The Social Contract

 

Guests

Laurie O. Robinson, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University

Seth Stoughton, Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law

 

Description

Coming through one of the most tumultuous periods in US history, marked by wide-scale social unrest, the genesis of the Black Lives Matter movement, and calls for police defunding, we look at the nation’s history of reform efforts, and go under the skin of police culture and the latest approaches to recruiting and training. We talk with co-chair of President Barack Obama's White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Prof. Laurie O. Robinson, and former police officer, law professor and Atlantic Magazine contributor Seth Stoughton, for their unique perspectives on the challenges and contrasting approaches.

 

 

Transcript

DAVID CHAUVIN (HOST):  Welcome to Engage, a Genetec podcast.   

  

"Are you emotionally, spiritually, psychologically prepared to snuff out a human life in defense of innocent lives? If you can't make that decision, you need to find another job."  

 

DAVID CHAUVIN: Former US Army Ranger Colonel turned police trainer Dave Grossman gives hundreds of sessions like this to police trainees every year across the country. But this philosophy finds sharp contrast among the proponents of a very different kind of police culture, one that encourages trust over fear, guardians over lawyers and diplomats over action heroes.   

 

KELLY LAWETZ: Coming through one of the most tumultuous periods in the United States marked by the murder of George Floyd, widescale social unrest, and calls for police defunding. We look at the warrior guardian paradox and the nation's history of reform efforts over the last administrations. Two leaders of that movement are on the front lines of policing and police reform.   

  

DAVID CHAUVIN:  I'm David Chauvin.   

  

KELLY LAWETZ:  And I'm Kelly Lawetz.   

  

“Last year, the events in Ferguson and New York exposed a deep-rooted frustration in many communities of color around the need for fair and just law enforcement.”  

  

KELLY LAWETZ: Four and a half years ago, Barack Obama announced the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing, sitting beside the president at that press conference with task force co-chair Laurie Robinson, the longest-serving head of the US Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs in the agency's 45 years, and my guest on the second half of the show.   

 

Interview with Seth Stoughton

 

DAVID CHAUVIN:  But to start things off, I speak with former police officer turned law professor and expert on police behavior, Seth Stoughton. His most recent article in the Atlantic magazine entitled "How to Actually Fix America's Police," is a stark critique of failed reform efforts, a reinforcement of the Guardian approach put forward in the Obama task force and then evolved model for recruiting, which is finding advocates across the US nearly 18000 law enforcement agencies. I began by asking Professor Stoughton how he squares the apparent paradox between the guardian and the warrior mentality and one of the world's most dangerous jobs.   

  

SETH STOUGHTON: I do think that officers have to be aware of the possibility of risk and threat. It is still a dangerous profession because there is violence directed against police officers in their jobs. It's not one of the most hazardous professions in terms of total officers killed. Still, it certainly is one of the most dangerous in terms of workplace violence. And that can be uncertain that one of the things that make that so scary is the uncertainty, which raises our level of fear, increases the perception of fear. From experience and academic studies, we know that officers must take it as an opportunity to increase public trust and build relationships to maximize positive outcomes in interactions. The relevant scholarly work, particularly by Brian Landy and Jonathan Wender, both police officers, and PhDs, is based on this DARPA-funded research on strategic social interactions. And they looked at policing, and they looked at the military context overseas to identify those factors. It led to the best possible outcomes in individual interactions. The big one, the consistent one, was the officer or the soldier going into it and looking at it as this is my opportunity to build trust. Now, that doesn't mean that the officer or the soldier ignores the operational realities. It doesn't mean that they take stupid risks. It doesn't mean that they put themselves entirely at the mercy of anyone they interact with. The principal goal is still what I can do during this interaction. The person and the community member I'm interacting with should leave with a better impression, not just of me but of my agency and policing as a whole. But, again, that doesn't mean that we just ignore risk. That doesn't mean that you know when an officer will take an armed robbery suspect into custody; they greet them with a hug and a handshake. You do a little more sophisticated risk analysis and calibrate your approach based on that analysis without assuming that everyone is always out for you.   

  

DAVID CHAUVIN:  You mentioned in your article that that so-called warrior culture. I quote, "did not become a visible mainstay of day-to-day policing until the massacre at Columbine High School in nineteen ninety-nine." Why? Why is that? Why was that one of the triggers to that new mentality?   

