Collaborative Strategies for Modern Policing - Dr. Brenda Bond -Fortier

Season 6 - Episode 138

Ever wondered how academic research can transform real-world policing? Join me as I reconnect with Brenda Bond-Fortier, a professor at Suffolk University in Boston, who shares her journey from the Lowell Police Department to academia. Brenda's passion for bridging the gap between research and practice shines through as she recounts her career under Ed Davis, her innovative role as Director of Research and Development, and her current work with 21CP Solutions. Discover how Brenda's unique insights are helping police departments across the nation implement research-driven strategies for organizational improvement.

Explore the critical role that diverse perspectives play in both healthcare and policing. Brenda and I discuss the transformative power of bringing in external experts to combat insularity and introduce fresh viewpoints. Drawing parallels with healthcare responses to crises like the pandemic and the opioid epidemic, we highlight the benefits of a multi-disciplinary approach in addressing complex social issues. In policing, this means rethinking who should be at the decision-making table to ensure comprehensive solutions, particularly for mental health and social challenges.

Leadership in policing isn't just about managing internal issues but innovation and reform. Brenda and I delve into the complexities police leaders face, such as balancing internal challenges with external expectations.

We illustrate how unconventional approaches can lead to significant changes by sharing real-world examples like offender reentry initiatives. We also explore the potential of applying the SARA model beyond crime fighting to foster continuous improvement and capacity building within police departments.

Tune in for a hopeful outlook on the positive changes in police organizations and the vital importance of meeting evolving public expectations.

Read Brenda's book:

Organizational Change in an Urban Police Department: Innovating to Reform, 1st Edition, Routledge (2020)

Find on Amazon at the link below:
https://www.amazon.com/Building-Adaptive-Police-Organization-Relationships/dp/1138190209/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3D9YGK2E8HXUI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ODsrKHt4KvRW8-_1Bw3lh0jraY0HGqXVI1dk9XgLFYU.cMVtIHissXHfP_J4Ox3UQ_txQdITxIR2QdRbyYjiD0Y&dib_tag=se&keywords=organizational+change+brenda+bond&qid=1725192885&s=books&sprefix=orgnaizational+change+brenda+bond%2Cstripbooks%2C89&sr=1-1

Contact us: copdoc.podcast@gmail.com

Website: www.copdocpodcast.com

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

Chapters

• 0:02 Bridging Research and Policing Innovation
• 14:04 Challenges in Collaborative Policing Leadership
• 24:23 Building Capacity for Police Innovation
• 30:00 Embracing Organizational Change and Innovation

Transcript

Intro/Outro Announcement

00:02

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. 

Steve Morreale Host

00:32

Hi everybody, Steve Morreale coming to you from Boston and another episode of The CopDoc Podcast begins. We're heading to New Hampshire to a colleague and ironically, this is a repeat of my very first interview. Brenda Bond-Fortier, who is now a repeat of my very first interview. Brenda Bond-Fortier, who is now a professor at Suffolk University. Hello, my friend. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

00:49

Good morning and, woohoo, it's great to be back A hundred and something episodes later, so thanks for having me back. 

Steve Morreale Host

00:56

Thank you, and you know that the two of us talk quite regularly. When I first started, I was saying I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know if it's going to work, I don't know. And here I am at 130. I think you'll be 138 and been able to talk to people from all over the world, but in the interim I think that was back in 2021, maybe early 2022 when we talked. You continue to be a professor, you continue to do research, you continue to be active now with 21CP as a consultant, among other things, and so I want to be talking about what you have learned over the years, what you have done over the years as it relates to policing. But very quickly, people who listen to the first one, I don't mean to be redundant, but talk about your walk into the area of policing. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

01:38

First, congratulations on such an awesome, successful launch and journey for the podcast. Just as a brief reminder or Cliff Notes version, I have been working in and around and with municipal police for almost three decades now, which is actually unbelievable. But it really began in my early part of my career where I was really interested in criminal justice and early on thought I was interested in working with young people, working in juvenile probation etc. And I sort of fell into working in municipal policing in Lowell for our friend and colleague Ed Davis, who at the time was a captain at the Lowell Police Department, and I worked at the University of Lowell on all kinds of projects and we partnered with the police department on some evaluation and community survey work. 

