June 11, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the Police Chief of Oxford, Mississippi—a small town where Our American Stories broadcasts from—had good reasons behind choosing to overhaul his department. Here's Chief Jeff McCutchen with the story.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your story. Send them to our Americanstories dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
There's some of our favorites.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Oxford, Mississippi, which is where we broadcast, just about an
hour south of Memphis, and we have a small town
of about twenty thousand people when college is an incession
and when Ole miss is in session, and with a
home of All miss that can.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Spiral up to about fifty thousand.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Oxford, Mississippi's new police chief has good reasons for why
he chose to overhaul his department, and as you are
about to hear every one of his reasons as a
memorable story.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
My name is Jeff McCutcheon, thirty nine years old. I
have spent eighteen years of my life as a law
enforcement officer. That's not really how identify myself. Anybody that
knows me knows I'm a husband and I'm a father
to two girls, and that's kind of my groundwork. I
grew up just down the road from here, about thirty
(01:13):
minutes in a little town called New Albany. My entire
family basically grew up and worked in the furniture factory.
My mom still does. My father's a pastor, and even
in the summers of college, I would go go back
and work. And I tell people that because man, I'm
a blue collar, you know, hard worker, and I saw
(01:35):
that in my family and that was ingrained im and
I'm proud of that. I'm really proud of that. It's
made a huge impact on me. And a lot of
times you hear people how you rose to the top
because of someone you knew or you know, the reality is, man,
it's those that get after it and put their head down.
And I was blessed. Man. My dad being a pastor,
(01:56):
we moved a lot from time to time, and you
had to learn to make friend had to learn to
talk to people, and played sports growing up from the
time I could remember, Man, if it was a ball
or somebody was competing, I wanted to be and had
a really fun high school time. My senior year we
won a state championship in basketball, and man, it was amazing.
You know, you work your whole life for that moment
(02:17):
and got through that moment and then I was like, gosh,
what next, Like I didn't prepare for that, And so
going into college, you know, just trying to figure out, man,
what do you want to do? And I'd always loved
one being outside but being a part of a team
and had this interest in law enforcement. And the summer
that I turned twenty one, I was back working doing
(02:38):
landscape at this furniture company and a guy working there
I was telling about what I wanted to do, and
he knew that the sheriff's apartment just down the road
needed some jailers. And I said, man, I'll do anything right,
you know. I mean, that's just want to get my
foot in the door. And so about a week later
I got a shot and the earth gave me a
(03:00):
chance to work for him in tip Of County, and man,
it changed my life. You know. You you experience things
in life and then you have this, this light bulb
moment together. Man, this is why God put me on
this earth. And I'll never forget the jail administrator he
was a former sheriff of that county and older, older gentleman,
and set me down and he said, he said, son,
(03:23):
have you ever you ever driven by or walked through
a cemetery? And I said, oh, yes, sir, And he said,
there's a start date and there's an end date. And
I said, yes, sir. He said, don't matter. All that
matters is what's in between in that dash. And he said,
there'll be people that walked by your cemetery one day,
and it's that dash. It's what's gonna matter to them
(03:46):
how you lived your life and how you treated them.
And he said, you're gonna learn real quick in law
enforcement that how you treat people goes a long way
for them and for you. Those encounters are imported and
people are imported, and so working in a small jail, men,
you had to learn to talk. You know, at the time,
(04:08):
we worked swing shifts, and on night shift from midnight
to eight in the morning, there was two of us
and somebody had to stay in the control room, so
you by yourself if something went south, and until somebody
else got there, your partner couldn't come out. And you
learned quickly how to talk, how to de escalate. They
weren't teaching us that at the time, but that's what
(04:28):
you were doing. You were listening to people's stores, you
were empathizing, you were trying to make good decisions, not
based off force, but based off leverage of using my words,
using my compassion to get what we needed to get done.
And so shortly I did about a year's stint there,
a year and a half, and I got an opportunity
(04:48):
to be a patrol officer for the Baseball Police Department,
and I spent about a year there. Incredible opportunity, incredible time.
I had quite a lot of what what I learned
initially as an officer to my FTO. He was unbelievable
in teaching, like he truly took pride in teaching me
(05:09):
how to do things, why we do things, how it
makes impacts. And I you know, when you go. I
actually got to do my FTO before I went to
the academy, And so when I got to the academy,
I felt like, man, I we just got to get
it over with. Like this guy had me so well prepared.
We were in classes. I'm like, oh, we've done that
and that you know, it was it was huge for me.
But while I was at the academy, I was I
(05:30):
was there with about six or seven guys from the
Oxford Police Department. And and so Baseball and Oxford are
pretty close. And uh, I my wife and I just
got married and we were living here in Oxford, and
so I still connected with those guys, and sure enough,
one of my classmates was actually going to relocate to
the Jackson area and uh he saw me at the
(05:50):
gym and said, man, if you want to come over,
and I was in a great time and fortunately uh
in O five, I got an opportunity to move over
here and uh and start working at op And so
coming to OPD did just like everybody else, you know,
you go through patrol and you serve as a patrol
officer and did that for a few years, and we
were starting back a grant program to do DUIs and
(06:14):
so I got an opportunity to serve as a du
officer and did that for about six months until a
criminal investigation spot opened up. And was really fortunate to
get that position. There were a lot of guys that
put in and I had an incredible captain that going
into that position, I would say I was pretty headstrong
(06:36):
and driven with blinders on, you know, not a lot
of forethought on what I'm doing. There's a mission, you
get the mission done and let's roll on and don't
ask a lot of questions. And he was completely the opposite.
He was super patient and very coachy about the way
he would do things which would drive me nuts because
(06:58):
I'm like, give me a case. I don't want you
to see me again until I saw it like I'm
going to be on the street, you know. And he
would constantly reel me back in and slow me down,
and we would debriefcases. And again I didn't understand it
really well.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And you're listening to Jeff McCutcheon and he's Oxford, Mississippi's
new police chief. When we come back more as Jeff
continues his story here on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Folks, if you.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Love the stories we tell about this great country, and
especially the stories of America's rich past, know that all
of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith, are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And if you can't cut to.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and
terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to learn more.
And we returned to our American Stories, and now let's
(08:12):
return to Jeff McCutcheon and more of his story.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
And even in my time at the jail, I thought
I understood dealing with individuals and why that's important. But
when I became an investigator, I really really learned because
you go and you deal with situations where people have
been victimized, and that could be from a property crime
(08:37):
or that could be from a personal victimization. And the
heartbreak that you see, you know, and the fear in
their eyes, and many times you're their last hope, you know,
can you get me answers? Can you help me? Can
you solve this? Can you put the person away who
did this to me? And at that time, we were
(08:58):
struggling with a rash of proper crimes. I think for
a year or two, man, we were averaging like three
hundred and sixty five a year, which you know, in
a small town like Auctionormen, every day somebody's getting their
house broke into. You know, that's that's a big deal.
And I found a little bit of success early, and
you know, like like with anything else, you find that
success and you're like, oh man, I gotta get more
(09:20):
of that. I got to craft myself better and to
come back for somebody I've never been a victim of
a burglary. But when we've sat down and talked with
these people, it wasn't about that you stole my stuff.
