The second candidate for chief of the Iowa State Police Department presented at an open forum Friday, specifically emphasizing community, collaboration, communication and transparency.

Michael R. Newton has been in higher education law enforcement about 18 years and is currently a captain at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a school with a larger student population.

One analogy that he used during his presentation was that of being a warrior versus being a guardian regarding law enforcement

Newton argued that a guardian is involved with the community and is there to serve and protect, rather than being confrontational.

“Somewhere along the line, law enforcement switched to this warrior mindset, and then we had the war on drugs,” he said. “We need to go ahead and take care of everything. The war on terrorism — we have the war on this, the war on that and we’re going to go into the community and we’re gonna solve all of the community’s problems.”

He further explained that while he does have to work toward fixing these problems, at the end of the day, he doesn’t see any reason why he can’t go back and explain why he did what he did.

“Embrace the culture of transparency. There’s a lot of things in law enforcement that we say we can’t talk to people about that we can talk to people about,” Newton said.

His division in Madison posted all of its policies online. This includes policy for body cameras that show when an officer will turn on the camera and how the footage is used.

This specific topic was one that he discussed with the Boys and Girls Club and NAACP. They had concerns about when they would be recorded and if they could ask not to be recorded.

Newton is the president of the Wisconsin NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and encourages police departments to do simple things like putting mental health resources on the back of their business card.

He said that those struggling with mental health have the choice of whether to use these resources. At least he knows that they have the information in their possession.

“I spent a lot of time building a program at my department that looks at how we can better help students and faculty and staff […] who just need some help,” Newton said.

Another initiative that he has been a part of is a program that was originally started by a student organization, the bandana project.

The premise of the project is that a person ties a bandana on their bag, representing that they are a safe mental health resource. More than 400 students on campus are signed onto the project.

The session ended with a question and answer session, which is uniform for all open forums for the position.

An audience member asked Newton about failures he has faced in his career in law enforcement.

Despite having failed projects and not getting promotions, Newton believes his biggest failure during his career was his lack of collaboration at times.

Having strong beliefs, he explained that many people have found him to be arrogant. He said this stalled him on his career path at times.

Once he opened himself up to getting feedback, this all was resolved. He said it was hard to hear criticism, but in the end, it benefitted him.

The next open forum will take place from 2:50 p.m. to 3:50 p.m. Wednesday in the Oak Room of the Memorial Union. The name of the candidate will be announced upon their arrival.

Due to a family emergency, the third candidate’s open forum, previously set to take place Monday, will be rescheduled. The new time and location has yet to be announced.