Chandler chief to help 400 AZ police agencies meet 21st Century challenges

By Jonathan Coronel

After 30 years in law enforcement—the past two as chief of the Chandler Police Department—Sean Duggan is taking on one of the potentially most influential roles of his career: chairman of Arizona’s quietly essential Criminal Justice Commission.

Appointed to the post by Governor Doug Ducey, Duggan will oversee the professional entity tasked with helping to guide 400 offices statewide, from large- and small-town police departments to sheriff’s offices to the myriad other enforcement and prosecutorial agencies involved with keeping the state safe.

Despite the inherent challenges of his new job, Duggan definitely knows the ropes.

Heading into law enforcement right out of college, Duggan spent the next 20 years on the Scottsdale police force, including seven as the department’s assistant chief. Due to his several decades of Scottsdale PD experience, which included a combination of years spent on jobs from investigations to SWAT work, Duggan emerged as a top candidate for the commission job.

Along with what were his obvious qualifications for the new state-commission role, those who know him say Chief Duggan brings an enthusiasm for helping people and holding the law enforcement community to high standards.

Now, as the body’s new chair, Duggan will face the job of balancing the needs of many constituents and responding to the pressing issues of the law enforcement community—needless to say a daunting task for state and city governments to take on.

Accordingly, ACJC serves as a liaison between the many involved agencies, since all members of the criminal justice community are represented, as well as providing a forum for people to bring their issues to the table, each element of which helps to further the commission’s primary goal of keeping crime in check, notes Duggan.

As the grandson of a British Royal Marine, Duggan is proud of his British heritage, which becomes evident as he explains how the foundations of American policing actually come from Sir Robert Peel, a 19th-century British statesman, and Peel’s impact on the development of today’s standards.

“Peel’s principles of policing serve as the basic tenets of our law enforcement practices. Even though they were written in 1829, they’re still just as relevant today as they were then, and you’ll find them up in just about any police station in America,” Duggan explained to me while showing me a framed copy of Peel’s concepts outside of his office.

The first principle, and the one both Duggan and ACJC think is the most important, states:

“The basic mission for which police exist is to prevent crime and disorder as an alternative to the repression of crime and disorder by military force and severity of legal punishment.”

However, the million-dollar question, older than Peel’s principles, is how to prevent crime. One answer is with data analytics, which Duggan says ACJC employs rigorously.

“The ACJC is unique because we have a capability to conduct surveys on a range of things like youth issues, crime, drug use, gang violence and victim services. Having that info helps us make informed decisions and predictions, so we can prevent crime from occurring in the first place. Data-driven decision making allows ACJC to allocate resources to different agencies and communities accordingly,” Duggan says.

Data-analytics is just one innovation that Duggan believes will continue to improve policing in Arizona. Another is body cameras, which are a trending concept, as relations between citizens and police in some communities continue to be less than amicable.

Duggan supports the implementation of such cameras, noting that the Chandler Police Department, which already has 60 officers using them, plans to have them deployed throughout the force by May. Duggan sees them as a valuable asset in an age when police can be a target resulting from civilian videos that he says may not show the entire story.

“There’s 300 million reporters out there,” Duggan says while holding up his smartphone, “Oftentimes people show snippets of an event and this is used to paint a negative narrative. Body cameras will solve some of the problems that arise from this, but even they aren’t a panacea. They will help though, and when officers do make mistakes they should be held accountable.”

Chief Duggan earnestly believes that the majority of police in America are doing a good job, and the numbers corroborate his belief as crime rates continue to fall in this country.

However, Duggan is quick to add that it’s impossible to paint law enforcement with too broad a brush, as cultures and police practices vary from state to state and region to region.

“There’s no such thing as ‘the police’. There’s your police. There’s the Chandler Police. Every community is different, and communities often dictate how police forces are run. With 250,000 people in Chandler, we can’t do our job without having the community behind us.”