Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the Future of Policing Institute fellows are theirs and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent.
Ethical Fading and the Future of Policing
What if the greatest threat to police integrity isn't corruption — it's the slow, invisible process by which people stop seeing their own misconduct as wrong? Ethical fading moves silently through hiring decisions, training halls, daily operations, and the highest levels of command — reshaping what feels normal until misconduct becomes routine. This article by FPI Fellow Captain Craig Solgat confronts that threat head-on and lays out what policing must do before the cost becomes irreversible. Ethical fading doesn't announce itself — it quietly rewires how officers, supervisors, and institutions define what's acceptable. This article, by FPI Fellow Captain Craig Solgat, traces how that erosion moves through every level of policing and what it will take to stop it.
Trust Tuning in the Heat of Crisis
Collaboration moves at the speed of trust, and as today’s challenges grow more complex, success depends on our ability to work seamlessly within organizations and across them. That’s why the familiar phrase “trust but verify” deserves a closer look — it’s inherently contradictory. If trust is present, constant verification isn’t needed; if verification dominates, then trust was never truly there. For leaders, the path forward isn’t blind faith or endless suspicion, but the deliberate work of building, calibrating, and tuning trust to fit the moment.
Policing’s Hero Mentality
What if policing wasn't the first response – but the final one? In The Hero Mentality, Captain Craig Solgat, a FPI Fellow, proposes a bold, future-focused vision of policing where police are deployed not by default, but with deliberate purpose.