January 7, 2025 • 50 mins
Season 7 - The CopDoc Podcast - Episode 144
Dr. Jim McCabe, a seasoned expert in police management and assessment, takes us on an in-depth exploration of optimizing police operations. From his foundational experiences with the NYPD to his academic journey at St. John's University, Jim provides insights from years of applying data-driven strategies to enhance police performance. Learn how the 2008 economic downturn became a pivotal moment in Jim's career, leading to his role with the International City Managers Association and creating CERTUS Public Safety Solutions, a venture dedicated to fostering meaningful client relationships through operational enhancements.
As we navigate the complexities of police organizational performance, Jim illuminates the critical importance of using data effectively, particularly in accreditation standards like CALEA. His latest book, "Understanding Police Operational Performance," serves as a comprehensive guide for police chiefs and city managers alike, covering essential topics such as patrol allocation, investigative performance, and community engagement. Jim shares actionable insights geared towards helping law enforcement leaders elevate their organizational effectiveness and adapt to evolving social responsibilities, including handling non-traditional tasks like mental health calls.
Our conversation also delves into the practical aspects of optimizing police department staffing levels and the value of collaboration with community stakeholders. Discover the strategies behind the "Rule of 60" and the significance of scorecards in assessing departmental performance. Jim offers a candid look at the challenges and rewards of building collegial relationships between police departments and city councils, ensuring the successful implementation of recommendations. This episode is packed with expert guidance and practical advice to help police departments adapt and enhance their service delivery in today's complex environment.
Happy to report that The CopDoc Podcast is listed as #4 in the 10 Best Worcester Podcasts!
https://podcast.feedspot.com/worcester_podcasts/
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
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the CopDoc Podcast.
This podcast explores policeleadership issues and innovative
ideas.
The CopDoc shares thoughts andideas as he talks with leaders
in policing communities,academia and other government
agencies.
And now please join Dr SteveMorreale and industry thought
(00:25):
leaders as they share theirinsights and experience on the
CopDoc podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey everybody.
Steve Morreale, coming to youfrom Boston, massachusetts,
today, and we are in our 145th,146th episode, and I'm talking
to somebody in the last fouryears We've talked to two times
this will be the third time mycolleague, dr Jim McCabe, who's
sitting in Queens, new York City.
Hello there, jim, good morning.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Steve.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So thank you so much for joining us.
There's a special reason thatwe are getting together.
I will explain to the audiencethat Jim and I are colleagues.
We are friends.
We met, actually, at ACGS manyyears ago.
We've written together, we'vepresented together, we've taught
together, we've traveledtogether, and we've traveled
together even with our beautifulbrides.
And so he is now at St John'sUniversity, after a storied
(01:16):
career with the New York CityPolice Department services, the
monitor for the New York CityPolice Department, and he just
wrote a book with colleaguescalled Understanding Police
Operational Performance.
And in my mind this is veryimportant for us to consider
because not a lot of policedepartments want to assess and
yet it's so important to assessand that's something you've been
doing for years and years andyears.
(01:36):
So, let's get started, jim, bygiving us a little bit of a
thumbnail sketch of yourbackground in policing, how you
got into academia and how yougot involved in police
management studies.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Sure, I started in the NYPD in the mid-80s and,
like a lot of people at the timewhen I joined, college wasn't
required.
I didn't have a college degreeand I decided that in order to
make a career you know my timein the NYPD I needed that
college degree.
So I went back to school assoon as I got off from probation
and I continued going to schooluntil my retirement day.
I ended up with a PhD criminaljustice from John Jay and I
(02:10):
decided I would go out and seewho would be interested in
hiring me.
And, as you know, when we metin ACJS my first academic
conference and I hadn't done alot of academic stuff, so I
wasn't expecting anybody to hireme.
But I got a job.
I went to Sacred HeartUniversity in Fairfield,
connecticut.
I spent 17 years there and lastyear I got recruited to join
the faculty at St John'sUniversity in Queens, which is
(02:31):
right in my backyard.
So I'm very happy to be home,very happy to be working in and
around the New York metro area.
And so the other question washow did I get involved in this
assessment stuff?
When the economy tanked in 2008,police departments, city
managers around the countrybegan looking for solutions to
just hiring and hiring andhiring.
(02:52):
Money was tight, fiscal budgetswere constrained because of the
recession and they were lookingfor help.
So the International CityManagers Association started a
consulting group to provide thathelp and I was recruited to
join that effort in 2009.
And since then I've done 100 orso as the principal
investigator and probably 150 aspart of a team looking at local
(03:14):
police departments around thecountry, been to 44 different
states.
Every region sort of beencrisscrossing the country
looking at local policedepartments.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
So a while ago and I know we keep in contact, we're
talking with each other once aweek, I would say but a while
ago you started your own concernand it is called CERTUS.
So talk about that.
You broke away from ICMA andnow you're doing things on your
own with colleagues.
Talk about that company or thatLLC and what you're doing there
.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Sure, well, it's called CERTUS Public Safety
Solutions and I'm partnered with, as you said, three of my
colleagues Demosthenes Long, helikes to be called Monty Paul
O'Connell and CarolRazor-Cordero and each of us
have been involved in doing thisassessment kind of work for a
decade or more, and each of usalso had long careers in
policing and as well asacademics, we're all PhDs and
(04:00):
working in various universitiesaround the country.
So you know, we decided that.
You know, the work that we weredoing was fun, it was enjoyable
, we were adding value, but wewanted to do it slightly
differently.
We wanted to have more of anengaged and long-term
relationship with our clients,not necessarily to provide the
report and run on to the nextclient, to have more of a
(04:21):
relationship and do deep divesinto the work, into the
organization and into theorganization, and provide that
longitudinal, if you would,longitudinal service as opposed
to a cross-section.
I was just going to say thatsounds like a PhD word.
Longitudinal, it's true, andit's more satisfying.
There's less clients, which isgood.
You can provide more attention,which is better, and we have
(04:42):
that sustained relationshipwhich we enjoy, because none of
us are in this really for themoney.
This is not a get rich quickscheme.
It's about an ability like whatyou're doing with the CopDoc
podcast.
It's an ability to give backand to use our skill and our
experience in order to do thathelp people around the country.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
What strikes me as Jim and myself, is when we're in
the classroom, when we're doingthe podcast, when we're doing
training, when you're doingevaluations, it clearly keeps
your finger on the pulse.
We both may be out of policingfor 10 years, but we're as much
in policing as anybody elsebecause we interact with people
who are doing the job,struggling, trying to figure out
(05:17):
how to do it, and I know youhave the opportunity to sit in
focus groups and some are betterthan others and I know we talk
about them.
But what I'm curious to know iswhat lights your fire?
What keeps you wanting to dothat?
I know you're very keen oncreating opportunities and
options to deal with the dataand let the data speak for an
(05:37):
agency that there's so much datain police agencies that most we
talked about this yesterdaymost don't know what to do with.
So talk about that.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
It's an interesting question.
I don't know what fires me.
I'm a bit of a nerd.
You know my sons-in-law call melike a data nerd and I just get
excited when data, thenumerical data, tells the same
story as what you see, thequalitative data, and what
you're talking to people on theground.
It's just, it provides thatsort of here's another academic
word for you when you cantriangulate the information that
(06:06):
you're seeing, bothquantitative and qualitative,
and it tells the story.
And it tells the story to thepeople that are living that
story.
You see them recognize whatyou're saying is true and then
you can provide this solution orat least recommend some
solutions to them, and then theydo it.
It's like it's terriblyrewarding.
So I guess that's what keeps memotivated.
It's certainly a labor of love.
I just enjoy doing it.
(06:26):
I get up every day with purposeand, like you said, I have my
finger across the country Isthat I get to talk to people and
listen to their stories and seetheir organizations and how
they work.
Like Johnny Appleseed, you knowI can travel around the country
dropping seeds and picking upthings and learning.
So I guess you know, going backto my entry into the police
(06:47):
field, I started learning rightaway and I became like a
lifelong learner, and I'm stilldoing it to this day,
contributing to this effort, toyour work.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Well, thank you.
So very interesting.
We're talking to Jim McCabe.
He's in New York right now.
He's a PhD, a doctor and aprofessor, most importantly, at
St John's University.
He just wrote a book and it'scalled Understanding Police
Operational Performance and itwas just released.
I just ordered it.
I'm sorry I don't have it.
I've seen glimpses of itbecause you've shared with me,
but it's very interestingbecause I think most police and
most police chiefs don'tnecessarily know what it means.
(07:16):
Here's the issue that I have inpolicing, we really don't
especially small agencies take alook at ourselves.
We're fearful of looking atwhat goes on, when really, by
ignoring what goes on, you'reraising risk and you're raising
liability.
And to understand what othersare doing, best practices and
what you're doing and how youcan better utilize time and
(07:38):
limited resources is reallyimportant.
So what I want to do here, jim,is we talked when you first
started to think about writingthis book, and I think it's an
extremely important book.
It's for people to understand,in my view, what is a management
study, what should it look for,what are the questions you
should ask, what are thequestions you should uncover and
what is the process by whichthis is a created, in other
(08:01):
words a request for proposal totake a look at my agency.
I'm trying to explain from myunderstanding.
You'll do a better job in aminute but sometimes it's police
chiefs that ask for this,sometimes it is city managers,
sometimes it is the council,sometimes it is the public that
drives the idea.
Someone from the outside has tocome in and look.
(08:22):
So talk a little bit about that, if you will, and then we'll
start to dig into what amanagement study looks like.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
A lot of layers there , Steve.
I know I'm sorry, yeah, solet's start with.
The first layer is assessmentand the reluctance of police
agencies to assess themselves.
We write about this in the book.
Like policing is you have amonopoly on police service in
your community.
Whatever the geography is,there's typically one police
department.
You're not in risk ofcompetition.
You don't have to continuallyevolve and improve because
(08:50):
there's nobody else coming downthe street to take your position
.
So it's easy to sit and justwait for the problems to arise
and deal with them.
Well, you don't have to assess,you don't have to look forward,
you don't have to learn andsense about what's going on in
the environment.
So there's sort of a naturaltendency not to do this because
you don't have to.
So that comes to.
The next layer is well, whywould you?
(09:10):
Well, there's a few differentreasons now, particularly in
2024, as we're talking.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Number one.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Like you said, you can identify problems and
address them before they becomebigger problems.
So having the data and havingthe capacity you know the
organizational processes to lookat your data, look at your
operations and identify theproblems and fix them is really
important in this day and age.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And I think more importantly, from what?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I see is that as you do this you'd be able to, like I
was saying before, where thedata and the story kind of meet,
you're able to collect theinformation that promotes the
good work that you're doing,that people don't appreciate the
good work, the effort that goesin.
Yeah, sure, they see theproblems, the one-tenth of 1%
that make it to TikTok orYouTube where the police do
(09:53):
something that's objectionable.
But in the most cases thepolice in our country do an
amazing job and when you startassessing what you're doing, you
get to tell that story withdata and examples and you get to
promote that.
So it's sort of a two-edgedsword, number one, two-sided
sword.
You get to identify theproblems and fix them and you
get to identify the really goodwork that you're doing already
and promote that and let theworld know and let the officers
(10:14):
know they're appreciated.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
So again, a lot there and I wrote a few things down.
And one is that really there's18,000 or so different police
agencies from varying sizes,from three to 30,000, 40,000,
whatever.
Nypd has one of the largest inthe nation.
And there's no nationalstandards unto themselves,
there's no National PoliceCollege, and my sense is that
(10:37):
police chiefs who are in thebusiness a lot of them just want
to babysit, they just want tomind the store.
They want to get through threeor four years without any shit.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Without the fires that come in.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Exactly, and I think leadership takes a resolve to
look inside yourself what can Ido better, what can we do better
, what are we doing well andwhat can we improve on?
And I think that's a mindsetthat is starting to take hold.
But there's an awful lot ofoldtime chiefs out there that
just are afraid of what they'lluncover should they look under
(11:07):
the rock, and I think that it'sso misplaced in my mind and I'm
seeing you shake your head, sotell me about that.
