TCD Podcast: Jon DeLena, Drug Enforcement Administration - Ep34

Jon DeLena serves as the Associate Special Agent in Charge for the New England Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration.  A former Collier County, Florida Deputy Sheriff, John has served in Colorado, Florida, Washington, D.C. at DEA Headquarters and New Hampshire , and traveled around the world.  

Associate SAC DeLena is originally from Revere, Massachusetts, and has more than 30 years of law enforcement experience.   He has traveled the world and has been successful in countless large-scale drug cases.  He spoke with us about the difference between local and federal law enforcement.  We talked about leadership and recruiting, agent wellness, and work-life balance.

We also chatted about the deadly rise in fentanyl distribution.

Jon earned his Bachelor's Degree from the University of South Florida, and a Master's Degree  in Executive Leadership from Champlain College.   

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

Transcript

[00:00:02.490] - Speaker Intro

Welcome to The CopDoc Podcast. This podcast explores police leadership issues and innovative ideas, The CopDoc Podcast 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.

[00:00:32.020] - Steve Morreale

Hello, everybody, again, Steve Morreale from Boston, and you're listening to The CopDoc Podcast, welcome to Jon DeLena who is talking to me out of New Hampshire. Good morning, John.

[00:00:42.580] - Jon DeLena

Good morning, Doctor Steve. Thank you for having me on.

[00:00:44.860] - Steve Morreale

Steve is going to be fine. Glad to have you. A colleague from an agency that I spent 20 years with the DEA. But I think it's so important to be able to chat with you. Who is active. You are the associate special agent in charge of DEA in New England. So I'd like you to tell the audience about your path to DEA, beginning with college and where you're from. And let's learn a little bit about you.

[00:01:06.940] - Jon DeLena

Well, thank you. Yes. So I'm a kid that grew up locally in Revere, Massachusetts, and at some point decided I needed to sort of break away and sort of shake loose from the community that I was raised in. And I was raised in community and in a home that was filled with addiction. So I loaded up what was then my 1983 Cutlass Supreme and took as many meatball subs as my mother could possibly pack for me. And I drove to Tampa, Florida, sight unseen, and I went down there to attend the University of South Florida and its beautiful Tampa campus fell in love with Florida.

[00:01:41.690] - Jon DeLena

I stayed there through summers and in my senior year I was a sociology major with a passion for law enforcement. I was trying to figure out how I could get hired and where I could get hired. And it was very challenging at the time. There was a lot of hiring freezes on. They wouldn't even take applications. So what I had found through an internship that I was doing my senior year doing an internship and I was doing some right along with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, I had some people who were trying to help me and they said, you need to get yourself certified.

[00:02:10.120] - Jon DeLena

And I didn't know what that meant.

[00:02:11.740] - Steve Morreale

But not certifiable.

[00:02:13.420] - Jon DeLena

Not certifiable.

[00:02:14.350] - Jon DeLena

Just certified, not certifiable. Exactly. So I needed to find a police academy that would take you without a patch from an agency and you had to pay your own way. And I had no money, which was typical of most of my college career. And they explained to me that there was an option to receive some sort of a grant to write an essay and actually wrote an essay. And I got sponsored by a bank in Sarasota, Florida, to attend the police academy in Sarasota, actually drove it was from 12 to eight where the hours and that worked for me because I was living in Tampa.

[00:02:44.920] - Jon DeLena

So it was quite a commute. And I drove every day and I put myself through the police account. And about three quarters of the way through, I had started putting some applications in with people that would accept them because I was in an academy and I received an offer from the Collier County Sheriff's Office.

[00:02:59.410] - Steve Morreale

Great area. Naples, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:03:02.440] - Jon DeLena

And and it's another it was really another adventure for me because I had never even been there. This was for your students and everyone listening again pre-Internet. Can't go on and take a look at what any of this place looked like. So I accepted the job and graduated the police academy and loaded up my little belongings. And I moved to Naples and started with the Collier County Sheriff's Office. I had a great experience there. I was there for a little over four years.

[00:03:25.270] - Jon DeLena

Former DEA ASAC and his name was Jack Lloyd recently passed away and he was a great mentor to me. He was a great man and he took the time to sort of recruit me and help me with the process. And ultimately I was hired from there. But as a young, young deputy sheriff in Collier County, I had a passion for working drug cases. And I helped out the narcotics unit a lot when I was on the road. And then they started asking me if I had any interest in doing any undercover work, which of course, I jumped at the opportunity and I did a lot of that for them and eventually got promoted into the unit in my last year and then got the job offer from DEA.

[00:04:02.590] - Steve Morreale

So was Alligator Alley there?

[00:04:04.630] - Jon DeLena

Yeah, it was a straight shot,

[00:04:06.190] - Steve Morreale

That straight shot from east to west. Right. And that was back before there was even a median. It was just two lane with a lot of horrific crashes and everything else. And as a young police officer, a young deputy sheriff and I actually was assigned to the Immokalee District. So I was about forty miles outside of Naples in a migrant town that was filled with crack cocaine. A lot of sex trafficking even back then, and a lot of violence.

[00:04:30.430] - Jon DeLena

There was a lot of robberies that occurred of the migrants were traveling, the crops working as the crops came in and out, these migrant farmers would come in and leave. And there was just a ton of crime associated with it. I learned

[00:04:41.980] - Steve Morreale

There's a lot cash there, right. It's a lot of cash. Nobody's putting that money in the bank. Right.

[00:04:45.700] - Jon DeLena

Whatever they whatever cash they had in their life they had on their person. Right. And there was a lot of opportunistic robbers who would come in and would just jack those people up. And we'd have a lot of victims of violent crime. There was no phones, no cell phones, obviously, back then. So you'd get an unverified 911 one from a from one of the two phone banks of pay phones in town. And usually there was a language barrier because they were either Haitian descent, Guatemalan descent.

[00:05:11.350] - Jon DeLena

And it would be very difficult. You learned a lot at a young age about responsibility, being able to handle a situation appropriately that could very quickly get out of hand. I saw a lot. And really, I think that was the beginning of what set me on the path of what I was most interested in, what I wanted to be in law enforcement.

[00:05:28.210] - Steve Morreale

Well, you know, as you're talking, there's so much similarity because. Like yourself, I got out of the army. I came back and, and I left Massachusetts and went to New Hampshire to become a police officer. And it's that period of time that I presume you and I were local police officers that made me understand how important it was as a DEA agent to work with the local authorities. I mean, extremely important. I think DEA does a great job of all the agencies and DEA does a great job of taking advantage of pairing up with local and state authorities.

