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The Kim Turner Podcast
We are going to talk about everything in the 9-1-1 space. Whether it's recruitment, retention, staffing, mass casualty incidents, leadership, wellness, you name it, it's not off the table.
MY WEBSITE: https://thekimturner.com/
The Kim Turner Podcast
Balancing Individual Accountability and Organizational Responsibility in Leadership
Ever wondered how law enforcement leaders balance the scales of individual accountability and organizational responsibility? Today we discuss the intricacies of leadership under the microscope of public scrutiny, the precarious nature of decision-making in today’s climate, and the evolving responsibilities that come with leadership.
We also have Deidre Geddis from Yuba City PD, sharing the details of their dispatch center and some exciting opportunities for new hires.
If you are interested in working for Yuba City, click the links below:
https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/yubacity/jobs/4303841/public-safety-dispatcher-ii-lateral-hiring-incentive-available?pagetype=jobOpportunitiesJobs
https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/yubacity/jobs/4484928/public-safety-dispatcher-ii-entry-level?pagetype=jobOpportunitiesJobs
every time like we have these conversations, I circle back to this thought like as organizations, I, I like I see it like a two-pronged thing right, where organizations have sort of forgotten about a whole set of folks, but then I often wonder about the set of folks sort of not seeking out on their own. I mean, like, how do we sort of marry that individual accountability for leadership versus the organizational responsibility for leadership? I don't even know if that makes sense, because I've always wanted to ask you about that.
Speaker 2:Well, I'd say I probably could have nailed this question 10 or 15 years ago. I don't know that, I know anymore. You know what I mean. I guess it depends what we're talking about, right, because each level of management, leadership, organizational issues, obviously they vary between professions, but for sure in law enforcement, um, there's been such a there's been such a paradigm shift. It seems like in the last at least five years or so, the degree of accountability is is changed so much, at least in the state of California. So I think it's it's put a lot of things into the spotlight. One thing, for example, is I just don't know the degree of people being allowed to make mistakes where that, where that temperature is at. I just don't know that that exists. When you and I were on the job, we can make a mistake and not have to worry about either the mistake being career ending or restricting to a great degree.
Speaker 1:And you bring up such a great point. If we eliminate or really narrow the idea of failing forward, then does that? Do you think that that is a precipice for leaders just not making decisions? I do.
Speaker 2:I think it creates fear, right, because if you're a leader that's worked and you've always, let's just say it's a person who's always wanted to be at the tip of the spear or the top of leadership, all right. So for what that looks like in a police organization, it's either a director of some sort or it's going to be a chief of police, and so I mean that person knows that that whatever decision they make, they got to kind of stand by it and to be very decisive. You mean you're at the mercy of the city council and the mayor. You may be gone the next day, and so if, if it's social media or, you know, even a small percentage of the public has the ear of the politicians, your decision, albeit the right decision, may be the one that gets you fired.
Speaker 1:That's true. I think we see that in really polarizing incidents where a decision is made before there's an opportunity to even explore the facts, and I think that's another thing that's a complication. Often we aren't quick to release facts because we have union protected employees right. So in the protection of the employee we are not allowed to disseminate certain facts and the public has a perception that may or may not be accurate. How do we navigate Like? How do you navigate that?
Speaker 2:I don't, like I said, I don't know how you navigate it these days, right, because I mean, just take Oakland, for example. How many chiefs have they had in the last? I think it's eight years or something like seven or eight years.
Speaker 1:It's like eight or nine chiefs, like who would?
Speaker 2:who would go there and say, nope, I'm going to turn this around Like I, I don't know that. You go in knowing that you have the support of the people you're working for. So I mean, if history is any indicator of what the future is going to look like, you may have that job for a year, right?
Speaker 1:So you bring up. You're making me think about a trend that's happening across the country in terms of 911. And this is a trend that really took grew legs after George Floyd is separating 911 from under the entity of a police or a fire department and creating its own entity where the police and the fire department then become clients basically of 911. They're our own standalone authority, basically of number one. They're our own standalone authority Locally here in California.