Look, I know there'saccreditation.
There's state and CALEAnational.
What do you feel about that asa way to move the industry or
the discipline forward?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I think CALEA does an excellent job.
The agencies that at least I'veexperienced that are accredited
are much better than the onesthat aren't.
But again, it's only the tip ofthe iceberg.
So, for example, you know CALEAwill require that you do some
kind of community survey, andwhich is great.
You know you should be, and ourbook suggests that you should
be understanding through datawhat your organized community
thinks of the services you'reproviding.
(11:44):
But it doesn't tell you what todo.
It doesn't tell you how to doit, it doesn't tell you who to
speak to.
It says you got to do it and alot of times organizations that
are accredited go through thecheck the box exercise because
they have to do it.
They don't really know what todo.
Like you said, they're kind ofafraid of the results that
they're going to use thatopportunity to really collect
the data, and not just foraccreditation but to use the
(12:07):
data.
Collect the data and use thedata in order to inform the way
that you should be doingbusiness, and Kalia certainly
points you in that direction.
So it's a matter of taking thatleadership position and
embracing it and using theinformation to assess your
organization and your operationseffectively and not just that
check the box.
I got to do this to move on.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Well, in some cases, even a report that would come
from you.
It really strikes me I've donea few myself and you hand it to
them and they become almostparalyzed, like what do I do now
?
There's a checklist.
This is so true.
There's a list ofrecommendations.
Why don't you chip away at it?
Why don't you prioritize?
Why don't you try to?
(12:46):
In other words, you just spentfive, 10, 20, 30, $50,000 on
this report.
Will you do something with it?
I'm going through it with myown hometown, where they're
saying you need more people.
Here's the justification forpeople and no one reacts to that
.
But I think this is this is amove in so many places, and
certainly at NYPD to be moredata driven, be more
evidence-based, and whether ornot that takes shape, and
(13:06):
there's resistance with that, itseems to me.
You go out and you measureoutcome.
You did this, this was theoutcome.
Before you did that, there wasno outcome, right.
So you're measuring outcomes,and we talked about that the
other day.
And so the book itself.
I want to spend a moment.
So this again is a book just outon the 17th, just this week, by
Rutledge.
It's called UnderstandingPolice Operational Performance.
(13:26):
We're talking again with JimMcCabe, former NYPD and St
John's University professor.
Here's what the contents say.
Why should you assess Patrolallocation and deployment?
Assessing patrol operations,investigative operational
performance, professionalstandards, administration and
policy assessment I mean theseare big, big buckets Assessing
(13:47):
recruitment and retention,assessment of police, training,
community engagement, assessingunderstanding and managing
organizational culture, which isa big nut strategic management,
planning and futureconsiderations and alternative
service delivery models.
So you wrote an awful lot inthis book that I know comes from
the four of you sitting downand saying well, when we look at
(14:08):
something, what are we seeing?
What are we looking for?
What are the components ofpolicing?
Now I don't want to go over theheads of many listeners.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
I think this is an important discussion to have.
So talk about how this tookshape and the way that we study
departments and put it inwriting and give people the
opportunity to pick it up.
Like if I was a city manager ora police chief, this would be
on my bookcase Because if Iwanted to figure out what I
needed to do to understand howmy organization, my police
(14:48):
organization, was performing,there's a blueprint in there.
If I want to know what I shouldbe looking for out of the
detectives, if I want to knowwhat I should look for for of my
community relations orcommunity engagement platform,
it's in there.
What are my critical policies?
It's in there.
The idea is this was born outof our process that, as we went
into an organization, this ishow we do it and this is what we
(15:08):
would report so clearly overtime.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
you've been doing this since 08, you were saying
so that's a pretty long time.
You've got an awful lot underyour belt.
You've made mistakes and maybethey're not mistakes, but I know
what it's like.
You go into an organization andyou know, you and I talk to
people who are beginningresearch and say ask as many
questions as you can when you'rethere, Cause when you're gone
you're not going to really beable to get a second bite of the
(15:31):
apple.
So I'm sure you walked awayearly on to say man, we're
missing.
That is that a fair statement,and that's for sure.
so it's an evolution right andof course, even even still, body
worn cams are new andtechnology is new and cyber
crime is new and all thesethings that have been piled on.
Social issues are new not new,but have certainly piled on.
(15:52):
Mental health are issues thatpolice deal with all of the time
, and so the role of the policechanges and expands and
sometimes, as you and I havetalked about before, there's
mission creep.
Are we supposed?
Should we be doing all thatstuff?
So I'm sure you're sittingthere thinking, okay, let me
take a look at this agency.
You're going out fairly soon.
You just came back from Alaska,for goodness sakes, and you
take a look at it, and someagencies are more adept than
(16:15):
others.
But what's your view of wherepolicing is and where policing
has to go, understanding thedeficits you sometimes recognize
?
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Well, let's go back to the first part of that
question, the evolution of itand making the mistakes.
So when we go to anorganization now, in 2024 or
2025, for the first time, wewill give them a list of data
and documents that we want tosee.
It sometimes overwhelms theagency because it's so long.
I think we're up to 162 items,and when I first started you
(16:44):
didn't get any of that.
You just sort of parachuted inand started rooting around and
you learn.
Like you said, you come back,you go damn.
I wish I had that informationbefore I went.
So the idea is you collect asmuch data as possible and do as
much analysis as possible thatwhen you get on ground to
actually meet the client and dothe interviews and the
observations, you know as much,if not more, about their
(17:05):
operations than they do.
And it's more of aclarification.
Can you explain this to me?
Can you tell me how this works?
Can you show me X, y and Z?
And that physical presencegives you the ability to see
what you're seeing in the dataand the documents.
And again, it really isfascinating when it comes
together in a way that you go ohyeah, I see what you're talking
about and you're able tomeasure it and you're able to
(17:27):
make conclusions about it andthen recommendations from it.
And it's really important to dothat kind of that work
beforehand, because you owe itto the client, you owe it to the
organization that you'reworking for.
They are better able to helpthem help themselves.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So I'm throwing a lot at you because there's so much
that you know and so much Ithink the listeners can gain
from our conversation.
Data don't always lie.
Sure, and that's what you say,and my experience with this was
with the Drug EnforcementAdministration is that on a
rotating basis, every three orfour years, inspectional
services would come out, justlike NYPD.
And I'm going to come out,captain, and I'm going to take a
look at your organization andyou're going to do an
(18:03):
interrogatory and you're goingto answer questions before we
come out, and of course, you'redigging like oh shit, I got to
answer this question.
You know, you've been throughit and certainly I've been
through that Most agencies donot have to, most posts do not
(18:25):
require those audits, and sothis is a way to hire a company
like you, or ICMA or whoever itmight be becomes pretty
important.
And then I suppose, when youleave well, so react to that,
jim, about the inspiration.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yeah, that's true and I think the way that the
studies, at least that I'veparticipated in, come from the
organization's inability to dothat themselves or they want an
independent quote, unquoteimpartial view that the biases
that are built into doingresearch on your own
organizations they're minimizedbecause you have an independent,
independent, personal bodydoing it.
So that's why organizationslike that independent view.
(19:01):
It's sort of like an accountingwhere the auditor has to be
independent.
If you're looking at a bank ora business in order to give them
an impartial, sort ofunvarnished version of what's
going on, you don't want to haveyour own accountants doing the
auditing of your own books, soto speak.
And a lot of times this comesfrom the city manager.
Like you said, the council isthat the police chief might be
asking for resources that thecouncil or the city manager or
(19:24):
the mayor is hesitant.
That's a big ask.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Funds are tight, Maybe we need to get somebody in
here to give us an objectiveopinion on whether or not we
need more people or less people,or how things should be
organized.
One of the things I know youhave been famous for.
But you're famous for is your.
I'm sorry, I'm blanking.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Rule of 60.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
There you go, exactly .
So the rule of 60 in terms ofstaffing, talk a little bit
about that.
And has that stayed constant?
Has that?
Yeah, it has Okay, so talkabout that it turns out.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
It has a lot of face validity and likeness and
likeness.
Yeah.
So the question is always howmany officers do I need?
And that's where this started.
My work in this space started,you know, 2008,.
You think about it.
The city doesn't have enoughmoney.
Police chief says we need morecops.
This town council says that's alot of money.
Maybe we get somebody in hereto give us an objective opinion.
(20:20):
What is that objective opinion?
So I developed this rule, callit the rule of 60.
And the idea is there are twocomponents to it and with those
two components you can get abasic framework of what staffing
in a police department shouldlook like.
So the first part of it is that60% or about 60% of the
department's sworn personnelshould be assigned to patrol.
If you go below that, you'reprobably over-specialized, and
if you go way above that, youprobably have too much invested
in patrol and not enough inspecialization.
So that's sort of the benchmark.
(20:41):
It's not a hard to fast one,but just sort of gives you a
place to start the second piece.
I mean that's easy.
You can get your table oforganization, you count out the
people, you do the math and youcan see how your personnel are
allocated.
The harder part of the Rule 60is looking at the workload of
the officers on patrol.
This part of the rule suggeststhat no more than 60% of their
time should be committed to work, meaning calls to service,
(21:03):
self-initiated activities,community events, whatever it is
that you need to have 40% oftheir time uncommitted?
And why is that?
Well, number one they're notmachines.
(21:29):
You can't expect somebody towork 100% of the time.
Number two is that they need tobe free to react to emergencies
as they occur, if the officersthink that they are overly
patrols and hotspots.
So if they're too busy, they'renot going to do that.
And that sort of inhibits yourdepartment's ability to deal
with crime and quality life.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Can I just interrupt for a moment, because I think
another offshoot of that is ifall you're doing is running me
from job to job to job to job,right, not much of a breath,
maybe a little bit of time to goand eat.
I never get to know thecommunity that I'm supposed to
serve.
That's the other thing right.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
The community becomes just the people you're dealing
with on an interactive basis,from call to call to call to
call, and they were always incrisis.
They're having problems and youget to assume that everybody in
the community is like that andwe know that's not the case.
So that's hard to calculate,that's hard to figure out and
most police departments, mostpolice chiefs, don't have the
capacity to do that, even thesophisticated ones.
I mean, even when you explainthat those two fundamental
(22:21):
principles it's like, yeah, thatmakes a lot of sense, that rule
has sort of stood the test oftime.
When I explain that to policechiefs around the country,
they're like, yeah, okay, I canlive with that, that makes sense
.
How do I figure that out?
So we have a data team thatextracts the information from
the department, does theanalysis and can spit back what
we call the saturation, how muchof the officer's time is
saturated with work, and then,based upon that, you have a
(22:41):
couple of decision points tomake.
You can either add more people,you can either change shifts to
have them work when the work isthere, or you can reduce the
number of calls that they'reactually doing, and that's
probably the easiest but thehardest because things like
traffic accidents and alarmcalls and all the miscellaneous
calls that officers go to on aday-to-day basis.
They scratch their heads going.
(23:02):
Why the hell am I in thiswoman's house scolding her kid
not to go to school?
Why am I here telling oneneighbor not to blow leaves on
the other neighbor's lawn?
It's just a waste of my time.
The silly story yeah, the sillystories, and they all have them
, and that's the great part.
Tell me your silliest call thatyou have.
If you can minimize those calls, if you can organize the patrol
(23:23):
staff in the right ways,working the right times, doing
the right shifts and thensometimes you need to add people
and those are the combinationsof things you can do to address
that workload saturation.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
The other lingering thing out there is concept that
the Justice Department had witha ratio of officer to population
and that seems to be changingand I know you've seen some
recent studies.
So talk about how that squaresup.
Your rule of 60 squares up withthat ratio.
That's out there.
It used to be 2.2.
It's changed.
Where are you at, I think?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
that ratio does a disservice in a number of ways
to our profession.
I mean, it's easy to calculate,it's simple.
How many people do I have inthe community?
That's how many cops I need,period.
Some places that's too manypolice officers.
A lot of places, that's notenough.
You know, when you look at aplace like New York, the ratio
is off the chart.
You go out west and the ratiois a lot smaller when there's
probably not enough policeofficers.
