 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 with who bring expertise on various topics of interest and relevance to this community. 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 now 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 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 at. Take it away. 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 of 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 to I got my, I got my start in local public safety and Boulder I was there for about 15 years. 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 chief 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. We call 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 health issues differently than what we've done dealt with them in the past and so I'm sure we'll get into that happy. But listen, in, in, 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. I think it's, 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, 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. It's, I come from a belief that everybody's voice counts. Their thoughts matter and maybe most importantly their human this 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 or practices. You know, how we hire who we hire, how we train and in essence, our relationship with the community and, you know, I, you know, I know that the word relationship connection or buzzwords but I can't be more clear that those are 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 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're, you work with the city manager and, and I'm still 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 philosophy 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 police. What is that, 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 and 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, 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. Working in partnership. I 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 are no closed meetings, everyone's voice counts their thoughts matter they're human this is value. They know that. And so I want, 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. And so, and in essence, one, 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. And 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, and 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 and 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 and 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 what 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 district police fire, but you have to be able to make shifts and and 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. 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 it was like pulling teeth crawling on glass to make shifts. Once people got to know that hey here comes another shift and how we're doing business here comes another way of doing business. I'm going to have to kind of retool re school or re skill 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 and that we weren't we were we were going to be just fine and so the change process from for always evolving always growing always moving forward is something that is also very much a part of our culture. It's it's like when we bring a change to a policy or procedure or 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 while that doesn't happen a long time. And so we have cultivated a really good strong relationship where the union believes that their voice counselor thoughts matter and that they're valued. 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. Our relationship with our fraternal order police union has been wonderful and I give credit to our president president Steve Schultz for allowing for being a part of that. And so, 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 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 be an emergency lately but that one does happen to not. When you're interviewing the chief of police and he gets against his phone ranks he got it. 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 have 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 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. 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 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. Decisions have been made and how you work together so for whoever listens to this part of the backstabery 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 that's the case. And thank you. You stated it well Tim thank you. 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 backstory 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 meat the media as well. That idea of people, you know of individuals who had a problem one place, get hired someplace else. And 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, yeah, we can have confidence in that process that part of the process in Longmont. First of all, thank you. I get a great question and it's a critical important question as you will 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 to justifiable justice force or the right to take someone's freedom away. That's an enormous 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 the 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. 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 1000 people involved in that process and the vast vast vast majority of that 1000 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. 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 and 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 like that. 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 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 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 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 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 that 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 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 very clear about 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 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 be behave or act because my supervisors 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 a whole series of studies that he so thoughtfully wrote about with his team. But having having the right people on the bus and having them in the right seat is the place that every great organization. It's really start culture having the right people with you and then have 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. 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 places is as intense as it is. I hope we don't do a lot of knee jerk stuff. Yeah. 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 might take place. So I and so yes. 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 death. 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. But if you're not going to managing change, you better be really good at managing conflict. And, and hopefully, as a community, we'll be we'll be working together to continue to manage whatever changes now are implied by the, you know, the increasing visibility and transparency 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 legislative talk about where we are with policy in particular use of force policies. And, and then building on accountability that you met 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. I 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 policy 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 were at policies procedure 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 what if they want to become engaged involved to please call will figure out a way to make that happen for you. 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. 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 long mind, 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. So, and so the other part of that though is the kind of the checks and balances is when forces use what happens in an organization like long month. And so real quickly, I'll speak to that that there is a significant check and balance whenever whenever an officer uses force by the way. I don't want to throw a lot of any specific department under the bus here, but there are a lot of departments and then 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. 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, for at least two decades, if not longer. There's a huge age 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 what did that officer do. Why did he do it, you're she do it. What was her justification rationale, and if that if they're not documenting that to the level but they need 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. 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 and supervision training, but they also know that when they use force that there's going to be 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 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 as an anomaly 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 not for any other reason. And so, all of those things are in play as a, as we talk about use of force and so, so as a result of this Tim, and for whatever this means. We don't get excessive use of force complaints by the community, we may have had to over the last three years or something like that and by the way those were both unfounded by our citizens committee and so our citizens committee when there is an allegation this conduct. 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 the citizens are done with that part of their work. The citizens then decide, what should happen. Should the, should the gap should the investigation be sustained. Should, should we say that the officer is guilty, so 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, So, just in terms of the citizen oversight. Just 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. I think it makes, well, you know, we interestingly enough, we sometimes will get a lot of people state 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 city. So you would have to call the city manager's office. If you're interested, the city manager of Longmont Harold Omega should have to call his office. If you're interested. 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 altered person can't be there. In 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 who 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. So 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. 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 able to send you or get provide you that information. 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 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 their state legislation is coming. 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. 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. So 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 here and take care of here, but it requires 1500 hours to become a beautician. It's a fair 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. 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. 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 this state or in our country to really begin to see differently and 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 a work so that you're getting beyond just the surface 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 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 watches or listens to this. Mike Butler spent a fair amount of time with the city council in a city council, a meeting that was a virtual meeting was recorded from June 2. And if anybody's interested in that conversation, if you were to fast forward to the 20 minute and 22nd time staff, stay with it to an hour and eight minutes. That's the conversation. And I know that because, because I've 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. I 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 all 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 dispatch right and making dispatching public knowledge of people are using monitors, police monitors, radius, 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 you shifted to an encrypted process. Talk about why you did that. The rationale for it and how people can still get information that 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. 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 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 the there's a certain group of people and I'm just going to kind of characterize it that way that were they were actually trying to set us up in terms of they would call in and hope we would arrive and they they we 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 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 have a rest later and find out yeah I would listen to you and find out what you were doing and I actually committed my crimes while we were busy. In essence, we heard quite a bit of that. The other part of this is, you know, 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, and so people would hear this information over an encrypted radio station. And so, 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. You know, we actually chose to do a six month experiment pilot in which we went in and look that what would have what happened 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 and we couldn't find it 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. 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. And that's the 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 our people's names when it has something to do with a health issue. So because we still will protect the privacy of people. That's something we will do. But I think it's either four eight hours later that that information is available for anybody. So you know that's that's what that's why and that's what people can still do local media have access to that information kind of in real time. What we made with the Times call and now the long mile 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 seven. So in terms of public scrutiny, local media does have real time access and citizens within a few hours, following that access. That's correct. 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 Howard, what we're talking about. So I mean locations of incidents, names are easy to detect. 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. If I had known about this, I could have helped but that is so, so rare. Anyway, that's 10 codes. Yeah, those are 10 codes and so sometimes we this was a striking the balance decision. It was a thoughtful decision made on on based on evidence and information and data that we gathered during this six months. Whatever it's worth for listeners. I was, I was skeptical as a citizen, and, and I have a volunteer had on today as I do these interviews with the city council had on I was skeptical Mike, Mike's comment about my involvement we had a lot of conversation at that time about the pilot program 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 that 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 a son who was eight years of police officer. And I only know about 10 coats 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 what all those codes mean that for any father, mother, brother, sister, you know, somebody who loves police officers as a family member. And the kinds of things that increase officer safety are, are, are really very critical to keep 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 anti cop 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. This is a great place to intervene and say that, you know, once we're over this COVID-19, and we've got to, 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 of 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 firsthand 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 recommend it is you want to understand policing. Get in the car and an experience a shift or two with folks who are, who are asked every night and every day to go places than 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 a great representation 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 maybe 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. So it was 2017 or 2018, but you're right. Maybe it was 17. Yeah, but yeah, right. I think it was 17. It was when the public safety tax and by the way, it was like a 65, 68, 32 kind of proposition. Highly supported. So, you know, but 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 had 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 as 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 mental health team responds to 100 to 150 calls a week on 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 an addiction. And so it's basically 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 the funding I think what people what I'm hearing more and more of is the is the is the language of reimagining rethinking re calibrating resetting, which is something long month has done. In terms of responding to calls like that involved 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 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 3am in the morning. And there is a an element of danger I hate to say, I don't want to 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 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. It's actually like the kind of the kind of the perfect coming together of if you will, 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 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're 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 to 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 that's what lends us 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. 