The CopDoc Podcast: Aiming for Excellence in Leadership
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The CopDoc Podcast delves into police leadership and innovation. The focus is on aiming for excellence in the delivery of police services across the globe.
Dr. Steve Morreale is a retired law enforcement practitioner, a pracademic, turned academic, and scholar from Worcester State University. Steve is the Program Director for LIFTE, Command College - The Leadership Institute for Tomorrow's Executives at Liberty University.
Steve shares ideas and talks with thought leaders in policing, academia, community leaders, and other related government agencies. You'll find Interviews with thought leaders drive the discussion to improve police services and community relationships.
The CopDoc Podcast: Aiming for Excellence in Leadership
Shaping the Future of Police Work through International Insight - Dr. Grainne Perkins Chief, University of Southern Maine Police
Season 6 - Episode 125
Join the conversation with Dr. Grainne Perkins, a trailblazing Irish-born Chief of Police at the University of Southern Maine, whose career arc bends from zoology to the forefront of global law enforcement. Grainna shares her riveting story, a blend of detective work in Dublin's cobblestone alleys, innovative roles in Interpol, and her current tenure shaping the future of policing in the U.S. Her dynamic path showcases the wealth of opportunities within the policing profession and underscores the impact of an international perspective on law enforcement.
Venture into the heart of police accountability with Grainne as she offers her candid thoughts on navigating the shift from the streets of Dublin to the academic corridors of Southern Maine. Tackling intricate communication challenges, she uncovers the layers of adapting an Irish accent for American listeners and the critical role of community trust. Grainne unravels the complexities of Seattle's hybrid police accountability system and reflects on the seismic changes in policing post-George Floyd. Her insight into the utilization of body-worn cameras reveals the delicate balance between technology and traditional investigative work, proving pivotal in the pursuit of justice.
The epitome of a leader, Grainne delves into the nuances of guiding a police force with clarity and vision. She dissects the art of mentorship and the strategic development of officers, drawing parallels between the communicative Irish Garda and her experiences in North America. Her final thoughts touch on the essence of leadership, collaboration across borders, and the indelible mark one aspires to leave on the world. As we close, Grainne muses on the gratification that stems from aiding others and the conversations she yearns to have with historic trailblazers, illuminating the profound journey of a life dedicated to public service.
Contact us: copdoc.podcast@gmail.com
Website: www.copdocpodcast.com
If you'd like to arrange for facilitated training, or consulting, or talk about steps you might take to improve your leadership and help in your quest for promotion, contact Steve at stephen.morreale@gmail.com
Welcome to The Cop Doc Podcast. This podcast explores police leadership issues and innovative ideas. The CopD oc shares thoughts and ideas as he talks with leaders in policing communities, academia and other government agencies. And now please join Dr Steve Morreale and industry thought leaders as they share their insights and experience on the The Doc Podcast.
Steve Morreale:Well, hello again everybody, Steve Morreale coming to you from Boston today and we are starting another episode of The Cop Doc Podcast, and today we're up in Maine, the University of Southern Maine. We're going to talk to somebody in a moment you'll hear. It's a little strange when you hear the accent, but Grainne Perkins is the chief of police and has traveled all over the world, very, very well healed in policing and a doctor, a PhD herself. So, Grainne, good morning.
Grainne Perkins:Good morning. Thank you for having me on the podcast, Steve. It's strange accents. I don't know what you're talking about.
Steve Morreale:Well, it feels comfortable to me because I spent so much time in Ireland. But you are a lady from Ireland who is now in the United States. Why don't you tell us how the hell you got here? Tell us about where you started? It looks like you've been literally all over the world, so talk about that.
Grainne Perkins:Yeah, I suppose that I've been very fortunate in terms of policing, the access that I've had to policing. It's one of those careers that doesn't necessarily travel, I think, as well as some careers and vocations do Started my policing career off in Ireland back in the mid 90s. I suppose I was actually an interesting police in Ireland for a long time. I don't hail from a family of police officers at all, or guards as they're known in Ireland but for some reason got the book at a very young age. I, ella's sister, was doing psychology in University College Dublin and they were trying to recruit PhD students into the lab of the police service at the time. And my sister said to me you might want to come in here and listen to this particular person because they weren't recruiting in Ireland in the police and they had a lank of ban for many years. So I went to my school in uniform, 15, 16 years of age and said I want to be a guard. How can I do it? And she said get yourself a degree and come in through the sciences. And I mean this realistically was before the CSIcom took off. Nobody had even heard of the word forensics really until the last sort of 10 years and some popular TV shows took off, so got myself an honour science degree in zoology. I actually ended up on Boston working as a profile chemist, still waiting on the call up for the guards on Garda Sjeghan at New Ireland. It eventually came and it was a no brainer. It was a job I had my sights on. So I ended up coming back from Boston and my now husband's stroke stalker followed me back to Ireland and we spent 17 years in Ireland and I absolutely loved my career.
Grainne Perkins:I started in the trenches like everyone else uniform community policing Actually got pulled into detective work. I honestly credit that with the analytical skills that come through the science degree. I always remember my interview for the guards. One of the interviewer said to me you know you're very well educated and you know we're just thinking would you be bored if you come into the guards? I'm like no, please work. It's not the most exciting things to do. And when I explained to them that I just spent a summer counting microscopic insects out of a tray, literally by hand, I'm like I've reached levels of boredom you can only dream about. And I think that analytical skill really the research perspective as always kind of stuck with me. So got in, loved it ended up detective, detective sergeant, worked across seven positions in the city, seven different stations, which really was fantastic.
Steve Morreale:What city was that? Dublin? Dublin City, I see, and some of the outlying stations.
Grainne Perkins:Outlying stations, very much the busiest stations in Dublin City I was lucky enough to work in. When I got promoted I got pulled into the professional standards unit, which in North America it tends to mean internal affairs, in Ireland it was legislated for in 2007. We, basically a group of us went around the country looking for best practices and how we could inform the rest of the police service about these best practices in an annual report Informative, but I suppose that's when the education component of my career really took off, because prior to that, when I was a detective, I came across restorative justice practices and it blew my mind. I literally stopped me in my tracks with respect to what I thought justice was. And then when I saw restorative justice in motion, I'm like this is the difference between a legal system and a justice system.
