Chief Jeremy Story: Building Leaders, Telling Stories, and Changing Policing in Las Cruces, New Mexico

Season 9 - Episode 166 - The CopDoc Podcast

What does it take to lead a police department through tragedy, transformation, and tremendous change? Chief Jeremy Story of the Las Cruces Police Department in New Mexico knows firsthand.

A Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, Jeremy joined policing in 2007 after choosing family over a military career. He rose through the ranks touching nearly every division—SWAT commander, K-9 handler, gang unit sergeant, training director, and deputy chief—before becoming chief at a younger age than he expected.

In this powerful conversation, Chief Story talks about:

Leadership That Teaches: How he runs a command staff book club (yes, really) and why teaching is a critical part of being a chief

The Toughest Year: Losing the department's first officer in the line of duty in 96 years, then losing their first officer to suicide two months later—and what they learned about officer wellness

Evidence-Based Policing: Implementing stratified policing to make proactive work as normal as answering 911 calls

Training Investment: Why he sent a patrol officer to a three-week leadership course and how the department nearly doubled the state's required academy hours

Telling the Story: Speaking to hostile crowds, correcting false narratives, and why chiefs must educate the public

Humility & Vulnerability: Sharing his biggest mistake with academy recruits and why admitting failures builds trust

Preparing the Next Generation: How Las Cruces PD rotates officers through specialized units for a month to prepare them for promotion

Civilianization Done Right: Using civilians for everything that doesn't require a badge—and why their legal advisor and former news anchor PIO are game-changers

Chief Story is direct, thoughtful, and unafraid to challenge the status quo. He's a thought leader who believes the majority is rational—if you give them the right information. He's building something special in the New Mexico desert.

Whether you're a new supervisor, a seasoned chief, or someone considering a career in law enforcement, this episode offers invaluable lessons on leadership, resilience, and what it really takes to be a police chief in 2026.

Contact us: copdoc.podcast@gmail.com

Website: www.copdocpodcast.com

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

Transcript

The CopDoc Podcast - Interview with Chief Jeremy Story

Las Cruces Police Department, New Mexico

INTRO

Announcer: 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 Doctor Steve Morreale and industry thought leaders as they share their insights and experience on the CopDoc Podcast.

INTERVIEW

Steve Morreale (Host): Hey everybody. Welcome back to The CopDoc Podcast, Steve Morreale coming to you from South Carolina today. And we're headed to New Mexico to the desert. And Jeremy Story, who is the chief of police in Las Cruces at the police department there, he has been for just over a year. He's been in policing since 2007. He has worked as the training director, the gang task supervisor, a SWAT commander, and had oversight of the Academy. He was a lieutenant, deputy of operations, went to New Mexico State University and, as I've noticed, a non-commissioned officer in the Marine Corps. Thank you for your service. Having served myself, that means an awful lot. And as I was saying, Jeremy, first of all, welcome and thank you for being here.

Jeremy Story (Guest): Well, good morning, and I appreciate you having me. And thank you for your service.

Steve: No problem. And so I'm reading that you just, I guess, recently received a Citizen of the Year award from the Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce. So congratulations on that. But did they have no other choice, Jeremy?

Jeremy: I'm not sure. I mean, the business community has been very supportive of us and me. So I appreciate that and I'm honored. But yeah, I'm sure they had some better options that could have gone right. I'm teasing of course.

Steve: So let's talk about your history. What drew you to policing? Where did you go to boot camp, out of curiosity?

Jeremy: I'm a West Coast Marine, so I went to San Diego.

Steve: Okay. All right, all right, so the Hollywood Marine. Because right across the bay from us is Parris Island. So I hear firing weapons as you and I did. And when it's hot, you know what that's like. Well, thank you again for your service. So talk about what drew you to policing after the military.

Jeremy: Well, it was kind of a conundrum I had with my family. So I got married very young. I'm married to my middle school sweetheart, you could say. And there was a point where I went into the Marine Corps. I went to Officer Candidate School right after I got married. I found out I was deploying—I was already in the reserves—I found out I was deploying to Iraq while I was in Officer Candidate School. So the first two years I was married, I was gone for almost a year and a half. My first child was born while I was in Iraq. She was five months old when I got home, and then my wife was pregnant with my third when I would have gone to Afghanistan. So she said, "I don't want to do this anymore. If you can get out, get out." And I said, "Well, I'm going to pick my family over the Marine Corps, but then I'm going to be a cop." And so that's when I started saying, I still want to serve, and I'll wait for the Las Cruces police to open up, and I'll be a police officer then.

Steve: Is this your hometown?

Jeremy: I've been here since I was twelve, so I went to high school here. I consider this home.

Steve: That's great. Well, a good sized city. One hundred and twelve thousand or one hundred and fifteen thousand or more. Seventy-seven square miles. I've been out there. Two hundred and twenty—if this is not accurate, correct me—two hundred and twenty officers and one hundred and twenty civilian staff. Let's start by asking this. I've watched you from afar. You are not afraid—I'd say outspoken is probably the wrong term—but you're not afraid to say your piece. You're not afraid to stick up for your officers. You're not afraid to stand up and sort of weigh in on what's going on in policing so others know. Is that accurate?

Jeremy: That's definitely what I try to accomplish. I think it's very important to educate the public, to correct false narratives. And I think that's one of the jobs of a chief, is to educate the public so that they can make informed decisions about what they support and what they don't support. A lot of times they just don't know. And so it's out of ignorance that they say certain things. But I think the masses are rational, the majority is rational. And if you give them the right information, they come to the right conclusion.

Steve: Well, there are so many outlets for information. I truly believe that chiefs like yourself need to tell the story. There's so many great stories and there's so much misinformation that really coming from your lips—and you do a great job of pushing that narrative. I want to ask about you coming through the ranks and your approach to leadership, which really this is what the podcast is about, and what you bring to the table a little bit different. Where you have learned, in other words, who's your mentors to be the leader that you've become? And I presume, like myself, we're always a leader in training because it's never the same every day, right? We're getting curveballs every day. So tell me your feeling about that, Jeremy.

