71e6b33dd7d621158375a95 Police/Community Relations RECORDED ON May 04, 2016 COPYRIGHT 2016 SPEAKER Chief Calvin D. Williams TAGS police, community, relations, phoenix, bridge 02-VIDEO-571e6b33dd7d621158375a95 Police Community Relations Transcript Speakers: Chief Calvin Williams MODERATOR: Chief Williams, can you tell us about your Peace Makers Alliance that you created? CHIEF CALVIN WILLIAMS: Yes sir, of course. I would definitely like to thank Chief Garner and the city of Phoenix for having us here, the University of Phoenix. This is an excellent opportunity for us to get together and kind of exchange ideas. Chief White basically told you everything that's being done out there with policing. I mean he hit the nail on the head on just about every point as far as police community relations. But we have an organization in Cleveland that's called the Peace Makers Alliance. It was started by a former Cleveland Browns legend. For those of you that go back that far, Reggie Rucker played wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns. He got involved with an organization that wanted to do something with some of our formerly incarcerated individuals, some individuals from the community that aren't the people that you would see in a meeting like this but that he knew could move the bar as far as police community relations in the city of Cleveland. He got those young men and women together and he turned the Cleveland Peace Makers Alliance. What this organization does, they work hand in hand with the Police Department and the community during high profile events, during community events, during times in the city when we need that so-called buffer between the Police Department and the community because things have happened. These individuals have what is commonly referred to as street credibility. They've been out there, so to speak, in the game. They know the players. They live in these neighborhoods and they definitely have a genuine desire to help make things better in our city. We applaud them for that so I utilize them often. Every officer involved shooting that we have in the city of Cleveland, there are members of the Peace Makers alliance on scene working with myself and our officers to make sure that the factual, timely, correct information is given to the community because rumors start and they spread quickly. If you don't get the correct information out there then you spend most of your time trying to dispel those rumors. We work with our Peace Makers Alliance members and we give them that information so they can tweet and snapchat, Facebook, even face to face put that information out there to the community. We had an incident that happened in Cleveland earlier this year. Our officers were fired upon. They returned fire. Nobody was struck. They arrested the individual. We taped off an area that was the crime scene. Investigators came out to process the crime scene, to talk to the officers and talk to the arrested individual. Peace Makers Alliance g.

1. 71e6b33dd7d621158375a95 Police/Community Relations
RECORDED ON May 04, 2016 COPYRIGHT 2016 SPEAKER
Chief Calvin D. Williams TAGS police, community, relations,
phoenix, bridge 02-VIDEO-571e6b33dd7d621158375a95
Police Community Relations
Transcript Speakers: Chief Calvin Williams MODERATOR:
Chief Williams, can you tell us about your Peace Makers
Alliance that you created? CHIEF CALVIN WILLIAMS: Yes
sir, of course. I would definitely like to thank Chief Garner and
the city of Phoenix for having us here, the University of
Phoenix. This is an excellent opportunity for us to get together
and kind of exchange ideas. Chief White basically told you
everything that's being done out there with policing. I mean he
hit the nail on the head on just about every point as far as police
community relations. But we have an organization in Cleveland
that's called the Peace Makers Alliance. It was started by a
former Cleveland Browns legend. For those of you that go back
that far, Reggie Rucker played wide receiver for the Cleveland
Browns. He got involved with an organization that wanted to do
something with some of our formerly incarcerated individuals,
some individuals from the community that aren't the people that
you would see in a meeting like this but that he knew could
move the bar as far as police community relations in the city of
Cleveland. He got those young men and women together and he
turned the Cleveland Peace Makers Alliance. What this
organization does, they work hand in hand with the Police
Department and the community during high profile events,
during community events, during times in the city when we
need that so-called buffer between the Police Department and
the community because things have happened. These individuals
have what is commonly referred to as street credibility. They've
been out there, so to speak, in the game. They know the players.
They live in these neighborhoods and they definitely have a
genuine desire to help make things better in our city. We

