Replacing Band-Aids With Real Police Reform

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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Jennifer (narrator) 00:02
HOST, welcome to Beyond the band aids with Project pact, hosted by Dr Carol angle Enright, Kristin Daly and Chief Mike Butler, where we explore how police, public safety experts, city leaders and dedicated community members can work together to drive meaningful change.

Carol Engel-Enright 00:19
Welcome to be on the band aids, a podcast from Project pact. PACT means police and community together. I’m Carol. I’m here with Mike and Kristin, and we’re excited about this, this topic, we’re going to really kind of talk through the last five years of what’s happened with policing and how we look to the future in the world of policing and community together. And I just, I want to bring Kristin and Mike into the conversation and just talk about their history of having conversations around shifting the culture of policing. Many people say institutions cannot shift. They are set in stone and traditional and and and very they can’t be moved. They just have to be torn down. And we don’t believe that. We believe that mayors and city managers and police chiefs are all looking for ways to really bring in a new, fresh way of work and developing out trust and community safety and well beingness. So Mike, you know, we’ve talked about several times. We’ve talked about the last five years, but I think you go back further, 40 years and 40 over 40 years in law enforcement, and 26 years sitting in the chair as as a police chief and is retired. And you know you you saw the you came in with a fresh, new perspective and developed a new culture within your own department. But talk more about what’s happening in the nation and how we’ve, how we’ve how we’ve dealt with the last five years, when we get when there’s something that happens, and we all get this uproar, and things need to change, and things need to shift, and and then it taps back down. So maybe kind of walk through that culture.

Mike Butler 02:20
Thanks. And I think it’s a I think it’s a worthy topic. Every now and then, revisit a little bit of our history to kind of get a sense for either how far we’ve come or how far we have to go, and so, but I would take it back further than five years, initially, because I think the human cry in terms of shifting and changing cultures and police departments really became loud and magnified and amplified during in August of 2014 when Ferguson, Missouri occurred, whether you agree or disagree with how that was handled, that’s when the spotlight became brighter in terms of what was going on for Police and and then we saw the series of incidents that occurred in Cleveland, New York, Rochester, or other cities that around the country, that these things were videotaped and filmed and shocked in my in for me, personally shocked my conscience in terms of some of the things I saw police departments do. And I know I’m not alone amongst police practitioners in this nation in terms of what happened and how did it get to this point. And there was a hue and cry for we need to change the culture. I can’t tell you how many times I heard pundits or police professionals, practitioners and academicians as well, active and retired say we need to change the culture of our police departments and so and then all of a sudden, we got another big dose of of something that was that shocked our conscious and that’s what happened in Minneapolis with George Floyd again. You know, there’s been a there’s been some kind of there’s a difference of opinion in some minds in terms of what happened there, but I can tell you, good police officers all over this country were somewhat concerned about all of that in terms of what happened in Minneapolis with George Floyd. And so there again lies the sense of, Well, now what do we do? And so the amplification ratcheted up again in terms of we need to change our culture. We need to figure things out differently. And so what happened across the country, and we talked about this pre program, is we approach police departments, organizations in public safety and even in the criminal justice system, as a problem to be solved, as something through the lens of deficiencies that wasn’t working well, and it’s no there’s no doubt that things needed to change. There’s not an institution in this country, I don’t care what industry, realm or business we’re talking about, that doesn’t need to be shifted. In fact, you know, in our school, we talk about. About the repurposing of institutions, what? What does needs to happen in order for all of our institutions to become more service oriented, less egocentric and less more selfless in terms of how they respond to the human condition or to the or to the concerns we have, whether it’s business, banking, religion, education, government, beyond police, all those institutions need to take a strong look so. But we’re talking about police today and so and so. After George Floyd, another big you and car. But then things began to kind of kind of wane. Things became less. As you know, we heard words like defunding the police, repurposing the police and and there were all those kinds of comments and in terms of and some cities actually did some of that. Some cities actually, they found themselves behind the eight ball once they were doing that. But on the other hand, they they knee jerk, reacted in some of these things and so but again, I want to make the point that we responded to looking at all of our police officers and and the police profession and the institution of our criminal justice system in a very negative light, through that lens of, here’s what’s wrong. Here’s what we need to be afraid of, versus saying, hey, and here’s project Pax. Here’s our methodology, and that is what’s working well, what do we want to see more of? What would we like to see expanded? What’s good within that police department or in our policing profession? Well, how do we expand that so that when we expand those things, they naturally and evolutionarily kind of crowd out the things we don’t want to see. For those of us who have raised children, for those of us who have been around in terms of trying to restructure or recultural organizations, we know that that’s really the only way it’s going to work, and we have not yet tried that. We’re still in that vein where we saw states like Colorado, the state I live in, you know, knee jerk, react, and pass laws that became very punitive and very retributive in terms of, if a police officer or police department does this, they’re going to get punished. And so it was those things just didn’t work. And so here we are, five years later, and we’re kind of, we’ve, I can’t say we slid backwards, but we’ve kind of gone back to pre August of 2014 in my mind, in terms of what’s happening now. And we’re still seeing events. We’re still seeing videotapes and video film police officers doing things in our country that would, again, kind of are shocking in terms of, why is this happening? And so so I’m not saying there hasn’t been some progress made, but I think we reached a diminishing point of return with some of that, and now with the last election, and I’m not going to get political about this conservative liberal, but there has been even more a sense of of less urgency around shifting cultures within our police departments. By the way, I agree that we needed to shift our culture. I think Kristin did too. We needed to shift cultures, not only in our police departments, but as Project pact discusses, we want to shift those cultures in our communities. And what paradoxically, the police department’s up against is that it really can’t change itself until the community changes. And the community really can’t really change all that much until police departments change in terms of the sense of safety. And so we have to work through that paradox. We have to work through that conundrum. And therein lies what project PAC offers in terms of the instruction and the training around how to approach that paradox and how to move beyond the stuckness that we find our police department still in. Because, you know, most of the most of the responses by police departments, and that’s the name for this particular podcast, were band aids. They were band aids. They this body worn cameras. Let’s change our use of force policies or pursuit policies or or let’s add a program. But we became very programmatic, and we still got involved in this. Police departments were very much involved in this mix of commodifying the human condition and seeing these needs and creating programs to address those needs. Is very programmatic, very hierarchical, very patriarchal, very sense of we’re here to fix you and and and so and so. People bought it because we still have this very consumer like culture in our in our country, where we think we can buy safety, or we think we can we can purchase satisfaction or purchase parenting or purchase something that will make us better, versus doing the hard work that we have to do in order to get to another level, another place, and so and so we commodified that human condition. We with a would because of our consumer like mindset. And so we’re still very much there. We’re still very much in that mode of. Of how we see justice is a pound of flesh. We’re still very much in that mode of believing that if we pass laws or that if we stiffen penalties, that somehow these social health issues will get resolved, and those things just don’t work. And so we’re still there. We’re still stuck. But I also know I’m convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are police chiefs, city managers, mayors and communities that want something much deeper, much more, that has a lot more depth and a lot more comprehensiveness attached to it. We can’t stay shallow in our approaches. We can’t stay kind of minimally. Give this a minimal kind of of response. So anyway, we’re that’s where we’re at. That’s kind of where we’re at at this point and and so while we’ve made some minimal progress since August of 2014 the shifting of cultures has not happened in our police departments. It hasn’t happened in our communities. There’s still and we’re still hungry for that. Let’s not get let’s not get kind of taken in by the illusion that something is going to happen that’s better because there’s a new president, or because there’s a new way of saying things. Even the Department of Justice is saying no more consent decrees. We’ve talked about consent decrees. I have personally called them band aids myself because they never addressed the culture. But that’s just another example of backing off this sense of we need we need to make shifts. We need to make changes still in the institution of policing so that they can really act in authentic partnership with our communities and communities can begin to respond less unhealthily dependent and more interdependent in terms of how they are with each other and how they are with the police department. So I’m gonna leave it at

Carol Engel-Enright 11:51
that for now. Yeah, changing the mindset, and I’m gonna come back to you on some of the specifics around the legal and maybe how that affects culture. But Kristin, talk about what you’ve seen in the last five years. Well,

