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(upbeat music) (bell rings) - Good afternoon.

Welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

Today is Friday, November 4th.

I'm Dan Moulthrop, I'm the chief executive here, and I'm moderating our forum today, which is the Lozick Law Enforcement Forum, and it's also part of our criminal justice series.

Now, when we talk about criminal justice and criminal justice reform, we're typically talking about systems and policies, bail, diversion programs, sentencing guidelines.

But at the heart of this, the heart of all of this are human beings, sometimes in conflict, sometimes working to keep one another safe, sometimes both.

And the question we're talking about today is this, What if empathy is actually the key to better policing?

I know it sounds kind of touchy feely and a little gooey, but honestly, what if learning to recognize one another's essential humanity could be instrumental in making our communities safer?

Here's the spoiler, it works.

For the past few years, leaders in the Fourth District, in the Cleveland Division of Police and leaders in the community, in the community that the Fourth District serves have been doing just this.

And today we're gonna learn where this story begins, what this actually looks like in terms of the day-to-day operations of police work and where this might lead our community.

Joining us are Marilyn Burns, she's a community advocate and volunteer and a Ward 6 Precinct committee member, Detective Chris Gibbons with the Cleveland Division of Police and Commander Brandon Kutz, with the Fourth District of the Cleveland Division of Police.

And I have to say too, that there's one other person who should be on this panel, but who couldn't be here.

She's the woman who basically wrote the book on the how the practice of empathy can change everything about your life.

Her name is Jacqueline Acho.

Jackie's not here with us today, because to be totally transparent with all of you, she's in hospice care.

It's the end of a long journey with cancer.

And about a month ago, she published a blog post simply titled, "I'm Done".

So as we get into this conversation, I want everybody here in our listening audience as well to understand that none of this would be happening if it weren't for Jackie Acho.

And I know Jackie's listening.

So members and friends, please join me in a big round of applause for Jackie Acho and our panel.

(audience applauds) Marilyn Burns.

I know you had something you wanted to say about Jackie's impact.

- Yes, I did.

Jackie became a very good friend of mine through a training program that started at the Fourth District.

She had worked with Chris and Commander Kutz, and she came for a visit to start a little program with our safety group.

I feel very passionate about her work that she had done.

We've had one-on-one conversations about this.

The Acho Group, if anybody wants to look her up and see of the amazing things that she has done.

And I just wanted to say, I would not be sitting here today if it wasn't for the work that Jackie has been doing.

She's become a good friend in so many arenas, and it's been an honor for me to have met her and to be a part of this group.

- Yeah, Brandon.

- So I could take an hour up talking about how awesome Jackie's been for us, but I'll give you a feel for the spirit.

So I went up last summer to Chatauqua Institution with her in New York where she gave a presentation about this.

And you talk about 2,000, 3,000 people in an amphitheater there, right?

And she's giving her compelling talk as always, and a rapt audience.

And about two thirds of the way into it, suddenly a brass band for some reason had gathered outside the amphitheater, just started playing.

And in the middle of her speech and her talk, and this brass band is playing.

And when I finally got a chance to go up to the stage, I said, "You know, Jackie," I said, "Brass band would follow you around everywhere you go, because when you talk, that's what people hear."

So, it was an amazing moment and kind of reflects how she comes across to people.

- Detective Gibbons, I want to start our conversation sort of continues, reflecting on Jackie's impact.

This all begins with you watching her TED Talk.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Tell that story.

- Thanks, Dan.

So, I started the police department.

I went to the Sixth District where my dad and his dad worked and got out there and I love the job, but I started to see some things about myself.

It changed, I think I started getting a little more cynical and maybe a little more distrustful of people.

I mean, it's hard to describe how difficult it is to be a police officer emotionally, really.

And every human being wants to be liked, and it's just a universal need.

And when you put this uniform on, there's a segment of people are just not gonna like you.

And it just, it became more difficult.

And I realized that, yeah, I was starting to lose some of that enthusiasm that I had when I got out of the academy, that excitement, I'm gonna go out there and change the world.

Everyone comes out of the academy feeling that way.

And, I realized that about myself, but fortunately, I had a lot of really good mentors out there who helped me to navigate that and improve my really good examples.

Police officers who push back on my maybe overzealous approach to certain things we'll say.

And, they really just showed me a better way to do things that you really catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

And that was really the approach.

It sounds kinda corny, but that was the approach that some officers really showed me.

And it was the one that I saw working with them.

And then, so I was brought down to Employee Assistance in December of '04, and when I got down there, I was just really, so I learned, I should say, I learned through the course of my time out in the Sixth District, how to improve the way I approach things, right?

To bring a more empathetic approach to work, to the calls, the assignments.

I mean, we're also called peace officers too, right?

So if I show up in a state of disease, and wound up myself, I'm not gonna bring peace to the situation that I show up at, really.

And so, I learned to do that.

It took me really longer than I would like to admit here in front of you all.

But, so when I came down to Employee Assistance, I was really overwhelmed with the issues that police officers are dealing with, the problems, the trauma, the stress, anxiety, the resort to alcohol and things to deal with what they saw.

I mean, really, I mean, just to be frank, I mean, how many dead children can you see without really losing a part of your spirit?

And so, I was just overwhelmed with what we were dealing with, and my boss, my first boss, Sergeant Lynda Dismuke and I just kinda made a decision.

We wanted to be more proactive.

And so we start, set about starting to do that.