2. applaud them for that so I utilize them often. Every officer
involved shooting that we have in the city of Cleveland, there
are members of the Peace Makers alliance on scene working
with myself and our officers to make sure that the factual,
timely, correct information is given to the community because
rumors start and they spread quickly. If you don't get the correct
information out there then you spend most of your time trying
to dispel those rumors. We work with our Peace Makers
Alliance members and we give them that information so they
can tweet and snapchat, Facebook, even face to face put that
information out there to the community. We had an incident that
happened in Cleveland earlier this year. Our officers were fired
upon. They returned fire. Nobody was struck. They arrested the
individual. We taped off an area that was the crime scene.
Investigators came out to process the crime scene, to talk to the
officers and talk to the arrested individual. Peace Makers
Alliance guys were on the scene with us and a huge, huge
boisterous group from the community because the word had
spread that members of the division of police had shot an
individual in the head, killed them and he was lying in the back
yard dead and that's why we taped off this area. There was no
one shot. There was no one even hurt on that scene. VIDEO
TRANSCRIPT © University of Phoenix 2016 Police/Community
Relations Page 2 We were able to have the members of the
Peace Makers Alliance along with some of our people from the
community relations to actually come out and start walking
through and talking to the crowd to give them the factual
information on what transpired that day. That calmed things
down tremendously for us. We utilize Peace Makers Alliance
guys on a daily basis. The Mayor of the city of Cleveland also
started a One CLE hashtag during some troubled times we had
earlier this year, this spring. We got the Peace Makers Alliance
along with our clergy, along with our street outreach workers,
along with our activists in the community and basically got all
of them onboard to this One CLE. We are One Cleveland. My
colleagues at the end knew that during the recent NBA finals

3. that was sort of a slogan for the Cavaliers; we're all in. We
turned this One CLE. We're all in this together as one.
(Laughter) MALE SPEAKER: Thank you Chief. Thank you for
reminding me of Cleveland. MODERATOR: I like the rivalry.
I'm glad you guys were separated. (Laughter) CHIEF CALVIN
WILLIAMS: Well the Mayor turned this One CLE. We got all
of our community stakeholders together and when the
announcement was made in a real high profile criminal trial we
had activists, police officers, clergy, community people all out
together walking the streets of Cleveland, talking to groups in
the streets of Cleveland and urging people to respect the One
CLE, to come together as one Cleveland to make sure that we
get to the root of the issues that we have and we get to them in a
positive way. We had a positive outcome from that. [
02-VIDEO-571e6bfad0464a1d42a7f523 Transcript Speakers:
Assistant Chief Perry Tarrant
Cultural Diversity in Policing
MODERATOR: Chief Tarrant, when I think of Seattle, I feel
like I'm kind of in that corner, I see a picture of a very vibrant,
ethnically diverse, really an international city, not dissimilar
from many big cities but there's a uniqueness to Seattle. We
chatted about that. You have a unique challenge around that.
You have an international district. You've created some
programs that really kind of help you get a better sense, a pulse
of what's happening in that district. Could you address those
please? ASSISTANT CHIEF PERRY TARRANT: Sure,
absolutely. Let me begin by first saying that I'm kind of wearing
two hats today. I'm representing the city of Seattle as well as
NOBLEE which is the National Organization of Black Law
Enforcement Executives. NOBLEE has had a very long
relationship with the University of Phoenix so I want to thank
the University of Phoenix for that and its continued support as
well as being our host this morning. Also I would like to thank
the city of Phoenix as well for their hospitality that's been
extended and the opportunity to be with you guys this morning.

4. Spider mentioned it during my intervention that my original
plan of being in law enforcement was five years. How that came
about was a lot of the contacts I had initially or had with the
law enforcement when I was going to the university wasn't
really positive. I went home kind of in a battle with my
roommate. I had a discussion and the conversation kind of went
along the lines of you can continue to vent about it or you can
do something about it. A passing conversation I had just very
shortly after that with my father and he says well if you're going
to do something about it the only way you're going to change
the organization is from the inside. That's how I got into law
enforcement. There was never a plan. It was never part of my
overall goal and it was only going to take me five years to
change all of law enforcement. (Laughter) Thirty-five years
later. Let me kind of talk about the city and how I got there.
Seattle is absolutely an international city. Not only is it known
for its tourism but you have Microsoft, Amazon, Expedia,
Yahoo, Starbucks all drawing a very international and very
diverse population to that city. On top of that you have a
Department of Justice investigation which found a series of
patterns and facts occurring within the Seattle Police
Department and the Seattle Police Department is now under
federal monitoring which means the Police Chief and the Mayor
report to a federal judge as far as policing goes in the city of
Seattle. The challenge that presents is when your department is
first hit with that consent decree from the federal court saying
you shall do certain things the tradition of how policing
historically occurred stops. Now you have an instance where
you have a very large police force and a very large metropolitan
city deciding not to have contact with the public. That is a huge
challenge. My boss gets to the city of Seattle and taking a page
out of Chief White's book immediately addresses her command
staff. What occurs in that process is she eliminates all of her
command staff and then hand picks her new team. That's how I
got to Seattle. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT © University of Phoenix
2016 Cultural Diversity in Policing Page 2 Hitting the ground in

