 Welcome to the back story on policing in Longmont, Colorado. My name is Tim Waters and as a volunteer for Longmont Public Media, I enjoy the good fortune of interviewing leaders, activists, elected officials, policymakers who bring expertise on various topics of interest and relevance to this community. And this morning, I am joined by Chief of Public Safety, Mike Butler, who has served this community with distinction for many decades. And I'm going to give Mike you a chance to talk about that experience. But this is an opportunity for us on this podcast to talk about the story behind the story. And without question right now, there is an ongoing public facing story that's being told by the media and by others. Again, we see it on the 24-hour news cycle about policing in America. That's the big context for this, but we're going to talk about the backstory of policing in Longmont, which that story, I think, is a little bit different than what people have heard generally. So we're going to get into this with a whole series of questions, but I want to start, Mike, by giving you a chance to talk about yourself, your background, what you brought to this job when you stepped into it, kind of what you've learned in the decades you've been in. Take it away. All right. Great, Tim. Thanks. It's good being here. So, well, personally, I've lived in Longmont for over four decades, and I've seen a lot change in our community over four decades. And I have to say, I think this community has really changed, become a much more robust, culturally much more diverse community. And I like what we've become, frankly, over the last four years, certainly a ways to go, but I like what we've become. I raised five daughters here, and I will always give great credit to this community, and specifically to the St. Rain Valley School District for providing my kids a great jumpstart in education. Without going into it, they're women of the world, and they're doing well. I've been involved in public safety for four plus decades, too. I got my start in local public safety in Boulder. I was there for about 15 years. Back in 1994, I was hired as the police chief in this community. In around 2008, 2009, I began to oversee fire services. And so that's why the title, Public Safety Fire Police. And there's another division that we've created that I think is indicative, reflective of the evolution that public safety has made in this community. It's called the Division of Community Health and Resiliency. That's a division that consists of mental health and addiction treatment service providers, case managers, clinicians, paramedics, police officers, in terms of dealing with certain social and health issues differently than what we've done, dealt with them in the past. And so I'm sure we'll get into that, Tim, because it's a little bit about me and happy. Well, listen, I'm certain you brought with you into the job as police chief, a philosophy of policing. And I'm certain that's matured as you've taken on greater responsibilities as chief of public safety. So I think it's a good place to start in addition to who you are, is what's the philosophy of policing that you have developed that actually you've used to shape the organization? And then we'll talk about what that looks like in an organizational culture. But start with your philosophy. Yeah, you bet. First of all, it's one of collaboration, one of partnership, one believing that the police can't do it by ourselves, that we need people in our community to be a part of and be responsible for public safety as well. I come from a belief that everybody's voice counts, their thoughts matter, and maybe most importantly, their humanness is valued. And those that kind of thinking has shaped, I think, who we are, not only in public safety, but it has shaped our shape, our policies, our practices, how we hire, who we hire, how we train, and in essence, our relationship with the community. And I know that the word relationship connection or buzzwords, but I can't be more clear that those are very much attributes and ways of doing business that we want to be able to, we want to be able to be like. And so relationships in connection, very, very important from the police officer on the street to myself. I'm convinced that the more we understand our community, the more we know our community, the more that we are in relationship with our community, that the more effective and efficient we can be. You know, there's lots of police departments from around the country that are somewhat faceless entities within our communities that kind of live behind a fortress, and they're not necessarily very personal within the community. And so the personalization of who we are, our police officers, and what we do is very, very critical to, again, how we do business, what we do and how we do it. And so I know we'll talk more about what that looks like as this conversation goes on, but I can't be more clear that relationships and connections are important. So that philosophy gets translated. I mean, you work with the city manager and the whole community, but for all intents and purposes, you've been the CEO of a large organization for a long time. And like any CEO, you want to see that translate into a culture, a corporate culture, or an organizational culture. And I know that's happened with our Public Safety Department, both police and fire. But more specifically in police, what does that translate for you? As you look around, listen, you engage both with your team and with the community. What's the culture? If anybody walked off the street and were to been report, what's the culture that you would have heard feel experience as part of this department? How would you characterize it? So, yeah, let me let me just say that I do monitor that. I monitor that from the perspective of how community members have perceived us, how new employees, when they come in, perceive what's what's here. In essence, how that plays out in our community. But, you know, being approachable, being friendly, being caring, compassionate, being competent, skilled in all the areas that we need to be skilled. Again, working in partnership. If I didn't say approachable, very, very, we need to be very, very approachable. And so, and so in essence, my who I am with our staff and who I am with our community. I wanted that to become a model for how our staff is with our community as well. And so, everything is wide open. In our organization, there are no closed meetings, everyone's voice comes, their thoughts matter, their humaneness is valued. They know that. And so I went, I wanted our staff and our police officers and firefighters. That's how I wanted them to respond. And so that's translated into how we recruit and who we hire and how we train and how we supervise. And so, and in essence, the one big, if there's if there's a way of doing business or kind of a strategy for being able to kind of bring this culture to life. What I utilize a lot is personal conversations and being one on one or one on two or one on one with three, or one with a group of people and always in conversation with our staff. Having those kinds of conversations and discussions around, you know, what we do, why we do it and how we do it. And, and believing that within that conversation, lots of really good things can happen in terms of growing awareness, growing understanding consciousness. And sometimes when you need to make shifts in the way things get done. In my mind, if you can, if you can create an environment where conversations can easily occur and people really feel comfortable in having those conversations with us. And with my staff with me, that you can make shifts, you can say, okay, that needs to shift from this way of doing business to that way of doing business. And those personal conversations with whether it's one on one or one with a few. In my mind has been my main strategy throughout the years, being able to bring shifts, the shift in the conversation happens and then the shift in how we're doing business can occur. Whether that's when we move towards restorative justice, whether we move towards how we're going to deal with different health and social issues differently without utilizing the criminal justice system. Those shifts when they occur are not necessarily