Rethinking Justice: Alternatives to Police Citations and Arrests

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

LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
Contact Us

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.

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts
Subscribe via Spotify
Subscribe via YouTube

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

Jennifer (narrator) 00:02
Carol, welcome to Beyond the band aids, with Project pact, hosted by Dr Carol Engel 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 your podcast on, you know, a conversation about the future of policing and how we can bring all communities to public safety. What are we going to do in the future? I’m Carol. I’m here with Mike and Kristin, and we’re excited to have this as a part two to what we started last in the last episode, which was called Beyond arrest and citations. Now, there’s a lot of news happening around police forces and and, you know, a lot of conversation going on around, why do why? What has happened with policing? Why aren’t they just enforcing the laws and arresting all these people that are causing turmoil in our community and and we have to kind of go right to the point of, are the police responsible for fixing the social issues of our community? And so today, we’re going to kind of question Mike about what happened when he came to Longmont in 1993 It was a time Longmont had lived through some really rough stages with their police force, and he was coming from Boulder, Colorado and and yet was into a mindset that was a little different for the traditional command and control. Everyone do the same, zero tolerance. It’s black and white. We’re traditional. And so we’re going to explore today some of the alternatives. And this is, this is not meant to be this is the right thing. Every Mike will say every community is individualistic in their needs and how they deal with their community and their people in their community. So Mike, I just want to, like start in when you came, what did you find, and and what did you know? Well, what did you do as a first step? And I, I’m going to say, Be begin with the end in mind. And when we end this podcast, we’re going to ask all the policemen listening, and the police chiefs and the deputy chiefs and city managers to say, what is one thing I can maybe pilot tomorrow. So when you started think of that, what was the one thing that you could Well,

Mike Butler 02:50
I can, but I’m not sure I’ll get to that point where one thing you can pilot tomorrow, because this is a sequential timing pace thing. It’s not so much. Here’s what I and so we can talk about first steps and what those look like. But on their hand, what I discovered when I came to Longmont was just as you said, Carol, and that is a very traditional police department that was kind of immersed and kind of dug in on custom and tradition and believing that enforcement was the only way to move forward and so and then the only tool that they had, the only really big tool they had, was enforcement. There were few, if any, part and really solid partnerships in the community. There were no alternatives to enforcement or the criminal justice system. And by the way, this all kind of goes back to what we talked about before, and that is the definition of justice, thinking that the retribution form of justice was the only form of justice that could exist, and that just didn’t exist in the police department. We also discovered that in our community, and so people wanted justice, that pound of flesh, that eye for an eye kind of thinking, and that was the level of justice that we had, a rather primitive form of how we thought about what we could do to bring justice, a different justice, to this community. And as you said, long minded experienced some a tragedy a few years before I got there that was still very much a big time residual when I landed, and that was the killing of two Hispanic boys by a white police officer and and which really tore this community, our community of Longmont, Colorado, apart. This was before, long before, of course, Ferguson and all the other cities that were high profile, certainly Minneapolis and George Floyd, but it was significantly worse, and in some cases, because of the way the situation went down. And so this community was really close to being burned to the ground, and it was a lot of mistrust going on between police and the community. And the police were very faceless. They were very they were not a person. Noble kind of organization in the in the community, they had circled the wagons, had become very defensive in terms of their approach to how they were with the community, and especially with the media and and so there was all these factors and all these kinds of residual all these residuals were still there, and we were deep into those and so I will just say the first thing I did was to acknowledge that, to acknowledge the and honor the past, and honor and recognize that the past existed there. And for everybody, there was still a tremendous amount of pain in the community, and a tremendous amount of pain internally, and people didn’t know how to transcend that pain. They didn’t know how to move beyond the hurt they and they didn’t know how to move beyond the trauma of what was there. And so that became a big challenge. And so depending on where you’re at in your organization, and by the way, police departments more than any other municipal department and anywhere in this country, will most likely experience those kinds of of dynamics more so than anybody else, simply because of the nature of the work that that’s there and the sense that the police are responsible for our safety, this kind of patriarchal kind of way of seeing the police and seeing that they’re the ones who are responsible for the safety of everybody. And I heard often, you know, I pay your taxes, I pay my taxes, I pay your salary and and so you’re responsible for my safety. And that sense of unhealthy dependency on police was alive and well in Longmont and so and so. The first steps became the sense of understanding, listening, acknowledging, recognizing, honoring that where people were at and and really accepting that that’s what was there. And then, as we move forward, though, we shifted the nature of our conversations. And I will say that that was a big part of where we had to go is, how do we shift the nature of the conversations we’re having from one of being stuck in the mire of misery, trauma and pain, to one of, how can we become healthy again, or maybe for the first time, how can we begin to reclaim ourselves In a way that we’re not necessarily disempowered by the past, and that we can kind of move forward and create a different future than the one that existed, a different future that has that aliveness and being of the kind of future we want to live into, versus being stuck where we’re at, and that’s where a lot of police departments are today. They’re stuck and and even you know, here we are. This is the day after our president, President Trump, declared that they’re going to federalize the Washington DC Police Department. We’re still very much stuck in the mode of, well, if we’re going to fix Washington, our nation’s capitals, social health issues, including homelessness and the squalor that President Trump talked about, we’re going to have to add more systems, people, more professionals, more police. It’s still kind of the kind of the harkening back to the same old model, the same way that we used to do things, in terms of, we’re going to fix these problems with more enforcement. We’re going to fix these problems with more kind of more the hammer, so to speak, more criminal justice system and force and command and control. And so we’re still very much there and and so, and we don’t necessarily, we’re not having those conversations that we need to have about what is the responsibility of those people who live in Washington, DC and who reside in Washington, DC, and the neighborhoods that are there, the communities that are there, the businesses that are there, the nonprofits that are there, the police department that’s there, what can what can they do differently that they’re not doing now? And so we had to approach this back in the mid 90s, and frankly, in Longmont, because that’s kind of where we were, with a tremendous amount of pain. We didn’t have a federal force saying we’re going to kind of land on you and do your jobs for you, or try to figure out how to partner with you. But, you know, but at the same time, we had to move forward. And so the initial step for us in terms of moving forward. Maybe the second step was changing the nature of our conversations and changing and maybe having more conversations, not so much about the past or the present, about but what the future could look like.

