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Interview With Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary Lou Leary-Office of Justice Programs-DC Public Safety Radio

November 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

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Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2012/06/interview-with-acting-assistant-attorney-general-mary-lou-leary-office-of-justice-programs-dc-public-safety-radio/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes:  From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety.  I’m your host, Leonard Sipes.  Today’s interview is with acting Assistant Attorney General, Mary Lou Leary of the Office of Justice Program’s U.S. Department of Justice.  Miss Leary has 30 years of criminal justice experience at the federal, state and local levels, with an extensive background in criminal prosecution, government leadership and victim advocacy.  Before joining the Office of Justice Programs in 2009, she was Executive Director of the National Center for Victims of Crime.  She also served in leadership roles at the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.  From 1999 to 2001, she held several executive positions at the Department of Justice including the Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs, Deputy Associate Attorney General, and Acting Director of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Programs. For the sake of brevity, the Office of Justice Programs oversees the work of the federal effort to evaluate fund and provide technical assistance to the country’s criminal justice system.  Before getting into the bulk of the interview, I want to provide just some of the examples of the Office of Justice Programs in terms of what they do.  Just some of the topics, bullying, DNA backlogs, domestic violence, elder abuse and mistreatment, faith-based programs, hate crimes, human trafficking, identity theft, indigent defense, mentoring of offenders, juvenile justice law enforcement tactics, prisoner reentry, victim assistance, and a database as to what works.  Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary Lou Leary, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Mary Lou Leary:  Well thank you, Len.  It’s a pleasure to be here.

Len Sipes:  I’m really happy for you to be here.  Then we had Laurie Robinson on before she left.

Mary Lou Leary:  I know.

Len Sipes:  And we had a real exciting interview, I think, and a very popular interview.  How does it feel going … and Mary Lou has left, she was the Assistant Attorney General, and now you’re in the Acting position.  That’s a lot of responsibility thrust on your shoulders.  But you’ve been in this position before.

Mary Lou Leary:  I have, Len.  It actually is quite a natural transition for me.  I was serving as the Principle Deputy Assistant General to Laurie Robinson at OJP for the three years of this administration.  And then when Laurie moved on, I stepped into the role of the Acting Assistant Attorney General.  And for me it feels just right.  I did this before during the Clinton Administration.  And it’s kind of funny, we’re into repeat performances.

Len Sipes:  Yes, we are.

Mary Lou Leary:  Because Laurie was the Assistant Attorney General during that administration.  And I came in when she left and served as the acting for the rest of the term.

Len Sipes:  But it’s such a broad, big organization.  Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, National Institute of Justice, the National Criminal Justice Reference Service that I worked for for five years early on in my career.  I mean, it just goes on and on and on in terms of the agencies.  Office for Victims of Crime, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Community-Oriented Policing, you have such an amazing amount of organizations under you.

Mary Lou Leary: Yeah.  Well that’s what makes this job so exciting, and really, so much fun.  There is this incredibly broad spectrum of issues.  We are the only federal agency that is dedicated to serving state, local and tribal public safety entities.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Mary Lou Leary:  And so public safety includes every piece that you could possibly find in the criminal justice puzzle.  All the systems, all the programs, it’s quite an extraordinary range.

Len Sipes:  Well one of the things that I brought up in Laurie’s interview was the fact that you get all these technical reports on CSI, Crime Scene Investigation.  All the fallacies and the fact that you watch these programs on television and most of what you see is not how it’s ordinarily done. But all these technical documents that develop all that expertise come from your shop.  You are Madam CSI.

Mary Lou Leary:  Yeah.  Well, in a way.

Len Sipes:  You are.  You’re Madam everything.  You’re Madam offenders leaving the prison system, you’re Madam corrections, you’re Madam law enforcement, you are the very epitome of the criminal justice system at the federal level.

Mary Lou Leary:  Well that’s exactly what OJP does.  We cover every single issue in the criminal justice system.  And it’s wonderful that we do that and that we have that broad scope.  Because we know that the best approach to take, and the one that really works, is a comprehensive approach.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Mary Lou Leary:  You can’t deal with one aspect of the criminal justice system without paying attention to the whole of it.  So for instance, if you increase the number of arrests that you’re making, that’s going to have an impact.  It’s like a domino effect all the way through the system.  The pre-trial, the prosecutor’s office, the court system, the prison system, probation, parole, reentry, it all is impacted, each piece by what happens in the other.

Len Sipes:  Yeah.  Nobody’s in isolation.  Everybody’s dependent on everybody else.

Mary Lou Leary:  Exactly.

Len Sipes:  So what one part of the criminal justice system does affects the other parts of the criminal justice system.

Mary Lou Leary:  Exactly.  And that is, in fact, one of the primary messages that OJP delivers to the criminal justice field.  We are all in this together and the only way we can attack these problems and have success is by working together and by being conscious of the impact that one individual agency’s actions have on the rest of the system.

Len Sipes:  There are three things I want to get to pretty quickly in the interview.  Number one, a practitioner focus.  I’ve spoken to you in the past and one of the things that you’ve been adamant about is this idea of serving the practitioner, serving the people who actually run the criminal justice system, being sure that they have the research and the facts and the technical assistance to make sense of their day-to-day lives.

Mary Lou Leary:  Yes.  That is one of my primary goals at OJP.  I, myself, as a practitioner for 30 years, I was a local prosecutor, I was a federal prosecutor, I ran a national victim’s advocacy organization.  So I know how difficult it is for practitioners who are incredibly busy, to learn about what’s actually being researched in their field, and what works, what doesn’t work, what are the latest trends.  You are putting out fires all day, every day and you don’t really have the time to dig up the evidence and maybe base what you do on what is known to be effective.  And so that’s our job. We’ve got to figure that out.  We have to do the research.  We have to do the statistical analysis.  We have to read all the literature and understand the evidence about what does work in the criminal justice.  And then one of our most important jobs is translating that.  You have to make that understandable and accessible to practitioners in the field.  A mayor should be able to just go to a website or make a phone call and communicate that, “Hey, you know what we’re having a big problem with youth gangs in our city.  Do you know if anybody out there is doing something that’s been effective?  Do you know if there are any researchers who are really looking at this problem?  Help me out here.”  That’s our job.

Len Sipes:  Right.  You have said that they need to get answers.  They don’t need to get a telephone-sized book of research.  They don’t need to be given an esoteric overview, they need answers.

Mary Lou Leary:  Exactly.  But those answers better be good ones and they better be based on real evidence.

Len Sipes:  Right.  And I wanted to start the interview off with that background.  Because you are Madam criminal justice, you have served in the criminal justice system, you’ve been a practitioner.  So you’re just not a policy wonk that hangs out in DC.  You have actually served in the bowels of the criminal justice system and you know what it’s like, how difficult it is to get ahold of research and make sense of research.

Mary Lou Leary:  Yeah.  Exactly.  And I think that that is one of the things that I bring to the job that, frankly, makes me effective in that position.  Because I really understand, I get it.  I know what’s happening on the streets.  I learned everything … I know about that from working with local police departments.  I ran the cops office for a while which provides police to communities across this country.  And I think it’s important to have real respect for research and science, but also to have that practical, pragmatic approach to problems.

Len Sipes:  Absolutely.  You’ve been there.  So that’s the message I wanted to get out.  But having said that, research is an extraordinarily important part of what it is that you do.  Which we say we can substitute best practices for that word research.  Research, that word is a little scary to a lot of the people in the field. What you’re trying to do is establish best practices.  Because states and localities, they’re running out of money.  The budget issue is such a huge issue throughout the country for criminal justice organizations.  They’re basically saying, “Fine, if we’ve got to deal with a 15% reduction in our budget, we’ll do what we have to do.”  But what’s the way … what does the research say … or what are the best practices to maximize what it is we do?  Is there technology; is there new ways of doing things?  What can we do to maximize what it is that we do on a day-to-day basis?  And that’s what you’re emphasizing.

Mary Lou Leary:  Right.  Well you hit the nail right on the head, Len.  It’s true that resources are really tight.  And looking ahead, we can only presume that they will be getting tighter.  And so in that climate, it’s more important than ever that you base your strategy on what is the best practice, what we know works.  And it’s just as important not to waste any time, not to waste any resources human or financial, on things that don’t work.  Because we do know a lot about what doesn’t work as well and we want to discourage the use of those approaches that don’t work.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Mary Lou Leary:  We’re trying to make that approach easy and accessible, understandable.  In fact, just last year, we launched something called crimesolutions.gov.

Len Sipes:  Yeah.  Good.  Thank you.

Mary Lou Leary:  That’s a website.  Yeah.  It’s a great tool.

Len Sipes:  Crimesolutions.gov.

Mary Lou Leary:  It is a wonderful tool.  We’ve gotten great feedback from people.  And here’s how it works.  We have a group of researchers who scour the literature and look at all the practices, and rate programs that have been used across this country to address different crime problems.  So they rate them and we put it up on the website.  So you can see what’s effective, what’s working, and what’s not.  And you can search it every which way with all kinds of different search terms.  So say you’re the chief of police, or you’re running the youth program in your community, and you want to know is there anything out there that is evidence based that has worked on this issue.  You can go to crimesolutions.gov and search.  And you will see what programs have been used in that context, and which ones have been proven effective, and which ones have not really had an effect, and which ones are still kind of in the proving stage.  And this website now has over 200 programs on it.  And if you don’t find what you’re looking for the first time, go back for sure, because we are adding new programs every single week.

Len Sipes:  And the thing I want to emphasize about the website is that again, it’s not this esoteric, oh my God I’ve to spend five years reading this stuff.  It gives you a very quick chart in terms of what works and what doesn’t.

Mary Lou Leary:  Exactly.

Len Sipes:  And then once you’ve figured out what works, what doesn’t, then you can research it from there.  So people should not be afraid, “Oh my God, not another esoteric website or piece of research.”  It’s easy to read.

Mary Lou Leary:  Exactly.  It’s not wonky in any respect.

Len Sipes:  There you go.

Mary Lou Leary:  And if you are more interested in reading the study itself, the methodology, and so on, you can do that.  You can just go deeper into the website and really get that kind of a nuanced understanding of it. But if you want something that’s quick and dirty and practical, that is your tool.

Len Sipes:  There you go.  Now you’re also talking about opening some sort of technical assistance outreach program, right.  So once they say, “Oh, geezies, peezy” this particular thing works in terms of what you said, in terms of gangs.  Here are the research in terms of where it works.  I wonder what funding technical assistance other research is available.  And so you’re now instituting a help desk, if you will.  Once they’re moving in that right direction they can talk to somebody who knows the subject well.

Mary Lou Leary:  Well, in fact, we have several ways of getting at that.  You can go on the website, ojp.gov and you can look under funding opportunities.  And then you also look at our science agency’s National Institute of Justice, and Bureau of Justice statistics to see what research reports are coming out, what statistical reports are coming out.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Mary Lou Leary:  But if you have a problem that you don’t really quite understand in your community and you need some expert help in assessing the problem, trying to figure out what is really going on here.  We are working on the development right now of something called the Diagnostic Center which would be kind of a companion piece to crimesolutions.gov.  Crimesolutions.gov will tell you about the programs that already exist and whether they work or don’t.  The Diagnostic Center will bring in some expert technical assistance to help you get a handle on what is my problem in my community.  And then we’ll match you will technical assistance and experts who can help you marshal the evidence-based practices to address that.

Len Sipes:  So we’re talking about a one-stop shop.

Mary Lou Leary:  Yeah.  Absolutely.

Len Sipes:  That’s amazing.

Mary Lou Leary:  Yeah.  It’s very exciting.

Len Sipes:  I’ve been in the criminal justice system for 42 years.  Why did it take us so long to do that?

Mary Lou Leary:  I know.  It is quite remarkable.

Len Sipes:  It is quite remarkable.  What you have done is significant.  It is one of the very few times in my 42 years in the criminal justice system that I’ve said that I can go to one spot, get a quick summation of the research, talk to somebody, get quick answers, that is just incredible.

Mary Lou Leary:  It’s very exciting.  And it really is the embodiment of what we have been encouraging for years.  Which is you know what criminal justice practitioners, there’s some sound research out there that could actually help you get your job done every day.  These researchers, they’re not a bunch of egg heads who don’t know how to talk to cops and other folks.  They do know and they want to talk, because they figured out all this cool stuff that you could be using to do a better job every day.

Len Sipes:  Right.  And again, with the budget situation people are looking for answers. I want to re-introduce Mary Lou Leary, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.  Giving out the website, it is www.ojp.gov, www.ojp.gov.   You did a heck of a YouTube video a couple years ago when you were Director of the Office a Center for Victims of Crime.  So obviously, you’re interested in new ways of bringing material, fresh ways of bringing material to the criminal justice system.

Mary Lou Leary:  Yeah.  Very interested in making all of our information easily available, quickly available.  You got to meet people where they are.  And we know from research that actually in a … not very long, most people will be accessing internet, for instance, from their mobile devices as opposed to a desktop. So if you can’t get to where the people are, your message will not be heard.  So we’re very interested in exploring the full gambit of social media, Twitter, You Tube and all kinds of things that my teenage daughter could probably tell you more about than I could. But we know that that’s the way that you got to go if you want to be helpful to people.

Len Sipes:  Your background, former prosecutor, former Executive Director for the National Center for Victims of Crime.  A lot of people are going to take — they’re going to like that.  I’ve heard people throughout the decades saying, “Too many policy wonks at OJP, not enough real people who have been in the criminal justice system.”  You’re a former prosecutor; you’re a staunch advocate of victims of crime. That brings … I’m not going to say a new perspective to the Office of Justice Programs, but it brings … in the minds of a lot of people … a refreshing perspective.  You understand how this system works, you understand criminal victimization.

Mary Lou Leary: Well I certainly do.  And I’ll tell you, having been a prosecutor for so many years, this is my dream job.  Because all those years I saw these problems that were seemingly intractable in the criminal justice system.  And you would see the same defendants.  You’d prosecute them this month and then you’d prosecute them next month for a very similar offense.  And sometimes you just kind of felt like you were just doing a clean-up operation and not really solving the problem.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Mary Lou Leary:  And you could see that the problems that played out in the courtroom were so related to many, many other public safety issues that never came into the courthouse. So now this … OJP puts me in a position where I can actually address those issues.  And I can reach out and develop partnerships with all kinds of public safety agencies, tribal leaders, philanthropic organizations, foundations, private sector, all kinds of partners all of whom really see that this issue matters, it’s so fundamental to the way we live in this country.

Len Sipes:  One of the things that you said to me is the idea of bringing everybody to this table to maximize our impact on the criminal justice system, so whether it’s foundations, whether it’s private organizations, to take all these dollars, all that expertise, and marshal it to have the greatest impact.  And I find that interesting.

