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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on
the show veteran LAPD police officer and litigation attorney, Greg Yakubian.
Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from Greg's journey into law enforcement,
the Rampart scandal, the LA riots, his journey into law, fighting for first responders whose
careers were threatened by vaccine mandates, cowardice in leadership, government overreach
and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredibly important conversation, as I say every week, please
just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show,
leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of well over 950 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, Greg Yakubian.
Enjoy.
Well, Greg, I want to start by saying thank you so, so much for taking the time and coming
on the Behind the Shield podcast today.
I'm honored.
I'm honored by the request.
Thank you.
So where on planet earth are we finding you this afternoon?
So I'm actually in beautiful Bullhead City, Arizona, and I'm taking care of some personal
business with my my daughter.
But that's that's where I'm at today.
Brilliant.
Well, I would love to start the very beginning of your personal journey.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings?
Sure.
So I was born in Queens, New York, and I was actually the first one born in this country.
My parents and actually, I should say my two older sisters were born in Lebanon and my
parents, their parents fled the pogroms in in Eintap.
And this is, you know, almost a century ago, but in any event, they were one was raised
in Damascus.
And my other parent, my mother was was born and raised or at least early part of her life
in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
They later met in Lebanon, which is I mentioned is where my sisters were born after my parents
married.
I was born here.
I have one younger brother, one younger sister, and I deeply love the United States.
My father traveled around quite a bit and he didn't just stumble into the United States.
He came here intentionally because he saw the tremendous opportunities because of the
wisdom of the founders of this great country.
And he is very, very right.
Very smart man.
I deeply respect him and miss him very much.
But he he saw United States as being the place that opportunities were bound, you know, for
one of the big reasons is that there's a recognition of natural rights.
They're God given.
People play by the rules as they should.
And that's that's that's why he came to America.
And he was right.
I love all of these immigration stories because I mean, this is a culture, you know, a nation
built on immigration.
And again, obviously, you know, ultimately, we first immigrated into the U.S. and the
Native Americans already here.
But even then, if you go far enough back, that goes to Mongolia.
You know, we are a very nomadic species as a whole.
But this I think there's there's such a sad kind of narrative about immigration, the illegal
immigrants and the borders and so you ever kind of hear.
But there's so much richness to the tapestry that makes up the U.S.
So what were some of the stories about the countries that your parents were born in and
then Lebanon?
And then how did that contrast?
What was their immigration story when they got to the U.S.?
Sure.
Boy, that let me unpack that.
That's a fabulous question.
My I did.
Fortunately, I think I'd given foresight, but I did have the opportunity to actually
interview my both my parents, actually not too long before my father actually passed
away.
But I actually obtained this information.
It's probably been about 20 some odd years, but I do.
I do remember most of this.
My father again, both my parents' families were in a town which is now in Turkey.
But many Armenians would call that Western Armenia.
But I'm tough.
And when when their parents fled, my father was mentioned that he was born in Damascus.
He was reared actually in a French Catholic boarding school in Lebanon.
And once he grew up and he became involved in clothing industry, designing, and he traveled
around quite a bit.
He was in Iran in the Ivory Coast and just traveled around quite a bit looking for opportunities
to develop his his clothing design business.
And as I mentioned, he met my mother.
My mother, her parents, they they fled to, as I mentioned, Ethiopia, but they came to
Lebanon when she was still relatively young.
And she also went to a wasn't a boarding school, but it was a school where she had quite a
bit of influence from the from the Catholic tradition.
In any event, she spent most of her early adult life there, met my father, they were
married and my father still traveled around quite a bit.
But he actually came to the United States, leaving my mother and my two older sisters
with some of his other family in Lebanon.
But he came in 1956.
So there's about a two year gap, which was very common for for families.
I understand the time where one individual usually would be the the the the father, the
husband would would go to the the country where they're anticipating making the move
to.
And that's what my dad did.
And he came here to kind of get the the nest settled, so to speak, get a job, try and find
housing.
He made connections with some relatives we already had here in upstate New York, which
people we still keep in contact with, by the way.
And then once he got things settled in, then he brought my mom and my two sisters and actually
his brother over.
And what's interesting, James, is my dad didn't just think about himself.
He actually was thinking about all the other folks that were in places that just didn't
have the same opportunity.
So we were in New York for about three years.
Again, I was born there, but we came out to the San Fernando Valley in California in January
of 62.
I still remember this, by the way, pulling up to the house, the there on Elmer Avenue
in North Hollywood.
But once we got settled into that house, the house was built, I want to say, in the early
1900s, so it was old even then.
But very frequently, my brother and I had bunk beds, and very frequently it would be
like, hey, Greg, you're going to have to sleep on the couch because we got uncle so-and-so.
My dad was sponsoring people, and that happened a lot.
So his journey didn't end with just him getting settled in.
He actually facilitated legal immigration for several folks and many, many family members
we still keep in contact with, many of whom now passed on.
But that's kind of the quick overview.
Beautiful.
I think it's just important to hear so many stories.
And sadly, obviously, we're hearing tension now with Lebanon, if I've got that right.
You hear people that came from Afghanistan and all these different places.
And in the 70s, it was almost no different than London or Paris.
And now we see a lot of these places reduced to rubble, or there's extremism, or whatever
it is.
And I think educating us all on how some of these nations used to be, some of the horrors
of people fled 50, 100 years ago, these lessons of history that some of us are just completely
oblivious to.
Yep.
Well, again, according to Jorge Santanaia, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat
it.
It's been characterized other ways, but yeah, it's unfortunate.
So I lived in Burbank for about a year and a half when I worked for Anaheim Fire.
So I remember North Hollywood, but it was probably a very different North Hollywood
than you grew up in.
So that area obviously is known for crime and certain pockets.
What was the environment that you grew up in?
So yeah, Burbank, I have actually friends from Burbank.
Burbank was actually kind of like a little mini Hollywood.
I'm sure you remember, in fact, well, anyhow, there were some very high profile studios
there in the Burbank area.
But in any event, yeah, North Hollywood in the early 60s, it was quaint.
I actually had a number of newspaper routes.
I mean, I'd get up in the morning and then later my brother joined me on this business
adventure of throwing newspapers.
But it was nice.
It was relatively safe.
And my dad bought another home, again, kind of on the outskirts, very edge of North Hollywood.
And for those of you who are familiar with the Los Angeles area, they have these different
locations or these different areas that are named.
But there's no separate boundary.
They don't have a separate city council and all that.
But they're all part of the city of Los Angeles.
But you have North Hollywood, you have Van Nuys, they have these different districts,
if you will.
So North Hollywood was OK.
It was good.
The homes were very old.
And then we moved to a home, I think I was about 16 that summer because I was supposed
to go to North Hollywood High School and I ended up going to Grant High School.
And Grant, which was actually just over the, and I'll use the air quotes, border in Van
Nuys, was considered to be a premium school at the time.
And it was, again, very, I got really, really good education, or at least I like to think
I did.
So I remember many of my teachers.
And it was a really positive, I think, environment growing up.
Over the years, I think, I don't know if I mentioned yet my introduction into law enforcement.
I did work as a police officer in the Los Angeles area.
And I remember going back to the street that I grew up on many years later and finding
out that there was a street gang actually named after Elmer Avenue, which was disappointing
to see that.
And when you think about gang members, they're just seeking to fill a void in their lives.
They're looking to take care of each other and protecting themselves from some of the
problems that are around them.
And I understand that.
But sadly, it's a very, it's an unhealthy familial relationship that gets developed
in that culture, I think, because they end up being self-destructive.
But disappointed to see that.
In North Hollywood overall, because when I got married, I was married there in North
Hollywood.
We lived there for about four years, in fact, up until 1985, until we finally moved out
to a different county, adjacent.
And I still drive through the area.
But it's just sad to see it go the way that it has.
And it's just continuing to degrade with the unchecked homelessness and unchecked crime.
And it's unfortunate.
I'm going to jump straight into a topic, even though we're not there chronologically yet.
But I think it's just so interesting hearing the perspective, especially from the law enforcement
community, the group of men and women who have been told for their entire career, you
must enforce these rules.
And obviously, we're going to get to good rules and bad rules in a minute.
But as my career progressed, I started seeing the epic failure of drug prohibition with
my own eyes, the homelessness, the addiction, the gang membership, obviously the overdoses.
And I'm not talking about arresting dealers, I'm not talking arresting smugglers, but addicts
specifically, and how that empowers the underworld by demonizing the drugs that they need.
But my perspective, obviously, is that is a huge common denominator of a lot of the
crime that we've seen, a lot of the devolution of the streets of America.
That being said, that's James Gearing's opinion.
What has been your perspective of why a safe neighborhood back in the 60s has become this
gang-ridden culture in the 2000s?
Yeah, I do think it's a shift.
And I think it starts at a deeper level, a more spiritual level.
People begin to just think about their own, just kind of getting through the day, and
they don't really think about the long-term repercussions.
I mentioned my father, he was always kind of trying to get the big picture view of things
and trying to help others.
And this issue with the use of drugs, and I'm also going to include alcohol in there,
I know that that might not be a very popular opinion, but I'm going to put it in there.
The reality is, personally, I take what I think would be characterized properly as a
libertarian view of things.
I think people should be allowed to do whatever they want to do with their bodies, and that's
between them and God, so long as it's not impacting others.
The reality is, when you take that last part, that caveat, using alcohol drugs, it does
impact others.
