Here is the full transcript of Chip Huth’s talk titled “The Importance of Mindset in Policing” at TEDxTacoma conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Hello, good afternoon. My name is Chip Huth, and I’ve been a law enforcement officer for the past 24 years. And for most of that time, I have police problems, not people. As we’re all aware, law enforcement has come under deep scrutiny in the wake of recent significant events in our country. Some of these high-profile events have contributed to a lack of trust in the police on the part of many community members, and for most of my career, I’ve been part of that problem.
The Transformation Journey
But over the last several years in Kansas City, we’ve been on a journey, a journey learning to apply new ways of policing that have been transformational, particularly for me and the members of my team.
With the real urgency to find solutions to our biggest problems, I want to share how this transformation occurred for us and what it has meant in Kansas City. I’m here because I know what has happened with us can happen anywhere. When I first became a SWAT team member, our city’s Westside community was deeply burdened with high volume crime.
Many businesses had relocated, and the streets resembled open sewers. Most of the criminals blended in with groups of undocumented workers and preyed on them and other citizens who were too fearful to cooperate with the police. At one point, our SWAT team was brought in with a mandate to clean it up. We adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward crime of any kind, but the situation continued to decline.
We policed the neighborhood heavily. We wrote tickets and made arrests for any violation we observed, no matter how minor. We were fishing with a net instead of a spear, and many hardworking community members got caught up in the sweeps meant to discourage the criminals. Despite our work, the crime rate increased, and because of our work, some community members began to see us as the enemy.
I remember one critical thinking officer approaching me and asking, “Chip, you do realize what we’re doing isn’t working, right?” To which I replied, “Yes, of course, I realize it isn’t working, but we’re the police, and this is what we do.” It was my narrow-mindedness that invited community members to complain more and cooperate less. A few years later, I was promoted and had the opportunity to lead a SWAT team of my own.
A New Perspective
I brought the same mindset I had employed on the Westside with me, and it wasn’t long before that team was one of the most complained-upon units in the entire department. I was equal parts blind to the needs of the community and the potential of my team. It was in the middle of all this that we encountered the ideas of the Arbinger Institute.
Through a partnership with the Institute and our Leadership Academy, we began to ask a question. “Do we really see the people we’re policing as people?” As we started to ask ourselves this question, our team members started to consider what it might be like to be policed by us. As our collective mindset began to shift, so did our results. Let me illustrate with a few quick stories.
Our team encounters many aggressive dogs during search warrant service operations. Aggressive dogs pose obvious dangers to the team, and the primary way for the team to address them was to shoot them. This made the owners of the animals predictably angry and sad.
Relating to the dog owners, one squad member asked this question of our team. He said, “What if we could serve a warrant on your house without shooting your dog, would you want us to?” Well, many of the team members are pet owners, so you can imagine what the answer was. This one question led us to embed a dog expert with our team to learn our jobs and to teach us about dog behavior. We also implemented additional technology to capture and restrain aggressive animals.
This initiative to date has resulted in an 80% reduction in dogs being shot on search warrant executions in Kansas City, Missouri. Our team utilizes patrol wagons to escort suspects to jail. These wagons are essentially vans that have been converted to haul prisoners. A couple of officers were operating these wagons, noticed that people were complaining about the excessive heat in the summer months.
As a result, they were often angry and unruly, and when they got to jail, they caused disturbances with the detention people. The wagon drivers listened to the complaints of these folks, and they actually did an investigation themselves. They took it upon themselves to look into this. They discovered the cabins of the patrol wagons could heat up to dangerous levels on some days, but because of the modifications made to the vehicle, cool air could not be effectively pumped into the prisoner compartment.
These officers went to the local hardware store and purchased PVC pipe and duct tape with money out of their own wallets. They used the duct tape to attach one end of the PVC pipe to the air conditioner vents in the driver’s compartment, ran the other end of the pipe through the metal mesh into the back of the prisoner’s compartment. This made it possible to push cool air into the back of the wagon, providing relief from the heat to the suspects as they were being transported to the detention facility.
As we started to see people we were policing more and more as people who mattered the way we mattered, it began to affect what we did as we responded to unique situations in ways we could not have conceived of when we were operating from an N-word mindset.
Stories of Change
One summer day our team chased a violent fugitive into an apartment complex. The man hid in the ceiling of one of the apartments, requiring us to evacuate the entire building.
One family was in the middle of making dinner and in their rush to get to safety, they weren’t able to turn off the stove. Once the building was evacuated, we were able to enter the ceiling space and capture the suspect without endangering the residents.
A detective assigned to our team noticed the ruined dinner on the family’s stove. He took inventory of everything that was wasted and left the scene as we began the process of letting folks back into their homes. About 30 minutes later, that detective returned with an armful of groceries, which he delivered to the family whose dinner was ruined. The detective had used his personal credit card to replace every single item on the family’s dinner menu.