Mary Lou Leary:  Oh, it is fascinating.  And we’re really just scratching the surface.  We had a meeting at OJP with foundations, a number of foundations about 60 of them, all of whom have interest in various aspects of criminal justice.  A number of them, for instance, are really interested in kids who get involved in the criminal justice system.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Mary Lou Leary:  Many of them are interested in preventing kids from getting involved in that system.

Len Sipes:  Sure.

Mary Lou Leary:  There’s a whole domestic violence community out there with interest in the philanthropic sector.  And we have been partnering with a number of those kinds of philanthropic groups projects that we are doing at the Office of Justice Programs.

Len Sipes:  So nobody’s out there in isolation.  It is not [PH] PIU versus the Office of Justice Programs of the Department of Justice.  It’s PIU in concert with the Office of Justice Programs.

Mary Lou Leary:  Absolutely.

Len Sipes:  And that applies to the Urban Institute, that applies to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Correctional Association.  It doesn’t matter, the whole idea is let’s all work in lockstep because state and locales are hurting from a budget point of view.

Mary Lou Leary:  That’s right.  And if you … what we try to do is we try to seed innovative projects around the country, new approaches to problems.  But after a certain period of time, the program has to move forward on its own and we try to seed other places.  So in order to plan for sustainability of those innovative approaches, you have to look to other places in the community, other places in the philanthropic world, and so on.  So we work with our grantees to try to educate them about that.  And we are able to facilitate communication between the philanthropic sector and grantees.

Len Sipes:  But I don’t want to get too far away from that answer, the question I had a couple minutes ago.  Your role as a prosecutor has been firmly established.  And a lot of people feel very comfortable about that.  But you’ve seen victims, talked to victims of crime, you’ve represented the National Center for Victims of Crime.  You understand the nature of criminal victimization on a very personal level.

Mary Lou Leary:  I certainly do.  This actually is a real passion of mine.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Mary Lou Leary:  And it has been ever since I started as a baby prosecutor decades ago.

Len Sipes:  Yes.

Mary Lou Leary:  I worked in the Middlesex County DA’s Office.  We had one of the very first victim/witness assistance units in the country.  And in fact, it was established by Senator John Kerry when he was the DA in Middlesex County.  And I learned from those advocates, how critically important the way you treat victims can be to their ability to recover. They need to be treated with respect and dignity.  And you need to make a victim feel safe.  And you need to make sure that a victim is heard.  That’s the most important thing.  So much more important than winning your case.  And I really feel that.  And I have really supported victims throughout my career.  And at OJP is a great opportunity to continue that. I am really excited because part of what we do, a big part of what we do at OJP, is working on victim issues through our office on victims of crime.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Mary Lou Leary:  And we have spent the last two years talking to folks who work with victims of crime all over this country.  We’re talking to practitioners, we’re talking to researchers, we’re talking to advocates, we’re talking to cops, you name it.  Anybody who has an interest in victim issues. What’s happening in this field, what are the unmet needs?  Crime has changed so much over the years.  Now we have all these financial frauds -

Len Sipes:  Yes, we do.

Mary Lou Leary:  – and internet perpetrated crime, and stalking through the internet, through devices you place on people’s cars, and so on.  There’s just a whole new world out there.  And it will continue to evolve. So the Office of Victims of Crime is looking at that and talking with people in the field saying, “Okay, we have a lot of these needs that have been with us forever that we haven’t met yet.  How do we meet those needs better, and at the same time, deal with these emerging crime issues and these emerging needs of victims?”

Len Sipes:  And I just wanted to point out there’s a lot of people out there who will be applauding as they listen to this.  Because, again, they have this image of people at the top of the Office of Justice Programs as being stoic policy wonks.  You’re not.  You’re a real live human being who’s suffered through this issue personally, directly, and you know, you’ve tasted it, smelled it, felt it, you know what’s going on out there.

Mary Lou Leary:  That’s exactly right.  And that’s why it’s so important to get out in the field and talk to people.  You have to see it, you have to talk, you have to hear it, you have to walk the walk. What we will see coming out of this big effort with Victims of Crime this summer, I believe, at the end of the summer is a report called Vision 21.  And that is to shape the path forward for the victim services field, into the 21st century and beyond.

Len Sipes:  That’s great.

Mary Lou Leary:  Yeah.  The Victims of Crime Act was passed in 1984.

Len Sipes:  Yes.  A long time ago.

Mary Lou Leary:  Things have changed a lot since then.

Len Sipes:  Yeah.  They have.

Mary Lou Leary:  And it’s time to revision the way we serve victims.  So I am just so excited.  I can’t wait to see that report and to most importantly, act on the recommendations.

Len Sipes:  In the final minutes of the program, one of the things I suppose that we want to do, is to assure that regardless of whether it’s law enforcement, corrections, parole and probation, the judicial system, the juvenile justice system which Attorney General Eric Holder is certainly a huge proponent in terms of this issue of tremendous violence being directed towards children.  It doesn’t matter what the issue is, your job is to be sure that the best research is being done, answering questions on the part of people at the county and state and local level, giving them access, quick access to this information via the new databases that you’re putting out.  So that’s the bottom line.  If there are questions, or if there are issues, they can come to the Office of Justice Programs for answers.

Mary Lou Leary:  Absolutely.  And they’ll find real people, and people who care very, very much about their work and about public safety in this country.

Len Sipes:  In the sense of being evidence based, we … I don’t want to get into a methodological discussion but it’s a matter of taking a look at the better research.  The research that’s fairly well done.  And trying to draw conclusions from that research.  And that’s essentially what you guys have done, in terms of crimesolutions.gov and in terms of the Diagnostic Center. Take a look at Project Hope, which is a wonderful program in Hawaii which has dramatically reduced recidivism as a parole and probation program, a substance abuse treatment program.  And what you’re doing is funding its replication in other areas throughout the country to see if the success that they had in Hawaii, which was considerable, can be replicated in Baltimore and in Des Moines, and in San Antonio.

Mary Lou Leary:  That’s exactly right.  In fact, we do that a lot with different kinds of projects.  Project Hope, this probation program was developed by Steve Alm, who was a former U.S. Attorney in Hawaii.  And right away we could see that his approach was different and that it was really interesting and promising. So we worked to support that program from the get go and then we sent in a team to research and evaluate it.  Those evaluations would knock your socks off, it just made such a big and positive difference.

Len Sipes:  It does.

Mary Lou Leary:  Exactly.  So now that’s just kind of like the business of OJP.  You get good programs started, you evaluate them, if the evidence shows, ‘whoa, this really works’, then you want to get it out to as many communities as possible and tweak it to apply to the needs of that particular individual community.

Len Sipes:  And getting that information out to those communities in the right way.  That you don’t have to struggle.  It’s like, oh my God, I remember when I worked for the Maryland Department of Public Safety, this is decades ago.  The Public Safety Secretary would bring this document from NIJ, telephone-size book, plop it on my desk and go, “Sipes, I don’t have time to read this.  Give me a one-page summation.”

Mary Lou Leary:  Right.

Len Sipes:  “Just tell me if it works, doesn’t work, and why it works and doesn’t work.” Because he knew that I used to work for the National Criminal Justice Reference Service.  So he sort of figured I would know how to read this big, long, esoteric document. What you’re trying to do is to take this research and make it come alive.

Mary Lou Leary:  Yes.  Make it real.  And you demonstrate that through actual programs in the communities.  Reentry is a great example of that.  We are helping communities across this country to deal with the massive return of incarcerated offenders.

Len Sipes:  Seven hundred thousand a year.

Mary Lou Leary:  Seven hundred thousand a year.  And where do they go?  They go right back to the neighborhoods that they came from.  The same environments, the same folks, the same buddies in the neighborhood. And you can’t just release people from incarceration, send them right back to that environment and expect that they are going to do just fine.  They’ve learned their lesson and now they’ll behave.

Len Sipes:  No.  It doesn’t work that way.

Mary Lou Leary:  No.  You have to provide support, and it has to start right from the moment of incarceration.

Len Sipes:  And if we did that, we could reduce the budgets of states and locals by huge amounts.  If you get just a 15% reduction in recidivism in the rate of return back to the prison system by providing programs, you’ve just saved that county, that state, tens of millions of dollars.

Mary Lou Leary:  Exactly.  And that is one of our major goals.  Not only to help them save that money, but at the same time, to improve public safety.  Because if your reentry programs really work, you will not only save money, but people in that community will be safer and you will reduce re-victimization.

Len Sipes:  And that’s the common theme throughout this entire program, reducing re-victimization.

Mary Lou Leary:  Exactly.

Len Sipes:  That is what … you’re the office of reducing re-victimization.

Mary Lou Leary:  Yes, we are.

Len Sipes:  Yes.

Mary Lou Leary:  And for me, that’s a wonderful orientation because I am so passionate about crime victims.

Len Sipes:  Final seconds of the program.  The law enforcement side of things, it’s people, places, little focusing on high-risk offenders, high-risk places.

Mary Lou Leary:  Yeah.  We know a lot about hot spot policing, for instance, where you look at the hot spots through your crime mapping and so on.  And that’s where you want to target your resources.  We know that works.  We know that there are innovative approaches to dealing, for instance, with youth violence.  We know that there are ways of saving money on incarceration and then reinvesting it in things that do work.

Len Sipes:  And a beauty about all this is that if you go to www.ojp.gov and if you go to the Crime Solution’s database you can get a tremendous amount of information on all of this.  Really want to express my appreciation to Acting Assistant Attorney General, Mary Lou Leary for being with us today.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety.  We really appreciate all of the cards, letters, comments and criticisms at times, in terms of what it is we do.  We really appreciate your participation.  And we want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

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Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Corrections-Prisons, Criminal Justice, Interviews with Policy Makers, Parole and Probation, Police, Probation, Reentry, Victim's Services, Violence Reduction, What Works Tagged With: , , ,

Intelligence and Information Sharing in the Criminal Justice System-UMUC-DC Public Safety

March 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2011/09/intelligence-and-information-sharing-in-the-criminal-justice-system-umuc-dc-public-safety/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes:  From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. We have a really interesting program for you today, ladies and gentlemen—intelligence, intelligence sharing, what’s happened within the criminal justice system, the larger arena of national and local and state intelligence sharing, the lessons we’ve learned since 911, the lessons we’ve learned in terms of an exchange of information between law enforcement, corrections, parole and probation, and the national intelligence apparatus. We have at our microphones, back again, Doctor William Sondervan. Doctor Sondervan, or Bill Sondervan, is the executive director for Public Safety Outreach, University of Maryland University College. They have an astounding 94,000 students there at the University of Maryland University College. And also joining him at our microphones today is his colleague Peter Oleson. Peter is an associate professor of intelligence studies. Let me give you a little bit of background about Peter. Senior intelligence policy advisor to the Secretary of Defense, Assistant Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, he was a CEO for his own consulting firm for quite some time. So we have a true expert to talk to us about this whole issue of intelligence and intelligence sharing within the criminal justice system, in the larger society. And with that introduction, Bill and Peter, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Dr. William Sondervan:  Thanks, Len.

Peter Oleson:  Happy to be here.

Len Sipes:  Alright Bill, let me give you the first go round. Just set up University of Maryland University College. You have students throughout the world. 94,000, that’s quite a few people.

Dr. William Sondervan:  Yes, actually we do. UMUC is one of the 11 universities in the University of Maryland system, and we have classes all through Maryland. We do most of the on-line learning for the university system, and we also have an agent in a European division. We have people on the ground teaching in about 26 different countries, to include Iraq and Afghanistan.

Len Sipes:  That’s amazing. Peter, you’re an associate professor there at UMUC, so you have this mix of people that you and your other professors teach in terms of intelligence studies. Give me this larger sense. We were discussing before the show that the listeners to this program may be a bit confused in terms of intelligence studies. What we have is the CIA, Central Intelligence Agency. We have the FBI, we have lots of organizations throughout the country at the federal level who gather intelligence information. But we’re principally, today, talking about criminal justice system, how agencies share information with each other. My agency, the Court Services and Offenders Supervision Agency, we share information all the time regarding high risk offenders, regarding those offenders who pose an obvious risk to public safety. We share that information with the metropolitan police department, we share that information with the FBI, we share that information with the Secret Service, we share that information with the U.S. Park Police and other law enforcement agencies. So the bottom line in all of this, I’m presuming, is the public safety; despaired agencies getting together and sharing information to protect public safety. That, to me, is the bottom line. Am I correct?

Peter Oleson:  Oh, I think very much so. I mean, the whole investment in intelligence in the United States really was an outgrowth of the surprise at Pearl Harbor, and you know, the conviction that we should never let that happen again. And yet, of course, in 911, it did. There are really many communities when you think about intelligence. You mentioned CIA and the FBI, both of which are probably the best known for the simple reason that that’s what you see on TV and in the popular novels. But I like to think about their being indeed four different communities that deal with intelligence, and certainly the national intelligence community is one of them that comprises those that you mentioned, as well as the intelligence activities within the Department of Defense and the military services, and several other department levels of the federal government. The second community I’d really think about is the Homeland Security Community, which of course is headed by the Department of Homeland Security, and which uses intelligence, of course, for very specific reasons of keeping not only the United States safe, but our citizens overseas and our allies. The third is really the law enforcement community, which has traditionally used intelligence in limited senses to drive intelligence-led policing, but which of course has expanded greatly since 911, when we have learned that we really need to deal international terrorists, and also with international criminal organizations that will deal in drug trafficking and money laundering and many other illicit activities. But what a lot of people, I think, don’t recognize is that intelligence also is used very extensively in the private sector in large corporations, in international corporations to understand their environment, to understand their market, to understand their competitors; and in a defensive sense, to protect their own intellectual property and products from espionage by others. The Chinese seem to be particularly adept at this at present.

Len Sipes:  Mm-hm.

Peter Oleson:  And also against counterfeiters.

Len Sipes:  Mm-hm.

Peter Oleson:  Yeah, I’ve worked with a large international pharmaceutical firm that uses intelligence to identify who is counterfeiting their products so that they can go after them with law enforcement; so that when you open a bottle of whatever is their medicine, you can be guaranteed that it’s not gonna poison you.

Len Sipes:  And we go on for the next half hour in terms of the IT community and Apple computer and all the rest –

Peter Oleson:  Absolutely.

Len Sipes:  – that are very jealously guarding their secrets and making sure that their products that are released without their competitors knowing about them.  Bill, let me go back to you for a second. One of the things that you mentioned in prior conversations with this sense of sharing intelligence within the correctional community, you were the Commissioner of Corrections for the – the Division of Correction – for the Maryland Division of Correction, part of the Maryland Department of Public Safety. Both of us worked there in terms of full disclosure, and Bill, you, in terms of running the prison system, you discovered a lack of intelligence sharing and sought to rectify that with both federal and local law enforcement agencies for a wide variety of reasons.—Number one, to keep your prisons as safe as humanly possible; number two, to share that information with law enforcement and community corrections, to be sure that those people coming out of prison, who again posed a clear and present risk to public safety, that that information was shared and that the law enforcement and parole and probation community knew how to keep an eye on that person.