Speaker 1:The closest we have in Southern California would be Santa Monica. That separated several years ago and San Francisco. They separated probably, I would say, a decade ago, maybe 15 years ago, and part of that ecosystem then becomes 911, having its own leadership, its own autonomy in terms of separating from police or fire and being able then to make their own decisions and policies and the ideas that they would better serve the community. In theory, I actually think it's a great model. But where my concern, my leadership concern, is if we've historically of course I'm painting with a broad brush here historically have ignored our civilian counterparts for leadership development, then how are they best prepared to lead those organizations with that full autonomy right? Like, how do we play catch up for that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm not, I don't know and what would be? No, I don't know that.
Speaker 1:I'm super familiar with Sorry, I cut you off, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I don't know that. I'm super familiar with a desire for agencies to pull away from their own dispatch model. I know like it was done like, I think, hawthorne PD, and then in Orange County you have some smaller agencies that have one dispatch center. Right, you have in FIRE, you have like Metro net, things like that, where several agencies are under the auspices of one dispatch center, which I like. I'm a firm believer in regionalization. I think, though, without what I don't know is do the other ones you're seeing now, do they have no law enforcement oversight or structure within their leadership?
Speaker 1:They're their own independent body, so they're on equal footing with the police department and the fire department. So it'd be like the department of emergency management or something like that, where it's 911. So, Seattle moved to that model.
Speaker 2:So they'd still work for the Seattle police department.
Speaker 1:They're just, they're just, they're like, they're like they work for the Seattle Police Department. They're just, they're like. They're like they work for the city, they work for the city, and the police department, the fire department, would be their clients, basically their customer base, right? So instead of a director answering to a chief of police, the director is on equal footing as the chief of police. They would be partners.
Speaker 2:Got it, and part of that I'm sorry. And so, and part of that I'm sorry, there's a little bit of a delay, but so does that. Has that been an effective model? Cause that's interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, I think the jury's still out. I think part of the problem here that we see is that if it's truly that structure where 911 is its own independent entity and not answering to like emergency operations or being a subsidiary of any other department, I see where we can absolutely work, because now that leader is now tasked with creating policies that work for the dispatchers, that work for the community because oftentimes there's a conflict of what patrol wants and detectives want versus what dispatchers need to do and regionalization. In theory I'm not opposed to it. In practice I am, and I'll be very clear about that. In theory it works fabulous for the communications piece, for the information, for the dissemination of timely information across a multitude of stakeholders.
Speaker 1:The problem from the dispatch perspective of regionalization is very simple.
Speaker 1:Every single member of that regional team wants to have their own independent policies and procedures, which makes it completely ridiculous for dispatchers and the community.
Speaker 1:For example I'm just throwing out hypotheticals, I don't know if this is true or not Say, if I work for a regional center and I have Hawthorne and Culver City, let's just use South Bay as an example. South Bay, I do not know your policy, so don't get mad at me, but let's say, hawthorne will respond to an animal complaint, but Culver City doesn't. Well, if I have 15 different member agencies, I have to know 15 different policies, and that's ridiculous. That's what it looks like in practice across every regional department that I know. It's true for fire as well, and it creates a conundrum because the chiefs can't get together and say let's all come up with best practices, all of our departments respond the same way so that we're serving our communities better. Because I think that that's where and then the the piggyback on that you absolutely will see a failure in training, because it's almost impossible to remember all of that information, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think, so, I think, in a situation like that, I think that would be challenging, with multiple policies that you had to follow. I think you're, I think, but I think, in order to make it work, like you said, though, that you would have to have best practices and function in that capacity. Yeah, it's interesting, I think. I guess the jury's out. Like you said, I'm interested to see how that works, that model works, I think it's. I think it's a good thing, though, because then you have, I like, the idea of having the director on the same playing field, at the same level, as the other chiefs and or directors, because I think then you'd have some ability to influence some change.
Speaker 2:You know, classically, I don't ever remember probably until probably my last years, the last few years, when I was still on the I've even seen civilians go to leadership courses that that just didn't happen. They were put in positions of leadership very minimal training requirements. It was kind of the good old, whatever good old person, you know, they've been here a long time, sort of thing, and so, yeah, and there's many cases where that just didn't work old, whatever good old person, you know, they've been here a long time, sort of thing and so, um yeah, and and there's many cases where that just didn't work and I think we we invested a lot in our sworn side of things, but not necessarily the non-sworn side of things.
Speaker 1:So you know, if I were, if I were a, say, a dispatch supervisor, with, say, 10 years on as an example, and I came to you and I said, kent, I really want to promote through the ranks, what would be your recommendation of what kind of courses you would recommend that I take, or even what books you recommend that I would read to get ready for the next level?
Speaker 2:So, for sure, the courses you can take, I think posts has come a long way. I think there's a lot of civilian leadership courses and civilian management courses. I think if you're already in a supervisory position and you've done a good job as a supervisor because if you didn't do a good job as a supervisor, I'd probably send you back to supervisor school and say, well, let's work on that first and then we'll get you to the management level I say, create, if you can create opportunities where they can co-manage in some things or co-manage responsibilities. I think that was always my first launching um for people that said things like that and I was like, okay, let's see if you really mean this. Here's a project that we've been putting on the back burner. Let me see if you, let me see if you're able to to take a stab at this, if you're able to to take a stab at this. Or do you have a project that you think um absolutely fits your group? Because no, no boss wants someone to dump a really good idea in them so the boss can figure it out. It's like, hey, you really like this, you think it's going to work. I agree with you. Why don't you get to work on it, and if you need some help along the way, I can give you some help along the way how to put that together. But let's you and I go in together and present this to our next level or the next level up or whatever it is, and then, if it's a money issue, let's go talk to people that have the money. Let's go find the money. So I think that that's really the first level thing I would do, and then if they were at that point, I would find them a course, and if it wasn't like something they could do at post, I'd look for the Kim Turners of the world where any of my discretionary money I had in my budget. I would absolutely put that back into employee development if I could, and so that'd be probably the second thing I would do is finding the program for you. And then what I used to do at least and I think this was unique to some of our dispatchers is, at least when I, when I oversaw them for the little bit, it wasn't just them, it was other groups that I saw that were civilian as well.
Speaker 2:As I say, look beyond communications, unless you want to stay in communications Once you get to a point, in city government there are lots of leadership jobs. It may not be in communications, but there are lots of jobs within. It may not be in communications, but there are lots of jobs within the police department that are leadership jobs. And so now if you're saying, oh, I never even thought about job b in forensics or I never thought about these other jobs, let's start getting you some training to make you a viable candidate for a leadership position there, so that if you go across the board as either a supervisor or manager, they're not going to walk in and go but you have no experience doing this. Like well, if you think there's some other opportunities within the city or the county or wherever, we'll start preparing you for some of those other leadership jobs. So I did that as many times as I could, as long as they were open to it.
Speaker 1:I love that idea. I think that many people just literally don't think of outside of their sphere, right, I love it. I love the idea.
Speaker 2:And most of the time because communications, I mean in some other departments within a city, even if your city's somewhat decent size, your top leadership position that you may want to seek, that may not be available for 10, 15 years. So you may also want to think outside of your initial employment, like another county or another city has jobs open up throughout different, even parts of the state. I mean, kim, you did it best right. I mean you like you didn't stay home in LA County.
Speaker 2:I mean you moved up north and then rose to a position in leadership there and then stocked some other opportunities back down south. So I think you have to be open to those kinds of things and I think it's when you have that conversation with those employees as you try to develop them. I think it's being able to key in on some of the things they're open to and then I think, with the whole benefit of being a leadership, the one thing that I really enjoyed about being a leader was then being able to open that door for someone, whereas before I wouldn't have had the official position to open that door. I can now make things happen with the rank that I had to help that employee, and that was always satisfying to me. I'm like that's why you can become a boss, so you can help those next bosses right, get whatever they need to be the kind of boss that they want to be.
