by D Ideals · 2015 — Cite this paper as: Rahr, Sue and Stephen K. Rice. From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals. New Perspectives in
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Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety This is one in a series of papers that will be published as a result of the Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety. Harvard™s Executive Sessions are a convening of individuals of independent standing who take joint responsibility for rethinking and improving society™s responses to an issue. Members are selected based on their experiences, their reputation for thoughtfulness and their potential for helping to disseminate the work of the Session. In the early 1980s, an Executive Session on Policing helped resolve many law enforcement issues of the day. It produced a number of papers and concepts that revolutionized policing. Thirty years later, law enforcement has changed and NIJ and the Harvard Kennedy School are again collaborating to help resolve law enforcement issues of the day. Learn more about the Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety at: www.NIJ.gov, keywords fiExecutive Session Policingfl www.hks.harvard.edu, keywords fiExecutive Session Policingfl APRIL 2015 From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals Sue Rahr and Stephen K. Rice fiIn Plato™s vision of a perfect society Š in a republic that honors the core of democracy Š the greatest amount of power is given to those called the Guardians. Only those with the most impeccable character are chosen to bear the responsibility of protecting the democracy.fl 1Introduction Beginning in the 1960s, and more recently fueled by post 9-11 fear, American policing has slowly drifted away from Plato™s vision of guardians and Socrates™ view of guardian education as expressed in Plato™s Republic . This view of guardian education is humanistic. It takes shape through criminal justice education that is not only vocational but also stresses ethics, theory and the nature of virtue. 2 As a profession, we have veered away from Sir Robert Peel™s ideal, fithe police are the people, and the people are the police,fl toward a culture and mindset more like warriors at war with the people we are sworn to protect and serve. 3 As a nation, we have tended to relinquish some of our sacred constitutional rights in favor of the perception of improved safety and security. 4 Constitutional rights are now viewed by some, including some police,
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2 | New Perspectives in Policing as an impediment to the public safety mission. Sadly, many have forgotten that protecting constitutional rights is the mission of police in a democracy. As New York University law professor Stephen Schulhofer argues in a review of the Constitution and the police: fi˜e future of individual liberties in this country depends on reinvigorating the system of vigorous checks and balances built into our Bill of Rights.fl 5 Such a call for reinvigoration of the civil religion of the state has strong historic precedent. As Lincoln argued before the Spring˚eld Young Men™s Lyceum in 1838: Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors, and conditions, sacri˚ce unceasingly upon its altars. 6Recapturing the Fabric of Community Despite two decades of aspiring to effective community policing, American law enforcement seems to have drifted o˛ the course of building close community ties toward creating a safe distance from community members, in some cases substituting equipment and technology as the preferred means of gathering information about crime and addressing threats to public safety. In some communities, the friendly neighborhood beat cop Š community guardian Š has been replaced with the urban warrior, trained for battle and equipped with the accouterments and weaponry of modern warfare. Armed with sophisticated technology to mine data about crime trends, o˝cers can lose sight of the value of building close community ties. Largely stripped of a nuanced understanding of how communities operate, crime tracking and crime prediction software minimizes the utility of hard-earned intelligence provided by line o˝cers who know their beats. After all, one™s ability to glean meaning from algorithms is only as good as its sourcing: the accumulated body of knowledge of officers who have come to understand that there are few fistraight linesfl in policing Š that (sometimes visceral) person- to-person contact is typically not well-suited to statistical models. 7 Most law enforcement leaders recognize that creating stronger human connections and community engagement will lead to improved public safety and more e˛ective crime ˚ghting. So how do we build the foundation of trust necessary to form a true partnership between the police and the people we serve? ˜e research tells us that, despite three decades of falling crime rates Š and improved training, technology and tactics Š public trust in the police has not
