A dozen St. Croix police sergeants spent Friday in class learning leadership and management principles and strategies to help them better motivate and direct the officers under their charge.
Doug Norwood, a professional police instructor and training program coordinator with more than 20 years of criminal justice experience, flew in from North Carolina to teach the one-day seminar.
Norwood lectured his class about styles of leadership, from autocratic to democratic, and about elements of leadership ranging from professional ethics and setting an example to remembering to praise your team members. And he prompted them for their input.
"Say a sergeant in another unit gives someone in another unit an order — how does the other sergeant react?" Norwood asked, giving an example where more than one unit responds to a traffic situation.
By protocol and courtesy, the officer giving such an order should tell the officer’s commanding sergeant, Norwood said. But in the end, rank is what matters and a good commanding officer will smoothly handle a situation where no notice is given while supporting the officer making the order. "Being a paramilitary organization, we have to follow the chain of command," he said.
Norwood advised the sergeants to become expert on as many aspects of law enforcement as possible, so they are the natural go-to person for any unusual situation.
"You need to be the one that knows everything," he said. "Your officers will expect you to have done everything before." He urged them to spend even a little time working in as many areas as possible, from Internal Affairs to Investigations.
"Volunteer to go on a call if it is something you need experience with," he said. "If you never handled a felony rape case, volunteer to go on the trip. I can tell you from experience they will let you go and help them."
Having a lot of information on hand or easily accessible is important too, he said.
"If you don’t know something, know where to find it," he said. "Have your references ready and put your sources on your cell phone. If you are in the field and have a legal issue to resolve, you have your phone and can make a call to your source for that information when you need to."
Norwood took away something from his students too. Asking the class what they felt were important aspects of leadership, one sergeant said it was important for an officer to at times work side by side and literally get dirty with his officers.
"I’m going to put that into my next training lecture," he said. "A good leader comes in dressed sharp, polished and shined with his or her uniform clean and pressed. And a good leader proceeds to get dirty with his troops over the course of the day."
All the sergeants and other commanding officers go through at least one day of continuing training a month.
More training of officers and of supervisors is a requirement of a consent decree agreed to by the Police Department, the U.S. Justice Department and the V.I. Justice Department this past March. The decree came about in the wake of an investigation into police internal affairs procedures, its training programs and its use-of-force policies that was launched in 2004. Under the terms of the decree, the department has five years to improve operations to comply with all the conditions laid out in the decree.
Melody Rames, public information officer for the Police Department, said acting Police Commissioner Novelle Francis sees the consent decree as a benefit to the department because it is an opportunity for concrete improvements.
"Commissioner Francis believes these training sessions help continue us on the way to being the model police department we are striving to be," Rames said. "We welcome the consent decree because it inspires us and makes us become better, helps us serve the public better and support our officers becoming better officers."
