Chief John Drake on Keeping Nashville Safe
Chief John Drake, Metro Nashville’s Chief of Police, joins us for a wide ranging conversation on leadership, trust, and what it actually means to serve a city that has changed dramatically over the last few decades. With nearly four decades in law enforcement and deep roots in Nashville, Drake shares how his early experiences shaped his view of policing, why community engagement is not a side project but a core pillar of public safety, and how MNPD thinks about precision policing, transparency, and crime prevention at the neighborhood level. We also talk candidly about moments that have tested the city and its first responders, the mental health toll of crisis leadership, and why the best policing today looks less like force and more like patience, presence, and accountability.
About Chief John Drake
Chief John Drake is the Chief of Police for the Metro Nashville Police Department, leading more than 2,000 sworn officers and staff with a leadership philosophy rooted in service, compassion, and community trust. A Nashville native, Chief Drake brings nearly four decades of law enforcement experience, paired with a deep personal understanding of the communities he serves.
Growing up in East Nashville, Chief Drake’s early experiences with policing were not always positive. Those moments shaped his desire not just to wear the badge, but to redefine what it represents. Encouraged by a family member who believed change could come from within, he joined the police department in 1988 with a simple goal: to help people and make Nashville safer.
Throughout his career, Chief Drake has served in patrol, narcotics, youth outreach, and leadership roles, rising from officer to Chief of Police. Along the way, pivotal moments such as working undercover, mentoring at-risk youth, and witnessing the long-term impact of community investment reshaped his focus. He became a strong advocate for early intervention, officer wellness, and meeting people with dignity rather than judgment.
Leadership & Community Impact
Chief Drake’s approach to policing extends far beyond enforcement. He has championed:
Youth mentorship and Police Activities League programs that reach children before they enter the justice system
Officer wellness initiatives and trauma-informed counseling for first responders
Transparent data tools that empower citizens to understand and improve neighborhood safety
Innovative public-private partnerships, including a downtown police substation funded by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood
Community engagement efforts that humanize law enforcement through visibility, service, and presence
His work reflects a belief that safer cities are built through relationships, not fear.
Resources
Metro Nashville Police Department
Police Activities League Programs
American Cancer Society – Real Men Wear Pink
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Spencer: [00:00:00] Welcome to Signature Required. It is intended for Tennesseans by Tennesseans, the heart of a Tennesseean. The volunteer state is serve, and we do so largely without self-promotion.
Carli: And these are genuine people that get up every day and want to make art or want to educate the nations, or want to have a heart of love in a way that makes a difference.
Spencer: Learn from 50 years of experience. Take a nugget away and then go share it with a friend.
Chief John Drake. You're the Chief of police for Metro Nashville. Welcome to Signature Required. Thank you for having me. It's such an honor to be here. I have to make the obligatory joke that when you came to our studio, and I have police officers walking through my hall here in uniform, which for those that are not watching here, people look at me and wonder what's going on and what kind of shop that I'm
Carli: running here do.
Yeah. And what [00:01:00] did you do, Spencer? It would be
Chief Drake: great if I pulled out a set of handcuffs, I mean, when I walked up to you, but, eh, woo. Maybe next time.
Spencer: I'm thankful to have you as our guest today. Thank you. And we like to start off each of our podcasts with just getting to know people a little bit.
I have so many things that I want to ask you about. You play an incredible role in our community. You have been a police officer since I've been in diapers. Oh, wow. And it's amazing. I hope that made you feel old, by the way. Made me feel, yeah.
Very. We didn't make
Carli: him feel comfy in this studio.
Spencer: Yeah. So I want to just ask you a couple questions just so we can learn about who Chief Drake is. Sure. Let's talk about, I hear you're a foodie. Okay. I wanna know, what's your favorite food when you've had a long day? You want a comfort food, you want something to just take the edge off? What do you go
Chief Drake: to?
So I either do steak or sea bass. Those are my two go-tos. I love to do a surfing turf. Okay. And I actually wound up [00:02:00] buying this cow. And the meat from the cow actually
Carli: say as you do when you live in metro Nashville, you just buy a cow. That's right. If I'm clearance, I had a
Chief Drake: friend call me and said, Hey, I got these three cows.
Do you want one? And I bought one cow, 530 pounds. I had 530 pounds of beef in a freezer, which is. Crazy. It's insane. But so I go in and I wanted my steaks to all be two and a half to three inches thick. Which are huge. And and so that's my go-to. I do steak, sea bass, and then either asparagus or spinach is my go-tos.
Carli: We need to up park, aim. Clearly
Spencer: I was expecting something entirely different and that's what's so fun about the question is like you just get. The wildest answers that we've had different guests that all of us just have our go-to things, you know?
Chief Drake: You know, I do a theme dinner as well, and so I do all the cooking in my family.
So Thanksgiving I do a dinner, but at Christmas I do theme dinners. And so I've done Sweden. I've done Peruvian, [00:03:00] Mexican German Mexican. So I do all these foods and I've done New Orleans, which I did a gumbo which is pretty cool, but it's, it adds, I broke the tradition. Our family would always do the traditional meal, the Turkey, ham, all that stuff, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
And I said, I'm gonna break this up. And so Christmas, it's a fun thing to do for different countries and
Carli: I'm so with you. Yeah. I'm so sick of Turkey. And that's like a hot take. I know. We never do Turkey either.
Chief Drake: Yeah. Yeah. It gets old after a while. I tell you what, when I did the gumbo I almost messed it up.
I mean, 'cause you have to do the rule. And it got hot. I had to take it off the heat for a minute and get it back. But it turned out perfect. So it was good
Carli: for you.
Chief Drake: Yeah. Thank you. Another question
Spencer: we like to ask everybody is, what was your favorite childhood toy?
Chief Drake: Favorite childhood toy was a slinky.
If you remember those. Absolutely. I was the people like, what is that? I'm so old. But it was a great toy. That way you could play with it and make it kind of [00:04:00] flip and do things. So
Spencer: Yeah. You don't wanna sing the commercial song about the slinky right here, do you? I
Chief Drake: don't
Spencer: want to do that.
So the jingle,
Carli: you keep putting him on the spot. I just wanna go make gumbo with him. Leave him alone. There you go.