(24:13):
So it's sort of a shortcut.
It doesn't tell the full story.
You know, we recommend notusing it to look at workload as
the basis of making yourdecisions.
Yeah, because-.
It's like saying.
It's like saying Steve, it'slike saying how many people live
in this town, Therefore, that'show many people I need working
in my pizza, my pizzeria.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
It's like well it's a very small number.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Depending upon the demographics of the community,
it would change.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yes, exactly right.
And what's your call volume?
And what are the calls?
What are type one calls, whatare type three calls, what are
emergency calls?
And that's all of the data thatyou need, because I think
that's extremely important tounderstand.
I think it's important tounderstand.
So we're talking to Jim McCabe,author of a new book,
understanding Police OperationalPerformance, former NYPD
(25:06):
inspector and now a professor atSt John's University, and we're
talking about a number ofthings.
It strikes me that you go outseeking sometimes because
requests for proposals are putout there, asking for bids for
somebody to come in and toevaluate a police department,
not only that, corrections atsome point in time, and
certainly district attorney'soffice or district attorney
(25:29):
office investigators.
So you look at these RFPs andyou respond to them.
You find sometimes that theyare written either too broadly
or too narrowly.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yes, so it's easy.
When you read the RFP you cantell that there's always a story
behind the story.
You can tell they don't knowwhat they want.
Sometimes there's so much inRFP it's impossible to provide
the study One in your area.
It was like a 35-page bulletedask.
It would have taken somebody adecade and an army of people to
do it and it was just like thesepeople are just they don't know
(25:59):
what they want.
And then others knowspecifically like this is what I
want.
This is.
It's driven sometimes by ascandal.
Sometimes they had a problem ina certain area that we want a
deeper dive into this, and thenwe'll say, well, okay, that's
fine, but in order to understandthat, you need to look at the
broader organization.
You just can't say, yeah, Iwant to look at training,
because it's an element of theentire assessment process.
(26:23):
You have to assess theorganization.
Training is part of it.
So we try and it's not anupsell.
Sometimes it sounds like anupsell, but we need to do it
right.
If you're going to ask for anRFP, if you're going to have
strangers come into yourorganization and study it, it
needs to be studied right.
So we see it runs the gamut andyou apply to a lot of them and
you miss most of the times andthey're like, ah, that would be
nice to have gone there, I'minterested in.
(26:44):
You could tell by the RFP thatsomebody's put some thought into
it.
Those are the misses that youregret not getting.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
So you're looking at elements.
Is it outside the realm ofpossibility?
First of all, in your view, ifsomebody got your book and
followed it as a recipe if youwill and you know how I am with
recipes as a recipe for what anRFP should ask, it's like a menu
of some sort.
You need to know patrolinvestigations, clearance rates,
all of those kinds of thingswhat are important?
(27:10):
Training Is it enough?
Training, staffing that'simportant, all of the things
that you talk about.
Have there been times whereyou've actually either reached
out to the person who hassubmitted the RFP and said can
you give me a little more detailas to what you're looking for,
because I think it's too broad,or you're missing a couple of
things that I would suggestcould be valuable to you.
Have you had those?
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Certainly the first part, but not the second part,
because most RFPs have to abideby local procurement rules and
most of them give you anopportunity to ask questions
before you bid, so there'salways going to be an
opportunity to get clarifyinginformation.
Not the second part where yousay, hey, I would do this again
and write this Because it'salready done.
It's already done and I've hadoccasions where people have
(27:49):
asked me to help them structurean RFP and I will and they go,
oh great, when you do it, thenwe'll publish it and then you
can bid on it.
I'm like, no, I can't, youcan't do that.
That's sort of a conflict, butit's an important part, and I
think, to your question.
I think the book is more of arecipe that if anybody picked it
up they could start asking theright questions.
And if there was awell-intended police chief or
(28:11):
city manager that wanted sort ofa guidebook on what they should
be looking for and somesolutions perhaps on how to fix
things that they might encounter, that assessing police
operational performance could dothat, would it help you write
an RFP, perhaps because youwould know what the assessor is
going to be looking for and whatkind of information that they
have.
And it's also certainly give youan opportunity to say, hey, we
(28:33):
don't collect any of this stuff.
We should start going back tothe drawing board and seeing
what are we doing here, what?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
are we counting?
Speaker 3 (28:39):
So, for example, sometimes I told you we have
like 162 item data requests.
Sometimes the best response isnot getting anything, because it
shows that the organizationdoesn't have the data, even just
doesn't even collect theinformation that they really
need.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Don't realize it's of value to them so they don't add
it in the CAD or in thereporting systems, exactly we
don't track case closings, so wedon't track clearance rate.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
What do you need?
How do you not do that?
How do you know if your peopleare successful?
How do you know if they needmore training or you need more
of them, if they're not clearingcases effectively?
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Let's take us into an evaluation.
You've been hired, you begin tointeract once it has been
granted to you, whoever thepoint of contact is, and you're
asking for the data, and I knowwe've talked.
Sometimes you get it andsometimes they balk at it.
And the real problem here, jim,and what our listeners may not
know, is sometimes it is thecity council or the city manager
(29:34):
that is asking for it on apolice department and the chief
is reticent to give thatinformation.
I think it begins topotentially expose them.
Sometimes you walk in blindlybecause you don't get what you
needed.
But once you're talking aboutthat, what are the conversations
that you have as you get readyto frame the job?
Speaker 3 (29:51):
That's a great point you raised, Steve, because it
does depend on who's asking forit.
Typically, if it's the policechief asking for it, you have a
lot easier time getting thestudy done.
If it's the council or the citymanager asking for it, over the
objection of the chief, thatoftentimes runs into some
difficulties.
In all cases, what we like todo is set up an introductory
(30:11):
meeting and send them ourresumes so they can get to see
us and know who we are, thatwe're not these beltway bandits
that are coming in here to pullthe pin on a hand grenade and
close the door on that.
We've actually walked the walk.
We've sat in the desk.
We understand the challengesthat the chief is facing.
And it humanizes the process.
It's not us telling you what todo, it's us trying to help you,
(30:32):
help yourself.
And those conversations startdifficult but at the end they're
very, very.
it's a very collegial processeven when the chief wasn't
necessarily on board with theprocess in the first place.
I like to think that you know,among the four of us, when we do
this we have enough credibilitythat we can go in, and then we
don't have egos either.
We're not here to tell you whatto do and my way or the highway
(30:53):
.
It's very much a collegialprocess and we like to think of
it as a collaboration, andthat's why we started the firm
that we started so we could dothat to a greater extent and
have those relationships andcontinue that long-term
relationship that we like.
So when you have the report andyou know like the last one we
just wrote for anchorage wasalmost 200 pages long how can
anybody expect to digest that?
And so there might be a time insix months we say say hey, what
(31:14):
the hell are they talking abouthere?
We're trying this.
Pick up the phone anymore.
You can email us and say hey.
And when you have thatrelationship, when you build it
from day one, the department andthe personnel in the department
have a better opportunity todevelop the solutions that are
appropriate to them, because wedon't have all the answers.
We point you in the rightdirection.
We think and say, every agencyhas a different solution, but
(31:35):
this is sort of what it mightlook like.
Your version of it will bedifferent and we can help you
right-size that for your ownorganization.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Frustrating is it to you, as it has been for me when
I understand.
At the other end of the rainbow, you get paid, they get a
report and you don't necessarilyknow what's going on.
But how frustrating is it toyou where you gave them a
roadmap to begin to improveservice delivery and that
doesn't necessarily happen.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I don't know if it's frustrating is the right word,
steve, disheartening?
No, it's not disheartening,it's.
I don't know if it's regretmaybe, but I wish we could have
convinced them or given themmore information to convince
them that this is the right wayto go.
But you know what People areadults, we're professionals.
I'm not here to say I have Imissed the mark, that's okay.
But I like to think that,having seen what I've seen and
(32:20):
knowing what I know, I think ourrecommendations are pretty spot
on most of the times Not always, but most of the times.
There are kernels that they canwork with and really do good
things with the solutions andthe recommendations that we
provide.
People don't want to do it.
You know, it's not frustratingfor me, it's just I says, wow,
this is good stuff.
Can you help me design, forexample?
(32:44):
I said before about the rule of60.
We'll offer maybe six or sevendifferent combinations of shifts
that the department mightconsider Like wow, I never
thought of that.
Can you help me work with theunion?
Can you help me work with theemployee organization in order
to make this happen?
Like, yeah, that keeps me going, that gets me up in the morning
.
I see an email like that in theinbox.
Oh yeah, I'll take that meetingany day of the week.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
That's the real gratifying part of it Well, it's
like a booster shot.
I guess the big question that Ihave from that is looking back
over your experience since beingactive in the NYPD, what
changes have you seen?
What changes do you see coming,and how do police departments
have to be more nimble in a lotof ways than they had to be 20
years ago?
Speaker 3 (33:25):
You know, the events of 2020 really opened up a lot
of eyes on a couple of fronts.
Number one you know I spokebefore about police doing all
the ridiculous nuisance calls.
You know, and every cop has astory.
You had mentioned it at thebeginning of the discussion here
about alternatives to handlingmental health calls.
So that sort of opened theopportunity, because police
(33:46):
departments typically don't wantto be involved in these things.
You can ask any cop.
I don't want to go to themental health call.
It's just not a fun experience.
You do get an opportunity tohelp people sometimes, but you
know we see this revolving door,revolving door, revolving door,
and it's just one experienceafter the other.
So now maybe communities willtake that seriously, where
there's a co-response model.
(34:06):
There are other people thatneed to be involved in this
conversation, that it's not apolice problem, that the mental
health system needs to step upand help fix this.
Certainly, there arecommunities around the country
that are having thoseconversations and the police
should be an important part ofthat conversation, but they are
not the answer, and I think whatI've seen is the evolution of
our profession.
Is that there's finally somerecognition in that?
(34:26):
Okay, maybe there are otherthings or other social segments
that need to be more responsiblehere, and we need to give the
police a little bit of a I don'twant to say a break, but we
need to sort of take some ofthis stuff off their plate, and
rightfully so, I think policingis collaboration and
relationships, as you well know,and you certainly know, recent
commander, and sometimes policebecome leaders.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
recognizing this ain't work.
We need to figure out who needsto be at the table so we can
give tools to the police officerwho's on the street to be able
to hand this off, so it's notalways handcuffs.
That's the end result.
Is that a fair?
Speaker 3 (34:59):
statement, and then a fair statement for sure.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
And then pushing people towards how do you
collaborate and who do youcollaborate with.
Is that a part of an assessment?
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Yes, but going back to the first part of that
statement is that I think thepolice chiefs probably have been
saying that for a long time.
It's just people have not beencollaborating with them.
They see the need and now Ithink people go okay, we get it,
it's time for us to collaborate.
And then the second part of itis yes, one of the elements of
(35:28):
the book and the study is aboutthe level of community
engagement, and who are youengaging with and are they
stakeholders, and what kind ofrelationship do you have?
And how do you measure whetheror not you're providing the
services that that group or thatorganization or those
individuals need?
And if you don't do that, wellthen you're really kind of
flying blind.
You're driving or flyingwithout knowing where you're
(35:50):
going and whether or not you'remaking any progress getting to
where you want to go.
So it's sort of a.
Again, it's a two-prongedeffort.
It's leading the charge, it'scollaborating with people and
then developing the processesand collecting the data in order
to tell you whether or notyou're being effective in
accomplishing the goals that youwant to accomplish.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Great.
So we're talking to Jim McCabe.
He's a New York professor at StJohn's University and he wrote
a book on understanding policeoperational performance and
we're discussing thatperformance and we're discussing
that.
And I want to drill down alittle bit more in terms of the
RFP, the awarding of an RFP toyou and your particular concern
(36:30):
and the planning that goes intoit asking, collecting, taking
time to evaluate the data beforeyou go out.
You know sort of crafting.
I know that there is.
You know, I know that you havesort of a plan, but that each
plan is customized right whenyou show up there.
So to take us through the timeit takes for that, how much time
(36:51):
you're on the ground, how muchtime it takes for you to turn
around a report.
You know, sitting together withall of the players, because I
know four or five of you go outthere, you do this, you do that,
you do this.
Two of us will do that and nowwe come back and we talk and we
pull together a report.
So talk about that process.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
So the post-COVID era has made that process a lot
easier with Zoom and WebEx andwhatever that, whatever we're
using.
But what we do is, you know, wehave that extensive document
and data request list and ittakes us.
If the agency is responsive,it'll take them about a month to
give us all that informationand for us to analyze it and
produce it into sort ofactionable data that we can use
for the assessment.
(37:29):
And then so within 30 days ofthem giving it to us and 30 days
from us analyzing it, so it'sabout a two-month delay between
the time we say we shake handsand say, okay, we'll do this, we
have that kickoff sort ofmeeting and then within two
months we should be on theground.
And sometimes clients are like,wow, you only want to be here
for three days.
Well, you know what Probablyknow more than the chief knows
about the department Before wewalk in.
(37:53):
So the time on site is reallysort of confirmatory.
This is what we're going to see, and now we're seeing.
So before we go there, the waywe do it is we divide the
organization by functional area.
So somebody will handle patrol,somebody will handle
investigations, somebody willhandle administration, basically
driven by the way thedepartment is organized.
Now, if you could just picturean organization chart, there's
(38:13):
four bureaus.
There's going to be four peopleassigned to handle each one of
those bureaus.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
If there's three, there'll be three of us If
there's two.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Typically there's always two.
Two would be the minimum numberof people that you would send.
So then we go, and then we goabout our business.
A lot of times departments liketo script your day like eight
o'clock with the chief, 8.15,with the deputy chief 8.45.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
You know what that reminds me of, and you and I
know about it.
It's like when you get ready tobe interviewed for a position
in academia, the same thingYou're going to talk to the
provost, you're going to talk tothe president.
You go to here.
You've got no downtime yourself.
Do you like that or do youprefer to adjust?
I don't.
I don't.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
I ask them to reconsider and just throw that
out, because that's the way ofthem trying to control you.
So a lot of times they want tocontrol who you see, how long
you see them, and not see thethings that they're afraid that
you'll see.
So what I prefer is I call itsnowballing.
So you'll go in and we ask thateverybody be available.
You're paying a lot of moneyfor this.
Just have your principal peopleavailable on the days that
we're there.
Don't schedule any trainingsand obviously, if you have last
(39:08):
minute emergencies or whatever,that's different.
But just please have yourprincipal people available and
we snowball.
We'll talk to one and thenwe'll go to another, and then
another, and then oh, that'llgive me an idea I got to go back
to that person.
We find that to be veryeffective at developing the
information that we need.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Jim, I know that we've talked about situations
where you show up, you flyacross the country and deputy
chief just happens not to bethere and he's avoiding you.
So tell us about that.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Yeah, that happens.
Sometimes it's the chief thatavoids you.
I was actually told to go away,take your New York gas pack
home.
So I was actually told to goaway, take your New York ass
back home.
So I go okay, that's fine.
Walk across the street to thecity manager, the mayor, and
I'll tell him my work is donehere and I'll send him an
invoice because I can't studythe department without your
people cooperating.
Oh, hold on, Hold on.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
I can correct that.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
I can correct that.
Let's get you the informationyou need, and that's my fault.
That means I didn't raise thecomfort level of the person, of
the people that I was dealingwith, and that's really
important.
And that's that data collectionphase and that processing
information phase, because youget a chance to ask questions
and probe before you get on theground.
They get the idea that you knowwhat you're talking about and
you're not just some kind ofpencil-headed geek that's going
(40:14):
to come out here and do a numberon me.
And then you do your visit andit usually takes another month
or so to write that up into thedocument and they'll wall its
narrative form.
We've tried experimenting witha scorecard, which has been, I
think, effective is that thefunctional areas just say
investigations.
We have developed a scorecardwhere we'll rate you on a scale
of one to three high performing,somewhat performing, not
(40:35):
performing, those sort ofcategories.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
That has been of the discussion we've had about
balanced scorecard and applyingit to the public sector.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
It is so.
It's sort of a rudimentary wayof visualizing and orienting
people to the problems or to thegood performing things.
And then comes the narrativeand we try to break it down in
narrative form so people canread and understand what we're
talking about.
And it gets long those thingsare.
The doc is lengthy 150, 200pages of the clip, so it does
take some time to put togetherand then we'll provide it to the
client and ask them to spendabout as much time as they need,
(41:06):
but probably about a month Makeany edits they think are
appropriate.
We won't change substantivematerial.
But if they're as stylisticthat they want or you can say
this differently, because thisis going to not sound good when
my people read it that's fine.
We'll edit things to make itacceptable and then that's it.
Most times we're asked to comeback and do some kind of
(41:27):
presentation to some governingbody the council, board of
select men whatever the casemight be.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
But I would think, jim, one thing you didn't say,
and I'm sure you do.
What I didn't hear is how youphrase, how you add the element
of recommendation.
We call them improvementopportunities.
Okay, there you go, that's fine, that's fine.
I didn't hear that.
So that's a part of this.
At the end of your narrative,there is because I mean you know
anytime we're looking at evenacademic pieces.
What did you find out?
What were the findings?
(41:49):
And that's, that's because whatgood are you if you didn't give
me some findings?
and some suggestions forimprovement.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Each of those functional areas will have
recommendations or not.
If it's fine, it's fine.
We're not there to find thingswrong.
When I was in the NYPD.
I was part of a task force thatworked with the McKinsey
company and they did anassessment of the department.
They didn't use criticallanguage, they used improvement
opportunities.
I was like, wow, if I'm ever aconsultant, I'm going to use
that kind of language, so youtold me where the source of that
(42:15):
is.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
I got you yes.
Well, listen, we're running outof time, but there's a couple
of other things that I want totalk about.
This is Jim McCabe, who we'retalking to on the Cop Talk
podcast and he, among otherthings, is a consultant and does
management studies and justwrote a book, rutledge, which
you can find online just on salea little bit ago.
It's not an expensive book$35.99.
And I will put that informationat the end of the notes for
(42:39):
this podcast, but it's calledUnderstanding Police Operational
Performance.
There are things that you do asthe monitor which we have
skirted around, and I knowyou're very busy and very active
in serving as one of themembers of a team monitoring for
NYPD, the federal court.
You do a lot with body-worncameras and I can't imagine the
number of files that are outthere.
(42:59):
You've created some sort of asampling approach and an
evaluation approach.
Can you talk about that alittle bit, as you're looking at
these things that come up on arandom sample?
Speaker 3 (43:08):
That's the start of it.
As you just pointed out, we tryto be as random as possible.
As random we'll give you abetter degree of representation.
The NYPD records somewhat onthe order of 50,000 videos a day
.
50,000 videos a day are loggedinto the system.
So the federal monitor in theNYPD case is looking primarily
at stops, at Terry stops.
Nypd is conducting about 15,000to 20,000 stops a year.
(43:31):
So you can't look at all ofthose.
So how do you select?
Well, the best way to selectthem is to do a random sample.
So we try to get the randomsample and then, as you pointed
out, we do the assessment ofthose encounters.
Was it lawful?
Was the stop lawful?
Was the frisk lawful?
If there was one?
Was the search lawful?
Does it matter whether it'sradio run driven or
self-initiated, or somebody'spointing out somebody at the
scene?
And we look at the supervisoryreview of those.
(43:53):
How is the command itselftreated when it's reviewed by
the command staff?
How do the auditors NYPDauditors look at it?
How closely are we looking atthe same encounter?
The same way, the inter-raterreliability of all these stops
that we assess?
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Is another factor.
The identification of theofficer, the demeanor of the
officer, not swearing, are thosefactors.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
No, not for the course purposes.
It's more of a legal assessment, not necessarily a behavioral
assessment.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Thank you.
So we also talked a little bitago about 14th Amendment issues
self-initiated stops and let'stalk about that not from the
NYPD's point of view but from apolice agency's point of view
and your assessment, yourconcern, your consideration of
that and what kind of guidanceyou would give a chief where
this may be one of the morerisky or libelous potential
(44:44):
issues for an agency.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
So it's a very complicated field, but it's an
important one.
Nobody wants to believe thattheir officers are treating
people differently because ofthe race their race.
I'm sure most police officerswould tell you I don't treat
people differently because oftheir race.
But we know, the data suggeststo us that there is a racial
disparity in the way that thepolice and the criminal justice
(45:07):
system in general deals withpeople of color.
So we just know that.
How do you get to the bottom ofthat?
Why is that happening?
How do you know it's happening,are terribly important issues
that police departments shouldbe dealing with.
It's a prominent element in thecase that I'm working on 14th
Amendment treatment, making surethat racial profiling does not
exist when it comes to stoppingpeople in the street.
Police departments have datathat can help them understand
(45:28):
the issues in this area.
I'm almost confident in sayingthat hardly anyone uses that
data to answer those questions.
When we go into an organization, we don't do that assessment.
It's a complicated assessment.
It's most times not asked forby the client, by the
organization, but we point itout to them.
We orient to them that this isan issue that you need to start
dealing with.
So the simplest way ofunderstanding that is looking at
(45:49):
two data points.
Number one is your traffic stopdata.
Traffic stop data is typicallyself-initiated by the officer.
How are the officers?
Number one who are they pullingover?
How are they treating thepeople that they're pulling over
?
Does race matter in thoseencounters?
And the second is theself-initiated street stop.
Most police departmentsconducts Terry stops all the
time.
It comes in the CAD data anumber of different ways.
(46:09):
Police departments will call itthings depending upon the way
that they're laid out.
But that street stop or thesuspicious person the
self-initiated suspicious personcall it's in there
(46:44):
no-transcript suspicious personexactly what you just said,
right, but it may not besuspicious person.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
So where else do I look for that information so
that I can see the totality ofthe potential encounters?
And it may drive change to say,hey, in the future, this is
what we expect you to code whenyou're stopping someone on your
own, I mean.
So talk about that, because Ithink that's an important
element.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
I don't have an answer to that, steve, but
you're 100% right.
It does depend upon how it'scoded Like.
I don't know what the 18,000police departments how they code
that, but each one knows.
They know if I'm stopping aperson that I think is prowling
a car or about to burglarize ahouse, I know what's being coded
at dispatch.
The idea is that you've got tofigure that out and start
analyzing that information.
That's great.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
All right.
So we've been talking for agood long time with my friend
and colleague, jim McCabe, inNew York.
He is with St John's Universityand also again wrote a book
that I strongly suggest those ofyou who are interested in
evaluating your organization,called Understanding Police
Operational Performance.
How do people get in touch withJim McCabe?
Speaker 3 (47:45):
Well, you could email me.
You can call me.
What's the best way to reachyou?
Well, email would be the best.
It's mccabej1 at stjohnsedu.
M-c-c-a-b-e-j-1 at stjohnsedu.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Well, we're gearing up for the holidays.
I wish you good holidays, myfriend, and thank you for your
time and for sharing, and I wishyou Godspeed everything you do.
As you get ready to leave, youhave the last word.
Do you have belief and hope ina not necessarily a reformation,
but a new, earned respect leasein communities?
Speaker 3 (48:17):
Well, I hope so.
I think we hit a low point overthe last couple of years where
the police have been unfairlycriticized for the work.
I know, because I look at a lotof body camera video, as you
pointed out, that the police doan amazing job in our
communities and part of thethings that I tell departments
when I work with them is thatyou need to leverage that body
camera information and promotethe good work that your people
do.
I see it changing.
(48:38):
As you mentioned a couple oftimes, I'm a professor and I
teach about police in thecommunity and I ask students to
go and ride along with cops andgo to community meetings and
they come back with this sort oflike wow, I didn't realize the
really good guys, she reallytreated the community well and I
didn't expect that.
So I'm hopeful.
I see the change, see thingsstarting to improve, and
rightfully so, because I think alot of police departments and
(49:00):
police officers took it on thechin and it wasn't deserved.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Some was.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
We witnessed some horrific events that needed to
be dealt with, but it doesn'tmean the entire profession is
like that, right, well, thankyou.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Thanks.
