This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade and that is 511.
I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California and have used their products ever since.
From their incredibly strong yet light footwear to their cut uniforms for both male and female
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We have Murph coming up in May and again I bought their plate carrier. I ended up buying real
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sponsorship spots is their brick and mortar element. They were predominantly an online
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behind the shield podcast and you will hear my interview with Wes Barnett and Joel Totoro from
Thorne. 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 veteran law enforcement officer John Womack. Now
what makes this conversation so powerful is at the age of seven John was a victim to drunk driving
after his mother's boyfriend wrecked the car and John was ejected. After a long mental and physical
recovery he ultimately became a police officer and in 2016 was assigned as a sergeant over DUI.
So we discuss a host of topics from the millions of accidents on American roads,
some proactive solutions to reduce the number of injuries and deaths, alcohol, cell phone distractions
and his work with the non-profit Mothers Against Drink Driving Walk Like Mad. Now before we get to
this incredible 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 over 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 Womack enjoy.
So
well John I want to say thank you so much for taking the time and coming on the Behind the Shield
podcast today. I know that you have not only a passion when it comes to road safety when you're
wearing uniform but obviously there's an origin excuse me an origin story when it comes to that
as well so I want to begin just by welcoming you to the show. Thank you very much for even having me.
So where on planet earth are we finding you this afternoon? I'm currently in Land O' Lakes Florida
is where I've been for the last 23 years and the last two of it of my retirement. I retired in
March of 2022. All right well I want to start the very beginning of your timeline as I said before
is obviously it's very pertinent so where were you born and tell me a little bit about your family
dynamic what your parents did how many siblings? I was born in Tampa Florida pretty much lived here
my entire life in Tampa till I met my wife and then we moved up here in Land O' Lakes did a
little time in Brandon but I was born in 1970 just to my mom my mom was a single parent she my dad
was never in the picture still is not in the picture I met him but still not in the picture
we went to she was a I guess like in a I don't know what her current title maybe an accountant or
some type of purchasing and money type thing for a it was called Tampa Independent Dairy Farmers
Association is where she worked that I can remember my entire life but we grew up in
Templetares for the most part is where I grew up and she dated a guy I don't remember exactly when
but I can remember at least when I was seven he was around he was an alcoholic so from that point
he was around for that I can remember I don't know how long before seven but at least till probably
12 so at least five years in my life but other than that I just had a few uncles I got no siblings
I'm an only child that were in in the picture. Well let's start around the age seven then because
I know that was a very pivotal point in your life and most of us can't remember too much prior to
that age anyway so walk me through you know the events that happened when you were a seven-year-old
boy and what how alcohol contributed to your near-death. Okay so like I explained my the guy my mom
dated was a an alcoholic so I don't ever remember a time where he was not impaired at least the
majority of the time I don't think I ever saw him where he had not been drinking but I know as far
as going anywhere that it wasn't just it was not a big thing back then you know in the in the 70s
it DUI penalties were not there they didn't really I don't know it I want to almost say like they
didn't really care about it so as much it was like a victimless crime as long as you didn't hit or
kill anybody which we all know that that could that could end up happening at any point. So
I turned seven in December of 77 and then in January it was January 6th of 1978 is when
my mom her boyfriend and I were all on our way to a family gathering I don't even know if it was
a really our family it was kind of like his friends and some of his family but mainly his side of the
the picture was where we were headed out in the Turkey Creek area I don't know if you're familiar
with that so if you're going out towards Brandon on Highway 60 you would go out going towards Bartow
and in between like Brandon and Bartow there's like a little area that's called Turkey Creek
and Antioch so it was out in that area so we were traveling down Highway 60 going east
and at he had already you know partaken in some alcoholic beverage beforehand
and you know and what we preach nowadays is you know especially teaching kids now we always would
say hey you've got a voice you know if you see your parents drinking too much at dinner or at a
friend's house or wherever you are you can speak up and say hey listen I don't I think you've I
don't want to ride with you because I think you've had too much to drink and you know you know
I don't want to ride with you because I think you've had too much to drink back then you just
didn't say that you got in the vehicle and you did what you were told the truck we had was a 68 GMC
step side pickup truck no seat belts it wasn't a law back then so I don't think I never wore seat
belts to be honest with you until oh man till I probably started driving my senior year of high
school I don't think I ever wore a seat belt so we're on our way out there not wearing a seat belt
I'm sitting on the passenger side my mom's in the middle and he's driving and we're at a point
where we're gonna make a northbound turn making a left from 60 onto Turkey Creek Road I guess he
felt like he had enough room he made the decision to go and he did not so he violated the right away
of a single vehicle and they basically t-boned us kind of like at the crease of the door in the
fender of the passenger side which immediately made that door open so not being seat belted in
I was ejected somehow I don't know I don't remember any of that I just kind of remember sitting in the
middle of the intersection and then I don't remember anything after that until I guess I came to or
somehow they got me to I was talking I remember talking under the vehicle and then it was actually
my mom's boyfriend telling me that everything was going to be all right I was under a vehicle pinned
and they were working to get me out so what was weird about that whole thing is I don't remember
how or why but my shoes my shorts my shirt everything was off of me somehow during that crash
shredded the only thing that I had on was just my underwear socks everything was shredded so while
that the vehicle I was pinned under it I guess the battery had cracked so it became where it was
leaking quite a bit I ended up getting you can see here I got a scar that pretty much takes up
the entire right side of my face that's all from the battery acid I got a little scar on my elbow
and a few spots on my back which is kind of weird because it's nowhere else you know so I don't know
if it had gotten on the ground and where I was laying it was concentrated in the area or whatever
but all I can remember I remember waking up talking and I was calm and you know looking back on it now
from from my perspective now as a Christian I know that it was God that kept my eyes closed
because right at the top of my eye I don't know if you can see it but the scar comes like right
down by the edge of my eye and if I would have opened my eyes for any reason I would have probably
been blind in one eye which would have taken me to a higher level of my life and I would have
a whole different career path or what you know who knows what would have happened at that point
so I don't remember anything after that I remember at some point they did get me out
and I was in an ambulance I remember being in the ambulance and all I can remember was you know like
a sizzling like burning and what I the analogy I use is if you've ever cooked bacon and you hear
that sizzling in the pop of the bacon grease popping that's what it felt like and that's what
it reminded me of when I was driving and out in the EMT or the paramedic that was in the back of
the ambulance I remember him spraying water or some kind of liquid in a bottle spraying it on
my face I guess trying to cool it off so I don't remember anything after that point until
probably several days later when I woke up in the hospital room with you know bandages and dressings
and stuff like that to after they've already had done several surgeries I don't and so that probably
would have been like maybe four or five days later and then I ended up spending probably about two
months in a hospital started out at TGH and back then TGH wasn't as good as a hospital as they are
right as they are today so my mom actually had me transferred to university community which is now
Advent Health so I did that for two months going in and out of surgeries trying to basically I
guess smooth the scar and get it as best under control as they could you know being that it was
only seven didn't go to school I basically had tutoring and stuff like that while I was in the
hospital and then I yeah I think it was about after two months I don't remember exactly how
long I had been out of the hospital but I eventually went back to school and after that
I went back to college and as you can you know and I don't know what what age group you're in but
it's pretty much been the same as long as I can remember when kids you know how kids are and how
ruthless they are when it comes to any type of ailment or something they see wrong with somebody
how they immediately start picking on it or or use as an excuse to bully kids around so as a part
of the surgery being out of the hospital and trying to prepare for later surgeries down the road the
doctor told my mother that I was going to have to wear a mask so of course it wasn't a cool mask
you know it's a flesh tone basically a mask that you would see I don't even know if they do it now
it's still in the in the wrestling world the wwe I don't I don't watch it so I don't know if they
do it but back in the day they used to do that and they would cover themselves up with a nice
flashy mask so but unfortunately mine wasn't flashy so I had to wear this thing to try to
smooth out the skin as best as possible so that it would make it easier for them to do surgeries
down the road so I started out doing that and you can imagine what kids would say and and and just
the bullying that started and just all kinds of different things like that as a second grader you
know so my only recourse back then was I mean it hurt my feelings when you know you got called names
or or picked on or anything like that so I became an angry kid I mean it was it was pretty bad
short-tempered and just angry and ready to fight over any little thing that you that somebody would
say or anything particular to my face or scars or anything like that so I don't remember exactly
