Celebrating 40 Years of Impact: A Special Episode with Karhlton F. Moore, Director of BJA

MEREDITH TIBBETTS: Welcome to Justice Today, the official podcast of the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs, where we shine a light on cutting-edge research and practices and offer an in-depth look at what we're doing to meet the biggest public safety challenges of our time. Join us as we explore how funding, science, and technology help us achieve strong communities.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Welcome. I'm your host Karen Friedman. I'm the Director of Criminal Justice Innovation, Development, and Engagement at OJP's Bureau of Justice Assistance, otherwise known as BJA. This November, BJA proudly celebrates 40 years of dedicated service in advancing justice and safety in America. To continue our celebration, we present part two of our 40th anniversary podcast. In this episode, I sit down with Karhlton Moore, the current Director of BJA. 

And now, the interview I have been waiting to do. I am so excited to be sitting down with the current Director of BJA, Karhlton F. Moore. Welcome, Karhlton. So happy to see you today. Thank you for doing this with me.

KARHLTON F. MOORE: Hey, Karen. I've been looking forward to this as well.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Let's start from the beginning. So in what way did your previous work with BJA—because I know in your former job, you interacted with BJA all the time. So based on that experience, what were your goals and strategies when you came in as director?

KARHLTON F. MOORE: I guess a couple of things about previously working with BJA. One was it gave me a sense of the capacity that BJA had to support the field. I also knew about some of the staff. I didn't know all the staff. I knew a few people. And I knew what it was like to work with many people on the staff who were kind of higher up in the organization. What I think my experience with BJA had been that it was very much—when I first started working in Ohio—it was very much one of the leaders in the field, you know? BJA would put out their priorities and we would include those priorities in our solicitations because we wanted to make sure that we were staying up-to-date on things that were impactful to the field and also, obviously, as our funder, we wanted to make sure that we're focusing on issues that were important to BJA because our cinch was they had their finger on the pulse of the nation when it came to criminal justice.

As you know, Karen, and you're part of the expertise that BJA has, there are people there with deep understanding of practice and policy. And we needed to make sure that people saw all of BJA. They saw the resources, which included funding, obviously, but policy understanding, practice expertise. And I think the real thing that BJA has is passion for criminal justice. And that's not to say that none of that existed before we got to BJA because it did, but I think it's important that leadership demonstrate to people what their priorities are. And so a big priority to me was reclaiming that leadership banner that BJA had been able to proudly display for a very long time, because the thing that makes BJA unique from so many other places—and don't get me wrong—we need these other places. I love these organizations we get to work with who are very focused on moving criminal justice practice and policy. We need those folks.

But the secret to BJA and the difference is we'll go anywhere. Anywhere. Some people want to help a community move from Y to Z. We will help them take those very first steps from A to B. We'll help them have conversations they've never had before. We will be there not just to give them resources and tools but just to let them know, hey, we're here with you, we're standing with you, because you know change is hard. Change is very hard. There is such comfort in doing things that you've always done, even when you know how we're really not getting the outcomes that we need to. And I've seen you do this. The work that you do—I won't name the state or the provider. Your presence there helped resolve an issue and allow folks to move forward and to be able to keep our eyes on the field, which is what we really need to do.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Yeah. I think getting people to make changes and to get the buy-in from—and showing them how to get buy-in from all the other stakeholders that they need that buy-in from in order to move things forward and kind of just changing the narrative around what they're doing and why they're doing it. It's tough for a lot of places. It really, really is. I think that's a great focus and I'm so glad that you came in with that lens and that priority. What has surprised you since you became director? What is it about BJA that surprised you and that you didn't know and that you wish other people would know?

KARHLTON F. MOORE: I think the one thing that certainly surprised me was how little known all of the things BJA does inside of the federal government. That's really surprising to me. I still get phone calls from time to time asking do we do anything with officer safety and wellness. Do we do anything with officer safety and wellness? We're the largest provider of officer safety and wellness opportunities in the country. I mean, that is us. And we train countless numbers of officers and go-to agencies all over the country. That's one thing that surprises me. I have been pleasantly surprised. Even for people who have never really worked with BJA, they know of BJA, or they know some aspect of some of the work that we do.

