24-05-2025
How a post-George Floyd initiative by the Miami Heat is reshaping Florida policing
As a Miami girl, born and raised in the 305, I derive immense pride and pleasure from working for my hometown basketball team, the Miami Heat.
During my 25-year career here, I've been enormously blessed to experience NBA championship confetti raining down from the rafters, being gifted championship bling and banging pots and pans like instruments, laughing and dancing with my colleagues — not once, not twice, but three times.
But there are other quieter, more subtle career-defining experiences I carry with me to remind me that winning takes many forms.
Such is the case for a unique three-way partnership we launched in the aftermath of the George Floyd tragedy, which marks its fifth anniversary on Sunday, March 25.
As social upheaval gripped the country, NBA teams and players sprang into action. The Miami Heat released numerous statements as well as an organizational pledge condemning the violence and vowing to help make meaningful change.
In response, Miami Heat formed a pioneering partnership with Dedication to Community and local law enforcement to train thousands of officers in empathy, deescalation and cultural competence. The result: a quiet, determined march toward meaningful reform.
We teamed up with the national nonprofit Dedication to Community (D2C), which trains law enforcement through curricula focused on bias, cultural competency, historic and local impressions of law enforcement and social justice issues.
D2C's facilitators aren't your typical corporate talking heads. They are former and retired law enforcement professionals with decades of hands-on experience.
Founder M. Quentin Williams is an attorney, former FBI agent and federal prosecutor. Williams and his staff have the street cred to talk the talk because they've literally walked the walk.
Joining forces allowed the Heat to bring the reach and visibility, while D2C brought the expertise and training infrastructure.
The city of Miami police brought its entire agency — all 1,400 sworn officers and civilian employees — to engage in specialized training to improve interactions specifically with Miami's Black and brown communities.
D2C's four to six-hour training sessions cap out at approximately 30-40 participants. Community members and activists — often outspoken critics of their local police departments — are invited to participate, allowing for open, honest dialogue that promotes empathy and mutual understanding.
The trainings include breakout sessions, deescalation techniques, role-playing and personal anecdotes. The sessions are spaced out over weeks or months. In other words, this program is a marathon, not a sprint.
To date, the partnership has reached more than 2,500 sworn officers, deputies and civilian staff with approximately 525 hours of training across multiple law enforcement agencies and counties in the state of Florida.
From the Broward County Sheriff's Office to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office to the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission's Division of Law Enforcement, our partnership has expanded the philosophy of community-oriented policing thanks to the many agencies that have participated.
Specific to Miami police, the culmination of the partnership is a more empathetic, responsive police force, according to exit surveys conducted after each training session. Among the findings:
95% of participants believe the sessions will positively impact their organizational culture
93% learned strategies to ensure alternatives to avoidable trauma
85% said they will take action to avoid escalating confrontational situations
To address continued staffing shortages and recruitment issues, D2C, in partnership with the NBA Foundation and the Heat, will launch Aspire to Serve in the fall.
The program will focus on mentoring, resources, career development and a clear pathway for youth from underrepresented communities to pursue meaningful careers in law enforcement.
Tackling a challenge of this magnitude — helping improve relations between local police and the communities they serve — is daunting. It's time-consuming, expensive and exhaustive. But we stand by the organizational pledge we issued in June 2020 to uplift communities of color. This program is a testament to the power and efficacy of successful public-private collaborations.
We revere our role in this process, which is to speak truth to power by condemning police brutality while taking action to support police education, training and reform. To be sure, it's a slow burn: quiet, steady and relentless, moving us closer, inch by inch, to lasting change.
Lorrie-Ann Diaz is vice president of business communications and social responsibility for Miami Heat.
