Leadership Training: Creating a Shared Vision through Community Policing

The San Jose, California Police Department has a history of pursuing a number of department-wide initiatives to cultivate community policing.

These initiatives include:

• A professional development course for all 300 sworn and civilian supervisors to teach the skills critical to implementing community policing.
• Training for command personnel through an executive retreat that allowed the chief of police to develop the top leaders of the department.
• Consultants to help create a strategic plan to develop the importance of community partnerships and collaborative leadership.
• Site visits to Baltimore and Boston to observe community policing programs and to Los Angeles to evaluate a West Point Leadership Model.
• Expansion of the intranet to allow delivery of information, updates and curriculum to personnel at individual work sites.

The San Jose Police Department was in desperate need for transformation and community policing allowed the emergence of these strategies for growth:

• Regular detailed communication about the scope and intent of community policing activities and initiatives
• Ongoing department meetings to discuss progress
• Inclusion of community members, key school personnel and government partners in community policing discussions
• Empowerment of individuals to take responsibility for projects
• Development of a culture of community policing demonstrated daily through the entire chain of command
• Encouragement of "champions" within all levels of the department who support community policing and value change and innovation.

Click to read more about Community Policing in Action!