An interview with St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry
As a 24-year veteran of the St. Paul Police Department (SPPD), Axel Henry (AH) has held various leadership roles in his career, which ultimately led to his appointment as chief by Mayor Melvin Carter last November. The new chief of SPPD enters the job at a time when the city has seen a rise in homicides and continues to battle gun violence.
With several challenges facing the department, Henry believes that a system solely reliant on the police will not succeed, emphasizing the importance of community involvement in solving crime but more importantly preventing it.
Henry has made a name for himself in the department, having led officer training sessions and recently commanding the Narcotics, Financial Intelligence, and Human Trafficking Division. When the department needed a leader to implement new programs and set an example for other officers, Henry was called on time and again.
Whether it was for training officers on the Blueprint for Safety initiative, which served as a coordinated response to domestic violence, or the time that SPPD required officers to wear bodycams, Henry came to mind.
Transparency and de-escalation training have become a national focus, with instances of police brutality being widely covered in the news—the latest of which is the killing of Tyre Nichols at the hands of members of the Memphis Police Department. His death, captured on camera, has led many to condemn the actions of the accused officers, including law enforcement leaders like Henry. He released a statement on Friday calling for justice in the police brutality case that led to Nichol’s death:
“On behalf of the Saint Paul Police Department, I want to extend our condolences to the family and community of Tyre Nichols. We have no words that could even begin to address how community members in Memphis, and all over our country, are feeling at this time.
“We also feel a deep sorrow. As a community, we must come together to decry these acts and create a better future. It is a sacred honor to be entrusted to serve and protect your community. We also know that when this trust is violated and broken it is a betrayal of the highest order. No one is above the law, particularly those of us who have been entrusted to represent and enforce it.”
Now the longtime St. Paul native has taken the top job in the department with the task of solving the city’s most pressing criminal issues, at a time when the role of the police department in public safety is hotly contested.
MSR: You’ve held several leadership positions in the department and spearheaded the body-camera program in Minnesota, which provided city residents with more insight into police conduct. As chief, how will you continue to foster more transparency in the department?
Henry (AH): My path to this current job is unique and kind of unusual. There are a lot of different things that historically have been stopping points for people who are on this kind of trajectory. I’ve been very fortunate to stay in St. Paul, and I’ve been asked to do a lot of things for the department.
The primary driver behind that is me being an instructor and a trainer in different disciplines. I’ve been teaching and trying to coach and develop people my whole career. As a part of that you become kind of a salesman, someone that can affect change management by getting people to do new and different things and believe in that change.
The first one of those was the Blueprint for Safety, which I was asked to help with because there was a lot of conflict about “will the police officers buy into this and will they believe in what’s happening.” As a person who teaches the other side of the job—the tactical part—I was asked to sell or deliver the idea. We did that, and it became a very successful national—now international—model.
Part of our strategy was that we believe that if body cameras are supposed to create increased trust in law enforcement, then the community—we’re all members of the community—and the process we use for our program should be equally powerful. What happened was that different groups came together and got to hear from each other. The group that didn’t want the [body cameras] heard from the group that wanted them. Not only did the community embrace the process, but they actually started to embrace each other.
MSR: There’s been a lot of debate around the vision of public safety and where police fit in. What’s your view on public safety and where do you see things going in the future?
AH: Probably the easiest way to answer that question is that law enforcement has been very reactive in the past. We drive around and we look for stuff that’s happening. What drives our behavior is someone picks up a phone and calls 911 and says, “Oh my God, there’s a creepy guy in my front yard,” or “My house is being burglarized.” I think the first iterations of community policing has been feeling out our community, figuring out what they want, and then seeing if we can deliver it.
We have to look at ourselves as one big community. Then we all have to decide together where we’re going, so we’re not waiting for one side or the other to sign off on something or say that’s a good idea. As a collective, we have to come together and say, this is the direction we want to go, and these are the kind of the rules we want to follow.
MSR: How will you go about implementing this public safety approach, not only within the department, but throughout the community as well?
AH: It’s one of the things that is in the traditional, transactional leadership, the paramilitary style leadership. The idea, the philosophy or the edict comes from the [top] and moves down through the organization. We want that baked into our officers from day one. In fact, we want it baked into our [police academy] candidates from day one. We need people who understand and believe in community philosophies right from the start.
It’s one of the things I told the mayor in my interview about the difference between transactional and transformational leadership. I am not interested in running a police department by having a bunch of rule followers. I’m interested in having officers who believe in the department and our mission for the city, for our community, and with our community.
MSR: The retention and recruitment of police officers has been a challenge for police departments across the country. What are some of the factors affecting SPPD’s ability to recruit and retain officers and what solutions are you considering to address the shortage?
AH: Obviously, this is a problem that isn’t unique to St. Paul. I think you’ve got a number of things that are happening, not the least of which is the awareness around mental health has gotten better.
We’re seeing people leave [the police department] with PTSD. If people start to leave because of the stress of the job—even if they’re not experiencing PTSD—they’re starting to wonder to themselves, is this a good environment for me to be in?
We need to focus on the health of the organization internally, and that happens in different ways. The good news is that when you do it the right way, it helps recruit people. It certainly helps us retain people. It helps develop people. We want everyone to be invested in making other people better.
