The CopDoc Podcast Maureen McGough, Ep 70, The Policing Project, New York University School of Law

Maureen McGough (Mc-Goff) is the Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Policing Project, a non-profit organization, at New York University Law School.  At the Policing Project Maureen (Mo) oversees national efforts to improve accountability and transparency in policing.  She joined the Policing Project after working with the National Police Foundation, where she led the non-profit’s research, training, and technical assistance efforts as Director of National Programs.

Prior to joining the National Police Foundation, Maureen spent a decade with the federal government in various roles with the US Department of Justice and the US Department of State. She served as Senior Policy Advisor to the Director of the National Institute of Justice – the USDOJ’s research, development, and evaluation agency – where she led agency efforts to advance evidence-based policing, improve the representation of women in policing, and implement systems-level criminal justice reform initiatives. Additional federal experience includes serving as counsel on terrorism prevention to the Deputy Attorney General, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and coordinator for federal AIDS relief efforts through the U.S. Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda.

Maureen is a member of the FBI’s Law Enforcement Education and Training Council, an executive board member for the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing, and is a recent public leadership executive fellow with the Brookings Institute.  Maureen is an attorney and earned her J.D. from the George Washington University Law School.

Update:  Maureen has become the Executive Director for the EPPS at the University of South Carolina School of Law. 

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If you'd like to arrange for facilitated training, or consulting, or talk about steps you might take to improve your leadership and help in your quest for promotion, contact Steve at stephen.morreale@gmail.com

Transcript

[00:00:42.850] - Intro

Welcome to The CopDoc Podcast. This podcast explores police leadership issues and innovative ideas. The CopDoc shares thoughts and ideas as he talks with leaders in policing, communities, academia, and other government agencies. And now please join Dr. Steve Morreale and industry thought leaders as they share their insights and experience on The CopDoc Podcast.

[00:01:12.550] - Steve Morreale

Hello again, everybody. This is Steve Morreale coming to you from Boston today. We're talking to a colleague in the greater DC area in Virginia, actually, and we have Maureen McGough. And Maureen is one of those thought leaders. I would have to say it has been a difficult time trying to get her because we're so damn busy. But we have her now. And I'm so happy on this Friday morning. Good morning to you, Maureen.

[00:01:36.750] - Maureen McGough

Good morning. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:01:39.030] - Steve Morreale

Thank you. I want you to start by telling us your story. You went to law school at GWU and you went on a little bit of a journey and you end up at NYU with a policing project. But on the way, tell us your background so we can better understand where you've been and where you are now and maybe where you're going.

[00:02:01.930] - Maureen McGough

Sure. I love that question. So I will say I think my story starts much earlier than my time in law school. So I'm a cops kid and I grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida. My dad's been over 30 years with the St. Pete Pde. And at the time that I was growing up, St. Pete was still pretty fairly racially segregated. We had some race riots when I was a kid. And I grew up with stories around the dinner table hearing about a lot of failures, failures of community and also failures of the people who are serving that community, failures of how we were serving the cops. We're serving the community. There were failures all around. And it really sort of drew me to this field where I knew that there were people in the police profession who were service oriented and trying to do the right thing. And I knew they didn't have the tools or the space or the support that they needed in order to achieve the kinds of outcomes that they were trying to achieve. So from very early on at my time at the US Department of Justice, I was really drawn to sort of advancing the police profession police reform, advocating for ending racial disparities, and working both with police and the communities they serve to that end.

[00:03:17.680] - Maureen McGough

So I was with a cops kid, and then in law school, I focused a lot on human rights. And those two things coming together while I was at the US Department of justice really sort of shaped how I approach doing the work now.

[00:03:28.810] - Steve Morreale

So let's talk about Justice, and then we'll fast forward to where you are now. While you were at Justice, you were given a portfolio and given some latitude to make some changes. And I know that you didn't do it alone. Many of these things are not done in a vacuum, but you created a research opportunity and talk about that and talk about the things that you did and the things you're proud of at DOJ.

[00:03:55.390] - Maureen McGough

I love that question, too. It's one of my favorite times in my career. About seven years ago now, I guess I started something called the Leads Program. It's Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Science, and that was inspired by a couple of people. So one, my dad was a total police nerd. He had an NIJ grant. He built something called the Pistol Project paperless Information Systems, totally online. And it was very early reporting through computers with big old Tandy’s set up in cruisers. So I knew that there were people out there in the field who are innovating. And we always talk about researchers and practitioners as if they're two separate people, but not always. And at that time, I went to my first IACP conference, and I saw a presentation by Dr. Renee Mitchell. And at the time, she was a Sergeant with Sac PD, and she was up there receiving an award for research alongside all of these teams with some of the greats, right. Jeff Albert was there with his police professional partner. I think they actually won the gold award that year, but Renee won a silver, and it was just her by herself.

[00:05:01.270] - Maureen McGough

And the idea that there are these police officers out there who are pursuing terminal degrees, who really care about what's empirically shown to work and matter, I wanted to do everything we could to support them. And it felt like the National Institute of justice was the absolute perfect place to do that. And I will tell you, at the time that we built it, we had no idea what it was going to become. We started with basically change we found in the couch positions at NIJ. Right. I think we had like $30,000 to play with that first year. And we put out an announcement to see how many people like Renee are there out there. And we were blown away by the quality of the applications. We get those ten folks into that next IACP conference, we meet with them, they meet with the director of NIJ, and we realize this can't be a one and done thing. We can't lose these people. So we extended the program for three years, and every year since. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say the quality of these applications that we're seeing is just mind boggling. And sort of a common thread that we've seen is that a lot of people approaching police work in this way, in their agencies, they're kind of alone, they're not necessarily celebrated.

