Enforcement of Laws by Police

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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[Carol Engel-Enright] (0:01 – 0:59)
Well, hello, welcome to another episode of Beyond the Band-Aids. We’re excited today to really dive deep into the definition of law enforcement. I’m Carol Engle Enright, Dr. Carol Engle Enright. I’m an academic researcher in social sciences. I’m gonna go around the table and have everyone introduce themselves. Just gonna say we have three nonprofit organizations that are bringing you this episode.

I’m the founder, one of the co-founders of SOSES, School of Statesmanship, Stewardship and Service. We work to educate people in how to be a better citizen, how to understand the social emotional intelligence of yourself and how you work with other people and bringing the common good into being. Kristen, can you introduce yourself?

[Kristin Daley] (0:59 – 1:17)
Sure, I’m Kristen Daly. I’m the executive director of New Blue and board member of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. And I’ve spent about 17 years in police policy and training.

And my area of expertise in particular is trauma-informed and survivor-centered best practices for policing.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (1:18 – 1:21)
Okay, and Mike, can you introduce yourself?

[Mike Butler] (1:21 – 2:18)
You betcha, I’m also one of the co-founders of the School of Statesmanship, Stewardship and Service. I have a career in policing and I left my position as the public safety chief where I oversaw police fire emergency management and a few other social services a few years ago and began this adventure with the School of Statesmanship, Stewardship and Service. I’m also a board member on the Law Enforcement Action Partnership and very thankful that New Blue and LEAP, the Law Enforcement Action Partnership and the School of Statesmanship, Stewardship and Service are collaborating together to bring you the police and community together project.

It’s an exciting project. We think we have lots of good information and perspectives to offer those who are in the field whether you’re an outcome addition or a practitioner.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (2:19 – 3:38)
All right, so we’re gonna get right down into it. Project PAC, I just wanna lead people to the website, projectpac, P-A-C-T.org. We are a new mission and vision towards bringing police and community together in authentic partnership.

I just wanna say when I first met Mike and he was the police and fire chief of my local community, his title was public safety director and chief. And I didn’t know what public safety meant. Most people understand police.

We certainly work and are very grateful to the Law Enforcement Action Partnership for kind of sponsoring us as we take on this project. And so I wanna start with unpacking law enforcement. So Mike, I’m gonna go to you first because you’re the practitioner in the field with over four decades of experience.

What does it mean when somebody enforces the law? And I also wanna talk about where laws come from along with that.

[Mike Butler] (3:39 – 7:25)
Sure, okay. Well, there is a lot to unpack and there’s a lengthy history in this country about how police became so entangled in their role and mission as law enforcers. But enforcing a law means that there’s a law that exists, whether it’s a municipal or county ordinance, whether it’s a state law or whether it’s federal law.

And those laws exist. And there’s typically an order, a direction within those laws that police departments, federal agencies, state agencies who have enforcement powers are directed to ensure that if those laws are violated that people who are in violation of those laws be brought into the criminal justice system. And typically that’s by an arrest and or by a ticket or a summons.

And once that happens, the criminal justice system then works with prosecutors, judges and courts. If there’s a conviction, there are prisons, there’s probation, there’s parole. And so there’s this larger apparatus called the criminal justice system that’s designed to help enforce these laws.

But it all begins with police. And it all begins with the police as on the front end of the criminal justice system being the entity that introduces someone, if you will, to the criminal justice system. They’re the ones who invoke the criminal justice system.

And then from that point on, the roles and purposes of each entity within the criminal justice system begin to work. And so typically that would be a district attorney, a city attorney, a U.S. attorney as prosecutors. There’s levels of judicial branches, that’s local, municipal, typically state, county, district, state and federal.

And so there’s all these various levels with all these various roles that people play. And these laws are designed, if it’s a national law, it typically involves more than one state. There’s an interstate aspect to it.

If it’s a state law, it just provides for the law that’s for that state that any enforcement officer, whether they’re a state municipal or a county sheriff or a state enforcement position can enforce and so forth and so on. And so that’s the system that we have in place. And it’s an incredible apparatus in our country in terms of its size and its expense.

And if I didn’t mention, it also includes our prisons, our corrections facilities, whether they’re at the local level, the county level, the state level or the federal level. And so there’s quite a bit of that aspect within our country. It’s a large apparatus that has many moving parts and pieces but it’s designed to work with people who have violated these laws and also more recently assist people who have been victims of these laws.

