How police and the public can create safer neighborhoods together Tracie Keesee
You know, my friends,
I look at this photograph
and I have to ask myself,
you know, I think I’ve seen this
somewhere before.
People marching in the street for justice.
But I know it’s not the same photograph
that I would have seen,
because I wouldn’t take my oath
to be a police officer until 1989.
And I’ve been in the business
for over 25 years.
And identifying
as an African-American woman,
I know things have gotten better.
But even as I learned about public safety,
I wondered if what
I was doing on the street
was hurting or harming the community.
And I often wondered if, you know,
how did they perceive me,
this woman in uniform?
But there is one thing that I knew.
I knew there was a way that we could
do this, probably, different or better.
A way that preserved dignity
and guaranteed justice.
But I also knew that police
could not do it alone.
It’s the coproduction of public safety.
There is a lot of history with us.
You know, we know loss.
The relationship between
the African American community
and the police is a painful one.
Often filled with mistrust.
It has been studied by social scientists,
it has been studied by government,
all both promising, you know,
hopeful new ways and long-term fixes.
But all we want is to be safe.
And our safety is intertwined.
And that we know,
in order to have great relationships
and relationships built on trust,
that we’re going to have
to have communication.
And in this advent and this text
of the world that we’ve got going on,
trying to do this with social media,
it’s a very difficult thing to do.
We also have to examine
our current policing practices,
and we have to set those things aside
that no longer serve us.
So, in New York, that meant
“stop, question and frisk.”
That meant really holding up
the numbers as opposed to relationships.
And it really didn’t allow
the officers the opportunity
to get to know the community
in which they serve.
But you see, there is a better way.
And we know – it’s called coproduction.
So in the 1970s, Elinor Ostrom
came up with this theory,
really called coproduction,
and this is how it works.
You bring people into the space
that come with separate expertise,
and you also come with new ideas
and lived experience,
and you produce a new knowledge.
And when you produce that new knowledge,
and you apply this theory
to public safety,
you produce a new type of public safety.
And so, in New York, it feels like this.
It is called building relationships,
literally one block at a time.
And it’s “Build the Block.”
So this is how it works.
You go to buildtheblock.nyc,
you put in your address.
And up pops location, date and time
of your neighborhood meeting.
The important part of this
is you’ve got to go to the meeting.
And once you go to that meeting,
there, of course, will be NYPD,
along with officers
and other community members.
What’s important about bringing, now,
the lived experience into this space
to produce new knowledge
is that we have to have
a new way of delivering it.
So the new way of delivering it
is through what we call neighborhood
coordinating officers, or NCOs.
And so, also in this meeting are the NCOs,
the what we call 911 response cars,
sector cars, detectives,
all of us working together
to collaborate in this new way
to reduce crime.
And what’s interesting about this
is that we know that it works.
So, for example, in Washington Heights.
At a community meeting, there was a bar,
up in Washington Heights,
and the neighbors were complaining
about outcry and noises.
So in their conversations with their NCO,
they talked about, you know,
sound barriers,
different ways to sort of approach this.
Is there a different way
we can direct traffic?
And of course now they have
relatively quieter bar nights.
So, another issue that always
comes up in neighborhoods is speeding.
How many of you in here
have ever had a speeding ticket?
Raise your hand.
Oh, higher, come on!
There’s more than that, this is New York.
So those are other issues
that brought to the NCO.
Speeding – what the NCOs do
is they collaborate
with the Department of Transportation,
they look at issues such as speed bumps
and signage and all types of things.
And when we come together to create
this different type of policing,
it also feels different.
The coproduction
of public safety also means
that officers need to understand
the history and the power
of their uniforms.
They’re going to have to set aside
old historical narratives
that do not serve them well.
And that means they have to learn
about implicit bias.
Implicit biases are shortcuts
the brain makes
without us really knowing it.
They’re stereotypes
that often influence our decision making.
And so, you can imagine,
for police officers who have to make
split-second decisions
can be a very detrimental
decision-making point.
That’s why the NYPD, along with other
departments throughout the United States,
are training all of their officers
in implicit bias.
They have to understand
that learning about their implicit biases,
having good training, tactics
and deescalation
and understanding how it impacts
your decision making
makes us all safer.
We also know how officers
are treated inside the organization
impacts how they’re going to behave
with the community at large.
This is critical.
Especially if you want to have
a new way forward.
And we know that we have to care
for those folks that are on the frontline.
And they have to recognize
their own trauma.
And in order to do that,
us as leaders have to lift them up
and let them know that the narratives
of being strong men and women –
you can set those aside,
and it’s OK to say you need help.
And we do that by providing peer support,
employee assistance,
mental health services.
We make sure all
of those things are in place,
because without it –
it’s a critical component
to the coproduction of public safety.
Equally as important
is that we also have social issues
that are often laid at the feet
of law enforcement.
So, for example,
mental health and education.
Historically, we’ve been
pulled into those spaces
where we have not necessarily
provided public safety
but have enforced long, historical
legislative racial desegregation.
We have to own our part in history.
But we also have to have
those folks at the table
when we’re talking about
how do we move forward with coproduction.
But understanding this,
we also have to understand
that we need to have voices come to us
in a different way.
We also have to recognize
that the community
may not be willing or ready
to come to the table
to have the conversation.
And that’s OK.
We have to be able to accept that.
By acknowledging it, it also means
that we care for the community’s health
and for their resiliency as well.
That’s another key component.
We also have to acknowledge
that there are those folks
that are in our community that are here –
they do want to do us harm.
We also have to recognize
that we have community members
who did not get the benefits
of a long-ago dream.
We also have to acknowledge
that we have put faith in a system
that sometimes is broken,
hoping that it would give us
solutions for better.
But we cannot walk away.
Because there is a better way.
And we know this because the NYPD’s
neighborhood policing philosophy
is grounded in the coproduction
of public safety.
And in order for us
to move forward together,
with our family, our friends
and for our health,
we have to make sure
that we focus this way.
And in order to do that,
there are three fundamental ideologies
that we must all agree to.
Are you ready?
Oh, I’m sorry, one more time –
are you ready?
Audience: Yes!
Tracie Keesee:
Now, that’s better, alright.
The first one: There’s no more
wallowing in the why.
We know why.
We must move forward together.
There’s no more us versus them.
Number two:
We must embrace the lived experience
and our histories,
and we must make sure we never go back
to a place where we cannot move forward.
And number three:
We must also make sure
that truth and telling facts is painful.
But we also know that no action
is no longer acceptable.
And agree?
Audience: Yes.
TK: Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t hear you,
do you agree?
Audience: Yes!
TK: So we do know there is a better way.
And the better way
is the coproduction of public safety.
Thank you.
(Applause)