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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week is my absolute honor to welcome on the
show veteran law enforcement officer and the man behind my arena, Travis Gribble.
Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from his journey into law enforcement,
his officer involved shooting, the horrendous child abuse case that began the downward spiral
of his own mental health, the struggle well program, the dangers of finding a bad therapist,
EMDR, his post-traumatic growth story and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and
leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of almost a thousand 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 that being said, I introduce to you Travis Gribble.
Enjoy.
Well Travis, I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time and coming
on the behind the shield podcast today.
It is my pleasure.
I do my best not to turn down any of these opportunities, just to have as many people
try to hear the message that we're trying to get across.
So yeah, it's a privilege to be here.
Thank you, buddy.
Absolutely.
And I wish I could thank someone who connected us, but I want to say your name has come up
several times.
So it would be multiple people.
So I'm off the hook, I think.
Right on.
All right.
Well, very first question, where on planet earth are we finding you today?
So I am in beautiful Montana.
I live up in the mountains, about a 900 person town.
I moved here after I retired from law enforcement out of Mesa PD in Arizona.
So got 14 acres up here, a very small little house that we built and just loving life up
in the mountains.
Brilliant.
Well, I know that you weren't born there, so let's start at the very beginning of your
timeline.
Tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings?
For sure.
Yeah, so I grew up in Michigan.
I was actually born in Missouri, but only lived there for a few months, so I have no
recollection of that.
But yeah, I grew up in the Michigan area.
My father was actually a minister for a certain denomination of church.
But some things happened there.
And as I was pretty young, he was not in my life a whole lot because at an early age,
he exited and it was just kind of off again, on again type of relationship, quite frankly,
until he died just a few years ago.
So but yeah, I grew up, you know, my mom was the one that raised me pretty much full time.
You know, I would say lower middle class at best, just didn't have a whole lot, but I
was very involved in sports, baseball and football.
Did that my mom and I, you know, we did what we had to do to, you know, to survive and
just, you know, be together and I guess get me out of the house and, you know, forward
towards adulthood.
So but very good memories.
Grew up in a small town.
I was not too far away from Lansing, Michigan, which is a big, you know, the capital of Michigan.
So had that around me, but the area I grew up in was a smaller town.
Having that experience with your dad and him coming from that certain religion, did that
jade your experience with faith when you were younger?
Absolutely.
Yeah, it definitely did.
And I wouldn't say just being younger throughout my whole life.
I guess it's been something that, man, I couldn't even give you an age, but you know, after
quite a bit of maturity, understanding, you know, that I need to come up with my own beliefs
and how I felt about everything versus this is just what you were raised in and this is
what you think about.
So which I think is good for everyone.
Everyone has to have those, you know, those, this is going to sound weird, but come to
Jesus moments to where, hey, is this just what everyone else told me or is this actually
what I believe?
So and then I would say throughout my entire professional career, there was a lot of questions
at times just from the standpoint of seeing all the evil that I was seeing in the world,
trying to make sense of all that and how it all plays in.
But I would say now I'm probably the most comfortable I have ever been with my beliefs
and thoughts on that.
Josh Brolin shared a quote this morning.
I forget who it was from, but and I'm going to have to paraphrase because I got a mind
like a colander, but it was something like make your own Bible and include the words
that you hear as loud as the two of a trumpet or something like that.
But that whole concept I've heard a few people talk about and that's what I've done is, you
know, there's elements of Buddhism, elements of Christianity, whatever it is, elements
of, you know, just wisdom that you heard from regular, you know, mortals like ourselves
and you're like, that's, that's my collation.
And the same way as I'm going to get into it, your toolbox to help you with your physical
health or your mental health is everyone's is different.
This is my own personal opinion.
I think it's the same with faith.
And so to be told, oh no, you just have to listen to the way I interpret this holy book
in my church.
And if you don't, then you're going to hell.
I think that that might do harm to some people rather than good.
I would agree.
I would say, you know, my wife and I are very much aligned in this, probably organized religion
of current times is probably done more damage than good just because, you know, a lot of
hypocrisy and are you just following the leader and not really taking time to think.
And that's, that's a place where we've come to where, yeah, we, we definitely have our
faith and we follow, you know, what her and I feel that's important.
And with, I mean, we do, you know, follow some of the things obviously of the Bible
and, but I think it's definitely, I think there's too much of like shoving down your
throat.
This is what you have to believe.
And if you don't, this is going to be the consequence.
I think it needs to be a more individual setting and spiritual setting of where you just really
have to have good thought process of what this all means to you.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's also, it's like you said, a hypocrisy.
What I'm seeing from the outside looking in is, for example, we are a very faith based
country supposedly, but then people will walk out of their churches or synagogues or temples
and then be like, yeah, but I want these homeless people to move out of my jurisdiction and we're
wasting, you know, Narcan on these addicts and, you know, look at these funds and these
hookers on the streets.
I'm like, if the, your prophet, whatever religion was, was out in these streets, I don't think
they'd be so judgmental.
And then to put it on other communities, I mean, how many gang bangers have got, you
know, fricking all the religious icons all over them and then they're out murdering people.
So I think the hypocrisy of man's interpretation of what I would argue, the tenants of these
religions are actually good.
That is the problem, not so much the original religions themselves.
Yeah, agree.
It's definitely, yeah, you talk about the homeless crisis or anything, you know, drug
abusers.
I have, you know, my older son has struggled with addiction.
So that's been a new thing that I've had to open my eyes to.
But I mean, if, yeah, if you've, anyone has read anything about the Bible, you know, Jesus
was kicking it with, you know, the prostitutes and all that stuff.
But I think we've lost sight in that where there's two, not that we don't all have personal
responsibility to make sure, you know, we are taking care of our own lives and making
steps to get better.
I believe in that as well, but definitely having the empathy and the grace that we need
to have to work together as human beings, human beings could be something we could all
do a little bit better on.
Yeah.
Well, I think the other side, because I hear the ownership all the time.
Well, if they just, you know, it's the thing that we hear in our profession, if you just
get up at five o'clock and then go for a run and eat salads and have an ice bath, you can
be as awesome as me.
And it's like, well, you know, I grew up on a farm and talk about this a lot.
So I grew up and it was, it was bred into me to be outside, to be cold, to be dirty,
to be hungry sometimes, to get food from the garden, you know, to understand that that
sheep that you loved is going to be on the dinner table, you know, a few weeks later.
That's not fair for me then to look at someone who lives in the inner city and the bodega
is their local place of nutrition and go, Oh, why don't you just get up and, you know,
run five miles every day?
So the environment that either creates addiction or opposes addiction is equally as important
in the conversation as the ownership of the individual.
100%.
Yeah.
And like I said, I learned that with my son, I didn't understand addiction a whole lot,
you know, at times, you know, you think you can, you know, punish things out of people,
but just taking a step back and understand all the environment and how much it all has
to play is definitely something we could all, you know, we need to do more of.
So when you were in the school age, were you already dreaming of law enforcement or was
there something else in your mind?
You know, yeah, obviously that's a common question.
Everyone wants to know, you know, how did you get involved?
So if you had asked my mom today, she would say, you know, I didn't have any police officers
in my family.
I remember, you know, interesting enough, a couple of police officers in the churches
that we went to that were guys that I, I don't know, you just kind of looked up to them for
say.
And then when I was about, I think, yeah, I was already, already 18 or maybe just 17
still.
My mom and I lived in an apartment in this small town and I would see a police car pull
into our building.
And I find I quickly caught on.
It was a guy coming home for dinner on a swing shift to have dinner at his house because
he lived and worked in the area.
And so one day we struck up a conversation and I was, he probably could tell that I was
somewhat interested.
And he said, why don't you do a ride along with me?
And so I did.
And I can distinctly remember that first ride along, like the hooks got into me and I was
like, okay, this is what I want to do.
Not that I, I mean, I had obviously no idea what exactly that meant.
But most of it was just the attraction to the, the excitement of that night and like,
okay, I think I can do this because I don't want to sit behind a desk.
You know, I want to be out there, you know, and I wanted to chase bad guys quite frankly.
And so, yeah, they definitely got the hooks into me.
Now we're going to go on to talk about mental health as we progress through your story.
One thing that really just rose to the surface after almost a thousand interviews now, when
it came to mental health in the uniform professions was the massive element of early childhood
experiences on our ability to be resilient.
And I mean, I'm not saying you're not resilient if you had issues, but you look at it as a
foundation.
If you had early childhood experiences and you've processed them, whatever that looks
like your foundation, I would argue would be pretty strong.
That is resilience.
If it's been buried down, like so many of us do, then arguably there's, there's cracks
in the foundation before you ever even pin that badge onto your chest.
So when you look back now with this mature lens, were there any elements of your early
years that you contribute that contributed to later struggles?
You know, James, I could, I could probably on both ends of the spectrum say, you know,
it affected me in two things.
Number one, I would say I was pretty resilient because, you know, I went through a bunch
of difficult times with, you know, not having a dad around those types of things.
But then on the other hand, we were real good as a family of stuffing everything down.
We're just not going to talk about it.
And this is what we do.
And we put on a show for everybody else, you know, cause we don't want anyone to know that
we're having problems.
And so I can see now again, I tell people when I go around to speak, I have the luxury
of really looking in that rear view mirror and analyzing, you know, what, how, what happened
during my career.
But I can look back now and see like, yeah, we did.
I never learned that it was good to, you know, we need to address these things.
It was just stuff it down, put on a good face and keep marching forward.
And then, you know, what goes in our professions, like when you roll right into that same sort
of culture that can just, I mean, it just makes the stack even heavier of, you know,
just keep stuffing down.
This is what I learned in childhood.
This is what my profession's saying.
This must be the way.
And we obviously know that is not good to be doing.
What were some of the things you think from the early life were negative influences of
it, for example, more often than not, if it's a foster child or an adopted child or someone's
whose mother father both left them, that feeling of abandonment on its own can be, you know,
why wasn't I good enough?
So what, what was some of the elements when you look back and analyze now,
Man, you're getting real deep on me now.
Yeah.
Cause I did just come back for the couple of weeks ago from a place through Boulder Crest
Foundation and it was a retreat where I was a participant.
I was not, I was not there at official capacity.
I was working on Travis and we dove deep into childhood stuff.
And part of that was addressing that, you know, Travis is enough, no matter what, like
Travis, you're enough.
And it was, it was a, it was an experience.
It was a good experience, but I tell you, even though, you know, I've been doing it
working and advocating for mental health now for a couple over a few years now that this
was an aspect that I had really not dove into as much as I should have.
But I can see now how very important it was to just analyze that, understand how it affected
you and not even to be focusing on the negative, but be focusing on how did all these experiences
shape me today and who I am and understanding how that can be a source of strength instead
of just like, why me?
So very important.
Beautiful.
Well, I listened to you on the Cleared Heart podcast, the first one you did with Andy.
And I, so I heard you talk about your, your first day in law enforcement.
So let's walk through that.
Talk to me about the decision to enter that profession, your academy experience, and let's
go to your first day.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So I started in 1996 and back when I was entering the profession, you know, nowadays is complete.
It's just so different to where you see departments hiring someone prior and then they, they sponsor
you through the academy.
So they're paying for your academy.
Back when I was going through, that just wasn't the case.
It wasn't happening a lot.
So the, the path was you go to community college and you were working towards an associate's
degree in criminal justice.
And then the last six months of that two year degree, you're actually in the police academy.
So now you enter into the police academy and you finish your final credits.
So then a graduation of the academy, you are now you have, you're called certifiable in
the state of Michigan, meaning you're ready to be certified as police officer.
And you have that associate's degree.
And it was a, you know, I know there's some community colleges where the, you know, the
people, it's only a couple of days a week and it lasts a lot longer, but mine was a
40 plus hour a week.
We had to report every single morning.
We didn't stay overnight, you know, had it's, you know, PT in the morning, you know, bust
your ass to get showered up, get in your uniforms, inspections, and then you start all the training,
you know, whether it's classroom or practical exercises.
So that was, that was the beginning.
Again, I had no job lined up.
It was just going to be when you get out, you are looking for employment and they're
in Michigan.
There's a lot of little, you know, like that is in many states, but a lot of very small
police departments, township departments, village departments, and they would come to
the academy to recruit part-time officers just to get a job.
So then my licensing is locked in.
And so this department, one square mile town, like literally the whole town is one square
mile comes into our academy and they're recruiting and they offered me a part-time job.
I was going to make $6 an hour to start.
And I took the job just to get everything locked in.
And that, that was the beginning.
It was chasing the money.
Yeah.
Chasing the money.
I mean, you know, people ask him like back then I probably would have done it for free,
but you think about $6 an hour, that is just, it's something, obviously no benefits.
And so I stayed there for a very short time and then got picked up by a larger sheriff's
department, but still very small compared to where I went to a rural sheriff's department
in Michigan, just between Lansing, Michigan and Grand Rapids.
And I worked for Ionia County Sheriff's Office and we had 15 people on the road.
I think when I left to Ladder-LaMesa.
So I worked there, worked my way through patrol.
I got involved with, this is where I got the itch for, I guess the SWAT world.
And we were actually myself and another officer or actually other sergeant, because I did
promote the sergeant there, were tasked with standing up some sort of containment type
team that until the state police actual SWAT team could get there, we could lock down a
house if something was happening or something like that.
So that's where I got the itch.
But I will tell you, James, all through my career there, I always had the itch to go
work big city.
I, you know, as silly as this may sounds, I grew up watching cops on Saturday night.
In fact, I joke about my buddies and I, even if we were going on on Saturday night, I was
like, yep, we can't leave until cops is over.
And we would watch that.
So I had an itch for big city.
And so in 2007, finally, I said either I'm going to do it or I'm just pushing that dream
away.
And so I found Mesa Police Department in Arizona and decided to throw my hat in the ring.
And thankfully, they picked me up and I ended up moving with my first wife and two boys.
We moved across the country to go to Mesa, Arizona.
Have you watched cops recently?
In fact, the other day, my wife and I, because there's some old ones on and we were watching
just to have kind of some background noise on the TV, we were doing stuff and I've forgotten
how how it is.
But yes, I have watched some of them.
I haven't watched any brand new ones.
Because when I think back to it, you know, you'd have these car chases that would go
into foot pursuit and then they'd end up with a tiny bit of marijuana and they'd hook them
up and rough them up a little bit.
And then you look at it with a 2024 lens and you're like, oh, it wasn't a good idea back
then.
Oh, and I still I mean, it's funny because I have one of my sons, my youngest is he's
talked about going into law enforcement.
And we talked about cops and I said, have you ever watched that?
Don't be watching it for training because you do see a lot of things on there like I
don't even think that's legal what you guys are doing right now.
But cool, it's on video now.
I don't know.
So it's just funny to watch some of that stuff, but you have to take it with a grain of salt.
Absolutely.
Well, I'm learning from it.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Well, then talk to me about day one of the part time department and then talk to me as
well about the dynamic because this is one of the things baffling to me that the volunteer
fire service has a place in a very, very rural community.
