by David Brown | Aug 18, 2026 | Leadership |
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...
by David Brown | Aug 11, 2026 | Insight, Leadership |
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...
by David Brown | Aug 4, 2026 | Leadership, Thoughts |
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...
by David Brown | Jul 28, 2026 | Leadership |
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...
by David Brown | Jul 21, 2026 | Insight, Leadership, Thoughts |
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...
