Dentsu's Christena Pyle and Tulsa PD's Major Matt McCord on Bridging the Police/Community Gap

The officers smashed the SUV39s windows dragged the driver out beat her and took her child from her The largest police union in the country posted on Facebook a photo of the child with a police officer framing the situation as one wherein the police had found a lost child whose irresponsible parents had let him run loose during a riotLevels of trust for the police are extremely low in Black communities and calls for reallocating police funds have been growing more popular particularly among Black voters It was against this backdrop that Christena Pyle chief equity officer Americas for Dentsu had a conversation with Major Matt McCord of the Tulsa Police Department at Allyship ampamp Action39s 39The State of Equity39 summit on October 30quotIs 39defund39 the police a misnomerquot Pyle askedquotI believe it39s a misnomerquot came McCord39s immediate answer quotEveryone can agree including police officers that they are forced to do jobs they are not best suited forquot So many calls that police respond to are mental health calls but armed officers simply aren39t equipped to deal with most of those situations Tulsa PD officers are trained in deescalation techniques a sort of quotverbal judoquot as McCord calls it but the core of police culture is still quotenforcementquot and changing that is a long slow roadMcCord sees immense value in instead of simply defunding the current police force devoting more resources to nonenforcement activities and hiring trained mental health professionals like social workers His philosophy is that when you want to build a new stadium in a city you don39t tear down the old one before construction on the new one has even begunMcCord has 16 years of police experience from the organized gang unit to SWAT quotI didn39t set out to become an allyquot he acknowledgedamp8212he had merely found himself quotcalledquot to be a police officer in 2004 McCord only began to open his eyes to issues of race in policing shortly after the 2016 murder of Dallas police officersquotThen we had a shooting in Tulsa where a white officer shot a black man who ended up being unarmedquot McCord said quotAnd I said 39I39m not a leader if I don39t step up39quot So he stepped up by heading to community meetings where all eyes were on him He was the sole white man in the room and a cop to boot someone of the same cloth as the man who had just killed an unarmed Black manquotI said 39Let me be your lightning rod39quot McCord saidOne of the most difficult issues to overcome in police bias is the inherent isolation of police culture McCord describes the life of a new cop as rather grim getting stuck on graveyard shifts exposed to traumas they may not have seen before and only ever seeing members of their community on their worst days As a result of their schedule and their need to bond with people who can understand their daytoday lives their social circle contracts excluding people not affiliated with the police despite instructions from superiors to keep their nonpolice friends quotYou start to trust only people who are copsquot McCord saidThat39s part of why McCord39s department is requiring officers to spend 30 percent of their time on nonenforcement activities What is a nonenforcement activity Playing hoops with kids or reading at librariesPyle was impressed with the openness with which McCord discussed the police perspective laying bare the roots of so much of this distrustOne factor in the massive gulf in trust between police and Black communities is media portrayal of both police officers and Black Americans quotAll day every day any police station you walk into has Fox News blasting on the TVquot McCord says quotAnd it influences the officersquotImplicit bias training helped McCord understand that the Golden Rule doesn39t work in policing and that the Platinum Ruleamp8212treat others as they want to be treatedamp8212is far more effective in deescalating conflict quotWe might have the same intentions but we are not the samequot McCord said quotAnd if I try to resolve a conflict with you the way I want to that may not work for youquotInvaluable too was a female Black friend of McCord39s who told him about the generational trauma inflicted on Black communities old wounds that are reopened with each new killing of a Black person by police quotI stopped treating it logically I started treating it emotionally seeing what it was like to live that fearquot McCord said quotIt was eyeopeningquotFor McCord expanding his social circle has helped him get back to his roots growing up in a diverse enclave of Dallas and experiencing financial hardship Now when he looks at his Facebook feed he truly sees a diversity of opinionamp8212a diversity that is at times uncomfortable or even painful for him but utterly necessaryquotI39m no longer in an echo chamberquot he saidClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily 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Dentsu's Christena Pyle and Tulsa PD's Major Matt McCord on Bridging the Police/Community Gap

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Oriana Schwindt

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Dentsu's Christena Pyle and Tulsa PD's Major Matt McCord on Bridging the Police/Community Gap

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