Building Social Capital to Crowd Out Crime

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

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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)
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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
Carol, 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 00:18
Welcome back to be on the band aids, and I’m Carol, I’m here with Mike and Kristin, and I just, I do want to give a shout out to Lee, the law enforcement action partnership that makes all of this possible as we bring together leap and so sis and new blue to have a conversation about how to move police and community together into a culture of healing, health, safety and well beingness for all people in community. Last week, we were talking about a conversation that Mike had, a year long conversation, really, with John McKnight, who passed last last year and 24 at the age of 92 very much a an advocate through the Civil Rights Movement and then working as a professor at Northwestern into urban community development and and started the organization, asset based community development that brought together, you know, people in a neighborhood. And John just never could understand how the institution, the rigid institution of policing, could ever affect change in our neighborhood that it must be done from nonprofits or churches or neighborhood groups, and what role could police have in community policing? We hear that term all the time, and so today, we’re going to rip that band aid off beyond the band aids and talk about the healing that takes place. We don’t know how skin heals, but we do know that there is a there is some kind of power that can form in a neighborhood. And we were talking about the kind of the 12 Steps, or the 12 strategies that Mike wrote down last week, we started with convening the neighborhood multiple times that there were multiple conversations, including the residents, their skills, their Gifts, their time, their talents, that those are often disregarded. You know that there’s anything that the neighbors bring to the equation of bringing about safety and well beingness in a community the promises to see a project through, to see the vision, and we’re going to talk a little bit more about that, of creating this vision, co creating that with a neighborhood. And then we ended with nurturing various people that there are different kinds of personalities in a neighborhood, many different kinds of personalities. So Mike, I just want you to talk a little bit about how where did this conviction, where did the vision, come from to really head into the neighborhoods and and make a difference in each neighborhood?

Mike Butler 03:37
That’s a good lead in Carol for this and and I do want to honor John McKnight and go back to his sense of the kind of the incompetence or the irrelevance of institutions in our society. And that’s a that’s a longer conversation for us to have soon, I think maybe on his podcast in terms of how it impacts safety. But there’s a lot of institutions, you know, we’re only talking about our criminal justice system and our police profession for the most part right now, and also our community in terms of project pact. But on the Aryan, there’s his sense of institutional oppressiveness. Is a sense that you know you almost the idea was that you almost had to satisfy the institution in order to find some kind of satisfaction, so to speak, not necessarily kind of what was good for you, so to speak, in terms of how the institution serves you, but how what was, what were the what did the institution expect? And so he, he wrote about that quite a bit. So I just want to honor John McKnight in terms of his role and thinking in beginning us to this point. But so my own conviction, though, kind of I. Rested in that arena. That is, there was a an opportunity for us to kind of repurpose our institution, and specifically our public safety department, in terms of its role in our in our own community, and what could that look like, so that the community itself could begin to re establish its sense of identity, its sense of self sufficiency, its sense of self reliance, its sense of its own destiny. And so we had to tread lightly and honor and keep that honor, honor, that sense of purpose as we move forward with that. So for me, it was a sense that this, the collective personalities and people in any one neighborhood, could make a big difference. That’s where my conviction was, and much more so than than an institution. Even though an institution could play a role, an important role, in terms of perhaps starting something and helping out in terms of some skill sets development and, and, and so that was an aspect of what we were doing. But it came from this belief that is that the neighborhood itself could heal itself and and that the woundedness was very much theirs to identify and theirs to heal with our assistance. So my conviction was along those lines, and the belief was there that that could happen.

Carol Engel-Enright 06:35
Kristin, what do you think about community? We just never talk about the collective. And and when we do, people get a little nervous that they’re well, who’s in charge and who’s going to make the decisions? And Doesn’t this feel a lot like chaos if you have a lot of various type of personalities. So what have you seen going into communities in how, how things can work together?

