Targeted violence, domestic terrorism and international terrorism are changing. In the past, America has been the victim of large scale coordinated attacks. Today, acts of mass violence are as simple as cars, fireworks and household items.
On April 15, 2013 two terrorists blew up homemade bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three innocent people were killed. Hundreds were injured. Boston Police Chief Daniel Linskey immediately found himself in charge of a mass casualty event and a multijurisdictional manhunt through the streets of Boston.
Chief Linskey joined Fran Racioppi to share how he overcame fear, panic and the realization that in an instant the entire city was looking to him for guidance and direction. He shares how preparation and training between law enforcement and first responders in the years leading up to the attack was critical in their response. And he explains why in emergency response, there’s no place for egos or credit, just action and results.
Join our conversation from the shores of Plymouth Harbor. Follow us on social media, read the full episode on our website, then head over to our YouTube channel or your favorite podcast platform to catch Chief Linskey talk about Team Maureen, an organization he founded to honor his late cousin focused on preventing cancer in our Veterans.
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Danny, welcome to The Jedburgh Podcast. Twenty-eight years in law enforcement. After a career in the Marines, you led the Boston Police Department. I would argue, and I’m sure you would too, it’s one of the finest institutions in law enforcement in the world.
I’m proud to have been associated with the Boston PD. It is one of the best in the country. They’re constantly looking at, “What we could do better?” What makes you best is not accepting that you’re like, “We’re good. Let’s leave it alone.” That’s not what leaders do. If you leave a place the same way you found it, then you’re not leading. You should have a wake of leadership behind you where better leaders than you are coming up and doing greater things than what was going on when I was there.
You say that and I immediately start thinking about the Marine Corps, which is where you started. When you look at a Marine Corps recruiting poster, it never says something like, “Come be a follower, and then one day, we’ll make you a leader.” Great organizations talk about leadership and they instill leadership from day one. Leaders exist at every level of an organization.
People conflate leadership with management and think once you’re at this level, you’re a manager and a leader. What I argue is no. You may be a manager after you’re in charge of a couple of people, but the reality is that even an individual contributor, the lowest level private, the entry-level police officer, is a leader in their job. I have to ask you before we get into all that. Why the Marines?
My grandfather was a United States Marine. He fought at Belleau Wood. I want to be a cop. I pretty much thought I needed to get a veteran’s preference to become a cop because that’s what you needed at that time. That was my plan. I was going to fly F-18s for the Marine Corps, do six years, and then become a cop. My grandfather said, “You’re going to go to Quantico and be a Marine officer? You should probably get your behind down to Parris Island and find what it’s like to be a Marine before you lead Marines.”
That was his attitude. He always found that Marine leaders that he thought were most effective were leaders who had been grunts before. They had been the Mustang officers in the Marine Corps that went from enlisted to sworn. That was his thought. I joined the reserves, too. In September of my high school year, I went in and joined the Marine Corps Reserves.
My mother was, “What are you going to do? Why aren’t you going to do whatever all the other kids do?” I said, “Mom, my entire life you said, ‘If the other kids jumped off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge?’ I’m a Linskey. You told me to do what Linskeys do, so I’m going to join the Marines.” On June 10th, I graduated high school and on June 12th, I was standing on the yellow footprints at Parris Island, finding out what my grandfather thought I shouldn’t understand. It was great. It was a bunch of other good kids with free food and clothes.
Can you call it food?
It was great. What do people pay for a personal trainer? I had three personal trainers running me through.
Motivational speakers.
They were great. It was a good experience. I matured and found out what I needed to do. You’re right. It starts there. My leadership probably started in high school on teams. If someone had to be the captain, I was like, “I’ll do it.” Also, school politics. I stepped up and I was a school treasurer for my senior class. You might know who said this but there’s a famous saying about leadership. “If you want to learn leadership, lead.” Do you know who said that?
I don’t know who said that.
I’ll give you a hint. It’s a Marine.
I won’t hold it against him.
Any guesses on who it could be?
It wasn’t Mattis.
No. I think General Mattis wished he’d said it but he didn’t say it. A lot of people think it was Chesty Puller but it wasn’t Chesty Puller. It was a mentor of mine, somebody I’ve looked up to, respected, and seen. I saw how he operates and works. It was General Dunford. His dad was my commanding officer when I was a young detective in the drug unit.
The first time I met him, he called me in his office. You didn’t go in and talk to a deputy like they were God. I was in the unit for about a week. I thought he must have heard about that undercover buy I made and wanted to congratulate me. He was chewing my ass out for screwing up and yelling at me. I’m like, “Jesus Christ, it’s the first time I meet this guy and he’s already up one side and down the other.”
A week later, I got called back to his office and I was like, “What do I do?” I had done a case in a lot of complaints come in and no one could get a case against this guy. I knocked on his door and convinced him to sell me a bunch of cocaine. It worked. We got the guy. The deputy found out about it, brought me to his office, gave me a pat on the back, and told me what a good job it was and how effective it was.
That’s a leadership lesson I learned. He had a standard and I hadn’t met it. He wanted to make sure that I knew what I was supposed to do there. Disappointment was not an option. When I did something that he thought was right, he had the ability to say, “Great job. Keep up the good work. I appreciate it.” I’m like, “Wait a minute. This guy’s reading my reports and knows what we’re doing out there?”
I’ve been learning lessons of leadership my entire life, whether it was Parris Island or what it was like to be an enlisted Marine down there. I went to college at Northeastern University. We’ve got an intern who’s going to be going to Northeastern, so congratulations. I met my wife there, so good luck to you. I went to Quantico that June again. I did the platoon leaders class program. I was going out for two different summers and getting commissioned. That’s it.
Hopefully, they’re going to give me a chance to go to flight school. It’s up to me whether I fly an F-18 or a pack for six years, depending on how I do in flight school. I got hurt down at Quantico. I tore a ligament on a run. It’s not bad but bad enough that I couldn’t finish. Marine Corps has to keep you for a little while, so they kept me for two weeks and then let me go home.
It was the first time I ever failed. It’s the only thing I ever set out to do that I didn’t complete it. I was a little downtrod. I had taken the police exam for practice. I got a good score on the police exam. They kept calling me for interviews and background checks. I’m saying, “I’ll go through it, but I know I’m not going to get hired because I’m a nineteen-year-old kid with no veteran preference. I’m not going to get the job.”
On Friday night, I get a call. I report to the academy on Monday morning. I graduated from the police academy when I was twenty years old. I could seize alcohol as evidence but I couldn’t drink. It led to some ethical challenges for a young cop on Friday nights but I got through it. I went to the police academy. My brother was in the academy with me. There were 180 recruits in the class. Someone had to be top of the class. It was not my brother. I’ve let him know that in his entire law enforcement career.
Competition always exists at that level.
It does. I was good academically studying-wise, so I got the law pretty quickly. I topped with the Hogan Award winner in the academy class. That came with, “Where do you want to go?” The hottest work in the busiest district was District 2 in Roxbury. That’s where I wanted to go and where I’m going to learn to be a police officer.
Has that changed?
No. 2 is still a busy district. 11 and 3 are vying for first place, Dorchester and Mattapan, but 2 is a good place to learn to be a young cop. I still remember my first day. I screwed up so many times in the first three hours. It was unbelievable. I was so early that I checked in and put my stuff in the locker. I had a 7:30 roll call and I’m there at 6:00. I check in, put my locker, close it up, and go out.
I realized I didn’t have the citation box that I was supposed to have, so I went back. I can’t open the locker. I’m like, “What’s going on here?” There was a tire iron near there, so I popped it. I found out that it wasn’t my locker. I committed a burglary on my first day on the job. I was like, “Are they going to fingerprint this? Am I going to get fired?” My locker was the one next to it. I was trying to open the wrong locker. That was the first half hour on the job.
They put me out with a guy who started earlier. They were like, “Instead of hanging out, you go out with him for an hour.” We have a motor vehicle accident. The kid crashed a motorcycle. I’m trying to get him to take medical care. “You need an ambulance. You could be hurt, but you don’t realize it.” The older cop is like, “Kid, if he gets medical care, there’s a report involved. We have to write a report. If he doesn’t get medical care, we came, we saw, see you later.”
The old guy doesn’t want to do a police report. I’m on the job for an hour trying to convince myself to get the paperwork. We get back in the car. He goes, “Kid, don’t push the paperwork. We’re not going to do that.” I’m like, Step three.” I got my training partner and we were about three hours into the call. We get a call for an alarm at a house.
We showed up and the house was inside a fence. It was a six-foot high fence with barbed wire all around it. He looked and was like, “I don’t see anything. Nothing’s broken.” We looked around the perimeter. I’m like, “No. We got to check the house.” Idiot me climbs over the fence and I’m trying to climb over the barbed wire. I get stuck halfway up. My new pants are getting ripped.
It still has the crease for being fully broken.
They’re brand new. It’s the first time they’re worn. Eddie, all of a sudden, realizes that there was a lock on the gate but it wasn’t locked. He opens it and pushes the gate open with an idiot spinning on the gate and says, “We could do it this way, too. Let’s climb down from there.” That was my first day. Thankfully, you get better from there. As a young cop, when you get to a scene, if you didn’t have a supervisor there who was in charge or sometimes even when you had a supervisor there who has the rank but not the ability to lead, sometimes, if you want to be a leader, lead.
If I had to step up, bang that door, make that arrest, jump in on that interview, or make a decision to search the car, I would do that. I had that leadership my entire career. I had the privilege of working with some great cops, became a sergeant, and ran some effective teams that worked well together. We lost one of my guys. I went to his funeral. We posted a thing on LinkedIn. We got a citation from the police commissioner. It was six years that the crew was working.
We’re running them to cover the narcotics squad. We had done 1,000 search warrants, arrested 3,000 people, took 650 guns off the street, took tens of millions of dollars of money in ill-gotten gains, and took $100 million in coke, heroin, and other various drugs off the street in those 6 months. Amazingly, all those times, not everyone wants to go easily with the police. There are some challenges sometimes. Not a single internal affairs complaint for anyone in that squad. That spoke volumes for the squad. I had the privilege to lead them.
You’ve seen an evolution over your career of, we’ll say, support for the profession of law enforcement. I often will equate law enforcement as a service. You’re serving, whether you’re a first responder and you’re in the fire department or EMS or you’re a police officer. They’re like a military that goes out there; they answer a call to the nation. Our law enforcement answers that call to the community. At the end of the day, that’s their job. They’re there to protect, serve, and help the community in ways that you don’t even think about.