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 10 times for the same person that we've arrested. That's where it gets expensive. Okay, 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. 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. The 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. The programs that the listeners to this podcast may have heard about maybe not the angel initiative, the core program or co responder rewind lead are all kind of acronyms or titles for programs that result in that 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 to substance abuse, where 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, 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. Yes, that's fair statement. Let me talk a little bit more about 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 amount please 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 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 6000 people that process and I'm not going to go into what restore justice does other than to say that sometimes the proofs and the putting the results have been a recidivism rates that less than 5%. Criminal justice system anywhere between five and 70 you mentioned rewind we're going to talk about school resource officers as 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 will 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 where 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 100 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 assistant diversion for addiction. So those are a few examples of what my police are doing versus we're going to go in and force we're going to rest the bad guy we're going to go arrest a 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 department 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 a lot 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 praying on the vulnerabilities of others and not caring about it. 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 provide 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 treat. 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 is that ultimately translate into back at the, at the beginning of this interview. You know, you talked about, I don't know if we use these words I've used these words and 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 criminalize something or someone. And you just named a number of programs that are are 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. Let's jumpstart those programs to give us a chance to have experience to evaluate effects to know which have the 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 me just say this to let me just say this to Tim that, you know, if we if police departments got in the business of reforming themselves, we're going to 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, if you will, that sense, but we're repurposing it because we know we can be more effective. So listeners, 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 in problem solving. Before we worry about the enforcement and incarceration of our residents. Two more questions might 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 not to reject that idea or that notion or the presence of uniform police officers in schools. What are we doing in Longmont and what might be different here what's the back story here that people might not understand that the differences differentiates us from other places. You know, and I, again, I don't know about all the other school resource officer programs and other 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. We're not we're relationship oriented and and actually parents teachers staff have for years requested that we have school resource officers were police officers in the schools but we're 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 re choreograph the path that someone's taking versus arresting them and summoning 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. So, for sometimes the person we're working with is committed numerous serious crimes and so we 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. And we're about trying to get these kids on another path but the other thing that people don't realize Tim is it's amazing the relationships that these officers have developed with these kids to the point where these officers become parents almost they come 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 kid will come up and say, Hey, here's what I'm hearing. And I, and the couple police officers start working with teachers or staff and say well this is how we can prevent stop that from happening. It 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 dinodad has been very supportive of, of this program and the principles 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 schools 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 take on an entirely different perspective for for us if we do it the way we're doing it. One last question of this and then I'm going to 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, we're not militarized at all if we've done anything we have demilitarized in terms of how we operate. You know, it's, I won't go into all how the military operates and how long my police operate but we're not militarized in fact I did ask, since council asked me the question the other day. 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. 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 fellow government was given blankets away and so we got binoculars, you know, sometimes we need to see from a distance. And so we got binoculars and so we've not gotten tanks with not gotten armored vehicles with not gotten weapons. We've not gotten those things like a lot of other departments have received over the years. We've not done that we you know the two big things that we're using more than anything else of blankets and binoculars and so I also know that 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 backs and like I said the other night a 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 Baghdad 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. This vest serves as kind of an ergonomic helper to help kind of spread the weight around the upper torso of a police officer. It just has a 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 meant to help people save their backs. It's ergonomically sound. 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 prolongs their capacity to continue to do this work because they're able to more evenly spread the weight around their upper torso. The last question really is what to expect after July 3 because I know and many members of the community know you're about to turn the page and and go into the next week chapter of your life, which is when you don't have to show up every day to earn a living. What can we expect in the wake, right? We're going to, we're going to go through a 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 and long life. So, you know for me. I think I know what you know when I say this but you know what's going to happen when you leave is there's going to be at the culture that we've developed. I think it's going to I'm convinced is going to continue to grow 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 phrase the ology social fabric every community has a kind of a social fabric. We 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. Because there's a tear in the fabric because of what's happened. We also can be involved in kind of the growing of our kind of the development of the strength 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 long, 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. 1994 to 2020. I think that's 26 years of service to this community that I had drive that right. Yes, and 40 plus years of service to to Boulder County in the area of public safety. First problem solving, ultimately with enforcement where it has to occur. Thank you for decades of service to all of us in in for two and a half decades of service specifically to the city of Longmont God bless you and good luck in, in the in the next chapter of your life and Longmonters. That is the backstory on on policing in Longmont. Mike, be safe. And stay tuned for the next episode of the backstory. Thanks.