And this was previous regimes to, prior to Calvin Williams becoming the chief.

So prior to that, people said, "That's a great, you guys are doing good to keep that up."

But we didn't get a lot of welcoming, like, "Yeah, let's start this."

Until a couple incidents that could really catalyze the incident, like the chase and the Tamir Rice incident probably softened us up to realize, okay, we do need to change.

- [Dan] The chase referring to the death of, the killing of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams.

- So it really, I think that really kind of brought it home to the Cleveland Police Department that let's just really try and take some things.

So we became willing to take some more chances, I think and to- - So at what point are you watching a TED Talk by Jackie Acho?

- So that's exactly when, so I talked to another, she's at work as an externally AP.

I said, "Hey, this one I wanna do, what can we do?"

She said, "Why don't you check out Jackie Acho's TED Talk?"

And I did, it was great, it was compelling.

And so, I reached out to her, she said, "I have your number."

I called her up and she said, "Well, why don't you meet me at Bryan Stevenson's talking at Cleveland State."

So, pretty interesting.

- That was a City Club event.

- It was.

Okay, well, so that's where we met.

There you go.

So little serendipity for you.

- So Bryan Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative.

- Okay, so great, great talk.

That's where we met a little serendipity for the folks at home.

- That's beautiful.

- And so, we met there and we started talking and she's a little intimidated by the whole project, I think.

But really immediately I knew, okay, she believes in this.

She knows change can happen by the power of empathy.

Brandon and I, commander, I should say, commander and I, Kutz and I, actually talk, call it love.

I mean, she was a little uncomfortable with that.

But we say, we're talk Jackie, what we're really talking about is love, right?

And so, just another word for love.

- Commander Kutz, talk about how this work first gets introduced into the Fourth District.

- So Jackie and Chris and members of the Cleveland Police Foundation showed up at my door and they said, "Hey, we have something little we wanna offer you."

And of course, that was the undersell of the century, right?

So Jackie's like, "Yeah, we just wanna give you folks a survey, find out how they feel about their work, and then we're gonna maybe do some training or a few things with them," is how she sold it.

"Yeah, no problem, Jackie, let's do it.

Let's go for it."

It was an opportunity to give something to the officers to benefit them.

So it was an easy yes.

And that was, and then came the 60-90-minute long survey that each officer had to take, and the page after page of analysis on how they felt about the job themselves, about working with the police department, how they felt about the community.

- What did you learn?

What did you see in that survey?

- Well, I would say that I'm now my 25th year as a police officer, so there weren't too many surprises.

People were upset, angry, morale was an issue.

They were concerned about the relationship with the community and how the community perceived them.

They were concerned about how the division treated them and how we provided to them or failed to provide to them.

So there was a lot of that.

And it was a cold reckoning, it was a long weekend that Jackie and her partner Monica handed me the result and they're like, "Just take your time and read this over the weekend."

And I think on Monday I came in, I was a basket case and I was like, "Man, this is messy."

- You had to call Employee Assistance.

- Yeah, right.

And as the commander, I take responsibility for my people, and I knew I was only there for a short time and I inherited some heartaches and whatever.

But I took that responsibility seriously.

So we got to work and formed a team of people from within the district from all different corners of my district, experienced levels, just everybody we could possibly pull in that we thought we'd work on this.

We used a leadership model to bring the team together.

And when the team came together, they looked at the results of the survey and they got to work and they said, "Here's our 10 biggest priorities commander.

here's what we wanna do about it."

And these young officers and detectives and sergeants under the leadership of Jackie and our partner Monica, really took off and started just nailing things out of the park.

- But so what does that look like?

Oh, we gotta work on empathy.

And so, like goal number 1, we're gonna love each other inside the department.

- Well, we didn't drop the word empathy on them or love on them.

We want just like Jackie kind of snuck in on me.

We kind of snuck in on them too, which is we wanted to make sure we did, we put them in a position to be successful.

So the whole concept behind this basically is we have big expectations for our police officers, right?

We expect them to go out into the public, be patient, be calm, be good listeners, make very wise decisions under stressful conditions.

And those aren't easy expectations.

They're not easy to get to.

And it's very hard when the organization isn't treating the officers with that kind of respect itself.

So, it's just kind of the way we have been for a long time, a very paramilitary organization.

You do what we tell you to do and that's the way it's gonna be.

Not a whole lot of room for discussion or conversation about why we tell them to do that.

Resources are scarce, so we have to make hard decisions about resources.

And the environment wasn't always great for our employees.

So giving them the opportunity to tackle some of that stuff head on and solve some of that, start sending the message to the people inside the building that we care.

And then the hope is that they take that same feeling that we care for them, we need you to care for the community.

And we believe that we saw real positive results, 'cause of those efforts.

- Ms. Burns, at what point do you start intersecting with this work?

- Well, I didn't have to take that 90-minute survey, let me start with that.

(audience laughs) But commander, we have safety meeting groups from residents in the neighborhood, very neighborhoods.

And so, he came to us and talked to us about this empathy piece and would we like to take some training.

So everybody agreed that's how we met Jackie.

And we started talking about empathy and some training came along with this.

Some people from out of town came along with this and did a couple of sessions with the people that were head of our safety committees in our neighborhoods.

- So, was this training just for residents or was this training with alongside police officers?

- Both, both as well.

But, and so that came about.

- What did you think?

- I was all onboard, because I'm a very, very empathetic person, for those who know me in this room.

I'm always showing empathy and love.