Think back to COVID. You have an entire profession of folks. You guys were a lot of that at the front lines here in Boston. You’re especially at odds with some of the political leaders here during that time where you still got to go out there and take action at a time when the rest of society is being told to do nothing except one demographic. I bring it up because you’ve seen an evolution of levels of support. Where are we as a society? How does our law enforcement view their role as we’ve seen support for law enforcement go down and scrutiny go up?
The men and women I worked with, it wasn’t a job they did. Most of the teams I was on and the teams that I was able to put together, it was a vocation that people had. It wasn’t that they were a cop and that they did police work. It’s that they were somebody who is dedicated to public safety, the job, and getting the mission done, whatever assignment it was. That’s what they did. It wasn’t a job they did. It’s who they were and how they lived.
A lot of that has changed. Some of that was the police’s fault. We had challenges in Boston. We’d have violence. Some of it is communication from the community. What do you want? I remember a twelve-year-old kid was shot. I was looping the block and saw a bunch of gang kids that I knew were gang-involved. This little girl was sitting on a mailbox and swinging her feet. I’m like, “I don’t like that.”
The kids that were on the corner I know are rival gangs of the gang that’s six blocks that way. At some point, they had shot them up a couple of days ago. I knew at some point they were going to return and shoot these guys up. I was thinking to myself, “I don’t want this kid hanging out with these guys.” I get out of the car. I broom the kids off the corner and tell them, “Head out. Go someplace else.”
One of them throws a bottle at me once they get around the corner. I had enough time on the street that I was smart enough that I didn’t run over. They were all going to be in the apartment and through the back door. However, I’m going to see these kids six hours later. One of them is going to have a beer, smoke, and bone. They’re not going to get a pass on it. They’re going to get arrested. I’m going to say, “Remember the bottle you threw? Whoever threw the bottle, you can thank them for tonight’s stay in jail.”
I said to the little kid, “What are you doing here? You got to get out of here. This is a bad neighborhood.” She said, “I’m visiting from the South. I met a friend here yesterday and we played. I was waiting for her to come back so I could play with her.” I’m like, “Those guys who were out here are not somebody you want to be hanging out with. You should probably go back home to your aunt’s house and see if he can find your friend there.”
I moved the block 3 or 4 times and didn’t see the kids who threw the bottle. I said, “I’ll go grab some food.” I ordered my food. I got the pizza, put it in the car, and a call came in for Humboldt and Ruthven. When I got there, the kids had come back. The gang kids had come back after I left. Unfortunately, little Tiffany Moore came back too and she jumped back on the mailbox. She wanted to play with another little girl that she was hoping was going to come out of the house and be someone she could play with.
As I had feared, a rival gang came and shot up the corner. As often is the case, they missed the people they were shooting at and they shot Tiffany in the head. She died. The whole city was outraged. A twelve-year-old kid is shot dead in a mailbox. Our bosses came in and told us the next day, “Go get him.” We got him. We put a bunch of cops up there and arrested all kinds of people as if you were driving without a license. Everyone was going to jail.
If you wanted a fight, we’d fight you. We went up and arrested everyone. We flooded the place. We had bodies lined up in the police station but who were we arresting? We get told, “Go get them.” Who’s them? We start arresting everyone under the sun. We’re arresting Ed the electrician who’s got a driver’s license that’s suspended. He’s working hard to keep his kids in a private school and he hasn’t had money or time to go get his license done. He gets arrested.
He wasn’t the shooter or he didn’t know who the shooter was but he gets his car towed. We take him to the station. He’s going to take a day off work. We’re asking him, “Help us find them.” “Why should I help you? You treated me like a jerk and arrested me.” Was it legal? Sure, it was legal. Do we need to arrest people for driving without a license? No, we need to find the kids who were involved in gang activity. They knew we were coming, so they put their heads down and kept low for the 3 or 4 weeks that we had saturated patrols.
We didn’t police the community. We occupied it and created tensions. If there are tensions, there’s going to be feedback. Some of our problems in policing are things we did ourselves, and some are out of our control, as others did. We saw a change in the last couple of years where law enforcement was the target of everyone’s anger. We’ve got a new media that has no editor in the Twitter guard room and no one verifies the information. It spreads like wildfire.
I worked for the Department of Justice and went out to Ferguson after the Michael Brown shooting. Hands up, don’t shoot never happened but it happened to people who lived in that community. There was no comment given on what happened with the shooting. When the police and the DA are saying no comment, and the other side is saying he had his hands up and said, “Don’t shoot,” I call it the third, the third, and the third.
There are 1/3 of people who will say, “The police shot a guy in the crosswalk because he was jaywalking.” That’ll teach him. He won’t jaywalk anymore, will he? They’re always with us. There’s a video of a cop getting shot in the face in Boston and people are going, “Why’d you have to shoot him?” “We shot a cop in the face at point-blank range.” “Aren’t you guys trained for that?”
This kid was a Harvard Law student who was arguing with the then Superintendent Chief of Police William Gross at the time. We’re never going to maybe win everyone over. People don’t like the police and authority for whatever reason. There’s 1/3 in the middle who want the information and facts. If you tell them what happened and it makes sense to them, then they’re going to support you if the cop was doing the right thing. If the cop was doing the wrong thing, they’re going to want accountability. They lost that in Ferguson.
I’m not saying Ferguson burned that day because of no comment, in my opinion. It was going to burn eventually because of the way policing was going on out there. They were policing for dollars in the community a lot. It was not a way to build trust with the community. Your wife’s in marketing. If we had a CMO for the police department, they should be fired. We weren’t getting our image out and we weren’t doing a good job messaging what we were doing.
Lots of good police work was going on but we weren’t sharing that. What was getting shared was where cops were doing the wrong thing and we had to come back from that. It’s a long answer to your initial question but the pendulum is coming back. More people realize that the police are trying to do the right thing and in fact, in the justice system, the police have probably been some of the more progressive changes than any other folks.
We look for diversity in police departments. I have reporters who write stories about the lack of diversity in police departments and what have you. I go to their newsroom. Have you looked in a mirror? I’ve had academics who talk about, “We need to do this in police departments.” I go, “Have you looked inside the university system? How many diverse people are at your table when you’re having discussions?
Police have taken a pretty good step towards that and worked to diversify with men, women, different ethnicities, genders, races, religions, and politics and tried to get the departments that reflect the communities they serve. We’ve done a better job with that. We’re holding cops accountable. The body cameras were great.
Cops hate two things. Let’s be clear. Any change, they hate it. If you want to put body cameras in, cops hate change. The other thing cops hate is the way things are. They hate all those two things and argue with it. They’ve seen where body cameras have helped tell their story. What happened in that 30-second Twitter video where the guy was pulling a gun out, out of control, and trying to hurt somebody? The officer did what he had to do to save lives.
I went to a Medal of Honor celebration at the Boston police awards. I have friends who I worked with who were telling me, “I don’t want my kid on the job. I tell my kid not to take the job.” They were angry when their son or daughter took the job because the jobs changed. It’s not the same job. It’s the same job. Do you know why? Thirteen of the cops who walked across that stage and got medals of honor and medals of valor, saving lives and being shot at were sons and daughters of cops I banged to the town with. Those kids are doing what their mothers and fathers did before them. I’m glad to see that.
It’s not just that, though. We are seeing different folks coming into policing. It’s a great time. If you think there’s a problem, be a leader. If you want to be a leader, lead. If you think there’s a problem with policing and leadership, join and see what you can do from the inside and see if you can change it. You’re not changing it from outside on Twitter but you can change it if you put some skin in the game. Some of that is you understand what’s going on and not just your thoughts of how police should do things.
How are you seeing and how do you react to changes in policy? There’s a lot of discussions out there, like you have district attorneys who don’t want to prosecute crime and are soft on crime. Police officers are doing a lot of work arresting folks for mid to low-level misdemeanor crimes. People are back out on the street within 6, 12, and 24 hours. How do you balance that? How much effect do you have over going after that type of crime at a baseline level if it’s not being prosecuted?
I’ll go back to what we were doing. We were trying to stop the violence. We targeted those who engaged in violence. If you were doing other things but it wasn’t violent, that wasn’t the primary focus for our resources. I didn’t need Ed, the electrician, arrested because he didn’t have a license. Let’s have Ed pull the car over and park it. If he doesn’t fix it, then that’s Ed’s problem.
We started focusing on impact players who we knew were engaged in violence. By doing so, we lowered crime by 30% plus. We lowered arrests and incarcerations at the same time because we’re going after the violent players. That was our model at the time. We had a school program where we had school resource officers who made relationships with kids, did non-typical police things with kids, took kids fishing and tutoring programs after school, and hooked them up in the community center with coaches.
We had a very successful program where a kid would be going off the rails and he’d start hanging out with a gang. The teacher knew it. We knew it. He’s using gang graffiti on the covering of his book. He’s wearing the Tar Heels hat. It isn’t because he likes the team. It’s because that’s the gang color that the kids are flying in his neighborhood. Mom and Dad are working a bunch of hours. They’re not seeing this.
We would go with a school police officer, one of our school cops, community leader, or clergy sometimes. We would go with social services. We go to the house, knock on the door, and have a conversation with the parents. “How are you doing? Your kid’s in trouble. This is what’s going on. How can we help you? Can we get him onto a sports team? Can we get her into a dance program? Can we get them a coach or mentor? Can we help do this, that, or something? Do we need to get the court system on him?”
Sometimes, that’s the best response for a kid who needs the sword of Damocles hanging over their head. We were not charging kids. We were diverting them. We weren’t arresting them for stuff. It was successful. Some folks came in and said, “Get rid of school police. It’s horrible.” We’re starting to see violence back in school. I would like to see any politician who is making policy on law enforcement do a two-week basic in-service class in law enforcement.
I had use of force where one of our officers, unfortunately, had to shoot a guy. This guy had a machete and he was attacking a woman. The officer took action and started attacking the officer. He shot and killed the guy. That’s unfortunate for everyone involved. The officer was hit with a machete. He got 67 or 87 stitches in his leg. I had a reporter who said, “Why didn’t the officer shoot the gun out of his hand?”
I’m a United States Marine. I was on a Marine Corps pistol team. I was a police officer. I’ve shot and killed every paper target I’ve gone up against. When I’ve had to use my weapon at work, I don’t know where those rounds went. I’m happy because I still got the bad guys and didn’t have to deal with taking someone’s life. That’s not the world we live in. We’re not all a sniper with the ability to take that shot. You’re backing up.