Jeremy: I started early in high school. I was in Junior ROTC. I was reading leadership books in high school, trying to be the best leader I could in that context. And then in the Marine Corps, I rose through the ranks. I was a staff sergeant when I got out. And I learned a lot from the Marine Corps about leadership. The Marine Corps does a good job teaching leadership in boot camp or even before you go to boot camp for the most part. So I learned a lot. I try to apply that to everything I've done since the Marine Corps in policing, and then here in the police department. I've had a lot of good mentors from the very beginning. I have people who took me under their wing, who invested in me, who held me to a high standard. So it's not like they just gave me a free pass, but they also gave me the resources and the training and the mentorship to actually accomplish that standard. I've tried to model that in my own leadership throughout my time in the police department.

Steve: So we're talking Jeremy Story, chief of police in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the police department there. And I want to ask a couple of questions as you came through the ranks. Tell me, why don't you also tell us about the police department? Why don't I ask you that first from your words. Tell the listeners about the police department as it exists now. Sort of the makeup of the police department, even the makeup of the community. Just give us a little thumbnail sketch of that.

Jeremy: Las Cruces is a very unique community. It's one hundred and fifteen, one hundred and eighteen thousand people. Seventy-seven square miles is large. We have a big segment of the population that is retirement because of the weather. We don't tend to have extreme swings. We also have very high crime, far above the national average in both property and violent crime. We have a huge issue with juvenile violent crime right now. So a lot of challenges—homelessness, addiction. The police department, in my opinion—I'm biased, obviously—but one of the best police departments, certainly in New Mexico or the Southwest. And I think we're very fortunate to be just a perfect size. Two hundred and twenty commissioned officers. Right now, we're about two hundred, and we have kind of opportunities that most small agencies don't have. But we also are small enough that we know everybody there. There are no strangers within the police department. So I've been fortunate to have opportunities that I could never have dreamed of when I started. I can't imagine having a better career. I've done everything I wanted to do from the very beginning. I've done SWAT all the way up to SWAT commander. I've done K-9 as a handler. I've done the gang unit as a sergeant, which does a little bit of everything, part of FBI Safe Streets. I've been an instructor in everything you can think of. I've had those opportunities, so many opportunities for training, both hosting classes here and sending me all across the country for training. And then as a supervisor, I've supervised detectives, I've supervised the traffic section, the training director, deputy chief of operations. I've had so many opportunities in a pretty short period of time that I don't think you can have in some police departments. So I'm biased, but I think we have a great police department that just has a really good balance of opportunity, but also camaraderie because of the size.

Steve: Talk about your command staff and the way it is set up. There's a chief. And then what?

Jeremy: We're a very flat organization, which I like. I don't think it's necessary to have all these arbitrary ranks. So we have a police officer. We have obviously detectives and investigators, which is considered a promotion, but they're still peers in one sense. We have sergeants. I have eight lieutenants which kind of oversee all the different sections of the police department. I have two deputy chiefs, and then I have myself. So very flat. But I think the span of control is still manageable and it allows us to have efficient communication.

Steve: So when you were promoted, what were you doing just before?

Jeremy: Well, so I was the training director as a lieutenant. And then I went to deputy chief of operations, which oversees patrol, critical incident response, SWAT and hostage negotiations, and our traffic section. And that includes things like K-9 that fall under patrol. And then I went to interim chief a lot faster than I probably would have wanted to. But that's the circumstance.

Steve: That's okay. That's all right. You got thrown into the pit, right? So what I'm curious about is, as you were promoted and as you said a lot earlier than you thought, what do you feel prepared you to be a chief, number one? But number two, how important was it for you to touch so many of the bases, meaning different areas of the organization, so that you had a more broad view of Las Cruces and policing?

Jeremy: I think the mentorship I had is probably the most important thing. I've been able to go to all kinds of different trainings, leadership trainings, management trainings, how to do a budget. When I was an officer, I went through Leadership and Police Organizations course, a three-week course, and the department allowed me to go as an officer, not even a sergeant. So they have invested in me when it comes to that. I think one of the biggest advantages I have as a chief is all the different places I've been. I'm not an expert in a lot of them, but I at least have a general understanding of what they do, what they don't do, the restrictions they have. And another thing is, when I promoted to deputy chief, I came from the Academy. So that training director, we oversee recruiting, hiring, our basic academy, in-service, advanced training. But that meant I spent every day with the cadets to some degree. So I knew the youngest officers to the oldest officers. And that's not typical. That's just something I was fortunate to have. So it allowed me to have a really close connection to some of the youngest officers as a chief, which was an advantage, especially when we lost our first officer in the line of duty.

Steve: When was that?

Jeremy: In 2024, February 11th.

Steve: It's still recent. I'm sorry to hear that. And certainly those are things that we've all experienced if you're in policing for any period of time, but when it's one of the family, that's not an easy thing to do. I understand. How did your time both as the academy director and as a trainer, how did that change your mindset?

Jeremy: Well, being a trainer, one of the things I've noticed, and it's not trying to disparage any chiefs, but they understand the job and they have a hard time articulating some of the parts of the job. When you're defending an officer in a use of force, it really helps to have a comprehensive understanding of use of force, of the law, of the policy, how it all relates, how training factors in. And because I came from that background where I was a use of force instructor, a firearms instructor, the rangemaster, it allows me to articulate these things to people who don't have the background in a way that I think helps to persuade them. Being an instructor has been—if there's one recommendation I can make to anyone who wants, especially as a chief who has to be in front of the public—being an instructor, because teaching enables you to learn how to be a good public speaker. It gives you that foundation of knowledge about policing in different areas.

Steve: You have to be prepared, right? Or else you're going to be exposed. Is that a fair statement?

Jeremy: It is. And also teaching is the best way to actually learn something and know it and be able to apply it and recall it when it matters.

Steve: And if I can interrupt, being one myself, I'm constantly learning from the people in the room.

Jeremy: Exactly.

Steve: It's a two-way process.

Jeremy: Definitely should be.

Steve: That's great. So let's fast forward to civilianization. I think you have begun to grab a few more people who are civilian specialists, as opposed to police officers that are going to fill a role. What are those?

