How The Warrior Mindset Shapes Law Enforcement | Dean Crisp | TEDxTryon

thank you how many of you in the audience have ever thought about being a police officer anyone well that's kind of what we get today when I go around we don't get as many people say as we used to but for me I have thought about being a police officer my entire life matter of fact here's a picture of me in 1966 standing next to my sister and this is a picture of my dad this is my best impression of men in black me and my father right here so you can see this is in 1966 and went and one of my most vivid memories and he was a police officer was what a story that he told one morning as I was listening to him talk to my mom and he began to tell the story about the night before what had occurred and so he says to my mom I got a call last night to a post where a man was shooting at a postman well my dad arrived on the scene and guess what happened the guy started shooting at him so this long barricaded situation came unfolded and as it did my dad decided about midnight to make a move to the front of the house now imagine this all these sheriff's deputies around my dad decides to move and he starts taking this deputy sheriff with him so as he begins to move around the front of the house he gets near the front door starts to enter a barn area that was closed there it looks up in the deputy sheriff who was following him he now sees the man standing on the front porch that had been shooting at him he's got a rifle pointed right at the deputy sheriff he immediately hollers drop the gun and as soon as he did he wheeled and fired one shot right towards my dad's head it barely missed my dad by an inch matter of fact it was so close that the bullet fragments went into his face and the wood chips also he returned fire fell backwards the guy crawled back inside the house my dad was credited with saving the deputy's life unfortunately the man perished I've been a police officer for over 30 years and for 17 of those years I've been a police chief but the past 7 of them I've had a front row seat if you will and watching American law enforcement and talking to police officers about law enforcement professionalism and also about leadership with an organization called FBI leader it pains me greatly to see the current state of American policing of what's happening now in America police legitimacy is at an all-time low trust with our communities is an all-time low officers being ambushed in retribution for acts unbelievable times but I'm not here to deliver a message of despair I'm here to deliver a message of hope over the past several years no everyone understands that the role of a police officer has changed greatly with the failure of social services with the increasing dealing with mental patients with the increase in dealing with homeless with the increase of terrorism with the increase and many mass shootings and our school shootings the role of police has changed greatly but unfortunately police haven't been as quick to change we've changed some of our tactics we've changed the way we do things one of the most important things need to understand we need to change is our mindset one of the things that a police officer is absolutely equipped with is what we call a warrior mindset now why do we do that it's because immediately as a police officer is brought into training we begin to talk to them we begin to train them for shootings for tactical technical scenarios now that's needed because the job of a police officer is absolutely dangerous without question but what we need to do is have that police officer not just have that mindset that's only five to ten percent of their job but to expand their mindset to be inclusive of connecting with others now I know personally how that mindset let's think for a second about the mindset of a warrior and I know personally because of being a police officer that number of years I know how they think what does a warrior say a warrior is a person that is at war with something think about that for a moment it's a person who has a siege mentality or a mentality to go out and enforce the laws matter of fact if you were to ask police officers today what is your main job overwhelmingly the majority will say to enforce the law but in reality the job of police officer is to protect the constitutional rights of all people and you think about that mindset how we front-load them with those things I understand that sometimes a warrior mindset can allow you to be an us-and-them mindset that's the last thing that we need from our police personally I've lived that mindset I understand it and particularly being a police chief for a number of years I understand what it is to work with officers and see officers and to be with officers with that mindset a matter of fact it took hold of me I can remember heading home one day from a particularly rough day at the police chief in business a matter of fact I was saying about police chief in business as this that is the police chief you actually age in dog years and so that is very true it's not 1 it's actually 7 for one and that's very true I found that to be true and I remember the sales what hitting home when I was going to stop by a Walmart and so I had had this warrior mindset all day dealing with issues dealing with problems and I remember having to park in the heart healthy parking spot have you any of you ever had to park there well I parked there and as I begin to walk into Walmart I noticed that there was a young man whipping into a parking spot and he had a blacked-out SUV he had sunglasses on his music was blaring and he was in a big stretch cart and I said I dare you no placard no no handicap pulled right into a handicap spot my warrior mindset kicked in and I thought I dare you especially since I've had to walk from the heart-healthy spot so I thought about what should I do well immediately I began to think well I'll go write him a ticket well I tell you I'm the police chief I'll just call someone to come out and have him arrested then I thought you know what you need to embrace the benefit of the doubt just go inside and shop in Walmart now how many of you have ever shopped at Walmart that's an experience but shopping at Walmart angry is another experience and the fact that I was inside Walmart angry made it worse so my warrior mindset had kicked in at about this time I'm walking around the store trying to figure out what's going on and I'm still thinking about this guy parking in this spot and all of a sudden I seen and I look and see him coming in the door but now I seem differently and why because now he's pushing a wheelchair and inside that wheelchair is a child and I thought for a moment good gracious my warrior mindset coming into Walmart would have forced me to do something so now I looked at him as a guardian and I said I'm only to do anything I can to help it changed now what does the Guardian well a guardian is a protector of the community a guardian as a person that sees the cause of policing not just the action of policing a guardian is someone who looks out for the community is a partner with the community not separate from them the old adage back in the 1990's when we would do a community community policing was that the folks we worked with the folks in our communities were our customers that's not really true the folks in our communities are our partners we must expand our mindset from that of a warrior to be inclusive of that also of a guardian