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This episode is sponsored by NuCalm.

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And as many of you know, I only bring sponsors onto this show

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whose products I truly swear by.

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Now we are an overworked and underslept population,

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especially those of us that wear uniform for a living.

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And trying to reclaim some of the lost rest and recovery is imperative.

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Now, the application of this product is as simple as putting on headphones and a sleep mask.

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As you listen to music on each of the programs,

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there is neuroacoustic software beneath that is tapping into the actual frequencies of your brain,

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whether to upregulate your nervous system or downregulate.

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Now, for most of us that come off shift, we are A, exhausted,

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and B, do not want to bring what we've had to see and do back home to our loved ones.

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So one powerful application is using the program Powernap,

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a 20 minute session that will not only feel like you've had two hours of sleep,

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but also downregulate from a hypervigilant state back into the role of mother or father, husband or wife.

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Now there are so many other applications and benefits from this software,

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so I urge you to go and listen to episode 806 with CEO Jim Poole.

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Then download NuCalm, N-U-C-A-L-M, from your app store and sign up for the 7-day free trial.

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Not only will you have an understanding of the origin story and the four decades this science has spanned,

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but also see for yourself the incredible health impact of this life changing software.

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And you can find even more information on New Calm dot com.

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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast, as always, my name is James Gearing,

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and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show,

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Army veteran, Oklahoma State Trooper, member of the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force,

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and founder of the Oklahoma First Responder Wellness Division, Danny Long.

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Now as you will hear, Danny is the blackest of black clouds when it comes to the law enforcement world.

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So we discuss a host of topics from his journey into the military,

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his initial entry into law enforcement, going back to contracting,

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tactical teams, active shooter training, the multiple officer involved shootings that he had personally,

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his own mental health story, the formation of the Oklahoma First Responder Wellness Division,

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BeaverFit equipment, and so much more.

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Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment,

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go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback, and leave a rating.

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Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find.

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And this is a free library of almost 1,000 episodes now.

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So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories,

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so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.

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So with that being said, I introduce to you Danny Long. Enjoy.

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Music

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Well Danny, I want to start by saying two things.

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Firstly, thank you to our mutual friend Dan Cowan for connecting us.

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And secondly, I want to welcome you to the Behind the Shield podcast today.

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Hey, great to be here. I've been looking forward to this for quite some time.

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Yeah, likewise. Your name has definitely been thrown around quite a bit, so I'm glad that we finally made it work.

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So very first question then, where on planet Earth are we finding you today?

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I mean, I know this is going to be a shocker for people.

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You know, I'm not from New York, and if you haven't figured that out by now,

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I'm from central, the greatest part of the country, Oklahoma.

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And I've been all over the world in very different capacities and have always returned back here to my roots.

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My family has had generational farms here going way back.

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And you know, this is where my heart and soul is.

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So and definitely where I'm supposed to be right now.

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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.

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Well, you spoke about growing up in the farm.

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So let's talk about origin story then. Tell me exactly where you were born.

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And tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings.

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OK, so we're I mean, we're going to start off.

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I'm a very vulnerable person now. I wasn't always that way.

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But that's what helped me survive and grow, you know, survive my suicide attempt and where we are right now.

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So I'm glad you asked.

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Southern Oklahoma, not too far from the Texas border, just far enough to not to get their stank on me.

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But all of our farms were in that central region.

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Man, I grew up in the middle of nowhere pretty much.

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And farm life and ranch that rodeo that that that was me.

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And I felt like a slave most of the time.

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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.

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I was in the hay field, baling hay, hauling hay.

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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.

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And so my mom remarried a few years later, brought us to this other farm.

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Not too far from my original family farm.

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And that man was tough. I mean, and I didn't always align with him very well.

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I mean, he taught me how to shoot, fight, pretty much run a farm and ranch.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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There was a reason he was like rough and direct.

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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.

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I hope my mom never hears this because I've never told her.

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But we were out hunting one day. There was a snowstorm that came in.

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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.

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I mean, you name it. But we ate the meat also, along with our beef that we raced.

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And so I missed this rabbit. I mean, heavy snow coming down.

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I was probably like nine or 10 and had the same 22 rifle my whole life.

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And I didn't miss a whole lot with that. But I did that day.

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And I couldn't see I couldn't see the rabbit. He was telling me to shoot. Shoot. Well, I missed it.

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Well, I got discipline over that soon as I missed.

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And, you know, man, that that affected me for a few years.

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But here's the here's the positive thing that it did. So I wasn't paid.

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I mean, I, you know, I didn't get anything but like a food provision during the week.

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And but I would get some additional money in the summer for hauling hay for some other people.

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So I saved money. But after that little discipline of missing rabbit,

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I started going to our local store every time we went to town.

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I would buy a box of 22 shells. And in a few weeks, man, I had like two or three thousand rounds of 22.

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And I practiced every single day. I mean, because I wasn't going to miss again.

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And, you know, I had no idea what I'd be doing years later professionally.

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And but, man, I just got to where.

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If I had my rifle in your in my hand, man, your ass is dead.

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And, you know, that that played out in the professional world.

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Not just to save me, but for a lot of other people throughout my career.

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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.

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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.

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I'm like, don't miss. You're going to get beat, son. So good or bad.

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I mean, it's a good now. It wasn't when I was nine or ten.

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But, you know, we don't know. We don't know sometimes and what's coming to prepare us for the future.

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And that was definitely one of those lessons I learned on the ranch that was it was tough.

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But it saved my life down the road.

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And, you know, we rodeo all the time. We had our own rodeo arena.

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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.

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And I mean, I was six to about the time I was about 15 or 16, just lanky.

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I just got dumped and hurt all the time. So I gave that up probably when I was 17 or 18.

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And but, you know, I'm just like graduated high school.

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I was dating the same girl since about our sophomore year.

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And she went to nursing school at a college in Oklahoma.

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And I went to Fort Benning and went to the infantry training, came back.

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And I decided, you know, I wanted to be a trooper a long time ago,

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not because I wanted to. I had no interest in riding tickets or working crashes.

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But the Highway Patrol here in this state runs the statewide tactical team.

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And I came across those guys one time and they were just a little different breed,

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military guys and special service tops that transitioned over and went straight to our tactical team.

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And I'm like, that's what I want to do. You know, and so and I served.

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I'd actually when I was when I came back, I was going to college and I went to EMT school

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and firefighter one school at night. And I rode in the ambulance

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and was a volunteer at a local fire department all the way through college.

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And that that along with my GI bill helped kind of pay the food

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and the gas during that part of my life. Finish up.

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I applied for the Highway Patrol here and got on.

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And two years later, I moved over to our tactical team.

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And that's kind of where it all start.

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I want to go back to the early life. And the reason I say this is, you know,

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we talked about this before when we spoke the other day, I grew up on a farm as well.

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And I was in sheep and, you know, stone picking and bailing and all the things that you talk about.

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And, you know, of course, it forges resilience.

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And my dad wasn't the kind of, you know, iron fist kind of a person.

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He was a little bit more gentle. So I had that.

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But, you know, as you said, the kind of standards that you were given, albeit maybe a little, you know,

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overbearing, you know, you see now how they created strength as well.

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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.

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So when you look at it now with this lens in 2024, after going through your own crucible,

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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?

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Well, a great question. And that was part of my problem.

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I mean, I was never allowed to show an emotion.

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I've got discipline for that as well. And in our culture, in this part of the country, it wasn't just me.

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My other friends were the same way. They're growing up on adjacent farms and ranches.

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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.

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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.

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That's what people do down in Texas.

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Yeah, exactly. So I showed sheep and we had we had a cattle farm, but I was into these

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because it was paying a lot of money at the time, right. And I was after all the money I could get.

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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.

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Well, I come home one day. My mom picked me up from school.

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And I would had to been like 12 or 13 at that point.

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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.

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I'm like, that's odd. So I walk out there and I see some obvious signs of trauma to the sheep.

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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.

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And I found him, you know, like a mile from our place.

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And I was distraught, you know, and I remember coming back and my stepdad was there.

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And I mean, I think I was crying. I nearly know I was.

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And there was some harsh, you know, rebuttal to that emotion.

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He's like, what are you going to do about it?

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I said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, obviously something came and killed him and drug him out there.

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I mean, he went and looked. He said, what are you going to do?

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And I'm like, well, I want some payback for my sheep.

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He said, well, go set on, you know, his remains and they'll come back.

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And sure enough, they came back and it was this wild pack of dogs, you know, I don't know how many there were.

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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,

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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.

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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,

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always very stern and direct. And and stress was never talked about because it was a bad thing along with that other emotions.

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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,

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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.

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I can go get some payback and another place. Or that's just how I viewed things.

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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,

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withdraw. And that really started happening a lot throughout my career, ultimately leading to 2015.

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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.

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But there's absolutely a reason. I mean, there's a why of why we do things the way we do.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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No, I can't agree more with that.

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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.

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I promise sometimes it just doesn't always go out. So if I get hung up, please help me out.

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I got no excuse. I didn't have a TBI and I chip over my work all the time. So there we go.

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Well, you know, it's my ace in the ace, my ace card. So but, you know, absolutely. I agree with that.

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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.

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And, you know, I didn't know I had I never thought in a perspective of hey, the post traumatic growth.

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And I didn't hear that term for a long time, but just what you said to build the resilience piece of it.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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But yeah, when you look at that environment, especially being a farm boy, mindfulness was absolutely ingrained in what you did.

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And then I look now at this generation that my son has grown in with so many distractions.

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I mean, you can't even go to a restaurant without 20 fucking televisions around you.

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They they don't have that presence where, you know, it's hard to be bored in 2024.

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I was bored a lot on the farm. I adored it.

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But sometimes there was just nothing to do when you're on your own as a kid.

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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.

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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.

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And, you know, so eventually my mom or somebody would jump on one of the we had three wheelers at the time.

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And they would start driving around looking for me and I'm just like, I'm doing my thing out here.

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I kill stuff, eat it.

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You know, I just that that was my getaway from dealing with what was going on in the house.

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But also, I truly enjoyed it.

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But, you know, probably like you, my closest friends were probably 10, 12 miles away.

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So I just kind of did my own thing for a long time.

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But, you know, looking back now, I almost feel sorry for like even my son.

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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.

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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.

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I think it's being lost every second, you know, all over the world.

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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?

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So my my time was just in the reserves.

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It was I think I left here in 94 and there was nothing going on.

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So nothing at all.

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The budget there and especially for my line of work, what I chose to go do was just almost zero.

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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.

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But there was just no pathway forward at that point.

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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.

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I mean, we were an infantry scout platoon and almost had zero ammo to train with and equipment.

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So, I mean, again, the war machine was not really running at that point.

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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.

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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.

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I believe in doing my part, no matter what season of life I'm in.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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And from getting through the door, collapsing the room, you know, working, working the problem, moving to the problem, helping with the problem.

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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

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upper tier war fighters. And it was all shooting and fighting. Not not anybody, you know, was ever talking about mental health.

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And as I look back on that part of my life now, I mean, they're all they were all divorced.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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What happens when one of us gets shot or injured or hit with cancer and taken out, you know, from the silent killer?

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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.

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And I think it's used way too much period, not just for the peer side of the house, the mental health approach.

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But that word has been taken way out of context because everybody's a warrior now, especially behind the keyboard.

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I saw another kind of funny video on social media a while ago, and it was a guy talking about the word alpha.

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And he was like, do you not understand how wolves work? There's only one alpha.

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Everyone else is following the pack. And, you know, but all of a sudden, everyone's identifying as an alpha.

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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.

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Yeah, yeah. I mean, I agree. I have the beard, but it's only because I have no hair to grow out anymore.

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So it's my I'm compensating for what I don't have. And it's all turning gray really quick.

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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.

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You and I both hate that phrase because it's been talked about for the last 10 years.

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And I mean, to me, it's just a phrase that people are going around standing up, maybe talking at a conference.

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Well, that's good. But what are we doing about it?

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Everybody you James, you and I both have bad traumatic past. So does everybody else.

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But, you know, this brings me to a point I'm probably skipping around a lot, but skip away.

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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.

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And it wasn't just all militaries, mainly some state law enforcement executives, administration.

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And while they chose the military base, I have no idea. But it's a very remote area.

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And they were bringing in this second day speaker was this retired green beret.

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And and I mean, I'm pro military. So here's what I'm saying right now.

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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.

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I mean, I'm not saying anything bad about them. I mean, not at all.

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But my focus on is on right now. What do we do post event? And what do we do pre event?

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And then there's that little small place and time of bad things that happen to us.

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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.

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So I was actually packing up my truck and.

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This guy comes out, I don't know who he is. I mean, I knew most of the people there.

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Introduce themselves to me and we start talking, start talking, start talking.

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Well, it's the presenter for the next day. I didn't know it.

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And within about 15, 20 minutes, I realized this is not about a war story.

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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.

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And his name is Greg Stuby. I don't know if you've heard of him or not.

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And I haven't, though. Well, I'm going to hook you up with this guy because.

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That night we sat down, we're talking, I don't know how late this went.

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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.

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Another topic, but I'm like, man, this guy gets it.

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He's not here to talk about how, how bad it was, how bad of a person he was.

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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.

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And I apologize to him.

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And I was the first one in class the next day, one had breakfast before the start of class and.

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That that was probably the one of the most impactful.

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We spent about seven hours together that next day in this classroom setting, and it was.

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Where I felt it was so appropriate was.

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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.

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And, and I.

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I don't want to tell his story, but it.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Well, this guy ended up saving his life.

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Like, five, six years later in Afghanistan.

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And when he seen him coming out of this helicopter come to come, I mean, that he was it. That was his lifeline.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I know you talked to a lot of people.

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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.

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Outside of the classroom outside of just going over the normal peer training that the normal peer critical incident stress management debriefs.

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I mean, I'm not dog and all that stuff, but that's just like subsurface approach like asking somebody.

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Hey, how's it going? Then just quickly turning away and walking and not listening to them.

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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.

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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.

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We just connected on that level.

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We touched on the word post traumatic growth.

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Well, we're in this conversation. I think this is what I'm seeing is that next step.

