The CopDoc Podcast: Aiming for Excellence in Leadership
Visit our website: https://www.copdocpodcast.com
The CopDoc Podcast delves into police leadership and innovation. The focus is on aiming for excellence in the delivery of police services across the globe.
Dr. Steve Morreale is a retired law enforcement practitioner, a pracademic, turned academic, and scholar from Worcester State University. Steve is the Program Director for LIFTE, Command College - The Leadership Institute for Tomorrow's Executives at Liberty University.
Steve shares ideas and talks with thought leaders in policing, academia, community leaders, and other related government agencies. You'll find Interviews with thought leaders drive the discussion to improve police services and community relationships.
Happy to report that The CopDoc Podcast is listed as #4 in the 10 Best Worcester Podcasts!
https://podcast.feedspot.com/worcester_podcasts/
The CopDoc Podcast: Aiming for Excellence in Leadership
From the Bronx to the Battlefield: Leadership Lessons with MG (ret) Dr. John Hussey - U.S. Army Military Police Corps
The CopDoc Podcast - Season 7 - Episode 145
Mentors count! Listen as we sit down with Dr. John Hussey, a retired Major General and author, who takes us on an incredible journey from a lively Bronx Irish neighborhood to a distinguished military career. Dr. Hussey shares how crucial mentorship was in steering him away from potential pitfalls during his mischievous youth and guiding him toward unexpected academic and professional success. This episode unveils personal stories of resilience and perseverance, shedding light on how constructive criticism and accountability can propel personal growth in both the military and law enforcement arenas.
Listen to the leadership stories from Abu Ghraib, where command decisions had to be made under intense pressure. Dr. Hussey and I dive into empowering teams by trusting them to operate independently, a lesson echoed in sports coaching and organizational leadership. We draw parallels between leading diverse groups and coaching, showcasing the importance of visibility, direct engagement, and empathetic support to foster a cohesive and motivated team environment. Learn how leaders can thrive by embracing autonomy and tackling external challenges head-on.
Venture into leadership approaches and the preservation of institutional knowledge with reflections on military service. We explore the strategic engagement of the National Guard and Reserve in post-Vietnam America and the ongoing need for structured mentorship to prepare future leaders. Through personal anecdotes, we emphasize the power of compassion, empathy, and understanding in modern leadership approaches. This episode offers a compelling narrative on the necessity of learning from history, advocating for a leadership style that is both supportive and effective, preparing today's leaders for the complexities of tomorrow.
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
Welcome to The CopDoc Podcast. This podcast explores police leadership issues and innovative ideas. 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.
Steve Morreale:Hey everybody, Steve Morreale coming to you from Boston once again, and we begin another episode of the CopDoc podcast. We are approaching 150 episodes. It's being listened to in 86 countries, 3,000 cities and towns it boggles my mind. And today I'm headed to South Carolina to a colleague, the retired Major General John Hussey, who is a PhD. So he's Dr Hussey, now teaching part-time down at Citadel and has actually written a book that I have with me, but unfortunately it's in another place. It's called Inside the Wire, about his experiences as a commander of the military police corps, of which I was a member many, many years ago. John hello Good morning Steve.
John Hussey :How are you Thanks for having me aboard.
Steve Morreale:I appreciate it. I do too. I'm so glad we connected and we've been in touch. Liberty University, the command college, fairly soon looking forward to bringing you down to Liberty University. But, John, let's talk about your history. It sounds like you're an Irish American from South Boston, am I right?
John Hussey :Actually, I'm an Irish American from the Bronx.
Steve Morreale:I know, I know, I know.
John Hussey :When I first met my brother-in-law he called me a bick. He thought they were extinct like the dinosaurs. Bronx Irish Catholic. So grew up in the Bronx in a nice Irish neighborhood, was an altar boy, all the things you know. Went to Catholic high school, learned a lot, I tell you as I go along, though people always ask me to describe myself. So let me start out by saying this you know, typical Bronx kid, mischievous, nothing wrong, but just a mischievous kid. Liked to crack jokes, drink beer, play football and crack jokes. And that's what I was doing through high school, probably graduated at the bottom of my class.
John Hussey :My old man died when I was 16 and I was kind of lost, and you know you can get lost to the streets of the Bronx. And I had some very good mentorship, and the first being a New York City retired cop at Mount St Michael that took me under his wing, naturally a big Irish family. But the one thing that I think that I'm more fortunate than anything else and if I can ever stress to anybody, it's just pure mentorship I could have been lost to those streets. Some people thought I may wind up on the other side of the law, but through proper mentorship and guidance and my willingness to listen, I turned out pretty good. So that's the number one lesson that I have in my life and I try to pass on and always give back to young kids looking for that mentorship.
Steve Morreale:So let's talk a little bit about that. But as you say it, I can self-face and say I was probably in the same damn boat. People always told me Steve, you don't apply yourself, you're a smart kid, you're not applying yourself. And I didn't do so hot in high school. In fact, what I tell students in a capstone is that I have, like yourself, suffered rejection and failure and mistakes, and it's the way you handle those things, the way you can bounce back from them. I think certainly the military helped me grow up, as it probably did you. But it strikes me too that I never took the SAT, and if you told me back in the 70s that I would be a professor with a doctorate, I would have said you're absolutely delusional, and you may feel the same way, john.
John Hussey :I just said it to my wife last night. I'm laughing because I just said it to her.
Steve Morreale:Yeah.
John Hussey :Who'd have thunk it? Listen, I got to tell you. I'll never forget it. I was sitting in an English class and I'm teaching at the Citadel now, as you noted, and sometimes I call on these students and it's like my God, this kid's off in la-'s. Okay. He said, basically, go back to sleep, but for summer school, get yourself a seat right here by the window, because the breeze flows in nice. He made me feel so low that I've said it numerous times and I went back.
John Hussey :I got five master's degrees and a PhD and it's like here, brother Cowie, look see, you know what sometimes and we don't do this anymore because everyone's being shamed, right, fat shaming or this shaming or that. But you know something? I'm not saying we should do it, but as a principle, sometimes it lights a fire under somebody's backside, right. And so we grew up in a different generation where the football coaches literally grab you by the face mask and rip you. I mean, I was nine, 10 years old and anyone from my neighborhood is listening would know we had a football coach today. The guy'd probably be in state prison, but he raised champions and you know, he held you accountable and he booted you in the backside. Now I'm not condoning that, I'm not saying we should do that, but we shouldn't rub everybody's belly either and everybody gets a trophy, because I don't know if that's being productive either.
