(Courageous Leader): The Border Patrol has put a $50,000 hiring bonus on the table, and 100,000 people have already applied. While the ink is barely dry on the Border Patrol’s announcement that they are hiring 10,000 more agents, some in law enforcement are complaining that seasoned law enforcement officers leaving for the opportunity have a “loyalty problem.”
It’s with the leaders who have spent years kneeling to politics while abandoning their officers.
For years, too many in law enforcement leadership have knelt with the protestors while their officers stood bloodied on the line. They’ve thrown good cops under the bus for using legal, justified force because the media or city hall demanded a sacrifice. And when the profession was smeared as “systemically racist,” most stayed silent instead of easily defending the truth.
When the profession needed its leaders, they watched as they chose self-preservation over doing the right thing.
You can’t preach loyalty from your e-mail when you won’t give it when it matters. You can’t expect officers to stick around when they know you’ll fold the second a hashtag starts trending. Every time leadership caves to politics instead of facts, the bond between the badge and brass is shattered a little more.
We all noticed, and while many left, others were looking for the next opportunity.
Just to be clear, officers aren’t leaving their agency and home for $50,000. They are leaving the leaders who abandoned them.
This could also be known as “the chickens have come home to roost” or you reap what you sow” (Galatians 6:7), but it’s here, and leaders need to look in the mirror rather than point out the door.
What Leaders Should Do Right Now
If law enforcement leadership wants to stop the bleeding, it’s not complicated, but it does require courage:
- Defend your officers publicly when they are right. Don’t hide behind the generic and safe statements when you know they acted within policy and law.
- Stop chasing political approval. Make decisions on facts and evidence, not polls or social media trends.
- Be present. Stop hiding in your staff meeting or behind your office door but meet your officers where they are and let them know you care.
- Invest in your officers’ safety and well-being. Stop worrying about what pledge you signed at the last IACP Conference and provide your officers with the best training, tools, and resources they need to do their job.
- Call out false narratives. When lies about your agency or officers hit the headlines, respond with the truth just as loudly as the lies being spread. When a media outlet lies about your agency, it should lose all privileges to that agency.
Loyalty matters, and truthfully, if it wasn’t for the pension system, I’m not sure we would have a law enforcement “profession” today, but as Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “it’s never too late to do the right thing.”
Dr. Travis Yates retired as a commander with a large municipal police department after 30 years of service. He is the author of “The Courageous Police Leader: A Survival Guide for Combating Cowards, Chaos & Lies.” His risk management and leadership seminars have been taught to thousands of professionals across the world. He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy with a Doctorate Degree in Strategic Leadership and the CEO of the Courageous Police Leadership Alliance.
