Police Departments understanding a Communities Feelings | Greg Dagnan | TEDxPittsburgStateUniversity

[Music] in the 1800s Sir Robert Peel he's a British British prime minister and those of us in law enforcement really kind of look at him as a leader of modern law enforcement now this is in the 1800s he wrote some principles for policing in a democracy now if I read them to you right now you would doubt they were written in the 1800s you would think they were written yesterday his principles were so good we're still using them today and the big idea from Sir Robert Peel is simply this the police or the community and the community are the police that it is a partnership that we are inseparable that we are the same now keep that concept in mind and I'm going to tell you about a conversation that I had with a local grandmother that took me in the department that I lead on quite a journey of self-discovery so over here and a half ago I met this community event and I'm talking with this grandmother now I don't like I really don't know she was a grandmother I didn't like ask for the identification of her grandchildren you know that would be a little ridiculous but I mean like the personality of a grandmother right she had the gray hair and the kind eyes and she was just really nice for having this great conversation I thought to myself man if we were at her house she'd be bringing out homemade cookies right you know like that kind of conversation and then suddenly unexpectedly she started complaining about a nearby Police Department she says they're unprofessional and they're they're big and they're mean and they treat people badly and then she begins to tell me the story about her family that lives in this town and how they were mistreated by this police department well the conversation that was an unexpected turn I was a little shocked but I recovered and I said hey I know the guy that runs that department he's a buddy of mine let's go talk to him let's tell him what your concerns are and then this grandma I blame her all for this she started this thing she said here's what she says she says I know him too and he's a great guy and he's doing a great job and I would never bother him with my petty concerns right so I let it go with that but now I'm driving back to Carthage and I'm thinking wait a minute so there's their grandmother's and Carthage that are unhappy with our services and they're never going to tell me right I'm never gonna know so then kind of like I have a tendency to do took it a little far right I'm seeing a guy and he's walking to his job at the poultry plant I'm thinking well he's probably got kids I wonder what he thinks of our services right and I see the lady next to me and she's got her her kids in a car seat and I'm like I wonder what she thinks of our services if we're keeping her kids safe and I'm thinking about high school kids and business leaders and I'm realizing that I kind of think I know but I really don't know what anybody in our community thinks of our police department I mean I really don't know well for a moment in just a moment I wondered if it mattered but of course I realized that actually it matters police are in the community you see the headlines they're in the headlines all the time we're always under fire we're always being criticized and one of the things were always being criticized for is what not having a good enough relationship with our community not having community trust so I'm sitting here wondering if I have a good enough relationship with my our community if I have community trust so I went on a quest I was gonna figure it out I was gonna hear the voices in our in our community and I was gonna find out what they thought of us so I employed the help of my friend Jack Jack is retired from the Kansas City Police Department he works for a company called urban juror and kind of what he does is kind of think differently about things and so I said to him I said hey I don't know what anybody in our community thinks about us and I remember at one point he says okay come on Greg surely you know what somebody thinks about you and I said yeah I got a couple but buddy's their own businesses and I got the people that call once a week and yell at me complaining those are the people that I know what they think about really you know anybody else it's a guess what they think about our department so we went back and forth really for a couple of months and the simple question that we kept coming back to you is how I know what the average person in Carthage thinks of our services how could I know that so we did what for a conservative government based police department it's pretty radical here's what we did we decided that we were gonna survey everybody and that part's not that radical but immediately so you got a traffic ticket from us you could immediately take a survey about what that experience was like you get arrested for DWI you give survey you beat your wife and get arrested you get a survey right I mean everybody gets a survey crime victims get a survey everybody that we deal with for any reason gets a survey now I will say this that that I personally did not think it was that radical the deal right I really don't think was that big a deal but it really was like my friends people that I trusted they were like I cannot believe that you were going to do this they told me they said chief you don't want to ask these questions you don't want to know they told me that you know you're all you're doing by handing out the survey is you're asking people to complain and if you ask them to complain they're going to here's one of my favorite ones come on man if you don't know you don't have to deal with it right that was the I really appreciated that advice I got the I got the hey the media is gonna hear about this survey they're gonna run through results or results gonna be bad it's gonna be bad for you here's one of my favorites if you care what people who got arrested think you were truly a hug a thug chief I really really enjoyed that one but here's the one right here's the one that by the way none of those scared me that's just the normal fear that you have when you're about to hand out a survey so none of that bothered me here's the one that bothered me and it came from one of our own people they said chief we got this thing figured out with the community we do a Christmas party for 300 kids every year we are involved in the Polar Plunge for Special Olympics we have our own designated community policing officer that does community projects throughout the community all year long like our guys will go to a call that starts out as a disturbance and we're literally helping people move I mean like lifting their stuff helping them move right we go to calls where toys are stolen and the officers will go with their own money and they'll replace those toys right I mean he's like we have this down what happens if the surveys are bad then what do we do right what does that mean does it mean that what we're doing isn't working and and frankly that scared me a little bit because I thought you know we're doing all this stuff what if the surveys are bad what if it means isn't it's not working well what do I do well I didn't turn out that way so here's our survey results here's how they turned out and I will tell you that I'm very very excited about these survey results I know maybe some of you can't read them in full but 94 percent of our population took the survey this is over 500 surveys that we got back 94 percent were comfortable with with us in some way we kind of had them rate the different levels of comfortableness 94% we're comfortable with us in some way and almost 85 percent gave us the