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And I mean, we've we've talked about this before that. Let's smash the stigma.

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I'm here for you, bro. I've got your six. Call me if you're struggling.

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Those are all those may as well be just fucking stickers on the back of your car.

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They're not actually doing anything at all.

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The storytelling, the people that have been on here and gone through the crucible, but then made it out the other side.

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And that's not to say that they don't have ups and downs because they're still human beings.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And there's not the education of how big this toolbox actually is.

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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.

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And you've got people telling their stories, you know, and you're going to today on how dark it got.

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But then how they found their way out of that and became a better version of themselves.

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I think that is there's so much value to that.

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So, yes, you know, let me tell you how shit it was.

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That can be part of the story. But the real power of the story is let me tell you how I got myself out.

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Absolutely. And that's.

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That's where I'm at. I've turned down.

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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.

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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.

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My whole life. And it just means nothing to me now.

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I mean, I'm glad I was there. I'm glad I did what I did.

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But, you know, big deal.

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I could care less about it. And again, I think that's why I wanted to meet you.

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I wanted to get on your show and start a connection piece.

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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.

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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.

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But I see it as truth. There's no way we're ever going to be able to stop every suicide.

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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.

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And attacking it, not just from the hugs and telling you this could be OK.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And that's just not. And we've got the data to show it's not now.

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But actions like you're doing, we're doing here.

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I mean, I truly feel this is how we will change the culture.

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But it will take time. And that's OK. You and I are both fighters.

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I'm into this until God tells me or takes me out of this world.

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Yeah, you and me both. Ironically, there's that phrase.

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I think the profit is never received in their own land and where I live, Marion County are the biggest resistors.

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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.

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So it's maddening. But OK, right. Well, then we'll just fix everyone else.

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And you'll be the last one with the worst fire department because you know, one will want to work for you.

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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.

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So, you know, the choice is yours. But anyway, well, you mentioned the shootings.

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Obviously, that is part of, you know, the kind of the spiral, not the only things that are part of it.

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You and I have got another thing in common with both absolute ship magnets. And I was more on the kind of medical side.

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So walk me through you find yourself in the specialty team now, walk me through the different kind of umbrellas that you worked under.

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And then, you know, the the unending high.

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We will be the right word. These these extremely dangerous calls that you found yourself in.

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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,

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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.

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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.

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Yeah, man, I'm going to get I'm going to try to get through this quick as possible.

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So, yeah, as I'm coming on the tactical team, we have a teammate that's murdered.

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They were serving a warrant in eastern Oklahoma. He's murdered another another partner shot.

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And so the bad guy ends up surviving his gunshots, of course.

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And this three, four year trial takes place.

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There was actually a mistrial, you know, at the state level.

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And luckily, we had some good federal partners that came in and retried him on the federal side and ultimately got a conviction.

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00:43:00,860 --> 00:43:04,860
But, you know, I was very black and white.

367
00:43:04,860 --> 00:43:11,860
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.

368
00:43:11,860 --> 00:43:17,860
And I hadn't really been exposed to a lot of that, even in my short time.

369
00:43:17,860 --> 00:43:25,860
Back and forth to Georgia, there's no other exposure really to that type of reality for me.

370
00:43:25,860 --> 00:43:32,860
So when he got killed, I was assigned to his family and he had two young kids.

371
00:43:32,860 --> 00:43:39,860
And it just I can look back now. I didn't really pin it down up until a few years ago.

372
00:43:39,860 --> 00:43:51,860
But that's when things really started like changing. And I was starting to withdraw, isolate, feeling these things.

373
00:43:51,860 --> 00:43:53,860
But I didn't know what they were. I didn't know.

374
00:43:53,860 --> 00:43:58,860
I was afraid to talk to my senior guys because I'm afraid they make fun of me, you know.

375
00:43:58,860 --> 00:44:03,860
And well, I started to drink a lot more.

376
00:44:03,860 --> 00:44:06,860
That's the exact time I started cheating on my wife.

377
00:44:06,860 --> 00:44:10,860
And, you know, we had two small kids on the ground.

378
00:44:10,860 --> 00:44:13,860
And, you know, shortly thereafter, I'm divorced.

379
00:44:13,860 --> 00:44:19,860
You know, I'm fast forwarding through this and over about a three year period.

380
00:44:19,860 --> 00:44:24,860
And it just went downhill from there. All I have was my job at that point.

381
00:44:24,860 --> 00:44:31,860
You know, a few years later, I'm actually running the team. I mean, I'm still producing at work at home.

382
00:44:31,860 --> 00:44:38,860
You know, I'm about an F4 growing into an F5 tornado. Very destructive.

383
00:44:38,860 --> 00:44:46,860
Guys come up to me now that work for me on the teams like, man, you were like the biggest asshole ever.

384
00:44:46,860 --> 00:44:57,860
But I didn't want to lose anybody else. And every time we were training, again, bad part of my life, I didn't.

385
00:44:57,860 --> 00:45:05,860
I didn't have a lot of feelings for people. And what I did have was getting smaller and smaller.

386
00:45:05,860 --> 00:45:16,860
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.

387
00:45:16,860 --> 00:45:21,860
And I think for Texas, another reason I don't like Texas.

388
00:45:21,860 --> 00:45:28,860
And I just said, no, well, that that not you know, they fired me after.

389
00:45:28,860 --> 00:45:35,860
After the mission was over, successful mission, nobody got hurt on either side, successful, but I still got terminated.

390
00:45:35,860 --> 00:45:46,860
And man, if I wasn't an F5, that's I hit F5 status within about two to three days.

391
00:45:46,860 --> 00:45:52,860
Completely went out of control. I had to go to Oklahoma City and turn on my gear.

392
00:45:52,860 --> 00:45:56,860
And I was driving an unmarked Suburban at the time.

393
00:45:56,860 --> 00:46:04,860
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.

394
00:46:04,860 --> 00:46:09,860
It's funny story. So I'm so mad.

395
00:46:09,860 --> 00:46:17,860
I turned on my gear in. I had my some green pants, a T-shirt and my backpack.

396
00:46:17,860 --> 00:46:22,860
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.

397
00:46:22,860 --> 00:46:27,860
I had not been assigned to my next vehicle to work out of.

398
00:46:27,860 --> 00:46:31,860
I was just told I had to be in this area by zero seven hundred the next day.

399
00:46:31,860 --> 00:46:37,860
So I started walking and it's about seventy five miles away.

400
00:46:37,860 --> 00:46:42,860
And I mean, people were calling 911. I was walking on the interstate.

401
00:46:42,860 --> 00:46:47,860
And I'm telling you kind of where my head was at and how bad it's about to get right.

402
00:46:47,860 --> 00:46:50,860
This should have been an indicator to some people.

403
00:46:50,860 --> 00:46:55,860
Other troopers, some Oklahoma City guys were stopping trying to like, Danny, what are you doing?

404
00:46:55,860 --> 00:47:01,860
I'm like, I got fired. They told me I had to report back and be on the road to Mark seven.

405
00:47:01,860 --> 00:47:03,860
So I got to get it. I got to make sure I'm down there.

406
00:47:03,860 --> 00:47:08,860
Like, man, everybody's calling 911. I think I had a gun on too.

407
00:47:08,860 --> 00:47:13,860
So I didn't know what was going on. And I'm like, no, I said, you need to go on.

408
00:47:13,860 --> 00:47:16,860
I'm walking home. My brother, seventy five miles.

409
00:47:16,860 --> 00:47:19,860
I'm like, yeah, I know. I'll be there tomorrow.

410
00:47:19,860 --> 00:47:23,860
And finally, one of my friends pulls up.

411
00:47:23,860 --> 00:47:29,860
He's like, you got to get in the car that you are about to get terminated from everything.

412
00:47:29,860 --> 00:47:34,860
So he talked me down. I stayed around maybe a couple more years.

413
00:47:34,860 --> 00:47:39,860
I called some friends that I knew that a transition from military life

414
00:47:39,860 --> 00:47:44,860
to the private sector, working for our government in different capacities.

415
00:47:44,860 --> 00:47:53,860
So put my name in that process and got vetted and trained and landed in Iraq.

416
00:47:53,860 --> 00:47:58,860
It was my first duty station and was a bad one.

417
00:47:58,860 --> 00:48:03,860
You know what? What I enjoyed about it was this.

418
00:48:03,860 --> 00:48:05,860
And this will take you headspace again.

419
00:48:05,860 --> 00:48:12,860
I wasn't because after like a week, I felt like I was pretty well acclimated to the temps and all.

420
00:48:12,860 --> 00:48:17,860
And I'm like, man, this is awesome. I'm never going home.

421
00:48:17,860 --> 00:48:20,860
And here's what here's what what I mean by that.

422
00:48:20,860 --> 00:48:26,860
Nobody was calling me saying, hey, the toilets broke, the faucets leaking.

423
00:48:26,860 --> 00:48:28,860
The cat needs to go to the vet.

424
00:48:28,860 --> 00:48:30,860
The dog sick kids got it.

425
00:48:30,860 --> 00:48:33,860
I forgot their books. It was just me.

426
00:48:33,860 --> 00:48:35,860
I don't have to worry about anybody else.

427
00:48:35,860 --> 00:48:37,860
Almost reverting back to my childhood. Right.

428
00:48:37,860 --> 00:48:40,860
I told you I used to run and isolate and hide in the woods.

429
00:48:40,860 --> 00:48:44,860
Except this time I was hiding in Iraq with some other.

430
00:48:44,860 --> 00:48:48,860
I mean, everybody just as crazy as I was.

431
00:48:48,860 --> 00:48:51,860
So I thought I was in heaven. You know, I was getting paid.

432
00:48:51,860 --> 00:48:55,860
Well, the only thing you had to worry about is how many times you're going to get food poisoning.

433
00:48:55,860 --> 00:49:04,860
You know, and if you're one of the unlucky ones to get hit by evening mortar or something, it's it's great.

434
00:49:04,860 --> 00:49:13,860
And, you know, there was fast forward through that big army left Iraq and things started changing.

435
00:49:13,860 --> 00:49:17,860
We were left on our own in a lot of ways.

436
00:49:17,860 --> 00:49:21,860
And I'm like, you know, there's nothing patriotic about being here.

437
00:49:21,860 --> 00:49:29,860
Nothing at all. And I called from the embassy in Baghdad.

438
00:49:29,860 --> 00:49:33,860
There had been a new chief that came on the highway patrol in Oklahoma.

439
00:49:33,860 --> 00:49:36,860
And I called him and I said, can I get my job back?

440
00:49:36,860 --> 00:49:39,860
And he said, yes, soon as you get back, you can have it.

441
00:49:39,860 --> 00:49:44,860
And what's interesting about that, it took me about a month, too much to get home.

442
00:49:44,860 --> 00:49:48,860
I go to pick up all my stuff in Oklahoma City and I was good.

443
00:49:48,860 --> 00:49:55,860
They were going to put me back on the road. But everybody's welcome me in hugging me.

444
00:49:55,860 --> 00:50:00,860
No, no mental assessment at all. Nothing.

445
00:50:00,860 --> 00:50:07,860
And I remember driving home that day. So I'm driving south on a 35 headed headed to the farm.

446
00:50:07,860 --> 00:50:16,860
And there was a crash or something that happened in front of me is very large, loud.

447
00:50:16,860 --> 00:50:22,860
Boom, you know, and. Man, I kind of I didn't freak out or nothing.

448
00:50:22,860 --> 00:50:26,860
I just like almost crashing some cars trying to get away.

449
00:50:26,860 --> 00:50:31,860
You know, something had happened. There was going to be contact up front somewhere.

450
00:50:31,860 --> 00:50:34,860
And I'm like, man, that was weird.

451
00:50:34,860 --> 00:50:37,860
And nothing bad ever really happened to me there.

452
00:50:37,860 --> 00:50:41,860
There was just a lot of food poisoning.

453
00:50:41,860 --> 00:50:49,860
But I realized right then I'm like, you know, nobody's asked me about why I left to begin with.

454
00:50:49,860 --> 00:50:53,860
Nobody's asked me if I'm OK when I came home.

455
00:50:53,860 --> 00:51:01,860
They gave me pistol, rifle, shotgun, my badge, my uniform and a car is like, all right, go get after it.

456
00:51:01,860 --> 00:51:07,860
There was nothing. And I've heard later that well, they expected that for me.

457
00:51:07,860 --> 00:51:14,860
They expected me to be fine. And then I had that kind of persona that I was carrying around at that point.

458
00:51:14,860 --> 00:51:26,860
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.

459
00:51:26,860 --> 00:51:30,860
That just caused all kinds of chaos.

460
00:51:30,860 --> 00:51:33,860
And I ended up shooting him, finally ending the pursuit.

461
00:51:33,860 --> 00:51:37,860
It's a wild video, by the way, I'll show you sometime.

462
00:51:37,860 --> 00:51:42,860
I've never shot from a moving vehicle at 100 miles an hour.

463
00:51:42,860 --> 00:51:46,860
And there's nowhere to train for that. Right. But I did it.

464
00:51:46,860 --> 00:51:54,860
And it worked. So anyway, so as I'm off for that, I get a phone call from the Marshall service.

465
00:51:54,860 --> 00:51:59,860
And it was one of their fugitives that I shot.

466
00:51:59,860 --> 00:52:04,860
And they said, hey, we think you'd be a good fit once you come to work for us.

467
00:52:04,860 --> 00:52:08,860
And like, well, I don't know how long I'm going to be off.

468
00:52:08,860 --> 00:52:16,860
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.

469
00:52:16,860 --> 00:52:19,860
And I leave the house one day.

470
00:52:19,860 --> 00:52:31,860
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.

471
00:52:31,860 --> 00:52:35,860
So I didn't think anything about it. It was mid morning on a Sunday.

472
00:52:35,860 --> 00:52:46,860
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.

473
00:52:46,860 --> 00:52:53,860
And I see him pump it. And I mean, I'm like 10 yards away and I lean over.

474
00:52:53,860 --> 00:53:02,860
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.

475
00:53:02,860 --> 00:53:10,860
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.

