Carthage Police Department

Chief Greg Dagnan of the Carthage Police Department knew that successful law enforcement requires maintaining a delicate balance. On the one hand, you need policing that effectively responds to legal violations and prioritizes officer safety. But it is also crucial to cultivate trusting relationships with the community. With inherently stressful situations and a slim margin of error, the stakes in law enforcement are high.

National Crisis, Local Proactive Response

Even though Carthage, Missouri enjoyed an exemplary reputation among area officers and within the community, Dagnan was concerned about the increasingly fraught political landscape and the frequency with which police departments across the nation were in conflict with the communities they exist to serve. The aftermath of high-profile events like those in Ferguson, MO, and Baltimore, MD, illustrated a dangerous erosion of trust between law enforcement and local citizens, an erosion that too often escapes detection until after situations escalate.

Dagnan was determined to proactively implement law enforcement leadership training to create a sustainable culture within the department; a culture that would ensure ongoing success without compromising the well-being of officers or of local residents. After reading Leadership and Self-Deception, he realized that Arbinger had the guiding vision, principles, and experience to provide the law enforcement leadership training he was looking for.

Siloed Officers and Escalating Personal Stress

The department faced internal cultural challenges typical of law enforcement. "When I first started, you had a zone. You didn't cross the line. You didn't help anybody else out, other than to just go back them up and make sure they didn't get shot. And then you drive off as quick as possible before you didn't have to get included in their call," one officer described the siloed mentality.

The stress of the job created destructive patterns. "If you let things get to you and go home at the end of the day, you're going to take it out of your wife and kids and it can escalate your home life. You're going to come back to work and be angry the next day and it's going to escalate even more. It's just going to continue to escalate," an officer explained about the cycle.

Accountability Dilemma and Career-Ending Frustration

Leaders faced difficult questions about holding colleagues accountable. "I think the most difficult decisions that we make, and that we struggle with, and from the Chief on down is, so I'm working with a fellow officer who's not reflecting our mission, who's not really helping anyone, and so do I hold them accountable?" one leader posed the challenge.

The dysfunction was taking a toll. "When we started the Arbinger process there were leaders who were angry, frustrated, and ready to end their career," Chief Dagnan later reflected about the state of his team. Officers recognized the systemic nature: "We've come to realize that you can't just move the furniture around. You can't just restructure the command staff or say, 'Hey that guy's out, this guy's in.' You know you've got to change the actual story-line or change the very system. Because everybody knows every organization has a history. Everybody has a system story. And unless you change the story, you're probably not going to change the culture."

Certifying Internal Facilitators for Sustainability

Chief Dagnan wanted a sustainable solution with deep impact. In order to provide every officer with Arbinger's outward mindset tools, Dagnan selected key personnel to become certified to facilitate Arbinger's leadership training program for public safety. This investment enabled the department to internally promote cultural transformation far into the future.

"Through the Arbinger process it gives us some language for not ending up in places we wouldn't want to end up. And that gave the chief then the ability to say, 'We want to change, you know, the culture,'" an officer explained about the framework's power. Another reflected: "I started to kind of put it together, you know, that I really need to change the way I do things."

Applying Principles Across All Systems

Under Dagnan's leadership, Carthage PD implemented outward-mindset practices in multiple areas throughout the organization. Arbinger principles began influencing recruitment, leadership development, de-escalation, crisis management, and community engagement. "Chief and all our command staff puts it into our mind that we should be treating people at a certain standard," an officer noted about the top-down modeling.

One officer described applying this mindset during difficult encounters: "Whenever I contact them, you know they're probably not having the best day, whether it be an accident, a ticket, getting arrested. So I got to think about if I was in their position, just had a car accident, do I want to receive a ticket? So I can kind of understand some of their anger, I don't take it personally towards me, and I think that just helps me get through it."

"Voice of Your Community" Feedback Program

The impact spread well beyond internal department protocol and procedures. The agency wanted to strengthen its community ties by establishing unprecedented transparency and accountability for every police action. By applying Arbinger's "Voice of Your Community" program, Carthage PD started offering all community members the opportunity to rate and provide feedback following any interaction with a Carthage officer.

This feedback was then linked via the department's technology to the specific event and officer(s) involved. In this manner, the Carthage PD could proactively address citizen concerns, deepen trust within the community, and develop their officers. "Each individual officer has to go in with the attitude that they want to improve the department, they want to have better in relationships with their city," one officer emphasized about the mindset shift.

