I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast
that is Transcend.
Now for many of you listening, you are probably working the same brutal shifts that I did
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Now when it comes to the world of hormone replacement and peptide therapy, what I have
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So I myself wanted to find a reputable company that would do an analysis of my physiology
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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So my own personal journey so far filled in the online form, went to Quest, got blood
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In my case specifically, because I transitioned out the fire service five years ago and been
very diligent with my health, my testosterone was actually in a good place.
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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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but sometimes nutrition, exercise and sleep can offset that on its own.
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So whether it's libido, brain fog, inflammation, gut health, performance, sleep, this is definitely
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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.
And 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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And you can find even more information on newcalm.com.
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 former law enforcement officer, veteran firefighter and the man behind Firefighters
for Freedom, John Knox.
Now this is an incredibly important conversation because as I record this in January 2024,
first responders are still being terminated over vaccine mandates during COVID.
So as you will hear, we discuss a host of topics from John's journey into law enforcement,
his unique and powerful 9-11 experience, entering the fire service, the arson unit, working
in dispatch, vaccine mandates and much more.
Now before we get to this incredibly important 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 five-star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of almost 900 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, John Knox.
Enjoy.
All right.
Well, John, I want to start by saying thank you so much for coming on the behind the
show podcast and reason why I say that is we just came across each other after you were
terminated by LAFD, you know, about four or five weeks ago now.
And this is something that I've brought to the forefront many, many times during the
pandemic and after which is the middle ground of health, but also I'm going to start that
intro again.
I just fucked that up completely.
Bear with me one more.
I was going off on a fucking tangent.
Let me just welcome you to the show.
Well, John, I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time and coming
on the behind the shield podcast today.
Thanks for having me.
So I came across you.
I do follow firefighters for freedom.
I had one of my friends, Steve Davis from Orange County that was terminated.
Well, that was probably a year and a half ago now, two years.
And I went right in the heart of all this.
And we did an interview with him and Jason Wheat, another friend of mine.
And this is an issue I think that as I know a lot of you talk about, most of the country
doesn't have to deal with it because common sense prevailed.
But we're having a conversation where in this case that didn't happen.
So I want to start at the very, very beginning.
I don't want this whole conversation to be about that one moment in time.
So I'd love to actually kind of lead you through your timeline.
And then obviously when we get to 2020, we'll start talking about that specific event.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings.
So I was born in Los Angeles, California and middle-class family.
My dad was LAPD for 32 years.
And that's what I grew up really wanting to do was be law enforcement.
That's all I ever knew.
And then my mom, she worked for mortgage industry and stuff like that.
So parents got divorced when I was young, probably fifth grade maybe.
I moved to Europe for a couple of years, got to experience life in another country, a couple
of countries over there.
And then came back to the States, went to high school and just started living life.
After I got out of high school, I attempted to get on LAPD three times.
Everybody who's watching this probably understands the process for oral interviews and so on
and so forth.
And that was back in the mid-80s.
And 97%, I think 97, 98% is what I got on my oral scores every time.
But back then you couldn't get on unless you scored 100% and had military experience because
affirmative action was the big keyword and thing going back then.
So that didn't happen.
Fast forward, I started doing my own businesses.
And then I got involved with the sheriff's department and worked for them for 11 years.
I did search and rescue, was on a helicopter, did just all kinds of stuff through that.
And then during that time, I had been married, went through a divorce and I had a buddy that
I went to high school with and I had become a paramedic as well while I was in the sheriff's
department.
So then I had a buddy reach out to me and he's like, man, you've got a great resume.
Did you ever think about going to the fire department?
I was like, no.
So one thing led to another.
I applied to two departments, one up in the Bay Area, Hayward, and got a call for that
and turned it down because I decided I didn't want to live in the Bay, the San Francisco
Bay, which turns out that's probably a good thing seeing what they've been going through
the past couple of years as well.
And then I got hired by LA City.
I had applied originally as a firefighter and then they were in dire needs in 2000 for paramedics,
short-staffed.
I mean, it's like that everywhere.
It's never changed really.
And so I got hired on as a single function paramedic initially.
Got hired on, worked for the city, for LAFD for I think it was probably two and a half
years.
I was supposed to be cross-trained in nine months, but the way the city works, nothing
ever goes on time.
So then I worked cross-trained, dual function firefighter paramedic.
And from that point, worked as a hazmat task force.
I worked arson, counterterrorism.
I did stuff with the tractor units.
What else?
But yeah, just a lot of stuff.
I was also not for LAFD, actually LAFD I was supposed to be.
I was next in line to go into their air operations as a flight medic, but I was a flight medic
before for California City Fire Department out in the Mojave Desert as a flight medic
on a helicopter out there.
So I've had a pretty extensive experience.
I was at 9-11, ground zero there.
I worked for the Department of Justice dealing with Chris Koslow who was running the operation
there, worked directly for him.
So I don't know, I've had a vast and varied experience doing a lot of different things.
And then fast forward to now, November 27th, I was retired.
Not by my own means.
You were forced to be retired.
Yeah, I was forced to retire or terminated for what they consider not being in compliance
with the condition of employment.
So and that's where we stand today.
Well, we will get to there, but there's so much I want to pull from all the things that
you told us, all these rungs of your ladder.
So let's start at the very beginning.
With this lens that you have now and it's quite a storied career that you have and obviously
some very high highs and now here we are some pretty low lows as well.
When you look back at the impact of over three decades working in LA as a police officer
on your father, were there any elements that you think were detrimental to him now you've
got this wiser perspective?
Elements that were detrimental to my father?
Yeah, I mean, especially, you know, the impact of the job mentally, physically, et cetera.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I would say for sure, you know, it was a major factor in the divorce of my parents.
You know, especially back then that was late seventies, early eighties, late seventies.
You know, mental health wasn't even talked about.
So you know, my dad worked a very unique career path throughout LAPD doing, I mean, he worked
vice narcotics, rode with the Hells Angels for a period undercover.
He was in another organization there called Cobra.
He was instrumental in putting Shub Knight in jail for death row records.
So there's a lot of interesting things, you know, and with that job working in the city
of Los Angeles, you know, it really puts a lot of stressors on you, you know, and I don't
necessarily know whether he was capable of coping with that, you know, and dealing with
that.
And I mean, here we are in 2023 and look at, I mean, there's a lot of lip service to mental
health, but there's really not a lot of mental health stuff that the departments are doing,
you know.
So yeah, I think those are all big factors.
I had a guest on Jay Dobbins.
I think he was out of Arizona and he was actually ATF, but he was one of the ones who went undercover
with the, I think it was the Hells Angels as well.
Very famous story.
But again, organizational betrayal is huge in his story too, because his department kind
of shunned him on the back end of it.
Yeah, you know, it's funny at one point, I mean, I had looked at going into the DEA originally
when I was testing for LAPD, because my dad had a friend that was in that.
And you know, back then I think the starting salary was $19,000 a year plus you got a 25%
bonus pay for being out of the country.
You know, South America or whatever.
Back then I'm like, what?
That's so stupid.
There's no, I don't know, you know, but when you're young and you look at things and you're
like, oh, adrenaline, I want to go do this and I want to save the world, you know, and
you get there and you're like, what?
Yes.
Yeah, I was just talking to one of the guys.
He's, let me see, ODA.
Have I got that right?
Yeah I think it's ODA.
No, fuck.
Hold on a second.
I'm going to get, I'll cut this bit out because I've got to get this right.
EOD, because I'll get, I was too confused.
Yeah, I was interviewing a guy, Nick Kush yesterday, who was an EOD, Navy EOD, which
is the explosive kind of expert alongside the SEALs and he'd been a SWIC boat driver
as well.
So, you know, immersed in that whole community, but he works, you know, in the training department
now, air quotes, for the SEALs.
So he's developing the newest of the new technology.
And I was asking him about this because so many of the people in the special operations
community, they're amazed when they discover, you know, overall the lack of training support
experts that we have around us, even though we're protecting their families when they're
overseas.
Yeah, it's a sad state of affairs, you know, in public service these days, you know, emergency
services, both, you know, fire and police.
There's just literally, it's like ostrich syndrome, you know, everybody knows it's going
on.
Maybe it's machismo syndrome, you know, everybody wants to pound on their chest and be a fire
slayer or super cop, right?
But not really understand the necessity of what mental wellness really means because,
you know, it doesn't only affect you, it affects everyone around you, right?
Your family, your wife, your mom, your dad, your kids.
I mean, guys just become ticking time bombs between, you know, drugs, alcohol, gambling,
porn, you name it, whatever that vice is that they slip into and they just create this swath
of destruction.
And then if you're not in a good state, you know, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually,
how do you go out and serve the citizens, you know, that you swore that oath to, you
know?
It's a really slippery slope and unfortunately, I think ego gets in the way and we need to
lose that, you know, be humble.
We're all the same thing, we're all humans and there's not one person on this planet,
I don't care how bad-ass you are, what a bitch and motherfucker, period.
You're gonna eat it at some point, you know?
You can, I, you know, for me, one of the things I noticed, I kind of got a little tangent
on mental health here but the way that I liken it to is like, you know, working in the city
of Los Angeles, it's a shithole, you know?
There's, I mean, it's a great city but the crime and corruption and the things you see
on a daily basis, unfortunately, we see the underbelly of society most of the time, right?
So it will affect you and, you know, we run over 2,000 calls a day in the city of Los
Angeles so think about that, you know?
On average, guys are running 20 calls a shift and those things that you see, you know, you
don't want to take that home to your family really but there's nothing in play to help
you deal with that.
So what do you do?
You lock that, you know, for me, it was, I had a box, right?
And I would just lock all that stuff in a box and chain it all up and make everything
like it was honky-dory but doesn't matter after a while, those monsters, you know, they
start scratching at that box, right?
And little holes get in there and it starts leaking out and shit happens, man.
And before you know it, you know, it's all going to come out at some point so you either
have to figure out how to deal with it because if you don't, you're going to destroy everyone
and possibly yourself as well, you know?
So it's a sad state of affairs.
No, it is.
The thing is, you know, when I have these conversations, it sounds kind of doom and
gloom and if you contrast it to the Chess Beat in Greatest Job in the World conversations
you hear on some other, you know, podcasts and rightly so because it is and I adore it
but the thing is we can't survive on glory alone.
We need rest, recovery, we need, you know, the pay that's not going to require someone
to work two other jobs is to make their mortgage and so this is going to be my call to action
in 2024 for the fire service is we are so courageous when it comes to fires, when it
comes to, you know, extrications off the side of a bridge or going down a sewer pipe or
whatever it is but yet and I understand it's because we're so damn beat down and tired
as well but the fight is kind of sucked out of us but we just accept these conditions
that we're given and the perfect example that I'm fighting for at the moment is the work
week.
Like the fact that our first responder works 56 hours a week minimum, you know, to go from
a dead sleep to, you know, heart rate of 160 as you're driving the back of a tiller on
the way to a structure fire or a wreck, you know, it's insanity and yet the people making
those decisions work 40 hours a week and go to their bed every night, you know, so we
need to find that same courage that we have on a call to actually advocate for ourselves
because we are selfless but it's getting to the point where there will be no fire service
if we keep letting them doing what they're doing to us and we have to rise up and unite
and push back against it but look if you want a fire service that's fine but you have to
start giving us the time to recover from these shifts, you have to give us the tools to keep
our bodies healthy, to keep our minds healthy or you're going to go back to, you know, bucket
brigade and no one's going to step up and do this anymore.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's the really tricky part.
How do you do that, right?
Because you know, like the city of Los Angeles, the city of San Jose, there's still cities
in this state of California where the mandate is in place, right?
And so people don't want to go to work there, right?
Because they're forced to take this shot.
And so to that point, it's like, okay, we're already short staffed, you're forced hiring
every day, you know, you go in, I mean, it's not uncommon for you to work in 96 or 120
and it's like and then you get a day off or you get 12 hours off and then you're, you
know, forced hired again, you know?
So it's like, at what part does that seem realistic or feasible?
It's not, you know, I mean, I've done it and I got extremely sick.
You know, I spent two and a half years off of work trying to recover from all kinds of
issues but I think what brought a lot of that on was the fact that I was so run down, my
system was crushed from working so much, you know?
And out here in California, it's quite different, you know?
I mean, we make very good money and, you know, there's a lot of places where guys aren't
making that kind of money and so they're sea shifting, right?