You violated my peace of mind. You know, you took
something from me. I may never feel comfortable back in
(09:40):
this house again. And to knock back on those doors
to say, hey, that person's in jail, and oh, by
the way, I got a truck coming, I got all
your stuff back to see that though, just the color
in their eyes change it. Would you understand why law
enforcement officers get just get lost in this job because
there's no feeling like that. You know, even now we'll
(10:04):
brief our newbies on hey, when when this moment happens,
I promise you I'm gonna have to kick you out
of this office because there's no feeling like that. Again,
no home run you ever hit, no walk off three
when you helped somebody and you absolutely change them and
there's nothing better. So went through that did about six
and a half almost seven years of investigations. But in
(10:25):
that time we had some cases that we took to
court and thought they were just jam up good cases,
you know, really solid cases. And I'll never forget we
had a multiple burglar case and had several people that
had already you know, taken polease and we took it
to trial, and we had a witness saw pretty much
(10:47):
everything that went down. They saw people pull up, they
saw those people go around the house come back with stuff.
We're like, we're good. Multiple people had already taken their
guilty plea. The jury came back not guilty. And I
remember sitting there like, whoa, how did we lose that?
And so we get an opportunity to go back and
(11:10):
talk with the district attorney and say, hey, we need
to find out how we can do better what happened?
And he said, you don't have a relationship with this community,
And I say, what do you mean. They were like
and the reputation of your department is not great that
they they were like, you know what, now there was
about a thirty second window. She didn't see such and such,
So now not good enough. And that moment then reminded
(11:36):
me and doned on me that every encounter we have
has got to be spot on. Every time we go
in a gas station to get a drink, we need
to be smiling and speaking to people. We need to
be personable. We need a relationship with our community. And
it was at that moment where you begin to change
who you are and how you do things. A lot
(11:58):
of times, even as a young alser, I didn't mean
anything by it or think anything about I'm focused. So
I pull up at the gas station. Man, I'm getting
drink to get back because I'm trying to do work.
But you miss all of those moments in between. Another
teaching moment, we had a case where an individual took
their life, and again a young investigator, he's trying to
(12:18):
teach me to look beyond just what's in front of
me as a big case investigation, and he made me
go back and trace the steps that that person took
for the twenty four hours prior to that moment. And
so what I found was that that person actually was
out the evening of shopping for the items that they
(12:39):
would then use to take their life. And I just
remember going back and replaying that video and I kind
of stopped watching them after a while, and I started
watching the people around them. Why didn't somebody hold the
door for you know? Could I have been that person
on that eye that would have looked at them and
(13:01):
just spoke or maybe just a smile or that moment
at the register. You know how many moments have we
missed in our life for people that are just struggling internally,
that those gestures may have pushed them one more day
and then it maybe somebody picks it up the next day.
And so when you begin to see all of this
in your law enforcement career and you begin to be
(13:24):
shaped by the images that are in your head, and man,
sometimes those are traumatic. You have to then either bury
them or you have to use them for the greater good.
And during that time as an investigator, that became my mission.
So my wife and I got into ministry work with students,
(13:44):
and again, you're kind of crafting yourself at all times.
You know what am I learning, what am I seeing
in the world, And we found out that all of
these people that we thought were what we would call okay.
When you get into a world where you start encouraging
people and building people up and lifting them up, and
you see their whole mannerism change and you're like, wow,
(14:08):
I did that through encouragement of you, and then you
get to talk to them like, yeah, man, I really
was in a low place and that word of encouragement
or that positive message or just that hug or that
smile man that was huge for me. That pushed me
to the next day. And so I continue on as
an investigator. And then an opportunity popped up that I thought,
(14:29):
would you know, never consider myself a person that would
be on the administrative side. But we had a major
of operations position open up and I put in and
was just unbelievably blessed to have that opportunity. And so
you go from Jaylor the street officer to du officer
to investigator and in between all that, I had some
(14:51):
swat time and probably been here four years where we
had a hostage situation and our team actually had to
make entry and do a rescue. And you know, the
the things that that you pick out of that is
you train all these years and all these hours for
one moment, but that one moment is critical to someone else.
And so it helped to remind me that the little
(15:12):
things that we're doing on a daily basis that we
can't take 'em from just it's just mundane work or it's
mundane training, or this is not important that that moment
that you have to use it, it's important to someone.
It's important to those men that were in the stack
with me that I I was a team leader at
that time and I hadn't even been a team leader
probably two or three months, and we had that event happen,
(15:32):
and y, you know, all you can think about is
did I do everything to prepare these guys for this moment?
And I prepared for this moment, and and and and
it turned out good. We were able to rescue an
individual and not hurt someone inside. It was perfect scenario.
But you take all that and and and it begins
to continue to shape you and shape who you are
and how you lead. And so as major of operations,
(15:56):
we began to focus on that that personal touch of
law and enforcement. And at the time it was Chief
Joe East. We took a complete turn in law enforcement
for OPD into what we call community based policing, where
we focus on community events and going out and meeting
the public. And you know, we were met with a
lot of frustration in that because that's not the style
(16:18):
that people were used to. And even for me, I
was like, man, I don't know how this is going
to work out, you know, I mean, we're cops. We
got to go out and you know, take care of things.
And so that was twenty fourteen. That summer I got
to go to Quantico and I spent two and a
half months in Quantico at the FBI Academy and just
met some incredible people, got to take some great classes
(16:40):
on leadership and communication and learning about what other places
are doing and how they're doing it. I'll tell you
what I learned is in the South, you know, we
talked about hospitality, and we talk about those things. It's legit,
like it's real, and the way we treat people and
interact with them is completely different than other parts of
the world. And it made me appreciate how we do
(17:03):
things because I would be out with some of the
buddies and they would be from different areas of the
country and I'm a yes, ma'am, yes sir, and the
people are looking at you like what you're doing. And
it's that respect that goes a long way because it
opened up other dialogues and other conversations about just different
things because now you're approachable.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
And you've been listening to Jeff McCutcheon, Oxford, Mississippi's new
police chief and talking about this switch to community policing
and to building relationships inside the community and how that
makes a difference. More of Jeff McCutcheon's story and more
stories about well solving problems and ethical problems here on
(17:45):
our American Stories, and we continue with our American stories.
(18:10):
Let's continue with Oxford, Mississippi's new police chief, Jeff mccutchey.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I'm contrary as it is, so, you know, being in
the subway in DC and talking you're us, people were
just looking at you and like, yeah, I'm not from here.
I get it. So twenty nineteen, he decided to run
for share and it opened up the chief spot for
an interim role and I was fortunate enough to receive
(18:36):
that and become the interim chief in twenty nineteen. And
he was still the guy, right, I mean, because he's
still running for office. But I'm trying to hold the seat.
But it wasn't one of those things where I wanted
to just set on my hands and say, well, you know,
we'll just let's just keep everything as it is. And
I don't feel like that's leadership. I don't feel like
(18:58):
that's helping the men and women that you serve with.
And I definitely don't think it helps your community. And
so we just decided, let's run it like it was ours,
all right, Let's just don't set back and wait for things.
I don't want to be a counterpuncture. I want to
be the first. And so we crafted a new mission statement,
(19:18):
and so our mission statement was completely people driven. We
didn't want to do anything that wasn't people driven. So
every phone call that we take, every traffic stop that
we make, every call that we go on is tied
to a person. There's nothing in law enforcement that you
do that's not people oriented. And I don't care if
you're out directing traffic, you're dealing with people. You're dealing
(19:41):
people in those cars, and the way you present yourself
and the way that the way that you interact with
them in every situation absolutely matters. Go back to that
new investigator who lost a case that should have been
a good one because we didn't have that relationship. So
we began to just focus on relationships and people. Last
(20:02):
year we did over two thousand hours of community service.