Steve Morreale:No, I think so. That's a great conversation to have that. Obviously, in the military I grew up you did too. I had my share of ridicule and I was a little bit chunky and I didn't get dessert. I was doing some exercises while everybody was having dessert, but it made me stronger and I think that's exactly right. I think that to be in policing for sure is absolutely a requirement, that you have to understand the difference between right and wrong and that you're not always going to get your own way, which is unfortunate, because it seems to be, but sometimes I'm accused of being too direct. You and I had a conversation about that that there's time to lead, there's time to be democratic and there's time to say go and get this done, and we just have to know when that time is. So let's go back to how you left New York, ended up in the Army, were in the courts system as an administrator, not as somebody behind bars and then ended up a rising star in the military police corps. Talk about that. How did that start?
John Hussey :So again through mentorship, right. So my goal going to college. But I mentioned in the book you talk about SATs. I took the SATs and I did embarrassingly low. I was terrible at standardized tests. To this day I'm probably not that good, but anyway I went to Iona College and I begged my way and I said to the gentleman I said, just give me one shot, no harm, no foul. I was 17 years old and I said if I don't do well, I'll leave. You won't even have to tell me. Just you'll say John, we had a deal and people, it's because I had a goal. If you're just wandering aimlessly through a program to anything else and you're just taking up space, you're not going to do as well. But I knew at that point I wanted to be a Marine pilot. So I knew the demand was high, I needed high grades. So I was working towards that.
Intro - Outro :And I excelled.
John Hussey :Problem was in my senior year I had astigmatism in my left eye no-transcript to grow up and I went to boot camp and it was a hard experience. I tell my wife to this day the best day of my life was our wedding. She knows that me a taste. So I come back, didn't go into the Marines full time but I had passed the New York State Court Officer's test and there I met a mentor, sergeant Major Jimmy Siak. I mentioned him in the book. As a matter of fact, I spoke to him a few weeks ago and he told me about this program OCS Officer Candidate School in the New York Guard switch over. So you know, I listened, I followed it, I wanted to be an officer.
Steve Morreale:Wait a minute, john. Did a Marine become an Army officer? Yeah, oh my goodness, because it was an opportunity. What a step up, I know, I know.
John Hussey :But you know what? What a step up. The culture never left me. The culture never left me. Marines are and again, I'm not knocking anybody, it was a different avenue for me. But I said I don't want to stay enlisted, I want to become an officer. And like most people you talk to any general I've ever heard right talks about ROTC at West Point. I'm going to get in, I'm going to do my time and then I'm getting out. And I've heard that so many times. I've also heard on the other end from people like you. I should have stayed in. I should have stayed in, you know so. But for me I stayed in and the opportunities came. And what I mean by that is the Army had an old saying be all that you can be. And what that meant to me was the more you put into an organization, the more you put into yourself. And that's any profession Fire department, nursing, doctor, right, academia the more you put into something, the more you're going to get out of it. So I continued to put in and study and go to the schools and stay in good physical shape. And stay in good physical shape. I did deployments. My first deployment I mentioned in the book and it's kind of interesting.
John Hussey :When I graduated OCS Officer Candidate School, I didn't take my commission immediately. I did what was known as a hip pocket, and the reason I did that was they would pay for an enlisted person to have their master's degree. So I was getting over $15,000 in aid to pick up an MBA. But if I converted to a lieutenant lieutenant the payment would have stopped. So I said put off.
John Hussey :I wasn't an American that needed instant gratification, I had a long-term plan. So I put off the commission for a year or two and then I got my MBA. But when I went back to revert to the commission, I had suffered a melanoma cancer and they weren't going to take me in. So I volunteered for Desert Storm and I kind of had them in a short spot there. How can you send me to Desert Storm, to war, but you can't commission me, right? I mean, that's not going to look too good on 60 Minutes. So anyway, I got commissioned in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm while we were doing POW operations, and then the rest is history, so wait a minute, john.
Steve Morreale:So while you were in Saudi, you were enlisted and then were commissioned. I see, wow.
John Hussey :Very interesting, because here I was as an E4, right, and I'm putting up wire and I get called into my commander's heart at Good Friday on 1991. I'll never forget it because I said uh-oh, what did I do? Now, you know, nobody has an E4. You don't want to get called into a commander's. And he pinned me and nobody believed it.
Steve Morreale:My friends saw me and they said hey, you got the wrong stuff on kid. You can't fake it.
John Hussey :You're impersonating an officer. I said no. And the next day I got in, I actually got in the front and some staff sergeant threw me out and told me to get in the back. You don't belong in the front, kid. The lieutenant said no, no, he's a lieutenant, push him in. It was kind of bizarre, but I tell you, the best leadership lesson, steve, that I've ever learned was learning from DEA, but it's just watching bad leadership and taking notes and then just trying to go back and using common sense and not doing those mistakes. So that's probably been the best education I've gotten to emulate those individuals that you want to be like and what was positive about them, and then look at what bad leadership is and make sure you don't make those same mistakes.
Steve Morreale:You know it's interesting with everything we do. I see myself as a student of leadership. I've been playing with it since probably 30 years. Dissertation was involved in leadership and policing. I always say that, exactly what you just said, john, and, by the way, we're talking to retired Major General John Hussey, dr Hussey from South Carolina and it strikes me that, no matter what theories are out there, you really should be customized with a little bit of everything, a lot of what you want to emulate from those good leaders, and then customize it to yourself so you can be genuine and authentic and avoid everything that was done to you, so you don't do it to others, including micromanaging. Fair statement.
John Hussey :Very fair statement and I think, oh my God, as we go on in the book, right, that was the best lesson. So I got activated, or my unit got activated, to do the Abu Ghraib mission. And for those that may not be aware, the Abu Ghraib was the big prison scandal. It went all the way up to the president. It was an international embarrassment. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was ready to retire and the unit that did that. In 2003,.
John Hussey :There was another unit on the ground and, as a matter of fact, the gentleman that was running that unit was a lieutenant colonel. He was also a law enforcement officer, craig Essek. He was a sergeant outside of the great city of Chicago. The man was absolutely spectacular, did a fantastic job. But we were the next unit to rotate in right after the scandal.
John Hussey :And I'll tell you what I thought for sure that you know. I thought for sure that you know I'd be filled with like the all-star team. They go all over the country and they find the best individuals and I always use that. And I said how many I talked to classes in the military I go. How many of you think I got the all-star team to go to Iraq and I go? You're damn right I did. It's like I got had everybody, everybody and his mother, sticking their finger in my pie telling me how to do things, interfering. And there was a great article and I mentioned it in the book written by a West Pointer. He's an attorney, a Major General, jeff Jacobs, and he spoke about the fact that the active duty has one thing in mind when you go mission accomplishment period period, that's it the Reserve and National Guard have. You know they want to get the mission done, but they're worried about creature comforts. Hey, did the soldiers get out bowling tonight? Did you cut enough time in the schedule? Did they get to go to Burger King on Sunday? And I get all that. But you know what, sometimes training takes priority and if we don't get this right, those that don't train hard could come home in a casket. And so I had more people interfering.
John Hussey :And then when I got overseas and I came under the 18th MP Brigade that has a lot of history back from Vietnam with their MPs, military police did an absolutely fabulous job during the Tet Offensive in Saigon. A lot of Valor Awards given out there and I had a Major General Brandon Berger, colonel Brown and a CSM Shelley I always speak about and they let me run my unit period. You know I was the supported commander and whatever I asked for they just stayed out of my hand and it was so good. My command sergeant major was a senior enlisted individual that an officer gets at battalion level and if a commander's smart he'll listen to the command sergeant major. He's your battle buddy. He's been around a long time probably 20, 25 years military experience, a lot of schooling and they're very smart.
John Hussey :But my CSM I was fortunate was a New York City police sergeant that came up through the ranks, worked narcotics and I trusted him like a brother, just solid advice and we just wanted to make it through without getting relieved. I think that was one of the things that we didn't want and we knew we were working for a boss. We were under the microscope and again they let us run our unit. And when I finished I learned that and it's the one thing I applied when I was finishing up as a two-star, I had brigade commanders these are 4,500 persons, that's right, 4,500-person brigades run by colonels and each of them thanked me for just letting them run the brigade and my feeling was if you can't run your brigade in the United States during peacetime.
John Hussey :What chance do you have to run your brigade during combat? So I'm not going to be there to hold your hand, I've got to let you run it now. And so I learned that, and it's the one lesson I've tried to pass on. But, my God, even to the day I got out as a two-star, I still had people poking into my command and getting involved where they had no place to be.
Steve Morreale:So I'm writing a couple of things that I don't want it to pass by. It's very, very, very interesting. You say what you say and when I'm facilitating training for sergeants or mid-managers or executives, I'm always asking actually, take the time, if you can envision this, to draw a field. And it is a field. I ask how many have been coaches before? Because in a lot of ways, the higher up you get, the more of a coach. The role of the coach you're playing. Is that right?
Steve Morreale:I agree, you're patting people on the back. Go and do it, you can do it. Let's go try something different. And then I stay out of your way. Now go perform exactly what you just said. We don't get all-star teams. So what I do is I put this on chart paper, I put 11 people on a field and I'll say okay, you've got a group of 18 players. Tell me if you're going to be lucky enough as a coach to have an all-star team. And everybody says exactly what you say. I don't. All right, Tell me how many A players you might have, Tell me how many B players you think you'll have, and tell me how many C players you have. And the fact of the matter is that's what happens in real life. We have A players, we have a whole bunch of B players and we've got a couple of C players. And it's our chore and this is what I'm going to say as a leader it's your chore to deal with, you say, the land of the misfit, but people of different readiness and willingness to try to move them in the direction of the mission right and get something out of everyone, in the hopes that an A player brings B players up to a higher standard. And some of your B players bring a few of the C players up.
Steve Morreale:To be productive. If you understand what I'm saying, I see you writing oh, I fully do. And to be productive, if you understand what I'm saying, I see you writing oh, I fully do. And I think that's a great analogy. Well, to be productive. So what I'll say is when you're playing a soccer game and you've got four A players, do you put them on the field at the same time? And the answer should be no. You need fresh legs, right, you have to pair them with B players. So go ahead and tell me what you think about that, oh right.
John Hussey :So let's start off and I want to come back how I lined up Abu Ghraib. But this is good. Now the one thing you have to understand, I agree, everything right. The first thing you have to do as a leader right, I think is you have to put out your vision. And I think, as leaders, we don't do that because you know, let's say, I'm coaching the Pittsburgh Steelers or whatever.
John Hussey :I'm the offensive coordinator, everybody knows my number one goal is to get more points right. That's the mission. So what's my vision as a commander, be it the DEA, the New York State Court system, so that A player, b player, c player, everybody knows where we're going. What's my short-term vision, long-term vision and we don't have to get too deep into that, but they should have an idea of the mission statement, why the organization exists and what the leadership is looking for. Right and looking for right. And so the other problem you want to see.
John Hussey :But as a leader, you got to understand you may have the F players, I mean total failures, that may be the informal chain of command trying to bring the organization down for whatever reason, or the people that you really got to keep an eye on. They're the cancers. If you let them, they will disintegrate, right, they will bring others down, but they can cause problems and this is what we saw, for example, at Abu Ghraib, right, people that can't be left on their own and they need to be watched. Now, as a leader, you don't have to micromanage, but they need to know that you're out there, that you're not sitting behind your desk eight hours a day. I've not been a police sergeant or lieutenant, but I'll tell you anybody that knows me knows I would I'd be out in their car. They never know when I'm coming. It could be three in the morning. I'll stop by, I'll get out of the car, I'll walk hey, where's McGillicuddy? How come he's not on post?
John Hussey :And I'll bring him up on the radio and so I did this in the courts. Everybody knew and I just gave a lecture to leadership in the courts. Everyone knew. At 930 I did my walkabout. Everyone knew. I walked into every courtroom. I looked to make sure air condition was working, heat was working. I walked the stairs to make sure graffiti wasn't there. I actually used the public restroom to make sure toilets were fresh and all those little things right. How was the flag outside the courthouse Was?
Steve Morreale:it, paying attention to detail.
John Hussey :Detail, right. And so also it gave lawyers access to me. I wasn't the hidden wizard behind the and I'm using a Wizard of Oz parody here, right, my favorite show yeah, behind the curtain that nobody had access to. So if lawyers wanted to come up and say, john, you know, I've been trying to get one of your clerks to call me back for a couple of weeks. John, really appreciate your help on this one. It gave them the ability to talk to me, and I think that's what's missing in leadership. Just, I had a sense Now. Just I had a sense Now.