Dr. William Sondervan:  Exactly right, Len. You know, I retired from the military police in the Army, and the last job I was on the joint staff when General Powell was the chairman. And you know, we share a lot of information, a lot of intelligence all the time. And then there was a point that initially, as Assistant Commissioner for Corrections, in charge of security operations, and I came to Maryland, and it just really dawned me, it just hit me right between the eyes, that we had so much going on in these prisons. We had 27 prisons with 24,000 convicted felons, and they were doing all sorts of things, but we all worked in stovepipes.  The prisons didn’t talk to each other. The prisons didn’t talk to parole and probation. We didn’t talk to the jails, we didn’t talk to the local police, we didn’t talk to the federal authorities, and it was all in stovepipe. All the information that we gathered was very informal and it was through informants and snitches and things that the warden would pick up. And there were several big incidents that happened that just really embarrassed me as being responsible for security, and I go into a lot of them. But one of them specifically, I had one of the federal agencies came to see me, and they closed the door, and they said, “Did you realize that one of your contract chaplains happened to be an imam who was also a co-conspirator in blowing up the World Trade Center the first time around, is working in your prison as a chaplain, and he’s recruiting disaffected inmates to be terrorists.” I just about fell out of my chair! We confirmed that, and that was going on along with several other things; and we got to the point where we decided we had to do something about it. So we partnered up with the high intensity drug trafficking area, the Washington-Baltimore area, and they helped us with funding. The whole idea was to collect the intelligence, to analyze it, and disseminate it the best we could. So they gave us money, we hired two former NSA intelligence analysts to help us get going. I started a security threat group office, I appointed a captain, hired a civilian. We hired two retired civilians from the National Security Agency to help us, and we appointed a lieutenant in every prison. We started this whole process of finding out what was going on in prisons, finding ways to deal with it, taking a look at it and disseminating to others. So we were able to do a lot of really important things. Just a couple of examples, but one of the things we did was we were able to take back the inmate phone system, which goes out on a bid to the Department of Budget and Management.  We were able then to record inmate phone calls, and once you record inmate phone calls, the software exists to be able to go in and use it for intelligence purposes, to capture whatever you wanted to do. So we started doing those things, and from there, it all kind of grew, and we all started working together. We went out and we talked to police departments, we talked to the other prisons, we talked to the jail administrators, and we started partnering with everybody. We started getting onto intelligence committees. We started finding ways to work with each other, and it was really a start, and it’s really grown since then. One of the things we also did is we were able to validate gangs in the Maryland prison system. Just as an example, what we would do is every month we would put together a list of validated gang members who were going home to particular communities, and we would share that with parole and probation, and with the local police.

Len Sipes:  You know, the bottom line in all of this is because an individual hearing this program, who is not part of the criminal justice community, may say to themselves, “Oh, wait a minute, this sounds very oppressive. This sounds almost scary.” We are talking about, and I think we need to constantly bring the program back to this focus, we are talking solely about individuals who are engaging in acts while in prison – still engaging in acts, organized crime, still ordering homicides, still ordering murders, still ordering people to be victims of violent crime while in prison. And at the same time, through that intelligence apparatus, we knew that once they were released, we could no longer legally hold them when they went back into the community. We know through intelligence that they were gonna go straight back to being involved in very violent crimes, to the point where we had people followed through the law  enforcement community. So I think the focus on the whole program has to be in terms of the criminal justice or the corrections community, to remind everybody, again, we’re talking about some bad actors. We’re not talking about everybody within the prison system. We’re talking about people who pose a clear and present danger to our either national security or to our local security, correct?

Dr. William Sondervan:  Absolutely, Len. And -

Peter Oleson:  And I would add a point, Len, if I could [OVERLAY]

Len Sipes:  Yeah, Peter, please.

Peter Oleson:  – Bill, is that, you know, for those who might think along the lines of civil libertarians, that you know, once a person has been convicted and put in prison, he does not have the same rights as you and I would, as law abiding citizens in our homes. Being monitored by the appropriate authorities is both legal and most appropriate, as I think you’ve pointed out.

Len Sipes:  And something we’re obligated to do.

Peter Oleson:  Yes.

Len Sipes:  To, once again, protect public safety.

Peter Oleson:  Absolutely.

Dr. William Sondervan:  Some of the issues that also came out of that, is, you know, once I retired after serving 10 years in corrections and being a Commissioner of Correction, I came to University of Maryland University College, and was asked to put together a state of the art criminal justice program for practitioners. So the way we did that is we established an advisory board with very, very senior people in the community. And we took a hard look at our curriculum, and one of the things that everybody said unanimously is that we don’t have an intelligence component for criminal justice. We really need to have that. We need to get out of stovepipes. We need to trust each other, we need to work with each other, and we have to start collecting, analyzing and sharing intelligence if we’re gonna win and the bad guys are gonna lose. So that’s kind of – that’s what we did. And as a result of that, we put together a certificate program in our undergraduate criminal justice program that focuses on the art and science of doing intelligence. And by going through that process, that’s where I met Peter Oleson. My background is police and corrections, and I’m not really an intelligence person, except for being a consumer of intelligence while I was in the military. I had the good fortune of meeting Peter Oleson through mutual friends, and Peter then came on board, and he became the advisor of UMUC in terms of intelligence, and he’s been a great help to us in not only perfecting that undergraduate certificate in intelligence, but also a master’s program in intelligence management.

Len Sipes:  Well, I’m sitting here in what is affectionately known by those of us who work here, ground zero. I’m sitting one block away from Pennsylvania Avenue, I can see the Washington monument, I can see the Supreme Court, can’t see the Whitehouse. The Congress is hidden by a building in front of me, but this is – you know, we within the Washington community, are extraordinarily grateful of everything the intelligence community does, because we know that every day, every single day when we come into downtown Washington DC—and I would imagine New Yorkers feel that way, I would imagine people through the country feel this way—is that we are extraordinarily grateful to the intelligence community in terms of protecting us. And that larger intelligence community extends to parole and probation agents, extends to police officers, extends to middle management. It extends to the national agencies, and there are many. I mean, if it wasn’t for the intelligence community, our lives would be at risk.

Peter Oleson:  Oh, absolutely, and I think what he public doesn’t know, of course, is the number of times when intelligence has in fact frustrated a plot that could have resulted in significant casualties or damage to Americans. You know, the challenge of course is that you have to be on top of it all the top, and you know, a terrorist only has to be successful once. You know, that is a very high standard. It’s one of the issues we always have in intelligence, you know, when you’re accused of an intelligence failure, that sometimes people apply an impossible standard to what’s success and what’s failure.

Len Sipes:  We’re halfway through the – oh, I’m sorry, Peter, let me just cut you off for a second.

Peter Oleson:  Sure.

Len Sipes:  We’re halfway through the program, and let me re-introduce the both of you, and hold that thought for a second. Doctor William Sondervan, Executive Direction of Public Safety Outreach, University of Maryland University College. Peter Oleson, associate professor of intelligence studies, a man with an extraordinary, extraordinary background, probably the most senior intelligence person I’ll get to talk to in my career. I want to thank you both for being on the program. Both can be reached at www.umuc.edu; www.umuc.edu.  I’m sorry, Peter, I interrupted you. Go ahead with your thought please.

Peter Oleson:  Well, I was talking about how do you judge success.  I think one of the important things for anybody thinking about intelligence, is to realize that intelligence is prospective. It’s looking at what might happen in the future, and trying to give decision makers the information they need to take the appropriate action. You know, it’s not an investigative ex post facto activity.  And so you’re never always fully knowledgeable of what might happen. As a matter of fact, in intelligence analysis, I always like to use the analogy with students that it’s like putting together a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle -

Len Sipes:  Mm-hm.

Peter Oleson:  – only somebody tore the picture off the cover of the box, so you don’t really   know what the picture’s supposed to look like. And when you open up the box, you find that anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of the pieces are missing; and yet your job is to describe in detail what is that picture.  That’s the challenge that intelligence faces.

Len Sipes:  And Bill, that same intelligence package comes down all the way to the local level in terms of people in prison who we know. I mean, we had, when I was working for the Maryland Department of Public Safety while you were there, there was all sorts of instants, all sorts of times where we had individuals followed as soon as the person was released from the gate because we knew, we had hard, strong intelligence that person was headed straight towards a series of violent crimes in terms of an associate or in compliance or – he had accomplices; that as a group, they were gonna go out and commit violent crime. So it’s just not keeping a dirty bomb from going off on Pennsylvania Avenue, it’s keeping individuals who are avowed violent criminals from going out and hurting other human beings.

Dr. William Sondervan:  Well, it’s even deeper than that, Len. It’s not only when they leave, when they go on the outside, it’s also like you alluded to earlier, what they’re doing while they’re still in prison. They can commit crimes from behind bars, and I think a lot of people in the police field think that when an inmate gets locked and he goes behind the walls of the prison, he automatically puts on a halo and he becomes a good doobie. But that’s not the case at all. What we uncovered is that people were running drug empires, they were putting hits on people, they were intimidating people, they were defrauding people, and it goes on and on. So a big piece of that as a corrections professional–and that’s really my expertise–is to prevent that from happening while they’re in there; and in being able to share the intelligence we have with the parole and probation people, with the police people in the community, so that they can prevent the violent acts when they go out.

Len Sipes:  And I just want to be, again, re-emphasizing certain points, that what we’re talking about is not all prisoners. We’re not talking about 50 percent of prisoners. We’re talking about a sub-set that we know are engaged in acts that are obviously dangerous to public safety.

Dr. William Sondervan:  That’s true. A lot of the inmates don’t do that, but it’s a small percentage of them. But that small percentage can cause a lot of damage.

Len Sipes:  Well, one of the interesting things about the custodial setting, the prison setting is that the best sources of information we have are fellow inmates, because they don’t want the problems. They don’t want any trouble. They don’t want violence erupting, nor do they want violence erupting in their own home communities. The best source of information we have are the inmates themselves, because they see the intelligence sharing process as something that keeps them safe, and something that keeps their community safe.

Dr. William Sondervan:  You’re absolutely right. The majority of inmates just want to do their time. They want to be safe themselves. They want their families to be safe, and they just want to do their time, be productive. A lot of them want to work, they want to go to school. So quite frankly, a lot of the inmates want to be informants, and a lot of inmates tell prison officials what’s going on, and it’s really a good source of intelligence to put together that piece of the puzzle that Peter was talking about. You know, you have to gather intelligence from a variety of different sources, and try to make it all fit, and try to get a good picture of what’s really happening.

Len Sipes:  Peter, now, you know, there are so many intelligence related agencies that we have in this country –

Peter Oleson:  Mm-hm.

Len Sipes:  – ranging anywhere from probably a dozen federal agencies—I think I read at one –

Peter Oleson:  17 actually.

Len Sipes:  17 federal agencies, all the way to the New York City police department that’s sending their own people overseas to gather intelligence. And they’ve been able to stop crimes, acts of terrorism from happening in New York because of that. So it’s a huge –

Peter Oleson: Indeed.

Len Sipes:  – apparatus, and the criticism before 911 is that we weren’t sharing information. Are we now sharing information?

Peter Oleson:  Well, I mean before 911, there were actually legal restrictions in sharing information–that you weren’t allowed to do it. And part of that grew out of the investigations of the intelligence community in the 1970s with the Church and Pike Committees, the subsequent executive orders and laws. And nobody in the intelligence business wanted to be criticized for doing things wrong, so, you know, they were overly conservative, in my view. Much of that has changed. The prohibitions and sharing certain kinds of information, such as grand jury information with intelligence people, has been swept away with subsequent laws. The imperative to share is being emphasized very much by senior managers. The current Director of National Intelligence, Jim Clapper, his major theme for managing the federal intelligence community is related to integration, which really means sharing and getting the information that somebody needs to them, either for analytical purposes or for making some kind of executive decision. And I think he has pushed that ahead rather well and rather dramatically. Jim’s a strong manager. I’ve known him many, many years. The importance about sharing really has two things, and in my view, if you spent a lot of time and effort collecting intelligence and you don’t use it, you frankly wasted that time and energy.

Len Sipes:  Mm-hm.

Peter Oleson:  And worse yet, you may be sitting on something that somebody else really needs. The ex post facto investigations that we have had, of 911, even back of Pearl Harbor, we had the information oftentimes that we needed, but we just didn’t put it together properly; and it didn’t get into the right hands.  That was truly the case at Pearl Harbor because neither General Short nor Admiral Kimmel, who were the commanders out there at the time, were privy to the fact that we were reading Japanese diplomatic communications, and that clearly indicated that hostilities were…

Len Sipes:  About to break out. Yes, yes, yes.

Peter Oleson:  And so they were caught unprepared, and pilloried for it, and I think somewhat unjustifiably.

Len Sipes:  Yeah, they turned out to be scapegoats, yes.

Peter Oleson:  But, you know, this is not a unique problem. It’s happened many times. In the intelligence business, you also – you always have a conundrum between the secrecy of your source and your desire to protect that source –

Len Sipes:  Mm-hm.

Peter Oleson:  – whether that be an individual or a technical means that can easily be thwarted, and sharing the information. And frankly, the risk of revelation or leak goes up with the amount of sharing you do. You know, that’s the inevitable problem you have, and how you balance those takes decisions every day by a lot of people.

Len Sipes:  Well, the same thing, we have the same problem here, that a community supervision officer—what is commonly known as a parole and probation agent in the rest of the country—will gain information and it’ll be that a person is about to engage in a series of violent crimes, part of a gang retribution, share that information with MPD, at the same time having to protect their source. So, all of us at all levels of the criminal justice system suffer through that sort of ethical decision in terms of protecting the source while sharing the information.

Peter Oleson:  Absolutely. There’s an interesting observation I would make also, and that is sort of how intelligence and law enforcement activities are merging since 911. I mean, it used to be in the Cold War that intelligence focused on foreign armies and foreign countries, but since the terrorist attacks, and with the growth of international criminal organizations, intelligence is increasingly focused on what the intelligence community calls sub-national groups. You know, you can say it’s individuals or small groups of individuals, which has always been the focus of law enforcement. And what you’re seeing in the case of New York City, as you pointed out, is an organization that is a police organization using intelligence, I think, quite effectively. And I might comment that Ray Kelly’s positioning of New York City police officers overseas, brings the expertise of a cop to the scene of foreign terrorist incidents, which really gives us insight and better analysis than you’re gonna get say from a CIA officer who’s stationed in the embassy, who is not a trained investigator. I mean, his purpose is entirely different. And so I think that that has benefitted not only New York, but because New York does share information, it’s benefitted all of us.

Len Sipes:  We have three minutes left in the program. Either one of you can address this question. To me, the intelligence sharing apparatus is absolutely necessary to protect me, to protect our communities, to protect our children, to protect our welfare, to protect our jobs. It’s absolutely critical, absolutely necessary. The information has to be shared, but yet many within the larger American community are a little frightened and a bit overwhelmed by the intelligence gathering and sharing process. They see it as a bit Orwellian. They see it as overbearing, that there’s a fine line to be walked in terms of protecting the public and being overly zealous in terms of the collection of information. There are endless examples of criminal justice organizations and intelligence communities who did go overboard, who did collect the wrong intelligence from the wrong people at the wrong time. So how do you address that?

Peter Oleson:  Well, Len, that’s why oversight by independent groups is absolutely essential, whether it be from the intelligence committees in Congress or whether it be things like the Intelligence Oversight Board in the Whitehouse, or shall I say, an independent group at a local community level that has all the appropriate access and who can always be a check and balance. I mean, that’s the basic nature of our government is checks and balances, and when you deal with civil liberties, checks and balances are critically important.

Len Sipes:  But I do want to emphasize in the final minutes, is that the individual intelligence officers, the individual police officers, the individual parole and probation agents also understand their constitutional duties in terms of the privacy of individuals and when it’s necessary to gather information to protect public safety. They understand that as well, correct?

Peter Oleson:  They are basically well trained but, you know, you can face ethical questions every day. This is not a simple world. It’s a very complex one, and the fact that we’ve done so well at the individual level, I think, is a remarkable testament to the American law enforcement community and the intelligence officers who support them.

Len Sipes:  Okay, Bill, we got about 30 seconds left. Go ahead and wrap up.

Dr. William Sondervan:  Len, I just wanted to add that UMUC, we’ve taken on the mission to prepare people to go into a multitude of agencies, all the criminal justice agencies, and be intelligence specialists and analysts. And part of the program, we’ve incorporated the legal and ethical issues involved in intelligence, besides the theory into practice. So our whole goal is to produce graduates that can go out in the field and be advisors to leaders of agencies and help them do these things, and do them properly.

Len Sipes:  Everybody pretty much understand the limitations and understand the roles. I think that’s what you’re trying to say. I mean –

Dr. William Sondervan:  Exactly.

Len Sipes:  And that’s what everybody who’s listening to this radio show needs to understand, that it’s just not Congressional oversight. The individual officers pretty much know where they can go and where they can’t, but they gotta go where they gotta go to protect public safety.

Dr. William Sondervan:  Exactly.

Peter Oleson:  Absolutely.

Len Sipes:  All right, ladies and gentlemen, I really want to thank you for listening today. Our guests have been Doctor William Sondervan, the Executive Director for Public Safety Outreach, University of Maryland University College, www.umuc.edu.  94,000 students, that’s a huge university. Joining him today is Peter Oleson, associate professor for intelligence studies; again, a person with an extraordinary background, and to Peter, you can look at the web site. Once again, it’s the same for the University of Maryland University College, www.umuc.edu. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We thank you for your interest and calls and letters, and please have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

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An Interview with Bernard Melekian, Director, US Department of Justice-Office of Community Oriented Policing Services

November 23, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts. We now average 200,000 requests a month.

This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2010/06/an-interview-with-bernard-melekian-director-us-department-of-justice-office-of-community-oriented-policing-services/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes:  From the nation’s capital, this is D.C. Public Safety.  I’m your host, Leonard Sipes.  We have a real treat for us to today, ladies and gentlemen. Bernard Melekian, he is the director of the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, commonly known as the COPS office, www.cops.usdoj.gov to talk about what’s happening with the COPS office and where the COPS office is going.  Before we get into the interview with Director Melekian, I want to thank everybody once again for your calls, for your letters, for your emails.  If you want to comment in any way, shape, or form in terms of what it is that we do here in D.C. Public Safety, please feel free as you already are doing.  You can follow us via Twitter that is twitter.com/lensipes, L-e-n S-i-p-e-s.  If you want to get in touch with me directly via email, it’s Leonard, leonard.sipes@csosaid.gov.  Or you can simply go in and comment in the comment area, which most of you do, which is media.csosa.gov.  And simply comment in the comment boxes.  CSOSA stands for the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, a parole — a federal parole and probation agency here in downtown Washington, D.C.  And again, it’s my pleasure to re-introduce Bernard Melekian.  He is the executive Director, Director of U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, commonly known as COPS, a gentleman with 37 years of law enforcement experience and 25 years within the Coast Guard Reserve.  Again, Bernard, welcome to D.C. Public Safety.

Bernard Melekian:  Thank you, Leonard, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Len Sipes:  You know, 37 years in law enforcement, that’s enough to tell 10 billion stories.

Bernard Melekian:  At least, at least.  It’s been a fascinating career.  I feel–I do feel very blessed to have gotten to spend my adult life doing something I love doing.  And I’ve gotten to continue that here in Washington. 

Len Sipes:  You know, it is a profession.  It is a calling.  For those of us who have been in law enforcement, those of who have been in the criminal justice system, we’re passionate about what it is we do, because we see the direct benefits to so many citizens.   

Bernard Melekian:  You know, that’s absolutely true.  I think and I think it was doubly interesting is that very often the people that you help when you’re a law enforcement officer don’t see it or aren’t aware of it.  The–I’ve always teased my fire department colleagues about the fact that everyone loves them even–because they’re contribution is so tangible. 

Len Sipes:  Uh-huh. 

Bernard Melekian:  But what happens with law enforcement is very often the positive benefit is long-term or it’s unseen.  And I’ve often thought that police officers labor in an unfortunate obscurity. 

Len Sipes:  The first time I was involved with a terrible automobile accident.  And I was there by myself.  And I literally saved the individual’s life.  About a week later, his parents came in, it was a young man involved in an automobile accident.  And they were hugging me.  And they were crying.  And you know, I–from that, I’m saying, my heavens, what other profession do you have where you can make such a direct contribution to the welfare of others?  I mean, I understand that law enforcement has its own stereotypes.  Law enforcement carries its own baggage.  But for those of us who are privileged to have served in law enforcement capacities, you know, how many people come up to you in your lifetime hugging you and crying because you’ve saved the life of their child? 

Bernard Melekian:  Well, not too often. And I think your experience was probably unique or–although I suspect if I was on the questioning end of this interview, I would imagine that more people had complained to you than that family that hugged you and thanked you for your service. I think all–very often that part of what happens is that police officers intervene in people’s lives usually under negative circumstances.  Usually they’re either, you know, stopping you for apparently no reason, or a reason that may not be clear, or you’re being issued a citation that you clearly don’t deserve, or you’re–you’ve been the victim of a crime.  And the officer’s there to take a report.  But there’s not a sense that the officer can do anything tangible.  I think that–I think that one of the things that police work has done, and needs to do a better job of, is marketing itself and marketing what it is that men and women do 24 hours a day, 7 days a week across this country in events large and small to make their community safer. 

Len Sipes:  And that’s the heart and soul of COPS, is it not?  The concept of connecting with the community, the idea of making sure that partners are involved, making sure that the community is involved and making sure that everybody is connected, everybody is interdependent, and the community is not out there on their own.  The law enforcement agency’s not out there on their own.  They’re interconnected.  They’re talking.  They’re solving problems together.  That’s the heart and soul of the COPS concept, is it not? 

Bernard Melekian:  Absolutely.  And I’ve been in this business long enough, 37 years as you mentioned, to have come up under what was called the professional model of policing, which was that–which was an arm’s length sort of just the facts Jack Webb “Dragnet” model, which actually was very deliberately focused on not connecting with the community, because the focus really was to deal with how to make sure that professionalism implied absolute objectivity.  It became apparent as the years went forward, and I came in this business in 1973, became apparent as the years went forward that that system wasn’t working.  And there’s a whole long laundry list, really, of reasons why it didn’t work.  But it became clear that it–we needed to connect with the community in a way that we did not, to use or word, partnerships, I’ve always believed that community policing at the end of the day was really nothing more than building relationships and solving problems.  And it’s something the police officers do quite well.  I would argue and have argued that for most of the agencies in this country, particularly rural agencies, and small towns, that they do community policing by default and always have, and probably just didn’t call it that. 

Len Sipes:  Well that’s been my point for years, Bernard.  It is, you know, the interesting part about it is that we have been doing community policing for years.  So there’s an awful lot of police officers out there, who have spent time with community organizations, spent time with gangs in the street, spent time walking, talking.  And from that, developing good leads as to who was doing the bad stuff.  But there has to be a trust relationship between–it all comes down–it doesn’t come down to the U.S. Department of Justice. 

Bernard Melekian:  No. 

Len Sipes:  It doesn’t come down to the chief of police.  It comes down to that individual police officer, whoever he or she may be, willing to interact with the community on a very personal level, not out of an officer friendly public relations approach.  We’re doing this because it works, correct?  We’re doing this because it solves crimes.  We’re doing this because it solves problems.  So that’s the heart and soul of the COPS office, correct? 

Bernard Melekian:  Absolutely.  And I think there’s this picture, this stereotype of what community policing is, that it’s–we all go to the–the officers go to the neighborhood barbeque, and everyone holds hands and sings kum ba ya. 

Len Sipes:  Right. 

Bernard Melekian:  But the reality is, and that may be a piece of it, but the reality is, for example that I guarantee you that if I look at a department that has a high crime solvability rate, particularly crimes of violence, I guarantee you that they have a solid community policing program going on because those detectives and those line officers have relationships in the community, have relationships with people who have information.  And not only have the information, but trust the officers and trust the department enough to give that information up. 

Len Sipes:  We live in a CSI world.  Too many people watch all these programs at night.  My wife–I drive her crazy because I cannot watch them in any way, shape or form because their reality, the television realty is so distant from the reality on the street.  And I think what you just said, it’s correct.  The vast majority of what is accomplished is accomplished not through neutron activation analysis, not through fingerprints, not through DNA, not through CSI investigators.  The vast majority of crimes are solved because that police officer has good, solid connections with that community.  That detective has good solid connections with the community.  Would you agree with that or disagree? 

Bernard Melekian:  I would agree with a caveat.  I absolutely agree that the relationships are critical.  And I have believed that and attempted to practice that throughout my career.  I don’t know whether it’s unfortunate or not, but the–certainly the state of the evidence required today to bring a case to trial, and to obtain a conviction has been–that bar has been raised significantly.  And in some ways, programs like CSI have contributed to that because the people who serve on juries have watched those programs as well.  

Len Sipes:  Right. 

Bernard Melekian:  And they have an expectation of what it is that they’re going to see-

Len Sipes:  Right. 

Bernard Melekian:  –when they get to the courtroom.  And if they don’t see it, or they don’t see some version of it, most prosecutors will tell you that the risk of an acquittal starts to climb. 

Len Sipes:  Are the juries stuck with us.  We’re just regular John Doe and Jane Doe shmucks.  We’re not the very pretty, very good looking, very well educated, very well funded–

Bernard Melekian:  Very articulate and–

Len Sipes:  Very articulate, very glib–did I say young and extremely well dressed detective, who solves–

Bernard Melekian:  Right. 

Len Sipes: –crimes within a half an hour.  That’s television. 

Bernard Melekian:  Right. 

Len Sipes:  The juries are stuck with you and I.  And we’re just regular–

Bernard Melekian:  And their computers, I’ve noticed, are never down. 

Len Sipes:  Yes, and they always have everything.  I mean they roll up with more equipment than I’ve seen in a lifetime.  Now the COPS office does what?  I mean, let’s set that up.  I mean you guys basically set the standard for the country in terms of what community policing is.  And we go from there please? 

Bernard Melekian:  Well, I think it’s important to–as we have this discussion, to look quickly at the history of the COPS office.  And the COPS office came into existence in 1994.  It was–its purpose was to advance community policing, a concept that had been born out of the broken windows theory and about a recognition, particularly in the nation’s urban centers that relationships with the police and the community, particularly the minority community was not what it should be, and to try to make some strides in that.
The–under President Clinton and under then Senator Biden, the office was brought into existence.  And its purpose was to advance community policing.
At the same time, because if you recall in the ’90’s, the crime rate was so significant, there was also a pledge that that office would put 100,000 additional officers on the streets of America– 

Len Sipes:  Right. 

Bernard Melekian:  –for the purpose of making America’s community safer. 

Len Sipes:  Which you essentially did, the office did. 

Bernard Melekian:  And the office did do that.  Unfortunately, or the fortunate part was that it worked.  Crime did go down.  And I happen to–and while there’s a great deal of sort of back and forth about why crime went down in the 90’s, I am a very big adherent of the concept that cops count.  Cops do make a difference.  And that those 100,000 cops were in large measure responsible for that crime reduction, not the only reason, but certainly one of. 

Len Sipes:  Okay. 

Bernard Melekian:  However, the–I think then the view of the COPS office shifted from a focus on community policing, to a focus on hiring.  And–

Len Sipes:  Right. 

Bernard Melekian: –I think most of America’s law enforcement, sheriffs and detectives and political leaders have come to see it as sort of what I only half jokingly call the federal ATM machine.  And if you can figure out what the–

Len Sipes:  I’m sorry.  That’s a great line. 

Bernard Melekian:  If you can figure out the PIN number, you can get some police officers out of it.  And that was only part of the case.  And I think sort of fast forwarding to 2009, where–and I have to tell you in 37 years, I have never seen, I’ve seen the economy rise and fall.  I’ve seen problems as we all have.  I have never seen the devastation to local law enforcement that this economic collapse brought about. 

Len Sipes:  Totally agreed.  It is happening throughout the country. 

Bernard Melekian:  Absolutely. 

Len Sipes:  I just read in the Chicago papers about 450 state troopers in Illinois being laid off.  Every day, because I–

Bernard Melekian:  Right. 

Len Sipes: –subscribe to three newspaper services, every–and Google alerts.  And every day, all that–all those articles from throughout the country are pushed towards me.  And I would say at least 20 percent to 30 percent of them deal with budget cuts.  And what’s happening in the criminal justice system throughout the country is literally devastating. 

Bernard Melekian:  Yeah.  The irony is that we as a profession, we as a society, I think, had started to make some great strides, and were really positioning ourselves over the next 10 to 20 years to do something very strategic.  And instead, most chiefs and sheriffs and I’m sure court administrators and district attorneys and public defenders, no one came in this business to do less.  Everybody came into the criminal justice system to do more, to make it better, to make society better, whatever your–whatever approach–wherever you come from on that.
And instead, they’re faced with this need to cut back.  Well, in 2009, in addition to the normal COPS hiring money, the Recovery Act funds were added to that.  And so, the COPS office gave out just over a billion dollars in hiring grants. 