Now, I still think that ultimately we are accountable to God directly.
But society does have an interest in regulating these issues.
I mean, there's this fiction that gets created.
Once again, just pick on alcohol for just a minute, where you can drink, consume alcohol,
or marijuana now is becoming a big thing, cannabis or whatever, so long as you don't
become intoxicated is the term.
But the reality is, it does begin to affect your day-to-day functioning.
And that's, to answer your question, that's what is the beginning of the devolution or
the degradation of these neighborhoods.
People just start doing whatever they need to do, either alcohol or drugs or spray cans,
whatever they're going to use to numb their brain, and then they start to not care.
And then you have this, well, you've got the government facilitating this.
Here, let me give you the needles.
Let me give you some money to get through the month, and just enough to keep that addiction
funded.
And then we start seeing the problems where, in fact, I just recently saw, I think it's
in London, some individual put a pup tent on this, it looks like some suburban home,
they're just tenting there, right there on the person's front line.
I don't know if you saw that.
Yeah.
And that's how bold people are becoming, because in the end, it's being facilitated, encouraged,
funded by those who are in power in government.
And this just can't go on.
I mean, the reality is, it just can't.
I think what I've seen, I went to Portugal, my family moved there, and I sat with the
guy who spearheaded decriminalization of addiction, to be very specific, there.
And what they did is they took all the resources, or a lot of the resources from the quote unquote
war on drugs.
And as a nation, they kind of looked and go, look, this just isn't working.
And it's funny because Portugal is kind of looked down upon by parts of Europe, but actually
they're very progressive and very community based.
And so they took that money and they put it into solving why people turn to drugs in the
first place.
And that, as you said, absolutely includes alcohol too.
So how does that void create it?
And so they created addiction counseling and mental health counseling and job creation
and all these incentives, housing, and they completely revolutionized their addiction
crisis.
And I think that this is the problem is that, like you said, if you piecemeal it, if you
just give out free needles, but you're not addressing why someone's turning that, why
is a eight year old boy going into a gang versus a police or fire explorer program,
that's a deeper issue.
And then to turn around and go, oh, well, it's broken homes.
But yeah, because we've got multi-generational drug use and alcoholism by this point.
So this is what I've seen through the career that I've had is that the war on drugs is
almost a hundred years old now since the thirties.
So clearly it's an epic failure and we need to do something different and get to the root
cause of what's making people turn to them in the first place.
Yeah.
And I think, again, even drilling down deeper into the, when you mentioned the root cause,
I think that the only thing that's going to, and I'll use the term fix, if that's even
the right word, it's going to correct the problem is at a very deep, very spiritual
level really, people who have no purpose in life, they have literally no connection with
regard to why they're here.
There's a catechism that's actually published.
It's very, very old talking about the chief end of man.
Why are we here?
Well, really ultimately to glorify and serve God.
And without that larger purpose, it just kind of trickles down and starts to cause the person
to fall apart with regard to their drive.
So I think that, I agree completely that the war on drugs is a fiction.
It really is.
There's so much corruption, there's so much where you have people who are in control that
are playing both sides of the game to facilitate the problem.
And then of course, facilitating a problem creates a need for the fixtures, if you will.
Yeah, it is a fiction.
I don't think it's good that we just allow no enforcement.
We should be enforcing.
But the reality is the people who need help, I think first and foremost, they need to look
to something substantially larger than themselves.
And that's going to be only in the Lord getting saved, if you will, and recognizing that the
reason why they're here is God created them for a purpose.
They're here for a reason.
And they need to really turn to the Lord and get their lives squared away in that regard.
Then everything flows from that, I think.
Beautiful.
All right, well, getting back onto the career path then, when you were school age, obviously
you got into a very physical career.
What were you playing as far as sports and exercise?
So sports?
Well, let me go back a little further because this was not my plan.
The last thing in the world I ever thought that I would be would be a police lieutenant
having retired now and a police defense attorney, police and fire defense attorney.
Never would I have thought this is how my life would land up.
From my earliest memories, I only wanted to be a doctor.
And my sports was, I mean, I liked running and weightlifting and stuff like that.
But as far as sports, I did one year in high school, I played football with an individual.
I'm still friends with him, Joe.
He and I still keep in contact with each other.
But that was it for sports.
And I mean, I'd play tennis and stuff like that.
But I was very academic.
I was the kid that went to summer school every year.
Even once I satisfied requirements, I just took other classes.
In fact, I did take police role in government at Grant High School.
I still keep in contact with my high school teacher, by the way.
Really?
Yes, I do.
We text on occasion.
Once things worked out, the way I land up in law enforcement, you didn't ask specifically
that.
But once I went from high school to college, I wasn't playing any sports there in college.
I was, again, just pre-med is what I was.
But things unfolded a little.
It's a little complicated how things went the way they did.
But I landed up meeting my wife.
As I mentioned, we got married.
But I went to law enforcement initially just as a temporary diversion because there were
benefits.
And I was only going to stay with the department a couple, three years.
And we had one child at the time, my wife and I, and we had another one on the way.
So I came on the job really just temporarily thinking I was going to do a couple, three
years and then get back to wrap up college and then go to medical school.
But things didn't go that way because some personal health issues within my family.
And I ended up staying on the job.
I think it was God's will.
I don't think this was an accident.
I don't think anything happens by accident, by the way.
We do have free will.
But the sports thing was kind of a side thing.
I was really, like I said, pretty academic in my life.
Which parts of LA did you find yourself assigned once you were in uniform?
Started my career.
Well, obviously I went through the academy when there was just the one academy facility.
Now there are three facilities.
When I came out, I was initially assigned to West Valley, which I was familiar with
because I grew up in the San Fernando Valley.
Went to Hollywood and I was actually the first sworn certified bilingual Armenian speaker
with the Los Angeles Police Department.
And no surprise, I was brought to Hollywood to help facilitate investigations because
of the Armenian population in that area.
I went to, was loaned to training division for a period of time.
I worked Hollywood vice.
There was a police officer and later as a sergeant.
I did work majors.
You mentioned narcotics.
I worked majors for a period of time.
And then I went to metropolitan division.
I deeply, deeply loved that job.
Supervisors there, some I still keep in contact with as well.
But then I went from there, I went to anti-terrorist division.
I was back in the academy for a period of time.
And then I did work back in the valley as a detective, working Van Nuys Homicide.
Went back to Hollywood as a sergeant.
From there I came back to West Valley as a sergeant off of probation.
I was actually the last West Valley crash sergeant for those folks who remember crash
when they liquidated that unit, which was unfortunate the way that was handled.
You mentioned about leadership and the way those officers were treated.
It was really unfortunate.
I think that there are problems with certain units, that's just human nature.
That's unpacking that for a second.
That was the rampart scandal, wasn't it?
That was what got that whole deconstruction of that whole unit.
And of course, you have a couple of folks, which again was a matter of I think poor leadership
anyway.
I was brought in to essentially facilitate that transition.
And then they formed a new gang unit, which was for about a year or two.
And then they ultimately formed the GED configuration, which is still to this day the configuration
of the gang units.
What was the reason for the creation of the unit?
And again, if you get to Monday morning quarterback it now, what was done poorly?
And then obviously what was the result of, as you mentioned, the actions of a few officers?
The cause, if you will, is nothing new.
Just a lack of oversight and leadership and really direction.
It's been said that modeling may not just be the best way to teach, and I'll use the
word lead.
It may be really the only way to lead.
And I think you have some, air quotes, leaders that are just simply not modeling the desired
behavior.
And then you also have to have the reality is, not just for crash, any unit.
I know crash got picked on, but the reality is there are a lot of other units that just
are very poorly supervised.
You just don't hear about these issues.
I do because the work I do in police defense, I hear about these issues and I'm typically
defending the officers.
But it's nothing new.
Sergeants aren't going out.
They're not monitoring.
They're not correcting behavior when it starts to go off the rails.
And the reality is some people will blame the lack of the triage when people are coming
on the job.
And that may be a problem.
In other words, you have people who are in effect corrupt when they come into the department.
That's a problem.
But I don't think it's the problem.
I think the problem is a failure to recognize that the police department and fire department,
the public sector, it's comprised of human beings and human beings are fallible and they
can be corrupted and you just have to have supervision that's willing to correct the
behavior and actually also willing to toe the line.
The reality is you'll have command staff or supervisors that are actually doing kind of
the same conduct that the officers are doing.
They're just smarter about getting away with it, unfortunately.
Not all of them.
I have a lot of folks and friends that are at the command level that I deeply respect
and they're trying to do a very difficult job.
But what happened with crash is, just so happens you had a couple of very, very, very corrupted
individuals and thanks to the checks and balances at the property division, they picked up on
some of these issues.
And it's just unfortunate that the supervisors maybe weren't maybe on top of some of these
issues, could have maybe picked up on this sooner, but then the whole unit throughout
the city, all the units were blamed as if the units themselves were corrupt, which doesn't
make sense.
The people are corrupt, not the unit.
Hitting on one more obviously very infamous event in LAPD and then we'll go to some positive
outcome career calls that you've had.
But when you look back now, not only with this law enforcement lens, with this legal
lens, Monday morning quarterbacking, what happened with the Rodney King incident?
What were the compounding factors that led to that?
So yeah, thank you.
Fascinating.
That whole issue with regard to the videotape and what I understand was that Holliday actually
walked into Foothill division.
I didn't know you were going to ask me about this, but I'm going to have to scour back
through the files here and sort of find something.
