14 minute read
Municipal Police Chiefs on Preventing and Responding to Civil Unrest
By toM reynolDs, MMl DireCtor oF eDuCation resourCes
A Hometown Emergency Preparedness Ad hoc Committee (HEPAC) priority over the past year has been to help Maryland’s municipal leaders be better prepared for potential civil unrest in our communities. While the vast majority of protests and gatherings are peaceful, we have seen instances where these events have turned violent, leading to physical injury and destruction of property. To discuss best practices for preventing and responding to civil unrest, the Maryland Municipal League called on two municipal police chiefs – Victor Brito with the City of Rockville and Barbara Duncan with the City of Salisbury – to share their thoughts on what cities and towns can do to minimize threats and respond effectively.
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Municipal Maryland: As a law enforcement official, what is your greatest concern when it comes to threats or risks of civil unrest?
Chief Barbara Duncan: My greatest concern is the safety of the members of my community, the protesters, my officers, and my agency’s ability to protect public and private property. As groups of protesters gather you always have to be aware that the protest organizer may not be able to control the behavior of the group. Consideration also has to be given to counter protesters or individuals who show up simply to disrupt or change a peaceful gathering into one where multiple arrests need to be made.
Chief Victor Brito: I’m also concerned about not having the appropriate actionable intelligence to which I can deploy police and other resources to ensure that my community is safe and resilient. It is critically important for police departments to always be situationally aware of what is occurring locally, regionally, and nationally. You can never assume “it won’t happen here;” you must be always diligent with intelligence
Municipal Maryland: What should local leaders know about identifying the line between constitutionally protected peaceful protest and civil unrest?
Chief Brito: Community leaders must know that we will always support Constitutionally protected First Amendment activities. We must always be flexible, allowing people the right to express themselves even though those expressions may be uncomfortable to some. Peaceful protest morphs into civil unrest when interpersonal violence and/or destruction of property occurs.
Chief Duncan: As local leaders we have an obligation to provide avenues for our community to legally engage in constitutionally protected free speech and the right to assemble. Peaceful protests do not jeopardize public safety, do not conflict with traffic regulations, and do not result in property damage. One of the best ways to identify the line between constitutionally protected speech and civil unrest is to confer with your State’s Attorney and your law department prior to the protest happening. This will help local leadership understand what activity the State’s Attorney will consider for prosecution. Your local law department will also provide additional clarification on the legality of certain activity as it relates to your specific municipality. The information from the State’s Attorney and the municipal attorney should also be shared with protest organizers and on social media.
Municipal Maryland: What are the most important things a municipal government needs to do to be prepared for civil unrest?
Chief Brito: Municipal governments must always be prepared to deploy the appropriate resources at a moment’s notice. This can include physical resources such as barriers, and human resources, such as calling in additional staff to protect life and property. This is particularly important for law enforcement agencies to ensure they are operationally prepared and can ensure a quick mobilization to help quell any unexpected or unplanned incidents.
Chief Duncan: A municipal government needs to make sure that their law enforcement agency is capable of handling civil unrest. Your police agency must have the appropriate equipment for their officers so that they can safely engage with protesters and the agency must be afforded the time to train on the latest crowd control and de-escalation tactics and mass arrest processes. Plans should be developed for evacuations or shelter in place protocols for business or residential areas impacted by civil unrest, and communities need to be part of the plan development process. Understanding that different departments within a municipal organization can impact the success of navigating through civil unrest is equally as important. Members of municipal or volunteer fire departments as well as public works staffers will be contributing resources and manpower during the event and plans need to be in place for the use and deployment of these valuable resources. Lastly, a municipality should be prepared to work through the fear experienced by the public during civil unrest. Establishing a phone line for the public to use is an easy and direct way to provide much needed support for community members who will be struggling with fear related to the unrest.
Municipal Maryland: Do you have any specific recommendations for leaders of smaller communities that may be at risk if, say, there was adverse reaction to a police shooting, or an outside group chose your town as a rally location?
Chief Brito: Municipalities of all sizes must always have strong partnerships in place with formal and information community leaders. You do not want to be meeting each other during or in the aftermath of a critical incident. These trusted relationships can ensure a smooth, coordinated, and quick response to any incident, regardless of nature. Community partners can also increase community awareness of what is occurring within or nearby; we especially rely on this type of information sharing in the event of little or no-notice incidents.
Chief Duncan: The one thing I’d add is, ahead of time, the importance of establishing mutual aid agreements with surrounding jurisdictions and updating them annually.
Municipal Maryland: Social media increasingly plays a role in civil unrest as a planning or incitement tool, but also as a public safety tool for response and prevention. What should municipal officials know about social media when it comes to preventing civil unrest?
Chief Duncan: Social media has become a valuable tool in crisis management and can be used to prevent or at least mitigate civil unrest. Social media monitoring results in the gathering of real time information on potential flashpoints and friction within a community. This information can support decisions which need to be made by officials and can guide efforts directed towards prevention. Engagement through social media allows for direct and two-way communication with community members. Social media can be used to push out your story while offering a platform to the community for collaborative problem solving and participatory decision making which can help reduce the likelihood of civil unrest. Lastly, as with any prevention strategy, it’s important to have a strategic policy on the use of social media by members of the municipal team as well as providing media training to team members.
Chief Brito: I’d also emphasize the importance of local law enforcement working with other municipal agencies to monitor local, regional, and national social media posts to better understand threats to their communities. We can also use these tools to communicate with our residents and alert them of locations to avoid, street closures, and the like.
Municipal Maryland: Can you share a little bit more about the importance of partnerships and communication and who municipal leaders should look to in forming those partnerships?
Chief Brito: Community partnerships are the lifeline of successful municipal governments and police departments. These partnerships must be forged, and trust built, long before any significant community event/civil unrest in order for you to manage the event and the recovery. It’s important to identify and include non-traditional partners as well to ensure your point of view is as inclusive and comprehensive as possible.
Chief Duncan: Chief Brito makes an important point in that partnerships can provide insight into various issues faced by community members. Those partnerships can also create education opportunities and build the trust needed to move a community forward. One way to determine with whom to partner is to review existing networks within your jurisdiction and work to form partnerships with members of those networks depending on the task at hand.
Municipal Maryland: Are there particular resources or training opportunities that municipal leaders should be aware of?
Chief Brito: Our department has a newly appointed public information officer who shares agency-specific messages and echoes select messaging released by our city PIO. We also work to ensure our messages are based on risk communication principles (they are clear, concise, and actionable). There are a variety of tools out there that can help leaders learn more about crisis communications. A useful tool is CDC’s CERC curriculum, https://emergency.cdc.gov/cerc/
Chief Duncan: An overlooked preventative resource involves developing a process where conversations between community members and municipal staff take place in a facilitated or guided way. This will create and strengthen relationships between officials and community members while providing opportunities for participants to be heard and understood. There are community mediation centers around the state that provide these services. In Salisbury, for example, we’ve had success working with Tri Community Mediation in facilitating community dialogues.
Municipal Maryland: Thank you both for your time and insights.
Victor Brito was appointed as Police Chief of the Rockville City Police Department after a nationwide search in June 2018. He previously served for two years as Chief of Police with the City of Hagerstown Police Department. Chief Brito’s career also includes 25 years with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., where he retired with the rank of captain.
Barbara Duncan has served as the Police Chief for the City of Salisbury since November 2010. Prior to that, Chief Duncan was the Chief of Police from 2008-2010 in Mount Vernon, New York where she served for more than 20 years rising through the ranks from officer to Sergeant, Lieutenant, and then Captain.
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