[00:06:10.340] - Maureen McGough

And by providing them this sort of community of practice, this access to people in leadership at IACP, access to experts at the US Department of justice, we're really giving them a lot more latitude to advance evidence-based policing. And I do think the idea of EVP has definitely gained a lot of traction in the last five or six years in the field. And I think the Leads program has played a significant role in seeing that happen. So I'm thrilled by the success of the program. And I will tell you, it is 100% attributable to the quality of the officers who are participating in it. It's the easiest thing to ask for support for because they really are doing transformational work on the ground.

[00:06:48.330] - Steve Morreale

Well, you know, I have to say that as we talk about evidence-based policing, and I know that Cynthia Lum and GMU and so many places have taken hold, it is resisted, much like the 30 by 30 at times. And we'll talk about that at first it's resisted because it's not necessarily understood. And I watch some of these things. And I know Renee and I interviewed Renee, and I just talked to a number of Canadian people who are involved in it and advancing it. I've talked to one of the commissioners, the Assistant Commissioner at New Zealand, where the Police Department has an evidence-based policing unit. And talking to the Garda the other day, I said, why not you? And it was that simple, in saying we never thought about that. That's a neat opportunity for us as we just plant seeds. And I believe that that's part of what someone like you and even myself are trying to do, plant seeds, throw them out there, put a little fertilizer on them, and hope that they grow over time, but they need tender loving care. Now, one of the things I want to talk about in terms of evidence EVP or evidence-based policing is most people out there don't necessarily understand it.

[00:08:05.500] - Steve Morreale

It becomes complicated when people say, hey, let's do a strategic plan. Strategic turns people off. Like what? Or if you say, let's do policy analysis, what the hell is that? What's evidence-based policing? So you hear it in a couple of ways, intelligence led policing, maybe an offshoot. And I know that Jerry Ratcliffe interviewed you and I've interviewed him. And it's a small world we live in. Right. It really is. But I think that some of the reasons that it has such great potential is let's not work anecdotally let's let the data tell us what works and what doesn't. And I believe it has some roots in evidence-based medicine.

[00:08:51.610] - Maureen McGough

Absolutely. When I was first at NIJ, our director. His daughter was in Med school. And that idea of transformational medicine, where the needs of the field inform the research priorities and the results of the research and form how the field operates really changed. I think the way that NIJ approached developing and disseminating research, it became much more collaborative. And I think around that time that's when Cynthia launched that transformational Criminology publication that's so fantastic. And it's such a great resource, both for informing academics about the field's needs, but also informing the field about the latest research. I do think that EVP is having a bit of a moment and will have an even bigger one because especially as we go into these periods where budgets are tighter than they've ever been before, crime is increasing, people don't have money to waste. If you were going to invest in a program or a strategy, you need to be able to measure it and show empirically that you're having the intended impact that you're looking for. There's just very little margin for error. And I think the more that we learn about practitioner interest in contributing to research, the easier it's going to be to just build basic data and evaluation and maybe quasi experimental design and how you roll out your strategies.

[00:10:10.930] - Maureen McGough

I think that the field is going to be contributing much more to the research base as time goes on Well.

[00:10:17.250] - Steve Morreale

I'm writing down, as you're talking, because it seems to me a lot of the work that I've been doing is about decision making and how the police officers and police agencies make organizational decisions. And what is the template and what are the things that you need and who do you gather and stakeholders, and what data do you need before you make a decision and don't hold firm on that decision when new information comes in, modify it a little bit. And so to me, it's so neat. And I think what you just said is so important, so many police officers, first of all, budgeting, right. Somebody comes in with budgeting. What's budgeting? Zero based budgeting, or what we do is we play what do we have last year? And let's add one or 2%. And that's it. There's no real thought that goes into planning, but I will say that so many of the people who are mining the purse strings, whether it's Congress, it's the city Council, or it's the state legislatures, prove that it works. What are the outcomes? And that becomes important. And as our leaders begin to understand that, I do think that it will get more traction than it has already.

[00:11:24.010] - Steve Morreale

But I'm also concerned about the many small police departments, and they'll say I can't afford somebody to take a look at my data. Maureen, I'll always say I think you can, and the reason I think you can is use schools, colleges and universities or pool your resources, do it regionally, have four or five people hire an analyst or a data technician to figure out what's working and what isn't. I'm seeing your head shake. What do you think, Mo?

[00:11:55.090] - Maureen McGough

I just couldn't agree more. I think about how many doctoral students there are out there who are desperate to get access to police data, especially to do original research, which isn't even happening that often anymore at the doctoral level. Right. So the idea that you can't afford to do it. I completely empathize with that. And I know that so many police departments across the country are struggling in terms of capacity, but this is the kind of need that you can fill really quickly and easily with really quality people just for looking for those research and practitioner partnerships. And who knows if that student does well, you could have one of those really long-term relationships like Anthony brought in Boston. Right. You can have a resource that is always there for you if you just open up sort of your data. And I know that's hard if you don't know what the analysis of data is going to say, it's hard to give it to somebody else, but you're never going to learn until you go through that process.