Spencer: Yeah. Chief Drake as I mentioned before, it's a real privilege for us to be able to have you on here. I feel like when people see the header of who we have on today, there's all kinds of assumptions.
Probably mostly wrong about what the Chief of Police does. Yes. So will you just take a second and talk about what your responsibility is and then we'll kind of roll back the clock and talk about your history. But what is it that you do?
Chief Drake: My responsibility is to make sure that 2000 men and women at work for the police department go in a direction that I want them to go to ensure the public safety of Nashville to ensure the constitutional rights of people are upheld and to make forth a safe city.
And so we design initiatives and practices to go out and target individuals that are [00:05:00] committing harm. Go out, engage community to show the friendly side of who we are. So I put three core pillars in place. Organizational excellence, being good as a police department, being good people, doing things the right way.
Community engagement, letting people to know that we love, we laugh, we cry that we're people, but we also love people and we're very much part of the community. And then precision policing. We identify the people that are committing harm and we do something about that. And so we set the direction based on that, and we've been able to drive crime down various aspects.
We look at crime that's occurring in different parts of town, whether it's robberies, burglaries, all are tailored to micro micro areas. And so it's just we set the tone, set the fates. I'm in meetings all day looking at crime looking at community, meeting with people and ensuring that, you know, they're heard and we're heard.
And just a lot of engagement.
Spencer: I feel like you are in a season where [00:06:00] the term police and being a police officer is as complicated and as conflicted.
As a season as we've ever been in, it has charged feelings based upon where you are and who you are, and I just wonder. What you view the landscape of your role, trying to have excellence for these 2000 men and women amongst a backdrop that you'd probably rather not have all of the rest of the stuff.
I mean, it's you're not a politician, at least I don't think so. You know, you're wanting to impact your community. How do you wrestle with the dynamic and the charge that comes with the responsibility and the role that you have?
Chief Drake: You know, I try to make sure that we put a good product out there, that we have good people, that we engage community, that we listen to them and we deal with crime and issues and concerns that plague different communities.
But we also [00:07:00] try to make sure that we separate ourselves. We're the only profession in America that gets grouped together for crimes that occur. If you have a politician that gets arrested in New York. Or indicted in DC or arrested for smoking crack in Pennsylvania. All these politicians are just unique to this city.
But when a police officer does something bad, and it only happens periodically there's millions of interactions before a police officer does something bad, and then we're all vilified. And so I try to make sure that they, that we're we're viewed separately and that we're judged on what we do for the city that we serve.
And that's been pretty pretty good for us. I equate that to going to your favorite fast food restaurant. And you go to your favorite fast food restaurant, you get a hamburger, fries, grape food, great service, you love them. And the next week you go across town, you go to the same chain and you get the, a burger that's cold, fries is cold, and the service is horrible.
You just say. This is a bad [00:08:00] restaurant. The other restaurant, I'm just gonna keep going to that one. And I want people to realize we're the same way. That some actors in law enforcement may do the wrong thing, but overall, 99% is a great profession and try to make sure people know that and it works here.
So people, all the community engagement that we do they see me out in dunking booths letting people dunk me, and I'm smiling all the time and I'm picking up babies. That's what I thought I was gonna do when I first became chief. I was gonna be picking up babies, kissing babies, hugging people, and 25 days later we have a Christmas Day bombing.
You know, it's just all kinda things, but it's it's been a great profession to show who we are to show my heart to show that I'm a fun person. I'm a caring person. I believe in getting the job done. I'm a country boy hard, although I'm from Nashville, but I believe in working hard and getting the job done, but, and we've.
We are we've done what we need to do.
Carli: Yeah. You and Vince have in common that you're both Nashville [00:09:00] unicorns. That's right. You're people that are from here that have stayed here to serve. So did you grow up knowing you wanted to be. In Nashville and serving your community this way, when did you know you were gonna be a police officer?
Chief Drake: You know, that's a great question because growing up I grew up in East Nashville and the area I grew up in we just didn't really see the police that much. And when we did, they were coming in arresting people. And so I didn't see the police officers in a good light. In fact the two instances I know of from a family perspective, I had a relative that was run over in 1974 by members of the police department.
It's a different police department back then. And then I remember they were investigating a crime. And so I get called into the guidance counselor's office in high school, and I think it's two coaches recruiting for football. And I go in and I'm thinking, you know, get a good offer from somebody.
And it's two detectives from the Metro Nashville Police Department. And they hold up this picture of this guy, and he's a male black. He has on a red shirt. I on [00:10:00] that day have on a red shirt. And then they said hey, we're investigating this rape of an 89-year-old lady, and this looks like you. And I looked at the picture and I said, that doesn't look like me.
That looks nothing like me. And they said we have a fingerprint that can clear you or convict you. And so they pull me outta school, they take me down to juvenile and they they take this print comparison and it's negative. They take me back don't take me to school. They take me to my house, drop me off on the sidewalk and pull off.
They never talked to my parents. And I had this disdained for law enforcement. And then years later I had a cousin who came on the police department and said, Hey, you know, we can make a difference in how people view us. We can show people that we really want to help people that we really care.
because law enforcement has changed over the past decades. And I said, let's do it. I, I. Definitely want to help people. And that's what drew me into the profession. A cousin actually who could talk me into anything almost except bad stuff. And that's and you know, funny thing is that [00:11:00] I got hired and he didn't, and he came on a year later and got hired.
So he called me, said, did you get hired? I said, yeah. I said, did you? He said, no. So the rest was history
Spencer: maybe. Give us a walkthrough of some of that timeline of your evolution of when you came into the force and some of the milestones along the way. 'cause it's a really incredible trajectory that you've traveled.
Chief Drake: It really is. And so I started in 1988. Just put in for the department. Uncertain of what the future held for me. I just wanted to be a police officer, wanted to help people, and came on. I wanted to spend maybe 30 years and get out and go into the private sector. And so I came on patrol worked west Precinct.
I had a really bad area of town, one of the worst areas of town where we had officers that had been killed in the line of duty and all these things. And so I went there and and made a big difference. Crime really dropped. I was really proactive, but I went [00:12:00] above and beyond 'cause my caring heart.
