The CopDoc Podcast: Aiming for Excellence in Leadership
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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!
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The CopDoc Podcast: Aiming for Excellence in Leadership
From Boston to LA: Jim McDonnell - One Chief's Journey Through Three Departments
The CopDoc Podcast - Season 8 - Episode 156
Chief Jim McDonald's journey in law enforcement reads like a masterclass in adaptive leadership. From his bold decision to leave Boston for Los Angeles with just $400 and two suitcases to his current role leading one of America's largest police departments, McDonald exemplifies how stepping beyond comfort zones catalyzes professional growth.
The conversation reveals McDonald's approach to leadership transitions across three major departments – LAPD, Long Beach PD, and LA Sheriff's Department – before returning to lead LAPD. Rather than imposing previous methods, he entered each organization with respect for existing traditions while bringing fresh perspectives. "I did make some changes but tried to be respectful of the organization and its history," he notes, demonstrating how balancing innovation with cultural awareness builds effective leadership.
McDonald's candid assessment of modern policing challenges is particularly compelling. While facing critical staffing shortages (1,400 officers below authorized strength), unprecedented natural disasters, and civil unrest, his department still achieved a 30% reduction in homicides. This success stems from his commitment to both operational excellence and human connection – listening more than talking, valuing diverse perspectives, and ensuring officers have proper wellness support.
Perhaps most thought-provoking is McDonald's reflection on how the profession has evolved. Today's officers must navigate increasingly complex social dynamics, particularly mental health crises, while maintaining tactical readiness. "We need someone who can be compassionate with a traumatized child, then rush into a school to stop an active shooter," he explains, highlighting the multidimensional skills modern officers require.
As LAPD prepares for world-stage events including the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Olympics, McDonald's experience across multiple departments provides unique insights into building cooperative security frameworks. His optimism about policing's future, grounded in admiration for incoming officers' innovative perspectives, offers hope for a profession facing unprecedented challenges.
Discover why McDonald believes getting uncomfortable is essential for professional growth and how his seasoned leadership is reshaping LAPD for 21st century challenges. His journey proves that sometimes the most valuable career moves are the ones you initially resist.
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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 Cop Doc Podcast.
Steve Morreale:Hey again everybody. Coming to you from Boston, steve Morreale is the Cop Doc Podcast and we are beginning another episode and I have the distinct pleasure to talk to a friend, a thought leader beyond belief, jim McDonald, the chief at the Los Angeles Police Department. I've known Jim for we've known each other for 40 years and I'm so glad I've watched him rise and move and now he's back. So I didn't think you were going to make it, jim, with everything that's going on. I'm so appreciative, but welcome to the podcast. Thank you, steve. I appreciate you having me on. No problem, you have some great perspective, which I think is so important, and most people know your trajectory. A Boston guy like myself and you went out on a lark to Los Angeles right after school. A St Anselm graduate up in Manchester, new Hampshire Just tell us that little piece about you showing up at LA knowing no one.
Jim McDonnell:Yeah, I look back on that and I think I must've been nuts. I wanted to get on the Boston police department at the time and they had just laid off 25% of their department due to a tax cutting measure prop two and a half. As a result, they would have to hire back everybody laid off. So any anybody with up to 11 and a half years on the job potentially was falling into that mix.
Steve Morreale:So it would be at the back of the line for that right.
Jim McDonnell:Very, very bottom of the list and it would be at least six or seven years before there would be a shot there. So I looked around the country to see where there was opportunity and back when we wrote letters. I wrote letters to all these departments to get information and I was looking for an organization that had a good reputation and that was hiring. And so I looked around and LA had both. Although I never thought I'd have a shot at getting on the LAPD I had grown up with Adam 12 and Dragnet and all the other shows. It was kind of something that was aspirational but probably not realistic for somebody from 3,000 miles away with a Boston mindset that you don't get hired unless you have somebody speaking for you. And I didn't know a soul.
Jim McDonnell:And so I came out during spring break, my senior year in college, took the out-of-town testing program, spent a week and came back and they sent me a letter saying you did well on the test, come back out and finish it. So I graduated, I had two suitcases, gym bag, $400 to my name, and I took the plane out and stayed in a very low-end motel in Hollywood. You got to know the people, huh yeah, yeah, it was pretty interesting and I went through the rest of the testing and then got a job offer that I would start the academy in two weeks. So thankfully the department found me a job just to keep me going for two weeks and started the academy and spent the next 29 years with LAPD and looking back, you know I'm so happy I made that decision to go west because, although there were obstacles, family and friends left behind, it was something that I could not have probably replicated anywhere else the experiences, the friendship, the challenges. It was a great experience.
Steve Morreale:Well, you've done well, my friend, but I have to tell you I will share a story I'll never forget. You were a commander at the time and you called me and I thought you were nuts and I don't know if you remember this call. But, steve, I put my hat in the ring for chief and I said what?
Jim McDonnell:Yeah, yeah, I certainly remember the circumstances.
Steve Morreale:You actually made it to the top of the list and at that point in time our colleague Bill Bratton got the nod and he brought you in as an assistant chief and ultimately as the first assistant chief, and so you worked with them for a while, for a long while, and you did some amazing things. Let me ask you this question, commander how was it that you were able to understand and recognize how your role was changing as you were moving up with more responsibility? Where did you learn that?
Jim McDonnell:How did you assimilate that? Well, lapd was pretty good about putting you through courses. Once you made you know a sergeant school, watch commander school, uh, and then, uh, executive development courses.
Steve Morreale:So part of it was, I think, in a formal way but I think, more importantly, and certainly probably more, as you went through and you were, just talking to you had some executive development courses, so the courses itself. But there had to be other other ways that you learn attending conferences, having good bosses, having bad bosses and understanding what to avoid.
