Cobb County District 2 Commissioner Erick Allen sat down with Cobb County police Chief James Ferrell, and with Cobb Fire Chief Dr. Michael Cunningham in the latest installment of Allen’s periodic Inside the District video.

He introduced the episode by saying, “When we talk about the health of our county, we often talk about the economy or our parks, quality of life, but none of that matters if our families don’t feel safe in their homes, and (if) our first responders don’t have the support they need.”

“So today I’m thrilled to have two of the most important leaders in Cobb County sitting down with us,” Allen said.

“First, we have Chief James Ferrell, the Cobb County Police Department chief, and he’s been in the permanent role for a few months now after three decades in the department, and it’s great to have a Cobb homegrown leader at the helm. So thank you for being here again.” Allen said.

“And we’re also joined by Fire Chief Michael Cunningham,” he said. “And Chief, you’re hitting the almost one year mark of being in the department head. And so you’ve brought a heavy focus of leadership to the fire service, and I’m going to dig into that a little bit later.”

Police chief James Ferrell

Allen asked Ferrell “What do you need from our officers?”

“What do I need most from our officers?” Ferrell responded, “I need our officers to understand the importance of everyday connections that they make when they go out in the community and work, and the leadership that they provide from a law enforcement perspective when they’re responding to calls from an event that has occurred, providing that leadership and the importance of providing that leadership when they’re there to help resolve those issues.”

He said that on the flip side of that, strong relations are also built in the more casual encounters officers have with community members when they are not responding to a critical event.

Two new Cobb police divisions

Ferrell said the police department is implementing a strategic restructure, creating two new divisions headed by majors.

One is a strategic outreach division focused on community affairs, PALS unit, youth leadership programs, and faith-based organizations.

The other is a technology division devoted to leveraging technology for efficiency and community connections.

Regarding technology and privacy concerns, Chief Ferrell said that “every piece of technology that we have in our police department right now is event driven and it’s not surveillance driven”.

He said that technology like Flock license plate readers helps make communities safer by directing police “towards a specific problem at the end of an event” rather than making unnecessary stops.

“I’ve spoke about this a lot of times with our officers and with the community,” Ferrell said. “Technology is changing the way we police and over the next five to 10 years is really going to change the way we do it, how we utilize that technology if we’re utilizing it responsibly”

“And when we put it in place, are we talking to the community? Do we have solid policies in place? Are we doing legal reviews of it? Is there accountability when you’re using technology?” he said. “Every piece of technology that we have in our police department right now is event driven and it’s not surveillance driven.”

“And I believe that’s really important for every police department to understand the difference between using technology to make our communities safer and using technology as a surveillance tool,” said Ferrell. “And so our department works really hard to make sure that the policies we have in place prevent that from occurring, whether that’s through audit trails to see who can do it, limited access to some parts of technology that are very sensitive.”

Fire Chief Dr. Michael Cunningham

Allen said to Fire Chief Cunningham, “Chief, you’re hitting the almost one year mark. I am I of being in the department head.”

“And so you’ve brought a heavy focus of leadership to the fire service, and I’m going to dig into that a little bit later,” he said. “But I’m excited to dive into what that looks like on the ground in this first year.”

“I know you’ve got a PhD in organizational psychology.” Allen said. “I’m a master’s level organizational psychologist … I didn’t know we had that in common until I did a little bit of research on you.”

“That’s not typical for a background of a fire chief, so how does that academic lens kind of change the way you’re running the department?” Allen asked.

“So it’s no longer just putting wet stuff on the red stuff,” Cunningham said. “I think the concept that we’re dumb firefighters is not a reality.”

“We have extremely smart, extremely competent people in our department,” he said. “And the fire service as a whole is changing.”

“As an industrial organizational psychologist, we’re in the test and measures side of things,” he said.

“We look at data, we crunch data, we understand, we want to understand and analyze how is data impacting our environment, our organization,” said Cunningham, “So I think that’s just a little different approach because we’re in such a data-driven environment right now.”

Cunningham said the questions the department is asking as they crunch through the data are: “What is the data telling me? What is it telling me about my people? What is it telling me about my community? Where’s growth happening? How do we have to place fire stations? What do we have to place apparatus?”

Cunningham said that to make sure that response times stay low, that traffic footprint has to be considered, and that fire stations need to be in strategic locations so that firefighters can get to where they are needed quickly.

Cunningham said that it isn’t just fire the department deals with, 60 to 65% of what the department handles is EMS calls.

“So that’s very important that we are strategically placing our EMS response in those locations that will serve the citizens the best,” Cunningham said.

Cunningham said also that preventative programs were part of the department’s activities, and mentioned the smoke detector initiative.

Watch the full video below: