We’ve all heard it, most of us have said it. And the truth is, meetings can be
unproductive, tedious, and utterly wasteful.
But the takeaway isn’t that meetings are bad. The takeaway
is that bad meetings are bad. Good
meetings are not automatically bad. In
fact, good meetings can be good. Very good. Especially for emergency managers.
If you ever find yourself sitting across from your new boss,
and you hear a comment like, “I don’t believe in meetings,” the first thing you
should do when you get back to your office is update your resume’ and type out
a quick letter of resignation. Don’t put a date on yet, but keep it where you
can find it in a hurry.
Why? Because if your boss says he or she doesn’t believe in
meetings, what they’re really saying is, “I don’t believe in sharing
information, especially with you.
Information is power, and there is not enough for both of us. I don’t want you
to know what I am thinking, what my priorities are, or what I might do tomorrow
and I don’t especially care what you think.”
If your boss won’t share information, you can be certain of
one thing: he or she is setting you up to fail. Eventually something will go bad
and you are going to end up on Front Street holding the bag.
In emergency management, law enforcement, and the military I have worked for many types of leaders: Good leaders, bad leaders, indifferent leaders, inspirational leaders, and leaders who can’t spell ‘leadership.’ There are lots of things that make a good leader, but one trait is always present. Good leaders share information. Bad leaders don’t. I am not sure which way the causation arrow points: maybe sharing information makes you a good leader, or maybe being a good leader makes you share information. Either way, the connection is clear.
Emergency managers should recognize this intuitively, as the
entire emergency management enterprise is based on collaboration and
cooperation – both of which require unconstrained information sharing. Good
emergency managers are out and about, listening and learning. There’s not time
enough in the day to do everything, and those plans really need to be updated, but
you are not learning anything sitting in your office all day. And no one else
is learning anything, either.
As an emergency management leader, your job is to share
information. And not just with your
staff, but with every organization, agency, community group, and resident of
your community. Meetings can be a very effective tool for sharing information,
explaining your priorities, developing relationships, understanding other
points of view, and getting your message out.
If you are not sharing information regularly with the people
and organizations that you are relying on – either through meetings, newsletters,
e-mail updates, or other means – you are undercutting your own effectiveness as
an emergency manager.
The best leaders I worked for conducted regular staff meetings to share information, discuss the future, and receive updates on ongoing projects. As a staff officer, I learned how my bosses think, what they expected, what their priorities were, and what our unit’s goals were in these morning meetings. I also kept abreast of the work my colleagues were doing, what problems they were having, and how they were resolving them. Every morning update or staff meeting was a mini-AAR, overflowing with lessons learned.
Of course, meetings need to be properly conducted to have lasting value. There are lots of articles and webinars about how to conduct effective meetings, and a good leader will learn how to do so.
At a bare minimum each meeting should have an agenda, a specified deliverable, someone in charge to keep the meeting on track, a time limit, and should only include people who have a reason to be there.
Despite what you might have heard, good meetings certainly have a place in the professional emergency manager’s toolbox.
It was a small fire, as fires go, and it wasn’t the first time that a river choked with industrial waste had burned. But a brief mention in Time Magazine in August, 1969 about burning fuel on the Cuyahoga River came to epitomize the sorry state of America’s environment in the years before the Clean Water Act and other seminal environmental legislation became law.
The fire on the Cuyahoga became “the emblem for all that was wrong with industrial America,” said environmental activist Denis Hayes yesterday, during a discussion at the Cleveland City Club. Hayes rose to prominence as an environmentalist in 1970 when he coordinated the first Earth Day event at the request of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. That first Earth Day drew 20 million participants to rallies, protests and other environmental events across the nation.
Thanks to Time Magazine, the Cuyahoga River fire became widely known, said Hayes. But suggestions that it sparked the American environmental movement overstate the importance of the incident.