how long I wore the mask um but eventually I was like I just told my mom I said you know I'm taking
too much at school with these kids and I said I just can't wear the mask anymore so I ended up
taking it off and not wearing it but obviously that didn't do any good because now the scar is
exposed so as a go back to school thinking everything's gonna be all right I'm the same kid
but now you can see who I am um unfortunately it was not that way the bullying continued but now
they've got a name to associate you know the mask was no big deal but now they can see that I have
a scar so everybody started or not everybody but the kids that were the bully type kids were
you know scar face was the name that I got called so that just made it even kind of worse and getting
into trouble and I tried to do the best I could um unfortunately it didn't work out as well as I'd
liked it had worked out but um so fast forward in and out of the you know the second third fourth grade
when I finally made it to fifth grade my my aunt had a lady that lived across the street
that she was really good friends with and she had known me since I you know since I was a baby so
she was a teacher at the school and this is where it kind of turned around my uh my thinking about
the whole having the scar I was on the lunch room got my food I was walking to my table and the the
same it was usually one the one or two kids but it was the same kid that I had a problem with every
since the second grade yelled out scar face so I kept walking to my table excuse me I walked put
down my tray and I start heading back to back to his table because him and I are gonna fight well
she saw me so she quickly like intervened and rushed over and like cut me off and pretty much
embarrassed me in front of everybody because she grabbed me by my ear and she was like
I'm gonna get you hurt and I'm gonna get you hurt and she was like I'm gonna get you hurt and like
lifted me up on my tiptoes and walked me off to the side and she said where are you going I said
well nowhere she's like well it didn't look like nowhere because you would have stayed at your
table and ate your food she goes I know where you're going and you know where you're going and she
goes I want to know why I want to know where you're hurt and where he hurt you to make you go back to
your hurt and I said well I'm I mean I don't know what you mean I mean I'm not hurt he didn't hurt me
she goes oh so you're going back over there because he called you a name
said well yeah she goes listen
you've got to make a choice right now if you keep living your life
wanting to fight everybody that calls you a name you're either going to end up in prison
or you're going to end up dead way before your time and I had never really thought about it
like that I mean you know in fifth grade you're a 10 year old
and you don't think about the rest of your life and how it's going to affect you you're living in
that moment and you know that's all you care about is getting ready to fight for your life
is getting revenge on the kid that called you a name so I started thinking about that and I was
like wow that's you know that that really kind of does make some sense and it is going to get me
nowhere because it hasn't gotten me anywhere yet so from about that fifth grade point I you know
I'm not going to say I never got into any other trouble from it from fighting or name calling
because the name the name calling continued pretty much I mean shoot even to I haven't heard it lately
but it continued pretty much well into my adulthood adult life listening to you know just
various people you know obviously either you know either ignorant people now this is the way I look
at it but really never had any issues past fifth grade other than maybe a handful
so it was never really a big deal they told me that I couldn't get any more surgeries to get it fixed
until I stopped growing so by the time I stopped growing I was you know in high school probably
close to you know probably a senior by then I and now I've had it for 10 years so it doesn't bother
me it doesn't prevent me from doing anything so I was like yeah I'm not going to worry about it
so kind of started you know living my life going to school and you know did a little bit of college
time then you know really couldn't afford that because my mom was a single mom so I just kind of
started in the workforce and a friend of mine that I went to high school with
basically said um hey man I don't know I'm coming back from the military I need a place to live
I was wondering if you wanted to you know be roommates so we did and somewhere during that
that term in the middle of probably started in 94
nine end of 91 maybe early 92
he said hey I'm doing this thing that Tampa police department's doing a recruitment
and they're trying to get new officers minority officers
so I looked at him and he's a white guy and I'm like uh I don't know if you've looked in the mirror
lately but you and I are both white guys we don't really fall in the minority category so he's like
you know what I don't I don't care I'm gonna do it I'm just gonna go in and put in for it and
you know see what happens so I had never thought about it and I'm not gonna do it I'm just gonna
do it so I had never thought about being the police you know had a few interactions over you
know my driving time with cops but really nothing nothing major never even thought about it but then
I started thinking I'm like oh man that kind of sounds like an okay career so we both started it
doing the process and I continued with it and he decided that it just wasn't enough money for him
that he didn't follow through with it so what other minority job did he get in the end
uh he didn't get one he ended up being um something to do with engineering or something with I know he
worked worked for a different couple of different companies I know the last one or the one he worked
for Zephyrhills water and then he started working with waste management so doing some kind of um
executive position or something like that but he he's still working and I'm retired so
we were both working for a cash and carry warehouse basically that was where your if you saw
I ever went into a grocery store and you saw the all the boxes and stuff stacked up on pallets
we were the ones that were actually we would pull those orders and uh so I we I did everything
I did everything like real quick like six months I did several things and then I didn't hear from
the police department for man about a year and a half
and almost at a point where I had written them off you know like man yeah okay we didn't get it
you know and then in the summer of 94 um out of the blue I got a call from um one of the recruiters
at the police department and said you know this is so and so and um we were calling to see if you
were still interested in being a Tampa police officer so I I said yeah I yeah I'm ready to go
so they said okay well we got an academy coming up in two weeks we need to run you through a bunch
of stuff to get you ready and prepared and are you willing to do that you just tell me the date and
time and I'll be there so basically I started the academy in August of 94 um graduated January of 95
and got hired on the police department February 26 of 1995
Going back to the accident first um I had a real eye-opening discussion with a couple of my law
enforcement friends I'm writing a second book now I'm actually starting to finally finish it but
there is a scene where there's a traffic accident and I wanted to find out okay legally who would be
at fault what would happen so I can make sure it's correct and I was blown away by the fact that they
both told me here in Florida that unless you intentionally kill someone with a car like you
are chasing someone down the road you know deliberately trying to murder them with your
vehicle that's about it from the from the legal side everything else is lawsuits and I couldn't
believe that my well no wonder there's no you know real punitive elements and no deterrent when it
comes to poor driving because you know you can cause an accident you can maim or even kill people
and ultimately if it's not proven that you did it on purpose you were just a bad driver or an
erratic driver that on the law side of things you walk away scot-free and it's only the the
litigation side so talk to me about please educate me on your perspective of that first
yeah so that'll say that's not necessarily true if it's you know if you're proven to be at fault in
the crash by either some type of negligence or something like that then you can be charged with
something with DUI manslaughter or vehicular manslaughter not DUI DUI would obviously if
you're impaired and you and you cause a crash no matter what um probably 99.9 times out of 100
you're going to be charged with um DUI manslaughter at minimum so but if you don't if you don't kill
someone and you haven't been drinking though right so that's why i'm driving and we're just
gonna say it's at the other so i'm driving mind of my business i've got a green light
you run the red light in front of me and i t bone you and kill you at that point you're you know
i've got no negligence in in the crash even though you're the one who resulted in death
i'm probably not facing any charges based on that because i've got nothing that shows that i was
negligent in my driving now if i'm driving the same scenario you've got the green light and i'm
driving not paying attention because i'm on my phone i'm speeding and i go through the red light
and i kill you i'm probably looking at vehicular manslaughter what if you don't kill me what if you
seriously injure me but i don't die now then serious injuries is just gonna that's gonna
the only time you would get charges is if there's a death if there's just injuries that's all like
your your other law enforcement that's just going to be civil litigation at that point
i don't think most civilians know that so think about those dangerous drivers the guy and i had
in in literally 24 hours two days ago i had a guy lay on his horn because i was waiting for a
cyclist across the road when the cyclist had the pedestrian right here all the time and and then i
had a old fucker ride my ass in a school zone when i was doing 20 in a 20 and then he ends up getting
into into the school and it's like every ounce of my restraint to not walk over to his than you know
have a word but that would again result in nothing just like your teacher said we have to carry that
that lesson forward even in the world of driving however to think that those aggressive drivers
because then plow a minivan full of kids into a wall because they were driving so close and they
had to break for whatever but someone isn't killed that there is no punitive action no deterrent to
someone driving like a fucking asshole as long as they don't actually physically un-unalive someone
as they say these days that's correct and it seems like it's you know it's almost like we've gotten
worse as the years go by since i started driving until now how impatient drivers have become
and how reliant on we'll just say google maps ways we're getting where people aren't they don't
have common sense when it comes to driving you know and that's why you see a lot more wrong way
drivers nowadays because i mean most of those are impaired but i have stopped wrong way drivers and
the excuse i get is well the gps told me to turn here i'm pretty sure the gps didn't tell you to