[00:12:46.380] - Steve Morreale

But when you have players on the inside sometimes who have that inquisitive mindset, not just about how many people are arresting. We can't arrest our way out of mental health. We can't arrest our way out of domestic abuse and all of the things that are happening, it seems to me and I look at myself as a pracademic. Right. I was in policing for 30 years, 35 years, and now 15 or 20 years in academia. It is bridging that gap between the two. And it is things like IACP or NIJ where you are putting action research at the forefront so that you've got potentially a researcher and somebody who's inquisitive inside the Department to make those marriages happen, which is just a great opportunity.

[00:13:37.850] - Maureen McGough

Amen.

[00:13:39.650] - Steve Morreale

So let's move on. You had the LEADS program. Evidence-based policing has clearly begun to ramp up. I'm glad to see it. You moved on from NIJ. You are somewhere else. Now. Tell us about that.

[00:13:55.790] - Maureen McGough

So I am at a nonprofit called the Policing Project out of NYU School of Law, and we really focus on Democratic accountability and policing. So it's the idea that policing is a public institution and as such, the public deserves a meaningful say in how they're policed. And we really try and work at the intersection of police and community interests, and we find that intersection, the more we do this work is much larger, I think, than people would assume. I got there three weeks before George Floyd was murdered. So it's been a pretty extraordinary time, a pretty fraught time. But I will say I feel like it's historic in terms of how much room there is to work and really deeply reflect about how we've policed historically and how we need to police in order to equitably serve our communities. And it's been a really incredible time. I have loved federal service, but there's something to be said to being on the outside and being free to do things like have a conversation with you about the needs of the field and what I perceive the priorities to be. It's been a pretty wonderful thing. I'm really grateful for the opportunity.

[00:15:09.950] - Steve Morreale

So so much of academia, of which I am now a part of, is seen by policing as ultra-liberal.

[00:15:19.490] - Maureen McGough

Yeah.

[00:15:19.490] - Steve Morreale

And so there's some pushback that will happen. How do you bridge the gap? How do you engage? Well, you understand just by that question, how do you engage police who are resistant because they think that you are coming from an academic setting and therefore you might be a little too Liberal? Not you, please. I'm not saying no, but the project is a little too Liberal. How do you begin to engage them to say, we're working to help you, we're working with you, not against you, but we're working to improve what's being done.

[00:15:55.070] - Maureen McGough

I love that question, and I don't think it's specific to where I am now. I think a lot of the projects I've worked on throughout my career, there's a criticism from some officers that any attempts to change policing is automatically considered hyper left and very progressive and aligned with abolition right. The flip side of that is I think attempts to work collaboratively with police departments to advance the profession and improve public safety outcomes is sometimes seen as not left enough. I don't think I've ever worked on a project that has been palatable to either end of the extremes politically, and I'm comfortable with that. I will say I think it is helpful, having come from a law enforcement family and how I approach this work. So, for example, I'm running a project right now called Health Check. And it's basically the idea that in the absence of national standards for police departments, it's really hard for police leaders in the communities to serve whether or not to know whether or not their Department is doing a good job. You ask a chief, how do you know if you're doing a good job? That's a complicated question to answer.

[00:16:59.760] - Maureen McGough

And the proxy metrics we have are limited. And communicating whether or not you're doing that is hugely complicated. And so police departments, city leaders, communities they serve deserve some type of North Star clear standards for what good policing looks like and metrics to see whether they're measuring up. And I'm not talking about deep Kalia accreditations. I'm talking about 100 questions, just like an annual physical. That's why we call it Health Check. And our approach to developing those metrics was not to say we are the high and mighty researchers and our Ivory towers. We're going to read our things, we're going to sit at our desks, we're going to highlight books, and we're going to develop these metrics hired a bunch of those lead scholars. Right. And acknowledging that so much of the wisdom of what needs to happen and so much of the evidence base that we're using comes from the field. And elevating the voice of the people in the field who prioritize doing what works and matters, I think is critically important because I'm sure you know this more than anybody. Right. The way that police departments or police leaders in particular receive their information and learn it best is from other law enforcement.

[00:18:03.690] - Maureen McGough

So the more we elevate the voice of law enforcement officers who are also aligned with advancing the profession, who are willing to admit the limitations as it currently exists and do the work of reimagining a better future, I think that's critical to the success of these initiatives.

[00:18:18.590] - Steve Morreale

Well, so the first thing that comes to mind is and I'm glad to hear that. I want to look at those metrics afterwards, please.

[00:18:27.210] - Maureen McGough

Yeah, I'd love to share them.

[00:18:27.210] - Steve Morreale

But I think the big question always is, what do we count, right. What do please count? And I know that justice and other funding organizations began to move the needle when they said, we don't really care how many things you do, what you do, what outcome can you show us or you're not getting our money. And I think that was a change unto itself that came from them. But I do think what we count if we're counting beans, it always troubles me. And I was very active in beginning the ideals and the ideas of community policing back in the 90s while I was with idea and I ran a nonprofit New England Community Police Partnership. And one of the things we kept saying is, what are you measuring? If you're just measuring how many cars you stop, how quick you respond without saying, have you looked at the problems, have you worked with the community to work on the problems that until we switched the mindset that we were just counting beans.

[00:19:29.510] - Maureen McGough

Yeah.

[00:19:30.710] - Steve Morreale

And Maureen, let me just say one more thing. So if what you want police officers to do is to create more relationships, how do you measure that? It's not just chasing calls.

