1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,840
This episode is brought to you by Thorne and I have some incredible news for any of you

2
00:00:03,840 --> 00:00:07,960
that are in the military, first responder or medical professions.

3
00:00:07,960 --> 00:00:15,880
In an effort to give back, Thorne is now offering you an ongoing 35% off each and every one

4
00:00:15,880 --> 00:00:20,160
of your purchases of their incredible nutritional solutions.

5
00:00:20,160 --> 00:00:27,280
Thorne is the official supplement of CrossFit, the UFC, the Mayo Clinic, the Human Performance

6
00:00:27,280 --> 00:00:31,480
Project and multiple special operations organizations.

7
00:00:31,480 --> 00:00:36,420
I myself have used them for several years and that is why I brought them on as a sponsor.

8
00:00:36,420 --> 00:00:42,080
Some of my favorite products they have are their Multivitamin Elite, their Whey Protein,

9
00:00:42,080 --> 00:00:45,840
the Super EPA and then most recently, Cynaquil.

10
00:00:45,840 --> 00:00:50,120
As a firefighter, a stuntman and a martial artist, I've had my share of brain trauma

11
00:00:50,120 --> 00:00:55,520
and sleep deprivation and Cynaquil is their latest brain health supplement.

12
00:00:55,520 --> 00:01:02,640
Now to qualify for the 35% off, go to thorn.com.

13
00:01:02,640 --> 00:01:05,460
Click on sign in and then create a new account.

14
00:01:05,460 --> 00:01:09,800
You will see the opportunity to register as a first responder or member of military.

15
00:01:09,800 --> 00:01:14,680
When you click on that, it will take you through verification with GovX.

16
00:01:14,680 --> 00:01:19,000
You'll simply choose a profession, provide one piece of documentation and then you are

17
00:01:19,000 --> 00:01:20,920
verified for life.

18
00:01:20,920 --> 00:01:26,680
From that point onwards, you will continue to receive 35% off through Thorn.

19
00:01:26,680 --> 00:01:33,120
For those of you who don't qualify, there is still the 10% off using the code BTS10,

20
00:01:33,120 --> 00:01:36,240
Behind the Shield 10 for a one time purchase.

21
00:01:36,240 --> 00:01:42,040
To learn more about Thorne, go to episode 323 of the Behind the Shield podcast with Joel

22
00:01:42,040 --> 00:01:45,880
Titoro and Wes Barnett.

23
00:01:45,880 --> 00:01:47,240
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.

24
00:01:47,240 --> 00:01:51,080
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on

25
00:01:51,080 --> 00:01:57,040
the show veteran Californian law enforcement officer and the man behind Policing in America

26
00:01:57,040 --> 00:02:00,440
podcast, Tom Datro.

27
00:02:00,440 --> 00:02:06,280
Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from Tom's early life in Chicago,

28
00:02:06,280 --> 00:02:11,700
his journey into law enforcement, the impact the defund the police movement has had on

29
00:02:11,700 --> 00:02:20,640
his profession, fitness standards, the recruitment crisis, addiction, gangs and so much more.

30
00:02:20,640 --> 00:02:26,080
Now before he gets this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment,

31
00:02:26,080 --> 00:02:31,280
go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and

32
00:02:31,280 --> 00:02:33,360
leave a rating.

33
00:02:33,360 --> 00:02:38,840
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for

34
00:02:38,840 --> 00:02:40,500
others to find.

35
00:02:40,500 --> 00:02:45,920
And this is a free library of over 1000 episodes now.

36
00:02:45,920 --> 00:02:51,240
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so

37
00:02:51,240 --> 00:02:56,480
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.

38
00:02:56,480 --> 00:03:01,400
So with that being said, I introduce to you Tom Datro.

39
00:03:01,400 --> 00:03:11,400
Enjoy.

40
00:03:11,400 --> 00:03:23,960
Tom, I want to say two things to start.

41
00:03:23,960 --> 00:03:28,640
Firstly I want to thank our mutual friend, George Ryan for bringing us together and secondly

42
00:03:28,640 --> 00:03:32,840
I want to welcome you onto the Behind the Shield podcast today.

43
00:03:32,840 --> 00:03:33,840
Thank you, sir.

44
00:03:33,840 --> 00:03:34,840
It is truly it's an honor.

45
00:03:34,840 --> 00:03:39,760
I'm super excited to be here and yeah, I think we are we all love George.

46
00:03:39,760 --> 00:03:43,000
So thank you, George, for making the connection.

47
00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:47,240
So where roughly on planet earth we finding you today?

48
00:03:47,240 --> 00:03:48,240
That's awesome.

49
00:03:48,240 --> 00:03:49,240
I love how you were to that.

50
00:03:49,240 --> 00:03:50,240
So I'm going to be in California.

51
00:03:50,240 --> 00:03:52,240
I'm going to be in Southern California.

52
00:03:52,240 --> 00:03:53,240
Brilliant.

53
00:03:53,240 --> 00:03:57,300
Well, I would love to start the very beginning of your timeline.

54
00:03:57,300 --> 00:04:01,000
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what

55
00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:04,000
your parents did, how many siblings.

56
00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:09,000
You know, this will be this will be a little bit profound for me and I know that seems

57
00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:10,000
like a strong word.

58
00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:12,200
I just lost my mother.

59
00:04:12,200 --> 00:04:14,520
Actually it was unexpected.

60
00:04:14,520 --> 00:04:22,300
She ended up having a stroke on October 10th and by October 14th she had succumbed to that.

61
00:04:22,300 --> 00:04:25,360
So forgive me if I get a little bit emotional.

62
00:04:25,360 --> 00:04:27,760
I haven't really I've been processing this.

63
00:04:27,760 --> 00:04:32,280
You see I'm wearing her Fitbit right now because I'm not ready to give it up.

64
00:04:32,280 --> 00:04:33,360
So here's the deal.

65
00:04:33,360 --> 00:04:41,600
I was born in the south side of Chicago to a 17 year old single mother.

66
00:04:41,600 --> 00:04:44,960
She was a bit of a wild child.

67
00:04:44,960 --> 00:04:46,680
I was born in 1971.

68
00:04:46,680 --> 00:04:51,240
So Chicago is a very rough part of town, especially the south side.

69
00:04:51,240 --> 00:04:54,720
Really don't know my biological father that well.

70
00:04:54,720 --> 00:04:55,920
He's actually passed away.

71
00:04:55,920 --> 00:04:57,880
He passed away some years ago.

72
00:04:57,880 --> 00:04:59,680
Never had any kind of relationship with him.

73
00:04:59,680 --> 00:05:01,140
I am his namesake.

74
00:05:01,140 --> 00:05:02,480
His name was Tom.

75
00:05:02,480 --> 00:05:06,520
So I'm a Tom Jr. but really never knew him.

76
00:05:06,520 --> 00:05:12,280
I think my mom and him were together for enough to put me on this earth and that was about

77
00:05:12,280 --> 00:05:13,520
it.

78
00:05:13,520 --> 00:05:18,160
My mom would remarry later on but that wasn't a healthy relationship either.

79
00:05:18,160 --> 00:05:21,360
So that kind of came and went.

80
00:05:21,360 --> 00:05:28,280
Grew up in the south side of Chicago where my grandmother at a young age, to give you

81
00:05:28,280 --> 00:05:34,800
an idea of the value system that I was around, said get yourself a good city job as like

82
00:05:34,800 --> 00:05:40,000
a trash collector or a curb breaker and that's how you're going to make it kid.

83
00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:41,880
Just get yourself a good city job.

84
00:05:41,880 --> 00:05:47,500
And you know we weren't the kind of family we come from very very modest means food stamps

85
00:05:47,500 --> 00:05:49,640
and government cheese and all that.

86
00:05:49,640 --> 00:05:51,140
We didn't have big ambitions.

87
00:05:51,140 --> 00:05:52,800
We didn't have big hopes.

88
00:05:52,800 --> 00:05:59,920
So to kind of traverse the storyline to where I am today, it's quite the story for me.

89
00:05:59,920 --> 00:06:02,760
I fell, I think they kicked me out of high school.

90
00:06:02,760 --> 00:06:04,080
I think they were like you're done.

91
00:06:04,080 --> 00:06:05,080
You're so bad.

92
00:06:05,080 --> 00:06:06,080
Get out.

93
00:06:06,080 --> 00:06:07,320
We don't want you here anymore.

94
00:06:07,320 --> 00:06:10,680
Probably graduated high school with a 1.9 GPA.

95
00:06:10,680 --> 00:06:13,560
I tried to join the military.

96
00:06:13,560 --> 00:06:17,180
I had asthma so the Marines wouldn't take me back then.

97
00:06:17,180 --> 00:06:18,800
The army wouldn't take me.

98
00:06:18,800 --> 00:06:23,680
And I had a huge fear about being stuck on a boat in the middle of the water.

99
00:06:23,680 --> 00:06:24,960
So I never even thought about the Navy.

100
00:06:24,960 --> 00:06:28,360
In hindsight, should have joined the Coast Guard or should have joined the Air Force

101
00:06:28,360 --> 00:06:30,960
but I didn't know any better.

102
00:06:30,960 --> 00:06:37,320
I fumbled around life just trying to figure out who I am and what I'm supposed to be.

103
00:06:37,320 --> 00:06:39,040
I got into fitness early on.

104
00:06:39,040 --> 00:06:40,520
I was a spin instructor.

105
00:06:40,520 --> 00:06:44,960
I got into mixed martial arts because you grew up in the, before it was called mixed

106
00:06:44,960 --> 00:06:48,280
martial arts actually, just got into a bunch of different martial arts.

107
00:06:48,280 --> 00:06:50,840
Went up in the South Side of Chicago as a young punk.

108
00:06:50,840 --> 00:06:52,440
You got into fights all the time.

109
00:06:52,440 --> 00:06:54,720
And it just, you know, you want to learn to defend yourself.

110
00:06:54,720 --> 00:06:57,000
So I was always a bit of a scrapper.

111
00:06:57,000 --> 00:06:58,000
Not anymore.

112
00:06:58,000 --> 00:06:59,000
Not anymore.

113
00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:00,000
I want to buy someone dinner.

114
00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:01,000
I don't want to fight anybody anymore.

115
00:07:01,000 --> 00:07:03,400
Those days are behind me.

116
00:07:03,400 --> 00:07:08,720
Through a whole series of events, a whole different series of events, I found myself

117
00:07:08,720 --> 00:07:11,000
in the world of academia.

118
00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:14,600
And I ended up completing an undergraduate degree.

119
00:07:14,600 --> 00:07:19,120
I did get a master's degree and I did finish my doctoral work at the University of Southern

120
00:07:19,120 --> 00:07:20,120
California.

121
00:07:20,120 --> 00:07:23,640
So any fellow Trojans out there, fight on.

122
00:07:23,640 --> 00:07:29,560
I joined law enforcement and I've been 22 years now in law enforcement.

123
00:07:29,560 --> 00:07:35,160
Again, through just a whole series of different events, found myself on the West Coast and

124
00:07:35,160 --> 00:07:39,720
got in with a very large, prominent West Coast agency and I've been there for the past 22

125
00:07:39,720 --> 00:07:40,720
years.

126
00:07:40,720 --> 00:07:44,080
I started later in life in my policing endeavor.

127
00:07:44,080 --> 00:07:45,920
I was 31 years old.

128
00:07:45,920 --> 00:07:49,760
So that's an old guy in the academy.

129
00:07:49,760 --> 00:07:53,600
And I have always enjoyed learning.

130
00:07:53,600 --> 00:07:57,240
I just knew I never know enough.

131
00:07:57,240 --> 00:08:00,720
And I knew that I never know enough.

132
00:08:00,720 --> 00:08:05,320
So I always enjoy trying to learn more about just everything, whether it's religion or

133
00:08:05,320 --> 00:08:08,560
physics or automobiles, whatever it is.

134
00:08:08,560 --> 00:08:13,040
And I'm, you know, I know so little about every of these topics, but I did notice something

135
00:08:13,040 --> 00:08:17,380
in policing and I'll start to kind of take this broad perspective and start narrowing

136
00:08:17,380 --> 00:08:18,480
it down.

137
00:08:18,480 --> 00:08:26,920
It felt as though we were training our police officers like the way we train grammar school

138
00:08:26,920 --> 00:08:27,920
students.

139
00:08:27,920 --> 00:08:33,720
I remember standing up in class, reading from a book, two or three paragraphs, and then

140
00:08:33,720 --> 00:08:34,960
I would sit down.

141
00:08:34,960 --> 00:08:39,040
Somebody would stand up next to me and that's how we learned about the laws of arrest.

142
00:08:39,040 --> 00:08:40,840
And that's how we learned about the penal code.

143
00:08:40,840 --> 00:08:45,840
And sure, when we learned tactics, it was a little bit more kinetic, but the training

144
00:08:45,840 --> 00:08:53,640
was very just heavy lecture, no input, not at all the Socratic method of, you know, they

145
00:08:53,640 --> 00:08:56,800
just assume you don't know anything coming into this job and we're going to teach you

146
00:08:56,800 --> 00:08:57,800
everything.

147
00:08:57,800 --> 00:09:02,000
And it was always a, I don't even want to call it a passion.

148
00:09:02,000 --> 00:09:08,020
It was almost like an imperative of mine to change how police officers are trained, to

149
00:09:08,020 --> 00:09:14,360
make them think you're not just a law enforcement officer, you're a problem solver.

150
00:09:14,360 --> 00:09:20,000
Because if you look at everything through the lens of enforcing the law, you limit your

151
00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:23,680
cognitive capacity to solve a problem.

152
00:09:23,680 --> 00:09:26,200
It just opens it up for you cognitively.

153
00:09:26,200 --> 00:09:30,540
So the better part of my career, the latter part of my career, the last seven years I've

154
00:09:30,540 --> 00:09:34,540
been in training and education within the department, I still dip my toe in the pond

155
00:09:34,540 --> 00:09:35,540
of operations.

156
00:09:35,540 --> 00:09:39,240
I still get out there a little bit, not nearly to the extent that I once did.

157
00:09:39,240 --> 00:09:44,840
And I've been traveling around the country and even around the world to some smaller

158
00:09:44,840 --> 00:09:50,300
countries that are trying to professionalize their police agencies, teaching them how to

159
00:09:50,300 --> 00:09:54,800
actually think about being a police officer.

160
00:09:54,800 --> 00:10:00,440
Not this binary thought of do this, don't do this, break the law, don't break the law.

161
00:10:00,440 --> 00:10:05,600
Society writ large has dropped a lot of problems on the doorstep of policing.

162
00:10:05,600 --> 00:10:09,160
We'll take mental health and homelessness as two options.

163
00:10:09,160 --> 00:10:12,860
Yet we don't learn a thing about those in the academy.

164
00:10:12,860 --> 00:10:18,880
But if we learned how to think and if we learned how to solve problems, then irrespective of

165
00:10:18,880 --> 00:10:23,260
what falls on our doorstep, we just might be able to handle a little bit better than

166
00:10:23,260 --> 00:10:24,260
we do now.

167
00:10:24,260 --> 00:10:25,260
I've been talking a lot.

168
00:10:25,260 --> 00:10:28,080
I'm going to pause, sir, and see if you have anything to say.

169
00:10:28,080 --> 00:10:31,600
No, no, absolutely, I'm going to take you all the way back to the South Side of Chicago

170
00:10:31,600 --> 00:10:32,600
though.

171
00:10:32,600 --> 00:10:36,440
What was the environment that you were surrounded?

172
00:10:36,440 --> 00:10:39,640
What were some of the negative pulls that you were working against?

173
00:10:39,640 --> 00:10:44,360
And then what was your relationship with law enforcement at that age in that community?

174
00:10:44,360 --> 00:10:46,700
God, such a great question.

175
00:10:46,700 --> 00:10:49,800
Everybody around me was a single parent household.

176
00:10:49,800 --> 00:10:51,760
I grew up in an apartment building.

177
00:10:51,760 --> 00:10:54,640
Everybody around me had financial insecurities.

178
00:10:54,640 --> 00:11:00,440
There were people who had houses, little bungalows, but there was not opulence.

179
00:11:00,440 --> 00:11:06,480
You had lower middle class, which is probably where I'd put myself, and then middle class.

180
00:11:06,480 --> 00:11:10,240
We were never starving, but we had government intervention to help.

181
00:11:10,240 --> 00:11:14,120
We always had heat and electricity and whatnot, so I don't want to oversell it.

182
00:11:14,120 --> 00:11:16,940
But times were very lean.

183
00:11:16,940 --> 00:11:19,080
It was a rough part of town.

184
00:11:19,080 --> 00:11:25,440
It was, think of it almost like the West Side story, the 33rd Street kids had a rivalry

185
00:11:25,440 --> 00:11:31,480
with the 37th Street kids, and the 31st Street kids, you didn't walk down that way.

186
00:11:31,480 --> 00:11:33,080
It wasn't gang.

187
00:11:33,080 --> 00:11:35,200
It was more like gang light.

188
00:11:35,200 --> 00:11:38,400
It was just groups of kids that grew up in this little section.

189
00:11:38,400 --> 00:11:43,860
And Chicago, especially back then, was very segregated.

190
00:11:43,860 --> 00:11:45,960
So it was segregated by race in general.

191
00:11:45,960 --> 00:11:49,500
We had the white neighborhoods and the black neighborhoods and Hispanic neighborhoods.

192
00:11:49,500 --> 00:11:54,400
But then even in those white neighborhoods, you had the Italians and the Polish and the

193
00:11:54,400 --> 00:12:03,000
Irish, and even they didn't stray too far from their own little nests.

194
00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:06,040
I look back fondly on those times.

195
00:12:06,040 --> 00:12:07,680
You play in the alley.

196
00:12:07,680 --> 00:12:12,320
You'd get a refrigerator cardboard box that somebody would leave, and people would put

197
00:12:12,320 --> 00:12:15,760
kids in this box, and you'd roll it down the alley.

198
00:12:15,760 --> 00:12:20,640
You know, we had crazy weather in Chicago, so you'd have these incredible snowball fights

199
00:12:20,640 --> 00:12:25,240
and football games where the 33rd Street kids would play the 37th Street kids in football

200
00:12:25,240 --> 00:12:27,360
when it would snow.

201
00:12:27,360 --> 00:12:29,880
So there was a lot of camaraderie.

202
00:12:29,880 --> 00:12:34,240
Chicago didn't get ultra-violent, I'd say, until like the 90s.

203
00:12:34,240 --> 00:12:38,020
That's when people were starting to get shot for Air Jordans.

204
00:12:38,020 --> 00:12:45,280
And by that time, I'm already late teens, early 20s, so the youth aspect is gone.

205
00:12:45,280 --> 00:12:49,120
You know, I was in that Bridgeport neighborhood.

206
00:12:49,120 --> 00:12:50,640
And I mean, just rough.

207
00:12:50,640 --> 00:12:51,760
James, I'll give you an example.

208
00:12:51,760 --> 00:12:53,120
I was eight years old.

209
00:12:53,120 --> 00:12:55,560
I remember walking into my grandmother's little apartment.

210
00:12:55,560 --> 00:13:00,040
I'm crying because I got punched in the face by Bobby Sugalowski.

211
00:13:00,040 --> 00:13:01,680
And she said, what is going on?

212
00:13:01,680 --> 00:13:04,320
And I said, Bobby Sugalowski punched me in the face, and I'm crying.

213
00:13:04,320 --> 00:13:09,080
And I remember Grandma, who was a tough little Lithuanian immigrant, pinched me with these

214
00:13:09,080 --> 00:13:11,480
brittle nails that were like prehistoric.

215
00:13:11,480 --> 00:13:13,600
And I said, ow, why would you pinch me?

216
00:13:13,600 --> 00:13:16,240
She said, you go back out there, and you don't let anybody punch.

217
00:13:16,240 --> 00:13:17,240
You go back and fight.

218
00:13:17,240 --> 00:13:19,340
And I walk outside.

219
00:13:19,340 --> 00:13:22,480
And I walk up to Bobby Sugalowski, and all the older guys are around.

220
00:13:22,480 --> 00:13:24,720
And I said, my grandma said, we got to fight.

221
00:13:24,720 --> 00:13:28,360
And so we just start, as eight-year-olds do, right?

222
00:13:28,360 --> 00:13:29,920
We're not skilled fighters.

223
00:13:29,920 --> 00:13:31,920
We're just slapping the hell out of each other.

224
00:13:31,920 --> 00:13:35,080
And then the older guys broke it up and said, all right, it's a tie.

225
00:13:35,080 --> 00:13:36,080
It's a tie.

226
00:13:36,080 --> 00:13:37,080
You go, then we're both crying.

227
00:13:37,080 --> 00:13:39,320
And my grandmother waited, and I went in and I cried.

228
00:13:39,320 --> 00:13:42,360
But that was the lessons of a Lithuanian immigrant.

229
00:13:42,360 --> 00:13:44,200
You don't just get punched in the face.

230
00:13:44,200 --> 00:13:46,560
You're a tough Chicago kid.

231
00:13:46,560 --> 00:13:47,560
You punch back.

232
00:13:47,560 --> 00:13:48,560
And if you get beat up, you get beat up.

233
00:13:48,560 --> 00:13:50,160
But you fight.

234
00:13:50,160 --> 00:13:52,760
And so that was Grandma's kind of mentality.