[00:05:58.820] - Steve Morreale

Is that a fair statement?

[00:05:59.810] - Jon DeLena

Well, not only is it fair, but that's really the one thing that's been consistent in the 30 years that I've been doing this that hasn't changed. A lot has changed in law enforcement. A lot has changed in communities and the way we approach policing. The one thing that hasn't changed is the fact that we have to work together in order to be successful. And that concept, I learned that as a young police officer throughout my career with DEA, where I excelled I think the most was in the task force setting and being able to leverage those relationships and build those relationships and let people know that I could be counted upon.

[00:06:32.570] - Jon DeLena

And that's how you grow the team, and that's where we've had, you know, where I've had and experienced the most success.

[00:06:37.450] - Steve Morreale

So I'm going to assume that you had similar experience in some cases that I would, because those who are federal agents who were not local police officers sometimes have a tendency at first to look down on them because you're a Fed and you have an awful lot of autonomy understanding that. But I know that I had many conversations, I presume you did, to say, hey, we're partners, don't look down on them, we're partners. And once you have that conversation with people, I think it things gel.

[00:07:03.500] - Steve Morreale

I saw you shaking your head. You've had that experience. Absolutely. And I sure as you're explaining it, you're thinking of 15 of those conversations you had as I was. And sometimes it takes something to have the light go off in your partner's head to realize how important those partnerships are. We can't do it alone. And now, more than ever, I mean, you know, like I said, I started this and just celebrated my twenty-fifth anniversary with DEA.

[00:07:27.650] - Jon DeLena

So you add on the four plus years before that, it's almost 30 years in law enforcement now more than ever in this country. We have to work together and DEA and our goals here are obviously to make the biggest cases and attack those command and control elements that are impacting all of our communities. And I say this all the time, we can't possibly begin to connect the dots until we collect all the dots. And the way we collect those dots is by working with all of our partners and trying to put all those pieces of the puzzle together.

[00:07:55.460] - Steve Morreale

You know, an interesting I remember I guess my favorite bosses called me in in Newark and said, Steve, I want you to go out to Elizabeth and I want you to make a case. And that was my direction. That's it. That's it. Just go and find, you know, find out, well, who do I work with? We'll just go there and find out. Start with the Elizabeth Police Department. The next thing you know, we're putting this little task force together.

[00:08:13.100] - Steve Morreale

And it was without question, first of all, the might of of the federal agency, the might of and power of of federal law and certainly the funds that we could bring in. But how can you walk into a community, DEA, the FBI, ATF, and know that community without bringing those community partners in? Again, you're shaking your head. That's the way we get to know it. You walk in and you say, who's your biggest pain in the ass and what can we do to help you?

[00:08:37.160] - Steve Morreale

Go ahead.

[00:08:37.550] - Jon DeLena

I got to tell you, as you started that in explaining when you were told to go take on that assignment, I love that. I've experienced that. And even now as a leader, I've said that to you, put together your heavy hitters and you say this is where the problem is. Go over there and figure it out. And we do that really well. And a lot of times it goes without saying. But I think to somebody that's new to the game, new to DEA, that might be a little bit overwhelming.

[00:09:00.860] - Jon DeLena

What do you mean? You want me to go into this community and figure it out? We build upon those relationships. I truly believe that is the most important thing. And it's what sets us aside. I think I think DEA without disparaging anybody else, the DEA, the reputation of doing the  at better than anybody else.

[00:09:15.500] - Steve Morreale

I'm an avid supporter, as you can see. And as we're talking, I'm going back in time. I'm getting tingles because it's what it's what drove me. It's what satisfied me and satiated me to be able to go there and make a difference. And so we have gone through - DEA. I say I'm no longer with the DEA has gone through its ups and downs and I'm not talking about the negative things, but I think that when 9/11 happened, we kind of got pushed aside.

[00:09:41.630] - Steve Morreale

Drugs weren't so important. Terrorism was real important. And yet I happen to know that it's one of our people, one of our own helped us solve the Pan Am crash because of cities that were developed in France. And we do that. I'm sorry DEA does that so many times. Talk about the job. And I guess what I failed to ask was, where have you been assigned with DEA?

[00:10:05.150] - Jon DeLena

In 1996, I went to the academy in Quantico and my first assignment was Glenwood Springs, Colorado, another place I had never been.

[00:10:15.650] - Jon DeLena

The assignments were made available and I was sort of people were fighting over certain places and that left a lot of uncertainty. I just wanted to pick a place that I knew I could go to again. No Internet can't go on and even look at housing or anything like that. But I took a shot. I went there and that office went through some transition and I was there for a short time and I got sent to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which to me was was the great greatest opportunity I could have had.

[00:10:40.910] - Jon DeLena

I loved working cases in Fort Lauderdale. I think for us, some of the biggest cases in South Florida, while we had an office in Miami, Fort Lauderdale had a history within DEA and the Miami Field Division of being some of the bigger cases. And I remember first being assigned there, hitting the ground and they had a wiretap case going with Port Everglades. Some employees from Port Everglades cargo containers were coming in with massive amounts of cocaine. There was a money laundering case that was going on.

[00:11:08.480] - Jon DeLena

And to me, it was just I couldn't have been in a better place. So I spent a great deal of time there. I built phenomenal relationships there. I started to learn a lot about leadership there. I learned from people who I who I wanted to emulate either state and local police supervisors who I thought did it really well, DEA supervisors who I thought did it really well. I also learned from a lot of people that I promised myself I would never do that.

[00:11:30.530] - Steve Morreale

By the way, that we're talking to Jon DeLena, the Associate Special Agent in Charge of DEA in New England, and he's in Manchester, New Hampshire today or the Manchester office. It is interesting that I think and when I do teach and when I do training, I'm always asking people who are in front of me, think about your best boss and your worst boss. And right down the way they treated people, the way they treated you. And when you begin to talk about that and then talk with each other, you realize we all work for the same asshole at one point in time.