Kristin Daley 12:04
I want to first go back to what Mike said about culture change. Culture change is the key to transforming public safety. You can put a great policy in place, and without culture change, and without a real understanding of how that works. In practice, it’s not going to do anything, it’s not going to help, it’s going to be a band aid. Culture change is the most critical element of all of this. And I think Mike is absolutely right. All of these, these incidents, over the last you know, going back to 2014 we’ve seen them pop up, and we’ve seen the response and the reaction from the public, and then it’s kind of faded out, and we’ve gone back to the traditional way of doing things and the status quo, and it’s difficult to sustain that kind of momentum toward change, because it is we are so kind of bogged down by tradition, and I think in certain agencies, the leadership has made change, changing the culture, a real priority. And those are the agencies that do start to build a better relationship with their community, and the community is more receptive because they see the effort being put in and the change that’s happening, and I think we have to be really transparent about that process, and that it’s not easy, that it’s that culture change is difficult, and that it’s generational, and that’s something that Mike and I have talked a lot about. This isn’t an instant change. You put a policy in place and all of a sudden everything’s better. You have to be willing to put in the work. And I think the thing about what happened in 2020 with George Floyd is that it wasn’t the first time we saw something that horrible happen. It was just the most visible in terms of the entire country watching and protests happening everywhere. It was the most widespread, and it felt like a turning point, and then since then, we’ve seen things kind of go back to the way they were, and that’s frustrating. It’s frustrating for police who are truly dedicated to public service, it’s frustrating for community members who really were deeply invested in seeing things change, so I think we do have to really dig into the culture, and figuring out what is working well is a big part of that. But without being really committed to that long term change, we’re not going to see anything better come of

Carol Engel-Enright 14:44
it. Okay? So project pact is here for the long term. Let’s just say that we are here for and and both of you are talking about this two way street that happens. It can happen just from the police department, the Department of just. Cannot put in training that goes just to police. It has to happen with the community, with the community, and so the community itself has to go through a mindset shift. I and and I’m thinking about how technology changed everything for everyone you know George Floyd was was recorded and spread and and body cams are recorded and spread. And, you know, so, so we’re dealing with an age of technology, of and maybe that’s brought up a new level of transparency. Mike, you talked about Colorado shifted some of their their laws, and I think they put into place a liability issue that they could go after a patrol officer or policeman individually if they make a mistake. Is that true? Yeah,

Mike Butler 15:53
they did. They minimize the governmental immunity. And I’m not saying that that shouldn’t necessarily happen at some level. But they they the law they passed. I think it was in 2020, and I think it was actually Senate Bill 217, actually put in place some kind of punitive measures that a police officer of our police department did these things they could, they’re more likely to be sued, or they’re more likely to use their the protections that they’ve had in the past, even if they did something in good faith, or they couldn’t get hired somewhere else if they made a mistake in good faith, or something along those lines. And so all of those things happened in 2020, shortly after George Floyd, and you know, the state, the legislature and the governor saw that as a positive. I didn’t, and I saw it as it’s just negative. And so the point I want to make here is, you know, the again, we think passing laws is going to serve as an insurance policy. In this case, it’s going to protect us from the human condition. It really won’t. It didn’t, and it won’t. And we need to go deeper with a lot of this, and that deeper means we move upstream and get away from just addressing the symptoms of things, and what these laws address were symptoms they didn’t address. How do police departments shift and change cultures in a way that we were talking about here, in terms of how we can bring about that kind of partnership, that kind of vulnerability, that transparency, that sense that there’s a level playing field, that sense that everyone’s responsible for safety, not just the police, and that gets into the whole and in the General Assembly in Colorado, never addressed the community’s responsibility. It only addressed police responsibility. It didn’t address anything going on in our communities and and so we keep on missing that point. We keep on saying that as it’s the institution’s responsibility, and that gets into that whole mode of dependency that gets in that whole mode of someone else, the the experts are responsible, the system providers are the ones that make things happen. You know, leaders are the cause and everybody else is the effect, kind of mindset and and so and so, that level of commitment, accountability and action we need from the community has yet to be addressed. And in that in this 10 or 11 year period, I heard very few comments from 2014 to 2025 with this podcast is being made in July of 2025 about anything about community responsibility. What are the rights and responsibilities of community we talk a lot about rights, but we don’t talk a lot about responsibilities. What are the rights? What are the rights and responsibilities of citizens? That is a huge, huge piece that’s going to have to shift and change so that community realizes that safety is as much their responsibility as a lot of other things are. Again, this consumer like culture we have kind of pushes that aside, that we can purchase our satisfaction, we can purchase our parenting, we can purchase our safety, we can purchase all these things that that and so how do we move from consumer to citizen? Is going to become a big part of the transition that has to be made. And I can sit here and without, without, with a straight face, and virtually guarantee that if citizens reclaim their citizenship, or just claim their citizenship to the level that we’re talking about, that that would automatically change the relationship they have with their police departments, and that strength that they would have, that sense of I have power to do things in my neighborhood, in my community, that I didn’t know I could do, would automatically change so many different things In terms of what’s happening, and so as we address laws and institutions and and police departments, that’s fine. We need to do that and project pact is all about that, in terms of shifting and changing at a deep level, cultures within police departments. But the thing that has to change even more so are the cultures of our communities in terms. Terms of that sense of being very unhealthily dependent on government services and police in a way that that just kind of puts a stranglehold on their sense of empowerment, their sense of their being able to be the authors of their experience and their destiny. Yeah,

