From Fine Arts to Tucson Police Chief: Chad Kasmar's Journey

The CopDoc Podcast - Season 8 - Episode 160

What happens when you combine a fine arts degree with police leadership? Chief Chad Kasmar of the Tucson Police Department demonstrates how creative thinking transforms modern policing challenges into opportunities for innovation.

Kasmer's journey from beach bum to nationally recognized police leader reveals the unexpected value of diverse perspectives in law enforcement. With refreshing candor, he shares how his background in painting and sculpture equipped him with problem-solving skills that have proven invaluable in reimagining police services. Rather than merely modifying existing systems, Kasmar approaches challenges with a blank canvas, asking fundamental questions about what modern communities truly need from their police departments.

The results speak for themselves. Under Kasmar's leadership, Tucson PD has expanded their Community Service Officer program to handle 70,000 calls annually that don't require armed response, reducing lower-priority response times by 50%. His department distinguishes between mistakes and misconduct, creating space for officers to learn and grow while maintaining accountability. Perhaps most remarkably, their Struggle Well program has saved multiple officers in crisis by focusing on post-traumatic growth rather than simply preventing PTSD.

Kasmar doesn't shy away from difficult truths, questioning how America expects perfect performance from officers with just nine months of training when other trades require years of preparation. He advocates for growing police talent internally, developing leaders who understand their communities, and creating organizational cultures where seeking help isn't career-ending.

For anyone interested in the future of policing, Kasmer offers this wisdom: "You don't get paid to have all the answers; you get paid to surround yourself with people who will help you find the best answer." This episode provides a masterclass in humble, innovative leadership that places community needs and officer wellness at the center of police work.

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

Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Introduction
• 4:40 Chad's Journey to Policing
• 14:48 Rising Through Police Ranks
• 26:59 Creative Leadership Approach
• 36:21 Community Service Officers Program
• 45:53 Working with Federal Partners
• 54:01 Data-Driven Policing Innovations

Transcript

Intro Announcement

00:00

Welcome to The CopDoc Podcast, your gateway to exploring police leadership and innovation. Join Dr, Steve Morreale, a retired law enforcement practitioner turned academic and scholar from Worcester State University, as he engages in captivating conversations with thought leaders in policing, academia, communities and government agencies. Together, we'll uncover invaluable insights and share our experiences on The CopDoc Podcast. Let's dive in. 

Steve Morreale Host

00:29

Well, hello everybody, Steve Morreale, coming to you from South Carolina, today I'm going to Tucson, Arizona, to the desert, to the chief of police in Tucson, Chad Kasmar. I want to welcome you, Chad. Thanks for coming in. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

00:43

Thanks for having me on the show. 

Steve Morreale Host

00:44

Appreciate it. So we ran into each other. You had done a presentation that I witnessed and you did a super job. You were talking to the Society of Evidence-Based Policing at your alma mater University of Arizona. Tell us first about your trajectory to policing. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

01:00

So I was a kid that struggled in school, struggled to focus, but I loved auto shop, auto body. I had parents that were really heavily encouraging me to go to college. I was living in San Diego at the time. Actually I was a senior out there in my divorced family. I had the choice to go to high school in San Diego or Tucson and I made the choice. 

Steve Morreale Host

01:18

Good choice, Good choice right. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

01:20

Learn how to surf. I was a beach bum but my junior year, going into my senior year, I was starting to think about what I was going to do. I was entertaining joining the Marine Corps straight out of high school and my dad, who had served in the Vietnam War, talked me out of that and was like, hey, if you want to do that, take the officer path. So I ultimately came back to attend the University of Arizona. I had in-state offers from SDSU and U of A but came back. I graduated with a lot of longtime friends from Amphi High School here in Tucson. I finished my senior year there and then I attended the University of Arizona. 

01:51

The interesting part was I decided again, I was never a swimmer in high school but I surfed and I decided you know what? I'm going to try this lifeguard thing out. You know my summer before my freshman year of college. What I didn't know is I would meet my future wife there. We would start dating two years later. So I started my journey with the city of Tucson as a lifeguard and a swim instructor and started my freshman year in 1996 at the University of Arizona with a fine art degree was my focus and a lot of people say like fine art degree. 

Steve Morreale Host

02:21

What's that about? I was going to say that I loved art in high school. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

02:25

It was one of my favorite classes. I loved ceramics and watercolor. So I attended University of Arizona from 1996 to 2000 and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts 2D. 3d which means I did sculpture painting, watercolor and ceramic painting. I did have a Georgio Keith painting, which was one of my favorite artists. So that was the story behind my journey at University of Arizona. 

Steve Morreale Host

02:45

But how the hell did policing come into it? 

Chad Kasmar Guest

02:46

Okay, so great question. So my initial plan was again doing the officer candidate school for the Marine Corps and wanted to be a special forces guy and want to be drop off in the middle of a foreign country and be in the middle of conflict and and and serve my country. And that was my original plan. Well, I'd I'd started that journey. That's actually how I started dating my wife. She had gone to Arizona State University. 

03:12

I was up there for some military testing and what I did know at the time was that I had some degenerative disc in my back from either racing dirt bikes or car accidents and that ultimately kept me from service to my country through the Marine Corps. And then my pivot was if I can't serve that way, I think I'll join law enforcement. But nobody in my family had been a police officer. But my best, one of my best friends since kindergarten his dad was at the time a sergeant at the Tucson Police Department and Jason and I were in college at the time and I thought it was my junior year of college and Jason and I went and tested and I got a job offer. So I went and told my dad hey, I'm getting married and I'm dropping out of school and I'm going to be a police officer. 

03:55

As the father of a 21-year-old son in the Army at the moment, I would have also not been happy with those life decisions. But he talked me into finishing school, so I postponed. With TPD I finished winter session summer school in August of 2000. 

Steve Morreale Host

04:10

Yeah, so you expedited to get out. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

04:12

I did so. I finished school on a Wednesday, I got married Saturday and I started the police academy. 

