Is There a Crisis in Crisis Communication? Douglas Levy on Missteps, Media Pressure, & the Golden Hour

What happens when the people responsible for controlling the message become part of the problem?

In this episode of True Crime with the Sarge – The Audio Files, I sit down with crisis communication expert and author Douglas Levy (The Communications Golden Hour) to break down a growing issue in modern policing: Is there a crisis in crisis communication?

From high-profile investigations to breaking news moments, we examine real cases where police executives stepped in front of the microphone—only to later walk back critical information. What went wrong? And more importantly, how does it impact public trust, investigations, and the victims’ families?

We dive into:

• The concept of the “Golden Hour” in crisis communication
• Why law enforcement messaging often unravels under pressure
• The risks of speaking too soon vs. staying silent
• Real-world examples of communication breakdowns in major cases
• How media cycles and social media amplify mistakes
• What agencies should be doing differently right now

This is a must-listen for anyone following true crime, law enforcement leadership, or the evolving intersection of media and investigations.

🎧 Subscribe, rate, and review True Crime with the Sarge – The Audio Files for more insider analysis and expert interviews.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This podcast contains adult language, adult topics. Listener discretion is advised. TrueCrime with the Sarge The Audio Files is owned and operated by Sarge Media LLC. Please consider liking and subscribing to the channel. Today we have Douglas Levy Levy, Peabody Award-winning journalist, communications expert, and author of the Communications Golden Hour, the Essential Guide to Public Information When Every Minute Counts, in the second edition now. He's going to talk to us about breaking down the moments that happen when it can cost an agency credibility. And this agency, of course, we can zoom in on law enforcement, but just about any agency out there. Doug, welcome back to the show. Good to see you.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

So, Doug, I'm going to start off with a tough question. Do we have a crisis in crisis communication?

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yes, unequivocally. It seems to me that just as many leaders in government and other organizations have kind of lost their footing, communications people have two. And a lot of it is because the tone and culture are set from the top. And if the leadership of an organization is going a different direction from what we've been used to or trained on or expected in the past, it's very hard to communicate clearly in that environment. And we are seeing it. We have way too many examples in the police world. I am sad when I see police chiefs, in some cases, holding news conferences, sometimes just putting out news releases, public statements, Facebook posts, whatever, that are not serving the public's interest, but instead they're self-aggrandizing or chest thumping. If it's not advancing public safety, why are you doing it?

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Right. So my question now is what happens when the people responsible for controlling these message messages become part of the problem, right? I mean, that's basically what we were. What do we do? I mean, when you have the chief, and I'm gonna pretty much focus on law enforcement here. And if you have another example, please jump right in. But we've seen a number of cases over the last year or two, and even the last couple of months. I mean, you going back to you Uvaldi, where they're telling us that they they confronted the guy in the parking lot and they didn't, right? Uh, we had the the Brown University shooting where we were giving out information that was wrong. And when you have the head of the department telling us, like Sheriff Nanos out in Arizona with the Pima County Sheriff's or Department and the Nancy Gutter Case telling us stuff and then having to walk things back right away. I mean, how why did we get away from the public information officer model? That's where we have them. They they have them. Every one of these departments have them, but yet they don't use them. Can can you can you have an answer for that?

