The CopDoc Podcast - Season 10 - Episode 173

Guest: Chief Ryan Johansen, Apex Police Department, Apex, North Carolina

Most police chiefs walk into a new department and tell people their vision. Ryan Johansen asked questions and took notes for 90 minutes with every single one of his 200 employees. One-on-one. No agenda. Just listening.

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Chief Ryan Johansen of the Apex Police Department sits down with Dr. Steve Morreale for a wide-ranging conversation on what it takes to rebuild a police department's culture, restore officer confidence, and lead with both conviction and humility.

Ryan came to Apex, North Carolina about 15 months ago after five years as chief at the San Bruno Police Department in California, just south of San Francisco. He made the move with his wife and family, driven by a desire for a different environment and a chance to do something meaningful. What he found was an agency with purpose-driven officers who had pulled back on proactive policing, and a community watching crime numbers rise as a result.

He walked in with a clear belief: most of what ails policing starts inside the organization. If officers are treated as numbers, managed through policy, and punished more than developed, it shows in how they treat the public. Johansen flipped the model. He spent 90 minutes one-on-one with every one of his 200 employees, asking questions, listening, and taking notes. He made clear that the org chart runs the other way: everyone in the building, including him, exists to support the officers answering calls.

The conversation covers a lot of ground. Ryan talks about his early days at the San Diego Police Department and what he learned by leaving a 3,000-officer agency for a 50-officer department in San Bruno. He talks about taking the chief's job in San Bruno just two days before Covid lockdowns, and then navigating George Floyd and the calls for reform that followed. He describes walking into the Apex roll call room, tattoos and all, introduced only as "Ryan, from California," and what he said to a room full of officers who weren't sure what to make of him.

He and Steve dig into the managing versus leading debate, the difference between policy and culture, the false safety of no-pursuit policies, and what servant leadership actually looks like when it's time to discipline someone. Johansen is candid about the tension between institutional pressure and personal courage, and why he believes most police chiefs live in fear of the average three-year tenure rather than leading the way their people deserve.

This is a refreshing, honest conversation with a chief who isn't performing. He says what he believes. And the people around him are proving it works.

KEY TOPICS COVERED

• Career path from San Diego to San Bruno to Apex: what each stop taught him
• Why he believes policing "breaks good humans" and what he is doing about it
• The recruiter's words that brought him to Apex ahead of schedule
• What a real listening tour looks like: 90 minutes, one on one, with every employee
• Managing versus leading: where chiefs spend their time and why it matters
• The discipline dichotomy: development versus documentation
• Command and control culture and its effects on officers in the street
• Extracting a vision versus dictating one: how to earn genuine buy-in
• AI in policing: low-risk value versus high-risk shortcuts

Hey there! Send us a message. Who else should we be talking to? What topics are important? Use FanMail to connect! Let us know!

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

The CopDoc Podcast - Season 10 - Episode 171

In this episode of The CopDoc Podcast, Dr. Steve Morreale sits down with Christian Quinn, retired Fairfax County Police executive and founder of Fulcrum Innovations.

Christian traces his path from Massachusetts summer police officer to one of the technology leaders in one of the nation's largest county police departments. The conversation then dives into the rapidly changing world of artificial intelligence in policing.

Steve and Christian explore:

1. How AI is already affecting police operations and investigations.
2. Why agencies need governance, policy, and training before deploying AI tools.
3. The risks of deepfakes, synthetic media, and digital evidence manipulation.
4. How leaders can use AI responsibly to improve efficiency without surrendering critical thinking.
5. What police executives should be doing right now to prepare their organizations for the future.

Key takeaway

This is a candid discussion about the opportunities, blind spots, and ethical challenges that come with AI in public safety. If you lead people, manage policy, or are trying to understand what AI means for policing, this episode offers practical insights from someone who has been on both the operational and technology sides of the profession.

Hey there! Send us a message. Who else should we be talking to? What topics are important? Use FanMail to connect! Let us know!

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

The CopDoc Podcast - Season 10 - Episode 170

EPISODE SUMMARY

What happens when a police chief walks into his first department meeting and tells the staff, "I'm here to serve you — not the other way around"? For Chief Tom Wetzel of the University Circle Police Department in Cleveland, Ohio, that statement was not a slogan. It was a commitment he has carried through three decades of policing, from dispatcher to lieutenant to chief.

In this conversation, Tom shares a leadership philosophy built on servant leadership, dignity, and what he calls the "sweet spot" between accountability and motivation. He is direct about what he has seen: too many police departments creating more stress for their officers inside the building than on the streets. The politics, the gossip, the nitpicking, the heavy-handed discipline — it follows officers home, sits with them at the dinner table, and follows them to bed. He believes that is not just a morale problem. It is a leadership problem, and it is fixable.

Tom also discusses his book, A Cop and a Coffee Cup, a short, practical blueprint for police supervisors and leaders. The concept is simple: imagine a wise, seasoned officer sitting across the table from a young leader, with one cup of coffee and one shot to pass on what matters most. That is the book. It covers how to develop inspired and accountable officers, how to handle discipline with grace and discretion, and why the word "clemency" belongs in every chief's vocabulary. If you lead people in blue — or aspire to — this episode will give you a great deal to think about.

Hey there! Send us a message. Who else should we be talking to? What topics are important? Use FanMail to connect! Let us know!