Kristin Daley 07:11
Well, you’re exactly right. Different community members have different interests, different needs, and they’re possibly coming from very different perspectives, but there is kind of a middle ground that can benefit the whole of the community, including, you know, police and city officials, and everyone has to be involved in that conversation. But I would say, you know, approaching it from a place of, well, this person maybe sees things a little differently than I do, but I’m going to really hear them and listen to their needs, and listen to, you know, where they see this going come from a place of understanding and listening to really absorb information and not necessarily just respond with your own viewpoint. I think that is really an important starting point. I think also, you know, you’re right on the fact that it can feel a bit chaotic to not know who’s in charge and who’s guiding this process, and that’s where we can involve people who’ve been so deeply invested in public safety, like the police department, like city management, like people who have served in that sort of guiding role, to kind of jump start the process, lead the conversation, invite community members in, as Mike talks about,

Carol Engel-Enright 08:26
right? I want to go back to Mike so, so these episodes are talking about owning safety the neighborhoods, owning the safety, and moving from dependence to where we’re going to call you because you’re the you’re the daddy, you’re in charge. You have the authority to interdependence. How could we possibly work together? We don’t even know each other and a neighborhood, so Mike, how do we start in city management, how do you even begin to talk to city management and departments and chiefs about shifting a culture where you include the neighborhoods, you invite them?

Mike Butler 09:18
Well, that’s I’ve had those conversations, by the way, I’ve had those conversations with city managers, with police chiefs, with mayors, elected officials, and certainly police officers in my, in my, in my, my career, and since then, in terms of of what that looked like. And so this gets down to a sense of what’s our purpose. And having this, you know, do we want to have something that’s sustainable, or do we want to have something that has a kind of quick fix, kind of one size fits all arrangement attached to it, which is where a lot of cities tend to kind of end up, or a lot of response, you know, kind of responses on the part of city management or police departments. Just tend to end up and so, so there’s this idea of purpose, this idea of of meaning, and the sense that, you know, these are their neighborhoods, not ours. In essence, it’s, it’s someone else’s neighborhood. They live there. They they reside there. And so those are the conversations I’ve had with those are the nature of those conversations, and that, you know, we have to, if we if we want to find, if we want to get people to choose accountability, choose commitment, to choose action, we’re going to have to kind of set up the conversation in a way that’s that gets it to that point where that people do choose accountability, commitment and action and and aside from our own, our own thinking about how it needs to operate. And so part of the conversation gets into, how do we measure how we’ve been effective, and what’s that look like, and from a city perspective, or from a police department’s perspective? And as I said, probably too many times on these podcasts, is that Longmont police departments, Longmont Public Safety’s metric for effectiveness was that we were no longer needed. Now, that may sound a little abstract or a little bit What are you talking about? Well, that’s exactly what we meant. Was that people felt like they didn’t need an outside entity. They didn’t need the institution anymore. They didn’t need the police or city management. They could resolve their own issues on their own in many different ways and things. They used to call us for. They no longer called us. They were called they were calling each other, and that became our metric for effectiveness all the way through our organization. And so that’s how we and so my conversations with city managers, I have a conversation coming up with a another entity that I’m not going to mention on the air right now, but the idea is, how do you measure the effectiveness of police departments in the future. And that’s what we’re that’s what I’m going to talk about. And that is it’s, it’s not so much by the number of arrests we made, or the number of convictions we got, or the number of summonses we issued, or the number of times we we went to a neighborhood, these output kinds of measurements. It’s the outcome needs to be very much in alignment with people. Have self reliance, self they’re self sustaining. There’s they understand that they’re responsible, that they they’re choosing commitment, they’re choosing action and choosing accountability in ways that we haven’t seen before, and so they’re becoming the authors of their own destiny and their own experience. And so