turn the wrong way but even if it did you've got three big signs that says one way and you turn the
ray that it says not to go you you still bear some of the responsibility even though the gp you're
following a gps and i can't i've you know i've been you know victim to this as well with a gps
where you get somewhere and it tells you to turn somewhere you're like i can't turn there
and then it wants to reroute you because you didn't go the way it told you to go
but you know people just have to realize that you cannot rely on something like that 100%
to do the driving for you you still have some responsibility for a operating that vehicle and
to pay attention to your surroundings and i just find that people are way more distracted with
you know the little ding on their phone that shows that a new tick tock came in a new instagram
photo or a facebook or something like that and i've got to see it right now i've got to i've got to
look at it right now now i'm not going to tell you that i'm not guilty of you know texting while i'm
driving and but and not that it's an excuse but i almost say that i'm a professional at it because
i've been dealing for you know over 20 20 years probably 25 years of driving in a police car where
i have a laptop that were that we that were doing several things throughout the day driving where
we're getting calls on it we have to look at directions in the maps we have you know you have
messages and calls and different things that you do running tags and licenses and all those different
things which doesn't you know make it better or excusable but you've come to adapt and i only do
it now i like most of the time i don't type it i'll speak it if i have to answer it but for the
most part i try not to or i wait till i get to a red light but we see a lot of now and to go just
to expand on that a little bit about distracted driving and how it affects the next generation
before i left the police department starting 2016 through even today they still do it is we have a
program that we go to the high schools with a it's called sydney cart basically it's like a little go
cart it runs off batteries it's electric and we can control the vehicle by a button that makes
it on a delay so we once we put it in impaired mode we can it delays the steering the brake and
the gas so we tell people we've done it with kids in high schools where we put them all right i want
you to get on your phone and i want you to start you know texting or doing whatever you normally do
look at your tic tocs whatever you would normally do and see how you drive and we basically have a
course set up with cones and we have them drive this course and we explain ahead of time that each
cone that you hit is like hitting a vehicle and killing a person and you would be surprised
how many cones that these kids hit and but now the last i had heard they're coming around a lot
better and they're like wow man that's what it that's what it's going to be like if you know if i
drive impaired you know not being in control the vehicle like that and we're like yeah and you hit
three cones and on average it's 12 to 15 years if you kill somebody while you're impaired
so you do the math you're looking at you know what is that 45 years maybe six to 45 years you're
looking at doing well two things to pull from what you said is firstly um when it comes to law
enforcement when when we're in the fire service you know we're fortunate enough that was usually
at the least two people in a vehicle and usually more so for example rescue ambulance you know the
the same kind of thing that we have in the fire service one of us is driving usually the emt if
it's a combined crew and then the other one's going to navigate you know if we know our first
you really well you know you don't have to worry about it i know where i'm going we're good
otherwise you know we're going to navigate one person's checking blind spots you know as we go
um and so it's a very coordinated effort then you transfer over to law enforcement and what has
always blown my mind and driving is just one portion of this the other part is officer safety
you know the the force multiplier effect of having two officers come out of a vehicle
to do a traffic stop for example versus one um the danger we put our police officers in when they're
one to a car and this also applies to the driving i you know i think a lot most firefighters will
agree we we're kind of blown away how you're even able to do it it's hard enough navigating
we're not normally chasing someone we're just trying to get there quickly but that route isn't
deviating if someone suddenly decides to you know pull a ui right in front of you so what are your
thoughts on you know if if we really invested in our law enforcement officers properly having two
to a car from the driver safety point of view as well well i i mean i think it's a good thing
i mean i'm all i'm a proponent for two to a car um because it just it makes things more efficient
and like you said like especially in a chase you know and i've been in in quite a few car chases
by myself and i've had people in the car with me and it's much easier to navigate and do things
when you have a second person because as an individual just by myself i've got to operate the radio
i've got to make sure intersections are clear and do all that on my own as well as telling directions
and updating i mean there's numerous things that you're doing and it it's it's hard you know so it
takes a lot of practice to be good at that but on the other hand when you have a second person all
i do at that point is i concentrate on driving and i'm watching the vehicle in front of me whereas
the passenger now that officer is responsible for he does all the radio traffic he's looking to the
right so i don't even have to look to my right he's going to tell me clear clear clear or he's
going to tell me hold up hold up so you also have to have a partner that you trust in that car with
you because you're you know you're basically putting your life and his life you know in in
in his hands by telling you it's clear because you're watching your side and you have to make
sure that he's watching his but it does make things go not only in that perspective more
efficient but just in the job in general you know if you have to make an arrest everything goes so
much quicker and smoother when you have two people if you have two people that need to arrest one big
guy well he's now going to think about it because man i if i was just one i could probably get away
with it but now i got two to fight you know i might you know and all one's got to do is hold me down
and maybe they don't do it it's a deterrent whereas you know the one person you know they're
more likely going to to give it a shot even with the uh you know the the officers at a shot and
traffic stop and we had uh brandon coats here in orlando right in the area i used to work in that
was murdered and they found it in this taser deployed and he was shot dead but i would imagine
again i'm not in law enforcement but i would imagine if someone realized that if they shot
one officer the other one was going to kill them you would then think that would reduce a number
of single officers that were murdered on the streets too yeah i mean for the most part you're
still going to have you know the people that are going to do whatever they're going to do no matter
what and we actually had two officers at tampa killed um at the same time they were riding two
men they did everything right i mean the the one guy worked for me and i knew what type of officer
he was very safe um but a lot of the times when people are compliant compliant compliant compliant
we get a little bit complacent we think everybody's going to be compliant and i'm and i'm guilty of
that many times up until that point after that i didn't care who you were how you acted i handcuffed
you the same way every time if you're sitting in a vehicle and basically that's what that was uh
curtis and co-cab in in uh june 29th of 2010 they basically had a guy that all he had was a warrant
for bad checks however he thought they knew that he had just he had already he was a suspect in
three murders they didn't know that because that had not been um information that was provided to
us that was just something the detectives were working on but two of the cases were in um
hillsborough county's jurisdiction one was in our jurisdiction so when they went to arrest him on the
bad checks he was compliant stepped out of the vehicle did exactly what they told him to do
and as soon as they like went to move him from like the the the the a pillar of the car where the
door the like the wedge of the door the where the where it opens he moved slightly they were
slightly moving him back towards the b pillar and as they did that they just kind of let their guard
down just slightly and he turned and shot so quickly that they didn't even have a clue what
was going on and basically shot both of them in the face um so that's just you know one of those
things that's going to happen no matter you know who you are but your odds are much better
with two people compared to one absolutely well going back to the school initiatives i think is
great the um what's it called the sydney cart it's a great great initiative i just shared a video
recently and it was miami date i think that did this um and i've actually been a part of these in
california and we did one in orange county as well but it was the mock um you know dui death at the
high school right and you know we come in you know and we cut the car open and we extricate a body
and then you know they handcuff the the person who was responsible and in this particular one
i've never seen this before they even went as far as then conducting a funeral service in front of
the school which is another addition coming from a country where our psa's are certainly were known
to be so raw but they they work i mean they absolutely work um i'm a huge fan of the
work i'm a huge fan of pulling this out into the front where it needs to be and these are you know
they're educational not meant to scare or trigger anyone you know over a point but they're just
supposed to show the reality of how dangerous these vehicles are if we're not paying attention
so what is your perception of those um i think those are great and we actually um did something
similar to that um my first my first year as the dui sergeant maybe this um maybe it might have been
the second year those are great and we found that it was just such a hard time to get people to get
the cars there and and in the high schools i don't know it just seems like nowadays they're
they don't want to offend anybody they don't want to they don't want to scar anybody or get them
you know make them feel uncomfortable or anything like that so i don't think we've that we've done
anything like that in a long time but i do think it's a powerful message um and and one time that
what we actually did is they conducted a um they didn't do the funeral service but they did like a
trial and you know it's powerful i mean there's there's nothing better than for you to see a crash
see somebody get taken out go to a funeral and then go to a trial and watch somebody on trial
for their life you know no better message i wish we could get more into that but just the way
society's going they don't want to hurt anybody's feelings they don't want to you know now you got
