I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast
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Now for many of you listening, you are probably working the same brutal shifts that I did
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and then offer supplementations without ramming, for example, hormone replacement therapy down
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Now I came across Transcend because they have an altruistic arm and they were a big reason
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They also have the Transcend foundations where they are actually putting military and first
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In my case specifically, because I transitioned out the fire service five years ago and been
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knowing full well the damage that 14 years of shift work has done.
Now I also want to underline because I think this is very important that each of the therapies
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So to learn more, go to transcendcompany.com or listen to episode 808 of the Behind the
Shield podcast with founder Ernie Colling.
This episode is sponsored by New Calm.
As many of you know, I only bring sponsors onto this show whose products I truly swear
by.
Now we are an overworked and under slept population, especially those of us that wear uniform for
a living and trying to reclaim some of the lost rest and recovery is imperative.
Now the application of this product is as simple as putting on headphones and a sleep
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Welcome to the Behind the Shield Podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on
the show Vietnamese immigrant, US Army Ranger and law enforcement veteran, Trong Nguyen.
Now as you will hear, Trong has an incredibly powerful story from leaving Vietnam as a young
child, growing up in the gang areas of Chicago, entering the military, his journey into law
enforcement, working for an agency with a very high standard, then transitioning to
one with a low standard, organizational stress and betrayal, the frustration of a driven
first responder trying to thrive in a toxic environment, his transition out, we go home
and so much more.
As with any conversation, the goal of this is to bring solutions to problems, but sometimes
we have to drag them out of the shadows and Trong does a phenomenal job with that.
Before we get to this conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment, go
to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single 5 star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
This is a free library of well over 850 episodes now, so all I ask in return is that you help
share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to every single person on
planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Trong Huynh.
Enjoy.
Well Trong, I want to start by saying firstly, thank you for coming on the Behind the Shield
podcast, but secondly, there's an element of synergy because I literally tripped over
the documentary and then for some reason you came across my social media feed right around
that same time.
So this was obviously serendipitous to have this conversation today, so I want to welcome
you to the show.
Oh, thank you, sir.
I heard a lot of good things about you from Kelsey and a bunch of other great individuals
that I met during my Harvard speaking event.
Yeah, that's so again, I think that was where it came across.
I think you guys were speaking side by side and I was like, wait a second, that's the
guy from the Amazon selection I just saw.
So I'm very, very excited to hear the story.
So where on planet earth we finding you today right now?
I am in Katy, Texas.
Good old Texas.
Brilliant.
Well, I know that your story doesn't begin in Texas, so let's start at the very beginning
then.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings?
Yeah, my family and I were born in Vietnam.
It was post-war.
A lot of families were struggling dealing with communism and the North overtaking the
South.
And they came in and they ravaged a lot of villages, towns coming in there.
And it happened to my father too.
I didn't know my father really because I was so young, but they went into his house and
they took his gold and took his money.
And they were doing that a lot because it's a communist regime and they felt like that
was owed to them.
And my family grew up in poverty for a very, very, very long time.
My mom wanted a better life for us.
And when the United States intervened in that war, she learned about America and what it
stood for.
And she wanted that type of freedom, that type of choice for her kids.
So she literally left.
She told her parents and she told my dad, she's like, hey, I'm taking the kids.
We are fleeing Vietnam to try to make our way to the United States.
And my brother, half brother at the time, wanted to go to the United States first so
that he can get a foothold so that when we arrive, that we have a place to stay.
He kind of understood the lay of the ground and whatnot.
Unfortunately, he crossed by sea in a boat about approximately 70 to 80 people.
And pretty much every single person died except two people.
And my brother was one of them.
They died from starvation.
They died from sickness and disease.
From what I was told, it was only like a 70 something year old lady and a very young girl
that survived in that boat.
So my brother wanted a better life.
And that's the thing with people who come from war torn countries like that.
They want the freedom.
They want a better way of life, a better to do better.
And they will cross vast oceans to try to achieve that.
And many have died during that travels.
And my family, my mom literally mustered $10 to her name.
I mean, that was from like her brothers and sisters, her mother.
They gather her approximately 10 US dollars.
And we made our trip.
And before we could make it to America, we ended up in the Philippines.
And we stayed there for a year and they were in processing us.
We're at FOP Freedom.
I don't remember much at that point because I was around like two years old.
But from bits and pieces and from what the story that my mom and my sister told me, it
was just a lot of suffering.
There wasn't enough food to go around.
They put us in like little encampments.
And my mom and my sisters and I survived for that year before we just went to our voyage
to the United States where we landed in Chicago.
I want to go back for a moment because I had two lam on the show.
I know that you guys are friends and the Army Green Beret here in America, but another immigration
story from Vietnam around the time of the conflict.
When you talk to your mother, because obviously you were too small to remember, what does
she story tell as far as how Vietnam was when she was younger?
And then what she experienced when this war broke out in her country?
She said Vietnam was...
Right now Vietnam is very prosperous, right?
Because there's a lot of tours, but back then it wasn't.
There was a lot of occupations from different countries that tried to take over Vietnam
and she grew up very poor and she suffered a lot.
During the war, they suffered even more.
Everything was... you can't travel during when there was a war breaking out down in
the South.
It was very tough for her in that environment trying to stay alive, trying to make sure
my grandmother, my grandfather, her brothers and sisters, everybody had food on the table.
She was a very strong woman.
I look up to her a lot and that's where I gathered a lot of my strength is her resilience
to be able to withstand all of that, all the suffering, what she had to endure to make
sure that the family had food on the table.
We saw a parallel to withdrawal from Vietnam again in Afghanistan a couple of years ago.
And I've had people on the show who have told a story told about what's happened to Afghani
or Afghan, excuse me, men and women post-conflict, especially if they were discovered to be helping
us.
What was happening in Vietnam when we withdrew them to the people that were loyal to the
South?
The same issue.
Some of them got to come to America and some of them got into the hands of the Viet Cong.
They end up in prison camps.
I knew stories of when my mother redated somebody, he was a captain in the Southern Vietnamese
army and they put him in a prison camp because of what he stood for with the Americans.
He suffered a lot.
That's the same situation that happened in Afghanistan has literally happened in the
past with the Vietnamese people is the lucky few got out on Hueys and on airplanes and
the majority didn't.
They just had to stay there and suffer the consequences.
Obviously, public execution, the North Vietnamese would do that.
They would then rape, pillage and whatnot the towns and whoever they can capture, they
bring them to prison camps.
It's really sad because when I got rest of soul, he passed away, but he told me a story
once and I was sitting down there and I was like, how is the war, post-war and what happens
to you?
During the prison camps, they treated us like animals.
We couldn't stand to pee.
They made us all sit down and pee because that's degrading to men and he never got accustomed
to standing to peeing.
He said that till this day, I still sit down and pee.
I just felt like the psychological warfare and the physical torment that they went through,
it really affected a lot of these people.
I think it's important for us to hear these stories, whether it's the actual state of
the country that a lot of these men and women and children are trying to flee, but also
the crucible that they go through to get to this country, whether it's walking hundreds
of miles, whether it's risking life and death on a tube coming from Haiti or whatever it
is.
Because for me, as an immigrant in a country that was founded on immigration, I feel like
there's a very anti-immigrant rhetoric by certain people that is extremely dangerous.
When you actually look at how incredibly fortunate we are in the US, the absolute terror that
a lot of these people are trying to flee.
Of course, you just don't open the floodgates, but I think we've lost some of the compassion
for some of the tyranny and terror that a lot of these people are physically trying
to bring their children away from.
It's very true.
You know the saying, it doesn't affect you until it happens to your doorstep.
I think that's what in America, a lot of people who are born here, they get comfortable.
They get used to living in their bubble.
Everything is now instantaneous.
You can order pizza on your app, on your phone.
You can order alcohol.
Everything is creature comfort galore.
And we kind of forget a lot of the world is still suffering.
A lot of the world, they don't even have fresh water to drink.
They have to walk miles to a well to get water when we have it literally in our homes.
We can just walk to the sink and filter water.
And we tend to forget that.
And you're right.
We should have more compassion in life for others.
A lot of people take living here for granted.
And that's why something I always practice is gratitude.
Having gratitude for having a roof over my head, food in my stomach, clean, fresh water,
the ability to chase my dreams every single day.
And if I wanted to till tomorrow or even right now to be a nurse, I can literally apply to
school and do that.
A lot of people around the world don't have that opportunity that they can just pick up
on the whim and pursue their dreams and their goals.
Absolutely.
I think that's the thing I had when I first moved here was there is that element of the
American dream.
And to me, it was a roof over your family's head and maybe a little bit of land to grow
some vegetables and have chickens.
Very, very oldie worldie.
But that is at its core.
When I moved to the US, it was 4,000 square foot houses, Winnebago's, jet skis.
And I'm like, where's the original dream gone?
And I think we need to refine that.
Necessity versus luxury.
This is an amazing place where you can.
I was an American firefighter and now we're having a conversation as a podcaster.
How many people in Syria or Gaza at the moment could pursue any of those?
They just can't.
So gratitude, I think, is so important in reminding ourselves that the material stuff
that we're bombarded with, that we're supposedly supposed to have to be happy, is all superfluous.
But the real core hierarchy of needs, we are so, so lucky to have those almost guaranteed
here.
Absolutely.
Gratitude is huge.
That's the one thing I would tell the viewers.
Practice gratitude.
Every moment that you wake up, you're alive.
And when people ask me, how are you doing?
I always tell them I'm doing great.
I'm blessed.
God has given me another day to chase after my dreams.
Not a lot of people have this opportunity.
Don't let it go to waste because time is fleeting.
Absolutely.
With that being said, young Vietnamese boy comes to America.
You didn't find yourself in Bel Air originally.
So talk to me about growing up in Chicago.
Yeah.
So when we came to America, we were an immigrant family and we didn't get placed in the best
area.
Obviously, we didn't get to choose.
And they placed us in Section 8 homes.
And I grew up in the inner cities of Chicago for the majority of my youth to my teens.
And I grew up around drugs, violence, gangs.
It was constant.
Being so young and being placed in that type of environment, me personally, I thought that
was the norm.
Right?
Because I didn't know any better.
I didn't know what good living was or what you're supposed to have.
I was just here in the States and I was just happy.
But as I got older, I started to process the good and bad and understanding that I was
like, oh my God, this place is pretty insane.
So with that exposure, obviously, you're the other end of a not only a military but law
enforcement career.
When you look back, talk to me about the criminal element that you are surrounded by and then
let's unpack the impact the drugs were having on that environment that you grew up in.
Yeah, absolutely.
They always say the people you hang out with is how you end up with.
Show me your five friends and I'll show you your future.
And I was just hanging out with inner city kids.
And I thought that was the norm.
When we were hanging out in the streets and seeing all these violence and these gang members,
they would come up to us like, hey kid, they'll be like, hey, don't trust the police.
They're the bad guys, you know what I mean?
Fuck 50.
That's what they used to call them 50 and all that.
And we thought like, oh my gosh, so these guys are the evil people.
Don't talk to them.
Don't interact with them and whatnot.
So seeing that and being around that, I grew up first with a perspective that the police
were bad.
And seeing people on drugs and all that, I thought that was normal.
