Group effort needed to improve policing

Another viewpoint is a column The NewsHerald makes available so all sides of an issue may be aired. Tom Wetzel is a Northeast Ohio police chief, certified law enforcement executive, adjunct professor in community policing at Lakeland Community College and trainer with Northcoast Polytechnic Institute.

To say the American model of policing is being unfairly and inaccurately portrayed would be an understatement. Our honored profession of service has been maligned like no other time in its history. Despite their hard work and the daily risks that police officers take, there has been a misleading narrative promoted by some that policing is systemically corrupt and should be eliminated or defunded or in need of a complete overhaul. A casual review of empirical data demonstrates what utter poppycock this is.

As an adjunct professor in community policing, I routinely assign letter grades for tests or papers. If I were to grade the American police model right now, I would give it a Bwhich is good but of course we should be striving for an A+. To achieve this, we must work together with those we serve to find solutions. Police officers are public servants and must never lose sight that they serve at the will of the people. But the leading voices for strong positive improvements must come from the cops themselves because no one better understands the enormous responsibilities and the risks involved with policing than those who don a uniform.

What we need now are bold strategies for these challenging times and police officers, particularly their leadership, must do a better job in shaping the narrative, making innovative change where needed, artfully adapting to its environment, and reinforcing the power of its righteous mission. But it is going to take a team effort with an all-hands on deck mentality because collectively, we can solve this. It reminds me of a group exercise in a police leadership training class years ago.

An instructor held up a Styrofoam cup and told the students they had like 10 minutes to write down 10 things they could do with the cup. There examples could include any manipulation of the cup they could think of to include writing on it or tearing it in pieces. I recall struggling after about 7 responses and wondered what more you could possibly do with a Styrofoam cup. At the end, the instructor had each student read their answers and he would write them out on big sheets of paper. He wrote many different responses and I suspect nearly all the students had a common thought running through their heads as he would write them down which was “I never thought of that.” What the instructor essentially did was enlighten us that we have a treasure trove of good ideas available to us from those we work with but must be willing to dig for them. Our current situation requires us to really start putting shovels to the ground.

From coast to coast, police agencies need to engage in small and large-scale efforts at improving our service model, building trust, and educating the public that we are doing well for them now but are committed to delivering sustainable excellence in the future. It could range from more police think tanks, better lobbying efforts, regional problem-solving strategies, to simple small gatherings where cops pick each other’s brains on how to do better. An example of this is when I meet on Fridays over a cup of coffee with Paul Matias, another local police chief, at Fiona’s Cafe in downtown Willoughby. Bouncing ideas off each other, we look for ways to better serve our customers.

A key component of community policing is problem solving and it is going to take the leadership of our public servant guardians to fix the issues we face today so that one day, we can deliver our best service ever.

Tom Wetzel