Jeremy: We have a lot. When I look at how many civilians other similar sized agencies have, we have a lot more, which is because what we're trying to do is use our police officers for the things that police officers have to do, and try to use a civilian or non-commissioned person for all the rest. So we have animal control and code enforcement falls under me—those are non-commissioned. We have park rangers, we have police service aides who handle upwards of 60 to 70 percent of our crashes in the city that they're taking. So that's freeing up a lot of time for our officers. Our records section, public records—they do all the public records requests, which are a major issue. Now I have people in accreditation that are civilians that help with that. Our real-time crime center, for the most part—we do have some, the sergeant is a commissioned sergeant over it, and I have another commissioned officer that sits in the real-time crime center, but the rest of them are all civilian technicians. So we've tried to find ways where we can get good people to do a good job, and it doesn't have to be a police officer so we can have them on the streets.

Steve: Legal advisor. 

Jeremy: We do. We have an attorney who's a police legal advisor who does mostly a lot of training for us in all kinds of different areas. Officers and sergeants can also call him and say, "Hey, this is what I got. What do you think?" He helps with policy revisions and recommendations, a bunch of different stuff.

Steve: So you're the head of the agency. You're the spokesperson in a lot of ways. While you may have a PIO, you're the person. You're the front person. Take me into your first meeting as an interim chief and your command staff is around the table, maybe looking for some direction, trying to figure out—though they know you—you now are responsible in a different way for the entire organization. How did you run that first meeting?

Jeremy: Well, advantage and disadvantage. Advantage that I knew everybody close to them to some extent. All my command staff, three of my lieutenants are from my academy. That's a good thing. It can also be a bad thing, as long as you maintain the separation. I think it's a good thing. I approached interim as I'm not going to just sit back and wait for them to pick a permanent chief, which may not be me, without addressing some things and pushing the agency forward.

Steve: You know, I like to say that, Jeremy. I like to say that when I have the opportunity to mentor chiefs, new chiefs especially, I'll ask them two questions. Do you want to babysit? Or do you want to lead? Right? And that sounds like that's exactly what you wanted to do. Certainly to lead, not babysit.

Jeremy: Yeah. And I had the advantage. I knew exactly where we were. I knew who the players were. I knew what we needed to do. If I had just come in as an interim, it would have been a lot harder to just start doing stuff. But I knew what I wanted to do. We started pushing for it. I gave a clear vision—as clear a vision as I could—to my command staff. This is what I want to do for the next six months, for the rest of this calendar year. This is what we're going to focus on. And they ran with it.

Steve: That's great. So how do you run your meetings? Are you autocratic? Are you open? Do you listen? Do you seek input? Do you ask questions to sort of be probative?

Jeremy: I do. The last two years we've done—we start with what we call they call it "story time." You know my last name. I'm joking, but that is—

Steve: That's a good one. That's a good one. Story time is story time. But this is really Story, this story, story time. Go ahead.

Jeremy: So we have a book that we have each year, and every staff meeting we start with discussing that chapter from what we read in between that time from the last—almost like a book club.

Steve: That's awesome. Like a book club. So tell me what the current book is.

Jeremy: We just started "The Founding Fathers on Leadership" from Donald Phillips.

We last year we did "Lincoln on Leadership,"  Yeah, I know both of them are some of my favorite books. I like them because you get a refresher on our history. And being that it's 2026 and the celebration we have this year for our founding, I thought it would be a fitting book to do for this year.

Steve: That's great. So was that something that was in place before you got there or did you bring that along with you?

Jeremy: I brought that along with me. I think there's a tendency—I don't read as much as I would like, but I've always been a reader, so I'm trying to kind of force myself to do it more and hold myself accountable and force my lieutenants to invest in and read, and specifically in leadership.

Steve: So let's talk a little bit about that. You know, when you bring some new idea like that, there can be some reluctance, if not resistance. How did you overcome that if there was, or how did you sort of sell that and what the outcome could be if we all were reading the same things and trying to apply it to the organization and to ourselves as leaders to improve our leadership?

Jeremy: I think that's exactly it. As we've gone through it, I don't think there's a ton of pushback. I think they're busy. I stretched them thin sometimes. And it's about making it a priority. And I do that by randomly selecting someone right before the meeting who's going to do the primary recap of the chapter, so that anybody is fair game. And then we discuss it. But as we've gone through the first book that we went through, there are so many times where like, "Hey, this applies to what we're dealing with right now or what we just dealt with." And you start to see the value of it because you're applying it in real time.

Steve: Well, some would say that that's a waste of time. And please don't get me wrong. Let me finish the thought. In other words, you've got things to worry about. Why are you being a teacher, in essence? And I'd be curious to know what your counter to that would be.

Jeremy: My first counter is that a significant proportion of a leader's job is to teach. It's a very important role for a leader to teach. And like I said, we have seen the value of it in that we can apply what we're learning to real-time events that the department is facing or a particular section is facing. And these are—I pick these books strategically because the chapters are not—none of the chapters are that long. Very simple principles. There's a lot of value without a lot of time investment because I recognize it's a balance, but I think being intentional about becoming a better leader is extremely important. And sometimes we have to force ourselves to do that.

Steve: I think so many of these books—and listen, you and I have read an awful lot of leadership books, and there's an awful lot, and I just wrote one myself—but there's an awful lot of overlap. The themes don't necessarily change. Maybe the application changes, but I would say that you're always looking for lessons and nuggets, right, as you're reading. So I'm very appreciative to learn that that's what you're doing. I think that's an important thing. And so many other chiefs are doing that. Where do you get your ideas? Who do you bounce ideas off of? I'm a member of the IACP. So are you. You've got the New Mexico Chiefs of Police Association and on and on and on. How does that help you sort of broaden your horizons, think outside the box, and get you outside of the day-to-day occasionally?

Jeremy: It definitely does. I think relying—well, I'll tell you, when I became chief, I did not feel prepared to be a chief. And so I had to do a lot of work with reading and learning and investing on my own. But I also had to lean on other people that I trusted. And that's chiefs here in New Mexico that I knew, on LinkedIn looking for nuggets, like you said, and information that I could apply, stealing ideas from other police departments—whether it's, it's not stealing—

Steve: Acquiring.

Jeremy: So on LinkedIn and IACP has a ton of resources, pulling whether it's policy or just different approaches. Podcasts—I do listen to a lot of podcasts to get ideas, reading studies and articles. So a variety of ways. But I think there's so much information out there. We can learn a lot if we just spend some time looking.

Steve: How do you use your data? It seems like you've had a reduction in crime. There's been some rise in crime here and there. And I know you focus on juvenile crime, and you've been trying to push for some better legislation, I suppose, to take care of that. So talk a little bit about that.

