Amid nationwide mistrust in police, CMPD rolls out a customer service-based approach
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Chief Johnny Jennings’ first big public gamble begins now.
Starting Thursday, Jennings’ officers and staff — 2,500 Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department employees in all — get their first look at CommUNITY Collaboration, a first-of-its-kind training program that connects law and order with customer service.
As CMPD has been buffeted by the same deepening public mistrust and cratering morale that have hit law enforcement nationwide, Jennings has turned to The DiJulius Group, a Cleveland-based national consulting firm, to introduce his officers and the city to the “Customer Service Revolution.”
The department will pay about $60,000 for the program.
Training would include about one hour of online work followed by a four-hour, in-person session at the police academy, the department said in a news release Thursday. The training and curriculum — developed and taught by CMPD employees — will include new communication techniques to use with “customers,” role playing and engagement scenarios, the release said.
In videos on his company’s website, John DiJulius stresses the importance of creating empathy and compassion in any organization for the people they serve.
In return for his money, Jennings is expecting nothing less than a culture change — one that “will influence everything we do.” Specifically, the chief wants his people “to be more intentional in leaving a positive impact on the individuals we encounter,” Jennings told The Charlotte Observer in a remote interview on Wednesday.
He hopes the new training regimen — along with other changes he’s already made — will help defuse existing tensions between police and the public, make interactions safer, and lead to increases in both officer morale and increased public support.
Company founder John DiJulius, who also took part in the Wednesday meeting, said the training will focus on the 98 percent of police interactions with the public that do not involve violence or use of force.
Only 14,000 of his department’s 500,000-plus interactions with the public last year ended in arrests. Far fewer involved force.
DiJulius believes the same tools that his company passed along to such customers as Starbucks, Chick-fil-A and Disney will work for CMPD. He said six other police departments in the country already have contacted his firm since the Observer first reported Jennings’ plans in April.
“Why now?” DiJulius asked. “We absolutely know policing has been drawn through the mud, right or wrong, for the past 15 to 18 months,” he said.
Regaining public trust, he believes, is a matter of “one community at a time, one interaction at a time.”
Derek Chauvin and early reaction to change
The timing is auspicious. At the same time Jennings announced the new training, he also said public trust of police was the lowest he’d ever seen nationwide.
His first 11 months in office have been tumultuous. The city announced him as Kerr Putney’s replacement on May 20, five days before George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, a watershed moment that set off a summer of protests in Charlotte and around the world about police treatment of Black people.
Now his novel training program starts — one day before Floyd’s police killer is sentenced. Complicating matters: a surge in violent crime that’s well into its second year in Charlotte.
Critics already are lining up. City Councilman Braxton Winston, a supporter of disbanding CMPD, described the training as a waste of money and likened it to putting “lipstick on a pig.”
The local Fraternal Order of Police said in a statement in April that the training money would be better spent on morale, retention and officer health and safety.
Any directives that “the customer is always right” don’t jibe with real police work and could put the community and cops at risk, the statement said.
A ‘relentless’ vision for CMPD
DiJulius said every bit of the training will be compatible with CMPD’S defining responsibility of keeping the city safe.
He described Jennings’ vision for improving and modernizing his department’s approach as “relentless,” and said the chief is both “a pioneer and a disturber.”
“The first pioneer through the wall takes the most hits,” DiJulius said. “Everybody else sits around and watches and says, ‘That won’t work.’”
Jennings says he has already seen how it does, even in extreme circumstances.
About a month ago, Jennings said he was on the scene after a Charlotte man started shooting at a group of officers, who then returned fire. The man was wounded.
Yet, Jennings said he saw his officers respond with “compassion, caring and empathy” to a man who had just tried to kill them.
“Exactly what my vision entails,” he said.
This story was originally published June 24, 2021 at 3:00 PM.
