From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief — Cathy Lanier

0:00 I would say the two things that have helped me in that exam

0:03 that have helped me most of my law enforcement career my grandmother instilled

0:08 in me two things problem solving being a big part of that is is

0:12 like you never make excuses when bad things happen don't make excuses you put

0:18 yourself in that position you found yourself here it is nobody else's fault

0:21 but yours you know I'm not an excuse person I don't make excuses if

0:25 I find myself in a bad situation I did something to get myself here

0:28 and I'm going to get myself out and that was the way she taught.

0:31 The other thing she taught me was she's like,

0:33 "You're going to be damned if you do and damned if you don't.

0:35 You better be damned for doing [clears throat] like so [laughter] you act.

0:38 You always act.

0:39 You don't let your circumstances dictate for you.

0:43 You act and you take action and you do.

0:45 You don't wait for somebody else to do for you."

0:48 Kathy, it is so lovely to see you and thanks for making the time.

0:52 Really nice to see you again.

0:54 Glad to finally connect.

0:55 It was nice to see you, too, Tim.

0:57 I was going back and forth on where to start this and I

1:01 think I'm just going to follow the tried andrue and begin

1:05 at the beginning here and maybe we should just start with tuxedo

1:09 and just give people sort of a snapshot [gasps] of where you grew up,

1:16 how you grew up, you know, all those dreams of being in law enforcement.

1:22 And [laughter] I'm partially kidding, of course,

1:26 because I know a little bit of the backstory,

1:28 but can you tell people about the beginning?

1:32 It's important, I think, for context about the choices I made in my life,

1:38 like everybody on this planet, the way you're raised, your your family,

1:42 your environment has so much influence on the way you do things as an adult.

1:46 So, my parents married right after high school.

1:48 First boyfriend, girlfriend, you know, so right after high school.

1:51 My father was a firefighter, went in the fire department.

1:54 My mother was a secretary.

1:55 She went to work for the federal government.

1:58 Dream, you know, back in the 50s, being married at 18 is perfectly normal.

2:03 So, they got married, bought a home,

2:05 started having children, they had three kids.

2:07 I'm the youngest of the three.

2:10 After I was born, I think they realized that a secretary

2:13 and a firefighter salary does not exactly cover child care for three kids.

2:17 So, they couldn't afford the child care for three kids for both of them to work.

2:20 So, my mother took a a leave of absence from work.

2:24 She did eventually go back,

2:25 but she took a 10-year leave of absence after I was born.

2:28 And then when I was two, my mother took us to my grandparents for the weekend.

2:34 And when we came home, my father was gone.

2:36 He had taken a car [clears throat] and uh left my mom with three

2:39 kids and and no income literally cuz she was not working at the time.

2:44 So, life changed pretty dramatically for us.

2:46 Then I was again, I was two.

2:48 I don't remember a lot of detail early on, but I

2:51 do remember as a child growing up over that next 10 years,

2:54 my mom was home with us really just a wonderful childhood.

2:58 My mother was always there.

3:00 She helped with homework and she would take me

3:04 to soccer practice and basketball practice and majorette practice.

3:07 I mean, she was always with us and she

3:09 was just a a wonderful, loving, caring mom.

3:11 And we didn't have a lot, you know, we lived on $350 a month.

3:15 my my father's eventually paid child support.

3:18 So, we had, you know,

3:19 a lot of support from the church and from, you know, friends and family.

3:23 But it was a a fun childhood for me.

3:25 I mean, my mom was with me and I I think

3:27 she provided a lot of stability for my brothers and I.

3:30 And then when I was getting ready to go from back then,

3:33 this is back before middle school.

3:34 So, you went, you know, elementary school, junior high school, high school.

3:38 So, in sixth grade, you leave elementary

3:40 school and you go to junior high school.

3:42 So I was 12 years old, 13 years old, becoming a teenager.

3:46 We were going to a new school.

3:47 I was going to seventh grade.

3:49 My mother went back to work.

3:51 I was the youngest at the time at 13.

3:52 She felt like we were old enough to be latch

3:54 key kids and come home and let us in, you know,

3:56 be home for a couple hours every day until she got home from work.

3:59 So she went back to work in her same role

4:02 working for her same boss that she left 10 years earlier,

4:04 which is pretty amazing.

4:05 That is amazing.

4:06 In fact, that whole 10-year period when my mother was off,

4:09 also important is how it frames my context of things

4:12 is during that 10 years when my mom was home.

4:15 I remember her sitting in front

4:16 of the TV and taking shortorthhand to the television

4:19 and she would like get our favorite

4:21 records and she would write down in shorthand

4:23 all the words and then she would sit at the table and type them

4:25 all up and give us the words so we could sing along with our songs.

4:28 And you know, I thought it was just mom doing fun things for us,

4:31 but it was her keeping her skills, right?

4:32 My mom when she went back to work after a 10-year break in service,

4:36 she still took shorthand at like 96 words a minute

4:39 and still could type over 100 words a minute.

4:41 So,

4:43 wow.

4:42 Just a wonderful example of work ethic for us.

4:45 She knew she needed to go back to work and wanted to go back

4:47 to work as soon as possible and she wanted to be on her game.

4:50 So, great childhood.

4:51 But when I was moving to junior high school, my mom went back to work.

4:54 So, I kind of lost that guardian,

4:55 that best friend like at a critical time, right?

4:59 Like I'm becoming a teenager.

5:00 We were going to a new school.

5:02 They were busing back in those days.

5:04 So, I was being busted into a really tough neighborhood in Washington DC.

5:08 From Maryland to Washington DC.

5:11 Right on the border of DC.

5:12 Can I pause you for one second?

5:15 Sure.

5:14 I'm just trying to put myself,

5:16 which is impossible for me to do of course, in your mom's shoes, right?

5:20 You guys return to the house, no car, dad's gone, three kids.

5:26 Have you spoken to her or do you have any best guesses as to the other

5:31 things that helped her hold everything together

5:36 in terms of resilience or support or anything else?

5:40 I mean, I suppose that necessity is the mother of invention on some level,

5:44 but have you ever spoken to her about that?

5:47 I did.

5:48 And you know, it's funny.

5:49 My mother was very passive, sweet, just kind of a very quiet internal person.

5:56 And in my entire life, I never saw my mother cry.

5:58 Never.

5:59 Never.

6:00 I mean, under any circumstances when I I'm sure she did.

6:04 Mhm.

6:04 But I never really saw my mother cry.

6:05 And my grandmother was completely the opposite.

6:08 My mom was an only child.

6:09 Her mother was like a pistol.

6:11 Like hardcore.

6:13 So my grandmother was very helpful, but my mother was a rock.

6:17 I mean, she took care of us.

6:20 When I tell people now, we lived on food stamps, welfare.

6:24 The church brought us baskets of food for the holidays,

6:27 but we didn't have a car for many years.

6:29 We finally got a car.

6:30 It didn't have heat.

6:30 It used to break down every time we went out in it.

6:33 You know, the hot water spet in our bathroom

6:35 used to squirt scalding hot water over you if you

6:37 didn't weren't careful because it needed a washer and there

6:39 was nobody to come and fix that washer, you know.

6:41 So, but we had a wonderful childhood.

6:43 My mother was just solid.

6:45 She loved her kids and she was a beautiful, beautiful woman.

6:49 And I always ask her why she didn't ever date and she's like,

6:52 "My kids were my life and I didn't want anybody around my children

6:56 that didn't think of them as the same priority that I thought of them." So,

7:01 I think her resilience was really just steady for her family.

7:05 I think her family was her motivation

7:07 and nothing was going to disrupt her commitment there.

7:10 Yeah.

7:11 The singular focus.

7:12 So, I interrupted you.

7:13 That's okay.

7:14 you were saying there's this transition point.

7:18 You're busing in to Washington DC and you've

7:23 sort of lost your guardian in a sense.

7:27 Yeah.

7:27 At that point.

7:27 So if if you wouldn't mind picking up there.

7:30 So again, we were being busted into a neighborhood.

7:32 The idea at the time was to racially integrate neighborhoods.

7:34 I lived in a very small industrial neighborhood,

7:37 like an industrial park right on the border of Washington DC.

7:41 Literally, there was a train that ran right behind my house in the backyard.

7:45 On the other side of that train tracks was Washington DC.

7:47 We were on the Maryland side.

7:49 So, they were busing us to a school

7:51 and uh on the border of northeast Washington to integrate,

7:55 you know, racially integrate the schools.

7:57 So, each day when our bus would pick us up and take us to school,

8:00 when our bus would pull up in front of the school,

8:02 everything in most big cities, I would say,

8:05 but in Washington for sure, is very neighborhood based.

8:08 So when our bus would pull up in front of the school

8:10 and we would get out as the Maryland kids coming to the school,

8:14 as soon as we'd get off the bus, we'd get jumped.

8:15 Like every day there was a fight.

8:17 [clears throat] It was a terrible change.

8:19 You know, all the way through school.

8:20 I was in the talented and gifted program, straight A student, loved school,

8:25 and now I'm being busted into a school where

8:26 the kids that we were going to school with hated us.

8:29 Was very racially charged.

8:31 It was agonizing to go to school because you had

8:34 to fight just to get from the bus to the classroom.

8:38 So my mom would go, her bus would, it's funny now, it wasn't funny then,

8:42 but her bus would pick her up on the corner at 7:00 in the morning

8:46 and my bus would pick me up on the other corner at 7:15.

8:49 So we'd both go out to the bus stop together

8:51 in the morning and she would wait for her bus,

8:53 I'd wait for my bus.

8:54 She'd get on her bus and she'd ride by me and I'd wave and then one of my older

8:58 friends who had a car would come and pick me

9:00 up and we would go skip school for the day.

9:02 You know, I at least would skip the first half.

9:05 Like I would skip the first few periods

9:06 so I didn't have to go through that agonizing, you know, fight every morning

9:11 entry.

9:12 Yeah.

9:12 Rough entry.

9:13 So I went from, you know,

9:14 a talented and gifted student with straight A's to failing

9:19 like literally every subject the first quarter of seventh grade.

9:23 So I was chronically truent.

9:25 I think I was averaging 19 days a quarter

9:26 that I was actually showing up for school.

9:29 My mother didn't know because the school never notified her.

9:31 And by the time she got home from work at 6:00 p.m.,

9:34 we were all sitting around like pretending to do our homework.

9:37 So my poor mother had no idea until about midway through the eighth grade,

9:42 I was so chronically truent that I was failing all of my major subjects.

9:47 So meanwhile, while I'm skipping school, I'm hanging out with the wrong people.

9:52 Much older crowd, friends of my older brother and older,

9:55 you know, just an older crowd and just getting in trouble.

9:58 and I fall in love with a much older boyfriend at the time,

10:02 think I'm in love and we want to get married and run away and get married.

10:06 And so by the time I was in the ninth grade,

10:08 I 14 years old, found myself pregnant.

10:11 My boyfriend at the time had given me a diamond ring.

10:13 We were engaged.

10:14 We're going to get married.

10:15 So we run away.

10:16 He was 26 at the time.

10:19 I was 14.

10:21 My mother, when she finds out, was going to have him arrested, right?

10:24 So she was going to put him in jail.

10:27 So, I run away from home and think, "Well, we got this.

10:29 We're going to get married and we're going to have the baby

10:31 and everything's going to be great." The mind of a 14-year-old.

10:36 Obviously, things didn't work out that way.

10:38 So, interestingly, I went to my father,

10:40 who had been out of the picture most of my life,

10:44 and asked for him to sign for me to get

10:46 married because I had to, because of my age,

10:48 one of my parents had to legally sign over my legal guardianship to my husband.

10:55 [clears throat]

10:54 So they literally signed over my legal guardianship to my husband.

10:58 So my dad thinking he would have one less child to pay

11:02 child support for cuz once he signed over my guardianship he

11:06 and cuts the child support bill paid $100 less a month in child support.

11:10 So he signed over my legal guardianship to my husband.

11:13 We got married the day after my 15th birthday.

11:15 I was 8 months pregnant at the time.

11:17 So, I guess fast forward a little bit,

11:20 a year and a half later, I was back at home.

11:24 My mother was taking me to GED classes at night.

11:27 I was sneaking to go to GED classes when I was still married.

11:30 My husband didn't approve of me going to school.

11:32 So, once we separated, my mom made sure I stayed in school, got my GED.

11:37 She would bring her typewriter home from work and she

11:40 taught me how to type on the kitchen table.

11:42 So, she taught me how to type and take a little shortorthhand.

11:44 And I went and got a job as a secretary.

11:46 I lied about my age.

11:47 I went and got a job as a secretary when I was 16.

11:52 So started working as a secretary and then worked

11:54 as a waitress in the evening in a bar.

11:56 Also lied about my age to work in a bar.

11:58 That was the only option up in the area where I was working.

12:02 So for the next several years, I worked two jobs as a secretary and a waitress.

12:07 You know, my motivation really was my son.

12:11 Mhm.

12:12 It was kind of a significant moment for me and I've had a few in my life.

12:17 When my son was born, I'd never babysat before.

12:20 I'd never held a baby.

12:21 I didn't know anything about babies or children.

12:24 And when he was born, he was such a good baby.

12:26 His crib was at the end of my bed in my bedroom.

12:29 And I'd wake up in the morning and he'd be awake and he'd just be looking at me,

12:32 waiting for me to wake up, right?

12:34 Not crying, [clears throat] not nothing.

12:35 He would just be looking at me.

12:37 [laughter] And so that is remarkable.

12:39 Yeah.

12:39 About three weeks into this experiment,

12:42 I'm looking at him one morning and it just dawns on me like for the first

12:46 time that I'm a parent and that that helpless

12:50 little baby was completely relying on me.

12:53 And my mother was always stressed the importance of education and work to us.

12:59 And here I was, you know, my husband didn't allow me to go to school.

13:02 I would never be able to get a job.

13:04 And I'm looking at this poor little innocent baby and I'm thinking,

13:07 his whole life depends on me.

13:08 and what am I going to be able

13:10 to provide with a nth grade education and not much.

13:15 So that was a aha moment.

13:17 Yeah.

13:18 Yeah.

13:18 I'm going to resist the temptation to ask

13:21 300 questions about the last few minutes that you

13:24 shared because we'll we'll end up spending all of our time there if I do that.

13:28 But I am curious for you.

13:31 I'm trying to put myself in your shoes at that young age.

13:38 when you and we we don't need to get

13:40 into the details unless you'd like to share,

13:42 but when you separated from your then husband, like when that happened,

13:48 what did you think was going to become of you?

13:51 Like what did you envision your path would be at that point?

13:56 I have to imagine that it would have just been incredibly challenging.

14:02 I don't know.

14:02 You can't believe everything you read on the internet,

14:04 but I read that when you were a young girl, you dreamed of being a lawyer.

14:07 I don't know if that's true or not.

14:09 And then flash forward,

14:11 you go through this entire tumultuous experience and you land back at home.

14:18 Where did you think your life was headed?

14:21 Where did you think you were headed at that point?

14:23 Well, I knew that with a ninth grade education and a single mom that I had

14:28 zero chance of being able to do what I thought was most important in the world,

14:33 and that's take care of my son.

14:35 And when I first moved back home, I got my GED,

14:38 but I still was not able to easily find a job at my age.

14:42 I was, you know, 16, almost 17.

14:44 I had to wait till I was 16 and nine months to take the test to get the GED.

14:49 Interestingly, you needed 255 to pass the test.

14:52 I got 256.

14:53 I passed at that one point.

14:55 Oh my god.

14:56 Just another little like footnote of my life.

14:59 Talk about these sliding door moments.

15:01 Holy cow.

15:02 Right.

15:02 So, my mother had always stressed the importance of education and work.

15:06 So, I knew I had to go back to school and I wanted to go to college.

15:08 I didn't want my son to be subject to the same

15:11 crappy neighborhoods and the same crappy schools that I went to.

15:14 I wanted him to have a real chance.

15:16 And I knew if I was going to do that, I

15:17 had to go back to school and get a college education.

15:20 And if I didn't do that, he would be doing I was

15:22 standing in the same food stamp line my mother stood in with me.

15:25 I remember the first day I went to get food stamps going

15:27 to the big white building by Prince

15:29 George's Plaza right near my home and standing

15:32 in the same line with my son that I stood in with my mom

15:34 when I was a kid and I was like this is not my path.

15:36 This can't be my path.

15:38 And when I got my job as a secretary,

15:41 they offered tuition reimbursement to go to college.

15:43 So, I started a community college.

15:45 I just started taking one class a semester and uh that's where it started,

15:48 one class a semester and they reimbured me for it.

15:51 So, [laughter and snorts] so I recall I mean for people who don't have contacts,

15:56 we've been we've been trying to schedule

15:58 this for a while and understandably you got

16:01 a lot of balls to juggle and I remember hearing just pieces of your story.

16:10 This was God, it has to be what, more than a year ago now.

16:13 I'm sure.

16:14 Time flies, but it's been a it's been a long while.

16:16 And I just remember thinking to myself, God,

16:20 I hope someday that we can have this conversation on the podcast.

16:23 So, I want to thank you again for doing it.

16:25 How do you then go from there?

16:29 What is the connective tissue sort of the catalyzing

16:32 events that ultimately get you into law enforcement?

16:37 Right?

16:37 What is what are the first few dominoes that get

16:41 tipped over that start to push you in that direction?

16:44 So, to be fair, my family is a public service family.

16:46 My father was firefighter.

16:48 My oldest brother had become a firefighter right out of high school.

16:51 My other [clears throat] brother was a police officer.

16:53 I was working as a secretary.

16:55 I was taking that one class a semester working

16:57 as a secretary trying to get my son in private school.

16:59 I wanted him in private school.

17:00 I did not want him going to those schools.

17:02 I was still living in the same crappy neighborhood,

17:04 but I wanted my son in a good school.

17:06 And I saw an ad.

17:08 I was 23 years old.

17:09 I saw an ad in the Washington Post for the Metropolitan Police Department.

17:14 They were hiring.

17:15 And what caught my attention, it's a full page ad in the post.

17:19 The half of the page was said tuition reimbursement.

17:22 I'm like, "Oh my god, tuition reimbursement.

17:24 I'm paying for one class a semester.

17:25 I'm going to take me 30 years to get a degree."

17:29 So I went with a friend and we went and stood in line.

17:31 They were hiring a thousand cops.

17:33 This was during the crack cocaine wars in Washington.

17:36 Early 1990.

17:37 So 500 murders a year.

17:39 DC was known as the murder capital of the world at the time.

17:42 So I just went and stood in line with a thousand other people.

17:45 Went and took the test and I came out I want to say

17:49 I came out like 60 out of a thousand people on that test.

17:52 So they called me right away.

17:54 I was the only white female in the room.

17:56 Right.

17:56 This is back in the early 90s.

17:58 Washington DC was about 89% African-American.

18:01 Right.

18:02 So I felt the same drive my mother felt taking care

18:06 of us is that I have a son that needs me.

18:08 He needs me to provide for him and the only

18:10 way I'm going to do this is get a good job.

18:12 Government job, not a bad option, and go back to school and get my degree.

18:16 So I got hired by the Metropolitan Police in 1990.

18:19 Started walking a footbeat.

18:21 My first day out of the academy was the Mount Pleasant riots.

18:23 So my first day out of the academy,

18:26 I went to work and didn't come home for 5 days.

18:28 It was great.

18:29 Okay, we're gonna double click on that and come right back to Mount Pleasant.

18:32 But before we do,

18:35 I want to know what the entrance exam or qualification exam was like.

18:43 Mhm.

18:42 Right.

18:43 because you you mentioned the GED and like just by sort

18:47 of the skin of your teeth getting in, you know,

18:49 passing the hurdle and then it sounds like you not very technical term,

18:54 but kind of crushed the the examination that you took

18:59 that ultimately placed you at 60 out of a thousand.

19:02 What was that test like?

19:04 So, remember now when I started going

19:06 taking classes at Prince George's Community College,

19:09 my goal was to be a lawyer.

19:10 I wanted to be an attorney.

19:11 Mhm.

19:11 I started out wanting to be a secretary like my mom.

19:14 Then once I got into the workplace, I realized I wanted bigger, better things.

19:18 So I wanted to be an attorney.

19:19 So I was taking political science, philosophy, a lot of those kind of courses,

19:24 getting all my generals out of the way in community college.

19:27 So by the time I got to the Metropol Police Department at 23,

19:30 I had three years of college courses, right?

19:34 But the exam for entry into policing, now back in those days,

19:38 they only required a high school diploma or an equivalent.

19:41 So you didn't need college.

19:42 So the this the entry exam was a lot

19:45 of things that you would expect for law enforcement.

19:49 You do a lot of multiple choice questions.

19:52 You know, you have to be able to read and comprehend well.

19:54 So reading comprehension was a big part of it.

19:56 You have to do some basic math, right?

19:58 So you have to understand math.

19:59 But there was a lot of problem solving type questions.

20:02 So they flash a photo in front of you and then

20:05 they say you there's a photo inside of a a department store.

20:08 Okay.

20:08 you just walked into this department store and there's been a robbery, right?

20:11 What is it you noticed in that quick

20:13 three seconds you had to look at that photo?

20:15 What do you remember?

20:16 What time was it on the clock?

20:17 You know, what color was the lady's shoes that was standing at the register?

20:21 Right?

20:21 Like, so there was, you know, reading comprehension, math, problem solving,

20:26 and then a good bit of are you paying attention?

20:28 you have the detail to pay attention and do

20:31 the things that you need to do as a police officer,

20:32 which much of which you learn as a cop.

20:35 But it seems like you had either developed or innately possessed,

20:41 and maybe I'm reaching, but I mean, maybe not.

20:44 I mean, was there anything in that test that highlighted,

20:48 [snorts] for lack of a better descriptor,

20:50 like superpowers, strengths of yours that came

20:55 into like full fruition later where you're like, okay,

20:58 if I look at the recipe,

21:00 some of the ingredients of the recipe that ultimately contributed to my success,

21:04 were any of them sort of revealed in that test in any way or not really?

21:09 Great question.

21:09 Actually, it's a very good question.

21:11 I don't get a lot of interviews that ask the types of question you're asking.

21:14 I think it's a excellent question.

21:15 So I I would say the two things that have helped me

21:18 in that exam that have helped me most of my law enforcement career.

21:23 My grandmother instilled in me, you know,

21:25 she spent a lot of time with us growing up as well.

21:28 Two things, problem solving being a big part

21:30 of that is is like you never make excuses.

21:33 When bad things happen, don't make excuses.

21:36 You put yourself in that position.

21:37 You found yourself here.

21:39 it is nobody else's fault but yours.

21:41 You know, I'm not an excuse person.

21:42 I don't make excuses.

21:43 If I find myself in a bad situation,

21:45 I did something to get myself here and I'm going to get myself out.

21:48 And that was the way she taught.

21:49 You get yourself in, you get yourself out.

21:51 And the other thing she taught me was she's like, you know,

21:54 you're going to be damned if you do and damned if you don't.

21:56 You better be damned for doing.

21:58 [clears throat] Like, so you act.

22:00 You always act.

22:01 You don't let your circumstances dictate for you.

22:06 you act and you take action and you do.

22:08 You don't wait for somebody else to do for you.

22:11 And those things were really part of that problem-solving

22:15 exercise when you're coming on the police department.

22:17 And it's certainly your problem solving exercise

22:19 every day you're on the police department.

22:22 Mhm.

22:22 It it certainly was for the next 27 years for me.

22:25 You can't avoid consequences.

22:26 There's consequences for everything that happens.

22:28 Every decision you make has consequences.

22:30 You can't avoid consequences,

22:32 but you can choose what you do after those things happen.

22:36 I imagine you've probably not met him,

22:38 but I interviewed someone named Jaco Willink,

22:41 who's a former Navy Seal commander many years ago.

22:45 It was the first time he ever did a public interview.

22:47 And he wrote a book called Extreme Ownership.

22:51 And I feel like your grandmother and what she instilled in you is

22:56 in a nutshell exactly the type of high agency thinking that Jaco talks about.

23:04 It's the same thing.

23:06 Yeah.

23:07 Wow.

23:07 My grandma would say there there's two types of people in the world.

23:09 Excuse people and people who are accountable.

23:12 And I'm going to be the accountable.

23:14 Let's come back to Mount Pleasant.

23:16 For people who don't have the historical context,

23:19 what were the Mount Pleasant riots?

23:21 And you said right before I asked about the test, you said it was great.

23:25 And if that is actually not a sarcastic statement,

23:29 but a real sort of statement of how you felt,

23:31 I want to know why that was the case.

23:33 But let's start with just a little bit of

23:37 history for people who who aren't familiar.

23:39 I certainly wasn't with the Mount Pleasant riots

23:42 when I said it was great in terms of being a rookie

23:44 right out of the academy and understanding what you've got yourself into, right?

23:48 It was here's what you've got yourself into, right?

23:51 Like you went to work today and you're not gone home for 5 days, you know?

23:55 So the night before my first day out of the academy,

23:58 there was a pair of police officers walking

24:00 a foot patrol in in our patrol district.

24:02 They tried to place a gentleman under arrest for drinking in public.

24:06 He was a Latino male, didn't speak English.

24:09 We had a big problem in our city back in those days.

24:12 Law enforcement, we had very few people in the department that spoke Spanish.

24:16 We had a huge Latino population.

24:18 There was a big gap in our community.

24:20 So, it's really difficult to do any kind of effective policing if

24:23 you're not communicating with the people in the community, and we were not.

24:26 So when this officer was trying to place

24:28 this person under arrest during the handcuffing the the subject

24:34 after one handcuff was on he turned around pulled

24:36 the knife on the officer and the officer shot.

24:38 So he was shot with one handcuff on so the partner of the officer who

24:42 shot rolled him over put the other

24:44 handcuff on took the knife away called paramedics.

24:47 Alls that people saw was a handcuffed person who'd been shot.

24:50 M so the Latino community in that neighborhood immediately began,

24:55 you know, gathering on the street, large crowd.

24:57 This all happened around 11:30 at night.

25:00 So by the time I got into the station for 5:30 roll call,

25:04 I show up at 5:30 in the morning.

25:05 The riot had broken out around 1:00 a.m.

25:08 They had burned several police cars.

25:10 There was stores that were looted and on fire.

25:13 I mean, there was a big, big deal down in Mount Pleasant.

25:16 So when I got to work my first day,

25:18 I walked into the station, said, "Hi, I'm Kathy Laneir.

25:21 I'm the, you know, new rookie from the academy." And they threw me

25:24 a gas mask and they told me to go out and get in the van.

25:27 He said, "Hop over the counter,

25:29 go out the back door and get in that van." And I was like,

25:31 "Okay." So I hopped over the counter and went and got in that van.

25:35 I was sitting with 15 other cops with gas mask on and big riot

25:40 sticks and they took us down and they dumped us off on the corner

25:43 of Mount Pleasant and Park Road and it was fully engulfed in a fires

25:47 and looting and you know people were

25:49 throwing bottles and bricks and stones at us.

25:52 We had little helmets they had given us in the as we were hopping out of the van

25:55 and I didn't have a radio because rookies

25:57 weren't allowed to have radios at the time, right?

25:59 I had not been trained how to use the radio.

26:02 So my partner had the radio.

26:05 So my lifeline was on my partner,

26:08 but we stood there online and literally got pelted with bricks

26:12 and bottles and I mean over the course of 5 days.

26:15 It was trial by fire for sure.

26:18 But it was a big learning experience

26:19 for me because I understood the frustration.

26:21 I understood the frustration.

26:23 The large number that whole community of Mount Pleasant were all Latino.

26:28 They didn't speak English.

26:29 The cops didn't speak to them very well.

26:31 I mean, nobody could really communicate with, but the cops

26:33 were pushing people around and there was no

26:37 way to to try and get the story straight

26:39 and really no effort to get the story straight, right?

26:41 To understand the frustration.

26:43 So, it was a big learning experience for me as I worked

26:46 my way up the ranks to understand how important inclusion is in the community.

26:52 If you're a police officer and you are

26:53 not embedding yourself in that community and understanding

26:56 who the people are in that community

26:58 and what their needs are and how to communicate,

27:00 you're really not going to be successful.

27:01 We're gonna, I imagine, revisit that at some point because it seems to be

27:06 a consistent thread through a lot of the work they've done.

27:09 But I want to spend a little bit more time on Mount Pleasant.

27:14 I am curious, I suppose, yet again, what that maybe showed you about yourself

27:23 or just highlighted about you constitutionally or personalitywise, right?

27:29 Because I would imagine some people could get

27:32 dropped in that environment after they just signed up.

27:34 They're like, "Hey, I'm just here for tuition reimbursement.

27:37 Holy shit." Like, I'm getting hit with bricks.

27:40 Like, this is not exactly what I thought my first day was going to be.

27:43 and they're out, right?

27:45 Like I have to imagine that there are some people who would be closer to that.

27:49 Maybe they didn't quit, but they're probably closer to that end of the spectrum.

27:53 And do you thrive in particular in intense environments?

27:59 I wonder, right?

28:00 Because like in my case, constitutionally sort of out of the box,

28:04 little things, especially interpersonal things bother

28:08 me that are kind of trivial, frankly.

28:10 Like I get all wound up about very stupid things,

28:13 but in crisis situations, you know, the car accident in front of me,

28:19 some guy's got his like leg blown apart or whatever.

28:21 I actually do really I do very well in those environments.

28:25 I don't know why that is.

28:26 I really have no idea.

28:27 Yeah.

28:28 But was there anything that you noticed about yourself

28:31 in that type of environment in those types of circumstances?

28:36 I think the thing for me that I thrive on is

28:40 as we're dropped out down there and they're giving us the riot sticks

28:43 and the helmets and the gas mask and they're shooting canisters of gas

28:47 into the crowd and knowing what started this and how this all blew up.

28:51 I'm thinking to myself, we're not going about this the right way.

28:54 Like I was a rookie.

28:55 I know nothing about policing other than what I was taught in the academy.

28:57 So by no means did I think I was

28:59 smarter than the guy making the command decisions, right?

29:02 But I'm just looking at it from my perspective and going

29:04 this is just not the right way to do this.

29:06 like this is we're not going to win here.

29:08 That's this is not a win situation.

29:10 This should be done differently.

29:11 And I just always felt like from the minute I hit the ground like watching like

29:16 analyze the way that we were doing things

29:18 and thinking why are we doing this this way?

29:20 There's a better way to do these things.

29:22 And so that's the way I felt at Mount Pleasant my first day on the job.

29:26 You know, really hard to explain.

29:27 I just felt like there's a problem to be solved here

29:30 and we're not going about it in a problem solving manner.

29:33 We're going about it with brute force, right?

29:35 brute force doesn't always work.

29:37 So, it intrigued me.

29:39 Every day after that, once the riots were over,

29:41 I started walking a footbeat in the city.

29:43 Every single day I went to work, I got to problem solve for six,

29:48 seven, eight times a day, you know, and calls for service, 911 calls.

29:52 You respond to people who are in crisis, people who need help, and you know,

29:55 you get to try and help think through that, help solve the problem.

29:58 And that's that's what I enjoyed doing.

30:00 It's frustrating when you're at the bottom

30:01 of the totem pole and you're the line officer, right?

30:04 you're in a chain of command.

30:05 You can't make certain decisions.

30:07 But I did feel like every single day I went to work,

30:10 I made a difference in someone's life, no matter how small.

30:14 Yeah.

30:14 And this was around, tell me if I'm getting this wrong,

30:17 but around 1990 or early early 90s.

30:21 1990.

30:22 1990.

30:22 Yep.

30:22 1990.

30:24 And you were working your way up the ranks.

30:26 When did you first and we'll certainly talk about kind of the the good, the bad,

30:32 and the ugly of that time frame in some respects,

30:37 but when did your first real mentor show up?

30:42 I have different names from doing homework in front of me.

30:46 I've got, if I'm saying it correctly, you know, Sonia Proctor,

30:49 [snorts] I've got Charles Ramsay, who might show up a little bit later.

30:53 I'm not sure exactly on the chronology,

30:55 but were there any critical figures in the first few years

30:59 who were helpful to you or was it really just executing,

31:05 getting the job done, delivering and working your way up?

31:10 I'm wondering when your first mentor of sorts

31:14 or kind of [snorts] I don't want to say guardian,

31:18 it might not be the right word,

31:20 but influential figure showed up within policing.

31:24 So, I was an officer and I loved my job.

31:27 I got once I worked my way up, I was foot patrol the first, you know,

31:32 several months and then I went to motorcycle school and I got

31:35 trained to ride a motor and then I was on a motorcycle.

31:37 I want to be mobile so I could get around

31:38 and you know I love the adrenaline 911 calls getting out

31:41 there being first on the scene and and then I got

31:44 moved up a little bit more and seniority and I was

31:46 in a patrol car and I used to get on the radio

31:50 and I'm like all right dispatcher I'm in service give me

31:52 stack me up give me all the calls you got pending

31:54 you know that's been sitting there waiting I I'll take them all.

31:56 I had a lieutenant who he was like

31:59 a SWAT team commander guy who got promoted to lieutenant

32:03 and they sent him out to patrol which is like

32:05 a slap in the face to a SWAT guy, right?

32:07 For sure.

32:08 Like they hate the patrol stuff.

32:09 But he'd come to my district and he called me in his office one day.

32:13 He's like, "I hear you on the radio out there." He's like,

32:14 "You're really humping." I was like, "Yeah, I love this job.

32:16 This is great.

32:17 It's fun." And he's like, "You're coming up on three years.

32:20 You're going to be eligible for sergeant.

32:21 You should take that sergeant's test." And I was like, "Why would I do that?

32:24 I like my job.

32:25 like what I'm doing if I take sergeant

32:26 test and I'm going to get moved somewhere.

32:28 He's like, "No, no, you need to take the sergeants test." Like,

32:30 well, why would I want to do that?

32:31 And he's like, "Well, you want to make more money,

32:34 right?" And I'm like, "That's a good point." And he said,

32:37 "And once you start taking these promotional exams,

32:40 it gives you more opportunities to influence the things.

32:43 You know, I hear you're trying to change some things.

32:45 You know, why don't you take that exam?" So, he pushed me pretty hard.

32:49 And when the tests announcement came out, he said,

32:52 "Come on, I'm going to give you a ride.

32:53 let's go pick up your books.

32:55 You have a eight-month window to study.

32:56 He's like, "Let's go pick up your books."

32:59 So, I was like, "All right." I was a little intimidated.

33:01 I like, "Okay." So, I took that sergeant's test.

33:04 I was eligible for sergeant at 3 years.

33:06 I took the first sergeants and test.

33:08 There was 890 people that were eligible that we took the test all together.

33:13 After the written exam,

33:15 you go to um an assessment phase where you do

33:18 a bunch of oral interviews and exercises and paper exercises.

33:22 and I end up coming out number 13 out of 890 for that.

33:26 So I got promoted right away.

33:27 A very young sergeant, 26 years old, three years on the job.

33:33 Most of the people I I had a master patrol officer working

33:36 for me that had more years on the job than I was old.

33:38 He had 26 years on the job.

33:40 I was 26 years old.

33:42 So that was the first mentor and he remained

33:45 a mentor for me for most of my career.

33:47 What was his name?

33:48 Donnie Axom.

33:49 Donnie Axom.

33:50 These stories are so critical, right?

33:51 Because I mean people are self-made in many respects and at the same time

33:58 you just have to wonder sometimes right

34:00 if if you didn't have these intervening figures

34:03 nothing like your experience but I had a pretty miserable public

34:06 school experience when I was growing up and ultimately hadn't even

34:10 thought of private school and it was there was one math

34:12 teacher who was basically like you need to get the hell

34:14 out of here and I was like yeah yeah yeah

34:16 out of here to where right and he just kept harping

34:19 on me and then there was one other person who chimed

34:21 And then I had two people and I was like, "Oh, okay.

34:23 Maybe I should take a look at this." And it

34:24 was just like if that had not happened, who knows, right?

34:28 Just a lot of question marks.

34:30 Critical.

34:30 Those mentors are critical.

34:32 What does a sergeant do?

34:33 I'm embarrassed to admit that I have no idea.

34:36 Like, what does a sergeant do?

34:38 This is one of the things that police departments do, right?

34:40 Now that I'm in the private sector,

34:42 I wish the private sector had similar structure.

34:44 So, once you make sergeant, you start as a first-line supervisor.

34:48 So they'll give you eight people,

34:50 eight to 10 people that that you're responsible for.

34:52 So you're the squad sergeant.

34:54 Like you have a squad that's assigned to you.

34:55 Those eight to 10 people, they report to you.

34:57 So I'm responsible for making sure when we pop out a roll call and we

35:01 hit the street that that my squad of eight is doing what they're supposed to do.

35:06 They're clearing their calls.

35:07 They're taking reports like they're supposed to.

35:08 If they get in a situation where they don't know what to do,

35:11 they go over the radio call for me.

35:12 I go down and help them work through that situation.

35:14 And I help teach them how to manage these situations.

35:16 So, you're first line supervision.

35:18 You're right there every day on the street with the 911 responders and you're

35:23 helping them manage those calls and you're

35:24 helping them manage how to solve those problems.

35:26 You're signing arrest paperwork.

35:28 You know, if you make an arrest, wait a minute,

35:30 let me let me look at all the probable calls you have here before we put

35:33 this person in handcuffs or if you got

35:35 the person in handcuffs when I get on the scene,

35:36 let's review what you got here, right?

35:38 Before we take somebody to jail,

35:40 let's make sure we we've met the DC code, right?

35:42 We know that you've got a legitimate arrest here.

35:45 You start managing a small group and then the next level is manager.

35:48 Then you become a lieutenant and then they give you like

35:51 40 people to manage and you start making little bigger decisions.

35:54 Now you're scheduling, you're assigning,

35:56 you're working through warrants and things like that.

35:59 So it's a very gradual progression.

36:02 In that time frame, early 90s or just 90s I suppose at large,

36:09 what was it like being a woman in the police force?

36:14 It was a really tough environment when I first got there.

36:17 There were a few days in the very beginning when I was an officer that you know

36:21 the good thing about the officer like when

36:23 I got there the department was 85 probably% African-Amean.

36:29 And the city was largely 89% African-American.

36:32 So largely African-American, certainly very few white females.

36:35 It was very few females.

36:36 So I would think we were about 11% women on the department of 5,000.

36:41 5200 I think when I came on size of our department.

36:45 So very few women, very few white women.

36:47 It's hard to think back to 199.

36:48 Sexual harassment was common place.

36:50 Nobody talked about it.

36:51 Nobody cared about it.

36:52 It wasn't an issue.

36:53 Like it just it it happened every day and you just,

36:56 you know, you work through it.

36:57 I grew up with two older brothers,

36:58 so I kind of knew how to navigate it a little bit.

37:00 You know, I listened.

37:01 My brothers gave me advice how to deal with some of this.

37:05 The good thing is as an officer, you very quickly establish yourself.

37:10 And I established myself as an officer early on as a worker.

37:13 Like, I came to work, I did my job.

37:14 I don't need anybody to do me any favors.

37:16 You don't need to look out for me.

37:17 I don't need a partner.

37:17 I can ride by myself.

37:18 I'm good.

37:20 Once I made sergeant though, the harassment got worse.

37:23 I mean, I I had a lieutenant that was really really sexually harassing.

37:27 I mean, not just me, but several women, physical harassment.

37:31 I mean, like getting you in a on a midnight shift

37:34 in a sergeant's office and closing the door and, you know,

37:37 putting her hands on you and things like that.

37:39 And I remember saying to my boyfriend at the time, I was like, "You know what?

37:42 I got real thick skin.

37:44 I could take all kinds of comments.

37:45 I don't mind any of that stuff,

37:47 but I'm not going to let people put their hands on me.

37:49 That's just not going to happen." So the harassment was pretty intense.

37:53 It was a it was a really tough environment.

37:55 So what happened?

37:56 I eventually So I had a a lieutenant when I made sergeant.

38:00 I was sent over to um southeast Washington.

38:03 I was patrolling in southeast.

38:04 I had really a good squad.

38:06 I worked nights, permanent nights.

38:08 So I had a lieutenant that was harassing me and some other women,

38:11 but me pretty intensely.

38:13 calling me on the radio, forcing me to drive him around,

38:15 putting me in his cruiser with them, making me drive him around,

38:19 just not letting me do my job, constant harassment, calling me on the radio,

38:23 bringing me to the office, make me drive him somewhere, things like that.

38:26 So, I finally, after several times of asking him to leave me alone,

38:29 I finally filed a sexual harassment complaint.

38:32 He had put his hands on me several times.

38:34 So, I filed a complaint and I remember going down to the EEO office and filing

38:40 this complaint and they asked me to write a list of anybody who had ever Well,

38:43 first of all, before I went down, my partner,

38:45 one of my fellow sergeants who was a a black male officer said to me one day,

38:51 we were out riding together.

38:52 The lieutenant had called me in and my partner said to me,

38:55 the other sergeant said, "How long are you going to let this keep

38:59 going on before you do something about it?"

39:01 And I was like, "What are you talking about?" He's like,

39:03 "I hope you're writing this stuff down.

39:05 I hope you're going to say something to somebody

39:07 because this can't go on like this." Again, a man,

39:10 not a woman, another male police officer basically said to me,

39:13 "If you're not going to stand up for yourself,

39:14 nobody else is going to stand up for you." And so

39:16 when he said that, it clicked and like he's trying to say

39:20 either you're going to allow this to keep happening or you

39:22 don't want it to happen and you do something about it.

39:24 So I after that conversation, I filed this complaint.

39:28 I list all the people who had witnessed because

39:31 my harasser made no no effort to hide it.

39:34 He made horrible comments and grabbed women in front of others all the time.

39:38 So I listed 17 different witnesses and they did

39:42 the investigation and literally I left the EEO office.

39:45 I went to court.

39:46 I had court that day and I was in court 20

39:48 minutes after I left the EEO office from filing my complaint.

39:51 My harasser, the lieutenant, texted me on my beeper,

39:55 and we had beepers back then,

39:56 [clears throat] and said, "I know what you're doing,

39:58 and you're not going to get away with this." Like,

40:00 so it was supposed to be confidential,

40:02 but within 20 minutes of leaving the office,

40:04 the person who was doing my investigation called him

40:06 and told him that I had made a complaint.

40:10 Gross.

40:09 So, I had to go back to work in that environment,

40:12 one of the most violent areas of Washington DC.

40:14 From that day forward, he prohibited me from partnering with anybody.

40:18 He refused to allow me to ride with anybody else.

40:21 He continued the harassment.

40:24 He, you know, came into my office the next day,

40:26 shut the door and said, "Look, I know that what you're doing.

40:28 You need to back down.

40:29 You need to withdraw this complaint.

40:30 You're not going to win." They sustained the complaint.

40:32 So, the investigation, all the witnesses I listed, they were all men.

40:36 I didn't think any of them would tell the truth.

40:37 Nobody wanted to go against us, a higher ranking person.

40:40 And every [clears throat] single one of them told the truth.

40:42 They all wrote down what they saw.

40:44 They all not only talked about what they saw him doing to me,

40:48 but what they saw him doing to other women.

40:49 And I was just shocked.

40:52 I [clears throat] always say to women,

40:53 you don't realize when you're in these scenarios,

40:56 decent men that observe these things going on, they don't like it either, right?

41:00 They don't like it either.

41:01 And and those other men that I was working with, they didn't like it either.

41:04 And some of them, this guy had harassed their girlfriends

41:06 or their wives or, you know what I mean?

41:09 So that really made an impression on me that so many of the men

41:14 that I work with stood up and did the right thing there.

41:17 So when when it was time for him to be

41:19 disciplined for this, when we got to trial board,

41:22 I walk into trial board for the discipline to come down and they

41:25 told me they had to drop the whole case and throw it out.

41:27 And I'm like, why?

41:28 What happened?

41:30 And they said, well, we missed the 90 days.

41:32 In the District of Columbia,

41:34 you have to bring discipline within 90 days of the day

41:38 that you knew or should have known about the misconduct.

41:41 They sat on this investigation till day 91 and then turned it in.

41:45 So, literally after all of that, they threw the case out and they said,

41:49 "Well, we'll just transfer you.

41:50 Where do you want to be transferred to?" I was like,

41:51 "I don't want to be transferred.

41:53 I didn't do anything wrong.

41:54 I don't transfer me.

41:55 Transfer him.

41:56 I didn't do anything." He later had

41:58 several other complaints come forward and eventually

42:01 was terminated for a severe case

42:03 with another multiple other subordinates later on.

42:07 But I will [snorts] tell you this now, everything above the rank of captain

42:12 in the police department is appointed, right?

42:14 You civil service exam for sergeant, lieutenant, and captain.

42:17 After captain, it's appointed by the chief of police.

42:20 You're an appointed rank.

42:21 And you're also at will.

42:22 So if you can get appointed to inspector or commander,

42:25 but you also can get demoted with no cause either.

42:28 So I remember one of my mentors, another mentor, a lieutenant,

42:31 there was a captain and a lieutenant that were both good mentors to me there.

42:35 The captain of the two mentors I had

42:37 there pulled me aside after this complaint and said, "You did the right thing.

42:43 He's been harassing women here for years and somebody needed to stand up,

42:46 so you did the right thing." He said,

42:47 "But just know you'll never make it past the rank of captain." because

42:51 my that lieutenant was very well connected at the time to the chief of police.

42:54 So very friendly with the chief of police that whole administration.

42:57 So I said that's fine.

42:58 Like that's fine.

43:00 I wasn't thinking, you know, long-term longevity and promotion.

43:04 That actually ties into what I was going to ask you

43:06 because it strikes me as an incredibly brave thing to do.

43:12 I imagine not everyone in your situation would have done that.

43:16 I mean, in fact, they didn't, right?

43:18 I imagine there's a lot of fear around there could

43:21 be a lot of fear around the political or job,

43:25 you know, professional repercussions of voicing something like

43:28 that, especially during a period when that was not common.

43:32 Well, remember my driver in life, Tim,

43:34 if you think about this and harassers work this way.

43:36 My goal in life is to take care of my son.

43:38 I'm a single mom.

43:40 After he knew I made a complaint, he was threatening my job.

43:42 He was really making it very difficult for me to come to work.

43:46 like it was terrifying to come to work, you know, and I was fighting for my job.

43:52 I can't lose my job.

43:53 I have a son to take care of and I'm not

43:55 going to lose my job because somebody wants to be a bully.

43:58 And that's the motivation.

44:00 It was it was terrible.

44:01 I was sick to my stomach every day.

44:02 I was going in the bathroom and throwing up.

44:05 I mean, it was when I got to work

44:06 and just every time I heard his voice on the radio,

44:08 it was terrible for me.

44:10 But I also couldn't afford to lose my job.

44:13 I was not going to let somebody force me out of my goal.

44:16 I had a son to take care of, so I couldn't afford that.

44:18 I was going to fight until I knew that I was safe.

44:21 Yeah.

44:22 I mean, it's sort of focusing forcing function, right?

44:25 I mean, having that singular priority.

44:27 So, it seems like I mean,

44:28 the predictions about you never rising above the rank of what was it?

44:31 Captain.

44:33 Captain seems like that fellow wasn't exactly

44:35 the the Nostradamus of of predicting the future.

44:38 So could you walk us through sort of how things

44:43 progressed and why were you able to continue to excel?

44:48 Did his prediction just turn out to be completely false?

44:51 I think it would have been accurate.

44:51 I I tell you what it the stars aligned for me.

44:54 So I took sergeant test at three years.

44:56 I was eligible for lieutenant at five.

44:58 I took the lieutenant's test at five years.

44:59 I came in number one on that test.

45:01 I took the captain's test seven years.

45:03 I came in number three on that test.

45:04 So I got promoted bang bang bang.

45:06 three years, five years, seven years.

45:08 I was a captain for seven years.

45:10 I would have never gone past the rank of captain in that current administration.

45:13 And then Mary and Barry gets arrested, our mayor.

45:17 Mary and Barry is taken out and replaced by the control board.

45:21 The control board comes in 1998.

45:23 I'm a captain at the time.

45:26 Mayor and Barry is now taken out of play.

45:28 The control board takes over.

45:30 They bring in Chuck Ramsay, an outsider who knows nobody in the department.

45:33 He doesn't know anybody.

45:34 He's got no click.

45:36 He's got no boys.

45:38 Everybody's fresh.

45:39 So, he comes in as I'm lieutenant just making captain,

45:42 takes over the police department as a complete

45:43 outsider and is doing his assessment of what officials,

45:47 what command level officials he wanted to have on his team.

45:50 And he appointed me from the rank of captain to be an inspector

45:54 to take over a major narcotics branch with less than eight years on the job.

45:58 I was 29, I think.

46:02 All right.

46:03 Chuck makes his appearance.

46:04 Right.

46:05 Okay.

46:05 Charles Ramsey.

46:06 He's the next big mentor.

46:08 Yeah.

46:10 Yes.

46:09 Okay.

46:10 So, just for my honestly my personal curiosities,

46:13 I really know nothing about how police structures work, right?

46:20 What is what is a captain doing?

46:22 And then what is an inspector do if you don't mind?

46:27 So, again, this is where I think the police gets right.

46:29 You're you spend three years as a patrol officer.

46:33 You make sergeant.

46:34 You study really hard to take the test.

46:36 You make sergeant.

46:37 You do go through some schools.

46:38 After you make sergeant, you manage a small group.

46:40 Then you make lieutenant two years later.

46:42 You go through the exam process.

46:45 You go through some schools after that.

46:46 And then you manage a squad of like a platoon of 40.

46:49 So now you've got when I was lieutenant,

46:51 I had narcotics officers, I had detectives, and I had patrols.

46:55 How are those 40 people determined?

46:57 Is it based on neighborhood or some type of sort of geographic area

47:02 at that time?

47:02 It's done differently and over the course of the years

47:04 it's changed but at that time it was geographically.

47:06 So I had a patrol district and of that patrol district I had one-third

47:10 of that patrol district and I managed

47:12 every resource for that part of the district.

47:15 So all three shifts I had day work, midnights, evening shift all three shifts.

47:21 Those officers are split across those three

47:22 shifts and they covered all the policing.

47:25 So, not just the 911 responders, the guys in the in uniform going to 911 calls,

47:29 but also your narcotics officers and your detectives

47:32 that follow up and investigate crimes.

47:34 This is Lieutenant.

47:35 Am I getting that right?

47:36 That's Lieutenant.

47:37 Okay.

47:37 So, Lieutenant, is that the first time where you're getting

47:39 kind of the decathletes exposure to all of these different things?

47:45 Yes.

47:45 Okay.

47:45 And you're also getting exposure to administration.

47:48 So, part of that exam, that promotional exam is studying administration.

47:52 You have to learn administration.

47:54 Like so if there are municipal regulations that need

47:57 to be changed and I'm managing a large part

47:59 of the portion of the District of Columbia

48:01 and I see a municipal regulation needs to be changed,

48:02 I need to know the process to petition to change that municipal regulation.

48:06 How do I go about changing that law?

48:08 Because I I'm seeing firsthand the impact

48:10 it's having in our neighborhoods, right?

48:12 So, so police administration starts to become more and more important there.

48:16 I also now can start influencing policy.

48:19 I can influence policy for my little piece of the world, right?

48:22 Mhm.

48:23 I decide what my drug enforcement tactics are going to be.

48:26 I decide how we're going to work in terms

48:28 of doing warrant service and things like that.

48:30 So that's where you first start to get a better

48:33 understanding of influencing how policing actually is carried out.

48:37 Not to minimize the the prior steps,

48:40 but it sounds like the lieutenant role is

48:43 a very dense learning opportunity just based on the description.

48:48 And I think the best role,

48:49 the best rank on the police farmer for me was lieutenant.

48:52 I was able to still go out on the street,

48:54 support my troops, back up my sergeants,

48:57 have fun policing and do the policing that I enjoyed,

49:00 but I also had the ability to change the environment for them, help them

49:05 and also influence how we were policing our community.

49:07 And then captain, after captain, it gets, you know,

49:11 so captain is more more you're strapped to your desk a lot more.

49:15 Yeah, I was going to say more more behind the desk

49:17 because you're reviewing bad arrest that went, you know,

49:21 somebody didn't a sergeant didn't do the right thing and review the paperwork.

49:23 Now you've got a bad arrest that's got to be detention journal.

49:25 So you've got to review and make that decision.

49:27 You've got to set things up at the courts.

49:29 You've got to look at all the disciplinary investigations that come in.

49:32 You know, officers getting disciplined for things.

49:34 You got to make decisions about that.

49:36 You sit on trial boards, you know,

49:37 who's going to get disciplined, who's going to get terminated.

49:40 It's very administrative.

49:42 You're helping the commander make decisions, you know,

49:44 community meetings, deployment decisions, and it's not as much fun.

49:49 Yeah.

49:50 [laughter] Yeah.

49:52 I don't I do I I know a few people in in law enforcement,

49:57 but mostly military, former military guys.

50:00 And I mean, very similar, right?

50:02 Some of these guys, they just love being in the field,

50:04 and they're like, I got promoted.

50:06 It's like, I just don't know how I feel how I feel about it.

50:09 They're [laughter] like very mixed.

50:11 Well, here's the big key.

50:12 When I went to go change my uniform, so you go to property division.

50:16 When you get promoted, you walk off the stage, you get your promoted,

50:18 you get your your birds or whatever you're getting, your clusters or whatever.

50:22 It's for your new rank.

50:23 You go to the property division, you get your new rank insignia.

50:26 When I made captain and I went over to property

50:28 division to get my new rank in, they said,

50:30 "Turn in your handcuffs." And I was like, "What?

50:33 Turn in [laughter] my handcuffs?

50:34 What are you talking about?

50:35 You don't need those anymore." Like, uh, you're not taking my handcuffs.

50:38 I'm going to keep my handcuffs.

50:39 I'm right here.

50:41 [laughter] Right here.

50:43 I kept my gun belt, my handcuffs, my extra magazines,

50:46 all those things that the administrative captains used to turn in.

50:49 I'm like, "No." Uhuh.

50:50 I'm keeping this stuff.

50:51 Yeah.

50:51 [laughter] So, let's come back to Chuck.

50:54 And because I'm so unfamiliar with the internal workings,

51:00 it's hard for me to pick the next sort of flash point,

51:05 maybe a seinal moment for you.

51:07 There's a lot to pick from.

51:08 I'm not sure how to put them in order.

51:10 Not that they have to be in order,

51:11 but maybe tell me if there's something that we

51:14 should talk about before this, but you mentioned Chuck,

51:18 right, pushing you to take tough assignments.

51:22 Is special operations division is that a sensible place to hop to next

51:28 or what do you think is are

51:29 we skipping some important important steps in between?

51:34 when Chuck came in and he initially put me in charge.

51:38 I'd only been a captain I want to say four

51:40 or five months and he kind of did a clean

51:44 out at the top like a lot of that old

51:46 boy network that was there when he got there.

51:48 They were all people that were long past retirement.

51:51 So he pushed a lot of the command staff out.

51:53 So that made him push people up pretty young in their career.

51:57 So he pushed me up to be

51:58 the commander of major narcotics branch as an inspector.

52:02 Like I said, just under eight years on, so I was very young.

52:05 I'm trying to do the math.

52:06 How old were you then at that point?

52:08 So I want to say I was 30ish 30 31 at Major Narcotics Branch.

52:14 Wow, man.

52:15 That's amazing.

52:16 That is a lot of responsibility.

52:17 And so I went to major narcotics branch.

52:19 So I had major narcotics branch and vehicular homicide.

52:22 So I managed all the vehicular homicide

52:24 investigative units there for just under two years.

52:27 And then he promoted me again to commander and I took over a patrol district.

52:32 the fourth district where Mount Pleasant sits,

52:34 the patrol district I started in, I went back

52:36 now and I was the commander of that patrol district.

52:38 It was the largest residential area in the in the city of Washington.

52:42 So I took over that district.

52:44 I ran that for two years and then he shot away.

52:49 He called me down to his office and he says, "You know,

52:52 I'm thinking I'm going to send you to SOD." It was 911 happens, right?

52:55 911 happens the Friday after 911.

52:59 He says,"I think I'm going to send you

53:00 to special operations division." I was like, "You know what?

53:02 I love being the district commander.

53:04 I love working in 4D.

53:05 This is my goal was to retire as the commander of 4D.

53:09 Thanks, but I really like where I am." And [clears throat] he's like, "Oh,

53:13 okay." And then two days later, a teletype came out transferring me to SOD.

53:17 So, like it wasn't really asking me.

53:19 [laughter] He's like, "Oh, oh, okay." He's like, "That's a great story.

53:23 Thank you for that." Funny, right?

53:24 [laughter] Glad to hear it.

53:27 So I took over special ops.

53:29 Now special operations division had never had a woman in charge.

53:32 So that in itself was a little intimidating.

53:34 But the one thing that when you talk about

53:36 mentors and I I know you probably have experienced

53:38 this like many others is what a mentor does

53:43 for you is they lend you confidence that you don't have.

53:45 Like Chuck recognized that I didn't have the confidence.

53:49 I was like intimidated by this sod thing.

53:52 My guy was like, "Yeah, no." That, you know, never had a woman in charge.

53:56 It's the predominantly male.

53:58 I always say it's the most testosterone in the police departments in SOD, right?

54:02 It's the bomb squad, the SWAT team, harbor, the marine unit,

54:06 the helicopter unit, aviation, horsemounted unit, K9,

54:10 civil disturbance unit, the presidential protection unit.

54:13 So, it's like nine or 10 different units.

54:15 You know, your your high-end stuff.

54:17 So, anyway, he recognized that I was intimidated by that.

54:20 And he's like, "Mm- you're going to go and you're going

54:22 to do it." He sent me off to a bunch of schools.

54:25 I went to EOD schools, bombing schools.

54:27 I learned how to manage a bomb squad.

54:29 I learned how to manage a squat team.

54:31 And the people there were great.

54:32 That was my best assignment in my entire career.

54:34 I spent six years there after 911 recreating our special operations

54:39 division and turning it into a homeland security and counterterrorism unit.

54:42 What made it so good for you, that particular role?

54:46 Well, it was the most complex role I'd ever held.

54:49 Most of the units I I managed,

54:51 I had to manage three or four different type of specialties.

54:54 I had to manage nine different specialties and they were highly special.

54:58 Sniper teams on the SWAT teams, negotiations unit, the bomb squad.

55:02 We were just after 911 and we were trying to evolve our department from a pre

55:07 911 police department in the nation's capital

55:09 to a post 911 police department in the nation's capital.

55:12 We got called flatfooted on 911 and we should not have been.

55:15 We didn't have the skills, training, equipment,

55:18 and things that we should have had.

55:20 Right?

55:20 I always say Timothy McVey, that Oklahoma City bombing was the wakeup call.

55:25 That's when we should have started changing the way

55:27 we train and prepare our police officers, but we didn't.

55:30 Right?

55:30 And then there's the first World Trade Center bombing.

55:32 That was another wakeup call.

55:33 We didn't respond to that.

55:35 It was not until 911 that the nation's

55:37 police departments in the largest cities really realized

55:40 that we have to be prepared for this type

55:43 of asymmetric threat that we're now facing.

55:47 So when Chuck put me in charge of SOD, he said,

55:49 "I want you to create the homeland security

55:52 capabilities that we need, not just in SOD,

55:55 but across the whole department." So he gave me a blank check

55:58 to create a brand new police philosophy in the Metropolitan Police Department.

56:04 So we created the Homeland Security Counterterrorism Bureau.

56:08 We created CBR&.

56:10 My first year we got $17 million in funding to buy

56:13 level A suits to send our people down to Andison, Alabama.

56:16 I went down to Andison, Alabama.

56:17 I trained in sarin and VX live sarin and VX gas.

56:20 We were trained to do rescues in hot zones.

56:23 We went down to Nevada and trained on rad environments,

56:26 radiological environments.

56:27 I was one of the few people that was

56:29 fortunate enough to train with Ken Albec and Bill Patrick,

56:32 two bioweapons scientists, one from Russia and one from the US,

56:35 taught my bio weapons class, you know, how to respond to biological threats.

56:40 Anthrax, right?

56:40 We had anthrax in Washington DC.

56:42 These are all things that I was on the front end of creating

56:46 and I got to go through all of that training and all

56:48 of that experience with my whole team and the Metropol Police Department when

56:52 we were finished that six years

56:54 of of evolution was a completely different place.

56:57 Wow.

56:57 This is a good time to I think come back to something I kind

57:02 of promised to listeners that we would revisit and it goes all the way back.

57:07 We're not gonna go all the way back to Mount Pleasant.

57:12 But when you were first day on the job, five days,

57:18 and you're looking at it and you're thinking to yourself,

57:19 we're not doing this the right way, right?

57:21 We can't even communicate with these community members.

57:25 Furthermore, we're not even trying to set the message straight.

57:29 And then if we flash forward, you know,

57:31 I have notes that are a bit scattered here,

57:35 but I have notes on embracing technology, right?

57:40 So this is from governing.com.

57:42 I want to give credit where credit is due,

57:44 but this relates to looking for new ways to connect

57:46 the community to the police in the case of the police.

57:49 So the creation of an anonymous text tip line, cleverly named 50411.

57:53 Am I saying that the right way?

57:55 Give the 50.

57:56 Give the 50.

57:57 the 411, right?

57:58 The 50.

57:59 I'm such an idiot.

58:00 I'm such an idiot.

58:01 We are the 50.

58:02 Like the cop, they used to call us the 50 back in the old days.

58:07 And 411, you know, the 411.

58:10 Yeah.

58:10 Right.

58:10 So, in in 2008, they received 292 tips.

58:14 By the end of 2011, that number had jumped to 1,200.

58:18 1,200.

58:18 Yeah.

58:19 We got up to about 2,800.

58:20 2,800.

58:21 Right.

58:21 And there are many examples of how that ended up being valuable.

58:26 And then there's a whole separate topic which is maybe related

58:32 but different which is cultivating sources right so like developing sources

58:38 getting to know people and this is quoting from the same piece but you you

58:41 treat people with respect you establish relationships

58:44 and god you know I'm trying to think of some [snorts] of these examples that I

58:49 read about separately but this seems to all

58:51 probably feed into a lot of what you were doing in bad overhaul later, right?

58:59 Yes.

58:59 And I'm just wondering if you have any other examples

59:02 of [snorts] sort of cultivating a access to helpful information, right?

59:09 Not just drowning in noise.

59:11 I'm wondering how you even thought about that cuz

59:12 I imagine one of the challenges at at that time, probably even still today,

59:17 but especially post 911 in the wake of that, that there's

59:22 kind of a good news bad news situation.

59:24 If you want more information or tips,

59:27 there's probably going to be an overwhelming amount depending

59:31 on how you solicit and how you search for it.

59:33 So, how did you how did you think of separating signal from noise?

59:38 For me, it was pretty simple and it does go back to Mount Pleasant.

59:40 Again, pretty intuitive on your part not having been in policing.

59:44 So when I became the chief of police,

59:46 a couple of commitments I made to myself and to the community was that we

59:52 had a tendency to place higher value

59:55 on some neighborhoods and some crimes than others.

59:58 And our job is to protect all of the community

1:00:00 and every crime should be equally important to us.

1:00:03 If if we're not preventing crimes, we're not being successful making arrests.

1:00:07 We used to publish our arrest stats every year and go,

1:00:09 "Oh, look, we made 50,000 arrests last year.

1:00:11 Look how successful we are." Well, that's 50,000 times and we didn't do our job

1:00:14 because we didn't prevent those crimes from happening.

1:00:16 So, to me, arrest stats are not

1:00:18 a good measure of success for a police department.

1:00:20 Now, I don't have a stat to tell you what I prevented, right?

1:00:24 But the goal should be to try and prevent.

1:00:27 So, for me, what was very clear is when I first took over as chief,

1:00:32 I promised I was going to go on the scene of every single homicide.

1:00:35 Why?

1:00:36 because I wanted people in the communities to know it didn't matter

1:00:38 what neighborhood you lived in or what the circumstances of that homicide was,

1:00:42 that homicide's just as important to us as every other homicide.

1:00:46 So, a homicide in Georgetown, right,

1:00:49 in the very expensive wealthy neighborhood, if there was a homicide there,

1:00:52 it would get news coverage for weeks and police were all

1:00:56 over it and and almost always those crimes would be closed.

1:00:59 But if there was a homicide in a project,

1:01:02 public housing project, it got little to no news coverage.

1:01:06 Three people shot last night in Southeast.

1:01:08 That was it.

1:01:08 That's all you'd hear.

1:01:09 And nothing about those people or what happened with those crimes.

1:01:12 And they very rarely got closed.

1:01:14 So I put an emphasis on trying

1:01:17 to cultivate those relationships in the community.

1:01:19 It was clear to me two things.

1:01:21 People didn't trust us.

1:01:22 They didn't trust the police.

1:01:24 And we didn't close these homicides

1:01:26 because people weren't witnesses wouldn't come forward.

1:01:29 They wouldn't come forward because they didn't trust us.

1:01:31 And so we had to change that.

1:01:32 So I had a great example.

1:01:35 I was out, we did a crime initiative during the summer called All Hands on Deck.

1:01:40 So I was out on All Hands on Deck.

1:01:41 I'm walking through a public housing complex and there's two

1:01:45 middle-aged women sitting on a wall outside in the summer.

1:01:48 They're drinking.

1:01:48 They got open containers of alcohol, which is illegal, right?

1:01:51 They could have been in the old days when I was pleasing,

1:01:53 we would just walk over and handcuff them,

1:01:54 lock them up, take them to the station, right?

1:01:55 That's open container alcohol.

1:01:57 So I go over and I sit down and start talking to him.

1:02:00 There had been a series of shootings in this complex and I said,

1:02:03 "Hey," she's like, "I don't know why you guys are here.

1:02:05 You don't care about us." Kind of giving me the lip.

1:02:09 And I said, "Okay, well, I'll tell you what.

1:02:10 Here's my business card.

1:02:12 My cell phone number's on here." First of all, they had no idea I was a chief.

1:02:16 That's [clears throat] I'm just a cop, right?

1:02:17 Right.

1:02:18 They don't watch the local news.

1:02:19 They don't know that I'm the chief.

1:02:19 Here's my business card.

1:02:21 If you have any information and you want to talk to me about anything that's

1:02:24 going on here and tell me who's out here shooting in the middle of the night,

1:02:26 hit these kids that are on the basketball court, please let me know.

1:02:29 And when I walk over to the two ladies,

1:02:30 they kind of take their beer, you know, and stick it behind the wall.

1:02:33 I was like, you know, you're not supposed to be drinking out here,

1:02:35 but I'm going to pretend I didn't see that, right?

1:02:37 So, so I give them my business card.

1:02:40 I give them that respect.

1:02:41 I Yes, ma'am.

1:02:42 No, ma'am.

1:02:42 Talk to them with a little respect.

1:02:43 I give them my business card.

1:02:44 My cell phone number's on there.

1:02:46 About two weeks later,

1:02:48 I get a call at 1:00 in the morning and it was a woman's voice.

1:02:51 Don't know if it was those women.

1:02:52 Can't prove it.

1:02:53 Don't know to this day.

1:02:54 But I get a call about 1:00 in the morning.

1:02:56 There was a shooting in that neighborhood.

1:02:59 And the woman's voice said to me,

1:03:01 "Tell your officers that the gun is behind the white Escalade."

1:03:07 And I like, "What are you talking about?" She says,

1:03:08 "On Cloud Street." She gave me that the address on Cloud Street.

1:03:12 She said, "There's a white Escalade.

1:03:13 The gun is there." So, I turned on my police radio,

1:03:16 half asleep, switched to the sixth district that where that address is.

1:03:21 And sure enough, they're working a shooting.

1:03:23 And I went over the radio.

1:03:24 I said, "Cruiser one, who's the onseene official?

1:03:28 Have him call me." He calls me.

1:03:29 I said, "Look, I just got a tip

1:03:30 from somebody that there's a gun involved in this case,

1:03:32 and this is where the gun is." Sure enough, that's where the gun was.

1:03:36 They recovered that gun.

1:03:36 From that recovery of that gun,

1:03:38 they were able to start working this case and actually get information.

1:03:41 So, I always tie that back to I strongly believe

1:03:43 that the fact that I walked over to those women.

1:03:46 I showed them a little respect.

1:03:47 I sat on the wall with them.

1:03:48 I didn't lock them up for the Oakland DL.

1:03:50 They weren't hurting anybody.

1:03:52 Mhm.

1:03:52 I sat and chatted with them.

1:03:53 I gave them my cell number and said, "Look,

1:03:55 I want to help, but if you don't give me information,

1:03:57 I can't help." So, that's the philosophy that I wanted all of my cops to have.

1:04:01 That's the way I wanted all of us to police our communities.

1:04:04 I wanted people to see that you give me information, you'll see results.

1:04:07 You tell me who's involved in shooting up the neighborhood, we'll go after them.

1:04:10 we will make.

1:04:11 So we started we're doing instead of just putting posters up when a homicide

1:04:14 occurred when we made an arrest for the homicide we went back and put

1:04:17 posters up saying the case is closed right reverse canvas like instead of just

1:04:21 telling you when something bad happens we're going to tell you when we close it.

1:04:24 So now people know

1:04:26 that we've taken that person off the street and those little things matter.

1:04:30 Yeah.

1:04:30 Matter a lot.

1:04:31 I want to please confirm or deny this, but I

1:04:35 am in the course of speaking with you

1:04:37 and certainly in the course of doing homework

1:04:40 for this conversation impressed with your attention to detail,

1:04:44 which comes back also to my signal versus noise cuz I'm like,

1:04:47 I am dazzled by your ability to manage all of these details.

1:04:56 And I tell me if this is a complete dead end,

1:04:59 but it seems like you demonstrated this really really early on.

1:05:03 And we'll we'll come back to where we were in the timeline,

1:05:06 but this is as a you had a job

1:05:08 at 16 as a secretary at a commercial real estate firm.

1:05:12 Am I getting that right?

1:05:13 Yes.

1:05:13 Eisinger Kilbane.

1:05:15 You handle tenant billing, right?

1:05:19 Y and it seems like you've practiced this or just

1:05:22 had this ability that you've honed over time.

1:05:24 you know, thousands of pieces of correspondents

1:05:26 come through the police department every day,

1:05:28 but you're also talking about learning, I think, at that job to never let

1:05:32 anything that's got your name on it be imperfect.

1:05:35 And it's just like, [laughter] sound familiar, Tim?

1:05:37 Well, yes, there's that also.

1:05:39 My incredibly helpful slash OCD.

1:05:42 Yeah.

1:05:42 Brain damage and two saying OCD.

1:05:44 [laughter] But as you have a job

1:05:48 that increases in scope upon scope upon scope upon

1:05:51 scope and how do you build systems that help

1:05:58 you to keep track of these things, right?

1:06:01 Because not everyone is going to have necessarily

1:06:03 your [snorts] eye for detail or capacity to remember

1:06:10 the details in that photograph that flash for a fraction

1:06:14 of time that you then need to recall.

1:06:16 So, it seems like ultimately,

1:06:18 and I'm I am cheating a little bit because you know when when

1:06:22 you sent and we asked for some notes in advance of this conversation.

1:06:26 I'll just I'll just read one thing here because I don't remember now.

1:06:30 So, I got you're going to get me on this.

1:06:32 Oh, I'll tell you.

1:06:32 It's great.

1:06:33 It just says, "No hacks for me.

1:06:35 I try to focus on systems or strategies that will hold up over time." Right.

1:06:39 And I'm wondering, for instance, whether it's in your current role or where we

1:06:44 left off in terms of your timeline as you're soliciting

1:06:49 information from [snorts] the community and they're offering more because

1:06:53 you're showing not just the announcement of the bad thing,

1:06:56 but that you actually took action related

1:06:58 to their help that closed cases, etc., etc.

1:07:02 How do you ensure that the department or the organization

1:07:08 that you're a part of is equipped to digest that?

1:07:11 And [clears throat] I'm not sure that's an easy question to answer,

1:07:13 but I'll just leave it there.

1:07:15 No, it's not an easy question to answer, but I would say this.

1:07:18 I experienced in 200.

1:07:21 So, I I pushed technology very very hard once I became the chief.

1:07:24 When I took over as the chief, we had Teletubby pagers.

1:07:27 We didn't even have cell phones.

1:07:29 And I wanted everybody to have smartphones.

1:07:31 the early smartphones.

1:07:32 The first one we got was a trio.

1:07:34 We had pump pilots and trios, right?

1:07:35 If you remember that far back.

1:07:37 Sure, I do.

1:07:38 And then we pushed putting computers in the cars and we pushed the technology,

1:07:42 gunshot detection technology, cameras,

1:07:45 integrating those gunshot detection technologies,

1:07:47 cameras, all those things together.

1:07:48 I really wanted technology to be those systems, right?

1:07:52 Taking all this great technology that's coming out,

1:07:54 make us more effective and more efficient as police officers, right?

1:07:58 Instead of spending three hours handwriting an accident report,

1:08:02 we could pull up on the scene of an accident report,

1:08:04 have a iPad or a laptop in the cruiser,

1:08:07 that GPS drops the intersection on a police report and all I got to do is plink

1:08:12 a little car down there and my police

1:08:13 report now takes 10 minutes instead of two hours.

1:08:16 Right?

1:08:16 So, I brought all this technology and the systems that made us better.

1:08:19 It made us more effective and I relied a lot on people.

1:08:23 I mean, everything I did,

1:08:25 I learned from the people that work for me and the people in the community.

1:08:28 I made it a point to go out and talk to people and listen.

1:08:32 Everything I learned about fighting crime that was effective,

1:08:34 I got it from walking around the community and giving my cell phone number out,

1:08:37 listening to what people had to say.

1:08:38 Cuz if you listen to people, they will tell you what to do.

1:08:42 and my officers, my detectives, my sergeants, my lieutenants, those guys.

1:08:46 When I did my strategic planning sessions,

1:08:48 I would bring in from all of those groups and, you know,

1:08:52 brainstorm with them, what are the things we need?

1:08:54 How can we do better?

1:08:55 What do you need that you don't have?

1:08:57 What are the crime trends that you're seeing?

1:08:58 But I witnessed this evolution of technology and crime.

1:09:03 And we had to get our police department to adjust to meet that evolution, right?

1:09:07 We didn't we hire cops for a 25 year career.

1:09:10 And when this technological crime evolution was happening,

1:09:14 we had detectives that didn't know how to manage a crime scene with seven

1:09:18 different cameras they had to download to get video of the crime scene.

1:09:21 They didn't know how to mobiley forensically dump a phone.

1:09:24 You arrest a guy who just did some armed robberies, right?

1:09:27 And the biggest case, and I'm sure you in your research,

1:09:30 you saw this Thomas Maslin case.

1:09:32 There was a case that really kind of set this in stone for me.

1:09:35 This poor gentleman who was robbed for his cell phone one night.

1:09:39 He's beaten with a baseball bat.

1:09:40 They crush his skull.

1:09:41 They take his phone.

1:09:42 Those same suspects, we find Mr.

1:09:45 Maslin the next day with his skull crushed, barely alive, no cell phone.

1:09:49 We don't know where his cell phone is.

1:09:51 He's in the hospital.

1:09:52 Well, what we don't know is that same night, right after they robbed him,

1:09:55 that same group of kids went to Adam's Morgan, another neighborhood,

1:09:59 and they robbed three more people, and they were arrested.

1:10:02 And when they were arrested, they had multiple cell phones on them.

1:10:05 They were robbing people for their cell phones because they were

1:10:07 going to go and turn those phones in and make money.

1:10:09 And all those cell phones were recovered as evidence and put on the books,

1:10:13 but nobody knew that Thomas Maslin's phone was

1:10:15 in that books because we didn't have anybody

1:10:17 that had the digital forensic skill to dump

1:10:19 those phones and figure out whose phones they were.

1:10:22 And when we finally did figure that out months later,

1:10:25 I said, "This is never going to happen again.

1:10:27 We need to have people that are trained to have that skill.

1:10:30 And if we can't train our detectives to do it

1:10:31 or we they don't have the bandwidth to do it,

1:10:33 then we're going to hire civilians to do it.

1:10:35 But we're going to have that skill and we're going to have it

1:10:37 out on the street daily." And so we did we hired criminal research specialists.

1:10:41 We hired some other civilians for for digital forensics.

1:10:44 So we went through this evolution and it is building systems

1:10:47 that will endure over time and policing was not designed that way.

1:10:51 So we had to really change the way we do policing and now

1:10:54 police departments are are doing much better at keeping pace with technology.

1:10:57 Before we get to maybe the differences between your experience

1:11:02 in law enforcement and everything that preceded the NFL and the NFL,

1:11:07 could you just give people an idea

1:11:09 of the scope of your responsibilities at the NFL?

1:11:13 What are you responsible for?

1:11:16 Everything related to security.

1:11:17 So, executive protection,

1:11:19 I set the standards for physical security and cyber security at the stadiums.

1:11:25 So all of the stadiums,

1:11:26 the 30 stadiums across the US and our international stadiums,

1:11:29 a little bit variation on the international, but across all the US stadiums,

1:11:32 we set the requirements for security that they have to meet.

1:11:35 So once we set that standard, we update it annually.

1:11:38 We do the audits and red teaming and we

1:11:40 make sure that they are meeting those standards.

1:11:42 So physical security, cyber security, both.

1:11:46 We also have investigative responsibilities.

1:11:48 So violations of the personal conduct policy,

1:11:51 those are all investigations that are done by my team.

1:11:53 We have game integrity.

1:11:54 So, management of the game integrity program.

1:11:57 So, making sure that we are maintaining the integrity of this game.

1:12:02 There's a a lot involved in that.

1:12:04 If it's got anything to do with security, it falls on us.

1:12:08 Individually, the league office has full responsibility for Super Bowl,

1:12:13 Pro Bowl, combine, draft, and all the International Series games.

1:12:17 So when I say we have nine international games this year,

1:12:21 the reason scheduling this is so hard.

1:12:23 Each one of those international games I will take a team

1:12:26 out in advance at least two trips if not three.

1:12:29 And we've got nine international games this year.

1:12:31 And I'm also working on we plan Super Bowl about 18 months

1:12:35 out in advance because that's 10 days of events over 20ome venues.

1:12:40 And then draft.

1:12:40 So draft I'm leaving for Pittsburgh on Sunday to go

1:12:43 manage the draft for the next seven or eight days.

1:12:46 So special events, 10 pull events, that's a big big part of it.

1:12:50 Yeah.

1:12:50 So tons of free time.

1:12:51 I'm tons of free time.

1:12:54 [laughter] 170 days on the road last year.

1:12:57 Oh my lordy.

1:12:58 So red teaming is a really critical concept that I want people to understand.

1:13:05 Some folks may recognize it within the context of say

1:13:10 tech given the types of people that I've interviewed before.

1:13:13 Yeah.

1:13:13 in terms of paying people to try to break into your systems, let's just say,

1:13:18 or to take down your service or to fill in the blank, but they're on your side.

1:13:24 I wonder where red teaming I should know this comes from as well.

1:13:28 Military military pretending to be the Soviets, right?

1:13:30 Probably it's the military.

1:13:31 I mean, it was a military concept initially.

1:13:33 And think about it this way.

1:13:35 You got to look at it a little differently.

1:13:36 I think on the tech side it is a little different but I think of red

1:13:40 teaming as we set a standard like we

1:13:44 think use of magnetometers to screen for weapons.

1:13:48 We think use of a perimeter to make sure everybody goes through screening.

1:13:52 All these standards we put in place of security, right?

1:13:55 I can go and audit you and you have all those standards in place.

1:13:59 But what a red team operation does is it's quality assurance.

1:14:02 Are those standards working?

1:14:04 Did I tell you to do something that didn't necessarily work?

1:14:07 So it tells you if the standards that you were using are effective or not?

1:14:12 Maybe that you put them in place,

1:14:13 but you didn't execute them properly, so they're not effective.

1:14:16 So if you're not properly doing secondary screening,

1:14:19 it's not that the magnetometers didn't work.

1:14:21 It's that your guard didn't respond properly to an alert.

1:14:25 Right?

1:14:25 So it's a quality assurance.

1:14:28 That's a quality assurance test to see if the standards that you

1:14:31 are employing or you're requiring are

1:14:34 being used properly and are they effective.

1:14:37 That's the key.

1:14:37 It's not a gotcha.

1:14:38 It's like is what we're doing effective and if it's not effective,

1:14:41 how can we make it effective?

1:14:43 How are your responsibilities or your job

1:14:46 with the NFL most different from what you did beforehand?

1:14:50 I'm just uh imagining there might be new constraints, what you can or can't do,

1:14:54 even though you're coordinating with federal, state, and local law entities.

1:14:58 I mean, just imagining what that entails with 32 clubs is makes my head spin.

1:15:03 But how is it most different from what you did before?

1:15:07 I'd say it's most different in terms of its diversity.

1:15:11 So I thought coming from 27 years in the nation's

1:15:15 capital managing SOD I managed every large event protest demonstration.

1:15:23 We had about 2,300 a year that I was responsible

1:15:25 for when I was there [laughter] and then presidential inaugurations.

1:15:29 I was like this is easy.

1:15:30 Like I can come to the NFL.

1:15:32 This Super Bowl thing is going to be nothing.

1:15:33 Like this is going to be a walk in the park.

1:15:35 And the diversity here is the complexity here is so much more.

1:15:40 It's so much more complex and the diversity.

1:15:43 So, I'm not only setting up the equivalent

1:15:46 of a presidential inauguration that I did every four years before.

1:15:50 Every year it's Super Bowl, but the Super Bowl is more complex.

1:15:53 It's spread over 10 days over 26 venues and it moves every year.

1:15:57 So, it's in a different place.

1:15:58 So, I've got to build all those relationships.

1:16:00 I've got to learn all those new venues.

1:16:01 I've got to figure out security in a completely different climate.

1:16:04 In Minneapolis, it was 25 below zero.

1:16:06 Guess what?

1:16:06 Some technology doesn't work in that 25 below zero.

1:16:09 some of the things that we do in Arizona is not going to work in Minneapolis.

1:16:13 And then now with international, right,

1:16:15 we try and go and implement our full suite of security

1:16:19 standards in Madrid and Sa Paulo and Australia and Munich,

1:16:24 but when we get there,

1:16:26 20% of what we do is going to have to be adapted to the local environment.

1:16:30 Right?

1:16:30 There's laws and regulations and things

1:16:32 that are different in different countries, right?

1:16:35 Things that we do here, you can't do there.

1:16:36 Things they do there, we can't do here.

1:16:38 Mhm.

1:16:38 The complexity of what I do now is far more complicated

1:16:42 and it's far more diverse than what I used to do.

1:16:46 And by diverse, you just mean constantly

1:16:49 shifting like you mentioned these different locations with there's no template.

1:16:52 Like I can't say, hey, you know, it's inauguration.

1:16:55 This is what we do for the inauguration.

1:16:56 The ball sites are all the same.

1:16:58 We do the same things.

1:16:59 We know what to do with the inauguration.

1:17:00 This is every time it's like you just take the old plan and throw it away.

1:17:04 Start all over.

1:17:05 [laughter] Pretty much.

1:17:07 Not completely, but pretty much.

1:17:09 Yeah.

1:17:09 Well, there's no shortage of learning.

1:17:12 You don't want to start with any assumptions.

1:17:14 No assumptions, that's for sure.

1:17:17 Shift gears just a little bit.

1:17:18 I'm wondering if are there any books that you recommend or resources,

1:17:25 this doesn't have to be within the context of the NFL,

1:17:28 but when I I imagine you get approached by people who

1:17:30 are hoping to learn from you in one way or another,

1:17:34 or you are just mentoring people, right?

1:17:36 whether that was in policing or within the NFL or in other contexts.

1:17:42 Are there any books that you recommend frequently to other people,

1:17:46 doesn't need to be non-fiction, could be anything.

1:17:48 So, I'd say my favorite book of all times,

1:17:50 and I made it mandatory reading for my command

1:17:53 staff when I took over as the chief, which was a hoot because nobody ever

1:17:57 made our command staff read anything before.

1:17:59 And I also did a book club.

1:18:00 I also used this book and did a book club with the community.

1:18:03 The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell.

1:18:05 One of my all-time favorite reads because it forces you to understand

1:18:09 that no matter what your challenge or no matter what your problem is,

1:18:12 goes back to problem solving.

1:18:14 Whatever the problem is you're trying to solve, there is a tipping point.

1:18:18 You just have to know what that tipping point is.

1:18:20 And I love that book.

1:18:20 It's a great I've read it three times, I think.

1:18:24 It's a great book.

1:18:25 So, that's one of my favorites.

1:18:26 It just makes you think differently.

1:18:28 What did you hope people reading it would take away to apply?

1:18:33 Like how might that change how they act on the job

1:18:36 or think and then therefore act on the job?

1:18:38 Well, it doesn't matter what you're doing, what your profession is.

1:18:41 If you read the tipping point,

1:18:42 the key point is that you can turn around any situation.

1:18:45 You can solve any problem if you're paying close enough

1:18:48 attention to the details that you can hit that tipping point.

1:18:51 What is the tipping point to turn around high levels of violence in a community?

1:18:56 What is the tipping point to [clears

1:18:57 throat] turn around whatever your problem is?

1:18:59 I would also say Blink.

1:19:01 Blink is another one that I only read because I liked Malcolm Gladwell,

1:19:04 but Blink for people in highpaced professions.

1:19:10 Mhm.

1:19:09 Blink is one that helps you really evaluate how you make decisions.

1:19:13 How you rely on your instinct and your experience and how much that matters.

1:19:18 So, those are two of my favorites.

1:19:20 The only thing I read, Tim, is stuff about my job.

1:19:22 I I read work stuff.

1:19:23 Yeah.

1:19:23 So, nothing really fun.

1:19:25 [laughter] Well, let me come back to the I

1:19:28 suppose this all relates everything relates to making decisions,

1:19:31 but especially kind of performing [snorts] under extreme and sustained pressure.

1:19:41 And I would imagine that of course part of the hiring

1:19:45 process for a lot of the people who report to you,

1:19:48 let's just say or within your organization,

1:19:51 you're already vetting for people who can

1:19:53 operate at a high level with sustained pressure

1:19:55 where they also have to be very good

1:19:57 at improvising when conditions change and so on.

1:20:00 But if you were teaching a class to could be high school students,

1:20:05 college students on sort of resilience and handling pressure, right?

1:20:09 Some people buckle and sometimes you learn by buckling

1:20:12 and then you figure out how to approach it next time.

1:20:16 What would you tell them about making decisions under

1:20:21 pressure and acting under pressure as opposed to becoming paralyzed?

1:20:27 How would you even begin to talk to them about that?

1:20:30 I would say it's I don't care who you are.

1:20:33 It's not 100% instinct, right?

1:20:36 Mhm.

1:20:37 Your body is going to react in a crisis to what it knows.

1:20:43 So if it's a situation where you have trained for it or you've thought about

1:20:47 it or you've prepared for it or you in your mind you've walked through it,

1:20:51 you're going to be in a lot better position

1:20:53 than if it's something that's never crossed your mind.

1:20:55 This is where kind of preparedness crosses that line.

1:20:58 Like this is why we try and encourage people to be prepared.

1:21:01 know when you walk into a building what are

1:21:03 the two different ways you can get out not

1:21:04 just the way you came in is there other

1:21:06 ways you can get out of this building right

1:21:09 so everybody's going to freeze initially I think to a certain extent if

1:21:12 you have no experience nothing in your brain that your brain can go

1:21:15 back to to to have you act but in terms of being

1:21:18 in a in a workplace or a professional

1:21:21 environment and making decisions as a leader

1:21:26 if you have the knowledge that you need you've done

1:21:29 your homework you've read everything that there is to read,

1:21:33 you've got your education, you've got experience,

1:21:35 decision- making becomes easy, right?

1:21:38 As each time you go up in a different level of rank as a sergeant,

1:21:41 when I first made sergeant, making decisions was a little tough at first

1:21:44 because I was still pretty inexperienced myself.

1:21:47 My job was to be more well read,

1:21:48 understand the DC code a little better than the patrol officer,

1:21:51 know what case law says.

1:21:53 So if I didn't read that stuff and I didn't study,

1:21:56 I would be uncomfortable making decisions

1:21:58 and I would hesitate to make decisions.

1:22:00 We had a lot of people that don't like to make decisions.

1:22:03 But the more you read, the more you learn,

1:22:05 the more you invest in your knowledge, the easier it is to make decisions.

1:22:09 Like to me, decisions now with all of the years I'm

1:22:13 in 36 years in this business and now I've again two master's degrees.

1:22:17 I've [snorts] studied, I've got all this experience.

1:22:20 decisions for me like boom boom boom boom.

1:22:23 So it comes with experience.

1:22:25 It comes with investment of time.

1:22:27 It comes with preparing yourself to be able to make a decision.

1:22:32 And of course people will throw things at me that I've never experienced before.

1:22:36 But because I have all those other things to rely

1:22:38 on, I can make a decision and I feel good about it.

1:22:40 Well, I have to imagine also this is true

1:22:42 in a lot of contexts outside of security or law enforcement.

1:22:47 certainly applies to military but it kind of applies everywhere

1:22:50 which is making decisions in the face of incomplete information

1:22:56 right and so I'm wondering what you have learned about that making decisions

1:23:02 biasing towards action when you have incomplete

1:23:06 information how do you think about that it happens it happens a lot

1:23:11 especially in first responder communities and military

1:23:14 like you said it happens a lot going to have a complete picture.

1:23:18 Again, I think your comfort level with being able

1:23:21 to make those decisions is going to fall back on.

1:23:26 Are you qualified to make that decision?

1:23:29 If you feel qualified to make the decision,

1:23:32 sometimes I got to make decisions without all the information.

1:23:34 There's two things that go along with that.

1:23:36 One is do the best you can based on what you know at the time,

1:23:40 but know a decision has to be made.

1:23:42 And then if you make the wrong decision, undo it.

1:23:46 change it, fix it.

1:23:47 Don't just stick with it because you've got to be the boss.

1:23:50 And this is what I said.

1:23:51 Admit you're wrong.

1:23:53 Change course.

1:23:53 Go another direction.

1:23:54 That's where people get tripped up.

1:23:56 Right?

1:23:57 When I'm making a decision, I don't have full information.

1:24:00 I'm thinking to myself as I'm making this decision,

1:24:02 I can either go this way or I can go that way.

1:24:04 If I go this way, what can go wrong?

1:24:07 If I go this way, what can go wrong?

1:24:09 Okay.

1:24:09 Now, I'm going to go this way.

1:24:11 If one of those things goes wrong, consequence thinking, right?

1:24:14 If one of those things goes wrong, what's my course of action then?

1:24:16 So, if I'm making a decision with incomplete information,

1:24:19 as I'm making that decision and giving that command,

1:24:23 I'm thinking about how I'm going to deal

1:24:24 with the collateral damage if that was the wrong decision, right?

1:24:27 Because that's next.

1:24:28 You make a bad decision, you can't just go, "Oh, shoot.

1:24:32 Wow, darn." You know, [laughter] tough luck.

1:24:35 You got, all right, fix it.

1:24:36 Fix it.

1:24:36 Fix it.

1:24:37 Fix it.

1:24:37 What are you going to do about it now?

1:24:38 How are you going to fix it?

1:24:40 Just a few more questions and then uh let you get back to your very busy day.

1:24:46 If you could put this is metaphorically speaking like a message on a billboard

1:24:50 or have a reminder on your desk that everybody sees when they come in.

1:24:54 Could be a could be a quote, could be a mantra, could be anything.

1:25:00 If you could put it on a billboard for millions of people to see, right?

1:25:06 What might that be?

1:25:07 I mean, is there anything that comes to mind?

1:25:09 Could be someone else's quote.

1:25:10 Could be something that you try to live your life by.

1:25:14 Could be something you want everybody who who's within your organization

1:25:18 to be reminded of or it could be something else entirely.

1:25:22 Does anything come to mind?

1:25:24 I mean, I tell people all the time, bad things happen to everybody, right?

1:25:30 Mhm.

1:25:29 Bad things happen to everybody.

1:25:31 And a lot of times it's we do it to oursel.

1:25:33 We make bad decisions.

1:25:34 Bad things happen to us because of ourselves.

1:25:36 Bad things happen to everybody.

1:25:38 It's not about the bad decision you made or the bad thing that happened to you.

1:25:42 It's what you do after that.

1:25:45 So, it's easy to have some tragedy or some terrible thing happen to you and sit

1:25:51 around and feel sorry for yourself or become a victim or let it define you.

1:25:57 It's your attitude and your effort that you put into how you recover.

1:26:02 So, it's not what happens to you.

1:26:04 It's not the bad thing.

1:26:05 It's how you handle those things that really matter in life.

1:26:08 [clears throat]

1:26:08 Because you can have one of two attitudes every time something bad happens.

1:26:12 Which attitude are you going to pick?

1:26:14 For me, it's going to be I wish that never had happened.

1:26:18 I wish I'd never made that decision.

1:26:19 I wish that had never happened.

1:26:20 But you know what?

1:26:21 I'm going to fix it.

1:26:22 I'm going to I'm going to not let it define me.

1:26:25 I'm not going to let it take me down.

1:26:27 Well, Kathy, I mean, I think that's a pretty strong way to land this plane.

1:26:32 So, you have the coolest job, by the way.

1:26:35 I can't imagine how much you get to learn talking to so many people.

1:26:41 And you must have a an encyclopedia in your brain.

1:26:45 It's the best job.

1:26:46 I mean, and it didn't come from some big long-term plan.

1:26:51 It was kind of zigging and zagging with frankly I mean tying

1:26:55 into what you said some really you know in retrospect with the information

1:26:59 I had at the time there were good decisions about various

1:27:01 things you know starting books but made some terrible decisions on deadlines

1:27:05 where there were kind of suicide missions and ultimately just adapted

1:27:10 and tried to make the best of a sequence of I would say

1:27:15 in retrospect kind of poor decisions led to one of the best

1:27:18 decisions right which I never thought would become this and here we are.

1:27:23 So, good for you and thanks for being willing to do the dance

1:27:27 and uh play some improv jazz in this conversation.

1:27:31 Is there is there anything else you'd like to say or add,

1:27:35 suggest to people, request of people?

1:27:37 Anything at all before we wind to a close?

1:27:40 No, just uh was a fascinating couple hours with you.

1:27:43 You know, I'm an avid follower and really enjoyed my time here.

1:27:47 So, thank you for including me.

1:27:49 Oh, definitely.

1:27:50 Kathy, thank you so much.

1:27:51 I hope we get to see each other at some point.

1:27:55 Who knows?

1:27:56 Might get to your neck of the world.

1:27:57 Probably will, actually.

1:27:59 Please let me know if you do.

1:28:00 New York or DC.

1:28:02 Look me up.

1:28:03 I'm in both.

1:28:03 So, I'll keep you posted.

1:28:07 Okay.

1:28:06 Thank you again for the time.

1:28:07 And for everybody listening, we'll have show notes,

1:28:11 links to everything that we talked about at tim.blog/mpodcast.

1:28:15 As per usual, just search for Kathy and you will find this episode.

1:28:19 Until next time, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others,

1:28:22 but also to yourself.

1:28:24 And thanks for tuning in.

1:28:26 Thanks, Tim.