Steve Morreale Host

04:17

What a honeymoon, Chad. We're talking to Chad Kasmar, and he's the chief of Tucson Police Department. So you've been at it since 2000, and you're a single organization guy, but you certainly have pronounced yourself in the nation. I can see that from the things you have done, you have a creative streak, and maybe it's a creative streak that comes from your fine art background, but also from the leaders that you have learned from. So in 2019, you were awarded, from Perth, the Gary Hayes Award, which is an amazing feat, but I also heard that. Well, let me go back for a moment. So, during your time in the police department, tell us what jobs you held and how you sort of moved through the puzzle of policing. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

05:08

Sure, I didn't have any aspirations when I started this job as an officer. I never thought in a million years one day I'd be the chief of police. Back when you started in 2000,. I mean, you really didn't even know your captain. You rarely spoke to your lieutenant. Your sergeant was kind of the god and filtered everything from the command staff from above. 

05:26

So I started my journey in patrol and operations division midtown. I spent three years in patrol and I loved every minute of it. I bounced around some different squads. I had good advice from veterans. I said, hey, don't stay anywhere too long in a squad in a job, so you keep your learning edge, and I really took that to heart at a young age. So I love my patrol squads and the experiences Did everything from days to midnights and everything in between. I spent a year in a bike in the bicycle unit where we did a lot of proactive enforcement, so in community contact. It wasn't just responding to calls for service from the machine. After that I tested for motors and I became a motor on the south side of town. I spent my life as involved in bicycles and motorcycles so it was really honestly more of a love of riding motorcycles than it was. I didn't love riding tickets every day. In fact, I gave more warnings than tickets. I did my job. 

Steve Morreale Host

06:18

I'm sure you got in trouble for that, but you did it right. I had a lot of energy back then, and I still do. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

06:21

I did a fair amount of both. But I had a lot of energy back then, and I still do. I did a fair amount of both but had a great time down on the South side of town doing that for a year. And then, and then I decided, you know, we were had had our first child and I was on the hostage team as well. So I was, I was really enjoying my jobs and my work. And then my wife decided that our first child at two was was, you know, developing a personality and was fun and she wanted to stay home. So I figured, okay, I need to go to night, go work night motors to absorb her income, or I need to test for sergeant. 

06:50

And I was red and I had worked for quite a few different supervisors and I thought, you know, I think I could be effective at this role. So I tested for sergeant, made sergeant. I did that for a couple of three years, four years I was a patrol sergeant and then I was a sergeant of an undercover squad and that was really probably the beginning of my love for supervision, leading people doing dynamic work. I went from a patrol squad, what we call community response team, which is a tactical resource for a patrol commander. You can be in uniform one day or you can be buying narcotics or firearms the next day, and then I went to a full undercover job for two years. That was probably the pinnacle of my sergeant time. Back then you couldn't have beards and long hair. 

07:31

Look at you now with a big goatee, but I really loved that job and at the time we were getting ready to have our second son and my wife and I thought you know I've done a lot of fun things high speed. I've been to Vegas and then towards the border of Mexico doing the work and really unpredictable, exciting stuff and I thought it's probably time that I started thinking about my line of work and how I can balance being a husband and a father. And my wife was like you're going to hate it? You should, you should definitely not do this. 

Steve Morreale Host

07:56

And you know that's the problem. So when I went to detectives, that was the problem. Going back from detectives never mind being with the DEA and having that independence is so difficult for so many people. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

08:08

It is and, as you know, in a undercover capacity you're working with your federal partners and an offsite that we were working for Haida and the counter narcotics alliance, and it was just you're out of the belly of policing and you're not the focus of it and you get to do some such fun and exciting things. 

08:22

And I loved it. It was a great time. But I ultimately I took the lieutenant's test the day after we had our second son, Deigan, and I didn't look back. I didn't put the effort into the lieutenant's test that I did the sergeant's test, but I was ultimately picked up and promoted and then from there I did a little bit of time in patrol, did another year in patrol and then what really drove the trajectory into the chief's office work was, at the time, Chief Senior, which was pretty unusual because I only had a year on as a lieutenant Pulled me into back then what was the Office of Professional Standards? It was internal affairs and so that really I'd spent about 18 months in there. Toughest, toughest job I've ever had on the department, as you know. 

Steve Morreale Host

09:01

You're policing the police and you never liked yeah. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

09:08

There's some stigmas there and it's true and everybody knows it's a needed thing. But I really worked in there to set a tone of fairness procedural justice before that was a thing internally and externally and I really matured in that job. And then after that I spent about. I was promoted to captain out to the east side, but I only was able to spend six months out there. When I got a call I was actually at the police executive research forum out in Boston for the senior management and I started getting emails for the chief of staff position and I called the executive assistant at the time. I said, hey, there must be a mistake. I'm getting these emails and she goes chief hasn't called you yet. And that was the beginning of the end. So I've pretty much been in the chief's office since then. 

Steve Morreale Host

09:48

You know it's. It's so unusual. It is a very small number that take the plunge and accept the fact that that, when you were undercover, that was one of the better deals that you had. You had independence, you could, you could call your shots, and now, all of a sudden, you raise your hand and say I want to be a sergeant, I want to be a lieutenant, I want to be a captain, I want to be responsible for everybody on the job, including some malcontents, and you think about us doing that. Right, it is, but it's such an important thing. Let me ask you this as you rise up, I truly believe this and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but as you rise up, it's really no longer about you, it's about everybody around you. It's about developing other people You've already achieved. You do your personal development and improvement. But what's your take on that point of view, chad? 

Chad Kasmar Guest

10:46

No, I think you hit it spot. On my first year as a supervisor, working midnights with not in a very gauged or supportive chain of command, I had conflict with my peer and I had a set structure of what I was looking to accomplish. And I'll tell you it was difficult and if it wasn't for my wife staying home with our son, I probably would have been. This isn't for me. I'm going to go back to motors and hostage, where I had a lot of autonomy. I love my jobs, not a lot of stress. I knew my schedule and I made it through that year. And I'll tell you what I didn't recognize at the time. 

11:14

It's kind of like when you're in high school and you think, man, life can never get more difficult than this and then you get married. Just wait, kid, and that's true for every. When I made lieutenant I took a $30,000. I was making captain wages more than my captain from my federal overtime and I took a $30,000 pay cut 15 years ago to make that jump. That was real money back then and it certainly is now. And so all these hurdles are presented that discourage people from making that jump and you have this idea that people are going to see the world through your lenses and work like you, but that's certainly not the case. So it's a lot like I tell people like having children, and we have, you know, two children from the same parents who are wildly different. 

Steve Morreale Host

12:00

You know what my wife says? Chad, we're talking to Chad Casmar. He's the chief of police in Tucson. My wife says same womb, different head. Wow, it is true, isn't it Right? 