[00:19:43.910] - Maureen McGough

It really isn't. And I feel like we're invoking Dr. Lum's name a lot, but that's how it should be, I think. But she's got the great research that really explores how is it that police, police officers spend their time. Right. It's talking to people. It's deescalating rough situations, and it's talking to people often at the worst day of their life. And so if you're bean counting, how the heck do you start to capture things like that? I will tell you, our approach has been less about the actual outputs. I think there's a lot of energy around things like improving tracking of uses of force and making them public. Right. Like improving data transparency and accessibility. We think that's important, and we measure some of that. We really try and focus on how are the police impacting those numbers. So I think a good example of that is something like community complaints. So let's say one of your metrics for whether or not you have a good police Department is how many community complaints you have. Well, what our tool tries to do is understand how good is your community complaint process so that you can put those numbers in context because you might have really low numbers, because your reporting process is abysmal and it's not accessible in communities that are most impacted by police activities.

[00:20:51.610] - Maureen McGough

So really trying to find that sort of front-end guidance about what good practices and policies look like, according to the evidence in the industry and the thought leaders, and then assessing the extent to which the Department is implementing policies and strategies that way. It's not an audit, right. Like you would absolutely need a really big external audit to figure out, okay, this might be what your policy says and this might be what your training says, but what are people actually doing every day? But it at least gives leaders a sense of where are their opportunities for improvement? Where do we need to be investing our resources and our time to improve outcomes for communities?

[00:21:26.250] - Steve Morreale

Having just come back from Ireland, one of the things that I noticed is there are two reports that play in my world, and that was the report on the 21st century policing. And, conversely, in Ireland, there is the report in the Future of Policing in Ireland, which was done by Kathy O'Toole. Both of those have similarities, however, that in the United States is absolutely aspirational. There's no one forcing any police Department to do it. But in Ireland, it's a little bit different. It becomes sort of the treaties for what's going to happen over a period of time. So what troubles me a little bit is there are so many individual police departments that are struggling and trying to do the best thing in some cases. But if everything is aspirational or, hey, we'll move the needle by giving you a little bit of money to grant money which you have to compete for. So not everybody gets it becomes confounding, I think, to police departments in America. Do you agree?

[00:22:30.870] - Maureen McGough

I completely agree. So I will say the 21st Century task force report, I'm such a huge fan, and there are critical elements of it are actually reflected in our metrics. I think one way to alleviate that sort of quagmire is to come to consensus about what good policing looks like right now. It's kind of whacka mole, right? Yes, the task force report is a bit of a North Star for the people who agree with it, but it's also not necessarily a tool, right? It's not necessarily a roadmap of how to implement those critical principles. And so even if you're trying to, there's only so much you can do. I really appreciate this question because I think one of the things we've lost sight of in sort of the years since George Floyd was murdered is that you can only litigate so much, you can only legislate so much, you can only ascribe so much to policy. At the end of the day, if you really want to deeply impact policing, you have to work collaboratively with these agencies in the absence of any type of federal oversight to say you must do these things right.

[00:23:35.870] - Maureen McGough

The power is in the hands of police Chiefs to really come on board with what that definition of good policing is and how it is they could and should be serving their communities.

[00:23:45.390] - Steve Morreale

That's good. So when the funding hit right afterwards, what was your reaction to that? What do you need to fund?

[00:23:54.690] - Maureen McGough

This might not necessarily be a popular thought, but it didn't feel anti police to me, the way that people say it's anti police because I have had so many conversations with police leaders who do not understand why they're the primary responder for a host of what amounts to people.

[00:24:11.750] - Steve Morreale

It's been mission creep for sure. I understand.

[00:24:14.090] - Maureen McGough

Right. So, I think some jurisdictions, in their haste to meet the moment, have reallocated budgets in a way that isn't necessarily thoughtful and oriented to improving public safety outcomes and reflecting sort of the deeply complex sort of structural issues that contribute to these disparities over time. But I'll tell you how we're approaching it at the Policing Project, and I feel like this is a very measured and necessary approach. We ask police to do too much for which they are not equipped and we don't set our community needs and the responses that we do have. And if we had all of this research about what it is that police are called to do, if we look in the decades since 911 was instituted, policing is not the first response that we would design. They are not set up to actually do what they are called to do. So the idea of taking this sort of historic moment and thinking really deeply about what an appropriate role for the course of authority of the state is versus what an appropriate role for a social service provider is, I think is not anti police. I think if anything, it's getting people closer towards the public safety outcomes that everybody thinks that they're trying to achieve.

[00:25:22.050] - Maureen McGough

So I do think some of the ways that it's been pursued are not optimal. But I think that underlying concept of rethinking who's doing what is really important and one that I think a lot of police leaders actually agree with.

[00:25:34.790] - Steve Morreale

Well, you know, Garda, as you were talking, I'm thinking, well, one of the reasons is that, yes, you call 911 because the shit has hit the fan and it's Saturday night and I can't call DYS or I can't call DCF because they're underfunded there's nobody available over the weekend. And, God forbid you call because you've got to place a child. I can't do anything. We don't have any money. We don't have any overtime. And so the catch basin for all of this mess is the police. And you're right. I say the reason there was a call for defunding is because all other social services have been underfunded.

[00:26:17.590] - Maureen McGough

I couldn't agree more. And I think focusing on the drivers of defund solely on police departments misses the Mark because the people who have the power to make the difference and design the services that are actually needed for communities is at the municipal leadership level. Right. Local policy makers need to invest in the services that their communities need most.