  

SETH STOUGHTON: Yeah, it wasn't the first one, but it was undoubtedly a very pivotal one, a significant one in Columbine. The officers who initially responded to that situation treated it how they had been trained. You set up a perimeter; you hold a position. Then you wait for a SWAT team to arrive. So, there was no difference before Columbine. There was no difference between the response to what we would call an active shooter situation and what we would call a barricaded armed subject. Either way, the first responding officers set up a perimeter outside and wait for the specialists to come in. We learned in Columbine that when the first arriving officers set up that perimeter and then waited. That delay gives an active shooter more time to hurt or kill people in the location of that case in Columbine High School. So that shifted police tactics, and it changed it pretty significantly. So now, active shooter response looks very different, either the first officer or the first couple of officers, depending on exactly how they're trained in that particular agency. As soon as they arrive, they don't try and set up a perimeter. What they do is they go on the law enforcement equivalent of a search and destroy mission right there. Their primary mission is to locate, identify and terminate an active threat as efficiently as possible. That also necessitated a change in equipment. So, it wasn't only a change in tactics. We knew patrol officers needed more tactical training on rapid entry and room clearing, which they weren't previously trained on. Entry and room clearing was a relatively slow and methodical process. Now we need a rapid entry in-room clearing that had once been reserved for tactical teams like SWAT operators. We not only do tactics, we now needed new equipment. That wasn't just Columbine. A couple of incidents included the LA bank robbery and a Miami bank robbery. In these situations, our officer's standard firearms were not sufficient to penetrate someone's suspect's body armor, for example. So instead of just adopting the SWAT teams' tactics, patrol officers were given more access to equipment reserved for SWAT teams, like patrol rifles, usually AR 15s. So that drove a change in both the tactics and equipment. With that change in tactics and equipment comes or has become something of a shift in mentality.   

  

DAVID CHAUVIN:  So, the change of tactics, change of equipment, and the change of that mentality. Right. Dave Grossman has a quote where you should stand on an overpass and look at the city you protect and let your cape flow in the wind like you're Batman. When you have the more military-like mentality, training, and equipment, do you think that it's the training that's an issue and a recruitment issue that agencies have in the types of people they attract?   

  

SETH STOUGHTON: Yeah, it certainly can, and as you might expect, I have some major qualms with the kludgy approach you're describing. Yeah, yeah, I am very comfortable both as a scholar and as a former police officer. I'm very comfortable with the idea that violence will be, perhaps well, regrettably. Still, by necessity, violence is an embedded and inherent aspect of policing. But I am uncomfortable when we as an institution or as a culture start to glorify violence or hold it up as an ideal profession instead of a regrettable necessity within the industry of policing. I do think recruitment is a relevant concern here. I believe that absolutely factors into how we present protecting individuals who are potentially interested in becoming officers or deputies. When recruitment videos or materials focus on the more kinetic and violent aspects of policing, particularly those that glorify it, I think you're attracting candidates who want to do what's in that material. Suppose you're presenting policing as if it's an action movie. In that case, you're attracting candidates who would be interested in playing the lead role in an action movie. Right. And I'm not saying that that's going to be true of most folks or, you know, even a majority of folks. But it is going to be accurate, I think, at least at the margins. So there are a couple of videos that have been online. I don't know how many of them are still online. Newport Beach, California, had a very militarized recruitment video. That video was pitched explicitly as a recruitment video with officers getting yelled at by training sergeants in the academy and takedowns with firearms and hip throws and rifles and handguns and foot pursuits. It's a very, very kinetic view, a very action-oriented view of policing. Not only is that not realistic, but it's also counterproductive. Suppose those are the types of officers, of people you're recruiting, who want to chase people, throw them to the ground and use rear-naked chokeholds to render them unconscious. In that case, you're maybe not getting the folks who are most interested in doing the most common aspects of policing, like comm communication, fact-gathering, and investigations. Officers do that stuff day in and day out, above and beyond the use of force, which is a relatively rare event in policing.   

  

DAVID CHAUVIN:  I mean, there's no doubt that law enforcement and becoming a police officer are both hazardous and incredibly stressful. You know, firsthand. You see, it's a career choice. I would personally never choose for myself because of those risks, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for those who do. Do you believe there's a way to achieve a level of training combining the best of guardian methodology with alertness and risk assessment to help protect themselves and others in the field?   

  

SETH STOUGHTON: Yeah, I do. One of the critical points, so we draw this distinction. I draw this distinction between a warrior officer approach and a guardian officer approach. But that's not a dichotomy. It's not an either-or, that's a spectrum. And where an officer falls on that spectrum, the appropriate way to respond depends on the situation. So, there are certain situations like, for example, an active shooter situation where I want officers to be very heavy on the warrior end of that spectrum. But that shouldn't be the default. If that's an officer's default or if that's all that an officer is capable of being, then they aren't outstanding officers—right, being a warrior, another. So, the way to look at this is not just like a spectrum. Still, the ability to be a warrior is one part of what it takes to be a guardian. You have to have those capabilities. You have to have the mindset to use those abilities in the appropriate situations. But if that's all you are, you're just not serving your community very well.   

