23 minute read
LEADERSHIP
What Is Your Leadership Brew?
Whatever your chosen profession, regardless of position, title, or rank, you have a unique “Leadership Brew.” Your leadership approach will inevitably be comprised of a lifetime of experiences—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Your approach will be built from bits and pieces of people you admire from your personal and professional life, who you happen to have resonating chemistry with, and how they inspired you or made you feel.
Your Leadership Brew is also roasted with the core beliefs of who you are as a person. You cannot separate them from the blend, and they are vital to the recipe.
I am one of the fortunate ones. I work for a company that is grounded in a clear mission, with guiding principles to fulfill that mission, and real-life culture that mirrors my own belief in the quality of the human interface. The Starbucks mission states:
“To inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time. This is accomplished through principles of how we live that every day.”
In my experience the most successful Leadership Brew has passion, consideration, respect, and dignity at its core. As leaders with that foundation, you naturally empower others to lead by connecting with them in a genuine and meaningful way.
Throughout my career the most impactful Leadership Brews I have experienced have a few characteristics in common— flexibility, adaptability, consistent delivery, and finally unwavering demonstration of dignity, respect, and honesty. It’s personal.
Adapt
Human beings are fragile, yet resilient, and amazingly flexible. If presented with stressful conditions, depleted resources, and points of deprivation, we can still survive and, in some instances, thrive by adapting. Genuine, consistent leadership in times of transition or change becomes a pivotal point between success, failure, and traction despite times of uncertainty.
Leadership structure and delivery is part of an individual’s psychosocial DNA and, by default, his or her Leadership Brew. Attempts to change basic leadership DNA structure often result in failure or dysfunction, much like abnormal chromosome structures within a cell. If a leader tries some minor adjustment to her style and is successful, those new techniques will be incorporated into her DNA. That adjustment can make her Leadership Brew much more impactful because she is willing to adapt. These adjustments are typically minor, yet better suit the current environment.
by Krista Osborne, CPP
Ms. Osborne is currently international director of loss prevention and supply-chain safety for Starbucks Coffee Company. Prior to joining Starbucks, she spent eighteen years in law enforcement in Washington State. Osborne earned both Master’s and Doctorate degrees in administration and management from Columbia Pacific University. She is a member of ASIS International, sits on the steering committee for OSAC’s Pan-Asia Regional Council, graduated from the International Security Management Association’s advanced leadership course at Georgetown University, and earned a certificate in terrorism studies from the University of St. Andrews. Osborne can be reached at 206-318-4639 or kosborne@starbucks.com.
Be Consistent
Generally, an individuals’ leadership delivery will be surprisingly consistent regardless of situation or setting. Just like any other pattern of human behavior, veins of leadership run deep. We often come across those who attempt to emulate a variety of leadership styles that they have read about in the most current publication or witnessed themselves. Most often it seems the attempts at leadership shift through this type of experimentation are not successful, recognized easily by most.
A secondary, not necessarily positive, impact to an attempt to significantly modify your internal Leadership Brew is the further dilution of exactly what the leader’s core style, or unique brew consists of. This will be demonstrated by awkward, not genuine, exchanges with those who are to be the recipients of leadership.
keep It Personal
The most effective leadership styles I have been exposed to have been reflective of who that leader is as a person and are extremely personal to that individual. The way they connect with others creates natural capillary action. People are drawn naturally to them without effort. Their direction and guidance looks and feels natural because it is a mirror of how they are inherently.
Each one of us has the unique opportunity to create our own blend, our own unique Leadership Brew, by simply being who we are. Much like a great cup of coffee, you recognize the quality through sensation—the smell, the taste, the experience—at times hard to put into words and impossible to replicate. Soak in the aroma of your own Leadership Brew, and share it with the world.
Feature
HoW
By Chief Raymond D. Schultz and Karen G. Fischer
The recent economic downturn has had a significant impact on law enforcement nationwide. According to a 2010 publication from the Police Executive Research Forum entitled “Is the Economic Downturn Fundamentally Changing How We Police?” the average budget cut experienced by many police agencies is approximately 7 percent. In spite of cuts in pay, furloughs, layoffs, and the dissolution of specialized units, police agencies are still expected to provide the same level of quality public safety services as they did during times of economic vitality.