Carol Engel-Enright 20:18
and I just want to say, you know, from from the from the brain, from the metacognitive point of view, I wanted to point out that statute that was passed by Colorado because imagine being a police person and in your work and having that fear of being, you know, held personally liable. You could lose your home, you could lose all kinds of things if you make a mistake. And I think any culture where there is this fear laden, you know kind of you’re going to make a mistake and you’re going to pay is not healthy. It’s not healthy for the community. It’s not healthy for the police department. It’s not healthy for the brain. It’s not healthy for a neighborhood. It’s just It triggers all of those things that can can lead to mistrust Well,

Mike Butler 21:10
and that’s why a lot of police officers one of the reasons why a lot of police officers left the profession and the police profession became less attractive to people looking for a career in their lives, whether you’re 30, in your 40s, 30s or 20s. And so we’ve seen the results of that kind of coming down hard on up on the police profession, play out in terms of their inability to recruit, their inability to retain. And so a lot of things have happened in that arena, too. In terms of, I can tell you, when I was working the role of public safety chief, we expanded the attributes and characteristics and qualities we wanted to see in our police officers, and we didn’t, we didn’t minimize those. In fact, because we were a profession at that point that was being was very attractive to people looking for a career or something that they could do to make a difference in their communities or the world. So right now, it’s that doesn’t exist as much and and so and so. There’s lots of choices too for people to make in terms of their careers. What can we do? And we talked about this in a previous podcast, what can we do as a police profession to make ourselves more attractive to people looking for a career, or maybe changing careers midstream in 20s and 30s, we hired a lot of people who are social work, youth ministers, people who were teachers, people were doing other things, other professionals from other environments, because we were that kind of organization that said we can make a difference in our community, and here’s how that looks.

Carol Engel-Enright 22:53
You knew they had that maturity and that that sense of civic responsibility. And I want to talk about this pattern that we’ve seen tragedy and then reform talk, and then the police retreat, and then it repeats with the next tragedy. And so how do we move beyond this pattern, this theme of and we think it’s through our training, through our facilitating, through conversation, new conversations, Mike and I are having bi weekly conversations with our community around a number of topics, and they’re it’s beautiful to watch conversations people come together who might have been polarized and might have been kind of in their tribes and and now they’re starting to interact and discover so

Mike Butler 23:48
we could go down, yeah, we can. We could take a look at a relationship, a simple relationship between two people. Can be two men, friends, whatever, to a woman and a man friends or intimate relationship, and if there’s a power imbalance, and if one feels much more dependent, or one feels a sense of powerlessness, and the other feels that sense of powerfulness, that relationship is not healthy. And if we want to get beyond these kinds of cycles that we’re in, these these stalemate like cycles that we’re in, we’re going to have to enhance that sense of power in the community, that sense of going from that under dependency to that interdependency, much like what we see in healthy relationships, where two people are operating off the sub same level Playing Field. And when that happens, relationships are healthier. And so that relationship that exists between the police and the community they serve has to kind of go through that same metamorphosis, and we have not yet even gotten close to doing that. And so one has all the power in terms of, here’s, here’s what we can do. And here one thinks that. They don’t have the power, and they defer to the people that have the power. And so when you see those kinds of relationships, whether they’re two people or between entities like the police and the community, what’s going to happen? Unhealthiness is going to happen. These cycles are going to repeat. We’re going to continue to see the tragedies where we’re going to continue to see the ebbs and flows of that sense of what’s not working well, and so that that sense of being having the same level of of choice and the same level of knowledge, the same level of capacity to kind of bring about safety, is where this needs to go. Like, we can’t emphasize that enough,

