A credo is a statement of belief expressed as a commitment to conduct.

It gives words to the principles by which we intend to live. It reminds us what we value, what we will stand for, and what we refuse to become.

The word itself is old. The need for it is older.

People have always struggled to reconcile what they know to be right with what circumstances tempt them to do. We inherit the same human weaknesses that troubled those who came before us: pride, fear, resentment, selfishness, and the desire to choose what is easy over what is right.

We also inherit their capacity for courage, mercy, sacrifice, loyalty, and love.

The circumstances change. Human nature does not.

A credo helps us remember the better possibilities within ourselves.

For a parent, it might concern patience. For a teacher, fairness. For a leader, the obligation to tell the truth. For a husband or wife, the promises that must survive disappointment and fatigue.

For a police officer, these commitments carry particular weight.

Police work places ordinary human judgment under extraordinary demands. Officers encounter people in fear, anger, grief, confusion, and desperation. They must make decisions quickly, often without complete information, sometimes with profound consequences.

Some decisions are dramatic. Most are ordinary.

How do I speak to this person? Have I listened before reaching a conclusion? What does restraint require? What does courage require? Am I seeing the person before me, or merely the problem I have been called to resolve?

Am I acting from principle and judgment, or from anger, fatigue, pride, or fear?

These are questions of character.

Law and policy establish the boundaries of authority. Training and experience teach officers how to exercise it. Personal character influences what happens within those boundaries.

A credo helps an officer cultivate that character.

There is a good chance you have spent much of your career riding in a vehicle bearing a few carefully chosen words.

TO PROTECT AND TO SERVE

In 1955, Los Angeles police officer Joseph S. Dorobek submitted those words to a Police Academy motto contest. They eventually became the official motto of the Los Angeles Police Department and, in various forms, a familiar declaration on police vehicles throughout the country.

Four words. Easy to remember. Difficult to live up to.

The word credo comes from the Latin credere, meaning to believe or trust. Its deeper linguistic ancestry is associated with the idea of placing one’s heart or trust in something.

There is a fitting thought in that history.

A credo declares where we have placed our trust, and what we believe deserves our loyalty.

Institutions have long expressed their principles through mottos and pledges.

The FBI has Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.

The United States Coast Guard has Semper Paratus—Always Ready.

Such words establish public standards. They announce what an organization believes its members ought to be.

And those standards are necessary.

But an institution’s words cannot supply every answer to the private questions its members must face.

An officer may know the department’s values and still struggle with what to do when a colleague makes an inexcusable mistake. When admitting an error threatens professional pride. When a citizen is abusive. When exhaustion makes indifference seem reasonable.

The department’s motto belongs to the department.

Your personal credo belongs to you.

It expresses the obligations you accept even when no supervisor is present, no report is required, and no one will praise you for keeping them.

The finest institutional values find their fullest expression in the conduct of individual people.

A personal credo is where those public principles become a private responsibility.

Long before modern police departments existed, people searched for ways to preserve the principles by which they lived.

Some committed them to writing. Others passed them through instruction, stories, ceremonies, and example.

Across cultures, codes of conduct helped establish what was expected of a person who carried responsibility, exercised authority, or faced danger.

Japan’s samurai traditions developed ideals associated with loyalty, courage, and duty. European traditions of chivalry offered their own expectations of conduct, though practice often fell far short of the ideal.

The American frontier gave rise to stories of men and women whose reputations rested upon their word, their courage, and the obligations they accepted toward others.

These histories were neither simple nor uniformly noble. Their codes varied, and the people who professed them did not always obey them.

Yet the recurring human ambition is recognizable.

People wanted a standard they could remember when circumstances tested them.

Modern military organizations continue this tradition.

The United States Army’s Soldier’s Creed expresses duties and commitments in language intended to become familiar through repetition.

Other military units have their own creeds and traditions, passed between generations.

The purpose is practical: to establish expectations before a difficult moment arrives.

A principle learned in calm circumstances may become easier to recall when circumstances are anything but calm.

There is another lesson in these traditions.

A creed is strengthened by repetition, but repetition alone is insufficient.

Someone may recite honorable words without acting honorably. History provides abundant examples.

The standard must survive contact with ordinary life.

That is what gives a personal credo its force.

It invites a person to consider, in advance, the conduct by which he wishes to be known—and then to practice that conduct until it becomes familiar.

No borrowed code can do that work for you.

You must decide which principles deserve your loyalty and what those principles require of your life.

In these pages, “spiritual” does not mean religious. It means the part of you that decides what your work is for, the part that knew, the first time you put on the uniform, that you were doing something that mattered. A secular officer can take every word seriously. Every officer has that part. Nobody reaches the academy without it. It runs on deposits, and nobody taught you how to make them.

Every police officer enters the academy with a full account — a set of values, beliefs, and reasons for doing this work. Over time, the job can drain that account. Calls pile up. Cynicism grows. The original convictions become harder to find.— Rabbi Cary Friedman, police chaplain and FBI spirituality consultant

My Credo exists to make a deposit.