Jim McDonnell:No, absolutely, and I think that every day was a learning experience and certainly an opportunity to learn something you didn't know the day before. And, like you mentioned, I learned a tremendous amount from good people, watching them lead, watching them take new roles and how they adapted to that. And I learned as much from people who took new roles and didn't do so well and lessons learned from there. And the cheapest lessons are ones you get by watching someone else, but probably as valuable as ones you would get yourself through some setbacks. So I tried to do that and I tried to be as open as I could to new ways of thinking, to take an advantage of every opportunity I could to be able to travel and to take courses IACP, PERF and anyone who was putting on a course and if I had to pay for it myself, I did that. You came to Harvard.
Steve Morreale:I remember meeting you then, yeah.
Jim McDonnell:I've had the opportunity to go back there several times now and every time you go to these courses, if you treat it, I think, with the right attitude, you can learn an awful lot. If you go there as some do, and passively sit there and take in what you know, what comes their way, I don't think you get as much out of it. I have been blessed, I think, with the opportunities that I've been able to take advantage of and also just, I think, being stubborn and refusing to quit and keeping your eye on your goals and working hard to get them and, during the setbacks, doing what you can to be able to get readjusted and then go back in the game and focus and work hard, and sometimes good things happen when you do that.
Steve Morreale:Well, and it strikes me that you're a lifelong learner, that you're a humble guy. I mean, you realize I'm sensing and I'm talking to you, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department you still, I still don't know everything. You're still learning on a daily basis. You know, how do you not admit that? But how do you recognize that you still are open to new ideas, still looking for new opportunities, still trying to draw things out of the people that they didn't even know they had to make the organization better.
Jim McDonnell:Sometimes we have the ability to see something in someone else that they don't see in themselves, and so if you can set them up for success by putting them in a position, maybe, that they didn't want and I've been in that role myself where I've had jobs that I absolutely did not want that job, and then when I left that job, I look back and think to myself there's no way that I would have gone there on my own, but the value that I got from sitting in that chair was something that served me well for the rest of my career and continues to serve me today. So I think that realizing in yourself, trying to be realistic, knowing that every one of us is subject to a mistake that could be international news on any given day, and every decision you make certainly affects someone in your organization or someone in the community. So to try and be as judicious as you can, try and be as thoughtful and try and look 360 at everything that's put before you and see, you know, from a more nuanced approach than maybe you would ordinarily do, what impact is this going to have on everybody that's involved in this? And you can never please everybody, but as much as you can, it's good to try and be aware of the impacts that your decision will have on so many others.
Steve Morreale:So one of the things that strikes me, and I think that's so unique in policing and you belong to associations, whether it's Cal chiefs or the LA County chiefs and certainly ICP and the national sheriff's association there are a lot of people that you have encountered who are single dimension because they've always been in one organization right, I'm not.
Steve Morreale:I'm not knocking that. I don't think that's a bad thing. By the same token, you became the chief at long Beach. You became the sheriff for a very large organization in the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department our office and with that has different cultures and with this you took your experience and grabbed new experiences from those. How did you learn? How did you? When you left I know you can always take people, your own people, and I know you balk at that. I know you balk at that Tell me your point of view and your learning, your metamorphosis from one agency to another and now back full circle to LA.
Jim McDonnell:Yeah, yeah, no, you know I have been blessed. I look at the opportunities. When one door closed, another open. You just have to be willing to do what it takes to go through that door. And I looked at when I left LAPD. My whole adult life had been in the organization. I love the organization and LAPD has their own way of doing things. So I remember a very humbling experience when I went to Long Beach as chief and check out a car and get in the car, turn on the police radio and listen for a couple of minutes to calls coming out and I don't know what they're talking about. They use a whole different code system and it was something that for a guy.
Steve Morreale:Should I go? Is this an important call?
Jim McDonnell:For someone who had at the time almost three decades in the business and I'm in an organization right next door to where I left, and to realize that a guy coming out of the academy knew more about this particular aspect than I did, it was humbling.
Jim McDonnell:It told me that, hey pal, you got a lot to learn here.
Jim McDonnell:And I went in there and my hope was to be able to learn about the department, to respect the tradition and the culture and the way it's organized, learn about the department to respect the tradition and the culture and the way it's organized, but to be able then to also bring in a set of fresh eyes, to be able to look for opportunity that maybe someone who had been there a long time didn't see and wouldn't be expected to see. So I did make some changes going in there but also tried as much as I could to be respectful of the organization and the history and tradition of the organization. And I think you know initially it was bumpy at first. I'm an outsider coming in from LAPD, which was not something that was welcomed in the culture. And I think in, you know, in six months or so we were able together to overcome that and be able to be on a path where we were trying to make each other better each day, and I look back fondly on my experience and time at Long Beach PD.
Steve Morreale:So we're talking to Jim McDonald. He is at his home in California today. He's the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. It strikes me too that well, I'll explain. When you were telling that story about getting in the car and not knowing their 10 code, or whatever they were talking about, it was the same thing. I left from DEA, went to HHS and I'm sitting in a meeting and you know how we love acronyms, right? And I swear to God, I had a steno pad. I must have written 40 terms. And I walked out of my office and I said to my secretary will you let me know what the hell all this stuff means?
Steve Morreale:because I have no idea, I'm sure you felt the same way, Like what the hell does this mean? I assume it happened when you went to LA County too? Same sort of?
Jim McDonnell:thing? Absolutely it did. It's funny because three organizations LAPD, long Beach PD and LA Sheriffs they're all right next to each other, they all abut each other's jurisdictions and yet there are three very different cultures and so for me, going from one to another to another and then back again, it's kind of almost a full circle in a relatively small geographic area. But I feel like I learned so much. Getting out of my comfort zone was probably the best thing that could have happened to me as far as development, and often I think we avoid that. We want to stay comfortable, particularly as we get a lot of time on the job. We feel we've earned the ability to be comfortable and know people know where to go, what to do and how to do it. But really the growth comes from discomfort and from pushing yourself beyond where you were happy.
