“Justice is always first, painstakingly done, as long as it takes. The media can and should wait.”
Former Minneapolis police Chief Janeé Harteau, whose resignation was compelled after Justine Ruszcyk Damond was shot and killed in a back alleyway by Minneapolis police Officer Mohamed Noor, recently launched a consulting firm one month after stepping down from her police leader role.
Calling it Titanium Leadership, LLC, former-chief Janeé Harteau’s new consultancy firm website purports to offer “public speaking, coaching and consulting” from a “visionary leader, trailblazer, [and] transformational change agent.” Janeé Harteau’s new venture will be operating out of the Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul region.
Leading in Crisis
One of the sub-pages on Harteau’s business website says “Leading in Crisis” which some may find ironic, given the Damond incident when, during and several days thereafter, she was nowhere to be found. Ms. Harteau also serves as an assistant professor at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, providing instruction in police leadership in its Police Science program. One may wonder what she tells her students when dissecting Damond-like instances.
Ms. Harteau admitted being out of town at the time of the July 15 fatal shooting of Damond and, instead of deploying back to Minneapolis, for six days she remained on vacation and left the highly questionable incident in the hands of her secondary commanders. Ms. Harteau claimed her vacation spot was remote and without the ability to monitor the event as it unfolded.
I know of no police executive who would ever position themselves out of contact and not within range of communication with subordinates under his/her command.
Not to question the competency of her command staff, but leading in crisis from afar is certainly a watered-down version of leading from the front-lines, seeing first-hand graphics, generating order out of chaos, and directing assets from the ground. Mitigation becomes paramount and, when the top cop is not around, any preventable failings seem more indefensible. Remote-based and ineffective is not leadership quality.
It took five days before Ms. Harteau publicly addressed the Damond shooting. In her statement and before the investigation was even remotely substantive, she flung open the city’s door to civil litigation.
Dogging the Process
Any pursuant climate in Minneapolis after a Muslim (Somalian) policeman shot and killed a yoga teacher (Damond) who called for police services is not your run-of-the-mill incident. It exacerbated matters when Ms. Harteau decided to go on Live TV and state “Justine didn’t have to die.” That was a premature statement to make as the investigative process ensued and elemental pieces were still being collected by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Any police executive can attest to that, no matter how the cursory perspective appears.
Ms. Harteau further fueled fire when she suggested the investigative process be expedited to allow transparency. No clock need ever be hastened in any investigation, despite the desire or policy to be transparent. Justice is always first, painstakingly done, as long as it takes. The media can and should wait. PR and providing information to curious citizens are not the priority.
Recently, MPRNews.com published the following excerpt spoken by Ms. Harteau: “I think if people are really committed to change that they have to weather the storms of those setbacks and not be quick to assume that progress is not being made and assume that the people in charge are not doing what they need to do. It takes time.” Indeed it does, whether it be “change” or the most serious of investigations and detectives doing what they need to do.
In the MPRNews.com interview, Ms. Harteau alluded to her new consultancy form: “I’d like to have an impact in a broader way. If I’m a chief, I can impact that city, but I don’t have the time to impact the profession or have more of a global basis.”
She surely had the time (opportunity) to impact the profession by showing what a dedicated police chief ought to do: be in accessible range and return to base camp when worst-case scenarios become reality. That would have been a great stride to impress upon not only the Minneapolis police force and its constituents but for the nation. Example-setting is what she speaks of here, but supportive actions lacked mid-July 2017.
Bumping Heads
Given what we just discussed, it comes as little to no surprise that Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges elected to telegraph that it would be in Harteau’s best interest to resign. (That is a common prelude, a sort of save-face method, when a figurehead is anticipating termination in lieu of her resignation.) Any faith in her ability, and confidence in continuing police leadership, would have culminated differently. In fact, you likely wouldn’t be reading that the former Minneapolis police chief opened a consultancy agency.
At the time of the July crisis, Mayor Hodges wrote, “As far as we have come, I’ve lost confidence in the chief’s ability to lead us further — and from the many conversations I’ve had with people around our city, especially this week, it is clear that she has lost the confidence of the people of Minneapolis as well.” (For the record, Mayor Hodges is not seemingly favored there either.)
In a Hennepin County Attorney’s Office statement, prosecutor Mike Freeman said, “We have received some emails and phone calls from members of the community demanding that we charge the officer immediately and ascribing all kinds of nefarious reasons as to why we haven’t done so. The truth is, we are following the same procedure we have with the three previous officer-involved shootings.”
Mr. Freeman provided a tentative answer regarding when his office will render a decision pertaining chargeable offenses against Officer Noor, saying, “While I have no way of knowing how long the investigation and review will take, usually from the time of the officer firing the shot until our office’s announcement of a decision, four to six months have elapsed. I fully expect a decision in this case before the end of 2017.”
As of August 29, 2017, the Hennepin County prosecutor has declared, despite pressure from the Minneapolis community, if any charges are brought against Officer Noor it will not be until the end of this year.
Ultimately, the outset will fall into the lap of current Minneapolis police Chief Medaria Arradondo who, on July 15, 2017 was the boots-on-the-ground leader during a major crisis. On August 30, Chief Arradondo got the opportunity to do so again and reshuffled the command staff within the Minneapolis Police Department.
