The world of
policing is going through the roughest time in decades, but the profession will
evolve, improve and be better than before. It seems so far this year there have
been weekly police incidents nationally that capture our attention. It is tough
to see the good work every day drowned out by stories of misconduct.
In the
aftermath of recent highly visible police incidents, President Obama convened a
task force to examine the state of policing and make recommendations to improve
police-community relations. The recommendations were released in a report last
month. As one of our lieutenants pointed out after reading the report, the
Duluth Police Department already does a lot of what is recommended. This week,
I will summarize the first pillar of the task force's recommendations and what
we're doing in Duluth.
The first focus
area of the task force recommendations involve "building trust and
legitimacy." Police need to incorporate into their daily activity the
tenets of procedural justice, which is defined in the report as "treating
people with dignity and respect, giving individuals a voice during encounters,
being neutral and transparent in decision-making and conveying trustworthy
motives." As I've written here before, we do a lot of work on
relationship-building and transparency that no one ever knows about.
In January, I
sat down with a group of African-American community leaders who were concerned
we were ticketing too many kids of color and creating a "school-to-prison
pipeline." We reviewed cases involving tickets issued in schools. A
synopsis of each case was presented without names or identifying information.
Together, we reviewed every case into December of the school year.
We issue a
disproportionate number of tickets to African-American youth and I want to do
everything we can to ensure understanding, fairness and transparency. In this
meeting the community leaders led me to believe they were in agreement with the
majority of the outcomes. My charge to our officers who work in schools is to
coach, guide, mentor and use discretion to keep youth out of the criminal
justice system to the fullest extent possible.
An obvious area
addressed in the report revolves around police use of force. Excessive use of
force can undermine the public's trust and officers must be restrained to the
extent possible. We need to focus not just on a legal justification, but a
moral justification as well. While I don't ever want to see our officers get
hurt by using ill-considered tactics, police actions must meet with public
acceptance.
We just sent
several officers and other community leaders to be trained as trainers — thanks
St. Luke's Foundation for their financial support — in crisis intervention.
This is one of the more effective programs that trains officers how to work
with the mentally ill or people in crisis and to de-escalate situations. We
need to continue to focus on talking through tense situations and gaining
voluntary cooperation whenever possible.
A group of 20
officers went through this training several years ago and have struggled how to
train more staff. With certified trainers now on staff, we hope to have all of
our patrol officers trained over the next 12 months.
In Duluth we
have focused on the community guardian concept: open dialog, building
relationships, creating positive contacts, approachability and community
policing. As Plato wrote, "In a republic that honors the core of
democracy, the greatest amount of power is given to those called Guardians.
Only those with the most impeccable character are chosen to bear the
responsibility of protecting the democracy."
Additionally,
the report recommends placing department policies online for accessibility,
something Duluth police did some time ago. Internal and external surveys are
recommended to gauge community trust and needs. We have used surveys extensively.
The most recent citizen survey, administered by the International City and
County Managers Association from 2014, found 93 percent of the respondents
rated contact with Duluth police as excellent, good or fair.
