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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast, as always, my name is James Gearing,
and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show,
Army veteran, Oklahoma State Trooper, member of the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force,
and founder of the Oklahoma First Responder Wellness Division, Danny Long.
Now as you will hear, Danny is the blackest of black clouds when it comes to the law enforcement world.
So we discuss a host of topics from his journey into the military,
his initial entry into law enforcement, going back to contracting,
tactical teams, active shooter training, the multiple officer involved shootings that he had personally,
his own mental health story, the formation of the Oklahoma First Responder Wellness Division,
BeaverFit equipment, 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 1,000 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories,
so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Danny Long. Enjoy.
Music
Well Danny, I want to start by saying two things.
Firstly, thank you to our mutual friend Dan Cowan for connecting us.
And secondly, I want to welcome you to the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Hey, great to be here. I've been looking forward to this for quite some time.
Yeah, likewise. Your name has definitely been thrown around quite a bit, so I'm glad that we finally made it work.
So very first question then, where on planet Earth are we finding you today?
I mean, I know this is going to be a shocker for people.
You know, I'm not from New York, and if you haven't figured that out by now,
I'm from central, the greatest part of the country, Oklahoma.
And I've been all over the world in very different capacities and have always returned back here to my roots.
My family has had generational farms here going way back.
And you know, this is where my heart and soul is.
So and definitely where I'm supposed to be right now.
I have no doubt about that for what you and I are both doing to help create some culture change in and for our people.
Well, you spoke about growing up in the farm.
So let's talk about origin story then. Tell me exactly where you were born.
And tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings.
OK, so we're I mean, we're going to start off.
I'm a very vulnerable person now. I wasn't always that way.
But that's what helped me survive and grow, you know, survive my suicide attempt and where we are right now.
So I'm glad you asked.
Southern Oklahoma, not too far from the Texas border, just far enough to not to get their stank on me.
But all of our farms were in that central region.
Man, I grew up in the middle of nowhere pretty much.
And farm life and ranch that rodeo that that that was me.
And I felt like a slave most of the time.
And because I got up early, did chores before school, I had chores after school when all my friends were out running around in the summer.
I was in the hay field, baling hay, hauling hay.
And a lot of it was by myself. And, you know, my and so my my biological dad was killed when I was think two on a Harley.
And so my mom remarried a few years later, brought us to this other farm.
Not too far from my original family farm.
And that man was tough. I mean, and I didn't always align with him very well.
I mean, he taught me how to shoot, fight, pretty much run a farm and ranch.
And and as you know, James, growing up on the farm, there's not a whole lot of BS time when it comes to farming.
And so I was quickly thrown into the that side of the house and not told years later that I began to appreciate it and start, you know, to to appreciate more.
Of him, because, you know, as I grew and went through my recovery period, you know, there's a reason we act the way we do.
There was a reason he was like rough and direct.
I mean, that's why he was raised. And, you know, I remember one time and I'm not saying this for like pity or to make.
I hope my mom never hears this because I've never told her.
But we were out hunting one day. There was a snowstorm that came in.
And we hunted all seasons just because I mean, I was always in the woods if I wasn't working in a bow hunting or deer hunting, rabbit hunting.
I mean, you name it. But we ate the meat also, along with our beef that we raced.
And so I missed this rabbit. I mean, heavy snow coming down.
I was probably like nine or 10 and had the same 22 rifle my whole life.
And I didn't miss a whole lot with that. But I did that day.
And I couldn't see I couldn't see the rabbit. He was telling me to shoot. Shoot. Well, I missed it.
Well, I got discipline over that soon as I missed.
And, you know, man, that that affected me for a few years.
But here's the here's the positive thing that it did. So I wasn't paid.
I mean, I, you know, I didn't get anything but like a food provision during the week.
And but I would get some additional money in the summer for hauling hay for some other people.
So I saved money. But after that little discipline of missing rabbit,
I started going to our local store every time we went to town.
I would buy a box of 22 shells. And in a few weeks, man, I had like two or three thousand rounds of 22.
And I practiced every single day. I mean, because I wasn't going to miss again.
And, you know, I had no idea what I'd be doing years later professionally.
And but, man, I just got to where.
If I had my rifle in your in my hand, man, your ass is dead.
And, you know, that that played out in the professional world.
Not just to save me, but for a lot of other people throughout my career.
But so that, you know, all those years of me taking it as a negative and, yeah, I probably could have done it in a softer way.
But every time, even now, man, I if I grab a rifle and I'm going to train or a pistol, I remember that discipline.
I'm like, don't miss. You're going to get beat, son. So good or bad.
I mean, it's a good now. It wasn't when I was nine or ten.
But, you know, we don't know. We don't know sometimes and what's coming to prepare us for the future.
And that was definitely one of those lessons I learned on the ranch that was it was tough.
But it saved my life down the road.
And, you know, we rodeo all the time. We had our own rodeo arena.
We roped twice a week. We had a bucking pin in the opposite end. I tried riding bulls, but that's for like short stocky guys.
And I mean, I was six to about the time I was about 15 or 16, just lanky.
I just got dumped and hurt all the time. So I gave that up probably when I was 17 or 18.
And but, you know, I'm just like graduated high school.
I was dating the same girl since about our sophomore year.
And she went to nursing school at a college in Oklahoma.
And I went to Fort Benning and went to the infantry training, came back.
And I decided, you know, I wanted to be a trooper a long time ago,
not because I wanted to. I had no interest in riding tickets or working crashes.
But the Highway Patrol here in this state runs the statewide tactical team.
And I came across those guys one time and they were just a little different breed,
military guys and special service tops that transitioned over and went straight to our tactical team.
And I'm like, that's what I want to do. You know, and so and I served.
I'd actually when I was when I came back, I was going to college and I went to EMT school
and firefighter one school at night. And I rode in the ambulance
and was a volunteer at a local fire department all the way through college.
And that that along with my GI bill helped kind of pay the food
and the gas during that part of my life. Finish up.
I applied for the Highway Patrol here and got on.
And two years later, I moved over to our tactical team.
And that's kind of where it all start.
I want to go back to the early life. And the reason I say this is, you know,
we talked about this before when we spoke the other day, I grew up on a farm as well.
And I was in sheep and, you know, stone picking and bailing and all the things that you talk about.
And, you know, of course, it forges resilience.
And my dad wasn't the kind of, you know, iron fist kind of a person.
He was a little bit more gentle. So I had that.
But, you know, as you said, the kind of standards that you were given, albeit maybe a little, you know,
overbearing, you know, you see now how they created strength as well.
That being said, I think the the under discussed element of first responder mental health is what happened to us before we put the uniform on.
So when you look at it now with this lens in 2024, after going through your own crucible,
what were some of the elements of the upbringing that you think were actually negative, that were traumatic, that ultimately needed to be recognized and addressed?
Well, a great question. And that was part of my problem.
I mean, I was never allowed to show an emotion.
I've got discipline for that as well. And in our culture, in this part of the country, it wasn't just me.
My other friends were the same way. They're growing up on adjacent farms and ranches.
It's just that cowboy culture of just suck it up and, you know, pull your hat down tight and get back on and go.
And, you know, there was one thing and I forgot about this until you just mentioned sheep and no, it's not what everybody thinks.
That's what people do down in Texas.
Yeah, exactly. So I showed sheep and we had we had a cattle farm, but I was into these
because it was paying a lot of money at the time, right. And I was after all the money I could get.
So I had this prize sheep. His name was AJ. And man, I made a lot of money with that cat man for a couple of years.
Well, I come home one day. My mom picked me up from school.
And I would had to been like 12 or 13 at that point.
And the sheep pen was next to our cattle pen. So when we pulled in the driveway, I could see him, you know, we wasn't there.
I'm like, that's odd. So I walk out there and I see some obvious signs of trauma to the sheep.
And I'm like, this is not good. So I went in the house, packed a backpack because it was headed off to the woods and grab my rifle.
And I found him, you know, like a mile from our place.
And I was distraught, you know, and I remember coming back and my stepdad was there.
And I mean, I think I was crying. I nearly know I was.
And there was some harsh, you know, rebuttal to that emotion.
He's like, what are you going to do about it?
I said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, obviously something came and killed him and drug him out there.
I mean, he went and looked. He said, what are you going to do?
And I'm like, well, I want some payback for my sheep.
He said, well, go set on, you know, his remains and they'll come back.
And sure enough, they came back and it was this wild pack of dogs, you know, I don't know how many there were.
I killed them all and didn't make me feel any better. But that was one of those times where I mean, I was upset for weeks, you know,
and, you know, life's hard on the farm. I lost a lot of dogs and a lot of things that meant to me at the time.
As a dog, they're still special to me. But I was not shown. I mean, I never remember that guy crying ever, never shown emotion,
always very stern and direct. And and stress was never talked about because it was a bad thing along with that other emotions.
And so, you know, that's a great question, because when stress actual like really bad stress started happening in my life in the professional career,
I looked at it as a total negative and almost removed myself from it. I'm like, I don't want to deal with this. I don't have to.
I can go get some payback and another place. Or that's just how I viewed things.
I carried a chip on my shoulder for a long time because of all that. And, you know, and that was my reaction was always to run and isolate,
withdraw. And that really started happening a lot throughout my career, ultimately leading to 2015.
So I love where you're going with that, because absolutely, I don't think we very, very few times do we as a first responder community want to go back and revisit some of those bad things that's happened in our early childhood that wasn't fun, wasn't pleasant, don't want to talk about, don't want to believe that actually may have happened.
But there's absolutely a reason. I mean, there's a why of why we do things the way we do.
I think what's interesting hearing almost a thousand conversations and many of those, you know, even even like, you know, there's one guy, Dan John, who's a strength and conditioning guru.
He spent the first 45 minutes talking about mental health and all the generational trauma of his family. So it doesn't matter what they're on for. It nearly always finds its way to this conversation.
But I think the early early struggles, the early trauma can do one of two things. If it's appropriately dealt with as you go along, it can immediately forge resilience, which is why some people seem to struggle less than others when you get in there.
But if you're in an environment, like, for example, you've got that, you know, facade of stoicism where emotion is just pushed down.
I would argue that becomes a fracture of your foundation. And so then when you put the uniform on and you have the sleep deprivation, the stress and sometimes the organizational betrayal and all these other things that compound.
And now you're standing on balsa wood instead of oak. You know that then this is why I think we lose some of these young men and women early in their career because we're not talking about what did they bring in before the badge hit the chest.
No, I can't agree more with that.
Man, and I apologize. I need to put this out there right now. I've got it. I was finally diagnosed with a TBI in early 2019 stuff gets stuck from here to here. I mean, I know I sound like a crazy redneck, but it's there.
I promise sometimes it just doesn't always go out. So if I get hung up, please help me out.
I got no excuse. I didn't have a TBI and I chip over my work all the time. So there we go.
Well, you know, it's my ace in the ace, my ace card. So but, you know, absolutely. I agree with that.
I can look back on many of those instances to where it did create a fracture in what I knew at the time is my foundation. And it just added more fractures and more fractures.
And, you know, I didn't know I had I never thought in a perspective of hey, the post traumatic growth.
And I didn't hear that term for a long time, but just what you said to build the resilience piece of it.
I just didn't view stress that way. And my automatic reaction, like I said, was to withdraw, isolate and just remove myself from that whatever environment it was at the time to include my relationship with my wife.
