Daedalian goes Behind the Connection with Tamara McDiarmid to talk about "Silver and Blue: Tracing the Roots of Policing and Corrections," a new podcast coming to LCC Connect, Tuesday, April 21st. Tamara, who serves as the Director of Public Service Careers at Lansing Community College, draws upon her extensive experience in teaching, public service and corrections to shed light on the historical context of policing, corrections, and the justice system across various cultures and eras.

Related Podcast: Silver and Blue: Tracing the Roots of Policing and Corrections

Website: LCC Public Service Careers Department

Since then, we've expanded to offer more than 30 podcasts, all of which are hosted by members of Lansing Community College or folks within our community.

I'm Daedalian, General Manager for LCC Connect, and on today's episode I'll be sitting down with Tamara McDiarmid.

After devoting herself to decades of public service upon retirement, Tamara transitioned into teaching and mentoring the next generation of public service professionals. She now serves as the Director of Public Service Careers at Lansing community college.

Now let's go behind the scenes and find out what's happening behind the connection.

25 Years with the Kent County Sheriff's Office before heading to LCC. Criminal justice is what you always kind of wanted to get into. So what first inspired you to do it?

Back in the 70s 80s, there was a lot of really good vibes about being in public safety police, and I always kind of wanted to serve the community. Had a strong community background. That's just kind of way I was brought up. And you know, I watch tv.

I wanted to be the one to catch the bad guy too, but it was more a strong sense of serving the community that kind of got me interested.

Okay, so I got two questions based on that. First of all, I've got to ask you because I'm a TV guy, grew up on TV, love TV.

What was the 70s 80s go to TV show that you were like, wow, I really want to do this.

There was one show, it was called the Rookies, and so I did watch that.

And then the big one that of course you remember, I was in middle school, so I had a bedtime, but it was Charlie's Angels was another one that I watched a lot.

Chips was my go to.

Yeah, I watched that too.

The way you describe that, it doesn't sound like necessarily and I find this a lot of the times with anybody in public service careers that it's a part of their family. So were you the first one to get into law enforcement in your family?

Yes, I was. I was.

Okay. Am I right about that? That typically it tends to be a generational.

It does tend to be generational, and it just so happened to be that I was the first one in my family. Except for a cousin that lives in North Carolina, there's only two of us. It's just him and me.

Nobody else in our family has gotten involved in public safety at all.

So. Do they look at you like you're the black sheep?

Yeah.

Do they really?

No, they don't. No, they don't.

Okay. During your time with the sheriff's office, you work way up to corrections Sergeant.

What did those years teach you the most about the profession itself?

Being a corrections officer, you learned patience, you learned not to be judgmental, and you learned really how to use your ability to communicate. Because I think what maybe people don't understand is corrections officers don't have weapons inside the facility.

So the only weapon that we have per se, which is our ability to de. Escalate situations and our ability to talk through things. So you learn very quickly how to be able to handle yourself through talking.

I mean, there are always going to be times when you couldn't do that, but for the most part, that's the first route you take. As I gained through and I got through the ranks, some of the things that.

That I learned being a sergeant is you gotta be able to separate the personal with the professional.

That makes sense.

You rise through the ranks. So I went to a sergeant from being an officer.

And so you have to be able to separate those, because now you're gonna be the one telling people that you have worked with for many years, you know, kind of what to do or what's expected.

Right.

And the other thing is that respect is earned. And I was very lucky because I had the respect of a lot of the officers. And I also saw the byproduct of supervisors that didn't.

Well, based on that answer, I mean, you can tell you're just a good communicator, first of all. And I will say that you do a great job on that podcast. Very good at doing some storytelling.

You can tell you put a lot of thought into what you're doing. A lot of the same traits that you mentioned, patience, judgment, communicator, even separating the personal from the professional.

These are all great traits also for anybody teaching a class. And that was the thing is you Actually retired from law enforcement. Right. And then you came here to LCC to teach.

So what made you want to move into teaching after you got done?

I was part of the base training corps of officers, and I was the sergeant in the training unit for five years toward the end of my career. But I found I had a love of training.

So whether it was training new officers or whether I was in the in service training, training veteran officers, I found that I really enjoyed bringing that information to the officers.

Whether it was a reminder of what signs to look for in inmates that might be coming suicidal, or whether it was just informing our new officers what it was like first day on the job or something along those lines.

And with that, I chose a path that would give me the credentials to be an instructor. So I decided pretty early on that that was going to be the next phase of my life.

So I was very fortunate that I got to retire at a very young age to be able to go into a second job. And the training aspect of it just gave me the confidence to actually want to go into teaching, and that's kind of where I went from there.

Is there a preference like actually being out there in the field and teaching, that you've kind of found that you've gravitated more towards and enjoy more?

Not that I enjoy more. I enjoyed being a corrections officer and sergeant for different reasons than I enjoy being here at LCC as a teacher.

They just have different aspects that give gratification on different levels. So I don't really like one more than the other. They've both been able to give me very satisfaction in different levels at different times in my life.

That makes sense.

So, yeah, it just. It was a natural progression for me to be able to go from being in the career to being able to prepare others for the career.

It just seemed like a very natural progression.

Yeah, kind of the answer I expected you to give me.

Not for any other reason other than in the short time that I've known you or got to know you better, I think I should say you seem very passionate about the things you do, and that's excellent. It's a great trait to have right there.

So a lot of folks that are listening to this aren't quite familiar with LCC and all the different things we do. And of course, LCC plays a huge role in preparing people for careers in public safety.

Now, public safety to most people, I think, outside of LCC, might not register as to what that is. So what kinds of programs are available to students here at LCC?

Our public safety department is pretty expansive in what we can offer students here. It's three main programs. So we have criminal justice and we have the Fire science program, and then we have legal studies.

And so within those umbrella programs, what we have are other avenues within each of those umbrella programs that students can choose to study within.

So within criminal justice, we have associate's degrees and certificates in law enforcement and a general associates that are for students who may be looking at transferring. So we have a lot of transfer agreements with universities in the state of Michigan.

We also have an associates and a certificate program that will cater to students that are looking for corrections. And sometimes our students don't understand or the public at large doesn't understand that corrections is much more than institutional corrections.

So it could be for students who are looking to maybe serve in a probation or parole aspect or maybe in alternative corrections such as halfway houses or substance abuse homes.

And then we also have an associate's degree and a certificate for a juvenile justice population, which means working in youth homes or detention centers or something along those lines.

And then we've just, in the last four years or so, put together an associates and a certificate for Digital Evidence Specialist, which is a cooperative effort with our CIT Computer Information Technology program, where students who maybe don't want to work in law enforcement or corrections juvenile, but they want to be of service to their community in some way and are very technology savvy. And so they want to maybe be the one on the cutting edge of cyber criminals and wanting to be helping law enforcement that way.

And then we have our fire program. And so we have two associates degrees, one for the firefighter who also wants to be an emt.

So we collaborate with hhs, the Health and Human Services, and they'll get their firefighter at tech careers, and then they'll go to HHS and get their EMT and then they get their Gen Eds and they're good to go. And then we also have again, a degree for somebody who may not want to be a firefighter but want to be in the sector doing other things.

Fire investigator, maybe installation of fire equipment somewhere, something like that. That degree also caters to firefighters who are looking to advance in their own departments. And so they will need a degree for that.

And so we Help them with that. And then our legal studies program is a two year degree for those who are looking to work in a law office as either a paralegal or a legal assistant.

And then we have a post bachelor certificate for those that already have a bachelor's degree, maybe looking to change a career or look for something different and they can come in and they can get a certificate on top of all those programs. Then we have our three academies.

We have a police academy that runs 16 weeks, we have a fire academy that runs 16 weeks, and then our local corrections academy that runs four weeks. All accredited through state agencies here in Michigan.

So while we were talking about a lot of that, I kind of thought, you know, what, what if Tammy piqued somebody's interest, you know, wanted to find out more.

If you were to talk to somebody about it and explain to them, well, these are traits that would make you a person that's fit for public service careers, especially in law enforcement. What would you tell them?

Somebody who's thinking about getting into law enforcement really should think about things like, again, stuff I've mentioned before.

Communication skills and the ability to listen, the ability to interact with many diverse communities, but also the willingness to adapt to situations that are changing all the time, and the ability to work with many different kinds of people. Because if the community is diverse, then your workplace is going to be diverse.

And then the last thing, and probably one of the most important things, entering anything in public safety is to have integrity and honesty because the public looks upon you to be a very honorable and upstanding person who reflects the community at large.

And so you hear about and see on all social media all the bad things that can happen or do happen when officers are not showing integrity and honesty and stuff like that. There are very few. You see only the bad ones. And that ends up giving a very bad impression of all police officers. And that's really just not true.

You really should have that inner strength to have the integrity to carry on all the time whether you're in a uniform or not.

You know, I don't remember the exact statistic. I'm just going to go ahead and throw it out there and just say whatever it is that I thought it was.

