Cincinnati Assistant Police Chief Lisa Davis and Milwaukee Police Chief Jefferey B. Norman were named as finalists out of a pool of more than 30 applicants. Broadnax may now make his pick for the next leader of the Austin Police Department as soon as July 26, followed by City Council's confirmation vote.
Davis and Norman answered questions from the media and attended a public meet-and-greet July 23 to share their thoughts on public safety issues and department oversight. The full community forum can be viewed here.
Lisa Davis
Davis has spent her entire professional career in Cincinnati, where she rose through the ranks from officer to assistant chief.
If she's tapped to oversee a larger department and city, she said she'd start by trying to build trust within city and APD administration, as well as with the community and media. As an outsider, she said she'd have the opportunity to assess police leadership and department processes without the influence any existing relationships—and wouldn't plan any major overhauls off the bat.
"I’m not coming here to cause complete chaos and disruption," Davis said during her media availability. "I want to look at what we have, the strengths, and one of the things everyone knows is you have to build a good team around you. To be successful, you have to have a good team around you, and that’s what I want to do.”
On the ground, Davis said she favors evidence-based policing and would use data to target streets or neighborhoods—downtown, Riverside, the North Lamar area—that she said appear to have more family violence and homicide incidents, and to reduce response times. One strategy in neighborhoods could be deploying officers to visible locations for just a few minutes, resulting in "hours of deterrence," she said.
As APD vacancy levels creep closer to 20%, Davis said a top focus of recruitment efforts would be boosting department morale. She said police recruitment should be streamlined and open to as many people as possible, with a focus on initiatives like 30x30 that aims to increase the number of women on the police force.
Davis said she's aware of the extensive reporting on reforms at APD's training academy, and the internal resistance that's remained through the process. Making changes and weighing different aspects of policing falls on department leadership to fully take root, she said.
"We want to be what they call the guardian-centric, but warrior-based. Because we all know that it could be at any minute that a police officer has to protect someone’s life, protect their own life and be warriors. But for the most part, we are all guardians," she said. "I think that is pushed from the top and that’s pushed from leadership, it’s pushed down through those academy ranks.”
She also said she views police transparency as "extremely" important, and that residents should always have the right to know what's happening in a publicly-funded department. That information could include "g-files," or secret personnel records that have been a sticking point in voter-approved oversight measures that remain contested in court.
"How do you balance being transparent with the officer’s right of, ‘Hey, this was a complaint that was made that was totally unjustified and not sustained.’ So how do we look at that and still be transparent?" Davis said. "There’s room to negotiate that in. That kind of took me by surprise, this g-file, so I’m interested to learn more about that.”
Jefferey B. Norman
Norman's law enforcement career has been centered in Milwaukee, where he also worked through the department ranks from a patrol officer role in 1996 to the chief position he holds today.
During his media availability, Norman stressed his desire to engage with residents as key pieces of his approach to police leadership.
"You want to have a connected community with your department, you want to have someone who knows what it means to be a change agent, to work on challenges and have positive outcomes. This particular type of challenge is not new to me," he said. "The things I have dealt with in regards to my respective department has been a labor of love, but through collaboration, great team members, supportive community and electeds, things can happen when we all work together.”
Norman said engagement is a central strategy that can work between departments, and said he'd spend his first 100 days at APD out in the community and getting to know Austinites, local officials and the media to build new relationships. He said that focus extends outside city government to the offices of county attorneys and state leaders as well.
Discussing Austin's high average response times, he said APD may reevaluate when officers are required to show up on-scene versus alternative response methods or more technology supports like online reporting. Still, he said he'd have to "look under the hood" of department operations before rolling out any new policing policies or programs.
On the recruitment issue, Norman noted that staffing remains an issue for police departments around the country and said the "tone of your city" is an important piece of supporting the organization. He said Austin and police leaders should have a unified message to thank and support officers.
"We all know that in any civilized community, you need police officers," he said. "No department accepts bad officers. Ask any cop out there. And so when we have a unified message in regards to our leadership beyond just dealing within the department, but also those who make up our community ... that’s when you really start to work on that effort in a collaborative way and an effective way. Tell your citizens that we ... need the police."
At the academy, Norman said he believes there have been improvements to attitude and culture shifts following the evaluations by city consultant Kroll Associates. And despite any progress made on a guidebook to sustain training reforms, he said a key factor to maintaining continuity will be keeping a good culture with service-mindedness and mentoring in place.
Norman also said he has experience dealing with police oversight issues, although he said he wants more information on the challenges and opportunities in Austin before laying out his approach.
"Check the record. Transparency is hand-in-hand with me. There’s nothing that we should do in regards to us as law enforcement where we cannot talk to the public about," he said. "We are responsible to the public ... What we can talk about we should, but there are processes in place in regards to there are reasons why we cannot talk about certain things, especially when you talk about things in litigation."