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

The CopDoc Podcast - Season 9 - Episode 169

EPISODE SUMMARY:

Steve Morreale sits down with Captain Dr. Heather Glogolich of the NJIT Police Department in Newark, New Jersey, for a candid, deeply personal, and professionally rich conversation about what it means to lead in policing today. Heather brings more than 22 years of law enforcement experience, an EdD focusing on domestic violence and higher education, and a hard-won perspective on what it takes not just to survive in a male-dominated profession, but to thrive in it and bring others along.

Heather speaks openly about her journey from the Morris County Sheriff's Office to patrol officer, lieutenant, and now captain, including having to sue her agency to secure a promotion she had earned. Rather than letting that experience define her bitterness, she channeled it into a commitment to mentorship and transformational leadership. Her story is one of accountability, growth, and choosing to lead with love, even when the institution made that difficult.

The conversation ranges widely, from the real reasons women remain underrepresented in law enforcement leadership, to the operational risks of empathy, to why she believes the first day on the job should include leadership training. Heather challenges comfortable assumptions, pushes back thoughtfully on conventional DEI narratives, and delivers a message that will resonate with anyone trying to grow as a leader, regardless of rank, gender, or years on the job.

KEY TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• How Heather's path from the Morris County Sheriff's Office to NJIT shaped her leadership philosophy
• Women in policing leadership, the 30x30 initiative, and the real reasons representation remains low
• Balancing being a great cop and a great parent without sacrificing either
• Her personal experience as a survivor of domestic violence and how that shaped her doctoral research
• The difference between sympathy and empathy, and why empathetic policing carries operational risk
• Suing her agency to earn a promotion and what she did with the chip on her shoulder
• Culture change within your sphere of control when you cannot change the whole organization
• "Lead with love," servant leadership, and transformational leadership in practice
• Why the first day on the job should include leadership training
• How to mentor others while still seeking mentorship yourself, including her work with Simon Sinek's curve.org

Hey there! Send us a message. Who else should we be talking to? What topics are important? Use FanMail to connect! Let us know!

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

The CopDoc Podcast - Season 9 - Episode 168

What does it take to go from a dirt road in Northeast Texas to leading one of the most progressive police departments in the country?

In this episode of The CopDoc Podcast, Dr. Steve Morreale sits down with Dr. Lance Arnold, Chief of Police in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Lance calls his journey "dirt road to doctorate," and that phrase captures something essential about who he is: a leader who never lost sight of where he came from, even as his thinking about leadership grew more sophisticated, more deliberate, and more people-centered with every passing year.

Lance spent 20 years at the Norman, Oklahoma Police Department before taking his first chief's job in Weatherford, Texas, and then moving to Broken Arrow. Along the way, he earned an Ed.D. in organizational leadership and built systems for developing leaders from the inside out. He arrived at a deceptively simple conviction: the job of a leader is to create conditions for people to flourish. Not just survive. Not just get to retirement unbroken. Flourish.

This conversation is one of the most substantive explorations of police leadership development you will find anywhere. Lance and Steve dig into why leadership training rarely sticks when the culture does not change around it, why most supervisors manage fires instead of preventing them, and why "we tried that in 1995, and it didn't work" may be the most dangerous sentence in policing. Lance is direct about his own early failures, honest about what it took to grow, and clear-eyed about the gap between what most agencies say they value and what they actually build systems to support.

If you are a leader at any level who has ever felt like you were swimming against the tide, this one is for you.

Hey there! Send us a message. Who else should we be talking to? What topics are important? Use FanMail to connect! Let us know!

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

The CopDoc Podcast - Season 9 - Episode 167

What does it take to walk into four different agencies, each with its own culture and expectations, and lead effectively in all of them? Gina Hawkins has done exactly that — from the Atlanta Police Department where she came of age as a young officer, to Sandy Springs, Clayton County, Fayetteville, North Carolina, and now Cobb County's Sheriff's Office. Along the way she has learned that culture doesn't start inside the building. It starts with the community that either demands excellence or tolerates mediocrity.

In this conversation, Gina shares the hard lessons she picked up at each stop — managing stress that nearly broke her health, losing custody of her daughter the weekend the moving truck arrived as she headed to take command in Fayetteville, and still walking into that organization and pouring herself into the work. She talks about what it means to develop leaders, why women belong in policing at every level, and why the absence of universal standards for 18,000 law enforcement agencies is one of the most pressing problems in the profession.

This episode is candid, personal, and practical. Gina Hawkins doesn't give you theory — she gives you earned wisdom.

KEY TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• How culture is shaped by the community before it is ever shaped by the chief
• Leading through personal crisis while commanding a new organization
• What it's like to be the outsider hired over the heads of internal candidates
• The importance of women in policing and Cobb County's annual Women's Summit
• Her experience on the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and why the lack of universal standards remains a critical gap
• The role of transparency, accountability, and body cameras in rebuilding public trust
• What retirement looks like when you can't stop serving

Hey there! Send us a message. Who else should we be talking to? What topics are important? Use FanMail to connect! Let us know!

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

Season 9 - Episode 166 - The CopDoc Podcast

Hey there! Send us a message. Who else should we be talking to? What topics are important? Use FanMail to connect! Let us know!

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

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.

Hey there! Send us a message. Who else should we be talking to? What topics are important? Use FanMail to connect! Let us know!

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