The CopDoc Podcast: Aiming for Excellence in Leadership
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The CopDoc Podcast delves into police leadership and innovation. The focus is on aiming for excellence in the delivery of police services across the globe.
Dr. Steve Morreale is a retired law enforcement practitioner, a pracademic, turned academic, and scholar from Worcester State University. Steve is the Program Director for LIFTE, Command College - The Leadership Institute for Tomorrow's Executives at Liberty University.
Steve shares ideas and talks with thought leaders in policing, academia, community leaders, and other related government agencies. You'll find Interviews with thought leaders drive the discussion to improve police services and community relationships.
The CopDoc Podcast: Aiming for Excellence in Leadership
Chris Noble on Transforming Police Culture
Season 6 - Episode 139
Chief Constable Chris Noble takes center stage as we explore his remarkable career in policing, starting from his unique upbringing in Northern Ireland during the '70s and '80s. With his father juggling roles as both a bank manager and a part-time reserve officer for the RUC, Chris was surrounded by the complexities of law enforcement from an early age. In our conversation, he shares how the seismic changes brought by the Patten Commission, including the transformation of the Royal Ulster Constabulary into the Police Service of Northern Ireland, shaped his career path and leadership ethos. Chris provides a candid look at the challenges and triumphs of these reforms, emphasizing their profound societal impact and the lessons he carried forward.
Explore Chris's transition from Northern Ireland to Humberside, England, in 2017, driven by a quest for new challenges in a struggling police force. With 21 years of experience under his belt, Chris shares his innovative leadership style that prioritizes frontline engagement over hierarchical, filtered reports. His approach encourages local officers to develop their own methods, fostering a culture of listening and collaboration. Discover how this strategy has helped revitalize morale and performance, paving the way for significant transformations within the Staffordshire Police under his leadership.
As we wrap up, the conversation shifts to the modern-day challenges faced by police forces, from managing young recruits to navigating misinformation-fueled unrest. Chris draws parallels between the UK and US policing landscapes, offering a global perspective on maintaining balance amidst contentious issues. Through his experiences, Chris highlights the importance of leadership that values diverse perspectives and the need for accountability and adaptability in an ever-evolving policing environment. This episode offers a comprehensive look at the trials and triumphs of police leadership today, promising insights for anyone interested in the future of law enforcement.
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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
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:Hi again everybody, Steve Morreale, coming to you from Boston, Massachusetts, and today we have the opportunity to cross the pond and we're talking to a colleague, a new friend. He is the chief constable in Staffordshire Police Service in the UK. Chris Noble Chris, how are you on this Friday? I am very well, very kind to catch my attention. That's unique, that's unusual. I'm glad that person is sharing that, because so many of your colleagues kind of stay to themselves. They don't want to share, they're afraid of being ridiculed, and certainly, there are things that I write that people will say you're just an apologist for the police. So thank you very much. I want to say to those who are listening too that when I reached out for Chris, we just had a sort of an introductory conversation and the first thing that I said I am trying to figure out is whether or not your English is understandable. And I find out in talking to you, Chris, that you are speaking the Queen's English and I love to have your perspective.
Chris Noble:So thank you, it's a pleasure and of course, I'm speaking the King's English, Oh bit of undefined peculiar accent, but we'll maybe come to that as we chat.
Steve Morreale:I I think that's great. Let's talk about how long you've been in policing where you're from I know that you are a transplant within the UK and tell us about where you've been and where you are now, and then describe the area that you are responsible for policing.
Chris Noble:Okay. So yeah, it's a bit of a sort of an interesting journey, steve. I was born and bred in Ireland, in the north of Ireland. My dad was a bank manager by day and a part-time reserve cop by night, and in the sort of 70s and 80s in Northern Ireland that was a pretty brutal experience. So he was dealing with checks through the day and, sadly and traumatically, he was at times picking up body parts in the evening. So from a really young age I had a dad who was hugely committed to work and his family, but then maybe three, four nights a week I didn't see him in the evenings because he was policing and trying to keep people safe and I wouldn't say there was any one moment in time I thought I want to be my dad, I want to do what my dad's done, but that's got to be latent in your own experience and memory as a kid.
Chris Noble:So growing up, I'd always been interested in law. I wanted to be a barrister, a fancy arguing for a living and getting well paid. But I pretty quickly realized as I went through law school I was probably going to end up doing, you know, conveyancing, family law, divorce law, tax law, which is not the most inspiring thing to have and apologies if any of your listeners are specializing in that field and policing came up as a really good opportunity for a career. So did my law degree and then joined as a standard entrant in Northern Ireland, which was then the Royal Ulster Constabulary. And that was what late 96 and still a really challenging environment to police, albeit not the absolute heat of the troubles. But at least one of the guys who I joined with, sadly, was killed within a bit 12 months by terrorists in a bar in Belfast, simply targeted because he was a cop. So even though it wasn't the worst of times, it definitely wasn't the best of times to join policing in Northern Ireland.
Steve Morreale:RUC, of course, has quite a history and at one point in time, with the Patent Commission, we saw a change to PSNI, and you must have been in the midst of that. Is that correct? Changing uniforms, changing a
Chris Noble:name. I joined in 96. T he Patten Commission, and then there's some pretty key sort of, you know, American cops in the middle of that.
Intro/Outro :Kathleen O'Toole from Boston was absolutely fundamental to those changes.
Chris Noble:So it was a difficult time, because I'm not sure there has been a change project around policing like that anywhere in the world or I haven't seen one because pretty much everything changed the name of the organization, so the title of royal ulster constabulary was at least put into the background, if not pretty much lost completely for a lot of people. The symbols which contained the crown changed, the uniform changed, the arrangements around management changed, composition and policing changed. So for example, whenever I joined, 92 of cops in Northern Ireland were Protestant, 8% were Catholic and there was a rule brought in that from every 100 cops you recruit, 50 have to be Catholic, 50 come from another background. So in the course of maybe what seven, eight years you moved to maybe 32% of police officers being Catholic, they couldn't yet meet the 50%, the 50-50, right.