Grainne Perkins:I ended up going up to Queen's University in Belfast and get a master's with Shad Maroon up there, who did a lot of work on rehabilitation of ex-prisoners, very, very fortunate with the type of professors I had there, just opened my mind, really took that with me, went into professional standards and then was exposed to the administrative governance side of police. It's a language you need to be off with, particularly when you're climbing the ranks, and that, okay, here's another new language I have to learn. So I ended up getting a master's in public administration governance Intentionally. A lot of people ask me why I didn't go for an MBA. I have no inclination to go into the private sector.
Grainne Perkins:I'm a public servant to my core and I wanted to do something that I could put to work. I'm from a very blue collar family and we have a phrase that you know degrees and certificates are lovely, but you can't eat them. If you can't put that certificate or degree to use, it's not really worth much to you, unless you're into your Greek and Roman studies, which no one in my family is. Yeah, worked in Ireland and then myself got an opportunity to go down to South Africa. I was in Interpol at the time.
Steve Morreale:Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You just go from Dublin to South Africa. What a damn crazy thing. We're talking to Granny Perkins and she is the chief of police at the University of Southern Maine, which is in Gorham and Portland, and you're in.
Grainne Perkins:Lewiston too, Lewiston too. Yeah, I was in the company in Lewiston.
Steve Morreale:I got you so obviously an Irish gal who is now here in the United States. But I read some things about you and we've been able to talk and how I came to find Granny was one of her colleagues from the guards. From the guard it reached out to me on LinkedIn. He follows the podcast and said you really get to reach out for this lady. She's really close to you in Maine and she's probably an hour and a half away from me and so you end up with now three degrees my degrees in public administration. So I understand why you would gravitate in that direction, but I do know that your husband was an Amazon guy and ends up taking a job and that's one of the reasons you ended up in South Africa. Is that a fair assessment?
Grainne Perkins:I think you're on the money. I was in Interpol I'd only been there a year International sort of police in which another angle I hadn't done was really enjoying it. And he asked me to take a career break and I instinctively said no, because Amazon I thought it was the mothership, seattle was calling him home and I thought why would I move from one wet country to a wet one? Like no. And he said no, it's actually South Africa. So I took a year career break on the basis that would go down and see the lay of the land. I don't have kids by choice. I can't cook to save anyone. I'd be more likely to kill you with my cooking. So I knew I had to do something and contacted a Shad Maroon, a professor in Belfast at the time and said listen, I'm thinking about maybe doing a bit more study, any ideas? And he said this is going to be great. Give me half an hour and full credit to him. Within the half hour I had an email from the director of University of Cape Town, clifford Shearing, who was an absolute giant in criminology. He said come on down, we'd love to chat to you. So yeah, on a whim and a prayer, I took a year's career break and headed down to South Africa.
Grainne Perkins:Fortunately for me, unfortunately for South Africans, there was a commission of quarry into policing at the time, into one of the townships that they had such bad customer service from the police agency, they did a tribunal of inquiry to which I went to every day and sat down the back just listening, meeting people trying to understand the lay of the land. I met with Clifford in a coffee shop in South Africa, I think within the first two weeks, and he said you know, lovely to meet you and chat it through. And he said by the way, I'm retiring. I thought, oh dear God, I've just taken a career break and this man is leaving the university. In fairness, he had me already hooked up with a professor there who said I think you'd work well with a Rina Vanderspoi in terms of policing and your interests.
Grainne Perkins:So I spent the year really just feeling my way around South Africa, the landscape of policing, making connections to understand. Is it something that I could do as far as the PhD went? And by the end of the first year I knew I wanted to do it. I knew I'd found my topic and it came in inadvertently through attending the Police Commission of Inquiry and, yeah, I just got the bug. Then I was very, very fortunate to end up working with the South African Police for five years in one of their most dangerous townships, where their members get killed at the highest right in South Africa.
Steve Morreale:And I see that you have a book on its way out, danger and Police Culture Perspectives from South Africa from Emerald Publishing. Talk about that.
Grainne Perkins:Yeah, the topic itself. I suppose it's a rework of the PhD itself. My original interest as a detective surgeon homicide really was about homicide and how they investigate homicides there, and that started the background inquiry into the research itself. But when I started to read into it I'm like, wow, the police officer's getting murdered here at a really alarming rate. And when I went to look for the research on it I couldn't find any. I mean, I had maybe 20, 25 academic papers. I'm like, am I missing something here? There can't be that much in Africans. And no, it was a very under-researched topic in South Africa because violence is on a continuum there from birth right through to death. There's levels of it that are accepted and I think it became this kind of occupational hazard of acceptance that when you became a police officer in South Africa it goes with the territory.
Grainne Perkins:But the more I start digging into the murder of South African police officers, the more I started to unpack this idea of danger. And it's an accepted concept in policing, among scholars. You know the danger, authority, isolation triangle of the personalities of the work and police officer and it was just a taken for granted concept which really blew my mind because, particularly with the conversations that have evolved over the last five, six years in policing. To understand why police operate in the way that they do, we have to first take a step back and understand what it is they think they're responding and reacting to, which ultimately is a danger. And I think, just unpacking that idea of what is danger, how do we formulate danger in police? And that really became the driving force of the research that I ended up doing then in South Africa. Again, no better place to do it in a place where they're subjected to that physical danger more than anyone else. And with that comes the psychological dangers that surround that as well.
Steve Morreale:Your police officer at heart and now a researcher and a PhD, and you've taught and you've been in many different organizations. Let me take you back to your home country, Ireland, and ask what you thought you know so much with social media comes out almost instantaneously. Then there were some riots in Dublin a few weeks back and there were some pretty damning pieces of video out there about the hooligans and in your, the same place that you policed. What were you thinking?
Grainne Perkins:The footage was pretty raw.
Grainne Perkins:I think there was a slow march towards that riot and it came in news tidbits prior to that that we had an American tourist there earlier on this year in the summer who was beaten in an area very, very close to where the riots happened that there was this slow bubble that seemed to be happening. So when the riot itself sort of exploded disappointing but not surprising, and I think that's kind of a narrative that we're looking at across most democratic countries at the moment with respect to how policing is actually evolving I think we're at an important junction in what policing is and what it does, both in the global north of America and in the global south, because it has to evolve. George Floyd was the pivotal point of it needs to change and I think that idea of a change and it speaks to the danger and the perceptions of danger with respect to how and why we police the way that we do I mean the old adage of you cannot police without the consent of the community. It is that you want to please.