I remember taking a burglary call in this housing development and this lady, it was about three days before Christmas. This lady's looked in this lady's house. The Christmas tree was knocked over, all the toys was gone, all the food was gone. And she was just literally in tears. And I remember saying, Hey, I can just take a report and move on, let detectives work it.
But I went and bought toys and bicycles and food, and I remember taking them back and just, she was just crying with tears of joy. And that's something I talk about all the time is going above and beyond the call of duty. We're not just there to take a report and we're not just there to make an arrest.
We're there to actually help people and do good. And so I try to make sure our men and women do that. They actually do that. I've seen cases where they do that now. So my career span from there, I went, I always wanted to work narcotics. Went there. I was investigating. Some people did undercover work.
And then I befriended this guy who. [00:13:00] Ironically would bring his son around on some of the deals. And I felt horrible because I kind of liked this guy, which it sounds crazy for an undercover cop. And and then it came time to arrest him and we arrested him and his son was there. And I remember looking at these tears and I was like, I'm not making a difference.
I felt like I, I hurt more than I helped, although this person was selling drugs and and really, you know, dangerous drugs in the community, cocaine and et cetera. And so I decided I wanted to go in the police athletic league. I really wanted to help kids and I wanted to do different based on what I dealt with this person.
And and so I started a program of about a hundred kids that grew to 1300. I became one of the biggest and best in the country. NFL New York came down and said that, said it was one of the best they've seen. They gave us money to put a football field at Litton middle school. It's still standing today a couple of hundred thousand dollars for that.
And so I felt really [00:14:00] good about that. And then I decided that I wanted to go into leadership after having a supervisor. I had a mask taken outta my leg and they thought it was cancer. And they're talking about all these things. And I had a sergeant call me and I was hoping he would say, Hey, how are you?
You know, what are you doing? You know, how can we help you? And he was more, Hey, you know, your name's on the calendar and people can't take a vacation, and when are you coming back to work? And I remember. Hanging up the phone, I was literally in tears. I was like, man, I'm doing all this good work. I'm up for Office of the Month and all these things, accommodations and they didn't care.
And I said, I want to go into supervision where I could actually lead people. I could actually help people. I could have compassion, but also lead to where we could have effectively deal with crime. So I got promoted to sergeant and from 2007 to 2020, I went from Sergeant to chief of police. And it was pretty incredible.
Spencer: When you go back to the beginning, passion for narcotics, it [00:15:00] sounds like that experience really did move your career into an entirely different trajectory. What was the root of why that was the area that you wanted to focus on? Focus.
Chief Drake: Because one, I grew up in a quite different part of town where all of that stuff was was prevalent.
I remember going trick or treating as a little boy, going to a house, knocking on a door saying trick or treat. And there was four guys playing cards and there was a revolver sitting on the table. And that's the area I grew up in and people selling drugs and doing things. And and I, you know, wanted to, I wanted to read the community of that.
'cause I thought it was very harmful, especially growing up the way I did. And so I wanted to do that. But when. You know, I have this thing that no matter what some people do I like him and I love, my heart is with people and I liked this guy I was dealing with and I knew I was really conflicted.
'cause [00:16:00] I knew we were gonna have to arrest this guy one day. And then I met his son. And I was like, I like his son. I'm high fiving him and doing stuff, and I'm like, God, this is not gonna be good one day. And and so it came time to arrest his dad. And we seized a bunch of things from the house and all these things and and I just felt I'm, I was better suited at that time to help the community through helping kids changing their trajectory.
The reason why that was so important to me is because I went to school with three other kids. They wound up going to prison bank robbery, drugs drugs was prevalent in the neighborhood. And the only thing that saved me was coaches. I was an athlete coaches that took me under their wing.
They saw something in me, I didn't see in myself. Coach even paid for my tuxedo to go to the prom because I couldn't afford it. And and they still coach me today. I, if I have a bad day, something doesn't turn out. So right in the police department, one of the coaches of tech say, Hey, take it on the chin today, but keep moving forward.
Keep your head up keep doing it. Or [00:17:00] they'll say, Hey, great job and we're proud of you as a, you know, old. I'm not an old man, but you know, as an older guy, it still feels good to see the evolution of people that cared about me and changed my trajectory. And so that's why I wanted to change other people.
Carli: Can you tell me a little bit more about the community program you started? Because I. He, we hear about a lot of nonprofits and community programs. I had no idea the police department was so active and certain individuals such as yourself would be so active in that type of work. So can you talk about how those go together a little bit more?
Chief Drake: Oh, absolutely. And you know, we do programs like the police activities league, and I changed that from the police athletic league when I did it, is because we wanna meet kids where they are. And every kid is not an athlete. And so we have cops and chorus kids that can sing. We bring them in and sing.
We're doing a program with New York. New York City is gonna be here in a couple of weeks to talk about a program we're gonna do together. Tony [00:18:00] Danza helped the program in New York City. And so we do golf exposing kids to golf, exposing kids to hockey. We built a soccer pitch at Midtown Hills.
All I knew growing up was football because they were easy to get to basketball and and baseball and, but exposing kids to other things and just connecting through that, through these programs, we've been able to find kids that didn't have beds. We've been able to go through the fraternal oil of police and get beds find people, kids that or families didn't have food.
We may able to work with Second Harvest Food Bank and other places to, to help kids that are struggling. We tutor we have programs where we help kids so struggling. The precursor to a lot of problems we have in the community is when kids are struggling, they don't have food, they don't have a stable background and all these things are going wrong.
They kind of start lashing out and the only mechanism that they had was juvenile or punishment or whatever. [00:19:00] So meet 'em before they get there and do these programs. Excuse me. And it's been really good. And we partner with the community a lot. We do over 2000 community events. Every year I've done anything you can do from going in Dunking Booths to going up on one of these have you ever seen the lift trucks with NES, where they lift you up way?
And so I had some people talk me into doing that. So I let 'em strap me in and I went up there and and I got up there and the guy from NES, he looked at me, he said, you okay? I said, yeah, I'm okay, but let's go back down. You know, I had enough of it. But anything I can do to engage the community to show who we are as people I think people see the uniform and they don't see the smiling and sometimes you see them in their worst moments, but the.
Actually let people see us. You know, the smiles, the giving, the caring building trust is important to me and it's important to the mission. The overall mission is making our community safer and better but also showing people that we're good people too.