John Hussey :You can't be Well, that's the old management, by walking around and being available and accessible, it's true, but I think with computers today and this email, we've gotten away from that. It's even when I get people counseled by email. Hey, frankie, I need you to do better on this, or, susan, you're coming in. No, bring him into the office and sit down Face to face.
John Hussey :You don't need to put everything in writing because, who knows, maybe Susan's husband walked out or has stage three cancer and she doesn't want to put it in writing, but if you bring her in she may burst into tears. And now you're in that human touch and you're getting the human feeling to say, okay, because there's so much you can get by looking somebody in the eye that you don't get through email, you can see the shaking or the emotion and if you're a good leader and they trust you say listen, I know something's wrong. Please trust me, bring it out and let me help you. What can I do to help you? And again, there's the screw ups, right, that doesn't matter, it's every time they've got an excuse or reason. Often, unfortunately, in today's society, it's ideology. Oh, you're picking on me because I got orange hair and you can substitute orange hair for any race, creed or color. And you're going to deal with that as a leader. And you have to be ready, right, because they're going to try to deflect with that. And so, as a leader, what I did and I noted in the book is one standard, one standard the organizational standard.
John Hussey :So there was a lot of talk in the military. After people say the military went woke, and I'm not getting too deep into that here. That's not the purpose. Minority soldiers were not facing the same under UCMJ as Caucasians, and this was 20 years before this, but I was very cognizant of that. So if I caught a soldier, for example, it was reported to me they were sleeping on duty.
John Hussey :Every soldier, regardless of the unit, regardless of time, in service color, you got the same punishment. And I had a CSM that would literally take his knife and cut your rank off and send you out so everybody could see immediate justice. Right, it wasn't long-term justice like we do with death penalty in the US. Right, boom came out. He went in as an E4, he's coming out as an E3. But I never got a complaint saying he's treating, you know, whites different than blacks. And the best compliment I got I noted in the book was from a New York City police detective and he was Hispanic. He said sir, I just got to say one thing you were tough but you were fair and as a leader, that's the best compliment you can receive that you treated everybody the same. First of all, when you talk, about vision.
Steve Morreale:I talk about expectations and accountability, and we're dancing around all of those. That's exactly it. In other words, here are my expectations, and what troubles me is that some people accept that responsibility to set expectations and never to say that again. I say it can never be one and done. You always have to say these are the expectations. The boss just came at me and we need to make some modifications. Here's why and here's where we're going, need your help. I have the benefit of watching you on video. I see you shaking your head. How do you react to that, john?
John Hussey :Hussey, these aren't written in stone, right? They're just what we like to call guidance, no-transcript, time and a place. And so it's funny because I want to go back to two things time and a place. I'll never forget I was working. My operations officer was a retired Greenwich police deputy chief great guy, fabulous, and he's actually a chief of police at a college up in Connecticut. And he said to me hey, sir, you've given some guidance and I don't really understand it and I exaggerated. But then I won't use any of the profanity language I put in. But I said, bob, I said here's my commander's intent. No-transcript to start. He goes okay, okay, I got it now. I got it now.
John Hussey :But you have to be clear in your intent, because there's a phenomenon and I never knew what it was until I really learned about it. We have this word here, steve mirror imaging. You know what you want in your mind, but if you don't convey that to other people then it's not going to come out. Right Now I'll give you an example of that. So my you know troops when I met Fort Dick said hey, sir, you know, at night, do you mind if we get out of our uniform and we just get into relaxably in clothing, and my command sergeant, major Donnie, new York City cop, says, sir, don't do it. And I said, mike, come on, loosen up. What's the big deal? I said I'm 43. So I figured well what we're going to have a nice Notre Dame shirt on, a nice pair of gym shorts to come down to your knees, and that was my image of what I was allowing.
John Hussey :Now these guys come back. All the guys are walking around with their muscle t-shirts they look like they're on Venice Beach weightlifting, and the girls are walking around spring break it's October, november, so it's cold, right, people can understand that with tank tops and no brassieres and their shorts up their rear ends. And then my CSM finally confronts one and she's like well, how come you're stopping me? But that one basically had a vagina out and you didn't say anything to her. And he comes back to me and tells me this. And I just look at him. I go Mike, two things, okay, two things Number one, put them all back into uniform. And number two don't ever tell me. You told me so it was right, but my problem was.
John Hussey :So you as a commander, as a leader, really have to lay out your intent, because you know, and this is and I was teaching a class like in foreign policy, you know, the United States says something and we think people are going to react like, oh no, putin won't invade the Ukraine, because that's not what a rational actor will do. Well, we might not be dealing with a rational actor. Last thing, I just have to go back because you mentioned about the soccer team and I don't want to get too far off this, but it's a great story about A's and B's on the field. So we get to Iraq and we noticed that we had some—I didn't meet most of the individuals that worked for me until we got to the prison okay, so I had no idea what I was getting. It was a crap show. So we knew we had a lot of weakness in our own headquarters company. We didn't have a lot white shining stars there. So what we said was usually what the military would do was they would look at the prison and they would give, for example, this company, this portion of the prison, this company, this portion of the prison, and they would just have separate entity. And we said that's not going to work. So we mixed everybody. It was like a big stew. Just imagine I had 715 people. At the end of this, I threw them in a big pot, mixed them up and I said Hussey from A company, smith from B company, and we put them all together.
John Hussey :Well, my command Colonel Brown came out and says John, unorthodox, this is not acceptable. And I said hey, sir, you know what You're the boss and I will do what you want. But I'm going to tell you right now it's going to fail. Okay, you want me to put all A soccer players as forwards? Right, and I can do that. And then the B will be midfield and the C will be on defense. So we'll score a lot, but we're going to get scored on a lot too. But if you let me put a couple of A's, b's and C's at the forward line, a, b's and C's in the middle and A, b, c's on defense, I'm going to have a balanced attack that's going to bring you victory. And he looked at me and he said Okay, because I knew the culture, I knew what I had in my deck of cards, and he let me do it and I mixed it as you described on the soccer team.