Just as a tangent, I shared a video of a comedian the other day, and he was about our age and he was talking about mindfulness and he's like, when we were young, there was no fucking mindfulness. It's like when you when you sat in the toilet, you just sat there and took a shit.
There was no phone to scroll or anything. And it's funny because when I think of the farm, you know, I walk around carrying a stick and trying to make a bow and arrow.
But yeah, when you look at that environment, especially being a farm boy, mindfulness was absolutely ingrained in what you did.
And then I look now at this generation that my son has grown in with so many distractions.
I mean, you can't even go to a restaurant without 20 fucking televisions around you.
They they don't have that presence where, you know, it's hard to be bored in 2024.
I was bored a lot on the farm. I adored it.
But sometimes there was just nothing to do when you're on your own as a kid.
No, I mean, I probably if I had downtime, I grabbed my pack and loaded it with some snacks, water, either took my bow or a rifle.
And I would just go I would make a place to stay and I would overnight sometimes two or three nights, no cell phones back then.
And, you know, so eventually my mom or somebody would jump on one of the we had three wheelers at the time.
And they would start driving around looking for me and I'm just like, I'm doing my thing out here.
I kill stuff, eat it.
You know, I just that that was my getaway from dealing with what was going on in the house.
But also, I truly enjoyed it.
But, you know, probably like you, my closest friends were probably 10, 12 miles away.
So I just kind of did my own thing for a long time.
But, you know, looking back now, I almost feel sorry for like even my son.
I mean, not that I would want him to go back and go through that everything that I did, but he didn't get to experience a lot of this personal growth.
You know, by yourself, just truly enjoying nature for what it is and what it was meant to be and just being present in the moment.
I think it's being lost every second, you know, all over the world.
100 percent. Well, speaking of packing and going off on your own, what made you decide to join the military and then walk me through the time that you spent in that role?
So my my time was just in the reserves.
It was I think I left here in 94 and there was nothing going on.
So nothing at all.
The budget there and especially for my line of work, what I chose to go do was just almost zero.
I mean, I got to a point, I think in ninety five, I went through some additional training and looked at it as a possibility of doing some other stuff, you know, for the future here.
But there was just no pathway forward at that point.
I mean, this is all pre nine eleven. And again, I mean, the political powers to be at the time were I guess, say, maybe anti military, but there was just zero budget.
I mean, we were an infantry scout platoon and almost had zero ammo to train with and equipment.
So, I mean, again, the war machine was not really running at that point.
So, yeah, I came back here in ninety five, stayed in the reserves, went to college and but I knew I knew before I went, like I said earlier, I wanted to be on the highway patrol here and get on the tactical team as soon as I could.
So that and really, I can't tell you why I went. I mean, I, other than I love my country, I'm a patriot.
I believe in doing my part, no matter what season of life I'm in.
And that was definitely one of the boxes that and one of the uniforms that I wanted to wear almost all my family to include my stepdad.
I mean, even on my mom's side, all Navy Marines Army, I don't think we had any Air Force, but I mean, my both my granddad's World War Two.
My uncle World War Two Normandy. I mean, so I was raised to be a patriot and do your part, earn your part here, not just take and that's probably the biggest reason I wanted to go.
So I know you wanted to be on the tactical team. What was the front door like for you as far as the training, any mental health discussions and then standards as well?
And great segue. It was all physical, all physical. I mean, even today, man, I think we were using the word warrior in this line of work way too much.
I've been trained not just by some really good people in very high level branches and services that can train you to do, you know, take a take a building down, assault a building, active shooter, you name it.
And from getting through the door, collapsing the room, you know, working, working the problem, moving to the problem, helping with the problem.
So that's all I ever known. And that's all I was ever told and taught. Not not one time from even when I left and started having more exposure overseas when I was working for State Department, you know, a lot of exposure to these like high level
upper tier war fighters. And it was all shooting and fighting. Not not anybody, you know, was ever talking about mental health.
And as I look back on that part of my life now, I mean, they're all they were all divorced.
And all my good friends that were similar to me, most of them are divorced. Their loss of, you know, here in Oklahoma, we have a lot of tornadoes and in their rank from F1 being the lowest least destructive tornado to F5.
I mean, everybody I was around was at least an F3 to an F4 tornado, just self destruction followed them. I mean, 360 degrees just destroying everything.
But man, they're really good shooters. They're really good ground fighters. You know, they have blue belts, black belts from the gray season, all this warrior stuff.
But that's where it stopped. There was no talk about, hey, what happens when one of your partners gets killed? How's that going to affect us moving forward?
What happens when one of us gets shot or injured or hit with cancer and taken out, you know, from the silent killer?
Nobody talks about that stuff. They didn't then. And I mean, so I'm just I probably got to still have a chip on my shoulder over that whole word warrior.
And I think it's used way too much period, not just for the peer side of the house, the mental health approach.
But that word has been taken way out of context because everybody's a warrior now, especially behind the keyboard.
I saw another kind of funny video on social media a while ago, and it was a guy talking about the word alpha.
And he was like, do you not understand how wolves work? There's only one alpha.
Everyone else is following the pack. And, you know, but all of a sudden, everyone's identifying as an alpha.
Like, we can't have that many alphas. You're not alphas. But I feel like that's another word that's used so much at the moment by people that grew a beard and did an ice bath once in a while.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I agree. I have the beard, but it's only because I have no hair to grow out anymore.
So it's my I'm compensating for what I don't have. And it's all turning gray really quick.
Yeah, man, I just I think we're almost moving in the wrong direction of if you know, you know, I talked about this word, this phrase smashing the stigma.
You and I both hate that phrase because it's been talked about for the last 10 years.
And I mean, to me, it's just a phrase that people are going around standing up, maybe talking at a conference.
Well, that's good. But what are we doing about it?
Everybody you James, you and I both have bad traumatic past. So does everybody else.
But, you know, this brings me to a point I'm probably skipping around a lot, but skip away.
So two days ago, I was asked to come in to this military base and teach a wellness block to this group of upper leadership.
And it wasn't just all militaries, mainly some state law enforcement executives, administration.
And while they chose the military base, I have no idea. But it's a very remote area.
And they were bringing in this second day speaker was this retired green beret.
And and I mean, I'm pro military. So here's what I'm saying right now.
I was going to teach my block and I was going to bounce that night when everybody else went to bed because I'm I have no desire to listen to another war story about Afghanistan, Iraq.
I mean, I'm not saying anything bad about them. I mean, not at all.
But my focus on is on right now. What do we do post event? And what do we do pre event?
And then there's that little small place and time of bad things that happen to us.
And that's all we're focusing on primarily because it's cool and they want to make movies about it and all of that.
So I was actually packing up my truck and.
This guy comes out, I don't know who he is. I mean, I knew most of the people there.
Introduce themselves to me and we start talking, start talking, start talking.
Well, it's the presenter for the next day. I didn't know it.
And within about 15, 20 minutes, I realized this is not about a war story.
Although I mean, it's one of the more I mean, the dude's got a like prime example, but that's not what his mission is all about now.
And his name is Greg Stuby. I don't know if you've heard of him or not.
And I haven't, though. Well, I'm going to hook you up with this guy because.
That night we sat down, we're talking, I don't know how late this went.
His mission is so he was using the same words and verbiage that I was that that's in our holistic eight year plan here in Oklahoma to truly start changing his culture, which is.
Another topic, but I'm like, man, this guy gets it.
He's not here to talk about how, how bad it was, how bad of a person he was.
And I was honest with him. I said, hey, I was about to leave because I thought you were just going to talk about how nice your hair was and, you know, and how bad of a guy you were over there.
And I apologize to him.
And I was the first one in class the next day, one had breakfast before the start of class and.
That that was probably the one of the most impactful.
We spent about seven hours together that next day in this classroom setting, and it was.
Where I felt it was so appropriate was.
All that upper leadership in the room was was in hearing the same thing that I was as transformation transformational leadership from the human perspective, serving as a human to their people and what that looked like.
And, and I.
I don't want to tell his story, but it.
I mean, I went up and hugged him afterwards and I apologize to him again for, you know, about to run out on this deal thinking that perceiving what I thought was going to be.
And by the way, that was really the the heart and soul of his whole day was how we perceive things and perceive other people, even ourselves is 99% of the time wrong.
And, you know, just the case in point, he perceived a person from Texas on his team that he didn't like people from Texas kind of like me.
Well, this guy ended up saving his life.
Like, five, six years later in Afghanistan.
And when he seen him coming out of this helicopter come to come, I mean, that he was it. That was his lifeline.
I mean, his teammates were there, but this was the other train trauma medic that was going to come in and be able to shut the blood from pumping out.
And, but he despised this guy up and until it was necessary for him to, you know, welcome him into his life like he'd pushed him away this whole time just because of his perception.
And then it went on to talk about how we perceive and we're made to be this whole big happy team and we're not.
I don't know I could keep talking about that for the rest of the day, but maybe just one of these life impactful events.
I know you talked to a lot of people.
I do as well. I watch a lot of podcasts. I'm always doing research, but to find someone who who understands that we got to start connecting on the human level.
Outside of the classroom outside of just going over the normal peer training that the normal peer critical incident stress management debriefs.
I mean, I'm not dog and all that stuff, but that's just like subsurface approach like asking somebody.
Hey, how's it going? Then just quickly turning away and walking and not listening to them.
If you ask him, how's it going and giving them a chance to respond and you actually listen, you know, it just I was really mad at myself for even thinking about leaving.
But I was so happy that the rest of the way home, I'm even bringing the guy back to Oklahoma, I think twice next year to plug him in into some of our ongoing training just because I'm in.
We just connected on that level.
We touched on the word post traumatic growth.
Well, we're in this conversation. I think this is what I'm seeing is that next step.
And I mean, we've we've talked about this before that. Let's smash the stigma.
I'm here for you, bro. I've got your six. Call me if you're struggling.
Those are all those may as well be just fucking stickers on the back of your car.
They're not actually doing anything at all.
The storytelling, the people that have been on here and gone through the crucible, but then made it out the other side.
And that's not to say that they don't have ups and downs because they're still human beings.
But the hope from that post traumatic growth that they are now a beacon of light for other people that came out the other end of the caver with the flashlight and the lifeline.
No, that I think really puts hope into people that are struggling rather than smash the stigma that just kind of leaves you right where you are now.
And then you add in the fact that there's so much barrier to entry to the tools that a lot of these men and women need.
And there's not the education of how big this toolbox actually is.
So if you educate them on, yes, you've got the middle, but then you've got equine therapy and psychedelics and all these other things that are added in.
And you've got people telling their stories, you know, and you're going to today on how dark it got.
But then how they found their way out of that and became a better version of themselves.
I think that is there's so much value to that.
So, yes, you know, let me tell you how shit it was.
That can be part of the story. But the real power of the story is let me tell you how I got myself out.
Absolutely. And that's.
That's where I'm at. I've turned down.
I don't know how many speaking engagements to come and talk about one of my shootings that and I just care less about it.
I mean, all of my shootings together and I mean, there was a decade of them, but they're like that much of my life out of.
My whole life. And it just means nothing to me now.
I mean, I'm glad I was there. I'm glad I did what I did.
But, you know, big deal.
I could care less about it. And again, I think that's why I wanted to meet you.
I wanted to get on your show and start a connection piece.
And because I think it's going to take all of us, people like minded to really make an impactful difference, you know, five, 10, 15 years down the road.
