Patrick Flannelly wrote on LinkedIn:
Some days I spend too much time on social media, LinkedIn included. But the last couple of days have been interesting, and it spurred me to post about a concept I think is critical to the future of Public Safety.
On one feed, I’m seeing news out of New York City: canceled academy classes, slashed budgets, and videos of officers standing in a winter storm being mocked and pelted with snow while simply trying to serve their community. What troubled me almost as much as the incident itself was how easily the mistreatment was minimized. Admittedly, and to be candid, it really pissed me off.
🗨️ “It looked like kids at a snowball fight,” Mamdani said, downplaying the event despite officers being struck and hospitalized. (ABC7 New York)
Those officers left their families to stand in freezing wind for the benefit of strangers. For the mayor to call that “a snowball fight” is BS, and everybody watching could see right through it.
Then, in contrast, I came across something entirely different in my feed.
In Overland Park, Kansas, city leadership publicly declared that public safety is “the bedrock upon which our prosperity is built” as they broke ground on a new police training center. A community investing in its people. Investing in infrastructure. Investing in professionalism. Congratulations, Chief Doreen Jokerst, EdD, and thanks for saving my day!
Two very different signals. And it made me reflect on something I’ve been thinking about more and more since retiring:
Do we view policing as an expense… or as an investment?
An expense is something you minimize. An investment is something you protect and grow because you expect a return. Communities that understand public safety as infrastructure, just like roads, schools, or utilities, tend to build stability, attract business, and retain families.
Communities that treat it as a line item to trim often find themselves reacting instead of leading. For those of you in leadership positions, chiefs, sheriffs, city managers, elected officials:
How do you view public safety in your community?
The answer to that question may shape your department and your city for the next 20 years.
I explore this more in my latest LinkedIn and Substack article: “Expense or Investment?”
I responded:
Thanks for sharing, Patrick. I look forward to reading your full post.
Perhaps you get into this more into your writing, but I wanted to ask: How do you define public safety and is public safety limited to police?
I assume you agree that is also includes the work our fire departments do every day, along with our ambulance services.
What about our street departments, sanitation services, parks departments, maintenance and custodial teams, hospitals, schools, libraries, and other public agencies.
Does it also include access to high quality and affordable food, affordable housing, high quality infrastructure, engaged and connected neighbors?
I know it is rhetorical positioning, but the question isn’t a simple binary of expense or investment. Every tax dollar spent deserves to have the who, what, where, when, why, and how attached to it. It’s good governance. It allows the Public to have an informed, nuanced discussion of these important public safety services to determine what is an expense and what is an investment.
And I’m sure you witnessed frivolous spending at times in your own tenure or through your conversations with others in the public sector.
Is every dollar spent an investment? Is every investment wise?