Carol Engel-Enright 12:46
it’s a rough world when we’re always in data points versus the social benefits that have been created, the network that has been created within a neighborhood, the calls that neighbors make to neighbors to check in and make sure people are okay. I want to move on to these strategies and remind the listeners that we’re going to put these strategies up on the project, pack.org, website. It’ll be under resources, so you have those. And I just I also want to encourage citizens, think about, think about what you can do in your own neighborhood. What is your starting point? Maybe it’s just taking a walk and meeting people and introducing yourself and having a conversation. I know people are so quick, and when you talk about the quick fixes, the quick fixes, let’s organize, organize a safety meeting and bring everybody together. And my experience has been people walk in with their antenna up of, what are you going to take away from me? What are you going to do to me? What freedom am I going to lose versus developing the relationship? Developing, developing the collegiality. So the fifth strategy that you listed to John McKnight, as you wrote, kind of this, this essay on on shifting culture and what you did in the neighborhoods, was to cultivate and teach various people to help in certain ways. Now, Project pack, that’s our whole purpose for being here. Yeah, right, that’s our whole purpose for being here. That’s the whole purpose we went into this project with. Is, how can we cultivate and teach you what to do? What? Skills might you need? So what

Mike Butler 14:42
really wasn’t a teaching. It really wasn’t a teaching as much as it was a sense of self awareness, kind of bringing them to that point that they were aware of their own gifts, their own skills, they became aware of their own capacities. And so we kind of you. It wasn’t the capacity of the police department or the individual officers or public safety personnel they were going to carry the day. It was their capacity. And so the cultivation of those capacities had everything to do with their kind of enhanced self awareness around what their capacities were, what their gifts were, what their skills were, what their talents and strengths were, not only individually, but collectively. Now we talked about individual people here, but we had to start there. We had to start with certain people, because certain people would show up more often than others and so and so when they began to see that their capacities were much greater, their gifts were, were were, and their talents and their skills were potentially very useful. They began to shift and change the nature of the conversation. So it wasn’t so much, what’s the police department going to do for us, as much as what can we do for ourselves? How can I leverage my gifts individually, and how can we leverage our gifts and talents and skills expertise collectively? That was a very important conversation to have with people, because it shifted the nature of the conversation from who’s responsible, was it the police, or was it the community of the neighborhood and the people in that neighborhood that helps shift that neighborhood? And so when people become big, they begin to kind of see beyond their own sense of, Well, we’re we have all these limitations, and we’ve always needed you in the past to know I have the I’m enough. How many times have we said that, that I am enough, that we collectively are enough, that that begins to really change, you know, their sense of who’s responsible. It begins to change the sense of, you know, who can move this ball forward, and so that, that’s what that was about. It was kind of enhancing their sense of awareness about who they were and what they had to offer. And that’s always a very valuable conversation with people, whether it’s in a relationship or amongst in an organization, between an organization and a community, as we’re talking about now, but there’s a very important conversation that that’s that sense of self forgetfulness and that sense of selflessness, where people can come from, it’s not about me, it’s about it’s about us and it’s about you. And so when people can have those conversations, and when I say about me, it wasn’t about what the police department was going to do or not to do or not to it was about what all of us could do together initially and then eventually, what they could do to sustain what we were going to be doing as we move forward. So so it was, it was that sense of awareness, that sense of self awareness, that had to come from this almost egoless like mindset that we had in the police department. Most institutions have a very egocentric, like mindset and perspective and thinking that they are the answer and that the world would change because they’re here, so to speak. Well, that’s and there’s almost a secondhand nature.

Carol Engel-Enright 17:58
Is that hang on, is that based on the authority of the institution itself.

Mike Butler 18:03
It’s there’s a lot of tradition and custom attached to it, yeah, and it’s based on, here’s how we here’s how we’ve acted in the past. We are the parents. We are the patriarchs. We’re, we are, we are action takers. We are the problem solvers. A lot of leaders like to see themselves that way, that they’re the answer. There they have the they can answer. They’re the problem solvers and they’re the action takers and and sometimes that’s important. I’m not saying that that’s the leadership is always situational, but oftentimes, if we can get into this role where we can see each other as partners, and we can see that other people’s voices and their talents and their gifts and their thoughts matter. That that begins to change the nature of the relationship. That begins to shift that power imbalance from one of the institution and being empowered to the one of the community, the neighborhood, being in power and so but that happens, that should happen in every single relationship in our lives, whether it’s between parents and children, whether it’s between, you know, people in a relationship, whatever, wherever that’s at, it should always be focused on, well, it’s not just about me, it’s about us and it’s about you. So that gift of saying that you have the capacity to kind of be the author of your own destiny and the author of your own experience is the nature of those conversations. And so it gets, it’s that’s how, but that’s what this

Kristin Daley 19:27
means. I’m curious about that small group of community members that initially started showing up, from your perspective, were those, the people that were already pretty, you know, well versed in that self worth peace and coming into it without ego, or were they community members who felt the most frustrated with what was happening in their communities? Who were those people? Where were they coming from, and how did you get them to the place where they were ready to step in and step up and take action?

Mike Butler 19:57
That’s a great question. Kristin, it was all. The above. I mean, they were frustrated, they were angry. They were pointing fingers at us. They were saying, you’re responsible. You’re the ones that we you’re not here. We never see a patrol car, you know, we, we, there’s all these things happening in our neighborhood, and you’re not around. And so there was, there was some of that. There was also this sense of people who felt like they were kind of neighborhood, community connectors. They were the people who were going to be in charge, so to speak. And we had to work with that aspect, because they weren’t necessarily going to be the ones in charge. They were going to be the ones being, helping others be, become more responsible as well. And so there were, there were all these, there were all these personalities with all these motivations. And so what we had to do in terms of moving that conversation forward was to be patient and allow people to speak and to allow people to kind of have these conversations around, you know, the resistance to, maybe the initial resistance to them being more responsible to us, being being responsible. It was, was something that we confronted almost all the time, because they were operating from this. We we’ve always called you in the past, and you’ve always said you’re the ones you know. You’ve always said to us, if you need us, call us for anything. We’ve talked about that mantra. Well then now we’re calling you, and so now you’re telling us that, you know we’re not the ones. You’re telling us that the police department, no, we didn’t quite come at it from that perspective, but we had to initially, kind of move through those conversations and allow that energy to flow, and maybe have name it so to speak. And then once that energy flowed and we were able to name it, we were able to almost move on in these conversations. We were able to evolve the conversations towards a partnership, towards the sense that we’re all responsible here, and we’re here for you, and we’re not going to leave until we get this to another place, so to speak. So it was often an evolving patient understanding, but always in the back of our minds, with this thinking that you know what you know they have. They are enough. This neighborhood is enough. And if we just, if we, if we, if we kind of minimize that thinking and said, No, you’re going to need us forever, so to speak, you’re always going to need to call us, then the conversations wouldn’t have evolved. And so we had to keep that our eyes on that prize of these people have, all these gifts, these strengths, these talents, they are enough, and what can we do to move it into that? And some people caught on to that earlier than later, and some people resisted that for a while, but we began to see these small successes almost all the time in terms of what would happen differently and so and so. But that was a very important conversation in terms of cultivating their sense that they could they were enough in terms of moving forward.

Carol Engel-Enright 22:55
I this. This conversation reminds me. And as you were talking, Mike, I was thinking back, this is not the quick fix. This is the patience. This is the development of the relationship. This is the development of the mutual trust. I and I’m thinking about the neuroscience behind what happens when a police car comes to your neighborhood. It’s, it’s almost in the adrenals. You know, fear, fight, flight, freeze. You know, you’re on that side of the brain that’s, that’s dominated by a chemical reaction. And when you, when you start to encounter the police in a different way. You know, the academic term would be eight times to build that neuron pathway, maybe over and over, understanding that police are good, inherently good, because we’ve been, we’ve been, I don’t know, socially conditioned into something else that that police can bring connections, and that’s going to take us to this next strategy. The police, more than anyone, are networked with all the services that are available to help in neighborhoods. And so when you have this divided nature of of here’s the police and here’s all the social services and the two don’t, don’t talk, then you don’t have that, all of those resources available. Your strategy was to connect to to connect them to what they needed.