easy to happen, especially when you have an organization that's that is is used to doing things a certain way. And I don't care what organization you can be in a school district, you can be in private industry, police fire, but you have to be able to make shifts and not only in what you're doing so that you can not only stay up with what needs to happen, but that you can actually kind of stay ahead of the curve as well. And so what's happened over the years, my own take on things without Tim has been these shifts have gotten easier and easier and easier. Initially it was like pulling teeth and crawling on glass to make shifts. But once people got to know that, hey, here comes another shift in how we're doing business, here comes another way of doing business, I'm going to have to kind of retool, reschool, or reskill and rethink how I'm doing. I'm talking as a police officer. They got to understand and know and believe that it was going to be okay. And that we weren't we were we were going to be just fine. And so the change process from always evolving, always growing, always moving forward is something that is also very much a part of our culture. It's like when we bring a change to a policy or a procedure or a way of doing business, I get very little we've gotten very little pushback. And a part of that goes into now I know that this may not be part of what you were thinking about. But we have a great relationship with our union. And across the country, what you're hearing a little bit of is that unions have gotten in the way of of change of police chiefs being able to change cultures. Well, that doesn't happen in a long line. And so we have cultivated a really good strong relationship where the union believes that their voice counts or thoughts matter and that they're valued. And so they're part of our conversations and they've been they've been brought into everything. And so when I have a meeting with my command staff, typically, it's not unusual for our union president to be part of that conversation so that they understand why we're doing what we're doing and and and how this has to happen. And so our relationship with our fraternal order of police union has been wonderful. And I give credit to our president, President Steve Schultz for allowing and for being a part of that. And so where unions have gotten in the way and they literally have, I've talked to police chiefs around the country, many who would tell stories like I fired the same guy three times. And we don't have that issue in in Longmont. And when we have to make a difficult employment decision that can include termination, we've never gotten any pushback from our union. So when we need to make those kinds of difficult personnel decisions, the FOP, the union, has been very supportive. And so and then what that translates to is, you know, when people want to say, Hey, FOP, what do you think about this? And the FOP tells their constituents, we support what management the chief are doing. That makes life a lot easier. So our capacity to change and shift and stay up with the times is very much a part of who we are. And so hold on a second. I got a phone here. Sorry. So that's an emergency call. It's every call seems to me an emergency lately, but that one does happen to not. So when you're interviewing the chief of police and he gets again, his phone ranks, he got to pause. I hope that kind of explains kind of a little bit. There's a lot more that goes on. Well, we're going to drill down in terms of diversity and and understanding good, good, great personal interpersonal communication skills, capacity to, you know, the emotional intelligence to level of emotional intelligence, something we've worked on over the years in terms of kind of understanding, because, you know, we work with people often on the worst days of their lives. Yeah. And and so we have to have that sense of empathy, that sense of compassion, but we also have hard, difficult jobs to do as well. So I'll leave it at that. Well, Mike, I what I've heard, just going to put an exclamation point on this, is anticipate, adapt, high touch, listen, no black boxes, inclusion, giving people voice and responding. I mean, that's that those are the kinds of things that one might hear and see as part of the culture. I want to I want to give I want to give credit as well to you and to Steve Schultz. I know Steve and having interacted, I think it's a tribute to both of you and to and to his crew, that his team, both teams, that you can say what you've said about this relationship. And there's evidence of that relationship in terms of decisions have been made and how you work together. So for whoever listens to this part of the backstory in policing in Longmont, is that relationship is different than you would find in many other places. And it's a credit to both management and leadership in the union. That's the case. And thank you. You stated it well, Tim. Thank you. The all of that begins to translate into practices and programs and approaches. And we're going to drill down on on those things that that are part of the back story that differentiate, I think, policing in Longmont from so many other places. But let's start with practice. You touched on them. And that's your kind of HR or personnel approach. How you recruit, who you recruit, what are the standards that you get applied? How do you promote? When do you and why do you retain or not? Those kinds of questions are permeating the media as well. That idea of people, you know, of individuals who had a problem one place, get hired someplace else, and it's a problem or their problem again. You've incorporated things in your in your personnel system to try to get in front of that, to get the right people, to keep the right people, to promote the right people, to retain the right people. And then when they're not the right people to let them go, just talk about some of those practices that would cause us to say, yeah, we can have confidence in that process, that part of the process in Longmont. Well, first of all, thank you. I got a great question. And it's a critical, important question, as you well know, especially the folks that you hire into your organization. And when you give a human being the power of a police officer, the right, the justifiable right to use force or the right to take someone's freedom away, that's an anomalous authority, is something you have to give an incredible amount of thought to in terms of ensuring that you're bringing in the right people to do that. And so we have done a lot of work on the front end and we've done it over the years and that process is always evolving as well. And the one other thing I want to say is that the community has been very much engaged in that process in terms of saying, here's who we want to see as our police officers. They're actually part of our hiring. And kind of moving back before that, you know, before we kind of started all of this, and I know I've said this a few times, but we actually went through a long range strategic planning process where we addressed every single thing we could possibly address in terms of who we wanted to be in the community. And the community's voice and their thoughts were incredibly loud and clear in terms of what that looked like. And so we ran through this, we did this long range strategic planning process that took 18 months because, and it took so long because there were over 1,000 people involved in that process. The vast, vast, vast majority of that 1,000 were people from our community. You name a part and aspect of our community and there was representation there in terms of what they wanted to see their police department look like and what kind of policies and procedures and who we wanted to hire. So, but in terms of that hiring process, in terms of the other performance or the personnel practices within police, I mean, we're very, very careful. And as I said before, we want to hire people who are life experienced people, frankly. I, you know, I don't know how this sounds, but I'm interested in hiring people who have experienced disappointment and rejection and failure in their life. They know they're no longer at the center of their universe, that they really understand that they have this sense of empathy, compassion. And we