You know, it's just it has to be.
But what I see, especially in the Northeast, is they rely on volunteers for suburban, you
know, densely populated areas.
So I think that volunteerism is being kind of abused on the fire side.
But you don't have volunteer police officers.
So there's either part time or career.
But I can imagine that there are still elements of that that are making it more dangerous
for those men and women as well.
So what was your first day like?
When you look back now with a whole law enforcement career under your belt, what were some of
the pros and the cons of the way they worked you at that point?
Yeah.
So my first day on that job, I specifically remember it.
I had already went in and got some uniforms.
They literally like, hey, search through this box, find some stuff that fits.
OK.
And so I got that and I show up on the first night and the chief's there and then there's
a sergeant.
So they're full time people.
They have a chief, a sergeant and an officer.
The other guy else is part time.
And they tossed me the keys and they said, this is the keys to the brand new Chevy Caprice
car.
Don't wreck it.
And then they said, here's our phone numbers.
If something goes wrong tonight, call us.
And that was it.
And I was patrolling the first night with no training.
And I'll be when you're a young kid, you're like that and like, man, I don't think this
is appropriate.
But hey, I'm here for it.
Like I'm ready.
It's day one.
I got the badge on.
And it was I'm going to tell you, it is not good.
We should not be doing that.
However, it did cause me to quickly learn how to deal with people on my own, the responsibility,
all that stuff.
But not safe.
I would say that should never be done.
I don't even know if that still goes on.
It wouldn't surprise me if it does in some rural areas.
But then around there, it's just you're dealing with domestic violence and drunk driving all
the time.
That's like the two main things.
And it was funny because even I come in, I want to be a go getter.
And so I was arresting quite a few people for drunk driving.
And I remember I got a talk from the chief.
He called me and he said, hey, we need to talk before shift.
And I went and he said, you got to stop this.
And I'm like, what do you mean stop?
He's like, you're pissing off the town.
I'm like, okay, well, they're drunk.
And I quickly learned that was my first probably experience with politics of like, this is
small town and they don't want to be messed with.
And they think they're exempt to some of this stuff.
And obviously people who complained about me.
So it was a good, I mean, a good learning experience, for instance.
So yeah.
What is your philosophy on one officer to a car?
Because I've had a lot of people on here from, for example, you know, LA where they're riding
to to a car.
And I'm talking from a firefighter's perspective.
So no law enforcement experience whatsoever.
But when I think about as a fighter, the force multiplier of two people, whether they're
holding a weapon, whether they're just going hands on is more than two, you know, it argue
is like three by the time you have double.
So safer for the person they're arresting safer for the officers.
What is your lens on that kind of whole conversation?
Yeah, so obviously in a perfect world, I would have two man cars all over the place.
Now I understand, obviously, in a place where I was working, like if you take that small
place, I was the only officer on.
So that's impossible.
And then also even the sheriff's department that was in our area, or even where I went
to work at best on night shift, we'd maybe have three people until two in the morning.
But then from two to seven, it's one person and like we're splitting the county in half.
And then hopefully we get the state police now.
And we'll get there with my Mesa PD experience going to big city 900 person department 500,000
people.
In my opinion, every car should be two men because 99.9% of the calls were two man calls,
meaning they're sending a backup.
Now I have heard the argument from administrations to say, well, what happens then?
I don't know, let's say it's a homicide or a suicide and you guys have to stick around
there for a little bit.
You could definitely cut down to one officer and then the other one goes out and answer
calls.
But at the end of the day, like when we would measure out time and everything, it really
doesn't make a difference.
I think the reward far outweighs any like, oh, that call may take longer.
We lose two people to that call because you're right.
So many of our calls, we were going hands on or heaven forbid a weapon is produced.
I want backup there right with me.
And that two man car is gigantic.
And we went through periods of like, whether there was violence in our city, maybe just
during the protest of everything that happened from 2015 on all this different stuff.
And they'd be like, okay, the threat is high.
We're going two men.
And we'd say, yeah, we appreciate that, but why aren't we two men all the time?
It just makes sense.
And now when I ran my squads, though, there was definitely, I would put as many people
to man as I possibly could.
Like and say, if you guys want to go to man, I support it.
Let's do it.
Also understanding there's a lot of cops out there.
They don't like anybody else in their car and they want to be by themselves.
So that's just the nature of the beast.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's, you know, it's what's always been normal, you know?
So at some point you're going to have to push against the grain and change it.
You know, and there's fire departments that until recently ride two to an engine.
You can't get really anything safely done with two firefighters.
And there's an amazing documentary they did about probably 15 years ago now.
And this one guy who was thinking he was paid on call, so volunteer, but he drove an aerial,
a ladder truck to a fire where a woman and her child were hanging out of, I think it
was a third story building.
And because of the, the wires, he wasn't able to navigate the, get putting the main ladder
up and he didn't have the manpower to put up the kind of ground ladder that you would
need.
And so he's talking and you know, and then he says, you know, he has this woman screaming,
then he hears the stud and she's throwing her child from the window and the child dies
from the fall.
So when we have understaffing, when someone has said, Oh, we'll just keep doing what we
did a hundred years ago.
There's a certain point where you have to put your big boy pants on and say, look, times
have changed.
We can't keep doing this anymore.
It's actually worse for the people and it's worse for our offices of firefighters as well.
Yeah, no agree a hundred percent.
And I do, I mean, some of the stuff kind of goes into all the mental health stuff too,
as far as that's where I believe labor organizations and unions really need to be aggressively
pursuing these types of things and getting the community support by education.
Because most people don't understand even though they see our trucks or cars, right?
Roll by the engines, roll by, they don't understand what day to day operations look like.
And we definitely, it's, it's incumbent upon us.
And I would hope leadership to educate them and understand this is why we need these things
and let us, you know, just explain things a little bit differently or better.
Absolutely.
And I think the other thing as well is that, you know, a lot of times there's finger pointing
to the chiefs or admin or whatever term.
And like you said, the unions, you know, there are some phenomenal unions out there, but
I've sadly seen a lot that are self-serving.
For sure.
They don't want fitness standards because they know they won't pass it.
You know, they don't want to change the work week because they want to suck up the overtime,
you know, because they're on days and they get paid, you know, even more when they go
on shift, you know?
So if you're in those positions and what you're doing is only really serving you, then either
you need to change or you need to step aside and let a servant leader be in your position.
100%.
Yeah.
When I talk about mental health and organizations or unions getting involved, I get it because
you know, you know how it is, James, you come to this profession and you start feeling out
the unions, it becomes bred into us like we just want to make sure we get paid more and
our benefits are better.
Well, why wouldn't we start looking to taking care of our mental health better?
And in essence, like that's going to help you live longer.
It's going to, you won't need benefits as much.
It's all a part of it.
But you're right.
There are a lot of people that are very self-serving and they just want that next bump in pay or
whoever.
So yeah, we need to look at all aspects of that from a union perspective.
100%.
Well, I know that you had a pretty significant call in 2005.
Prior to that, before we get to that one, what was some of the other, you know, career
calls that you have, whether it was your part-time department or the county?
Well, first of all, I mean, you did, you know, I do want to say like people always wonder,
did you know, did in your academy, did they talked about mental health?
Was it part of your early career?
I can tell you absolutely nothing.
I definitely can remember very early on, like, this is just what we deal with.
This is who we are.
You know, even the words being used, we got to suck it up.
We got to keep pushing.
This is the, this is the path you have chosen and this is your profession.
So I had none of that.
And I can tell you, very interesting, that little teeny town.
So we think like, oh, nothing ever happens there.
The first significant call and it was within two weeks of me starting there.
So we were part of a larger county, of course, and they were so understaffed.
A lot of times if it was something right around our village, they would say, hey, can you
go out and check on this call and go from there?
I specifically remember we got this call and I was assigned to it.
They said, hey, can you go check this?
It was a one car accident on a dirt road.
And that's all we got.
A lot of times when that happens, it seems to be, you know, a drunk driving thing is
involved.
Like someone's intoxicated these one car accidents out in the middle of nowhere.
And so I went there and I remember rolling.
It was a dirt road coming around a curve and I could see, and this was, it was dark by
now, but I could see flames and I'm rolling up and I'm like, oh, this car is fully on
fire.
So I aggressively get out and like, Hey, what's going on?
I don't see anybody standing around.
And I approached to try to get as close as I can.
And all as I see is a figure in the driver's seat and they're just fully engulfed.
They're obviously already passed by now.
I will never forget the smell because I, I didn't know what it was at the time, but it
was burning flesh.
And that was probably my first experience of like, you know, the county deputy rolled
up and like, Oh, you know, you're making jokes about it.
And like, it just kind of gets brushed over and then that's the end of it.
And nobody ever talks about it again.
And if you had asked me, you know, a month after that, like, what do you think about
that?
Like, yes, you know, shitty call, or maybe I'd even blame them like real stupid ass,
whatever they're drunk or who knows what it was.
I can't remember that part of it, but you just make comments and you keep pushing through.
But I still to this day, because I try to stress importance, how the site smells, what
you touch step in all of it can last forever.
I still, when I throughout my career had smelled that I know exactly what it is.
And it takes me back to that call every single time.
I will never forget that day.
You know, it's not giving me, it's not one of those ones that keeps me up at night or
anything like that.
But it's one of those ones where that definitely put a print in my memory.
And as I again look in the rearview mirror now, holy shit, we should have been talking
about mental health way back then, you know.
So that was one significant and then man that probably throughout, you know, the early end
of my career, the suicides were something that I just, you know, I didn't talk about
suicide growing up, you didn't hear much about suicides.
And those significant ones of whether I knew the family because they lived in the area
where I worked and lived, you know, near me, you know, suicides that I knew people are
having to tell parents, yeah, their 18 year old son.
You know, he took his own life.
He's inside.
I'm sorry.
Hearing those just incredibly awful screams of a mom when you tell her that her son had
taken her own life.
Those are, you know, things that just weighed on me.
But I mean, James, anyone where I'm talking to, you got to understand where I am now is
vastly different than how I conducted my career because I bought into the culture of just
suck it up.
It's what we do.
And we don't talk about this shit.
And if you need to talk about it, you're a weaker person.
So I bought into that.
And so I became very, very calloused.
And even though it was wrecking me inside, that's just how I proceeded throughout my
career.
I had a really interesting experience just over a year ago.
I went back to England and we're literally on the in the plane on the tarmac, getting
ready to taxi to the runway.
And the last passenger has just come on all of a sudden, I don't hear a thump.
I got my headphones on, but people start turning around in front of me.
So I pulled my headphones off and that last guy just basically face planted and went full
cardiac arrest in the plane.
So you see in the films, you know, I saw after this, like a two weeks later, I saw the person
that went down in front of a plane full of cardiologists coming back from a conference
and they brought him back to life.
And you know, it was a beautiful reunion.
But when I'm there, I'm the fucking black cloud every time.
So not a single person was from the emergency background at all.
So I was trying to help.
There's a couple of people that had CPR classes that they were assisting, but trying to run
this code.
And then the London fire brigade gets on and they're helping me.
And then the poor, poor Virgin staff, they had to ask permission for every bag, the airway
bag, the defibrillator, every single one.
They had to go and ask, can I do this?
Can I do this?
So that took forever.
So I went and got some of the equipment in this tiny little, you know, aisle in a plane.
Then the paramedics show up.
I dragged the guy with one of the firefighters to the galley area.
I'm working the chest still while the medics is intubating now.
And then it got to the point where I realized, OK, I've got to change with someone, get fresh
hands on the chest.
So I stepped away and said, hey, do you need me anymore?
And they're like, no, no, we'll come find you in a bit.
Thank you.
So I went and washed my hands and this is five years after leaving the fire service,
washed my hands and sat back at the seat.
And I was like, that's just so weird because at the end of the call, you know, you're cleaning
your gear, you're talking to your partner, maybe the nurse or the doctor tells you what
was going on.
But no, I just went and sat back down, got the blood off my hands.
And then like a day or two later, it bothered me.
And I was like, what is going on?
And then I actually did a video about this.
I'm like, oh, shit.
So this is how it's supposed to feel when someone dies.
And it was such an epiphany because this was 20 years after becoming a firefighter by that
point.
And I realized just how, like you said, how dulled, how callous we become.
And I've always been in tune with my emotions, but that physical and mental reaction to a
death and that wasn't even a very grotesque death compared to many, many calls I've been
on.
That's what you're supposed to feel like.
And when you hold that next to how I used to be, which is clean your gear, restock
and go to the next one.
One of my calls, I had three deaths and three different people in one shift.
That compared to the plane, I was like, oh, that's how far we get from what the actual
physiological response is to one of these deaths.
Right.
No.
Yeah.
I would say and where I've experienced, I haven't had to go into old work mode since
I've been off.
But I say when I see things happen in society or you hear a story or read a story, I think
I've gained and part of this is because I've done a lot of work on myself.
I've gained that empathy back to where, holy shit, Travis, like you have feelings again.
And you're right.
Because you do, you become so callous and it's survival mode.
You know, because we're not taught in the profession how to deal with all this.
It's the only thing you can do.
Like I'm just going to get this rough exterior and try to become numb to the bullshit I have
to see every day.
So yeah, I can relate to that, man.
Absolutely.
So you talked about that one call as you progress through 2005, you have an officer involved
shooting.
So talk to me about that actual event.
And then was there a ripple effect from that one?
Yeah, for sure.
You know, and in the meantime, between that, I had two deputies I worked with.
They were both shot in the line of duty.
So I see as I look these things back, like very early on in my career, things are, you
know, they're starting to stack up, you know, and again, we have no outlet.
We don't talk about it.
But yeah, in 2005, I was going to a very simple, you know, we're going to pick up a kid on
a warrant arrest.
He had failed to appear for court after a drug driving charge.
And it's called a preliminary hearing in Michigan.
And he had not shown up.
So the county judge issues a warrant for his arrest.
And the deputy that I was working with that night, he actually even knew this kid.
And he said, Oh, yeah, we'll just go to this house.
It's going to be not a big deal.
We'll go, you know, get him hooked up and then taking him book him at the jail.
And so when we got there, we're in full uniforms, you know, fully marked patrol cars.
And the suspect that had the warrant, he comes to the door.
He was, you know, right away, I could tell he was not going to be incredibly cooperative.
And so my buddy is he's the face to face contact, really, it's called the contact officer with
the suspect and then I'm his cover officer.
So I'm back kind of bladed off, watching surroundings there to support him.
And I saw an individual come to a window looking out at us.
But he did not have what I would not a normal look.
He just it was a very blank stare, no emotion, no smile, no nothing.
And I even remember, you know, I was flicked my flashlight at him a little bit because
he was such a blank stare.
Like is he seeing us but we're right under a light like just something was off.
And you know, a short time later, he abruptly moved from that window.
And just a few seconds after that, about that time that door where this kid was not opening
all the way opened up and this individual was inside the house pointing a gun at us.
And he failed to drop the weapon and I had to shoot him and he ultimately died from his
wounds.
