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I made a stupid civilian mistake recently. Corresponding with a law enforcement source, who also happens to be a good friend, I “playfully” got prickly with him for not responding to a request as quickly as I would have liked.
His reply was even pricklier, and not at all playful. As it turned out, he’d been involved in a joint task force operation, serving search warrants and examining digital evidence, for the better part of the week—in addition to investigating a fatal shooting.
And once I got over my initial who-does-he-think-he-is reaction (because, really, who likes to hear they’ve screwed up—even when it’s painfully obvious?), I told him:
I know better, and I should’ve known better. I’m sorry.
And left it at that.
True apology is about trust
One of my favorite social media experts and another friend, Liz Strauss, re-blogged an older post of hers: “When an Apology Can Open the Door to Trust.” It didn’t only strike me because of my experience. It also struck me because in this day and age, it seems everyone is apologizing. Is this really an effective way to rebuild trust?
Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle
Honestly, I doubt it. I have to admit I rolled my eyes when I heard the word “apology” in conjunction with Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle’s apology to his city’s Hispanic community over a rookie officer’s actions. This was due in part to the fact that Kunkle has made public apologies before—notably with regard to another traffic stop.
But it’s not because of any opinions I hold about the DPD, or Kunkle himself. That’s my reaction to every public official’s apology, from Mark Sanford to John Edwards.
Apologies from organizations and public officials have, I fear, not come to mean very much. They are rarely 100% honest. Yet the public expects them, and public figures expect to have to give them. It’s become a “thing to do.” That removes the sincerity right there.
Worse, public reaction to them is mixed. Apologies for extramarital affairs only sometimes destroy careers. More often, they result in even more fame and attention. Apologies for misconduct result in the media using words like “outcry” and “demands for change” for a few weeks. Then nothing much changes.
And as Liz writes:
An apology that deflects attention, that says “I regret it happened,” is not an apology.
An “I’m sorry” that doesn’t own the damage done won’t rebuild trust.
An incomplete apology is a missed opportunity to build a stronger relationship by learning from what went wrong.
Words are not enough
My apology to my detective friend would have meant nothing had I emailed him again the next day, or really anytime before he dug out and was ready to talk again. I had to show that I meant what I said.
So I left him alone for a week—until he emailed me. Trust reestablished, friendship remains, though it has changed along with the two individuals who comprise it.
And therein lies the rub. People change. What they want and need and expect of a relationship changes along with them. The same is true of whole groups. People who once trusted a police department can learn to lose trust, and people who once distrusted their police can learn to regain it.
That’s why it’s so important never to assume you know what the public wants or needs, but to continue to research them, to reach out to them. Crime patterns shift. Demographics change. But pretty universally, people want to be heard and understood.
I made a stupid civilian mistake, and I owned up to it. Police make stupid cop mistakes, and they need to own up to them—not by making an “expected” apology, but by agreeing to learn from the mistake to make public safety better for everyone.
This is not easy. It often means putting one’s ego aside, and only rare leaders can admit their own mistakes to the extent that they can institute organizational culture change. The rest need to know when to admit that a change in leadership is necessary. Perhaps the best example: the LAPD.
What place do apologies hold in our culture? How can you move from the “expected” apology to one that is sincere and credible? And how can you follow through with action?
Christa M. Miller is founder and co-author of Cops 2.0. A freelance trade journalist turned public relations and social media consultant, she has specialized in public safety issues for the past eight years. She resides in Greenville, SC and can be reached at christammiller@gmail.com.
Most of us who are involved with social media at some point find ourselves on information overload. Links from Twitter and Facebook, Google Alerts, e-mail, RSS feed readers provide so much data that it’s tempting to close ourselves off and hide for at least a week.
However, even the most introverted of us are social creatures. The reason we came online to begin with was to find other people to relate to, build our own communities. We seek validation, security even. (Arguably, the familiarity we find is what leads us to post too much information.) We seek comfort.
What happens when we’re comfortable? The information becomes easier to manage. Just as our grandparents forged brand loyalty to a newspaper or TV news network, we associate with people who filter news in a way that resonates with us, with our own life circumstances—whose outlook based on experience mirrors ours.
With awareness comes cynicism
That’s why information isn’t just information. Just as importantly, it’s also opinions about the information. If TV brought new levels of awareness to previous generations, then social media brings new layers to those awareness levels. We now know not just a message; we also know what our friends think of the message from moment to moment.
The more people close ranks into comfortable, self-contained communities, then, the harder it is to get their attention. This is where master advertisers come in. They know how to manipulate emotion, play off people’s fears to inspire action.
They’d just better know which fears to get to, though, because all those messages have made the public more cynical than ever. Witness reaction to Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m.” campaign ad: the return to Cold War-style paranoia did not win points.
We know which messages sound the same, which are designed to make us feel a certain way, especially when we don’t feel that way. We want to trust official messages less and less; for trustworthiness, we turn to each other. (This, incidentally, is how things “go viral.”)
How do communicators communicate?
This is the reason why so many organizations are jumping on Twitter and Facebook. It’s not just about finding another broadcast point; it’s about gaining access to people’s trusted networks, becoming part of their filtered information stream.
Yet communicators have a double-edged challenge: cut through the noise and cut through the comfort zone. Because not only does the sheer amount of information coming at us mean there’s no time to think critically; learning to build community to help us filter it means, in effect, we’re trusting other people to do our thinking for us.
And if we’re doing that, then your message about teen drinking and driving, domestic violence, or child pornography won’t get through. At this point, communication becomes an intricate dance:
- You must interact with the people whose stream you’re part of, provide consistently good information.
- Become trusted and trustworthy; people tune out shock value, but will tune into serious information once they trust you’re trying to help them solve problems, not just manipulating their fears. (Whether you can follow through should never even be a question.)
- Accepting that there will always be skeptics, you learn to work with the believers, trusting them to carry your message through to others.
Inspiring action
People operate under their own worldview within their own communities, both online and off. They attach stigma to domestic violence, child pornography, drug abuse, anything “other.”
And so when it comes to educating people about crime, law enforcement might succeed in some quarters; but getting people to do anything about it is quite another matter. The “call to action” involves asking them to think about what they are willing to do. And so perhaps social media’s true promise is in making it easier to change minds and hearts.
Social change happens when people face each other with uncomfortable truths and refuse to back down, not to manipulate, but because it’s about humans looking out for other humans. When a cop who’s entrenched in a cause s/he feels deeply about, it shows. In Toronto (Ontario), Sgt. Tim Burrows is passionate about traffic safety. Now-retired Sgt. Paul Gillespie is passionate about taking down child pornographers.
Look around your agency. Who’s passionate about gang violence? Domestic violence? Mental health intervention? Identity theft? What if they were able to take those passions online, get the public’s attention, get them to filter out all the noise and start thinking about how they could help each other?
You just might start to get some problems solved in your community.
Christa M. Miller is founder and co-author of Cops 2.0, http://cops2point0.com. As a freelance trade journalist turned public relations professional, she has specialized in public safety issues for the past eight years. She resides in Greenville, SC and can be reached at christammiller@gmail.com.
Get on the crime map at CrimeReports.com
Analyst/Blogger Deborah Osborne has posted what’s promised to be the first of several lessons on tracking MOs in crime patterns. The lesson contains some sample spreadsheet files that can be used to organize and track crime data.
Stumble It!
The Crime Map 