Steve Morreale:I'm assuming you have this experience At some point in time. What wants to come out of your mouth is well the way we did it at LAPD when you were at Long Beach. And I think you probably had to say that three or four times before somebody didn't slap you but said it doesn't really matter what you did at LAPD. Is that a fair assessment?
Jim McDonnell:Yeah, I went in, I think, eyes wide open on that, because I had watched, as you mentioned earlier, so many others go places from LAPD and try and do exactly that to try and turn another organization into an LAPD. And that didn't work. And if you don't go in respectful of the culture of the people that you're going to be working with, you've got two strikes against you right there. And so what I did try to do is make it the best Long Beach PD or the best LASD that we could be, and not try and replicate what we had at LAPD. And likewise, going back to LAPD now, after a 15-year gap, I see opportunities there.
Jim McDonnell:Things are different than they were when I left there. In many ways the culture has changed in society as well, but it's still the organization I grew up with. I'm very comfortable. I feel like I went back home as far as culture, tradition, procedure, policy, those kind of things. But there are some differences too, and the tools, the technology, the tactics that we use have evolved over time and I think we're a better organization now than we were previously. We just have to be able to keep the human side in alignment with the technology side, the tactical side.
Steve Morreale:So there are a few things that I'm writing down, but what I'm hearing is that you walk in with an open mindset. You don't come in with a fixed mindset. You have a growth mindset and I'm assuming, as you're talking to people and you're assessing people around the table, no matter what organization you walked into, right, you're inheriting a new group of people, and even people who you worked with, who have climbed the ladder, had some different life experiences, you know, respecting that they have a perspective that might be of value. And how important has it been for you and I think you've always been this way but to listen, to ask a question, to probe a little bit and listen and get input from the people, someone's perspective other than yours.
Jim McDonnell:I think maybe it's selfish on my part, but I learn a lot more by listening than I do by talking, and so I want to learn as much as I can, and I want to be able to hear from people I have the opportunity to work with. What are their thoughts, where are they coming from and make judgments on? Where is the best fit for that person, where is their skill set strongest, and how do we take advantage of the talents that each of our folks bring to the table that we might not otherwise know? It might not be on the resume, it might be something they've done that they don't talk about in their personal life. You know many of the people, sadly, over the years.
Jim McDonnell:I can't tell you how many funerals I've been to, and when you hear the eulogy about what people did off duty, you wish to God you knew about that when they were still with us, because they were stellar, stellar people, citizens beyond policing Right In ways that we really weren't aware of and had we known, we would have probably looked at them maybe in a little bit of a different light, but maybe also had the opportunity to be able to capture some of those talents and be able to channel them into the work we're doing on duty.
Steve Morreale:So listening is important. The human element is important. So you walk back into la. Let's talk about your current job as you returned in november the fires, some of the some of the active stuff going on in the city now, and yet, at that same time and I'm always talking to people when we're watching things on TV but regardless of what's going on in this place, this still calls for service somewhere else and we still have to meet that. And something you said the other day really struck me, and it was that we're the LAPD and no matter who calls for help, we'll do our damnedest to get there and help. Yeah, I think that was quite the statement, because it reminded people that that's what you're there for to help. Yeah, when the call comes in.
Intro-Outro:We're going to come.
Steve Morreale:So tell me how you drive that through the organization and remind people of mission and purpose.
Jim McDonnell:We have an organization that has a very strong culture, a very strong tactical officer safety focused culture that's been developed over many decades. I think part of that is because we are deployed so leanly and that we need to be able to be there for each other to back each other up in order to be able to go home at night safely, and so when I look at where we are when I came back, we're 1,400 officers down from where we should be. We should be actually probably a lot better deployed than that, even for the officer to population ratio that this city has versus many others across the country. So we're trying to recruit. We've gotten some support from the council to be able to move forward with recruiting efforts, so I'm hopeful that we will have an impact there. I'll do a shameless plug. If somebody's interested, we are hiring. It is a great job and we just started a recruitment campaign that, if somebody was interested, it's wwwlapdunrivaledcom. Lapdunrivaledcom and I think it's well done. It was a third-party marketing firm that put that. There's a video on there that I think is pretty compelling and it shows the stuff you would expect on a recruitment video the action, the running from call to call, the different types of specialized units. We have the various things patrol do, but it also shows the human side, the compassion, the need for character, the ability to be able, at the end of the day, to look back and think that you were able to help somebody on the worst day of their life manage it just a little bit better. And so I think it's a minute 45 seconds but, I thought, exceptionally well done. So I would invite all your listeners just to take a look and see what they think on that.
Jim McDonnell:But we are hiring. We've got the same problems that police organizations across the US and Canada have, that, for a number of reasons, people don't want to be police officers today the way they did when we came on, and so that's the challenge we're going to have to overcome, and I think we do that by being more transparent, by showing people what the job is and what it isn't, and we've too often allowed Hollywood to tell people what police do and what they don't do and to paint a picture of us in a way that sells movies and series but may not tell the true story on what our role in society is. And I think, if we can go back to showing the nobility of the profession to show that we take people at generally 21 years old, with whatever life experience they have, and test them. And you know the latest the numbers before COVID were for every hundred people who applied to be a Los Angeles police officer, four made it to the academy, three made it through the academy. So extremely selective. But then we take that person with whatever life experience they bring, put them through a six-month academy and try and prepare them for what they're going to see out there on the street. They graduate, they get in the field and they're paired up with a training officer for a period of time and then, once that's over, they're going to be with whoever they are assigned to work with for the rest of their career. They're going to sit in that black and white and get radio calls directed their way that handle a broad spectrum of societal ills.
