Greg Sheehan: Inspector of Police at NYPD (Ret.)

This episode of the Coptimizer Podcast features Inspector (Retired) Greg Sheehan of the New York City Police Department.  But I will start with a quote from another Greg, Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, Inc. - “Our understanding is that the needs of Olympic athletes and our grandparents differ by degree, not kind.”  So, while we did not talk about Fitness much on this Podcast, we did focus on Training.  The relevance of the quote from Glassman is this, the training needs for the NYPD, the largest police department in the world, are the same as the smallest police department.  

Whether your agency has twenty-thousand sworn officers, or twenty, if a citizen calls in an active threat, the community will expect a prompt and professional police response.  Therefore, the training needs of our police officers across the country, no matter where they work, are relatively the same. The ability to scale and train in a timely manner is the challenge.  

If you have ever been responsible for coordinating training, you understand what a challenging task it can be to ensure that every single officer has been trained on every single topic that is required and that is properly documented and professionally completed.  Now, imagine for a minute you have thirty-five thousand sown officers accountable to hundreds of policy and training topics.  If your head has not started to swim a little, you are not really thinking about the scale of this task.  

Now, consider this, how much would it cost?  In an era when some groups of uninformed members of the public are demanding the de-funding of the police, think about the ramifications this would have on training.  This is an impossible task in a small department, let alone in the largest in the world.  Now, this is my opinion, but we touched on this and many other training-oriented challenges facing policing.

Greg Sheehan retired after twenty-seven years with the NYPD where he served in many capacities. His work legacy was broad, and he impacted a range of successful initiatives, such as positively developing subordinate talent and collaborating with many different stakeholders.

With the dedication and professionalism of his patrol partners and many other colleagues over the years, he was awarded numerous times with Department commendations, including four Unit Citations and ten instances of distinguished police service.  #FidelisAdMortem

These days Greg is still impacting public safety.  He is currently working as Team Leader for Government Solutions and Cisco Certified Renewals Manager at Vector Solutions, the leading provider of award-winning, intelligent SaaS solutions that help organizations operate at the highest level and prepare for more challenging workplaces and environments.  Additionally, he has found success as both a law enforcement leadership and professional development coach and virtual reality (VR) training consultant, opportunities that have allowed me to inspire human performance gains while developing scalable solutions to today’s toughest law enforcement training problems.

You can watch this podcast on our YouTube channel by clicking here.