I'm very concerned about how this all plays out into the community, especially communities that has a great deal of disparities and the way they feel about police officers, it was just this wall that was built, "Oh my god, it's a problem.

We're gonna build this wall, we're not going to accept any of this that they're bringing."

But I would sit outside in my office and I would see the reaction that the residents would have with the police.

But the police in my district, I would talk to the commander about how they were accepted.

And at the end of the day, that's just a uniform, but under that uniform is a human being, and this is what we wanted our neighbors to capture, instead of automatically putting up this wall of resistance.

So the commanders started these walk and talks.

The kids would love it when the police came through, they would pull on the uniform, "What is this?

What does this do?"

And I would watch the reaction of some of these kids' parents and these walls would start to break down.

"Oh, they're not that bad, they love the kids, love 'em, we love them."

'Cause in my generation, we were taught that the police are your friends.

Somewhere over the years, it just turned completely around.

But I love this empathy piece.

I think it's something that is sorely needed in our neighborhood, sorely needed in the city itself.

So I'm hoping that this, that what we started with Jackie, and we always love her, that her work and this piece that she has brought will spread like a domino effect.

And we all will feel that empathetic piece, we always still feel that love and that's basically, at the end of the day, this is what empathy is, showing love to one another, changing the minds, the spirits, and the holistic of a person that we are all connected.

We all need each other, we all need to have that piece of understanding in order to grow, in order to change.

So she has brought that piece back.

And so, it's fresh air.

It's just fresh air, sorely needed throughout the city of Cleveland.

- Thank you, Ms. Burns.

Detective Gibbons, what does this actually mean day-to-day in how police officers are doing their work?

- Well, I think the commander said it best.

The analogy that this, if you're gonna nurture a child, right?

You're gonna care for 'em, you're gonna be loving towards 'em so that you know that they're gonna take that loving, nurturing spirit out with them to the world, right?

If you treat a child in a rough way, how is that child gonna treat the world, right?

So we're human beings, right?

Police officers are human beings.

So if there's a little bit of a nurturing spirit at roll call and within the building, if you look around the building, it looks a little bit nicer than it did, which kudos the commander, if you could see the difference between the Fourth District building today from where it was before he took over, it's really amazing.

And so, you start nurturing them.

And then, but what you really do is you give them some agency and you allow them to make the changes.

What do you think needs to be done?

'Cause the patrolmen, the men and women on the street and the detectives on the street, they know what needs to be done.

I don't personally, I've been off the zone car for a very long time.

I've been out of the zone car for a long time and I really don't know what's going on out there.

Really, as they do, they have the answers, we let them do it.

They take teams like Detective Mike Williams out there, best looking man of law enforcement.

He tackled some issues, and they took it on themselves to make the changes that they wanted to see within the department.

And then, so how could that not make you feel a little bit better about yourself?

So then when you go out and you handle a tough assignment on the street, suddenly you have a little bit deeper well of compassion and patience for the people you deal with on the street.

- Commander, tell a few stories if you could, about how this has changed the work of the officers who are driving zone cars, routine traffic stops.

How are they different?

- Well, this work's kind of hard to measure, right?

'Cause it is touchy and squishy.

We did look at some metrics and we were looking at use of force as a result.

At the end when we did the initial push on this project, and the Fourth District showed a disproportionate drop in uses of force compared to the other districts in the city.

Also, with citizens complaints, we saw disproportionate drop from the Fourth District and citizens complaints and then even transfers we looked at.

So one of the things we wanna see is where were officers asking to go?

And typically, in the history of as long as I've been around is people typically fled the east side to go west, because I think they figured it was easier.

So typically, out of the Fourth District is what we had seen.

- We should define, we should let people understand where the Fourth District is.

I don't think we've actually mentioned that this basically stretches from 55th to Warrensville Heights.

- Correct, from Slavic Village to Warrensville up towards Shaker Square.

So the southeast part of Cleveland, and it's a community that is wonderful and also in distress at the same time.

So, there's a lot of issues.

We do have a lot of crime.

There's amazing people that live there and working very hard to try to address these things but it's challenging.

So over the course of this project, we saw transfers, 50% of all transfers that occurred from one district to another came into the Fourth District for the time period after we started doing this project.

So people were clamoring to get in back to the Fourth District.

I had people coming back that had been gone for years and they came back and were like, "We can't even believe that this is the same place that we left five years ago."

So it was really encouraging to see that, the teams themselves have done some amazing projects.

The agility that they have now, because they're empowered to make decisions and to identify problems.

And I'll give you a real good example.

So the same year of the George Floyd incident and then the riots that came afterwards and we lost a detective, Detective Skernivitz in the line of duty.

Well, that same exact day that he died, got killed, one of my officers committed suicide.

So the building was under distress.

Officers were already feeling a little stressed due to all the incidents that were happening and then the deaths on top of that.

Well, team members came to me and they're like, "Commander, we have an issue in the building.

We're seeing people starting to break down.

People are having issues inside this building that we think need to be addressed.

This is what we wanna do."

And they listed out different things.

So we ended up bringing in May Dugan, who was already working in our building, doing trauma recovery with our victims of violent crime.

And we went to them and asked, "Hey, we could really use your help, because Employees Assistance Unit is dealing with Skernivitz's command and helping them out.

But we need help in the Fourth District too, because we lost an officer."

And May Dugan just jumped right up and provided weekly group counseling to our roll calls.

They're doing one-on-one counseling with our officers, and that came out of the innovation team and the work that they wanted to do.

