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 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...
by David Brown | Jul 14, 2026 | HumanFirst, Leadership, Thoughts |
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...
by David Brown | Jun 2, 2026 | Blog, Insight, Journal, Leadership, Non-Profit, Productivity, Thoughts |
The text came in at 6:40 on a Tuesday. A deputy one hundred miles away wanted to know if there was still a seat on the June trip, and the answer lived in exactly one place. My own head. Not a shared calendar. Not a second person who could have handled it in ten...
by David Brown | Jan 13, 2026 | Personal Growth, Thoughts |
How often does a man stop to listen to the wind? Truly stop—not as a pause between obligations, but as an act of attention. The soul benefits from stillness, yet stillness has become rare. The calendar pulls at us relentlessly, its weight disguised as productivity. We...
by David Brown | Sep 9, 2025 | Insight, Journal, Leadership, Thoughts |
“It’s not whether you win or lose—it’s how you play the game.”We all heard it growing up. On dusty ballfields, in echoing gymnasiums, and during locker room pep talks, that phrase shaped our earliest ideas of success. Effort mattered more than outcome. Grit mattered...
