In this second episode featuring our guest, Chief Frank Mackesy, Chris and Alison talk about his time at the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. They discuss his training and how things have changed over the years.
In this second episode featuring our guest, Chief Frank Mackesy, Chris and Alison talk about his time at the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. They discuss his training and how things have changed over the years.
Mackesy_Part_2_Transcript.mp3
Alison DeBelder [00:00:04] This is trauma injustice. This is a podcast about the ways that people confront and manage trauma in the justice system. These conversations touched on seriously troubling topics. This podcast is not appropriate for children. People with their own traumatic histories should be aware that we discuss violent crimes, exploitation, sexual trauma, child abuse and incarceration.
Chris Moser [00:00:28] I'm Chris Moser
Alison DeBelder [00:00:30] and I'm Alison DeBelder. Today we have the second half of our interview with Chief Frank Mackesy. If you missed last week, you can go back and listen to that first. Today, we hear about his background. Our guest today is Chief Frank Mackesy, director of police and public safety at the University of North Florida. Chief Mackesy started his law enforcement career at the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, or GSO, in 1979. He retired after 32 years from the position of undersheriff, where he was in charge of five departments with over 3000 employees there. Before undersheriff, he had other roles, including chief of detectives. After he retired, he then taught at Florida State College at Jacksonville and was the director of emergency and security training in this capacity. He provided on site training to the US Secret Service chief. Mackesy has a bachelor's and master's degree in business administration from U.N. at the University of North Florida, and he's also a graduate of the FBI National Academy. I'm glossing over a lot of positions he's held and commendations he's received. But I do want to get into our conversation. So welcome, chief. Thank you for being here.
Frank Mackesy [00:01:49] Well, thank you for having me.
Alison DeBelder [00:01:51] Is there anything that I missed in that brief bio that you wanted to mention?
Frank Mackesy [00:01:56] No, not really. The thing that's probably the most important to me is that I'm a husband of over 40 years and I have two kids and I also have a grandson and a new granddaughter on the way.
Alison DeBelder [00:02:08] Oh, congratulations. Are you the only law enforcement person in your family?
Frank Mackesy [00:02:12] Not in my nuclear family. I do have several cousins that were in law enforcement, one in New York whom I've never met. And then a couple of my cousins, my dad's brother's kids are currently or were formerly in law enforcement in California. But other than that, no no one else.
Alison DeBelder [00:02:33] Could you run through for us what your training looked like?
Frank Mackesy [00:02:39] I started in 1979, went to work back then you worked in the jail for up to a year without any training other than what you got on the job and then they put you in the academy. And then in 1983, I was fortunate enough to get selected to go to the police academy and I went through the police academy in 79. The training was about care, custody and control of inmates. Also, the jail was under a federal consent decree from a lawsuit that was filed by Bill Shepherd, which really did a whole lot in making corrections a lot more professional.
Alison DeBelder [00:03:14] Why do you say that
Frank Mackesy [00:03:16] there were things that were agreed upon that when you see what they were, when you learned what they were like? Well, heck, why weren't they doing this all along? I mean, you know, just common sense stuff.
Alison DeBelder [00:03:27] You mean like giving people more time outside outside.
Frank Mackesy [00:03:31] Nutritionally, they were. The meals were more balanced. I mean, they were getting fed three squares a day, but they were getting fed three squares a day that necessarily weren't good for them. Not that many of them watch what they eat when they're on the outside, but if we're taking care of them, we got to take the best care of them. Always calm.
Chris Moser [00:03:47] When you say you were selected, do you recall if you applied to become law enforcement from the jail or if they sought you out based on your skill set?
Frank Mackesy [00:03:58] No. So the way it worked back then when they hired me originally in 79, they told me within six months they'd go to the street and it didn't happen in that five year period. There was only three police academies and there were people that were in the queue way ahead of me. Now I did get promoted to sergeant while I was in there to jail for those five years. And the second time they turned me down for the police, the first time I'd only been there like a couple of months and there were people there that had paid their dues and deserved to go more than me. And then I forget what it was maybe a year later or something like that. A little longer, a little less. I got passed over. And when I went back to asking why I got passed over, they said, Because I abuse sick leave. Well, I was sick on Christmas Day and I was so sick. I'm a grown man and I still wanted my mommy. I mean, I was sick. It was Christmas in bed with the bucket next to the bed. You know, it was an excuse because they had other people that were a little more connected. Yeah, if they had any connection, they had more connection than I did.
