It has been more than 40 years since trainer John Demand Jr., then a rookie, almost gave a courtesy ride to a car thief. But he remembers the leadership lesson of that night vividly, and now he’s passing it along to a new generation of cops.
Demand told the story recently to an audience of predominately young officers at one of his popular Rapid Threat Recognition classes.
The year was 1968 and Demand was on only his second night working alone, patrolling the quiet streets of Glenview, Ill., a Chicago suburb. As the end of his shift approached, he spotted a new sedan stalled in a traffic lane near a railroad track, the driver evidently frustrated by car trouble.
“I stopped and asked him if I could help,” Demand recalls. “I was into the serving part of protect and serve. He said he’d run out of gas. I was just about to have him get in my squad car so I could take him to a filling station when a lieutenant happened by.”
The lieutenant was heading to work in his personal vehicle to begin the midnight shift when he saw Demand’s Mars light and then recognized the newly minted officer. “The lieutenant stopped and asked to see the guy’s driver’s license,” Demand says. “When he couldn’t produce a registration, the lieutenant asked more questions.
“Eventually the truth came out: the guy had stolen the car off a dealer’s lot a few miles away and had run out of fuel before he could gas up.
“The lieutenant looked at me and said, ‘This is your collar, John. Take him in and book him.’ Then he got back in his car and drove on in to work.
“He could have made me feel like a complete jerk, and if he’d told other cops what happened they’d have made my life miserable with ridicule. He could have…but he didn’t.
“I worshipped him after that. I used to go in on my time off and ride with him, just to learn from him. He was my hero and my mentor.”
Since that night, Demand has had a successful career that includes not only law enforcement but corporate security, personal protection, and now full-time police training in how to sharpen observational skills.
“A leader had such an ability either to mold or to destroy an individual’s self-image and motivation,” he told Police1. “When you make a mistake, he can make you feel like an idiot or he can help you learn from your mistake and not repeat it.
“That lieutenant helped me to learn. I learned not to take things at face value, to dig deeper before you draw conclusions. That lesson has stuck with me ever since.”
John Demand, based in Windsor, Calif., will present an eight-hour block on instruction on Rapid Threat Recognition at the annual ILEETA Training Conference next April in Wheeling, Ill. Information on his courses is available at www.observationondemand.com. He can be reached at: John@observationondemand.com.