want to hire people who, you know, who are great problem solvers, people who, like I said the other night, if there's anyone that has an iota of violence in their background, they are dismissed in terms of becoming a police officer. We don't want people who are willing to want to solve problems through violence or force or anything. That's what gives rise to excessive use of force and the kinds of things we saw in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago. And so, you know, that hiring process, the profile we've, it's changed over the years, I'd have to say, but the average age of the person we're hiring is somewhere between 30 and 32. College educated has had jobs. We've hired people who have been ministers, youth ministers, school teachers, social workers. People have had that, that have done the kind of work where they know working with others is not, is not necessarily, it's something that requires lots of skills, lots of, of good perspective around yourself and other people, emotional intelligence. And so our screening process is, is, is really elaborate, very complex. And we've been told by police officers from around the state and people who have tried to hire on that. Longmont is one of the most difficult police departments to become a police officer. And because of not only our standards and our profile, but because of our process. And one of the things I want to make real clear is that our police officers actually are the ones who run this process. They're the ones who ultimately, I mean, I'm ultimately the one that makes this final selection. But they're so engaged because they don't want to see anybody working with them that is going to kind of create issues, create trouble, create concerns, and doesn't have that kind of profile and, and doesn't want to work in partnership with the community, doesn't want to relate or connect others. Our police officers are the ones that have, they have a stake in terms of who they're working with. And so the other part of that, as I said, is our community. We even high school students are part of our, our process as well in terms of saying, hey, we don't want this person to be a police officer. And by the way, I know we're going to talk about school resource officers later, but they're also involved in selecting our school resource officers in terms of ensuring that we get the right people into our schools. So, so anyway, and so when we have that kind of level of the high quality person working with us, other things personnel wise become a little easier, if you will. And so the people we promote are the people who, who will understand the greater mission of our organization and really know how to get people to respond to them in a way that will benefit our community. And so again, our police officers are very much engaged in who they want to see as their leaders and are very, very careful, very, very precise and, and very clear about what, who they want to see as their leaders. And so, and so when it comes time to, you know, the other thing that I want to make real clear here is it gets into this whole idea of, you know, when you see another police officer not doing the right thing, that's important because oftentimes police officers work by themselves. And when you saw that incident in Minneapolis, you didn't see a supervisor or you didn't see the chief of police there, you saw four police officers. And so we place a lot of emphasis on peer accountability. You know, the most powerful part of force for accountability comes from yourself, being able to choose accountability. The second in our minds comes from your peers. The third comes from supervisors. And the fourth is kind of that distant kind of internal affairs or the chief's office process. And so peer accountability is powerful within Longmont. And, and I don't worry, we don't worry about if a police officer sees another police officer not doing the right thing, that another police officer is going to step in and stop it. We see that all the time. We know about it. And that, I hope people realize that that sense of wherever you're working, that if that peer accountability is strong and powerful, it is, it is incredibly valuable. And it plays out in terms of, hey, I just don't have to behave or act because my supervisors are around in a way. I got to do this when my peers are here. And that also lines itself to the development of a powerful culture where people want to do the right thing for the right reasons. Well, we know, not not far down the road, kind of Jim Collins, who was a researcher in the league school of business at University of Colorado, did his whole series on good to great and built the last and how the mighty fall and a whole series of studies that he so thoughtfully wrote about with his team. But having the right people on the bus and having them in the right seat is the place that every great organization that's really stark, right? Culture having the right people with you and then having them doing the right things. And that's what you just described. The language was different from Jim Collins, but the process and the outcome sounds pretty dug on similar to what that we've heard from business gurus that any great organization has to get past to get right to differentiate itself from others in the field. And if there is a, I think what's happening right now, Tim, is that, you know, there's a part of me that's so much satisfied that the focus on police is as intense as it is. I hope we don't do a lot of knee jerk stuff. But on the other hand, it's time for us to reset, recalibrate, rethink what we're doing. And so I'm hopeful that that might take place. So yes, I'll leave with that. Well, you made reference a little bit ago to the shifts that you've had to manage as you anticipate in the depth. I've said a number of times and I've experienced in my own professional life a number of times, the better you are at managing change, the least skilled, the less skilled you need to be at managing conflict, right? But if you're not good at managing change, you better be really good at managing conflict. And hopefully, as a community, we'll be working together to continue to manage whatever changes now are implied by the, you know, the increasing visibility and urgency around policing in America, as well as policing in Longman. But if we manage that change well, you know, we may not have to get quite as skilled at managing conflict that we're seeing occurring across the country. And a lot of that, a lot of that, whatever the shift is in the changes that we're going to manage goes to policies. You've made reference already. I want to ask you to talk about our policies. I know they're in flux right now. As we're, as we're doing this interview, I think yesterday, the legislature passed a bill that the governor may have already signed that's, it's going to trigger reforms. I don't know how much change that's going to occur in Longman versus other departments. But, but, but I know you've been waiting to update your own policies based on what comes out of the legislature. Talk about where we are with policy in particular use of force policies. And, and then building on accountability that you, the peer accountability, there's also an accountability that that's associated with your department in terms of oversight by citizens. So talk about your policies specifically use of force and then who oversees implementation of those policies and reviews when somebody thinks they haven't been followed. Yeah, okay. Great, great questions. Thank you. So, so I also want to kind of just go back to citizen engagement. Past and present. We've had citizens in our community, residents in our community, very much involved in the development of policy and procedure goes all the way back to that strategic planning process. And by the way, we've had other iterations of that long range strategic planning over the years. It wasn't just a one time event. We've probably done five or six of those iterations over the years where we update and, and modernize, we're at policies, procedures, systems, processes, service delivery, all those things are talked about. And so I just want to make it real clear to your viewing audience that citizens are engaged and we and I would make this an invitation to any citizen