Steve Morreale:Did you mean adage the adage?
Grainne Perkins:I lived in Paris for a year and 40s, and time to bring a little bit of French with that.
Steve Morreale:I love it, I love it. Go ahead as you're writing. It's such a transition that you've gone through. You've gone from policing to interpol, to professional standards, to we haven't talked about Seattle, but you've been in South Africa and now you're in Maine and you are the leader of a police organization on a campus. Talk about the transitions, the difference between your experience with the Guarda and your experience here in the United States, and what you had to do to adapt and transition.
Grainne Perkins:I think the first adoption was to slow down because the accent again, irish people speak very, very quickly. It's an easier adoption. Funny, on the east coast of America I very rarely have to repeat myself, unless I use a French word, steve, and throw it into the conversation.
Steve Morreale:Alright, take your shot, but you take your shot, go ahead.
Grainne Perkins:In Seattle. I think the core of what I do is relationship. It's packaged in a police model but really the vocation is about building relationships and building trust. Seattle was an unusual spot for me because we ended up there after five years in South Africa and again I knew I wanted to stay in the policing arena and, as a civilian moving to America, I started looking at jobs that were on the periphery of police and but still central to what it did. The police accountability job come up along with an offer from the office of the inspector general and I'll be honest, I found my clan, as we say in Ireland, or the tribe. Here was very much police accountability because I got to work in policing. I had 11 sergeants that I think were two civilians by the time I left as investigators of IA.
Grainne Perkins:The police accountability model in Seattle is quite unusual. It's a hybrid model, so they deal with internal affairs as well as public facing complaints, so you get everything. And really interesting to understand and unpack how police investigate their own. I mean it's often being called the, the Wolf Garden, the hen house. I don't subscribe to that because I think to investigate people, knowing how a system works, is central to getting to the core. Just because policy says it's meant to work like this. We're humans. We will always find that shortcut. And who better to show you the shortcuts of? We may need to rewrite this policy because it's not put in practice the way it's written.
Steve Morreale:There are unintended consequences. We didn't consider that, but I understand yes.
Grainne Perkins:Yeah, like those knock-on effects. I think I'm very practical when it comes to policing. I don't like ostrich management. Let's you know, we know it's happening, so can we deal with that as opposed to pretend it's not happening? And I think the George Floyd moment really Seattle turned itself inside out. We were the epicenter of Covid for the first eight weeks without fail, eight o'clock every evening. I was living downtown at the time. People stood out and banged pots and pans for emergency and healthcare workers. George Floyd happened and it was boomerang effect. The pots and pans were now being thrown at the police and to see the footage. I couldn't tell you the thousands of hours we watched in relation to the footage from body worn cameras and CCTV to investigate the police, the practices, what they did, the attacks on them.
Grainne Perkins:Again, it cleaned my lenses with respect to understand of police in a wholehearted way as opposed to well, I come from Ireland and this is the way we do it here. And then you move to South Africa and the context and the culture it changes. But that central idea of you need the consent that never changes, regardless of the community, is that you're police and, be it the gated community, a community of color, you need their consent and if you don't have it, you can't please. The accountability super, super interest and very intense. And again it's that pivotal time in America where we need to understand policing has to change.
Grainne Perkins:It's something now I'm starting to look at with a researcher in Glasgow. We're actually trying to pull together an international project the how has policing changed? I mean the old idea of top down. You know the Reagan war on crime will tell you what you're going to police, we're gonna. We're gonna feed our police services what we want them to do. We're now much more reactionary with respect to society. We're policing on housed issues. We're policing divergence in communities, and that's not top down, that's literally the community's telling you we need this to be sorted and I think the police are suddenly front and center with respect to well, what can we do?
Steve Morreale:social issues. So let's talk about that for a moment, and you experienced it, it seems to me. Now I'm working with the guard and they're they're trying to roll out a co-response unit. They have to work with HSE, which is our HHS, if you will, and they're having a little bit of trouble getting it going in limerick, but you know your experiences. The 24-7 police are there and child and family services aren't, and the homeless group is not available, or it's all of these mental health, and we go on and on and on.
Steve Morreale:So I want to ask you about some things you just spoke about. You talked about reviewing body-worn cameras. As you review when I talked to so many people who do this for a living actually review based on complaints and whether or not the complaint is sustainable or that the officer actually did a good job, and we have some proof to that what was your experience as you were looking at it, as the Seattle police were coming under fire and being constantly being complained about? Were they holding their own? Were they being respectful? For the most part, what was your finding?
Grainne Perkins:yeah, I think with the body-worn it's funny. It's one of those pieces of technology apart from cars that was brought in wholesale. It was never tested, it was never questioned with respect to. Is this the right thing to do? Body one in America is coming in on mass. We know in Ireland, I mean, they had to pilot it first. They've been pushing for it. The police wanted it, but the public didn't.
Steve Morreale:It was the opposite here. But as soon as I think your experience is. As soon as ACLU wanted it, but as soon as it started to boomerang back on the people, what do you mean? You had a complaint. We have proof to the contrary, because that's not what happened. Oh, never mind. And they want to withdraw the complaint, isn't that? I'm seeing your face. Is that true?
Grainne Perkins:It is and, again, it's such an interesting conversation. As far as peaks and valleys With the body worn, it's something that my own investigators I always caution them. That is a tool and it's one piece of a larger conversation. It's one angle. It's not 360. You'll get maybe 30 seconds retrospective before the camera kicks in. You don't have the full context.
Grainne Perkins:You can never remove old school investigations from the current status of where we go to and the tools that we used. Body worn it's one aspect and even with that one aspect, I mean I had a case where we had a query on in relation to use of force situation and the body worn gave such an interesting angle with respect to what the officer did and whether the right hold was used, et cetera, et cetera, and then we pulled up the footage from the car and when I say 360 with respect to the other angles that we could see it was a great case that I use, bringing in new investigators as well, to say no more than there's always one opinion, there's always another angle and the context to have all those angles hugely important when it comes to investigations, no matter what the investigation is. The body worn for me is really just, it's a tool that we use. It's not the beyond.
Steve Morreale:It's not the cure all. Yeah, I understand and you know, what just came into my mind is our American football and the use of video and how sometimes, no matter what, whatever angle, we cannot completely say that the foot was out of bounds or whatever it might be. And I think, more importantly, what you're pushing is I understand, I've made arrests, you've made arrests and you never know what led to it. It's sort of like I mean, you use soccer, we use football, right, there's a push that happens and I see the follow-up push as the referee or the umpire and don't realize what precipitating issue was. You understand, somebody tried to kick me in the Hootsies and that's the reason I reacted, because my body was threatened. We don't see that on the camera.