They're doing, they're running a side business, they're doing whatever to get by and that's,
you know, economy wise, that's a whole other topic, right?
We can talk about but what happens here is guys don't see shift, they end up just working
overtime because it's there, we have constant staffing and so because it's there, it's very
easy and so then they can make a lot of money and, you know, and then you get sucked into
that and then what happens is now you're living above your means because you're relying on
overtime because you bought all this shit, right?
Because living on your base salary and then that's investment money or whatever, right?
You're not relying on that.
So now guys get stuck in that mode of they have to work five, six, seven overtime shifts
or get forced hire, excuse me, every day in order to maintain their lifestyle.
So you know, we have to take responsibility on that side as well, right?
We can't just say, well, it's the department.
Well, no, it's not, bro.
You literally you dug yourself into this hole, you know, so now you have to dig yourself
out, sell a boat, you know, sell some of your toys so that you don't have those expenses,
that overhead, you know?
So there's a lot of issues at hand but in reality, it all boils down, any of it, anything
that we do, we have to take responsibility for our actions, right?
It doesn't matter whether it's at work, you know, management versus employee or it's husband
and wife, right?
There's two sides to every story, you know, we have to take responsibility for those actions.
It's not always that one person, right?
So yeah, I think this is what's been the barrier to getting these issues fixed is there's been
a lot of kind of finger pointing, you know, and even I would argue that there's some good
unions out there but I've seen a lot of self-serving in the unions that I've worked, you know,
in the departments I work for and so then it's all the management, there's sort of union
that or it's the membership or, you know, whatever it is and everyone's kind of pointing
fingers rather than all getting together and accepting their part of the problem and one
thing I underline a lot, for example, not so much in the California because I know the
schedule when I worked out there was a different pattern but over here, we say, oh, I work
one day on two days off.
Well, we don't.
There's nowhere else in the world is a workday 24 hours, it's eight hours with a one hour
lunch in between, you know, so we work three days on one day off.
So we tell this fairytale, we go around telling all our neighbors, I only work 10 days a month.
No, you fucking don't.
You work 30 days a month.
Just three of those days are scrunched together in a ball for 24 hours.
Yeah.
So we're telling that fairytale and then we're getting, you know, obviously the kind of cities,
counties, oh, we don't have the money to staff properly and so there's all this myth going
on and the reality is the way that we are being worked between our belief in this mythical,
supposed incredible schedule that we have and then all the way up to the other kind
of levels is we are bleeding money because our people are falling apart, you know, medical
retirements and, you know, wrongful death lawsuits and you name it, all the things that
happen.
And so the money is there too, but it needs us all to accept our part of it.
We need to not oppose it because you're an overtime whore and you want this and you don't
care about the fact that you've been to 10 fucking firefighter funerals this year.
So we have to get rid of that, but then we also have to see at the higher level, the
false economy of the way that we're working and how you would actually not only save your
city or county a shitload of money, but you'd increase the delivery of service if you added
a fourth platoon so that the men and women could actually get like a full 72 hour period
between 24 hours of getting your dick kicked in and the next 24 hours.
Yeah.
And you're right on that.
But then again, you would, you know, you still fall into that play and this is where, you
know, rules would have to be put in there where it's like, okay, you can't work, you
know, if you've got one day on and then you're off for 72, right?
You can't work though in that 72 hour period.
You know how you make that happen though?
You staff your department properly.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's, I mean, I see it.
I mean, both, both sides.
I mean, I can see the argument from both sides.
You're going to have the individuals that, you know, are chasing that dollar.
But it's like, okay, well, you know what, then go do something else in that period of
time, you know, start another business.
Do something to help your community ever because this job is so demanding and has, you know,
look at the suicide rates.
They're higher than any other career out there, you know?
And I mean, it's just been on the rise, especially since COVID, you know?
I mean, it's, it's through the roof and there's a lot of factors for that.
So yeah, I mean, there's, there's room to make changes, but then again, that comes back
to the unions and you know, like you said, and I'm going to put this out there and I,
I hope all of you union leaders that are listening to this take heed.
You suck, period.
End of story.
There's very few unions and I applaud.
Yay team, the unions that step to the plate for their members.
But they're bought and sold and they're controlled opposition.
And I've seen it firsthand because I've talked to people all across this country.
I mean, we built out, you know, firefighters for freedom.
We have approximately 21 chapters and I've created a network, you know, our organization
has created this network across the country that I can pick up a phone call and talk to
anyone.
They're calling me from all over Chicago, Florida, New York, DC, Boston, West coast,
middle of the country.
Middle of the country is not as bad, but you know, definitely both sides of the coast are
bananas.
And I hear the same thing over and over.
It's literally like a, a playbook.
They're all doing the same exact thing and that's not standing up for their membership.
I mean, for the city of Los Angeles, we pay $6 million a year in dues.
And for me to be terminated with that kind of money going into it and the lack of assistance
and help that we've seen throughout this whole thing.
And the only thing that they've done is because our organization has pushed them.
And so they do what they should be doing, but then they don't follow through.
They make it look like they're doing something, right?
And it's like the puppet master, right?
Look over here while we're doing this other thing behind the curtain.
You know, a union's job is wages, benefits, and working conditions.
Three things that they're responsible for.
So working conditions.
We have the worst working conditions I've seen in my 23 years in the fire service.
It's only gotten worse and you can't tell me their job is to be 180 degrees polar opposite
of what the city is, not lockstep with them, right?
They're lapdogs.
That's all it is.
And they're playing for political chips, you know?
And it's like, no, you know, one of the things that really frustrated me always was that,
you know, oh, the PAC funds, right, that we pay into.
Oh, well, you know, we need to get this city council member on board.
You know, we need to give them a million dollars.
And it's like, wait a minute.
We don't work for city council members.
We work for the constituents of the city of Los Angeles.
And by us giving this council member a million dollars, what about the other 50% of the citizens
that don't go along with what this person says?
We should be apolitical in that aspect and like, look, we're not putting any money into
any of your campaigns, period, end of story.
But what we'll do is we'll sit down with you and we'll work through the issues, whoever
gets voted in, you know?
But unfortunately, we always go the Democratic side because, you know, they're pro-union
and so on and so forth.
But in reality, it should be like, look, stop playing these political games and paying these
people, you know?
So that you can, I mean, the last person that we did for city council president, you know,
they paid a ton of money to her to get her in there.
We endorsed her, you know?
And then what does she do?
She turns around and drops this COVID mandate and is pushing for the terminations, you know?
And it's like, we just paid for her to terminate us?
What part of this are you missing?
You gave back a raise?
I mean, you know, it's just insanity.
It's like, stop playing the political game, be there for your members, fight tooth and
nail because they're paying your salary, they're paying your overtime, they're paying all those
things for you to be there for them and you guys are just rolling over, you know?
It's disgusting.
So, you know, unless guys are willing to stand up and step into that position and take over
those union positions and really make that change, but it's corrupt.
I mean, at every level with those guys.
Sorry.
No, but this is the thing.
I paid my union dues my whole career.
You did, you know what I mean?
So we get to have a voice.
We get to say, hey, this is not seeming to do what we thought it would.
You come into the fire service, you're like, oh, this is the movement that created Bunker
Gear and SCBA and they're fighting for our cancer and all these things.
And then you get in, I was in 14 years, I got out the other end.
I'm like, absolutely fucking nothing has changed in 14 years.
That's a long time.
14 years, you know, that was like almost the birth of the internet to now, you know?
So a lot of things should happen.
And you look at, for example, you know, there's one tiny mental health center in the Northeast
side of the country.
You're like, check, we got the suicide problem figured out from the IAFF.
It's like, no, we've got so much that we need to do.
And as you said, so many people are putting their hard earned money in, you know, part
of their wages so that, you know, we can advocate.
It doesn't have to be for me.
If I'm blessed with good health, then make it go to all the other people that need the
help.
But my last place, they had the IAFF, and this is before the change of membership, this
is Scheitberger still, I think.
And it was funny because they called me after I retired from there and that was fucking
worst department I've ever worked for.
But they were going to the Disney area for the conference that year.
And they were like, oh, yeah, so that, you know, apparently for Scheitberger, we have
to have like this level of suite.
And I'm like, well, this is like Britney Spears and Blue M&M's.
What the fuck are we talking about?
These are union people and we're paying for them to come.
And then they were like, oh, can you get John Travolta to do the keynote?
Because I had him on my show once.
I'm like, no, but this is like, you're not, we're not, Michael Jackson isn't coming to
your fucking birthday party.
These are people that work for us that you pay for that are supposed to be advocating
to improve our conditions.
And like you said, there is no more basal thing than the work week.
You know, I mean, we stopped putting kids up chimneys and in factories because we realized
they were killing them.
Yet we lose so many firefighters every year.
Once in a while, it will be an actual, you know, fire or some god awful tragic accident.
But most of the time it's cancer, heart disease, and now double the amount is suicide.
And that's even the ones we know about the moment we retire, we cease to be a statistics
in the fire service.
So all those are getting worse despite modern medicine getting better.
And yet you're beating your chest saying that you're the greatest union in the country.
And I disagree.
We should be in the union philosophy is beautiful, but it's being abused by many, many people.
Yeah.
And, and so you just listed off all of those, you know, things that are, you know, uh, cancer
and heart disease and then stroke, right?
You're top three.
Well, and suicide now.
So, but since COVID, right?
Turbo cancers through the roof, sudden death, guys that are perfectly healthy specimens
of health, right?
Guys that are fit are literally having strokes, paralyzed pacemakers put in, right?
All of these things.
If you go from 2020 until now and look at the increase in cancer, turbo cancers, especially
when I say turbo cancer, I mean, oh, not you were diagnosed with, you know, stage one.
No, you were diagnosed with stage four terminal pancreatic cancer, nut cancer, you know, whatever
it is.
We've never seen that in the history of the fire service.
It all started from 2020 until now.
So there's a common denominator in that.
And now you've got the IFF, you know, suing the turnout companies, cause this is their
play to cover their tracks is to say that the PAFS is what's causing cancer.
Well, we've had PFS and in the turnouts for how long, right?
This isn't something that they just threw in there and we've never seen rates of cancer,
especially stage four cancer come out of nowhere until now.
And it's only going to exponentiate.
We're seeing the beginning of the curve and it's not going to be a gradual slope like
this.
It's going to go like this straight up.
And for anybody who's a doubting Thomas, I'm telling you firsthand because I've seen this
for the past two and a half years being in this space.
And it's disgusting that our unions aren't standing there helping protect against this,
you know, and that's something that we're working on right now without the union's help.
But you know, when they're calling it a condition of employment, yet workers comp denies you
for any of these claims, you know, you're seeing the largest
life insurance providers.
I mean, they carry stats.
That's their job, right?
Is life insurance.
So they know what all-cause mortality looks like.
They know what the death rates are.
And when they say that they've seen a 44% rise in one year and that that's an unsustainable
model, guess what?
They're going to be putting clauses in that say, if you took an EUA shot, guess what?
You're out of the loop.
You can't get your insurance because it's an experiment and you chose to do it.
That's what's happening with medical insurance as well.
You know, guys go in, they're like, oh, did you take the shot?
Yeah.
Sorry, you're not covered into this because you had the option to opt out.
Well, no, they told me it was a condition of employment.
Yeah, but you could have opted out.
You could have gotten a job somewhere else.
These are all the things that they're saying and we're seeing.
And it's like, where's our union standing and fighting for this?
Where's CPF, you know, and their legislature doing that?
You know, these guys are all lost because they're all bought and paid for.
So it's disgusting.
And that's, we're really going to see a huge spike come in that.
Unfortunately, it really saddens me, you know, but I mean, we did our own internal bears
report and it's there.
So yeah, it's, they really need to step to the plate on all levels because there's a
lot wrong in the fire service right now.
You know, and it's a fantastic career and it's very rewarding because you get to help
a lot of people, but really it's killing us at an exponential rate, you know, so.
A hundred percent.
I mean, this is the thing, you know, if you went to Afghanistan and you were well-trained
and well-equipped, but you got shot by an enemy combatant, that was, you know, the risk
that you took going over.
But if you went to Afghanistan and you were doing, let's say a menial job, for example,
and you weren't seeing combat, but it was the kind of job, a work environment where
10, 15, 20 years later, there was a high chance that you were going to get heart disease,
stroke, or cancer.
Well, those are preventable elements.
