AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: OCTOBER 2017 41 understand, I walked by this lady and every day I greeted her, and one day, she said, “Officer, can you stop for a minute? I want to talk to you,” and she tells her story of a horrendous crime that happened to her months earlier. The cop al- ways says, “Why didn’t you tell me before?” And she would respond, “I didn’t know you then.” That’s why officers em- braced walking beats and the neighborhood em- braced the officer. As they say, sure and steady wins the race. I didn’t need people to like me as chief or the police department. But I needed them to trust their officer. It’s also much safer for the officer because the community will come to his or her defense. The future remains somewhat hard for me to grasp. Searches are being done with robots, drones are telling us what we see and computers are using cameras to figure out who everyone is. The question for me is not the technology, it’s how it is being used. Is it in trusted hands? Because that trust I am talking about is built through relationships, not computer bytes. Officers will have to work hard to ensure those conversations conducted over coffee are not forgot- ten. As technology be- comes further entrenched in departments, those con- versations will help. It is much easier for an officer who is trusted by the community to talk about technology the department is using as opposed to being forced to figure it out on their own. We also must remember that technology has no moral compass. The hands that operate it have the moral compass. I would much rather someone I know and trust explain why they are using a cam- era or a drone or facial rec- ognition technology than someone I don’t know. Technology will never replace human relation- ships. It will only augment and support them. A few years ago we had a huge snow storm. We sent the rookies out there in cars with shovels to help people. And what happened? They couldn’t believe people came out of their homes to help them when their cars got stuck in the snow. Those efforts made by those rookie cops in the days and months leading up to that moment showed that community members weren’t digging out cops from the police depart- ment. They were digging out rookies they knew. Dean M. Esserman is the Senior Counselor at the Police Foundation and the immediate past chief of the New Haven (CT) Police Department. Prior to that, he served as Chief of Police in Providence, Rhode Island; Stamford, Connecticut; and the New York State MTA- Metro North Police Department. From 1987-1991, he served as the general counsel to Chief William Bratton of the New York City Transit Police. He started his career as an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn, New York, and as a special As- sistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. He is a graduate of Dart- mouth College (B.A.) and New York University School of Law (J.D.). He has held university appointments at the Yale Law School, Yale University, Yale Child Study Center, University of New Haven, and Roger Wil- liams University. Thanks to the boom industry that is the surveillance state, soon will come a time when all we need to do is have the robot tell the security guard where to pick up the suspects. Just think of all the money we could save on personnel costs, gas and lawsuits. Machines don’t build trust, but officers do Continued from previous page (801) 475-6000 www.symbolarts.com customerservice@symbolarts.com Contact us today to get started on your custom products BADGES PATCHES MEDALS THE LEADER IN PUBLIC SAFETY INSIGNIA FOR OVER 30 YEARS COINS APPAREL PINS