Highlights

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, every American realizes that police officers are their primary or only defense in an uncertain world.

Being a cop or correctional officer or parole and probation agent takes guts during the pandemic. The public gets this.

It’s time to take back our public relations. It’s time to be bold and to be everywhere. Let’s tell our story aggressively, passionately, and accurately.

Author

Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.

Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of criminology and public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Aspiring drummer.

Facebook Quotes

It’s not the Coronavirus that’s scary. It’s how brainwashed & easily manipulated the masses of people can become!

We are dealing with two contagions — the virus itself and the emotions it generates.

Editor’s Note

All citations are direct quotes, possibly rearranged for the sake of brevity.

Article

This is a pivotal time for law enforcement and the rest of the justice system. Cops have taken a beating for several years regarding use of force issues and the resulting negative publicity.

I spent thirty-five years as a multi-national award-winning senior spokesperson or as a director of public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. See a reference to my book based on my media relations career at the bottom of the article.

I have said repeatedly that the public, regardless of who they are, continues to support policing as being one of the most respected professions in America. Survey after survey supports this notion, Americans Rate Law Enforcement.

But after reading my articles, the pushback I get from some in law enforcement is discouraging. Many feel that Americans have soured on policing.

Recruitment is down considerably; the same is happening for retention. There are officers leaving the job with family members telling their loved ones to get out of policing, and to get out now. This is mostly due to incessant negative media coverage that many families perceive as wildly inaccurate or unfair. Quite frankly, some of it was deserved, Running Out Of Cops?.

But that is now a thing of the past due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Self Preservation

The average American understands that the pandemic could disrupt or endanger their lives. People are concerned about their families and homes. There are signs of increasing violence in some cities along with commercial burglaries, domestic violence and child abuse, Coronavirus And Crime.

Gun sales are going through the roof; people feel that there may not be enough healthy cops to protect them. They read daily that thousands of cops are getting sick, and some are dying.

Over fifty police officers have died due to the virus, FOP. At least 20 NYPD employees have died of COVID-19. THE NEW YORK TIMES. Thousands more are sick.

Suddenly, every American has come to the realization that police officers are their primary or only defense in an uncertain world.

Yes, the public appropriately applauds the doctors and nurses on the front lines. But when push comes to shove, they understand that cops risk their lives to the virus plus the day to day dangers of being a law enforcement officer.

I wrote an article suggesting that things in correctional facilities could easily get out of hand as they have in prisons throughout the world. What happens if correctional officers don’t come to work? Would you risk your life and the well being of your family for $26,000 a year for almost guaranteed contact with COVID-19? Yet every correctional officer on Facebook and other social media groups said that they knew the dangers of corrections when they took the job, To a person, they pledged to show up, Will Correctional Officers Stay?

Being a cop or correctional officer takes guts during the pandemic. The public gets this.

A New Appreciation Of Cops

It’s time to move beyond the negativity of the past. It’s time to acknowledge and embrace a new public relations reality. Americans have a greater appreciation of law enforcement, and what preceded it wasn’t too shabby. As stated, the majority of Americans, regardless of who they are, support cops.

I’ve always been critical as to our public relations efforts. There are endless people who point out our problems and most law enforcement and justice agencies don’t do enough to counteract critics.

I’m not suggesting that we discount our detractors. I’m not suggesting that we ignore decades or centuries of animosity. We made mistakes. In this profession, it’s almost impossible not to. There are people who shouldn’t be cops. But the vast majority of people in law enforcement are good, well-meaning people who simply want to serve.

We don’t do enough to let the public know what we do right. How many lives did we save today? How many kids did we assist? How many domestic violence incidents did we stop? How many elderly people did we attend to? How many violent criminals did we apprehend? How many burglaries did we interrupt?

How many have come down with the Coronavirus yet returned to duty?

Cops save lives. Cops save communities. It’s time we let the public know what we do on a day to day basis.