Jim McDonnell:The dysfunction of our society is played out on the radio in a police car, call after call after call, and many of these calls are extremely complex. They're not something that you can go and address in two minutes and expect that you've gotten some resolution. Many more calls today deal with people who are undergoing a mental health crisis. And you get there and if you sent out, instead of a police officer, if you sent a trained psychiatrist or psychologist, their response would be to see the person four or five times to be able to diagnose their issue, medicate them, change the medication to try and make it appropriate for them and then do follow-up visits once the diagnosis is made. Then monitor them, change the medication to try and make it appropriate for them and then do follow-up visits Once the diagnosis is made, then monitor them going forward and we get a cop out there and he better get there fast. Once you get there fast, nobody ever calls you when the person who has these issues, if they're not in a crisis, if they're not acting out on the illness in a potentially violent way, so the officer gets there and they have to de-escalate it as quickly as they can, if they can, and try and be able to get that person referred to appropriate treatment.
Jim McDonnell:Often that person wants nothing to do with Kona treatment or dealing with the officer who responded and, as you can imagine, the lights and the siren and the uniform and the badge and the command presence are all triggering events for someone who's undergoing a crisis, and so we need, as a society, to do better, to have other tools than police officers rolling out to calls like this and expecting them then to be right 100% of the time and amazingly, we're right 98% of the time or better, and it's just miraculous that we're able to do what we do with the tools that we have to deal with some very highly nuanced and complex issues.
Jim McDonnell:And yet our folks do it day in and day out.
Jim McDonnell:And while we talk about technology as a force multiplier, it's great to make us more efficient, sometimes more effective, but at the end of the day it comes down to that interpersonal contact between an officer who gets it, an officer who can get to a person by talking to them and be able then to do the best they can to put the situation in perspective for this person so that they will cooperate, and then you can hopefully get them the help that they need, so that they will cooperate and then you can hopefully get them the help that they need.
Jim McDonnell:That's a lot to ask for somebody who's 21, 22, 23 years old, with six months of formal police training, and they're out there doing the best they can with what they have.
Jim McDonnell:So I think if we can communicate to our society in a more effective way than we have what we're asking of young police officers today, and it is a different job than it was just a few short years ago on so many fronts. But we have great people who are drawn to a profession that is, one that who else is asked, other than our military, to put themselves between a threat and society? I look at our other partners in the public service, our fire partners. They do put themselves between a threat and certainly the public, but in a different way, usually not dealing with the same type of issues as we do, although our paramedics are out there in the field dealing with people undergoing the same issues and doing the best they can, and often they have to reach out and get a backup from police officers to be able just to do their job at a basic level. So it is a very difficult environment across the country that we're asking police officers to interact with, and the expectations of them have never been higher.
Steve Morreale:Well, you went on for a bit and you talked about things that are close to your heart and I. And what troubles me is and most of the people who are listening are in the business or affiliated with the business, academics and such but they're listening from all over the world, which blows my mind. But it strikes me that, as you said, society, our politicians, our policymakers don't seem to always realize that you're the 24-7 group and that DFS or somebody psychiatric or whatever it is, are not on on Saturday at three o'clock in the morning. So you have to be able to have relationships with those groups so that you can hand it off or give somebody the option of who to talk to on Monday morning. But you've got to deal with it right then. And, by the way, we're talking to Jim McDonald In previous years and I know you keep it up is understanding your role as the chief and your command staff to understand what's going on in the neighborhoods with the citizens, what's on their mind, right, and how do you do that while you're chasing calls?
Jim McDonnell:Yeah, you know, it certainly is a challenge for our folks.
Jim McDonnell:But everyone in the organization is expected to be plugged in with the community as best we can. Those that are best at it or closest to it are our officers in the field, our senior lead officers, who are kind of the quarterback on that area 24-7, our field supervisors and our watch commanders, our captains, in each of our divisions. We have 21 divisions. They are very plugged into what's going on in the community. They're very plugged into what the crime problems are quality of life problems in each of the communities within their command and so that we use the CompStat system, we drill down on these type of issues. But it's well beyond that. It's a daily interaction between all of us keeping each other up to speed on what the challenges of the day are and what tools can we employ to be able to make things better. There is a culture within the organization, I believe, that continues to feed itself with an energy to go out there and do the best you can and make things better than they were when you found them.
Steve Morreale:Make a difference. So you all often talk about the human element and I also understand that you had concerns when you came back about complaints are handled. Talk about that, the slowness in which in the past they have been handled, but to try to speed that up so it doesn't become the albatross for the officer.
Jim McDonnell:Thanks for that. When I came back to the LAPD I was aware of a number of different issues that had reached critical mass, that the complaint system certainly is one of them and there were many others. We put together 10 working groups with representation, subject matter experts in the organization and representatives from the union. I just got the report this past week to look at what the results of those working groups were. We've made a number of changes on low-hanging fruit already to try and speed things up. But as we move forward we want to do it deliberately and to be able to do it in a thoughtful way so that we address all of the issues for the reasons certain things were put in place and many things were put in place many years ago under different circumstances, a different level of deployment. But my hope is that on the intake of complaints, that we will always take the complaint but what we do with it from there will differ depending on the type of complaint and what an initial investigation will show. So if something is demonstrably false, hopefully we'll be able to deal with that differently and more rapidly than we would with something that is a more serious consequence and where the initial investigation shows that there's something there that needs to be followed up on as we move forward. My hope is to be able to streamline the process, maintain a high level of accountability, track everything that comes in. We have audits, we have an inspector general, a police commission that look very closely at all of these issues. So I'm comfortable that, as we move forward, we will be able to streamline the process and be able to maintain the level of accountability that we have, but to do so and free up people to be able to focus on their mission For instance, field supervisors more time in the field and not have as many complaints to have to investigate. Some of these complaints take up to a year to investigate and during that time the accused officer will be kind of in limbo, unable to transfer or potentially promote, unable to get a select assignment, and so that's not fair to the officers. And, as much as we can, while maintaining accountability, we want to be able to do better, and I know the people who are on these working groups took it very, very seriously, and so I'm optimistic that the outcomes will be positive on that front.
