Building Friendships is Work: Chief Quaka on Leadership in Crisis

In this powerful episode of IgniteCast, we sit down with Chief John Quaka, Tupelo’s Chief of Police and former FBI agent, to discuss what it means to lead in moments of crisis. From witnessing 9/11 unfold as an FBI agent to handling high-pressure situations here in Tupelo, Chief Quaka shares how preparation, training, and most importantly, relationships built before the crisis make all the difference.

You’ll hear his journey from Los Angeles to Mississippi, the lessons he’s carried from federal law enforcement, and why he believes “building friendships is work.” Chief Quaka also reflects on the importance of servant leadership, diversity, and community trust as the true foundation of effective leadership.

🎧 Tune in for an inspiring conversation on leadership, resilience, and leading when it matters most.

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Transcript

Taylor Tutor: [00:00:00] Welcome to Ignite Cast, where ideas Spark action brought. To you by the Community Development Foundation, your Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Engine for Tupelo and Lee County, thank you to our presenting sponsor, iHeartMedia for powering this season of Ignite Cast. I'm Taylor. I'm Judd, and welcome to Ignite Cast.

Taylor Tutor: And today we're here on another episode of Ignite Cast. 

Judd Wilson: It's always fun, TEYL. And you know what I can see. At night in the right there we we're. It's getting close now. It's, it's 

Taylor Tutor: coming up Judd 

Judd Wilson: because tickets have gone on sale now. [00:01:00] They're 

Taylor Tutor: on sale. 

Judd Wilson: So that's exciting. Everybody's getting ready for at night and, and kind of planning for it.

Judd Wilson: So, 

Taylor Tutor: but not only are they on sale, it's the early bird sale. 

Judd Wilson: Early bird. I love a good early bird. Early bird gets the worm. That's why you at four 30, so get that's a pretty early to get that early bird dinner. Yeah, it's, well, you get a better discount. As if go to go along with my senior citizen discount as well.

Judd Wilson: So that's always good. I tell you, Taylor, love doing these at night cast because we talk about different leadership, and this is a little bit different because we're actually gonna kind of touch on a little bit of leadership in crisis Sometimes it's great to be a leader, you know when times are good, but when in a stressful situation.

Judd Wilson: We kind of got an expert on that today. 

Taylor Tutor: We do. 

Judd Wilson: We got Chief of Police, John Quo with the Tupelo Police Department. Also a former, former special agent with the FBI as well. And so we wanted to kind of bring him in here and guess what else he is? 

Taylor Tutor: Ooh, what? 

Judd Wilson: CLI. 

Taylor Tutor: Oh, a leader. [00:02:00] He's a leader. Went through our CLI 

Judd Wilson: program so.

Judd Wilson: He's done it all. So, John, welcome to at nightcast. Thank you, Judd. 

Chief John Quaka: I appreciate being here. 

Judd Wilson: Yeah, it's, it's good. It's good. So let me give you a little brief history as a CLI graduate. So John, uh, the Jiming Community Leadership Institute started in 2001. That date will kind of stand out probably in your mind.

Judd Wilson: A little bit, but um, it used to be called leadership Lead a couple years ago. And then Create and CDF got together and said, Hey, we need to kind of change this up and do this a little bit differently. And we actually named it after Jim Gram, who was a huge leader in, in the Tupelo Lee County area. So it came the Jim Ing Community Leadership Institute.

Judd Wilson: And when the first class of CLI was starting. There was a, a, a, a group in the boardroom forming that first class, a group of leaders that was kind of forming that first class. And our receptionist, miss Helen, actually kind of knocked on the door and opened and said, Hey, hey, hey, Bo, bother the meeting as y'all kind of get this class together.

Judd Wilson: But the towers have been attacked. So it is sort of, uh, kind of poignant that we [00:03:00] were starting relaunching this JIMING or Community, community Leadership Institute. The day of September 11th, 2001. 

Chief John Quaka: Yeah. That is interesting. 

Judd Wilson: Yeah. So it's kind of neat that we kind of carry that through, kind of talk about leaders in that situation, um, and kind of tell us about what was going on that 

Chief John Quaka: day for you.

Chief John Quaka: Yeah, I can remember it very well. Like most people can, I was actually home in bed sick with, uh, pneumonia. Wow. I had just come back from a seven day cruise in the Caribbean and being on a boat. With 800 people, everyone gets sick. Yes. So I had the unique opportunity of being home that day and watching it unfold on TV all day long.

Chief John Quaka: And the very next day I felt much better. I went back to work because I had to go back to work. And, um, the world within the FBI changed dramatically. We went from working nothing but criminal activity in northeast Mississippi to hunting down every possible lead of [00:04:00] terrorism. And I bet that's all we did for the next nine months until things kind of settled back and got back under control.

Chief John Quaka: So yeah, it was very, very unique time for the FBI. 

Judd Wilson: Wow. Wow. So let me ask you this, just to kind of personalize this a little bit. Um, give us a little brief history of how number one you ended up in the FBI and, and kind. The process that that happened and, and now Chief of Police here at, at Tupelo. 

Chief John Quaka: Yeah, it's very interesting.

Chief John Quaka: Um, took some turns during my career that I did not expect sometime in high school. I really became interested in federal law enforcement and I set my goals on the FBI, the research that I had done. Was that the FBI was the premier law enforcement agency in the world. I did not want to be a police officer.

Chief John Quaka: I wanted to be a federal agent. That was my goal, and I started planning that out throughout college. Um. And the biggest thing I did to prepare myself was I went to law [00:05:00] school. I saw that people with law degrees were having an easier time getting into the bureau, and it's a path that I thought that I would enjoy as well.

Chief John Quaka: So that's what I did, and I joined in 1995. And I can remember in week eight of the academy, they give you your orders and they, it's in a sealed envelope and they make a big, big production out of it. Um, you know, you gotta come up one by one, stand in front of your class and open up your envelope. And tell everyone what your first assignment is.

Chief John Quaka: And when I opened up my envelope, I thought, surely this is a joke. And I quickly learned it was not. So my first assignment was Los Angeles, California, and I thought, why are they sending a boy from deep, deep Mississippi to Los Angeles? And the joke was that they selected you based upon a monkey throwing a dart at a map.

Chief John Quaka: And that's probably closer. To the [00:06:00] truth in anything I've heard. But, um, that's what we did. My wife and I packed up and moved to Los Angeles, California. 

Taylor Tutor: Wow. How long were you out there? 

Chief John Quaka: I was out there for two and a half years. The first year was a culture shock. 

Taylor Tutor: Oh, I bet. 

Chief John Quaka: Um, after the first year, we tended to adapt a little bit.

Chief John Quaka: The weather is fabulous. Mm-hmm. It's, uh. You know, 60 degrees in the morning and 80 degrees in the afternoon, 365 days a year. Uh, we started taking advantage of things in Southern California that we didn't have here in Mississippi. Every Saturday we would go mountain bike riding, don't have many mountains here, and Sundays after church, we would go to Malibu Beach, hang out on the.

Chief John Quaka: In the Pacific Ocean every Sunday. So those were unique experiences for my wife and I. 

Judd Wilson: Yeah, that's neat. Yeah. 

Taylor Tutor: I think, you know, every, everything we go through, you know, every opportunity that we're given or door closed or open, we learn something from it. [00:07:00] So what would you, oh, absolutely. 

Chief John Quaka: What 

Taylor Tutor: would you say you learned during your two years there that, you know, you still apply today?

Taylor Tutor: Maybe? 

Chief John Quaka: Yeah. Number one is my wife and I had no one to rely on but ourselves. Mm-hmm. So. We were independent, very independent, uh, did not have family to lean on to come help us with any situation, which was really good. That helped build our marriage. Mm-hmm. Um, I was exposed to things you would not be exposed to in Mississippi.

Chief John Quaka: I worked in an office of 600 agents, got to participate in some really, really large cases that you just wouldn't find anywhere else in the country. 

Rorke Denver: Mm-hmm. 

Chief John Quaka: So. From there, did you come to Mississippi then? I did. You know, my whole goal was to get back to Mississippi, specifically Jackson, Mississippi. Um, and they called me, I say they headquarters in DC who does all the logistics of moving people, and they said, Hey, did you 

Judd Wilson: pick up a red phone when they called?

Judd Wilson: I didn't 

Chief John Quaka: have any red 

Judd Wilson: phones. [00:08:00] Okay. I just had to, I wanted to clear that up. No, no red phones. Okay. 

Chief John Quaka: They did call me just out of the blue and said, Hey. We have an opening in Greenville, Mississippi, would you be willing to take it? And I said, gimme 24 hours. So I went home, talked to my wife about it, we prayed about it and we decided to do it.

Chief John Quaka: We decided, hey, that'll get us back to Mississippi. And then from there it would be easier to transfer from Greenville, Mississippi to Jackson, Mississippi. So that's what we did. January of 1998, we moved to Greenville, Mississippi, and that in itself was a culture shock moving from LA to Greenville, Mississippi.

Chief John Quaka: Yeah, you know, I had heard about the Delta, but I had never experienced the Delta and it was very unique. But the biggest difference was I went from an office of 600 to an office of two. There were two of us. Two. So in Los Angeles, there's so many of us. You work one specific crime. I was on a squad that all we did was public [00:09:00] corruption, nothing else.

Chief John Quaka: Well, I get to Greenville and it's two of us. You work everything. Whatever comes across your desk, you work. So I'm now exposed to kidnappings, carjackings, bank robberies, civil rights, a lot of different things. I fell in love with that. I fell in love with the small office FBI, because I got to do a little bit of everything.

Chief John Quaka: So then I had a unique opportunity presented to me. Two years later, my whole plan was to get back to Jackson. That's where I'm from. I get a call from our Jackson office and say, Hey, we have an opening in Jackson, but we also have one in Tupelo. Which one do you want? Well. It would've been a no brainer, but I had fallen in love with the small office work so much that I wanted to stay in a small office and never been to Tupelo, but it had a good reputation, and this is in 2000.

Chief John Quaka: It had a really good reputation, so [00:10:00] my wife and I prayed about it and we said, let's go to Tupelo. And the rest is history. 

Judd Wilson: That's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, because I think I met you shortly after that. So, um, you know, it's just kind of neat that when you find a place, 'cause you said you're from the Jackson area.

Judd Wilson: Why do you think it's important, um, you know, to kind of find community where, where you land? 

Chief John Quaka: Oh, it's extremely important. Um, you know, building friendships is work. Um, you're not gonna sit at home and people are just gonna come knock on your door and say, Hey. Welcome to the town. You gotta get involved in activities.

Chief John Quaka: Uh, lucky for me, my wife is extremely outgoing, so I just kind of followed on her coattails and I met lots of people. Um, got involved in, I hate to say it, churches plural. Yeah. It took us a while to, to find a home church, so we've been to many churches in town, which that's been a blessing in itself because it ex has exposed me.

Chief John Quaka: To a lot more people than if I just would've [00:11:00] gone to one church and settled in one church and had been in one church for 25 years. 

Judd Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's neat too. 'cause everything you said, you said, my wife and I, why, why is that important as a leader to have somebody to kind of bounce things off of that is not somebody at work or something like that, but you know.

Chief John Quaka: Yeah. Well, number one, it's really important if you're in law enforcement, it's really important, and I preach this to. To new officers, you've got to have friends that are not law enforcement. Because if you, all your friends are only in law enforcement, what are you gonna talk about 24 7? Mm-hmm. You're gonna talk about law enforcement things.

Chief John Quaka: So my wife is a great one because she's, and I don't mean this in a negative way, it's turned out to be positive, but she's just not interested in law enforcement. So, which is good for me because when I'm away from work. I am away from work. Right. And that's a great balance for me. It took me about eight years to learn, Hey, don't bring your work home with you.

Chief John Quaka: Mm-hmm. [00:12:00] Um, there's enough hours in the day for you to do your job well at work, but if you start bringing it home and it start affecting the people that you love, the people that are around you. Mm-hmm. So that was a tough lesson for me to learn. But finally. Finally I learned it. 

Judd Wilson: Yeah. 

Chief John Quaka: Yeah. 

Taylor Tutor: At your, um, swearing in ceremony back in 2022, you mentioned a lot about community and the, the, just the passion and you have a huge job and a lot of responsibility here in Tupelo.

Taylor Tutor: So what would you say is at the heart of that? Like what, what keeps you going? 

Chief John Quaka: Building relationships. I really enjoy it. Uh, and it has, it pays dividends because we're gonna have. Problems in the city, there's gonna be crisis. And if you can build relationships with the people you're gonna be working with prior to that incident, you've, you've accomplished 90% of your goal.

Chief John Quaka: 'cause I don't want to ever want to meet you at the crisis site. I want us to [00:13:00] already have a relationship. Uh, go to lunch together. I feel like, um, there's a lot there for sharing a meal with someone. The president of the Lee County naacp, Charles Moore, he and I are a lot alike and we both share that feeling that we want to get to know each other and we have both worked hard to, uh, build relationships with each other.

Chief John Quaka: Charles is a close friend of mine. We go to lunch quite often. Uh, really not enough. I'd like to see 'em more, but, um, we've built relationships that are, that are gonna pay dividends. 

Judd Wilson: So you think in, in being a crisis, being a leader in, in a crisis, it's really what you do before that crisis, right? Is that what you would say?

Chief John Quaka: Oh, absolutely. Yes. Um. It, it's, it's the framework that you established before. You know, I asked, I asked Deputy Chief the other day, you know, the, the [00:14:00] shooting that Tupelo Police Department had in 2016, if that were to happen again today in 2025, do you think the outcome would be different? He said, absolutely.

Chief John Quaka: Absolutely because of the framework we have in place, because of the relationships we have in place. And I would love to be able to tell you that, you know, we're never gonna have another officer involved shooting. Well, that's not true. We had one last year. Um, they happen unfortunately. So it's something that, um, you know, if you can, if you can predict, you can prevent and prepare for.

Judd Wilson: Yeah, 

Chief John Quaka: yeah, yeah. The, the biggest one though that's been in my tenure is the. Airplane on Labor Day flying over the city, threatening to crash into Walmart. Mm-hmm. That one, that one's hard to prepare for. That one really is. But we had relationships built. The sheriff and I obviously have great relationships, so I can call him instantly and he's not gonna question and he is gonna be there.

Chief John Quaka: Um, [00:15:00] so that worked out well. 

Judd Wilson: Yeah. And so in a situation like that, I mean, you actually started, I mean, you were talking to the sheriff, but. When that plane started going, other, other areas. Did you have communication with those counties as well? We did. Did you just kinda lean on your FBI expertise for that as well?

Chief John Quaka: Yes, very much so. So when I left the FBII did not leave behind my relationships. I had built in the federal government. So yes, I am talking to the FBI, I am talking to surrounding agencies. We're talking to the FAA. Um, so yes, there was a lot of communication going on. In that crisis. 

Judd Wilson: That's, that's amazing.

Judd Wilson: So Taylor, we know, we know we do this every time we try to play a clip from at night leadership conference and we actually have a, a clip now that's, um, from one of our former speakers. Uh, he was a Navy Seal Rourke Denver. He was with us, uh, back in 2022. And, uh, we're gonna listen to this clip and kind of get your [00:16:00] feedback, John.

Rorke Denver: And frankly, there's a lot of subjects I like covering, but training is one of my absolute favorites because this is the thing we utterly control, right? I mean that alchemy of traits and genetics, the talent that was passed on to you from your parents, there's not a lot you can do about that. That's kind of fixed.