[00:11:56.360] - Steve Morreale

Right. But what becomes important is exactly what you say. Who is it? How are you going to customize the approach that you'll take when you're a leader? And who are you going to emulate? How are you going to make that happen? When you became a supervisor, I suppose you went to a training as I did. Correct. And at what point in time, Jon, did you realize as you were trying to figure all of this stuff out, you're now no longer responsible for only yourself, you're responsible for several people, and somebody above you is driving you and your group to become productive and to have results.

[00:12:28.970] - Steve Morreale

When did you realize the difference between the subtle difference between managing and leading?

[00:12:33.620] - Jon DeLena

Yeah, I tell you, I think that happened pretty quickly. I was promoted to a group supervisor in West Palm Beach. Again, another very busy office for us, surprisingly so. Big cases with big agents that were making big cases, but also problem. I had some people that were problem employees that got in trouble that I had to deal with some things pretty quickly. I went through a changeover in who my boss was. I went from one ASAC that maybe looked at things a lot more aggressively in terms of enforcement to one that was at the end of his career and looked at things a little bit differently.

[00:13:05.630] - Jon DeLena

I had to sort of manage that as well, keep the workers working. And my thing was always to sort of break down any barriers, any hurdles that they had so that they can continue. The men and women in the group could continue to just do the work to not let them get bogged down with all of the nonsense. And there's always nonsense. And being in an outlying office of DEA at the time and my direct supervisor sat in a different part of Florida back then, it was fax machine.

[00:13:32.780] - Jon DeLena

So we'd have an operational plan, you'd have to send a fax down and you'd have to wait for that person to see it, review it and send it back. And sometimes, as you know, this is a very fluid enforcement game that we have and sometimes. Well, and the people in the field are saying, what's the deal, John? What's the deal?

[00:13:48.410] - Jon DeLena

Absolutely. My goal was always to when it came to that stuff is to find a way to expedite it, do it safely, obviously, but try to break down any of those hurdles and have that communication back and forth. And sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I learned a lot, again, just in that short time, almost six years, I guess, as a first line supervisor. But like I said, there's some cases there that I feel so proud of as some of the biggest cases that we've been involved with.

[00:14:12.230] - Jon DeLena

And we suffered some tragedy there as well. We had an employee who lost a husband who was also on the job that was very difficult, very difficult for the group to manage. It taught me, again, a lot about leadership, put me in a position that I had never been in. But I had some agents who were in trouble, who did some things that they weren't supposed to, and to maneuver those waters were difficult as well. But I think, again, I don't know if I realized it at the time, but it was all setting me up for success as I continued, because I'm able to pull from a lot of those experience.

[00:14:40.320] - Steve Morreale

Well, some of the things that I'm hearing you say to it's about humanity and about knowing your people, watching for signs that there's some stress that they're having some issues and maybe they need to kind of stand down a little bit and not overuse them, because DEA agents are for the most part, as you and I know, our type A personalities in many cases. And they want to produce, they want to go. They don't like necessarily be managed.

[00:15:01.370] - Steve Morreale

And I want to talk a little bit about that. But what I liked what you said is keep workers working and not worry about the outside noise. In a lot of ways, the first-line supervisor in my mind is a blocking back. You're not the quarterback. You're a blocking back. You're blocking people who are trying to do the job from people, interfering from them, from outside and inside their statement.

[00:15:21.110] - Jon DeLena

Absolutely. And started to hit on something. And I think really what I've become most interested most recently in the thing that I focused most on. From my time as an ASAC and now becoming an SES, DEA is a very challenging job, particularly for the agent. There's always something that as an agent you're striving for, whether you're trying to get the next grade, the cases never end. They run from one into the other. It's very difficult to have any work-life balance on this job.

[00:15:48.730] - Jon DeLena

And it's something that recently I've spent a lot of time and been taking some training. I finished my master's degree finally after graduation.

[00:15:56.440] - Jon DeLena

That's a lot. That's hard to do while you're doing this job. Where did you go?

[00:15:59.740] - Jon DeLena

Where did you go

[00:16:00.160] - Jon DeLena

So Champlain College?

[00:16:01.630] - Steve Morreale

Oh, yeah, up in Burlington.

[00:16:04.390] - Jon DeLena

With a master of science and executive leadership. So I really dug into a lot of the leadership principles and was able to look back on a lot of my experiences. And I recall mostly in this office in particular, where I spent a lot of time as there was a lot of young, super-aggressive agents who were home run hitters. But I would see them here.

[00:16:22.390] - Jon DeLena

I'd come early and they'd be here. I'd stay late and they'd still be here. I'd pop in on a weekend and they were here. And I started to think a lot about just how difficult it is when you're a young employee to have a work life balance. It's very difficult. The cases never end. You never get to turn your phone off. Or when you and I were young agents, it was the people you had to always answer, which is a good thing at how you become a good agent and how you become known as being a reliable agent.

[00:16:45.400] - Jon DeLena

But in the meantime, marriages suffer. You don't get to the Little League games, you don't get to the dance recitals. And that's very, very difficult. It has to be there has to be a way for the younger employees to strike some balance for the health of those employees. So that's something that personally I've tried to focus on and have a lot of conversations personally. And as you remember, when you're the SAC or the Associate SAC, which is new to New England.

[00:17:07.600] - Jon DeLena

But my time in Miami, when you're an agent, you never even had a conversation with the SAC or the Associate SAC and you ran the other way if you saw them coming down the hallway. And I think we've tried to really change that, particularly here in New England, and get out and spend some time in the groups and talk to people, talk to the contractors, the admin people, task force officers and the agents and intel diversion and get to know them a little bit.

[00:17:29.530] - Jon DeLena

And you have to mean it.

[00:17:31.090] - Steve Morreale

You have to be authentic.

[00:17:32.230] - Jon DeLena

You talked about supervisors that you remember one of my favorite ones was somebody in headquarters. And I couldn't figure out how he learned my kids names in the first day. And four years after that, he'd recalled their names and ask how they were doing and sort of could tell what grade they'd be in and everything else. And that was authenticity. He was truly authentic when he did that.

[00:17:51.190] - Jon DeLena

Now, there's a lot of other people that were not nearly as authentic, and you could smell that a mile away and think that's something that we need to bring to the forefront of what we're doing in something here in New England. That some changes that we're trying to make is we want a especially in the group supervisor. You have to be approachable and you have to really get to know your employees.

[00:18:07.930] - Steve Morreale

Well, OK, so I want to talk about that because that's terrific as we're talking about authenticity and knowing your people no longer, I think, can we survive by being in a bubble, in a vacuum where we're asking others. I know this is this really causes some problems with those who work for you because you're reaching down to their people. But if I think if you can create the understanding that, look, this is what I want, I want first-hand knowledge so I can help make decisions.