And that could look like camp cops, or that could
be snow cones with kids. I mean, we try to
literally look for any and every opportunity that we can
get around people and just be people, you know, don't
be a cop, just be people. Next, I think it's
next weekend, maybe in two weeks, we will go to
(20:27):
one of the doctor's office and they're doing a drive
through flu shot for children. Well, one of our captains,
he's just reading the news and saw that they were
doing that. He said, I'm gonna call them, and you know,
when you get a shot, you typically get a sucker. Right,
We're gonna set up a snow cone station so when
they drive through and roll the win down get a shot,
they pull right up and we got a snow cone
with you, and it's gonna be a guy or girl
(20:48):
in a uniform smiling and giving you a fist pump
and a snow cone. Those are the things that we
want to instill in people of the good that's happening.
And you know, it's a little thing, but you never
know where that kid's gonna be in four or five years.
That they may give information to an SRO or they
may have a total different perspective about law enforcement. And
so it's not a maybe not a tomorrow impact, but
(21:10):
it's a seed that's being planted and then somebody else's
responsibility to water it and help it. But we begin
to just focus on relationships and people. And so our
mission is this to serve with wisdom and compassion and
to create a safe and connected community. That's it, because
I think everything that you tie in, I don't care
what status you've used, fits in that mold. And so
(21:33):
we wrote it for keywords, and we preach this constantly
to our officers. I mean they get tired of we're
going to talk about it almost in every meeting. Are
we focusing on those things? Because number one, we're servants,
So we got to have a servant's attitude. We got
to have another's first attitude. It can't be about us here.
Our role here is strictly to make someone else's life better.
(21:56):
It's not about what we get out of it. It's
what we give out of it our goal. So number one,
we've got to be servants. Two, we've got to have wisdom.
We've got to make good decisions. So we talk about
just a phrase or what are all my options? You know,
when you're looking at a situation, when you're on a
call or a traffic stop, man, what are all of
my options to fix this? Too often we are do
(22:20):
I take someone to jail? Do I not take someone
to jail? Do they get a ticket? Do they not
get a ticket? There is so much in between there
that we can meet a need, and so we begin
to talk about that. We want your decisions to be
wise and what are all of your options to get
through with this? What are all your options that is
best for you in a safety manner that's also best
(22:41):
for the person that you're dealing with. And when you
think about that, man, Oxford's such a blessed community. Like
if if you need something in Oxford, there's probably a
nonprofit for it. If someone's hurting, there's probably a group
that will meet that need. They just need to know
about it. And so we began giving our all time.
There's information on all of these nonprofits or all of
(23:03):
these community help organizations, and send it out to them
an email and said, listen, save that in your phone.
When you get in these situations, man, go back to
it and just maybe it's not an arrest, maybe it's
not a ticket. Maybe you just say, hey, call this number,
take a screenshot, call this number. They're gonna take care
of you. Or you call them and bring them to you.
And then so we want to be wise in our
decision making. We want to see the big picture because
(23:26):
everything matters, everything is important when you're dealing with people.
And then to serve as wisdom and compassion. I know
for me, there's been people that have shown me compassion
in my life and it changed my life. But they
didn't just change my life. They changed my kid's life.
They changed their kids that are gonna come because that's
(23:47):
what I'm gonna teach them. And so for us, we
want our officers and our staff to think every time,
how can I show compassion? Right? When we realize that
not every time we can show compassion, and sometimes people
do have to go to jail, we treat you right,
still treat you like a human. We still keep that
servant others first mentality. But I still may have take
(24:08):
someone to jail. Someone may talk themselves into a ticket. Okay,
so compassion may not work that day. They didn't allow
that to take place. But our goal is always to
show compassion. And we tell our guys, I don't know
that there's a ticket in Oxford under two hundred dollars.
I don't know that if we write you any citation
on the side of the road, that's going to be
(24:29):
under two hundred dollars. So take that thought and apply
it to this. If I give them that two hundred
dollars ticket today, they may have a child at home
that doesn't get to sign up for OPC soccer or
OPC baseball, or they don't get to go on this
trip that the parents have been saving money for. It's
(24:52):
not just a ticket, it's greater than that. There's so
many times that a word of encouragement we talked about
earlier does more than a citation than punitive damages. Man
showing love a lot of times will pay itself forward.
And that's what we want to do first. So we
want to serve. We want to do it with wisdom,
we want to do it with compassion. And then we
(25:13):
want to create a safe and connected community. And so
when you study law enforcement, I was fortunate enough to
be at the FBI and A when Ferguson happened, and
we got to debrief that every day in our media class,
and we talked about, Hey, how did it go wrong?
Why is there not a dialogue in the community. Well,
you've got to keep your community connected. So we say,
(25:35):
let's keep it safe and connected. Because I believe we
can do it both. It's not always easy, but I
believe we can do it both. And so we phrase
it this way to our staff. I can keep your
street safe, I can put that thing on lockdown, but
I can treat you like a jerk every time I
deal with you. And so you're safe. Your cars an't
gonna get broken into, your family's not gonna be victimized,
(25:56):
but I treat you like crap. You're not connected to us. Now, equally,
swing it the other way and we can be really
close buddies and go have lunch and work out, do
all those things together. But I keep letting your house
get broken into, or I keep letting one of your
family members get harmed. Well, we're connected, but we're not safe.
We have to find that balance.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
And searching for that balance is no duck walk. That's
a big deal. And you're listening to Jeff McCutcheon and
he is the new police chief here in Oxford, Mississippi.
Sometimes we do stories about our own town and what
a dilemma for that cop. And he said, sometimes you
give a ticket, sometimes you don't. But those aren't the
only two options. There's a range of options in between
(26:37):
and that two hundred dollars ticket, And he said, two
hundred dollars is the minimum you're in this town. It's
a minimum in a lot of towns. That's a lot
of money to a family. And so as you're writing
that guy up for doing a fifty five and a
forty and you have a chance to warn them or
a chance to take two hundred dollars out of the
family budget, Well, that is an ethical dilemma for that
(27:00):
cop on the spot.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
What do you do? How do you do the right thing?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
When we come back more of Jeff mccutchen's story, Oxford,
Mississippi story, and so many communities around this great country
here on our American stories, and we continue with our
(27:38):
American stories. Now, let's continue with Jeff mccutcheen and his story.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
What we know is this, if we put eighty of
our officers out at one time, all eighty of them,
they'll never see what the community sees on a daily basis.
Because there's twenty five to forty five thousand people here
at any given time during the day. We need that connectivity.
We got to have that trust so that they will
talk to us about their issues. And then we got
(28:06):
to go meet that need. And so for us, that's
that's been our goal, that's been our vision, that's been
our mission, and to keep it super simple. And for me,
I try to make sure that the life lessons that
I've learned is what we apply here because I've seen it,
I've seen it work. I've seen it work in my
own life. For me, every day, I start each day
(28:29):
with a journal, and I start my journal with six circles.
And in those six circles are one Peter five two
through six. That's number one. Don't lord your position over people.
You use your position to make it better for somebody else,
and you do it with humility. That God deal with
everything else. Then Proverbs two seven one seven Iron sharpens iron.
(28:50):
That's my next circle. How am I sharpening myself as
a husband, as a father, as an officer. I think
that too often we lose who we are. You know,
I I'm not just the cop. That's not who I am.
I'm really proud to be a cop. I love it.
