultimately agree or disagree, that's how you start to build trust. And now you start to build respect, I think, because you listen to other points of view. And when you hear, when you see things, I've often said that part of what we have to do in policing is try to see policing through the eyes of those being policed. And I think that oftentimes, that's what's missing. We, you know, chiefs get together and talk, well we're all looking through the same lens in effect. But when we have a diverse group of people with different opinions, and we take time to listen and respect their point of view, whether we agree with it or not, then you really start searching for common ground and you start building a relationship. And with that relationship comes trust, because you know one another, and, you know, the titles kind of go out of the window.
Chuck Wexler:When you think now about the report, what would you say was the one key recommendation from each of you, that you think really, as we look back today, that really still resonates?
Laurie Robinson:Well, for me, I think that the key underlying principle was the notion that the police should not be an occupying force, that they have to be protectors and guardians of citizens, in effect protecting the democracy. And that concept is just so fundamental and then underlies a lot of the other principles in the report. And tied to that is the whole notion to me of procedural justice, about fair treatment of citizens.
Chuck Ramsey:And I would agree with that. And I think they are an acknowledgement or recognition that in many of our communities, especially our challenged communities, there is no trust and in some cases, there never has been any trust, and you have to build it. And you have to find a way in which you can reach people where they are in order to provide them with a quality service that they deserve to have. And so I think, you know, we recognized that, we acknowledged it early on. You know, when I think about the six pillars, and again, we only picked six, because we had such a short timeframe, but there were only two that we really thought about in terms of positioning within the document. The first being building trust. And legitimacy had to be first because without that, nothing else really matters. And you can't really get anything else accomplished if you've not established trust and legitimacy with the communities you serve. And then the last was of course officer safety and wellness. And when we talked about that, we talked a lot about the mental health aspect of the officers, not just about, you know, wearing your Kevlar vest and things of that nature, but actually looking out for mental health, knowing that we had to do more in those areas. They kind of like form bookends, if you will, in the report. And I think even looking back on it, I think that was a good decision. And I think that the way we laid it out even made a lot of sense and made it easy to follow for people.
Chuck Wexler:So now it's 2023, and so much has happened since your report came out. I mean, you have the George Floyd murder and then most recently, Tyre Nichols. What in your report do you think is still important? And if you were writing it today, how would you add to it?
Chuck Ramsey:Well, I mean, I'll take the first stab at it. You know, if we had a seventh pillar, it would have been recruitment, hiring, and retention, which in 2015 wasn't the issue it is today. But I think the one area that we did not dive deep enough into, and that is the culture of policing. And I think that without addressing the culture, you cannot have any real transformational change. And I think we have to acknowledge the fact that, you know--and it's not just a single culture within policing, we have a culture of service, for example, there are some positives in policing. But there's also a subculture, a couple of them that exist in our profession, that I think we saw in Memphis, for example, you know, the us-against-them type mentality. Some of these special units that are given specific missions--get guns, get drugs--and nobody pays much attention as to how they go about doing it. And it's easy to really kind of stray away from, you know, your own training, your policies, your procedures, all those kinds of things, because of the enormous pressure that police officers feel like they're under. They have to perform and bring in numbers in order to be successful. So our performance evaluation system is another thing that has to be looked at. All these are issues that, you know, to just take a deeper dive I think is appropriate. And I think if we really want to have the kind of transformational change in the profession that we all would like to see, you can't achieve that without dealing with that. And just one last point, leadership development. If you want to transform policing, you need transformational leaders. And there aren't enough of them in in policing in America. There are some good training programs that are out there right now; there's no question about it. PERF, you have ways in which, you know, SMIP and so forth. But it's still not enough. Good leaders are more by accident than by design, because we don't really develop from the ground up first-line supervisors, middle managers, senior leadership, all the way up so that we have the right people in positions to make the kinds of decisions that need to be made to really move the profession forward.
Chuck Wexler:Laurie, what do you think?