[00:18:31.660] - Steve Morreale

I'm not trying to step on your toes. But also what I'm hearing, John, is that DEA is beginning to focus on wellness. It's a big thing in policing, but to make sure that the players, the things that DEA agents see, the blight of communities and the devastation from drug addiction and such, I think that's really important. So as you now are mentoring new ASACs, what are the conversations you're having with them in terms of setting your expectations and helping them come up with their own approach to leading?

[00:19:03.430] - Jon DeLena

Well, that's a great question. And let me go to something you touched upon, which is the blight of those communities. And for me, coming back here to where I grew up, it changed my perspective, came here as an attack first, and now it's been about been eight years. But when I first came back, it was the first time in my adult life I was back in New England and to see at the time the devastation that the opioid crisis was having on these communities.

[00:19:27.850] - Jon DeLena

And I was connecting back with people who I hadn't seen in twenty, twenty-five years. I was never a Facebook guy, so I never really had connections with people. And I reconnected with some people even from high school. And I learned of overdose deaths that kids that I went to school with and people in my family and some of the stories and it became a little more personal to me, I think for a long time, particularly when I was in Florida, it was more of line them up and knock them down and move on to the next one.

[00:19:52.870] - Jon DeLena

But when I came back, here is the exact and to truly see just how devastating this thing was, it was a little more personal to me. So I had that conversation with the ASX and I explained to them that they truly have to understand and listen to the people of this community that are suffering. For the most part, we're lucky here in New England because the ASACs that I do supervise for the most part, are all from New England.

[00:20:14.830] - Jon DeLena

So they do have that connection.

[00:20:16.270] - Steve Morreale

I've got to say this job that there's something about New England, it's almost like we have a magnet. We want to come back until it's raining and it's snowy. And I think, what the hell am I know? What am I doing here, having known Florida or. Colorado or all of those kinds of things, but it's interesting that people really want to gravitate back, that's where they want to make their final stop. But I'm not sure why.

[00:20:37.480] - Steve Morreale

But but it's beneficial to go and get information. This is what I think so many people who have not been federal agents may not understand, and that is that we, the DEA, FBI, don't normally want to send you back where you came from. We want you to get a more well-rounded view before you come back. Do you see benefit in that?

[00:20:54.220] - Jon DeLena

I do. And the path when you get promoted and DEA, eventually you have to do a tour through DEA headquarters. I, along with everybody else, did not want to go to DEA headquarters, went there, reluctantly, went there kicking and screaming. I probably learned more about DEA in the time that I was there than I have in my whole career because I really, truly understood the worldwide reach of the agency and was able to see it at a much higher level.

[00:21:17.470] - Jon DeLena

What we're doing and how it's affecting not only communities at the local level, how it's affecting the United States of America and the impact that we have in the foreign arena. I was assigned to a section in headquarters that I never even heard of, and I was in charge of the SIU programs around the world. So our foreign vetted units, our foreign law enforcement partners that we work with very closely hand in hand. Again, DEA does it better than anybody else where the gold standard when it comes to those I use and I was able to travel and see parts of the world, including Afghanistan, twice that I never thought I would ever experience in my life.

[00:21:49.420] - Jon DeLena

So I was able to see that global reach that we have. And it really does help you when you come back. And I think the one challenge of New England and you talked about it as people get here and they don't want to leave, they don't get to experience what it's like to be in a Miami field division and L.A. Field Division or even in the Midwest somewhere where things are a little bit different. And if you don't get to go to DEA headquarters, you don't experience that.

[00:22:10.300] - Jon DeLena

So you asked about what my conversations are with the ASACs, first and foremost. I want to completely disrupt the way that the ASACs have done business here, which is from their inbox. That's the most important thing that they can understand their job. What they're getting paid to do is not in that inbox. They have to get out and they have to get to know their groups. Just yesterday, I had a conversation with one of the newer ASACs. You have to know the makeup of your groups, because when you're approving an operational plan for a simple buy-bust in a parking lot that changes exponentially from group to group, you have to know tactically how one group is equipped versus another group.

[00:22:45.370] - Jon DeLena

And you have to get to know your people. You have to get to know the problems and be there to elevate them when they need it, be there to offer support when they need it and be there to give them a kick in the ass if they need that too. But if you're not there and if you're in your inbox all day, you're never going to see or hear or experience any of that. And I got to tell you that a little bit disruptive, because that's not the way things have always been done here.

[00:23:06.790] - Jon DeLena

But I, along with the SAC of the division, firmly believe that that's the best way for us to do this. We have a lot of outlying offices and we have some of the control just sitting at the John F. Kennedy federal building in Boston. They need to get out and they need to spend some time. And the successes that we've seen over the last three years especially, have been because of that. I did it here when I was in Manchester, but I covered Maine and Vermont as well.

[00:23:30.700] - Jon DeLena

You have to get in your car. You have to go up there. So when you're responding to a critical incident, as I did in Vermont on a snowy evening after a shooting incident, it's not the first time that you're meeting with your local law enforcement partners.

[00:23:42.610] - Steve Morreale

I'm going to interrupt you just because I'm hearing what you're saying. I did exactly the same thing. You cannot do it from your office. And you have to know your people and you have to make yourself available and you have to be approachable. And that's very, very important and sort of drive the conversation. Do you find that when you're having staff meetings that you are leading through questions by posing questions and asking them to think from a different it sounds like you're already in that, got that angle covered already. I see your head shaking. What does that mean to you to draw people into the conversation at a staff meeting?

[00:24:14.890] - Jon DeLena

Well, there's nothing more important, right? I don't want to go in there and lecture. That's your job as a professor to lecture people.

[00:24:21.550] - Steve Morreale

I facilitate!

[00:24:21.550] 

I can tell you, I can tell you that, you know, DEA divisions have management conferences. We change that three years ago to a leadership conference, actually try to change the verbiage as people use it. I want it to be a leadership conference. I want people at the 14 and 15 level, the group supervisor and level to have some input in what we're going to talk about at the leadership conference.

