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man in history, at forty-four, to become a superintendent of state police, and the first African American. It had been national news.
    “Sir, we need more sophisticated programs and more sophisticated IT guys. The federal people will have that; maybe they can get in.”
    Obobo said, “I understand and that’s why I have federal people on the way. I know if we all work together, we can get this done with a minimum of loss.” He spoke with the confidence of the man who knew the truth.
    And why shouldn’t he? His success had been pretty much a certainty. The son of a Kenyan graduate student at Harvard and a Radcliffe anthropology major, he’d graduated from both Harvard and Harvard Law. But instead of taking the conventional path to whatever the American Dream was, he’d joined the Boston Police Department as a beat cop. He was quickly absorbed into the Homicide Bureau and had been the front man on a series of highly publicized cases,where he revealed himself to be a mellifluous speaker and a quick wit and to exude a kind of enlightened law enforcement attitude that could console the races, even in a tough town like Boston.
    Despite the fact that he never broke a case, arrested a suspect, won a gunfight, led a raid, or testified in court, in five years he left the department to become the lead investigator for the Senate Subcommittee on Government Fraud, where again his charisma made him a star and got him noticed on the national level. Run for office, many said. You have the gift.
    But he was a cop, he said, and committed to the healing of America by progressive law enforcement policy. The old days of kick-ass and coerced confession were gone; the new day of respect for all had arrived.
    He became, quickly, the assistant commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department, then the chief of the Omaha Police Department, though he cared little for the snowy plains far from the national media. But they kept dropping by anyway, and he made the national news more than any other police executive in the country, in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Finally, his big move, to head the Minnesota State Police with the idea of bringing it into the twenty-first century, making it the premier investigative agency in the state while aiming to cut traffic fatalities to a new low. That hadn’t happened yet and in fact no stated goal had been accomplished, but it was hard to hold that against a man struggling against the old culture and the old ways. The media loved him for his effort. Somehow, he’d ended up on the cover of the
New York Times Magazine,
subject of a gushing profile by David Banjax.
    Now, his first real crisis. He understood that America, the Mall, was a mess. First responders had had a nightmare approaching, as shoppers fled in the thousands, most in cars, gridlocking the place so that incoming LE simply added to the confusion. Meanwhile, the reports were sketchy. Mall security was not answering and had not communicated since the first 10-32 alert went out. Thousands of 911 calls crowded the circuits, all some variety on the theme “Machinegunners are in the mall,” or “I lost my grandma in the mess, help me find my grandma.”
    Grandma was going to have to wait, unless she was already dead.
    But he also understood that this was an opportunity beyond measure, in some way a gift. The national spotlight would again shine on him and the decisions he made, the leadership he showed—the resolution coupled with fairness, the fortitude coupled with compassion, the eloquence coupled with wisdom—would be on fine display. It wasn’t about ambition, he always said; it was about gifts. He had been given many; it was mandated, therefore, that he give back.
    “You know,” his longtime civilian advisor and public affairs guru David Renfro had whispered in his ear on the thunderous ride over, “few men get a chance like this. This is an opportunity we have to seize by the throat.”
    Obobo and his senior command team—including Mr.