I watched the beating of Tyre Nichols. I watched from multiple cameras and multiple angles. I don’t have the words for what I saw. It was barbaric. Human beings acting at their worst. We saw cops holding Mr. Nichols upright while another beat him. Then we literally saw him kicked when he was down. It was horrific.

My initial thoughts are with the family of Mr. Nichols. No parents should ever outlive their children and no mother should ever have to hear her son scream for her out of sheer terror. My deepest condolences go out to the friends and family of Mr. Nichols.

This incident, another one in a string of highly disturbing acts of police violence, makes starkly clear how much culture of policing in America must change. Having studied leaders and leadership for over 15 years, there is one thing I know – any meaningful change can only happen from the inside-out.

But there is a problem.

Leadership theory continues to modernize with the times with business communities and the military leading the way. Health care and education, while far behind, are more and more starting to ask themselves how they can do better. Law enforcement, in stark contrast, lags about 20 years behind in how it trains its leaders. Their leaders still struggle to understand how to develop a corporate culture that places the value a human life above all else, including protecting the peace and property.

Too many leaders in policing receive little to no leadership training as they promote. Too few have the courage to challenge what is an insular and old-fashioned way of doing business. In fact, too few law enforcement leaders even know what a strong, human-lead culture looks like, let alone how to build one.

I appreciate that police agencies put out statements after these kinds of events saying how they deplore these actions, but I am tired of how they almost always include the “most cops are good cops” line. The time has come for all these good cops rise to up. It is time for them to demand change. To demand their leaders be held to account. One of the reasons we are seeing profound changes in how leaders lead in corporate America is because, in many cases, the employees demanded it. I understand that with over 18,000 police agencies across the country and no national standards that the kind of culture change needed will be complicated. Complicated but not impossible. Which is why it is time for all the good cops to demand that bad leaders be shown the door and new leaders who understand what has to change be given the power to affect that change. This includes removing every barrier that prevents good leaders from removing bad cops from the system.

I hope that the former officers responsible for this heinous act will be brought to justice. But that won’t fix what needs to be fixed. Unless police can take responsibility for the change demanded, incidents like this will never stop.

Even in this darkness, I remain hopeful that the change we need can happen. I have met a few forwarding thinking chiefs and sheriffs who are breaking with tradition, challenging their own profession and pushing the boundaries that need to be pushed. They understand that culture matters and they are working to modernize how their officers, deputies and troopers do their jobs. We want to live in an America in which all people feel that justice is administered with dignity, respect and fairness. And we will only be able to live in that world if the profession of policing makes it happen.

-       Simon Sinek

January 29, 2023