The pursuit of police professionalism and dignificación is a noble cause, and therefore a consideration of these terms is a useful way to begin this conference. My focus today will be how police professionalism is conceptualized in the United States, and how through an adoption of an advanced version of professionalism, in which police agencies dedicate themselves to effective public service and the reduction of crime, dignificación can result.
“Professionalism,” has two meanings in policing. The first is the traditional and basic sense of integrity, honesty, and the adherence to a code of ethics, conduct or standards. To be professional in this sense is best illustrated by a American television show. Thirty years ago if you had said police “professionalism,” at least to kids about my age or a bit older, they would instantly have conjured up images of two incorruptible and earnest Los Angeles police officers driving around in a black and white patrol car, unit 1-Adam-12, fighting crime. I’m not certain if any of you, other than some of the Embassy staff or those who have spent time in the United States, have seen the show. It contained powerful images that I will bet helped propel some of us to enter the law enforcement field. It depicted an idealized vision of the professional model of policing. The whole show epitomized rapid-response 911-driven policing. They served as the entry-point to the mythical “criminal justice system,” nearly always using their legal authority to solve a crime, make the key arrest, and do it all in 22 minutes. As polite as they were, they were largely detached from the community, engaging in random preventive patrol that was supposed to demonstrate omnipresence, thus deterring criminals from committing crime. They exemplified efficient, centralized-control, para-military policing at its finest.
However, there is another, more modern, conception of professional policing. In this version we find police officers more engaged with the community and who are more effective crime-fighters because they “police smarter.” Because crime is more challenging, complex and abundant in some locations than ever before, and because the public is demanding police service that is responsive to the community and is respectful of human rights, police must be more effective. Becoming more effective requires more than simple honesty and integrity. It requires the adoption of a more sophisticated version of professionalism.
Where crime rates are low, police can get away with the older traditional professional model of policing because as long as police are generally respectful and honest, the public senses no problem and does not complain. Where crime rates are high, and the public perceives that police are ineffective, more of the traditional kind of professional policing will add only marginal benefit. We know from research that random patrol is a minimal deterrent to crime. We know that post-crime investigation has limited effectiveness in preventing more crime. Lots of crime is not even reported, and when it is, it is reported too late for our rapid response capability to be of much use. From this ineffectiveness stems disillusionment among the public and among the police themselves, which has a negative effect on the ability of police to control crime. Their morale suffers.
Public security is about public confidence in our collective safety. If citizens are fearful of crime, they retreat indoors to safety and concede victory to the criminal element. On the other hand, if the public sees its police force confidently attacking crime and proactively engaging the community in the process, confidence in public safety rises and the result is that the public more eagerly joins with the police to control public spaces.
The word dignificación was difficult for me to understand at first because the Spanish-English on-line dictionaries I consulted did not include it. With assistance from the Embassy staff, I learned that it means a sense of institutional and individual pride as well as respect by the public for the institution and for its officers. The term is an excellent one; it is a critical attribute of a good police force.
My knowledge of Mexican policing is unfortunately limited. The Internet provided some useful information on the subject but, more importantly, I have enjoyed the opportunity to meet a few months ago in Washington, D.C. with a delegation of Mexican police officials and representatives of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). From them I learned that Mexican police face significant challenges: lack of financial resources, low pay for officers, doubts about the value of decentralization, corruption, and uncertainty about the boundary that separates the responsibilities of the police and the responsibilities of the military deployed on a civil policing mission.
To pretend that policing ideas or programs from the United States are necessarily applicable throughout all of the Americas would be foolish, but there is certainly something to be learned by comparing your and our successes and failures, and vice-versa. The opportunity this meeting offers us to share experiences is therefore valuable.
It should be emphasized that the American police structure, because it is a federal system like yours, is a diverse one – there is nothing monolithic about it. Within the U.S. there are more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies at every level of government and so there is great variety of experience. Many observers have commented that this variation is better described as fragmentation. They point out that the NYPD (the New York City Police Department), which has more than 40,000 officers, is vastly different from countless one-person police departments. Critics say that this difference must mean that the nation must be riddled with inefficiency and must lack coordination. To a degree, this is true. But variety is also a strength in the United States, whose democracy demands local control. Variety allows for innovation and encourages competition between potential suppliers of police services at every level of government from federal to local. It is only natural, therefore, that control of our law enforcement is variable. For the most part we have appointed police chiefs nationwide, but we also have about 4000 elected sheriffs, and even a handful of elected chiefs. This variety of governance allows innovative ideas to take root within a mix of policing practices that are highly progressive and some that admittedly are not. Nonetheless, we do have a degree of state standardization that compels a level of uniformity.
