IMPD consultant to lead the way on drawing up long-term strategy

INDIANAPOLIS — IMPD found enough leftover money in its 2024 budget to pay a local consultant $237,000 to lead the way in helping the department develop a long-term strategy.

Taylor Advising was one of three local agencies to submit a bid which resulted in a signed contract in late January.

IMPD Chief Chris Bailey has already organized his executive staff to draft plans on assisting the consultant with identifying community groups, stakeholders and officers which will be solicited for ideas to build the department’s long-range plan.

”Chief Randy Taylor and I started talking about this early in 2023 about creating a playbook for whomever comes next and setting strategy and goals and priorities for this agency and try to create an identity for IMPD as we move forward,” said Bailey. ”It should be any police department’s goal to understand what exactly the community, the people who pay us, the people who provide our authority, what they want and need from their police department.”

Bailey said that while the community at large might derive its view of IMPD by media coverage of violent crime, he finds that residents often have other priorities for their officers.

”Community relations. Visibility. Speeding. Keeping my stuff in my car and burglaries are going to come to the top of that list.”

Bailey said his leadership team and the consultants will also seek out the input from IMPD officers and professional staff.

”I am really interested to hear what our cops need, what our professional staff needs and what our community needs,” he said. ”What we want to do now is we want to build on the successes we’ve had over the last four, four-and-a-half years, in making our department more accountable, to being responsive to what our community wants, we want to add our professional staff and police officers to that equation and we want to do things that are evidence based, that are research based, that are data driven, that are intelligence led driven, not chaos driven, not loudest voice driven.”

IMPD’s pivot to a reconsideration of its mission and delivery of services came in the wake of community unrest and social justice protests in the summer of 2020 when then-Chief Taylor retooled the department’s complaints and use of force review boards to include more citizen input and oversight.

”There may be some areas where we do have to do this completely down to the dirt remodel of the road,” said Bailey. “There may be things we just build on the success of. We’ve had a lot of successes in this agency over the last four and a half years, specifically our crime reduction plans.”

”If people just want me to sit here and twiddle my thumbs, they got the wrong guy. We’re gonna move this agency forward. We’re gonna create a plan driving our actions moving forward. We’re gonna hold ourselves accountable for it. We’re gonna be able to pivot within this plan because law enforcement’s not a stagnant thing. Something’s going to happen. The world’s going to change. We pay attention to what’s going on around us and make adjustments to our plan moving forward and be nimble enough to do that.”

Besides community and officer feedback, the development project will also seek out best practices by other large police departments, search for effective recruit and retention policies and development and implementation of an IMPD image and culture.

Marla Taylor, founder of Taylor Advising, issued the following statement to FOX59/CBS4 regarding the project:

“We’ve spent years helping organizations navigate complex challenges with practical, data-driven solutions. As a local firm, we’re deeply connected to this community and bring a unique understanding of Indianapolis’ needs. IMPD brought us in as a neutral facilitator to help create a strategic plan that reflects the voices of officers, staff and the community. Our role is to bring structure, objectivity and expertise to develop a strategic plan that reflects the needs of officers, staff and community and we will do so through an inclusive and transparent process. We’re proud of the work we do and the trust we’ve built in this community over the years.”

The Taylor Advising website lists the clients it has served in the past, including the Indy Public Safety Foundation, the IndyGo Foundation, the Anthenaeum and several non-profit social agencies, none of them presenting the size or complexity of IMPD.

”We’re not asking them to tell us how to do things,” said Bailey. “We’re asking them to help set parameters and baselines and guardrails on, here’s how you find a strategy, ‘Here’s how you hold yourself accountable, here’s what the plan should look like, here’s how long it should be, here’s the tools you can do to make sure as we walk out the door that you’re maintaining your plan, that the decisions you make from the plan that you created that you don’t go outside it, here’s how you pivot inside those things,’ because, once again, we’re cops. I didn’t go to business school.”

Bailey said the bidding process revealed Taylor Advising understood the challenge and what IMPD could afford.

“How do we provide some leadership guidance to our executives? Do you know our community? Have you done this before? Working with the Public Safety Foundation you have a leg up to understanding IMPD because you helped develop their strategic plan. The cost point was where we needed it to be and they understood what we were looking for.”

The IMPD Executive Staff has already met to begin drawing up plans for internal outreach and listening sessions, searching for national best practices and listing community groups for the consultants to engage.

A final report is due in early 2026 with an implementation process to assure the resulting plan will not be shelved.

The full interview with IMPD Chief Chris Bailey can be viewed below: