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October 26, 2024 PERF’s Town Hall Meeting covers the challenges facing policing
PERF members, Today I’d like to share a few highlights from PERF’s Town Hall Meeting at the IACP Conference this past weekend in Boston. ELECTION ISSUES We led off the meeting with a conversation about issues related to the upcoming election. There’s just over a week to go before one of the more contentious elections in recent memory. Attendees discussed the roles they expect to play in ensuring Election Day and the following weeks are peaceful.
Chief Tom Manger U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger I got there three months after January 6, and the trauma and pain that department went through is tough to describe. But we have spent over three and a half years making sure that the department is where it needs to be. And we are ready and prepared for whatever happens. Our mission is fairly simple, and may even be a little simpler than yours. We protect the Capitol, we protect members of Congress, and we protect the legislative process, which is what was under attack four years ago. All of us now have to think about what we’re doing before the election, what we’re going to do on Election Day, and what we’re going to do after the election. Most jurisdictions in this country are dealing with threats against elected officials. And the threats against government officials who run the elections are pretty dramatic. On Election Day, we want to make sure that polling places are secure, but we don’t want to intimidate voters in any way. Then, after the election, we’re probably going to have half the country not happy with the way the election turned out, and a lot of folks may not trust the election results. A couple lessons have come into sharp focus for me over the last three and a half years as the Capitol Police chief. First of all, with the possible exception of my friends at the NYPD, everyone could use additional people. Sometimes you have an event that is so big that working with your law enforcement partners is a lifesaver. Second, each of us needs intelligence operations that are on top of the game. We don’t know what to expect after the election unless we have our ear to the ground and are gathering intelligence about what people might want to do as a result of the election.
Former Philadelphia Commissioner and Washington, D.C. Chief Chuck Ramsey Make sure you and your people understand election law in your jurisdiction and state, because it’s going to vary from place to place. I came up in Chicago, and Chicago had a cop at every polling place. Then I went to Philadelphia, and cops can’t be within 100 feet of a polling place unless they’re called. Take threats seriously, and make sure you notify the FBI, your Joint Terrorism Task Force, or whomever that contact person may be, so they can keep tabs on any threats that might be coming in.
Kathleen O’Toole and Chuck Ramsey Former Seattle Chief and Boston Commissioner Kathleen O’Toole Commissioner Ramsey and I have been working with the States United Democracy Center on resources to help law enforcement leaders prepare for the election season. If you haven’t come up with a plan yet, get a plan in place. Talk to the election officials in your community in preparation. And you don’t have to be in a battleground state; we’ve seen this happening everywhere. Front-line election workers – people who are retired and work the polls – are getting threatened.
Madison Chief Shon Barnes It’s never too late for pre-planning. You should plan to not be on the news November 5, and the only way you can do that is by talking with your election officials to figure out what you can do to help them. You have to plan for what you want your officers to do when they are called to an incident related to the election. What are the rules, and who’s in charge? Do they know how to properly de-escalate? We are going to require our supervisors to go in those situations, and everyone will have a fact sheet in their cars so each officer knows what they’re going to do. We will have an emergency operations center open on November 5 to look for any misinformation and let the news media and the community know that it’s not coming from us. I believe dis- and misinformation could affect the elections, and we’re going to do everything we can to prevent that from occurring in the battleground state of Wisconsin.
Chief Shon Barnes, Assistant Chief Carven Tyus, Commissioner Kevin Bethel, and Chief Michael Sullivan Atlanta Assistant Chief Carven Tyus Our biggest challenge, being a battleground state, has been dealing with multiple candidate visits. It’s been a collaborative effort with local, state, and federal agencies. I’d encourage everyone to make sure there’s collaboration. Our Joint Operations Center will be open, and we will have members of our law department there. If an officer is called out to arrest someone for passing out water too near a polling place, that beat officer may not know what to do in that situation. So we’ll have someone on hand to talk that officer through their response. And make sure you have dedicated analysts looking through threats and other activity. Protests are going to pop up, and we have to be able to continue to provide basic police services and respond to any First Amendment-protected activity we see.
