Valdosta Police Department Successes - Jim Vance Media and Community Relations Course Jim, First let me say I am relieved to hear you are heading to Missouri to help law enforcement in that area deal with the media and community. I only wished they took your course before the Michael Brown incident occurred because maybe their response would have been better. Second, thank you for being willing to speak with the Georgia Prosecuting Attorney’s Council (PAC) who are planning on developing some protocol to respond to officer-involved shootings in Georgia. When I was contacted about that matter, I immediately thought of you since I have patterned many of my media and community relations programs based on your class at the FBI Academy in 2008. As I have told you before, your course has influenced me more than any course I have ever taken, both in my military police and civilian police career. I believe your course is visionary and should be adopted by all law enforcement agencies across the country. As I explained to you on the phone, I have one success story after another to prove your philosophy in community relations works and I would be honored if you shared this information with other law enforcement agencies. Based on your course, here are some philosophies we have adopted for our department in improving community/media relations with our department: · Creating a since of transparency and honesty with all as demonstrated below: · Automatic computerized email distributions to media – each morning, our records management system sends out an automatic email to all news media reflecting the major incidents in Valdosta for the past 24 hours. They only get the initial report per open records but it gives them a heads-up of what happened and a sense of trust with us. This trust is so good right now that when we tell him something did not happen, this are satisfied with that answer alone. · Public Kiosk – we installed a large kiosk in our lobby where several things occur: o Citizens can come in and complete a police report without waiting on an officer; o Media use this as a digital press pad, again to comply with open records; o A community education screen was installed at the top which show the public several things: § Internal affairs summary – again demonstrates a sense of openness § How to file a complaint on a police employee § Crime prevention tips · Press releases and press conferences – again for major incidents and community policing activities · Citizen’s Police Academy – we do this twice per year and I insist on diversity in the classes since Valdosta is roughly 50% African American, 50% Caucasian · Shop with a Cop – each year we identify 24 children from low-income homes and they and their family shop with us at Wal-Mart before Christmas and buy them gifts. Through donations, each child usually gets $200 each · Quarterly Meetings with the NAACP and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) – I meet with these groups together at the PD and we discuss ANYTHING. I created an email group for these folks and there is constant communication with me and my command staff. When we started these meetings, I gave them a tour of the PD and Crime Lab and made sure my command staff was there. I think one key here is getting to know and trust each other. A typical meeting we discuss topics like Ferguson, Missouri, recruiting efforts by the PD, annual reports like use of force reviews, crime statistics, and any complaints of biased and racial profiling. I don’t mind telling you there was some concern by some of my folks about this program but I believe it was more the fear of the unknown. I also believe other adjacent law enforcement agencies don’t like the idea but I am confident they are wrong. · Police Advocacy Program – I got this idea from another accredited agency. Basically stated, we selected two citizens from each council district (again for diversity) and a few who live in the county. I meet with them usually quarterly and again, we discuss ANY concerns to include complaints against the PD, crime prevention, etc. · Citizen’s Survey Program – this is a program where each citizen who files a report receives a survey card attached to their case card. The survey can be mailed in with postage already paid. I get these cards back daily with over 95% of them positive. Now I do something a little different with these cards than my predecessor. Good cards are emailed to the entire department with a thanks to the individual officers while negative cards are investigated by the officer’s supervisor and a response sent back to me. · In-Car Camera System – Early this year, we moved to a new in-car camera system which includes a 45 second pre and 30 second post event recording and a front camera and wide-angle back seat camera. The entire system downloads wirelessly to a secure server with no intervention by the officer and is stored for a minimum of 2 years, 3 months. · Wearable Cameras – we installed these well before the Ferguson case because I saw that kind of incident coming. We purchased 100 wearable cameras which cannot be tampered with and have a software system where officers are required to download them before they end their shift. I was careful on this system because the officers were in-fact afraid of the cameras but since then, they have ended numerous complaints as Unfounded. I have disciplined two officers but for the most part, they have protected the officers against unfounded complaints and now they life them. · Last, we are CALEA Accredited and State Certified. We are also seeking Crime Lab Accreditation and a team is coming in to inspect us in February. During the CALEA Accreditation this past April, we had the NAACP and SCLC come in and speak with the assessment team and we educated as many people as we could on this process to again demonstrate transparency and help improve their confidence in us. During the awards ceremony where we received accreditation with excellence and meritorious service, the community to include members of the NAACP/SCLC were invited. Now based on all these efforts, I have some success stories for you: · First, a Use of Force Incident – earlier this year, one of my K-9 officers who happens to be a white male, was allowing his new K-9 to conduct an off-leash search of a convenience store. A young male who happens to be black was walking from our housing authority and came behind the store where the K-9 was conducting the off-leash search. Unfortunately, the dog took the young male’s actions as a threat and ran after and bit the male. My officers can be seen on camera running after the dog, pulling the dog off the young male, and treating the male for his injuries. Fortunately, the male was not seriously hurt. So how is this a success story? Following what you taught me, building relationships and admitting when you are wrong, I reached out to the young male and his mother. We of course took care of any medical bills the young man had. And then, I met with the local president of the SCLC, Reverend Floyd Rose and his investigator, Leigh Touchton, and explained what happened and our actions. There was no protest, there was no arguments and no news stories. There was emotion from Reverend Rose, not because he was upset, but because he appreciated the honesty. It was a mistake, we admitted it, and we had a relationship built before it happened. · Second, you stated in your class bad news is bad news. You stated you can lie or say no comment and get 10 stories or own up to it and get one story. On two occasions in the past several years, we have had two officers arrested and in both cases, we sent out a press release, talked with the media, and we got one story; that was the end of it. I have also attached some articles which I am very proud of. I was presented an award from the SCLC for building these relationships. But I also want to be clear here, I am in no way bragging. My department and I are not perfect. The reason I am sending you this is two-fold: I am concerned about the future of our profession and the distrust people have with law enforcement; Second, I want to thank you for making an impact in my life. I only knew you for three months but those three months changed me. You made me a better man and a better law enforcement officer. I love you pal. Brian Brian K. Childress, Chief of Police Valdosta Police Department
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 16:11:31 +0000
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