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 Toni Morgan: 00.09 Hello and welcome. My name is Toni Morgan, and on behalf of the COPS Office, I would like to introduce to you Pam Delaney. Pam is the executive director for the National Network of Police Foundations, and she is here to talk with us today about police foundations. Pam, most police chiefs and sheriffs don’t fully understand what a police foundation can do for their city or county. Could you explain a little bit about the wide variety of programs that police foundations support? Pam Delaney: 00.41 I’d be very happy to explain to you the wide projects and programs that police foundations support. To begin with, police foundations are vehicles through which police departments and the private sector interact. And there are a number of resources that the private sector has at its disposal that can be very, very useful for the police departments. Usually, probably the main thing about police foundations that is important for police executives and sheriffs to know is that they do not supplant police budgets, but they augment them. And that meant, traditionally, when—certainly before the economic crises that we’ve been experiencing the last couple of years, what that meant was that the police foundations could bring to police departments the means to do experiments, to try innovation, whether that be in equipment or new approaches, to provide training, whether that be leadership training or special investigative skill training or training in new equipment and new types of technology. Today, with drastically reduced budgets—the new normal—what police budgets cannot absorb is really expanding, so that the whole scope of what police foundations can provide, therefore, expands. So again, training. I mean, that’s one of the things that police departments cut first. I mean, it’s travel money; it’s time. It’s all sorts of things. But training and skill development I think are so particularly important when other resources are being cut back, because that’s an investment in people, and it’s the people on the street that you need to be enthusiastic about what they’re doing, and keep up with the latest skills that they need to lead and to make sure that they are providing safety for the community. Research and development is another way. Studies in terms—not so much of the academic, although that’s certainly part of it—studies in terms of what kind of equipment might be good to use; things like the surveillance cameras, for example, deciding whether that is going to be good for your community or not. You want to do some research to see if experiments and innovation in other cities, in other towns, in other counties, work for you. So it’s exploration. It’s, again, special training. It’s support for police-community interaction. For outreach to youth, to outreach to other segments of the community, so that dialogue and communication skills and vehicles can be implemented. Also, police health and wellness, those kinds of programs to kind of bolster the thought process of police officers, and then finally recognition and awards. Those are always, and again especially when raises are very infrequent and promotions are not often there, recognition and awards take on an extra meaning. So those are the kinds of things that I think traditionally and then in the new environment really work for police and sheriffs offices. In sum, it’s leveraging police resources with private sector support. It’s bringing the private sector in to help. Morgan: 04.05 So you started the very first police foundation in the country, the New York City Police Foundation. Now you’ve left to create this new National Police Foundation Network. Can you tell me about the network, and how it can help agencies that don’t have their own foundations? Delaney: 04.24 Through the COPS Office, through the Police Executive Research Forum and with help from the Target Corporation, we’ve been able to launch this project, what we’re calling the National Police Foundations Network project, to provide support and information for police and sheriff’s agencies as well as private sector partners throughout the United States. We are offering six workshops. We’ve already held three; they’re regional. We’re also providing, on a limited basis, technical assistance. So if there are cities or towns that have police foundations that may not be, may have been created a while ago and are now needing to redevelop them and re-invigorate them, we’re providing technical assistance. And then we’re also developing a manual, to build, to help police foundations grow and develop. A second phase of this is an association, an organization to serve the professional needs of the police foundations so that we can share information, share best practices. We will be building a website offering training and technical assistance. That’s a little bit further down the road. Morgan: 05.41 Okay, great. So where can agencies learn more about the National Police Foundation Network? Delaney: 05.47 The best way right now to find out about the National Police Foundations Network is to contact me, Pam@pamdelaney.com. This is in anticipation of our website eventually coming up, which will have, hopefully, a great amount of information that people will be interested in. But the best way to do it for right now is to contact me, and I believe the COPS Office, also. If you contact the COPS Office, the Office, too, can provide information. Morgan: 06.19 Sounds great. Thank you so much, Pam. Delaney: 06.20 Thank you. Voiceover: 06.23 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.