The Pursuit of Excellence by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police 
Early Intervention System a tool to encourage and support high quality performance 
A Guidebook for the Public and Our Employees On What We Do and Why We Do It

MISSION OF THE 
CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG POLICE DEPARTMENT 

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department will build 
problem-solving partnerships with our citizens to prevent 
the next crime and enhance the quality of life throughout 
our community, always treating people with fairness and 
respect. 

We value: 

• Our Employees • People • Partnerships 

• Open Communications • Problem Solving • Integrity 

• Courtesy • The Constitution of North Carolina 

• The Constitution of the United States 

Published July 2005 by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department 

The development of this document was supported by Grant # 2002-HSWX-0020 
from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department 
of Justice. COPS Office support enabled the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police 
Department to enlist Bill Geller, Director of Geller & Associates, to 
collaborate in writing this handbook. Points of view or opinions contained 
in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent
the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.


Photograph of Chief of Police Darrel W Stephens
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department 


It is my pleasure to present this handbook on the Early Intervention 
System in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. This 
new and automated system holds great promise to help our 
supervisors introduce an ounce of prevention when employees 
seem at risk of troublesome patterns of conduct so that a pound of 
cure—discipline—does not become necessary. The system is 
intended to alert supervisors and guide them in doing what good 
supervisors have always done: notice and then address the 
possibility that a person they supervise may need some assistance 
in complying with our high standards of performance. 

Preventing problems rather than waiting for them to erupt is a 
central strategy of our agency. We do this in addressing the 
community’s crime problems, and we are no less dedicated to this 
approach in maintaining the high level of performance from our 
employees that the public and members of this Department expect. 
We care about the well-being of the men and women who work for 
our organization and, frankly, they represent a substantial taxpayer 
investment in training. So if they are beginning to struggle in 
handling their work responsibilities in some way, it’s important 
for us to intervene early and help them return to a good pattern 
of performance. 

As with any new system, some of our employees have questions 
about how the EIS works, how it differs from past practices, 
and how they may be affected by an early intervention. This handbook, 
in Q&A format, addresses questions that have been asked and tries 
to anticipate and respond to others that may arise. Other police 
departments may find these discussions helpful as well. 

This publication was prepared with feedback from CMPD employees, 
including a 45-member working group, representing all parts of 
our organization, which developed our EIS by carefully reviewing 
other departments’ systems and tailoring their best aspects to 
suit our mission, values and needs. I am grateful for the diligence 
and effectiveness of this working group and to consultant Bill Geller, 
who posed questions about our draft EIS policy that helped us improve 
it and drafted this handbook based on input from our employees. I 
am grateful as well to the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of 
Community Oriented Policing Services for funding development of this 
handbook. 

I am proud of the service our employees deliver to our community 
and the many productive partnerships we enjoy with our citizens. 
I hope that you find the information in this handbook helpful 
and reassuring of our commitment to high standards of service 
and integrity. 

Sincerely, 
Darrel W. Stephens
Chief of Police



Table of Contents 
Chief Darrel W. Stephens’ Letter 
Introduction..............................i 

FAQ Categories 

1. 
Why Create An EIS? Why Do We Need It?........1 


2. 
How Will EIS Affect Me as an Employee or Supervisor?................3 


3. 
How Does EIS Work? What Are the Mechanics? ................ 13 


4. What Input Did CMPD Employees Have in Designing the EIS?............ 15 


5. 
Does Our EIS Differ from the Systems in Other Departments? .............. 16 


6. 
How Will We Know if Our EIS is Working Well and Benefiting the 
Department, Our Employees and the Public? ............................ 17 

Conclusion ............................................................. 17 

Appendix: Flowchart showing the operation of the Early Intervention System......... 19 


INTRODUCTION 


This handbook is intended mostly as an 
explanation for our employees of a new system 
which affects them. Since some members of the 
public may be interested in understanding how 
our Early Intervention System works, and why 
we developed it, we have endeavored to write in 
a way that minimizes police jargon and will be 
understandable by a general audience. 

As noted in Chief Stephens’ preceding 
comments, in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police 
Department, we place a high priority on solving 
crime problems when they occur and on 
preventing future problems. Similarly, when it 
comes to performance by our sworn and civilian 
employees, we are committed to helping them 
handle challenges that might impede their 
effective and appropriate conduct. 

When we notice potential performance 
problems, we want to prevent them from 
growing to the point where they will jeopardize 
an employee’s career, weaken our service to the 
public, or damage the reputation of the CMPD. 
To be sure, if our employees violate our rules, 
our internal affairs and supervisory structure are 
responsible for investigating and recommending 
discipline as may be appropriate. We are strict 
about compliance with our rules because we owe 
high standards to the community and to our 
justly proud workforce. We also owe the public 
and our employees the very best supervision 
possible—supervision which encourages 
employees to continue what they do well and 
helps them steer away from potentially troublesome 
patterns of conduct. 

With the increasing complexity of police work, 
the responsibilities and workload of our 
supervisors are greater than they were a 
generation ago. The CMPD strives to find 
methods that make high quality supervision as 
easy and effective as possible. There is no 
substitute for well-trained and motivated 
individuals selected to serve as supervisors, but 
one of the systems we have established to assist 
them in doing their jobs proficiently is an 
automated record keeping and notification system—called 
our Early Intervention System 
(EIS). 

This handbook explains why we created this 
system; how it works; how it is expected to 
affect sworn and civilian CMPD employees and 
supervisors; what input our employees had in 
designing the EIS; how our system differs from 
those adopted by other departments; and what 
criteria we will use over time to assess whether 
the EIS is making a positive contribution to 
effective supervision and employee assistance. 
These topics are discussed using a question-and 
answer format, with the discussions grouped 
under six general categories. 

1 


Why Create An EIS? 
Why Do We Need It? 


Q 
What’s the difference between what a 
supervisor should do under the EIS and 
what a supervisor has always done if he 
or she is actively monitoring what the 
employees are doing? 

A 
There are some new procedures, but 
essentially there really is no difference. 
As always, we expect our supervisors to 
know what their employees are doing, to manage 
employee behavior, and to help employees 
overcome performance weaknesses. 

Q 
So if there’s isn’t any new responsibility 
placed on the supervisors, what’s the 
purpose of adopting a new system? 

A 
Sometimes the number of employees a 
supervisor supervises may be large or 
larger than we’d like. Or a supervisor or 
employee may transfer. We have a lot of 
transfers, so as a supervisor you may not know 
an employee’s background, behaviors, or other 
circumstances. And our supervisors are just plain 
busy, and they might miss something about one 
of their employees that they should know about. 


