PERFcast

Building Public Trust Episode 4: Challenges to Building Trust and Ways to Overcome Them: Part 2

• Police Executive Research Forum • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Central to the conversation about public trust in police are the historical and current incidents that have exacerbated mistrust. In part two of this episode, community members and police leaders share how discussing these events can narrow these divides. The episode also highlights successful broader community engagement programs and explains why police and academics should work together to evaluate programs and base them in evidence. 

Speakers (16) in order of appearance: 

  • Dustin Waters, PERF Editor and Audio Engineer 
  • Chuck Wexler, PERF Executive Director 
  • Rachel Apfelbaum, PERF Writer, Producer, and Narrator 
  • Chairwoman Karen Gaal, Metropolitan (DC) Police Department’s 3rd District Citizens Advisory Council 
  • Director Nancy La Vigne, Department of Justice (DOJ) National Institute of Justice (NIJ) 
  • 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 
  • Sergeant William Corrales, Tucson (AZ) Police Department 
  • Chief Adrian Diaz, Seattle (WA) Police Department 
  • Gabriel Diaz, Community Service Officer, Tucson (AZ) Police Department 
  • Captain Rob Fanelli, Gainesville (FL) Police Department 
  • Chief Pam Davis, Punta Gorda (FL) Police Department 
  • Sheriff Tom Dart, Cook County (IL) Sheriff’s Office 
  • Abrianna Morales, CEO, Sexual Assault Youth Support Network (SAYSN) and Program Manager, National Organization of Victim Assistance (NOVA) – Youth Advocacy Corps  
  • Chief Joe Harvey, Golden (CO) Police Department 

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.

Dustin Waters:

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

Rachel Apfelbaum: Hi, this is Rachel. Part one of this episode discussed strategies for engaging individual residents, particularly those from underrepresented populations. This episode will include three sections. Section one: effective policing history programs. Section two: effective community engagement programs. Section three:

the value of using research and implementation. In this first section, effective policing history programs, we'll begin by hearing how police officers and leaders can build trust today by understanding and publicly acknowledging negative aspects of policing history and we'll highlight innovative programs that meet this goal. Here's Chairwoman Karen Gall of the Metropolitan DC Police Department's Third District Citizens Advisory Council. She describes how negative interactions with police in the past, whether directly experienced or shared with younger generations, can heighten tension in police-community member interactions and how officers understanding this context can help them strategize their response on scene.

Karen Gaal:

When you're educating your new officers about Washington, DC, as well as about the legacy of policing, there was a lot of harshness in dealing with the citizens of Washington, DC. So if you understand that this traumatic history is built into the DNA of a lot of people who have experienced that, then you sort of understand that's the reason why people are not receptive to police officers, because they did not have a good experience. But the officers need to understand, Okay, well, I'm in a situation, let's think about what could possibly be a problem that I may run into when I go into the scene. I see a multi-generational group there and everybody says, No, don't touch my child. You're hearing the fear of a mother, or the fear of an aunt, because they never feel their child will return from a situation, even though they know that their child was wrong. So some of the officers, if they grew up in Washington, DC, they may know about these things. But whether they grew up here or not, in their training they should learn that people are going to have that village effect, they're going to have that cultural effect, they're going to have the repercussions from the traumatic situations that they've gone through for generations.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Officers' day-to-day duties are difficult, and they have to handle not only these, but also the history and national narrative and how it impacts their day-to-day interactions. Director Nancy La Vigne, head of the National Institute of Justice, the research, development, and evaluation agency of the US Department of Justice, worked on the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice. Through this initiative, she observed the innovative Courageous Conversations program of the Stockton, California Police Department, which brings together officers and community members. Findings from the national initiative and more details on the Stockton Police Department's program can be found linked in the episode information.

