How can communities and police departments build trust?

If you’ve been reading our Respect Project in recent weeks, you might be anticipating this answer: conversations and listening.

One place both of those are happening is on a podcast called “3 Cops Talk.” Launched last year by a trio of officers – Chris, Scott, and Shaun – the Illinois-based show has more than 30 episodes. Very little is off limits, as the wide range of topics shows: use of force, gun control, police training, active shooter situations.

The hosts aim to be transparent, evidenced in segments like “Ask a Cop Anything” and episodes like the engaging two-parter with an African American father and son one of the hosts knows.

For more than two hours, the men talk together honestly, at times colorfully, about race and policing. They focus on solutions and, in keeping with the show’s subtitle, “rebuilding community trust.”

Chris asks the father about creating understanding between officers on the street and the public: “How or where do you think we could start?” The father suggests officers could intervene when those they work with are out of line. 

Later, the hosts take turns responding when the father asks how they were in their early years on the job, and how they might have responded to what they thought was a car full of gang members.

Our newsfeeds are rarely filled with interactions like this. Chris wants to see more of them: “We need to sit down as a community … and we have to have a conversation.”