Chief Washington, thanks for being with us this morning.

Thanks for the invite. Look forward to it.

So I'm wondering if you could just share a little bit of how it

is that you came to be a law enforcement officer?

It's kind of an interesting time in my life I went to a college

at the University of Southwestern Louisiana which is now called

University of Louisiana in Lafayette and ended

up where I intended to play football but wasn't able to and then started,

kind of, I was one of these kids who had to work

for a living and my parents supplemented me.

And they were a great supplement but it wasn't enough so I

had to work and I started working in convenience stores and

ended up having a situation where the stores

got robbed a couple of times and then I had met

a university police officer previously involved in

an incident and ended up being taken to the dean's office.

And so, one day he walked in the store.

His name was Andrew Speier.

And so Andrew came in, we used to call him Andy,

he came in and he started talking to me says, "everything's okay."

And I say, "We keep getting robbed".

And he said, "These stores are just notorious for,

for robberies and staff working at night," he said.

So, he invited me to apply for a student officer job and said,

"You ought to come work for the student officers".

And I said, "Really?"

I said, "You think they would take me?"

You all just had me go and see Dean Blanko.

And he said, "Just go in and they'll set you up an interview."

Went in the next day,

they asked me my jacket size,

had me try on a shirt and they say I start Monday and

I've been in law enforcement ever since and have

enjoyed a career of upward mobility in it and have enjoyed working

throughout the country and that's how I got my start in law enforcement. Great.

So, when you think over your career what have been

the most rewarding aspects of being a police officer?

I think when I started in law enforcement,

I had the fortune of working for an African-American Chief of Police and I knew early

on I wanted to become a Chief one day and the big part was when I worked for this guy,

his name was Chief Albert Gallard,

he was a great mentor of young men and young women.

And so, what I wanted to do,

I wanted to get in this profession and at

the Chief level after I'd worked for a while and I wanted to be a mentor.

And I think that's been the greatest reward is that and

when I've worked throughout this country as a Police Chief and as

a Law Enforcement Administrator and have been able to mentor young people into

the profession and try and set the tone for what I truly believe is the right way to,

to, to serve as a police officer and that's through service and to look at this

as an opportunity to serve rather than just enforce.

And what would you say, thinking about

your own life and then the lives of the officers that you've worked with,

what are the biggest challenges that you've faced,

both personally and more broadly for a police officer?

Well, I think today,

in today's climate I think it's a tough business.

You know, policing in America,

there's a lot of questions of how we do our jobs.

And I think it's just tough because it's

a business where you have to make split second decisions but you're,

you're evaluated for long periods of time on those split second decisions.

But I also think that being in the profession no matter who you are,

what's your background, is just tough because you're dealing with the, the, I think,

the sometimes the social ills of society but

also being an African-American male is sometimes truly tough

too because there appears to be in our society today

a disparity between law enforcement and African-American men.

So sometimes you, you,

you really are struggling with where our profession is going and,

and you, you want to do a great job

and you really believe in the profession as I do but sometimes it's just tough.

You know as a daily,

as part of your daily operation,

a daily, you know, performance of your duty.

Well, in your own history are there

some particularly challenging moments that you could point to?

I think it's, it's to me is over the years in my, in my career.

It's one is the challenging moments is when I came into law enforcement it

was for the most part a white male dominated profession.

And so when I used to go to work when I was in Louisiana,

quite often you felt that you wasn't really

wanted in the department but then at the same time you,

kind of, felt sometimes that your community didn't really like the profession.

So you kind of felt a little bit,

kind of, where do I belong?

Where do I fit in?

And I really believe in the work I'm doing but where do I fit in?

How do I make a positive difference?

So I think it's always been that challenge

but that challenge has never left me in my life.

You know, as I progressed in this profession up to

the rank of my current rank as Chief of Police,

it's a really challenging profession for an African-American male.

So, have you seen improvements both in terms of gender and in race diversity?