Chad Kasmar Guest

12:11

So you know, some of those things discourage that movement. In fact about 50% of my command team right now, from lieutenant and above, can retire and about 85 to 90% of my command team in the last four years are new, whether they're lieutenants, captains, assistant chiefs or the deputy chief. I put them in those roles and then if I go back the seven years before, six years before that I spent as the second in command under Chris Magnus we've pretty much developed that whole team. So I'm the beneficiary of 10 years of investment of this team. But there's continuous challenges and even an organization my size, which I'm on the smaller end of major city chiefs. As we know, there's 18,000 police departments in this country. There's only 70 major city police departments in America. So as a chief of the 33rd largest city in the country, I have a lot of organizational change. With about 1,230 team members, about 800 commissioned, I'm probably 300 to 400 shy of what I should have to police a community our size with the level of crime that we face. So there's all these challenges and opportunities. But I'll go back to something you said earlier. 

13:16

I was embarrassed for a long time when I was in the police academy. I didn't tell my peers that I had an art degree, my peers that I had an art degree, and I certainly didn't tell my art degree colleagues that I was going to be a police officer, because there were just two very different walks of life and two very different social groups. But what I realized a couple of years into my career was my passion for art, my passion for building hot rods and restoring old cars and flipping houses and taking the worst house in the neighborhood and investing in and making it the best house neighborhood. That was all applicable to my work in a police department and in a community where I could say, okay, we're not where we should be in this squad, we're not where we should be as a division, and then, certainly through George Floyd, our relationships weren't where they needed to be to not have riots and protests and those types of things. So certainly the creative brain has been a has really made me unique, I think, in my field. 

Steve Morreale Host

14:07

So I read about you. I wrote a book recently it's a workbook Leading Police with AI and how AI can help us, both individually as leaders, to be creative and innovative and be a thought partner for you, and so I put a few things in about you and a couple of things came out that were very interesting, and it seems that Chris, who I interviewed many, many years ago, is one person who began to lead with questions. Maybe your previous chiefs did too. In other words, sitting around the table, not being top down, because I know you've lived in that era. Here I am, here's what we're going to do. You're going to do this, you're going to do that, you're going to do that. 

14:47

Those are the old days. I've been through that myself but it seems to me that there is a new era of police chiefs who realize they don't know everything, they don't know what they don't know, and they need to lean on the people who they hire, who they have brought to the organization, to extract ideas from that group of people to better the department. I'm sure that's what you do, but take us into your meetings now. I know you've had experience with four or five chiefs. What is it that you gained from the Chris's of the world and from the previous chiefs that you bring to the table now in your meetings, in your staff meetings. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

15:27

So you hit it on the head. Chris did start his questions with well, why don't we do that? That's a benefit of being an outside chief. You come in with this clarity and a blank canvas of not growing up in an environment where you just you don't even recognize the things that you should, because you've grown up in it and it's hard to see. They're camouflaged. I'll give you an example I like to think of. I'm pretty employee-focused and people-focused and building relationships so they enjoy their job and it's the most effective way to get things done, whether it's inside the department or in the community. And one of the first things Chris came in and I was his chief of staff at the time non-sworn Would you like to be called a non-something? And I thought, damn, why didn't I think of that? 

Steve Morreale Host

16:11

He's so much smarter than me, yeah. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

16:14

And then I thought well then we changed everything to professional staff, so we removed the non-sworn. Now the funny part about that was the folks who had identified as non-sworn for so many years didn't want to be changed to professional staff. Their identity was within that. But it certainly made very. It made a lot of sense to me of like, hey, that's totally rational. Why didn't we think of that before? That's small example. 

16:36

Chris absolutely built a team where it was about process because he didn't know anyone when he came in, but it was also about consensus building and we made 98% of our decisions based upon consensus. Now that looked probably like a family fight to an outsider that came in to watch one of our executive leadership team meetings. You had the attorneys, you had the chiefs, you had the deputy chief, you had the chief of staff, the executive assistant, and it was a free-for-all and Chris needed that. He was very much an audible learner and he wanted that banter back and forth. There were very few times where I would walk in later as the deputy chief, second in command and the chief of staff and we'd walk in and we would try to tag team Chris and tell him you're heading down the wrong path, like we don't think you should make this decision. And he'd be like, okay, tell me your perspectives. And we'd tell him our perspectives and we'd passionately argue and we'd think, man, we got him. And then he'd be like, okay, is that it? And he was like, okay, well, you guys are wrong and I'm right and this is the path that we're taking now, and at the time we thought, oh gosh, I can't believe we're going to walk off this cliff. Now I have to say he was right in the two or three circumstances that I can tell you that he did that to us because he had so much knowledge from being a chief before and his BJA work and DOJ work on consent degrees from other organizations, and he was very much about let's position the department through policy development, while nobody is making us do it. 

17:54

If you look back at Chris's era, Chief Magnus's era, it was very much. We would go places and people would be like, oh so when did you guys fall under a consent degree? We're not under a consent decree, so your city leadership or community is mandating that you make these changes? No, no, we're looking at best practices from around the country and then we're trying to create model policy that keeps our staff at a harm's way, builds relationships and allows us to effectively do our job. 

18:19

So Chris taught us what it meant to be a learning organization and again, I certainly participated in those conversations, but as the chief now for four years. We've continued that and I continue that same level of banter and demand. In fact I just was. I spoke at a conference last week and I said if your executive leadership team all looks the same, you know by race and gender, you're limiting your creativity of that team because of lived experiences and perspectives. So you don't necessarily have to have an outside chief come in to have those conversations, but you do need a diverse and dynamic team that can see the world through different lenses. 

Steve Morreale Host

18:56

You know it's interesting, we're talking to Chad Casimir. He's the chief of police in Tucson. So I appreciate your candor, which I think is so important. I was just reflecting back on what you were saying and a guy named Mike Roberto, who is a business professor, wrote a book why Great Leaders Don't Take yes for an Answer Managing for Conflict and Consensus. So it's almost like starting. 