So I’ll leave it at that.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (7:25 – 7:36)
Okay, so in one sentence, I want both of you to answer. The purpose of law enforcement is to?

[Mike Butler] (7:39 – 7:40)
Go Kristen.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (7:40 – 7:41)
Go Kristen.

[Kristin Daley] (7:41 – 7:44)
The purpose of law enforcement is to serve the public.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (7:46 – 7:48)
Serve the public. Okay, Mike.

[Mike Butler] (7:48 – 8:25)
I think the purpose of law enforcement is evolving. And I think it has evolved over time and from a very punitive, mostly punitive, retributive philosophy into something different in terms of perhaps more so towards how do we bring about safety in the community? And so it’s a tool that, it’s simply a tool for our society.

And but that the context for that tool and the purpose for that tool has changed over time.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (8:25 – 8:46)
Okay, and most people, I would say, if you’re a common citizen, I’m gonna speak from the layman’s position today. Are most people aware of all the laws that exist in the US? I’d like an answer from both of you.

[Mike Butler] (8:47 – 8:48)
Kristen, we’re taking turns, so go ahead.

[Kristin Daley] (8:49 – 9:31)
I, no, I don’t think so. I don’t think most people are aware of the intricacies of every law, every policy. No, and I think that contributes to the current environment toward law enforcement where people see police as a negative entity because they are the ones out there front and center with the public.

And there’s not a clear understanding that in some cases, this is really very much a systemic issue. It’s not down to individual officers being bad actors. In many cases, they’re simply following their job.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (9:32 – 9:44)
Okay, and Mike, you as chief of police, how did you make your several hundred people, officer patrols, how did you make them aware of laws?

[Mike Butler] (9:44 – 12:13)
Well, let me just go back to that question. Are most people aware of most of the laws? And let me just also say that the vast majority of people in our country have little to no contact with the criminal justice system, whether by being a victim or by being an offender.

And so the criminal justice system typically applies to a small percentage of people in our country. And so that’s part of it. Most people live their lives day in and day out, not too concerned about the criminal justice system, the police.

Now we see police vehicles, we see police officers typically in our community. They’re one of the most visible forms of government in our country, the police. We have, I’m gonna say we have about 800,000 paid police officers in this country and a couple of hundred thousand auxiliary and professional staff people that make up around a million people assigned to police departments around our country, spread out in every city, every community, in every county, and 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

But the vast majority of people aren’t necessarily overly concerned about all the laws that are on the books. We’re all aware of laws like you can’t steal from somebody, you can’t damage someone’s property, you can’t assault people. And so there’s all kinds of other laws that have to do with white collar and other kinds of crimes.

But the vast, vast, vast majority of the laws that people are barely aware of, because it doesn’t influence them. I mean, most of, I wanna make the point in Project PAC that the vast majority of people live their lives in a way that’s integrity filled, that’s moral, that’s ethical, that where they are caring about their neighbors. And so that’s more the case than not the case.

Although the media narrative may want us to think differently about that as they dramatize the human condition and market fear, market fault, and try to exploit our wounds, whether they’re the wounds of people or communities. But the vast majority of people live their lives raising their families, working, enjoying their neighborhoods and their communities. And so that’s the point I think we need, that’s the prize we need to keep our eyes on with Project PAC.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (12:14 – 13:05)
So would you say there’s a moral code in a civilized society that people know, what’s right and what’s wrong in a moral way? And then I’m interested in how police are notified. Of something that’s out of, I’m gonna call it out of order.

So there’s public safety in place to kind of keep this kind of civilized order. And when disorder takes place, police are there to handle the situation. Would you both agree with that or no?

And Kristen, I’m gonna ask you first.

[Kristin Daley] (13:06 – 13:14)
I mean, I think in some ways it’s important to acknowledge that people who have been, should I start over?

[Carol Engel-Enright] (13:15 – 13:16)
Go ahead, start over.

[Kristin Daley] (13:17 – 13:17)
Sure.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (13:18 – 13:18)
Sorry.

[Kristin Daley] (13:18 – 14:25)
I think it’s important to acknowledge that in many cases people who have been disproportionately impacted by the system, the system isn’t really set up to work for them. And it’s not always necessarily easy to navigate once you’re caught up in the cycle. And I think, yes, police are there certainly to respond to crime, to respond to people in danger or people in trouble.