  

DAVID CHAUVIN:  Five and a half years ago, President Obama had a task force on the 21st century policing. A report that came out did anything from their report, six central pillars. Were any of them, as far as you know, implemented at a wide-scale degree nationwide? And if so, did they have any positive consequences on the state of policing?   

  

SETH STOUGHTON: Yeah, that's a great question. There was much good there were a lot of good ideas in that in the task force final report. Although one of the things that's worth pointing out is, I don't know that there was very much new or revolutionary in that task force report. Many of it reaffirmed what we know about policing and improvements to policing that we've developed over the last 20, 40, 100 years. There were and there are still agencies that have adopted the 21st-century approach to policing. I happen to live in a city that is home to one of those agencies. Right. So, the Columbia Police Department here in Columbia, South Carolina, adopted the 21st-century task force approach. One of a handful of police agencies used to study the effectiveness of the 21st-century task force approach. And it has had some benefits, at least from what I understand about the state of evaluation, which I believe is I actually can't say I'm sorry. I don't remember which one of the consulting companies is doing the assessment. I think it's CMA. But I may be wrong about that. And I'd hate I hate to throw out the wrong name. Still, certainly, in conversations with the police chief and with the other members of the Civilian Advisory Council, which I am honored to serve on, some benefits seem to be. Perceptible, whether or not they hold up to rigorous study is a different question. However, there are some perceived benefits to some of the twenty-first-century approaches. For example, the guardian policing in that approach, that mentality, and things like Officer Wellness, one of the pillars, officer health, and Wellness of the 21st-century task force approach. Unfortunately, policing is an industry that has not done an excellent job of taking the stress and psychological impacts of the job as seriously as it should of 10 or so years ago. The International Association of Chiefs of Police pointed out that stress and psychological issues are officer safety issues. The task force picked up on that. Having more support for and awareness of officers undergoing mental health, emotional or psychological issues is as important as support and attention on tyrannical officers or have physical issues. That's important in a couple of ways. One, it's essential in an outward-facing way. It improves public service when officers interacting with public members are struggling to deal with PTSD or stress or any of several psychological issues that could impair their ability to serve and protect in their communities. It makes officers happier as employees. And when you have more satisfied employees, you have employees who stick around longer who do their jobs better.   

  

DAVID CHAUVIN:  Well, Seth, this was incredibly entertaining for me at least, and it was a very, very good conversation, very informative. So, I appreciate your time. I thank you again for taking the time this morning to talk to me.   

  

SETH STOUGHTON: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I enjoyed this.   

  

DAVID CHAUVIN: That's Seth Stoughton, former Tallahassee police officer and associate professor of law at the University of South Carolina.   

 

Interview with Laurie Robinson

 

"This is no longer a peaceful protest. Will protesters and media please evacuate the area? We are trying to get to the next fire.  "

  

"So back in December, I announced a task force on the 21st century policing chaired by two noutstanding leaders who are respected both in law enforcement and civil rights. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and former Assistant Attorney General Laurie Robinson. "  

  

KELLY LAWETZ: Now in our offices at George Mason University, where she teaches criminology in law. Her seminal work is back in the spotlight, with the memory of the Ferguson riots replayed in Minneapolis and cities across the country this summer. I started by asking Professor Robinson what she thinks about defunding the police and whether that would do anything to fix the problems identified in her task force nearly five years ago.   

  

LAURIE ROBINSON: Well, I think that there are, first of all, many definitions of defunding the police. I have raised this subject of defunding the police, for example, with my students in the class I teach at George Mason University. And we have examined through a review of different media reports just how many interpret that term differently. It is helpful to use it as a trigger to step back and think carefully about how we as a society want to use the criminal law and the power of arrest in this country. For example, we know from federal data and another Institute of Justice report that there are about 10 million arrests every year in the United States. Still, fewer than five percent of these are for serious violent crime. The majority of them involve not serious offenses, things like disorderly conduct or low-level nontraffic offenses. And we also know that those offenses disproportionately impact people of color, which, of course, is something that our 21st-century report highlighted. Beyond the enormous cost of that arrest to the public, there are substantial costs to people caught up in the system. The defunding question should push us to think about how we want to use criminal law and law enforcement to deal with behavior like addiction or mental illness, homelessness, etc. I don't know of any police officers who wouldn't want to hand this job to someone else very quickly if they had the option. We know that in many jurisdictions, many community-based services have been cut. And the reason that police have this job is that no one else can do it, particularly, let's say, at 3:00 a.m. But the difficulty right now is how that responsibility could or would be shifted. I know that jurisdictions like Eugene, Oregon, have experimented with doing that. They have a pioneering type program called Cahoots; an initiative I think we could collectively learn from. Since George Floyd's death, Albuquerque in New Mexico has started experimenting by changing to a 911 call system to triage cases differently. They now assign them to social services if they do not involve things they think the police need to be handling. So, some careful attention to how different jurisdictions manage this is something that I think Americans will want to be following. And this is something that the task force in several of our sessions and how we talk about collaboration would have very definitely supported.   