5. Seattle under those circumstances number one at the federal
monitoring and number two coming from the outside into an
organization that has been somewhat demotivated about doing
policing and on top of that having to work with her leadership
team to change the overall culture of that organization and kind
of reinvent community policing. We started off with looking at
how we were doing everything. Everything from recruiting.
When I started and you looked at the recruitment materials it
was really guys driving fast, shooting guns and rolling around
grabbing. We changed the format of our recruiting materials and
started addressing the kind of folks we wanted coming in
particularly during this time in our community. We showed that
video internally and it was not very well received because it
wasn't what folks who grew up doing police work thought
police work should be. We showed that same video externally to
the community and it was a lot of footage that already existed
and they did not know those were things that were already going
on in the city of Seattle. It was very positively received
externally. We kind of had that mixed bag initially but that's
still the video that we push out there as part of our recruiting
materials. Because Seattle is such a very diverse community we
have a very large Chinatown and a continuously growing Asian
population. Chinatown is now surrounded by what's called the
International District which has an even greater diverse
population. Just outside of the International District is another
neighborhood and everybody in Seattle is very proud of their
neighborhoods but that neighborhood is called Columbia City
where there are over 70 different languages spoken. You try and
mix that into an effort toward moving down the line on
community policing and it absolutely presents a series of
challenges. Every precinct has a community policing team
assigned to it which basically reports directly to that policing
commander in a decentralized fashion on all of our different
community policing initiatives. On top of that to reach some of
those more difficult, some of those other market areas what we
did was the city of Seattle brought in internally several liaisons.

6. We specifically hired liaisons to work with the East African
community, with the Asian community, with the Norwegian
community that all make up the city of Seattle. The sole intent
there was, and you hear Cerelyn say a few minutes ago, and that
was to have those conversations and to continuously engage the
community on what they expected from their police. The cops
are now getting back out and engaging with that whole new
framework and surrounding that by an understanding of what
the community wants and more importantly what the community
expects. The larger part of that on the international district
portion of that is trying to blend folks outside of their
neighborhood where there is a very, very tight cultural pride in
being defined as a neighborhood. The challenge doing police
work in that environment really isn't that great. The larger part
of our challenge is having that conversation and kind of moving
those along. We've taken community policing and we actually
call it micro community policing specific to those
neighborhoods and those communities. The officers that are
assigned to those specific communities either work through the
liaison or an interpreter on a regular basis where we have very
specific programs for those very specific neighborhoods all
intended to build the relationships and improve the relationships
with the Seattle Police Department. All of this is going on and
being reported back to the federal judge on a quarterly basis
because that is the requirement. Seattle is about two and a half
years into almost three years into an incent decree which
requires the city of Seattle's Police Department to do several
things on a list that the federal judge approves and then after
the last item is signed off we have a federal mantra team that
still lives with us for the next two years to make sure we don't
backslide. I will tell you right now within the organization at
the speed at which change is happening within Seattle, the folks
who were initially kind of stepping back and depolicing are
back out there on the front lines having those conversations.
The conversations that I have on a routine basis when I attend
role calls and briefings with our troops are every single contact

