32-year police veteran and current Sunriver, Oregon Police Chief Cory Darling, who previously served as a patrol officer, detective, Sergeant, lieutenant and captain with the City of Bend, OR Police Department, including 5 years as a Narcotics Investigator, 16 years with a regional SWAT team, and more, discusses his current commitment to the safety, resilience and wellbeing of all of his officers and other personnel as well as current challenges in policing and necessary priorities for the future of public safety.
How early career experiences inspired him to move beyond and aspire to transform the dehumanizing and isolating, us versus them attitudes common in law enforcement culture.
The importance of law enforcement and public safety leaders, leading from the front, directly participating in and modeling the wellness or resilience training programs they bring into their agencies.
Discovering how yoga and mindfulness reduced occupational injuries and his own path of participating in and leading these wellness and resilience training programs.
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Transcript
Lt. Richard Goerling:
Hi, everyone! Welcome to another session on day six of the Global First Responder Resilience Summit. My name is Richard Goerling. I'll be your co-host for this session. Today's theme is Leading Resilience. I'd like to welcome Chief Cory Darling with the Sunriver Police Department in Oregon to the conversation. So, Corey, welcome. Good to have you here.
Chief Cory Darling:
Thank you, Rich. It's my pleasure. I really been looking forward to this. Thanks for the invite. I really appreciate it.
Lt. Richard Goerling:
Yeah, well, you've been a real influencer and just the whole charge of leading health and humanity or resilience, maybe said differently. Not just in Oregon, but I think really nationally and even internationally with just really leading by example.
Before we get started, Cory, what I want to do is just read your bio, right? It's always fun to have someone read your bio, or not fun to have someone read your bio, but let me just introduce you formally to our audience, and then we can talk more specifically about your career.
Chief Cory Darling:
Sounds good.
Lt. Richard Goerling:
Thank you. So, Chief Corey Darling is currently the Chief of Police for the Sunriver Police Department in Oregon. He has over 32 years of law enforcement service. Corey has held the positions of Officer, Detective, Sergeant, Lieutenant, and Captain with the City of Bend Police Department.
Cory has also served in numerous special assignments including five years as a narcotics investigator, 16 years as a regional SWAT team member, a motor officer, street crime sergeant, firearms instructor, integrated use of force instructor, and a field training officer.
Corey holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in criminal justice and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy Class 237. Corey is the current Board of Director for the Oregon Association of Chiefs of Police, Vice President for the Oregon Fallen Badge Foundation, and a Board of Director for Kids Center, a regional Children's Advocacy Centre. Cory, you're no stranger to public service. So, thank you.
Chief Cory Darling:
No, thank you. Yeah. It's been a long ride. Thirty-two years in the profession. It's changed me. Both the profession has changed. There's a lot for us to do, a lot to work on. I think there's some things that we can share. Hopefully we can improve the quality of services that we provide to our communities.
Lt. Richard Goerling:
Absolutely, yeah. Thank you for that. That's yet another reason why we're here talking is to kind of tap into some of that wisdom and some of that innovation and way of really thinking forward and visioning what the future of service and public safety looks like.
Can we lay the foundation? Can you just tell us your story to whatever degree that you want? Tell us about Cory Darling's journey in public safety. You mentioned it changed you. Maybe a little bit into that. How maybe your vision as a law enforcement officer, law enforcement leader, has evolved over time, and share a little bit with the audience who is Cory?
Chief Cory Darling:
Yeah, absolutely. I started in the profession in 1988. The reason I got into the profession is the guy that I was working with it at the time was a retired police officer. I was in the sales industry. The more I talked to him, the more interested I got in law enforcement. It sounded challenging, exciting, something that I really wanted to be involved in. And I really wanted to give back to my community. So, that's kind of what got me started in law enforcement.
I started out just about everybody else on patrol, pushing a patrol car, and answering calls for service. I've really had an outstanding career. I got to do some really cool things. But during my career, I've also had some of those threshold moments, right? Those changing moments that define who you are, and how you want to be a police officer.
One of those times came. It was September 22nd 1995. I was on the SWAT team, and we were going to execute a search warrant for our regional drug team. The person that we had targeted, he was no stranger to us. He had been in and out of prison most of his adult life. He was kind of a bad actor. He had a reputation out on the street for really enforcing his drug trade. He's the big guy that go in prison and he would come out just totally yoke, just a big guy.