Carli: You've seen a lot in your tenure.
[00:20:00] Some big events that I'm sure we're gonna hit, but the one that hits heaviest on my heart is obviously the Day of the Covenant shooting. Our kids go to school across the street from the Covenant School, and it was originally tweeted that it was our school that this tragedy was happening to. And so it was very personal.
But I remember. My son was actually going to preschool. At the reunification site? Yeah. Where all the kids were meeting up with their parents. That church is where my son went to preschool. And I went and picked him up that day. And he was so excited to see your officers, his memory of that day coming out with mommy.
Look at how cool. Look at all the police officers. And I tell you, he wore his little police vest every day. I think it was at least six months. I have a six month stretch where Solomon only wore a police vest over his clothes. That's awesome. Every day. And so I wanna commend you guys on your response and talk about that a little bit, but also say, [00:21:00] being in the community, my son left a tragic day.
Feeling so positive by your presence. Thank you. And that's one of the things we take,
Chief Drake: you know, that was a day that I'll never, ever forget. It's a day that, you know, we had trained for years. I trained for active shooters. We all have. And we knew. That during training that there was a possibility that, you know, we may not make it out.
We all say that as we go through training. You train that, you go in and you go after the stimulus which is the shooter, and you step over whoever's harmed. And on this particular day, that morning, I met with a group that morning. It was a beautiful day little crisp kind of cool but beautiful blue skies, a little bit of clouds.
And I left my first meeting and I was on Cloud nine because one of the best meetings I had, we were getting ready to promote some people and we had assessors from all over the country in and and just left really feeling good. And I got back to headquarters and we got notifications as an active [00:22:00] shooter and and Don Aron and one of the assistant chiefs said, Hey, it's it's active.
And we flew out ran emergency, got there and it was chaos. We have officers coming out that had blooded hands and glass broken and police cars that are shot up. And we found out that day that there was six people tragically killed. Three of those were kids nine years old. Three were adults.
That worked at the school. And and I went in to see the aftermath. Yeah, and it took me a minute to be able to talk about that. I couldn't talk about it without literally tearing up in front of people. But on that day we went in, our men and women did the right thing. It's what we trained to do.
We go in, they stepped over people that had been harmed, went and took care of the person that was harming people. And then we tried to save the people that had been killed to no avail. I saw video officers were picking up lifeless [00:23:00] bodies rushing out, just trying to find a way to help these, these people and we sent kids down to to a church. I don't say the church, but we didn't even give them notification. We just said, we know this is a good church. They're always helpful. Let's send there, let's do the let re reunification site there. We've since now called it the Family Assistance Center because we know that some people are not gonna be reunited with their kids.
And that was just a tragic day. We made the most of it men and women stepped up. They went to the family assistance site, helped with getting kids and parents back connected. They were loving and coaching. Our counselors came out and tried to make the best of every kid that was there, and that's why some didn't know really what happened.
They. Kind of what happened, but they didn't know the third graders they took on the brunt of the gunfire through the door. And every time I see one of [00:24:00] the kids, I can be in public or somewhere, and a parent will come up and they'll say, this is my daughter. And she was in the third grade. And when they say third grade, I automatically know that they were in that classroom taking on gunfire.
I listened to the videos of people asking for help telling the kids to be quiet. It's it hurt me beyond hurt because I love people and I love kids. I went to every funeral. I remember going to one of the funerals. It was that covenant actually. And and they took flowers down to the little girl that was killed.
And the kids were. In kind of a decent mood for what they were doing. And they all walked by and they looked at us and they said, thank you for your service. And I remember we were all sitting over there just crying. All the first responders, police officers, firefighters, everybody we're just crying.
And the kids were different because they had such a strong belief in God that they felt like their classmate was in a better place. And it made my [00:25:00] faith a little better because I had to relook at my journey and what I believe in. But it was it's a day I never forget. It's a growing community of people.
Every time there's a. School shooting we call each other. We're in touch. The officers that went in go through something every time they get an award, if you watch 'em, you can see 'em fidgeting. 'Cause they, when although they get an award, they having to relive that moment. They have to relive what they saw.
We all have to do it. And when there's a shooting somewhere else, there was one in Minneapolis and we're talking to parents and we're talking to officers, and I'm talking to a parent from Parkland whose son was killed. This community is growing of people that's connected through this tragic and senseless and crazy violence that we're seeing.
But covenant I'll never, ever forget it.
Carli: So can I ask you about the mental health of the first responders? Because in the prayer community, our school is [00:26:00] so connected to Covenant, there was a huge call for prayer for the people that did go in and for their just. Recovery's not the right word, but they're coming back into the workforce and coming out of that experience.
With everything you've seen and done, what does the department do to help? Because I can't imagine the trauma that you guys interact with every day.
Chief Drake: Oh, yeah. We have one of the best wellness programs in the country. We have counselors that have a master's level in wellness and counseling and so they all go through post incident debriefing individual counseling.
We didn't wanna put anyone in front of the media until they were ready. Had a conversation with Don Aaron and the officers actually, and and told them if if the media wants to do an avail and you don't want to, you don't have to. Because I think what people forget sometimes is that when you do an interview or when you give someone an award that's done, that they have to sit there and relive that moment.
And and so even from every level from my [00:27:00] not make, letting them make the decision if they want it to be available for media briefings, if you recall, in some of the briefings, all five weren't there. It may have been two, it may have been three because the others just weren't ready for that.
And and then so they they went through extensive counseling to when they felt they were ready. And we really learned that from the Christmas day bombing. So we had the bombing December 25th, two days later. We, it was just a horrible year, one of the worst years in policing 2020. And we we put the officers out there.
It did the world a lot of good. I was getting emails from all over the world, but those officers literally in front of everyone cried. And they shivered and they shook. And we realized then we should have waited. We should have waited and and let the counselors make the decision when officers was ready.
So we, we do a lot of things to make sure that they're okay.
Spencer: You know, something unique and valuable about [00:28:00] your experiences being from here? You have seen this community change tremendously. And I think policing as a whole looks really different now than it did 10 years ago than it did 20 years ago.