Jeremy: Yeah. We've seen similar to what most of the country has seen. We saw a sharp rise from 2020 to 2022 was our peak. And then we've had a decrease every year since then. But we're still above where we were in, say, 2018. Not by a ton now, but we're still above that. A lot of it is recognizing those trends. I try to—I have good analysts. I try to use them to understand what's really going on. We have a system called Paragon, which is a phenomenal system. It kind of pulls all your different data sources, and it's very easy to search and query and compare and do graphs. And I do that a lot because I want to make sure that what my feelings, my intuitions are, are accurate. Because sometimes they're not. And I don't want to be making decisions on false assumptions.

Steve: Hey, we both said the same thing at the same time. Go ahead.

Jeremy: Yes. So I use that data for—I try to use data for every decision I make, at least to some extent. When it comes to legislation, New Mexico is a very difficult state to be a police officer, I would argue probably the most difficult. It's definitely up there when you look at the restrictions we have with search and seizure and how we apply the New Mexico Constitution is far more restrictive than the US Constitution. What officers can do, the legal liability landscape for officers with the New Mexico Civil Rights Act. So I push constantly for changes to make it a little bit friendlier for law enforcement and to hold criminals accountable. It's a balance. It's not about locking people up forever for every mistake. Nobody's asking for that. But right now, we're skewed heavily to the side of criminals are never wrong. Let's coddle them. And basically our victims are left behind and our officers are left to deal with the pieces where they're arresting people over and over and over and over.

Steve: So the recidivism is quite an issue, as you say, especially if the system around you—your officers are doing the job, they're putting handcuffs on, they're bringing them through, and they're—I mean, we see this in New York, too, that they're not being handled. And then I always ask the question, justice for whom? Right. What about the victims? Right. And I understand that. If you had the opportunity to make modifications, and I'm sure you already did in your academy, what are the things that should be paid more attention to in the time that cadets are in the academy?

Jeremy: I spent a lot of time researching, reading, and thinking about this and applying some of those changes while I was there. And the training director I have is very progressive in a good sense with trying to apply what we know about what works in training, specifically police training applied to the academy. So some of the things we've done, we've tried to really do spaced repetition in the topics instead of doing legal—we have a legal block. It's a week of legal or whatever the time period is, and then we just move on. That's terrible for retention. We want to apply it throughout the academy, and we want to make sure that they're actually having to apply it in a realistic context. So if they're in a scenario, they need to understand the legal implications, not just the tactics, not just the firearms skills. Everything has to come together and be interleaved. So we do a lot of interleaving where in the same day they'll do some firearms, they'll do some defensive tactics, some PT, they'll do maybe two hours of search and seizure, and then they'll do some scenarios where they apply—they're scaled obviously to where they are in the academy, but really trying to apply what we know about learning in the academy setting. And it's not convenient. It's actually the opposite. It's very difficult for scheduling, for getting instructors there, because it's easy just to take a week off and go teach and then go back to what you're doing. It's hard to go, "I got to show up for two hours on Monday and then Thursday, and then the following week I got to show up for three hours." But it is effective. And if the goal is long-term retention and transfer, I mean, I don't care if at the end of the academy they know 100 percent of it, because if six months later they can't recall it, it doesn't matter. And if they can't apply it in different scenarios in the real world, it doesn't matter. We have to look at retention and transfer as the key goals of training—both the academy and in-service advanced training—and then work backwards and make sure that we're accomplishing that.

Steve: I mean, I think what's so important, and now as a professor after many years in law enforcement, that critical thinking is really important. But I think using adult learning techniques is really very important, and I don't know that an awful lot of academies have done that in the past. But I know, having spent a good deal of time over in Europe, I was watching the way some of the police departments are trained, their people, and first of all there are much longer periods for a recruit officer to be on probation. Sometimes it's three years. But most importantly, and what I would love to see adopted here, is allowing reflection and allowing the opportunity to reflect: What happened? What did you do? What could you have done better? Now that you know this, how will you handle it the next time? Even written reflection, which aggravates the people writing it. But I think you talk about retention, it adds to retention. What's your take on that and whether or not there's ample reflection in the academy while they're learning?

Jeremy: I agree with you 100 percent. I don't think there is. I think the tendency both for the instructor and the student is we want to just move on. So for instance, you finish a scenario and instructors will do a debrief and it's just, "Hey, you did this wrong. You did that wrong. And here's what you need to do to fix it." That seems like it's productive, but it's absolutely not. You have to guide the student to kind of discover what they did, what they saw, why they did it, how they could improve. There's so much more value in that. But it takes time. Written reflection just as important. And it's hard. It's hard for the student. But that's the point. We know that good learning is difficult. We need desirable difficulties. Easy learning is easily forgotten. So that difficulty is kind of the point. And it's got to be scaled. Right. There's a bell curve. If you make it too difficult, you actually degrade learning. But we got to find that sweet spot and reflection's a really big piece of that.

Steve: That's great. How important to you in driving maybe some of your ideals to other leaders—creating other leaders to me is one of the most important things a leader does. And I always say, I've talked to many a coach, and sort of the way you can measure a good coach is how many other head coaches, for example, they've produced under them, how many other leaders you've produced, you or your colleagues. Tell me about how important that is, developing others.

Jeremy: If there's one focus I have right now, it's that. And I think we've done an okay job of that as an agency over the years. But I think it's something we need to focus more on. I have good—my lieutenants, my sergeants have some really good leaders in this department. Of course, I have some that need a lot of work. I think that's true in any organization.

Steve: Sure.

Jeremy: But it is very important. And we all have strengths and weaknesses. My strengths are different than some of my lieutenants and vice versa. But we have to work on that. That's why the book club is just a small component of that. So we're talking about these things or hearing other lieutenants' ideas, self-reflecting on whether maybe I need to reconsider my approach. And that's kind of how we move the needle forward. The formal programs are important. We're doing more of that—Northwestern, going to Northwestern, sending people to the National Academy. That's not the be-all end-all by any means, but that's a part of it. And that you're talking to other leaders, you're comparing. We kind of need to do all that. But succession planning is something that keeps me up at night because I want to make sure that when I leave, someone from within the agency takes over. The last thing I want is someone from the outside to come in, because I've had that throughout my career—over 50 inside chiefs, outside chiefs. And it's never worked out for us. Not because they're even bad leaders, because it takes time to learn the organization. It takes time to learn the people, know who you can trust. And then by the time they do that, they tend to leave for us—three to four years. I want it to come from inside.