19:16

Sometimes I think I liken it to going to a domestic disturbance, as we both have, and listening to both sides and letting them talk, letting them talk it out, letting them get out of their system, sometimes asking why do you feel that way? What's going on? And it's the same thing in some meetings, because if you don't have some conflict and if you don't understand what somebody's point of view, I think it's very hard to steer them away from whatever their point of view is. And so, as you're sitting around the table now at your meetings, I presume you do an awful lot of listening, but mostly you start the conversation and ultimately I understand, as the chief, you are the final determiner, you're the one who has to pay the price if things go to shit, but nonetheless it becomes important to draw out. I can't imagine you allow anybody on your staff to remain silent on any matter. You're smiling, go ahead. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

20:13

And I'm lucky because there's certainly different chiefs who don't mind jumping in first and there's some strategy there too. It's easy to sit back and not go first and have a few perspectives, whether you're the chief of police and again, I just participated on a media panel with nine other major city chiefs and they're all very talented, extremely intelligent, with a ton of experience, and it's always risky to go first because you don't know if your peers are going to have a countering opinion or a different lived experience. Here's the beautiful part about it what George Floyd you know, what Ferguson and the murder of George Floyd taught us was the previous leadership teams didn't have all the answers either, and what we saw in our country was that they want modern-day policing and safe cities. I like to use that analogy blank canvas Because when we tinker around what we have, existing policy, the way that we normally work, you limit your creativity of what you can actually accomplish, because you just can't think broadly enough. Versus if you say, for example, we have community service officers, we've had those folks for over 15, 20 years, but we use them in pretty traditional responses. So when I got political will because we couldn't fill all of our police officer positions to say, okay, let's start with a blank canvas. What job doesn't require a gun and a badge to go to? What job can a community service officer go to, with the right training, as an 18-year-old, as a 20-year-old, as a 60-year-old, what can they do? And we got really creative. Well, what has that resulted in? We have 136 of those team members now and they took 70,000 calls for service last year off the deck from police officers and they dropped our level four response times by 50% last year. 

21:53

Now that's the benefit of it. Now there's always, sometimes when you have a pro, there's a con. The con is what we have to think about is, as we peel off calls that don't low-level calls, that don't require a commissioned police officer, you're using them for more priority calls, choir commission police officer. You're using them for more priority calls and so you're exposing them to more trauma and less rest, less of those low priority calls where they can catch their breath, they can call their spouse, they can get lunch in between calls or they can do those types of things. So we have to balance that we have to think about. Okay, is accumulative trauma exposure now higher because we're not using police officers to take those low level calls. So that's certainly something. But that's, you know, an example of if we had not thought creatively about rethinking the way that we used a department resource, we would have never been able to scale and expand. And the community loves them, loves those team members. 

Steve Morreale Host

22:38

Are you of the mindset that there are certain calls that no one has to go on, that it can be reported online and followed up on? 

Chad Kasmar Guest

22:47

that no one has to go on, that it can be reported online and followed up on. Absolutely, I'll give credit to city manager Michael Ortega who about a decade ago, thought 911 should not be embedded within the police and fire services, and we started the journey of unconsolidating that function and making the 911 center a true public safety standalone, third partner to police and fire, and I was, as a deputy chief, I was in charge of the TBD aspect of that, although primary PSAP resided within the fire. So the initial when you call it that 911 and then fire service, so that was a decade long project. And now, I have to say, we have a high functioning public safety communications department and they're're doing great work. And one of the really cool things that they do is they've also partnered with Arizona Complete Health and we have clinicians within the 911 Center that peel off 1,000 calls a month that don't require a police officer or fire EMS to go to, and they work with a co-response model out in the field as well. And I certainly think, when you start factoring in our use of force policy, making it clear for me as a chief in a post-George Floyd world go out and do your job and I will be fair if something doesn't go the right way. 

23:58

We have to acknowledge that it hasn't been safe the last five years for officers to go out and do proactive work and largely they've thought I'm just going to go do the calls I have to and not expose myself to the next CNN or the next viral news clip, right. And so all these things come together with having the right tools, the right use of force, training, enough rifles out in the field, you know, foundation of BGJ work, so they have the tactical skills that they need. I want to come back to the under investment in our profession at some point in this podcast, but all those things have come together. We historically, over the last 20 years, have averaged eight officer-involved shootings a year. Last year we had three and, knock on wood, we sit here in September of 2025, and we've not had one officer-involved shooting this year and I can't think of a time in my career when that happened. So we're not taking credit for that. We're celebrating the fact. There's a lot of different parts and moving pieces to this puzzle and the 911 center. 

Steve Morreale Host

24:53

Good outcomes start in that dispatch center and how they vet the calls and such Absolutely so as we're talking. I find it quite fascinating about a few things. Clearly, when you make a decision, you're never going to please everyone because somebody is going to be pissed off. It's not going to go their way. That's just that comes with the territory of being a leader. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

25:14

That's a life of the chief right. I have a three-legged stool. I have my staff If there's no followership, then I don't have a department to lead. I have the community and then I have city leadership right, and it's more complicated than that. But if I lose one of those groups and my stool falls over, I'm no longer employed, right? 

25:34

What we're trying to do is, in a post-George Floyd world, not make this job overwhelming to the community, because, let's be real, people sat at home and thought I don't want my child to go do that job. It's dynamic. There's not enough training. The expectations are crazy. It's one of the few professions in the world where you strap a camera onto your chest and you're expected to be perfect, and that was the goal. 

25:54

The goal was, yes, to target other. You know you can call it diversifying the applicant pool, which we had already been doing a fairly good job of. The reality, though, is we were trying to get into pockets of our community who would, who would not traditionally be supported to take on a role in this, in this profession, we run three academy classes a year. I continue to be really proud of the diversity of that we bring to the table, but that community service officer really enhances our ability to grow our own and reach a market that hasn't decided that, whether they like or dislike the policing profession through lived experiences or through social media exposure, and so my goal continues to be to get enough CSOs to build that up to around 300, where we're largely growing our own police officers. 

Steve Morreale Host

26:38

Are you saying that the CSOs community service officers are sort of a breeding ground for potential future officers? 

Chad Kasmar Guest

26:47

You know, much like a county or a sheriff's department would use the jail for that and like they do here in the Pima County. Yes, we want to make it a career track where you can spend an entire career as a professional staff team member and enjoy and have a fulfilled career At the same time. I'd like to see 20 to 30% of that population wanting to jump up and take on the responsibility to become a police officer. Now, one of my big complaints about our profession is that a decade past Ferguson, five years post-George Floyd, police departments guiding organizations like Arizona Post throughout the country, the state guiding policies it's still largely a four-month basic academy, one-month post-basic and a four-month field training. Nine months of training to go do a dynamic job. That doesn't make you a social worker, that doesn't make you a Navy SEAL operator. You know it gives you the fundamental tools to go out and continue to learn on the job, tools to go out and continue to learn on the job. 

