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by | Jun 29, 2018 | Leadership | 0 comments

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Write It Down

by | October 27, 2026 | HumanFirst, Insight, Journal | 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...
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Side by Side

by | October 20, 2026 | Uncategorized | 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...
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Skating Isn’t Hockey – Jumping from Officer to Sergeant

by | October 13, 2026 | Blog, Journal, Leadership, Personal Growth | 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...
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Staffing Came Back. Experience Didn’t.

by | August 18, 2026 | Leadership | 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...
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Silence is Not Agreement

by | August 11, 2026 | Insight, Leadership | 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...
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The Staffing Crisis Is Quietly Promoting People Who Aren’t Ready

by | August 4, 2026 | Leadership, Thoughts | 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...
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Overtime Is a Bridge. We Made It a Foundation.

by | July 28, 2026 | Leadership | 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...
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Who Actually Runs the Police Department? What Does the Charter Say?

by | July 21, 2026 | Insight, Leadership, Thoughts | 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...
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A Hiring Bonus Is a Press Release. A Longevity Step Is a Policy.

by | July 14, 2026 | HumanFirst, Leadership, Thoughts | 0 Comments

Just after the pandemic, my agency put up a five thousand dollar hiring bonus. The veterans read that flyer the way veterans read everything, carefully and personally. By the end of the week the hallway question was the same everywhere: where is ours? Nobody was...
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You Can’t Hold Someone Accountable. You Can Only Make It Safe Enough for Them to Choose It.

by | June 23, 2026 | Leadership | 0 Comments

I once took over a unit that was slipping, and I tightened everything. More check-ins, more reporting, more eyes on the numbers, a standard I could measure against, and a way to track it daily. I called it accountability, and for a few weeks it looked like it was...
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Side by Side

Side by Side

by | Oct 20, 2026 |

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...

Staffing Came Back. Experience Didn’t.

Staffing Came Back. Experience Didn’t.

by | Aug 18, 2026 |

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...

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