How can the quality of the law enforcement services provided not be impacted during these hard economic times? For the Albuquerque (NM) Police Department, the answer is that we had to change the way we police. At the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) we have accomplished this by engaging our community.
An Eye-Opening Beginning
When we started down this road in 2006, we were not facing the current economic crisis. We began this journey with the purpose of better serving our community based on the needs defined by our citizenry. We had assembled a Community Policing Steering Committee to provide direction on how we should work with our citizens. While the APD had focused on neighborhood policing, the committee asked the question, “What about the business community?” Thus, it was our citizens who prompted us to hold a “business summit” in May 2006 where we developed our first public-private partnership that is now known as the Albuquerque Retail Assets Protection Association (ARAPA).
In conjunction with some of the loss prevention professionals employed by retailers such as Target, Walgreens, and Smiths, we held our initial ARAPA meeting to exchange information about crime impacting the retail sector. Our law enforcement personnel gathered toward the back of the meeting room with arms crossed, thinking they were at a meeting that would not provide anything new or different. Moments after the meeting started, this all changed. Retailers had brought photos and videos of offenders committing “their” crimes to illustrate their stories of criminal victimization.
The very first case discussed was presented by Walgreens and involved an offender who was sweeping product from shelves at an area store, walking out with hundreds of dollars in merchandise. After seeing the photo of the suspect, one of the officers in the back of the room stood up and stated that he had investigated the same guy for an auto burglary the previous week. At this point arms in the back of the room became uncrossed, and the basis of the ARAPA partnership began.
Members of the Albuquerque Police Department’s Organized Crime Unit include (front row from left) Det. Al Velarde, Sergeant Mizel Garcia, Det. Lawrence Saavedra, (back row from left) Detectives Scott McMurrough, Vicente Alvarado, Jerrod Pelot, and Dakota Moore.
Information Sharing
After establishing the foundation for this public-private partnership, the next hurdle we faced involved improving communication and information sharing between law enforcement and retailers. It was after ARAPA received recognition as a “Best Practices in Community Policing” by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in 2008, that Target Corporation provided the initial funding for a web developer to work with us to create the web-based, real-time crime alert system we now call CONNECT, which stands for Community-Oriented Notification Network Enforcement Communication Technology.
The philosophy behind CONNECT establishes that in order to improve public safety, we have to employ proactive methods for our private-sector partners to be engaged in addressing community safety needs. In a traditional police response to crime, victims call police when a crime occurs and an officer is dispatched to take a police report. The report is written, filed, and approved via police procedure and, at some point in the coming week or more, the case is assigned to a detective for follow-up.
Prior to ARAPA and CONNECT, our detectives and retail personnel would both be investigating the same offender for different crimes and not be working together, thus they would not be linking the offender’s criminal activity. With the public-private partnership model, loss prevention personnel are accepted as crime fighting partners. Through CONNECT’s real-time information-sharing technology, we level the communication platform by recognizing that police can no longer be a community’s sole response to dealing with crime and public safety issues. By allowing our community to be equal partners in APD’s crime-fighting strategy, we expand the resources available to us to fight crime, which becomes a force multiplier in addressing Albuquerque’s public safety needs.
It is noteworthy that this public-private partnership model has been replicated in over fifteen additional jurisdictions across the United States to include: ■ LAAORCA—Los Angeles Area Organized
Retail Crime Association, ■ CCROC—Cook County Regional Organized Crime Taskforce, ■ WSORCA—Washington State Organized
Retail Crime Alliance, and ■ HIORCA—Hawaii Organized Retail Crime Association.
Other Business-Sector Partnerships
Because the purpose of ARAPA and CONNECT is built on the foundation of law enforcement and private-sector partnerships, the APD began to consider other business sectors where crime prevention could be enhanced by a shared vision for community public safety. During presentations at business-sector networking meetings, APD representatives would speak about new initiatives the department was implementing with the business community, including the ARAPA partnership and the CONNECT website.
Business leaders outside of retail who heard these presentations began asking APD to consider bringing in their business sector into a similar sector-based partnership. Based on these requests, the APD began working to establish public-private partnerships with the financial, hospitality, and construction industries, which have turned into the FISOA (Financial Institutions Security Officers Association), CICA (Construction Industry Crime Alliance), and Hospitality partnerships.