Carol Engel-Enright 09:33
And just to remind the listeners, the demographics of Longmont at the time were the percentage, of what? Percentages of?

Mike Butler 09:43
Yeah, so it’s so Longmont is, is a very diverse community, and very heavily populated by people who are Hispanic, Latino, people from Latin American countries and and I’m not going to get into this. We’re not going to get into this on this particular. Podcast, but it became a destination point for a number of folks who were not documented. And so we had a lot of just Spanish speaking, monolingual only, people with very, very deep, rooted cultural kinds of backgrounds from other countries and and, and basically, kind of hiding in our community is kind of existing in the shadows, if you will, and afraid to kind of be, kind of in the community itself. And so, so there were, there was a lot of that, and there was quite a bit of on the east side of on the east side of the tracks, east side of town was, was the cultural kind of, that kind of cultural milieu existed, and there was a big divide. And so there was also a tremendous, not tremendous, but there was a considerable amount of racism going on in our community between the dominant culture of white and by the way, that was like a 30 to 35% population of Hispanics and Latinos. And so there was all of that going on as well. And so we had the we had the despair aspects of, you know, the kind of the symptoms of what disparate impacts can have. They were alive and well too, and just in our community,

Kristin Daley 11:23
Mike, you talked about initially recognizing the pain and the trauma on both sides and acknowledging it. I’m wondering, and I think probably a lot of police leaders and community members out there are wondering, what was the initial reaction from the people you were having these conversations with. What were some of the, you know, roadblocks that you had to get past and and how did you What were the kind of some of the most effective conversation points in opening people up to a different way of doing things?

Mike Butler 11:55
Yeah, thanks for that, Kristin. And so my role was not just to be transparent, but to also be somewhat vulnerable and to acknowledge that I wasn’t here. I wasn’t here as a police officer. I lived in this community when those things happened, but I worked in another community, as Carol said, Boulder, but to be vulnerable to that and to kind of let them see that they could say and they were safe to say anything they wanted to say, initially in terms of what they what they wanted to impart to this new police chief me in our community, and to really take an active listening, empathetic approach and to utilize my own skills and emotional intelligence, social intelligence, in terms of what it was and to be in their shoes and to be and to listen to their to their listen to their stories and their experiences. And so I just kept asking questions and and, and I didn’t give answers, nor do I give solutions, nor did I try to say, well, this is what we’re going to do, but just ask questions of them so that they felt like I was and knew that I was really listening and that I was there and that I was empathetically in trying to be in the same space they were in. And so the questions were along the lines of, tell me more. What did that look like? What did that feel like? What was the response of others? And so in getting them to kind of go as deep as they could with their own pain, in terms of being able to express what it was like for them, and then and then allow that conversation and further conversations to kind of unfold that way, and so that I just didn’t come here as the person on a white horse trying to say, here’s how we’re going to solve all of this, and here’s your role, but to say that, and here’s my role, and we’re going to, I’m going to make it all right for you, but to just really create that, that kind of sense of safety, that sense that that people were listening, and that this was going to be different in terms of how we move forward and and then I didn’t invite people in those initial conversations. All I did was listen. All I did was to become vulnerable, in some case, shared their tears, because there were some deep, deep kinds of things going on for people that they that personal experiences they had, and that just wasn’t from, by the way, the community, that was also from our officers, our staff, not just dispatchers and others within the organization, that they felt like I could listen and so and for me, that took, that took that was a it was not something that was difficult, because that’s just naturally kind of where I’m at and how I am with people. But on their hand, it was something that I had to hang in there with for a long period of time, several months, in terms of listening to this, it wasn’t something that okay, I listened to you once, and we’re done and we’re. Were going to move on. It was this pain was going to be around for a while, and we had to honor and acknowledge that pain, whether it was received real or whatever it was, it had to be, it had to be acknowledged as being valid and being a part of where people were coming from and so and so. Initially, this was all about creating relationships, where people could talk to one another in ways that we hadn’t talked before. And so that was, that was where I came from, and still very much there, by the way, and still very much. That’s what project pack is about, in terms of how we are with people and so and so that’s so, I don’t know if I answered all your questions. It seemed like a three parter there. Kristin, if I missed something, let me know.

Kristin Daley 15:46
No, you answered it perfectly. I don’t think we could ever overstate the importance of leadership, knowing how to listen and how to create spaces that are safe for people to voice their their concerns and their problems and their fears, you

Mike Butler 16:00
know. And that seems like a modern day kind of of strategy, so to speak. But this really comes from believing in people, a sense that people have a lot to offer, a sense that people have this almost unlimited capacity in the sense that everyone’s voice counts and their thoughts matter. I have some chills right now going for him, because I go back to those conversations, and I just remember the pain. I remember the sense that people felt. And sometimes they came in groups, sometimes they came one on one, sometimes I got invited to certain organizations to kind of listen. And so that’s all I did and for and that took several months, by the way, because of the nature of the tragedy and the things that had happened and in the isms that existed in our midst, not only in the community, but in our department. And there’s not a police chief or a police officer doesn’t know what I’m talking about. They know that, and police departments more than anybody deal with the pain of a community, the woundedness in a community, more so than anybody, and that’s why the shifting of and transcending of culture within a police department from the sense of being patriarchal and we’re responsible to one that is really in partnership with the community, and what that partnership looks Like becomes so critically important for us to move forward. Yeah,

Kristin Daley 17:23
and it’s impossible to build trust when you don’t feel heard. And that goes internally within the department and externally into the community as well.

Carol Engel-Enright 17:31
You talk, Mike about the heart of a community, and as you were talking, I had the heart and the soul that the community is it’s so often left out of the equation, and yet, the community is where safety and the the sense of belonging happens. Um, sometimes, sometimes police officers don’t even live within the community, and they’re coming in and performing these tasks. I, you know, I’m, I’m kind of taken with the academic struggle between task related or transactional things versus transpersonal. And how, how do you make it personal? And I just want to go to the school teacher part of your first days in office for other chiefs out there you, I’m sure you had a lot of other duties. You know, most people would say, Well, I don’t have time, you know, I have all these other things I have to do. So how do I make time for deep listening, deep, active, engaged listening and and this, this power of making connections, social connections within that are real.