to why if they want to become engaged involved, please call. We'll figure out a way to make that happen for you. But the policy use of force policy, there has been some, there's been a kind of an acceleration, Tim, of what's happened since you and I spoke. We actually finished, you know, what, one of the things when you talk about use of force, it's not just the policy that's in play. It's the culture that's in play. Practices are in play. Supervision is in play. The policy, certain in play. Training is in play. And so all of those things, all of those factors are factors that impact and influence the practical application of a policy. And so when our officers do use force, it just not, one thing I want to make real clear is well, what's, what's the use of, how does Longmont, what's their take on use of force? You got to look at a lot of things. The policy is definitely one thing that kind of is the written codification of how things get done. But it doesn't include all the training, the practices, other kinds of procedures, the culture, the training, supervision, all of those things play a part in when an officer uses force, how it's used, to what extent it's used. And so, and so the other part of that though is the kind of the checks and balances is when force is used, what happens in an organization like Longmont? And so real quickly I'll speak to that, that there is a significant check and balance whenever an officer uses force. By the way, I'm not good, I don't want to throw a lot of any specific department under the bus here, but there are a lot of departments and really a major, major police department in Colorado that don't require an officer to report use of force when they point a gun at somebody. And if there is, if there's a sense of fear, if there's a sense of force coming at you, when someone points a gun at you, that's a pretty powerful influence or whatever, it's intimidating. And so we've been doing that for at least two decades, if not longer. I'm amazed that police departments don't require that as an example, but back to my point, when we do use force, the check and balance system is, is very thorough in terms of who, what did that officer do? Why did he do it? Your she do it? What was her justification and rationale? And if that, and if they're not documenting that to the level that they need to document that, that's, that's unacceptable. And then it's going through this several layers of review. Each and every use of force is go goes through several layers of review before it's approved. And so our officers know that too. It's not all those other things I talked about that, you know, influence how an officer use force, whether it's policy, culture, supervision, training, but they also know that when they use force that there's going to be a, a significant review process no matter how minor that force might be. And so, and that's something that's critical for us in terms of, it's another check and balance for us that we owe to the community, we owe to ourselves to ensure that we're doing what we need to be doing because what we don't take lightly is the fact that the authority that we have while anonymous, I'm sorry, while anomalous, it's an anomaly in a, in a society where the individual rights are paramount, when you give somebody that kind of power, it better be the right person and you better be using that power correctly, accurately, and for the right reasons and, and not for any other reason. And so all of those things are in play as, as we talk about use of force. And so, so as a result of this, Tim, for whatever this means, we don't get excessive use of force complaints by the community. We may have had two over the last three years or something like that. And by, and by the way, those were both unfounded by our citizens committee. And so our citizens committee, when there is an allegation in this conduct, or even on a lethal use of force, they review all those things. And they review it for, okay, was, was what the officer did, was it, was it justifiable given policy? Was it the right thing to do? Could they have done something different? Was the investigation thorough fair, complete? And when they're done with that part of their work, when these citizens are done with that part of their work, these citizens then decide, well, what should happen? Should the, should the gap, should the investigation be sustained? Should, should we say that the officer is guilty for, for the most part of what the allegation is, or not guilty, or should it be unfounded or exonerated? And so that's another citizen engagement piece that's critical for us to ensure that what we're doing is the right thing. And so, so anyway, I, not for now on that. So just in terms of the citizen oversight, just to, to affirm, there is a citizen board that oversees or reviews any complaints that occur relative to officer actions or behavior. How do people get on that board? Yeah, okay, thanks. Well, you know, we interestingly enough, we sometimes we get a lot of people, we have a long line of people and we have to run an actually a selection process that's run out of the city manager's office. So the city manager makes those appointments? So you would have to call the city manager's office if you're interested. The city manager of Longmont, Harold Dominguez, should have to call his office if you're interested. And, and then, and then there would be a selection process down the road to determine. And so initially, when we put this together, we had tons of people who were interested. There's five people that we select with two alternates. So five members on the board with two folks to step in. So there's seven citizens in case an alternate person can't be there. When this case happens, we have an alternate that can sit in. So, so call the city manager's office and we welcome that. And by the way, it was designed with purpose, so that I or anybody else in the police department would not be able to say here, here, here's who needs to be on the board. It was designed specifically. So an entity or people outside of the police department would make the decision about who would be on the board. Mike, is there any place on the website, website, either public safety or the city's website? I think there is description of the role or the responsibility and, and how to, I think there is Tim, I can't 100% say. But again, if someone's interested, if they can find it, call the city manager's office and they will send you or get, provide you that information. All right. Yeah, that's good. And will there, will there be a place either on your part of the website or the some other part of the city's website where there is, if somebody wants to look and see what the policy or policies are or policy is on use of force where they could go and read it? Yes. So what's changed since our conversation, Tim, is it is now on the website. And while we know there's state legislation that's coming, it, it's, it's in a state of flux and it may not be signed. It may be signed sometime this week or next week, we're not sure by the governor if he chooses to sign it. But I also want to talk a little bit about that legislation real quickly here. Sure. It's, I have to tell you in terms of how it's written, it's only going to address symptoms of things. It's not going to address things like how do, what should the hiring profile of a police officer be? What, what should the culture, how should, how should cultures be developed with it? I don't know how well you can legislate. But the other part of that is what Colorado is really weak on compared to a lot of other states is training police officers. You know, we only require 600 hours of immediate basic training. And just as a comparison, you may not be interested in, you know, people who cut hair and take care of hair, but it requires 1500 hours to become a beautician. Mike, was that a hair joke that I wouldn't care about? Sorry, Tim, but it's 600 hours to be a police officer, 1500 hours to be a petition. Hair is important. I'm not going to minimize the importance of hair, but that's my point. And so that this, this state legislation bill doesn't address training, except in certain small little areas. And so it misses great opportunities around what's important for police departments to shift. And