Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Jeff, welcome aboard to the show today. I'm absolutely delighted to talk with you.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Jeff, I'm going to just cut to the chase. I want to ask you an incredibly difficult question if you would be okay to share what your most difficult moment that is most salubile that you can kind of recall in the force in your 30 year career.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: I would say that it wasn't one specific incident. Yes, I worked on the streets. I worked down in South Los Angeles, which is arguably the most violent divisions in the city. It wasn't unusual for US to have 140 plus homicides in a given year in a seven square mile geographic area within the city.
So I had multiple experiences dealing with life and death situations. But I think what occurred that was most discerning to me was the inflexibility and at times the toxic culture of law enforcement wherein we weren't maximizing our ability to evolve and handle critical incidents with the likelihood of having the most optimal and favorable outcomes. And so that is what has actually motivated me to do what I'm doing today in the endeavors that I'm taking on now as a retired law enforcement professional.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: So it's, I think for just, you know, your normal citizen. Right, Typical Joe. It's hard for us to appreciate the complexity that, you know, a police officer on the street has to deal with. Could you help us understand?
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Well, police officers are a reflection of the training that they receive and one could be quite critical of the training wherein you would say that perhaps it's a little hyper vigilant on resorting to the use of force to resolve incidents.
And the culture tends to develop a them versus us mentality wherein over time rationalizations begin to be utilized to justify actions which quite frankly should not be justified.
But so you get a mindset of the police officers because really your attitudes impact your belief systems and ultimately your actions. So what the challenge is in law enforcement, to ensure that the officers that are handling these critical incidents and dealing with the public in which they serve on a daily basis, it's key that you work in empathy into the training. So by and large what impacts officers perspective or viewpoint on what they're being confronted with on a daily basis is impacted by their attitudes and their belief systems in regards to the people in which they're serving.
To elaborate on that, oftentimes you work communities that are primarily a particular race and over time, unfortunately, law enforcement is called not when things are going well, but when they need to intervene.
So the reality is it's quite easy to develop less than favorable attitudes about particular groups. And you have to be intentional in your efforts to prevent yourself from going down that rabbit hole where you're viewing people as them versus us and painting people with a broad brush relative to how you view them.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: I mean, I think I understand what you're saying. If I have a, you know, nine out of 10 or 10 out of 10 bad experiences of anything in life, I'm going to expect that the next one is also going to be a poor experience. That just makes common sense to me. How can you even counter that? I mean, you know, it just seems to me that, you know, you know, you're going into a bad situation, you're being called into a bad situation, but some of the cases you're going to be totally wrong. What is even a framework or a training that could help you break that mold?
[00:04:40] Speaker B: Well, I say it really begins with who law enforcement hires. And currently the process for being hired is a deselection process.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: What does that mean?
[00:04:54] Speaker B: What I mean by that is you apply. And as long as you don't have a criminal record, you haven't used drugs or narcotics within the past 12 months, your financial situation is in order, then you meet the criteria to potentially be hired. And I think that the seriousness of the job and the importance of the decision, decisions you're going to be making in split seconds requires that we look for people that have evidence of the criteria of proper functioning, executive functioning really, where they have empathy, they're self aware, they have moral reasoning, they think critically, they're or creative problem solvers. Those are all characteristics that I think we would all say are important that law enforcement officers have. And we need to take those basic fundamental characteristics and then nurture those throughout one's law enforcement career to ensure that they maintain an objective perspective on their role as law enforcement officers.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: So let me play the devil's advocate here for a second. You're saying that these are split second decisions. We don't think logically in split seconds. We're going to quote Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, the fathers of psychological behavior, social psychological behavior.
I'll refer to the book Thinking Fast and Slow. We're making very emotional decisions. We're utilizing biases, right, which are creating mistakes in our decision. And you can't really do a logical process within a split second decision. So how does that make sense? Or can you train yourself to be able to do something else in a split second? How do you see this contradiction between fast decision making and then basically failing, you know, falling to all these biases that are very human.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Well, what's, what's key is we have to realize that as humans, our brains are not reactive, they're predictive.