Deep Leadership Conversations

The transformation required more than surface-level changes. "Words are cheap. I mean anybody can say, 'Oh I care about you as a person.' It's an altogether different deal when somebody comes in and closes the door and says, 'You know I care enough about you as a person to ask you a couple of questions about how you're relating to this person over here or your attitude,'" an officer described the authentic accountability.

Another emphasized: "By really stressing that we're not perfect, we're always trying to improve, but in the end that is the style of leadership that we want here. And that becomes the ongoing ongoing work, because it takes a lot of deliberate, intentional, purposeful, engaged conversations."

While gathering feedback is an important step, it ultimately makes little difference unless the recipient is responsive and willing to change. Because the department worked to establish an outward culture, the community responses received via their feedback program have sparked powerful learning and improvement among Carthage police officers.

Eagerly Seeking Negative Feedback

"We've received responses from people who have received tickets, people who have been arrested, you name it. Any type of situation, we're getting feedback," shared Dagnan. And while the department certainly enjoys receiving positive responses from their community, it is not the only feedback they get excited about. They eagerly respond to negative feedback because they have come to view it as a valuable opportunity to build relationships and make things right.

"To be successful as a leader," says Dagnan, "you have to say, 'I really want to know. If it's good, if it's bad, if it's ugly—I really want to know and I need to be open to it. I need to be willing to do something about it.' No matter who's filling out the survey, or what reasons they're filling it out for, there's something we can learn from it. That's the leadership challenge. It's real easy to talk yourself out of doing something with feedback, but you can't do that."

The remarkable willingness to engage with and learn from feedback, even from people caught breaking the law, has strengthened the position of Carthage PD as a community leader.

Mindset Enabling Feedback System

The seasoned police chief believes this survey mechanism is a useful tool that can help transform any department. However, he is quick to attribute their own department's success in embracing feedback to the shift in mindset enabled by Arbinger's law enforcement leadership training. "At Carthage PD we have all been through the Arbinger training, and we have a culture of treating people right, especially when in our minds they may not deserve it."

Nourishing a mindset that prioritizes the humanity of others can be particularly challenging given the nature and constraints of police work. Officers described the practical application: "You can still treat somebody with respect and get the point across and be very firm with them too. If I get somebody yelling in my face and stuff I can't- that doesn't mean that you just turn around and yell back at them. How you act reflects. We can do our job and be firm and do what we have to do when we- when we need to do it, and still be a friend of the community."

Recognition and Results

The changes implemented by Carthage PD have allowed a powerful relationship to develop between the community and their police force. The Carthage Chamber of Commerce recently recognized the Carthage Police Department for "Community Contribution"—an award generally reserved for businesses. Chief Dagnan is also confident that department efforts to apply Arbinger principles have contributed to the lower crime rates Carthage enjoys compared to other similar agencies and communities.

One officer summarized the ownership mindset: "You make your department the way it is or the way it isn't or needs to be. It's not going to happen overnight." Chief Dagnan reflected on the sustained transformation: "I've seen people since we started this that were really frustrated, angry, probably their careers were going to end soon. Leaders, who are now some of the best leaders I've ever worked with." He concluded: "We're not perfect, but this is what makes us go." 

Carthage Police Department proved that you can't build community trust by waiting for a crisis to force change—proactive culture transformation prevents the erosion that catches departments by surprise. When Chief Dagnan watched Ferguson and Baltimore illustrate how trust between police and citizens can collapse before anyone detects it, he knew Carthage's exemplary reputation wasn't enough protection. His department faced typical challenges: siloed officers who avoided each other's calls, stress cycles destroying home lives and feeding workplace anger, and leaders so frustrated they were ready to end careers. Traditional restructuring wouldn't work, as officers recognized, "you can't just move the furniture around, you've got to change the system story."

By certifying internal facilitators to train every officer, implementing outward mindset across recruitment through crisis management, and launching unprecedented "Voice of Your Community" feedback linked to specific officers and events, Carthage created a department that eagerly seeks negative feedback from arrested citizens as learning opportunities. Leaders who were career-ending frustrated became the best the Chief has worked with. The Chamber of Commerce gave the department an award usually reserved for businesses. Crime rates dropped below similar communities. The lesson: you can't prevent trust erosion with good intentions when systemic culture allows officers to see citizens as threats rather than people, even when "they may not deserve it." Change the mindset that drives behavior, and community trust, officer wellbeing, and safety follow.