Chris Noble:No, and I think the target was to try and get it to a critical mass which was in and around that 30%. And it slowed down a bit, steve, recently for lots of different reasons. But you know, quadrupling representation, you know, if that was members of the black community or the gay community or whatever, that would be a huge change. So it was real progress. But it's an ongoing challenge around representation.
Chris Noble:So really fundamental change, and probably the hardest change of all, was about the symbols of the organization, the name of the organization, the badge of the organization, because that's what people got very emotionally attached to and some people felt that policing maybe was being punished or maybe scapegoated because this was part of a wider peace process. But I remember the chief constable at the time, a guy called Ronnie Flanagan, really inspirational, charismatic leader, but clearly RUC through and through, and his language was if the pain in policing is worth it for gain in wider society, well then, this is change that we should embrace and ultimately the organization did embrace it. But it's an interesting one whenever you look back and how, on the one hand, you remember colleagues who've been killed in the Troubles, as we call the conflict in Northern Ireland, but on the other hand, how policing needs to keep being progressive and keep being inclusive in terms of what it does. So, yeah, really challenging in the late 90s, early 2000s.
Steve Morreale:So you were with RUC later to become PSNI and you know that I interviewed the current chief constable, of which you are the chief constable in Staffordshire, simon Byrne, and it was interesting because he used the term you know. You got to set your stall and I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. I do now for certain it was one of colloquially it was. I don't even know how to say that. It was one of those terms Phrases, steve.
Steve Morreale:Yes, yes yes, yes, okay, that's pretty bad, but that I had never heard. But it made an awful lot of sense. And so how long were you at RUC later to become PSNI, and what did you do there? In other words, I presume, in order to be a chief constable in another organization, you had to climb the ladder and UK policing up until recently.
Chris Noble:Everybody joins up the frontline, everyone's a constable, everyone starts in response policing, which is your blue lights. Get the things as quickly as you can deal with what's in front of you. So I started in exactly the same way and then, after about four years, moved into that first line of supervision Again, uk terminology.
Chris Noble:As a sergeant I went to work in a police station which at that stage was one of the most bombed police stations in Europe, and on occasions you had to be bussed in an armoured Land Rover. On other occasions you could drive your vehicle in but it had nets over the top of the station because regularly some of the local young people would have taken to stoning the cars in the station. So it was an interesting place not just to learn your craft as a supervisor. But how do you strike the balance between keeping your cops safe from people who wanted to kill them? Because we drove about in armoured vehicles? We had at that stage military support everywhere we went, but on the other hand you should still be serving the community and keeping them safe. So for a long time and there's still an element of that in Northern Ireland I grew up being really thoughtful about my own personal safety on and off duty, so my kids for a long time didn't even know what I did.
Steve Morreale:But on the other hand you join policing to help people and that balancing of two you know, quite competing concepts, I think caused a huge amount of trauma and stress to police officers over the years in Northern Ireland. Well, I mean, when you're constantly under attack or you're fearing that somebody, just because of the uniform, is out for you, that's a very difficult situation to find yourself in.
Chris Noble:Yeah, that sort of constant level of vigilance and agitation. You know there's very few occupations, apart from maybe the and wartime, have that level of stress on and off duty and in fact actually probably I don't know maybe 30%. Peace is pretty well embedded in Northern Ireland. Runs a soccer club, football club, and his son was there, a 13 year old boy. They'd finished the game, he was coming out, he was putting soccer balls, footballs in the back of his car and he was shot three times in the back, three times in the front, in front of his boy. Now somehow he survived. So, as I said before, things have improved in Northern Ireland. It's a very different place to police and live in, but there's still an element that see police officers as a legitimate target. So even now you've got police officers still under real pressure, real trauma, and mental health is still probably one of the biggest challenges for the police service of Northern Ireland at the minute in terms of the numbers of officers they have struggling with.
Steve Morreale:Well, it's interesting because, as I was traveling back and forth to Europe on a plane, I was able to watch. I think it's called Blue Light. Is that the name of the show? There's a show that is based in Belfast.
Steve Morreale:Yes, it is. It is and it's quite interesting when you roll up you better have more than one or two people that you're going to have to have some backup to kind of keep the crowd back. And that leads us, of course, to discussions later on today about demonstrations and how police are kind of caught in the middle, sometimes on two opposing sides. But let's talk about how you ended up leaving Northern Ireland to go to basically the mainland, the UK, england.
Chris Noble:I served 21 years in Northern Ireland policing from a whole range of roles. I was part of that patent change team I think I'm the only serving cop left, actually, who was part of that team so that was a really challenging time for the organization, but fascinating to be involved in. I did a lot of frontline roles in local policing, as we call it. I was in specialisms like close protection. I was in the change and performance and strategy units. So lots of different roles, but there comes a point whenever actually there's a new challenge and was personal reasons, professional reasons, for looking for a new challenge, and I initially moved across in october 2017 to a place called humberside and the big city in that force is called hull or kingston upon hull.
Chris Noble:Actually, it's quite a history around royalty and conflict, very deprived core city, post-industrial real challenges around drugs, deprivation, kids in care, and I went over over there to be the head of specialist crime, forced contact, which is where you take all the calls, and now all the digital contact from the public, criminal justice around your investigations, and then specialist ops guns, dogs, roads, policing all that good stuff. So, yeah, real learning curve. Because Northern Ireland even though 85%, I think it'd be in a cop translates including cops crossing the pond, as you call it as well, but the 15% can be really challenging around the legal framework, the culture, the busyness, the partnerships that exist as well. So it was a steep learning curve for me, but no regrets at all professionally about making the move. It stretched me at a key time whenever probably I was becoming a little bit complacent.
Steve Morreale:Can I interrupt you for a second, little bit complacent, can I interrupt you for a second? What's important for me to understand is leaving Northern Ireland and coming to a new place. Policing is the same but it's different, and so, as you adjust to a new culture, here's an outsider, in essence, even though you're a member of the UK coming in. Those who work within the Commonwealth States and I understand Shauna Coxon, for example, is over down. Well, drew, the commissioner for Ireland, is from PSNI and Shauna Coxon is from the Toronto Police Service and she's in the number two or three position and you're doing the same thing. What was the receptivity of the people working? As curious as you were about how it was being done in the UK, I'm sure they're curious about what you bring.
Steve Morreale:Tell me how you navigated that.
Chris Noble:Yeah, and there's a lot of learning from me coming into Humberside and my journey into Staffordshire as a chief as well, so I was really really careful, steve, not to keep using the P word. I'm talking about PSNI because it just-.
Steve Morreale:This is the way we did it. I know, I know that's the quickest way to piss people off, like I don't give a shit what the PSNI did. This is Humberside.
Chris Noble:Exactly, yes, exactly. So I tried to be emotionally intelligent about even if I was seeing something really strange and I've seen where it's been done better Actually encouraging someone to go and see that for themselves can be really powerful, as opposed to just dropping it on them and imposing it, and then that breeds a resentment. But at the time, humberside you know great force in terms of the officers and staff in there, but it was the worst performing force in the country, really poor clear-up rates for crime, weren't getting to things quickly, weren't answering the sort of triple nine system over here which is your emergency calls, the lowest morale in the country as well, and really underpowered in terms of numbers of cops at that stage as well. So in some ways that helped because actually the force was ready for help. I think it had got to a point that it had some brilliant leaders inside but it needed fresh thinking, fresh experiences and it wanted people as well to get out on the front line, and across my career I have loved walking the ground.
Chris Noble:Whether it be planning for big parades and protests, whether it be dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist attack or a serious investigation or a community engagement event, I love genuinely getting out on the boat. My biggest frustration as a chief is I've got to be behind a desk and I've got to be strategic. So even now, the discipline of getting out isn't a discipline for me, it's a pleasure. So, coming to Humberside, I don't think they were used to that sort of level of leadership and at the start they were nervous, you know why are you here?
Steve Morreale:You checking up on me. Have you got law? Yes, so.
Chris Noble:I think over time they do respect that and whenever they realize you're not there just to catch them out, you're interested in the detail. You want to be where they are, you want to solve the problems, you want a reality check.
Steve Morreale:Well, you want to hear from them, right?
Chris Noble:Because that's not how you police I didn't mean to cut you off again, but I think by listening did that not make you, or help you, understand what was going on and then identify ways that could be improved. Yeah, because the bottom line is, as a senior cop, I no longer have a clue what is going on in the frontline.
Chris Noble:Well, that's quite obvious. The further up the line you go in policing, the more stuff gets sifted and it's amazing what people can polish because they don't want the bosses to hear bad news. My sort of style of leadership and I'll maybe talk about it in terms of staffature is get on the front line, talk to staff, have a conversation Doesn't mean you need to be a populist, because sometimes you've got to push back the frontline staff. Because I've been there. Sometimes you can talk up the bad stuff, ignore the stuff that works, but people respect you being there. They respect you getting involved in a debate with them, that you don't rely on what's on your shoulders in terms of rank just to tell them what to do. And the people who know the job are the people on the front line. They know why it's not working and they've got a pretty good idea about what could work as well no-transcript, but for those who are on this side, or, believe me, I just, chris.
Steve Morreale:I just checked the stats for the podcast and I couldn't be more pleased. I think you're going to be a 139th interview. This podcast is being listened to in 86 different countries and 2,900 different cities, which just blows my mind. You talked about digital content or, excuse me, you said digital contact. Can you explain that? I think I understand, but I think it's important because we're not there in the United States.
Chris Noble:Yeah, so in probably a pretty typical English constabulary or police force, the most common way now that people contact the police, whether it be in an emergency or in slower time, is over the phone. But we've now got a lot of digital channels or ways of contacting the police. You know live chat, which is pretty ubiquitous now if you're dealing with Amazon or Microsoft or Apple or whatever. We've got something called single online home, where you go onto a web page, you type your details in. We will respond to you, if not quite in lifetime, very closely, clearly. You've got the email ways of entering policing. A lot of police forces are using sort of AI technologies to dynamically respond to queries without necessarily needing a human being, unless that's what's wanted. You've got something called rapid video review, which is where you're maybe dealing with a victim who's suffered abuse of some kind and, as opposed to an initial deployment, you're able to speak to them securely and safely on video screens it's like a telehealth and make an assessment of what they need what can help?
Chris Noble:Exactly Like telehealth. Exactly the same concept. So all these different channels are ways of engaging with the public. That is now sort of baked into the UK policing model, because a lot of police stations have closed, very often because of financial challenges, but also because people are just not coming into stations anymore. They want to pick up a phone or send you an email or deal with live chat. You know that's what satisfies their needs.
Steve Morreale:Well, that's quite interesting. I would assume that, as you moved in that direction, that one of the things was manpower, but also in terms of being responsive more responsive because you can be responsive. You can't always send a car because you've only got five or 10 or 12, but you've got the ability to react to them and respond to them Okay. So that had to be a change in culture in your career. That fair.
Chris Noble:Yeah, whenever I joined Steve, mobile phones weren't really in play, or if they were, you know they probably weighed about 10 kilograms. We were writing our reports right, not typing them. Go ahead, yeah, so a big change. I think it's fair to say that a lot of the contact centers, as we call them, are force contact centers or command centers. It's all the same concept when all these calls and contacts come in. They are really struggling at the minute because a lot of research and studies have been done that said that about 29 to 30% of all those calls, all those contacts, are about policing and crime. 70% are not. It could be mental health issues, it could be labor disputes, it could be littering at the side of a road, it could be anything but stuff where policing should not be the lead agency. But we're having to manage that level of contact and demand and expectation coming in and that is one of the biggest challenges in UK policing today.
Steve Morreale:Chris, one of the things I'm curious about is the training and I understand, at least from my experience in Europe, that you have a significantly long-term probation period, and I'm curious about that. So you could could explain it from your perspective and, most importantly, about the training that you receive as a high ranking officer as you climb the ranks. Talk about that experience.
Chris Noble:So for people joining policing, there's different routes in the policing nowadays and we've got a college of policing which covers all of the UK which sets the standards and defines these entry routes. Probably about five or six years ago, supported by a guy called Peter Nayrude I'm not sure if you've spoken to Peter but and other colleagues brought the concept of academic accreditation into policing. So a lot of my cops joining now don't just have to learn their craft on the streets for two or three years in terms of their probation period, but they're also having to secure a degree through university Criminology and associated sort of policing disciplines as well. So for most people joining police now there's a three-year probation period. They've got to satisfy me. They're an operationally signed cop, their standards are at the highest level and they're achieving their academic requirements. It's only now we're starting just to adjust that a little bit, removing or adding another entry route in where you don't need to do the degree function, because we were missing out on people maybe from a military background or who had no interest in the academic route. So it's probably now, I think, a better offer for people joining.
Chris Noble:But those first two or three years a lot of pressure, really well-defined training, high expectations, and you're not set up to pass automatically.
Chris Noble:You have to work hard to qualify, come out of your probation and then be a fully substantive cop all the way from that initial probationary training up to what they call executive training, which is the sort of chief officer tier of which then I'm chief constable level and leadership training you get albeit you can tap into training around public order, firearms and a whole range of operational disciplines, including investigation ones. So not a huge amount, steve, in summary, but I'm a big believer in you. Go and find your own CPD. You know there's a Chartered Management Institute in the UK. There's an Institute of Directors. I've been on sort of a program called LINCT, which is about counterterrorism which spans US, uk, australia, new Zealand. So I think there is a responsibility on Policing UK and the College of Policing to provide a core of courses. But I still see the main responsibility for my development now sitting with myself and tapping into partners and other parts of government to just make sure I've got the right blend of operational and business skills.
Steve Morreale:It seems like you are a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and you said you may be in Boston, and if that's the case, you'll be in my hometown and I hope to see you there in October. But one of the questions I would ask is, well, what we haven't done, been told about the transition Humberside to Staffordshire, when and how and why did that happen?
Chris Noble:Yeah. So I joined Humberside in October 17 and ultimately then joined Staffordshire in December 2021. So four years in Humberside really steep learning curve, really strong improvement journey, thanks to the team I was a part of, and it's now gone from being the worst force in the country to now being recognized in the last 12 months as the very best. So I learned a huge amount from that in terms of how do you strike the balance between, as a senior leader, a really strong grip on the things that matter and dragging people up by their boot laces but, on the other hand, giving people a bit of space to breathe, and that whenever you leave an organization, success is that other people make it better than it was, you know, whenever you were there.
Chris Noble:So for me, I learned a lot in Humberside and I'd never initially thought of myself as going straight to chief constable level, but I had a lot of friends in Staffordshire and they said look, you know what you're experiencing in Humberside, the type of leadership style that you value. We think is right for Staffordshire. We want to go back to a really community-based model of policing. We need some appropriate grip again around performance. We need to do change and transformation with our staff as opposed to to them. We need to rebuild relationships with our partners. We need to do the basics well about technology and running policing. So I got a real warmth from staff that they would be open to an outsider, or a blow-in as I call myself.
Chris Noble:A blow-in, you say Stepping into Staffordshire, a blow-in.
Steve Morreale:Yeah, yeah, look what just blew in now, right.
Chris Noble:Go ahead Exactly. Well. You used the analogy earlier on about I think it was a transplant. Yeah, for me, there's been no organ rejection.
Chris Noble:I have to say, in terms of coming into staff, the staff have been superb and but before I applied, I probably spoke to about 100 110 different people to say what is going on in the force. They were either partners, they were retired or serving cops and they just gave. They wrote the presentation that I gave at my interview for me in terms of this is where we are, this is where we want to be and this is how we want to do it. So the things that I was saying, I was pretty much then giving staff back what they had told me.
Chris Noble:So the big changes we made in the first 18 months were all things that came from the frontline, because they were frustrated with what was happening and they had actually gone to the time of not just complaining, because cops hate two things, don't they? You know, change and status quo. But you know, the guys I was working with and the girls I was working with in Staffordshire actually said, not, just, it's not working, boss. They said and this is what you should do. So that transition was made a lot easier because the staff were up for it, they had a passion. They were frustrated. I think the biggest critics of policing work in policing. It's not on social media, it's not in the media, it's not politics, it's the people who know what policing could be. So I find the workforce absolutely outstanding and a really strong core of local leadership, supported by me, bringing in external people with real skills and experience, which is what the force needed at the time to keep improving needed at the time to keep improving.
Steve Morreale:Did that help having a few of your own people or people that you felt had experience and were loyal and had sort of a track record, to provide the impetus to implement ideas, to provide the logistical ideas to try to move the?
Chris Noble:department forward. I think the people I brought in from other forces or agencies I didn't really know that well. I'd done my homework around them. But I think what I did know from sort of triangulating their career was the type of leadership they brought, which was the right balance about getting stuff done but treating people as human beings and with respect. And I was sort of recruiting on leadership values, leadership approach as well as just credibility that they've moved the dial where they were before. So I didn't know them particularly well but I brought in people who had done my research on and done due diligence on, so I was pretty comfortable. But I would say really early on, probably because I'd taken so much time to speak to staff, I built up a network of well, you probably not know this term CHIS, so covert human intelligence sources. It's the people you recruit outside policing to tell you about where the latest sort of drug deal is going to go down or something like that.
Steve Morreale:You had your own snitches.
Chris Noble:I have my own network within the force. This isn't quite working the way you expect. You might want to come out and patrol and have a look at this, so you've got to be careful you don't undermine management around that and in particular middle management. But you need to know the right questions to ask, and the way of doing that is having a network of people who are working on your front lines, wherever they are. Policing's job is too important to take somebody else's word for it.
