A police officer already has plenty of information they can’t release. Criminal investigations, confidential personnel records, protected personal information, and security details aren’t things officers should be discussing with just anybody. Those restrictions come with the job, and there’s a good reason for them. So when a city decides its officers need to sign an…
If an employee uses a police system for something they aren’t authorized to do, that employee owns the decision. I’m not interested in watering that down by blaming the software, the supervisor, the policy manual, or anybody else for a choice the employee made. But when it happens more than 2,700 times over about a…
I’ve seen some impressive resumes in my life. College degrees, command schools, leadership certifications, specialized training, and enough certificates to cover an “I love me wall.” There’s nothing wrong with any of that. I believe in education and training, and I think officers should take advantage of every opportunity they have to improve themselves. But…
Police departments have access to things political organizations don’t. We can stop people, investigate them, obtain records, use surveillance systems, gather information, write reports, make arrests, and speak with the credibility that comes from an official badge and government authority. That power exists for a public purpose. Political policing starts when somebody tries to use…
When I’m looking at a police promotion, I don’t start with who deserves it. I start with the job that needs to be done. An officer can be very good at their job and still not be the person I want supervising other officers. They may handle calls well, make good cases, stay productive, know…
Most cops don’t wake up one morning and decide they’re done putting in the work. It usually happens slower than that. They start out wanting to do the job well, solve problems, be useful, and maybe even believe that if they work hard enough somebody will notice. Then the department starts teaching them different lessons….
A sergeant candidate may have to meet minimum qualifications, take a written exam, sit through a structured interview, complete an assessment, compete against other candidates, and live with a scoring system somebody can point to afterward. Then the chief’s job opens, and sometimes the process gets looser. A city may review resumes, conduct a few…
I’ve never believed being chief means I owe an officer blind loyalty. If one of mine is wrong, I have to deal with it. That may mean coaching, discipline, termination, or standing in front of the public and saying we got something wrong. What I won’t do is decide he’s wrong because defending him became…
When a police officer screws up, the officer owns it. If he violated policy, used bad judgment, lied, mistreated somebody, failed to do the job, or made a decision he should’ve known better than to make, supervision shouldn’t become a way to explain that away. But once I understand what the officer did, I want…
A chief can get a pretty clean version of a department without anybody lying. A sergeant gives the short version. Somebody trims it down again. A detail gets left out because it doesn’t seem important, or because it makes somebody look bad. By the time the story reaches the chief’s office, the part that might’ve…