Grainne Perkins:We don't and I think that the implications of it then we didn't shoot through it enough with respect to okay, we now have this piece of evidence, let's bring this piece of evidence to court. It was actually an Australian researcher looked into the idea of secondary victimization, that when this footage is shown in court, if a respondent didn't act the way, the jury sometime think they should react on it. I think the case in question was a sexual assault complaint and the victim wasn't the crying distraught. I mean, the person was obviously in shock as this academic piece was written and the problem was when the footage was re-shown in court it didn't align with what they believed a victim should be. So what damage the evidence was doing with respect to the credibility of the witness?
Grainne Perkins:Again not factored into the idea of well, what else does body-worn footage do for us? Is that something that should be chewed through? Same with the collection of evidence at a scene that we're seeing now. With respect to collecting evidence, it's saying well, how much weight do we attach to photographs, crime scene photographs? Because that's the angle taken through the lens of a photographer. How objective can we be with that singular lens? Should it be a video? Should we give the jury the full 360 of what the murder scene actually looked like, because with this crime scene photograph, all I'm getting is a still and your angle of the weapon relative to the body, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that technology is one of those. It's really interesting police and to see how quickly accept some things, and then the repercussions we see 10, 15 years later in terms of yeah, we maybe should have again taken that research or mindset and tested it before we pushed us through the system.
Steve Morreale:It's rare that we do that, I understand. Let's sort of fast forward a little bit. It seems to me that your husband, that we talk about Amazon has had a worldwide perspective. They keep moving him around and now you're in Maine, I guess, this time. So tell me how you ended up in Maine, because it looks like he asked for as reading about you, he asked for a transfer, as opposed to being offered a transfer. It's an up you go.
Grainne Perkins:Well, that was to Seattle. Yeah, the move from South Africa to Seattle was a promotion of sorts for himself, so it was a new team. We were there five years and we tend to sort of reassess after five years, so the time was right then the move from Seattle to Maine was mine. This is the quid pro cono.
Intro-Outro:It was my turn it's my turn yeah.
Grainne Perkins:Yeah, I wanted to do something fresh and I was looking at new opportunities. I took some time off after leaving the police accountability because I had the book deal in hand and I wanted to actually set time aside to just concentrate and do something that I had my mind set on but I had never set the time aside to deal with. So I took a couple of months to focus and do that and then really just start looking out for positions. This side, the usual suspects cropped up training academies and things like that. I saw this opportunity at the University of Southern Maine and started to read around the university, the people, and it really started to excite me, because in Europe we don't have police agencies and universities. It's not a dumb thing. So the idea of being involved in policing in your own community in a research setting so many boxes were being ticked. I thought this could be really interesting. And again, what can I learn from it? Like, what haven't I done? I haven't done this.
Grainne Perkins:The type of emergency management that I would have done would have been the intra-police side of the house or managing murder investigations. You know, plain falls from the sky. We're gonna spin up a victim support, calm center, larger scale, whereas this is really hands on with respect to the community and the folks that you come in touch with on a day to day basis. So once I started interviewing with the university, I just the people were solid, as we'd say in Ireland, you get a great sense of a community from the first people you touch base with and their ability to stay in communication with you, and I had nothing but positive interactions and I thought this is feeling good. I like what I'm hearing, who I'm meeting. I come out in November Thanksgiving last year and thought what have I done? I think my face was gonna fall off with the cold. I forgot cold.
Steve Morreale:Oh, it's not cold in Ireland. Come on, yes.
Grainne Perkins:It's a different type, as you say. In Ireland, joe, we get soft rain. It'll still soak you, but it's not heavy rain here. That November cold it's still not as bad as like December's fine November cold is just this. I think it's the North Easter's warning it's coming, but now it's been great. The people are very aligned to the Irish type of thinking that we don't take ourselves seriously, but we take what we do seriously, and for me that's a huge difference. I don't take myself seriously, but put my nose to something that's police related or work related, I can switch, I can change those gears when I need to, but I think the ability to laugh at yourself and I think that's why South Africa was probably a draw as well for me. Because Ireland I obviously lived through the Civil War there, my mom's from Northern Ireland, my dad's from the South.
Steve Morreale:We've all been doing more. Oh, they didn't know that.
Grainne Perkins:yeah, yeah we've all been to Northern Ireland. We called it the troubles, god forgive. You'd never call it civil war. South Africa, it was the struggles. They had the same type of sense of humour where you can laugh at the absurd and laugh at the normal. I find that here in Maine and the East Coast as well, that the people have a sense of humour. It aligns with the way I was brought up, that culture that I was brought up in, and I think it works really well for a police model. I think people are bitterly disappointed when they meet me that they're not getting the typical police officer that they're used to.
Grainne Perkins:But I think that's part of the change that's come on, that the international model, the globalization of police, and we're using it a lot more now because it's what works.
Steve Morreale:Well, this is so unique. We're talking to Granny Perkins and she's now the chief of police at the University of Southern Maine, also a PhD, and so it's a nice blend of both. Here you are with a PhD, research experience being involved, with three master's degrees and a PhD program in three or four different schools, and now here. So you've got a nice blend, but it had to be startling for police officers at USM for this redhead with an Irish accent to be the chief. What's that about?
Grainne Perkins:They've been very welcoming and very patient. They're giving them that much. I met again when I came up last November. I met them and I very much believe in setting out my stall. As we say in Ireland, set up your stall and tell people what your stall is. You know who? I heard say that Someone in Ireland.
Steve Morreale:Simon Byrne. Simon Byrne, the chief constable at PSNI. He said that and I had to say to him assignment, what do you mean? Set up your stall? And I've heard it from two, so explain it from your perspective. Yeah funny.
Grainne Perkins:It's one of those things probably in training in Ireland, particularly in leadership training in police, and the first thing that you're taught is well, set out your stall, show people what you're selling and what you're about. Tell them. Don't wait for them to ask you and I think for me, particularly in the management role, I've always done that. I have to tell people who I am and what I'm about. You'll go into the listen and learn mode for three, four months before you make any changes or even attempt to make changes. You've got to understand that culture.