Mike Butler 24:46
We knew that it wasn’t just going to be helpful that there were, there were other issues, there were engineering issues, there were lighting issues, there were other kinds of referrals and resources that beyond Police and Public. Safety, you know, the only difference between us and the other entities? Well, there were lots of differences, but the big one was we were there 24/7 365, most of the other departments and referral resources that were used were more or less a Monday through Friday, eight to five operation. But we also knew that they were needed, and so we called on them, or we gave them different resources to kind of attach to, and we brought them in. We brought them into the conversations, and and they were, they became part of these conversations in terms of, I think I even mentioned assistance for grants, or whatever that might look like. The city had grant opportunities for neighborhoods that wanted to do some self improvements. And so there were a number of things that that we, that we we became kind of the fulcrum or leverage point. We didn’t necessarily do, but we all we asked other entities to help out neighborhood resources, or the engine or the electric department, or other departments in the city, or other nonprofits that were working with youth, or anything like that. So we called them on them often, but not with the sense that they were going to come in and take charge and take over, but with the sense that they were going to be following the same kind of theme, and sense that our purpose is to get people to see that they’re enough and that they can be take over themselves,

Carol Engel-Enright 26:23
and you also connected to the mental health and addiction. That’s very much. That’s a huge that’s still a huge topic in all of No,

Mike Butler 26:33
it’s thanks for bringing that up, because that was always, not always, but it was often one of those topics in terms of, well, we have drug addiction in our neighborhood, or we have people who are struggling with their mental health, and so, so we had to bring in resources that kind of could temporarily help people kind of help themselves, so to speak, and then move beyond, move beyond that. So, but yeah, addiction, mental health issues were always, not always, most of the time, quite prevalent.

Carol Engel-Enright 27:04
Yep, Kristin, I think you have a lot of officers working in this arena as well. And you, you yourself, have worked your entire professional life in connecting people and in neighborhoods. I think feel helpful helpless. You know, I know my I know my neighbor is struggling. Families feel helpless. Families feel helpless. I don’t know what to do for my neighbor. I, you know, I don’t know if it’s safe to go knock on their door. I don’t I don’t know what to do, so I do nothing. And I think that’s where we’re paralyzed in this moment in time and place in society, and depending on other institutions to take over and do it for us and it it just leads to this laziness you talk about the relationship number Seven on the strategy, is relationship development within the neighborhood. I just want to say, when I started working with you, you took me to block parties, which I couldn’t even believe happened. It was my own community, and I didn’t know they happened. It was beautiful to see a whole neighborhood come out. Traffic was not allowed. Everybody was on the street. Usually there was a fire engine there with some some some people to meet, and you’d show up.

Mike Butler 28:31
It’s not unusual for neighbors not to know each other, but in order for them to move forward collectively, they have to get to know each other, and so we worked hard on finding there were people who didn’t want anything initially to do with us or do anything with our effort, we would show up time after time, and there were always certain neighbors that never showed up. And so how do we move forward with that? That became one of our challenges. How does the neighborhood move forward, if only a third of the neighborhood is going to be involved, or just a very few people and so so. But in order to realize that collective mindset, we needed as many people as we could possibly get. So we worked on that. And so we developed strategies on how to help people kind of feel better or feel like they could be part of something, or wanted to be part of something. And so we worked hard on that in terms of getting as many people in that neighborhood as possible to show up. And that included throwing little parties where kids were involved, or or little neighborhood get togethers or barbecues where people, people would come out and say, Okay, well, everybody gets hungry every day in his neighborhood, so let’s, let’s, let’s throw up. Let’s have a let’s break some bread. And we, we, you know, so barbecues happened, and so, so there are all kinds of things that we did, and people get this but, and so people would show up and. Initially the conversation was a little stunted, maybe a little awkward, but ultimately became they began to see that, hey, I’m part of this. I maybe I have this sense of belonging. Maybe I’m tiptoeing into this belonging arena right now, but maybe I’ll be able to jump in with both feet here eventually. But on the other hand, that was all part of that relationship development in the neighborhood became critically important for us, because the more people we had, the more gifts we had, the more talent, skills, expertise, resources, we had, that human power by one person or many people in the collective became critically important for us, and so we didn’t that was a step, that all these steps are important, but these this step was critically important too in terms of

Carol Engel-Enright 30:52
this strategy, but you would use some of your budget to pay for food and and some sodas and ice cream Occasionally,

Mike Butler 31:01
there was, there was some of that. There was that wasn’t an overly expensive thing, but, yeah, but, but on the other hand, people, people, there was a potluck. People who were involved came with their salads and casseroles and hot dogs and hamburgers, and so oftentimes, we just kind of characterize it as a potluck. Let’s have a potluck, and here’s what the police will bring and so, or if here’s what public safety will bring. And so that’s how that that’s how that worked, well.