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Well, I think the examples that you mentioned, Uvalde, uh Pima County, uh, Brown University, all three of those cases have one big thing in common, which is many different agencies responding both to the initial emergency and to the follow-up. And not everybody knows how to play well in the same sandbox. This is something that you and I and many of our colleagues have drilled on over and over and over again, you know, between emergencies and when the lights and sirens are on. So we know what to do when the feds show up to a local incident or you need the state authorities involved, whatever the case may be. If you're not prepared for that kind of cooperative situation, or worse, if there's actually some tension or hostility between the agencies, the PIO is the one caught in the middle, usually. And that's not a problem a PIO can solve. Communications can make things better and worse, but it can't fundamentally change the way operations are managed. And however, what a PIO can do is help reflect those disconnects back to leadership and hopefully help them understand how when the agencies are squabbling with each other in public, that's not good for anybody. It doesn't matter who's right at that point. Um, I want to go to one of the incidents that you mentioned. Actually, let's talk about two. Uvalde stands by itself as an extreme outlier. However, it is also proof of one of the things that those of us who are professional PIOs have feared. I mean, literally, Uvalde was almost the exact worst-case scenario that many of my colleagues we've talked about. I mean, for example, at the police chiefs association meeting, you know, there's usually 300 or so PIOs in one of the meetings. And we know that those departments are going to do okay no matter what happens. If for no other reason they know who to call for help. And having a well-trained, well-qualified, experienced communicator who can take charge so that the operations people can do what they do. Uvalde had absolutely no, if they had any communications plans as part of their critical incident practice, that completely fell apart because the mistakes started at the beginning of that incident. The first public statement that came out from the Uvalde School District, which controlled the police department responsible, was that staff and students are safe. So I was watching this unfold mostly on CNN and other media, but I could tell from what I could see on TV that that statement that had come out could not possibly have been true. There was no way in the world that they could assure people, truthfully, that everybody was safe because there weren't, they didn't have officers inside yet. So that told me that the communications people person, whatever, was not well prepared. And then, of course, the errors got worse and worse and worse when the local police put out wrong information, the state police put out wrong information, and over the course of the first three days, there were so many elements that were just plain wrong, which is the most egregious mistake to make in any kind of communication. We don't know all the answers. Sometimes weeks later, we still don't know a lot of things. You never say something definitive if you don't know that it's true. And the public absolutely expects you to say, we just got here, we're gathering the facts, we'll share what we can as soon as we can. Be honest. Or, you know, if you're asked, you know, how many shots were fired? That would be part of the investigation. And that's just so important. And then the the Brown University uh shooting was one where you had the federal authorities, you had the Brown University authorities, you had the Providence police, you had state police, and then you also had agencies in other adjoining municipalities without close coordination of messaging. And it's possible that that's because they didn't realize the the incidents were all connected early. That's not unusual. But when you're putting together your public communications about especially a suspect on the run, you have to understand the context that this is going to affect people beyond your immediate vicinity. So you have to choose the information you put out carefully. You want to be clear, you don't want to convey false confidence or assure people falsely that they're safe. If there's really a threat out there, you need to communicate about it. And that's where I encourage everybody to take a look at any of the communications that was done on July 4th, whichever year it was when the Highland Park Parade shooting happened. Chris Cavelli of the Lake County Sheriff's Department. I have never seen emergency communications handled better. Uh he knew exactly what to do. He understood at every moment why he was communicating. They had a mass shooting suspect loose in the community. They didn't know if he was going to continue killing people. They needed people to understand. They needed to be extra vigilant, and they also needed to be looking for anything that would give the police clues to who the person was and where they might be. And his communication was crystal clear. He let the reporters know here's what we know, here's what we're doing, here's when we'll get back to you with more. And it it that's part of the reason the information got out so effectively once they had somebody uh identified and they were able to catch them within a few hours, which is incredible. I mean, that's protecting the lives and and and safety. That's why police are there. And I tip my hat to him. He really was amazing. I was thrilled. I mean, I was horrified at the shooting and the deaths, obviously. But as communications go, uh, and he was he was not even supposed to be the PIO that day. He was from an adjoining jurisdiction, but he knew that he was needed, and he was. And and the the the chief in Highland Park trusted him already because they had drilled together. So he was totally fine saying, okay, media, that's you.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Right, which kind of asked uh it begs this question, right? So after 9-11, we spent so much time and effort and money on the incident command system. Uh, have 25 years later, have we just abandoned it? Have we have we just like forgotten about it? Because I I mean, listen, what what happened with Pima County, what what happened if and I didn't I didn't even mention on the list of things that I thought went bad was uh when the Charlie Kirk shooting when the FBI head cash patel got involved, right? Both of those two last cases that we could tell of told us that we had people in custody and basically everything's over, and then to turn around and say, Well, it's not him, we're back on to the I mean the messaging is absolutely horrible, but let's let's circle back to this incident command system where you have a public information section to do this. How do we how did we get away from that? It's only been 25 years, it's not ancient history.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