Jim McDonnell:If I could just interject beyond your question, but without wanting to miss this, the same thing is true for our hiring process.
Jim McDonnell:We have a heck of a time hiring new people and getting the best and the brightest out there as quickly as we'd like to, and the problem has been since I've been on board, I can speak to it we're up 95% in the number of people who want to be Los Angeles police officers, but we're in a situation where we have another city department, the personnel department, who's actually responsible for the testing and hiring.
Jim McDonnell:So while we bring them in, they are not adequately resourced and have a different set of systems for doing what they do. And my hope is, as we move forward, to be able to streamline the process because often, like so many departments across the country, when a candidate applies to one department, they may apply to two or three others at the same time, and whichever makes the first job offer will get that candidate, or three others at the same time, and whichever makes the first job offer will get that candidate. So while our pipeline is not quick, we lose some solid candidates to other agencies throughout the region, and I think we can do better than we have in the past and be able to increase the number of people we're able to bring into the academy and ultimately then expand the size of the organization to where we can do a better job for everyone.
Steve Morreale:So you're looking for a quicker turnaround without having an impact on the seriousness of background. So you bring the right people in. We're talking to Jim McDonald, these working groups that you were talking about. You assemble them and then you finally get the report. You give them time to do the work with all the other stuff that's going on at the same time. But now the report is out and now you said we tried to handle some low hanging fruit, and I think you recognize and certainly I do when you do that, it is saying to the people we value your input and we're going to act on some of those things. How important is that?
Jim McDonnell:It's critical. I think if you're putting together groups and they're getting input and you're not acting on that input, then the next time you ask they're less likely to engage. So my hope is that we're able to move forward, do some meaningful change, but do it in a thoughtful way where we're together with input from those closest to the issue, those who care the most, who deal with it every day, and yet not jeopardize the quality in the case of a candidate, or the quality of an investigation in the case of an internal or community complaint. There's a lot of different things we're looking at in that way and my hope is that, while it's taken maybe a little bit longer than I would have liked because of the emergency situations we've had in 2025, that we move forward now and I'm hoping we get a break for a while on those issues and are able to focus.
Jim McDonnell:But again, when you look at just the magnitude of the emergencies we face the unrest here in the past couple of weeks and prior to that, the rain and mudslides after the fires the fires were the worst in our history here, just absolutely devastating. Many of our people lost everything they had and yet they wanted to get right back in the game and get out there and serve. And same with the unrest we had, we had 52 police officers injured and the vast majority of them got treated and wanted to get back out on the line and protect their partners and protect the community. That's something that you don't see, I'd say as much in other professions is that comes from the heart. You know, it's not a decision of the mind, it's more a decision of the heart. You know, put me back in and let me, let me be helpful.
Jim McDonnell:Let me play, coach yeah they're an inspiration to me, because some of them significant, significant banged up but yet want to get right back in there.
Steve Morreale:So there's a number of things going through my head. Thank you so much for sharing your perspective. I want to take you back to a time when maybe you were a captain, a commander, right, so that was many years ago and just think back for me about how you began to run meetings, get feedback back then and how you have evolved over time. And, more importantly, how you are watching other people run meetings and then coach them. Maybe that there might be a different way to do it. You're being too tactical, you're being too administrative. You've got to get feedback. Tell me how you're suggesting to the people you're developing. I truly believe this.
Steve Morreale:Jim, you've got a shelf life, but, who knows, you may be doing this for 10 years or whatever, but ultimately someone will take your place. Right? We're all replaced at one point in time, and it seems to me that a good leader works very hard to develop other leaders in the future. Right, and I'm sure that along the way, you have had some minor hand in creating other police chiefs, right, almost having a family tree. How important is that? And how have you morphed in the way you run your meetings?
Jim McDonnell:That is a great question and, looking back on it, I never gave it a lot of thought in those terms, but I would say, probably talk less and listen more and to be able to set the table but then let others run with the issues. And to me, I learn more from listening to others, and most of the time, others who are going to speak to the issue are speaking because they're the subject matter expert for the department on that issue, and so we learn a lot from listening to folks that we consider are insight experts. But they're also people who go to conferences, who are talking to people across the country and around the world all the time, whether it's counterterrorism or crime control or some of the internal personnel issues that we deal with. Whatever the issue is, we have our experts, but they also avail themselves to expertise from other places. So I think the strength that we have is that we're not insular, we're not just looking inside, because some would argue that that was our culture many years ago.
Jim McDonnell:I think we've gotten past that and we now are very much open to new ideas and not wanting everything necessarily to have our brand on it for us to listen to it or accept it, and I think that's a healthier place to be than maybe we as a profession have been previously. So it's just too complex a world today for anybody to believe that they have the answers. You pick any topic and it is so nuanced and I use, for an example, crime control, something that used to be pretty much pretty straightforward, and now we've got drones as a first responder, We've got AI, we've got all of the technology, dna analysis, cameras everywhere. All of these things that we did not have not too long ago are now part of the equation when you watch.
Steve Morreale:I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I'm thinking the digital breadcrumbs that we have to. I mean, that's one of the first things everybody does.
Intro-Outro:I need video.
Steve Morreale:I need phone, I need a computer, I need to see what was on social media, dark web, I mean, this is a whole new world right.
Jim McDonnell:Yeah, right. And then I look at you mentioned that. I just think that in the next couple of years we have the biggest events. We have a lot of events all the time here, but the biggest events are the FIFA World Cup next year and then in 28, the Olympics and Paralympic Games, and just the eyes of the world are on whatever region hosts those events, and they'll be on LA, certainly in 28. And so to try and prepare for what we're going to have to be up to speed on, so much of that is networking, is partnerships, because no one agency alone can pull something of that magnitude off.
