Substandard, As Measured By...

 "If he's such a good hitter, how come he doesn't hit good?"

Billy Beane, Moneyball (Michael Lewis, 2003)

It helps, when one is an over-analyzer, to have someone in your life who is... Well, Over-analyzers Anonymous is that obscure and discreet organization one can call in dire situations of need. A critical incident responder arrives at the front door, bottle of tequila in hand, and has a couple of margaritas with a sufferer until the urge to disappear down rabbit holes passes.

 In the alternative, having another over-analyzer in the household at least offers a kindred soul with whom to commiserate. Casual conversations become calls to action. Road trips become seminars. An innocent book the basis for hours of conversation, give and take and more books. That's what I have.

Over the years, trips north seem to spur on meaningful conversations, even as the most pressing decisions in my retired life revolve around the kind of coffee creamer to buy. Yesterday was no exception.

My dear spouse casually mentioned an article she'd read about a local police department's recruiting and selection process. This department, whose employment processes are governed by a civil service regime, gives a test to those who apply for law enforcement positions, I suppose among others. Recently, the city has given some latitude on what they consider a passing grade. This decision was apparently met with howls of derision, accusations that critical standards have been swept aside and, of course, the pronouncement that Babies will die!

I have just finished listening to Michael Lewis's delightful and entertaining book Moneyball, which examines how the Oakland A's baseball team sought undervalued players (they had a small-market budget) using a statistical analysis that examined what seems an obvious concept - what are the skills players have that contribute critically to winning baseball games. And... We're off.

What attributes make a good police officer? How does an organization determine that a person has those attributes, or develop them in people who seem susceptible to learning? Are they the attributes once deemed essential, or were those just reflections of bias? Is one of the solutions to the issues presented in modern law enforcement a reevaluation of what makes a good cop good?

Like the old-school scouts inherited by Billy Beane, past law enforcement recruiters often looked for things having tenuous relationships to policing. Tall, fit, male, military veteran... Each seemed to be intuitively related to success, but, like the baseball players Mr. Beane evaluated, there was precious little data available and much of it was conflicting. "Good body, firm chin, looks the part," the scouts would tell Billy. Another thought having an ugly girlfriend meant a lack of confidence on the part of the player. 

It turned out that what mattered, what could be proven by the reams of data available to Billy, had nothing to do with looks, either the player's or his girlfriend's. It had everything to do with getting on base and staying there until someone or something advanced them. It didn't matter if the player was a gifted "Five tool player" or someone who only did a few things well. Data proved conclusively - players who get on base score runs. Runs win baseball games.

Which brings us (mercifully) back to law enforcement. What are the attributes of a good police officer? Can they be quantified, and thereby evaluated? Is it as simple as counting tickets, reports, arrests, contacts? Below are a few things to get us started, offered in no particular order.

Empathy

 The dictionary definition of empathy is the ability put one's self into another's place, especially emotionally. In his excellent book Morality, Jonathan Sacks is less inclined toward ability and more toward inclination. It isn't as important that a person can, so much as that person seeks. Seeking empathy involves seeing the other person as a human being, worthy of the time and attention required to create the connection.

There are any number of interesting studies showing that people respond positively to empathy, even when a police officer is engaged in an enforcement activity - an arrest, a ticket, a warning. What I've never seen is something authoritative that measures the degree to which a person is empathetic. Certainly little if any attempt has been made to select candidates based on an objective analysis of their inclination toward empathy.

Emotional Stamina

Author Nassim Taleb introduces the book [Anti-Fragile] as follows: "Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better". Wikipedia

A police officer, over the course of their career, is exposed to hundreds, perhaps thousands of traumatic incidents, depending on their assignment. For someone to remain emotionally healthy in the face of that kind of experience requires a number of skills, some of which can be learned. Post traumatic stress disorder is epidemic in law enforcement ranks, and many organizations offer training and treatment to deal with it. Certainly, trauma is one of the factors leading to an array of mental health issues among past and present officers, which account for, among other things, recruitment and retention difficulties for organizations. Plainly, there are some people who, even after getting a good start in law enforcement, leave with the parting comment that no amount of money would make them stay.

Are there some individuals who are inherently more "anti-fragile" than others? If so, how would one find this out? Is there a psychological measure? HR departments still use the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), which is a brute of a multiple choice exam. Something of a blunt instrument, it is obviously better than nothing but even in its modern form is a tool, not an oracle. Can it predict which applicants (or serving officers) are or can be taught to be anti-fragile? No.

Intellectual Curiosity

 Arthur Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes calling it the "Observation of Trifles" in his short story The Boscombe Valley Mystery. It isn't confined to looking for clues, as it were. It is examining how the job of Policing a Free Society (Goldstein, 1977) is undertaken, and finding ways to improve. It is the George Bernard Shaw in all of us, seeing things as we imagine and saying "Why not?"

In the five years that I spent as an academy staff member, I had the privilege of working with nearly five hundred recruits. While most of them were excellent (a handful were not) there was a smattering of the truly intellectually curious, people who asked why more often than any other question. There has to be a way to intentionally find them

Character

 Character and Cops (DeLattre, 1994) makes a heroic effort to one-stop-shop the subject. It lays out (in pre-social media and woke culture terms) what it means to have character, how to develop and train morality. It gives police leaders suggestions on how to model it in themselves, and how to demand it of others. It's a nice try.

"Lead us not into temptation" is the prayer, and the temptations are many. They are not confined to money, fame and romantic encounters. The temptation to power, to authority, has a debilitating effect. It is the most astonishing moment in a new officers career when he or she orders a citizen to do something, and they do it. On the heels of that is the moment when someone defies them (which is rare). What happens next often means the difference between an uncomfortable few moments of wrangling (or wrestling or fighting) and Memphis.

How does one measure the tendency to misuse authority? The same way one measures the ability to get on base. What have they done in the past when given a degree of power over others?

Finally - this might have been exhausting, but it is not exhaustive. Often, in the ongoing struggle to find acceptable candidates to populate law enforcement agencies, we ignore important traits and elevate meaningless ones. 

What do you think?