A 35-year law enforcement veteran, R. Gil Kerlikowske was selected by President Barack Obama to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Prior to being named drug czar, he was the chief of the Seattle Police Department. In that capacity, he talked to Aubrey Fox of the Center for Court Innovation about innovation and what can be learned from failed criminal justice initiatives.
How common is failure in policing?
The old joke is that in policing, there are no failures. If you know of a failure, please let me know. To be serious, you’re absolutely correct that a number of pilot projects in policing don’t achieve the success they were meant to achieve. But it’s hard to know if something is a failure because so many programs aren’t evaluated. It’s risky. I know a big city chief who bluntly told a researcher who wanted to study a program, “You can only bring me bad news.” Of course, the reality is it’s rare that a program is a complete and utter failure.
How hard is it for a police chief to admit failure publicly?
Always the greatest danger is that you’ll spend money on a new project, it won’t achieve the success intended and then you’ll be in front of the city council or in the local newspaper trying to explain what happened. I don’t see anyone out there saying, “We tried this, it didn’t really work out, but here’s what we learned.” The old days of random experiments are gone. I can’t see in this day and age some of the classic policing experiments repeated where you have an experimental and a control group, like the Minneapolis spousal abuse project or the Kansas City preventive patrol project. On the other hand, police chiefs have gotten more sophisticated about research and innovation. No group in criminal justice is studied more often and partnered with more than the police.
How do you balance openness about failures with political self-protection?
In my first few months on the job, we had a big demonstration on the anniversary of the World Trade Organization conference. We put together a smart plan that dealt with the demonstrations effectively while making only a small number of arrests. But we found out a few weeks later that we went considerably over budget, mostly because in the last few days before the demonstration, police officers were adding extra officers – and extra overtime – to make sure they had enough people in place. My finance people prepared a complicated four page letter for me to present to the city council explaining the cost overruns. I said to them, why can’t we just send them a short letter explaining what happened in plain English? The reaction we got from the Council was amazing. They said “ok, we accept your explanation.” They didn’t even ask for a hearing. We’ve tried to live that way for the entire time I’ve been in Seattle.
What leadership style works best for police chiefs?
I don’t think there’s a particular style. If you look at the genre of leadership books, it’s all over the map. Five years ago, the military was this incredible leadership model to follow. Before that, it was Jack Welch at GE. Our shelves are loaded with this stuff. I’ve seen incredible police chiefs with very different leadership styles. Bill Bratton was a transformative leader but also New York is so unique. It’s an outlier by any standard. Take Jerry Sanders in San Diego, by contrast. He is about as different as humanly possible from Bratton, but they were both successful at bringing down crime.
How would you describe your leadership style?
I don’t lose my temper that often. If you are a screamer or a shouter, after awhile people don’t know why you’ve lost your temper. When I get angry, people know that I’m really upset. If you’re the type of person who takes a persons head off for making a mistake, it’s not going to take very long for word to get out. You have to be willing to understand and tolerate failure, and even take the heat instead of pointing fingers if it’s not really that person’s fault.
Do you feel that police chiefs have a lot of room to experiment?
This job is very difficult and success and failure has a lot to do with luck and timing. You have to go into the job with the right kind of attitude – a lot of people don’t understand the pressures we deal with. I was fortunate to work for two Mayors, but I always tell them, if things aren’t going right, please tell me. Other chiefs I know are dealing with really tough situations. Take a look at the chief in Washington, D.C. She’s introducing a program to deal with a terrible public safety problem in the city. It may or may not have an effect, but she’s getting criticism from all sides. No one is saying, “Gee, at least this is a well thought out program that’s done with the best of intentions.”