They're the ones who identified that and asked for it.

And that's the type of work that I think is really important, because had that not been addressed, now I'm putting officers out on the street that are not at their best and officers that are not at their best make mistakes.

So I think it's just, that's a very good example of what the team can do for our district.

- I just wanna mention for the benefit of our radio audience, that's Commander Brandon Kutz of the Fourth District in the Cleveland Division of Police.

He's also joined by Detective Chris Gibbons of the Division of Police and resident and advocate Marilyn Burns on our panel.

Commander Kutz, when you talk about it that way, it really does seem like this is as much about addressing unmet mental health needs as it is on the sort of back end or sort of the deficit side of things as it is building the asset of a capacity for empathy.

- Well, it's addressing all, I mean, we started small, right?

So paint, water fountains, pictures, little things to help hit those basic needs.

And that was very early on in the project, but it didn't take long and we didn't push community on 'em, by the way.

We didn't push anything on this team.

We let them decide what they wanted to tackle first.

So they really looked internally first and hit some of those kind of things that were rough around the edges.

They smoothed those over and very quickly it moved to let's work with the community, let's sit down with them and figure out how we can work together on issues.

What can we do about issues across the entire Division of Police?

And they started tackling bigger and bigger projects as it moved on.

- I wanna circle back to a word that Detective Gibbons, I think you raised earlier about training, paramilitary-style training.

I don't know if it was you, you mentioned- - [Chris] The commander mentioned that.

- Commander mentioned that.

You're gonna have to answer for it.

- Sure.

(panel and audience laughs) That's the chain of command.

That's about right, chief.

So, all right?

- Rolls downhill.

- Directly.

- Yeah, at any rate, talk about what kind of training you received when you were coming up.

And what kind of training today's cadets are receiving?

- Yeah, sure, so I mean, we were just basically the entire academy was there's like a universal precaution.

Some people in the medical field aren't familiar with that phenomena.

Well we have that, we're trained, we're indoctrinated into that that there's a gun behind every door, which there is a truth that is, there is truth to that, right?

- Could be.

- Right, could be, exactly.

There's a possibility of that.

But when it's relentlessly ingrained, you start to become more and more fearful.

By the time you get out of the academy, you're looking around, "When am I gonna get killed?"

I mean, that's really, realistically, that's about emotionally where you're at.

So actually again, tip of the hat to the commander, when he took over the academy, they started changing that.

And the first half of the academy, he could talk a little bit more about that, but it is about sort of that paramilitary-style.

You have to be tough, you have to be able to withstand criticism, you have to be able to, but then allowing officers to make some decisions on their own, make some mistakes.

And he could talk a little bit more about that.

But, so what that created in us was, we had this notion that the more quickly you get a subject into the car in handcuffs, the safer you're gonna be.

Don't give him time to make, do something crazy.

Get 'em into there.

So what that really created was a situation where use of force would go up, because rather than slowing down, taking a little time, waiting until some more officers show up, talking to 'em, letting them vent a little bit, it was immediately hands on.

So the approach, it's really a nationwide conversation is to shift law enforcement from being warriors towards being guardians, right?

I mean, you can't completely surrender the warrior aspect of it, but to shift it towards defaulting to being a guardian.

And that's what the training has taken on with the Cleveland Division of Police over the recent years.

And this really just compliments that.

And then we instituted mindfulness training, equine therapy, appreciative inquiry.

We've done a lot of things to try and compliment that shift in paradigm from warriors to guardians.

- Ms. Burns, do you feel that in the community that shift?

- Somewhat, it's a slow process.

Like with everything, all of this did not start overnight, so it's not gonna be fixed overnight.

But I do see change, I see a more understanding growing in our neighborhoods with the police and with our residents who live there, because after all, apprehension and mistrust is a big thing.

And I'm often asked all the time, how do we gain that back?

It was a statement that once was made by our City Council president, and he said, "Trust is built in drips, but lost in buckets."

So that being said, it takes a long time for people who have, this is not just generational mindsets, this is historical mindsets, then generational.

So all this being built, these negative attitudes are gonna have to be changed by little, by little, increment by increment.

So the longest journey is with the first step.

So these first steps that have been taken in our communities by the police departments to rebuild this trust, I see it happening, but as I say, it's not gonna happen overnight.

And as I was listening to Chris Gibbons and Commander Kutz speak, we talk about trauma and mental health.

But my biggest thing, and I always say, how does this trauma and mental health start?

It starts from broken spirits.

We have to rebuild our spirits in each other.

This is a house.

And then in this house we have many rooms.

And so, behind each door in our house is a human being, there is something behind that door that has to be dealt with.

So when we talk about empathy, that's just a door that's being unlocked.

And in that room, it's a lot of, you know how you have a junk room?

You hope nobody comes over you, just throw everything in there, you know what I mean?

- I don't know what you're talking about Ms. Burns.

- Okay, well, yes, anyway.

So behind those doors what we did, when we talk about empathy and mistrust and trauma and mental health, that's that door, that key, that empathy is the key to start unlocking that door, to start sorting things out, to put them in their proper place.

And it's gonna take some time to do.

- Commander.

- If every police officer in the city of Cleveland could be a friend to Marilyn, this job would be a lot easier.

- Absolutely, that's true.

If they could see that Marilyn and love her like we do, it would be a lot easier place to work.

- You need to hold office hours.

- Can I just piggyback off that?

So I really think the opposite of empathy and love is fear, right?