people identifying as other people and different things like that so they just don't want anything
like that to you know to educate people i think the root of the problem that we're seeing to be
extremely fair on our younger people is a lot of the the figures that have found themselves with a
microphone in the hand are divisive and cancerous and don't walk the walk themselves so we've got a
you know a youth that's kind of bumbling around trying to find well who the hell am i supposed
to look up to then the last two presidents have been horrible fucking people you know some of these
sports stars are doing horrendous things like who you know my my pastor just got caught doing this
you know who who are the good people of the world who are the people i should be looking up to
who are the good people of the world who are the people i should be looking up to and so i think
it goes back to walking the walk ourselves being mentors in our own communities i mean even one
thing that nauseates me of what call them out is the police officers that drive around my town
that speed that ride the ass of cars in front that don't use their blinker i mean you're supposed to
be the prime example so how the hell are we expecting our people to drive well when you're
driving like a fucking asshole yourself so it all goes back to education and setting that bar now
we're going to get into the other roles that you've you've played in law enforcement especially when
it comes to you know safety on the roads but i was amazed when when i kind of dug into the stats
we have six million car accidents a year in america six million of which 40 000 people die
and i would imagine a large percentage of those are teens and younger and then of those six million
there's 2.5 million injuries now again some of them are going to be oh my neck my back you know
call your lawyer type injuries but then there's going to be a lot of people with truly life
altering injuries coming from a country where the bar truly is held extremely high when it comes to
this issue you know we have you know old country lanes and we don't have dividers and medians in
most roads it's extremely hard to pass the british driving test you know and most people take about
two or three attempts to even pass it and that's with you know 10 plus lessons with a professional
driving instructor and you know having to truly prepare but what i think it does in the end
is you have a huge respect for the responsibility and you have a huge understanding because of this
depth of knowledge that you need to get of why you use your indicator your blinker you know why you
have certain spaces between the vehicles in front of you obviously why you don't start screwing
around with your phone contrary to that when i came to america and took my florida driving test
i genuinely thought the portion that i did was kind of like a little warm-up let's get used to
the streets before we start and i got back to the center and he's like congratulations you passed
okay yeah congratulations and i just watched my son do the exact same thing you know 22 years later
as a 16 year old boy and so this is just you know every country does certain things really well and
other things really poorly and this is my opinion is our standards are set so low how could we not
have chaos on the road we set expectations so poorly they have no real understanding of the why
behind the rules that you guys enforce so what's your perspective okay i'm going to kind of break
down all these different levels but at the driving test standard level and age what is your perspective
with all the the horrible things that you've had to witness in uniform um well i personally think
that the driving age should be a little bit higher than 16 i think it's 16 just with a little bit
because they only require you to have your permit for a year and with the parents being so busy
not many people are going to hire a driving instructor to teach their kids to drive they're
going to do it themselves however they're only going to do it you know in little phases and
you know you just don't have enough experience behind the wheel as to be a 16 year old a year
later going and now getting a license to where you can drive on your own
because they all think they know it you know everything on the road they know what to do they
know how to react and i'm here to tell you they don't they do not they cannot react and that's
you know a lot of the accidents are because kids don't pay attention and they just don't realize
they just think it's their right that they've been given because i'm 16 now i'm i'm able to have a
license and i should you know and i find now too that when i was 16 and 15 getting my license i did
it right away however we don't have as many teens nowadays wanting to get their license
which i'm okay with you know if you want to wait till you're 18 19 20 years old
um then you know you're not that you're going to have more experience but at least you're a
little bit older and you're a little bit you know you're wiser and you've just you've had more
life experience watching other people and watching what people are doing whereas 16 you know up until
you're you know when you really think you're going to start learning about driving maybe 14
how much do they really pay attention when you're driving to the vehicles outside the patterns
how people are doing how do you go through it you know the turn signal the people running red lights
you know the turn signal the people running red lights how long do you wait at a red light before
you proceed making sure that somebody's not coming the other direction deciding they're going to run
a red light just today on the way home i was um coming up to a red light clearly clearly red
probably 250 feet from the stop bar there was a car that was just in front of me maybe two car
links so that one's roughly 200 feet from the stop bar the light is completely red and she drove
right through it thank goodness the other people that were going to go north and south saw what
that you know that they were coming and they didn't go but it's that kind of thing it just
people don't pay attention and that's you know she was an adult she was probably mid-40s so you know
we got somebody that's like 16 we've said oh you've taken a written test so you know some of the laws
that we want that we think that are important and you've gotten a little bit of experience driving
with your parents and we're going to go do this little easy test that mainly takes place in a
business park you know not really a whole lot of driving on the road you might have a little bit
but for the majority it's on roadways that are in this business park so you don't have any
interaction on doing a red light stopping and having other cars around you in three lanes and
different things like that and we just expect our kids to know you know i think it should be
you know maybe not quite 21 you know because it becomes more of an inconvenience you know but it
should be at least 18 or graduated from high school because now you're going to be going to college
you know some kids go to colleges where you're going to have to drive but it just needs to be or
like like like you said over in in um your country they just they take it more serious
you know i just don't think the united states takes that kind of thing serious they just think
it's oh it's my right yeah just let them do it it's convenient but you know kind of parents don't
want to have to shuffle their kids back and forth everywhere yeah well i think i mean i i train my
son diligently and would like to think i'm a decent driver obviously coming from the uk and
then having to drive you know fire engines and ambulances and all kinds of things you know you
have to now you know you have to be a better driver how can you not after you know going
license sirens and all that kind of thing but then it was also fear base having cut dead people out
of cars for a living it really motivates you to make sure that your child is as safe as possible
so i mean i was talking to him when he was 14 and walking him through it and then when he came 15 we
were constantly going to you know any area and kind of incrementally loading you know as he got
more and more confident getting into bigger and bigger roads so that when he took his 16th test on
his 16th birthday he did pass but again it was so disappointing what he was being asked to do
but i think we just set our people up for failure whether they're 16 year old kids or 60 year old
immigrants that have come from wherever that you basically have to have this base level of skills
and then you know you look at the the the results i think if i got this right the uk is is 10 percent
of the deaths that we have per capita so the proof is in the pudding the higher the standard is the
better driver you're gonna have which is gonna carry on but if you and if you drive in the uk
you'll see there's a sharing of the road this is very very kind of gracious you know people
emerging on the freeway people will kind of go over a latency people do here as well and this
isn't you know tarring everyone with the same brush whereas here though it's kind of like a race
and it's almost like people's egos get hurt oh you passed me and so you know what what is the
difference between the do and how can we change that at the testing and and education step
i don't think you're ever going to change that i mean i i think that is just the fast pace
of our society everybody's in a rush you know and nobody wants to wait they're impatient
you know so you know i'm gonna i'm gonna keep in that middle lane and i'll just um give you an
example on 275 going through like getting close to the tampa downtown area and you know you know
to the tampa downtown area where you can merge on to i-4 that is a constant backup and people will
go in that the the they'll be in the lane to go to i-4 and then the two lanes next to it will back
up and slow because people are driving till the last minute and then try to cut in and then you
know you got people like me that are like hey wait a minute i've waited in this line you're not cutting
in front of me and then that's how you have accidents i had we were on the way to a lightning
game um it was me my daughter and her boyfriend and there was a car that basically was doing that
and ended up like swerving because you weren't paying attention that the car had stopped trying
to get over into the i-4 lane so now she had to swerve around that didn't even look in my lane
so thank goodness i was paying attention because she was right even with me and my daughter wasn't
paying attention it was like one of these you know she pays attention when she drives she actually
did well when i taught her but they have no concept she wasn't even all of a sudden you know she feels
the truck jerk over to the left and say oh what you know what's going on what's going on and her
boyfriend was actually paying attention he was just like froze there because he didn't he was
like i can't believe like you i said yeah well i pay attention i pay attention i'm on constantly
looking around me and looking at the habits of other drivers you know because if you don't pay
attention you're going to be a victim you're going to be in the you're going to be in the wall
because they're going to hit you and and then you're not going to you're going to get pushed
into another car and now we got a free car accident and somebody's getting injured