The types of things that you have to be prepared for are different. And I think that's also true with the growth of Nashville. You have a lot of communities in Nashville that have. Lived in one place that now they can't live there anymore. The dynamics are different. Can you talk about some of the evolution of policing?
'cause I think just the two examples that you've talked about, school shootings and bombings downtown, like those were not things that 1990s Nashville was contemplating or thinking about.
Chief Drake: It wasn't, policing was a lot different. When I came on back in 1988 when I first got in a police car, you had a police radio in there.
That was it. You had a [00:29:00] police radio on your side and you had a night stick and it was. Take the call, get to the call, get done as quickly as possible. If you have to make an arrest. You have to use force. You have to use force, but get done and stay in, in service. It wasn't about building trust.
It wasn't about having compassion in the community. It was almost like the dragnet, Hey, nothing but the facts. Nothing but the facts. I don't care about you. I don't need you to care about me. I just wanna do a job. And so the evolution has been community policing building trust in the community.
And I think a lot of things we deal with in law enforcement today from the ills of law enforcement 30, 40, 50 years ago the way policing was done it was done in a manner. It wasn't as caring as now. It was you know, when I first came on, you could have a use of force incident and there wasn't even a form for use of force.
Now every time there's a use of force, there's a form that has to be completed on every [00:30:00] one, and it has to be critiqued to make sure that the officer did the right thing and didn't overstep. There weren't body-worn cameras, so you didn't know really what happened at the scene of an incident. If someone called in to complain you had to take really the officer's word because it was.
You know, two words against each other which, which weighs more. Now we can look at body-worn camera. Now we can investigate better. We teach compassion. We teach understanding. We teach deescalation which is important, and it's something I talk about in our police department all the time.
I'd rather have. A 30 minute conversation than a 32nd fight any day. Because then you can, everybody leaves and you're okay. And we've been able to have some very tough times deescalated by having a conversation and having people come back off from getting ready to jump off a bridge or when they're getting ready to have a shootout with police officers or when they're getting ready to harm someone, being able to talk them off of that without using [00:31:00] force.
The evolution is good. Trust was harmed back in the day. It wasn't built, it wasn't a part of what we did. It wasn't trained in the academy. It was take a report, do your job, get back in service. Now it's about building trust, learning your community. Knowing the people you're dealing with, helping the people you're dealing with, and then going above and beyond for things that they may need.
And I talk about the burglary that I went on. I want people to have that kind of compassion and not just take a report and leave, but actually how can I help this family beyond what my job calls for at this moment? Who can I connect them with? And that's important. So
Carli: I know one of the things I'm reading about a lot in the news is this new crime dashboard and how you guys are monitoring crime and really trying to focus, you even called it micro communities, like know what is happening and where it's happening.
Can you, for people that haven't read about that, share a little bit about what you're doing to document [00:32:00] and really target. What you're up to.
Chief Drake: Absolutely. And you know, I would go to a lot of meetings and I would get asked the same questions all the time. And I would answer the same way. And I'd say, you know, being transparent, maybe if we put these dashboards up there on the most commonly asked questions, you know, how is crime?
Is it up or down? What's going on? How are motor vehicle thefts? How are homicides? How's the community feeling about the police department? We put these dashboards out there. The latest one was on guns. Gun thefts are up year to date and it's a growing problem. We've had over 974 guns stolen this year alone.
And all those guns are gonna be used in a crime somewhere. They're gonna be used in a homicide or a robbery or carjacking or some other type of crime, a drug deal. And put that out there to show one, Hey, this crime is happening in your community. This area has been impacted the most. Maybe if you can secure your weapons we can combat this a little better.
And people [00:33:00] can have it right at their fingertips. They can look and see whatever's plagued in their neighborhood and actually be able to do something about it. And and so just being transparent helping people help us make Nashville safer. And so when they look at this, they're like, okay, yeah.
People in our neighborhood need to put the guns up. We need to put our guns up. We need to cut our lights on, and we need to help make Nashville safe too. And these dashboards are vital to that. And it's just part of being transparent as a police department. I'm not afraid that one day it may be, Hey, crime is up.
'cause crime goes up, crime goes down. But we're gonna try to combat it to keep it down. But I want people to know what's happening.
Spencer: Something that I think Nashville has done a really good job is leaning into all the new technologies, all the different evolutions that much smaller police departments just can't have access to.
So when you think about some of the interesting opportunities to [00:34:00] incorporate technology, maybe it's tools, psychology, whatever it is, what are some things that maybe the public wouldn't know about at large, but that. The Nashville Police Department is able to utilize.
Chief Drake: Oh wow. Yeah, that's a good one.
So the police car now has changed from when I was an officer where you had just a radio in the car. Now it's a rolling office. You have, when I came out and we did traffic citations, we had paper. And if it's raining, it's gonna get wet, it's gonna tear up. It's frustrating. Now it's all done on a pad.
You do the citation, it's done electronically. The reports are done electronically. When we would do accident reports, it was cumbersome. 'cause you had the all these pages that you're flipping through and you're, you erasing this and drawing this. Now it's it's done on a digital format.
We had the maps when I would respond to calls, we had a handy map. And so you're flipping it around while you're driving emergency, you got your lights and siren going and you're trying to. You know, get your map right. And I remember running the emergency once and I went down this street [00:35:00] and it was a dead end and I had my lights going and siren and everybody's looking.
And I was like, oops. Wrong place. You know, with technology today they have GPS on the computers in the car. They have them on their cell phones. Every officer has a cell phone issued by the police department. That wasn't the case when I came on. So if they need to call someone or someone needs to call them, they have direct access to the officer.
So technology's better. We have a community safety center now. It's a real time crime center. I get away from these old terminology type concepts. And so we call it the community safety center and we're able to pull up real time the video cameras, we have different areas. If we have a special event, we can look at Nissan Stadium or we can look at Broadway or wherever.
So technology is playing a big part. Of course, there's technology I would like to have. And we just haven't been able to to get it yet, but we're working on it
Carli: okay. I have a couple of questions that this is the only time, Lord willing, that I'm [00:36:00] going to be this close to the chief of police and get to ask whatever I want and hopefully I will not be interrogated someday.
You're asking me questions. While we got you in the hot seat, I have to ask the stupid questions that I've always wondered about all things. So when you're driving down the highway. Your lights aren't on, but you're clearly in a cop car. Does it annoy the tar out of you that everyone goes like five below the speed limit and pauses and you can't get where you're going?
Chief Drake: It does sometimes, and it would frustrate you. Or on the flip side of that, when someone would like, blow by you and you're like, oh, I gotta pull this person over because if I don't, I'm gonna get in trouble because I let this person speed by me. So you're dealing with both dynamics, but people will slow down and you're in a 60 or 65 and they're doing 50 and I don't have hair.
But you like pulling, you know, you come on. Yeah, it does
Carli: because you've got places to go too.
Chief Drake: You do. Yeah. And you want to drive the speed limit, but people are, you know, considerate. Most of them. But now post 2020 people are different people. People are [00:37:00] blow by a police car now and you know, and then they're surprised when they get pulled over.
Okay.
Carli: Number two.
Chief Drake: Okay. Where
Carli: I come from. You were always really careful at the end of the month to go the speed limit because you got pulled over so many more times. All my buddies, we get pulled over the last five days. It maybe not your police department, but is that myth true that there's a quota
Chief Drake: and we
Carli: should be perhaps more careful certain times than others?
Chief Drake: You know, it, that's not a part of our police department. I've heard that rumor before. It's not something that I can remember us ever practicing. I remember we had a chief come from New Orleans and he was big on stats and pulling people over, but at the end of the month we never had that.
It was just make sure that you did daily performance. But having quotas no. I can't remember ever having that. And
Carli: this is my last one, I promise.
Chief Drake: Yeah.
Carli: We drive to church down a really sneaky road. Okay. And we at least see three police cars [00:38:00] along the way of, they just are always so sneaky.
They're moving around and like the best hidden spots. And it's one of those horrible roads where you have to go so slow and then the minute you ease up. Inevitably, someone's in a really sneaky spot. Do you guys like share your sneaky spots or are you always looking for the place to hide? Or are they just clever?
I would imagine going to the Christmas party and be like, dude, I found the best spot. I got
Chief Drake: like 10 of 'em.
Carli: You know,
Chief Drake: You know, it's a little bit of both. They share spots on, on, on what's effective and then they're clever too. You know, as you're driving, sometimes you can see, you go, you crest a hill and you come down and you hit this wine and you got this little open spot.
You say, oh, that's a good spot to sit because someone's gonna come blowing through here. They're gonna not expect a police officer to be here. And sure enough, you're sitting in a 45 mile an hour zone and here comes someone at 70. And and the funny thing is, you know, you pull 'em over and you tell 'em they were doing seven, no, I was doing 45.
I wasn't speaking no way did you think you were, [00:39:00] you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Carli: Okay. And my stereotypical question, I'm sorry.
Chief Drake: Go ahead. I love them.
Carli: Do cops really like donuts? Is that like the thing? Do you always have about a box of Krispy Kres rocking,
Chief Drake: you know. A lot of police officers don't go to donut shop for that very reason.
But we do like donuts. I you know, so this funny thing I was working out the other day and I was on, finished my workout on the treadmill and on this big screen was this thing for Shipley's Donuts. And it had this picture that would draw anybody into buying donuts. So it was a stack of four donuts with this drizzly gray glaze going down.
And I was like, so I'm on the treadmill on this guy of all places on the treadmill. Yeah. This guy beside me goes, oh God, I can't believe they're doing this. And I look and I'm like, what? And it's the picture of the donuts. And I was like, oh man, that looks good. So I get through working out and I'm sweating and I'm doing all this, and I drive by ship, please.
And I say, why [00:40:00] not? That's
Carli: awesome.
Chief Drake: I stopped and took him into the office. I let everybody else share in the punishment, you know, the shame. But I ate like a donut and ate. You know, kill them.
Okay.
Chief Drake: We do like
Spencer: them.
Carli: Okay. Just checking.
Spencer: No, chief Drake, I'm not gonna let Carli get away with the only kind of indulgent opportunity to ask questions.
So now I got a story that I want to tell you. You probably know it, but for the benefit of our audience, I wanna know whether you ever have the opportunity to hatch plans like the one that I'm about to describe. Okay. Okay. So you may recognize it, but a couple decades ago I think this was in Chicago, there was a police department that coordinated with the Chicago Bears and the police.
Hatched this plan to send out notices of free tickets, like a free family day experience at the stadium. But the key is that the notices were sent to every last known address [00:41:00] of people that were on the run in one way or another. They had skip bail persons of interest, whatever it was. They're all out there.
And the Chicago Bears Stadium was occupied by a couple hundred undercover officers that were dressed as if it was a family day carnival. And so when the people show up thinking that they have a free ticket, they go inside the Bears Stadium and. Slowly but surely they're taken off into a locker room to where they're actually it's one big trap and kind of the master plan is revealed.
Now, I can think of all kinds of reasons why that's dangerous and not allowed and against the law and all sorts of stuff. Community.
Carli: Let's use a community event to trap people. Yeah.
Spencer: But I wonder what I'm really getting at is there's all kinds of kind of creativity that may be the opposite of anything that, that policing should be.
But then at the same time, maybe it is that [00:42:00] creativity that. Does kind of yield results that's different than how we've al already done it. So can you speak to some of that?
Chief Drake: Yeah, I can speak to some of that. I mean, that's very clever of Chicago to do that. I don't know if that would work here with the Titans or not.
I think people look on the schedule and see, Hey, maybe I don't like that particular team, or see, maybe it's not a game going on, et cetera, and, then they wouldn't show up. But we've had some things where we've tried to draw people in and have drawn people in for various things come in to have a conversation and to, take care of business that way. But we haven't as being that creative we try not to trick a lot of people. So I can
Spencer: appreciate it won't help the reputation. It was not it. You may have a good day, but the trust in the community is probably demolished from their forward.
Chief Drake: It would be gone. Yeah.
And so no, that would not be would not be a good thing. But, you know, sometimes the way to find people is to say, we just want to talk to you [00:43:00] when you know that you need to do a lot more. That's about as creative as we get as far as criminals we do police in the old fashioned way. I believe in doing surveillance looking up being an investigator finding addresses, find last known addresses, finding.