I'm very proud of this profession. But at the end
of the day, that's not who I am. It's just
(29:11):
what I do. But I've got to make sure I'm
being the best version of that to my wife and
my children because I can come and and and be
the best officer that I can be for this community.
But if I'm not serving them, I'm I'm really missing
the point of why I'm on this earth. I don't
want my legacy to be here, on my legacy to
be left with them, you know. And I had a
(29:32):
I it's happened. But I've only had one guy in
all of the retirements that I've been to in law enforcement,
only one guy's ever stood up said I'm with the
same woman that I started this career with. And I'm
sure there's been a few that have, you know that
that didn't highlight that. But when you go back and
you start looking at the retirements that you've been to,
(29:53):
and you go, it's not many. It's not many that
were able to keep their family. And I was telling
the football coaches yesterday, I've been to some of the
retirements where the kids aren't there, like they don't come,
like there's dad was a copy of one of that,
you know, And and it's hard, you know, it really
(30:15):
is hard from a time standpoint and energy standpoint when
you deal with certain things here and then you pick
your kids up and you're just like man, I mentally drained.
But I think it goes back to that whole foreverness
mentality of if it doesn't have an eternal impact, man,
you've got to be strong enough to get it out
of your life because your family needs your energy. And
so the third circle is joy. So it's Jesus others
(30:37):
than in you, and that sets that other's mentality and
that kind of helps me remind myself, Look, it's not
about you. You're deep on the bench. We got to
do this for other people first, and then we crafted
a little. The last three are kind of for here
positive culture. It needs to be positive up here. There
are times when it's tough. There's times when it's dark.
(30:57):
There's times where traumatic events have and it can change
you for the negative, and it can make you hard,
and it can make you disgruntled and cynical. We want
to be positive, we want to be upbeat. We want
to make sure that you want to come to work
because if you're coming to work and you want to
come to work and you're following that mission statement, we're
going to get it right most of the time. And
(31:18):
that's the goal. Is not to send them out frustrated,
but send them out with a specific purpose and to
know what that purpose is. And then questions are greater
than reactions For me, I know, I've got to be
patient and I've got to ask questions, Hey, how did
we get to this point? You know? What is? What
are all my options? You know? We want to ask
(31:39):
those questions before we make a snap reaction, because again,
I don't want to be a poor leader that here's
information snaps on somebody and then come and find out
I didn't really get all the details because I've seen
it over my eighteen years. These men and women go
through so much, the toll and the scars that they
(31:59):
endure for this profession. I respect that. I honor that,
and I'm want to do everything that I can to
be the best version for them so that when we
go through these moments, we don't make it harder on them.
Job's hard enough to job's stressful enough. I don't want
to be an extra one. I want to find ways
to make it better for them. And then the last
thing is just encourage every day. There's a way to
(32:21):
encourage someone every day. These guys and girls are doing
good stuff. We got to make sure we give them
out of boys. We got to make sure that we
put we have a system guardian tracker that keeps up
with positive and negative behavior every day. We're trying to
put something in that guardian tracker for someone to say, hey,
we see you. You keep doing that because I believe
(32:41):
rewarding that positive behavior instills what we want. And they
are doing things so good. And we are in a
society right now where law enforcement has taken a lot
of just a lot of beatings right now, and for
those officers that are doing it the right way and
trying to make their communities better, we got to remind
them that we see you and we appreciate you. Those
(33:03):
are the goals each morning. Right beside that, I'll I'll
do a hashtag in four f's and I tell my
girls that's reminds me of my report car. So I
want to do better. But it's faith, family in forever,
and those are kind of my grounding points. It's very
busy up here, and I mean it's busy from the
(33:23):
time I wake up. I'm reading emails and something's going on.
I'm making sure we're doing what we need to be doing.
Right I mean, that's that's the position I'm in is
to try to bless our community, and so when we
see things, we got to do with it. But in
that time, I have to remember what I am and
one faith. Faith is is that navigation for me. And
I've got to make sure I spend time trying to
(33:44):
learn and be the best leader that I can possibly
be with the purest heart. And then my family, which
kind of grounds me, you know, they keep me where
I need to be. Am I focusing on them, you know,
my spending time genuine real time with them. And then forever,
I tell people it's foreverness. So if whatever I've got
(34:04):
going on in my life, if it doesn't have a
forever impact, I really need to move on from it.
You know, I'll check social media, but I'll kind of
check for what's happening quickly in the world and what
the pulse is around Oxford, and then I try to
get off because whatever free time I have, I want
it to be allow myself to be spending time with
my family, spending time on my faith. If it's gonna
(34:25):
draw me away from those two things, I need to
get away from it because it's gonna make me pour
up here, and I need as much energy for here
as I can possibly have. And so, you know, I
think for me, those are the focuses, the simple things.
I try to keep it simple. I'm not great when
I'm trying to juggle a lot of things. I know that,
and I know that about me, and so I try
(34:47):
to keep my life simple. Last night, I had a
little free time and there was a college football game
on and my daughter was getting ready to go to bed.
I thought, and turn that off and take these last
fifteen minutes to just listen to her, how was your day,
what was going on? Instilling those things into her. And
if we're not careful, we get so inundated with so
(35:08):
much stuff that has no forever impact that we're going
to get to the end of our line and we
wasted that dash. You know, that's my biggest fear is
We've got this huge opportunity, not just as a police chief,
but as a husband and as a father to make
that dash impactful. And I don't want to get to
(35:28):
that end rope and realize that I wasted twenty five
years of my life with my thumb on my phone
when I could have been doing something for somebody else.
You know, there's so many needs around us that if
we would just be open to it, just like that
that investigative case where I'm watching the video of this person,
I don't want my eyes down. I want my eyes
(35:51):
up looking for someone that we can make an impact on.
And you know I want to do I want to
do ten more years. I gotta do five. I'd like
to do ten. And I'd love to pass the torch
on to someone else and carry on that mission of
another's first as I feel like, if if we do
anything in this world, we were all put here to
make life better for somebody else. When they took the
(36:13):
interim label off and I became the chief, I sat
in here one day and uh, I just started writing
letters to people that had impacted my life. And one
of them was a coach. And he he was a
hard coach. He was he was stern, he was hard nosed.
But he took us to a different level than we
could have gotten to on our own, that we could
(36:35):
have gotten to with just an encourager. I mean, he
you knew the line, you knew the standard, and you
didn't cross that. And he made us so much better.
And and then there was another guy who wrote a
letter to who was as a little kid, as a
little leaguer, I I never forgot this. I was we
were warming up for an All Star game as a tournament.
We were playing in baseball, and I the ball just
(36:56):
would not land in my glove. I'd stick it there
and it just wouldn't stick, you know. And so as
a little kid, you're emotionally so fragile. I was like
so down on myself, and he put his arm around
me in the outfield that day as we're warming up,
going you're fine, calm down, it is okay. You know
you got this. And I wrote him a letter to say,
you know, you have no idea that moment, what that
(37:17):
did for me as a kid that I now use
for our people. And just like John Wood, sometimes you
got to be stern and here's the line, and then
there's times you got to know when to put your
arm around somebody and you got to develop a feel
for that. You know, that's there's no blueprint, that's a feel.
And you know those guys made impacts on me that
now I'm trying to pay it forward to other people.