Seeing somebody that's smoking crack or seeing somebody that's overdosed on the streets,
I thought that was just normal day living in the United States because that's all I
knew.
And I think that all changed for me.
One day when I was playing basketball in the corner, what a bunch of my friends were just
hanging out and it was late and this patrol car pulled up and I was like, oh shit, these
guys are about to do something to us.
And this officer stepped out the car and he was like, hey, my name is Officer Such.
I wish I remembered his name.
He was very, very genuine.
He came up to me and he was like, hey, this is the beat I work.
This is usually the time I work.
I just want to let you know this neighborhood is not, you know, it's very dangerous for
you to be out this late.
You should be inside.
You know, here's my business card.
If you guys never need anything at all, do not hesitate to call me.
You know, I'll pick up the phone.
I'll help you any way I can.
And that really touched me.
And I was like, oh my gosh, you know, this copper really could have just drove by and
said, fuck these kids, right?
Excuse my language, but he didn't.
He literally took the time out to get out of the car, do community policing and really
approached us and was really sincere.
And that touched me so much.
I was like, dude, this guy, he didn't have to do this, but he did.
And that kind of already, that planted a seed like, man, this might be something I want to
do.
And as I got older and I start seeing what the police was about and what they were doing
to catch these guys on the streets and put them in jail.
And I was witnessing like what these gang members were doing to the neighborhoods, how
they were destroying the place that we're living by bringing violence and drugs and
all this to it.
And I saw what the cops were doing.
I was like, maybe the cops aren't the bad guys.
Maybe these guys who are saying that they were, are the ones that are really out here
trying to do wrong.
When you're telling that story, I think of the term confirmation bias.
And I think it's huge at the moment.
We'll get into obviously your experiences at the end of your career and that particular
city that you worked in.
But when you're portraying an image that cops are bad, which sadly we're seeing a lot on
media at the moment, but that's a distorted view.
But if you grow up in Compton in the 1980s, there was a kind of war going on between a
lot of the gangs and law enforcement.
If you were a young child growing up in that, I can see how your perception would be distorted.
But you just kind of underlined the power of smashing that confirmation bias by all the
good cops being out there with the community policing element and how important it is if
you are a good police officer, which is most of them, that if you can actually insert yourself
back into the community, you start to shatter the myths that have been told, either by maybe
some of the criminal element that you've grown up around and or more recently what you're
seeing on your screens.
Oh, absolutely.
100%.
And I think that a lot of coppers to this day is something they shouldn't lose.
Don't forget why you started.
Don't forget why you rose your right hand.
It's not for a paycheck.
It's not for the money.
It's because you believe in what you're doing and don't lose that.
A lot of cops get jaded after years of service.
You got to sit back and remember your why and why you started and the people, the lives
that you help because you could end up very much helping someone, a kid like me, that
you affect his change and his perspective and his trajectory towards what he wanted
to do later down the line.
You never know.
You never know how many lives you touch and in what aspect.
So don't lose that fight.
I think it's very important.
A huge common denominator of a lot of the guests that have been on that are obviously
doing very well now.
That's why they're on here.
Not that everyone has to be doing well, but they've become a good person.
That's a common denominator for the guests is a mentor.
Now it could be a third grade female history teacher.
It could be a wrestling coach.
Could be anything.
But it's that individual that steers someone down a better direction.
Now you grew up around a lot of these gangs.
You talk about it in a documentary.
I mean, you're surrounded by multiple different gangs.
When you look back up to kind of prior to enlistment, who were some of the mentors in
your life that sent you down a positive path rather than the gang life that you were surrounded
by?
You know, growing up, I was trying to seek that father figure because I never had a father
hung out with the wrong crowd for a long time.
I thought that was cool.
When I found out it wasn't really.
And I'll be honest with you, one of my biggest mentors is God.
He's the one who really changed my life.
I grew up a Buddhist because my mom was Buddhist.
And when I found God, it really changed my life because I talked to him.
I was like, hey, I don't want to go down this path.
I don't want to end up like a lot of these individuals.
I really want to change my life.
And he helped me.
My pastor helped me.
One of my teachers in school helped me.
And then obviously that officer, I kept in contact with him for a little bit and he helped
me too.
Those were my mentors.
Those were the ones that kept me straight to go down the path that I eventually went
to during my wanting to enlist.
And the choices of me wanting to enlist is really because of my mother's best friend,
her son.
He was a lieutenant in the army and he just graduated Ranger school.
And I got sent a VHS at the time of Ranger school and I watched it.
And that really sparked something.
And at the time there was no internet.
Internet wasn't prevalent back then.
So you have to go to Barnes and Nobles and whatnot to do your research on whatever you
wanted to do.
And that's what I did.
I read on the lineage of the Rangers and that was something I always wanted to do.
I was like, man, this is badass.
These guys are badass.
This country has given me so much.
I wanted to give back.
So that's how I really started the path in my enlistment.
Now I know 9-11, like so many people on here, was a pivotal moment.
So you had the seeds planted, but you were young at the time about Ranger school.
Talk to me about 9-11 and then how you ended up enlisting.
Yeah.
Again, you said mentors.
I took Hop Kettle for a long time.
One of the instructors was my mentor.
He served in the Korean army in a special forces unit.
And being around people like that instilling discipline in me and what this country has
given me the opportunity to pursue.
After 9-11 kicked off, I was finishing Hop Kettle.
I went to my sister's store because I wanted to help her out.
And everybody was like in awe, like glued to this TV.
And they were showing the incident in New York.
And at that time, one of the towers was already on fire.
And when I got there, literally 10 minutes later, another airplane hit the second tower.
And I was like, oh shit.
When I was driving to Hop Kettle, Howard Stern was on air and he's saying, oh yeah, one of
the planes hit the antenna jokingly, I guess, because he didn't understand the seriousness
of the incident.
Then when I got there to the shop and I saw what the heck was happening and they confirmed
it was a terrorist incident that occurred.
And I was just like, that right there hit the last nail to the coffin.
I was like, I'm going to enlist in the army.
And I didn't tell my mom because she, I was one of her favorites growing up and she wanted
to baby me.
She's like, yeah, go be a lawyer, go be a doctor, go be a pharmacist.
She didn't want me to like go out there, but I always grew up being hands-on, very physical,
going out there, playing in the dirt, playing softball, playing soccer, staying out late,
doing all those things.
And I knew inside me that working the desk was something that was not something I wanted
to do.
And after seeing that video and what happened with 9-11, I made the decision like I'm going
to enlist and I'm going to go down this pipeline to become an army ranger so that I can fight
for my country.
Now you mentioned hapkido, what other sports were you playing and how did you prepare for
not only the military, but ranger school specifically?
So I hapkido, I was always into martial arts because I grew up liking Bruce Lee.
I mean, who didn't, right?
I mean, Bruce Lee, I saw Enter the Dragon and all that.
I was like, oh man, I want to be a martial artist.
So there was something that I wanted to do and pursue because I liked the discipline that
is involved in that, right?
Because for you to excel in such an art, you have to be consistent, you have to be disciplined.
And I was just one of those kids that wanted to play any sports I can get my hands on because
I just had so much amped up energy.
So for preparing to become a ranger, to go into RIP because it was called RIP at the
time, Ranger Endoctor Program before it was called RAPS now, I literally went to Barnes
and I looked up what it consists of and I literally trained myself.
I just ran all the time.
I did push-ups, I did sit-ups.
I prepared myself as much as possible because I understood, because if you go right now,
if you go on the internet, there's plenty of apps and websites that prepares you for
special operations.
Back then there wasn't anything like that.
And I think it's one of the most important things for anybody who wants to be successful
in anything they want to do in life is when you figure out what you want to do and you
figure out the standards of that course or that job or whatever, you meet that standard
and you exceed it.
And that's the one thing that was ingrained into me through my martial arts training.
So I didn't want to be like, hey, I'm just going to sit back, sign a contract and hope
I pass Ranger Endoctor Program.
I knew that it was hard.
I knew that the fail rate was high.
I knew that not everybody was going to pass.
So I was like, if I really wanted to take this serious and if I really want to walk
down this path and if I really want to fight for my country and be one of the most elite
units fighting units in the United States Army in history, then I better freaking prepare
myself.
So I took the time to do diligence, to train myself so that when I left to boot camp, I
was well prepared ahead of time from my peers.
So you watched the attack on the towers, which was a Saudi hiding in Afghanistan, but you
found yourself in Iraq.
So first we'll get to the actual deployments.
You detail a lot of the combat on the documentary, so I won't drag you down that.
The question I always like to ask our veterans that have seen combat is this.
It's a two-part question.
And I'll preface it every time by saying when we watch the television, it's either a very
pro-war rhetoric, kill them all, let God sort them out, stack bodies, or it's very anti-war.
They're all baby killers.
And in the middle are the men and women that we send, arguably children, overseas to fight
for our country.
So regardless of the politics, again, the preface that was disconnected because you're
in Iraq, not Afghanistan, regardless of the politics, was there a point where you realized
that there were atrocities happening, there were horrific people that did need to be taken
care of in Iraq when you landed there?
Absolutely.
With the unit I was placed in, we had a mission set.
We weren't regular infantrymen where we're sent out on patrol or like, hey, walk this
path, make sure you clear these houses, clear this block and whatnot.
We had a set mission.
We knew when you call the Ranger Regiment, they are placed in the most hostile areas
possible or the most dangerous areas possible.
And we knew the targets that we're going after were killing soldiers, Marines, airmen, and
civilians.
So we knew who we were going after.
There was no shadow of a doubt.
They weren't like, hey guys, yeah, go out the gates and just go for a patrol and hopefully
you get into contact.
Right?
No, it was like, hey, these are the individuals we're going after.
This is what they've done.
This is the last time their cell phone was pinged in this area.
And this is, we need to get them now.
So I knew every time we went out the gate, every time we went out there, the wire or
whatever the hell you want to call it, that we're out there chasing dudes that were killing
or hurting or just being terrorizing that part of town.
So there was without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, the individuals that we were tasked
to go after were not good people.
So the other side of the two-part question is this.
Again, we get a very black and white portrayal of Iraq, Afghanistan.
So America is at war with Iraq.
We're at war with Afghanistan where the reality is the people within those countries are being
terrorized by these extremists.
And we never hear about kindness and compassion on the battlefield.
So when you think back to that time, were there moments of kindness and compassion that
you remember witnessing from either the indigenous people or some of the men and women that you
serve with?
Yeah, absolutely.
I would say I saw a lot of servicemen and women give out aid to the Iraqi people, food,
water, and whatnot.
And I saw the same thing from the Iraqi people where they try to help out and point out the
bad guys.
Because hey, like any war, there's no way everybody's a bad guy.
There's good civilians who live there and they just want to live a good life and just
be normal and live a good life.
And they want to point out the bad guys.
And a lot of times they can't because they're in fear of them being attacked.
But there are individuals like interpreters.
The Iraqi interpreters were such great help to us.
They would risk life and limb to help us to try to capture the bad guys.
And I think that was so powerful.
They wanted to free their country.
They wanted to destroy evil and they were willing to risk everything to do that.
Absolutely.
I think we don't hear enough of that.
I've heard army vets taking care of the indigenous animals in Iraq, Afghanistan.
You said the courage, not only of the interpreters, but the Iraqi Afghan freedom fighters that
fought alongside us that sadly a lot of them were left behind when we pulled out.
But I think it's important that we hear that side as well.
So thank you.
With the SF dudes doing hits on buildings simultaneously where we're doing hits on other
buildings, they want to fight for their country too.
They want to have that freedom.
And like you said, they're willing to risk life and limb for that.
And a lot of those guys are heroes, but they're never really spoken about.
Like the SF unit, the Iraqi Special Forces unit out there right now is still getting
some to this very day.
They're still out there capturing all these little terrorist groups that are still in
Iraq, but we don't hear about it anymore.
And they are as much of our heroes as we are.
Absolutely.
Well, speaking of the cost of war, I know there was a pivotal moment where you lost
two friends during one of the deployments that you had.
So we don't have to dive into details, of course, but talk to me about the realization
of losing brothers and how that impacted you and caused you, not caused you, but became
a strong reason for you to transition out of the military.
Yeah.
War affects everybody differently.
And I talked about that in the documentary.
Some people, they can withstand it longer than others, and some it just takes a big
toll on them.
And I did lose two friends.
One of them was our team leader.
One of them was our squad leader, Bremen Barazza.
And these guys were the epitome of a Ranger.
What you think a Ranger was?
Barazza was like a six foot, 200 stout dude who was tactically proficient, who was an
outstanding leader.
Like when you see him, you look at him, you're like, dude, Barazza is a beast.
And there's Bremen, who was like five, six, more, not that big of a dude, but he was a
Ranger through and through.
And they were both amazing leaders, tacticians.
And that's the one thing that I would like to thank the Ranger Regiment for was the outstanding
leaders that I had the opportunity to serve on.
They have built me into the man I am today without the lessons be who I am today.
And I have those two to pay for, to really contribute for me, for my success, for how
I operate my mindset wise.
And when we're losing them, you think at that time we haven't lost anybody yet in our company.
And those were the two first individuals that we lost in our company.
When I first got into the regiment, by the time I got there, Pat Tillman had already
been killed.
So the gym was dedicated to Tillman.
And I met his brother, Kevin Tillman during our EIB, which is an expert infantry badge
course where we earn our EIB.
And that was the last time I've heard of somebody in the Ranger Regiment in a second Ranger
battalion that was killed was Pat Tillman.
So we thought we were invincible.
I thought, man, we were kicking ass and I was like, man, this is awesome.
No one can mess with us.
And when we lost those two, it affected everybody because those guys were squared away.
Those guys were studs, but everybody knew there was a mission that has to be completed.
We mourned, they mourned, but they knew the next day, the next following day, it was business
as usual that we had to go back out there.
They had to go back out there and bring the fight to the enemy.
And losing them and going to their funeral in their wake and saluting their pitcher,
I was just lost for words.
I was emotionally wrecked.
The whole, everything that we saw up to that point combined with the loss of these individuals
really did a pull on me.
It really did.
It affected me.
And for a long time, I strayed away from that and thinking like, oh yeah, I'm a guy, I'm
a Ranger, I'm a tough dude.
Thinking about depression and all that PTSD, which wasn't even called at the time, was
for, excuse my terms, bitches.
You always want to put that face up with your other boys going out to drink with them and
be like, yeah, that doesn't affect me.
But you can tell there's certain visuals that are affected by war.
And I reached a turning point where I was like, I can't stand, this is too much for
me.
My mom needed my help.
So that's when I decided not to reenlist and head back home to Chicago.
And I did, I head back home and I tried the college route for about a year and it wasn't
for me.
I was being in that classroom with those young kids and going from what I experienced to
that classroom is just, they didn't understand I had no one to talk to.
I couldn't talk to my mom.
I couldn't talk to my sisters.
And at the time I already had a, I have a little brother from her boyfriend at the time.
So I couldn't tell my little brother anything either.
And I was just dealing with my own inner demons.
There was no outreach group.
There was no one I can talk to.
And I just hung out in my room for almost a year straight.
I stopped working out.
I stopped, my friends called me.
I never picked up their phone calls.
I didn't want to go out.
I didn't know that what the hell was wrong with me.
I felt suicidal for a little bit.
And I thought alcohol would be something that would cure or help me.
But it was like a small bandaid and a gaping wound.
And then when I realized, I sat back and I started to talk to God again.
And I was like, hey, I need your help.
And going back to church and just working out my internal issues and understanding a
lot of the things I went through or seen, there's really nothing I could have done about
it.
And when I came to terms with that, I got better.
And I realized, hey, you didn't make it this far in your life just to take your life or
become a piece of shit.
So that's when I decided, hey, I'm going to pursue my other dream, which was to become
a police officer.
With the mature lens that I have now after seven years of these conversations and a career
in the fire service myself, it makes so much sense.
You had such a sense of purpose.
You had such tight knit camaraderie and brotherhood in the Ranger Battalion that you work with.
You saw combat, you had shared suffering, you had loss.
And then you go back to the States where no one understands what you've done.
You don't have your tribe anymore.
People are probably bitching about stuff that's so insignificant compared to the things that
you've had to see and do.
And I think that you just mirrored what a lot of people experience when they transition
even from the military or from the first responder professions.
Yeah, James, you hit it right in the head.
I lost purpose.
I was in a unit that was operating at such a high level.
When I left that and I came back to civilian world, there's no more shared suffering.
Am I going to sit here and lie to you and say the Ranger Regiment was sunshine and rainbows?
Absolutely not.
It was the hardest freaking thing I've ever done in my goddamn life.
But that shared suffering and what I went through really molded me to who I was.
And when I left that, and even now when I left this police job, realm, career, there
is no more shared suffering.
I always tell people, when you do those type of jobs, yeah, there's shared suffering.
Now there isn't.
There's no one to carry that weight by yourself.
And I have to carry that weight by myself for a very long time.
Now you said you found God.
Talk to me about that journey.
You already had a relationship with God.
How did you navigate yourself back to this spiritual communication that was healing for
you specifically?
I picked up the Bible.
I prayed.
Prayer is a powerful thing.
I prayed and I talked to him and I went back to church and that really helped me because
I found someone else that I can speak to.
And I knew he could understand me because he's God Almighty.
He knows, he sees, he experiences everything.
So through the power of prayer and really sharing my suffering with him, it lifted a
big boulder off my shoulder and really gave me purpose again.
And he gave me purpose again and really like, hey, what the other dream that you wanted
to do, remember?
And I was like, yeah, it's time.
It's time to get back into it.
Brilliant, so as you said, you were talking to God, you are reminded of your second purpose,
which is your journey into law enforcement.
You initially find yourself in a small department in Illinois, braving real policing.
You transition over to California after putting an app in for Chicago.
Now I know I'm kind of going past some of your life's journeys, but I want to specifically
get to this.
So talk to me about the level of training, the expectations, the attrition rate for LAPD
when you joined that department.
At the time I joined, it was about 2011.
And this was my second police academy I went to.
Obviously the first one was with the suburban department in Illinois.
And you know, it was okay.
It wasn't that bad.
It was from what I've went through in the military, it was walking to park really, to
be honest with you.
Then I went over to LA.
They treated at the time, I don't know how things are now, but when I was going through,
I mean, they were implying, right?
I mean, there were standards.
They treated like a paramilitary organization.
The males had to shave their heads.
The women had to wear their hair in a tight bun.
We had to double time everywhere.
There were standards to meet.
And if you don't meet that standards, you're going to get dropped without a question.
And we started with a class of over a hundred.
We graduated around like, I would say 60 something officers.
I mean, they weren't playing.
They're like, hey, and to really drive that home, one of our guidon, our guidon is the
guy who got to carry the flag during our academy class.
And he was a former Marine.
And he passed all the way to the badge ceremony where we got our badge and we got pin.
We literally had four weeks left.
And the way LAPD does is like, hey, there's scenario based training that you have to pass
and you get two tries.
Your partner is the instructor.
So there's no sneaky peaky, like I got another candidate next to me who's smarter than me.
And I'll just like give him or her all the duties that the criteria is that you have
to meet.
No, it's literally you and you're put on a spot and he failed twice and they got rid
of them.
And the senior instructor was in the class because he saw our class was like really up
in arms and really sad and angry what happened because that guy was a squared away guy.
He was squared away.
He did everything was asked him to that point.
And we express our opinions to the senior instructor and he's like, hey, we have standards
here.
If we drop the standards, if we lower the standards, then he said anybody else will
get that chance.
And we're not like that.
And when he told us that, it made sense.
So yeah, LAPD was a legit academy.
I had so much fun, but it was hard.
It was hard.
And I was glad it was hard because then you get a better trained officer, right?
You're not getting the bottom of the barrel that's just pushed through the pipeline because
they need bodies.
They need numbers because that's when it gets dangerous, especially now.
We will touch on that, James, about current policing right nowadays and what the heck
is going on.
But back then in 2011, there were standards and people still wanted to be the police.
And yeah, I had a chance to work for that department.
It was great.
I wanted to join LAPD SWAT because being on SWAT was something I always wanted to do.
That was one of my lifelong goals.
But my mother needed my help back home.
She was getting old and she didn't want to move to California because she didn't have
any friends here.
She didn't know the way around.
So I had to suck it up and come back home.
Before we hit record, I talked about how your journey mirrors mine in certain ways, obviously
not with deployments in Ramadi, for example.
But the first responder journey, I got hired by Anaheim, California, just south of you
guys.
And again, it was the same exact thing.
The bar was so high and we lost 25% of each probationary class in the first year through
attrition.
And they literally would say, look, you're not a bad firefighter.
You're just not the right fit for Anaheim Fire Department.
And so people would go and work for other agencies.
And that was this incredibly high standard.
Now I want to get to the contrast of the other side of it.
But before we do, talk to me about with this kind of lens that you have now, how that high
level of training and standards factored into some of the calls that you had wearing an
LAPD uniform.
Absolutely.
It matters.
The hard training matters because you heard this many times, right, James?
You don't rise to the level of occasion, you fall to the level of your training.
And if you have shit training and if your department doesn't give a rat's ass about
you and you don't give a rat's ass about you and your profession, the professional
that you claim to be, and then when you meet something that was extremely difficult to
deal with, an adversity, you're just going to suffer.
And hopefully you don't end up causing someone else's life or your life in the process.
And that's the one thing that I loved about the Ranger Regiment is because when we train,
our level of training is so fucking hard.
It's way harder than war, in my opinion.
And it's made that way for a reason because if they would do us a disservice, if they
trained us at this level and we went to war and it was at this level, then we're just
like, oh shit, right?
Now this is a big gap that we have to try to catch up to or try to survive.
But if our training is at this level and war is at this level, then we're like, this is
easy day.
Because I've suffered more in Yakima, in the state of Washington, out there in the field
with not eating, staying up all day and night, doing fire and maneuvering, live fire in CQB
and all that, than I did over in Iraq.
And when I went to Iraq and I went to war and I did all that, in a sense, it was not
that hard because what I dealt with in training was way more tough.
And I was used to that.
I was able to exceed what was asked of me out in the real world.
And the same thing applies with the police room.
It's the same thing that applies to being a firefighter.
It's the same thing that applies to any one of these jobs where you raise a right hand
and you sign a blank check.
It's like, you have to exceed the standards in training constantly because you never know
when you're going to go out there and face whatever adversity is out there.