Jim McDonnell:But what are the threats? And I think back to when I came on the job in 1981, we were building up for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and we were looking what's happened in the past. What are the threats? And the threats at that time were what happened in Munich in 72. And the kidnapping and the hostage, uh effort that went on for a period of time, and that was what we then prepared for, among other things, for the 84 Olympics.
Jim McDonnell:And we have to prepare every bit as much today for those type of things as we did then, but with a threat stream is just so much more diverse and so much harder to be able to identify and to be able to protect against. I'll give an example on that is the cyber threats protect against. I'll give an example on that is the cyber threats, you know, cyber terrorism, the cyber fraud and the whole spectrum of cyber threat to an organization, to a city, to a region. The ability to be able to shut down, potentially, a power grid or anything subordinate to that, would have a major impact on any city's ability to be able to do what they're trying to do, and so to get the right people in place early enough to set up systems for protection against those type of threats, to be continuously conversant with what the emerging threats are and to be able to put in place opportunities to be able to protect our community and events like this from threats that are predictable, potentially or certainly. That are something that we should be up to speed on.
Jim McDonnell:And again, going back to the importance of relationships, the Secret Service will be the primary agency once the Olympics kick off, because it is a national special security event and, by law, they're the lead agency. Our relationship with the Secret Service is tremendous and we law they're the lead agency. Our relationship with the Secret Service is tremendous and we hope to even build on that, so we have an edge going in, I think, as far as positive relationships in this region. We've worked hard on that. It wasn't always like that, but we're in a very good place now from that perspective. But, moving forward, it's going to take all of us working very closely together to be able to achieve the safety that people deserve. We're going to attend the games and come to Southern California to enjoy that experience.
Steve Morreale:You know, we've had so many conversations through the years and I remember one that was talking about I think it might've been at the fires and you were brand new and you're watching and you're observing, even though people don't think that you're observing. How is that person handling it? How they handle the stress, how are those kinds of things? In many ways, I think you're a terrific judge of character, but tell me how that plays out in your world. In other words, you're looking, you're watching, you're listening.
Jim McDonnell:Yeah, I'm still looking to put a team together and you never really get your final team, because once you put what's perceived as the team together, people get opportunities, they get recognized and they become chiefs somewhere else, or they're coming on retirement or they're forced into retirement because of the deferred retirement option program where you have the drop program, where once you sign up for it you have a five-year term. So we face a lot of those issues where we know people are leaving a date certain and so we have to continuously evolve the team that's in place to be able to mentor the next generation of whoever's going to sit in that critical chair and to be able to find the right people. And if we have to go outside the organization for some of these things, we certainly will do that, and you know I'm looking to do that right now for a CISO to be able to help protect our infrastructure. Information security officer.
Steve Morreale:And you. I think we talked about this before. You are not afraid. It used to be. I'm just going to have cops do it. That's a sworn position that you can use in other places, and so you're not afraid to bring in a professional staff. And is that working well for you?
Jim McDonnell:Oh yeah, absolutely.
Jim McDonnell:I mean, when you look at the way we've done business traditionally, we tend to use police officers, because that's what we're used to, and we plug somebody in and we tell them okay, you're the new IT guy, get smart on this stuff and get back to me in three months, go to classes or whatever.
Jim McDonnell:That is not fair to the people that you're policing. It's not fair to the people in the organization and certainly not fair to that individual. The expectations of them will be extremely high and there's somebody who had maybe no aptitude but no interest in being in that role and they're forced into that role and, to their credit, over and over again, people thrust into that responsibility, they step up, they do the best they can, but that's not what they trained for, not what they went to school for, not what their interests were that drove them on their own to go to conferences and to become an expert. So to reach out and be able to bring people into the organization who have that expertise, who've been around to different organizations, maybe had city experience, county experience or at the national level, and to be able to tap into their expertise and then teach them and mentor them to adapt to the policing culture to the organizational culture, so that they're successful, but they don't have to go and study IT because you came from that world, right?
Jim McDonnell:Just apply it to us Exactly, Apply it to the public safety arena, and we're off and running two steps ahead of the rest. So I'm optimistic that we have an ability here to bring on a couple of people in the short term. I'm looking very forward to those interviews and seeing that move forward. So we're doing well. We're focused on the big events coming our way.
Jim McDonnell:As you touched on earlier on, we have these major emergencies in the last six months, tremendous challenges to the organization, but the rest of the city doesn't shut down. We still have crime throughout the rest of the city, as every city does, and you still have to handle them. The public has the same expectations of service if you don't have that emergency going. And I look at our numbers and it's pretty amazing that we're down almost 30 percent homicide year to date, in spite of the fact that we've been dealing with all of the major issues. We're dealing with A crime category. The other crime categories are down as well. Some are pretty even. But all in all, I'm very proud of the men and women of our organization, both sworn and civilian professional staff, who continue to step up and go beyond where anybody thought possible.
Steve Morreale:Jim, I'm looking at you and I'm thinking maybe when you retire you could be like Tom Selleck, you could be LAPD blue and on TV, have your own, or call Donnie Wahlberg for the new Boston one. What do you think, bud? I'm not feeling it. Okay. Well, it's interesting. I digress, my friend, but it's interesting that it seems to me that one of the important elements of leading and leadership is that when you become distracted, you have to give 100% to deal with that issue.
Steve Morreale:But at some point in time COVID, for example somebody had to say, okay, we got to get back to what we were trying to do right Before we got distracted. We have to. Our job is to make this a better place, to improve the organization, to improve service. So you, as the leader, have a lot of people around you, but you're keeping a bunch of plates up at the same time, right, and they're all in different states. How are we with that? And how are we with that? What's the plate that you're spinning now that you're hoping you can get back to make those improvements? Besides some of the things you were talking about dealing with the complaint process or improving the turnaround time for applicants to become sworn police officers what's on there?