That's another episode of theCop Talk podcast on the books
and I want to thank you all forlistening.
We're now being listened to inmore than 80 countries and 3,000
cities and towns.
If you have an idea aboutsomebody who is innovative, a
thought leader, please reach outto me and I will try to connect
with them and see if they'rethe right fit.
I've just been talking to a goodfriend and colleague who I feel
(49:31):
is a thought leader untohimself.
So, jim, thank you very much.
Thank you, steve, it was greatto be here.
Thanks very much.
All right, bye-bye.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Thanks for listening to the CopDoc Podcast with Dr
Steve Morreale.
Steve is a retired lawenforcement practitioner and
manager, turned academic andscholar from Western State
University.
Please tune into the CopDocPodcast for regular episodes of
interviews with thought leadersin policing.
Welcome to the CopDoc Podcast.
This podcast explores policeleadership issues and innovative
ideas.
The CopDoc shares thoughts andideas as he talks with leaders
in policing communities,academia and other government
agencies.
And now please join Dr SteveMorreale and industry thought
(00:25):
leaders as they share theirinsights and experience on the
CopDoc podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey everybody.
Steve Morreale, coming to youfrom Boston, massachusetts,
today, and we are in our 145th,146th episode, and I'm talking
to somebody in the last fouryears We've talked to two times
this will be the third time mycolleague, dr Jim McCabe, who's
sitting in Queens, new York City.
Hello there, jim, good morning.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Steve.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So thank you so much for joining us.
There's a special reason thatwe are getting together.
I will explain to the audiencethat Jim and I are colleagues.
We are friends.
We met, actually, at ACGS manyyears ago.
We've written together, we'vepresented together, we've taught
together, we've traveledtogether, and we've traveled
together even with our beautifulbrides.
And so he is now at St John'sUniversity, after a storied
(01:16):
career with the New York CityPolice Department services, the
monitor for the New York CityPolice Department, and he just
wrote a book with colleaguescalled Understanding Police
Operational Performance.
And in my mind this is veryimportant for us to consider
because not a lot of policedepartments want to assess and
yet it's so important to assessand that's something you've been
doing for years and years andyears.
(01:36):
So, let's get started, jim, bygiving us a little bit of a
thumbnail sketch of yourbackground in policing, how you
got into academia and how yougot involved in police
management studies.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Sure, I started in the NYPD in the mid-80s and,
like a lot of people at the timewhen I joined, college wasn't
required.
I didn't have a college degreeand I decided that in order to
make a career you know my timein the NYPD I needed that
college degree.
So I went back to school assoon as I got off from probation
and I continued going to schooluntil my retirement day.
I ended up with a PhD criminaljustice from John Jay and I
(02:10):
decided I would go out and seewho would be interested in
hiring me.
And, as you know, when we metin ACJS my first academic
conference and I hadn't done alot of academic stuff, so I
wasn't expecting anybody to hireme.
But I got a job.
I went to Sacred HeartUniversity in Fairfield,
connecticut.
I spent 17 years there and lastyear I got recruited to join
the faculty at St John'sUniversity in Queens, which is
(02:31):
right in my backyard.
So I'm very happy to be home,very happy to be working in and
around the New York metro area.
And so the other question washow did I get involved in this
assessment stuff?
When the economy tanked in 2008,police departments, city
managers around the countrybegan looking for solutions to
just hiring and hiring andhiring.
(02:52):
Money was tight, fiscal budgetswere constrained because of the
recession and they were lookingfor help.
So the International CityManagers Association started a
consulting group to provide thathelp and I was recruited to
join that effort in 2009.
And since then I've done 100 orso as the principal
investigator and probably 150 aspart of a team looking at local
(03:14):
police departments around thecountry, been to 44 different
states.
Every region sort of beencrisscrossing the country
looking at local policedepartments.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
So a while ago and I know we keep in contact, we're
talking with each other once aweek, I would say but a while
ago you started your own concernand it is called CERTUS.
So talk about that.
You broke away from ICMA andnow you're doing things on your
own with colleagues.
Talk about that company or thatLLC and what you're doing there
.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Sure, well, it's called CERTUS Public Safety
Solutions and I'm partnered with, as you said, three of my
colleagues Demosthenes Long, helikes to be called Monty Paul
O'Connell and CarolRazor-Cordero and each of us
have been involved in doing thisassessment kind of work for a
decade or more, and each of usalso had long careers in
policing and as well asacademics, we're all PhDs and
(04:00):
working in various universitiesaround the country.
So you know, we decided that.
You know, the work that we weredoing was fun, it was enjoyable
, we were adding value, but wewanted to do it slightly
differently.
We wanted to have more of anengaged and long-term
relationship with our clients,not necessarily to provide the
report and run on to the nextclient, to have more of a
(04:21):
relationship and do deep divesinto the work, into the
organization and into theorganization, and provide that
longitudinal, if you would,longitudinal service as opposed
to a cross-section.
I was just going to say thatsounds like a PhD word.
Longitudinal, it's true, andit's more satisfying.
There's less clients, which isgood.
You can provide more attention,which is better, and we have
(04:42):
that sustained relationshipwhich we enjoy, because none of
us are in this really for themoney.
This is not a get rich quickscheme.
It's about an ability like whatyou're doing with the CopDoc
podcast.
It's an ability to give backand to use our skill and our
experience in order to do thathelp people around the country.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
What strikes me as Jim and myself, is when we're in
the classroom, when we're doingthe podcast, when we're doing
training, when you're doingevaluations, it clearly keeps
your finger on the pulse.
We both may be out of policingfor 10 years, but we're as much
in policing as anybody elsebecause we interact with people
who are doing the job,struggling, trying to figure out
(05:17):
how to do it, and I know youhave the opportunity to sit in
focus groups and some are betterthan others and I know we talk
about them.
But what I'm curious to know iswhat lights your fire?
What keeps you wanting to dothat?
I know you're very keen oncreating opportunities and
options to deal with the dataand let the data speak for an
(05:37):
agency that there's so much datain police agencies that most we
talked about this yesterdaymost don't know what to do with.
So talk about that.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
It's an interesting question.
I don't know what fires me.
I'm a bit of a nerd.
You know my sons-in-law call melike a data nerd and I just get
excited when data, thenumerical data, tells the same
story as what you see, thequalitative data, and what
you're talking to people on theground.
It's just, it provides thatsort of here's another academic
word for you when you cantriangulate the information that
(06:06):
you're seeing, bothquantitative and qualitative,
and it tells the story.
And it tells the story to thepeople that are living that
story.
You see them recognize whatyou're saying is true and then
you can provide this solution orat least recommend some
solutions to them, and then theydo it.
It's like it's terriblyrewarding.
So I guess that's what keeps memotivated.
It's certainly a labor of love.
I just enjoy doing it.
(06:26):
I get up every day with purposeand, like you said, I have my
finger across the country Isthat I get to talk to people and
listen to their stories and seetheir organizations and how
they work.
Like Johnny Appleseed, you knowI can travel around the country
dropping seeds and picking upthings and learning.
So I guess you know, going backto my entry into the police
(06:47):
field, I started learning rightaway and I became like a
lifelong learner, and I'm stilldoing it to this day,
contributing to this effort, toyour work.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Well, thank you.
So very interesting.
We're talking to Jim McCabe.
He's in New York right now.
He's a PhD, a doctor and aprofessor, most importantly, at
St John's University.
He just wrote a book and it'scalled Understanding Police
Operational Performance and itwas just released.
I just ordered it.
I'm sorry I don't have it.
I've seen glimpses of itbecause you've shared with me,
but it's very interestingbecause I think most police and
most police chiefs don'tnecessarily know what it means.
(07:16):
Here's the issue that I have inpolicing, we really don't
especially small agencies take alook at ourselves.
We're fearful of looking atwhat goes on, when really, by
ignoring what goes on, you'reraising risk and you're raising
liability.
And to understand what othersare doing, best practices and
what you're doing and how youcan better utilize time and
(07:38):
limited resources is reallyimportant.
So what I want to do here, jim,is we talked when you first
started to think about writingthis book, and I think it's an
extremely important book.
It's for people to understand,in my view, what is a management
study, what should it look for,what are the questions you
should ask, what are thequestions you should uncover and
what is the process by whichthis is a created, in other
(08:01):
words a request for proposal totake a look at my agency.
I'm trying to explain from myunderstanding.
You'll do a better job in aminute but sometimes it's police
chiefs that ask for this,sometimes it is city managers,
sometimes it is the council,sometimes it is the public that
drives the idea.
Someone from the outside has tocome in and look.
(08:22):
So talk a little bit about that, if you will, and then we'll
start to dig into what amanagement study looks like.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
A lot of layers there , Steve.
I know I'm sorry, yeah, solet's start with.
The first layer is assessmentand the reluctance of police
agencies to assess themselves.
We write about this in the book.
Like policing is you have amonopoly on police service in
your community.
Whatever the geography is,there's typically one police
department.
You're not in risk ofcompetition.
You don't have to continuallyevolve and improve because
(08:50):
there's nobody else coming downthe street to take your position
.
So it's easy to sit and justwait for the problems to arise
and deal with them.
Well, you don't have to assess,you don't have to look forward,
you don't have to learn andsense about what's going on in
the environment.
So there's sort of a naturaltendency not to do this because
you don't have to.
So that comes to.
The next layer is well, whywould you?
(09:10):
Well, there's a few differentreasons now, particularly in
2024, as we're talking.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Number one.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Like you said, you can identify problems and
address them before they becomebigger problems.
So having the data and havingthe capacity you know the
organizational processes to lookat your data, look at your
operations and identify theproblems and fix them is really
important in this day and age.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And I think more importantly, from what?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I see is that as you do this you'd be able to, like I
was saying before, where thedata and the story kind of meet,
you're able to collect theinformation that promotes the
good work that you're doing,that people don't appreciate the
good work, the effort that goesin.
Yeah, sure, they see theproblems, the one-tenth of 1%
that make it to TikTok orYouTube where the police do
(09:53):
something that's objectionable.
But in the most cases thepolice in our country do an
amazing job and when you startassessing what you're doing, you
get to tell that story withdata and examples and you get to
promote that.
So it's sort of a two-edgedsword, number one, two-sided
sword.
You get to identify theproblems and fix them and you
get to identify the really goodwork that you're doing already
and promote that and let theworld know and let the officers
(10:14):
know they're appreciated.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
So again, a lot there and I wrote a few things down.
And one is that really there's18,000 or so different police
agencies from varying sizes,from three to 30,000, 40,000,
whatever.
Nypd has one of the largest inthe nation.
And there's no nationalstandards unto themselves,
there's no National PoliceCollege, and my sense is that
(10:37):
police chiefs who are in thebusiness a lot of them just want
to babysit, they just want tomind the store.
They want to get through threeor four years without any shit.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Without the fires that come in.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Exactly, and I think leadership takes a resolve to
look inside yourself what can Ido better, what can we do better
, what are we doing well andwhat can we improve on?
And I think that's a mindsetthat is starting to take hold.
But there's an awful lot ofoldtime chiefs out there that
just are afraid of what they'lluncover should they look under
(11:07):
the rock, and I think that it'sso misplaced in my mind and I'm
seeing you shake your head, sotell me about that.
Look, I know there'saccreditation.
There's state and CALEAnational.
What do you feel about that asa way to move the industry or
the discipline forward?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I think CALEA does an excellent job.
The agencies that at least I'veexperienced that are accredited
are much better than the onesthat aren't.
But again, it's only the tip ofthe iceberg.
So, for example, you know CALEAwill require that you do some
kind of community survey, andwhich is great.
You know you should be, and ourbook suggests that you should
be understanding through datawhat your organized community
thinks of the services you'reproviding.
(11:44):
But it doesn't tell you what todo.
It doesn't tell you how to doit, it doesn't tell you who to
speak to.
It says you got to do it and alot of times organizations that
are accredited go through thecheck the box exercise because
they have to do it.
They don't really know what todo.
Like you said, they're kind ofafraid of the results that
they're going to use thatopportunity to really collect
the data, and not just foraccreditation but to use the
(12:07):
data.