Steve: How do you make use as a chief of incidents and issues that happen in other organizations, sometimes next door, as learning opportunities?

Jeremy: Well, we need to pay attention to that. Now, Albuquerque is similar, but it's a very different community than it is. I see some of the reactions, the approach, like here's the public information approach and here's the reaction. You got to pay attention to that because you can definitely learn lessons from that, both good and bad. Sometimes you're like, "Oh, wow. That was a good approach. That really helped kind of stifle that outcry that could have happened," whether it's justified or not. So I think learning lessons from other departments is something that we should do as police. I think we have done that my whole career. We watch videos from agencies across the country since I started, in years before, and we try to learn the lessons not just to critique or criticize, but so that we can get better, we can be safe.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, when you're looking at something like that and you're saying, okay, what happens if this happens to us, how are we going to handle it? You know, a chase that ends in a T-bone and somebody is hurt or killed, how do we do that? How do we learn from them, not to Monday morning quarterback, but to understand this could be on our plate pretty soon. How are we going to handle it? Do you have those conversations, Jeremy?

Jeremy: I do, and I think the other half is how do you handle it if and when it does happen? And how could we maybe try to minimize the potential of that happening? How do we mitigate the risk of that happening here, whatever the event is? I would say the Chiefs Association here in New Mexico has gotten better and better at collaborating and having those conversations amongst chiefs so that we can learn from each other.

Steve: That's great. Do you consider yourself a lifelong learner? I think from listening to you are.

Jeremy: I do. I believe that wholeheartedly. I think as soon as you stop learning, it's time to hang up whatever you're doing. And the concept of growth mindset, I buy into entirely.

Steve: So we're talking to Jeremy Story, Las Cruces Police Chief, and I really appreciate your being here. Why do you feel—it goes back to a question I asked earlier—that you have the opportunity if you create the pulpit rather than being quiet? I see so many chiefs that should speak out and don't. You seek those opportunities. Why? And how thoughtful—how much thought goes into that before you take the microphone or sit in a hearing?

Jeremy: One of the big, probably the biggest lesson I learned from the previous chief, who got a lot of flack both internally and externally, and actually was a good chief. Most of that flack was because he did not get out and talk to people as much as he should, including internally. There's a lot of miscommunication and misperception that happens. And towards the end, I think he recognized that. We did our first town hall with the public before he left. So that's a lesson I took. I'm going to try a different approach and see if that helps. I do. I know there's a lot of thought because I try to anticipate, "All right, this is how I think I'm coming across. How could it be perceived?" And there's been times where I misjudge it a little bit. I still think I'm saying things that are correct. I'm not saying anything that's crazy. I'll still stand by it. But I try to be really thoughtful about how I communicate. Again, I'm appealing to the middle, what I would like to believe is the majority, not the fringes on either side, because that's the group that I need to kind of persuade and educate.

Steve: Well, okay. And so you've done that to me. What I'm hearing from you too is that value, not only for your tactical knowledge, but for your training knowledge. And that blend makes for something pretty good. Now, something you said in the beginning was "I was able to go to a leadership class when I was an officer." Are you able to do the same thing and provide similar opportunities to people?

Jeremy: Yes. When it comes to training, we spend a lot of money on training and we prioritize it now. So you have to fight for that—

Steve: One of the questions I was going to ask you is that that's very often an organization's first thing to go. Right. We've got to buy bullets and we've got to buy Kevlar and we've got to buy cars and whatever it is. And training is sort of at the back seat. It seems to me that it's a priority for you.

Jeremy: It is. And for the city. I haven't had pushback. Now, I will say the city's budget is in a very different position going into next year. It's going to get challenging. But I've made it clear and I hope—I have bosses too—but I hope they listen. That training is an investment that's pennies on the dollar. We're talking about life and death. This is not Parks and Rec going to a Parks and Rec conference. This literally could be life and death for the officer and for the public. And we talk about liability reduction. It pays dividends if I prevent one lawsuit that will pay for potentially our entire training budget for five years. So it's worth the investment. We have to prioritize it. Do I wish we could train more? Yes. I think realistically, in a perfect world with great staffing, officers would train—they'd be on the streets 50 percent of the time, they train 50 percent of time in all the different areas that we have to stay cutting edge on. That's not realistic right now, but I try to do as much as we possibly can, and I push that a little bit every year is the goal.

Steve: That's good. I'm glad to hear that. I'm going to throw two words at you: humility and vulnerability. Not something that is used in policing an awful lot. As a chief, how important is humility to you with you and others and being vulnerable and accepting vulnerability, being honest?

Jeremy: I think it's really important, especially if you grew up with the agency. People are going to know what your mistakes were, potentially.

Steve: Isn't that true?

Jeremy: Yes. So be honest about them and help other people learn from them. It's not an easy thing to do. I think it pays off even for me personally once I do it and build that trust. I've talked to Academy—even the last academy class, I told them the biggest mistake I've made as a police officer, how painful it was. But then I talk about the growth that came from it. They can see that everyone makes mistakes. Mistakes actually are required to learn, to grow, to mastery. You're not going to master anything without mistakes. It's about trying to minimize the severity of them and do them in the right environment when possible. But if we don't talk about our mistakes or admit our mistakes, you lose trust because people know. People know that they're there. And if you just say, "I don't make any mistakes, but let me call you on yours," it's hard to do that.

Steve: Well that's—yeah, that breaks down trust and belief in somebody. And in terms of using that theory, that philosophy that we all make mistakes as you're dealing with—I don't like to—I mean, there's discipline out there, but taking some corrective action, how do you weigh in on does everything have to be punitive or is there more often than not a way to use a learning opportunity and some correction rather than discipline?

Jeremy: I definitely think training should be the first thing we look at. Mentorship or counseling kind of goes hand in hand, and that should be the default. Anytime there's a mistake, especially a mistake to the mind where it's not a mistake to the heart where they do something unethical or illegal, that's really stupid. That could be different circumstances. But even when it comes to ethics, I think training is a component of that. You can do scenarios where an officer is confronted with an ethical dilemma where they have to intervene with an officer, where somebody, another officer tries to do an illegal search. What do you do? And that helps make it normal so that it minimizes the chances of it happening in these tough situations on the street. So training should be the first course of action. There's exceptions of course based on severity. But anytime we can, we should really focus on training and counseling as corrective actions.