476
00:53:10,860 --> 00:53:17,860
And so fast forward, I end up killing him after another.

477
00:53:17,860 --> 00:53:27,860
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.

478
00:53:27,860 --> 00:53:31,860
So that delayed my process to the Marshals Service.

479
00:53:31,860 --> 00:53:36,860
And so as soon as I come back, they had my paperwork done.

480
00:53:36,860 --> 00:53:47,860
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.

481
00:53:47,860 --> 00:53:53,860
During this time, I tried to work things out with my wife and.

482
00:53:53,860 --> 00:54:02,860
I mean, I never. Worked on anything, you know, any of my past, much less anything currently going on.

483
00:54:02,860 --> 00:54:07,860
But that didn't last. I mean, no time, especially after these two shootings.

484
00:54:07,860 --> 00:54:11,860
It was just that I mean, shootings never did really bother me.

485
00:54:11,860 --> 00:54:19,860
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.

486
00:54:19,860 --> 00:54:24,860
I mean, I live in a small community. So problem with that is everybody knows who you are.

487
00:54:24,860 --> 00:54:29,860
I'm in the grocery store shopping. I'm by myself.

488
00:54:29,860 --> 00:54:36,860
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?

489
00:54:36,860 --> 00:54:42,860
He said, are you Danny Long? I said, yep. He said, well, you murdered my dad.

490
00:54:42,860 --> 00:54:48,860
And man. At that one.

491
00:54:48,860 --> 00:54:54,860
That I would have rather. Done anything at that moment.

492
00:54:54,860 --> 00:55:00,860
Than to hear that little kid say that and even telling me that's I don't get emotional a whole lot anymore.

493
00:55:00,860 --> 00:55:03,860
But, man, I just don't like to see kids upset or hurt.

494
00:55:03,860 --> 00:55:08,860
And it was like somebody just like.

495
00:55:08,860 --> 00:55:17,860
Brutal heart out of me and he was saying something else, but I was backing up and I just took off running.

496
00:55:17,860 --> 00:55:20,860
Of course, I ran back to my farm, shut the gate.

497
00:55:20,860 --> 00:55:25,860
And I don't think I left there for like three days. And.

498
00:55:25,860 --> 00:55:30,860
How do you handle that? And, you know.

499
00:55:30,860 --> 00:55:40,860
So that that was that part. And as I come off of admin leave from that second shooting.

500
00:55:40,860 --> 00:55:42,860
It was time to go to the Marshal Service.

501
00:55:42,860 --> 00:55:49,860
And they did do some evaluations, but I knew how to work the system at that point.

502
00:55:49,860 --> 00:55:54,860
I just I wanted another change again, running to a different place.

503
00:55:54,860 --> 00:55:59,860
So, I mean, you can guess by now I'm not over there.

504
00:55:59,860 --> 00:56:09,860
Six months, another gunfight and another gunfight, and they just keep happening in 2015.

505
00:56:09,860 --> 00:56:13,860
I think I think I was still on admin leave for one of them.

506
00:56:13,860 --> 00:56:19,860
I'm out of my farm, actually had hair back then and much longer beard.

507
00:56:19,860 --> 00:56:25,860
And I was living by myself and I got out of my bed and went to the bathroom.

508
00:56:25,860 --> 00:56:30,860
Now this mirror hanging. As soon as you walk in the bathroom door at my farm.

509
00:56:30,860 --> 00:56:35,860
And I thought somebody was in there.

510
00:56:35,860 --> 00:56:41,860
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.

511
00:56:41,860 --> 00:56:44,860
I go to do a double leg takedown on whoever this person is.

512
00:56:44,860 --> 00:56:47,860
And I hit my head on the sink.

513
00:56:47,860 --> 00:56:49,860
Kind of brings me back to reality.

514
00:56:49,860 --> 00:56:53,860
And I look back in the mirror and it was me.

515
00:56:53,860 --> 00:56:57,860
And I didn't recognize myself.

516
00:56:57,860 --> 00:57:01,860
I mean, as a human, as Danny, nothing.

517
00:57:01,860 --> 00:57:02,860
I mean, there was nothing there.

518
00:57:02,860 --> 00:57:05,860
And I don't know how else to describe that.

519
00:57:05,860 --> 00:57:16,860
And immediately I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle and walked outside, grabbed one of my duty guns and.

520
00:57:16,860 --> 00:57:19,860
They got on a pair of tennis shoes and shorts and that's it.

521
00:57:19,860 --> 00:57:25,860
And I walked to the back side of my farm and I took that gun.

522
00:57:25,860 --> 00:57:32,860
I ran a suppressor on and took it off, loaded it, sat down.

523
00:57:32,860 --> 00:57:36,860
Looked around for a little while and stuck it in my mouth.

524
00:57:36,860 --> 00:57:38,860
Flipped it off safe.

525
00:57:38,860 --> 00:57:42,860
Put my thumb on the trigger.

526
00:57:42,860 --> 00:57:46,860
And that particular gun.

527
00:57:46,860 --> 00:57:48,860
I shot. I mean, I had my own range there.

528
00:57:48,860 --> 00:57:49,860
I shot every day.

529
00:57:49,860 --> 00:57:53,860
I mean, I probably shoot over a thousand rounds a week.

530
00:57:53,860 --> 00:57:57,860
Just I mean, that's that was my hobby, if you want to call it that.

531
00:57:57,860 --> 00:57:59,860
I don't think I really shot for fun at that point.

532
00:57:59,860 --> 00:58:05,860
But the gun was clean, but I never took the can off.

533
00:58:05,860 --> 00:58:10,860
Well, so what happens where the can clicks on to the end of the barrel?

534
00:58:10,860 --> 00:58:17,860
There's a lot of debris and buildup carbon.

535
00:58:17,860 --> 00:58:21,860
I'd stuck it in my mouth and I stuck it farther in my mouth.

536
00:58:21,860 --> 00:58:25,860
And this carbon started a chunk of it broke off.

537
00:58:25,860 --> 00:58:29,860
And I've got a bad gag reflex anyway, and it started gagging me.

538
00:58:29,860 --> 00:58:33,860
So I took it out, spit it out. I did it again. Same thing happened.

539
00:58:33,860 --> 00:58:36,860
And except this time I'm throwing up.

540
00:58:36,860 --> 00:58:38,860
I'm like, man, what's going on?

541
00:58:38,860 --> 00:58:43,860
And I'm fast. This this is drawn out until afternoon.

542
00:58:43,860 --> 00:58:51,860
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.

543
00:58:51,860 --> 00:58:58,860
And the second I sat back down, put it right between my eyes.

544
00:58:58,860 --> 00:59:07,860
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.

545
00:59:07,860 --> 00:59:15,860
And I was always given the opportunity. And it was from the same lady. She knew I was broke.

546
00:59:15,860 --> 00:59:24,860
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.

547
00:59:24,860 --> 00:59:33,860
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.

548
00:59:33,860 --> 00:59:43,860
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.

549
00:59:43,860 --> 00:59:47,860
And I turned around and said, what do you tell me that?

550
00:59:47,860 --> 00:59:54,860
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.

551
00:59:54,860 --> 00:59:59,860
And because it wasn't just like I woke up that day and like this is it.

552
00:59:59,860 --> 01:00:06,860
And there's data now that that's on the paper that shows I mean, suicides, a gradual buildup.

553
01:00:06,860 --> 01:00:14,860
All these signs and symptoms, indicators are there, which is either choose not to see them or don't want to see them.

554
01:00:14,860 --> 01:00:24,860
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.

555
01:00:24,860 --> 01:00:30,860
And I knew I just I just I could I'm like, he's going to be the one that finds me.

556
01:00:30,860 --> 01:00:37,860
I could seem like coming across the pasture like we had a ranger at that time driving in and driving.

557
01:00:37,860 --> 01:00:42,860
He had to drive across Pond Dam to get to the backside of the property.

558
01:00:42,860 --> 01:00:46,860
And that's where I was at. Like, I can't do this to him.

559
01:00:46,860 --> 01:00:50,860
And that was a whole other deal. I mean, I had a fit after that.

560
01:00:50,860 --> 01:00:55,860
I'm like, I can't even freaking kill myself, you know, and it's not really that I wanted to die.

561
01:00:55,860 --> 01:01:04,860
Just I'm just tired. I'm not feeling anything is what really bothered me.

562
01:01:04,860 --> 01:01:16,860
Just zero emotion. And, you know, and I know, I mean, people watch movies and all this stuff and.

563
01:01:16,860 --> 01:01:24,860
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

564
01:01:24,860 --> 01:01:35,860
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.

565
01:01:35,860 --> 01:01:40,860
I mean, and he and he was dying and.

566
01:01:40,860 --> 01:01:46,860
But it just don't happen right away. And I was looking at him.

567
01:01:46,860 --> 01:01:54,860
Felt nothing. I mean, yeah, I tried to kill me, but. Everything good in me at that.

568
01:01:54,860 --> 01:01:58,860
That's when I knew I'm like, dude, you're something's wrong.

569
01:01:58,860 --> 01:02:03,860
I had zero emotion out of this. This was somebody's dad.

570
01:02:03,860 --> 01:02:09,860
You know, some kid is going to be destroyed. And by the way, that kid found me.

571
01:02:09,860 --> 01:02:17,860
You know, and so and it was terrible that there was a most lonely, dark.

572
01:02:17,860 --> 01:02:22,860
Feeling I've ever had my life of not feeling anything because that's not who I was.

573
01:02:22,860 --> 01:02:31,860
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.

574
01:02:31,860 --> 01:02:39,860
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.

575
01:02:39,860 --> 01:02:46,860
I'm the one who caused all this. Now, let's and I made two promises to myself on that pond.

576
01:02:46,860 --> 01:02:55,860
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.

577
01:02:55,860 --> 01:03:02,860
That's my mission. And to the second promise was once I get there,

578
01:03:02,860 --> 01:03:06,860
I'm going to do everything necessary to keep my life in order.

579
01:03:06,860 --> 01:03:14,860
And I got up, picked up a rifle and I text that dog and I said, hey, I need help.

580
01:03:14,860 --> 01:03:20,860
I didn't tell her what I'd done. And normally she don't hit me back until the end of the day.

581
01:03:20,860 --> 01:03:25,860
I mean, she was as clients all day and I mean, immediately she said, what do you mean, you need help?

582
01:03:25,860 --> 01:03:29,860
I said, I need help and I'll do whatever you tell me to do.

583
01:03:29,860 --> 01:03:35,860
And I think she's told me to be there tomorrow. And it began that day.

584
01:03:35,860 --> 01:03:45,860
And I think you referenced earlier about, you know, even after you come through this stuff, I mean, it doesn't go away.

585
01:03:45,860 --> 01:03:57,860
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.

586
01:03:57,860 --> 01:04:05,860
And there's no easy button to get through it. And just my approach now, just call it what it is.

587
01:04:05,860 --> 01:04:10,860
Let's find out exactly what it is and go go deal with it.

588
01:04:10,860 --> 01:04:18,860
But that was the turning point for me that day on that pond dam. Absolutely.

589
01:04:18,860 --> 01:04:24,860
Well, firstly, thank you just for sharing that. I think this is I've said this many, many times on here.

590
01:04:24,860 --> 01:04:32,860
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.

591
01:04:32,860 --> 01:04:46,860
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.

592
01:04:46,860 --> 01:04:54,860
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.

593
01:04:54,860 --> 01:05:00,860
He's a hippie, you know, but when someone like you does, then, you know, it's it's absolutely needed.

594
01:05:00,860 --> 01:05:06,860
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.

595
01:05:06,860 --> 01:05:17,860
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.

596
01:05:17,860 --> 01:05:26,860
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.

597
01:05:26,860 --> 01:05:30,860
Their brain at that point was so miswired.

598
01:05:30,860 --> 01:05:47,860
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

599
01:05:47,860 --> 01:05:56,860
that in that moment they truly believe that they are the reason for their family's pain.

600
01:05:56,860 --> 01:06:01,860
And so therefore, if they remove themselves, then this problem solved.

601
01:06:01,860 --> 01:06:08,860
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.

602
01:06:08,860 --> 01:06:13,860
It makes a suicide courageous, selfless, but no less terrifying.

603
01:06:13,860 --> 01:06:17,860
So talk to me about where your mindset was when you were sitting there.

604
01:06:17,860 --> 01:06:34,860
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.

605
01:06:34,860 --> 01:06:37,860
Same with my daughter.

606
01:06:37,860 --> 01:06:39,860
I mean,

607
01:06:39,860 --> 01:06:50,860
all right, so I didn't really catch this until after that, because my kids were not

608
01:06:50,860 --> 01:06:59,860
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.

609
01:06:59,860 --> 01:07:05,860
And I wasn't fooling them. They knew exactly. Dad had a problem.

610
01:07:05,860 --> 01:07:09,860
And, you know, and the more you try to conceal it, the more they know.

611
01:07:09,860 --> 01:07:21,860
I mean, but, you know, I realized I didn't tell my daughter very few times, you know, that I loved her.

612
01:07:21,860 --> 01:07:32,860
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.

613
01:07:32,860 --> 01:07:37,860
I mean, all these ridiculous ideas in my head, but that I believed them.

614
01:07:37,860 --> 01:07:45,860
It wasn't like they were fake ideals that that was real in my head. And I believe that they would truly be better.

615
01:07:45,860 --> 01:07:50,860
I 100 percent believed. I mean, because my wife and I were best friends.

616
01:07:50,860 --> 01:07:56,860
We went to school together since sixth grade, and that's my best friend.

617
01:07:56,860 --> 01:08:08,860
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.

618
01:08:08,860 --> 01:08:14,860
It's just a physical protection of my family and nothing on the nurturing side.

619
01:08:14,860 --> 01:08:25,860
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.

620
01:08:25,860 --> 01:08:28,860
They all upon them.

621
01:08:28,860 --> 01:08:31,860
I think this is why this needs to be front and center in this conversation.

622
01:08:31,860 --> 01:08:42,860
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.

623
01:08:42,860 --> 01:08:54,860
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.