it shifts, you know, the kind of people we hire, the kind of training we get. It could, it could, it could have lots of impact on use of force. It does have a little impact on use of force, but underlying use of force gets into culture, gets into who, who's actually wearing the badge, gets into how we train policies out there. It only codifies all of that. And so, and so, and then what has to happen afterwards. So the bill only addresses symptoms. It does not address what needs to be addressed in terms of if we want our police departments in the state or in our country to really begin to see differently and to respond differently and to be different, it's got to address. And I'm not necessarily certain legislation is the best way to do that. But if you're going to create legislation, at least make up work so that you're getting beyond just the surfaces symptoms of things. Well, this is an election year. So that might be a question that might, we might translate that into some questions for legislative candidates. Politics aside, it's, it's one of those things where these things have to happen in policing. And that's the kind of reform we need to be talking about. All right. So last fall, by the way, you've made a couple references to the other night. And just so anybody who's listening, who watches or listens to this, Mike Butler spent a fair amount of time with the city council in a city council a meeting, it was a virtual meeting, was recorded from June 2nd. And if anybody's interested in that conversation, if you were to fast forward to the 20 minute and 20 second time stamp, stay with it to an hour and eight minutes, that's the conversation. And I know that because, because I sent the link to that to residents in Longmont to say, if you want to know, listen to this period of time. And I think you'll answer most of the questions that you have, you might have about policing in Longmont, and people have appreciated that. It was a good conversation. The people have appreciated the opportunity to hear your interaction with the council. So in some of what Mike shared that night, and in a moment in history where things are changing pretty rapidly with respect to expectations, legislation and those kinds of things, you're adapting in real time to those as well. In the fall of 2019, the department made the decision to move away from, I don't know, analog, I don't know a way to describe this, you'll have the right words for it. Dispatch, right, and making dispatching public knowledge, people are using monitors, police monitors, radios. And you shifted, this is one of the shifts from that to an encrypted approach. And there's been, you know, there was conversation, then there's been some renewed conversation now, not just here, but across the country where apartments have shifted to an encrypted process. Talk about why you did that, the rationale for it, and how people can still get information. If people want to know who was dispatched where, who gets that information now, and how the interested residents or citizens continue to track that information. Yeah, okay, thank you, Tim. First of all, we didn't shift the digital in the fall of 19, we actually shifted the digital a while ago from analog to digital. Shifting the digital allowed us to encrypt the radio, the primary radio station. And so, you know, there was an incident that occurred back in September of 2019 in which the police became a target for certain people in our community and began listening to our calls. And it was actually a call for service that we went on where there's a certain group of people, and I'm just going to kind of characterize it that way. They were actually trying to set us up in terms of they would call in and hope we would arrive. There was a potential for them to be ambush and a danger and armed. And then we began having conversations internally, not that these were the initial conversations, but there's been a push to encrypt by police all over the country. I pushed back on that for a long time within our police department for all the reasons why we just talked about. But it got to a point where I was hearing and seeing more and more stories around how our officers were potentially in danger because people were listening to where they were and where they were going. We began to the arrest and certain kinds of crime that we were involved in. We knew people were listening to our whereabouts and knew where we were at and knew how long it would take us to get there. And we would talk to people that we would arrest later and find out, yeah, I would listen to you and find out what you were doing and I actually committed my crimes while I knew you were busy. In essence, we heard quite a bit of that. The other part of this is we respond to a lot of calls where people's private lives and what's going on in their private life, whether it's a health issue, whether it's addiction, mental health, or whatever that might be. Because we have to communicate with dispatch, that information would get air in terms of names and what this person potentially was struggling with as a health issue. And so people would hear this information over an encrypted radio station. And so given the concern that officers had around their own safety, given the fact that we were also encountering numbers of people who were actually listening to our whereabouts so that they could more easily and in undetected ways commit crimes and given issues around privacy, confidentiality of people's lives. And they had nothing to do with committing crimes or anything, but they were struggling and we get called to these kinds of calls. We actually chose to do a six-month experiment pilot in which we went in and looked at what would happen during this pilot versus what happened because I just didn't want to make the switch without having more information. And so I know you were involved with some of that too in terms of guiding us around some of what that might look like in terms of the pilot. So we came back and made a presentation to council after that pilot and it turned out that I think the council began to see based on all that information that the police were more effective in terms of being able to detect people who were committing crimes. And we talked about the numbers of arrests that we would make for things like car breakings or in progress crimes like burglaries or other kinds of crimes where, you know, because people were listening, we couldn't detect it and we couldn't find it. And so in some cases I think in burglary our arrest went up over 150% as a result of us them not being able to hear our radio track. And so it's an example of where you have to kind of blend the ideal of transparency with the practical temper that with a little practicality of what's happening in terms of safety in terms of detection of crime in terms of privacy on the part of people. And so we went encrypted. But I also want to say that anyone can go back and listen to this. You can ask us for what you want. We will give it to you. We will give you all the radio traffic. The only thing that we might enact are people's names when it has something to do with a health issue. And so because we still will protect the privacy of people. That's something we will do. But I think it's either four or eight hours later that that information is available for anybody. So, you know, that's what that's why and that's what people can still do. Do local media have access to that information kind of in real time? The agreement we made with the Times call and now the Longmont leader is that we gave them access to our radio that they do have real-time access to can listen to on a regular basis 24-7. So in terms of public scrutiny, local media does have real-time access and citizens within a few hours following have access. That's correct. Now sometimes we yeah sometimes we hear well citizens citizens would have known this. We very seldom given if you were to listen to radio traffic it's hard to detect even how or what we're talking about. I mean locations of incidents names are easy to detect. But we use we use some kind of some we use some code language that's hard so people may or may not be able to we've heard well if I known about this I could have helped but that is so so rare. Anyway that's those