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…
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…
I’ve made personnel decisions that looked right at the time and didn’t work out. I can interview somebody, review their record, talk to people who’ve worked with them, and watch how they perform, only to discover later that I misjudged their ability to supervise other people. Sometimes the promotional process itself is the problem. Other…
Everybody likes transparency when the answer makes the department look good. It’s easy to talk about accomplishments, successful investigations, improved response times, or something the department has done particularly well. The harder part comes when I have to acknowledge that something inside my own organization isn’t working the way it should, especially when admitting it…
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…
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…