Each of these partnerships utilize CONNECT via a secure industry-sector communication system, with law enforcement being able to see the overlap of incidents between each industry. By using this system, it quickly became apparent that there was an overlap of criminal activity between each sector partnership, with the same offender linked to incidents in each.
Identifying Serial Criminals
Identifying property-crime offenders involved in serial criminal activity has been a focus of the Albuquerque Police Department since 2005. Property crime constitutes 85 to 90 percent of the Part 1 Offenses reported for most communities. However, property crime is often viewed as a victimless crime, making it easier for offenders to re-victimize.
The often-cited 80-20 rule for offenders says that 20 percent of offenders commit 80 percent of the crime. By concentrating on property crime and those offenders involved with these crimes, law enforcement is able to identify criminals committing multiple offenses. In receiving the incidents from each of our private-sector partnerships, it quickly became apparent that those offenders victimizing each of our partnerships were the same as those who were stealing cars, breaking into houses, dealing drugs, and committing other crimes impacting Albuquerque’s community.
“The private-public partnerships that we have created from CCROC have developed unprecedented successes, not just in the Chicago area, but in the Midwest and nationally. We are able to work and share ideas with Albuquerque and Los Angeles. Locally our partnerships combine the resources and expertise of the private corporations with the powers of law enforcement and the prosecutor’s office. These partnerships have allowed us to have long-term investigations and be proactive. The sharing of intelligence and trust in partnerships have brought us light years from where we were before we got organized. Our investigations are better, we have lobbied and passed better ORC laws, and educated the criminal justice system on the expanse and sophistication of these criminal enterprises. Only together can we be as successful as we can be.”
- David williams, Cook County Assistant state’s Attorney and executive Director of the Cook County regional Organized Crime task force (CCrOC)
One case that speaks to serial criminal activity is illustrated by an offender by the name of Brian, who came to the APD’s attention as an unidentified offender linked to separate felony-level shoplifting incidents from Home Depot, Target, Walmart, and Lowe’s. During the same period of time, APD received information and a photo from a hotel partner of an offender who had taken a guest’s laptop from a hotel room while it was being cleaned by housekeeping. Though the follow-up on these incidents, it was determined that the same offender was involved in criminal activity in both the retail and hospitality sectors.
Without the hospitality-sector partnership, it is unlikely that the offender activity would have been linked to the offenses committed against retailers. However, with the multiple sector partnerships, we could now connect the offender to crimes in more than one business sector. It is also important to note that Brian’s criminal history includes arrests for offenses such as possession of drugs (methamphetamines), drug trafficking, receiving/transferring a stolen vehicle, fraud, commercial burglary, and assault on a police officer.
Organized Crime Unit
At the end of 2010, we could see that Albuquerque’s overall Uniform Crime Report (UCR) Part 1 crimes were down 16.2 percent from 2008. Through a number of departmental efforts, we have seen a positive impact on crime in Albuquerque. [Authors’ Note: Since official 2011 UCR figures were not available at the time of this writing, they cannot be appropriately referenced for this article.]
Our public-private partnerships are one of the programs that have influenced the decline of crime in Albuquerque. Additionally, the success of our partnership initiatives is not only linked to crime statistics, but also to participation, awareness, and satisfaction with police services. Prior to the establishment of our partnerships, one of the complaints from our private-sector partners was that they did not know if anything had resulted from their filing a police report.
By the summer of 2011, we were able to identify and track increased satisfaction with APD services brought by our partnerships, but still were looking at ways to further improve our commitment to their work. APD already has investigative teams dedicated to follow-up on criminal activity via “traditional” police reporting means and for dispatched calls for service. One “service gap” discussed with our private-sector partners was that existing APD units were too compartmentalized and busy with other assigned tasks to focus on the investigations forwarded by them. We began to consider how APD could improve the coordination and investigation of crimes brought to our attention via our partnerships. The follow-up and linking of offenses illustrated in the case discussed above of Brian was not the type of case follow-up that the APD was able to provide to support the partnerships on an on-going basis.
In September 2011 the APD initiated a new investigative unit as a pilot project and created our Economic Crimes Section to include a specialized Organized Crime Unit (OCU) made up of one sergeant and between four and six detectives who work in an undercover capacity. The focus of detectives assigned to this squad is to follow-up and investigate offenses brought to our attention via our private-sector partners.
