A police chief answers to somebody, and the people he answers to are allowed to ask hard questions about how the department runs, how the money gets spent, and whether the town is getting what it expects. That part isn’t the problem. The problem starts when the question stops being about the department and becomes…
When I’m looking at hiring a police officer, the salary is only part of what the department will spend on that person. By the time you add benefits, uniforms, equipment, academy expenses, field training, supervision, and the time other officers spend helping someone learn the job, you’ve made a considerable investment before that new officer…
One of the worst times to start building a relationship between the police and the community is when something has already gone wrong. Emotions are high, people want answers, and we’re expected to make decisions while everyone is trying to figure out whether they can trust each other. I don’t expect everybody in town to…
There’s something interesting about a company being able to tell the public it tests its artificial intelligence for discrimination, while the results of certain tests remain protected from disclosure in a lawsuit alleging that the technology discriminates. That’s the situation in the ongoing case against Workday, whose automated hiring software can determine which applicants ever…
The stories and ideas I don’t want you to miss.
It’s pretty easy to judge the boss when you’re not the boss. I’ve done plenty of it. I’ve looked at decisions made above me and thought they were slow, unnecessary, poorly timed, or just wrong. Sometimes I was probably right. Becoming the person in the chair didn’t suddenly convince me that bosses know better than…
After nearly three decades as sheriff of Lee County, Jay Jones lost the May 19 Republican primary to former deputy Cam Hunt by just 307 votes. Hunt received 9,301 votes to Jones’s 8,994, according to the unofficial results. Jones first took office in January 1999. He had spent nearly thirty years building his career, his…
Starting over sounds like going back to the beginning, but at 52, I don’t think that’s what it means. I have started over in a few different ways over the last several years. I came back to policing after being away from it for a long time. I went through the police academy again, twenty-eight…
Jay Jones has served as sheriff of Lee County since January 1999, following his election in 1998. Nearly three decades in office gives him a substantial record to campaign on, along with relationships and experience that a challenger can’t easily match. But it also gives voters nearly three decades of decisions to examine, and former…
I’ve sat on both sides of the interview table enough times that I don’t really think of one person as the interviewer anymore. If I’m hiring, I’m trying to decide whether somebody can do the job and handle the responsibility I’m about to give them. If I’m applying, I’m trying to figure out what I’m…
In a previous life, I delegated a lot more than I do now. I had to. I was responsible for more than 2,300 employees who depended, in one way or another, on the decisions I made, and there was no realistic way I could personally handle everything that came with that. On a normal day,…