I think this is one of the gaps between the big jurisdictions and the small ones. And it's also I want to do my best to stay away from politics here, but um I think it is factually true that there are individuals in leadership positions in certain organizations now who do not have the law enforcement and emergency management experience that used to be expected in those roles. So you and I have probably been through a lot of ICS trainings and drills. I can say pretty certainly that that's not the case for certain individuals in senior roles everywhere now. And if you've never been through at least a tabletop exercise on the progression of command or the roles and functions of the different sectors in a command post, uh you're not going to understand the significance of going outside the system in an emergency. And that's a problem because uh you know the the examples you you gave absolutely are public safety problems, and there's no reason for them. You know, the the premature announcing of a suspect in custody does nobody any good because you want the public to keep looking out for information that's going to help the investigation. Um, I will never forget a drill that I was in. I was the chief communications officer at the Columbia Medical Center in New York City, and I think this was on the 10th anniversary of 9-11. FEMA organized a massive drill involving literally every emergency response organization that would ever be responding to an incident in New York City. And it was a really well-constructed drill. And a big part of that drill was to test what's changed since 9-11. Um was there clear authority from one law enforcement agency to the next, or was there going to be conflict? As the incident got more complicated, how was the chain of command brought in? And how did that command shift from the local precinct commander to the borough commander to the city commander or beyond as the incident played out? And one of the things that was stunning to me at the time, I think for the drill purposes, we were maybe 90 minutes in. And it was, you know, we had to do a media briefing because the reporters were showing up at this crisis scene. And the incident commander at the time was the precinct commander, uh, whose officers discovered the biohazard it was. Uh, and he looked at me and he said, You're doing the briefing. And I said, But it's your incident. And he said, Yeah, you know how to talk to the media, and I'm busy. But and and in the in the the debriefing, the uh the evaluators said that was exactly the right call by that commander. It was.

unknown 17:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Yeah, common sense too. Common sense too. And and and it it, you know, I was in the incident command, so I had access to all the information. There was no reason for me not to be the briefer. And it also was a way to show that everybody was working together, which is really important. And we have not seen enough of that. Right. And and yep, that go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

No, and actually, the two of those incidents, like the Brown case, the Brown University case, and the Charlie Kirk case, it was Idaho, I believe, right? Uh oh no, Utah, sorry. Utah, Utah, Utah. The governors are up there talking and telling information about the case. And I'm sitting there going, what is going on here? The politicians have taken over this. I mean, it's either gotten to a point where it's just ego or people want to be on television. But this is not the way to run a communication system during a major event. I'm sorry, governor. Yeah, I know you're the governor, but you need to step aside. This isn't your this isn't a show. This isn't about votes.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