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From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals | 3 improved. Instead, empirical assessments of trust and con˚dence in the police have remained generally unchanged in recent years. 8It turns out that people don™t care as much about crime rates as they do about how they are treated by the police. 9This phenomenon, known in academic circles as procedural justice, is regularly practiced and understood by e˛ective and respected beat o˝cers. ˜e public knows it when they see it. But neither has likely heard of or used the term. Both beat o˝cers and members of the public would describe procedural justice in action as being a good cop and doing the right thing. More formally, Tom Tyler of Yale University explains that procedural justice focuses on perceived impartiality during interactions between police and the communities they serve, participation (fivoicefl) from the public during these interactions, fairness, and consistency of treatment. Fairness relates to the protection of human rights and goals to include equal treatment, nondiscrimination, and nonpartisanship. 10 As Tyler and colleagues explain, procedural justice relates directly to legitimacy. fiIf legal authorities exercise their authority fairly, they build legitimacy and increase both willing deference to rules and the decisions of the police and the courts and the motivation to help with the task of maintaining social order in the community.fl 11 Put another way, procedural justice refers to the set of procedures by which agents of social control such as police meet, or fail to meet, standards of consistency, suppression of bias, accuracy of information, mechanisms of recti˚cation, and ethicality of standards in their interactions with the public. 12 Few police leaders would disagree that community trust would improve if police officers routinely employed procedural justice during their interactions with the public. Training in these principles is under way in a number of locations around the nation. 13 Elaborating on the specific behaviors of a good cop doing the right thing, the theory of procedural justice was simplified and operationalized for training street o˝cers through a model developed in 2011 by then King County, Wash., Sheri˛ Sue Rahr (and first author of this paper), using the acronym LEED Š Listen and Explain with Equity and Dignity. Using the LEED model, o˝cers are trained to take the time to listen to people; explain what is going to happen and how the process works; explain why that decision was made so the equity of the decision is transparent; and leave the participants with their dignity intact. Positive police contact facilitates public con˚dence. 14 People tell good cops what is going on in their neighborhoods and work with them to keep it safe. ˜ey view good cops as part of their community Š one of the key distinguishing characteristics between cops with a guardian mindset and cops who operate with a warrior mindset. The guardian operates as part of the community, demonstrating empathy and employing procedural justice principles during interactions. ˜e behavior of the warrior cop, on the other hand, leads to the perception of an occupying
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4 | New Perspectives in Policing force, detached and separated from the community, missing opportunities to build trust and con˚dence based on positive interactions. Police leaders dedicated to establishing practices in their agencies based on procedural justice principles must ensure that their organizational culture is not in conflict with these same principles. As Stephen K. Rice and Karen Collins Rice explain, fiOrganizational systems, such as training, are nested within cultures that tend to go under-acknowledged but have tangible, and even visceral, impacts on the people working within them and their likelihood for embracing change.fl 15The current culture in some American law enforcement agencies tends toward the warrior mentality. ˜e seeds of that culture are planted during recruit training, when some recruits are trained in an academy environment that is modeled after military boot camp, a model designed to produce a warrior ready for battle and ready to follow orders and rules without question. As Radley Balko points out in his noted book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, the warrior mentality threatens Fourth Amendment principles and casts the relationship between o˝cers and citizens as a battle between fiusfl and fithem.fl Balko pulls no punches in describing the Department of Justice under Attorney Generals William French Smith and Edwin Meese during the Reagan era: ˜is would be a rough decade for the Symbolic ˜ird Amendment [what Balko characterizes as strong American resistance to armies policing American streets]. Reagan™s drug warriors were about to take aim at posse comitatus, utterly dehumanize drug users, cast the drug ˚ght as a biblical struggle between good and evil, and in the process turn the country™s drug cops into holy soldiers (p. 139). 16 One of the many problems with the military boot camp model used in some academies is that it has little to do with the daily reality of policing. Whereas attention has been focused on the best span of control of supervisors to patrol o˝cers, 17 in reality, few o˝cers working the street have consistent or even regular supervision. No one is giving them orders or making decisions for them, and police executives cannot generate enough rules to cover the variety of situations they will face on the street. Plus, even if we were to create fienoughfl rules for o˝cers to memorize, the e˛ort con˙icts with what cognitive science tells us about limits on working memory: young adults generally can keep no more than three to ˚ve items in mind at a time. 18 Given the realities of policing, critical thinking and decision-making, not memorization, should be a top goal of any training strategy. Another, more insidious problem in a military- style academy is the behavior modeled by the academy sta˛. ˜ose without power (recruits) submit without question to the authority of those who have power (academy sta˛). Rule violations are addressed by verbal abuse or physical punishment in the form of pushups and extra laps.