(37:40):
But you know, my thought is you do right, You
keep doing right, and then whatever happens, it just is
what it is. You always hold your head high.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
And you've been listening to Jeff McCutcheon and he's the
new police chief here in Oxford, Mississippi, where we broadcast
a young police chief's People for First Policy, Jeff mccutchen's
story here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your story. Send them to our Americanstories dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
There's some of our favorites.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Oxford, Mississippi, which is where we broadcast, just about an
hour south of Memphis, and we have a small town
of about twenty thousand people when college is an incession
and when Ole miss is in session, and with a
home of All miss that can.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Spiral up to about fifty thousand.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Oxford, Mississippi's new police chief has good reasons for why
he chose to overhaul his department, and as you are
about to hear every one of his reasons as a
memorable story.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
My name is Jeff McCutcheon, thirty nine years old. I
have spent eighteen years of my life as a law
enforcement officer. That's not really how identify myself. Anybody that
knows me knows I'm a husband and I'm a father
to two girls, and that's kind of my groundwork. I
grew up just down the road from here, about thirty
(01:13):
minutes in a little town called New Albany. My entire
family basically grew up and worked in the furniture factory.
My mom still does. My father's a pastor, and even
in the summers of college, I would go go back
and work. And I tell people that because man, I'm
a blue collar, you know, hard worker, and I saw
(01:35):
that in my family and that was ingrained im and
I'm proud of that. I'm really proud of that. It's
made a huge impact on me. And a lot of
times you hear people how you rose to the top
because of someone you knew or you know, the reality is, man,
it's those that get after it and put their head down.
And I was blessed. Man. My dad being a pastor,
(01:56):
we moved a lot from time to time, and you
had to learn to make friend had to learn to
talk to people, and played sports growing up from the
time I could remember, Man, if it was a ball
or somebody was competing, I wanted to be and had
a really fun high school time. My senior year we
won a state championship in basketball, and man, it was amazing.
You know, you work your whole life for that moment
(02:17):
and got through that moment and then I was like, gosh,
what next, Like I didn't prepare for that, And so
going into college, you know, just trying to figure out, man,
what do you want to do? And I'd always loved
one being outside but being a part of a team
and had this interest in law enforcement. And the summer
that I turned twenty one, I was back working doing
(02:38):
landscape at this furniture company and a guy working there
I was telling about what I wanted to do, and
he knew that the sheriff's apartment just down the road
needed some jailers. And I said, man, I'll do anything right,
you know. I mean, that's just want to get my
foot in the door. And so about a week later
I got a shot and the earth gave me a
(03:00):
chance to work for him in tip Of County, and man,
it changed my life. You know. You you experience things
in life and then you have this, this light bulb
moment together. Man, this is why God put me on
this earth. And I'll never forget the jail administrator he
was a former sheriff of that county and older, older gentleman,
and set me down and he said, he said, son,
(03:23):
have you ever you ever driven by or walked through
a cemetery? And I said, oh, yes, sir, And he said,
there's a start date and there's an end date. And
I said, yes, sir. He said, don't matter. All that
matters is what's in between in that dash. And he said,
there'll be people that walked by your cemetery one day,
and it's that dash. It's what's gonna matter to them
(03:46):
how you lived your life and how you treated them.
And he said, you're gonna learn real quick in law
enforcement that how you treat people goes a long way
for them and for you. Those encounters are imported and
people are imported, and so working in a small jail, men,
you had to learn to talk. You know, at the time,
(04:08):
we worked swing shifts, and on night shift from midnight
to eight in the morning, there was two of us
and somebody had to stay in the control room, so
you by yourself if something went south, and until somebody
else got there, your partner couldn't come out. And you
learned quickly how to talk, how to de escalate. They
weren't teaching us that at the time, but that's what
(04:28):
you were doing. You were listening to people's stores, you
were empathizing, you were trying to make good decisions, not
based off force, but based off leverage of using my words,
using my compassion to get what we needed to get done.
And so shortly I did about a year's stint there,
a year and a half, and I got an opportunity
(04:48):
to be a patrol officer for the Baseball Police Department,
and I spent about a year there. Incredible opportunity, incredible time.
I had quite a lot of what what I learned
initially as an officer to my FTO. He was unbelievable
in teaching, like he truly took pride in teaching me
(05:09):
how to do things, why we do things, how it
makes impacts. And I you know, when you go. I
actually got to do my FTO before I went to
the academy, And so when I got to the academy,
I felt like, man, I we just got to get
it over with. Like this guy had me so well prepared.
We were in classes. I'm like, oh, we've done that
and that you know, it was it was huge for me.
But while I was at the academy, I was I
(05:30):
was there with about six or seven guys from the
Oxford Police Department. And and so Baseball and Oxford are
pretty close. And uh, I my wife and I just
got married and we were living here in Oxford, and
so I still connected with those guys, and sure enough,
one of my classmates was actually going to relocate to
the Jackson area and uh he saw me at the
(05:50):
gym and said, man, if you want to come over,
and I was in a great time and fortunately uh
in O five, I got an opportunity to move over
here and uh and start working at op And so
coming to OPD did just like everybody else, you know,
you go through patrol and you serve as a patrol
officer and did that for a few years, and we
were starting back a grant program to do DUIs and
(06:14):
so I got an opportunity to serve as a du
officer and did that for about six months until a
criminal investigation spot opened up. And was really fortunate to
get that position. There were a lot of guys that
put in and I had an incredible captain that going
into that position, I would say I was pretty headstrong
(06:36):
and driven with blinders on, you know, not a lot
of forethought on what I'm doing. There's a mission, you
get the mission done and let's roll on and don't
ask a lot of questions. And he was completely the opposite.
He was super patient and very coachy about the way
he would do things which would drive me nuts because
(06:58):
I'm like, give me a case. I don't want you
to see me again until I saw it like I'm
going to be on the street, you know. And he
would constantly reel me back in and slow me down,
and we would debriefcases. And again I didn't understand it
really well.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And you're listening to Jeff McCutcheon and he's Oxford, Mississippi's
new police chief. When we come back more as Jeff
continues his story here on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Folks, if you.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Love the stories we tell about this great country, and
especially the stories of America's rich past, know that all
of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith, are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And if you can't cut to.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and
terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to learn more.
And we returned to our American Stories, and now let's
(08:12):
return to Jeff McCutcheon and more of his story.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
And even in my time at the jail, I thought
I understood dealing with individuals and why that's important. But
when I became an investigator, I really really learned because
you go and you deal with situations where people have
been victimized, and that could be from a property crime
(08:37):
or that could be from a personal victimization. And the
heartbreak that you see, you know, and the fear in
their eyes, and many times you're their last hope, you know,
can you get me answers? Can you help me? Can
you solve this? Can you put the person away who
did this to me? And at that time, we were
(08:58):
struggling with a rash of proper crimes. I think for
a year or two, man, we were averaging like three
hundred and sixty five a year, which you know, in
a small town like Auctionormen, every day somebody's getting their
house broke into. You know, that's that's a big deal.
And I found a little bit of success early, and
you know, like like with anything else, you find that
success and you're like, oh man, I gotta get more
(09:20):
of that. I got to craft myself better and to
come back for somebody I've never been a victim of
a burglary. But when we've sat down and talked with
these people, it wasn't about that you stole my stuff.