Yeah, that's okay.
No, it's no problem.
I mean, that's a fair question.
Walked in with his VHS and for those of you who don't know VHS, there were these old very
large cassettes for magnetic recording of images, video images, and actually wanted
to turn it in at the desk there.
And at the time, what I was told or I understand through the rumor mill was that the folks
there said, they didn't want anything to do with it.
They basically thought it would just kind of go away.
But upon a close analysis, and I think I can say this objectively, what was being done
there as far as the officers that were involved using the PR24s, the side-handled batons,
they were doing what they were trained to do.
And I distinctly remember, in fact, when I went to the Academy myself in the mid-80s,
there were instructors that came in there and they testified at the first trial there
in Simi Valley.
Of course, they had to change the venue because of the problems with Los Angeles venue being
too biased.
But we were told, hey, they being the citizens don't want you choking people out because
of the time they just had transitioned away from using the carotid so-called chokeholds
that would cause incapacitation without breaking bones or whatnot by cutting off the blood
flow to the brain, not the trachea.
But they don't want you choking people out.
But by golly, they gave you these PR24s that can break bones.
And even at the time, again, I thought, well, I didn't have a whole lot of use of force.
But the bottom line is that was the instruction that was being given.
You basically just want to create space and move away.
And then if you have a person that's not compliant, push them away.
You draw your PR24.
At the time, they changed the type of gas you're using.
But your options were relatively limited.
And what I saw in the video, and I distinctly remember this with regard to the analysis,
was that's kind of the way everybody was being trained.
And could things have been done better?
Yeah, absolutely.
But to act as if they were just beating this guy.
And I actually remember being after this video came out, this is interesting, James, I was
doing some training in another state, actually was in Arizona.
And I remember because of the false narrative that was being circulated, people were actually
saying things like Mr. King, Rodney King was handcuffed.
And yet all these several officers, like four or five of them with their PR24s just literally
beating this guy on the ground, which of course was not true.
And that's the kind of thing that really frustrates me is when you start having this hyperbole.
And this police officer was saying this, he was working in a different state.
And I was looking at him and saying, look, let's tear this apart rationally.
First, what you're saying is not true.
He was not handcuffed.
This is the way officer being trained.
Things could have certainly been done better, absolutely.
And whether or not the supervisor that was there, Stacey Kuhn, could have handled things
differently, there's always, to use your word, James, money more than quarterback.
That's done to sharpen the sword, if you will, moving forward.
But then to your earlier point, where's the accountability within the organization for
how these officers are being trained?
Should I even say, well, you look at this issue with George Floyd.
There are questions now about the training that these officers were being provided with
that incident.
So I just think that there has to be, if we expect, or if we need change within the police
department, truly need corrective action, we need to look at the training materials,
how they're being instructed, what tools we're giving them, rather than immediately demonizing
the officers as if, oh, we found the cancer.
Let's get rid of these three or four, five guys and gals, whoever they are.
Now we've dealt with the problem and we move on.
That's unfortunate.
But that's a way to treat people that are, I think, for the most part, trying to do a
job that society wants and actually needs.
It's interesting when you talk about the chokeholds, which was prior to the nightsticks.
During my career, I trained in Florida.
And then when I went over to California for a few years to work for Anaheim, they are
extremely aggressive when it comes to roof operations and in a good way.
My whole probationary year, I constantly had to study building construction and strip down
saws and do all these different cuts at the academy week after week after week.
And so by the time you get out and you're well trained, you're like, oh, wow, this works
really well.
If I cut a big hole in the ceiling, everyone inside has got a much higher chance of surviving.
But then I go back to Florida and they're like, oh, no, no, we don't do this.
It's too dangerous here.
It's lightweight construction, which obviously it is everything in Florida.
In California, it's lightweight construction, including the walls.
So you realize that the standards were lower because of lack of training.
And when I've had this conversation with a few police officers recently that are also
in the jujitsu space, I ask them, why can't you choke people?
Because I know as someone who gets choked a lot in the gym, that is one of the quickest
ways to make someone comply.
And then even if they kind of black out for a second, if you've got someone who's going
for your gun or whatever it is, then that's a very, very valuable tool.
However, only in a well-trained set of hands, which then has the whole, where is that bar
set?
So what I've seen is some of the more effective techniques, whether it's in the fire service
or in law enforcement, are actually disregarded because it requires more money, more training
and a higher level of professionalism, even though actually it's a better technique.
Yeah, I would agree with that.
And the issue with the choke, again, a little bit of the history there, some of it, talking
about leadership again, that the fact that our chief at the time made some public comments,
I don't even want to repeat it, but Chief Gates, again, he made some public comments
about what was called a chokehold that didn't help facilitate a healthy discussion about
the issue.
So unfortunately, that particular technique was placed at a level and there is the continuum
analysis, which I'm sure you're familiar with with regard to the levels of force.
And that I think is an unfortunate way to analyze use of force when you look at the
Graham standard.
But yeah, to your point about training, if it was possible to train officers at a sufficient
level to where they apply a carotid properly without having it come across and become an
arm bar and crushing somebody's trachea, that would be good.
There were problems.
I mean, I'm not going to ignore the reality that in some of my training officers, again,
in the 80s, we're talking about the days where if somebody was even mildly noncompliant,
you know, get what they would call a shoulder smash, just spin somebody around and put them
to sleep for a couple of seconds.
You know, and so there had to be a balance, but unfortunately, I think that lack of discretion
along with I think the chief's comments kind of muddy the waters and really poisoned the
well for having a healthy discussion on the issue.
But if there's a way to come back to that, that would be healthy, I think, for society.
Do I think it's going to happen?
I don't know.
I mean, now you have companies that are coming up with these like the Ebola wrap and all
these other, you know, we have the Taser.
And I think that there's again, maybe some I'll call it a profit motive to keep some
of these other tools available.
I'm not saying they're not bad.
I'm not saying they're not good tools.
There may be an application for them.
But to your point, I 100% agree with you that if it was possible to revisit some of these
Archon arrest control, jujitsu techniques, you know, Gracie had a very strong influence
with the Los Angeles Police Department.
And there were some other folks, McTatter brothers, and, you know, they had influence
with different folks within the department.
But and that did actually change our techniques for a period of time.
We integrated a lot more of the jujitsu material.
But that specific technique is still again, the the crowd is still held at the lethal
force in in the the kind of the shorthand is if you could choke somebody out, you know,
you can shoot them is kind of the the shorthand way of looking at that, which I think is unfortunate.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I think it wasn't it George Ryan that connected us.
I've got that right.
Yes.
Yeah.
So obviously, I talked to George about all of his martial arts training and striking
and all that stuff, too.
So.
Yeah, brilliant, brilliant guy.
Yeah, he is he is an encyclopedia, literally.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
So we've talked about some of the, you know, arguably darker incidents within LAPD.
Let's go back to your career now.
When you reflect what was some of the the big career calls, the career successes during
your career in L.A.
Career successes was probably, I would have to say, first, you know, maintaining my my
family's, you know, the relationships and all that.
I think that's success.
I know.
But you're probably talking about stuff that I did while I was on the job.
I you know, I don't hold my identity out as being a again, a Los Angeles police officer
as much as I deeply, deeply love Los Angeles City and the department.
And I wouldn't change one thing about about my career as a whole.
There are some relationships I wish I would have I would have developed maybe more deeply.
And you know, I still try to maintain contact with folks from, you know, over the years.
And now people are, you know, they're passing away.
But I would say some of the most interesting things I probably did.
Metropolitan Division.
I still keep in contact with my partner of four years when I when I was there working
in that in that detail, working the homicide unit.
I learned just a tremendous amount of investigative techniques and skills from my D3 Steve Fisk.
Deeply respect him and partners that work there.
In working Hollywood Vice, you know, there are a lot of it was it was an interesting
I don't know about success, but it was a very interesting career.
But I would say the success would be just just having the diversity and experience working
with the department.
And I still remember my the Academy leader for our class, Chamberlain, actually, he said
this and I think I think it's true.
It's not the equipment.
It's not, you know, the badge.
It's not always it's the people that really make the Los Angeles Police Department.
And I think that that's the case.
And I would say my success is just being able to get around to see really see the whole
city.
And I did.
And I still do, actually.
I'm still technically with the department as a reserve.
I love that you mentioned that keeping your family unit whole was the highlight of your
career.
I think that's a beautiful answer.
What was it when you reflect that kept you together, not just from from yourself, but
through your your partner and your children collectively when so many of us, our families
are fragmented through the career?
Oh, the Lord.
Yeah, it's Jesus.
That's that simple.
I have I still remember James, my one of my training officers who has since passed away.
Bob was his first name.
I'll just leave it at that.
And I liked him.
He was a funny guy.
He had back when we could have like he had a bull nose.
It was kind of a bull barrel on on his revolver.
But we're revolvers.
Those things.
It's got like a round thing with six holes in it.
Anyhow, I was driving around and I was on probation.
So you do what you're told.
You know, you can't keep your mouth shut and listen and watch and do what you're told.
So I was doing that.
And so he goes, hey, kid.
So you married?
Yeah, married.
How long have you married?
Oh, three and a half, four years.
OK, you'll be divorced five years.
You five years.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
So, you know, my wife, it's been over 42 years now.
I don't know what I'd do without her.
I love her.
She's great.
She's literally God's gift to me and our kids.
My kids are all grown doing their own thing.