You know, we can't prevent you and I make an entry and not realizing that the, you know,
the structure is compromised and there were no signs outside and we went in to rescue
someone and then we got collapsed on.
That's the chance that we take.
But if you're running, you know, ALS call after ALS call after ALS call and just doing
your job, but it's the actual work environment that is killing you, then that's a preventable
element, you know?
So, and I think, you know, this goes hand in hand with the turbo cancers and all that,
and we're going to get to the vaccine in a second, but also our men and women were asked
to do more with less, more with less, more with less.
So it was a double-edged sword because some had a reaction to a vaccine and, or some were
more susceptible to COVID as well because we were also destroying their human body at
the same time.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
I mean, there is, you can go and look, I mean, there's plenty of white papers, there's plenty
of studies.
It's been looked at where, you know, sleep deprivation, right, was it crushes your immune
system, right?
I mean, it's funny, I used to think that we were Superman and we all looked in shape and
everything, you know, and whatever.
And when I was off sick for, you know, two years, when I came back, I was blown away.
I looked at everybody and I was like, what happened to everybody while I was gone?
And I noticed the inflammation was insane, you know, the redness in the face, just massive
swelling, body inflammation all over the place on guys that I used to think, oh, you know,
they were fit, all those guys were, no, they're not, they're underlying their fit, but their
immune systems are being crushed.
They have no sleep, they eat like shit, you know, there's, you know, and they start using
the coping mechanisms, right, especially alcohol.
And they, man, it was bad.
I was like, whoa, this is, I never realized it until I stepped away from it for that period
of time, right, working on my own health.
And you know, then when I came back, I was like, whoa, dude, you look great, you know,
you look, yeah, well, I feel great.
I took care of myself.
It took me, you know, a year before I could sleep normal again, you know, sleep pattern
is not being jacked up, you know, not waking up and doing whatever, you know, or sleeping
so hard that when you wake up, you don't even know where you're at, you know, because the
body just isn't used to that, right?
So, I mean, it causes all kinds of issues with hormone dysregulation and so on and so
forth, right?
And I mean, all the caffeine, right?
I mean, you're already dealing with it, adrenaline rush to a certain extent, you know, I mean,
after a while, it just gets to be same place, same thing.
But then, you know, because you're running so many calls and you're up, you know, you're
working three days on a one day shift, right?
That whole thought process, but yet you're there for five in a row.
So you just worked 15 days and you've been doing nothing but pounding coffee, right?
Your adrenals are shot, everything is hammered.
And so, you know, your system is failing way faster.
Plus one of the classic things that at least in the LAFD that they used to say is, you
had 50 years from the day you were hired until the day you died.
So you know, if you worked 30 years, you know, we'd get a death notice that would come through,
right?
10 bells and then you'd read off when the guy was hired when he retired and on average,
you know, you'd have 18 to 20 years after that and then he was done.
You know, you get some guys every once in a while you're like, well, that guy won the
lottery, right?
He lived 40 years after that.
Well, that's because he only worked 20 years, you know?
So yeah, it's, there's a lot that needs to happen.
Absolutely.
Well, I want to get to some of the kind of highlights of career you mentioned being in
9-11.
So I'd love to hear that too.
So let's kind of hit some of your career before we unpack COVID specifically.
So firstly, you talked about working on the police side and search and rescue.
So what would be some of the career calls during a time in that uniform?
Oh man.
You know, I spent a lot of time in the mountains looking for lost people, dangling out of helicopters,
swift water, you name it.
I mean, it was, that was super rewarding.
Really got me interested in the EMS aspect of it, right?
Because I mean, you come upon people and they're jacked up, you know, out the forest, you know,
austere environment.
So that really made it so that I wanted to go to paramedic school.
So you know, I mean, God, you come across everything.
I mean, we, you know, you come across in the national forest especially, and now it's more
prevalent out here than it was back then, but you know, huge marijuana plantations,
you know, run by cartels and things like that.
So you know, we'd make notifications and then annually they'd usually go in and do, you
know, raids with the military and DEA, you know, strip those out.
But it was just, you know, to me it was great working in the mountains because, you know,
whether you're on patrol, you're usually by yourself, there's no backup around.
So you really, you know, had to think strategically on everything you did, right?
It's not like being in a main city where you can just make a call and somebody's there,
you know, from around the block or whatever.
You got a 30 or 40 minute response time sometimes for anybody to be there.
So everything you did really had to be calculated, you know, from a traffic stop to whatever,
you know, it was you came upon.
So that was good, you know, and I mean, it was great because we traveled all over, you
know, we'd go across the state helping out, you know, other agencies, all the training,
you know, there's training is always good.
Get to go places and do things that most people don't get to see.
So yeah, it's just a different, it was good.
I liked it a lot, but I think it was, you know, I really enjoyed the medical aspect,
which I never realized.
And then that's kind of what lured me over to the fireside.
So what about 9-11?
Was that between PD and FD?
No, I was working for FD at that time.
I was at fire station 10 in downtown LA and I was at work the morning of, I remember I
was getting off shift and walked into the kitchen.
We make relief at 630 in the morning.
So I was down there, I don't know, six o'clock in the morning having a cup of coffee and
waiting for my relief to get there.
And you know, the TV's on every kitchen.
Everybody knows the TV is always on.
So the news was on and I remember seeing that and I was like, what the hell?
Well, that's weird, you know, seeing the first plane hit and then, you know, all the chatter
on that.
And then a couple of minutes later to see that second plane hit, I'm like, that's okay.
That's an act of terrorism.
There's something going down and within, you know, seconds after that, you know, minute
or whatever, pretty much they came across the PA system, you know, from our dispatch
center.
Nobody's leaving.
You're all recalled.
Everybody's staying.
And they made us staff, you know, all of them.
So we run a task force situation where you have a truck and a pump and then an engine.
So we staffed our pump because our pump normally just has an engineer on it.
So we staffed that fully staffed with four people.
We put an extra person on the ambulance at the time.
And then, you know, we turned the engine if we had the ability to into an ALS resource
in the station.
So, you know, we had extra ALS.
We had, you know, two platoons on and it was weird.
I'll tell you because anybody who's been to the city of Los Angeles, you know, or New
York, they're just nonstop.
You know, it's just people everywhere.
And to go out, you know, initially we went out and surveyed, you know, our first in and
then just kind of hung out and waited and the city shut down.
It's like everything came to a grinding halt.
You could drive through downtown and there wasn't a person on the ground anywhere.
You could have shot a cannon down there.
The only other time I've seen it like that was in COVID.
And I'm telling you, it's the eeriest thing in the world to be in a city that big and
have nothing.
Weird.
So you know, from that, I still had been working with the sheriff's department through search
and rescue.
We were going to be deployed.
So I was working on, you know, getting time off through the fire department.
And then that fell through.
And then my partner at the time, Wendy Cummings, she said, hey, do you still want to go?
And I said, yeah.
So she had made the phone call.
And then next thing you know, I was on a critical incident stress debriefing team, CSD team.
It was three of us from the fire department and two detectives, I think, and one sergeant
from LAPD.
And the police protective league actually put it together.
And so we went out there.
We were two days later.
You know, we were the first plane off the ground in LA.
And we flew out there and landed.
And that was weird, man.
We had all these coppers show up from New York, you know, at the airport, grabbed our
gear and everything, threw us in squad cars and they were hauling ass back to the city.
Emergency, I mean, and those guys, a whole other ball of wax, man.
I mean, they're driving on the sidewalk.
They're driving, pushing cars off the road.
I'm like, what the hell's going on, man?
You'd think the president of the United States was here.
So that was a trip.
You know, so we got back into the city and then hooked up with the sergeants union.
And then they basically kind of, they walked, they took, they have, have you been downtown
yet?
No.
So they got us some badges and took us downtown and we walked through ground zero.
Ooh, man, that was something else.
I mean, they had just put a fence up, literally a fence went up.
And so, you know, it was 16 square blocks.
I think it was around that.
I mean, it was undescribable.
There's no words to it looked like a war zone, you know, in the middle East, like Lebanon
or, I mean, it was just shit everywhere.
Things crushed and collapsed.
It was really just, you walk through there so surreal and you're like, fuck, is this
the United States of America?
What in the hell just happened here?
No.
So you really, there's a lot to take in.
And back then, you know, we didn't have smartphones.
We didn't have flip phones.
We had a little piece of shit cell phone.
Maybe it was a flip phone, but no cameras, you know, and they're like, no, no pictures.
You can't take any pictures.
If they see you taking pictures, they'll kick you out.
And I'm like, that's weird.
Why the fuck can't we take pictures?
You know, it's not like, so anyway, I had a little 110 camera.
You remember those?
I think so.
The little rectangular one.
Yeah.
The disposable camera oblong or whatever.
Yeah.
So I was walking along and snapping photos when nobody's looking.
I'm like, this is fucking unreal.
This is history.
You know?
So anyway, we walked around and the guy's like, hey, I'm going to take you over to the
guy who's running this here at ground zero.
So he took us over there and we started talking to him.
And his name was Chris Koslow.
And it turns out he was retired LAPD.
He worked Devonshire division for, I don't know, 15 years or something like that.
And now he was working for the DOJ.
And so we started talking to him and he was like, well, what are you guys doing?
Like, well, we came down here as a part of the CISD team, but nobody wants to talk.
You know, nobody, New York, I mean, that wasn't even a thing.
You know, I mean, they didn't even believe in the ICS system back then.
I mean, that wasn't even, there was no ICS system in place.
It was a mess, man.
So he's like, well, you know, you can, you want to work for me?
I was like, yeah, what do you need?
I was like, well, I got to go, you know, to this meeting right now, but I need, they had
barges coming across from Jersey, full of equipment and all this stuff.
And he's like, I have no idea where these things are coming from.
I don't know what equipment's on there.
I need to know what this place looks like.
You know, I said, okay, cool.
Well, I need a lot of resources.
You know, I need maps.
I need, if you have satellite imagery, you know, whatever you have.
So he tasked me with, you know, some guys from CBRN and PD, the national guard.
I mean, he's like, whatever you need, ask these guys and they'll get it for you.
Okay.
So he says, but I want to plan when I come back of how we can take this city back over
because we have, you know, there was all these civilians inside of there because that was
a political football, right?
So one thing led to another anyway, gridded out the city, figured out where resources
were coming from, so on and so forth.
And then that just started the ball rolling and it just escalated into, holy shit, or
rebuilding the city.
It's a long story, but, and there's a lot of pieces to it, but man, it was something
else.
I mean, I would have never thought, you know, just happenstance, met this guy hooked up
and one thing led to another and there it is.
It was, gave me a lot of experience, you know, a lot of, and I was used to running operations
through, you know, the sheriff's department.
So that was really good, you know, on logistics and stuff like that.
And then when we came back, it was interesting.
We put together, you know, PowerPoint on what we saw, lessons learned, things to consider,
you know, for out here.
And we gave that to the sheriff's department, you know, the sheriff and all of his top command
staff, we gave that to LAPD police chief and his command staff.
And then we attempted to give it to the LAFD and they just farted at me and like, no, thanks.
Yeah, we're good.
We don't need any of that information.
What?
Okay.
It's weird.
Another weird thing in the LAFD, but whatever.
When you look back now, what do you think that came from?
It seems like so often it's egos.
Like I've obviously tried to bring solutions to places I've worked and usually it's an
ego of an individual ultimately is the hurdle.
Yeah.
Back then, especially if you weren't a chief, you literally had no say so, you know.
So that was really interesting, you know, because I wasn't, I was just a firefighter
paramedic, you know, dumb fireman.
But I had the firsthand experience working, you know, for the main guy at ground zero.
There's a lot of intel, a lot of information that, you know, lessons learned on what to
look at things you'd never consider in a situation like that, right?
That we came across that we had to deal with, you know?
And as a city, you would think your EOC or whatever, you know, your DOC would want to
know that information to be able to better, you know, utilize that in some kind of disaster
scenario, right?
Yeah.
Well, especially when you have terrorism, but you also have earthquakes, which could
create the same kind of scenario.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, those hit out of nowhere and literally it would look the same, you know?
I mean, if we had an 8.0 or higher, it's no problem, you drop these buildings.
So yeah.
So if you could impart to everyone listening now, some of those takeaways that you were
trying to educate your own people with, you know, a lot of us have, you know, I spent
a lot of my time in Anaheim and the Orlando area.
