Arnette Heintze, Hillard Heintze’s Founder and CEO

Q:                    Could you describe your job in two to three sentences? 

AH:                 Let me give you a perspective on my background because I think it will help explain Hillard Heintze and where we are today. I finished LSU in 1977 and went straight into law enforcement. I was a uniformed police officer in south Louisiana – and that experience really started framing my perspective and view on the world of criminal justice. I became a criminal investigator for the Louisiana Attorney General's office for a couple of years. Then I moved on to the Louisiana State Police where I served as a State Police detective working some of the worst crimes in the state at the time. And then I joined the Secret Service in 1983 as a Special Agent. The Secret Service protects the President and our nation's financial infrastructure, so it has a very unique mission in the criminal justice system. My career which was 30 odd years in that, in public service, certainly gave me a point of view. I decided to retire from the Secret Service in 2003 and, with a perspective strongly – but not completely – influenced by my 30-odd year career in public service, I opened the firm we have here today in January 2004.

Q:                    Okay. Can you tell me about the firm? 

AH:                 Hillard Heintze. I'm the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the company.  We are a security risk management firm. That's a broad phrase, but think of it as relevant in five specific areas. Security Risk Management, Threat + Violence Risk Management, Investigations, Private Client and Family Office Services, and finally Law Enforcement Consulting. In the world of law enforcement consulting, we have a team that really is immersed in reforming law enforcement to make sure our law enforcement leaders and organizations are bringing best practices to bear in the criminal justice system. I started that practice about 10 years ago when I recognized that criminal justice reform was an important topic. The first community we worked in was Seattle, Washington in a place called King County. We examined their internal affairs program to identify areas for improvement – and I think we had 18 recommendations in that report.

Q:                    Oh wow.

AH:                 And the Sheriff implemented every one of them. What we found is that significant reform needed to take place and we offered a roadmap on how we recommended these areas be fixed. We did that probably in 2010. We have such great subject matter experts in the area of law enforcement and criminal justice so we get called into organizations going through a variety of challenges. For example, we did work for the Metra Police Department in Chicago. You may not remember this but there was an Executive Director of Metra who was caught embezzling funds. The Metra Board asked us to come in to look at their law enforcement because they saw some problems in that area once he was gone. We made a pretty comprehensive review. We've seen this constantly, but the biggest challenge in law enforcement today is leadership. If you're going to reform the criminal justice system, you have to have leaders who truly understand the best practices required to lead law enforcement agencies effectively. Like do they have a strategic plan? Do they know how to create one? Do they know how to balance the ends, ways, means, and risks of a strategy initiative? Another crucial area is training and selecting individuals to be in the criminal justice system, whether they're guards in a jail or officers on the street. Here's an example: in 2015, the Mayor of Denver reached out to us, a gentleman by the name of Michael Hancock. In their jail system, fatalities kept occurring. A number of their inmates were dying at the hands of the jailers. The community was outraged and calling for federal authorities to step in. The mayor reached out to us and we identified 14 key findings with over 300 recommendations. And that community is going through and implementing every one of these recommendations since then. You will find these reports on our website, too.

Q:                    Okay, perfect.

AH:                 So that will give you a sense of the work we're doing. Another organization that we did some work with was Schaumburg which is, you know, a Chicago suburb. They had three police officers who were arrested for selling cocaine to an undercover federal agent. The Community Manager didn't know whether there was a problem in the organization, but he reached out to us and said maybe you guys should come and take a look at our organization. It turns out that it was a leadership issue. Their police chief was not leading the organization in a manner aligned with best practices. They ended up firing the chief and asked us to come in and run the Police Department transitionally. We actually did so, as a private company, for a year. We also did this with Metra. I'm in the middle of writing a book with our team around how to strengthen the bridge between communities and law enforcement agencies that are there to protect and serve us. One of the critical issues we see today is bias in policing whether it is intended, which we would call implicit, or explicit bias. And sometimes police officers don't realize they're policing in a biased manner. But sometimes it's very aggressive, and unconstitutional by picking somebody by the color of their skin or their ethnicity. So that's a huge issue that we see: law enforcement use of force across this country. There are some law enforcement representatives who have lost perspective on the true value of a human life. And we see far too often police resort to violence when there would have been another way to de-escalate the incident. Here in Chicago, there was the notorious killing of Laquan McDonald who was shot 16 times. The courts will determine if that is criminal. 

