Doodling my new four-square for analyzing police departments:

Skill culture Social culture

Empathetic
|
Mediocrity __________ Excellence

|
Callous

The explanation of a helpful way to think of the options. Skill culture refers to the leadership, supervision, training and tactics of a department. It also an indicator or laziness. A lazy culture has a chief who is often invisible and good tactics are an afterthought. +

Example: why do you allow patrol to do box-in maneuvers that can lead to cross-fire risk? “I don’t know. We don’t practice it.” Lazy and mediocre. +

A department that strives for excellence is obvious. The officers are fit. Their tactics are sound. The esprit de corps is apparent. As is command presence. Accountability matters - at least internal accountability. More on that to come. +

The Social Culture may take time to figure out or it may smack you in the face. Literally. By this I mean how the public is treated. High empathy in a homogeneous well to do town is easy. Show me how someone who “doesn’t fit” is treated. +

In a more diverse city, are all victims treated the same? If officers err, do Black people also get an apology? Spend time listening in executive conference rooms or roll calls and you will understand where they lie on the social culture scale. +

And it is also where one can see if “accountability“ is only internal and external is “not so much.” It is a culture where the public is viewed as a bother and that “they don’t get it.” In such cases, transparency is negligible and community policing doesn’t involve community. +

*Mediocre + empathetic is pretty rare, in my experience. “We have awful leadership and tactics but we treat everyone well,” doesn’t happen often.
*Excellence + empathetic is the culture you want to see. It is hard to obtain and harder to maintain but all departments claim it. +

*Mediocre + callous. You know them. They suck the life out of the community and they are a systematic failure. Incredibly hard to fix. Better pay, better leaders, better everything and it still may not stick. Civilian policy makers are responsible too. Disband and rebuild? +

*Excellence + callous. They are very good for a few and horrible for the others. They will say stuff like “tactics are our bible” all while having massive disparities in stops and force. Up side? Their very discipline makes reform possible with strong leadership. //