Associates finding family members and then you can narrow down to where that person might be and then using technology to find them. The cell phone people worry about a lot of things, but the cell phone tells everything. And you can find people we've had wanted criminals that's in another state somewhere and be able to find them based on their cell phone.
So yeah.
Spencer: What's it like for you when you have the opportunities to go into communities and talk to young men that maybe weren't dissimilar from the boy in the red shirt? And that was a really moving story. I mean, you have a level of authenticity to be [00:44:00] able to speak into situations that is very special.
You are holding a chief of police role. That I think you're the second African American to hold that role. That's an incredible opportunity. And so can you just talk for a moment that the chances that you've had to impact from your unique seat. Because I just feel like it's a special moment in the history of Nashville.
Chief Drake: It really is, and it's something that I take very personally. I I wanna make sure people know my journey you know, where I come from. I grew up my dad was blind. My mom was disabled. And I really, you know, walked to school every year except my seventh grade year when I was bused.
And I was just in an environment where there was a lot of things going on. And I try to make sure kids know that no matter where you come from no matter what your circumstances are you can be whatever you wanna be. I say that a lot of times to a lot of kids. because a lot of times you don't have [00:45:00] hope.
You're in these neighborhoods and you see these things going on, and you think everybody lives this certain way. I didn't know a whole other world existed. Outside of where I grew up. I didn't know people really cared about you, where you lived, you know? And so I try to make sure that I put that out there.
But I also try to make sure people know that my journey hasn't always been it's, I sit in this seat. I used to not cut. I had this bad speech impediment and I had a teacher that helped me with that. And if I wanted to say, Hey, I'm gonna be on this podcast, I would be like, but I couldn't get it out. You would be trying to make my words for me because I couldn't get it.
And I had a teacher say, Hey your mind is out racing your mouth just slow down. And I share this with kids who, you know, when kids laugh, 'cause I used to be scared to death to speak in public. I would literally start sweating profusely because I would, you know, just was scared. And so when I see a kid.
That that stutters, I'll give 'em a dap and say, you're gonna be okay. You know, [00:46:00] and and I'll give 'em a hug or I'll do something. I just try to make sure they know that whatever they're dealing with, whatever circumstances where they live, whatever's going on it can be better. Just put your mind to it.
Keep your head up, keep moving forward. You know, I've had people tell me that people like me really should be in an institution somewhere. I had someone tell me that actually that lived in Chicago. And I just I'm thankful that coaches and peoples saw in the neighborhoods saw something in me, and that's why I try to impart that on other people.
I've done as a young man right now that's a police officer with the Atlanta Police Department. The only reason he's not in Nashville, he didn't have the college and we required at least 60 hours of college. So he joined the Atlanta Police Department because of me. He met me in Powell when he was five years old.
And he actually encountered an individual. He had a call in Atlanta of a person with a rifle in Midtown Atlanta. He encounters individual fires and the rifle around [00:47:00] grazes his forehead a half a inch, and he wouldn't be here today. And one of the first people he called was me. And I'm like his one of his parents.
And so when he got promoted to sergeant, he had me come down last year for his pen in ceremony. And you have his stepdad there and his mom, and all these uncles and all these people. And the person that got the pen, his badge on. It was me, and that was important because I've known that. W the role I played in his life and and thousands of others just to have that opportunity to give them hope.
Because when you live in certain neighborhoods, you feel like people don't care about you. You feel like when you don't have, you know, I was buying food when I was a cutting grass as a 10-year-old. I would cut grass and buy food for the family. It would ride my bike to go get it. And you feel like people don't care.
And so when you get a chance to actually go back you know, that's important to, to share that story with a lot of people. And I, it makes a difference. [00:48:00] It really does. Sorry. Makes me yeah.
Wow.
Spencer: Chief Drake being from Nashville, downtown Nashville and Broadway has changed a ton since the early nineties when you got started and I started to get familiar with what Nashville was all about.
And those dynamics, while fun, can also introduce all kinds of complexity to policing. And you know it 50 times better than I do. So can you talk about some of the. More innovative and creative things that have been going on downtown. I hear there's something with Garth Brooks having this.
Chief Drake: It really is, you know, I, growing up here and being a unicorn being from Nashville, downtown Nashville wasn't always the place that you wanted to go to. And and then downtown started to evolve and all these bars and restaurants would come on and and Garth Brooks was building a bar friends in low places.
He had just acquired a building and there was [00:49:00] a problem area that was next door. And he was trying to figure out how do I fix this problem area at the same time? I don't want this. You know, problem to be next door to my bar. And so he decided to build a substation for our police department fully funded by him.
And I can't leave it out. Miss Yearwood, as he calls, her she always says, why does he call me Miss Yearwood and not Trisha but that's what he calls her. And they decided to build this substation which they did, and put in ice maker. He asked me, what else do you need a set of coffee pots? So he gave us this real nice coffee maker.
And so people actually think that's a they see the big police sign, but they think it's part of the the bar scene. You see them standing in front of the station sometimes. But we use that for special events and we have. Monitors in there to look at downtown Nashville for keep supplies and other things.
It's a really neat and innovative building. It's just part of our concept of what we're gonna do [00:50:00] downtown to ensure the safety of people. And we have to put another building down there because we're, the East Bank is gonna be totally developed. We have multi-billion dollar corporations coming in.
We have a Dome stadium, maybe a Super Bowl. Yeah. That may be coming. And we'll have one of the biggest entertainment districts in the country. And with that comes a lot of. Planning and trying to get ready for that talking of Garth and Tricia. I support, I'm
Carli: sorry, they're on a first name basis with like my country music icon.
Garth and Dolly are like, who raised me? And so continue. Yes, just Garth and Tricia, Dan office. Garth and
Chief Drake: Tricia. So Garth and I, we text all the time about whatever and talk to, of
Carli: course you do. Tell him I said hi.
Chief Drake: I'll tell him you said hi.
Carli: Send him the podcast.
Chief Drake: Yeah. Yeah. And so I support The American Cancer Society and Trisha and I have something in common. My grandmother had breast cancer and her mother had breast cancer. And so we're gonna do an event together coming up really soon. And and I'm [00:51:00] gonna be the celebrity chef where I'm gonna cook and she's gonna do a dessert and we're gonna be there together.
