11/29/2025
THIS! Our neighbors to the east are hurting while they and the public try to make sense of last week’s tragic incident. There will be no one-size-fits-all answer, but good people will continue the good fight. With so many apparent “experts” in our field, it’s not clear why they haven’t helped with our growing recruitment issues. How about some of you try to “be the change..”
Thank you for your words, Sheriff Noah!
The No-Win Scenario
Anyone who knows me knows I am a Star Trek buff. Captain James T. Kirk and Captain Jean-Luc Picard were absolute role models throughout my childhood. One of the recurring themes in those shows was the idea of the no-win scenario. As Captain Picard once said:
“It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.”
The writers of Star Trek were drawing from the same philosophical foundation the Stoics taught centuries ago. Thinkers like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius reminded us:
You can control your choices, your effort, and your character.
You cannot control external events or the outcome.
This idea has long resonated with people in law enforcement. It is part of how many officers stay grounded in a profession that demands so much while guaranteeing so little certainty.
A police officer’s response to an incident is shaped by a complex web of interrelated factors: training, experience, character, environment, and the actions of others. But the public often sees only the outcome.
We call officers cowards when they wait for backup and reckless when they charge in.
We call them weak when they lose a fight and brutes when they win.
If they act decisively, they’re accused of escalating. If they hesitate, they’re accused of failing to act.
There is no other profession where every decision is dissected in slow motion by people who were not there and did not face the rapidly evolving circumstances, limited information, and personal risk.
We expect officers to be superhuman... to read minds, determine intent in seconds, and flawlessly predict danger. It’s like giving a mathematician a set of variables that are wrong, putting a timer on the clock, and then criticizing the solution.
Other high-stakes professions acknowledge the limits of human performance. Surgeons carry malpractice insurance when a procedure takes an unexpected turn. Pilots run through written emergency checklists when a critical system fails.
But policing is the one profession where the “external human factor” is overwhelmingly decisive. A surgeon is not interrupted mid-operation by an intruder. A pilot is not typically landing a plane full of passengers while someone else actively tries to crash it. Officers, on the other hand, must operate inside a volatile human environment where someone else’s choices, not theirs, may determine the outcome.
Some point out that police in the U.S. use deadly force far more often than officers in Canada, the UK, or Germany. But no other modern democracy faces the universal presence of handguns the way American officers do. And Indiana is the only state in the nation where a 2012 law explicitly allows a homeowner to use deadly force against police if they believe officers entered unlawfully.
We ask our officers to enter a tinderbox knowing fi****ms are present and knowing a resident might mistakenly believe they are legally justified in shooting them.
At the same time, a serious challenge looms for our profession: recruitment.
Be honest. With the headlines we see daily, would you encourage your son or daughter to become a police officer?
What happens when we publicly demonize officers who are forced to make split-second decisions with imperfect information? We sure don’t encourage the best and brightest to step forward.
I worry that law enforcement is entering what I call a recruitment death spiral:
When good people don’t want to be cops, who is left to fill the ranks?
Robert F. Kennedy once said:
“Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.”
Kennedy’s point was simple: If a community insists on professional, ethical, well-trained policing, it will have it, but only if the community supports the process that produces it.
If a community tolerates constant hostility towards cops and knee-jerk condemnation of their actions, policing will reflect that too.
If we want good people to become good cops, then we must respect the process.
When a controversial incident occurs, let investigators do their job. Allow the law and proven facts, not speculation or social-media outrage, to guide conclusions.
If we aren’t careful, we will create our own no-win scenario. And if that happens, our community may end up with the kind of policing demanded in anger, not the kind it truly deserves.