He wanted to know why the officer didn’t shoot him in the hand and give him commands in Spanish. The officer wasn’t Spanish-speaking. He probably didn’t know that the guy with the machete attacked the woman and he was speaking Spanish at the time. I invited that reporter over to our academy and said, “Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is? Let me run you through the training scenario. Why don’t you see what it’s like to do this? If you like, stand by your article and have at it.”
To which credit he came and did it. He ran him up and down the stairs. I put him in the fat simulator training room. He shot everyone but the bad guy. He killed his partner and the neighbors. I’m going, “Why didn’t you shoot it out of his hand? You were only 6 feet from him. Come on.” He’s like, “Lesson learned.” To his credit, he wrote an article saying, “Last week, I had an opinion. This week, I walked a mile in the shoes of the officer who might have been there and I realized that my opinion maybe wasn’t informed. Here’s my experience at the Police Academy.”
I would like to see everyone who’s deciding on using force policies and police policies. Have an experience. If you’ve gone through it and you think we shouldn’t or should have Tasers, then you can be informed as you make a decision. Advise me and tell me how to do the job. I wouldn’t go in and tell a neurosurgeon how to do the job. They’re not conflating what neurosurgeons and cops know. You don’t have to be a cop to understand what’s good policy, procedure, and policing. Having that familiarization when you’re making decisions is helpful. It also gives you some credibility. If you walk that walk and you still decide you want to go with this policy, that’s great.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a massive influx in immigration. There are a lot of different opinions on national and federal policy on immigration. A lot of the burden of those who are coming into the country is being borne by local police and local law enforcement. We have policy decision-makers and elected leaders who are at all ends of the spectrum in those different jurisdictions as to how they’re handling those situations. It’s everything from nothing to massive amounts of resources going into supporting them.
We’ve seen that in New York, here in Massachusetts, and even out on the islands. Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard have even had their share of dealing with an influx of that population. How much more complex does that make the job of local law enforcement when you start to add a demographic into the population that is in a no man’s land?
It’s made it harder, for sure. Resources are stretched thin. It’s a strain. There are a lot of good folks who are probably here for good reason. I trained a bunch of police officials out in New Mexico. One of the leaders of the state police there was human trafficked. His mother was beaten by his father and the father wound up killing an unborn baby girl that she was carrying. He beat the mother because she was pregnant with a girl and he wanted another boy.
They came from a communist country in Central America. The police were all-powerful. The mother had some family here and she ran with the kids. He talked to me about being trafficked across the Mexican border, waiting for his uncle to pick them up. He had a flashlight and was flashing it. They went into the border patrol. They get picked up. At that time, they took them right back. The mother had her passport from Guatemala. They put them back in Mexico, thinking that they were from Mexico.
They eventually get re-trafficked across the US border. The mother got a job, met a gentleman, married him, and moved. He was a commander in the state police at the time. He joined the Navy. He was on the USS Kennedy. He was deployed all over the world in the Navy. At one point, he went to Singapore. He got off the ship. He had a passport for Guatemala and also a US passport but he has the Guatemalan passport. They deny him entry.
“How’d you get here?” He’s like, “That big ship out there.” “You can’t come in.” He’s a leading official in law enforcement. That’s probably somebody that we want here. He joined our military. He went and contributed to our safety and security. I’m sure there are lots of stories like that but because it’s so wide open and there’s no control, we’re seeing lots of dangerous folks coming across who are using our system to create crime and victimize people.
I’m a cop. I do CompStat. We problem-solve. “What’s the problem?” When we got criminals coming in this area doing this, we say, “Let’s not do that. How do we change that?” There are all kinds of ways we can change it. We’re putting our teams in bad places. If there are no consequences for your actions, we see what the crowds were doing to the New York cops there. They were assaulting the police officers and creating crimes. No one’s being held accountable. Why not? If people think there’s no accountability for assaulting a police officer or doing anything, they’re going to probably do it if that’s how they’re inclined.
We have to go back to where we don’t need everyone in jail all the time for every crime but we need to have discussions about this person, their actions, and whether they should be in jail, on probation, on an ankle bracelet, or diverted out of the court. Everyone makes mistakes. If you made a mistake and you don’t need to go to jail, great. If you commit crimes, hurt people, and you’re a threat, that’s what jails are for. We have to make sure we’re giving our cops the tools so that they can keep us safe.
It’s easy to be a leader when everything’s going well. Whether you’re a police officer, in business and your company’s making money, you don’t have an enemy to face, and you don’t have people conducting crime, anyone can be an effective leader. We live in what’s called a VUCA environment. You study in law enforcement and the military.
Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity. It’s this VUCA world where we wake up in the morning and anything can happen. Our job as leaders, military, special operations, and law enforcement is to be trained and prepared to find ourselves in any one of these complex situations and then have to respond. We were introduced by Eric McNulty, my guest on episode 70. Eric was a coauthor of the book You’re It. He’s part of the National Preparedness Leadership Institute. We have that moment when an event happens and all of a sudden, you’re it. You’re the person in charge. On Monday, April 15th, 2013, at 2:49 PM, you were it.
I didn’t want to be it. When you were a kid and you were it, you didn’t want to be it. I didn’t want to be it that day. We looked at challenges and threats that we could face prior to that date. We trained and prepared. We put plans in place. We taught and trained people how to plan. I had a 146-page plan for the marathon. We had an alternative finish line that, God forbid, if there’s a fire on Boylston Street, we would pull some barriers. We had a second timing mat down Commonwealth Avenue right at 26.2 so that we’d still have an official marathon. It was that level of planning.
That plan didn’t get thrown out the window. I had a terrorist bombing with 3 dead people, 259 maimed citizens, and a city under attack. It was the training, preparation, and learning we did on a couple of different training episodes. You know this. You can’t just say or pretend you’re training. You can’t say, “Bang, you’re dead.” We were doing that.
I realized we had a problem. I was in New York when Mumbai happened. I was on a family vacation. Mumbai’s playing out and I’m asking, “What do we do in Boston? What are we doing here? They’re attacking the entire city. Could we be one of those targets?” We didn’t have a plan. There was no plan to stand up tactical teams to protect critical infrastructure. We made it up on a notepad in a hotel room in New York with me talking to people back here in Boston.
We didn’t get hit but we realized we were flat-footed. I brought my team together. “This leadership is putting your team to the task.” I said, “What do we have to do?” They’re like, “We got to do this, that, and this other thing.” We took a program called Urban Shield in California, which was a 36-hour SWAT operation, where SWAT operators went from 36 different locations and scenarios.
They had real-life role players with moulage that looked like Hollywood special effects. Sometimes, it was a shoot situation or no-shoot. It was on an airplane, a hotel, and all kinds of things. Our SWAT team said, “This is the best training we ever had.” I brought that guy out and said, “I want you to make this team for us.” He said, I will. It’s not about training your teams. It’s about training your leaders.” I go, “What are you talking about? My team said it was the best SWAT training they ever had.” He goes, “They’ll have a good time and get good training but how did you train people to be the incident commander for events?”
“We didn’t. You were the guy. You sat in the chair and that’s it. That’s your incident commander training.” “You need incident commanders, a safety chief, and a logistics person for one of these sites. What are you worried about?” What happened is we debriefed with Mumbai and they told us that the Taj Hotels is on fire. They’re shooting people in the hotel and they’ve ringed the place with IEDs. The fire department and the police department have a discussion of who’s going to go first. The fire department is saying, “Not us.” The police department is saying, “We can’t go in with fire.” The bomb squad said, “Figure it out. We’ll take care of those bombs once no one’s shooting and the place isn’t a raging inferno.”
That conversation was going to occur between me and the fire chief in the city of Boston if it were to happen. The fire, police, EMS, docs and nurses, and Homeland Security were trained. We were all in silos. We weren’t training together for the big day. We brought in eight cities and towns, all the federal agencies that would show up on a bad day, and we trained. They did 8 hours of scenario training, 3 hours of terrorist attack, 16 active shooters, full automatic sim weapons, and 150 role players.
I blow up a police car when the officers go through the gate of the training scenario. There’s a guy, a former Iraq vet, who’s got a missing leg. We’ve got a prop foot with a boot and pants that are on fire next to him. The cops think it’s a real training accident, that something happened. They’re trying to stop the training because they think they need a real ambulance. It was that realistic to them. We’re telling them, “No, train through it.”
The kid hits a blood pack and arterial blood is squirting up on the vest of the cop. We freaked them out. If the first time you see a human being missing their leg is on Boylston Street, you’re probably going to do what every human being does. You’re going to freeze. If you haven’t trained it and had that muscle memory to go to a tourniquet on your belt or you haven’t put a tourniquet on your belt, that person’s going to die. We did every first responder, 5,000 in all, with two separate trainings prior to the marathon. We had trained and prepared for it.
This is my seventh time as the Incident Commander. I get out early and do a couple of things. I walk that route for two reasons. One, I was a real cop at one point. I did police work. I’m a chief and I do PowerPoints in meetings. I had 834 of my cops out there that day, and I had to get out, shake their hands, and thank them. “Great arrest. That kid was going to kill someone if you hadn’t stopped him. The DA and the judge called me. Your testimony in that child sexual assault case was phenomenal. You put that person away. The judge personally said how professional your investigation was and wanted to let me know about it, so thank you.”
“Are you okay? You’re back okay. I know you’ve been out injured.” He’s like, “Yeah, I’m getting better. It’s the third police guy. He crashed on me. You’re going to be walking a beat if you keep smashing police cars up.” I shake every one of those cops’ hands. The other reason I walk that route is because I’m terrified of bombs. I don’t think any law enforcement leader in America was as afraid of bombs as I was before April 15th, 2013.
My dad had lung cancer and died fairly young. When he was recovering from his surgery, there was a lot of stuff going on. My best friend’s dad was a cop. When I got my license, Jerry took me to go get my license. I spent more time in his basement as a kid growing up than I did in my house. He had a cop bar and I used to listen to the cop stories. I wanted to be a cop like Jerry.
I never wanted to play for the Red Sox. I didn’t want to catch balls with Tom Brady. I want to be a Boston cop. I got to do that and I graduated. I was twenty years of age and I’m a young cop. On October 28th, 1991, there was a call for two officers down in Roslindale, Massachusetts. My partner and I, Bobby Pirouette, responded to it. When we got there, we found out that Jerry and his partner were examining a device and it went off. They are badly injured. Jerry was screaming, “There’s a secondary device. Leave me.” No one left him.
