Terry Dwyer, J.D. Professor - Western CT State University, NYSP (Retired)

The CopDoc Podcast - Season 10 - Episode 174

Guest: Terry Dwyer, J.D. – Professor, Author, & Playwright

In this episode, Dr. Steve Morreale sits down with Terry Dwyer, J.D., a professor at Western Connecticut State University and a retired New York State Police investigator. Terry shares insights from his diverse career stretching across the Navy Reserves, corrections, the court system, state policing, legal practice, and creative writing. They dive deep into the differences between leadership and management, police culture, systemic issues facing women in law enforcement, and the trauma that impacts officers and their families.

Key Takeaways

• The Foundations of Corrections: Terry strongly believes every police officer should spend time working in corrections first. It builds crucial, real-world communication and de-escalation skills by forcing you to manage difficult situations entirely with your words.
• Leadership vs. Micromanagement: A disturbing shift in modern policing culture is the rise of the "liability-first" mindset. Exceptional supervisors lead by establishing trust and giving their professionals autonomy, whereas poor managers default to punitive micromanagement and "dog-piling" charges onto struggling officers.
• Secondary Trauma & The Family Unit: Law enforcement trauma isn't just about active gunfights; it is cumulative. Terry emphasizes that the true partner riding through the career's highs and deep lows with an officer is their spouse, highlighting his 42-year marriage to his wife, Joan.
• Culture and the 30x30 Initiative: Discussing his background representing female officers in harassment suits, Terry notes that police culture can be intensely insulated. He underscores the importance of the 30x30 Initiative (aiming for 30% women in policing by 2030) and notes that a department's culture is purely dictated by its top leadership.

Featured Works by Terry Dwyer

• Book: The Badge Between Us: Duty, Marriage, and Family – Part memoir, part true crime, and part love letter to his wife, exploring the unseen weight a police family carries.
• Play: Depositions – An MFA thesis play premiered at the Grand Fringe Festival, based on his qualitative research and legal cases surrounding sexual harassment and the experiences of female police officers.
• Upcoming Project: A true-crime book detailing a 50-year-old cold case involving a missing young Black man whose remains were finally identified in 2024, focusing on a dedicated detective who investigated it into his retirement.

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

Intro - Outro 0:00

Welcome to the CopDoc Podcast. This podcast explores police leadership issues and innovative ideas. The cop dog shares thoughts and ideas as he talks with leaders in policing, communities, academia, and other government agencies. And now, please join Dr. Steve Morreale and industry thought leaders as they share their insights and experience on the cop dog podcast.

Steve Morreale 0:29

Well, here we go again, everybody. Steve Morreale coming to you this time from the root of the Boston Marathon. It started today. Actually, it starts right about now. And I am going to Southern Connecticut and Southbury. And we're talking to Terry Dwyer, who is a professor at Western Connecticut State University. He was all kinds of things. He was in the Navy. Thank you for your service. He was a corrections officer. He was in the courts. He was a trooper and an investigator for the New York State Police. And now a lawyer and a professor. I'm telling all the stuff there, Terry, but everything that you have done, including representing police officers and such. So why don't you fill in the blanks about your trek through criminal justice from the Navy to the law and all that kind of stuff? And by the way, he's a writer. So we'll talk about that. Go ahead, Terry.

Terry Dwyer 1:23

Yeah, hey, well, well, first of all, thanks for having me. Great to be here. As far as the Navy goes, I was only a Navy reservist.

Steve Morreale 1:30

No, no, no, no, no, no. You were not only a Navy reservist. You served, you were ready to go wherever. Look at what they're doing in the reserves now.

Terry Dwyer 1:37

Well, here's my here's my story. I was a landlocked sailor. I I joined in '93. Yeah. I was working in the city doing organized crime cases. I went APG advanced pay grade. So I was an MA2, master at arms. And then that was when Clinton was downsizing everything. And I lost my billet after a year and a half. So I was IRR for the remainder. Okay. And then March ended my enlistment. I got my honorable discharge. I wanted to re-up. I said, you know, I'm busy with work, a lot of things going on. And then what do we have? 9-11. Six months later. Whole world changed. It did. And then what did you do? Oh my God. Well, I was working for the Bureau of Criminal Investigation for the New York State Police. I was up in Troop K, before I went to the major crimes unit.

Steve Morreale 2:27

What is Troop K, for those who don't know?

Terry Dwyer 2:29

Yeah, Troop K is really more like the metro area of the state police jurisdiction. Troops L, K, and F. So L is our Long Island area. F is from Rockland County up the line on the other side of the Hudson. We're from the Westchester Bronx line up to the Columbia County line. So four large counties. Gotcha. A lot of complaint stations. New York State Police is primarily complaint-based state police. We handle areas that don't have their own PD or augment the police departments. And then obviously the highway work as well and the interstates and the uh parkways. So you're from the Bronx.

Steve Morreale 3:10

And that means there's the Yankees in the Bronx. Is that it?

Terry Dwyer 3:14

Well, you're gonna like this tale, Steve. Uh being a Massachusetts guy. I grew up in the 70s in the Bronx, lived three miles north of Yankee Stadium in Woodlawn, maybe a little further. I was a med fan, diehard Med fan, but I also want to have an American League team. And the American League team I settled on was none other than the Boston Red Sox.