Rabbi Friedman says the career carries three kinds of danger.

Physical dangers. Most of your training has been about these. They are real, and the training is good.

Emotional dangers. The trauma of what you see. The strain on the family. The grind of shift work and the slow accumulation of cases that will not let go. Departments acknowledge these, even if the support is uneven.

Spiritual dangers. The slow erosion of the part of you that decided, once, that this work was worth doing. Friedman puts it bluntly: “More officers end their careers because of the spiritual dangers than due to any other reason.”

Friedman calls this condition spiritual overdraft.

Think of an officer who begins his career with an account full of idealism and purpose. Every difficult call, every disappointment, every encounter with cruelty or indifference may take something from that account.

Year after year, the withdrawals continue.

Unless something is deposited in return, the balance begins to disappear.

You may have seen what happens next. The officer who once cared deeply becomes cynical. The work becomes mechanical. The original reasons for wearing the badge grow harder to remember.

Making a Deposit

A credo offers one way to make a deposit.

It reminds you of what you believed before the disappointments accumulated, and what you still intend to stand for.

It cannot erase a painful experience or take the place of the help an officer may need. But it can bring you back to a conviction worth preserving.

And every time you honor that conviction in your conduct, you put something back into the account.

Small. Repeatable. Yours.

A credo has five properties. If yours is missing one, you can usually feel it: the sentence lands soft.

Vague and real

Specific words have power. Vague words drift away.

Practice Before the Moment Arrives

A credo brings a large commitment into a small, familiar moment, where you have the chance to honor it.

Choose a moment that happens often enough to give you practice.

A credo built entirely around extraordinary danger may sit unused for years. You may sincerely promise yourself that, if the worst should happen, you will stand your ground and do what courage requires.

But courage is also required when you admit a mistake, tell an unwelcome truth, or accept responsibility for something you would rather conceal.

Everyday life gives you regular occasions to stand steady, keep your word, and protect the people who depend on you.

Each occasion is another chance to practice the person you have chosen to be.

Over time, those familiar decisions help prepare you for the unfamiliar ones.

The great moments may be rare. The practice need not be.

“Every day, on my way home from my shift, at the corner of Maple and Elm, the last stop sign before home, I pause for a moment and think:

I decide that my family deserves more than whatever remains of me after the job has taken its share.

I will turn the corner as a husband and a father.
I will not let that be taken from me.”

Why This Credo Works

• PLACE: A familiar intersection encountered every day.
• ACTION: A deliberate pause before turning toward home.
• IDENTITY: The person he has committed himself to being — a husband and father.
• COMMITMENT: To avoid carrying the day’s anger into his treatment of the people he loves.

There is nothing elaborate about this practice.

Its strength comes from the connection between an ordinary event and an important promise.

The corner becomes a reminder. The reminder invites a decision. Repetition gives the decision a place in his daily life.

Over the years, the words may become as familiar as the road itself.

A credo does not require you to wait for a great moral crisis.

It gives you something to practice along the way.

Another officer in Victim Services sits in her car for a full minute before reporting for duty, resolved to lock her personal problems inside. She steps out, determined to bring calm and compassion to someone’s worst hour.

“I will reflect the face of God to those in need.”*

*Attributed to Chaplain Jack Poe, Police Chaplain Project interview.

Do not start by trying to sound wise. Start by remembering who you are at your best.

Your credo already exists. You have lived pieces of it. The work now is to find the words.

Take a few minutes with these. Answer only the ones that feel true. These boxes are for thinking, not for keeping. Nothing you type here is saved or sent anywhere. The keeping happens on paper.

That last one deserves the most weight. It points to something you value enough never to do halfheartedly.

Before this journey ends, you will write your credo on a piece of paper.

In your own hand.

You may keep it in a drawer, fold it into a wallet, place it inside a book, or leave it somewhere you will encounter it regularly.

The paper itself has no special power.

But consider what it may eventually represent.

Years from now, someone else may discover it.

Perhaps a son or daughter. Perhaps a grandchild. Perhaps someone who knew you only during the later years of your life.

They will have memories of you.

They may remember your kindness, your impatience, the way you laughed, the promises you kept, and the occasions when you fell short.

They may remember how you treated strangers, how you handled disappointment, whether you admitted your mistakes, and whether you were willing to stand beside someone who needed you.

And there, in your handwriting, they may discover the standard you set for yourself.

A few words about the person you intended to be.

Those words will have a special meaning if your life has given them substance.

If you have practiced them faithfully, the people who knew you best may recognize the person who wrote them.

And if you sometimes failed them, as everyone does, perhaps they will remember that you tried to make things right.

A credo is a promise we make to ourselves.

The life we lead becomes the evidence of how seriously we took it.

Write your promise plainly.

Write what you stand for.

Write what you intend to do.

Write what you refuse to become.

Then give those words a life beyond the paper.

Starters