Steve Morreale:Well, you know that's interesting and it's interesting. You know we're talking to Dr John Hussey, a retired major general, and I want to talk about that. Here you are in the National Guard and now you're running the army. In a lot of ways boggles my mind the use of reserve components to do active duty work. It strikes me and I will tell you over time, and I profess this now that avoid saying no and hear me out for a minute. I'd like your reaction to that. In many cases I would say no, I don't like that idea. That's not going to work. And the older I got, the more mature I got, the more I realized by saying no, you're shutting people down with innovative ideas. But I will now say ah, you know, I'm not sure about that. You'll have to convince me, tell me about that. And it has changed my perspective and it has changed my leadership style. That allows things to come to me that I would have originally said no to. How do you feel about that? I'm not talking about tactical situations.
John Hussey :I fully agree. I love that concept, right. And so there's a portion in the book I talk about General Miller. He was a four-star general in Afghanistan and he came in and he sat us all down. We were the rule of law task force, right, running basically prisons, courts, trying to teach the Afghanis how to do detective kind of work and things of that nature. And he sat there and he went around the room and I was one of the last individuals to go and the big concern at this point was, on December 31st at midnight, 2014, we ran out of our authority to hold prisoners and we were getting no guidance from Department of Defense, state Department what we do with these guys. The Afghans didn't want them, so they were basically gonna go back on the streets from really bad guys, right, probable humans that you don't want on the street.
John Hussey :So, anyway, that was what everybody said, and I'm sitting there saying you know what? I'm a full colonel, he's a four star. He's got the message Everybody, time after time. So I'm thinking real quick, what can I say to be correct, impressive. So I said, hey, sir, there's this amendment, the Leahy Amendment. The Leahy Amendment says you know, if the US is assisting a nation with funds and ammunition and things of that nature and that nation is not living up to morality. In to morality, in other words conducting extrajudicial killings, in other words taking people behind the tree and putting a bullet in their head.
John Hussey :Then we can cut off funding, as the United States and unfortunately that was happening in Afghanistan, because here you have special forces, afghanis and police going out arresting bad guys. They go into the local court and the judges are letting them out the back door and that's frustrating for anybody, but it's really frustrating for them because these are the same people killing their brothers. It's really frustrating for them because these are the same people killing their brothers. It's bad for a cop to see turnstile justice in the United States but for the most part all right, the guy's back on the street. But here in Afghanistan he's back into the villages and killing you the night after you've apprehended him. So they were doing extrajudicial killing. So I said to the gentleman I said hey, sir, to avoid this, why don't we bring up all the police, you know, and the military and show them the Justice Center here in Palawan and the fact that we can bring those terrorists here so they don't go to a local court and we can try them here? Do you know, within 72 hours we had helicopters coming into the Justice Center in Palawan filled with senior Afghan commanders in both the police and the military. Because he was willing, general Miller was to listen to somebody four or five ranks below him and that taught me, and I always did beforehand. I'll listen to you. My problem and I think you brought it out, steve, and I want everybody to hear this I think any leader's willing to listen, depending on how you deliver the message.
John Hussey :People that just wanted to confront me. We're standing on a Bronx corner and you're going to have a confrontation with me. I had one person that came out and said he doesn't like to be second guessed. No, I'm the boss. We don't second guess our teachers. We don't second guess our baseball coaches. We don't second guess our police lieutenants. If you have an idea and a concept, bring it to me. I'll listen. But if you think you're going to put your finger in my chest as a leader, I can't allow that. The street is watching and they need to know that I'm in command, not you, and that if I allow that to happen, that's bad behavior and we simply can't have bad behavior in an organization. All the listeners, please. If you're going to go to your boss with a good idea, present it properly.
Steve Morreale:I wrote two words down Do it respectfully, do it reasonably and do it with the right tone and the right intention.
John Hussey :It's not an accusation.
Steve Morreale:So we're talking to John Hussey and I want to know I mean, remember that this is a podcast that's listened to by police and scholars all over the world. I'm very proud of that. It is about police innovation and providing police service and being a little bit unusual and out of the norm, dealing with the culture, all of which you did as an MP. What drew you to the MP branch?
John Hussey :I had a mentor there, jimmy Siaka. He was an MP, and when I transitioned I had a criminal justice degree and I was working in the courts. What frequently happens, though, is on active duty. You know you'll pick your whatever branch you want to be infantry, armor, aviation and then kind of the senior level the personnel, individuals at what's called human resource command will assign you In the reserve and Guard. It's a little different. You'll find people that will usually join units based on the proximity to home, so you have a young 19-year-old. He or she doesn't want to get in a car and drive five, six hours. Now, as you go up in rank and you start taking commands from you know, maybe Major, lieutenant, colonel, you may fly across the country. I knew people that flew from Germany to the United States for weekend drills. They flew from New York to California. The longest I really had to go was from New York to Chicago, so that's difficult, though right. I finished work on a Friday afternoon to take a half a day, and I got to run to the airport, get on a plane Sunday night I'm trying to make it back and make it back from Chicago with no snow to be at work Monday, so it can be difficult. That's kind of how the reserve works.
John Hussey :After the Vietnam War, the senior level of the military looked and said you know what? We took everything to Vietnam except one thing the population. They were not involved in this war at all Drafted and so there was actually to put a lot of assets into the Guard and Reserve. And the concept there was obviously you save money, but the next time we went to war we'd be bringing the American public with us. So if you recall Desert Storm and maybe some of your listeners may be a little too young when we went to Desert Storm, I mean every town across the United States was affected, because this wasn't just active duty. Now you were activating units in Alabama, new York, illinois, and you can remember the families coming to those deployment send-offs, the whole town with yellow ribbons. So they brought the American people to the war with them.
John Hussey :Today, less than 1% of America serves. So if you line up a football field with 100 individuals aged 18 to 24, the military cannot talk to 75% of them, so 75 have to go to the showers right away. They're overweight, they don't have the right education, arrest records, psychological problems, drug problems. That means they can only talk to 25. It doesn't mean they're getting 25. They can talk to 25. So we've really got kind of like a mercenary military now today. So that Guard and Reserve brings the American community into the military and into our national foreign policy. So I'm like a big link as a reservist connecting a community that knows nothing about the military into the military.
John Hussey :And I used to mandate that the officers that work for me have to go out once a year and speak at a Rotary, a VFW, an American Legion, any kind of those meetings, so they have the ability to talk and understand, and that's why I even do these podcasts right, so that they can understand that. So in the MPs it's about over 40,000 MPs in the US Army and it's broken down by about one-third. One-third. One-third meaning an active duty National Guard and Army Reserve, and the Army Reserve really has a big portion of the detention ops mission, okay, and so I commanded the 200th MP command.