27:49

But in this country, if we're going to decide that we don't want that environment to be a learning environment and we want folks to have all the skills they need to do the social work, to do the dynamic, active killer things and everything in between. Nine months of training does not get that done. You in this country cannot go to a tech school and go install a water heater in nine months, or an air conditioner, or be a framer or put in electricity to a house right, those are two to four-year trades. But yet why is it in this country that we still have these expectations for police officers to perform at a level right of perfection, above Michael Jordan status, and we expect that with nine months of training, two years for an associate's degree, that you do what with two years to go to a tech school. 

28:31

Four years to get a, to get a fine art degree, that you can do what with right. Two years to get a master's program. So we have to rethink that in our country. So what the CSO program does for me is it gives me two to three years to train, to invest, to give people the emotional and physical and mental skills that they need to be successful when they do get this job. And they do get that. Nine months of training. 

Steve Morreale Host

28:52

So one of the questions that I want to ask is where did Chad learn to lead and where do you go for new ideas? I mean, you're involved in PERF, you're involved in ICP, you're involved in I presume in the Arizona Chiefs Association, and on and on. You know where is it that you go to hone your skills as a leader? Because my guess is that you lead much differently today than you did in 2000, 2010, in 2015. If we're staying stagnant, then we're not learning, we're not growing. What's your take on that? 

Chad Kasmar Guest

29:31

I think you have to be really comfortable in your own skin and that goes back to my childhood and being raised in a divorced family and maybe some of the challenges that that environment presents and a pretty colorful family of addiction and mental health disorders to this day, and all those experiences become the foundation of becoming a police officer. 

Steve Morreale Host

29:51

Those are our roots. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

29:53

And you know certainly my exposure to Chief Miranda, Chief Yusinior and my closest chief because I was a second in command Chief Magnus, and the skills and tools that they taught me. And I'll give credit too, because you know, and I gave credit to the conference where you're at I love to pay it forward Chief Kevin Hall, who's now the Spokane, Washington chief and was our assistant chief. Kevin knew data was going to become important to our organization long before I did and that was something I had to get caught up on when I came back as chief. And knowing that Kevin was going to go on to become a chief and I had to have those skills and I did believe that it was going to play a critical role in the future of policing and it certainly has. I think you have to be a lifelong learner. Kevin's line is you have to read the lead, you've got to stay up on the news, you've got to stay up on perf clips, you've got to stay up with your peers. So, yes, I'm connected at a regional level to my sheriff and my local chiefs. I play an active role. I'll be the chair of the Arizona Chiefs of Police Association. I'm also part of the Law Enforcement United Immigration Task Force, LEITF. You pick and choose. I'm on a board of the Boys and Girls Club. I'm involved with my community. You have to pull in all this information as chief within the organization, within the community, within a changing landscape of leadership. I'm on my second city manager. In December, I'll be on my about fourth different set of city council leadership. 

31:09

So as a chief, you have to always organically be learning. 

31:13

You have to be a sponge a sponge of gathering information and recognizing that relationships do two things they get better or they get worse based upon your investment, and I haven't been with my wife for 28 years and married 25 because I haven't didn't figure that out a long time ago. 

31:28

You also have to have relationships with your DA or county prosecutor, your federal partners, and that has become more complicated the last six months to a year. I depend on our federal partners. As a critically low staff police department I'm operating at 1989 staffing numbers right now and that means I have to be creative with the way that we get the work accomplished and be really intentional, but also have partners that are good collaborators. So working my city leadership through why I have a partnership with Homeland Security under ICE, while we have laws like SB 1070 that dictate what we do around immigration enforcement. This department will never be a 287G and our primary focus is not federal immigration enforcement. So it's this delicate balance of whether we're going after local, state or federal grants or we're doing collaboration of enforcement. It's really dynamically managing all these relationships to accomplish your goals every day. 

Steve Morreale Host

32:24

And I think that's something I haven't said. But obviously, having been a boss in two federal agencies and how task force officers are welcomed in in certain circumstances, it strikes me and I'm not looking for a comment because it's such a third rail issue immigration, as you well know because your people have to have the trust of the people who are living in Tucson and it erodes that trust sometimes and I understand that. But then you have to say all right, you're going to go on that task force. But when you're out on a task force and I was just talking to some DEA agent when you're out on a task force that is doing immigration, you need to kind of watch your step Right, because we don't want the black eye that can come with some outrage. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

33:10

One of the reasons I have strong, real relationships with people is I tell them how I'm feeling, even if it's going to hurt their feelings or there might be some conflict, and I try to do it in a way where the receiver of the information will take, process it. So tone and inflection delivery is important. But I tell them look, the immigration effort in this country right now. My violent crime issues are not being driven or my drug issues are not being driven by folks who don't have status to be here. Period. That's fake news in my community. But out of my nearly 40 homicides, you know that's one right. So it's not the driver of the crisis that I'm facing. 

33:43

What I tell you know fentanyl is driving our unsheltered population crisis. In Tucson we still have a gun crime. Guns being so accessible to juveniles and anybody who wants one has created a gun crime problem here in Tucson. Our proximity to the border and the fact that 50% of fentanyl in this country is seized in our state and the fact that we're an hour north of the border makes it super accessible. Those are real issues that I'm trying to navigate and focus on. The border makes it super accessible. Those are real issues that I'm trying to navigate and focus on. 

34:10

So when I have my federal partners who have bosses in DC and that DEA, atf, fbi, the US marshals have all had resources pulled from their agencies to go help with the immigration, the ERO activities that impacts our gun crime, it impacts our narcotics, and I don't think that's what the country understands, or even our local community. And what I add to my colleagues and all of my special agent charges is look, I've spent five years post-George Floyd rebuilding relationships in this community to never have that happen again and we're undoing all that work right now. The fear that we're creating in a population that's 50% Latino or Hispanic here in Tucson does not support this idea that anybody here without status is going to self-report and turn themselves in. We have generational families here because we have a broken immigration system. Now I'm a registered independent, I'm apolitical, I'm right down the middle. That happens to be beneficial for me personally, but that's the way I think chiefs should lead. We are not elected officials, we're not sheriffs and we have to work with both sides of the aisle here. 