One thing I didn't know much about that BJA does is the PSOB office. Our Safety Officers' Benefits Program. And that is something I really didn't know that much about. And I have been pleased that this is—even an incredibly sad time very often—that we are still there as an organization supporting people as they go through the most difficult times in their lives. So whether or not you're talking about a police officer who's lost their lives and we're dealing with—we're working with their family or if we're talking to an officer who has been permanently disabled and can no longer do this job, which was their work and their passion and what they wanted to do with their life, whether we're talking to a family whose loved one has died by suicide, just being able to be that part of the government that is trying to help people.

Now, we still don't do it nearly as quickly as I wish we did. We still don't have all of the resources in place that I wish we had. But we are getting better. We've invested far more resources than anyone ever has in the PSOB Office. And so I'm pleased with—I'm not satisfied with—but I'm pleased with the progress that we're making even though I know and I know families across the nation know that we need to do better.

I'll mention one more thing, because I worked with BJA for a long time, as you indicated in your question, but I did not know about the training and technical assistance that BJA offers, specifically like CVI. Our work in CVI, you don't have to be a grantee. You can have access to that. And I wish I would have known, I wish I would have understood that when I was still at OCJS because you're always trying to find a way to make sure that the stakeholders you're working with, that they have access to the best—the best, the brightest, the most innovative, and to expose people to these things. And they can make their own decisions about if that's for them or if it's not for them, but that is definitely one thing that I really wish I had known about prior to coming to BJA.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: So how do you think that BJA has grown under your leadership?

KARHLTON F. MOORE: I think one of the things that I am really focused on, that is—and you're a testament to that as well, is engagement and our relationship with the field.

And, again, I don't want to pretend like no one went out to the field and no one listened to the field before I got there, but I think leadership—I don't care what organization people are a part of and how strong a professional we are—leadership matters. And leadership who believes deeply in messages and not just talks about it but does it, that says, "Our job is to understand what is going on in the field. Our job is to understand what challenges these folks are having. It is to understand what success looks like that they're having as well. It is to be able to make assessments on the tools and resources that they need." And then it means once we have an understanding of those things, we've got to figure out how do we create tools that are responsive to the needs of the field.

The other thing is, those relationships, that engagement, puts us in a position. When someone says, "Well, I think CVI workers feel this way about this problem," or I think police officers or I think judges or I think prosecutors, whatever it is, and we can say, "Well, we don't have to think because we just met with, this prosecutor and that prosecutor and that association and this policing association and that victim service provider—whatever the case may be."

And the message that I've tried to get across to folks is I know you have your own relationships, and I'm talking about our partners in the field. I know you have your own relationships, but guess what, there's going to be rooms you're not in and our team's going to be in them. And it's best for us to understand exactly what the challenges are you're dealing with, what you think about some of the current things we're doing or not doing. And so what I hope that people have really internalized is that sense of BJA is about the field, we are for the field, we work for the field, and we get our job satisfaction out of the success that the field has.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: So what specific programs have you helped launch or support since becoming Director? And if you want to talk about my summit, that's fine too.

KARHLTON F. MOORE: Well, your summit was easy because it was such a great idea, all I had to say was yes. That's all I had to do, was say, "Well, yes." But I did more than that. But primarily, all I had to do was say yes. Dot a few i’s and crossed a few t’s, and that was a great summit. And, there were some Ohio judges who came and I was so glad to be able to spend time with them. And I remember one judge, Judge Thomas in particular, she said to me afterwards, she said, "You know what? I finally found my people." And that meant the world to me. I know it means the world to you, but it meant the world to that judge to understand. I don't care, like we talked about earlier, who you are, what you've accomplished, whatever it is.

There's always this little thing in the back of your mind, I don't care, decisions I've made where I have been, "This is what we need to do and I know it's going to upset some people, but this is what we need to do." And there's always a little thing in the back of your mind that's like, "Are you sure? Are you sure?" And sometimes just to have that affirmation, I think, is so helpful. 

