Preview
  • Black in Blue

  • Lessons on Leadership, Breaking Barriers, and Racial Reconciliation
  • By: Carmen Best
  • Narrated by: Jackie Schlicher
  • Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (49 ratings)

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Black in Blue

By: Carmen Best
Narrated by: Jackie Schlicher
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Publisher's summary

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. You will learn 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 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 achieving that vision. Her motivating story serves as a master class in guiding principles for anyone striving to serve their community and rise to the highest echelon of success.

©2021 Carmen Best (P)2021 HarperCollins Leadership
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What listeners say about Black in Blue

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A leadership philosophy masters class.

This book was short, powerful, and through. It took me awhile to get around to picking it up to read/listen to, but once I started I didn't want to put it down until I had read everyone of the 175 pages. The book is truly a teaching of the characteristics of a great leader. Chief Best accomplish this task by writing her truth as she lived and modeled authentic Leadership throughout her life. No matter if your an aspiring leader or a leader aspiring to enhance your skills and become a great leader. You will not be disappointed by this impact full teaching of the philosophy of leadership for a Black in Blue perspective.

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Fantastic read!

So grateful that she shared her story. So timely, so necessary. Such an inspiration and committed leader.

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    3 out of 5 stars

inciteful

I'm a young man whos going into law enforcement there are many points in this book that I do agree with and like but at the same time there is some things that I don't agree as much I am a white male who understands the horrors of the past but I was raised to not see raise and treat everyone equally as human diversify law enforcement and encouraging others to go into this field is a huge way forward but I am not who goes along with the narrative that because I am white I am a racist or bad person there is some great points in this book but there are a few things that I believe were uncalled for but overall a good book to listen to.

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Really practical and really hard worker

I absolutely love this book and I will recommend it to everyone you’re both inspires encourages and directs in practical and realistic Ways. then she Leave that out for high standards of leader ship. I totally recommend this book

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Leadership When the Heat is In

This is a well written book on leadership. Carmen Best was the Chief of Police In Seattle When the protest turned riots i. Response to the killing of George Floyd spread across the country. She came up through the ranks of Seattle Police Department and from the book I get the sense she loved her community and her department as well as its members . Her book gives an inside point of view on the violence, the problems and social issues that led up to them. She talks about her and her departments work to build relationships throughout the community and how good collaborative efforts work to make a difference in how communities solve real world problems in an effort to first prevent crime and violence and when prevention fails how to fairly and impartially and justly deal with it.

She comes off very candid and frank, honest which to me a retired cop of over 30 years is a breath of fresh air. I don’t know her personally but from reading her book I would have liked working for her.

Great book with a ton of great information on leadership as well as what’s vitally happened in Searle in 2020.

Nice job Chief

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Leadership is Lonely

What an eye opening book about events that happened in Seattle. I am from Bellingham two hours north of Seattle. Thank you Carmen Best for sharing your story. What a shocking revelation about the city council and how they handled the situation with the police force in Seattle. I was amazed at all the work the police actually do in all areas of the community. Carmen Best, as police chief, made many hard decision in leadership. What an story of an amazing woman.

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Written like a children's novel + needing revision

I've been following Chief Best and the woes of the Seattle Police Department for some time now, so I was hoping this would be an internal tell-all from a police leader. Instead, it turns out half of this book is just inconsistent and underwhelming anecdotes about Best's upbringing and her struggles with "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (these words have become so politicized that they don't really mean anything anymore); less than half of the book is actually about the happenings of the Seattle Police Department and the issues that they faced during significant times, and they're told in such a way as to make them seem ingenuine or unrealistic.

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Unconventional Author: Conventional Ideas

Carmen Best is an interesting figure to me as she was Chief of Police during the Seattle CHOP/CHAZ & George Floyd riots. The book can't decide what it want's to be. Is it a recounting of that period of her life? Cultural or Social commentary? Or a book about Leadership?

Unfortunately, though I have much personal admiration for Chief Best, her ideas in these latter areas are rather conventional. As a black woman police chief, I was hoping for more from her about how to resolve the various cultural tensions we have about policing and the black community. Instead she gave credence to the same platitudes that led to her resignation.

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