Again, you know, something that you prepare for but you or you think you do as far as
like training, I'm good with my firearm, I know about tactics, all these things.
But I can't even explain to you the feeling it is when you pull that trigger for the
first time and you're like, oh shit, here we go.
You know, remember him, the guy's name was Fred Blets, remembering him laying on the
floor and he had a white t shirt on and watching his t shirt fill up with blood because we
had multiple people in the house so we could not get in there right away to administer
care for him, you know, which is what we're required to do and which we should do.
So a lot went on.
My department, they hadn't had a lot of shootings where the officers were pulling the triggers.
Those two deputies had been shot but they never returned fire.
So it was a new thing for them.
The state police come out and investigate.
Our union comes out, the sheriff comes out, the sheriff, I remember, gave me a ride back
to the station and I don't think he knew what to do because him and I were, I would say
even friends even though he was my boss and just the conversation's weird.
And so, yeah, went through that part of it.
I was cleared pretty quick criminally.
However, a civil lawsuit, we were sued by the family, including myself and the other
deputy and the department and the county and that lawsuit went on for five years after
that before they had, you know, finally settled with the family.
The shitty part of it is, is that guy, I had actually met him a couple months ago, the
guy that I shot and killed, he was, he would go work out at a gym in the neighboring town
where I would go and he was known for being an advocate for Vietnam, still being, believing
there was prisoners of war in Vietnam.
And so he is advocating for their release.
And he suffered from severe PTSD to where he would take tons of Ambien to sleep.
He would, he was legally deaf and legally blind and that night he did not put his glasses
on, did not have his hearing aids in.
So my assumption is, obviously I can't talk to him, he probably didn't even know who we
were.
He was under the influence of Ambien, which we all know that is nasty stuff now.
And so that's the shitty part of it.
You know, back then I would probably like have the attitude of like, fuck that guy, he
had it coming.
But now in the position that I'm in, I have this empathy, like it was a really shitty
situation where two worlds collided and a very horrible event took place and he lost
his life because of it.
So different perspective now.
I've had several Vietnam vets on the show, Major James Capers, Rich Rice, who was one
of the original Delta guys.
And I haven't had a single one yet say anything other than when they came home, it was, you
know, they were vilified by the very people they were supposedly, you know, coming home
to going over there to protect, you know, we were supposed to be doing good in Vietnam.
You know, that was at least what they were told.
Yeah.
Politicians selling our soldiers a certain story and then we discover it's not, but,
you know, but a lot of these were constricted too.
You know, they weren't even signing up.
And then they come back and they're spat on, they're called baby killers and Major Capers
is wounded and the guy comes and pisses on him on the sidewalk.
I mean, just disgusting stories.
So you have that, that loss of tribe, that betrayal by the nation that you supposedly
were fighting for.
And then you have obviously the PTSD element, what you did, you know, what you were ordered
to do, did that, you know, jar with your ethics.
And then when you say Ambien, the number of people I've had from the sleep medicine world
that have told me that, you know, Ambien doesn't make you sleep.
It makes you unconscious.
So there is an element of sleep deprivation when you are taking Ambien.
So he probably had that psychosis as well.
So it's so sad because if you reverse engineer that moment to the human being before he went
to war and maybe address what happened to him when he was younger, that shooting would
never have happened.
You know, and this is what, you know, it's just, it's never in the law enforcement conversation.
They always look at you and like, why'd you shoot that guy?
And it's like, well, why do we have gangs?
Why is there so homelessness?
Why do we consume three quarters of the world's opioids?
Where are these conversations of how we're creating these crimes in the first place?
Yes.
No, agreed, man.
And I like they ended up settling with a family for $3 million.
Again, totally different perspective on Travis's part.
It doesn't even make me upset anymore.
I'm like, okay, they lost their father, you know, husband, brother, sister, whoever, or
brother, whoever he was to people.
And so now I'm like, okay, it is, it's no skin off my back.
I know I had to make that choice, unfortunately, that day.
And but it sucks that a human life was taken.
So absolutely.
Well, speaking of taking lives, I heard you talk about the, uh, the two deputies that
were shot with, with Andy.
I think it's worth revisiting.
So talk to me about that call.
And then again, I can imagine the, the smack in the face of, of the danger of the job after
sitting in hospital with him.
Agreed.
So yeah, approximately two weeks after I had left that very small, uh, department to go
to the sheriff's department, I was working like a modified late swing.
So I think I had got off at four in the morning, but then we obviously had a night shift and
there was this guy in this local teeny little town.
And I would probably the best way to describe him was an anti-government person.
I don't think he had any formal ties with militia, but that type of person that just
hated government in general.
And uh, I had already known about him actually, because he had this house in town where he
had like a spiral staircase thing.
It was framed in, but at each level, like as he goes up, he had gun ports pointed outside.
So they made me aware of him.
Like this is not a guy or you just need to be conscious of him.
So he had actually had a dispute with a local village government and he was not abiding
by some rules.
And so they issued a, just a, a $500 civil citation.
And most of the times he had, he had, this has happened before and he would pay him,
but for whatever reason he didn't pay this one.
And so the time had come up and there was a warrant issued for his arrest.
So the two deputies that were going to, they knew about this warrant and they said, well,
we're going to go get him.
They made a good choice.
We're not going to go to the house because we don't want to go confront him on his own
property, but we know where he works.
We know how, what route he drives to work, what time he leaves for work.
We're going to make a traffic stop and arrest him on this warrant.
And even these two, they had grown up in the area.
So they even knew this guy probably had multiple conversations over the course of the years,
all of that.
So they, I'm not saying they were complacent by any means, but probably felt they would
be the ones most well equipped to address him.
And maybe some of that prior relationship would break through and let everything be
peaceful.
So sure enough, he had left like they thought he would, was on a dirt road out in the middle
of corn fields in Michigan.
And they tried to, they initiated a traffic stop, meaning they turned on their patrol
lights.
And he didn't stop.
He didn't, you know, he wasn't going a hundred miles an hour, but just kind of maintain a
very slow speed going down this dirt road.
He gets about a mile away and he abruptly stops this vehicle that he was in.
And as he's exiting, grabs a rifle and comes out and just lights up both patrol cars.
The one patrol car that was in front, that deputy gets shot in the head, doesn't even
get out of a seatbelt.
And then the other patrol car that was offset, it was actually a lieutenant, he gets hit
in the shoulder and his shoulder just blown up.
He can't get out and return fire.
He can't even open the door.
And this suspect takes off.
And so obviously big deal.
We thought the deputy that was, had been shot in the head was going to die.
So you can imagine all the law enforcement just combining forces to try to find this
guy.
So ultimately a two week manhunt took place.
And at the time I was just in what was called, what it's called a field training program,
meaning I am riding around with a training officer trying to learn the job.
And that deputy actually happened to be best friends with the deputy that was shot in the
head.
So he was ultra focused on, we're just finding the suspect.
We're going to get him.
And so they didn't know what to do with me.
So they actually had me go up to the hospital and I was doing 12 on 12 off with the deputy
that had been shot in the head.
And yeah, as I share this with people, you can prepare as much as you want.
You can say, I know someone may want to kill me.
I obviously I'm wearing a vest.
I have a gun.
I'm trained for these situations.
But when you see the aftermath of what happens from one of those incidents, especially when
this deputy was put down and fighting for his life as a very new officer, it can punch
you in the face because it's pretty much a wake up call.
It was a wake up call for my family because they knew this department.
They're like, oh, nothing ever happens there.
It's peaceful.
You know, no big deal.
This is a great place to work.
And then this violence erupts.
So it was a you know, I'm in the room with Jeff is his name.
And you know, he's on life support.
Like I thought he was going to die.
Other agencies were sending officers to pay their respects, you know, say their goodbyes.
Well, ultimately, he ended up pulling through, never was fully able to come back to work
completely and he ultimately retired.
But it was a punch in the face.
And again, as I look back, it affected our department because everyone knows everyone
in the town knows, but there's no talk of mental health services of like, hey, guys,
this is going to hit you pretty hard.
These are the things we suggest you do.
These are the professionals we're going to provide for you to help you get through this
day or these weeks.
Ultimately, that suspect was found in the northern woods of Michigan by the state police
SWAT team and a sniper ended up putting him down because he would not surrender.
So yeah, that was a it was a very big event in my career.
How did the two deputies do after the event?
Because you have the acute trauma of the shooting itself, but then you are forcibly stolen from
your tribe, your profession, your calling.
And I think that's an under discussed element is when people get hurt or wounded, the mental
health side of that injury, especially if it takes you out of the profession.
Yeah, I can tell you.
So the deputy that was shot in the head, I would characterize him.
He was never the same.
There's lots of anger involved, lots of because he obviously had a long road of recovery.
And sometimes our organizations are terrible when that is happening, that we stay walking
beside them throughout the whole process.
You know, and you can say all the bullshit you want of like, we have a mission to keep
going.
I understand that.
But this person is in this situation because they were a servant of their community.
And this is now what they're dealing with.
And so we shouldn't leave their side.
So he was never the same.
The lieutenant, I would say, man, he was a master at he tried to come back.
You know, they had to put I don't know if it was titanium, but they completely had to
redo his shoulder.
He fought just with just vigor of trying to come back and beat show us that he was OK.
But he was never OK, could never raise his shoulder or like his arm above like a 90.
And he just but but he was definitely one part in the culture.
He wouldn't tell us if he was struggling by any means.
But even other deputies in the department like that one guy that was best friend, I
don't think he was ever the same.
Just to anger about him that I never saw come back to the person he was.
And quite honestly, some of those people, I don't even know if they realize how much
they change, you know, if they if they've taken that look in the mirror yet.
I think that's one of the things that comes up over and over again.
And I had this realization myself is, you know, some of the conversation is like, well,
check on your people, you know, make sure you're OK.
You're all in the same fucking meat grinder together.
So you you don't have a very good barometer if you're OK.
So I would say try, but really go to your wife or your husband or your children and
say, how am I doing?
Do I seem more angry?
Do it?
And then they will tell you, especially if it's a friend you haven't seen for a while
or, you know, your your family, because I've had times where I've Skyped my mother is in
Portugal now and she said, you look like you're dying.
I'm OK.
Well, that's that's probably a red flag.
Then, you know what I mean?
So, you know, these are the voices that we need to ask.
And sometimes if it's your crew or, you know, your partner in the SWAT team or whatever
it is, you got to remember that you're going through the same shit together.
So it's hard for you to see where the real baseline is.
Yeah, no, agree.
In my presentation, I show this picture and the slide title is Then and Now.
And the one picture is me, my very first day on the job in 1996.
The other one is one of my final operations as SWAT team leader and Mesa.
And I just do that to hopefully solicit an emotion out of them, because I said, I want
you to think about yourself.
First look in the mirror.
How do you think this job has changed you?
Are you more angry?
Do you have less empathy?
Do you you know, we joke, we hate the human race, all these things.
And then I ask them after you've listened to me, I asked you to take this other step.
Go to your closest family member, allow them to be just brutally honest, meaning you're
not going to get mad, whatever they say, and just give them the opportunity to say, you
know, what do you see in me when you look at me since, you know, this I've started
this career.
Do you see these changes in me or there's anything that concerns you?
I want to know because you are a family are you know, they're the ones that are going
to notice the stuff the quickest, you know, the earliest because, you know, we're great
at putting on a mask when we're, you know, on the job.
You know, we just like you said, we're all on this, we put these masks on and just keep
going.
But our family members, you know, they see the little, I guess, chips of the armor coming
away as the years go on and on and on.
I've had that recently.
I'm writing my second book and revisiting a lot of calls, diving into some stuff that
happened in hidden history.
It's all tied into the story.
And so, you know, the historical stuff is horrible.
You know, the calls of I'm remembering again are horrible.
And then, you know, you've got got stresses of, you know, finances and, you know, trying
to get this book out in time.
And recently, I've become angry again.
It's not the book on its own.
It's probably all the stuff and actually reached out to a friend of mine who's a counselor
I've had on the show, psychologist, and she's recommended someone else I'm going to talk
to.
And it's not I'm not haunted by stuff.
It's not many of the classical things that do really, you know, just so detrimental to
people.
But it's just, again, that simmering anger, you know, for me, being from a profession
where we see all the horrible shit, when someone drives like a fucking asshole, I want to drag
them out of their car and fucking curb stomp them if I'm going to be completely honest,
because I know what happens when you drive like that.
You end up sitting on the curb crying like a little bitch.
And we have to cut a family of four out of a minivan and they're all fucking dead because
of you.
So it's it's understandable the the the reaction to it, but the intensity of the reaction,
you know, you're always going to be angry when someone's driving like an asshole.
But this, you know, deep kind of, you know, just fight or flight anger response, you know,
isn't an overreaction to that, even though it's justified.
No, agreed, man.
The harmful obviously, yeah, you can still be upset at that.
But if you let it get to that boiling point, and just understanding how the ramifications
for us personally, because I think the you just keep getting worse and worse, you know,
that's your go to thing of like, OK, I'm just an explode.
And this is just the reaction.
I was there, so I understand what it was doing to me to where now, you know, much better
like, OK, I feel this coming about like, OK, why is this happening?
And like, maybe I just need to take a take a break like my wife, Emily.
She's amazing.
And I don't know, we were getting ready to travel for one of my events a few weeks ago.
And I get to the airport and you know, airports can just be chaos.
You can see the best of humanity and the worst of humanity.
And I just get in there and I don't even know why.
But I just told her, I said, hey, I feel it.
Like I just I don't have the patience today.
And she's like, I got you.
And so I let her deal with everyone.
And I just, you know, I just was focusing on Travis like this in the healthy.
Just keep, you know, keep yourself where you need to be.
And but that's OK.
You know, that's the one of the biggest hurdles is being able to recognize when that's about
to happen and pull yourself back before it snaps.
Absolutely.
There's a beach called Crescent Beach near St. Augustine here.
And I just went there with my son and my dog and we walked for two hours while I threw
the ball and he's skim boarded.
And by the time we got back, I was Ussah again for for for now.
Awesome.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, then you talked about, you know, one day driving in a big city police car while
bad boys played on the radio.
So talk to me about your transition to Mesa.
That's funny.
Yeah.
You know, it was it was honestly it was a great transition.
I I am so thankful for the time that I had at the smaller department because where we
did everything from beginning of the you know, you take the call, you're doing fingerprints,
you run the case all the way through to trial or whatever is going to happen versus then
I go to big city PD and we had all these resources, whether it was, you know, civilian crime scene.
I was turning out, you know, we turn over calls to detectives.
So it was good.
It was a good transition period to where when I went there, you know, I had to go through
when you lateral to a different state, I had to take two waiver exams to show that, you
know, most of the training I had in Michigan, they they allowed that to just, you know,
come right over to Arizona.
But I had to take two exams just to make sure that I was good to go.
And I did that.
But then I have to go through an FTO process or a training process, just like, you know,
a new officer would come out of the academy.
And I had two great FTOs that they didn't try to change my style policing.
