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The Second Question

by David Brown | November 7, 2026 | Leadership and Culture | 0 Comments

After a hard call, “you good?” gets “yeah, I’m good” every time. One small change gets you a real answer.

Clear the Desk

by David Brown | November 3, 2026 | Leadership and Culture | 0 Comments

It's a Tuesday, and the request has been sitting in your box since the first of the month. Four days in March. His daughter turns ten, his wife found a cabin down in Hocking Hills, and his in-laws want to fly in from Arizona if it's actually happening. You've looked...

Write It Down

by David Brown | October 27, 2026 | Fatherhood | 0 Comments

I was driving home from work when a retired general on The Art of Manliness podcast described a briefing he sat through in 1991. Mark Hertling was an Army major in Germany with two boys at home, ten and seven, and he was told his cavalry squadron could take casualties...

Side by Side

by David Brown | October 20, 2026 | The Road and Outdoors | 0 Comments

We were sitting at a fire, and nobody was talking. We both knew there was hardship there, and neither of us was saying anything about it. Then, with tears streaming down his face, all the weight he had been carrying opened up and came out. Nobody had asked him how he...

Skating Isn’t Hockey – Jumping from Officer to Sergeant

by David Brown | October 13, 2026 | Leadership and Culture | 0 Comments

There is a particular kind of embarrassment in having a wide open net in front of you and not being able to score. I know it well. I started playing hockey at 43. I never played growing up. I rollerbladed in the nineties, but never hockey, so when I finally stepped on...

Staffing Came Back. Experience Didn’t.

by David Brown | August 18, 2026 | Leadership and Culture | 0 Comments

Everyone bracing for a young department to fail is watching the wrong place. They are watching the street, and the street is fine. The failure, when it comes, shows up in a case file somebody else opens about nine days later. Chuck Wexler sent PERF's members their...

Silence is Not Agreement

by David Brown | August 11, 2026 | Leadership and Culture | 0 Comments

Watch the room the next time you roll out a decision. If every head is nodding, you have a problem. People who believe in an idea do not nod at it. They speak up, they add to it, they start solving for it before you finish the sentence. Nodding is what a room does...

The Staffing Crisis Is Quietly Promoting People Who Aren’t Ready

by David Brown | August 4, 2026 | Leadership and Culture | 0 Comments

The number everyone quotes is one in ten. American policing is running at about 91 percent of authorized staffing, and almost every conversation about that number turns into a recruiting conversation. The conversation nobody schedules is about what the shortage is...

Overtime Is a Bridge. We Made It a Foundation.

by David Brown | July 28, 2026 | Leadership and Culture | 0 Comments

In most departments, the worst news in policing is not delivered by the chief. It is delivered by a shift sergeant walking toward an officer who has already worked a full tour, to tell them they are not going home. Ask front line supervisors to name the hardest part...

Who Actually Runs the Police Department? What Does the Charter Say?

by David Brown | July 21, 2026 | Leadership and Culture | 0 Comments

In the early months of the pandemic, law enforcement officers around this country were told, in everything but writing, to stop being cops. The order did not come from their chiefs. It came from the politics above their chiefs, and the crime rates that followed told...

How Holding On Too Tightly Hurts Your Team — and Why Letting Go Builds the Future

by David Brown | May 6, 2025 | Leadership and Culture, The Inner Game

There’s something you’re doing that’s holding back your entire organization. Yes, I’m talking to you—the model employee. The one everyone counts on. The one who’s been promoted because you’re competent, reliable, and, most importantly, because you care. You care about...

Are You Busy or Are You Productive?

by David Brown | Apr 29, 2025 | The Inner Game

As I walked through the convention center hallway, the cloud of dust in the air sent my sinuses into a frenzy. The noise of a banging hammer and the whirl of a drill told me what I hadn’t yet seen: this was a construction zone. The building was undergoing massive...

The Ride.

by David Brown | Apr 22, 2025 | The Road and Outdoors

There is a kind of freedom that those who experience it know intimately. It is the union of man and machine, man and earth, man and himself. It is a freedom that cannot be replaced or replicated by any other means—the freedom of solo riding a motorcycle. The wind...

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