235
00:13:52,760 --> 00:13:56,520
Yeah, man, I was back there recently.

236
00:13:56,520 --> 00:14:01,600
My mom lived and passed away in the exact same neighborhood.

237
00:14:01,600 --> 00:14:04,640
She spent 72 years in this neighborhood.

238
00:14:04,640 --> 00:14:06,520
This is what people do in Bridgeport.

239
00:14:06,520 --> 00:14:11,040
And I'm sure it's like that in Boston and some of these enclaves in New York City and

240
00:14:11,040 --> 00:14:12,880
Philly.

241
00:14:12,880 --> 00:14:18,620
She grew up across the street from the church that we had her final service on.

242
00:14:18,620 --> 00:14:22,080
It's just the way it is in the south side of Chicago.

243
00:14:22,080 --> 00:14:26,120
I'll pause, see if anything comes up that may be Peter curiosity.

244
00:14:26,120 --> 00:14:29,760
Well, let's go back even further with the generations.

245
00:14:29,760 --> 00:14:32,880
What do you remember about your grandmother's immigration story?

246
00:14:32,880 --> 00:14:37,760
Because there's so much depth to this genealogy of the guests that we come on.

247
00:14:37,760 --> 00:14:38,760
It's so interesting.

248
00:14:38,760 --> 00:14:49,520
You know, it the way we categorize our life experiences today was so different than how

249
00:14:49,520 --> 00:14:51,720
they did it 50 years ago.

250
00:14:51,720 --> 00:14:54,960
They just didn't share as much.

251
00:14:54,960 --> 00:15:00,880
You know, Grandma was brought here by her mother on a boat.

252
00:15:00,880 --> 00:15:02,740
But I don't know much about it.

253
00:15:02,740 --> 00:15:04,880
Life had so many challenges.

254
00:15:04,880 --> 00:15:08,360
We didn't sit around at night talking about a lot of stuff.

255
00:15:08,360 --> 00:15:13,360
There was always some problem to be solved, whether it was, you know, the food fridge

256
00:15:13,360 --> 00:15:17,360
was a little bit light or the gunshots in the neighborhood, whatever.

257
00:15:17,360 --> 00:15:18,740
There's always something.

258
00:15:18,740 --> 00:15:24,340
My mom's, you know, relationships and then the brokenness of it or the abuse of stepdad.

259
00:15:24,340 --> 00:15:26,640
So there really wasn't a lot of time to learn.

260
00:15:26,640 --> 00:15:30,480
I wish I knew more about my grandmother's story.

261
00:15:30,480 --> 00:15:34,360
She's a one Adele Adele stack, wonderful, wonderful woman.

262
00:15:34,360 --> 00:15:36,800
Tough, tough as nails.

263
00:15:36,800 --> 00:15:44,200
Her husband served proudly in the World War two, and he died due to complications coming

264
00:15:44,200 --> 00:15:45,720
home from the war.

265
00:15:45,720 --> 00:15:48,320
God, I don't know.

266
00:15:48,320 --> 00:15:52,280
I know her father was killed in Chicago.

267
00:15:52,280 --> 00:15:57,680
He was stabbed to death for loose change in a neighborhood not too far from where Bridgeport

268
00:15:57,680 --> 00:15:58,680
is.

269
00:15:58,680 --> 00:16:00,560
I think it's now it was called Back of the Yards.

270
00:16:00,560 --> 00:16:03,920
That's the name of the neighborhood, Back of the Yards, and it's where the stocks, the

271
00:16:03,920 --> 00:16:05,200
stockyards are.

272
00:16:05,200 --> 00:16:08,920
So this is where a lot of men would just, you know, take all the beef and the cattle

273
00:16:08,920 --> 00:16:12,280
and they would slaughter the cattle and, you know, chop it up and everything.

274
00:16:12,280 --> 00:16:14,920
So he was one of those kind of hard men, but I never met him.

275
00:16:14,920 --> 00:16:18,240
I never knew him and grandma never talked about him much just from the fact that he

276
00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:21,440
died young.

277
00:16:21,440 --> 00:16:25,040
I don't I don't know a lot of my family tree.

278
00:16:25,040 --> 00:16:30,040
You know, grandma was all I knew, and I didn't have any connection to my biological father's

279
00:16:30,040 --> 00:16:32,000
side because he was gone.

280
00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:37,420
So it really starts with my grandmother and it kind of ends with my mom.

281
00:16:37,420 --> 00:16:39,600
And they were both Bridgeporters.

282
00:16:39,600 --> 00:16:45,560
And I just know grandma was brought here very, very young, maybe one years old from her from

283
00:16:45,560 --> 00:16:49,280
her mother, who I honestly I'm embarrassed to say I don't even know her name.

284
00:16:49,280 --> 00:16:55,080
I don't know my great grandmother's name because my grandmother never spoke about her too much.

285
00:16:55,080 --> 00:16:59,480
What about the interaction with law enforcement when you were a young man?

286
00:16:59,480 --> 00:17:00,480
What was the relationship?

287
00:17:00,480 --> 00:17:02,160
Were they walking the beat?

288
00:17:02,160 --> 00:17:05,880
Were they ruling with an iron fist or a lot more kind of community minded?

289
00:17:05,880 --> 00:17:06,880
Yeah.

290
00:17:06,880 --> 00:17:07,880
Yeah.

291
00:17:07,880 --> 00:17:08,880
Thank you for the reminder.

292
00:17:08,880 --> 00:17:09,880
Terrible.

293
00:17:09,880 --> 00:17:10,880
Hated them.

294
00:17:10,880 --> 00:17:11,880
Hated the cops.

295
00:17:11,880 --> 00:17:12,880
Absolutely.

296
00:17:12,880 --> 00:17:16,520
They were Chicago police were heavy handed.

297
00:17:16,520 --> 00:17:18,160
They were arrogant.

298
00:17:18,160 --> 00:17:19,440
They could do whatever they wanted.

299
00:17:19,440 --> 00:17:24,800
They were like they were like the palace guards that were, you know, because they served the

300
00:17:24,800 --> 00:17:28,080
king they could come and go and do whatever the hell they wanted.

301
00:17:28,080 --> 00:17:30,640
They used to look down on us because we were Bridgeporters.

302
00:17:30,640 --> 00:17:33,640
We were the dirty South Side kids.

303
00:17:33,640 --> 00:17:38,320
We would be playing football in the street and they would drive down the street and say,

304
00:17:38,320 --> 00:17:39,320
give me that football.

305
00:17:39,320 --> 00:17:40,380
You can't be playing in the street.

306
00:17:40,380 --> 00:17:45,280
They would say things like street cars, sidewalk people, and they would take our football and

307
00:17:45,280 --> 00:17:46,960
just leave.

308
00:17:46,960 --> 00:17:51,460
It was no wonder come Halloween or winter we would throw stuff at their cars.

309
00:17:51,460 --> 00:17:55,000
We would line up and wait for them to drive and throw snowballs at the cars.

310
00:17:55,000 --> 00:17:57,600
Or on Halloween we would throw eggs at their cars.

311
00:17:57,600 --> 00:18:01,640
Like it was such a contentious relationship with them.

312
00:18:01,640 --> 00:18:03,720
I'm sure there were good cops.

313
00:18:03,720 --> 00:18:05,920
I'm sure there were good cops.

314
00:18:05,920 --> 00:18:10,560
And we were punks, but we weren't like in the grand scheme of things.

315
00:18:10,560 --> 00:18:18,000
We were just kids without dads running around raising havoc, but we weren't breaking laws.

316
00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:21,560
We were juvenile delinquents, but we showed up for school.

317
00:18:21,560 --> 00:18:24,360
We would stay out past curfew.

318
00:18:24,360 --> 00:18:26,740
We would run through people's gangways.

319
00:18:26,740 --> 00:18:29,800
We would ding dong ditch, you know, that kind of stuff.

320
00:18:29,800 --> 00:18:32,720
Low level, low level, we weren't like bad kids.

321
00:18:32,720 --> 00:18:36,640
We never hurt anybody or would jump other kids.

322
00:18:36,640 --> 00:18:41,680
Just a rowdy group of little bandits running around raising hell.

323
00:18:41,680 --> 00:18:45,560
But in our way, you know, we still loved our mom and grandmothers.

324
00:18:45,560 --> 00:18:48,400
Every parent could hit every other kid.

325
00:18:48,400 --> 00:18:49,440
Like that should be known.

326
00:18:49,440 --> 00:18:54,000
Like Jimmy Spall, a good friend of mine, firefighter, Chicago firefighter.

327
00:18:54,000 --> 00:18:58,680
Jimmy and I were in the apartment and we were doing something, we were playing with matches,

328
00:18:58,680 --> 00:19:03,320
you know, in the bathroom, putting stuff on fire in the bathtub.

329
00:19:03,320 --> 00:19:07,000
Mrs. Spall, who I still call her Mrs. Spall to this day, would come in and hit both of

330
00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:08,000
us.

331
00:19:08,000 --> 00:19:09,000
You little sons of a bitch.

332
00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:10,000
And shoot, and that's it.

333
00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:12,120
Like I didn't think, oh, that's abuse.

334
00:19:12,120 --> 00:19:16,560
I wouldn't go home and tell my mom Mrs. Spall hit me because my mom would hit me for doing

335
00:19:16,560 --> 00:19:19,200
something that Mrs. Spall had to hit me for.

336
00:19:19,200 --> 00:19:20,880
And my mom could hit other kids too.

337
00:19:20,880 --> 00:19:23,460
So that you think of like that kind of environment.

338
00:19:23,460 --> 00:19:25,080
But we hated the cops.

339
00:19:25,080 --> 00:19:27,400
They were not mentors.

340
00:19:27,400 --> 00:19:30,000
They were not, they wouldn't stop and play catch with us.

341
00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:34,520
It was, it was, I never wanted to be a cop.

342
00:19:34,520 --> 00:19:35,520
Never.

343
00:19:35,520 --> 00:19:43,120
It's just by a strange, all my buddies grew up and became firefighters, cops, curb breakers,

344
00:19:43,120 --> 00:19:44,120
mail carriers.

345
00:19:44,120 --> 00:19:46,040
We all, they all got civil service jobs.

346
00:19:46,040 --> 00:19:47,320
And I went into academia.

347
00:19:47,320 --> 00:19:49,640
I tried to leave that world behind.

348
00:19:49,640 --> 00:19:55,160
But when I would meet my buddies and hear their stories, I got romanticized by it.

349
00:19:55,160 --> 00:20:00,960
So that's when I had a little bit of a career change and went into the civil service and

350
00:20:00,960 --> 00:20:01,960
policing.

351
00:20:01,960 --> 00:20:05,320
But please, I haven't thought about these memories since I was a kid.

352
00:20:05,320 --> 00:20:06,880
So it's fun to even think about it.

353
00:20:06,880 --> 00:20:09,240
There's any, anything else that comes up.

354
00:20:09,240 --> 00:20:13,960
Yeah, no, I mean, it's, this is why I love the, the, the, the early years of anyone.

355
00:20:13,960 --> 00:20:17,760
There's so much gold there, especially in the family members as well.

356
00:20:17,760 --> 00:20:22,960
You mentioned that the police officers seem to not be mentor material.

357
00:20:22,960 --> 00:20:25,760
You were raised, you know, with a single mother.

358
00:20:25,760 --> 00:20:27,160
Who were the role models?

359
00:20:27,160 --> 00:20:34,360
Who were the mentors that you encountered that took a 1.9 GPA high school kid into the

360
00:20:34,360 --> 00:20:37,360
world of academics?

361
00:20:37,360 --> 00:20:43,960
Yeah, you know, these are interesting questions, James, because I don't look back fondly at

362
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:53,160
like an inspiration or somebody that motivated in hindsight, I admire my mother and hindsight.

363
00:20:53,160 --> 00:20:59,960
I admire my grandmother because they did the best they could with the hand they were dealt.

364
00:20:59,960 --> 00:21:02,320
Excuse me one moment.

365
00:21:02,320 --> 00:21:04,040
Excuse me.

366
00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:11,320
But there wasn't this sort of, you know, like Yogi on the mountain or this mentor.

367
00:21:11,320 --> 00:21:13,360
It was fumbling.

368
00:21:13,360 --> 00:21:21,920
It was just fumbling through and making mistakes and hitting dead ends that just said, I got

369
00:21:21,920 --> 00:21:23,360
to try something different.

370
00:21:23,360 --> 00:21:26,160
I'm, I'm so tired of being broke.

371
00:21:26,160 --> 00:21:28,960
I'm so tired of not being able to go anywhere.

372
00:21:28,960 --> 00:21:34,840
I'm tired of having to use credit cards to buy groceries for my mom and then just defaulting

373
00:21:34,840 --> 00:21:35,840
on the credit card.

374
00:21:35,840 --> 00:21:42,340
You know, like I just got so tired of that life that you see people join fire departments

375
00:21:42,340 --> 00:21:45,720
when they're 20 and a half and they, they start to get into a little bit of money and

376
00:21:45,720 --> 00:21:47,780
their life starts to change a little bit.

377
00:21:47,780 --> 00:21:54,280
So I think my group of buddies, my South side buddies, just you either got out.

378
00:21:54,280 --> 00:21:56,580
And when I say got out, some of them still live in the neighborhood.

379
00:21:56,580 --> 00:21:59,880
You either got killed, something happened to you.

380
00:21:59,880 --> 00:22:05,400
You drank and drove or you got into some crazy fight or you got into prison or you just fumbled

381
00:22:05,400 --> 00:22:07,520
your way through and figured out how this worked.

382
00:22:07,520 --> 00:22:09,000
And we would mimic that.

383
00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:11,940
Oh, Ricky's a runner at the board of options downtown.

384
00:22:11,940 --> 00:22:12,940
I'm going to do that.

385
00:22:12,940 --> 00:22:17,300
Or so and so's delivering, they're cutting cable back then when we used to have cable

386
00:22:17,300 --> 00:22:19,320
systems and you'd climb up the poles.

387
00:22:19,320 --> 00:22:21,200
So and so joined the fire department.

388
00:22:21,200 --> 00:22:27,480
So you just fumble through and find your way, whether it's divine intervention, a little

389
00:22:27,480 --> 00:22:28,480
lot of luck.

390
00:22:28,480 --> 00:22:35,260
I just sort of fumbled my way to the North side of Chicago, which was the yuppie area.

391
00:22:35,260 --> 00:22:39,420
This was the more pretentious, the busy, it was the white collared compared to the blue

392
00:22:39,420 --> 00:22:40,600
collared.

393
00:22:40,600 --> 00:22:46,320
And I think my first exposure was at DePaul University and just seeing these like young

394
00:22:46,320 --> 00:22:50,080
minds walking around and people talking, I loved it.

395
00:22:50,080 --> 00:22:51,980
I loved the campus.

396
00:22:51,980 --> 00:22:57,160
I loved just walking around feeling like these people were so superior, like they were just

397
00:22:57,160 --> 00:22:58,160
so smart.

398
00:22:58,160 --> 00:23:00,580
And I kind of just got sucked into that.

399
00:23:00,580 --> 00:23:05,820
So maybe I had a propensity for education and knowledge, but I never got to realize

400
00:23:05,820 --> 00:23:08,540
it because I had so many problems.

401
00:23:08,540 --> 00:23:12,800
As a kid, I never got to just come home and study.

402
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:17,280
When you were struggling in school, I was a straight C student in school and I've talked

403
00:23:17,280 --> 00:23:22,640
about in here before when I went to fire school, EMT, paramedic, I was a straight A student.

404
00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:27,180
And for me, it was just I needed that tactile element needed to make sense.

405
00:23:27,180 --> 00:23:30,000
You tell me, oh, memorize it because you have to.

406
00:23:30,000 --> 00:23:31,880
It just doesn't work in my world.

407
00:23:31,880 --> 00:23:38,120
But if you show me how this mathematics works in the hydraulics of a hose and friction loss,

408
00:23:38,120 --> 00:23:40,200
now all of a sudden it makes sense.

409
00:23:40,200 --> 00:23:45,240
What was that kind of aha moment or that shift that you had from struggling in education

410
00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:48,040
to thriving in education?

411
00:23:48,040 --> 00:23:52,240
So OK, so I think it was twofold.

412
00:23:52,240 --> 00:23:56,760
I was always a very shy, insecure kid.

413
00:23:56,760 --> 00:24:02,440
And growing up just not having as much and whatnot, you carry these around you.

414
00:24:02,440 --> 00:24:05,640
But in the north side, I could sort of redefine myself.

415
00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:12,480
I wasn't Tommy Detro, the kid without a dad whose mom is going to the church to get the

416
00:24:12,480 --> 00:24:13,480
food bank.

417
00:24:13,480 --> 00:24:17,520
You know, I got I could shed that nobody knew me.

418
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:22,320
And I remember just like sitting in classes.

419
00:24:22,320 --> 00:24:23,320
I would just walk in.

420
00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:27,240
You could just walk into the classes and just hearing things.

421
00:24:27,240 --> 00:24:33,060
And one particular time there was some mock.

422
00:24:33,060 --> 00:24:35,260
These kids were going to be they wanted to go to law school.

423
00:24:35,260 --> 00:24:38,320
So there were probably political science undergraduates.

424
00:24:38,320 --> 00:24:45,120
And I happened to be in this area and they needed volunteers just so they could practice.

425
00:24:45,120 --> 00:24:47,040
They were going to say, here, you're a witness.

426
00:24:47,040 --> 00:24:49,320
Sit over on that desk and they're going to cross examine you.

427
00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:51,080
And I really had nothing.

428
00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:54,140
It was just a warm body that they can talk to.

429
00:24:54,140 --> 00:24:58,060
And I remember bantering back and forth.

430
00:24:58,060 --> 00:25:05,800
You know, my brain remembers it as the character in Good Will Hunting, where that tough kid

431
00:25:05,800 --> 00:25:10,240
was real smart and was able to tell everybody, like, how about them apples?

432
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:11,820
But it wasn't.

433
00:25:11,820 --> 00:25:15,200
They handedly outmaneuvered me intellectually.

434
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:17,600
But I was able to talk back and forth.

435
00:25:17,600 --> 00:25:20,220
And kids were asking me, like, I call them kids.

436
00:25:20,220 --> 00:25:22,120
The students were saying, hey, what are you studying?

437
00:25:22,120 --> 00:25:23,120
Where do you go?

438
00:25:23,120 --> 00:25:24,720
That was really funny what you did.

439
00:25:24,720 --> 00:25:26,240
And I remember having to lie.

440
00:25:26,240 --> 00:25:27,240
Oh, yeah.

441
00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:29,120
I'm studying this or I'm studying that.

442
00:25:29,120 --> 00:25:32,120
I just completely BSed myself.

443
00:25:32,120 --> 00:25:35,280
And I thought, they think I'm smart.

444
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:41,240
Like, they think I'm smart and they like me and they invited me to this next little thing.

445
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:45,200
And I'm never going to see them again because I don't have class and I can't be there.

446
00:25:45,200 --> 00:25:52,360
And so what I ended up doing was I ended up getting a job at DePaul University back in

447
00:25:52,360 --> 00:25:53,360
the early 90s.

448
00:25:53,360 --> 00:25:59,880
And my job was loading paper into these huge printers because back then there were no client

449
00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:02,240
server type of instant information.

450
00:26:02,240 --> 00:26:05,360
You'd have mainframe computing.

451
00:26:05,360 --> 00:26:10,320
So the accounting section had their mainframe and the accounts payable had theirs and the

452
00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:11,840
human resources had theirs.

453
00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:15,960
And at the end of the day, they would upload their data on these big reels.

454
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:20,520
I would take these reels, put them into a machine, and then they would create a report.

455
00:26:20,520 --> 00:26:25,120
And my job was to load the reel, wait, when the report was ready, go to some keyboard

456
00:26:25,120 --> 00:26:29,040
and say print this out and literally stacks of paper.

457
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:32,680
My job was to open a box of paper and put in these printers.

458
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:34,480
That was what I was doing at DePaul University.

459
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:36,060
And they only did it at night.

460
00:26:36,060 --> 00:26:40,140
So I worked from like nine o'clock at night till three in the morning.

461
00:26:40,140 --> 00:26:41,520
And it was a part time job.

462
00:26:41,520 --> 00:26:43,200
And I just kind of hustled.

463
00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:44,200
And I would do these reports.

464
00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:47,120
I remember I would stack them neat ways and whatnot.

465
00:26:47,120 --> 00:26:52,320
And I knew if I could get full time, if I could get a full time job, I could get school

466
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:55,380
for free because you're an employee.

467
00:26:55,380 --> 00:26:58,240
So I just kind of hustled in the middle of the night.

468
00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:02,660
And one day they said, well, if you want to do this full time, like we'll just hire you

469
00:27:02,660 --> 00:27:03,840
as a nighttime employee.

470
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:05,840
And I grabbed it.

471
00:27:05,840 --> 00:27:08,080
And I just loaded paper.

472
00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:12,560
And then the morning I would deliver all these reports to all these various departments.

473
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:16,120
And I was charismatic and funny because I could redefine myself.

474
00:27:16,120 --> 00:27:20,600
Well, I applied and I started going to school at DePaul, which was funny because they said

475
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:22,160
you're not allowed to take these classes.

476
00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:23,480
You don't have the GPA.

