Blog Post- Compassionate Policing Isn’t a Mood. It’s a System You Can Build.

“Compassionate policing” gets talked about as if it’s a personality trait—some officers “have it,” others don’t. We pin it on the individual: the “good” cop who took extra time, the “bad” one who didn’t.

Compassion that depends on the mood, shift, or personality of whoever shows up is fragile. Compassion that’s built into the system is durable.

Compassionate policing is not just being nice on scene. It’s designing a public safety system where the default response to crises is safe, clinically informed, and honest.

That means structure. That means metrics. That means contracts, staffing models, and dashboards—not just slogans and posters.

From Sentiment to Structure

In the book, I talk about turning compassion “from sentiment to system.” What does that actually look like in a city?

It looks like:

• Dispatch using a short, consistent behavioral-health script so the right responders get sent to the right calls.

• Call-takers treating warm transfers (to 988, crisis lines, clinicians) as a standard, not a favor.

• Co-response teams having clear roles so the officer can focus on scene safety and the clinician can focus on engagement and options.

• Hospitals and crisis centers agreeing to meet the work at the curb instead of leaving people in hallways for hours.

• City leaders moving money from overtime that pays for waiting to differentials that pay for presence—especially at night and in under-resourced neighborhoods.

None of that is flashy. None of it trends. But together, it changes what a Tuesday night feels like for the mother, the young man in crisis, the officer, and the clinician.

Compassion, in this frame, is not a soft extra. It’s embedded in how we design the chain: phone → dispatch → arrival → decision → destination → follow-up.

Why Metrics Belong in a Conversation About Compassion

Some people flinch when you start talking about “measuring” compassion. It can sound like we’re reducing care to a spreadsheet. My argument is the opposite:

In public systems, what you can’t see, you won’t sustain.

If we say we value compassionate policing, then we should be willing to track things that make it real:

• How long do warm transfers to crisis lines actually take?

• How often are clinicians or peers on scene or on the line?

• What’s the average “curb-to-room” time at the crisis center?

• How many next-day appointments are offered—and kept?

• Which neighborhoods wait longest, and which languages are missing at night?

These are not just “performance indicators.” They are receipts that show whether our compassion is showing up where we say it is.

Compassion that leaves no trace is charity. Compassion that leaves receipts is culture.

When compassion becomes part of:

• a stipend line for night-shift teams,

• a clause in a co-response contract,

• a denial log that is honest enough to hurt and therefore useful,

…we’re no longer relying on individual heroics. We’re building expectations into the system.

Law, Ethics, and “Why Are Police Even Here?”

The epilogue also tackles a question communities ask all the time:

“Why do police show up when there’s no crime?”

The short answer is: safety.

The longer answer is that constitutional law, state mental health statutes, and professional ethics all converge on this idea: officers are often the only 24/7 mobile workforce authorized to step into that “gray area” where someone is at serious risk but no crime has been committed.

Compassionate policing doesn’t mean “police first, always.” It means:

• When there is credible risk of serious harm,

• And when a clinician-only team is unavailable, unsure, or requests staging,

• Police respond to secure safety and facilitate a handoff to care, not to make the situation a contest.

A practical standard I use in policy work is:

When there is credible risk of serious harm or grave inability to care for basic safety, send the nearest appropriate care team. If a clinician-led team isn’t available or requests staging, send police to secure safety, exercise emergency-aid authority if needed, and move the person toward health care—not deeper into the justice system.

That’s compassionate policing at the policy level: clear, lawful, safety-first, and health-oriented.

Hard Nights Are Design Inputs, Not Excuses

Even with well-built systems, there will be nights where things go badly.

Phones fail. Cars stall. A person’s pain outruns every tool we have. A call scars a family, an officer, a clinician, or a nurse. There is no version of this work that is neat.

In a culture of compassionate policing, what changes is the response after:

• Bad nights trigger review, not defensiveness.

• Scorecards get updated, not massaged.

• Policy and staffing adjust based on what actually happened, not just what’s written.

Hard nights become design inputs. They show us where the chain broke: Was it the script? The staffing? The destination? The handoff? The law?

Compassionate systems don’t pretend everything went fine. They treat pain points as instructions.

Your Piece of the Chain

The epilogue ends with a handoff: this isn’t my city’s story; it’s yours.

Compassionate policing doesn’t start and end with an officer on a doorstep. It’s carried by:

• Dispatchers who insist on keeping that extra behavioral health prompt in the script.

• Clinicians who teach rookies how to offer choices that aren’t hiding a threat.

• Sergeants and Lieutenants who take three minutes after a call to ask, “What would we do again? What would we change?”

• Charge nurses who fight to move screening closer to the front door, not deeper into the hallway.

• Union reps who bargain for staffing, supervision, and wellness protections that prevent moral injury.

• Council members and county supervisors who tie budgets to equity gaps and response metrics, not just anecdotes.

• Families and advocates who write the phrase “least restrictive if safe” on crisis cards and bring those cards to the table.

Systems are built in Tuesday increments: one script, one MOU, one training block, one staffing tweak at a time.

Why This Matters

If someone asks you, in a meeting or at a microphone, why compassionate policing deserves time and money when there are so many other needs, you can answer in a sentence:

Compassion reduces fear before it becomes force. It shortens scenes, clears units for true emergencies, and keeps destinations honest. It prevents moral injury and the slow exit of good people. Compassion is a public-safety strategy you can make, measure, and sustain.

When that’s true—not just in our values, but in our budgets, dashboards, and policies—you can point to a hallway, a clock, a call log, and say:

This is what compassion looks like in our city.