Len Sipes:  That’s a lot of money. 

Bernard Melekian:  In fiscal year 2009.  It is a lot of money, but the downside was, or the other side of that coin was that there were over $8 billion in requests.  We funded 1043 law enforcement agencies.  We–out of–over 7,000 agencies that filed requests.  So clearly, the gap between the need and the resources to meet that need is huge. 

Len Sipes:  We’re halfway through the program.  Bernard Melekian, he is the director of the United States Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing services COPS program.  Now both of you are smiling.  Did I blow the last name?  Am a constantly blowing the last name? 

Bernard Melekian:  Melekian.

Len Sipes:  Melekian.  I’m sorry.  And then I’ll get–

Bernard Melekian:  All right, I will say that your pronunciation is the most common. 

Len Sipes:  Well, now I’m going to get my dozen emails from, particularly from the New York City area, going Leonard, once again, you proved that you cannot get a name correctly.  Okay, so www.cops.usdoj.gov.  And the idea here is that not only do you, the COPS office, continue to fund positions in law enforcement, but you continue to provide some sense of moral guidance as to where the law enforcement community should be going.  And consequently, the rest of us in the criminal justice system, where the community should be going in terms of its relationships to the community. 

Bernard Melekian:  Well, my hope is that, and my belief is that American law enforcement does not need Washington to provide a moral compass for how they serve the community.  What I think we do is to help articulate what community policing is, and how those federal resources should best be used.
As I said, I think there’s this view of the COPS office as a hiring arm of the federal government.  I–what I want people to–sheriffs and police chiefs and elected officials across this country to realize is that we are not going to solve the economic challenges that the cities and counties of this country face.  And we ought not to be viewed that way.  What we can do, and what we will do is to provide three or four year problem solving grants.  In other words, what is it in your community, what challenges are you facing?  Is it gangs?  Is it– I just came from a meeting in El Paso of the southwest border sheriffs who face, you know, a unique–

Len Sipes:  A lot of problems. 

Bernard Melekian:  –set of challenges–

Len Sipes:  Yeah. 

Bernard Melekian:  –that really are unique to American law enforcement.  Those are specific community problems that the hiring of additional personnel to address those problems is exactly what the COPS office was designed to do.
Adding to that, I think as we go forward, is to encourage agencies, and I think the economy is going to do this, to encourage agencies to enter into regional projects and to enter into regional collaborations and partnerships. 

Len Sipes:  Bernard, we’ve been talking a lot about the money that the COPS office provides.  And–but isn’t this more an issue about telling the rest of us, instructing the rest of us, helping the rest of us in the field understand what is important, what works, what doesn’t work in terms of community oriented policing? 

Bernard Melekian:  Yes, I think it is.  I mean, I think one of the things, community policing by definition is unique, is unique to the community that it serves.  What works in Brooklyn, Iowa is probably completely different than Brooklyn, New York.  And I think it has to be shaped that way.  I think so one of the things that we’ve tried to be clear on, the COPS office historically has never attempted to tell agencies what they should do, what community policing was for them.  But I think we do have an obligation to search out evidence based practices, look for best practices, share that information, and structure our funding mechanism, so that they become goals to strive for. 

Len Sipes:  Right.  But the best practices, I mean, there are–there’s got to be some sense of a collective whole of knowledge in terms of look, we both know, and we talked about it at the beginning of the program, stoic cops who don’t communicate with the community are people who don’t solve a lot of crimes.  There’s got to be some level of communication with the community.  And unless that level of communication is there, community oriented policing doesn’t work, correct? 

Bernard Melekian:  Yes.  And I think–I think the–it needs to go beyond that.  I think it needs to be a–that communications piece has to be combined with a level of technical competence.  And by technical competence, I refer to culturally technical, as well as sort of instrumentally technical.
Policing in America’s communities large and small today is far more complex than when I came in to this business.  We can talk about and should talk about issues of race and ethnicity, for example.  But when I–in the 1970’s, that was really America–when America talked about race, they talked about black and white.  In the department that I came from in California, there were 23 languages spoken in the school district.  How do you communicate when you can’t speak the language?  And you clearly are not going to be able to simply do that by hiring a certain number of people who can speak a particular dialect.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Bernard Melekian:  There is technology out there that has to be grasped.  There are cultural sensitivity issues that have to be grasped.  And so the definition of community policing almost by default has become far broader than it was 20 years ago.  The COPS office wants to help and can help agencies identify resources, what are other departments doing, what have other departments done.  We do provide training and technical materials, but we’ve also said if you’re going to hire police officers to interact with your community to advance community policing, then we’re–we want to know exactly how you’re going to do that.  We want to measure it.  Hiring officers is an output.  Achieving community policing is an outcome.  We’re striving for outcomes.

Len Sipes:  But in essence, once again, it is the community policing, the heart and soul of it.  I mean, you have a debate in this country right now in terms of, you know, a problem oriented policing, problem solving policing.  You’re talking about targeting high risk offenders, which is something that we do with the Metropolitan Police Department here in Washington D.C., where we target high risk offenders, who are on our case loads.  There’s all sorts of forms of policing, but my guess is community oriented policing is getting away from stove pipes and recognizing once again that without the community support, it doesn’t matter what we do.  I mean, is that a reality or not?  I mean, we have to have the community support to be effective.  And through community policing, we use whatever mechanisms are available to get that community support.

Bernard Melekian:  I think you’ve touched on a very important point.  First of all, the community support is critical.  If we don’t have community support, then you simply have an army of occupation.  And that, you know, we don’t have enough police officers or the–nor is that a particularly effective way to, you know, to do business.
Having said that, all the things that you mentioned are simply styles, in my opinion, styles of providing community policing.  Problem oriented policing is very effective.  There’s a concept that’s come out of Los Angeles called predictive policing.  That’s got some interesting possibilities to go with it.
There’s a model out of Providence, Rhode Island, which I think is really where the future of policing is likely to go, called the Teaching Police Department, which pairs a department with an academic institution for the purposes of studying what that organization is doing, identifying what works, and what doesn’t work.  And if it does work, why is it working?  And then, share that with the field as a whole.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Bernard Melekian:  The COPS office can facilitate that.  As departments want to undertake experimental efforts, for example, to try to address specific community problems, not again, Washington’s not going to make any effort to say this is what you should do.  But if you’re going to try this, we want to be able to measure it.  And if it works, we want to share it with the rest of the country.

Len Sipes:  Right, but do we not have that collective source of knowledge, though?  I mean, when I worked for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse as the senior specialist for crime prevention, it was my job to figure out what was happening in Albuquerque, and what was happening in Albany, and what was happening in San Francisco and whatever was working, and to build either documents or a collection of resources or referral sources.  So when another police department came in and said I’m interested in, oh, I don’t know, anti-burglary programs.  I can say, hey, he–these four cities have really interesting programs.  Go and talk to them.  I mean, there’s–somebody’s got to be at the center of all of this, dispensing the collective wisdom of what’s happening in the country.

Bernard Melekian:  You’re absolutely right about that.  And that really is what NIJ, National Institute of Justice has done a pretty good job of doing that.  But the fact of the matter is that most local practitioners very often because they’re–what they’re dealing with is so immediate, and so seemingly unique to their community, that they may not even be aware of the resources that are out there.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Bernard Melekian:  And one of the things that Attorney General Holder has been very clear about is wanting to break down those stovepipes, and wanting to build mechanisms, so that information is available across the board.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Bernard Melekian:  And part of the COPS office mandate in my opinion is to share with the field where those, not only what’s out there, but where they can go do their own research.

Len Sipes:  And it’s interesting because I totally agree with you, by the way, is that I’m not quite sure sitting in Washington, D.C. for probably a good part of my career is not, you know, is nothing comes out of me or anybody else, that’s particularly wonderful in terms of knowledge.  All we do is suck up the knowledge of the experiences of what’s happening at the local level, and share it with others.  I mean, it’s really what’s happening in the cities and the counties and the states throughout this country.  And they push it to us.  And we somehow, some way get the word out about what they’re doing.
The ideas, the true innovation in law enforcement is not coming from D.C.  It’s coming from the individual police departments.

Bernard Melekian:  That’s correct.  And one of the goals that I have for the COPS office is that all too often, those agencies that do unique groundbreaking effective kind of things all too often you find that when the chief leaves, so does that particular program.

Len Sipes:  And why is that?  Why is it that leaders, when they transition, a new person comes in and he wants to put his or her own stamp on the program.  There is no state of the art in terms of community based policing, where the person comes in and says oh, obviously, I need to continue doing what my predecessor did.  Why is that?

Bernard Melekian:  Well, I think one of the things that we–and one of the goals the COPS office is to really institutionalize community policing and community policing practices.  You know, one of the–in what I thought was the–a groundbreaking book, “Good to Great,” Jim Collins talked about what makes a truly great organization.  And one of the things that he talked about was the fact that you have to–in order for an organization to consider itself great.  It has to be able to sustain its growth or sustain its success, whatever you’re measuring through at least one change of CEO, one change of leadership.
Because if you don’t do that, then the leader may have been very effective, but the program was a function of his or her leadership, and not a function of the idea.  One of the reasons that I’m so intrigued by the Teaching Policing Department model is if we can measure a program, if we can find ways to evaluate groundbreaking programs that work, and share them with the field in kind of a personality neutral way, I think we may be able to get buy-in, not just from the executive level, which is traditionally where sort of creative, progressive thinking at least on the surface seems to start, but really get it down to the middle management and first line supervision level, which will accomplish two things.  One, it means it actually get done because people are invested in it.  And two, it will mean that the police chiefs of 10 years from now are invested in this kind of vetting.

Len Sipes:  So in the final minutes of the program, this is what I’m hearing.  COPS is an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice that seems to do two things.  That seems to A, provide money to hire police officers or to fund specific programs that are truly innovative, and B, provide the leadership in terms and then to share the experience of what’s happening with law enforcement agencies throughout the country.  So whatever good things Rochester, New York is doing can be replicated in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Is that the heart and soul of COPS?

Bernard Melekian:  Absolutely.

Len Sipes:  Okay.  So it is the–that sharing part of it, and that funding part of it that most people who are listening to this radio program can go to your website, www.cops.usdoj.gov.  And on the website, what I read and in terms of your magazine, the COPS magazine, through your website and through your magazine, which is free, by the way, for anybody who wants to obtain it through the website, they can get a sense of what the state of the art is in terms of community based policing?

Bernard Melekian:  Yes, that’s correct.  If you go to that website, and we’re really working very hard on updating that website and bringing the best–links to the best practices, both in terms of police departments and academic institutions in our regional community policing institutes across the country, and having the resource available for the field.

Len Sipes:  Okay, so the website, the magazine is a point of dissemination.  And the philosophically community based policing is not–doesn’t have a national definition.  Every police department for themselves have gone to figure out what community based policing means for them.  If there is an issue in terms of the Spanish speaking community, and that happens to be the priority and lots of crimes are being committed there, and you’re not getting the cooperation, that police department’s not getting the cooperation, then for that particular police department, outreach efforts to the Spanish speaking community, and sitting down and talking with them and figuring out common strategies to approach a crime problem, that would be their strategy.
In another city, it could be burglaries and figuring out the best way of communicating with citizens in that area about burglary, so they can get the information they can need to catch perpetrators.  I think–

Bernard Melekian:  I think if I could just interrupt for a second.

Len Sipes:  Please.

Bernard Melekian:  I think there is a–I think in a way, there–hopefully going forward from this point, is that there is a national definition of community policing and that’s building relationships and solving problems.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Bernard Melekian:  What–and the examples that you cited are exactly on point.  In each of those cases, in spite of probably different geographical locations and certainly different sort of tactical concerns, at the end of the day, that police department needs to build relationships, whether it’s with the Spanish speaking community in one city with it’s–whether it’s a group of effective neighbors–affected neighbors in another city, there has to be a relationship there.  There has to be a line of communication there.
Now then we get into the issue of how do we do that?  That’s really tactics.  But the strategy is to build relationships and solve that community’s problem.

Len Sipes:  And it is also, in the final analysis, as we close out the program, there’s a larger sense that we within the criminal justice system, we can have an impact.  And we do have an impact.  There’s no doubt that law enforcement has an impact on the–

Bernard Melekian:  Absolutely.

Len Sipes:  –quality of life and criminal activity within an area. But in the final analysis, we’re going to be–law enforcement is going to be much more effective if we have the full cooperation and blessing of the community.  And the only way we have the full blessing and cooperation of the community is to work with them as cooperatively as we can.

Bernard Melekian:  And really to help neighbors and residents realize that they are the solution, that ultimately, it is their commitment to their quality of life and their willingness to work with the department to achieve that, that becomes the essence of community policing.

Len Sipes:  Ladies and gentlemen, this is D.C. Public Safety.  Our guest today has been Bernard Melekian.  He is the Executive Director–the Director, rather, of the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, commonly known as COPS.  The website www.cops.usdoj.gov.  Once again, we really appreciate all of the letters, all of the phone calls, all of the emails, all of the comments in the comment box, all the interaction that you provide us in terms of what you would like to see in the show.  You can feel free, once again, to reach me directly via email.  Leonard, leonard.sipes@csosa.gov.  We’re up to 230,000 requests on a monthly basis for the radio show, television show. The blog and transcripts, and we are really in your debt for all of the interaction that you have with us.  And we want you to have a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

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Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Budget Issues, Interviews with Policy Makers, Police

Social Media for Law Enforcement-DC Public Safety-213,000 Requests a Month

May 18, 2010 by 2 Comments

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2010/02/social-media-for-law-enforcement-dc-public-safety-213000-requests-a-month/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

- Audio begins -

Len Sipes: From my microphones in downtown Washington, DC, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes, and today’s program is about social media in law enforcement, how the law enforcement community and eventually, hopefully, the entire criminal justice community will take on social media. What is social media? It’s websites, it’s blogs, it’s Twitter, it’s Facebook, it’s radio, it’s television. It’s basically a way of communicating with citizens. It’s a way of making sure that citizens and your criminal justice entity or your police department is having a meaningful conversation. You’re giving them interesting stuff to listen to or watch, and they’re giving you good information in return about what’s going on in their communities or how your police department or criminal justice agency can do a better job. Our guests today are Dan Alexander. He is Chief of Police of the Boca Raton, Florida, Police Department, and I’ll be giving out everything that Dan does in his website in a couple of seconds. Laurie Stevens, she is the Chair of Web Design for the New England Institute of Art, but interestingly enough, she’s putting on a conference, Social Media in Law Enforcement, the SMILE Conference on April 7, 8, and 9 in Washington, DC, but before we get into our program, the usual commercial, we are way beyond 200,000 request in the monthly basis for DC Public Safety Radio Television blog and transcripts, media.csosa.com. We are incredibly appreciative of all the e-mails that you get back to us with the comments that you get back to us in terms of our products. If you want to get back in touch with me directly, it’s Leonard L-E-O-N-A-R-D.sipes S-I-P not T but P E-S @C-S-O-S-A.gov or you can follow me via Twitter at twitter/lenssipes. One word. Back to our guest, Dan Alexander, Chief of Police, Boca Raton, and Laurie Stevens, New England Institute of Art, the person in charge of the SMILE conference. Welcome to DC Public Safety.