I just like suicides. I mean, you know, I said this on a federal panel a couple of weeks ago, and I don't think everybody agreed with me.
But I see it as truth. There's no way we're ever going to be able to stop every suicide.
That's impossible. But what I do believe people like you, myself and some other brothers and sisters that are doing this for the right reason, we can lower the numbers.
And attacking it, not just from the hugs and telling you this could be OK.
But I mean, James, like you're doing now is addressing sleep deprivation problems that are brought on by these crazy shifts that are being, you know, these unrealistic expectations.
Forgetting we're a human being, forgetting we require sleep, which, you know, maintains our hormones or testosterone and every other regulatory biological thing in our body.
It's just we're looked at as robots and just, hey, perform this way this time for this many years and help things work.
And that's just not. And we've got the data to show it's not now.
But actions like you're doing, we're doing here.
I mean, I truly feel this is how we will change the culture.
But it will take time. And that's OK. You and I are both fighters.
I'm into this until God tells me or takes me out of this world.
Yeah, you and me both. Ironically, there's that phrase.
I think the profit is never received in their own land and where I live, Marion County are the biggest resistors.
And they had a study done by HMC, which works with high level, you know, Naval Special Warfare and NASA and DARPA and this county was like, oh, we rebuke your information.
So it's maddening. But OK, right. Well, then we'll just fix everyone else.
And you'll be the last one with the worst fire department because you know, one will want to work for you.
And then you'll change and you'll be known as the chief or the, you know, the union leadership that let the ship sink.
So, you know, the choice is yours. But anyway, well, you mentioned the shootings.
Obviously, that is part of, you know, the kind of the spiral, not the only things that are part of it.
You and I have got another thing in common with both absolute ship magnets. And I was more on the kind of medical side.
So walk me through you find yourself in the specialty team now, walk me through the different kind of umbrellas that you worked under.
And then, you know, the the unending high.
We will be the right word. These these extremely dangerous calls that you found yourself in.
And then, you know, as we go along, talk about the impact of that, because this this insane narrative that a police officer wakes up in the morning like,
Oh, I hope I shoot someone today. And obviously, we all know the reality is the polar opposite, that they were forced in that position.
And now they've got to carry, even though they did what they were supposed to do, they've still got to carry that guilt of taking the human life.
Yeah, man, I'm going to get I'm going to try to get through this quick as possible.
So, yeah, as I'm coming on the tactical team, we have a teammate that's murdered.
They were serving a warrant in eastern Oklahoma. He's murdered another another partner shot.
And so the bad guy ends up surviving his gunshots, of course.
And this three, four year trial takes place.
There was actually a mistrial, you know, at the state level.
And luckily, we had some good federal partners that came in and retried him on the federal side and ultimately got a conviction.
But, you know, I was very black and white.
And that goes back to my upbringing, too. And I thought there was the way things were supposed to be done and that there was actually reality.
And I hadn't really been exposed to a lot of that, even in my short time.
Back and forth to Georgia, there's no other exposure really to that type of reality for me.
So when he got killed, I was assigned to his family and he had two young kids.
And it just I can look back now. I didn't really pin it down up until a few years ago.
But that's when things really started like changing. And I was starting to withdraw, isolate, feeling these things.
But I didn't know what they were. I didn't know.
I was afraid to talk to my senior guys because I'm afraid they make fun of me, you know.
And well, I started to drink a lot more.
That's the exact time I started cheating on my wife.
And, you know, we had two small kids on the ground.
And, you know, shortly thereafter, I'm divorced.
You know, I'm fast forwarding through this and over about a three year period.
And it just went downhill from there. All I have was my job at that point.
You know, a few years later, I'm actually running the team. I mean, I'm still producing at work at home.
You know, I'm about an F4 growing into an F5 tornado. Very destructive.
Guys come up to me now that work for me on the teams like, man, you were like the biggest asshole ever.
But I didn't want to lose anybody else. And every time we were training, again, bad part of my life, I didn't.
I didn't have a lot of feelings for people. And what I did have was getting smaller and smaller.
So one night I made a call as an officer safety thing that some some people above me wanted to change the dynamic of the warrant.
And I think for Texas, another reason I don't like Texas.
And I just said, no, well, that that not you know, they fired me after.
After the mission was over, successful mission, nobody got hurt on either side, successful, but I still got terminated.
And man, if I wasn't an F5, that's I hit F5 status within about two to three days.
Completely went out of control. I had to go to Oklahoma City and turn on my gear.
And I was driving an unmarked Suburban at the time.
I was told to drop it off and report back to my duty station, which is I was going to be a road trooper again.
It's funny story. So I'm so mad.
I turned on my gear in. I had my some green pants, a T-shirt and my backpack.
I put my backpack on and I'm like, I'm out of here. Well, they thought I was going to go pick up a car.
I had not been assigned to my next vehicle to work out of.
I was just told I had to be in this area by zero seven hundred the next day.
So I started walking and it's about seventy five miles away.
And I mean, people were calling 911. I was walking on the interstate.
And I'm telling you kind of where my head was at and how bad it's about to get right.
This should have been an indicator to some people.
Other troopers, some Oklahoma City guys were stopping trying to like, Danny, what are you doing?
I'm like, I got fired. They told me I had to report back and be on the road to Mark seven.
So I got to get it. I got to make sure I'm down there.
Like, man, everybody's calling 911. I think I had a gun on too.
So I didn't know what was going on. And I'm like, no, I said, you need to go on.
I'm walking home. My brother, seventy five miles.
I'm like, yeah, I know. I'll be there tomorrow.
And finally, one of my friends pulls up.
He's like, you got to get in the car that you are about to get terminated from everything.
So he talked me down. I stayed around maybe a couple more years.
I called some friends that I knew that a transition from military life
to the private sector, working for our government in different capacities.
So put my name in that process and got vetted and trained and landed in Iraq.
It was my first duty station and was a bad one.
You know what? What I enjoyed about it was this.
And this will take you headspace again.
I wasn't because after like a week, I felt like I was pretty well acclimated to the temps and all.
And I'm like, man, this is awesome. I'm never going home.
And here's what here's what what I mean by that.
Nobody was calling me saying, hey, the toilets broke, the faucets leaking.
The cat needs to go to the vet.
The dog sick kids got it.
I forgot their books. It was just me.
I don't have to worry about anybody else.
Almost reverting back to my childhood. Right.
I told you I used to run and isolate and hide in the woods.
Except this time I was hiding in Iraq with some other.
I mean, everybody just as crazy as I was.
So I thought I was in heaven. You know, I was getting paid.
Well, the only thing you had to worry about is how many times you're going to get food poisoning.
You know, and if you're one of the unlucky ones to get hit by evening mortar or something, it's it's great.
And, you know, there was fast forward through that big army left Iraq and things started changing.
We were left on our own in a lot of ways.
And I'm like, you know, there's nothing patriotic about being here.
Nothing at all. And I called from the embassy in Baghdad.
There had been a new chief that came on the highway patrol in Oklahoma.
And I called him and I said, can I get my job back?
And he said, yes, soon as you get back, you can have it.
And what's interesting about that, it took me about a month, too much to get home.
I go to pick up all my stuff in Oklahoma City and I was good.
They were going to put me back on the road. But everybody's welcome me in hugging me.
No, no mental assessment at all. Nothing.
And I remember driving home that day. So I'm driving south on a 35 headed headed to the farm.
And there was a crash or something that happened in front of me is very large, loud.
Boom, you know, and. Man, I kind of I didn't freak out or nothing.
I just like almost crashing some cars trying to get away.
You know, something had happened. There was going to be contact up front somewhere.
And I'm like, man, that was weird.
And nothing bad ever really happened to me there.
There was just a lot of food poisoning.
But I realized right then I'm like, you know, nobody's asked me about why I left to begin with.
Nobody's asked me if I'm OK when I came home.
They gave me pistol, rifle, shotgun, my badge, my uniform and a car is like, all right, go get after it.
There was nothing. And I've heard later that well, they expected that for me.
They expected me to be fine. And then I had that kind of persona that I was carrying around at that point.
So I was at home maybe two or three months and I get in this running gun and gun battle on on the interstate with this escapee of Louisiana.
That just caused all kinds of chaos.
And I ended up shooting him, finally ending the pursuit.
It's a wild video, by the way, I'll show you sometime.
I've never shot from a moving vehicle at 100 miles an hour.
And there's nowhere to train for that. Right. But I did it.
And it worked. So anyway, so as I'm off for that, I get a phone call from the Marshall service.
And it was one of their fugitives that I shot.
And they said, hey, we think you'd be a good fit once you come to work for us.
And like, well, I don't know how long I'm going to be off.
A few months goes by and I'm back on the road for a short time as they're doing my paperwork to make the move to the US Marshals.
And I leave the house one day.
And I live in a rural area and I get about a mile from my house and I notice there's a vehicle on the side of the road parked by this lake that people frequent walk around.
So I didn't think anything about it. It was mid morning on a Sunday.
And as I get up close to the vehicle, this guy, I seem like jump from behind the rear of the vehicle when he's got a shotgun.
And I see him pump it. And I mean, I'm like 10 yards away and I lean over.
I'm like, OK, it's not going to be good. Even with the shotgun at that distance, you know, I think I'm a window roll down partially.
And I heard rounds going off and I'm like, why is this guy trying to kill me? I don't know who this guy is.
And so fast forward, I end up killing him after another.
We have a lengthy kind of a response and we end up in a gunfight him and I at about 15, 20 feet and I'm off again.
So that delayed my process to the Marshals Service.
And so as soon as I come back, they had my paperwork done.
But during this time is pretty important because I told you I was divorced before I left the agency in the first place to go to Iraq.
During this time, I tried to work things out with my wife and.
I mean, I never. Worked on anything, you know, any of my past, much less anything currently going on.
But that didn't last. I mean, no time, especially after these two shootings.
It was just that I mean, shootings never did really bother me.
It was always the aftermath. And I'll give you a prime example of the second one was while I was off on that second one.
I mean, I live in a small community. So problem with that is everybody knows who you are.
I'm in the grocery store shopping. I'm by myself.
And this little kid comes up to me, taps me out of back and I turn around and I'm like, hey, little kid, what's up?
He said, are you Danny Long? I said, yep. He said, well, you murdered my dad.
And man. At that one.
That I would have rather. Done anything at that moment.
Than to hear that little kid say that and even telling me that's I don't get emotional a whole lot anymore.
But, man, I just don't like to see kids upset or hurt.
And it was like somebody just like.
Brutal heart out of me and he was saying something else, but I was backing up and I just took off running.
Of course, I ran back to my farm, shut the gate.
And I don't think I left there for like three days. And.
How do you handle that? And, you know.
So that that was that part. And as I come off of admin leave from that second shooting.
It was time to go to the Marshal Service.
And they did do some evaluations, but I knew how to work the system at that point.
I just I wanted another change again, running to a different place.
So, I mean, you can guess by now I'm not over there.
Six months, another gunfight and another gunfight, and they just keep happening in 2015.
I think I think I was still on admin leave for one of them.
I'm out of my farm, actually had hair back then and much longer beard.
And I was living by myself and I got out of my bed and went to the bathroom.
Now this mirror hanging. As soon as you walk in the bathroom door at my farm.
And I thought somebody was in there.
And to the point, I'm like, OK, I don't know why they're in here to kill me, but let's get it on, I guess.
