With the resignation of Chief Bryce Johnson last week, Juneau will be losing more than the head of our police department. In his four years here, he has been exemplary community leader not only for his efforts to make Juneau a safe place for us all. He’s modeled an ethical standard we should all strive for follow — to be honest with ourselves — a rule he insisted the department would follow in the wake of last summer’s murder of five Dallas police officers.
Now it might seem silly to emphasize honesty in any profession, especially one whose core principles of integrity and respect are necessary to ensure justice for all. But taking anything for granted is the first act of losing touch with its real-life value.
Johnson’s directive wasn’t issued behind closed doors. He published it in an Empire My Turn, accompanied by the acknowledgement “that much of the history of policing is not flattering. At many points in American history the police enforced the status quo that was often unfair or brutal to disfavored groups.”
The words “much” and “often” dismiss the most common excuses for bad group behavior. The history he spoke of wasn’t the result of honest mistakes, misunderstandings or the work of a few bad apples. As a structural problem passed down from generation to generation, it’s deeply woven into our national heritage.
This isn’t about fixating on the unfortunate realities of the past. Here and now, Johnson worked hard at fostering a healthy relationship between his force and the public. The community policing model he implemented and the renewed emphasis on bicycle patrols are a few examples.
But life is too messy to let us navigate our way to a better future by merely adapting past successes to new situations. We need to uncover the learning potential from unpleasant experiences as well. That means honestly acknowledging their uncomfortable truths.
Unfortunately, honesty is too often an unspoken attribute to other high-minded values such as selflessness, duty, and commitment.
I chose those three ideals to critique because they came right out of the vision statement for the U.S. Coast Guard where I worked as an engineer for 14 years. Those qualities more readily speak to intent, not actual performance or outcome. Honesty isn’t mentioned at all.
I’d have considered it an underlying, unspoken value that anchored the others if it wasn’t so routinely neglected. I’m not implying there was outright lying within the agency, although that did happen occasionally. Rather, success was often measured by money spent, wisely or not, and with little regard for the real value gained. On the other side, major mistakes were downplayed and largely left unexamined.
It’s not just reporting the agency’s annual performance that the Coast Guard falls short of Chief Johnson’s management philosophy. Honesty also struggled for its place at the individual level.
Officers were expected to draft their own annual evaluation reports which would ultimately be used to rank candidates for promotions. They were filled with elaborate embellishments of their contributions to the projects and programs they worked on. I actually attended a two-hour training session in which management not only acknowledged this was common, they encouraged it.
This institutionalized culture of playing loose with the truth isn’t limited to military or civil service organizations. The banking collapse of 2008 and subsequent recession resulted from the competitive practice of overstating the value of more mortgage-backed securities. As the meltdown began, the first responders were lawyers and public affairs specialists who focused on disguising their company’s transgressions.
That scandal caused mass outrage across the country, but not enough to hold anyone in the industry accountable. That’s because even though millions of people were hurt financially, most of society was still comfortable with the status quo.
The same was true and remains so regarding the law enforcement problems Johnson confronted. Despite the attention given to and support of groups like Black Lives Matter, most Americans are willing to quietly tolerate police injustices as long as they don’t affect them.
Mass movements have proven to be essential to this country’s social advancements. But they can’t do it alone. They need strong allies within the institutions they hope to change. It’s why we need leaders in every profession with Johnson’s dedication to honesty.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.