Steve: Great. Glad to hear that. Let's go back to a time. I mean, I feel bad for what's going on in Minneapolis and for Brian O'Hara. And no sooner does he start to take things under control from Floyd, you've got shootings. And now the ice shooting and shootings in school. It's not an easy job, I'm sure, for him. But when George Floyd happened, a lot of things happened with public perception and the public distrust of police. We were all painted with the same broad brush. Walk me back to you at Las Cruces. And what was learned and what conversations were going on as we were getting that backlash across the country?

Jeremy: That was a very difficult time for us. Obviously, you had COVID going on, which did not help matters. The chief at the time basically was absent and then he ended up retiring. And so we then had an interim chief who was the chief right before me trying to lead us through that. We didn't have to deal with what many places dealt with, but we had large protests that we were able to kind of keep in line. But that was hard to manage. And I, as a lieutenant, I was a lieutenant at the time, and I was in charge with running the operations around those protests. We had an officer-involved shooting—ourselves. Actually was an officer—I take that back. It was an in-custody death we had that happened very close to this. So that kind of added a little bit of fuel to the fire. And it was difficult. I think when you talk about recruiting and retention that impacted all of us. So we had recruiting challenges. In 2021, we were at 161 officers, the lowest that we had been in at least in the modern era. So all these things were going on. It was tough to navigate through.

Steve: How do you deal with developing, maintaining community trust?

Jeremy: Part of that is being very proactive with education, getting information out there. I rarely say no to anyone who asks me to be at an event or to speak unless I legitimately have some conflict where I can't be there. Last night I was at an organization called the Progressive Voters Alliance. This is people on the farther end of the left and not a friendly crowd for the most part. Not that all of them are antagonistic to the police. But if there's any group in town that is antagonistic to the police, it's them. And they finally invited me to speak about juvenile crime. And I went and I stayed the whole time. I stayed after and talked to people. So part of that is just talking to every group and every person you can, hearing their point of view and allowing yours to get out.

Steve: Right. And I think persuasion happens even sometimes even people that are pretty far left or pretty far right, you can bring them a little to the middle or at least understand where you're coming from. And that's helpful for everybody. So it takes a lot of effort, but I think it's worth it.

Jeremy: Yeah, I've been at those kinds of meetings and people will ask why we use the term "blade your target." Why do you blade your target? Why do you keep your arm near your weapon, all of those kinds of things. And as you explain why, I think people begin to understand, but they have to be receptive and ask those questions and be able to accept that.

Steve: So what is on your agenda for 2026? What do you want to accomplish to improve the department that I think is already in pretty good shape?

Jeremy: Yeah, we definitely have room for growth. And part of that is, well, I'll start with we're just talking about community trust. So we're going to continue our town halls. We just had one. We do them in different formats. They've been very successful at having those conversations and building trust. We just hired a new public information officer. She comes from—she was a news reporter and then an anchor, and she comes from this community. So she's already started and been very good at putting out content that is educational but also builds trust and is engaging.

Steve: Can I interrupt for that? I think that's a pretty important step for you to take. But my question is, here's somebody coming from the media now coming to the other side. Right? I was a PIO. So I understand that. And lots of people don't want to tell their story. I think that's the mistake. How long did it take her—is it her? Is it a woman?

Jeremy: Our new one is a woman.

Steve: Okay, so my question. How long did it take that new PIO to understand what's going on inside the organization and to be able to tell the story? How did you help her understand the police point of view?

Jeremy: So she covered a lot of police stuff and specifically LCPD stuff as an anchor and reporter. So she had some understanding of the department. This is only her second week, and she's already putting out a lot of good videos that tell our story. But one of the reasons she did so well in the interview to be the number one candidate was her emphasis on "I want to tell the story." We were missing opportunities to tell the positive side of policing, to talk about all the good stuff officers are doing, and that's what she's already delivering on. So I think it's only going to get better.

Steve: Great. That's great. I have a number of questions. And Jeremy, I'm so glad to pick your brain on these things. And you realize people listen to this podcast from all over the world, 100 different countries. So it's very valuable for them to hear your perspective. Evidence-based policing. What do you know about it? What do you think about it?

Jeremy: So we have—evidence-based policing is an umbrella term that obviously incorporates all the things we know from primarily from research, academic research, all the things that work to reduce crime. Because the primary purpose of the police is to prevent or reduce crime. We've been implementing a lot of the stuff we know over the past three years, especially once I became deputy chief of operations. We started formalizing hot spots policing. We started doing more offender-focused, trying to do it based on what the evidence says works. And we've just progressed from there. We actually just did training this week, and it's going on right now for officers and sergeants for stratified policing, which is a concept by Dr. Santos and Dr. Santos. They're husband and wife—one's from an analyst background and then PhD and one's from a policing background and then PhD. And what that does is take all the evidence and how do we operationalize it? How do we make it normal for officers to do the proactive stuff on a day-to-day basis? Because right now, I mean, call response is—1965, 911 comes into being and responding to calls is policing to officers. It's normal. You don't really have to do much. If an officer gets a call, they know what to do. We need to do the same for proactive policing, where it's just as normal to do that in the uncommitted time. And then accountability. Accountability not in the sense like "Lieutenant, you didn't do this. You're getting disciplined." But say, "Hey, you're assigned this problem area. Where are we at? What have you done? Is it working? If it's not working, what's your next plan? What do you have to tweak?" Yeah, right. That's the part where we're not doing a great job on right now. And so as we implement stratified policing for 2026, which will be a big part of our goals, it's how do we tweak it so that we accomplish more with the limited resources we have.

Steve: How are you at recruiting?

Jeremy: At this point we've done really well. I have tons of people eligible for retirement. So that's where it's hard with the retention side. But we just had an academy that graduated 27 people, which is a big academy for us. And we start an academy on Monday, pre-academy, with 28 people.

Steve: Wow.

