The NJ Police Chief Magazine Volume 25, Number 1 | страница 25

The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | January 2019
Continued from previous page
sergeants, lieutenants, captains and one chief. I had never studied leadership theory and to be able to
study it with military people was an amazing experience. I was a sergeant at the time. We came back from
West Point and we converted the leadership training that we did there. It was taught to us in a military
context and we had to take the military context and convert it to law enforcement context. Working
together, we were able to do that. Teaching that course for years afterwards lead to a lot of us becoming
adjunct professors in colleges and universities in NJ. I taught at my local community college for years and
that followed the experience of teaching the West Point curriculum, which gave us an understanding of
educating law enforcement professionals. The fact that it is still in existence 25 years later, it validates the
importance of it. It was intensive.
Joe Devine, who later served as Chief of both the Rockaway Township Police Department and the Morris County
Prosecutor’s Office, also looked back at that West Point experience as a seminal moment in his career.
After 1993 I completed two additional Masters Degrees, a doctorate, started a second doctorate and
graduated from the FBINA… The summer of 93 ignited the passion to learn, to teach and to continually
give back to our profession.
As Joe wrote in his Doctoral Thesis,
There is nothing magical about leadership, and there is nothing magical about teaching it or learning it.
Leadership is the synthesis of cognitive, emotional and social intelligence, acting upon and within the
situational dynamics shared with followers…. Understanding motivational theories – rationally
communicated and applied to any leadership challenge – will likely motivate followers.
These theories and their application can be effectively taught in a manner that provides new and future
leaders with a toolbox of leadership skills, knowledge and abilities. One such method has proven effective
at the United States Military Academy at West Point and to law enforcement executives: the case study
method.
Jim Clifford, who retired from the Raritan Township Police Department as a Lieutenant; Commander of the
Services Division shared his distinct memories of that West Point experience and the resulting profound impact
that experience had on his colleagues that went to the Academy that summer, and subsequent influence the
Program has had on law enforcement.
[We] began our assigned task on Monday, June 21, 1993, just three weeks after being selected in a
statewide candidate search. The work and collaboration with USMA Faculty continued into March of 1994,
at which time both the State Chiefs and USMA personnel signed off on the final curriculum, which, of note,
was published as an Army Manual. This was the first of only two times the Army has ever partnered with
police to share their leadership expertise – a true feather in the cap of the NJSACOP. The first NJSACOP
Command & Leadership course was taught by these ten police officers at the Union County Police
Academy. It was a semester in length and began on Wednesday, April 27, 1994. This initial kick-off was
addressed jointly by Cranford Police Chief Harry Wilde and U.S. Army Lieutenant General Howard D.
Graves, USMA Commandant, who landed by helicopter that morning on UCPA grounds.
All the classes thereafter were split North and South, with the ten instructors assigned to the region
nearest them. In the early years, these police instructors continued their relationship with West Point’s
BS&L Faculty, attending Faculty Development Workshops and the like in the pursuit of program excellence.
All have since retired from police work, with the last one doing so in 2017. Only one of the original ten
came to the program as a Chief (Bill Herman), but another four rose to that rank in the years that fol-
lowed. They are Joe Devine, Eric Mason, John Coyle and Bill Fraher. Two of them (Eric Mason and John
Coyle) went on to serve as President of the NJSACOP. Many continued their educational pursuits – some
teaching at colleges and universities. One (Joe Devine) earned his Doctoral Degree at Seton Hall.
Finally, Eric Mason shared an anecdote from that West Point experience and a succinct and fitting summation:
I remember one of the first intimidating moments. We were given the ‘Leadership in Organizations’ text
book (still on my shelf) and one of the things I noticed about the book there is a page of people who edited
24
Continued on next page