And so, when you see officers maybe making a mistake or somebody within the community making a mistake, it always emerges from a very human fear, I believe, 99% of the time it's a fear-driven mistake.

And so, we're trying to overcome that fear, it starts with how they're treated in roll call, how they're treated in training and how do we treat each other, right?

So, and then, so I can't communicate something that I don't have.

And if I'm not loved or nurtured in my work environment or my home, how can I convey that back out to the community, right?

- Commander Kutz he's a big picture systems question for you.

The Division of Police is under a consent decree right now, the second in a recent memory, in recent history.

And how does this work fit into the requirements of the consent decree?

- I'm glad that's your question.

(panel laughs) - That's why he's got the stripes on his sleeve.

Who else is gonna answer that?

- Well, it's a good question, Dan.

At the heart of this, it's about building the relationships, but not only internally, which are important, but certainly with the community.

And by getting our officers to be more empathetic and more patient and making sure they're professional, just like Marilyn said, we reduce the amount of times that we damage that relationship that we have at the community, and we give opportunities for that relationship to grow.

And I think if you look at the consent decree, I think there's a pretty heavy percentage of that consent decree that talks about the relationships that the police department has with the community and being partners with the community.

So I think this speaks very clearly towards some of the goals of the consent decree.

On a more practical matter is also building the capabilities of our men and women in the police department.

I have officers who are taking on projects and solving problems and can do work on the issues in the consent decree that in the past we were always kind of top-driven.

And I'll tell you right now, that it works a lot better when it's bottom-driven and when we enlist those folks to do the hard work and the work that they're passionate about and that they're knowledgeable about and that makes a huge difference.

They've done some incredible work for the division.

- I think for the benefit of our radio audience we should note the chief of police is with us today.

Thank you very much, sir.

And also members of the monitoring team are with us as well from the consent decree.

And if this were a different kind of forum, we'd be moving the mic all over the room right now.

I wanna ask you another question, commander though, that's about the sort of systems that this is all a part of.

The Division of Police is part of a broader criminal justice system and the broader criminal justice system, while there are courtrooms and individuals who are known for empathy, the system itself is certainly not known for empathy.

And I wonder how you see the work that you're doing perhaps helping to change and make a more just justice system?

- Well, I think we're pitching in, we're trying to do our part the best that we can and trying to do it better every day.

I'm very happy that we have good partners and I've seen real positive changes outside of just law enforcement.

The court system here today is Bridget Gibbons, Chris's sister, by no small coincidence, but she is an administrator with the juvenile courts and is taking on the task of detention alternatives for juveniles.

And it's something that we've been participating with the juvenile courts for years.

It took pretty strong effect and Bridget's the lead on that and continues to push that concept and trying to find new ways to do that.

So I think we're seeing other parts of the criminal justice system come in the line and we are all subject to the public's will and as that will changes, we have to be ready to change with it and make and be good community members.

- All right, we're about to go to the Q&A with all of you and open it up to your questions and concerns.

And chief, if you have a question, you wanna go first for the question for the commander, you can have it all on the record right now, just kidding.

Commander Kutz is the Fourth District Cleveland commander with the Division of Police.

With us as well, Detective Chris Gibbons with the Division of Police and community advocate and volunteer and Ward 6 Precinct committee member Marilyn Burns.

We do welcome questions from everyone, including guests and students, and those of you joining us via our livestream at Cityclub.org or a radio broadcast on 89.7 WKSU Ideastream Public Media.

You can tweet us a question by tweeting @thecityclub or you can text it to 330-541-5794.

The number again is 330-541-5794, and we will work it into the program.

And we have our first question.

- Hi, good afternoon.

I'm wondering what you all think about the sort of empathy 2.0.

You're talking about police using their expertise where it's needed.

There's a growing sort of effort to do non-police response and seen around the country, including Ohio and a coalition here in Cleveland working on that and started sending others beside your peers or mental health workers out instead of police to lower level nonviolence situations.

And I wonder how you see that fitting into the kind of work you're doing already?

- I think it fits like a finger in a glove, the work that we have... We have a big lift in the community and there's a lot of demand for help.

And the police department certainly plays a part in that.

And, but to think that we can do it alone, I think is a faulty notion.

So the more we can get our partners to help us out, and we already have social workers attached with officers going to mental health or mental health specialists going with our officers to mental health runs, which is a great program, you're out.

(panel laughs) So we're already starting that process and I think we're seeing a good return on that effort.

And I think that the more we can utilize other community members to help us with the issues in the community, the better for us.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Next question.

- Hi, I'm Pat Blochowiak, I'm a member of the City Council in East Cleveland.

And for those of you in the neighborhood, you may be aware that the Cleveland NAACP referred our police department to the Department of Justice, because of many concerns with things that have happened.

We have had nine of our current and former police indicted in the recent past, and still we have needs for policing, of course, because of the significant amount of crime.

So in wanting to support both the community and of course the police force, what would be your first step?

And go on from there if you have time, thank you.

- Small steps, but steps forward is, I think the key.

If you know there's a problem, then you just gotta start moving on the problems and start knocking 'em out as as you can.

I mean, we're not a perfect organization.

We have a ways to go.

And I imagine as time goes on, expectations will change and we have to be ready to step in new directions at all times.

So having agility in your organization and having people prepared to help you with those changes are really important.

But I mean, I think if I had the magic answer for that one, I would probably be the chief's boss, - Can I just kinda piggyback?