I intend to use most of my comments to make a particular argument: that a primary obstacle to the general improvement of police services in the United States is hesitation to adopt the principles of advanced professionalism that lead to a state of dignificación. In low crime environments with modest public demands on police, dignificación comes readily hand in hand with the conventional professionalism that stands on honesty and personal integrity.
In places with high crime rates, as in most urban centers with minority neighborhoods where victimization rates are high, there is serious need for proactive, community-oriented policing strategies. Police in these communities need to be not just honest and trustworthy, police must be effective in fighting crime and that requires an advanced level of professionalism. Let me clarify this.
I believe that the major challenges facing policing today are not Internet or technology crimes. Nor is the recruiting of new officers or lack of funding. It is not even terrorism. I think the major challenge is resistance to transforming police into organizations that effectively fight crime and project the perception that they are effectively fighting crime. They must make it convincingly clear that the community and its police force control public spaces. Perceptions influence the public’s fear of crime and its sense of safety. Attitude determines whether residents of a community will encourage its police officers and actively join them in helping to control behavior that leads to criminal acts.
A police institution in any nation is only as good as the officers it puts on the street everyday. It gives its police officers a great deal of discretion, instructing them to make decisions that directly and irrevocably affect peoples’ lives. Sometimes officers exercise physical force, and at other times they wield more subtle power that can inflict injury. Examples are the authority to make arrests, to take someone into custody for mental health reasons or to take children from their parents if abuse is suspected. To make those difficult decisions, we want officers who are not merely “street-smart.” We want officers with good sense, who have a mature view of life.
I hope that no one here or in the United States misunderstands what I am trying to say. In the United States we train police officers well but we teach it predominantly as a skill. We produce well-trained patrol officers in anywhere from 10 to 26 weeks of police academy plus a varying number of weeks of field training. On the whole, they are good officers. They know how to patrol, investigate crimes, respond to emergency situations, and they do it well.
A couple of months ago I became the police chief in Milliken, Colorado, a small community north of Denver. It used to be a thinly populated agricultural area but has become a suburb for northern Colorado cities including Denver. Milliken’s population is nearly half Hispanic, mostly of Mexican-American heritage but many Mexican nationals live there, too.
My new challenge is to propagate an expanded sense of professionalism within my department, a professionalism that spawns dignificación. The challenge therefore extends beyond the department to my community. I want to help the citizens of my community to understand what a good responsive police department is.
The plans for Milliken are not my own. They represent a composite of ideas borrowed from distinguished chiefs of police and police researchers. Many ideas come from pioneering agencies like San Diego and Boston’s. We are lucky to have in place an excellent professional department, if we define professionalism in the conventional way. What is more the officers have backgrounds and come from places that will help them to appreciate the meaning of dignificación and help them understand the concept of community-based policing. Among them are no grizzled veterans who might resist change at any cost and insist that they continue to do things as they always have.
Let me tell you something more about my police officers. One of them worked for several years with juveniles in a halfway house. Another worked with probationers. One is an immigrant; she came here from Ireland during high school. Another worked in a jail. The sergeant has worked in three other police agencies. These are people with a range of experience in life. They are intellectually curious, impressionable and educable with the ability to integrate ideas. Which means that I have a responsibility to be sure they are provided with mentoring that will help them expand their vision of policing. I am confident that they will progressively make judgment calls with greater and greater skill and assurance. And as they are encouraged to interact even more with the people and families of the community, they will exercise discretion prudently in dealing with them.
It is possible that up to now some of you may feel that what I have been touting as a second kind of professionalism is an abstraction. Perhaps a recent incident illustrates it well. One of the most junior officers recently attended a two-day “officer-safety” seminar. It had to do with handling deadly force confrontations. He and his class were told by an instructor that reconciling community-based policing and officer safety is difficult, and therefore police officers must take representations in favor of community-based policing with skepticism lest they jeopardize their personal safety. I was troubled to hear of this advice because one of the best ways to increase officer safety is to practice community policing. Why? Because it enlarges an officer’s acquaintance with potential adversaries on the street even as it enlarges his circle of acquaintance with good citizens who may be helpful partners in difficult situations.