just from the little slight not paying attention i touch wood i'm going to bang on my desk now i've
never had an accident on the road but i am an absolute shit magnet and i've you know when i
first started dating my my wife now i told her and she's like yeah yeah whatever and she got in the
car and she's like holy shit you really are and then my son you know had that a little bit too
but again at first you're like okay is it me but it's not it's just the people pulling in front and
you know like you said cutting over and things that are nothing to do with the way you're driving
it's that entitlement yeah you know and that's the thing that irritates me i can't even tell you how
many people i've stopped over my career where i'm in a police car some of them were marked and then
later down the road i mean i guess you wouldn't know that it's a police car other than i mean it's
a white dodge charger so chances are it's probably a police car but they think because i've turned my
blinker on that everything else around them has to stop and let them over and i've been cut off so
many times in my personal vehicle and in the police car but the good part about being in the
police car is i just put the little lever off to the right and and the lights come on and
now we can adjust that that driving habit because um and the one guy basically when i stopped him
after he cut me off and i'd slam on i mean slam on my brakes to avoid hitting him and once i
stopped him he he was like confused you know what what did i what did i do officer um i don't know
maybe you cut me off to the point where i had to slam on brakes his answer was why i had my blinker
on i said so what you're telling me is you're driving along and no matter what anybody else
is doing as long as you turn your blinker on that's pretty much permission and saying hey
i'm coming over you need to stop and let me in i said unfortunately it doesn't work that way
even though you put your blinker on you still have the responsibility to make sure that that lane
that you're trying to go into is clear
so of course i wrote him a ticket he took it to court and he tried he tried that same
uh reasoning i guess with the judge and the judge is like yeah that's not gonna work you know and
he had to pay the fine in court but but that's how people think that i've turned my blinker on you
have to stop and let me in and because you know that's i put it on i put the blinker on that's
what it's there for you're supposed to let me over yeah yeah and i've got a you know a heartbreaking
story for every every you know infringement of a safety element of driving from motors as a
motorcyclist once in california and this woman again was impatient she was about the hov lanes
over there and they have the chevrons you're not supposed to drive through she got impatient the
traffic decides she's going to cut over to the hov lane knocks this this motorcyclist off his bike
knocks this this motorcyclist off his bike under the between the front and the rear wheels of a
tractor trailer wheels he's seen trying to crawl out traffic eases off in front of the tractor
trailer because they're stopped and just before he can clear it the the trailer runs him over and
kills him you know what i mean so for each of these things like the the person that's riding
the ass and then the the car stops for a child and they would have stopped in time but that car
behind them crams in behind them and they go over the child you know what i mean every single one of
these safety reasons has it not just one thousands of death stories attached to them but if you don't
understand the why like one thing that drives me crazy people will stand on their brakes go into a
turn lane and then when they're in the fucking lane with a big arrow then they'll put their blinker on
like the blinker is letting people know i'm gonna slow down and turn if you're already in the lane
having slowed down a turn then you clearly don't why are you putting it on now exactly and it goes
back again rather than just you know emptily talking shit is is about how do we fix this
and what really disgusts me is i've been in america for 22 years now i've never heard anyone talk
about traffic safety every single year it's about 40 000 lives lost never seen a little
counter on cnn on fox for that and you think about the money lost every time there's a wreck
on a freeway or a main line you know an archery road in a city it's probably billions of dollars
in commerce left lost from all the people stuck in those traffic jams so i don't understand why there
isn't a conversation of addressing the issues on our roads it's just never a big topic you know i
know um we work hand in hand with fdot especially being you know with i do volunteering with mothers
against drunk driving once i got involved with them back in 2016 but we also go as when i was
a sergeant on the department we would go to these fdot meetings so i mean fdot they do a lot of
education in high schools and and stuff like that trying to get to these new drivers
um but everything's everything's money driven to be honest and um people want it's just like in the
school system the more that you show your school has issues the less money you get because your
ratings gone down so i feel like you know you're not going to see a lot of this stuff or any type
or any type of remedies for it because if we show that we have an issue in tampa or texas
or anywhere they're afraid that they're going to lose funding because they're not doing something
to fix it so we're just not going to report it correctly or we're going to report it but
we're going to leave it to them if they want to show it or do anything like that to the public
then we'll do that the only thing we're going to highlight is serious like wrong way drivers
um dui crashes anything with negligence high speeds they're going to say that kind of stuff
but that's easily fixable you know with high speed and impairment you would think don't drink
and then get behind the wheel it's real simple you know when you get in there that's why they
have those little signs on the side of the road that say 45 55 35 if you go that speed and you
have a crash at that speed it's less likely for you to have serious injury or death not that it
can't because it there are there are exceptions however that's why they base those speeds like
that because they're basing it on two vehicles hitting at that speed so if i have one that's
going 45 and i hit you at 45 now we've got a 90 mile an hour impact with the safety features of
most vehicles those those are survivable you know because of the airbags but if i'm going 100
and you're doing the speed limit now we have 145 mile an hour crash definitely going to be some
injuries possibly death out of that you know but that's you know i think that that's a big issue i
just think everything in this country is driven by how much money and funding and and how much i can
line my pocket before i get out of this profession absolutely i think that's the the corrupt nature
that you know we need to address all the way down you know from top down to bottom and if you even
look at the way that we select people to be president you have to already be a millionaire
to even afford the campaigns and you have to be willing to accept money from lobbyists so that you
promote whatever it is that does you know that's going to really help the country like Oxycontin
and cigarettes and fast food and other things that are killing millions of people so you know
that whole ethos has to be changed and you know if our country was full of svelte healthy people and
roads were safe and everything would be like all right it's working let's keep doing this model but
if it's you know a country that has 70 percent overweight and obesity and 40 000 people dying
on the roads every year and you know god knows how many dying of cancer maybe just maybe the way
we're doing it isn't working and we need to change it up right but see but if you do it the right way
and well you know it's it's about it's about convenience to be honest you know a lot of the
the products that they're doing as far as our food and why everybody seems to be getting cancer
nowadays on you know all the little things that they do it's they're doing it to make it convenient
and you know us as a society here you know i don't have time to cook the healthy healthy meal all the
time so what do i do i i do something quick i go to fast food and that's how you end up doing that
it's just and it costs more to eat healthy you know it costs less to go to the fast food and
and all the preservatives and and all that kind of stuff you know those already packaged meals and
stuff like that so i think it's that's a big part of it as well is it's just a convenient and as a
society i think we've just become impatient with everything everything once we we just want it now
and fast and and easy an issue i talked about a lot especially in the fire service because most
of our firefighters work 56 hours a week um you know some might have an extra day thrown in here
or there but then now you add in the hiring crisis now a lot of them are working eight
hour weeks when they're forced to stay for another 24 and so in this profession it is
extremely clear to me that sleep deprivation is extremely detrimental long term for all diseases
that we get in the mental health problems but also short term the acuity and i wonder how many you
know things that we've classed as a line of duty death like intersection wrecks and getting lost
in fires or actually it was sleep deprivation at the genesis of that what have you witnessed as far
as in your profession but also in the civilians how many are attributed to that because as you
said even in the general population we have a a mal you know a population that's overworked
understaffed and malnourished um i've seen it quite a bit um especially in you know not as much in the
fire profession just because that's going to be dependent on like in tampa on like what station
you're at um i can just tell you my best friend's a firefighter and the station he's at he might get
one or two calls every two or three shifts so he's definitely sleeping through the night so there's
should be no issue with uh sleep deprivation but in my profession with law enforcement um
you probably don't see it a whole lot on day shifts it just kind of depends on you know what
you have going on in your lifestyle if you're working extra duty and stuff like that where
you know you're living above your means so now i've got to go work extra you know and that's
where you're going to get that sleep deprivation from the day shift but like if if nobody's ever
worked midnights and had to stay up all night long that is just it's rough on your body you know and
i i know i can just tell you from experience because i was on midnights for probably 14 out of the
27 years and driving home driving to work when the sun's up and then coming back home
when the sun's up is it's it's pretty rough you know it's just it takes a totally different toll
on your body and i can tell you that i can't i've been on the way home and go i don't remember this
getting from this stretch you know like at this point of the road and now i'm like three miles
down the road and don't know how i got there i'm like uh you know i must have fallen asleep at that
point you know and at one point i hit a curb and busted two tires up you know it's it's it's a