Grainne Perkins:So the setting out the stall is really the first part of that. When you're in first gear and you're cruising along and you're just understanding the lay of the land, who's who, who does what, what works well, what doesn't, and listening to your people. I think from a leadership perspective it's very much about listening to your people. We're fortunate enough now I'm actually in the process of hiring three folks at the moment. I very much stay in the periphery. I mean, as I say to the lads, you're working with them, you select who you want to be with.
Grainne Perkins:You decide right, right, right, right right, I'll do the papal blessing at the end if we need to, but this has to be driven from the ground up. I'm not top down when it comes to management decisions because I suppose bitter experience We've all had that manager who gives you so much of a choke on it you can't even chew on it and I never wanted to lead a group like that. Very much a team effort, because it can't be successful on your own. It's back to that core model of police and you can't please your own people if they don't consent us. So to get that buy-in, you set out your story.
Steve Morreale:Set the story early. That is such an interesting perspective. I mean, we've said it here in the United States the same way you gotta get buy-in, you have to get earned trust. But that consent that you talk about, that is so important and vital in the GARDA, is applied here. So you're taking those lessons and applying them internally rather than externally, absolutely. So we continue in our discussion with Granny Perkins. Dr Granny Perkins and she is at the University of Southern Maine, sitting in Maine today and headed on another trip. She is a wander, as they say. But one of the things we were talking about is that as you come into this new job, you are now a police chief. You have now converted from a civilian position that you had in the Seattle Police Department and come back to the policing aspect. You have young officers and senior officers. Take us into the first few weeks Talked about listening and learning. How did you do that?
Grainne Perkins:Yeah, I mean, I think your point there. I've never had anyone work for me or work with them, and I think the higher you climb in management and leadership, the less you believe you're actually in charge, because if you think you're in charge, you're doing the wrong job. Your folks are going to tell you what they need and how. They've been listened to before you arrived and for me that was huge with respect to getting the lay of the land in terms of where the agency sat in the community that had a place, and our community just happens to be three university campuses and I very much treat it the same way I treat it Seattle. In Seattle, as the interim director of police accountability, I reported to the mayor. My mayor is now the president of the university, who reports to another mayor, the chancellor. The sort of administrative thing was very similar to me in terms of leadership, and policing is about clear and open communication vertically and horizontally. The people at the top need to know what's going on, but, more importantly, so do the people at the bottom, because they're the ones that are going to bring in your mission, your vision, your values, your goals, all the buzzwords, but it has to be something that makes sense to them and any change that I did.
Grainne Perkins:I socialize at first. I'm a huge believer in socializing ideas and I think that's probably driven from the research that I did and organizational and occupational culture that you cannot just bring in an idea. There's no such thing as ideas by email. It doesn't work like that. It's the door stepping that I think most police officers they get it because they do it on a day to day basis. You knock on people's doors your door stepped them and you ask them what do you think and what do you think of this, would you like to add to this? And you give them space to have a voice and they have to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Then if the boss comes to you and says, you know, what do you think of this idea, I tell them what I told folks who hired me in USM, and it's the last thing I pretty much say in every interview I go into. You know I'd love to take this position, but I have one word of caution and I'm serious when I say it Please do not consider hiring me if you think you're going to get a yes woman. I won't be a yes woman. I will disagree and commit when I have to for the right reasons, but if you're looking for a nod and dog leader, I'm the wrong person for the job that I very much like to bring in new ideas Probably. I think it was a compliment.
Grainne Perkins:The best compliment I believe I got of late was in relation to one of the lads where I was hiring recently and my lieutenant said to me. He said, chief, you know, they're asking what sort of chief you wear and we buy the book and blah, blah, blah blah. I said right, okay. The last thing he said to me was you know, does she think outside the box? And I looked at him and I said right, and what? What did you respond? He said honestly. I said to him think outside the box. I don't think she's ever been in it.
Steve Morreale:So you're, yeah, you're growing on people for sure, right I?
Grainne Perkins:think you're going to get that on a t-shirt. I kind of like it. It is just the way it's been done. Like this Doesn't mean we have to keep doing it like that. It doesn't matter if it's shift work, it doesn't matter if it's how we do our day to day business. It's bringing in different ideas and I think it's different vocations as well. I mean I'd like to read, but I'm not a fictional reader. I like the leadership books that we enjoy. I think problem Adam Grant is one of my favorites. I just think he brings in some very innovative ideas with respect to what to do Anything in the medical field. I mean I'm a checklistcom that if we're building something, I guarantee there'll be a checklist attached to it, because if it's good enough for formula one racers and brain surgeons to have at the side of their day to day duties, it's good enough for us. You won't forget things if it's a checklist.
Steve Morreale:Well, okay, wait a minute. That's very, very intriguing. Are you saying that this is one of the ways that you are asking your people to figure out what we do, so that you kind of can go through a checklist and root nigh some of the normal? I love what you're saying because let me explain this when I was the chair of the department, people will come and ask questions. Right, questions are finite. There's 25 questions, there's 300 different calls that we go on, whatever it is, and you begin to say, okay, is there a way for us to put on paper answers to the questions so that we don't continually have to answer those questions? How do I do this? How do I change a grade? How do it's those kinds of things? I'm seeing you shake your head. We could be doing that in policing and it sounds like that's something you're moving towards as a new idea and outside the box thinker.
Grainne Perkins:Absolutely. It probably started in Seattle during COVID that we had to onboard new investigators and we had to work remotely, and I thought this is madness. The stuff we do, it's all hands on and I thought what technology do we have to hand here, what can we use? And literally got the team to start creating an, a online learning library where they take themselves on Zoom walking through a case, and it was done on the basis that lads will keep this as an in-house library for new hires, that people can forward and pause and see how you work your way through a case management system, and it was really popular. We kept it.
Grainne Perkins:Similarly, when I moved to Maine, we're now obviously looking at major emergency planning. We had a recent incident up in Lewiston. It was an ours, but we were already on our pathway of let's look at our emergency operations plans. We've had one in existence that was prior to my time. It was very standard, followed all the rule books and I'm like I don't like this, as my mother would say anything for an easy life, but God forgive me if I'd give myself an easy life. I'm like this isn't working. We're coming out of a COVID coma. Some people are still hybrid.