You violated my peace of mind. You know, you took
something from me. I may never feel comfortable back in
(09:40):
this house again. And to knock back on those doors
to say, hey, that person's in jail, and oh, by
the way, I got a truck coming, I got all
your stuff back to see that though, just the color
in their eyes change it. Would you understand why law
enforcement officers get just get lost in this job because
there's no feeling like that. You know, even now we'll
(10:04):
brief our newbies on hey, when when this moment happens,
I promise you I'm gonna have to kick you out
of this office because there's no feeling like that. Again,
no home run you ever hit, no walk off three
when you helped somebody and you absolutely change them and
there's nothing better. So went through that did about six
and a half almost seven years of investigations. But in
(10:25):
that time we had some cases that we took to
court and thought they were just jam up good cases,
you know, really solid cases. And I'll never forget we
had a multiple burglar case and had several people that
had already you know, taken polease and we took it
to trial, and we had a witness saw pretty much
(10:47):
everything that went down. They saw people pull up, they
saw those people go around the house come back with stuff.
We're like, we're good. Multiple people had already taken their
guilty plea. The jury came back not guilty. And I
remember sitting there like, whoa, how did we lose that?
And so we get an opportunity to go back and
(11:10):
talk with the district attorney and say, hey, we need
to find out how we can do better what happened?
And he said, you don't have a relationship with this community,
And I say, what do you mean. They were like
and the reputation of your department is not great that
they they were like, you know what, now there was
about a thirty second window. She didn't see such and such,
So now not good enough. And that moment then reminded
(11:36):
me and doned on me that every encounter we have
has got to be spot on. Every time we go
in a gas station to get a drink, we need
to be smiling and speaking to people. We need to
be personable. We need a relationship with our community. And
it was at that moment where you begin to change
who you are and how you do things. A lot
(11:58):
of times, even as a young alser, I didn't mean
anything by it or think anything about I'm focused. So
I pull up at the gas station. Man, I'm getting
drink to get back because I'm trying to do work.
But you miss all of those moments in between. Another
teaching moment, we had a case where an individual took
their life, and again a young investigator, he's trying to
(12:18):
teach me to look beyond just what's in front of
me as a big case investigation, and he made me
go back and trace the steps that that person took
for the twenty four hours prior to that moment. And
so what I found was that that person actually was
out the evening of shopping for the items that they
(12:39):
would then use to take their life. And I just
remember going back and replaying that video and I kind
of stopped watching them after a while, and I started
watching the people around them. Why didn't somebody hold the
door for you know? Could I have been that person
on that eye that would have looked at them and
(13:01):
just spoke or maybe just a smile or that moment
at the register. You know how many moments have we
missed in our life for people that are just struggling internally,
that those gestures may have pushed them one more day
and then it maybe somebody picks it up the next day.
And so when you begin to see all of this
in your law enforcement career and you begin to be
(13:24):
shaped by the images that are in your head, and man,
sometimes those are traumatic. You have to then either bury
them or you have to use them for the greater good.
And during that time as an investigator, that became my mission.
So my wife and I got into ministry work with students,
(13:44):
and again, you're kind of crafting yourself at all times.
You know what am I learning, what am I seeing
in the world, And we found out that all of
these people that we thought were what we would call okay.
When you get into a world where you start encouraging
people and building people up and lifting them up, and
you see their whole mannerism change and you're like, wow,
(14:08):
I did that through encouragement of you, and then you
get to talk to them like, yeah, man, I really
was in a low place and that word of encouragement
or that positive message or just that hug or that
smile man that was huge for me. That pushed me
to the next day. And so I continue on as
an investigator. And then an opportunity popped up that I thought,
(14:29):
would you know, never consider myself a person that would
be on the administrative side. But we had a major
of operations position open up and I put in and
was just unbelievably blessed to have that opportunity. And so
you go from Jaylor the street officer to du officer
to investigator and in between all that, I had some
(14:51):
swat time and probably been here four years where we
had a hostage situation and our team actually had to
make entry and do a rescue. And you know, the
the things that that you pick out of that is
you train all these years and all these hours for
one moment, but that one moment is critical to someone else.
And so it helped to remind me that the little
(15:12):
things that we're doing on a daily basis that we
can't take 'em from just it's just mundane work or it's
mundane training, or this is not important that that moment
that you have to use it, it's important to someone.
It's important to those men that were in the stack
with me that I I was a team leader at
that time and I hadn't even been a team leader
probably two or three months, and we had that event happen,
(15:32):
and y, you know, all you can think about is
did I do everything to prepare these guys for this moment?
And I prepared for this moment, and and and and
it turned out good. We were able to rescue an
individual and not hurt someone inside. It was perfect scenario.
But you take all that and and and it begins
to continue to shape you and shape who you are
and how you lead. And so as major of operations,
(15:56):
we began to focus on that that personal touch of
law and enforcement. And at the time it was Chief
Joe East. We took a complete turn in law enforcement
for OPD into what we call community based policing, where
we focus on community events and going out and meeting
the public. And you know, we were met with a
lot of frustration in that because that's not the style
(16:18):
that people were used to. And even for me, I
was like, man, I don't know how this is going
to work out, you know, I mean, we're cops. We
got to go out and you know, take care of things.
And so that was twenty fourteen. That summer I got
to go to Quantico and I spent two and a
half months in Quantico at the FBI Academy and just
met some incredible people, got to take some great classes
(16:40):
on leadership and communication and learning about what other places
are doing and how they're doing it. I'll tell you
what I learned is in the South, you know, we
talked about hospitality, and we talk about those things. It's legit,
like it's real, and the way we treat people and
interact with them is completely different than other parts of
the world. And it made me appreciate how we do
(17:03):
things because I would be out with some of the
buddies and they would be from different areas of the
country and I'm a yes, ma'am, yes sir, and the
people are looking at you like what you're doing. And
it's that respect that goes a long way because it
opened up other dialogues and other conversations about just different
things because now you're approachable.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
And you've been listening to Jeff McCutcheon, Oxford, Mississippi's new
police chief and talking about this switch to community policing
and to building relationships inside the community and how that
makes a difference. More of Jeff McCutcheon's story and more
stories about well solving problems and ethical problems here on
(17:45):
our American Stories, and we continue with our American stories.
(18:10):
Let's continue with Oxford, Mississippi's new police chief, Jeff mccutchey.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I'm contrary as it is, so, you know, being in
the subway in DC and talking you're us, people were
just looking at you and like, yeah, I'm not from here.
I get it. So twenty nineteen, he decided to run
for share and it opened up the chief spot for
an interim role and I was fortunate enough to receive
(18:36):
that and become the interim chief in twenty nineteen. And
he was still the guy, right, I mean, because he's
still running for office. But I'm trying to hold the seat.
But it wasn't one of those things where I wanted
to just set on my hands and say, well, you know,
we'll just let's just keep everything as it is. And
I don't feel like that's leadership. I don't feel like
(18:58):
that's helping the men and women that you serve with.
And I definitely don't think it helps your community. And
so we just decided, let's run it like it was ours,
all right, Let's just don't set back and wait for things.
I don't want to be a counterpuncture. I want to
be the first. And so we crafted a new mission statement,
(19:18):
and so our mission statement was completely people driven. We
didn't want to do anything that wasn't people driven. So
every phone call that we take, every traffic stop that
we make, every call that we go on is tied
to a person. There's nothing in law enforcement that you
do that's not people oriented. And I don't care if
you're out directing traffic, you're dealing with people. You're dealing
(19:41):
people in those cars, and the way you present yourself
and the way that the way that you interact with
them in every situation absolutely matters. Go back to that
new investigator who lost a case that should have been
a good one because we didn't have that relationship. So
we began to just focus on relationships and people. Last
(20:02):
year we did over two thousand hours of community service.
And that could look like camp cops, or that could
be snow cones with kids. I mean, we try to
literally look for any and every opportunity that we can
get around people and just be people, you know, don't
be a cop, just be people. Next, I think it's
next weekend, maybe in two weeks, we will go to
(20:27):
one of the doctor's office and they're doing a drive
through flu shot for children. Well, one of our captains,
he's just reading the news and saw that they were
doing that. He said, I'm gonna call them, and you know,
when you get a shot, you typically get a sucker. Right,
We're gonna set up a snow cone station so when
they drive through and roll the win down get a shot,
they pull right up and we got a snow cone
with you, and it's gonna be a guy or girl
(20:48):
in a uniform smiling and giving you a fist pump
and a snow cone. Those are the things that we
want to instill in people of the good that's happening.
And you know, it's a little thing, but you never
know where that kid's gonna be in four or five years.
That they may give information to an SRO or they
may have a total different perspective about law enforcement. And
so it's not a maybe not a tomorrow impact, but
(21:10):
it's a seed that's being planted and then somebody else's
responsibility to water it and help it. But we begin
to just focus on relationships and people. And so our
mission is this to serve with wisdom and compassion and
to create a safe and connected community. That's it, because
I think everything that you tie in, I don't care
what status you've used, fits in that mold. And so
(21:33):
we wrote it for keywords, and we preach this constantly
to our officers. I mean they get tired of we're
going to talk about it almost in every meeting. Are
we focusing on those things? Because number one, we're servants,
So we got to have a servant's attitude. We got
to have another's first attitude. It can't be about us here.
Our role here is strictly to make someone else's life better.
(21:56):
It's not about what we get out of it. It's
what we give out of it our goal. So number one,
we've got to be servants. Two, we've got to have wisdom.
We've got to make good decisions. So we talk about
just a phrase or what are all my options? You know,
when you're looking at a situation, when you're on a
call or a traffic stop, man, what are all of
my options to fix this? Too often we are do
(22:20):
I take someone to jail? Do I not take someone
to jail? Do they get a ticket? Do they not
get a ticket? There is so much in between there
that we can meet a need, and so we begin
to talk about that. We want your decisions to be
wise and what are all of your options to get
through with this? What are all your options that is
best for you in a safety manner that's also best
(22:41):
for the person that you're dealing with. And when you
think about that, man, Oxford's such a blessed community. Like
if if you need something in Oxford, there's probably a
nonprofit for it. If someone's hurting, there's probably a group
that will meet that need. They just need to know
about it. And so we began giving our all time.
There's information on all of these nonprofits or all of
(23:03):
these community help organizations, and send it out to them
an email and said, listen, save that in your phone.
When you get in these situations, man, go back to
it and just maybe it's not an arrest, maybe it's
not a ticket. Maybe you just say, hey, call this number,
take a screenshot, call this number. They're gonna take care
of you. Or you call them and bring them to you.
And then so we want to be wise in our
decision making. We want to see the big picture because
(23:26):
everything matters, everything is important when you're dealing with people.
And then to serve as wisdom and compassion. I know
for me, there's been people that have shown me compassion
in my life and it changed my life. But they
didn't just change my life. They changed my kid's life.
They changed their kids that are gonna come because that's
(23:47):
what I'm gonna teach them. And so for us, we
want our officers and our staff to think every time,
how can I show compassion? Right? When we realize that
not every time we can show compassion, and sometimes people
do have to go to jail, we treat you right,
still treat you like a human. We still keep that
servant others first mentality. But I still may have take
(24:08):
someone to jail. Someone may talk themselves into a ticket. Okay,
so compassion may not work that day. They didn't allow
that to take place. But our goal is always to
show compassion. And we tell our guys, I don't know
that there's a ticket in Oxford under two hundred dollars.
I don't know that if we write you any citation
on the side of the road, that's going to be
(24:29):
under two hundred dollars. So take that thought and apply
it to this. If I give them that two hundred
dollars ticket today, they may have a child at home
that doesn't get to sign up for OPC soccer or
OPC baseball, or they don't get to go on this
trip that the parents have been saving money for. It's
(24:52):
not just a ticket, it's greater than that. There's so
many times that a word of encouragement we talked about
earlier does more than a citation than punitive damages. Man
showing love a lot of times will pay itself forward.
And that's what we want to do first. So we
want to serve. We want to do it with wisdom,
we want to do it with compassion. And then we
(25:13):
want to create a safe and connected community. And so
when you study law enforcement, I was fortunate enough to
be at the FBI and A when Ferguson happened, and
we got to debrief that every day in our media class,
and we talked about, Hey, how did it go wrong?
Why is there not a dialogue in the community. Well,
you've got to keep your community connected. So we say,
(25:35):
let's keep it safe and connected. Because I believe we
can do it both. It's not always easy, but I
believe we can do it both. And so we phrase
it this way to our staff. I can keep your
street safe, I can put that thing on lockdown, but
I can treat you like a jerk every time I
deal with you. And so you're safe. Your cars an't
gonna get broken into, your family's not gonna be victimized,
(25:56):
but I treat you like crap. You're not connected to us. Now, equally,
swing it the other way and we can be really
close buddies and go have lunch and work out, do
all those things together. But I keep letting your house
get broken into, or I keep letting one of your
family members get harmed. Well, we're connected, but we're not safe.
We have to find that balance.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
And searching for that balance is no duck walk. That's
a big deal. And you're listening to Jeff McCutcheon and
he is the new police chief here in Oxford, Mississippi.
Sometimes we do stories about our own town and what
a dilemma for that cop. And he said, sometimes you
give a ticket, sometimes you don't. But those aren't the
only two options. There's a range of options in between
(26:37):
and that two hundred dollars ticket, And he said, two
hundred dollars is the minimum you're in this town. It's
a minimum in a lot of towns. That's a lot
of money to a family. And so as you're writing
that guy up for doing a fifty five and a
forty and you have a chance to warn them or
a chance to take two hundred dollars out of the
family budget, Well, that is an ethical dilemma for that
(27:00):
cop on the spot.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
What do you do? How do you do the right thing?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
When we come back more of Jeff mccutchen's story, Oxford,
Mississippi story, and so many communities around this great country
here on our American stories, and we continue with our
(27:38):
American stories. Now, let's continue with Jeff mccutcheen and his story.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
What we know is this, if we put eighty of
our officers out at one time, all eighty of them,
they'll never see what the community sees on a daily basis.
Because there's twenty five to forty five thousand people here
at any given time during the day. We need that connectivity.
We got to have that trust so that they will
talk to us about their issues. And then we got
(28:06):
to go meet that need. And so for us, that's
that's been our goal, that's been our vision, that's been
our mission, and to keep it super simple. And for me,
I try to make sure that the life lessons that
I've learned is what we apply here because I've seen it,
I've seen it work. I've seen it work in my
own life. For me, every day, I start each day
(28:29):
with a journal, and I start my journal with six circles.
And in those six circles are one Peter five two
through six. That's number one. Don't lord your position over people.
You use your position to make it better for somebody else,
and you do it with humility. That God deal with
everything else. Then Proverbs two seven one seven Iron sharpens iron.
(28:50):
That's my next circle. How am I sharpening myself as
a husband, as a father, as an officer. I think
that too often we lose who we are. You know,
I I'm not just the cop. That's not who I am.
I'm really proud to be a cop. I love it.
I'm very proud of this profession. But at the end
of the day, that's not who I am. It's just
(29:11):
what I do. But I've got to make sure I'm
being the best version of that to my wife and
my children because I can come and and and be
the best officer that I can be for this community.