rough deal and then just imagine as a society everybody's burning candles at both ends trying
to get as much in a day as they can so along that along with no common sense and not paying
attention and then your social media i'm surprised we don't have more car crashes than what we have
i know there's been some horrific um wrecks with with semis i know one of them barreled into a
school bus here in north north of us in o'calla um killed a little girl and she was trapped while
the bus was burning and again i don't know if that was uh the same kind of thing because i know a
lot of our truck drivers they have safety parameters but are they actually you know sticking to them
right but do they abide by exactly so you have these micro sleeps that they don't realize they're
asleep and i've seen this recently more so than than often you know and part of it is is cell
phones but other times you're like that person looks like they're barely you know barely awake
and i'll call it in if it's someone who's clearly doing that but you know you see a lot of cars just
not even staying in the lane anymore so again like you said the distraction of a device coupled with
you know extreme fatigue already is is a pretty dangerous combination well you know and and and
nowadays what's going to even make that a little bit worse and make it happen more often is they've
got these new vehicles that come out that kind of drive themselves the lane departure i mean i was
in a rental car and i was like no there's no way that this is going to do this and i hit the button
and i mean it drove it stayed in the lane i mean going around curves i mean i was shocked so when
you have a vehicle that can do that 100 you're going to have more people pushing the envelope
and going oh well i mean the car pretty much stays in the lane as long as we're going straight slight
curves you know i can catch a you know a three minute little snooze as you know it's they're
going to push the envelope guaranteed i mean i i i have a motor home and i heard of a story
where somebody was told that they have cruise control on the motor home and they're like oh
that's great i'm just going to put it on cruise control i'm going to go to the back i'm going to
make myself a sandwich and they get up and they go make a sandwich while they're nobody is driving
this motor home and then wonders why it goes off the road and crashes you know on the interstate
that's the type of people that we have in this society that i mean really you think that the
car is driving itself but eventually you're going to have that something they've already got some of
them that that do it i mean what about the total other side of the spectrum i live in you know the
o'cala area we've got the villages we've got on top of the world i have definitely witnessed some
people behind the wheel who are definitely very advanced in their years that have done some very
dangerous things we do get you know pedestrians walking out that i just think they again their
their perception of how far away cars are and they get creamed um so there's a there's a there's a
kind of tug of war though because we all know that when you take away someone's independence
then you know their their longevity their will to live can be shifted from that so it can be
detrimental to someone who's older when they're having their license revoked what is your
philosophy on the older driver and retesting or you know ways that we can make it i'm all for that
and matter of fact that's funny that you bring that up because i my mother-in-law is 77 and we
were on the way to an appointment the other day now she hasn't driven in uh we'll say six or seven
years we pretty much take her wherever she needs to go um but we were talking about that because
she could not believe on our way to the doctor's office that there was two or three cars that kind
of just cut us off for no reason and then when i was able to get up alongside was an older person
and she was like oh they probably need to go and i'm like you're exactly right i know where you're
going with that they need to be retested and i think that should be a mandatory thing that
you don't just go in and have your eyes checked and and things like that you need to go in and
they need once you reach a certain age and they need to do basically redo your driving just like
you would do it at 16 you need to come in you're at this age now we need to see how your reactions
are and how you're doing on the road and because i mean you have a lot of crashes where older people
are hitting the gas instead of the brake and they're driving through you know the front of
restaurants that should never happen unless there's a malfunction with your car that should never
happen and that's just all not paying attention or you don't remember or you know little things
like that that start going wrong when you're older you know and and and god forbid you get any type
of you know the start the onsets of dementia or alzheimer's or something like that and you know
obviously you don't want anybody to know that because then they're definitely taking your
driving privileges away so you hide it and then you just you push the envelope and then now you're
hurting somebody i definitely think that needs to be something that needs to be addressed well it's
protecting them as well and it's the same conversation as you know fitness in first
responder professions and fitness standards it's you know people get oh you're trying to take jobs
like well firstly no because we do a very physical job you should be in great shape but secondly
that then in turn is going to make you healthier and hopefully have a long retirement so there's
no downside at all and it's the same with this if you can prove that you are still competent behind
the wheel then beautiful off you go again and if you can't there's no better time than now with uber
and lift and all these other great services that have really evolved where you know you you hand
in your license and allow someone who's younger and more apt to be able to get you safely from a to b
because we yeah yes older people can kill other people but we're also protecting them they more
often not going to get killed and i've been we had a post office anaheim someone drove through an
older person no sooner had they repaired the front another person drove through the exact same window
so like twice twice in about seven or eight days so it does happen um and i you know and again so
it's not about overreach in that particular example if someone is danger to themselves or others then
that's that's where the line has to be you know put it in the sand right i agree 100 well i want
to hit one more topic and then go to alcohol you know when i was you know early in my career that
was kind of it that you know again i'm sure some of it was sleep deprivation that we now would
understand but more often than not when you went to you know a bad wreck one of the people was
drunk and i can think of a you're talking about dying at a slower speed i remember someone
blowing through a stop sign and killing this this poor woman who was just you know she had the right
away she pulled out and just got t-boned and it didn't even look that bad on the outside and she
was dead on the inside of the car so but before we get to the alcohol side it's funny i've seen so
many people where i live our community is like 30 mile an hour on the main outside 25 through the
streets and most people do adhere to that it's very good but when i'm seeing people driving by
i'm talking not school-aged kids you know 30s 40s 50s everyone has their phone in their hand
and these are new vehicles where you have you know cradles and bluetooth and all the things
we don't even need to hold a device even if you do want to make a phone call or whatever it is
so what have you seen because your career spans a lot more than mine does you know what were you
seeing as the causes of a lot of these crashes early in your career and what has been your
observation with the smartphone being put in the car um well early on in the career it was
you know just not paying attention that you know or over driving yourself you know
but most of it was just not paying attention just distracted by something eating it's always been
some sort of distraction but nothing is more i and then as my career has gone on definitely with the
smartphone is it increased a little bit when we first got just a regular smartphone but where i
saw the big increase is when we started these social media platforms and it's all about i need
followers i need likes i need this and that and when you hear the ding you want to see who's
commented on your picture to see if they say that oh you're so cute it all that looks oh my gosh
that's great um and and now you can just see from everything that we have you know influencers on
tik tok only fans and all this kind of stuff all they're looking to do is get as many people on
their following and doing that and subscribing because it all goes back to the root of money
everybody wants to live a lavish lifestyle and the more i have following me subscribing to me
and all that the more money i'm gonna make so if i can hear the ding and i'm just driving you know to
to the the grocery store i'm gonna pick it up i'm gonna look and all it takes is that little split
second you know looking away or you know you go to pick your phone up and it drops to the passenger
side you're gonna leave you think somebody that's an influencer or anything like that that's big
into the social media especially when they're making money it's gonna leave their phone on the
ground until they get to the grocery store they're leaning over they're trying to pick it up and what
they don't realize is their hand still on the wheel they might be driving straight until they reach
and once you reach your hand's going exactly the same way you're gonna go so if you're going over
to the right your car is going to the right but they don't they don't think about that beforehand
and i think that's you know the a lot of the big problem that we have is it's just you know the
you know the common sense to realize that any little thing that you distract yourself from
paying attention on that road it it could it could be detrimental it could be you know it could be
fatal absolutely well let's go to alcohol then so circling around to the beginning of this conversation
seven years old you're rejected after a dui crash with your mom's boyfriend driving walk me through
how you found yourself in the very unit that deals with that in your agency and then let's talk about
the the alcohol element of driving so you know once i became a police officer i mean obviously
all the part of it is you know you you enforce all types of crimes and in in traffic some of it and
and then dui is also throughout my career i've always you know i've done duis here and there
but we actually had a specialized unit from 1996 and and it's current today we still have it
so a lot of the time once they made that segregated unit they wanted people calling them to come do the
duis because they specialized in it and for me as a patrol officer if you you know you don't do them
all the time but you know how to do them you're typically for a dui from start to finish you're
about three hours off of the road so you still have to do all your field sobriety then you got
to go to the jail go to cbt do all the observations do all the stuff and by the time you get back