Collect the data and use thedata in order to inform the way
that you should be doingbusiness, and Kalia certainly
points you in that direction.
So it's a matter of taking thatleadership position and
embracing it and using theinformation to assess your
organization and your operationseffectively and not just that
check the box.
I got to do this to move on.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Well, in some cases, even a report that would come
from you.
It really strikes me I've donea few myself and you hand it to
them and they become almostparalyzed, like what do I do now
?
There's a checklist.
This is so true.
There's a list ofrecommendations.
Why don't you chip away at it?
Why don't you prioritize?
Why don't you try to?
(12:46):
In other words, you just spentfive, 10, 20, 30, $50,000 on
this report.
Will you do something with it?
I'm going through it with myown hometown, where they're
saying you need more people.
Here's the justification forpeople and no one reacts to that
.
But I think this is this is amove in so many places, and
certainly at NYPD to be moredata driven, be more
evidence-based, and whether ornot that takes shape, and
(13:06):
there's resistance with that, itseems to me.
You go out and you measureoutcome.
You did this, this was theoutcome.
Before you did that, there wasno outcome, right.
So you're measuring outcomes,and we talked about that the
other day.
And so the book itself.
I want to spend a moment.
So this again is a book just outon the 17th, just this week, by
Rutledge.
It's called UnderstandingPolice Operational Performance.
(13:26):
We're talking again with JimMcCabe, former NYPD and St
John's University professor.
Here's what the contents say.
Why should you assess Patrolallocation and deployment?
Assessing patrol operations,investigative operational
performance, professionalstandards, administration and
policy assessment I mean theseare big, big buckets Assessing
(13:47):
recruitment and retention,assessment of police, training,
community engagement, assessingunderstanding and managing
organizational culture, which isa big nut strategic management,
planning and futureconsiderations and alternative
service delivery models.
So you wrote an awful lot inthis book that I know comes from
the four of you sitting downand saying well, when we look at
(14:08):
something, what are we seeing?
What are we looking for?
What are the components ofpolicing?
Now I don't want to go over theheads of many listeners.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
I think this is an important discussion to have.
So talk about how this tookshape and the way that we study
departments and put it inwriting and give people the
opportunity to pick it up.
Like if I was a city manager ora police chief, this would be
on my bookcase Because if Iwanted to figure out what I
needed to do to understand howmy organization, my police
(14:48):
organization, was performing,there's a blueprint in there.
If I want to know what I shouldbe looking for out of the
detectives, if I want to knowwhat I should look for for of my
community relations orcommunity engagement platform,
it's in there.
What are my critical policies?
It's in there.
The idea is this was born outof our process that, as we went
into an organization, this ishow we do it and this is what we
(15:08):
would report so clearly overtime.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
you've been doing this since 08, you were saying
so that's a pretty long time.
You've got an awful lot underyour belt.
You've made mistakes and maybethey're not mistakes, but I know
what it's like.
You go into an organization andyou know, you and I talk to
people who are beginningresearch and say ask as many
questions as you can when you'rethere, Cause when you're gone
you're not going to really beable to get a second bite of the
(15:31):
apple.
So I'm sure you walked awayearly on to say man, we're
missing.
That is that a fair statement,and that's for sure.
so it's an evolution right andof course, even even still, body
worn cams are new andtechnology is new and cyber
crime is new and all thesethings that have been piled on.
Social issues are new not new,but have certainly piled on.
(15:52):
Mental health are issues thatpolice deal with all of the time
, and so the role of the policechanges and expands and
sometimes, as you and I havetalked about before, there's
mission creep.
Are we supposed?
Should we be doing all thatstuff?
So I'm sure you're sittingthere thinking, okay, let me
take a look at this agency.
You're going out fairly soon.
You just came back from Alaska,for goodness sakes, and you
take a look at it, and someagencies are more adept than
(16:15):
others.
But what's your view of wherepolicing is and where policing
has to go, understanding thedeficits you sometimes recognize
?
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Well, let's go back to the first part of that
question, the evolution of itand making the mistakes.
So when we go to anorganization now, in 2024 or
2025, for the first time, wewill give them a list of data
and documents that we want tosee.
It sometimes overwhelms theagency because it's so long.
I think we're up to 162 items,and when I first started you
(16:44):
didn't get any of that.
You just sort of parachuted inand started rooting around and
you learn.
Like you said, you come back,you go damn.
I wish I had that informationbefore I went.
So the idea is you collect asmuch data as possible and do as
much analysis as possible thatwhen you get on ground to
actually meet the client and dothe interviews and the
observations, you know as much,if not more, about their
(17:05):
operations than they do.
And it's more of aclarification.
Can you explain this to me?
Can you tell me how this works?
Can you show me X, y and Z?
And that physical presencegives you the ability to see
what you're seeing in the dataand the documents.
And again, it really isfascinating when it comes
together in a way that you go ohyeah, I see what you're talking
about and you're able tomeasure it and you're able to
(17:27):
make conclusions about it andthen recommendations from it.
And it's really important to dothat kind of that work
beforehand, because you owe itto the client, you owe it to the
organization that you'reworking for.
They are better able to helpthem help themselves.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So I'm throwing a lot at you because there's so much
that you know and so much Ithink the listeners can gain
from our conversation.
Data don't always lie.
Sure, and that's what you say,and my experience with this was
with the Drug EnforcementAdministration is that on a
rotating basis, every three orfour years, inspectional
services would come out, justlike NYPD.
And I'm going to come out,captain, and I'm going to take a
look at your organization andyou're going to do an
(18:03):
interrogatory and you're goingto answer questions before we
come out, and of course, you'redigging like oh shit, I got to
answer this question.
You know, you've been throughit and certainly I've been
through that Most agencies donot have to, most posts do not
(18:25):
require those audits, and sothis is a way to hire a company
like you, or ICMA or whoever itmight be becomes pretty
important.
And then I suppose, when youleave well, so react to that,
jim, about the inspiration.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yeah, that's true and I think the way that the
studies, at least that I'veparticipated in, come from the
organization's inability to dothat themselves or they want an
independent quote, unquoteimpartial view that the biases
that are built into doingresearch on your own
organizations they're minimizedbecause you have an independent,
independent, personal bodydoing it.
So that's why organizationslike that independent view.
(19:01):
It's sort of like an accountingwhere the auditor has to be
independent.
If you're looking at a bank ora business in order to give them
an impartial, sort ofunvarnished version of what's
going on, you don't want to haveyour own accountants doing the
auditing of your own books, soto speak.
And a lot of times this comesfrom the city manager.
Like you said, the council isthat the police chief might be
asking for resources that thecouncil or the city manager or
(19:24):
the mayor is hesitant.
That's a big ask.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Funds are tight, Maybe we need to get somebody in
here to give us an objectiveopinion on whether or not we
need more people or less people,or how things should be
organized.
One of the things I know youhave been famous for.
But you're famous for is your.
I'm sorry, I'm blanking.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Rule of 60.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
There you go, exactly .
So the rule of 60 in terms ofstaffing, talk a little bit
about that.
And has that stayed constant?
Has that?
Yeah, it has Okay, so talkabout that it turns out.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
It has a lot of face validity and likeness and
likeness.
Yeah.
So the question is always howmany officers do I need?
And that's where this started.
My work in this space started,you know, 2008,.
You think about it.
The city doesn't have enoughmoney.
Police chief says we need morecops.
This town council says that's alot of money.
Maybe we get somebody in hereto give us an objective opinion.
(20:20):
What is that objective opinion?
So I developed this rule, callit the rule of 60.
And the idea is there are twocomponents to it and with those
two components you can get abasic framework of what staffing
in a police department shouldlook like.
So the first part of it is that60% or about 60% of the
department's sworn personnelshould be assigned to patrol.
If you go below that, you'reprobably over-specialized, and
if you go way above that, youprobably have too much invested
in patrol and not enough inspecialization.
So that's sort of the benchmark.
(20:41):
It's not a hard to fast one,but just sort of gives you a
place to start the second piece.
I mean that's easy.
You can get your table oforganization, you count out the
people, you do the math and youcan see how your personnel are
allocated.
The harder part of the Rule 60is looking at the workload of
the officers on patrol.
This part of the rule suggeststhat no more than 60% of their
time should be committed to work, meaning calls to service,
(21:03):
self-initiated activities,community events, whatever it is
that you need to have 40% oftheir time uncommitted?
And why is that?
Well, number one they're notmachines.
(21:29):
You can't expect somebody towork 100% of the time.
Number two is that they need tobe free to react to emergencies
as they occur, if the officersthink that they are overly
patrols and hotspots.
So if they're too busy, they'renot going to do that.
And that sort of inhibits yourdepartment's ability to deal
with crime and quality life.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Can I just interrupt for a moment, because I think
another offshoot of that is ifall you're doing is running me
from job to job to job to job,right, not much of a breath,
maybe a little bit of time to goand eat.
I never get to know thecommunity that I'm supposed to
serve.
That's the other thing right.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
The community becomes just the people you're dealing
with on an interactive basis,from call to call to call to
call, and they were always incrisis.
They're having problems and youget to assume that everybody in
the community is like that andwe know that's not the case.
So that's hard to calculate,that's hard to figure out and
most police departments, mostpolice chiefs, don't have the
capacity to do that, even thesophisticated ones.
I mean, even when you explainthat those two fundamental
(22:21):
principles it's like, yeah, thatmakes a lot of sense, that rule
has sort of stood the test oftime.
When I explain that to policechiefs around the country,
they're like, yeah, okay, I canlive with that, that makes sense
.
How do I figure that out?
So we have a data team thatextracts the information from
the department, does theanalysis and can spit back what
we call the saturation, how muchof the officer's time is
saturated with work, and then,based upon that, you have a
(22:41):
couple of decision points tomake.
You can either add more people,you can either change shifts to
have them work when the work isthere, or you can reduce the
number of calls that they'reactually doing, and that's
probably the easiest but thehardest because things like
traffic accidents and alarmcalls and all the miscellaneous
calls that officers go to on aday-to-day basis.
They scratch their heads going.
(23:02):
Why the hell am I in thiswoman's house scolding her kid
not to go to school?
Why am I here telling oneneighbor not to blow leaves on
the other neighbor's lawn?
It's just a waste of my time.
The silly story yeah, the sillystories, and they all have them
, and that's the great part.
Tell me your silliest call thatyou have.
If you can minimize those calls, if you can organize the patrol
(23:23):
staff in the right ways,working the right times, doing
the right shifts and thensometimes you need to add people
and those are the combinationsof things you can do to address
that workload saturation.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
The other lingering thing out there is concept that
the Justice Department had witha ratio of officer to population
and that seems to be changingand I know you've seen some
recent studies.
So talk about how that squaresup.
Your rule of 60 squares up withthat ratio.
That's out there.
It used to be 2.2.
It's changed.
Where are you at, I think?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
that ratio does a disservice in a number of ways
to our profession.
I mean, it's easy to calculate,it's simple.
How many people do I have inthe community?
That's how many cops I need,period.
Some places that's too manypolice officers.
A lot of places, that's notenough.
You know, when you look at aplace like New York, the ratio
is off the chart.
You go out west and the ratiois a lot smaller when there's
probably not enough policeofficers.
(24:13):
So it's sort of a shortcut.
It doesn't tell the full story.
You know, we recommend notusing it to look at workload as
the basis of making yourdecisions.
Yeah, because-.
It's like saying.
It's like saying Steve, it'slike saying how many people live
in this town, Therefore, that'show many people I need working
in my pizza, my pizzeria.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
It's like well it's a very small number.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Depending upon the demographics of the community,
it would change.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yes, exactly right.
And what's your call volume?
And what are the calls?
What are type one calls, whatare type three calls, what are
emergency calls?
And that's all of the data thatyou need, because I think
that's extremely important tounderstand.
I think it's important tounderstand.
So we're talking to Jim McCabe,author of a new book,
understanding Police OperationalPerformance, former NYPD
(25:06):
inspector and now a professor atSt John's University, and we're
talking about a number ofthings.