John Hussey :I was responsible for over 14,000 soldiers and I told them when the balloon goes up, meaning if we go to conflict, that's our mission, and a lot of younger soldiers are like oh, you know, I don't want to do this, it's boring. And I said you have no idea what you're talking about. I mean, you have every day, you're guaranteed contact with the enemy. If you go back and study EPW operations in Germany, korea, you know, and all throughout it is a hard mission and you will be driving to the front and under combat fire, trying to bring prisoners back to the rear. You'll be flying and we had Con Air in Iraq where we actually got on C-130s and flew detainees from basically Baghdad down to the Kuwaiti border in a place called Kambuka. So it's an exciting mission, it's a lot, it's very interactive and so that kind of gives it.
John Hussey :Now the last portion of your question is how do you rise so fast? And I spoke at a leadership conference up in Orange County, wanted first responders in to hear this, and it's very important and this is key for your first responders. First of all, it's mentorship. People took the time to invest in me, but it's not because I came in and I was good looking. Steve can see me, many of you can't. He'll tell you I'm not a good looking guy, so there's nothing-.
Steve Morreale:You have a face of radio, my friend right.
John Hussey :There you go, right. So nobody has to see it. But you know what I had? I had the willingness to learn, to put in the extra time, to come in on Tuesday nights to the meetings in the armory where we were getting paid and to stay till 1030. To go up to my boss, not because I was kissing his backside and say, hey, boss, you got a lot on your plate, me any kind of assignment. So the other thing was it's tough assignments, right. And so the one thing in the military that I try to mentor young officers is you've got to take the tough assignments, command being the hardest. Going on deployments overseas. So I've deployed six times four into combat zones.
John Hussey :I've had command in combat where a lot of my peers didn't, and so, yeah, I sacrificed a lot. When I look in retrospect, maybe I hurt my family a bit, but we're intact. We really are. We'll all be together for Christmas. You know, I put a lot of pressure on my wife, janice, and she represents military and first responders, police, firefighters, ems. She represents those spouses.
Steve Morreale:They bear a lot of responsibility. They have to be independent.
John Hussey :They're on their own and the American public has no idea.
Steve Morreale:And they worry about us. So I understand You're absolutely right.
John Hussey :Listen, I'm going to say something and I don't care if it's politically correct or not right. We do a month of whatever Pride Month or a month of this month, you know all this and we do one day of Veterans Day. We do one day Memorial Day. When are we going to give military families and first responder families their own day right? Skip a month. I just want them to have one day.
John Hussey :Our leaders get that and you as leaders in the law enforcement, and you can do that by. Hey, you know, and I used to tell people if your son has a championship football game or your daughter is a championship soccer game and you're at the unit and not with them, I'm going to be really pissed off at you. Now, if you come to me every week and tell me, well, my son's got a piano lesson, my daughter's got whatever ballerina, then you and I are going to have a problem. When you have those wrestle moments, you better take them. You have an anniversary and you're coming away this week. Maybe I can understand that. We can look at things. And death, absolutely. You know, you have no business being around an armory when you've had a death in your family or work, and we can get into that. I call it the good, bad and the ugly list what the mentorship is.
John Hussey :Make sure, if you're a police leader, what are you doing to men, individuals, because you're not going to be there forever when you retire in 20 years. And if you're a police lieutenant, you don't have 20 years, you might have another 15. Who's taking your place? You're replaceable, you know. So are you looking to get that individual, maybe to make sure they have their bachelor's, their master's, through the FBI Academy? Are you looking? I don't know, many people know, but they have a master's degree out at the Naval Postgraduate School for First Responders. That gives you a master's degree in Homeland Defense. It's incredible and we're not affording our people the opportunity to do this. And if you're a captain, whatever chief of police, and you're not thinking about what the organization looks like in 10 to 15 years and how I'm setting a roadmap for my sergeants to be those lieutenants and captains and chiefs in years to come?
Steve Morreale:then you're failing as a leader. So you have to have that program in place. No, you're right, and I always use the saying be a mentor and have a mentor, because it's a two-way street. What I said from the beginning is that we really have to see ourselves as coaches, mentors. What I like about what you're talking about is the willingness to learn. But let's go back to what prepared you for your leadership position. We do it so much differently in the public sector. We wait, have a job, it opens. We have to wait for you to leave. Then we advertise it. We put somebody in, we sew stripes on them and we say go do the job, but we never tell them how to do the job. You understand what I'm saying. That doesn't happen in the military, and while we in law enforcement hold ourselves to be a mirror image, if you will, of the military, we're so far away from the way that the military prepares future leaders. Talk about your experience with that.
John Hussey :Great conversation. So I think the active duty does a good job. So if you're selected for a command position, be it command sergeant, major battalion and brigade command, you have to go to a course. It used to be a week, I think it's about two or three weeks now. Go to it. I've spoken at these courses and given my tidbit. What happened to me was different. So they do what's called a change of command. The band comes, my wife and kids are there, the general comes and he does this flag ceremony and I get it.
John Hussey :And there I am.
John Hussey :Then all of a sudden the band leaves, the wife leaves and you're in charge, and the reserves. I didn't get to go to this school till eight months later, so it's just the same.
Steve Morreale:Wow, yeah, so here.
John Hussey :I was, it was just timing.
Steve Morreale:So here's what I did.
John Hussey :But, steve, this is what I did. I said you know what? Talk about a learning point, remember? I said at the beginning we learn from our mistakes. I said I'm never going to allow this to happen to me. So when I got my two-star command, I had brand new commanders that were scheduled to go to that course I. I am now with sexual assault that if you're a commander and you don't report a sexual assault, you could basically lose your job. And there's a difference between sexual harassment Someone tells a joke at the water cooler and then sexual assault. Somebody grabs, let's say, a woman's buttocks okay, that's an assault. And if you don't report that, right, that's mandatory reporting. But who's telling that?
Steve Morreale:individual.
John Hussey :He's not going to find that out until six or eight months later. So here's what I did. I said to my staff we're going to change the paradigm. We're going to do a weekend here with the 200th MP command and we're going to bring in our JAGs, our inspector generals, me, my command sergeant major, and we're going to give a one weekend, like a day and a half full, with everybody explaining what you need to succeed. Starting out, nothing but accolades. On that, the JAGs got up.