Chris Moser [00:05:05] It kind of reminds me of Michael Jordan not making the team the first time.
Frank Mackesy [00:05:08] And you know, you can't put me in the same category as Michael Jordan, but I know what you mean.
Chris Moser [00:05:16] Yeah, but you know, yeah, he became the undersheriff and you had this prolific career. I find that very interesting. The optics looked a certain way, and it actually wasn't the case at all.
Frank Mackesy [00:05:28] No. When I did go to the academy, I had, like I said, I had made the rank of sergeant in the jail and enjoyed my time in the jail. I really did. I mean, that's where I met most of the people that, you know, the Louis gazelles, the and Finnell, the Al and Chipperfield, you know, the Patrick McGuinness's of the world. The bill shepherds. I worked in that releasing office a lot, so I'm the one to let them in and out. Randy Fallis. I don't know if either one be. I'll ever remember Randy. I mentioned earlier that I've been married, you know, over 40 years. Well, my wife had been previously married and she had a three year old when I met her and later on in life, we had a child together, our son. And I wanted to adopt her daughter. I was talking to Randy one day at the jail, and that guy did my adoption of my daughter for me for free. He was just a great guy, and I met him through a cage at the jail. Hey, Randy, how you doing? You know,
Alison DeBelder [00:06:29] I think that's one of the things that I hope people get out of. Our first season of the podcast is that the best criminal defense attorneys are just really kind people. They get it. They feel for their clients, their clients, families, they feel for victims and victims families and their generous, big hearted people. So that doesn't surprise me. I mean, it's a great story, but it doesn't surprise me.
Frank Mackesy [00:06:53] I don't know if this surprises you, but I embrace the role of the don't get me wrong, there's a couple of them that I don't really care for now will say that they were never in the public defender's office. There were more private people that were out there, and part of the reason why is because I just felt like they were doing things a little underhanded, Lee, whereas I never experienced that in my encounters with any of those people I just mentioned. It was always professional. I also recognize that if we, as in law enforcement, win them all, then something's not right. Right now, that makes sense because you can't win them all, you know?
Alison DeBelder [00:07:29] Can I ask you just before we get on to your career outside of the jail? So if y'all didn't get a lot of training and you were in the jail working in the jail as long as you were as a CEO, a CEO, as a corrections officer, I imagine some of the stuff that you saw must have been shocking.
Frank Mackesy [00:07:48] I don't know that I ever remember being upset, so the jail I was in was old old jail. It wasn't like the one I think the two of you were used to being in. We had bars. There was no glass or plastic in the windows and we could interface with the inmates. Now fast forward, when Glover got elected sheriff, he promoted me to chief and he made me chief of the jails. And I'm going into this brand new jail that's got all this windows in dorms and pods and all this stuff where they were a little more segregated back in the day, which personally I thought was more safe for the inmate. But, you know, people do studies and all that kind of stuff. I'm not sure I still buy that because the jail can be a dangerous place, but the inmates taught me a tremendous amount. Part of the reason was I could talk to them face to face. I'd be standing in a catwalk. They'd be standing in a cell. And the only thing between us was bars, and they'd hang their arms through the bars. You know, I mean, it was more personal. You know, it's not like I shared my life story with them or anything, but I just treated him with respect. You know?
Alison DeBelder [00:09:01] Had you had any experience with people living with mental illness before you got into this line of work because you're going to run into folks in the county jail who have uncontrolled mental illness, right?