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From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals | 5 Day-to-day power di˛erentials may be reinforced more subtly. As Chief David Couper relays on his more than 20 years in the Madison (Wisc.) Police Department: When I was introduced to the academy class that was already in training before I was appointed, the class stood at attention when I entered the room. In fact, I found that not only did they stand at attention when I entered, but that they did so for every supervisor who came into their class. A coercive, top-down leadership model had no place within a police department that was seeking highly educated people to come and join it. Some of the people we were trying to attract into a police career were currently in business, law, social work, or teaching. And most of them wouldn™t choose to remain in a police department that ran like an 18th century British warship (p. 150). 19Upon graduation, we send our newly trained recruits out into the community Š they ˚nally have power. Despite the way they were treated during their training, we expect them to treat the powerless people they encounter in the community with dignity and respect. One example of requiring the most from the least experienced has been in New York, where for years newly credentialed officers have been placed in fiOperation Impactfl assignments in many of the city™s most stressed neighborhoods. 20 Why are we then surprised when some o˝cers treat both suspects and citizens with the disdain and detachment they saw modeled by those in power at the academy? According to the lead author™s experience working with police academies across the nation, much recruit training focuses on physical control tactics and weapons, with less attention given to communication and de-escalation skills. The reasoning for this approach is the sacred mantra of o˝cer safety. We train relentlessly Š as we should Š in physical tactics for the high-risk, low-frequency attacks. 21 Less instructional attention is focused on human behavioral science. Yet seasoned cops and statistics tell us that the o˝cer™s intellect and social dexterity are often the most e˛ective o˝cer safety tools. For the sake of safety, voluntary compliance should be the primary goal in resolving con˙ict, with physical control reserved for those who present an immediate threat and cannot be managed any other way. Don™t misunderstand Š we are not advocating a reduction in tactical training or equipment. O˝cer safety is critical, and we must maintain vigorous instruction on physical control tactics and weapons. Those skills will always be necessary for dealing with individuals who refuse to comply and present an immediate threat. But we need to significantly increase the level of training and importance placed on communication skills and human behavioral science if we truly care about the safety of our o˝cers. As Lt. Jim Glennon of the popular Calibre Press tactical training programs explains in
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6 | New Perspectives in Policing his engaging book, Arresting Communication, fiMastering the skill of communication provides an o˝cer with deep insight into what the public wants, who they are, and what their intentions might be.fl 22 ˜is leads to another great conundrum for leaders. A fiphysical control as last resortfl maxim places immense importance on o˝cer discretion, an orientation that can run counter to longstanding tendencies to regulate o˝cer actions through operational control in the form of complex policies, rules and procedures. 23 To reduce the need for o˝cers to use physical force, it may be necessary to increase their discretion and to trust their critical thinking and decision-making skills. 24What stands in the way of adopting a training model and culture that supports the development of critically thinking leaders with enhanced skills in managing human behavior? Tradition. Some perceive moving away from the boot camp model as coddling recruits, making them weak and diminishing officer safety. Worse yet, it could be perceived as fisoft on crime,fl a political death knell to leaders since the 1960s. However, there appear to be no clearly logical or evidence-based reasons that we should train police o˝cers as we do soldiers. Although police o˝cers wear uniforms and carry weapons, the similarity ends there. ˜eir missions and rules of engagement are completely different. The soldier™s primary mission is that of a warrior: to conquer. ˜e rules of engagement are decided before the battle. The police officer™s mission is that of a guardian: to protect. The rules of engagement evolve as the incident unfolds. In war, collateral damage is expected and accepted. Not so in policing. On the battle˚eld, the soldier acts on orders from a superior. In the community, the o˝cer is the leader, rarely operating with the luxury of direct supervision. Why aren™t more police executives clamoring to train police o˝cers to be more independent, critically thinking leaders? Because it is not consistent with the culture that exists in many American police agencies.