They just said, hey, we just need to teach you like the Mesa way for paperwork, those
types of things, because they understand that I had 11 years on the job.
So they were respectful of my experience, which that was I'm super grateful for that.
But yeah, I got through the FTO process pretty quick.
And then I was I I intentionally went to the district that had the reputation to be the
nasty where the heavy hitters go to police, because I did even though I didn't tell anybody
this because I didn't want to be that guy.
I knew my sights were set on trying to work for the SWAT team, but I didn't want to tell
anybody that I just wanted to do my patrol job.
You know, I guess get earn the respect of people around me before I even say anything
like that.
And so I ultimately ended up working with a bunch of guys.
Our team was part time, our part time SWAT team, meaning you had, you know, patrol and
then you also did SWAT on the side.
At that time, that's what we did.
So I ended up working on patrol with quite a few younger SWAT guys that I built relationships
with.
And ultimately, it grew into having a conversation of Travis, you should come test for the team
team.
So that was great.
I love the humility that Mesa had saying that they value the experience that you brought
over.
Anaheim was like that California where I worked there, but other places I've seen, you know,
their posters are the wall, you know, 10, 10 rules for the rookie.
And one of them is like, no one cares what your previous department did.
And I always remember looking at that guy and what a stupid thing to say.
Yeah, like, you know, all the experiences and all the nuances of a different department.
Don't get me wrong.
Don't start telling everyone that they're wrong on your first day on probation.
Yeah, but you know, there's a lot of value, whether it's within the uniform or whether
you were a carpenter or a computer program, whatever, there's always value that you bring
in.
So yeah, don't flaunt it and belittle the way that another one does.
But maybe how you used to do it would actually be better than the way we do it in our department.
Yeah, no, that's a good point.
Yeah, that that's sign.
That's hilarious.
If you especially nowadays where recruiting out of state laterals is just it's a big thing
because so many departments are fighting for positions.
Yeah, think about just the wealth of experience you can have from other organizations, someone
from another organization bringing in things that maybe they did a little bit differently
that could benefit your current organization.
So yeah, that that mentality.
But honestly, James, it does not surprise me because there's departments out there.
They think they have the only way.
Now they have invented the the perfect way to police and nobody else knows how to do
it, which I say to them like, yeah, I want to laugh and like, let me come operate with
you and see if your way is the best.
So yeah, I had a very gypsy career.
I worked for four departments and it was basically chasing my now ex wife around the country
while she pursued stardom.
But no regrets.
I mean, I really gave me, you know, a kind of 10,000 foot perspective of the fire service.
But one thing I had no idea when I was first in was just how siloed every single department
is.
And then like you said, in bad situations of Orlando and Orange County, perfect example,
sometimes they don't even talk to each other.
You know, I've been I've been standing in front of a fire before trying to get dispatch
to send me an engine and they're like, oh, that's that's not our jurisdiction.
I don't care whose jurisdiction it is.
I can see their fire station.
Can you please tell that engine to come put this fire out before this mobile home goes
up?
So that's what's so crazy is we have unions that are supposed to put us all together.
I haven't seen it personally.
But then, as you said, there's there's so many departments that do certain things really
well, but there's not that knowledge sharing.
So it leaves everyone trying to know how do we start a peer support?
How do we start a fitness initiative rather than going to the people who've already got
it figured out and coming together as an entire profession and saying, you know, South Metro
has got a great fitness plan and this one's got a great peer support and this one is talking
about school shootings.
This is who you need to go to.
But I think that requires humility.
And I think that's what's missing in a lot of places.
Agreed, man.
I am fortunate because I had some a couple good, very mentor leaders in the SWAT world
at Mesa that, you know, we were we strongly pursued the quiet professional mentality.
And he would even I mean, I thought this was great.
There was one guy specifically that just he was my number one mentor.
Like you could be a guy in our department that ultimately our team went full time.
Let's say you've been on Mesa SWAT five years full time running 250 to 300 operations a
year.
And he'll be like, yep, you're going to basic SWAT school over here at this state.
And we'd be like, what?
Basic SWAT school.
Like I've been doing this for five years.
He's like, I want you to go to this training because there's a couple reasons.
Number one, maybe you'll go there and they will everything you will learn.
You'll be like, OK, it's affirming what we're doing is still correct.
And he said, you may go and experience like, holy shit, why would they do that?
So again, affirming, maybe we're doing things right.
And he would always say, if you can go and even spend 40 hours in training and come away
with a five minute critical piece of information, he said to us, that's worth you going.
And so I just I loved it because then it just always, I guess, it shaped my mind of like,
I don't care if you've been on 30 seconds or 20 years, we may be able to learn from
one another and how much better we can be if we take that mentality.
Absolutely.
We talked about transitioning into SWAT and then we talked about the false multiplier
of two offices.
One thing that blows me away about our professions collectively is despite the fact that people
push three numbers on a telephone on their worst day they're ever going to have our same
profession are more often than not will oppose fitness standards.
And I never understand that.
I mean, I tell it to the Special Forces community and that blows their mind.
The ocean lifeguards.
I mean, to me, it's like telling an ocean lifeguard that if you can doggy paddle, then
you're good.
Come on in.
So what's been your perspective of that?
Not only operationally, but as a deterrent, as a way of maybe stopping some of these hands
on incidents even happening.
Well, you're never going to get anywhere with me to say that we should ever change standards
because I 100% from a standpoint, number one, fitness has always been a part of my career
and not I wouldn't I would say until I got to Mesa SWAT, that was just my personal thing
that I chose because I always looked at my career as I am preparing.
Yeah, you can probably go 90% of the calls I got sent to.
I could be a fat slob and probably figure it out.
However, I'm training for that 1% that worst day in my career where someone wants to take
my life.
They want to fight.
That's the day I'm training for.
So that was always my perspective.
And then getting to our team.
I mean, we were very big.
You know, we obviously could work out on duty.
We were very strict.
I mean, our fitness standards, you know, even get looked at on the team, you had to go through
a series of tests to get looked at.
But I was I'll tell you, James, I was very disappointed in our profession as a whole
with the low end of standards or even if, you know, let's say the officer gets on and
they had they had gone through the fitness standards, but they have left themselves go
throughout their career.
And then they were not at a place where Travis felt, you know, especially on the street like
this, this is not appropriate.
I specifically remember one and I got shut down so quick.
There was an incident with one of my hard chargers when I had promoted and went back
to the street and he was in a fight with a pretty good dude.
And there was an officer that was there to back them up.
And in Arizona, we have all these brick walls everywhere.
So you know, whether it's the neighborhood walls or four foot pony walls, whatever.
And this other officer could not climb over this four foot wall to get to the other side
to help my guy in this fight.
And it was a good fight.
And I, as you might imagine, Sergeant Gribble was not happy.
And so I went to command staff above me, my chain of command, and I talked to him about
it and literally had a lieutenant tell me like, Travis, I completely understand where
you're coming from.
Human resources won't touch this.
And I said, this is I haven't showed policy like fit for duty, like it is under our fit
for duty.
But we have to be able to do these things and in the in the, you know, testing for pre
academy, you have to climb an eight foot wall.
So there's obviously a deterioration in your physical fitness.
This is a problem that thank God that that person didn't have a gun on them.
And my officer is still with us.
And he fought the good fight.
We ended up getting them.
But that could have cost him his life.
And it got shut down so quick.
And right then I learned that was my probably my first and only where like I tried to fight
it.
And I'm like, OK, I see how this is.
So but I had the good fortune of being, you know, most of my career in Mesa, I was a full
time SWAT.
And we I mean, we pushed each other so stupidly hard at times like you just this is how you
lived your life and you better be ready for the day, you know, even with SWAT, you know,
90 percent of the stuff we can slow and deliberate clear house.
We're not going to have that problem.
But the 10 hour 10 hour barricade and 110 degree heat or we have to fight with someone.
Those are the days you are training for.
That was Denver chief.
I always forget his name is hugely respected.
But he was talking at the Orlando Fire Conference.
And I kind of this is a loaded question.
Like you put questions to the audience and I said, what's the how many stories do you
expect a firefighter to be able to climb in full gear?
And he goes to the top of my tallest building in my city.
And I was like in my mind, right, Mike drop, because this is the problem.
Like you said, is that going to happen?
Probably not.
But could it happen?
Absolutely.
And the irony is in the fire service in Florida, at least our fire academy certification is
labeled minimum standards.
That's the shittest you should ever be in your entire career.
And so to turn around 10 years later and say, it's not fair that they're making me do fitness
when you were told from the front door that you should be able to climb all this, you
know, all these stairs with this hose and drag dummies and hit sleds.
This is what's so crazy is no one no one kind of pulls you in and the front door, it gave
you some knitting and then you play with a kitten for a while and then you rode in unicorn.
Like you bust your fucking ass when you first became a firefighter.
How dare you pretend that we're trying to take your jobs when someone says you should
be held to a standard.
Right.
No, agreed.
And I always say from a personal standpoint, again, I don't know that I necessarily understand
why I'm motivated by organizational what they're telling me to do.
Like I said, fitness was always a big part of my life.
And I when I have these conversations, maybe one on one with people I say, maybe it's even
about training firearms or training defensive tactics, whatever it is, or fitness.
If you have a really bad call and you are expected like you've got to perform and you
don't perform, how are you going to feel the next morning?
For me, like if I was not able to handle that worst day scenario, or at least know that
I'm trained as much as I possibly can be, I couldn't I wouldn't want to live with myself.
I just would be too critical.
So yeah, personally, I think anyone listen to this, if they're wondering, like, you know,
I don't it's not like, Oh, I don't have time like bullshit.
You got to find time and take care of yourself.
You've chosen this profession, where on any given day, your fitness abilities may be called
into play.
And I would expect you to be able to perform.
There's a phrase that goes around in the fire service, would you want you rescuing you?
And I don't like that personally, because that's about you.
To me, I like to flip it around and say, how would you feel if your family died because
the rescue hadn't trained?
Absolutely.
And in the SWAT world, we say this, if your family was taken hostage, would you want what
would you expect or would you want yourself going there to perform the hostage rescue?
So that's how we would talk about our training.
You know, so the same the same type of mentality for sure.
Absolutely.
Well, speaking of SWAT, before we get to 2016, as you progress through, were there any other
you know, career calls and then in parallel to that, were there any kind of chinks in
the armor when it came to your mental health then?
Yeah, man, again, having the luxury look back, I definitely at this point in my career, even,
you know, so laterally into Mesa in 2008, if I can look back, like I obviously already
needed to be dealing with stuff because I just had so many calls stacking and and James,
I'm not going to say like, you know, quadruple homicides, all that kind of stuff.
I'm just saying the day to day cumulative effect of dealing with like you said, when
they call 911, it is quite possibly the worst day of their entire life over and over again.
And then also trying to jump back in and out of normal civilian life and then going back
into the chaos and how that all relates.
And then, you know, with SWAT, probably the biggest thing, you know, I will say this,
you know, we were always understaffed and we were just go, go, go.
We were very high operational team, especially after we went full time.
And so it just became your mentality.
And I bought into this culture of like, well, the team needs me, I have to be there.
And I put the team above everything, which is a it was a terrible mistake, something
that I regret.
And just seeing the death and destruction, the things we were going on, just dealing
with the worst of the worst people and watching it chip away at who Travis was, changing my
personality, jaded towards the human race, just, you know, not wanting any contact with
anyone outside of my, you know, brothers on the team.
And that's just how, yeah, so I see the chinks in the armor.
That was that I didn't I didn't have my priorities straight, because I always bought into the
mentality of like team first, the team needs you.
I think that's one of the dangers in the mental health conversation in the first responder
world is, well, you know, I wasn't at 9 11, I wasn't the Vegas shooting.
So therefore, you know, I shouldn't be complaining.
But I love that phrase death by a thousand cuts.
I think that's what 99% of first responders actually go through.
Some of us may have been at these big cute events like acute, not cute, like the pulse
shooting, for example, locally here.
But you know, for the rest of us, it's 10 2030 years of every third day for 24 hours,
responding to either horrific shit or in between some awful calls, then go into someone's tummy
ache or as I had once my dentures don't taste right, you know, those kind of calls and maintaining
your composure when you've just cut a dead child out of a car two hours prior.
So this is the thing, you know, is that when people say, you know, what's the worst thing
you've seen, I think most of us would be like, you got to be more specific than that.
Like you want babies, you want gang bangers, you want people missing for three weeks and
you finally find them like the library is vast.
So this is the problem, I think, is, you know, we downplay because we weren't at that massive
kind of news event.
But most of the acute calls that we run are, you know, do take their toll, even if it's
just a little bit of time.
Yeah, the drip man of the career is what I like to call and I know organizations get
scared of the word cumulative because like, well, how do we address it?
And I say, well, you address it be the very beginning of the career making mental health,
you know, well-being a priority for the agency and everything that you do, quite frankly,
and every decision making process, how are we then going to take care of our people as
we move to this new strategic plan, whatever it is, or we're doing these things because
yeah, you know, you talked about cleared hot with Andy stump.
He said something to me offline, which I had never even thought of, but he, you know, seal
team six guys been in the worst of the worst.
And he said, man, he said, you know, everyone thinks what we did was so, you know, just
rough and all the shit we had to experience.
He said, of course, we had some really rough days, had to make some really horrible choices
at times.
But he said, we're over there on deployment.
We're away from normal life.
And we're with our brothers and we go do a hit that maybe something doesn't turn out
right.
We come back.
We're just with us.
I do not understand how you guys jump in and out of chaos.
Maybe have the worst call at four o'clock in the afternoon, but it's six o'clock.
You're coaching your kids T ball game and everyone wonders why you're not normal, you
know, or what they think is normal.
And it's I honestly just the more and more I look at it.
Yeah, that little drip of, you know, going on and on.
And I know I'm going to talk about my call from 2016.
I constantly have to field questions about that and I'll get an email or a message on
Instagram.
Hey, man, I don't have that call.
But and I'm like, hey, stop minimizing what you've been through.
You know, I don't want you to think of it like that because we have underestimated the
power of the problems that can happen, the chip away at who we are from 20 plus year
career and what this can do to us.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think the other thing is the rest and recovery.
And this is a dead horse that I flog like a crazy person.
But in the fire service, you know, most of the guys and girls are working 56 hours a
week.
You have this recruitment crisis.
So now mandatory is a rife.
So that's an 80 hour week.
And so you have this death by a thousand cuts, but all of a sudden, you know, the cleaver
is getting bigger and bigger and bigger because they're not able to recover.
And when you actually invest in your people with the right staffing, with the right shift
patterns and time off, you can do some of these things, but then have the time to kind
of process it and spend more time with your family and get to the beach.
In my case, you know what I mean?
So that when you get to your next shift, you've kind of come a lot closer to the baseline
again.
But I think what is a big missing conversation part of the conversation is that not only
is the op tempo through the roof now, but you're asking these people to do more with
less, more with less, more with less, and then turning around and going, I don't know
why we have a suicide epidemic and then continue doing the same fucking thing.