624
01:08:54,860 --> 01:08:56,860
Because you hear about I'm here for you.

625
01:08:56,860 --> 01:09:00,860
There's a number, like I said, but we don't hear especially about that burden.

626
01:09:00,860 --> 01:09:02,860
Of course, we want the pain to end.

627
01:09:02,860 --> 01:09:05,860
But at that moment, you know, think of your family.

628
01:09:05,860 --> 01:09:09,860
They are. And you're almost pushing them towards it in an ironic sense.

629
01:09:09,860 --> 01:09:15,860
So I think this needs to be out there as part of the whole storytelling of where these people get to.

630
01:09:15,860 --> 01:09:19,860
Because you talk about stigma, that's where the stigma is.

631
01:09:19,860 --> 01:09:30,860
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.

632
01:09:30,860 --> 01:09:40,860
No, absolutely. And and I don't know, man, I just think you and I are you bring a lot of.

633
01:09:40,860 --> 01:09:50,860
Like good points that helped me look at the positive thing that came out of this, and here's the one.

634
01:09:50,860 --> 01:09:58,860
And this is what I was talking about earlier about when you ask someone, hey, you doing OK?

635
01:09:58,860 --> 01:10:08,860
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.

636
01:10:08,860 --> 01:10:18,860
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.

637
01:10:18,860 --> 01:10:32,860
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.

638
01:10:32,860 --> 01:10:39,860
That made me rethink that gave me this much hope not to do it, that you know what?

639
01:10:39,860 --> 01:10:44,860
I can't do that for my kids and was that the right reason to live or not?

640
01:10:44,860 --> 01:10:48,860
Doesn't matter. It means that I didn't do it at that point in time.

641
01:10:48,860 --> 01:10:57,860
And I gave myself a chance again to hopefully look at this in an objective way when I'm off that pond dam.

642
01:10:57,860 --> 01:11:08,860
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.

643
01:11:08,860 --> 01:11:17,860
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.

644
01:11:17,860 --> 01:11:21,860
I made jokes on suicide scenes all the time about it.

645
01:11:21,860 --> 01:11:33,860
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.

646
01:11:33,860 --> 01:11:39,860
We need to stop any type of joking reference about suicide because you don't know.

647
01:11:39,860 --> 01:11:43,860
You may think that because they look fine at work, just like I did.

648
01:11:43,860 --> 01:11:46,860
But nobody saw under the vest.

649
01:11:46,860 --> 01:11:52,860
Nobody knew what was really going on. And you don't know. I don't care how well you think you know this person.

650
01:11:52,860 --> 01:11:57,860
If you say something jokingly, I don't think you're going to be the cause of the suicide.

651
01:11:57,860 --> 01:12:04,860
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.

652
01:12:04,860 --> 01:12:10,860
And that's where I think we can really change the numbers and just a simple approach.

653
01:12:10,860 --> 01:12:17,860
I mean, if you if you care enough just to ask somebody how they are, take the time to listen to them.

654
01:12:17,860 --> 01:12:21,860
You know, watch their body language as they respond to you.

655
01:12:21,860 --> 01:12:28,860
You know, I mean, they'll tell you even if they don't verbally tell you if something's going on.

656
01:12:28,860 --> 01:12:31,860
And if you care about that person, hope you're observing enough at that point.

657
01:12:31,860 --> 01:12:37,860
It's like, well, bro, I mean, I'll give you the example yesterday.

658
01:12:37,860 --> 01:12:44,860
I've got a tight still about seven or eight guys that are pretty top with that are still working.

659
01:12:44,860 --> 01:12:49,860
And we have been for a long time. And some of these guys, I meant toward them.

660
01:12:49,860 --> 01:12:57,860
All right. And there's one in particular that calls me out on my BS when he because he knows me.

661
01:12:57,860 --> 01:13:03,860
And yesterday, we had this discussion in this group chat about some upcoming stuff.

662
01:13:03,860 --> 01:13:08,860
And I fired off and I was having a pretty bad day.

663
01:13:08,860 --> 01:13:14,860
And he called me out on it. Then, like 30 seconds later, he called me on the phone.

664
01:13:14,860 --> 01:13:17,860
He said, hey, man, no bullshit. What's up?

665
01:13:17,860 --> 01:13:20,860
He said, I know something's wrong with you.

666
01:13:20,860 --> 01:13:24,860
And I was like, yeah, you're right.

667
01:13:24,860 --> 01:13:30,860
And, man, just having those people and it can't be all on the peer team.

668
01:13:30,860 --> 01:13:36,860
That's why we got to start relying more finding these people you can be vulnerable with,

669
01:13:36,860 --> 01:13:39,860
because it's not going away just because you remove yourself.

670
01:13:39,860 --> 01:13:44,860
You run like I did. You isolate. You drink. You all do all these things to hide.

671
01:13:44,860 --> 01:13:46,860
There's a reason it keeps on coming up.

672
01:13:46,860 --> 01:13:54,860
It won't go away. And having a circle like that that calls me out when they see something wrong.

673
01:13:54,860 --> 01:13:57,860
You know, I'm the director of the First Responder Wellness Division here.

674
01:13:57,860 --> 01:14:00,860
I'm supposed to be perfect all the time, and I'm not.

675
01:14:00,860 --> 01:14:08,860
You know, but that's part of the reason people see our vulnerabilities like, hey, man, it's OK to be f'ed up.

676
01:14:08,860 --> 01:14:11,860
It's just, you know, part of our culture now.

677
01:14:11,860 --> 01:14:15,860
But we don't have to lose our life to it. We don't have to like give in.

678
01:14:15,860 --> 01:14:19,860
We can fight through this. And by the way, here's how we're going to do it together.

679
01:14:19,860 --> 01:14:24,860
And, you know, and hey, I did it. I'm going to continue to do it.

680
01:14:24,860 --> 01:14:35,860
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.

681
01:14:35,860 --> 01:14:39,860
But maybe they're leading up to it, like I said, because the studies are out there.

682
01:14:39,860 --> 01:14:44,860
Suicide that you just don't wake up one day is OK. I'm going to blow my brains out.

683
01:14:44,860 --> 01:14:50,860
It's a buildup. It's a plan. Some people follow through with it. Some people don't.

684
01:14:50,860 --> 01:14:57,860
But so planting a seed in any opportune time when you see your brother or sister hurting men, that that's our job.

685
01:14:57,860 --> 01:15:03,860
We want to make a difference. That's we be a human being to our closest people.

686
01:15:03,860 --> 01:15:08,860
Absolutely. I want to go to the tools that you use to get yourself out.

687
01:15:08,860 --> 01:15:14,860
But just before we do the second shooting, you've got this car stop there. You're driving by all of a sudden.

688
01:15:14,860 --> 01:15:19,860
They open fire. Clearly, we have a massive mental health crisis outside the uniform as well.

689
01:15:19,860 --> 01:15:24,860
Did you ever find out the backstory of why he tried to ambush you in the first place?

690
01:15:24,860 --> 01:15:30,860
Oh, yeah, that man, that guy had a history of mental illness.

691
01:15:30,860 --> 01:15:36,860
I think he he had actually shot himself a year before, two years before.

692
01:15:36,860 --> 01:15:41,860
I think he had he'd kidnapped one of his exes.

693
01:15:41,860 --> 01:15:44,860
And I don't know if he was going to kill them or not.

694
01:15:44,860 --> 01:15:49,860
They were tied up in a house in the same direction he was going when I drove by.

695
01:15:49,860 --> 01:15:53,860
I don't know why he pulled over where he did.

696
01:15:53,860 --> 01:15:57,860
I don't really know what he was doing.

697
01:15:57,860 --> 01:16:01,860
I think it's just an important part, this whole conversation as well, especially when it comes to law enforcement.

698
01:16:01,860 --> 01:16:06,860
You know, always the the cameras are pointing at you and, oh, you made this mistake.

699
01:16:06,860 --> 01:16:09,860
And, you know, this wasn't a justified shoot, whatever the thing is.

700
01:16:09,860 --> 01:16:13,860
But no one ever turns it around and says, why are our streets so dangerous?

701
01:16:13,860 --> 01:16:17,860
Why do we have such a rampant gang problem?

702
01:16:17,860 --> 01:16:19,860
Why are our schools so unsafe at the moment?

703
01:16:19,860 --> 01:16:20,860
You know, all these elements.

704
01:16:20,860 --> 01:16:26,860
And this needs to be part of the conversation, too, because obviously it's not just us in uniform and we're seeing it.

705
01:16:26,860 --> 01:16:28,860
And it's even worse.

706
01:16:28,860 --> 01:16:33,860
But the civilians of the world, these young boys and girls that grow up in gang culture and, you know,

707
01:16:33,860 --> 01:16:36,860
see drugs being dealt out of their home when they're still in diapers.

708
01:16:36,860 --> 01:16:42,860
You know, this is another part of the entire conversation that puts our law enforcement and first responders in danger.

709
01:16:42,860 --> 01:16:50,860
Well, I mean, from the time you and I started in the first responder community,

710
01:16:50,860 --> 01:16:58,860
I would say just because I've been I mean, I didn't have a office in rural Oklahoma.

711
01:16:58,860 --> 01:17:02,860
It was on the Texas border and I didn't work that region.

712
01:17:02,860 --> 01:17:08,860
So I hung out at the firehouse all the time with those guys cook for me all the time.

713
01:17:08,860 --> 01:17:10,860
We hung out together, worked out together.

714
01:17:10,860 --> 01:17:15,860
So I think I can speak some some not speaking for them.

715
01:17:15,860 --> 01:17:23,860
But I saw our culture in the first responder world change from not just doing fire and EMS duties,

716
01:17:23,860 --> 01:17:32,860
police duties, as I knew them at the time, we were becoming social counselors, family counselors, you know,

717
01:17:32,860 --> 01:17:34,860
that I'm like, I'm not trained to do that.

718
01:17:34,860 --> 01:17:43,860
You know, and so I agree, man, just the whole dynamics and over the over the past couple of decades

719
01:17:43,860 --> 01:17:51,860
and the changing of what's expected for us and how we're supposed to perform that we don't have true training on.

720
01:17:51,860 --> 01:17:56,860
I just know that's a recipe for disaster in itself.

721
01:17:56,860 --> 01:18:03,860
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.

722
01:18:03,860 --> 01:18:12,860
There was a lead up to some mental health crosses for years, days to whenever you and I would be called to that event.

723
01:18:12,860 --> 01:18:15,860
That I mean, what are we supposed to do?

724
01:18:15,860 --> 01:18:22,860
You know, so yeah, it's a horrible situation right now.

725
01:18:22,860 --> 01:18:27,860
Hundred percent. Well, you obviously talked about sitting there with the rifle.

726
01:18:27,860 --> 01:18:31,860
You had this phone conversation with the counselor and you said I need help.

727
01:18:31,860 --> 01:18:37,860
As I mentioned earlier, I think people don't realize that everyone has their own individual toolbox that works for them.

728
01:18:37,860 --> 01:18:42,860
So what were those tools that you started using to get yourself out of this hole first?

729
01:18:42,860 --> 01:18:47,860
Man, there's here's the two biggest things.

730
01:18:47,860 --> 01:18:50,860
And the next day when I got to her.

731
01:18:50,860 --> 01:18:55,860
So, you know, I think there's a big misconception on what counseling is.

732
01:18:55,860 --> 01:19:03,860
And so without getting next, that could be a whole other topic.

733
01:19:03,860 --> 01:19:09,860
We laid out a playbook because I mean, it wasn't like she and I were starting out from day one.

734
01:19:09,860 --> 01:19:14,860
She knew, you know, all about me, the good, the bad, the worst.

735
01:19:14,860 --> 01:19:19,860
I mean, so we cut right to it and got to a plan of action.

736
01:19:19,860 --> 01:19:22,860
But then it was turned to me like, what are you willing to do?

737
01:19:22,860 --> 01:19:27,860
I'm like, whatever you tell me to do, I'm going to do it.

738
01:19:27,860 --> 01:19:34,860
So the first few things I had to do, I had to remove a lot of people out of my life.

739
01:19:34,860 --> 01:19:37,860
That were not healthy for me.

740
01:19:37,860 --> 01:19:42,860
And that's hard for a lot of people and a lot of people fell at doing that part.

741
01:19:42,860 --> 01:19:50,860
And they find themselves right back in that environment of walking down that unhealthy path with these other people going off the same cliff.

742
01:19:50,860 --> 01:19:53,860
And I'm like, I'm not going to do that.

743
01:19:53,860 --> 01:19:55,860
So and it took some time.

744
01:19:55,860 --> 01:20:01,860
Then I had to remove things out of my life gradually.

745
01:20:01,860 --> 01:20:05,860
Alcohol was one of them.

746
01:20:05,860 --> 01:20:18,860
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.

747
01:20:18,860 --> 01:20:21,860
I removed it.

748
01:20:21,860 --> 01:20:25,860
I didn't have to go to to an inpatient treatment in anywhere.

749
01:20:25,860 --> 01:20:30,860
I mean, I was drinking every night like it was my job, you know.

750
01:20:30,860 --> 01:20:35,860
But and I'm not saying if that's where you need to go.

751
01:20:35,860 --> 01:20:38,860
And I've had a lot of friends that I've helped get to a treatment program.

752
01:20:38,860 --> 01:20:42,860
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

753
01:20:42,860 --> 01:20:43,860
For me, I just set it down.

754
01:20:43,860 --> 01:20:47,860
I'm like, I'm not doing that anymore.

755
01:20:47,860 --> 01:20:50,860
But I truly saw where I wanted to go.

756
01:20:50,860 --> 01:20:52,860
And I felt like there was a chance.

757
01:20:52,860 --> 01:20:56,860
I didn't know how that I could get my family back.

758
01:20:56,860 --> 01:21:00,860
And that was about some of the biggest motivation.

759
01:21:00,860 --> 01:21:11,860
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.

760
01:21:11,860 --> 01:21:20,860
Like I did giving up not not looking for another piece of hope to go fight for one more day.

761
01:21:20,860 --> 01:21:22,860
So many were just a gradual battle.