I go to do a double leg takedown on whoever this person is.
And I hit my head on the sink.
Kind of brings me back to reality.
And I look back in the mirror and it was me.
And I didn't recognize myself.
I mean, as a human, as Danny, nothing.
I mean, there was nothing there.
And I don't know how else to describe that.
And immediately I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle and walked outside, grabbed one of my duty guns and.
They got on a pair of tennis shoes and shorts and that's it.
And I walked to the back side of my farm and I took that gun.
I ran a suppressor on and took it off, loaded it, sat down.
Looked around for a little while and stuck it in my mouth.
Flipped it off safe.
Put my thumb on the trigger.
And that particular gun.
I shot. I mean, I had my own range there.
I shot every day.
I mean, I probably shoot over a thousand rounds a week.
Just I mean, that's that was my hobby, if you want to call it that.
I don't think I really shot for fun at that point.
But the gun was clean, but I never took the can off.
Well, so what happens where the can clicks on to the end of the barrel?
There's a lot of debris and buildup carbon.
I'd stuck it in my mouth and I stuck it farther in my mouth.
And this carbon started a chunk of it broke off.
And I've got a bad gag reflex anyway, and it started gagging me.
So I took it out, spit it out. I did it again. Same thing happened.
And except this time I'm throwing up.
I'm like, man, what's going on?
And I'm fast. This this is drawn out until afternoon.
OK, I don't remember everything about it, but I know finally I decided I'm just going to stick it up against my head.
And the second I sat back down, put it right between my eyes.
The last thing, because I was sent to mandatory counseling after all these shootings, every time I was sent for a fit for duty assessment.
And I was always given the opportunity. And it was from the same lady. She knew I was broke.
But I mean, I had to be at a place where I wanted to get better and I just wasn't. And I know that bothered her a lot talking to her now.
But one of the last things she told me when my last visit with her, I got up to leave her office and she said, stop.
I turned around and said, what do you want? She said, if you kill yourself, your kids are more like two to three times more likely to kill themselves in adulthood.
And I turned around and said, what do you tell me that?
And she said, you need to leave my office. I said, no, why did you just say that? I mean, she knew what was coming.
And because it wasn't just like I woke up that day and like this is it.
And there's data now that that's on the paper that shows I mean, suicides, a gradual buildup.
All these signs and symptoms, indicators are there, which is either choose not to see them or don't want to see them.
So soon as I touched that muzzle to my forehead, I heard that woman saying that to me and my son would have been about 10, 11 at that point.
And I knew I just I just I could I'm like, he's going to be the one that finds me.
I could seem like coming across the pasture like we had a ranger at that time driving in and driving.
He had to drive across Pond Dam to get to the backside of the property.
And that's where I was at. Like, I can't do this to him.
And that was a whole other deal. I mean, I had a fit after that.
I'm like, I can't even freaking kill myself, you know, and it's not really that I wanted to die.
Just I'm just tired. I'm not feeling anything is what really bothered me.
Just zero emotion. And, you know, and I know, I mean, people watch movies and all this stuff and.
Doing being in a gunfight, especially taking somebody's life when it's just you and them is probably the most personal thing you can do
besides bring a kid in the world. And I remember watching this dude one time I killed and I was just just him and I and.
I mean, and he and he was dying and.
But it just don't happen right away. And I was looking at him.
Felt nothing. I mean, yeah, I tried to kill me, but. Everything good in me at that.
That's when I knew I'm like, dude, you're something's wrong.
I had zero emotion out of this. This was somebody's dad.
You know, some kid is going to be destroyed. And by the way, that kid found me.
You know, and so and it was terrible that there was a most lonely, dark.
Feeling I've ever had my life of not feeling anything because that's not who I was.
And but. Once I made that decision, I'm like, OK, I'm not going to kill myself. I can't do this to my kids.
I knew I'm like, OK, I'm the time for me to take responsibility. I'm the one who allowed all this to happen.
I'm the one who caused all this. Now, let's and I made two promises to myself on that pond.
One, I'm going to do everything necessary to get my life back together, no matter how uncomfortable, no matter where I had to go.
That's my mission. And to the second promise was once I get there,
I'm going to do everything necessary to keep my life in order.
And I got up, picked up a rifle and I text that dog and I said, hey, I need help.
I didn't tell her what I'd done. And normally she don't hit me back until the end of the day.
I mean, she was as clients all day and I mean, immediately she said, what do you mean, you need help?
I said, I need help and I'll do whatever you tell me to do.
And I think she's told me to be there tomorrow. And it began that day.
And I think you referenced earlier about, you know, even after you come through this stuff, I mean, it doesn't go away.
It doesn't just get easier. You just get stronger and more capable to fight and the will to fight because, you know, enduring is part of the process.
And there's no easy button to get through it. And just my approach now, just call it what it is.
Let's find out exactly what it is and go go deal with it.
But that was the turning point for me that day on that pond dam. Absolutely.
Well, firstly, thank you just for sharing that. I think this is I've said this many, many times on here.
You know, when you have people who are and I'll use the term alpha just because of the description of the job that they do is what we perceive as it.
You know, your SWAT and special tactics units and your essay and your seals and your firefighters, when they are courageously vulnerable, it debunks the men don't cry, rub some dirt and it bullshit that a lot of us were raised on.
So I think it's so important for these voices, you know, I say tongue in cheek, you know, if it was a dude with long hair and a flowery shirt talking about his feelings, we were like, well, yeah, of course he is.
He's a hippie, you know, but when someone like you does, then, you know, it's it's absolutely needed.
I want to ask you because this is something and I repeat it all the time because I hope that it gets to more and more ears.
But one truth that has really emerged from so many of these conversations now that totally debunks the whole old school rhetoric of suicide is cowardly and selfish.
And how could you is so many of these people had on the show that got just to where you were or even went through with it and survived.
Their brain at that point was so miswired.
And I'm always say I've used that term, you know, compassionately, not judgmentally, by by the combination of the unaddressed early life stuff, you know, the things that we see in the uniform, the organizational betrayal, the alcohol, the psych meds, the, you know, all the things that the perfect storm
that in that moment they truly believe that they are the reason for their family's pain.
And so therefore, if they remove themselves, then this problem solved.
And that makes it that moment, even though through a healthy pair of eyes, it doesn't make sense to that brain, that person at that moment.
It makes a suicide courageous, selfless, but no less terrifying.
So talk to me about where your mindset was when you were sitting there.
I mean, you know, I mean, I've been thinking that thought for a long time that my kids, my son, especially, he'll have a better chance of being a healthy man in his future life if I was out of it.
Same with my daughter.
I mean,
all right, so I didn't really catch this until after that, because my kids were not
happy with me for a long time during that, you know, the early years of their life, because I was gone and I was living the way I was.
And I wasn't fooling them. They knew exactly. Dad had a problem.
And, you know, and the more you try to conceal it, the more they know.
I mean, but, you know, I realized I didn't tell my daughter very few times, you know, that I loved her.
And, you know, and I again that carried over is like, she can have a better chance of finding somebody that's going to take care of her the way she needs to.
I mean, all these ridiculous ideas in my head, but that I believed them.
It wasn't like they were fake ideals that that was real in my head. And I believe that they would truly be better.
I 100 percent believed. I mean, because my wife and I were best friends.
We went to school together since sixth grade, and that's my best friend.
And I 100 percent believe that with her that she deserves somebody that's going to be true to her, protect her, take care of her, not just physically, because that's what I felt my only role was.
It's just a physical protection of my family and nothing on the nurturing side.
I was never shown that. And so, yes, all those things were running through my head, not just that day, but for years leading up to that.
They all upon them.
I think this is why this needs to be front and center in this conversation.
You know, if you are feeling that burden, you know, sense of burden, if you starting to hear these voices saying that your family were better off without you, that needs to be one of the things on the posters.
And the same thing, if you hear people kind of suggesting that talking about that in your team room, in your fire station, that's a red flag to to really kind of dive in and see how they're actually doing.
Because you hear about I'm here for you.
There's a number, like I said, but we don't hear especially about that burden.
Of course, we want the pain to end.
But at that moment, you know, think of your family.
They are. And you're almost pushing them towards it in an ironic sense.
So I think this needs to be out there as part of the whole storytelling of where these people get to.
Because you talk about stigma, that's where the stigma is.
You know, and once you understand the distorted reality, these men and women are in now, you all of a sudden, you can be compassionate and empathetic and pull them away from that void.
No, absolutely. And and I don't know, man, I just think you and I are you bring a lot of.
Like good points that helped me look at the positive thing that came out of this, and here's the one.
And this is what I was talking about earlier about when you ask someone, hey, you doing OK?
And as you're passing and not really giving the person a chance to respond, because nobody's going to respond to that anyway, especially people like me.
When I was in that position in 2015, if I didn't think you'd give a shit about me, I kept everybody at arm's length.
But what what saved my life, I believe somebody put it, somebody put planted one little bitty seed that that that statement that the counselor told me of.
That made me rethink that gave me this much hope not to do it, that you know what?
I can't do that for my kids and was that the right reason to live or not?
Doesn't matter. It means that I didn't do it at that point in time.
And I gave myself a chance again to hopefully look at this in an objective way when I'm off that pond dam.
And that's what I did. But just from little bitty piece of seed that she planted was all that it took that to keep me from dropping the hammer down.
And that's why I think it's so important that one, because I was one of these guys to I made fun of people that committed suicide.
I made jokes on suicide scenes all the time about it.
But man, we don't joke about child porn. We don't joke about kids getting killed in the school during an active shooter event.
We need to stop any type of joking reference about suicide because you don't know.
You may think that because they look fine at work, just like I did.
But nobody saw under the vest.
Nobody knew what was really going on. And you don't know. I don't care how well you think you know this person.
If you say something jokingly, I don't think you're going to be the cause of the suicide.
But you're not going to be the cause of them to grasp onto something that that little bitty seed of hope to not do it.
And that's where I think we can really change the numbers and just a simple approach.
I mean, if you if you care enough just to ask somebody how they are, take the time to listen to them.
You know, watch their body language as they respond to you.
You know, I mean, they'll tell you even if they don't verbally tell you if something's going on.
And if you care about that person, hope you're observing enough at that point.
It's like, well, bro, I mean, I'll give you the example yesterday.
I've got a tight still about seven or eight guys that are pretty top with that are still working.
And we have been for a long time. And some of these guys, I meant toward them.
All right. And there's one in particular that calls me out on my BS when he because he knows me.
And yesterday, we had this discussion in this group chat about some upcoming stuff.
And I fired off and I was having a pretty bad day.
And he called me out on it. Then, like 30 seconds later, he called me on the phone.
He said, hey, man, no bullshit. What's up?
He said, I know something's wrong with you.
And I was like, yeah, you're right.
And, man, just having those people and it can't be all on the peer team.
That's why we got to start relying more finding these people you can be vulnerable with,
because it's not going away just because you remove yourself.
You run like I did. You isolate. You drink. You all do all these things to hide.
There's a reason it keeps on coming up.
It won't go away. And having a circle like that that calls me out when they see something wrong.
You know, I'm the director of the First Responder Wellness Division here.
I'm supposed to be perfect all the time, and I'm not.
You know, but that's part of the reason people see our vulnerabilities like, hey, man, it's OK to be f'ed up.
It's just, you know, part of our culture now.
But we don't have to lose our life to it. We don't have to like give in.