02:32

I really had no idea what policing was all about, what my role potentially could be as a civilian not a sworn person but in any event over the next several years I got to do more community work, more work around police community relations, and eventually joined the Lowell Police Department as a civilian employee working for Davis when he then transitioned to interim superintendent and superintendent of police and spent several years there doing all kinds of really fun and interesting things around innovation and change. I eventually became the director of research and development there, and so I worked there for a long time. After leaving there, I went back to graduate school to work on my PhD, because I really learned that I was interested in bridging research and practice. I didn't have any training in research. 

Steve Morreale Host

03:22

I've had you know the director of research, but without any training in research. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

03:27

I had hands on what they call on the job training. Yes, that's a great point, Steve. My role was really to be more passive and the recipient of research partnerships. Right, we had researchers who would approach us and say we want to work with you or we would be trying to introduce something new, and you know I would be tasked with trying to find out where is the research that supports this particular issue around domestic violence or offender re-entry, et cetera. And so that on the job training made me realize that I wanted more formal training and actually I really was interested in sort of working in academia. 

04:06

Fast forward a few years, through graduate school, I worked for a regional police chief association up here in Massachusetts, met Mike for a little while and started doing some consulting work and then landed at Suffolk University. 

04:19

But I would say that the big theme that really crosses my career has been bridging research and practice, and so as I've grown as a researcher and gotten more interested in things like organizational change and reform and sort of interagency, collaboration to address challenging issues, it's always been through this lens of okay, what does the police officer on the street think about this? 

04:46

What's the reality of trying to adopt research on the street and not being a police officer means I have limited perspective, but at the same time I worked in a police agency and so I feel like I knew what it was like. For the last many, many years, I have had the joy of consulting with police agencies across the country through the Bureau of Justice Assistance, smart Policing Initiative and some other sort of short-term projects where I collaborate and work with police leaders and officers to try to figure out how to improve their organizations. That very much brought me to where I've been the last several years continuing to translate research into practice, think a little bit more about how to build organizational capacity for this, but then also working with 21CP Solutions and their great team around supporting different municipalities and institutions of higher ed to think about change. 

Steve Morreale Host

05:41

So let me say this One of the things that I wanted to talk about is the idea and the concept of civilianizing professional staff, of which I think Lowell PD Ed Davis and yourself as the practitioner, was sort of early adopters, long before it was HIP. And yet it seems to me that there has to be a receptivity of command staff to accept research, to understand the value of research, to bring and allow people in to evaluate, because with that has the potential for funding. Is that a fair statement? 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

06:20

It is, but there's a lot there. I think. First, bigger cities were ahead of the curve on this in terms of civilianization. It wasn't until the early 90s and the cops office pushed towards redeployment of officers, where you saw a lot of agencies, I would say and we could spend another episode talking about that, which would be interesting and fun. But I think that what I've observed and experienced is that command staff are more aware and understanding of the different roles and contributions that professional civilian staff can bring to the organization. But you know, I don't want to overgeneralize because it's not the case everywhere analysts or civilian employees. So we're seeing a lot more of that. 

07:12

I think you're seeing it at the local level, obviously, department of Justice, nij, ojp that's really become more of the norm and I think you're right that if you think about an organization and what an organization is trying to achieve, a police organization is trying to achieve many different things. There's on the street, operational things. There's sort of strategy and strategic stuff about big issues like opioid crises, but then there are sort of managerial and operational things that require special skills and competencies and so civilians who are trained in those areas can do that work and officers who are trained in sworn officer functions and thinking can do the work that they should be doing. So I see civilianization as another aspect of specialization in police agencies. We don't hesitate to create a drug unit, a school resource officer unit, a SWAT unit, a traffic enforcement unit. Why wouldn't we have specially trained individuals who just so happen to be civilians, doing the work that helps the organization resources, do research, help to create policy, you know, all kinds of things that aren't necessarily part of the recruit academy or in-service curriculum. 

