Policing with Our Community© is a police-community engagement platform designed to take “first steps” toward a more collaborative relationship between local neighborhoods and communities and the officers that patrol their homes, schools, and businesses. To that end, we offer educational workshops that facilitate more transparency and accountability in our law enforcement agencies. We also offer community stakeholder workshops that provide an insightful view behind the “blue wall” designed to prepare citizens for new emerging roles for stakeholders working with and alongside law enforcement officers, managers, and executives.
Our core workshop is a four-hour discussion about 21st Century Policing touching briefly on law enforcement history, framing the current policing issues facing law enforcement and our communities, gathering participant opinions, and passing on promising policies and practices that lead to more productive relationships between the police and their stakeholders. While the modules are the same, the discussion is specific to the perspectives of our stakeholders or our law enforcement officers. As source material we use the Executive Summary of the President’s Task Force Report on 21st Century Policing. Most participants have some knowledge and/or familiarity with the Report which makes for a common starting point for our discussions.
We gather anonymous information from our participants about their perspectives and viewpoints on criminal justice issues. The Report helps us to categorize and sort that information in a standardized way. We also utilize other
Our Stakeholder workshops, in some ways, are similar to the kind of session(s) that might be sponsored by your local department. We, however, offer a broader base of learning and discussion about the role of the police, how policing actually works and the policies and practices that produce more accountability and transparency.
One of the key findings of the 2017 Pew Research Center study, Behind the Badge, 83% of Americans reported that they knew and understood the challenges facing today’s police officer. 86% of the cops said, “No they don’t!” We believe it critically important that if we wish to improve police –neighborhood relationships, we have make transparency and accountability intentional and mutually productive.
While our law enforcement workshops have wide-ranging group participation, we stay true to the lesson plan and objectives so that we satisfy POST standards and requirements.
In creating workshops specifically for officers and deputies, supervisors and managers and one for command officers, we have found ourselves conducting “retreats” where participants could freely express their viewpoints and opinions in a constructive way that focusses on the work ahead.
This led to the creation of “professional” workshops for municipal administrators, managers, human resource managers, city attorneys, and civilian review boards. This also spawned workshops with a singular focus. For the cops its often issues related to consent decrees, discriminatory policing, bias in policing, tactical training, personnel management, leadership, and early intervention, to name a few.
Similarly, we expanded our catalog of stakeholder workshops to include discussions on community participation in recruiting, hiring, policy, training, advisory, and accountability processes.
For serving law enforcement officers, we conduct “critical issues” discussions and the likely paths that the industry will be taking in the days to come. This not only looks at best practices being employed in the most forward-looking organizations but also explores the programs that enhance the profession and improve the quality of the officer experience. We always find time to provide career development tips for those sitting in the big chairs and those who will inherit those seats down the road.
Our workshops are interactive with facilitated discussions and group exercises where everyone’s viewpoints are explored, and strategic goals are established in an atmosphere of collaboration and problem solving. As you can imagine, our subject matter can be wide ranging, complex, argumentative, and emotionally tinged. Our presenters are experienced with all of the directions that this kind of event can generate. Even when we are drawn to topics that aren’t in the agenda, we go to a place where we all learn.
We employ Audience Response Systems (ARS), “clickers” in our workshops to reach consensus among participants ensuring that everyone has a “voice” but allowing those who wish their thoughts to remain anonymous, to do so.
We offer both half and full day engagement sessions. While we always prefer to host our workshops in person, we can facilitate virtually. We like to keep our groups around 25-30 but a few more or less work just fine.
Finally, we also offer an increasing number of citizen-based workshops designed for special groups. At present, these are largely persons in allied fields that interact directly with law enforcement, civilian review boards, city administrators and one of our favorites, criminal justice scholars and students interested in careers in criminal justice.
While our facilitators can recommend a host of resources and reading material for those thirsting for more information about policing and law enforcement, we maintain some consistency in our approach by depending on several documents that most participants have some familiarity with.
The materials that we use in our workshops and the discussions and activities that we conduct are all based on the following documents:
We would love for our participants to pre-read the applicable material for our workshops so we’ve made it downloadable.