Grainne Perkins:I need folks to start reading about emergency management, because it's not a one woman show Emergency management. It's an all hands on deck and people need to know what to do. So we basically ripped up the rule book and we're making our own. By that I mean what we're doing is siloing out the emergency operations center into the individual silos of planning logistics, the usual suspects to the pillars of safety. The request of all our folks is I've given them a template to make a workbook, and the workbook has to have everything top down, bottom up, with respect to immediate contact, phone numbers, activity logs, maps, the three phases of the emergency plan and what happens before, what happens in it and what happens after it. And they're all checklists, they're literal tick boxes that people can tick, because I wanted to create one learning environment that you need to be obeyed with the language. You need to understand, if you're asked to do something, what that actually means and, more importantly, you're allowed to win the lottery and go to the Bahamas and hand that book to someone else.
Steve Morreale:Yes, so it maintains institutional knowledge Knowledge exactly.
Grainne Perkins:And there's continuity then in emergency planning, which often doesn't happen when there's a change in the guard and I can see that. But on top of that it encouraged everyone in the emergency plan and mindset to actually put the nose down and understand their own places. We're aligning that with the basic 101 of emergency planning. How do you get out of a building? When's the last time we did fire drills? Because again, this COVID coma. A lot of agencies, never mind universities, are coming out of that. Some things. People are asleep at the wheel because we're still kind of a half hybrid model. So the idea of just shaking the system and creating something new, it's going down well, but that's not anything I can do on my own.
Steve Morreale:Well, no, that's a socialization.
Grainne Perkins:Idea of okay folks, can we sit down and break some bread, have a cup of tea together? What do you think?
Steve Morreale:Yeah, I think that's great and there's so many things coming at me, but I think about the situation that happened in Lewiston. Obviously, the situation is just happening at UNLV. We just had a shooting on our campus, a gang shooting that came on our campus on Halloween, and how do people react to this? And you're going to do an after-action review. But it also seems to me that one of the things in you talked about relationships that you have to make sure that you have is that in every town or city that you have a campus, you have to have a good relationship. So that's a little bit different, because if you're in Dublin, you're working with the guard. You don't have to work with three different police departments, but you do.
Grainne Perkins:We do and I'll be honest with you in the guards the same thing applies, but on a different scale, and who you build that relationship with. I mean, when I first became a detective and I remember the group that I moved to were like what's she doing? I literally went around all the pharmacies and introduced myself with a calling card because we had a huge problem with robberies and a lot of it was methadone, which was indicative of a drug culture in Dublin, and I wanted to know well, who frequented the area Didn't think much of it, they were all quite appreciative, whatever. And then about six months later the pharmacies went up in arms in relation to. They had a number of tests and stuff and my then boss was able to say hey, did Granny instigate something there about six months ago?
Steve Morreale:How did you start? How did you start?
Grainne Perkins:We already started building something about this and it was a nice backstop for us to say we started on this. We saw a common. Similarly, with the university. The first thing I did, I think, within the first four weeks, was literally knock on the doors of all the local agencies, from Gorham Fire to Gorham PD, portland, the new police chief there, mark DeBoeff. From Boston Mahem a few weeks ago, portland Fire, because again, some of our issues we cross swords with each other, like we have an unhoused population that have been living in campments that have come on parts of the university. That involves more than me. It involves a relationship with our other agencies all the way out to Gorham. I mean I've winded them. I have, oh God, gray standish. Like we literally backside with a lot of other agencies and support each other. I mean Gorham PD or Gray for us that if we need backup to a call they'll be there and it's that core relationship building. It's what we do as a service. We're a public service.
Steve Morreale:Yeah, I like that. I want to talk about individuals now and what you see your role as a police chief. You have staff members and command staff. You're running meetings. I'd like to know how those meetings go, how you engage others, what kinds of questions you're asking, how you look at developing other people. That in a lot of ways I've said over and over again when you're in charge, leadership it's all on you but it's not about you. You said that at the top Talking with Gronja Perkins, and she's from Ireland but now in the United States at University of Southern Maine.
Grainne Perkins:How important?
Steve Morreale:is it developing other?
Grainne Perkins:Huge. It's something I know police are very poor at, we're very poor at. You mentioned the idea of a one-to-one with someone and you'll probably see the back of their head before you see the front. They'll be out the door. But it's something that I've actually brought into my own department now because people need that space to talk to you, either to offload or to upload, particularly with junior members who want to become managers and who want to become leaders. Probably one of the things I can ask the most is exactly that I'd like to become a sergeant, but I don't think I know enough about this.
Grainne Perkins:Or I don't think I know enough about that the general imposter syndrome that you get as a researcher or as a senior manager, and the way I explain this to my folks I'm like the way I see leadership, particularly in policing. You're the conductor of the orchestra. You don't have to know how to play every instrument, you just need to know what it sounds like together. That's the difference. You can get down the back and bang the drums, but if you do that, are you playing for the one o'clock matinee of school kids or are you playing for the symphony orchestra at eight o'clock? So understanding your audience, I think, is key with respect to understanding your instrument, understanding your people. I very much believe in skip interviews as well, that we have the rank and file and I like the rank and file. As far as communication, I like the idea of people being comfortable to be able to come in and talk to you and talk with you, but I also like to give folks the opportunity to do skip levels that they don't have to go to their lieutenant or their deputy chief. I'll arrange one to one with my folks because I think the one thing that I missed out on it I got fortunate in terms of mentorship. I was very, very lucky that I got mentors throughout my career because I wasn't afraid to step up and step in and say you know, can I sit in this interview? As my folks would say? I wasn't shy about coming forward.
Grainne Perkins:Some people are and when you see that potential in folks, it's the one thing I want to expose them to. Your junior sergeant isn't going to be right the level of report rights that you have to do for the chancellor. But you should be exposing that sergeant to those reports now. Get the focus in line that they can understand the level they have to write and the detail they have to write to that problem that was their lieutenants or was their deputy chiefs or was their chiefs. That should be theirs. And I think if you get that mindset early in folks that you want to develop, you'll reap benefits that you wouldn't have even thought of yourself. Your mindset early.
Steve Morreale:Yeah, I think you've probably had the experience of people who like to keep everything to themselves, because if I show what I'm doing, then they're a threat to me. They want my job as opposed to right creating bench depth and helping people think one or two levels above them, which is exactly what you say. I want to ask this question. I was thoroughly impressed during my time with Garter, garter leadership, garter College. How do you feel now that you're on this side of the pond? How do you feel that they prepared you for this job?