We can fight through this. And by the way, here's how we're going to do it together.
And, you know, and hey, I did it. I'm going to continue to do it.
But I just can't tell people enough that the importance of planting a small seed of hope in somebody that maybe they're not thinking of suicide right then at that moment.
But maybe they're leading up to it, like I said, because the studies are out there.
Suicide that you just don't wake up one day is OK. I'm going to blow my brains out.
It's a buildup. It's a plan. Some people follow through with it. Some people don't.
But so planting a seed in any opportune time when you see your brother or sister hurting men, that that's our job.
We want to make a difference. That's we be a human being to our closest people.
Absolutely. I want to go to the tools that you use to get yourself out.
But just before we do the second shooting, you've got this car stop there. You're driving by all of a sudden.
They open fire. Clearly, we have a massive mental health crisis outside the uniform as well.
Did you ever find out the backstory of why he tried to ambush you in the first place?
Oh, yeah, that man, that guy had a history of mental illness.
I think he he had actually shot himself a year before, two years before.
I think he had he'd kidnapped one of his exes.
And I don't know if he was going to kill them or not.
They were tied up in a house in the same direction he was going when I drove by.
I don't know why he pulled over where he did.
I don't really know what he was doing.
I think it's just an important part, this whole conversation as well, especially when it comes to law enforcement.
You know, always the the cameras are pointing at you and, oh, you made this mistake.
And, you know, this wasn't a justified shoot, whatever the thing is.
But no one ever turns it around and says, why are our streets so dangerous?
Why do we have such a rampant gang problem?
Why are our schools so unsafe at the moment?
You know, all these elements.
And this needs to be part of the conversation, too, because obviously it's not just us in uniform and we're seeing it.
And it's even worse.
But the civilians of the world, these young boys and girls that grow up in gang culture and, you know,
see drugs being dealt out of their home when they're still in diapers.
You know, this is another part of the entire conversation that puts our law enforcement and first responders in danger.
Well, I mean, from the time you and I started in the first responder community,
I would say just because I've been I mean, I didn't have a office in rural Oklahoma.
It was on the Texas border and I didn't work that region.
So I hung out at the firehouse all the time with those guys cook for me all the time.
We hung out together, worked out together.
So I think I can speak some some not speaking for them.
But I saw our culture in the first responder world change from not just doing fire and EMS duties,
police duties, as I knew them at the time, we were becoming social counselors, family counselors, you know,
that I'm like, I'm not trained to do that.
You know, and so I agree, man, just the whole dynamics and over the over the past couple of decades
and the changing of what's expected for us and how we're supposed to perform that we don't have true training on.
I just know that's a recipe for disaster in itself.
And there's proof of it. I mean, just like I mean, I know you and I both have been in a lot of those situations.
There was a lead up to some mental health crosses for years, days to whenever you and I would be called to that event.
That I mean, what are we supposed to do?
You know, so yeah, it's a horrible situation right now.
Hundred percent. Well, you obviously talked about sitting there with the rifle.
You had this phone conversation with the counselor and you said I need help.
As I mentioned earlier, I think people don't realize that everyone has their own individual toolbox that works for them.
So what were those tools that you started using to get yourself out of this hole first?
Man, there's here's the two biggest things.
And the next day when I got to her.
So, you know, I think there's a big misconception on what counseling is.
And so without getting next, that could be a whole other topic.
We laid out a playbook because I mean, it wasn't like she and I were starting out from day one.
She knew, you know, all about me, the good, the bad, the worst.
I mean, so we cut right to it and got to a plan of action.
But then it was turned to me like, what are you willing to do?
I'm like, whatever you tell me to do, I'm going to do it.
So the first few things I had to do, I had to remove a lot of people out of my life.
That were not healthy for me.
And that's hard for a lot of people and a lot of people fell at doing that part.
And they find themselves right back in that environment of walking down that unhealthy path with these other people going off the same cliff.
And I'm like, I'm not going to do that.
So and it took some time.
Then I had to remove things out of my life gradually.
Alcohol was one of them.
Just man, it was just one chip at a time that I was pulling out anything that I saw or she saw that that was leading me off the plan.
I removed it.
I didn't have to go to to an inpatient treatment in anywhere.
I mean, I was drinking every night like it was my job, you know.
But and I'm not saying if that's where you need to go.
And I've had a lot of friends that I've helped get to a treatment program.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
For me, I just set it down.
I'm like, I'm not doing that anymore.
But I truly saw where I wanted to go.
And I felt like there was a chance.
I didn't know how that I could get my family back.
And that was about some of the biggest motivation.
But ultimately, I wanted to do this for me to be a better example for my kids so they could look at me someday because I did not want them to end up on a pond.
Like I did giving up not not looking for another piece of hope to go fight for one more day.
So many were just a gradual battle.
You know, then there was the treatment modalities that I went through brain mapping, EMDR treatment, multiple, multiple sessions with my counselor.
Anything necessary that I that I could identify, man, I poured a lot back into the physical side at that point.
I mean, I always worked out that I didn't do it for the healthy purpose.
I did it for survivability and I didn't enjoy it.
She can like shooting.
I got to I hated shooting.
And I mean, I've shot up my whole life.
But same thing with working out.
I just viewed it as a necessary survival tool.
But then I started working out because I wanted to.
That was my go to instead of going to the bottle.
I'd go throw my pack in my do 10, 15, 20 miles, you know, or go smash out across, work out, whatever.
I mean, I just kept it moving and kept it being different, putting myself in really uncomfortable positions.
Man, you're going to think you're going to laugh at this one.
So uncomfortable is where I was that.
And that was my word for like four or five years, probably still in the top three of my words of all words, staying comfortable.
And I wanted to put myself because I pushed a lot of my friends that were good, the good friends away from me because you're not a first responder.
You know, all that stupid crap.
So that led to a lot of my identity problem of I'm nobody outside of being a cop.
You know, I have no mission, no purpose.
So well into this program, I'm like, I want to go dive into a completely different, total different perspective view of I mean, I don't want any like minded people in this group.
Where can I go?
So I started searching.
And I found this group about 20 miles from me, this gardening group.
Right. And I'm the youngest one in it.
And I've been in that for four years now.
We garden every Tuesday night.
And I mean, everybody thinks I'm just I don't know why they thought I showed up in the first place.
There's a lot of people standing off from me.
And after the first semester or two that, you know, they all love me now and we're 100 percent different in about 90 percent of our view and perspective on life.
But man, that's what that's made me start looking at a different lens through their lens of life and perspective versus the cop.
The first responders like everybody's guilty, everybody's out to kill me against me, trying to take me down.
I don't trust them. All that crap.
Man, that's been so healthy for me.
You know, then there's some other little things along with that.
But that was one of the big ones.
Amazing. Talk to me then about you mentioned the first responder wellness program.
You know, as you start coming out of this and obviously you're using the mental health tools, you're using fitness, you know, how did those two paths cross where you ended up becoming one of the people leading the solutions for your entire department?
All right. We're going to fast forward to May of 2018.
I'm still with the Marshall Service. My son is about to graduate from high school.
We have a senior trip plan for him and some of his friends.
And my wife, we were not married at the time, but we were on the path.
We knew we were going to get back together. And I left a lot of that part out.
But and that took two years just for her to really sit down with me and because I wanted to tell her what I was doing since 2015 to repair because words meant nothing to her at that point, you know, and nor they should.
But we started reconnecting and by May of 2018, we knew it's something's going to happen and just didn't know when we weren't rushing it.
And so she was working. She works at a hospital north of us and in the metro.
And I was home.
Finishing some decorating stuff for the after party.
And what we hadn't told anybody at that point was when we got back from this trip, I was retiring out of law enforcement.
I was already packed all my stuff.
Really, a couple of the things that I did while I'm because I've been off on administrative leave during all these shootings for almost probably three years total, you know, scattered out over a decade.
But, you know, one of the positives, probably one of the only positives that I did was I don't like to sit around a whole lot.
So I was I was off for like eight months to one of these shootings and I'm like, man, I they won't let me come back to work.
So what I do, I went started a jumped in with another private business.
And guess what? It started working.
And so I go back to work and it was just I didn't there wasn't a lot of involvement on my end.
I mean, I would do some hours at night and upkeep and all, but it's pretty much self sustaining business and it was doing well.
And so I'm off on another shooting. I jump into another sector and get it going.
So, you know, I had this conversation in May of twenty eighteen with the wife.
I'm like, there's nothing else I can do here.
I mean, I feel like I've accomplished what I wanted to getting the life back together.
So which we decided not to tell anybody till we got back.
And and so I'm up on a ladder that day in May.
I think it's May 18th. I get this phone call from my boss, Marshall Service.
And he's like, Danny, I know you're off, but any chance you could come in?
I said, man, I'm here. He knew what I was doing.
I said, OK, five minutes later, another teammate calls and asked me the same thing.
He said, man, I got a bad feeling. I was like, man, screw your bad feeling.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
Everybody we chase has the potential for a gunfight.
And a lot of them ended up that way. So he's like, OK, what made me mad?
I'm like, because I know I'm going at that point. I mean, I can't leave those guys hanging.
So I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell my wife.
I jumped in my G-Rod and grabbed my rifle, go back in my kit and get there.
Fast forward to this deal.
We end up taking him down on a traffic stop and didn't go as planned.
Somebody started a little too early.
And my partner, one of the deputy marshals, he got shot as I'm pulling up to the traffic stop.
And the bad guy's out shooting him with an AR-15.
And I see him drop, roll out of his car, and he's bleeding. I'm like, OK, he's dead.
It was like 15 yards, you know, as you just hammer him with the AR, closing the distance, walking up to him.
I'm like, man, if he's not dead, he's about to be.
And so I start I bring my rifle up, lay it on my dash. I'm still rolling up.
I haven't stopped. And I'm like, I don't have time to get out. I just got to get it on right now.
Had a good side picture and I start pressing the trigger and I could tell I was impacting him.
He had on body armor.
Him and I get out. We have a for the cop world. It was a long gun battle.
And he he was trained. He knew what he was doing.
I end up killing him. I took some fragments and hurt my ear again.
So take care of my buddy. We get him shipped off in an ambulance.
And I'm like, oh, God, I had I had called the wife yet.
She don't even know I'm up here, you know. And guess what? They're taking them to her hospital.
Like, oh, Jesus, she could be pissed, you know.
So they make me go to the hospital and I'm trying to get a hold of her.
And anyway, we get there.
She said a few things to me, nothing. I mean, she was doing her nurse stuff on me.
But we get home that night. My kids are there.
And I think my mom comes over and a few other people and everybody I walk into the room, they move.
And I'm like, finally, like, what are you all doing?
And they're like, well, and my wife pulled me aside.
She said, well, the kids think you're about to disappear, isolate, withdraw, not be seen again for five, six months like you always do.
I said, fair enough. But that's absolutely the last thing I want to do.
And I say that for this reason. I mean, as mad as mad as I was to get the call to go up there that night,
when I laid down, I'm like, all right, this is validation.
This work that I've done to heal me over the last three years, it's worked. It's real.
I didn't want to go drink. I didn't didn't want to go to the farm.
I had no interest in being away from my family.
And that was the first time ever I didn't want to run.
And I wanted to be where my family was.
And I'm like, OK, I think I might have a chance at this now.
And so I was off for about eight months on that one, healing up.
And that's when I started putting this program together, because I've lost a lot of friends either by just saying they're burned out.
