"Dont Become A Cop"

[Wayne Dobbs]

Just to jump on the pile here with my experiences in a 25+ year career. When I first started, the job was taught to me this way: "Take care of the good guys...and take care of the bad guys". Those are two very different task sets and when learned, you can do great work. We did great work and I did great work and it was fun and satisfying. Then the political correctness came upon us and leadership, which had always been in short supply, literally vanished. The profession has now embraced what I term "pathological approval seeking games" of trying to be all things to all people and thereby abandoning our true mission. Leaders are not desired, but shitbird managers are welcome. I'm so glad I got out when I did. I miss the job, but I don't miss the scumbags I had to deal with....and they wore the same badge I did.

[OnionsAndDragons]

I'm really thankful for those of you out there, being professional cops AND stand-up humans.

I've got a good deal of respect for anyone willing to try to do the job, but I have the utmost respect and gratitude for those out there like yourselves.

Thanks for doing it, and thank you for sharing your experiences and insights with all of us.


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[voodoo_man]

Just to jump on the pile here with my experiences in a 25+ year career. When I first started, the job was taught to me this way: "Take care of the good guys...and take care of the bad guys". Those are two very different task sets and when learned, you can do great work. We did great work and I did great work and it was fun and satisfying. Then the political correctness came upon us and leadership, which had always been in short supply, literally vanished. The profession has now embraced what I term "pathological approval seeking games" of trying to be all things to all people and thereby abandoning our true mission. Leaders are not desired, but shitbird managers are welcome. I'm so glad I got out when I did. I miss the job, but I don't miss the scumbags I had to deal with....and they wore the same badge I did.

Wow, did you work for the same dept I do?

[LtDave]

A couple additional thoughts on promotion. Sometimes, you have to promote in self defense to avoid having to report to an idiot. If you spend any amount of time actually doing police work, your chances of reaching high(er) rank decline. I spent way too much time doing cop stuff as opposed to doing "get promoted" stuff. Probably related to that lack of professional development I mentioned in the earlier post. IMHO, Lieutenant is about the highest a real working cop can achieve. I'll always remember what Darryl Gates wrote in his book about his career. As soon as he gained a new rank, he immediately started preparing to take the next test. Another couple of secrets. Lieutenant is the worst rank in law enforcement. Literally no fun, no how, not ever at least at my old agency. That ringing phone in the watch commander's office never had good news at the other end. I took the Lieutenant job because it was worth another $1000/mo over my Sergeant money. I retired soon after reaching top step and when I hit age 50, the minimum age for service retirement. Detective Sergeant is the best job in law enforcement. You get to work on all the major cases and can cherry pick any others that grab your fancy. A good amount of overtime and at my old place, one of the few assignments that came with a take home car.

[BehindBlueI's]

A couple additional thoughts on promotion. Sometimes, you have to promote in self defense to avoid having to report to an idiot. If you spend any amount of time actually doing police work, your chances of reaching high(er) rank decline. I spent way too much time doing cop stuff as opposed to doing "get promoted" stuff. Probably related to that lack of professional development I mentioned in the earlier post. IMHO, Lieutenant is about the highest a real working cop can achieve. I'll always remember what Darryl Gates wrote in his book about his career. As soon as he gained a new rank, he immediately started preparing to take the next test. Another couple of secrets. Lieutenant is the worst rank in law enforcement. Literally no fun, no how, not ever at least at my old agency. That ringing phone in the watch commander's office never had good news at the other end. I took the Lieutenant job because it was worth another $1000/mo over my Sergeant money. I retired soon after reaching top step and when I hit age 50, the minimum age for service retirement. Detective Sergeant is the best job in law enforcement. You get to work on all the major cases and can cherry pick any others that grab your fancy. A good amount of overtime and at my old place, one of the few assignments that came with a take home car.

The only issue with DET-SGT here is they can move you at their whim. My last partner got promoted and two weeks later was in Professional Standards, the criminal side of our Internal Affairs. Pass.

[BehindBlueI's]

I'm going to spend a shift searching trash at a landfill for the corpse of an infant in the morning. Who WOULDN'T want to be a cop?