ˆ˜e hierarchical, top- down control model remains the predominant structure both in the station and on the street. We do not encourage the rank and ˚le to question authority. We cling to the belief that fear of punishment for rule violations leads to greater rule adherence and better police performance. Many still believe that an abundance of rules leads to fewerˆmistakes and greater accountability. ˜ough well-intentioned, this style of leadership has the unintended but powerful consequence of conveying a distrust of o˝cers by their leaders. It is no wonder that one of the hallmarks of law enforcement culture is the reciprocated distrust and disdain of police leadership by rank-and-˚le o˝cers. As David Bayley explains, fiAuthority is very much top-down, but perhaps for good reason. Policing needs to be accountable to law and morality, so supervisors double-down on discipline so as to minimize mistakes, they hope. Not only do o˝cers not trust the community, but senior
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8 | New Perspectives in Policing justice system professionals. ˜e Commission oversees the training of approximately 10,000 police o˝cers and deputies from across the state, serving in 39 counties, 243 cities and a variety of tribal and state agencies. Each year, more than 600 police recruits receive 720 hours of basic training in programs that last 5 months. Figure 1 shows the courses and hours of training. Before 2012, basic training was conducted according to a paramilitary fiboot campfl model that employed a deterrence strategy to maintain discipline and control. Referred to as a fitune-up,fl starting the ˚rst day, training o˝cers yelled at and berated new recruits for failing to complete drills designed to be impossible. Recruits were required to brace (salute) and remain silent whenever they encountered an academy staff member. Minor rule violations resulted in physical punishment in the form of extra pushups and running laps. Despite the offering of behavioral and communications instruction in the classroom, the majority of the ˚ve-month training regimen emphasized physical skills training accompanied by a steady stream of fear-provoking stories about officers killed in the line of duty. Few classes Figure 1. Basic Law Enforcement Academy CurriculumApplied Training (Mock Scenes)Study/Review/ExamsMiscellaneous 260HOURS250HOURS74HOURS64HOURS40HOURS32HOURSFundamental Knowledge:Criminal Investigations 53 Criminal Law 48Criminal Procedures 37 Patrol Procedures 63 Traf˜c Investigations 55 Ethics 4Communication & Behavior Management:Blue Courage 14Emotional Intelligence/ Tactical Thinking 6Crisis Intervention Training 8Crisis Communication 12Physical Skills:Defensive Tactics 124Firearms 86Emergency Vehicle Operations 40 720TOTAL CURRICULUMHOURS*Elements of the Communications and Behavioral Management training have been extensively integrated into the Fundamental Knowledge and Physical Skills blocks of training and must be demonstrated in Mock Scenes.
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From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals | 9 e˛ectively integrated communication skills and physical tactics. Physical control was emphasized over de-escalation. Conquering was emphasized over serving. Most of the posters and visual aids in the classrooms carried themes related to deadly threats on the lives of officers. Skulls and crossbones were featured prominently. The lobby was decorated with display cases featuring the fitools of the trade.fl Legacy mementos from previous classes reflected a consistent theme of warriors, battles and survival. Noticeably absent from both the physical environment and curriculum was any reference to service and the noble and historical role of policing in a democracy. What changed? The first change was the elimination of the protocol requiring recruits to brace. ˜e new protocol requires recruits to initiate a conversation any time they come in contact with a sta˛ member, taking care to make eye contact, show respect and address the person as fisirfl or fima™am.fl ˜e arti˚cially imposed fear and humiliation from the fitune-upfl day has been replaced by coaching. ˜e standards for physical performance remain high, and training o˝cers still push the recruits far beyond their physical limits. But, rather than screaming and berating the recruits, the training o˝cers vigorously coach and encourage them to keep pushing. Instead of trying to instill a sense of fear, training o˝cers strive to build a sense of camaraderie and pride for the success of the whole team. ˜e displays containing the fitools of the tradefl in the main lobby were replaced by a large mural depicting the United States Constitution, framed by the following words in large relief: fiIn These Halls – Training the Guardians of Democracy,fl as shown in Figure 2. ˜is theme has been replicated in several locations across the campus. Posters depicting the pride and honor of policing have been interspersed with the more traditional posters about o˝cer safety. Speeches delivered at graduation ceremonies