But yeah, I can't take any credit for that because, you know, working crazy, crazy, crazy
hours and then through the riots.
And she's she's been just a tremendous stabilizing influence.
And I attribute that only to the work.
Beautiful.
All right.
Well, then, so as you progress through your career, what was it that started steering
you into the world of law itself?
Yeah.
So that that's an interesting question there.
I always intended to get back to medical school, as I mentioned, until I had this there was
a kind of a personal medical issue that popped up in the family.
But I wanted to do something, something else.
I just want to do something else academically, because, you know, to your question earlier
about sports, I was really more of an academic kind of guy.
Not that I mean, I worked out and stuff.
I just wasn't other than that little stint in high school football.
So I was constantly chipping away at my classes, take, you know, going to college part time
for years.
In fact, I held myself out as like a 22 year, you know, college student on the side.
And in the I mentioned I work Van Nuys Homicide.
There was an individual there who was going to law school at the time, Harvey.
And we would have like, you know, water cooler chats about law school.
They kind of planted a seed.
Honestly, James, the last thing I ever thought I would even consider was law school.
So for two years, I kept thinking, OK, I'm wrapping up as I wrapping up my undergraduate
degrees and college, and I thought, well, now what do I do?
Medical school is not going to happen.
So I thought I talked to my wife and I said, what do you think about law school?
And she was thinking or she said, why would anyone want to be a lawyer?
And I said, yeah, you know, I agree with you.
Why?
You know, that's crazy, right?
But you know, let me let me think about this and maybe I'll just get the JD.
So that was about as much thought that went into it, James.
And I jumped in toward the latter part of 99 is about two years later.
And I went through the four year part time program.
And then I thought, well, OK, and I was working for a small law firm as a legal, basically
a legal writer part, you know, part time.
But it's after the bar, the February 2004 bar and passed, you know, because I hear all
I heard all these stories about, you know, I take the bar four times or whatever, and
I passed.
So I'm thinking, you know, now what?
So I started practicing part time and with this firm.
And in fact, I did I think I was and I was an active lieutenant at the time.
In fact, I sat for the baby bar in the lieutenant's exam.
This is a couple of years earlier at the same time, within a couple of months of each other.
And then they got my ticket punched and I landed up handling as an active lieutenant
this criminal matter with Chief Bratton's approval in another another county.
I disclosed to my captain and, you know, and then that was OK as far as the there were
no conflicts issues.
But but the bottom line is it wasn't like I had this this mapped out and thinking where
I was going to go.
But I practiced part time for about seven years.
And then things I was invited to come into work, you know, in a more full time capacity
doing police defense from our union.
And I thought, you know, maybe this is the way Lord's taking my career.
So at the 26 year mark, I retired and went to full time practice.
And I just feel like again, this is where where God would have me.
Where I hear a lot of people struggle in the military and first responders is the transition.
You know, when we're in uniform, we've got our tribe, we've got our purpose, you know,
we've got all the things that we adore.
And it literally, as you said, if you're if you're cognizant, it doesn't become your
identity, but for a lot of people, it does because they started when they were 18, 19,
20.
And then, you know, they did it for 20, 30 years.
That can be very jarring when that door closes behind them on the very last day.
And it's not even like the military that has a VA or, you know, places that they can
go meet up after a lot of these departments.
When you're done, you're done.
What was your transition like?
And I'm assuming there was, you know, there was going from one kind of tribe to the other
still attached to the first.
And what have you seen as far as some of your fellow men and women with their transitions?
And if you saw any struggles.
Have some struggles.
And in fact, yeah, to your point about the tribe and that transition, the Los Angeles
Police Department does have a very fraternal sorority sense.
And there are actually groups all around the United States and even even I think some abroad.
But where these groups will meet, even here in not too far here in Bullhead and all over
Southern California and other states.
So the retired folks will get together.
And I've attended a few of these functions.
But unfortunately, I think in this most recent, you know, culture shift with the way that
folks were being treated with regard to this mandate issue, I think that that was interfering
with some of that sense of family.
So people that were on the job in their whole identity was that of a Los Angeles police
officer, which, by the way, is kind of almost like the default.
A lot of people walk away and they just really look they become unworked from that identity
and then they don't know what to do.
So I would just recommend strongly that, you know, people take a hard look at themselves
and realize that their identity is not wrapped up in their career.
Not to minimize the importance of being a firefighter police officer or that, you know,
being a Los Angeles police officer.
It's just that that doesn't that doesn't make you who you are.
And I try to tell people that.
Now, a lot of my clients, you know, once this happens, like I thought we were family here
and they're being treated this way.
And I got to, you know, kind of bring them back.
This is a little bit outside my job as a lawyer.
But you know, my job is to protect you legally.
But I'll tell you, you know, take a hard look at really, really what life is all about.
It's not about your career.
Even me as a lawyer, you know, I love to do what I'm doing.
I feel it's my calling.
But yeah, you're right.
It is jarring.
And I just try to draw them back to again, what is your what is your purpose in life?
Why are you here?
Well, we're really here to serve God.
We're here really to to recognize his divine purpose in our lives.
And it is to love and respect him.
And and that's that's probably the best direction I can give people, which, by the way, is the
reason why I usually try to end my conversations with people with, you know, God bless.
I try to draw people to, you know, the creator of the universe.
And then that helps them, I think, deal with these things that are on a lower, lower order.
Well, you mentioned the mandates.
So let's talk about that during a suit.
When this thing first swept across, I haven't met a person yet that didn't say at first
we were like, oh, shit, what is this thing?
But then shortly after that, a lot of people, especially in the health space, stood in the
middle were like, OK, this isn't as bad as everyone was saying.
And so through that next year and a half, two years, my whole stance was in the middle.
This is all about the health of the individual, the healthier you are, the more chance you
have of surviving the virus.
Or if you choose to opt for a vaccine, very different than being told, you know, that
again, your body would have a healthier immune response and create antibodies that may or
may not help you if you're exposed.
So the health of the nation was the truth that I stood on and was extremely disappointed
to see, as you talked about earlier with alcohol, that what people were told to do was the polar
opposite of how you make someone healthy.
You know, stay in your house, stay scared.
We'll tell you when you can come out.
You can have fast food and alcohol delivered to your home and just go watch the Tiger King
versus, you know, let's put P back in schools.
Let's get real food made in schools again.
Let's remove all the soda machines.
Let's give local farmers money to grow healthy organic food.
All the things that would make someone a nation healthier were completely disregarded.
So that was the the middle area of common sense that I stood through this.
Then the vaccines came through.
I had friends that worked in in hospital settings that said the vaccines seem to be helping.
So OK, there seems to be some sort of symptom reduction, possibly of people who are already
sick.
All right.
Well, great.
That's a that's a good thing to know.
But then the very men and women that held the line while we were all hiding in our houses
are now being told you're going to be terminated because you're a selfish murderer if you don't
take this vaccine.
And I literally just interviewed an L.A. firefighter just in November.
No, no, I interviewed him in January.
He was terminated in November of twenty twenty four.
So to me, that was a complete abuse of power based on zero science.
And as we know now, not only was the vaccine pretty much a flip of a coin, whether it is
even going to help you or not now, even the the six foot and the masks, which anyone in
the health space knew was absolute bullshit from the beginning.
Now people are putting their hands up because they're being forced to and going, OK, this
was I kind of made this shit up.
So I was just furious, the fact that people that served so selflessly were now being terminated
for something that was completely unjust.
So walk me through that's a big monologue of my my perception.
But walk me through the pandemic through your eyes and then what you started seeing was
happening to your men and women.
Yeah.
Thank you, James.
It's become actually a big part of my practice for this last three and a half years now.
So what happened?
I'm sorry.
August twenty twenty one.
So that's actually two and a half years, I believe.
Right.
Is that the math is correct.
Yeah.
So I just put foundation.
I was never really a you know, I never had any really strong anti vaccine opinions, although
that term also has and I know you I'm sure you know this has has changed because the
time in August of twenty twenty one, the term vaccine referred to a dead or deadened version
of the virus, not messenger RNA treatment, which is again a different technology, it's
a different biotechnology, not that it's invalid.
I'm saying it's different.
And so, you know, as a lawyer, I want to make sure we use the right words.
So at the time, I you know, I remember in the 80s and 90s, people talking about the
vaccines, that other type of the dead and deadened version and some of the, you know,
preservative issues and the taint and mercury.
And, you know, I just was never really that close to tracking those issues.
It just wasn't on my radar, especially since I was, you know, again, in police work at
the time.
But I remember hearing some of these Senate hearings.
And then there were connections to the different syndromes that young kids were starting to
experience who were being vaccinated, maybe over vaccinated or some some allegations.
But James, that was not something that I was really getting drawn into at the time.
It was it was adjacent to the issues I dealt with.
But in August of 2021, I actually had and I'm not going to give names here as far as
this park was, but actually was getting referrals from from our union for options that were
going, hey, you know, what's going on with this?
What are we supposed to do?
And just I know, you know this, and I'm sure all your listeners will remember this history.
If you go back to the very early part of 2020, in fact, January, February of 2020, that's
when people are starting to say, wait a minute, what is this thing that's going on?
This this virus?
And by March, I think in fact, I think it was March 4th, if my memory serves me correctly,
2020 was when there was a declaration of an emergency in the sense that we have, at least
in Los Angeles, we have this problem here, we need to deal with it.
So we got March 2020.
Now fast forward to August of 2021.
This is what is that a year and a half plus, we have officers who are actually units, it's
almost a year and a half.
