Creating a Shared Vision for Public Safety: Introducing Beyond the Bandaids and Your Hosts

This episode of Beyond the Bandaids is brought to you by Project PACT (Police And Community Together).

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Connect with the co-hosts of Beyond the Bandaids:

Chief Mike Butler on LinkedIn
Dr. Carol Engel-Enright on LinkedIn
Kristin Daley on LinkedIn

The following three organizations—each committed to enhancing community well-being and policing integrity—joined forces to create Project PACT.

Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP)
New Blue
The School of Statesmanship, Stewardship & Service (SOSSAS)

Beyond the Bandaids is dedicated to exploring how police officers, public safety professionals, community leaders, and community members can reconnect with their sense of purpose and inspire positive change in their local community.

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This episode was produced by Story On Media & Marketing: https://www.successwithstories.com

[narrator] (0:02 – 0:58)
Welcome to Beyond the Band-Aids with Project PACT, the podcast where police, public safety experts, city leaders, and engaged community members explore how to create real meaningful change in our communities. Each week host Dr. Carol Engle Enright and Chief Mike Butler have conversations with experts and visionaries who are transforming public service. Discover how innovative leadership, compassion, and restorative practices can bridge gaps and build stronger connections between community stakeholders and police officials.

If you’re ready to rediscover your purpose within your community, enhance your leadership, and make a lasting impact, Beyond the Band-Aids is the podcast for you. Whether you’re a police officer, city leader, or committed community member, join us to unlock new possibilities for a safer, more connected future. Subscribe now to Beyond the Band-Aids and be part of the movement for change.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (0:59 – 2:01)
Welcome to Beyond the Band-Aids. This is the first podcast that we’re doing for Project PACT. PACT means police and community together.

We came together from three organizations, LEAP, Law Enforcement Action Partnership, New Blue, which is working with police in creating directions for community policing, new ideas, the future of policing, and SOSUS, the School of Statesmanship, Stewardship and Service. We’re excited to be here. This has been a vision of ours.

We think about designing something wonderful for the future, and how we can shift into a new vision of how police and community work together, both being responsible for safety, goodwill, friendship within community. Mike, take it away.

[Mike Butler] (2:02 – 3:54)
Yeah, so thanks, Carol, for that welcome. And I just want to add that I’m convinced, we’re all convinced that you’re going to be hearing things you’ve never heard before, in terms of how we create a different kind of future with this Beyond the Band-Aids. And Beyond the Band-Aids is a title that suggests that we’re moving beyond something.

And ever since Ferguson, that happened in August of 2014, there have been a number of efforts by police departments, and sheriff’s departments, and the police profession generally, that kind of moved beyond where they were at. But most of the things that were put in place, whether they’ve been new programs, new technology, new kind of organizational structures, and maybe the more popular one, new leaders, new police chiefs, have all more or less been Band-Aids in their approach to shifting and transcending the culture, which is what Project PACT is all about. We want to help police departments figure out how they can really, in a very in-depth way, shift and change the culture.

And that’s going to take more than the Band-Aid. And so since August of 2014, you know, we’ve had a number of high profile incidences or catastrophes in policing. And much of the banter you hear is we have to change our culture in policing.

Well, that’s what Project PACT is about, and we are moving beyond the Band-Aids. And so this series of podcasts you’re going to hear over time, we’re going to give you some real-life, practical, experiential ideas and practices about what that looks like in terms of how we move beyond the Band-Aids. And so we’re excited about this, and we’re anxious to hear your feedback along the way.

[Kristin Daley] (3:56 – 4:16)
And we also realize that these are complex topics. They’re not necessarily always easy to talk through, but we are welcoming the hard questions, and we want this to be conversational. And we want to hear from our audience about what they think and what they’re feeling.

And we want to really dive in in a deep and meaningful way.

[Mike Butler] (4:17 – 5:13)
Thank you. And by the way, for those of you who are watching this, if your community or the residents or neighborhoods don’t have any issues, you have zero issues in your neighborhoods, and you have zero issues with your police or sheriff departments, or you don’t think there are any kinds of things that you need to be concerned about along those lines, then frankly, this podcast is probably not for you. But on the other hand, our sense is, you know, there’s 19,400 communities in this country.

And commented to that, there’s 19,400 plus police and sheriff departments as well. And our belief is, is that the vast majority of them have some things that they can work on to help enhance their relationships, to enhance the safety in their communities, and to move forward to create something that perhaps didn’t exist in the past.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (5:15 – 8:31)
So this podcast is not just for police, it’s for community. And community, what what a lot of people don’t think of is each community charters their own public safety department. And so within the community, you have mayors, city managers, directors, and then the public safety.

But that’s all responsible to the citizen. We as citizens, as community members, how many of you have children and you want your children to grow up in a place that fills whole, that there is a good sense of well being, that you understand safety is, is going to be taken, not taken care of, will be dealt with. But you have a great sense of safety.

We read every day that people are feeling less safe, feeling more angry, feeling more divided, feeling more polarized. And community is the answer. Connection is the answer.

We’re going to go into that. So this is for community leaders. If you’re a neighborhood group leader, if you’ve connected with neighborhoods in your life, listen in, it’s going to have some great ideas about how to bring it all together.

Okay, we’re going to go through a little bit of introductions. I’m going to start. I’m Carol Ingle Enright.

I do have a doctor in front of that. But I taught at the university for 17 years. And I always said just call me Carol.

I did my graduate study in design and merchandising. Sounds funny that I’m working with community and public safety, but not really. Design thinking is bringing innovation into, into being and understanding culture is what we do when we’re out working with new ideas, creating new products, thinking about a consumer, what are they doing?

My PhD was in education. And I did a lot of work around social responsibility and social sustainability. But let me primarily say before I was an educator and academic, I was a mom with five kids, raising them in a community, I got involved with service organizations, and I went to youth leadership, I saw that there was great potential and impact and bringing the youth up to feel like they were a part of the community as well.

I learned things around emotional intelligence that I took into the classroom. So we’ll, we’ll incorporate all of that as we go into the podcast into future episodes. And it’ll be the I’ll be the academic side, I’ll be the one kind of drawing out the stories.

And now I’d like to introduce Mike Butler, I’m going to brag on him. He served 41 years in public service, in public safety. And I’m going to let him give a little bit of his background, I might add to it.

[Mike Butler] (8:32 – 11:31)
Thanks, Carol. And you know what, it’s really great to be here with all of you. We’re excited about this.

And, and we’re really wanting for this to be something that people can really grasp and sense that this is possible for each and every person, each and every community, each and every police department in this country. And so we’re thinking about it that way. And my background, I, Carol said, I have actually 46 years in public safety, five at the federal level, I used to work for the FBI at one point.

And then I started my career off in the city of Boulder, my municipal policing career in the city of Boulder, Colorado, which is just right down the road from where I’m at now in Longmont. Spent 15 years there, worked my way up to the number two position, and wanted to become a police chief somewhere. Well, lo and behold, the police chief job opened in the community that I resided.

And I applied for that job and got it. And so for 26 years, I was the public safety chief at first just a police chief in about 10 or so years into that job. I was asked if I also wanted to oversee our fire services.

And I said, excitedly, yes. And so I became a new title public safety chief. And in that period of time, really recalibrated, rethought, reset the police department, fire department’s relationship with our community, to one of patriarchy, to one of partnership.

Our motto was public safety in partnership with the people. And that took on a whole new set of how we did business, the practices that we had. You know, when you’re a patriarch, you have a different relationship and your actions are different.

But if you’re a partner, again, your relationship is different, your comments are different, your stories are different, your practices are different. And those are the things we’re going to be talking about. So I come from a very practical, experiential place as well.

And so after that, after I left the service, Carol and I started this School of Statesmanship, Stewardship and Service, which is designed for just about anybody, but focused on elected officials or elected official wannabes, appointed officials, or people in leadership positions that have fairly sophisticated jobs to help them see how they can become stateswomen, statesmen, statespeople in the organization or community or state or country that they’re working in or want to work in.

We believe there’s a significant need for that, for the qualities, attributes and characteristics of statespeople in our society. And so that’s a third of what we’re doing here with Project PAC. So we’re very happy to be here.

And I’d like to now introduce Kristen Daly, who is going to be a very important part of this podcast.

[Kristin Daley] (11:32 – 15:24)
Thanks, Mike. So how I got into this space of thinking about how we can improve public safety in a way that feels equitable and collaborative comes from both a long career in justice system work, and from deeply personal experience. I am a rape survivor, which colors my perspective on a lot of things and eventually led me to become a credentialed victim advocate and a crisis responder for sexual violence and domestic violence.

So that’s a very unique role in the context of the justice system, because you are very tuned into the needs of crime survivors and their loved ones. And whether the person chooses to go through the traditional path of the justice system or not, your job is to support and empower their decision making process. So some things you’ll never hear an advocate say are you need to, you need to report, you need to testify, you need to feel this way or that way.

It’s about finding what works best for each individual person to create their own path towards healing. At that same time, I was working for 16 years at Law Enforcement Action Partnership, which is a national advocacy organization for justice system professionals to advocate for more compassionate, ethical, empathetic regulations and police policy. So I was their Director of Development and Communications, and LEAP started out primarily focused on drug policy and harm reduction.

So it really aligned with my goals in terms of making sure that people who need to support, who need support and compassion, don’t end up victims of the justice system. So I was very focused in both roles on how the system can be changed to enable police to do their job in a way that treats people with dignity and empowers them with choices. And you know, you don’t have to interview people in a way that re-traumatizes them.

You don’t have to treat someone struggling with substance use disorder as less valuable in society. So at that same time, police are dealing with incredible pressure and significant vicarious trauma, complex trauma, where a lot of times they’re interacting with people on the very worst day of their lives. And that’s a lot to process internally.

So I would say for me, the first and most critical step in thinking about how we make public safety a shared responsibility is having compassion for each other and understanding that everyone is dealing with their own traumas and doing the best that they can. And then coming back around after 16 years on LEAP staff, I was presented with an amazing opportunity to become executive director of this new organization called New Blue, which was founded by a former police officer and a current police officer. I met them through a program at MIT about reimagining policing and reducing the footprint of policing.

And the three of us just sort of very much aligned on what we believed policing could be and should be. And I joined their board as a volunteer. And then as they were looking to hire their founding executive director, they asked me if I’d be interested and I jumped at the chance.

And I think we’ll get a little bit into what New Blue does and what LEAP does a bit later on. But I was also lucky enough to stay involved in LEAP joining the board of directors where I’m currently serving alongside Mike. I’ve also been very fortunate to serve on the Peace Corps Sexual Assault Advisory Council, which is a group of national experts in sexual violence prevention and response.

And I served as the chair of the council in 2023 and founded my own training and consulting business around victim survivor advocacy best practices. And that’s a little bit about my background.

[Mike Butler] (15:25 – 16:05)
Beautiful. Thanks, Kristen. And I wonder, also, Kristen pointed out that I’m also a member of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership Board, been so for three years.

Also on the board of the International Institute of Restorative Practices. And so, and I know Carol has some other things in her background as well. Also a father of five daughters, and there’s a little experience there as well.

And so, Carol, I think you have some more things in your background, too, that perhaps you didn’t mention. But all three of us come from a perspective of wanting to help communities in our police departments find a different path.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (16:07 – 18:55)
Well, right. And we have these three ongoing organizations that are moving in the same direction. It’s a beautiful combination that they brought together to allow us to put Project PACT together to do this podcast.

We’ll be bringing the school statesmanship training program onto the site and then doing direct advisory collaborative services with police departments. So, you know, if you’re out there and you’re a community member and you feel very distanced or separated from what’s happening in your public safety, or even if you are just, I’d love to get my neighborhood together, but I have no idea how to start. Mike has a lot of practical experience.

I will say he, I live in the community that he was a chief of for 26 years. And I watched the restorative practice take place in our community. I saw what happened when domestic violence started to take off and initiatives came around that connected the community with people who were experiencing domestic abuse is one that people don’t speak out about.

But they put an initiative in place and he had, he had great ideas, but he didn’t do it on his own. What’s really important for this podcast is that people work together to create ideas, to come up with a vision, and then to use the concept of social capital. Now, my research is all around the social capital, what has happened in society where people did not bring shared knowledge, shared collaboration together.

I happen to do it within industry and how people were trying to manufacture and get supplies together. That’s my background on my PhD and my National Science Foundation work. But they were, Mike has watched it happen within community where they invited in community.

I’d love for you to talk about that, Mike, a little bit more. I just want to say that the Mental Health Association in Colorado, in the state of Colorado recognized him as man of the year, because he knew that it wasn’t just, it’s not a matter of intentional criminals. Sometimes it’s a matter of what is happening within life that, that creates some of the issues that we all deal with.

Can you talk about that, Mike?

[Mike Butler] (18:55 – 23:34)
Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for that. Thanks for that, Kara.

I, you know, from the very beginning, public safety in partnership with the people takes into account that safety is in our own hands, and that safety is a big part of what we all want to accomplish in our community. And every community in this country has its own uniqueness in terms of its own woundedness, has its own social and health issues. They’re singular, but they’re also similar across the country.

And we’re going to be addressing it that way as well in terms of what that looks like. But the idea was, was that, for instance, was mental health, for instance. We, we knew that while we had a number of mental health addiction or mental health treatment service providers and others who focused on mental health, that the mental health issue was much, much bigger than perhaps the services they could provide.

And so the idea was, is how can we surface activate, coordinate what we call social capital. Social capital are the gifts, the talents, the resources, the expertise, the skills of various people, individuals in a community, citizens, regular citizens and residents within a city. How could we hold that together in a way where we’re trying to accomplish this whole, that’s greater than the sum of the parts to address mental health?

Now, oftentimes what I’ll say is the issue, the resources and services are this big. The issue is as big as the room I’m in. And so how do you fill that gap?

And so part of how we felt filled that gap was making the invitation to people in this community to be part of that process. We didn’t want to monopolize and come from the perspective in government and public safety and say, you know, you’ll be better because we know better. And we’re the trained experts and no one else in this community can really be part of that.

There’s a lot of that that goes on right now. And we’ll talk more about that. So we expanded the opportunity for people to want to be engaged, who wanted to be engaged.

And so we made simple invitations, knowing people had gifts, they wanted to offer those gifts, perhaps they just didn’t know how. And so we coordinated a lot of that effort to surface activate and coordinate the efforts for us to kind of respond to mental health. You could also put addiction in there.

You can also put homelessness, Carol, someone else mentioned domestic violence. Those are all social and health issues that we dealt with as a community, not just in public safety or the nonprofits or the experts or service providers. You’re going to hear us say that great communities aren’t necessarily made up of great leaders or good government or improved services or more expertise.

We’re absolutely convinced that great communities are made up of great citizens. And so we believe that our police departments, our public safety departments can play a significant role in bringing community members and residents into the mix in terms of trying to heal the woundedness that’s in our communities, trying to get beyond the kind of the old model approaches of how we deal with social and health issues. And so you’re going to be hearing quite a bit about what that looks like.

And we’re going to want your questions and we’re going to want your ideas as well in terms as we move forward. So that’s how we ended up working with everything. We also are going to encourage police departments to not necessarily say so unilaterally connected with our criminal justice system.

We know that there has to be a relationship there. We get that because there is the enforcement role police have to play. But we’re going to ask our police departments.

In fact, we’re going to strongly encourage our police departments to kind of think of different alternatives and options to the criminal justice system and rather be so unilaterally linked to the hip of the criminal justice system. We’re going to ask our police departments to consider being more connected to the heart of their communities and what that might look like for you. That could be a scary proposition for a lot of police departments in terms of what that might look like.

But I can assure you that it’s doable. And in fact, you’ll be much more effective. And we’ll bring in some data and information to suggest that effectiveness is very realizable as we move forward.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (23:36 – 25:54)
So you’re not going to want to miss a single episode. And we want you to go to projectpack.org and sign up. You’ll get a newsletter.

You can also get a downloadable booklet called Safety in Our Hands. It’s written by Mike Butler and Peter Block. Peter Block is an author of about 20 organizational development books, wonderful ideas on stewardship, this concept of partnership.

I want to go back to the Beyond the Band-Aids. I have little grandkids at three and four years old. You know, when someone gets hurt, they come running in, Mommy, Mommy, I need a Band-Aid.

That’s going to fix the boo-boo. Well, we’ve done that in society. We’ve covered over things with programs and, oh, just apply this.

But we’ve never gotten to the heart of the matter of how community can itself work together with the people responsible for the safety in each community. And I really strongly distinguish each community. It took me a while to understand it as I came into working with these two wonderful leaders.

And we’ll have, Kristen will bring on some of her officers that are working on particular projects to tell their story, beautiful stories. Mike will have some of his authors that he works with in writing about community and neighborhood social capital. Do you have something to say?

It looks like, Mike, you want to add to that? And the focus will be, each week we’ll have a different focus. So watch for the focus as we put that on.

If you have an idea, if you have a concern, if you have an issue within your community, please email us and we will look to see how we can incorporate that. We’re also open to questions and we’ll answer back on your podcast reviews. And Kristen, one last word around today and the introduction?

[Kristin Daley] (25:55 – 26:23)
Thank you. I just kind of wanted to draw a through line between what Mike said a bit earlier and what you just said, which is that communities know what they need and we just need to give them the opportunity to tell us. So as police, police’s job is to meet community needs.

And that starts with asking what the community actually wants and needs and coming up with a shared vision for public safety.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (26:25 – 26:25)
Beautiful.

[Mike Butler] (26:26 – 27:16)
Very good. Very good. I couldn’t agree more with what Kristen just said.

And it’s amazing when you create that space for people in the community to engage to what level they will engage. A lot of people in government might think that community engagement can be very, very messy and unmanageable, if you will. Well, we’re here to say that the community can also create something that unilaterally a police department can never create.

And I like the idea of what Kristen just said in terms of asking what their needs are, what they believe they can offer to create a different future. And so very real and very encouraging.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (27:17 – 27:54)
And from the citizens role, one of our big primary objectives in school statesmanship is to look at life, look at society, look at community through the lens of goodness. What is working well? We will focus on that in these podcasts.

So often citizens show up at city council meetings and complain about everything that’s broken. Well, Mike will tell you, I’ll let you say it yourself. As a chief, what did you find about the goodness in the community?

[Mike Butler] (27:54 – 30:41)
The goodness prevails. And by the way, I’m glad Carol brought that up because that will be the main approach Project PACT uses as we move forward. It’s easy to see people, organizations, and communities as problems to be solved and to see them through the lens of their deficiencies and to try to find out, here’s what’s wrong.

Here’s what needs to be improved. Here are the problems that need to be fixed. That’s the old model, folks.

The new model that we’re going to be strongly suggesting and encouraging is to take a look at what’s working well. What do we want to see more of? What can be expanded?

What goodness resides within either the person, the organization, or the community that we want to see more of? And come at it from that perspective, not the perspective of, again, seeing people, community, organizations as problems to be solved, but seeing them as possibilities. And again, that takes on a whole new kind of conversation, a whole new set of actions.

It’s a new model. It’s a model that I’ve worked with for decades that works. And by the way, as parents, if you think about it, you’re going to see that that’s how you respond.

I mean, you want to see what’s good in your child. Let’s say you walked into a parent-teacher conference and the teacher said, your child has a problem to be solved. What kind of response is that going to be versus you walk into the parent-teacher conference and the teacher says, your child is full of possibilities.

Entirely two different conversations, two different energies, different emotions, and a different path in terms of how things move forward. It doesn’t mean that you can’t also look at the problems, but you’re looking at it through the context of what are the possibilities. And so, it’s an entirely different approach that I think you’re going to be excited about.

And hang in there, be patient with us as we explain this, because there’s going to be quite a bit of information along those lines. And I think each and every person that’s watching this podcast would like to think that deep down, they’re a good person. Deep down, their children are good people.

Deep down, their friends are good people. But we can also get caught up in the imperfections and here’s what’s wrong and see people or organizations or communities as through the lens of those deficiencies. And that’s an old model, folks.

And we’re here to say that we’re moving forward with a new model. So, if you’re more interested in how that could play out for your community, your police department, and the relationship that exists between your police department and your community, stay tuned. We have a lot to offer.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (30:43 – 31:04)
Great. Well, that wraps it up for this episode. We’ll be back to talk about more of what we’re putting together, some of the training, some of the opportunities and the possibilities that you have both as community and as police officers and directors and executives.

[Mike Butler] (31:05 – 31:07)
City managers and mayors too, by the way.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (31:07 – 32:04)
Very, very big. So, we’re wrapping this up and we’d love for you to come visit what we’re doing on our websites. ProjectPACT.org.

You can look at the School of Statesmanship. It’s S-O-S-S-A-S, schoolofstatesmanshipstewardshipandservice.org and newblue.org, as well as Law Enforcement Action Partnership. You have to spell all of that out, .org.

So, anyway, we’re excited. We look forward to having conversations together and conversations with you. Please reach out to us.

Sign up for our newsletter so you’re in touch with everything that’s going on as we bring about the training and the advisory services and have a great day. Make it beautiful.

[Mike Butler] (32:05 – 33:01)
Hey, I just want to put a bigger plug in for the Law Enforcement Action Partnership too, by the way. They’re the ones who are really supporting and sponsoring Project PACT and making this happen. And so, LEAP, Law Enforcement Action Partnership, is critically important to this effort.

And I just don’t want to understate or minimize their role in all of this. And without their role and support, this would not be possible. So, newblue and SOSUS offers expertise, offers some of the coursework, but LEAP is the one that’s really supporting this effort.

So, I just wanted to say thank you to the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. Absolutely. And by the way, everything is available in the podcast description in the show notes.

And so, just so you know that that’s there for you. And we will see you next time.

[Kristin Daley] (33:03 – 33:54)
Thank you for tuning in to Beyond the Band-Aids with Project PACT. We hope today’s episode has inspired you to think differently about public service and community engagement. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review.

Your support helps us reach more listeners and continue bringing you valuable insights and stories. For more information and to stay connected, visit our website at projectpact.org and follow us on social media. We’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas, so feel free to reach out.

Pioneered by Law Enforcement Action Partnership, newblue, and the School of Statesmanship, Stewardship, and Service, Project PACT is the culmination of three leading organizations committed to enhancing community well-being and policing integrity. Until next time, keep moving forward and stay engaged. Together, we can create a safer, more connected future.