Kristin Daley 31:29
And that goes back to what you mentioned about patience and persistence and like, relationships aren’t built overnight. This wasn’t a one time event. You kept putting the invitation out there, kept having that conversation, and that’s how you build a relationship with a community,

Mike Butler 31:42
yeah, especially, especially with the cynics, victims and bystander kinds of folks that are that are initially kind of very put off by all of this and so that. But that’s so true. That’s so true. I mean, we see it all the time. We confront it daily in our own lives, in terms of people not showing up, or people resisting kind of being in a relationship, or wanting to be friendly, or wanting to kind of work together, or whatever that might be. And there’s all kinds of reasons out there for why people don’t want to show up, and some of them are absolutely legitimate in terms of what’s going on in their lives, but but on the other hand, this was their neighborhood, and this is where they lived, this is where they resided, and they also felt the residuals of not feeling safe and things happening in their neighborhood, whether it was from a drug perspective, gang perspective, traffic perspective, disorder, they they also felt those residuals and so and So it was part, part and parcel of, you know, well, they were never really asked to be involved in anything before. They only had to dial 911 in the past and then, and it could be anonymous. And so most a lot of people, that was the extent of their engagement involvement. So how did you how did we move beyond 911 not just the band aids, but the 911, kind of mindset that all I gotta do is dial three numbers and someone else will take care of me. And so that that became a big part of our thinking in terms of of developing moving forward. So I was, per se, perseverance, patience, but it was also this sense that, you know, we we wanted to do this. We wanted to do this and and our, our measure for effectiveness and no longer being needed, seemed to kind of carry the day, so to speak, in terms of what, what we had to do in order to get it to that

Carol Engel-Enright 33:35
point. Talk about that want. Why did you want that?

Mike Butler 33:39
Because this was the idea was we did want to continue, we have to respond back to their issues that they could eventually figure out how to handle themselves. And so it was. It was not wanting to constantly be in that mode of calling, being having to respond to circumstances that they could have as a neighborhood handled themselves. And so we wanted to kind of create something different, a different expectation about how the neighborhood became healthy. We wanted to see that healthiness. We wanted to see that collectiveness. We wanted to see those relationships. We wanted to see that sense that they could choose that level of commitment action in order to become more engaged on their own. And so, so that, to me, was something we really wanted. We wanted to do that, and we trained our officers to get out of this mode of, well, we’re always responding, and that’s all we’re going to do, is just react. We’re always reacting to a mode of no we want to be able to develop something, an energy, a sense of how things were, where people began to do things on their own and not need us. That’s what we wanted.

Carol Engel-Enright 34:57
So you wanted your officers to have. This Pro, proactive experience. But did you see as the neighborhoods shifted, did you see more goodness and less? I don’t even want to call it crime. I don’t I don’t want to call it violence, you know, because that’s what we hear. That’s what we hear in the news. Did you see the goodness expand and the people who were causing harm or causing trouble or causing chaos?

Mike Butler 35:36
So here’s here was our experience. The more people that got involved, the more people who were engaged, the more people got to know each other, the more people kind of understood and coalesced and built that sense of that larger kind of social capital aspect of their neighborhood, the more the more more goodness that eventually produced, and that that coalescing and that goodness eventually crowded out the things that were happening that they didn’t want to see, so that police weren’t necessarily invoking the criminal justice system to deal with those issues. The community itself, through its own coalescing and goodness created that, in creating that coalescence and goodness crowded out those things, and so the behavior left many of the behaviors. That’s the secret sauce. That is kind of the where we’re headed with all of this, and that is the more social capital we can produce, the more goodness we can produce. And in terms of a neighborhood doing that for themselves, the less likely we are to see the things we don’t want. And that happened in every single neighborhood we were in, without fail. And that’s the part that needs to be really emphasized. Here it was, the criminal justice system became less needed as the goodness was enhanced, as the coalescing and social capital increased, and so the less criminal justice system, the less, fewer police responses were needed.