It's a good 16 months.
Right.
So pretty close to a year and a half.
Officers are working under conditions where there was no issue about the vaccine as far
as, hey, get this injection, go out there, handle your radio calls.
Yeah, you got to wear a mask, keep your distance, hear some wipes.
That was it.
And suddenly it's like throwing a switch.
Okay, wait a minute.
We're going to come up with this ordinance, which is fine, by the way, I get that.
But back to leadership, we play by the rules.
So you want to enact this law, then let's go through the process, which whether or not
they actually complied with the meet and confer requirements is a kind of a side discussion
here.
It was at least adjacent to the issues I was dealing with, but that wasn't really properly
what I was looking at.
But the questions I was getting, hey, can they do this?
I did some light research on the issue and it got kind of brushed aside and specifically
looking at the application of Jacobson.
But what I was looking at was, wait a minute, this is kind of emerging technology.
It's not at the time, again, it was not defined as a vaccine, but really let's put that aside.
Let's just look at the legal stuff.
What can the city do to in fact enforce or force is probably a better word, it's human
resources, the people to actually take this medical treatment, which is really experimental.
I mean, that's what it was and everybody knew at the time.
So I provided some of this very initial research and I thought, well, I can distinguish this
Jacobson issue and that kind of got put aside.
So within a month or two, I'm getting, because by the time officers come to me, it's already
a train wreck.
In other words, they're being sent to a board of rights.
I'm not involved in, was not for these cases at all, involved in any of the decisions that
were made prior to them being worked to board of rights.
And what happened here, James, was, and this is where I as a lawyer, this was a relatively
easy analysis.
You have an ordinance which was enacted.
It was actually codified in the Los Angeles administrative code, which, okay, they did
that and they being the council and the mayor, it is what it is.
And you have the labor code and you've got the government code.
As a lawyer, that's what I start with.
And now you have, okay, so what was the action that the officer did in conjunction with these
different provisions that actually sent them to board of rights?
Well, what it was, James, was this document that was called notice, and I'm paraphrasing
her a bit, but essentially notice regarding their requirements to comply with the COVID-19
vaccine.
In a nutshell, and that's a bit of a paraphrase, but it was this other document.
When you look at that, that document itself on its face, you don't have to be a lawyer
to figure this out, violated the labor code and it violated the ordinance itself.
Crystal clear violations.
So I don't even get to whether or not the vaccines are effective, whether or not the
vaccines at all, didn't even deal with any of that.
And when I went to these boards defending the officers, sadly, and I may not have my
opinions about why this happened, but I'm probably going to reserve on those opinions.
The boards, the tribunal is comprised of three individuals.
These happen to be what we call civilian boards.
So all three individuals are civilians, but they are in essence, they're at the direction
of the police commission.
They're selection process.
But in the end, they're essentially being kind of told, don't even worry about the labor
code.
Hey, these are emergency conditions.
Gosh, people are dying.
They're just dropping like flies.
So because of these emergency conditions, we can ignore, and I'm paraphrasing, we can
ignore the labor code.
We just got to do what we got to do and we'll deal with it later.
I got to tell you, James, that's not acceptable.
We weren't under martial law.
We don't suspend civil liberties.
We don't suspend the labor code.
We don't suspend even the ordinance itself.
The notice didn't even comply with the exact law that was purporting to create the need
for the vaccination requirement.
And that was the context.
Now, I had several boards, the very last one, because this over the course of about probably
about five or six months, the very last one, we finally prevailed.
I was able to get the board.
There was actually, well, we prevailed that one.
But everyone else, they were being sent to these boards and then they were terminated.
Now, this is a matter of public record.
What I'm going to tell you here is that these officers were looking for their remedy when
they're terminated, which would be a writ to superior court.
That's the normal appeal process from the administrative finding, which we did.
And we batted literally a thousand on those with one of the tentative rulings getting
flipped around because I was able to demonstrate later that there was a misrepresentation at
the hearing about evidence, which was simply not true.
We're going to get that corrected here in due course on the appeal.
But every one of the judges found that there were crystal clear Skelly violations, Skelly
in due process, Skelly being a case that essentially in California kind of breaks down what the
officers minimum due process rights are.
But they found, and using one judge's word, trampled.
They literally trampled on these officers' rights.
So when you get that level of literally disregard of what to say about leadership.
And unfortunately, the courts then looked at the case law.
And I respectfully think they misinterpreted this, that the remedy was simply give them
the back pay up until where they go to the board of rights.
So they're basically to give them six, seven, eight months worth of back pay.
But they're going to uphold determinations, which I think is a legal issue.
It's a very discrete, it's very easy.
I don't think the court of appeal, I'll be surprised if they don't correct this.
Because the proper remedy was reinstatement.
And it's particularly appropriate now.
I think it was always appropriate.
But now that we know we have a Ninth Circuit rule in which you're probably familiar with,
a relatively recent, where it's pretty clear that the Mesjarni treatments have very serious
consequences.
In fact, one of the comments in that opinion harkens back to the common law and actually
imposing medical treatments on people was considered a common law.
You know, the type of torus, type of battery.
And even the chief, Chief Moore, in the interim period, there was a podcast, he was interviewed
and he plainly admits, oh yeah, now we know after the fact that the vaccine, as he called
it, it's kind of like a flu shot.
So yeah, it doesn't affect transmission, but you know, still you should think about taking
it.
Well, wait a minute, if it doesn't affect transmission, in other words, getting the
jab doesn't change a person's ability to transmit, then what right would you have to impose it?
When that was precisely the reason why you were saying everyone had to be vaccinated,
it was to minimize the transmission when you have public safety folks going out there and
on radio calls or responding to fires and whatnot.
So yeah, reinstatement is what should happen.
To your point, I have clients, I mean, we're talking 27 year, 32 year veterans, stellar
career supervisors, no misconduct for the most part in terms of history.
And yet the department, or I should say the city, is just digging in and they're just
simply saying, yeah, you know what, figure it out in court.
Well, okay, as a lawyer, that's what I do.
I just think it's unfortunate.
And if there was some leadership, and especially now, the city just recently now is looking
at rescinding the ordinance.
And I believe that now it's actually taking effect, they've been talking about it for
months.
But why not just say, hey, look, we made a mistake, let's bring these folks back and
they're just simply not doing it.
So we're going to have to go through the whole process apparently.
And I think that that's just not the way to treat people.
And to your earlier point about the jarring effect, I think these folks are really jarred
by that.
And it gives me the opportunity to tell them, look, we're here by God's grace.
So I love the department, but that ain't what life's all about.
Just expanding on that for a second, this is what I've seen.
So we touched on before about if you work for a department for 10, 20, 30 years, how
that does become your tribe and part of your identity, but certainly your tribe.
And I was talking to a friend this morning, because we just had yet another suicide here
in central Florida.
And when you work in an organization, and we'll get to the leadership side again in
a second, but you wear the patch on your shoulder, you wear the badge on your chest, and you've
literally signed, as they say, a blank check that you will die for the men and women to
the left or right of you and all the people that you serve.
Not many professionals can say they do that.
That's what you do for this tribe.
And then that tribe turns around.
And like you said, it may not be the actual department, but that tribe, the city, the
county, whatever it is, turns around and cuts your legs from underneath you.
That is devastating to a first responder.
And I wonder how many that we've lost, because that kind of betrayal was the final straw
in their mental health struggle.
Yeah.
I remember even in the academy, an officer came through who I had the opportunity to
work with later, first name being Keith.
I won't use the last name, but distinctly remember him coming in and talking about these
dark times that he was experiencing.
And they were, this again, even in the 80s.
This is not a new problem for fire and police.
And he was talking about going into this closet and the pistol malfunctioning.
Thank God.
I would just say first and foremost, if anybody is ever experiencing that dark sense, that's
just demonic.
You got to remember that God put you here for a purpose.
And doing something like that, think about, if you can't draw your attention to the Lord,
just think about what you're doing to your family.
Somebody's going to be for sure at least one or two people, maybe more, are going to be
completely devastated.
And they're going to live with that guilt of thinking maybe they should have done something
intervene.
But it's just demonic.
So if you're feeling like you have to have these connections for your identity, that
again is the first problem.
I mentioned earlier about these relationships I have.
I keep in contact with partners.
I mentioned even my partner from Metro, my teacher from police role in government.
But that's a relationship.
It's independent from the Los Angeles Police Department.
Just so happens that I developed that relationship while with the Los Angeles Police Department.
But that's not inextricably woven in.
And you're going to have people that are going to fail you.
Unfortunately, when things go sideways, as they did here with this whole mandate thing,
you're going to have folks that are scrambling around doing what they think they need to
do to survive.
And that's disappointing.
But don't let that define again your value and your worth.
People I think when they come to that very, very dark demonic threshold, I think they
just lost the sense of their value.
And just cry out to the Lord, don't allow that to consume you.
It's interesting because my philosophy or my view on the suicide and how I view it has
evolved, you know, with all these conversations.
And you know, the old school way of thinking was, oh, it's cowardly, it's selfish, you
know, think of your family.
But what I've realized now hearing so many testimonies from people just like you spoke
about, people that literally were there about to and a phone call or something just stopped
him or, you know, on occasion, a malfunction.
And then some people that went through with it and survived their suicide attempt is there's
such a miswiring of the brain through the perfect storm of, you know, unaddressed childhood
trauma, you know, sleep deprivation, the horrific calls that we see, organizational betrayal,
you know, it's a whole bunch of side effects from psych meds, you name it.
