Humanizing the police: A powerful community engagement strategy

Key takeaways

• Use real-time incidents to build trust: Officers who communicate clearly and calmly at crime or crisis scenes help humanize the badge and earn community trust.
• Strong community relationships reduce fallout during crises: Agencies with ongoing, relational communication are better positioned when high-profile events occur.
• Humanizing should include all units, not just PIOs: SWAT, motor, and narcotics officers can all play a role in outreach through school visits, career days and social media.
• Balance emotion with professionalism in public content: Share authentic stories, but avoid posts that feel staged, silly or poorly timed after critical incidents.
• Highlight the full range of police work in recruiting: Social media should show patrol, community interaction and real-world challenges to attract mission-driven applicants.

The best opportunity to show the human side of policing is not a community cookout, not a “Coffee with a Cop” or “Shop with a Badge” or any other type of planned event, says Kevin Davis, Chief of the Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia. It’s not even a video of a big, burly cop leading ducklings across a busy highway.

“It’s an outdoor crime or incident scene, like a car crash, a house fire, a murder or a robbery,” says Davis, who’s been in law enforcement for 34 years. Crime scene tape goes up, and people start gathering and asking what’s going on. Instead of declining to provide information, Davis says it’s an opportunity for officers to talk about their work in simple terms, without giving away any investigative details. “Demonstrating your controlled humanity in a time of chaos and crisis typically bodes well with people,” he says.

The concept of humanizing the police — through community outreach and public communication — is an idea as old as community policing, which took off nationwide in the 1980s. Catalyst events have pushed the concept of humanizing officers to the forefront of modern policing principles. The most recent was the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis five years ago and the explosion of anti-police protests across the U.S.

“This was a pivotal moment in the country and especially for law enforcement,” says Julie Parker, President and CEO of Julie Parker Communications, a consultancy firm that specializes in crisis communications for public safety.

Countering anti-police narratives

In the summer of 2020, one of the main reasons some jurisdictions saw massive protests and riots while others were largely spared was the pre-existing relationship of a police department with its community, Parker has observed.

Agencies that engage frequently with the community and choose “a more conversational, relational-focused method of public communication instead of a traditional police-report style of communication” typically fare better when a crisis hits, says Parker. But the relationship must be in place before the critical event happens, she adds.

In addition to serving as a preventive strategy, humanizing the police can also be a tool to counter the narrative of badge-wearing, unempathetic robots in blue often pushed by anti-police activists.

“Our profession has come a long way in how we paint ourselves in the public eye,” says Sgt. Leon Millholland, a law enforcement veteran of 25 years and currently the PIO for the Sandy Springs Police Department, a 154-officer agency in metro Atlanta.

One example is the issue of police officers’ mental health and resiliency. While high rates of suicide, depression, post-traumatic stress and substance abuse among law enforcement have long been a concern internally, only recently have agencies stepped forward and addressed the crisis — and possible solutions — publicly.

The stigma is slowly fading, says Millholland, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and a sniper on his agency’s SWAT team: “Talking about the strain and stressors of our job, admitting to weakness and asking for emotional support is now more common and accepted than a decade ago.”

Fairfax County Chief Davis adds that part of humanizing the police is to own your mistakes and apologize early and often. “It tends to take the air out of the ‘I want to fight the police’ balloon,” he says.

But applying the “humanizing the police” approach in the fast-paced and unpredictable world of policing is highly situational, and it comes with risks. The concept’s power rests on a delicate balance of occasions and platforms, content, context and timing.

Showing the human side of SWAT

Common places to convey a humanized image of police and policing are community-oriented events, like meetings with neighborhood associations, chambers of commerce, schools, youth, and faith-based organizations. Others are press conferences, media tours and individual interviews. The most powerful community engagement tool is social media, says Parker. Today, over 90% of law enforcement agencies connect with the public through social media, according to the nonprofit Urban Institute.

Photo/Katja Ridderbusch

But whether during in-person encounters or in the digital space, departments shouldn’t put the sole burden of demonstrating humanity on the public-facing units, says Davis, like patrol officers, PIOs, community outreach officers and school resource officers. “There is an equal opportunity for everyone at the agency to show their human side,” — including SWAT, motor cops and drug squads. Opportunities like career days at high schools and youth organizations, says metro Atlanta PIO and SWAT officer Millholland. During these events, his department brings out the entire cavalry — squad cars, motorcycles, trucks, tactical vehicles and patrol boats.

“We let the kids put on the equipment, like the body armor and helmets, and climb inside the vehicles, so they can experience to a degree what being a SWAT officer feels like,” says Millholland. “The teens sit down with officers from different units and ask questions. It humanizes not only the individual officer but the entire agency and the entire profession.”