[00:26:39.350] - Steve Morreale

But even so, when you think about it, and I've been in town government off and on for a while as a sort of a side job, what you begin to see is that when you look at the way police is funded, police are really underfunded in a lot of ways. And schools get whatever they want, but everybody else gets some of the Morsels, including the police Department to me. Unfortunately. Unfortunately, as you're speaking, I'm thinking to myself, My God, Mo, you are so much smarter than you look.

[00:27:12.230] - Maureen McGough

Got these glasses on. Is that not working?

[00:27:16.320] - Steve Morreale

That's part of it. Nobody else can see your glasses. 

[00:30:18.830] - Steve Morreale

So we're talking with Mo McGough, and she is at the Policing Project at NYU. We're talking to her down in Virginia. And we've been talking a whole bunch more about evidence-based policing and counting. And I like this idea of health check. When you said health check, the first thing I thought when I was ready to jump on to say mental health for police officers check up from the head up, those kinds of things. And I think that's extremely important. And the mental health cases that police are being called upon to handle to a greater degree, especially added the frustration of COVID and being isolated and all of those things that's yet another added responsibility that policing has faced. And that whole segment, if you will, about how frustrating I think it was for police officers and police departments to be called on to enforce mask regulations that are not law, that are public policy that were on the fly and the game that they had to play that okay, you're calling me Mo you're at a restaurant, you've got to put your mask on, and we're going to have to ask you to leave.

[00:31:36.360] - Steve Morreale

Screw you. I'm not going to do it. And the next thing you know, then I'm going to have to arrest you for disorderly conduct or for trespassing. It continues to put police in a bad light when they're just doing their job because no one else knows how to handle it.

[00:31:54.110] - Maureen McGough

I think we as a society have failed significantly to appropriately explore the intersection of public safety and public health. And the example that you just gave is a perfect one of that failure. And it manifests in so many different ways, too. We have really wonderful conversations with communities around the country, and we ask them about their public safety needs and priorities. And almost to one, they name things that are social determinants of health that have nothing to do with what's in the police purview. And I think that needs to be one of our highest priorities as we seek to explore the role of police is to simultaneously seek to explore the role of public health in building vibrant and thriving communities.

[00:32:38.330] - Steve Morreale

Well, one of the things, again, that makes me think is that the best way for police to function is to recognize that they are not operating in a vacuum. They are not unilateral, that they can only do it through collaboration by sitting with people who are from nonprofits, from businesses, from communities, from other sectors, in government service providers so that they can do it collectively. Thank you. My officer shows up. They've got an issue. We've set up a process where we can hand this off rather than handcuffing. We can hand this off to a provider that can help that's everything from mental health to domestic abuse to child abuse and on and on sex trafficking, all of those things. There are other services that police do not and cannot provide.

[00:33:32.690] - Maureen McGough

I couldn't agree more. That sort of shift in perspective to not focusing solely on force and enforcement in the law, but focusing on solving problems so that you interrupt that cycle. There's so much data out there that it's actually a very small part of the population that's using an outsized amount of public resources, whether it be public safety resources or emergency services, people are cycling in and out of systems without agencies coming together, just as you describe to say what is sort of the continuum of care that's needed here to interrupt the cycle. And it takes more work, it takes more time. It probably takes more staff. But over time, I would suspect you would see a decrease in reliance on public services and possibly cost savings over time.

[00:34:17.420] - Steve Morreale

Well, the same thing happens in many places with courts, specialty courts, mental health courts, and drug courts.

[00:34:23.470] - Maureen McGough

Yes.

[00:34:23.470] - Steve Morreale

And we have veteran’s courts and on and on and on. And that seems to be helpful because I think the court is recognizing, too, as a part of our criminal justice system, that they can't do it alone. And if they can create the opportunity for hand offs, it's much better. It gives them options, alternatives. And I think that's what police need. What's the alternative? I don't want to babysit a child for three days because it's a long weekend. It's not fair to police, and it's not fair to a child or to a family. Food for thought. All right. We're moving on, and we're going to talk about 30 by 30, Yvonne Roman, who was one of your I know, I know. I interviewed her and somehow LinkedIn and so many other places helped me focus on people who are trying to make a difference. And she was one of your leads alone. And this 30 by 30, I've been preaching it on your behalf. 30 by 30. I'll explain it the way I know it, that it is a project and a program to increase the number of women in law enforcement in America to 30% by 2030.

[00:35:38.570] - Steve Morreale

I will say I'm going to throw this. I want you to explain it, but I also say very important to have women. Look, I'm going to say this. When I came into policing in 1970s, we were the first when I was in the army, the first to allow women to come in as MPs.

[00:35:57.890] - Maureen McGough

Wow.

[00:35:57.890] - Steve Morreale

When I came out, it was the very first in the early 70s where police officers were allowed to be women, not matrons. It goes back, at least in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And I remember wanting to be a police officer in my hometown and riding by after getting out of the military, the police Department with people, police officers and their wives holding signs to say no women in my I know no women in my husband's cruiser. So we've come a long way, I know, but those are my vivid memories. And ladies at that point had such an uphill battle to enter into a male dominated world. But talk about how you came to the 30 by 30 man.