100%.
I just did a podcast with these two ladies called Wives on Fire podcast and their husbands
are both firefighters.
And as we were leading up, she was supposed to get me some stuff and she apologized, which
she didn't have to, but she's like, yeah, my husband was on his days off and he just
got mandatory at another 72.
And I'm like 72?
Like she's like, yeah.
And that happens all the time.
And I'm thinking from the standpoint of how that throws not only the individual, meaning
the firefighter, like you were on your rest and recovery days.
Now you're losing that and what it does to the family dynamics, all of it.
So yeah, I mean, man.
And again, like I understand recruitment and retention are a big topic right now.
But if you have chosen to be sitting in the big boy chair being number one, you've chosen
that, and you may have to rethink how we do things because if you can't provide enough
people to where your current people are not being worked to death, then like you said,
maybe you should humbly give that chair up to someone that is ready to be innovative
and change how things we've always done it.
Yeah.
Well, I think what blows me away is I'm a firefighter that was a farm boy from England
that never rose above the rank of firefighter and paramedic.
And happily so.
I'm not being the door kicker, but if I can figure it out with a podcast, just interviewing
people like yourself, then where are all the people that actually have the pieces of paper
and the bugles on their lapel?
Why are they not figuring this out?
And again, some people have, but why are you not asking those that have?
So changing the workweek to a 24 72, having actually hiring a competent, sorry, culturally
competent clinician, putting standards back.
That is how you reverse the recruitment crisis.
Because firstly, as you said, the people that work for you will want to keep working for
you.
But then these young, very intelligent recruits with the whole world at their fingertips on
the internet, when they research and see that you actually give a shit about your people
and you're investing in the wellness rather than just working them into the ground and
keeping the workweek the same as it has been for the last 60 years, they're going to go,
oh, you get it.
I do want to work for you.
Oh, but we're going to have to pass this fitness standard.
People good because I want to be a good firefighter.
So that's a plus.
That is how you get people lining up around the buildings again, testing for us versus
this, oh, we'll just lower standards, 18 and a heartbeat.
Because the part of that conversation that people seem to be completely missing is that
when we had to fight for jobs back in the day, they took the top 10 or 20% of that list.
Now they're taking everyone and begging them to come in.
So you're getting the absolute rock stars along with the turds and those turds are going
to be with you for 10, 20, 30 years.
So unless we put that bar up, we're not only going to possibly lose the first responder
community because no one want to do it anymore, but you're going to have more of those awful
Uvalde incidents or that horrendous one of that woman that was just shot the other day.
These mistakes that are going to cost these cities and counties millions and millions
and dollars, but more importantly are going to cost the lives of our children or our men
and women.
Agreed.
100%.
I mean, yeah, I mean, not that the police schedule is as nasty as what the firefighter
can be, but I remember at Mesa and they still do the same schedule.
They're on four tens, but it takes a lot of years before you ever get a weekend off if
you were on patrol.
So I had like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday off and I would talk to my supervisors like,
have you guys ever thought about doing something where you would get a weekend off every once
in a while?
And literally the calls from up top would be like, well, I had to work that schedule.
So so should you.
Well, that's a fucking asinine way to look at it.
Are you kidding me?
Because I would see a lot of my younger officers, especially with young kids, once I became
a patrol sergeant, their wife's working maybe and then the weekend comes, they would like
some, you know, maybe some support, you know, everyone, the rest of the normal civilization,
they're off on the weekends, like it could be beneficial to all of us, but they just
wouldn't that mentality of like, well, this is how we've always done it and I did it.
So so can you.
So yeah, just stupid.
I've always said one day someone turned around and said, you know what, we probably shouldn't
be putting children up chimneys and working in factories.
This is no different.
You are right.
Yeah, that's a good example.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, then you touched on 2016.
So walk me through up to that day and then I'll give you all the time in the world to
kind of unpack that horror.
Right on.
So yeah, so I had been with a team up to the point of 2016 for I guess I was at the six
year mark.
And so I was an operator and then I also had been asked by the team to be an assistant
team leader.
So I was in somewhat of a leadership position, but then 2015 was here and we had a couple
team leaders that one of them I think was ready to promote.
He wanted to become a lieutenant and then another one was just going to retire.
So they came to the team and they said, hey, we would like some guys to test for sergeant.
It's always a big ass to come off that unit because if we go test for sergeant, we got
to go back for the street for at least a year and then there's no guarantee we'll get back
to the team as a team leader.
It's just, but they want to have the ability to have prior SWAT guys come back as team
leaders.
Well, I was one of the ones that volunteered because I did want to promote back to sergeant
again and I'd done that in Michigan.
So I volunteered and I tested pretty well and I was getting brought out for the training
program for a sergeant at Mesa in the first group.
They took three of us.
So it was my very first day on the job as a training sergeant or as a sergeant in training,
I should say.
And first day, first call, I had already done briefing with a shift and there was nothing
really going on for a sergeant to handle.
So patrol broke from briefing and they were out handling calls and I was down in the office
with the guy training me and we were just going over administrative stuff that, you
know, whatever, a proven time off or proven reports, that kind of stuff.
And so I heard a call kick out that this individual had went to an apartment.
He had met another guy online for like an online dating or sex type thing.
I don't know if it's Craigslist or whatever.
I don't really know.
And he had went to this apartment to engage in their activity.
And when they were done, the guy that lived at the apartment said, Hey, I also have a
little girl if you're interested in her, meaning to have sex with her.
This guy was like, I'm not into that.
And he, you know, left the apartment.
He thankfully had some sort of a conscious and he called 911, but he would not give his
name or his location at first.
And quite honestly in the big city, we get crazy, stupid calls all the time.
So I was like listening in one ear.
I haven't even answered up as a supervisor, just hearing how this thing brewed a little
bit and patrols getting assigned.
Well then lo and behold, this other officer makes contact with an individual in a, this
was a not a good area of Mesa in a park.
He just saw this guy pacing part of our local drug scene probably.
And he was on the phone.
He could tell he had his hand up like he's holding the phone to his ear.
And he went to make contact with this individual.
And when he did, there was bleed over on the radio, him checking out on the call and the
call taker said, Hey, you're out with a caller from this such and such a call with this little
girl.
And when I heard that, I'm like, Oh, okay.
Now this is going to be legit.
So I answered up as a Sergeant to go run the scene.
More, this officer was getting more and more information from this guy who had been in
the apartment.
He hadn't seen anybody.
He just said this was the offer on the table.
Didn't hear anybody, anything like that.
So we went to the scene and ultimately come up with a plan, some people on scene didn't
think that we necessarily even had a reason to go knock on the door because there was
no proof or anything.
I was arguing, yes, we do because it's accident circumstances under the law that I can, we
have enough information at this point that there could possibly be somebody inside that
apartment in harm's way.
We have an obligation to go and check without needing a search warrant.
So finally, the lieutenant that was on scene, he just said, Hey, Travis, you're the SWAT
guy.
Fine.
You go take a couple of people, figure out, go up to this door, do what you want to do.
And so I came, you know, grabbed the patrol people and I just said, Hey, we're going to
go knock on this door.
You know, I'll be third back from you guys will be kind of cross covering on the doors
they knock.
Let's see what happens.
I said, I will make all decisions.
If that door opens, I'll tell you what to do, go from there.
And so they knocked on the door and almost immediately the door opened and there was
a male individual he had makeup on.
He was dressed in like a pink ballerina like outfit.
And that was exactly how this person had described that person had been the apartment.
So for me, that was enough.
And I said, Hey, grab him and detain him.
And so they did so the guy didn't really even say anything, just kind of looked at
us blank, didn't fight anything like that.
So getting handcuffed, you know, detained for the moment and put him off to the back
of us to another officer so they could take custody of him.
And we did announcements from the door.
I said, Hey, just announce our presence.
And specifically as Mesa police department, you know, you go through a series of statements
like, Hey, if anyone's in harm's way, please shout out to us.
You know, is there anybody in there?
And we heard nothing.
So I said, Hey, I still, we got enough.
We're going to search this apartment just looking for a body if there's anybody in
harm's way.
We're obviously not going on there looking for drugs or anything like that.
We're just here for exigent circumstances.
So we pushed in and almost immediately to the right, I could see there was a closed
door.
So I told the two guys in front of me, I said, Hey, I'll cover you on the door.
Meaning I put myself between them and this door.
It was closed.
So my gun is obviously out and you guys finished covering the apartment or searching the apartment
and I'll cover you on this.
We'll deal with this closed door when you're all done with the rest of the apartment.
And it was your normal shitty inner city apartment as far as the drug scene.
You know, you tell lots of stuff, not a great place.
They come back, they say, Hey boss, we don't have anything.
We haven't found anybody.
We've looked everywhere.
There could be a body and we don't see anything.
So I said, okay, I've got this door.
It's a small closet door.
You guys step off the side.
I'll open it on my own.
I did so obviously my pistols out and it's, it's more of a storage closet.
It's not really a coat closet.
There's nothing hanging there.
A bunch of shit like knee high piled in and I scan it one time.
I don't see anything that I really, um, it stands out to me.
I slowly scan again and I, for some reason, a black trash bag, just a few feet into the
closet stands out to me.
So I go ahead and I holster my gun and I reached down to grab the bag and simultaneously as
I'm grabbing the bag and it's kind of falling, a little girl's head comes out of the bag.
And uh, she's, you know, um, not much older than a toddler.
Um, I won't give exact age, but, um, she's shaved head.
She is conscious because I see her eyes blinking and, um, but she's not crying.
She's not, I mean, you know how, if you see emotions, like someone's smiling, you would
see things on their face.
There's nothing she's got gray duct tape across her mouth.
I'm overwhelmed by the smell.
I later come find out she's sitting her own feces and urine.
And as I'm pulling her up out of the bag, her hands are bound with gray duct tape and
sore ankles.
So obviously first concern is, is, uh, I'd already had Mesa fire and medical on standby.
I'm getting on the radio, calling them in, come in.
Now we're cutting the tape off.
Even when the tapes off her mouth and all that stuff, there is no reaction.
She is just ice cold.
Um, not auditory, you know, we're trying to talk to her.
Um, so just, um, incredibly horrific.
Um, the worst thing that I've ever found by far.
And at this point in my career, I would have told you there's pretty much not much or not
much I had not seen from homicides to suicides to child sex cases, whatever.
But this was the first time I actually was touching, feeling, seeing the true victim
in my hands that what, and I knew what had happened.
I know what this is.
Um, my team up to that point, we always covered our internet crimes against children unit
when they would set up these things.
Um, and you know, in a week we had arrest 14, 15 people come in there to try to, you
know, have sex with underage girls.
So I know this is part of our world, um, but just complete shock.
Like no one was really saying anything when the fire guys came in.
I remember, and these are dudes I knew from, cause they worked, I always worked in the
busy areas and they, when they saw and they just looked at me.
Cause I think they had a little bit of information as they came up with a gurney up the stairs.
Um, but they just looked at me just kind of like in disbelief, almost like what the fuck
is this?
Like, where did you bring us into?
Um, but I just saw the, just emotion.
Um, my heart felt like it was going to come out of my chest.
I was hot, um, emotional, not even knowing what's going on.
And I've been again, to this point, I've been on hostage rescues.
I've been shot at and never had these feelings before of what I was experiencing at that
time.
So you want me to keep going?
Yeah, please.
Yeah.
So from that standpoint, um, they actually, the training sergeant, um, again, no dig
on him.
He was having a really difficult time.
He even asked me, do you want me to call somebody else to help you?
And I said, Nope, I'm going to take this meaning I'm going to run the scene.
So we had to go through, um, big city.
Again, we have all these resources.
We've got the child sex detectives coming out.
Um, just, you can imagine the massive response to something like this as the radio comments
start getting throughout the city.
We have a patrol commander show up.
It's just massive resources to this one area.
My initial reaction, I'll be quite honest with you, James.
And I had been in, you know, again, I've been shot at, I've had been in fights.
I had never had the feeling before, but when I walked out of that apartment, this dude
was sat outside on this little balcony area.
I wanted to pull my gun out and shove it in his mouth and pull the trigger.
Um, because I was just, again, I knew what had happened.
Um, I know what was happening in that apartment and I was disgusted.
Um, I will tell everyone this because I always do this in my presentations right now, because
that's a really rough thing to hear.
Um, her name has been changed, this little girl's, and she is safe and loved right now.
She, the foster care family, she had to go to the Phoenix Children's Hospital for quite
some time.
She had a lot of injuries from just months of abuse.
And um, but the first foster care family that took her in, they ended up adopting her.
And I actually just recently, oh man, it's been about six months now, seven months.
Um, I was connected with a 501 C3 that has actually worked with this family and taking
care of her ever since this happened, meaning providing care and all this.
And I was able to see a picture of her with just a beautiful little girl now.
And it's, I'm hopeful that someday I'm actually going to not even necessarily have a conversation
with her, but be in the same room with her.
Like she's not going to know who I am, but just to have that, like just see her because
everything I do, everything, sorry, no, I'm not saying sorry.
I'm not apologizing for crying.
Um, absolutely.
Everything that I do now for our first responders is because of her, because of that day.
So when we talk about post-traumatic growth and what can happen, like this is what happens.
And so, and her, I do know that her foster care family, now her family, they have been
made aware of what we're doing in her honor.
And so they're very appreciative.
And like I said, we're trying to work on what this even looks like.
So I believe it'll happen sometime in the future.
Well anyway, so a big thing we need to talk about, cause we're talking about the mental
health is what was my agency's response?
Um, it was absolutely shit.
Um, and that just be an honest, uh, because we have to talk about those rough things about
what we, you know, what we need to do differently.
The only thing they did for us as an organization or everyone that was on that call is they
had the famous, um, mandatory, uh, big debrief where everyone that has touched this case
is going to come in.
And it actually, I think it was someone from the fire department.
They ran it.
Um, and those situations are very good.
I would have done debriefs a little bit different cause I, I've went through some different
training now of how I think it should all work, but bringing us all together, um, at
that standpoint, and then, you know, go through these talks and then, you know, does anyone
want to share?
And everyone there's like crickets, like no one's talking, um, because there's just,
that goes to feed into the culture.
Cause what am I supposed to say?
This, this bothered me.
And then we were all back to work the next morning at zero 600.
I believe that was a mistake.
Um, I believe in critical incident policies that when these major events go on, your people
need to have time off and they need to be required to check in with someone, um, to
make sure they're okay.
Because man, the, the, the crew that I was with or season people, I don't think any
of them had less than 20 years on patrol and, uh, they were rock stars, but me seeing these
seasoned officers be affected like that, it was a big deal and we should have received
a different care.
And now Mesa is doing things differently, which I am so appreciative of, you know,
they've changed some things, but, um, that was just, that's a pretty typical response
to a man to be quite honest with you.
You know, if we get into a shooting, yup, they need four days off.
They're going to go see someone to come back to work.