Steve Morreale 3:35

Well, I guess we'll get along for this conversation. It's so unusual. Actually, I was at the gym a little bit ago, and somebody had a New York Yankees shirt on, and I said, Yankees suck. And he goes, he looks at me and I said, You know where I'm from. you're from Boston, aren't you? Yes, I am. But Yankees don't suck. It's just an easy thing to say. So we can get along. We can get along, right? Terry, I've known you for a long time, and I'm so glad to finally have you on. We talked a little bit ago. You just released a book, The Badge Between Us, Duty, Marriage, and Family, among other things. You are a playwright. You have written a play. I've watched you both from afar and up close. So let me tell you this story because there's so much this similarity. I went to school for radio, and my first two years was radio, I was radio announcing and broadcasting. And, you know, full circle, here I am hosting a podcast, which is ironic. I did a little bit of stuff in in Boston working, but the pay was horrible. The hours were terrible. When that's when I turned to policing and went in the army and became an MP. But you have have have gone from your bachelor's degree into a master's degree and then on for law and back to writing. So talk about that. Talk about what made you go into a master's degree, what made you go into law.

Terry Dwyer 4:53

Well, actually, it a little bit flipped. when I was undergraduate, English literature major, my goal, my dream was to go to Columbia University and go to their MFA program in creative writing or their school of journalism. And growing up in the Bronx, there's a lot going on. A lot of people in the neighborhood were becoming cops or firefighters. My dad was a lawyer and he was pushing law school, and that was the last thing I ever wanted was to go to law school. And my dad didn't want to be like him necessarily, right? Yeah. And so you wanted to be. Yeah. Well, my dad started off in law enforcement too. He was an IRS agent. He was a court officer, New York City court officer at the time. And so I had it all around me in my life. But as I like to always joke and tease, I fell in with a bad crowd, became a cop, fell in with an even worse crowd when I became a lawyer. But the my full circle moment, just like you, came when just a few years ago, like three years ago, I started my MFA program. I I received my Masters of Arts in Creative Nonfiction. I had the wonderful, incomparable, unbelievable uh Michael Lennon as my mentor. He's a Pulitzer Prize nominee, a national book award nominee. This book was my master's thesis. And then for I got my MFA, I stayed on and got my MFA and my Masters of Fine Arts, and I concentrated on playwriting. I've been writing plays since 2018. And my new play, Depositions, which is based upon research I did on female police officers, was my MFA thesis. And I had the wonderful uh Bonnie Kohler for that, a uh a talented playwriting author. So I kind of came back to everything once I retired from my law practice four years ago, and I got back into creative writing because I've written three textbooks.

Steve Morreale 6:37

Yes.

Terry Dwyer 6:37

My last textbook had 1400 footnotes, and I said, never again.

Steve Morreale 6:41

Here, here, I know. That academic stuff is wonderful to a point, but it gives you an awful lot more freedom when you're writing for you, not for an academic audience. And for academics that we are, right? People who have been in the practice and are have an academic background, I think it makes it a little bit easier. I find it quite relieving. I'm working on a book, uh, Just One More Case. It's a novel. It's about my DEA days, and it's so much fun to take that artistic license and take what I've experienced and basically fictionalize it, right? Just an amazing opportunity. I know that's not what you did, but you've got a lot of stories.

Terry Dwyer 7:18

Well, it's cathartic in many ways, and it is a big word for a trooper to say. It's a big word, but don't forget, I'm a trooper who went to Fordham. Don't forget those Jesuits. It's very cathartic, but you know, there are studies that also show the benefits. So for the last year, I got involved with the Syracuse Veterans uh writing group when I lived in central New York, and wonderful, wonderful group. And you're sitting there with guys who are combat veterans in in Vietnam, I mean, in the thick of the jungle. You're sitting with people who uh served in the 80s, 90s, you're with people who served recently and were in, you know, the conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to hear their stories and also to hear some of the sadness in their lives. But writing is has been a great soother for them and is part of that healing process. And I wanted to take that and bring it to law enforcement, which is uh a goal that I'm I'm working on now. There's something to writing, if you have that mindset that really kind of sets you free. And this book for me was really cathartic, not just for me, but really my wife and I.

Steve Morreale 8:27

So we'll talk about that. I don't want to dismiss that, but I want to talk about your experiences. You were in the courts, you were in corrections for a while. How did that make you a different trooper, a different investigator? That that initial experience in a different element of criminal justice?

Terry Dwyer 8:49

Right at the outset, mad respect, as the kids say, to anybody who's worked in correction and made it a career. It's a tough job. I started in New York City Corrections working at Rikers Island at C95, Deanna M. Cross Center, and then I transferred to the Bronx House of Detention. My uncle was retired from Corrections. He went out on the Hart Bill. He was a captain at Bronx House. He pulled a few strings for me and uh got me, got me over there off the rock, as they called it. And I worked at the Bronx House until I went to Bronx Night Court and started working criminal arraignments as a court officer. I I firmly believe, just even if it's for a year, every cop should start off in corrections. One, just to learn the job and see what your brethren in the jails, in the prisons do. Also, it really gives you those much needed interpersonal skills with communication and speaking.

Steve Morreale 9:45

Because talk about de-escalation, right? Way before de-escalation.

Terry Dwyer 9:49

Way way before we talk about look, we've been doing de-escalation for forever. Uh it's become a buzzword, like so many things become a buzzword, but we know that you're doing the job right, there's always an element of of de-escalation, and not every situation is going to call for de-escalation. But the the thing is with correction, it really teaches you how to handle the people who are probably going to be the most difficult to handle, and and they're grouped. So that was really a learning experience. And I went in at 20 years of age, I was 20 years old. I looked like I still had my communion money. So it was challenging.

Steve Morreale 10:23

Actually, you still do, just saying. Go ahead.

Terry Dwyer 10:26

So that was good, and then it was an easy transition over to the courts where I was for a little over two years, and that was also good. Still had very close connection to corrections because you're dealing now with the pre-arraignment cops, the corrections with the arraignments. So it was it was really a good overview of the criminal justice system. And the Bronx courts in the 80s was circus at night court. It was my partner and I made a lot of arrests. We're processing a lot of people at the 4-4 precinct. It was a very interesting time down there.

Steve Morreale 10:59

So that experience and the many organizations that you played with, and your law practice, where you were beginning to represent uh people who got a bit jammed up in policing. And it gives you a perspective on leadership, which is really the focus of this podcast that's a little different than most people. You've said that in many cases, leaders betray the people who work for them, or that leaders uh ignore and leave people out there. There's a failure of leadership that you've experienced or seen in the past. And I want you to talk a little bit about that. Tell me your view of that. And given those problems that you've encountered, that you've seen, that you've tried to protect people from their organization in a lot of ways, what's the antidote to that?

Terry Dwyer 11:52

Well, just give you my perspective. First of all, I'm somebody who retired from New York State Police as an investigator. I made ranked fairly early from uniform to the bureau. I love detective work. That was my life, my lifeblood. I did 17 and a half years until I retired. I took the Sargent's test, died on two lists because both lists I took, they were not promoting anybody. But then after that, I got offered to go up to division counsel's office twice by the superintendent, turned it down. It would have given me equivalent rank of captain or captain's peg. I had a young family, didn't want to go up there. I liked working, working the cases and everything. And then I was offered senior investigator about four times, which I turned down. I liked being a soldier, I liked doing my job, I like the autonomy of handling my cases. But and I should just jump back. The state police, I received my law degree between being a uniform and making the bureau. And state police, we had a contractual thing through the union. They ended up paying a little more than half my law school, which was great. Over the years, I worked for wonderful bosses, and I've also worked for some duds as bosses. And then when I retired and started really representing the unions and individual officers that were jammed up, I saw a lot of negative aspects of leadership. For me, there seemed to be a point in time, and it was while I was on the job where all of a sudden they were teaching supervisors don't trust your subordinates. Don't take anything they say at face value. And we got into a very micromanagement sort of mindset. What I used to hear from some of my supervisors of rank was they'd use the L word, well, liability, liability. And I'd say, um, and I'm sitting here there as a lawyer listening to that. Do you understand liability? Do you understand when you're liable and when you're not? And I actually use a line in in the book. I don't know when in supervisor school they taught them to hate their subordinates, to hate the people that they're supposed to be in charge of. So what I saw is a lot of betrayal. It's either company or nothing. And they don't look after their people. And then invariably they don't always take care of their people. Um now we're getting into a much more better understanding of mental wellness in law enforcement, and that's great. And the younger generation are more attuned to that and more protective of it, and supervisors are, but there's still more to do. But back in our day, that was a death knell for somebody. I've represented some officers. Matter of fact, I just had an article come out in policewom.com where uh for my column where I talk about a case I handled where, you know, they're ready to discipline somebody rather than look at the underlying cause of the behavior and late days, sick days, yeah, accumulation, and then some other things. The old Bugs Bunny cartoon, dog pile on a rabbit, they just start putting more and more charges without looking at the whole situation of what the officer's going through, what the officer went through as a result of being on the job, doing the work that you're asking him and her to do.

Steve Morreale 15:04

Right. hear that more often than not. And I just interviewed a chief who was saying just that. And I've had such uh opportunities to talk to people who are so open-minded, who are progressive uh police chiefs, saying, Well, wait a minute. Just because somebody, this would this blew my mind, just because somebody's a trooper and gets locked up for drunk driving, does that mean he's gonna lose his job? Can we look at how that happened? Could it have been that there's something that's going on from the job and that we can give him potentially one second chance, which was really mind-boggling for me. It's so humanistic.

Terry Dwyer 15:40

Yeah, I think that chief that you spoke to is correct. Why are you gonna take a good officer and potentially end their career and then again go through the expense of finding a new officer and retraining when there's a blip on the screen? that maybe there's a DWI. It's certainly going to be different if you have protractive drug use, if you have protracted alcoholism, or if you have an offense that goes to dishonesty. But something like a DWI, sure, something minor or or trivial. Let's uh bring the officer back. And I've represented officers that were pretty much one foot out the door, the other on a banana peel. They were given last chance agreements, and I've tried to orchestrate it so it's for so the officer can show themselves, prove themselves to stay on the job. I've had officers that were coming back from severe depression and alcoholism and trying to give them a softer landing. Unfortunately, I remember I had one and I told the union that I was representing, look, did this this guy, lieutenant, I said he's going to relapse. I give him six months, if that. Just keep an eye on him. I worked out a really good agreement. Let's get him by the six months so he can have a career, finish out, and retire. And he had maybe two, three years left to go. He didn't even make it that far, Steve. Three weeks later, he was found in the woods. He'd hung himself. There's usually a lot more going on beneath the surface. The good supervisors know. The good supervisors put their people in touch with those who can help them. The ones, the dilettantes, oh, they want to bring everybody up on charges and get that next rung on the ladder.