Frank Mackesy [00:09:14] Oh no. There are a few things that opened my eyes. One of them was in dealing with the mentally ill. The other one was and the people would come into the jail. They'd be there for two months. Get out and be right back like a week later. You know, it was just this revolving door. And most of those type of people were in on like minor offenses back then. You could just go be put in the jail for being drunk. You weren't even arrested for anything. It was called the Deb. No. And we would put you in a holding tank and you would stay in that holding tank until you sobered up. And it was not uncommon for there to be 50 people in that holding tank on a weekend. Wow. You know, and when they sobered up, we let them. And there was this three or four that were the I mean, we know shipyard slim. Danny Sally.
Alison DeBelder [00:10:03] Did you just make up yard slim? Because that's the greatest name I've ever heard.
Frank Mackesy [00:10:08] No, that was his street name. Shipyard Slim. Wow. There was Sally. I can't remember her last name, but she was a frequent flier and she fought everybody but me. For some reason, she wouldn't fight me, and she'd come through the back door and she'd start screaming at the top of her lungs. Frankie Frankie, and if I was there, we could get her through the whole first floor system and up to her cell without incident. If I wasn't there, it was a challenge from the time she came through the back door till the time she got upstairs, you know?
Alison DeBelder [00:10:40] But then they're also not getting a record for every time they're scooped up right
Frank Mackesy [00:10:45] back then they didn't. Now you can't do it anymore. It was ruled unconstitutional, which if you think about it in retrospect, you're taking people off the streets, you're putting them in a jail and they haven't violated any laws. So, yeah, no kidding. Seems kind of Goolagong ish to me. Yeah.
Alison DeBelder [00:11:02] So tell us about after the academy.
Frank Mackesy [00:11:05] I didn't know it at the time, but one of the things that I learned as I went through my career in law enforcement was we went through the police academy and I forget how long it was. I want to say were there like almost six months? And this percentage isn't completely true, but I think it's accurate. But about 80 percent of our training was in law and dealing with suspects how to stay alive. And I'm being generous if I say 20 percent of it was in dealing with victims. And the problem is is when you get to the street, 80 percent of your time is dealt dealing with victims and 20 percent of your time is dealt dealing with suspects. And I always felt like that that training was upside down. So that's why whenever I had the opportunity through my career to do things wrapped around victimology, I always tried to do it. And then the Harry got the more I tried to infiltrate that into the system itself. Now, I couldn't really do a whole lot about the CJS outside the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission. They require you to do certain things and in their defense. Now, in modern day times, there is a lot more victimology there. But it took special interest groups to get it there. You know what I mean? I just remember, like one of the very first sexual assault victims I ever dealt with. I can tell you exactly where we were. And I just as a young patrol officer, I just felt like. Holy cow. I'm not sure I know how to deal with this because she was very, very, very traumatized and I was dealing with her right after the initial act of trauma. Fortunately, I had two kid sisters growing up, and I kind of just thought, well, heck treat like you would if this is one of your sisters. But it's still that's not enough. You know, that's not enough. So what we tried to do is, and I think I think we were successful in it. I used to tell the troops when I was in charge over there, Hey, you need to remember most of the people that you deal with are victims, so don't treat them like suspects and they just need to hear that. But that's what the training was like when I went through in 83 from 79 to 83. There was no victimology in the corrections academy that I remember. I was 19 years old, so who knows? It could have been there. I just don't remember it. But in 1983, when I went through the police academy, I was a little better suited for things because I was a little older, married, had a kid in the way, had a stepdaughter at the time. That kind of changed your perspective. I think that if you're trying to be the best at what it is, you're trying to do. I think it's important that you incorporate all those life experiences that you can that are appropriate into whatever it is you're doing. I used to tell people when I was with the sheriff's office, the perfect cop to me. If I could take the brain of a 10 year veteran and put it in the head of a 19 year old snot nosed recruit. That's the perfect cop because you don't know what you don't know. I have to tell you, I think working in that jail for as long as I did. Interacting with so many different people. Noteworthy people came into that jail. Rich people came into that jail. Poor people came into that jail. Sick people came into that jail. Very dangerous people came into that jail. Made me a better police officer.