But that's that's not why it's like you talked about earlier.
I mean, there's other things going on to cause the burnout, whatever that means, that just not being addressed.
And I've lost friends to suicide.
And like, there's got to be a better way to catch people like me and my friends that are falling through the gaps because we had peer teams.
I mean, we had peer teams for like 20 years and not knocking those guys.
I mean, they're nice guys, but it was a retirement gig for a lot of people.
And it was only they were only used in a proactive and a responsive way.
They were doing zero proactive work.
There was no trust building on the front end of a problem.
It was they would show up at your shooting and try to hug you.
And I remember the first time somebody tried to hug me.
I mean, I'm sitting there with blood everywhere.
I mean, I'm still in kill mode.
Right. I mean, shooting straight with you.
Like, bro, you touch me again.
I'll kill you. Get the fuck away from me.
And I apologize to the guy later, but I knew everybody on that team.
Ain't nobody been in anything like me at that point.
And they try to under and again, I probably pissing people off when I say this.
And it's not like they can't care about you.
But man, if you don't know what you're talking about, if you don't know what that person's going through that just taking a life or being in that type of situation, call somebody else.
And I went home after one of these shootings.
I found this note because during twenty eighteen, like I said, when I was putting this together, that was one of the things that I was wanting to change.
Putting the right peer with the right problem or situation to bring sympathy and empathy, true sympathy and empathy and trust.
And man, everybody just wants to show up and kumbaya and hug it out and sit through a debrief and like, you're supposed to experience this and this and this.
OK, what happened six months from now?
You know, are you going to be around then?
How did this affect you?
You know, and I've asked several of them that before, and they just look at each other like, I don't know.
I'm just reading you what in this book, you know, like hell with all that. That is nothing real human about that.
And this whole thing, this whole package when I started writing it was was at the top of my title was served the human had nothing in there about police, fire, EMS, communications, serve the human.
And every other aspect of our pillars were built serving the human hell with the badge, hell with the uniform, hell with an agency.
I don't care about any of that. I don't care about agencies.
Means nothing.
It's the people that are there that's showing up, doing this stuff repeatedly, being exposed to it repeatedly that are still human.
If they survive this long enough to retire, guess what? Still a human.
And so I put the same together, had some help about a third of the way through it with some outside counselors that I really wanted to bring some, you know, scientific perspective to clean up my Danny Long language in it to make it valid when I presented it.
And I think by spring of 2019, I had it at the Capitol, handed it to one of my friends who was the governor's cabinet secretary for public safety at the time.
I said, man, this is how we're going to change some lives. I said, this is what peer teams should have been doing a long time ago.
He said, yeah, I'll read through it. I said, well, just so you know, I'm retiring.
But this is how we can make an impact. So I didn't get out to my car. He calls me back and he's like, bro, get back in here.
He said, what is all this? He said, this is an eight year model. I'm like, yeah, I know.
I said, it's how we're going to change culture. You can't change everything overnight. Just set the top down.
I said, we're going to start from the bottom up. And so there was a few weeks, months of discussion about me leaving.
And man, I began. I mean, I started following God a lot at that point.
And I know I don't sound like it, but man, I'm still a work in progress there.
But I knew there was something bigger in me for the serve in a bigger way.
And I was praying a lot about it at the time. And I just I've never felt.
I mean, I think I did a lot of stuff out of obligation of everything I've done, to be honest, just the sense of giving back.
I've never felt led to do something until this day. And I mean, I've talked about it with the wife.
We remarried in 2019. And I'm like, I think I got to go do this.
I think this is truly going to be something to fill in the gaps for people like me to keep people like me from destroying their lives, their families.
And she backed it 100 percent. And so I retired and they hired me back as a civilian director over the program.
And I don't know if you want to jump into that part of it now or not, if there's anything else you want me to clean up before we go there.
I've got one quick question. Your partner that was shot, did he make it or did he pass?
He did. He made it. He he ended up having to retire medically from the marshal service, but he did really good.
I mean, that dude, I mean, he had been shot in the head to die. He's that he's that tough.
He's just one of those true battle battle partners, man.
That I mean, I hate it. I hated it was him. But I mean, it glad it was in a lot of ways to.
That's good to hear. I'm glad I asked. Well, then let's yeah, let's unpack the peer support kind of mental health side.
And then let's go to the fitness, strength, conditioning side as well.
Yeah. So, man, that's all a part of it, because that's one of our pillars.
So they bring me back to the civilian director and by September of 22, this thing becomes a living, breathing state agency.
And but it took me I mean, I spent about a year and a half at the Capitol selling all this.
And I expected a lot of pushback from these anti cop, you know, legislators that are just maybe not anti cop or not the most friendly.
And they were some of our biggest supporters.
But I did a lot of one on ones on why this could impact them.
And one one thing I've sat down with this guy that I thought was going to be one of the worst critics up there.
And I just said, hey, if your family was in a really bad crash tonight.
You got two choices. Do you want a brand new firefighter, brand new medic, a brand new officer all showing up on that scene together to rescue cut out, remove, perform life saving skills on your family.
To get them to the hospital, to give them a chance. Or do you want someone that's healthy, experienced in years, experienced on the job that knows how to perform all these shortcuts and maneuvers and how to really go after the life saving skills?
Who would you want? It's like, well, that's a dumb question.
Someone with the experience guy. I said, OK, help me keep those experienced guys around them.
I said, because this what this whole program is about. We we got to do a stop loss on our people that are just leaving after 15 years.
That has all this experience, but they're leaving because they're sick and tired of of of not dealing with the cumulative trauma that they don't know they may even have and give them a chance to become healthy and whole, whether they leave or not.
In the last couple of years, I said, we're not treating we're not treating them like a human at all.
And I said, we're just expected to perform like a robot repeatedly for 25 years and have no change.
And he said, Well, that's ridiculous. I said, it sure is.
And he was one of my biggest allies. He stood up and he was he was a Democrat and he stood in the middle of all these Republicans and raised hell like what we should have voted this in a year ago.
Well, I appreciate it, but I didn't bring it here a year ago.
So it was really refreshing to have all that backing pouring into the program.
And so that was the launching point. I really figured it was going to take a couple of years to get the same past. And it didn't.
So, man, I'm on the guest pedal. And so this eight year program is built around really three to four different pillars.
Physical, mental, spiritual, and there's a financial piece that falls in the middle of all these two all surrounding the word resiliency. Right. I mean, that's another word getting thrown around a lot.
But it's true.
We have these pillars of foundation that I put in this program because that like, for instance, I'll start off with the physical component.
During COVID, this is the reason I did this statewide. We have a statewide network of these functional fitness gyms that are within a geographical area from any first responder about 40, 30 to 40 minutes, no matter where you are in the state.
There's one of our boxes at some location in your geographical area.
But the reason I spent so much money on that was during COVID when we couldn't do these corporate gatherings and corporate workouts, because up until that time, it was just about producing a more capable first responder.
Right. That I'm being straight up honest with you. I wish I could tell you I figured this out before then, but it's not true.
So what I was doing at that point, because it was just me on the team, I'd fired everybody on the team because I wanted to build a team that was the right people there for the right reasons.
I mean, I was going around different firehouses, police stations, troop headquarters.
I'd call people tell them I'm on my way. I had a bunch of kettlebells and sandbags and we just smash out a workout with three or four of us in a parking lot.
I had no other purpose than just give them a break. You know, well, guess what started happening?
I started getting all these phone calls and after the workout was over, like, hey, can I come talk to you for a minute?
Like, yeah, what about? Well, tell me about counseling.
Like, what do you mean? Well, how do I get that counselor? What counselor do I go to?
What's how to how to overcome addiction and other things start popping up?
I mean, I'm having some bad thoughts. I don't know who to call because I know I'm going to get put in time out or fired.
I am in financial trouble. I did this and I've lost a lot of money.
All these things started happening.
And this tells you how dumb I am. It took me about another six to eight months to figure out, hey, man, these workouts are creating.
Conversations that I've never had before with people that normally wouldn't ask me stuff like that.
And at the time, I was doing interviews locally on our news and doing a lot of stories.
I was being very vulnerable about my path and what what happened to me.
Very detailed. And I know that helped.
But man, suddenly I'm like, OK, there's a lot more than just making a capable first responder.
This is generating a lot of referrals.
Then it started generating more referrals to our counselors.
And so. In comes BeaverFit.
They met all of our needs and I'd learned about BeaverFit from some work overseas and how they were deploying these boxes and different austere environments
and just setting up a full gym basically with, you know, not having to rent a building and all this other upkeep and cost.
And I started looking at the geographical areas across the state to put our gyms in.
And sorry, my dog just went crazy.
So I went to my boss, the cabinet secretary for the governor, said, hey, this is one pillar I would like to go ahead and enact.
But it's going to cost a couple million dollars.
And he's like, man, I don't know if we can do that. And.
But at the same time, I got an invite to come sit on this committee or testify in front of committee to get additional funding through the ARPA grants,
the American Rescue Plan Act. And you say what you will about that and I have my own thoughts.
But it it it was meant for infrastructure build across the country.
And I tied it all in the infrastructure of being what keeps infrastructure going is how I got my funding through ARPA.
And you know, I got a lot of money to really slingshot my whole program in a matter of months.
And I mean, I'm on the phone with BeaverFit and at first they they I think they thought I was crazy.
I'm like, hey, man, I'm with this equipment, but it's not about working out.
And finally, you know, I think they I don't know what they thought of me in the beginning, but I finally figured out that, hey, yeah, I believe in working out.
But this is not why I want to build this program here.
It's about the building that network, open communication that and I started sending them data.
I'm like, look at these referrals we're getting to our counselors after these workouts.
And, you know, next time we're on a plane going out there to their headquarters and shaking hands, making this relationship.
And there is bought into this program.
I mean, they get it that they truly understand what we're doing here.
And and we're actually about to do a lot more with them.
That's probably another story, though.
But, man, October of last year, I unloaded our last box.
So we have this whole network that we're running constant everything from, you know, just functional fitness workout strength.
Sometimes we do yoga. Sometimes we just meet at these boxes and just do continual debriefs to try to do preventative maintenance.
So getting ahead. But it's the trust building is the open communication that's generating from all these events that we're doing.
And and yes, we're making more capable first responders.
Any questions about that for the next pillar?
Yeah, well, I'm going to add something in a couple of things.
Firstly, I had a guy on quite a while ago now, Tom Hewitt, and he is an Englishman, great surfer, ends up moving to I think it's durable.
And starts a nonprofit called Surfers Not Street Children.
And I'll never forget what he said. Firstly, there's a lot of kids that were told that, you know, there were monsters in the ocean.
I think, you know, back then, we're talking apartheid.
Obviously, there's probably trying to keep the beaches white if you really kind of deconstruct it.
So you've got to get these kids in the water, you got to teach them how to swim.
And then eventually they learn how to surf.
But what they would do is whatever phase these children were in at the end of it, they would sit on the beach and they would talk.
And it was an informal counseling session.
So you've already had your exercise, your camaraderie, your salt, you know, sun, sand.
And then these kids are open. I think it's the exact same way with exercise.
And if you look at the selection process, if you look at the academies, especially if it's held to a high standard,
that shared suffering forges that camaraderie and therefore that conversation.
A hundred percent. It's just a carryover of all that that that needs to continue throughout your career.
And that's people. I mean, even we're coming up on one year now with the operation of the physical component.