Steve Morreale 17:18

Well, that's interesting. It's too bad that we have a culture of or have created a culture of constant punitive approaches rather than corrective approaches. And it strikes me that when you're on the job and when you're uh stopping cars, not everything has to equate to a ticket. There are alternative sanctions. And so we're asking people to use discretion, and yet in many cases, we don't use discretion when it comes down to a mistake that's that an officer makes. It doesn't mean there won't be sanctions. There is that doesn't mean there can't be corrective action. But I just wonder why it's this one size fits all. You screwed up, and we're gonna stick it to you because you violated policy.

Terry Dwyer 18:00

Absolutely. So I've been writing for policewan.com since 2008. And in that time they were taken over by Lexapol. And it's been a great experience. I love writing for police one and and and getting to communicate with a broader audience. But I wrote an article, maybe going back two years, and it was about fair and impartial policing. And the article was titled The Flip Side of Fair and Impartial Policing. And I talked about it. This is what we expected, the officers, just what you said. But now here's the other side. Officers have due process rights, officers have certain protections. And look, I've represented bad cops, and you have to get them them off the job. I do what I have to do as an attorney to represent them. Sometimes they're beyond uh help or redemption, but as an attorney, you have to take those those cases. But there's a flip side too. We can't we can't preach one thing for one group and then as supervisors not apply it to our own people. And I have seen so many procedural and substantive due process violations in my representation of police officers that it is maddening and it is disgusting. Their rights don't go out the the door. And some people say, well, on the east coast and and on the west coast, we have all those the laws in New York State's very civil service protective. Well, the the the rules are there, they protect the cops. They have a much more tenuous situation than you would think. And all you need is a supervisor to have it out for you. And it's really an uphill climb to fight many of the disciplinary charges that are out there. I've done it for years, battling for for cops.

Steve Morreale 19:40

That's an interesting perspective that you bring, which is very rare on on the show. And I know that you have allowed your practice to take a back seat to other things that you're doing now. Let's go back to the badge between us and your writing. Now, you said that this started as a master's thesis and yet it it becomes a book. And you indicated that it's cathartic, but that you were very honest about the impact that the job has on you. And I will tell you, and I want to hear from you, there are things that I have witnessed that still I carry with me. And back in my day, there weren't an awful lot of suggestions that I go and I seek some help just to have a mind dump. I love the idea of uh a checkup from the neck up where everybody is going every year, it's going to be resisted at first, but every year you're going to go and talk to a police psychologist to talk about the crap that you have done and how it happens. There are things that open up in me, Terry, you too, that sometime when I don't expect it. My time, I I'm proud and I'm sad by having brought a team to play a very small role on 9-11. I was there that afternoon. And and yet no one ever said, Are you okay? Are you okay with what you saw? Are you okay with what you observed and witnessed? And that that's not the case. Now, I don't mean to say, Oh, woe was me, but we've changed a little bit, I hope, to pushing people towards you just saw something you will never be able to unsee. Would like you to talk about it. So talk a little bit about how you writing the book was helpful to you to get out some very serious things that you experienced.

Terry Dwyer 21:28

Yeah, well, I was the book started off very different. I was gonna create a writing program and I was looking to write the book in a different way, kind of third-person view. I had this idea, and I was gonna write about moral injury and the secondary traumas, and then it turned into a memoir. And one of the writing instructors said, You have to write the book you need to write before you can write the book you want to write.

Steve Morreale 21:51

That's like a dissertation, just get the thing done, and then you can write to get out the door.

Terry Dwyer 21:56

No, not even that. He was like the the the There's stuff you'd be before you can be the complete writer, the creative writer, before you can talk about other people's traumas and things like that, you have to confront your own. Gotcha. And so on because I'm writing a book now. My second book is a true crime, a missing person, murder, mystery, 50-year-old case that I'm I'm working on. I did that, and it became what I last thing I expected, a memoir. I described it as true crime slash memoir slash love story. So somebody said it sounds like a love letter to your wife. And my wife, Joan, will be married 42 years this June. She was there through everything, but we never talked as much about the job as we did in at that time, my 16, 17 years of retirement, until I started writing the book. And Joan did a lot of my upfront editing because she used to be an editor shortly after college. But I closed my career with a Quintuple homicide, family of five, three boys, 13, 10, and 6. And I was the first major crimes guy on the scene. And I come to a tarp with the three bodies out on the January snow, the oldest boys, what would come to be 83 stab wounds to his body. And that was seven weeks after I got off of a big gang case where I was a primary officer with an FBI agent. That was a 13-month intense case. I went through a lot of stuff with that case, a very violent gang. But then going back into my career, I was a young investigator, brought down. Three months working in New York City, brought over to another unit to investigate corruption on my job because our internal affairs had no clue what was going on. And it involved organized crime, the Genovese crime family. And what do I uncover? But I uncover a connection to our internal affairs. So that really tailors your view as a young trooper, as a young investigator. I only had three months in the bureau. And then the constant instances of corruption that you encounter throughout your career, including when I was working the gang case, I was in trouble more times for bringing these corruption issues to my bosses than anything else. And it does stick with you, but you don't think about it. As I say in the book, I was never directly shot at. I never had to shoot anybody, thank God. Pointed my gun plenty of times, but I did investigate the murder of another investigator in my unit. I did stand bedside of two cops that were shot in the line of duty, one right after the incident, and two others that were seriously injured, run down by cars. I've had my moms, I've been to police funerals, but we don't think about that. And there's this secondary police trauma syndrome, it's called, and there's the secondary trauma that builds up. And I know I left the job very angry, very, very angry. And a lot of us over time do leave angry, but then what do we do? Oh, I got a second job and I'm working as a cop here, or I'm working for the feds and I'm doing this. Or an idiot like me, yeah, I'm off the job. It's in my rear view. I spent 15 years representing cops. I rolled up my sleeves in that world. I'm representing cops involved in shootings, I'm representing cops in use of force in different critical incidents, or getting jammed up. So I never left it. I never left it. And as I tell people when they read the book, they're like, wow, you had quite a career. That really only covers about maybe a quarter, maybe a third of the You can only tell so many of the stories. Yeah. And there was a theme to this. This was thematic. I really look at those last two years and the gang case and the quintuple homicide, but the only way I could do it is I had to give a retrospective. But the badge between us, this is do you marriage family? It's about that other in my life. We all talk about partners, partners, and I have a chapter about partners. And I had great partners. The only real partner that mattered at the end of each day was my wife. Yeah. And that was the partner that I rode in the job with and I wrote out of the job with. And that's the way I would hope it would be for everybody, but we know statistically it's not.

Steve Morreale 25:46

Well, that's an interesting thing because it like you, I've been married for 48 years. She's had to put up with a lot of crap as Joan did. Her name is Kathy. And there are times when I'll get a little bit down, somebody, another officer gets killed, and or I'm watching TV and you're seeing 9-11 and it's bringing it back there. And there's times when she'll say, You've been off the job for so long. Stop it. No. And I have to say, I saw you shake your head. It sticks with us for the rest of our lives, I think, in a lot of ways. Again, we put it, we put it in little boxes, but don't you find sometimes, Terry, that it leaks out at the most unexpected times?

Terry Dwyer 26:22

You never stop, and Joan never stopped being a police wife. And for anybody who's a police spouse, Joan she'll she'll tell me, Oh, an officer got killed today. Did you see? Usually I have, sometimes not.

Steve Morreale 26:34

But they pay attention because of what we what we've experienced. I understand that.

Terry Dwyer 26:39

She will always be a cop's wife. My kids will always be cops' kids. My kids see the world differently. They always did than their peers, just by the nature of my work. And I even see it in the way they're raising their children. So, and none of my kids are in law enforcement, thank God. But you mean thank God. They'd be fine.

Steve Morreale 26:58

But I understand. Yes. Yeah, they would. My son was looking when he was coming out of college, he came out of Seaton Hall and he was toying with the idea. And he would have been, he would have been a great, a great cop, but he's he's a businessman, he owns his own company. But I'm glad because I don't want to be a parent and neither do my wife with that that worry, that that concern. I teach a generation of students that are going to be law enforcement officers, going to be prosecutors, defense attorneys, social workers. We have a lot to go, as you're aware in your programs that you teach, that are gonna go into law enforcement. And I yeah, and I stay in touch with a lot of them and I see them after two, three, five years on the job. And we always get to that point when I talk to them after they've been on for a while, the bloom has come off the roads, hasn't it? And they're like, yeah. The reality of the job sets in.

Terry Dwyer 27:41

The reality sets and and a lot of times I'll say to people, in the interest of being honest, if you raise your hand to be in corrections or to be in policing or to be in victim services or whatever you end up doing, I have to tell you that once you're in there, there's not enough. You're going to be dragged into time working more than you ever wanted to because you're forced over time. And you're going to see things that most human beings could never tolerate. And I as you, I want them to be eyes wide open going into this job. It is a noble job, but it is not easy by any means. No, not at all. And it is noble. And they all go in for the right reasons, but then there's that maturation that takes place, and they realize that not everybody's in it for the same reasons that they are. Or they're thrust early on. I had a graduate come into my office and he was not yet 27. He was getting ready to turn 27. He works for a busy police department in Connecticut. He's now a sergeant, he's supervising younger cops, and he's already getting that sense of, okay, I want to feather my nest for the for the afterlife because I'm doing my 20 and I'm getting out. He likes the job, he's good at the job, but already he's a supervisor. He's in charge of people that are just a few years younger than him. And he said, some shifts he comes in on the evening ship where 70 calls jammed up or 70 calls backlog. So it's a busy agency. And as he's settling into his new life, he's getting married and everything else. It's those demands, it's those pressures. And I see it in my in my former students that are coming back and and talking about the the job. The the the wide-eyed wonder is gone and the reality is setting in. And usually I see it around year three. They come. And then I always say you go through phases on the job, you're five-year, 10-year, 15, and 20-year mark.

Steve Morreale 29:36

Yeah. It is. And of course, there's that point where all of us have sat back and said, Do I want to stay? And then at one point, you're over the hump. You think, wait a minute, I've got 12 years in. Why would I give up that pension? Although we know the job has become quite more difficult. Recruiting or retention is a difficult piece. Plus, I think you're experiencing, you've been at this for almost 20 years, as I have. And when I first came into criminal justice and the department, I think 50% wanted to be cops. Now it's more, and this is this is antithetic, not based on numbers or scientific numbers. I'd say 25% are interested in policing. Everybody is not else is not.

