Andrew “Sully” Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan spent nearly two decades in the SEAL teams, and now he trains the patrol officers who reach an active shooter first.

The episode was recorded outdoors at Sugar Hill Outdoors instead of the usual studio. Brad had met him at a couple of events and wanted to talk about Community First Project rather than the war stories, which is what most interviews ask him for. Sully is from Worcester, Massachusetts, which Brad, who spent time in Westborough, had to concede, and he has not let an Atlanta and Patriots game go since.

Community First Project is a 501c3. He raises money and brings in former teammates to teach patrol officers the tactical side and how people hold up inside a critical incident. His argument is that a department cannot train on the job for the thing that happens once in a career, and that nothing in high level tactics fails to apply to a traffic stop or a warrant service. He brought the after action review with him. In the teams, every operation ended with the whole thing pulled apart, what went right, what went wrong, what to change next time, and they did it every single time. He also teaches five rules his boss at SEAL Team Two slapped on the wall before a Baghdad deployment with no explanation attached. The last one is act like you own the place.

He joined because of 9/11, and by the end he knew the body was not keeping up with the mind. He retired in 2020 and started Blue Force Strategies to train cops. Within two months he found that his actual clients were the military and the federal government, and that the patrol officers walking into his kids' school could not afford him. There was no budget, no manning, no time and no demand, because nobody had agreed there was a problem yet. That did not sit right with him, so in early 2022 he started giving the training away instead. He had his own mental health issues at that command, got help, and says it shaped his life. That is the part he thinks law enforcement is about ten years behind on.

He sits on the board of One Summit, which his former teammate Adam LaRue started after losing his mother to cancer and seeing what the children on the pediatric ward were carrying. It pairs Navy SEALs with pediatric cancer patients for indoor rock climbing. Every oncologist Adam approached told him he was crazy, until one hospital agreed. It runs quarterly in four states now, and Sully says he gets more out of it than the kids do. Community First Project has raised money in 14 or 15 states so far, mostly by turning up in person and talking to departments. The short term number he needs is a million dollars per state.