In terms of content, Parker says it’s key for an agency to communicate all news — “the good, the bad and the neutral” — to be authentic and serve as a genuine and trusted source of information for the community.

That sometimes means being the first to inform the public about a call that got out of control or a case of misconduct by an officer. But it also means showcasing the “more tender side of law enforcement,” says Parker.

Posing with pets pays dividends

Once a month, Davis, the Fairfax County police chief, puts out a social media post with the hashtag #ChiefsChoice. In partnership with the local animal shelter, he takes a photo with a pet that’s hard to adopt. Featured animals usually find a home within 48 hours.

An injured or abused animal typically gets more media attention than an average murder investigation, he says. Posing with a dog, cat or rabbit “just pays dividends” in the public, he continues, “And the pet community is not Republican or Democrat, not red or blue.”

Sometimes, departments go overboard in their efforts to humanize their officers, Davis notes. A pet peeve of his is videos of dancing and singing cops, which look staged, he says. “It takes away from the seriousness of our profession. It takes away a humane stoicism, which is what most communities expect from their police officers.”

There can also be internal disruptions caused by well-meaning attempts to demonstrate the humanity of a police department, Davis says. One example was in 2020, when several police chiefs were taking a knee along with Black Lives Matter protesters. “Unless you explain this symbolic gesture internally, officers might not understand the intent of the actions by their chief,” he says — and instead feel that their leadership has turned on them.

Timing is also crucial, adds Parker. If there’s a critical incident on Monday, like an officer-involved shooting, and on Tuesday morning, the department runs “a light-hearted, maybe cutesy, maybe goofy, social media post, the agency can come across as tone-deaf, uncaring and clueless.”

Discover how the National Police Athletic League is changing perceptions and humanizing law enforcement as a profession. In this clip from the Policing Matters podcast, learn more about these transformative efforts and their impact on communities. Listen to the full podcast here.

Social media — a blessing and a curse

Another intrinsic risk that comes with humanizing the police on social media is exposing an officer’s privacy. If, for example, an officer receives an award and is celebrated on the agency’s social media platforms, and sometime later, the same officer is involved in a controversial use-of-force incident, the officer’s resume and photo are already out there.

While a department can control its own social media content, it is hard to control individual officers’ accounts. Agencies typically warn their officers of the impact a thoughtless social media post can have. If, for example, an officer posts photos on their own social media posing with alcoholic drinks, and if that officer later testifies in a DUI trial, the defense attorney might use the post against the officer.

There is no complete protection, but every agency should have a social media policy that holds officers accountable for the content they post on their personal platforms, says Parker, if they identify themselves and their department by name. But most cops use an alias on social media, mainly to protect their and their families’ privacy and safety.

But there’s also self-monitoring, adds Millholland, the Sandy Springs PIO. At his agency, a lot of officers follow each other on social media, and if they see one of them putting out something they shouldn’t, they advise them to take it down. “They police each other,” Millholland says with a thin smile.

Photo/Julie Parker

Humanizing the police plays a key role in police recruitment

Social media have also become a critical recruitment tool, notes Parker. Humanizing the police is a must, since “many of this new generation want to see themselves in their future agency.” But Parker says it’s key that the social media content reflects the full spectrum of law enforcement work. Only posting pictures of cops with cute critters may set wrong expectations and be as misleading as just focusing on “the drugs, guns and SWAT content,” she says. It’s also important to show officers doing routine patrol work and interacting with the community, she adds — which is a large part of what police do.

Humanizing the force is the main goal of a new catchy recruitment video from the Atlanta Police Department. The “Boots on the Ground” viral video shows police officers with cowboy hats line dancing, singing, and laughing. The video has reportedly led to an increase in applications but has also garnered internal criticism, according to sources close to the agency. Some fear the video makes light of the serious nature of police work and attracts people for the wrong reasons. It’s the same concern voiced by Davis, the Fairfax County police chief, about dancing cops.

Whether it’s for recruiting, community relations, or crisis communication, the officer or civilian tasked with humanizing the police and running a department’s social media account bears a lot of responsibility, says Parker. It’s a balancing act that requires good judgment, emotional maturity, a keen sense of timing and mental agility.

Sandy Springs’ Leon Millholland says that many officers, especially in smaller departments, wear several hats and find it natural to switch between different roles, shift focus, categorize and compartmentalize.

But he can never quite take off his PIO lens, he admits, even when he’s in SWAT training or gets called out for sniper duties. In the back of his mind, he keeps thinking about how to promote and protect his department’s brand, and he formulates a plan “to stay professional yet humanize who we are and what we do,” whether that’s at a community cookout or a violent crime scene.

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