Carol Engel-Enright 37:07
Yeah, and that’s truly the John McKnight story in bringing the community together, but he never could see the part that police could play into it. And I think the beauty of that for public safety and for a neighborhood is that when there’s when there is a trouble, a troubled soul, a troubled person that truly is involved in criminal behavior, you already have that trusting relationship with the police and the enforcement, then can come in and handle the situation, which is so vitally important. It’s not one or the other, it is both together,

Mike Butler 37:53
so but I also want to emphasize that that’s that, to me, is really where we need to go as a society. It’s not going to be more institutions, more police, more DEA, FBI, ICE agents. It’s that’s not going to those aren’t the answers. They’re those are temporary band aids, and we’re beyond the band aids here in in this podcast and in Project pact. And so the idea is, is to create that coalescing, to create that social capital, to create those relationships to connections in ways that didn’t exist before. And those were that that is, those are the forces that will eventually crowd out the things we don’t want to see. Yeah.

Carol Engel-Enright 38:35
So that brings us to the next strategy, which is precise and judicious enforcement at the neighborhood’s request.

Mike Butler 38:46
Yeah, and that’s the that important, that last part is important. It was community driven. In other words, once we got it to this point, and things still were happening, you know, it was decided, well, what do we need? What? What? What is the role of enforcement and all this? And all this, and that was something that became that was also part of every single neighborhood in terms of what we had to do, because there were some people who refused to stop dealing drugs, or who refused to stop their gang banging, so to speak and so and they were committing crimes in ways that were harmful to the neighborhood in spite of the kind of the the enhancement of social capital. And so that’s where that precise, more judicious, community driven enforcement played a role. And so that’s well, but it will be a role for police for a long time to come. I don’t want to minimize that. We haven’t, we haven’t that’s going to but we have to get out of this one size fits all. We’re going to decide how we enforce, when we enforce, what we enforce. It has to be as community driven as it can possibly be, and it has to be very precise, very judicious and very kind of surgical in terms of how it’s done, and so that there’s some really good reason for it. High leverage actions here that are taken now, when it comes to here’s, here’s the other thing. You know, some people thought that they could just deal drugs in their in their neighborhood, common areas, or they could use little kids to kind of carry drugs for them, or something like that. I get that those aren’t long term solutions, but those are solutions that I that that need to occur in the moment so that people feel safe, and that there’s a sense that their police are are part of this, and that this is unwanted behavior. This is behavior that is not acceptable by the neighborhood or by the community, and that’s where the laws come into play. That’s where the enforcement comes into play. It’s not a long term. I get that, you know, if the supply side of drugs is very much relevant and very much related to the demand side, and that we need to deal with that demand side through how we how we respond to addiction in our society. And that’s something that we have to, still have to give a lot more attention to. But ultimately, until we can get it to that point, the supply side has to be tempered at some level, especially in these kind especially in our neighborhoods. I can tell you, I can’t tell you how many times we responded to there are people there, there at one house in a neighborhood, 24/7, drug dealing going on, all kinds of cars, all kinds of activity, all kinds of behavior, people with guns, people with scary behaviors, people committing crimes, racing up and down streets, lots of loud noises and neighbor neighborhoods got tired of that one house being the source of that kind of activity. Well, it didn’t take them long, and it didn’t take us long to realize it was a it was a house when where lots of drugs were being dealt out of and so it became part of our precise, judicious, community driven enforcement to say, Okay, we’re going to see what we can do to kind of dismantle what was going on in that home so that that the home didn’t become the that home stopped being this kind of the place that made everybody in that neighborhood feel unsafe and insecure and kept their kids In and and people weren’t afraid to walk the street, their neighborhoods, etc. So that became a role for the police. And we did that over and over and over again. And every time we did that, that neighborhood actually became very not only appreciative, but also it also strengthened their resolve to say, we got to keep this from happening in the future, and so and so. It was quite useful for us to play that role in terms of ensuring that that neighbor, that particular house, it took, it took a while because there were those were things that we just, you know, there’s laws in our country. We have proper search and seizure methods, et cetera, that we had to follow to make sure that we were able to do what we needed to do in ways that you know, that that the prosecution and courts could follow through as well, so