477
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:25,960
You would never get accepted into our university.

478
00:27:25,960 --> 00:27:29,280
And I said, well, I mean, I'm an employee, so I get school.

479
00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:31,260
So we're going to have to work it out.

480
00:27:31,260 --> 00:27:37,520
So DePaul had to send me to all these like pre-college level classes to learn English

481
00:27:37,520 --> 00:27:39,200
and learn math.

482
00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:42,480
You know, you have like level 100 classes, level 200 classes.

483
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:48,000
I was doing classes like 08, 09, like there weren't even 100.

484
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:54,480
It was like 90 level classes or 80 level classes to learn grammar and whatnot.

485
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:56,560
And that's how I kind of got into it.

486
00:27:56,560 --> 00:28:00,440
And I realized like, I'm not a dummy.

487
00:28:00,440 --> 00:28:01,440
Like I'm not brilliant.

488
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:02,440
You know what I mean?

489
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:05,560
I'm not going to Harvard anytime soon, but I'm not a dummy.

490
00:28:05,560 --> 00:28:08,000
And I can do this.

491
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:10,160
And I would just study at DePaul at night.

492
00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:13,720
I would read the books and I would just little by little chip my way.

493
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:14,720
Okay, I finished that class.

494
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:15,720
I chipped my way.

495
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:17,120
I finished that class.

496
00:28:17,120 --> 00:28:19,460
And I think that was the realization for me.

497
00:28:19,460 --> 00:28:22,720
That's how my academic journey started.

498
00:28:22,720 --> 00:28:24,880
I was a hustler.

499
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:30,960
I figured out how to get into university through a back door, loading paper into printers.

500
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:32,520
So what did you end up majoring in?

501
00:28:32,520 --> 00:28:35,680
What was your focus?

502
00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:41,680
So DePaul had a degree called human computer interaction.

503
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:45,040
This was before Y2K.

504
00:28:45,040 --> 00:28:51,800
And DePaul was on this, on the forefront of this technological revolution that was coming.

505
00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:59,760
So I did a lot of courses that were exposing me to, I think back then it was just how to

506
00:28:59,760 --> 00:29:07,160
psychology classes, I think it was a psychology major, but with an emphasis on technology.

507
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:13,080
And I'm sure, because this is going back 30 years, I'm sure the technology I was learning

508
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:19,800
was like C plus computing and uploading of files.

509
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:24,320
It was just so, so very basic.

510
00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:26,760
And I was just chipping away little by little.

511
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:35,400
And what ended up happening was I applied for the agency that I'm with now because I

512
00:29:35,400 --> 00:29:36,400
applied to a bunch.

513
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:38,960
I was going to go to Chicago and I was applying to all these agencies.

514
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:42,560
And the one that picked me up was this West Coast one.

515
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:44,840
They picked me up very quickly.

516
00:29:44,840 --> 00:29:46,480
So I moved.

517
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:47,480
I shot out there.

518
00:29:47,480 --> 00:29:49,580
So I had to put my education on hold.

519
00:29:49,580 --> 00:29:51,960
But I was really becoming an academic at that point.

520
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:55,700
By this time, I had been going to school part time for three and a half years.

521
00:29:55,700 --> 00:29:59,240
So I had really embraced how to study and how to take notes.

522
00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:02,640
And I was becoming a good student, especially because I could scaffold it.

523
00:30:02,640 --> 00:30:05,640
I was only taking one class a quarter.

524
00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:09,560
So I could really dive into that class and get good at it because I was just going so

525
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:12,200
slowly.

526
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:14,240
I started the endeavor with policing.

527
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:18,680
And then once there, that's when my education really skyrocketed.

528
00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:20,720
That's when I finished my degree.

529
00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:21,720
That's when I got the master.

530
00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:26,000
So the degree I got now is just in criminal justice management because I finished it out

531
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:27,000
here.

532
00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:28,800
But I knew that was going to be a stepping stone.

533
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:33,920
And then the master's is in public administration because I wanted to see how civics works on

534
00:30:33,920 --> 00:30:35,360
a large scale.

535
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:39,360
I didn't want to just get a master's in organizational leadership or something because it was too

536
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:40,360
narrow.

537
00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:41,760
So I wanted to see public.

538
00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:45,120
How is this public sector is so big?

539
00:30:45,120 --> 00:30:46,120
How does it work?

540
00:30:46,120 --> 00:30:50,020
And then the doctorate is in education because that's where my passion was.

541
00:30:50,020 --> 00:30:54,640
So just to take you through all three, but if we want to go back, we'll do that.

542
00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:55,640
Yeah.

543
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:56,760
No, I think that's the front door.

544
00:30:56,760 --> 00:31:00,100
The law enforcement community is a good place now.

545
00:31:00,100 --> 00:31:07,480
With this unique lens that you had, the upbringing on the South Side, this educational journey,

546
00:31:07,480 --> 00:31:13,120
describe to me your perspective as far as that community when you entered almost 20

547
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:14,120
years ago.

548
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:15,120
Yeah.

549
00:31:15,120 --> 00:31:17,320
The community for policing, right?

550
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:19,040
For policing, yes.

551
00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:27,080
So this was something that was very at home to me because I don't want to oversell it,

552
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:29,080
but it was poverty.

553
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:30,080
It was.

554
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:33,880
But people think of poverty and they have these images of kids that haven't eaten in

555
00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:35,880
six days, but it was poverty.

556
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:39,800
We're at the poverty line, but I don't want to oversell, but it was.

557
00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:41,160
So I'm used to these neighborhoods.

558
00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:42,980
I'm very comfortable there.

559
00:31:42,980 --> 00:31:47,760
So when I started working in some of these downtrodden neighborhoods that are often described

560
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:51,400
as underserved or marginalized, boy, I felt right at home.

561
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:54,200
Like I knew the plight of these individuals.

562
00:31:54,200 --> 00:32:02,480
And it always struck me as interesting how a law enforcement community, writ large back

563
00:32:02,480 --> 00:32:08,680
then, sort of looked down on the community, these dirty people, these criminals.

564
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:10,760
Everybody here is a criminal in some way, shape, or form.

565
00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:14,480
Gosh, it reminded me of my Chicago cops.

566
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:18,120
And I did not have the same perspective.

567
00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:26,000
And from day one of probation, I felt like a round hole in a square peg.

568
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:30,240
And I would share this with people and they would, the advice was always just get off

569
00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:36,440
probation, play the game, get off probation, and then you could be the kind of cop that

570
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:40,320
you want to be, but you got to get through probation.

571
00:32:40,320 --> 00:32:41,680
And I just started dealt with it.

572
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:48,440
I mean, I remember being in people's houses and cops with dip in their mouth, like looking

573
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:53,200
around and like just spitting in the people's apartment, like rubbing their foot in the

574
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:54,200
carpet.

575
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:56,200
And I'm thinking, what is going on?

576
00:32:56,200 --> 00:32:59,920
Like that is insane to me that we would do this.

577
00:32:59,920 --> 00:33:05,880
Like I'm here to truly change the lives of people and make it a better existence.

578
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:10,280
But there was, it was very, it was a poor taste in my mouth with it.

579
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:14,760
Because I was expecting a bunch of, I don't know what I, I think I was expecting a bunch

580
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:17,480
of heroes because this wasn't Chicago PD.

581
00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:23,520
Chicago PD was the breeding ground of all the ass hats in policing.

582
00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:25,160
But I'm going to a good agency.

583
00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:27,160
I'm going to a professional agency.

584
00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:34,880
And yet I saw a lot of the same sort of uneducated, uncouth, blue collared arrogance that I was

585
00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:36,840
surrounded by.

586
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:41,840
And I mean, for the first year of probation, I wanted to leave and people would say, just

587
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:43,080
stay, just stay.

588
00:33:43,080 --> 00:33:44,080
It's a good job.

589
00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:47,000
You're going to be able to do good things, but we got issues.

590
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:48,000
Nobody's perfect.

591
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:52,240
And, and then, you know, so you stay, you grind it out and you stay and then you become

592
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:53,320
off probation.

593
00:33:53,320 --> 00:33:56,200
And then I got to police the way I wanted to police.

594
00:33:56,200 --> 00:33:59,400
I got to talk to people the way I wanted to talk to.

595
00:33:59,400 --> 00:34:06,320
And I don't know, I have a lot more empathy for the asshole gangster as they're told,

596
00:34:06,320 --> 00:34:13,040
because my brain sees a punk who's doing terrible stuff, but I can't help but think, did his

597
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:16,280
mom take prenatal vitamins when he was in the womb?

598
00:34:16,280 --> 00:34:19,960
What kind of coping mechanisms was he taught as a kid?

599
00:34:19,960 --> 00:34:22,380
Like of course you're an asshole gangster.

600
00:34:22,380 --> 00:34:26,660
Look at where you're growing up and look at who your role models are, because your parent

601
00:34:26,660 --> 00:34:27,660
is in jail.

602
00:34:27,660 --> 00:34:29,440
Your dad is not even alive.

603
00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:32,600
But when I would talk to these kids, James, this is something that's interesting.

604
00:34:32,600 --> 00:34:33,960
And I'm digressing a bit.

605
00:34:33,960 --> 00:34:38,120
But when I would make an arrest, I would, I would, I remember driving and I would open

606
00:34:38,120 --> 00:34:39,120
up the window behind.

607
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:40,840
I would say, can I talk to you young man?

608
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:43,600
Because remember I'm 33 years old at this point.

609
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:46,560
And I would say, like, do you have any brothers or sisters?

610
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:47,560
Yeah, inevitably.

611
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:50,080
Yeah, I got younger this, that and the other.

612
00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:53,960
Do you want your younger brother to be in the gang?

613
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:58,520
And James, when I say a hundred percent hit ratio, I'm not exaggerating.

614
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:03,120
One hundred percent of the time they had an answer that was akin to this.

615
00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:04,120
Stop no.

616
00:35:04,120 --> 00:35:05,680
Like that visceral, right?

617
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:07,800
Like or, or hell no or something.

618
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:08,800
But it was like that.

619
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:10,520
And I said, well, you're part of it.

620
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:12,200
Yeah, but I had no choice, man.

621
00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:13,880
I don't want my little brother to be part of this.

622
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:14,880
But I'm bullshitting.

623
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:18,600
Like it was visceral, which made me think they're not proud of us.

624
00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:22,560
They just felt as though they didn't have any other option.

625
00:35:22,560 --> 00:35:27,600
Now, the case could be made that everybody gets to make their own choice.

626
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:31,160
And at a certain point, you're an adult and you're going to choose your path.

627
00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:39,080
But you can't discount the factors along that path that keep nudging you along the way.

628
00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:45,840
I really think if I was born in the South Side of Chicago, six blocks south, and I was

629
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:51,960
hanging out with the 37th Street kids and not the 33rd Street kids, the trajectory of

630
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:55,960
my life would have been very different because the 37th Street kids got in jail.

631
00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:57,660
They died young.

632
00:35:57,660 --> 00:36:01,880
Some of them made it out, but some of them just their lives were nothing to speak of.

633
00:36:01,880 --> 00:36:05,520
And really, like it's a six block difference with me.

634
00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:08,480
And that never fell short on me.

635
00:36:08,480 --> 00:36:12,320
So I definitely have more of an empathy.

636
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:13,960
Now today's cop is very different.

637
00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:19,600
I think we've traveled a long way and we have community policing and you have cops now being

638
00:36:19,600 --> 00:36:20,960
recruited from the inner city.

639
00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:25,120
So I think today, if anyone's listening, like I get it, I'm not trying to paint a picture

640
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:26,120
now.

641
00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:29,000
It was 20 years ago, 22 years ago.

642
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:37,120
So the distance we've traveled and the ground we've made in policing has been very profound.

643
00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:38,120
It's been very good.

644
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:39,600
But let me pause.

645
00:36:39,600 --> 00:36:43,400
Well, that underlines something that I talk about a lot.

646
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:47,960
That whole ivory tower, we all get to make decisions.

647
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:49,800
I call bullshit on that.

648
00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:56,840
And the great kind of analogy to use is if I grew up in inner city wherever and a bodega

649
00:36:56,840 --> 00:37:01,520
was the only place that I even understood what food was, am I going to make the same

650
00:37:01,520 --> 00:37:06,960
decisions about my nutrition as James Gearing, who was an English boy who grew up on a farm

651
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:10,520
that had an orchard and a vegetable garden and chickens and all the things?

652
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:11,800
Of course not.

653
00:37:11,800 --> 00:37:14,460
So the environment dictates your decisions.

654
00:37:14,460 --> 00:37:19,680
Your environment dictates your level of discipline and motivation and all these other things.

655
00:37:19,680 --> 00:37:23,540
So to jump on and say, well, if you just woke up at five and went for a run, took an ice

656
00:37:23,540 --> 00:37:26,280
bath and ate a salad, you could be like me.

657
00:37:26,280 --> 00:37:28,200
I couldn't disagree more.

658
00:37:28,200 --> 00:37:33,800
So when we look at the world of policing, it's always a one way mirror.

659
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:36,160
It's always what are the police doing wrong?

660
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:41,400
No one's ever saying why are the streets of America so fucking dangerous?

661
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:45,380
Why are the schools of America so fucking dangerous?

662
00:37:45,380 --> 00:37:50,760
Because they don't have this problem in Oslo or Lisbon or Tokyo.

663
00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:56,800
So there are numerous countries full of human beings just like us who do not have these

664
00:37:56,800 --> 00:37:57,800
issues.

665
00:37:57,800 --> 00:38:02,660
So if we're not looking at why have we got to the problem, and I would argue that prohibition

666
00:38:02,660 --> 00:38:04,800
of drugs is a massive part of this.

667
00:38:04,800 --> 00:38:10,940
Ironically, Chicago, we know the name Al Capone purely because of prohibition.

668
00:38:10,940 --> 00:38:17,740
So that epic 80 year longitudinal study of failure has shown us that when you put addicts

669
00:38:17,740 --> 00:38:22,120
in prison, you create this incredible crime issue.

670
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:25,860
So let's expand on that a little bit more.

671
00:38:25,860 --> 00:38:32,160
What needs to change so that gangs aren't the most powerful influence of a lot of young

672
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:34,040
men and women's lives?

673
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:36,200
Yeah, this is great.

674
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:42,740
And the variables that if I could wave a wand, you know, I've often said this to my inner

675
00:38:42,740 --> 00:38:50,120
city folks, if I wave a wand and I create an algorithm program that takes racism out

676
00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:51,480
of policing, that's it.

677
00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:55,680
Like, it just doesn't exist in this matrix that we live in.

678
00:38:55,680 --> 00:39:00,240
The day to day police citizen changes very little.

679
00:39:00,240 --> 00:39:06,040
You will have things that change on an individual level, but writ large, you're not going to

680
00:39:06,040 --> 00:39:11,520
get the kind of profound change if you instead say every police officer needs a four year

681
00:39:11,520 --> 00:39:19,360
degree and every police officer needs to have that degree in psychology.

682
00:39:19,360 --> 00:39:24,800
Or like, like that's a big intervention where I could stop getting 20 year old kids that

683
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:30,720
are just getting indoctrinated into something that is my experience only just my anecdotes

684
00:39:30,720 --> 00:39:36,200
experience, because I spent 20 years in this particular division, and that's all I know.

685
00:39:36,200 --> 00:39:38,440
And I'm going to impart that knowledge on them.

686
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:40,320
So I love that your question is like that.

687
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:45,280
I would the big intervention number one, and you mentioned Oslo and I love Oslo, Norway.

688
00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:51,080
The thing I would do is first of all, we have a system of punishment.

689
00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:58,120
And I think we need to seriously look at that and say a system of true rehabilitation.

690
00:39:58,120 --> 00:40:03,840
When you go to prison in America, you come out a better criminal.

691
00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:11,520
And we I would truly I've been trying to become an educator in the prison system because I

692
00:40:11,520 --> 00:40:17,720
want to show people there's other ways of doing things that you have value, but we don't

693
00:40:17,720 --> 00:40:18,960
treat them like that.

694
00:40:18,960 --> 00:40:21,480
And now I understand that's not very popular.

695
00:40:21,480 --> 00:40:25,120
And I understand that there are some very bad people.

696
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:31,560
So let's take the outliers out, let's take these quote unquote evil people that are that

697
00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:39,100
are unrehabilitable and just taking the general convict like we can make this person better.

698
00:40:39,100 --> 00:40:43,080
They haven't had any investment in them.

699
00:40:43,080 --> 00:40:49,480
And could you imagine the system we would have if you went into this penitentiary?

700
00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:51,800
Your punishment is you don't have any freedom.

701
00:40:51,800 --> 00:40:52,800
Like there's your punishment.

702
00:40:52,800 --> 00:40:57,520
You don't get to come and go, but you are mandated to get an education.

703
00:40:57,520 --> 00:40:58,900
Education is an optional.

704
00:40:58,900 --> 00:41:00,940
You're going to wake up and you're going to go to school.

705
00:41:00,940 --> 00:41:04,060
And then when you go to school, we're going to figure out where your aptitudes lie.

706
00:41:04,060 --> 00:41:06,780
And here's a list of things that you're going to study.

707
00:41:06,780 --> 00:41:13,880
We need mechanics, we need plumbers, we we need people to help society move.

708
00:41:13,880 --> 00:41:18,400
And there are it's hard to say this, but there is going to be hard to hear this.

709
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:22,760
I should say there are brilliant people sitting behind bars are brilliant people.

710
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:27,380
There are people with incredible skills that are sitting behind bars, writhing away because

711
00:41:27,380 --> 00:41:29,480
they chose.

712
00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:31,360
They made a bad decision.

713
00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:35,640
And we need to stop looking at this as like a zero sum.

714
00:41:35,640 --> 00:41:42,440
One bad decision shouldn't be the marker of the entirety of your existence.

715
00:41:42,440 --> 00:41:44,280
Now, there are some bad decisions.

716
00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:46,800
I know everyone's going to go to the most extreme.

717
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:49,560
Everyone's going to go to the person that flies a plane into the World Trade Center.

718
00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:52,400
Like I'm not talking about the most extreme.

719
00:41:52,400 --> 00:41:55,840
I just mean in general, we as a society, maybe.

720
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:57,260
But where does that start, James?

721
00:41:57,260 --> 00:42:04,040
Maybe that starts with we have we have a pretty good safety net with food and security.

722
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:05,920
There's very few people starving.

723
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:08,800
OK, so we're feeding our people.

724
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:15,680
But maybe we need to start educating our youth on things like human interaction, how to build

725
00:42:15,680 --> 00:42:21,900
relationships, how to oh, oh, how to resolve conflicts.

726
00:42:21,900 --> 00:42:23,000
Training mechanisms.

727
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:25,240
We learn that's not an innate thing.

728
00:42:25,240 --> 00:42:26,240
Right.

729
00:42:26,240 --> 00:42:28,200
Little kids see each other and they hit each other.

730
00:42:28,200 --> 00:42:30,640
And we say, no, no, no, you don't hit.

731
00:42:30,640 --> 00:42:32,600
We teach them how to cope.

732
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:35,960
But your instinct is to hit or grab.

733
00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:41,000
And we guardrail them through this.

734
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:47,200
Maybe we need to learn how to teach our youth how to cope with struggle, how to cope with

735
00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:52,680
loss, how to cope with things so that as they get older and the inevitable challenges that

736
00:42:52,680 --> 00:42:57,920
life is going to throw at you, become more manageable.

737
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:01,240
And I think that will be a neat place to start because we could we could say we're going

738
00:43:01,240 --> 00:43:05,400
to take our prison system and turn it into true rehabilitation.

739
00:43:05,400 --> 00:43:07,480
And you know how you get out of prison?

740
00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:11,460
Not these mandated sentences, but show us how far you've come.

741
00:43:11,460 --> 00:43:18,200
Let's incentivize you that we will take years off of your your your punishment if you complete

742
00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:23,120
these degrees, volunteer at these places and show that you could become a complete productive

743
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:27,620
member of society, show remorse and all these things like we could incentivize that while

744
00:43:27,620 --> 00:43:34,200
at the other level, we're teaching kids how to cope with certain things that aren't just

745
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:38,400
fighting and respect and my neighborhood.

746
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:41,360
So those are two ideas that are just kind of big.

747
00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:42,520
Tell me what you think.

748
00:43:42,520 --> 00:43:46,440
Like scalable or just pie in the sky?

749
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:48,720
No, I mean, you're preaching to the choir.

750
00:43:48,720 --> 00:43:52,840
I had Tom Eberhardt on who's the governor of Bastogh prison.

751
00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:56,200
That was the superintendent, they call it.

752
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:58,980
And it's an island right off Oslo.

753
00:43:58,980 --> 00:44:00,240
And it looks like a housing community.

754
00:44:00,240 --> 00:44:02,440
Looks like my housing community where I live.

755
00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:04,620
So they have lost their freedom.

756
00:44:04,620 --> 00:44:08,120
And there's everything from petty criminals through to murderers in there.

757
00:44:08,120 --> 00:44:11,680
And their whole philosophy is they have that I forget the guy's name.

758
00:44:11,680 --> 00:44:15,960
I don't think he's worthy of mentioning anyway, but the one that killed all those young people

759
00:44:15,960 --> 00:44:18,880
in that camp in Norway, he's locked in a box.

760
00:44:18,880 --> 00:44:20,720
So Norway has that too.

761
00:44:20,720 --> 00:44:24,720
But just like you said, the other huge percentage of people that have just been led down the

762
00:44:24,720 --> 00:44:30,240
wrong path, crimes of passion, whatever it is, they have to pay an atone for their sins.

763
00:44:30,240 --> 00:44:35,920
But their whole ethos is one day they are going to move next door to you again.

764
00:44:35,920 --> 00:44:37,820
They are going to come out of prison.

765
00:44:37,820 --> 00:44:42,000
Do you want the person who became a better criminal or do you want the person who was

766
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:43,400
rehabilitated?

767
00:44:43,400 --> 00:44:48,800
And so their whole philosophy is they live together, they cook, they clean, they go to

768
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:51,040
work, they study.

769
00:44:51,040 --> 00:44:56,200
And they teach them to be a functioning member of society rather than using taxpayers money.

770
00:44:56,200 --> 00:44:58,240
They create tax again.

771
00:44:58,240 --> 00:44:59,720
So I absolutely adore that.

772
00:44:59,720 --> 00:45:04,440
And Tom's been on on his own and he's been on with one of the prison governors from the

773
00:45:04,440 --> 00:45:08,640
Northwest, that they're trying to put this and you start to hear this now, the Norway

774
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:13,000
model, they call it, people are realizing that this is what you need to do.

775
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:17,260
And I think it's the Philadelphia model is basically just lock them in a cage.

776
00:45:17,260 --> 00:45:19,000
They're realizing that it doesn't work.

777
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:24,480
You know, and I know I'm I saw that you had a podcast on this, but I was researching the

778
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:29,040
stats recently, because obviously all this toing and froing of last week and you know,

779
00:45:29,040 --> 00:45:37,480
the politics, we we are 4% of the world's population and our incarceration, arguably

780
00:45:37,480 --> 00:45:42,880
is more now of 20% of the world's incarcerated, especially if you include juvenile detention

781
00:45:42,880 --> 00:45:46,160
centers and jails, it's almost 25%.

782
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:51,080
So when you look at that system, clearly, as I said, with the fire service and the way

783
00:45:51,080 --> 00:45:55,880
we do our hours, if it worked, we'd be like, yeah, we have point zero one percent of the

784
00:45:55,880 --> 00:45:56,880
world's incarcerated people.

785
00:45:56,880 --> 00:45:57,880
We are.

786
00:45:57,880 --> 00:45:58,880
It works.

787
00:45:58,880 --> 00:45:59,880
We're not going to do it again.

788
00:45:59,880 --> 00:46:04,080
But it doesn't work clearly because we have so many prisoners.

789
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:06,680
So this is such a beautiful opportunity.

790
00:46:06,680 --> 00:46:08,480
And like you said, remove the analogies.

791
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:09,480
I hate that.

792
00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:11,000
Oh, you know, the food stamps.

793
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:15,440
Yeah, I know a guy has got an escalator on his on his front lawn and you know, he uses

794
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:16,440
it.

795
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:17,440
Yeah, he does.

796
00:46:17,440 --> 00:46:20,720
But how many people have food stamps got through and they're back on their feet now and they

797
00:46:20,720 --> 00:46:23,080
went to school, you know, whatever it was.

798
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:24,760
Don't negate that because of that.

799
00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:26,680
Oh, yeah, but story.

800
00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:28,400
And it's the same with this.

801
00:46:28,400 --> 00:46:29,400
Are we Norwegian?

802
00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:30,400
No.

803
00:46:30,400 --> 00:46:35,080
But does that mean that we discard this incredible philosophy and that we can start applying

804
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:39,620
it here and rehabilitating, as you said, the lower tiers and then maybe working up and

805
00:46:39,620 --> 00:46:40,620
working up?

806
00:46:40,620 --> 00:46:44,320
And yes, there are some that are so broken, sadly, and it's tragic.

807
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:48,120
We failed them that they are now past the point of rehabilitation.

808
00:46:48,120 --> 00:46:50,180
They have to be kept in a box.

809
00:46:50,180 --> 00:46:54,640
But all these other people, these people, I've had people on the show that became firefighters,

810
00:46:54,640 --> 00:47:00,200
that became Navy SEALs that made a mistake were given the opportunity to grow format

811
00:47:00,200 --> 00:47:02,560
and now they're wearing a uniform.

812
00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:05,500
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

813
00:47:05,500 --> 00:47:12,320
We have a out here in California, many of the inmates are firefighters.

814
00:47:12,320 --> 00:47:17,400
They bring them out and to help with the firefighting line like that should count for something

815
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:19,120
that should count.

816
00:47:19,120 --> 00:47:23,440
And I what it's going to take is a paradigm shift.

817
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:30,760
And I don't know if it's rooted in religion or if it's rooted in just our sense of what

818
00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:39,360
justice is, but it's going to take a paradigm shift to say you committed a crime and and

819
00:47:39,360 --> 00:47:41,260
there has to be some repercussion.

820
00:47:41,260 --> 00:47:44,080
We need to disincentivize that to an extent.

821
00:47:44,080 --> 00:47:48,140
But we doesn't mean you're not a good person.

822
00:47:48,140 --> 00:47:52,400
You can still be good people do bad things.

823
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:54,640
And bad people do good things.

824
00:47:54,640 --> 00:48:01,080
It is not this monolith or this binary idea that everybody just makes the best choice

825
00:48:01,080 --> 00:48:02,080
all the time.

826
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:10,320
There are so many factors that come into somebody's cognitive ability to be able to see the potential

827
00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:14,540
paths on their future if they choose one or the other.

828
00:48:14,540 --> 00:48:17,800
And that just that just isn't innate in us.

829
00:48:17,800 --> 00:48:19,880
That's taught to us.

830
00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:24,240
And it's oftentimes learned through many, many mistakes.

831
00:48:24,240 --> 00:48:25,240
It would be interesting.

832
00:48:25,240 --> 00:48:32,320
I think if I were to change society, oh, gosh, do I start with the inmates or do I start

833
00:48:32,320 --> 00:48:33,320
with the children?

834
00:48:33,320 --> 00:48:38,600
Part of me would just go with the kids first and then simultaneously put all my energies

835
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:44,320
and efforts there and then simultaneously then put the efforts towards this rehabilitation.

836
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:53,000
But how do you take a system that is based on punishment and completely?

837
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:54,880
Where do you even begin to do this?

838
00:48:54,880 --> 00:49:00,080
I love that Norway model to see were they ever hard on their criminals.

839
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:04,320
And then was it just a radical change where overnight they said, we're not doing this

840
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:12,480
anymore or was it an evolutionary thing where over decades they did little changes?

841
00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:16,600
Yeah, I'm not I have to go back and listen because I'm sure Tom talked about that.

842
00:49:16,600 --> 00:49:21,260
But I know Bastoy and there was another one were kind of like the first ones to do this

843
00:49:21,260 --> 00:49:22,260
full model.

844
00:49:22,260 --> 00:49:27,340
But I think they did start shifting and even, you know, again, they didn't have the levels

845
00:49:27,340 --> 00:49:32,000
of violence that we have because culturally, you know, look at education, you look at many,

846
00:49:32,000 --> 00:49:35,760
many areas, the health of the nation, you know, they do things very differently than

847
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:36,760
we do.

848
00:49:36,760 --> 00:49:38,320
So we've got a lot we can learn from them.

849
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:39,320
Go ahead.

850
00:49:39,320 --> 00:49:47,000
Please, if I may, can I and one thing, too, I think we fail with our country, our counties,

851
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:49,240
our cities and our townships.

852
00:49:49,240 --> 00:49:54,480
We we don't frame our problems properly.

853
00:49:54,480 --> 00:50:01,040
And when we miss, for example, we have a homeless population here in Southern California.

854
00:50:01,040 --> 00:50:05,920
That is, you know, to the tune of like 80,000 people in the county, it's a lot of people.

855
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:10,880
And it is often framed as a housing crisis.

856
00:50:10,880 --> 00:50:17,640
And that doesn't do service to these people who are suffering from mental illness and

857
00:50:17,640 --> 00:50:19,780
who are suffering from addiction.

858
00:50:19,780 --> 00:50:25,360
Their problem is not that they can't afford a house close to where they work.

859
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:32,160
Their problem is they most likely had a mental illness that they were coping through addiction.

860
00:50:32,160 --> 00:50:37,720
And then those two things fed into each other, and now they're an unproductive member of

861
00:50:37,720 --> 00:50:43,480
society that we enable by allowing them to camp on the streets because we have a housing

862
00:50:43,480 --> 00:50:44,480
shortage.

863
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:48,840
Like, and then when we try these things and they don't work, we need to be able to say,

864
00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:52,440
well, hell, we tried that didn't work.

865
00:50:52,440 --> 00:50:53,680
Let's try something else.

866
00:50:53,680 --> 00:50:54,680
But we don't.

867
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:58,640
It's like we double down because we're scared of failure.

868
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:00,760
Like how many times are the Wright brothers fail?

869
00:51:00,760 --> 00:51:01,760
Right.

870
00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:03,680
They failed over and over.

871
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:07,920
And now we got, you know, planes whipping through the world.

872
00:51:07,920 --> 00:51:09,420
But it was through failure.

873
00:51:09,420 --> 00:51:12,440
They didn't just double down and say, well, no, no, no, this is how it's going to work.

874
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:14,240
And they kept doing the same model.

875
00:51:14,240 --> 00:51:15,960
They tweaked it and tweaked it and tweaked it.

876
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:16,960
We don't do that.

877
00:51:16,960 --> 00:51:23,360
Or at least I don't want to make it sound so like we don't do that enough because I'm

878
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:25,320
sure there's people that do it.

879
00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:26,840
But we don't do it enough.

880
00:51:26,840 --> 00:51:29,220
We need to not be so afraid to fail.

881
00:51:29,220 --> 00:51:34,600
We need to not be so afraid to we need to not excoriate our politicians when they change

882
00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:35,600
their mind.

883
00:51:35,600 --> 00:51:38,120
Like, I want you to change your mind.

884
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:40,800
I want you to change your perspective.

885
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:42,280
We call them flip floppers.

886
00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:44,240
Yeah, I want flip floppers.

887
00:51:44,240 --> 00:51:48,040
Imagine, you know, do we call doctors flip floppers because they no longer put leeches

888
00:51:48,040 --> 00:51:50,620
on people like, oh, you're a flip flopper.

889
00:51:50,620 --> 00:51:53,200
You're supposed to give them a good bleeding, but now you're going to change it.

890
00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:56,280
Like, no, we want doctors to change their minds.

891
00:51:56,280 --> 00:51:58,360
I want to use leeches again.

892
00:51:58,360 --> 00:52:00,720
There's an application in surgery for leeches these days, too.

893
00:52:00,720 --> 00:52:02,520
So they've come around again.

894
00:52:02,520 --> 00:52:03,520
How interesting.

895
00:52:03,520 --> 00:52:07,800
I suppose like in certain instances, right, they have a space.

896
00:52:07,800 --> 00:52:11,960
But when somebody has, you know, the flu, we don't want to give them a good bleeding.

897
00:52:11,960 --> 00:52:18,200
So we learn how to use these things well, you know, in the right context.

898
00:52:18,200 --> 00:52:22,680
But my goodness, James, like, let's get out there and crack a few eggs.

899
00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:27,000
You know, let's let's crack a few eggs and let's stop getting.

900
00:52:27,000 --> 00:52:31,480
Let's stop judging people just because they tried something that didn't work.

901
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:35,200
At least they're out there giving it a shot.

902
00:52:35,200 --> 00:52:37,840
Let's talk about drug prohibition.

903
00:52:37,840 --> 00:52:41,680
I had a really interesting kind of journey and it was through my mom.

904
00:52:41,680 --> 00:52:47,920
Ironically, I started the podcast and quite early on she called me one day and she's like,

905
00:52:47,920 --> 00:52:50,600
did you hear what they did with drugs in Portugal?

906
00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:56,520
Because she'd moved to Portugal about five years before I moved to the States.

907
00:52:56,520 --> 00:52:58,320
And I had no idea.

908
00:52:58,320 --> 00:53:03,360
So you talk about, you know, was there a slow kind of movement in Norway?

909
00:53:03,360 --> 00:53:07,880
Well, Portugal, there's something extremely democratic, which is, you know, again, when

910
00:53:07,880 --> 00:53:11,800
you, you know, when you sit here, hear people talking about in America and we're the only

911
00:53:11,800 --> 00:53:16,000
free country and all this stuff, you know, you look at some of these incredible progressive

912
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:19,280
nations around the world, I would argue, you know, they've got a lot more democracy than

913
00:53:19,280 --> 00:53:21,520
we have at times.

914
00:53:21,520 --> 00:53:23,840
So they had a lot of their soldiers.

915
00:53:23,840 --> 00:53:30,400
I forget which country it was, but one of the Portuguese colonies and they had a war

916
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:31,400
there.

917
00:53:31,400 --> 00:53:33,120
So the Portuguese sent soldiers out there.

918
00:53:33,120 --> 00:53:36,880
I think this was in the 90s, maybe early 80s.

919
00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:42,040
Anyway, they came back and a lot of them were addicted to opiates and they kind of, you

920
00:53:42,040 --> 00:53:45,120
know, began this, this crisis, this addiction crisis.

921
00:53:45,120 --> 00:53:50,040
And at one point they had the worst addiction levels in Europe from what I understand per

922
00:53:50,040 --> 00:53:53,320
capita probably, because it's quite a small country.

923
00:53:53,320 --> 00:53:58,040
And their leadership said, look, the way we're doing it isn't working.

924
00:53:58,040 --> 00:54:01,620
And they had, you know, again, the, you know, the lot of traditional models and the war

925
00:54:01,620 --> 00:54:02,960
on drugs was forced on them.

926
00:54:02,960 --> 00:54:05,980
Like it was the rest of the world.

927
00:54:05,980 --> 00:54:09,940
And so one day they said, look, we're going to try something different.

928
00:54:09,940 --> 00:54:14,280
But what they did, and again, going back to this kind of piecemeal half ass thing, they

929
00:54:14,280 --> 00:54:18,720
didn't like Oregon, oh, we're just going to decriminalize.

930
00:54:18,720 --> 00:54:23,880
They decriminalize addiction, but they took the money from their war on drugs and they

931
00:54:23,880 --> 00:54:31,960
poured it into mental health counseling, addiction counseling, job creation, housing, and less

932
00:54:31,960 --> 00:54:34,400
than 10 years later.

933
00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:38,000
And if this was opposed by a certain group, it was passed by a majority.

934
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:42,760
A year after they started seeing success, all their opposition had joined in support.

935
00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:43,760
It was amazing.

936
00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:48,360
Nine years later, they went to the lowest addiction rate.

937
00:54:48,360 --> 00:54:52,840
And all they did is they went, like you said, they went all in, they asked the people, they

938
00:54:52,840 --> 00:54:54,320
explained the situation.

939
00:54:54,320 --> 00:54:55,720
They said, look, this is what's happening.

940
00:54:55,720 --> 00:54:57,520
We've tried this American model.

941
00:54:57,520 --> 00:54:58,520
It's not working.

942
00:54:58,520 --> 00:55:01,800
You know, arresting addicts clearly isn't working.

943
00:55:01,800 --> 00:55:06,000
And so not only did they bring it down incredibly, and they still have addicts, of course, it

944
00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:08,020
doesn't, you know, fix everyone.

945
00:55:08,020 --> 00:55:13,080
But now law enforcement and the court system was freed up so they could focus on the drug

946
00:55:13,080 --> 00:55:17,280
dealers and the smugglers and then all the other bad people.

947
00:55:17,280 --> 00:55:20,360
And so it's been incredible watching that.

948
00:55:20,360 --> 00:55:25,280
When I look at the origin story of prohibition, which started here in the U.S., it was Harry

949
00:55:25,280 --> 00:55:29,640
Anslinger on the back of the epic failure of alcohol prohibition.

950
00:55:29,640 --> 00:55:30,640
And it was job justification.

951
00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:32,000
And it truly was racism.

952
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:34,280
He was a screaming racist.

953
00:55:34,280 --> 00:55:37,720
And so when you look at Reefer Madness and all the things that happened from there, we've

954
00:55:37,720 --> 00:55:40,240
got an 80 year study.

955
00:55:40,240 --> 00:55:44,240
If this works, we would have almost no addicts.

956
00:55:44,240 --> 00:55:48,820
We certainly wouldn't have gangs because they were born out of criminality.

957
00:55:48,820 --> 00:55:51,160
So clearly we have an issue.

958
00:55:51,160 --> 00:55:55,380
And again, just like Norway, I think with Portugal, there's an opportunity to truly

959
00:55:55,380 --> 00:55:56,680
adopt that model.

960
00:55:56,680 --> 00:56:01,580
But that doesn't mean just decriminalizing it without putting all these things in place.

961
00:56:01,580 --> 00:56:04,120
You have to help the person.

962
00:56:04,120 --> 00:56:08,800
An addict is a mental health patient, not a criminal.

963
00:56:08,800 --> 00:56:12,560
So that's James Gearing's perspective, my own personal journey.

964
00:56:12,560 --> 00:56:17,600
But I saw the ripple effect of this in uniform for years and years and years.

965
00:56:17,600 --> 00:56:21,520
What is your perspective of prohibition and contributing to the issues that we've been

966
00:56:21,520 --> 00:56:23,760
talking about so far?

967
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:27,960
It's such a great, thoughtful question.

968
00:56:27,960 --> 00:56:28,960
I.

969
00:56:28,960 --> 00:56:34,600
OK, so let me see if I can make this like a running jump.

970
00:56:34,600 --> 00:56:41,720
Patient goes to a doctor because they have an injury and the surgeon wants to cut you

971
00:56:41,720 --> 00:56:42,840
open.

972
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:46,560
The physical therapist wants to give you therapy.

973
00:56:46,560 --> 00:56:51,540
The homeopathic person wants you to do these sorts of things.

974
00:56:51,540 --> 00:56:58,800
It seems like when we take these problems and we put them into the box of law enforcement,

975
00:56:58,800 --> 00:57:00,040
well, we'll solve this problem.

976
00:57:00,040 --> 00:57:03,520
We'll just make it illegal and we will put everyone in jail.

977
00:57:03,520 --> 00:57:05,240
And then that doesn't work.

978
00:57:05,240 --> 00:57:07,620
And then we do it with social services.

979
00:57:07,620 --> 00:57:11,200
And then their thought is, well, the reason why they're shooting up on the streets is

980
00:57:11,200 --> 00:57:12,200
because they don't have a house.

981
00:57:12,200 --> 00:57:17,920
And so what I think is happening is you have too many individual.

982
00:57:17,920 --> 00:57:25,120
Cooks in the kitchen, not creating a you need a team of people to look at this and you need

983
00:57:25,120 --> 00:57:29,280
you need private sector to come in and start doing things.

984
00:57:29,280 --> 00:57:30,440
You need the public sector.

985
00:57:30,440 --> 00:57:33,000
You need the education to come in and start doing.

986
00:57:33,000 --> 00:57:40,520
We have to we have to address this on a way that is very complicated.

987
00:57:40,520 --> 00:57:43,960
What Portugal did, I'm sure, was no easy feat.

988
00:57:43,960 --> 00:57:47,240
And they probably stumbled along the way.

989
00:57:47,240 --> 00:57:50,220
Now let me ask you real quick, how big is Portugal?

990
00:57:50,220 --> 00:57:52,520
Is it like one of the US states?

991
00:57:52,520 --> 00:57:53,520
Yes.

992
00:57:53,520 --> 00:57:56,440
If yeah, probably one of the smaller states.

993
00:57:56,440 --> 00:58:00,720
Yeah, it's interesting little place because it's almost looked down as like a second world

994
00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:01,720
country in Europe.

995
00:58:01,720 --> 00:58:04,680
But actually, when you look at the health of their people, even what they did during

996
00:58:04,680 --> 00:58:10,680
covid, I mean, there's a there's a lot of middle of the road, common sense elements to the

997
00:58:10,680 --> 00:58:11,680
Portuguese.

998
00:58:11,680 --> 00:58:12,680
And I think it's an incredible culture.

999
00:58:12,680 --> 00:58:15,680
But yeah, it's not it's not a very large country.

1000
00:58:15,680 --> 00:58:16,840
Right.

1001
00:58:16,840 --> 00:58:21,840
So you're able to get your public servants and your civics and your governance can get

1002
00:58:21,840 --> 00:58:23,760
their arms around this.

1003
00:58:23,760 --> 00:58:31,120
And I think with us, because of our structure, this federalistic way, Florida is going to

1004
00:58:31,120 --> 00:58:34,200
look at this very differently than California.

1005
00:58:34,200 --> 00:58:41,040
But what we could do is have coalitions that say, look, Florida, you're going to do it

1006
00:58:41,040 --> 00:58:42,040
your way.

1007
00:58:42,040 --> 00:58:44,680
You see it from this lens.

1008
00:58:44,680 --> 00:58:48,520
But we're going to we're going to honestly track you and we're going to see if this is

1009
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:53,320
working and California, you're going to and we're going to actually track you.

1010
00:58:53,320 --> 00:58:58,360
And we're going to we're going to take the best practices of what's doing what's happening

1011
00:58:58,360 --> 00:59:02,200
in Texas, what's happening in Florida, Oregon and California.

