So at some point you all decide to go to law school but you're not using your law degrees
in the traditional sense as most people would see it as practicing lawyer so tell me how
law school and law enforcement work together for you Lisa okay sort of like Chief Tucker
I wanted to be a police officer and I also had this dream I guess of being an attorney
so I fulfilled that but I don't really use it I find that it helped me become more structured
and more goal oriented and much to the chagrin of my officers and everyone who knows me I
actually just I analyze things to death to the point sometimes that I actually drive
myself crazy yeah I've been there to as foolish as that sounds and there's no simple answer
to a question anymore life has changed drastically in that aspect but I took what I learned at
Mass School of Law and also in my other schooling and what I continue to learn to just form
a basis for how I go about my daily activities my job as a police chief but just how I do
things it certainly has changed the way I look at things and the law degree must be
pretty valuable for your positions because we have eleven police chiefs across the country
that have law degrees from Mass school of law and in fact are in that top position you
must from the time you decided to go to college in terms of the rest of it you must have just
been in school virtually all your life here yeah the running gag in my house is that I
actually when I finished up at MSL I'm on line one day and I see the fact that George
Washington University is doing on line courses and I'm like oh that's cute so I type out
fill out the form and everything and uh that came in the mail and that was a proverbial
pipe bomb with my wife she didn't take it well no you would've thought that that was
another woman's phone number I am not going through anymore schoolit was yeah I started
I finished the police academy and it was about six months later I started taking classes
at night and basically it was about a decades straight that I was in school I went through
I got by bachelors degree then I decided to get my masters degree and once I wa done with
that I decided to jump in with MSL as well and it was a very nice roller coaster ride
and how do think it improved you or not improved you as a police chief I can honestly say I
don't think I'd be here without it I don't think I'd be sitting in the chair in the office
that I'm sitting in without the degree from MSL there is it just it helps to round you
out it helps to it's hard to explain from the time that you from the time that you start
especially the law school to the time that you finish law school your whole way of thinking
analyzing and structuring things like Lisa says changes it's you all of a sudden you
now have a beginning a middle and an end to every single situation and then the multiple
variables that come into play in each one and hen how to navigate each one to get down
to the bottom line it's you know I it's been invaluable it really has now Kenny you did
it in as difficult as Ron's journey is you were commuting two hours from New Haven to
get to law school as well so you must have really really wanted it yes I really wanted
it and I do want to make the statement that I didn't come onto the department with a degree
I was in college and I had to okay college or this forty thousand dollar job back then
so I chose the job but it took seven years to get a bachelors degree because the rotating
shifts and so forth and then I went to get my masters degree and then I decided to go
to law school for me it has helped me think better okay it was one of two plans one I
wanted to become a police chief but it's very rare that you become a chief and I was in
a big department with five hundred cops and you know to become a chief is pretty difficult
so my secondary plan was I was just going to practice law so I became a chief and even
as a police lieutenant before I became a chief it just helped me to think better there's
simple things that we now see as MSL graduates that other people don't see I'll have conversations
with my commanding staff and they'll say well let's do this chief and right I'll just pick
up on it we can't do that I tell the town manager as I told in New Haven the mayor I've
saved you thousands of dollars of money for not having to go to your legal counsel right
there's probably no doubt about that if you think your legal training if it's not just
not going to legal counsel but likely in advising your officers you've saved yourself exposure
to God knows how many civil suits as a result of practices that might have gone unchecked
by someone who didn't have a law degree and had some legal training I was told by one
of the members of the board of select men he said oh yeah we got a two for one we got
an extra town council and we also got a police chief at you know a bargain basement price
that's true isn't it so Kenny I interrupted you before you finished searching for police
chief jobs you were saving them money police chief jobs some of them said juris doctorate
preferred I'm sure everyone on this panel will agree that back in the day cops could
go out and do a lot of things there were no ramifications now this is a different time
yep we have law suits flooding in to cities and towns so I think the demand now is that
our chief executives in policing must have some type of legal background Paul I have
a couple of distinct memories that really still jump out at me and will stay with me
one is a conversation I had with my wife when I was thinking about going to law school and
I said I really want to go to law I said I really want to go and I was in my mid to late
thirties at the time and my wife asked me why and I said I just think it'll help me
on my job it'll help me further my career and she said well why don't you do it and
i said well I'm going to be forty when I graduate and she said well you'll either be forty with
or without a law degree and that actually spoke to me and the second distinct memory
I had was the very first night at Mass school of law it was orientation and I looked at
Brian Gilligan who is a captain on Salem PD we went to school together and I said Brian
what are we doing here he said what do you mean I said my son's playing in an all-star
baseball game tonight it was August Thirteenth 1997 I said it's the first game he's playing
I'm gonna miss I don't know if I can do this and we just it was one step at a time it wasn't
a sprint it was a marathon but it was a great race to run and it was something that you
know we have and I think that now that I have this degree it's really dawned on me a few
times that I think that there is among the public there's a respect for what it takes
to get through law school whatever people think of law school or medical school there's
a certain respect that if you reach the finish line you finish law school you get that juris
doctorate you pass the bar I think it brings with you some respect and some credibility
one other story I have a dear friend of mine who's a very honorable criminal attorney he
had told me a story about what I'm going to learn and we've heard this a few times you're
going to think like a lawyer there is a tremendous amount of truth to that when you look at all
sides of a problem he had a case of a multiple offense drunk driver and he was trying to
look at this and I think most people look at it and say boy this client he's going away
there's a bad ending here he looked at it a different way and he was able to go back
and look at some of the previous convictions and there was flaws in those previous convictions
so what could have been a fourth or a fifth offense was really a second offense and people
may look at that but he protected that individuals rights and he looked at it a different way
and that really spoke to me This excerpt is brought to you by the Massachusetts School
of Law