I volunteered. I really thought I was smarter than that.

[Warren Wilson]

LE is generally pretty bad about not providing good LEADERSHIP training for supervisors. Newly minted supervisors may go to technical schools but many agencies just have a complete lack of real leadership training.

I suspect we have all worked for supervisors who couldn't spell leadership, much less show any. Learning to lead is not an inherent trait we are born with, it's a learned skill you hone over a lifetime. You learn from good leaders and bad. Some of my best learning moments came from saying to myself if I'm ever in a position to change things, this shit won't happen again.

I'm testing for captain on the 9th. Part of the process is to write an essay on the biggest challenge the department faces and how to solve it. My topic is lack of training and especially, lack of leadership training. We'll see how they take it.

[cpd2110]

I'm going to spend a shift searching trash at a landfill for the corpse of an infant in the morning. Who WOULDN'T want to be a cop?

I volunteered. I really thought I was smarter than that.

BlueI, sucks, I read about it this morning. I've been lucky to only have to deal with child deaths a few times. As you know those stay with you a while. I would have done the same as you though in terms of volunteering. Something's you just can't explain.

[Wayne Dobbs]

Regarding leadership in LE and the "training" for same. I've seen a couple of you mention "leadership training" being needed in LE and Warren Wilson mentioned that he intended to include it in his Captain's promotional process essay. I think that to a large extent, training for leadership is another boondoggle such as community policing, problem solving, social work for cops, etc. In other words, a monstrous waste of time and money. Here's why and I hope I can get this done without wasting too much time and space.

First, many if not most LE bosses (and other political creatures) think they're leaders by virtue of their rank, status or position. That is their most significant failing and mistake and is foundational to our problems in policing today. Most of those guys have NEVER led anything...they've bossed or managed it by ordering folks around or passing down programs that are useless. They are MANAGERS or BOSSES, but they are in no way leaders. I've had dozens of bosses and exactly three leaders (that outranked me) during my career. That should be a clue to all of us. Leaders inspire by example, integrity, experience, judgment and conduct. In other words, we want to go make something happen because of what we see in those guys and gals. They don't have to tell us much, other than to point us towards a problem and let us take care of it. Bosses/managers have to stay on top of things because as managers, they really don't trust their people or believe in them. True leaders have developed their people in various ways to go and do the job and they trust that those troops are going to do exactly that.

To a huge extent, you can't put on training to make that happen to managers. They are what they are and no amount of classroom or role play time is going to fix that. We develop leaders by first of all having leaders at two ultra critical spots in a PD: FTOs and Sergeants. FTOs must be strong leaders and practitioners of our craft because they're literally raising kids. Bad upbringing begets bad cops and all those "managers" later on! Those FTOs should be strong in character, job knowledge and tactical skills. They should absolutely love the job and taking care of the people we deal with on the job, both good and bad. They are the great Dads....or the bad ones. We get much of what we have because of those FTOs.

Sergeants are next, because they are the next set of parents out there. They should lead by example in the same way FTOs do, but with a different spin. They have the daunting task of "keeping us between the ditches" (to use a Texan expression) as we deliver police service after field training and before any promotions. Show me a great Sergeant and I'll typically show you a great policing unit that he or she supervises and leads.

Finally, I've mentioned the job and its priorities in the past. We've forgotten our way in policing. We cannot make everybody happy and we cannot solve societal problems to any extent. We should not be wasting time on those processes either. We are here to project a force vector into our communities to maintain order, enforce the law and provide some limited services. We should be doing nothing but this and selecting/developing folks to do those tasks. It will take 15-20 years to turn this ship around, but we're not likely to do it.

So...to do "leadership training", fix your important functions of FTOs and Sergeants first. Don't be afraid to get rid of folks during field training that aren't going to make it. Don't be afraid to demand high integrity from all (and equally as much from the command ranks as the lower ones) and to swiftly get rid of those whose integrity is clearly wrong. Once you do these steps, you'll have plenty of leaders, whether they've promoted or not. Get to work!

[SouthNarc]

Rock on Wayne!