762
01:21:22,860 --> 01:21:37,860
You know, then there was the treatment modalities that I went through brain mapping, EMDR treatment, multiple, multiple sessions with my counselor.

763
01:21:37,860 --> 01:21:44,860
Anything necessary that I that I could identify, man, I poured a lot back into the physical side at that point.

764
01:21:44,860 --> 01:21:48,860
I mean, I always worked out that I didn't do it for the healthy purpose.

765
01:21:48,860 --> 01:21:51,860
I did it for survivability and I didn't enjoy it.

766
01:21:51,860 --> 01:21:53,860
She can like shooting.

767
01:21:53,860 --> 01:21:55,860
I got to I hated shooting.

768
01:21:55,860 --> 01:21:58,860
And I mean, I've shot up my whole life.

769
01:21:58,860 --> 01:22:00,860
But same thing with working out.

770
01:22:00,860 --> 01:22:03,860
I just viewed it as a necessary survival tool.

771
01:22:03,860 --> 01:22:07,860
But then I started working out because I wanted to.

772
01:22:07,860 --> 01:22:11,860
That was my go to instead of going to the bottle.

773
01:22:11,860 --> 01:22:18,860
I'd go throw my pack in my do 10, 15, 20 miles, you know, or go smash out across, work out, whatever.

774
01:22:18,860 --> 01:22:26,860
I mean, I just kept it moving and kept it being different, putting myself in really uncomfortable positions.

775
01:22:26,860 --> 01:22:28,860
Man, you're going to think you're going to laugh at this one.

776
01:22:28,860 --> 01:22:35,860
So uncomfortable is where I was that.

777
01:22:35,860 --> 01:22:43,860
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.

778
01:22:43,860 --> 01:22:53,860
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.

779
01:22:53,860 --> 01:22:55,860
You know, all that stupid crap.

780
01:22:55,860 --> 01:23:00,860
So that led to a lot of my identity problem of I'm nobody outside of being a cop.

781
01:23:00,860 --> 01:23:03,860
You know, I have no mission, no purpose.

782
01:23:03,860 --> 01:23:16,860
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.

783
01:23:16,860 --> 01:23:17,860
Where can I go?

784
01:23:17,860 --> 01:23:20,860
So I started searching.

785
01:23:20,860 --> 01:23:25,860
And I found this group about 20 miles from me, this gardening group.

786
01:23:25,860 --> 01:23:28,860
Right. And I'm the youngest one in it.

787
01:23:28,860 --> 01:23:32,860
And I've been in that for four years now.

788
01:23:32,860 --> 01:23:34,860
We garden every Tuesday night.

789
01:23:34,860 --> 01:23:40,860
And I mean, everybody thinks I'm just I don't know why they thought I showed up in the first place.

790
01:23:40,860 --> 01:23:42,860
There's a lot of people standing off from me.

791
01:23:42,860 --> 01:23:56,860
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.

792
01:23:56,860 --> 01:24:06,860
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.

793
01:24:06,860 --> 01:24:14,860
The first responders like everybody's guilty, everybody's out to kill me against me, trying to take me down.

794
01:24:14,860 --> 01:24:17,860
I don't trust them. All that crap.

795
01:24:17,860 --> 01:24:22,860
Man, that's been so healthy for me.

796
01:24:22,860 --> 01:24:26,860
You know, then there's some other little things along with that.

797
01:24:26,860 --> 01:24:29,860
But that was one of the big ones.

798
01:24:29,860 --> 01:24:33,860
Amazing. Talk to me then about you mentioned the first responder wellness program.

799
01:24:33,860 --> 01:24:47,860
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?

800
01:24:47,860 --> 01:24:51,860
All right. We're going to fast forward to May of 2018.

801
01:24:51,860 --> 01:24:56,860
I'm still with the Marshall Service. My son is about to graduate from high school.

802
01:24:56,860 --> 01:25:01,860
We have a senior trip plan for him and some of his friends.

803
01:25:01,860 --> 01:25:06,860
And my wife, we were not married at the time, but we were on the path.

804
01:25:06,860 --> 01:25:11,860
We knew we were going to get back together. And I left a lot of that part out.

805
01:25:11,860 --> 01:25:26,860
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.

806
01:25:26,860 --> 01:25:37,860
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.

807
01:25:37,860 --> 01:25:43,860
And so she was working. She works at a hospital north of us and in the metro.

808
01:25:43,860 --> 01:25:46,860
And I was home.

809
01:25:46,860 --> 01:25:50,860
Finishing some decorating stuff for the after party.

810
01:25:50,860 --> 01:25:58,860
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.

811
01:25:58,860 --> 01:26:01,860
I was already packed all my stuff.

812
01:26:01,860 --> 01:26:14,860
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.

813
01:26:14,860 --> 01:26:23,860
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.

814
01:26:23,860 --> 01:26:30,860
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.

815
01:26:30,860 --> 01:26:34,860
So what I do, I went started a jumped in with another private business.

816
01:26:34,860 --> 01:26:37,860
And guess what? It started working.

817
01:26:37,860 --> 01:26:42,860
And so I go back to work and it was just I didn't there wasn't a lot of involvement on my end.

818
01:26:42,860 --> 01:26:51,860
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.

819
01:26:51,860 --> 01:26:56,860
And so I'm off on another shooting. I jump into another sector and get it going.

820
01:26:56,860 --> 01:27:01,860
So, you know, I had this conversation in May of twenty eighteen with the wife.

821
01:27:01,860 --> 01:27:04,860
I'm like, there's nothing else I can do here.

822
01:27:04,860 --> 01:27:10,860
I mean, I feel like I've accomplished what I wanted to getting the life back together.

823
01:27:10,860 --> 01:27:15,860
So which we decided not to tell anybody till we got back.

824
01:27:15,860 --> 01:27:20,860
And and so I'm up on a ladder that day in May.

825
01:27:20,860 --> 01:27:25,860
I think it's May 18th. I get this phone call from my boss, Marshall Service.

826
01:27:25,860 --> 01:27:30,860
And he's like, Danny, I know you're off, but any chance you could come in?

827
01:27:30,860 --> 01:27:34,860
I said, man, I'm here. He knew what I was doing.

828
01:27:34,860 --> 01:27:40,860
I said, OK, five minutes later, another teammate calls and asked me the same thing.

829
01:27:40,860 --> 01:27:44,860
He said, man, I got a bad feeling. I was like, man, screw your bad feeling.

830
01:27:44,860 --> 01:27:47,860
I'm like, what are you talking about?

831
01:27:47,860 --> 01:27:50,860
Everybody we chase has the potential for a gunfight.

832
01:27:50,860 --> 01:27:56,860
And a lot of them ended up that way. So he's like, OK, what made me mad?

833
01:27:56,860 --> 01:28:01,860
I'm like, because I know I'm going at that point. I mean, I can't leave those guys hanging.

834
01:28:01,860 --> 01:28:05,860
So I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell my wife.

835
01:28:05,860 --> 01:28:13,860
I jumped in my G-Rod and grabbed my rifle, go back in my kit and get there.

836
01:28:13,860 --> 01:28:17,860
Fast forward to this deal.

837
01:28:17,860 --> 01:28:25,860
We end up taking him down on a traffic stop and didn't go as planned.

838
01:28:25,860 --> 01:28:28,860
Somebody started a little too early.

839
01:28:28,860 --> 01:28:35,860
And my partner, one of the deputy marshals, he got shot as I'm pulling up to the traffic stop.

840
01:28:35,860 --> 01:28:39,860
And the bad guy's out shooting him with an AR-15.

841
01:28:39,860 --> 01:28:46,860
And I see him drop, roll out of his car, and he's bleeding. I'm like, OK, he's dead.

842
01:28:46,860 --> 01:28:53,860
It was like 15 yards, you know, as you just hammer him with the AR, closing the distance, walking up to him.

843
01:28:53,860 --> 01:28:56,860
I'm like, man, if he's not dead, he's about to be.

844
01:28:56,860 --> 01:29:02,860
And so I start I bring my rifle up, lay it on my dash. I'm still rolling up.

845
01:29:02,860 --> 01:29:07,860
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.

846
01:29:07,860 --> 01:29:14,860
Had a good side picture and I start pressing the trigger and I could tell I was impacting him.

847
01:29:14,860 --> 01:29:17,860
He had on body armor.

848
01:29:17,860 --> 01:29:24,860
Him and I get out. We have a for the cop world. It was a long gun battle.

849
01:29:24,860 --> 01:29:28,860
And he he was trained. He knew what he was doing.

850
01:29:28,860 --> 01:29:35,860
I end up killing him. I took some fragments and hurt my ear again.

851
01:29:35,860 --> 01:29:40,860
So take care of my buddy. We get him shipped off in an ambulance.

852
01:29:40,860 --> 01:29:44,860
And I'm like, oh, God, I had I had called the wife yet.

853
01:29:44,860 --> 01:29:50,860
She don't even know I'm up here, you know. And guess what? They're taking them to her hospital.

854
01:29:50,860 --> 01:29:54,860
Like, oh, Jesus, she could be pissed, you know.

855
01:29:54,860 --> 01:29:59,860
So they make me go to the hospital and I'm trying to get a hold of her.

856
01:29:59,860 --> 01:30:03,860
And anyway, we get there.

857
01:30:03,860 --> 01:30:07,860
She said a few things to me, nothing. I mean, she was doing her nurse stuff on me.

858
01:30:07,860 --> 01:30:11,860
But we get home that night. My kids are there.

859
01:30:11,860 --> 01:30:18,860
And I think my mom comes over and a few other people and everybody I walk into the room, they move.

860
01:30:18,860 --> 01:30:21,860
And I'm like, finally, like, what are you all doing?

861
01:30:21,860 --> 01:30:25,860
And they're like, well, and my wife pulled me aside.

862
01:30:25,860 --> 01:30:34,860
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.

863
01:30:34,860 --> 01:30:39,860
I said, fair enough. But that's absolutely the last thing I want to do.

864
01:30:39,860 --> 01:30:46,860
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,

865
01:30:46,860 --> 01:30:50,860
when I laid down, I'm like, all right, this is validation.

866
01:30:50,860 --> 01:30:57,860
This work that I've done to heal me over the last three years, it's worked. It's real.

867
01:30:57,860 --> 01:31:01,860
I didn't want to go drink. I didn't didn't want to go to the farm.

868
01:31:01,860 --> 01:31:04,860
I had no interest in being away from my family.

869
01:31:04,860 --> 01:31:08,860
And that was the first time ever I didn't want to run.

870
01:31:08,860 --> 01:31:11,860
And I wanted to be where my family was.

871
01:31:11,860 --> 01:31:16,860
And I'm like, OK, I think I might have a chance at this now.

872
01:31:16,860 --> 01:31:20,860
And so I was off for about eight months on that one, healing up.

873
01:31:20,860 --> 01:31:29,860
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.

874
01:31:29,860 --> 01:31:32,860
But that's that's not why it's like you talked about earlier.

875
01:31:32,860 --> 01:31:39,860
I mean, there's other things going on to cause the burnout, whatever that means, that just not being addressed.

876
01:31:39,860 --> 01:31:41,860
And I've lost friends to suicide.

877
01:31:41,860 --> 01:31:51,860
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.

878
01:31:51,860 --> 01:31:56,860
I mean, we had peer teams for like 20 years and not knocking those guys.

879
01:31:56,860 --> 01:32:00,860
I mean, they're nice guys, but it was a retirement gig for a lot of people.

880
01:32:00,860 --> 01:32:08,860
And it was only they were only used in a proactive and a responsive way.

881
01:32:08,860 --> 01:32:10,860
They were doing zero proactive work.

882
01:32:10,860 --> 01:32:13,860
There was no trust building on the front end of a problem.

883
01:32:13,860 --> 01:32:18,860
It was they would show up at your shooting and try to hug you.

884
01:32:18,860 --> 01:32:21,860
And I remember the first time somebody tried to hug me.

885
01:32:21,860 --> 01:32:23,860
I mean, I'm sitting there with blood everywhere.

886
01:32:23,860 --> 01:32:25,860
I mean, I'm still in kill mode.

887
01:32:25,860 --> 01:32:27,860
Right. I mean, shooting straight with you.

888
01:32:27,860 --> 01:32:29,860
Like, bro, you touch me again.

889
01:32:29,860 --> 01:32:34,860
I'll kill you. Get the fuck away from me.

890
01:32:34,860 --> 01:32:40,860
And I apologize to the guy later, but I knew everybody on that team.

891
01:32:40,860 --> 01:32:44,860
Ain't nobody been in anything like me at that point.

892
01:32:44,860 --> 01:32:50,860
And they try to under and again, I probably pissing people off when I say this.

893
01:32:50,860 --> 01:32:52,860
And it's not like they can't care about you.

894
01:32:52,860 --> 01:33:03,860
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.

895
01:33:03,860 --> 01:33:07,860
And I went home after one of these shootings.

896
01:33:07,860 --> 01:33:14,860
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.

897
01:33:14,860 --> 01:33:25,860
Putting the right peer with the right problem or situation to bring sympathy and empathy, true sympathy and empathy and trust.

898
01:33:25,860 --> 01:33:36,860
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.

899
01:33:36,860 --> 01:33:39,860
OK, what happened six months from now?

900
01:33:39,860 --> 01:33:42,860
You know, are you going to be around then?

901
01:33:42,860 --> 01:33:44,860
How did this affect you?

902
01:33:44,860 --> 01:33:49,860
You know, and I've asked several of them that before, and they just look at each other like, I don't know.

903
01:33:49,860 --> 01:33:58,860
I'm just reading you what in this book, you know, like hell with all that. That is nothing real human about that.

904
01:33:58,860 --> 01:34:14,860
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.

905
01:34:14,860 --> 01:34:23,860
And every other aspect of our pillars were built serving the human hell with the badge, hell with the uniform, hell with an agency.

906
01:34:23,860 --> 01:34:27,860
I don't care about any of that. I don't care about agencies.

907
01:34:27,860 --> 01:34:29,860
Means nothing.