And so then our experiences and how we view things will dictate how we will respond in situations. So if you're going to hire people that are objective, open minded, are critical thinkers, they're more likely than not to go down a path wherein they hypervigilantly resort to force to resolve incidents. Now, there's some empirical evidence and studies that have been done recently. There was one done where they studied two medium sized law enforcement agencies here in the United States. And what they did is they looked at the education level of police officers, they looked at people that had four year undergraduate degrees and above and compared them to people that had high school education or the equivalent.
And they looked at a number of different areas.
First was the number of contacts they had in the field.
Secondarily was the number, what does that.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: Mean, contacts in the field? Just bring us all together on this journey.
[00:08:44] Speaker B: Contacts would be dealing with suspects in the field because you want to make sure that you're comparing apples to apples. So you want to ensure that regardless of educational level, they both have the same number of incidents that they're dealing with a potentially competitive suspect in the field. And then the next thing they looked at was the number of searches that they did of people that they detained in the field.
And then they looked at the use of force incidents as well as complaint history.
Interestingly enough, regardless of your educational background, they found that they had the same number of contacts in the field, they had the same number of incidents where they searched suspects. But most significantly was the reduction in the use of force by those who had an education of a four year undergraduate degree or higher, as well as they also had much fewer personnel complaints.
So it demonstrates that through education and having an open mind and being accepting of what I call creative encounters, where you're willing to listen to diverse thoughts and conflicting opinions and accepting the fact that it's not about being right, it's about getting it right. And that requires that as many people as possible sit at the table. And you can't have these justifications wherein you're like, well, bad things happen to people who make bad decisions. Reality is, law enforcement officers are not paid for what they do on a daily basis. Just about anybody can do that job. What you're trained for and what you're required to do is handle those cases where a person is not compliant, who is potentially violent, who is a threat to you or to another citizen. It's how do you handle those cases? And that's where it requires that we have a very open mind and be very critical and looking at various options on how we can handle a situation rather than resorting to force.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: I want to drill into this. So your argument, and again, I'm playing the devil's advocate here, your argument is that the research shows correlation between higher education and better outcomes, less violence in the outcomes. Would that mean that you would advocate to have more higher education in who we bring into the force? Or is that not necessarily your point? I want to be very careful about making assumptions based on what you said.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Well, I'm not, I'm not inferring that people that don't have an education are incapable of being a desirable person in, to serve in law enforcement. I'm not saying that. But there should be a value placed on the proper assessment of people to include level of education not only prior to when they got on the job, but valuing that after they get on the job.
And it's in. One criticism I would have of law enforcement in the United States is it's so insular, it oftentimes refuses to look outside of the United States and sometimes even outside of the organization, particular organization you work for to find better ways to do things.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: So we look at experience of others.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: Right. So if you look at like Scandinavian countries, yeah. They require a, an educational level that's consistent with a four year undergraduate degree.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: And while you're going through that training, you're being assessed. So if you want to be a law enforcement officer, if you have to go through this education and you're being evaluated and assessed to determine if you have these characteristics of executive functioning that are consistent with somebody that is more likely than not going to be successful in law enforcement and be able to make the best decisions and judgments when under stress in these critical incidents. And it's quite interesting if you look at the countries over there, you know, law enforcement is oftentimes one of the most favorably viewed government entities. And you can, you can certainly I would say this is not the case here.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: I would, I would. If you had to ask me and I to guess the answer, I would say that would not exist.
That's incredibly interesting. So based on what is this, like, this is surveys or this is how do we know this?
[00:13:57] Speaker B: It's research and studies that they've done in surveys.
It's quite interesting.