Alison DeBelder [00:14:38] I was thinking that that would have to be the case. There is a real divide in my career as I progressed through the public defender's office handling different types of cases and after I had been in felony for a while, I went and handled Jimmy Rice cases. Mm-Hmm. Which for the audience are folks who finished their prison sentences and are being technically civilly committed because they are deemed likely to commit another sexual offense. And in the course of doing that work, yes, would reexamine facts of underlying cases. But a lot of it had to do with examining a person's time spent in jails and prisons, right? The types of disciplinary reports that they get and charges that they may pick up when they're in prison. And when I left that work and went back to doing felony cases, I had a very different perspective because I was representing sometimes children. But frequently, young men, they were on the other side looking at going to prison for the first time, and I knew to the extent that I can know what they were looking at, what that meant when we were talking about that time that they were going to spend. It 100 percent changed my perspective in the way that I handled cases and talked to people about things, and I feel like there's something similar there, right? When you're a patrol officer and you're sending somebody into jail, you know what you're sending them there for, right?
Frank Mackesy [00:16:02] Yeah. And it changes your perspective, too in that, you know, there's just certain things. I drew the line on that I didn't and I made the case and they deserved everything they got. And then there were other cases where, you know, I got in trouble once for throwing a little bit of weed away. Well, you know, the guy had to weed on him, but it wasn't no big deal. He had a good excuse in my mind. He. Well, that's not really true. Now they've got to remember this is going back a few years. OK. But his excuse wasn't really that great. But he made a mistake that could have impacted him a lot more harshly than just having a little bit a little bit of weed would have in the court system. Pretty much probably would have happened, and I thought it booked him. He did go on the first appearance there. Now, prosecutor given him time served, kicked him for a $50 fine and that's it. But his kids would not had somebody bringing in the paycheck to feed him. It would have been harder on the wife. But, you know, back then was a different era. I checked back x ray from a drug call and got an x ray means verbal warning. As a young rookie cop, I didn't know any better. I learned after that not to put that kind of stuff on the radio and just do it, you know? So I get it. I totally get it. And it's a spectrum. A friend of mine stopped the guy one night hammered, hammered, hammered drunk, and the guy starts sobbing in his back seat. The next morning, he was getting on a bus to go to the Naval Academy, and he'd been out celebrating with his friends. So drove him by his house. Hey, dad, you got a son named so-and-so? Yeah. What are you doing tomorrow? He's supposed to be going to the Naval Academy. Is you OK? Yeah, he's OK. He's in the backseat of my car drunk. Guess what? The kid went to the Naval Academy. No one was hurt. He made a stupid mistake. Why are you going to jam him up on something like that that they would not ever let him in again? You know, you learn the older you get, more experience you get, you learn. Sometimes you got to take risks on people. And so what if it doesn't work out? But if it does make you happy, you took a risk?
Alison DeBelder [00:18:16] How long were you a patrol officer before you became a detective?
Frank Mackesy [00:18:20] Right about. For years, I think five years or something.
Alison DeBelder [00:18:25] Where do you start out as a detective?
Frank Mackesy [00:18:27] I started out in burglary. I got put in the Ocean Way area of town. Boy, oh boy. There were some demons son of a guns out there breaking into people's houses. Fortunately, I had a detective that had been there a while and he built up a pretty good intelligence file. So I kind of went into it halfway there. And that taught me a lesson too, because I built on that and left it for the person that took my place.
Alison DeBelder [00:18:51] And as most of your training as a detective in burglary, is that on the job training from other detectives or is there formal training you go off to?
Frank Mackesy [00:19:01] They do send you to like, interview and interrogation school. You do that because the types of interviews you do in the division are different than the kind you do in the field. And then you pretty much learn it from the detectives that are around you. And then after burglary, I went to what was called the general detail, and I worked like flimflam Jamaican switches, pigeon drops, bank examiners, teams, a lot of fraud cases that predominantly targeted the elderly because they were the more trusting, especially in bank examiners, schemes that would always portray themselves as a member of law enforcement. And they always wanted to help law enforcement so they'd take 100 hundred grand out of their bank account. Give it to them, and then they'd be in the wind.
