Q&A: Phil Smith, Evansville's new police chief, discusses community policing, plans for EPD

EVANSVILLE — Phil Smith described himself as “an emotional guy” shortly after Evansville Mayor Stephanie Terry appointed him to lead the city’s police department in January, and that trait was on display last week when Smith gazed at newly installed signage affixed to a door at police headquarters.

“Philip Smith − Chief of Police,” the sign read.

A 39-year-old Smith reflected momentarily as he looked at his name and title, saying, “I wish my father could see this.”

Smith’s ascendancy to the chief of police post comes after an 11-year career at the Evansville Police Department. During that time, Smith worked in various roles, including as assistant chief under former EPD Chief Billy Bolin.

Smith is just the second Black member of the department to serve as chief, a fact he acknowledged during his swearing-in ceremony.

Last week, the Courier & Press sat down with Smith to discuss his approach to leading the department, his goals for its officers and what doing the job means to him personally.

The following conversation is edited for clarity and length.

To start, could you talk a bit about your childhood and how you got interested in police work?

So, I'm one of six children, grew up in a two-parent home with all my brothers and sisters in a house where everybody's got their own personalities. A really close-knit bunch. My dad was a pastor and my mom was a stay-at-home mom.

Nobody on either side of my family − mom’s or dad’s − was a police officer. I grew up just like any other kid in Clarksville, Tennessee. I started college down in Jackson, Tennessee, and then ended up transferring to Evansville, Indiana at USI, and I graduated.

While working summer jobs − a "playground leader" it was called − at the city’s parks department, I found just kind of a niche working with young people. And so right out of college, I interviewed and got hired for a job as an after-school programs coordinator and loved it. Then I switched to the alternative high school and did college readiness work. And while I was doing that, I met a bunch of police officers, because police officers worked off-duty at the high schools, making sure everybody was safe.

While I’m working there, I started building relationships with police officers, and the job that I’m working is grant-funded. I knew this grant wasn’t going to be renewed, so one of the officers said, “Ever thought about being a cop?” And I was like, “No, not really.” He convinced me to do a ride-along. Everything I knew about law enforcement came from television because like I said, I didn’t have any reference points.

So I went on this ride along thinking it would be all high-speed chases and fights, the stuff you see on television. But in reality, what law enforcement is and what it was to me that day is a platform to talk and reach out to people. I saw these officers helping people through issues, talking to them, giving them different perspectives and advice, and I was like, “I can do that.”

This was in 2012. I applied, and then I was hired on June 28, 2013. That’s when I got my badge and went to the academy.

What was your experience like at the academy as someone who, as you said, didn’t have a background in law enforcement?

We are fortunate here in Evansville to have in-house the Southwest Indiana Law Enforcement Academy, so I was able to still live at home and go to the academy and get back home every night.

I’d put SWILEA up there with any law enforcement academy. You get individual attention, it’s very hands-on. It was a 17-week academy; you’re learning about criminal law, civil law, being tactical and safe. You’re learning how to talk yourself out of things. You realize teamwork is super important.

At the end of the academy, they voted me class president, which was one of the honors in my life, to be the class president and speak on their behalf at graduation. But going from the academy to the street and actually doing the job was a totally different experience than learning from a book. I remember walking into a room and seeing blood from an actual fight, and it was like, "Woah − we’re not in Kansas anymore."

So the academy prepares you, but the field-training officers are a tremendous aid and help. Because they’ve been doing the job for the citizens of Evansville, the job you said you wanted to do. I had a great time throughout that process.

Based on your experience working as a beat cop, in the department’s communications wing and as assistant chief, what does the role of chief of police mean to you? What should Evansville residents know about how you approach the job?

First of all, you have to have a police chief who is willing to humble himself and understand that he doesn’t know everything. So the very first assignment for a chief of police is to understand humility. You need to understand that you have very smart people who work for you, especially at an agency of this size, who have been with the department longer than you. You got two ears and one mouth for a reason.

So, you listen to your people. My job is to help, my job is to oversee, my job is to facilitate. My job is not to come in and tell people what they’re doing wrong. How can we make this department a place officers enjoy serving in and that our citizens can trust and believe in? How can we marry those two thoughts? I’m here to help figure that out for our people.

As chief, you’re also responsible for any perceived problems. You need to be prepared for that. Whether you made the decision or not, the buck stops with you. So, communication is key – letting your commanders and personnel know what your intentions are as a leader. We call that ‘commander’s intent.’ And for me, that means letting everybody know that the chief has asked for unconditional respect for the men and women who work here, your coworkers, and the chief has asked for officers to have unconditional respect for the citizens that we serve.