So again, still pretty urban, maybe not the high rise landscape that you guys have in
New York, but still a lot of similar target hazards.
So what would be the takeaways for the average person listening now?
Well, comms are number one, right?
You definitely, I mean, without comms, and it doesn't matter whether it's on the job
or in your marriage, right?
Everything falls apart without that.
So you need to really have some sort of communication system in place and a backup for any type
of scenario like that.
That would probably be the number one thing.
Then, you know, moving forward, I mean, there's so many different factors that go into an
operation like that, you know?
I mean, initially you're looking at the search and rescue aspect of it, right?
And then, you know, you're dealing with the recovery aspect of it, right?
If there's bodies, I mean, there really wasn't much recovery going on at that time, very
little to none.
So I mean, you really need somebody managing that aspect of it, right?
And then you need somebody, there's still search and rescue on another level too, because
you have all these other buildings around that area as well, right?
So all of those buildings need to be cleared to make sure that, you know, somebody didn't
get trampled, somebody didn't fall, somebody didn't have a heart attack, right?
Somebody who was in a wheelchair who couldn't get out, you know?
I mean, you're talking about 30 to, I mean, trade centers were 110 stories.
So you got a lot of buildings that are very tall.
There's a lot of landscape to cover.
You have that whole situation to deal with because there's still, it's no different like
a USAR operation, right?
You know, you got to go through and mark your doors and your buildings to make sure that
those are cleared.
Well, this is the same thing floor by floor, but in hundreds of buildings.
So I mean, it's a monumental task on that aspect.
You know, then you're dealing, I mean, you're dealing with all the different agencies.
So water and power, gas, you know, one of the big things that was really a good takeaway
was sanitation, you know, and everything in New York is unionized.
So there was a lot of infighting with that.
That's our job.
We're not in charge of that, you know.
Yeah, you are, but we have to come together and there's a main center of command and then
all information disseminates down from that on what you guys, you guys just can't go out
there and willy-nilly be doing everything, right?
It all has to come together from one central command post.
But what was interesting, one of the big things as well was because what happens when sanitation
stops, right?
Trash pick up.
Well, Manhattan's on an island.
We got rats, right?
You got a lot of rats in Manhattan.
And so what do rats carry?
Disease, right?
So now you're dealing with issues of disease spread, contagions, things like that.
So about every 10 floors, I think it was in those high rise buildings, depending on the
size of them, they had a cafeteria that's full of food.
There's no power.
There's no cooling.
There's no electricity.
Now that food's sitting there rotting and now you've got that pest problem running up
into those facilities scavenging.
So getting people into those zones to clear that stuff out is super crucial.
Understanding what's in your buildings as well and having, I mean, we have a 704 placard
on a lot of buildings, right?
So it might tell you what's in there, but not the quantities and stuff.
And so making sure that you're not sending people in.
That was another thing too was there was no respirators and that was one of the big things
I'm like, we need these people to be wearing, not an N95.
I mean, there wasn't even that, but legit 3M particle canisters and stuff.
And food was being set up outside.
You have people coming with truckloads of food to help the first responders, right?
And I mean, you got McDonald's and all these other places that are out there and there's
tables set up everywhere and this food's just laying all over.
There's no climate control on it.
There's no nothing on it.
And now you've got all this debris, ash, all of this stuff falling on this and guys are
just eating it, not thinking of the concept of what's in this, asbestos, heavy metals,
radiation, all kinds of stuff.
I mean, we know what was there.
So all of those things need to be considerations, right?
You need to control all those environments and none of that was controlled there.
Is that the reason why people got sick?
Well, yeah, probably a lot of it.
I mean, you're ingesting those toxins on food.
You're breathing it in, you're inhaling it.
So we got the mask for guys, but it was hot and guys didn't want to wear them and a lot
of issues.
So I don't know, we're going for days.
Yeah, no, but thank you though.
Because I mean, this is a way for people, whether they're in rural New Zealand somewhere
or in the city itself to actually learn.
I think this is what's so great about these conversations is the podcast medium allows
everyone around the world to listen.
If they got a wifi connection, they happen to hit play on this episode, they're going
to learn some things.
And when you talked about the food, whether it was actually the disease side within the
buildings or serving it on the streets, I mean, it's all coming from good intentions,
but these aren't things that you think about.
I wouldn't think about it.
So I appreciate it.
Yeah.
And that's the biggest thing is like, right?
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and we really have to in the emergency management
space, disaster management, or even just as a first responder, not in a management position,
you need to look at those things and think about what is it that I'm doing and what are
the potential outcomes for that, right?
I mean, I'm not talking about going into a burning building or whatever.
We know what those are and we weigh those consequences, right?
We look at smoke conditions, we look at, is it blowing through the roof?
Is it already venting?
Is it part of the building collapsed?
We make all of those judgments, right?
And we make our assessment to go in and we look for those danger signs.
But in bigger things like this, we really have to look at the bigger picture as well,
right?
What are the outcomes and what are the consequences of our decisions and making this, right?
So just, you know.
Absolutely.
Well, that was 9-11.
So prior to the pandemic, now you're wearing a fire uniform.
What again was some of the career calls in your career?
Well, I remember coming back from 9-11, you know, and then we had the whole, you know,
we had the whole issue with anthrax, you know.
Then I was at the Hazmat Task Force.
You know, I remember having, I mean, we were anthrax, that was a big thing constantly,
right?
Oh my God, everywhere.
So we had to deal with that, you know.
So that was kind of interesting.
Then fast forward again, and I went to work in arson, counterterrorism, you know, lots
of training in that.
It was great.
You know, I've been to bomb school, I've been to homicide school, I've done, my resume
is pretty extensive.
So it was great getting to learn, you know, all of these different things and being able
to put all these pieces together.
And in, God, what year, I'm trying to think of what year it was now.
The years, forget some of those, somewhere around 2011 or 12 when I was there in arson.
New Year's Eve, I made an arrest for a gentleman who started, if I remember correctly, I think
it was five fires.
And young kid, 18 years old, 19 years old or whatever, went on a drinking bender, got
pissed off, walked through the city, starting fires.
One of the fires was, we have these apartment complexes, you know, this was like a three-story
garden style apartment and the parking, it was a carport and it went down underneath
the ground level units.
So they were open facing the street, not closed with the garage door, but they were subterranean.
So this kid bought a fire starter, like a, you know, a Duraflame log type of thing and
put it underneath one of the front end driver's end, if I remember right, of the car and lit
it.
Eventually the car caught on fire, caught the cabinets on fire above it, all the other
cars and then it went up into the apartments.
And this is like two o'clock in the morning.
So you know, you've got people asleep, so on and so forth.
Luckily no one died, but ended up catching him, got him to confess and you know, he went
to jail.
So I went home, you know, I had been on for multiple days, had to write the report to
go to the DA, you know, so that he could be arraigned.
You got 48 hours to do that.
And then, you know, I shut my phone off because I was wiped out.
Wake up the next, my wife wakes me up and she's like, Hey, your phone's blown up.
You need to answer.
So I answer it and they're like, you got to come back to work.
We had somebody freaking go out and light, you know, 30 fires last night and they're
matching the MO of your fire.
What?
You know, you're asleep, you're groggy.
Okay, great.
So I drive back to work and I spent the next couple of days there and it turned out he
was, I cannot remember this guy's name, but he was the largest serial arsonist in the
history of Los Angeles.
He lit over a hundred and 110 fires.
I think in two nights it was.
It's pretty wild chasing this guy down.
You know, we thought originally one of the initial things was that it was his buddies,
the guy that I arrested.
His buddies went and set the same type of fire, you know, to say, look, it wasn't this
guy who did this.
It was someone else so that they could get him out of jail.
Well, you know, write search warrants, do all that stuff.
Long story short, it turns out the guy lived behind the arsonist, lived behind where he
set that fire in that apartment complex and that gave him the idea.
And it turned out that he was in court the day before his mom was being deported for,
I believe it was prostitution.
And he got pissed, walked out of the court and said, I'm going to burn the fucking city
down paraphrasing, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was.
And then that night he started burning the city down and, you know, like I said, lit
110 fires or something.
So I mean, that's a lot of fires to be chasing around the city, you know, takes a lot of
units.
Yeah, it's a lot of accelerants too.
Was he carrying like a gas truck behind him or something?
No, man, literally he was using those fire logs, those fire starters and just strategically
placing them underneath the car, you know, and they get hot enough and it would catch
and you know, and then you got the magnesium usually in that area of the car right there
and then that gets super heated.
And it was wild.
It was one wild ride.
That's for sure.
So with that apartment fire, when I was at Anaheim, I remember this clearly, I was on
an engine and we got banged out to a car fire and we were like, all right, you know, we
always took it seriously.
It was a good department.
They trained us well, so we were all bunkered up.
But actually, when we got there, it was not subterranean, but the same exact layout.
It was actually, I think there was four, four or five cars in a carport and then it was
a, I think it was a one story.
So above that was then a wood frame apartment complex.
You got all these fire and all every single car was fully involved.
You're raging fire.
Then you've got, you know, apartments and they give us either one or two floors.
Yeah.
And it's terrifying because you've got an absolute, you know, inferno below.
You've only got wood steps for these people to escape.
And like you said, if they're asleep, they're literally going to cook to death above you.
So I mean, that layout is always terrifying to me knowing, especially now with these electric
cars and how they spontaneously combust that you could lose an entire row of families without
them even ever waking up.
Yeah.
You know, and yeah, absolutely.
We could run all the scenarios all day long, but yeah, that's one of the worst ways, you
know, I think those are a horrible design period.
Yeah, absolutely.
So any other career calls prior to 2020 and we'll get into the, the, the event that shut
down the world.
Yeah.
I mean, we've had trained derailments, you know, all kinds of stuff.
Those are, those are some pretty good ones though.
I think, you know, I don't know.
It just all kind of blurs together.
You know, one of the things that always blows me away is, and is, you know, you go out or
whatever and you're your friends who are not in the fire service or in a first responder
are like, tell me about the worst call you ever had.
Tell me about the gnarliest call.
And it's like, you want me to relive one of the worst things I've ever seen for your enjoyment.
And that's not what I'm going with you, but that popped into my head, you know, as like,
unless you've been there, it doesn't matter what I tell you, you're never going to grasp
the concept or the reality of how shitty that was, you know, what we see too is, is we go
and we deal with it, right?
We shut it off while we're there because we have to function, right?
And there are those calls that catch you off guard, you're like, oh, but you still right
into work mode, right?
It's not until afterwards, you know, that either A, you try and process it or B, you
just box it up and put it away and party on Garth, you know, whatever.
Oh, that was a sick call, bro.
Yeah, it was a sick call.
So yeah, you know, I don't know.
I just, it's crazy when you think about how many calls you run in that length of a career,
you know, in a big city.
I mean, when I was put off for COVID, you know, because I came back from being sick,
my doctor wouldn't let me go on the field anymore.
I couldn't go into an IDLH because of immune issues, autoimmune issues and stuff.
And so, I went to our dispatch center and we have our own, our dispatchers are sworn
members.
It's a place to go if you've been broken, you know, or you want to be a dispatcher for
a couple of years, it's great because it gives you the ability to see everything from all
sides.
And in reality, like on structure fires and stuff, we run those for the chief, you know,
we're an extra set of ears, we're listening to everything, we're prompting if they miss
something, you know, if they need resources, we're telling them, you know, you've got 15
minutes on your instant clock, whatever it is, there's a lot of things happening behind
the scenes that people don't grasp if you've never been in that position.
So I think, you know, that was a great experience as well, you know, just because you're looking
at it from a different lens.
So yeah.
Well, there's a lot of them and us when it comes to dispatch and whoever's on the call,
you know, and then we all know exactly, you know, what that means and we've experienced
it.
But, you know, I remember, for example, going on a hemorrhage once and we got there and
it was, there was a dead guy with a gun next to him.
He was hemorrhaging, but it was ultimately a self-inflicted gunshot boom, but, you know,
very different call once you come through, but all the dispatcher has is what they are
told by whoever picks up the phone.
And I've had a few dispatchers on here.
One of the ones that really stands out though is Beth Bowersox.
She was a dispatcher, she was from Paradise and she was on call that day during the Paradise
fire.
So these poor men and women, firstly, they, you know, they work shift work like us, but
they don't get to have a physical exertion to offload the stress.
They sit in a chair in the dark for 12 hours at a time, maybe never seeing the sun, depending
on their shifts, and then have to have this stress with no way of offloading it.