Jim McDonnell:You know, certainly the counterterrorism front is one of great interest. But, going back to what you just said, really the focus has to be on recruitment and retention, because if we don't have the personnel to be able to do the job, then no matter what strategies we're employing, they're not going to be what they could be, and so that's a real priority for us is the hiring and then retaining good people as well. Post-2020, we saw kind of an exodus from the profession. The people we would have relied on to mentor newer people, many of them left at the same time. As we saw amongst chiefs across the country. We saw not only the chief but the next two or three or four in line who had been mentored for that position to be replaced. They all left at the same time, which left a lot of people, unfairly to them, put in a position where they became the chief but they didn't have the same level of preparation maybe that they would have otherwise.
Jim McDonnell:And so I think across the board, profession-wide, we need to help each other moving forward and be able to be a resource for each other, so that we've all seen most anything that comes along, but not everybody has, and everybody has gaps in what they've experienced. So the ability to have that network to reach out and say, okay, what happened here? What did you do here? How did that play out? What was the fallout from the community side, what was your relationship with FEMA if it's a major disaster, or how did you navigate those waters All of those things are invaluable to be able to reach out for, but not something that everybody has in their toolbox because you just haven't been through that type of an event.
Jim McDonnell:It hasn't been thrown at you right, right, but someone else has. So reach out to them and tap into them and, across the board, my experience has been people have been tremendously giving with their time and their insight and knowledge when you ask them for help on an issue like this.
Steve Morreale:Well, I mean, you belong to a lot of things. You're an anomaly for any number of reasons, but mostly for having the stick-to-iveness and the longevity as a chief in three different departments, and so I applaud you for that. It's so unusual because, you know, normally a chief is three or four years. And see you later I'm going to retire, that's not Jim McDonald. But what you just said was about networking and I think that's important. But there's two questions that stick with me, and one was leading with questions and you just threw out a bunch of questions.
Steve Morreale:You're sitting around the table, you're walking in and you're trying how are we doing with that? What about this? What? Walking in and you're trying to, how are we doing with that? What about this? What about that? What can we do better? What can we learn from that mistake? How can we avoid something like that happening again? But networking becomes important. You're active with major city chiefs. You were certainly active with ICP, still are. You were active with National Sheriff's Association, california chiefs, on and on and Right. But you're the big cheese, and this is friend to friend. But you don't carry yourself that way and there's got to be people that you lean on when you're trying to figure out. How do you handle it? This is what I'm facing, or are you on your own?
Jim McDonnell:I don't think anybody can be on their own and expect to be successful.
Jim McDonnell:We all have to be part of a bigger team.
Jim McDonnell:But I think it's important to see the team as bigger than your department or bigger than your city, because there is so much information and knowledge and expertise out there across the country and around the world.
Jim McDonnell:So to be able to tap into that and to be able then to try and tailor that to your needs at the time, I think is critical. And the ability to be able to ask for help, whether it's from other experts in the field or whether it's from your elected official, and to go talk to them and say, hey, I need your help on this. I think that is the best way to, if you don't have a relationship, to open one and if you have one, to maybe change the dynamics of it. It, to make somebody part of the team by asking for their help, and it could be truly beneficial to you. But you've also then opened the door so that they're willing to give you their perspective. Maybe resources come along with that, maybe not, but certainly the more people on the team pulling in the same direction, the better off you're going to be in the in the end.
Steve Morreale:Yeah, one of the things I say is be a mentor and find a mentor. And I think that becomes important and whether it's you or your command staff, I think that becomes important and whenever possible, look outside the organization so you get a different perspective, and that doesn't have to be all police right.
Jim McDonnell:It doesn't have to be all police right Right, no, absolutely not.
Steve Morreale:And I think that's important. So as we wind down, a couple of things. Family I know how important is your family and keeping up as busy as you are with what's going on with the family, how important is that to Jim McDonald?
Jim McDonnell:I think it's critical as far as staying balanced and as far as kind of keeping your perspective of what's important. People talk about work-life balance and the reality is in these jobs you don't have work-life balance. You're either focused completely on the mission, knowing that that takes away some time from the family and that's a sacrifice for everybody involved. But I think it's important today to try and talk about work-life balance and the human side of the business and the wellness piece. But in today's society, with the demands on police chiefs across America, it's certainly very, very difficult to get anything that's any semblance of work-life balance. But the family is a critical part. Friends are a critical part. You can't be a silo. You can't try and do everything on your own. You have to be able to have somebody that you can call and say, hey, let me download on you, or hey, what do you think of this or what do you think of that? I think that's your mental health break, that's your therapy just having friends and family as a support base. So good to hear.
Steve Morreale:So what's an important question about policing that either I'm not asking you or nobody is asking. In other words, what would you like somebody to ask you? You know, I'd like to take a look at.
Jim McDonnell:A lot of people go to school for a criminal justice degree and what does that look like today the curriculum versus what did it look like 40 years ago? Is it much the same, because policing is not like 40 years ago? Is it much the same Because policing is not? And are we preparing people for this profession to the best way possible? And my fear is that we're probably not. I think we need to take a step back. We need to kind of recalibrate. What is this job, what are the expectations and how do we get the people who are the right fit? We don't want somebody who's one-dimensional and everything is tactics or everything is academic.
Jim McDonnell:You have to be kind of the full package. You have to be able to come in and do the job and be able to get along with people in the workplace, be able to go out in the field, de-escalate situations and leave people with the feel that you cared about them and that you were helpful to them. That's so important. But you also have to be a tactician. You have to be somebody who can go out there and keep your partner and yourself alive, and under some of the most violent conditions that a young person could face, and you have to be able to do that in a team atmosphere when the situation dictates.