  

KELLY LAWETZ: What was it like working with President Obama on such an important initiative? Can you take me into the room and tell me about some of those initial discussions?   

  

LAURIE ROBINSON: Well, I'll tell you about some of the discussions toward the end of it. We had to work on a concise timeline and move back to the beginning of the process for one moment. When Chuck Ramsey, who at that time was the Philadelphia Police Commissioner and my co-chair, and I first met with President Obama, it was on December 1st, 2014. I had the call on Thanksgiving weekend of that year, two days before we met with the President. I had to call out of the blue asking if I would do this. And they said, we're going to get you in one day, and you're going to be meeting with the president on Monday. They called on a Saturday. So, it went very quickly. And then before we met with them, we sat with his counsel, and Chuck and I said to him, I think we're going to need about four or five months to do this. And the council agreed to that. But when we met with the president, he called in the press, he said, and Chuck and Lloyd will have the report to me in two months. And Chuck and I looked to each other, and we went, Holy Toledo, this is going to be tough. We did not say that out loud, of course, with the press there. Then, of course, on a very, very short deadline to get the report to him. By the time the task force was appointed, we had started January 1st and reported to him by March 1st. During that time, we held hearings around the country. We had to work pretty steadily every day and do the hearings and the deliberations. And at the end of the process, with the president in a long session and the flavor of it, I have to tell you, it felt like a graduate seminar as he was grilling us about. It was clear that he had read all 100-pages. He was grilling us about why we had done this and that, and in the area where he grilled me the most, he knew I had handed the grants agency in the Justice Department. He wanted to see why we could not require every police department in the United States to send in data on the use of force. And I had to explain to him that half of the agencies of the 18000 agencies have fewer than ten sworn officers, and they're tiny. They don't receive direct federal money. They probably don't receive any federal money. So, there's the leverage to require them to do anything. They're just out there operating without federal money. And if they get any, it's not direct, so it's not something where you can demand this at the national level. But I have to tell you that having the leader of the free world bearing down on one of the smartest that I've ever worked with, it's made me swallow hard. So, to have him asking the questions was a wonderful experience to go through.   

  

KELLY LAWETZ: Can you give me a profile of the ideal police recruit?   

  

LAURIE ROBINSON: I'm glad you raised that question, Kelly, because one of the things that President Obama, as Chuck Ramsey, my co-chair, and me as we were wrapping up, you said Chuck Laurie. Is there one area if you had more time than you should have delved into or would have wanted to delve into? And both Chuck and I said the area would have been recruitment and hiring. I still believe, if anything, strongly believe that the way to address culture. In policing, to get the changes that I think are needed for moving to police forward is to hire for the police force and forces that we want for the 21st century. I'll cite one statistic: the percentage of women in policing has been meager for some time. There are only about 13 percent women police officers. And that has been the same statistic for almost 20 years. And there are a couple of reasons for it, among others. And it goes to the kind of lifestyle issues, the structure of jobs and policing probably not surprisingly, is somewhat rigid handling shifts. So, for women who have family responsibilities, that's very tough. But women also, research has shown, have a much better track record in escalating incidents. They have a much better track record in handling social interaction with citizens, which is an essential aspect of police officers' jobs. If you think about it, they're dealing with citizens every day. They may shoot a gun maybe once a year if that, but they're dealing with citizens every day, and that's a crucial part of their position. Furthermore, let's think back to the vital principle in the task force report of being guardians of the community. That's a key, key concept. To hire for that rather than for the warrior mindset, not that we don't need warriors in some situations, but to have a 100 percent warrior in someone who cannot be a guardian. We need to be hiring for those traits and those approaches.   

  

KELLY LAWETZ: I imagine having a warrior culture one hundred percent of the time is not good for the mental health of the people who live in that culture.   

  

LAURIE ROBINSON: Oh, you're right, Kelly. As I mentioned earlier on our sixth pillar, one of the things about officer wellness and safety and the number of suicides by officers significantly, very sadly, over an all-time high right now nationally. It's a very worrisometrend. Still, it reflects the strain and stress that police officers are under and anything we can do to help them. I think it's imperative.   