Philadelphia Commissioner Kevin Bethel I got a call from a councilman last night about a swatting incident. So we anticipate we may have swatting. We prepare in case we have an active shooter. We prepare for things that, historically, we may not have had to consider during elections. We’ve gone so far as to have courts canceled that day so that I will have another 400 men and women to redeploy. We asked our judges, and they agreed, so those officers are another group I can deploy to support our efforts.
Phoenix Interim Chief Michael Sullivan I have to thank the States United Democracy Center. They came to Phoenix last November and brought chiefs and sheriffs in from around the state to make sure we were talking. We’ve had numerous tabletop exercises since then, because elections aren’t just in your jurisdiction. They’re throughout the state, and you have to have those connections when things start to bubble up. The candidate visits have been extremely challenging, because there’s a lack of information, and any information may change at the last second. Providing the resources to make sure these candidates are able to campaign has been extremely challenging over the last three months.
Metropolitan Nashville Chief John Drake We’re going to have a command set up on Election Day, and we’ve done de-escalation training with polling officials, so they might be able to better de-escalate any situations. We’ll have our legal team available as well. Don’t let this creep up on you, because I really feel anxious about it. We’ve never had to worry about elections before. We may have worried about who’s going to win or lose, but now we have to worry about what’s going to happen before, during, and after.
Chief John Drake, PERF President RESTRAINTS PERF Deputy Director Jen Sommers presented PERF’s recent report on reducing the risk of restraint-related deaths, and several police chiefs shared their thoughts on the report’s recommendations. Of the 15 recommendations, Jen emphasized four:
PERF Deputy Director Jen Sommers The fourth recommendation is crucial. As Jen highlighted, during MBEs, individuals are often excited, agitated, and unable to remain completely still. Therefore, insisting on keeping someone in the prone position until they comply with directions to stop moving, which they likely cannot do, could ultimately deprive them of the chance to survive. Moreover, if an officer demands total immobility before moving someone out of the prone position, there’s a risk of mistaking unconsciousness with compliance, if the individual finally does become still.
Minneapolis Chief Brian O’Hara Telling folks to calm down is not effective, and completely immobilizing people is not necessary, so we need to teach an awareness of what actions are reasonable and necessary. If the cop is there for, basically, an ambulance run, you need a reasonable threat to public safety or a person to try to restrain an individual. And the report points out that you absolutely do not need to completely immobilize someone – you just need to contain them. Even if a person is restrained, they don’t need to be completely immobilized. And if they do suddenly stop moving, that may be a sign that something is wrong. So, I think the report is really good and can help officers see how these situations are different and should be handled differently than a lot of other situations they’re trained for.
Tucson Chief Chad Kasmar We had two in-custody deaths in Tucson when I was second in command. In one of the incidents, the individual was naked and thrashing around. He exhibited all eight indicators of Medical Behavioral Emergencies listed in the PERF report, and we just didn’t pick up on them. We did sentinel event reviews and identified 32 different contributing factors that led to the outcomes in those two incidents. My emergency communications deputy director is here with us today. Your 911 directors need to be here to hear these conversations because good outcomes start in 911. If there’s more than one officer going to a call, somebody has to have incident command of that call. Somebody has to be directing the polyester pile and saying, “This person is detained, let’s get them on their side. Let’s get EMTs here.”