7. is a transaction. You're either making a deposit or you're
making a withdrawal. I'll go back to the example that Chief
Williams of Cleveland mentioned earlier and that is when we
have events and there are events virtually every day in the city
of Seattle, we don't let the officers stand around. We have the
expectation that they will engage and have those conversations
because that is absolutely the opportunity to make those
deposits. Ultimately there will be a time where we have to make
a withdrawal and those withdrawals when they occur are
sometimes pretty significant. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT ©
University of Phoenix 2016 Cultural Diversity in Policing Page
3 Some of the other things we have internally are the most vocal
bloggers and folks who are doing a lot of posting kind of on the
opposition side of Seattle PD. We hired them and brought them
inside. As Cerelyn mentioned, sometimes what you have to do is
make that concerted effort to demystify policing for the
community so they understand. I will tell you that since we've
hired those folks those are absolutely some of our greatest
proponents of what we do and they're also the most vocal. What
we get is we actually have taken our Media Relations
Department and kind of bolstered that with civilians that we
brought from the community to respond to and anticipate
questions that we were most likely to get from the community.
We've all been on this side of policing for a very long time and
don't necessarily always anticipate the questions that folks have
out in the community. The intent was to bring some folks in on
a pretty regular basis and this is in addition to all of our
advisory committees but bring them in on staff using the
mechanisms that they were using previously to communicate to
a much broader platform but doing that on our behalf, helping
us get our message out there. It’s working very, very well.
[End of Audio]
02-VIDEO-571e6b82d0464a1d42a7f520 Transcript Speakers:
Chief Calvin Williams & Chief Robert White

8. Police Onboarding, Recruiting, and Civilian Calls Video
MODERATOR: What is the what I would call onboarding
requirements? What are you looking for? What is different?
Maybe the better question is what is different when you were a
young guy from what you're bringing in today? How is the 22
year old Calvin Williams different today? CHIEF CALVIN
WILLIAMS: Well I started when I was 22. I think the
differences are the officers that we're bringing onboard now
want more. They want more as far as technology. They want
more training. They want more involvement. We have to -- the
only thing we have to do with our younger officers is kind of
divorce them a little from the technology part of it so much
because everybody is tied to a smart phone. Everybody is tied to
a tablet. Everybody is used to text and email and not that face-
to-face personal interaction. That's the one thing that I see that
we have to kind of improve upon. But we have a young
energetic generation here that wants to get out there and wants
to serve. We see it in our military. Up until I would say the last
year and a half or two years we saw it in our public safety
courses. Now we have to turn that back around because I don't
know about the rest of the chiefs in the room but we have a
difficult time recruiting in Northeast Ohio because of some of
the things that are happening around the country and admittedly
some of the things that have happened within the Cleveland
Division of Police. We have to work harder to recruit better
candidates, to recruit more candidates to become police
officers. We can't just stop there and say this generation they
don't want to be police officers. I mean we have to recruit hard.
But from a standpoint of what's different, again I think when I
came on almost 30 years ago I just wanted to be a police. I
wanted to be an officer out there protecting my community. I
think our officers want a little bit more now. They want to
protect and serve but they also want advance. They want more
training. They want more education. They want things like that
and I'm happy to say that the city of Cleveland provides tuition
reimbursement for our officers at 100% if you can maintain that

9. A average which is I think unheard of. Sorry. But the difference
is we have to give them a little bit more than the officers that
came on 30 years ago and 40 years ago when the Chief came on.
MODERATOR: Chief, thanks very much. Chief, he's just
dissing you. CHIEF ROBERT WHITE: Did I say I had 40 years?
I didn't even share that. No, it is 40. I didn't mean to share that
though. MODERATOR: Chief, you started a program in your
schools. Can you describe that? CHIEF ROBERT WHITE: Yes,
I can. Prior to that, can I speak to something that I think is
really important to the community and important to us as police
chiefs? We just had our elections. We have six out of 13
become Council members. Many of them are hounding us
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT © University of Phoenix 2016 Police
Onboarding, Recruiting, and Civilian Calls Page 2 about
response time. Our position is exactly the same as Chief
Williams. We really want officers to go and do quality work
versus how fast can you write a report and get back in service.
At the same time there's this demand from those above and
parallel, you have to get there quick. People don't want to wait.
Part of our approach has been trying to explain to the
community and to these Council members there are priority
calls. If you are a victim of a crime we need to get there as
quick as possible. As quick as possible. Then there are calls that
I call customer service calls. You go on vacation. You come
back. Somebody broke into your garage. What is the real rush
for us getting there in two minutes? The crime had already
occurred. However you as a citizen still want to have someone
there and you don't want to wait on that. Part of it for us has
been -- again I'm from the school that if it doesn't require men
in badge police shouldn't be doing it. There are types of calls
that we hire civilians that work for the Police Department. They
take those calls. They address those quality like issues of those
customer service type calls. The other thing that we're
attempting to do, like many of you, you call your cable person
or your petco person. They give you a block of time that they're
going to be there. Make an appointment. One of the things we're