Laurie Robinson:Well, I want to expand a little bit on what Chuck mentioned at the beginning, and that is that President Obama, recognizing that he'd given us a very short time, did ask Chuck Ramsey and me at the end of the process, if we'd had more time what would we have zeroed in on? And we both said immediately, recruitment and hiring. So we even recognized right then that given a few more week or a month, we would have zeroed in on that. And he and I both agree to this day that that is what we would zero in on. And I think it's tied very much to both the opportunity to implement many of our recommendations like the guardian mindset as well as the culture issue that Chuck talked about. So I think that is really a critical, critical issue. And the second thing is something that we addressed very briefly in our kind of preamble portion of the task force report, which is the preliminary recommendations to the President that talked about areas that policing could not address but needed to be addressed. In other words, the broader criminal justice system responsibilities, number one, and secondly, the whole of government responsibilities for looking toward HHS and HUD, education, etc.--to address the problems broadly, dealing in a simplistic way with poverty, things that tend to make the crime problem worse or are at the root of a lot of the crime problems. And I think that there is something that we would have given more time and addressed.
Chuck Ramsey:And we did mention leadership development report, again, with you know, funding support for existing programs but also creating regional command colleges, if you will, partnering with current colleges and universities with strong criminal justice programs, for an example, to really start to reach across the country, and really start developing at every level, including first line, middle, senior, and top leadership, so that we're developing the right leaders to really move us forward the way we need to be led.
Chuck Wexler:Let me ask Laurie a question. You know, you've been a big proponent of evidence-based practices. If you look at all the time you were in the Department of Justice, that seemed to be a theme that you talked about. How can evidence-based police practices help to build community trust? Any thoughts on that?
Laurie Robinson:Actually, I think that there's a great example from some research that came out just this past year. This study that David Weisburd did with the National Policing Institute that found that procedural justice training can improve community relations. And this was done actually in hot spots so it was a potentially combustible situation. But then it actually helped to rebuild community trust. I'll just mention briefly what the study did. It was a randomized control trial, so as you know, that was a rigorous study. And it was done in Tucson, Houston, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. And it found that intensive procedural justice training of police officers can both improve relations between officers and the community and also reduce crime. So, it is a really significant study and just came out a little over a year ago. And particularly because prior procedural justice studies were not definitive, this is really an important study, and one that I think can really have some staying power.
Chuck Wexler:And just staying on that theme, Laurie and Chuck both, the relationship between practitioners and academics has always been a little rocky. You know, when it works, it's great, when it doesn't, it almost seems like Venus and Mars, that they can be looking at each other. And yet, can you think of examples where practitioners and academics--and you just gave one, which is perfect--but maybe, you know, if you can think of others. And Chuck, where academics and practitioners came together around the issue of regaining public trust.
Chuck Ramsey:Well, this doesn't pertain to building public trust directly, but I think back to the '90s, early '90s, when I was still in the Chicago Police Department and given the task of creating a community policing model for the Chicago Police Department. And I had two universities reach out because they wanted to do research they wanted to study. That was Northwestern University and the University of Illinois, Chicago. And I was interested too because I had heard about community policing, I thought I understood community policing, but I wasn't convinced that it really worked. And so I was as interested in having an independent study as anyone. I asked if they would come together, form a consortium, and work together. And I would open the department to them to do whatever they needed to do, have access to everything, under one condition, and that is that I could get some periodic feedback as to what was working and what wasn't working. I didn't want to read about it three years from now in some book that they wrote about everything I did wrong. Right? They can still write what they write. But at the same time, if I know something is not really working, well, I have an opportunity to tweak it. That also becomes part of your research. Yeah, did the fix work right, if you will. And so they agreed to it.
Chuck Wexler:That was Wes Skogan, correct?
Chuck Ramsey:Yes, and Dennis Rosenbaum, so that was my first real experience in dealing with academics. Fast forward to my time in Philadelphia, we formed a very close relationship with Jerry Radcliffe at Temple University. And, you know, we did the foot patrol study, which Temple did for us, that really showed a 22% reduction in the effectiveness of foot patrol. But I've always wondered if something works, why it works. You know, you could throw 100 cops in an area and you can suppress crime for a period of time, but that's as temporary as a band aid on a bullet wound. I mean, it's a temporary solution to something. If there was something that was sustainable that you could do, because you can't sustain having that many resources in one place, then why wouldn't you want to do that? Because you can bring a longer-term relief in safety in a neighborhood. If you have the right research and someone really looking at it and kind of helping you think through this, then I think it really benefits both sides.