John Hussey :They spoke about whistleblowing is a big thing in the military. So, for example, if you have a soldier that files a congressional, that's his absolute right and you can do nothing to impede them, hurt them or anything else. But again, the normal human reaction is to take retribution and if you do that as a leader in the military, it's over. But if you don't teach them? So my lawyers and inspector generals taught them that, and then I would get up as an older commander and I say, guys, you know I used to take it personal, don't? It's part of business. And I said the first congressional I got, I was in a panic. I was a two-star commander, I was handling congressmen probably about five to ten a month, and no disrespect to the elected officials. They're just doing a letterhead, sending it off to the military, and they want their constituent to see look, I did it for you. Nothing really changes and if we're wrong and we made a mistake, it brings attention to us. We'd rather the soldiers use the chain of command, but so what? We got the congressional, but the point was we were teaching our people how to do it.
John Hussey :If you're a leader in a police department, don't just make this person a sergeant, and I think the NYPD does a good job. So if Hussey grew up and I was a cop in the 52nd precinct, I got promoted. I can't come back there. I have to go to another precinct because I used to drink with those guys and they know all my shenanigans. How are they going to respect me as a boss? So send me someplace else but, more importantly, put me through some form of academy. Give me a lieutenant that's, a mentor, someone that I can come to and talk to. And if you're interested, steve, I was asked by a police chief to come speak to his supervisors. That's my recommendation and advice to police leaders out there.
Steve Morreale:So let's talk about we have to wind down. It's so easy to chat with you You've got so much experience and I appreciate getting you out there but let's talk about the book. It's not an easy thing when you're writing, as I know. It is lonely and there's pressure that comes on you Once you say I'm going to write a book, when are you done? When are you done? When are you done? Got to change this, got to change that. What made you take that step towards writing inside the-.
John Hussey :So I tell and it's great it's a police audience out here I tell people, you know what? Everybody's got a story right. I don't care if you're a DEA agent, fbi, everybody has a story. Well, there's not too many people that were detectives, so there's really nobody that has this type of experience that I do, doing detention operations in combat in Desert Storm as lieutenant, then getting the Abu Ghraib prison, transitioning into the Afghan prison where I mentored four Afghani generals, and then going on and being the deputy commanding general down at Guantanamo Bay. So I have a lot of experience. So, a I wanted to talk about those experiences. B the leadership experiences.
John Hussey :I grew because I was like a teenager when I went to Iraq. I was a major that's a field grade officer and I thought I knew everything and I got a PhD in combat leadership from some great people, fabulous, fabulous leaders and it was great. So I passed those lessons off to people in the book. And then the other piece was here I am you talk about again, not me. I'm not trying to talk about me, but I was sitting as a two-star commander and we're doing a quarterly training briefing, which means I bring people in every quarter and I go over their calendars to look where they're going. And I said to this one colonel, I said have you ever been to a run a POW camp? And she said no, but I visited one. It's in the book. And I said, well, I visited a restaurant but I don't know how it runs. What do I boil the chicken at? What happens if the ice machine breaks? I said big difference between running a prison and visiting one. Same with the restaurant. So I looked at a couple of people. I said you know these guys don't realize it, but they're playing musical chairs and, like me, sooner or later one of them is going to get caught being mobilized to go overseas and run a prison. And I said they don't know what they're talking about.
John Hussey :So I put together the DOTE Detainee Operations Training Event and I ran into so many problems. It was right in the middle of COVID, but my plan was to bring the smartest minds I knew in detention operations and some four stars to talk about this. We had a four-day conference. General Petraeus, who I think the world knows, dealt with this in Afghanistan and Iraq. I had General Brooks, four-star from Korea, absolutely fabulous mentor, and the guy was on it. He spoke about this. Then I brought in a couple of three-stars. Laura Potter, she's from the intelligence world and I worked with her in Afghanistan as a colonel. She's a three-star. And then we brought General Quantock, who's a legend. He retired as the Army IG but he was the provost marshal and we taught out people very strategic level I mean national issues down to how to feed a detainee and count detainees in the camp and we gave them four days of training and then at the end I wrote for the public's information white, commanding a detention operations camp is so difficult because people forget the enemy gets a vote and they know our rules of engagement.
John Hussey :We're not barbarians. I can't just open up and use lethal force like some nations might, and they know that. So they push us to the edge. And in some cases I discuss in the book where I was going to use lethal force and in situations in Iraq it was used under the same auspices as you in the law enforcement community, based on threat of life and serious physical injury. But I left 50 tidbits at the end.
John Hussey :I got the greatest minds in the Taney Ops. So 20 years from now, if, hussey, I tell everyone I'm in the old general's nursing home, we're all going to pass on and sooner or later some kid that might be 28 today might be 45 in years to come. He can pick up this book and read about it and read the 50 lessons that we wrote down for him Okay, because America is terrible at reading doctrine and past after action reports but this book might give him a fresh start and a fair chance to succeed. That's what we really wanted to write it and, you know why, brought in some great minds to help look at it and put together the thought process.
Steve Morreale:So we're talking to John Hussey and I think that's very valuable. And I think one of the things and Bill Bratton says it, I say it in the forthcoming book, choosing to Lead that the old saying, if we don't learn history, history will repeat itself. And that's exactly what you're saying. We lose so much institutional knowledge as people pass on. If you don't document it and don't give it to people, then it's just going to happen again. We've got to learn from our mistakes. John, I have a question as it comes back to leadership. If you think back to the first time that you were in Saudi as a lieutenant and you were leading, I understand that most of us are enamored with the stripes or the bars and you lead in a certain way at first until you realize that may not work. So the big question is how have you seen your leadership approach evolve over time? Where you led in 91 is much different than in 2024, would you say.
John Hussey :Oh, without question, and just your thought process, the way you think. Before we leave, I just want to touch on one thing. It's called the good, bad and ugly list, if you allow me. But absolutely. And one thing though even in Iraq, I had so many different ways.
John Hussey :So at times when you deal with death, you have to be willing literally to stand up and hug somebody and share a tear with them, because, I mean, horrible situation happened in Iraq where we had to call a soldier in at two in the morning. His young son died at home. He was playing with a blind string and he basically hung himself. That was probably one of the worst experiences of my military career to have to do that because we were all fathers, right, and oh my God.
John Hussey :So you have to have compassion and humanity. So you have to have humanity, empathy, right. You have to have understanding, right. And even if me, when I would do sold, you had to pep them up because they were still going to work for you and say all right, son, or you know you made a mistake here, but I still have confidence in you and I've got to hold you to a standard, I've got to hold you accountable, but I know you can go out and do the job, because if you leave them with no dignity in anything, you're going to leave that head down and that's not going to help you with the mission.