a person who understands connectivity who put a person who understands the importance that people want to understand they're police officers but they also want to support them so the officer needs to understand the Guardian mindset the second thing is three levels of service now how many of you have ever had an encounter with a police officer raise your hand oh my goodness hope it was good most of them are traffic situations or traffic related but one of the things that I think police officers ought to do is to understand that we must begin to repair our relationships and how do you begin to pair relationships with the community is you create better relationships and doing that one of the things police need to do is deliver certain levels of service but the first one that I've seen as a police chief three levels of service delivered the folks the first is what I call survival or basic the second is called successful or satisfactory and third being significant or exemplary well I'll give you an example imagine for a moment if you were on the side of the road stuck with no way to get out you're in your car your tires flat no way to call for help traffic buzzing by that's a pretty tough situation now in today's world with all the cellphones it's hard to imagine that you wouldn't have one but let's just pretend your battery was dead and you couldn't call someone so you're stuck well all of a sudden the police officer comes up when that officer drives up you sit and you think oh goodness here's help but he just simply rolls his window down and says what's going on and you say my tires flat and then the officer says well have you got a way to call for help me said no my phone's messed up and then he says well I'll call a tow truck for you so immediately he calls a tow truck then he drives off let's see that's basic and what does that do that doesn't endear connectivity that doesn't endear empathy that endears I'm too busy to deal with you now it is true that cops and police officers are way busy we're doing other things no question about it but every encounter with the police officer matters us as police officers we have to understand we cannot arrest our way out of every situation we must serve people as well the second on the successful level is that officer would ride by roll the window down a little bit talk to you about what will make you feel like that you're important possibly call a tow truck for you just stay with you for a few moments and then when something else he would move on now that's satisfactory it's still not what we're looking for but something that's important how about the exemplar level the significant level what about if that police officer actually got out of that car and walked up to you and said how's it going what's happening and you said my tires flat and he said oh my goodness or she said oh my goodness well let's see if we can't get you some help and then if it was hot if they offered you said in the car or if it was you needed anything that could help you and what about even if that officer would help you change that tire as this officer did right here she couldn't resist a selfie on an officer changing a tire I don't blame her I would probably take one too but the one thing that would matter here would be that if an officer significantly connects with you you never forget it it's just like a traffic citation when I asked you how many of you have ever had a traffic citation I'd be willing to bet that it wasn't so much that you violated the law that mattered what did matter to you was how that officer made you feel that was most important because that's what matters to all of us so the next one is the third thing is accountability breezier what we call responsibility well this is important because I believe that what we should do as police officers is hold ourselves personally accountable personal accountability matters to police and it matters to our community the first things we should do is have the highest moral and ethical standards no question about it the second thing is to have the Guardian as well as the warrior mindset in conjunction working together we should hold ourselves to the high standards of performance and service to our folks we need to understand the importance of that one of the things that we've often heard about in law enforcement circles is this thing called The Thin Blue Line and sometimes that has been pushed the wrong way or the wrong things have been said about it that it's this protection and sometimes it's been used for that well the thin blue line is important but I would submit to you that we should adopt what TSA does when it comes to checking on folks at the airport if you see something you ought to say something if we see police officers not doing what they should be doing even though it would be our partners or be our trainees or be people above us that we should say something we should not tolerate bad Condon by police officers the second portion of that is organizational accountability and what I mean by that is organizations need to step our training up to include the Guardian as well as the warrior mindset and I think about it we do 90 to 95 percent of our training deals with five to ten percent of our job no wonder our cops and our police officers look at the world the way they do our organizations should not just transfer bad police officers around from one agency to another or from one division other that we should actually get rid of those officers the other things we ought to do is have a better job of selecting police officers right now police officers really when we choose them we really don't have a selection process what we have is called an elimination process which means that we only hire the people who's left and haven't been eliminated and you think about the significance of that is that we need in the day's world is to recruit people into law enforcement that fit who understand the calls who understand the why it is a difficult complex and there's not one magic bullet to fix law enforcement for certain but if we take the look and if we join together with our communities absolutely nothing we can't do together Sir Robert Peel said in the 1890s he said the police are the people and the people are the police which is so true back in 1966 there was a young kid that was watching the police officer and hearing the police officer every day he come home and interestingly enough my sister always also became a police officer but we watched my dad and we watched him perform a service and we watched him in the 60s and it had a major impact on us of what we wanted to be there's a whole generation of kids out there right now watching they're watching us as police they're watching us as community members they're watching us as a society of what we do to handle these problems that we face now you know folks we don't have all the answers but together we can get all those answers I ask you in a call to action to say that supports your police understand where their mindset is but also understand that the police want to be servants to the community as well thank you very much you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 151,206

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, America, Big problems, Change, Cities, Community, Criminal justice, Impact, Law, Public Policy, Reform, Social Justice, Tolerance

Id: Bt5F6QuY8lo

Length: 15min 43sec (943 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 19 2016