Steve Morreale:So we're talking with Chris Noble. He is the chief constable in Staffordshire, uk, the police service. He's actually talking to me from his vehicle because for some reason I suppose for network security he couldn't dial into Zoom except from his cell phone. So thank you for that. Let's ask a question. First of all, tell us a little more about the current organization, how big it is, what's your Staffordshire Police Service is responsible for, the population is, and where it is.
Chris Noble:Yeah. So UK policing really, really quickly. Its biggest strength is it's really local there's 43 police forces. Its biggest strength is it's really local there's 43 police forces. Its biggest challenge is it's really local there's 43 police forces. So you've got 43 chief constables. If you want to change policy or adjust an approach, on occasions it can be a little bit like herding cats.
Chris Noble:So that concept of operational independence is really important in UK policing. That police geography. You own a county or you own a city like London and as the chief or the commissioner, as it is in London, you own that patch and you make the decisions around it. So that's the sort of policing DNA. But there's also really good sort of national networks. I've talked about the College of Policing which sets standards around training, which accredits forces in terms of what they do around firearms or public order. There's police chief leads for certain thematic areas. So I'm the lead for how we police protest. Other colleagues would be the lead for criminal justice and how we investigate crimes or diversity and inclusion, whatever it would be.
Chris Noble:So you're a local chief by day but then you sort of take on national responsibilities over the course of the year as well, and Staffordshire is, of the 43 forces, about number 21 or 22,. It is bang in the middle. So it's got about maybe 2,100 police officers, maybe about 1,700 police staff. We've got special constabulary of about 150, and we've got police community support officers who work in local neighbourhoods and wards and districts as well. So the overall family and staffature is probably in and around. I would have thought maybe nearly 4,500, 4,300 cops, which is, as I say, bang in the middle of the size of police forces in the UK.
Steve Morreale:How many people reside in your jurisdiction?
Chris Noble:Probably about maybe just over 1 million, maybe about 1.2 million people, and obviously then you've got movement in and across the border and the big city or conurbation near me is Birmingham, so a lot of people commuting into Birmingham and then, sadly, a few ne'er-do-wells or criminals whatever we are allowed to call them these days also come across from Birmingham as well in terms of some of the challenges around car crime and, less regularly, gun crime. But a really safe county, got challenges around deprivation, around what we call safeguarding in the UK in terms of people who are subject to abuse from their partners or other people, but overall a really safe place to live. And whilst it's not my job to be the tourist industry, if you want to visit a beautiful county in England, come to Staffordshire and I'll talk, maybe a little bit, if you give me a chance, about somewhere called the National Memorial Arboretum as a really special place for police officers in particular to come to visit. So I think I shared a video with you a while ago, steve, about it.
Chris Noble:But we've got, as I've just said, we've got something called the National Memorial Arboretum in the heart of Staffordshire which has been in place now probably for about 10 years and, as it sort of hints out in the title. It's a place of memories and reflection, so dominated probably by the military stories and by the conflicts over the years that the UK has been involved in. But there's also elements in there around COVID about those who were shot for deserting. I think there's quite a few areas around sort of US and Canadian colleagues as well who've lost their lives as well, and there's a couple of really special places in there around policing, so a really impressive memorial about UK policing and colleagues we've lost. There's a place and a garden that recognises the sacrifice of the Royal Austro-Constabulary and then another place as well for the police, so a really special place.
Steve Morreale:That must be special for you.
Chris Noble:That must be very special for you. It is. It's a privilege to have it on our patch and we've got a lot of royal visits and a lot of dignitaries come to visit as well that we look after when they're on our patch. But it's a beautiful place just to go every now and again and just walk through and reflect. And whilst policing is modern and progressive and of course, we're constantly moving on in terms of what we do, I think it's really important and it's maybe my upbringing in Northern Ireland that you never forget what's gone before in terms of that sacrifice and remembering the memories of people who've given everything for policing. So it's a powerful place as well as a place that we're proud to police and look after. That's great.
Steve Morreale:By the way, we're talking to Chris Noble from Staffordshire, the chief constable from Staffordshire Police Service. I'm curious to ask you a few questions regarding leadership and your approach to leadership. I think you've intimated a great deal about trying to press the flesh, be on the front line, understand what's going on, instead of hearing it in the ivory tower, experiencing it, seeing it, asking people who are on the front line what's going on, how's it going, providing support. I think that's big. But what I'm curious about is you've got a group of presume we call them command staff people who are high ranking executive many years ago and the evolution of meetings now and how you choose to run them to encourage feedback rather than being top down. But to understand, tell me your approach, what's your command staff meeting like?
Chris Noble:So being brought up in the Royal Australian Constabulary. It was a very security focused, very militaristic organization. So being in a meeting as a young cop and then even moving up through the ranks Well, number one there probably been a meeting before the meeting where it was all decided by the very senior people. So it was a bit of a charade on occasions and a bit of for show. But secondly, it didn't promote a huge amount of either conversation, let alone divergence of views, and challenge just didn't really happen.
Chris Noble:It was just very rank, very hierarchically based and, don't get me wrong, you know, command can be important in policing but it's probably two to three percent of the day job in terms of just telling people to do this and using your rank and authority to short circuit decision making. So sometimes it's easier, I think, whenever you're growing up as a leader, to almost define how you lead, how you make decisions, how you run your own teams and meetings, by what you've seen not working in the past. So for me, you know, whilst ultimately as the chief I've got to own the big decisions in the organization and I've got to take responsibility for them, I think you're a fool if you think you're the most intelligent or knowledgeable person in the organization and I'm pretty confident I am.
Chris Noble:So, recruiting the right people, bringing them in as senior leaders, having practitioners in the key decision-making meetings One of my key challenges to my staff whenever they bring me a new policy, let's say, about how we deal with high-risk missing people. You know, a 12-year-old kid goes missing or an older adult with Alzheimer's goes missing. We grade those normally as high-risk missing people. Okay, well, let's build a policy around that. But you tell me, before we do this as a command team, have you spoken to the detective who's going to own that policy tomorrow? Have you spoken to the frontline cop who's got to complete the 30 box checklist that you've now put in place to cover the organization's backside whenever the inspection body comes back in?