I I agree with you, but I will also say that the governor of Utah did a pretty good job in that situation. Um what I what I would like people to understand though is that, as you said, the politicians and I would actually argue the heads of any organization, the police chief, the fire chief, those executive level leaders should not be the automatic PIO or briefer. And in fact, um, I mean, in corporate communications, this is kind of the gold standard. The no matter what the situation is, you never have the CEO make the first statement. You know, even if it's just on paper, it's like, you know, you have a VP. Um, you know, many departments have a good PIO who's got the relationships with the media. So that's the familiar face. And in an emergency, the familiar face is really important. So you you've got to go with whoever's got that trust and credibility. But you also need to insulate the leadership a little bit in case things change. Then the executive can come in and redirect the communications or acknowledge the good work. There's there's a lot of things that you want the the top people to do that they can't do if they are the only one doing the briefing.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Right. And I've been my argument has been, and I kind of feel like sometimes they're shouting in a vacuum, but I I say the chief of police or the commissioner, whoever they called, and whatever the department, not only should they not be doing the initial public information offerings, they should be at the scene directing, you know, directing what's going on. That's what we we want them to be. And the PIO, and listen, these cases, as you know, Doug, are they so dynamic, they change so quickly. When if you're the chief and you go up there and tell us everything, and then all of a sudden everything has to be walked back. I mean, you you lose credibility. It's a simple people turn you off. And that's what that's what happened in Pima County, as far as I'm concerned. People can't you can't convince me otherwise because people look at the sheriff differently after that. They say you know, and you lose all this credibility. Listen, guys and girls, I mean, don't be the first one out there. And how do we get that message across, Doug? Right? I mean, this this is your area. You've written the the the book on this, actually, second edition, and we're gonna talk about you know some other things happening. But like, how do we get that message out? Like, guys, you're you gotta be in the back. You gotta be directing traffic, so to speak, not talking about it, because it looks looks terrible when you have to come back and say, oh, everything I just said was wrong.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Well, right. And and and part of that, too, is you you want to make sure that whoever the executive in charge is, whether it's the police chief, the captain, whatever in in each department, is not just speaking from notes given to her or him. By other people. You want that firsthand authority. And the PIO can give some space, can create space so that the chief can go to the scene. And ideally, in fact, you know, the PIO should be at the scene too, but sometimes that's not prudent for safety reasons. But you know, you you want things to be authentic, you want them to be credible, and you want them to be timely. And that's of course another big gap. Way too many organizations wait too long. And we don't know all the details within minutes of a of an incident. But the public wants to know that you're on top of it. And it's actually okay. In fact, it's it's more than okay. It's good to just get out there and say, hey, we we've got officers on the scene, we're figuring out what's going on. And then come back later when you have information. If you don't do that, other people are going to jump in and make make stuff up. And unfortunately, that's some of what we saw with um, well, Pima County actually is a really good example of that.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Um pick another, but it's it's it's a it's a target-rich environment for what we're talking about here.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

I I think you know part of what we need to do is really help particularly the younger folks, you know, the people coming up through the ranks, understand how important communications is. And some departments are, you know, at least providing some training on social media and First Amendment, and some of the things that communicators do. Uh, I think that needs to be mandatory because face it, everybody is on camera when they're in public, whether they mean to be or not. And every citizen is a journalist. So every police officer, every firefighter, every government worker is effectively a representative, if not a spokesperson, for whatever entity they work for. So let's embrace that. And they're just some simple things that we can teach. And in fact, I mean, I went to law school and I I think I was pretty good at asking questions as a reporter, but you know, I was trained in law school, specific ways to ask questions and answer questions that help people understand your point better. Who won't benefit from that kind of instruction?

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Everybody. I mean, and you watch what's going on. I mean, and we can talk about uh so many cases, like so let's just throw out the the Idaho case with the Idaho 4 with with Kohlberger and all these where you see the police departments eventually spending their time dealing with the internet rumors and the social media stuff. Like, how do we I'm I am so thankful that I didn't have to work under those conditions when I did this a long time ago. But what's what's the best advice that we can give agencies about dealing with the rumor mills, speculation, and all the other stuff that we see online because it has to be distracting.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

I think I think there are a couple of things. One is we have to acknowledge that we have very partisan feelings across the country these days, and it's very hard for people to check their politics at the door. That is especially true if you're an elected sheriff. Sheriffs are kind of in their own special place of challenge. But if at every step, before we open our mouths, we figure out why are we speaking, everybody will be better off. If you're in law enforcement or emergency management or fire department or EMS, any emergency service, any government agency, pretty much, you are there to serve the public, whether it's to improve public safety or protect the financial wellness of the community or to keep the streets clean, whatever your role. Have that front and center. And if what you're planning to say does not support that reason for you to be there, step back and think again.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Where you have a couple of press conferences that go bad, and then all of a sudden you're doing one-on-one interviews. It's just, it's it's kind of, I mean, I've never seen anything like this coming out. You know, this whole Arizona, I know, keep on going back to Arizona, but there's so many things that I find wrong. But of course, now people question the transparency, they question what's going on, and then and then the face 40 days into it and say, you know what? And these guys can strike again. I nearly fell out of the chair when I when I watched that. What do you call it? After 40 days, you're telling the public that there that there's guys or there's at least one person running around kidnapping elderly ladies out of their homes in the middle of the night. I mean, are you serious?