It strikes me that you go outseeking sometimes because
requests for proposals are putout there, asking for bids for
somebody to come in and toevaluate a police department,
not only that, corrections atsome point in time, and
certainly district attorney'soffice or district attorney
(25:29):
office investigators.
So you look at these RFPs andyou respond to them.
You find sometimes that theyare written either too broadly
or too narrowly.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yes, so it's easy.
When you read the RFP you cantell that there's always a story
behind the story.
You can tell they don't knowwhat they want.
Sometimes there's so much inRFP it's impossible to provide
the study One in your area.
It was like a 35-page bulletedask.
It would have taken somebody adecade and an army of people to
do it and it was just like thesepeople are just they don't know
(25:59):
what they want.
And then others knowspecifically like this is what I
want.
This is.
It's driven sometimes by ascandal.
Sometimes they had a problem ina certain area that we want a
deeper dive into this, and thenwe'll say, well, okay, that's
fine, but in order to understandthat, you need to look at the
broader organization.
You just can't say, yeah, Iwant to look at training,
because it's an element of theentire assessment process.
(26:23):
You have to assess theorganization.
Training is part of it.
So we try and it's not anupsell.
Sometimes it sounds like anupsell, but we need to do it
right.
If you're going to ask for anRFP, if you're going to have
strangers come into yourorganization and study it, it
needs to be studied right.
So we see it runs the gamut andyou apply to a lot of them and
you miss most of the times andthey're like, ah, that would be
nice to have gone there, I'minterested in.
(26:44):
You could tell by the RFP thatsomebody's put some thought into
it.
Those are the misses that youregret not getting.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
So you're looking at elements.
Is it outside the realm ofpossibility?
First of all, in your view, ifsomebody got your book and
followed it as a recipe if youwill and you know how I am with
recipes as a recipe for what anRFP should ask, it's like a menu
of some sort.
You need to know patrolinvestigations, clearance rates,
all of those kinds of thingswhat are important?
(27:10):
Training Is it enough?
Training, staffing that'simportant, all of the things
that you talk about.
Have there been times whereyou've actually either reached
out to the person who hassubmitted the RFP and said can
you give me a little more detailas to what you're looking for,
because I think it's too broad,or you're missing a couple of
things that I would suggestcould be valuable to you.
Have you had those?
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Certainly the first part, but not the second part,
because most RFPs have to abideby local procurement rules and
most of them give you anopportunity to ask questions
before you bid, so there'salways going to be an
opportunity to get clarifyinginformation.
Not the second part where yousay, hey, I would do this again
and write this Because it'salready done.
It's already done and I've hadoccasions where people have
(27:49):
asked me to help them structurean RFP and I will and they go,
oh great, when you do it, thenwe'll publish it and then you
can bid on it.
I'm like, no, I can't, youcan't do that.
That's sort of a conflict, butit's an important part, and I
think, to your question.
I think the book is more of arecipe that if anybody picked it
up they could start asking theright questions.
And if there was awell-intended police chief or
(28:11):
city manager that wanted sort ofa guidebook on what they should
be looking for and somesolutions perhaps on how to fix
things that they might encounter, that assessing police
operational performance could dothat, would it help you write
an RFP, perhaps because youwould know what the assessor is
going to be looking for and whatkind of information that they
have.
And it's also certainly give youan opportunity to say, hey, we
(28:33):
don't collect any of this stuff.
We should start going back tothe drawing board and seeing
what are we doing here, what?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
are we counting?
Speaker 3 (28:39):
So, for example, sometimes I told you we have
like 162 item data requests.
Sometimes the best response isnot getting anything, because it
shows that the organizationdoesn't have the data, even just
doesn't even collect theinformation that they really
need.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Don't realize it's of value to them so they don't add
it in the CAD or in thereporting systems, exactly we
don't track case closings, so wedon't track clearance rate.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
What do you need?
How do you not do that?
How do you know if your peopleare successful?
How do you know if they needmore training or you need more
of them, if they're not clearingcases effectively?
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Let's take us into an evaluation.
You've been hired, you begin tointeract once it has been
granted to you, whoever thepoint of contact is, and you're
asking for the data, and I knowwe've talked.
Sometimes you get it andsometimes they balk at it.
And the real problem here, jim,and what our listeners may not
know, is sometimes it is thecity council or the city manager
(29:34):
that is asking for it on apolice department and the chief
is reticent to give thatinformation.
I think it begins topotentially expose them.
Sometimes you walk in blindlybecause you don't get what you
needed.
But once you're talking aboutthat, what are the conversations
that you have as you get readyto frame the job?
Speaker 3 (29:51):
That's a great point you raised, Steve, because it
does depend on who's asking forit.
Typically, if it's the policechief asking for it, you have a
lot easier time getting thestudy done.
If it's the council or the citymanager asking for it, over the
objection of the chief, thatoftentimes runs into some
difficulties.
In all cases, what we like todo is set up an introductory
(30:11):
meeting and send them ourresumes so they can get to see
us and know who we are, thatwe're not these beltway bandits
that are coming in here to pullthe pin on a hand grenade and
close the door on that.
We've actually walked the walk.
We've sat in the desk.
We understand the challengesthat the chief is facing.
And it humanizes the process.
It's not us telling you what todo, it's us trying to help you,
(30:32):
help yourself.
And those conversations startdifficult but at the end they're
very, very.
it's a very collegial processeven when the chief wasn't
necessarily on board with theprocess in the first place.
I like to think that you know,among the four of us, when we do
this we have enough credibilitythat we can go in, and then we
don't have egos either.
We're not here to tell you whatto do and my way or the highway
(30:53):
.
It's very much a collegialprocess and we like to think of
it as a collaboration, andthat's why we started the firm
that we started so we could dothat to a greater extent and
have those relationships andcontinue that long-term
relationship that we like.
So when you have the report andyou know like the last one we
just wrote for anchorage wasalmost 200 pages long how can
anybody expect to digest that?
And so there might be a time insix months we say say hey, what
(31:14):
the hell are they talking abouthere?
We're trying this.
Pick up the phone anymore.
You can email us and say hey.
And when you have thatrelationship, when you build it
from day one, the department andthe personnel in the department
have a better opportunity todevelop the solutions that are
appropriate to them, because wedon't have all the answers.
We point you in the rightdirection.
We think and say, every agencyhas a different solution, but
(31:35):
this is sort of what it mightlook like.
Your version of it will bedifferent and we can help you
right-size that for your ownorganization.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Frustrating is it to you, as it has been for me when
I understand.
At the other end of the rainbow, you get paid, they get a
report and you don't necessarilyknow what's going on.
But how frustrating is it toyou where you gave them a
roadmap to begin to improveservice delivery and that
doesn't necessarily happen.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I don't know if it's frustrating is the right word,
steve, disheartening?
No, it's not disheartening,it's.
I don't know if it's regretmaybe, but I wish we could have
convinced them or given themmore information to convince
them that this is the right wayto go.
But you know what People areadults, we're professionals.
I'm not here to say I have Imissed the mark, that's okay.
But I like to think that,having seen what I've seen and
(32:20):
knowing what I know, I think ourrecommendations are pretty spot
on most of the times Not always, but most of the times.
There are kernels that they canwork with and really do good
things with the solutions andthe recommendations that we
provide.
People don't want to do it.
You know, it's not frustratingfor me, it's just I says, wow,
this is good stuff.
Can you help me design, forexample?
(32:44):
I said before about the rule of60.
We'll offer maybe six or sevendifferent combinations of shifts
that the department mightconsider Like wow, I never
thought of that.
Can you help me work with theunion?
Can you help me work with theemployee organization in order
to make this happen?
Like, yeah, that keeps me going, that gets me up in the morning
.
I see an email like that in theinbox.
Oh yeah, I'll take that meetingany day of the week.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
That's the real gratifying part of it Well, it's
like a booster shot.
I guess the big question that Ihave from that is looking back
over your experience since beingactive in the NYPD, what
changes have you seen?
What changes do you see coming,and how do police departments
have to be more nimble in a lotof ways than they had to be 20
years ago?
Speaker 3 (33:25):
You know, the events of 2020 really opened up a lot
of eyes on a couple of fronts.
Number one you know I spokebefore about police doing all
the ridiculous nuisance calls.
You know, and every cop has astory.
You had mentioned it at thebeginning of the discussion here
about alternatives to handlingmental health calls.
So that sort of opened theopportunity, because police
(33:46):
departments typically don't wantto be involved in these things.
You can ask any cop.
I don't want to go to themental health call.
It's just not a fun experience.
You do get an opportunity tohelp people sometimes, but you
know we see this revolving door,revolving door, revolving door,
and it's just one experienceafter the other.
So now maybe communities willtake that seriously, where
there's a co-response model.
(34:06):
There are other people thatneed to be involved in this
conversation, that it's not apolice problem, that the mental
health system needs to step upand help fix this.
Certainly, there arecommunities around the country
that are having thoseconversations and the police
should be an important part ofthat conversation, but they are
not the answer, and I think whatI've seen is the evolution of
our profession.
Is that there's finally somerecognition in that?
(34:26):
Okay, maybe there are otherthings or other social segments
that need to be more responsiblehere, and we need to give the
police a little bit of a I don'twant to say a break, but we
need to sort of take some ofthis stuff off their plate, and
rightfully so, I think policingis collaboration and
relationships, as you well know,and you certainly know, recent
commander, and sometimes policebecome leaders.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
recognizing this ain't work.
We need to figure out who needsto be at the table so we can
give tools to the police officerwho's on the street to be able
to hand this off, so it's notalways handcuffs.
That's the end result.
Is that a fair?
Speaker 3 (34:59):
statement, and then a fair statement for sure.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
And then pushing people towards how do you
collaborate and who do youcollaborate with.
Is that a part of an assessment?
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Yes, but going back to the first part of that
statement is that I think thepolice chiefs probably have been
saying that for a long time.
It's just people have not beencollaborating with them.
They see the need and now Ithink people go okay, we get it,
it's time for us to collaborate.
And then the second part of itis yes, one of the elements of
(35:28):
the book and the study is aboutthe level of community
engagement, and who are youengaging with and are they
stakeholders, and what kind ofrelationship do you have?
And how do you measure whetheror not you're providing the
services that that group or thatorganization or those
individuals need?
And if you don't do that, wellthen you're really kind of
flying blind.
You're driving or flyingwithout knowing where you're
(35:50):
going and whether or not you'remaking any progress getting to
where you want to go.
So it's sort of a.
Again, it's a two-prongedeffort.
It's leading the charge, it'scollaborating with people and
then developing the processesand collecting the data in order
to tell you whether or notyou're being effective in
accomplishing the goals that youwant to accomplish.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Great.
So we're talking to Jim McCabe.
He's a New York professor at StJohn's University and he wrote
a book on understanding policeoperational performance and
we're discussing thatperformance and we're discussing
that.
And I want to drill down alittle bit more in terms of the
RFP, the awarding of an RFP toyou and your particular concern
(36:30):
and the planning that goes intoit asking, collecting, taking
time to evaluate the data beforeyou go out.
You know sort of crafting.
I know that there is.
You know, I know that you havesort of a plan, but that each
plan is customized right whenyou show up there.
So to take us through the timeit takes for that, how much time
(36:51):
you're on the ground, how muchtime it takes for you to turn
around a report.
You know, sitting together withall of the players, because I
know four or five of you go outthere, you do this, you do that,
you do this.
Two of us will do that and nowwe come back and we talk and we
pull together a report.
So talk about that process.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
So the post-COVID era has made that process a lot
easier with Zoom and WebEx andwhatever that, whatever we're
using.
But what we do is, you know, wehave that extensive document
and data request list and ittakes us.
If the agency is responsive,it'll take them about a month to
give us all that informationand for us to analyze it and
produce it into sort ofactionable data that we can use
for the assessment.
(37:29):
And then so within 30 days ofthem giving it to us and 30 days
from us analyzing it, so it'sabout a two-month delay between
the time we say we shake handsand say, okay, we'll do this, we
have that kickoff sort ofmeeting and then within two
months we should be on theground.