Laurie Stevens: Thanks, Len.

Len Sipes: Laurie, we’re going to go with your first. Now, what does the Chair of Web Design of the New England Institute of Art? You get this hoitsy-toitsy sense of free flowing artist, mixed up with the mundane, everyday world of law enforcement. How did you get involved with working with law enforcement?

Laurie Stevens: Well, it’s really the other half of that title is Web Design and Interactive Media. Certainly social media is part of that interactive media world, and so as part of my job at the college, I’m certified in social media as a strategist and I make it part of my work to stay on top of those things, and then I have been working with law enforcement just with a couple of departments that I have been friends with for a number of years and it just kind of grew from there. People started noticing the work that we were doing, and all of a sudden I was doing more and more, and then I got on Twitter and all of a sudden I was kind of catapulted into this arena and decided to go with it, and that was some months back, so now it’s just such a huge part of my life. But the two worlds come together right at the intersection with social media.

Len Sipes: And Dan, now, let’s see. You have done everything. I’m very impressed. www.bocaviper.com is your website. Now you do Twitter, you do Facebook, you do MySpace, you do interactive mapping, you do e-mail alerts, you do offender notifications, you do a television show, you do a blog. That is just both admirable and interesting, but you say the key issue here is not the fact that you’re doing social media; it’s what you’re accomplishing for the citizens of Boca Raton.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely. I think you can’t forget your fundamental mission whenever you decide to take something new on like social media, and that mission is to be a community policing organization, community-oriented in the way we approach our business, so keeping that in mind, it’s really a matter of connecting and how you connect with people and how you push information. I think there’s some other interesting parts that also fall in, in terms of how the media covers, how media has changed. I think that social media falls right in line with our orientation to be better connected, to be more transparent, and to insure that we’re getting the word out.

Len Sipes: Now you know it’s interesting because this can be manipulative. I do social media here, radio, television, blog, and transcript at DC Public Safety, and it’s to the point where you can control your own media to a large degree. You’re no longer dependent upon mainstream media. You’re no longer dependent upon the newspaper and the television stations and the radio stations to get word out to the public. You can do that at your time and at your leisure and at a pace that you control.

Dan Alexander: Yeah. What’s interesting about that is that when we started to do this, we had a media outlet come cover us and actually they quoted a professor that expressed concern that we would be putting our spin on the news, and really at first we were taken aback, but the issue really is adding another layer and I think that’s what we’ve tried to explain to people is that our test is not to try to replace traditional media as a source of information, but to add another layer such that people can get a different view or just fundamentally get the information because media is not covering nearly as much as it used to.

Len Sipes: Laurie, is there an issue where anybody should be concerned about it? We are under a real obligation to, when we use the social media channels, to talk about everything, warts and all, correct?

Laurie Stevens: Right. And I think, well, Dan’s point is, it’s what I love about the work he does. Initially he had this – I believe it was a television station he was saying, was taken aback by the fact that he was putting out his information himself, but he embraced that, and what he’s saying is its just one more layer. He’s not trying to replace the media; nobody really is. It’s just trying to get more information. When you think about it, the police departments have a lot of good information that the media just doesn’t want to cover. It’s just not worthy of the 6:00 news in their opinion. Another department I work with had, very early on when they went on Twitter for example, a citizen was surprised and commented, they didn’t know they had crime in their town because the cops were tweeting all night long and during the day of what they were coming across. So it really is expanding the amount of information that’s getting out to citizens in any community, so we’re fortunate enough to have this.

Len Sipes: The individual police officers were tweeting?

Laurie Stevens: Oh, yeah.

Len Sipes: That’s interesting.

Laurie Stevens: Dan, you’ve got some individual police officers tweeting, but I know of several departments that have police officers tweeting, and then in one case, we tweeted into the official police stream, the tweets of each officer as they tweet, and we put that right on their homepage. So the citizens can see that some of these officers are tweeting and maybe a photo of an arrest they made during the night, not any kind of confidential information, but if it was a bad DUI arrest and getting out those DUI messages time and time again, and the citizens are seeing this is happening in their own town the night before as opposed to maybe somewhere else where they think it doesn’t happen here, so they’re realizing this stuff does happen. It happens every single night right here where I live, and it really opens their eyes and ears to these messages.

Dan Alexander: I think that it raises some serious policy issues about how you approach media, and I think one of the distractions in the self media debate has been well, now we have to write a whole new policy on social media. I wouldn’t necessarily say that that’s not the case. I think that the way we recognize it is it’s another form of media, so the policies are going to be pretty consistent with the way we deal with the regular media, so definitely seeing some negative impacts of social media in some cases, but again, I think we just have to realize it’s media and our policies should be pretty consistent.

Laurie Stevens: But those negative impacts, Dan, wouldn’t you say that those negative things that you’re talking about would have happened or in the same way? In other words, these officers aren’t having to learn anything new in terms of how to be officers; they just have new tools.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely.

Laurie Stevens: If they’re going to do things that they probably shouldn’t be doing, they’re probably going to exercise that poor judgment in another way even without social media.

Dan Alexander: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a tool, and obviously many tools can be used properly or improperly.

Len Sipes: But the bottom line is that because we had sort of an esoteric conversation thus far, and my sense is that for the kids in the audience, and I’m being really stereotypical here because I know a 1000 times more about social media than my daughters, but for the kids out there, they’re going to say yeah, I understand intrinsically what it is that you’re saying. For the criminal justice community listening to this program, the bottom line is that you capture bad guys, you have conversations with the community that helps them, that makes them feel better about the police department, you accomplish operational objectives through social media, so this is, to you from what I understand, Dan, in terms of our conversation before the show, this is just as important to you as having a sufficient number of police cars. This is just as important to you as having radio communications between your dispatchers and your officers. This is just a tool to help lower crime rates and to get information to citizens so they can take their own action. This is an operational issue, right?

Dan Alexander: Absolutely. I think you look at it from that perspective and also from public relations and marketing perspective, and from the operational standpoint, I can think of two examples of how it’s had a direct impact, the first being a theft of a flat screen television out of the local mall. A video that we put online as part of our social media outreach and a witness picking up on the suspect in the video, and then passing that information along to us and us clearing a case and recovering property. Another instance from the intelligence perspective is a local criminal enterprise had taken root and their use of social media and using our resources and our investigators looking at their material, and without getting too much into it, developing information that was critical to developing a case on organized criminal enterprise, so those are two examples of how social media has a real impact in terms of law enforcement.

Len Sipes: We’re going to be having the Chief of the Community Oriented Policing Program from the U.S. Department of Justice on our air in a couple of weeks, and one of the reasons why he is coming in is for the very reasons that we’re talking about, that the more information that you get out to the community and the more interaction that you have, the more that they’re going to give to you in terms of your ability to keep them safe or solve crimes.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely. I think that’s the other part of it, is making the connection. I think if we’re brutally honest about our ability, we’re really the intervening variable. You have your community and the involvement of your citizens, and at the end the result is your quality of life and level of crime. We’re in the middle of that equation, and we’re absolutely dependent on a resident not only in terms of providing information on criminals, but also taking care of themselves. I think that the majority of us, unfortunately, have property crime to deal with and obviously violent crime, but typically property crime is the major portion of what we deal with and much of that can be prevented just by getting the right message out in terms of crime prevention, so there are so many different angles to the social media thing that are important in my mind.

Len Sipes: Go ahead, Laurie, please.

Laurie Stevens: I was just going to kind of piggyback on what he saying. I think in terms of sharing more information in both directions, a lot of what is happening here, and it’s getting back to the word social and social media, it’s the building of relationships and the building of trust between law enforcement and their community. Even though they’re still the cops and you’re still the citizen and they still have the authority, something else is happening in that whole area of trust in one another, and I think that is really key. It’s not very tangible, but that’s really key in why there’s more information going back and forth because there’s trust being built.

Len Sipes: Right. And whether it’s done electronically or whether it’s done face to face, the bottom line is trust. Trust gets you more information. It prompts the community to take greater action to protect themselves. I mean, it’s a win-win situation all around.

Laurie Stevens: Well, it’s absolutely going back to the beats, the community policing philosophy, in my mind. I’m not a cop and Dan will speak to that lots better than I will, but it’s really getting back to those relationships. With this technology, you can build more relationships faster.

Len Sipes: Now speaking of relationships, this question goes out to either one of you when I’m going to tie it into the conference, Social Media in Law Enforcement Conference. If people are interested in this, it’s April 7, 8, and 9 in Washington, DC. It’s called the SMILE Conference, Social Media in Law Enforcement, that’s how SMILE comes out. It’s theSMILEconference.com, so it’s www.theSMILEconference.com or http://theSMILEconference.com, April 7, 8, 9 in Washington, DC. Social Media in Law Enforcement. The reason I’m so enthused about this conference is the fact that it helps us talk to people in the criminal justice system and it helps us to promote social media because, again, I had this conversation with another national criminal justice organization this morning. People are simply wary of doing this. They’re afraid to do it because they live in sort of a protected bubble. They have this sense that the less news there is the better off for everybody, and that’s just the antithesis of what it is that we’re trying to do through social media, but that fear does exist within the criminal justice system, does it not? Either one of you.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely. Yeah. Obviously it’s changed and unknown and that’s a concern for people that like their world in order, but beyond that we are very secretive. Laurie knows that I wrote a piece early on, basically five or six barriers to law enforcement use of social media. It’s fast and we’re not. We obviously develop cases and move things along, and it takes time. Social media is immediate, so there are some barriers there. We are very cynical and protective, by nature, of our information, and so that works against us in that respect. We’re also suspect in terms of our relationships with people. I don’t want someone following me or being my friend or fan that I don’t know too well, because I like gathering intelligence on the people that I have relationships with if I’m thinking from a traditional police perspective, so there are a number of reasons why I think there hesitancy on our part to get involved.

But going back to what you said earlier, connecting electronically, it’s interesting about what we first got out there on Twitter in particular, we would get the feedback, Boca Police is following me – I guess I should slow down. Things like that that you know are out there that people are thinking. Or Boca Chief shows up as a follower, okay, it even makes people nervous to a certain extent, but I think it’s a great icebreaker. I really do. People see that you’re involved in this form. I think that they think more in terms of accessibility and the fact that we’re people too, so I think we’ve got to start turning some of that negative into positive.

Len Sipes: We’re more than halfway through the program. Our guests today are Dan Alexander, Chief of Police of Boca Raton, Florida. His website www.bocaviper.com, B-O-C-A-V-I-P-E-R, one word, dot com. Dan is involved in everything on the face of the earth – Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, interactive mapping, websites, e-mail alerts, offender notifications, TV shows, and a blog. Laurie Stevens is our other guest. She is with the New England Institute of Arts. She is Chair of Web Design in Social Media. She is putting on a conference called Social Media in Law Enforcement, the SMILE Conference. The website address is theSMILEconference.com, one word. So, www or http://theSMILEconference.com. All right. So we’re into the second half of the program. This is going by like wildfire. I think we need to move off of this fear thing because it’s interesting – so many individuals throughout the country, so many corporations are embracing social media wholeheartedly, and it’s become a huge part of what it is that they do and how they operate, but we in the criminal justice system just are, we’re just a bunch of, we’re a bit stodgy, and for an organization that has to communicate with a public, this is a fantastic way of doing it.

Laurie Stevens: It is fantastic and it’s inexpensive and it’s fast, and it’s like Dan said, cops aren’t exactly known for changing, yet this guy, Dan, had his own social media police, not an officer, a civilian, but a social media manager, over a year ago. I was listening to him and kind of chuckling thinking, he’s not all that afraid, because he’s out there really leading the pack. And to that point, I think that another officer friend of mine made the analogy that it’s like freight train and it isn’t about a [PH] decision anymore Len; it’s taken off. You’re either going to get hit by it or you’re going to get on and you’re going to ride it, or you’re going to wake up one day real surprised and wonder what happened and how did I lose control of this situation.

Len Sipes: I found a website, go ahead, please.

Laurie Stevens: No, I’m just saying that I think law enforcement, I don’t know about the criminal justice organizations as well as law enforcement, I think law enforcement isn’t that far behind other businesses. I really don’t. The ones I’m talking to, everybody’s interested in doing it. They are a little fearful, but they’re trying to figure out their way.

Len Sipes: I ran across the other night a website, Cops Who Blog. That’s part of the NING network, N-I-N-G, Cops Who Blog or Cops That Blog, I can’t remember, but I’ve been interacting with them in terms of my own promotional activities, and they’re really interesting, the conversations I’ve had with them and talking about some of the websites and some of the things that they’re doing. You’re right. There’s a lot of energy, but once again, and I don’t want to beat this horse to death, I do think that there is, and this is the conversation I had this morning, that folks are just reluctant. I was talking to some people in public relations a little while ago, and said, Leonard, I’m a dang gone good public affairs officer. I know how to talk to the media, I know all about my agency, I’m not friends but I have a good relationship with the folks in the media, I’m constantly available, and so I can do radio shows, I can do television shows, I can do talk radio, and I can write, and now, on top of everything I know how to do, now you want me to start producing radio shows, you want me to start doing websites, you want me to start doing blogs, you want me to start Twittering. Where does this begin and where does this end? His point was traditionally a public affairs officer had a set amount of skills and that’s all he or she had to worry about. Now those skill sets need to double or triple, and now their job has become much more complex and they’re not exactly hopping and skipping and smiling into the social media process because it’s a lot more work.

Dan Alexander: Yeah. Some of that can be shared, and we talked about this early on, that I’m fortunate to have a resource here that is involved in it and primarily is his job function, but I think that a lot of places also have to have policing officers and crime prevention officers or use their regular officers to get engaged, and there’s some risk involved, obviously, but again, I think in terms of return on investment, it’s huge. We talk about risk, and I mentioned in the ConnectedCops.net piece that I wrote for Laurie, there is a risk in ignoring social media. I’ve watched my colleagues try to shut off a particular outlet or media outlet in particular because they don’t like a story that was run, and then they go back again. Why? Because their constituents get their news from that outlet, so you have to be there and there’s a risk ignoring it. The fact of the matter is they’re talking about you out there. The question is whether you want to get engaged in the discussion or not.