Because we already know, both us being from a first responder type of career, that you
go from zero to 100, just like that.
One minute you're having a cup of coffee, the next minute shots fired, active shooter,
a hostage situation that you have to respond to.
Now if you get there and your training sucks ass and the last time you shot was an annual
qual or the last time you did some kind of defensive tactics or any kind of training
was the police academy, shame on you.
And I've seen both spectrum.
I've seen cops who were squared away.
When I went through a call of, I remember vividly, one of the calls I did during LAPD
in the Olympic division was they went after the stolen vehicle.
This guy just did a drive by shooting.
The patrol caught us, seen him speeding through that part of town.
They chased and sued.
They ended up chasing his vehicle.
We were listening to the radio.
We joined the chase.
They came to this neighborhood, they ditched the car and they ran into the city block.
Now LAPD at that time, they had standards and we trained to that center.
They locked down that city block.
So there's no way for that dude to escape.
They set up a team.
All right, you're less lethal, you're lethal.
You're going to be the ones with the shield.
And we put together a team to go look for this guy and the airship came over the air
and they located like, okay, this individual is in this backyard hiding underneath the
shaft.
And when we got there, they put together a well-thought out plan and we tactically executed
to standard to take the dude into custody.
And he had a pistol and I tased them and he's like, you're less lethal.
I was the new guy attending.
He's like, hey, you're less lethal.
All right, this guy's lethal.
There's something happening and I'm hands on.
And we came there, we approached tactically in a safe manner and gave him commands.
He didn't abide and we did what we had to do.
We took him into custody and that is paid dividends to the training that was instilled
upon us during the police academy.
And not only that, but when we got to the department, the ongoing training that we were
able to still have and the squared away FTOs that we have that really helped with the whole
spectrum of that side of things.
So yeah, absolutely.
It matters.
And I've seen it unfold many times, many, many freaking times, hitting a house in Iraq,
explosive breach, entering, knowing your points of domination, knowing when to step into the
kill zone, knowing when to being sharpened up to know not to over penetrate a certain
room because of the angle of the room, knowing when to do all this thing.
It all matters because at that time I didn't think about any of that.
It just happens.
The more you train, the more it becomes second nature.
And that's the most important thing that anybody who's listening should realize that you want
to train.
You want to get so good.
That's like what Bruce Lee said, be like water, my friends.
You don't have to think about punching.
You automatically punch.
It's the same thing when you do anything tactically or anything on the fire side, being able to
know what's cool to take the breach of a door or you read the door knowing like, okay, this
is what it's going to need to take is because time matters.
When things happen and seconds count, the more you delay, the more you second guess
yourself, the more bad things are going to fucking happen.
Absolutely.
And I think they say what train not to get it right, but train so much that you don't
get it wrong.
And I think that's absolutely the way, especially the basics.
Obviously, we're all jack of all trades, master of none, but the basics, which is one of the
things I see with Instagram is people are trying to invent new ways of doing things.
It's like, well, just the basics are there because they work.
Of course you can add tools to your toolbox, but are you proficient at picking a ladder
up off a rig and throwing it on your own and then having to move it if things change?
Before you get that down, you don't need to worry about the fancy stuff.
So I agree 100%.
You drill the absolute basics that you will lean into and then you can start adding to
your toolbox after that.
I'm huge on mastering the basics.
Think of high level athletes, Michael Jordan, dude who can do crazy layups and dunks and
all that.
What do you think he practiced when he gets on the court?
Layups.
He practiced free throws.
He practiced the basics and mastering the basics, like you said, James is huge.
If you don't have a foundation to stand upon, it's going to crumble.
Everything else is not going to freak you out if you don't know the basics of your skill
set of your craft.
If you're not a master of your craft of the basics, you can't excel and expect to do all
the other high speed things you see on social media.
But I've seen the unit guys overseas when they were training, when they're out there
on the range, they don't run fancy drills.
They do the basics because they understand the importance of that reload, being able
to present your weapon system stance, all that.
They're doing basic drills just over and over and over and over and over until, like you
said, second nature.
Absolutely.
Even if you think about the martial arts, Hapkido, I did Taekwondo.
When you take your black belt, you start from what you learned in the white belt.
Even in your black belt test, you start in your very first kata you ever did and you
worked your way up.
I think that's a good kind of analogy.
You never ever forget the foundations that your skills were built on.
No, your foundation has to be rock solid.
Like a house built on not a solid foundation is going to crumble.
You have to think of your craft as the same way.
Before you go out there and start trying to do all these high speed things, let's work
on the basics.
Let's be so damn good at it that then you're like, okay, I am now ready.
You probably talked to two and you talked about Miyamoto Musashi.
Towards the end of his life, his choice of weapon was a wooden stick and is kicking people's
ass with that thing.
Why?
Because he understood that all these fancy blades and all these fancy things didn't matter
anymore.
When you break down the essence of being a true master of your craft, even with a wooden
stick, you can still kick somebody's ass if you are a master of your craft.
He proved that.
He's proven that.
It's been proven time and time again with high level athletes, with guys who are in
CAG, guys who are in dev group, guys who are high level in what they do.
They are so good at their craft that it doesn't matter.
You can give me a 1990 M16 with iron sights.
I'll still freaking shoot the shit out of that thing.
For example, one of our senior guys on SWAT, he went to an FBI instructor course, pistol
course and every single guy who went to that course from other teams, Illinois State Police,
all these counties, they all had staccatos with red dots, all these Gucci guns.
And that guy, our senior guy, his name is OJ.
OJ, he's a bad motherfucker, by the way.
OJ, he came there with a Gen 3 Glock 17 iron sights and he outshot everybody.
He won top shot of the class.
All the other guys had staccatos and you name it, any kind of Gucci gun you had, you can
imagine with optics and he outshot them with iron sights with a Gen 3 Glock 17.
What does that tell you?
Performance and basics.
Yes.
Beautiful.
Well, I've started with Hialeah, which was a department just north of Miami and they
laid such an incredible foundation.
Then I moved to California for a few years, Anaheim again, I made that 75%.
I was one of the ones that graduated.
And again, with my own eyes saw not only the entry level training, but it never stopped.
I mean, we constantly cut roofs.
We constantly took doors.
We constantly pulled hose and threw ladders and did the medical stuff.
And it was just part of the culture.
You never stop learning.
Then I transitioned back to the East Coast, just like yourself.
It was family first.
And that's why I went back.
We had a little boy and my son's mother wanted to be back near her family.
Oh, what a blessing.
And it was apart from career wise and it broke my heart because I left my dream department
and I chased that same level of professionalism for 10 years.
And don't get me wrong, I worked with some great people, especially that next department,
even the last one, a few good people, despite the department, but the mediocrity and the
lack of standards, the lack of almost understanding the why of what we were even doing as a profession,
the complacency was nauseating and it angered me.
And it really is one of the creations of this podcast was eventually I'm going to fix it
from the outside.
But knowing where you should be from those first two fire departments to then seeing
the other side of the spectrum, I mean, mental health wise was detrimental on top of everything
else.
So talk to me.
You've had this amazing bar set now, LAPD.
Talk to me about your transition to Chicago and let's talk about the other side of the
scale.
Oh my God, James, you hit it right in the head and you can relate to what I'm about
to speak of.
And disclaimer guys, I'm not here to bash on Chicago.
This is from my own views of 10 years on that department.
So this is from my experience.
It's not like I'm anti Chicago.
I hate Chicago police department.
Serving as a cop is an honorable profession.
Doesn't matter what department you serve in.
And I worked with great individuals in that department that was square right away, but
you're absolutely right.
The department, the Chicago police department, I have to go through another police academy.
So this is my third police academy I went to.
And I always treat every single academy like my first.
I don't have an ego.
I don't think like, oh yeah, I've been a cop for X amount of years.
These kids are just off the, from college or whatever, they don't know shit.
No, I treated like I'm the new guy.
But it was very unfortunate.
The culture that the Chicago police department was doing, even in 2013, before this whole
anti truly anti police rhetoric that they were pushing, defund the police bullshit.
At the time we could still be the police, but it was so relaxed.
There was no standard.
You walked everywhere.
It was like literally like college.
They'll give you as many tries as you need to pass.
You know, there are certain individuals who couldn't pass the pistol qual, but all of
a sudden they train with the instructors and they shot alone, they miraculously passed.
When they shot like shit with us during our, you know, our qualification to a point where
there's no way with this X amount of time, this individual is going to pass.
There was no standards.
If you wanted to stay, they'll let you stay.
Right?
And I believe no matter what profession you do, fire police, military, there has to be
a standard because you're setting your officers, your firefighters, and the guys who are serving
up for failure right from the beginning.
When you make it so easy for them to pass, right?
That they will now they're out there in the real world.
Now they're out there dealing with criminals and killers.
Now they're like, oh shit, I am not ready for this because the standards weren't set.
And I saw it firsthand with CPD, coppers.
When I got to this, like the police academy was a joke.
It was a complete freaking joke.
And I was so disheartened, especially with, you know, the name Chicago police, dangerous
murder capital of the world, you know, all this stuff, but they're not giving these officers
the correct training that they deserve to go out there to do their jobs.
And when I got there to the district, the culture was even worse.
All the old timers, sloppy uniform, like when I was in LAPD, your badge had to be shined,
your boots had to be shined, your leather belt has to be shined, your uniform better
be pressed.
And if you're a new guy, you're sitting in the back of the road, they call you boot,
you gotta go up there to the teleprompter, turn on the teleprompter.
Do all these things, because you're the fucking new guy.
I came into Chicago, all the old timers had these worn out leather belts, maybe one pistol
mag, you know, their gun holsters like tilted all the way in the back.
Their uniform is sloppy.
There was no standards.
And that's what they bred.
You know, the females in LA and the West Coast, you have to put your hair up in a bun, obviously,
because if you wrestle or you get into a situation with a criminal and they grab your hair, you
know, you're already at a disadvantage.
In Chicago, they let the females have their hair down.
So they have their hair down, these little ponytails.
There was no standard right from the beginning.
It was like, hey, whatever, kid.
And I saw that.
And they don't give their officers any training, real life-saving training, as in, you know,
the only time that you shot is your annual call.
And it was like 30 rounds.
That's it.
When you get, when you hit the streets every year, the Chicago police department gets you
30 fucking rounds to shoot.
Now think about that.
If you're in a place that the chances of you getting into a violent situation or dealing
with violence is too so high.
And this is the type of training they're giving the officers.
It's a detriment to them, to the citizens and to their partners.
Right?
Because then what type of officers do you have at that level?
Oh, the last time you shot was 30.
And you see in this bunch of Instagram videos, TikTok videos of this copper trying to reload,
trying to clear her pistol that she freaking forgot how to do, which is super embarrassing.
That was a Chicago police officer that recently showed where she got into a OIS, an officer
involved shooting, and she had a stovepipe that was easily cleared, but she didn't know
how to clear it.
Stuff like that is such a detriment to not only yourself, that what you swear, when you
swear you raise your right hand to swear upon being a professional, but most importantly,
like I stated, the citizens you swore to protect.
And the officers in the academy, we didn't get rifle trained.
If you want to be a rifle trained on the streets, you have to go put it in a little application
and the wait time, unless you know a fireman instructor down in the academy, you're probably
waiting over a year to even be rifle trained to hit the streets.
Right?