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Yeah, that that unfortunately is an example of somebody who um was not well prepared to be on a national stage. And that's when you call for help. Um, it's also a really good example of when you really do want to let other people do the talking. Um I mean, yes, the sheriff had to be there visibly, but the sheriff should not be the, you know, unless the sheriff is the the the only detective, uh, you hold, you know, you introduce your PIO and let the PIO do the talking. That way, when you jump in, it's got more credibility, and you can be you can give the higher level perspective that people want. You shouldn't be getting into the weeds.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Right. I mean, I I I come from the model where if you're the boss, we want you at the scene, we want you to get everything firsthand, like we talked about before, and you can go talk about it. And then before you leave, you say, okay, guys, has anything changed in the last 20 minutes? Because they're gonna ask me, and then I'm gonna come back here hunting heads if it's not right. So is what do we have? Is what has changed? And unfortunately, we get away with we get a we've gotten away from that. And I'll tell you, the one of the reasons why I wanted you back on the show is because this is a major problem and something needs to be done. And I know you have the textbook, and you know, it's in the second edition now, and I know there's other plans in the future, and you deal with, I think you deal with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, right? You deal with you deal with a lot of organizations over your career. The message has to get out there somehow.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

There are so many excellent resources for people who want to communicate better. Um, you know, FEMA still does a lot of really good training. Uh, you know, the FEMA Public Affairs courses are solid. The uh Police Chiefs Association ISCP, the PIO section, is a fantastic resource, um, both for experienced and new PIOs, because uh, I mean, I think one of the reasons many of us are involved is that those of us that have been through things a few times really want to help others not have to learn on the job the same way. And you need to have a network. You need to know who to call. And in fact, you know, if you look at some of the really good examples of communications, again, Highland Park, Illinois is a perfect example where somebody from an adjacent mutual aid jurisdiction stepped in as the PIO because the police department that was handling the incident was there was no way they were going to be able to do it themselves. They didn't have to. And because they had trained together, that cooperation was seamless. And and most of the people who watched those news briefings not only had no idea, but had no need to know that Chris Cavalli was not part of the Highland Park Police Department. It didn't matter because they were working together, and that's that's so important. Um, I know that uh, you know, when Ivalde happened, there were people from the Texas Police Chiefs Association offering to send their PIOs there to help. Um and you you know, you you you have the every state has good resources. And every state has agencies that are afraid to use them. They think it's a sign of weakness to call in for help. But in fact, it's a sign of strength.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

Right. I mean, and some of the cases we spoke about already, the major major city within a few miles, Providence, Rhode Island for Brown University. Uh not only in Pima, you had not only Tucson, but you had Phoenix. You know, uh, I mean, you have all of these different agencies, like you said, mutual aid, talk to them. I think we've gotten away from the training, right? So I I hope that, and I believe the FEMA, there's a FEMA course for the ICS, the incident command system. I think it's like it's it's an online course. You can do it yourself.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

ICS 100 takes a couple hours if money is that.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

Right. And and why? You know what? This is something that you know, when people hire police chiefs or if they're going to be elected, it should be part of their resume. I am trained in ICS because I don't know how many more I can take of these, Doug, because it's bad. It's bad.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