America’s patience with massive industrial pollution had already given out. Environmental groups had been working to reduce industrial pollution and had already made significant progress. An oil spill off Santa Barbara in January and February 1969 contaminated more than 200 miles of California coastline, highlighting the problem. The Cuyahoga River fire on June 19, 1969, though immortalized in Time, was just one more outrage.
But Time’s story, though brief, caught the public’s attention, said Hayes. “It was a teachable moment for Americans.”
It was not, however, the first time the Cuyahoga River had burned. Nor was it the most serious fire ever to occur on the river. Flammable liquids on the river had burned at least a dozen times previously, and a fire in 1912 had killed five people, according to researcher Doug Kusak. Industrial rivers in other cities had also suffered fires. But the myth that the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and major environmental legislation persists.
Regardless of the role the Cuyahoga River played in raising America’s environmental consciousness, since 1969 the nation has made great progress, said Hayes. He expects that the U.S. economy will continue to evolve from its past reliance on heavy industry to a more sustainable model that is less damaging to the environment.
The Cuyahoga River today. (photo: wvgirlinthe216)
But now we face new threats, including climate change, mass extinctions, and plastic loading in the oceans. These are international problems, said Hayes, and taking effective action internationally is much more difficult than taking action nationally.
We have already passed several tilting points, he said. No matter what we do now, hurricanes will continue to get stronger, extinct species will never come back, and ocean acidification will never be reversed.
While solving large-scale international problems, like climate change and mass extinctions, will require coordinated efforts by governments and industry, individuals can make a difference, said Hayes. Most importantly, individuals can take local action and demand effective action by their elected officials. “The real Earth Day is election day,” he said.
While supporters of environmental action might have science on their side, said Hayes, their opponents have been more motivated and more effective. People who support efforts to preserve and protect the environment must match the passion of these other groups. While Hayes does not believe that single-issue voting is appropriate, he said citizens concerned about the environment should make clear that candidates who do not understand the critical importance of environmental issues – including climate change – should not be considered qualified to serve.
Individuals can also make a difference through their purchasing decisions, said Hayes. Consumers should demand environmentally sound manufacturing processes, products, and packaging “There is one way our economy works,” he said, “when there is a demand for something, it tends to be produced.”
Despite the significant environmental problems facing us today, Hayes believes that positive change is possible, but will require international cooperation and collaboration and effective leadership by the United States. “Across the world, there are different solutions, different economies, different cultures, different problems,” he said. “We all need to come together.”
January 19, 2019
Burn on Big River
There’s a red moon rising On the Cuyahoga River Rolling into Cleveland to the lake
There’s a red moon rising On the Cuyahoga River Rolling into Cleveland to the lake
There’s an oil barge winding Down the Cuyahoga River Rolling into Cleveland to the lake
There’s an oil barge winding Down the Cuyahoga River Rolling into Cleveland to the lake
Cleveland city of light city of magic Cleveland city of light you’re calling me Cleveland, even now I can remember Cause the Cuyahoga River Goes smokin’ through my dreams
Burn on, big river, burn on Burn on, big river, burn on Now the Lord can make you tumble And the Lord can make you turn And the Lord can make you overflow But the Lord can’t make you burn
Burn on, big river, burn on Burn on, big river, burn on
Sign in luncheonette window, circa 1943 (Photo: Oregon Historical Society)
“Remember when” posts are pretty popular on social media, especially posts that contrast life as a kid in the 1950’s or 1960’s with life as a child today. Many of the comments on these posts focus on changes in technology. Sure, dial telephones and VCRs might confuse kids today, but I would like to think that kids today would be even more astonished to find out that not too long ago Americans – including teachers, pastors, business owners, nurses and combat veterans – could legally be denied service at gas stations, restaurants, hotels, and other establishments, simply because of the color of their skin.
A Beagle might find drugs hidden in a suitcase at the airport. A Labrador Retriever might bring back a murdered duck. A German Shepherd might lead a blind person through heavy traffic. A Border Collie might help with your taxes. But Sammy, our LBD (Little Brown Dog), can tuck himself into his bed on a cold winter morning. Some things just can’t be taught.
