EP 89 Thomas Canavan | Executive Director, National Law Enforcement Museum

The Charity Charge Show

In Episode 89 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen talks to Thomas Canavan, Executive Director of National Law Enforcement Museum, whose mission is to honor the role of law enforcement, in service to society, by recognizing the sacrifices and valor of law enforcement, educating the community, and making it safer for those who serve. Stephen and Thomas Canavan talk about the effect of COVID-19 on the National Law Enforcement Museum and how CALEB (Community Alliances and Law Enforcement Bulletin Network) is bringing communities and law enforcement together.

Thomas Canavan is the Executive Director of the National Law Enforcement Museum and beginning in late 2019 began refocusing the Museum into what it is today…a place that honors the history and heroism of law enforcement officers. Thomas leads the Museum’s operations which includes exhibitions, education, outreach, and fostering strategic partnerships, all of which focuses on telling the story of American law enforcement.

Thomas is an accomplished non-profit professional with leadership expertise in developing exhibitions as well as educational and outreach programs that focus on building thriving communities. His experience includes establishing collaborative program environments; development and oversight of innovative educational programming; and cultivating strategic partnerships and alliances between local government, corporate sector, and nonprofit organizations. He holds a Master of Science, Arts Administration from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts, Studio Art from the University of Maryland.

Thomas Canavan on using social media to bring communities and law enforcement together:

After the death of George Floyd, there was a lot of unrest around the country, and the relationship between communities and law enforcement, in certain places, was very strained. In this environment we as an organization we were thinking about our platform, and the connections that we have to the law enforcement community as a whole and wanted to see if it were possible to pull together best practices within that community on a national level. We ended up creating CALEB (Community Alliances and Law Enforcement Bulletin Network) a national bulletin board, where we invited people to post what works in their communities to see if we could make something positive happen. Once we had collected a lot of ideas, we saw that a lot of engagement was happening in other parts of the country. Overall we wanted to create a social media platform that was built and designed so that the law enforcement community and the public could come together to have a dialogue about what's working in their communities. We want to help pull all this information for the benefit of engagement with law enforcement who are really busy, working long hours in long stretches of days in a row. CALEB is a really great project and we're hoping that more people will hear about it and start to participate.