You know, we do that, but then when we deal with this horrific event and everyone that
I talked to across the country, these child calls, man, they're, they're probably the
worst, um, to where, but we don't do anything for it.
We don't provide care.
So, um, I knew right away though, I was not right.
Um, I knew I felt differently.
I had been through a divorce about a year prior to that.
So I had my custody arrangements for my two boys.
I had them a week on a week off and the weeks that I did not have them was pretty rough.
Um, alcohol was already part of my life, meaning I'd bought into the culture of, yeah, rough
day, you know, go have a couple of drinks, but I had never, I wouldn't have considered
myself now.
Did I go out and party sometimes and drink too much?
Of course there had been situations, but not a regular occurrence.
Um, alcohol became probably one of my best friends cause I just felt like I needed it
to numb myself.
Cause when I'd come home, it was just very difficult.
Going back to the biological mother, talk to me about her part in this whole thing.
Yeah.
And it's a pretty shitty part of it.
Yeah.
So, um, this dude in this apartment that had, um, this little girl in there, he was not
a relative, um, but he was involved in the drug scene with her mom and she would drop
her off there at days on end and let her, let him do with whatever he wanted.
Um, she of course tried to claim she didn't understand it, but we know that was an absolute
lie, um, to fund her drug habit.
And then, uh, grandma was also involved as well knew this was all going on partaked in
it and, um, but they've all now been sent to prison, but yeah, it was, it's pretty disgusting
deal man.
Um, and then I know detectives that had to, unfortunately, um, the things that come with
this, the videos and all that on this guy's computer, it was, uh, it was a horrific event
that, um, I think it had been going on for about 18 months.
So not good, man.
Yeah.
When I've spoken to people in the psychology world about predators, it always elicits such
a different response.
And, you know, obviously we talked earlier about, you know, compassion and understanding
childhood trauma and preventing crime in the first place, but it seems like the sex predator,
there is a biochemical difference than someone who was simply, you know, abused as a child.
When you look back at that case, and I know your wife worked in that field, you know,
for a long time, are there any common denominators with these predators that are different than
the other criminals that you interacted with?
Man, I don't know.
Like I guess, I guess they're not, you know, I know we see stupid TV shows and all this
and you think these people are these, you know, yes, they're violent, but like openly
violent like you would see like, oh, they must be doing, um, like this individual, um,
I would have characterized him as very quiet, very withdrawn from normal society, um, almost
a darkness around them and maybe even how they conduct every part of their lives.
And then even from the standpoint of, you know, some of the stings that I have, I specifically
remember, I tell this story all the time where, you know, we're doing really sting operations
and a dude from, you know, United Postal Service, UPS, the brown trucks, he's in his uniform
showing up to pick up this little girl.
He thinks he's going to meet a girl for sex and we arrest him for it.
Um, so yeah, I think like the psychologist or psychiatrist that studies people could
definitely paint a picture, but I wouldn't say it's like your typical, typical like people
that you maybe stand out, but maybe just kind of withdrawn, not seeming to fit in with normal
society, that kind of stuff.
One of the firefighters, which I think he was a firefighter, I think he was a paramedic,
um, single sir, but he popped up on to catch a predator one day.
Yeah.
So that's a profession that everyone, you know, respects and trusts.
And he was, I forget the details of who he was thinking he was meeting, but it wasn't,
it was a camera crew.
But, uh, yeah, I mean, this is what's so sad.
It's not the creepy guy, you know, with the, the rape van more often than not, these children
are being groomed through the internet and, you know, meeting arguably normal looking
people.
Yeah.
And I say, I've, I've been a part of those operations where we've arrested, uh, ministers,
we've arrested computer engineers, we've arrested police officers.
There is, uh, there's really, yeah.
If you try to paint it into this little picture and understand it, it's, it's very difficult
to because it's unfortunately throughout our society.
Yeah.
That's, I mean, again, I think there's so many areas that are preventable.
I mean, I talk about the ridiculous prohibition of drugs, you know, and the war on drugs.
That's just been an epic 90 year failure.
Now the resources that we could free up if we stopped chasing addiction and then obviously
all the crimes that are associated with that, that then could be put into the smugglers
and the dealers and the predators and all these, you know, really fucking broken people
that need to be behind bars.
You know, you would have so many, you know, not only resources in the law enforcement
side, but the court system will be freed up to actually make sure that those people are
addressed properly.
But the way that we've devolved to this, you know, as we said, homelessness and addiction
and gang membership and sex work, there's so much that I think, you know, it's the ripple
effect of prohibition.
And if we can reverse that with some sort of proactive system like they use in Portugal
or Switzerland or some of these areas that have done it properly, not piecemealed it,
like, you know, Portland, imagine, imagine the difference that we could make.
And now you would have enough eyes looking for these predators rather than getting lost
in the white noise of all the, you know, the smaller crimes that you guys are flooded with.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, just talking to my wife, I mean, you know, whether people want to hear this or not,
like we aren't even scratching the surface, James.
I mean, she was constantly, you know, she's a go getter and she would say, like her bosses
would say, you know, because you feel like you're drowning under cases all the time.
They're like, you're only one person.
You just got to keep pushing forward.
And that was a larger department.
Now, like here in Montana, where there's smaller departments, they may be assigned one detective
to it.
They're not even scratching the surface, man.
And it is just, it's crazy.
Yeah, we could, there's a lot of resources we could divert to that.
And even from the federal level, whatever that means of like putting some task force
on this to just hit these people hard.
But we continue to just do these things that are at the end of the day, aren't really making
lasting change.
Absolutely.
Well, you have that horrific call kind of walk me through the next few years and how
you found yourself at your darkest point.
Yeah, man.
So I knew things weren't right.
But again, I'd come up in the culture where we just don't talk about it.
I'd seen examples with my organization, other organizations where people that finally did
say they needed help.
And we listed as career suicide, you were just done.
They would think that you couldn't handle the stress anymore.
So I was keeping it all inside.
I was trying to cope with alcohol.
I started having severe PTS situations, night terrors, just flashbacks.
The triggers from different things from the calls.
And then from that point on, even the calls that I was experiencing now, I wasn't handling
them like I thought I'd handled them before.
Specifically, I had a couple of murder suicides once I got my own patrol squad and got through
done training as a sergeant.
And I handled the call just fine.
But then I went in the back corner, dark corner in the middle of the night and work a night
shift and I'm balling.
And I don't know what this is because this has never happened before.
And so I just kept trying to fight through it, coping in my own ways, negatively, not
good coping, terrible sleep, all of it.
And then I finally in 2017, I thought I got to do something.
So I did go to our peer support group and I said, hey, I actually lied to him.
So this is my ownership.
I said, I've been through a divorce.
I had been through a divorce, but I said I needed to go because the child custody battles
with my ex, all these things just wearing on me.
I need to talk to somebody.
So they sent me to this individual who he did a bunch of stuff for our organization
and other organizations and he was horrible.
I've seen all of his notes and everything now, but he was definitely he was not invested
in us.
From my perspective, he was only there because he's getting paid for it.
Ultimately, I would give him a little bit of information and my ownership is I didn't
tell him what I was at all.
I was dealing with the suicidal ideations, all these things, because I was trying to
feel him out.
I was like, is this going to mean the end of my career?
What's he going to do to me?
I ultimately told him a little bit more information every time up until the fourth time.
And I told him about this little girl's name at the time was Ruby.
I said, hey, you know, I told her told him about what happened and his notes on this
paper literally reads in quotations distressed about girl and bag.
And he gave, you know, this is an intake form.
There's nothing there like, yeah, I'd like you to be off work.
There's nothing I need you to come once a week.
When I was getting at the end of that session, he said, well, just contact me again when
things are stressful.
And I honestly I'm like, well, fucking everyday stressful.
So I was like, screw you, man, I can't come here every day.
And you're giving me no pathway to get things better.
So I guess the route that Travis is on figuring the shit on my own.
This is how I will continue.
So I walked out of there and even the first time I went in there, I was not a believer
in therapy at this point in my life.
I thought it was all bullshit.
You know, I'm like, these people don't understand what the fuck it is I do all this stuff.
So left there and then kept doing my thing.
Things were not getting better.
And then I get a call that they're going to bring me back to the team as a team leader.
Well, to me, I think that's going to be the answer because all I need is I need to be
back with my buddies full time off the street doing the SWAT thing.
And this will all subside.
This will just be a distant memory.
But when I went back to the team, we were busier than ever, which is not good because
I'm getting no reset time.
And I just keep trying to shove anything down.
I'm drinking more than ever and just go, go, go.
But I hit it work quite honestly, because when I was home, I didn't like the way I felt.
You know, I didn't like what was going on up here.
But I always well, if I just keep going, if I just keep driving 1000 miles an hour, I
can put those thoughts at bay.
But you know what that does physically, then it's just it's destroying you in all different
aspects of your life.
So throughout that time, you know, and again, progressing through the years, again, our
team at this point, our culture was like we made fun of people that came forward for help.
So am I going to come forward for help?
No, I'm going to join in.
Disgusting.
I regret that my team has now changed, thankfully.
But I was part of the culture I had bought into it, that if you couldn't handle it, then
it must mean you're not fit for this job.
And I was just so completely ignorant, man.
So kept pushing through there.
And I had some emotional breakdowns outside of work.
Emily, my wife, who she is a rock star, just my support all the time, she would see these
things like, hey, I really want you to get help.
Her unit had actually been going to that knucklehead that I went to that I didn't like.
And they had some pretty horrible experiences with him.
So they were the only union in Mesa at that time, Internet Crimes Against Children.
They were required to go once a quarter to go see a therapist.
I love that.
But I always laugh about it now because like if it's good enough for them, why is the whole
department not required to go in once a quarter?
So that's another subject.
But they had changed to this new person.
And my wife worked with a couple of Salty Detectives that I knew.
And she's like, hey, even these two guys, they are having success with her.
And I didn't even know at the time.
But what she's telling me is this person is culturally competent.
She understands what it is we go through.
And somehow through all that, she's able to bridge and create this trust for people to
be able to open up and say what's really going on.
But I still wasn't buying into it.
I had situations, you know, one time Emily found me in the garage.
I'd come across the gray duct tape.
It was the first time I'd seen it since Ruby.
And man, I felt like I was literally standing at that door again that day, picking her up
out of that bag.
Didn't know what that was.
I'm crying.
I feel my heart rate again.
But again, who am I going to tell this to?
Because I've never been educated about this is why this is happening or someone telling
you, Travis, this is a perfectly normal response to a very abnormal situation.
I've never heard those words.
I just, all I had heard is you're fucked up if you can't handle this.
And so I just kept bottling, man, and just not healthy at all.
Emily wasn't telling me she was going to leave me by any means.
But she was saying, like, she's pretty adamant.
My wife's pretty assertive.
She's done the job for a while.
And she was saying, you're going to go get help.
But I kept putting it off until finally in 2021, I had actually had listened to her.
So the beginning of 2021, sometime in January, early February, I called this person, her
name is Jennifer Cooper, that my wife and her team were going to.
And I said, hey, I'd just like to make an appointment.
Didn't tell her I was in distress, anything like that.
And so we made an appointment for early in March of 2021.
And it was a Monday, and I was supposed to be going, you know, I was going to her office.
I was the on-call team leader.
I told some of the team, I said, hey, I got to run into Phoenix to handle some shit.
I of course didn't tell them where I was going.
I didn't want them to tell them I was going to anybody.
And so I had to Phoenix.
And I'm literally pulling into her office, Jennifer's office, and a barricade suspect
call kicks out back in Mason's, meaning our team is getting called out to come handle
this person.
So easy for me.
Cool.
I don't have to go to my appointment now.
And so I answered up for it.
And even when I had a couple buddies text me and say, hey, boss, we've got this, you know,
just come join us when you're done with whatever you're doing.
But I said, no, I'm the on-call team leader.
I got to go.
But it was Travis just running from it again.
So I contacted Jennifer real quick, cancel the appointment.
She said, OK, get with me when you can, you know, again, we'll reschedule.
So race back to Mesa, handle this barricade pretty uneventful.
We end up gassing the guy out, comes out with no further incident.
We do our debrief on scene.
We send everybody home.
And about 45 minutes after I got home, getting cleaned up, sitting down with dinner with
Emily, one of my bosses call and said they have a hostage rescue in East Mesa.
What East Mesa in this area is a very nice area.
And so they give me the details, the details where a little girl had escaped her house
and inside she was already been shot once and her dad had badly beaten her.
And inside the home was still her mom and 18 year old sister.
So getting this information coming from the SWAT world, I knew like I wasn't going to
have a long time for a very strung out deliberate plan.
It was going to be probably we get on scene.
Travis, you know, rounds up the guys I can.
We come up with a very hasty plan and we're going to go hit this house and stop this guy
from killing anybody else or hurting anybody else.
So sure enough, we roll, get there.
I grab a team, put it together real quick and we end up making entry through a backslider
door, shotgun breach, drop the glass and we make entry into the house.
Immediately inside we see a male with obviously deceased gunshot wound to the head.
And the other side of a couch was an older female, obvious deceased gunshot wound to
the head.
But the scene there was blood all over the place away from these bodies, which, you know,
at the time I wasn't even computing what I was seeing.
We work our way up and you know, in this blood, there's like big tile floors.
We see little footprints and stuff distinctly remember that.
That was now I know from the little girl who had escaped, she was barefoot.
And then going up the stairs, there's blood smeared down the wall and her little hand
prints in the blood.
Just so weird because we were in operation mode and numerous of us recall after we debrief,
we saw these prints, which is odd to me still to this day.
But almost like a finger painting, you know, if you do painting things, you put the prints
in, that's what it looked like.
We made our way upstairs and unfortunately our last room, we find the 18-year-old sister
and she was still in the covers on her head on the pillow, obvious deceased with gunshot
wound to the head.
And man, that rocked me.
There's a couple different reasons.
Number one, I didn't have much more room for any capacity of shit.
I was at the end of my rope.
But also I was fully expecting and now I've talked to many other operators, even some
military guys not understanding why I was feeling so horrible.
I thought I was going in there to rescue these people.
I was going to save the day.
I had full intention, like, you know, almost thirsting, like, okay, we're going to kill
the suspect.
I'll kill the suspect however it needs to be done.
And we get in there and we find everyone dead.
I was prepared for a rescue.
I was not prepared for a recovery and that's what it ended up being.
And so numerous of my teammates, they were not well inside.
It just hit us pretty hard.
And man, we had been running so hard, like call the call, the call, not much rest in
the last month prior to this and we were just we were just kind of done.
And so we ended up pulling the team off for 24 hours and just to try to let guys go home
and get some sleep.
We didn't really get much sleep.
And yeah, that was that took me up.
That was the very last call of my career.
That was the last call I ever went on.
Two things, firstly, when I look back at my career, 14 years as an EMT, firefighter EMT
and then paramedic, I never had a single code save.
So someone went into cardiac arrest in 14 years and then add the guy on the airplane.
That's another one as well.