are 10 codes. Yeah those are 10 codes and so sometimes this was a striking the balance decision. It was a thoughtful decision made on based on evidence and information and data that we we gathered during that six months. So as a for whatever it's worth for listeners I was I was skeptical as a citizen and and and I have a volunteer hat on today as I do these interviews with the city council head on. I was skeptical. Mike's comment about my involvement. We had a lot of conversation at that time about the pilot program and what we're going to learn. And there's no question in my mind. The data supported the conclusion that we reached that the policing would be more effective with this approach. The transparency was not diminished in terms of the media scrutiny and officer safety was enhanced. And so I will add in full disclosure as the father of the son who was eight years a police officer and and I only know about 10 codes because I wrote with him a dozen times or so and learned a lot about the 10 codes and when he was toned up and you know what all those codes mean that for any father mother brother sister you know somebody who loves police officers as a family member those kinds of things that increase officer safety are are are really very critical to keep the real on the job and keeping family members at least somewhat confident that we've done all we can along with all the accountability that goes along with the Anacop these days and there's a lot of it and there's going to be more of it. The other side of that is officer safety and making certain we've done everything we can keeping it on the job. This is a great place to intervene and say that you know once we're over this COVID-19 and we've got you know we're a little bit feel a little safer being closer to each other you know we have a citizen ride-along program that if anyone wants to ride along with us you are welcome to and we invite that and we we've had a you know I don't know how many hundreds or thousands of people ride along but we once this COVID is over we will extend that invitation again for people to ride along and to kind of get a first hand view to get an authentic police experience be able to ask questions and get to know and be able to get to know police officer too by the way. So I make that offer an invitation now. Highly recommended is you want to understand police and get in the car and experience a shift or two with folks who are who are asked every night and every day to go places the rest of us would never go voluntarily. We hear a lot today in the news about defunding police departments. It is it's a crescendo now. In the fall of 2018 the citizens of Longmont approved a sales tax dedicated to public safety. So this community has said we're willing to spend more not less for policing but what you've been able to do with that increased revenue I think reflects some of what people are wanting to see done in the name of defunding police it's the reallocation of resources. Talk about what you've been able to do because of that sales tax and that's going to take us into the things that that are characteristic of this department that may be unlike other departments in terms of areas where we've decriminalized because we've had access to resources to do things through the police department other than just enforce the law. Yes so it was it was 2017 or 2018 but you're right maybe it was 17 yeah but yeah right I think it was 17. That's when the public safety tax and by the way it was like a 65, 68, 32 kind of proposition. So you know what we the case we made was that we could provide a different kind of policing model and the other part of that was that we had safety issues because we got to the point where about 40% of the time we could only send one officer to a call where we needed to have at least two officers and so those two things kind of led that thinking and rationale for a public safety tax but what we've been able to do is create this division called the community health and resiliency division and we do now have on public safety staff mental health service providers addiction treatment service providers paramedics you know clinicians case managers because a lot of what police do all over the country is respond to mental health and addiction related issues and I know that there's some of this well we can just send social workers but I can pretty much assure anyone listening to this that we get a lot of calls from mental health private mental health private addiction treatment service providers sometimes social workers who say they're not going to go talk to somebody they need the police to go talk because of the issue of safety and so accompanying our mental health and addiction treatment service providers is a police officer but who leads the way is the mental health or addiction treatment service provider so we get literally hundreds of calls I mean I think our our mental health team responds to 100 to 150 calls a week on just just mental health and addiction is similar but maybe not quite as much where we now respond with experts in the field where we're working with folks who can who know how to respond to these calls who have skill sets to deal with folks who are working or who are struggling with their mental health or in addiction and so it's basically it's it hasn't all the money from that public safety fund didn't go entirely to fund that division but there's a chunk of it that that does now and and so and so that's and that's when we talk about defunding I think what people what I'm hearing more and more of is the is the language of reimagining rethinking recalibrating resetting which is something Longmont has done in terms of responding to calls like that involve people struggling with addiction people struggling with mental health people struggling with homelessness by the way we often see mental health addiction homelessness swirling together and so and so and and and the nature of these calls people don't call and say we want a police officer to go out unless they really believe they need a police officer sometimes these calls are going to be at 3 a.m. in the morning and and there is a an element of danger I hate to say I don't want to be hold back too much here so oftentimes we do get calls from people's psychologists psychiatrists or their treatment provider because they know they're not going to be able to go out and work with this person so we go out and we work with that person and oftentimes you people have committed crimes and we do our best to that to kind of divert people from that being arrested from the criminal justice system so it's actually like the kind of the kind of the perfect coming together of if you will of of mental health addiction treatment and police to work with circumstances that have an element of danger but that also involve mental health and addiction issues and and I have to tell you I wish I could go on and on and on come back another time Tim around the success and effectiveness we're seeing that the amount of suicide the level of suicide suicide attempts are almost half of what they were we've been able to work with people and get them into treatment and I and I want to make real clear that oftentimes we're working with people who have been for the most part abandoned in their lives by family by friends by neighbors by co-workers by just about everybody that was in their life is no longer wanting to do them and we are constantly hearing back that the only friend they have is this police officer because they're the ones who are spending time and we just don't go once we go back and back and back and we create relationships with people and for those of us who attended the Dr. Bruce Perry seminar a few months ago Dr. Perry said that the most powerful healing force for people struggling with addiction and mental health are healthy relationships and so our police officers are developing these healthy relationships with people and that's why we're hearing back from people they're my best friend and so that's what lends our that's lends it to that's what lends itself to why we hire who we hire and and what we expect out of our police officers and so we're not arresting a lot of these folks we're developing relationships and we're seeing these folks take other paths and so that's