emphasize the nobility and higher purpose of policing and the distinction between the roles of warriors and guardians. During the ˚rst week, each recruit is presented a pocket-sized book containing the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. A vigorous discussion about civil rights and the important role of policing in our democracy follows the presentation. Behavioral and social science programs have been integrated into the 720-hour curriculum. Although intertwined, each of these programs has a distinct purpose that supports the others and contributes to better officer safety and improved public trust Š two areas that, in the past, have been incorrectly viewed as mutually exclusive. ˜ey are: ŁBlue Courage. Developed through a Bureauof Justice Assistance grant, this motivationalprogram instills pride and supportsvalues about the nobility of policing and
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10 | New Perspectives in Policing the importance of maintaining physical, emotional and spiritual health. It has also been implemented at the Arizona Law Enforcement Academy and is currently being introduced to the rank and ˚le at the New York Police Department and many other agencies across the nation.ŁJustice Based Policing. This program,developed by the King County Sheri˛™s O˝ce with funding from the O˝ce of CommunityOriented Policing Services, teaches theprinciples of procedural justice using theLEED model (Listen and Explain with Equityand Dignity).ŁCrisis Intervention Training. This programteaches recruits to recognize behavioralcues associated with mental illness andtraumatic brain injury and helps recruitsdevelop strategies to de-escalate conflict and gain compliance. More than half of the fimock scenariofl training and testing activities have been modi˚ed to include options andrequirements for using crisis intervention techniques.ŁTactical Social Interaction. Academypersonnel worked in partnership with Defense Figure 2. A 6™ x 9™ Mural of the United States Constitution
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From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals | 11 Advanced Research Program Administration (DARPA) researchers to create a program that teaches students speci˚c, measurable actions that increase rapport between strangers and lead to positive social interaction. Although the program was developed to train Marine recruits how to conduct peacekeeping missions in foreign villages, it has shown great utility for police o˝cers and is currently being adapted for both basic and in-service training.Ł fi˜e Respect E˚ect.fl Lessons from the book by Paul Meshanko about the neuroscience behind the acts of respect and disrespect to either motivate or antagonize26 were integrated into the basic academy curriculum. At the same time, the entire WSCJTC staff completed the program as a demonstration of the e˛ectiveness of this organizational strategy to begin cultural transformation. What has not changed? Moving away from the fiboot campfl model has not led to softening of the training. Recruits still must demonstrate a high level of pro˚ciency in defensive tactics and firearms. In fact, additional firearms training time and tools have been added, and the defensive tactics program has been expanded to include more realistic and challenging scenarios. Discipline standards have not been relaxed. ˜e use of formal titles and deference to senior o˝cers and sta˛ are still required. ˜e changes made at the academy do not resemble previous experiments with finon-stressfl academies, nor has the environment been changed to mirror a community college. The military protocols that have been retained (marching and formal flag ceremonies) are focused on patriotism and honor rather than power and submission. Behavioral strategies and decision-making have been integrated into physical control scenarios to better re˙ect the reality of policing. A ˚ve-year longitudinal study of the e˛ectiveness of the new training is now under way, having been launched in the fall of 2014. Researchers will follow cohorts of recruits for five years, conducting interviews and administering surveys at various intervals. ˜e study is designed to determine if the guardian philosophy, the Blue Courage program and the Tactical Social Interaction program positively in˙uence o˝cers™ attitudes about their job and the public. It will also measure whether or not officers trained under those programs are more likely to use crisis intervention strategies and de-escalation skills in the ˚eld than o˝cers trained under the old warrior philosophy. Conclusion As this paper was being written, media images of o˝cers atop armored personnel carriers, dressed in military fatigues and armed with ri˙es, have proven to be a powerful catalyst for vigorous discussion about the militarization of police in this country. 27 This debate should generate introspection by police leaders about cultures created within police agencies. ˜is introspection should lead to a robust conversation with community members to assess whether police
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