But to hear families screaming saying, please help me right before they're burned over by
a wildfire.
I mean, it's brutal.
So I think it's, it's really interesting and I'd love to hear your kind of your take on
the perspective that you did get when you hear voices from dispatch, because it's so
easy to just blame them for stuff and think that they're vindictive or whatever.
And sometimes they are, they're having a bad day too, let's be honest.
But you know, most of the time it's a, it's a team effort, but we're so disconnected.
It's just simply a voice on a radio, but there's often a lot of animosity between the two.
Yeah, I remember.
I mean, for me being in the field, you know, it was always, um, I never, you know, I'd
just go to the address.
I'd look at the call and be like, yeah, like you said, hemorrhage.
Okay, great.
Whatever.
And when I got there, I would assess the situation and be like, how did they get this?
You know, I'm having them the whole time.
Then you get down there and you're like, yeah, okay, now I get it.
But you know, and unfortunately, like, I don't know whether it's fortunate or unfortunate,
you know, guys still always do the same thing.
You have the control, you have the power.
Well, no, you don't.
Because you know, there's three captains sitting up on a bridge.
I mean, our, our dispatch center looks like NASA control center.
It's unreal.
I mean, each dispatcher has six computer screens in front of him.
He's got a 10 key.
He's got one, two, three or four keyboards.
He's got a headset on whether he's taking calls or he's dispatching.
And you got, you know, all the stuff going on, right?
And you're trying to garner information from somebody who, whether it's on the other end
that they're, you know, the end of the world.com truly or, you know, their toilets flooding
or they stubbed their toe, you know, or a guy trapped in an elevator and he's MF with
a mental health issue and a substance abuse issue going on at the same time, right?
So, I mean, it's so wide and varied and our hands truly as a dispatcher, you're very tied
because at least with LA city, you know, they monitor all your keystrokes.
So everything you typed in, all the calls are recorded.
They have a QI, you know, system that they go back and they review all the calls.
Every single cardiac arrest is critiqued and gone over as well because the head doctor,
you know, for the city reviews all of those to see how we can get better, you know, outcomes
and so on and so forth.
So there's so many factors and you're under a microscope and you do something wrong or
what they feel is wrong or you didn't dispatch appropriately, you know, they come after you.
You get put into the system and they'll pull you in for remediation and if you don't, you
know, get better or whatever, you continue to have issues, then they boot you out of
there and yeah, I mean, that's normal, right?
There has to be checks and balances.
But for the guys in the field, they don't grasp the concept that everything you do is
not like being in the field where, you know, if you took your axe to the door before you
turned the doorknob and checked it, right?
It's not the end of the world.
The building was burning down.
You just took the harder way, right?
Or whatever it is, you're not scrutinized like that to that extent.
Here they really have the, you know, because a captain has, you know, four guys that he's
in charge of, right?
Including himself and there's a lot going on here.
You know, everything's recorded, everything's keylogged, so on and so forth.
So you're really under that scrutiny and if you guys don't want to get hammered, you know,
it's just easier.
Follow the script or, you know, send, press send, get somebody there.
At least you got somebody there.
So yeah.
But while we're on the dispatch conversation, we were talking about the workload.
One of the most amazing innovations that I've seen, and I would love to get a company on
here as a sponsor so we can really, really share this message, but I think a lot of them
are still kind of grassroots operations, but the 911 telehealth immersion now.
So you know, the, the obviously the Omega course, but then the Alpha and maybe even
some of the Bravo depending, you know, that's a large portion of what we run on, you know,
the real, real true 911 emergencies.
I think most of us would agree are probably a quarter of the calls that we get.
The rest are, you know, a number of things from loneliness to drug seeking and, you know,
and just, just mania in general.
And so you call 911 and the dispatcher immediately figures out, okay, what level is this?
All right, we're, we're at a very low level.
You know, well, we've got two options for you.
We can send out, you know, a rescue paramedics to your house, or we can get you into a zoom
call, you know, video conference with an ER physician, which one would you prefer?
Oh, well, yeah, I'll talk to a doctor.
They then, you know, you tag them off and obviously they always have the ability to
come back to you if they deem that they want to go after all, but now they talk to the
doctor and that tummy ache or let me use a better example, you know, the, the kid with
the 102 fever that's thrown up once, but it's a new parent and they're terrified they're
going to die of dehydration, you know, or the rolled ankle or, oh, my, my, you know,
blood pressure meds have expired or whatever it is, they're able to mitigate that.
And they probably trust that person as much, if not more than, than a paramedic.
So then you've eliminated a bed being taken up in an ER, you've stopped that patient,
you know, being charged thousands of dollars by going into that ER and you've given the
crew one less call to run.
So it's like a win, win, win.
And it doesn't even cost the fire department anything because this company bills the health
insurance, you know, a much smaller bill than an ER as it would be.
So that to me is an incredible idea, but, and it's one good thing that came out of COVID
because they cut a lot of the red tape around telemedicine.
So I would love to see that become, you know, a thing in all 911 is if it's not emergency,
then send it to a trained professional who can mitigate that virtually.
And so we're not running our people into the ground.
Yeah, we started that.
Well, I don't say we started it.
I know there's companies doing it, but during COVID LA city actually implemented telehealth,
you know, and we hired PAs to come in, you know, give them abbreviated course.
And then basically they trained the dispatchers that if you had a certain level call, right,
and it met this criteria, then if they were working that day again, you know, they get
days off.
We're not in that space.
But the idea was there definitely to send that over to them, you know, to get that handled.
And then if they couldn't get it handled on their end, then they would end up sending
it back to us and we would dispatch out, you know, a BLS resource or whatever to handle
that.
I think in theory it's good.
I don't necessarily know that our protocol was set up correct, but I think it's a step
in the right direction.
You know, it's better than continuing to send resources, you know, and then they've got
mental health fans and all kinds of things.
But again, then we've seen issues with that.
So I don't know.
There's a lot there.
Yeah.
Like you said, the potential is there.
Absolutely.
We need the right people to create it the right way so that we're not throwing it all
together at the beginning of a national emergency.
Yeah, absolutely.
It has to start somewhere, you know.
So if that's the case, then, you know, start doing something, see what doesn't work and
start tweaking the system, right?
But again, then you get into the space where, you know, your dispatchers don't want to send
someone over to telehealth.
Let's just send an 800 because I don't want to lose my job.
I don't know.
There's all this round robin that goes through, you know, everybody's like protected their
space but okay, great.
Guys are complaining in the field, they're getting hammered.
Why are you sending on this?
Here's a person right here to help.
So send them to that.
I agree 100%.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, speaking of that then, so I had Bo Porter on one of your LA FD brothers, amazing conversation,
but it was great because he talked about in his first year where he worked, they did see,
you know, a lot of the deaths and issues when it came to COVID when it first hit.
This is an important part of the conversation.
There's some people in, you know, rural, wherever that saw zero, you know, this is why I think
there's a bit of to and froing when it comes to the individual experience.
Through your lens in the station where you were assigned, walk me through the beginning
of the pandemic.
So when all this happened, you know, with COVID and so on and so forth, I was actually
in dispatch.
I was a dispatcher.
Well, actually when COVID started, I had actually had just come back to work September of 19.
So then January 20 is when that all started and I was working in our fire communications
division dealing with radios and comms and stuff like that, waiting to go into our dispatch
center.
So anyway, fast forward through that, you know, basically they, the city, well, let's
see, when did, what is it, Operation Warp Speed?
They offered, you know, the shots to the elderly and first responders first, right?
So I think that was about, what was that?
2020 December sometime, I think is when they first started offering those.
And me, the way my brain operates, you know, I look at a lot of different factors.
I did my research and I knew that that wasn't something that I was comfortable with.
So fast forward into 2021, we, in August, you know, we had heard, prior to August, we
had heard rumblings that, you know, they were going to start mandating this shot.
And I'm like, wait a minute, we've had a choice this whole time.
Now why all of a sudden is this being mandated?
Something's not right here.
You know, we don't force people to take medical treatment against their will.
So me and a buddy started talking about what we would do if that came into effect.
And we kind of laid out a plan.
And then it happened.
They had a union meeting and in that union meeting, they said that, you know, there's
nothing that they could do that, you know, the city, you know, we've been in negotiations
with the city meeting confer and, you know, we're still at the table.
And so that went back and forth.
And I basically, you know, I mean, I sat there throughout the whole time.
I came with like eight pages of notes and all the stats and things that I was going
to talk about and trying to figure out when I was going to speak and what I was going
to say.
And I was just listening to everybody.
And man, the one thing that really stood out to me was the amount of fear in the room,
you know.
Guys were like, you know, I have a family.
I've got kids I got to take care of, you know, blah, blah, blah.
All the main things, right.
And they're like, I can't afford not to take this.
I have to do, you know, all of these things going around.
And I'm like, wow, this is horrible.
There's literally nobody knows what to do.
And it was bizarre.
So I finally got to the point where I'm like, I can't handle this anymore.
It's terrifying.
So I stood up and just started talking and I never touched those notes.
They never came into play.
And I felt like, I don't know, like this information came from another source, like divinely inspired
and really, you know, focusing on the fact that everyone was terrified.
They didn't know what to do.
It's like, nobody wanted to step up and lead.
Nobody wanted to be that guy.
Nobody really, there's no roadmap for this.
Nobody seen anything like this before, right.
So I think from that standpoint, the fear was just tremendous.
How do you, this is what we do is we solve problems, right.
And now we don't know what to do and we're the providers and I can't step out of that
role.
So I'm going to do whatever it takes, right, to be in that.
And that's what I saw.
And so I basically just stood up and talked to the union, the union president, everybody.
And I was like, look, this is, there's more at stake here.
You know, yeah, our privacy is being violated.
Our body autonomy, you know, these are working conditions.
We have contracts.
There's a lot of things at play here.
I said, but in reality I was born free, right.
I'm a sovereign individual, human being, and my rights are given to me at birth by God.
And I have the right to protect myself.
It gives me discernment, free will to do the things that I think that are right for me.
And this is not right.
This is not okay for the city, the union, the federal government, anyone to be telling
me what it is I have to put into my body.
And the thing that people didn't grasp the concept, you know, initially I think is that
we're given those rights by God at birth and those rights are enshrined, you know, there's
documents, the founding documents, Declaration of Independence, the constitution and the
Bill of Rights, those limit the powers of the government and it protects our sovereign
right to make decisions for ourselves, right.
We elect these officials to govern, not rule us, and those documents protect those God-given
rights.
And so, you know, I basically just said, look, this is the line in the sand that I'm not
willing to step over and cross.
You're not going to force me.
And if it means that this has to go to the end and the city decides that they're going
to terminate me over this, then that's what will be because I will not capitulate to this
bullshit.
This is wrong on so many levels and I'm not going to kiss a ring and be held a slave,
you know, over a paycheck.
And then, you know, afterwards I was like, whoa, what was that all about?
I know what it was about, but I think it was really kind of just like, hmm, people need
to understand that there's more here.
And so, you know, I said, look, I'm willing to fight this.
I don't know how or what, but anybody who wants to, you know, what I see in this room
is everybody feels like they're on an island, right, that they're a lone wolf, that there's
nobody there for them.
And in reality, they're sitting there giving lip service, you know, like this, but they
proved that they didn't do anything throughout this.
And so, after that, you know, I had a conversation with my buddy.
I said, well, this is how it went.
But we need to do something.
And you know, so we had some telegram channels and we had some other stuff.
We're communicating with people in the department and, you know, the members who weren't down
with this.
And then we put it out there, hey, we're going to start this.
We're going to do something, anybody who wants to be involved.
And so, then we got eight other people that reached out and we basically said, okay, what
do we need to do?
So, we created a 501C3.
You know, that was our board of directors and we created Firefighters for Freedom.
And then we found an attorney, you know, and we got attorneys on board.
We initially had one attorney and then that led into, you know, three other attorneys,
one of which was, you know, Kennedy.
And we just started pushing back.
You know, we started an Instagram channel and then that blew up as our social media.
I mean, you know, over 50,000 people on that.
And we really held the city to task.
You know, we really pushed, asked questions, pointed out the hypocrisy, just really started
laying down truth, you know, and trying to expose the lies.
And then, so, you know, so all of that was happening and, you know, I was still working.
And so, you know, that was Mr. Toad's wild ride, holy mackerel, fast and furious.
