TAMPA, Fla. — After more than 20 years as a Tampa Police Officer, Felicia Pecora has now started her own academy to teach others how to stay safe.
“I learned to be a cop in Ybor City,” said Pecoa. “I had five fights a night. I’ve been attacked by two people at once. I was on a city squad, it was 19 men and me.”
After 23 years with the Tampa Police Department and eight years in the U.S. Army prior to that, Pecora decided to retire from public service in 2023.
“I found this entrepreneurship class for veterans, and I was like, ‘let me check this out because maybe I’ll teach something,’” said Pecora.
Fast forward to today, and Pecora is back in Ybor City, not as an officer, but as a teacher.
“There’s a lot I’ve learned on the job about human behavior, behavior cues, stuff like that that everybody should know,” said Pecora.
She calls her new class Doer Academy. In the past six months, Pecora has gone into offices, libraries, and schools, teaching everything from de-escalation to crisis management to risk mitigation.
“I want to contribute to people’s quality of life by helping them remove the fear and replacing it with competence and preparedness,” said Pecora.
Most recently, she was at the Crowbar, working with business owners and staff in the restaurant, bar and event planning industry.
“You know, having this training, if it helps one situation not get to the point where we have a tragedy, I think it's worth hosting these trainings,” said Crowbar owner Tom DeGeorge.
“Everyone can do this. This isn’t for an elite squad of combatants to only know this information,” said Pecora.
“She clearly eats, sleeps, breaths trying to keep people safe and trying to keep the community safe, so I certainly trust her advice,” said Cricket Larson, owner of Skippers Smokehouse.
“To be able to have the skills and resources to understand at least how to deescalate a situation where nobody gets hurt,” said Dennis Amadeus, with Grow House Tampa.
Pecora said the best part is knowing that all her years of experience and training will continue to live on right here in her home of Tampa Bay.
“Where people show up and they are like, ‘I’m not really sure what I can do in that situation,’ to ‘I have a plan, I can do things,’ I live for that,” said Pecora.
For more information on Doer Academy, click here.