where the money is gone and interestingly enough when you talk about arresting somebody for struggling with a mental health or addiction issue they get nothing in the criminal justice system that helps them and when we're seeing sometimes the criminal justice system you know nine ten times for the same person that we've arrested that's where it gets expensive and by the way that's where they also people also get victimized because we didn't do anything that we should have done on the front end and so we're not seeing recidivism out of these folks we're seeing very little and the expense that to our community because we don't have to go back to this person over and over again is gone the cost is going way down so there's an efficiency and effectiveness factor that i can't give justice to in this few minute conversation to say that the money that we got out of that public safety fund was leveraged incredibly well in terms of increasing safety in our community and decreasing cost so programs that the listeners to this podcast may have heard about maybe not the angel initiative the core program or co-responder rewind uh lead uh are all kind of acronyms or titles for programs that result in i've heard you say this before there was a time or a places today where the very behaviors you just referred to somebody's dealing with mental illness homeless or substance abuse uh where uh somebody might end up being arrested and going to jail now people end up in treatment facilities or connected with services and resources that get to solving problems uh as opposed to exacerbating as a result of the use of those funds is that is that a fair statement that's that's very fair and and i will say that um um yes that's a fair statement uh let me talk a little bit more about that that a little bit one of the things you didn't i don't think you touched on was restorative justice i did not and i should have so that's fine but law and police have taken the philosophy policy and put it into practice that we want to we don't want to invoke the criminal justice system as much as we've done because we've seen the futility of it and we have kind of geared and redesigned our organization not so much towards more enforcement but for actually from less enforcement and more towards how can we more effectively work with these issues that we get a call to quite a bit mental health addiction homelessness take up a tremendous amount of our resources and so rather than going in there with this enforcement mode and and an overly prominent criminal justice system response we're going in with an entirely different way of doing business that we know is much more effective and actually helps make our community safe safer and so restorative justice we've we've referred over six thousand people to that process and i'm not going to go into what restorative justice does other than to say that sometimes the proofs and the pudding but the results have been a recidivism rates that less than five percent criminal justice system anywhere between five and seventy you mentioned rewind we're going to talk about uh school resource officers that's my next question our school resource officers work a lot with restorative justice and with rewind and and they prefer not to invoke the criminal justice system with these kids we'll talk more about that in a minute and so then you have programs like the angel initiative where we've leveraged probably maybe three million or more dollars of free treatment for people in this community that did not have access to treatment you no longer have to have insurance or have financial wherewithal to get treatment you can come down to the police department and we will help you find treatment if you're suffering from a chemical substance addiction and i'm always taking the opportunity to make sure people know that that angel initiative is there we will help you find addiction treatment and in some cases treatment can be very expensive we have we have agreements with does over a hundred addiction treatment service providers who will provide treatment for us if they come through the angel initiative and by the way tim that's a program that hasn't cost the citizens of dying volunteers and it's volunteers it's it's free service and and so so and then you mentioned core that's the co-responder for mental health and lead is the law enforcement system diversion for addiction so those are a few examples of what law mob police are doing versus we're going to go in and force we're going to arrest the bad guy we're going to go arrest the person that's doing dope this whole issue of the war on drugs as if you want to talk about something that's in the history of the police angels and the criminal justice system in prisons that war on drugs increased police departments significantly over the decades and it helped create a large prison apparatus in this country and so and so we have we have gone away from we've gone more towards the demand side and working with people and away from trying to interrupt the supply side we do get involved in cases sometimes where we know people preying on the vulnerabilities of others and not caring about it but if we can help take those people out of our community because they don't care about the vulnerabilities of others and are willing to override them drugs at a cost that's something we do work on we work on the big the big organizations that do that and we're quite successful and effective but the vast majority now of our our resources inside police and public safety are more towards helping people find services and treatment and so we do that with our experts and that's how we're doing business again I can't give it all justice but that's not sure I would say again for listeners the manifestation of you go all the way back to philosophy and culture and what does that ultimately translate into uh back at the at the beginning of this interview uh you know you you talked about I don't know if we use these words I've used these words I know you've used them before the first the first ask or call for your officers is as a problem solvers you're going to enforce the law but you'd rather solve problems if possible before you worry about trying to uh is it criminalize something or someone and uh you just named a number of programs that are or examples of what that looks like in practice I think residents might be anxious or interested to know that you your department has successfully pursued funding outside local tax revenues yes don't start those programs to give us a chance to have experience to evaluate effects to know which have that are most efficacious in terms of ongoing support once outside funding goes away it's a great way to leverage you know probably tax dollars or foundation well let let me just say this to let me just say this to Tim that you know if we if if police departments got in the business of of reforming themselves we wouldn't have to be have as many police officers as we do and there's a long story there but we're actually trading police officers and firefighters for these clinicians and case managers and so we're not asking for more money as much as shifting and repurposing money that would normally go to police officers and firefighters into this kind of work and so we are defunding uh if you will that that sense but we're repurposing and because we know we can be more effective solicitors when you want to defund the police department be careful what you're asking for as much of what's happened here has already occurred in terms of defunding and reprioritizing and investing and problem solving before we worry about the enforcement and incarceration of of our residents two more questions might uh the first one is on or the next of the last question is on the school resource officer program we've heard a lot we're seeing a lot about people wanting now to reject that idea or that notion or the presence of uniform police officers in schools what are we doing in in longmont and what might be different here what's the back story here that people might not understand that the difference just differentiates us from other places you know and i again i don't know about all the other school resource officer programs another part of the states what i do know is that there's some there's sro