Tag Archives: police partnerships

New Jersey Devils Coach Peter Deboer teaches a cop a few things

Posted by gary askin on

Coaching our Staff for Success

by Waterloo Regional Police Service

Superintendent  Gary Askin

 

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Have you ever wondered what makes a National Hockey League coach successful? Several years ago a friend of mine decided to find that out and spent a few days job shadowing an NHL coach. His purpose was to examine the coach’s leadership style and to determine what made him a successful coach. When he told me about his experience it struck me that our own community must be full of leaders that we can learn from.

Learning outside of formal police institutions and within our own community has many benefits. It meets our organizational goals and values as they pertain to staff development, partnerships, teamwork, and excellence, while injecting a police presence into the community.  I decided to put this into action.

Some say growth only occurs while operating outside your comfort zone, so with this in mind I decided to select a local leader with whom I’ve had no previous connection. I wanted to determine what challenges they faced, what leadership skills they utilized, and whether those skills were transferable to policing.

Before moving onto New Jersey, Peter Deboer was the coach of the Kitchener Rangers Ontario Hockey League team. Peter was one of the most successful coaches in the OHL and now ranks fifth in wins among all coaches. He has won the Memorial Cup, a gold medal with the Team Canada Juniors and has been named coach of the year twice. He is recognized as one of the OHL’s elite and is now coaching the Devils in the playoffs.

Armed with 200 interview-style questions and a digital recorder I met Peter at the Kitchener Rangers head office. From the moment I walked into his office Peter was gracious and receptive. We spent several hours talking about his career, motivation, development, and the challenges he has faced as a coach. Continue reading →

Compronet-using Twitter to report and dispatch?

Posted by gary askin on

Fascinating, innovative and powerful software being developed in the Netherlands will be a game changer for cops and the public.  This takes crowd sourcing and citizen engagement to a new level.  The video speaks for itself.

Compronet

Breaking the Law of Unintended Consequences

Posted by gary askin on

by Superintendent Gary Askin

 

During the days and weeks after 911 police stumbled upon a weapon so powerful it virtually halted drug trafficking and reduced crime. Best of all it was free, it required no judicial oversight, no legislative authority to govern it, and no Police Board approval to use it.  As police officers, this was our finest hour and we didn’t even realize it.  We unwittingly created a scenario that Sociologist Robert Merton identified in 1936 called  “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action.”

What exactly is that? Consider this example

In the 1981 movie Body Heat, William Hurt’s lawyer character hatches a plot with his lover, played by Kathleen Turner, to murder the woman’s husband.  While plotting, Hurt receives some sobering advice from an experienced criminal client, portrayed with trademark style by Mickey Rourke

“I got a serious question for you”, says Rourke.  “What the (expletive) are you doing? This is not (expletive) for you to be messin’ with. Are you ready to hear something? I want you to see if this sounds familiar: any time you try a decent crime, you got fifty ways you’re gonna (expletive) up. If you think of twenty-five of them, then you’re a genius… and you ain’t no genius”.

In the simplest of terms, Rourke was citing the well-known Theory of Unanticipated Consequences.   In 1936, Sociologist Robert Merton wrote “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action” in which he discussed how our decisions and actions can and will always result in unintended consequences.  Sometimes these are positive, and sometimes they are negative, but the theory holds that we cannot always know which will occur, and the unanticipated consequences are often well outside our control.  The power of this law has been well recognized by economists and sociologists for decades but curiously, ignored by most of us in the policing profession. Continue reading →