We set up this mission, and we were just going to secure the residence and then allow the drug team to do their thing. This was a search warrant that went bad from the get-go. And as you can imagine, everything going wrong in a mission, that's what took place. I learned a lot about leadership in training during this actual mission. That's a different story altogether.
But during the execution, I was actually shot by another one of my officers. I took two rounds from a nine-millimeter to the chest, just thankfully that I was wearing Kevlar at the time. I survived the encounter. That changed my career. But more importantly, I think it changed the person that was the target of the search warrant. He changed at that point in time.
He got into rehab and cleaned himself up. He spent and to this day, he's been helping at risk youth. He has actually been going into the prison systems and helping to reform people that were in the same situation that he was. And so, while that was kind of a tragic encounter, for me, it was a victory, I guess you could say, in some sort of fashion.
What I took away from that is, I had started to develop kind of a cynical view of the people that I was interacting with. It was kind of an us against them mentality. That made me realize that even though he made some really poor decisions in his life, he was still at heart, a good person and wanting to do the right thing. He had just taken a different path. So, I took that and I carried that with me throughout my career. That's kind of how I started looking at our profession. And maybe, we could do some things to change.
Lt. Richard Goerling:
Yeah, that's a fantastic story. I hope to read that in a book chapter one day. So that threshold moment, Cory, was one where it sounds like you confronted a lot of things. One of those, it sounds like, was sort of the cynicism of the culture that you were embodying where we're othering the people in our communities, the classic bad guy. Right?
We have all kinds of names for folks who we encounter on a daily basis in law enforcement. And a lot of times that dehumanization literally gets under our skin. And so, it sounds like that was a really a key threshold moment. I love that term, where you started to reassess whether that was the way you wanted to be, and you shifted.
And so, tell me about how that threshold moment informed your own journey as a law enforcement officer, but also your journey as a law enforcement leader.
Chief Cory Darling:
Right. At that point in time, I was an officer. I wasn't in a command structure at all. But I learned a lot from that moment. I took the opportunity to get involved in training, right. I became a firearms instructor, integrator use of force instructor, taught SWAT tactics, because I wanted to improve the way that we led our officers, the way that we interacted with the public, and just our mental focus on the job that we do.
So, I got into the training aspect of it. I didn't promote until early 2000s. I was promoted to sergeant. I was able to run my own team. I ran a patrol team. I ran a Street Crimes Unit. I tried to help mentor our officers in looking at the bigger picture as opposed to just run and gun and put handcuffs to people and take them to jail. Try to look at a systematic way that we could improve the job that we were doing.
I kind of carried that forward and got into more of an administrative piece when I promoted to lieutenant in 2005. What I found is, the more that you promote through the ranks, the more influence you can have on your organization. And then again, by the same token, the more you promote, the bigger the gap comes from you and the people out on the street doing the job.
So, one of the things that I really wanted to make sure that I was doing properly is keeping that connection with the officers. I didn't want to lose that. We see our officers and I talk about my own personal cynicism, and some of the bad attitude that I had when I was a police officer. I saw that from the way that I interacted with people on the street. But then I've also seen it internally with officers reacting the same way to the administration side of law enforcement, right? They see the administration as the enemy, just as they see the bad guy on the street as their opposing force. And it doesn't have to be that way.
In administration, we need to take a role in developing a better connection with the officers on the street, so we don't lose that. We have to have that connection. And that's the only way that we're really going to make true change in my opinion.
Lt. Richard Goerling:
Yeah, that's really a great point. I'm going to emphasize that for the public safety leaders that are listening, even the community leaders that are listening, is the connection, the connection with the people that you're privileged to lead and manage is critically important.
One observation too that I have, for me, in my own journey, and in the research that that I'm involved in, is that you've promoted up but you don't lose the occupational stress, right? You're still exposed to it. I even sometimes describe the conditions of occupational stress that you're in as sort of crucible because I think that you still have the stressors from being operational that you bring, right.
And you have this sort of geopolitical stressors that particularly right now they're incredibly hot, right. And then, if you have incivility between the population of men and women that are sort of operational in your organization, the folks that you know that you want and need to be connected to, that you have inside and outside, and internal stressors that just are almost paralyzing.