[00:24:43.390] - Jon DeLena

So we start months before trying to put together an agenda and make it one that's valuable and adds value. Everything we do every day, no matter what section you're in, no matter where you are, you have to find ways to add value. That's the most important thing. And as you know, when we do these operations, you know, you might have ten agents in a group of men and women who are either DEA special agents, an agent from another federal agency or a task force officer, and they're led by a group supervisor.

[00:25:06.940] - Jon DeLena

Not everybody's the case agent. Not everybody's the undercover somebody is going to get the worst possible assignment that there is and is going to get stuck sitting in their car with the engine off because you can't show that the car is running and you might have the eyeball and you might be stuck there for 12 hours. And you're going to make do you might be the person that has to drive the prisoners, pick them up first thing in the morning. But it doesn't work if everybody doesn't do that.

[00:25:29.830] - Jon DeLena

To find a way that starts with the group supervisor to build that team concept, I think unlike probably any other job, the groups themselves aligned so well with sports. I think I see that correlation all the time. If you've played any sort of sports, any competitive sports, you understand how the team has to operate. DEA is exactly like that. You have to have somebody's going to bat ninth, somebody's is going to play right field. It doesn't work if you don't have that and somebody has to sit on the bench ready to go in.

[00:25:56.290] - Jon DeLena

And that's how we operate. And that's that's how the machine works.

[00:25:59.350] - Steve Morreale

That's a great analogy. And I and you're absolutely right. What I do in classes that it is I ask people, even in sergeant classes, think about your chickenshit job, that job you first had, it was not going to be a career. What did you learn from that? You learn how to deal with difficult bosses, difficult customers, doing some of the dirty work, cleaning the bathroom, those kinds of things. And I think that that translates into what you're suggesting at DEA.

[00:26:22.480] - Steve Morreale

I'm gratified to hear because at one point in time that was not the way DEA was managed. It was top-down. It was don't come to me with a problem. I don't want to hear it. And I'm only calling you in when you're in the shits as opposed to let's get to know you before. Let's help you think a little bit better, let's help you develop your judgment, Let's help you feel more creative in solving problems. And to me, I'm so glad to be able to talk with you about this.

[00:26:48.790] - Steve Morreale

So we talked about leadership and some of the changes in the way you as executives are approaching relationships both inside and outside. But ultimately, the mission of DEA is to try to stem the tide, fentanyl and opioids. And you've got to scratch your head. I knew we were enforcing marijuana laws and now it's taken a backseat. Not so important. So many states have decriminalized it and we've had to modify. But there's so many drugs out there from cocaine to heroin to fentanyl and designer drugs and such.

[00:27:20.440] - Steve Morreale

Talk about how to keep all those balls up in the air instead of just focusing on one particular drug that we have to have our focus on many drugs that are impacting the community. Talk about that, John.

[00:27:31.120] - Jon DeLena

Yeah, I mean, first of all, the case is sort of drive what direction you go. And I remember during my time in Florida where Columbia and organizations and cocaine really ruled the world, and at the early onset it was a thousand kilo cases coming in at the port. I mean, just amount's like you've never seen before. But when the opioid epidemic and it hit South Florida first, where truly where doctor shopping in these clinics popped up everywhere.

[00:27:57.490] - Jon DeLena

I was running a group there. And you truly couldn't do anything other than those cases for some time, because once you got into one, as you know, started working your informant base and a cooperator, and next thing you know, we'd be like two straight months of at the time, working OxyContin pill by bus. And as a leader of the group, I would sit back and say, like, I don't even know how we got here and what happened to the Colombian cocaine cases.

[00:28:21.730] - Jon DeLena

But, you know, it was exploding. I never could have predicted then that that was really going to be the genesis for what took over our entire country. And it really did. And you can look back now and on any of these programs at night, they're doing specials on some of those clinics that happened when I come here after my tenure at headquarters. And it was heroin at the time. And I remember thinking as a kid that grew up and saw addiction and I understood that, particularly in New England, that prescription pills were sort of accepted in this area.

[00:28:50.950] - Jon DeLena

People grew up around that. People ask me all the time why, I don't know. It's blue collar, hard working town. Somehow it just it just was OK. And then with the onslaught of the overprescribing that happened, then all the other bad practices that went along with it, this thing took off. And eventually one of two things happens when you're messing around with those prescription pills. Either we enforce our way out of the problem, meaning they can't find those pills on the street anymore.

[00:29:14.200] - Jon DeLena

Or more likely, the truth is what happens. They can't afford them anymore. Those pills become too expensive. And that's where drug traffickers truly are at their best because they know that day is going to come and they make sure that they're right around the corner when that happens. So when I talk to people that are battling addiction and either at the beginning of it, the middle of it, or come out of it, somehow they all have the same story.

[00:29:33.460] - Jon DeLena

They all say they never, ever intended to put a needle in their arm. They promised their mother, their wife, their girlfriend, their children or God that they would never, ever do that until that day when they can't find those pills or whatever they were using before. And the situation is so strong.

[00:29:48.210] - Steve Morreale

They're chasing the high.

[00:29:49.120] - Jon DeLena

And they're chasing it. And there is that local friendly drug dealer say just try this one time. That's how heroin sort of really took off here.

[00:29:56.110] - Jon DeLena

And then fentanyl changed the landscape of everything. And it really hit New Hampshire, first in Massachusetts and New England before anywhere else in the country. These that the cartels started using chemicals that they were getting from China and they started manufacturing in labs, illicitly manufactured fentanyl, and it was stronger than anything they'd ever seen. Initially, most of the drug traffickers locally didn't even know what it was. They knew that they were told to add it to the heroin.

[00:30:19.390] - Jon DeLena

They quickly figured out on their own that the stuff they were adding was stronger than the heroin. So on their own, they flip flopped the recipe. So they started using mostly fentanyl with a little bit of heroin and. Quite frankly, that's when they killed everybody. It was just too strong and they were putting it out into two Potente of a form. So they've since then, they've tried to they've tried and people will ask the question all the time, why would anybody create a product that would kill off their customer base?

[00:30:44.700] - Jon DeLena

And the answer to that question is they truly don't intend to kill everybody. They want to addict everybody. And quite frankly, they don't care how many people they kill. The CDC put out numbers that ninety thousand Americans died last year of a drug overdose, the most we've ever seen. We'll never reach a number in this country that will cause the drug traffickers, the cartels to say, let's stop what we're doing. They're never going to be set back by that.

