Nashville Business Journal

July 29, 2024, By Adam Sichko

Pat Shea has found her new mission, one she believes "is calling on all of [her] experience" as an entrepreneur, three-time nonprofit CEO and influential business leader.

Shea has created the Nashville Police & Public Safety Alliance, which aims to spark a citywide conversation. She wants to pull together businesses and nonprofits for projects that could prevent crime — while working with and supporting the Metro Nashville Police Department and its efforts to make the city safer.

Shea tells the Business Journal she has raised $1.8 million so far and hired her first staffer, Halim Genus, vice president of programs and partnerships. The nonprofit's board features top executives from the Nashville Predators and Tennessee Titans and the head of Sony Music Publishing Nashville. The alliance's founding committee features big business names such as Ronald Roberts, Aubrey Harwell, Jerry Williams and Tom Ingram.

"We didn’t see a way that the public could actively engage in improving public safety with the police department. So we’ve built this sandbox … to invite people to bring the gifts and tools and resources they have," Shea said in an interview. "If we can offer the right role and promise the right outcomes, I think people will line up."

The alliance is still early in figuring out what it could become. That begins with surveys to establish a baseline understanding of attitudes about the local police and public safety. One study already commissioned will probe those perceptions within the school system and its stakeholders. Starting in August, hundreds of residents will be surveyed; the alliance is working on a similar survey of attitudes within the business community.

"It impacts employee satisfaction. It impacts whether someone will use your business. It impacts business costs," Shea said. "It’s very intertwined."

A news release says the group "aims to create a safer Nashville through initiatives that engage our community, businesses and nonprofits to prevent crime, introduce innovation and best practices, and collaborate with police." 

What might be easier to say about the alliance at the moment is what it is not.

"We're completely apolitical," Shea said, "and we're not a committee that's going to lobby for anything." It will not buy weapons for police. It is not a community oversight board (which Nashville had until late last year).

The alliance also rejected the model of a police foundation, which is more common nationwide and normally raises money to help fund the police.

"We're one of the largest cities that doesn't have an ancillary support structure like this. It’s so critically important to the continued rocketship growth of this community," said Dan Hogan, the group's board chairman and a serial Nashville entrepreneur.

"In whatever manner we can engage to allow them to better improve that service — hell yeah, I’m all for that," Hogan said. "And that really means specificity, the data side of what we’re doing. … We're a data organization first. We'll do that every year, because that's likely to be the greatest measure of the work we're doing."

Hogan hopes that some of the alliance's potential partnerships will bolster the police's ability to recruit and retain officers.

"One of the things that really grinds me about the city of Nashville is right now, two-thirds of our police can't afford to live in our city," said Hogan, citing attainable housing as one of the "big boulders we want to move real fast."

Hogan said businesses have compelling reasons to care about public safety.

"We can't recruit and retain employees in a city where people don't feel safe. We can't attract new businesses in a place where people don't feel comfortable," he said. "A very reliable, high level of confidence in the framework of public safety in Nashville is a baseline plank of doing business here. We have to have that, and we do have that. We're playing defense: maintaining, and hopefully improving. It's not like we're digging out of a hole."

Even the mere definition of "safety" will vary widely by neighborhood, Shea acknowledged. It's becoming more complicated, potentially involving issues such as mental health, school shootings and homelessness.

Shea has known Metro Nashville Police Department Chief John Drake since her days leading the YWCA Nashville & Middle Tennessee, when he led the department's domestic violence unit. She said she is well aware the police are divisive in some segments of the community.

"I think as we do our projects, people will see our intention become reality. Those successful projects will start to help reduce friction," Shea said. "Our strategy is be transparent, use data and share successes. … People can talk about what they think we’re going to do, but the reality is, just watch us and judge on what we do. I think we will uncover community issues and community needs, work with the police department on how they might see that being improved and then identify community partners who can bring those resources to the table."

"Public safety," she added, "is not controversial. We've got to figure out how to live in a safe community. This can happen, because of Nashville. We build community in Nashville. We can do something special here."