Grainne Perkins:the Garter I think, well, I mean baseline for police in Ireland. Well, and not through, the context and the culture comes into play. I mean the amount of classes I've been to in North America as part of the train and FBI lead and stuff like that, where I say to a class of 30, 30 sergeants, the frontline officers don't carry guns in Ireland. And I had the same response in South Africa. The go to responses how do you police? And that fascinates me, that to be a police officer to police you think you have to be armed. In Ireland your mouth is your weapon, like the gift of the gab is something that you put to work every day. It's the core of what we do, I mean.
Steve Morreale:I observed it. It's amazing.
Grainne Perkins:It's a de-escalation tool, but the way the modules are built there, I think this is where globalization has to occur. Part of our basic training, they have a full TV studio built in Templemore, yes, and communications is one of your core classes. Communications how to speak really you're teaching the Irish, but that's structured, that comes with it. I mean remember in my own class you start at one minute and your final exam is, I think, a 10 minute presentation on camera and the class clown was vomiting before he had to do his presentation. That that's how much the mindset changes when you understand the audience that you have to communicate a specific message to. I think we can borrow from each other.
Steve Morreale:I will say this that my experience has been and continue to remind you we're talking to Granny Perkins, the police chief at the University of Southern Maine. Dr Granny Perkins, it is such a fascination with the Irish police, with police from other countries, certainly in North America, and vice versa, and yet I think in some ways the Irish national police, the guarda, is far ahead of us and in other ways they're way behind us, and I don't know whether you're seeing that same thing. When you have to come back and do the portfolio and do reflection, which is something we don't require in the United States, I think it's a big mistake. Talk about that, that portfolio. We go to the Academy, the guard of college, and then come back and practice and apply what you learned and then come back again and then tell us what you did, tell us where the mistakes were, tell us what you saw others do, give us an indication of a community policing situation. I know you're quite familiar with that, but American police are.
Grainne Perkins:Yeah, with two years of a journal that you have to do. The journal basically indicates what you do on a day-to-day basis, what powers you used on it. It's a fantastic way to become familiar with the ingredients of policing, because if you don't have ingredients, you're not making a rest similar to here, I think, with the air on the side of caution, I think that the reflective piece I mean. Research has shown you'll always learn better when you reflect regardless. But who's police in the journals? With respect to the accuracy of them? The dear diary.
Grainne Perkins:Today I went to school and I collected seashells. Is that really what happened? I believe in the journal. I believe in the journal Reflections. I think, particularly when you go to instant room coordinators courses, that that's hugely important. That becomes part of the SIO model.
Grainne Perkins:With respect to reflecting on the activity log of what you do, I think a balance has to be struck between the collegiate model that Europe tends to push towards versus the American model of let's get you in, get you out of the academy. That's sort of 16 weeks, I think, of standard here, compared to two years. Or I was lucky enough to actually work with the German police on a scholarship for a few weeks. That's gone back to the late 90s when I went there and their model blew me away because they had actual pathways where you could join the police agency through the academy and be fast-tracked if you wanted to be an administrator, that, if that was your gig, if you wanted to do strategy and policy, it could be fast-tracked through the academy if you had the right qualifications. And that always fascinated me because I thought we've all worked with people who end up sitting behind desks that shouldn't have joined police in many people's minds because they're, you know, the pen pushers but yet they're really good at what they do. And the problem with police in most countries is, with rank comes the higher responsibility comes the higher the pay, and that shouldn't be so. It's a bit like nursing. I come from family nurses. I think that the pay scale should be reversed. Frontliners are the people that should be kept, should be paid well, and people who have the administrative nine to five roles. They'd be lower down on the pecking order.
Grainne Perkins:With respect to the retention issues that we have to look at now, I mean it's a one thing that I've had conversations with a few chiefs here at a few different conferences in terms of what we're doing about retention? How are we keeping our people? And there's always concerns about the idea of the lateral hires and let's give them a bonus. I'll be honest, I'm not a fan. I want to give the people who are staying the money. I don't want to give new people money just to come in that there has to be a leveling of understanding with respect to hiring and retention and I think we're starting to see that it's starting to level out with respect to why people are moving People no more than leaving a job. You don't leave a job because of the job. You leave because of the people. That's the reason why you join a job, because of the people. It's the reason why I joined the university, so it was the people that attracted me.
Steve Morreale:Which is terrific. So we've been talking to Ganya Perkins and we're slowly running out of time for the episode Because it's so easy to chat with you. I really appreciate it. If you had to assess or you had to write a little bit of your own journal about what you're finding different in American policing than what you have experienced or had experienced in Ireland, what would it be?
Grainne Perkins:I always go back to a conversation, steve, I had with a friend in South Africa when we were down there before I knew I was coming to America. He actually got a job in America and this guy was 36, grew up in Johannesburg very, very violent area, and himself and the wife were moving to America. And I remember saying to him oh my god, he's so excited, you've never been da-da-da. And he turned to me and said, ganya, a bit worried. I said what are you worried about? And I thought missing his family or something, and said no, I'm actually worried about the violence.
Grainne Perkins:And I remember pausing and thinking are you pulling my leg? The violence? You literally are from one of the most dangerous places in the world, never mind cities, and you're worried about the violence. He said, yeah, ganya, it's not the violence per se, it's the randomness of the violence. That's what worries me. I could be shot at school, in a bar, at a cinema, and I remember just pausing and thinking, wow, that's very outside in type of mentality that I had been so nose to the books with respect to North American policing and South America and you know, the global South. The reality was the change in coming to America. For me, it's the randomness of what you have to deal with.
Steve Morreale:Think about what happened in Lewiston.
Grainne Perkins:Exactly those very unknown variables. I mean, we've discussions about the gun culture and everything else, but that's a question we have to look at. How do you please randomness? And that speaks to context, and it speaks to communities and to culture, and I think it gets back to the core of understanding the community that you please and that you serve ultimately. But that's how you understand the randomness.
Steve Morreale:That's interesting because for those of for you who used to investigate murders and watching what happens here in America, it's funny how, I think, the public reacts when a police chief will come on. We're waiting to hear what happened. Was it targeted or was it random? Right. And if you hear that, oh, it was a girlfriend, it was a boyfriend, it was a firm of boss or whatever, oh okay, it's almost like we take a breath like, okay, I'm not at risk. I'm seeing a shake your head. Is that an amazing reaction?