A young woman, Denise, tied tourniquets on his legs and stemmed the flow of blood. We get there with the ambulance. I remember when the ambulance pulled up. My wife is an emergency room nurse at the hospital at that time. I knew her docs were good. If anyone could save Jerry, it was going to be Michelle and her nurses. They worked for six hours but unfortunately, Jerry died in that bombing on October 28th, 1991.
I want to make sure our EOD team had all of the training and support and that they were doing things by the numbers. I saw what that bomb did to Jerry physically and the Hurley family for the time he’s been gone. I’m walking with the EOD team and saying, “Is that your bag? How long has that dog been out?” EOD dogs are not infallible. You don’t just keep saying, “This dog’s going to smell any bomb for the next six hours.” They’re like pro athletes. They need water and rest.
We can do it and pretend we’re sniffing or we can say, “How’s your dog? Let’s pay the money, make sure we get other resources, and do it the right way.” That was my mentality. As I’m walking that route, I’m checking to make sure we’re doing our job. We do it. I go out one mile. I cross the street. I go back and shake every cop’s hand. We swept that first mile of the race two times and we were good.
These cops are getting younger and I’m getting older. I forgot this kid’s name. I can’t think of it and I apologize to him. I’m like, “Your last name is the letter of the alphabet.” He’s, “It does.” I tell him, “Happy Patriots Day,” and tap him on the shoulder. He says, “Boss, I bought the house five houses up from you.” I’m like, “What?” I spent too much time at work. I didn’t know the house was for sale. I’m like, “Isn’t that Carol Cloonan’s house?” Carol is a cop and we lived in a section of Boston where there are lots of cops, firefighters, and teachers.
I’m in front of the Forum Restaurant talking to this young cop. I’m like, “Where are you going to send your kids to school? I put my kids at St. Mary’s. My Eamon had gotten into Harvard so I had to brag with him that we could get into Harvard. St. Mary’s is maybe a good place to send your kid. Brandly’s has the coldest Budweiser and best buffalo wings in town. Where are you going to get your uniforms done? I go to Jimmy the Cleaner. The guy’s name is Jimmy the Cleaner so he knows how to clean a cop’s uniform.”
Twenty minutes I spent BSing with this kid, my new neighbor. He’s a Bud Light drinker. I’m going to drop a case of Bud off to him when he moves in. I then go back to doing my job and looking for threats. I thought they’d hit us when the whole world was watching those lead runners come down Boylston Street. We were on high alert. In addition to the cops assigned to the marathon that day, there were probably another 200 who were from my other units that supplemented.
We were standing on our toes, looking at the crowd. “Is that your backpack? Is that your bag?” It’s like the president got out of a motorcade. We’re looking at hands. The winner wins. The national anthem played. The governor and all the VIPs are leaving. Billy Ridge, one of my planning chiefs, looks at me and says, “A road race now, boss.” I said, “You got that, Billy. I got to deal with my biggest problem, which is drunken college kids.”
I went right by all the college universities. The kids enjoy the marathon. They go up on the roofs and fall off the roofs. My cops don’t like doing alcohol enforcement. The community kills me because we’re not doing alcohol enforcement. I go to a meeting and they ask me about it. I go, “We take alcohol enforcement very seriously.” The woman puts up a PowerPoint picture of 5 cops with 10 coeds and the cops’ hats are on the coeds and they all get red solo cups.
It’s apparent that everyone is probably drinking alcohol. I say, “I believe that’s an undercover sting to find the kid with the keg. I don’t know but we take it seriously.” I want to shake all those cops’ hands too because the marathon is a 1.5-mile finish in Boston. We have another mile of it when it comes in by Boston College out at Newton and then we lose it to Brookline. I went out to Newton and shook all those cops’ hands, crossed the street, shook those cop’s hands, and thanked them. I got in my truck.
This is important. I ran the marathon one year and my wife got the bug. Whenever she’s gone, she cheers. She’s not cheering for Cox, Wilson, and Daddy. He touched me out and won the marathon that year. I saw him finish, though. He had a course record but I saw him finish. I think 2.14 was his time. I was close enough behind him that I saw him when he crossed the finish line and broke the tape. I was at Wellesley at the halfway point and saw him on a jumbotron two hours behind him. I saw him cross that finish line.
My wife and kids have been coming for seven years. I didn’t arrange this but when my wife and kids show up, somehow, they wind up in the front row and the VIP viewing stands. My wife’s got a promotion. She works at Tufts Hospital. She couldn’t go so she said, “Take the boys with you and I’ll meet you down there. I’ll come down at 3:00. We’ll get something to eat.” She’s a cowbell ringer. “I’ll ring the cowbell for a little bit and cheer for the runners.” Kids with cancer, Down syndrome, and all the charity runners are who she’s cheering for. She’d gone to work.
I went to my then 18 and 15-year-old sons and said, “Do you want to stay home and sleep in? It’s a day off from school. Do you want to go out in the blazing sun and sit in the VIP viewing stands that your mother makes you do every year?” They’re like, “Could we please sleep in, Dad?” I’m like, “Yeah, absolutely.” “What does mom think?” I said, “I’m the Chief of the Boston Police Department. I don’t need to know what mom thinks. I can make a decision on this. I got you covered.” I let the kids sleep in that day.
I was going to meet Michelle for dinner. I went to the other side of Fenway Park. I had to come in from the Brookline line to Kenmore Square. It was probably another 200 cops’ hands to shake. I was going to go back, get out in my uniform, meet my wife, and we were going to go have a nice dinner. It was another marathon in the books. That’s when I heard the Delta 984. Delta 984 is Sergeant Detective Dan Keeler. Danny is a former homicide cop and a level-headed street cop, a former Marine.
We’ve had some bad days at the office together and I’ve never seen Danny not 100% in control. Danny is screaming into his mic and I can’t understand a word he’s saying. All these cops are clicking their mics and radios. Everyone’s cutting each other off. I don’t know what we had but I knew we had a problem on Boylston Street. I ran and got up to Kenwood Square. One of my deputies was there, Stevie Whitman.
His brother was a firefighter in an incident command post who said that there were two explosions at the finish line. They thought it might be electrical but they’re not sure. We jumped in the car. I went to Channel 5, which is our slowest police channel, and said, “I don’t know what I got but I need mutual aid or anything we can get.” I don’t want it coming to Boylston Street. I sent a commander to the Boston Common. I had all the mutual aid go to the Common.
The good news is if you get hit like I got hit, everyone’s coming, every cop, sheriff, and deputy. The whole cavalry is coming to help you. You’re not in this alone. The bad news is every cop, sheriff, and deputies come and if you don’t control that, it can make your problem worse. I sent any mutual aid to the Boston Common. I get out on Boylston Street. Danny Keeler, who did an amazing job, ran that scene before I got there. He came running up and said, “Boss, they hit us twice. They blew a device. As people were running away, they blew a second device.”
He stopped talking. He was looking at me. I have five stars on my shoulders and somewhere it says I’m in charge. He essentially said, “Tag. You’re it, boss.” I didn’t want to be it. What Danny had told me, “They hit us twice, boss,” was the Forum Restaurant where that young cop, my new neighbor, was on duty. He had a pretty bad leg injury and was being treated out of the scene.
There was an eight-year-old little boy next to a young woman on the ground in front of the Forum. They destroyed that baby. I’ve been a cop for a long time. I’ve seen a lot of stuff. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Along with the devastation was a wave of shame and guilt that washed over me that I spent twenty minutes talking to that cop and I might have missed that bag. That family’s loss and destruction and the family of the young woman next to him might be my failure. I was supposed to keep him safe that day. I might have failed.
I’m a pretty action-orientated guy and I hear somebody scream secondary device. I’d heard that once before in my life and that was a horrible experience. I’m a United States Marine. I’m a cop. I’m the chief. I froze. I want to go home to my kids. I’m looking at backpacks all around me and waiting for a bright light to come out and just to die.
She appeared. This woman was on the sidewalk and her leg was jammed up. She was bleeding. I’ve been doing first aid since I was a Cub Scout. I grabbed the napkin off one of the restaurant tables. I bent down and went, “I got your leg.” I lifted her leg and told her how I had her leg and how I was lifting her leg to keep her from going into shock. I put that napkin around it. A medic and a firefighter came. They’re like, “Chief, we got her.” They wrapped an actual pressure dressing on it, the way you’re supposed to. I was holding on to her foot and wouldn’t let it go. They’re like, “Chief, we got it.” I’m like, “I know how to do this. I don’t know how to do that. I’m going to stay here and do this.”
A Massachusetts State Trooper came over to me, grabbed me by my jacket, pulled my jacket, and said, “Chief, I need you in the middle of the street.” There’s some tension sometimes between us and the troopers. I said, “Get the fuck off of me. Give me goddamn one second, Mark.” It popped. I didn’t even know what the hell I was doing. I took three deep cleansing breaths. I shook that tension out of my body that I was pissed about. My file cabinet popped. All the training I had done to prepare for Urban Shield and every crime scene I ever worked was there.
Every leader, the Joe Dunfords of the world that I saw as great leaders, those lessons were there. Every idiot that I said, “I’m going to study and be a boss because they’re never listening to that person. Tell me what to do again,” was all there. I just had to open it. My file cabinet opened. I wasn’t pissed at Mark Horgan, who’s a lieutenant in the Mass State Police and a buddy of mine, for telling me to be the boss and knock it off. I was pissed at myself for having to be reminded.
I started pulling through files and said, “Assess your situation. Define it. Looks like someone’s dead. That’s a murder. We usually have detectives do detective stuff when that happens. You should probably have your detectives do detective stuff.” This is the self-talk that’s going on in my head. I see Kevin Buckley, my investigative superintendent. I say, “Buck, get an investigative command post up here at Ring Road and Huntington. I want Huntington to Newbury Street. I want Mass Ave. to Arlington. Shut it down, lock this scene, and stop pulling the video. Go.” I don’t have to tell Kevin Buckley how to do an investigation. I just had to tell him it was okay. “Buck, go do your job.” He knows how to do his job. I had to give him the mission.
One of my deputies, Colm Lydon, came running up to me and said, “Chief, we got no ambulances. I have all kinds of people. I need ambulances.” We had learned in Urban Shield that we weren’t going to have enough ambulances if we ever had a mass casualty event. We were going to have to use police cars. I said, “Colm, we got ten wagons in this plane. I want those wagons down here. You put three patients in the back of each wagon with a medic and get them off this goddamn street.”