In years past, it would not have been easy to cre- 
ate a user-friendly system to help supervisors  
manage a little bit better. But with breakthroughs 
in information technology and with our 
employees’ computer skills, we can now put 
together a system to help prevent some people 
from falling through the cracks. Establishing the 
EIS is not a criticism of our sworn and civilian 
supervisors. There are completely normal 
reasons why a supervisor might not be aware in 
a timely way of something about an employee. 
For instance, the supervisor could have a day off 
and something happens to one of his or her 
employees, but nobody ever communicates that 
to the supervisor. It could be that the supervisor 
is in training for a week, and an employee is 
involved in one or two events during that week; 
but the supervisor doesn’t know because another 
supervisor handled it, and it was never 
communicated. 

So there are many reasons why some of that can 
slip through the cracks. And where there are 
differences in skill levels among our supervisors, 
this system can help ensure that supervisors are 
all functioning at the levels that we need and 
expect. By creating a departmental record 
system, it matters not where an employee is assigned 
or whether he or she transfers tomorrow 
to the other side of the county. If the employee 
has been involved in an event and another 
incident occurs, the Department won’t lose 
count. 

We hope even without a computerized system a 
supervisor would catch if an employee was 
involved in some frequency of events. The EIS 
just helps to ensure that. It should function as a 
tool to help keep the supervisors on task. Put 
another way, EIS is simply systematizing and 
providing much easier information retrieval for 
what the CMPD has long viewed as quality 
supervision. This is reflected in the fact that the 
policy establishing EIS procedures (CMPD 
Directive 800-010) is listed in our Directives 
manual in the “Information and Records” 
section. In essence, EIS should be viewed as an 
aid in keeping records—records that both 
provide a limited history of activity and remind 
supervisors of upcoming tasks to be done. The 
full text of the EIS directive is available at the  
following website: 

www.charmeck.org/Departments/Police/About+
Us/Departments/CMPD+Directives.htm#800

Q
Are CMPD employees being singled out 
for close monitoring and early 
intervention, or are early intervention
systems widespread?

A
The CMPD committee which designed 
our EIS looked at the business commu-
nity, the military, other public sector
service providers and, of course, other police 
agencies. A majority of what we found was 
counseling, training or employee assistance 
programs. Frankly, we did not find anything 
unique even though one of our marching orders 
was to look outside of police departments for
something creative. There are processes in place 
in many institutions that identify employees in 
need of assistance so companies don’t lose their 
investment in that employee. Within the police 
world, EIS programs are growing rapidly. 
There’s widespread interest now in early 
intervention systems.

Q
Was the EIS forced on us by a court or 
some outside group?

A
No. We have been interested in 
developing an EIS for purposes of 
continually improving our management
and supervision. In order to be accredited as a 
police agency by CALEA (Commission on 
Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies), a 
police agency has to have many types of 
systems, one of which is an early intervention 
system. However, our interest in providing this 
kind of support for our supervisors and 
employees was self-initiated and independent of 
any outside advocacy or requirements.

Q
What’s the most significant impact the 
EIS is expected to have on our
Department?

A
The largest contribution will be that it 
provides a limited history. If an
employee has a problem once, and
someone tries to address it, we will have a clear 
history of what steps were taken, what the


analysis revealed. We will be able to see readily 
if an employee is having the same problems over 
and over again. If past attempts to help an 
employee correct job performance concerns have 
not worked, we can pursue progressive 
interventions. 

All of us in the police department know that 
when an employee refuses to make changes, 
ultimately it will result in discipline. The EIS at 
least sets the stage for employees to correct 
behavior—inappropriate or unacceptable work 
performance, or behaviors that contribute to 
that—without being disciplined. If they elect not 
to change, or they can’t change, then that’s a 
different matter. The EIS provides the limited 
history of efforts on the part of the 
organization—the supervisors—to try to shape 
an employee’s behavior in a positive way. 

The EIS retains alert records for a period of five 
years. After that time, the records are purged 
from the system. The EIS committee and 
executive staff felt that this period was sufficient 
to ensure that potential problems would be 
properly addressed, or that the employee would 
have faced discipline or unsatisfactory 
performance reviews, both of which are records 
which are retained for an extended period of 
time by Internal Affairs or Human Resources. 

2
How Will EIS Affect Me as
an Employee or Supervisor?

Q
What kinds of events will be the subject 
of an alert and possible intervention?

A
After considering a lot of options used
in other police organizations, we settled 
on a relatively small number of
performance indicators. These are indicators that 
our in-house EIS design committee believes are 
meaningfully related to keeping an employee 
from falling into job habits that, unchecked, 
could result in discipline. The events that our
EIS tallies for each employee, as the occurrences 
are entered into the electronic records, are listed 
in section IV.A. (“Performance Indicators”) of 
the EIS directive. They are:


. 
Discretionary arrests (intoxicated and 
disruptive in public; disorderly conduct; 
resisting, obstructing or delaying an officer; 
assault on a law enforcement officer)—when 
they occur in the absence of another nondiscretionary 
charge (e.g., larceny, possession of 
drugs or paraphernalia, a charge supported with 
tangible evidence) 
. 
Incidents requiring a supervisory 
investigation (uses of force; vehicle pursuits; 
on-duty employee vehicle collisions; employee 
injuries) 
. 
Citizen and Department generated 
complaints (alleged violations of CMPD Rules 
of Conduct, such as neglect of duty, courtesy, 
excessive use of force, etc.) 
. 
Use of sick leave (frequency of use in general, 
use of sick leave in conjunction with days off 
and use of sick leave in conjunction with the use 
of vacation leave) 


Q
How many of these events have to occur 
for a threshold to be reached and an 
alert to be issued? 

A
There must be several such events 
during a specified number of months. 
The thresholds were set by the 45
member committee that designed the EIS, which 
consisted mostly of first-line employees. What 
they considered is how many events might 
indicate a potential performance problem. There 
was consensus among the large design group on 
all the thresholds we set. The Department from 
time to time will review and may reconsider and 
recalibrate the number of events that seems 
appropriate to trigger an alert. 
 
There is no secret about the calibrations. All our 
employees will be kept current on the system’s 
mechanics and on what the thresholds are for 
triggering an alert. Any employee who wishes to 
know the thresholds that have been set for any 
given type of events (for instance, it might be 



three incidents of use of force within a 90 day 
period) need only ask his or her supervisor. Or, 
as we explain elsewhere in this handbook, 
employees can see what the thresholds are by 
checking their own electronic “summary page” 
in the EIS. That page also shows them if any 
relevant events have been counted for them. 

Q
What happens to me if an alert is issued 
by the system? 

If you are the supervisor who is alerted, 
your responsibility is to make an 
assessment, as you normally would if 
you had a concern about one of your employees. 
The purpose of this assessment is to determine 
whether each of the events which triggered the
automated alert is explainable and appropriate
conduct or whether it represents undesirable job
performance which should be corrected.

If you are the employee who is the subject of the 
alert, you will have an opportunity to discuss the 
events with your supervisor if he or she believes 
there is need for an intervention to correct job 
performance. If the supervisor’s assessment is 
that no intervention is necessary because the 
employee is performing properly, there is no 
need for the employee to do anything.

Q
What kinds of concerns might lead a 
supervisor to decide that an
intervention is needed?