But particularly, I'll mention two things. One is, I got the great honor and pleasure to be here at the launch of CVI, our CVIPI initiative, our Community Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative. And I had a little bit of exposure to CVI prior to coming to BJA. And then with an understanding of we were going to be doing CVI work, just reached out to someone and said, "Hey, will you spend some time with me and walk me through all that CVI can do?"

And that was Aqeela Sherrills and E. Reubman. And we had great conversations about it. They spent a lot of time with me. And I took that understanding and experience that they had shared with me into how I look at the launch of our CVI initiative, our public safety partnership program. And it is a great program, it basically is like if you met a person and they're like, "Hey, I want to lose a few pounds." And they know what they need to do, right? It's calories in versus calories out, right? And they know they should probably exercise more and they probably should eat better, right? PSP is like a coach for policing agencies. But instead of you just having to do these things, you get a dietician and a chef. You get an exercise physiologist or personal trainer. You get someone who develops a plan for you and you get someone who does an overall assessment of your health. And that's what PSP does. We do these assessments, they get to the agency, we pick the policing agency who gets to figure out exactly where they want to go, they pick them, maybe there's three assessments, whatever. The problem I saw with PSP, as I talked to folks, it was that agencies would get these assessments but they oftentimes didn't have the resources to implement the assessment. They might have resources for one, and they usually to get three. They might have resources for two, but they didn't have resources for all of them. And they're looking at these assessments like, "Gosh, we really need to get this stuff done."

So I came in, I looked at that, and I said, "Look, here's what we need to do. We need to create a program for agencies who have gone through PSP." Because when you go through our Public Safety Partnership program, as you know, you don't get grants. You get like a bank of money. And we will use that bank to fly around the country or to bring people to you to do the assessments, to do the peer-to-peer visits and all that type of thing. The capacity building grant for PSP is what we utilize for agencies in their second or third year, or agencies who have graduated from the program in order to implement those assessments. And so that's the thing—probably the individual program—that I am most proud of that was my idea.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Awesome. So during your tenure, what cultural shifts have you witnessed? And how has that affected the work at BJA?

KARHLTON F. MOORE: I think the biggest cultural shift is more universal recognition of the role that community plays. 

CVI is a very good example of it where community members are actually part of the public safety infrastructure and that they are doing their part in helping to keep their own community safe, to keep reactionary violence from taking place, and a whole host of other things that they do. Certainly it's obvious there. And officer safety and wellness, there's kind of two things I look at as pillars in policing: community engagement, and officer safety and wellness. And those two things together, if an agency has both of those and real community engagement where they're working with their community to identify problem areas, they're working with their community to make sure that they're ready for the introduction of different types of technology, they're working with their community so they understand new techniques or new interventions that they might want to try, or the placement of cameras or anything like that.

When they're really doing that and you have real trust between community and policing, they clear cases better, the health and wellness of the officers are so much better, like I was saying before about some of the other things. There are already people at BJA who understood that importance. I hope I've elevated it so it becomes part of the DNA of the organization so that even when I'm gone, that recognition of the importance of community remains.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: So you talked about community voices, which is so important. And I guess a kind of extension of that that I've seen that I think is a real cultural shift is the way that we are now valuing the voices of those who have been impacted by the criminal justice system and the people with lived experience. I don't think years ago we really acknowledged the importance of that voice and how the people who are closest to the problem are really the ones who are closest to the solution and we can't tell people what we think are going to solve the problem. They need to tell us what they think is going to solve these problems.

And I think that's so incredibly important that those voices are now really, truly valued and are sitting around the table and are in the rooms where decisions are being made. Have you noticed that as well?