And at the same time, I think that there are plenty of communities and individuals within communities that feel underserved or targeted or that they have not had a trusting enough relationship with the police that they don’t feel safe to call for help when they do need it. So I think both things are true. Police are certainly out there trying to do their job and keep people safe.

And at the same time, that’s hard for them to do and hard for people to accept when they haven’t had that positive relationship built.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (14:26 – 14:27)
Okay.

[Mike Butler] (14:28 – 18:41)
So I’m gonna build on what Kristen just said. Thanks, Kristen, that was really good. I think the vast majority of laws are passed and penalties are stiffened.

When that happens, I think there is more of an impact and I’ll call it the spirit impact on the economically disadvantaged people in our society. There’s just seems to be this case where economically disadvantaged people will for, we can talk about that as well in terms of what that means, but seem to have fewer options. And so there seems to be a tendency that when there is disorder, people rely more on the government or on the police or on fire or on public safety or other services in the communities that seem to be economically disadvantaged and at some level, I think there is, and because of that, I think there is disparate impact on people of color.

But I also think there’s disparate impact on people who are Caucasian because they don’t have the options either. And so I think it has more to do with being economically disadvantaged in terms of how many options and choices do you have to work through in terms of dealing with disorder. Now, there’s a lot of disorder that goes unreported, by the way, too.

There’s a lot of disorder that just doesn’t get reported. There’s a lot of crime that doesn’t get reported. In fact, I think if the research, my recollection of the research serves me correctly, it’s somewhere between 30 and 40% of the crimes are reported in this country.

Now, the more serious ones like homicide, serious bodily injury, injuries do get reported more often than not, for sure. But for instance, you take the world of domestic violence where that happens in our homes, less than 20% of those get reported. And so the same thing with sex assault kinds of cases, also most of those occurring in our homes.

And when you want to talk about violence, the vast majority of violence occurs between people who either know each other or allegedly love each other. And when people ask me in my community, was it safe to live in our community? My response was typically it depends who you live with because the vast majority of violence occurs in our homes or occurs between people who know each other and again, who allegedly love each other.

That’s a dynamic that we don’t necessarily consider a lot. And so when you look at the violence that occurs and domestic violence is a huge crime in just about every city in this country where it’s a significant crime, those don’t get reported a lot. And typically they don’t get reported until somewhere down the road.

So the point is, there’s a lot of disorder and there’s a lot of crime that occurs at laws that are on the books where people don’t report. And so the police and criminal justice system don’t know anything about it. And so there’s a lot of dynamics and variables that go into when people call the police, to what level, as Kristen said, do you even trust the police to do anything about what can happen?

And so there’s all those flavors and variations of how crime gets reported. Someone could say, well, my window was broken. I’m not going to call the police because I don’t think the police can do anything about it.

Or a lawn ornament was taken off my yard. A lot of people won’t call because they don’t think the police can do anything about it. And I’m not going to say they’re wrong because there may not be any evidence at all to suggest that there is a path towards finding the person who did it.

So there is a lot to unpack in this whole arena of enforcement.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (18:42 – 20:05)
And we’re not going to make it through in one episode. So stay tuned, all you listeners, as we work through this. I do want to talk about the evolution of policing.

I’m a grandmother. When I was growing up in a small town, you knew the police. They were your friend.

They knew your family. And if you messed up, they knew who to take you to. Usually it was your parents first.

And I want to talk about the evolution of society in terms of the actual, the policeman on the street, the cop on the beat. He’s in his patrol car. We’ve talked in previous episodes about how the patrol car might’ve become this barrier to community.

But what happens, how did these roles start to change? Why was there a shift into police being seen differently than somebody who could support you or maybe put you back on the right path? That’s a big question.

[Mike Butler] (20:06 – 20:07)
These are all big questions.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (20:07 – 20:21)
Yeah. So I don’t know who wants to take it first. I do, Mike, want you to talk about the personal experience of being a patrol officer and walking in to an unknown situation and what that feels like.

[Mike Butler] (20:21 – 20:29)
Yeah, we could do that. But I also think your former question is a good question. I’m going to let Kristen kind of run with that a little bit.

Then I’ll build on what she says.