- Please do, please Ms. Burns.

- It all starts, we're all in this together.

So the community, your neighbors, your friends, we all have to work on this issue together.

It's just not one person sitting at the table, it's a whole lot of people coming together with their ideas.

I always say, look at this low hanging fruit first.

What can you change immediately?

So your neighborhoods, your communities, your friends, the police department can take an exhale so to speak.

But we all are, as I say, we're all in this together.

It takes a community, it takes a village, it takes all of us to bring about a change.

It's not gonna happen overnight, but we gotta work at it together.

- Ms. Burns, thank you very much, Chris Gibbons.

- Yeah, I mean, I would just say too that, you asked about changing the justice system.

It's pretty, pretty tall order, but I think that obviously, it'll be the change you wanna see in the world tomorrow, and I'd like maybe we could be an example for East Cleveland.

I'm really sympathetic to that.

The zone that I worked in was bordered East Cleveland all the way down and so I'm really sympathetic to what you're dealing with.

But yeah, prayers are with your community too.

- Thank you detective, go ahead.

- Hi, thank you for being here and thank you for your commitment to change.

My name is Janine Gergel and my question has to do with the use of the Diversion Center, recognizing that mental health is foundational to so many of the challenges in our communities, what have been the factors that have prevented greater utilization of the Diversion Center by police in the Fourth District and citywide?

- Well, I haven't been in the trenches in that conversion over to that, so I'm not sure of all the factors that are playing into that, but I do believe that the Diversion Center is important.

I believe that providing alternatives to jail is important for people with mental health issues.

Just like we are working with the juvenile courts for juveniles, that the jail is not a great answer for everybody.

And so, we're supportive of the concept.

If there's been issues, I know there's people, folks working on that and if we can sooner we get that moving smoothly, the better for everybody.

- Go ahead.

- Hi, my name is Dr. Stephanie Kent, I'm a criminology professor at Cleveland State University.

I'm glad to learn that there were trauma recovery services offered to your officers in the post-George Floyd situation.

And I was actually wondering if you could speak more about that.

Specifically, are your officers participation in these services or reactions to these services documented?

And if so, are these officers then being offered specialized services based on whatever emotional or psychological needs they appear to have?

- So I'll jump in.

I'll just do the (indistinct) part first.

So we have the trauma recovery specialists in the Fourth District.

The primary purpose there is to service our victims of violent crime, the victims of stabbing, shootings, things like that.

And they do a great job providing resources, counseling, whatever they need.

It's been an amazing project with really good results in the community and for some of our most vulnerable victims.

Their work within the police department was documented by May Dugan, and they kept track of the work that they did.

It was several months of weekly roll call presentations or roll call group counseling sessions with our patrol officers.

Other people in the district were invited in as well and then followed up after that, the need for the group counseling sessions kind of died off.

There was some, we heard some feedback that it wasn't necessary for everybody.

So we changed footing on that.

May Dugan, we stopped the group counseling, but we offered individual counseling to officers.

So that's just from May Dugan, but Chris and his folks at Employees Assistance Unit, they offer a whole range of services to our officers and he could talk a little bit more about that.

- Yeah, that's a great question, thanks.

I mean, officers, are more likely to die at their own hands and suicide than be killed in line of duty.

And we live about 20 years less than the average person, due to stress-related illness and all that.

So it's a really important issue and basically that's what my entire work life is devoted towards is to pure counseling and finding resources and doctors and treatment centers and facilities that can help officers.

And as I mentioned, we've started mindfulness training and equine therapy and in all kinds of we just trying to hit 'em with everything we possibly can, 'cause not everybody responds to every intervention.

So, but yeah, that's really, we follow up on that as much as we can.

If you wanna help out, I'll talk to you afterwards too.

- Thanks, I think we have our next question.

- Is there a disciplinary action that would occur if the training is not taken seriously by the officers?

And then a two-part question.

Can we get this moved into the county jail where we've seen this empathy training?

Can we get that moved into the county jail where we've seen 10 deaths in the last, since 2018?

Thank you.

- So any policy violation, any incidents that occur, whether it's dispatch or police officers are subject to review.

Everything, pretty much everything we do is recorded and videotaped, audio-taped.

So if there are missteps, if there's policy violations, then certainly the Division of Police will investigate that and hold those officers or dispatchers responsible for the policy violation.

And, if anybody wants to fund this work anywhere, I'm sure people would be happy to have it.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah.

- That's the thing.

- I'm sure many people are thinking right now about how to translate this work into the work in the county jail, but I know we don't have the right person on the panel to address whether or not that can actually happen.

But thanks for raising it as an issue, because I'm sure the right person is probably listening or will be told to tune in.

Go ahead sir.

- Jim Craciun and I'm on the Board of the Cleveland Police Foundation.

This transformation program has been wonderful in the Fourth District, it's made a difference.

It costs about $200,000 to do it.

Now we are aware that the other districts, and there's four other districts, would like to have this transformational program just as he's talking about the county jail.

So let's hope that the committee will get behind us.

And isn't it true that the other districts would like to have this program?

- Full speed of ahead, Jim?

- Absolutely.

- I mean, unfortunately, I always hate to talk about money.

It's like my least favorite topic, but my wife's here, maybe she can talk about it.

But that's an issue that we approach funders and we depend on grant funding and donations for our work.

So yeah, anyone that's interested outbound.

- it's been funded by the Cleveland Police Foundation and the St. Luke's Foundation, I believe as well.