And I can tell you, even from first quarter of twenty four this year until I'll just call it third quarter of twenty four,
our referral rates have quadrupled again to our counselors.
And I mean, it's it's it's a good problem to have because I keep on having to funnel money into that one project to pay our counselors.
Right. We have three full time counselors that work for us. And it's I mean, it's great.
I'll keep on finding the money and moving the money around. But, man, people are coming in waves.
Now, people that that I know personally that just like me would keep this way at a distance, you know, that just didn't believe in it.
But, man, they're just so desperate for hope now and grasping.
So it's it's it's working and we have the proof now that it is working.
I want to just talk about BeaverFit for a little bit longer.
I came across them years ago in TSAC, one of the the conferences, which is a great conference.
But, you know, again, you see as a firefighter, you see a big Connex box and the people say, we drop them into Afghanistan.
OK, well, that's really cool. That doesn't apply to what I do.
But then years later, I had Tom Beaver on the show, the founder in the UK.
And they got the stuff that they build for the British military and the facilities they've got are absolutely insane.
But then I had Mike and Alex on from BeaverFit USA.
And what really blew my mind is, of course, if you happen to be, you know, some grandstand fire department, they build you a brand new station and everything's inside.
And you've got, you know, a thousand square foot gym, then you can buy the the inside gym equipment.
But the reality is the other 95 percent of fire departments, you know, we got to put equipment in the bay.
Or it's got to sit on the back apron or an FDNY.
There's nowhere. So, you know, they have these foot lockers that you can drag out.
And then there's literally an entire squat rack inside this foot locker.
You assemble it, you do your workout and then you break it down again.
You've got the trailer hitch. Same thing. The squat racks that go on them.
You've got trailers. So I was amazed because some of the genuine reasons,
slash excuses for not having strength and conditioning were solved.
Like here is a company you can leave the barbells out in the rain.
They're deployed in sand and sea. You know, so talk to me about what BeaverFit specifically brought as far as solutions that, you know, ordering from Sears wouldn't have done for you.
Well, I mean, I mean, you said it.
It that equipment and how it's built and manufactured saved me so much money because I didn't have to look for a physical structure to rent and upkeep overhead.
It's very self-contained unit, takes up a small footprint.
And even here in Oklahoma property, I mean, especially where it needs to be, it's there's always a battle for space, but it met every need and the functionality of it.
So I mean, I think we had like 15, 16 of the boxes, the permanent boxes spread across.
But then we also have for the mobile Beyond trailers and we use the Beyond trailers in a capacity.
So we one thing we do on the mental side and this ties in to that other pillar.
We believe in preventative maintenance. We believe in promoting building trust with our people long before we're called to a problem.
So not only they'll be familiar with the equipment that we use, they'll be the last some trust in the person that's there to serve them.
For example, this year was a really high in tornado event here in Oklahoma from southern Oklahoma to northeastern.
There were some really big track tornadoes that I mean, destroyed parts of large sections of towns and long recovery effort rescue on the front on the back end of that.
So we deployed and not immediately because I don't believe the right time to come in and try to interject yourself with firefighters.
It's no different than appear trying to interject with me while I'm in a gunfight.
I looked at this. I've worked the two biggest tornadoes.
If not in the country, definitely in our state, both have five events that killed a lot of people as a trooper here.
I've worked both of those over over my career and I knew the mindset during the recovery side.
They we don't need to inject right now. We waited till the transition to became rescue to recovery.
We slowly started interjecting teammates, wellness programs within that specific community, a lot of a lot of different fire houses around the state.
For example, the biggest hit community in the state was sulfur, Oklahoma, just devastated about half the town.
And so we set up shop at their at their firehouse for about three weeks, about two days into it.
The fire chief comes up to me because we're doing critical incident debris.
We're doing EMDR treatment, trying to give them a reset and arrest in between shifts and a path forward.
So he said, hey, I noticed on your website you have these workout trailers.
I said, yeah, what about them? He said, why aren't we doing workouts here?
I'm like, dude, your people are smashed. What are you talking about? He said, I want you to come in and do a team building every day in between shifts.
I want you to come in and offer some type of team building exercise. I'm like, OK.
I thought it was a bad idea. I was never, ever intended to use those trailers for that capacity.
I'll get some pictures. I'll show you, though. I'll send you some time.
Do from there forward every day about five p.m.
We started holding these team building short in nature.
Twenty, thirty minute targeted group exercise that that promoted teammate helping teammate.
Sometimes we rock. Sometimes we did other functional fitness movements that involved supporting your teammate.
Man, the second night we did that, we finished with the rug.
And we were walking, making the last curve through all this tornado debris.
I mean, the heart where the tornado came through and just uprooted, destroyed buildings in our route was right through there.
Soon as we got out of that and we could see the fire department ahead, they had a big.
What's the big engine with the big ladder, the ladder truck that they parked?
One of their biggest ladder trucks in front of their department raised up the ladder, had the American flag on it.
And the Oklahoma flag man, they all started high five and each other and hugging.
I mean, I start crying and I'm like, man, I'm glad I'm back here where nobody can see me.
Like I almost missed this opportunity to serve our people in another capacity outside the classroom.
And to this day, man, I mean, they still call me and.
Now, you all did it. You're the ones who asked for this.
We just showed up to serve and it just it was a lot of growing opportunity on our end as well.
And how we're going to serve and not just having our blinders on is like just come up, set up, do debriefs, EMDR.
This modality. Just I don't know.
It was a good I mean, I hated that it happened again, like all these gunfights.
I learned something from each one of them was a true benefit later.
But man, it's just there's a lot of growth during this tornado season.
I'm so glad you told that story is that's amazing.
So that was the like you said, the fitness component.
Let's talk about the other legs of the stool.
So the mental pillar is this and this is where we kind of.
Well, the physical components, 100 percent, that identify the different path
and the majority of the peer teams in the United States right now,
because it's so much more than just working out.
And we talked about that. Our mental piece is I wanted something other than a critical incident debrief that.
It never. And I was forced to sit in a lot of them.
And I'm like, OK, I mean, if you want me to talk, I would say what I needed to.
And after that, I'm fine. I'm good.
And I could keep going on that.
And again, I know there's I'm not dogging it.
So I know I'll probably get attacked as I always do when I make statements about those things.
We still do them. We still we do about two or three a week.
But the differences are follow up.
To me, those critical incident debriefs are just the beginning.
And now from where I said, I tell my team, I said, hey, if they help people, great.
But my I tell the guys and girls, I said, I really want you.
Your mission during if during performing a debrief is to identify the people in the crowd we need to go to one on one.
I mean, true people that are dealing with really bad stuff that can lead to bad outcomes.
We need to get to them. And so follow up with that.
I wanted to start removing any barrier that I've ever thought of that I used as an excuse to keep me from going to keep my friends from going to help.
So we wrote a state peer law.
It mimics that of HIPAA protection with our counselors that work in our office.
I mean, we're almost word for word. So it don't matter what agents if you're first responder in Oklahoma and you reach out to us in an official capacity, you're you're protected at that point moving forward.
And the only thing that would violate that protected communication is if we identify you're about to harm yourself or somebody else, then we're going to do the moral thing and we're going to protect you, whether you like us or not.
So outside of that, and it's art, it's been tested. I've been subpoenaed twice now, I believe, to try to get some information on who we were working with.
And it's failed both times. And it's a very strong bill. But identifying that to our people to making sure they understand, hey, you are protected.
And this is your law that protects you once you call us. I mean, because I was never going to call my boss and say, hey, I'm drinking a bottle of whiskey every night.
I'm pretty sure I whiskey on my breath when I go in service. I am having some bad thoughts about killing myself that you know what that guy would have done.
He had had me in handcuffs that day. I mean, I could tell you another story on that guy.
But, I mean, we've all got those guys in our life. And that's another part of our job is educating our supervisors now and looking past discipline.
Hey, let's look at what's causing his problems here. So I'm kind of getting off track. But it is still part of our job in this mental pillar that we're doing.
So I told you earlier, I fired everybody on the peer team and it pissed a lot of people off. I mean, because this was their retirement gig. They'd been there for several years.
It was a call for service. I don't know that they left their house unless they were called. You know, I don't know.
But I built an application process that included a vetting component with your current former partners.
And I had total autonomy to build this program how I wanted to. I mean, and that was my deal. I'm like, I'm either going to build this this way, which is not for me.
It's for people. And I said, if you're not going to let me do it, I'm out. So I had total autonomy in this bill.
So I built this application that would reveal your true motivation to be here to include the last thing with the vetting piece with your partners.
And if I got three negatives, I asked the same questions, three same questions to your current former partners. If I got one negative, I would call another partner.
If I got another, I would call another. And I kept on until I'm like a duck is a duck. Right.
I mean, so it identified the problem people. I mean, there was people applying that had so many different degrees that were cops and peer certifications that just on paper.
You're like, man, I got this guy, the master peer and master something.
But, man, nobody trusted him. I mean, hated this guy. And there are several like that, you know, that he had burned people down.
But for whatever reason, you know, that didn't think trust was a big deal, you know, and I had multiple people like that.
That were applying that just couldn't figure out why. Why can't I be a peer? I've done all this training.
I have my own PC or whatever. I'm like, dude, nobody trust you. It's not just me. Here's the proof and the pudding.
And I mean, that that was a game changer and why every agency doesn't do that.
And I called these I called some chiefs out on on this panel. I was telling you about earlier that they had built their peer team.
Assembled their peer leader based on their beliefs, their trust in that person. And my question was only this.
Hey, chief, I know you I'm glad you trust that person. But does your people trust them?
And this one woman stood up. How dare you? I'm like, what do you mean?
She said, I can't believe you'd insult me like that. I'm not insulting anybody.
I'm just asking, do your people on the ground trust your peer leader? Oh, and by the way, where's your peer office?
What's right next door to my office? I'm like, Jesus, you know, I'm it. And that happens all over the country.
So, again, who's and I know I'm getting off on a tangent, but man, this stuff just drives my ass crazy.
But so I built the right team. And most of these team members did not want to do this.
I'm like, I never wanted to be a peer. I'm like, yeah.
But everybody knows your story. Everybody knows what moves you made to get your life back in order.
You know, you got shot in the face. And I mean, I've got them all here.
I've got people about died from brain aneurysms, cancer, gunshots, alcoholics.
It's the people who can empathize and sympathize because they've been there themselves.
I don't care about no piece of paper. I can send people out and get them peer trained.
But I can't train a human to act like a human and serve as a human.
That that's the piece we're missing.
The other side of that within the mental house is removing a barrier of bringing our in-house counselors,
culturally competent counselors that that are all vetted, been in the game in 15, 20 something years that truly
were either one of us at one time or still us that their whole life has been around first responder trauma.
And they get it. And there's zero cost.
I mean, nobody's out, no copay, nobody's out anything.
And it's all anonymous when they come in and we're offering treatment modalities.
This is the other thing that's starting to separate us of other equipment that we have in-house that just another tool in the toolbox.
We have EMDR sessions, enhanced EMDR with our we started a brain mapping neuro performance offering
with an outside group and neurologist group in Arizona that just has been really phenomenal.
And I mean, this stuff's five, seven thousand dollars to sign up if you were to go do it on your own.
It's free. I mean, another barrier removed.
And I mean, we have REM sleep treatments beds that are made in this group and Clearwater that I found through our good friend, Doug Monda,
that helped reset your your REM sleep treatment pattern.