1012
00:59:02,200 --> 00:59:04,640
And we're going to really work together.

1013
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:08,720
But we're almost competing with each other.

1014
00:59:08,720 --> 00:59:14,320
The health and wellness of our nation, the criminality of our citizenry, it shouldn't

1015
00:59:14,320 --> 00:59:16,120
be a competition.

1016
00:59:16,120 --> 00:59:18,560
It should be a collaboration.

1017
00:59:18,560 --> 00:59:22,440
And we're not collaborating enough.

1018
00:59:22,440 --> 00:59:25,000
It feels like we're just competing.

1019
00:59:25,000 --> 00:59:29,360
Well, Florida is better because we have we dropped our homeless rate.

1020
00:59:29,360 --> 00:59:31,240
But like, where did it go?

1021
00:59:31,240 --> 00:59:32,240
What happened?

1022
00:59:32,240 --> 00:59:33,240
Tell me.

1023
00:59:33,240 --> 00:59:35,600
Like, I really want to know genuinely.

1024
00:59:35,600 --> 00:59:39,440
And like California says, well, our interventions worked.

1025
00:59:39,440 --> 00:59:43,000
We're not criminalizing drugs anymore and there's less people in jail for drugs.

1026
00:59:43,000 --> 00:59:45,000
OK, are they still addicted, though?

1027
00:59:45,000 --> 00:59:47,960
Are they still addicted and walking around or did they get clean?

1028
00:59:47,960 --> 00:59:54,400
Like we don't look enough at these things and we tie them to political people whose

1029
00:59:54,400 --> 00:59:57,440
careers depend on us voting them in.

1030
00:59:57,440 --> 01:00:03,640
So there is an incentive for them to skew the data almost.

1031
01:00:03,640 --> 01:00:05,120
And I don't know what this is.

1032
01:00:05,120 --> 01:00:14,840
Maybe we need a private sector element to come in and judge the efficacy of all these

1033
01:00:14,840 --> 01:00:21,120
different things, because it just seems like there's what I would call perverse incentives

1034
01:00:21,120 --> 01:00:26,560
to make their program, whatever their program is, look like it's working.

1035
01:00:26,560 --> 01:00:32,360
And now we're just bickering all the time and we're fighting.

1036
01:00:32,360 --> 01:00:35,360
I don't know if.

1037
01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:42,760
Gosh, I the idea of prohibition, like making all drugs illegal, like, OK, like that's

1038
01:00:42,760 --> 01:00:43,760
that's fine.

1039
01:00:43,760 --> 01:00:44,960
This is a dangerous thing.

1040
01:00:44,960 --> 01:00:48,240
And we want to disincentivize disincentivize some people.

1041
01:00:48,240 --> 01:00:52,000
But we know that it's they're going to make their way into society.

1042
01:00:52,000 --> 01:00:53,360
So how do we treat them?

1043
01:00:53,360 --> 01:00:58,920
I can't tell you in my early years as a police officer how many people I arrested because

1044
01:00:58,920 --> 01:01:02,560
they had crack cocaine on them and like they were doing nothing.

1045
01:01:02,560 --> 01:01:05,720
They were sitting in an alley and we were driving by.

1046
01:01:05,720 --> 01:01:08,280
We saw someone lighting up and it's like, oh, that's a felony.

1047
01:01:08,280 --> 01:01:09,280
Let's get them.

1048
01:01:09,280 --> 01:01:10,280
And I'm a young cop.

1049
01:01:10,280 --> 01:01:11,280
I don't know any better.

1050
01:01:11,280 --> 01:01:15,160
And I just arrest this guy who's quickly trying to get as much crack into his body because

1051
01:01:15,160 --> 01:01:16,720
he knows he's being arrested.

1052
01:01:16,720 --> 01:01:18,040
So he's trying to get as much as he can.

1053
01:01:18,040 --> 01:01:21,840
And we come up and he puts his hands up like he's not fighting.

1054
01:01:21,840 --> 01:01:25,600
Arguably, he's just dying in an alley by himself.

1055
01:01:25,600 --> 01:01:31,560
Like am I should I have arrested him or should I have gotten him to a treatment center immediately?

1056
01:01:31,560 --> 01:01:35,840
Like what would have been the better option society, societal wise?

1057
01:01:35,840 --> 01:01:40,760
I don't want him in the alley smoking crack cocaine because of a variety of things that

1058
01:01:40,760 --> 01:01:42,180
could happen.

1059
01:01:42,180 --> 01:01:45,340
But was my very was the very best option.

1060
01:01:45,340 --> 01:01:52,280
If I ask, you know, chat GPT, like run the algorithms and what is the best option for

1061
01:01:52,280 --> 01:01:53,280
society?

1062
01:01:53,280 --> 01:01:58,800
Because all I did was take him with his addiction, put him in a box where he's going to get released

1063
01:01:58,800 --> 01:01:59,800
soon afterwards.

1064
01:01:59,800 --> 01:02:00,800
Like we're not getting him treatment.

1065
01:02:00,800 --> 01:02:02,400
We're not helping him.

1066
01:02:02,400 --> 01:02:07,640
Whatever whatever little life he had left in that alley, we've taken him from that and

1067
01:02:07,640 --> 01:02:09,840
it's been poached by somebody else.

1068
01:02:09,840 --> 01:02:13,880
So whatever little stuff he accumulated is now gone.

1069
01:02:13,880 --> 01:02:18,040
So I'm going to release him back in a society with nothing.

1070
01:02:18,040 --> 01:02:20,840
Maybe he had a few items that were keeping him alive.

1071
01:02:20,840 --> 01:02:24,800
And I don't know, a little little burner where he can make food or maybe had some food that

1072
01:02:24,800 --> 01:02:26,120
was stashed away.

1073
01:02:26,120 --> 01:02:27,840
That's gone at this point.

1074
01:02:27,840 --> 01:02:28,840
So now what does he do?

1075
01:02:28,840 --> 01:02:29,840
Does he go steal?

1076
01:02:29,840 --> 01:02:35,600
Like, oh my gosh, James, like it's such an ineffective intervention.

1077
01:02:35,600 --> 01:02:43,280
But that's going to take a profound look at what we should frame the problem.

1078
01:02:43,280 --> 01:02:44,280
What are we trying to do?

1079
01:02:44,280 --> 01:02:46,640
Are we trying to punish people with addiction?

1080
01:02:46,640 --> 01:02:48,700
Are we trying to help them?

1081
01:02:48,700 --> 01:02:55,000
Are we trying to figure out why this person is experiencing homeless or why they're homeless?

1082
01:02:55,000 --> 01:03:00,600
Or are we just going to get them a house or an SRO, a single residence occupancy?

1083
01:03:00,600 --> 01:03:06,000
I think we need to dig deeper and it's we're going to have some bumps along the way, but

1084
01:03:06,000 --> 01:03:07,840
we should look at Portugal.

1085
01:03:07,840 --> 01:03:08,900
We should look at Oslo.

1086
01:03:08,900 --> 01:03:11,120
We should look at all these other places, but we don't.

1087
01:03:11,120 --> 01:03:16,960
I think because of our arrogance, because we're the best and we don't do those things.

1088
01:03:16,960 --> 01:03:20,680
The arrogance I think gets in the way.

1089
01:03:20,680 --> 01:03:26,480
I think the storytelling again has just has to be if it worked, things will be better.

1090
01:03:26,480 --> 01:03:29,120
Show me a graph of 50 years.

1091
01:03:29,120 --> 01:03:30,480
Which way is that line going?

1092
01:03:30,480 --> 01:03:32,160
I mean, look at obesity.

1093
01:03:32,160 --> 01:03:38,080
If the way that Americans work, the way that we do things, then we wouldn't have this 45

1094
01:03:38,080 --> 01:03:43,120
degree line that spans both sides of the aisle as we get fatter and fatter and sicker and

1095
01:03:43,120 --> 01:03:44,120
sicker.

1096
01:03:44,120 --> 01:03:45,120
Look at the mental health.

1097
01:03:45,120 --> 01:03:46,160
Look at the consumption of opiates.

1098
01:03:46,160 --> 01:03:52,760
We consume 75% of the world's opiates at 4% of the population.

1099
01:03:52,760 --> 01:03:53,760
This is the thing now.

1100
01:03:53,760 --> 01:03:59,380
I think there's such a great opportunity because sadly in the 80s with the crack epidemic,

1101
01:03:59,380 --> 01:04:02,760
it was kind of a certain group of people that were subjected to that.

1102
01:04:02,760 --> 01:04:04,480
A lot of people could stand on there.

1103
01:04:04,480 --> 01:04:09,200
Again, they're every tower looking down at the addicts while they have five beers and

1104
01:04:09,200 --> 01:04:11,200
drive home.

1105
01:04:11,200 --> 01:04:18,760
Now we've got this fentanyl crisis, this opioid crisis, the circumnavigated race, socioeconomic

1106
01:04:18,760 --> 01:04:20,440
scale, everything.

1107
01:04:20,440 --> 01:04:25,800
If there's ever a time to really turn the mirror around and say, this is you, this is

1108
01:04:25,800 --> 01:04:27,720
us, it's now.

1109
01:04:27,720 --> 01:04:29,800
I think this is an exciting opportunity.

1110
01:04:29,800 --> 01:04:36,600
Yes, there is a large crucible of things ahead of us, but as they say, every waterfall begins

1111
01:04:36,600 --> 01:04:45,200
with a single drop of water and we need to start having that conversation.

1112
01:04:45,200 --> 01:04:52,360
We should start looking at the civic resources that are out there and maybe better utilizing

1113
01:04:52,360 --> 01:04:56,160
them.

1114
01:04:56,160 --> 01:05:02,460
I'm here in my line of work to enforce the laws, but there's so many things a police

1115
01:05:02,460 --> 01:05:04,880
officer does, just like a firefighter.

1116
01:05:04,880 --> 01:05:13,400
A firefighter fights fighters, sure, but they do so many other things and they're allowed

1117
01:05:13,400 --> 01:05:15,640
to do so many other things.

1118
01:05:15,640 --> 01:05:22,720
Nobody gets mad at a firefighter when they see them at a park playing with the kids or

1119
01:05:22,720 --> 01:05:25,440
the kids are at the firehouse climbing on the trucks.

1120
01:05:25,440 --> 01:05:26,720
That's community engagement.

1121
01:05:26,720 --> 01:05:29,120
That's giving kids hope.

1122
01:05:29,120 --> 01:05:32,760
All those things permeate society.

1123
01:05:32,760 --> 01:05:39,440
When you have a system like law enforcement where you have a division that's allowed to

1124
01:05:39,440 --> 01:05:44,400
go play in the park with these kids, but not every cop can do that.

1125
01:05:44,400 --> 01:05:47,700
Only the cops that work this division can go play in the park.

1126
01:05:47,700 --> 01:05:51,960
These cops got to enforce laws and these cops got to do these things.

1127
01:05:51,960 --> 01:06:00,520
We need to structurally look at how we're doing this and broaden our officers and our

1128
01:06:00,520 --> 01:06:06,480
public servants, broaden their capacity to serve because there's people that have good

1129
01:06:06,480 --> 01:06:07,480
ideas.

1130
01:06:07,480 --> 01:06:09,800
There's people that have neat concepts.

1131
01:06:09,800 --> 01:06:16,260
There's people that have really unique experiences that can lend itself to solving these complex

1132
01:06:16,260 --> 01:06:23,600
problems because simple solutions to complex problems will always underwhelm.

1133
01:06:23,600 --> 01:06:30,000
Let's start looking at and allowing us to be a little more complex and not just distill

1134
01:06:30,000 --> 01:06:37,160
it down to this crime's out of control, homelessness is out of control, whatever, like this hyperbolic

1135
01:06:37,160 --> 01:06:38,620
language.

1136
01:06:38,620 --> 01:06:43,380
Let's start reframing and let's start using language that's a little bit more accurate

1137
01:06:43,380 --> 01:06:45,760
in how we describe these things.

1138
01:06:45,760 --> 01:06:52,080
Homelessness is something that I think drives somebody into addiction.

1139
01:06:52,080 --> 01:06:54,160
There's a sense of hopelessness.

1140
01:06:54,160 --> 01:06:56,960
Can we address the hopelessness issue?

1141
01:06:56,960 --> 01:06:59,920
Not the homeless issue, the hopelessness.

1142
01:06:59,920 --> 01:07:05,160
Maybe we start looking at it from that perspective and we start to see things that we were missing.

1143
01:07:05,160 --> 01:07:08,560
Will Barron Even with the horrendous school shootings that

1144
01:07:08,560 --> 01:07:15,320
we have, it turns my stomach that every single time within a few hours, all it becomes is

1145
01:07:15,320 --> 01:07:16,320
this gun conversation.

1146
01:07:16,320 --> 01:07:22,640
It will spit in the face for every parent that lost a child or every classmate that

1147
01:07:22,640 --> 01:07:27,040
watched their friends murdered or every teacher that whatever it was.

1148
01:07:27,040 --> 01:07:31,140
It's disgusting and there's a multi-layered element and obviously mental health is a huge

1149
01:07:31,140 --> 01:07:34,100
part of that conversation.

1150
01:07:34,100 --> 01:07:39,460
As long as we just keep reducing it to a second amendment conversation, we're deliberately

1151
01:07:39,460 --> 01:07:43,160
fertilizing this from happening again and again and again.

1152
01:07:43,160 --> 01:07:48,000
This all ties into that hopelessness, that mental health conversation, that sleep deprivation

1153
01:07:48,000 --> 01:07:49,000
conversation.

1154
01:07:49,000 --> 01:07:52,000
I mean, all these elements are contributing as well.

1155
01:07:52,000 --> 01:07:58,620
If we don't look at these as a nuanced problem, then we will, as we have seen, Columbine was

1156
01:07:58,620 --> 01:08:04,080
in the 90s, we will see decade after decade of our children being slaughtered.

1157
01:08:04,080 --> 01:08:08,900
It nauseates me that my son has to rehearse his own murder at school.

1158
01:08:08,900 --> 01:08:10,640
You and I just had to worry about fire alarms.

1159
01:08:10,640 --> 01:08:11,640
I loved it.

1160
01:08:11,640 --> 01:08:12,640
It got me out of maths.

1161
01:08:12,640 --> 01:08:13,640
I used to be a mathematician.

1162
01:08:13,640 --> 01:08:14,640
I was very good at maths.

1163
01:08:14,640 --> 01:08:20,920
But now they have to lock the classroom, hide under tables on the pretense that one day

1164
01:08:20,920 --> 01:08:27,600
one of their fellow pupils or a former student or whoever is going to walk into a school,

1165
01:08:27,600 --> 01:08:32,820
try and kick in their classroom door and slaughter them as they cower under these tables.

1166
01:08:32,820 --> 01:08:35,300
That doesn't move people to want to actually change.

1167
01:08:35,300 --> 01:08:39,220
No, you're not taking my guns away or I'm taking all your guns away.

1168
01:08:39,220 --> 01:08:43,380
We need to grow the fuck up and actually have a proper conversation about that too.

1169
01:08:43,380 --> 01:08:46,380
Yeah, it's interesting.

1170
01:08:46,380 --> 01:08:54,220
So let me ask you though, like we are a very interesting species and there's more of us

1171
01:08:54,220 --> 01:08:57,220
now on this planet than there's ever been.

1172
01:08:57,220 --> 01:09:06,780
Do you think with the influx of just humans, we're going to inevitably have more of these

1173
01:09:06,780 --> 01:09:07,780
outliers?

1174
01:09:07,780 --> 01:09:14,700
If there's five million people on the planet, you probably have a lot less of these people

1175
01:09:14,700 --> 01:09:16,580
who are going to do horrific things.

1176
01:09:16,580 --> 01:09:21,900
But if there's five billion people on the planet, you've now exponentially increased

1177
01:09:21,900 --> 01:09:30,260
that population of those folks who are, I want to be sensitive, but let's just say for

1178
01:09:30,260 --> 01:09:35,940
the lack of a better word, that capacity to do evil is greater in them.

1179
01:09:35,940 --> 01:09:40,380
Some people would say deranged or whatever, but the capacity to do evil is just in that

1180
01:09:40,380 --> 01:09:41,380
person.

1181
01:09:41,380 --> 01:09:47,820
We have so many people, James, like how do you get your arms around this?

1182
01:09:47,820 --> 01:09:52,780
You grew up, you know the world more so than I do from a living perspective.

1183
01:09:52,780 --> 01:10:01,900
Do you have violence in other countries or is this really exclusively an American phenomenon?

1184
01:10:01,900 --> 01:10:08,260
You have violence depending on the environment, so for example Sierra Leone, where they had

1185
01:10:08,260 --> 01:10:13,340
all the boy soldiers, I had one of them on the show, Ishmael Bay, amazing guy.

1186
01:10:13,340 --> 01:10:19,220
When you are growing up and you have this tribal conflict and you're taught to go slaughter

1187
01:10:19,220 --> 01:10:24,660
the Tutsis or whoever it is, in that particular, I think it was Rwanda, but if that's your

1188
01:10:24,660 --> 01:10:31,340
environment, those are your mentors, the Crips, the Bloods, the Tutsis, whoever it is, then

1189
01:10:31,340 --> 01:10:32,860
that becomes normal.

1190
01:10:32,860 --> 01:10:34,860
So again, I think it's environment.

1191
01:10:34,860 --> 01:10:42,260
I think that very, very, very few people are truly physiologically broken.

1192
01:10:42,260 --> 01:10:45,140
The chemistry is just completely off.

1193
01:10:45,140 --> 01:10:51,500
If you look at the history of shootings in the US in schools, like pre-1990s, it's very

1194
01:10:51,500 --> 01:10:54,220
recent, it's almost non-existent.

1195
01:10:54,220 --> 01:10:59,340
You've got the Texas tower shooting and a few other isolated incidents, but apart from

1196
01:10:59,340 --> 01:11:00,900
that, it's isolated.

1197
01:11:00,900 --> 01:11:08,740
If you look at the amount that our population has grown, it doesn't even come close to the

1198
01:11:08,740 --> 01:11:11,380
explosion of violence that we've seen.

1199
01:11:11,380 --> 01:11:15,300
Even as we touched on, I have people on the show that are older that got in gangs when

1200
01:11:15,300 --> 01:11:19,660
they were young and they were just gangs, kind of like you talked about in Chicago.

1201
01:11:19,660 --> 01:11:25,100
And now here we are and you've got, ever since the late 70s, early 80s, you have this mass

1202
01:11:25,100 --> 01:11:30,620
gang warfare that kills thousands and thousands and thousands of people.

1203
01:11:30,620 --> 01:11:36,860
So I would argue that there is a large percentage of this that is preventable, but we are creating

1204
01:11:36,860 --> 01:11:38,420
isolationism.

1205
01:11:38,420 --> 01:11:43,060
We are creating psychosis through even the way that we teach children, which I would

1206
01:11:43,060 --> 01:11:44,500
love to get to in a little bit.

1207
01:11:44,500 --> 01:11:50,500
But you look at the school shooter, let's profile that for a second, usually a young

1208
01:11:50,500 --> 01:11:57,500
white male, isolated, bullied, usually on psychiatric meds, usually a video gamer.

1209
01:11:57,500 --> 01:12:03,820
When you read Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman's assassination generation, he breaks down contributing

1210
01:12:03,820 --> 01:12:04,820
factors.

1211
01:12:04,820 --> 01:12:09,980
I believe that that same child born into a loving environment would never ever even think

1212
01:12:09,980 --> 01:12:10,980
about doing that.

1213
01:12:10,980 --> 01:12:15,480
So I think absolutely a lot of these are cultural and they are preventable.

1214
01:12:15,480 --> 01:12:21,280
But if we're just talking about guns, then again, we're like, shrug shoulders, just wait

1215
01:12:21,280 --> 01:12:22,500
for the next one to come on.

1216
01:12:22,500 --> 01:12:26,260
Well, I think that's unacceptable because if it is preventable, we need to do as much

1217
01:12:26,260 --> 01:12:27,260
as we can.

1218
01:12:27,260 --> 01:12:31,860
You can't get all of them, like you said, but imagine if you stop 90 percent of these

1219
01:12:31,860 --> 01:12:33,360
ever happening.

1220
01:12:33,360 --> 01:12:35,020
How many children be walking around today?

1221
01:12:35,020 --> 01:12:40,820
And I've had survivors of the Parkland shooting and some other groups of people that were

1222
01:12:40,820 --> 01:12:45,820
witness to it, either responded to it or were in the classroom or like one of them, her

1223
01:12:45,820 --> 01:12:48,820
boyfriend was one of the ones that was killed in Parkland.

1224
01:12:48,820 --> 01:12:49,820
He would still be here.

1225
01:12:49,820 --> 01:12:53,920
Joaquin would still be walking around today if we'd actually had the guts to start addressing

1226
01:12:53,920 --> 01:12:54,920
some of this.

1227
01:12:54,920 --> 01:12:58,100
But he's dead because people just argue about guns.

1228
01:12:58,100 --> 01:12:59,140
Could we have saved him?

1229
01:12:59,140 --> 01:13:00,140
Who knows?

1230
01:13:00,140 --> 01:13:03,700
But we damn well could have given it a hell of a shot if we'd had the proper conversation

1231
01:13:03,700 --> 01:13:05,180
at the right time.