Nancy La Vigne:

The agency that did it best by far was the Stockton PD. The chief there at the time, Eric Jones, took this really seriously and didn't do what I think a lot of other agencies did, which is to say we'll have more meetings and see who comes. Instead he partnered with a community member who had lost a loved one to a police shooting and invited her to work with him to recruit people to attend the meetings. And what he said was, I don't want the people who like the police or want more police to come to these conversations. I want the people who are the biggest detractors; I want to hear from them. The chief was at all meetings and started by saying, I want to start with an apology and to name the history of policing in America and policing in this specific jurisdiction that builds on Jim Crow and the aftermath of slavery in ways that have continued in mass incarceration today. To actually name that and say that by wearing this uniform, I own that history and I apologize for that history. And then to move on to say, We want to hear from you, want to hear what your views are about police, want to hear what your issues are with safety in your community. The other thing he did was ask for suggestions for changes in the agency's practices; some of them he committed to doing in the moment, others he committed to following up on, and he did. If that doesn't build trust, I don't know what does.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Mandi Leigh, whom you heard from earlier, and Bryan Kelly are members of the Golden, Colorado Police Department's community engagement group. Here they discuss the actions by Chief Joe Harvey, who created the group, and former Chief Bill Kilpatrick that had a positive effect on trust.

Bryan Kelly:

He put everybody in the group that applied. I thought it'd be pretty easy for him to cut me out of the group, and that's what I was expecting. I was surprised because he knew of the past critiques that I had given to the police department, and he probably figured I was gonna give more. And by him putting me on that group, it kind of told me--and I guess other people that had heard the stuff I had said--that he knows I've given negative feedback, and I probably have more critiques, but he must actually want to hear them and learn and grow from from those critiques. And that's why he put me on the group.

Mandi Leigh:

It's hard to even put into words, the power of him saying (or it might have been Kilpatrick saying) that we haven't done policing equitably in the past, and it's a problem. And just hearing a leader in the police force say that was so powerful. Being brave and vulnerable to do that is something that I absolutely commend, particularly in contentious fields like policing. It's really important.

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. He explains how shared understanding develops from conversations acknowledging the history.

Romero Davis:

I have two young boys 25 and 20 years old, and my little guy is 11. And I've had to have conversations with them that maybe other folks haven't had to have with their kids, based upon historical elements. And it changes the relationship and the trust. The only way that this changes, Rachel, is if communities and law enforcement call each other in and say, You know what, you may not understand the impact of what this harm has done. But I'm going to call you in because every voice deserves a chance to talk, to hear, to grow perspective. If you don't talk to me and understand my perspective, you'll never understand why. And until I was able to really sit down and talk to law enforcement and say, Hey, why did you stop me and pull me over, and they're like, Listen, in the dark I can't see who you are, I didn't understand their perspective either. My wife is in law enforcement, and I want her to be safe. I want her to come home. And safety is everything to both sides of the table.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

The Tucson, Arizona Police Department has partnered with community members to create a cultural awareness program for officers, which is described here by Sergeant William Corralas.

William Corrales:

For new officers that work these areas, we have community members who have historical information they share with these officers. What the area was--they were sharing about the time when this was the only place where Hispanic or African American citizens could buy property. They talk about the racism. These new officers, some of them are very young. It's a history lesson about the area they're gonna start working in. And it gives them kind of a roadmap, like, Hey, you might get a little pushback, but understand where they might be coming from.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

In Seattle, Chief Adrian Diaz established a first-of-its-kind training program, called Before the Badge, which takes the above principles even further. More on this program can be found linked in the episode information.

Adrian Diaz:

We were actually giving an officer a gun in four and a half months and hoping that we were going to have really good outcomes. And I just felt that that wasn't enough. So I created Before the Badge as a six-week program prior to them ever joining the academy. It really infuses them into the community, to engage and listen and discuss and understand the communities that they're going to be policing. And understanding some of that distrust and sometimes having those difficult conversations. But also even just understanding how trauma manifests itself in communities. But I wanted them to take a look at themselves as well. We know if we have a healthy officer, we're going to have healthier outcomes. And so it's really about making sure that we build resiliency in our officers at the very front end, prior even to the academy, and then engage them in the community. So then the community embraces them and says, Look, I actually know who the officers are that are going to be patrolling my community. And they develop a relationship prior to starting in the policing environment. It allows us to have a different outlook and reach the community in a different way. We had started working with a lot of community groups, just in doing demographic outreach; we had advisory councils, and whether it's the African American Advisory Council or the Latino Advisory Council, we started using them as conduits into the community. We reached out to community members that had expertise; some were professors in Black history, and we worked with the Northwest African American Museum and with some of our Black clergy. As we started to do more outreach it gave us new contacts and new opportunities for us to build relationships that we hadn't necessarily built.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

We've heard about some groundbreaking initiatives to reconcile the divides between police and the community, resulting from the negative aspects of policing history. In the second section, we'll explore some effective community engagement programs. The Tucson, Arizona Police Department has a robust community service division. Sergeant William Corrales describes the division's zebra units, which include patrol officers and civilian community service officers or CSOs. The CSOs can respond to about 70 to 80% of the calls that patrol officers take. In 2022 they responded to roughly 150,000 calls.