Beate Sirota was a 22-year-old language expert working for
the Allied occupation authorities in Tokyo in 1946 when she wrote one of the
most important paragraphs in Japanese history.
One of a handful of women on the staff of General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), Sirota was tasked with drafting a section of the proposed Japanese constitution that would establish civil rights for Japanese women involving marriage, money, and family.
When adopted as part of Japan’s postwar constitution, the sentences Sirota wrote redefined the role of women in Japanese life, upending a thousand years of cultural and social tradition, exactly the result that MacArthur was looking for. Along with the renunciation of war and the strengthening of Japanese democracy, the equality of women was a key part of MacArthur’s plan to smash the power of the Japanese militarists who had disastrously led Japan into World War II.
Women had never enjoyed equal rights in Japan. Marriages were
arranged and adultery was permitted for husbands, but not for wives. Women
could not own property and had no legal, economic, or political rights. High
schools were segregated by sex, and there were no colleges or universities for
women at all. MacArthur was determined to halt Japan’s traditional gender
discrimination, and Beate Sirota would play a key part.
Sirota was born in Austria, the daughter of a well-known concert pianist. But the rise of Nazism terrified her parents, Russian Jews who had emigrated to Vienna. When Sirota’s father was invited to teach and perform in Japan, they grabbed the opportunity. From ages five to fifteen, Sirota lived in Japan, where she learned the intricacies of the Japanese language and of Japanese society, including the powerlessness of Japanese women.
In 1939, at age 15, having completed secondary school in Japan, Sirota enrolled at Mills College in Oakland, California. She was there in December 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Unable to return to Japan, she completed her studies and obtained work as a translator. For nearly four years she had no direct contact with her parents.
As soon as the war ended, she looked for a job that could take her to Japan, so that she could search for he parents. Fluent in Japanese, she quickly found work as a language expert with the U.S. government’s Foreign Economic Administration supporting the Government Section of SCAP in Tokyo. Upon arrival in Japan, she located her malnourished parents, who had survived the war despite constant government suspicion.
In February 1946, the Government Section was assigned to draft a new constitution for Japan. The document would need to be approved by General MacArthur before submission to the Japanese government, which would have final say. MacArthur wanted to use the new constitution to make far-reaching social changes in Japan. Belying the importance of the task, the Government Section was given just eight days to prepare their initial draft.
As the lone woman in the unit, Sirota was assigned to write the section on women’s rights. It didn’t matter that she had virtually no government experience and had studied modern languages in college. She was a woman – the only woman readily available – and that was qualification enough.
Undaunted – indeed, energized by the tasking – Sirota quickly
toured all of the available libraries in Tokyo, gathering samples of constitutions
that could guide the Section’s work. She found the German Weimar Constitution
of 1919 to be especially helpful. The
Japanese Meiji Constitution of 1889 was useful mostly as a template for what
not to include, she noted later.
On her own initiative, Sirota also drafted a section that
would protect Japanese children from exploitation, ban full-time child labor,
and ensure free medical and dental care for children.
“Believing this was a chance Japan would never have again,”
she wrote, “I wanted to be sure not to omit a single thing that might benefit
Japanese women in the future.”
While the section on children’s rights and many of the specific details of her section on women’s rights were dropped by U.S. officials, the document that was ultimately presented to the Japanese for review included her language guaranteeing equality for women. When Japanese officials saw the American draft, they were initially opposed to the section on women’s rights. But when an American officer pointed out that the section had been written by Sirota, who had lived in Japan for more than ten years, was fluent in the language, and understood the point of view and feelings of Japanese women, Japanese officials relented, and the article remained in place.
Later, many of the specific requirements Sirota had drafted that were dropped from the constitution were incorporated into legislation, and thus became law.
Sirota served in Japan until 1947. For the rest of her life
she worked as a translator, primarily for the Asia Society, a non-profit organization
dedicated to improving relations between Asian nations and the west. She died
in New York City in 2012.
Article
24 of the Japanese Constitution, promulgated on November 3, 1946:
Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and wife as a basis. With regard to choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equality of the sexes.
For further information on Beate Sirota Gordon’s experiences in Japan, see her memoir: The Only Woman in the Room, Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1997.
Photo: Occupation of Japan, 1945. Scene at Sasebo, Kyushu, Japan, shows mother working with sleeping child on her back. Photographed by crewmember of USS Chenango (CVE-28), released October 19, 1945. Official U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collection of the National Archives. (2015/12/01).
In 1960 an explosion at the Soviet Union’s Baikonur launching complex killed hundreds of people. Rather than halt their program to investigate the disaster and implement safety features to prevent a re-occurrence, the Soviets pretended the incident never happened and kept it a secret for decades, even from the families of the victims.
That attitude towards crew safety is just one of the cultural and operational differences between the Russian space program – a continuation of the Soviet program – and NASA, according to Scott Kelly, an American astronaut who spent a year in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015-2016. Kelly chronicled his mission in a memoir titled, Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.
Kelly’s book details his career and his year-long mission. Having trained as a Navy pilot to fight the Soviet military, he was especially attentive to the operational and cultural differences between U.S. astronauts and the Russian cosmonauts that he lived with aboard the station.
Throughout his flight – and for several years prior – Kelly worked closely with Russian cosmonauts and technicians. During this period he learned to adjust to the different ways of operating and the differing philosophies of the American and Russian space agencies, including their attitudes towards crew safety.
NASA’s safety rules routinely delay or scrub launches right to the final moments of the countdown, Kelly wrote. American astronauts were never certain that they were going into space until the rocket engines ignited. Not so for the Russians, who “haven’t scrubbed a launch after the crew was strapped in since 1969.”
Kelly also described differences in the ways NASA and the Russians designed and procured equipment. Though robust and dependable, Russian equipment is often less technologically advanced than U.S equipment, as the Russians highly value efficiency and low cost. Kelly cites the Soyuz capsule – originally designed in the 1960’s and still in use today in updated versions – noting that it is cheap, simple, and reliable. The Russian Progress resupply vehicle, which brings food, spare parts and other needed components to the ISS, is another example. The vehicle is very similar to the Soyuz, he writes, “because the Russians never create two designs when one will do.”
As an astronaut, Kelly piloted two space shuttle missions (STS-103, Shuttle Discovery in1999 and STS-118, Shuttle Endeavour in 2007) and completed a five-month mission on the International Space Station (October 2010 – March 2011). In 2012 he and a Russian cosmonaut were selected to spend a year aboard the ISS as the subjects of a study on the effects of long-duration space flight. Kelly’s year in space lasted from March 2015 until March 2016. During his career he spent a total of 520 days in space. Remarkably, Kelly’s twin brother, Mark, is also an astronaut.
But Kelly‘s career almost never got off the ground. As a college freshman he was hardly the over-achieving honor student/Eagle Scout that is typical of American astronauts. He was, in fact, a poor student who was, in his words, “A directionless, undereducated eighteen-year-old with terrible grades.” But Kelly never lacked intelligence, and when he found direction he responded with energy and discipline. During his first semester at college he read Thomas Wolfe’s account of NASA’s Mercury program, The Right Stuff and he became hooked. “I felt the power of those words washing over me,” he wrote. “I felt like I had found my calling.”
Newly dedicated and driven, Kelly earned a Navy officer’s commission and was selected for flight school. Like a film character from Top Gun, he became the best of the best, flying F-14 fighters off the crowded decks of aircraft carriers. Later, like the seven Mercury astronauts whom Wolfe chronicled, he became a test pilot – the best of the best of the best. Finally, he was selected by NASA to become an astronaut – the best of the best of the best of the best.
The International Space Station was designed and built by a 15-nation coalition, including the United States, Russia, and the space agencies of Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been continuously inhabited since November 2000, and by now more than 200 persons from sixteen nations have visited it.
While Kelly calls international cooperation the highlight of the ISS program, station operations are not as international as you might think. The station consists of multiple modules and is roughly divided into two segments: the Russian segment, where the Russians live and work; and the U.S. segment, where everyone else lives and works. In addition, each astronaut or cosmonaut works directly for his or her own space agency, rather than for some international space organization. Thus, ISS crew members work on their own national experiments, follow a daily schedule prepared by their own national space agency, eat food supplied by their own nation, and speak with their flight controllers on their own national communications system.
The different nationalities cooperate with each other, and share resources when necessary, but they are more neighbors than co-workers, albeit neighbors in an alarmingly dangerous neighborhood that requires constant vigilance, near-total trust, and frequent cooperation just to stay alive. And for all the national differences that are observed, Kelly reminds us that the ISS, “is the longest peaceful international collaboration in history.”
Despite significant cultural differences, Kelly writes that American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts work well together. “We make an effort to learn about and respect one another’s cultures, and we have agreed to carry out this huge and challenging project together, so we work to understand and see the best in one another.”
But Russian attitudes about sharing information take some getting used to. Russian cosmonauts have lower base salaries than American astronauts, wrote Kelly, but the Russian Space Agency pays cosmonauts a significant bonus for each day they are in space. However, if the Space Agency determines that a cosmonaut made a mistake, they decrease the cosmonaut’s bonus. Thus, there is a tremendous incentive for cosmonauts to withhold information about problems or other issues from their own Mission Control personnel. This is especially dangerous because Mission Control has access to thousands of engineers, technicians and other specialists who understand every component of the ISS. Their knowledge is critical to keeping the ISS operating and the crews safe.
Similarly, Russian training is more detailed than comparable U.S. training, but the reason is not necessarily to ensure that cosmonauts are safer or better trained. Instead, writes Kelly, training serves to protect the trainers from blame in case of an accident or failure. “Everyone involved in training needs to certify that the crew was taught everything they could possible need to know. If anything should go wrong, it must then be the crew’s fault.”
Cosmonauts also are encouraged to avoid responsibility for mistakes. To be certified for flight, cosmonauts must pass a difficult oral exam. But once their performance is graded, cosmonauts have an opportunity to contest their grades, and they do so by attempting to minimize and avoid responsibility for any mistakes they made on the exam.
While the ISS orbits silently above our heads, it is easy to discount the difficulty and danger of spaceflight. But that’s a luxury not available to astronauts or cosmonauts. As a reminder, during a nine-month period that included the start of Kelly’s mission, three resupply vehicles were lost during missions to the ISS, including two in a row. Fortunately, none carried passengers, but the Soyuz rocket that failed on a Russian supply mission is the same type of rocket used to bring cosmonauts and astronauts to the ISS and the SpaceX rocket that failed is the same model rocket that NASA will use to transport astronauts in the future.
On his first spacewalk outside the ISS, Kelly was shocked to see the extent of damage to the exterior of the station. Fifteen years exposure to micrometeoroids, orbital debris and the sun have left the station pitted and scarred. At one point during his year on the ISS, Kelly and two Russian cosmonauts were forced to take refuge in the docked Soyuz capsule – a Soyuz capsule is always docked at the station to serve as a ‘lifeboat’ in case of a catastrophic accident – when an old satellite was detected approaching the station and there was no time to maneuver the ISS away from it. Orbiting earth in the opposite direction as the station, the impact speed would have been 35,000 miles per hour, and a collision would have instantly destroyed the ISS, and in all likelihood the Soyuz capsule.
For a full account of his ISS mission, see Scott Kelly’s book: Endurance; A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.
top image: Scott Kelly aboard the International Space Station. (NASA photo)
President Trump will apparently speak to the nation about the national security “emergency” we are facing on our southern border.
This will be great. I can hardly wait to hear the fact-based, well-reasoned rationale for spending $20 or $30 billion dollars on a wall. Since no one except the dictator of some banana republic would propose a project of this size or expense without carefully evaluating all aspects of its implementation, I am sure that the speech will be informative, accurate, non-partisan, and compelling.
Of course, we can all expect that the president will use actual data and other evidence to explain the problem with our current situation and how, exactly, a wall will solve the problem. (You know, like, if the problem is 11 million undocumented persons here, how will a wall remove them; or, if nearly 60 percent of the persons here “illegally” actually entered the country legally through ports of entry and overstayed their visa period, how will a wall address that problem?)
I will be especially interested in learning about the detailed proposals for a border barrier that the Republicans in the Congress prepared when they drafted the current federal budget. As they have been responsible for all aspects of national defense and homeland security for the past two years, I am looking forward to seeing the report of the congressional hearings Republicans must have held to examine this critical issue. (Too bad the Fake News Media wouldn’t cover those important hearings.) The testimony they must have heard from border security professionals, immigration officials, environmental groups, lawyers, local government officials, and affected landowners must have been illuminating.
As the White House is convinced that this is a significant issue, and has been saying so for years, I am sure that the administration has amassed a trove of compelling data to support the proposal. I can’t wait to see the numerous studies and reports that the Department of Homeland Security must have prepared to analyze and evaluate the cost and benefits of a wall. I am looking forward to hearing why funds spent on a wall will be more effective than funds spent on additional border personnel, fencing, better equipment, training, surveillance devices, increased cooperation with Mexican authorities, and immigration courts.
I must admit that I have not been paying enough attention to this critical issue. I have somehow missed the administration’s detailed plans for acquiring the necessary land (much of which is privately owned); constructing the barrier on harsh, remote, difficult terrain; monitoring the border; maintaining the wall; and addressing the inevitable attempts to circumvent the wall.
So, I am sure the speech will be great. Hopefully it will be as convincing as the conservative Cato Institute’s 2017 report titled “Why a Wall Won’t Work.”
If you aren’t available to watch the president’s speech, and if you don’t have time to read the report (which really is compelling…), here’s a couple of summary paragraphs from the report:
“In a sense, the wall merely represents the Trump administration’s worst instincts and desires. It is harmful, wasteful, and offensive, but an ineffective wall is nonetheless better than the surge of 5,000 new Border Patrol agents and 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to round up and deport people that the president also wants. No wall has ever arrested, robbed, battered, or murdered nonviolent people, as immigration enforcement has. A wall will not create an interest group to lobby for itself, endorse nationalist presidential candidates, and demand more power and funding, as the Border Patrol union does.
The wall is more than a symbol. It will harm the lives of thousands of border residents and immigrants while wasting billions of tax dollars. But in a world run by nationalists, the one small source of comfort for non-nationalists over the next four years may be the knowledge that it could be worse.”
The most powerful position in any police department is patrol officer.
While chiefs and deputy chiefs and commanders can set policy, decide budget priorities, discipline members, and apportion resources, it is the patrol officer – almost always working without supervision – who determines how effective or ineffective the police department will be.
Law enforcement agencies may not be the only organizations in which power flows upward, but they are certainly one of the few.
Don’t let the use of military ranks fool you. Police departments are among the most unmilitary organizations in America. In the U.S. Army, soldiers go where they are sent by the organization. When they leave the FOB or the post or wherever, they are going out to conduct a specific mission. The actions of individual soldiers are coordinated within the squad, the actions of individual squads are coordinated within the platoon and the actions of individual platoons are coordinated within the company. Soldiers receive intensive training, – vastly more than police officers – their missions are planned in detail, and they are under near-constant supervision by more experienced and knowledgeable personnel. None of these things are true about law enforcement officers.
When an incident occurs, and police officers arrive on the scene, it is the first officers there – virtually always patrol officers – who take the initial action and set the stage for whatever follows. Whoever shows up later – sergeants, lieutenants, SWAT, detectives, etc.- can only build on the foundation laid down by the individual patrol officer who was there first and who might be the least experienced, lowest-paid member of the entire organization.
