In improv theater, actors follow one key rule to keep the action going: Always respond with “yes, and …”
But when a Brooklyn theater company asked Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to let officers join a 10-week improv program meant to build compassion and insight, her answer was a scene-stopping no.
Commissioners had routinely approved the requests since 2014, but the Police Department is contending with a staffing crisis that has left leaders scrambling to patrol high-crime areas and respond to protests. With summer, an especially busy time, approaching, no officer could be spared, according to department officials.
Still, the response stunned Terry Greiss, executive director of the Irondale Ensemble Project, a theater company based in a cavernous space with peeling paint and stained-glass windows on South Oxford Street in Brooklyn.
For 10 years, Mr. Greiss directed “To Protect, Serve and Understand,” an acting troupe borne out of the killing of Eric Garner in 2014. It paired seven officers with seven civilians, and the group went through acting exercises meant to help both sides see each other’s humanity and to create, as Mr. Greiss called it, “a theater of empathy.”
He had expected to start another 10-week stint this summer. But last month he was told that the department would not be sending officers this year.
“It was a blow,” Mr. Greiss said. “It was like getting hit in the stomach.”
New York is down to about 33,580 police officers, the fewest since the early 1990s, when there were fewer than 33,000. At its peak in 2000, the department had more than 40,000.
The department said in a statement that the officers were needed offstage: “When the department is facing a serious staffing crisis, we must focus on deploying cops directly to our streets and subways to continue to keep crime down and ensure New Yorkers are safe.”
While the program has not measured the broad effect on the Police Department and community relations, surveys by Irondale showed that participants felt the program helped them communicate more effectively, work better with others and listen to people with different perspectives.
Jillian Snider, a former officer who lectures at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the program had been introduced at “a chaotic moment” when building trust was paramount. “The community was absolutely disgusted with law enforcement,” she said.
But for at least the past two years, the staffing shortage has forced detectives to don uniforms and patrol the streets during the summer, Ms. Snider said. “Any available personnel that can be deployed in an enforcement capacity, they’re going to have to use,” she said.
“Do I think it’s the best use of limited resources and city government dollars to be paying officers to be doing improv and miming?” Ms. Snider said. “Not necessarily.”
Supporters said the program’s benefits should outweigh staffing concerns, especially since the officers, who participate during shifts, are needed only about four hours a week. The participants spend another week in rehearsals — eight hours — and perform two shows before audiences of 200 people.
“It’s programs like these, which are considered soft and not real crime-fighting, that go by the wayside when there is fear of crime rising,” said Susan Herman, a former deputy commissioner of collaborative policing who oversaw the program until she left the department in 2019. “But it’s a very challenging and demanding program. There is a lot of self examination.”
Officers still participate in a range of other programs, such as a youth academy, a summer jobs program and a teen mentoring program. However, officers who participated in the workshop said it stood apart from the others.
Officers go through exercises with strangers — such as singing and role playing — that force them to examine their feelings about their work and interactions on the street that can lead to resentment, distrust and fear. Officers said they often used the improv exercises to talk about stress and the frustrations of working in a paramilitary environment. One officer said he learned how to stay calm in the face of screaming protesters. Another was finally able to open up about a shooting.
“Anybody who calls it just theater — no. This is real life,” said Antoinette Jennings, 45, a former patrol officer who retired from the department last July and participated in the program last fall. “It’s a healing circle. It’s more than theater.”
Mr. Greiss, who began Irondale with two other actors in 1983, got the idea for the program after watching the video of Officer Daniel Pantaleo putting a chokehold on Mr. Garner. Mr. Greiss, 72, said he wondered if the tragedy could have been avoided if the police had been trained like actors, to closely look at and listen to others.
Mr. Greiss wrote a letter to William Bratton, then the police commissioner, pitching the idea. Within a few weeks, it was approved, Mr. Greiss said. The department agreed to send 20 to 30 officers to be interviewed, and then the group would be whittled down to seven.
Mr. Greiss was especially interested in any officers who had been disciplined or received public complaints.
“What I like to call the hard nuts,” said Michael-David Gordon, the musical director of the program. “And we love those cops because they’re the ones who have had some of the most conflict.”
Every session began with dinner — usually home-cooked meals of baked chicken, spare ribs or mulligatawny soup.
“It’s hard to hate somebody you eat with,” said Mr. Gordon, 63.
The exercises could be intimate, with participants stripping to their underwear onstage so they could put on one another’s clothes. An officer and a civilian would sit so close that their knees touched, an exercise that was deeply affecting, said Tracey Pinkard, 56, a school parent coordinator in Brooklyn who participated in the program around 2017.
Her mother is close to Mr. Garner’s mother, and she grew up with his family. She wanted to participate in the program to help with her anger and grief. Years later, she is still on a text thread with the officers and participants from her session.
“There was no way that you were walking out of this experience without feeling that you now had a different perspective,” Ms. Pinkard said.
Crystal Hudson, a City Council member from Brooklyn, stood with other city officials this year when the program celebrated its 10th anniversary. She said she had been in touch with the department to keep the program going.
“Of course we want a police force that’s fully functional and out patrolling, but I don’t think this program is draining, by any means, the police force,” she said.
Mr. Bratton, however, said Commissioner Tisch was dealing with a shrinking department. When he approved the program, the agency was growing.
“These things are important, but once again, they come in the face of dueling priorities,” Mr. Bratton said. “Jessie has limited resources.”
Mr. Greiss and Mr. Gordon are hoping for a meeting with Commissioner Tisch. Mr. Gordon said he thought he could get the commissioner to sing at Irondale.
Dozens of officers warned him over the years that they would never sing.
“My response is always ‘OK, that’s fine,’” Mr. Gordon said. “Because I know I’m going to get them to sing.”
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas.
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