Dean Esserman is the Chief of Police of the New Haven Police Department. Chief Esserman has also worked as a prosecutor in New York City, as well as the Police Chief of the MTA Metro North Police Department and Providence RI Police Department.
How do you think the criminal justice system views failure?
I think many leaders have learned how to react to failure, but that’s different than learning from it. I think the notion of learning from failure is linked to the difficulty of sustaining change. New leaders come in and want to bring about change. We think we’re rock stars. But, in fact, making change is easy. All you have to do is keep switching venues, and you can always bring about change. The trick is to actually institutionalize it. Every year, I announce new initiatives at our annual retreat. I announce that the initiatives are the same as last year. Don’t change just to change. Stay the course.
What are the obstacles to institutionalizing change?
Leaders need to have a constant conversation with themselves. When you start, you have certain goals. Everyone has their ideas of reform. But after those initial changes, you need to turn towards sustaining change. The problem is that most police chiefs don’t stay long enough to have that conversation. The average police chief stays less than four years. The simple reason is that chiefs have become highly visible, often coming in from outside the community as agents of change. Sooner or later, you are just another casualty in a high-casualty business.
So how can criminal justice leaders sustain change, given such a high turnover rate?
Truly institutionalizing change is less about the leader that you’d think, at least in an overt way. Police has become too leader-centric. The leader becomes the brand of the police department, instead of the department itself having a free-standing reputation. Think about top universities like Harvard or Yale. Would you want to send your kid there because of the reputation of the university’s president? No, the school itself has a reputation for excellence, independent of the current leader. Some police departments have achieved an independent reputation for excellence in their heyday, like the NYPD under Bill Bratton, but it’s rare. This climate makes it all the more important to institutionalize excellence so that excellence remains as leaders come and go.
Are there other instances in which policing has made a significant shift in its leadership model?
Yes. Even John Wayne fans like myself will acknowledge an important shift in leadership. It used to be that “lone” was strong. But now, partnership and collaboration are strong. It took a long time to institutionalize a more collaborative model. But even that model needs more work, extending it beyond a specific department. There are some national organizations that foster collaboration and discussion like the Major City Police Chiefs Association and the FBI’s National Academy. But we haven’t really changed the behavior. Departments are not learning institutions. Some police chiefs done have done it, but if you asked the average police officer if his department was a learning institution, he’d have no idea what you were talking about.
Do you think there’s guidance from other fields as to how police can be more collaborative and focused on learning?
Absolutely. An idea I’ve been working on for the past few years is to bring the model of a teaching hospital to policing. Ask yourself: if you were sick, would you want to go to a hospital where everyone was trained in the basement and had never learned participated in an outside internship or exchange program? Of course not. But that’s essentially the model of most police departments. In the U.S., we have 17,000 different fiefdoms. No consolidation. No regionalization. The department you join, you stay in for life. No fellowships. No internships. No exchanges. A few years ago, I started learning about how teaching hospitals work from the inside, sitting in on morning meetings. I got the idea that we could create a teaching police department. We recently presented a paper to Attorney General Holder and COPS Director Bernie Melekian proposing the project.
How would you describe your leadership style?
I liken leadership to leading a parade. It’s hard to lead a parade if no one will follow you. So whenever we are considering new programs, I do a lot of work talking and thinking about it within the department. You have to start getting to know the people you want to collaborate with. In planning for the teaching department concept, we started a program called Cops and Docs. We have police sitting in at Brown University’s teaching hospital, and doctors sitting in on homicide meetings and morning CompStat meetings with us. These efforts are working to develop consensus within. It takes time and focus, but it’s worth it.
What else have you done to instill a culture of constant learning in the Providence Police Department?
One example is staff development. We’ve started exchange programs. If you get promoted, you have to do an exchange. I’ve also instilled the idea that upon promotion, whether you asked for it or not, you become a teacher, as well as a learner. Another great example is the homicide project that is about to start. After a homicide occurs, within 48 hours, detectives will present the investigation to group of investigators outside of the department. The idea is for it to serve as both a post-homicide briefing as well as a teaching tool.
In aiming to make your police department a teaching institution, what will success look like?
I think success will be evident when the leader becomes less prominent. I think you’ll also see success by having more and more partnerships between academics and police departments.
How do you think departments can better address failure?
A big part of community policing is problem solving. But that problem solving approach isn’t always present when it comes to addressing failure. For example, in teaching hospitals, they have mortality conferences. They discuss failures outright – why a patient died, what the contributing factors were, and how any mistakes can be fixed. Why shouldn’t police have failure conferences? Again, the lack of such discussion shows the difference between handling failure versus actually learning from it.
Can you give an example of how you have the failure of a specific program?
We are planning to launch a gun buyback program in Providence. Gun buyback programs are known for failure. So before we implemented anything, I assigned a lieutenant to research past gun buyback failures. We looked at programs all over the region. That’s an unusual process for a police department. It would have been much easier to skip that step and grandstand at a press conference. Gun buyback programs are popular because they look like action, even if they have little impact. We wanted to be sure that our program would actually be effective, not just create good press. The end result is community safety, not simply having a gun buyback program.
Do you think police chiefs are good at anticipating or responding to the public’s concerns?
No. We’re not good at prepping the public about what success will look like. We’re also not good at getting permission from the community when we should. For example, when police have to conduct a big raid or implement a new, visible policy, it’s very important to inform the public and ask their permission. But the arrogance that comes from power makes that an afterthought. We come in as surgeons and leave as ninjas. We need to get better at sticking around and walking the block, explaining what happened. Just this morning, we closed a major undercover case. No one got hurt, but it was a big show and we made arrests. I made sure to walk the block immediately after, explaining to people why we arrested their neighbors. Even though the bust was safe and successful, holding a press conference would not have achieved what in-person face-time did. Ideally, all officers would understand that that is part of their job.