In just the first four months after establishing this pilot project, OCU detectives were able to focus on the criminal activity impacting our public-private partnerships. Through the ensuing investigations, OCU detectives made over fifty arrests for criminal activity resulting from the communication and follow-up enabled by these partnerships. In turn, these
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arrests resulted in sixty-seven cases that have been forwarded to our district attorney’s office for felony prosecution.
Following are two examples of cases that were developed via investigations by the OCU.
Rodney’s Return Fraud Ring
Since 2007 Home Depot loss prevention personnel were monitoring receipt fraud associated with an offender who would select various types of high-dollar merchandise that was small enough to be pushed under the large gates in the back of the outdoor garden area. This offender has also been linked to other persons who would return the items and in many cases receive a Home Depot gift card with the amount of the store credit.
To use these cards, the offenders would also search store parking lots for discarded receipts with items purchased with cash, check, or debit card, knowing that purchases on a credit card could be tracked. They would then use the store credit to purchase items on the receipt, and go to another store to return the items for cash. Via this elaborate theft scheme, it is estimated that the offense ring was stealing thousands of dollars each week.
The frustration for Home Depot’s loss prevention personnel was they could identify the illegal activity, but were having a hard time getting law enforcement to do the follow-up investigation because the offenders were hitting the six Home Depot stores in the Albuquerque metropolitan area, two of which were outside APD’s jurisdictional boundaries. It is also important to note that the offenders would often steal items below the $500 felony-theft limit. Thus, this illegal activity was “flying below the radar” for law enforcement to address because it was “just a misdemeanor shoplifting” offense. This activity continued with little follow-up until OCU was developed in 2011.
With the creation of OCU, we now had law enforcement personnel dedicated to addressing the serial offenders who came to our attention via our private-sector partnerships. Within the first few weeks of OCU’s deployment, we were able to follow-up on these Home Depot thefts and build a case against an offender named Rodney. OCU found that the other persons linked to this return-fraud scheme were, in fact, homeless individuals that Rodney would pick up at shelters and offer a cut of the money from the thefts. By using different persons when he made the purchases and returns, Rodney was minimizing the ability to link him to his theft scheme.
In the six months prior to his arrest, Rodney’s ring was responsible for approximately $11,000 in theft from Home Depot and $14,000 from Lowe’s. In reflecting back to 2007, it is probable that this ring was responsible for over $200,000 in theft. Upon his arrest, Rodney was charged with the following felony crimes—criminal solicitation (22 counts), larceny over $500, and fraud over $2500. This case awaits adjudication.
Beyond this arrest, Rodney’s criminal history dates back to 1996, with over forty arrests, including armed robbery, aggravated battery on a household member, false imprisonment, aggravated fleeing from law enforcement, possession of a
“Gap Inc. has established a best-in-class partnership with the Albuquerque Police Department. Starting with the ARAPA network and now the newly formed Organized Crime Unit, APD and Gap stores in the city of Albuquerque are working together to help keep our customers, employees, and stores safe. APD has worked with lightning speed to close pending organized retail crime cases that we have reported. The OCU hit the ground running and is making a huge, positive impact to the retail community as a whole. This public-private partnership will serve as a template going forward for Gap stores across the U.S.”
- nelson Harrah, Director of Organized retail Crime, gap inc.
controlled substance (methamphetamine), and child abuse. Rodney admitted to using the money from these thefts to buy drugs.
Justice for Johnny and Justin
In April 2011 ARAPA partners were notified of an incident at a local freight company where a duo by the names of Johnny and Justin were identified for theft. Both offenders could also be linked to several shoplifting offenses, including attempting to steal 9mm ammunition from a Sportsman Warehouse. Since this time, Johnny and Justin have been tied to offenses at JCPenney, Home Depot, Bed Bath and Beyond, Kmart, and Gap.
Johnny’s criminal history includes charges for armed robbery, auto burglary, unlawfully carrying of a weapon, larceny, drug trafficking, drug possession, battery, and numerous arrests for misdemeanor and felony shoplifting. Justin’s criminal history includes more than one charge for auto theft, criminal damage to property, possession of burglary tools, larceny, and a number of charges for felony and misdemeanor shoplifting.