Alison DeBelder [00:19:45] Were people ever made whole like as a rule? When you're doing that,
Frank Mackesy [00:19:49] we would get lucky every now and then. But what happens is there's a circuit. They come into the city, they hit and hit and hit, and then they just keep right on moving. It was a frustrating job because we didn't get the closure that we would like to get, but every now and then we got lucky, we caught one. That was a good thing. And then after that, I went to robbery, that was a robbery detective, that was a great job, man. I had fun in that job.
Alison DeBelder [00:20:13] Why do you say fine?
Frank Mackesy [00:20:15] Well, we were taking bad people off the street. I mean, these are people that were sticking guns in people's faces, you know, using weapons. And if you caught them, typically they got time in the system. And back then we pretty much had a picture of every person that ever robbed like a little champ or something like, you know, a convenience store. It made the job a little bit easier. But you catch burglary suspect. And this seems like they got a slap on the wrist a lot because back then, it was also during the beginning of the crack cocaine era. You know, they're most of them were stealing. When I was chief of detectives, I used to tell those burglary detectives because sometimes I felt like what they did wasn't important. I said, Let me tell you something. There are other crimes here that impact our victims more severely, personally and physically than a burglary. But if you've been the victim of a burglary for the longest time when you come home, when you stick that key in the door, you're wondering if there's someone in your house or if someone's been there. There's various stages of being a victim, but I don't want us treating the victim of a burglary a whole lot different than we treat the victim of a sexual assault. But don't get me wrong, I know that that sexual assault is a hundred percent more traumatizing than that burglary could be.
Alison DeBelder [00:21:28] But if you are the burglary victim, that trauma is real to you, and it is not lessened by the fact that somebody elsewhere has had something worse happen to them.
Frank Mackesy [00:21:37] That is correct.
Alison DeBelder [00:21:39] And I was going to ask you, did these other roles, especially burglary, talking to elderly folks about being defrauded, losing their savings? Did those things prepare you for dealing with victims, family members when you get to homicide eventually?
Frank Mackesy [00:21:54] No, I never worked as a homicide detective, OK? I was the chief of detectives and I was involved in a lot of homicide cases, but I just never really wanted to make my living every single day standing over that.
Alison DeBelder [00:22:08] I've talked about this on the podcast before, but there just came a point when I lived in Jacksonville. First of all, if I could get my husband to go and get gas in my car, I'd do that. And if I went to go get gas, it was like a military operation, like I had my credit card out Mackesy in my hand. I didn't wait to put my money or my card away before I pulled out of that place. I was scanning the area before I pulled in because I felt like I had been to every single gas station in Duvall County. Walking around it as a crime scene and it really changed my behavior because you're right. Having a gun in your face, knowing those facts is really terrifying.
Frank Mackesy [00:22:48] So what you just described is one of the main reasons why I became a police officer. So I teach here you enough run how to fight active shooter response. But I tell them over and over and over again, and these are professors, you know, they've got all those little letters with dots behind her name and some of them have five or six of them. I tell them, I do not want you to be paranoid. I want you to be prepared. And it sounds like to me that you are prepared and there's a difference between paranoia and preparedness because I don't want the bad guy to win and get in our heads like that. Now sometimes it's inevitable it happens and I get that and we got to help those people through that. I mean, I've seen PTSD in both sworn officers and also victims on the street. So I know that it's real. And I have to admit here there was a point in time I wasn't sure that it was real. It was a relatively new phenomenon in the very first time I ever really heard about it was an officer was being disciplined for doing something wrong on the job. And when we got into the Civil Service Board, the defense, the officer uses PTSD and had never complained about anything PTSD related up until the point they got in trouble. But now, in retrospect, when I look back, it's probably because they were just afraid to bring it up because they didn't want to be labeled. Those are the kind of things that really changed the way I manage at the sheriff's office and the way I treated people in the field because she's there for me to say what you should or shouldn't be traumatized by.
Chris Moser [00:24:29] Was that officer in the military in the past saw combat, or was it a different reason for that diagnosis, do you recall?
Frank Mackesy [00:24:38] It was a combination of both. It was military and law enforcement work.
Chris Moser [00:24:43] I have such a soft spot for veterans and my dad was in the service and we've had so many clients.
Frank Mackesy [00:24:49] Thank him for his service.
