The Illinois Model

WARNING: Provocation of higher education and police statistics ahead. It shouldn't be a surprise that I didn't finish college. Almost 18 years ago, I left my university studies to accept my dream job as a police officer. I'm now in the second half of an awesome career that's spanned: patrol, tactical, investigations, crisis intervention, SWAT, training, and policy. As such, I have a fairly broad perspective and understanding of what effective policing looks like. And doesn't. And what I'm about to do here is poke some golden idols in law enforcement circles. I hope those who are offended punch back. I can take it if they can. There is a movement within law enforcement operating under the banner Evidence-Based Policing . What exactly evidence-based policing is is quite a mystery to some of us lowly beat cops. For example, it's not a unified effort. There are many groups and individuals pushing the evidence-based policing (EBP) term. As a gener...

At the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association’s ( ILEETA ) annual conference this past week in Chicago, I started a conversation about the mental and emotional burden of having too many “tools” to do our jobs as police officers. The same theory applies to any industry, field, or business. How can you streamline your organization’s toolbox of processes, strategies, or systems?  There is a popular saying in police training circles (and I suppose in your industry too) that a new technique or procedure or trick is “ just another tool for the toolbox. ” Here’s the problem: Our toolboxes are full. Our brains don’t have the bandwidth to accept any more tools. We need  less  tools…but still need to reach an ever- increasing  level of output. The answer lays in finding those select tools with broad applicability and high adjustability. I have long advocated for  generalism  in life. ...

Most of my seminars revolve around a central theme of  adaptability . It doesn’t take long for the question to arise:  How do we get there? Adaptability, whether organizational or individual, is the ability to respond to change – change that comes in the form of problems and opportunities. Developing adaptive traits in your people (or yourself) is not a step-by-step checklist. Nor is it an elusive organic metamorphosis. Organizations committed to learning surely have a head start. Here are some of the waypoints I’ve plotted on my map: VALUES.  People in your team who share a common set of values will rely upon those principles when all else fails. The philosophic or abstract theories that bind your organization cannot be overlooked. GUIDELINES.  Strict rules are for kindergartners, not problem-solvers. Adaptive thinkers need flexible guidelines, built upon a solid set of concepts. Few issues in your industry fit nicely into pigeon-holed respo...

One of the riskiest things my police SWAT team does is deploy explosives to defeat fortifications. The techniques lay at the intersection of science and art. As such, it's a hyper-specialized field requiring perpetual experimentation and learning. Investigators have built a criminal case for a group of heavily armed bad guys. When the investigators attempt to arrest them at their hideout, the situation turns into a standoff. The SWAT team is called in to assist. Believing the offenders have barricaded the doors, and to avoid an up-close deadly confrontation, the tactical commander decides to use explosives to blast the door from a safe distance. The breacher team approaches, hangs the charge on the door, then retreats to a safe location.  KA-BOOM!   The door is open! Negotiation for surrender may continue for hours or days. But now there is a safe exit for the bad guys...or entry by the team. Formally known as   Explosive Breaching  (ExB), these capabilities ar...

When responsibility is focused on one person or entity, it's a single rope bearing all the weight. Is that neatly tied knot slowly turning into a noose around the organization's neck? When purposefully twisted into an interconnected web, the resulting net protects against falls and survives considerable stress. Accountability factors into every phase of an organization's operations. Whether it's an administrative function, daily operations, crisis response, or project management, the responsibility falls somewhere. When there's a break in that body of responsibility, someone has to pick up the pieces. It's not only a preoccupation with failure; it's also about stacking the deck of  creativity . The bulk of what I've learned about leadership, supervision, administrative duties, and project management is a result of my assignment to my police department's firearms training unit. But as I look back on  all the lessons , they seem to circle back t...

The following is text-only version of my official written testimony submitted to President Obama's  Task Force on 21st Century Policing . In it, I boldly recommend  The Illinois Model  be considered as a framework for police training and operations in the United States. 05 FEB 2015 I am a full-time (17+ years) police officer/detective in a Chicago suburb. I currently hold collateral positions as: Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) officer; SWAT team supervisor; training unit instructor. I hold a variety of operational and/or instructor roles, responsibilities, and certifications, including: Constitutional law trainer (4th Amendment search/seizure/force/intrusion); Response to mental, behavioral, emotional health emergencies; Weapons trainer (firearms, Taser® , beanbag projectiles, etc); Scenario-based exercise developer & coordinator; Certified Force Science® Analyst (human factors, physiology); Report writing (tactical & investigative) instructor; C...