But I was remembering somebody as you were saying that, where you have to basically offer three to four good compliments to one bad compliment.

And I think that almost translates to kind of what you're saying in a way where that you almost have to have an encounter or an interaction with three to four law enforcement individuals where it was a positive experience to the one. And so somebody, like, viewing it from the outside, you're going to see that one more than you are, or it's going to be shown.

What's the word I'm looking for? You know what I'm trying to say?

Yeah, they're going to remember the one.

Yes, yes. Before they do the.

Before they do three to four.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's unfortunate, but it is the way our world works. And you also mentioned in there change.

Change is a good way to segue over to the notion of your podcast, because a lot of things have changed. A lot of things have stayed the same. So it's called Silver and Blue and Tracing the Roots of Policing and Corrections.

So obviously history is a part of what you're doing here. What inspired the idea and desire to do this?

I've been wanting to do a podcast for a while, and when the opportunity came to come on LCC Connect, it was a great opportunity. I can use the knowledge I have, and I can also do some research. I'm a huge history fan. I love history.

And this allows a platform for education and information.

And I think one of the things that public safety really needs is a kind of a continual information highway where the public can learn more than what they see in TV and movies. If that can come from something that I'm able to provide, I think that would be great.

If you're ever given an opportunity to educate or give information about something that you're very passionate about, I think you have to grab that and use it to the best of your ability. And I think this podcast can give us an opportunity to quell some rumors, quell some assumptions of what law enforcement corrections is.

I think over the years, so many people have seen more bad than good,.

Or as we noted earlier, they reflect or notice the bad more than the good.

Correct. And so I think this might give me an opportunity to not only talk a little bit about that, but to go back and say, this is kind of how we got here.

And so it's not just what's happening now, it's something that's been here all along, and this is why. And hopefully it'll start a dialogue.

And that's all I kind of want is somebody paying attention enough to go, I think I want to talk about this a little more. Or a couple of people who are friends are listening to it and they're going, that sounds interesting. I never knew that.

Let's talk about that a little bit more. Something that can start a dialogue is a Good thing and something that I've always kind of wanted.

Tell me a little bit more about how you feel. Understanding the history of policings and corrections is an important thing for folks to know.

This is just kind of my opinion, but I think a lot of people don't put a lot of stock in history.

And so when they look at what's going on today, they don't take into account that a lot of what's happening today is a byproduct of what has happened years and years and years and years and a millennia and centuries and stuff ago.

And I think by listening to the podcast, what they're going to realize is that a lot of stuff that we still deal with today, a lot of stuff that started and then that we have in our systems today, is not all that original. It's something that had been thought of and put into place a millennia ago or centuries ago or decades ago.

And once they kind of realize that this isn't a new concept, maybe it'll start people to think about how we can change it or how we can talk about it more to other people who might think that maybe it's a change that's needed. It's something that I'm just providing information to and make kind of the statement that we didn't get here just by ourselves.

So what was it that influenced that society that all of a sudden made this society do either the same thing or a different thing? And nobody makes that correlation.

And that's what I want to bring into the podcast is a realization that what happened in the 18th century absolutely did influence what happens in the 21st century. You just don't know how.

Right. And as the producer, of course, I've got the opportunity to listen to some of what you already have recorded and done.

And it has been interesting to me to actually be able to kind of listen and go, wow, we are still kind of like that in some respects, but we aren't this. So in other words, something where it's just so off base that you're like, wow, I am glad we are not a part of that society to this day.

Can you give listeners an idea of what kinds of topics you're exploring at this point in time?

I decided to try and start right at the beginning of the first civilization that really had any sort of codified laws. So one of the classes that I taught was an introduction to Corrections. And so one of the big things is that we give a history of a lot of stuff.

And one of the first things is we talk about is where did law come from? What made it so that there was a law and then there was a consequence if there was that law broken.

And so we start right with ancient Mesopotamia, which is probably the first documented society or civilization that had any sort of codified laws.

And so we're going back to 3,000 years ago and we're continuing to then move to different civilizations that started to show how they handled society and the people that were in their civilization and what their idea of law and order and disorder, what happened when people didn't follow the rules and how they handled the punishment or the consequence of that.

And so starting at the beginning, I felt was a great way to start, sort of sequencing the way so that we can kind of move all the way to the 21st century.

And I'm not going to go decade by decade, but we're going to go in periods of time where certain things happened that were instrumental in forming how we got where we are today. And it felt really natural to just start at the beginning.

I think that completely makes sense. So in your experience, as you're talking about all of this, what's the one thing the public might misunderstand about the corrections profession?