[00:31:06.720] - Jon DeLena

They're driven by greed and their goal is to addict everybody. And that's why the newest trend and again, you talked about how do we move from one drug to the next. The newest trend is now they're starting to encapsulate and put fentanyl in pill form and make it look identical to a pharmaceutical grade pill. So if you're buying pills on the street right now, if you're buying a Xanax and hydrocodone and OxyContin or Percocet, there's a very strong likelihood that those pills were made in a lab somewhere and they're made with nothing but fentanyl.

[00:31:32.130] - Speaker 3

We're seeing and seizing those pills all throughout the country right now in numbers like we've never seen before. And here's what's most troubling to me. And this is something that's more troubling to me than the way the fentanyl epidemic has exploded in this country. The cartels are now manufacturing pills to look like an Adderall made with nothing but crystal methamphetamine inside it. Now, who uses and abuses Adderall in this country? Children, college age kids, high school kids and middle school kids.

[00:31:57.570] - Jon DeLena

So this is truly an attempt by the cartels to addict the youngest generation. In my opinion, they have taken the gloves off. They're coming after the kids. We need to do a better job of getting messaging out there about these dangers. I've spoken to groups of kids just like I know you have. There are kids who think that Adderall makes you smarter and makes you a better athlete, makes you faster. None of that is exactly true. There's a legitimate need for it.

[00:32:22.050] - Jon DeLena

It is prescribed legitimately to people that need it and use it appropriately. But it's also widely abused by people who don't know the full ramifications. And this is where the cartels, once again, they seize upon that. They have an opportunity. We're seizing those pills right now every single day throughout New England in amounts that are just truly disturbing to me.

[00:32:40.560] - Steve Morreale

And this is New England. I see behind you a sign that says the 360 strategy and DEA has gone through an evolution and is constantly trying to do things I'm sure I know to disrupt and interdict. What's the 360 strategy? How do you sell that?

[00:32:55.530] - Jon DeLena

And this is something that personally I've been involved with and very passionate about is I think we need to do more. I think the cases that we make are so important and it has to remain that we're making those investigations at the highest level. But I also think that with our title, we can get people to listen. And I've seen that here in New Hampshire. If we can reach out and elevate prevention in this country, there's already efforts to increase treatment.

[00:33:18.540] - Jon DeLena

But prevention and education or something that we really have to get engaged with and involved with prevention today is much different than when I was a kid. It's no longer coloring books and stickers. You have to have hard and fast conversations with young people younger than ever before about the dangers of these drugs. And I'll tell you, twenty, seventeen. We hosted the nation's first ever youth opioid summit. We did it here in New Hampshire. We partnered with the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation and we brought eighty five hundred New Hampshire kids into an arena and live streamed it to over thirty five thousand other kids.

[00:33:48.120] - Jon DeLena

And we talked about how to inform them, how to empower them to be upstander and not bystanders in this thing. And young people today are more engaged than ever. They want to be part of the solution. They're telling us, don't just tell us not to do drugs. Explain to us the why. Explain to us what's going on and let us be part of that. And the thing that I'm most proud of is that you kids that were engaged with us in twenty seventeen are still involved with us now.

[00:34:10.020] - Jon DeLena

In fact, one of them sitting outside this room as an intern in our intel program. That's great. She was she was a young girl that was sitting in the audience that day as a senior from Bedford High. And this is the path she's chosen. We need to do more of that. But prevention is a long term solution to a problem that you and I want solved tomorrow. And that was a little bit difficult for me in the beginning to wrap my head around.

[00:34:31.140] - Jon DeLena

We like to fix things, prevention's, a long-term solution. But you have to sow those seeds of prevention now in hopes that the young people that we're talking to three years, five years and beyond can make a healthy, informed decision.

[00:34:42.600] - Steve Morreale

Well, what I'm hearing and you're talking to an old  Demand Reduction Coordinator for DEA, so prevention was all about it. And we're only 20 of a country at the time. And so it changed my perspective. I think that's important. But what I'm hearing that is different from my time a DEA is the pills and the fact that they are basically disguising very, very potent drugs to look like a pharmaceutical drug. And that's troubling to me,

[00:35:05.070] - Jon DeLena

Steve, it truly is the thing that I mean, I just have a chip on my shoulder about it because they're seizing upon the misinformation and sort of the misguided opinion of a lot of people. There's a lot of people that think right now, with all the coverage that the drug crisis has had around the country over the last five years, there's a lot of people that think they're completely immune from this crisis because they're not using a syringe and they're not using a bag of white powder, they don't understand that the cartels fully recognize that, so what they've done is they put it in a mechanism, the pill form. And I tell you, they are identical to a pharmaceutical-grade pill. We can't tell the most seasoned DEA investigator can't tell just by simply looking at it. Isn't until we get it to the lab that we get that analysis back, that we find out, oh, it's fentanyl or now it's crystal methamphetamine.

[00:35:51.690] - Jon DeLena

In fact, the DEA Lab is recently put out numbers that said one in four of the pills that we've been submitting for analysis contains a lethal dose. One in four has a lethal amount of fentanyl inside it. And that is why getting that education a message out there to people that think, oh, I'm just taking a Xanax, that's all I'm taking. And again, the traffickers at the local level, they understand this better than anybody. They understand marketing.

[00:36:15.300] - Jon DeLena

And now if they're selling those fake Adderall or crystal meth in them, they're also selling Xanax with fentanyl in it and telling those young users, hey, take this, it's going to help you. You're going to do great, going to work hard. You're going to do this. You're going to have trouble falling asleep. And I take one of these to I'll give you one. Take one of these. Everybody takes these Xanax. It's sort of a soft drug that people think it's in a lot of homes.

[00:36:34.080] - Jon DeLena

So it's OK. Nobody realizes that this drug is made. The Adderall is made with nothing but crystal meth. And the other drug Xanax is made with nothing but fentanyl in a dirty lab with no oversight.

[00:36:44.850] - Steve Morreale

Right. Right. There's no quality control. I thought that as soon as you said that. But I also want to know, again, my curiosity is that when you talk about the pills and the lab analysis, there must be some filler, because I know fentanyl, it doesn't take very much in terms of the dosage. It is very, very small. And more than that, it can be deadly, as you know. But what is in one of the fillers?