Steve Morreale Host

08:28

No, they wouldn't be. And so I also think about crime analysis and evidence-based policing. We've seen units crop up for evidence-based policing exactly what you were saying. But I know that for a long time you've been all about organizational change and yet this new thing comes out after Floyd and before, called police reform, and it's almost one in the same. It is an attempt to change culture, and you have been spending an awful lot of time in organizations where it is is of no consequence. But my interest and my curiosity is when you're sitting there in focus groups, you're talking about any number of things. What are you doing? How are you doing it? Why are you doing it that way? Is it working? Many of the questions you would ask talk about how you're drawing that information out from the organization and why it's valuable to have somebody from the outside come in and ask questions and do analysis and make recommendations. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

09:26

Well, for many individuals, professionals and organizations it is very hard and almost offensive to have somebody from the outside come in and ask questions. And I get that because if someone came into my shop in my university, in my department, in my class, I'd be a little sensitive to sort of the critique you know, sort of the constructive feedback, if you will. Yes, but also I do not become both accustomed and comfortable and open to feedback because, frankly, I want to do a good job and I want people, whether they're my students or the practitioners that I work with, or colleagues or researchers I want them to feel like I am making a valuable contribution. So I'm much more open and in a university setting we get evaluated every semester and every semester I have anywhere from 30 to 40 people saying well, let me tell you what you did well, what you didn't do so well, and I'm OK with that. But not all organizations and cultures and individuals are used to that and it's hard to open up and be thoughtful and reflective, and so that's a cultural thing, right, like that's a. That's a way in which we need organizations to sort of move that. That's a way in which we need organizations to sort of move that. 

10:47

However, when I work with practitioners in the way that you've described whether it's focus groups or meeting with people to figure out, like, how's it going here, what works, what doesn't work I am really committed to how can we do better. There is always a way to do something differently and perhaps something better. Who better to say what that is than the person who does that job every day? And I'm not approaching these conversations as a critic. I am a fan of and a believer in municipal policing and I'm thankful for those professionals every single day of my life. Do I feel like we have work to do and they have work to do? Yes, do I feel like I have work to do as a professional? Absolutely, so. 

11:26

I approach these discussions and conversations with a sort of where what could make this better? And I try to model that in my conversation and I try to be very open and forthcoming. I don't know all the answers. I have no idea what it's like to be you, but what I do know is there are always ways to do things better, and so I think that approaching it like that I'm not a know-it-all from an ivory tower from the outside, I go in and I'm sort of this is the way that. 

11:56

One of the reasons why I try to emphasize the importance of this is because we want people outside, whether they're our constituents or victims or whomever in the context of the police, to see us as legitimate and to recognize that you have a job and a function and that you're doing your job and function in the most professional, constitutional way possible. And I think if organizations and practitioners can be open to feedback and change and doing things differently and then communicating that to the world, then I think the world can say, ok, well, I know my local police agency and they do really good and could they do better in this area? Yes, but they're very transparent, they talk about it, they engage with us, they want to listen to me. It's mutually beneficial for the officer, for the organization and the community. 

Steve Morreale Host

12:49

We're talking to Dr Brenda Bond. She's from Suffolk University. We're talking about evaluating organizations and such, and I think one of the things that I'll always ask when I get the opportunity to walk in in the same manner is where are you now, where have you been and where could you go or where do you want to get to? And so it understands that what happened in the past is not. There may be some bad things, but we don't erase all of that legacy. And yet, as our society morphs and grows and expectations are made far more prominent than before, what can we do to improve? And then, how do we market what we're doing? How do we communicate what we're doing? How do we engage the community in what we're doing? And I know that's a lot of what you did, because what I'm trying to get at from your own perspective is what's the state of policing today? 

13:35

Police reform that happened very quickly. When you think about it in terms of public policy, many of those reforms happen in a millisecond, based on how policies normally drag and drag, and drag. But the state of policing? I'd like your point of view, your perspective, because and, Brenda, one thing I wanted to say is let me go back, because perspective is important to me and your perspective is important, I think, to the audience. But I also think when you bring outsiders, as you said either they are consultants or they are professional staff they bring a different perspective around the table and it kind of opens us up to stop being insular and start hearing from what someone else is hearing from outside. Or have you thought about that before you do that? I'm seeing you shake your head, so react to that. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

14:28

Well, I think to the point about the outsiders, those groups of training or whatever. I often will start our conversation in the space of when you are a patient and you are visiting an emergency room or a doctor's office or seeing a specialist. What is your experience and what do you expect from them? And so we can be very clear as patients, or, generally speaking, about what we're hoping for. Right, we want someone to diagnose us, what are our symptoms, diagnose us, listen to us, etc. 

14:57

But in healthcare, what we've also seen is an evolution in the way that healthcare also thinks about things and approaches different challenges. For example, whether we're talking about the pandemic or I've mentioned previously the opioid crisis, we are no longer thinking about these types of health, public health or health challenges in isolation. We're bringing in different people from different sectors to help us think about how do we better understand what's going on? With the pandemic, right, this is not just a limited, individual health issue. This is a community, global issue. And same thing with the opioid crisis right, there's so many different things that interact with this that can't solve that problem with just a healthcare provider or substance abuse treatment provider alone. 

15:42

My point being that policing is very similar and I think where we are today in this place, where we recognize that there isn't sort of a crime or a community safety issue that can't be better informed by a different base of evidence or different experience or different disciplines, what I see in terms of the current and future state of policing is really about what do we know about this issue? Where's the research? What's the evidence? What does an officer know from their experience and their observation? Because that's as valuable. How do we bring that together? Who else might tell us something about this? What other information do we need to know? What do we need to know about other factors that might be influencing the situation? So that's the value of having that different perspective. 

Steve Morreale Host

16:28

So talk about this. And I'm thinking about, if you have a very serious issue, health issue, the best situation can be to maybe it's cancer you want a team around you, you want somebody who's a pathologist, who can say something, and so it's bringing the team around you. And I know what you're saying, that we could learn from teaching hospitals. We could learn from realizing we can't be unilateral, we can no longer do things ourselves. I think about mental health. We haven't mentioned that yet, but cops are consistently being called to calls that have a mental health nexus and they also are called to people who have some learning disabilities and they don't yet understand them. And having people who can help them understand, even people who can respond with them. When these kinds of situations happen, it's the team effect. Police no longer should accept all social ills on their own. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

17:22

Correct Right. 

17:23

We should be thankful for those who have to show up at 2.47 am in the morning, when no one else is working, to manage the crisis that's happening at 123 Main Street. 

17:35

So I think that there's a lot of that conversation happening, and what I really sort of appreciate and understand but also am fascinated by, is this real, the real intersection of these different issues now in current and contemporary public safety policing community. How do we think about this? Right? So you've got, in this case particularly, you've got all these alternative response models showing up and you've got clinicians that are working in dispatch centers and clinicians that might be going out as alternative response units on their own or together with police, and all of that is great. What I hope to see is sort of more movement on how the organization is structured or outfitted. Right, I guess I'm thinking out loud and I don't know that I have the answer to this, but you know, as policing has changed and as we're changing, what does all of this mean for the way that police organizations are structured or staffed or run or measured, you know? But, like, these are questions that I'm really interested in, because, on the one hand, you might think that, well, the question is what should police be doing? 

Steve Morreale Host

18:43

What's their core mission and has there been mission creep? That's a huge question right now, right? 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

18:47

That's a huge question, and so, even as we're talking about like, oh, all this alternative response and all these challenges, what's the role of police? Right, I mean, we're talking about that. What should the police be doing? Well, that also depends on who you ask, right? Like some people in the police, I just don't know where we're going and how we should get there. 

Steve Morreale Host

19:35

So I'm hearing you and I think that we're both very lucky because we're both in the classroom and we were able to lead by questions, if you will and I'm an advocate of leading by questions, whether you are in the command meeting, a command staff meeting, or you're in a classroom asking questions, probative questions to get people to think, to get people to take the sort of the rose colored glasses off or take the blinders off of them, it seems to me that's very good and when in a group, just asking those questions, moving them along, moving the mindset along, is very, very beneficial. 

