Police Culture Change and Leadership: Dr. Tracie Keesee

Dr. Tracie Keesee, Senior Vice-President, Justice Initiatives for the Center for Police Equity

Thank you for joining us to share some of your insights and perspectives with our readers. Before we speak about the issues surrounding police reform and police-community relations, tell us about your work.

My background is in policing. So, 25 years with the Denver PD, four within NYPD as the Commissioner of Training and the Commissioner of Equity and Inclusion. When I was with Denver PD, I co-founded the Center for Policing Equity 12 years ago. We work with police departments specifically around race and measuring. We say: “Justice through Science.” We measure and help police chiefs look at the disparities and think about ways to reduce that.

How does that works at the organization-level?

We have the National Justice Database, where we collect the information that we get from our chiefs on use of force, pedestrian stops, traffic stops, and policies. We’ll do an analysis and then produce a report and help them walk through things they can do which we know work from not just best practices, but from evidence-based analysis. We also talk about the culture of organizations and how that impacts your ability to do change and to make change. We do a lot of cultural work with police culture and with many organizations and with community as well.

When you worked the beat with Denver PD, did you ever have occasion to discharge your weapon?

Yes. That is something that you train for and something that you hope you never have to do. Luckily, that situation turned out fine for me and luckily for the other person as well. But it is those moments where no matter how much training you've had, you still are human, right?

Training is important, but for the moment that we're in, that's not it.

As you know, for our Jazz Leadership Project workshops, we don’t say “training.” We call it individual and team development, because it's a process of growing in your maturity, your perspective, your skill sets.

Let’s discuss a piece by you in the Washington Post, “After this Crisis, Policing Should Never be the Same.” You wrote:

Acknowledging the truth when police take a life without just cause is a prerequisite. So is acknowledging the historic role police have played in terrorizing black communities, from slave patrols to the enforcement of Jim Crow laws. The latter is well within living memory; police need to account for why many see the badge as a symbol of oppression before they can begin to overcome that perception.

What are some of the ways you and the Center for Police Equity help police begin to overcome that perception?

The first place is the actual science of finding the evidence of what we're seeing. What’s going on? How much do you actually lay at the feet of law enforcement as opposed to systemic criminal justice? Over the last three or four decades, police have been used in ways in which they were never intended to be used.

For instance, what's happening now with health disparities, with COVID. If this is a public health response, why criminalize that? You have officers enforcing social distancing rules, handcuffing someone because they don't have a mask on. What we're talking about is law enforcement versus public safety, which are two totally different things. Same with mental health. We have officers that are responding to calls for people who are in crisis. And the question becomes: whose role is that?

This is what we're talking about at CPE. It's really about efficiencies—is this the best use of time? Is this what the community wants us to be doing? You have to center around community and define what public safety means. What does it feel like? But also: what do you want officers to do? What should their role be?

There are a lot of programs closer to what's happening on the ground: Violence Interrupters in New York. You have Life Camp, Erica Ford’s group. You have Dr. Divine Pryor, Executive Director of the Center for Nuleadership on Human Justice and Healing.

You have the infrastructure on the ground already: invest in those. That's what the community is saying. They're not asking for programmatic approaches. We're talking about systemic procedural changes.

Dr. Keesee speaking at Howard University

You also wrote that a new way of policing requires “new systems for accountability.” Police chiefs have some barriers, police unions for example. What would you say about that?

This has become part of the national conversation. Police unions are there not just for collective bargaining, but to make sure that officers get due process. But then administrative items are included that deter change.

In Minneapolis two weeks ago, the Police Chief said she was walking out of contract talks because she needed those contracts looked at.  Might there be anything that will keep her from doing what she needs to do administratively, with discipline or making structural or procedural changes?

We're going to see a lot more community input and community voice in what ends up in those contracts.

You alluded to a culture within policing and police forces. How do you help culture change happen?

A police chief can do more than just discipline. Chiefs can maintain the consistency of the message. If someone steps up [about something wrong], then that person has to be cared for. Anybody who took that oath understands that you have a duty to intervene. The question with what happened in Minneapolis with George Floyd is: why did the other officers feel they didn't need to intervene?