The defensive tactics they taught there was a joke.
The stuff that doesn't really work.
And I really feel like every police department should train their officers in jujitsu.
You have to be proficient because it matters.
Being able to take a person in a custody as safely and as quickly as possible without
wailing your baton at them, because that's the last time you train your baton was in
the academy.
So you're doing these techniques that doesn't work.
It looks bad on camera.
It looks like you're using excessive force.
But if you're given an officer and their team and their department the proper training so
that they can handle themselves professionally, because I think a lot of these departments
don't realize what that entails.
Does it cost money to have your officers trained?
Absolutely.
But you're saving so much lawsuits.
You're saving your department so much face because now when somebody calls the Chicago
Police Department or CPD officer, they can be like, yeah, I pretty have a really good
confidence that the officer who's responding to my call is squared away, is trained very
well then he can handle that situation.
I think this is such an important conversations.
And again, it's not talking crap about the individuals in the uniform, at least the ones
that are good at their job.
And I actually have a lot of respect for anyone who's a good police officer, firefighter,
paramedic if they work for a shitty department because they are good despite the department,
not because of the department.
One of the big misnomers that I've seen and it seems to be maybe behind the absolute extreme
from your positive experience in LA and the negative one in Chicago is Anaheim had the
bar really high.
And when I practiced my CPAT, which is the physical agility test for the fire service,
I had the humility to go, well, let me practice.
I know I'm in great shape.
Let me do a practice run in California before I go and test in Florida to make sure that
I smash it.
And the guy in the testing center goes, you're the only person I've ever met that left Anaheim
fire department.
And I left purely from geography.
I didn't want to leave Anaheim, but because their standard was set extremely high.
Now, more so now than ever, there's this philosophy, well, if we lower standards, then we'll get
more candidates.
I argue that's completely the opposite.
Not only is it extremely dangerous, but the real firefighters, police officers of the
world want to be challenged.
That's what's going to get you to line up outside the door and obviously having support
of your department and good training, et cetera.
What is your perception of the philosophy that created the way that the academy was,
the lowering of the standards and the kind of devolution of what was probably an incredible
department a few decades prior?
I can tell you this.
When I went to go test with the Chicago police department, they put us in the McCormick place
because there's over 14,000 people trying to apply to be a police officer.
Now they're lucky to get people to want to do the job.
And it plays hand in hand with, like you said, standards has to be high.
It's not high anymore.
Even then before it was anti-police, but now even worse when the whole incident with the
defund the police and you lose out on good candidates.
People who are physically fit and intelligent, they look at the job of a police officer now,
especially like big metropolitan departments that are blue states.
They're like, I don't want to be the cop there.
They tie my hands.
They'll hang me out to dry.
I can be the next YouTube sensation, get sued.
Worse yet, go to jail.
So what are they doing?
They're not going to do the job.
They're going to go work for the, if they're going to want to be a law enforcement individual,
they're going to go work for a three letter agency.
And you're like you said, now you're left with scraping the barrel.
So how are they going to try and fix it?
Oh yeah.
If they, if they have this criminal record, a couple of these misdemeanors, that's, that's
okay.
Oh, they don't have a college degree.
That's okay.
Oh, you can't pass the power test.
That's okay.
We'll work with you just as long as you don't quit.
Then you start seeing the pool of candidates come that they're not here for what this job
stands for anymore.
Because now they're like, oh yeah, well, we can't get candidates.
Let's raise the salary to make it enticing.
Oh, we'll pay for your college or, you know, help you pay for your college tuition.
Then what are you getting?
You're getting people not wanting to do the job for the right reasons.
They're in here, they're in it for the money.
And the, the, the, the, the quality of candidates is so watered down that is super dangerous.
I don't know if you've seen that most recent video, James, of the four CPD officers who
try to arrest the shoplifter and they couldn't even place them in a custody.
I did, sadly.
Yeah.
That to me speaks volumes.
You know, they're out of breath.
I can tell you like those, those coppers there are pretty much rookies, maybe three years
on the, on the, on the job because of where they're, where they're located.
And usually like, you know, you know how it goes when you're the new guy or new gal, you're
going to be placed in areas that are very dangerous because all the seniority guys get
out and go somewhere else, right?
A little bit safer, what you say.
And so those cops have probably had like three to five years on the job.
And this is the type of coppers are out there now.
And it's just, it's, it's insane.
It's absolutely insane.
Were you hit on a topic?
I think that most people don't understand, which is the term false economy and it's the
same in the fire service.
You know, we are struggling now recruitment wise.
And I think what's happening for us is just as you alluded to now, let's say you're an
18 year old, you know, man or woman and you're like, I think I'm going to be a firefighter.
I think I'm going to be a police officer.
And they do an actual diligent Google search on what does a job actually mean?
And they start discovering this standards lowering, you know, organizational betrayal,
you know, all these elements.
Then you've got the marriage issues and the mental health problems, addiction, suicide.
And then they look at the pay and they look at the hours, they look at the mandatory overtime
and then they go, Hmm, you know what UPS is hiring or I've been offered this IT job.
And so that's where they go.
And this is what we've got to understand is that we as the first responder professions
have literally hit critical mass where our generation was asked to do more with less
over and over and over again.
Fire stations were browned out.
You know, to me, for example, in law enforcement, the fact that any police officer is sent out
on their own in a car is fucking insanity.
How we got there nationally, I don't understand LAPD and some of these two to a car that should
be the gold standard.
Less cars, you know, more cars with two, it doesn't matter how many vehicles you have
to get out that are well trained, that is an absolute force multiplier on one individual
that may or may not resist.
One person gets out and the other person is bigger.
They're immediately on the back foot.
So now they're either going to get murdered or they're going to, you know, forced into
drawing their weapon.
So we're at the point now where people got to understand that we are bleeding so much
money as you said, lawsuits, medical retirements, workman's comp, overtime, you name it.
There is the budget, but we need courageous leaders to go enough is enough.
We've been bleeding money out the back end.
Our, you know, our brand to use a corporate word is completely fucked.
So we got to start investing in our people.
We're going to put the bar back where it needs to be.
We're going to do a hiring, but to get the people to walk through the door, we've actually
got to create good working conditions.
We're going to start saying we offer this, this level of jujitsu, wrestling, judo, whatever
we're going to be doing all kinds of real tactical weapons training.
We're going to do, you know, training on, on interacting with the public on deescalation,
on conversation, you know, physical fitness programs.
So when you get out the car, your initial thought might be, I'm not going to run from
that guy or that girl.
They look like a kill me.
And in a good way, you know, these are the things that we have to do.
We can't keep being reactive because we found ourselves literally swirling around the toilet
bowl.
As people have said, and this is not scaremongering, if we don't change, there won't be any firefighters
or police officers to respond to your house anymore.
That is where we're at in some of these jurisdictions.
So to me, you know, hearing your story, hearing, obviously I've, I've touched on some of my
experiences in the past.
We've both talked about where there were good departments, where everything was done well.
So it's not, oh, everything's crap.
It's just the ones that are, you know, that could be the person that's pulling over your
teenage son one day who reaches in the glove box to get his driving license.
And that person with a one annual qual freaks out and shoots your kid in the head.
That's what we're talking about.
Or stands frozen while someone walks through a school and massacres school children, including
your own.
So it's not that we're talking about the carpentry world and now my cupboard door is slightly
wonky because it was a shit carpenter.
When you or I are bad at our jobs, people die.
You are 100% sir.
You hit that in the head and I think it needs to be realized what's going on.
Like, you know, let's talk about the one man car thing.
It's perception, right?
They want more cars out there.
So it looks like there's more cops, but you're absolutely right.
It should be two to a vehicle, 100%.
And not only that in this day and age, they don't want warriors anymore.
And what they're pushing out there in society and we see the trickle effect now.
No one wants to be a police.
No one wants to do this job.
The army just missed their recruitment by 15%, which is the lowest it's ever been.
You know, and what is why?
Why?
Why is that?
It's because of what's being pushed out there nowadays.
No one wants to do these professions anymore.
You're absolutely right.
I can be a UPS driver.
Like Chicago, they have mandatory like days off canceled because there's not enough cops.
I've worked so many days off, so many days that was supposed to be my days off, but they
got it canceled.
Oh, it's canceled.
It's canceled.
And you just have to show up to it because there's not enough manpower and there's not
enough hires and there's so many retirees that are retiring.
And we see it, you know, and it's frustrating because there are good cops in Chicago.
I've encountered many good cops.
The training, I saw what has happened there and I decided to go out and seek my own training.
I spent thousands of dollars on my own money to go out there and train myself and prepare
myself for joining CPD SWAT.
You know, and not a lot.
And if you know anything about coppers, a lot of them are cheap.
They don't want to spend their money on their own training.
If the department is not going to provide me with the training, I'm not going to go
out there and spend my own money, which is sad.
You're a professional.
What if it's your kid that, you know, imagine you go into the cause and that's your kid,
that's your mom, that's your sister.
Don't you want them to have the best, most well-trained officers to arrive to make sure
that they're safe?
Isn't that what you raise your right hand for?
And let's talk about leadership.
I mean, in Chicago police department, there's something called meritors promotion, meaning
that they put like, they put 15 to 20% aside that the commanders and whatnot could put
in like, oh yeah.
And back in the days that was, it was done correctly, right?
Because there were cops who were running and gunning who were great officers, but they
suck at the test taking.
So those meritors promotions like, okay, John, John's a great copper.
He's out there getting guns.
He's in a gang.
He's doing all this high speed thing, but he didn't test that well as a sergeant.
Let's put them up.
Let's make them a sergeant.
It went from that to now my dad is commander.
He's putting his friend's son through the rank of sergeant and in return one day you
do the same for my kid.
So now we have a rank of people in the police department that are like chief, deputy chief,
whatever, working the streets who are a bunch of house mouses who never really went out
there and run and gun or bend the police that, you know, but now they're, they, since they
know somebody that's a higher ranking individual in the department, they got put it meritoriously
from sergeant to lieutenant to captain to commander.
Because there's individuals in our department that made all those rank through meritors
promotions or in these high level positions that were supposed to be reserved for the
veteran run and gun officers who was out there for their troops.
Now you're placing these individuals with no experience in that level, in those positions
and it just crumbles.
And I saw it through my 10 years of being a cop there and I got sick and tired of it.
And that's why I left.
One of the reasons why I left.
Again parallels.
So my last place, and I've talked about this a lot, just to bring change.
I'm not talking about it to talk shit.
Yeah, for sure.
Our operations chief, the one who's in charge of everyone who's doing the job came up through
dispatch.
So he spent his career answering 911 calls.
The chief chief came up through fire prevention.
So checking fire extinguishers for extinguish dates and sprinklers.
Neither of those two qualify you to be a ground level firefighter or overseeing the paramedic
side.
And that complacency, we had the shooter that ended up going to the Pulse nightclub in Orlando
came to our area first, which was Disney Springs.
And this is public knowledge.
And he's seen on camera with a stroller and under the blanket on the stroller, a bunch
of automatic weapons pushing it in.
But when he gets there, there's some sort of shift change from the sheriff's office.
And so he turns around, gets back in his car, drives up Orange Avenue and then goes and
murders a bunch of people in Pulse nightclub.
I'm overseas when this happens.
I come back expecting all kinds of new training equipment, things I'm going to have to catch
up on.