Because of the unpredictability and complexity of law enforcement operations, and the overriding need to respond as quickly as possible, police departments do not have the option to plan their responses in detail. Every police officer has experienced arrival at a chaotic scene, not knowing what happened or who to believe, receiving conflicting information from various strangers, and having to make an instant decision about what to do without access to the lawyers, advisers and other policy-makers of the organization. It is no wonder that one of the absolute imperatives of police culture is to support the actions by the person on the scene, regardless of how the situation ultimately turns out.
Finally, when considering who has the real power in a police department, think about how departments employ deadly force.
If you are going to be shot by a police officer, it is not going to be because the chief, in consultation with his highly experienced command staff and the prosecutor, having reviewed all applicable rules, regulations and laws, decided that in the interest of public safety you should be eliminated. It will be because a patrol officer, whose training was limited by budget constraints, who has only the sketchiest information about what you are doing or who you are, who may not be able to see you clearly in the dark or the rain, who has seen countless victims of violent crime, who knows that he or she is alone, and who has only fractions of a second to decide how to respond to what he or she sees, made the decision to shoot.
While the large-scale demonstrations against police killings of unarmed men have ebbed, the underlying causes of the protests remain. Too many Americans, especially persons of color, remain suspicious and distrustful of police. In their eyes, police are rarely held accountable for their mistakes or misconduct, even when those errors cost the lives of innocent persons.
Accountability is an issue that has bedeviled law enforcement administrators, municipal leaders, community activists, and sociologists since the 1960’s. Police have done themselves no favors with their knee-jerk opposition to any attempt to hold officers or departments accountable for misconduct. Though in some ways understandable, the reluctance of police agencies to hold members accountable for errors is enormously counterproductive.
Law enforcement agencies that refuse to hold their members accountable can break the essential links between police and the communities they serve. Lack of accountability erodes public trust and fosters suspicion and resentment. Citizens who distrust the police are less likely to provide information or other assistance that could help police in their efforts to reduce crime. Most people understand that law enforcement is difficult, demanding, and dangerous, but they also expect that when an officer makes an error – especially an error that results in the death of an unarmed citizen – that some corrective action will be taken.
Many police chiefs and top administrators recognize the damage that denying misconduct and protecting officers from accountability is doing. So do many – if not most – rank-and-file police officers. Given a choice, the vast majority of police officers would prefer that all of their colleagues behave professionally at all times.
But police culture today is a powerful impediment to police accountability. The culture of law enforcement is all-enveloping, and law enforcement officers highly value the camaraderie and sense of belonging that membership in the police “fraternity” bestows. Unfortunately, many elements of law enforcement culture are antithetical to accountability, including an ‘us versus them’ mentality, a high regard for autonomy, a commitment to secrecy, and a feeling of solidarity with members of their own organization.
Establishing a culture of accountability must focus on organizational changes, rather than on the actions of individual officers. The problem is systemic, and attempting to place the blame for misconduct on ‘a few bad apples’ are doomed to fail. Many police agencies have taken steps to increase accountability, including the creation of police review boards, early intervention systems, improved citizen complaint procedures, external review of critical incidents, additional restrictions on the use of deadly force, better employee evaluation systems, higher educational standards for new hires, more comprehensive training, and greater emphasis on community-oriented policing.
Not all of these steps can be effective in every department, and research to identify the most effective practices continues, but while it might not be apparent to the casual observer, overall police accountability is greatly improved since the 1960’s.
But despite progress, problems remain. Like civil aviation, medicine, and other professions, the margin for error in law enforcement is razor-thin. Mistakes can be uncorrectable and the consequences can be irrevocable.
Efforts to increase police accountability shouldn’t be viewed as threatening or hostile by police officers and their most ardent supporters. Greater transparency and a good-faith effort to hold departments and individual officers accountable for their actions are in the best interests of police and citizens alike.
“I know being a cop is hard. I know that shit’s dangerous. I know it is, okay? But some jobs can’t have bad apples. Some jobs, everybody gotta be good. Like pilots. Ya know, American Airlines can’t be like, ‘Most of our pilots like to land. We just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains.’