Chuck Wexler:You know, it's a great example. I was going to ask you that later on. But it's a great example, because we talk about building trust, but in some ways the relationship between practitioners and academics is a bit of a trust issue. I mean, the academics--and Laurie, I'm sure you're familiar with these studies--have come into a police department and said, We're gonna look at this. And it turns out they look at something completely different. And the police chiefs feel deceived, and they get soured on research. But the example that you gave, Chuck, you both had to compromise, didn't you? In some ways, you had to trust them that they would come in, because they could just write this report that said the CAPS program didn't work. And they had to compromise in terms of how their research was done, because usually academics don't like to give mid-course feedback because that changes the very nature of their research. So that's a great example of trust building, isn't it?
Chuck Ramsey:Well, I think it is, Chuck. But there's also something else I think that's important. And whether you believe it or not, I wasn't concerned about whether or not it was going to work or not work. If it didn't work, then that would kind of end the discussion in some ways as to why we ought to move in that direction. Why would we move in a direction for something that didn't work, right? If it didn't build relationships with the community and didn't have an impact on crime, why would you want to do that, right? And so I wasn't concerned about that. I wanted to know, and I wanted to have, you know, let's build a model that others can look at and learn from, the good and the bad--the things that do well, but the things to avoid and you can only do that if you have a third party take an objective look.
Chuck Wexler:Laurie, just your thoughts on this. I'm sure you've given a lot of thought to how academics and practitioners can build the kind of trusting relationship that's in both of their interests.
Laurie Robinson:Chuck, I have given a lot of thought to it. And I think part of it comes back to what we talked about a few minutes ago. And that is when we spoke about the task force itself, getting to know itself, people within it. And that is just building greater familiarity with, if you will, the other side. And I have--I hate to use this word, but I think it's right--lectured my colleagues on the academic side a great deal about getting out and getting to know folks on the law enforcement side to a greater extent. And since I left the Justice Department and joined George Mason University, and have been attending the American Society of Criminology conferences every year, I regularly--I'm afraid I should use the word--harangue my colleagues there about if they're interested in policing. Are they going to meetings of PERF? Are they going to the IACP conference, not just to give a quick talk but to sit around, talk to people, listen to them, and make some engagements with them? Get to know people, talk to them.
Chuck Ramsey:Hey, Chuck, can I just add something real quick to this whole thing? Both in Chicago during the CAPS study as well as Temple, they not only, you know, studied what it was we were doing, they were embedded within the department. There wasn't a staff meeting or any other kind of meeting that they weren't a fly on the wall. They were there. They were free to listen to discussions, to disagreements, to all these kinds of things. And they became, they really understood just how hard we were working to try to make this work, too. And I think an important part of trying to build a relationship is for them to actually see what's going on, the inner workings of what's really taking place. I just personally think that that's, you know, beneficial to everyone, because they do get a deeper and a better understanding of what it is they're looking at.
Chuck Wexler:Chuck, in 2016, in your TED talk, you discussed how law enforcement needs to shift its perceived mission from one of enforcing the law to protecting the rights of all. Can you talk about what you meant there? How does that make the community safer?
Chuck Ramsey:Well, my thinking really began in my days in DC, when I visited the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. And from that we developed Law Enforcement & Society, which is a program that's run by the ADL in Washington and the Holocaust museum. And it came from a visit there that really had me thinking about policing in a different way. I was not aware of the role of police in in Nazi Germany during that period of time. I always thought it was just SS or SA soldiers and so forth. And it made me think about the role of police in a democratic society, and how important that role really is. And what happens when police lose sight of that, you know, democracy itself starts to unravel, if that makes sense, because when you think about what happened there--I mean, prior to the rise of Hitler, the cops there took an oath very similar to the one I took, right? And what happened? And so I started thinking about, in current terms of policing, if you ask the average police officer what their role is in society, most of us probably say, enforce the law. And yet, when you read the oath of office that police officers take across the country, I don't care if it's federal, state or local, one of the key parts--I think the most important part--is an obligation to protect the constitutional rights of all people. And if a police officer answered that same question, what is your role, and they said, to protect the rights of all people, do you think we'd be having the kinds of discussions and the kinds of issues we're having today in policing? I don't think so. Because we would see ourselves differently, we would see our role differently. You know, we get caught up in the war on drugs, war on crime, we're in this war or that. We're not at war with our own citizens. Yeah, there are bad people that we need to get off the street, but it doesn't mean that we're at war. And even the metaphor of the thin blue line, well, that's almost an us against them. Everyone wants to be associated with the good, but what about the people that are on the other side of things, right? That's us against them. And then you start to kind of broaden and stereotype and all the other kinds of things that really, you know, I think can easily take hold if you're not careful. We train people on the technical aspects of policing but we don't spend time talking about the role of police in a society like ours, in a democratic society. We don't talk about the history of policing in the United States so that we come to understand that 21-year-old kid about why some communities are so distrustful of police. And it's because of the history of policing, where people have been abused. And there's a reason why they feel that way. You can't fix it if you don't know what caused it.