And so, I'm curious if you could talk to us about, how as a senior leader in law enforcement, how can you manage your own stress so that you can have clarity to lead? And what recommendations might you make to other senior leaders out there?
Chief Cory Darling:
That's a good point. I think as a leader, we always have to lead the way. I think of a lot of administrators. They look at programs and they think, "Hey, that's a great idea. Let's bring that program into our agency. We'll check that box. It will make us look really good."
Unfortunately, they don't know what they're doing. They don't try the actual whatever it is that they're trying to push into the agency, right? They're just trying to check that box. I think that the troops see that. They recognize that, and that's where that disconnect is.
In my opinion, when you implement programs in your agency, as a leader, we take charge. Whatever that program is, and I can go into some of the programs that we implemented around 2013-2014 at the Bend Police Department, one of those things that we implemented was yoga.
We really wanted to take a holistic approach to wellness. We looked at where the injuries were coming from when we looked at our trips. We found out there were a lot of knee injuries, a lot of hip injuries, shoulder injuries. And so, we wanted to bring a component in to address that. Believe it or not, yoga was one of those things that would give us more flexibility, it would build strength. What we found over time is it really reduced the injuries that we saw from our officers that were experiencing that on the street. So, that was a plus. But from an administrative side of things, I had to participate. I had to participate in the yoga so the troops would know that I bought off on this as well. I was leading. We have to lead from the front.
I got to be honest, I was not always sold on this stuff at all. When we talked about yoga, we talked about mindfulness, we talk about some of these things that some of our officers would call a little bit woo woo, right. I wasn't sold initially. However, as an administrator, by taking the lead and actually experiencing what could happen, I am a true believer now. I found out that we can improve the people that we lead, but we have to lead from the front. Does that make sense?
Lt. Richard Goerling:
Yeah, and I love that. I think that maybe another way to frame leading from the front draws in this notion of checkbox programs. I want to maybe address that and then see if you have any comments.
A lot of senior leaders bring in wellness programs. It's almost a desperation to try to do something well intention for the troops. And yet, we don't participate in those. And so, there's no leadership from the front, or maybe said differently, there's a lack of embodiment, a lack of leading by example. In the mind and body training world, we refer to this as embodiment or integration, integrating the skills.
When we practice things like yoga, it's mindful movement. We get more attuned to what's going on, and maybe you practice some awareness attention skills called meditation, that they train us to improve focus and a lot of other really interesting things. There's a whole lot of checkbox efforts happening from my perspective, and I hope that I'm wrong, across the nation as it relates to police wellness.
The data is not producing or not illuminating that we're very successful. The landscape of suffering among police officers now that the data is really sobering. And in fact, one study I want to bring up just to integrate into our conversation, Cory, is a recent study by John Violante and his team up in Buffalo, New York, from 1997 to 2018, looked at duty related illness deaths among police officers. And so that looks like stroke and cardiovascular disease, cancer. I know that you all lost the officer event that was, you know, one of these data points, but Johnny was a real human being, right.
We see this happen, and our efforts to intervene are often not working well. Now, the work that you did at Bend Police Department really did make a difference. We have some great data to show that yeah, this is in fact, a great example of how we can lead forward that isn't just a checkbox program.
I just painted a really kind of assorted picture for what we know nationally. But I do think, too, that there is this crucible effects that the intense stress that senior leaders are under, we lose our ability to see clearly. Perhaps, even lose our ability to move into the participatory role, the leading from the front. I wonder if you have thoughts about how to break out of that crucible into action that might be more successful for us.
Chief Cory Darling:
Yeah, right. I mean, I think when you get into administration, the duties in your job, they change, right? You spend your days going to meetings, and interacting with stakeholders and political figures to move your vision and your mission forth. But with that, I think we become so focused on that we lose sight of what is really, really important. And those are the people that we lead, right?
We talk a big game about the people are the most important asset that we deploy. Well, I think it's time for us as administrators to put the money where our mouth is, and step up to the plate, and invest in them. We look at it from the standpoint and it's a philosophical view that if our officers are mentally well, they're physically fit, they're in a good mindset. When they put the uniform on and they go out on the street, they're going to perform a better service to our community.
And honestly, isn't that what it's about? It's not about us attending meetings. It's about making sure that we lead people that are going to carry forth our mission and treat the public well. And so, we just have to change, I think, the way that we prioritize our day. And if we put our people first we're going to make a difference.
Lt. Richard Goerling:
Yeah, this is I think really skillfully stated, Cory. I want to highlight a couple of things you said. You use this term 'investment.' If you just look in the management term, the return on the investment is so far beyond wellness. And this is why I often say wellness is the wrong conversation. You've just framed the conversation as a performance conversation. So, in other words, how your officers show up in the community and encounter the public, how they perform their tradecraft, how they build relationship.
In today's environment, we also need to talk about how we bring equity with the deep responsibility and the deep authority that police officers have to folks that don't look like us, the folks that are different. And simply how we show up with an ethos of equanimity that honors the constitution, that honors the community standards, and all of that. That is about optimizing human performance.
I think you've just shifted the conversation from wellness to performance. Once we look at it as a performance conversation, then I really do think it shifts the lens through which we see things and it shifts the conversation. I think it's wonderful for a chief of police to care about his or her men and women in uniform. And of course, you do, a successful leader is going to.
To be able to fund interventions, we'll call them, that are going to help your officers be healthy, and have the kinds of perspectives on humanity that we need to do this work today in the 21st century, you have to be supported by city councils, and mayors, and the community to spend money to literally invest to bring in yoga teachers, to bring in meditation teachers, to train your folks to become yoga teachers and meditation teachers and have more skill and nutrition and all kinds of things that we need to do.
And so, thank you for shifting the conversation from leading resilience to really leading human performance.
Chief Cory Darling:
Yeah, no. Absolutely. I know, I think when we talk about the job that we do for our community, we do a really good job with training our officers in a lot of the skills that we believe they need to do their job.
I think we do a fantastic job at teaching them how to use their firearms. We teach them defensive tactics. We teach them emergency vehicle operations. Those are all extremely important and we've done a fantastic job doing that. But what happens and what have we done in law enforcement when we take an applicant and we put them through a battery of tests, their oral boards?
We evaluate their mental proficiency to do the job. We'd send them to a psychologist where they're vetted. They are physically tested. So, we know that they're in good physical conditions when they start the profession. So, what happens when we bring these folks in, and we know that they're good morally sound people, but then 15 years into their career, they're making mistakes that they shouldn't be making. They're treating the community in a way they shouldn't be treating the community. Is there something in the profession that is leading and transitioning them to that state of mind?
I can say, from my own personal experience, the job does change you. I am not the same person that I was when I started the profession at all. I'm on a constant path to try to improve myself and be better at serving my community and serving the officers that I employ to work for our community, right? So, we have to look at, if I own a piece of that, if I bring somebody into this profession, and I'm changing them, I own a piece of that. And I have to do something to make sure that they can not only survive the 25 or 30 years in the profession, but when they retire, they survive as well.
We look at police officer suicide, and if you compare a police officer suicide to the line of duty death, it's almost double the number. If you take COVID out of the picture, it's almost double the number of line of duty deaths.
I think that we as administrators, we own that. We have to make a change. So, when we look at firearms, look at defensive tactics, we need to keep that. We also need to look at how do I keep this person that is well vetted mentally and physically sound through their career because they're the ones that are doing the job.
Lt. Richard Goerling:
Yeah, that's a great, very informed perspective. When you were at the Bend Police Department, you were a key champion to bring in yoga and mindfulness and psychotherapy and other kinds of, we'll call them health and wellness interventions, to support the men and women of Bend Police Department, which also had an influence in Bend Fire.
So, you've been there done that. You've been there. You know how to do this work. You know how difficult this is. You also know how imperfect it is, right? No leadership initiative is 100% effective or perfect. There's always problems and conflict and all that. But that's just part of part of life.
Having gone through some of this, are there two or three things that you would recommend to police chiefs listening, or other senior public leaders listening, who are really interested in what are a couple of really tactical practical things that they can start to do to move towards a different level of resilience and health and humanity?
Chief Cory Darling:
Right. And first and foremost, I want to say that I was a small cog in a bigger wheel within my agency. I have to give a lot of kudos and respect to the team that worked to make this happen. Lieutenant Brian Beekman, Sergeant Scott Vinson, they were instrumental in pushing the wellness program forward.