And they were like, what do you mean?
Basically it didn't happen.
So therefore we're okay.
And that complacency again was one of the big things that eventually led to me going,
all right, I've spent five years trying to make a positive impact.
I did train people.
I did do fitness training.
I did do all kinds of stuff and then left it better than I found it and then transitioned
out.
But that was such a giant near miss that most refuse to even acknowledge no matter learn
from and change.
You had a pretty horrendous incident when it comes to the Mercy Hospital shooting.
So again, you've got LAPD.
Talk to me about that.
We've got horror stories, obviously Parkland shooting here in Florida with the SO not responding,
Ovalde recently with the officers, at least the leadership side of the officers not engaging
that suspect.
So talk to me about not only the heroism of the officer that you lost, but also if any,
how that complacency factored into that incident.
It was huge.
It was lightning in a bottle.
That luck happened for the Chicago police department because that could have turned
180 from what had happened.
So in our department, we have something called the sort vehicle.
So on SWAT is called the special operations response team.
You drive around the city just in case something kicks off that you respond to an incident.
And luckily at the time, that vehicle, one of our sort vehicles is downtown.
And instead of making a left towards John Hancock, which is the opposite of the Mercy
Hospital, they decided to go right for whatever reason.
So towards the Mercy Hospital, not knowing there was an active shooter that occurred.
So they were driving and they heard this whole incident kicked off about this individual
shot the doctor, an officer has been shot, Officer Jimenez, who literally had only a
couple of weeks, a couple of months on the job.
He's a brand new probationary officer.
And he was at the hospital.
I think he was dropping off paperwork or he was dropping off a suspect or something like
that.
But he was there when he got hit in the jugular and he bled on scene and died in the hospital.
But then again, that's one of those things you could have two days on a job and you get
killed.
You could have, and there's stories of coppers who have 19 years on the job, the day of retirement,
they get killed.
Right.
You never know when you're in your stand of career.
And that's why you should always train and be the best that you can.
You got to realize that.
So back to this story, this whole, that whole Mercy Hospital kicked off.
He, the story behind that was, you know, the doctor that he was dating was his fiance and
she, she, she called it off.
She's like, I don't want to be with you anymore.
We're calling this off.
And he, and he got mad about that.
So he's like, okay, meet me outside in a vest of, meet me outside.
Oh, give me back my ring and we'll call the quits.
So no, she didn't know, but he had a pistol and he had a box of rounds in his pocket.
So we can see it over the camera.
You know, they're, they're talking, and I guess an argument ensued and he killed her.
He pulled out a pistol and he shot her to death right there.
He stood over her body for a little bit.
Then whatever he was processing, he decided to go inside the Mercy Hospital and start
shooting people.
And when that call kicked off, our sort vehicle, I was off that day, but my radio was on because
I was downstairs in my basement and I was cleaning my gun.
I was on call and this call kicked off and that car luckily was heading towards Mercy
House.
They, so it was our sniper and two other guys in the car heading towards that incident.
And I, we rewatched the, the camera, the body worn camera of the Lieutenant.
And this is going to fall back to training.
Oh, the Chicago Police Department on aftershooter, they didn't know how to train their officers.
And we saw it firsthand in the video because there was a bunch of cops standing in the
hallway looking for directions.
They didn't know to close in and kill the enemy or form a diamond formation and go towards
the gunfire and try to look and eliminate the threat.
They, you know, of course you fall back to training and you know, I'm not going to blame
those cops because they were never really trained in active shooting.
So when our guys got there, we, you know, the one thing that's great about being on
the SWAT team in Chicago is we train all the time.
We got a test to get on.
They don't just accept anybody.
So when you get on the SWAT team, we train all the time.
And I wish we, you know, the patrol level or the tactical guys on plain clothes had
that level of training too.
But when they got on scene, luckily one of the guys' name was Elvis.
He was our sniper at the time.
He responded with the Lieutenant and they close in and at that time they met with Jimenez.
So it was him, Jimenez, the officer who got shot in the juggler and the Lieutenant were
going towards the sound of gunfire.
And when they started bounding towards the incident, it was a T intersection.
So basically just imagine a big T leading down a deep hallway and another, basically
an I. The shooter was on the other side of the hallway.
They were bounding to the next level of cover.
And that incident when they were bounding, that's when Officer Jimenez got hit in the
juggler and he started to bleed out.
And luckily, not luckily, but that guy who was the SWAT guy, Elvis, you know, he was
our sniper.
He got down in a prone position and he dialed down his rifle optic so that he's able to
see the dot clearer in an ambient light environment.
And he shot the guy and took him out.
If we weren't there on scene, I firmly believe he would have continued to try to kill as
many people as possible because he had a bunch of freaking rounds in his pockets.
So just to underline, so Officer Jimenez without all the training and gear that a SWAT officer
had still went towards gunfire.
Absolutely.
Amazing courage.
I mean, truly tragic end, but amazing courage.
Absolutely.
He, he, uh, he could have coward.
He didn't.
He knew what was right.
And he went, he went, he went towards it and God bless him.
Did that incident have any ripple effect of discussions improving training?
I mean, like you said, from a SWAT perspective, you know, you guys did what you had trained
for, but was there an analysis of the lack of training of other individuals in the hospital
that could be elevated?
Absolutely.
But like the department always is good for is they talk about this in their hands.
And, uh, you know, our, our rifles that we had, uh, like the guy who, the guy who, uh,
Elvis, who was the shooter, who, you know, eliminated the threat, uh, our department
rifles that were issues were, were old.
And there was a, and there was a couple of jams that happened from that incident that
he tried to return fire, but the weapon jammed on him.
And, uh, after the incident, we, they came in, they saw like, Oh, a lot of these weapons
are super old.
They're like, yeah, we're going to get you guys new guns.
Never happened.
They talked about it.
These guys are still having the same weapon system that, that they used during the Murf
State hospital incident.
And that's just how the Chicago police department rolls.
They like to talk about it.
They like to put smoke in mirrors, but they'll sit on their hands until some shit happens.
Then they're like, Oh crap.
How can we do to fix this situation?
Right.
Like the Laquan McDonald shooting where, um, you know, that officer shot that kid 16 times.
Uh, was, was that kid in the wrong of why he was called there?
When the officer arrived?
Absolutely.
Could the officer be more trained to handle that situation?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's just sad.
It's, it's, it's just sad.
I think this is the thing is that when we're talking about funding, supporting, training,
even rest and recovery, it's not focused at making just the police officer's life better.
I mean, the goal is to obviously save lives on the streets as well.
And another thing, which I talk about a lot when I'm interacting with law enforcement
is where is the discussion on making the streets safer?
Like, we never hear anyone say, you know, this doesn't happen in Oslo, right?
Or Lisbon, you know, or Reykjavik.
Like there are countries around the world that don't have their children murdering each
other because they wore blue or red, you know, or because they're slinging dope on every
corner.
So, you know, we always blame law enforcement.
You're not doing enough, but culturally, where is the discussion on the mental health crisis?
You know, we talk about guns or all about guns, you know, every time a classroom full
of innocence is murdered, everyone discards their feelings.
Like, were you pro gun or anti gun?
Like, hold on, there's this human being that we just killed.
Are we not going to talk about that?
Oh, I don't know, but that's, you know, that's not my podium.
You know, so it's maddening.
But yeah, so by elevating training, as we said, you know, you walk out and it's, you
know, whatever suspect that sadly has made the news because they were killed, maybe in
that situation, a well-trained fit officer was able to deescalate and never have got
to the point of lethal force.
But you don't hear that in the conversation either.
And then the same with the overtime sleep deprivation.
Maybe if this officer hadn't worked two straight shifts cognitively, he would have made a different
decision, but you never bring that into the conversation either.
Absolutely.
I agree with you on all ends.
Go back and going back to like what you're speaking about about training again, because
I think it's very important.
We need a harp on this is because look at the Yuvali incident.
That town was 20,000 people in the middle of nowhere in Texas.
No one expected that to happen there, right?
But I guarantee you when those coppers were standing in that hallway, everybody was like,
this is wrong.
This is wrong.
We need to do something.
But no one had the confidence or the competent or the training to be on me.
Let's go.
Because I guarantee you that's all it took is one copper and that stick to be on me.
Let's move, you know, and people were like, yeah, let's go.
Because I know a lot of those coppers there would have been like, they're thinking in
the back of their head, this is wrong.
So much time is passing.
This is wrong.
We need to do something.
And it falls back to your training.
Right?
Training is huge.
Training makes a big difference and saving lives.
Let's forget about the lawsuit.
Let's forget about all that shit.
Right?
Just saving lives, doing your damn job.
Why do we do this job?
To save lives.
I'm not doing this for a paycheck.
We don't get paid enough for what we do.
Absolutely fucking not.
Not because it's honorable, because we believe in it, because we have purpose, because we
want to make a difference.
So how are we going to be able to do that if we don't get the training?
We're going to be like that cop like, oh, my department doesn't give me this X amount
of training.
So too bad.
I'm not going to train myself.
I'm just going to do TikTok videos and dances and ridiculous things.
You know, where does the professionalism come into play?
You think because you raise your right hand, you wear that badge, it's all almighty.
I always tell people, sometimes your uniform does not suffice.
What happens when your challenge, when your uniform doesn't command respect anymore and
that individual wants to fight you?
Then what?
Are you going to be like, oh shit, I wish I could want to more training.
I wish I would have taken this seriously.
And I hope I make it through this.
Are you going to be that officer who's like, I'm ready?
I'm well trained.
You know, if you want to walk down this path, I'm going to walk down this path with you.
And I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that I'm going to come out of
this alive.
My partner is going to come out of this alive or the individuals that are involved in this
incident, the innocent ones are going to come out alive and you're going to pay for what
you did.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, even the conversation with the canine, I've had several canine handlers on the show
and there's been a pushback against the canine program too.
And people are so short sighted because those are non-lethal options.
If you don't use the dog, then you use the gun.
That's it.
That's your two.
And more often than not, if you speak to Mike Goosby was one LAPD absolute legend when it
comes to canine, he can count the number of bites he's got on one hand.
You know, it's a deterrent again, but we have this optic of, oh, you know, no more tactical
operating tactical gear for the police and no more canines.
It's like, well, ideally, yeah, ideally we can go back to the beat cop that's just walking
around, you know, playing basketball with neighborhood kids.
But there's areas at the moment that are absolute war zones and taking away tools that make
it safer for the officers and the person that you're even pursuing is insanity.
But this political, you know, fucking fairy tale bullshit that's happened the last few
years, people don't realize that's making it even more dangerous for our children than
it ever was before.
Yeah, absolutely.
Chicago doesn't have bite dogs.
It's insane.
Like we've been on calls and I'm like, hey, you want to send in your dog?
They're like, oh, my dog's not a bite dog.
You know, like I said, like you said, there's tools to be used to do our job more safe.
But like you said, it's political.
It's all political.
For example, like the explosive breaching program for our SWAT team, we have explosive
breaching capabilities, but they won't let us use it because they're like, oh, you're
blowing up the color, you're blowing up, you're going to use it to blow up the community or
the, you know, they use as a politicized thing.
But then when you look at it, it's like, it's not that it's the most safest thing because
it's all math.
But like you said, it's all political.
It's like a perception, right, of what it is, explosive breaching.
Oh, don't want you to use explosive breaching.
You might be hurting the, you know, the community and whatnot, but no, it's the safest way to
enter.
And when you, when you can, I know we've been in incidents where our RAM doesn't work.
That door is like shut.
What other ways are we going to get in to the school, this home, if there's like a hostage
situation and this dude's going to do a countdown, hey, I'm going to kill her.
I'm counting down right now or whatever, whatever he cues.
And he has this door barricaded so well.
Now what are we, and the only tools that are giving us are a bunch of RAMs and we can't
breach the door.
How are we going to get in and do our job?
But they don't care.
You know what I mean?
It's just, and the end of the day, they really don't care.
They're just going to do what, just, just what is enough.
What is enough to check the box to say that, okay, they're trained to this certain level.
We're good to go.
And that's it.
And it's sad to see.
And it was so frustrating.
So, so, so frustrating.
And that's why I left.
I was like, I'm not going to sit here and bitch and moan anymore and be like this.
And I got to a point where I hated going to work.
It wasn't fulfilling for me anymore.
And I always, I wanted to be a 30 year cop.
That was my, that was my passion.
I wanted to retire on SWAT.
I wanted to, you know, that was my end goal was being on SWAT and doing 30 years and even
on the teens, they tied her hands a lot.
And it was so frustrating.
And you were wearing on the guys on these long SWAT jobs for like 14 hours and you let
the negotiator talk this guy ear out.
Do you want to let us use gas?
And by like hour 10, you're, you finally decide to pull, to turn off his power.
Stuff like that is like, they don't care about, I felt like towards the end, it's like, they
don't care if you work doubles.
They don't care if you're standing out there exhausting yourself.
Right.
We're, they're going to let it play out because it's, they didn't want to make it a perception
that we're trying to end this quickly.
And there's many SWAT teams around the nation who have proven like after a certain amount
of time, they're going to gas the building after a certain amount of time, they're going
to escalate because they have to.
So there's just very, very frustrating.
I'm on my end.
I want to hit one more area before we transition to your transition out.
When you think of the city of Chicago in the defund movement, obviously your mayor was
front and center.
And I think one of the least discussed elements of first responder mental health is organizational
betrayal.
You know, you have sworn, as you said, you've written that blank check.
You swore to be part of this tribe, to uphold the laws that you're given, to, you know,
die if necessary to defend the people of the city of Chicago.
And then you get your legs cut off by the mayor.
So through your eyes, not only the result as far as crime, but also the impact on the
men and women you served alongside.
Talk to me about the impact of that from inside the city of Chicago.
My last couple of years, there was a bunch of suicides because coppers had nobody to
turn to.
They took their lives and I, I, I want to percent feel like it has to have to do with
the lack of leadership from our police department, the mayor, the DA, all that comes into place
the days off canceled, not having a time for the cops to recuperate to, to cause we're
all humans, right?
People tend to think police officers are robots.
We get beamed down from some magical planet and, and, you know, we put on this uniform
and, and we're, we're this robot.
We have no feelings.
We have no emotions.
We, we just go black.
It's all black and white.
No, these are citizens who live in the community who wanted to do the job, raise their right
hand to make a difference in their community.
And when you don't have the backing and T and you don't have the correct leadership
to take care of your officers, wellbeing, mental health wise, give them time off to
be with their families, you know, cause all these coppers, but Jordan have girlfriends,
boyfriends, wives, husband, kids, you know, how's it going to feel when daddy, mommy have
continuously days off canceled and you're missing your kids' birthdays.
You can't go to their events.
You can't go to holidays.
How is it going to play on not only your own personal lives and, and, and maybe your spouse's
life too.
Now you're, you're, you're leaving your spouse to tend to your, to your, your personal families
while you're like, Hey honey, I'm sorry.
I'm out here working the streets.
I got my days off canceled again.
And you have this, this mayor spineless mayor who talks shit about the police, right?
Anti defund the police, but she'll have, she has, when I left, she had not only the mayor's
detail guarding her home, but she had her own private police squads that she pulled
to form our own unit.
Oh, doing patrol around her block, having set up on marked vehicles, right?
She has all this police protection on her property, but she's out here saying, Oh, it's
okay if they're destroying your property.
There's insurance.
There is going to take care of that.
Oh, it's okay.
And she talks crap about the cops, but she uses all these cops to watch her home.
She even had like a SWAT car sitting at her house 24 seven guarding her house home or
not.
You know, and all this coming to play the lack of days off, days off the, the, the,
all this.
Yeah.
It affects the cops.
It affects them greatly.
And I saw that they're like, they don't care about who did you have to turn to?
A lot of them, like you said, like I said before, try to turn to alcohol.
That's just like a small bandaid and a gaping wound.
And then they end up taking their lives.
And there's, there are so many lies that was taken the last couple of years I was on.
It was just disgusting that these officers needed help, but there was no one out there
to help them.
Well, I think as well, I mean, that's worst case, you know, human costs, which should
be enough to make people change.
This is what drives me crazy.
But I, yeah, but you've got to show the, you know, the, the financial gain, which nauseates
me because all these people worship in holy buildings and I'm pretty sure Jesus Buddha
Krishna, whoever wouldn't have been like, yeah, people don't matter.
Think about the bottom line.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure, you know, but it's also the retention.
We're seeing this, you know, hiring crisis.
Well, the other side of the hiring is retention.
As you said, retirees hanging up their gun belt five, 10, 15 years prior to when they
may have stayed.
The young people transitioning to other departments have actually support.
I know right, wrong or indifferent, you know, our governor here, DeSantis at the time was
offering people massive bonuses that were leaving other states to come to Florida, you
know, our gain, you know, so this organizational support, putting the standards back, investing
in your people, putting training, getting the right manpower staffing.
Don't see them as a number.
Yes, exactly.
That that forges retention.
You know, therefore the person, as you said, is pulling over your teenage son doesn't have
two years.
Now he has 22 years or 15 years and hopefully he or she has the experience to deescalate,
not have a hair trigger and, you know, your your child gets to make it home safely.
So there's so many elements of this that are so detrimental over and above the fear mongering.
I mean, there was that one absolutely heartbreaking video of the retired police chief.
I think it was in L.A. that was executed on the sidewalk during one of the riots.
You know, I mean, this this is what happens when you entice the shit bags of the world
to to rise up and you empower them.
You get all these stores now where they're beating up the clerks and stealing all their
stuff because they know they're not going to get arrested.
You know, ninety five plus percent of the population are good fucking people.
And we don't want that.
And we support our first responders.
You know, we support our military.
Absolutely hold the ones that fuck up accountable, but also hold the organization.
If that fuck up is partly, you know, systemic, then hold the head of that organization responsible.
If they've been well trained and they've gone against protocol, then you just, you know,
send the individual to prison.
But support the rest of them.
Don't jump on some fucking racial or political bandwagon because one person who, let's be
honest, wasn't a fucking angel in the first place, resisted arrest and then X happened.
And I'm not talking about the the the cases where the police officer was completely wrong,
but the gray area or the justified ones where they still riot and still talk shit about
the police.
Those people need to be locked up because they're basically enticing riots, whether
it's the fucking what was it called when they when they went into the government building?
I forget the term.
The insurrection.
Exactly that.
I mean, you know, all of these, it's all the same thing.
If you are inciting results in the loss of human life, you yourself should be fucking
held accountable as well, whether you're the mayor of Chicago, whether you're a, you know,
so-called president, whatever it is.
If you're inciting hate and division and anger versus community, then we've got to remember,
it's not just the person in the fucking uniform.
Follow the chain all the way to the top as well.
Absolutely.
Having the back of the officers is huge.
Having their morale is huge.
Instead of jumping to conclusions immediately and jumping on the news and saying, yeah,
I don't believe what this officer did was right.
Let the letter of the law, the investigation happen before the facts gets gathered, before
we start jumping to conclusions that this officer or this situation was right off bat,
wrong, right?
And we've seen that.
And that's what happens, that trickle effect.
And it's been huge in Chicago.
I mean, the magnificent mile, the mag mile down Michigan Avenue used to be a beautiful
place.
There are so many stores that are exiting.
Like the Water Tower, like the owner of the Water Tower went to the city and said, here's
the keys back to the Water Tower.
We don't want it anymore.
Because crime is running amok.
Cops are second guessing themselves.
There's no chase policy.
There's no proactive policing anymore.
There's just going to, a lot of these cops are like, oh, you know what?
If that's what you want from me, fine.
I'm just going to sit in my squad car.
I'm going to drink my coffee and I'm just going to wait for my calls.
I'm not going to drive around.
I'm not going to look for criminals.
I'm not going to do my job because it's not worth it anymore.
And that's what type of culture you're breeding.
Like when they, there's many instances where in Chicago, there's no chase policy is huge
and the criminals knows it.
Right?
So let's say if you see the guys speeding and you try to pull them over and you turn
on your lights and your sirens, you go over there, you let dispatch, you know, hey, I'm,
you know, I'm trying to pull this vehicle over.
It's not pulling over.
And they're like, okay, what speed are you going?
And then the supervisor comes and said, terminate the pursuit.
And you literally have to turn off your lights, pull to the side of the street that you said
you stopped on the sergeant or the supervisor comes on scene, looks at you, logs you into
his thing to show that, okay, this officer stopped.
And what that does is criminals aren't stupid.
So they know that they'd like, oh, okay.
So there's a bunch of tech talk videos out there of dudes carrying pistols with lasers
on it, with these extended mags driving, blowing lights, and they're filming it under the view
of you near to see the blue and white lights are on and it continued driving.
It turns off and they continue driving.
They just laugh because they know.
So now there's no fear anymore from the criminals.
And they know that they're using it to their advantage.
And they're seeing that these cops are not doing their job.
They're seeing cops standing by while places are getting looted because the supervisor
is telling them to stand by because it's only property.
And they see this and all these kids, they call it gatherings because the new mayor doesn't
want to call it a riot.
When they're going downtown and they're destroying shit, jumping on cars and breaking stuff and
violence to happening, they don't call it a riot.
It's a big gathering.
And there's no respect for the law anymore.
And so these kids, they know that they're like torquing on these cops and they just
stand by.
They just stand by.
And it's sad.
And you're absolutely right, James.
I looked at the retirement.
So I get sent this magazine from the police department every month and it shows the retirees
and it shows how many years they have on when they retire.
Now it's like 20, 21, 19.
There's one that's like 10.
There's 22.
Back in the days, you have to pry a copper from his job.
You always see like 29 in a day, 29 in a day, 30 years, 34 years because they love what
they did.
Those times are gone.
And you're losing all this experience from all these experienced coppers.
They're saying this is not worth it anymore.
I'm just going to do my bare minimum to get my pension and I'm going to go do something
else.
Or there's even cops like me, where it's like 10 years is enough.
It's not worth it anymore.
I'm going to go do something else.
And it's sad.
Like you said, it plays hand in hand, right?
You have all these experienced cops leaving.
You have all these new people who are not up to standard, but they're hiring them anyways
because they need bodies coming and be the next generation of police officers.
What do you think is going to happen?
It's crazy.
It is.
Well, speaking of your transition then, what was the final straw for you?
And let's talk about your transition into We Go Home.
Yeah, the final straw was all that, James.