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In January 2012 OCU arrested Johnny and Justin for shoplifting at a Kmart store. When this boosting team was approached by loss prevention personnel, they stated to the store associates that they had a gun and would kill them. Upon apprehension, a firearm was not found on either offender.
During the follow-up interview, OCU detectives asked the offenders why they committed the crimes and were told that they do the crime to get money to buy drugs. One of the offenders also provided some insight into the word on the street regarding OCU and the investigations this unit is conducting. He said, “Honestly I’m scared to even go out and do this anymore. I’m scared to even steal anything because there is this new unit out there that is just for this stuff. They are finding and taking everybody to jail.”
Beyond the Arrest
Following an arrest, a case has to proceed through the criminal justice system, and, thus, it is imperative for involvement from our area prosecutors. An additional positive effect that has resulted from our partnerships includes increased cooperation and communication between law enforcement, private-sector partners, and prosecutors in the Second Judicial District Attorney’s (DA) Office. This cooperation has increased successful case closure via the court system. The below data reflects the number of felony prosecutions for cases that have been closed by the DA’s office resulting from ARAPA-based cases.
Adult Felony Prosecutions (Cases Closed) for ARAPA-Linked Cases 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011* 471 339 457 471 556 315
*Additional cases will be added when they are through the adjudication process.
The support from our partnerships continues through to the sentencing of offenders. With APD and community members in the courtroom, we have seen significant sentences for these offenders and have even had defense attorneys ask us about the case for which we were in the courtroom, fearing that should we be in court for their client that “their client could be in trouble.” The reason for their worry is the length of sentences given to offenders, with the most significant sentence for a property-crime offender being 70 years, with 50 years suspended, but 20 years in the department of corrections.
APD’s public-private partnerships are built on a foundation of community involvement that begins at the point that a crime comes to our attention, through to sentencing of the offender. The fortitude for community public safety that is built through these partnerships is well summarized by ARAPA’s co-chair representing the retail sector, Craig Davis, senior investigator for Target:
“At the heart of the ARAPA program is trust and partnership. It goes beyond communicating through a website or once a month at a meeting. It’s a business relationship between the detectives and the retail ORC investigators, meeting almost daily in one way or another to exchange ideas, share intelligence, and collaborate on the next steps needed to move a case along. These strong partnerships lead to quick case closures, a better understanding of the scope of activity committed by the offenders, and ultimately a safer community, as a result of the prosecution of hundreds of felony offenses.”
Expanding Crime-Fighting Resources
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the country’s economic crisis has had a significant impact on both government and business. During this time of budget crisis, how do communities afford to implement initiatives like ARAPA that require additional resources? Our response is, “How can you afford not to engage your community?”
With the financial cutbacks in police budgets, law enforcement think tanks assert that it will be decades before we restore our staffing levels…if at all. For APD our private-sector business partners are equal partners in how we fight crime. Whether retail, construction, hospitality, or banking, all of the professionals aligned with these businesses have a vested interest in a safer community. We just have to open the door and let them in. Our community is our eyes and ears for what is happening on our streets, in our parking lots, and at our businesses. Law enforcement will never have enough officers to see and hear what you can help us identify.
The partnerships formed by APD have grown as a template for other agencies. “APD has demonstrated itself as a national leader in the fight against retail crimes, and city government officials throughout the country have been watching,” says Joe LaRocca, senior assets protections advisor for the National Retail Federation. “Several major metropolitan areas have taken elements of APD’s strategy. APD has built a successful track record of working with the private sector and area law enforcement agencies to proactively remove threats from their community.”
Criminals are opportunists. Whether they steal from a store, break into a car, burglarize a house, or steal copper from a construction site, we can best detect their crime through collaboration. Public-private partnerships provide for a more effective means to solidify public safety. As law enforcement, the challenge is to change the way we engage our community, and to be willing to let you join our crime fighting strategies. For those in the security and loss prevention profession, your challenge is to be leaders in the process and approach law enforcement in your community. We can make our cities and towns safer if we are committed to working together. Our only failure is if we don’t even try.
RAYMOND D. SCHULTZ is chief of the Albuquerque Police Department and KAREN G. FISCHER is strategic support division manager in the department. To contact the authors, call 505-768-2419 or email kfischer@cabq.gov.
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