Grainne Perkins:It is, isn't it? Sure, it's not the label and terrarium action. You know they did it because they are XY, they are XZ.
Steve Morreale:Gang related or it was a boss?
Grainne Perkins:Yes, you know we can box it off and psychologically we can make sense of it then that you know that was a once off, it's you know won't happen here type thing. But for me it's that randomness piece, it's kind of central to what we do and it's the slippery eel. You're never going to be able to pin it down. The only way to understand it is to understand the folks that you're working with on a day-to-day basis.
Steve Morreale:The slippery eel. Another. We call it the slippery slope, but it's a slippery eel. From where you are from, I'm learning, I'm learning. I have to say so. So thank you, listen as we wind down what's on your bucket list. What is it you want to do? I know you're headed somewhere, but what is it you want to do? You like to travel. What are the things you want to accomplish? I like to travel. Do I say?
Grainne Perkins:world domination. I don't know I genuinely. Where I'm at at the moment is great, Super interesting. We're building a lot of new projects and stuff. I think collaboration is key for me going forward. There's a lot of other agencies internationally that I still want to see what it is and how they do what they do. I think the collaboration key is going to be front and center going forward.
Steve Morreale:That's great, and so you're so close to Canada and you're so close back home five, six hours in your back home, whether it's Shannon or in Dublin, and so that makes it very, very convenient for you, I suppose.
Grainne Perkins:I agree with that and so Anywhere. But Shannon, I'm a dope. I'll be flying into Dublin. I won't be going to.
Steve Morreale:Shannon, I'm sorry about that.
Grainne Perkins:You'll be bringing me down here, Corkness.
Steve Morreale:Yeah, well, you, oh, I'm sorry. I know how you feel about that Southern part. So if you had the opportunity to talk with somebody who is famous, who would you want to talk to? How would you want to pick their brain?
Grainne Perkins:I probably have to dig them up now because he's passed. But Ernest Shackleton would be probably one of the people I admire the most. I know I have a print of him somewhere in the house. With respect to his Antarctic adventures, in terms of the exploration, I love and again I suppose the traveler in me that I like that anthropology, the new cultures, but I think his leadership, I think his story, it gets told but not often enough. With respect to the endurance Haven, I think it was 28 in total men on board a ship. They all survived. There wasn't any massive outbreak of fights. It was a quiet, stable sense of leadership that brought people on literally a global adventure.
Grainne Perkins:I think I'd love to chat to him. I'd love to see what type of character he was. There were a few Irish. Tom Crane obviously would have been one of his right arms on the endurance trip. I think I've always just been drawn to the Antarctic exploration because it was unexplored. And then to do with why? A building a team into the unknown? It's always fascinated me. I've shelved the books here on it. Yeah, probably Ernest Shackleton, I think, would be my go-to in terms of if I could chat to anyone.
Steve Morreale:Your legacy. What do you?
Grainne Perkins:want to leave. What is your legacy? Do you think? What would you like?
Steve Morreale:your legacy to be what do you want to leave behind? Why do you do what you do?
Grainne Perkins:I don't know, but honestly, I asked myself quite a bit in terms of it is one of those things you think why am I doing what I'm doing? You could have the mantra, in terms of what you, you know, your management or your leadership, to be firm but fair. I think anyone who knows me would probably say what you see is what you get and what you hear. I'm pretty straight with respect to I think that might be an Irish trait.
Grainne Perkins:You know it is and yet it's not. Some people are packaged a bit softer. I would have a turn of phrase that would be fairly unique to me. As my mother would say, slippery ale could be one of those phrases. I think the legacy for me would be just hope when you've helped someone. As cheesy as it sounds Any couple to add here, there's no better day than when someone says to you thanks and it's an earnest. It doesn't matter what that thanks is for. But when someone genuinely says thank you for helping me, it doesn't matter if it's the kid who's the instigator of the trouble or the kid who's the victim of the trouble. I think that thanks is that's the bow on the end of your day. If you've done a good job, it's good enough for me.
Steve Morreale:Well, I think I just spoke with another police chief a little while back, and one of the things that he said is I am not looking was Christian. I am not looking to count beans. I'm looking to make sure that what the people who work with me do makes a difference to others. What's your thoughs?
Grainne Perkins:I'll be honest. It's like he's echoed my open statements to my own crew. I'm like it's. The first thing I'll say is I'm not a bean counter. I'm not looking at the clock to say that's five past nine. You're like that's not my gig. The idea is they know what they're doing and if they know what they're doing and enjoy what they're doing, we're all winning.
Steve Morreale:They do it with respect and they do it with the right reason, with the right heart. I think that we can continue to build big police police departments back in our in the trust back.
Grainne Perkins:Where we are. It's again. We're being driven by what society wants and we're back to the consent conversation that if you have folks in your agency who don't have the traits and characteristics you've just mentioned, the culture will eat them up and spit them out. They won't last because the people that they're police and won't want them and their colleagues won't want to work with them.
Steve Morreale:That's great. Well, thank you so much for all of your time. I know you're gearing up for a trip to South America. I wish you the best of luck and I hope to be able to chat with you again. We've been talking with Dr. Grainne Perkins, Chief of Police at the University of Southern Maine. You have the last word about policing. Do you have hope?
Grainne Perkins:Absolutely. I think policing from everything that we've listened to and heard over the last five years the defund, the police movement I understand the mantra, I understand the ask, but I think it's about reimagining policing, reimagining what it is we want from our police, because every community, every person deserves someone they can go to and ask for help. As I said before, it doesn't matter if they're instigator or the victim of it. But I think to remove that right from communities is a disservice and that's what we should be there for. That centerpiece of I need help and be ready I think that's the future.
Steve Morreale:Be ready when somebody asks for it. Well, thank you. So that's it. You've listened to another episode of The Cop Doc podcast. I appreciate your time listening. We've been hearing from people all over the world. We just heard from a colleague in Maine. Thank you so much for being here, Grainne!
Grainne Perkins:Thanks for having me. Really enjoyed it.
Steve Morreale:Thanks, so stay tuned for another episode. You've been listening to The Cop Doc Podcast, Steve Morreale. Have a good day.
Intro-Outro:Thanks for listening to The Cop Doc Podcast with Dr. Steve Morreale. Steve is a retired law enforcement practitioner and manager, turned academic and scholar from Worcester State University. Please tune into The Cop Doc Podcast for regular episodes of interviews with thought leaders in policing.
