The character quality of the month is Sensitivity, which the Character Training Institute defines as:

Perceiving the true attitudes and emotions of those around me.

Think about it from a street survival perspective for a minute. Perceiving the true attitudes and emotions of a criminal suspect can be the difference in life or death. We call it “street savvy” or “street sense,” but the character quality of sensitivity can give you more protection on the street than your ballistic vest…!

(Which I am grateful to have when I am roaming around the streets of Afghanistan…)

This next series of posts will be a bit different for the Police Dynamics site. I was invited by Pastor Chuck Baldwin to speak at Crossroad Baptist Church during their God and Country Service just prior to the 2006 elections. My topic was the Biblical Foundations of American Government. The whole message went about 56 minutes, but I am going to break it down into shorter clips to be posted on the blog.

During the first portion of the presentation, I spoke about the importance and true meaning of the oath of office taken by an elected official. George Washington said: “…where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths…?” I believe he was right…

Click here to view the entire message on the Foundations of American Government.

Here is Pastor Baldwin’s rather lengthy introduction of me as the speaker for anyone who is interested…

The Latin root for the word integrity is integritas - which means wholeness and completeness. Here, I use the opportunity of visiting the ancient Roman city of Jerash in Amman, Jordan to tell another story about the centurion.  In the Roman military tradition, the soldiers would line up for inspection and as the centurion approached each man, the soldier would bang his breastplate with his fist and shout, “Integritas!” which meant, “I am whole. I am complete. And I am prepared for battle…!”

I was first exposed to this history in a speech by General Charles Krulak, then commandant of the US Marine Corps.

“… And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you… From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death.”

–Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 1785

You may be familiar with the Peter Principle that states,”In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” First espoused by Dr. Laurence Peter, this principle essentially means that, within an organizational structure, employees tend to be promoted as long as they perform competently. Sooner or later, they are promoted to their highest “level of incompetence” where they are no longer capable of performing well. And here they tend to remain stuck.

The Peter Principle I talk about here is different, however. This Peter Principle involves the Apostle Peter who was one of Jesus’ disciples who lived at Capernaum where I filmed The Centurion video. Peter was a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee and being there gave me an opportunity to talk about this important leadership principle, which I have to credit to my Chief of Staff, Barney Barnes (every Sheriff needs a Barney)…

You can read more important leadership principles from Chief Barnes at his blogsite: www.eyeofeagle.wordpress.com.

For those of you interested in seeing more of the Sea of Galilee, plus our wonderful meal of St. Peter’s fish, here are a couple of additional videos. Also featured are our guide and Biblical historian, David Dekker, and my travelling partner/cameraman, Gary Curry.

While we were at this restaurant, we had the opportunity to meet a famous Israeli general.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 3 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, there were 119 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 68 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 142mb. That’s about 1 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was February 9th with 351 views. The most popular post that day was About Me.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were policedynamicsmedia.com, mail.yahoo.com, facebook.com, policedynamics.com, and charactercounts.org.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for police training videos, sheriff ray nash, models of policing, police dynamics media, and proper exercise of authority.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

About Me February 2010
10 comments

Training Videos February 2010
2 comments

Police Dynamics February 2010
1 comment

The Three Models of Policing / Leadership February 2010
6 comments

Contact Me February 2010

Thanks for a great  first year!

Sheriff Ray