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Two members of the Bartlesville Police Department's Command Staff continue their course work in Louisville, Kentucky.

Bartlesville Police Chief Tracy Roles and Captain Kevin Ickleberry have been taking Administrative Officer courses at the Southern Police Institute going on eight weeks now. Chief Roles says they are going through the 13-week program that focuses on police executive leadership. 

Chief Roles says Bartlesville has it good compared to Louisville. Roles says Bartlesville is a great place to live. He says the violent crime rate in Louisville is off the charts compared to a nearly non-existent violent crime rate in Bartlesville.

The approach and attitude towards law enforcement in Louisville is also discouraging to say the least. Chief Roles says life in Bartlesville is refreshing because of the tremendous support there is for law enforcement and first responders. He says he is very thankful that he lives in Bartlesville compared to where he is currently at in Louisville.

As for the program itself, Chief Roles says they are going through academically challenging and demanding course work. He says there are two tracts: graduate and undergraduate.

Upon completion of the course, an undergraduate will walk away with 15 college credits towards their degree. On the master's track, the student will have a 12 hour of master level credit towards a degree if they choose to apply it.

Chief Roles says they attend four different classes, including managing organizational performance, criminal justice leadership, criminal justice administration, and legal aspects of the criminal justice system. Roles says they have to complete two to three research papers per class that are 10 to 28 pages long. He says the papers are based on data driven research that has been peer reviewed. 

The course makes its participants take a dive look into looking at why they police things a certain way. Chief Roles (pictured left) says the course work challenges the subculture of policing. Roles says policing is entrenched within a certain paradigm and that there are two things that cops hate: change and the way things are. He says the course focuses on shifting the police paradigm and getting away from doing things a certain way because they always have carried things out in a certain way.

The methodology of policing falls under the microscope during this course in Louisville. Chief Roles says they constantly ask why they do what they do in policing a certain way. Roles says the classes challenges the way things are and forces police leaders to pay attention to what actually matters. He says they have to measure what matters with data driven information.

Shifting the paradigm allows police departments to appropriately align with community needs. Chief Roles says aligning with community needs will allow them to achieve internal and external organizational legitimacy. He says they want to know what they are doing actually works and how it works.

One study that the class has looked at extensively so far is the study of routine preventative patrol in Kansas City and how effective it has been on crime suppression across the country since it was introduced in the early 1970's. Chief Roles says the study shows that routine preventative patrol had little to no effect on crime. He says the course has given them the opportunity to detach themselves from their day-to-day work so that they can immerse themselves into researching what does and doesn't work while listening with an open mind to PhD level professors who do research for a living about what they discovered through their data.

Chief Roles says the classes have really set them up as police leaders to challenge the processes of their agencies. He says the courses drive the importance of building a strong, fundamentally fair supervisors who can then impact officers to make fair policing decisions.

During his time in Louisville, Chief Roles has challenged his administrative staff back home to get him information on items such as staffing shifts. Chief Roles says they staff three shifts at the BPD – day shift, evening shift and night shift – and they staff each shift with the same number of officers. However, looking at the data from a very high level, Chief Roles says there is a significant period of time in the early morning hours where a very small portion of crime occurs in Bartlesville. By looking at the data, Roles says they can probably make a change to have lower staffing levels during that time. He says logic would have them staff more people when crime more commonly occurs/is reported each day. The BPD has since been coming up with a plan to more effectively and efficiently staff its patrol shifts.

Just because something works for an agency in Kentucky or Florida doesn't mean it will necessarily work in Bartlesville. Because of this, Chief Roles says they have to do their due diligence and apply the research to see if it would be more beneficial to the citizens the BPD serves. He says he plans on sending more officers to take the course at the Southern Police Institute in Louisville in the future so they can create more grounded future police leaders.

Chief Roles says all police departments need to do a better job of getting others ready to take on the responsibility of leading police organizations. Roles says he is now three years into his service as Police Chief of Bartlesville, but data would suggest the average life span for someone to serve as chief is two years. He says that data has opened his eyes to getting people more prepared to take on more responsibilities to prepare them for leadership roles. 

According to Chief Roles, law enforcement has never been an entity that has relied on data to do many things. Chief Roles says that needs to change because some of the traditional methods that they have used simply don't work based on the data. Roles says they need to take a hard look at everything and see if  they are being as effective as they can be, if they are measuring what should be measured, and if they are being good stewards of their time and taxpayer dollars. He says they want to gain external and internal legitimacy within the Bartlesville community.

In their free time Chief Roles and Captain Ickleberry (pictured right) have be able to enjoy the finer things in Louisville. Chief Roles says it is nice to get out and relax for a bit after spending a long time studying, researching and writing. He says they have professors that really care about the future of policing.

Chief Roles and Captain Ickleberry should be returning to Bartlesville after they graduate in mid-November.