[00:36:50.530] - Maureen McGough

So that story, it's such a great reminder. We really have come an incredible way and we have a really long way to go. So I think about the facts. I was born in 83 and Penny Harrington didn't become the first woman in chief of a major Metro until later in the 80s. Right. I think about the fact that I was born into the world where they've never been a woman who ran a major Metro Department. That's humbling. And we had this summit on women of policing in 2018. And Penny wasn't able to travel. But Chief Farrington did record some videos for us, and she told us the story. It was kind of tongue in cheek and funny, but it was also really serious about how they just didn't have any ballistic resistant vests that fit her when she went out on patrol. And her chief advocated for her to get one and worked with the manufacturer. And they returned one that basically had like Madonna cones on the front. Right. Which is absolutely just absurd in terms of critical lifesaving equipment. But at the same time, I was just at a conference last week in La through the DOJ, having a conversation with a woman who is a cheap who has never once had a ballistic resistant vest that fit her appropriately.

[00:37:52.710] - Steve Morreale

Even to this day.

[00:37:53.800] - Maureen McGough

Even to this day, even when there's manufacturers who are focusing on this. So I think it's really important to celebrate the wins, but also really keep our eye on the fact that this profession in particular does have a lot that they need to do in order to adequately support the needs of women. So your description of 30 by 30 was great. Our goal is to reach 30% of women actually in police recruit classes by the year 2030. And the reason why we're going for 30% is the theory of representative bureaucracy. And that says that until an underrepresented group reaches 30% in an organization, they can't actually impact that organization for the benefit of that group. So anything up to 30% people are really just trying to survive, maybe assimilate not necessarily bring their true selves in. So that's why we're trying to get to that number. But we also have two goals in addition to that, 30% representation. One is to have agencies really deeply examine their current assessments, policies, strategies, and identify areas where there might be an unintended bias against women or identify areas where there's a failure to meet women's specific needs.

[00:39:00.170] - Maureen McGough

It's not surprising. It's a profession that historically was built by and for men. I mean, we are in a lifetime, right, where women are finally coming into it. And of course, the status quo wouldn't meet the needs of women. It's not surprising. But now that we understand it, we've just got to be Proactive in doing something about it so that's things like equipment that fits in is appropriate uniform pants that are actually fit and don't require thousands of dollars of tailoring over a career, critically making sure that nursing mothers who are returning to work have a safe and private space to pump. We hear women pumping in cruisers or women pumping in public bathrooms on the toilet. That doesn't send a message that this is a profession for you. So we want to make sure that agencies are able to explore that. And then third is really addressing agency culture and trying to understand how can we adapt culture so that these underrepresented groups aren't just surviving, but that they're thriving. And we feel really strongly about pursuing all these goals simultaneously, because the last thing we want to do is just focus on recruitment and improving representation of women, but getting them into a profession that isn't set up to support their success.

[00:40:01.200] - Maureen McGough

So that's our sort of top line in terms of what we're trying to achieve.

[00:40:04.990] - Steve Morreale

Well, what I also see is there are announcements here and there indicating that other agencies early on early adopters, and now others are saying we're signing on. So it seems to me that you're in the hundreds of major agencies. Is that a fair assessment?

[00:40:21.420] - Maureen McGough

So we have, I think as of latest count either 168 or 170. I'll have to check there's a couple of processing this morning, and I will say that's barely over a year. And that's without funding. We just got our first round of funding in March of this year. So we haven't done a recruitment campaign. We haven't done anything like that. Right. We built a website we got with some really passionate people. And as happens in policing. Right. One chief talked to another chief, and all of a sudden they're realizing the utility of this, and they're signing up. And when we launched, I think it felt like throwing a party. I'm not sure if anybody would show up, but one of the first people to walk through the door was the NYPD. And we've been going gangbusters ever since. So we do have a lot of major Metro NYPD, LAPD, Washington, Metro, Baltimore, Philadelphia. We have a lot of university police departments. We have a lot of small and rural police departments, and they're from most regions in the country, state agencies. And I don't think I've seen something in policing with quite this diversity of the types of agencies that are signing on and are really sort of committed to doing this work in this way.

[00:41:25.450] - Steve Morreale

Well, there's so much value, I think. And as the father of three daughters, I understand and I've worked with many women and in my life at DEA, in my local police Department and working. Actually, I'll tell you, when I do so much training and I'll spend some time and I showed up at a training for sergeants, and it was New England sergeants. And I walked in, and I'm not afraid to say, where are the women? Why aren't there women here? As sergeants, what are you doing to make that happen while maybe seeming to embarrass them? The bottom line is it's time. It's well past its time. And so whatever little I can do, that's important. But I will also say and I really like one of the other things, saying, don't just move to hire them. Change your policies, your approaches, your culture. That's very, very important. I know that when I'm over in Europe and especially at the Garda, one of the things that they did more recently than not is to allow for parttime work and job sharing, which is nobody can understand that and not many can understand that here. But imagine not losing the mother, if you will, to the job, but sharing the job with family.

[00:42:43.010] - Steve Morreale

Food for thought, but we have to move some mountains.

