
Dealing with oral boards is a fact of life. One of your main objectives is finding a way to distinguish yourself from the other candidates. Like everything else in law enforcement, preparation is the key to your success.
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Law enforcement is filled with decision-making. You need to go deeper in your understanding of this near art form. To improve your own skills, you need to learn about decision-making traps and how to use this knowledge to your advantage.
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A mindset is developed when you employ a fixed mental attitude that predetermines your response to a given situation. For example, your attitudes toward something help develop your response or approach. Your mindset becomes your approach.
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Supervisors and officers tend to dislike dealing with performance evaluations (PEs) as much as they dislike internal affairs investigations and termination proceedings. Supervisors hate writing evaluations and officers hate reading them. But they persist anyway.
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We live in an age of political correctness where saying the right things seems to have more value than doing the right things. People use catch phrases to draw attention to themselves and make them seem wise and caring.
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There is a tendency to shy away from DUIs unless you are part of a specialty unit that deals with them all the time. But I think we can reverse this trend through understanding and training.
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The saying "It's not over 'til the fat lady sings" is incorrect. It's not over until the paperwork is done. That includes a report after the fact, as well as an operations plan beforehand.
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K-9 teams are considered force multipliers. One K-9 team can do the work of many officers, which frees up officers for other duties. A K-9 team is an effective tool if its use is understood by those that call on them to support their operations.
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What most agencies do well is produce managers; it helps with short-term goals but exasperates long-term ones. Please don't tell me you are part of that innocuous group of lost souls that think managing and leading are the same thing, because they're not.
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Although many agencies are trying cost-cutting alternatives, it's been my experience as a field supervisor that there is no substitute for a helicopter in the air with a well-trained flight crew. Effective coordination between ground and air units is imperative.
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