And any administrator needs to understand that they are the ones that are going to authorize these programs to take place, but it's the people underneath them that will be driving that that program forward. And that's what they really need to know that the weight is not just on their shoulders. They can allow their people to be creative. They can allow them to move that needle forward and improve the wellness program within the agency.
So, that's the first piece is, this is a group effort. This is a team effort. It is not one individual making this happen. Nobody's going to be successful by trying to take this all on themselves. It's too big, right? So, that's the first piece.
The second piece, I would say is, don't be afraid to fail. You will put programs in place that will not be successful. That just means you learn one way that's not going to work. But you could come at it a different way. And what I have found is when you have an organization that you're working with, and you have different ages that come from different backgrounds, and have different thought processes, you have to come at wellness at a bunch of different angles in order to get to everybody, right?
It's not just one program that is going to fit all sizes, right? So, when we look at programs, like I said, you have to look at it from a holistic standpoint. One of the things that I would also say is the leaders in the organization have to be honest and show that they're vulnerable, and that they have experienced issues in their career as well.
I'm not ashamed to say that I've had calls for service that have really caused me some issues, and that I have seek professional help to get me through that. It's done nothing more than make me better at who I am in the job that I do. We have to get rid of that macho attitude, and that stigma of asking for help. Right?
One other thing that I would say for administrators is when you put a program in place, let's say you're putting in a program to address mental health issues and try to reduce that stigma. That is great. Kudos for doing that. But you will need to put something in place right up front so when your officers say, "I need help", that you can get them into professional services, right then.
When a law enforcement officer comes to the reality that they need help, they need help right away. And one of the things that I found is trying to get people into mental health services was not easy. It was two to three to four weeks out. That just doesn't cut it with law enforcement officers.
We actually contracted with a professional mental health person to help us be that conduit into professional services. That person didn't provide the clinical mental health counselling himself. What he did was get them into a professional provider. So just make sure that when you put these programs in place that you think a little bit ahead so you have the infrastructure in place. So, when you do kick it off, and you get a response from your officer, that you're able to actually assist them.
Lt. Richard Goerling:
Yeah. This is really great, Cory. I want to highlight the five things that I heard you say, because these are so important. The first one is you talked about building a team of champions. That's my term. I had the privilege to work with those folks to help you work with a mindfulness component. So, I got to see.
Here's what I say to you, my friend, is that I love the humility. I will also say, if you weren't in the role you were in, if you weren't that top cover, they would not have been successful. So, as much as I appreciate you distributing the success, there's a role that you played that was perhaps bigger than what you might know.
So, have the organizational infrastructure. You build a team. You have some organizational infrastructure to support that team, and then move, accept failure. Right? Yes. And then, have some diversity and agility in your program so that you meet people at the different various places they are, but with all kinds of issues around what people want, what people need. The other piece was, be vulnerable and be an example. I love that. That's courageous authenticity that is so critically important.
And then finally, having a capacity for what I'll refer to as timely intervention. You have an officer that raises their hand and says, "Hey, I want / I need some medical intervention, some psychotherapy intervention." Have a system to be able to do that. I think that what you all did in the model you created with your psychologists that you contracted with to be able to, I don't know, maybe for lack of better term to triage and get people into services, critically important.
Those five things are great. I think those are five things that folks can sort of reflect on and see in what ways they might want to pursue those to help build a program that's not just a checkbox program, but one that can be integrated, embody, where they can lead from the front and be a participant instead of an observer. Yeah, that's really fantastic. Anything else to say? Did I mischaracterized any of those things, or you want to follow up on any of that?
Chief Cory Darling:
Nope, you're right on track.
Lt. Richard Goerling:
Wonderful. Just the final thing, Cory, that I want to talk about. It's a little more fluid, maybe. We're in a state of policing in America today that is really challenging.
I'm not sure what I'm asking, but I'm interested in your thoughts on, the forward evolution of policing in America, the ability to sit and have conversation with folks who disagree with perhaps sort of the thin blue line ideas, the evolution of those thin blue line ideas from holding the line, "This is how it is." to "Well, okay, maybe there's some room for growth." Or maybe said differently, police reform in America.