10. looking at actually as it relates to response time for those
customer service type calls is come make an appointment. Ms.
Fritz, we can get somebody there. What is good for you? We
can get somebody, if you tell me 2:00 is good for you we'll get
somebody there between 1:00 and 2:30 that way they're not
sitting there waiting for the police and that way we can manage
those calls better. I think it's really important that the
community really understands that it’s those priority calls and
then the other calls that's just customer service type calls. We
still have a responsibility to get there and to do it professionally
and do it as expeditiously as possible, it’s incumbent upon us to
explain that to the community and it's also incumbent upon us to
come up with better ways to do that to address the issues. As it
relates to the schools. It was actually December 2014 one of our
larger schools in Denver, hundreds of kids walked out. This is
after the Ferguson incident and after Officer Wilson was not
charged. They were very frustrated. That actually started a
movement in Denver. We were led by the kids, not by the
adults. I would say at least another 15 schools kids walked out
in the middle of the school day exercising their First
Amendment rights. It got to be really challenging. This occurred
over maybe a two week period every single day, pretty much all
the high schools and many of the middle schools kids just
walked out. The principals didn't have control over them. The
superintendent didn't have control. The teachers didn't have
control. The police didn't have control but we obviously had to
provide service because the numbers were so large that they
were walking in the middle of the street. It became a safety
issue. The superintendent of the schools along with the Mayor,
the executive director of safety which is equivalent to the city
Mayors and I had a meeting. We attended pretty much most of
the high schools. Most high schools in Denver I imagine it’s the
same in most cities. They have a student body that sort of
represents the students at large. We met with, this is the Mayor
and the superintendent. In Denver there are about 100,000 kids
that go to public schools. We've gone to many of these schools

11. to have a conversation to try to understand from their
perspective what was their frustration and obviously the black
lives matter was something that was very prominent. What we
learned was they wanted demands on the Police Department but
at the same time they wanted to understand why we were
making the decisions that we were making. From going to
several of those schools, listening to these young people, the
Mayor decided to create a summit. A couple months ago we had
a summit with public school kids. They were bussed in. These
were pretty much many of the schools that were really impacted
by some of the challenges just through socioeconomics, where
they lived. The Mayor had the summit. At that summit we
created scenarios. The students actually participated in the
scenarios. You get stopped by the police. We made them be the
police and kind of schooled them on what they should do and
shouldn't do. We had the police officers be the students. It
became a little better understanding as it relates to that. In
Denver we have what we call the independent monitor. That's
the person that has oversight over police, fire and the sheriff’s
department and make recommendations. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
© University of Phoenix 2016 Police Onboarding, Recruiting,
and Civilian Calls Page 3 They're supposed to be
recommendations but sometimes its beyond that. But anyway.
We don't exactly have a kumbaya relationship with the
independent monitors as you can well imagine. But in light of
this movement by these young people, the monitor actually has
what he calls a pawn card. It tells the young person -- and it's
done in concert with the Police Department by the way. What do
you do when you get stopped by the police? How do you act?
What should you expect the police officer to do when they stop
you? Maybe even more significant than that, there is a program
that we are in the process of working with and we've actually
done phase one of that process and expanding it where the
initial program was we identified through the monitor, and this
is those working in collaboration which is unusual, they've
identified some kids in an impact area again and mentored to