Chris Moser [00:24:51] Oh, thank you.
Frank Mackesy [00:24:52] Thank you. I'm serious. I appreciate that.
Chris Moser [00:24:55] I used to work at CCRC, do an appellate death-row work, and many of my death row clients saw combat. And I always just personally got very upset about how on any given day, someone's either a hero or a villain based on the harm that they experience in those really difficult situations. Thank you for answering that question for me. I always like to ask that because it does seem like for some of the defendants that have faced the most serious punishment and then some of the officers who have had disciplinary issues, there is kind of a a line back to some very serious dangerous trauma that they endured. And we got to take better care of our veterans just across the board.
Frank Mackesy [00:25:44] Totally agree.
Alison DeBelder [00:25:53] Have you ever had to shoot your sidearm at work? No.
Frank Mackesy [00:25:58] That doesn't mean I didn't have many opportunities.
Alison DeBelder [00:26:02] Is there a requirement for cops in any particular role to receive counseling or therapy?
Frank Mackesy [00:26:09] So I'll tell you a quick story. So I'm the chief of detectives about 1997 1998, I went to patrol. I was the chief of jails under Glover. He transferred me to patrol a couple of years later. He transferred me to the detective division. So from whenever I went to patrol, like in 96 97. Prior to that, if it happened in my zone when I was a captain, if there is an officer involved shooting, I would go and there was this protocol that we followed and it was a very strict protocol. But I never went inside the crime scene because once the yellow tape was up, unless you're doing something in there, you don't want to cross, contaminate or kick evidence around unexpectedly or you just don't want to do that. So I felt like I had to set the example. But I did kind of make exceptions to that when I became chief of detectives because I was the one that was telling the sheriff, I think we got a problem with the shooting or I think the shooting is within departmental regulations and the law more importantly. So we went to a shooting and there was an officer who had just shot and killed somebody. And I happened to have known this officer by working with him, and this officer was standing in a semicircle of detectives standing around him, and I'm standing next to the officer that was involved in the shooting and they're shooting questions at him and his head was on a swivel and he was traumatized from the shooting incident. It was obvious to me, but his head was on a swivel. So I call the time out and I asked the officer to give us a minute, and I took the detectives aside and I said, OK, here's how this is going to work from now on, one officer is going to ask the questions. If you got a question, you want that officer to ask. Write it down and hand it to him if you need to get together before you do the interview and get all your questions together. One officer is going to ask because we're not going to traumatize this officer any more than they've already been traumatized. And then the other thing that occurred to me was we would always say, look, Yap is available to you. Now, this is one of the things I'm the most proud of.
Alison DeBelder [00:28:21] And that's the employee assistance program.
Frank Mackesy [00:28:23] Yes, thank you for that. I would say, look, the APIs available. You need somebody to talk to give me a call. It's confidential. We don't know anything about it. You can go talk to him. Well, I found out none of them were doing it. Sometimes is a good buddy of mine says I sit and sometimes I ponder. Sometimes I sit and I ponder and I'm like, Why wouldn't these? Why wouldn't these officers do this? Well, it's a predominantly male world. Now it's better now than it was back then. And there's this little bit of macho ism that runs through the place, and nobody wants to be perceived as the weak when going to see the shrink. So I said, Well, I'll tell you what we're going to do, then we're going to order every single person involved in a critical incident to go see a psychologist every single one. And at first, people were kind of pushing back on me. I still look, I don't care. We can afford it. We're doing it. I can't tell you that everybody embraced that. But I can tell you that after I started doing that now, I don't know if they still do it because I've been gone 10 years. But from about 2000 to 2011, somewhere around in there, I can promise you maybe two thousand two or three, I don't remember the exact date I started it. Every single one of them went. And I bet you, I had a dozen officers catch me in the hallway alone nine months to a year later and thank me.
Alison DeBelder [00:29:56] That's amazing.
Frank Mackesy [00:29:57] That told me right there. They needed the help.
Alison DeBelder [00:30:01] What made you come up with that? Is it something that you had heard about other departments doing? No. Had you been involved in counseling or therapy and found it therapeutic? What inspired you to do that?
