Warrior vs. guardian mindsets in policing | Mike D'Antonio | TEDxLosGatosHighSchool

mark don't pull it up come on mark mark los gatos Paul 37 mark come on put it down I'm tan be advised marks in there with his knife holding at me taking take a little sweat his neck got more units here yes wait one hard stop mark stop warrior versus Guardian the video you just saw was captured on one of our officers body worn cameras and I showed it to you this afternoon just to try to get to have you get a little bit of an idea what it's like to be a police officer and there's a new term that's kind of caught fire in the last year and it's carried a lot of discussion in police and police work in police administration and it's warrior versus Guardian and so what we're starting to see as as you all know there's been a lot of critical incidents throughout the United States and in law enforcement is being critiqued and rightfully so and what we want to be able to do is to do a better job and so some of the discussion again has come up about as a police officer should our mindset be a warrior or should it be a guardian so when I think about it for myself I think about what is a warrior as it relates to police work or warriors probably something somebody who's going to escalate a situation who's going to command people and who's going to force compliance where a guardian is somebody who's going to de-escalate that situation communicate with the public and hopefully gain compliance and it's really interesting as you deal with a lot of different people when you are a police officer you can really tell who has been treated properly by the police and there's some times where you can tell who the citizens who have had negative contact with the police and it was late one night I was in Los Gatos I made a car stop it was just a for a vehicle code violation it wasn't going to be a big deal but as I approached the vehicle I noticed that there was two Hispanic males then the driver's seat and passenger seat the driver had his hands locked on the steering wheel and the passenger had his hands pressed up against the dashboard and I looked in I was like what are you guys doing but this isn't a big deal yet your taillights are out can I see some driver's license and registration and they were really afraid I mean it was they weren't playing around I mean they were really scared and so once I got their drivers license and got to talk to him a little bit they're from the Central Valley and that's that was their experience once law enforcement is what they got pulled over in the middle of the night that if they didn't be very careful about where their hands were and follow commands very directly that that contact would probably turn maybe not maybe not so well for them so a little bit about me I started in law enforcement in 1996 I started a little bit late in life and had some friends that were police officers so I tested for a large agency and I was fortunate enough to get picked up by that agency and it was a really good agency but it was different there was something for me that I was missing we were super busy we would go caught a call we would really almost have a little bit of an us-versus-them mentality when it came to police work if we went to a call and there was a crime we would handle it but if it was a quality-of-life issue if there was maybe some counseling that was needed maybe if there was some help that those individuals were just looking for we were busy and it wasn't the culture it culture was you need to go to the next call or your Sarge was going to be wondering why you're taking so long at each call so in the year 2000 I had a friend who was working for the los gatos - Reno Police Department and I kind of was sharing with them that I really wasn't happy where I was working at and he said hey you need to come come to Los Gatos so he brought me in I came on a ride-along I met some of the officers and met a couple of the sergeants and I really recognize that every department is different and even though there weren't the words warrior versus Guardian then this agency really had officers and supervisors that treated the public with respect and they kind and they really were guardians and so I was really fortunate fortunate enough to get hired I came over I lateraled over here to Los Gatos and I spent the next three s on three years on Patrol I really just kind of tell you that dichotomy just so you can see the difference or at least try to explain the difference in each agency and the falafels Asif II and the culture of the agencies so I spent about three years like I said in patrol became a field training officer and then there was a specialty assignment that was opening up and then then chief frisbee who's the chief now he was going to come out of that assignment and it was really a hand-picked assignment it was a specialized team and it was head it was headed by the Department of Justice and it was overseen by the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement so that team it investigated high-level drug trafficking gangs murder-for-hire any type of violent crime that that the task force would be asked to handle and so when I was first asked to go into that task force I didn't want to go I thought man this thing I'm going to be with a bunch of meat eaters again for lack of better words I'm going to be with a bunch of warriors and that's really not my style of policing so the chief talked to me and he said it's not it's not what you think that you have to be able to talk to people in this task force you're not going to be able to be successful being in us-versus-them mentality so in 2000 2003 2004 I went into the task force I changed my appearance and I started working in an undercover capacity and it was just amazing he was right he was right these guys were were high speed don't get me wrong we were incredibly effective and there were times were that we did have to have the warrior mentality but the only way we were successful in the way we made our cases what was by developing relationships and it may sound funny but we were developing relationships with the suspects if his suspect got arrested and they want they wanted to work their case off and they didn't want to go to jail they would they would bring those suspects to and we would interview him and to see if there would be a match and they needed to trust me they needed to trust that what I was telling them that I would follow through with and at some level I needed to trust them as well because the way it worked is they would introduce me into their group they would introduced me into their friends vouch for me not as a police officer as as another criminal to be honest with you and and that's how we would make our cases so one of one of our really like a case that I'm really proud of was a prison gang case it was the nuestra familia and so the nuestra familia actually is the head over the Hispanic prison gangs in Northern California and they actually have authority over the street gangs of the norteños in in all of California and so it took us took us almost a year to really infiltrate the case there was several search warrants that were executed and we were able to fortunately enough you know get a bunch of guns a bunch of drugs and put a whole bunch of people in jail but again the reason why I tell you this story is because when we made entry into this house and then once everybody was secured there was the head of the nuestra familia for Northern California and I had an opportunity to talk to him I treated him with respect I treated him with dignity he wanted his socks before he went to jail I wanted his shoes I got him all that stuff and on the right to drill he he started telling me things and not not things that would get him in trouble but just kind of how their operations work some of the some of the things that I just needed to understand about how they made certain deliveries and how some of their security processes so again it it worked for me because it was a guardian type mentality it wasn't that us versus them even though they were the criminals and needed to go to jail they still needed to be treated with respect and dignity just like any other human being so in 2007 I came back to the police department cleaned up