One day we were asked by the homicide unit to serve a warrant on a house looking for a couple of murder suspects. We did our homework on the residents, I briefed the team, and we rolled out. As we made the block, we were immediately compromised by lookouts. Our breacher took the front door off the hinges with a battering ram, and we made our way into the living room.
What we encountered on the other side of that door was complete pandemonium. There were approximately 25 people with small children and infants in the home. Toddlers were literally clinging to our legs as we made our way through the house. There were minutes of chaos as we rounded everybody up and consolidated them into a dining room that had been furnished with three couches.
I tried to address the group, however, with several small children screaming and mothers frantically trying to calm them, the best I could do was try to go from person to person to explain why we were there. It was about that time I noticed that my point man was missing. I decided I was going to try to find him. I imagined he had found some quiet place somewhere in the house to call the detectives.
I walked into the kitchen, and there he was, in full tactical gear, standing at the sink mixing baby bottles. He just looked at me and smiled and kind of shrugged, and he went out to the dining room and began distributing the baby bottles to the mothers of the crying infants. This one act of responsiveness changed the entire scene. Everyone calmed down, and we were able to explain the situation thoroughly and turn the two suspects over to the detectives smoothly, all because this officer was able to be responsive in a stressful situation.
Community Transformation
No behavioral mandate, new policy, or technology prescription can change the way we see others. Nor can these sterile measures equip officers with the ability to adapt in the moment to provide the approach each unique situation requires. The change in the way we see can not only transform a single situation but can transform an entire community. Let me take you back to the Westside, where two officers there began to see people as people.
After we had abandoned the zero-tolerance policies on the Westside, the main responsibility for policing the community fell to two officers. These officers engaged community leaders with humility and an open mind. They abandoned positions and focused on the shared interests of the neighborhood and the police department. They began by acknowledging the personhood of each member of the community. They saw them as people who counted.
This shift in mindset opened up possibilities never before considered. They worked to build trust with all community members. They began to differentiate between the day laborers who wanted to work and those who hid among them that were responsible for the majority of the crime in the neighborhood.
These officers helped devise a system where the men seeking work had to report to a community center where they were issued ID cards and provided with food, coffee, restroom facilities, and a place to shower. Those who weren’t picked up for work on a given day were dispatched out into the community to perform neighborhood services. These two officers worked right alongside them, clearing brush, painting houses, and even helping neighborhood matriarchs make tamales, all the while building critical relationships that were leveraged to help instill security, safety, and prosperity back into the community.
The criminals with ill intent became easy to identify, and the community began willingly cooperating with the efforts to reduce crime and disorder as their fear of the police dissipated. These two officers worked with the community members and fellow officers to drive the crime rate to an all-time low and achieve a national success story that was made possible by a mindset shift that allowed them to see those in the community as people with individual hopes, needs, fears, and dreams.
A bank, restaurants, and other businesses moved back into the neighborhood, and the community is engaged and supportive of the police. We are facing a huge challenge, and we must face it together. The solution is simple, changing our mindset more than mandating new behaviors, deploying new technologies, or implementing new policies is what is needed.
This mindset shift helped our SWAT team capture more illegal drugs and guns in a three-year period than we had in the previous decade, while at the same time transforming from the most complained-on unit in the department to receiving zero community complaints in six years.
Just to recap, that represents a three-fold increase in productivity and a 100% reduction in community complaints. Believe me, if we can do it, anyone can. Thank you very much for the gift of your time.
SUMMARY OF THIS TALK:
Chip Huth, a veteran law enforcement officer with over two decades of experience, delivered a compelling talk titled “The Importance of Mindset in Policing,” highlighting the transformative power of empathy and understanding in law enforcement. Throughout his career, Huth observed firsthand the pitfalls of traditional policing methods, which often exacerbated community tensions and failed to address the root causes of crime effectively.
He shared his journey and the pivotal moment when he and his team in Kansas City began to question their approach to policing, leading them to adopt new strategies focused on seeing the people they serve as individuals with dignity and worth. This shift in mindset led to innovative solutions, such as integrating a dog expert to reduce the shooting of pets during operations and modifying patrol wagons to improve conditions for detainees. Huth’s talk illustrated how these changes not only improved community relations but also enhanced the effectiveness of law enforcement efforts.
He underscored the importance of empathy, respect, and collaboration between police and communities in creating safer, more harmonious environments. By sharing personal anecdotes, Huth demonstrated the positive impact of adopting a more humane approach to policing, from reducing complaints against the police to significantly lowering crime rates. His message emphasized that changing the way officers see and interact with the people they police can lead to profound community transformation.
“The Importance of Mindset in Policing” serves as a powerful reminder that at the heart of effective law enforcement lies the recognition of shared humanity and the value of each individual. Huth’s talk is a call to action for law enforcement agencies everywhere to reconsider their approach and prioritize compassion and understanding in their mission to serve and protect.