Kristin Daley 25:38
yeah, community members need to be equal stakeholders in the conversation around public safety. So

Carol Engel-Enright 25:44
and Kristin talk, talk more to that. How do you you know so many people, so many citizens are have been told, just call 911, you know, just report the emergency. They don’t think they have agency. They don’t think they have permission. They have lost touch with neighbors and their neighborhood. They they don’t even know, you know, we’re talking about a new generation that has lived on and on their phones, and they don’t know how to have a conversation with somebody, much less a difficult conversation. So So talk more about, you know, how the community becomes a stakeholder in in as an individual, as nonprofit groups, or, you know what, however those however we’re doing it, versus showing up at a protest and saying, defund the police?

Kristin Daley 26:39
Sure, I think part of it is exactly what you’re saying, getting involved in local nonprofits or programs in your community, getting more active about interacting with your neighborhood. I think it’s also partially on on the police department and city management and others to create space for those initial conversations. And Mike was talking about the power dynamics in a relationship, and that’s exactly what it is. I think a lot of community members don’t feel that they have the agency or the ability to get out there and be more involved in what public safety looks like, because they see the police as the authority or as more powerful than they are, and I think we need to level that and have honest conversations about everyone’s needs. And the police are stakeholders in public safety and in the health of the community, just like the average community member is police are invested in the community, and so are people who aren’t within the police department, and we need to make that really clear. Make it an open conversation about what those initial needs are and what the plan is going forward, to keep lines of communication open, to create interaction that builds trust, to create programs that create better community safety. All of that starts with communication.

Carol Engel-Enright 28:06
Yeah, so being in alignment, that the citizens are in alignment with the police and the purpose

Kristin Daley 28:13
everyone needs to get on the same page. And that might look really different initially, but there is a point where you maybe you compromise a little bit of what the ideal looks like for you, but we find a solution that is greater for the whole

Carol Engel-Enright 28:29
Yeah, I was, as I was going through my notes in this morning, I had this vision of a tug of war. You remember when you were all kids, and you got on the rope and you had one team here, and you had another team here, and you just kept pulling against each other. And I just I thought, boy, that’s what it’s felt like with police and community safety and trust. We’re gonna pull this way. Oh no, we’re pulling this way. But what if we all were pulling the same direction? What would happen?

Kristin Daley 28:58
And nobody wins like that. That goes back to that pattern that you mentioned, of tragedy and reform and you know it, and go back to the status quo,

Carol Engel-Enright 29:07
retreat, repeat, yeah, yeah.

Mike Butler 29:11
So let’s just put this in context of if that’s the state of policing, and the state of policing is very much tied to state of community. And we want to make that point really clear, that that’s where this is. That’s where this needs to go if we’re going to move beyond, if we’re going to transcend, transform, and do something that kind of is timeless, we’re going to have to our communities have to become healthier. They have to become less dependent. They have to own the power that they have, and there’s ways of doing that, through conversations. And again, I will come back and say, because we did it in our community of 100,000 people, that there are ways of police departments sitting because they sit in that cat bird seat. They’re in the community 24 Seven, 365, our neighborhoods, they know everybody more so than anybody else in municipal government, state government, definitely, federal government, because they have this still very legitimate platform, because people, for the most part, really want the police to be successful and effective, and so they want that, and we need that, but that the police can play this role and project pack makes the case that the police, our police departments, can be that fulcrum, that leverage point, that can bring about us a level of healthiness in our communities that needs to happen so that that power imbalance is dissipates or is eliminated, and so and so. There are ways of police departments, if they can change their cultures and get start working in partnership internally, that our police officers working in this departments are going to see. Here’s what a partnerships look like. Here’s what that pairs how that plays out, and can begin to mirror that in the community, and then have the kinds of discussions that can elicit that level of accountability, that commitment and action. And so a lot of police departments, a lot of government folks, will tell you today, even today, that in July of 2025, that bringing in the community is messy. Of course it is, but we have to, we have to figure out how to kind of orchestrate and work with that messiness. And so people in relationships can be messy, great, but this is, this is our relationship. Let’s make it work. And so all those things have to play out in ways that that the community can find its strength and operate from that level playing field.