Chuck Wexler:What's the one question I didn't ask each of you that you'd like to answer?
Chuck Ramsey:You know, do I see a positive way forward for policing? And the answer to that, in my opinion, would be yes. And it's not going to be easy. It's going to be a long road. But I do see a positive way forward. There'll be some setbacks along the way. But I do think that most in policing recognize the status quo is not acceptable and that we have to move forward. And we can't move forward without some significant change taking place within the profession of policing. Like it or not, we are all connected one way or the other. You know, there was a time during my career and certainly during Laurie's, if an incident occurred let's say in Minneapolis, it would be pretty much a Minneapolis incident. It might get a little bit of attention regionally, but not necessarily LA, New York, Chicago, or whatever. Now, it doesn't matter where something happens. I mean, think about Ferguson, Missouri. I used to go to St. Louis, Missouri all the time, I had no idea where Ferguson was even located. Who would have thought that a community with a small police force of only 50 police officers would change policing in America? Yet it did, because of that incident. And so we have to recognize that the world has changed, and in order for us to survive, we have to adapt or we will not survive. We will not survive, and I think most have come to that realization.
Chuck Wexler:Laurie, I'll let you have the last word.
Laurie Robinson:I would have you ask, if the task force members were meeting around a table today or by Zoom, what would they say now? And the answer is that, in fact, Chuck and I did pull the task force members together after Tyre Nichols' death in Memphis, and we've been meeting for the last five weeks by Zoom, and we're going to issue a report in the next weeks.
Chuck Wexler:Thank you, Chuck and Laurie, for this insightful conversation on the task force's work in 2015 and the recommendations set forth then that still hold true today. This interview between Chuck Ramsey, Laurie Robinson, and me was recorded in March 2023. The task force's new report, released in April, is titled The Task Force on 21st Century Policing: A Renewed Call to Action and is linked in the podcast episode description.
Rachel Apfelbaum:This has been a conversation with Executive Director Chuck Wexler, former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Chuck Ramsey, and former Assistant Attorney General Laurie Robinson. The consensus building accomplished by the task force is a good model for law enforcement and community members around the country who are seeking to come to alignment on the path forward for public safety. They and the task force made recommendations for changes that will improve police-community trust related to officer wellness, recruitment and retention, policing culture, leadership development, and systemic issues. In future episodes, law enforcement and community members will share the innovative strategies and programs that have been implemented to strengthen the relationships in their community, many of which align with the recommendations of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing. In episode three, we will raise the following questions. We can all agree that trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve is crucial for increasing public safety. But can we agree on what trust means? What is the impact on police-community relationship building when definitions and measures of trust differ between community and law enforcement members? In this next episode, we will highlight the voices of law enforcement leaders and community members to begin unpacking the nebulous concept of trust. We'll also examine the implications of differing definitions of trust as well as understanding some of the core principles and actions needed to build trust.
Dustin Waters:Thanks for listening to this episode of PERFcast, the official podcast of the Police Executive Research Forum. Please be sure to subscribe on your podcast platform of choice and stay tuned for upcoming episodes. For more information on PERF, visit www.policeforum.org or follow us on Twitter @policeforum. Thanks again for listening. This podcast series was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Motorola Solutions Foundation.