[00:42:48.650] - Maureen McGough

I'm so glad you brought that up, because we're actually in the middle of we're going to have a webinar on this very topic at the end of the month. And the point that you just raised, I've had the opportunity and the privilege to speak with a lot of agencies around the world who are much pushed to parity than we are in the developed world and actually places in the developing world. But leadership at the New Zealand Police Service said that the one change they made that made the biggest difference in their retention. And they're actually on track for complete gender parity was the implementation of job sharing and part time work. And I will tell you, because of that, it's an element of the pledge. We encourage agencies to explore it, but there are so few agencies in the US that do it. Chief Jim Birman, when he was at Redlands, he had a job-sharing program. When he left, the job-sharing policy went away. I know Montgomery County has a job-sharing policy. And what we're trying to do is basically we've hired a former officer with Lincoln Police Department who's a lead scholar and a total research nerd who's a big advocate for women in policing.

[00:43:54.330] - Maureen McGough

And he's doing a literature review. He's going to speak to all the agencies that have current policies. And we're going to try and put out some kind of model policy. We know there's challenges. It's going to involve Union contracts, it's going to involve local regulations. You're going to need city Council cooperation. But it just makes such imminent sense. And when you look at the data, that is around the time we lose women. Right. Is around the time when they're in their childbearing years and likely to be having their first kid. It's when they're on patrol, when they don't have shift stability, and it's when they need it more than ever. So I'm thrilled to hear you bring that up. I also want to make one comment on something you said, because I think it's really important. You said something like, oh, just a small thing that I can do. Right. But the role of men in advocating for this work is critically important. Right. Men hold 97% of police chief positions in this country or police leader positions in this country. And the underrepresentation of women in policing, it's not just about gender parity. Right.

[00:44:49.440] - Maureen McGough

It's about public safety outcomes. They use less force and excessive force. I could go all into the literature. Right. But your voice in advocating for it in podcast, prior and you work with the field, it is so important. And I'm really grateful for you for doing it.

[00:45:04.280] - Steve Morreale

Well, thank you. I'm very happy to do that. One of the other things as we're talking about diversity is I think that police agencies, while they're starting to do that, have to work, not just adding women, but other diverse populations to make it more representative. And so it is a big job. It's very hard to turn things around. I will also say that I often sound blasphemous when I say this, but the big bad America of which you and I are apart think we know everything. Not the case when you start moving across the world, the globe. There are so many things that we can learn from other organizations, not that they can't learn from us, too. But I think we have to go at this with open eyes, because when you talk about New Zealand, one of the things I told you is that the New Zealand police have an evidence-based policing section. That's just amazing to me. And it was an uphill battle to start. But that starts the growth. And that's why I say that here, that it's not outside the realm of possibility for major agencies to begin to move towards creating evidence-based policing centers.

[00:46:29.930] - Maureen McGough

I couldn't agree more. And so much of how we're approaching the pledge is grounded in evidence about what works and matters from analogous industries. And it's also helping agencies create their own evidentiary base for understanding what impact they're having on underrepresented groups, collecting demographic information at every step of the process understanding where and when you might be losing people that you're actually trying to hire. And I agree that expanding diversity overall in policing is going to be a challenge, but I'm actually really optimistic. And I think in some ways it's going to be easier than we suspect. And here's why. So there's research out of the FDNY. Okay. Not police, but analogous.

[00:47:09.900] - Steve Morreale

It doesn't matter.

[00:47:10.640] - Maureen McGough

Yeah, analogous. First responder industry. Right. And they started studying their application process. They have worse diversity problems. Right, then policing. It is overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. And they found that when they started tracking demographic data over time. Right. From people who engaged with the recruitment materials to each step of the application and assessment process, where were they losing people? And they found that when they removed the $30 application fee, they had an over 80% increase in racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in their applicants. So researchers from Ideas 42 went out afterwards and said, hey, you've been engaging with these materials for years. You didn't apply until we gave you a waiver for this silly $30 fee. Why is that? That's not that people couldn't afford the fee. Right. It's that this is a profession that is overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. They don't see themselves in it. And they're like, Ah, why waste the $30? I suspect that policing is full of those unintended artificial barriers to entry and barriers to success, that if we just get better about data collection, we'll be able to identify and change accordingly. And I think once we start doing that, we'll see changes really quickly, not just in gender, but in racial and ethnic diversity as well.

[00:48:22.550] - Steve Morreale

So we're talking to Maureen McGough from the Policing Project at NYU. And as we wind down, there's a few things that I wonder. I'm going to ask a question about your past to today. What do you know now that you wish you knew then as you approached change in policing?

[00:48:46.030] - Steve Morreale

This is going to seem I really love this question. I don't think I've ever been asked it. And two things come to mind that are going to seem contradictory, but I hope I'm able to explain them in a way that isn't so. One is how long this change takes. I think I and others. And I imagine you people in the space who are sort of aligned with the better future, that seems very plausible, burn out really quickly and need to protect ourselves and need to understand that this is an ultra-marathon and nowhere close to even a marathon. Right. And this is systems that have compounded over time and are really complex online at the same time. And this might seem contradictory. I think I would say, man, you can really get anything done with the right group of people. And if you don't care who gets credit for it, there is tons of room to work, and there are tons of people in the field who are ready to step up, ready to be leaders. They deserve space and support and a microphone, and they will lead policing into a better tomorrow. So I think both the time it takes to achieve reform, but how quickly it can happen in the right circumstances with the right people in leadership.

[00:49:58.750] - Steve Morreale

Well, Mo, one of the things that you think about is and it's a question I ask all the time, who's at the table and who's missing. In other words, who should be here to talk about these things, to give perspective. I think it's important. And when we become again operate unilaterally, big mistake. And that's for everything. Engaging others, getting ideas. I know, even myself as a leader. I'll sit there, I have an idea this is what's going to happen. You open it up to others, you think you know where it's going. But if you're not flexible, if you refuse to be flexible, you're never going to get the feedback from other people that will grow that idea and make the initial idea that you thought was good. Great. I see you smiling.

