The CopDoc Podcast: Aiming for Excellence in Leadership

TCD: Lisa Lane McCarty, Police Academy Director, Fitchburg State University

May 16, 2023 Lisa Lane McCarty Season 5 Episode 101
The CopDoc Podcast: Aiming for Excellence in Leadership
TCD: Lisa Lane McCarty, Police Academy Director, Fitchburg State University
Show Notes Transcript

Season 5 - The CopDoc Podcast - Episode 101

Lisa Lane McCarty is the Director of the Municipal Police Training Committee (MPTC) Police Academy at Fitchburg State University (FSU) in Fitchburg, MA.  

A strikingly unique model for police training, this program engages CJ students from their freshman year and continues through their senior year.  After graduation, they continue to an on-campus academy, a bit shorter than most, since other coursework has been completed over the previous 4 years.  

Students also earn credits towards a Master's degree and many continue at FSU for an MCJ!  Graduates of police training and FSU are sought-after candidates in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  

Lisa Lane McCarty has been a practitioner in criminal justice for more than 30 years.    She served as a Victim Advocate for prosecutor's offices and municipal police agencies.  A graduate of the University of New Hampshire, Lisa has worked for the Municipal Police Training Committee for decades.  

We talked about the clash of culture between police training and academia, the value of civilian professional staff in agencies, and the role of victim advocates in police agencies. 

The FSU - MPTC police academy is an interstring and successful model.  We discussed the difficulties and successes of police training in an academic setting. 

Contact us: copdoc.podcast@gmail.com

Website: www.copdocpodcast.com

If you'd like to arrange for facilitated training, or consulting, or talk about steps you might take to improve your leadership and help in your quest for promotion, contact Steve at stephen.morreale@gmail.com


[00:00:02.450] - Intro

Welcome to The CopDoc Podcast. This podcast explores police leadership issues and innovative DEA. The CopDoc shares thoughts and ideas as he talks with leaders in policing, communities, academia, and other government agencies. And now please join Dr. Steve Morreale and industry thought leaders as they share their insights and experience on The CopDoc Podcast.

 


[00:00:32.250] - Steve Morreale

Well, hello again, everybody. This is Steve Morreale coming to you from Boston. Thanks for joining us today. We are talking with a colleague not too far away for those of you who are not from Massachusetts, I am at Worcester State University where I teach, and I have a colleague at Fitchburg State University, which is on the New Hampshire border, probably 40 minutes away in the general area of central Massachusetts. And we have Lisa Lane McCarty. Good morning.

 


[00:00:55.520] - Lisa McCarty

Good morning, Steve. Thank you for having me.

 


[00:00:57.380] - Steve Morreale

Thanks so much. I'll tell the listeners that we go back in time a little bit in terms of knowing your mother and knowing you. Your mum was the executive assistant for a nonprofit that I was responsible for for a while at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, and we ran New England Community Police Partnership. You have been around for a while and I'd love to hear how you started to become involved in criminal justice. And now, if I may, Lisa is the Director of the Academy at Fitchburg State and I think you'll find it very fascinating about the approach that they take at a college campus. So tell us about yourself, Lisa.

 


[00:01:36.490] - Lisa McCarty

Thank you. So I became interested in criminal justice because obviously my dad was a lieutenant, so he was on the job. So I got to sort of see firsthand what he did and then my mom later in her professional career got involved, obviously, as you stated when I met you. And I knew I didn't want to be a police officer, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I went to the University of New Hampshire and got a Justice Studies minor in a political science major. And then fortunately, a job opened up that my dad knew about in the A or District Court with the Middlesex County DA's office. And it was a support staff position, so entry level. And I, luckily enough, got the job. And so I got to see the inner workings of the criminal justice system from the DA's office, which I think was the most valuable experience that I had. And it opened me up to being exposed to prosecutors and defense attorneys and judges and victim advocates, which is the direction my career took when clerks and parole and probation. And I just found it fascinating. But like I said, I was exposed to victim advocates and I decided that's what I wanted to do.

 


[00:02:34.000] - Lisa McCarty

So I was a victim advocate for a long time, was a little bit with the DA's office sort of shadowing and filling in when I could and then going to Leominster Police Department as one of the first civilian domestic violence advocates in the state. That was in 91, back when that was a new model. And I've worked for various state agencies since as a victim advocate, the whole time, teaching at a police academy. I was at the Boston Police Academy, so I was interested in police training, and I was interested in helping victims. And then this job came up, this new model, this new initiative of police education and training. And I was with MPTC at the time, which is the Municipal Police Training Committee, a state agency here obviously mandated for developing and implementing police training. And I worked at the Boylston academy full-time for them. When this job came up. Like I said, this new model, and I thought it married both of my passions of police training and still being able to work with young people.

 


[00:03:22.790] - Steve Morreale

So the focus today is going to be about this model of a four-year degree and a police academy embedded in it, something that's unique, certainly from Massachusetts and first of its kind. But I also want to go back for a moment. We'll cover a couple of things, because that victim advocate and the civilianization of that position and the position in a police agency is unique also. And you say it's a new model, 91. I can tell you it's still pretty new because it's not something that's adopted that often, except in larger agencies. But let's focus on police training for a few minutes. You became involved in police training at the Boylston Police Academy as a trainer and later as a staff person for the MPTC. Talk about that and how you evolved, how policing has changed over the years from your perspective.

 


[00:04:10.260] - Lisa McCarty

So it was interesting, like I said, to work in all those different agencies as an advocate, and some of that was human services, and then a lot of it was criminal justice. Once I got to the police academy, I was teaching domestic violence. I was teaching victimization sexual harassment. So sort of the things in the victim advocate wheelhouse, and I got to watch I was doing that was that 20 something years ago at this point. And I did get to watch the waves of law enforcement. And what was important with training when you and my mother were at NECP squared, it was community policing was the big sort of hot button topic at the time. Then after 911, it became Homeland security. Before community policing, maybe it was drunk driving. So I've watched this ebb and flow. And I was fortunate at the time that domestic violence was on the radar, and that's when people in the state started thinking, we need experts in police departments. Police officers are a jack of all trades, and they don't have time necessarily to follow up with victims. And we need somebody this is an epidemic in this country.

 


[00:05:05.970] - Lisa McCarty

It's a human rights issue. It's a public safety issue. We need somebody sort of looking out for these victims. And that was a hard sell at first, being a civilian, walking into a police department, as I'm sure you would understand.

 


[00:05:15.750] - Steve Morreale

I understand, yes.

 


[00:05:16.700] - Lisa McCarty

They introduced me. The sergeant that was my supervisor said, this is Lisa Lane. She's Lieutenant Lane's daughter, because that bought me some credibility. I was with them. So being able to see how a police department functioned from the inside was fascinating to me. And I think all of that led up to me being able to be here. And I see now that, like you said, there's still domestic violence advocates. Not as many, but now there's mental health clinicians.

 


[00:05:38.690] - Steve Morreale

Yeah, the correspondence, right, yes.

 


[00:05:40.780] - Lisa McCarty

So I think they saw that that model of putting expert civilians with police officers works. So I see more of that. There's mental health, substance abuse counselors, and I was on grant, the Violence Against Women Act. That's how I was at Leominster Police Department is it was grant funded. I don't know how much of that money is still out there, but I think a lot of grants are being used now for these mental health and substance abuse counselors. So I've seen that law enforcement for a long time was it wasn't transparent. It was the police officers are the trained experts. The civilians, maybe not so much. They don't understand what we do, which is still true to a certain extent, but I think we're doing a better job of being transparent and working. Co-partnerships now correspond to models.

 


[00:06:19.520] - Steve Morreale

So let's go to police training and the change of police training. What strikes me is that we are always in a knee-jerk reaction state. In other words, oh, my goodness, this is happening. We have autistic people. We have people with mental health. We've got to train the police. We've got a domestic violence issue. We've got to train the police. And we constantly are trying to catch up and put it on the shoulders of police. So you have young people now. Let's get right to it. You are now running a police academy at Fitchburg State University, the first in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. When it started, what were the pushbacks that you experienced? How did you climb over some of the hurdle?

 


[00:06:58.590] - Lisa McCarty

You know this better than anybody, but trying to change police training or trying to change the way police officers operate is a monumental task sometimes because there's outside forces, inside forces, political forces, and people don't like change. It's hard. So when I was at the Boylston academy, to be candid, I would tell I have a lot of friends with police officers, and I was explaining what I was thinking of doing, coming to Fitchburg State with this innovative model. And they were all a little skeptical, or a lot skeptical, saying, what, are they going to sit in the campus lounge? And how is that going to work, and this was a risk for my career. I didn't know if this would be accepted, so the police officers were skeptical. I came to campus, and I was fortunate that we have a university president that is progressive. He took a risk with this program, bringing it onto this campus, and so I had the support I needed. But the faculty was skeptical. The students were they were CJ students that were signing up for this pilot program. That was a big risk for them as well. And marrying the two cultures of academia with policing has been a challenge for both sides, for them and for me.

 


[00:07:57.480] - Lisa McCarty

Been here six years now, so I think we've come a long way with that. But the barriers were that sort of pushback of better educated officer doesn't mean they're better officers. Think some police officers took exception for the fact that we would say, well, we're trying to educate them, and I wholeheartedly agree one's not better than the other, but this is a model. That the unintended consequences of it. We're hoping, and we're doing a research study on right now, we're hoping that these are better people going on the street, because we're exposing them to human services classes and psychology classes and sociology classes. It's mandated that they take certain classes so they understand where they fit in the world around them and sort of what the social problems are out there right now. So we're hoping that that makes them a better officer. We're trying to give them more tools. We're trying to give them more exposure to policing. We're hoping that they decide whether this is for them or not while they're in this program.

 


[00:08:44.870] - Steve Morreale

Let me interrupt you for a second. So there are so many things exploding through my mind as we're talking about it, and police training is so important. Bringing the right person in the right fit, really very important. And what I'm finding, and it is not empirical, but less and less students in criminal justice programs are aiming towards policing. My guess would be is when I first started in the was probably at the 40 to 50 range for 40 50% range, and now it might be 20% to 30%. Are you seeing that on campus? There's not as many who have a desire to be a police officer to work in CJ, but not as a police officer.

 


[00:09:21.080] - Lisa McCarty

We're absolutely seeing that. So when I came here six years ago, every criminal justice student wanted to sign up for this pilot, and then we opened it up to traditional enrollment every fall. Who wants to apply for this program? And the numbers back then were 80 to 90 freshmen coming in for the police program under the CJ major. And just the way the world has turned in the past couple of years, the enrollment is down. The last couple of years, I think we had 50 freshmen coming in, and then maybe 40. I don't know what this fall looks like. So we have small classes because you have to start in this program and stay as a cohort to get to the academy and of course there's attrition in colleges, so our classes are smaller and there's such a need. Not only is there less enrollment here, but obviously in police departments in the commonwealth right now, recruitment and retention is huge, and they can't get enough people. I have chiefs calling me constantly, when's your next class? How many in there? When's your next class? How many are in there? And I just don't have like this current class we have going in, which starts May 24, is twelve Recruits.

 


[00:10:20.990] - Steve Morreale

Wow.

 


[00:10:21.720] - Lisa McCarty

And that's down from, I think they started at about 4 years ago. And I can't backfill because part of our curriculum is embedded into their four years. Part of the recruit curriculum is embedded. So there's less coming in and there's less staying. I've lost quite a few police students saying that they've had a crisis of faith, unfortunately, about this profession and just the things they've seen or heard. And I'm trying to expose them to all the good that they can do and the changes that they can make. But yeah, it's been tough.

 


[00:10:47.060] - Steve Morreale

It's a tough sell sometimes. You're absolutely right. But I think we have to be very honest with students about it's not all rose petals. There's a lot of difficult things. There's a lot of midnights and there's a lot of problems and there's a lot of stress and there's a lot of overtime and all of those kinds of things. It's reality, but it's such an important job, it's interesting. I'm going to probably avoid touching a third rail with both of us in academia. However, it's interesting because LinkedIn is a place that I use, and I post things as you do. I posted something about college education and to watch that string back and forth and the absolute disdain that some people have for academia. And it is a shame because both of us are in it. And yes, there are people around that have great distaste for policing or for authority and such. And even on campus now, it was really very telling to see how many police officers are out there that either were exposed or believe that it is I don't know how to explain it. It's very frustrating because I am a pracademic.

 


[00:11:49.670] - Steve Morreale

I'm teaching from my experience students, and they see the ivory tower, and that's troubling to them. But I know again, in LinkedIn posts that you had made in the past, that some of your students are getting pushed back from campus, that it's not comfortable for them to walk around representing policing in their uniforms or such. Talk about that.

 


[00:12:09.600] - Lisa McCarty

Yeah. So I think that goes back to the clash of cultures, too. And unfortunately, where we are in this country with distrust of police and the media's exposure, and we tend to see more of the bad things that small, tiny percentage of police officers do than all the good they're doing. So I think this program is a positive in that respect, regardless of what's happening on campus. Because I teach the police students, you can push back on what your professor is saying, but you have to be respectful. You have to be informed about it. And I'm hoping that we are mirroring what we want to see police do in the community where police students are in these classes. And if they are facing some negative thoughts about police or research that isn't exactly correct, or information that the police students don't necessarily agree with, that they're respectfully saying, well, here's my thought of it. They're adults. They have a say. I tell them, you can speak in class. You just have to be respectful about it. And I'm hoping that we're opening the eyes to people that maybe do not understand really what the police do, or maybe they don't have respect for the job right now, for whatever reason, that maybe they can see that this open dialogue is what we need.

 


[00:13:08.250] - Lisa McCarty

We're trying to mirror what's happening on this college campus and what we want to see happen in the community with transparency and trust. But it has been challenging and just had a conversation with somebody the other day on campus about how our police students wear uniforms. And I think part of this is an education piece on my part where I'm not having them wear uniforms just to wear uniforms. It's a training issue. It's an education issue. It's a preparatory stage for them. But I want them to wear uniforms, and their last names are right on their polo shirts because I want them easily identifiable, held accountable, out in the community, understand that they're seen and heard all the time. So how they act and what their.

 


[00:13:42.870] - Steve Morreale

Conduct is and their perception, the public.

 


[00:13:44.630] - Lisa McCarty

Perception, right, public perception. And their boots should be shined and their shirts should be tucked in. I'm preparing them for policing. But also the academy. I mean, this program, we're trying to do more in the four years and 17 weeks of the academy that we have so that the uniforms aren't they're not marching around campus, they're not doing drilling ceremony. They're not paramilitary, but they're in uniforms, and they're quite proud of their uniforms. And so when I was explaining this to somebody, it was saying, well, I wonder how the other students perceive them. And I said, well, how do the other students perceive nurses who are walking around their scrubs?

 


[00:14:15.750] - Steve Morreale

What an analogy.

 


[00:14:16.910] - Lisa McCarty

Yes. And we're a big nursing school, hugely successful here. And I think that's for me, I need to make those analogies for some people on campus because what I said also is, well, what's the public's perception of an officer in uniform? Shouldn't they say there's a helper? Right? There not. There's someone that's going to hurt me. I want to see when they walk around in their uniforms. I tell the police students, you have to conduct yourself with integrity, honor, and discipline all the time, but specifically when you're in your uniform. So I think it's an education piece, and I've done a lot of that. I've been took a while to get fully accepted here, and it's obviously not 100%. You'll never get that. But I'm trying to explain and educate and train not only the students, but the university about what policing is and what police training really is.

 


[00:14:58.880] - Steve Morreale

So we're talking Lisa McCarthy, and she's at Fitchburg state university in an unusual and a very successful four plus college education and police academy in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. So let's talk about that. I come in, I'm a new young student, my daughter, my son. They sign up. They make it through the vetting process, and they have to purchase their uniform, which is khakis and a polo shirt and boots that are shined and shinable. And as they're in classes, they are immersed on campus, but they're in uniform every time they take a class.

 


[00:15:33.470] - Lisa McCarty

What's unique about our program is we're not just an academy on a college campus like other colleges and universities in Massachusetts. We have an agreement. We have an articulation agreement with the municipal police training committee MPTC to run this program. And part of what that articulation agreement states is that the police students will take six undergraduate courses that have basic recruit academy curriculum embedded in it. So our police students take about a quarter of the basic recruit curriculum, the academy curriculum, while they're here for four years. So they wear their uniforms only to those six classes. Those are considered MPTC classes. And so our academy and this is another thing that there was some skepticism about it is our academy is 17 weeks instead of the traditional 23 or 24, because our police students have taken about a quarter of the academy curriculum as undergraduates. They've taken things like criminal law, which is a week in the academy, constitutional law, which is a week in the academy. Juvenile justice, they've taken criminal investigations. We have a retired sergeant from Londonderry who teaches our criminal investigations. He's a PhD faculty on staff here, or an Ed.d.

 


[00:16:38.790] - Lisa McCarty

So they've taken that academy curriculum, and they're tested on it prior to day one of the academy. And that's part of their academy file, that they took those modules and they passed them. So they're not wearing the uniforms. If they have classes in a row, they might be in a uniform class.

 


[00:16:51.080] - Steve Morreale

For an English to go to one class to another. Right, I understand.

 


[00:16:53.960] - Lisa McCarty

And I was talking to a student yesterday who said that one of her professors, who's not in CJ and not in behavioral science warehouse in the behavioral science department, she thinks that this professor is sort of like, why are you in uniform? And doesn't really like it. But that's teaching them how to face adversity, too, right?

 


[00:17:08.780] - Steve Morreale

Yeah. Yes. And try to win people over the best we can.

 


[00:17:12.160] - Lisa McCarty

That's sort of the model of our program. That's what makes it different, is that we have in our PhD. Level, professors are MPTC certified, just like any police officer or civilian teaching in an academy, they're properly certified. And again, that's sort of what sets us apart, and that's why I can't backfill my academy with just anybody. You had to have started here as a freshman.

 


[00:17:31.710] - Steve Morreale

Got you. I understand. So let's talk about when they enter this phase of the academy training that is certainly more rigorous and more similar to any academy training. When do they do that?

 


[00:17:44.280] - Lisa McCarty

So they graduate on a Saturday with their undergraduate degree in CJ, and they start the academy here on Monday. I always say I'm really nice. I give them one day off. So they graduate Saturday. They could do whatever they want on Sunday. They start here Monday. Now, prior to that, they've done everything a candidate for a police academy has to do, per Commonwealth HRD standards. We do a full background investigation. The chief here at Pittsburgh State University does a full background like he's hiring them. They do. Full medical commonwealth. HRD medical. Once they pass that, they do the Commonwealth Civil Service pat test, physical abilities test, and then they do the entry level MPTC PT test. So they've accomplished a lot. Now, this is all during their senior year, their fall and spring of senior year. They're doing classes, finals, sort of wrapping up college and doing all of that, and then they start the academy. Day One is typically, like I said, the Monday after they graduate.

 


[00:18:36.010] - Steve Morreale

So, wait a minute. Now we're talking right about the time of graduation. So that means very soon this academy is going to start.

 


[00:18:41.260] - Lisa McCarty

Yes. So we're starting on a Wednesday this year just because of scheduling. So day one is May 24. They graduate May 20 this year.

 


[00:18:48.720] - Steve Morreale

Okay.

 


[00:18:49.180] - Lisa McCarty

And the other part about this program, why there's a lot of attrition, too, is that we and this was an unintended good, positive consequence of this program is that we fully vet these students, because in the four years that they're here, MPTC said you have to treat them like traditional recruits, with some caveats to that. I mean, they're 1819 years old when they get here, but they have to follow all of the academic standards, the conduct standards, and the apparent standards that a recruit follows for 24 weeks, they have to follow for four years and then into the academy. I can dismiss them for any violations that you could dismiss a recruit for. So by the time they start day One, I have chiefs call me and just say, what do you know about Joe Jones? He applied here. And I can tell you everything that's happened with this kid since he stepped on campus. And if they didn't have good integrity and they didn't have good character, they would not be in this program because we wouldn't allow that to happen. So a lot of the chiefs now, like I said, they're saying, how many do you have in this class and when does it start and when do they graduate?

 


[00:19:43.890] - Lisa McCarty

Because they know these are sort of known. You've done this a million times in your career. I'm sure you interview somebody. How do you really know if they have integrity?

 


[00:19:53.090] - Steve Morreale

You'll look at them over time, there's a longitudinal understanding of them as opposed to a two hour and then get you into the academy and a little bit of background. So that is very unique. But one of the other things that I saw, Lisa, is that now some New Hampshire organizations are blessing this academy which expands the opportunities for students. Talk about that.

 


[00:20:12.210] - Lisa McCarty

So that was extraordinary that that happened. The current class is going to be the 6th Roc Recruit Officer course. So the second Roc course, we had this phenomenal outstanding female candidate, and she applied in Nashua, New Hampshire, because she lives on the New Hampshire border in Massachusetts, but she wanted to work in Nashville, New Hampshire. They really have a good reputation and they said their standards are you have to work in Massachusetts for two years first or you need to take the New Hampshire Academy. And she said, I'm not doing another academy. And they wanted her so badly that one of the detectives there went to his command staff and they approached the equivalent of MPTC in New Hampshire. So the New Hampshire Standards and Training Council and said, we want to make an exception for Pittsburgh State University academy graduates. We want the four years that they're in undergrad in this program to count for that two years of experience in Massachusetts. And the New Hampshire Training and Standards Council voted on it and they voted that in. So Nashua PD made such a great pitch. They came down here, met with me, I gave them all the information.

 


[00:21:12.980] - Lisa McCarty

They made a PowerPoint. And because of this Officer Medina, who's still there in Nashua, they changed the rules that they'll take any of our graduates, any of our recruits, and they can start immediately in New Hampshire, I should say with any New Hampshire department that has a bona fide FTO program.

 


[00:21:28.830] - Steve Morreale

I see that's. Great. So let's talk about even the vetting. Where are you getting I understand that. Let's talk about Marcel, Marcel Beausoliel, who you know quite well who was there and who was worked at Worcester State for me and who was a former police officer. He's now retired, but he was involved in it on the academic side. And now you have Dr. David Weiss. And I understand the players there, but you've got a mix of faculty members, as you made very clear, that if they're teaching a course that counts towards the curriculum of the MPTC, they must be MPTC certified number one. And number two, you also have a group of people who are cadre and talk about that.

 


[00:22:05.100] - Lisa McCarty

So it's interesting because fortunate that a lot of people want to come teach here now. Like any college, we have practitioners and we have researchers and we really need the combination of both, especially exposing them to these students. What's happening now is we're having more officers coming in as adjuncts. They want to teach in the police program. We have PhD level professors that are coming here specifically to work in the police program because they believe in this model and they want to be a part of it. So we're fortunate. Dr. Weiss is now the chair of the Grad program. He was the academic coordinator after Marcel left, and so he's sort of revamping that. And police officers are teaching because obviously our graduating recruits are in the master's class. After that. Our academy is twelve credits towards the Masters, so they're continuing and some of their DI's are professors here now. Some of my DI's are taking classes here now. So it's sort of been a really good marriage and a sort of exposure for both sides, but fortunate to have that mix of researchers and now we're having a lot of practitioners. We're turning people down left and right.

 


[00:23:02.750] - Lisa McCarty

Everyone's like, hey, I want to teach there, how do I do it? It's a great problem to have.

 


[00:23:06.730] - Steve Morreale

I know. So you just said something that is a little bit different, too. So you actually are offering a four plus one and an academy if that's what students choose, is that correct?

 


[00:23:16.260] - Lisa McCarty

Yeah. So the model is a four plus one, and when I got here so the plus one year is a Master's. Obviously the academy was going to be at the end of the plus one, and I just felt like that would be too far away from the classes they're teaching in undergrad. I mean, those are perishable. They're not skills necessarily, but they're not going to remember criminal law. And we were losing students because once they turn 21, they can be a police officer. So I said this needs to be upfront in the plus one year. So what happens is the students will start day one of the academy. They'll graduate mid September after 17 weeks. That academy is twelve credits towards their 36 overall credits of a master's degree. Here the rest of the master's degree. So that 24 credits that they still need to get is all online. And we did that because the first iterations of the recruitment officer courses, the ROCs weren't big and our students were getting hired and they were working through the eleven s and midnights and FTOs and change, and they couldn't be here in person. So we realized, well, wait a minute, we can't have this plus one in person Masters when we're hopeful that they're getting hired so they can take it at their leisure.

 


[00:24:13.480] - Lisa McCarty

Now they. Have twelve credits towards the Masters. After the academy, they can take one course a semester, two, three. So it's a plus one, but it's sort of a plus, plus one.

 


[00:24:22.850] - Steve Morreale

That's a lot of work. So let's talk about that, your sense of having been at Boylston Academy and the big push pull that goes on. I have held that there are people out there who call this a profession, and I know I'm playing devil's advocate here, that policing is a profession. And I ask the question, if it's a profession, why isn't there an educational requirement? And people will push back, well, what about the military? I think we're doing a disservice to people in minority communities, don't have the opportunity to avail themselves to education. You see across the country a similar approach, using community colleges, not a four year institution, which makes you so unique, but understanding all of that, are you putting out a better product?

 


[00:25:06.340] - Lisa McCarty

We are doing like I said earlier, we're doing a research study on that, which I'm not privy to, obviously, because I can't be, but they've started focus groups. There's questions being asked, surveys going out, because I want to know, first of all, are we hitting the outcomes we want to hit, and are we being successful? And what can we change? However, I can tell you that non research data that I've gotten is simply just from chiefs of police. So chiefs are getting traditional recruits all the time, obviously, and then now they are getting our recruits. So just as for instance, Chief Martin, though, Ernie Martin, Pittsburgh, he has a big department. He's hiring all the time. He's getting a slew of traditional recruits, and he now has hired four of my recruits. So someone from the third, Roc, someone from the fourth, and then two from the fifth, and just anecdotally him and other chiefs have said that he notices a huge difference in how our recruits conduct themselves. Speak to people, write reports. They're better written, they seem to be better problem solvers. They don't get in trouble. They have less citizen complaints. And it follows the research because educated officers, they use less use of force, more likely to not use deadly force.

 


[00:26:12.190] - Lisa McCarty

They write better reports, less complaints, less injuries, things like that. So I've had a few chiefs who have said, we're going to hire your people first, send them all to us. And again, not to say the other academies aren't doing a great job, but again, you're taking these strangers and you throw them in a group for 24 weeks with an academy director that doesn't know them and doesn't own them. They're all hired. Our students start out not hired, they get hired. As they're getting closer to the academy, they're getting grabbed up. But I've known them. If you watch our academy graduation or come in person, I'm in tears at every graduation because I've watched these 18-year-olds grow up into this 22 23 year old squared away adult, that the transformation is unbelievable. My job as an academy director during the four years of undergrad is to mentor them.

 


[00:26:59.270] - Steve Morreale

So I'm hearing you speak, and by the way, we're talking to Lisa Lane McCarthy, who is serving as the director of a police academy at Fitchburg State University. But what I'm hearing also as a mentor, you're saying I serve as a mentor and an academy director, but also as an advisor. I'm sure there are students who are sitting in your office. I'm looking at you in your office now that are bringing concerns and issues and worries to you, and you're talking through that. That's my best guess. Is that a fair assessment?

 


[00:27:27.110] - Lisa McCarty

That is absolutely 100% spot on. And that's why I love this job, because as I said at the beginning, I love working with young people. And I have to say I'm using my victim advocate hat right when they come and sit here and talk to me. And I'm fortunate because I have 32 years in this system. I know a lot of people, not as many as you, hopefully one day, but I know a lot of people, and I know this business, and I know this field, and they come in with anything from personal problems to and they have really good problems. Now they have three chiefs that want to hire them. What do they do? Or they have a crisis of faith. Yeah, I mean, when can you pick where you want to work, right? Back in the day?

 


[00:28:04.170] - Steve Morreale

That's a good decision. And actually, in some ways, I sort of like that. I get an awful lot of questions like that. Where should I go? Who should I consider working for? Oh, my goodness. And I sent a lot of people to New Hampshire because I was a New Hampshire police officer, and they go up and take the Great Bay Regional Test, and the next thing you know, weeks later, there's somebody knocking on their door, and they don't know what to do. So my answer to them and I know it's completely different they're not in an academy. They're being drawn to a police department that will put them through an academy. But they'll say, it's April, and I'm graduating in May. What should I do? They want me to leave in April. My answer to them is, you're doing well. Go take the opportunity. The bird in the hand, as they say. But you don't have to worry about that. So let's talk about this particular academy, and then I want to talk about your victim advocate experience. This academy will start in May. You said mid-May. That is where is it? On campus.

 


[00:28:55.110] - Lisa McCarty

It's on campus.

 


[00:28:56.130] - Steve Morreale

Okay. And so you're using facilities on campus between May and September. So there's, like, an overlap, because now the students are coming back for the following year. How does that work out and what's going on? Practical exercises, I'm sure, DT, Firearms, all of that kind of stuff. What are some of the things that they're doing?

 


[00:29:13.860] - Lisa McCarty

So we're fortunate that we have great facilities here on campus and we're like any other traditional academy. And I brought a lot of the people over that worked at Boylston Academy to work here because I know them and I trust them. So I have a PT staff, PT at the football field every morning. We're so fortunate. A lot of academies don't have facilities like that. We have an inside arena, turf field. So if it's raining and that's where we do our defensive tactics training. 80 plus hours we do in the turf field. But PT has visitor and home locker rooms so they can shower right there. We have a classroom here in the summer, dedicated in my building that I'm in. It's the Criminal Justice Building and education on the first floor, but no one's here in the summer, so we have a dedicated classroom. They form up in the parking lot, they march in. But the good thing is there's no one around. Typically, I'm in a building that's a little bit off campus. And then they have like any academy, they have content experts coming in, certified police officers and civilians coming in to teach them 800 plus hours of MPTC curriculum.

 


[00:30:07.870] - Lisa McCarty

And we do it all here, including all the scenario breakouts. But we do go off campus a lot because obviously we go off campus for EVOC. So emergency Vehicle Operation course we do with the troopers. Yes. And we have an agreement with Mass State Police that we use their cruisers. They were kind enough to get into an agreement with us because our students initially weren't being hired. So I had no cruisers. I also had no guns, so we had to buy guns. So it's been unique about I have to buy ammunition. If they're not hired. We've sort of taken care of all that. So they go off site too, for the range. And that depends. The statewide coordinator for MPTC for Firearms is my lead firearms instructor. I'm very lucky. And then we go off site for motor vehicle searches and building searches and active shooter, and at the end it's applied Patrol procedures. So the sort of the skills test out scenarios of everything they've learned. And we are fortunate because my lead firearms instructor, who's the lead for the state, he also is a Metro SWAT member. And they use a nice training facility in Norfolk for the Metro SWAT training.

 


[00:31:04.920] - Lisa McCarty

That's the former Doc building. And it's all set up. Like, there's one room that's set up like an apartment one's, a bank one's, a childcare one's, like an apartment building. And so we'll go off site a lot into Norfolk, which is a little bit far, so the students know there's going to be some traveling. We can't do everything here. We can't do building searches here and things like that because there are summer programs going on here, and we use sims, rounds and all, but other than that, everything's on campus. Our graduation is in our beautiful auditorium here, which is nice, and they get.

 


[00:31:31.890] - Steve Morreale

To know it for sure. Okay, who pays you? MPTC?

 


[00:31:34.790] - Lisa McCarty

No, FSU.

 


[00:31:35.690] - Steve Morreale

Okay, that's great.

 


[00:31:36.610] - Lisa McCarty

They pay all the instructors.

 


[00:31:38.170] - Steve Morreale

Unless it mimics what my views are, like, I don't care about you, which is just so antithetical to higher education teaching.

 


[00:31:47.390] - Lisa McCarty

Yeah, exactly. Every day they're in here. There was a girl in here the other day that I'll tell you, she said Richard said, you're a woman. You shouldn't be a police officer.

 


[00:31:58.000] - Steve Morreale

Plus you're too short.

 


[00:32:00.150] - Lisa McCarty

Too short. And this girl is going to be a superstar. Like Chief Mike Luth teaches her. He's a big advocate of her. So, I was trying to be politically correct when I said, well, they're trying to respectfully. They've shut down in class. They shut us down. They treat us differently. They give us dirty looks. They argue with us. They have the wrong information. So not all of them, but there's.

 


[00:32:23.080] - Steve Morreale

A few enough of them to question well, and you have to say, well, welcome to the world of assholes. You're going to be dealing with assholes. So you're preparing for it now.

 


[00:32:31.420] - Lisa McCarty

So one of my favorite recruits, he's in Walpole now, and he came out and did something with some people that came with the higher ups, and he said the professors that were anticop taught me more about how to deal with people on the street than even in the academy.

 


[00:32:44.510] - Steve Morreale

Yes, I know that. That's exactly right. To be tactful and such. We're talking with Lisa McCarthy. She is the director of a police academy, an unusual police academy, a very well received police academy at Fitchburg State University with a four plus one program and an academy built in. So, Lisa, we were talking a little bit ago about your work in victim advocacy, and that work becomes very, very important. You said a couple of things earlier, and that was that the work that you did for Leominster PD, Leominster, Massachusetts Police Department was grant driven. What troubles me about that is that's what we do an awful lot. We're going to try something out as a pilot with grant money that eventually will run out. It happens with crime analysts, and it happens with police prosecutors that sometimes are, again, civilians, not police officers. And plus, you said it was unique. How important is the victim advocate for providing services with police departments at least mid size or larger?

 


[00:33:59.510] - Lisa McCarty

I look at it as critical. Again, it's not a knock on anybody. I mean, police are doing an unbelievable job. Research shows that 33% of their time is spent responding to domestic violence calls, but they have a myriad of other calls and they have calls stacked, especially in larger departments. So they're doing the best they can at the scene. They're seeing a snapshot of what's going on. But we all know there's so much more than that one instance in time. So when I got to the limits of police department and again, there wasn't really a model for it yet. I think my time at the DA's office really prepared me to develop the program there, because I said what I would like to do is see every single police report from the night before when I come in that has anything to do with domestic violence, because I want to follow up with every victim. And it's not saying the police didn't do everything they were supposed to do by mass General Law Chapter 209 A, because the police did a phenomenal job in Leominster. But I want to reach out. So I would reach out with a phone call or a letter and just say, here's who I am.

 


[00:34:51.280] - Lisa McCarty

I know what happened to you last night. And a lot of people, as you know, think victim advocates are social workers. We're not. I'm just there to be a liaison between victim and the police or the victim and the prosecutor, wherever I was working. And I just said, here's the resources and referrals that I can offer you. Do you need a place to go? Do you need money? Do you need transitional assistance? Do you need a lawyer? Do you need help filling out a restraining order? Are you involved with DCF now as a result of this? Do you have any questions about that? Most often the critical incident was over and I wouldn't hear back from victims, but a lot of times I would. And that was just my job is to make sure that they knew what their rights were. There's a victim's rights law in Massachusetts which a lot of people don't even understand exists. And so I felt like it was my job and to not only to help the victim, but to protect the department from liability. I mean, let's be honest, it is a litigious society and bad things happen to people, and people are looking to see, well, what went wrong.

 


[00:35:43.180] - Lisa McCarty

So I wanted to make sure that we just did the best that we could for these victims who are in crisis. When the police respond. I mean, how can you even think clearly? So I think the follow up and that's all I did. To the extent that they wanted help, you're not going to force it. I had a few victims that I work with that were ultimately killed by their abuser. When I trained police officers or trained anybody, I said, I just always wanted to make sure that I did everything I could to help that person. You can't predict the outcome and horrible, awful things happen, unfortunately, but as long as you did the best that you could for that person, then your conscious is sort of clear and you can't take it to heart as much, I think.

 


[00:36:16.940] - Steve Morreale

Well, you said something early on and it's something I have adopted. And when I spent time in Ireland, they talk, as does in Europe, about human rights, not civil rights. And that's different. And you use that term. How would you explain to others that the victim advocate is working to preserve the human rights of individuals?

 


[00:36:38.670] - Lisa McCarty

I came to that because teaching domestic violence for so long, it's an uncomfortable topic for people. Statistics show that 95% of all domestic violence victims are women. And so I think it came across the men in the audiences would be very uncomfortable. And I would say for the men here, you have mothers, you may have sisters, you may have nieces, girlfriend. You don't want this to happen to anybody. So it became what I thought was a feminist issue, quote unquote, or a man. Men are bad, women are good. And then you'd hear the males that are like, well, women lie. And yes, people lie about every crime. So we were going down this rabbit hole of this gender based us versus them. And when you break it down, it's a human rights issue. Nobody should put their hands on anybody in any way against their will, whether it's domestic violence, indecent assault and battery, sexual assault, whatever it is, we shouldn't be hurting anybody. But it made worse by the fact that you supposedly love this person. Domestic batteries are doing this to someone. They profess their love. It's a human rights issue. Everybody in this room should be standing up against this.

 


[00:37:36.050] - Lisa McCarty

So I just felt like that couched the problem a little better, where we could just get the training done and make sure that the information was received versus these uncomfortable conversations or people feeling attacked.

 


[00:37:46.050] - Steve Morreale

So the civilianization of certain jobs, do you have a feeling about that? There seems to be a reticence or resistance in some places that the only people who can do jobs in police organizations are police officers, sworn officers. And yet there are certain things that most people don't want to do, and yet they resist because there's a union job being taken away. So your experience? I think we have to have a shift in mindset that there is room for people that are not sworn officers to provide services within organizations, police organizations.

 


[00:38:16.440] - Lisa McCarty

So I think I was with Leominster PD for three years. So like I said, walking through the door, it wasn't an open arms was a tough sell. And again, I get that change is hard for everybody, but what ended up happening so if police departments can get civilians in, they're going to understand. What Leominster did is that I made their jobs easier. I took a lot of the burden off of them because I was the one, if not me, who was going to do it? The detective bureau. They would do it, but they have other things to do. So I came in and said, I'm going to follow up with all these people. You want to give them my card instead of yours? Go ahead. I'm the expert. I'm the trained expert. You're an expert in responding to a crisis and tactical, how do how do you do it? What are the laws? Absolutely. But I know all the resources and referrals and how to get them somewhere.

 


[00:38:57.110] - Steve Morreale

Right. Part of it is what you're saying is you can hand that off to me, and I'll do the follow up, and you can continue to do the police work. You be the first responder. Let me do the follow up or let somebody do the follow up.

 


[00:39:06.280] - Lisa McCarty

Absolutely. Which took a lot off their plate, because you can't just ignore that a victim's calling an officer. Somebody has to respond to that person. So I think what I'm imagining, because I obviously have a lot of police officers coming through these doors, and with the mental health counselors and the substance abuse counselors, they're understanding that it's taking the police officers shouldn't have that. I mean, you can't put all of society's ills on the police officer's shoulders. They're the ones that see them. Yes, but they just certainly don't have the time, the skills. They just don't. So I think what I'm hearing from police officers that these mental health clinicians are providing an essential service that is allowing them to go to their next call. That's a policing issue that I can't handle for them. I really do think that we're coming into a place where we see it as a co response model, and we're not there to and again, there's obviously always been a trust issue between police and civilians. I think we're getting better at that. But I had to earn the trust of the offices at Lemons to BD. Like, I'm here to help you.

 


[00:40:04.420] - Lisa McCarty

I'm not out to get you.

 


[00:40:05.620] - Steve Morreale

Okay, so let's begin to wind down. What are some of the more difficult issues that you've had to tackle since you have been at Pittsburgh State to try to sustain this model?

 


[00:40:16.760] - Lisa McCarty

I tell everyone this. I think there was some pushback initially because and you can appreciate this I needed to create this model first and foremost, to be credible to the chiefs in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. If they didn't believe that this academy was credible and that there were good candidates coming out of here, I couldn't have done anything here. So that's why I instituted uniforms as soon as I could. I have monthly meetings with all the police students, mandatory monthly meetings for an hour and a half, where I bring police officers, chiefs. I give them the extras. How do you interview? How do you respond to a canine call? I bring Metro SWAT guys into it. So that's the extras. Right. I was like, I have to have these police trainings, and the faculty cannot come to them. This is my time with them. But I needed to do all of this so that it looked and felt to the chiefs, the hiring chiefs in Massachusetts, like any traditional academy, because there was that skepticism and I had to sort of ignore everything else that was going on because people were saying, they don't need to be in uniforms and they should be doing this.

 


[00:41:10.890] - Lisa McCarty

And I'm like, you have to just let me do this right now. And so fortunately, we have a lot of good recruits that left here, and hiring chiefs have hired enough of them to know that, okay, this is a really good program. They're really good candidates.

 


[00:41:22.170] - Steve Morreale

They've helped to build your brand and earn a reputation that is now well deserved.

 


[00:41:25.960] - Lisa McCarty

It was more important that I said, if I can't get these recruits hired, then this is all for nothing. But now I'm able to take a step back and sort of work in those out of the box thought that some of the administration, the faculty have which are well worth vetting, right? But the challenges are, these are 1819, 2021 year olds. Do they really know what they want to do? They get themselves in big trouble. And one of the hardest parts of my job is to decide, is this big enough to dismiss them from the program, or is this not so big? And I can continue to work with them because if they get dismissed from the police program, they stay in CJ, unless it's a huge university issue, which nine times out of ten, my rules are obviously more strict than the universities. So it's just deciding who can stay, who can leave, what's immaturity, what's a character flaw, not omnipotent. I can't see into the future. So in these young kids, I remember what it was like to be that young. I have dismissed kids from the program, and they're in tears, and they're like, My life is over.

 


[00:42:19.790] - Lisa McCarty

And I'm like, no, it's not. But that's not easy to tell a 19 or 20 year old. Like we said, a lot of them have a crisis of faith. I don't know if I want to do this anymore. And I have to sit with them and talk to them and say, I truly believe that the most good work you can do in this world is by being a police officer. Because you see everybody in every situation, they're like, I just want to help people. And I say, well, you're going to be able to do that as a police officer. I think we're past some of the challenges, but just where we are in this country with policing has made the program difficult too, as well.

 


[00:42:48.230] - Steve Morreale

So as an academy director, meeting with other academy directors, with the constant changes that are going on, you've got MPTC, you've got Mass post now and the changes and the regulations and such, what kind of discussion goes on? In those meetings about how to move the ball forward, how to modify training to meet the needs of society, how quick before you take something from idea to putting it in the classroom, if you have to modify?

 


[00:43:12.950] - Lisa McCarty

So it's interesting to talk to traditional academies because I like to hear what's different and the same about ours. And so they're experiencing some of the similar things that I am. Unfortunately, what's happening is recruits aren't as fit, and there is a PT test that you have to pass. So they're working on, what are our standards? How fit do we want police officers to be? Or recruits coming into the academy and sort of meeting these people where they're at? Right? We're at a different generation, this generation of 20 something year olds. They do text, they do email, they do online. So I think MPTC chief Perulo is doing a really good job of sort of meeting these recruits where they're at at the time without compromising the integrity of training. The training looks the way it looks for a reason, but MPTC is a strong, obviously, supporter, and they authorize our program and they've revamped their curriculum quite a few times in the past few years. And now with post, they're revamping it even more. I was talking to an academy director recently of a traditional academy, of an operated academy, and we have to do things differently.

 


[00:44:09.450] - Lisa McCarty

And you still have that old school thought of, why aren't they doing bear crawls on the pavement? And why aren't they doing front leaning rest for an hour? And you have to say, because their health and safety has to come first. Those days of risking an injury to a recruit is over. And that whole theory of breaking them down to build them up, that's gone. That didn't work. And again, it's that balance of you want to protect the integrity of training. It has to be hard for a reason. This is a hard and dangerous job. But how do you balance sort of the nuances of making sure that these officers have empathy and they know how to? What's the difference between dealing with someone with autism versus somebody that's bipolar? How do you deal with persons with disabilities? Because I'm sure when you were trained, it was like, everybody's the same and I have the power of rest. I'm arresting.

 


[00:44:52.790] - Steve Morreale

Right.

 


[00:44:53.070] - Lisa McCarty

How do we understand and that's why I think our program is really progressive, and so many people say this is the model of the future. Our students are sitting in human services classes, crisis intervention classes, interviewing abuse and neglect classes, psychic crime, and they understand the society that they're going into and that people have real problems, families have real problems. And just going in there and saying, I can arrest, so I will arrest is maybe not the best course of action.

 


[00:45:17.150] - Steve Morreale

The troubling thing is we keep piling more and more and more on with policing and insist that they become trained and become jacks of all trades and such. Yet you are constricted with time. Is there talk about expanding?

 


[00:45:30.180] - Lisa McCarty

They've actually shortened it because they realized and it's funny because now with Post, I think there's some more modules going in. They keep trying to shorten it, and it keeps sort of progressing. But I will say that what Post asked them to implement was already in there. And a lot of the trainings that police officers are getting, they'll tell you, we've already had this. Massachusetts does a really good job. That's why people take our academy everywhere. Most places across the country, 800 plus hours, we already the things that Post outlined, MPTC already implemented, we were doing. So I don't think it's going to get longer. I think we all realize that maybe a longer academy doesn't mean a better trained police officer. But what is important in that curriculum.

 


[00:46:07.410] - Steve Morreale

So, Lisa, let me throw this at you. One of the things that I'm espousing is and it comes from the UK in Ireland, that police officers do a whole bunch more reflection and training. And I think you do that on the academic campus in classes. But what I see them do with the garda is that go to the academy, come out, serve, come back, and now you've got experience, and now you're sitting and you're talking about, well, what happened? What did you know, how did your partner handle it? What did you see wrong? How would you do things differently? And I think that's extremely valuable. But it's pushed away in America because we don't want to reflect on ourselves. We don't want to see how we can fix things. We just go on to the next call. I see a little bit of a smirk and a smile from you.

 


[00:46:50.700] - Lisa McCarty

Reactive. Yes. So we want them to be proactive a little bit more. But I think we're trying to front load that in this program. And I'm bringing people in front of the students at these monthly meetings to talk about mindfulness and officer wellness. Chief Ed Denmark. He's retired now. He does a really good job with this mindfulness and sort of self-reflective and implicit bias and procedural, all of those things in one talking about, look at yourselves. So I'm hoping that by bringing these people I had Deputy Chief Palladino was coming out. She does a great module on Mindfulness. It's just our schedules didn't mesh, but I'm going to have her come out. So I'm trying to front load these young people so that hopefully, Steve, they will be self reflective and they will be able to recognize we all have a bias, whatever it is, reflect on what that is or what gets me upset, what gets me angry, what makes me lose my temper. Those are the things that I want them to be mindful of now and sort of work through. So a professor gave you a D, and you. Think you deserve an A.

 


[00:47:46.300] - Lisa McCarty

And you wrote a nasty email. What could you do differently next time? Because guess what? When you're a police officer, you're going to have to do a better job of dealing with your emotions. So I'm hoping that that reflection, because you're right. We train them. They go to an academy for 24 weeks, 50 strangers thrown together, and then they depart. And the academy class will stay somewhat close. But we don't know what's going on with those people. I am hoping that where we have this four years with them, that we are doing our best to not only physically prepare them, but mentally prepare them for the job.

 


[00:48:15.740] - Steve Morreale

Sounds like you do, because I think what you do and what we do collectively is plant seeds and hope some of them germinate, which is pretty neat. We've been talking to Lisa McCarthy. The last thing I will ask you is this. As somebody who has put most of their time and energy in a career in preparing people to become police officers, what do you say about the profession of policing? How do you suggest people look at it and consider it?

 


[00:48:40.660] - Lisa McCarty

It's hard for me because I have such a personal stake in this, because I think being a daughter of a police officer my dad was a lieutenant in a small town. He was called out at all hours of the night. And I talk about this sometimes in my academy graduation speech, and no one will understand the fear. I just think of my mother as his wife, what went through her head. I saw the sacrifices that my father made. I won an award in high school for outstanding acting in a play, and he wasn't there because he got called out on a case. He missed Christmases and holidays and weekends because he worked Saturdays. And I say in my speech, and I say this to people here all the time, because he was out protecting your family. He wasn't home with his family. My mother and me and my brother, we supported that. And I'm still so proud of him to this day. So I think that there's a disconnect with what people think police do and what they see on the news about what they think police do. And so I tell stories, right, because I think that's the only way.

 


[00:49:28.870] - Lisa McCarty

I'm not a cop, so I don't want to speak for cops. But I'll never forget when I was at the Boston Academy and I did in service, I ran the in service training for veteran police officers, and one of the modules was Defensive Tactics. My lead Defensive Tactics instructor came in. He was a Worcester police officer. He looked exhausted. And I said, what's up? And he said, oh, I got called out last night for a guy with a machete. And he said he was up in the attic, and we had to go up this ladder. We couldn't find him. We figured he was up in this attic. And I walked up ladder and he goes, I thought I was going to have to shoot him. Said that's how he started. He said, I almost had to shoot someone last night. And he told me the story, the guy's coming at him with a machete, and he was able to subdue him and take the weapon, but he so casually said to me, I almost had to shoot someone last night. And now he's here training for me. And I said, Don, you didn't have to come in today.

 


[00:50:12.940] - Lisa McCarty

I could have got someone else. He's like, I'm fine. That's not normal. He woke up from his family in the middle, and I got called out because he's on the SWAT team there and he almost had to kill somebody. I was talking to a Metro SWAT officer that teaches firearms for me, just casual conversations. These are and he got called out on Thanksgiving. He was frying a turkey, Metro SWAT call out. And he said, I told my wife I got to go. And he's like, I looked at my heart rate monitor. It was through the roof as I'm racing towards the call. And then it started to come down as I planned what I was. And I'm thinking that family on Thanksgiving was like, I hope to God he comes home after this call. So I try and really impart to people, these are good people doing really, really good things for your families and for the community. And yes, there's a small percentage, like in any profession of bad cops. Absolutely no one can deny that. But what these men and women are sacrificing is immeasurable in some respects. And I get angry about it, as you can tell.

 


[00:51:06.150] - Steve Morreale

Well, you're passionate, I think, and I appreciate that because we certainly need many more people like you in the world to support police and develop police and think about what you're doing and paying forward, which I think you should be very, very proud of. So thank you so much for sharing your insight, your input, and for the success of your program and for sharing this to the listeners all across the globe. Very much appreciate it. My best you, Lisa

 


[00:51:30.690] - Lisa McCarty

Steve, thank you so much for having me. I really, really appreciate it.

 


[00:51:32.750] - Steve Morreale

And the same here. I'm glad we finally connected. So that's another episode in the books. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with more episodes on The CopDoc Podcast. Steve Morreale from Boston. Take care.

 


[00:51:45.070] - Outro

Thanks for listening to The CopDoc Podcast with Dr. Steve Morreale. Steve is a retired law enforcement practitioner and manager turned academic and scholar from Worcester State University. Please tune into The CopDoc Podcast for regular episodes of interviews with thought leaders in policing.

 

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