Mike Butler 18:45
So let me just say that that was by far the most important thing I could do. And what I made time for was those opportunities to listen. In fact, I will tell you, in the first maybe six to nine months, I met with every single person in public safety four different times. I made it a point to have a series of meetings in small groups, three to four to five people, in which there the intimacy and personalness could kind of come to the forefront and so and so, maybe what somebody couldn’t say the first time, they might be more likely to say the second, third or fourth time. And so we got deep into these things, and by the fourth time, there was this sense of, you know, where our voice counts, our thoughts do matter. I mean, it wasn’t just he just didn’t have one opportunity to meet with me. It’s just that he chose to meet with me four different times and and I had a series of questions lined up each and every time to kind of evolve the conversation along, if you will, from necessarily just dwelling on what happened. Been in the past to what’s going on today, and was there any room to have a conversation about what the what, what you think the future could look like? And so, and those conversations got exciting initially, and so, so I I don’t want to miss, I don’t want to I don’t want to shortchange the conversations around the past, because those came up for years, by the way, and sometimes even in those four conversations, people didn’t say everything they needed to say. And I could tell being in the room with people that they were, they were still cautious and and reserved and had doubt about whether or not I was, who I was, who I said I was, and so and I had to make room for people’s doubts and reservations and and and their in their sense of caution and fear, so to speak, because it was real. But we couldn’t operate in that environment in terms of moving forward as well. We had to figure out how we were going to move forward. And so I don’t want to call these therapeutic or psychological sessions, but in some ways, they’re quite emotional, quite psychological, quite in that vein, and and, and so people went deep often in those conversations. But therein lies in the depth of those conversations, the relationship changes, and therein lies the fertile soil, but how we’re going to move forward, and so that was important for me in terms of of getting to that point. And so that was where we were at.

Carol Engel-Enright 21:34
You use that term, fertile soil. I also hear you use it when we were in a series now of community conversations with our school statesmanship and and fertile soil, thinking about how a new seed is planted and how it can start to to grow, and then to bring the fruits and the Harvest of what it is, I think is really maybe an important value to think about in terms of thinking about how to deal with the human condition and and safety issues in in a city, in a town, as you work with different kinds of people, I Just I would like for you to talk about how you could move from black and white. This is the way we’re going to do it. This way we’ve always done it. This is the way we’ve thought about it. And now we’re going to think different. We’re going to enter into these new seeds of thought of how we work with people. And I, I know you took that connection point to now, now we have a criminal behavior or a social issue and and how do we start to think about that and keep enforcement still at the center of what we Do? Well, we