I think a lot of it is just not knowing anything.

But I think if there's one thing that you would ask or that they might not understand is that we're high paid babysitters that were uneducated and we don't need a lot of skills or education to perform the job.

And that really is unfair to the men and women who work in corrections, certainly, because the clientele that are dealt with are very difficult at times.

And the other thing that I think is a misconception is, especially in institutional corrections, is that the terms jails and prisons are interchangeable and they're not. There's a distinct difference.

And while they're similar because they're institutions, the clientele that are in these institutions are extremely different. And the misunderstanding of the corrections profession to begin with is that it's a job that kind of can be done by anybody.

And we're trying, and have been trying for the last 40 years or more to show the public that you need to have baseline knowledge, you need to have that education.

Because having the communication skills, having the listening skills, having the knowledge of the legal know how at an officer level, to be able to do your job efficiently and correctly is necessary so that you don't keep seeing the one bad thing that happens.

And we have 3,300 jails across the United States and hundreds of prisons over the 50 states that we have, which means there are thousands and thousands and thousands of corrections officers who are not given the credit for the job that they do every day, at least not in the same vein the police officers are. And not to say that we're different. We're all part of what I call the criminal justice triangle. Okay.

So you have law enforcement and you have the courts and you have corrections. You can't have one without the other when you're looking at that triangle.

So everybody knows law enforcement and courts, but the corrections part is just one that sort of falls into the background because we're unseen, we're the gatekeepers. And so there's great misunderstanding that I hope with this podcast I can sort of quell a little bit and bring understanding to.

So that's kind of the one takeaway that you're kind of hoping folks will get out of this by listening to even a historical perspective and kind of the things you're saying.

Absolutely. And some of it's not going to be pretty. Historically, corrections up until the 20th century was not pretty.

But you have to learn from that to get where we are. And I hope listeners will stick with me for the ride.

So we unpacked a lot today.

Yeah, we did.

And you did warn me that you could be a little bit long winded. I wouldn't say long winded. I would say pick. Passionate is the way I would put you.

You definitely can tell you have a love for what you do, and you can hear it in the podcast itself. So I am so glad that you're a part of LCC Connect and you're doing what you're doing.

We actually went a little bit long, so I'm going to go ahead and wrap things up. But I want to mention all the things that you do. You build programs, you mentor students, you've been a part of public safety and law enforcement.

Corrections shaping future public service professionals is partly what you're doing now.

So what part of that impact means the most to you personally when you're teaching those classes or working with potential law enforcement or other service careers, too?

I think it having the impact on students when you can guide them to where their passion is going to be.

I was faculty for eight years before I moved into the director's position and over the years, to be able to have that kind of impact on somebody and be able to guide them or direct them the way that they feel their career would be best. And sometimes that wasn't corrections, you know, sometimes that was sitting down with them and going, where do you really find your interest?

And they would say, well, I really want to work as a crime scene investigator. So I go, okay, you need to do this. It's not going to be here. But if this is where you want to go, this is where I would suggest.

And that would be for them. Do I lose a student in my program? Probably. But it also means that they can serve their community the way that they want.

Right.

And that's okay.

So mentoring students, helping students prepare, that was why I got into teaching to begin with, was to prepare the next generation of public servants. That was what I felt was part of my responsibility, was to prepare the next generation. And I think I've done that.

I don't know that this necessarily applies to what you're saying, but one of the things that came to mind and something that's talked about a lot of the times here at LCC is the fact that part of being a student is sometimes learning that, oh, that's not actually what I want to do. And finding the path you want to go.

Absolutely.

Silver and Blue, tracing the roots of.

Police and Corrections joins the LCC Connect podcast network. It's going to be Tuesday, April 21st. It'll show up at 2pm at our website as well as most major streaming platforms. You can find it almost everywhere.

Thanks so much for listening to behind the Connection, the show that takes you behind the scenes of LCC Connect. And thank you, Tammy, so much for coming in and talking with me.

Thank you for having me.

And of course, thank you for being a part of LCC Connect. I am so looking forward to this and. And looking forward to people getting a chance to hear what you had to say.

Thank you.

Very last question of the day. I cannot tell you what it is because you know why? I don't know what it is. So we're gonna click the Rando question generator.

What is something that you can never seem to finish?

Oh, wow. I can never seem to finish a book.

A book, really?

I've got about four of them going right now. I can never seem to finish a book.

I do that sometimes. Same thing, but with audiobooks as well. I feel your pain, actually. Thanks so much.

Yep.

This is LCC Connect - voices, vibes, vision.