June 11, 2024
The Badge of Wisdom: Pete Forcelli on Leadership, Whistleblowing, and the Challenges of Modern Policing
What if the badge you wear symbolizes more than authority, but a lifetime of wisdom and responsibility? Join us for an engrossing conversation with Pete Furselli, a distinguished law enforcement veteran, as he recounts his 35-year journey from the gritty streets of the Bronx to leading roles in the ATF across North America. Pete shares gripping tales from his career, from handling homicide cases to managing high-profile incidents like the Parkland and Pulse nightclub shootings. Gain invaluable insights into the significance of the badge, the evolution of law enforcement culture, and the critical lessons Pete imparts to new recruits.
Effective leadership is the cornerstone of a successful law enforcement career, and this episode dives deep into what makes a great leader. Drawing from my own experiences, I reveal the importance of truly listening to your team, respecting dissenting opinions, and shunning authoritarian clichés. The conversation takes a compelling turn as we discuss my time as a supervisor in Phoenix, navigating the complex Fast and Furious investigation. We explore the necessity of understanding your team on a personal level to foster collaboration and accountability, ensuring fairness and trust.
Lastly, we confront the emotional and financial ramifications of whistleblowing within the U.S. justice system, featuring a poignant narrative of integrity and resilience. Pete sheds light on the personal sacrifices made when standing up for what is right, including the toll it takes on one’s family. We also reflect on the enduring love for the law enforcement profession despite facing significant adversities and societal challenges. This episode underscores the need for community support and realistic expectations of officers, highlighting the thin line between maintaining and restoring order. Don’t miss this heartfelt discussion that emphasizes the profound commitment required to serve and protect.
As a First Responder, you are critical in keeping our communities safe. However, the stress and trauma of the job can take a toll on your mental health and family life.
If you're interested in personal coaching, contact Jerry Lund at 801-376-7124. Let's work together to get you where you want to be and ensure a happy and healthy career.
Podcast Website www.enduringthebadgepodcast.com/
Podcast Instagram www.instagram.com/enduringthebadgepodcast/
Podcast Facebook www.facebook.com/EnduringTheBadgePodcast/
Podcast Calendar https://calendly.com/enduringthebadge/enduring-the-badge-podcast
Personal Coaching https://calendly.com/enduringthebadge/15min
Host Instagram www.instagram.com/jerryfireandfuel/
Host Facebook www.facebook.com/jerrydeanlund
As a First Responder, you are critical in keeping our communities safe. However, the stress and trauma of the job can take a toll on your mental health and family life.
If you're interested in personal coaching, contact Jerry Lund at 435-476-6382. Let's work together to get you where you want to be to ensure a happy and healthy career.
Podcast Website www.enduringthebadgepodcast.com/
Podcast Instagram www.instagram.com/enduringthebadgepodcast/
Podcast Facebook www.facebook.com/EnduringTheBadgePodcast/
Podcast Calendar https://calendly.com/enduringthebadge/enduring-the-badge-podcast
Personal Coaching https://calendly.com/enduringthebadge/15min
Host Instagram www.instagram.com/jerryfireandfuel/
Host Facebook www.facebook.com/jerrydeanlund
00:14 - Law Enforcement Wisdom and Communication Skills
09:36 - Learning From Leaders
21:40 - Whistleblower Faces Government Retaliation
31:11 - Challenges and Advocacy in Law Enforcement
39:18 - Podcast Guest Thank-You and Information
WEBVTT
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Welcome to today's episode of Enduring the Badge podcast.
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I'm your host, jerry Dean Lund, and if you haven't already done so, please take out your phone and hit that subscribe button.
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I don't want you to miss an upcoming episode.
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And, hey, while your phone's out, please give us a rating and review.
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On whichever platform you listen to this podcast on, such as iTunes, apple Podcasts and Spotify, it helps this podcast grow and the reason why, when this gets positive ratings and reviews, those platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify show this to other people that never listened to this podcast before, and that allows our podcast to grow and make more of an impact on other people's lives.
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So if you would do that, I would appreciate that from the bottom of my heart.
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My very special guest today is Pete Furselli.
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How are you doing, pete Good?
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good Thanks for having me Honored to be here.
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Yeah, thank you for being on, Pete.
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Can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself?
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Sure, I spent 35 years in law enforcement, started back in the Bronx in the late 80s 1987 to be exact.
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Walked the beat Back then cops actually walked the beat Did it in the projects.
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Did it for a couple of years actually.
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Then eventually made my way into a sector car handling, 911 jobs.
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About seven years into my career made it into the Detective Bureau.
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Spent my last eight years as a detective with the Housing Authority Police Department and then the NYPD.
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After Giuliani merged the three departments together and then jumped ship in June of 2001.
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I became an ATF agent.
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Started in New York as a field agent, working cases mostly the same kind of stuff I was doing as a homicide detective in New York.
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You know, just didn't need to be a gun nexus but you had plenty of gangs using guns to do bad things during those times.
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Went out to Phoenix as a group supervisor for five years.
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Got thrown out of the state of Arizona for blowing a whistle on that Fast and Furious mess.
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Went to headquarters kind of as a punishment.
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Actually Didn't last for long because I had some folks who appreciated that I was honest in my testimony.
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Before Congress Sent up to Canada was a liaison up there for two years with Canadian police on the eastern side of the country.
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An amazing assignment, I mean.
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Canadian cops are the salt of the earth.
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I actually loved working with them, just good people.
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So two years later went down to headquarters.
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I was put in charge of ATF's leadership and professional development division, so training stuff really outside of my wheelhouse, outside of my comfort zone, but I enjoyed the assignment.
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Then I was sent down to Miami.
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I was originally the number two down there, assistant special agent in charge, then got promoted to the special agent in charge job.
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I was down there, unfortunately, for Parkland and the Fort Lauderdale Airport shooting and I was the assistant special agent in charge during the Pulse nightclub shooting.
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So I had a role in that as well, not the shooting itself obviously, but the investigation.
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And then I spent my last four years as the head of training for ATF, which was great because by that time, man, I was like over 30 years in the profession.
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I was kind of beat down and you know from politics and the grind and one of my you know areas was the academy.
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So one month, rather one week a month, I would travel down to Brunswick, georgia, which is where the ATF Academy is, and spend time with the new hires and just talk to them.
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And I tried not to be that pompous bureaucrat from headquarters so I'd really just try to engage with them and just seeing that energy like fresh faces coming on, you know, just really wanting to be good law enforcement officers, recharge my batteries, so it was good.
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But then, you know, got to a point where you know, federally there's a 57 year age requirement to retire.
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I was 55, closing in on 56 and I wanted to go out on my terms.
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So I pulled the pin in October of 21 and now just trying to stay busy being law enforcement's biggest cheerleader when they get it right.
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And look, I've called them out when they get it wrong.
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You know.
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But look, anybody expecting law enforcement to be perfect will always be disappointed, because it's a profession staffed by 99% noble people who are humans.
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You know so.
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But no, it's good to be retired, but I'm not going to lie and say I don't miss the job.
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Yeah, yeah, that is quite a career Quite the right spread across the US and into Canada and stuff like that and different positions, and it's a lot, a lot there to that we could unpack.
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But I kind of want to like talk to you about something you're saying like you know, the, the leadership of the new, the new people coming in, and that, how that rejuvenated your, your battery, like what would?
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What'd you talk to them about?
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Well, a few things actually.
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First I want to go down there you talk to them about.
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Well, a few things actually.
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First I want to go down there and explain to them.
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You know I was blessed in my career to be taught by guys.
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I mean, when I came on as a cop I worked with guys that were around in the Serpico days.
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You know they were the old timers and you know I didn't realize what a gift it was to be around those guys because they had wisdom to share.
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And I'm not trying to say that I was wise at any point in my career, but by the time I was in charge of training, you know I'd learned some things, from my mistakes mostly, but also from seeing some things that others had done and just understanding the culture and how much the culture has changed.
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Just to talk to them about the importance of realizing that the badge is not something that represents power, it really represents responsibility.
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And it was funny because one of the blocks I would always try to go down there, because it's the ATF Academy, it's broken down into many, many different blocks of instruction.
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The ones that the agents loved was the undercover block, because they get to do undercover pseudo like go out there, mock, exercise and everything.
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And then, of course, there was the tactics block, which is a couple of weeks long.
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Where're going?
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You know, doing swap type stuff.
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I used to go down during the interview block.
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I wanted them to realize the importance of interviewing.
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If you're going to be a good cop, you're going to be a good investigator.
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Even if you're a good manager at some point or I hate the term manager leader you need to know how to talk to people and you know, one of the things I really loved about being an investigator was putting the puzzle pieces together.
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But you know, what I would see is a lot of folks were really good on technology or really good with some of the other things, but they weren't always very good at the human interaction and I blame that on just the generation today.
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A lot of it's.
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You know I grew up playing sports in the street, where you know you had to learn how to talk to people.
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You had to learn how to deescalate situations.
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Now I'd see you know younger folks today who you know they.
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They communicate to the person in the cubicle next to them via text instead of getting up and walking over and saying hey, what are we doing for lunch?
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They text each other.
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So I would just go down there, you know, explaining the importance of of relating to people and building rapport and interviewing and then, more importantly or equally as important, following up on that.
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You know, like if somebody tells you something, don't just take it at face value.
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I notice a lot of investigators.
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They get caught up with informants, with everything the informant tells them has to be legit.
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No man go out there and corroborate it.
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I mean, that's what makes you a good investigator.
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But I think you know, talking to people is just the most important skill that any cop or any agent can ever have.
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And then it needs to transfer with you to leadership positions, because you need to listen to your people more importantly than them even sometimes listening to you.
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You know, it's all about serving your folks.
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It's not the other way around.
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When you're, you know when you're a leader.
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Yeah, yeah, definitely, I think you're right.
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There is definitely a different with these different generations, right, different ways of communicating and and that's pros and cons with that.
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But, like like you said, I, the foundation of what even relationships right Is the communication of being able to communicate, whether it's a relationship of interviewing someone or leadership, but you have to be able to communicate.
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Not it's a relationship of interviewing someone or leadership, but you have to be able to communicate.
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Not just send an email, send a text or whatever.
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It's that face-to-face interaction.
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Yeah, yeah and look the most important thing.
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I've learned and this I didn't know right away.
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It took me years to learn it is.
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Listening is more so important than talking sometimes.
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Whether it's in the interview room with a suspect.
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You know those uncomfortable moments of silence are just golden.
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But even you know I see a lot of leaders and I you know, towards the end of my career I dealt with one who, just if you had a one hour meeting with this person, you could expect 57 minutes of him talking at you.
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He'd take a phone call and then give you a minute for you to.
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You know, to summarize and this is instances where you'd have to bring a problem to his attention.
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You're like what's going on here?
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So I just found it was always better to just listen to people.
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I mean, that's how you find out what's happening, that's how you find out about morale, that's how you find out how you can better serve your folks.
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What's happening in your field division or in your area of responsibility?
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Or, as a beat comp, you're going out there talking to people.
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Just, you know, if you listen to them.
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They'll tell you where the problems are.
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But if you're constantly talking at them, they just kind of check out, you know.
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Yeah, why do you think some leaders are like you know, take that approach of just talking, talking, talking and not listening?
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I think it could be a mixture of things.
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Like the gentleman I was speaking about, this is one of the nicest men I've ever met, but his ego was a bit inflated and I think his impression of himself as a leader was as well.
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I just think it depends on the person.
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You know, I found the best leaders to be the most humble people.
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You know, the ones who led by example and the ones who kind of acted as the cushion between the bureaucracy and the madness and their people.
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You know, I mean I try to do that and look if I succeeded, because that's the other thing I always say about leadership you don't get to decide whether or not you were a good leader, right, and neither really do your bosses.
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Your bosses know they tasked you with things to do and whether they were accomplished or not, they can gauge you on that.
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But the only folks who get a vote on whether or not you were a good leader is the folks you led.
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So I just always tried to steal some of the things that I saw from the leaders who I look.
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I'll say it plainly I love them.
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I mean, I worked for some people I would have walked through fire for and I just tried to steal some of the traits, some of the things that they did, sometimes even the language, the stuff, the way they addressed certain things.
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Sometimes even the language, the stuff, the way they addressed certain things.
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Um, and then I also learned a lot from some real assholes.
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Um, but you learn what not to be.
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So I also tried to you know, always keep that in mind as well to not be like those folks, but to be like the really good ones.
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And, um, look, the good ones listened, the good ones wanted to hear what you had to say.
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The good ones actually appreciated and this is something I love respectful dissent.
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For example, when I was in charge of ATF's Miami office, I had two ASACs assistant special agents in charge, both great guys, both very experienced guys, but we didn't always see things the same way.
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There were times where we would really go at it with discussion and sometimes the discussions would get heated, but never like a personal.
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You know what I mean.
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And and and I thought that's what made us a good team is that it was never.
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Yes, sir, you know, in the end there were times where I would disagree with them and look, hey, I'm the sack, I get the final decision.
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This is where we're going to go.
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But it was never like fact.
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I think that when you use the words because I said so that is like you have just failed as a leader, if you throw those words out, as someone who is just trying to find out the why.
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Because hey, look some people, they're not pushing back on you, they just want to know why so they can buy into the mission or buy into the task.
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And so when you're there and you throw it or you point this used to kill me you point to the stripes on your sleeve or the or the collar brass.
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This is why, man, that's just epic fail, just bad stuff.
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Yeah, I think that's really hard to recover from as a leader when you, if you do something to that sorts, I mean, yeah, I mean I think most leaders well, they should appreciate those types of discussions but I feel like often they don't.
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They think it's a challenge and take a personal can take a personal.
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Yeah, well, I think it's insecurity.
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I mean, if you're not a secure leader, you're not going to want to hear somebody push back on you because you think they're pushing back on your authority rather than just wanting to understand things.
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Well, look, I've had some people that work for me who were, you know, boss fighters.
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I mean, anything you said to them, they were going to push back.
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If you handed them a bar of gold, they would complain that you didn't wipe your fingerprints off it.
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So I mean, there's that too, but it's just a matter of knowing your people.
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But going back to what we started with, if you don't communicate with folks and understand them and know what they're about, what makes them tick, you don't, you can't enter into those discussions intelligently because you don't know.
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Like all right, this person just, no matter what I do, there's going to be pushback, you know.
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Or this person just loves the job.
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You know, some people love the job, they get caught up in things, or hey, maybe this person's having some stuff going on at home, right, and I need to keep an eye on him, or he or she, or help them out.
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But if you don't know them, if you're not talking to them, you'll never know those things you know.
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The other thing is, if you're a manager, like at a higher level, trust your managers under you, but also hold them accountable.
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And look the most important thing, this used to drive me nuts hold yourself accountable.
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I'd seen bosses who would bark orders at people and then go out there and just do things that you just actually said.
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Are you kidding me, like that's the boss and that's how they're behaving?
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Cause I find that the higher you move up in an organization, the more eyes are on you.
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Oh, yeah, yeah, and people are watching.
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So I mean when you're telling people to behave a certain way and you're behaving a different way, or you're allowing your buddies to behave a different way because they're not in your you know, rather than have you know you have an inner circle.
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That's always also a recipe for disaster.
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You gotta be fair to everybody.
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Yeah, yeah, talk about communication and let's get into the fast and furious story and what that's about.
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Sure, sure.
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Well, I was a brand new supervisor in Phoenix and I had come from New York and when I was in New York I worked on some cases that really just were amazing cases, and not because I'm special or anything like that, it's because I had a good team, good prosecutors, which is critical to a long-term, larger-scale investigation.
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Because you need things you need court orders sometimes, you need subpoenas, you need grand juries, there's things that you need.
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So I worked on a few big RICO cases.
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They all started as, like, low-level gun cases and we would flip the defendant, go in an interview room, interview them.
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So I mean it all fits into, you know, the bigger process of doing investigations.
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So it was weird that when I got out to Phoenix, what I would see is our agents would do things that agents did all over the country.
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They would pull over cars, right, because we would get tips frequently from gun dealers, like legitimate licensed gun stores, saying, hey, something suspicious with this guy who came in and asked how many AK variant rifles we have on the shelves and we'd say to, whatever the number was, I'll take them all and would hand over a bag of cash.
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So the dealers would call us and we would roll out there, we would set up surveillance and we would watch the transaction happen and we would follow the car off because we'd want to do it in the parking lot and burn the dealer.
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We would always make up a story.
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Hey, we were watching you and we saw you load 13 guns in the car and that's suspicious.
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We would separate folks Again.
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What would cops do?
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Everywhere, all over the country?
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Get different stories.
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You know court of lies, we know where this is going.
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So what I would see in Phoenix is that scenario would unfold time and time and time again and we would always be told well, just, we'll indict it later, let them go.
00:14:49.431 --> 00:14:58.033
So you have these people who are smuggling guns to firearms traffickers, who are bringing guns down to the cartels in Mexico, and it was always kick in the can, let it go, let it go.
00:14:58.033 --> 00:15:06.519
Another example would be we had one guy who he bought a gun and transferred it to another person and that gun, within 48 hours, was used to kill.
00:15:06.519 --> 00:15:12.062
Well, was used, with other guns, to kill 21 people in a town in Mexico called Canadaya.
00:15:12.062 --> 00:15:14.625
So four of those people who were killed were cops.
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Four other cops were taken into the desert and beaten and left for dead.
00:15:18.607 --> 00:15:20.971
So I mean a pretty heinous crime.
00:15:20.971 --> 00:15:25.672
We get confessions from the straw purchaser, the person that illegally bought the gun for the other person.
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We get a confession from the trafficker.
00:15:28.142 --> 00:15:30.311
Well, we're not going to prosecute that case.
00:15:30.311 --> 00:15:31.153
The gun's in Mexico.
00:15:31.153 --> 00:15:33.301
So I'd see this unfold time and time and time again.
00:15:34.129 --> 00:15:40.197
So you know, and my group's initial tasking for my first three years in Phoenix was Mexico-bound firearms trafficking.
00:15:40.197 --> 00:15:43.663
So we seized thousands, literally thousands of guns.
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Not many people went to prison, which is not really a success when you think about it, if you're a federal agent supposed to be making federal cases.
00:15:50.418 --> 00:16:01.761
Some of the cases we were able to take to the county, some we were able to take to the state attorney general's office, but the ones we brought to the US attorney's office, like the federal prosecutors about 90% of them they passed on.
00:16:01.761 --> 00:16:06.721
So anyway, years later, 2009, because I got down here in 2007.
00:16:06.721 --> 00:16:10.801
So in October of 2009, our group's focus was changed.
00:16:10.801 --> 00:16:26.032
We were focused on home invasions and drug robberies, because Phoenix led the United States at that time in home invasions and kidnappings and they were second in this hemisphere behind Mexico City, which is a much, much bigger city than Phoenix.
00:16:26.032 --> 00:16:27.960
So obviously that's not something to be proud of.
00:16:27.960 --> 00:16:32.894
But I had worked on some home invasion cases in New York, so I was like fine.
00:16:32.894 --> 00:16:42.423
So I was kind of excited, different thing to work on something that I had experienced on working on in the past and I was tired of the grind with the US Attorney's Office but they kept turning our cases down.
00:16:42.423 --> 00:16:48.692
But they so they stood up a new group in Phoenix that was tasked with Mexico-bound firearms trafficking.
00:16:49.253 --> 00:16:58.378
Well, after a while we start to hear at these meetings, these numbers, like we're on this case with 600 guns, 900 guns, different meetings, and I'm like, wow, okay, interesting case.
00:16:58.378 --> 00:17:02.224
And I'm thinking that they found this historical treasure trove of documents.
00:17:02.224 --> 00:17:10.049
But as the numbers were going up, it was pretty clear that that's not the case, because I mean, if they found the documents, then you know, keep finding them.
00:17:10.049 --> 00:17:20.154
So, anyway, a little while into it, a Border Patrol agent named Brian Terry gets killed and all of a sudden this water cooler talk starts that they were walking guns and letting them go.
00:17:20.154 --> 00:17:29.925
And then around this time we start getting calls from the dealers that used to call us, because what happened is, when we would seize the guns, they would never have to be traced because we knew exactly where they came from.
00:17:29.925 --> 00:17:38.298
Well, the dealers were like, hey man, why, all of a sudden, with this new group, are we getting phone calls from ATF saying the gun was recovered in Mexico?
00:17:38.298 --> 00:17:40.843
Like with us, nobody went to jail.
00:17:40.843 --> 00:17:42.045
But the guns were in our vault.
00:17:42.045 --> 00:17:45.579
They weren't used to shoot some cop or some kid or you know whatever.
00:17:46.810 --> 00:17:57.182
So but it was around this time that an agent named John Dodson, who was in that group, who knew what was going on, contacted Senator Chuck Grassley's office and said that ATF was walking guns.
00:17:57.182 --> 00:18:22.044
So now I'm at a subsequent meeting and the special agent in charge of the Phoenix field division who was a nice man, I would argue, very inexperienced when it came to street work he came in and told us hey, the US attorney's office same US attorney's office that declined all of those cases I was talking about was very upset with John Dodson for contacting Senator Grassley's office and don't be surprised if he finds himself indicted.
00:18:22.044 --> 00:18:24.499
I'd stay away from him, or some words to that effect.
00:18:24.499 --> 00:18:33.875
I remember going home that night, not very happy obviously, and talking to my wife and explaining what happened, all those cases that were declined.
00:18:33.875 --> 00:18:46.797
And now they're talking about indicting John who who, candidly, I didn't even know I don't know if I ever even was on the shooting range with him ever never had a conversation with him, but again, I didn't think it was right.
00:18:46.797 --> 00:18:47.259
So we had a discussion.
00:18:47.278 --> 00:18:52.634
The very following morning I called Senator Grassley's office and said hey, listen, I spoke to a guy named Brian Downey who was one of his staffers.
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I said, brian, I know you're being told that by Eric Holder and by ATF and the Department of Justice that ATF doesn't walk guns and that John Knott's is a liar.
00:19:02.914 --> 00:19:10.373
I'm just letting you know he's not lying and if you give me a subpoena, I'll tell you everything you want to know about what's been happening in Phoenix over the past couple of years.
00:19:10.373 --> 00:19:13.868
And lo and behold, a couple of weeks later I get a phone call.
00:19:13.868 --> 00:19:25.453
I'm sitting at my desk and it was another gentleman from Congress, a staffer named Colton Davis, and he's like Mr Friselli, we have a subpoena here for you.
00:19:25.453 --> 00:19:34.515
You can either come downstairs to the hotel across the street, which was a Hyatt, from our office, we can come up to the ninth floor and serve you there, or we can come out to your house and serve you there.
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I was like, hey, I'll be right down and took possession of the subpoena.
00:19:38.934 --> 00:19:47.730
And that's kind of where the journey began, as far as you know, blowing the whistle and speaking about what happened there and you know, and then the retaliation that followed.
00:19:47.730 --> 00:19:54.635
It all began with, you know them talking about indicting John when for years they weren't indicting criminals.
00:19:57.232 --> 00:19:58.417
Why was the sudden switch?
00:20:00.270 --> 00:20:00.832
That you know.
00:20:00.832 --> 00:20:02.857
That's something I never found out.
00:20:02.857 --> 00:20:03.881
Why was it for years?
00:20:03.881 --> 00:20:09.494
Once the gun made its way to Mexico, we were told they couldn't prosecute because the corpus delecti, the body of the crime, was in Mexico.
00:20:09.494 --> 00:20:12.371
I mean, this was many, many, many defendants, mind you.
00:20:12.371 --> 00:20:16.007
Now, all of a sudden, the strategy is to let the guns go to Mexico.
00:20:16.007 --> 00:20:18.575
So I mean, we were never told why that would happen.
00:20:18.935 --> 00:20:24.682
There were rumblings that one of the things that they were looking to do was to implement this thing called Demand Letter 3.
00:20:24.682 --> 00:20:29.871
And this, when I say they, that's not Phoenix, I mean this was people in the Department of Justice.
00:20:29.871 --> 00:20:42.172
The way it works is and I don't know if your listeners might know if you go into a gun store and you buy two pistols, you have to fill out a multiple sale form, right, so you can buy a pistol and that form is not filled up.
00:20:42.172 --> 00:20:50.157
If you go in and buy a bunch of rifles, like those people were doing who were coming up from Mexico, you also didn't have to fill out a multiple sale form.
00:20:50.157 --> 00:20:51.801
It only applied to two pistols.
00:20:51.801 --> 00:21:23.137
So while Fast and Furious was going on, the brass was kind of gleeful in this idea, like, hey, we can implement this multiple sale form for rifles now, and they in fact did as a result of Fast and Furious, where now it's not a national thing, but if you buy more than one rifle in a border state so Texas, new Mexico, arizona, california you have to fill out this form now, which is kind of sickening if you think about it, because, look, a lot of people in Mexico were killed with guns that were smuggled during Fast and Furious.
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