This week I will be travelling in Egypt, Israel, and Jordan so I will not be making any posts on the blog. But I plan to record some more posts while I am there which should be awesome! So stay tuned…

A friend of mine sent this powerful video by Tamara Lowe to me and I just had to share it with you. It’s about eternal truths and the influence of pop culture…

Chaplain Grant Wolf of the Chattanooga, TN Police Department is still working on his anthology of “stories of faith and courage” from law enforcement. He needs 45 more stories to complete the project and has asked for my help in getting the word out to readers of this blog. When it is finished, the book will feature 365 stories – one for each day of the year – about how God intervened in the life of a law enforcement official.

Stories received to date run the gamut from light-hearted (a rookie who passed out while helping deliver a baby) to not-for-the-faint of heart (a bank shooting and a fatal auto accident). They represent every phase of law enforcement work and demonstrate that something happened which simply cannot be explained other than by God’s hand.

If you have a suitable story, please download this link for a brochure explaining the law enforcement faith and courage project.

Most progressive disciplinary models used by law enforcement agencies use behavior-based standards. However, most of our problems stem from ethical failures. Discipline is not always negative. By definition, discipline is training designed to perfect moral character, not necessarily punish behavior.

In this video last video in the Polish the Tarnished Badge series, I use the Path of Destruction from the Dynamic of Restoration to illustrate a powerful principle. To incorporate a character-based dynamic into a progressive discipline model, let the nature of the offense determine the range of internal disciplinary options and let the character of the individual dictate which option is chosen.

This points us back to the leadership principle of knowing the condition of your flock. Without the foundation of internal trust-based relationships, this disciplinary model will not work…

The Character First Curriculum provides some excellent tools for promoting and encouraging character within any police organization. The Police Dynamics Institute has partnered with the Character Training Institute to provide a truly outstanding character-based leadership program for law enforcement.

The basic principle is that you should hire a police officer for character and then train them for skills. But in law enforcement management, we tend to hire for skills and fire for character because so many officers fail the character test!

The key to impacting a culture is to impact its vocabulary. In this video, Franklin Smith shows you how to make the character connection on a day to day basis as well as how to pass the character tests that we all tend to face.

Most professional standards in law enforcement agencies are achievement, performance, or behavior based standards. Yet most of our failures are related to character. There are two critical components to establishing our integrity: character and competence. Most of our training is related to competence while, again, most of our problems are in the character arena when it comes to ethical failures.

In Part 2 of Polish the Tarnished Badge from the National Sheriff’s Association Annual Conference, Sheriff Ray Nash presents the Dynamic of Character and explores the need for incorporating character into our professional standards of behavior.