Steve Morreale Host

35:15

That's the sociopolitical risk that police chiefs have and I appreciate you being so candid. That's so important to talk about. By the way, we're talking to Chad Kasmar and he is in Tucson today and I would say, without question you are a thought leader. You are a leader not afraid to say your piece. When you go to IACP, when you go to PERF meetings, town halls I'm presuming you're sharing what you're doing, but you're hearing from other colleagues from around the country and it's either saying it reinforces what you're doing well or it brings some new ideas. They must hate you when you come back from those meetings because I got a couple of ideas, guys, so talk about that. I see you're chuckling, sir. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

35:57

So we have a major city in ICP in October and my staff figures they have to weather me for the next week or two. Well, first, their worst fear is a chief of police with Wi-Fi and a four hour flight Time to kind of get through our email and get caught up on things. But when we get there, I love the current major cities group is almost all of us are new chiefs, post-george Floyd, where we raised our hand and said give us the opportunity to lead right now. And that's special. And what I can tell you as an insider to that group is they are a confident but humble group and it doesn't matter if you're talking to the chief of LAPD or NYPD or Denver or Tucson or Phoenix. 

36:39

Everybody's interested in what's working and not working in our own communities Because it's a group think, thought sharing process where we already have the jobs we got paid to. You know what I told a group of young sharing process, where we're, we already have the jobs we got paid to. You know what I told a group of young commanders in Albuquerque the other day was you don't get paid to have all the answers, you get paid to surround yourself with the people that will help you come up with the best answer, and so if you can lead with that confidence that you don't have to always have the solution, but you got to have be able to come up with the best solution for your team and your community, with the people you surround yourself with, it becomes a more manageable job, and I'll tell you, it is the most difficult job. I'm four years in. I'm past the major city chief lifespan. 

Steve Morreale Host

37:15

Yes, congratulations. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

37:18

I serve at will. I could be let go today with no recourse. 

Steve Morreale Host

37:21

It might be after the podcast. I don't know Chad it totally could. I hope not. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

37:25

But you can't leave until you can leave. And I think all chiefs right now kind of work with a quiet confidence of I'm going to do the best job I can with the resources that I have in the collaborative partnerships and when that's not enough or it's time for them to step down, then it's time. 

Steve Morreale Host

37:41

I understand and that's terrific. I actually, ironically, because of major city chiefs who've been around, I'll be having breakfast with Daryl Stevens tomorrow, who lives right down the street. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

37:50

Another legend. 

Steve Morreale Host

37:51

He is a legend, and so I'm so lucky to be able to sit and chat with him. It seems to me that in order to do this job, you have to be open-minded and have a growth mindset, in other words, and be forward-leaning. And how do you do that? Because it seems to me you've got day-to-day and it's not your responsibility for day-to-day. I'm sure you delegate that sometime, but you have to know what's going on. But how do you prime the engine to keep thinking forward? 

Chad Kasmar Guest

38:17

So my line is how's it working out for us? Right? Are your policies? Are the staffing? Are you know? Yes, we're short staffed, but I still have 800 commission team members that I can move around and do different things with Right, and we get to, we get to choose. And I'll tell you right now we just had a seven-year-old hit by a vehicle last night and she's not going to make it point. I've had more traffic fatalities than homicide victims in my community and I'll tell you, traffic fatalities are largely. There's less potential that two parties knew each other, that were a volatile conflict. It's an accident, somebody made a bad decision and it cost somebody their life, and we've had more of those than homicides. And so I'm at a point where I really have to evaluate, and the team has to evaluate have we made a big enough commitment in traffic resources? I've got 10 motors right now. When I was in there, we had 60. And there is a correlation with what you and I both know when a police officer is behind you, you drive differently. 

Steve Morreale Host

39:18

Oh, visibility is everything. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

39:20

Yes, we're short, we're tight on resources and we never have enough, but are we at a point where we really have to rethink that one of our strategic initiatives is failing? 

Steve Morreale Host

39:29

But it goes back to what you were saying that data helps you figure out how to place or how to move around your limited resources. Right? 

Chad Kasmar Guest

39:42

It does and we definitely depend on that. And then there's the people part. Right, you have to make sure that you know largely the data will tell you okay, I need X amount of officers at this point in time. And then you have to think, okay, does that work for home lives? Can we schedule that? Can we do all those things? 

39:52

What I'll tell you is being selected for the Department of Justice Public Safety Partnership, which is a gun crime reduction effort three-year project, was life-changing for me as a chief. I really needed that support and that help. I was assigned a peer mentor, dan Oates, who's been a chief in three different organizations and learned a lot from Dan, and he helped me, shepherd me through the process, and the federal government then brought in a lot of expert resources and we wholesale changed the way that we investigate gun crime. We took gun crime, where we used to solve 20% of non-fatal shootings, up to 80%. That's 30% higher than the homicide average solvency rate in this country, and we solve 80 to 90% of our homicides as well. So that's a good example of when you're not afraid to try different things, when you commit to being a learning organization and when you give your command team the space to be architects and make decisions in that process and not be overly critical of them and provide them. 

40:49

So my job is to buffer community pressure, council pressure right and say, hey, let's try this. We have to celebrate that. We work for individuals that have four years to get reelected and it's really difficult to have some of these systems, large-scale systems changes or financial investments that might not give them a return within their window of reelection. And I'm pretty lucky here. I have a mayor and council largely, and the manager. Let me do my job. They have confidence in me and helped me weather those political pressures versus interrupt organizational development where we can try different things. 

Steve Morreale Host

41:25

So a couple of things as we wind down. Can you think of a situation where an innovation or a new idea didn't go quite as planned and what you learned and how you handled that, how you picked up on that and put the stops on it? But maybe we pick something else, we try a different thing, and to talk about that process of trying it out and exactly what you said, how is this going? How is it working? 

Chad Kasmar Guest

41:54

Yes, in my effort to scale and increase the amount of community service officers and professional staff team members that could become police officers, we create a program called P2P Professional Staff to Police Officer Recruit P2P Great idea, good strategy. It failed miserably. It didn't work and it was about a two-month investment of pulling people out of their assignments and letting them go out to the academy and do different things. But what we saw was we didn't educate. So you have a patrol captain who's feeling the pressure and is in crisis of I don't have enough resources to do all this work, and now you're asking me to give up a resource to go do a pre-academy or pre-training that might benefit them, might not benefit them to become a police officer, but I'm not going to see that investment again. Much like I described the council for another year or two, and we just didn't see the level of support within the organization. Now we always say like when you develop a plan and a strategy, it can be a good plan and strategy and it can be a failed implementation or it just might not work right, and so it's one of those things where we had to go back to the drawing board and recognize, hey, this didn't work. 