Speaker 1:That's a hundred percent correct. I appreciate you, man. We're going to finish up and head up to our next interview. This was awesome. Our 911 agencies across the country are hiring and recruiting and we love featuring agencies and having a conversation and also inviting you to take a look at that agency if you're thinking about lateraling or if you are interested in this as a profession.
Speaker 1:Yuba City how many of you are interested in this as a profession? Yuba City how many of you are on Google right now looking up where is Yuba City, california? It's a beautiful part of our state and I'm excited to have Deidre Gaddis here with us from Yuba City PD to talk to us about their dispatch center in the region and what they do. So if you're interested in later, do so. If you're interested in laterally, if you're interested and this is a profession, pay attention because, uh, not every peace app is going to be the big giant one, but we all do the same work. I'm excited for this. Deidre. Welcome to the podcast yuba city. Tell me about your. Are you guys a combined peace app?
Speaker 2:Yuba City tell me about your are you guys a combined PSAP.
Speaker 1:Combined. Do you do police on fire? Yeah, do you do police on fire Yep.
Speaker 3:And do you do EMD protocol too? We do, yes, girl, you don't have enough dispatchers.
Speaker 1:You don't have enough dispatchers. No, emd takes a long time. Yep, what's full staff for you?
Speaker 3:Full staff would be 15. And we are currently at nine, and one part-timer Is 15 enough.
Speaker 1:Considering all that you do, how many cities do you?
Speaker 3:district for Just the one, just the one city. We do quite a bit of the county for fire, but just the city for police. So I think that our population is somewhere around 75,000, 80,000. So, it's not super big, but medium size.
Speaker 1:Who are the competing agencies in your region?
Speaker 3:We have the county which is, yeah, Sutter County, and then across the river we have Marysville City and then we have Yuba County, which is where Marysville is also located. Those are the three main agencies right within our area. Otherwise, it's another almost hour away before you get to any other cities. Is CHP up there? Yeah, we have CHP, but their dispatch center is actually out of Chico, which is about an hour north of us.
Speaker 1:Okay, I actually all right. That's yeah. Okay, I'm just putting in, putting it all in perspective for me. Now, one of the things that's cool about the podcast is that it reaches thousands of people, right, so the thought here is recruiting, whether it's entry-level or laterals. If I were listening to this podcast, one of the thoughts I think I think differently, having lateraled right Is I think there's a fear factor when you're thinking about changing agencies. So I kind of want to talk about it from both perspectives. Right, if I were a lateral, what would make me go I am absolutely applying at Yuba versus if I am entry level, what are some of the things that are attractive to the agency for me?
Speaker 3:For us. So I think one of the biggest things is just we have a really awesome group right now, pretty positive. I know sometimes the negativity in dispatch can be really bad, but our group is. They're awesome. They're great. I love everyone that I work with and I think we have a lot of potential for growth. We have two that are probably going to retire in the next year or two. We do have three other supervisor positions below me. Only one of them is filled, so there's so much growth that can happen over the next couple of years, even almost immediately. Really. I mean it would be nice to have another supervisor, but we just don't have the staffing yet to promote anybody. I mean, other than that our department has some great benefits.
Speaker 3:We are offering the lateral bonus. I think it's up to $22,500 now, which is, I think, almost the highest for a local area.
Speaker 1:Wait, I'm stopping you right there. $22,500 is almost a brand new Honda Civic. That's like, literally. Yeah, I'm stopping you right there. 22.5 is almost a brand new Honda Civic. That's like, literally, I could buy a new commute car.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've had that now, I want to say at least over a year, and we haven't really had any biters.
Speaker 1:Maybe people don't know about it, but they're going to know about it now, right, yeah, the other part do you have an entry level bonus for applicants? We don't.
Speaker 3:We bring everybody in though already at. So like we call our dispatchers DC1, dc2, dc3. So we don't even hire at the DC1 level anymore. All the entry levels come in at DC2. So we bring them in at that higher rate. So that's kind of the bonus that we're offering for our entry level right now.