Chris Noble:So for me, ultimately, senior leaders are there to earn their money and make decisions and be decisive, but the way they get there is critically important and you need to understand not just the problem you're trying to solve. I'm very ready to senior leaders really understand the root causes of why there's a problem. And then, secondly, instead of just giving a policy or decision to staff, you know, if needs be, give them some parameters and ask them to break it, or ask them what would you do and involve them in the decisionmaking process, as opposed to the implementation process on its own. How?
Steve Morreale:do you find you set expectations? In other words, you're pronouncing this is what I want to do or this is what we want to do. We've talked about it. These are my expectations In terms of holding your I hate the word subordinates, but your fellow leaders accountable for their particular unit. How do you set expectations?
Chris Noble:I think even before they become a senior leader, you know, whenever they're looking for promotion or looking to join Staffordshire Police, the first thing I sit down and say is this is what we're about, this is what we're looking for. If it doesn't work and it doesn't fit, don't even bother applying. So there's something about. Even before they're part of the team at that level or even join Staffordshire Police, they know exactly the rules of engagement and what the expectations are and how they're going to be held to account.
Chris Noble:So I think there's something there almost pre-birth, if that makes sense, then whenever you're selecting them, it's not to say that technical skills aren't important. There's other ways of measuring those, even before they come into the process. So whenever I'm testing, interviewing, running promotion processes, it's about getting under the skin of who that person is and not just what have they done in the past, because everybody can memorize some really great examples about what they've done. It's about what would you do if and how have you and what are you about? And drilling down and getting into the detail of who that individual is.
Chris Noble:And then for me, the third part is if you're seeing behaviors or ways of working that aren't appropriate, this isn't about criminality or even misconduct, it's just poor leadership or inconsistent leadership in a mature way. Deal with it right there, don't let it sit, don't let it atrophy, don't let it slide, don't let it go past. Just have a really early, mature intervention to say spotted that, tell me what's going on. Or I've got a bit of feedback about an issue you've dealt with. Chat me through that because you might want to think about how you can deal with it differently. And then finally, steve, model it yourself. You know, if I talk about leadership that's really engaged with the workforce, with the people we serve. If I'm not doing that, it's just noise. People pick apart contradictions very, very quickly, so you've got to live that and make sure your habits are the habits that you want your own staff to adopt as well.
Steve Morreale:You know, one of the things that strikes me and haven't been around policing for a long, long time is when we get into positions of leadership, sometimes we forget how to investigate, and what I mean by that. We're trained to investigate and so part of your job is to investigate. Whatever that is and you said something a little bit ago and that was asking questions, and I love the idea of leading through questions, asking probative questions, deep questions that will start to make people. Even when I'm doing training, just posing questions sometimes stifles people. It stunts them Like I can't believe I'm being put on the spot. But leading through questions can be very valuable. What's your experience?
Chris Noble:There's a phrase in policing called the ABC of policing. So accept nothing, believe no one and check everything. Now that's an extreme, because if you do that you're not going to engender a huge amount of trust or empowerment in an organization. But there's something about being professionally curious about what is really going on in policing, and I suppose my approach is you know, before I just ask a random question and get lucky by asking a good one, as a senior cop again, I'll talk to the people who are doing the job, whether it be a middle management or the front line or a police staff specialism or a partner, and get their sense of where things are. So the questions that I'm asking then of my senior leaders are informed by what is actually going on. Now, I don't mean not to be mischievous, because in the end, if they're doing their job and leading that way, there should be no surprises in the questions I ask.
Chris Noble:But your questions have got to be informed by reality, as opposed to getting lucky with asking a really good question on occasions, and I think it's. I wouldn't even call it questioning as such. I think it's more about a conversation, that you sit down with someone and have a conversation and, as you say, a part of that. You probe until you get to the source reason as to why something isn't working or indeed why something is working. And I think most staff if you ask the questions in the right way, if you're clearly not seeking to blame people at every opportunity, if you then do something with the conversation you've had with them actually value the fact that you care enough to ask and understand what's going on in their world. So yeah, I think questions, as you say, isn't just for the investigation side and for suspects. It's got to be how you improve and indeed tackle challenges within the organization.
Steve Morreale:Sometimes I find people just avoid asking questions because they do not like the work or the consequences that comes with the answers yeah, when you start digging what you uncover, it sometimes becomes uncomfortable or, oh my God, it becomes my problem. And I'm sure what you're saying to your crew through your behavior, through your modeling. That I want to know. I want you to be curious, I want you to identify problems, I want to solve problems before they explode. Let's kind of get ahead of those problems, try to figure out what the difficulties are and come up with process, a new process to deal with it, to allow those in the field the options to handle that.
Chris Noble:And, steve, I don't like to swear on podcasts, but there's something about, you know, policing deals in shit every single day.
Chris Noble:So if I'm not getting a whiff of something on a daily basis, I get really suspicious, because it generally means people are hiding stuff from me.
Chris Noble:So you go looking for things that aren't working, you lift stones. But how you handle that, I think, is really important because if, whenever there's a crisis or a ball's been dropped or somebody's done something stupid or potentially malicious, you have got to handle that as a senior leader in a mature way. And if people are bringing you information proactively which is what you want as a senior police leader you have got to be mature and neither shoot the messenger or two people behind them. And how you are in a bad day and losing the rag, as we would say in Ireland, or blowing your top, that is the stuff that will be remembered and people will not come to you again, will not raise things, whether that be in a meeting format or a one-to-one or even just dropping you an email and saying boss, I think you want to be aware of this. So how you handle bad news as a senior leader is fundamental. Or all of a sudden, people will start covering stuff up.