I mean, you know, on days that I wasn't at work, it was 16 hour days.
I mean, I'd get, I mean, I'd be on the phone all day long and, you know, five, six, 700
texts a day at least, you know, and you're just, it's just nonstop.
Trying to help people through that process on, you know, what to do, what their rights
were.
You know, here in California, we have the firefighter bill of rights.
You know, we have Skelly, which is a Supreme Court ruling.
It says you have a property right to your job.
You know, again, F for firefighter bill of rights, that's your due process.
That took 20 years to get put into place.
So there was a lot of things that were happening, you know, and things that they were doing.
And, you know, then we filed suit on September 17th, which actually turns out to be the day
that the constitution was signed, ratified.
And then we started down that process of dealing with, you know, the court system.
So originally the city put the mandate into place and said, you know, you had until October
20th of 21 to be in compliance or you would be put off duty, disciplinary action, pending
termination.
And so then we held a small rally.
Then we held a big rally on the day of, I think it was, I'd have to go back and look,
of that on the 20th of October with 10,000 people.
You know, we had a lot of big speakers, you know, America's frontline doctors, you know,
exec and just a lot of people came out and spoke at that rally in support of freedom
and, you know, medical freedom, body autonomy, privacy rights, all of that stuff.
And that was really the beginning of, you know, all of that.
We pushed really hard.
And so we were supposed to be terminated, you know, put off on the 20th and then the
20th came and went and that didn't happen.
And one of the reasons they said was, you know, because you're an imminent threat to
the public and the workforce.
Well then they extended that date out to December 18th of 2021.
And it's like, wait a minute, if we're an imminent threat to the public and the workforce,
why am I still at work?
Why am I still working?
You know, no answers.
So we continued through the court system and we got a radical judge who was very biased
throughout the whole process.
He denied us at every step of the way and then dismissed our case on a demurrer, which
you can't do.
He stated that we had no legal standing.
So which is hilarious because in the state of California, you know, legal standing is
almost, I mean, if you have a pulse rate and you can breathe, you have legal standing.
But we had plenty of legal standing.
So anyway, our case got kicked out and then we went to the appellate court in April of
this year and we won in the appellate court.
So it had to go back to the superior court.
And then we had a hearing, I think it was December 1st or first week in December of
this year in front of the judge.
She heard it and basically set a trial date for February of 2025.
So just around the corner.
So that's where that legal case is sitting right now.
The city says that they want to come to the table before that happens, but we'll see what
they want to do with that.
They sued on constitutional rights on that, but based on the California constitution,
because it's much stronger and has better protection rights, Article 1, Section 1 of
the California constitution gives you medical freedom, body autonomy, genetic privacy rights,
a lot of things like that.
And so it's way stronger than at the federal level under those protections.
And we wanted to show that these mandates are unconstitutional.
They can't step into this space and force you to take something against your will.
It just goes against every principle that this country was founded on.
So that's where we stand in the courts.
And then throughout that process, December 1st of 2021, I got off shift and about 15
minutes after I got off shift, I received an email that said, you've been placed off
duty, leave no pay pending disciplinary action.
And so I stayed off the work for pretty much two years, no pay, which is illegal in the
state of California.
And then I had my Board of Rights that started in September of 23.
And then on November 27th of 23, they came down with their decision and found me guilty
of violating a condition of employment and terminated me.
So that's where I sit happily retired right now and still continuing to fight.
Yeah.
So there's a lot inside of that unpack, but whatever.
Yeah, no, but I want to just recap the way I viewed the pandemic and then we'll get into
your term happily retired because I know there's two oxymorons there.
Firstly, when I think almost everyone has come on here, no matter what leaning they
have, everyone was like, February 2020, we were like, oh shit, what is this?
Everyone took it seriously.
But then as the months and the weeks and ultimately months went on, you had all these different
layers of leadership.
And I would say I'm not a huge fan overall, but I have to say that Ron DeSantis, the way
he handled that, obviously his team, it was just so measured.
It was like, all right, everyone shut down.
All right, now we're going to see what's, oh, the numbers aren't actually anywhere near
as bad as we thought.
All right, restaurants or gyms or whatever.
And it wasn't too long, for example, before our gyms were open again.
And so I was very impressed.
I don't lean either way.
I just want good leaders, whatever shape, color, whatever they are.
And I saw it was very, very well done.
And it wasn't too long before most of us were going around and then you had the choice.
Do you want to get a vaccine?
Do you want to wear a mask?
And I got vaccinated ultimately, not because of any fear of myself and my own health or
the spreading side, because me being in medicine for a long time, a lot of the things we were
being told as we got into those months, like that doesn't line up with fucking everything
I've been taught as a paramedic and in, you know, exercise physiology in, in, in UF and
all these medical classes that I've done.
There was a lot of, you know, oh, trust the science, like, but this isn't the science
that you've been teaching us for decades.
So that's where that's what stuck with me.
But I needed to get vaccinated to travel.
And I was going to visit my grandmother who was turning 105.
So for me, I was like, I will take that risk because I want to protect her.
So that was my personal choice.
It wasn't, you know, avert fear of the vaccine, but I certainly wasn't pro-vaccine.
I would not have had it had I not needed to travel and finally see my family after a couple
of years.
So that was my own choice and I had it done.
But what I observed through the whole two years, and I still revisit the pandemic for
this very reason is if it was about health and the wellness of the population, then during
those two years, we would start seeing real food put back in schools, soda machines being
removed from schools, physical education and sports programs being bolstered, you know,
mental health programs being bolstered, downtown areas being pedestrianized, how is cycle paths
being made?
You know what I mean?
And none of that happened.
And even in LA, if you really want to talk about a lesson missed, the smog went away.
I lived in Burbank for like a year and a half.
So you know, I know.
You know what the fog is?
Yes.
And you know, I was like, wow, you know, dolphins going into the, you know, was it the Venice
Canal?
I think it was, you know, so many lessons.
And then it was only a couple of months.
We were like, yeah, fuck that.
And now all of a sudden there's rubber gloves and masks everywhere you look, you know, fuck
the environment, you know?
So it was, there was some powerful lessons and you had a captive audience.
So what really smacked firstly, just simply on the wellness message was if we were actually
talking about wellness, then we're going to acknowledge the fact that a huge percentage
of the people that were losing a dime because of underlying health conditions, 70% of our
country is obese or overweight.
We consume 75% of the world's opiates.
You know what I mean?
We have a health crisis.
So all COVID was, say all, what COVID was for most people was the final nail in the
coffin.
And we lost a lot of first responders because of what we talked about earlier in this conversation.
Shift work makes us so immunocompromised.
Now I had a friend of mine who's a Texas ER physician and he was observing that for some
people that were ill, it seemed like the vaccine was, was mitigating the symptoms to the point
where someone didn't die, but they survived their COVID infection.
So there was an application through his eyes.
And so what I try to do is bring all the different pieces of the puzzle so we can have a nuanced
overall look at this conversation.
But now fast forward a little bit further and we're watching the efficacy of this vaccine
that we're being told about go from a hundred percent to 70%.
And now ultimately it's no different than, you know, a placebo, you know?
So okay, I had no side effects that I'm aware of, you know, I think a lot of people had
the vaccine and had no issues at all.
However, as you said, there seems to be a lot of alignment with, again, either a vaccine
being the final, you know, the straw that broke the camel's back with someone who was
fragile, and, or really having, you know, an abnormal response.
But you do not have the data now to tell a first responder who was on the front line
with no fucking PPE working all the hours while you hid in your house, gotten fucking
fast food and alcohol delivered to your home, while you binge watched Tiger King.
And now you have the audacity a year later to say they're selfish, take their jobs on
a, on a vaccine that the efficacy has been proven now to be bullshit.
I think it had applications.
I think it saved some people, but not in any way the magnitude that you could hold someone
accountable and say you were spreading this infection because it wasn't fucking working.
Let's be honest.
So to then still try and, and I'm speaking to you now in, you know, November, December
of 2023, we're still having first responders being terminated because of this mandate.
We as a profession, as a country need to stand up and say, this fucking ends now.
What the hell are you doing?
There are no grounds now retrospectively to take these people's jobs.
And I had a San Francisco police officer, Joel Evan on the show, same exact thing.
So I just wanted to kind of, you know, put my name on log there because I'm in the middle.
I'm, I had the vaccine.
I'm not coming from any extreme, but I care about the wellness of this country.
And if we come out of a two year pandemic getting fatter and sicker than we were before,
it was never fucking about the health of the nation.
Well, and you're right.
Absolutely.
A hundred percent on everything you said, you know?
So let me jump back to one of the things, first things.
Okay.
So, you know, our organization, firefighters for freedom, you know, we're apolitical, right?
And I think that's important to understand from the standpoint that this was a political,
I mean, you could sit back and watch, this is political theater that you're watching.
And this was a heavily politicized event from day one, right?
And to me, when we had conversations in the beginning of what we were starting, we recognized
that this needs to be apolitical because in the fire service, right, we come from all,
I mean, we're very conservative, a lot of us, but still there's people on the complete
opposite end of the spectrum.
And it's the same thing with society, but in that space, we come to work and we do our
job and we don't look at things through a political lens, right?
If your house is burning down, you're having a heart attack or you got shot, I'm not judging.
I'm there to help you because you're a human being.
And that's how we looked at this as well.
We're apolitical from the standpoint that doesn't matter.
I don't care.
If you got the shot, that's the choice you made.
I hope that you did the research and everything and you made that decision based on your own
free will and for what you felt was right for you at the time.
In hindsight, again, every decision we make has a consequence and we have to deal with
that, whatever that may be.
That's what adulting is.
But to that point is our organization, we have people in our lawsuit that are vaccinated,
that believe in that, but don't believe that your choice should be taken away.
Don't believe it says freedom.
We the people, freedom.
That's what this is about.
And our liberties, maintaining our liberties as Americans and for the government to come
in or a bureaucratic leader, use that word loosely because that's what this country is
suffering from is a lack of leadership and organizations as well.
But for them to come in and tell me or you what you have to do to your body in order
for you to put food on the table and clothes on your back and a shelter over your head
is absolutely wrong.
So I don't care if you're on the left or the right, the middle, wherever, if you believe
in that same thing that you should be able to make that decision for yourself and not
be coerced, then that's the important thing.
And we want everyone from every party because diversity is important in that aspect.
We're all should be free to make our own decisions.
So that's really to me the crucial point in how we structured our organization because
throughout this whole thing, everybody wanted, oh, I won't say everybody, but there's a large
chunk of people that tried to play us off as right-wing radicals, racist.
Again, this is political theater and they throw everything under the sun at you trying
to discredit you.
But I've been the mouthpiece for this organization and done a lot of interviews and I stand in
a space of truth and light is the best disinfectant.
I have nothing to hide.
I've laid it all out there.
We've laid it all out there.
Everything we believe is on our website, what we're about and what we're fighting for and
that's people's freedoms.
Us as first responders, we took an oath, right?
And I think people forget that.
When you swear an oath, man, that's if you think you're just standing there and you're
saying that so you can get that cool fucking badge and go right around in big red and get
a Starbucks and town on your chest and whatever, you're a jackass.
You need to really go back and look at that oath that you took and understand what that
means.
The first thing it says is that you are protecting the constitution of the United States of America
and then the state that you work in and then the laws and ordinances of whatever municipality
you work for.
There's a reason that constitution stands up there as number one and that is it protects
your God given rights so that in an emergency, they don't trample those rights, right?
That's what the constitution and the bill of rights was put there for emergency situations
so that you didn't lose your rights and for them to come in and try and crush that and
use your paycheck as coercion to get you to submit to whatever that is, that's a loss
of your liberties.
And that's to me what COVID was.
It was the vehicle to create that power structure to gain control because tell me, would you
have ever thought Americans would have locked themselves in their home for two weeks and
then three months and then worn a mask and then stood six feet apart and done all of
this?
No.
No, I never ever would have thought that, but I understand how they did it and looking
at it now, I mean, it's a very elegant but diabolical plan to gain control over people
and using fear and coercion and it's sad.
And I want people all over the world to understand what they did and how they were gaslighted.
This was never about your public health ever.
It was about power, control and money and the world seeing it.
I mean, when I was put off of work in December of 21, we knew at that time, Rachel Wolinski,
the head of the CDC came out and said, it doesn't stop disease, doesn't stop the spread
of anything.
You can transmit it, you can catch it.
What?