908
01:34:29,860 --> 01:34:37,860
It's the people that are there that's showing up, doing this stuff repeatedly, being exposed to it repeatedly that are still human.

909
01:34:37,860 --> 01:34:44,860
If they survive this long enough to retire, guess what? Still a human.

910
01:34:44,860 --> 01:35:01,860
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.

911
01:35:01,860 --> 01:35:13,860
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.

912
01:35:13,860 --> 01:35:21,860
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.

913
01:35:21,860 --> 01:35:26,860
He said, yeah, I'll read through it. I said, well, just so you know, I'm retiring.

914
01:35:26,860 --> 01:35:36,860
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.

915
01:35:36,860 --> 01:35:42,860
He said, what is all this? He said, this is an eight year model. I'm like, yeah, I know.

916
01:35:42,860 --> 01:35:48,860
I said, it's how we're going to change culture. You can't change everything overnight. Just set the top down.

917
01:35:48,860 --> 01:36:00,860
I said, we're going to start from the bottom up. And so there was a few weeks, months of discussion about me leaving.

918
01:36:00,860 --> 01:36:07,860
And man, I began. I mean, I started following God a lot at that point.

919
01:36:07,860 --> 01:36:14,860
And I know I don't sound like it, but man, I'm still a work in progress there.

920
01:36:14,860 --> 01:36:19,860
But I knew there was something bigger in me for the serve in a bigger way.

921
01:36:19,860 --> 01:36:25,860
And I was praying a lot about it at the time. And I just I've never felt.

922
01:36:25,860 --> 01:36:35,860
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.

923
01:36:35,860 --> 01:36:43,860
I've never felt led to do something until this day. And I mean, I've talked about it with the wife.

924
01:36:43,860 --> 01:36:48,860
We remarried in 2019. And I'm like, I think I got to go do this.

925
01:36:48,860 --> 01:37:00,860
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.

926
01:37:00,860 --> 01:37:12,860
And she backed it 100 percent. And so I retired and they hired me back as a civilian director over the program.

927
01:37:12,860 --> 01:37:18,860
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.

928
01:37:18,860 --> 01:37:24,860
I've got one quick question. Your partner that was shot, did he make it or did he pass?

929
01:37:24,860 --> 01:37:35,860
He did. He made it. He he ended up having to retire medically from the marshal service, but he did really good.

930
01:37:35,860 --> 01:37:42,860
I mean, that dude, I mean, he had been shot in the head to die. He's that he's that tough.

931
01:37:42,860 --> 01:37:46,860
He's just one of those true battle battle partners, man.

932
01:37:46,860 --> 01:37:54,860
That I mean, I hate it. I hated it was him. But I mean, it glad it was in a lot of ways to.

933
01:37:54,860 --> 01:38:00,860
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.

934
01:38:00,860 --> 01:38:03,860
And then let's go to the fitness, strength, conditioning side as well.

935
01:38:03,860 --> 01:38:11,860
Yeah. So, man, that's all a part of it, because that's one of our pillars.

936
01:38:11,860 --> 01:38:20,860
So they bring me back to the civilian director and by September of 22, this thing becomes a living, breathing state agency.

937
01:38:20,860 --> 01:38:27,860
And but it took me I mean, I spent about a year and a half at the Capitol selling all this.

938
01:38:27,860 --> 01:38:38,860
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.

939
01:38:38,860 --> 01:38:41,860
And they were some of our biggest supporters.

940
01:38:41,860 --> 01:38:46,860
But I did a lot of one on ones on why this could impact them.

941
01:38:46,860 --> 01:38:54,860
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.

942
01:38:54,860 --> 01:39:00,860
And I just said, hey, if your family was in a really bad crash tonight.

943
01:39:00,860 --> 01:39:19,860
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.

944
01:39:19,860 --> 01:39:35,860
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?

945
01:39:35,860 --> 01:39:39,860
Who would you want? It's like, well, that's a dumb question.

946
01:39:39,860 --> 01:39:45,860
Someone with the experience guy. I said, OK, help me keep those experienced guys around them.

947
01:39:45,860 --> 01:39:54,860
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.

948
01:39:54,860 --> 01:40:10,860
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.

949
01:40:10,860 --> 01:40:16,860
In the last couple of years, I said, we're not treating we're not treating them like a human at all.

950
01:40:16,860 --> 01:40:24,860
And I said, we're just expected to perform like a robot repeatedly for 25 years and have no change.

951
01:40:24,860 --> 01:40:28,860
And he said, Well, that's ridiculous. I said, it sure is.

952
01:40:28,860 --> 01:40:43,860
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.

953
01:40:43,860 --> 01:40:46,860
Well, I appreciate it, but I didn't bring it here a year ago.

954
01:40:46,860 --> 01:40:52,860
So it was really refreshing to have all that backing pouring into the program.

955
01:40:52,860 --> 01:41:01,860
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.

956
01:41:01,860 --> 01:41:12,860
So, man, I'm on the guest pedal. And so this eight year program is built around really three to four different pillars.

957
01:41:12,860 --> 01:41:24,860
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.

958
01:41:24,860 --> 01:41:26,860
But it's true.

959
01:41:26,860 --> 01:41:37,860
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.

960
01:41:37,860 --> 01:41:55,860
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.

961
01:41:55,860 --> 01:42:00,860
There's one of our boxes at some location in your geographical area.

962
01:42:00,860 --> 01:42:13,860
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.

963
01:42:13,860 --> 01:42:22,860
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.

964
01:42:22,860 --> 01:42:34,860
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.

965
01:42:34,860 --> 01:42:41,860
I mean, I was going around different firehouses, police stations, troop headquarters.

966
01:42:41,860 --> 01:42:51,860
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.

967
01:42:51,860 --> 01:42:57,860
I had no other purpose than just give them a break. You know, well, guess what started happening?

968
01:42:57,860 --> 01:43:03,860
I started getting all these phone calls and after the workout was over, like, hey, can I come talk to you for a minute?

969
01:43:03,860 --> 01:43:09,860
Like, yeah, what about? Well, tell me about counseling.

970
01:43:09,860 --> 01:43:16,860
Like, what do you mean? Well, how do I get that counselor? What counselor do I go to?

971
01:43:16,860 --> 01:43:21,860
What's how to how to overcome addiction and other things start popping up?

972
01:43:21,860 --> 01:43:29,860
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.

973
01:43:29,860 --> 01:43:34,860
I am in financial trouble. I did this and I've lost a lot of money.

974
01:43:34,860 --> 01:43:37,860
All these things started happening.

975
01:43:37,860 --> 01:43:48,860
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.

976
01:43:48,860 --> 01:43:54,860
Conversations that I've never had before with people that normally wouldn't ask me stuff like that.

977
01:43:54,860 --> 01:44:00,860
And at the time, I was doing interviews locally on our news and doing a lot of stories.

978
01:44:00,860 --> 01:44:07,860
I was being very vulnerable about my path and what what happened to me.

979
01:44:07,860 --> 01:44:11,860
Very detailed. And I know that helped.

980
01:44:11,860 --> 01:44:18,860
But man, suddenly I'm like, OK, there's a lot more than just making a capable first responder.

981
01:44:18,860 --> 01:44:21,860
This is generating a lot of referrals.

982
01:44:21,860 --> 01:44:24,860
Then it started generating more referrals to our counselors.

983
01:44:24,860 --> 01:44:30,860
And so. In comes BeaverFit.

984
01:44:30,860 --> 01:44:42,860
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

985
01:44:42,860 --> 01:44:52,860
and just setting up a full gym basically with, you know, not having to rent a building and all this other upkeep and cost.

986
01:44:52,860 --> 01:44:57,860
And I started looking at the geographical areas across the state to put our gyms in.

987
01:44:57,860 --> 01:45:02,860
And sorry, my dog just went crazy.

988
01:45:02,860 --> 01:45:13,860
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.

989
01:45:13,860 --> 01:45:17,860
But it's going to cost a couple million dollars.

990
01:45:17,860 --> 01:45:22,860
And he's like, man, I don't know if we can do that. And.

991
01:45:22,860 --> 01:45:31,860
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,

992
01:45:31,860 --> 01:45:35,860
the American Rescue Plan Act. And you say what you will about that and I have my own thoughts.

993
01:45:35,860 --> 01:45:42,860
But it it it was meant for infrastructure build across the country.

994
01:45:42,860 --> 01:45:50,860
And I tied it all in the infrastructure of being what keeps infrastructure going is how I got my funding through ARPA.

995
01:45:50,860 --> 01:46:00,860
And you know, I got a lot of money to really slingshot my whole program in a matter of months.

996
01:46:00,860 --> 01:46:07,860
And I mean, I'm on the phone with BeaverFit and at first they they I think they thought I was crazy.

997
01:46:07,860 --> 01:46:11,860
I'm like, hey, man, I'm with this equipment, but it's not about working out.

998
01:46:11,860 --> 01:46:23,860
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.

999
01:46:23,860 --> 01:46:26,860
But this is not why I want to build this program here.

1000
01:46:26,860 --> 01:46:33,860
It's about the building that network, open communication that and I started sending them data.

1001
01:46:33,860 --> 01:46:39,860
I'm like, look at these referrals we're getting to our counselors after these workouts.

1002
01:46:39,860 --> 01:46:48,860
And, you know, next time we're on a plane going out there to their headquarters and shaking hands, making this relationship.

1003
01:46:48,860 --> 01:46:51,860
And there is bought into this program.

1004
01:46:51,860 --> 01:46:56,860
I mean, they get it that they truly understand what we're doing here.

1005
01:46:56,860 --> 01:47:00,860
And and we're actually about to do a lot more with them.

1006
01:47:00,860 --> 01:47:04,860
That's probably another story, though.

1007
01:47:04,860 --> 01:47:10,860
But, man, October of last year, I unloaded our last box.

1008
01:47:10,860 --> 01:47:18,860
So we have this whole network that we're running constant everything from, you know, just functional fitness workout strength.

1009
01:47:18,860 --> 01:47:26,860
Sometimes we do yoga. Sometimes we just meet at these boxes and just do continual debriefs to try to do preventative maintenance.

1010
01:47:26,860 --> 01:47:35,860
So getting ahead. But it's the trust building is the open communication that's generating from all these events that we're doing.

1011
01:47:35,860 --> 01:47:41,860
And and yes, we're making more capable first responders.

1012
01:47:41,860 --> 01:47:45,860
Any questions about that for the next pillar?

1013
01:47:45,860 --> 01:47:48,860
Yeah, well, I'm going to add something in a couple of things.

1014
01:47:48,860 --> 01:47:55,860
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.

1015
01:47:55,860 --> 01:47:59,860
And starts a nonprofit called Surfers Not Street Children.

1016
01:47:59,860 --> 01:48:05,860
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.

1017
01:48:05,860 --> 01:48:07,860
I think, you know, back then, we're talking apartheid.

1018
01:48:07,860 --> 01:48:12,860
Obviously, there's probably trying to keep the beaches white if you really kind of deconstruct it.

1019
01:48:12,860 --> 01:48:15,860
So you've got to get these kids in the water, you got to teach them how to swim.

1020
01:48:15,860 --> 01:48:17,860
And then eventually they learn how to surf.

1021
01:48:17,860 --> 01:48:23,860
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.

1022
01:48:23,860 --> 01:48:25,860
And it was an informal counseling session.

1023
01:48:25,860 --> 01:48:31,860
So you've already had your exercise, your camaraderie, your salt, you know, sun, sand.

1024
01:48:31,860 --> 01:48:35,860
And then these kids are open. I think it's the exact same way with exercise.

1025
01:48:35,860 --> 01:48:42,860
And if you look at the selection process, if you look at the academies, especially if it's held to a high standard,

1026
01:48:42,860 --> 01:48:47,860
that shared suffering forges that camaraderie and therefore that conversation.

1027
01:48:47,860 --> 01:48:54,860
A hundred percent. It's just a carryover of all that that that needs to continue throughout your career.

1028
01:48:54,860 --> 01:49:03,860
And that's people. I mean, even we're coming up on one year now with the operation of the physical component.

1029
01:49:03,860 --> 01:49:15,860
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,

1030
01:49:15,860 --> 01:49:19,860
our referral rates have quadrupled again to our counselors.

1031
01:49:19,860 --> 01:49:29,860
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.

1032
01:49:29,860 --> 01:49:34,860
Right. We have three full time counselors that work for us. And it's I mean, it's great.

1033
01:49:34,860 --> 01:49:40,860
I'll keep on finding the money and moving the money around. But, man, people are coming in waves.

1034
01:49:40,860 --> 01:49:50,860
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.

1035
01:49:50,860 --> 01:49:55,860
But, man, they're just so desperate for hope now and grasping.

1036
01:49:55,860 --> 01:50:02,860
So it's it's it's working and we have the proof now that it is working.

1037
01:50:02,860 --> 01:50:05,860
I want to just talk about BeaverFit for a little bit longer.

1038
01:50:05,860 --> 01:50:11,860
I came across them years ago in TSAC, one of the the conferences, which is a great conference.

1039
01:50:11,860 --> 01:50:17,860
But, you know, again, you see as a firefighter, you see a big Connex box and the people say, we drop them into Afghanistan.

1040
01:50:17,860 --> 01:50:20,860
OK, well, that's really cool. That doesn't apply to what I do.

1041
01:50:20,860 --> 01:50:25,860
But then years later, I had Tom Beaver on the show, the founder in the UK.

1042
01:50:25,860 --> 01:50:32,860
And they got the stuff that they build for the British military and the facilities they've got are absolutely insane.

1043
01:50:32,860 --> 01:50:37,860
But then I had Mike and Alex on from BeaverFit USA.

1044
01:50:37,860 --> 01:50:47,860
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.

1045
01:50:47,860 --> 01:50:55,860
And you've got, you know, a thousand square foot gym, then you can buy the the inside gym equipment.

1046
01:50:55,860 --> 01:51:01,860
But the reality is the other 95 percent of fire departments, you know, we got to put equipment in the bay.

1047
01:51:01,860 --> 01:51:04,860
Or it's got to sit on the back apron or an FDNY.