And sometimes clients are like,wow, you only want to be here
for three days.
Well, you know what Probablyknow more than the chief knows
about the department Before wewalk in.
(37:53):
So the time on site is reallysort of confirmatory.
This is what we're going to see, and now we're seeing.
So before we go there, the waywe do it is we divide the
organization by functional area.
So somebody will handle patrol,somebody will handle
investigations, somebody willhandle administration, basically
driven by the way thedepartment is organized.
Now, if you could just picturean organization chart, there's
(38:13):
four bureaus.
There's going to be four peopleassigned to handle each one of
those bureaus.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
If there's three, there'll be three of us If
there's two.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Typically there's always two.
Two would be the minimum numberof people that you would send.
So then we go, and then we goabout our business.
A lot of times departments liketo script your day like eight
o'clock with the chief, 8.15,with the deputy chief 8.45.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
You know what that reminds me of, and you and I
know about it.
It's like when you get ready tobe interviewed for a position
in academia, the same thingYou're going to talk to the
provost, you're going to talk tothe president.
You go to here.
You've got no downtime yourself.
Do you like that or do youprefer to adjust?
I don't.
I don't.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
I ask them to reconsider and just throw that
out, because that's the way ofthem trying to control you.
So a lot of times they want tocontrol who you see, how long
you see them, and not see thethings that they're afraid that
you'll see.
So what I prefer is I call itsnowballing.
So you'll go in and we ask thateverybody be available.
You're paying a lot of moneyfor this.
Just have your principal peopleavailable on the days that
we're there.
Don't schedule any trainingsand obviously, if you have last
(39:08):
minute emergencies or whatever,that's different.
But just please have yourprincipal people available and
we snowball.
We'll talk to one and thenwe'll go to another, and then
another, and then oh, that'llgive me an idea I got to go back
to that person.
We find that to be veryeffective at developing the
information that we need.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Jim, I know that we've talked about situations
where you show up, you flyacross the country and deputy
chief just happens not to bethere and he's avoiding you.
So tell us about that.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Yeah, that happens.
Sometimes it's the chief thatavoids you.
I was actually told to go away,take your New York gas pack
home.
So I was actually told to goaway, take your New York ass
back home.
So I go okay, that's fine.
Walk across the street to thecity manager, the mayor, and
I'll tell him my work is donehere and I'll send him an
invoice because I can't studythe department without your
people cooperating.
Oh, hold on, Hold on.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
I can correct that.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
I can correct that.
Let's get you the informationyou need, and that's my fault.
That means I didn't raise thecomfort level of the person, of
the people that I was dealingwith, and that's really
important.
And that's that data collectionphase and that processing
information phase, because youget a chance to ask questions
and probe before you get on theground.
They get the idea that you knowwhat you're talking about and
you're not just some kind ofpencil-headed geek that's going
(40:14):
to come out here and do a numberon me.
And then you do your visit andit usually takes another month
or so to write that up into thedocument and they'll wall its
narrative form.
We've tried experimenting witha scorecard, which has been, I
think, effective is that thefunctional areas just say
investigations.
We have developed a scorecardwhere we'll rate you on a scale
of one to three high performing,somewhat performing, not
(40:35):
performing, those sort ofcategories.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
That has been of the discussion we've had about
balanced scorecard and applyingit to the public sector.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
It is so.
It's sort of a rudimentary wayof visualizing and orienting
people to the problems or to thegood performing things.
And then comes the narrativeand we try to break it down in
narrative form so people canread and understand what we're
talking about.
And it gets long those thingsare.
The doc is lengthy 150, 200pages of the clip, so it does
take some time to put togetherand then we'll provide it to the
client and ask them to spendabout as much time as they need,
(41:06):
but probably about a month Makeany edits they think are
appropriate.
We won't change substantivematerial.
But if they're as stylisticthat they want or you can say
this differently, because thisis going to not sound good when
my people read it that's fine.
We'll edit things to make itacceptable and then that's it.
Most times we're asked to comeback and do some kind of
(41:27):
presentation to some governingbody the council, board of
select men whatever the casemight be.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
But I would think, jim, one thing you didn't say,
and I'm sure you do.
What I didn't hear is how youphrase, how you add the element
of recommendation.
We call them improvementopportunities.
Okay, there you go, that's fine, that's fine.
I didn't hear that.
So that's a part of this.
At the end of your narrative,there is because I mean you know
anytime we're looking at evenacademic pieces.
What did you find out?
What were the findings?
(41:49):
And that's, that's because whatgood are you if you didn't give
me some findings?
and some suggestions forimprovement.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Each of those functional areas will have
recommendations or not.
If it's fine, it's fine.
We're not there to find thingswrong.
When I was in the NYPD.
I was part of a task force thatworked with the McKinsey
company and they did anassessment of the department.
They didn't use criticallanguage, they used improvement
opportunities.
I was like, wow, if I'm ever aconsultant, I'm going to use
that kind of language, so youtold me where the source of that
(42:15):
is.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
I got you yes.
Well, listen, we're running outof time, but there's a couple
of other things that I want totalk about.
This is Jim McCabe, who we'retalking to on the Cop Talk
podcast and he, among otherthings, is a consultant and does
management studies and justwrote a book, rutledge, which
you can find online just on salea little bit ago.
It's not an expensive book$35.99.
And I will put that informationat the end of the notes for
(42:39):
this podcast, but it's calledUnderstanding Police Operational
Performance.
There are things that you do asthe monitor which we have
skirted around, and I knowyou're very busy and very active
in serving as one of themembers of a team monitoring for
NYPD, the federal court.
You do a lot with body-worncameras and I can't imagine the
number of files that are outthere.
(42:59):
You've created some sort of asampling approach and an
evaluation approach.
Can you talk about that alittle bit, as you're looking at
these things that come up on arandom sample?
Speaker 3 (43:08):
That's the start of it.
As you just pointed out, we tryto be as random as possible.
As random we'll give you abetter degree of representation.
The NYPD records somewhat onthe order of 50,000 videos a day
.
50,000 videos a day are loggedinto the system.
So the federal monitor in theNYPD case is looking primarily
at stops, at Terry stops.
Nypd is conducting about 15,000to 20,000 stops a year.
(43:31):
So you can't look at all ofthose.
So how do you select?
Well, the best way to selectthem is to do a random sample.
So we try to get the randomsample and then, as you pointed
out, we do the assessment ofthose encounters.
Was it lawful?
Was the stop lawful?
Was the frisk lawful?
If there was one?
Was the search lawful?
Does it matter whether it'sradio run driven or
self-initiated, or somebody'spointing out somebody at the
scene?
And we look at the supervisoryreview of those.
(43:53):
How is the command itselftreated when it's reviewed by
the command staff?
How do the auditors NYPDauditors look at it?
How closely are we looking atthe same encounter?
The same way, the inter-raterreliability of all these stops
that we assess?
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Is another factor.
The identification of theofficer, the demeanor of the
officer, not swearing, are thosefactors.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
No, not for the course purposes.
It's more of a legal assessment, not necessarily a behavioral
assessment.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Thank you.
So we also talked a little bitago about 14th Amendment issues
self-initiated stops and let'stalk about that not from the
NYPD's point of view but from apolice agency's point of view
and your assessment, yourconcern, your consideration of
that and what kind of guidanceyou would give a chief where
this may be one of the morerisky or libelous potential
(44:44):
issues for an agency.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
So it's a very complicated field, but it's an
important one.
Nobody wants to believe thattheir officers are treating
people differently because ofthe race their race.
I'm sure most police officerswould tell you I don't treat
people differently because oftheir race.
But we know, the data suggeststo us that there is a racial
disparity in the way that thepolice and the criminal justice
(45:07):
system in general deals withpeople of color.
So we just know that.
How do you get to the bottom ofthat?
Why is that happening?
How do you know it's happening,are terribly important issues
that police departments shouldbe dealing with.
It's a prominent element in thecase that I'm working on 14th
Amendment treatment, making surethat racial profiling does not
exist when it comes to stoppingpeople in the street.
Police departments have datathat can help them understand
(45:28):
the issues in this area.
I'm almost confident in sayingthat hardly anyone uses that
data to answer those questions.
When we go into an organization, we don't do that assessment.
It's a complicated assessment.
It's most times not asked forby the client, by the
organization, but we point itout to them.
We orient to them that this isan issue that you need to start
dealing with.
So the simplest way ofunderstanding that is looking at
(45:49):
two data points.
Number one is your traffic stopdata.
Traffic stop data is typicallyself-initiated by the officer.
How are the officers?
Number one who are they pullingover?
How are they treating thepeople that they're pulling over
?
Does race matter in thoseencounters?
And the second is theself-initiated street stop.
Most police departmentsconducts Terry stops all the
time.
It comes in the CAD data anumber of different ways.
(46:09):
Police departments will call itthings depending upon the way
that they're laid out.
But that street stop or thesuspicious person the
self-initiated suspicious personcall it's in there
(46:44):
no-transcript suspicious personexactly what you just said,
right, but it may not besuspicious person.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
So where else do I look for that information so
that I can see the totality ofthe potential encounters?
And it may drive change to say,hey, in the future, this is
what we expect you to code whenyou're stopping someone on your
own, I mean.
So talk about that, because Ithink that's an important
element.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
I don't have an answer to that, steve, but
you're 100% right.
It does depend upon how it'scoded Like.
I don't know what the 18,000police departments how they code
that, but each one knows.
They know if I'm stopping aperson that I think is prowling
a car or about to burglarize ahouse, I know what's being coded
at dispatch.
The idea is that you've got tofigure that out and start
analyzing that information.
That's great.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
All right.
So we've been talking for agood long time with my friend
and colleague, jim McCabe, inNew York.
He is with St John's Universityand also again wrote a book
that I strongly suggest those ofyou who are interested in
evaluating your organization,called Understanding Police
Operational Performance.
How do people get in touch withJim McCabe?
Speaker 3 (47:45):
Well, you could email me.
You can call me.
What's the best way to reachyou?
Well, email would be the best.
It's mccabej1 at stjohnsedu.
M-c-c-a-b-e-j-1 at stjohnsedu.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Well, we're gearing up for the holidays.
I wish you good holidays, myfriend, and thank you for your
time and for sharing, and I wishyou Godspeed everything you do.
As you get ready to leave, youhave the last word.
Do you have belief and hope ina not necessarily a reformation,
but a new, earned respect leasein communities?
Speaker 3 (48:17):
Well, I hope so.
I think we hit a low point overthe last couple of years where
the police have been unfairlycriticized for the work.
I know, because I look at a lotof body camera video, as you
pointed out, that the police doan amazing job in our
communities and part of thethings that I tell departments
when I work with them is thatyou need to leverage that body
camera information and promotethe good work that your people
do.
I see it changing.
(48:38):
As you mentioned a couple oftimes, I'm a professor and I
teach about police in thecommunity and I ask students to
go and ride along with cops andgo to community meetings and
they come back with this sort oflike wow, I didn't realize the
really good guys, she reallytreated the community well and I
didn't expect that.
So I'm hopeful.
I see the change, see thingsstarting to improve, and
rightfully so, because I think alot of police departments and
(49:00):
police officers took it on thechin and it wasn't deserved.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Some was.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
We witnessed some horrific events that needed to
be dealt with, but it doesn'tmean the entire profession is
like that, right, well, thankyou.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Thanks.
That's another episode of theCop Talk podcast on the books
and I want to thank you all forlistening.
We're now being listened to inmore than 80 countries and 3,000
cities and towns.
If you have an idea aboutsomebody who is innovative, a
thought leader, please reach outto me and I will try to connect
with them and see if they'rethe right fit.
I've just been talking to a goodfriend and colleague who I feel
(49:31):
is a thought leader untohimself.
So, jim, thank you very much.
Thank you, steve, it was greatto be here.
Thanks very much.
All right, bye-bye.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Thanks for listening to the CopDoc Podcast with Dr
Steve Morreale.
Steve is a retired lawenforcement practitioner and
manager, turned academic andscholar from Western State
University.
Please tune into the CopDocPodcast for regular episodes of
interviews with thought leadersin policing.
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