Carol Engel-Enright 31:39
I love that comparison. I think, I think raising children is messy, very messy, and then they become adults, they mature, and they accept responsibility, and they become really beautiful people. And I just kind of want to frame that around how this, you know, the community, is acting as children in regards to police and

Mike Butler 32:00
well, their child, they don’t want to be but, but it’s at some level, this patriarchal mindset kind of keeps them there. And you said it earlier, people don’t want to give the community permission to act on its own, to take what matters into their own hands. They’re afraid to do that because there’s this loss of power, because we are so needs based in our own systems and institutions, that we that our own lifestyle sometimes are based on the needs of others, and because that those needs exist, we kind of encourage those professionals and those experts to kind of take care of us. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard we could solve our problems in our community if they just had I’m talking to people in government, if we just had more of me, so to speak, in terms of more more more resources, more government, more sense of because we know the needs, we know the problems, we know the solutions. I went to school and I learned about how I’ll do all these things, and so we don’t need the community’s involvement. Just let us take care of it. That’s the mindset that needs to go away, and we need to start opening it up so that people feel comfortable in saying, I can, I can play a part in being a citizen and Reclaiming my own citizenship in ways where I can make my neighborhood stronger. I can make my community stronger. I can help deal with health and social issues in this community that I have never been able to do before. People have gifts. We just they just don’t know it. They and helping people understand what those gifts are, helping them leverage those gifts, and then creating a place for them to be involved in all of this, we have to start. And so that’s what hasn’t very little of that has happened. And even as I look at sometimes the more progressive police departments in this country, or the more sometimes the National Police Organizations that three of them that I’m a part of, they still haven’t caught on to that idea, yet that community is the secret sauce here. The strengthening of community is where this is going to happen, and that strengthening can happen through our police departments. I’m not saying other entities and municipal government can help, but they’re not. They’re not in the community. 24/7, 365, many of those government departments are eight to five, Monday through Friday and so and so. It’s like, how do we how do we do that? How do we move forward? I’m just again, we’re going to say, if you want to know a little bit more about if you if you’re interested, or you want to, if this is piques your interest at all, curiosity, give us a call. Project, pack.org, where, that’s where our contact information is at. Let us have a conversation with you, and you can shut us down and say no to us, or you can say, I’d like to know more. Yeah,

Carol Engel-Enright 34:49
it’s free. It’s a free conversation, and I guarantee you it will be a transforming conversation. I, you know, I just, I thought the world has said. Well, we just need to hire more social workers and for the police department. And I think, oh no, maybe the neighbor needs to walk next door and and just knock on the door and being that caring person in a neighborhood and, and yet, I do want to get to this other side and kind of talk about the goodness that is in policing and what is expanding, because we are seeing some reduction in we’re seeing reductions in violent crime. We’re seeing some reduction in property crimes. And not to say that that may not ebb and flow and come back. But do you think that we’re moving to a place where people are becoming a little more responsible to their to their communities, to their civic mindedness? Yeah,

Mike Butler 35:56
the social scientists, we don’t know yet, and because these things are so short lived and so temporary. And they have been short lived and temporary throughout history in terms of these ebbs and flows of crime, trends and so and by the way, what I hear is sometimes where there’s a city that hears their magic, and their magic caused the crime to go down, and another city kind of describes another kind of magic, and completely different than that other city, their crime has gone down. And so there’s something country wide that may be happening. And I always have hope that there’s a trend attached to this, and that it’s not short lived. But my own history says these things tend to be short lived, and so and so there may be another repeat thing here going on. I’ve been through these ebbs and flows of crime reduction and crime increases, and I never get too high or too low, depending on what what direction it’s going. But I have hope that maybe, maybe this is the one. Maybe this is the one where we begin to see less and less of something. And I will also say those that kind of thinking matches the trajectory and trend lines that that people like Steven Pinker have talked about in enlightenment now and other people have talked about in terms of trajectories, of what was happening in society, in terms of societies becoming safer, you know, more literate, less hunger, a greater longevity, fewer accidents, etc. And so we’re moving in that direction over the long term, over the over the decades and centuries. But is this? Is this current drop in crime that we’re seeing all over the country? Is it going to stay with us? It’s going to get better? Is it even going to drop less. We don’t know yet. These are five to 10 year cycles that have to happen. And I have not ever seen a five or 10 year cycle and drop in crime, or maybe five years, but 10 years not as likely. So we’ll have to see, we’ll have to see where this goes. But I have my fingers crossed that there’s something emerging in terms of evolution. That’s another thing we talk about in our in our instruction, is how to become a partner with evolution, so that you can begin to see these trajectories and these these momentum, the momentum and inertia of how do you attach yourself to that? So you can begin to see more easily, these windows of opportunity to accelerate the ball down that evolutionary track if you’re, if you’re, if you’re in a high leverage position in an organization. And so those things can happen. And we teach people what that looks like, and how to how to find those windows too. So