Mike Butler 23:00
it’s a larger, complex conversation, but that’s that’s the thrust of this podcast, and that is, what can we do more effectively to deal with the messiness of the human condition? And one thing I would encourage and we teach in our school, in our school, in our project pack school, is is that we we have to get out of this binary, like way of thinking, either or black or white, right or wrong, good or bad. Everything is full of continuum and spectrums. Everything has nuance attached to it. There’s gray everywhere. And while there are some absolutes, and I’m not going to minimize those, there’s a lot of that aspect too, and and people tend to grow along those continuums and those spectrums. They tend to kind of, they don’t necessarily want to stay where they’re at in their in the box that they might be in, but they need help, and they want help. And so we can get people to kind of, kind of move forward with that. But when it came to dealing with the social and health issues and woundedness for our community. We had to wait just a little bit in order to get to that point, but we just couldn’t start offering different alternatives to the criminal justice system. But eventually we did, and eventually we began to look at, well, what are we doing that’s working, or what are we doing that’s not working? And as I said, before we did a study where we looked at hundreds of people that we had arrested one year, and it turns out they had been arrested nine times prior to that one year. And these were all things like burglaries, car break ins, vandalism, things that officers go to, things that’s community experiences we almost become desensitized to. But it got to that point where we began to say, you know, we can’t, we can’t continue to do this, and like we talked about in our last, last podcast. So here’s what, we don’t want to continue doing this. And so what can we do that might be more effective? And so we began to experiment with other things, in terms of AI as we move forward, and went down. Road. And the idea of, you know about restorative principles, practice and justice, came into our midst, and we began to tiptoe into that we didn’t go full force into it, began to look at it, and began dealing with low hanging fruit, for instance, with that in terms of how we looked at kind of misdemeanors, kids and first time offenders and and then we began to slowly expand that to misdemeanors and felonies, adults and multiple offenders, and found that, and I’m just I’m short, cutting this conversation around restorative justice, but over 7500 cases that we referred to restore of justice, recidivism rates were less than 5% and victim satisfaction rates were high, and the community input into the outcomes of these kinds of circumstances was was significant. And so we began to kind of redefine what Justice meant in our community in terms of it just doesn’t have to be punitive, just doesn’t have to be enforcement. There are the things we can do, because ultimately, what we wanted to bring to our community was a higher sense of accountability, chosen accountability on the part of people in neighborhoods, people who had harmed others, people had committed crimes against others, hurt others, and and people who were maybe not a victim or a an offender, but people who could, who could contribute. And so we began to work slowly but surely in terms of raising that level of a sense of personal accountability and responsibility on the part of people in our community, and we began applying that aspect to everything that we were doing. And so this podcast, maybe we’ll need another one, but this podcast, I mean, what we’re what we’re talking about here, is all those things that we ended up doing with, with with our youth, with with folks who were struggling with our mental health, folks who were struggling with chemical substance addiction, folks who were unsheltered In our community, homeless, folks who were, you know, maybe, you know, made a bad decision one day, and so we began to say, hey, you know, maybe there’s multiple tools, multiple options, to kind of see how we can deal with the messiness of the human condition, our health and social issues. And at what point was this has passed a law. Let’s stiffen the penalty, let’s enforce it. Let’s fill the criminal justice system apparatus until it’s overwhelmed, and then we just keep on doing that and end up with those numbers that I talked about just a minute earlier wasn’t wasn’t going to work anymore. And so we began to see that there were different ways. And we found champions in our community. We found champions within our public safety department that were willing to consider different options in terms of as we move forward, we began to collect information and evidence and track those results. Interestingly enough, it didn’t make any difference what the criminal justice system was doing. It was going to plow ahead as this monstrosity, this expensive monstrosity that had little effect in terms of safety on our community, because of recidivism rates 50 to 70% it’s hard to argue that this criminal justice system in this community in this country works, and the same with Longmont. And so what can we do that’s different? And so we began having those conversations and began, and sooner or later, people became, began coming up with their own sense of, Well, this is what we can do differently, and this is what we can do, what we can do now, enforcement certainly a tool for us, and it became one that we continue to use, but we began to use it more judiciously, more refined and more refined way, and in a way that was kind of supported by our community, because we knew there were people in our community that constantly hurt other people, and we got good at recognizing who those people were. One of the things we’re not good at in this country is recognizing who those people are now the term psychopath and social path are terms we kind of somewhat use with identifying these people. But how who are those folks in our community, and if they are out there committing crimes, hurting other people, how do we make the case with our da our judges and our criminal justice system that these are the people that need to be removed from our community so that, guess what? Our community can be safer. It wasn’t. So it didn’t come from a necessarily a perspective of, we’re going to we’re going to just punish these people, even though that was an aspect that was a consequence. But the bigger, but the bigger purpose was, how do we keep our community safe? And so that became our goal, that became our essence, in terms of what can we do to help keep our community safe? When we began to share that purpose with neighborhoods and other parts of our community, the business community became very involved. Other nonprofits became very involved. There was a neighborhood group leaders association that became very involved. There were a lot of people that said, hey, I want to help. And so we. Got involved in this whole way of talking to the community, by inviting them to be more engaged in in helping people who are struggling with their mental health, or helping people who are struggling with addiction. Employers, many dozens of employers, said yes to, I’ll employ somebody who’s in recovery. On one of these things, we had people say, I’ll help people find housing, I’ll help people find jobs. I’ll be there. I’ll be their social circle. Will be transportation, whatever that was, whatever people needed. And so we’ve just opened it up and said, you know, this is your community, too. And so there were literally 1000s of people that stepped forward over the years to say, I want to be part of making someone’s life better, especially with our youth. Many people who wanted to become mentors for youth who were struggling and maybe at home or didn’t have necessarily, everything that they needed to have to grow down this healthy path. And other adults stepped up and said, I’m willing to be there. And you know, Carol, we often talk about the neurosciences, and using Dr Bruce Perry’s perspective of one of the greatest healing forces we have on this planet are healthy loving relationships. And so we began surrounding people with those kinds of relationships, people who are struggling with their mental health, people struggling with chemical substance, people are homeless, youth and other people. We just didn’t confine it to people under the age of 18. But then there were those people that said we had to be removed, and sometimes permanently from our community. That’s what we got to get good at. So this, this, this messiness of the human condition, requires a multi pronged approach with many tools, many ways, many options, and each of them have to be kind of measured and guided towards their effectiveness. And T in dealing with that versus this one size fits all approach, we’re just going to enforce the heck out of everything and fill up our criminal justice system apparatus in a way that it just becomes overwhelmed, and to the point now where we’re triaging, which is what basically our president has suggested that we do in Washington, DC, that we’re just going to bring in more muscle, more enforcement, more brawn, and we’re just going to, we’re just going to and force our way into something better, versus asking the citizens of our nation’s capital to step forward and say, What can we all do to heal our woundedness? What can we all do to be a part of this? And so that’s what project packs about.