20:10

And I think sometimes I think back to the conversations we had about re-entry and who should be at the table. To me that's the big question that a leader should be asking when they're confronting an issue and they're sitting around and it's all cops Question really should be who are we missing at this table? Whose perspective do we need? Who do we need to help us to respond to it? Because I think about so many things the housing issues, social work issues, employment issues. All of those things are community right and social issues that impact crime or neighborhood disorder. Your thoughts? 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

20:45

Yeah, I think that's true and I think that we should be asking the questions who else should be at the table? But I also want other organizations that are doing work separately to be saying we need to get the police at the table. And even if the police are only there, we all have to figure out how each of our individual contributions help the whole. This is my latest so far. In most cases, we are unable, as humans, to accomplish what we want unless we have others involved. What I think is leaders who can support their staff and their organizations, and identifying and solving problems or creating value. That's the job, and how you do that is to give people the space to say we need to have other people at the table. Let's listen, let's make sure they hear us too, because the officer's voice is as equally important as the substance abuse treatment provider in some circumstances. 

21:45

So if we can create those mechanisms, I think that's great, but we also need to figure out how does that become the norm and how does that become acceptable, and how do we think about culture and training in support of that norm? And oftentimes what we find is we're up against things like resources and time, and so this is again a big conundrum is that we're trying to change, we're trying to reform, we're trying to evolve, but we don't always have the space to do that either, because we don't have enough resources in terms of financial resources or human capital. Right Like, most agencies are short-staffed, they don't have enough. They've got to respond to 911 calls. How can we spend three hours sitting around a table talking about the latest community problem? So I think we haven't figured that stuff out yet and I'm interested in figuring that stuff out. 

Steve Morreale Host

22:38

So we've been talking with Brenda Bond Fortier from Suffolk University and we've been talking about her work in policing, her work with organizations, and one thing that strikes me as you're talking is the role of a leader, in my estimation, is to help identify issues and provide opportunities for collaboration and for teaming up with other organizations so that people on midnights, the people on the second shift who have, who ran into somebody who needs a bed for the night, who they find a child that needs to be taken care of, those kinds of things, or they find somebody who has a substance abuse and is ready for help to find those resources to be able to hand that off, which is really a lot of the work that police do, isn't? 

23:27

it Is to try to help people get to the organization that can help them, because it's not always the police. What's your thought about that in terms of you talking to leaders and helping frame what their job is to help frontline and to help the community? 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

23:43

So a couple of thoughts on that which might be slightly disorganized, but I think that I like the idea of leaders who are trying to identify problems but also model for their staff how to identify problems and how to work through it. Another time in my life I really wanted to write a paper which now I know somebody else will do it, because I'm about to out this idea, which I'm not the first person to think of it. And another time in my life I really wanted to write a paper which now I know somebody else will do it, because I'm about to out this idea, which I'm not the first person to think of it. I really liked the idea of applying Sarah to management and leadership, and so I love the idea of police leaders helping to facilitate the identification of problems. 

24:23

When a police organization's leaders have so many things coming at them, they've got to think about external problems, they've got to think about internal problems. Sometimes their internal problems are bigger than their external problems, right, and how do they deal with that? But the idea of modeling problem identification and really understanding what's at the heart of the problem, and at that problem identification stage, who else needs to be at the table? Just like you said, who else needs to be at the table? Just like you said, who else needs to be at the table right, like who can help us understand this, because we continue to keep showing up here, you're confronted with these problems over here. Who else needs to be there? And so to model and facilitate collaboration, but also awareness right is, I think, job number one, because then you're building capacity. Right, I want to be a great leader and I want to be the person who everyone says that is a great leader. But what I really want great leaders to do is to build the capacity for other people to be great leaders sergeants, lieutenants, officers on the street and so I think it should be a goal of a leader, explicitly and intentionally and formally, to help to build capacity around problem solving and then facilitating collaborations with those relationships. And some of those collaborations and relationships are about service provision. Some of them might be about research partnership. Some of them might be about let's bring somebody in here that is an expert facilitator who can facilitate some discussion internally so that we can figure out X, y and Z. 

25:48

Right, I've seen a lot of these things across my experiences when we talk about reform or innovation. Right Now just a slight little plug for my book called Organizational Change in an Urban Police Department Innovating to Reform. One of the things that I'm really keen on right now and have been for the last several years, but I'm trying to spend more time on this now is this idea of innovating to reform, and what I mean by that is how do we build capacity as an organization to be reflective and critical of what we're doing in ways that can help us do better, and how do we change structurally, structurally, operationally, strategically, in ways that can help us avoid reform? But I want us to have this goal of innovating to reform so that there are very few organizations that really need reform, but what we see more is just an inherent and genuine and authentic commitment to innovating. 