It's it's hard. I I have and and this is probably less true in law enforcement because chain of command is a thing in law enforcement, of course. But um I've worked in other environments where the leaders don't understand that we have this whole emergency management system. And at one organization I worked at, um, we actually included in our plan what to do if one of the senior executives showed up at the command center when we weren't expecting. And it was um the equivalent couldn't do that, but it we we had something that was kind of the equivalent of telling the husband to go boil water when the wife was giving birth in the 50s or 60s or whatever that used to happen. Um because you know, they want to do something, they want to act, but you know, they don't understand. I mean, in that in one particular emergency, uh it was a power outage, and there was a very, very real risk that um lab specimens were going to uh defrost because the freezers were off. Well, what that senior person didn't understand is that we had trailers of dry ice lined up outside. We were ready. We had that part under control. Um so you know, he didn't need to be worried about that. Um so we you know helped him play a role, but not go in the way. Yeah, ease into it. So tell us about it. And actually, just sorry, I I I got I'm going over here, but um the other the counterpart to that is that you need to get your executives in those drills. Many of them think they've already been through enough training, they don't need to. But in fact, they need to see how well prepared their team is so that they can be confident when there is an emergency that it's under control and they don't need to jump in.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Great advice, right? Let's hope they take it. Let's hope they hear it. So tell us about the book. So it's a second edition, uh, The Communications Golden Hour, The Essential Guide to Public Information when Every Minute Counts. Now you have a new project possibly coming out, right? So tell us a little about the so you can still get the first edition, though, too.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

You you can still get the first edition, which was 118 pages, and I'm told a lot of people like how simple and and compact it is because they can grab it when they're running to the scene if they're uh if they need some reassurance that they need a checklist or something. Uh the the second edition grew to 400 some pages. It's a little unwieldy and it doesn't fit neatly in a go bag. Um, I actually I I have a copy in front of me now that has a gazillion sticky notes of things that we're updating. And uh what I'm planning on doing is creating a third edition of the big book with a companion small book. And I'm actually thinking it may even be smaller than six by nine. It might be a really, you know, something that could almost fit in your pocket. And it's going to be here's what you need with you when you are dealing with a crisis. Um, and uh I I've got to come up with a title for it. I think it's gonna be the go bag version. Um I hope to make it even more useful than the existing volumes have been.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

Yeah, maybe even like the the reporter's notebook kind of size with they could flip up like that.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Exactly, exactly. I I that is exactly the size I was I was thinking.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

Yeah, because you can stick it in your back pocket.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

I want to make it easy.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

Yeah, you can stick it in your back pocket, you can refer to it before you go on the news and you can take a look at it and say, all right, make sure I cover this and or make a checklist, right? Well, I know some people like checklists, some people don't, but you know, it's it's just still a good thing to say, okay, do you have all this information? Because from from what we're seeing now, there's there's a there's an absolute need for it. So I hope that they go out and get a copy of your book. I hope they go online and take these FEMA classes because, like I said, it's free, it's online. Sit when you're sitting in your office, download it and and and do it. Because boy, oh boy, I could tell, I don't know how much more I could take of this. I always said if I had hair, I'd pull it out.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

Well, and and and when you take these classes in person, you have an opportunity to meet people in your profession, in your community. Uh, there also are so many good local associations. Um, you know, California PIO Association is one. Um, you know, every state has a police chiefs association. Many of them have PIO sections. Um, North Dakota, I know, has a statewide PIO association that does, I think, quarterly trainings. Um, there are so many resources. And the other thing is just pick up the phone and call your neighbor.

SPEAKER_01 37:32

Yep. That's it. That's about the best advice we can get. Douglas Leavely. Doug, this was absolutely fantastic. I'm glad we got a chance to talk to us. Everybody, if you're in this business or you're planning on being in this business, this is the book to get. The links will be in the details of the show. You can just click on it, you'll find Doug's website and everything else that you need to know. Doug, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

It's been my pleasure. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

For more shows like this, check out True Crime with the Sarge on YouTube or on my official website, josephjackalone.com. This podcast is owned and operated by Sarge Media LLC. All rights reserved. Thank you for listening.