this was my commander at the Department of Justice Mette sir and he really taught me how to be a leader he was a true servant leader he took care of his folks we had very few use of force incidents in the four years that I was on the task force and it was really because of him because he would really instill in us that you didn't have to you didn't have to be at war with people and you had that term war on drugs but we didn't have to be at war with the people they still needed to be communicated with and they needed to to be talked to in a way that we could gain their compliance so I thought about that how can I bring back those values to the department once I promoted and how can I ensure that the los gatos - Reno Police Department would be a department that folks would respect and they wouldn't be afraid of and that we would be Guardians so I promoted through the ranks I became a corporal a sergeant Detective Sergeant and then when I got promoted to the rank of captain I was with now chief Frisby and we started thinking about how we would change our hiring practices and so what we did is we actually tied our vision to how we hire people and so for those of you that don't know the police department is doing three things we're building a highly competent professional police department providing traditional law enforcement services we're building community relations and we're engaging in community problem-solving with our ultimate goal of getting to know everyone in the community so think about that video and that ultimate goal of getting everyone to everyone everyone should know everyone in the community the officer knew mark did you hear that mark mark he's telling dispatch hey Mark's got a knife mark put down the knife and you can hear his voice escalate as mark comes out and it turned out he didn't tase mark it kind of sounds like it on the video mark complied mark drop the knife and if you watch how the officers took mark into custody I'm just really proud of them there is no excessive force they didn't have to tase them they knew who he was and that made a difference I truly believe that made a difference if we in police work if we can see and join our community and not be an us-versus-them type police if we can be a guardian of the community it's going to work for us I really believe it's going to work for us and not just here in Los Gatos I think it can work in the larger agencies I think it can work in the larger the larger agency that came from so tell you another story about how we did this in our selection processes because it's a success story so I'm bragging a little bit but Michelle Viviano was one of our interns she came to us to the police department while she was in college and she volunteered she volunteered in our records department and she did a great job and we saw the way she interact with people would at the front counter and she just had a way about her that was it was very easygoing and she had that ability and she wanted to get into the police work so we hired her as a community service officer and the community service officers actually worked alongside the police and they go to calls they'll take cold calls for service so in other words when I say cold calls it's it's a it's say a burglary or a theft where there's no suspects if there's no suspect information she just needs to document the report and then and then it opening came up in the library the library wanted to have some type of presence and we partnered with the library and we put Michelle in the library as a CSO and some of you may know her and that's a picture with some of the students I think from Los Gatos high school and Michelle while she was in the library she finished her degree she went through a bunch of oral board testings the the technical testing the Chiefs oral captain's role and we decided to hire them we don't do that very often here we hire people but we mostly hire laterals because it's very expensive to put somebody through the Academy and there's a six-month training time before she can even come back to us and then get into our field training but I'm really happy to announce that yesterday chief frisbee swore Michelle in as our newest police officer with the los gatos monte cassino police department and we did that because she does she has that she has that that capability of community communicating with people holding people accountable but still being able to be that guarding having that Guardian mentality it really doesn't stop there one of the other things that she frisbee did when he got appointed to the position is Jiri restructured the police department so what we did was we promoted two new lieutenants we had some retirements we had the ability now to have three new sergeants and three new corporals but when we did our promotional testing we really focused on and now now the word warrior and Guardian has has been discussed and so we we asked each one every one of these these supervisors are you warrior or guardian and each and every one answered it and I can't say it's right or wrong because it's controversial throughout the United States but for us in this department we want our officers we want our supervisors to be Guardians we want them to wear this badge with the respect and the thought process is that we are here and it's an old term to serve the community but we have to do in a way that we're here to protect the community the last part that we take into consideration in our warrior Guardian is our training we have to make sure we train like Guardians and so this next slide is a little bit of fun it's somebody who you may or may not recognize because when he was in this video he was also working for a task force and at times in an undercover capacity Virginia so he's not moving Oh that's a second that was so officer David Gregg been with Police Department probably for close to 20 years just a couple years ago she said hey I want to be a school resource officer and we do like we do every position in the police department it's competitive and you test for it and so he came in and uh he really he really won us over he's just he's an amazing man he's a true Guardian and the reason why I said that the things that he brought to us and we said what do you want to accomplish in your time what do you want to accomplish what do you want to do for the school what are some of your goals and he said during my time at the school I want to make sure I don't lose a single student in an auto accident I don't want to lose a single student because of a drug overdose I don't want to lose a single student because they took their own lives that's huge that's a police officer that's a school resource officer not that he doesn't care about holding people accountable and enforcing the law that's important don't get me wrong but to have a school resource officer with a guardian mentality that really really wants to make sure that the students are going to be safe and have an incredible experience and graduate and go on to college and work and whatever they decide to do was really another I guess win for us as a police department and how we think about things so I've talked to you a little bit about warrior versus Guardian there's a lot of information about it now on the internet if you care to take a look there's some things under procedural justice it's really a movement that's that's sweeping police work it will also talk about warrior versus guardian mentality and I say it's controversial because there are some police officers and some command staff that think that if we're too much of a guardian we're not going to be safe that the police have to have somewhat of a mentality and there's times that they're going to have to do that we're going to have to have that warrior mentality but I think for the most part that they're first our first thought process should be a guardian so in closing I think I'd like to show you I am going to show you our our future Guardians in police work is my grandkids take Jayden and Emma thank you very much

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 58,589

Rating: 4.6477065 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Global issues, Government, Ideas, Policy

Id: MgbfBnSPhqA

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 03 2016