Voiceover: 00.00 This is the Beat- a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation Tawana Waugh: 00.09 Hello and welcome. My name is Tawana Waugh, and on behalf of the COPS office I’d like to introduce you to Brad Brekke. Brad is the vice president of Asset Protection at Target Corporation. And he’s here to talk with us today about reaching out to the private sector. Target has built an unparalleled relationship with the public safety community. Can you tell us a little more about Target Plus Blue and why a retailer has decided to cultivate such strong partnerships with police departments and sheriff offices across the country? Brad Brekke: 00.41 Good morning. I would welcome such an opportunity. Target reaching out to the community, including the law enforcement community, I would say is just part of our DNA as a company. It is what we’ve been doing since the 50s, reaching out to the community giving over 5 percent of our pretax earnings each week back to the community, focusing on many things from education to sustainability—things along those lines—but police being part of that community. So we’ve actually purposely reached out to the law enforcement community and created a program called Target & Blue where we focus on giving back more than financially, our resources also to that community to help them enhance public safety. Another way to look at it is, we don’t want to be just in the community we want to be part of it where we put our stores. And what’s good for us as a business is also good for our guests and team members, who live in that community. It has also been a positive business model for us in the sense that we’ve been able to grow a business in urban environments, specifically larger cities because of these partnerships where we work together to make our stores safe and then push that sense of safety or security beyond just the four walls of the store out into the broader community. At this point our Target & Blue program has established almost 2,000 partnerships with the law enforcement at federal, state, and local level. We engage in all sorts of activities. Some of it are things such as community outreach, National Night Out, we’re a sponsor of that. We’ve also engaged police helping them out with their video forensic labs. And many other ways. The Law Enforcement Business Fellowship Program, which we have partaken with IACP, is a way we can share our expertise or training to law enforcement command staff. At the end of the day, all these efforts are a benefit to us, but they also benefit the communities we serve. Waugh: 03.03 Before you were at Target you were a federal law enforcement agent at the FBI for many years. What do you think the business community has to offer chiefs and sheriffs beyond just funding? Brekke: 03.15 I think the law enforcement community would be surprised how much business has to offer in the sense of robust resources across the board. We often look at businesses around financial giving, but actually businesses have much to offer in expertise or best practices. One of the things we’ve seen is that we can share human resource practices. We can share information on finances or strategic planning. And this is of great benefit to the law enforcement community. In fact the program, Law Enforcement Business Fellowship with IACP, is designed just to do that. It’s a two-week program where command-level law enforcement comes up to Minneapolis and learns some of these practices. The beauty of this for a corporation is what we do every day. So it is easy for us to share these resources and we see the application then from the agencies that partake then can go back to their cities or their communities and use these to better police. Especially in this challenging economic environment, the practices we have can be of benefit to the challenges they face as they face a tighter staffing or reduced resources. Waugh: 04.35 That’s a perfect segue for my next question. So many times police chiefs have to go to their mayor or city council and argue for why they should receive funding for various projects or initiatives. At Target you not only invest in Target Blue because it’s the right thing to do, but also because you’ve built a strong business case for it. Could you give some advice to our law enforcement community on how to build and present a business case to municipal leaders? Brekke: 05.03 Taking the business case approach I think is critical when dealing with private sector, the businesses. And there’s several different ways to do it, but core to that I would identify several key steps, and we’ve shared these steps and worked actually with Department of Justice/COPS on developing these. First off is to actually identify who your potential partners might be. Most police departments have an intelligence unit. Rarely has that intelligence unit ever been tasked with trying to identify the good guys, the business community, the partners that might be able to interact with the police department. So the first step is to identify who your partners might be. The next step would be to identify issues that would matter to the business sector. And I’ll use a quick example from our world is we go into many communities and Compton is a classic example where they wanted to re-establish a business retail environment in that community, and we saw an opportunity there if we could work together. So we actually worked with the city and the police department much ahead of the actual building around the issue of restoring a business, a retail environment, there. So the second thing is identify an issue. The third is, quite frankly, they need—and this is the police chief or their agencies— need to go out and introduce themselves. There’s a bit of a brand identity problem with police that most businesses see them as something not in front of them or on their radar or writing them a traffic ticket. And by reaching out, making an introduction, setting up a lunch, setting up an event, they begin that dialogue, that relationship. Finally, last couple points would be, look for the “ask,” as we say. What specifically do you want the business to do? Often it’s good to discuss issues but it’s critical that you identify the “ask.” And finally, celebrate. Celebrate the success. Businesses are about positive results, and if you can do that, it’s a win-win. Waugh: 07.11 Well thank you Brad Brekke, it’s been great talking with you. Brekke: 7.14 Thank you. Voiceover: 07.15 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice COPS Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation's communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships and solving problems.