If a police officer has to use his or her weapon in the line of duty, as soon as that situation is neutralized, their responsibility has to be how do they respond to save that individual's life. That's a fundamental responsibility that police officers who have to use force need to do a better job on. We just saw that in Baton Rouge, which is my hometown. The city had a shooting two years ago of a gentleman by the name of Alton Sterling. The police got into a huge fight and a struggle and they shot him. But the police chief there came in and looked at the facts, and he fired the police officer who did that. They didn't indict him criminally, they didn't charge him, but the new chief determined that's not the manner in which police officers should carry out the performance of their duties. So, the use of force is a topic that in society and criminal justice reform we really have to pay special attention to. Because we need to do a better job on training our police officers on how to de-escalate violent situations.

Q:                    You also said something about biases, can you elaborate?

AH:                 Sure. Here’s the issue of bias in policing. It’s fundamentally just making sure the department has the right policies to deal with bias policing, making sure they are given the right training and appropriate supervision. For the supervisors of police officers, meaning sergeants, lieutenants and captains, there's a higher level of training. So absolutely something can be done about it. I’ve talked about bias. I have talked about use of force. Police accountability is a big area. And when we talk about police accountability, it's about building trust. How can law enforcement communities do a better job of building trust with the communities they serve. It’s not this “us-and-them” thing. It's got to be a “we” thing. How do police officers identify themselves with the community?  If they go in there with this warrior mentality of “it's us against them – and they're the enemy,” that's a recipe for failure and there's too many police departments in this country, that approach it from that point of view.

Q:                    I haven’t thought about it like that before. That's really interesting. 

AH:                 If you go back in time, we have asked our police officers to do a lot. Chicago is a great example where on the south and west side there are some struggling communities. There are children born in our society who don't have the family structures that maybe you or I grew up in. The church I belong to here, Old St. Pat's, we sponsor an initiative in North Lawndale because on any given night, there are 300 kids who don't know where they're going to sleep. They don't know where their next meal is coming from. They don't know who they're going to be with. And these are kids who are as young as six months old to 17 years of age. And that's a tragedy, when we have children in our society who don't know where they're going to sleep, where their next meal is going to come, how they're going to get ready for school, what they're going to do, we can do a better job. And so those are things that we need to pay attention to.

Q:                    To you what does criminal justice reform look like? What's going on that you see in front of you right now?

AH:                 Criminal justice reform looked different 18 months ago than it does today. One of the principal drivers of that is our U.S. President. Under President Obama, there was a genuine interest in supporting criminal justice reform and doing so in a manner which supported the police but, at the same time, recognized that police can do a better job with our communities. That was a significant initiative. As a matter of fact, here is a report that we did with the Department of Justice under President Obama for San Francisco. In this report, we identified 80 initiatives and 94 findings of the police department, things that they needed to change. 

Every community in this country can be a little different, but the fundamentals of criminal justice reform need to ensure that you have a compassionate, caring law enforcement organization that has the right leadership, the right personnel selected and trained by it, and that they're engaging positively with the community they're supposed to protect and serve. But they're engaging them on an equal basis, meaning it's not “us against them.” It is “We're here to help. How can we help you.” But there is all too often this persona involved. You know: the cops come in and it’s like “hey, you're going to do what I tell you to do.” And in a crisis situation you certainly need police taking control and so on. But there has to be higher levels of trust established between the community and the police. So that's criminal justice reform, that's where it starts. Number one: how to build trust between police and the communities they serve. 

Q:                    And how do you do that?

AH:                 It’s done with leadership, with education, with training. All of the things I've talked about - about training cops on their implicit and explicit bias issues, on proper use of force, on de-escalation. It’s about building community oriented policing strategies that police and the community can embrace, you know bringing them together, helping the police agencies realize that their communities have a voice. The community needs to be able to say “we don't like this” or “we like this” or whatever the issue is. They need to make sure their voices are heard, and figure out how to bring that together. There's got to be a mindset of openness and willingness that will start this initiative of reform.

Q:                    Yeah, you talked about other communities and that every community is kind of different. And my question is why are you here in Chicago? What's going on in Chicago as a community that makes it unique?

AH:                 The reason I'm here in Chicago is when I was with the Secret Service they sent me here in '99 to run the Midwest for the agency. I was the agent in charge of the Secret Service here. My wife and I got here, and we actually fell in love with Chicago. And I was supposed to go back to Washington, but we got here, and we realized this is a great town. A few years later I retired from public service, and started the business that we have here today. And then we started having children here. We have three beautiful little girls and Chicago is our home. It's just a great, great community. I think we've got a tremendous leader in our Mayor who really understands the issues. It's a tough job because he's got so many different constituents that he's got to be able to help understand and accept and unify in order to advance reform. There are many things that need to change here too. And I think slowly, it's starting to happen. But it doesn't get broken overnight and it doesn't get fixed overnight. 

Q:                    What has stood in your way?

AH:                 Stood in my way? From what aspect?

Q:                    The company or anything else relating to criminal justice or criminal justice reform.

AH:                 Before we do work, a city or community needs to officially engage us. So, in that regard, there is nothing in our way.

Q:                    Okay interesting.

AH:                 And we have communities across this country trying to reform law enforcement. Right now, our team is working in Tampa, and Fort Pierce in Florida, in Memphis, Tennessee, in San Francisco, and in Commerce City, Colorado. 

Q:                    It's different being a private company.

AH:                 It’s totally different. It’s not like I have a mandate to have to go do anything. Somebody wants help? We can help, but you've got to hire us.

Q:                    Has there ever been an incident or a person you met that has changed your views on the system?

AH:                 Actually, there's been a couple. The first person that started helping shape my perspective a little different was President Clinton, Bill Clinton. In his administration, he actually created the COPS Office in the Department of Justice. He established the COPS Office which stands for Community Oriented Policing Services. It’s a distinct branch. He was probably the first progressive President, progressive political leader our nation has had in this area. He put a lot of effort into trying to understand the need for reform in law enforcement, and the COPS Office emerged from that. I would tell you that President Obama has been another leader who did a tremendous job trying to impact communities across this country and making sure reform came around. Because as a society, we were slipping into many, many situations of officers undertaking unconstitutional policing, violating our civil rights and not giving us due process of law. President Obama really had a keen interest in this. Have you seen his report on Policing in the 21stCentury?

Q:                    Not yet.

AH:                 You can look this up online, this was the Final Report from the President's Task Force of 21stCentury Policing. It came out in May of 2015. This is a tremendous initiative. It was embraced all across the country. And what they identified is different pillars. The first pillar is Building Trust and Legitimacy. And then we have Policy Oversight, Technology Social Media, Community Policing and Crime Reduction. Then Training Education and, finally, Officer Wellness and Safety. These are the things that we've been talking about. The report did a great job summarizing those issues. If you look that up online, that will give you a reference point to be able to say, in May of 2015, President Obama issued this report, his office made sure this report was issued to help reform law enforcement in our nation. 

Q:                    Before we conclude, is there anything else that you think I should know while learning about the criminal justice system and criminal justice reform?

AH:                 I think you know criminal justice reform has to be about people. There has to be committed people who believe that reform is necessary. The President we have now, if you listen to him – and I don’t know your politics and I don't care whether they're left or right, but this President is more on the right side. He’s more conservative. He has said he believes our police are great and they do no wrong and “let them go.” That's a mistake in my opinion.

Q:                    I agree.

AH:                 A mistake. The police are people. They will make mistakes because people are people and no one’s perfect. There will be situations when police officers cross the line and violate a federal, state or local law – our nation’s police must be accountable for their actions. To turn your head and say “oh no they're great” or “let them go do what they want to do,” no: that's wrong. Also, in addition to people, criminal just reform is also about resources. To advance reform in our nation, we need resources committed by federal, state, and local law enforcement. At every level – federal, state, and local – politicians need to fund initiatives to train, educate and prepare our police officers on a higher level. Funding is a crucial element. And then the last thing: there has to be this trust component that I've talked about: trust between police and community. Those are some of the biggest issues that I see.

Q:                    Thank you so much.