- Yeah, St. Luke's Foundation.

- And some others too.

- This was and St. Joseph, Marino Institute, yeah.

- Ms. Burns.

- It's just shifting the thing a little bit.

I'm sitting here and I'm looking around this room and I'm looking at all these beautiful young, bright people, young people sitting here.

And for that piece to touch them as well, because I often sit and talk to young people where I live, and sometimes they're not asked to sit at tables where they need to be sitting, because I know these bright, young, brilliant minds have a lot going on and they are affected by so much that's going on in their city and schools just in their own lives as well.

So I think conversations, if you guys, are thinking of sitting here listening to these conversations that we're having can perhaps start something within your school, within your own personal groups and talk about what empathy means to you and talk about how you can bring it to your peers and let this have a domino effect on your lives, because after all, in the future, you are going to be the ones who are gonna be sitting at the tables, who are going to take on leadership roles.

And right now is the perfect time with all that's going on in the world within the city itself, this is subjects that I think you guys need to be looking at.

Of course, if you need any help in trying to form anything, just ask for my information.

You could come and sit in my office anytime.

- Thank you very much, Ms. Burns.

(audience applauds) I think one of our students has a question.

Go ahead.

- What happens when police officers turn off their cameras?

- I don't know, what happens.

Well actually, they can be disciplined for it, if depending on the circumstance, right?

- I was thinking a little more existentially.

I mean, mechanically, if they turn off their cameras when they're not supposed to, we hold them accountable for that and they get disciplined for it.

And I will tell you that the cameras have been amazing and as the commander of a district, I have the duty and opportunity to review a lot of the footage, use of force incidents, all kinds of different types of incidents.

But the use of force is really kind of what grabs my attention.

And to see how these younger officers interact with the community is really encouraging.

But not like we were when we got on the job 25 years ago.

It's a completely different group of people, different mindset.

The way that they approach the public is a lot different than how we were kind of taught to approach the public from our peers at the time.

And not to say that everybody did it wrong, but we didn't do it great.

But watching these young officers now, the patience that they have and how calm they can be and how they try everything they possibly can before having to take a harsher step has really been encouraging.

I think I'm seeing really positive things out of watching those cameras.

So they're important, they let us know when our officers do great, which is most of the time and sometimes not great, which we address and we retrain or we coach 'em, discipline 'em if we have to.

But it's been a real great tool.

- Can I just briefly say that?

- Go ahead.

- I've worked in the Sixth District and I worked one day actually Dr. Acho was on a ride along with one of Commander Kutz's officers and I, and we worked today in the Fourth District.

And the difference between how they handled things and the way we would've handled it on St. Clair was really night and day.

I mean, as I said, I can have that fear-based, make sure you get things done, wrap 'em up real quick, so you not get injured.

And the patience that I saw them display was unbelievable.

And so, one of the most, guy that I thought was like a disgruntled veteran was when in roll call was putting together a bag of footballs that he got to take out to pass out to kids on the street.

And he just did that on his own.

And I thought he was a guy who was checked out, but I saw that he clearly still cared, so the change is there, but I really liked your analogy, Ms. Burns, that was great.

It takes time to rebuild that trust.

- Next question, sir.

- How do we recruit the young men and women in this room in Cleveland to choose the law profession or legal profession or just the wanna become a police officer in the city of Cleveland?

- Thank you, so the staffing shortages our a challenge.

We have been able to use the same model that we built our innovation team with to kind of build a team to address some of the staffing shortages and some of the things that we can do.

And out of that team came recommendations with the chief, which the chief and his staff have been working on diligently.

So that there is no doubt though that staffing is a challenge.

My message to younger folks who are considering careers is that this job's important.

If you have a heart for service, if you have a heart for helping people, if you have a heart for getting people through tough times, then this job is still for you.

It's a job where you can do important things at important times for people to make a difference in their lives.

It's not without challenges and it's not, every day won't be sunshine and buttercups, but it's a good job.

It's an important job.

One of the things that came out of that survey that we gave, that Jackie gave, that 90-minute survey that was very clear and unusual for workplaces, according to Jackie and her partner Monica, was that policemen overwhelmingly are here for the right reasons, that they have a service mindset.

That the reason they want to be here is to help people.

And that showed very clearly through that survey.

And it's our job to try to knock as much crossed off that heart that has gathered over the years and allow it to beat very clearly and soundly.

And so, my message out there to the kids, the younger people, is we need you.

We need people who care.

We need people who are service-minded.

We need people from the community who wanna serve the community.

We desperately need you.

Please consider it a career in law enforcement.

You will be the leaders in the future going forward and you will be the policeman that the community needs.

- You'll be the commander or the chief.

- That's right.

- Sir.

- Steve Smith, thank you for a very interesting program.

I was wondering whether there are good outcome data on the effect of these programs number one, on the community's view of the police, the satisfaction of the police officers and crime rates, for example?

- Thanks Steve.

- Well we track some metrics and though those aren't necessarily easy to do, nor are they always easy to draw a direct line to this type of work.

Like I said, we looked at use of force by our officers, we looked at the amount of complaints that came in from the public for our officers.

We looked at sick usage, those types of things.

Community response towards our officers, a little harder for us to measure, typically belong, that type of word belongs probably to our universities who specialize in that type of stuff and have that kind of experience.

Internally, we don't have a lot of experience doing that, although I would love to run that project.

I would love to see that happen, because I think, and I know with the project that we have now with gunshot detection technology, we just got an expansion on that.