Jeremy: So those are two big academies. At the end of it, it's another over a year before they're off field training. So that's a problem. It takes 18 months plus to produce a cop on their own. It takes a day to lose one. They retire. They get fired. They leave somewhere else. Yeah. It's really hard to—you're always playing catch up. But we've been very successful in recruiting. And I think this time next year, hopefully we are right around 220 or getting close to maintaining that.

Steve: From my take of our conversation, I feel like I'm pummeling you with a whole bunch of questions and you're handling them all very well. But there's, you know, policing has so many layers as you well know. Right. And I want to talk about officer wellness but I also wonder about, well, how you're handling knowledge management. And this is what I mean by that. And I know you've had this experience, whether you're in the Marines or you're at the Las Cruces Police Department. People come, people go, institutional knowledge leaves with those people that you will never capture again unless you work to capture it. So your chief of detectives, I love the question. What do you know now that you wish you knew when you began the job? So we can pass it on to the next person, because they're not going to be available to the replacement. Tell me how you feel about that and what we in policing could do better to capture some of that institutional knowledge and pass it on.

Jeremy: That's a very important point. I think this is a reality in a lot of departments—we're very young because of the mass exodus in 2020, 2021. So like most of our patrol, probably 70 percent have five years or less. And there's some good aspects of that, but there's some bad. You don't have the institutional, you don't have those really senior officers on patrol who can be kind of a guiding light in that first step for correction and mentorship. Same thing in all the different sections. I think it's a reality. There's nothing we can do about that. We can't go back and necessarily bring that back. Although I do have three retired officers who were rehired on a program that the legislature passed two years ago.

Steve: Really?

Jeremy: So you've got three guys back that have 25 years plus experience, and I actually have seen that as helpful. They have to learn a lot because it's changed. They've been out for two to three years each before they came back. And it goes back to training because we can't give them experience. We can't give them 20 years of experience in two years. There's just really no way to do that, right? The only thing we can do is provide the best training possible, send them to other places, have them collaborate with different working groups and try to shorten that learning curve as much as possible.

Steve: That's great. So let's begin to wrap up. Officer wellness—hot topic. Very important. Your people, you yourself, me, we were all drawn to calls that when we get there, they're the worst of the worst. In some cases, you can never unsee it. And sometimes it's—I use the term "death by a thousand cuts." But how do you deal with that mental wellness and wellness of officers who are called on to do such difficult work?

Jeremy: We've been building on this since the previous chief, to his credit, really started laying the foundation for officer wellness program. I mean, the reality is 2024 was a very tough year for us. We lost our first officer in the line, Officer Jonah Hernandez, 96-year history of our agency. And then two months later, we lost our first officer to suicide, an officer who had responded to that call. And it was—some people may have seen the video, but it is one of the worst videos you can watch. It was a gruesome, just terrible scene and that was very eye-opening. We had already done all these things. It didn't prevent the officer from committing suicide. That was a lot of reflection with me, my deputy chiefs. And so some of the things we've done since then is we've really prioritized peer support. I think peer support is probably the most important thing you can do if you do it right. As soon as you compromise trust, the program is dead. We've had several success stories of officers that were on the verge of ruining their career, ruining their family, and we got them to the right place for help and supported them through it.

Steve: Great. You didn't throw them away.

Jeremy: We didn't throw them away. And they're back and they're productive.

Steve: Good.

Jeremy: And not that they don't have any struggles, but it did keep them from falling off the cliff. My wife and the deputy chief's wife started a family support group after we lost Officer Hernandez, because one of the gaps that we never even thought about was, how do we support our families and move them in? Now it's voluntary, but the group that participates, I think gets a lot of value. They get a lot of information. They feel like they're included. They have people to reach out to. It's very important to keep it from becoming a gossip group, and there's very hard lines there. But those events and the camaraderie that they build really helps with the family situation, which lessens the stress on the officer in the long run. We hired an officer wellness coordinator who happens to be a licensed psychologist. It wasn't a requirement. We just got lucky. And he's been really good. His challenge is he's not a cop. So trying to get into the culture and build trust has been his challenge. But what he's done a good job of is making sure that all the resources we have aren't acting as silos, but they're working together as much as possible because that's what we have. We had financial wellness programs, we had wellness apps, and we had all these different things. But are they actually working at all and are they working together? And then the last thing that's I think really important is we brought in a program called Struggle Well.

Steve: Yes. I know it well. Yeah, that's a good one.

Jeremy: Yes. Our next class is—all command staff has been through it already. And our next class is at the beginning of February. And that program is about post-traumatic growth. So it's the recognition that when something bad happens, there's two options. I can let it be post-traumatic injury. I can let it make my life worse, or I can grow from it with post-traumatic growth. It is a decision. It's not an easy decision. It's not easy to do, but it is a decision. And I think over the long run, that program will make a positive impact.

Steve: So as I'm talking to you and one thing that floats through my mind is, here you are, a chief for a year and just over a year. You and I are talking about things that are sort of outside the traditional policing. It has become very important. But if you see it as policing, but how have you viewed your job in the big seat, and the many different things you have to deal with almost simultaneously?

Jeremy: If you include my interim time, it's been a little over two and a half years as the chief.

Steve: That's a long time as an interim.

Jeremy: It feels like even longer in some—it does. Yes. I take them as they come. There's times where I'm definitely scattered and just—I feel like I'm running around just barely getting by, preparing a presentation the night before another event. But I can't do the one for Saturday because I got to do the one for Friday. So it's been difficult to manage my time and make sure that I'm not neglecting important areas. And that's the hard part. And I haven't done that perfectly by any means, but it's good to be reminded of it so I can prioritize better.

Steve: What do you know differently about the role instead of while you're sitting in the seat, as opposed to sitting outside the seat? What has been unusual in your learning, what a chief's responsibilities are?

Jeremy: Just how many different facets there are. Obviously people can look at it and they can get an idea of how busy it is and how many different things you do, but it's really hard to actually understand until you're in that seat. And there are so many different areas that you have to be aware of and address and keep track of that. It's a tough job in any agency. I can only imagine, you know, LA, Chicago, Albuquerque for that matter. I think my job is hard enough here in this medium-sized agency. But these large agencies, I can't even imagine all the stuff they have to balance.

Steve: So as we wind down, I had asked what's on your to-do list. What is it that you haven't been able to do that you still want to do whether it takes years or not?