highest marks that we could get now was I happy about that yes by the way when they took this survey they could take it in English or in Spanish and like I said it was any electronic device so they could literally take it immediately was I happy with those results yes but I'm just gonna be honest with you I wasn't surprised if you had asked me where I thought we were at that's about what I would have guessed so now you're saying look he accomplished nothing right but no that's right that is actually not true at all so here's what happened as a result of this survey I now have some evidence I now have proof that what we are doing is working some of some of the other side benefits of this we're amazing it's through the comments section we figured out that there are some of our officers that are really doing exceptional work they were really going above and beyond doing way more than what we expected of them and we didn't know it we knew it by reading the comments from the survey the other thing that was a very strange side effect of this I got a lot of people say well just because you're brave enough to ask then you must have a great Department right I mean just that transparency of being brave enough to ask how are we doing we got a lot of benefit from that which I didn't expect that that was amazing now were some of the doubters correct sure they were right we there are some stuff that we needed to change that was the whole point so here's what we would do we want it we obviously wanted to have some ground rules for this right so here were the two ground rules when we got a bad survey back we were gonna let the officer know about that survey but we really weren't gonna we didn't want it to be like a discipline or reward thing right because it seems counterintuitive that the officer you know I am here because I'm mad at you okay here's a survey right it really didn't seem like that was like really the wisest thing to do we just want to give a survey survey to everybody so it was really about the department as a whole so one of the things that we did is if we got a negative survey we matched it up with body cam all our officers wear body cams we tried to keep it as anonymous as possible but we just watch the call and we ask the question was there anything that we should have done differently is there anything that we could have done better to serve our community better and you know what there were times where it was obvious we needed to do some things differently and we actually changed some things we did some things the actual question that we asked is we knew that we wanted the survey to be returned properly we you know like people hate fill out surveys right we knew that we knew that we weren't going to get a big response so we only at we're only going to ask one question because we knew we only had the you know we wanted to take that opportunity and get that feedback so the question that we asked them was based on the contact that you just had with members of the Carthage Police Department how comfortable would you be with us serving your family or friends in the future because right isn't that all what it's about so we also learned some other things not only did we change some things that we needed to change but we learned this as well we we were reminded that some people are just nervous just because they're talking to the police right and they would put really good things in the comments and then they would put they were still uncomfortable right and that's important for us to remember that sometimes it's just being face-to-face with the police officer makes you uncomfortable weren't you know some of the other things that we learned is some people gave us very high comments but put uncomfortable because they said the situation that they were in that caused them to call us made them uncomfortable right this makes sense right they were uncomfortable regardless of whatever we did they were uncomfortable to start with and then finally we learned that there are just some people that just don't like us right they just didn't they aren't going to like us and one positive comment it's not got are one positive event with them it's not going to change that that we need to work on those relationships and continue to make those contacts positive so that they can get a different idea about what being dealing with the police is like so where are we going with this right what's what's the bottom line on this well law enforcement leaders I'm talking to you I'm not criticizing you because I was the chief of this department for ten years and I didn't know what our community thought about us right so I'm not criticizing you but I'm challenging you do you actually know what your community thinks about you or do you just think you know because if you don't actually know you need to figure it out I mean if you could find out a couple of things that you could do that would change the way your community looked at you that would change that relationship and improve it wouldn't you want to do that why wouldn't you want to do that law enforcement and the community it's a partnership right and it's not us versus them it's a partnership and so if you can improve on that partnership you should do that because I think sometimes police in the United States we need to do a better job of that that's something that we definitely need to improve on but I would also challenge you in the audience as well if you're sitting here today and you're thinking well you know what does this mean to me see it's a partnership us and you you also have an obligation to bring your concerns to the police department to get involved with your community and to get involved with your department griping about your Police Department at the grocery store are posting it to social media that's okay but it doesn't do anything it doesn't change anything right you have an obligation to share if you don't think your partner with your Police Department is truly a partnership and you have an obligation to try to change that now I know some of you are probably thinking yeah I'll go down there and they're not gonna listen to me and they're gonna send me away and they're gonna ignore you well let me tell you the environment that law enforcement leaders are in we know that our leadership is based it is founded upon our relationship with the community if we don't have a good relationship we can't be effective leaders we also know that part of our obligation is to police ourselves so I can almost guarantee you that if you go down to your local police department sheriff's office whoever serves you and you say have some concerns I want to talk to a supervisor they're not going to talk to you but they're gonna welcome you I get almost guarantee that that's gonna happen most of the law enforcement leaders that I work with lead with integrity and principle and they're servant leaders they wanted either right thing now you may also now be thinking yeah but I've tried that it doesn't work they're not gonna listen to me look this is a partnership this does not you know just because you don't think they'll listen does not alleviate your responsibility to make your community better and let your Police Department know what concerns you have because you see we need your help we can't do it without your help because the police or the community and the community or the police and if that's not happening this thing called policing is not going to work thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 2,385

Rating: 4.8048782 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Security

Id: 4NqfRgyiGcY

Length: 14min 52sec (892 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 06 2018