[00:50:43.330] - Maureen McGough

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, you can either be 100% right about policing or you can change policing. Right. And what you just described, that sort of iterative approach, taking progress where you can get it, it's just critically important.

[00:50:56.070] - Steve Morreale

Okay. So what are the things in the future for you in terms of moving the needle? What are the other things that you think have to be? Can't policing be saved in America? Can it be improved in America? Do you have hope for that?

[00:51:18.840] - Maureen McGough

I have infinite amounts of hope, and that hope rests on the people in the field that I have been lucky enough to work with and learn from my entire career. And I understand why there are massive segments of society in this country who do not share that hope. And I understand there are people in the profession who might not give people cause for hope, but I have been really fortunate to work with some really brilliant minds who, even in spite of everything that has happened, remain committed to figuring out how best to serve communities and achieving equitable outcomes and overcoming a very long and compounded history that's deeply problematic.

[00:52:06.390] - Steve Morreale

I didn't mean to cut you off. One of the things that I'm thinking is that when you cast the net, you're often surprised at what you catch in the net. So that when you go to an event and you start talking and you realize, my God, I thought I was the lone one. There are like-minded people here. And once you've got that momentum, there's nothing but great things that could happen.

[00:52:33.810] - Maureen McGough

I couldn't agree more. I mean, we saw that with the Leads program. We see that with the advocates in 30 by 30, it's people who thought that they were operating in a silo and alone in a fight to achieve really significant change. In the profession, and they're not. And I think over time, the right people in the field are getting bigger microphones, better access to policy makers. I'm thinking about two things in particular. I also think that people are understanding that you can't speak about this work in simplistic terms when you talk about whose voice is missing from the table. I think about what happened in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd, where it was Black Lives Matter versus Blue Lives Matter, which is a false dichotomy that you either care about community or you care about cops and never the two shall meet. One. Not only is it deeply problematic, but it also completely erases the voice of the black officer in reform, right?

[00:53:26.090] - Steve Morreale

Yes.

[00:53:26.450] - Maureen McGough

And so sort of acknowledging how we're failing to communicate the nuance of what's happening in this country and the leaders that are working to bridge those gaps. I think people are starting to understand that now. There's been some time and people are doing the work, and it's less about knee jerk reactions and more about developing long term, sustainable change. I think it's only going to keep getting better.

[00:53:45.210] - Steve Morreale

One of the things that troubles me at times is there are people who see policing in a different light than I do as a pracademic, as a former practitioner, as a police apologist. And it could be further from the truth. And I can't explain myself because they're not going to listen. But that's not exactly - look policing is not perfect, and there's plenty of stupid people who have been drawn and are still in policing. But there are so many great people, and I think we focus not on reform, but transformation. And that sounds like some of the things you're doing. Let me give you the last word. Where do you see the next five years policing turning for the better?

[00:54:28.510] - Maureen McGough

That's a great question. It's so funny. I feel like I've been so focused on what we can achieve in the next week that at five years it feels like a little bit of a luxury to think about. I think we will continue to see a growing understanding of the critical importance of diversity in policing. I think we'll see a growing willingness of police leaders to approach their work with a sense of humility and acknowledge that the status quo is no longer tenable in this country. And I think and I hope that we'll see a rise in approaches like evidence-based policing to inform those new strategies for that better future now that humility and space to work is realized.

[00:55:10.690] - Steve Morreale

Well, last thing I will say, because we talk about evidence-based policing. The people who are controlling the purse strings in many cases come from the private sector, and they're always looking about ROI, and that's what we need to be able to provide through data. This is the reason. This is what we tried. This is how we tweaked it didn't work completely, but we learned from it. We made some modifications. Here are the outcomes. Then we can sell what we need.

[00:55:39.310] - Maureen McGough

I couldn't agree more with that. And I'll add on to that the critical voice of communities in defining what that ROI should be and defining what matters. Right. Defining what they care about and the services that they receive and measuring the extent to which they're receiving those services. I think that could change everything, right.

[00:55:59.010] - Steve Morreale

That's part of measuring the outcome. Did we satisfy that we reduce the amount of violence? Did we reduce the amount of accidents did we reduce the amount of arrests instead of diverting to mental health or to health facility? So thank you. We've been talking to Mo McGough, and I appreciate having you and talking with you and I wish you the best of luck in your work. I really do. So thanks, Mo.

[00:56:25.970] - Maureen McGough

Thanks so much for having me. This was really wonderful.

[00:56:28.230] - Steve Morreale

I appreciate it. That's another episode in the books. I'm Steve Morreale from Boston. We've been talking to Mo McGough from The Policing Project in New York. I appreciate all of you. Thank you so much for everything you were doing. The feedback we're getting we continue to grow all over the world. Appreciate it. There'll be upcoming episodes talking about my recent visits to Ireland. So thanks so much and let us know if we can help in any way. All the best.

[00:57:00.170] - Outro 

Thanks for listening to The CopDoc Podcast with Dr. Steve Morreale. Steve is a retired law enforcement practitioner and manager turned academic and scholar from Worcester State University. Please tune into The CopDoc Podcast for regular episodes of interviews with thought leaders in policing.