43:01

We had this idea, it sounded great. It didn't work. Let's go back to the drawing board. Let's go back to the drawing board, let's reassess, let's reorganize, let's reeducate and make sure all the command team's on board and supporting that. Because what I see in the policing profession is we're so focused on 12 inches in front of us and what I'm trying to teach everybody is, yes, what you might see 12 inches in front of you, but you've got to be looking four, six, 10 feet out and be making decisions now that are going to impact us in six months, in a year and in two years. 

Steve Morreale Host

43:32

That's important. It's important for you to have that perspective and to kind of push that out. I'll ask this question. What I truly believe is I want to liken you to a coach right, a head coach of a football team or a basketball team, baseball team and in a lot of ways, the way they are measured is who they leave in their wake. In other words, what assistance did they develop that now become full-time head coaches? And it seems to me that that's the same thing that you might be looking for as a leader and as a chief that you may have to lose somebody but you pick up a friend who becomes a police chief somewhere else. What's your thought on that? 

Chad Kasmar Guest

44:15

I think you're using AI to read my mind. Chuck Wexler asked me a similar question on when two of our assistant chiefs, both Chief Denison and Chief Kevin Hall, went on to become chiefs in a very short period of time. I was like man, what are you doing? What's the magic? The magic is Chris Magnus and this learning environment, and it's just happened to come together under my watch. The first thing is don't take credit for things that you contributed to, but we're certainly group projects. And two, the other thing is my legacy is absolutely what happens after I leave and the fact that I'm working hard to not only do my job today, but making sure that this city leadership team has two or three individuals to try to pick from in the event that there's a cheese process and that they can hold their own in a cheese process. And I think there's absolutely opportunity, and Chris's time with us here, chris Magnus, at TPD, shows that that time was important. But we've learned what we needed to learn and now I think there's so much benefit of continuity of operations, not for my, you know, replacement to lead just like I did, or to keep all the initiatives. 

45:17

But Tucson is unique. Tucson is every. Every community has their own heartbeat and Tucson has their own, and I think it would be a disservice to the community to not have. That's my job. Part of my job, big part of my job, is developing those future leaders. 

45:31

And I'll tell you, I always try to get feedback and I had a young commander not young youngish who's leaving as a lieutenant and going to be a captain in an organization in the Valley and we met up for lunch yesterday and I got you know, I've got some really candid feedback about how that person felt when they didn't get the nod for captain and how that made them feel with their investment, commitment to the city. And you know, those conversations I coined a long time ago. Courageous conversations help me as a leader. Because it will cause me pause, I'll do some reflection and I'll step back and go how do we, how do we not have folks feel like that? Now, it might be impossible to eliminate all of it, but there's certainly. I'm always open to thinking differently about the way that we even have our conversations and selections around folks. So they are more clear about what boxes do I have to check and how do I get myself to where I am thought about as a potential contender for higher levels of leadership within the police organization. 

Steve Morreale Host

46:27

What I'm hearing from you is just amazing to me, because in a lot of ways, I'm so lucky to talk to people from all over the world and that you have such an honest, humble approach a big job, for sure that you're looking to help others. There are two things that are weighing on my mind. One I want to talk about wellness before we leave, but I also want to talk about the development of other people, which I think is important, and your perspective, the department's perspective, on human frailty, human mistakes. You know so many times you get out of your car, you take a rip because you didn't have your hat on you guys don't wear a lot of hats or that you didn't have your belt, your gig line was off. Whatever it is that we don't like that we hit you with heavy sanctions. I think that's past. I hope that is. But how do you deal with issues that come up with police mistakes not bad behavior, but mistakes and trying to reform, not being always punitive but corrective? 

Chad Kasmar Guest

47:29

So about a decade ago we changed to a discipline guide that made the distinction between mistakes versus misconduct and I think and we've made mild changes to that but I'm super proud of contributing to that policy development, which was led by then Assistant Chief Carla Johnson, and it's such a cool work product and we call it the thermometer and it dissects. If you get into a collision one day but then you get a rudeness complaint the other. Those are separate situations. Unless you get your second collision in a too shorter period of time, it can bump you into misconduct. But what we're looking to do is to create an environment where you can learn and you can make mistakes and they're not defining for your career and we certainly, you know I have no expectation that when we book that individual to jail they're going to be like Eureka I'm never using narcotics again. They have a substance use disorder, right. They have something driving them, a behavior bigger than worrying about being a violation of state law that's driving them to do those things state law that's driving them to do those things. But we live in a world now where we try to say, hey, let's get that person the resources they need. The solution might not be parking them in jail for six months. Let's get them help Now. If they do that 10 times in a row, maybe they do need to sit in jail for six months until they can figure it out. 

48:57

Well, I figured out a long time ago what's good for the community, and procedural justice is also applicable to a police department. And I'll tell you the biggest thing and I don't have consensus on this I have fired a lot of officers over my career for a DUI, which was presumptive termination pretty consistent throughout the state, and we have that policy too, and it remains that way today. But the last few years I've, if somebody comes into my office and they take ownership of the mistake and they're ready to recognize that they have a drinking problem or they have some kind of mental health problem, that they've been coping with alcohol, what I recognized was I'm cutting them off of their resources, their finances, their ability to provide for their families and their insurance at a time where they probably need both of those things more than ever. And so I really try to not terminate for DUI anymore. 

49:45

I certainly have cases that are so egregious it has to be that way, but I have others where, if they can come in and take ownership and then we put them on a performance improvement contract and say, look, if you ever, if you choose to drink alcohol again and we find out about it, you're out. You have to pick your job, your family and us or alcohol, and we try to be part of that solution, and so I'm really proud of that work. I haven't gotten a pushback from community on it. I was interested to see if that would happen. 

