A critical leadership principle is the ability to articulate vision and standards. Part 3 of the Polish the Tarnished Badge series deals with communicating the standard of good character. A failure to clearly articulate a standard is a leadership failure. So law enforcement leaders must be particularly careful to communicate standards and expectations clearly and unambiguously.

Franklin Smith, President of Character Focus and former Director of Administration for the Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office, explores the concepts of using a Police Standards Manual and Character First Bulletins to help communicate the character standards of a police organization in this video from the National Sheriff’s Association Annual Conference.

Making the decision to retire after serving three terms as the Sheriff in Dorchester County, SC was a difficult one. But I had my time in and my wife and I felt like we should move on to other challenges. It didn’t take me long to find one!

One week after my retirement, I found myself in Sierra Leone, a small country in West Africa. I had been requested by the City Manager of Freetown to present Police Dynamics training to their National Police and Military. So I spent two weeks in this fascinating country that has been ravaged by unimaginable atrocities during a decade of civil unrest due to the conflict diamond trade (watch the movie Blood Diamond and you’ll see what I mean).

By and large, the police are feared by the populace and corruption is a way of life. The leaders there are in the process of rebuilding the government and realize just how important good character is to regaining the trust of the citizens.

One of the attendees, an Inspector named Gusman, had this to say during the closing ceremony to the Mayor of Freetown and members of the City Council:

His comments:

This course will have a profound impact on our professional lives. This course has taught us how bad character will not enable us to achieve our organizational goals…

We have learned that if we become good officers, if we respect our people, if we discharge our duties responsibly, without fear or favor, we will earn the respect of the citizens of this country. They also taught us certain principles about forgiveness, about patience, that we might take to our homes to teach our wives and our children so that collectively all of us will become responsible citizens…

I am very grateful on behalf of our police, to the City Council, and to the Police Dynamics Institute for this effort. I am sure, when we get back to our various institutions, we will share this knowledge that we have learned…

I think Gusman got the message and nicely summed up what Police Dynamics is all about…

Fighting crime is much like a game of chess. Imagine that your jurisdiction is a giant chess board where a war of sorts is being waged. Just like in a real war, or a real game of chess, our opponents (the criminals) are trying to take ground.

When they become entrenched in a neighborhood and rule through fear and intimidation, they have established a criminal stronghold. From here, criminals will branch out into other neighborhoods, commit their evil deeds, and retreat back into the safety of the stronghold.

There are several strategies the we as police administrators might employ to deal with this community problem. One is the Reactive Model of policing. We can assign police officers to patrol the other neighborhoods, hoping that we might stumble across some criminal in the act of committing a crime, or discourage one from doing so by our “presence” in the neighborhood. As the saying goes, I suppose even a blind squirrel can find a nut every now and then. But this proves to be a very ineffective crime fighting strategy and a poor use of our limited law enforcement resources.

The community policing or coactive policing model dictates that law enforcement must penetrate the stronghold to destroy the fear, apathy, and tolerance for crime that the criminals are relying on. Building trust based relationships through the power of good character is the key to this process. This is the truly effective crime-fighting strategy that we explore here.

The law enforcement officer who is operating out from under authority will often lead the police department in citizen complaints. The Independent Spirit that he or she demonstrates when interacting with the public can generate a reaction on the part of the citizen, which can in turn generate a complaint on the officer. I have been in police administration for a long time and I have seen this scenario played out over and over.

An officer that maintains his or her composure under pressure, on the other hand, demonstrates the type of character that builds public trust in our relationship with the citizens. This is the highest ideal of law enforcement: to bring peace out of disorder.

Dr. George Thompson brings this out in his tactical communications course, Verbal Judo. He emphasizes the importance of controlling the tongue. In fact, one of the dynamics in Series 2 (the Dynamic of Compliance) is based on Dr. George Thompson’s teachings.

You can trace instances of police misconduct back to one of the three root character flaws – anger, lust, and greed. An officer acting out from under authority will often refuse to take personal responsibility for their conflicts and blame other people or other circumstances for their own character failures.

I’ve arrived safely back in Kabul after a wonderful vacation in Cancun! I’ll spend the next couple of days resetting my sleep clock. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this video that I recorded before I left…

One of the reasons that Reactive Policing is so ineffective compared to Coactive, or Community Policing, is that we spend so much time on calls that aren’t related to the police mission. Watch this video for a good example of why character-based law enforcement that builds trust based relationships is the key to fighting crime…

The Third Installment from Cancun:

Fear, Apathy and Tolerance for Crime: the three elements necessary for a criminal stronghold to exist. Our crime fighting efforts in community policing are dependent upon the ability of law enforcement to attack strongholds at their source. In this video, we examine some of the tactical aspects of Police Dynamics training — the role that trust-based relationships, fueled by good character and a commitment to professional ethics, play in fighting crime.

We have such a limited vocabulary when it comes to character. We routinely praise people for their achievement and their achievement alone, without recognizing the good character that produced the achievement. Learning to make the character connection forces you to become a better supervisor or a better parent. This is THE paradigm shift for understanding how a character initiative works in real life…

BTW: I’m still in Cancun but we have been too “busy” relaxing and stuff for me to produce any more videos from here. But I kept some in reserve that I produced in Kabul…