And so there's a miswiring of the brain.
And you could argue if you want to put it in a religious point of view, the devil regains
strength.
And so that voice is telling you to live and be there for your family is now completely
distorted.
And your reality is, I hear this so often, you're a burden to your family.
They would be better off if you weren't here.
That's the voice that the devil's whispering in their ear.
And it's so sad because the average, you know, the healthy person goes, that's so selfish,
why would they do that?
That person, ironically, at that moment is being selfless and courageous because their
reality is I'm going to do that same blank check.
I'm going to do that for my family because I am the problem.
And so that needs to be front and center of the mental health conversation.
If you're a miswired brain, if the devil is whispering in your ear that you're a burden,
that is when you need to ask for help, whether it's, you know, your deity, whether it's counseling,
whatever your thing is, because your reality is so distorted that you believe that you
are the problem.
And there's a terrifying place to be.
Yeah, I know.
I agree with you.
And by the way, I apologize.
I definitely did not want to come across as judging anybody in the, I think you definitely
summed it up very well there.
The miswiring of the brain and what part of our awareness and our makeup is, you know,
the wiring and the physical and what part is the metaphysical and the spiritual.
I got to tell you, I don't know.
I just don't.
And, you know, the Bible talks about, you know, the whole drug scene is there's a term
for me, I think is the Greek term, but and where James, those lines are and what causes
it, because I've talked to people, in fact, my work in Hollywood, many, many, many times
chatting with folks on the streets and they'll see things.
Or you mentioned sleep deprivation.
That's another really, which I've experienced because of work, you know, and it does cause
you to see things and people will use the term hallucinate, which is probably correct.
I just don't know.
But yeah, you're right.
I think that if they come to that point and I would characterize as devil whispering or
hey, you know, you're doing the craziest thing.
Your family would be better off without you.
Well, that's a lie.
Devil's a liar.
And if that's happening because of, you know, the acid that the person dropped or whatever,
you know, they're so, you know, a drug from some other kind of drug or alcohol, whatever
it is.
Yeah, I think that if they can remember that they need help.
Yeah, I agree with that.
And we do have to take a look at the resource that are available.
Now LAPD does, I think, have the resources, BSS.
And there are, in fact, I have a number of colleagues that are with the Chaplain Corps.
So they're there.
The problem is when people get to that point where they're at that threshold, you know,
they need to seek help before that.
If people are starting to struggle with their identity and back to your point, I feel betrayed.
Hey, my partner's at this unit.
I was going through this border riots or whatever and I've seen officers, you know, that experienced
that.
I feel betrayed because they turned their back on me or we used to hang out.
Now they treat me like I'm a pariah.
That's when you need to start reaching out before you find yourself in that dark corner
in your room.
Yeah.
Well going back to something else you said as well, we made a mistake.
The power of the humility to say we did the best of what we did at that moment, but now
we realize that it was wrong.
I see it in the fire service, lack of it in the fire service.
Like I'm on this hell bent mission to change the way the firefighters are worked.
I mean, law enforcement usually is a 40-ish hour a week.
Firefighters are 56.
It's fucking insanity.
And yet to get people to just take a step back and go, I don't know how we got away
with it for so long, but it needs to change.
You know, it's such a hard push.
The same with the pandemic.
You know, like I said, there was one truth.
Let's make whatever country you're living in healthier.
That way, whatever the next virus is, whether you call it Steve or Barbara or whatever the
fuck you want to call it this time, that you're a more resilient person mentally and physically.
But that was completely disregarded, which this whole trust the science thing.
I've been in medicine most of my life that wasn't science that they were telling us.
And then, you know, if it's a thing about it, it's about health.
It wasn't because the obesity has only got worse and worse and worse.
So you never gave a shit about the nation's health.
What is the resistance to actually saying we made a mistake?
Here's the things we should have done.
Here's what we're going to do to rectify it.
I'm going to have to turn back to the Bible.
The first sin is pride.
And that's the reality.
And that's I think, you know, people want to be judgmental of command staff.
You know, that's I think I only is being judgmental by saying, look, you know, take a step back,
you know, leaders, you know, chief command staff or mayor and say, let's let's take a
hard look at this.
In fact, that that's what is preached at the academy.
You know, one of the things with discipline is, are you willing to admit that you made
a mistake?
That's one of the metrics that significant metric that's used, you know, is that recognizing
that you made a mistake.
So the tantrum question of resistance is is part of our fallen human condition.
We're prideful.
We have to be able to put that aside.
I deal with everybody deals with it really at different levels.
And Frank, frankly, that was, you know, sorry to keep harping on this, but that was that
was the devil's problem.
I read the book of Isaiah, you know, the five I wills, you know, his whole thing was to
to be God.
And we got to put pride aside if we really truly honestly want to make society, you know,
better and to advance.
Everyone has to be able to take a step back and say, you know what, you know, like in
this case, you know, looking at the mandate, we made a mistake.
And the other thing is we don't want to live in an echo chamber.
One of the things that was really, really spooky that they came out of this litigation,
James, was the revelation that the city really wanted to kind of identify folks that wouldn't
just kind of go along.
That was that was disappointing to hear.
Some of some of this and that was actually kind of part of the plan was to kind of, you
know, discover who wouldn't just go along with it.
When we say jump, you simply say how high instead of saying, well, wait a minute, this
is this is actually unlawful.
Law enforcement, which means I should call out something when it's not right.
But yeah, right.
We need we need to deal with it.
All of us do.
How do we stop the government overreach with this local government, state or national occurring
again and putting our frontline personnel in danger once again?
So that's multifaceted.
Again, looking at the brilliance of our founders in this country, the division, separation
of powers, any time you start allowing power to pull, you know, that that will tend to
hedge against the overreach.
And then the other thing is in this going to, you know, although I I've never really held
myself out as necessarily a union lawyer.
But the reality is we need collective bargaining units that are actually committed to doing
their job.
And the question might be not pointing finger to any particular collective bargaining unit,
but you know, where were they in this this whole adventure?
Some we're doing maybe a more effective job than others.
But but I think that's important.
And then also, just looking, I think even probably the most important thing is, is everybody
taking a hard look inside and make sure that we're not allowing ourselves to, you know,
take foreign leadership positions to misuse and abuse our powers.
I've called out unions a lot because I spent 14 years actually wearing the uniform.
The work we never changed.
There was never a fitness standard put in.
I'm like, what is it that you're doing?
Other unions, they have a standardized work week.
They have working conditions, you know, ocean lifeguards and special forces and all those
that they have all kinds of standards that they have to maintain.
And I work in these organizations that are opposing fitness standards and they're rebuking
a better work week because they're chasing, you know, a raise or I don't want to have
that because then then I'll lose my overtime, which is self-serving.
So I see first a lot of a lot of cowardice in and kind of self self-described leaders
in the fire service.
You know, there are I mean, I literally just found out that one of our firefighters died
literally yesterday or a couple of days ago, you know, and I don't understand how that
doesn't move people.
And whether you're in the administrative position, whether you're in the board of a city or a
county or whether you're in a union position, if you're not fighting tooth and nail for
your men and women, then you have no business being there.
And this cowardice, we have an absolute epidemic of cowardice and people are padding their
own career paths rather than actually serving the people in uniform.
Yeah, no, I agree.
Yeah, I've seen that directly.
And it's unfortunate.
But that's again, part of I think of the human condition and it goes back to the issue of
pride.
People are in our fallen state, we're self-seeking and people will go to these positions with
certain collective bargaining units, unions to advance some other political agenda that
happens.
Do I think they're all like that?
No.
My classmate, academy classmate was a president at our union, highly committed to doing the
right thing.
I deeply respect him.
But yeah, what we see here is it's not unique to any one organization.
It's not certainly unique to California or Florida.
It's I think nationwide for all police departments and fire departments.
As we sit and record this, I think it was yesterday, they announced that they arrested
one of the chiefs and an officer in the Uvalde massacre, for lack of a better word.
The last place I worked, the complacency was so nauseating and they protected arguably
the biggest target hazard in America.
And Uvalde to me is this is what will happen.
God forbid that happens on your home turf.
The lack of standards, the lack of reality and training, the lack of fitness standards,
I mean, it just goes on and on and on.
I think everyone in uniform that truly understands the job is just terrified of these certain
kinds of things happening, knowing that, don't get me wrong, there's lots of departments
out there that are fully prepared and ready and God forbid it happens, they'll respond
beautifully.
But when you work for an agency where you know that they're just cowering with their
fingers crossed, and we had a near miss in this department that I can say it because
it was a national story, the pulse shooter went to Disney Springs first, where I used
to work.
And that's where he would have massacred.
But there happened to be a police presence.
He ended up going back to his car, driving up to Orlando and then doing what he did.
And nothing was said in the department.
And I pull this out of the shadows because God forbid it happens, we need to be ready.
Now conversely, Anaheim, when I worked there, trained diligently and it would be the polar
opposite.
So Ovalde is just, the reason why it turns our stomach is because so many people look
in the mirror and go, that could be us.
That could be us.
So talk to me about your perspective of the wrong people rising to these positions where
they don't uphold training, they don't communicate with other cities and first responder agencies.
And you end up with that absolute nightmare where parents are basically watching their
children being massacred while police officers wait outside.
So yeah, James, wow.
