I’ve had officers ask me why they need to write a use-of-force report when everybody already knows the force was justified. Nobody complained. Nobody got hurt. Maybe it was nothing more than a two-second grab to get somebody under control. Why write several paragraphs about it? Because six months from now, “everybody knows what happened”…
If I were helping a city hire its next police chief, I wouldn’t be comfortable making a recommendation based on a résumé, a good interview, and three references the candidate picked himself. I’d want to know quite a bit more about the person who was about to take charge of the department. A police chief…
They’re dependable, they know the work, and they’re usually the person everybody leans on when something needs to get done. That makes your best employee a serious candidate, but I still have to decide whether those strengths fit the job I’m about to give them. The job they’re doing well now may depend on being…
When most people talk about leadership, they start with the leader. Restrepo starts with the team. The documentary follows soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade during a deployment to Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. Nobody stops to explain who has influence and why. You just see it in who people listen to, who they trust, who stays…
The stories and ideas I don’t want you to miss.
You’re probably never going to make your house impossible to break into. If somebody is determined enough, has enough time, and doesn’t care how much noise they make, they can probably get into just about anything. What you can do is make your house less convenient. Most of the home security advice I’d give somebody…
When one of my officers is under investigation, I have responsibilities to the public, the officer, and the department. Those responsibilities don’t always fit neatly together, especially when people want answers before the investigation has established what actually happened. I don’t believe transparency means telling everybody everything I know, and I don’t believe protecting an…
Barbour County history is full of stories people repeat because they’ve heard them all their lives. If you grew up here, or spent enough time around people who did, you’ve probably heard some version of them. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar: high-stakes poker games where decisions were really made, the prosecutor who…
I’ve never believed the officer with the highest test score should automatically get promoted. Some people are excellent test takers who have no business supervising other officers. They can memorize policy, give a polished interview, and answer every question on an oral board, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’d trust them to run a shift,…
Yes, but I’d want to know why the department didn’t want me in the first place. There’s a difference between officers who don’t like the person appointed as chief and officers who have legitimate reasons to question whether that person should be leading them. The Mayor can appoint me, give me the authority to run…
When I first became a cop in 1997, I was told that if I wasn’t getting complained on, that probably meant I wasn’t putting in the work. There was some truth to that. If you’re making traffic stops, arresting people, writing tickets, breaking up fights, and telling people things they don’t want to hear, somebody…