The Illinois Model

  Arguably dirtier than the Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) market... is the Drones-as-First-Responder (DFR) market.  Public safety, and particularly law enforcement, has always relied on competitive markets to procure its equipment; very few things are made "in-house." Consider: police cars, radios, uniforms, guns, typewriters, riot shields, office chairs, computers, fax machines, orange traffic cones, bulletproof vests, handcuffs...  But when you analyze the software and technology market... it's different. Much different. It's dirty as hell.  And the slimiest of them: the DFR oligopoly.  Gratuities to chiefs & executives Lobbying, legislation, and propaganda campaigns Exaggerated claims of product performance Closed architecture; proprietary access; joint ventures Marketing campaigns enticing government endorsement Job recruitment from your government customer base  Pressure to sign and enter into extended leasing/service contracts Questionable...

   The real nuts & bolts of a course like this are the modules or the curriculum. What are the topics or classes within the course? What is the actual content?  Allow me to offer a rough syllabus to Lou's Police Command School : Digital Tools Google suite - Drive, Docs, Slides, Forms, Sheets; or Microsoft, if you're forced to use tools that are unnecessarily complicated; Adobe (or PDF tools);  Slack (or similar); Complex Adaptive Systems & frameworks Cynefin   The Illinois Model OODA Eisenhower Matrix Seven Habits (Covey) other frameworks, modelings, etc Psychology & Emotion Emotional Intelligence Left of Bang Red teaming  Psychological safety Wellness  Meta-Learning Memory Science Instructional Design Training versus Education Presentation Skills Types of presentations Public Speaking Slide design Media & Community Relations Written press releases Social media Live press interviews Talking points for officers on-scene Finance / Account...

  How might cognitive frameworks help people who work inside police " real-time crime centers ?"  To me, it's about putting  people, ideas, & pieces of technology  together in way s that enhance awareness, sense-making & decision-making.  The third framework in this series is  The Eisenhower Matrix. The "Ike" Matrix is a 2x2 depiction, with an axes for: Importance -- the (non-)critical nature of the work, problem, opportunity, or threat; Urgency -- the timeliness, tightness of time frame, or time pressure to do it right. While different people put different labels into each of the four (4) quadrants, the prevailing combination is: Do, Delegate, Decide, and Delete.  The reason why I push The Ike Matrix into the real-time crime centers community is because the term "real-time" tends to pervert our mindset. It's as if everything is urgent: Drone-on-scene times. Hotlist alerts. Command staff notifications. Intel reports due tomorrow. Overdue pe...

   Anyone who's ever filled a police training coordinator spot (as I have, in a small agency) knows how difficult it is to schedule training classes. Massaging a 24/7/365 schedule that's already understaffed is no easy task. Shift shortages. Overtime costs. Labor union issues. Disrupting sleep patterns. Interrupting day-off patterns.  In the police supervisor training course world, there are two (2) prevailing schedules: ten (10) weeks straight, Monday through Friday, daytime. alternating two (2) weeks in class, daytime; two (2) weeks back at work on whatever watch you're assigned; for eighteen (18) weeks.  I use ten (10) weeks as a benchmark "in-person time" because that's the duration of some of the nation's more popular programs. Could I cram my suggested curriculum inside six (6) or eight (8) weeks? Possibly. Could I extend it to twelve (12) weeks? Possibly.  Take the second alternating schedule. I've participated in that format. As a Monday throug...

  Learning Management Systems (LMS) can’t be too complicated. Canvas is decent. It’s what a lot of colleges are using. LMS is best for due dates, submitting assignments, and grades. Most of their messaging bulletin boards leave much to be desired. It’s also not great for document storage. Let’s minimally rely on LMS; relegated to the transactional assignment stuff.  So where do we “do our work” in my command school? Collaborative places, like:  Google suite, MS Office suite, others;  Slack , Teams , other bulletin board apps. LMS is never used outside the learning environment. So let’s make sure our students are becoming proficient with what they will be or are using on the outside. It’s been my experience that today’s current supervisor / command staff is not comfortable with collaborative doc tech; they’re still emailing drafts as attachments. Maybe this will change with upcoming generations.  Why collaborative suites? Because there needs to be a stress o...

If I were given an opportunity to create a ten (10)-week police supervisor class, what would it look like?  I'll get much deeper into this question over the next weeks. But for now, I'll tease you with this:  It would span a year or more, with an in-person week-at-time each month or so. And rigorous academic work in between. Completion rate? Low. Very low. Graduation would actually mean something. *** This is part of an on-going series on how Lou would design his own training course for police supervisors and command staff. What qualifies him to take on such a position? Not much more than a website and a keyboard. Yes, he's aware that several programs already exist in this space. No, he's not actually going to offer his course. But if you'd like to see all the posts in this series anyways, click here .  *** Lou Hayes, Jr.   is a detective supervisor in a suburban Chicago police department, collaterally detailed to a regional major crimes (homicide) task force. ...

How might cognitive frameworks help people who work inside police " real-time crime centers ?"  To me, it's about putting people, ideas, & pieces of technology together in way s that enhance awareness, sense-making & decision-making.  The next framework in this series is Cynefin .  Cynefin is a sense-making framework that helps observers, decision-makers, and doers figure out what sort of system structure or dynamics exist. This is important because the attitude or approach taken to situations in each of the Cynefin domains should be different.  Please allow me to riff for just a bit... Many police RTCCs are filled with highly technical, algorithmic tools that use formulaic processes. For example, tools that might compare objective letters or numbers (such as those recognized in video or photos) against identical strings of letters or numbers in a database. When such digits are matched, certain alerts might be triggered. This is a highly objective process. A...

Adaptability was yesteryear’s concept. Today’s leaders understand prodaptability . Adaptability holds a passive connotation; whereas prodaptability is proactive.  Adaptive organisms are reactive & responsive to change.  Prodaptive organisms are even better suited to change, because they’ve purposely & proactively pre-adapted themselves, based on… meta-understanding of adaptability,  good anticipations of the future.  If you’re prodaptive, you’re not just responding to change, you’re making the change!  As John Boyd (the OODA guy) would say, you’re “shaping” your environment to meet your needs & wants.  Where the adaptive control their ship’s sails, the prodaptive impact the direction of the winds. Or at least building better boats.  Prodaptability is appreciating the articulable traits, characteristics, & behaviors of things that are adaptive, but taking it a step beyond: They purposely build these aspects into themselves, their conte...

In my years as a police detective, I've compiled a list of the top traits shared by the best investigators: CURIOSITY. You must have a genuine interest in discovering the truth and learning about what *really* happened. If you prematurely commit to an opinion or conclusion, you'll never truly be open to exploring the other plausible possibilities. Step 001 is acknowledging that you don't know. THEORY DEVELOPMENT. It's natural to hold hypotheses and theories about what might have occurred. But you can't be married to them. It's healthy to hold multiple, diverse, and conflicting theories at the same time. Have you ever heard of MECE - Mutually Exclusive & Collectively Exhaustive? Let that concept guide your development of theories. DISPROVE YOUR THEORIES. It's easy to find supporting evidence. It's more valuable to find evidence that disproves your theories. This is the exact and explicit opposite of "confirmation bias." This practice ensures...

How might cognitive frameworks help people who work inside police " real-time crime centers ?"  To me, it's about putting people, ideas, & pieces of technology together in ways that enhance awareness, sense-making & decision-making.  The first framework I'll introduce is Boyd's OODA . OBSERVE: These are the individual sensors, alerts, notifications, camera feeds, & info sources that make their way in front of a human. We are getting better at leveraging technology to automate this process. It's like multiplying our eyes & ears out there in the field. This is NOT situational awareness; it's simply receiving inputs. ORIENT: This is the contextual understanding of "so what" when a sensor gets triggered or some other information comes in. This is where Intelligence sits, as a form of individual & organizational understanding, sense-making, & pattern discernment. It helps answer "why does this matter?" Without backgr...