William Corrales:

The zebra units, their purpose is to enhance quality-of-life issues in our community. They have the time to work with the community, to gather information, whatever that complaint might be. It could be as simple as a barking dog complaint, where a neighbor has called 50 million times into 911 and we need to take care of that issue. Or it could be a drug house in a neighborhood, or retail theft--somebody who's stealing thousands of dollars from a business and they identify this person and make an arrest. One of the cool things about the zebra units is they're like project managers; there's accountability for making sure that the job is getting done. So, for example, if there is a retail theft at a business--convenience stores are losing about $50,000 a month in retail theft--the zebra officer could look at the area, look at the environment, see if there is something in the environment that is causing this because there are abandoned houses. They're able to walk the street, knock on doors around the business, and ask them, Hey, have you seen anything? This what we're doing and this is why we're going to be seen in the area. Are you seeing any criminal activity? It's extremely important that they get out of their cars and knock and build those partnerships and relationships with the community members. And use these little bits of information to put this puzzle together to see a picture of what's causing the problem. One of the great benefits of having zebra units is that the community gets to know the officers pretty well. The Tucson Police Department provides cell phones to the officers. Every officer on the department or community service officer has a cell phone and when we're on duty, the expectation is that we answer the phone and they don't have to go to 911. You don't have to go to another service. We don't have to tell you that you have to go to this department, you have the wrong number. We're kind of a one-stop service. People love that. They love the customer service that they receive, that we're going to take care of their problem when they come to us and if we don't know the answer, we're gonna go find out.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Here, Community Service Officer Gabriel Diaz describes what this role means to him.

Gabriel Diaz:

I like going out to people, and most of us actually do. A car accident, for example, for most people is one of the most dramatic events of their entire lives. So the goal for us is to get there as quickly as possible and make sure that they're okay. And then a lot of times, we might not get training for it, but we're like counselors; at a car accident we have to help them through that stressful moment in their life. At least for me, that's a huge gift because if I see somebody that's going through a little crisis and then half an hour later, even if I have to write them a citation for something, they're shaking my hand and thanking me for calming them down, that's the biggest impact for me, because I can touch someone directly, even if it's one person at a time. And Hey, you know what? You guys aren't so bad! It changes the face, not just of CSOs or other members of the Tucson Police Department but it helps everybody because we go out there with a softer side of policing.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Responding to quality-of-life issues in the community is an important way the division builds public trust, as Sergeant Corrales explains.

William Corrales:

Catching bad guys is fun, but we also have to make sure that we listen to the community and find out what's important to them. We have neighborhood associations--using the South Side Patrol Division as an example, once a month we go to the meetings to see what the problems are. And we have them jump in our police car; Gabe would have his computer open and we would drive down the streets where they would show us--this is a drug house, there's a missing stop sign, there's a big hole in the street. Well, that's not a police thing but we're gonna report it because it's a part of the community, a safety issue. It doesn't have to be a police issue; it could be anything that a citizen thinks is a problem--that's concerning to them, to their quality of life, and to their neighborhood. We take care of it. And like I said, it's so important that we take care of these right now. The feedback that we get from the community members or after these events, when they see that the hole is getting patched up, that there's a sign that we're taking care of certain things in the neighborhood, or it could be a street light that's out, they're very pleased. They feel safe. They're very thankful.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

We heard similar remarks from Captain Rob Fanelli of the Gainesville, Florida Police Department.

Rob Fanelli:

If we come in there, and we make arrests, that's traumatic to a community. Listening to what the community needs builds trust. It can be very simple things like the street lights don't come on, the roadway is not properly painted, but we can work with other city and county departments to get those needs met. And that builds trust. Later on, when we say, Hey, we're having this crime, call; if you see something, say something. That's the trust component.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Chief Pam Davis of the Punta Gorda, Florida Police Department echoed these sentiments.

Pam Davis:

We pretty much don't say no when we get a call. We had a call from a lady who could not lift her 70-pound dog into her car; she calls the police because we answer the phone. And so instead of the officer or the supervisor saying we're not going to that call because it's not police related, we helped her get the dog into the car; no big deal. That means more to that person than seeing the officers ride around the community. Literally, it had nothing to do with them being police officers, they just went and helped. So that's the kind of people we're looking for.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Chairwoman Karen Gall from DC points out that so-called minor quality-of-life issues are actually much bigger than that for many residents. How they are responded to affects community perceptions of safety.

