How the Police are Screwing Up The Story They are Telling

I was sitting in a hotel room yesterday watching the riots in Baltimore and wondering what the end-game of this police vs the black community drama is going to be.

It just seems to be getting worse.

I applaud the many preachers and leaders in the black community of Baltimore who, yesterday, derided their own young people for the riots. Preacher after preacher commented that the violence was senseless, offensive and useless to actualize change.

To be honest, the police community could learn something from the clear lines these black preachers are drawing. The only way this story gets better is when the unified tribe of police officers are willing to draw similar lines between good, law abiding cops and cops who abuse their power. Almost certainly there was an abuse of power when Freddie Gray’s spine was crushed, so why hasn’t a representative from the police department come out and said as much? Why not say, strongly, that if one of their own abused their power, that officer will face swift disciplinary action? Wouldn’t strong statements like this calm the tension? Instead, officers remain unified behind a wall of words that seem more defensive than objective.

When heads of police departments pronounce accused officers innocent within hours of a shooting, America loses trust. And those pronouncements keep happening.

Something has to change, and it seems like the next move belongs to police officers. They are the ones who are going to have to run a different play or this thing is going to keep getting worse.

When I’m not writing books, I help brands tell their stories through my company StoryBrand. So far, we’ve helped a lot of Fortune 500 companies as well as startups and small businesses.

Often the truth of a brand and the story they are telling are different. And that’s a problem.

I say all this because, as a guy who analyzes stories, the way the Police in these controversial situations are handling the “story” of said controversies is truly terrible.

Of course, the loss of the lives of so many black men is an enormous tragedy, but the failure of various police departments to even try to improve the story they are living and telling is, perhaps, the root of the trouble. And their handling of the story is going to cause even more trouble.

Consider another brand facing a controversial and difficult circumstance.

When faced with the onslaught of terrible stories of NFL players committing violence against women, the NFL finally began to act.

Once they realized they could no longer sweep these stories under the rug, they decided to do something about it. And their actions were swift, precise and pointed. They alienated those who committed the acts, pointed fingers at them and very clearly stated “they’re no longer with us.”

That move is what may have saved the NFL from many years of disgrace. Here’s why:

Every story needs an enemy, and in order to not look like the enemy, the NFL quickly disassociated itself as a brand from players within their own organization who were doing dastardly things. And while the NFL took their hits and their brand certainly lost value over the conflict, they at least worked to save the brand and frame the story differently, both in word and in the changing of their behavior.

Their attempt, whether sincere or not (and I believe they are now, finally, sincere) was to side with the good guys (society and the overwhelming percentage of decent NFL players and associates) in prosecuting the bad guys (those who committed domestic violence).

Here’s the problem with the story the police are telling now.

Every day, on the news, they are unifying with officers before truly finding out if what they did was an overreaction and an overreach of their power. Just after Michael Slager, a South Carolina police officer shot Walter Scott in the back as he ran away, and was filmed planting a taser gun near the body to cover his tracks, the local department defended him.

The District Attorney quickly stepped in and charged Slager. But the police were somehow unified. And when Robert Bates, a reserve deputy accidentally shot a man thinking he’d pulled his taser, he was defended by the local sergeant within hours. The words used were literally “he did nothing wrong.”

Really? Shouldn’t a court decide that?

The point here is not to say these officers are truly guilty.

The point is the knee-jerk reaction of police officers to defend each other no matter what really happened will continue to erode trust in the public. It’s just a bad story. From an outside perspective, they’re playing the role of mob characters, not heroic cops.

The percentage of good cops vs bad cops is extraordinary. I’ve known plenty of police officers and have yet to meet one that wasn’t truly drawn to their line of work for any motive other than to protect and serve.

So why are the good cops not distancing themselves from the bad cops? Storyline Blog