1232
01:13:05,180 --> 01:13:12,980
Yeah, I would love to be able to see the graph that shows the correlation or the relationship

1233
01:13:12,980 --> 01:13:19,260
between some of these societal cultural factors.

1234
01:13:19,260 --> 01:13:23,420
Is there a relationship with the family structure?

1235
01:13:23,420 --> 01:13:29,980
If they're the breakdown of the family as the family breaks down, do rates of violence

1236
01:13:29,980 --> 01:13:30,980
go up?

1237
01:13:30,980 --> 01:13:35,100
It was poverty, you know, like all these things I'd love.

1238
01:13:35,100 --> 01:13:39,780
But God, that data is so disparate and you really have to go in and because you're going

1239
01:13:39,780 --> 01:13:43,460
to have a preconceived notion as to why you think this is.

1240
01:13:43,460 --> 01:13:47,980
And you have to you have to figure out a way to say I'm not looking to confirm my bias.

1241
01:13:47,980 --> 01:13:52,860
I really just want to see where this data leads me and where it goes and have a bunch

1242
01:13:52,860 --> 01:13:55,180
of different people talking about it.

1243
01:13:55,180 --> 01:13:58,820
And then we got to start running some.

1244
01:13:58,820 --> 01:14:01,380
We have to run some experiments.

1245
01:14:01,380 --> 01:14:04,240
You go to any prison population.

1246
01:14:04,240 --> 01:14:09,340
And what I find interesting is ask them, all of your prisoners, how many of them believe

1247
01:14:09,340 --> 01:14:10,540
in God?

1248
01:14:10,540 --> 01:14:13,740
Like the prison population is not full of atheists.

1249
01:14:13,740 --> 01:14:16,180
A lot of them are believers.

1250
01:14:16,180 --> 01:14:19,500
Yet how many of them had no no family structure?

1251
01:14:19,500 --> 01:14:22,940
Well, the vast majority of them have had very weak family structures.

1252
01:14:22,940 --> 01:14:27,340
OK, well, that that should count for something like I want to know more about that.

1253
01:14:27,340 --> 01:14:32,180
I want to know why you believe there is a higher power and that there is an afterlife

1254
01:14:32,180 --> 01:14:33,420
and there's moral issues.

1255
01:14:33,420 --> 01:14:35,380
But yet you still did this immoral act.

1256
01:14:35,380 --> 01:14:40,980
What about because to me, if I had that strong belief, I would think, my gosh, I don't want

1257
01:14:40,980 --> 01:14:45,300
someone that's always watching me to see me do this.

1258
01:14:45,300 --> 01:14:53,260
But how is it that that big belief was overshadowed by a lack of mentorship or coping mechanisms?

1259
01:14:53,260 --> 01:15:00,300
And I think we're missing an opportunity to really learn at the expense of simply punishing.

1260
01:15:00,300 --> 01:15:08,220
We should be learning from these things and seeing what are the trend lines of an inmate?

1261
01:15:08,220 --> 01:15:15,580
What are the James, can we say the profile of an inmate in their their histrionics?

1262
01:15:15,580 --> 01:15:17,420
Like what is this person?

1263
01:15:17,420 --> 01:15:20,820
How young was mom when they had them?

1264
01:15:20,820 --> 01:15:21,820
Where did they grow up?

1265
01:15:21,820 --> 01:15:23,860
Did they did they have hospital access?

1266
01:15:23,860 --> 01:15:24,900
Did they have nutritious food?

1267
01:15:24,900 --> 01:15:30,060
Like all those things should matter and they should all be put into it.

1268
01:15:30,060 --> 01:15:36,900
I wonder if the advancement of AI will help us maybe model these things better because

1269
01:15:36,900 --> 01:15:43,140
we're so limited in our thinking because we're so siloed.

1270
01:15:43,140 --> 01:15:47,300
I'll just pick on Christians for a moment just because it's something that we see a

1271
01:15:47,300 --> 01:15:49,460
lot out front.

1272
01:15:49,460 --> 01:15:54,700
Culturally, like you said, how can we all see them there?

1273
01:15:54,700 --> 01:15:59,140
Let's say the Hispanic gangs, the gangbangers adorned with the Virgin Mary tattoos.

1274
01:15:59,140 --> 01:16:04,980
I mean, I scooped many, many of them off the floors of Anaheim.

1275
01:16:04,980 --> 01:16:05,980
How could they do that?

1276
01:16:05,980 --> 01:16:07,180
Well, I would argue as well.

1277
01:16:07,180 --> 01:16:08,620
Well, let's take a step back.

1278
01:16:08,620 --> 01:16:16,160
How could someone who declares their deep faith to Jesus also think that Narcan is wasted

1279
01:16:16,160 --> 01:16:20,060
on addicts and they should just shoo the homeless off to a different area?

1280
01:16:20,060 --> 01:16:25,780
So I don't see that same compassion and kindness in our supposed air quotes regular people.

1281
01:16:25,780 --> 01:16:31,500
So there's a difference in my opinion between religion and being a good person.

1282
01:16:31,500 --> 01:16:34,060
And I see a big disconnect in a lot of people.

1283
01:16:34,060 --> 01:16:37,260
How many people with a fish on the back of their car drive like a fucking asshole?

1284
01:16:37,260 --> 01:16:38,660
You know what I mean?

1285
01:16:38,660 --> 01:16:41,660
If we're really going to stand on the ivory tower.

1286
01:16:41,660 --> 01:16:46,680
So I think culturally, every single one of us has to take a look in the mirror.

1287
01:16:46,680 --> 01:16:50,000
And I love that phrase, you want to change the world, start a home.

1288
01:16:50,000 --> 01:16:53,380
Would Jesus be about locking people in boxes?

1289
01:16:53,380 --> 01:16:58,260
Would Jesus be about stepping over the homeless and complaining that they're in the way of

1290
01:16:58,260 --> 01:16:59,940
your Macy's store?

1291
01:16:59,940 --> 01:17:01,100
Pretty sure he wouldn't.

1292
01:17:01,100 --> 01:17:02,820
Would he have an issue with sex workers?

1293
01:17:02,820 --> 01:17:05,660
Or was there they're actually anointing their feet?

1294
01:17:05,660 --> 01:17:07,220
You know, so I'm not a Christian.

1295
01:17:07,220 --> 01:17:10,660
I'm a spiritual person, but I don't subscribe to any religion.

1296
01:17:10,660 --> 01:17:15,620
But I see a huge amount of hypocrisy because the reason we haven't seen a lot of progressive

1297
01:17:15,620 --> 01:17:22,020
initiatives is the same people that come out of their holy buildings actually work against

1298
01:17:22,020 --> 01:17:26,940
the very things that I would argue Jesus Buddha, you know, Mohammed, whoever would actually

1299
01:17:26,940 --> 01:17:31,100
subscribe to which is compassionate, proactive solutions to these problems.

1300
01:17:31,100 --> 01:17:36,140
How do you get these children to have a safe pregnancy, to be born in a loving household,

1301
01:17:36,140 --> 01:17:40,500
you know, to be nurtured, to be mentored by all the community?

1302
01:17:40,500 --> 01:17:42,900
You know, that's how you change this issue.

1303
01:17:42,900 --> 01:17:47,100
But we have to look at ourselves rather than just be pointing fingers at others.

1304
01:17:47,100 --> 01:17:49,780
You know, James, it's very eloquent.

1305
01:17:49,780 --> 01:17:51,660
And your point is nice.

1306
01:17:51,660 --> 01:17:54,420
It's concise and I completely see it.

1307
01:17:54,420 --> 01:18:01,940
I'm wondering if this isn't a flaw in our own CPU, if you will, in our brains.

1308
01:18:01,940 --> 01:18:06,740
We tend to catastrophize as a whole.

1309
01:18:06,740 --> 01:18:11,340
We tend to have a availability heuristic.

1310
01:18:11,340 --> 01:18:15,300
The most recent data tends to drive our decisions.

1311
01:18:15,300 --> 01:18:21,340
I talked to many police officers whose their their phrase, you know, on the side of the

1312
01:18:21,340 --> 01:18:24,700
car, it says to serve and protect or to protect and serve.

1313
01:18:24,700 --> 01:18:29,780
But their internal motto is all cops go home at night.

1314
01:18:29,780 --> 01:18:32,860
And boy, I've always had issue with that.

1315
01:18:32,860 --> 01:18:36,980
And I might get some pushback on this, but I I actually hate that phrase.

1316
01:18:36,980 --> 01:18:40,700
I hate the phrase that says, well, all cops want to do is go home at night.

1317
01:18:40,700 --> 01:18:42,740
Well, so does everybody.

1318
01:18:42,740 --> 01:18:44,100
So does the Amazon driver.

1319
01:18:44,100 --> 01:18:45,100
So does the surgeon.

1320
01:18:45,100 --> 01:18:47,260
So does the subway worker.

1321
01:18:47,260 --> 01:18:48,520
Everybody wants to go home at night.

1322
01:18:48,520 --> 01:18:50,740
Why do we have to say it?

1323
01:18:50,740 --> 01:18:53,540
And really, you know, I never hear say this.

1324
01:18:53,540 --> 01:18:55,380
We call ourselves paramilitary.

1325
01:18:55,380 --> 01:18:57,060
I never hear an army ranger.

1326
01:18:57,060 --> 01:19:00,980
I never hear a Navy SEAL say we know at the end of the day, SEALs just want to come home.

1327
01:19:00,980 --> 01:19:02,940
Like no, you know what they say?

1328
01:19:02,940 --> 01:19:05,860
We don't leave anybody behind dead or alive.

1329
01:19:05,860 --> 01:19:07,660
Like it's a foregone conclusion.

1330
01:19:07,660 --> 01:19:09,300
Like that's who they are.

1331
01:19:09,300 --> 01:19:12,780
And if they're going to go through the door and die, just don't leave my body here, please.

1332
01:19:12,780 --> 01:19:18,640
Like, but yet in policing, we say this like, well, I go home at night.

1333
01:19:18,640 --> 01:19:22,220
And then I think what happens is you have these little phrases.

1334
01:19:22,220 --> 01:19:24,560
And I'm picking on policing for the moment.

1335
01:19:24,560 --> 01:19:28,120
But you have these phrases, which, by the way, never heard a firefighter say that.

1336
01:19:28,120 --> 01:19:29,620
And I make that point to my cops.

1337
01:19:29,620 --> 01:19:33,240
I never hear a firefighter say, well, you know, there was people in the building.

1338
01:19:33,240 --> 01:19:35,980
But at the end of the day, these firefighters, you know, they just want to get home with

1339
01:19:35,980 --> 01:19:36,980
their families.

1340
01:19:36,980 --> 01:19:38,060
They never say that.

1341
01:19:38,060 --> 01:19:42,220
So whenever somebody tells me, well, everyone loves a firefighter, I always say, well, because

1342
01:19:42,220 --> 01:19:44,640
they never say all they want to do is go home at night.

1343
01:19:44,640 --> 01:19:47,040
So let's stop shooting ourselves in the foot.

1344
01:19:47,040 --> 01:19:54,980
But if we have these phrases like this, now everybody I see is a potential threat now,

1345
01:19:54,980 --> 01:19:59,100
which not only are they, they're already a potential threat.

1346
01:19:59,100 --> 01:20:00,400
Everybody's a potential, I get it.

1347
01:20:00,400 --> 01:20:05,700
But now I've already shaped my worldview that not only are they a threat, but they might

1348
01:20:05,700 --> 01:20:07,580
stop me from going home tonight.

1349
01:20:07,580 --> 01:20:11,700
So I'm really not going to look at them as anything more than someone that's going to

1350
01:20:11,700 --> 01:20:13,700
stand in the way of me and my family.

1351
01:20:13,700 --> 01:20:15,220
And my compassion goes down.

1352
01:20:15,220 --> 01:20:16,940
My empathy goes down.

1353
01:20:16,940 --> 01:20:21,540
Everything goes down because you potentially want to take everything that is important

1354
01:20:21,540 --> 01:20:23,620
to me and rip it away.

1355
01:20:23,620 --> 01:20:28,180
And I think you combat that by just being ready.

1356
01:20:28,180 --> 01:20:32,580
Spend time in the gym, spend time on the range, eat the right foods, get the right sleep,

1357
01:20:32,580 --> 01:20:35,620
be prepared for whatever comes your way.

1358
01:20:35,620 --> 01:20:43,260
But yet the nobility of my particular profession, I argue, is in the hardships of it.

1359
01:20:43,260 --> 01:20:49,700
I am willing to stand on a line and protect people that want to yell at me.

1360
01:20:49,700 --> 01:20:51,180
Like that's noble, right?

1361
01:20:51,180 --> 01:20:54,940
Like you want to swear at me and I want to make sure no car hits you.

1362
01:20:54,940 --> 01:20:58,940
Like that's, it's kind of a contradiction, but I'm not worried about going home at night.

1363
01:20:58,940 --> 01:21:04,820
If that was truly my biggest concern, I would have chosen a different career where accountants

1364
01:21:04,820 --> 01:21:07,780
go home at night regularly, all the time.

1365
01:21:07,780 --> 01:21:09,540
They always make it home.

1366
01:21:09,540 --> 01:21:18,500
So I think how we talk about ourselves sometimes will influence how we are trying to solve

1367
01:21:18,500 --> 01:21:20,500
these problems.

1368
01:21:20,500 --> 01:21:28,060
And we need to start looking at people, not just as criminals, but as fellow citizens.

1369
01:21:28,060 --> 01:21:34,720
And whether it's in the judicial system or at the executive level, or even in the legislature,

1370
01:21:34,720 --> 01:21:40,300
how we write our laws, how we write our codes, how we as a society, like we need to have

1371
01:21:40,300 --> 01:21:46,260
more town halls that really say, look, as a society, what do we want to do?

1372
01:21:46,260 --> 01:21:47,860
What do we want to do about this?

1373
01:21:47,860 --> 01:21:51,220
Whether it's the school shooting or the homeless encampment.

1374
01:21:51,220 --> 01:21:57,940
Like I think we need more civic engagement with thoughtful people.

1375
01:21:57,940 --> 01:22:04,900
And it feels like we're a little bit selfish here, you know, not in my backyard.

1376
01:22:04,900 --> 01:22:06,500
I'm sure you've heard like the NIMBY folks.

1377
01:22:06,500 --> 01:22:09,100
I want all the homeless people, just don't put them here though.

1378
01:22:09,100 --> 01:22:10,260
Good God, no.

1379
01:22:10,260 --> 01:22:13,620
Like put them somewhere, but not by my, not in my backyard.

1380
01:22:13,620 --> 01:22:19,940
So I think we as a society need a little bit of a self-reflection exercise and not just

1381
01:22:19,940 --> 01:22:24,460
put it in the hands of the politicians so that we can blame them when things go wrong.

1382
01:22:24,460 --> 01:22:28,260
Like I think we need to do our part.

1383
01:22:28,260 --> 01:22:29,940
You know, I'm sure you do this, James.

1384
01:22:29,940 --> 01:22:34,920
I was in Anaheim and I was training a bunch of police officers about two years ago.

1385
01:22:34,920 --> 01:22:38,340
And I'm walking down one of these streets and all these people are coming home from

1386
01:22:38,340 --> 01:22:42,380
Disney and it's just, you know, it's families and Anaheim is a beautiful city.

1387
01:22:42,380 --> 01:22:46,860
And there is a homeless man talking, howling at the moon.

1388
01:22:46,860 --> 01:22:51,620
He's barefoot, he's dirty, and he's just walking up and down the street looking at cars for

1389
01:22:51,620 --> 01:22:54,380
change and everybody, like everybody's ignoring him.

1390
01:22:54,380 --> 01:23:01,140
And like it, it affected me so much that the world had just shut this guy out.

1391
01:23:01,140 --> 01:23:05,060
I go into CVS, I bought a pair of socks, I bought two pairs of socks.

1392
01:23:05,060 --> 01:23:07,260
I bought like an Anaheim cheesy sweatshirt.

1393
01:23:07,260 --> 01:23:11,420
I bought some flip flops and I just got some random food.

1394
01:23:11,420 --> 01:23:16,460
I maybe spent 60 bucks and I walked up to this guy and I said, hey man, I'm sorry to

1395
01:23:16,460 --> 01:23:19,140
bother you, but here's some stuff that might help you.

1396
01:23:19,140 --> 01:23:23,020
And he looked at me and he said, hey, do you think you could get a blanket?

1397
01:23:23,020 --> 01:23:24,940
Like it's getting really cold at night.

1398
01:23:24,940 --> 01:23:27,260
And my heart broke for this guy.

1399
01:23:27,260 --> 01:23:30,860
And I said, there's a couple of shirts in there I think are going to help you.

1400
01:23:30,860 --> 01:23:36,260
And I just walked away and I don't like, I think we need more of that.

1401
01:23:36,260 --> 01:23:38,580
I'm not trying to say that I'm some holy guy.

1402
01:23:38,580 --> 01:23:44,380
It's just, how did you have thousands of people that just spent thousands of dollars at this

1403
01:23:44,380 --> 01:23:51,020
event, not look at this person and say, we, can we all give five bucks to this guy?

1404
01:23:51,020 --> 01:23:54,300
Anyway, I'll give him $2 and get this guy some kind of help.

1405
01:23:54,300 --> 01:23:58,180
And the world at writ large wrote him off.

1406
01:23:58,180 --> 01:24:03,260
And I'll tell you what, James, he may have been 30 years old, you know, and maybe I provided

1407
01:24:03,260 --> 01:24:06,300
for him a little piece for one night or two nights.

1408
01:24:06,300 --> 01:24:07,460
I don't know.

1409
01:24:07,460 --> 01:24:13,980
But how is it that so many people just walk by and not want to do anything?

1410
01:24:13,980 --> 01:24:16,980
And every time I see something like that, I am compelled.

1411
01:24:16,980 --> 01:24:23,180
I feel like it's an imperative as a fellow human to want to help this person in some

1412
01:24:23,180 --> 01:24:28,140
way and not look at him as like a pigeon or a rat.

1413
01:24:28,140 --> 01:24:30,000
But I don't know where that comes from though.

1414
01:24:30,000 --> 01:24:35,980
Maybe it's because my humble upbringings have me a little bit closer to him than, than maybe

1415
01:24:35,980 --> 01:24:36,980
others.

1416
01:24:36,980 --> 01:24:37,980
I don't know.

1417
01:24:37,980 --> 01:24:38,980
What are your thoughts on this?

1418
01:24:38,980 --> 01:24:39,980
Because I'm sure you see it too.

1419
01:24:39,980 --> 01:24:40,980
And I'm sure you help people too.

1420
01:24:40,980 --> 01:24:48,100
Yeah, well, I think this is what's so sad is I would argue that the lens that you have,

1421
01:24:48,100 --> 01:24:54,060
the lens that I had as a firefighter paramedic is such an invaluable perspective on how the

1422
01:24:54,060 --> 01:24:56,020
world is actually doing.

1423
01:24:56,020 --> 01:25:02,040
And I would argue even more so the fire EMS because, you know, the number of times I've

1424
01:25:02,040 --> 01:25:08,420
gone down, OBT in Orlando, for example, and, you know, the sex workers and the pimps and

1425
01:25:08,420 --> 01:25:13,140
the drug dealers, they're all waving at us because they know that if it all goes south,

1426
01:25:13,140 --> 01:25:14,580
we're the only ones that are there.

1427
01:25:14,580 --> 01:25:18,060
You guys obviously there are absolutely trying to protect them, but you're using the law

1428
01:25:18,060 --> 01:25:20,460
and that's obviously not very popular when you're a criminal.

1429
01:25:20,460 --> 01:25:22,280
So it's a different dynamic.

1430
01:25:22,280 --> 01:25:24,020
But for us, we're it.

1431
01:25:24,020 --> 01:25:28,880
So collectively, first responders, our lens on how the world is actually doing, which

1432
01:25:28,880 --> 01:25:33,340
is why I wrote the books that I wrote just to try and give this lens, you know, and I

1433
01:25:33,340 --> 01:25:38,220
wanted to make it into my most recent one into a TV show because to show these people

1434
01:25:38,220 --> 01:25:42,700
what we actually see, how society is doing, how we can help to put hope back in.

1435
01:25:42,700 --> 01:25:51,660
But but that same innate compassion that I think drives most of us into uniform is what's

1436
01:25:51,660 --> 01:25:53,180
missing in a lot of these areas.

1437
01:25:53,180 --> 01:25:56,420
And I think you could you could argue the messaging, especially in America.

1438
01:25:56,420 --> 01:25:59,060
I mean, you look at you mentioned CVS.

1439
01:25:59,060 --> 01:26:03,740
Well, what was always going to be across the road from a CVS or Walgreens?

1440
01:26:03,740 --> 01:26:07,780
Because in America, the monopoly is the holy fucking Bible of business.

1441
01:26:07,780 --> 01:26:11,940
Oh, don't don't have a pharmacy on one side and then one on the other side of town.

1442
01:26:11,940 --> 01:26:15,060
Let's put one right next to him so we can shut them down and destroy them because destroying

1443
01:26:15,060 --> 01:26:17,260
camp competition is everything.

1444
01:26:17,260 --> 01:26:19,380
You know, if you're not first, you last.