Kristin Daley 32:32
So more broadly, it sounds like you’re saying public safety needs to be a shift from punishment and enforcement toward asking, What does this community really need?

Mike Butler 32:44
Exactly with the idea that you know, the three questions that I’ve always said we needed to ask ourselves is, what do we need to do to make our community safe? What do we need to do to minimize recidivism of offenders? And what can we do to really help victims heal? Those are three generalized questions that I think if, if we ask those questions in every community, and we’re serious about those questions, that our modalities would change and we’d be more open to another way of seeing how we could move forward. And so versus, how do we put bad guys in jail, and how do we keep people from hurting other people? Well, those are all good questions at some level, but they’re not the questions of essence. They’re not the questions that’s going to require a deeper way of thinking in terms of how we move forward. So you’re right. Kristin

Carol Engel-Enright 33:33
Mike, you talk a lot about measurements, and I know when you were a chief, you hired somebody to kind of track your data, and you also use the term outcome versus output and, and I would like for you to and this, you know, I’m sure we’re going to need a part three on This. I And, and I would see it in education as well. You know, is the student growing? Are they able to accept more responsibility? Are they expanding and in their own learning journey? Are they becoming more responsible for others in collaborative teamwork. Those were outcomes, but they can never be measured by a letter grade and and I think, I think police have run into the same issue, you know, without question, without looking at how many arrests do we make? How many are, you know, a certain level of crime, right? Instead of, how do you measure safety? How do you how do you see that outcome when it actually exists? And so we speak to that,

Mike Butler 34:54
yeah, we did use measurements, and we did hire somebody to look at some of our alternatives. Crimes in terms of how they were working and how effective they were because, yeah, we had the measurement of the criminal justice system has been measured in well, how many crimes were reported? Well, we don’t even talk about the unreported crime and all the things that don’t go talked about and how many crimes are reported, how many arrests were made, how many crime cases were cleared? Those are important enough to continue to measure. I’m not saying that, but we need to go much deeper in terms of and as you said, How safe is our community? How many people are engaged in this neighborhood that weren’t engaged a year ago? How do we enhance the engagement of numbers of people who are adding to the social capital in that particular neighborhood or that particular community, to what level are they calling the police, or are they calling a neighbor for for assistance? And so to what level is that occurring? To what level are we? Are we? Are we responding to those kinds of concerns. And so we can point to dozens of neighborhoods in our community where we stopped responding, or even the response was was minimal. And you know, you know that I’ve said this many times in our podcast, that our our measure for our metric for effectiveness is we’re no longer needed. We are no longer the point person in terms of who people call. That may sound scary to people, but that needs to be the measurement. That needs to be the key metric, is that we’re no longer needed, not because we’ve scared people and not calling us, but because the people in the community, the people in the neighborhood, the people near the park, the business community, the schools, whatever have said, You know what? We’ve created enough social capital in our midst in terms of giving, of blending, all the guests, talents, resources, skills and expertise here that we don’t necessarily need to call the police anymore. We have this, and that’s where we want to be. That’s the That’s the essence of a healthy community. Robert Putnam talks about that. Other social scientists talk about that in terms of what is the essence of a healthy community and what’s and part of that healthiness is safety. And that was what public safety did. How can we help this community turn itself into a safe community, because the police department while we’re here, 24/7, 365, the neighborhood is there much more so than we are, frankly, in terms of and so it wasn’t the measurement, wasn’t the output of the number of armed guards in the community. The measurement was to what level did that community or that neighborhood coalesce or come together, or kind of enhance their social capital in ways that they call the neighbor they don’t call the police.