Steve Morreale Host

26:46

Wait a minute. I want to know what you think. What does that mean? What does that mean in organizations you have worked with? What is an innovation that you have been surprised by, that you have been impressed by? 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

27:00

So what it means is trying something new that either you've never done before or no one has ever done before. I'm going to go back to this example. It's an example of an innovation that hit me out of nowhere that I was sort of like what is a fender re-entry? This is one of my go-to examples. When I worked for Lowell Police Department and I was a newbie, didn't know what was going on, and my boss's approach was to come to me and say, can you figure this out and make this happen? And I was a newbie, didn't know what was going on. And my boss's approach was to come to me and say, can you figure this out and make this happen? And I was like I have no idea what you're talking about. Ed Davis came to me and said we're going to get involved in this DOJ pilot project around offender reentry and we're going to be a site. And I was like well, what the heck do police have to do with offender reentry? 

Steve Morreale Host

27:43

Oh, imagine that you weren't even sold on it. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

27:47

I was like this is making absolutely no sense to me and I hate to even admit this. This was pre-internet days, right, like I mean, this was at the cusp of the internet and so it wasn't like you could just go into Google and say tell me all about this, right? But my point is that that was a huge and momentous change in the way police thought about their work and their role in reentry. Their job historically had been to arrest those individuals as soon as they walked out the door and walked out jaywalk, right. 

28:24

That was like the number one any minor infraction puts them right back in right instead of how about if police, as part of a team, go into the correctional institution before this individual is released and talks about the transition, offers that person resources? We're here to help. If you decide that you're not interested in help you, decide to come out. 

Steve Morreale Host

28:46

We're here to recidivate you, yes. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

28:49

So when I say and like that's a huge innovation, right, but there are also other things that just because another agency is doing something, it's not necessarily an innovation like it's never happened before in the history of the world. But if some similar sized city five states away is doing something that you think could work for your community and your organization, that change is to me, it's an innovation. It's an innovation for that agency. 

Steve Morreale Host

29:14

I get you, you know. So, Brenda, you said something about using SARA. You'd like to see SARA used for management and leaders, the SARA model right Coming from Goldstein and others, and Problem-Oriented Policing Center and such Talk about what you mean by that. So those who I've had people say we're just going to use the SARA model for everything, and that's to me is just a one trick pony. By the same token, I think using that model could be valuable in more than crime fighting. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

29:43

Yes, so it's a methodology for problem solving and, yes, it has gained traction and evidence within the problem-oriented policing, problem-solving, policing research and practice for an effective approach to solving crime and disorder. 

Steve Morreale Host

30:00

I want you to be specific. Whoever's listening. I certainly have been through the Sarah model. I don't know that everybody would say I'm going to use this in meetings. Right For organization. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

30:10

So let's just say you have a staffing problem or a deployment problem or can't get your frontline supervisors to do X, y or Z. So how can you sit down in sort of a thought session with your command staff or maybe that's where a management professor comes in or a subject matter expert in some other discipline comes in you say, ok, let's actually identify what the problem is. Ok, so we have a high turnover rate and so let's figure out what we're going to do about this turnover rate. Right, we can't get enough people to come in and they're certainly getting that, they're taken off and they're leaving. So what is the first step in Sarah scan? 

30:52

Okay, what do we know about the turnover rate in this agency? What do we know about it? Okay, well, we know that it's mostly women, or we know that it's mostly early career officers who are maybe between two and five years of their time with us, right? So, like, what do we know? So the scanning and the assessment stage walks us through the managerial questions and the data about that particular problem so that we can better understand it. So it may turn out that you think you have a turnover problem, but what you really have is a turnover problem amongst young women who are mothers of children under the age of 10, or whatever. It's getting to the specific it's diagnosing. 

