Breaking Rank Read Free

our laws, police procedures and police administration, political science, leadership, social and organizational change, systems theory. Later, I attended and spoke at numerous national and international conferences on policing, and visited and consulted with several dozen police agencies, often conducting “organization development” and leadership workshops for them. I taught at the police academy, and at San Diego State University, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of Washington. I wrote a dissertation, later published, on the “professed values versus the observed behavior” of American big-city police chiefs. * I came to Seattle in 1994 as a police chief with a Ph.D. in leadership and human behavior.
    With each new badge, each new phase of learning, I developed a deeper and keener understanding of this: the most intractable problems of my field—racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and other brands of bigotry, fear, brutality, corruption, organizational ineptitude, even individual incompetence—are rooted in the system of policing, a system that includes the laws police are called upon to enforce.

    As my former colleagues will happily attest, I was never a cop’s cop. But throughout my career I witnessed many officers who consistently performed the job with inspiring mastery. They’re the kind of police officers who make a difference in the lives of the people they were hired to serve. My love for these cops is a major motivation behind this book. That they continue to get the job done lawfully and humanely, in spite of senseless laws, dim-witted policies, and childish workplace pressures, is something of a minor miracle.
    It’s a thing of beauty to watch these cops work with kids and parents, the homeless, the mentally ill. To observe their creativity and enthusiasm for community policing, and their talent and courage as they track down and capture the genuinely dangerous among us. Rarely did a day pass in my career that I didn’t register the humor, humanity, and compassion of these officers. Or their willingness to sacrifice all for a risky and delicate mission: in my thirty-four years I helped bury more than two dozen police officers slain in the line of duty.

    Who are the instructors I remember most vividly from my academy days? The ones who told stories. You couldn’t get those guys (not a woman among them) to cough up a theory or a principle if their lives depended on it. Not that I wished for them to turn academic on us: Their tales made the streets come alive. They educated, amused, frightened, and inspired us with images of what we’d face in the real world when we’d finally hit the streets. The instruction may have lacked a tidy theoretical foundation but it was compelling, entertaining, and unforgettable.
    Today, the best academy instructors still tell tales, but they weave relevant theories into those stories, helping new cops understand why they’re expected to do, and not do, certain things. These instructors also get their students out of the classroom and into “mock scenes,” simulations that help recruits get a taste of what it’s going to be like to collect evidence at a robbery, make a felony hot stop, or enter a stranger’s living room to interrupt family violence. In this book I set out to do something of that for you: to help you imagine what it’s like to be a beat cop, or a police chief.

    I’ve approached Breaking Rank not only as a memoir but thematically and polemically, introducing in each chapter a critical issue facing community-police relations and the justice system.
    â€œMy aim is to agitate and disturb people,” wrote the philosopher and writer Miguel de Unamuno. “I’m not selling bread, I’m selling yeast.” Breaking Rank provides “yeast” for those who seek to help this country move toward more effective, humane, and progressive policing.
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