Carol Engel-Enright 37:51
Yeah, I just wonder sometimes too with neighborhoods, if it’s the outsider, the one who feels left alone that then becomes the one who might commit a crime, and when they come into the social circle, when they’re included, when they feel comfortable and safe within themselves, they they raise their own responsibility, they raise their own level of community engagement and activism and and, and wanting to be a better person. And we never, never, never talk about that.

Mike Butler 38:31
Every neighborhood Carol has people who feel a little bit lonely, a little bit isolated, a little bit I’m not sure that I belong here, and and, and those are the folks that we need to draw upon. You know, I I will go into the safety in schools for a moment. And I remember teaching a class to about 100 different seniors at a from several high schools, and it was right after the Parkland shooting in Florida, and one of the things they wanted to accomplish in that particular session was, how can we make our schools safer? Well, guess what they came up with, metal detectors, arming teachers, having more police officers, the police officers need to have their big guns, or AR 15 automatic weapons stored on site, so that if something and so that was kind of what they came up with. And then I asked a question, I said, How many of you know somebody in your school that seems a little bit lonely, friendless, eats lunch by themselves? Maybe you might even describe them as odd, or maybe not in the mainstream. Everybody raised their hand and I said, Well, if you look at the demographics of those people who are kind of conducting a lot of these school shootings, it’s students that are that way, and so what can you do right now to help that person become more have a feeling of acceptance, a feeling that they’re recognized and valued, and feel like they belong and that they’re what can we do? And I asked, I asked, and it was amazing. What these kids. Came up with, and it said, Well, if you know these people, why don’t you name them amongst yourselves and say, Let’s take three or four or five of us and make it our purpose to bring that person into our midst and to bring them into the school setting, and to have them feel more like they belong and that there’s friendships and relationships. That is that that school setting is maybe the microcosm of the larger community, but it’s true in the community. And so they ended up dropping all this well, let’s get rid of the armed teachers and metal detector approach. And said, we need to become more socialized. We need to become more understanding of those who are folk, those folks who are left out and don’t feel like they belong. And so we can apply that same principle to any neighborhood in any community, and make a bigger difference in terms of how our communities are safer than adding more cops, more criminal justice system apparatus, or more metal detectors or more video cameras. I’m not saying we don’t want to have to do some of those things, but the bigger, bigger approach, the more effective, long term sustainable approach is, are the social connections in the sense that you hit on Carol, in terms of, how do we take those folks who feel different, left out, lonely and are by themselves, and help them become part of who we are.

Carol Engel-Enright 41:25
Bridge the bonds. And I think that’s a perfect segue into, let’s do a part three. Let’s, let’s get to these alternatives to really talk about diversion assistance and the other things that exist. So listeners, hang in there with us, and I just want to say project pack is this evolution of what is next for policing and public safety, but how can we all move into service to our communities and build really better, more enjoyable satisfaction within community life and public safety and belongingness, and that’s what we’re all about in Project packed. Packed means public and community together, that we work together, we work in this collaborative style, and that we help to train and advise and and give some give some counseling to all police officers, police chiefs. If you’re out there, contact us. We have free collaborative advising. If you’re on on target with what we’re doing, apply to become a pact ambassador, so we can spread the word about Project pact and and soon we will have the training up and ready to go. And so thank you for listening and

Mike Butler 42:46
give us a five star rating if you listen to this. Thank you for

Carol Engel-Enright 42:49
always mentioning that and moving beyond the band aids. We’ll see you next time.

Jennifer (narrator) 42:56
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.