When Good Ideas Are Not Enough
“The status quo remains; it’s easier. But, the future demands more from us.”
Change includes the implementation of new ideas to not only benefit us on a personal level but to help us advance policing in the future.
As I watch the sunrise in the distance from my bedroom window, I replay a Future Policing Institute meeting I attended the day before. Thoughts swirl around in my head.
I'm drawn back to a memory of one of my favorite lieutenants explaining how law enforcement can often be averse to cutting-edge technology. That mindset leaves little room for innovation and the introduction of bleeding-edge technology - despite our living in a world of proven technology. As a young man full of ideas, excited by the future of policing, and hopeful I might play a role, this mindset was, at once, both frustrating and enlightening. And it explained a lot!
On the heels of this conversation, I attended a seminar on serial homicide where the speaker, Roy Hazlewood, spoke of the not-yet-apprehended BTK killer. At lunch at the workshop, I asked Mr. Hazlewood one question: What advice do I need to follow to be the best analyst? His reply was life-changing: "Those of us afraid to share their ideas, only ever had one good one,” and he walked away. It was up to me to understand the deep meaning of his advice and to figure out what to do with it.
I have spent over 30 years in law enforcement. Before retiring, I spent most of my time pushing my agency, or at the very least, my people and my unit, to be the best they could be. The creative process played a significant role. I focused on innovation, sought new ways to do old things, and automated the reports that took time away from the real analysis.
Today, I am a Fellow at the Future Policing Institute, where I work alongside some of the most interesting and influential “shakers and movers” in the law enforcement community. Their ideas and experiences inspire me and generate thoughts of my own. To bring me back to the beginning of this article, these shared ideas and a particular meeting topic on future policing and protests are the reasons I couldn’t sleep.
What will the protests of the future look like? What lessons did American policing learn (and retain) from previous protests? Can it operationalize them?
Discussing topics from a historical perspective is easy, but thinking about the same topic in the future becomes much more difficult. Thinking about anything related to the future of policing requires critical and creative thinking, and at times, it seems like a lateral thinking exercise.
As a manager, I often asked my staff what problems they faced. I would write them down on the whiteboard and create small groups, each assigned to solve a problem over lunch. I would preface it by identifying the obstacles that needed to be eliminated and asked them to find a solution, even if their rank, position, and capacity did not hold all the necessary keys.
Unencumbered by typical excuses and self-imposed restrictions, my folks could always find solutions to the problem. If nothing else, this process generated the exchange of ideas and new perspectives. It stretched our thinking.
As part of my personal plan for success, I often researched what other agencies were doing. If I couldn't find what I was looking for, I would never hesitate to search outside the law enforcement domain to learn how others have dealt with similar situations.
I met with fraud examiners from AIG Insurance and learned how they applied the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) in their roles. I met with individuals from Citibank and learned how they utilize link analysis applications and how they integrate huge data files into the process. I met with IT professionals from large hospitals and learned about some of the homegrown databases and automated reports they had developed to track events across their networks. And early in my career, I met with a real estate broker to explore how he utilized GIS mapping and pondered how that technology might be applied to law enforcement.
I guarantee you that in the business domain today, individuals are using technology in ways that policing hasn’t considered. We don’t have all the answers, and we don’t have to; we need to listen, inquire, question assumptions, and seek the most efficient way to do our job. Future success demands it!
Innovation and thinking beyond today’s frame of reference are difficult in policing. Ideas must be adopted quickly enough to be useful and embraced, but they must also overcome that ubiquitous “gatekeeper”- our personal and organizational discomfort with change. I genuinely believe that we often wait too long to find solutions to problems, and due to political issues, we frequently delay addressing individuals and groups who break the law. Policing should be about public safety, not politics or ego.
We often reject others' successes, wanting to put our own spin on them. In the process, we lose the magic of the initial idea. When the Office of Criminal Justice Planning (OCJP) introduced the Repeat Offenders Off the Streets/Career Criminal Apprehension Program in the early 1990s, agencies throughout California applied for the grant money. My agency, for example, was funded for several years and was awarded millions of dollars over that period. With a program of this magnitude, you would expect that each awarded agency would have inquired as to what was done previously, what worked, and what didn’t. This was not the case. The wheel was continually reinvented with no regard for what had worked – or didn’t. Why was this? The answer is simple: ego was involved.
It doesn’t take a PHD to identify why crime control models don’t always work. Although the reasons are many, the following three play a significant role in failure.
1. Agencies resorted to a watered-down version of the solution. This can’t be emphasized enough. To appease the community or even the rank and file, the identified process for success gets modified to become easier to embrace or accept at the cost of effectiveness.
2. The agreed-upon process fails to achieve consistency and proves difficult to oversee, making it challenging to hold individuals accountable for not following the required new ways of doing things.
3. When administrators don’t embrace the idea themselves, delegation of authority occurs, and we are forced to rely on the least experienced individuals to carry the burden.
Experience has taught me that not all policing leaders are concerned about innovation until they are forced into it. The day-to-day operations and problems they face are mind-numbing, and it’s easy to get caught in the mindset of doing just what is needed and no more. The urgency of the moment is a real concern. I can’t tell you the number of ideas I've presented to executives that were rejected solely because of a lack of motivation or a desire to explore, as doing so might be difficult and time-consuming. So, the status quo remains; it’s easier. But, the future demands more from us.
I recall a student of mine who was enrolled in the Crime & Intelligence Analysis Certification Program at California State University, Fullerton signed up for the Risk Terrain Modeling Program at Rutgers University. She was really excited about what she would learn – and even more excited to bring that technology back to her agency. Risk Terrain Modeling was innovative and, at the time, a cutting-edge approach. She was sharp, and any agency would have been lucky to have her.
Upon graduation, my student returned to her agency full of excitement and energy to start this new approach. Unfortunately, she wasn’t met with excitement or even a green light to implement her learning on her own. She called me very disappointed, wanting to know why she wasn’t successful. I don’t know exactly why, but I gathered the concept wasn’t in her administration’s wheelhouse, and they saw the idea as academically driven. Apparently, the work to pull together the data necessary seemed out of touch.
I explained to her that often we reject what we do not understand, and it’s always best to get the administration's input on projects as a way of incorporating their ideas and giving them ownership. I'm reminded of an old quote, “Never make your appeal to a person's better nature; they may not have one, make your appeal to their self-interest.”
I don’t know about you, but I feel it’s time we start thinking about how the future of policing will change and begin to adapt policies and procedures for dealing with what’s to come. Controlling the narrative from a place of knowledge, understanding, and respect is more necessary now than ever before. We can’t leave it to the media or academia; we have to be the face of what’s to come.
Abraham Lincoln famously stated, "As our case is new, we must think and act anew". This quote highlights the importance of adopting fresh perspectives and taking decisive actions in the face of unprecedented circumstances. Another relevant quote from Lincoln is: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present". This highlights the inadequacy of old ways of thinking in the face of change. Change includes the implementation of new ideas to not only benefit us on a personal level but to help us advance policing in the future.
About the Author: FPI Fellow Brian Gray is the retired Crime and Intelligence Unit Manager, of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department in Southern California. He now works as a consultant. To learn more about him click here.