Law Enforcement Leadership

Michael Carpenter Managing Use-of-Force Incidents: Before and After The nature of police work virtually guarantees that officers will become involved in confrontational situations and that they will have to use force at some point. As a supervisor, you probably won’t be at the scene when it happens. Yet, even before a physical altercation (or an allegation of use of force) between a citizen and one of your officers takes place, you may have already contributed a great deal to the…

Michael Carpenter DEPARTMENTAL CULTURE – WHAT’S YOURS LIKE? Rest assured that your officers are being watched and talked about by the public – both positively and negatively. Your police department is unique. It differs in many ways from other departments – whether it’s the municipal agency next to yours or the county sheriff’s department with which you share a common border. Of course, there may be obvious differences in size, budget, structure, etc., but I think, more importantly, what makes…

  Don’t Put Up with Poor Performers Do any of you play in those “Fantasy Sports Team” Leagues? What a great concept: You can pick the best players for your team based on their past performance and potential. And, you can also try to balance your “picks” based on what position you need to fill on your team and how each of your picks might work best with the other “handpicked” players. Your list of potential players starts with the…

Michael Carpenter “Boss…You Got a Minute?” It starts out innocently. “Boss, you got a minute?” says one of your officers as he walks by your office. And, then, after a little bit of stammering and foot shuffling, your subordinate proceeds to tell you about the mistake he made, thereby dropping the whole thing right into your lap. Now, what do you do? Mistakes are a fact of life. Since they cannot always be avoided, the success of your career may…

Michael Carpenter The Will to Lead There is no substitution for the will to lead others. The young police officer thought his journey was over. He had received very good reviews on his performance evaluations. He had worked hard to get his college education while on the job. He had prepped diligently for six months for the written promotional exam and certainly impressed the oral board with his responses. He got the promotion to sergeant and a nice pay raise…

Michael Carpenter Maintaining High Standards Sometimes, it seems that when police commanders get into trouble, it’s for what they don’t do. The duties and responsibilities of a police commander – at any level and in any size agency – are so numerous and diverse that it can be easy to overlook something – even the little things. And, sometimes, the one thing you overlook could be the one thing which will get you and your department on the six o’clock…

Michael Carpenter “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” Do you remember who sang that song? (Or, maybe you’re old enough to remember listening to that song on a transistor radio!) Either way, even though it was written more than 50 years ago, the fact is that the times are still changing…and, in some cases, changing very quickly. In the private sector, if a store doesn’t continually change by updating its inventory regularly based on customer needs, then it will lose…