Carol Engel-Enright 43:08
precise and judicious at the neighborhood’s request, I love that. I just want to kind of close this upward. So we’re through eight. We’re going to take it the net, then the nine through 12 on the next podcast, because I think they’re so valid and really speak to strategies that people can think about if you’re on the citizen side, if you’re in the city management side, if you’re on the police side,

Mike Butler 43:37
this works everywhere, by the way. These strategies, and like I said, when what I wrote, these were the main strategies we used. There were certain other kinds of strategies and things we did that were more unique to particular neighborhoods. These were the 12 or so strategies that we used in just about every neighborhood. And it worked every single time, and when we did it this way, to the point where, you know, one of the things we’ll talk about we maybe near the end, is, you know, how did the police eventually just pull away? How did the police just kind of say, Okay, we’re no longer needed.

Speaker 1 44:12
What’s the exit strategy? This is, this is you’re you’re

Mike Butler 44:15
enough, and you’ve realized now that you’re enough. And so, how did we do that? Because lots of relationships form over time. And so that was, that was not necessarily easy, but we’ll talk about that. Yeah.

Carol Engel-Enright 44:26
And when the neighborhood reaches that point, it becomes, it becomes idyllic, and people see it, the property values go up, the togetherness goes up. People want to move into that neighborhood. It’s, it’s such a wonderful

Mike Butler 44:42
neighborhood ultimately becomes safe for themselves, yes, and they can enjoy a neighborhood in ways that they couldn’t enjoy. Yeah, for

Carol Engel-Enright 44:49
so I want, that’s my last kind of gathering to both of you what a shared vision for public safety in a neighborhood. Kind of give your what would your dimensions? Look like

Kristin Daley 45:00
I think really a lot of it is expressed for through these recommendations that we’ve been talking about. It starts with relationship, building communication, being open to having honest conversations about what a community really needs. That’s i That would be the big headline for me when we think about what communities need, we need to ask the community what they want and need and what they want to see and what they have to offer.

Mike Butler 45:29
Yeah, and for me, it was, I’ll come back to the word goodness in the sense that it’s always there, the compassion, the kindness, the generosity, the goodness, the care, it’s always there, but it seems to be latent. It seems to be dormant. It seems to be how do I do this in the midst of what’s happening and so in terms of the things that are going on in my neighborhood? But it’s always there to be leveraged, to be brought in, brought to the surface, and to be enhanced and sustained in ways that can eventually become how interactions occur. I mean in the kind of the milieu of that goodness, how interactions occur in the future. And so for us, I always knew it was there. We always knew. And I come from that perspective that there are good people, and there’s goodness in people, and there are good neighborhoods, and there’s goodness in those neighborhoods, and so, and there’s good institutions, and there’s good and there’s goodness in those institutions, and so sometimes just kind of aligning all of that in ways that can make that goodness feel so much bigger, better and and more evasive and kind of pervasive. That becomes, in essence, where we end up wanting to be,

Carol Engel-Enright 46:44
and when you focus on the goodness, that’s what expands, and when you focus on the neighborhood, that’s what comes together. So thank you for tuning into another episode of beyond the band aids, for moving from dependence to interdependence with communities. Please go online and give us a rating, hopefully a five star. Go on to our website, project, pack.org, org and and leave us your email so we can keep in touch with you as we expand our training, our cultivating our you know you can have one on one advising if you have an issue with your neighborhood and you don’t know what to do next, a phone call is all it takes. So thank you, and we’ll see you next time.

Jennifer (narrator) 47:35
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.