A
If, after careful assessment, the
supervisor concludes that employee
behaviors involved in the events—uses
of force, employee injuries, use of sick leave, 
etc.—are inappropriate in light of CMPD rules, 
mission or values, an intervention would be warranted.

For instance, the supervisor may find that 
relatively frequent uses of force by the employee 
or injuries to the employee stem not simply from 
the necessities of a high-activity, dangerous 
assignment but from other factors. These other 
factors might include some tactical mistakes 
officers are making that jeopardize themselves, 
their colleagues and innocent bystanders as well
as arrestees. There might be some deficiencies in 
verbal communication skills. Perhaps the 
supervisor learns that the employee is not as 
skilled as we would like in diffusing or 
deescalating stressful situations, and may in fact 
unintentionally contribute to increasing the 
stress, resulting in otherwise avoidable uses of 
force. Or, a supervisor may learn that the way an 
officer broke his hand is by using fists to the 
head of a suspect; depending on the incident 
circumstances, this may or may not represent the 
most sensible choice of tactics.

Q
What happens if the supervisor believes 
an intervention is needed?

A
The supervisor is not authorized to 
impose an intervention solely on his or 
her own initiative. The supervisor must
confer with the next tier supervisor and discuss 
the areas of concern, explaining why an 
intervention is appropriate, and also discuss why 
the proposed specific intervention makes sense. 

If the second-tier supervisor agrees, then there 
will be a one-on-one meeting between the first-
line supervisor and the affected employee to 
discuss the situation and any intervention. This 
is an opportunity for the employee to offer a 
different perspective, if he or she sees things differently. 
For instance, the employee may agree 
with the diagnosis of the problem but think the 
proposed solution (more training of a particular 
type, etc.) is unlikely to be helpful. 

This is an opportunity for mutual problem-
solving. The ultimate purpose of an early 
intervention is not a “gotcha” but an effort to 
head off at an early stage a pattern of conduct 
that could prove detrimental to the employee’s 
career and could negatively impact others. As 
with traditional employee-supervisor 
relationships, the supervisor has the 
responsibility to decide, after hearing the employee, 
what will be the best course of action for 
any intervention. 


Q
What are some of the interventions that 
will be used to correct job performance? 

A
The interventions under our EIS are the 
same kind of employee guidance, assistance 
and support that have always been 
applied when a supervisor thought an employee 
should be functioning at a higher level of proficiency. 
Section IV.C. of the EIS policy sets forth 
the kinds of interventions that typically will be 
appropriate: defensive tactics instruction, 
communication skills development (verbal judo, 
etc.), supervisor counseling, one-on-one training 
or course instruction, and engagement of the 
Employee Assistance Program. 

It is important to understand that the Early 
Intervention System is not designed to be Big 
Brother, snooping into our employees’ private 
lives and meddling in matters that are unrelated 
to work performance. The entire purpose of the 
EIS is to maintain the high standards of work 
performance that we hire and train our 
employees to provide. If a problem at home is 
not affecting work performance, it is not a matter 
that the EIS will flag or expect a supervisor to 
assess. We do, of course, care a great deal about 
the well-being of our employees, and, as always, 
if an employee seeks assistance with a personal 
matter that is troubling him or her, we will 
endeavor to see if we can be helpful.

Q
Can you give a specific example of what 
might occur when the employee is going 
through the prescribed intervention?

A
Take the example of someone who the
supervisor thinks could improve in the
area of tactical communication skills.

The employee would go to our Academy and be 
assessed by a use-of-force instructor or 
instructors. They would create a scenario or 
scenarios for that person to get involved with, 
and they would recreate, in the safety of the 
training environment, some of the incident-
related tension or stress that the employee seems 
to need to deal with more effectively.

Having created the stressful training encounter, 
the instructors will observe how the employee 
behaves. They might say to the employee, for
instance, “OK, you’re supposed to be here to
lock me up, and here’s the situation I’m in, and 
I’m not listening to you. What are you going to 
do about it?” Then the employee needs to try to 
communicate with them. The instructors might 
videotape the scenario, which is something that 
some other agencies that the CMPD EIS design 
committee visited do very well. They videotape 
the scenarios and then debrief, critiquing what 
the employee did well and what could be done 
better. 

We might not videotape everything, but there 
would be practical exercises, followed by a 
conversation. We might have additional people 
there, if they were not videotaping, to share 
during the debrief what they saw and how a 
person might improve. And then we would run 
through the scenario again and have the 
employee apply the tactics or the strategies just 
learned—whether it’s communication styles or 
skills—and see what the results are. Our 
objective in such training is to both encourage 
the employee and help provide the skills 
necessary to overcome whatever deficiency or 
weakness is interfering with high-quality police 
work. 

Q
Why would you want to videotape an 
officer going through corrective 
training? Isn’t that just a way to 
embarrass the officer? 

A
As they say, “Seeing is believing.” 
Sometimes some of us can’t see 
ourselves the way others see us, which 
can be quite understandable. It can help to watch 
a videotape to get insight into how we appear to 
others. Here’s an example from a retraining 
exercise used by another agency that some 
members of our EIS committee visited: 

Two officers are highly active, and their routine 
on the streets has been that after they handle a 
situation, they bump chests and salute each other 
with high fives. They’re the kind of guys who 
are always saying, “To the death, buddy. I’m 
here for you.” They were getting involved in a 
lot of uses of force. So their supervisor brought 
them in to see why every time they to go on 
something, they seem to get involved in uses of 


force. The department videotaped that particular 
retraining exercise. 

In that videotape, you see the two officers
talking to the guy in the Redman outfit, and he’s 
not cooperating at all. They’re not going to put 
up with that, so they jump right in with hands 
on. They’re not saying the right things to control 
him anyway, nor are they exercising any 
patience and tactical thinking. When they jump 
to hands-on, he puts up a fight and slings one 
across the room, gets on top of the other and 
struggles with both as the other officer returns to 
engage him.

At that point in the video, the suspect takes the 
gun of the officer below him. The officer above 
him sees this and runs out of the room, leaving 
his partner to be “shot” by the suspect, which in 
fact happens. As the story is told by agency 
representatives, those two officers weren’t 
bumping chests anymore as the officer left to be 
“shot” wasn’t very happy about his partner’s 
decision when the chips were down. The trainers 
had to work with those officers to show them 
that the two of them can be compromised, and 
that they need to think about how they approach 
people. So, there can be value in videotaping 
people because they can better understand what 
they are doing.

Q
What is the employee's basic
responsibility when directed to
participate in an intervention?

A
The employee has the responsibility to
do his or her very best to fix any 
concerns and try to address any issues 
that are identified. 

Q
Does EIS participation cost the 
employee any money or days off? 

A
No. It’s a cost to the Department. If the
employee has to go for a day of 
training, the Department bears the cost
of having that person out of his or her primary
function and having somebody else fill that role.

Q
How long will an employee be under 
closer scrutiny after an intervention? 

A
That varies by the situation and the type 
of intervention needed, and whether or 
not a supervisor prescribes a follow-up 
review. A follow-up might be planned for two, 
three or perhaps six months after the intervention 
to see how the employee is doing on the 
particular issue that caused the intervention. An 
Academy instructor who is working with the 
employee as part of an intervention may say, “I 
want you to come back next week or in a month 
or three months, and I want to test this again. I 
want to be sure we are confident—and you are 
confident—that you can apply the techniques, 
tactics and skills that you were taught.” 

So there are no hard and fast time periods that 
apply to all cases. The principle is that the 
supervisor should keep a close eye on the 
situation until the employee’s performance 
improves and remains consistently improved. 

We recognized that an employee is going to feel 
more scrutinized upfront because that’s where 
the assessment is active. If there’s an 
intervention, it’s going to be identified and 
discussed with the employee; he or she will go 
through it; and a number of people are going to 
be looking at the individual’s performance for 
some period of time after that—probably for a 
couple of months. The employee will be 
elevated on the supervisor’s radar, and the 
supervisor will know that the employee 
potentially needs closer scrutiny. 

Q
What, if any, stigma attaches to an 
employee who is identified by an early 
intervention alert or actual 
intervention? Can it affect career 
opportunities within the Department? 

A
It depends. EIS alerts are simply a count 
of events that may indicate an increased 
risk to the Department, public and/or  employee. 
Alerts themselves do not mean that an 
employee’s performance needs improvement or 
that it is inconsistent with our values as a 
department. EIS alerts are not based on the 
specific details of the events. Therefore, the 


mere presence (or absence) of EIS alerts will not 
affect promotions or transfers. 

There should be no stigma attached to the mere 
fact of an alert. While our system is quite new, 
based on experiences in other agencies we 
anticipate that there will be many alerts that turn 
out to require no intervention. That is, the 
supervisor looks into the matter and determines 
that the employee acted appropriately. Perhaps 
the supervisor concludes that in handling an 
arrest situation there was really nothing that the 
employee could have done better. The officer 
communicated well, used all the appropriate 
safety measures and tactics. The result would be 
no intervention. In these circumstances, what 
stigma attaches to those non-interventions? 
None. 

However, an EIS record that describes an
employee performance issue that has been 
determined to be problematic may affect a 
transfer to another assignment within the 
Department. Employee performance is always 
considered in assessing transfers. So, while an 
alert itself would not affect a transfer, an 
employee behavior or other matter that affects 
work performance could affect a transfer. If an 
employee’s work performance improves, resulting 
from an intervention or through the employee’s 
own efforts outside the EIS program, 
the improvement can also be considered as part 
of the evaluation for transfer. 

EIS alerts or interventions will not disqualify 
someone from a promotional process. Eligibility 
criteria for promotion are detailed in CMPD 
Directive 300-011. The Early Intervention 
System is designed to correct behaviors, 
inconsistent with our values and expectations of 
employee performance, before disciplinary 
action is necessary. Of course, discipline applied 
from sustained complaints does affect 
promotional eligibility, consistent with Directive 
300-011. 

Employee performance is always a factor in the 
Structured Chain of Command Evaluation 
(SCOCE). EIS interventions may affect SCOCE 
scores. An intervention (as opposed to the initial 
automated alert) is an indication that a behavior 
or performance needs improvement. Although 
the intervention is not discipline, the 
performance concern is always a matter that 
should be considered in assessing the 
promotional potential of any employee. 

So for the employee who does have issues that 
affect his or her work performance, and for 
whom an intervention is directed, is there a 
stigma? Some employees may feel there’s a 
stigma. They may think, “I’ve had five 
interventions in the last two years, and now I 
can’t get that job in robbery or homicide or that 
transfer wherever it is I want to go.” One could 
think of this as a stigma, but if it is, doesn’t the 
employee attach the stigma to himself or herself?

Q
Is it fair that I might be stigmatized by 
the EIS? 

A
Let’s remember that the EIS, like any 
system, is designed to help us do and 
manage our work in a sensible way. We
don’t leave commonsense and common decency 
at the door when we walk into the brave new 
world of computerized record-keeping.

Take an example. Perhaps an employee was 
struggling at home for whatever reason. Maybe 
his wife or child was sick, or may he and his 
wife had some marital strife, and it was a tough 
time. Maybe he got two or three rudeness 
complaints because he was a little bit more 
impatient than he should have been. Should that 
follow him forever? Most people—and most 
folks in this organization—aren’t going to hold 
that against a person forever. We don’t hold 
discipline against people forever. In the 
promotional process there are specific guidelines 
for how long something like that would be held 
against an employee.

The EIS information is a personnel record, and it 
may or may not affect someone’s promotion, but 
it’s not going to be held against him or her 
forever. If the employee has repetitive problems 
of the same sort, that says something different. 
Or if he or she has constant problems, that also 
says something different. Could there be stigma 
that attaches there based on the same type of 
problem happening over and over and over 
again? Sure, there may be some stigma that 
attaches there, but think about it: We don’t need 


EIS to point out some folks who have some 
stigma attached to them, and the members of the 
organization know it because people develop 
reputations. The way people perform their jobs 
establishes reputations for people. 

Q
Will EIS action be a part of an
employee’s permanent personnel
record? Will it be expunged? When? 

A
Because EIS records (and the data that people 
cannot readily see that EIS is about 
they are based on) address employee
performance, they are considered
personnel records. However, the Department has 
considered the length of time that these records 
would be relevant to an employee’s performance 
and has decided that EIS alerts and intervention 
records would be purged from the system after 
they age five years.

In their consideration of this policy, Executive 
Staff members felt that an employee’s 
performance concerns would be effectively 
addressed through EIS within this period or the
employee should have already faced disciplinary 
or unsatisfactory performance action. If 
discipline was imposed for action that violated 
Department rules, that would remain a part of 
the employee’s permanent personnel record.

Q
You say that interventions aren't
discipline, but aren’t they really just 
discipline dressed up in new language? 

A
No. We know it’s just human nature 
that any new system will be viewed 
with a little concern by some people.
“They’re tracking me, and that worries me” is a
feeling some may have. And in situations where
an employee isn’t cooperating with a supervisor,
it’s probably true that anything the supervisor 
prescribes is going to feel like discipline. 

But there’s a difference between interventions 
and discipline. Interventions don’t affect an 
employee’s pay or job status. Early intervention
is designed, as are other aspects of supervision, 
to affect an employee’s performance. The
purpose of interventions is to assist employees in
doing the job we expect them to do. We don’t
need a rule infraction to prompt intervention or
other guidance to an employee. In fact, we hope 
interventions and other guidance will prevent 
rule infractions and make unnecessary any sort 
of discipline. Discipline occurs, unlike an 
intervention, when an employee is adjudicated to 
have violated a rule of conduct.

As we studied early intervention systems around 
the country, we learned that successful systems
do not sit within Internal Affairs. If EIS is 
housed within a police department’s IA unit, 
people cannot readily see that EIS is about
preventing discipline; rather, they tend to think 
of it as a disciplinary system. 

Q
If the intervention isn’t discipline, will it 
be used in determining whether I am 
disciplined—and what type of discipline 
I might receive—for some other rule 
infraction? 

A
The way we handle our discipline is that 
an allegation of misconduct must first 
be sustained against an employee. Then, 
we look to their record—not their entire 
personnel record, but their disciplinary record. 
The employee’s EIS record is not a disciplinary 
record. 

In fact, Internal Affairs will not be any different 
than any other unit of the Department in terms of 
its access to EIS records. IA will not have full 
control access to the EIS system. IA staff won’t 
be able to look up any employee’s EIS history 
because they don’t have the permissions the EIS 
requires. The Training Academy (and its chain 
of command) will have that kind of access 
because they’re managing the EIS for the entire 
Department. But Internal Affairs supervisors 
will only be able to see the records and histories 
of their own employees. 

Q
Does the supervisor have the flexibility 
to look at the employee’s conduct even 
if the EIS doesn’t flag the employee 
with an alert? 

A
Yes. Nothing about the EIS is designed 
to intrude on what our good supervisors 
have always done—pay careful 
attention to the work of their employees and see 

 


how their good work can be supported and their  
challenges in doing good work can be overcome.  
A supervisor may notice, without receiving an  
alert, that an employee isn’t as productive as he 
or she used to be. If a supervisor thinks a pattern 
of conduct is occurring that requires closer 
analysis, the supervisor would take a look and 
would record that he or she was doing so by 
creating a “supervisor-initiated alert.” 

The Department developed this additional option  
for supervisors under the EIS because the system  
can’t necessarily pick up on everything. For 
instance, the supervisor may notice a problem 
with an employee’s attitude toward work. The 
EIS doesn’t directly measure the fact that 
somebody is disgruntled, but usually disgruntled 
employees tend to act out in one form or 
another, and it shows up in their work 
performance. They tend to have more complaints 
because they’re rude with people or they may 
engage in more aggressive physical behavior and 
uses of force. Sometimes a supervisor will 
recognize an attitude problem which is below the 
EIS radar screen in the sense that it hasn’t yet 
produced an event tracked by that system. 

It could be that the supervisor recognizes from 
talking with the employee that there is an issue 
at home that is affecting the person’s attitude 
and, ultimately, affecting his or her work performance. 
An on- or off-duty problem may be 
affecting work performance, and if so the 
supervisor will need to take a closer look. 
However, if stress or some other problem for the 
employee is not hindering the employee’s work, 
it’s not something supervisors would create an 
intervention about. Negative effects on work 
performance could show up as a communication 
problem, a safety issue, a tactics concern, or 
some other difficulty. The effect on work 
performance may not be something that would 
trigger an alert because it might not be 
associated with a particular event that EIS tracks. 

If something like that occurs, the supervisor can 
go into the EIS computer-based record system 
and create a supervisor-generated alert. When 
that is done, the system would pull all the events 
the employee was involved in for the previous 
180 days or whatever time period the system is 
calibrated to capture. The system would list 
these events for review by the supervisor. Just as 
 
with the analysis triggered by an automated flag,
the supervisor would be responsible for deciding
whether an intervention is appropriate.

Q
Why should a “supervisor-initiated
alert” be entered into an employee’s 
record?

A
It helps other supervisors to see an
accurate history of issues that may help
them better manage the employee. It
also helps the affected employee to see what 
kinds of issues supervisors believe need to be 
addressed in order for the employee to perform 
well and have a positive job experience.

Q
Will the EIS have any effect in 
smoothing out some of the inconsistencies
in how supervisors approach their work?

A
It may very well. Even though we train
our supervisors with standard 
procedures and expectations, inevitably 
there are variations in how people do their work. 
Some variations are perfectly acceptable and 
some are less desirable. Where in the past some 
supervisors may have dealt informally with 
problems and not made records of addressing 
them with their subordinates, the EIS should 
help the CMPD keep more complete and 
consistent records. This benefits our learning 
about how to best support and manage 
employees in doing high quality work, and it 
benefits supervisors who are newly transferred 
or receive newly transferred personnel into their 
unit. 

Q
How would the EIS help create greater 
consistency in interventions?

A
Achieving greater consistency in our 
interventions is likely to occur in part 
because the new EIS policy identifies
the types of available interventions. This listing 
is not a limit on the creativity of supervisors and 
command staff in tailoring corrective measures 
to the specific circumstances and challenges of 
any given employee. But the listing of typical



interventions in the policy is a reference—a 
starting place—for supervisors in figuring out  
how to respond when some kind of intervention  
is found to be necessary. 

Q
Is it always desirable to have interventions 
be consistent from case to case?

A
No. Consistency means treating similar 
problems similarly. Not only would it 
be unfair to treat different problems in 
the same way; it would be unwise and unhelpful.  
We want to make a difference for our employees 
who are struggling a bit in their performance—  
not just check off a box saying we tried and now 
the employee is on his or her own. So we 
attempt to tailor interventions to the particular 
individual and the difficulties he or she is facing. 
We don’t want to be unfairly inconsistent from 
one employee to the next; rather, we want to find 
a solution that actually helps the employee have 
a more productive, satisfying career working for  
the CMPD. 

In tailoring interventions, a supervisor is not left 
on his or her own to dream up what needs to be 
done. Just as good supervisors have always 
done, we expect them to check with 
knowledgeable people in the organization for 
good ideas if the path ahead is not obvious.  
Thus, a supervisor might talk with Academy 
staff, the police attorneys, or HR to see if they 
have any creative ideas for helping the employee 
address the area of concern. 

To help the people who will work with the 
employee to be of real use, the supervisor needs 
to be specific about what the intervention is 
supposed to accomplish. For example, if an 
officer has some challenges with using force, we 
expect our supervisors to do more than just send 
the employee off to have a one-on-one with an 
Academy instructor. The supervisor doing the 
assessment needs to have a conversation with 
that instructor and say, “Here’s what I’m seeing. 
We need to devise the exercise to get at this 
particular problem. You need to assess the 
employee’s capacity to handle this type of 
situation because this is where we’re seeing him 
blow up or do something else unproductive.” 
And then that supervisor is responsible for 
building a tailored, employee-focused inter-
vention. If a particular intervention doesn’t work
as we thought it would, we need to try
something else. If we fail, we are failing the 
employee.

So we aim for consistency which deals with the 
reality that each of our employees is an 
individual who deserves to be and must be 
recognized as someone with unique 
characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. We 
recognize, too, that different people learn best in 
different ways. Individualized corrective training
should honor that fact and adjust teaching
methods so the employee can actually benefit in
a practical way.

Q
Will the EIS cause the documentation 
of a lot more concerns about employees 
than would get recorded in the absence 
of EIS?

A
It very likely will. This doesn’t
necessarily mean supervisors will have
more concerns—just that the concerns 
they do have will be recorded more consistently.

Q
Will the EIS cause supervisors to 
intervene more frequently to improve 
the employees’ performance than
occurred before the EIS?

A
For some supervisors this will probably 
be true. With the EIS we now have a 
more clearly established process than
we use to have for supervisors to follow. When 
they get an alert they must conduct an 
assessment, and then they must discuss that with 
their chain of command. Some supervisors 
would have conducted assessments on their own 
initiative whenever they had concerns, others 
might not have looked into things quite so often. 
Under the EIS, when supervisors notice a need 
for attention to employee job performance, the 
supervisors can’t just say, “Hey look, how about 
straightening up” and then be on their way. By 
having an automated record system, it creates 
these flags. A supervisor can’t just eliminate a 
flag, so he or she has to address it, and the 
supervisor has to close it out with an 
explanation.



Q
Can employees suggest different
interventions than the one their 
supervisor has come up with? 

A
Yes. Employees should always feel free 
to suggest action that will improve their 
performance. The whole goal of the EIS 
is to improve work performance. Employees’ 
ideas about how that can best be done certainly  
may be relevant to finding long-lasting solutions.  
Having said that, supervisors are under no 
obligation to negotiate any solution with an 
employee. 



It’s also important to remember that employees 
are encouraged to frequently critique their own 
work performance. They can monitor their 
current status in the EIS, and take advantage of  
opportunities to enhance their performance by  
pursuing training or other assistance as 
appropriate. This can be done at any time, and 
the employee never needs to wait on an EIS alert 
to make an effort to improve his or her work 
performance. 

The way in which an employee could have input 
on an intervention is pretty straightforward and 
nothing new: The supervisor will sit down and 
talk with the employee in terms of the 
assessment and say, “Here’s the pattern I’m 
seeing, and my concern is this. Help me 
understand why you’re doing this.” The 
employee might say, “Well, that was the way I 
was trained.” Or the supervisor may prescribe 
some corrective steps that the employee believes 
won’t work. And the employee may propose an 
option the supervisor thinks is a better idea. This 
kind of conversation is part of the assessment 
and the process of setting in motion an intervention. 

Q
Will all the interventions involve the 
employee working with people within 
the CMPD? 

A
Over the years, we have developed the 
capacity in our Academy and other 
parts of the organization to meet most 
of our needs for training and guiding employee 
job performance. But we are always open to 
considering other ways to help our employees.  
If, in devising an intervention under the EIS, an  
employee recommended some outside training 
option—or the supervisor thought of something 
out of the ordinary—we would consider whether 
that makes sense under the circumstances. The 
supervisor might ask an Academy instructor to 
look into the costs and benefits of the proposed 
outside training for the particular employee, and
that information would help guide the supervisor
and the next tier supervisor in deciding on the
intervention to be directed.

Q
Why isn’t changing an employee’s
assignment listed as an available option
in the EIS policy?

A
The committee that designed the system
considered this option. We recognize
that, in some cases, the environment in
which the employee is working may be 
significantly contributing to a job performance 
problem. For the good of all concerned—the 
employee, his or her coworkers, supervisors and 
the public at large—the simplest and most 
sensible solution might be to reassign the 
employee. We didn’t specifically list transfers in 
the directive because we want to be careful that 
supervisors do not use transfers as a way of 
evading their responsibility to help their 
employees perform well. Supervisors shouldn’t 
be “transferring problems,” they should be fixing 
them.

Still, we recognize that sometimes a change of 
assignment is the smartest and most effective 
way to meet everyone’s legitimate concerns. We 
want to be careful however, that if a transfer 
does turn out to be the best solution, it is not 
seen as a disciplinary transfer. Intelligently 
matching employees with the right working 
situations so they can do their best work is not 
punishment.

Q
What checks and balances exist to 
prevent inappropriate or excessive
supervisory scrutiny?

A
The supervisor needs to discuss his or
her assessment with the next level of
supervisor. The point of this review and
discussion is to make sure that the assessment
was accurate and was properly completed. This




will include discussing whether any prescribed 
intervention is best suited to address the issue. 

Q 
What if I, as the employee, think the 
supervisor is wrong about a proposed 
intervention and I can’t convince the 
supervisor of this? Can I appeal to the next 
level supervisor? 

A 
It’s possible that the supervisor and 
employee will disagree about whether a 
particular intervention is a good idea. 
An officer might say, “Sarge, if you tell me to do 
that, I’m going to do it because I have to, but 
you are off base. It’s wrong. I’m not unwilling to 
address whatever your concerns are, but this is 
not the right way to do it.” The supervisor might 
be convinced to reconsider or he or she might 
stand firm. 

If the employee feels the supervisor is being 
unfair, that’s what we have a chain of command 
for. Our employees know this. An employee 
may be talking with the initial supervisor and 
might tell the supervisor, “Look, this is overkill. 
You’re killing a fly with a sledgehammer. I 
don’t know what you’re doing to me, but you’re 
going to crush my morale, and the kind of intervention 
you’re planning will not help things. I’d 
like you to reconsider.” Or an employee might 
just say, “I don’t feel like I need any 
intervention.” If the employee disagrees with the 
supervisor, that employee can talk to the next 
level in the chain of command. 

Because this process is not disciplinary, no 
formal appeal rights attach. However, an 
employee may seek to remedy what he or she 
believes is an inappropriate intervention 
response by discussing it through chain of 
command channels. The individual members of 
the chain of command may or may not elect to 
hear the employee’s position or change the 
intervention. 

We’re not setting up any rigid procedures for 
how an inquiry to the next level supervisor 
would work because we don’t envision any 
departure from how things seem to work 
reasonably well now. As a practical matter, an 
employee might say to the supervisor, “Well, I 
don’t agree with this, and I’d like to talk with the 
captain about it.” Most likely, the sergeant 
would say, “OK, schedule some time with the 
captain and I’ll let the captain know that you 
want to talk with him or her.” 

Probably—although we’re not try to 
micromanage this kind of thing—the first 
conversation between the employee and the 
second-tier supervisor would be a one-on-one 
meeting, unless the employee expressed a strong 
preference for having the first-line supervisor sit 
in from the start. A captain might very well say 
to the employee, “What I’d like to do after 
listening initially to you is for the three of us to 
sit down and just go through this.” Most captains 
will figure that when the sergeant comes in they 
will get half the story, and when the employee 
comes in they’ll get the other half and be able to 
ask intelligent questions. That’s usually how it 
happened before the EIS, and we anticipate no 
differences under the new system. 

Q 
What about the privacy of the EIS? 
Who has access to an employee’s record 
of alerts and interventions? 

A 
The individual employee and his or her 
chain of command. The EIS system 
manager, who is a member of the 
Academy staff, and that system manager’s chain 
of command, also have access. They need access 
in order to fulfill their responsibility to make 
sure that the EIS is functioning as intended and 
that supervisors are using it as intended. 

Note that the employee’s chain of command can 
see the EIS records for that employee, but only 
when they are that employee’s current chain of 
command. So as soon as an employee transfers, 
and his or her assignment is updated in the 
personnel records, the members of the 
employee’s previous chain of command can no 
longer see those records. 

Each employee may, at any time, check his or 
her own “personal summary page” in the EIS 
records. This early intervention summary page 
will show the number of events—uses of force, 
pursuits, accidents, injuries and the other items 
tracked by the EIS—that have been recorded. 
And it shows what the threshold is to trigger a 
flag in each category of activity. When the 


employee looks at his or her own summary page, 
the alert status will be indicated by an icon that 
shows a green, yellow or red light. 

When our 45-member EIS committee discussed 
different possible features of our system, people 
liked the idea of employees being able to see a 
summary page. They said it would help alleviate 
concerns for an employee to have the right to 
look and see where he or she stood at any given 
point in time. Some people said, “I don’t like the 
fact that the Department has one more tracking 
device on me, but at least there is nothing 
hidden. There are no secrets; I can see it too.” 

Q
Why does the employee’s chain of 
command have access to the 
individual’s EIS records? 

A
They ought to know the background of 
their employees. They may see some 
behavior, which has not created a flag 
in the EIS, but which is causing a supervisor to 
consider doing something to assist the employee. 
The supervisor would want to be able to take a 
look and see what’s happened before. It’s in the 
best interest of the employee for a supervisor to 
have access to that history so the Department 
doesn’t repeat a failed strategy with this 
individual. It also helps a supervisor, who is 
trying to make an assessment after an alert, to 
understand what other people saw when they 
were trying to make their assessments. That 
knowledge may help the supervisor make a more 
complete diagnosis and create a better strategy 
or tactic for trying to address whatever problems 
he or she is seeing. 

3
How Does EIS Work? What 
Are the Mechanics? 

Q
What is the basic difference between an 
“alert” or “flag” and an “intervention”? 

A
As noted earlier, an alert is issued when 
a threshold has been met. That threshold 
is met when a specified number of the 
events tracked by the system occur during a 
specified time period. An alert does not 
automatically require any corrective action on 
the part of the employee—because it’s not 
necessarily the case that the employee is doing 
anything incorrectly. That determination will be 
made by the supervisor who, responding to the 
alert, will conduct an assessment. If the 
assessment reveals that the employee’s work 
performance—not off-duty conduct—is falling 
below our expectations, then an intervention 
will be devised. The intervention requires the 
employee to participate in counseling, training or 
some other activity to fix whatever problem has 
been identified. 

Q
How is notification made that an alert 
was created? 

A
Notification of an alert or flag is made 
automatically, by email. 

Q
Who is automatically alerted via email 
by the EIS? 

A
The affected employee’s immediate 
supervisor and second-tier supervisor. 


Q
What exactly does an employee see on 
his or her own “summary page”? 

A
Here is an example of what the em-
ployee—or that employee’s chain of 
command—would see. The example 
uses fictitious numbers. It also uses illustrative 
alert thresholds that may not be exactly what the 
Department uses over time. Each of the areas of 
activity—accidents, injuries, pursuits, complaints, 
use of force—is shown. There is also a 
“combination” category, which totals the alerts 
from the other categories. An employee might 
not have enough activity in a single area to send 
up a flag, but one or more alerts in each of 
several categories could trigger an alert in the 
combined category. 

Screen shot of employee summary pageoften are the system alerts 

For each activity category, there are three items
of information posted: the time frome for which
the activity is being reported (number of days); 
the number of events that have occured during 
that time frame; and the threshold that applies to
that particular category of activity.

Q
How often are the system alerts updated?

A
The system does a record scan once per 
day for all records other than sick leave 
records. With sick leave, the scan is 
completed once per week. 


Q
What kind of case management 
information does the EIS show the 
supervisor and the rest of an 
employee’s chain of command?

A
There are several screens in the 
computer program. On the “Events” 
screen, the EIS displays the number of
relevant events where an alert has been issued; 
the date and time of alert notification; the name 
of the assigned supervisor; the closure date; who 
the matter was closed by; the follow-up date, if 
any; and the current status of the employee’s 
early intervention. The current status may be any 
of the following: in progress, for review, close 
intervention record, follow-up scheduled, 
follow-up due, and no action.

On the “Supervisor Assessment” screen, the EIS 
displays a box in which the supervisor writes his 
or her assessment in narrative form. Instructions 
on that screen state: “Indicate your analysis of 
behaviors in each of the following categories: 
Communication, Safety, Tactics, and Other 
On/Off Duty Behaviors (that affect work 
performance).” 

On the “Action Taken” screen, the specific 
action taken is to be described in narrative form. 
The supervisor is also instructed to check all of 
the types of interventions that were used. The 
choices listed are “No Intervention Required, 
Counseling, Training, EAP, Other (describe), 
Combined with Other EI Record.” 

Finally, the system provides a screen titled 
“Adding Exhibits,” in which the supervisor can 
add an exhibit or attachment to help document 
the assessment and intervention, if any.



4 
What Input Did CMPD 
Employees Have in Designing 
the EIS? 

Q
Were those most likely to be affected by 
an intervention consulted in the design 
of our EIS? 

A
“Consulted” would be an understate- 
ment. Our EIS is fundamentally the 
product of consensus decisions among a 
group of 45 employees of the CMPD. Their 
recommendations were, of course, presented to 
Executive Staff and ultimately signed off on by the 
Chief. The 45 employees represent every component 
of the Department—sworn and non-sworn; 
multiple ranks (with first-line sworn and 
initially, for about four hours, in 
non-sworn predominating); and virtually every
section of the organization. In addition, 
representatives from each of the local 
police employee organizations, including North State, 
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police, 
and International Brotherhood of Police 
Officers, were invited to participate. Of these, 
the representative of the FOP participated 
extensively in each area. 

In the Department’s preliminary research on the 
establishment of an EIS, we learned from the 
successful and unsuccessful experiences of other 
agencies. One of the first things we learned at a 
conference about EIS in Phoenix was: “Get your 
employees involved or nobody’s going to buy 
into it.” We were fortunate in that the CMPD 
was not pressured into adopting an EIS rapidly 
because of a court order or some other outside 
mandate. Sometimes when that happens, 
departments don’t always feel they can take the 
time to establish a highly collaborative process 
in which a representative group of employees 
substantially contribute to every aspect of 
system design and development, including 
policy development. 

Q
What were the tasks undertaken by this 
EIS committee? 

A
There were seven basic objectives and 
activities for the group: 

1. Identify performance standards 
2. Determine thresholds for system alerts 
3. Develop employee training on the system 
4. Identify intervention options 
5. Develop an operating procedure and policy 
6. Serve as EIS “ambassadors” to other 
7. Develop a standing EIS Management 
   Committee for post-implementation 
   management of issues. 


Q
How was the EIS committee organized? 