I think the answer to the meat of the question there is people that tend to rise through
the ranks within police and fire tend to be people who just never really had to, they
always were avoiding having to make any decision that they could be faulted for.
Finding the way out where they can just do the minimum with regard to having to make
any hard decisions, but not really making a call.
I'm not saying all of them, again, I'm saying generally speaking.
So it's almost like there's very little risk to just simply not taking action or not standing
up for something.
And you're involved in a, well, like you talked about Rodney King, and you have people that
are maybe standing on the back of this group of officers not getting involved.
Well, that would validate their thought because, gee, all these officers were currently prosecuted.
So I was in the background, so I didn't have to be swept up in this.
So when they move up, when they take their promotional exams, they don't have to worry
about answering about, hey, tell me about this incident that went kind of poorly here.
And I think that's what explains how with Yuvaldi what happened there.
Again, I don't have personal knowledge, but I kind of infer that that's probably what
happened and led to this kind of prevailing notion that you can just sit there.
Yeah, let's just kind of, let's get a command post set up.
Let's make sure we have all the resources here.
And then just kind of wait.
And then by the way, if a parent tries to run in there to get their kid, no, we're going
to arrest that person because we can do that without worrying about getting shot or whatever.
I think that that's probably trying to get inside their brain.
I think that's probably what's going on is there's no downside and we'll just come in
and when the dust settles and we'll take reports.
But for my rapid response like a little group of officers, okay, you got the point, you
got the shotgun, you got the shield and let's go.
We got to save some lives here.
Yeah, that's kind of risky.
We don't want to do that because then we shoot the wrong person or whatever, then we're going
to be faulted.
I get that part, but there has to be, again, a benefit in risk assessment and they're just
not used to doing that for the most part.
I always point to the police officers that go into a burning car, break the windows with
their nightstick, climb in, drag the person out.
That's probably not in their training, but they do it because it's the right thing to
do.
Same as the fire service.
I've had, I'll be very honest, I've had many firefighters say, well, if there's a shooting
and I'm not going in, it's not what I'm paid to do.
I disagree completely.
No, I don't wear a sidearm.
No, we don't have a vest, but we are paid to save lives.
Sometimes it's going to be more dangerous than others.
It's not about rules and regs and what's written down.
It's far greater than that.
If you gave the parents whose children were in that classroom, do you think they would
falter for a second?
No, they would take your fucking shield and your gun and they would just go towards and
hope that it all panned out.
You're the ones who trained with body armor, with tactics, and you're too scared to go
and confront a child with a weapon.
This is the issue.
But if you've done nothing but say, I'm going to rise to the occasion and lean on that kind
of fallacy, then you're not.
You fall to your level of training.
If your level of training is complacency, then you end up with an elementary school
murdered and is unacceptable.
Yeah, yeah, it really is.
And I still remember, again, what I have, I don't have any inside knowledge on what
happened there.
But again, yeah, what you just said there is exactly correct.
I couldn't imagine if I was a parent, let alone a police officer, but I was a parent
there and had one of my kids in there.
Yeah, that's just, it's tragic.
It's unfortunate.
And frankly, it's avoidable.
Yeah.
Yeah, all we can do is we can learn from it.
It's already happened.
Those kids are already dead, but at least the rest of the country can now go, how can
we make sure it doesn't happen in our city or county?
Right.
Yeah.
And people will sometimes talk about other incidents where there was intervention and
things at a federal level, who's going back quite a ways in terms of history.
But people talk about the FBI trying to intervene there.
Waco was a little different there, but the whole situation.
Well, okay, we don't say, we're not suggesting you be foolhardy, but there has to be some
plan to intervene is when you have an active shooter.
And actually LAPD did a good job, I think, developing the techniques.
And we've always as a whole been good about trying to address these issues as an organization.
Do we still have that tendency for people at the command level to be risk adverse?
They try to avoid making decisions that they can be called out on.
Yeah, we do have that.
But I think that explains what happened there in Ubaldia, I believe.
Going back to the example I gave with in California cutting the roof, vertical ventilation, the
comment I'd get on the East Coast, oh, it's too dangerous.
And I'd say, all right, so let me get this straight.
You would rather put several companies of firefighters under this roof than one company
on the top to make a hole so it's safe for you all.
Think about that.
So sometimes these little fairy tales that we tell ourselves don't even make any sense.
But the answer is going to require more courage and more training and more diligence as a
department.
Then that's how you get the results that you need.
Yeah, that requires work.
You have to actually think.
Yeah, it's fascinating when talking to, I know it was not a firefighter, so I just all
of my, if you want to call it knowledge, a little I know about it, putting the wet stuff
on the red stuff, I suppose, is kind of the shorthand.
Yeah, it's fascinating.
The science that goes into what firefighters do.
Yeah, that example you just gave is exactly right.
You just look at the risk of deploying other resources.
And the reality is fire and police, there is inherent risk.
If you want to avoid all risk, just keep the police and fire folks at the station and once
the building is burned down and once the murders are done, we'll go out and take reports.
That's an easy way to avoid all risk.
Exactly.
All right.
Well, I want to go to some closing questions, but just before we do, when it comes to the
mandate issue and other legal matters in the law enforcement community, are there any other
areas you want to discuss before we move on?
So other than mandate and the legal issues, I just think that officers have been doing
the work that they've been doing for many, many years with protections in place that
I think have been misunderstood.
I would just say that if anybody is complaining about police officers having some level of
qualified immunity protections to their personnel files, I would just say that take a step back
and consider the chilling effect on police efforts to keep communities safe.
And we just need to make sure that we protect those confidences.
Case in point, pretty recently, there was a, in fact, at the Los Angeles DA's office,
there was a high ranking official there with that unit that supervises the prosecution
of police officers.
And they really, what was revealed in this unsealed affidavit just within the last day
or two was the use of confidential information.
So I would say if anybody thinks, well, that's great.
We should just essentially get access to all of officers' personnel files and take away
all their qualified immunity.
And forget being a police officer.
Just think about yourself being a citizen living in a community and then having police
officers that really are hired with no protections and how hesitant many of them are going to
be to take any type of action to protect you at three o'clock in the morning when you're
sleeping.
You really, it serves an interest for society to protect officers.
And frankly, that's what I do in my office.
My job, my mission, my call is to defend police officers, not to defend the bad apples per
se in the sense that I'm trying to keep officers on the job.
They shouldn't be there.
But the point is everyone has to play by the rules.
And if you want to get an officer out of that career, you need to play by the rules if that's
what you want to do.
So I would just say that that's a significant issue that I think people need to really consider.
Just one more area I want to slide in before the closing questions.
It's become apparent that firstly, there's clearly a national recruitment crisis in the
first responder professions.
On the fire side, specifically, as I mentioned, 56 hours a week, mandatory overtime, you're
talking 80 hours a week plus.
I think what is happening is firstly, you're losing people.
They're hanging up their bunker gear sooner than they may have.
But secondly, young recruits, they have all the information available now.
They can see the pay, the work week, the overtime, the impacts on marriages, all these kinds
of things.
They're going side by side with Amazon or whatever else they're looking at and going,
yeah, I don't think that sounds very good.
So for me, I think it's a beautiful opportunity for us to finally change the things that we
need to change.
Because when you have a thousand applicants and you get to take a hundred of that thousand,
arguably you're probably getting some pretty good candidates.
When you have a hundred applicants, so you have to take all of them, to me, you're just
making what we've discussed the last hour and a half even worse down the line.
What is your perspective on the law enforcement recruitment at the moment through your eyes?
And what are some of the issues facing your profession that we can change?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, you sound very well there with regard to the challenge.
The pool is diminishing pretty quickly and to the point about the way you asked earlier
about that sense of family that's being lost by the way officers are being treated by the
department and going back to this mandate issue.
When you have the organization not playing by the rules with regard to how the officers
are being disciplined.
They're not saying it's discipline.
They literally just changed the condition of employment as the way they framed it.
This is a new condition of employment unilaterally imposed.
If I was looking for a job and I was saying, let me go here to Los Angeles City, Los Angeles
Police Department.
Oh, wait a minute.
I get hired.
I've been hired for the best 20 some odd years of my life.
And then they say, hey, you got to take this experimental, whatever treatment.
And if you don't, you're fired.
Similarly terminated.
Or like you said, Amazon, I can go here or go to some other organization where they're
going to treat me at least with some level of dignity.
Why would I want to go work for this other company?
They don't adhere to labor code.
So it is creating a problem.
And by the way, this issue, James, I've actually raised it with some folks that I talked to
trying to convince them to do the right thing.
Falling on deaf ears at this point.
I hope somebody, I hope that changes, but I'm still praying it does.
But yeah, it's going to clearly affect.
People will look at the money and the pension and most police departments, I think in fire
departments, I think are still offering defined benefit pension plans, which is good.
And that's fine.
But if a person is going, wait a minute, how do they treat their people here?
There's only so much that, you might get people that will come on the both of the academy,
but there's only so much of that abuse that they're going to take and then they're going
to leave.
Or they're just simply going to just apply elsewhere.
So yeah, I think if the city looking at what's the benefit to the city with regard to these
mandate cases, make things right, treat people right, and then try and encourage them to
come on board for the reasons that would, people that you want to come to for the right
reasons.
They're coming here because they want to work for a organization that actually treats their
people right.
And what that causes, it caused these people to go out and treat people in the community
the right way.
I'll just throw this one last concept out.
Procedural justice gets thrown around a lot.
There's external procedural justice and there's internal procedural justice.