You know, I mean, that was one of the biggest ones when Doug and I met.
We I mean, we both knew REM sleep lack of which controls all your biological function, your body regulations.
And that's one of the most important things in your body we don't get because a lot of times
we do things to think we're going to get some sleep like alcohol pills.
But that's actually a firewall.
You cannot get to REM sleep if you're drinking alcohol, no matter how much you drink or how little it just it's an absolute shut down to your rim.
And what's really important about REM and the reason I've spent so much money on these REM sleep treatment beds
is because REM is our natural ability to process these days of traumatic events that we're exposed to either vicariously hands on or we're hearing about it.
We're physically there, you know, because all trauma goes to our frontal lobe.
And that's where it'll stay until it's processed through REM sleep or some other treatment modality.
But a lot of us try to process it ourselves through these other unhealthy addictions and it gets stuck there.
And we can't can't imagine. I keep hearing that kid. I keep hearing the scream.
I keep smelling the smell. You know, we all got them because it's unprocessed in your frontal lobe.
You're not giving your brain a chance to process shift work just like you're battling right now.
But hopefully people are going to start paying attention to this that I mean, we're denying our own natural ability to heal itself.
And that's why I heavily invested in the REM sleep treatment beds. We've got massage therapy chairs, we've got hyperbaric chambers,
soon to be body scanners, sauna, red light therapy. So it's just one in-house all under all umbrella approach
to not expecting you have to go to like 14 different places to eat each of these treatment modalities.
And it's all free and nobody knows it. And I mean, I could keep on talking about that one, but I know we're running late on time.
But I want to get to the spiritual piece real fast. And everybody wants to just jump to church when I hear that when I see this like, oh, you church guy.
I'm like, well, yeah, I am actually. But the definitions, if you look at spiritual or like community,
connection, being a part of something bigger than yourself, my addition is being a part of something bigger than yourself outside of work.
So that's our focus. And then this whole conversation I had earlier with you about choosing to put yourself intentionally to grow.
You have to put yourself in uncomfortable positions like my garden group and some of these other things that I make myself do on a regular basis
to continue to grow outside of my normal culture and my trusted culture. And with that, we've placed a financial piece.
We have a full financial program run by one of our own team members who's a certified financial planner.
That's that's all he does. He goes around, sets up financial planning specifically to the first responder community.
I mean, you know, as well as I do every time we got a race, I mean, a few things were happening.
Big trucks, big boobs and boats were being bought, you know, and it's that way everywhere.
I found out and we just we're horrible at planning for the future because we don't you know, 10 years in,
we don't even think about retirement is a real thing until it's a real thing.
And you're finally at your retirement point like, well, I can't retire because I've got a four hundred thousand dollar mortgage
and I've got eighty thousand dollar vehicles sent in the driveway and it's on and on and on and acting like this never going to end.
So we know that that's a big stressor to long term negative outcome.
And that's why I brought him on.
And that's it. That's his whole mission in life is to build these financial programs out for us,
not not just a general public, but to really battle the areas that we're making a lot of mistakes in.
And I mean, I could keep going, but again, I don't want to be the only one talking either.
No, it's amazing. It really is. And it's you know, again, it's progressive and it's proactive.
And I think this is one you talk about the barrier to entry with the in-house counselor that definitely has emerged as the gold standard.
You know, and I talked about this, you know, even if you want to, you know, you're a small department, how do I justify it?
Some of the ridiculous things that we do in the testing process.
So I've worked for four departments in the end. That was four site tests for MMPI written tests,
which are proven to be completely ridiculous as a standalone test to select the first responder.
Exactly. I've lied my way through three polygraphs, you know, so that's thousands of dollars for that testing process
that could go into just simply hiring a counselor. Do your background, do your physical, do your written and do your interviews.
And after that, trust that. But, you know, if you have an in-house counselor, you can also give these young recruits
three, four, five sessions in their first six months a year so that you can then build a relationship at the front door,
normalize the mental health conversation and give them an opportunity to offload some of the things that they carried into the job.
And as you progress through, again, what I see is I'm hurting, I'm struggling. OK, we need to get you help.
Oh, shit. You know, we've got the EAP. This person is in your plan. This person's never worked with first responders.
And then, you know, all of a sudden they're they're desperate or they just simply can't afford it.
You know, they're out of out of network. And so it's one hundred and fifty, two hundred dollars per visit.
So by putting that in and obviously all the proactive treatments and another one I would suggest,
if you haven't looked into Newcom, N-U-C-A-L-M, it's now an app on the phone. It is phenomenal at down regulation.
And it's accessible to, you know, to anyone, anyone with a smartphone.
Used to be a big six thousand dollar piece of technology that sat in Navy SEALs, team rooms and NASA and NFL places.
But now you can get on your phone. But it's absolutely incredible at down regulation.
There's an up regulation one, too, but down regulation.
And I think that after a shift, you sit in your car, you do a 20 minute Newcom session with just the trip.
I'm asking headphones. You don't have to buy there. It's just a regular seat mask to find somewhere safe where you feel safe.
And it punctuates that shift. And then you go home, you walk through the door and your mom, your dad, your, you know,
you're not angry police officer firefighter that you were a few hours before.
No, I'll definitely check that out.
So I think I want to talk about this before we end.
This is the piece I mean, I love everything we're doing.
But this piece of probably one of the most proudest things that because our headquarters is in central Oklahoma.
The problem is it's in central Oklahoma and we have all these rural brothers and sisters that are serving out everywhere that 90 percent of them have no support network.
But guess what? Because your reserve, your volunteer firefighter, your volunteer medic, your volunteer police officer are full time.
They're still getting a lot of like all these tornadoes that the destruction, the violence that those things caused this year were horrific.
I mean, I mean, all in a period of about, you know, seven to 10 days.
Wildfires are really bad here. And we lost some firefighters this last year.
So they're getting really significant like the big T trauma.
And I'm like, how can I expect to help them?
How can I get all this equipment to them if they live four hours away?
They're not going to drive down here for that. They probably can't afford the gas to get here, but they deserve all this stuff that we have in Oklahoma City.
They deserve it. And I was like tormented over this deal.
I don't know what to do. I was driving home one night on the interstate and this bus passes me.
And I'm like, that's it. I want to go back and get some more money.
Bob buses put their equipment, these rim sleep treatment beds, these neural terminals, massage therapy chairs, debriefing rooms.
I want to put it all on the bus and go serve our people where they they're serving.
I'm not then reality hit the next morning. I was in a great mood that night and I woke up. I'm like, oh, shit.
I'm like, I don't even know if this equipment can hold up to a mobile platform.
So that was like eight to 10 months of research with the companies, the manufacturers.
Finally got the green light and they, you know, I spent some in-depth time.
This is why we got to do this. And if it won't work, let's make it work somehow, because nobody's built anything like this to go serve our people where they're serving.
So all these companies from the bus manufacturer to the rim sleep treatment bed, everything got behind this.
And guess what? They're in the building queue. I'm about to take possession of our first two 40 foot wellness buses in just a few months.
That will be going and we're not going to use them. I mean, yeah, I'm getting them for like the tornadoes, the wildfires, the long term call out events.
But those things are going to be on the road two to three days a week at different police agencies, firehouses across our state, running people through the sleep beds, resetting rim sleep, putting them in massage chairs, doing MDR treatment with them on a regular rotation basis.
So when they do need us, they're like, oh, it's wellness guys. I mean, that stuff actually feels good. And they're actually pretty cool.
So we're building trust. We're building trust with their equipment, helping them out, giving them a chance to continual unload of all this trauma to help get them further along in their career in a healthy manner.
And it's a benefit to all of us. You know, I'm probably going to order some more in the near future.
But one last thing, man, I got to bounce opener tonight. Oh, you soon as the Norman first game in the SEC.
So we're about to roll to Norman and celebrate that event. But, man, I got to tell you, I got some really good news the other day.
So I wanted to be in a holistic area to match our plan. And what I mean by that is I want an environment.
I want to create it. I want our headquarters, wellness headquarters to be in a place that when you pull in, you automatically want to come back.
And you hadn't even been in the wellness building yet. So guess what? Got some more money, got some more backers.
We're building our wellness headquarters of six hundred and forty acres.
We're having to share it with some of our other training facilities.
But about two hundred and sixty acres will be dedicated to our wellness building right in the middle of all these wooded areas.
The big heavy trees. I've already told people I'm like, I do not want to take out any trees if we absolutely don't have to.
We're going to build about a 15 acre lake right in front of it. Stock it.
We're going to have beaver fed equipment on all of our walking trails, running trails that will be encompass a whole six hundred forty acre campus of nothing but us.
Beaver fed equipment, campfires, fire pits, barbecue stations, place you could bring your family.
You could bring your whole team and just hang out. Come do, you know, thirty four, forty five minutes of some treatment modality.
Get reset, get plugged up. Hey, man, go spend the day the rest of the day fishing, hanging out, cooking out with your family, whatever you want to do.
Riding the Rangers around. Just go have fun. And guess what? Costs nothing.
So, man, I'm so pumped about that. I got to get you out here when we get this place built. I'll get you and the beaver fed guys down.
We're going to come down in a few weeks to get eyes on the property as we build this thing out. But, man, I'm just freaking pumped right now.
I'm just glad to be a small part of it here and hopefully. I don't know, Jane, maybe me, you, the beaver fit crew someday.
We're replicating this thing across our country, you know, because it's not just about us. And I know you believe that.
Absolutely. Well, I think the thing I've talked about so often is we're so fragmented as professions, you know, police departments and fire departments and everything.
So when there is someone who's doing it right, there's someone who's cracked that nut in that particular area.
All we have to do is ask him, how did you do it? And then, yeah, we should be able to kind of help blueprint everyone else doing a similar thing.
Well, I won't be mindful of your time. Get you to your football game. I got to go see my son. He just walked through the door.
But before we do, where are the best places to learn about the program and or to reach out to you online?
Hey, you can find us at OKFRWD.com is our website. We are also on all the social media platforms. Oklahoma First Responder Wellness Division.
Man, I mean, we're already helping several other states right now that want to come in and mimic some type or piece of our program.
And it's not ours. I give them everything we got. And, you know, I'll even come out, help through the building phase, putting this together to take to the Capitol, to take to your administration.
We've got a fire fire agency in Missouri coming in really quick that we're going to help them build out their why and their justification as they go present this forward.
Oh, by the way, just hired my first Oklahoma City firefighter is now working for us full time. Chris Fields. You know, yeah, he's a good friend of mine.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Him and I was walking out of my office the other day when we just got off the phone.
I said, Chris, you know, James, he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I know him real well.
And then he told me how you and Doug are, you know, the whole crew out there. Absolutely. And Raul, amazing, amazing humans. Good people.
Phenomenal. Really good people. Well, Danny, I just want to say thank you firstly, obviously, for all the conversations about the solutions that you've got now, but also, as I touched on earlier,
for simply being courageously vulnerable because those two combined, the identifying, you know, the strength in and courage that comes from vulnerability and identifying that we are struggling and then looking for those solutions.
But then obviously the solutions that have spawned from that, which is again, I mean, what a beautiful example of post traumatic growth on top of the fact that you're with your wife again.
So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today. Man, 100 percent an honor to be here.
And I think we're just getting started, James. I feel that 100 percent. So thank you for everything that you're doing, too.