STEP-UP and LEAD (eBook)

Introduction

As law enforcement issues become more complex, scrutiny increases, expectations for service rise, budgets become more austere, and attrition reaches an all-time high, it is critical that 21st Century law enforcement professionals employ innovative ideas and technologies to deliver safer and more transparent, effective, and efficient service. This has especially become evident in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd tragedy. However, much of what law enforcement leaders should or could have been doing prior to that incident is no mystery, and proactive leadership could have prevented this and similar tragedies we’ve seen both before and after the George Floyd incident. Nevertheless, the consequences of that day have had an enormous impact on law enforcement which has led to a new paradigm within this profession.

Having served a 46 – year career in law enforcement that spans the local, federal and private sectors – the majority of which has been in supervisory, leadership or executive roles, I will examine leadership issues from a comprehensive perspective. Like many of you, I have been through many leadership schools and seminars – the FBI Executive Institute and the FBI Law Enforcement Executive Development Training; the National Sheriff’s Institute; the Virginia Sheriff’s Institute; Harvard’s JFK Leadership Training; US Army War College’s National Security Seminar – to name a few. However, this book will provide a “hands on” perspective, applying principles I’ve learned along the way, but with a focus on what works – and most importantly, why.

I have had the good fortune to have started my career in local law enforcement in 1978 with the Howard County, Maryland Police Department where I served for seven years, roughly three in the Patrol Division, three in the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Division (also known as the Special Operations Section – SOS), and a year as a detective. This exposed me early to a paramilitary-type organizational structure.

In 1985 I was hired as a Special Agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). After completing the Academy in 1985-1986, I was assigned to the Miami Division, as was most of my class, Basic Agent Class 40. The mid-80s was a time when the cocaine wars were in full force, and there was no more active location than Miami. (While I may refer to various cases or incidents throughout my career to illustrate a point, the purpose of this book is not to provide “war-stories,” but to focus on leadership, management and problem solving in this profession of continuing complexity). This environmental structure was loosely paramilitary by design, but DEA allowed a great deal of freedom in the way cases were worked and there was no uniform dress requirement once a recruit completed the academy.

Following a three-year tour in Miami, I was selected to serve at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan. Working in a foreign embassy-type environment certainly was like nothing I had ever experienced in what had been predominantly a paramilitary career, either in uniform – or to a lesser extent in civilian clothes as a DEA Special Agent. This change of assignment, at 29 years-old, placed me in a position of being a professional diplomat, working with U.S. State Department Officials and a myriad of foreign counterparts. The exposure of information I received – as well as the way in which we communicated and acted upon that information was quite different to the way similar information was handled statewide. It also placed my family (wife and three children at the time) under additional scrutiny. People knew who we were, where we lived, and who we socialized with. In a foreign environment, professional expectations are high, and communications require enhanced discretion. While I was stationed in Karachi, I served as the back-up supervisor, and this type of assignment provided me with a very different work perspective than I have experienced in the past.

Following my foreign assignment, I returned to the U.S. as a Special Agent in Tampa, Florida. Unlike Miami where there were so many cases to immerse yourself in, work in Tampa required a much more “taskforce” oriented approach. The Tampa environment, while very busy, required constant interaction with state and local counterparts. In many instances, the state and local counterparts were in competition with each other, which required a great deal of diplomacy as DEA was often the leader of the investigations, or at minimum, the controller of the way seized assets were to be shared.

From Tampa, I was selected as a supervisor on the Mexican border in McAllen, Texas. Again, a completely different assignment, unique challenges, and a job culture that was nothing like I had ever experienced. Many of the Special Agents in McAllen were from that area and considered themselves “border rats.” Outsiders, like me, were not looked at favorably as they did not understand the culture – which I found to be a profound challenge in my early days as a supervisor.

From Texas, I went to Seoul, Korea as the Country Attaché. This assignment “structure” was like Karachi, however, in this assignment I served as a direct report to the ambassador. We lived in embassy housing on the Yongsan US Military base, which exposed me and my family to many aspects of a military lifestyle.

From Korea, I was promoted to the position of Chief of Public Affairs for the DEA. The reporting structure was unusual – as was the position itself. While there was a chain of command, media issues are fast and can be furious, so reporting usually took the form of directly meeting with the DEA Administrator. Daily, when facing pressing issues, I would make sure to advise the Chief of Operations before seeing the Administrator to ensure nobody was blind-sided by anything that either occurred or was about to occur in the press. It was difficult to balance trying to protect the agency brass, personnel, and the Administrator at the same time. To this day, I tell people that being the Chief of Public Affairs for the DEA was my most difficult challenge. Daily, this section was expected to know everything of importance, with excruciating detail, that occurred within a global agency comprised of 10,000 people, and to be able to address those issues in a pleasant and comprehensible way to the public and the media. No easy task. This was also the first time I had a 50/50 split of sworn and civilian employees.

From there, I was assigned to Bangkok as the Assistant Country Attaché, a position that, over a few years, morphed into supervising not only the offices within Thailand, but to the entire Far East Region. This comprised 15 offices in 13 countries covering four time zones extending from Beijing, China, east to the Philippines, and southward to Australia. This required supervision over a complex area, involving various cultures and languages, with different casework in practically each location.

After three years in Bangkok, I returned to the U.S. and was assigned to oversee field operations in the San Francisco Field Division, an area stretching from the Oregon border, south to San Jose and east to Stockton, California. This environment was very different than what I had experienced on the east coast, or Texas for that matter, but served as a continuation of my exposure to various cultures, priorities, and personnel.

I retired from the DEA to take a job back east (the Washington, DC area where I was from) with Booz Allen and Hamilton. As varied as my leadership experiences were in the DEA, this position provided me with a completely different paradigm of leadership – one that was flat, flexible, and interactive. I learned extremely valuable lessons working at “Booz,” most importantly involving going with the best idea presented – no matter who presented it. I learned the importance of a collective work environment (not taking individual ownership), where the standard was not the “best” any one individual could do, but the “best” the Booz Allen team could do. I also learned much about marketing and the importance of graphics in presentations, which would help me enormously in the next career I would pursue, sheriff of Virginia’s largest full-service sheriff’s office.

When I left California and returned to the east coast, my wife and I decided to live in Loudoun County, Virginia. She had done a significant amount of research, which included an examination of the reputation of schools and crime. Both came with high marks. While we had lived in Stafford, Virginia when I served as DEA’s Chief of Public Affairs, she and I also came to the same conclusion that fighting the I-95 traffic was not something either of us wanted to do, especially considering my office at Booz Allen would be located near the Dulles International Airport.

I began searching for a house in Loudoun while she remained in California waiting for the children to complete their school year. During my initial few months at Booz Allen, I met Pete, also a retired DEA Special Agent. Pete knew of my background, explained the makeup of the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, and suggested that I run for sheriff. Having grown up in the Washington, DC area, I thought all the counties in the surrounding DC had county police departments. I was surprised to learn that Loudoun did not, that an elected sheriff ran all law enforcement, jail, court, and civil process operations. In essence, the sheriff of Loudoun County served as both a sheriff and police chief. Pete advised me that Loudoun County might be ready for a new sheriff.

I spent a year examining whether this might be doable. Fortunately,...