And one of the demands that came out of council with the expansion for that technology is to measure the community's response to it and whether or not it builds trust with the police department and what the effect of that is on the community.

- This is what's referred to as shot spotter.

- A shot spotter, yeah.

And so, I'm glad that that piece actually got in there, because now we will actually have a mechanism to enlist some help in engaging the public response to the efforts that we do.

And that's not an easy thing, that's not something we do organizationally, but it is important I think for our team.

- Right, but also, there was, we did track that there was a drop in use of force within the Fourth District, a deviation from the mean of 50%, 30% drop in complaints.

And so, the numbers are there.

- And not a rise in crime or not a disproportionate rise or anything.

- It's really tough, when COVID hit crime did start to creep back up again, so it's not really, it's hard to measure that.

- But it was in line with what you were seeing across the city.

- Yeah, it was consistent with yes, yes.

- Miss Marilyn Burns, you wanted to say something?

- I wanted to piggyback on.

I know from being in universities and people wanna do things like surveys and measure numbers, you have to see a certain amount of numbers, but some things you cannot measure with numbers, some things I measure in my community and with people in general, you can't put a number on it, but you can by testimonies, by the way of people's mindsets changing.

Sometimes you can't measure that with numbers.

Oh, it's 50%, 60%.

But I measure things by people's mindsets, by their spirit, the way they walk, the way they talk, the way they say, "Hey, you know, Miss Marilyn, today something happened, wow, I'm so glad I saw the police.

It was such a positive thing they were out here with the kids.

I'm so glad that you're in the community pushing and advocating for a change such as this with empathy."

And just to show a different kind of reaction with your heart, with their spirit.

It makes such a big difference.

And people often, "Well, how do you measure that?"

By testimonies, by a person's smile, by the way they act, by the whole change of their whole being.

Sometimes you just can't measure things with numbers, but you can measure it with, once again, love and empathy.

- Go ahead.

- Hi, my name is Danny Welch.

And earlier you had mentioned how the young minds of us are the future and they can help resolve problems like that.

And I think that the first way to do that is to recognize the problem.

But I think that the problem is that we're too scared to talk about these types of things.

So how could we break that barrier of fear of one another when talking about these topics?

- I'll take that one.

- Ms. Burns.

- I'll take that one.

First of all, I'm not a religious person, but I'm a spiritual person.

We do not serve a god of fear.

And with that being said, I know a lot of people find it difficult to talk about things, but when you're in a room with people that are understanding, and once you start sharing your story, you'd be surprised of how many people still feel that same way.

And once you start building on that and opening up, it will be easier to remove that fear.

So I think we gotta start there.

We're all trying to be fearful, but we gotta move past that.

And if we know that we're in a room with the people that have some of the same issues and the concerns that we have, it will be much, much easier to talk about, much easier to deal with, and there will become resolutions to these issues that we have.

- Go ahead.

- Hi, Bree Easterling from Policy Matters.

I had a question pertaining to the expansion of the programs into other districts.

So I know that there's a lot of money coming to the city through ARPA funding.

Has that been looked at or explored as a mean to expand versus trying to acquire grants and things like that especially considering the amount of money that public safety is getting from the ARPA funding?

- We are discussing.

The chief is supportive of the program and we are in constant conversations about how we can possibly expand it.

So that's all I can say right now.

That's a great question.

- Okay, all right.

The search for funding is always an important search, but we are gonna have to leave it there.

As this expands across the city and elsewhere, I hope that we can return to the conversation and hear more about its impacts.

I wanna thank Commander Kutz, Detective Gibbons and Ms. Marilyn Burns for being a part of this today.

(audience applauds) Just a few quick notes as we close out.

Our forum today was part of our criminal justice series, which we present in partnership with the Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation.

Today's forum is also the Lozick Law Enforcement Forum made possible by a generous grant from The Catherine L & Edward A Lozick Foundation.

We are grateful to that family and to the Lozick Foundation staff for their support of this program.

We would also like to welcome guests at tables hosted by Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation, City Architecture, the Cleveland Police Foundation, the Cleveland State University College of Education and Public Affairs, Cuyahoga Community College, Dick Cluff, Lakewood High School, MC Squared Stem High School, Warrensville Heights High School, and Wycliffe High School.

Thank you all for being here today.

It's wonderful to have so many high schools in attendance.

Be sure to join us, yes, indeed.

(audience applauds) Speaking of school, be sure to tune in on Monday, November 7th.

We'll hear from the 2022 National Teacher of the Year, Kurt Russell.

He'll be interviewed by Elyria's Mayor Frank Whitfield.

We're sold out on that forum, so don't show up please, unless you already have a ticket, but do plan on livestreaming it.

It's gonna be a great conversation.

He's the National Teacher of the Year and he teaches in Lorraine County.

On Thursday, November 10th, we have our annual conversation about the state of downtown with downtown Cleveland Alliance's President and CEO Michael Deemer.

And on Friday the 11th, we will have a conversation about our state constitution and your power to alter that constitution at the ballot box.

Why that matters much more than you might think.

Tickets are still available.

Check it out, cityclub.org, thank you.

That brings us to the end of our program.

Thank you all so much for being a part of this.

Thank you members and friends of the City Club.

And Jackie, thank you very much too.

(bell rings) (audience applauds) - [Presenter] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to cityclub.org.

(logo chimes) - [Announcer] Production and distribution of City Club forums on Ideastream public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.