I hate firemen. I hate them because they get to be the heroes. They save baby kittens from trees and carry children out of burning buildings to safety. Hate 'em. To the community they are brave and courageous, polite and caring. Hate 'em even more.
Police officers? Well, that's a different story. We put their teenagers in jail when they were just minding their own business and give tickets to people when "we should be out there catching REAL criminals." We pepper spray innocent people and abuse our authority when we use our TASER. Just check the media stories; it's all fact; it's all the truth you know! Just once I'd like to save a kitten from a tree and have someone filming it. In your face firemen! OK I love our fire professionals - they are awesome; but every once in a while jealousy sets in.
I am sure your organizations have faced some unjustifiable criticism from your community at one point in time and you probably will again in the future. It seems people aren't as respectful for authority figures as they used to be in the "good ol' days". And it's not just the police profession that is suffering: it's our teachers, our doctors and nurses too.
Recently, a Phd student at the University of Saskatchewan did a research project on Community Satisfaction and Public Communication for the Saskatoon Police Service. Our department of approximately 400 sworn members is just coming out from under a ten year black cloud of poor public perception and image and is starting to dust ourselves off and work towards a positive community image. But first we needed to look at how we would do that. What we found was that just like any other "relationship" communication was the key. Just like when you wife says "We never talk anymore," the community wants us to talk to them and keep the relationship going. The only problem is that at home you have one wife (in most States) and at work, we have 250,000+ citizens to communicate with.
I think we need a marketing strategy like Reebok or Pepsi. We need to sell ourselves to the community. So what are we looking at selling? What would change our negative public image into a positive one?
First of there are a few messages we must get out.
- Police officers are educated. We need to show the community that some of our officers have Education or Commerce Degrees, Masters and PhD degrees. We are highly educated and highly capable people. Gone are the days when you were hired based on your brawn and not your brain. Policing is a technical business now that requires good quick thinkers with a healthy dose of common sense.
- Police officers are people. We are mothers, fathers, coaches, brothers. We have had our best friend die in a car accident and we have held our mothers hand as she goes through cancer treatments. Our heart skips a beat when we attend a teenage suicide, wondering if our 16 year old son is safe at home in bed. We get frustrated when we have to miss hockey practice or the dance recital because of shiftwork and we cry when our wives deliver our baby before we were able to attend.
How do we communicate this?
- Let them join us. Have a ridealong program where community members or the media can ride with an officer for a nightshift. Usually they are amazed at how much patience we have and the constant ridicule and "bull" we have to put up with during our shift. On one of my ridealongs I was getting quite the earful from one of my arrestees when the ridealong I had said "I can't believe you sit here and take all of that verbal abuse. I'd have punched him out a long time ago."
- Teach them what we do. Many do not understand what police officers do and what our role in society is. They have skewed view of what is actually possible (thank you CSI-Miami, Las Vegas). This in turn increases their level of expectation from police and when we cannot deliver on their high expectations it looks as if we are failing them.
- People think that police officers have to be everything to everybody. All of failures of all of our systems Social Services, Child Welfare, Education or Health end up as a police problem. If Social Services doesn't keep people accountable in rearing their children, the police arrest them for neglect or are out finding missing kids. If the education system does keep kids in school long enough to educate them into being productive members of our society, the police deal with the either as victims or perpetrators. The list goes on and on. They need to know what a police problem is and what a societal problem is. We, as police, did not invent alcoholism or drug addiction, society did.
- Softer side of policing. There is more to policing than the movies let on. We do have some positive moments and influences in our community. We play volleyball at noon with the local school team; we flip pancakes at fundraisers; we sit at trade shows and spend days in the parks putting youngsters on our police motorcycles for a "photo moment". The Community needs to be reminded of the time we spend doing this type of work, both on and off the job.
It is difficult to change the image of an individual police department as there are so many variables affecting it. Even policing issues from across the globe can affect police images locally. That does not give us reason to not start some positive marketing within our communities. Give it a try. You may be surprised.