Frank Mackesy [00:30:13] The welfare of the agency members? When I stood there with that officer and watch his head on a swivel and his eyes were the size of saucers. And this is a dude that was pretty well composed all the time. Very happy go lucky guy. If you were around him, you'd like him. And he was stammering and stuttering and they were talking cop to another cop. Well, he was a victim. So that's kind of what got me thinking about it now, I will say this when Rutherford got elected sheriff and I was in his upper echelon staff. He was a huge proponent of mental health awareness within our ranks. He made it easier on me to do some of those type of things because he blessed it, and that's not to say that the people that preceded him were against it. It just wasn't as important. But we did it under started under Glover. He knew about it, and I told him he never pushed back on it. But then what we did is when rather for got elected, we took it to the next level. Had people put in positions, created critical incident debriefing teams where they'd come out and they'd be with the officer doing the simple things like, Hey, you know, we probably should call your family Leadmill. You're OK, do you need anything to drink? You know, let's go sit in the car and just chill, you know, that kind of stuff because I will tell you this and this is a little bit of a soapbox dance with me. When you watch policing on TV or in the movies. I can tell you. And the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, I've never experienced any of that type of policing. I don't know of a single officer who left that morning go to work after they strapped on their boots and put on their bulletproof vest that set out to kill anybody that day. What I do know is that most of them, when they get up and get ready to go to work, are thinking about coming home.
Chris Moser [00:32:18] When you described getting up and putting on the gear to go to work and never planning or thinking, Hey, I'm going to shoot someone today or I'm ready or I'm excited. It reminds me exactly of DUI manslaughter clients who drink. And this is assuming there was like excessive force or some mistakes made, but there really isn't an intent. But then there's this cost that's paid when you do take a life, even if you didn't intend to do it. Oh yeah. I just wanted to say that because as you were speaking about coming up in the sheriff's office, in the jail, out of curiosity, I had just looked up when mothers against drunk driving was created and it was 1980. Mm hmm. And so those other special interest groups that helped lobby to give us all better support in sex crimes and other things like that I'm assuming must have come much later than that. But I could be wrong.
Frank Mackesy [00:33:22] Well, the very first major initiative that I was involved in personally was Hubbard House domestic violence response. So when I first became a police officer, we would go to the same house every Friday night. People would be liquored up or drugged up. Somebody would have been sporting a busted lip or a black eye, and we would try in the 20 or 30 minutes that we were there to undo five or 10 years of a bad marriage where there are substance abuse issues and all that kind of stuff. And it was frustrating because we were going to the same places all the time and nothing was happening. And back then it had to be what we had to witness it. It had to be battery committed in our presence. And then I got assigned to the Domestic Violence Intervention Project, which was a coalition. It had a representative from the public defender's office. It had representatives from the Navy. It had sheriff's office. It had the state attorney's office. There was even a judge in this coalition. McMillan was the sheriff at the time and I was a sergeant under McMillan, and he appointed me to be on that committee. Well, that ended up with me. I mean, I helped write the current domestic violence law, which was pretty cool. But more importantly, what it did is it gave us a tool. We might not stop the violence forever, but I promise you, we could stop it that night. And I used to tell the officers. So one of the things was like, I said it was I was a male dominated workforce back then, and Rita DeYoung was the executive director of Hubbard House at the time. She's long since moved on. But we were able to get her into in-service training at the sheriff's office to teach victimology. Well, the first time she went, it didn't go well. Well, she was in the room by herself. No, I wasn't her protector. Because trust me, read it to you could take care of herself, OK? She was a tough minded victim's advocate.
Chris Moser [00:35:19] But you were the leader, say, and this is important.
