Let’s not pigeon-hole and undervalue the capabilities of our police officers.
One of our regular contributors, Terry White, is also the host of the Better Minneapolis Podcast. In this election season he has invited the top tier candidates for Mayor, City Council, Park Board, and the Board of Estimate and Taxation. A few declined, but his archive provides us some in depth looks at the candidates, in their own words. I have listened to each and every one of them.
His October 26th guest was City Council President Elliot Payne. I have only met him briefly and was looking forward to learning more about him and his priorities for city governance.
In his opening remarks introducing himself, I learned he is a Milwaukee native who came to the University of Minnesota and earned a Bachelor’s degree in engineering, followed by a Master’s Degree from the Humphrey School. He made it clear that his decision making is data and analysis driven.
Fairly early in the podcast, I began to disagree with the way in which he relied on data to form conclusions. Much consideration has been given to finding ways to reduce the calls that Minneapolis Police Officers respond to and to reassign them to non-sworn professionals. That makes sense, to a point. The first example, hard to disagree with, is to relieve sworn officers of response to mental health crises. While today’s MPD officers receive more extensive training in mental health crisis intervention and de-escalation, there are a number of reasons why trained clinical professionals and social workers are better responders, absent the potential for violence.
Mental health crisis response calls are the low hanging fruit of diverting police calls. Of course, when appropriate, diverting to a mental health professional is a better response. Council President Payne went on to say that possibly 47% of MPD calls could be outsourced to another city or other professional. He said it might be possible to off load 911 calls to the point that 250 officers in Minneapolis, would be adequate for 911 response. Council President Payne did allow that other duties such as criminal investigative follow up for serious matters would require sufficient sworn staff. Regarding all of those calls that he didn’t think police officers should respond to, I don’t think he knows possibilities that go along with them. For example, have civilian staff respond to non-serious injury traffic accidents? In some cases, for sure, but you never really know. What about an accident that is a DWI, revoked license, arrest warrants, refuse to cooperate…? Well, then an officer would need to be called additionally. My point is, when you decide what calls can be off loaded from police officers, professionals with experience in these scenarios, that do happen, need to be a part of that assessment.
One the thing that really annoys me and certainly not just from CM Payne, is the “you don’t need to send someone with a gun to that”, rationale. I was a cop for 40 years and 5 days, 11 years of uniform patrol mostly in the Philips and Central neighborhoods where I grew up, 10 years on the SWAT team, grunt to commander, 6 years on an MPD/FBI joint SWAT team, and 3 years as a robbery detective. I never fired a shot off the range. About 27% of officers ever fire their weapon off the range, in a career of 20-40 years. That includes shooting fatally injured animals. When I was the 5th Precinct Inspector a deer trying to leap out of Lakewood Cemetery became impaled on the spikes of the wrought iron fence. An officer fired a shot to end its mortal suffering. 80% have never fired their weapon more than twice. While officers must be proficient and practice good decision making, firing a weapon is very rare for officers. It is by no means their go to tool.
I used my people skills a thousand times more than my skills as a marksman. Most cops, especially with crisis/de-escalation training, and years of experience in stressful interactions get pretty good at persuasion and listening. From the armchair, if you haven’t had a really angry person screaming at you with spittle flying out of their mouth and still stay calm, day after day, it is hard to appreciate the discipline required. If you think cops are jaded now, let’s make them just the gun squad, and only send them to violent calls. The police remain the city representative the public sees most and the most common point of first contact. We were taught we were not warriors for the city, but ambassadors for the city. Just help people when you can, even if it is not in the job description. That expectation makes for better police officers. It also makes the job more rewarding.
I received my BA in sociology from the University of Minnesota (as a first gen working class kid, it took me 8 years) focused on criminology and deviance. Sociology required two quarters of statistics. I opted for a 3rd quarter. They were descriptive, analytic, and applied statistics courses. In the 3rd quarter, with my classmates, we designed, carried out, and analyzed a large public survey. It dealt with seniors. I went on to get a master’s degree in Management from St. Mary’s University.
There are quantitative and qualitative statistics. Payne referenced quantitative statistics exclusively. Most social science research relies heavily on the qualitative, though they do support one another. For example: How safe do you feel? How much do you trust the police? Are response times acceptable? Is safety in your neighborhood worsening, status quo, or improving? What is most important to you? Do you value police project X? In my 12 years at UMPD we contracted for a customer satisfaction survey every two years from the University Office of Measurement Services. They interviewed students, administration, faculty, staff, neighbors, neighboring businesses, elected officials, and other policing partners. I am humbled to say the results started out good and got better each time.
Qualitative statistics are very important, particularly in public sector leadership, to know if your customers, citizens/taxpayers, value what you are doing. Should you stay the course in multi-year strategic planning or amend plans? I tried to keep it simple. There are outputs and outcomes. What matters is measuring outcomes, in social sciences, that is largely qualitative.
As a person who grew up in So Mpls, in some very rough and tumble environments, and after spending many years working as a probation officer in juvenile in L A County, working in Long Beach, South Central, and East L A, before finally relocating back to MN, I could not agree with you more, about everything. Thank you! Forwarding this piece on..