Rorke Denver: But what we train ourselves to, what we discipline ourselves to, that's what we become or who we become and we control that. And training is what builds those reps and kind of builds you up to the level to do that and to do that under intense, you know, volume of fire or, or, or, or pressure. 

Taylor Tutor: So I'm sure with in your job, there's lots of pressure and.

Taylor Tutor: I, I think you know, no matter what job you have, there's pressure. So what would you say about training for that pressure? 

Chief John Quaka: Yeah, training is a very broad term that we take very seriously. So the luxury being the FBI, you have lots of training opportunities. We trained all the time. So I wanted to bring that philosophy to the Tupelo pd.[00:17:00] 

Chief John Quaka: Every officer has to go through an academy. It's 400 hours and then that's pretty much it. Uh, until a year ago, deputy sheriffs never had to do any continuing education. None. Police officers have to do 24 hours of year of continuing ed. I ran the numbers recently and last year. My officers, were averaging about 60 hours each, so we're well surpassing the 24 hours.

Chief John Quaka: Mm-hmm. We've put a lot of investment into our academy. Um, so we're doing extra training. Um, we've gotten an increase in our budget for more ammunition so my officers can go out there and practice their firearm skills. And things like that. So training is very important. Like I said earlier, if you can predict it, you can prepare for it.

Chief John Quaka: And that's what we do in our training environment. 

Judd Wilson: That's great. So let me ask you this, I mentioned earlier you're a recent CLI grad. I think you're gonna, we're gonna have the meet and [00:18:00] greet coming up in September. Yes. Where we actually get the, the, the trophy that you can put on your desk That's right.

Judd Wilson: With all your other stuff, kind of tell us a little bit. That's a lot of different group of people in your class. Kind of what's important about being with such a different diverse group that kind of maybe helped you as a leader? 

Chief John Quaka: Yeah. I'm a big believer in diversity. I tell this to the department. I don't wanna sit around a bunch of people around a table that are like me because that would be really boring.

Chief John Quaka: So I like different perspectives and you only get that from diversity. I've met a lot of people in CLI that I probably would not have crossed paths with. Had it not been for CLI. So diversity brings different experiences and I find that the more different experiences you can put together, really the more problems you can solve.

Judd Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's so true. Mm-hmm. That 

Taylor Tutor: is true. I do have one more question for you. True. We ask this on every podcast, but what's the best leadership tip you've ever been given? 

Chief John Quaka: The best [00:19:00] leadership tip? Uh, that's a great question that I, I was told right before I started this job to read a book called The Servant by James Hunter.

Chief John Quaka: Mm-hmm. And I did, and that book really was transformational for me. 

Judd Wilson: Being a certain, I mean, you know, that's what 

Chief John Quaka: you gotta be, right? And you, you do. I've asked all my supervisors in my police department to tell me which leadership style they have. Mm-hmm. Uh, mine is servant leadership and there's several, and none of them are wrong.

Chief John Quaka: But you need to know what your style is. 

Taylor Tutor: Mm-hmm. 

Chief John Quaka: So that's what I had him do. 

Judd Wilson: That's a great tip. 

Taylor Tutor: It is, 

Judd Wilson: it's a great tip, John. Thank you. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I was a little nervous that we're sitting down at a table and I, I, I, you know, I was hoping it didn't turn into an interrogation, which was, it didn't, I'm glad that Taylor didn't have to play bad cop.

Judd Wilson: Yeah. I'm always good cop, by the way. Of course, judge. But thank you so much for your leadership in the community and, and, and what you have, uh, done [00:20:00] for us in the community and we. Appreciate all that you do and um, and, and thank you for being that leader. 

Chief John Quaka: Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah.

Taylor Tutor: Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Ignite Cast, presented by iHeartMedia. For more leadership insights and engaging conversations, be sure to hit subscribe. And if you enjoy today's episode, we'd love for you to leave a review. And remember, go forth and do good things.