White Lies, that Kill

When I met my now-wife, she quickly learned not to ask questions she did not want honest answers to.  “Does this dress make me look fat?” My answer would of course not simply be, “Yes,” but rather a well-crafted honest answer with context. “Did you like the food I cooked?” While this approach created some tension at first, my wife was not left to guess my true feelings and thoughts. I did not let her walk around in a dress everyone around her thought made her look bad or continue to cook food no one would like, or continue to cook foods I did not like. I expected the very same thing from her.  Sometimes, I would instigate things just to force her to be honest. White lies have a place, but they should be used sparingly. Trust is something very easy to lose and often difficult to earn. While my approach can rub some people the wrong way, no one leaves wondering how I feel. This creates trust in things big and small.   

Many might scoff at my approach, which is one’s right. But white lies can become toxic. White lies often become the default answer. They strip away our ability to be honest with others, work through confrontation, and be honest with ourselves. White lies create an image of perfection in our every action. As an officer, this is dangerous, toxic, and life-threatening. This might seem hyperbolic but let me explain.

Officers and departments are faced with highly limited budgets, time, and resources. The small things always matter, but even more when you are faced with these limitations and training for life-or-death situations. Every opportunity must be acted upon. When we train to succeed, we are not improving, we are sustaining at best. Compound this with trainers who do not correct or address issues. They tell the white lies that make life easier now and potentially deadly later. At the range, we allow people to qualify over and over but do not address how frightening it is to have an officer on the streets with such an appalling inability to qualify. Couple this with the fact that most departments use stagnant draw-and-shoot qualifications. What does it look like when we introduce real-world stress? The white lies instill an undeserving confidence in officers that leaves them spiraling and unprepared in real-world chaos. It’s that gut-wrenching feeling of being ill-prepared when that time arrives. 

It seems like most departments do not conduct AARs after real-world incidents. If we do, we tell ourselves and others the white lies that everything looked good. We ignore issues big and small because, well, they are just “not worth it.” Our lives are not worth being honest about. The white lies make life easier now and potentially deadly later. What I have found is that most of the time, fellow officers are not aware of their mistakes, how to fix them, or what to consider. They are trained with limited budgets, time, and resources. They have been trained by people who would rather tell the white lies and/or have been trained by white lies themselves. There are others, however, that believe these white lies so deeply, no words ever seem to place them in reality. These officers are often difficult to address, though not always impossible.

The impact of these white lies plays out every day. In the day of body-worn cameras, it is difficult to hide them, and yet, officers still choose to ignore them. As professionals, we should shed the burdens of the white lies and be honest with ourselves and others, if not for ourselves, for our citizens, and our families. We must realize that what we do BEFORE the incident is what shapes what we do DURING the incident.

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Jake Smith is a law enforcement officer and former Army Ranger with four deployments to Afghanistan.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.