So you just mentioned, James, the challenges for recruitment.
That's a problem.
But if you treat people internally, the internal procedural justice with a lack of respect,
a lack of dignity, that translates into the way these same folks go out, firefighters
and police, treat people in the community.
That's the external procedural justice.
And it's just healthy for society to treat their police and firearm, frankly, all folks
that are working in government service.
It serves society's interest to treat them with dignity and respect.
One of the knee jerk responses I get to fixing the manning issue, the staffing issue in the
fire service is like, well, we can't hire people now.
And it's like, because yes, you can't because it gets what we just said, they look in at
what you're offering and they go and no, thank you.
But they also go, well, we don't have the money to hire more because you have to create
a D shift.
That would be a fourth shift.
And again, it's not an entire shift, you give away Kelly days or some vacation days or whatever.
So there would be a slight trade off.
But when you actually ask, well, how much do you pay on overtime every year?
Like my department where I'm sitting now, the county, it's millions at the moment covering
overtime.
So that alone, not counting workman's comp claims and medical disability and wrongful
death and then the line of duty death benefits.
But that being said, I don't know if you've got a kind of lens on this.
The one other thing that people don't talk about is lawsuits.
The medic pushes the wrong drug.
The fire engine hits a minivan and intersection the cop, you know, roughs someone up too much.
What are the dollar amounts of some of these lawsuits?
Because that in itself, again, is a preventative element if you've got a higher trained, more
well rested first responder.
Absolutely.
Oh, absolutely.
If you have people that are trained properly, again, in your area where again, they're pushing
the wrong drug or you have an officer who's just literally pushed himself or herself and
with regard to they're not getting sufficient sleep and the overtime has gotten kind of
crazy and then because of that, they don't really process what their proper options are
during use of force.
Yeah, those are very real numbers that the city or county or state or whatever agency
they're with needs to evaluate.
And those kinds of things are thrown out there, but it's a difficult analysis to make because
it's always like after the fact, okay, so yeah, we had to write a check for 13 and a
half million bucks for this guy who was shot and shouldn't have been shot or like you mentioned,
they're pushing the wrong drugs.
So now we're going to, we start doing the training.
Well, gee, that's not going to have any real impact on the organization for months if we're
fortunate, probably years.
So then you have people that have come in, they'll be purveyors of certain training.
Is that really going to be effective?
Well, we're not going to know.
Not for months or years.
And then trying to change culture is very difficult.
We've always done things a certain way here with regard to like you were saying, the overtime.
And I'm sure you have folks like with the fire department who are used to getting those
large overtime checks, right?
And then, you know, well, that's just kind of the way we've always done things.
So yeah, but we want you to be well, you know, better rested.
Oh, I want the money, you know, you have those issues.
And how much, you know, the collective bargaining units, the unions, are they on board with
making these changes to make sure that their folks are better rested?
It's difficult.
It is a very, very difficult multifaceted problem.
With the money, because obviously economically, yeah, if you work more and more money, you
know, you're going to make, you know, if you work more rounds, you're going to make more
money.
You know, if you want to make even more, then go be a prostitute on the side and you can
make even more money.
There's a certain line where the money ceases to be the biggest thing in your life.
But what I always tell people is that right now in the fire schedule, you've got 24 72.
So you've got two days because it's not that second day isn't a day off.
You work eight hours by that point.
So you've got two days off.
You became a lawyer.
There are 1000 other things that a first responder can do to also make money, a passion project
that not only will create a side income where they still get to go to bed every night, which
is super important.
But secondly, whether it's after five years or 35 years, when they finally decide to pack
it in or they get fired or whatever happens, now you've got this other thing that you can
transition to.
Now you've got this other tribe that you already feel like you belong to.
So wanting all your money to come from overtime at the fire service is is wrong in so many
different ways.
Firstly, you should only be working a 42 hour week, full stop.
You know, you go to a bank and say, yeah, you're gonna be working 56 hours a week and
you're not sleeping every third day.
Every applicant walk out the back door or the front door, they wouldn't let him out
the back.
But you know, so we've created this complete fallacy that this is kind of, you know, golden
goose, but it's the expense of so many people that we bury.
So even on the money point of view, you need more money.
That's great.
You know, you love carpentry or you're a landscaper or whatever it is, then go and do that on the
side on your days off because you're going to be glad that you're not riding a rescue
or stuck in a fire station for another 24 hours when you actually start doing it.
So every single pushback that I've seen, there is a perfectly logical explanation.
You've just got to drag someone far enough away so they can actually see the indoctrination
that they grew up in.
Yeah, I, yeah, and it's again, I don't want to, I would never impose my life plan on somebody
else, but I distinctly remember in fact one in particular individual who was, you know,
just pushing this, I won't even be gender specific, it's this person's self with regard
to overtime.
So if a person really feels, you know, that they need, like you said, more money, there
are other things they can do, but the reality is as a template, yeah, you're right, 56 hours
a week.
I mean, how sustainable is that?
And you know, with old officers, I distinctly remember like during the riots how, you know,
working the crazy hours that we were at the time and other times, but that's the one that
comes to mind where you have the sleep deprivation issues.
It's just not healthy, but having it like, this is how we do things, 56 hours across
the board, defaulting to that, it would be good if somebody would take a hard look at
that and say, no, let's just, let's make this more doable so firefighters can have a more
reasonable expectation of having a life.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
All right.
To the closing questions then, the first one I love to ask, is there a book or are there
books that you love to recommend?
They can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated.
So the first book, I think the perfect source of wisdom is in fact the Bible.
That's something that I think people will have it sitting on their shelf, but you know,
cracking it open and reading it literally on a daily basis, not just on a daily basis,
but actually on an as needed basis, I think is probably the best source of wisdom, getting
it like literally directly from the creator of the universe.
Another book that I just recently have kind of gotten back into was Common Sense, Thomas
Payne.
I think that looking at the current situation we're in right now, case in point, just kind
of confronting situations that are just not right.
He deals primarily with tyranny and pushback on tyranny, but I think it speaks to the larger
issue of just simply speaking out.
Those are the first two books that come to mind.
Brilliant.
Next up, we have a couple films and documentaries.
Oh, thank you.
Yes.
Judgment in Nuremberg.
Wow.
If you have, I've got a couple.
Judgment in Nuremberg is one if you have ever had, and you can buy the, this is free stuff
and I like free by the way.
So it's on, if you can't find it, shoot me an email, but you can find it online and it
is.
In fact, William Shatner, Captain Kirk, he has a little, it's more than a cameo, but
it's not a cameo, but he has a bit part because this is before he was really known.
But it deals with the trial of the judges and their failures to honor natural law essentially,
and again, that's my paraphrase, but beautiful, beautiful.
Kind of a docudrama, but if you actually look at the transcripts from many of these proceedings,
pretty close to, they tried to stay, I think, close to what actually occurred.
And the other one is Justice for All, which is a late 70s movie that deals with essentially
the abuse of power by the judicial system, which again can happen with any, I don't want
to badmouth judges, I'm definitely not doing that.
You have attorneys that abuse their position, you have cops, firefighters, but that particular
movie dealt with the judge.
Brilliant.
All right.
Well, then the next question, is there a person that you recommend to come on this podcast
as a guest to speak to the first responders, military and associated professions of the
world?
Yeah, well, I'm assuming you already had George Ryan.
Yes.
Yeah, I was supposed to do another one.
I think I'm just waiting for the right time.
I know he's got all kinds of stuff going on, but yeah, I hope they'll get him back on again
one day.
This guy's going to kill me, but I'm going to put him out there.
Tyler Eisen.
Yeah, if you can get him on, you will benefit greatly from his insight and thoughts.
Interesting, very interesting guy.
Love him dearly.
And my academy classmate, I think he will provide some really good insights in these
issues we talked about.
Brilliant.
Yeah, if you're able to help me make the connection, that would be amazing.
We'll see if we can try.
I'll twist his arm.
Perfect.
All right.
Well, then the last question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you, what
do you do to decompress?
Kayak.
In fact, you probably can't see behind me, but the river is out there.
And like I said, I came to help facilitate my daughter's property acquisition.
So if I can get out there for about an hour, I love doing that.
And obviously, first and foremost, praying and spending some time reading God's word
is probably the most valuable for true decompression.
But physically, kayaking does it for me.
Brilliant.
All right.
So if people listening want to reach out to you, where are the best places online?
I do have a website, which by the way, it's kind of embarrassing.
We've had it up for probably, oh, I guess, 12, 13 years, but it's very plain.
You can shoot me an email and I'm on the, again, I've got the website, but my email
address is my first name, Greg, at Greg Yacoubian Law.
So it's the first name, first name, last name, but just add law.com.
And email is probably the best way to make initial contact.
And yeah, I'm always available to chat about public safety, defense.
That's what I love to do.
Brilliant.
Well, Greg, I want to say thank you so much.
It's been, as always, such a great conversation.
We've been all over the place, you know, unpacking some of the more notorious moments in LAPD.
But then, you know, as you said, some of the powerful sides as well.
But I think this element with the mandates and just, again, standing on the other side
and looking back and going, okay, what did we learn?
What can we change?
You know, that's such an important conversation.
Brushing it under the rug, saying, oh, let's just pretend it never happened is the worst
thing you can do.
Just like, as I mentioned, you know, the near miss at Disney Springs.
So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time today and coming on
Behind the Shield podcast.
Thank you, James.
God bless you so much for the work you're doing.