12. them over the course of three to four weeks just having these
conversations. They mentored them with a lot of adults and a lot
of police officers who were not in uniform. These kids did not
know that these were police officers. This wonderful
relationships really was created as a result of this three or four
week program meeting on a regular basis. The last day of the
program the police officers who were not in uniform were in
uniform and the kids were just astonished. You're a police
officer? I guess sometimes we seem as something other than
being officer and being a regular citizen. That has gone a long
ways. The Mayor has played a heavy role in this. Again he has
created what we call my Denver card. Every child in Denver,
every young person in Denver, can go to the library free and go
to the recreation centers for free. They can go to the museums
for free. This was really important during the summer months
because we were really afraid of what was going to happen
during the summer months as it relates to that. Our police
officers pretty much, we directed them to adopt a school. We
have a lot of schools so all of the command officers and these
precincts where these schools are they have a responsibility to
adopt, they work with the school administrator and they adopt a
school. They do lunch time based on the relationship they have
with the counselors in the schools. They go to lunch with
certain kids or they read to certain kids. That has been proven to
be relatively meaningful also. Then actually in Denver there's a
program Grid. Really what Grid is the city has hired former
gang members. I did say former. Former gang members. They as
you all know sometimes when we're trying to reach out to our
kids and give them advice they don't want to hear from us but if
they can talk to one of their peers, it’s more meaningful. Some
of these former gang members have been very, very helpful
because they've reached out to the young people who are at risk
of becoming gang members or that are gang members and trying
to get them out of that life. It’s actually been a litany of things
that the city has done as relates to that. One of the other things
we did this summer which I really felt was neat. We have a

13. foundation like many agencies have and they've given us
thousands of dollars. As a result of that we're trying to get these
kids so they get involved in summer activity we reward them.
We reward them either through our relationship with 7-11 where
they get Slurpee’s. We reward them through our relationship
with Papa John. If we see a young person doing something right
we give them a ticket that says you got caught doing something
right. They open it up. There's a free pizza. We do that for
adults also. Just doing things in I guess what I would call a
proactive way where young people are seeing that police
officers before they have to respond to something negative I
think has served our community relatively well. Then there are
other programs that we continue to create. As a matter of fact,
next week we're going to have summit number two. The Mayor
is going to have another young summit at the end, because it
was at the beginning of the school year and I would imagine the
superintendent will be there. Again we will call young people in
and they will be bussed in or we'll go to their location and we'll
talk about how did the summer go. What are some of your
challenges? Have any relationships changed? These are some of
the individuals that really have issues with the police. They
update on progress. I think you asked John a question earlier
how do you measure how effective you are. Well, at some point
you have to come up with processes to say we're doing all of
these things. Okay, are they definitive. I think summit two is
going to speak to some of the things the Mayor has actually put
in place over the course of last year or actually over the course
of the last or three months. MODERATOR: Chief, I have to tell
you when I heard you talking about that initiative the definition
of protect and serve kind of comes to mind. It was made
manifest when you made the comment about police officers then
put their uniforms on. I'm trying to get my VIDEO
TRANSCRIPT © University of Phoenix 2016 Police
Onboarding, Recruiting, and Civilian Calls Page 4 head around
what are those behavioral traits that routinely needed to be
demonstrated that go to protect, that go to serve. You just

14. described in a number of initiatives that embody that. CHIEF
ROBERT WHITE: Earlier I had mentioned that I think policing
has changed but the police haven't changed so when you talk
about I think we need to really understand what does it mean to
protect and serve, protect and serve does not mean when I was a
young police officer. I have to be honest. I was a victim of my
environment. I was very aggressive. I'd see how many arrests I
could make. I thought that was the measure of success in
policing but the real measure of success is how many arrests
you don't make because you put things in place to prevent those
crimes from even occurring. And also understanding that the
greatest resource we have as police officers are the very citizens
that are paying our taxes. If they trust you, if they know you, if
you treat them with dignity and respect regardless of their
station in life and if they have a voice in the things that impact
their neighborhood that's how you protect and serve. It is not
I'm sure all of you have heard this thin blue line. That's
something that has been in place for centuries in police officers.
I've often said that if I had an eraser I would erase it because
originally when it was created it was the police against the bad
guys. Now I think sometimes there's some police officers think
it's the police against everybody. That thin blue line I mean it
really is the police being part of the community and the
community has to be part of the police. That thin blue line has
to incorporate all of us. It’s that kind of thinking and that kind
of philosophy that we just have to be vigilant about
implementing. And change is tough. I am here to tell you
change agencies and changing mindsets and changing adults to
try to think and do things different is very challenging but I
think if you put processes in place and if you stay the course
and if you reward those values that are really important and you
deal with those issues that are not important you can eventually
get there. It’s like moving a big ship but you can move it.
[End of Audio]