[00:37:06.240] - Jon DeLena

Well, for the Adderall pills with crystal meth, the main ingredient that they use as a filler is caffeine. OK, so in fact, some of the field testing that we do now and field testing has changed incredibly since you and I used to do it. And that little violent break off a little piece. Yes, it's all done with lasers now. And there's a memory that that can read. And if we lined up one hundred of those Adderall and I've done it on the news, if we lined up one hundred of the Adderall and I shot that laser in, it really depends on what part of the pill you're aiming at.

[00:37:38.670] - Jon DeLena

You might get crystal meth might come up or it might say caffeine or it might say inconclusive. So it isn't until the lab breaks it down. Now, you talked about that small amount being a deadly dose. This is what the problem is, particularly with fentanyl is. It's very, very difficult. It's nearly impossible for them to appropriately dose the fentanyl when they're mixing it up in blender's in a mill somewhere, siphoning it out and putting it into something for packaging so they can never tell it truly how much fentanyl ends up in that mixture.

[00:38:07.230] - Jon DeLena

Right. So when our lab tested, we were testing. They like to pack the organization to package everything in a ten-gram finger, they call it. It truly looks like your index finger and a ten-gram amount is a lot. It's between one hundred and three hundred doses. Right. So it's a lot. But if you test that a finger in one corner, you might get 90 percent fentanyl and you're going to overdose from that. The other side, you might not get as much of a trace of trace elements.

[00:38:31.800] - Jon DeLena

And the best example I can give to you so people can understand that is if you go home tonight and you put salt and sugar in your blender and you put it on full blast in your expensive blender that I know you have, it'll mix up and we'll all agree that don't mix. It doesn't blend together. So then if you took out a teaspoon and you took a teaspoon of whatever mixed up and you laid it on your table, you couldn't determine how much salt and how much sugar you had and where the salt was and where the sugar was.

[00:38:55.710] - Jon DeLena

That's the Russian roulette. People play every single time they're taking this stuff because there is no scientific formula for them to mix this stuff up in a dirty apartment in Massachusetts somewhere for sale after that. So if you get that corner that has too much, you are going to overdose. Hopefully, you have somebody there with Narcan to save you. And I think across the country, in some communities where overdoses have leveled off and haven't completely spiked, I would attribute that to the availability of Narcan, which is now so widely available that you have uniformed police officers, Steve, who think you and I would agree at a time if you stop the car, are you involved with an approach of somebody and you found a syringe that was always something that sort of elevated what you were involved with and what you were doing?

[00:39:35.670] - Jon DeLena

Everything changed. I think now for young police officers, they're finding used Narcan on a traffic stop. Well, so you pull a car over and you see Narcan that's been used or two or three of them. I try to think about how heavy that is for a police officer to see that and say so somebody in this car has overdosed twice and it might be this person I'm dealing with right now.

[00:39:55.880] - Steve Morreale

 So you're saying this self-administering, knowing what's going on. They have they're almost the antidote themselves rather than. Wow.

[00:40:01.920] - Jon DeLena

And that to go into a home, it's not quite the level the homes that we're entering. We're not doing those traffic stops because we're trying to attract jumbo after, you know, the highest level violators, the availability of fentanyl locally, the massive amounts. And again, if they get a kilo that's brought up into the Merrimack Valley from Mexico, immediately, immediately the organization in the Merrimack Valley can convert that one kilo to eight. It's a huge moneymaker for them.

[00:40:29.070] - Jon DeLena

It also shows they have more product than ever before, even the biggest Colombian cases that I worked when I was in South Florida, those big organizations would occasionally run dry. There'd be a disruption in the supply chain and they might have to wait for a container ship to come in and there'd be times that they would dry. We've never seen that here. And they have so much product because it's so potent and so strong in the way they mix it up that they never run dry.

[00:40:51.780] - Steve Morreale

They're always servicing themselves. And they've changed their business model with their more customer service-oriented than ever before. They want to attract people to come back a lot of times in drug law enforcement, you'd go there because something went wrong. There'd be a robbery during crack cocaine. The dealer had to assume the buyer was going to rob them. The buyer had to assume the dealer was going to rob them reluctantly. They would come together into their exchange, reluctant, but they assumed there was going to be a robbery somewhere and maybe there'd be a shootout.

[00:41:18.300] - Jon DeLena

Maybe there'd be a home invasion of a drug. We're not seeing that right now. They truly they realized their best bet is to just service people, front them dope, give them stuff more than they want to pay for so they can go back and sell it in their communities and come back and buy more.

[00:41:31.530] - Steve Morreale

A couple of things that come to mind as you're talking. First of all, that one kilo that comes into the Merrimack Valley, as you suggested, that's in powder form. Correct. OK, so what's the cut being used?

[00:41:42.210] - Jon DeLena

It's depending on who's cooking it up and who's using the recipe along. The aloe plant is one of the biggest ones they've figured out a way to. They were buying these giant aloe leaves, microwaving them for a long period of time. And something about fentanyl, the powder itself is much more fine than heroin traditionally was. So they needed something that would mix up well, that seems to be one of their favorites. We've seen everything from when the awareness of fentanyl and the overdoses were at an all time high.

[00:42:09.450] - Jon DeLena

They started mixing in like a brownish whey protein to make it look more like heroin. Again, it wasn't heroin. And again, like you look at New Hampshire, New Hampshire hasn't seen as solely a heroin overdose in years. It's all fentanyl. They've completely removed the need for opium and water and growing and transferring that fentanyl, they can mass produce it. And the decision all of a sudden, methamphetamine is exploding in New England and forever. There really, truly hasn't been a crystal meth problem here.

[00:42:39.580] - Steve Morreale

No, it's almost always on the West. You you must have seen a lot of Glenwood Springs.

[00:42:43.650] - Jon DeLena

Of course. And if you talk to the agents from your era, they'll all have an occasion where they say, yeah, they were trying. They sent some samples of meth along with a coke load. They sent samples of meth along with the heroin. It just never panned out. Right now, they have that market because they've attracted the opioid abuser to say if you need something to get you up off of the ground and get your movement, try this and it will help you.

[00:43:05.790] - Jon DeLena

So we're seeing people that have never used meth in their life are all of a sudden using meth. And we're seeing from the medical examiner that toxic combination of methamphetamine on board a lot of the overdose deaths.

[00:43:15.660] - Steve Morreale

Wow. Well, we're talking to John Delina and we're running short on time, like always, the fascinating interviews that I'm able to do with people from all walks of law enforcement. We just go on and on and on. So the thirty-minute becomes fifty-six minutes at this point in time, John. And I really do appreciate it. But before we leave, I want to ask you a couple of questions. First of all, what's on your to do list your personal to do list.