Speaker 1:That's actually really significant. Yeah Right, I love that because you're starting at a much higher rate and a much more competitive thing. So, if I were sitting or driving in my car and I'm kind of listening to this what could I do to prepare myself? Right, because I think one of those questions in interviews what could I do to prepare myself into this career I didn't even know I needed in my life.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So that's kind of one of the thought process that we've kind of had is like how do we draw people, how do we get people to recognize what it is that we do? So actually, tomorrow and Saturday we have our first ever dispatch seminar where we're letting people come and they can learn more about what we do in dispatch and how we operate. So that's you know, and it kind of prepares them for the the process of the application and you know oral interview, the testing, you know background, basically everything that they're going to see through the process. But I mean other than that reaching out and I mean talking to people. There's so much stuff on the internet not that all of it's accurate, but there is a lot of good information out there about you know what dispatchers do and what to expect in the application process.
Speaker 1:Do you guys use critical software for your application process?
Speaker 3:So we're in the middle of changing and going to critical right now. So our current application that's open. These ones won't go through critical but the ones going forward will.
Speaker 1:I got to get critical to be a sponsor of this podcast because I am a firm believer in critical software. They do an excellent job and I think that really their moat. What separates them, is that it's based on your agency standard Right, and so you're really going to get people who, through predictability, have the skill set for your agency. So that's huge um and it's also very efficient. So hr hrg liked it too. Yeah, that's a good call. So what is that orientation or that seminar? You?
Speaker 3:you're gonna have background people there kind of answering like be truthful, myself and then at least two other dispatchers from our group. We have a little presentation we put together um one night. We do have one of the hr employees coming so maybe they can hopefully answer some questions that we might not be able to. But um, and then a tour of the department, obviously a tour of dispatch, so they can get a real you know firsthand look of everything and what we do in there. A couple like radio recordings, some call recordings, just so they have an idea of you know what is it, what it is we really do do in there.
Speaker 1:One of the things I think a lot of people don't know is that you have a training program. So if you're, if you're hired and you're entry level and you don't have any experience, it's okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, your agent one of the blocks that we're going to talk about in our seminar is you know what does the training program consist of? You know what can you expect. You know what hours and days and like how often you're going to move around and just to be prepared for those types of things.
Speaker 1:And just out of curiosity, did you? What schedule do you guys work? Are you you on 312s? Are you on 410s?
Speaker 3:312s and a four-hour shift. So and that with the staffing right now, basically everybody's four-hour shift usually ends up being a 12-hour shift, but not every four-hour shift, it's more like every other. So a lot of dispatchers will work 312s, take off their four-hour next week they they work four 12s and then they rotate that way are you on?
Speaker 1:are you on either side of the week? So, like sunday, monday, tuesday, thursday, friday, saturday, payback is wednesday.
Speaker 3:No, ours is very different. Everybody kind of works different days. You never work more than two days with the same person. So you have um, we have, I think, total. If fully staffed, we're able to have two to three shifts that have weekends off, and then we have a combination of, you know, the first half of the week and the second half of the week, and those shifts mirror on graveyard so they all work different days. So it's kind of nice. It allows everyone to kind of pick what they need for their family.
Speaker 1:That's nice and I think I kind of asked but I want to circle back to this If I were to pick, if I had to sit down and I live, like in your region, in your area, right, and I'm going to pick an agency that's a decent commutable distance, right, like I can do this every four times a week. Three times times a week, what is the one thing you would say separates you from everybody else?
Speaker 3:right now. We're the only agency that does do emd. We're the only ones that provide that for our citizens a lot of them yeah, it is. It is big and right now we're looking into getting um priority. We have the old card sets currently. We've been using those forever. But another thing is, you know, technology for us is like we're not afraid to change. We're not afraid to, you know, bring on new things that you know help us operate better.
Speaker 1:I like it. I love it, deidre. I have one last question for you, and it's odd and it's weird, but I love this question. So if I were to ask you to describe yourself as either a type code or a call type right, because we use those things interchangeably what would it be? Don't overthink it.
Speaker 3:I'll say a security check, just because I'm dependable and reliable and I'm always here and available for everyone.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love that answer. Thank you so much for that.