you're off the road three hours whereas you got two or three guys on your squad that are doing that
then you have the majority of the others that are taking the calls and being just run over from all
the other calls that are coming in so that's why they created this unit so that that's all they did
was that so um fast forward throughout the years i become the dui sergeant so um and over the years
and i'm going to tell you that i'm guilty of driving impaired myself as you know my early 20s
um and even when i got on the department a little bit until i started seeing these crashes and the
results oh my goodness i mean and people just do not realize and and still to this day i don't
understand how you cannot see the tv paper articles on social media where you haven't seen the results
of a dui or an impaired crash you've got you at some point you've had to see it and knowing that
and you still take the chance is just it's mind-blowing that you know i don't even drink
anymore now just because it's you know it just i lost the taste for it and had a kind of some
health issues with my liver where the doctors say you probably shouldn't you know just knock it off
so but just the crash part of it and seeing all the alcohol things which that's kind of what so when
sparked me with got me into this the whole thing that i do with mad and volunteering
even realizing that i'm a dui victim because growing up i never considered myself a victim
i kind of still i know i am but i don't feel i am because i don't i'm not prevented from doing
anything in life this little scars i mean it doesn't prevent me from doing anything so but
when you see some of the people that go to these walks that i'm going to be doing here in march
and some of the people that talk on the victim impact panels and just some of the people that mad
helps through their journey of being you know a victim slash survivor
um it's just it it opens your mind and you go you know you just feel bad for some of these people
that you know they were doing absolutely nothing wrong they were abiding by the law just driving
coming home from the grocery store or out to eat and the one guy or the or the girl that says
oh you know i'm okay and they take that chance and their reactions are slow and they're like
that's the big thing that they just most people don't realize
that they're impaired that's you know they don't think they're as bad as they they really are and
i see it on the end where guys you know though coming across and just dealing with it more so
from 2016 on till about mid 2018 we're just guys are macho they just don't want to have anybody
know that they're out of control of their faculties and and they'll take the chance
um you know a lot more than than i've seen women but however um right near the end
i was actually seeing an increase of more women um probably the ages of
probably 22 to to 35 is our you know the the main offenders you're gonna have some other ages but
that 22 to 35 range um i would probably have to say that the the the men are just barely
squeaking by of of being in the lead of of who's getting the most duis it seemed to be in my career
that the the drunk driver always emerged somewhat unscathed and everyone else would die was that
something that you witnessed a lot yourself i did witness um and you're absolutely correct seems a
little unfair you know that you know the the person is driving along doing nothing paying their
you know minding their own business doing nothing wrong and the the impaired person is the one who
basically survives it seems a you know way unfair um we've had actually law enforcement officers
that have put themselves in harm's way um and we just had one um from our agency
that did that he was on his way home and basically heard the call say
that there was a a wrong way driver going southbound in the northbound lanes of 275
and you know the car was doing easily i think i think they'd said it ended up being
like 107 something like that and you know you don't want them to kill somebody else so
we're thinking you know we're better than the average driver and being in the in the police
world because you're trained to drive at pursuits we do driving courses and you pretty much drive
11.4 hours a day four days a week and that's not if you if you're working off duty it's even more
but we feel that we're better drivers and that we could you know take somebody out per se
by just hitting their you know timing it and hitting their car right which you know
it's hard to do um we've had some successes i think fhp did it once a lady was able to stop the car
a lady trooper and she didn't get killed but she was injured unfortunately we've had some htso
deputies that have been killed doing the same thing trying to stop these impaired one-way
drivers but just as civilians and in the majority of the crashes i have seen that the impaired driver
accident compared to the injuries from the the civilians what is the penalty of one-way driving
the reason i asked that i remember years ago i lived in california i think was nicole richie
lino richie's daughter was going the wrong way on 101 and if my memory serves me right i might be
completely wrong but she got off pretty much scott free and again oh yeah there's there's no
unless you're impaired with it that would be the only type of penalty that you would do so like
say you're the they're the typical out of town tourist and you make a wrong way and we're just
going to say like downtown it's easy to do in downtown because you're going and you go oh
oh the gps said and you turn the next thing you know you find yourself in a 20 mile an hour 25
mile an hour zone going the wrong way that i can understand so if you get caught doing that
all that if the officer wants to write you a citation all it is is a hundred and fifty three
dollar fine that's it so the only type of penalty that you would have for wrong way driving is if
you're impaired along with it and obviously that's going to create a dui that's going to
you know typically cost you in the neighborhood anywhere from depending on your history 7500
to about 15 000 and that's if you're just caught for dui now if that's your second
third whatever then it you know obviously the penalties go up your you know your first dui
you're you're not doing any time in in jail other than the time that you're booked which is usually
you have to stay there at least eight hours depending on at least eight if you're if you
blow and and if you don't no matter how impaired you are you're there at least eight hours
whereas if you on your second third your third if you have a third conviction of dui now you're
into the felony so now you're looking at you can do prison time just on dui but if you're that's
the only penalty that you're going to get from a wrong being driving the wrong way is if you're
associated with an impairment other than that's a civil fine now flipping it around a little bit
um because as you were alluding to earlier in your life i think a lot of us listening if we
look you know ourselves in a mirror we can think of times where had we blown that day we would have
been over and we would be subject to a dui um a lot of the people that i've seen on on rex though
you know you have people that are a little bit over but usually you know they're they're extremely
intoxicated and when you talk about the mental health crisis in this country you know some people
lean into crack or meth or opiates but alcohol is the most readily you know available coping mechanism
for people both in and out of uniform so what have you witnessed as far as alcoholism through
this dui lens that you've got um you know to be honest i don't it's it's hard to say with alcoholism
i don't think that i've i guess you'd have to be around a person i mean on numerous occasions to
see that because just from my interactions with you on a traffic stop or the little bit i mean you
can't really tell from that type of thing just from but just like knowing some people i've i
mean i don't recall um very many of my friends like even like growing up and through high school
that have been alcoholics i mean where they have to have it um usually it's a it's more of a binge
drinking type thing you know where you'll see that people don't drink during the week
but on that saturday or sunday boy they're going to tie one on um so i see a lot of that and that's
typically what you see in in my world which is basically the college is you see a lot of that
and i think that plays a big a big part with uh you know the impaired driving and people aren't
just they're just i mean it's i think it's slowed down a little but clearly not enough because we're
still having people that are being killed by impaired drivers but once the the lift and
and the uber started it did go down a little um but i don't think it's gone down enough for us to
go oh it's you know these that the rideshare stuff is working um it's improved but i don't it
definitely has room for for better improvement but i but the ultimate thing is we're never going to
we're never going to cure it until people realize and that they're man i could take somebody's life
or i can spend the rest of my life in prison i just don't think the penalties are stiff enough
right now you know where it it's a fear thing man if i get caught drinking and driving my first time
i've got to do 10 years in prison wow man i don't know if i want to take that chance whereas
i lose my license for you know a year or six months yeah i can take uber you know it's not
that big of a deal where is if you're looking at 10 years in prison or something substantial where
it's going to take your freedom that's when people are going to start taking notice and go
you know and and i just use this as an example um i got insurance from a guy that i don't know
10 years ago no it would have probably been 15 years ago now he was actually a bobby over there
in in england and he was telling me some of the um penalties and stuff from singapore and he goes
and he goes have you ever been over there or know anything about singapore i was like no i don't have
any idea he goes singapore has one of the lowest crime rates that you'll find and they don't have
very many re-offenders and i think this is a big issue with any of it he said there is no probation
there is nothing like that every crime has a certain penalty associated with it whether it be
dui driving on a suspended license burglary robbery it doesn't matter so we're just going to
he used burglary he said so if you do burglary and you get caught you go to trial if you get
found guilty you get 10 years in prison 10 years is only if you're a model prisoner so he said you
could go 364 days have a fight that year you just did you didn't make it to 365 but you're almost
there starts over so your 10 years starts over so now you basically have 11 years so he says that
first of all that tends people to you know stay on the straight and narrow and not get in trouble
and he goes another thing they do he says why do people re-offend dui you know whatever it is
whatever crime why do people re-offend he says well because that's all they know he said they do
not know any trades their education is not there so they're going to go back to what i know i know
how to do crime even though i got caught i'm still not bad at it so i'm going to go back to doing that
he goes this is why they don't have re-offenders over there he goes what they do is they make you