Steve Morreale Host

50:11

Drunk driving is absolutely preventable in this day and age, but what we recognize it's more about what's driving that behavior Well, I was going to say, given all that we deal with on call after call after call, that there is that cumulative effect and sometimes that's what they lean on. I understand that. That then leads to the last question, and that has to do with your view on wellness and being proactive with wellness of your people. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

50:36

So I'll start as a child who went through divorce and a father who was an amazing dad but had his own struggles with sobriety, with drinking, and that's certainly how he coped with his life struggles and my mom inserted me into counseling as a teenager. I learned the benefit of that a long time ago in my life and how effective communication and sharing your feelings can really change your world, and I certainly get my talking gene from my mom. I'm an overshare, I'm a fixer. Those are my blessing and curse genes that I got from my mother, who's still with us today, thankfully. And so when I had the opportunity to come back as chief, I had left the department in 2020 to go be the interim public safety communications director and kind of finish a failed consolidation effort. And that year away was so pivotal for me and in a lot of different reasons and me even evaluating. Did I want to be a police officer? Was I done? Did I still have gas in the tank? And what also happened is we had two suicides that year of a young officer and a veteran female supervisor who left children and a brother and her next husband on the department, and talk about a weird situation. I've lost several officers over my career. But, being away from the department, I was not part of the department when that happened and what I thought when I had the opportunity to come back is we have to invest in wellness. And so I come back. 

51:58

There's some excitement, there's some fear about organizational changes I was going to make and one of the first things I did is I said we have to develop a wellness division and it needs to report up through the chief's office. And the reason I say that everybody says wellness, oh, we have wellness, this wellness that it's used as much as evidence-based policing, those two things you have to unpack those. Just because people say it doesn't mean they're actually doing it. And when you look on an org chart, all you have to do is look on a police org chart to figure out if they're serious about wellness or not. If the wellness effort doesn't report up to the same chain of command that professional standards does of PIO and the city and the attorneys, it doesn't have the same significance. So ours reports up through the deputy chief, the second in command, and they play a huge role. It's certainly enough resources and we're continuing to invest in that area. But we also found a partner, one of the things being a great leader and a good chief is you don't have to have all the answers. Find a good partner. And I inherited Boulder Crest and their Struggle Well program and so we certainly went from an early consumer of their services to being the lead organization that they work with in this country, because I recognized I don't have all the answers. 

53:05

And the foundation of Struggle Well is post-traumatic growth and if you ask a room, how many people know about post-traumatic stress disorder? Everybody raises their hand. And five years ago if you asked everybody, have you heard of post-traumatic growth? You maybe get 1% of the people that raise their hands and the idea is that your lived experiences and the trauma exposure and the way that you process that can actually enrich in your life. But we've got about 80% of our department who's completed the Struggle Well program. 

53:30

It is voluntary, much like crisis intervention training. We don't force people to go through it. It is not suicide prevention training. That's too low of a bar but it allows you to never get that far. It doesn't let you get that far in crisis. 

53:43

And I'll tell you we sit here today about four years in and we've probably saved eight officers who have come forward and said I'm struggling, everything from I'm struggling and I'm thinking about suicide or I actually have a plan. And all of those individuals were treated with respect. We did not take their badge and their gun away from them when they came to us. We wrapped our arms around them, we got them resources that they need, we put them in admin assignments so they could unpack whatever experiences they were struggling with Often it's home, not work and we've gotten them all back to work, and so what that's done is it's created a culture where people know they can come forward if they're in crisis and say hey look, I've just seen too much. 

54:20

You know, I've got to check in later today with my detectives and my officers who were on the on the traffic fatality scene, because there's no training that prepares you to see a seven-year-old that's been run over by a car right and, and, and you only get so many of those before your rucksack is full. And then you start coping with alcohol, and then you start coping with other exciting things like affairs, and and fast cars and boats you can't afford, and all these different things. And so you know we there. You know we are an imperfect organization, I am an imperfect leader, but we work damn hard to be better tomorrow than we were today, to acknowledge our mistakes, to acknowledge our setbacks. We try to model that as a chief's office so it trickles down through the organization and I think that's what makes us a unique police department. 

Steve Morreale Host

55:04

What a way to end. You had me silent for a little bit. That is numbing what you said, but so meaningful that you have actually worked to save people and to not to castigate them, but to bring them in. It's not easy for me to be without words, but that was a wonderful way to end. We're talking to Chad Kazmar. I am so glad to finally get you on the podcast. I'm sure that a lot of people will find it very interesting, find it very interesting to hear from you, and I do appreciate it. I wish you the best of luck going forward. As I said, it is amazing what you're doing simultaneously. That's the tough thing about being a chief, right? You get all these balls up in the air and you try the plate, as McDonald says. I'm trying to keep all these plates spinning without breaking. So I do appreciate it. You have the last word. What about policing? Is it still a noble profession? 

Chad Kasmar Guest

56:02

It is. I just graduated class 22,. I'm sorry, 25-1. Last Thursday, 42 actually police officers, 21 were ours and I said that in my speech to their families. You know I congratulated them, I thanked them for developing values and skill sets in their loved ones and I recognize it's a day of angst for a family member and I recognizing what it was like for my family and the concern I saw in their faces to have a loved one be exposed and to risk their life to protect their communities and to serve their communities. 

56:33

And it's absolutely been a noble profession and it continues to be. And I think it's just such a fascinating time to be a police officer because what we've learned the last five years is a police officer is not always the best resource. So we can be open to ideas and scaling of non-traditional police resources that peel off some of the responsibility on our profession and I proudly ask for investment to the point where I give my city manager and council and mayor gray hair. I'm unapologetic about fighting for the things that we need to do, our jobs. I'm I'm so proud of the human beings that are out there wearing, you know, a patch. That signifies over 150 years of service in our community and for anyone that listens, that doesn't happen to be in our profession. You know, I would be honored if either or both of my boys decided that they wanted to be police officers, and I hope that at least one of them does, and one of them is on that track. 

Steve Morreale Host

57:27

That's great. Well, that's another episode of The CopDoc Podcast that is in the books. I appreciate you being here, Chad, and thank you for your time. 

Chad Kasmar Guest

57:37

Thank you for the platform. 

Steve Morreale Host

•  
•  
•  
•  
•  

57:38

So at this point in time, just checking on statistics and there are people listening to the podcast. It just blows my mind 97 countries, 3,600 cities and towns from all over. Thanks for listening. Keep your people safe. Keep me posted as to who I might be talking to again. This is the CopDoc Podcast, Steve Morreale. Thanks very much for listening. 

Outro Announcement

58:04

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