Recommendation 9.1: Ensure that core departmental values reflect community values and communicate them to all department members.

Chiefs and other department leaders are responsible for establishing a set of departmental values and communicating them throughout their departments. The most credible and enduring way to do this is to consistently behave in a manner that reflects the department’s stated values; that is, leaders must “walk the talk.” Additionally, they ensure that officers at all levels have ample opportunity to provide meaningful input and to participate in conversations about organizational culture. Internal legitimacy hinges on two factors: leadership behavior and opportunities for meaningful input. External legitimacy is achieved when leaders work with community members to develop values that reflect the community’s priorities, ideals, and concerns.

Effective leaders also ensure that administrative and operational functions reflect departmental and community values. In the administrative arena, this means they make sure that departmental values are reflected externally in official policies, procedures, and rules, and internally in regulations, audits, performance reviews, and disciplinary processes. Values provide the framework for evaluating the performance of both individual officers and entire departments.

Chiefs and other department leaders also ensure that day-to-day operations, trainings, and promotions align with departmental and community values. Instructional materials and training instructors socialize new hires and existing employees to the department’s ethos. The selection of training academy instructors and field training officers (FTOs) embodies departmental and community values. Leaders’ decisions regarding promotion depend in part on whether officers have demonstrated commitment to the department’s core values. This shows others in the organization that embracing these values is necessary for professional advancement.

While a department’s priorities may vary depending on a community’s concerns, priorities, and unique challenges, leaders in community-centered departments emphasize the following principles to build trust and legitimacy both within the department and with the public.

Adopt and implement a “guardian” mindset. To build a shared purpose with the community — one where the police and the public work together to coproduce public safety — leaders establish that their agencies are guardians of the community and that their primary role is to protect and serve. To distinguish between perceptions of officers as warriors and officers as guardians, leaders communicate that officers must master the skills of a warriorto protect the public, themselves, and their fellow officers (as did the four officers who were shot when responding to the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018). But they stress that officers must serve in the role of a guardian. The warrior mindset, which reinforces “us-versus-them” thinking, is often ingrained before new recruits spend a single day on the job, thanks to training modeled on military boot camps.[i]

To move toward a guardian culture, leaders should review all elements of department messaging and training curricula to ensure they reflect the ethos of protecting and serving all members of the community. They should also develop policies and trainings with communities that are rooted in the principles of guardianship and that reinforce a dedication to protecting the communities and preserving public safety.

In New Jersey, for example, the Camden County Police Department has instituted a policy requiring officers to drive gunshot victims to a hospital if doing so is faster than waiting for an ambulance.[ii]On the other coast, the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission (WSCJTC) reevaluated its training program and eliminated militaristic protocols that promote a warrior culture, such as imposing fear and humiliation by screaming and berating recruits and displaying posters of skulls and crossbones in classrooms.[iii]Instead, training officers now coach and encourage recruits to push through physical limits, and they replaced posters with themes of deadly threats with a mural of the U.S. Constitution that reads: “In These Halls ¼Training the Guardians of Democracy.”[iv]In short, the WSCJTC decided to treat recruitswith dignity and respect because it wanted recruits to treat the communitywith dignity and respect. Training officers now act as role models to respect and admire — rather than as commanders to fear.

Operate in a procedurally just manner — both externally and internally. External procedural justice refers to the way that police and police departments treat the people with whom they interact.

Procedurally just behavior has four core elements:

• Treat people with dignity and respect.
• Give individuals ‘voice’ during encounters.
• Be neutral and transparent in decision-making.
• Convey trustworthy motives.

Source: President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (citing Lorraine Mazerolle, et al., Legitimacy in Policing: A Systematic Review, The Campbell Collection Library of Systematic Reviews 9 (2013)).

Internal procedural justice applies to practices and relationships within police departments. Research shows that officers who feel more respected by their leaders and coworkers are more inclined to accept and comply with departmental policies.[v]Department leaders can foster a culture of internal procedural justice by seeking input on their department’s core values, setting and making clear behavioral expectations, and consistently applying policies, procedures, and decision-making processes.

Importantly, internal procedural justice leads to external procedural justice.[vi]When officers are treated fairly and with respect, they are more likely to mirror that treatment when they interact with members of the community.