They view things very, very differently. And there's a resistance in the United States to where, like I tell you, my experience was primarily with the LAPD and where I served over 30 years. And it's kind of like if LAPD doesn't come up with the idea, then we don't really. We're not interested. And, you know, the reality is, I'll give you an example. I worked for the LAPD during the 10 year period that they were under a Department of justice consent decree. And this consent decree was imposed on the department because it had been determined that there were egregious violations going on and corruption that was occurring. We're talking about officers that were committing bank robberies, planting guns on duty to justify shootings, stealing cocaine out of evidence lockup and selling it on the street. I mean, some of the most egregious corruption that you could ever imagine in law enforcement. And it actually was primarily the Rampart Gang Unit. The Rafael Perez scandal is what it's called. And I was a sergeant and brought in and made the officer in charge of the gang unit to clean it up after this was the DOJ imposed the consent decree. And what I say a consent decree is, is it's a blueprint. It's a blueprint to police management best practices to minimize the likelihood that this level of corruption can occur without being detected. The idea is to prevent it from happening at all. And then you also want to have accountability measures in place wherein you will identify it if it is occurring. But the LAPD was failing on both levels. And there were things that were identified in that blueprint, as I call it, of the consent decree of best practices that we had to implement because it was imposed on us. But today, over 20 years later, I'm seeing law enforcement agencies making the exact same mistakes that we made and that were corrected as a result of that consent decree. So how in law enforcement can we have the LAPD making these mistakes of the past over 20 years ago, and other law enforcement agencies, large law enforcement agencies, not learning from LAPD's mistakes? It's because of the insular nature of law enforcement. And it's really unfortunate.
You know, when I ran the gang unit, my officers, I'd send them off to training because I was high on education, and I felt the most important tool you had was the tool that you had between your ears.
And I would require that when they came back, they would share what they learned so everybody can benefit from it. And unfortunately, law enforcement doesn't do that on a national level. It really doesn't. Not to the point where it impacts effective change.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: What was in. So I'll guess that the absolute most of our audience have never heard of the consent decree. As myself what was in that? What are the processes that had value that are not being practices, if you can give us a few so we can have kind of a more concrete understanding.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: Well, the consent decree primarily focuses on those things that are most highly critical in law enforcement. So it dictated how you would investigate use of force cases as well as adjudicate them. It also dealt with how you handled informants in what you were required to do there, what you were required to do in the running and operations of a specialized unit, most specifically a gang unit.
Because all of these things, if not properly managed, causes problems and is one of the primary focuses of the criticism of the public that we serve has of law enforcement. So that's primarily what what it focused on those areas in which you would see more more prevalence of misdeeds and inappropriate conduct and it elevated the level of accountability and integrity of law enforcement agency and transparency of the department.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: I have a question with the so the body cams is this now everywhere? And that being my first question, the second question is has this made a huge impact? I mean I would imagine that if everything's recorded, everything could be reviewed, then this would have a dramatic reduction of people not following the book, basically. What do we know about this?
[00:19:10] Speaker B: Well, I would say actually it's rather counterintuitive.
I would agree with you that you would think it would quell misconduct.
But unfortunately it's amazing to me to see what is captured on body worn video when the officers actually know they're being recorded. And it doesn't really deter them from engaging in misconduct. And I'll give you an example. Most recently here in Canton, Ohio, back in April, there was a gentleman that was involved in a single vehicle traffic collision and he went into this restaurant bar and two police officers responded and they had a minor use of force and they handcuffed the gentleman and they left him laying prone, handcuffed with his hands behind his back.
And he was pleading that he couldn't breathe.
And they did nothing.
They even responded to him using expletives, telling him to shut up and he died.
When the coroner did the coroner's report, it was deemed to be a homicide, which for your listeners, that's not the same thing as a murder. Homicide just means that in part he died as a result of the hands of another.
But it was determined that a contributing factor to his death was being handcuffed and remaining in a prone position where he suffered from positional asphyxia.
