Black in Blue: Lessons on Leadership, Breaking Barriers, and Racial Reconciliation

Carmen Best, the first Black woman to lead the Seattle Police Department shares her leadership lessons and experiences in her book. She discusses how she defied the odds and brought diversity to the force, but faced challenges when the city council cut her budget. She teaches readers the core qualities and mindset to persevere and rise through the ranks, even in a workplace with a culture and leadership that need to be challenged.

Format: Hardback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 09 December 2021
Publisher: HarperCollins Focus

Whatever your position is on Black Lives Matter, defunding the police, and equity in law enforcement, former police chief Carmen Best shares the leadership lessons she learned as the first Black woman to lead the Seattle Police Department—a personal insider story that will challenge your assumptions on how to move the country forward.

Chief Carmen Best has spent the last 28 years as a member of a big-city police force, an institution where minorities and women have historically found it especially difficult to succeed. She defied the odds and became the first Black woman to lead the Seattle Police Department. During her tenure, she was successful in bringing significantly more diversity to the force. However, when the city council cut her budget amid months of protests against police violence, she had no choice but to step aside. Without the city's support, she felt she wouldn't be able to continue changing the status quo of the police force from within.

Throughout her career, Chief Best has learned lessons that those coming up behind her can benefit from. In this book, she will use her story to share those urgent lessons. Readers will read about:

How Chief Best grew up to believe in the change she set out to create.

Her early days in the police force, including lessons from the academy and her time on patrol.

How she progressed in her career within a primarily white law enforcement culture and the events that led to her becoming Chief.

How she built her team and overcame the politics involved in her high-level position until the call for defunding came.

Carmen Best teaches readers the core qualities and mindset to persevere and rise through the ranks, even within a workplace whose culture and leadership must be challenged, and policies changed on the way to.

Weight: 353g
Dimension: 236 x 161 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781400230617