Steve Morreale:I mean you have to give people hope and belief to the degree that, look, you did mess up. I've got to take some action. But it doesn't mean you can't get back on the horse and ride and I'll help you as you come back.
John Hussey :That's a good leader and you try. And then I had the others and this is less 10%, but they were out there and they just kept testing me and testing me. And I had my CSM went up to one of them, don't you understand? Every time you smack him in the face, he punches you in the nose. It's like the old untouchables right, don't bring a knife to a gunfight. And he used to say and it goes back to my culture, this guy's a guy from the Bronx, in other words, out, and it was done publicly, privately, and I held them accountable.
John Hussey :And there were a couple of people at times I had to call in and you could just close the door and I used to work for leaders, we would say in the military. He was someone that you just didn't want to upset. He didn't have he or she didn't have to say a word. They just looked at you and shook your head and you felt this big. And so there were certain soldiers I could just call in my office and just look at them, and just look at them and go really, and they just ducked their head and go, sir, I'm so sorry, it'll never happen again. So you have to have various leadership and management styles, depending on the personalities you're dealing with and the situation you're dealing with.
Steve Morreale:I was just going to say that Situation, leadership at its face, yes, great.
John Hussey :Absolutely, absolutely. The one thing I did want to touch upon that I think is key and we miss an opportunity. I call it the good, bad and the ugly list, right? Hey, if you're a leader out there and you have a police officer that works for you and you just found out that his son got a full scholarship into Harvard, pick up the phone, send a note from your department with your letterhead congratulating the family. Call that young man. That's the good, the bad. You know, when it happened to me, I had a soldier, his kid was on a treadmill, fell, ripped apart his face. I called that soldier's family, right, I don't remember the call, but he came up to me a year later and said sir, you don't have any idea what that call meant to my family when you made that. And then you have the ugly and the ugly's death right. And I dealt with a lot of suicides in that. I just cleared my desk right and right.
John Hussey :And Joe Biden caught a lot of grief from this when the 13 killed at the Abbey Gate where they felt that he spoke about Bowen. That's the tendency. Oh, I know how you feel. They don't want to hear that. They want to talk about the loved one they lost. And you need to put yourself on total mute and you need to just listen and you need to be ready to say and know that individual Well, you know he worked as a police officer in my organization. I met him a few times and I really liked the way he got involved in the local community.
John Hussey :But you've got to have some good talking points. Even though you may have an organization of 22,000 cops, that time it's just you and that family talking about the special contribution that that individual made. And you need to make those wakes and you need to make those social events. And the other thing I say is I won't drink. When I was a two-star general, I went to these social events. If I was going to lose my career, I was going to lose it on something I did, but not because alcohol was involved. And let me tell you something I'm going to a law enforcement retirement party tonight and I'll be drinking some Cole Stellers Time and a place for everything right, but when I'm doing business as a leader, I would avoid the alcohol that is going to get you into trouble. Anyway, those are my thoughts.
Steve Morreale:Steve, that's good. Well, I think that it's been a very wide-ranging conversation based on your experience about the book, about your representation, about your service, and thank you for your service, and you continue to give back, as I do. I'm very lucky at the Citadel, which is a great institution, and I should tell you that I'll be there in a few weeks and I hope to meet with you down in South Carolina. Look, this is about relationship. Policing is about relationships. Leadership is about relationships. It's about humility. It's about having empathy. It's about caring and earning trust and being direct when you have to and seeking feedback. At least in my estimation. We've been talking to John Hussey Before we leave. John got new people that you're dealing with who are potentially future leaders in the military down at the Citadel and you're so familiar with so many people courts and parole and probation and policing what advice do you give to people who take these jobs as to their willingness to raise their hand and step up a step where they're no longer responsible for only themselves but for others?
John Hussey :Don't embarrass the organization, because when you talk about what happened in Abu Ghraib, they caused a lot of casualties. There's people today, at Christmas time, families have to go visit cemeteries because their loved ones are there based on the actions of these individuals. There's so many foreign fighters that came in, terrorists, the money that came up, and then we have we call them strategic corporals individuals like that that can make a dumb decision and then it affects the United States. And a similar situation for policing would be Derek Chauvin and what happened with George Floyd. Right, you set policing back globally 10 years and that's tough for the police officers to go out today, especially into some of these minority communities, to deal with. And they're judging that individual officer who might be 21 or 22 today and was so young when that incident happened. But they're still being held to what Chauvin did right.
John Hussey :So don't embarrass the organization. Always ask yourself and I always did this can you be satisfied if your actions appear on the front page of the New York Times? Or you have to stand and I always did this in front of the Senate Armed Service Committee and state where you made this decision and you're okay ethically with looking at it yourself, because I'll tell you what you're going to deal with your family and looking in the mirror and your legacy for a long time and you don't want to be embarrassed. I want my children to be proud of me and I hope they are and my family and friends and that name, and I even put that in the book. You know, my grandparents came from Ireland and gave us this life. Like many immigrants' families, they came with nothing and gave us this beautiful country and this life and they said don't ever embarrass your Irish people, your Irish heritage and your family name. And I take that with a lot of pride, as many other immigrants do around the nation.
Steve Morreale:Well, john, thanks very much. I appreciate you being here today and I look forward to seeing you in the next month or so down in South Carolina and to bring you to Liberty to speak with the command college there.
John Hussey :Real quick, Steve. Just one thing. College there Real quick, Steve. Just one thing. If anybody wants the book, it's on Amazon Inside the Wire, Just look it up, Hussey. And the other thing, if anybody, if I said something here that you think, as a leader, may interest you, you can find me on LinkedIn. Just reach out, instant message me and I will be happy to help you in any way, any form of mentorship that I can. And, Steve, to you and your family and to the law enforcement community and first responders and, of course, our military and all your listeners. A very happy holiday season and thank you for having me on.
Steve Morreale:Thank you. That's how I found John Hussey. I found him on LinkedIn, so it's a great place to be. So, john, thank you very much. That's another episode of the Cop Talk Podcast in the books, and we'll be back with more episodes. Thanks for continuing to listen. If you have any idea of somebody I should be speaking with, please reach out for me. Linkedin is one way to do it. Otherwise, have a safe travel, be careful. Good holidays.
Intro - 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 CopD oc Podcast for regular episodes of interviews with thought leaders in policing.