I think there's been some attempts at improvement but I think

there's still a long way to go and that's just a true depiction of our society.

It's not just singular to law enforcement in America.

I think there has been some improvements and I think

that the improvement has been that there's been a lot of

very educated African-American police officers or

police officers different genders and what have

you and policing has kind of opened the doors a

little bit to where it's not so singular in the way

we look at it and so there's

a lot more diversity but there's still a lot more work to be done.

So, recently the police have received a lot of attention

for excessive violence or excess, excessive use of force.

I'm wondering what you think about that

and how we should be thinking about it as a society?

Well, I think it, it,

kind of, to me it,

it depicts that the need for more training and education of officers.

And when I look at is also

law enforcement needs to continue to be more inclusive of our society.

It needs to reflect the demographics of our society.

When I look at situations like in Ferguson or what have you,

you look at those departments and a lot of times though

departments does not really depict the demographics

of that community and if you look at law enforcement in

its historical foundation it was designed for the people,

by the people, with an intent to serve the people.

And so, I think we've kind of gotten away

from law enforcement being truly community oriented.

People talk about things like community policing but I think there needs to be a push for

the police departments to truly be engaged with the community

and being a part of the community and so I think about those things.

But I think there has to be some activity to,

to really address why are we having so many shootings and what have you.

Well, do you have any recommendations for

your own officers or how do you talk to them about it?

What we do is we try and take every incident that happens and we use, look at it as a,

as a training opportunity and unfortunately we want to sit down and say,

"Hey, how does this occur?"

And one of the things we try and do is to set a tone of service

and at Vanderbilt we have about 100 police officers

and we try and as we hire police officers we

try and actually self-promote from within our organization.

And our organization is built on a foundation of service and engagement to

the community and being open minded and

receptive and inclusive and all of those things to,

to really try and make sure that our our officers

not only just help keep this community safe

but feel like they are part of the community and truly

recognize that we're in an all inclusive community.

And what would your officers say are the biggest set of challenges?

I think sometimes, you know,

I hear off that the biggest challenges that, you know,

in society that they look at policing all together and they want to say

we are different and you know

quite often in our society that's the way we look at things.

We take one group or one segment and say this is how it all is and,

and at Vanderbilt I think our officers feel like

that's a big challenge because they really work

hard at trying to really

understand and work with this community to make sure that the community is safe.

Well, you know since the late '70s, early '80s,

we've seen a skyrocketing proportion of Americans who are now incarcerated.

Right, so we had you know three or four hundred thousand in

the '70s and now we're over 2.2 million people people that are,

find themselves incarcerated and another 5 million who are under state supervision,

either parole or probation.

And in this, sort of,

story of American criminal justice the police are often on the front lines and they're

the first interaction with the criminal justice system is with the police officers.

So I'm wondering with this an incredible amount of

power behind them that the police have,

how should they be thinking about that?

How should they be managing it?

Well, one of the things that policing have in

America is that we have a lot of discretion.

And I think officers need to continue to look at that discretion but take it in that,

from a perspective of service.

And I'll tell you one of the things I often talk to my officers about is

the thing that I think is the greatest thing about living in this country is liberty,

is freedom and take that very serious.

That as a law enforcement officer you

have the authority and some immunities in the sense of dealing with

someone's freedom and so take that serious and try and serve

people appropriately and instead of trying to overcomplicate things,

we often go back to a very simple foundation of the golden rule.

If you work every day and treat people like you want to be treated I

guarantee you way more often than not you'll be right and people will.

And if you do that sincerely people will feel that you're right, you know.

And so we try to instill that into our officers on

a daily basis and say now hold on a minute, you know,

watch how we're approaching people,

watch how we're communicating people because we're here to

serve the community not to just enforce things.

We're here to serve them and we want people to feel

safe and feel like they are part of this community.

Chief August Washington: “Community Policing”

Justice, Mercy and Mass Incarceration

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