Give me your best effort, and I’ll give you mine.

Looking ahead over the next year, what are some of your key goals and objectives for the EPD?

Technology is always evolving in law enforcement. I think the wave of the future in law enforcement is to enhance our response time, that way we can identify threats and issues as they are happening. So one goal is to be more preventative and proactive instead of just being reactive. One way to do that would be a real-time crime center, which gives not only dispatchers but officers the ability to disseminate and review information quickly.

We’re always looking to the future, looking at how we can stop crime, and looking at new equipment that can help keep our people safe. My thing is always going to be officer safety and community safety, and I’ve already had initial conversations about how we can incorporate that as the city budget season approaches.

Do you think that when the EPD looks at acquiring new high-tech policing tools, tools that are on the cutting edge, it as an agency has a responsibility to discuss the issue with the broader community?

I’m very big on explaining the "why and the what" with a lot of this new technology, like drones for example, or the Flock Safety cameras. They give citizens some concerns when you start talking about privacy. I think a lot of that can be quelled if you communicate. I don’t want to come up with an idea here in the board room. I want to take that idea to our constituents and say, "Hey, this is something that would really help us. Let me tell you what this is. Let me show you how we’ll use it, and how we won’t use it."

I know there’s been times in the past when a certain technology has come up and there was some pushback because the communication channel wasn’t there. So to avoid those kinds of pitfalls, we need to open those lines of communication.

How do you view the need to balance the EPD’s statutory job, which is to fight crime and enforce the law, with the need to bolster the community’s trust in police?

Well with community policing, your whole approach to law enforcement is to work hand-in-hand with the community. You can’t just have coffee with a cop, or ice cream with a cop, or the Cops Connecting with Kids Disney World trip. You can have all those things, but you also have to be going after burglars and robbers and people who would commit murder or domestic violence. That is community policing: it’s not one or the other. It’s all-encompassing and it’s all-inclusive.  You have to do it all.

And by doing the job correctly and wanting to be out with the people that you serve, you are a community police officer. The balancing act is actually putting men and women out there who all bring different skill sets to the table and allowing them to do their job. We have a great community police department.

Police departments across the country have reported difficulties with recruiting in recent years. How will you approach recruiting? What’s the general situation like at the EPD?

Relationship building is huge. We have a relationship with the Southern Indiana Career Tech Center, and while you can’t join the department until you’re 21 years old, they have a program where students can become interns at the EPD.

We have moved a second sergeant into our recruiting office to help divide the duties and to allow us to send more than one officer out to college campuses and local military bases. You have to meet people where they are. The days of waiting for people to come to you are kind of over. You have to meet people where they are and your biggest billboard is going to be the officers that wear the uniform. Do they enjoy their job? So it’s my job as chief and for our command staff to listen to our troops and make this a place they want to be.

Word of mouth is still one of the best advertisements.

How will the EPD approach marijuana-related offenses under your leadership?

Typically, marijuana in small amounts is probably just going to get you a citation. It’s still illegal. That’s a state statute and our job is to enforce state statutes. We’re also very realistic about where we are in this country and the mindset of this country. So it’s not my decision or my decision alone to have a stance on how people view marijuana. But it does fall to our responsibility to enforce state statutes.

Currently, it’s illegal. But, officers mostly write citations for misdemeanor amounts of marijuana. If you get arrested for a misdemeanor amount of marijuana, there’s probably something else that happened there, such as a disorderly conduct charge.

In recent years, the United States has seen an ongoing conversation play out about the role of police and their relationship to the communities they serve. What’s your assessment of the state of that relationship in Evansville right now?

I believe that’s a question where the answer is going to depend on where you are as a police department. Here at the Evansville Police Department, we have so much support. In Southwest Indiana and Vanderburgh County, we have relationships. It’s rare that you’ll see us out doing something without the sheriff’s office alongside us, or firefighters alongside us.

You see us in schools, so we have relationships with our teachers and teaching staff. If you have relationships with kids, you have relationships with their parents.

What the national narrative would suggest about policing, we’ve not seen that in our community. In 2020 when there were riots − but mostly peaceful protests − we all saw those things and they didn’t come to Evansville. We did have some peaceful protests, but no one was rioting.

I know a community that appreciates what the police do. And I know a police department that appreciates what the citizens do for it.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Evansville Police Department Chief Phil Smith on leadership, approach