Rumor Control Isn’t
Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
“Rumor control isn’t” is one of the first things I was told when I became a police officer. What I couldn’t understand was, WHY NOT? In a business where we arrest people - we take their freedom from them - based on a collection of facts that compiled comprise the commission of a crime. How come we can’t have that same fact-gathering and decision-making outlook toward the parts of our lives that aren’t law enforcement?
No, rumor control isn’t controlled in any way. The old line about “If you don’t have something nice to say then don’t say anything at all” seems to be lost at times… most of the time in fact. Sure, there are officers out there that I don’t care for much. They don’t care for me much either. We all know cops that we don’t believe should be in the business for one reason or another. What seems to get lost in the personal feelings we have for those folks is that none of us is perfect.
All around our country there are agencies hiring cops from the current pool of available applicants. There are probably some things in some of those applicants’ backgrounds that veteran officers of twenty years might find unacceptable for a police officer. While that veteran officer feels the applicant should be disqualified, the administrator / chief faced with staffing his agency feels pressed to make some concessions. Is he right or wrong? I think the bigger questions is, Who are we to judge him?
Where we start to get ourselves into trouble is when we start “airing our dirty laundry” in a public venue. In this case, a public venue is anything not behind closed doors - even talking with another officer on patrol. Everything that comes out of our mouth, no matter how secure we feel that it will be kept confidential, will be repeated somewhere somehow. More than likely it won’t be repeated exactly the way we said it, so all of a sudden what we’re held responsible for saying isn’t even what we said. Has that ever happened to you?
I’m sure it has - at least to some of you reading this. Someone walks up to you and says, “Hey! I heard you said blah blah blah.” That person is upset by what you said. But what (s)he quotes you as having said isn’t even what you said - although it’s somewhere close. So there you stand potentially having to explain that what they heard wasn’t what you said - and thereby having to repeat something you thought was going to be kept in confidence anyway. And if it’s a really juicy tidbit it’s already been through six other people before it gets to you that it’s been repeated. The joys of “rumor control”.
So how do we avoid this? It’s fairly easy actually. Stop talking about each other. Or if you DO have something to say, recognize that it won’t stay private and be ready to defend it. Yeah - that’s a novel concept: take responsibility for what you said.
I wonder how different police work would be without the rumor mill circulating behind us all the time? Or even better, how would police work be if the rumor mill only spread positive information? What if all we ever did was brag about each other?
Isn’t it a shame that’s not what happens? What do you think?
Frank, you are right on target. I have 24 years & 4 months on the job & have worked as patrolman, Sgt. & Lt. so I have definitely been the person spoken about at times & I try to not be the gossiper. If someone does ask me about something I try to give them the facts that I know but with some qualifiers or I don’t discuss it. One of the patrolmen was talking about me the other day around some other cops & he came to me yesterday to tell me about it because he thought I’d hear about it from the other guys. He was a little nervous about how I handled 2 situations (he has a lot less time on the job but thinks he knows the right way to do everything because he came from a municipality) & after he explained himself I explained why I did the things I did & that I stand by my decisions because I had thought about safety first while he was busy talking to people at the 2 incidents. It wasn’t anything major but he clearly seems like he has a more “fearful” personality at times. But, as you said, we do the best we can at the time when we hire people & it’s not a perfect world, so, the struggle goes on. Thanks again for the insightful Op-Ed’s. Don
As a matter of fact our small department had this same discussion not but a few days ago. I am guilty of the sins as well and the question that you raise at the end is the same question our Chief raised at the end of the meeting. I think also as police officers we get caught up ragging on the bad guys to our fellow officers that we end up getting caught up in the same cycle of ragging on the good guys to other fellow officers. That’s not anyway to excuse the action but maybe on a humor note we could start complimenting the bad guy and we’ll start complimenting each other?
FRANK, YOUR LESSONS ARE PRETTY POWERFUL, I ALWAYS LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR MESSAGES AND IMMEDIATELY FORWARD THEM TO ALL ON MY LIST. I WORK FOR A VERY POLLITICAL DEPT. EVERY 4 YRS ELECTION TIME COMES AROUND BECAUSE OF THE ELECTED OFFICIAL, WHO IS HEAD OD THE DEPT. WELL SINCE THINNGS HAVE FINALIZED RUMOR CONTROL IS IS OUT OF CONTROL. INSTEAD OF A POSITIVE IT AEWAYS BECOMES A NEGATIVE AND UNFORTUNATELY US (PATROLMAN) ALWAYS GET THE SHORT END OF THE STICK.
Particularly in female-dominated environments, one has to be VERY careful of what statements are uttered because they get passed around quickly and, as Frank says, not in the form they were orginially stated. Those who are petty, catty, and jealous of others in the workplace will use their words against them by twisting and turning them into an ugly mess that can have dire consequences resulting in some sort of victimization.