Steve Morreale:Yeah. Well, what you're just saying is really important. I had something to think about, but you just said something that triggered with me, and that is you need to set that up. You need to basically set, I guess, the expectation that I'm willing to hear from you In fact, I'd prefer to hear from you. Please don't cover it up. We don't know everything that's going on, and so if you see an issue, it's almost if you see something, say something, that old adage, but but about the organization? Because if you care about the organization, I care about your input, and that becomes really important, because what you're doing is you're saying bring the problems to us, don't ignore the problems, don't let them fester.
Chris Noble:Fair statement yeah, for sure, and some of this is about improving the service we provide, but some of this is around police standards and misconduct as well. We've had a couple of really high profile cases in policing policing and some of it's been around the metropolitan police in london. But you know, but for the grace of god goes every single police service. Quite frankly, and at the core of it, some of these guys as they nearly nearly all were people within their team knew they were, quite frankly, deviants in some occasions or had criminal behaviors or were corrupt cops and they didn't speak up. And there's a pretty good chance their supervisors had a really clear sense that something wasn't right but they didn't have the courage to challenge.
Chris Noble:So there's something about creating an environment. If you want to work and improve police culture, police standards, there's something to be creating an environment that isn't about touting or telling tales in each other. It's about owning the reputation of the organization at the very frontline, people being proud of it, people having courageous conversations with colleagues and indeed, frontline supervisors intervening early, as opposed to, in 20 years' time, that individual all of a sudden doing something completely and utterly horrendous to a colleague or to a member of the public. So you know that's the UK experience. You guys in the States and North America and wider will have your own cases of extreme misconduct, but a lot of this stuff. If there was stronger leadership, courageous leadership earlier on, you may well not be able to stop it all, but at the very least someone would have been held to account much more sharply than they ever were before we're talking with Chris Noble, who is the chief constable, basically the big shot in Staffordshire Police Service, and I very much appreciate your time, your energy and your perspective.
Steve Morreale:I think that's important. I want to talk about the issues that you are confronting as an organization, the things that have been brought to your attention, even recently, and what you're working on and one of the things you said at the very beginning was about mass demonstrations and your role in that UK wide. So tell us about the issues of the day, the week, the month that you're working on.
Chris Noble:OK, well, I think when we've touched on already about policing used to be an agency of last resort. So when it all went wrong, you called the cops, you called the police. Probably in the last 10 to 15 years in the UK I don't know about other jurisdictions it's now become an agency of first resort. So the big challenge we have is how do you triage all those incidents, all those calls for service from the public to deal with the really key priority calls? That is one of our most enduring day-to-day challenges and we don't always get that balance right. So that's one. Secondly, it's a bit of a coming together of a really young and inexperienced workforce but really keen but learning their craft. 30% of all my police officers are student officers. So in and around the sort of two, two and a half year mark, and whenever I come into policing I join big teams with really experienced guys around proactive policing. You know how to build a case, how to do a good stop and search, community confidence, et cetera, et cetera. So that sort of inexperienced but really keen workforce and then the need to deliver really good quality investigations and then have that confidence in the street that you're neither over-aggressive but you don't encourage at times conflict with members of the public who like to try it on with the police. So there's a couple of things coming together there. We've seen a real increase in assaults on police officers recently in the UK, but in particular in Staffordshire. We've had real challenges about delivering good quality investigations consistently over time. And then we've had challenges because our cops are going through this probationary period and being in university on a regular basis about putting out good numbers every single day to deal with the challenges that we face. So there's probably a bit of a it's not a triangle of doom, because I'm really optimistic. In a few years time we'll have matured as an organization and for me the silver lining is every cop that joins Staffordshire I get time with and they all join for pretty much the same reason they want to serve the public, they want to stand in the gap, they want to make a difference. But it is hard yards at the minute for them, really hard yards about learning their craft, getting their academic qualifications and even just recognizing that not every member of the public loves the police. That can be quite a shock for some people. So that's a learning curve.
Chris Noble:And then talking about protest, because I think there's a relevance locally, even before I talk a bit about my national role. You may not have picked up on it, but on the back of a really tragic stabbing involving some young kids in a and actually in a taylor swift dance school in liverpool, there was a lot of misinformation indeed disinformation being put out on the internet about this being done by immigrants coming into the uk. Yes, and that sparked quite a few riots across major cities, including stoke in my place and also tamworth, which is also on my patch as well. Probably for the first time in maybe 13 years in uk policing, you had full-on serious, sustained riots and violence against the police. You know ripping up trees and charging riot shields, throwing petrol or pouring petrol and cops throwing bricks at police officers and police dogs. And you know, despite my experience in northern ireland, which was you went through a riot and you had a gun on your hip in case it all got really bad. Over here you don't have that, so they were taking a huge amount of abuse for a long time until we got reinforcements.
Chris Noble:So that's a dynamic, even in the last couple of months, which has created a huge amount of pressure for cops in terms of trying to balance the day job and dealing with crime and then having to stand in the gap between local people, rioters, violent individuals, criminals who are wanting to set fire to a hotel where immigrants are housed for a whole raft of different reasons. So we haven't seen that sort of level of violence or disorder in the UK for a long time. So that's been a challenge for us. But there's a difference between that and protest, because in the UK the big challenges we face recently around protest has generally been non-violent, what we call non-violent direct action. So climate activists blocking the big motorways around London, or a group called Palestine Action doing various things, again to try and disrupt particular industries or generate attention, or a group called Just Stop Oil, which you can probably imagine what their ethos is spraying paint over landmarks and over expensive pieces of art, et cetera, et cetera. So whilst in no way acceptable generally speaking, it doesn't step into the violence space that we've seen in the last month, but very challenging for cops to deal with.
Chris Noble:A really senior inspector of policing about five years ago said that policing protest is the brain surgery of policing, because you need to weigh up proportionality, you need to decide when they intervene or not. You've got case law you need to interpret. You've got to make sure that all your disclosure of evidence is got right. You've got to just carefully balance things or you will end up paying out money to people who've been arrested wrongly whenever people look at this in the cold, hard light of day.