1445
01:26:19,380 --> 01:26:26,180
So we don't have that community messaging or our news stations are divisive.

1446
01:26:26,180 --> 01:26:28,780
And it blows my mind because I've said this a thousand times.

1447
01:26:28,780 --> 01:26:34,300
Fox and CNN are the same exact blueprint, you know, divided screen for assholes or arguing

1448
01:26:34,300 --> 01:26:39,740
with each other and each viewership swears that the other one is a devil and there is

1449
01:26:39,740 --> 01:26:41,780
the second coming of Christ.

1450
01:26:41,780 --> 01:26:48,620
So there's so much division, so much nastiness, so much anti-community in the messaging.

1451
01:26:48,620 --> 01:26:52,540
But if you look, we're also Americans are some of the most kind, compassionate people

1452
01:26:52,540 --> 01:26:56,540
and they donate some of the largest amounts of charitable donations of anywhere on the

1453
01:26:56,540 --> 01:26:57,540
planet.

1454
01:26:57,540 --> 01:26:59,460
So I believe Americans are good.

1455
01:26:59,460 --> 01:27:05,540
But I think that selflessness and that nastiness finds itself on the screens in the messaging.

1456
01:27:05,540 --> 01:27:09,900
And that is what skews the very thing that they're learning in their holy buildings on

1457
01:27:09,900 --> 01:27:11,860
whatever day they go to it.

1458
01:27:11,860 --> 01:27:15,460
Yeah, it's it's yeah.

1459
01:27:15,460 --> 01:27:22,680
For all of our faults and for all of our shortcomings, boy, we can mobilize like we can help one another

1460
01:27:22,680 --> 01:27:25,000
and we could help the world.

1461
01:27:25,000 --> 01:27:32,300
But yet there is this arrogance that everybody has the same potential to just pull themselves

1462
01:27:32,300 --> 01:27:35,580
up by their bootstraps and everyone has the same.

1463
01:27:35,580 --> 01:27:40,100
Like that guy, he just needs to, you know, get his shit together.

1464
01:27:40,100 --> 01:27:43,620
And there's plenty of there's plenty of places he can go.

1465
01:27:43,620 --> 01:27:45,500
But not if he doesn't know.

1466
01:27:45,500 --> 01:27:53,260
Not if he has no clue and his brain is his his cognitive processing is so compromised

1467
01:27:53,260 --> 01:27:58,180
because he has nothing, whatever little joy he could get out of life is through a pipe

1468
01:27:58,180 --> 01:27:59,540
or a needle.

1469
01:27:59,540 --> 01:28:03,860
And he just doesn't know any better because that's where his existence has been for so

1470
01:28:03,860 --> 01:28:04,860
long.

1471
01:28:04,860 --> 01:28:09,060
Like we would never let a child walk around like that.

1472
01:28:09,060 --> 01:28:14,260
If there is a six year old barefoot walking around the streets looking dirty, the society

1473
01:28:14,260 --> 01:28:16,620
grabs them and says, what is going on?

1474
01:28:16,620 --> 01:28:17,700
Everything stop.

1475
01:28:17,700 --> 01:28:18,700
Like so.

1476
01:28:18,700 --> 01:28:20,180
OK, so there's a line here.

1477
01:28:20,180 --> 01:28:21,180
Where does that line go?

1478
01:28:21,180 --> 01:28:23,740
Are there 15? Do we do it?

1479
01:28:23,740 --> 01:28:25,900
Probably if they're 20, maybe.

1480
01:28:25,900 --> 01:28:28,020
But they're 30 like, fuck them.

1481
01:28:28,020 --> 01:28:29,020
They're done.

1482
01:28:29,020 --> 01:28:31,700
Like, why do we just write them off?

1483
01:28:31,700 --> 01:28:37,340
And it's I think it's what we perceive as their potential ability.

1484
01:28:37,340 --> 01:28:43,620
But the 30 year old that has had the terrible existence who hasn't who what at one point

1485
01:28:43,620 --> 01:28:48,300
maybe was an eight year old walking around, but has figured it out for a decade and now

1486
01:28:48,300 --> 01:28:52,260
is 30 year old, we just think they're going to pull themselves together.

1487
01:28:52,260 --> 01:28:58,500
And we do need a mechanism to capture those individuals.

1488
01:28:58,500 --> 01:29:05,020
You know, cops don't like any infringement on our day to day.

1489
01:29:05,020 --> 01:29:08,660
We're going to put the Department of Public Safety and they're going to answer calls

1490
01:29:08,660 --> 01:29:10,940
for mental health and cops are like, good luck with that.

1491
01:29:10,940 --> 01:29:13,500
We'll see what happens when the guy comes out with a knife.

1492
01:29:13,500 --> 01:29:14,500
Sure.

1493
01:29:14,500 --> 01:29:16,380
When the guy comes out with a knife, we may need to be there.

1494
01:29:16,380 --> 01:29:22,740
But maybe just maybe this is one intervention where we don't shoot somebody that really

1495
01:29:22,740 --> 01:29:29,460
just wants to be shot by us and we could take that person out of our officer involved shooting.

1496
01:29:29,460 --> 01:29:32,300
Maybe just that one person because we do this department.

1497
01:29:32,300 --> 01:29:35,140
We can't be so cynical, I think is where I'm going with this.

1498
01:29:35,140 --> 01:29:36,980
We shouldn't be so cynical.

1499
01:29:36,980 --> 01:29:38,020
We should be open.

1500
01:29:38,020 --> 01:29:42,540
We should be open because if we're in law enforcement and verifying and public service

1501
01:29:42,540 --> 01:29:50,740
in general, you should be the opposite of cynical because you're trying, you're voluntarily

1502
01:29:50,740 --> 01:29:57,140
getting into a sector that is trying to better society.

1503
01:29:57,140 --> 01:29:58,820
And we should embrace that.

1504
01:29:58,820 --> 01:30:04,500
We should be creative and look at things through the lens of hope.

1505
01:30:04,500 --> 01:30:05,500
And you know what?

1506
01:30:05,500 --> 01:30:06,500
Let's try to do this.

1507
01:30:06,500 --> 01:30:07,500
Let's give it a shot.

1508
01:30:07,500 --> 01:30:08,500
If it doesn't work, we got to learn something.

1509
01:30:08,500 --> 01:30:09,740
But I don't know.

1510
01:30:09,740 --> 01:30:13,220
I feel like you say it is there is this competition.

1511
01:30:13,220 --> 01:30:14,780
I mean, good God, cops.

1512
01:30:14,780 --> 01:30:20,940
I don't know if you guys do this, but like if I see a CHP officer, it's not uncommon

1513
01:30:20,940 --> 01:30:23,820
for a cop to say, oh, there's AAA with a gun.

1514
01:30:23,820 --> 01:30:24,940
Like why are you?

1515
01:30:24,940 --> 01:30:27,820
It's just an officer that patrols a different sector.

1516
01:30:27,820 --> 01:30:30,020
But like we talk shit about them.

1517
01:30:30,020 --> 01:30:34,780
Do you guys talk shit about like Glendale or like I don't think so.

1518
01:30:34,780 --> 01:30:37,660
But in policing, it's like that.

1519
01:30:37,660 --> 01:30:42,620
It's amazing how siloed the first responder professions are because, yeah, I've seen Anaheim

1520
01:30:42,620 --> 01:30:43,620
is a great example.

1521
01:30:43,620 --> 01:30:48,780
They have a thing called North Net where we would train with Orange and Fullerton and

1522
01:30:48,780 --> 01:30:51,500
all the surrounding agencies.

1523
01:30:51,500 --> 01:30:53,460
And that was a really good rapport.

1524
01:30:53,460 --> 01:30:55,140
But I would argue there was a lot of humility.

1525
01:30:55,140 --> 01:30:56,260
And this is the big thing.

1526
01:30:56,260 --> 01:30:59,660
Now fast forward to coming back to the East Coast.

1527
01:30:59,660 --> 01:31:05,140
I've stood in front of a trailer park when I was on a rescue, our fire ambulances, as

1528
01:31:05,140 --> 01:31:08,740
there's a transformer fire that's about to light off all the trees around it.

1529
01:31:08,740 --> 01:31:14,220
And these are old, old, old style caravans arguing with my dispatcher for them to send

1530
01:31:14,220 --> 01:31:19,260
the Orlando fire station that I can see with my own eyes, but it's across the dotted line.

1531
01:31:19,260 --> 01:31:22,100
And they're like, oh, that's not our jurisdiction.

1532
01:31:22,100 --> 01:31:25,700
I don't give a fuck who just send the people that are closest because these people need

1533
01:31:25,700 --> 01:31:27,180
help and we don't have any water.

1534
01:31:27,180 --> 01:31:30,460
I can try some IV bags, but it's not going to work.

1535
01:31:30,460 --> 01:31:35,420
So this is what's crazy is that in a good area, yes, you do have camaraderie and there

1536
01:31:35,420 --> 01:31:40,180
might be a little kind of bragging rights, but overall, you're all on the same mission

1537
01:31:40,180 --> 01:31:41,180
in a bad area.

1538
01:31:41,180 --> 01:31:47,660
Oh, the transport EMT, transport medic, the same damn patch that I got on my shoulder.

1539
01:31:47,660 --> 01:31:51,420
Have they seen as much maybe as far as the horrible shit that we see?

1540
01:31:51,420 --> 01:31:55,180
No, but they still went to the same school and got the same piece of paper.

1541
01:31:55,180 --> 01:32:02,320
So that whole PD not talking to FD or city not talking to county, that is inexcusable

1542
01:32:02,320 --> 01:32:05,420
in the first responder professions, inexcusable.

1543
01:32:05,420 --> 01:32:06,420
Agree.

1544
01:32:06,420 --> 01:32:09,300
Yeah, we, yes, inexcusable.

1545
01:32:09,300 --> 01:32:11,020
I think that sums it up perfectly.

1546
01:32:11,020 --> 01:32:12,300
We need to get rid.

1547
01:32:12,300 --> 01:32:18,620
This is again, public service should be about collaboration, not competition.

1548
01:32:18,620 --> 01:32:23,740
And you got a fire truck 300 yards away or there's one three miles away.

1549
01:32:23,740 --> 01:32:25,140
It doesn't matter.

1550
01:32:25,140 --> 01:32:27,300
It shouldn't matter at all.

1551
01:32:27,300 --> 01:32:33,780
You know, it's interesting, James, I've been, I've heard this a few times on some podcasts.

1552
01:32:33,780 --> 01:32:39,580
The airline industry seems to have some kind of secret sauce.

1553
01:32:39,580 --> 01:32:42,480
You don't, they don't say things like fly Delta.

1554
01:32:42,480 --> 01:32:44,220
We're so much better than spirit.

1555
01:32:44,220 --> 01:32:45,640
You know, like they don't do that.

1556
01:32:45,640 --> 01:32:48,420
They just say fly Delta, the friendly skies, fly American.

1557
01:32:48,420 --> 01:32:49,580
We'll get you there.

1558
01:32:49,580 --> 01:32:50,580
Fly spirit.

1559
01:32:50,580 --> 01:32:52,780
You know, we're fun, but they don't.

1560
01:32:52,780 --> 01:32:57,740
They collaborate on so much when there is a problem and an airplane has an instance

1561
01:32:57,740 --> 01:33:02,160
or a situation, all the airlines work together.

1562
01:33:02,160 --> 01:33:07,740
And if there's an instance because an LA County sheriff does something, other agencies say,

1563
01:33:07,740 --> 01:33:09,820
well, that's the sheriff's, they're fucked up.

1564
01:33:09,820 --> 01:33:10,900
We wouldn't do that.

1565
01:33:10,900 --> 01:33:12,540
Sure we would.

1566
01:33:12,540 --> 01:33:14,460
We just haven't done that yet.

1567
01:33:14,460 --> 01:33:20,300
Or we haven't done it this year, but we push things off as where I think other industry,

1568
01:33:20,300 --> 01:33:28,460
they work together because if one plane crashes, all airline in this, all airlines can suffer

1569
01:33:28,460 --> 01:33:30,000
from this.

1570
01:33:30,000 --> 01:33:35,860
We saw what happened when one Minnesota cop had a very bad decision.

1571
01:33:35,860 --> 01:33:41,640
We saw how that reverberated throughout all of policing, yet we don't want to collaborate

1572
01:33:41,640 --> 01:33:42,640
with each other.

1573
01:33:42,640 --> 01:33:49,020
We just want to silo everybody and say, well, that's not us, but other industries work together.

1574
01:33:49,020 --> 01:33:56,300
It would be amazing to see if we worked with surrounding agencies truly as partners and

1575
01:33:56,300 --> 01:34:00,300
not just competitors, what we could accomplish.

1576
01:34:00,300 --> 01:34:05,860
Because I think we waste a lot of bandwidth, energy competing with other people instead

1577
01:34:05,860 --> 01:34:08,260
of collaborating with them.

1578
01:34:08,260 --> 01:34:10,120
Well you mentioned Minneapolis.

1579
01:34:10,120 --> 01:34:14,660
So that obviously was a very pivotal moment when it comes to law enforcement and obviously

1580
01:34:14,660 --> 01:34:19,860
the probably I'm so sure some good things that came out of that and obviously with some

1581
01:34:19,860 --> 01:34:23,580
very evident poor decisions and politicizations are made as well.

1582
01:34:23,580 --> 01:34:29,820
So talk to me about that event through your eyes and let's kind of unpack the pros and

1583
01:34:29,820 --> 01:34:32,660
the cons that you witnessed following.

1584
01:34:32,660 --> 01:34:34,420
Wow.

1585
01:34:34,420 --> 01:34:40,840
This was, it's all starting to become a blur.

1586
01:34:40,840 --> 01:34:49,740
Because if I can, just before the George Floyd murder was the COVID experience and the city,

1587
01:34:49,740 --> 01:34:52,560
all cities around everywhere just like shuts down.

1588
01:34:52,560 --> 01:34:57,020
So just to give the listener some kind of a visual of this, and I'm sure some of the

1589
01:34:57,020 --> 01:35:03,540
officers had some experience, it was April and Los Angeles is a ghost town and we're

1590
01:35:03,540 --> 01:35:09,580
doing random patrols because all these businesses now are ripe for break-ins.

1591
01:35:09,580 --> 01:35:13,520
So people's cars are getting broken into, the opportunists come out.

1592
01:35:13,520 --> 01:35:18,400
So a lot of us have been just dispatched to just do patrol, just to be a presence because

1593
01:35:18,400 --> 01:35:20,640
so many places were getting hit.

1594
01:35:20,640 --> 01:35:26,800
And I recall one family heading their garage, they saw people in the back like in the garage

1595
01:35:26,800 --> 01:35:28,260
and they don't want to go outside.

1596
01:35:28,260 --> 01:35:33,960
And so we go there, I showed up first and the people are gone.

1597
01:35:33,960 --> 01:35:36,140
They tried to break in, but they're gone.

1598
01:35:36,140 --> 01:35:38,300
And I remember talking to them through the glass.

1599
01:35:38,300 --> 01:35:42,780
I'm wearing a mask, the family's wearing a mask behind the window.

1600
01:35:42,780 --> 01:35:47,200
And this little kid comes up and puts their hand on the window.

1601
01:35:47,200 --> 01:35:51,260
And I look and I put my hand on the window, I'm like, we're going to be okay, buddy, we're

1602
01:35:51,260 --> 01:35:52,640
going to be okay.

1603
01:35:52,640 --> 01:35:54,900
And they're like, thank you, thank you.

1604
01:35:54,900 --> 01:35:58,900
And I just think, nobody captured that, there's no phone.

1605
01:35:58,900 --> 01:36:01,960
How many moments do cops like that have or do firefighters have?

1606
01:36:01,960 --> 01:36:08,160
So I do this little thing and then it's as if somebody snapped their finger and I'm standing

1607
01:36:08,160 --> 01:36:13,680
on a line with the baton with my helmet on, people saying, you fucking racist, I hope

1608
01:36:13,680 --> 01:36:15,480
you die, you son of a bitch.

1609
01:36:15,480 --> 01:36:23,440
And it was this crazy shift of like the world clapping for the employees that were still

1610
01:36:23,440 --> 01:36:24,440
out there.

1611
01:36:24,440 --> 01:36:25,440
What was the term they used?

1612
01:36:25,440 --> 01:36:27,440
I always thought it was frontline workers.

1613
01:36:27,440 --> 01:36:29,160
Yeah, frontline workers.

1614
01:36:29,160 --> 01:36:30,160
And there was essential.

1615
01:36:30,160 --> 01:36:32,380
It was an essential employee.

1616
01:36:32,380 --> 01:36:34,240
That was like this grandiose term.

1617
01:36:34,240 --> 01:36:36,480
I'm an essential employee.

1618
01:36:36,480 --> 01:36:41,920
So essential workers, people had sweatshirts that said that.

1619
01:36:41,920 --> 01:36:47,760
And so here's the thing, Floyd happens and it's all over the news.

1620
01:36:47,760 --> 01:36:50,280
And I'm talking with various police officers.

1621
01:36:50,280 --> 01:36:54,300
And I remember there was a few colleagues I had and they're like, dude, this is terrible.

1622
01:36:54,300 --> 01:36:55,880
That guy's going to get in a lot of trouble.

1623
01:36:55,880 --> 01:37:02,600
And this was one of those instances where the plurality of people that I spoke to all

1624
01:37:02,600 --> 01:37:04,720
said the same thing.

1625
01:37:04,720 --> 01:37:07,360
That guy's in trouble, this looks terrible.

1626
01:37:07,360 --> 01:37:11,360
Every now and again, you have controversial shootings or controversial instances and you'll

1627
01:37:11,360 --> 01:37:13,040
get like kind of a split.

1628
01:37:13,040 --> 01:37:16,720
You'll have cops say, well, you know, you should have just listened or cops that'll

1629
01:37:16,720 --> 01:37:19,480
say it looks bad, but it's going to be legal.

1630
01:37:19,480 --> 01:37:22,180
This everybody was like, oh, it's terrible.

1631
01:37:22,180 --> 01:37:23,720
This guy just made a mess.

1632
01:37:23,720 --> 01:37:24,720
He's going to go to jail.

1633
01:37:24,720 --> 01:37:26,600
Like everybody was saying it.

1634
01:37:26,600 --> 01:37:29,400
And a Baltimore lieutenant that I know said, how's it going by you?

1635
01:37:29,400 --> 01:37:31,340
And I said, ah, we're fine.

1636
01:37:31,340 --> 01:37:35,840
But we invest so much into procedural justice and community safety partnerships.

1637
01:37:35,840 --> 01:37:38,680
Like we're not going to see anything here.

1638
01:37:38,680 --> 01:37:43,680
Literally 12 hours later, I was called in and we were on the line and it just, you know,

1639
01:37:43,680 --> 01:37:46,600
36 hours later, the National Guard gets rolled in.

1640
01:37:46,600 --> 01:37:55,220
So this was for me a very visceral yet surreal experience in law enforcement.

1641
01:37:55,220 --> 01:37:56,880
We were overwhelmed.

1642
01:37:56,880 --> 01:38:01,480
It was, it was unlike anything I had ever seen.

1643
01:38:01,480 --> 01:38:07,240
People that were on the department would refer back to the nineties when like Rodney King

1644
01:38:07,240 --> 01:38:08,240
happened.

1645
01:38:08,240 --> 01:38:10,800
So there was a handful of people that got to see both of these.

1646
01:38:10,800 --> 01:38:15,240
And so they were a little bit more familiar, but it was unlike anything.

1647
01:38:15,240 --> 01:38:20,040
And I think it was a, Sebastian Younger could probably write a book on this, like The Perfect

1648
01:38:20,040 --> 01:38:26,720
Storm, because I think had everybody just been going on with their life, it might not

1649
01:38:26,720 --> 01:38:31,840
have had as much, it would have had an impact, but maybe not as much.

1650
01:38:31,840 --> 01:38:37,580
But this was an excuse for everybody to come out that they couldn't come out for months.

1651
01:38:37,580 --> 01:38:39,960
Because why are you getting so mad in Los Angeles?

1652
01:38:39,960 --> 01:38:42,160
Like we had nothing to do with this.

1653
01:38:42,160 --> 01:38:43,160
We condemn it.

1654
01:38:43,160 --> 01:38:44,920
Like we made public statements about it.

1655
01:38:44,920 --> 01:38:46,920
Like we condemn it fully.

1656
01:38:46,920 --> 01:38:50,720
And yet everybody came out and we were overran.

1657
01:38:50,720 --> 01:38:52,320
We had to call in the National Guard.

1658
01:38:52,320 --> 01:38:55,740
It was, it was 12 days.

1659
01:38:55,740 --> 01:39:01,840
It was more than 12 days, but 12 days that we got mobilized where I was just working

1660
01:39:01,840 --> 01:39:08,600
16, 17 hour days and they all blended into each other.

1661
01:39:08,600 --> 01:39:10,820
Violence was abundant.

1662
01:39:10,820 --> 01:39:17,120
It was moments of pure chaos sandwiched between moments of absolute boredom.

1663
01:39:17,120 --> 01:39:20,960
You would just have a bunch of people sitting around, tired, looking around, because I was

1664
01:39:20,960 --> 01:39:23,360
in the morning watch hours.