And Garth actually suggested it. I wanted him to come sing, but he, he won't do it. if, he sings, I gotta sing. And I'm the person that, you remember when you have the school party and they cut the lights on and you know it's time to go. When I sing, know, it's time to go. told him that.
But he's dead set on getting me to sing one day. So I'm practicing guitar and we'll see if I actually do something with him one day,
Carli: I bet you could get him to do it to support breast cancer. That's worth it.
Chief Drake: It's called Men in
Spencer: Pink, right?
Chief Drake: Real Men wear pink. Real men wear pink.
Oh, look,
you have a bracelet. Yeah. So I
Chief Drake: wear this bracelet and it has this little thing where when I'm talking to people, they can tap their phone on it and they can actually make a donation.
Carli: Oh, you're like a, who needs Venmo? That's right. I've got a bracelet. That's right. That's amazing.
Chief Drake: Thank you.
And I love your pink, by the way. So I was speaking in, it actually did
Carli: cheat. I read that in the notes and
Chief Drake: ah, okay. So I like, she's amazing. I [00:52:00] like it. So
Carli: it is my favorite color, so it wasn't a hard push. Okay.
Chief Drake: Also
Spencer: chief Drake, having you here has been really one of the highlights of the year for us. You are truly called into this role for such a time as this to see the impact that from our view, and maybe you share this, but the Lord's hand has been on your life for decades.
And to see the experiences that you've had, the really pivotal moments that your life very easily could have gone in a different direction. And the fact that. You're here now and able to speak so authentically to a lot of different communities is so powerful. And it's so Nashville too.
Yeah. And so to hear your story and to learn about your leadership, just being in the studio with you, I can just feel the presence that you bring. And [00:53:00] that's just a really special thing that I'm so thankful that. Nashville gets to have you as the chief of police. And so for the 2000 men and women that you're responsible for stewarding I'm very thankful that it's you.
And if we do get a Super Bowl here in a couple years, you better not retire before that Super Bowl comes. 'cause I can see that you've been like, you know what? I've done my time and I'm outta here because if you leave before that Super Bowl gets here, heavens knows what's gonna happen without you on patrol.
Chief Drake: It's been an honor. It's been 37 going on 38 years, and it's been an honor to grow up here and to lead the men and women police department to know that you can police every day. You can make a safe community, but you can also love and respect your community. That's vitally important to me.
I do feel like I'm called by God and I don't offend anyone. I do believe in faith and things happen for a reason. One of the things that. I learned when I had my speech impediment and it said, Hey, your mind is out racing [00:54:00] your mouth. Slow down your talking. I've had men and women where we have a, a vehicle pursuit or an incident going on, or we have a school shooting like covenant or bombing, and they hear me on TV and they're like, you make me feel reassured.
And that role that teacher played in slowing me down and that's the only way I can speak without blah, blah, blah. It is vitally important, and I feel all of that is everything happens for a reason and faith and God is leading me to do this. And and I'm totally honored to do it. So
Spencer: well, I want to end it with asking you three quick questions.
It's how we end every podcast. Okay. There's a short sentence with a blank at the end, and you can either fill it in with a word or a short phrase. Okay. At the end. But if you'll just repeat the prompt back that I give you, and then however you want to complete the thought. Okay. Okay. All right, here you go.
Number one, the biggest challenge in policing today [00:55:00] is blank.
Chief Drake: The biggest challenge in policing today is recruitment and retention.
Spencer: Number two, the biggest joy in my work is. Blank.
Chief Drake: The biggest joy in my work is community engagement and getting to actually meet the people that we get to serve and protect.
Spencer: And number three, most people think I spend my day doing blank, but I actually spend it doing blank.
Chief Drake: Most people actually think I spend my day out in a police car chasing people, but actually I spend a lot of my time in meetings planning to try and figure out ways to keep the community safe.
Thanks again for joining us. Chief. It's been
Spencer: a real privilege to have you here.
Chief [00:56:00] John Drake, the Chief of Police for the Metro Nashville Police Department. What an absolute blast it was to get to hear from him. A super unique individual with a background that's kind of equal parts perfectly Nashville and perfectly suited for his role.
He brings a perspective from all the different angles of Nashville.
And that is a tough role. Like it's one thing if you can speak to one community but for him to be able to speak to a community that he grew up in, seeing the police largely as the enemy, certainly not as the friend, but then able to come full circle and come into that same community and say, Hey, there's more here than what you might think was just a really [00:57:00] powerful movement to see his life.
And how the Lord's using him.
Carli: I agree. I loved him saying, you know, my cousin talked me into it and I came because I wanted to make it better than what I remembered. And the Bible nerd in me thinks through like when Jesus called all his disciples, Andrew, called Peter, and then you don't see Andrew as much, but his claim to fame is that he called Peter.
Yeah. And so this cousin called Chief Drake, and I don't know where cousin is right now, I'm sure he is been off to do great things, but sometimes our role is to become a chief, but sometimes our role is just to lead people to their calling. And it seems like he had a lot of people that the Lord put in his life, whether they be coaches, his cousin, you name it, that led him to this time and place and I'm so glad they did.
Spencer: It's not too often that you get to play a game of 20 questions of all the things you've wanted to ask the police. Oh my gosh.
Carli: It was so fun. I had so many more and I just had to pull it together. Yeah,
Spencer: it's really a [00:58:00] blast because it also shows that there's a human there.
And it's easy to see the police and immediately you are uptight.
You get tense and you want out of the situation. But for him to make such a priority around the. Humanity, the care, the intentionality. That goes into it. You can see it in his own personality that he's playful, he's willing to answer those questions and ever the professional like we never saw him deviate from still honoring the uniform, honoring the badge.
But you could tell in his smile that he didn't hate the questions.
Carli: I agree. And I, you know, we need more of Chief Drake in our lives and the world needs more Chief Drakes because what he has been through in scene, he's able to articulate, but use it as a catalyst instead of an excuse. And I'm so inspired by [00:59:00] him leaving this podcast.
I didn't know what to expect. We never know what to expect coming in with a guest I, we research, but at the same time try to not over research so that we can let their personality play. And of all of the personalities that I am imagined, the chief of police for Metro Nashville being. He was not that. He was so much more just like Andy's besties with Garth and Tricia, so whatever. That's not fair.