Yeah, nothing changed.
I mean, we knew that, but she came out and said it on Fox News.
So you sit there and you're like, okay, so then why?
Like you said, here we are in 2023, December, wrong in 2024.
I was just terminated for that.
I still have nine other people that are off, leave no pay, waiting for their board of rights
right now.
And I was like, what are we doing?
You can't staff the fire stations, you can't do this.
What are you doing?
Now you're torturing people and making examples so that you can move on to your next charade.
Yeah, but also, I mean, for all the people that were taken off the line, that's even
more work that the ones that are still on are having to do.
So people don't understand that.
The ones that are left are working more and more.
And it's funny with the whole work week thing, people are like, well, we can't even get enough
people now.
I'm like, it fucking exactly.
Because you know what happens in 2023?
People can go on the phone and go, what's it like being a firefighter?
And of course, as you and I, the reason we wore the uniform for so many years is because
there's so many fucking awesome things about being a firefighter.
But that's all we knew when we got hired.
Now these younger generation can go, oh shit, when I put in firefighter, the next word that
pops up on Google is suicide or divorce or whatever.
And it's true, if punch it in, you put firefighter, I mean, as you go down the list, there's a
lot of negative words that populate next or the next couple of words.
And this is the problem.
And now you've got someone looking to go, I'm going to either do that, or I'm going
to go work in UPS or Amazon, or I'm going to go, you know, whatever insert option be.
And they're like, fuck, wait a second.
So I can be about to get off work and they can tell me you can't go home for another
24 hours?
Holy shit.
At least sounds terrible.
Yeah.
You know, and so we didn't know that we kind of went in and like, oh, okay.
And everyone's like, this is normal.
Okay, well, this is normal.
But then you go to all these funerals.
And then you're like, this is not fucking normal.
You know, so now, you know, we have to be this voice.
So with, with this, all these, all these elements of our profession where it's just fucking
wrong, whether it's the work week, whether it's faxing mandates, whatever it is, we have
to unify and push back and be a united front.
Because when everyone else is hiding in their homes, they push three buttons on a telephone
and pray that someone uniform is going to show up on their family's worst fucking day.
And one day if this carries on, there will be no one at the end of the phone.
And it sounds dramatic, but it's true.
We are at a point of critical mass.
But the irony is if you fix these things, you will have the same lines that I'm assuming
that you had to compete against to get in the fire service that I had to compete against
to get in Anaheim, a thousand certified people for a handful of jobs.
We can get back to that again, but not if we keep destroying our first responders physically,
mentally, and even betraying them organizationally.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I remember when I tested, there was at the LA Convention Center, 20,000 people
taking the written test.
Sure.
What are the odds?
There's a hundred positions, right?
Or whatever it was.
I mean, we have a large department, we have 3,500 plus members.
But again, the union always keeps a certain amount of vacancies, right?
And they keep certain staffing levels.
They've done numbers that whatever.
We can go round and round on that topic.
I mean, that's all another topic.
But yeah, I mean, it was.
There was definite competition for the job and now, I mean, we just went out, the LAFD,
they went and did a single function class trying to hire just paramedics, right?
From private industry, AMR, wherever.
They got four people.
The city of Los Angeles.
City of Los Angeles.
Four.
What is, how it, what?
You can't do anything with that.
A, that tells you no one wants to be a paramedic in the city of Los Angeles because they know
you get ground to a pulp.
And B, they don't want to deal with the whole mandate issue because that's still in effect.
And then C comes into effect where, like you said, we didn't have the internet and all
that stuff back then.
The way that we do now, I mean, you walk around, everybody walks around with damn supercomputer
in their pocket, right?
And you can find pretty much whatever you want and anything you don't want on that thing.
And they might be sitting there having a coffee at ex coffee shop and see the fire department
across the street doing something like, or see them in the coffee shop and be like, oh,
that looks like a great job.
And then they start looking and they're like, fuck that.
You know what I mean?
I've had rookies.
I remember having a rookie one time and this is like 2000, maybe verse 10, maybe, I don't
know.
12, 14, somewhere.
And we went on a cardiac arrest, you know, and came back and she was spun out, like totally
distraught.
So, you know, sit down at the kitchen table.
Hey, what's up?
What's going on?
I've never seen dead body before.
You're like, okay, most people haven't, you know, you're like, okay, I get that.
But then the next comment floored me.
It's like, well, I didn't know that this is what we do.
I'm sorry, what?
How did you get this far?
You're in a fire station on an engine or a truck.
How did you not know this is what we did?
That'd be like saying you didn't know we go to fires and that buildings burn down, right?
And that we go inside of them or on top of them.
So, you know, that comes from recruiting and, you know, we definitely have a different generation
than we did 20 years ago than we did 50 years ago, right?
I mean, they're constantly changing.
And so, everybody always said, I was not like this, you know.
Sure, it wasn't.
But you knew what you were getting into.
You understood what the fire service or the law enforcement or the military was about,
right?
You understood the parameters that you're stepping into.
You might not have known all the nuances and everything because when you get there, whoa.
Okay.
I knew this, but, you know, there's a lot of other interesting things that come along
with it.
That's to be given.
But, you know, when recruitment and stuff goes out and they go to college campuses and
they're, you know, they're hiring chiefs, right?
People with degrees and all these other things, sociology degrees and it's like you're selling
them on a great schedule, lots of time off, good pay, benefits, pension, but you're not
explaining to them what the job really is, you know.
It's a blue collar job and you get your balls stepped on every day and you see the underbelly
of society and you have to deal with that.
And so through our conversation with this young lady, I said, you need to really go
home, you know, tomorrow or whatever and really process what it is we do and have that conversation
with yourself and your family and are you going to be able to do this because this is
a daily thing, especially here in the city of Los Angeles.
You're going to run, you could run five, six, seven of those a day, you know.
But I'm telling you right now, you're going to be a different person in five years than
you are right now.
You're going to be a totally different person.
So you need to be able to understand what's coming down the pipe and if you can handle
that, you know.
And I don't think those are conversations that most people have and that recruitment
definitely doesn't have with that, you know.
So yeah, it's just I think the world we live in now, the fire service is really going to
struggle moving forward because we don't have, you know, they're really trying to breed out
A type personalities.
You and I would be considered toxic masculinity, you know.
Everything is going to down the DEI road, right?
And that's a whole nother topic.
But to me, that really is going to leave a big hole in the fire service because A, they
don't want those types and then those types are going to be, you know, like, okay, well,
I'm going to find something else, you know, because all this other nonsense that's associated
with it is, why am I going to put up with that bullshit?
Well, I think, I mean, we, there's many layers to this.
I mean, as a profession, we've done a terrible job branding the way we train ourselves.
Like I have just been the absolute shit magnet black cloud as a paramedic my whole life.
I'm an EMT and paramedic.
I've never had a code saved 14 years and I even just did CPR on a plane a few weeks ago.
That person died too.
I'm just that guy, you know.
So you, you know, we train like, you do your mega code, I gave, you know, this drug, I
cardioverted whatever and then boom, all right, beautiful.
They came back, normal sinus, but that's not the real world either.
We set ourselves up for failure.
Like no one tells you a medic school, just so you know, 95% of these people are going
to fucking die.
95, if you're lucky, you might get, you know, I never had that station visit with the cake,
I'll tell you that much.
So you know, you've got that, but not to doom and gloom it, there is a blatant obvious answer.
You know, ask, you know, find out about the, a week in the life of your favorite sports
star, another athlete who, whose entire, you know, world depends on, on his health and
his performance or her health and her performance and look at their week.
Does it look anything like yours in the fire service?
No, there's a fucking reason for that.
Cause that person's trying to eke out performance and health.
So the closer that we get to LeBron James, you know, whoever's your, your, your person,
the more people are going to circle around and start coming back.
But we have just got to this point now and you know, we romanticize about the war years,
the firefighters of the seventies and eighties.
And some of them ran a shitload of calls, but most of them, especially in, you know,
New York and some of them, they were fire only.
Now this introduction of EMS has changed things completely.
And now you've got into facility transports and you know, all these other things that
they're throwing at us.
So there is absolutely hope, but we have to have that courageous leadership that goes,
look, we've, we have got to do some massive changes.
We got to reinvest in our people.
And I always point to the corporate space.
If you look at Google and some of these, you know, revered businesses in, in, in the corporate
side, they're pushing to, you know, like a four day work week for nine hour days because
they're realizing that their people are getting as much, if not more work done with a three
day weekend.
So doesn't mean, you know, Bruno Sini talked about, oh, we're a business and customer service.
All right.
Well, then fucking model Google, not some Indonesian sweatshop.
You know what I mean?
We've got to actually take these lessons from the sports world, from the business world
and apply it to ours.
And we've got to brand properly and educate the people and what it is that we actually
do because the problem is when we go to these public spaces, people, I mean, I hear it all
the fucking time.
They think that we sit around playing cards and waiting for a fire.
And I'm like, have you stood outside in any of your main roads in your city?
Yeah.
Do you hear sirens a lot?
Yeah.
Well, what the fuck?
What do you think they're doing?
That means they're not at the station and not playing cards, but it's such a disconnection
that people just think we're backdraft.
That's it.
And then probably that young lady was like, oh, we always save them.
They don't die.
I see it on Chicago fire.
They always make it out.
Yeah.
Well, and that's the thing too is now, I mean, pretty much look at, and I'm speaking from
a, you know, I'm going to speak pretty across the board as well from conversations that
I've had.
And I'm sure you've had the same ones that literally the fire service has become the
dumping ground.
When I say that, what I mean is anything that comes through dispatch, like when it, so originally
it goes to 911, right?
If you're close to a freeway, it goes to CHP and then they disseminated to fire or police.
So if it goes to the police, usually nine times out of 10, they're going to try and
pawn it off and send it back to us.
And so we go on these calls and you're like, there's no need for us to be here.
Right?
It's a mental health issue and that's supposed to be taken care of by PD or it's, you know,
so there's so many things that we get tasked with doing.
And because firemen are that we'll make it work, right?
That's what we do.
And we step into that space and we do make it work, but to our own detriment.
And then later we have the kitchen table and we just sit around and we bitch about it.
And then this is the biggest thing that I see is complacency breeds comfort and comfort
kills.
And that's what I see going on in the fire service right now is, and I saw that from
COVID especially is everybody was in the fight and they were totally stoked and this is wrong
and so on and so forth.
And then they got, you know, they got their exemptions denied.
And then all of a sudden there was this big frenzy.
We're going to fight, we're going to fight, we're going to fight.
But then when they said, okay, we're going to, you know, they take all the exemptions,
right?
Whatever.
Then everybody got comfortable again.
And they're like, oh, I don't need to fight.
That's over.
I'm good.
My job's secure.
I'm safe.
You know, I've got my overtime shift.
I've got, and all the while you're missing what you were fighting for in the beginning.
And so they get complacent.
And then the next time this happens that, you know, because the next strain of whatever
is so dangerous, they're going to pull that exemption and be like, oh, this is way gnarlier.
You lose your exemption.
You've already given up your rights, you know, so on and so forth.
So yeah, I think that whole thing is you said we need leaders, but guys get comfortable,
right?
They're like, oh God, you know, I don't want to step into that space.
I've got a good job.
I make good money.
I've got, you know, my toys.
I get to go on vacation.
You know, I can have a whiskey every once in a, whatever, you know, whatever it is, they
get complacent.
And then that complacency, they get comfortable and then they get killed.
And whether that's in your training, right?
When you're young, you're at a busy house all the time.
And then as you get older, right, you get, you're like, okay, I need to go to a slower
spot and then your training slows down and then you're not doing any training.
And then guess what?
You're out of shape.
You don't know what's going on.
You're not paying attention to the stuff.
And then you go into a building and you get smoked.
It works all the way around, you know, that analogy.
And so guys don't want to step into that leadership.
They don't want to do the work.
That's the other thing I've found.
It's like, man, please step into that space.
And this is, and it's not just in the fire service, it's across the country.
It's one of, you know, I've traveled all over and spoke on big stages and events and things.
And one of the things that I really try and impress on people is nobody's coming to save
you.
You think the next fucking politician that you vote for is going to save you bacon?
He's not, he's a politician.
The person, we are the ones that are going to save ourselves.
So you know, you don't like what's going on in your kid's school, right?
You don't like the fact that they're pushing some agenda.