So there, there you have what I call the knowing doing gap. These officers knew what their policies and procedures were, they knew what the risks were, but they chose to not adhere to them.
And that's part of this police culture that I'm talking to you about.
And it has to change. There has to be more empathy, more compassion when you're dealing with the public, even when you have somebody that you're actually going to be taking into custody, because you can't justify that level of inhumane conduct when you're dealing with the public.
So there's a perfect example where you have the body worn camera that's on, they know it's on, and this is how they're speaking to the individual and this is how badly they deviate from adhering to the policy.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Is this true at the exceptional level or has it provided, and maybe this is just information that you haven't been exposed to. But just my own curiosity, has it proven to be ineffective at the statistical level or is it providing some value at least?
[00:22:24] Speaker B: I believe the value that it provides is that in which it elevates the transparency.
It provides the police department a means to share information with the concerned public. Now, that being said, I have to caution your listeners that you cannot rely solely on the body worn camera when there is a critical incident that's being investigated. That's just a part of the evidence.
It's an incumbent upon people to be patient and allow the entire investigation to occur before you render an opinion.
That's primarily, though, when you're talking about actions and responses under stressful circumstances in a highly volatile, rapidly unfolding tactical scenario, the incident that I just spoke to you about, it's pretty clear, right, that, that that's this. There's all of those other things that you would take into consideration when under stress don't apply to the incident I just spoke of.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously there was no risk to the officers at that stage if the person is already handcuffed. So you wouldn't, you wouldn't think that there was a split second decision. Right. That was something that they had the ability to think through. That sounds, at least to me clear. But I wanted to go back to your point about that. You know, the body cam just isn't, and this is how I interpret it, keep me honest. You're saying the body cam just isn't enough evidence. You would think that a picture, you know, is worth a thousand words. What is the aspect of where the footage just isn't enough? When does that happen? What does that look like?
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Well, when you're evaluating, say, a critical incident of a lethal force incidence where an officer makes the decision to use lethal force to obtain compliance from the individual that's being combative and violent, it's the standard in which you use is objective reasonableness. It's Graham versus Connor. That is a Supreme Court case that you use. So you have to be able to, in order to determine whether the officer had objective reasonableness.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: And bring us, bring us all with you on this journey. What does that mean? What's the definition? How do, how do officers understand this?
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Essentially what you're trying to determine is were the actions of the officer consistent with an officer who would have the similar training and experience in a similar circumstance, would they have acted in a similar manner? That's really, that's really the standard. So it requires that you have the totality of the evidence to evaluate and it's the preponderance of the evidence. What's more likely than not occurred.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: That's incredibly, I mean, that just shocks me at the definition because it's incredibly opaque. I mean, it's like, oh, you should do the same as other people do. But there's no clear standard on, you know, is this reasonable or not reasonable?
[00:25:35] Speaker B: Well, it's, you have to take into consideration that officers make decisions, life and death situations under rapidly unfolding, highly stressful circumstances. And these decisions are made in fractions of seconds. And there is no expectation that officers will be always right. Officers will, they will make mistakes, but that doesn't mean that what occurred is criminal. That doesn't mean that they should be held civilly liable. That's not what that means.
Was it objectively reasonable for them to believe that the incident justified the use of deadly force? And that's not only what you, you're going to evaluate that, yes, in part what you see on the body worn video. But then you have to reconcile that with all of the other, the physical evidence, the witness, witness, witness statements, as well as other video and security camera video and, you know, the officer's statements. And when you, when you take all that into consideration, then and only then will you be able to determine whether there was objective reasonableness for the, for the actions that were taken.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: Is there one thing that seems to me trivial, but I think this is the, you know, the whole discussion today is about things that we think would be right, but they're not necessarily. One thing that would sound to me is that if you have a partner and you're kind of Working together, then there would be a sense of checks and balances in the relationship that might prevent outcomes because, you know, maybe one of the officers is having a bad day and is not thinking straight, but then you've got that partner there to make sure that nothing kind of goes off the reservation.