[Kristin Daley] (20:30 – 22:43)
So I think that those dynamics have changed in over the past few decades because there has been this sort of breakdown in trust, breakdown in communication. And a part of it is the narrative that we’re seeing. But a part of it is also there has been kind of a dehumanization on both sides.

And that could be resolved by more open communication, more collaboration, more of a working toward a shared vision for public safety. But ultimately, I think the dynamics have changed not because policing has become a different type of career, because I think most people who go into policing do still do it with the intention of being a public servant and helping people and doing good things, good deeds in their community. But I also think it’s a job with a lot of stress, a lot of pressure.

And once someone has been in it for a few years, they may become a little bit jaded or frustrated with… They deal with people on their worst day, on many, many days. And that’s a lot to internalize.

That’s a lot of vicarious trauma. And that starts to wear on you. And police, I think, need more support in terms of wellness and mental health and having readily accessible resources that help them to manage their day to day.

And then I also think that the community needs to feel that policing in general, systemically and on an individual level, police are being more transparent with them. Police are being accountable when things do go wrong. And that there is an open line of communication and that communities are able to dictate what they need.

And police are a part of that community as well. So that conversation should include all community stakeholders working toward that shared plan for public safety.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (22:44 – 23:20)
So Kristen, I just wanna build on that a little bit. You do a lot of training within the police around trauma. And so you see that, do they talk about how they had to kind of harden off emotions or the relationships are hard to establish?

Maybe they see the same person over and over again under the same circumstances. We have a lot of recidivism, and especially with addiction and substance abuse.

[Kristin Daley] (23:20 – 24:52)
And- Oh, definitely. All of those situations, struggling with substance use, domestic violence, they may come to the same house over and over. And there can be a level of like, why am I back here again?

Why is this person not taking steps to get what they need? And it’s not that easy to sometimes get out of those situations. But I think on the officer’s side, there can be a level of getting a little bit worn down.

I also think from my perspective in the types of issues that I work with, there is a very comparable, there is a sort of alignment with survivors of violent crimes, survivors of sexual assaults, and police officers in that a lot of times that type of trauma can shut you down if you don’t work very hard to address it. And police departments don’t always make the resources that are needed to address those issues and officers readily accessible and available. There is sometimes a level of stigma around accessing mental health care.

And if you’re worried that you’re going to be penalized or lose your job for accessing resources that you need and being open about it when you need help, you’re not going to access those resources readily or as reliably.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (24:53 – 25:03)
Beautiful. That’s like unreported crime on the community side and then unreported mental health trauma on the professional side.

[Mike Butler] (25:03 – 31:08)
Yeah. Let me go back to your question, Carol, the evolution of police. So we live in a free democratic society and not unlike any other free democratic society, the rights of individuals are paramount.

And we’ve talked about the rights of people and our constitution dictates what those rights are. Well, along comes this entity called, we’re calling it the police in our society in America that has this almost, no, it’s not almost, it is an anomalous authority to take away the freedom of others or to use force to be able to get things done in a safe way, even force up to justified homicide if it requires that. And so you have this anomalous-like force entity within our country, working in a country, in a society where the rights of individuals are paramount, it’s kind of like there’s already kind of a built-in rub.

There’s already a built-in kind of, we have a couple of different purposes here. We want to live our lives freely and you want to, and you’re the order, you’re the people who create order or you’re the people that come and take our freedom away or you’re the people that use force. And so there’s always been this kind of almost natural rub in our society because of that.

And so, and the evolution of police is kind of, that’s been, that anomalous relationship has been the center of that rub, if you will. And so over the decades and maybe even centuries in this country, there has been a shift in the role of policing. Some people say it started, the role of police started with the police being attached to slaveholders and that whenever a slave escaped, that the police were called to go get the slave and bring it back to the slaveholder, if you will.

And that was back in the 1840s, 50s and 60s when that was happening. And so, and then over time, in terms of getting more precise, more currently, it’s like there’s been a lack of community in many ways with a lot of our, hold on a second. With a lot of our communities have, citizens have experienced a lack of community.

And in its place, there was this common belief that if we needed more police officers, we would need more police officers, we would need more criminal justice system, we would need more laws, we would need stiffer penalties to kind of fill that gap that citizens were feeling because they lacked community. And so in some ways our criminal justice system, including the police have been gap fillers for lack of community that has been felt by our citizens. And so over the last few decades, that’s been evolving and lots of information, lots of books have been written about that in terms of where’s the social capital now?