1048
01:51:04,860 --> 01:51:08,860
There's nowhere. So, you know, they have these foot lockers that you can drag out.

1049
01:51:08,860 --> 01:51:12,860
And then there's literally an entire squat rack inside this foot locker.

1050
01:51:12,860 --> 01:51:16,860
You assemble it, you do your workout and then you break it down again.

1051
01:51:16,860 --> 01:51:20,860
You've got the trailer hitch. Same thing. The squat racks that go on them.

1052
01:51:20,860 --> 01:51:27,860
You've got trailers. So I was amazed because some of the genuine reasons,

1053
01:51:27,860 --> 01:51:31,860
slash excuses for not having strength and conditioning were solved.

1054
01:51:31,860 --> 01:51:34,860
Like here is a company you can leave the barbells out in the rain.

1055
01:51:34,860 --> 01:51:46,860
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.

1056
01:51:46,860 --> 01:51:49,860
Well, I mean, I mean, you said it.

1057
01:51:49,860 --> 01:52:07,860
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.

1058
01:52:07,860 --> 01:52:12,860
It's very self-contained unit, takes up a small footprint.

1059
01:52:12,860 --> 01:52:25,860
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.

1060
01:52:25,860 --> 01:52:33,860
So I mean, I think we had like 15, 16 of the boxes, the permanent boxes spread across.

1061
01:52:33,860 --> 01:52:42,860
But then we also have for the mobile Beyond trailers and we use the Beyond trailers in a capacity.

1062
01:52:42,860 --> 01:52:49,860
So we one thing we do on the mental side and this ties in to that other pillar.

1063
01:52:49,860 --> 01:52:59,860
We believe in preventative maintenance. We believe in promoting building trust with our people long before we're called to a problem.

1064
01:52:59,860 --> 01:53:09,860
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.

1065
01:53:09,860 --> 01:53:18,860
For example, this year was a really high in tornado event here in Oklahoma from southern Oklahoma to northeastern.

1066
01:53:18,860 --> 01:53:32,860
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.

1067
01:53:32,860 --> 01:53:44,860
So we deployed and not immediately because I don't believe the right time to come in and try to interject yourself with firefighters.

1068
01:53:44,860 --> 01:53:49,860
It's no different than appear trying to interject with me while I'm in a gunfight.

1069
01:53:49,860 --> 01:53:54,860
I looked at this. I've worked the two biggest tornadoes.

1070
01:53:54,860 --> 01:54:02,860
If not in the country, definitely in our state, both have five events that killed a lot of people as a trooper here.

1071
01:54:02,860 --> 01:54:10,860
I've worked both of those over over my career and I knew the mindset during the recovery side.

1072
01:54:10,860 --> 01:54:19,860
They we don't need to inject right now. We waited till the transition to became rescue to recovery.

1073
01:54:19,860 --> 01:54:33,860
We slowly started interjecting teammates, wellness programs within that specific community, a lot of a lot of different fire houses around the state.

1074
01:54:33,860 --> 01:54:43,860
For example, the biggest hit community in the state was sulfur, Oklahoma, just devastated about half the town.

1075
01:54:43,860 --> 01:54:54,860
And so we set up shop at their at their firehouse for about three weeks, about two days into it.

1076
01:54:54,860 --> 01:54:58,860
The fire chief comes up to me because we're doing critical incident debris.

1077
01:54:58,860 --> 01:55:08,860
We're doing EMDR treatment, trying to give them a reset and arrest in between shifts and a path forward.

1078
01:55:08,860 --> 01:55:15,860
So he said, hey, I noticed on your website you have these workout trailers.

1079
01:55:15,860 --> 01:55:19,860
I said, yeah, what about them? He said, why aren't we doing workouts here?

1080
01:55:19,860 --> 01:55:30,860
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.

1081
01:55:30,860 --> 01:55:35,860
I want you to come in and offer some type of team building exercise. I'm like, OK.

1082
01:55:35,860 --> 01:55:42,860
I thought it was a bad idea. I was never, ever intended to use those trailers for that capacity.

1083
01:55:42,860 --> 01:55:46,860
I'll get some pictures. I'll show you, though. I'll send you some time.

1084
01:55:46,860 --> 01:55:51,860
Do from there forward every day about five p.m.

1085
01:55:51,860 --> 01:55:54,860
We started holding these team building short in nature.

1086
01:55:54,860 --> 01:56:02,860
Twenty, thirty minute targeted group exercise that that promoted teammate helping teammate.

1087
01:56:02,860 --> 01:56:09,860
Sometimes we rock. Sometimes we did other functional fitness movements that involved supporting your teammate.

1088
01:56:09,860 --> 01:56:17,860
Man, the second night we did that, we finished with the rug.

1089
01:56:17,860 --> 01:56:21,860
And we were walking, making the last curve through all this tornado debris.

1090
01:56:21,860 --> 01:56:28,860
I mean, the heart where the tornado came through and just uprooted, destroyed buildings in our route was right through there.

1091
01:56:28,860 --> 01:56:35,860
Soon as we got out of that and we could see the fire department ahead, they had a big.

1092
01:56:35,860 --> 01:56:40,860
What's the big engine with the big ladder, the ladder truck that they parked?

1093
01:56:40,860 --> 01:56:48,860
One of their biggest ladder trucks in front of their department raised up the ladder, had the American flag on it.

1094
01:56:48,860 --> 01:56:56,860
And the Oklahoma flag man, they all started high five and each other and hugging.

1095
01:56:56,860 --> 01:57:01,860
I mean, I start crying and I'm like, man, I'm glad I'm back here where nobody can see me.

1096
01:57:01,860 --> 01:57:09,860
Like I almost missed this opportunity to serve our people in another capacity outside the classroom.

1097
01:57:09,860 --> 01:57:14,860
And to this day, man, I mean, they still call me and.

1098
01:57:14,860 --> 01:57:17,860
Now, you all did it. You're the ones who asked for this.

1099
01:57:17,860 --> 01:57:24,860
We just showed up to serve and it just it was a lot of growing opportunity on our end as well.

1100
01:57:24,860 --> 01:57:30,860
And how we're going to serve and not just having our blinders on is like just come up, set up, do debriefs, EMDR.

1101
01:57:30,860 --> 01:57:33,860
This modality. Just I don't know.

1102
01:57:33,860 --> 01:57:37,860
It was a good I mean, I hated that it happened again, like all these gunfights.

1103
01:57:37,860 --> 01:57:41,860
I learned something from each one of them was a true benefit later.

1104
01:57:41,860 --> 01:57:47,860
But man, it's just there's a lot of growth during this tornado season.

1105
01:57:47,860 --> 01:57:50,860
I'm so glad you told that story is that's amazing.

1106
01:57:50,860 --> 01:57:53,860
So that was the like you said, the fitness component.

1107
01:57:53,860 --> 01:57:56,860
Let's talk about the other legs of the stool.

1108
01:57:56,860 --> 01:58:01,860
So the mental pillar is this and this is where we kind of.

1109
01:58:01,860 --> 01:58:06,860
Well, the physical components, 100 percent, that identify the different path

1110
01:58:06,860 --> 01:58:09,860
and the majority of the peer teams in the United States right now,

1111
01:58:09,860 --> 01:58:12,860
because it's so much more than just working out.

1112
01:58:12,860 --> 01:58:20,860
And we talked about that. Our mental piece is I wanted something other than a critical incident debrief that.

1113
01:58:20,860 --> 01:58:24,860
It never. And I was forced to sit in a lot of them.

1114
01:58:24,860 --> 01:58:29,860
And I'm like, OK, I mean, if you want me to talk, I would say what I needed to.

1115
01:58:29,860 --> 01:58:32,860
And after that, I'm fine. I'm good.

1116
01:58:32,860 --> 01:58:35,860
And I could keep going on that.

1117
01:58:35,860 --> 01:58:38,860
And again, I know there's I'm not dogging it.

1118
01:58:38,860 --> 01:58:44,860
So I know I'll probably get attacked as I always do when I make statements about those things.

1119
01:58:44,860 --> 01:58:48,860
We still do them. We still we do about two or three a week.

1120
01:58:48,860 --> 01:58:52,860
But the differences are follow up.

1121
01:58:52,860 --> 01:58:56,860
To me, those critical incident debriefs are just the beginning.

1122
01:58:56,860 --> 01:59:03,860
And now from where I said, I tell my team, I said, hey, if they help people, great.

1123
01:59:03,860 --> 01:59:09,860
But my I tell the guys and girls, I said, I really want you.

1124
01:59:09,860 --> 01:59:17,860
Your mission during if during performing a debrief is to identify the people in the crowd we need to go to one on one.

1125
01:59:17,860 --> 01:59:23,860
I mean, true people that are dealing with really bad stuff that can lead to bad outcomes.

1126
01:59:23,860 --> 01:59:31,860
We need to get to them. And so follow up with that.

1127
01:59:31,860 --> 01:59:41,860
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.

1128
01:59:41,860 --> 01:59:47,860
So we wrote a state peer law.

1129
01:59:47,860 --> 01:59:52,860
It mimics that of HIPAA protection with our counselors that work in our office.

1130
01:59:52,860 --> 02:00:05,860
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.

1131
02:00:05,860 --> 02:00:21,860
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.

1132
02:00:21,860 --> 02:00:32,860
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.

1133
02:00:32,860 --> 02:00:43,860
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.

1134
02:00:43,860 --> 02:00:54,860
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.

1135
02:00:54,860 --> 02:01:03,860
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.

1136
02:01:03,860 --> 02:01:11,860
He had had me in handcuffs that day. I mean, I could tell you another story on that guy.

1137
02:01:11,860 --> 02:01:20,860
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.

1138
02:01:20,860 --> 02:01:31,860
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.

1139
02:01:31,860 --> 02:01:42,860
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.

1140
02:01:42,860 --> 02:01:50,860
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.

1141
02:01:50,860 --> 02:01:58,860
But I built an application process that included a vetting component with your current former partners.

1142
02:01:58,860 --> 02:02:09,860
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.

1143
02:02:09,860 --> 02:02:17,860
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.

1144
02:02:17,860 --> 02:02:28,860
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.

1145
02:02:28,860 --> 02:02:39,860
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.

1146
02:02:39,860 --> 02:02:44,860
If I got another, I would call another. And I kept on until I'm like a duck is a duck. Right.

1147
02:02:44,860 --> 02:02:56,860
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.

1148
02:02:56,860 --> 02:03:02,860
You're like, man, I got this guy, the master peer and master something.

1149
02:03:02,860 --> 02:03:15,860
But, man, nobody trusted him. I mean, hated this guy. And there are several like that, you know, that he had burned people down.

1150
02:03:15,860 --> 02:03:25,860
But for whatever reason, you know, that didn't think trust was a big deal, you know, and I had multiple people like that.

1151
02:03:25,860 --> 02:03:32,860
That were applying that just couldn't figure out why. Why can't I be a peer? I've done all this training.

1152
02:03:32,860 --> 02:03:42,860
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.

1153
02:03:42,860 --> 02:03:49,860
And I mean, that that was a game changer and why every agency doesn't do that.

1154
02:03:49,860 --> 02:03:59,860
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.

1155
02:03:59,860 --> 02:04:08,860
Assembled their peer leader based on their beliefs, their trust in that person. And my question was only this.

1156
02:04:08,860 --> 02:04:14,860
Hey, chief, I know you I'm glad you trust that person. But does your people trust them?

1157
02:04:14,860 --> 02:04:21,860
And this one woman stood up. How dare you? I'm like, what do you mean?

1158
02:04:21,860 --> 02:04:25,860
She said, I can't believe you'd insult me like that. I'm not insulting anybody.

1159
02:04:25,860 --> 02:04:33,860
I'm just asking, do your people on the ground trust your peer leader? Oh, and by the way, where's your peer office?

1160
02:04:33,860 --> 02:04:41,860
What's right next door to my office? I'm like, Jesus, you know, I'm it. And that happens all over the country.

1161
02:04:41,860 --> 02:04:49,860
So, again, who's and I know I'm getting off on a tangent, but man, this stuff just drives my ass crazy.

1162
02:04:49,860 --> 02:04:58,860
But so I built the right team. And most of these team members did not want to do this.

1163
02:04:58,860 --> 02:05:02,860
I'm like, I never wanted to be a peer. I'm like, yeah.

1164
02:05:02,860 --> 02:05:11,860
But everybody knows your story. Everybody knows what moves you made to get your life back in order.

1165
02:05:11,860 --> 02:05:13,860
You know, you got shot in the face. And I mean, I've got them all here.

1166
02:05:13,860 --> 02:05:20,860
I've got people about died from brain aneurysms, cancer, gunshots, alcoholics.

1167
02:05:20,860 --> 02:05:25,860
It's the people who can empathize and sympathize because they've been there themselves.

1168
02:05:25,860 --> 02:05:30,860
I don't care about no piece of paper. I can send people out and get them peer trained.

1169
02:05:30,860 --> 02:05:35,860
But I can't train a human to act like a human and serve as a human.

1170
02:05:35,860 --> 02:05:40,860
That that's the piece we're missing.

1171
02:05:40,860 --> 02:05:48,860
The other side of that within the mental house is removing a barrier of bringing our in-house counselors,

1172
02:05:48,860 --> 02:05:56,860
culturally competent counselors that that are all vetted, been in the game in 15, 20 something years that truly

1173
02:05:56,860 --> 02:06:03,860
were either one of us at one time or still us that their whole life has been around first responder trauma.

1174
02:06:03,860 --> 02:06:07,860
And they get it. And there's zero cost.

1175
02:06:07,860 --> 02:06:11,860
I mean, nobody's out, no copay, nobody's out anything.

1176
02:06:11,860 --> 02:06:15,860
And it's all anonymous when they come in and we're offering treatment modalities.

1177
02:06:15,860 --> 02:06:25,860
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.

1178
02:06:25,860 --> 02:06:36,860
We have EMDR sessions, enhanced EMDR with our we started a brain mapping neuro performance offering

1179
02:06:36,860 --> 02:06:42,860
with an outside group and neurologist group in Arizona that just has been really phenomenal.