When you have senior officers on the scene, when you have community members yelling for you [to stop], something else is happening there. We also have to talk about an environment where people don't feel they are even a part of that culture. Black officers go through that a lot, not all, but most. They're navigating a space, sometimes as the only one in that space, where they have to make personal choices that at times don't align with the organization.

You know if you say something, you are going to be ostracized or isolated. Other folks begin to bother you. You've got to make a mortgage, you've got kids in college, you might have elderly parents. You have to make those choices and you shouldn't have to do that.

When you step up and call [wrongdoing] out, chiefs should say: thank you for calling it out. Anybody else who makes it difficult for you for your choice, should be dealt with.

You're saying that chiefs have that within their power.

They absolutely do. They have the power to hold people accountable. When people don't do what you ask them to do, and don't step up to their duty and their responsibilities, there are ways to handle that.

We've spent decades telling communities that it's going to take years to ever discipline an officer. But we've watched seven officers and a chief get fired in less than 24 hours! You can't come back and claim that you can't do this.

It’s intricate. Much will have to be disentangled, but it won’t happen with chiefs saying, “We're going to try this. What do you think?” but then only go to the portion of the community that's going to buy into whatever you say. I’ve told [them] that if you going to just dust off a program that you did 10 or 15 years ago, it’s not going to sell. You're absolutely missing the point.

L-R: Guest, Richard Glover, Bureau Chief Nida Hofmann, Guest, NYPD First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker, Tracie Keesee, Chief Kim Royster, Jewel Kinch-Thomas and Greg Thomas at Minton’s Jazz Club

Your conclusion was:

As the deaths of black men and women continue to mount and the collective pain of a community boils over, some argue that improving policing is pointless — that we’d be better off defunding departments entirely. I can sympathize; this is difficult and, at times, discouraging work. But on the other side of this crisis, we will still need policing in some form. We should strive to align it with the values of communities as much as possible. 

And while we work toward a new way of policing, we should also imagine a country that doesn’t use law enforcement as its default response to unaddressed epidemics such as homelessness, generational poverty and substance abuse. Sending guns and badges can’t provide anyone with a home, a job or freedom from addiction. And it certainly can’t compensate for our inadequate public health response to covid-19. 

Instead of threatening protesters with police, we could deal honestly with the pain driving people to the streets. That will require real strength and real leadership.

Please riff on the kind of leadership that is needed to move us forward. Vision is one of those elements, right?

Great question. You know I love the work that you and Jewel do around leadership, but I'm going to say something just from my heart. I don't know if we have folks who can do this.

What's clouding some leadership now is reconciling what's actually happening in this country. If you have a clouded vision of what's happening today, I don't think all the leadership courses in the world are going to help you.

You can say the right things. You can do some surface things that could help. But we must talk about and work through this issue of race. I've been on many calls last week where people can't even say the word. I'm still questioning whether or not we have the will, whether we have the ability to do some of this.

I think we do. But, fundamentally, you've got to uncloud your vision as a leader.

That means you have to be in places where you don't talk, where you self-reflect, where you own up to your complicity, where you have to think about, really, are you the right person to even do this work? To me, part of such leadership is knowing when you need to step aside and let somebody else step up and do that work.

That's why, in the article, we talk about having diversity throughout the ranks and up in those policy discussions. That’s equally as important as systemic and structural changes. So, when we talk about leadership, some are going to have to step back and say “you know what? I need some help in this space. And I don't know what I need to do.” This is very different than promoting black faces in places to say that you understand; this is about educating yourself. This is about listening. This is about asking questions. This is about taking what you are hearing and learning and pushing yourself to go into a space where you may not be comfortable, or even know what's going to happen on the other side. To me, that’s the type of leadership we're going to have to see show up over the next year, the next decades.

When you don't know, say I don't know. You don't have to have the answers to everything. And cops think we have to have answers to everything, but we just don't.

Thank you so much.

You are so welcome.