PERFcast

Building Public Trust Episode 3: Law Enforcement and Community Views on Building Public Trust

• Police Executive Research Forum • Season 1 • Episode 3

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In this episode, police and community members discuss how they define trust. Police leaders then share how they have integrated these trust building principles into their department’s operations and how they can measure community needs and sentiment. 

Speakers (14) in order of appearance: 

  • Dustin Waters, PERF Editor and Audio Engineer 
  • Chuck Wexler, PERF Executive Director 
  • Rachel Apfelbaum, PERF Writer, Producer and Narrator 
  • Chief Joe Harvey, Golden (CO) Police Department 
  • Director Nancy La Vigne, Department of Justice (DOJ) National Institute of Justice (NIJ) 
  • Sheriff Tom Dart, Cook County (IL) Sheriff’s Office 
  • Nola Joyce, Partner and Principal Consultant of 21 CP Solutions + former Deputy Commissioner of Philadelphia Police Department  
  • Detective Chris Carita, Fort Lauderdale (FL) Police Department 
  • Eric Trout, Golden (CO) Police Department Community Engagement Group 
  • Michelle Minihane, Golden (CO) Police Department Community Engagement Group 
  • Bryan Kelly, Golden (CO) Police Department Community Engagement Group 
  • Mandi Leigh, Golden (CO) Police Department Community Engagement Group 
  • Romero Davis, Senior Program Manager, Social Current 
  • Chief Adrian Diaz, Seattle (WA) Police Department 

Resource links: 

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.

Dustin Waters:

Welcome to PERFcast, the official podcast of the Police Executive Research Forum.

Chuck Wexler:

I'm Chuck Wexler, PERF's executive director. Thank you for joining us for this podcast series on building public trust. In the last episode, I interviewed Chuck Ramsey and Laurie Robinson, the co-chairs of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing. They identified legitimacy and procedural justice as core principles underlying trust. They also shared the task force's recommendations for actions needed to build trust in areas such as officer wellness, recruitment and retention, policing culture, leadership development, and systemic issues. The law enforcement leaders' and community members' perspectives highlighted in this episode reflect the principles and recommendations of the task force. PERF Senior Associate Rachel Apfelbaum conducted many of the interviews and will be narrating the series.

Rachel Apfelbaum: Hi, I'm Rachel. What is clear is that trust is multifaceted, and that many factors affect whether it will be achieved. However, there are common themes that can be used to create a shared framework to inform trust assessment and development strategies, which will be identified in three sections:

section one, defining trust; section two, operationalizing principles of trust; and section three, measuring trust. In this first section, defining trust, police, academics, and community members will discuss how they define the abstract term trust. Coming up with a shared definition is a critical step in establishing the path forward to building trust. Chief Joe Harvey leads the Golden Colorado Police Department, and this is how he defines trust.

Joe Harvey:

I would define trust as it relates to community-police relationships as kind of a core foundation. It's built upon confidence, reliability, credibility. For me, it is a deep-seated belief that we in law enforcement will always do the right thing in the right way and for the right reasons.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Nancy La Vigne is the presidentially appointed director of the National Institute of Justice, the research, development, and evaluation agency of the US Department of Justice. Here's her explanation of trust.

Nancy La Vigne:

Trust is an interesting word to unpack, right? Because it has to do with a belief that police are following the letter of the law, that they're exercising their authority in a constitutional manner. But it also has to do with just believing that police care about community interests and that they're in it for the right reasons--to keep the peace, to keep people safe.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Sheriff Tom Dart leads the Cook County, Illinois Sheriff's Office. Here is Sheriff Dart's understanding of the elements of trust and the signs that it has been earned from the community.

Tom Dart:

You know, by its nature, it's such a nebulous concept. Because some people would look at it as this sort of straightforward one. Is the community helping us solve crimes? And that's an element of it, but it's not the sole defining sort of data point. No, not at all. Trust is something that you earn, and you earn it because you're somebody that is viewed as trustworthy--a thoughtful person who is there for individuals and is there to help individuals. And if you're perceived in that way, there's trust. And that will play out in many ways. It doesn't mean that you're going to have people banging down your door to give you all the information you need to arrest someone. But will you get more of that? Of course you'll get more of it. There'll be a level of trust that you have where people feel comfortable coming to help you out, addressing issues in their community. When the community has not seen those issues addressed or if they've seen that you are very one dimensional, you're just there to arrest people, then you just don't have that ability to develop trust.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Nola Joyce is the former deputy commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department, and is currently a partner and principal consultant of 21CP Solutions, an organization founded by many members of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing that provides technical assistance to police departments and communities on developing equitable and inclusive public safety. Here's her simple explanation of what is required to build trust and the responsibility that police have with that trust.