Steve Morreale Host

31:38

I want to say this you know no doctor, and we've both been through it in one way or the other with ourselves, our kids or whatever. A doctor will not diagnose without knowing the symptom. I understand that. So it's about collecting data. I know when you're making funny faces, but it seems so simple. So the medical model can actually work in policing if we let it, if we embrace it. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

31:57

This is leadership, right. This is. Let's use this model and this approach to tackle the internal managerial organizational challenges we have. You walk through turnover. You just basically overlay Sarah and turnover. What are the problems? What's the data telling us? 

32:16

Let's talk to some of the people who have left. Let's talk to some of the people who are thinking about leaving. Right, blah, blah, blah. Let's pull together sort of our evidence and then let's look at what do we know about outside of our agency, what do we know about how other organizations have done this? What are the factors that are contributing to this right? So you're in response exploration mode and you're looking at the R right and then you're figuring out well, okay, well, it looks like if we do X, y and Z, then that might work. It seems to have worked in 17 other places and we have this research that says it'll work. Let's try it for a year and assess it right. So, again, you can walk through the same steps but overlay the managerial process. So it's a methodology that has broad implications for the way that we think about organization. 

Steve Morreale Host

33:05

Yeah, I mean. So we're going through scanning, analysis, response and assessment, as we said, the SARA model, and making that at least a route to get to, I mean, an R-O-U-T-E, not the R-O-O-T, but the route by which we travel down a path to get to the bottom of it and to get some data and then identify that problem and come up with potential ways to address it. So, thank you, that makes sense and doing the same thing, I'll use this in one of the classes I've got coming up. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

33:34

You still might do. 

Steve Morreale Host

33:35

They'll know where it came from, because they're going to hear the two of us talking about this at some point. So let's go back to the experiences you are having on campuses, where you're looking at generally public safety for campuses or at police organizations, whether it's with NIJ or it's with 21CP, and your experience and exposure. Are people receptive to change nowadays? 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

34:01

Yes, I don't know if that's any different than it's ever been in the past. Some people are receptive and some people are not. I do think that there is kind of a different environment in terms of accountability and demand for change now. And you know, university settings, institutions of higher ed, colleges, campus settings are in some ways very similar to municipalities but also different. And you know, the stakeholder groups are similar but also in some way different, and so there are a lot of demands for change that are happening across campus environments. 

Steve Morreale Host

34:35

So we're going to begin to wind down. Talking to Brenda Bond from Suffolk University and a pal of mine, I want to know whether you have hope, whether you have hope that police organizations that may have been in the past reticent not all, but reticent to change, are embracing that change, are willing to change and where you see policing going, because clearly the pendulum has been swinging one side or the other. We hate police, we need police, we'll tolerate police whatever it is. What's your prognosis? 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

35:09

Today is a day where I do have hope, because I feel like even this conversation has reminded me that. You know, 100 plus years of reform have shown that police can change, and they do change every day and they do face and confront the challenges that are presented to them. And I think that that comes with all kinds of things. It comes with external demand, it comes with even just generational shifts in the way that we think and operate in these environments, right? So younger officers have only been on for so many years versus officers who've been around for many years. Right, in some ways, they both have something to add. And so I think we are seeing change and I think it's good. And, unless we have some other option, I think we have a responsibility and an obligation to help the police do the best job they can in the way that meets our expectations. There's more to be said about that point, like what are our expectations? I don't know. Those are changing. Those are changing too. 

Steve Morreale Host

36:15

How important is it for today's leaders to allow for input from their own personnel, the front line, trying to understand what are you seeing? What's going on? What are we doing wrong? What can we improve? Those kinds of questions again leading through questions. Very often there are police agencies that say you're too young, you're too new, I'm not interested in your point of view. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

36:36

Top-down management is out. I mean, says who? 

Steve Morreale Host

36:40

Me, yes, okay. 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

36:41

And probably countless other individuals. I don't think you can get very far that way. You may be able to control and authorize and mandate, but it is not going to produce a workforce that is committed to the organization and committed to the goal and committed to you as a leader, and it's not gonna produce the best outcomes. And so you can do both. You can be decisive, you can guide, you can be informed, but you can also collaborate and you can also ask people to participate and engage. It's almost procedural justice. Being involved in a conversation and being aware and understanding the process and understanding how decisions have been made makes for a better professional and a better organization. You don't always have to agree with the decision that was made, but if you're to engage, then I think that you're likely to be more committed. 