Colm gets that plane in place and the wagons down. We transported 3 people in wagons and 3 people in police pickup trucks. They were in the medical tent being treated by a doctor, an ER, or an OR within 22 minutes. Everyone who left that scene alive is alive with the exception of one young woman who survived the marathon and then died in a tragic car crash. We had planned, trained, and executed it. It was police, fire, and EMS. The whole system was ready for it because we all trained together for that bad day.
I then realized that I had gone to some training at NPLI. I remember an Israeli military official who talked about, “In a crisis, there are 5,000 things you got to do but you need to focus on the 5 most important. What are the five things you need to do right this minute?” If you screw it up, fine, you screw it up. You change them going forward but more important than what you tell your team to do with the five priorities is the manner and method in which you tell them to do it.
If you’ve got a lectern and you’re going to make a presentation in front of the team, you better have that uniform squared away and those boots shined. You had better look like you’re in command and control of that and convey that somebody up there is in charge and that you’re quarterbacking this plan. If you don’t have that and you’ve got a radio, everyone in the region is going to listen to that radio transmission and that’s how you’re going to get your message out, you better write that script in your head and be the calmest and coolest you ever were when you hit that mic. That’s what I tried to do.
I said, “Yankee Charlie 2, we’re going to treat and triage these victims here. We will then set up incident command at the firehouse. We know that’s a secured location. We will then conduct a sweep with EOD assets to make sure there are no other bombs out here. We will then evacuate people out of the restaurants and bars once we know there are no more devices on the street. I need somebody up there to get on social media and tell the world what we’re doing here.”
That’s what I asked my team to do. They crushed it. The tragedy and loss of lives were horrible. It’s because we trained and prepared. Leaders lower down the children’s pole than me. Sergeant detectives and officers stepped up in the moment. They didn’t need someone to tell them, “Go in that crowd and tie your tourniquet.” They just went and did it. There are lots of people alive because of the efforts of those cops, firefighters, medics, and citizens.
That was just the beginning. From there, you have an investigation and suspects on the loose. How do you transition and start to move from crisis response incident management into deliberate investigative activity?
You’re taking it one at a time. We realized that we had to get an incident command. I originally said incident command was going to be at the firehouse but I didn’t trust them. I had an EOD dog there and I said, “I’m setting up incident command at the firehouse. Go check it out. I want to make sure it’s safe.” That young cop came back with his dog and said, “Chief, the package device is at the front door of the firehouse.” I’m like, “You got to be kidding me.”
It’s Mumbai. They knew in our Urban Shield training that that was one of my evil geniuses. That training wasn’t bosses. That was frontline cops, operators, SWAT, K9, and fire who came up with the scenarios to test what they thought they needed to be tested on. We were going along and he said, “I put a device in the incident command truck. I’m going to blow it. We’ll kill the incident command team. Someone else will have to take over. What do you think of that?”
I said, “That’s genius. Would the bad guys ever think of taking out the vehicle that says all senior leadership will gather in this vehicle? That’s amazing. We’re not going to do it this year. Next year, you get to kill the incident command team.” I had IAD check his incident search history and see if he’d gone a little too far to the other side. I’m kidding. He’s a good kid.
There was a device found at the firehouse and I’m like, “You got to be kidding me.” We had a suspect. We started running that information down. There was a report of an explosion over the John F. Kennedy Library. Initially, it was confirmed that that was another IED that went off there that later turned into maybe a Molotov cocktail that was thrown there. It later turned into maybe the janitor put a cigarette out in a barrel and caught fire over there. All kinds of intel was coming in.
People were telling me things and I said, “How do we know that? Who saw it?” “Jones saw it.” “Get Jones in here. I want to talk to Jones.” I talked to Jones. He’s like, “Not me, it was Sully.” I’m like, “Get Sullivan in here.” I’m talking to Sully and he’s like, “Not me, it was Joey.” I’m like, “Get Joey in here.” You have to verify it. Information is coming fast and furious. People want to tell you what they think. I want to believe it. We had an initial Saudi Arabian national suspect who had shrapnel wounds seen fleeing from the scene and discarding his phone. That’s a pretty good lead. I like this guy a lot. We assign investigators too. Let’s probably talk about the elephant in the room with the FBI.
You said everybody’s coming to help. How do you handle it?
Do the FBI agents follow your show?
Yeah, everybody follows this.
Technically, the FBI is in charge of a terrorist attack in the United States of America, even in the city of Boston. Those are my cops who are bleeding. I watched that little boy. I might have failed that little boy and his family. There’s no way they’re going to be in charge of this investigation without us. We had an initial conversation when the FBI lead came. I wanted to set the tone with him exactly how this conversation was going to go.
He doesn’t know me well but he may get a sense for how I lead. I looked into his soul and said two words, “Hey, Brad.” He said, “Danny, what do you need? What do you get?” I don’t care what his card said that he was supervised by a special agent in charge of joint terrorism tests. That’s impressive. What was impressive to me is he’s Brad Davis. He was embedded in my narcotics squad when we were banging doors as drug cops back in the day.
I respected Brad and he respected me. I’m like, “Brad, I need everything you can give me. He’s like, “You got it. It’s coming. There was no FBI. We’re in charge but what we decided to do is to have a Boston police officer, a trooper, and an FBI agent follow up on every tip and lead. That way, the Feds were fully plugged in. We were fully plugged in. We were all sharing information and working together. That’s where Eric and the work in meta-leadership and swarm intelligence comes from because we truly were skating in each other’s lanes and with each other pretty seamlessly.
You go to conferences and people say, “Before the crisis, you need to exchange business cards.” I know a bunch of guys who are in the top right drawer, and there are a bunch of business cards. They don’t know who those cards are from and why they ever took them. They never called them back. They don’t know those people. It’s not about business cards. It’s about before the bad day, sitting down, having a beer, and having a coffee, “What are you guys thinking? What are you doing? What equipment are you working with? How would you deal with this problem? What are you dealing with?”
Get to know people so that when they show up, it’s not a face on a business card. It’s somebody that I’ve covered their sex and they’ve covered my sex. We’re going to work together and get the job done. That was some of the magic we had, and we started running it in the command center. You have to lead your family before you lead the crisis.
I might have told you that I had left my 18 and 15-year-old kids sleeping at the house contrary to the thoughts and plans of my wife, who thought they were with me at the marathon finish line. My wife’s a nurse. When we had an initial suspect, they told me he was going to Tufts. I realized I have yet to effectively communicate to my wife that my kids are not here. I’ve consulted with some subject matter experts on this. Apparently, mothers who’ve been able to evaluate my efforts that day are critical of what I did and find failure in my lack of communication. I realized I didn’t tell Michelle about the kids.
My youngest texted me, “Dad, are you okay?” I’m like, “Thank Christ.” I didn’t have time to make the calls. I have hundreds of bags around me. Any one of them could have gone off any minute. We’re trying to figure out what we’ve got and how we’re doing this. I’m like, “I’m okay. Call Mom and let her know we’re all safe.” At least I had gotten that message out. I didn’t have to deal with that. If my wife ever heard of a terrorist bombing at the marathon, her kids were there, and she didn’t know that they weren’t there, that’s going to be a problem that I’m going to have to deal with. Thankfully, I didn’t have to deal with that problem.
We didn’t go to the firehouse because there was a bomb there. We went to the hotel instead and started the incident command. I need tables. My cell phone was running out. We didn’t have mophies at the time. It wasn’t a thing. “This table is investigation. This table is bombs. This table is crime scene. This table is this.” I had to get up and scream at people to shut up. I named people who were going to be the commanders at the table whether it was an FBI agent, a Boston police leader, or a trooper.
I said, “They’re in charge. They’re going to tap you and tell you to sit at that table. If they don’t tap you, get the hell out across the hall. We can’t hear ourselves thinking here. We got plenty of shit to do. We got to get some order in here.” We threw them out and put security on the door. We’re chasing all kinds of bad information down. I’m trying to figure out how many of my cops are at hospitals.
I’m calling and they’re saying, “We can’t release information to you on the phone.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? This should be thrown out the window for this.” I had families who were trying to find family members and working with public health, so we had to work with public health to get that. We had to shut the race down with 8,000 runners. Have you ever run a marathon?
No.
Usually, people go to the start of the marathon and put their cell phones, keys, keys to their car, hotel keys, sweatpants, and water bottles in a bag with a number on it. They put them in a truck and the truck takes them where? The finish line. I’m looking for any bags that could possibly go bang and everyone’s bag is at the finish line. We have to stop the race. Those runners are tired and dehydrated. They don’t have dry clothes. They’re not leaving because they want to meet their family. The family’s not leaving because they want to find their runner. They know there have been explosions at the finish line and they’re worried, “Is my family hurt?”
Our cell phone system melted. We couldn’t text or get calls. Nothing. For four and a half hours, the cell phones didn’t work in Boston. It wasn’t something we did. People thought we did it for electric countermeasures but we didn’t. It’s like 911. It was overwhelming. People couldn’t communicate. We had to set up shelters for people, food, get them clothing, and all things that have nothing to do with the marathon and police response to a crime scene but stuff we had to throw our minds into. We were dealing with crisis for crisis.
It was 10:30 or 11:00 when Congressman Stephen Lynch called me. He’s a good guy. He was good friends with the father of the little boy. He was with him in the emergency room. His father was hurt. Part of our effort to get people to the hospital so effectively was triaging what the injury was and putting people where they had to go. Unfortunately, that meant that Denise Richards was at one hospital. They were trying to save her eye.
Her husband was at a second hospital. He had a pretty significant leg injury. His oldest son was with him. He was singed but not physically harmed besides being traumatized and his ears were hurting him. Their daughter’s leg was severed at the scene. An off-duty firefighter used his personal belt to tie a tourniquet on it. That seven-year-old little girl was fighting for her life in a children’s hospital by herself.
With the rules of law in Massachusetts, once Martin and Lindsay Lou was declared deceased, we couldn’t move their bodies. The only one who can remove that body is the medical examiner. The medical examiner can’t get in there until we’ve made sure there are no other bombs. We have to document the evidence that’s there. It’s a long process on a slow day. It was taking a long time. I was very aware and very much wanted to get Martin and Lindsay Lou off that street.