Carol Engel-Enright 38:35
yeah, I just Kristin, do you have any closing thoughts on on changing culture and paradigm shifts. Not a big topic at all, but

Kristin Daley 38:44
Well, I think the vision of this shared sense of public safety and these healthy communities, it happens when the community, the entire community, moves from being consumers to being collaborators, and I think more and more police agencies and cities are beginning to see that and to, you know, make sure that the public has a voice in what’s happening. And I think culture change, we have to be patient and steadfast and keep it moving forward. I think that’s we have to recognize that it is not an immediate fix. It’s a long term process.

Carol Engel-Enright 39:27
Yep, and I love to talk about, you know, the training that’s involved with Project pack really works on self leadership, civic responsibility, commitment, action, accountability, and then really into the service mindedness of servant leadership, and, and, and I will just say, from that point of view, every person that can kind of move into that move, shift into that culture that can, that can become that person that that works. With the public, that that weaves the public together in the social fabric of a beautiful, safe and healthy community, has a great satisfaction. That is a profession we that we should all take on. Mike, any last words

Mike Butler 40:18
we’ve covered all the bases. I have hope, and I just want to say, yeah, one last word is this sense of police idealism that sometimes gets kind of back shelved for us, but it is a form of social capital, and it is something we need to leverage, because a lot of our new police officers, younger and older, new police officers, have the sense that they want to make a difference in our communities. And I think it’s important for us to recognize that that idealism is a form of social capital that needs to be identified, sustained and expanded. As police officers go through their careers, they shouldn’t get more cynical or less helpful or more begrudging towards the community, or not begin to dislike the community, it should go the opposite way, and that should expand. And you’re going to know when your culture is healthy, when that happens. That’s one of the earmarks. It’s one of the benchmarks, is you got a 1015, 20 year officer who’s saying, I love what I’m doing because it’s making a difference in the community. I love what’s going on here, because I’m seeing I’m in partnership with this community in ways, and we’re making things happen in terms of bringing about safety or helping maybe a wayward teenager find a different path, or whatever that might be. Those are the things that after 1015, 20 years police officers should be thinking about and saying in terms of, that’s why this is such a great career, instead of counting the days till they can retire.

Carol Engel-Enright 41:50
Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. And I just want to say project pack. If you go to Project pack.org, we’ve kicked off our ambassador program. If you’re a police in any level. And you believe kind of in this movement, in what we’re trying to do and to bring about the benefits and the partnership between police and community together, you know, and you want to be an ambassador for us. Fill out the information, send that to us. We’re looking for people who are forward thinking, who are shaping their own community and out and working with community. You might be a community leader. You’ll see on on the Ambassador Page that we have judges and people working in restorative training and and all kinds of things. We intend to make this also an expansion of what is good in every community, every state, every nation.

Mike Butler 42:50
I actually wanted to say too, if you’re just a citizen and you want to be an ambassador, give us a call or fill out the form. I don’t care. You can call me, or you can email me or care or me or Kristin, that’s fine, but I don’t care if you think you want to support what project pact is about in terms of developing healthy communities and shifting and changing cultures and police and community. If that’s what you want to support, you can become an ambassador, and we’ll be happy to accommodate that. We’ll put your picture online. Maybe that’s not something you want, but we’ll talk a little bit about you and and go from there, because we do need that kind of support. We want people to know that there, this is a rallying movement towards something that’s transformative, not temporary, not seasonal, but that’s long lasting and sustainable. So

Carol Engel-Enright 43:43
thank you, Mike and Kristin and thank you all for listening. If you would give us a review, we’d appreciate that that moves us a little further down the road as we as we take on this, this beautiful project, this long lasting, really shift in in thoughtfulness and caring for others and really establishing safe communities that belong to everyone. So thank you for tuning in, and that’s another one, beyond the band aids.

Jennifer (narrator) 44:20
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@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 new blue 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. You.