programs school resource officer programs that are more enforcement oriented and we're not uh we're a relationship oriented and and actually parents teachers staff have for years requested that we have school resource officers um we're police officers in the schools but we're a relationship oriented and and like i said just a few minutes ago we're not we would rather work with these kids their families the schools the teachers to try to recoreograph the path that someone's taking versus arresting them and summonsing them now i'm not saying we don't arrest and don't summons we do occasionally because sometimes the crimes that we're dealing with are ultra serious crimes and we just don't have a lot choice or sometimes the person we're working with was committed numerous serious crimes and so we've got to figure out something else we can do initially to get people's attention and so and so in essence we're about relationship um and we're about trying to get these kids on another path but the other thing that people don't realize to him is it's amazing the relationships that these officers have developed with these kids to the point where these officers become parents almost they become parent-like with with these kids become their confidants and and we hear information where we're able to prevent a lot of things from happening and so hey a kid will come up and say hey here's what i'm hearing and i and the cops the police officers start working with teachers or staff and say well this is how we can prevent and stop that from happening that happens so much and so our schools are safe and it has a lot to do with the partnership that the police department has with the school district and dyna dad has been very supportive of of this program and the principals are highly supportive of it and some were on bended knees saying we'd love to have a school resource officer because we've seen how it's worked in another school and how much safer that school's become because of not because we've arrested people but because of the relationship orientation we take with our kids and our students and so i actually do a lot of work in the schools i a lot of teachers come and ask me to teach and to talk and to present and i had five kids go through the same ring valley school system and so i'm very thankful so i'm often very open to that and it's amazing how well our partnership works and so it doesn't have to be this enforcement hard look of a police officer that a lot of people kind of see it can it can take on an entirely different perspective for for us if we do it the way we're doing it all right one last question of this and then i'm gonna kind of finish up with what's next for you we've heard a lot in the media as well about demilitarizing police departments so what does that mean and to what degree is this one militarized so well we're not militarized at all if we've done anything we have demilitarized in terms of how we operate um uh you know it's i won't go into all how the military operates now along my police operate but we're not militarized in fact i i did ask since council asked me the question the other day i um i went back and asked what what have we gotten from the military through these programs and the two things that i know we're using that we've gotten from these federal programs are blankets and binoculars um and and so we use blankets to help people when it's cold outside and sometimes these blankets are not cheap believe it or not and they had the the federal government was giving them blankets away and so we got them binoculars you know sometimes we need to see from a distance um and so we got binoculars and so we've not gotten tanks we've not gotten armored vehicles we've not gotten weapons uh we've not gotten those things like a lot of other departments have received over the years uh we've not done that we you know the two big things that we're using more than anything else are blankets and binoculars and so i also know that um sometimes when you look at a police officer they got this big vest on and they got all their equipment tools and their trades up on their vest and like i said the other night at council some people look at those things and go wow that looks kind of like what i might see a military person looking at you know and working in bag that or somewhere well those vests are designed so that they don't have to wear belts because the belts with all that all those tools and equipment everything can actually be very harmful to people's backs and so this this this vest serves as kind of an an ergonomic helper to help um kind of spread the weight around the upper torso of a police officer it just has the look that it has but i just want people to know that it's not meant to look like we're part of the military it's it's meant to help people help people save their backs ergonomically sound it's an ergonomically it's an ergonomic way of doing business that actually helps keep them healthy and keeps our us out of the workers comp realm and and uh and prolongs their capacity to continue to do this work because they're able to more evenly spread the weight around their upper torso like my last question really is uh what to expect after July 3rd because i know and many members of the community know you're about to turn the page and uh and go into the next sweet chapter of your life which is when you don't have to show up every day to earn a living uh what can we expect in the wake right uh we're gonna we're gonna go through process to select the chief i know there's an interim that's been identified but what should that we anticipate in the post mike butler era right with policing in long life so you know for me um you know i think i i i know what you know when i say this but um you know what's gonna happen when you leave is there's gonna be up the culture that we've developed i think it's gonna i'm convinced it's going to continue to grow um that sense of relationship orientation is going to continue to grow there's already we're already walking police officers are already walking neighborhoods you're going to see more and more police officers in your neighborhoods not responding to calls for service not trying to find out who the bad guy is or collect evidence they're just going to be there and it's not just so that we can develop relationships which are critically important but we're also going to do our best to try to kind of grow the social capital in our community you know i let me just say that if i use the phraseology social fabric every community has is kind of a social fabric when you look at what a police department does what we've looked at it as is every time we have to do something that with somebody that's been struggling or is committed to crime or we have to make an arrest we kind of see that as mending the fabric um because there's a tear in the fabric because of what's happened we also can be involved in kind of the growing of or kind of the development of the strength of that fabric this is this is kind of the what i say when i speak publicly around the country i think if police departments began to see themselves as part of the social fabric whether it's mending it making it stronger trying to grow it i think that's what you're going to see in lawnmower when i leave you're going to see more mending better mending you're going to see more development of the social fabric in terms of making it stronger and you're going to see a growth of the social fabric and so using that metaphor i probably overused it but that's who we are and that's who we're going to continue to be so that our police department become more part of the social fabric and make it stronger Mike Butler uh 1994 to 2020 i think that's 26 years of service to this community did i had to have that right yes and 40 plus years of service to the to boulder county in in the area of public safety uh first the problem solving ultimately with enforcement when it has to occur thank you for decades of service to all of us and and for two and a half decades of service specifically for the city of longmont god bless you and good luck in in the next chapter of your life and long monitors that is the back story on on policing in long line thanks mike be safe all right and stay tuned for the next episode of back story thanks