Mr. Richards found out that his son was still on Boylston Street and was not happy rightfully. The congressman was telling me that he signed himself out against medical advice and that he was headed over to see Denise, who was apparently coming out of her operation and in recovery. He tells the congressman after he sees Denise that he’s going to get his son’s body. I explained to Stevie what we were doing and why. He said, “Danny, I know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. I’m just letting you know he’s very upset.”
I had ordered all the cops out of that scene, except for our EOD teams, to sweep for bombs and the FBI EOD. I called the commander who was in charge of security on that end of the scene and said, “Frank, we got a problem. The father is very upset. I’m told he’s headed over to the hospital to see his wife and he’s possibly coming your way.” Two things are not going to happen. 1) We can’t let him get in that scene. 2) No cop is going to arrest him should he show up and try to get in that scene.
I’ve been to unfortunate events where family members come into a crime scene and they want to see their loved one who’s a victim of a homicide or a horrible crime. They push and shove. You have a cop arresting the Nana for A, B, and a PO when they’ve lost a loved one. That’s never good. I could imagine that that happened here and I want to make sure that didn’t happen. Frank Armstrong told me he disobeyed my direct order. If you want to be a leader, lead.
He and four men decided that they weren’t going to leave. Instead, they were going to perform an honor guard over Lindsay Lou and Martin Richards. They covered the body with tablecloths from the restaurant and two at a time, they stood half an hour towards the left and right of the two young kids at attention. He said, “I don’t know if it’ll help but can you tell the dad we didn’t leave? We’re going to take these kids home. I’m not leaving these kids on this street alone.”
I got that information from Father Sean, who’s our chaplain. He happens to be the family’s parish priest. He was in Denise Richard’s hospital recovery room. He saw Bill when he came in and he said, “Bill, I know you’re upset. I’ve spoken to Captain Armstrong. This is what’s going on down there. They’re going to stay with him and take him home.” He went into her recovery room and the first words that were in her mouth when she woke up were, “Where is my baby?”
Initially, he thought maybe she was confused and didn’t realize the extent of Martin’s injuries. I believe it’s something to the effect of Martin’s passing. She said, “I know Martin’s gone. Where’s my baby?” He looked at Father Sean. The word had got back that there were Marines and police officers who were doing it. Two of the cops were Marines who were guarding him and going to take him home. She reached out, grabbed his hand, and said, “I told him before I left I wouldn’t leave him alone. I don’t want him alone on that street.”
I’m going to my house at probably 2:30 in the morning after we exchange commands. I’m walking up the steps. My wife and two beautiful kids come over and give me a hug. My oldest hugged me so hard that he hurt my ribs a little bit. I’m the chief. In the command center, I was thinking five steps ahead and playing chess. I’m ready for tomorrow but I was bawling the entire way home, thinking of failing that family and causing that destruction because I missed that bag.
I’m trying to explain to my wife that I might have failed and missed it. She’s telling me it’s okay. I’m like, “No, you don’t understand. He’s a little boy. I might have missed it.” She’s like, “I love you. It’s okay.” She was hugging and kissing me and telling me how much she loved me. She said, “I love you. Goddammit. Why didn’t you tell me the boys weren’t with you? Why?” I went, “I texted Colm and told Colm to tell you. Colm, why didn’t you tell your mother?” He’s like, “Dad, you never texted me.” I’m like, “Yes, I did, you little son of a bitch.”
I took the phone out and I’m like, “Right here. ‘Call Mom and tell her we were okay.’ Do you see that text?” “Do you see the goddamn red exclamation point?” The fucking text number went out. The text number went out. Our cell system had melted. I didn’t know it. I thought I was covered. My poor wife was in surgery with a patient when she was told there was a bombing at the Marathon finish line. Her two kids were sitting in the front row. She does what cops’ wives do. She tells her nurse friend who’s outside the operating procedure, “Go to my phone, hit Ice, and see what Danny needs me to do.”
“Danny isn’t picking up. Danny’s not getting texts.” “Call Eamon.” “Eamon’s not picking up.” “Call Colm.” “He’s not picking up.” For four hours, while she was dealing with a critically ill patient and was putting an ICD, an internal defibrillator device, in the person’s heart with some doctors, she didn’t know where her kids were. Finally, she found out where her kids were. They had stayed home.
What I thought I had done to not get in trouble is I am still paying for to this date because I didn’t effectively communicate. I blew that one big time. I went home, laid upstairs, cried, and decided I was not going to sleep. What am I trying to do? Instead, I got the uniform on and went back. I showed up at the scene and thanked people. I told them to hang in there. “I need everything you got. We’re going to get these guys.” I was trying to motivate the cops, the National Guardsmen, and the agents who were there working the scene.
We still have a city to run. Crime’s still crime and we’re dealing with that but pretty actively, we’re working with the agents and running down information here, there, and everywhere and making sure we got resources. At some point, I get a call that they need me in the command center at 6:00 AM on a Wednesday. I see the video of White Hat putting the bag down. It was there for six minutes.
It shouldn’t matter. The instruction was the same. I didn’t miss it. However, for me, not missing it was something I needed to know that I didn’t fail that family. I made a vow to my wife and kids that night that we were going to go wherever we had to go and do whatever we had to do. We’re going to find and get them. I made a vow to my cops that morning that we were going to do that, too.
The good news is that we’re exhausted and overwhelmed. We’re hunting these guys. Everyone is working 16 to 18-hour shifts. The president of the United States decided to come. That takes very little resources to protect the president in five locations when he’s going to five hospitals. We are crushed. One of my leadership things is I call it peerage. If your buddy’s in a crisis and you can go over and hand him coffee or her tea, give advice and guidance that’s maybe outside their chain of command and sphere of influence, and be that calming voice, you should do that.
I was getting a lot of text messages from my colleagues in the National Academy. It’s police chiefs who have dealt with it. “Have you thought of this? Make sure you’re getting some sleep and taking care of this. Watch your stress levels. You look good on TV.” One Air Force Colonel in the United States Air Force said, “Danny, thoughts and prayers. Anything you do, let me know.” It was Colonel Tom Miner.
The president’s coming with my EOD dogs. There were no other bombs on Boylston Street. Our dogs were compromised so they were hitting and alerting us to all kinds of things that didn’t exist. There was a bag under the grant stands that we X-rayed. There was a bunch of batteries, cylindrical tubes, and wires. It was a picture-perfect device. We hit it with a water cannon. The AP photographer will probably never leave his camera lenses around like that. That probably cost him $100,000 in equipment.
There were no other devices that day. There were other devices later in the week. We were dealing with all kinds of crazy stuff. I said, “Tom, the president’s coming. Any chance you can get me some EOD support, some dogs, and handlers to come help me?” We have some Air Force personnel in the studio. I got a text message from Colonel Tom Miner of the US Air Force, who said, “Dan, it’s a violation of The Posse Comitatus Act for the US Air Force to support local law enforcement. Up, up, and away. I’m sure you’re pretty proud of your Air Force guys there.”
I’m a Marine. He’s in the Army. If we did the service, the two of us probably couldn’t spell Posse Comitatus but that’s what I got. They can’t support local law enforcement because that’s a procedure in the military. The military has lots of procedures. Procedures are good except in a crisis. You don’t need a procedure. You need a solution.
The next text that came fifteen seconds later was, “However, there are 50 dogs and 50 handlers leaving 5 air bases. They’ll be on post at 04:00 tomorrow morning for the protective mission of the commander in chief of the armed forces, President Barack Obama. Semper Fi. You go get these MFers.” Tom Miner had a solution for me that went around the procedure of Posse Comitatus. They deployed.
I told that story at a conference. The head of MEMA, who oversees the emergency management in the National Guard from Massachusetts, says, “That answers the mystery. I said to the general for the National Guard, ‘Did you order active duty Air Force?’ He said, ‘No.’ ‘How the hell are they here? Don’t we have to order?’ He’s like, ‘Someone did. I don’t know but they’re here. Dan Linskey from the Boston Police deployed the Air Force to the marathon.’”
That was the solution. If you want to be a leader, lead. “Look, I need dogs.” Tommy helped me get dogs. If he could, he would have got on a plane and probably stood up close to me if we needed him to. The president comes to town. I now know what White Hat and Black Hat look like. We haven’t released the pictures yet. A lot of people don’t know this but we had suspects at MIT that we were looking at. We had an entire FBI surveillance team over there, along with a bunch of Boston cops.
While we were looking at these subjects and ruling them in or out, the terrorists and bombers went to MIT and murdered Sean. That led to a carjacking and a car chase. It was another wild night. One thousand five hundred cops came with me from the city of Boston. The entire Watertown Police Department fired their guns. The police chief is trying to get 911 to notice people to shelter in place. All of these cops have been fired. He’s trying to figure out how to deal with that. Cops were running around crazy. It’s like The Benny Hill Show and no one’s in charge. If you want to be a leader, lead.
I’ll explain jurisdiction. I’m the Boston police chief so I have full jurisdiction of the city of Boston. Watertown is in another county. My jurisdiction is nil or none, a Latin term. I watched them kill a baby on my street so someone had to get these guys. I wasn’t going to let confusion stand in the way of our mission. I started screaming and yelling at cops who didn’t work for me. Thankfully, our reporter had posted on Twitter, “Chief Linskey’s on scene. He’s in charge.” That’s all I needed.
Maybe the police chief might have asked for mutual aid, which made everything I did legal then. We got a bunch of cops running around and it is mass confusion. I go to the police chief in Watertown and say, “I have a plan. How about we divide this up into five different sectors? We’ll search it with the five squad teams we have and put a big ring around this guy. We’re going to go house to house. If we find him, great. If we don’t find him, we keep bringing that net in. We’ll go from where he was.” We’re doing that.
I missed the part of the gun battle with the elder brother. One of my cops is a Marine. I hear him on the radio. He’s screaming that he’s in a gun battle with these guys and explosions are going off. They deployed 5 bombs, 3 of which exploded and 2 that did not explode. We get a cop shot. Ricky’s begging for help to get this cop some help. I’m on the radio saying, “Rick, I need to know where you are. Tell me where you are.” The dispatcher tells us.
I run down the street and I see Moriarty with a state trooper, two Harvard cops, and another Boston cop trying to treat the transit cop with that shot. There’s nothing I could do to help him. I knew that they either had it or didn’t have it. Over to my left was Tam Winson Ioffe. He had been shot by Jeff Puglisi. He’d been run over by his brother. He’s handcuffed but he’s still fighting them. He’s a big and tough kid.