Frank Mackesy [00:35:23] So I, when the roof started going to all the training with her now, John Rutherford was the captain in charge of the training academy at that time. And he said, I think you need to be in the room. I said, OK. And so it gave her street cred to me. She should have had it anyway. But if it helped her so well, that evolved into reading and I becoming friends and eventually I became I mean, I was on the board of directors for a sober house for a long time and was the vice chair of the board. I never wanted to be the chair because at that particular point in time, there wasn't enough opportunity for women to be in leadership of those type of roles. I was happy being second fiddle. It was giving someone else an opportunity. So I was cool with that. Rebecca Berg. I met her on the board of directors. I met so many empower women on that board. And Rebecca Berg became like a mentor to me. Rita also. But they helped me from a different perspective, and I used to tell the troops, Hey, I don't care if we go in the same living room 100 times. If on 201, the victim decides its time and moves on and gets help and we get to help them. It makes the other Hong it worth it again. Rebecca, read a few others. They were the catalyst. You know, I was just lucky enough to be able to help them along the way.
Alison DeBelder [00:36:57] Have you ever had to when you were chief of detectives, give news to a family that somebody had died?
Frank Mackesy [00:37:04] I did it a couple of times as a patrol officer, there was a chaplain and back in the agency back in the day, his name was Harborne. He's passed away since. Matter of fact, his son worked here with this unit, but it was at 45, 60, 70 St. John's Bluff Road South, and no one knows what that is. That was the old address for and that used to have an entrance off St. John's bluff. I used to read that B and I was on the midnight shift and I was standing in the parking lot of a nightclub that was on Beach Boulevard called Poppers. And I was there because there was always trouble when the bar closed at two a.m. and I was there just hoping that my presence would make the trouble go away. And I heard a crash. I heard it, but I didn't know where it was. So I go down St. John's Bluff Road and there's a vehicle upside down in the median and there's a body coming out from underneath the car that's upside down. And from about the shoulders up is under the car and I'm trying to lift the car off for this person and about ourselves. You know, you hear about all this stories about superhuman strength and all that. Didn't work for me. But while I'm out there trying to do this, a van pulls up. And out pops about 15 young people. The smallest one in the groups, like six foot one inches. They're a basketball team, so they hop out, they pull the vehicle up. I pull the guy out from under the car. I'm holding his head in my hands and he took his last breath. So back then, what you did is there was none of the way it is now, we called the funeral home or the medical examiner. I think it was about the same or actually to come pick them up. So I'm sitting on the side road, this guy covered in a sheet. Flight for two hours in middle of the night and they finally come, and then I have to go with the chaplain and we go to tell the woman that her husband is not coming home and she answers the door with a newborn baby.
Alison DeBelder [00:39:11] How old were you?
Frank Mackesy [00:39:13] Well, let's see. My wife was pregnant with my son at that time. So probably 25 somewhere is in my 20s. Got off that morning, went home now my wife's butt pop and we never wore seatbelts on what it wasn't required by law. Matter of fact, our daughter used to sit in the console between us. Back in those days, neither one of you are old enough to remember that on the
Chris Moser [00:39:42] hump, on the hump. I did, though I shouldn't say that, but I did that. That was really fun.
Frank Mackesy [00:39:49] From that day forward, two things happened in our family. I told my wife, Once you have this baby, we're never not wearing seatbelts again because if you've been wearing a seatbelt had been a lap. And from that day forward, every single time I leave a member of my family, I tell him I love him.
Alison DeBelder [00:40:11] Where did you find the words to tell the wife of this man? Or did the chaplain tell her?
Frank Mackesy [00:40:18] Luckily, I had the chaplain there and he was. He was very good at it because unfortunately that's what he did for a living. He wants his job back then to do that. I have to tell you a quick story, so now I have a three year old grandson, and every time my family leaves me, I tell them I love them, but I also shoot them the sign language sign for I love you.
Alison DeBelder [00:40:39] We do that to
Frank Mackesy [00:40:40] my three year old grandson. Every time he leaves me, puts that sign up and tells me he calls me po po. He says, Po po, I love you.
Alison DeBelder [00:40:49] Stop it.
Frank Mackesy [00:40:50] He does.
Alison DeBelder [00:40:50] That's amazing. Trauma and justice is created by Chris Moser and Alison DeBelder and engineered by Chris Higgins. Thanks for listening. To help us out, please subscribe to the podcast. Leave a star rating and review for us on Apple Podcasts and share with others who might be interested. Follow us and share your feedback on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Trauma Injustice.