Jim McDonnell:And you need somebody. Well, somebody has to be compassionate and be able to take a knee and talk to a young kid who's been abused or, you know, having a trauma, and at the next radio call, you know, rush into a school to try and stop a shooter, an active shooter situation, or into a mall, and often in society that's not the same person who can do both. But in policing we need that person who is well-rounded, who is the full package, who can put things in perspective and be able to adapt their tactics and their approach to things in the appropriate manner. And some of that will occur when I think we talk enough about it, we study it, we focus our efforts on trying to develop the 21st century police officer in a different way than maybe we did with the 21st or the 20th century police officer. The demands are markedly different today, but my worry is that we're not adequately preparing people for what the job now is all about.
Steve Morreale:I'd have to speak to that for a moment, because in the classroom, you know, because of my experience 35 years doing it I'm not afraid to say hey, look, when you get hired, here's what's going to happen. There's not enough people, there's overtime that you're going to have to work, you're forced overtime, you're not going to be able to go home when you are, and that's the reality, and I want you to know that. That's the reality that you're going to see things that most people won't see, that you're going to have to carry that with you. It's all of those things. But not everybody has that experience. So I appreciate that's an extremely important thing.
Steve Morreale:But let me say this, jim, in a recent training that I was doing, talking to a big city police sergeant and a detective and we got onto wellness and he said the following and it just it blew my mind and he said you know, steve, this takes so much out of us and so much out of me. When I get home to my family, I have given so much to my job that the best I give them is crumbs. And that just said it all in a lot of ways right, you know you've had that feeling yourself, I'm sure, because I have, yeah, sure.
Steve Morreale:So how do you deal with that in terms of making people understand that I'm not going to make a judgment on your family, but your family, for the most part, aren't going to turn on you. Once you walk out the door, you know LAPD is behind you, right, yeah?
Jim McDonnell:Yep, no, you're right, and it's keeping that healthy perspective as best you can, and I think, talking about it, we have resources at work now that we never had in years past and the stigma of talking to someone. I met with our chief psychologist yesterday and just talking about some of the personal sit down.
Jim McDonnell:I'm kidding yesterday and just talking about some of the Was it a personal sit down, I'm kidding, edric Dorian is our doctor who oversees that, and an amazing man and very solid. But we talk about what are the issues that we're seeing in the profession, in the department, and how do we best put programs in place and make it so that people don't feel stigmatized by seeking help. And I think we've come a tremendous way on that, you know, because I think back 40 years ago if you went and sought help you would be ostracized.
Jim McDonnell:And that's what scares people right, yeah, and today it's almost an expectation, in fact. We order people in to do a debrief with a psychologist after a major traumatic event, an officer-involved shooting or something that just shocks the conscience and which we have too many of and in years past those went untreated and unaddressed and a person got back out in the car and answering another call, and another call, and another call, and it's just an accumulation of critical incidents and severe trauma over a period of time. That, using the analogy of the backpack, every time you put a new brick in it, everybody has a breaking point and at some point, no matter how strong you are, that backpack is going to get too heavy for you and unless you're doing something along the way to start throwing some of those bricks out of there, you're going to end up in a bad place, and we've seen that, as you well know, too often for too many years. And if there's ways to intervene so that we lessen that and we help our people out, then we have an obligation to do that.
Steve Morreale:That's great, I'm glad to hear. Last question when you're not being Chief McDonald, what recharges you and helps you have new perspective?
Jim McDonnell:You know, I'd say I'm blessed that we just welcomed a new grandbaby in. Now we have two grandkids. Thank you. Thank you and certainly moving forward. That's going to be an increasing opportunity to be able to interact with them and be able to see the world through their eyes as well, which will be highly energizing. But I like to attend sports events. I play a little golf every now and then and I want to be a photographer, so that's kind of a little bit of a hobby.
Steve Morreale:Do you have a camera besides one on your phone wherever you go?
Jim McDonnell:Yes, yeah, I have a good camera and enjoy going out there and messing around with it. That's great.
Steve Morreale:So, jim, I want to thank you for your time. I know how busy you are and I'm so honored to call you a friend but, more importantly, to see the success that you have and that you're fighting the fight and trying to, as you said when you called that you were going to take the job that you still had more in you to to stay in policing. So I'm very happy. I wish you the best of luck, especially with your your efforts to try to get more people to do the critical job that you have in la, you have the last word.
Steve Morreale:Do you have hope for policing in the future?
Jim McDonnell:I'm extremely optimistic when I look at the young people coming out of the academy, when I get the opportunity to be able to go out and talk to people in the field and hear the innovative ways they're looking at things that our generation wouldn't have thought to look at it that way wouldn't have brought the same tools to bear on it. They have a different perspective, maybe one that we don't immediately understand, but if you take the time and you listen to the why, you come away nothing but impressed the work ethic, very solid people, dedicated and committed to the mission. I walk away from the interactions I have with people and I couldn't be more proud or more impressed with what they bring to the table and just the attitude of giving, willing to put it all on the line for someone they've never met. That's a pretty noble cause.
Steve Morreale:Well, you're a leader that many people are willing to follow and I'm very glad for that. So thanks very much and thanks for taking the time, jim. Thank you, steve, take care, good luck, all the best. And that's another episode of the Cop Talk podcast. In the can, we have been talking to Jim McDonald, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. I appreciate he's in Los Angeles today and we'll be back with more episodes. Keep in mind, if you have an idea of somebody I should be talking to, let me know. I'm always getting feedback from you and I appreciate it. We've been listening, we have been blessed to be listened to in 89 countries, so thanks very much. Have a good day, stay safe, keep your people safe.
Intro-Outro:Have a good day, stay safe, keep your people safe.