I was pretty convinced that he had a suicide vest on. He remote detonated bombs on us on Marathon Day. As Puglisi and Jared Giroux, one of my gang guys, are trying to cuff him up, I run over and say, “Strip him. I want to see what he’s got on him.” I’m looking for a cell phone, a dead man’s switch, and a vest on his body. I drilled my Glock into his temple and I had a solution. If I saw any of those, I was going to kill him. He didn’t have anything.
I holstered my gun, got on the radio, and called for an ambulance. We did first aid on a terrorist who murdered a little boy and 2 beautiful women, maimed 259 of my citizens, murdered a cop, and tried to kill a bunch of other guys with bombs and guns. I did look into his face when we loaded him into the ambulance. I told him he was going to burn in hell for what he did to Martin. I’m pretty confident my prediction is coming true. He went on his way. That’s how we identified him at the hospital.
We rolled his thumper and he died pretty quickly thereafter. We’re hunting his brother. It was mass confusion. That’s when I said to the chief of Watertown, “How about if we do this?” I went to the sack of the FBI and my commissioner and said, “How about this plan?” They’re like, “It sounds good.” I said, “Is it okay if I take it?” They said, “Go ahead.” I channeled George Bush. I don’t know why. It was all kinds of cops and there was a megaphone there. I go, “I got this.”
I grabbed the megaphone, jumped on the hood of a cruiser, and said, “This is what we’re doing. You’re doing this and that. Go.” We started hunting and hunted all day. All kinds of fake calls were coming in, reports of this, that, and the other thing. I knew I hadn’t communicated effectively with my wife on marathon day but I knew she probably was seeing this stuff on CNN. I wanted to let her know I was safe.
I called her and said, “Babe, I got one of them. I got one more to go but I’m not doing my usual shit. I’m not in the bearcat with the team. I’m in an incident command post. There are 100 men with rifles protecting me. I have a ring of security around me. I am protected.” She goes, “Okay, good. You have 100 men with rifles protecting you? That’s great. How come you have 100 men with rifles protecting you and my nephew Jamie?”
Her nephew Jamie is one of my SWAT operators. As I was talking about the protection I had, CNN was showing a Boston Police SWAT team going into a house where there was a report of a LAW rocket found in the basement and footsteps in the attic. I knew about that call and I dispatched the SWAT team to it to take the call. I look up and there’s my nephew Jamie leading the team into the house. I go, “I’m not communicating effectively with this poor woman.” I went, “He’s well-trained and well-equipped. I got to go. Bye.”
Jamie’s a good SWAT operator and a good kid. He’s also a good dad. He tries to spend some time with his kids coaching. He coaches baseball. He assistant coaches a lot too because he’s got a tough schedule. His kids played baseball with Martin Richards and went to school with Martin so he knew the family. He had a personal stake in finding this guy, too.
At some point, we need to get resources to UMass Dartmouth. We get some intel that he might have gotten out and that he’s possibly in an apartment down there. I got to get some resources there pretty quickly. It’s pretty far down from where we were. I remember the commissioner and I were talking. The general from the National Guard said, “Do you want a Blackhawk?” We said, “Has anyone ever said no to the question if you want a Blackhawk?”
The answer is always yes.
He said, “No.” We said, “How many do you get?” He said, “As many as you want.” We flew some equipment down there that we needed and then a Boston police SWAT team. HRT had taken off from Quantico. It was going to finish the way it started. Boston, the FBI, and the state kept the whole thing. I can only send one SWAT team so I sent Jamie’s. If anyone on the team kicked the door in, I wanted Jamie to put eyes on that guy.
With that, I hadn’t slept at all but maybe 45 or 50 minutes a little bit on Thursday night when I got woken up about the murdered police officer over at MIT. I was not in a good position. We’re making decisions to land helicopters in a mall without a lot of preparation. There were some challenges with that. Someone snapped a picture of me almost asleep at the switch with my eyes open.
Ed Davis, my boss, came over, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Danny, I got to ask you to step down. You’re exhausted.” I knew he was right. I said, “Boss, I think you’re right. I got it. I’ll call somebody and get somebody else in here.” I knew my nephew was on his way down in a Blackhawk to run a Tac-Ops and bang a door so I could run that from my cell phone on my couch. I didn’t need to be in the command center for that. I came out of the command post and fell down the stairs. I was having a hard time walking. Eddie Kelly was the president of the Firefighters Union. At the time, he was the president of Firefighters for Mass but he’s now the International President. Ed is a buddy of mine. He’s Greg Kelly’s brother.
He’s a friend of The Jedburgh Podcast and firefighters.
Greg Kelly’s rescue truck is probably better trained than half of SWAT teams in America.
They’d come with their pickup trucks off-duty and their grills. We were cooking hot dogs, burgers, and sausages and feeding the tropes. We shut down the city. Nothing was open. There was no food or restaurants. Nothing. He said, “Danny, are you okay?” I said, “No, Eddie. I’m getting ready to leave for duty.” He said, “You’re not driving, are you?” I said, “No.” I threw Eddie Kelly the keys to my police car and said, “You are.”
Eddie Kelly drove me home. I allowed him to turn the blue lights on. He got to live every firefighter’s dream and drive a police car. We got home and he helped me up the steps. We got in and he dumped me on the couch. Michelle was there. She said, “Are you okay?” I said, “Yeah. I leave the duty but I’m okay. We think he’s in New Bedford or down US Dartmouth. We landed some birds at New Bedford. We’re going to get him.” She said, “Where’s Jamie?”
I didn’t want to tell her that her nephew was going to lead my SWAT team in that operation. I said, “He’s in Watertown.” I didn’t want to have any more communication issues on that day because it had been bad. Jamie said something on the goddamn Tac-Ops mic. I had it on speaker and she said, “That sounds like Jamie.” I go, “Michelle, it’s a squad guy in a helmet. They all sound the same.” They do their thing and say, “We get three subjects in this residence.” I’m like, “Thank you. We got them.” About ten minutes later, they’re like, “Target not in residence. Repeat, target not in residence.” I’m like, “This kid’s a nineteen-year-old punk.”
I have every cop in the goddamn region. I had cops from Chicago, New York, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, and every federal agency that was at our disposal. This kid’s beaten us. I was devastated. We’re pulling out of Watertown. A lot of the cops had left but some of my guys were still there searching because they hadn’t done all the houses and they weren’t going to leave until they did it.
They get a radio call. They go to 57 Franklin Street. One of the homeowners saw a guy in his boat and reported. See something, say something. If you’ve been chasing a terrorist all day and you find a guy bleeding in your boat, you should probably call the police. He did. We get there and find him. We were under the impression he had an M4 and we knew he had prior explosives. We got his vehicle with an IED. It looked like a V bed when we first got it. We were expecting the boat to maybe go.
Billy Evans called for one tactical unit and asked everyone else to hold their position. We’re a paramilitary organization in Massachusetts. We’re very well-trained. All the cops circled the boat. What we believe happened was Tsarnaev was sticking the boat hook through the plastic so he could see what was going on around him to poke a hole in it. Someone saw that as potentially a rifle being poked through. We don’t know who that was because they fired a round and then everyone fired rounds.
There was a circular ambush at the boat. I don’t know how we didn’t shoot each other. He was shot and injured before he went into the boat. We know that. He got injured again in the boat. No police officers were shot. One did require several stitches on his gluteus maximus. The report somebody wrote was it was from a flying rock because a bullet would have been a 26-page report. A flying rock is a one-pager. He had a flying rock that caused stitches.
Billy called me and he’s like, “I hope it’s him. I don’t know if it’s a homeless guy. The cops are shooting.” I grabbed my radio and said, “Yankee Charlie 2, do I have a Tango Sierra unit on location at 57 Franklin?” Tango Sierra is my tactical snipers. I wanted one of my tactical snipers to answer that call. I didn’t want someone else’s sniper. I wanted one of mine. If you’re one of our snipers and you need to take a shot, you’re going to take a shot and you’re probably going to effectively deliver that shot. More importantly, if you’re one of my snipers and you don’t need to take a shot, you’re not going to take that shot.
Tango Sierra 301 was like, “I’m up and running on the second deck. I have superintendent six.” I’m like, “Yankee Charlie 2, I don’t need anyone else hurt here. If you’re not tactical, relieve yourself in that scene.” They backed up. Billy was running it. HRT came up and flash-banged him. Finally, we got him to come out of the boat. I don’t know if you saw it. Do you see when the cops were coming back into town and the kids were out with American flags? That was a great thing to see, wasn’t it? I wish I saw it but I didn’t see it. I fell asleep.
I was waiting for them to get him out of the boat and I woke up at 4:00 in the morning. My TV’s off. I’m on my couch. I was in the biggest case of my entire life a couple of hours ago and what the hell happened? I start screaming, “Jesus Christ. Michelle, what’d you do?” She’s like, “It’s okay.” “It’s not okay. I’m the goddamn chief of police. You can’t let me go to sleep. I’m in the biggest freaking case of my entire career.”
She’s like, “You didn’t go to sleep. You haven’t slept in a week. You’re unconscious. Look at your phone. The governor, the mayor, Murph, and everyone in your brothers called you. Eamon put cold compresses on you. I gave you a finger stick because you haven’t taken your medicine. I don’t know what you were. You collapsed. You had nothing else to give. You weren’t sleeping. You were out.” “We got him?” “You got him.” “Cops okay?” “Cops are okay, except for the guy who got the flying rock.”
I went over and put out a tweet, “Semper Fidelis,” and, “We got him for Martin.” I called the Secret Service agent, Rob Buster, who ran the President’s team. He was a friend of mine. He used to be the ASAC in Boston. I said, “I told the President I was going to make this call but can you tell him we got him?” He’s like, “He’s aware.” I’m like, “I get it. I fell asleep. I owe him one but I let Rob know that we got him. He was going to make sure the President told him I called.” I went down to the scene and shook every cop and agent’s hand. I said two words to them, “Thank you.”
At 11:00 that day, I met with the family of Martin Richards. They were all in one room. I went in with Police Commissioner Ed Davis. I said, “My name is Dan Linskey. I’m the Chief of the Boston Police Department.” He said, “I know who you are. Your nephew Jamie coaches my kid.” I said, “I can’t understand the horror that came your way and why this happened but I made a promise to my wife and kids and my cops when this happened. I made a promise to the president of the United States. Mr. Richards, the men who did this to your family will hurt no one ever again. I can guarantee you that.”