And what I realized when I look back is when you're in the police academy, when you're
probably even the SWAT training, if you do A, B and C, you get, you know, result D. And
usually it's the person, you know, gets up and hugs you or they bring you a cake to the
fire station.
But in reality, you know, a cardiac arrest save is very, very rare.
Pulling someone alive who's trapped from a fire is very, very rare.
You know, finding someone alive in a mangled car or, you know, a hostage situation is rare.
And I think that that inability to save is such a crushing weight.
And it's only when you realize that you are not God and you don't decide if people live
or die that you can finally give yourself some grace in those calls.
Right.
No, 100% man.
And speaking of your service, how you guys, I saw help a police officer recently, there
was a police officer.
I knew he was going through some hard times because he had been first on scene to help
with a baby who had went in a pool in Arizona and had done compressions and stuff.
And it was probably useless from the beginning, but the baby did not make it.
And he had been living with for a very long time because they, again, they didn't do appropriate
debriefs.
This was a failure.
But then somehow he gets connected with the firefighters around that call.
And one of the senior guys merely said to them, do you know how many saves I've had
in my career?
And this dude's like forever on.
And they're like zero.
And the officer's like, what?
Like I thought you guys did this all the time.
Like no, like that is a fallacy that like we think like we make all these saves.
So that's it's huge, man, of what we can do differently.
Like, yeah, the expectation is I'm there and I'm going to save everyone.
But 99.9% of the time that never happens.
Yeah.
And I think where you rescue what we call pre-code when they're about to go into cardiac
arrest, that's where you make your saves, where you guys are getting to someone right
before they do something horrible.
That's where a lot of your saves are.
But yeah, when it comes to that worst critical call, we have expectations up here, but the
reality is it just doesn't equate, you know, and then you have the shame and the guilt
that's layered on.
Like what if I did it differently?
But it doesn't matter.
You only arrive when you arrive.
You only had the gear that you had and the training that you had.
And that's just, I think, where back to the recruitment standards, the only thing that
you have that can actually put your mind at rest is like, I took my job seriously.
I trained diligently.
I'm in great shape.
Therefore, I gave that person every chance.
If you create an environment where you allow those standards to be low or nonexistent,
now you've got first responders that know in their heart of hearts that maybe that person
died because they hadn't trained properly and that will haunt them forever.
Agreed.
Yeah, that's a great point.
We can definitely preparing our minds for the reality would be so much better of the
kind of the fairy tale things we put up here, what we're going to do in this profession.
You talked as well about the bad counselor experience and this is again a reoccurring
theme here.
The number of incredibly powerful conversations that I've had on here and so many arguably
alphas, be in tears.
You said about I shouldn't apologize.
You're damn right.
You shouldn't apologize.
We are yin and yang.
We should be able to cry when we've been through the stuff that we have.
But what really scares me is I've heard stories about EAP nightmare counselor experiences,
but I heard them.
That means that they were able to find someone better and get through it.
How many EAP horror stories will I never hear because that was the final nail in the coffin
for that person?
100% man.
You know, the EAP thing is a touchy subject with many people, but everywhere that we go
and we present and I do it with the utmost respect.
EAP is not working.
It is just and you know, Travis, when I've started this whole thing, the mental health,
I could back then I would say, well, that was my experience or maybe a couple more people.
But when you've been where I have been across the country from agency to agency to conferences,
the messages I get EAP is failing our first responders.
There's no way around it.
We don't trust it.
It is not a good experience.
EAP, if people don't know this, I assume most of your listeners do.
They are the it's going to the lowest bidder.
Let's just be quite frank.
One of the therapists I work with in Montana had an organization wanting to add her on
the EAP.
The starting rate was $35 an hour.
She can't even keep the lights on for that.
And it's just ridiculous.
And one person said it the best to me.
He said, yeah, because he believes unions should be getting involved in this stuff,
too.
So you go before the people you're advocating to for this change in how we do things say,
so if your child ends up with cancer, do you go pick the cheapest doctor there is to take
care of him?
Or how many of you would search the country travel no matter where you have to go to get
the best possible care?
Why are our first responders any different?
Plain and simple.
And you if you can't say that I want the best for them, then again, this is the time where
the leadership needs to say, well, maybe I need to pass the torch off to somebody else.
This is something I've been talking about a lot.
And then, you know, to dip my knuckles in glass, calling out the cowards in the fire
service.
And I think the issue that we have that maybe is underpinning is either low standards at
the front door that now you've got these turds wearing bugles, or more likely, you have people
that came up through the same kind of, you know, ladder that we did, who didn't address
their own mental health things.
And now they're in a position where they don't have the capacity to feel empathy for the
people that work under them.
And for example, the agency that's local to me, they've had three or four suicides in
as many years.
And all of them, three of them were really young.
And one was about, you know, my age, a little bit younger, but the other three, we decided
30 years old.
And we've I've tried my hardest to talk about the work week, we even got him involved with
a study where the chief and I went to this study.
And then one of the outcomes was you need to change the work week, you need to have
the clinicians in the department, and nothing, it fell on deaf ears.
And this is exactly to use the verb as you just said, I said the same thing.
If people die in your department, and that doesn't set you on a fucking mission to scour
the earth for solutions, then you need to look in the mirror and just simply ask why.
And it's no different than you have the head of a cigarette company, or Purdue farmer or
McDonald's, knowing that millions of Americans are dying because your product and you can
fucking sleep at night.
You are borderline sociopath.
So I think the mental health conversation, we always look at the level that you and I
were at.
But we forget that exists in the management level too.
And so if you look at a chief and they are unfazed by suicides and cancers, then either
they need to have a fucking come to Jesus moment and turn their shit around, or you
need to have a fucking French Revolution moment, get rid of them and put someone worthy in
that position.
Agreed.
There's a report that I referenced.
So the IACP, it's the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Not that I agree with everything that they do, you know, some things I don't, but they
last year put out the 2023 suicide prevention report for law enforcement, which would apply
to all first responders.
But the number one thing that they say is a roadblock is the number one is the culture,
meaning that your organization does not support people coming forward for help.
And then the number two thing is every organization needs to have access to a culturally competent
therapist and every one of your people needs to know how to get a hold of them, what that
looks like.
And then also instituting mandatory wellness checks throughout your agency for everybody.
And so it didn't say, oh, if you're only a 50 man department, it says everybody.
That means if you have 2000 people, guess what, you better figure out how you're getting
them care, giving them access to someone that knows how to take care of them.
Because the consequences is you're going to have blood on your hands.
Plain and simple.
There is no more.
There is no more hiding from this.
There is no more stuffing it aside.
You can still not do anything.
But like I said, you will then have blood on your hands.
One of the conversations that's come up a lot is simply the false economy of the way
we work our first responders.
I even had Tulsi Gabbard on the show and I looked at it nationally.
It's the same thing.
You look at the war on drugs, imagine all the money that was there to put into mental
health counseling, drug rehabilitation, work creation, housing, all the things that would
turn this around.
You'd save money hand over fist.
And now you've, as we said, got law enforcement that can actually do their job and court systems
that can support them.
And it's the same in the first responder professions.
There's money.
There's so much money to put an extra shift in the fire service to hire culturally competent
clinicians so therefore money isn't a barrier to entry.
Because that's one of the biggest things is the insurance or they're outside your network
and it's $100 an hour.
And so there's a will to get help, but you just can't afford it.
And one thing that I don't know if you had the similar thing, but I work for four agencies
ultimately and three of them I had to do a polygraph, which I lied my way through because
I had a fucking blast when I was younger.
So I was honest once on an application got thrown in my face and I like, oh, okay, so
you got to be lied to be a firefighter.
So I pretended to be a choir boy and got job after job.
But then we had the MMPI, I think it is Minnesota, multiple or multifaceted personality interview,
I think it is.
And it's an absolute bullshit test.
I'm sure you took it.
It's like, do you like flowers?
Do you like riding a bike?
Do you like sunshine?
Do you like touching kids?
Do you like lambs?
And you know, wait, what was that?
So that's bullshit too.
And I've asked people in all fields of psychology and psychiatry and they're like, that was
never meant to be a standalone test to determine if you could be a firefighter or a cop.
So just taking that money from that ridiculous testing, because you've done a background,
you've done all the physical and written tests.
And you know, so you should know if it's a good person, bad person and able.
So take that money and then at the front door, as you said, you know, like every quarter,
I love that, but your new hires as part of your probation, when they're in the FTO program
or whatever it is, give them five sessions.
So now you've normalized mental health at the front door.
You've given them the opportunity to offload what we discussed, maybe years of trauma before
we ever put the uniform on and you've removed the barrier to entry.
So if they just want to tune up or they're actually struggling, they can go to Sandra
or Steve and say, Hey, I need help.
So rather than this box checking, you know, facade, I mean, a polygraph is basically a
magic show, actually put money into proactively giving these people time with a counselor.
And then that will set them up through their career, especially if you said if you're getting
tune ups every three months, six months, whatever it is.
Agreed.
And James, and I would say with all that, I understand the financial restraints for anyone
lit sitting in the number one seat.
I understand that's always challenging.
I would say in regards to this, it is not a financial problem.
It's a priority problem.
You can find the money, you can reform programs, you know, shuffle things around.
If this is not a priority, that's because you haven't made a priority.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Like I said, the money's downstream to put it back up.
Right.
So as far as far as your journey, I didn't hear you say this specifically with Andy,
but I mean, a lot of people that have been on here, they're the lowest of lows includes
suicide ideation and planning, even some near misses or actually in some of my guests, even
they went through with it and survived.
Where did you find yourself as far as the lowest part?
And then what have been the tools that have helped you grow from that trauma?
Yeah.
I mean, I'd say probably, I mean, unfortunately, like that five year span of 2016 from the
call through 2021, I was in the darkest days of my career, meaning I was high performing
at work.
But when I was alone, I didn't like what was going on up here.
I wasn't comfortable.
I was a prisoner to my own mind.
Suicidal ideations.
Yeah.
See my gun every day.
Train every day.
I could do this.
No problem.
I just gotta do it because I've seen people that aren't successful or riding my Harley.
Yep.
I had a Harley back in Arizona.
Yeah.
I can just go a hundred miles an hour into the front of that vehicle.
No one will know the better.
They just think it's an accident.
And at least it wasn't, I didn't want to die.
I never, of course, wanted to exit from my wife, from my boys, but the pain was so intense
with what was going on up here and how I was feeling inside.
I just needed it to stop.
And that's where I was.
But now, man, I've taken such a different, I don't want people to think that Travis has
it all figured out because every day is a new challenge for me.
And quite frankly, I'm fascinated now by the challenges of getting control of this mind
and how I tackle every single day.
But I use all those experiences now.
I do not, like I have one of my boys, my youngest.
He's toyed with it.
And now it's all of a sudden he's thinking about becoming a police officer again.
And he knows what I've been through.
He knows my story.
He's heard me speak.
But I told him just the other day, I said, hey, man, like Emily and I, we don't regret
anything we did in our career as far as like, we now see all these amazing things that happened
and all these struggles that I went through.
It's how it's post-traumatic growth where I've turned into because of what I went through
and because of the situation and the 2016 call, the cumulative calls throughout my career.
It's who I am today.
And now it's just, I guess, a change in perspective to where I used to curse those days.
After the Ruby thing happened, man, I was pissed.
I decided to promote.
I was pissed at my administration.
I was pissed at everybody.
But now I'm like, I'm thankful it was me that day that quite honestly had the privilege
to bring her up out of that closet.
That was a privilege for me.
So to be able to have that different perspective is so fucking freeing for your mind.
And that's what I want for everybody else.
That's why I do what I do.
Instead of saying why me, say why and change your perspective.
What are you going to learn from this today?
I went to this thing, like I said, from Boulder Crest and they had us do this, read this quote
one day from Rumi and I won't be able to quote it.
So don't think that I'm paraphrasing.
But in essence, it says, imagine every morning you wake up and there's a knock on the door.
You open the door, it may be something good.
It may be something bad.
But if you can almost with a little chuckle, welcome whatever that is and bring them in
and take the perspective of what am I going to learn from this?
Just think about how every single day could be completely different if we tackled it in
that way.
Going back to being a prisoner of your mind, one of the other common denominators that really
bubbled up and it's so interesting because if you look at the way most of us viewed suicide
back in the day, it's selfish.
How could they?
You go think about your kids, your family, what a coward.
And then you listen to these people who, as I said, were almost there, were there but
didn't pull the trigger or did pull the trigger, did jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and they're
here to tell the tale.
95 plus percent said the same thing.
They wanted the suffering to end.
But the other side was they truly believe that they were a burden to the people that
they loved.
And then you never hear this talked about.
So if you think about that, if your wiring has become so miswired, if your brain chemistry
is so off through all the things, childhood trauma, sleep deprivation, organizational
betrayal, psychiatric meds, alcohol, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, there's that perfect
storm.
And that is now your reality.
And you believe that if you take your own life, you will finally relieve your children
and your wife or your husband of the pain you've been putting on them.
That then makes suicide courageous and selfless to that person at that point.
When you add in the fact that you've got a profession where we swore to die for complete
strangers, we'll gladly die for the people that we adore.
I don't think that's spoken about enough.
Did you have any element of that as you were going through your darkness?
Absolutely.
Because you do.
You feel like you're a burden.
And we do my presentations, we do a big section on suicide.
And that is one of the things we talk about.
And I even show a video from a good friend of mine and he is willing to share about his
suicidal ideations.
And he quite frankly, every single day felt like my family hates me.
I'm causing them problems because I'm so messed up.
And then if you can get really philosophical and think about from the day one of the academy,
you are taught to be a problem solver.
You are taught to handle if someone's going through a rough time, guess what we're doing?
We're going to help you get through that rough time.
Well, what happens when you're the rough time?
You're the ones like you said, your family, you seem to be causing them all this distress.
Okay, well, I know what to do.
I eliminate the problem.
And Travis is the problem.
So if you eliminate that, they're going to be much better off.
So the weirdness of what goes on in your head, I don't want to leave my family, but I'm causing
them problems.
So they're going to be better off if I do exit.
So yeah, that is that is one of the number one things talked about.
And again, I have the privilege of working with three therapists, but they all tell me
when they're going over suicidal ideations, it all comes down to that, especially with
first responders, that they just feel like this burden.
Well, I'm going to take this burden away from my family.
This will be a good thing.
Yeah.
And I think that just needs to be front and center in the posters and the conversation
is like, oh, my door's always open.
Call me.
There's a number on the pin board.
Clearly, that doesn't work.
I mean, I'm getting Rudy Reyes on in a few days because the recon community is losing
brother after brother after brother and that.
So I think this is one of the missing pieces.
The other thing to put some, you know, some optimism in it is you've talked about post
traumatic growth quite a lot.
I think in the first responder profession, the mental health conversation kind of tripped
over the hurdle of stigma.
Okay, we, you know, we we acknowledge that we can have PTSD as well or, you know, moral
injury or whatever you kind of want to term whatever that you've got.
However, I feel like we're left with this.
So yeah, I live with my PTSD now and I've got my dog.
