Session 6 Has Ended

The Coronado bridge from Southwest Flight 2587 on final for San Diego Airport at 1603 hrs., Wednesday, July 12th.

And Session 7 looms ahead. There are but two more sessions left and we have but two more books to read. These books (with accompanying reports as per normal) are:

• The Sea Wolf by Jack London (100th anniversary edition in paperback)
• A Taste of Power by Elaine Brown

So, for next session we must:

Prepare our reports for the final books;
Be ready to present our dual-instructor topics on the morning of day 3, session 7;
Hand in our final project outlines and flesh them out in terms of:

• What: is the Learning Goal?
• Why: is it important to Leadership?
• How: do you intend to do it?

We must also be prepared to individually present, on the morning of session 7, an aspect of the standard journal entries.

During this past session, we held one of the best breakout sessions I've yet experienced in SLI, and that was the Podunk PD scenario in which we were broken down into various supervisors and managers, provided with separate memos and directives and then sent to our rooms with the phone numbers of our compatriots so that we could communicate prior to a mandated meeting 30 to 45 minutes later. The group dynamics were stellar and clearly indicate of the problems and issues of Groupthink, the Ride To Abilene and the relationship of dissent in the mix.

We subsequently, following the meeting, were provided with another memo issued by our Captain and had to meet with this Captain in order to discuss its points -- at the same time having to deal with the Captain acting within the parameters of papers written by students delineating the aspects of the worst supervisor or manager they ever encountered.

This was challenging -- and wonderfully insightful as well.

Finally, we chose not only our class motto but its graduation speakers. Our choices were:

-- JC Chalmers from East Palo Alto PD -- whose son just returned to the states after three tours of duty in the Middle East!
-- Steve Lowes from San Bernardino PD -- who is facing his own personal demons perhaps even "created" by SLI and is standing fast and true despite horrendous internal and external forces;
-- Scott McKnight from Newport Beach PD -- who has encountered some off-duty challenges and has persevered and, I should note, is simply an honest, true, forthright officer.

Congratulations to these officers; we know you will uphold the precepts behind SLI and the law enforcement profession, and hold the honor and grace we possess at our graduation ceremonies!