I hugged and cried with that family for 45 minutes to 1 hour. It was one of the most transformative moments of my life. I had to go back out and put the mask back on. I’m running an organization. I’m not going to Disney because I won the Super Bowl. We still have police work and an investigation to do. Who else was involved with this guy? Can we prove it? How do I help my cops who saw things they should never have seen and who are going to be dealing with this for the rest of their lives?
I don’t want my cops to wind up like some of the first responders in scenes like Oklahoma City and elsewhere, where the horror overwhelmed them and then self-harm started creeping into it. I had to try and figure out a way. How do we get resources to protect our team and help them with the emotional trauma that they saw? The community, our victims, and their families were such class, strong forces, and role models.
My boss wanted me to go to the Red Sox game. He said, “I need 50 guys at the Red Sox game.” I’m like, “I’m not going for a dog and pony show at the Red Sox game. I haven’t slept. I want to hug my kids.” He’s like, “I hear you but I need you and 50 guys. You got to get in uniform at the Red Sox game.” I go, “I’ll get you 50 guys but I’m not going.” He said, “Dan, I hear you. I got you but I need you at the Red Sox game.” I go, “I’m not going to the Red Sox game. I’m not going to do it. I haven’t seen my kids. I’m going to hang out with Michelle and the kids.” He goes, “I get it and I know what you’re saying. Chief, I need you in 50 minutes at the Red Sox game.” I was pissed.
I called Michelle and the kids. I go, “I got to do this thing at the Red Sox. I don’t know what it is. It’s some dog and pony show or something but grab jeans and a shirt for me. Bring the boys. At least we’ll see a Red Sox game.” The commissioner didn’t know but I had to go to an event that night. I’ll talk about that after the game but my kids and wife came down. We go through the tunnel. We’re in the locker room and my kids are amazed because they’re seeing Red Sox stars. We go up to the tunnel or the dugout.
There’s a thing, “Boston Strong.” The symbol was on the wall. I said to one of my cops, “What the hell is that?” “Chief, it’s Boston Strong.” “What the hell is Boston Strong?” “Boston Strong. Everyone came together. We’re raising money for the victims.” I was so focused on the case that I hadn’t read a newspaper. I didn’t know that Boston Strong was a thing. I thought it was a dog and pony show.
I realized why my boss made sure I was there and wanted me to go there. It wasn’t a dog and pony show. It was the city of Boston saying to the terrorists, “We won. You hurt us but you’re not going to change us or make us afraid.” I realized they were victims. The victims were there and were going to throw out the first pitches. We had docs, nurses, volunteers, cops, and firefighters. Everyone who was there in the crisis came together and was being honored. They had tributes to all of our victims.
I’m like, “I get it. This is us, that 9/11 baseball game after 9/11 happened. We’re back.” It was an amazing experience to see it. I realized, “This is a powerful thing.” That night, I had to go to a fundraiser for one of my cops who had taken his life, unfortunately, in front of his wife and two children in a suicide. We were having a fundraiser to try to pay off their debt. I had to go represent the department that night. It’s back to doing the job.
It was an amazing week. I’m so proud of the team I worked with and what they did. The lessons are that you train for that bad day and prepare for the challenges that are going to come your way. If you want to be a leader, lead. If you screwed up and it’s wrong, you can talk about how big a cluster it is, whose cluster it is, and why it’s a cluster. You can uncluster it and fix it. I have hopefully left a bunch of leaders behind me at my department who will uncluster and fix it. They are better leaders than I ever was as they bring the department forward through the challenges they go through.
You brought up the mental health challenges. In society and certainly here in America, we have spoken a lot about the mental health challenges our veterans face. Many times, we put a tremendous amount of resources behind that. I always quantify it in that veterans certainly have been exposed to a lot but it’s always over there. It’s an ocean away. It’s an eleven-hour plane ride somewhere else.
You’re a first responder. You’re you and your team. You see this upfront in your home, a couple of blocks from your house. You have to drive by that every single day for the rest of your life, interact with the population, and relive this constantly. You talked about putting mechanisms and things in place to address that proactively. What did you do? How do you do that for our first responder community? This incident in the marathon bombing shows that our first responder community sees the same things that our veterans see in war.
One of the things I had to do was admit that I screwed up. I can’t go to the debrief that the cops are going to because they need to be able to be in there and talk about how bad the chief screwed shit up and how bad the day went. They need to be able to talk freely and say that they’ve got challenges and not have to get back to the boss.
I called my peer support team and said, “Brian, I can’t go down to the peer support meeting. I’m in trouble here.” He sent a guy who does a lot of work with folks in the Special Operations community. He sat and talked to me for 1 hour and 1.5 hours. He got me to a place where I could go out and finish this mission. A couple of weeks afterward, I was having some issues. They brought in a doctor, Roger Solomon. I wound up doing some EMDR and some other treatment programs.
I was honest with my team. “I’m broken. I need some help. I’m not afraid to ask for help.” We have a ton of resources. I know we have New York Yankees fans here. My secretary comes out and says, “NYPD’s here for you.” I said, “NYPD for me? What are you talking about?” I went into the hallway, and there were 43 guys from NYPD, New York Port Authority, and New York Police. I go, “What do you get?”
“We’re from the peer support team of NYPD.” I’m like, “Did Brian call you?” He’s like, “No.” I’m like, “Why are you here?” “No one called you guys at 9/11. You showed up and helped us out. We’re here to help. Where do we go?” I put him in touch with my team. We’re trying to figure out where they were staying. I’m like, “Are you here for a day?” They’re like, “No, we’re here until you need us.”
There was a report of a hotel and I won’t mention the hotel. This hotel was going to charge $450 a night for rooms. I knew a buddy of mine who’s a reporter and he also knew somebody at the hotel. I called him and said, “NYPD showed up to help our guys out here. I’m hearing it’s $450 for rooms.” Hotels are tight in the city with everyone. I go, “Can you call your buddy?” The reporter calls up and says, “How are you doing? NYPD’s come up to help Boston with their mental health.”
“There were two stories going on. One is that you guys are donating the rooms to them so they can help. The other is that you’re charging $450. I’m writing a story on it. Which is it?” They got the rooms and they were there for two-plus weeks. They did 900 diffusions and conversations. They talked to guys and gals who needed to talk with folks. Some folks needed to come offline and get treatment with other folks so we did that fairly quickly. I had to wear a Jets hat and take a picture with them when they left, which I paid for.
That was the trade-off.
They were right there with us. My peer support, Brian, reached out and also Commissioner Davis. They had a relationship through McLean Hospital and started a program for police, fire, EMS, and military personnel to go and get mental health treatment in-patients where they’re not stigmatized. “I’m in with someone else who’s in the military or first responder.” That has been successful.
We put a lot of clinicians in play to do some extra counseling. We’re always looking for opportunities to make sure we’re taking care of people’s mental health and providing the resources we can. July 4th was coming right after the marathon. Cops were going to smell gunpowder again for the first time. We prepared them. “You’re going to smell it and see what the scene is on Boylston Street when someone throws an M-80 and you’re responding to a call.” So far, it’s been good.
What’s the biggest lesson?
Train the way you respond. Train hard and constantly. Take care of your team. I gave a speech about my team. I don’t know what the hell I said. I didn’t write it out or think about it. I just spoke from the heart. I told them how proud I was and how much I needed them to look out for each other. I don’t remember exactly what I said. Two years later, I got a text from a cop who said, “Boss, I want to let you know that that speech you gave that night, we still talk about that.”
All I remember talking about was the theme of, “I love and respect you, guys. I need you to do everything you can for each other right here, right now. One team, one fight.” That made an impact. If you tell the troops what you want them to do and why they should do it, they’ll do it. We screwed up. I said to my planning team, “I want cops on every corner. When people come out of the train station or get out of a cab, I want them to see a cop. I want them to feel safe until we get these guys. I want office-friendly on those corners. Flood it.”
I got a call from the president of the union. He’s like, “Why do you have these kids on traffic posts?” “They’re not on traffic posts, Tom. What are you talking about?” “You get these kids on traffic posts. There’s not even traffic.” I’m like, “That’s BS. We don’t have them on traffic posts.” I go down and say to my planning team, “We don’t have kids on traffic posts, do we?” “Yes, sir. You said you wanted cops in every corner. That’s how we put cops in corners. We put them on traffic posts.”
We never had a conversation with the cops to say, “Listen, here’s your mission. I want you to talk to each other and figure out how you’re doing. I want you to talk to the community and let them know we’re here and we’re safe.” We had to bring them back in. I said, “I’m sorry. There’s some confusion. I don’t need you waving around to traffic that doesn’t exist. This is what your mission is and what I need you to do.” They were like, “Roger, that boss. If that’s the mission, I believe in that.” Sometimes, as leaders, we tell people what to do quickly in crisis but if you can let your team understand the why, they’ll crunch it for you.
I talk about purpose. You have to have purpose, autonomy, and the ability to do it in a way that you feel is valuable and then efficacy. Where can you see the result? That’s about choice. People choose to take action and do things they want to do if they have purpose, autonomy, and efficacy. As leaders, we have to instill and show that to our teams. They’ll go out there and run through walls all day long. Thanks for your leadership.
When this happened, I was in Djibouti, Africa, and saw it from a world away. You want to talk about an event that shut a city down. I’ll tell you that that event shut a lot of the world down. Being from Boston, my mom lived off Kenmore Square. That was all I watched for 4 or 5 days. It was hard to focus on anything else. We got to see and know what it takes to lead in a crisis.
Having had the opportunity to speak with you and Eric and understand what was going on at the ground level, I realize that all the tactical stuff is important, but success comes from leaders who stand up, take charge, and lead when they’re it. We’re all going to have those moments that you had when you realized, “I’m it.” That’s okay because we need that. We need to go through your process of three deep breaths and someone having to pull you out to then clear your head.
Everything there from that point forward is about your preparation. Did you put the work in before to be successful now? Hope is not a course of action. We can’t rely on someone coming to save us and get us out of difficult situations. We have to take action and that action will be the byproduct of how much we thought about it before we got to that moment.
Thanks for everything you’ve done. Thanks for your service to the country, city, and state. Thanks for inspiring a whole generation of leaders in law enforcement who are looking up to you every single day and remembering everything you did throughout your whole career, not only in that moment. They’re trying to be like you and emulate you as that leader who was out there day in and day out setting the example.
Thanks for having me.
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