This is Steve.
He comes with me on the plane, you know, and it's not a very inspiring conversation at
all.
And some people may never get past there and that maybe they're just to the point where
that's their best.
And I'm not talking ill of that at all.
But where I feel this conversation is extremely exciting is that post traumatic growth.
And that's where we talked about resilience earlier.
I feel like that's resilience.
Resilience is going through struggles and coming out the other end.
And especially with the naysayers, whether if you just frame it as performance, like
you'd be a more, you know, effective operator or, you know, firefighter or a paramedic.
Or if you look at it as actually through the mental health conversation.
To me, once you've gone through that crucible and you found that toolbox, whether it's EMDR
or psychedelics or, you know, llamas, whatever your thing is, or combination of things is,
there is a better version of you on the other side.
And you become then a beacon of hope for other people.
And they start coming out the woodwork going, I've been having the same problems.
How did you get through it?
100%.
And, you know, I've always realized that there is power in sharing your story.
But I didn't, I didn't realize that that was actually the first step in towards growth
because I found first time I ever shared my story is when I was leaving the, I would decide
I was going to leave the profession.
I went and told my team, I needed to tell them personally.
It was a very, you know, like an hour long, I got with them.
And by me sharing my story, a couple other guys came up and they're like, holy shit,
Travis, like, I've been feeling like that stuff forever.
I thought I was the only one.
And so that's the first step because now if we know that, Hey, it's not just Travis that
are having these thoughts that have dealt with these things.
It's this, this and this, these people I work with all the time.
Now you have almost a camaraderie in that tribe of like, okay, we've experienced some
really shitty things, but now what do we do?
Now we look at like, okay, you know, you can sit around and Travis could say, I could still
be sitting here today, James and wallowing in, you know, the January day in 2016 of,
you know, cursing that day.
And that was horrible.
And I can't believe this happened to me.
Or I can do the steps I need to get myself well, which I did.
And then understand it's a daily journey and start understanding.
No, those experiences made me who I am today.
Just like we talked about the childhood, I used to curse my dad all the time, but now
I'm like, okay, with my dad, you know, there were some things I did learn good from him.
I also things that he didn't do correctly.
I learned from that as well, because I don't want to be like that.
And so that is literally the post-traumatic growth.
And every time, if you go through these refining of what goes on mentally, now you are just
that much stronger on the other side.
And so yeah, the post-traumatic growth, I agree it's exciting because yeah, like Mesa
PD, my old organization has adopted this.
It's a whole program called struggle well, and they are putting in the academy and all
these things.
It's through Boulder Crest foundation.
And I'm talking, James, like, because this is always my thing.
I want to talk to the heavy hitters in the department, meaning the people who have been
in the trenches and seen a lot of stuff and like, what do you think of this?
And every report I'm getting, Travis, I don't know what's happening, but this post-traumatic
growth stuff, there's something to it.
Meaning if we can change our perspective, you know, and I don't ever want to minimize
our organizations need to do better.
That's what I'm saying, you know, but we're providing them with a program to understand
use that horrible experience as a growth period and just how much stronger we'll be.
Number one, for you individually, number two, for your families.
And then finally, the organization, I agree with you.
It's exciting and I love it.
I just, I want to talk about it more.
Yeah.
Excellent.
We, I've heard you talking about EMDR and what I've, again, what I'm getting from a
lot of these stories is that EMDR is a great tool for an acute event to kind of, you know,
down-regulate your response to that.
But obviously there's the death by a thousand cuts element as well.
So as you started collecting the tools in your toolbox, what are some of the things
that are in that basket for you now?
Yeah, for sure.
So just a mindfulness, something that I've toyed around with, but I have not, you know,
this is again, I'm growing every day, but every day I set my intention.
What is my intention for the day?
Number two, I list something that I'm thankful for.
And number three, I say a positive affirmation about Travis and I'm journaling it all because
man, it's so funny when I talk about this stuff, because I think about Travis from prior
all this stuff happened, I would be making fun of Travis right now, but I'm telling you,
it is amazing what we can do to our minds when we change that perspective and place
expectation about what's going to be happening.
And then taking the, having a level of gratitude, you know, there, you can look outside, you
can look at your circumstances.
And of course we can all pick out things that says, you know, this is horrible or that I
can't believe I had to go through it.
Or you can focus on the things to be grateful for, even if it's all you can figure out
today is I'm grateful I can go to my faucet over here and get drinking water when so much
of the world can't do that.
Or you know, thankful for what goes on in your family.
And then the positive affirmation I know for Travis, I'm my own worst enemy.
I am up in this head every single day, you know, whether you're a piece of shit or you
failed at that, how could you have missed that?
But no, I'm going to cite some things that I know Travis, you know, I'm proud of, and
I'm going to put that down.
And then meditation, man, meditation is huge.
Again, I'm not, I'm not an hour long meditation guy, but like a 1520 minute thing where you
feel a reset needs to take place.
It is a great thing.
And then breathing, four, seven, eight breathing.
I do that when I feel these periods of just ultimate, like, I don't know what's going
on the stress.
Okay, just calm down for a second.
And then, you know, I think man, the daily practice, so through EMDR and through a lot
of therapy that I did, remember how I told you about the airport where I sense myself
like something's up before the old Travis, I would just, I would have moved towards the
reaction and I would have just, I wouldn't have paid attention.
But now as I become more aware of what's going on in my body, I wake up in the morning.
Okay, how do I feel, you know, maybe get a little sunshine, look at the sunrise, those
types of things, set those intentions.
How am I feeling today?
And it can guide you with how you tackle every part of your life.
Beautiful.
Well, I want to move to some closing questions.
We've been chatting for almost two and a half hours, so I want to be mindful of your time.
The first one I love to ask, is there a book or are there books that you love to recommend
it can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated?
Well, man, I'm going to throw a bunch of new stuff onto you, but the, I just started and
I'm halfway through it and I love it, but the Edith Eger book, The Choice, that is really
good.
I had her on the show.
She was incredible.
You did?
Oh my goodness.
Look that, man, I'm just captivated by that stuff.
I like for fiction stuff, just to say I'm really into the Jack Carr books.
This whole series, I just, his writing style, it just pulls me in and I'm a gear guy, so
I like how he does.
So those two things.
And then, yeah, I guess those are the two big ones I would recommend right now for people.
Definitely can help.
Beautiful.
Yeah.
Edith, I know it was episode 500 because it was a big milestone number and I'm like, who
better to have on the show than Edith?
I mean, that's just incredible.
And then Jack's been on a couple of times too.
Oh, seriously.
All right.
Yeah.
Love that.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well then what about films and documentaries?
Any of those that you love?
Films and documentaries.
I'm not a big, my wife and I laugh about this a lot of time.
I don't watch a lot of movies.
I don't want to get stupid, but yeah, I mean, I'm really just for, I love Top Gun.
How dumb that may be.
I don't know.
The two, but yeah.
Yeah.
I'm not a big documentary guy, so I guess I don't even have a suggestion on that.
It's amazing how many pilots have had on the show that Top Gun was absolutely the motivator.
So it was a good one.
All right.
Well, the next question, is there a person that you'd recommend to come on this podcast
as a guest to speak to the first responders, military and associated professions of the
world?
I would say, I think since you seem to be excited about the struggle well stuff, someone
from Boulder Crest Foundation that is, because they started with a veteran community and
now they're big in the first responders and just talk about how important that's been
for our first responders and veterans, I guess, embracing the struggle well concept, post
traumatic growth and what that means to them.
I've had it mentioned a lot.
So after looking, I don't think I've had, I think I've had people have gone through
it.
I'm almost certain I have obviously you're one of them, but I don't know if I've had
anyone from there specifically.
So I have to look, so happens when you got a thousand people I've said before, like,
I need to get someone on there.
Like I was on your fucking show, idiot.
Yeah.
Like a good buddy of mine that I've recently got to know, but he's the vice president.
Joe Wood is his name.
So he's, he's big into it.
So yeah, I think I've been seeing, you know, and again, I don't ever, I like to experience
things myself.
And then I also then, okay, Travis experienced this.
I've been doing my calls now to people that have went through and it's the same across
the board, like Travis, this is life changing.
I've been to all those bullshit training and this is definitely the best.
So they're definitely onto something.
So that should be explored more.
Excellent.
All right.
Well then one last question before we go to where people can find you and that she, before
I do that, I totally skipped my arena.
So before I jumped into the closing questions, I meant to jump into that first.
So you, you found all these tools now, you know, obviously we're in an age where social
media and the internet can be absolutely horrendous or it can be a beautiful healing community.
What made you decide to, you know, create a platform and tell everyone about what they
can find on there?
Man.
Yeah.
You know, a lot of it has to do with that first podcast with Andy stump.
I had been actually in Montana.
When I was moving up to Montana, someone asked me to come speak at a tactical leadership
conference in the state to just do one of my debriefs where we go over like a hostage
rescue or something that I had done.
And I agreed to do it.
But then as I started thinking, I said, well, maybe I wonder if they would let me talk about
my experiences with mental health and literally I don't want you to become Travis.
This is how I would have done it differently.
And these are the things I think could work for you.
And so they agreed to it.
And someone had heard me speak there that was friends with Andy.
And so Andy, you know, we got connected.
He's texting me.
I don't know who you are, but someone says I should have you on.
So I trust them.
Let's do it.
And so as that was going on, I honestly, man, just through a word of mouth, I do have that,
you know, I have a social media and not not a very big presence, but just something on
Instagram.
But all the events that I've ever done and I've probably I've been doing this for two
and a half years.
We have traveled from coast to coast and a bunch of stuff in Montana.
I don't even know how many events, probably over 60 events now to where we go and speak
it is just word of mouth.
I don't seek out departments, but we will.
Someone will hear about me and they'll ask us to do a proposal to come and speak at their
agency or to conference.
And that's what's happened.
So I go through and it's kind of a unique thing.
I travel with outside of the state of Montana.
I travel with my former therapist from Arizona.
And as I tell my story, the culturally competent clinician, she gives her side of it about
explaining why Travis was feeling these things, what we could do to prevent it.
If you're at that point, you know, we talk about suicide and all that.
And then in Montana, I have two therapists that I've become really close with that they
do the same role, you know, talking about things.
So yeah, that's what I do now.
And just to share my story and like we're getting, you know, we're busier than ever.
And then, you know, I do podcasts when I can.
But just trying to let people know they're not alone, man, and just hopefully we can
change this culture and be part of a lasting change.
And tell me about the powerful significance of the logo.
Yeah.
So that wolf, my wife actually is a stained glass artist.
If people don't know that it's like an old school thing, but she's really good at it.
And she created, you know, a picture of a wolf.
And I'm very partial to wolves.
I just think it's an awesome species, just the resiliency, their ability to fight, their
ability to stay together as a group.
And so I was partial to that.
And then myself, my wife, and then my former therapist, we thought as a good tribute in
the right eye of this, of my logo is Ruby.
It's the color Ruby.
And that's to honor Ruby for her part in this.
Beautiful.
I've read that obviously on the site.
I thought that was amazing.
Yeah, it's awesome, man.
All right.
So it gets a question that I meant to before I forgot to talk about that.
What do you do to decompress?
What do I do?
So still fitness is a big part of my life.
You know, I pretty much, you know, five, six days a week.
I do not miss that.
We have a home gym now because we live up in the mountains.
So, so that's kind of nice.
And then I am very fortunate to be up in the mountains.
So walking in the mountains, walking the dog and that kind of stuff when I need a break
is very good.
And then I am trying to get very better because I've recently found this out with just
disconnecting for a little bit and just just my wife and I just being together and enjoying
family time.
So very important to me.
And I do a lot of reflection, man, not to sound hokey or anything, but just a lot of
reflection for the moment that I'm in.
Just enjoying where I am, enjoying where I came from and enjoying about, you know, where
we're going.
Because I think it's I definitely was horrible about being so busy.
I never took the time to do things like that.
And I'm just trying to be very intentional about that.
Absolutely.
Yeah, that's the crazy thing.
I mean, you think about what we do in, you know, mine was 14 years in uniform.
Yours a lot longer, but there's a lot to reflect on.
You know what I mean?
When you finally come out the other end, it's like you've been through an absolute, you
know, shit storm.
So I think this is the other problem with with us is, you know, law enforcement will
come out and be like, oh, I guess I'll go work in security.
Firefighters will come out and be, oh, I guess I'll go teach at the fire academy now.
Other than the amazing lens that we have on society, you know, in this conversation about,
you know, is drug prohibition working and, you know, the way that we look at homelessness
and all these things.
I wish that that firefighters and police officers had more of a voice to talk about what we
see, not just so much what we do, but what we see.
Because as you know, we get into election seasons, all these things are being used as
political pawns.
And I think most of us are standing there going, what the fuck are you talking about?
That's not how this is or that is or, you know, no, the city isn't getting safer.
I mean, we watch more and more people go to the morgue this month than, you know, than
ever.
So I think, you know, there's a lot that we see.
And therefore, to your point, there's a lot to kind of process and reflect on, you know,
aside from obviously trying to be present with our family, just that I mean, it's 10,
20, 30 years of stuff to now kind of try and, you know, put in certain shelves after you
transition out of the career.
Agreed.
Yeah.
All right.
So then as far as online, where are the best places to find you, whether it's websites
or social media?
Yeah.
So my website is my arena LLC.com and then social media, the Instagram is the best way.
It's my underscore dot arena.
So yeah, and I just always commit to everyone.
You can email me, you can send me a message on Instagram.
One I love that I'm still be able to, I will connect with you if you need to have a conversation.
If you have questions, I make it a very important point that I just connect with people and
they reach out because sometimes they don't feel comfortable coming to their friends or
organization and sometimes we're the only people they have.
And just I just have made a commitment.
And that's it's honestly, it's a privilege because I've been able to walk along some
side some people throughout the United States that have just been in a really rough time
and get them, you know, going down the path that they need, whether it's they had never
heard about EMDR or never knew or what do you mean a culturally competent therapist
and just, you know, get these messages back like, man, this changed my life, my family.
We were about on the brink of divorce.
I'm staying with my wife.
You know, I'm happier now, whatever those things.
And that's, that's what I'm committing to.
So just be there for people.
Beautiful.
Well, I want to thank you so much.
Like I said, we've talked for two and a half hours and it's been, you know, just such a
powerful conversation.
I mean, some of the, some of the things that you talked about and, you know, in some of
these conversations, we get more philosophical.
Sometimes people really dive into, you know, what it was like on the actual call.
And I think it's important for people to hear that whether you're in uniform, whether you're
a civilian so that you can really understand, you know, some of the cumulative traumatic
events that happen for a first responder.
But then attaching the hope, you know, the growth, the tools that you brought to this
conversation, I think are imperative.
So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the
Behind the Shield podcast.
Well thank you brother.
Like, yeah, cause people like you, you know, it allows us to get the message out more and
you obviously have a big voice.
So thank you so much.
It's been a privilege to be here and I really appreciate it.