Nola Joyce:

Trust to me is built when you make a promise and you fulfill that promise. And so to build trust, it can be, I think, perhaps as simple as that. I promise you that an officer is going to listen to you, give you voice, and be responsive. And then the officer does it, right? But if you make a promise and you don't fulfill it, you're doing just the opposite; you're chipping away at that element of trust. And so the community and society has trusted police departments and police officers with probably the most critical aspect of society, and that is taking away one's freedom, and in some cases even taking life. And so that kind of responsibility demands a higher degree of trust and understanding. I think you build it by individual, one-to-one communication.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Detective Chris Carita serves in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida Police Department. He's a Bloomberg Fellow with a Johns Hopkins Master of Public Health. Here he discusses the signs of bilateral trust between police and their community.

Chris Carita:

I think trust between the police and the communities they serve is all about open communication. That is trust. That is a community member feeling comfortable walking into a police department, asking to speak to a supervisor and share a complaint--whether it's a complaint about the police service they received or it's a complaint about something they need the police to do for them--and feel comfortable that they're going to be heard and that their needs are going to be met to the best that department could do that. That's part of it. And the other part is the police department feeling comfortable walking into a church, walking into a business, walking to a street corner, and being able to talk to the people in those places and find out what's going on. And feel comfortable having those conversations and having that dialogue to come together and solve problems together. Because the police don't have all the answers. We have statistics, we have our experience, we have what we're seeing. But we're only seeing the parts that we get called to come see. But the people who live in the community, they see all of it. And they see things we don't.

Rachel Apfelbaum: I had a robust conversation on the definitions and principles of trust, and the broader narrative surrounding this issue, with four members of the Golden, Colorado Police Department's community engagement group:

Eric Trout, Michelle Minihane, Bryan Kelly, and Mandi Leigh. All bring different perspectives and motivations to this work. Here's our conversation. So the first question I want to start with, it's kind of a nebulous concept--trust. So how would you define trust as it relates to community-police relationships? Eric?

Eric Trout: I thought about this a little ahead of time. So I definitely think transparency is sort of number one for trust for me. There's five things that I've sort of thought about with trust and are part of how you develop trust, as I've read over the years:

transparency, relatability, predictability, feasibility, and empowerment. Transparency is definitely number one on that list for me because people, I think, get mistrust for the police because they don't see what happens. They don't see, you know, the interaction at the street level until it hits the news or something else is going on. Transparency is just also the police reaching out, like Bryan was saying about the little email that the chief puts out; that gives you relatability, that's being transparent. These are men and women who have families and all of these other things going on in their lives other than just being a police officer.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Yeah, I really love that you talked to being empowered, I think, to be involved to make change and kind of have that feedback loop with the department. Is there anybody else who would like to define trust? Michelle?

Michelle Minihane:

For me, trust can be really hard to define. But it needs to be a two-way street. You can't just have the public trusting the police, or just the police trusting the public. It really has to be bilateral. And one question this brings up to me is is whether it's actually possible to have bilateral trust when you have an armed police force that expects compliance and sometimes demands compliance through physical force and can demand compliance through deadly force. So one question that I have is, is it even possible to have bilateral trust in the police system that we currently have? And my other thought on trust is that the community police such as the Golden Police Department that we're talking about now, or that we're familiar with, mostly, they're part of a larger culture of policing in the country. And as a member of the public, I see videos of horrific behavior and tragic outcomes that are not specific to the Golden Police Department. However, those incidents that happen elsewhere impact my perception of local police. So it's part of a national culture. And I think it's going to be really hard to build local trust without having the national culture change so that trust feels like it can be spread across the whole culture.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

What we want to drill down to in this podcast is talking about the national narrative and if there is trust that can be built at the local level. But also, I think, as you said, it's so important to have kind of that national overarching view. Bryan?

Bryan Kelly:

I also think that relatability is another huge part of trust. Going back to that newsletter and how we're getting to know the Golden police officers in the department better, for me, I need to know the person or know a little bit about them to trust them.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Absolutely. Mandi, do you want to add something? I know you have a definition of trust also.