Len Sipes: But isn’t that the bottom line to both of you? And Dan, you said it perfectly – the conversation is going on whether you engage that conversation or not, so if that conversation about your agency is going to take place, wouldn’t you like to be part of that conversation in a very meaningful way? And I’m not talking about a manipulative way. I’m not talking lying. I’m talking about a very honest, open approach to sharing information with the community. If that conversation is going to take place, why don’t you want to be part of it? That’s my question.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely. I don’t see how you can, you can’t avoid it. No.

Laurie Stevens: I think it’s a lost opportunity if you’re not engaging. You know, Len, back to that skill set that you mentioned; I really think it’s not that it’s more complicated. There’s a learning curve there, but once you get over it you’d use them. They feed each other. You can use them to talk to each other. You can use them to build upon one another, the tools that I’m talking about themselves. It’s really not that hard. This is lots easier than learning how to write copy for print and lots easier than producing a television show. Tweeting, Facebook, it’s not hard to learn. It’s just getting over that hump.

Len Sipes: Well, even putting up a website, though because it’s interesting. Just a couple of years ago, a website was a $20,000 to $30,000 proposition and that was serious money. With WordPress-based designs and you’re talking about $100 to buy a professional website. Now you still have to populate that website and you may pay somebody to set that website up for you, but you’re not talking about $20,000, $30,000, $40,000. You’re talking about a couple of hundred dollars.

Laurie Stevens: If that. If you can grab WordPress and find a seam that you like.

Len Sipes: It can be a lot less than that, yes.

Laurie Stevens: It can be. It can be. It’s just not that hard, and not only that, but you don’t need a professional to update it. With WordPress and tools like that, [PH] Jumla, you can get right in and any amateur can get in and daily edit their content. It’s just not that hard.

Len Sipes: Right, but it does take time. So the point is to our brethren within the criminal justice community, it’s not that expensive. It’s not that risky. The conversation’s going on about you anyway, so why not get involved and you can accomplish operational goals. We were able to convince 530 criminal offenders with warrants to voluntarily surrender in Washington, DC, and we did it principally through social media. We did it principally through social media, so that’s my biggest law enforcement / criminal justice example of how you can accomplish operational objectives through social media.

Laurie Stevens: Well, there you go. Talk about your ROI right there. What would that have cost you without however you did that?

Len Sipes: Well, when I was an ex-cop out there serving warrants, they would give me a stack of warrants on the midnight shift and if I served one a week I was lucky, and here it is 530 people voluntarily surrendering to a church.

Dan Alexander: You go back to what you were talking about earlier, too, in terms of developing the informational content. You’re doing it anyway. We did the traditional release. It’s really just a matter of either copying, pasting, or simply changing it up a little bit to fit the format that’s appropriate for the social media outlet. Yeah, I think there is going to be a little bit more time and effort involved, but the payoff is significant. There’s no doubt about it.

Len Sipes: And it’s not just the younger individuals. I read a piece yesterday of how the younger people are bailing out of Facebook and going back to MySpace because they’re tired of their parents and grandparents being on MySpace and trying to be friends with them.

Laurie Stevens: I wouldn’t know, Len. My kids won’t friend me.

Len Sipes: My kids did so reluctantly, Laurie.

Dan Alexander: Yeah, well, that’s why a lot of parents got into it. They wanted to see what was going on, and you just look at the sheer numbers of people that are in social media. That’s the other concern that probably sits out there, is that it’s just a niche group – well, no, everyone is in social media and it’s where people are getting their content. The point I made, too, on the piece is that you talk about community – you’ll go visit someone for a Crime Watch meeting in a neighborhood, why not go into social media and visit the community that exists there. It really just doesn’t make sense.

Len Sipes: Instead of talking to 30 people, why don’t you talk to tens of thousands of people? It’s the same message. It’s the same effort.

Dan Alexander: Yeah. I think the challenge, a couple of challenges that I think about with this thing is are we reaching the right audience? I think that’s a concern in terms of trying to make it local. I know we need to do a better job of ensuring that we’re achieving a connection with our local group. The other part of it that isn’t so much of a concern, I think it’s an opportunity, is looking at how we can develop some of our own social media tools to ensure that we’re creating virtual communities within our jurisdiction. I think those are a couple of things that sit out there right now that are challenges, but not negatives. I think it’s something that is just going to involve a little more time and effort on our part.

Len Sipes: Well, you can always make fun of us northerners sitting in the snow while you’re all sitting down there in the warm weather.

Laurie Stevens: Don’t encourage him – he does that.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely.

Laurie Stevens: And he does it over Twitter, Len.

Len Sipes: You can have that cathartic relationship with your community. Laurie, you’re up there in Boston, right?

Laurie Stevens: Yes, I am.

Len Sipes: Yeah. And believe it or not, Baltimore and Washington, our metropolitan area, got more snow than any other major city this year. So Buffalo and Minneapolis, you’re now taking a backseat to DC and Baltimore. Any final thoughts? We have a minute left.

Dan Alexander: No. I would just say that we’ve been real excited about the feedback we’ve gotten and the tangible results that we’ve gotten from social media. I’m excited to see what the future holds. I think we’re still in law enforcement and in criminal justice on the front end of this thing, and I think it’s important for us through opportunities like the SMILE Conference to get together and see where we are, and see what we can do to improve our approach to community policing.

Len Sipes: Laurie, you got about 30 seconds. Laurie?

Laurie Stevens: No, just to piggyback on that – I think that law enforcement is, that adoption curve is just starting to turn up, and it’s just starting to really hit the masses. Not huge masses, but we have the early adopters like Dan and a few others, and now everyone else is seeing what they’re doing, seeing the successes that they’re having, and now is the time where everybody is really jumping onboard, and it’s going to get real exciting here.

Len Sipes: Well, in terms of size, I’m doing 2.5 million requests a year.

Laurie Stevens: You are?

Len Sipes: Yes, and I’m spending less than $15,000 a year to do it, so the point is, is that this is powerful. People in the criminal justice system need to understand how powerful this is and how relatively inexpensive it is.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely.

Laurie Stevens: Well, I think we went a long way towards that today, I hope.

Len Sipes: Good. Our guests today, ladies and gentlemen, Dan Alexander, Chief of Police, Boca Raton, Florida. His Web address, www.bocaviper.com. Bocaviper is one word. Doing Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, interactive mapping, websites, e-mail alerts, offender notification, TV shows, blog, and just about everything else on the face of the Earth. I’m very, very impressed with Boca Raton and Dan Alexander from what I heard today. Laurie Stevens, the New England Institute of Art, Chair of Web Design and Social Media. She is putting on a conference, Social Media in Law Enforcement, the SMILE Conference in Washington, DC, on April 7, 8, and 9. This is the year 2010. The SMILE Conference is the address, theSMILEconference is all one word, dot com, and you can get information about that. Ladies and gentlemen, like I said at the beginning of the program, we continue to be really impressed by your letters and in some cases phone calls, even though I don’t give out my address, your comments to our comments box, which come in to about 10 a day, and some of your e-mails, feel free to share them. Some of them are about the show and some of them are not, and I do the best I can to answer those e-mails that aren’t about the show, and some are just downright tragic and we try to do our very best to help you with local resources and plug you in to those local resources. But in any event, we really appreciate your patronage and have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

- Audio ends -

Terms: social media, SMILE, Social Media in Law Enforcement, police, law enforcement

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Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Criminal Justice, Media, Police, Social Media

Women Offenders-Our Place DC-DC Public Safety

July 13, 2009 by 1 Comment

Welcome to DC Public Safety-radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/?p=172

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at twitter.com/lensipes.