Ensure and improve transparency and accountability. Even the most perfect set of values means nothing if it is not supported by robust accountability systems that impose real consequences for violations. To that end, chiefs and other leaders at community-centered departments develop and clearly communicate accountability structures that impose consequences for violations of departmental norms and mete out consequences consistently.[vii]

Similarly, departmental values are reflected in the way leaders evaluate officer performance. Leaders who promote community policing know that “we measure what we value.” As such, they evaluate officers based on metrics that emphasize values like de-escalation and procedurally just policing. And they ensure that their departments collect and analyze robust performance data that paint a full picture of how officers conduct themselves in the community. This data include not only officers’ use of force, stops, arrests, and other law enforcement activity but also positive community interactions, use of de-escalation tactics, and other community-based metrics.

As the Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing emphasizes, leaders should promote transparency by posting departmental policies for public review and by making data on stops, summonses, arrests, reported crimes, and other law enforcement activity readily available to the community.[viii](For more detail, see Chapter 8.)In addition, when a major incident occurs, including instances of misconduct, the chief and other department leaders should communicate with the community and media quickly and honestly, sharing as much information as possible. Taking responsibility for the actions of the department and its members creates realaccountability.

Effective leaders develop internal mechanisms to assess their own performance as well. They seek input from officers on policies, procedures, and tactics to assess how they affect their ability to do their jobs safely and effectively. Without regular input, leaders risk losing touch with the rank and file, who are directly affected by department policy and have daily contact with the community. This input helps leaders take the pulse of their departments and creates work environments in which officers believe their voice matters.[ix]

Commit to engaging and promoting input from the community. As the public face of their departments, community-centered chiefs engage regularly with members of the community to both maintain departmental legitimacy and demonstrate the importance of community input to the rest of the department. Chiefs who fail to show respect for the people their departments serve can hardly expect their officers to do the same.

As discussed in Chapter 1, chiefs and other department leaders can gather community input in departmental policy and practice in a variety of ways. They can work with the community when developing new policies; involve the community, local nonprofit organizations, and experts when recruiting and training new and existing officers; regularly interface with the public through neighborhood meetings and listening sessions; and maintain open lines of communication with community representatives.

[i]Sue Rahr & Stephen K. Rice, From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals, New Perspectives in Policing, Harvard Kennedy School, National Institute of Justice 3, 4, 8 (2015), https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/248654.pdf.

[ii]See Camden Policy on Escorting Victims, N.Y. Times (Apr. 2, 2017) (embedded with: Camden County Police Dep’t, 3, Chapt. 38 at 2), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/02/nyregion/camden-police-policy.html(“[O]fficers must be prepared to initiate an emergency medical transport of a victim when deemed necessary.”).

[iii]Sue Rahr & Stephen K. Rice, From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals, New Perspectives in Policing, Harvard Kennedy School, National Institute of Justice 7-9 (2015), https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/248654.pdf.

[iv]Sue Rahr & Stephen K. Rice, From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals, New Perspectives in Policing, Harvard Kennedy School, National Institute of Justice 9 (2015), https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/248654.pdf.

[v]The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing 14 (2015), https://cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/taskforce/taskforce_finalreport.pdf (“Research shows that agencies should also use tools that encourage employee and supervisor collaboration and foster strong relationships between supervisors and employees. A more effective agency will result from a real partnership between the chief and the staff and a shared approach to public safety.”) (citing Tim Richardson, Senior Legislative Liaison, Fraternal Order of Police, in Discussion with Ajima Olaghere, Research Assistant, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Community Oriented Policing Services (2014)).

[vi]SeeMaarten Van Craen & Wesley G. Skogan, Achieving Fairness in Policing: The Link Between Internal and External Procedural Justice, 20(1) Police Quarterly 3, 6 (2017), http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1098611116657818(“[T]he extent to which police officers’ behavior toward citizens is guided by the principles of neutrality, respect, voice, and accountability depends on the extent to which supervisors’ behavior toward their officers is characterized by these principles.”).

[vii]See Police Exec. Res. F., Advice from Police Chiefs and Community Leaders on Building Trust: “Ask for Help, Work Together, and Build Respect” 18-19 (2016), http://www.policeforum.org/assets/policecommunitytrust.pdf(quoting Atlanta Chief: “As police chiefs,… [w]e have to push the bad apples out, no matter how difficult.”).

[viii]SeeThe President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing 13 (2015), https://cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/taskforce/taskforce_finalreport.pdf.

[ix]See The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing 14 (2015), https://cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/taskforce/taskforce_finalreport.pdf (“For example, internal department surveys should ask officers what they think of policing strategies in terms of enhancing or hurting their ability to connect with the public.”).