[00:43:39.720] - Steve Morreale

What do you want, what do you want to do? How do you balance?

[00:43:42.930] - Jon DeLena

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think I look at the entire division and I try to find things that I can fix and I can get engaged with pretty quickly trying to make improvements, whether it's facilities, buildings, equipment, trying to modernize some of these offices and their approach and try to provide opportunities for training. Never before I love to stay plugged into the communities. I think that's important. I love to do stuff like this. I think we didn't get to talk about it, but we need to spend a lot of time recruiting the next generation.

[00:44:12.000] - Steve Morreale

I was going to say I was going to say, how is that coming? Because so many, so few people, we really haven't talked a lot about policing or what's gone on. And yet are you having difficulties getting people to sign up to risk their lives and to travel all over the country and all over the world? I think you have a couple of things.

[00:44:28.320] - Jon DeLena

Obviously, the landscape of law enforcement and everything that's on the media talking about it right now has had some effect.

[00:44:35.310] - Jon DeLena

But I also think generationally it's a little different. We signed up and as you know, if you sign a mobility agreement and that's the first thing you sign and they say they're going to put you where they need you and they're going to move you and they need to I think a lot of people have now looked at that a little bit differently. And and even DEA, I'll give you a sort of we could talk more about this at another time, but DEA now, it used to be you'd go to the academy and halfway through the academy, they tell you where you were going.

[00:45:01.410] - Jon DeLena

Like I found out I was going to Glenwood Springs. Now they're offering the locations before the people even go to the academy because

[00:45:07.440] - Steve Morreale

Kinder and gentler, huh?

[00:45:09.540] - Jon DeLena

Yeah. And as you know, that's a huge swing for DEA,

[00:45:14.310] - Steve Morreale

It is.

[00:45:14.310] - Jon DeLena

But it's helping us attract more people and getting people to wrap their heads around, hey, I'm going to California and I'm a New York guy or I'm going to the Midwest. And I've always lived in a big city. So it's sort of a different approach.

[00:45:26.700] - Jon DeLena

But it's working, I think, as you. The best DEA agent maybe is somebody that has done a little bit of everything. We have great people that were cops and that's what I did. And I'm partial to that. We have great people that were in the military. We have people with financial backgrounds, law backgrounds. And that's what makes these groups, that team that I talked about, because you have a little bit of that and people come at these investigations through a different optic and that's what helps elevate them.

[00:45:51.560] - Jon DeLena

It used to just be phones, as you know. Now it's apps and encrypted apps that use the social and the dark web. Yeah, these are things that we've had to train and elevate ourselves to do and to do differently. So I just appreciate the opportunity to come on here and talk to you and connect with your people. And if anybody is interested, that's listening. And I really hope you take a look at it. There's a lot of options there, whether on the agent side, intel or diversion.

[00:46:15.480] - Steve Morreale

That's terrific. Well, so here's the last question I will ask you. If you had the opportunity to speak with somebody who is famous, dead or alive, whose brain would you like to pick? Somebody who would help you understand what you're trying to do in this day and age?

[00:46:30.930] - Jon DeLena

Well, I'll pull from somebody that's alive right now and somebody I've been I've been following a lot just in some of his leadership approaches. Jocko Willink. I like to listen to podcasts. I like to listen to his approach on a lot of things. If you haven't listened to him find his clip, just Google Jocko Willink. And I think what he talks about in some of the lessons that he learned, he's somebody that I wish I could afford to bring in to speak at our leadership conference and maybe this podcast will get to him here. But I just thought people that that sort of look at things a little bit differently. And, you know, I think in law enforcement and particularly in DEA, one thing I never want to hear is that's the way we've always done it. I hear that a lot here in New England. That's one of the biggest things that we want to change, is we can't just do things the way we've always done it.

[00:47:20.490] - Jon DeLena

We need to adapt. The drug law enforcement is a very fluid game. You have to be able to maneuver goes with everything that we do, going to reach roadblocks to the young people that you're doing and especially that are trying to get careers. These aren't easy careers to get into, but don't give up. You have to keep pushing it. This is what you want if it's truly your passion and find something that is your passion. If this is your passion, then go after it and get that job.

[00:47:42.060] - Steve Morreale

Well, it's been my pleasure to talk with a colleague from the Drug Enforcement Administration, John Delina, who is the Associate Special Agent in Charge in the New England Field Division. John, thank you so much.

[00:47:53.010] - Jon DeLena

Yeah, thank you very much for having me.

[00:47:54.570] - Steve Morreale

I appreciate it. You've been listening to The CopDoc Podcast. I'm Steve Morreale from Boston. Appreciate you listening. There'll be further episodes of interesting guests with different perspectives. And I certainly am appreciative of John Delina talking about leadership and drug enforcement and community mindedness. So stay tuned for other episodes. Thanks again

[00:48:13.740] - Steve Morreale Outro

Hi everybody, a few things before you leave. First, thanks for listening. I'm so gratified to see the downloads rising in the last few months, not only from the U.S., but from across the globe.

[00:48:23.220] - Steve Morreale Outro

It's surprising and humbling to find students, colleagues and practitioners listening. We have a growing number of listeners in Canada, Ireland, England, Northern Ireland, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Colombia. We appreciate your time and energy and welcome feedback. Please feel free to reach out to me by email at The CopDoc Podcast at Gmail dot com. That's The CopDoc Podcast at Gmail dot com. Check out our website at The CopDoc Podcast dot com.

[00:48:50.160] - Steve Morreale Outro

Please take the time to share podcasts with your friend if you find value in the discussions. We've had so many amazing guests and more to come who have shared their wisdom, their thoughts, their viewpoints and their innovative ideas. Most importantly, a huge thank you to those of you who show up for work in policing every day, knowing the kinds of calls that you'll be sent on or the kinds of situations you'll find yourself in, you risk your lives for people, many of whom you don't know.

[00:49:14.130] - Steve Morreale Outro

And for that, we owe you a debt of gratitude. A big thanks. I hope you stay safe, healthy and look forward to hearing from you and hope you'll continue to listen to upcoming episodes of The CopDoc Podcast.

[00:49:27.090] - 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 in to The CopDoc Podcast for regular episodes of interviews with thought leaders in policing.