Terry Dwyer 30:20

Yeah, the numbers have gone down. The numbers have definitely gone down. We have a very active legal studies program. We send a lot of students to law school. So I see more and more going to law school. Yes. I do also see a lot of interest in community corrections and and not so much being a correction officer, but the community corrections aspect. And it and it's varied. But yeah, you you don't have those same numbers coming in as as I remember, lions around the block to go take the police tests years ago. And I definitely have seen that that shift and also the reasonings and motivations to to go on the job. But again, I also see a group that's more more attuned to their overall well-being, mental wellness, and everything else. And they're looking for the jobs that are going to give them things like days off and everything. We complain about this generation and and we don't they're more into balance. Yeah, and and I don't like complaining about generations, but you know what? They may have their finger on the pulse more than we did.

Steve Morreale 31:22

And that takes adjustment for the people who are in positions of power and leadership, because if they think these young people are going to come in and be exactly what they were, they're absolutely sadly mistaken, I think, in a lot of ways. We have to modify to accept the new generation. And we could learn from the new generation in my mind.

Terry Dwyer 31:42

Yeah, and look, it's like being in the classroom. You know, as well as I do. I hate sitting through faculty meetings and listening to faculty be moan and badmouth the students. And yeah, there might be student problems that have to be addressed, sure, individual issues and everything else. But overall, don't broad brush them. They're wonderful individuals, get to know your students, but you have to adapt. You have to adapt to the times. I've had to do that as a professor. Me too. I'm a completely different person now. Yeah, that's what a good professor does. You adapt. It doesn't mean that you're letting lowering your standards or anything like that. There are different learning modalities that they're into and everything else. And we have to now, do I agree with all of them? No. No. However, can I get my lessons across and can I put out a product, a finished product, a student, and send them into the field with the same confidence as I did 10, 15 years ago. And I adjuncted for 10 years to 20, 25 years, 25 years ago. And I think I can. It's just a different, a different teaching model, different modality. We have to adapt. And supervisors, as you pointed out, have to do the same thing.

Steve Morreale 32:47

What's interesting? Many years ago, I was in a university-wide conversation, and I said, I don't use because there the term that's used on campus is pedagogy. What's your teaching pedagogy? I said, I don't use pedagogy. I use andragogy. And and and somebody looked at me and literally said, You have adults in your class? Yeah, I have adults in my class. I mean, they may be young adults, but they're still adults. And using the adult training or or teaching approaches can be very valuable in the classroom. So I don't want to digress. I have not said who I'm talking to for a long time, but this is Terry Dwyer. He is an attorney. He is a professor at Western Connecticut State University, former New York State trooper. He is an author, a playwright, an academic. I want to go back to something about policing. And I want to talk about a couple of things. Culture, the culture of an organization, but more importantly, leadership versus management. Departments often misread and mishandle mental health struggles in their own officers. We've touched on it a little bit, but what are they missing and what should they be doing instead to address and maintain the mental state of police officers and dispatchers?

Terry Dwyer 34:09

Oh, absolutely. Dispatchers. And any ancillary personnel. I think we easily get into in law enforcement, and we're all guilty of it, but we easily get into labeling. And we get a police officer, we get a trooper in the station, we make a snap judgment about them based upon limited observation, and we get fixed into that judgment. And I've seen it in my old agency, I've seen it in other agencies where once that officer has that label, they can't shake that label. And I've seen instances where they're willing to outstretch the hand of help for one officer, but then they retract it for somebody else. And there needs to be equity across the board. Again, that fair and impartial policing goes both ways. Again, we have this entrenched attitude. We have, I firmly believe in the paramilitary structure and law enforcement. It's needed. But in the managing, in the leadership of individuals, you need to look at the the human element because you're dealing with human factors in any of these endeavors. And again, I just bring it back to students. I have to consider what's going on in that student's life. I try and teach them and train them that you have to perform no matter what. You have to show up day in, day out. But there's a time and a place too, your time out. But you still have to get the task done. You still have to get the job done because that's what a professional does. But as far as leadership goes, I I also think in management circles, there's certain morphing into taking lessons from corporate America. Years ago, they started taking lessons from corporate America. And that seemed to go by the by the wayside.

Steve Morreale 35:44

Yeah, the old bootstrap program that IACP had. I actually went to Connecticut to Aetna. I was the only cop in 200 people. They call it leadership, but all they talked about was management. Because I think there's a misnomer between the two, right? So I'll say this that I'm doing a lot of work on managing is not leading. Managing is necessary, but get that out of the way and then focus on leading your sphere of control, whether it's 10 or 12, 15 people or a complete barracks. Look for opportunities to lead others, develop others, which I think is important. That's what I think you and I are trying to do, identify people in our classes that have promise and where we push them towards some potential opportunities to carry, basically to carry the water for criminal justice. Would you agree?

Terry Dwyer 36:34

Definitely. And look, in the classroom, and let me just bring it to the classroom level, when we talk about leadership and management, I have to manage my classroom. I have to get through 16 weeks of the semester. I have to cover the areas I'm going to cover. I have to give their quizzes and their tests. And students need to have that structure. That's the management aspect. The leadership aspect of it is how I carry myself each day in the classroom, out of the classroom, the students knowing what I'm all about and serving, I hate the role model, but serving as a model, serving as an exemplar for the way then they should act and behave and every and everything else. And a leader, I have students come to my office, even students who aren't my advisees, but have had me in class who know, heard of me, and they come to me for advice. And they're coming to me sometimes for stuff that's really personal. And I'd like to think that's because I bring a leadership role in the university in the program versus their advisor or their other instructor who's just management, management, management. Here's the X's and O's, here's the grades, and that's it, and that's all I care about. So it's seeing the whole person. And we both know I've had supervisors on the state police that I would follow into a fire. I'd follow anywhere. They were great. They were wonderful. I knew what they were about, they knew what knew what I was about. I had others, I would not follow them out the door at the end of the day to say goodbye.