What is the, let's say, standard practice? Are we seeing, you know, everybody working in pairs? Is that, is there a lot of officers that are just working alone?
Is my hypothesis even right? Do offices that work together versus alone, do they perform better? What's the, is there any research or perspective on this topic?
[00:27:42] Speaker B: Well, there are. You're seeing some change. There has been some legislation where there's legal statutes that require police officers now to step in if they see an officer engaging in conduct that is inappropriate and the officer can be found criminally liable if they don't.
So. And you'd see that with the George Floyd incident as well as a multitude of incidents.
But it goes back to culture. This is what I've always said, that culture will always supersede policy, procedure and training.
If the law enforcement organization's culture is not aligned with the policies, procedures and training, what's going to win out is the culture. And if the culture is not healthy, you're not going to have the, the outcomes and the conduct of the officers that's going to be consistent with the organizational expectations as well as most significantly, societal expectations.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: I would kind of expect that policy, procedure, training would drive the culture to a certain extent.
What's missing in this equation beyond those three things that is driving the culture?
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Well, you know, if you look at training, it does not address really mindset. And I'll give you this example.
So the police executive research firm, they have a model for de escalation training. And this model is to be used for people that are acting violently, that are unarmed or armed with something other than a firearm.
And it's, they have an acronym, it's ICAT I C A T and it's integrating communications, assessment and tactics. But what's missing from that really the overall understanding of the officer's role there for that incident.
So let me give you an example. And I've seen this time and time again.
I did, I used to write the adjudication of all officer involved shooting and lethal force incidents for Chief William Bratton as well as Chief Charlie Beck for the Los Angeles Police Department. And then after that I was the officer in charge of the detective entity that investigated all officer involved shootings and lethal force incidents. I've had my hands in hundreds and hundreds of cases.
And the key is that the actions of the officers have to be consistent with what societal expectations and the expectations of the police department are.
And you have to make sure that they have an understanding of their function of being there. Time. And when I say there on a particular call, time and time again, you would have somebody that's armed with a knife that starts stabbing themselves and then the officers shoot the person to stop them from killing themselves.
Doesn't make much sense, does it?
So you have to understand what is your sole purpose for being there. And time and time again, upwards of 36% of officer involved shootings are of individuals who are exhibiting a mental health crisis.
So you have to determine what is your role there and have some insight into how you're being perceived by this person who's experiencing the crisis and what impact your actions or inactions will have on this individual and the likelihood of resolving it in the most favorable manner. So when you show up and you point your gun at an individual having a mental health crisis and then you have your beanbag shotgun pointed at them as well as the taser with the red dot bouncing around on their chest and you're yelling at them to drop the knife, drop the knife, drop the knife.
You and I being mentally. Well, that would be an unbelievably stressful circumstance for us.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: Now equate that to somebody that's experiencing a mental health crisis.
What leads anybody to believe that that is going to end well?
And the reality is, unfortunately, and this is back to what I've said, culture has got to be consistent with training. Lapd, by and far is the number one organization in this country in training. The de escalation of situations, situations, as I spoke of, where there's somebody that's, that's violent but unarmed or armed with something other than a knife. I mean, I'm sorry, other than a gun like a knife.
So. But with all this training and being in the forefront and the leader in this, their data isn't any different than anywhere else in the country. Still, about a third of their shootings are of people suffering from a mental health crisis.
So you would expect you would see the reduction, but you don't. And going back to your question about body worn video, I've watched multiple, multiple cases and not only watched, but listened to the body worn camera video and the things that are being said. It's unbelievable. And it's clearly evidence that the culture is driving the decisions. And it's not the training or the policy and procedure.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: And again, I guess my questions are very simplistic because we really as a public don't have a lot of knowledge. But there are less, there are non lethal weapons and methods of restraining. Right. I'm sure that you know a taser can be lethal to somebody has a heart condition but barring the exclusions, I'm sure that most of the population will not die if they get tased. Keep me honest here, but this is an assumption on my side.