Just this accumulation of a lack of leadership, lack of not treating us like a number of days
off canceled, all that.
I just got sick and tired of it.
And that was the last straw.
And I was like, you know what?
I'm done being a police.
That's what I always wanted to do.
I always wanted to make a difference.
And I felt like I can make a bigger impact with We Go Home in a broader spectrum.
And that's when I decided what you're doing with your podcast is that you felt like you
can make a bigger change on the outside than inside.
That's how I felt.
And that's the message we wanted to push here with We Go Home is accumulation of my career,
of my experience, of seeing death, of losing brothers, of seeing lives lost and the seriousness
of this job.
And that's what I wanted to push out there to the community of firefighters, police,
first responders, military personnel, that this job is inherently dangerous.
Every single day we go to, we don't know if we're going to come back home.
It's up to us to be the best that we can because we can't be jaded.
We can't have that, oh, I've been a job for 10 years and I'm good type of attitude.
You got to come in this job every single day prepared.
And that's the message we want to push that We Go Home message.
Because every time before we hit the warrant, at the end, the lieutenant was like, no matter
what we do, we're going to make it home.
And there's like echo throughout and it was huge for me.
And that's what I want to do because everybody in this service, in this profession has mothers,
brothers, sisters, wives, kids.
They all want to come home to them.
So let's be a professional and do the job to your best ability so you can bring home
your brothers and sisters through your left and right, that you bring home the people
that you swore to protect.
That when adversity comes and when adversity strikes, it's not if but when.
Are you going to be ready for it?
Are you just going to be another example?
And I say that a lot.
Set the example, don't be the example.
And that's the message we wanted to push when we go home.
Is beyond selling supplements, is beyond selling apparel.
It's the mindset of what it takes to be a professional and how serious these career
paths are.
Talk to me about the entrepreneurial side of it.
When you leave a first responder profession, you're giving what used to be giving up actual
benefits and security.
Now I would argue somewhat of a facade of benefits and security because in my career,
the pension got cut, the healthcare was almost non-existent.
Actually, it was.
When we retired, we got zero healthcare.
So that was kind of a carrot and stick.
But anyway, regardless though, you were guaranteed a paycheck.
You had healthcare while you were in at least.
It's a brave jump to go out into the world in general, but certainly to say I'm going
to create something myself.
So what was that journey like for you?
Scary as shit.
And it's still scary.
It's the scariest thing.
It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my career to this point.
Being a ranger, joining SWAT, like you said, it is dangerous.
We understand the risks, but at the end of the day, there's a safety net.
You get two paychecks a month, you get a pension, you get insurance.
No matter what, you could be the top dog cop or you could be a piece of shit one that doesn't
just answer his calls.
You're getting paid the same.
And there's this shared suffering when you're in that type of unit environment.
Because back when I was on the SWAT team, we bitch and moan, but we had each other to
bitch and moan about.
Now when we're transitioning to entrepreneurship, there's no one to bitch and moan about too.
All the weight and everything that we carry is on our own backs.
But I'm a firm believer in chasing my dreams.
I'm the firm believer of not peeking, not plateauing.
And being a SWAT cop wasn't challenging to me anymore.
I reached a pinnacle.
I was a shield guy on my team.
I was a point guy on my team.
I knew my profession very well.
I knew my craft very well.
I was very good at what I did, making split second decisions and whatnot, but I didn't
feel challenged anymore.
This was the next mountain that challenged me.
And I looked at it, I was like, I can sit here and be like, okay, I'm comfortable where
I'm at.
I'm going to go home as a side gig or I'm going to go all in and jump into the deep
end and really get after it.
And I did, I was like, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is.
I want to make a difference.
I want to take this message and affect change in so many people's lives, but I can't do
it if I'm only putting half in when I'm on the police job because being a police officer
took the majority of my energy.
I was like, if I really want this to be something, if I really wanted to really change the lives
of the people that we were changing, I need to go all in.
And this is when I decided I did.
I was like, fuck it.
I'm going to do it.
I'm not going to sit here and talk about it.
I don't want to die with regrets.
I don't want to wait until, I don't want to suffer through my police career and finish
it up and then look back and like, what if, right?
I don't want to live my life.
What if?
Now, what about the documentary?
I mean, you, I just literally, as I said at the beginning, I've just finished watching
it right before this interview is beautifully shot.
It tells a powerful story.
Most people though, you know, that's, that's, if a crew comes to you with money ideas, you
know, then, then it's going to be easier, but to be part of that and to be a driving
force of that, I would say was quite an undertaking.
So talk to me about that experience and then let people know where they can find it.
Yeah.
The win was something I was really hesitant in doing, you know, Sean Spencer came who
did Ranger, which was a powerful documentary about, you know, a guy who was just a regular
guy who just wanted to do the right thing and joined the Ranger regiment.
And he talked about his time in war.
And I saw that documentary.
I was like, oh, this is super powerful.
And he was like, Hey, Sean's like, Hey, I want to do a documentary about you.
I'm like, who wants to hear about my life?
You know, I was like, I don't know.
I was like, I'll think about it.
You know, I was really iffy about it because I don't like to put myself out there like
that.
I didn't feel like, you know, I wanted to make a message.
Like I was like, Sean, I want to do it, but I don't want to make this message about me.
Like, Oh, look at me.
He's like, it's not about you, man.
I think it's a more powerful story beyond that.
It's a story about resilience of not quitting, of being placed in any environment and thriving,
right?
It's on the individual.
And I think a lot of people need to hear the story.
So I decided like, you know what, if this is going to change a lot of people's lives
to help them for the better, if they're struggling through what they're going through and they
want to quit their path, then I'm going to do it.
And that's why we decided to put the story together and put it out there so that people
can watch it and be like, Hey, look, life is going to slap your ass, like it or not.
It's going to beat your ass.
It's going to push you down, but are you going to quit?
Right?
That's what matters.
Everybody's going to be, everybody faces adversity in life.
No one's immune to adversity.
I don't care if you're born in the richest family to the poorest family, you're going
to face adversity in your life and how you deal with that adversity and how you are as
an individual, it's really going to dictate how the future that you're going to have.
And I want that message to resonate with everybody that, Hey, you don't have to be raised in
a rich family for you to do extraordinary things.
It's on you that for you to not quit and have purpose and drive through it and see it through.
And that's when we decided to do it.
And he shot it and God bless him.
And I just felt like the story that just needed to be heard, not just in that side of things,
but just in general, the humanization of an individual and going to war, working the streets
of as a cop so they could show people that, Hey, we're not robots.
We're human beings, right?
We just want to do the right thing and we just want to help people.
And that's why we do what we do because we damn well do not get paid enough.
So that's why we did it.
And yeah, it's on Amazon.
You can find it's my last name is N-G-U-Y-E-N when people who watched it said that it really
helped them a lot.
And I hope that you guys who watched this find some kind of inspiration from it so that
it can help you through whatever journey that you're going through.
What I really found important, and I say this only because you don't see it many places,
is just the raw frustration of someone who took their job really seriously, who wanted
to be the best version of themselves.
But like so many people listening found themselves in toxic environments.
And of course, like they said, the immigration story is incredibly powerful.
Like you said, the overcoming adversity and the self-belief.
But I think it's going to be to be completely blunt.
A lot of first responders and people in other professions are going to go, that's me because
I know so many great firefighters, police officers, soldiers, paramedics, doctors, nurses that
are amazing despite the environment.
And I know how detrimental that is to their spiritual mental health.
So that was one thing as a responder and having been through highs and lows myself that I
really kind of resonated with it was just here's another one.
Here's another guy who fucking gets it, who understands why we put the uniform on, whose
fire still burns in their heart.
And then like me, ultimately transitioned out because the head was hurting so much from
banging it against a brick wall.
But that in itself is also a resilient story because you're like, okay, I'm still going
to serve.
What does that look like now?
How can I make a bigger difference from outside these parameters without these handcuffs that
I've had slapped on me?
So that's another kind of different perspective for me that I think is so valuable for the
documentary for a lot of people listening.
Yes, sir.
You're not alone out there.
Like you said, there's many great individuals who want to do the right thing and they're
just frustrated.
And that's the one thing, the story I wanted to tell.
It's not a story of bashing the Chicago Police Department, but it's just a story of what
happens when you're placed in an environment, a political environment or lack of leadership
and lack of direction for an organization.
What really happens from the foot soldiers, right?
It's not about the leadership.
The guys are like deputy chief and chief.
They're great.
I mean, they got drivers, they're making 200 something.
They don't have anything to worry about.
What about the guys who are working the beat?
What about those guys and gals?
They have to answer the calls day in and day out knowing they don't have the backup from
their bosses or they don't have the training, but they have to go out there and still do
their jobs.
How frustrated are they?
And that's one thing I wanted people, when they watch the documentary, realize what is
going on in these big metropolitan cities.
It's happening in New York.
It's happening in Seattle.
It's unfortunate.
It's happening in LA now.
It's happening in a lot of places.
That was one of my driving factors of why I wanted to make this documentary, to let people
know what the hell is really going on.
And from a cop's view, 14 years.
Yeah.
Well, it's an important perspective.
And like I said, with the two part question on war, same thing.
We need to hear from the actual people on the streets, not the pundits on Fox and CNN
or whichever politician is looking to get elected next, but the actual people that are
out there doing the job, getting freaking blood on their uniform on a daily basis to
protect the people that we serve.
So I thought it was amazing.
And what about We Go Home?
Where can people find that?
Yeah.
You can find us on Instagram.
It's We Go Home.
Our website is We Go Home Subs, S-U-P-P-S, or you can find us on Facebook, We Go Home
Official.
So that's where we're located.
This job is not dead.
It's still an honorable job.
You're still needed.
There's still a need for warriors to be out there to pick up the mantle.
Somebody has to stop evil.
Evil is here.
It's never going to go away.
Somebody has to face it.
So let it be you.
Be somebody, be a professional.
And that's the message we want to push on our Instagram page.
It's like this warrior spirit, this warrior ethos is still alive and strong.
Don't let it die because you are needed out there because you've raised your right hand
to you sworn an oath.
It's up to that oath.
Don't be jaded.
People are counting on you.
So.
Absolutely.
Well, Trang, I want to say thank you so much.
It's been amazing to listen to your story.
Obviously, your origin story is pretty powerful, but then your perspective as a young man and
the positive interaction with PD, you know, the highs of your career, some of the lows,
but I think it's not bitching.
It's advocating for the people that are still in uniform that are so frustrated that feel
unsupported.
And we have to give them a voice and it may not sound like a positive conversation, but
it is because we're dragging this out of the shadows for the people that are serving to
advocate for the environment that allows them to thrive.
And I think anyone who leaves their family and again, so much respect for the families
themselves that are holding the line while we're, you know, protecting strangers, they
deserve every ounce of support.
And the people that we serve deserve the best version of a cop, a firefighter, a paramedic
that they can get as well.
So I want to thank you so much for telling us your story today and being so generous
with your time coming on the Behind the Shield podcast.
It was a pleasure, James.
I appreciate you inviting me on and I appreciate this.
And I, you know, last message to all you guys are all you listeners, just keep the good
fight.
You're needed.
You're needed more than ever, especially with what's going on nowadays.
You are definitely needed.
Don't ever lose that purpose.
Don't ever forget your why and why you started.