Chief Brian O’Hara, Chief Chad Kasmar, and Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan Former Rochester, NY Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan (appointed chief after the 2020 restraint-related death of Daniel Prude) I would have loved to see this report before the Daniel Prude situation in Rochester. As a police chief, if you see something isn’t done the right way, your first questions are whether they followed policy and whether the agency has a policy. And if it was followed, you have to deal with the policy; you can’t come after the officers. We had to play catch-up because we had a crisis of trust and didn’t have a lot of goodwill to build on. I can’t stress that trust enough. If trust is not there, you should be working on it now. Because you can have the greatest policy, but if people don’t trust you, they won’t believe what you tell them. PERF BOARD OF DIRECTORS The PERF board of directors welcomed people to the meeting. Metropolitan Nashville Chief John Drake, Sacramento Chief Kathy Lester, Vancouver Chief Constable Adam Palmer, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Chief Johnny Jennings, St. Louis Metropolitan Commissioner Robert Tracy, Philadelphia Commissioner Kevin Bethel, and Minneapolis Chief Brian O’Hara were in attendance, and Elgin, IL Chief Ana Lalley was unable to attend.
PERF board of directors 2024 GARY HAYES AWARD The PERF board of directors presented our 2024 Gary Hayes Award to Louisville Metro Police Chief Paul Humphrey. The award is given annually to an up-and-coming, innovative police leader, and is named for PERF’s first executive director.
Louisville Metropolitan Chief Paul Humphrey receives PERF’s 2024 Gary Hayes Award
Previous Gary Hayes Award recipients Danielle Outlaw, Chuck Ramsey, Michael Sullivan, Chad Kasmar, Paul Noel, Ed Flynn, Dean Esserman, Brandon del Pozo, and Bill Bratton WELCOME FROM BOSTON-AREA POLICE LEADERS Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox and others from the Boston area welcomed attendees to the region and recommended activities for those visiting the city. We also watched a fake Boston movie trailer, “Boston Accent,” from Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Boston Commissioner Michael Cox, Boston College Chief William Evans, and Sacramento Police Chief Strategy Officer Blake Norton FEDERAL OFFICIALS FBI Director Christopher Wray, U.S. Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe, and National Institute of Justice Director Nancy La Vigne addressed the meeting attendees.
FBI Director Christopher Wray
U.S. Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe National Institute of Justice Director Nancy La Vigne, Ph.D. CRITICAL ISSUES IN POLICING SERIES Over the past 25 years, PERF has tackled some of policing’s biggest challenges through its Critical Issues in Policing series, supported by the Motorola Solutions Foundation. This past month PERF released its 50th Critical Issues in Policing report. We identified some of the most important projects in the series – including those on improving police management systems, addressing violent crime, reducing use of force, and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic – and produced a video about that work. And the PERF board thanked Motorola Solutions CEO Greg Brown for the Motorola Solutions Foundation’s longstanding support.
Motorola Solutions CEO Greg Brown
Covers of the 50 Critical Issues in Policing series reports RECOGNIZING CHARLOTTE LANSINGER’S RETIREMENT PERF members and staff congratulated Charlotte Lansinger, PERF’s longtime executive search consultant, on her upcoming retirement. If you’ve been interested in becoming a police chief over the past 30 years, you’re probably familiar with Charlotte. She has led PERF’s executive search work over the past three decades and assisted with more than 200 search processes. Even if you haven’t interacted with her personally, you may have read her book, Command Performance: A Career Guide for Police Executives. Charlotte has been a regular instructor at our SMIP program, and she has always been willing to provide thoughtful career guidance to both those who are and are not selected in a search process. Charlotte’s professionalism and dedication are matched by her warmth and caring. She was the first person I hired when I arrived at PERF, and I credit her as one of those most responsible for PERF’s success over the years. I am tremendously grateful for all she has done for countless police leaders and me personally over the years. She is simply the best!
Charlotte Lansinger in front of a photo of her with her grandchildren PERF’S BOOTH IN THE EXHIBITION HALL And PERF once again had a booth in the exhibition hall to speak with PERF members and those interested in learning more about our work.
PERF staff setting up our booth
PERF staff welcome guests to our booth Thanks to everyone who attended the Town Hall Meeting or stopped by our booth! Have a wonderful fall weekend! Best, Chuck |