37:35

The other thing is that there is actually a significant amount of research that says participatory, collaborative organizational change and improvement is much more effective at reaching the goals that you're interested in reaching. It can take more time, it takes skill and you know patience and all of those things, which are things that are not always built into the structure or the culture of police organizations. So leaders have to figure out how do I walk and chew gum at the same time? How do I engage people and help my staff and my organizational stakeholders help us succeed but also deal with the crisis at hand right? So this is a really interesting challenge, but plenty of leaders have done it and have figured it out, and I think we just have to look to those individuals and those models who have been able to walk and chew gum at the same time, engage people and be decisive and help the organization improve. 

Steve Morreale Host

38:35

Brenda, what one thing would you like to see police do that they're not necessarily doing now? 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

38:40

I would really like. It's not a soapbox, but it's a thing that I'm spending a lot more time on and that I'm going to spend some time on in the next couple of years is, as you know and we started this conversation that I wish and hope for can really be facilitated through a structure and a mechanism that will help the organization succeed even more. And, as I've said, when police organizations face a challenge that is crime related, they're very good at creating specialized units to deal with those and many times those units are very successful. Why wouldn't we build in a managerial tool, a leadership tool, a strategic tool that has been shown by research and others to contribute to organizational improvement and outcomes? 

Steve Morreale Host

39:32

What would that be? 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

39:33

Like a research and planning, or what I call research and development unit, and capacity staff experts who are helping the organization strategically and operationally meet their goals. That would be. That's my latest thing. 

Steve Morreale Host

39:47

Is that another way of saying that we should accept, as medicine accepts evidence-based medicine, that we should accept evidence-based policing? 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

39:57

It's not just evidence-based, but, yes, evidence-based policing. It's not just evidence-based, but yes, we should unfold it in there. But research and development is not a new concept in many sectors. Some police agencies have these units and it's been prioritized. I know from my own work and the continued work in Lowell. Millions and millions and millions of dollars have been secured Resources, personnel, technology, equipment, training, partnerships these have been facilitated through that unit. But not just that improved policy partnerships and things like that. I like and want to see more of this particular innovation get institutionalized as a formal unit within police organizations so that it's no longer just something that some agencies do. I'd like to see most agencies do this kind of work, and so I'm going to spend some time on that in the coming year. 

Steve Morreale Host

40:51

Could you see the potential for regionalization or small towns that could pull together? I mean, there's so many departments that are 25 people or less? Could it be shared? 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

41:02

Yes, there are many different ways to accomplish it right. You can have your own unit, you can have people who are dedicated to it, you can have a regional approach, a shared approach, a partnership approach, a network approach. Absolutely, I mean, I think. So. What I was going to say is that myself and my colleagues from Boston PD are presenting at this year's 2024 IACP conference on this idea. A couple of us have a book proposal in process to talk about this, so I'm looking forward to being able to spend some time exploring the possibilities of this. You know, as one police chief said to me many years ago, many people will say they don't have the resources, but from experience we know that if it's a priority, then the resources can be found. 

Steve Morreale Host

41:45

Right. Well, thank you very much for everything that you've shared with us. It's good to have you back After almost three years. My first guest is now my 138th guest, Brenda Bond from Suffolk University. We're talking to her up in New Hampshire. Brenda, you have the last word for people who are listening. You say that there's hope. Hope for what? 

Brenda Bond-Fortier Guest

42:07

Hope for continued appreciation for the service of those who show up 24-7 and help us to deal with the many challenges, because, despite all of the opportunities for change and improvement, I'm very thankful for the people who do this work for a living, because I know when I need them they are going to show up. So I'm hopeful that we see continued and improved appreciation. That's it for me. Thank you very much, steve. It's great to be back. 

Steve Morreale Host

42:39

Thank you. I've been talking to Brenda Bond, Dr Brenda Bond, Suffolk University, and that means that's another episode in the can. Thanks very much for listening. Please continue to reach out. We are gaining listeners from all across the globe Just heard from somebody in, believe it or not Colombia and many other countries, especially in the UK. So thank you very much for listening. Stay safe. See you on the next episode. 

Intro/Outro Announcement

43:07

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 podcast for regular episodes of interviews with thought leaders in policing.