A
The entire 45-member group met 
January 2004. At that time, the group 
was briefed about EIS-type programs around the 
country that were somewhat like the system we 
were tasked with creating here. Also at that 
meeting, the group discussed what the CMPD 
was trying to accomplish by establishing an 
automated EIS; decided what they wanted the 
system to measure; and outlined the tasks 
mentioned above. The group then decided to do 
the bulk of its work over the next year in several 
subcommittees. These subcommittees were: 

. Technology 
. Training 
. Intervention Development 
. Operating Procedure/Policy 
. Thresholds 

The technology subcommittee talked about what 
kind of technology would be needed to make an 
EIS work. They also considered how they could 
make a business case to look for additional 
funding if we had to connect different systems or 
undertake other somewhat expensive efforts. 
The training subcommittee planned how the 
entire Department would be trained in the 
operations of the EIS. The Intervention 
Development subcommittee explored what 


categories of interventions we wanted the system 
to recommend as standard options for 
supervisors. The Operating Procedure 
subcommittee brainstormed and wrote the EIS 
directive, and then distributed it to the entire 
committee for comment. Following review of 
these comments, the directive was sent for 
review to Executive Staff. Finally, the 
Thresholds subcommittee deliberated the 
number of events of each type that should trigger 
an alert, on the ground that such a frequency 
might indicate a potential performance problem. 

After each of the subcommittees did their work, 
the entire 45-member committee reconvened in 
January 2005. The committee reviewed the 
accomplishments of each of the subcommittees, 
saw demonstrations of some of the technology 
we planned to use for the EIS and approved of 
all work. 


5 
Does Our EIS Differ 
from the Systems in 
Other Departments? 

Q
Why couldn’t we just buy a fully 
functional, off-the-shelf computer
system for our EIS? 

A
Off-the-shelf EI systems don’t always  
perform as expected. In the two years  
prior to this initiative, the Department 
unsuccessfully tried to integrate an ‘OTS’ 
system. Department staff and the vendor were 
unable to make that software fully function as 
expected within the Department’s network and 
data system structure. This prompted the 
Department’s effort to design and build its own 
system. We also learned that most of the 
successful EIS programs that we’ve seen are the 
ones that are home built because they’re 
integrated into the technology that exists within 
a particular department. 

Q
Do most other agencies track the same 
range of indicators we do?

A
Some do, but some track a great many 
more indicators. For instance, we took a 
careful look at Pittsburgh’s, Phoenix’s,
and Tampa’s systems. Of these three, both 
Phoenix and Pittsburgh measure many more 
types of events that the CMPD system does. 
Actually, those systems are intended to be far 
more than early intervention systems. They are 
essentially performance assessment systems.

Those systems, for instance, track a wide range 
of employee activity (tickets written, consent 
searches, etc.) and track whether each employee 
is within or outside a normal range for the 
workforce. While those systems may be useful, 
our EIS committee decided it would be most 
appropriate for the CMPD to develop a system 
more specifically targeted at identifying 
potential performance problems and the 
interventions supervisors prescribe to fix them. 
To put it in other words, some other agencies use 
their systems to try to assess overall employee 
performance, whereas our system looks at 
danger signals, and corrective actions. 

Q
Why did we decide to track the
categories of events that our EIS
monitors? 

A
The EIS committee that designed our
system picked the types of events that 
they believe are key in terms of
employee performance and liability to the 
Department—things that could derail an
employee’s career or injure the reputation of the
Department.



 
6 
How Will We Know if Our 
EIS is Working Well and 
Benefiting the Department, 
Our Employees & the Public? 

 
Q
What are the basic things the EIS has to 
accomplish for us to consider it useful? 
 
A
It has to help supervisors take note 
when their employees are potentially at
risk of performing their jobs below the  
levels we expect. The system should be fine-
tuned over time to make any corrections we 
learn are needed in the thresholds for alerts. The 
thresholds should be high enough that we don’t 
get huge numbers of “false positives”—alerts 
that turn out to reflect perfectly normal and 
acceptable employee conduct. And the 
thresholds should be low enough that we don’t 
miss significant numbers of “true positives”— 
employees who actually are experiencing job 
performance difficulties. 

To be considered successful, our EIS also has to 
help guide supervisors toward figuring out 
useful interventions, when interventions are 
called for. And it has to create an easily retrievable, 
accurate history for each employee of 
alerts and interventions. This historical record 
has to be user-friendly for supervisors and 
managers to keep track of employees who may 
have recently transferred, who have been 
involved in events when the supervisor was off-
duty, etc. If the system helps us better identify 
what works and what doesn’t work to help 
employees overcome particular types of job 
performance problems, the EIS will be a worthwhile 
system. And the system will be judged 
useful if it actually helps us implement what we 
learn about how best to improve employee 
performance. 

Q
Who watches over the EIS to be sure 
people are conducting themselves as the 
system designers intended?

A
If there’s something that looks unusual
in the way a supervisor handled an alert 
or an intervention, and the way a
second-tier supervisor approved it and closed it, 
then the EIS manager would bring that up to the 
third level in the chain of command. The EIS 
manager would say that something doesn’t look 
right and ask the upper-level manger to take a 
look. Additional oversight of the EIS might 
come from higher ranking members of the
organization. For instance, nothing prevents a
major or civilian equivalent manager—because 
they are within their employees’ chain of 
command—from going into the EIS records and
seeing what alerts there are on their employees
and how those alerts are being handled.

CONCLUSION 


The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department 
is proud that we hire good people and invest 
heavily in their training and supervision. Our 
supervision includes praising people when they 
do well, trying to share their accomplishments 
and skills with other employees through training 
and other methods, and guiding people when we 
think they can do better. Hopefully, through 
appropriate supervision we will notice—and 
intervene—if an employee seems to be working 
in a way that risks falling below our 
expectations. 

Police work is becoming more complicated each 
year. Things that our community’s police officers 
never had to think about in earlier generations 
now quite properly demand the attention of 
our workforce. This includes new problems, 
such as the risk of terrorist threats. And it 
includes new crime control strategies, such as 
problem-oriented policing. Just as front-line 
police work has become more and more complicated, 
so too has the task of professionally 


supervising their work. We want our supervisors to 
be problem-solvers themselves—not only 
solving the community’s crime problems, but 
also solving any personnel problems that might 
interfere with our department providing the 
highest quality service to the public. 

As we ask more and more of our supervisors, we 
need to be sure we are giving them ever-better 
guidance in what we expect. And we must 
continue developing and honing tools and 
systems to assist them with their important work. 
This handbook has described one such 
innovation—the Early Intervention System. Our 
EIS was designed by us—by a hard-working, 45-member 
committee representing every 
component of the CMPD. They, and our 
executive staff, believe this system will serve us 
well. But we want to ensure that it does, and so 
we welcome your feedback over time. Please let 
us know if the EIS can be modified to even 
better support our mission, goals and values. 
Together, we can make this system a valuable 
feature of one of the nation’s finest police 
departments. 


Image of EIS Dataflow and Process Model