Where’s the community now? Where’s the connections? You know, we’re in this epidemic, according to our surgeon general of loneliness and aloneness.

Where’s all that? I mean, what’s happening? And so a lot of folks become kind of say, well, the quick fix to all of this is more government, more police, more intervention.

We’re gonna bypassing laws and stiffing penalties and then ordering police to enforce those laws and the criminal justice system to kind of make those penalties come to life. You know, we’ve gotten to that point where that’s been our answer to trying to fix our social health issues. And so for me, more of those services aren’t effective.

More of those kinds of services, I think has become an addiction in our society. And so therein lies a role that the police have been playing over time because the police are typically following what the direction has been around the passage of all these laws, the stiffening of all these penalties, believing that we can heal our woundedness by invoking the criminal justice system. And what we know now is that that is very stopgap.

And like I said, these are gap fillers for lack of community in our towns and cities throughout our country. And what Project PACT is trying to do and figure out along with others is to figure out how we can bring police and community together in a different kind of way where we can begin to heal our communities without necessarily the large, invoking the large apparatus of the criminal justice system. So that’s been part of the evolution, but we’re still somewhat stuck.

And depending on how much we want to politicize this issue, it can be what we’re talking about in terms of depending on who’s president, who’s in power at the national level. And I don’t want to make this anywhere close to a partisan conversation. We can begin to cycle back and forth between these two ways of the police being.

And are we partners in the community? Are we the patriarchs in our community? Are we going to be aggressive law enforcers?

Are we going to be public servants with the role of trying to figure out how we can help surface, activate and coordinate social capital? So those are some of the things that we still have yet to figure out. And Project PACT, I think, is really on that path to help the police profession, the criminal justice profession and communities across this country find a better way of how to coexist in this anomalous relationship.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (31:09 – 33:54)
Okay, I’m going to go back to something you said. So it seems to me, being this academic, I’m hearing from both of you that relationships are missing. Relationships have, and Michael, I appreciate that you said there’s a lack of community.

The data is up on people living alone, people living away from important connections in their life. And that the result of that, and Kristen, maybe you can speak to that, the result is anxiety. What happens when somebody does not have social connections?

Both on the police side and the citizen side, the resident of a community, but not feeling like you have a community. The only person I know to call if I’m anxious, worried, concerned about somebody that’s outside my door, my window, is the police. And because there is a stranger out there and I don’t have a neighbor, I don’t have anybody around that I can call.

So I’m going to call the police. They’re going to come and fix it. And two things happened while you guys were talking.

Kristen, you talked about the narrative. And I want to discuss where that narrative is coming from. Is it a media narrative?

Is it a cultural narrative? Is it, we know there’s economic disadvantages and that plays out in how you have access to institutions and help when you need it. And then what do we do about this community?

We can talk about community, but how do we create community again? Because we’ve gotten very isolated. We all live on screens.

We, you know, we’re here on a screen together. But we know we have some in-person meetings happening soon and we’re excited to have that, that social connection. What does, how does that play out with law enforcement?

We actually have a reduction in violence, but people’s perception is that there’s more crime. There’s more danger out there. So I’m gonna, Kristen, why don’t you talk and then Mike chime in about this relationship issue.

[Kristin Daley] (33:55 – 36:55)
Sure. So, I mean, honestly, I think there’s a little bit of a cyclical thing happening. I don’t think it’s necessarily that we can place all of the responsibility on a media narrative.

I think there is a large cultural element to it, right? So I think that, you know, people need to feel supported and connected and, you know, like their needs are being met. And there is a bit of a cultural shift where people are out for themselves and not everyone.

And certainly there are people who are out there looking to make connection and looking to support those who need it. But I think, you know, one, we need more of that. Two, we need more of a culture of collaboration and working toward the good of the whole.

And I also think that, you know, there is an element, certainly, of looking at what’s in the media and feeling, you know, having very negative information constantly, you know, pumped at us. I definitely think that, you know, from my conversations with police officers, that has a negative impact. You know, I think when you’re constantly seeing in the media and reading about how you’re not doing a good job and no one in the public likes or respects you, clearly that has an impact.