Mandi Leigh:

I define trust as an outcome of a relationship that is consistent, transparent, and I see conflict as really something that's inevitable. I mean, we're human beings; we're bound to disagree. In having an approach where a disagreement isn't a barrier to having a healthy relationship, that consistency piece, and that's between those policies and practices. And as those are changed or improved or updated, that's really a collaborative effort with the public. I feel like our presence in the process is really, really valuable, because it begins with the understanding that conflict and disagreements are inevitable. It creates the space where instead of asking, How can I prove to you that my way is the right way, it's more like, How can we live together in a way where we all feel safe, and where we all have a way in which we can address harm which occurs on purpose or by accident? We're human beings. And the answer to that question really goes so far beyond policing. One of the things that I really valued in this 21st century policing report was it talked about education, healthcare, economics, and how that is also really important. And that's completely outside the control of the police department. But recognizing that those things overlap and are related is really important. And then I also agree with what Michelle said about that mismatch between the public perception. This is very true for me as well. When I see events that happen far away, I think that in my classroom, if one student has a question there's more people that have that same question. So if it's far away, it's probably here as well. So that can erode trust.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Romero Davis is a senior program manager with the nonprofit Social Current, which works with community-based organizations to drive equitable solutions and bridge the community gap with police agencies. Here he gives his opinion on what is needed to build police-community trust.

Romero Davis:

You have agencies and interactions that have happened with communities that have had major harm, major harm with law enforcement. Then all of a sudden there's this swift response and they say, Hey, we want to be trustworthy, we want you to trust us, and then there's a little bit of effort, and then it goes away. And then another incident happens, and then it's like, Hey, we want to trust; then it goes away. It does not work. It increases mistrust. Now, every response is a trauma response. That relationship now has been damaged. When we talked earlier about community, many law enforcement officers are a part of the community themselves. People all want to be safe. So I think, for law enforcement, and for community because it must be a dual effort, I think there has to be a sense of, where's the safe place to have this conversation? What is the safe place to build this trust and what does it look like? It doesn't look like law enforcement coming in with full gear, and guns and everything that may be triggering. It doesn't look like law enforcement coming in on their day off, where they're just this regular person. And although we understand that, you know, the dynamics of policing has been traumatic to folks across the country, locally and the communities, there must be a common ground.

Rachel Apfelbaum: Between the police and community members' responses, there were some similar component themes:

reliability and consistency, open dialogue and transparency, meaningful collaboration with community members, the need to address community needs beyond arrests and crime reduction. And finally, the impact of the police's ability to use deadly force. In the second section, operationalizing trust, we'll hear these elements reflected in police and community members' perspectives on how agencies can make trust building the foundation of their policing operations. Nola Joyce expands upon her earlier definition of trust to explain the actions needed to support the principles identified.

Nola Joyce:

So it's certainly at the agency level, and transparency, and accountability, and collaboration. I think those are, for me anyway, the three key principles that will help build trust between the community and the police. I want to say just a little bit more about the term collaboration. What I mean by that is that the department is inviting into the police department--you know, we talk about community policing, and we often talk about that meaning that officers go out to the community, but where we're at today is that the departments have to open up and let the community come into the department. And so that means offering a real way for the community to comment on pending policies and have those comments be seriously considered and weighed. The same with training--not only offering ideas around training but being part of the training. You have to continue to work to open up the department, its decision making around key issues to the community. Because what I'm hearing from community members is, We want to say how we want to be policed. Which is different than saying, for the police department is saying, We'll tell you how we're going to police you. So it's a different mindset and orientation.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Detective Chris Carita also re-emphasizes transparency and open dialogue and gives examples of them in practice.

Chris Carita:

I think anytime any police department makes the decision to do something proactive, and send officers out into a community on a proactive mission, and they do that without the full buy-in of that community, they run the risk of eroding trust. And that can be countered by training the officers; that can be countered by choosing the right officers who have the right demeanor, and who have the right experience and can talk to people in tense situations. But more than that, if you can bring a community into the police department, if you can bring community leaders in and have a conversation and you can say, Hey, listen, we have these numbers, right? We have these statistics. If you're a command staff and you're looking at skyrocketing gun violence numbers, and your heart's in the right place, you don't want to sit around as a chief of police while people are dying in the street. But at the same time, you have an obligation to the other people in that community, and you have an obligation to let them know what's going on, what you're seeing. And let them bring some context to that. Because you may learn something, first of all. And second of all, if you can explain to a community, Hey, listen, we are having people shot on this corner or in this part of the neighborhood every single weekend; I have a group of well trained officers who I think could do some phenomenal work identifying the people involved and really working it. But it's going to mean that that corner is going to get a lot of police attention for a little while. What do you think of that? Sometimes you're going to have some opinions that are going to say no, I don't think that's the best way to go about it. And you need to take that in. But if you have told them and you've explained to them, I think most community members are going to understand what you're trying to do.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Differences of opinion between police and community members are inevitable. How these discussions are handled--proactively collaborating, listening to understand rather than prove a point, engaging respectfully, understanding each other as full human beings, and striving to create a safe space for honest conversation--is key to consensus building. Director Nancy La Vigne also discusses transparency as well as accountability, and how they can be applied to and operationalized throughout individual office or community interactions to organizational policy and training.

Nancy La Vigne:

Well, I think it's important to have the right messages about the purpose of the agency, the goals, and how they want to engage with the community. But what matters most is action on the ground. And that can include actions by line officers and how they engage with members of the public. But it also has to do with how supervisors make sure to hold officers accountable for following policies and practices that are trustworthy. And it also means being transparent about decisions that are made agency wide, as well as the data on police activities, both good and bad--transparency around citizen complaints, transparency around use of force, transparency around crime, and transparency around footage from body-worn cameras, when there are notable events where the public is demanding to know more about what transpired. And so I would say that transparency is key. Accountability is also a huge part of building trust. And that accountability goes all the way up to the tippy top of the organization and holding officers accountable. I think the duty to intervene is a great example of that. There's many agencies where officers as bystanders have not stepped in when witnessing egregious acts that do have duty-to-intervene policies on the books. So where's the disconnect? The disconnect is not just having the policies on the books but training the officers, making sure that the supervisors are reinforcing that training, and then, at the very top of the organization, making sure that officers who stand by and don't intervene are held accountable.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Chief Harvey has undertaken an initiative to make equity-based policing the core of the Golden Police Department's mission, vision, values, and hiring practices, and for this approach to drive all interactions with community members. This initiative and evaluating its effects on community trust are still underway. However, Golden community member Mandi Leigh saw the value in equity being part of the department's vision, as in her opinion, it acknowledges that there is a diversity of human experience and their engagement with police. Having that nuance allows relationships to form with specific attention to individuals, instead of blanket protocols. We will now hear this equity-based policing lens woven throughout Chief Harvey's seven core principles of building trust that underlie the department's daily operations.

Joe Harvey: So in the City of Golden, I've implemented what I would consider to be seven core principles. And we work at this at every level of the organization. But the first one starts with people. And when we're talking about people, a lot of times we talk about recruiting the right people, and that is absolutely critical in 2023. So when I meet with employees, and particularly new hires, I spend about an hour and a half to two hours with every officer candidate. And about 45 minutes of that is talking about equity-based policing and my expectations for their behavior here. It's about fit:

you have got to pick the right people to do the job for your community. And it's a little bit different from community to community. And hopefully, you're doing it with equity, too, right? You're looking at all the different types of people you want to add into your organization that will help you do this the right way. But it also talks about removing people and it's tough to talk about removing people. I tell the folks in my organization that we're going to do business a certain way. And if that doesn't feel comfortable for you, it's okay. This place may not be the right organization for you. And if it is not, then we will talk about an exit strategy and I will help you with that exit strategy. So that's number one. Number two really comes down to the three P's, which is policies, procedures, and then of course, our best business practices. And in this realm, they need to be focused on evidence-based processes. The third phase is training. A lot of organizations can talk about all of the great training that they're doing. But when it comes to rebuilding trust, there's some core training you have to do. And certainly, we want to focus on bias-based policing training; we want to talk about ethics; we want to talk about REDI, which is Race, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; we want to talk about Crisis Intervention Training. But there are two very specific trainings that work at the core of what we're trying to accomplish here. And that starts with ICAT training, which is through PERF, certainly integrated communication assessments and tactics. The next one is ABLE training, which is Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement through Georgetown University. Now, number four for me is supervision. You have to have actively engaged supervisors in your organization that have 100%, complete dedication to the mission, vision, and values--and to leading. This is the human component of leadership. You have to want to engage your troops. You have to want to be a coach, a mentor, a teacher, a developer of people. But it also means you are actively engaged on the road when things are happening. When you hear a call and you know that it's an officer with less experience or less exposure, or maybe younger in their career, that that sergeant is going to the scene. The next one for me is culture, you have to build an organization-wide culture that is rooted in trust, in life. In our organization I tell everybody our number-one responsibility is to the people in the building. A member of the community may say, We should be number one. Well, I can't give you great police officers unless I'm treating them great, I'm taking care of them. But if I don't take care of those basic needs and treat them with dignity and respect on the internal level, with equity on the internal level, how can I expect them to go out and reciprocate in kind when they move into the community? So number six is discipline. And you know, what's interesting is, when we hear the word discipline we immediately go to the negative, right? We're holding somebody accountable. Is discipline about accountability? Yes, but it's also about prevention. And it's about supporting. I always tell our supervisors that when you have an officer who finds themselves in a hole, don't just throw them a rope, go get 10 more people and help pull them out. It is our job to invest in our people in a manner that is meaningful, which means that if you made a mistake, we will help you through that. But the heavy lift is on your side; you're the one who now has to prove that you are deserving of this hand up. Every human being has bias--there's no question right?--implicit or explicit, depending on how you want to look at it. It has an impact on the way that we go about policing. What I tell people who are in my organization is, I'm not here to change you. I am not here to change your core beliefs. What I can tell you is that if you're operating here, you will not allow that bias to impact the way you police. So that's number six. And then the last one is transparency. The community will trust an organization that is transparent with them, that is honest with them, that will show them what it looks like behind the curtain--that is open to dialogue and sitting down and having difficult conversations about things that people may have opposing opinions about and seeking to find a middle ground. So I think those principles are important. Those are what we're using in our organization to kind of help build our culture and drive our organization forward.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

As mentioned several times, trust is an abstract, multifaceted concept. In this episode we have identified principles and actions that are foundational to building it. However, if an agency wants to get a complete picture of their community members' sentiments towards the agency and identify specific areas for improvement, methods are needed to accurately measure the trust level. In the third section, measuring trust, Chief Adrian Diaz will explain the Seattle Police Department's methodology for assembling a detailed map of community members' opinions of the agency across the city's various neighborhoods. And he will discuss how this can guide trust-building efforts.

Adrian Diaz:

We as a department actually measure a variety of different things. We do a pretty comprehensive yearly survey with Seattle University, in what's called the Public Safety Survey. And it's so comprehensive, it takes about 18 to 20 minutes to fill out the survey, but we get close to 10,000 people that actually fill out the survey. And we break it into each of the micro-communities. We have a very good representation. We weighed out the different demographic communities, so if a community has some level of under-representation, we mirror it to the population of our city and it gives us some really new nuances into it. We do a quantitative portion of it and we do a qualitative portion of the survey. What are we actually measuring when it comes to public sentiment? We do measure police legitimacy, but there are things that are completely different that we're measuring. We do measure fear of crime evening and day. But we measure social disorganization, which is, you know, when people come out of their homes, do they see trash and debris? Do they see graffiti? Do they see disruption in their community? We measure informal social control. So do people call 911 when somebody might need it? And then we measure social cohesion, and how do people feel connected to their own community? The reason why is, we know that if people feel connected to their community, you will probably see less disorganization; you'll actually see a higher level of informal social control. These people are reporting crime and they're connecting the dots because they care about their community. We want to measure this, and we measure it throughout 57 different micro-communities. So we're not just looking at it just as a whole city; we're actually going down to an individual level of community to really understand what is actually occurring in those communities. And then we measure from that point on all those measurements. We've been doing this for probably about a five-or six-year term timeframe. So it actually gives us a good longitudinal study of how this data looks over the years.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Chief Diaz described the Seattle Police Department's annual public safety survey done in partnership with Seattle University, which is part of the Micro- Community Policing Plans initiative. More information on this initiative is linked in the podcast episode's description. As the survey data is analyzed by neighborhood, aka micro-community, the department can get an accurate picture of the trust level in each individual neighborhood and create policing plans and community engagement strategies tailored to the needs of each. In this episode, we have defined trust, established how the core principles underlying it can be operationalized, and identified one strategy for accurately measuring it. In episode four, police, academics, and community members will share the barriers to police building trust with community members. They'll also discuss innovative approaches and programs that have been adopted to overcome these challenges and strengthen trust community wide.

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.