Ed Flynn is the police chief of Arlington County, Virginia. He is one of the top-ranked chiefs of police in the United States. Flynn tells of his early patrol days in Jersey City, New Jersey, a tough town located across the mouth of the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan. His primary weapon was his mouth, that is, his ability to use it to make friends with the denizens of the neighborhood he watched over and to encourage people on the verge of physical conflict to calm down. One night he was alone when he confronted a suspect in an alley. He had no way to call for help; the officers did not yet have portable radios. His salvation was the gathering behind him of a few local residents whom he had befriended. That’s how community policing can bolster officer safety. It is the essence of Sir Robert Peel’s notion that “the police are the public and the public are the police; the police [are just] members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen, in the interests of community welfare and existence.” (Incidentally, if ever you are looking for clear guidance on what the vision of professional policing and human rights is all about, go read Robert Peel’s nine elements of the Statement of Principles that accompanied the Police of the Metropolis Bill, which founded the London Metropolitan Police in 1829. You will be amazed at its applicability 172 years later.)
Acculturating new police officers is a critically important task. I understand that in attendance today are some current police academy students. First, I commend you on your career choice. You have an opportunity to make a positive difference in many lives and communities. Second, the fact that your commanders felt it appropriate to bring you here to listen and participate in this conference is recognition that this kind of discussion is important to your professional development. I can assure you that I never attended anything of this sort during my police academy days 15 years ago. At my Academy, ideas about the role of police in society were hardly discussed. Oh, we attended lectures on the subject and heard simplistic platitudes about respecting the Constitution and abiding by the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics. The presentation was superficial and cursory. Once on the street by myself, I wrestled with these ideas, albeit crudely, because I always was vaguely unsatisfied by how we policed. Do not get me wrong; I loved patrol work. I liked racing around town in my patrol car responding to calls, making an arrest, issuing a summons, writing a report, and then taking the next call. I can tell you I never worked with a finer group of men and women.
However, I remember well the transformation in my thinking. With due respect to my attorney colleagues here, it was not law school alone that spurred it. The transformation was the result of being introduced to new ideas by attending conferences, reading literature about the evolution of policing practices and delving into research on policing. But of greater importance was the opportunity for exposure to the practitioners who were making new policing ideas work on the streets throughout the United States, Canada and in Europe. I have a vivid recollection of an experience that antedates this attitudinal change. In discussing community policing ten years ago with another officer I was the classic cynical patrol officer, who believed it was a misguided concept and that the public did not understand what good policing is. So I understand today’s skepticism because a decade ago I was myself a skeptic. It is possible that some of my officers might be a bit skeptical now, although they are probably more enlightened than ever I was because police training has generally improved in the past fifteen years.
Low pay is frequently invoked as a reason for inability to maintain good police officers. By Colorado standards Milliken’s police are not highly paid. A common concern is that officers need to earn a good wage to help them avoid temptation to engage in corruption. My officers can afford to live decently and raise families, even if buying a modest home is for some of them difficult. It is undeniable that low pay can be conducive to corruption but it can be balanced by inducements to be honest. One such is a departmental culture that demands honesty and integrity. One need only remember that many departments in the United States have suffered from corruption although their officers earned good wages. In New Orleans, perhaps the most recent example of a big-city police department that had been riddled with corruption and has undergone a dramatic transformation, salaries were raised from notoriously low levels but other important measures were also taken. That department’s culture underwent a dramatic change. I think that the major bulwark against corruption in any department is a culture of intolerance of it by fellow officers. Indeed, to claim that every New Orleans police officer had been corrupt prior to the salary increase is unfounded if not insulting. Peer pressure is the most powerful way to deter corruption. (It must be the “right kind” of peer pressure, though, because the “wrong kind” can just as easily encourage it.)
There is another aspect of low pay. It can lead to a lack of dignificación and damages self-esteem because the police sense the community does not value the work of its police. Much like the Broken Windows Theory of crime, one can argue that low pay reinforces an environment in which officers themselves tolerate bad behavior by colleagues because they believe the public does not care. I know some very low paid police officers in Colorado. They are all small town cops, but I would never question their integrity or their commitment to professionalism and ethical behavior. They are police officers because they are proud to play an important role in the life of their communities. They gain fulfillment from the respect they earn. [Edwin Delattre, Dean of the School of Education at Boston University] one of the foremost thinkers about the issue of police ethics wrote a book entitled Character and Cops. Perhaps some of you have read it. He stresses that good officers carry with them an absolute pride in incorruptibility. It is simply part of their character, forged in childhood and reinforced in school, police academy, in training and absolutely expected by the public and by their fellow police officers.
Dignificación depends on another factor: the culture of the government and society. The city or town itself must have a basic presumption of integrity and open fair government. The leadership and the community cannot tolerate breaches of integrity. My town of Milliken is a proud community with a history of good governance. [David Bayley, Dean of the School of Criminal Justice, State University of New York, Albany] a leading authority on comparative and international policing, argues cogently in his study on the democratization efforts of police in places like the Balkans, Somalia, Panama and Haiti that instituting democratic policing does not necessarily drive democratic reform in other governmental institutions. To achieve stable effective, truly democratic policing that implicitly respects human rights requires a foundation of other governmental institutions, which respect the rule of law and ethical conduct. The police cannot stand alone as a beacon of professionalism.