Steve Morreale 37:58

That's interesting because I usually say when you're in policing, we very often carry carry the same badge and wear the same patch. But there's certain people I would never bring home. Never. Never. While they are police, they're not my kind of police. And I understand that, which I think is important. So, Terry, you said you were writing another book, but let's go back to the book here. What's the reaction that you have had from the badge between us?

Terry Dwyer 38:24

I get a lot from the ladies. I it's a sweet, protract lengthy love letter to your wife, which is nice to hear because it is. I've gotten good reviews. I have a couple of reviews out there that are pending. I'm waiting for Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly and a few other reviews that are out there. But I've gotten feedback like, wow, really didn't know what a police officer and police family goes through. Have so much more respect. People that know me for you and your family, particularly what Joan and the kids just lived with growing up. We never knew. We were a very visible family, but we handled our business and and went along. And just really had a lot more respect for police in general. And you're kind of showing a different side, a human side, a vulnerable side. One of the feedbacks I've gotten consistently that people like, and then it's funny, it's my shortest chapter, it's chapter 23. It's called Meeting Sam. It's my interview with David Berkowitz, the son of Sam, which some people dislike because that's the true crime element that they like is on a cold case homicide. But again, a little bit of eye-opening from the early reviews. It's only been out since February 19th, so still really in the early phase, but I'm beginning a lot of just wow, just shows me a whole different side.

Steve Morreale 39:38

You've repeatedly said this is a love letter to your wife. And and explain that a little bit for the person who hasn't read. It seems to me that there are things that went on in your life where you carry stuff home, and you don't, and I know what's happened to me. I don't want to talk. I just need to chill. I don't want to talk. I don't want to tell you about. Thankfully, I think we have spouses where we don't hide a lot of stuff, but it's not the time. I have to think about what I've just gone through. I've got to think about what I just witnessed. I have to find a way to reconcile it within myself before I can share it with you. And then they feel like you're pushing them away. And so many cops do that. But talk about that love story and the things that you went through because it wasn't perfect, Terry.

Terry Dwyer 40:26

Like any couple you have, you're up, your ups and downs. And we we madly loved each other, obviously, and then still do to this day. But there are times where I write in a book, Joan said to me, I love you and I always will love you, but there were times I didn't like you. I kind of heard that before. Yeah, that was at my worst. And I'm a very introspective person. I could just curl up with a book for eight hours or write for eight hours, and I get in very much inside my head. And Joan knows when I'm there. And even now, when I'm writing, she knows, like she just checks on me to see that I'm still breathing. I'm in the office and still breathing and working or whatever. But she knew when to call me out and correct me. And she knew when to just sit back and just keep things and hey, kids, dad had a rough day. Maybe let's play outside or do a little bit where dad's got worked at midnight or whatever, or dad's been out all night to call me out and and uh call me out on my nonsense. I was gonna leave at 20 years because again, so you're talking to the idiot who had a law degree in his back pocket and stayed another 17 and a half years on the job. I I was admitted in two states to practice law, and I told Joan I was gonna leave, and I didn't. And then when I got to 20 years, I told her I was gonna stay five more because we could go out at 20 with half pay in New York. I said a state told him to have 25. That she didn't kill me was a miracle, I always say. But there's a scene I write in the book where jumping into this Safe Streets Task Force gang situation, I'm gonna be one of the two leads. And Joan says to me, Look, do it if you want to do it, but I think you're leaving one bad situation for another. She saw the writing on the wall as I write in the book. I nearly got fired as a result of that case. I nearly got ambushed by two gang members as a result of that case. I ran into so many uh problems, and it's just that steadiness. There, there's if I was the EKG that's going up and down, up, up and down, she was that steady presence. She was great right through. And I think that's what a lot of police couples, you need that other partner. Uh and I think that's why police marriages don't last. And I'm not going to broad brush it because a lot do, but there are a lot of times too where you see uh policing couples get together, and sometimes, depending upon the personalities, it's the clash of the titans. Yeah, they're doomed from failure from the beginning.

Steve Morreale 42:55

No question.

Terry Dwyer 42:56

But a lot do a lot do survive, and it's wonderful.

Steve Morreale 42:58

Well, I think too the two of us are examples of that. So we're talking to Terry Dwyer, an attorney, a professor at Western Connecticut State University. He's an author, he's a playwright, and I when I say writer, he is uh both a writer of books, textbooks, and a writer for police one. When we talk about the culture of police organizations, what comes to mind for Terry?