  

KELLY LAWETZ: Have police agencies been successful in recruiting guardians instead of warriors? Are they finding it difficult to recruit that type of person?   

  

LAURIE ROBINSON: Well, I think that some have been. I have not researched that, so I don't know that I can answer per se. Still, some agencies have looked for officers interested in community policing; outreach type of goals have been successful. I have no samples to give examples of people who have explicitly hired for a Guardian approach. But I think it would be similar to those who have hired looking for people who are interested in the community policing strategy,   

  

KELLY LAWETZ:  Just coming back. So, you know, the last few months, there's been many conflicts, much anger, and a lot of strife over-policing. Do you think we've turned a corner after Minneapolis? Do you believe or do you think we need another task force?   

  

LAURIE ROBINSON: I do not think we need another task force. I believe there are plenty of recommendations out there. I do believe that we need to have some national leadership in this area. I believe that there are many people within the policing field. I would say, kind of progressive field calling for change and have specific ideas on this. But it's evident that the countries, especially seeing so many young people out and people of all ages, support change. Still, the conversations have to continue and to look. I would urge that people look at suggestions for what has been put forward, but that, as I always talk to my class about, we need to be fact-based. We need to look at the research, and we need to listen. We need to do much listening. We need to listen to communities. We need to listen to people on the front lines as well, meaning some of the police. So, I think that relying on facts and the affected peoples rather than rhetoric is essential.   

  

KELLY LAWETZ: So, coming back to the task force. What do you want to remind our listeners? What do you want to put like there are six pillars? What do you want to spotlight?   

  

LAURIE ROBINSON: Again, I would talk about a few key areas; of course, as I said before, The Guardian set procedural justice elements like a precise and updated use of force, policies with de-escalation, and alternatives to arrest. A key point about independent investigations and prosecutions where each officer-involved shootings are involved. The critical point about coproduced in public safety is community policing, which means community engagement in that. So those are three points. And then the fourth point, I would say the importance of education and training, not just for recruits, but throughout an officer's career. We've talked a lot about the mentally ill. Still, crisis intervention training is in concert with people trained in this area. Even if some of this responsibility is handed off to folks who work with the mentally ill, officers will still be confronting and handling individuals with mental illness because they're out on the road. They're going to be encountering and running into citizens with those illnesses. So, training for officers in this area will be critical because they will need this awareness and an ability to recognize that they're handling individuals with these problems. Too many tragedies have arisen where officers did not have that awareness. So, this is an area where that kind of training can help in reducing excessive use of force.   

  

KELLY LAWETZ: If we want to build trust and intimacy, we need a change in police culture. However, watching the public needs to be empathetic about the context in which police get support to change.   

  

LAURIE ROBINSON: Yeah.   

  

KELLY LAWETZ: Genetec is a physical security business. And we do speak to law enforcement officials all the time. So, I imagine some of them will be listening to this podcast. What practical advice can you give them on how to move forward with reform in these turbulent times?   

  

LAURIE ROBINSON: Well, I know it's hard, I have worked with law enforcement throughout my career, and my heart goes out to people in law enforcement because I think they are upset. It is a tough time. I think doing a lot of listening, communicating, beating, and working with the community is as tough as that is right now. And some of it, by the way, I think is about education. I have been startled by the degree to which my students are ignorant about their lives. They're very bright. They're clueless about so many basics about law enforcement and what law enforcement has to contend with. I would say so—education and listening and, I think, some outreach in communities. You know, people talking to each other and listening on the local level, I think it can do a lot. One thing I always say is to work in criminal justice. You have to be an optimist. We wouldn't be working in this area; we wouldn't last. So, reaching out to people and just keeping lines of communication open, I think, is critical. So, I wish them well.   

  

KELLY LAWETZ: Thank you very much for joining us today. I enjoyed talking with you.   

  

LAURIE ROBINSON: Well, thank you, Kelly. Thanks so much for the opportunity to speak with you.   

  

KELLY LAWETZ: That's Laurie Robinson, co-chair of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing and now professor of law and criminology at George Mason University.   

  

Engage, a Genetec podcast is produced by Bren Tully Walsh, the associate producer is Angele Paquette. Sound design is provided by Vladislav Pronin with production assistance from Caroline Shaughnessy. The show's executive producer is Tracey Ades Engage a Genetec podcast is a production of Genetec Inc. The views expressed by the guests are not necessarily those of Genetec, its partners, or customers. For more episodes, visit our website at www.Genetec.com on your favorite podcasting app or ask your smart speaker to play engage a Genetec podcast.