Karen Gaal:

It changes from time to time what those particular quality-of-life issues are. People blocking businesses with their lawn chairs--that's just the smallest thing. Then you have people who are gathering just because they have nowhere else to go and this is where their tribe is. But for a person who is not part of that circle, when they see it, it becomes their quality-of-life issue; they feel as though they can't walk down the street because they feel threatened. They feel, if I walk past this, I'm going to be accosted by the people within that group setting. And they're constantly in fear of their life. So how can you stop it? You can stop it through consistent enforcement during those peak hours, like I mentioned, and you can't do that if you have an an enforcement system that's lost a lot of staff.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Chairwoman Gall touched on how public safety intersects with addressing underlying community-wide problems. Previously, she recognized that police are now expected by the community to handle these challenges as part of their duties. Mandi Leigh from Golden, Colorado expands on the impact when police speak out on systemic issues.

Mandi Leigh:

Imagine the power of a police officer being present for a public meeting and saying, Housing is really important and housing is affecting my experience in my workplace; if more people are housed, my workplace is a safer environment. To me, that feels really significant. And that would demonstrate action before we request an investment in care for a community. I think particularly policing, in all the media that I interact with, it's hard to perceive that they have the community's interest in mind. Doing something like speaking on behalf of the community would really challenge my perceptions in a good way.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Romero Davis of Social Current, proposes that treating structural disparities is a foundational step in improving relationships with community members.

Romero Davis: Those relationships are still burdened. And they are still affected in ways that we haven't addressed because there's still so much poverty and people are still hungry. So I don't have time to understand your role, I'm just trying to survive right now. If we don't keep the community safe and address disparities economically, socially, educationally, in every which way, we will continue to have this lack of understanding about what the community really wants and expects. Versus what law enforcement says:

Hey, this is what I'm sworn in to do.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Here, Sheriff Tom Dart of the Cook County, Illinois Sheriff's Office discusses the role of law enforcement in helping tackle broader societal challenges and the benefits of doing so. He describes the Forward Thinking Community Resource Center, run by the sheriff's office. More on the resource center can be found linked in the episode information.

Tom Dart:

I sat there one day, and I was looking at all the different programs that were hitting people from all different levels, whether it was a substance abuse program, housing issues, educational issues for an individual who's getting out of jail, or a family member of a victim, whatever it might be. I had all these programs and I wanted to have them all housed under one entity. The theory was that if we are going to be impactful and develop trust between us and the community, we have to be a full-time entity that's there for you, not just at a moment in time, but we're there for you period. Anything we do, we're gonna have to have a case management component. And so with our community resource center, it has this theory of connecting in a substantive way with the community, all of their needs and doing it on a long-term basis. So it's not like handing out a coat to someone leaving the jail in the middle of the night. No, this literally could have nothing to do with anybody in the jail. We came across an individual whose relative had called us because their cousin was in custody and heard we would be helpful with housing-related issues. The person had nothing to do with the criminal justice system; they just knew that we had a great network of trying to help people with housing-related issues. So we'd work with them. And when people would start to question me--which I get frequently--Aren't you outside your lane? Well, I defy you to tell me what my lane is. Because the reality is, without tortured logic I could you walk right through, saying all right, now this individual that called us about housing, if we did not intervene and help that person with housing, could that lead to that person having to house themselves in a public venue, like a train or something? That's a criminal violation.They then are taken into custody, an expensive process and to what end; they're then released. And it costs all this money. So these different interventions that we're doing, I don't have a hard time making a connection to what the job of sheriff is. I just find that if you're going to actually be impactful in the community, and develop the trust that we need so that people understand that we in law enforcement truly want to help and want to be partners, you're only limited by your imagination. I have not had to go to my county board looking for money for any of these. Most of it is just the creativity side of it. And sitting there saying, okay, there's already these existing programs out there, it's really making the connection and then saying, now that I have made these connections, can I find one position within my office who will be a case manager and make sure that all these efforts aren't lost?