Clearly that makes you feel like, well, nothing I do can be good enough. So there is an element of that. I wouldn’t say that the issues we’re looking at on a deeper level in terms of the community not feeling supported are 100% due to a media narrative.

I think that is more of a cultural thing. I also want to just re-emphasize Mike’s point that policy plays an enormous part in this. Policy in terms of, you know, federal and local laws and also policy in terms of department policy.

And that’s a big part of why, you know, community connection type of programs are wonderful and officers should be going out and pursuing that. But what New Blue aims to do with our fellowship and with, you know, the teams that we create between officers and community members or community organizations, we ask them to look specifically at policy and practice. We want the solutions that are being created to directly change policy and practice because, you know, that’s the systemic piece.

And a very good officer can be out there implementing laws that they don’t necessarily agree with or want to implement, but it’s their job. So we need to get to that root cause and change the way that the system works and the way that these rules are written. And that is going to, in turn, impact how the average officer is doing their job.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (36:56 – 37:00)
It has a relationship with the community. Good. Okay, Mike.

[Kristin Daley] (37:00 – 37:11)
I think building that relationship with the community is central to all of this. The community needs to collaborate on what these policies, what these best practices, what these rules look like.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (37:12 – 37:54)
Yep. Okay. And I know Mike’s got a lot on this, but I just want to remind people that there’s 19,495 communities, chartered communities in the United States.

And each of those has their own charter around policing and how the police department operates. And each police department develops their own set of policies. Some of those in combination with city management and city elected leaders.

And so I’m just going back to the intricacy of the laws. Okay, Mike, take off from there.

[Mike Butler] (37:54 – 40:09)
Well, I don’t have much more to say. I think Kristen covered a lot of bases. I just want to say that I tend to think the current conversation drives us apart.

The current narrative kind of makes it feel more divisive and makes it feel more polarized. And so from my perspective, one of the best ways to establish a relationship that is transparent, trusting, authentic, and can sustain itself is by changing the nature of our conversations. And that’s what Project PACT is all about in terms of how do we change the conversation?

Between the police and the community. And how do we facilitate that happening becomes important. And so we have within Project PACT the capacity to instruct police departments and communities to be able to shift the conversations towards conversations that get us to a different kind of relationship.

And a relationship that where there is trust, where there is chosen accountability, a commitment and action. And so where people are working in partnership. And so those are the kinds of things we’re going to have to do.

I’m not going to say it begins and ends with conversations, but it’s pretty darn close in terms of the kinds of conversations we can have with each other, between the community and the police, between people of color and the police, wherever that might be. And so I’m just going to leave it at that. I’m a big believer in the kinds of conversations that we’re having.

But I will also say that I think it’s somewhat of the police’s responsibility to begin that shift in the conversation. And to begin that kind of migration more from the patriarchal role that the police have been playing in our communities to more of a partnership role. What do those conversations look like in terms of building something different?

So I’ll leave it at that.

[Kristin Daley] (40:09 – 40:17)
100%. We need to acknowledge the power dynamics and level the playing field for those conversations to happen authentically.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (40:18 – 40:36)
So if I’m a citizen and I have an issue with the way police are behaving in my community and I go to the police department, what are the chances that anyone will sit down and talk with me?

[Mike Butler] (40:39 – 42:50)
Well, depending on the size of your community, depending on the nature of the police departments that’s there, some larger communities with larger police departments have a plexiglass-like bureaucracy. And it’s hard to get through and it’s hard to get into. But if you’re persistent enough, typically you’ll find a way.

But there is, you know, call and say, I want to talk to my neighborhood police officer or I want to talk to the supervisor in charge or I want to talk to, if you want to say, I want to talk to the chief of police. Or if there’s an advocacy entity within your community, like we had advocacy groups within our community that people, that if they didn’t feel comfortable going to the police, could call these groups and the group themselves would become an ambassador for people in terms of connecting with the police. A lot of cities have those.

So there are ways of doing it. It may not always be easy. You may have to make more than one phone call.

But typically, now the question becomes then what happens when you finally find someone to talk to? What’s going to happen will depend on a lot of things, including the resources available to that person, their authority to make decisions, their desire to be resourceful for you at that moment in time. But it’ll also be dependent on how you come across as well.