Chris Noble:So real challenges around protest policing, especially in London. It's a very political space, so the previous government was making laws on a pretty regular basis around trying to clamp down on protests and policing them, was constantly having to train and retrain and adjust its tactics for how it responds to that. But look you guys, 2020 was a really challenging year for policing. In the States it was. You're in the teeth of a presidential election and who knows what that might bring in terms of dynamics and tensions and protest as well. So we watch what's happening in your world to pick up the learning. I would much rather learn vicariously, steve, than have to learn ourselves.
Steve Morreale:Well, you know it's interesting. Well, one of the things that strikes me too is that police officers, no matter where, are very often caught in the middle, as you just said. And if you think about those who are on side in our country and maybe in your country, on the Israeli side and on the Palestinian side, you're stuck in the middle and you're trying to allow them. So that doesn't get out of hand the ability to have free speech and protest, as long as it's not violent and then very often you become the target because of the uniform, and that's a very difficult position to find your people in. For sure, yeah.
Chris Noble:And policing has got to be accountable, it's got to be transparent and there's a lot of host events, host protests, inspections, complaints go in, and so you've got a lot of cops who are really nervous on the front line making decisions.
Chris Noble:And we don't just see it in protest.
Chris Noble:We've seen it in armed policing in the last sort of couple of years as well, where people are doing their very best, really challenging environment. It's not the settled environment of a courtroom where they're trying to make snap decisions. It could be use of force, it could be use of legislation, could be locking people up and then in slower time they're having their decisions pulled apart and it could be career threatening. They could be demoted in rank, they could have their name plastered all over the paper. So there's a really significant conversation taking place at the minute between police chiefs and politicians about what we call an accountability review, about what is the right balance between holding police to account and giving cops the confidence that they can make honest, fair and decent decisions at the time without having them picked apart, with someone applying 20-20 vision to them. So I don't know if that's a similar challenge in the States or in North America, but that is something that is very challenging in the protest environment, but also whenever, sadly, police officers then have to use lethal force against people as well.
Steve Morreale:Yes, well, unfortunately, this conversation has flowed so easily and so well that we're about running out of time, so I want to wind down and give you a few opportunities to answer some questions and have the last word. We're talking with Chris Noble and he is in Staffordshire, uk. He's the chief constable, so if you had the chance to talk to somebody who is no longer with us to gain some insight and knowledge, who might that around policing or life more generally it's entirely up to you dealer's choice, as they say that is a good question.
Chris Noble:That is a good question.
Chris Noble:There was a police officer who was in northern ireland who sadly passed away to a guy called colin cramporn and you know, a really wise leader, a really gentle guy but incredibly effective in terms of what he did.
Chris Noble:And I only had the opportunity to meet him a couple of times as part of the sort of progression of the change process in Northern Ireland, and I think it's very rarely you find a senior leader who carries a real air of authority because of their humility, and he was someone who, just for me, had that sweet spot in terms of an incredibly capable leader having authority about him, but was a gentle, compassionate, humble leader.
Chris Noble:And I didn't get a huge amount of time to be around him or speak to him, but I would have loved just to get a sense from him as to how he came through what would have been a very command and control era of policing. How did you survive with that leadership style whenever a lot of the other senior leaders around you had something that was very, very different? Because as I've gone through my career, I've always tried to learn not from the bad examples of leadership but those people who just instinctively I just respected as senior leaders and he was one of those, but sadly he was taken I think he was in his 40s whenever we lost him but didn't really get a chance to sort of download his experience. And I think I would find that valuable as a relatively young chief constable, still learning my craft and knowing how you strike that balance between being authoritative but then sometimes just knowing when to shut up, be gracious with people as well as firm.
Steve Morreale:This has been a wonderful and wide ranging conversation. It seems to me that you are a thought leader and I really appreciate being with you and getting your feedback and hearing your perspective. Chris, as we get ready to leave, I'd like to know how you feel about policing. Do you have hope for the?
Chris Noble:future Absolutely and hope for now as well, because, well, first of all, the job we do is like no other, I think. For me, it's the highest form of community service actually being a police officer, a member of police staff, and in some ways.
Chris Noble:Sadly, I don't think the police are ever going to be made redundant.
Chris Noble:As an organization, I think we're always going to have to deal with challenges and frictions and fallouts and tensions in society.
Chris Noble:So I think there is a job for life and perpetuity for police officers.
Chris Noble:So there's a bit of hope there, steve, in terms of pay packets.
Chris Noble:But, more seriously, I think people are still joining policing 99% of the time for the right reasons, and I think they're getting the chance to make a difference. And I also think that police leaders now are much more tuned on to not just caring about victims and communities, but their own staff and looking after them, thinking about resilience, thinking about wellbeing, the right balance between being inclusive as an employer and then needing to deliver a service for the public. So I think that really clear focus on the public people joining for the right reasons and I think now finally seeing the importance of treating our people with respect and well, I see that coming together. But it will be hard yards going forwards because the world we deal with is not going to become more simple and there's going to be increasing demand on policing. So I think we just continue to need the support of the people who write the laws that we all work to and who also hold policing to account that it's fair and it's reasonable and the policing is giving a chance to succeed.
Steve Morreale:What a great way to end and I do appreciate it. We've been talking to Chris Noble he's the Chief Superintendent of the Staffordshire UK Police Service and I really appreciate your perspective and your time and your honesty and humility and yet the challenges you faced and how you have worked with people to A give them hope and, B to provide better service. So thank you very much. As you go into your weekend, I wish you the best of luck. Thank you for your time. I hope to see you in Boston quite soon. Cheers, Steve. Thank you. Well, that's it. Another episode of the Cop Talk podcast is in the can. Thank you so much for listening. Stay safe and reach out. If you can Remember, people from 86 countries and almost 3,000 cities and towns across the globe have been listening. So if you like what you hear, spread the word. Thanks, have a good day.
Intro/Outro :Thanks for listening to The Cop Doc 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 Cop Doc Podcast for regular episodes of interviews with thought leaders in policing.