It’s time that we create our own audio, video, photography, podcasts, television, and radio shows and pump this stuff out to the public. It’s not that hard or expensive to do and there are volunteers who will help.

We need to be everywhere. It’s time we control our own public relations destiny.

Be Authentic. Be Bold. Be Aggressive. Be Everywhere

The article from Vanity Fair (below) is instructive. It focuses on politics and the pandemic. It’s a media philosophy we should consider.

The strategic playbook for political communications is being remastered in the most unlikely of places: Donald Trump’s White House. No, not by the president during his highly rated, often bizarre media briefings. It’s Vice President Pence’s entrepreneurial press team and their shepherding of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s media blitz that is creating the gold standard. Impressively, they’re succeeding under the immense pressures of an unprecedented pandemic. Their execution seems centered around a few simple rules: Be authentic. Be bold. Be aggressive. Be everywhere.

The Fauci model is one that politicians from both sides should follow, both during and after the coronavirus pandemic. With a little innovation and a willingness to fail by venturing into unorthodox venues, enterprising public officials can overhaul the way they use the media to reach the American people to win elections. While you may think the circumstances make Fauci’s case unique, I can tell you with confidence that it is not. In many ways it’s a continuation of the “go everywhere” strategy I employed as Pete Buttigieg’s media adviser—one that was instrumental in his ascendance from unknown mayor to top-tier presidential candidate.

It’s 2020. Yet too many politicos are reliant on the 2004 playbook: cable-news hits and Sunday shows. Hitting traditional outlets is important, but in our current media reality those hits are only a few pieces of the larger puzzle. In a normal evening, just 6 million Americans tune in to prime-time cable news across the big three cable-news channels—CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. That means on any given night, 97-98% of Americans simply aren’t watching the shows that people in Washington are addicted to.

A good campaign knows what its end goal is: to convince as many people as possible to support its cause. Dr. Fauci wants to ensure that every single American hears the crucial “stay home” message, Vanity Fair.

The Experienced Police Reporter And Negative News

A major reason for inaccurate and negative media coverage is the demise of knowledgeable, savvy police reporters. Ninety percent of police media coverage comes from general assignment reporters who know little about the justice system. Understand that there have been huge cuts in the number of reporters throughout the last ten years. This is why the justice system gets hammered with stories that no self-respecting reporter or editor would endorse during earlier years.

From Vox: There are parallels between police reporting and inaccurate Coronavirus media coverage…that assumes the journalists themselves have the expertise to ask the right experts. Mainstream journalists who know how to read and understand academic research reports are a select group and have been for decades. Many midsize newspapers once employed dedicated science journalists, but those jobs have been dwindling for years.

But Zeynep Tufekci, a professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science who specializes in the intersection between technology and society, argues that the mainstream media should have been able to understand the threat facing the country much earlier, Vox.

But they didn’t. Because general assignment reporters are now responsible for ninety percent of all day to day media coverage, justice agencies should be aggressively creating their own media and pumping it out to a wide variety of sources daily. If experienced experts as to police or justice reporting no longer exist, we should step in and contribute to make sure that the public has responsible and accurate information and insights.

Conclusions

It’s time to wipe the slate clean. I’m not asking to sugarcoat the past; I’m asking that we learn from it.

We all understand that without citizen support, we don’t do our jobs effectively. To get their backing, we have to give them reasons why.

Every citizen in the country now gets that cops “are” the thin blue line separating them from potential chaos​. We have months left of the pandemic. Citizens are stockpiling guns because they believe that there is a potential for violence or theft and that officers may not be available.

It’s time to take back our public relations. It’s time to be bold and to be everywhere. Let’s tell our story aggressively. Let’s re-embrace​ why we became police officers.

Regardless of the problems of the past, the vast majority of us are decent, caring people who understand that we protect all.

It’s time to give ample evidence to our publics as to what we do to make their lives safer and better.

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