And so another part of this is I’ve always encouraged people to galvanize a group of people, whether it’s your neighborhood or a few people in your neighborhood or wherever that might be. That typically has a little bit more leverage in terms of working with the police department than just one single voice. And so I’ll pass it off to Kirsten.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (42:50 – 42:52)
Again, relationships, right?

[Kristin Daley] (42:53 – 43:31)
And I think, you know, on the police department side, it comes down to, you know, leadership, encouraging their officers. You know, from my perspective and New Blue’s perspective, every police officer should be a community police officer. Every police officer should want to engage directly with the community and have those conversations.

So when you have leadership and all the way down to the patrol officer who are engaged in an agency that prioritizes actually having conversations with the community, I think that does change the dynamics a lot.

[Mike Butler] (43:32 – 44:13)
I couldn’t agree. I couldn’t agree more. And one of the things that I think is important with the profile of people that we’re hiring to be police officers is to find those people who want to be police officers, who are relationship centered, who find life and find energy in forming and sustaining relationships versus lone cowboys or lone cowgirls.

That’s something we’re going to talk about with Project PAC down the road in terms of what’s the profile of the people that we need to hire as police officers. And so that’s a big one. That’s a big one because those are the people who the community will see day in and day out.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (44:14 – 45:50)
So wrapping this up, you know, I’m hearing from both of you that there is an evolution happening. There is a shift happening, whether it’s just even the awareness of how law enforcement applies within each unit of government and how it works with the citizenry. And that there is, I think there are people now that the conversation is starting to open up instead of the blame game, instead of the pointing fingers, instead of the, I’m right and you’re wrong or you’re good and I’m bad and I’m good and you’re bad.

Instead of those polar opposites that we can have conversation about where to go in the future, about how to create police departments that are truly, you know, in relationship with community, but also, also strongly support community coming together, getting out of their own isolation, that this is a two-way street and has become part of an issue, whether it happened through the pandemic or however it came about, that there can be this whole new vision, this whole new sense of public safety together. So I just want to let people know, there is so much hope on the horizon for where we’re going with this.

[Mike Butler] (45:50 – 46:57)
But I still think we’re going to have to answer some questions as we move forward. And those questions kind of revolve around, do we bet on more laws and oversight or do we bank on building social capital and chosen accountability? Do we continue down a path of building more prisons, more apparatus in a larger criminal justice system or do we surface and activate the social capital that is so darn abundant in our communities?

Do we continue to marginalize and disenfranchise people with a dominant punitive approach or do we attend to their gifts and figure out how to bring them to the center? Or do we continue down that quick fix, one size fits all approach or do we commit ourselves to the hard work that’s necessary to heal our woundedness? And Project PACT is going to take the latter approach on each of those questions in terms of building social capacity, what’s going to be necessary to heal our woundedness, how do we bring the gifts of those who feel marginalized to the center and how do we create and help build social fabric and chosen accountability in our communities?

That’s what Project PACT will be doing to answer a lot of those questions.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (46:57 – 47:31)
Beautiful. And I think we are unique in how we are approaching this both from in all three organizations, so doing the training and the curriculum on the social emotional, effective communication, how to advance leadership into partnership and stewardship. New Blue into creating these new kind of policy, looking at how community and police are working together in specific departments.

And then LEAP at the really global level, LEAP is working around as an international association.

[Mike Butler] (47:32 – 48:03)
And the one thing I want to add to that, Carol, is the idea that we can help police departments and community shift and transcend the current culture that they might be stuck in at this point, that we have the training curriculum, the instruction and capacity to help people see how they can begin to really move away from the culture that they might be in, that might be considered more patriarchal into a one that’s more partnership oriented.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (48:03 – 49:13)
Yep, that’s for another episode because we have to get leadership being open and vulnerable to thinking a little bit broader to opening up to expanding to new ideas and relationships. I’m just going to come back to relationships. I’m the social science person.

I’m the neuroscience person. I can tell you social connection almost always heals what is broken, what is feeling very out of order. So I hope all of you will go to projectpact.org.

Please sign up for our newsletter. We’re excited about what’s happening. We are not all talk.

We are action, very action oriented in terms of helping with advising, helping with training, helping with all kinds of things, resources within your department or your community. I’m not going to say that again. I’ll never use that or word again.

Your department and your community. So thank you for listening today. Tune back in.

We’re excited to have these conversations and take them further.

[Mike Butler] (49:14 – 49:16)
Thanks, Carol. Thank you.