'The Good Cop' Website Takes On 'The Internet Mob'

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Bad cops are seemingly everywhere, at least in headlines amplified in social media to make it seem as if there’s not an honest one among them.

A Michigan marketing company hopes to change that negative perception with “The Good Cop,” a nationally focused website and Facebook page created as a repository for stories about positive interactions that occur between citizens and police officers.

“The Good Cop” project was born in a conversation between Jeremy Angeletti, a project manager at Rhino Media in Kalamazoo, and his friend, Eric Shaffer, a police officer for the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety.

“It’s no secret there have been a string of events that brought a lot of bad press to policing as whole, and he was sharing with me some of the difficulties that can bring to that profession,” Angeletti told Patch. “In the weeks following those events, he said people wouldn’t look him in the eye, and he saw a general shift in people’s attitudes toward police.”

When incidents like the riots in Baltimore and Ferguson, MO, make headlines, “there’s definitely a transfer of emotions that travels across states to all of our communities,” Kalamazoo Police Chief Jeff Hadley, whose department worked closely with Rhino Media on the project, told Patch.

Angeletti isn’t naive. “Some of those stories do merit the bad press they receive,’ he said, but once the “Internet mob” globs onto a negative story, those headlines dominate social media for the next month or so.

“It’s a shame, because I don’t think the actions of a few should speak for the many,” Angeletti said.

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The website and Facebook page were launched on Sept. 14. The Facebook page has garnered more than 14,000 likes — a testament, Angeletti said, to the frustration brewing across the country and the power of police officers and others who know the bad actors to be an aberration to counter the headlines.

Stories from the East and West coasts and Hawaii quickly populated the page with the uniform #GoodCop hashtag and secondary hashtags localizing the post.

One from Dearborn, MI, shares the story of a police officer who bought a homeless guy lunch after finding him loitering outside a local lunch spot.

The act was witnessed by Rees Williams, a project manager at Ford Motor Co., who snapped a photo and posted it on his Facebook page with the following message:

“So I went out for lunch today with a coworker and there was a young man begging in front of the restaurant. As I was waiting in line a police officer from the Dearborn Police department pulled in and spoke with the man for a few moments. The officer then entered the bakery to buy him a meal. You could absolutely tell that this officer wanted nothing but the best for this gentleman. I wanted to share this due to the amount of negativity towards police these days. These officers put their lives at risk everyday to protect us. I wish nothing but the best for this officer as I witnessed something truly amazing today at lunch that you don’t see very often.”

Small acts like that occur daily across the country, Angeletti said.

The project isn’t intended to be a fluffy look at policing, but take an honest assessment of what it means to be a police officer today.

“Let’s be honest,” the project creators say on the website. “There are bad police officers, just as there are bad people in any profession. The current climate of law enforcement is volatile, to say the least. When an officer acts out of line, the consequences can be shaming and deadly. But should the isolated actions of a few speak for the overwhelming majority? We don’t think so. There are good-willed, hardworking people who deserve our gratitude, respect, and recognition.”

“When you describe ‘bad,’ ” one officer said, “I would describe as evil almost. They get good at camouflaging that up, so we have to be better at uncovering it.”

Angeletti said he’s been overwhelmed at the response to the project and the morale boost to public servants who risk their lives.

“The response has been more than I could have imagined,” he said. “As more of those stories pour in, I’m not surprised a message like this has become so popular because of the great job law enforcement has done across their communities.

“My hope is an officer has a terrible day and comes to our page to see all the positive stories,” Angeletti said.

Hadley said officers in his department “feel supported that people do recognize the very difficult job they have to do.”

“From a very fundamental aspect, it’s very important to our own psyche and our own spirit,” he said. “If something good comes out of the website and people share the hundreds of thousands of good things that happen every week between law enforcement and communities across the country, that balances things out.”

Like Angeletti, Hadley doesn’t gloss over problems the frustrations many people have with their police departments.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “we’ve done poor stuff. We’ve kind of behaved our way into the circumstances we’ve found ourselves in.”

He said the solution lies in “intentional relationship building” by the officers who interact daily with the public.

“We’ve gotten it wrong by leaving the relationship building to a very few people, and left the patrol officers harmless,” Hadley said. “They’re the ones who can make you or break you. That’s where you start changing the culture.”

Details are still fermenting, but “The Good Cop” project plans to honor one of the officers nominated for recognition on the website once a month.

“My hope is that we can counteract the negativity that can go so viral so fast, and paint a true picture of the state of law enforcement in our country,” Angeletti said.

Below, watch a film produced by Rhino Media for the project.

Photo via ”The Good Cop” Facebook page