KARHLTON F. MOORE: Definitely have. And I'm so glad you brought that up because if you think about it, every other industry in the world wants to know what people who consumed their products think of it. And for the longest time, criminal justice seemed to have no appetite or very little curiosity for talking to people about, "Well, why weren't you—why do you think you weren't successful in your reentry efforts? Or why do you think you came back?" Or, you think about some of the most impactful interventions. Focused deterrence, right? Focused deterrence in Boston. That started from two guys talking to members of gangs and asking them, "What do you think would be the most effective way to reduce violence?" And it was like once they really got an understanding of this, then you've seen people be able to implement if they do it with fidelity and reduce violence all across the country. But you're right about that. And it's about time. It's still one of those things it's not where it needs to be, but it is definitely an area that we have made progress and I hope we continue to make progress on in the future.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Yeah. Now BJA has been a leader in this field for 40 years. What do you see the direction of BJA going, let's say, in the next 10 years?

KARHLTON F. MOORE: Yeah. So I think the biggest thing, and the thing that I find myself leaning on and not having enough tools and resources in order to address, and that is when communities are challenged right now. So much of access to our resources, it's like, "Well, I'm having an issue and I need some funding." And it's like, okay. Well, go to this grant process and perhaps in, depending on when you have the conversation with the person, it could be a year, could be six months, could be eight months, could be eighteen months, right? They'll have an opportunity to get these resources.

And what I've been really happy with, is I really tried to take our National Training and Technical Assistance Center and focus it more on violence, violence that communities are experiencing right now. We have just gone through a year, 2023, where we saw the single largest drop in homicides around, 2,000, right? So about thirteen percent drop in homicides, you're seeing about—with a seven, eight percent reduction of violent crime. And many of those cities—major cities—these major cities, their numbers are coming in, all their numbers are being counted. Not only counted through FBI, but there is a number of programs across the country who look at these and they make their assessments. There's also Major City Chiefs Association, which looks at its members' numbers and sends out a quarterly report on what their members' numbers look like.

And I visited with some of those places where their numbers went down in '23 substantially, and they're down even further this year. But there are some communities that saw an increase and some pretty significant increases. And those are the communities that I think require us to really focus. There is no acceptable amount of violence. Let me make that clear. There is no acceptable amount of violence. But we have a responsibility to assist communities who are struggling with violence and those who are committed to making their community safer. And so I want more tools to be able to help communities today and to make it easier. The tools we have, I don't want to lose them, but they are challenging sometimes, logistically challenging in order to be able to deploy those tools.

But I think the future of BJA, and I'm trying to make that future come sooner rather than later, is when communities have issues around violence, that we can help them right now.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: What is the legacy of BJA over the last 40 years?

KARHLTON F. MOORE: I think the legacy of BJA really is its adaptability and its focus on trying to stay ahead of the curve. And at times, quickly catching up when we find out something is going on. But I think it has been an incredibly adaptable agency. And you think about the three things that BJA was created to do. And whoever wrote that, whenever that was, 40 years ago—well, obviously we're celebrating our 40th anniversary this year—but to build safer communities, to reform our criminal justice system, and to reduce violent crime. And those are the things. I don't care what part of BJA you are working in, you are hitting one of those three things every single day.

And I'm just so pleased and proud. I know you've had the chance to talk to some of the other directors. And certainly Domingo is the one I've been closest to. He's in Ohio when he was the Director of OCJS. And I still talk to Domingo very often. He's really been a true mentor and supporter. But I learned so much from Domingo and from Denise. And, you feel a responsibility to live up to this legacy of leaders who have made their imprint on BJA. And if you can do that at BJA the right way, you've made an imprint on the field. And I'm incredibly humbled and pleased to have an opportunity to lead what I think is just an amazing, amazing organization.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Well, I can tell you, as someone who has watched you for two and a half years, that you are doing an incredible job and you have more than lived up to your predecessors. And it's just been a pleasure to work with you. And, there's a lot I feel like I've accomplished over the past two and a half years, but establishing a lifelong friend is one of the things that I'm the most proud of. So thank you for being you and thank you for joining me here today. And just continue the success.

KARHLTON F. MOORE: Thank you, Karen. Thank you so much.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: As you can see, over the past 40 years, BJA has had a significant impact on justice and public safety in America. It has been my honor to be part of such an important organization. With leaders such as those we've spoken with today, BJA's important role will continue. We'd like to thank all of the directors, past and present, who took time to speak with us about their time at BJA. Justice Today is the official podcast of the Office of Justice Programs.