This conversation about health, humanity, resilience, human performance, how might we have some consideration for leading reform, leading change, and whatever that means. I don't necessarily have an agenda for that but it's something I'm not sure we can ignore. I know as an innovative leader, I'm sure you've thought about this. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.
Chief Cory Darling:
It's a very complex issue. It's not an easy conversation to have. It's not. I had this conversation with one of my sergeants. We were talking about bias-based policing. We were talking about are we prejudice? Do we have biases?
His response to that is, absolutely not. I said, really? I said, I believe that being a police officer, we are probably more prejudicial than most people because that's the line of work that we are in. Every person that we come in contact with, we are constantly sizing them up to figure out who they are and what they're all about. Are they a danger? Are they a good guy? What is it about them that I need to know? Right?
We look at how they're dressed, how they act, their mannerisms. I would say that depending on where you work and your background, when we look at people that don't look the same as we do, there is a bias there. I think it is in our DNA when you look at how we've evolved as people. We used to be in tribes. If you saw another tribe that didn't look like you, that was a potential threat. And the only way to survive was to be able to recognize that, hey, there's something different going on here. What do I need to be aware of?
So, in law enforcement, we talk about officer safety all the time. You watch police officers. They walk into a restaurant, and they're going to find the table that is in the corner, they're going to put it back against the wall, and they're going to be able to view the entire restaurant. That is what they do. They look at everybody comes through that door, and they look at them for what they see on the surface.
We do have prejudice and bias because that's the job that we do and that's how we stay safe. In order for us to be able to do the job that we do in the manner in which the community expects us to do the job, we have to look internally and we have to recognize that. We have to recognize that we are going to be safe when we're out on the street, but we also may have some prejudicial thoughts when we contact people.
I know that I did it on the street. I would be driving down the road and I'd say, "There's a tweaker." "I know that's a dirtbag." That's our job. So, recognizing that and coming at it from a, "I recognize who I am. I recognize how I think. I am going to do a better job interacting with the people that I'm serving." And we serve those people. We serve everybody. We have to understand that and recognize it.
Lt. Richard Goerling:
Thank you, Cory. This really intentional self-awareness, cultivating the self-awareness that I think you're talking to is really powerful.
As a mindfulness teacher and retired cop, what I know is that we can train police officers to be self-aware and to note the difference between judgement that doesn't serve me well. So, calling someone a tweaker. Although I totally understand why we do that. To reflect on, is that serving me well? Is there some wisdom there about what I know about this person that I can draw, or some discernment that I can draw, and leave the judgement sort of on the table?
I would argue that there's a lot of those prejudices that serve as well and it's not so much prejudice as it is. The training files, right? The training and experience. And at the same time, even within some of those sort of data files that we have is judgement that emerges that gets sort of intertwined with it. If we can learn to separate that and learn how judgments show up and sever the link between the judgement and the behavior, we're going to be more tactically sound.
That's a really fun conversation I love to have with police officers and police leaders is this idea that the more self-aware we can become, the more skillful in the field we are under stress. And, you know, to be able to make sense of information and make informed decisions and not have the fact that someone looks different than me. They're different skin color, different speaking language, or they have a mental illness or substance abuse disorder or something. Have that sort of discomfort that often produces bias become the tail that wags the dog.
I'm really excited to continue conversations with you and with others just about what do we know about cognitive science and how does that inform how we train and how we lead. There's a lot of exciting, I think, potential for that. But you've been a real Trailblazer. And certainly, I want to thank you for that leadership you've demonstrated and for drawing me into some of that over the years. Yeah, I definitely appreciate that. I appreciate your time here.
I just want to offer you an opportunity to kind of have any final words of wisdom for those listening.
Chief Cory Darling:
Thank you so much. It's my pleasure to be here. I know maybe some of my views are not real popular, but I have to say that we're going through a time where our profession is changing, and our culture is changing. The people that we serve are demanding that we do change. We need to lead that change before others on the outside tell us exactly how we're going to do the job, right?
We can be that we can be that progressive profession that caters to the needs of the people that we serve. That's what we need to do. So, thank you. I really appreciate being here.
Lt. Richard Goerling:
Yeah. Thanks, Chief. Really great to be here with you. And yeah, I look forward to watching you continue to lead forward in Oregon.
Chief Cory Darling:
Thank you.
Lt. Richard Goerling:
All right. Thanks.