work 14 hours a day six days a week they pay you a dollar an hour all of that money goes into a fund
for your time in prison while you're there they teach you a trade of some sort plumbing electrical
something they're going to teach you some type of trade so when you get out
you now have a trade that you know and now you have a bank account that has 25 30 000 in it
he goes and you don't so you don't see a lot of re-offenders he goes if you do
it doesn't matter what crime you do no matter what your first crime so if your first one was
burglary your second one is a dw a driving with suspended license your term now doubles
doubles so your first year your first one was 10 driving with suspended license 20 years
he goes in you don't have re-offenders so i think before we see a big dramatic change
we're going to have to have some stiffer penalties on certain crimes especially dui
it's got to get stiffer where people are afraid to do it because you're just not going to make it
decision if you go somewhere and you start drinking and you didn't make the decision ahead of time
how you're getting home if you get too impaired you're not going to do it you're going to drive
probably 95 percent of the time five percent you might get it where they're going to go hey i can't
do it and i'll leave my car here but that's you know people don't want to leave their cars
because they're going to they're they're afraid that a it's either going to get towed it's going
to get stolen or somebody's going to damage it so man i'm just going to take the chance
yeah and the answer like you said if you've been drinking is uber or if you know what i do a lot
now with my wife is if you're planning to even go out i mean ubers are so inexpensive now especially
if you're fortunate enough to live in a in a city or a suburban area i get it with the rural side
that's another challenge but most of us i mean you can get to your local you know bar of a 10
15 bucks each way which you know okay is that a little bit money yeah but again when you count it
when you compare it to what the the alternative would be even just the parking ticket for your car
alone is going to be a lot more so so yeah well i want to like my daughter you know we live in
land o'lakes she likes to go down to um this place called hide park they call it the soho area so for
her to her and her friends you know to drive from here to there roughly costs 40 or 50 dollars each
way something like that i think it's cheaper to go and then later in the night it sometimes it's a
little more but they're splitting it three two to three ways most of the time but even if you're
not say you pay for it yourself 100 30 years in prison or 15 000 for a dui i'm taking 100
dollars every time you know what i'm saying i'm paying the 100 it's just it's too convenient
you know to not do it absolutely well you know we talked about obviously the victims of some of these
accidents so educate us all on who mothers against drink driving are and then let's talk about the
walk that you're doing in march okay so i'll just kind of give like a little bit of a background on
how i got started with with uh with mad so 2016 when i became the dui sergeant as the dui sergeant
in the dui squad we always participated in the walk and doing stuff that's just because the
departments around the area are partners with mad and support them so as a sergeant i was basically
got told hey listen um these are one of your responsibilities that you have to do they do this
walk every year we go participate we go there we try to educate people with some materials that
we have and we just put some stuff together and and go out there and just participate with the
community so that's kind of how i got started um knowing that i just i was the sergeant and i just
you have to go do it well a corporal that i had at the time said hey you know it's funny i've known
you for many years now but i've really known i don't know how you got your scar so me explaining
the story just like i explained earlier to you he's like uh dude you're a dui victim he goes man mad
is gonna they're gonna eat this up they're gonna love this they're gonna love you being the sergeant
because you're gonna be you know you're a walking billboard for them so that's kind of what kind of
sparked me getting into the walk and realizing that the money that's raised and what it goes for
because they're constantly fighting for new legislation on um stiffer penalties for dui
they're always looking for something in the automobile industry which um they just recently
got passed um and they're and i think it's going up for some type of appeal because some people
don't want it but they are they actually got it approved where the automobile industry within five
years will have to have every vehicle that has some sort of technology that combats or realizes
or detects um distracted and impaired driving of some of some capacity so and the one that they
kind of explained was it'll be something with the technology either in the the glass the the windshield
or the mirrors or something but it's going to be able to detect your facial expressions
like we're just going to say like we were talking with sleepiness sleep deprivation you know where
we try to push the envelope and now all of a sudden we're driving and i've even seen it in cars now
where if you like not paying attention and you hit the little side markers a few times all of a
sudden the car will like beep and it puts a little coffee thing up and says hey maybe you should stop
for some coffee you know but eventually within five years supposedly that there's going to be
this technology in there which will be nice because if it detects that you're sleepy or your your eyes
are shut or you're not paying attention to the roadway it's going to pull you over to the side
there's been no other talk with like oh you know like an interlock device where you have to blow
into the machine before you get into the car i don't think it's going to be that extreme
unless you're an offender that may be coming down the line where you know your first time offense
usually right now they don't do it as a first time offense unless you're you you blow excess
you know like two or above a 0.15 i think you're you could be subject to the interlock device
which is double the limit um so that's kind of how i got started with just telling the story
and doing all that and then and what kept me going is just over the years seeing the different cases
that we've had um from people just being you know killed or injured and seeing the results and and
how mad basically right from the beginning if you contact mad because your family member or you were
involved in a crash they now assign somebody to you and they walk with you the entire way through
the court process and even afterwards on any type of things that you need um and then now they also
do which i participate in is education in the high schools so i work along with one of the other
ladies that does that part of the program and she has her little uh program that she does which talks
about distracted and impaired driving and you know marijuana and stuff like that because people
don't really think that that's a drug you know and that you can't drive while you're on it
so i go into the classes and i basically kind of just tell my story you know as a victim and
and you know they get to see firsthand the result of a dui crash so that's what kind of got me
started with that and then i've kind of just kept it going and and you know made it my goal to try
to raise as much money as i can for the walk that i do in march and then i also do a bike challenge
that we do in may they're just looking outside the bite or outside the box on trying to get more
people involved um with the awareness of impaired driving um and just looking for different avenues
to raise money to continue their fight with legislation stiffer penalties in the courts
and the education with the high school students brilliant and when is the walk this year
so the walk is going to be march 22nd um it's it's held at usf every year at least for the last
since 2016 that i've been doing it's been at usf and basically what that is is people sign up
they they fundraise and we all come there as victims and you just get to they walk around we
have vendors out there the law enforcement that have different type of things that they do
as well as we have some volunteers that cook and do that kind of thing and just a place to gather
and show that you you know victims you're not the only one out there other people do care about you
and care about your loss and it's just you know it's it's a it's an interesting event to attend
to attend and where can people find their website and then how can they don't know
donate to your team specifically um well there's several ways that you can do it
if you're just looking and you say hey i just want to find it you can go to mad.org and you can
hit up events and it's going to give you a list of an event there's several of them but you would
obviously look for the date march 22nd it's going to say um tampa bay area i believe it says
or um and then you can and then you'd have to that's a harder way to do it um me as a participant
um and a captain of a team i actually have my own link so i can you know i can share that link
to anybody and it just makes it convenient and easier to get to but other than that because if
typically if you just go to mad.org and you hit support it's just going to throw it into a general
fund and not specifically to the walk which the walk is specific to tampa in the tampa bay area
which the funds at that point stay with that chapter which gives them more um more money to
do what they want to do in this and locally here in tampa well i will put your your specific link
on the web page for this episode as well so people can go straight to that oh that would be great
well i'm sure people you know would love to to learn more about you reach out to you where are
the best places online or social media to do that um unfortunately i do not have any social media
anymore um i kind of do it through my wife's um but i can i can have an email address
um or even a phone number if somebody wanted to you know just inquire more about it yeah what's
your email address let's put that out there just so you don't get any crank calls
jjcm so john john charlie mike nine four six at gmail.com
and the purpose is if we're a i could do a phone number too i have an alternative phone number if
people wanted to call but email is probably the better way to do it absolutely well john i want
to thank you it's been such an interesting conversation obviously being kind of laser focused
on you know driver safety in this particular chat but with your you know small child lived experience
and then how that's carried you to where you are now is a very very powerful tool to help you
where you are now it's a very very powerful conversation so i want to thank you so much for
being so generous with your time and coming on the behind the shield podcast today well i appreciate
you even wanting to hear my story i like i said it's been a challenge over the years and you know
if i you know any way i can get messages out to where we can eventually stop the impaired driving
that that's my end result is my end goal is trying to do that so any way we can do that i
i'm just grateful that you wanted to take the time and even have me on the on the on the show