Then while you were busy watching Saturday football and playing fantasy football and
dancing with the stars, the other side got in there and they're pushing that agenda from
the ground up.
So, you know, we have to take our communities back at a grassroots level.
It starts from the bottom up, right?
It's not top down, it's control.
And so whether it's, you know, we get complacent in our lives, we don't, you know, you're a
rough day at work.
You just want to hang out on the weekend.
You don't want to be involved, you know, oh, it's too much work.
Somebody else is already doing it, right?
But then when it doesn't go the way that you want and things go sideways, you don't have
anybody to blame but yourself because you're not involved.
You have to be engaged in that process and the same thing goes in the fire service.
Man, if your union sucks, guess what?
Get in there.
Be that change, you know.
If you've got horrible captains and chiefs, you need to take those tests and step into
that space to create that leadership.
And guys just get comfortable, unfortunately, and it's sad.
I don't know how to change that other than to say, you know, do it, make it happen, you
know, and that's one of the reasons why I've stood in this space out front of this is like,
man, come on, stand with me.
Let's fight back with this.
Let's be that change.
You have to be the change you want to see.
Nobody's going to do it for you, right?
How many drug addicts have you had a conversation with?
How many alcoholics, you know, I mean, I worked Skid Row for 10 years in downtown LA and it's
like, you can have conversations until you're blue in the face.
It's only when things get really bad is that that person has to take that step, that action,
and they have to want that change for themselves because otherwise, you know, it doesn't happen.
A perfect example, you mentioned Skid Row.
I had Judge Craig Mitchell on the show and he started the Skid Row Running Club where
he would literally run with some of the homeless and some of the addicts that were in that
area and they ended up getting, you know, I mean, obviously there were success stories
and some people that didn't, but they ended up running internationally in marathons just
because a judge who hated seeing what was going on outside his building and, you know,
obviously a lot of the people would end up in front of him and just did something else
to be part of the solution.
So you know, another incredible story, you made the comment earlier about being happily
retired and I want to dissect those two words just for a second as we close out.
One of the least discussed elements of mental health challenges, you know, emotional damage,
however you want to label it, is organizational stress or organizational betrayal, even worse.
And even the soldiers I've had on the show and the war fighters that, you know, reflect
on the withdrawal from Afghanistan and, you know, the fact that we left our allies behind
and there's such organizational betrayal through their eyes, but you have kind of led us through,
you know, your time in uniform and obviously the years you've given to LA, LAC and then
this happens and then now, you know, as of a few weeks ago, that's it, the door slammed
shut and that transition voluntarily can be challenging for many of us because that's
our tribe, it's our purpose, it's who we are, it's what we identify as.
But when it's snatched from you, I can imagine that's even more jarring.
So talk to me, you say happily retired, talk to me truly how that feels now and how you're
doing.
Well, one of the things I really want to touch on quick before that is what you talked about
is we make that our identity, right?
And that's something that I think is crucial to change in the fire service.
You know, coppers, you don't see it a ton, right?
Because they're unfortunately, they're the first person you call when you're in trouble
and the last person you ever want to talk to, right?
At a party.
So they hang out together in that aspect, right?
So they don't like to say, oh, I'm a police officer when they're off duty.
They don't want anybody to know, you know?
Whereas firemen are like, oh yeah, I'm fireman, you know?
That's what I do because everybody loves me.
You know, and soldiers, you know, I mean, they're very humble, a lot of them, you know?
I mean, if you're a SEAL, they're not walking around pounding on their chest, but they definitely,
there's another dynamic there as well, right?
So for the fire service to me, you know, we see guys and that's their purpose, right?
That's all they live, eat, sleep and drink, fire slayers, right?
And then when they retire, they don't have any other purpose.
They don't have any other, they don't know what to do.
And so I think it's really crucial that you have to understand that's your career.
That's not your identity.
That's not who you are.
You need to drill down and understand who you are at your core.
What do you like to do when you're not in the fire service?
Just drink beer and fucking go to the river, right?
What is it that drives you?
What are the things that you like, that you enjoy?
And start identifying with that and start not identifying as a firefighter when you're
off of work.
Start realizing that you're a human being, you're a person.
Figure out what that is.
And that being a firefighter is your career, right?
And at some point, a career ends.
And if you don't have an identity out of that, you're really going to be in a deep, dark,
shitty place.
And we see that a lot.
So I want to touch on that.
Now as far as for me, where am I at with this?
Well, I'm still in multiple lawsuits.
But all the things we talked about, leadership, one of the sayings in the fire service that
I think has kind of become a cliche at this point now is leave it better than you found
it, right?
You go to a structure fire and you do overhaul after that.
That place is spotless.
It looks better than half of when you went in, right?
I'm in the floor.
It's crazy.
You guys know what I'm talking about.
But we're not seeing that in the fire service.
And one of the things for me is they terminated me based on a condition of employment that
didn't exist, right?
It's not there.
It's not in my MOU.
My union didn't agree to it.
I was terminated illegally.
And with that, you took my ability away to be that leader.
You took the ability away for me to leave it better than I found it to be the change
that I wanted to see.
I can't run for union president.
I can't make it to chief or whatever in that organization.
You took it from me based on a fallacy, on a lie, on coercion.
And so, because I recognized that, I was penalized for it.
So from that standpoint, that's difficult.
I didn't, when I left the fire service, when I left my shift and I went home, I wasn't
a firefighter.
That's not my identity.
I have my own identity like I talked about of the things I like to do, who I am.
I went through a phase where I did a lot of introspection to really understand that.
So for me on that aspect, that's not soul crushing where it is to a lot of guys.
But again, the fact that it's been taken from you and you didn't voluntarily say, okay,
you know what?
I've done my service and my time and I'm ready to go and I'm going to retire and I'm going
to go do whatever is next in my life.
That's the hardest part from that standpoint.
You cut off my ability to leave something better, to leave a mark in that.
And you also penalize me by taking my future earnings away.
I'm 55 and I've spent my career in public service.
And so now you go through that process of, okay, what am I going to do now?
You took what I was, my ability to make a living for myself away.
You took my pension bowl away, those things.
And so those are the things that I struggle with that are frustrating to me because it
wasn't on my decision and it was wrong.
But I mean, I'm happy because I know that I did the right thing and I didn't compromise
my integrity.
To me, if you were to ask me, what is your number one core value, that would be integrity.
So character is built by doing the right thing when no one's looking, right?
It's very easy to compromise your integrity.
And for me, it's been where I answer to a higher power, to somebody bigger than me.
And again, like I said, you took that oath and that if I step back and I said, well,
and I just answered to myself, it would be very easy for me to rationalize and justify
the reason why I capitulated and did what I did because I needed that paycheck to support
my family, right?
To pay my house payment, to pay my mortgage, to do all these things, right?
We can rationalize and justify any of these actions.
But in the end, to me, that would be compromising my integrity because I took an oath and I
don't take that lightly, right?
And that is to protect and defend the citizens and the constitution.
And we always look at it as, well, I could be out there.
I'm not at work.
I'm not helping them.
But in reality, the way I'm looking at it is, no, I am helping them.
That oath to the constitution is super crucial.
It's limiting the power of those people to do this to someone else again.
And I might not be on the front line in the space of helping you with your heart attack
or your burning building or whatever that is, right?
But I'm defending your liberties.
I'm standing in that space between the oath and because it's really easy to say, I swear,
I, John Knox, solemnly swear, blah, blah, blah, whatever your oath is.
And then every day you're like, oh, yeah, I took an oath and it's cool and I'm upholding
it.
And then when the rubber meets the road and shit like this happens, are you really now?
Are you really going to step into that space and do what you said you're going to do or
you're going to rationalize and just justify your actions because of your wants and your
needs, right?
Because this is bigger than that.
There's a country at stake really when you think about it, right?
That they have needs and wants as well.
And I look at my...
I have two daughters.
I have to be able to get up every morning to look in that mirror and be able to say,
I did everything I could to protect their rights for the future so that later, if this
goes sideways in whatever direction, they will be like, dad, you were there.
Why didn't you do anything?
What did you do?
Well, I didn't because I needed a paycheck for you guys or whatever.
But to me, that's something that I couldn't answer that question.
I don't judge anyone that has made a different decision.
We all make decisions and we all have different paths, right?
And I'm not the person to say that it's right or wrong.
There's only one judge, right?
And that's not me.
I know that there's a bigger plan and that everybody has a path and we all make decisions
and we have to understand that they have consequences.
My decision, as hard as I fought so far, has led to the fact that I was terminated and
I wasn't paid for two years.
But I'm not crying about that.
I'm still fighting, but I knew that that was a possibility.
But the outcome of it was much bigger to me.
My personal is that that paycheck was not the driver.
There's a reason I got into public service and that's to help people and this is part
of that.
That's how I'm dealing with it, where I'm at in that space.
And so now I'm still just driving along.
Now we're working in a space of legislation for due process so that your due process as
a firefighter can be insured that you get it, unlike what happened to me and many of
us out there.
And also individuals who were what I like to call mandate injuries because it wasn't
necessarily because of just the vaccine or the shot, right?
We have plenty of individuals who have been damaged by that and who would have never taken
it, but under coercion and duress, they took that to maintain their job.
And I don't blame them for it.
Again, it's their decision and they made it freely.
Well, I won't say they made it freely, but they felt that that's what they had to do.
But unfortunately under duress and coercion, they made it.
And so we're working, I mean, again, suicides, right?
Mental health issues.
These are all mandate issues.
They're not just vaccine issues, they're mandate issues.
And so we're looking at working right now with legislation here in the state, putting
something forward to hold these counties, cities, municipalities responsible for the wellness of these individuals, making sure that they get taken care of, that their medical bills are paid, that they're getting the mental health care that they need.
Because let's face it.
I mean, if you really boil this down, there's crimes against humanity here.
If you really step back and look at the big picture, it's not hyperbole, it's not sensationalism.
If you really follow the money, you look at, like you said, it's not public health.
Public health has gotten worse.
I mean, all of those things are nonsense.
And so when you look at the underlying issue here, these individuals that were coerced
into taking this need our help.
They need someone to stand in that space and to create that legislation.
It's no different than the people at 9-11, right?
Yeah, the Zardoga Act that's protecting their medical, right?
Somebody's continuing to keep up that fight to get that thing extended, right?
I mean, a lot of health issues that people had after that.
Well, we have a lot of health issues after this, after these mandates.
So I think that that really needs to be the focus moving forward, is how do we help our
first responders that put their lives on the line during this situation and dealt with
all the mandate issues that have come up out of this since then and make sure that they're
not left behind?
Because truly it is, it's a fucking battlefield.
You can look at it at so many different angles.
So that helps drive me.
It's tiring too.
It's all of it, you're just like, there's days you're like, holy crap, man, we'll help
here.
Somebody throw me a life vest.
Well, speaking of that, so if people want to learn more or maybe help, where's the best
place to find Firefighters for Freedom online?
So you can go to our website.
It's www.firefighters4freedom.com or.org.
If you just Google Firefighters for Freedom, any way you spell it, it comes up.
We have a website, we have a legal and operational fund that you can donate to there.
We also have Hold the Line, which is money that we have raised through donations.
We've donated over $110,000 to date to members that were off duty, leave without pay in this
fight illegally to help them with their bills and so on and so forth.
And then you can find us on, I mean, we have Instagram is probably our biggest.
So on Instagram, that's where we do most of our posts and all that stuff.
And then it feeds out to Twitter and whatever.
Right now, because everybody thinks everything's over, even though it's not, we don't have
a lot of content that we're pushing out.
But I mean, Instagram probably right now is our biggest thing.
We have 50,000 plus followers on there.
It's good.
We've done podcasts on there.
You can go and look.
We've had Peter McCulloch on.
We do a lot of stuff through that.
We talk a lot about, we've done mental health stuff.
We've got different things that we're working on trying to move that forward in this space
because we know that that's a big issue.
So yeah, I mean, those are probably the two best places to find us is our website and
then Instagram.
Brilliant, well, John, I want to thank you, we've been chatting for two and a half hours
now, but we still scrape the surface.
I'm sure of a lot of other elements of your life, but it's such an important conversation.
And it's something I've been talking about for three years now.
However, the fact that, as we said, four weeks ago, this happened yet again to you so late
in the game, just underlines that we need to roll up our sleeves and revisit the fight
if we kind of forgotten about it.
So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time today and coming on
the Behind the Shield podcast.
I appreciate it.
Thank you so much.