Having the foundation in place for inculcating the next level of professionalism, how will I inculcate it in Milliken?
In introducing officers to the concept and theory of policing in a democracy, it is necessary to define its characteristics. There are two common elements to it wherever it exists: First, police must be responsive to the public. In the United States all police systems are driven mainly by public demand. A person calls the police, frequently by dialing the 911 emergency telephone number, and a car is usually dispatched. While this may not be the most efficient strategy to deploy resources, it suggests something that is profoundly important: a highly diverse public directs where resources go. More importantly, it means that NO governmental agency, federal or local, directs where police resources go. Hence, in spite of criticism heaped upon the 911 system with its high-priced communications systems and its many inefficiencies (including overuse and the unrealistic expectations it generates), it does ensure that police officers are immediately accountable and responsive to the public, not to government. This means, as was eloquently pointed out in last evening’s Introductory Talk by Ambassador Taiana, that in democratic countries police exist at any moment not to ensure government security but to protect the rights of individuals.
A second set of demands for police accountability is imposed by a range
of organizations and institutions that exist in democracies. These constrain
and compel the police far beyond the single box above the police chief
on the town organization chart. All administrative authorities in
democratic jurisdictions expect police departments to be accountable to
them.
[Chris Stone and Heather Ward] authorities at the Vera Institute
in New York, a police research organization, have written that police
accountability runs to a range of institutions and bodies. Of course
police must answer to the administrative authority in a jurisdiction.
But how about the political authority? To pretend that police do not have
to be responsive to political pressures is not to understand democracies.
The key to dealing with political pressures is to be certain that it is
balanced by all the other levels of accountability. Police departments
are accountable to the courts, prosecutors, media, and neighborhood organizations
and even to some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). We police
are accountable to legislators, to Internal Affairs within the police department,
who may run proactive stings on officers to see if any are tempted by an
opportunity for a payoff. There may be a Police Review Board or some
sort of civilian oversight mechanism. We are accountable, as noted,
to the public every moment of every day. When any agency in a democracy
is accountable to so many institutions, organizations and individuals,
it helps ensure that those within the agency maintain their integrity and
their respect for democratic values.
A professional police department and officers need a unifying sense of purpose and mission. That mission must be conceived of in collaboration with the community and it should focus on providing value for the community it serves. Deploying officers in fixed guard-type posts or instructing them to drive around aimlessly demonstrating police omnipresence and waiting for crime to occur in front of them, or demanding that they write revenue-enhancing traffic citations are not activities that will sustain for long the professional aspirations of bright officers. They need challenges, so that at the end of every day they can go home with a sense of satisfaction that they have helped increase public safety in that community.
Police officers should focus on those places and people who produce the bulk of our community’s problems. They must, for a start, focus on problem locations and people with warrants, problem drivers who have had their licenses suspended, parolees, and probationers. This is a useful activity that reduces repeat calls for service, a form of preventive policing. For example, I hope our Milliken police officers will actively assist local juvenile probation officers by helping to monitor juvenile offenders and ensuring they’re not drinking alcohol and using drugs. My officers know the potential offenders well and can help hold these problem kids accountable. Why drive aimlessly in circles burning up gasoline during a ten-hour shift, hoping randomly to bump into bad guys doing something wrong when we have information and data that show who these people probably are. That does not mean that we have always to be looking to arrest these people. It means that they need to know we are watching, that we care for them, and that we are holding them accountable. Good police want these people to stay on the straight and narrow and succeed in probation or parole. Fortunately the call-load in Milliken will allow us to spend some of our time on these projects.
Milliken police officers are going to be led to adopt a problem-oriented way of handling nearly every pattern of crime or disorder we confront. The process of examining a problem, collecting information, brainstorming potential solutions to it and ultimately assessing levels of success is what problem-oriented policing is all about. This is one way to engage in very effective crime-fighting. In a gradual way officers will be assigned to various projects that they will keep long-term. For example, one officer will work with traffic problems at the schools. He or she will work with the School District and Public Works to figure out the extent of the problem, consult with parents about safety concerns, and figure out solutions and then measure whether the fixes have worked. Another officer will study a warehouse where parties that disturb the neighbors are frequently held.
Officers will be taught to embrace an expanded role of responsibility for some regulatory functions that affect crime and disorder. In the U.S. it’s typically called code enforcement. They will look for abandoned cars and overgrown weeds. These are the signs of decay that cause apprehension in people; they fear their neighborhoods are crumbling. When there is a sense that society reacts quickly to control deterioration, apprehension and pessimism recede and families again emerge to take control of public spaces. Remember that it is the public who ultimately police, but the police officers are the professionals who have the means to help people take back their public spaces. I encourage you to read Broken Windows by James Q. Wilson and George Killing.
Each police officer should be accountable for looking after the well-being of an assigned section of town. Each will “own” that piece of geography. It will be up to each one or teams of two to discover junked cars and abandoned houses and find a way to handle these and like problems. No good police officer should assume that someone else will take care of these problems.
Good police officers focus outward on issues of crime and disorder, not inward on internal department administrative issues. The focus must be on their customers, the people who live in the town. In too many police departments there is an unhealthy preoccupation with internal politics and the organization chart. If there is anything about their job that bothers them, they must be free to discuss it with the chief but their number one priority has to be the value of the services we provide to the community. Anything less means that organization loses its sense of mission.
Modern police officers must have graduated beyond calling themselves “law enforcement officers.” Law enforcement is only a small part of their job. They are more accurately peace officers. Labels and names do make a difference in how police officers perceive themselves. Their main job is not to stand as a gatekeeper at the front end of the criminal justice system, producing cases for the trial mill. Police officers do not work for prosecutors or judges. We have an independent role. We abide absolutely by the rule of law but we cannot confuse our mission. I am convinced, and I can say this is a lawyer, that police departments in the United States are too often just a bit too willing to subordinate themselves to prosecutors or be intimidated by lawyers.
I want my department’s police officers to understand the value of crime prevention. Their jobs are not all investigation, arrest, and prosecution. Officers can be far more effective in preventing crime than many of them realize. Conceding that the matter is controversial, I think that some of the training and resources aimed at improving reactive investigations, should more properly be aimed at understanding how crimes occur and how we can prevent them. In my department patrol officers will be keeping more of the relatively simple cases to investigate by themselves. Where it is warranted, officers will be encouraged to take “ownership” of cases. Passing them on to dedicated investigators is not always necessary. Finally, the officers will be encouraged to consider how they might have prevented the crime in the first place.
Officers should develop the habit of collecting data or evaluating data that others have gathered. Prof. Herman Goldstein, of the University of Wisconsin, who conceived of problem-oriented policing, envisions police as junior criminologists who study crime problems, much like a scientist might. Officers are fully capable if given proper training, and if the expectation is there. It can add challenge to the job and affords satisfaction. Numbers can help tell us if we are doing our job well. The NYPD introduced a revolutionary concept in policing: COMPSTAT for Computer Statistics. They showed that timely data about crime trends, crime patterns and crime locations can help police to make informed decisions about resource allocation.
A comprehensive vision of policing, strands of which fall under the rubric of community policing, has not been fully realized in much of the United States. However, it has spread wherever there is a progressive police culture that wants to embrace it. It appeals to and requires professional people – not professionals who simply go about their policing jobs fairly and honestly as they have for many years – but professionals who, in addition, build a body a knowledge about communities, crime, sociology, education, urban issues, public and private sector resources, and problem-solving.
I hope that Milliken’s police officers will recognize that emphasis on broadening their role must not diminish their capacity to provide emergency response. Traditional reactive policing will always be vitally important. Except for the fire department and emergency medical services, which have their own circles of responsibility, no institution other than a police force exists to respond at once when something bad happens and a trained person is needed on the scene to fix it. It follows that the extent of community engagement by the police has definite limits. Police officers cannot be all things to all people.
I’m not going to pretend that the entire vision outlined is equally applicable in Mexico. There are different institutions, challenges and conditions facing you. Yet I’m convinced there are universal truths in policing because there are universal truths about people. It can be Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, or Milliken, Colorado. The point is that we as police want to be professionally fulfilled as we go about creating and promoting public safety in our communities.
Achieving professionalism, certainly of the new and improved kind, is a journey. It will require baby steps. Here was one step I took a couple months ago. When I worked in Washington, DC, I was assigned an office with a single framed print hanging on a wall. It was so simple and yet it said a lot. It read, “Police Others As You Would Have Others Police You.” I must credit the visionary Chris Braiden, a retired superintendent of the Edmonton, Canada Police Service, with writing it. It now hangs in the main room of the Milliken police station. I am hopeful that a simple slogan will reinforce and advance the culture that exists.
We know today that police can successfully produce public safety, by reconciling a respect for human rights with the need to deal intelligently with crime, and through this we will find professionalism and dignificación. I hope I have provided some ideas worthy of further discussion and consideration. Thank you very much for your attention.
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