Transcriber: Agostina Solís Reviewer: Eunice Tan
Inspiring things are happening in policing today.
Thirty years ago,
I was a rookie police officer dispatched to a call for service -
came in from a frantic caller that said,
"My dad has been suffering with terminal cancer.
My mom's been caring for him,
and tonight she just needed a break.
So she and I went out for a short period of time,
and when we came home,
we found him bleeding at the door,
slumped against the door.
He's got a gun in his hand,
and I think he killed himself.
We need your help.
We need your help now."
I went to that call, as I was trained, with other officers.
And, in fact, the man had killed himself.
And as part of the process,
I went next door
to where it was reported
that the man's wife and daughter were resting.
And when I went there,
I knelt beside the woman because she was -
the man's wife was laid out on the carpet with her head on a pillow.
And I knelt beside her,
and I held her hand and looked in her eye,
and she said,
"He's gone, isn't he?"
And I said, "Yes, he is."
And I sat there with her in her grief and in her suffering
for quite some time
until even there,
there was nothing more that I could do.
I went back to that scene where the man had killed himself,
and the coroner was removing his body.
And as I approached, an officer yelled, "Moir."
I looked, and he said, "Grab the hose."
Without asking why,
I grabbed that hose
as he grabbed a bucket and soap and a broom.
And we cleaned that door,
and we cleaned those steps,
and we cleaned that driveway
of the physical remnants of the tragedy that had occurred there.
Now, that part wasn't in any police rule book;
that wasn't part of the police academy.
That was clearly in the rule book of humanity.
And that's what we did that day.
Well, I left that scene because I heard the dispatcher saying
they've got calls pending and calls pending,
and I couldn't spend any more time there.
So I went to my patrol car,
and I immediately pushed the button on the computer
and told dispatch I was available for another call.
But the sadness and the stickiness of the trauma was stuck to me,
and it was in me.
But I went to that call because I knew how I was trained:
I was trained to suck it up and drive on.
I went to the next call, and the next call, and the next call.
And I went home with that sadness and that stickiness of that trauma.
Well, in 2018,
148 police officers were killed in the line of duty.
Yet an additional 159 police officers took their own lives for unknown reasons,
but perhaps it was from calls like I handled.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says
that there are nearly 900,000 men and women
performing as police officers across this nation.
And research shows us and data informs
that there are 67 million face-to-face encounters
between a police officer and a member of the community every year.
67 million opportunities to do it right or do it wrong.
And that alone is a staggering number of opportunities
to influence people,
to insert humanity from a police perspective.
And that number alone said to me that I had to do something more
to influence the acute, chronic, and cumulative toxicity of policing.
That number led me to research.
I expected to find training.
I expected to find something,
but I did not expect to find mindfulness.
What I found was mindfulness
is, in essence, awareness in the present, free of judgment.
If mindfulness can influence the way
police officers treat themselves
and police officers treat the communities that we serve,
I had to dive into it.
Now, I go back to a colleague of mine.
Distanced from trauma,
a colleague of mine and I were sitting on a panel,
and we were talking about community policing.
And we were talking about the complexity of policing
and the vast number of things that are laid at the feet of the police
in modern policing.
And he said, "Syl,
it sure is hard to ask all that we ask of police officers
given the corrosive drip of policing."
I was taken aback.
I said, "The corrosive drip of policing?
What are you talking about?"
He said, "Think about it.
Every call for service of significance that has trauma is a drip.
Violence is a drip.
Anger, suffering, death -
those are drips.
They are corrosive drips.
And in mass,
we are not buffered against that.
It can bore a hole in the soul of a police officer."
I found a practitioner,
a man named Richard Goerling
who's a lieutenant with the Hillsboro, Oregon, police department.
And Richard is a military veteran.
Richard had - he dove into this space.
He'd been studying the impact of meditation and mindfulness
on police officers and military folks -
those of us that are in the high-stakes environment of humanity,
in the high-stakes environment where there is chaos.
And what he found
was incredible potential and promise in the practices of mindfulness.
If we accept it, as we've offered, that it is awareness in the present -
to permit this unfolding experience before us, free of judgment -
it is offered that mindfulness may just create a pathway
for resilience
that may cultivate compassion,
may just, in some way, create a presence in an officer
where they permit the unfolding experience
and they're more tactically sound, more precise, and more grounded.
But mindfulness rests on meditation.
And Richard offered that meditation,
(Exhales)
the practice of the breath,
the practice of meditation
was the fuel that permitted mindfulness to occur.
So I, a fellow chief and a bunch of cops went through immersion training,
and this is what we found.
We found, in fact,
there was science and research to back what we were doing.
And in that practice, we discovered
that we could influence our response to different kinds of stimulus.
It doesn't require equipment;
it just requires you.
Mindfulness, as the outgrowth, could be done while walking,
while eating,
while sitting in an audience
and while standing on a stage,
sitting in a chair
and in a police car, rolling lights and siren, to an emergency call for help.
I knew my leadership imperative was to do something.
And I suggested that we do this broadly in policing,
can you imagine?
The resistance was real!
(Laughter)
People said to me, actually said to me,
"You are going to soften policing.
You are going to make it so the cops lose their edge,
and cops are going to die when you do this woo-woo stuff."
(Laughter)
I said, "Okay.
I disagree - the science informs."
And in Tempe, what we did
was we first started
with a culture of openness and acceptance to perhaps something different.
And it starts with openness, acceptance, culture, and climate in our organization:
what life looks like, sounds like, feels like in the Tempe police department.
Then we sent cops -
those real, credible cops that are the tough, tough cops -
sent them to immersion training.
Sent folks to peer-coaching training in mindfulness and meditation.
And they came back,
and they teach it from the ground up.
The management command and executive team -
we went through it as well.
So it was a top-down influence and a groundswell of enthusiasm
for this incredible synchronicity
in this space
that might just prove something.
In Tempe, we gave cops two additional apps,
and they could get into Headspace or Ten Percent Happier
for a long-term meditative practice,
where they're in space:
solo space, together space, team space.
They got mindfulness training in briefing,
and it was supplemented by the app.
Cops started meditating.
They could use it for what I call a "reset":
a quick reset between calls for service.
Imagine, in Tempe,
if a police officer,
after a traumatic or painful or violent event,
was given permission and given a tool to reset.
To take a deep breath,
(Exhales)
and note what was coming up for them,
and commit to an awareness in the present,
and free themselves of judgment
so the next call they go on, they insert humanity
and they are more situationally aware,
more able to take in all of the environment
to make a better choice.
Our officers are given permission to do that,
and they're given tools to do that.
In Tempe, our officers are reporting
that through mindful practice, they're able to take in more data,
they're able to get through the chaos of some high emotional scenes,
and they are better suited to be the calm in chaos
when other people are rendered useless.
They are able to resolve the scene,
often, as they report,
with incredible permission and space and tools to de-escalate.
Remarkably, just about a month ago,
one of my cops ran up to me,
and well, he first hugged me because I'm a fun-sized chief,
and he hugged me.
(Laughter)
He hugged me, and he said,
"Chief! Oh my gosh!
I have to tell you something!"
I'm like, "Simmer down, mindful peer coach."
(Laughter)
And he said,
"I have to tell you my truth."
He said, "Our commitment changed something in me.
I've got to tell you about this call for service.
The call comes in; neighbors are frantic.
They say there's a man with a gun terrorizing the neighborhood.
They give the description,
and I thought, 'I'm going.'"
This is what he says to me, "I'm going."
And he said,
"I went into my meditation.
I went into my mindful practice.
I knew I could breathe.
I knew I was going to have heightened awareness.
I knew that I was confident and precise and clear to take in all this data,
and this situation was going to be better when I left
than when I got there."
I said, "So what happened?"
He said "Okay, so -
I found the man,
matched a description.
I did as I was trained.
I ordered him, I said,
'Let me see your hands, let me see your hands.'
The man immediately went to his waistband."
He said, "Chief, in that moment,
I thought, 'I am confident and clear.
Let it unfold, do not force it.'
And the guy threw the gun to the ground."
(Exhales)
He told me,
looked me right in the eyes and said,
"Before mindfulness,
that would have been an officer-involved shooting."
He said,
"Thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing this to us."
He said, "I de-escalated that because of this practice,
because of my commitment to it."
That incident alone is proof for me
that I need to continue my commitment in this space,
that I need to continue to reinforce in my organization
and broadly in the profession of policing
that we may just redefine what constitutes a threat.
We may just refine
how officers engage in trauma,
how they become resilient,
how they engage in the ambiguous and unpredictable nature of policing.
And that call alone,
that description alone -
there's all the other stuff -
but that alone says to me that that,
coupled with the most profound lesson in my professional life -
that I'd learned as a young sergeant here in California -
from the work of Viktor Frankl,
where Viktor Frankl said,
"Between stimulus and response,
there is space."
There is choice.
And between stimulus and response,
this space -
this is our commitment.
This is the space
that shows staggering and stunning potential to influence.
And if we, as executives in policing, push this throughout the profession,
we might just change the way officers view themselves in duty,
how they safeguard themselves
from the corrosive drip and the tactical environment.
We may just redefine our interactions with our community.
As a potential outgrowth,
we may just foster deeper humanity.
This entire emphasis of ours
is true.
It is real.
Our communities deserve us to engage in that space
and invest in that space between stimulus and response.
Our officers, the men and women doing the noble work in policing,
deserve it.
And this is the potential of mindfulness.
And this is the inspiring thing happening in policing today.
Thank you.
(Applause)