Jeremy: I want to institutionalize evidence-based policing so that it becomes just as normal as call response. That will take years to accomplish to the level I want it to. I want to tell our story better. And we've done a good job. We've gotten progressively better. But I want to tell our story better than we ever have for 2026. And then I want to have change at the state level. That's not going to fix everything, but it will improve what our officers are dealing with. If we make some meaningful changes in legislation and policy, it will help us.

Steve: Do you think that time spent in the academy is long enough?

Jeremy: No. In a perfect world, no. The state requirement, I believe, is 600 hours, 600-something hours, and we're around 1100, so we almost double it. But, I mean, is that enough? No. And field training is the other thing. I mean, our field training program has gotten so much better. I'm very proud of the lieutenant and sergeant who have spearheaded that because it's evidence-based. It's very heavily focused on mentorship and training with standards and accountability. And we've seen a lot more success through field training. We've seen better officers produce, and combining those and making it work together—the academy and field training—is really important.

Steve: Here's another one, especially with somebody who's got the training background and the military background that you have. It always strikes me that my experience and your experience in the military, where they were always preparing you for the next job. That doesn't happen in policing. We don't prepare for the most part. We don't prepare people until they apply for the job. They're then blessed or knighted with bars or chevrons or whatever it might be. And that's when we'll begin the training. So what would you do differently in terms of preparing people for the next levels?

Jeremy: I agree with that 100 percent. My first day as a sergeant on patrol, I was on day shift by myself with no field training as a sergeant whatsoever at that point. I think there's a number of things we can do. One of it, one of those is mentorship, because that's very helpful. Whether it's formal or informal, but just an example of something that I think really helps on patrol—and it's staffing, there's times where we haven't been able to do it—but we ask people, where do you want to go in the department? "I want to be a detective. I want to go to the gang unit or the street crimes unit. I want to go to K-9." And what we do is we pull people one per shift per month, and they go for a month to that place.

Steve: Wow.

Jeremy: So I want to be a detective. I go to criminal investigations for a month. They assign me some cases that are, you know, that can be accomplished in a month. They take you through everything. And so you learn those skills. Once you get to see, do I actually want to do that job? Maybe it's different than I thought. And if they end up going there, it helps to prepare them. And if they don't, they learn skills that actually make them a better patrol officer. So I see it as a win-win for everybody, and it gives them a break from—if you've been on patrol for 12 years, it's nice to go somewhere else for a month and just get off patrol. That's one way we can prepare people for the next thing.

Steve: You're going to allow them to be more well-rounded. I got you. I believe my last question to be with Jeremy Story from Las Cruces, New Mexico, is somebody gets promoted and they're sitting in your office—sergeant, lieutenant, deputy chief. What are the conversations you have with them?

Jeremy: The way we do it, and this has been done before with the other chiefs, is if someone's on the list for promotion and I'm about to actually promote them, we bring them in the room with me and the two deputy chiefs. And we have that conversation. I give them their badge. There's a little handshake trade-off there. And then we have a conversation about what it means to be a sergeant, what it means to be a lieutenant, and how important that role is. We talk about their history. So it's individualized—what they've done in the department, how that's going to help them. Some challenges they're going to have. I think it's really important. It needs to be obviously an encouraging conversation because this person is being promoted, but it needs to also prepare them for the challenges they're going to have and the challenge in a good way for the most part. And then we send them off. And of course, all the real work happens with the training, on the streets or in the field with wherever they're going.

Steve: So Jeremy, let me boomerang it back. What did you think of this interview?

Jeremy: Oh it was great. I love talking about all these different things. I'm appreciative of the opportunity to do that. Passionate about a number of things—training especially, public information and how we tell our story. So I got to talk about all these things that I care about, and I really appreciate your insights and your knowledge as well. Thank you.

Steve: So how do people get in touch with you if they'd like?

Jeremy: I am on LinkedIn. That's really the only way I can. That's how we connected, right? So that's where I do professional stuff. I'm a competitive shooter for Wilson Combat, so I do a little bit of that on Instagram, but I really limit it. So LinkedIn is the best way to interact with me. Or of course, they can go to the Las Cruces Police Department website. My email is there and they're welcome to email me as well.

Steve: Terrific. And the last thing, tell me what you say to people about policing to lure them to suggest that they consider it.

Jeremy: I try to be somewhat honest with them, but policing is, in my opinion, the best profession out there. I would do it 100 times over. I think it's gotten harder to be a cop over my career, but there's so much reward. And if you manage some of the drawbacks, some of the struggles, it is the best career you could possibly have. There's so many different opportunities, and it's a little cliche, but you truly make a difference if you're out there just doing the job, trying. You are making a difference in people's lives, sometimes in ways that you'll never even know about. The smallest interaction. I get emails and I love them because it's something so small and mundane. I'll give you just a quick example. An officer two nights ago was driving around patrolling and sees smoke, a little bit of smoke from a house, so that's weird. He stops. "I think there might be a fire." He starts knocking on the door, pounding on the door, wakes the resident up. By the time fire gets there, the house is fully engulfed. Fire alarms weren't working. Fire detectors? No one said anything about it there. It wasn't in the shift notes. Nobody told me. The only reason I knew about it is because the fire department said, "Man, that was amazing." Cops out there doing just phenomenal things every day. And it's normal to them because that's the truth. They do great work every day, never get recognized, don't expect to get recognized, but they are saving lives and making a difference. It's a special career for sure.

Steve: Well, Jeremy Story. Thank you. You are an impressive specimen for a chief. I'm so glad that we connected. I'm so glad to hear your perspective and your insight and the fact that I believe that you're a thought leader is amazing. I'm so glad to have met you. I hope to see you at IACP, but thank you for sharing your points of view, and I wish you the best of luck.

Jeremy: Well, thank you, sir. I'm humbled by this opportunity. I really am, and I will seek you out at IACP as well.

Steve: No trouble, thank you very much. Keep your people safe.

OUTRO

Steve Morreale (Host): That's it. That's another episode of the CopDoc Podcast in the can. We've been talking to Jeremy Story. He's a police chief in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Thanks for listening. And just remember, if you have somebody in mind who is forward thinking, progressive, doing some great things in policing, I would love the opportunity to talk with that person no matter where they are in the world. Thanks again. Stay safe and keep your people safe. Have a good day.

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