Terry Dwyer 43:28

Well, you mentioned I'm a playwright, and I'm gonna do a quick uh mention of my play depositions because that's about culture. I did a study and I've been involved with uh the 30 by 30 initiative and women in policing, and that's to get 30% of women in policing by 2030. The problem that always comes up when we talk about women in policing, and in some agencies in the United States, it's as much as 22% of the officers, in other agencies it's less than five. Yes. But culture always comes up. How do we treat These other officers who just happen to be of a different gender. It's a very insulated culture, like the military. It's got its own way of speaking and acting. But culture, we talked about leadership before. There's a culture within each agency. And it's either a healthy culture or it's a sick culture. And that comes from the leadership. And in the women that I've represented, because I've represented officers in lawsuits for sexual harassment against departments, and I've consulted in cases around the country, they can leave a problematic department and go to a neighboring agency and not have an issue. And why is that? It's the leadership. And I've talked to police leaders about this as well. People from our generation say, sure, you know, it's from the top down. That's where we get our cues. There's a lot that's good, obviously, with the culture. There's a lot that's bad. I don't know what the what the answers are, but if you look at the issues with female police officers around the country, it shows some of these cases, and I've done extensive studies, show the worst nature of police culture and behavior, behavior that we wouldn't accept in any other professional environment. And I've had feedback from people who've seen my play, which previewed last September at this Grand Fringe Festival, and women have come up to me and said, I've encountered sexual harassment, I've encountered it in the private sector. I never imagined anything to this degree that you write about. And I tell them, sadly, it's all true. It's based upon interviews and it's based upon cases and studies. So I think when we when we look at at the culture, that's a good place to start. Why are we treating some of our officers so poorly based upon their gender? I've worked with some incredible female officers. I've worked with some duds. Just like I worked with some incredible male officers and some incredible duds. So that always comes to mind when you're talking about culture.

Steve Morreale 46:09

Thank you for that. You said that you're working on another book. Tell us about that.

Terry Dwyer 46:15

Oh, it's a 50-year-old missing person case that turned out to be a homicide. The the body was just discovered in been identified in 2024. I was at the reuniting of the remains with the family in Georgia last June. But it's the story about this detective who wouldn't let the case go even into his retirement. Sadly, he died in 2014, so never got to see the end of it. But as fate would have it, I met him when I was a young professor and he lectured in one of my classes. And it's a very interesting story on looking at how we treat missing persons in the United States, especially people of color who are indigenous. This was a young black man who had everything going for him. And here's this white detective who wouldn't let it go. Not to talk about white savior syndrome or anything like that, but just a guy who was World War II vet, Pacific, Navy, that old greatest generation type of guy who just saw that here we had this decent kid, and he's not getting treated, getting the treatment he would if he was white or his family had more money. And he to his dying day, out of pocket, this guy traveled the country. And it's amazing because he had no resources. Didn't have any of the modern stuff that we have today, but he was so close to pinning it on an individual. So I'm arguing with both families. It's a great tale. It takes us from the northeast down to the deep south across the country to the west coast and parts in between. So it's exciting. And here's the best part about it. You said earlier, you never we never leave the job, we never stop being cops. Detectives have to detect.

Steve Morreale 48:08

I'm finding stuff you're back in the detective work, finding stuff 50 years later.

Terry Dwyer 48:13

Yeah, that's the fun part of it. And also retracing history. It's like a time capsule. I get to go back and talk about what was happening in a country in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s from Vietnam up through OJ up through 9-11. So it's fun. It's different than academic writing, just like the last book was.

Steve Morreale 48:31

Well, we're talking to Terry Dwyer, and he's sitting at his home in Connecticut today. I I want to ask you as we get ready to leave, what area have I not addressed? What did I not talk about or ask you a question about that you feel is important for people to understand the things that are going on in policing, the things that are going on in leadership, the things that are going on in culture that that trouble you that need to be addressed?

Terry Dwyer 49:01

Well, from the perspective of the public, don't broadbrush the police. Just because you see one horrific story about a police officer behaving badly, that's not every officer that's out there. Uh, just like you wouldn't broad brush every bad carpenter who does a bad job or butcher or a lawyer or what have you. Don't broad brush. And I think it's easy with policing and police officers for the public to do that. I would avoid that. And then for the police supervisors, I'd say the same thing. Just look at your officers individually. Don't get stuck in that, again, that managerial bean counter mindset, that micromanaging mindset where you're not trusting your people. And that for me, I think, was the biggest letdown towards the end of my career. And what I hear from officers nowadays is that lack of trust. You got your detectives, your officers, let them do their jobs. They're trained professionals, don't micromanage. The best supervisors I had back in the day knew when to just let their people go, right? Keep informed of what's going on and everything else. Let the boss know, but let your people do their job. And I really think cops, detectives, work better when the leash is let off a little bit. Yeah. With they're not micromanaging every bit of information because it really slows down an investigation a lot of times, too. And I've seen that. So though those are the things that I see from my perspective after so many years. Uh, and just for the new cops going on, take care of take care of self. Always look out for number one, and that's not being it's being selfish in the right way. Take care of yourself, not only physically, which a lot do, but the mental aspect, which in our time, nobody really you find yourself on the end of a bar stool or in some bad situation, which is not the answer.

Steve Morreale 51:07

Well, thank you so much, Terry Dwyer, who is a professor at Western Connecticut State University. We're both winding up our semesters and we'll get busy doing some writing and some other things this summer. And good luck with your new move, Terry. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Terry Dwyer 51:24

Thank you for having me. My pleasure. So that's another episode of the Cop Doc Podcast in the can. I just was looking at uh Buzz Sprout thanking you for listening to me from 134 different countries, 4,300 cities and towns, and it blows my mind. I want you to let me know if there's somebody I should be talking to, somebody who's progressive, somebody who's doing great stuff that uh we can share. Get in touch with me. Thank you. Have a good week and take care of you people. Don't forget to take care of yourselves. All the best.

Intro - Outro 52:02

Thanks for listening to The CopDoc Podcast with Dr. Steve Morreale. Steve is a retired law enforcement practitioner and manager, turned academic and scholar from Worcester State University. Please tune in to the copdock podcast for regular episodes of interviews with not leaders in policing.