Rachel Apfelbaum:

We've heard about several cutting-edge community engagement programs that have been implemented across the United States. When implementing any approach or program, it is crucial to see if it's having the intended impact. The third section, the value of using research and implementation, will discuss how to partner with researchers to evaluate community engagement strategies and base these strategies on evidence. Director Nancy La Vigne of the National Institute of Justice explains that partnering with researchers can support these efforts.

Nancy La Vigne:

From the NIJ perspective, we fund research. The research usually happens in institutes, including places like PERF, or academic settings. So what law enforcement agencies can do is be eager partners. And that research, certainly from an evaluation perspective, is a win-win. I don't know a chief who doesn't want to see the return on his or her investments, right? You need to be very savvy when it comes to budgets--how you're spending your money and how it relates to changes in crime and safety and so forth. So if that's the case, why wouldn't you want free labor in the form of a research partner who is funded through a federal grant to come in and help you better understand all these programs that you're implementing? Are these policies being implemented as intended? And are they having the intended impact?

Rachel Apfelbaum:

To explore opportunities and resources for police from the National Institute of Justice, see the link in the episode information. Abrianna Morales is founder and CEO of the Sexual Assault Youth Support Network, SAYSN, and program manager of the Youth Advocacy Corps for the National Organization for Victim Assistance. She points out that researchers can strengthen policing practices by bringing in the perspectives of underrepresented populations.

Abrianna Morales:

When it comes to research having a role in informing police practices, there needs to be much more interdisciplinary conversation between police themselves and researchers. And maybe even some collaboration about how we can use community-based participatory research practices to really focus on questions that police might have about best engaging with communities and really allow those voices to be elevated, taking from the current theory and discourse in academia or research about engaging communities. It's really about intentionally building relationships with those communities. I think that research is very much associated with the extraction of knowledge--going to a community, taking what you can from it, and then leaving and not giving any of that information back. Also, there's a long and painful history of not doing strengths-based research within those communities--focusing on the marginalization or what makes communities that are unsuccessful, as opposed to what makes them resilient or powerful or strong. In the same way that communities might be distrusting of police, communities might be distrusting of researchers. And so it's really the same mechanism of individual officers, individual researchers, going into these communities, not with the intent to get information and go or to superficially build trust and then go but really getting into those communities--building relationships, having those conversations on a macro scale, and then building from there and figuring out what they need, how we can serve them. Not extracting, but fulfilling and enriching instead.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Chief Joe Harvey of the Golden, Colorado Police Department points out that evidence should underlie all policing practices.

Joe Harvey:

You add a level of trust and belief in your organization when you have used practices that are founded in not what you believe is your best business practice, but proof--scientific evidence that says more often than not, these skill-sets, these methodologies work. So what does that mean? It doesn't necessarily mean that every single policy we have has been vetted by an educational institution. It has not. I'll give you an example of a policy. The Golden Police Department participated with the Police Executive Research Forum on a two-year journey of building two policies that were evidence based. And those were how to eliminate bias-based policing or bias policing, and sexual assault and domestic violence investigations. It took time to go through this process. But the policy was founded because there was research conducted by people who have very specific expertise in that particular area to build investigative strategies and methodologies that work.

Rachel Apfelbaum:

Lastly, Captain Rob Fanelli of the Gainesville, Florida Police Department contends that community engagement doesn't always have to entail a lot of resources or a new program.

Rob Fanelli:

We're facing a lot of challenges right now in law enforcement. Staffing is a big one. And I hate to hear some departments use staffing as an excuse not to engage the community. I'm a patrol captain right now; I understand the pressures and the difficulties in staffing. But I think there's an opportunity to lean into the community. When I started 20 years ago, community policing meant you were part of the community. How can you be part of the community rather than apart from the community, right? Right now we have this perception that it has to be a program or initiative. It doesn't always have to be that way. It should be searching for community partners, and then that gentle handoff where the community partner takes it from there. And we support that. That's not a huge time restriction. And I think we're starting to realize, too, that every call for service is an opportunity. It's an opportunity to build a relationship with the community, an opportunity to build trust in the community. And it's also an opportunity to look for resources that we can provide.

Rachel Apfelbaum: As Captain Fanelli said, your agency doesn't have to do everything, or even create a whole new program. Individual interactions matter. And your agency can form partnerships with community organizations that can provide additional resources and build trust in this way. Now that we've established how to engage your local community--again, the community is not a monolith--in episode five we will discuss a group that is especially vulnerable and requires different engagement strategies:

youth.

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.