- Audio Begins -

Len Sipes: From our studios in Downtown DC, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Tara Lihn Leaman, who is the Deputy Director of Our Place DC is by our microphone today. We’re here to talk about part of the request by the way of several listeners, we’re here to talk about not only Our Place DC, which I consider to be one of the best all purpose wraparound places for women offenders in the United States. It is an extremely comprehensive program with a stellar reputation, but also to talk about the status of women offenders throughout the country who are called up in the criminal justice system. And Tara, welcome to DC Public Safety.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Thanks, Len, for having us. And good morning to all of our listeners out there.
Len Sipes: Okay. Our Place DC is the telephone number and I’ll be repeating this throughout the program 202 548 2400; 202 548 2400. The website, www.ourplacedc – one word – ourplace.org. And Tara, one of the reasons why we wanted to have you on the program today was to talk about the status of women offenders, but first our usual commercial that our regular listeners are quite familiar with; ladies and gentlemen, thank you, we continue to go upwards in terms of the amount of requests that we get on a monthly basis. We’re way beyond the 120,000 now, and we really appreciate all of the suggestions, all of the comments that you make and please keep them coming. It is DC Public Safety at media – m-e-d-i-a.csosa.gov. You can get in touch with me via Twitter at lensipes twitter, slash lensipes or my email directly at Leonard.sipes@csosa.gov. And back to our microphone with Tara Lihn Leaman. One of the things that we talked about before the program, Tara was that there really is a difference between male and female offenders, especially when they come out of the prison system. Women offenders have higher rates of substance abuse per U.S. Department of Justice research. The same research, women offenders have higher rates of mental health problems. Women coming out of the prison system are not just on their own. They have, in probably 70 to 80 percent of the cases, children that they are responsible for. So they’re not just reentering for themselves, they’re reentering for their children. And finally the research showed – what was that final point that I was going to make? Completely slipped my mind. So we’ll go ahead and discuss what we have thus far and put it in context of Our Place DC, which I really believe is a wonderful opportunity for offenders coming out of the prison system to get all these wraparound services that you offer. So we’ll start off with what is My Place DC? I’m sorry, Our Place DC.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Thank you. Well, Our Place DC is the only community based support and resource center for formerly and currently incarcerated women from the District of Columbia. The mission of Our Place is to support women who are or have been in the criminal justice system by providing the resources they need to maintain connections with the community, resettle after incarceration and reconcile with their families. We help women remain drug and alcohol free, obtain decent housing and jobs, gain access to education, secure resources for their children and maintain physical and emotional health in an effort to lead women and families to self sufficiency.
Len Sipes: And the bottom line behind all of that is that all of the issues that we talk about for reentry, people coming out of the prison system, whether it be mental health, whether it be substance abuse, whether it be finding a place to live, whether it’s being reunited with her children, with talk about being in a safe place, all of that happens at Our Place DC, right?
Tara Lihn Leaman: It absolutely does happen and since 1999 we have served over 5,000 women needing those services. First and foremost the employment and housing services are often the biggest hurdles to women and families that we serve, must leap over coming out. So we have a substantial employment program that includes employment counseling, employment assessment, employment follow up and also, of course, employment job placement.
Len Sipes: And the women that I’ve talked to from your center that I’ve encountered throughout the years, one of the things that I hear consistently from them is that they, at Our Place DC, they feel safe. They feel safe, they feel embraced, maybe for the first time in their lives. And people listening to this program, if you’re not familiar with reentry, everybody needs to understand that we ordinarily send a former offender to over here for job placement and we send them over there for mental health treatment and we send them over there in terms of housing. So the person has got to be traveling from place to place to place. You have a comprehensive wraparound service.
Tara Lihn Leaman: We do, Len. And it really begins at our nerve center, which is our drop in center. And the drop in center is safe, it’s drug free and it’s a nurturing place. When I say safe, because most of the women that we serve are also survivors of domestic violence, it’s a women only safe space.
Len Sipes: It’s a sexual – and that’s the issue that I forgot when I was doing my introduction, the majority of women, again, per U.S. Department of Justice research, has basically stated that they were sexually abused in their younger years. Or they’ve been sexually abused at some point throughout their lives. Now, think about that. A lot of the women that I’ve encountered in my 40 years within the criminal justice system, they’re pretty hard. They’re drug addicted. They’re struggling with mental health issues. They’ve been on the street doing a lot of crazy things. And that’s something else I want to talk about because some of the women I encounter are not a danger to society at all. They got caught up in drug transportation at the “request of a significant male figure”. But we’ll talk about that a little bit later. And the point is that hard edge that comes with many of them, I think the basis for that is sexual violence at a young age. So they don’t trust anybody. They don’t trust – Lord knows that they don’t trust the system. But they trust Our Place DC.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, some of the women have absolutely been survivors of domestic violence. And I would go to say that the majority of the women at some point in their lives have been abused quite often by someone that they trusted. And so absolutely the women know about Our Place and we are fortunate to have wonderful relationships with folks actually working inside the prisons. So we go to the prisons and we do pre-release workshops, both at the prisons where there are the highest number of DC women.
Len Sipes: Right. And they’re involved in federal prisons through the Federal Bureau of Prisons. So for those listening outside of the District of Columbia, there is no District of Columbia prison that was closed down. It’s now, as of 2000, the responsibility for incarcerated DC offenders is now the purview of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Right, Len. And you touched upon a really good word which is trust. And because we have these positive relationships with folks working within corrections and we’re able to go in and actually start building bonds of trust with the women that we serve while they’re still in prison. So we hold prerelease workshops, usually there’s a couple of days that we spend, the staff, our program staff go in and do, we have a prerelease packet that we share information, women coming out – what they need to know in terms of housing, in terms of HIV services, in terms of, you know, the drop in services, that could be something as simple as getting an ID or getting police clearance. And so we’re able to start building those bonds of trust with the women on the inside so when they, upon release, they come to Our Place and we already have a good deal of information about what their needs are, what their concerns are and we’re able to address that then and there.
Len Sipes: Now I’m going to go out on a limb here because you and I before the show we were talking and I’ll get emails saying, you know, Leonard, you left leaning liberal you, in terms of talking about the issues dealing with female offenders or with male offenders in general. And I’ve always said, and I’m looking at my watch now and it is 25 of 12. I keep saying, all I’m doing is saying it’s 25 of 12. I’m not leaning right, I’m not leaning left. I’m simply stating what is in terms of the statistics. And they’re good, solid U.S. Department of Justice research in terms of the status of women offenders. But the other thing is that they do better under treatment than males. One of the correlates, or one of the predictors of doing well is being a female offender, not a male offender. I remember when I taught a Job Corps class that the bulk of my really good students were women. Were women, people called women, women offenders caught up in the criminal justice system. You know, women seem to be more willing to cross the bridge to a drug induced lifestyle, a criminal lifestyle, they seem more willing to cross the bridge than male offenders. And that just seems, I’m going by the research, is that right or wrong?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, it depends. And the reason why it depends is that most of the women that we serve have been charged with non violent drug offenses, that’s correct. And the majority of women are mothers. And so it’s really important for us in our services, which the woman lead and carve for us, to be very mindful of gender specific approach to our services. And so by that I man, for example, if a woman that we’re serving is a mother then ,
Len Sipes: And most are.
Tara Lihn Leaman: And most are, I would say over 80 percent are, grandmothers as well.
Len Sipes: Right.
Tara Lihn Leaman: When we’re looking at, for example, legal services, we’re going to more than likely be dealing with family law issues. Whether it’s child custody, it could even be divorce, that’s something that we are, that we are addressing within a gender specific frame. In terms of employment, our employment services, we want to place women who are often mothers at placements where they offer living wage and also benefits.
Len Sipes: Sure.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Health benefits for their children, flexible hours, because if you are a mother you often are going to be the primary caretaker of the kids. So we really want to ensure that the woman’s’ experience, quite frankly dictates the services that we’re able to provide. And we always want to provide services that any one of us on staff would also use. There is not a distinction in our services.
Len Sipes: Now, let’s get down to what I consider the chip on their shoulder the size of Montana, that’s how I describe so many male offenders. And there’s a lot of female offenders that fit that description as well, they don’t trust life. The overwhelmingly majority of, let’s say male and female offenders together, they grow up in households that were dysfunctional. They’ve been, a lot of them have been raising themselves from a very young age and a lot of them, they were very early age of entrance to drug use, alcohol use, very early entry to a lifestyle of crime or being involved in criminal activity. And if you raise yourself and if you associate with your peers who have also raised themselves, you come out of it with this joint sense of it’s me against the world. And so many of the women offenders that I’ve talked to over the course of time they also had this sense of, you know, I don’t trust you Mr. Government Man. And that’s fine. I understand that. How do you break through all that?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, before we break through it, we are always mindful that we are, we have all made poor choices in life. There’s no a person that I’ve met, and I include myself there, that has not made a poor choice. Often the difference lies in the types of support systems we have in place. For example, I was fortunate enough to have a cushion. I was fortunate enough to have someone say, that just ain’t right, you don’t do that.
Len Sipes: Right.
Tara Lihn Leaman: And so when you look at the choices, what we try to model is yes, we’ve all made poor choices, some of us were dealt a worse hand than others, and we want to always be accountable for our behaviors. And mindful of the need to make healthier choices. And that’s what Our Place is about. It’s not – we don’t care where you have been prior to walking through our door. The fact that you made a choice to walk through that door is the first step out of many to making better choices.
Len Sipes: But my question remains, how – I understand all that, and everything you’ve just said is extremely logical. But that doesn’t cut the mustard in terms of taking an individual male or female, who feels that life has not been kind to them and that they survive by this extraordinarily harsh exterior. Breaking through that extraordinarily harsh exterior involves what?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, breaking through that harsh exterior of which most of the women that we serve have that harsh exterior, begins by creating trust.
Len Sipes: Right.
Tara Lihn Leaman: It’s by treating someone that you may, on its face, feel like you have nothing in common with. But after sitting down and talking to them, you actually realize there is more things you have in common than not. And so that’s the trust.
Len Sipes: And that takes how long to break through?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, we have worked with women since the beginning of Our Place, since 1999, who have been serving extended sentences. We accept collect phone calls so we can still have a relationship with a woman who has a sentence of 20 plus years. When the women come, because we’re doing prerelease workshops inside the prison, when the women come out, they know about us. Their bunkee has told them about Our Place.
Len Sipes: There you go.
Tara Lihn Leaman: And so it’s all about those trusts, those bonds of trusts that we work so hard to create while the woman is still on the inside.
Len Sipes: Because you know she’s sitting there for the first week, the second week, the first month, second month saying, all right, but sooner or later some, they’re going to do something. Sooner or later they’re going to do something that’s going to violate my trust. I know that. Nobody, I can’t trust anybody.
Tara Lihn Leaman: That’s , I’m laughing as you’re saying that, Len, because there is this wonderful sister that we met at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia. And we were giving a prerelease workshop there and there were about 75 women who came to our workshop, DC women, and , this one woman got up in the middle of our presentation and was basically, c’mon, Tara, you guys ain’t for real ,
Len Sipes: That’s right.
Tara Lihn Leaman: , I mean, what’s really going on here?
Len Sipes: What is your game?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Exactly. What is our game? What are you not telling us that as soon as I walk into Our Place you’re going to be like, no, we can’t help you. And I said, when you come into Our Place you ask for me. I’m telling you we are going to do to the best of our abilities help you legal, HIV services, we have transitional housing. We have a sixty day transitional home. Healthcare, employment, our scholarship program, our family transportation program, our children services. We, there is no game. And I’m happy to say that once this young woman got released, she came to Our Place, she came our employment, she came to Our Place, she got her police clearance that she needed, her form of official ID that she needed, a voucher, a transportation voucher. And we helped her get her resume together. And she is currently enrolled in a job training program.
Len Sipes: Mmm. I’ve talked to one woman who basically said that Our Place DC is her home.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, we like to think that ,
Len Sipes: It’s their emotional home. They’re in an apartment now. They’re working. They’re reunited with their kids, but Our Place DC, and the people in Our Place DC are her real home, not her second home. It’s her real home because it is the only place, according to her, that she felt safe and comfortable.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, that’s really wonderful to hear. And that’s why we exist. And that’s just certainly a tribute to our staff. But I have to tell you, Len, unfortunately not every story is a success story for us.
Len Sipes: Of course not, it can’t be.
Tara Lihn Leaman: And what we do say is we understand that relapse is a part of recovery. We understand that. And as long as you are sober, you are welcome at Our Place. So it doesn’t matter if for some reason you have been re-incarcerated or if years have gone by and you haven’t come to Our Place, you’re always welcome.
Len Sipes: Tara Lihn Leaman, the Deputy Director of Our Place DC, I’m going to give the telephone numbers now and at the end of the program; 202 548 2400, 202 548, 2400. The website is www.ourplacedc – one word dot org. www.ourplacedc.org. I want to continue, Tara, for the second half of the program the – we talk about all of the isms in terms of women offenders. In terms of the research saying that they do have higher rates of substance abuse. They have higher rates of mental health problems. They bring the uniqueness of having other human beings to deal with and be responsible for when they come out of the prison system. And we talk quite frankly and openly about the fact of sexual violence being directed towards so many of these individuals. Now let’s shift gears a little bit. I was with the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services for 14 years as their Director of Public Information. And I remember we were talking about the women’s prison in Jessup. And somebody said, you know what? Here’s my opinion, that a third, up to 30 percent of these women, possibly more, could be safely released from the prison system today, as long as they had continuing services; mental health services, employment services, or even GPS monitoring or whatever it is from the safety, a public safety point of view, that if they have the right services they could be released today, it would save the taxpayers of the State of Maryland an enormous amount of money. Women offenders would get the assistance that was necessary for them to make that transition. And it would be a huge win/win for everybody, but politically we can’t do that. But they said that these women were not a danger to society. That these women that they are talking about were acting on the request of a male figure who requested “that they carry a substantial amount of drugs from point A to point B” when they came into Maryland and they were found out and they were arrested for transporting a truckload of God knows what, some illegal drug. So the woman ends up in prison for a long period of time but she is not a danger to society. She was basically told by this male figure, take this from one point in the State of Maryland to another, or take it from Georgia to New York or I’m going to hurt you bad. Now, again, I’m not making excuses for these individuals. I’m not. But that’s true. That happens a lot which, and so many people, so many of the women caught up in the criminal justice system fit that description. They’re not a danger to public safety. They were basically almost a victim, if you will, of this person who said do or I’m going to hurt you.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Absolutely. I mean, and you basically summarized the Kimber Wood story which who I believe President Clinton pardoned several years ago, but yes, some of our women were in that same situation where they were given a choice, you either do this by someone that they thought they loved or something harmful would happen to you. And what their situations have informed us is our need to really examine what a healthy relationship looks like. When we get caught up in that situation do we know what a healthy relationship looks like?
Len Sipes: People who have been abused a lot of times end up with abusive people.
Tara Lihn Leaman: There is a definite cycle, absolutely. And there’s lots of studies that confirm that. Mm-hmm.
Len Sipes: Right. So they end up with this abusive person out of some sense of love. And this person understands that he is just manipulating the individual and sends her out to do his bidding. Generally speaking not a violent crime, generally speaking transporting drugs.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Right.
Len Sipes: Or hiding a gun.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Non violent drug offenses. Absolutely. And I also want to make sure for our listeners that these types of relationships involving domestic violence abuse are not just heterosexual in nature. We also work with women who are in same sex relationships that also have been survivors of domestic violence. More than likely wouldn’t do the same things that we’re talking about. Do this or else.
Len Sipes: Right. Right. So it is , there’s a certain point where it just paints a sad picture. And, again, I’m totally, for the people who are going to write in and say that I’m leaning too far left, I understand that you do the crime, you do the time. I understand people need to take responsibility for their own decisions and I support that. And I believe that people should, under certain circumstances, serve long and harsh terms of incarceration. But nevertheless, you know, in the State of Maryland, we said we could let a third of the people in the Maryland prison system for women out tomorrow as long as they have the right services, they would probably not present a public safety issue. Now, it’s inevitable that one or two or three or ten or twelve or a dozen are going to go out and get right back involved in the lifestyle, I mean, that comes with the territory when you make those sorts of decisions. There’s nothing bulletproof, foolproof about dealing with offenders, former offenders, and taking risks. But nevertheless that was our assumption.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Absolutely. And DC being Maryland’s sister jurisdiction right now the council, I think, council member Phil Mendelson, who is the chairman of the Judicial system of the Public Safety Committee, they are entertaining an idea of releasing some folks earlier that have participated in programs preparing for their release.
Len Sipes: Right.
Tara Lihn Leaman: But let me just get back also to the numbers, because you mentioned the numbers, recently the peer center on states talked about how in New York, I believe that one dollar of every 15 dollars is spent on correction. In New York $40,000 dollars a year is spent on corrections, $15,000 dollars a year is spent on treatment. So in this environment of the so called scarcity of resources, where folks are being incarcerated instead of getting treatment, even the numbers favor getting treatment.
Len Sipes: Well, right. What they’re saying is that if we invest enough money, the research teams should be pretty clear on this from a cost effective point of view, and we have the PEW(?) foundation to thank for this and Adam Gelb’s organization as well as the Washington State’s Public Policy Institute where they’ve been able to prove, conclusively, that these programs save taxpayers an enormous amount of money. And probably do a better job of dealing with public safety than simply incarcerating them without services, right?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Absolutely. And I was reading an article, Gene(?) Healy, who is one of the Vice Presidents of all places, the Kato Institute in the Washington Examiner yesterday talking about how he thinks reforming the drug policy, particularly as it relates to decriminalizing certain substances, makes a lot of sense.
Len Sipes: And Kato, by the way, is a conservative think tank.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Exactly. So getting back, this is not a left or right issue. It is reality.
Len Sipes: Well, I get the newspapers clippings every day throughout the country. And the states can not afford to do what it is they’re doing. And they’re looking for a “better way” which is one of the reasons why PEW is involved in the business and the sentencing projects are involved in the business. But there is, the states are basically saying we can no longer afford to do this level of incarceration. We’ve got to look for alternatives. And again it’s not a political philosophy, it’s the state’s basically saying we can not afford to do this. And just in case the listeners don’t know, and the listeners throughout the world, I don’t know if they’re going to have a frame of reference here, but for the first time in my 40 years we’re laying off police officers, we’re laying off correctional officers, we’re closing prisons and we’re laying off parole and probation agents because the states simply can’t afford to keep these people on. So we have a fiscal crisis at the state level. The states are trying to cope with this by making better decisions in terms of how they manage their offender population and that’s why I brought up the Maryland situation of years ago, but we simply said, ah, we let 30 percent of the women offenders go and if a couple of them go out and do something wrong it’s our heads on the chopping block, why take that risk?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Right. And not only are those cuts being made at that level, but then you also have cuts being made in terms of the services being offered to women and men who have spent time in prison or are currently incarcerated in terms of employment services that are being cut as well. So it begs the question, what does rehabilitation look like?
Len Sipes: Well, that’s one of the reasons why I wanted you on the program today, because Our Place DC is probably the only entity that I’m aware of. I’m quite sure there are more out there, that even for male or female offenders, it is a complete wraparound service. You walk through that door, you know, you get all the services you need. Not necessarily at that physical location, but it’s all right there. I mean that doesn’t even happen here. To my knowledge it doesn’t happen anywhere but Our Place DC does that and there are so many hardened women with considerable criminal backgrounds that I talked to that are now taking care of their three kids and they’re now tax burdens, I mean, now a taxpayer, not a tax burden, and those three kids are now being loved and taken care of by their mother. Now that is a huge win/win for our society at large.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Absolutely. I mean, we’ve worked with several mothers to help them regain custody of their kids that they were obviously not with while they were incarcerated. So the services that one can get at Our Place include, but are not limited to the following: the drop in center, as I mentioned earlier, we have clothes. Clothes for women that again, anyone on staff would wear. We’re not going to give you something that we wouldn’t wear.
Len Sipes: Right.
Tara Lihn Leaman: ID, birth certificates, police clearance, tokens. We also have a phone, fax and computer for women who would like to set up an email account, check email. Our HIV/AIDS services includes onsite counseling, testing and referral.
Len Sipes: Which is a real problem over here in the District.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Absolutely.
Len Sipes: And throughout the country.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Absolutely. You know, probably a lot of folks have seen some of the abysmal statistics coming out of DC regarding HIV/AIDS, AIDS and the fact and the reality is that African American women primarily through heterosexual sex are ,
Len Sipes: Are catching HIV.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Exactly. At an extraordinarily high rate. We also have housing. I mentioned our transitional housing program we have, speaking of HIV/AIDS, three beds are reserved for women who are HIV positive, one bed is not. It’s a sixty day transitional housing program. We also offer housing case management. Our health care, we provide mental health services and substance abuse treatment through our consultants that we have on staff. Licensed nurses on staff. Legal services, direct representation, community based legal education groups and also not just a direct services, but also the advocacy part. For example, we are the only organization that is tracking and monitoring the conditions of release of DC women from the correctional treatment facility. Employment, as I mentioned before, career planning, placement assistance, training and education ,
Len Sipes: That’s an amazing list.
Tara Lihn Leaman: , scholarship program. We have a scholarship program for kids whose mothers are currently incarcerated or have been formerly incarcerated.
Len Sipes: But all this is on the website, right?
Tara Lihn Leaman: All this is on the website, exactly.
Len Sipes: We have to close the program.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Okay.
Len Sipes: We’re running late on the program. Tara Lihn Leaman, she is the Deputy Director of Our Place DC, 202 548 2400. These numbers and contact points will be in the show notes; 202 548 2400. The website, www.ourplacedc one word, if you will dot org. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We are extremely appreciative of all the feedback that you’re giving us and all the suggestions for the show. We got three suggestions for the show for women offenders and that’s why we’re sitting here with Tara Lihn Leaman. You all have yourselves a very pleasant day.

- Audio Ends -

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