1180
02:06:42,860 --> 02:06:47,860
And I mean, this stuff's five, seven thousand dollars to sign up if you were to go do it on your own.

1181
02:06:47,860 --> 02:06:52,860
It's free. I mean, another barrier removed.

1182
02:06:52,860 --> 02:07:01,860
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,

1183
02:07:01,860 --> 02:07:05,860
that helped reset your your REM sleep treatment pattern.

1184
02:07:05,860 --> 02:07:11,860
You know, I mean, that was one of the biggest ones when Doug and I met.

1185
02:07:11,860 --> 02:07:20,860
We I mean, we both knew REM sleep lack of which controls all your biological function, your body regulations.

1186
02:07:20,860 --> 02:07:26,860
And that's one of the most important things in your body we don't get because a lot of times

1187
02:07:26,860 --> 02:07:30,860
we do things to think we're going to get some sleep like alcohol pills.

1188
02:07:30,860 --> 02:07:34,860
But that's actually a firewall.

1189
02:07:34,860 --> 02:07:43,860
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.

1190
02:07:43,860 --> 02:07:49,860
And what's really important about REM and the reason I've spent so much money on these REM sleep treatment beds

1191
02:07:49,860 --> 02:08:00,860
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.

1192
02:08:00,860 --> 02:08:06,860
We're physically there, you know, because all trauma goes to our frontal lobe.

1193
02:08:06,860 --> 02:08:12,860
And that's where it'll stay until it's processed through REM sleep or some other treatment modality.

1194
02:08:12,860 --> 02:08:20,860
But a lot of us try to process it ourselves through these other unhealthy addictions and it gets stuck there.

1195
02:08:20,860 --> 02:08:26,860
And we can't can't imagine. I keep hearing that kid. I keep hearing the scream.

1196
02:08:26,860 --> 02:08:32,860
I keep smelling the smell. You know, we all got them because it's unprocessed in your frontal lobe.

1197
02:08:32,860 --> 02:08:41,860
You're not giving your brain a chance to process shift work just like you're battling right now.

1198
02:08:41,860 --> 02:08:50,860
But hopefully people are going to start paying attention to this that I mean, we're denying our own natural ability to heal itself.

1199
02:08:50,860 --> 02:08:59,860
And that's why I heavily invested in the REM sleep treatment beds. We've got massage therapy chairs, we've got hyperbaric chambers,

1200
02:08:59,860 --> 02:09:12,860
soon to be body scanners, sauna, red light therapy. So it's just one in-house all under all umbrella approach

1201
02:09:12,860 --> 02:09:19,860
to not expecting you have to go to like 14 different places to eat each of these treatment modalities.

1202
02:09:19,860 --> 02:09:28,860
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.

1203
02:09:28,860 --> 02:09:39,860
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.

1204
02:09:39,860 --> 02:09:47,860
I'm like, well, yeah, I am actually. But the definitions, if you look at spiritual or like community,

1205
02:09:47,860 --> 02:09:56,860
connection, being a part of something bigger than yourself, my addition is being a part of something bigger than yourself outside of work.

1206
02:09:56,860 --> 02:10:05,860
So that's our focus. And then this whole conversation I had earlier with you about choosing to put yourself intentionally to grow.

1207
02:10:05,860 --> 02:10:14,860
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

1208
02:10:14,860 --> 02:10:24,860
to continue to grow outside of my normal culture and my trusted culture. And with that, we've placed a financial piece.

1209
02:10:24,860 --> 02:10:30,860
We have a full financial program run by one of our own team members who's a certified financial planner.

1210
02:10:30,860 --> 02:10:38,860
That's that's all he does. He goes around, sets up financial planning specifically to the first responder community.

1211
02:10:38,860 --> 02:10:45,860
I mean, you know, as well as I do every time we got a race, I mean, a few things were happening.

1212
02:10:45,860 --> 02:10:51,860
Big trucks, big boobs and boats were being bought, you know, and it's that way everywhere.

1213
02:10:51,860 --> 02:10:59,860
I found out and we just we're horrible at planning for the future because we don't you know, 10 years in,

1214
02:10:59,860 --> 02:11:03,860
we don't even think about retirement is a real thing until it's a real thing.

1215
02:11:03,860 --> 02:11:11,860
And you're finally at your retirement point like, well, I can't retire because I've got a four hundred thousand dollar mortgage

1216
02:11:11,860 --> 02:11:20,860
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.

1217
02:11:20,860 --> 02:11:27,860
So we know that that's a big stressor to long term negative outcome.

1218
02:11:27,860 --> 02:11:29,860
And that's why I brought him on.

1219
02:11:29,860 --> 02:11:36,860
And that's it. That's his whole mission in life is to build these financial programs out for us,

1220
02:11:36,860 --> 02:11:42,860
not not just a general public, but to really battle the areas that we're making a lot of mistakes in.

1221
02:11:42,860 --> 02:11:50,860
And I mean, I could keep going, but again, I don't want to be the only one talking either.

1222
02:11:50,860 --> 02:11:56,860
No, it's amazing. It really is. And it's you know, again, it's progressive and it's proactive.

1223
02:11:56,860 --> 02:12:03,860
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.

1224
02:12:03,860 --> 02:12:08,860
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?

1225
02:12:08,860 --> 02:12:13,860
Some of the ridiculous things that we do in the testing process.

1226
02:12:13,860 --> 02:12:19,860
So I've worked for four departments in the end. That was four site tests for MMPI written tests,

1227
02:12:19,860 --> 02:12:23,860
which are proven to be completely ridiculous as a standalone test to select the first responder.

1228
02:12:23,860 --> 02:12:30,860
Exactly. I've lied my way through three polygraphs, you know, so that's thousands of dollars for that testing process

1229
02:12:30,860 --> 02:12:36,860
that could go into just simply hiring a counselor. Do your background, do your physical, do your written and do your interviews.

1230
02:12:36,860 --> 02:12:43,860
And after that, trust that. But, you know, if you have an in-house counselor, you can also give these young recruits

1231
02:12:43,860 --> 02:12:50,860
three, four, five sessions in their first six months a year so that you can then build a relationship at the front door,

1232
02:12:50,860 --> 02:12:58,860
normalize the mental health conversation and give them an opportunity to offload some of the things that they carried into the job.

1233
02:12:58,860 --> 02:13:04,860
And as you progress through, again, what I see is I'm hurting, I'm struggling. OK, we need to get you help.

1234
02:13:04,860 --> 02:13:11,860
Oh, shit. You know, we've got the EAP. This person is in your plan. This person's never worked with first responders.

1235
02:13:11,860 --> 02:13:15,860
And then, you know, all of a sudden they're they're desperate or they just simply can't afford it.

1236
02:13:15,860 --> 02:13:20,860
You know, they're out of out of network. And so it's one hundred and fifty, two hundred dollars per visit.

1237
02:13:20,860 --> 02:13:26,860
So by putting that in and obviously all the proactive treatments and another one I would suggest,

1238
02:13:26,860 --> 02:13:34,860
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.

1239
02:13:34,860 --> 02:13:38,860
And it's accessible to, you know, to anyone, anyone with a smartphone.

1240
02:13:38,860 --> 02:13:48,860
Used to be a big six thousand dollar piece of technology that sat in Navy SEALs, team rooms and NASA and NFL places.

1241
02:13:48,860 --> 02:13:53,860
But now you can get on your phone. But it's absolutely incredible at down regulation.

1242
02:13:53,860 --> 02:13:56,860
There's an up regulation one, too, but down regulation.

1243
02:13:56,860 --> 02:14:03,860
And I think that after a shift, you sit in your car, you do a 20 minute Newcom session with just the trip.

1244
02:14:03,860 --> 02:14:10,860
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.

1245
02:14:10,860 --> 02:14:15,860
And it punctuates that shift. And then you go home, you walk through the door and your mom, your dad, your, you know,

1246
02:14:15,860 --> 02:14:23,860
you're not angry police officer firefighter that you were a few hours before.

1247
02:14:23,860 --> 02:14:28,860
No, I'll definitely check that out.

1248
02:14:28,860 --> 02:14:34,860
So I think I want to talk about this before we end.

1249
02:14:34,860 --> 02:14:38,860
This is the piece I mean, I love everything we're doing.

1250
02:14:38,860 --> 02:14:47,860
But this piece of probably one of the most proudest things that because our headquarters is in central Oklahoma.

1251
02:14:47,860 --> 02:14:58,860
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.

1252
02:14:58,860 --> 02:15:07,860
But guess what? Because your reserve, your volunteer firefighter, your volunteer medic, your volunteer police officer are full time.

1253
02:15:07,860 --> 02:15:17,860
They're still getting a lot of like all these tornadoes that the destruction, the violence that those things caused this year were horrific.

1254
02:15:17,860 --> 02:15:23,860
I mean, I mean, all in a period of about, you know, seven to 10 days.

1255
02:15:23,860 --> 02:15:29,860
Wildfires are really bad here. And we lost some firefighters this last year.

1256
02:15:29,860 --> 02:15:35,860
So they're getting really significant like the big T trauma.

1257
02:15:35,860 --> 02:15:39,860
And I'm like, how can I expect to help them?

1258
02:15:39,860 --> 02:15:43,860
How can I get all this equipment to them if they live four hours away?

1259
02:15:43,860 --> 02:15:51,860
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.

1260
02:15:51,860 --> 02:15:58,860
They deserve it. And I was like tormented over this deal.

1261
02:15:58,860 --> 02:16:04,860
I don't know what to do. I was driving home one night on the interstate and this bus passes me.

1262
02:16:04,860 --> 02:16:09,860
And I'm like, that's it. I want to go back and get some more money.

1263
02:16:09,860 --> 02:16:20,860
Bob buses put their equipment, these rim sleep treatment beds, these neural terminals, massage therapy chairs, debriefing rooms.

1264
02:16:20,860 --> 02:16:26,860
I want to put it all on the bus and go serve our people where they they're serving.

1265
02:16:26,860 --> 02:16:35,860
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.

1266
02:16:35,860 --> 02:16:42,860
I'm like, I don't even know if this equipment can hold up to a mobile platform.

1267
02:16:42,860 --> 02:16:47,860
So that was like eight to 10 months of research with the companies, the manufacturers.

1268
02:16:47,860 --> 02:16:51,860
Finally got the green light and they, you know, I spent some in-depth time.

1269
02:16:51,860 --> 02:17:01,860
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.

1270
02:17:01,860 --> 02:17:08,860
So all these companies from the bus manufacturer to the rim sleep treatment bed, everything got behind this.

1271
02:17:08,860 --> 02:17:17,860
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.

1272
02:17:17,860 --> 02:17:26,860
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.

1273
02:17:26,860 --> 02:17:45,860
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.

1274
02:17:45,860 --> 02:17:53,860
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.

1275
02:17:53,860 --> 02:18:09,860
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.

1276
02:18:09,860 --> 02:18:18,860
And it's a benefit to all of us. You know, I'm probably going to order some more in the near future.

1277
02:18:18,860 --> 02:18:25,860
But one last thing, man, I got to bounce opener tonight. Oh, you soon as the Norman first game in the SEC.

1278
02:18:25,860 --> 02:18:34,860
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.

1279
02:18:34,860 --> 02:18:43,860
So I wanted to be in a holistic area to match our plan. And what I mean by that is I want an environment.

1280
02:18:43,860 --> 02:18:52,860
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.

1281
02:18:52,860 --> 02:18:59,860
And you hadn't even been in the wellness building yet. So guess what? Got some more money, got some more backers.

1282
02:18:59,860 --> 02:19:04,860
We're building our wellness headquarters of six hundred and forty acres.

1283
02:19:04,860 --> 02:19:07,860
We're having to share it with some of our other training facilities.

1284
02:19:07,860 --> 02:19:15,860
But about two hundred and sixty acres will be dedicated to our wellness building right in the middle of all these wooded areas.

1285
02:19:15,860 --> 02:19:24,860
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.

1286
02:19:24,860 --> 02:19:28,860
We're going to build about a 15 acre lake right in front of it. Stock it.

1287
02:19:28,860 --> 02:19:39,860
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.

1288
02:19:39,860 --> 02:19:47,860
Beaver fed equipment, campfires, fire pits, barbecue stations, place you could bring your family.

1289
02:19:47,860 --> 02:19:54,860
You could bring your whole team and just hang out. Come do, you know, thirty four, forty five minutes of some treatment modality.

1290
02:19:54,860 --> 02:20:02,860
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.

1291
02:20:02,860 --> 02:20:08,860
Riding the Rangers around. Just go have fun. And guess what? Costs nothing.

1292
02:20:08,860 --> 02:20:16,860
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.

1293
02:20:16,860 --> 02:20:25,860
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.

1294
02:20:25,860 --> 02:20:33,860
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.

1295
02:20:33,860 --> 02:20:42,860
We're replicating this thing across our country, you know, because it's not just about us. And I know you believe that.

1296
02:20:42,860 --> 02:20:52,860
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.

1297
02:20:52,860 --> 02:20:58,860
So when there is someone who's doing it right, there's someone who's cracked that nut in that particular area.

1298
02:20:58,860 --> 02:21:05,860
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.

1299
02:21:05,860 --> 02:21:10,860
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.

1300
02:21:10,860 --> 02:21:17,860
But before we do, where are the best places to learn about the program and or to reach out to you online?

1301
02:21:17,860 --> 02:21:29,860
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.

1302
02:21:29,860 --> 02:21:37,860
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.

1303
02:21:37,860 --> 02:21:49,860
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.

1304
02:21:49,860 --> 02:22:01,860
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.

1305
02:22:01,860 --> 02:22:11,860
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.

1306
02:22:11,860 --> 02:22:19,860
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Him and I was walking out of my office the other day when we just got off the phone.

1307
02:22:19,860 --> 02:22:24,860
I said, Chris, you know, James, he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I know him real well.

1308
02:22:24,860 --> 02:22:34,860
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.

1309
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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,

1310
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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.

1311
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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.

1312
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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.

1313
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And I think we're just getting started, James. I feel that 100 percent. So thank you for everything that you're doing, too.