The whole point of observation in the context of policing is so that we are able to make sense of what’s going on in real time rapidly changing conditions. We make situational assessments in the midst of uncertainty as circumstances ebb and flow through our minds that we interpret based on our life experience and the unfolding conditions we now find ourselves in. The patterns we recognize make sense to us and hence we are capable to responding accordingly. However what if the patterns we are observing does not make sense?

The Professional Reading Program is intended to save leaders that most precious commodity - time.

This post was inspired by a post at the Business Insider: General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis Email About Being 'Too Busy To Read' Is A Must-Read The General was asked by a colleague about the importance of reading for officers who often exclaimed they were too busy to read. The general’s response:

In the years to come, police agencies will likely encounter a heightened need for solid leadership as a combination of factors challenges law enforcement. Senior-level law enforcement officials will retire, creating a vacuum in the upper ranks and a shortage of experienced leadership talent.

Three officers respond at 3AM to the call of a disturbance. When they arrive, there are three people present, two males and a female. One male is intoxicated; I will only focus on him for the purpose of this example. Intoxicated male is spoken to by responding officers. They tell him to call it a night and to go to bed and sleep it off. He says he will and turns to go into the house. The officers continue gathering information for the incident report.

John S. Farnam, president of Defensive Training International, is one of the top handgun instructors in the world. He has personally trained thousands of federal, state and local law enforcement personnel, as well as non-police, in the serious use of firearms.

“Confronted with a task, and having less information available than is needed to perform that task, an organization may react in either of two ways. One is to increase its information-processing capacity, the other to design the organization, and indeed the task itself, in such a way as to enable it to operate on the basis of less information. These approaches are exhaustive; no others are conceivable. A failure to adopt one or the other will automatically result in a drop in the level of performance.” —Martin van Creveld, Command in War

“…organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.” ~Peter Senge

We must become more deliberate, more disciplined, and more thorough in our approach to learning and teaching

As cops, we often cry loudly about the lack of training in our profession. I am guilty of it myself.

However, while we whine about the seemingly lack of interest in ongoing training, we also miss the opportunities to train and learn from the everyday lessons available to us.

Those lessons that come from every call we respond to and every shift we work.

There’s No Magic Here

Seth Godin has a short but powerful blog post today titled "Beyond Showing Up" I thought I would share here with a few remarks as the quote pertains to cops.