If somebody has been doing the job for twenty years, I expect them to know things a new officer simply hasn’t had time to learn yet. They’ve seen calls go sideways, watched people react under pressure, learned which details matter, and probably made enough mistakes of their own to recognize a few before they happen…
Everybody likes transparency when the question is easy. It’s a lot easier to talk about openness when you’re announcing something good, explaining a successful case, showing off new equipment, or releasing numbers that make the department look good. The harder test comes when somebody asks about an arrest, a use of force, a complaint against…
One of the easiest things for a supervisor to say is, “I treat everybody the same.” I understand why that sounds fair. Nobody wants favoritism, special treatment, or a boss who changes the rules depending on who is standing in front of him. But I don’t think fair treatment requires pretending every employee and every…
Police departments buy equipment all the time. Radios, body cameras, vehicles, computers, protective gear, weapons, medical equipment, software, and plenty of other things most people never think about until somebody needs one. Some purchases are routine replacements, while others involve bringing an entirely new capability into the department. Either way, somebody has to decide what…
Most people who pass through Barbour County, Alabama, see a road. They see U.S. 431 through Eufaula, maybe Highway 51 toward Clayton, maybe one of the smaller roads cutting across the county. They pass gas stations, churches, fields, timber, old houses, a few businesses, and signs for towns they may never actually enter. Then they…
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…
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…
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…
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,…