I also hear that, you know the keep me honest here, that this is right, but the London police don't even have gun guns. If that is true or not.
What is the, what is the opportunity here and what is the policies when it comes to non lethal, you know, quote unquote weapons to be used by the armed forces?
Is this something that needs to change or no?
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Well, part of the de escalation training is having alternatives and primarily force alternatives that are less than lethal. Hence that's where it gets the name. So less than lethal would be like a beanbag round or the taser. So yes, they may cause injury.
Is it reasonable to expect that it's going to result in death? No, because by and large it doesn't. But there are exceptions.
So absolutely the use of less lethal options needs to be considered.
But like in the example I gave before where we're talking about standing there with somebody who is having a mental health crisis, it's really escalating it because yes, sure we're making sure we have all of our resources here so we have various options on how to respond to this individual. But how is that being perceived by that person and how is that person going to respond to it? Are we actually just in our presence and our deployment of those weapons systems escalating the situation?
And I don't believe that we're really insightful in that and we're very self aware in that. So we, and I can show you case after case after case that is captured on body worn video and you're like, well I can tell you exactly how this is going to end and lo and behold that's it ends that way and it's an unfortunate death. Now I'm not sitting here telling you that there aren't circumstances where police officers aren't justified in using lethal force. Absolutely are. And I'm not here to suggest that all incidents can be managed to the extent where lethal force will not be required. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is that we need to make sure that and when I Say we, I mean law enforcement needs to make sure that their actions are most likely to provide the opportunity for an optimal outcome.
[00:37:18] Speaker A: As I said, this is today the art of going down rabbit holes.
Is there an opportunity for actually negotiation skills? Maybe this is already part of the program. But the kind of training or skills that a hostage negotiator might have, is there an opportunity here for police forces? And I'll give a really stupid example. My son was able to turn a bully into a friend by just giving them a compliment once a day, a very sincere and real compliment. So there are skills that are not standard, not everybody has them that can help really diffuse situations by how we talk, how we interact. Is there an opportunity here as well?
[00:38:02] Speaker B: Well, absolutely. It's all about being self aware and understanding how your actions can positively or negatively influence the situation.
So actually the presentation of force may not be the answer. It's about information.
We oftentimes see officers that rush into circumstances when they, they're there for the purpose of somebody that's suffering a mental health crisis and the family asking that the officers help to get the individual the medical and mental health treatment that they need. And then it ends up in the death of the individual.
So you'll have a situation where the individual is inside the house and the officers force their way in and suspect will have a knife and then they end up shooting the individual. And it's take your time, time is on your side. If you don't have any imminent threat to somebody else.
And so to not maximize your understanding of what particular mental health issues is this person dealing with, what type of medication do they take? When was the last time they've taken it? Have they had similar incidents where they've acted out in this way? If so, what worked?
What calmed them down?
And so you could have some insightful decisions. You have to do your due diligence in your understanding, understanding of the circumstances that you're in.
Absent exigency, time is on your side.
Don't look at it as an inconvenient call that you're handling. You have to look at it as I need a positive outcome if at all possible. And my decisions will best be made with the maximum amount of information that I can obtain. So if you got family members or roommates that you're talking to, get that information and then strategize. And don't think that law enforcement can necessarily have the insight and the understanding on how best to handle it. Law enforcement agencies need to include mental health, mental health agencies and have a cooperative effort and have people on scene that can help direct and help the law enforcement agency and the officers on scene understand how best to address and move forward with the situation.
And we just don't see that to the extent we need to at this point.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: I mean, just by listening to the complexity and the amount of skill that is required from these officers. I mean, it seems to be incredible, right? You need to handle yourself under stress in unknown situations. It could be mental illness, it could be a gang, it could be. Who the hell knows what's happening? And you're trying to navigate this.
I mean, it just seems to me that the level of qualifications that we're asking is incredibly, incredibly high. My mind immediately races to, well, like, are we just underpaying this role to the level that we can't attract, let's say, the type of talent that we really need? Or can anybody do the job if they're trained properly? Is there an economics issue here as well?
[00:41:39] Speaker B: I would suggest that there is.
I absolutely do not agree with this. Defund the police.
If you want the police to more closely align their actions with societal expectations, you need to make sure that you're spending the money to recruit the right people, hire the right people, and properly train your personnel.
That's a very costly endeavor.
But I can't think of a profession wherein it's more vital than in law enforcement. And I often, I was an elite hockey player, and if you didn't perform well under stress, you were going to get traded or you were, you weren't going to be playing.
And we hold our professional athletes to a higher standard than we do our law enforcement officers.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: So we could talk about teachers, for example. I mean, this is ridiculous, right? How are the things that are objectively so important right now? If it's teachers, it's the people that are teaching our kids, right? If it's police officers, the people who are keeping our safe, how are we, how are we basically not able to get a pay that would make sense in light of what we're expecting of these people? That's just mind boggling to me.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: It is to not value education and not more highly compensate people for their education.
It was my experience in the LAPD, people that had higher educations, PhDs, law degrees, they were oftentimes looked as a threat to those people in power in the organization that didn't have those same levels of education.
And we need to rethink how we, we operate in law enforcement. We by and large hire people, put them through an academy, and then throughout their careers they can be police officers on the street for their entire career, or they may promote all the way up to the chief of police. But that being said, all the roles within the law enforcement agency are probably not best suited by those who actually are law enforcement officers. And a perfect example I give you in this is like media relations.
You know, you have a captain of police with the LAPD that is the officer in charge of media relations. You know, what level of expertise and insight do they have in being able to determine the impact of the release of information or the withholding of information?
How was that going to impact the perception the public has of a law enforcement agency? And you know, Chief William Bratton was brilliant. He brought in Mary Grady, who was a civilian head, you know, over a decade of experience in this, and she ran media relations. And it wasn't, it wasn't. The message wasn't driven by the chief, the message was driven by her and the post. Management of these critical incidents oftentimes is the failure of law enforcement because you need to command the narrative or rumor and innuendo and criticism is going to be perhaps unjustifiably raised against the organization if you're not properly managing this. And I would argue who that gets hired in the police department and goes through the ranks is necessarily the most qualified person. So why not have somebody that has that expertise?
So, you know, just like when we were under the consent decree, they brought in a civilian who oversaw the consent decree bureau. And it's all about creative encounters. It's about being open and objective and listening to the perspectives of people that have a different background and a different, more specialized level of expertise that can give you some insight to facilitate the most appropriate decisions and judgments.
[00:45:55] Speaker A: Jeff, our only scripted question in this interview is what would you go back and advise 20 year old Jeff, at.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: Times, perhaps not to be so idealistic about things and to have the patience to try to navigate the most appropriate way of influencing in a positive manner the changes that are so important in law enforcement? Because the challenge is to address the ingrained attitudes that are in law enforcement and make sure that empathy, accountability, moral reasoning is just as important as tactical skill and expertise.
And it requires a multifaceted approach. It requires the patience, but it's certainly a worthwhile endeavor.
And that's why what I'm doing today, I'm the founder and CEO of Law Enforcement Consultants, and I'm also, I have a forthcoming book that's going to be released in March of next year, and it speaks of much of many of these issues that we're talking about. And it's a, you know, it's my insider's view in perspective that I share my personal experiences and my professional insights into what I think needs to be done to enhance law enforcement, to improve accountability, integrity, and the trustworthiness that's necessary for it to be successful moving Forward in the 21st. Thank you. I've had a great time. This was a lot of fun.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate you joining us today.