But if I'm not serving them, I'm I'm really missing
the point of why I'm on this earth. I don't
want my legacy to be here, on my legacy to
be left with them, you know. And I had a
(29:32):
I it's happened. But I've only had one guy in
all of the retirements that I've been to in law enforcement,
only one guy's ever stood up said I'm with the
same woman that I started this career with. And I'm
sure there's been a few that have, you know that
that didn't highlight that. But when you go back and
you start looking at the retirements that you've been to,
(29:53):
and you go, it's not many. It's not many that
were able to keep their family. And I was telling
the football coaches yesterday, I've been to some of the
retirements where the kids aren't there, like they don't come,
like there's dad was a copy of one of that,
you know, And and it's hard, you know, it really
(30:15):
is hard from a time standpoint and energy standpoint when
you deal with certain things here and then you pick
your kids up and you're just like man, I mentally drained.
But I think it goes back to that whole foreverness
mentality of if it doesn't have an eternal impact, man,
you've got to be strong enough to get it out
of your life because your family needs your energy. And
so the third circle is joy. So it's Jesus others
(30:37):
than in you, and that sets that other's mentality and
that kind of helps me remind myself, Look, it's not
about you. You're deep on the bench. We got to
do this for other people first, and then we crafted
a little. The last three are kind of for here
positive culture. It needs to be positive up here. There
are times when it's tough. There's times when it's dark.
(30:57):
There's times where traumatic events have and it can change
you for the negative, and it can make you hard,
and it can make you disgruntled and cynical. We want
to be positive, we want to be upbeat. We want
to make sure that you want to come to work
because if you're coming to work and you want to
come to work and you're following that mission statement, we're
going to get it right most of the time. And
(31:18):
that's the goal. Is not to send them out frustrated,
but send them out with a specific purpose and to
know what that purpose is. And then questions are greater
than reactions For me, I know, I've got to be
patient and I've got to ask questions, Hey, how did
we get to this point? You know? What is? What
are all my options? You know? We want to ask
(31:39):
those questions before we make a snap reaction, because again,
I don't want to be a poor leader that here's
information snaps on somebody and then come and find out
I didn't really get all the details because I've seen
it over my eighteen years. These men and women go
through so much, the toll and the scars that they
(31:59):
endure for this profession. I respect that. I honor that,
and I'm want to do everything that I can to
be the best version for them so that when we
go through these moments, we don't make it harder on them.
Job's hard enough to job's stressful enough. I don't want
to be an extra one. I want to find ways
to make it better for them. And then the last
thing is just encourage every day. There's a way to
(32:21):
encourage someone every day. These guys and girls are doing
good stuff. We got to make sure we give them
out of boys. We got to make sure that we
put we have a system guardian tracker that keeps up
with positive and negative behavior every day. We're trying to
put something in that guardian tracker for someone to say, hey,
we see you. You keep doing that because I believe
(32:41):
rewarding that positive behavior instills what we want. And they
are doing things so good. And we are in a
society right now where law enforcement has taken a lot
of just a lot of beatings right now, and for
those officers that are doing it the right way and
trying to make their communities better, we got to remind
them that we see you and we appreciate you. Those
(33:03):
are the goals each morning. Right beside that, I'll I'll
do a hashtag in four f's and I tell my
girls that's reminds me of my report car. So I
want to do better. But it's faith, family in forever,
and those are kind of my grounding points. It's very
busy up here, and I mean it's busy from the
(33:23):
time I wake up. I'm reading emails and something's going on.
I'm making sure we're doing what we need to be doing.
Right I mean, that's that's the position I'm in is
to try to bless our community, and so when we
see things, we got to do with it. But in
that time, I have to remember what I am and
one faith. Faith is is that navigation for me. And
I've got to make sure I spend time trying to
(33:44):
learn and be the best leader that I can possibly
be with the purest heart. And then my family, which
kind of grounds me, you know, they keep me where
I need to be. Am I focusing on them, you know,
my spending time genuine real time with them. And then forever,
I tell people it's foreverness. So if whatever I've got
(34:04):
going on in my life, if it doesn't have a
forever impact, I really need to move on from it.
You know, I'll check social media, but I'll kind of
check for what's happening quickly in the world and what
the pulse is around Oxford, and then I try to
get off because whatever free time I have, I want
it to be allow myself to be spending time with
my family, spending time on my faith. If it's gonna
(34:25):
draw me away from those two things, I need to
get away from it because it's gonna make me pour
up here, and I need as much energy for here
as I can possibly have. And so, you know, I
think for me, those are the focuses, the simple things.
I try to keep it simple. I'm not great when
I'm trying to juggle a lot of things. I know that,
and I know that about me, and so I try
(34:47):
to keep my life simple. Last night, I had a
little free time and there was a college football game
on and my daughter was getting ready to go to bed.
I thought, and turn that off and take these last
fifteen minutes to just listen to her, how was your day,
what was going on? Instilling those things into her. And
if we're not careful, we get so inundated with so
(35:08):
much stuff that has no forever impact that we're going
to get to the end of our line and we
wasted that dash. You know, that's my biggest fear is
We've got this huge opportunity, not just as a police chief,
but as a husband and as a father to make
that dash impactful. And I don't want to get to
(35:28):
that end rope and realize that I wasted twenty five
years of my life with my thumb on my phone
when I could have been doing something for somebody else.
You know, there's so many needs around us that if
we would just be open to it, just like that
that investigative case where I'm watching the video of this person,
I don't want my eyes down. I want my eyes
(35:51):
up looking for someone that we can make an impact on.
And you know I want to do I want to
do ten more years. I gotta do five. I'd like
to do ten. And I'd love to pass the torch
on to someone else and carry on that mission of
another's first as I feel like, if if we do
anything in this world, we were all put here to
make life better for somebody else. When they took the
(36:13):
interim label off and I became the chief, I sat
in here one day and uh, I just started writing
letters to people that had impacted my life. And one
of them was a coach. And he he was a
hard coach. He was he was stern, he was hard nosed.
But he took us to a different level than we
could have gotten to on our own, that we could
(36:35):
have gotten to with just an encourager. I mean, he
you knew the line, you knew the standard, and you
didn't cross that. And he made us so much better.
And and then there was another guy who wrote a
letter to who was as a little kid, as a
little leaguer, I I never forgot this. I was we
were warming up for an All Star game as a tournament.
We were playing in baseball, and I the ball just
(36:56):
would not land in my glove. I'd stick it there
and it just wouldn't stick, you know. And so as
a little kid, you're emotionally so fragile. I was like
so down on myself, and he put his arm around
me in the outfield that day as we're warming up,
going you're fine, calm down, it is okay. You know
you got this. And I wrote him a letter to say,
you know, you have no idea that moment, what that
(37:17):
did for me as a kid that I now use
for our people. And just like John Wood, sometimes you
got to be stern and here's the line, and then
there's times you got to know when to put your
arm around somebody and you got to develop a feel
for that. You know, that's there's no blueprint, that's a feel.
And you know those guys made impacts on me that
now I'm trying to pay it forward to other people.
(37:40):
But you know, my thought is you do right, You
keep doing right, and then whatever happens, it just is
what it is. You always hold your head high.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
And you've been listening to Jeff McCutcheon and he's the
new police chief here in Oxford, Mississippi, where we broadcast
a young police chief's People for First Policy, Jeff mccutchen's
story here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com