1665
01:39:23,360 --> 01:39:27,520
I would always, I was a sergeant and I would say, just get some sleep, get some sleep.

1666
01:39:27,520 --> 01:39:28,520
I'll keep a lookout.

1667
01:39:28,520 --> 01:39:32,680
I wanted to be the good sergeant because so much of my work is on sleep and sleep deprivation.

1668
01:39:32,680 --> 01:39:34,840
I was aware of the situation we were in.

1669
01:39:34,840 --> 01:39:37,000
So I would say, go in the van, get some shut eye.

1670
01:39:37,000 --> 01:39:39,280
And I would rotate people.

1671
01:39:39,280 --> 01:39:42,040
But when you had held the line, you had to hold the line.

1672
01:39:42,040 --> 01:39:43,840
So like, let's go, let's go, let's get up, let's get up.

1673
01:39:43,840 --> 01:39:45,760
And we're going to be on the line for the next six hours.

1674
01:39:45,760 --> 01:39:49,220
But in times of quiet, I would make sure everybody was getting their rest.

1675
01:39:49,220 --> 01:39:53,320
So I was able to implement some of these things that I teach, which was a neat little experiment.

1676
01:39:53,320 --> 01:40:02,200
It forced some conversations to be had that needed to be had.

1677
01:40:02,200 --> 01:40:07,120
Like, why can't we just make better decisions?

1678
01:40:07,120 --> 01:40:12,360
Like arrogance, contempt a cop kind of conversations and like, stop being an asshole.

1679
01:40:12,360 --> 01:40:14,760
Somebody doesn't like you, but once the cuffs are on, the cuffs are on.

1680
01:40:14,760 --> 01:40:15,760
Let's go.

1681
01:40:15,760 --> 01:40:19,720
Like the big agencies know this and they know how this can go because they've had their

1682
01:40:19,720 --> 01:40:20,720
riots.

1683
01:40:20,720 --> 01:40:22,160
So they move on from this.

1684
01:40:22,160 --> 01:40:25,640
But the little agencies, I guess, didn't quite get the memo.

1685
01:40:25,640 --> 01:40:29,280
So they had to have some of these conversations.

1686
01:40:29,280 --> 01:40:34,400
And then there was the pendulum swing of defund the police.

1687
01:40:34,400 --> 01:40:37,920
And that really impacted police.

1688
01:40:37,920 --> 01:40:41,320
To this day, the echoes of that are still there.

1689
01:40:41,320 --> 01:40:44,880
Now, nobody says defund the police, but let me just give an example.

1690
01:40:44,880 --> 01:40:47,700
Let's just take the Los Angeles Police Department.

1691
01:40:47,700 --> 01:40:52,760
They shut down the Academy and they take 150 million dollars out of the budget.

1692
01:40:52,760 --> 01:40:58,040
So now you have the Academy is shut down for eight months.

1693
01:40:58,040 --> 01:41:01,260
On average, 50 people come every month.

1694
01:41:01,260 --> 01:41:03,300
So 100, 200, 300.

1695
01:41:03,300 --> 01:41:10,220
So 500 people that are normally going to get put into the department, it stops immediately.

1696
01:41:10,220 --> 01:41:18,100
Those 500 people in that eight months in order to make that up is going to take years

1697
01:41:18,100 --> 01:41:22,760
to do because you lose them immediately.

1698
01:41:22,760 --> 01:41:26,080
So then you have your regular attrition and your retirements.

1699
01:41:26,080 --> 01:41:28,160
And then you have people who are just leaving.

1700
01:41:28,160 --> 01:41:32,720
So you have this spigot, this pipeline of people that are coming in that just stops.

1701
01:41:32,720 --> 01:41:35,760
So now you have nobody coming in and you only have people leaving.

1702
01:41:35,760 --> 01:41:38,960
So now there's a big gap and now you're down a thousand officers.

1703
01:41:38,960 --> 01:41:42,040
Okay, let's start the Academy back up.

1704
01:41:42,040 --> 01:41:43,940
Well now less people want to be police officers.

1705
01:41:43,940 --> 01:41:48,200
So now instead of 50, you're only getting 20 that come in the pipeline and you're already

1706
01:41:48,200 --> 01:41:51,280
down a thousand, but 50 still leave every month.

1707
01:41:51,280 --> 01:41:53,220
So you're not even meeting attrition.

1708
01:41:53,220 --> 01:41:55,080
So now you go from a thousand.

1709
01:41:55,080 --> 01:42:01,160
Well now you're down the next year, you're down 1300 and the next year you're down 1600.

1710
01:42:01,160 --> 01:42:09,720
So we still haven't recovered from just that eight month gap where we stopped everything.

1711
01:42:09,720 --> 01:42:16,800
I don't know, it's going to take a decade to get back up to where we were just because

1712
01:42:16,800 --> 01:42:21,200
the echoes of all the people that wanted to be cops no longer wanted to be cops.

1713
01:42:21,200 --> 01:42:22,920
And then you stop the legacy.

1714
01:42:22,920 --> 01:42:27,520
All the people who had family said, don't join policing.

1715
01:42:27,520 --> 01:42:29,680
So those people went on to different careers.

1716
01:42:29,680 --> 01:42:37,680
And it just, the impact of that cannot be overstated to how bad that is hurting departments

1717
01:42:37,680 --> 01:42:39,960
across the country.

1718
01:42:39,960 --> 01:42:46,280
So many police, and now you go to some of these roll calls and you barely have enough

1719
01:42:46,280 --> 01:42:48,880
police to get by.

1720
01:42:48,880 --> 01:42:51,400
And it's like the dirty little secret in policing.

1721
01:42:51,400 --> 01:42:54,780
You have places like Chicago that are canceling days off.

1722
01:42:54,780 --> 01:42:58,640
I talked to police officers that have worked 160 days straight, right?

1723
01:42:58,640 --> 01:43:03,680
There's 300, you have 350 days in a year.

1724
01:43:03,680 --> 01:43:07,320
And we are working 160 days straight.

1725
01:43:07,320 --> 01:43:08,600
Like this is insane.

1726
01:43:08,600 --> 01:43:10,020
That's not tenable.

1727
01:43:10,020 --> 01:43:11,700
That's not scalable.

1728
01:43:11,700 --> 01:43:13,560
How long is this cop going to work?

1729
01:43:13,560 --> 01:43:14,560
Right?

1730
01:43:14,560 --> 01:43:18,320
Like you just have so many issues that have come from that.

1731
01:43:18,320 --> 01:43:22,180
Now let me just pause because I've kind of talked about that.

1732
01:43:22,180 --> 01:43:25,520
Tell me if there's anything more specific you'd like to get into.

1733
01:43:25,520 --> 01:43:29,600
No, we're just adding on to exactly what you said because I wanted to get to the recruitment

1734
01:43:29,600 --> 01:43:31,880
crisis and obviously we're at a great point now.

1735
01:43:31,880 --> 01:43:37,480
And also you and I share this, I think passion is the wrong word, just deep understanding

1736
01:43:37,480 --> 01:43:43,720
of the impact of sleep deprivation on the acute and chronic health of the first responder.

1737
01:43:43,720 --> 01:43:49,660
Just underline to me, just to make sure I'm understanding it correctly, if you are losing

1738
01:43:49,660 --> 01:43:55,720
more the retention side is going, the recruitment side is going, add vaccine mandates.

1739
01:43:55,720 --> 01:43:58,640
Now you've got rid of even more people, especially in Southern California.

1740
01:43:58,640 --> 01:44:01,240
I've had some of them on the show.

1741
01:44:01,240 --> 01:44:03,480
Talk to me about who's holding the line.

1742
01:44:03,480 --> 01:44:09,040
This load, this immense load that should have been shared between X amount of officers,

1743
01:44:09,040 --> 01:44:12,440
is it now squarely on the shoulders of just those who are left?

1744
01:44:12,440 --> 01:44:15,720
So they're being forced to work more and more and more?

1745
01:44:15,720 --> 01:44:17,680
Yeah, yes.

1746
01:44:17,680 --> 01:44:19,480
The short answer is yes.

1747
01:44:19,480 --> 01:44:27,360
They are being asked to work more, much to the chagrin of city controllers who control

1748
01:44:27,360 --> 01:44:32,320
budgets, like police officers, overtime now is abundant.

1749
01:44:32,320 --> 01:44:37,640
But it shouldn't be, we're working overtime just to make minimums.

1750
01:44:37,640 --> 01:44:41,680
And there are shifts.

1751
01:44:41,680 --> 01:44:45,320
You work a morning shift, like six in the morning till six at night, and then you have

1752
01:44:45,320 --> 01:44:49,640
a mid shift, like 10 o'clock in the afternoon till eight o'clock at night, and then you

1753
01:44:49,640 --> 01:44:53,220
have one from noon to midnight, and then one from six at night till, you have all these

1754
01:44:53,220 --> 01:44:56,560
different shifts around the clock in policing.

1755
01:44:56,560 --> 01:45:00,520
There are some places that just have two shifts, six in the morning till six at night, and

1756
01:45:00,520 --> 01:45:02,960
six at night till six in the morning, because that's all they have.

1757
01:45:02,960 --> 01:45:06,600
You have places that are borrowing sergeants.

1758
01:45:06,600 --> 01:45:11,120
So that like a division will have no supervision at all.

1759
01:45:11,120 --> 01:45:15,000
And now you have to have a sergeant from a neighboring division come over and help.

1760
01:45:15,000 --> 01:45:24,080
And it is, I hate to be hyperbolic, like the crisis level, but it's certainly a very concerning

1761
01:45:24,080 --> 01:45:25,320
level right now.

1762
01:45:25,320 --> 01:45:34,000
We are putting through 20 to 30 people a month in various academies around the country,

1763
01:45:34,000 --> 01:45:38,620
say an average number, while they're losing 35 to 40.

1764
01:45:38,620 --> 01:45:40,560
You're never making up for it.

1765
01:45:40,560 --> 01:45:43,840
So every year it's just getting less and less.

1766
01:45:43,840 --> 01:45:50,680
And is that causing us to reevaluate what we're responding to?

1767
01:45:50,680 --> 01:45:54,680
Like police officers don't need to respond to every traffic collision.

1768
01:45:54,680 --> 01:45:59,480
If it's a traffic collision and nobody's hurt and the vehicles, you know, they have damage,

1769
01:45:59,480 --> 01:46:03,080
but it's property damage and like, you don't need to show up for this.

1770
01:46:03,080 --> 01:46:04,700
It's an accident.

1771
01:46:04,700 --> 01:46:08,720
If somebody's drunk or somebody, you know, there's a crime involved, but if it's not,

1772
01:46:08,720 --> 01:46:10,040
we show up to a lot of these things.

1773
01:46:10,040 --> 01:46:14,360
I mean, think about a city like Los Angeles where there's millions of cars driving around.

1774
01:46:14,360 --> 01:46:18,440
There's a lot of traffic collisions and cops show up to these things routinely.

1775
01:46:18,440 --> 01:46:19,440
Maybe we don't need to.

1776
01:46:19,440 --> 01:46:23,120
So a good conversation has been had to say, hey, we're not sending police officers to

1777
01:46:23,120 --> 01:46:25,080
your traffic collision.

1778
01:46:25,080 --> 01:46:26,840
Exchange information, handle it.

1779
01:46:26,840 --> 01:46:31,160
But this, you know, people think, well, the insurance company needs your police report.

1780
01:46:31,160 --> 01:46:32,920
Insurance company have investigators.

1781
01:46:32,920 --> 01:46:33,920
They can do that.

1782
01:46:33,920 --> 01:46:35,380
They're just relying on us to do it.

1783
01:46:35,380 --> 01:46:39,180
So we really don't need to have a traffic collision because there's no crime.

1784
01:46:39,180 --> 01:46:40,600
It's just administrative.

1785
01:46:40,600 --> 01:46:46,440
So there's a good conversation being had for things like that.

1786
01:46:46,440 --> 01:46:56,160
If somebody breaks into your house in the garage and there's no cameras, there's nothing,

1787
01:46:56,160 --> 01:47:00,240
you know, some tools were taken, but there's no suspect description.

1788
01:47:00,240 --> 01:47:03,680
Like we would go out and spend two hours on that call.

1789
01:47:03,680 --> 01:47:08,720
Now they say, unless we have any idea of who this person is, we're not going to spend any

1790
01:47:08,720 --> 01:47:09,720
more resources.

1791
01:47:09,720 --> 01:47:12,520
Go online, make your report online.

1792
01:47:12,520 --> 01:47:13,520
And that's it.

1793
01:47:13,520 --> 01:47:14,820
We're not sending police cars for that anymore.

1794
01:47:14,820 --> 01:47:20,240
So there's been some instances that have helped us become more efficient.

1795
01:47:20,240 --> 01:47:22,600
There's a cost to that, though.

1796
01:47:22,600 --> 01:47:26,520
Citizens now are less likely to report crime because they say, they're going to send me

1797
01:47:26,520 --> 01:47:28,960
to some portal and I'm going to fill it out.

1798
01:47:28,960 --> 01:47:30,480
And then nothing ever happens.

1799
01:47:30,480 --> 01:47:32,840
So they're not even investigating in any way.

1800
01:47:32,840 --> 01:47:37,720
So then there's some of that issue that happens where there's a lack of trust in us.

1801
01:47:37,720 --> 01:47:42,160
We're not capturing all the crime that could be happening.

1802
01:47:42,160 --> 01:47:44,680
You're burning out police officers.

1803
01:47:44,680 --> 01:47:51,120
You're making people who are already chronically sleep deprived even more so because you're

1804
01:47:51,120 --> 01:47:53,360
incentivizing them with money.

1805
01:47:53,360 --> 01:47:56,960
So no, I get to work 12 hours overtime, I'll take it.

1806
01:47:56,960 --> 01:48:04,000
So they're not thinking about how that's cognitively impairing themselves if something really does

1807
01:48:04,000 --> 01:48:07,000
go awry.

1808
01:48:07,000 --> 01:48:12,260
And I would also say we're short even with the civilian side of it.

1809
01:48:12,260 --> 01:48:16,560
So like somebody's got to change the brakes on these police vehicles.

1810
01:48:16,560 --> 01:48:18,500
Somebody's got to change the oil in the cars.

1811
01:48:18,500 --> 01:48:19,500
We have mechanics.

1812
01:48:19,500 --> 01:48:21,800
We beat the hell out of our vehicles.

1813
01:48:21,800 --> 01:48:28,760
You need quality mechanics just as one example of an incredible civilian community that helps

1814
01:48:28,760 --> 01:48:30,760
keep policing going.

1815
01:48:30,760 --> 01:48:37,120
Dispatchers, the people that take the 911 calls, they are being worked to the bone and

1816
01:48:37,120 --> 01:48:39,600
they're done with it too.

1817
01:48:39,600 --> 01:48:46,400
Calls for service have not come down, but expectations have come way down, which is

1818
01:48:46,400 --> 01:48:47,920
kind of sad.

1819
01:48:47,920 --> 01:48:55,280
So it's not uncommon for somebody to post a meme on Instagram that says like 911, 20

1820
01:48:55,280 --> 01:48:59,480
minutes, and they'll say, been on hold with 911 for 20 minutes.

1821
01:48:59,480 --> 01:49:00,960
Like that's unacceptable.

1822
01:49:00,960 --> 01:49:05,960
Somebody calls 911, you need help now and you're on hold for 20 minutes.

1823
01:49:05,960 --> 01:49:09,880
Chimney Christmas, this is becoming a problem.

1824
01:49:09,880 --> 01:49:13,660
So I do think we're coming out of it.

1825
01:49:13,660 --> 01:49:18,280
I think more people are starting to apply to be police officers.

1826
01:49:18,280 --> 01:49:25,080
I think the rhetoric around it, we just had a big political, you know, to do here in the

1827
01:49:25,080 --> 01:49:30,080
States, a presidential election and really policing was not mentioned at all.

1828
01:49:30,080 --> 01:49:34,520
Nothing, nothing about that, which all of us were shocked.

1829
01:49:34,520 --> 01:49:37,080
We were just like, wow, like it's like, and that's fine.

1830
01:49:37,080 --> 01:49:38,080
We'll take that.

1831
01:49:38,080 --> 01:49:41,640
We'll take no one way or the other.

1832
01:49:41,640 --> 01:49:43,480
So I think we're in a trend.

1833
01:49:43,480 --> 01:49:48,320
I think we've hit rock bottom and there's nowhere else to go but up at this point.

1834
01:49:48,320 --> 01:49:49,320
Anything?

1835
01:49:49,320 --> 01:49:50,920
I don't want to talk too much.

1836
01:49:50,920 --> 01:49:51,920
Go ahead.

1837
01:49:51,920 --> 01:49:56,400
You're good, you're good, I've got a thousand things I want to ask you, but just to underline

1838
01:49:56,400 --> 01:49:59,360
something because I agree with you, I'm an incurable optimist.

1839
01:49:59,360 --> 01:50:01,960
Every problem is an opportunity for a solution.

1840
01:50:01,960 --> 01:50:06,800
Angry optimist with a foul mouth, but optimist nonetheless.

1841
01:50:06,800 --> 01:50:15,440
But I think to really underline the true magnitude of the problem, contrast the demand for one

1842
01:50:15,440 --> 01:50:20,480
position in your agency when you were applying, who you were testing against, a number of

1843
01:50:20,480 --> 01:50:26,080
people versus what you're seeing in 2024.

1844
01:50:26,080 --> 01:50:37,460
So as I recall, for every 250 applicants, one was accepted 22 years ago.

1845
01:50:37,460 --> 01:50:42,480
So the odds were not in my favor and you had to be an exceptional candidate and all this.

1846
01:50:42,480 --> 01:50:48,880
And I think now that number has dropped to about 75 applicants for every one acceptance.

1847
01:50:48,880 --> 01:50:57,960
So there's still some degree of standard, but the level of recruit I'm being told, I

1848
01:50:57,960 --> 01:51:02,680
haven't had this firsthand experience, but I'm being told by people who have no dog in

1849
01:51:02,680 --> 01:51:08,640
the fight and they say, we are taking people that probably shouldn't be here.

1850
01:51:08,640 --> 01:51:10,520
We're not taking people that want to be cops.

1851
01:51:10,520 --> 01:51:13,040
We're taking people that need a job.

1852
01:51:13,040 --> 01:51:15,520
That's how it's explained to me.

1853
01:51:15,520 --> 01:51:20,200
And you had these conversations like, what do you want to do in your career and where

1854
01:51:20,200 --> 01:51:21,200
do you want to go?

1855
01:51:21,200 --> 01:51:26,640
And you hear things now like, I think in 20 years I get my pension, so I want to be 20

1856
01:51:26,640 --> 01:51:27,640
and out.

1857
01:51:27,640 --> 01:51:29,040
Like those are the phrases you hear.

1858
01:51:29,040 --> 01:51:30,360
Like we never said that.

1859
01:51:30,360 --> 01:51:36,240
We want to work SWAT and I want to be a captain and I want to work every this and that.

1860
01:51:36,240 --> 01:51:39,560
But nowadays you hear things like, I don't want to get prosecuted.

1861
01:51:39,560 --> 01:51:40,880
I don't want to go to jail.

1862
01:51:40,880 --> 01:51:43,720
I want to get my 20 years and I want to be done.

1863
01:51:43,720 --> 01:51:50,480
Which is so rare of a thing to hear from my generation.

1864
01:51:50,480 --> 01:51:54,320
They're also being brought up in a different climate.

1865
01:51:54,320 --> 01:51:57,840
I didn't know the police commissioners.

1866
01:51:57,840 --> 01:52:04,800
I didn't know the city council members when I was my first 10 years on the job.

1867
01:52:04,800 --> 01:52:08,800
These young kids, I call them kids, these young officers, they know everybody.

1868
01:52:08,800 --> 01:52:15,360
They're following the TikToks and the Instagrams and they're all in the memes.

1869
01:52:15,360 --> 01:52:19,680
We were told, don't broadcast that you're a cop when I was coming up.

1870
01:52:19,680 --> 01:52:20,680
Keep that quiet.

1871
01:52:20,680 --> 01:52:21,680
Keep it quiet.

1872
01:52:21,680 --> 01:52:27,080
These kids are just holding up phones and taking pictures like serving and protecting.

1873
01:52:27,080 --> 01:52:29,680
It's almost like a novelty.

1874
01:52:29,680 --> 01:52:33,720
I don't want to generalize because there's still good people coming and there's still

1875
01:52:33,720 --> 01:52:35,160
people that want to help others.

1876
01:52:35,160 --> 01:52:43,160
But if you were to ask the trainers the differences in what you see in the recruit, here's how

1877
01:52:43,160 --> 01:52:44,920
one said it to me.

1878
01:52:44,920 --> 01:52:50,840
He said like this, take 10, take a sample size of 10 recruits.

1879
01:52:50,840 --> 01:52:52,880
One is like your Navy SEAL.

1880
01:52:52,880 --> 01:52:54,120
You always got one.

1881
01:52:54,120 --> 01:52:55,520
That's just amazing.

1882
01:52:55,520 --> 01:53:00,920
One is a complete jackass and I don't know how they got into the department.

1883
01:53:00,920 --> 01:53:04,120
And then eight are good cops.

1884
01:53:04,120 --> 01:53:05,360
They're average.

1885
01:53:05,360 --> 01:53:08,320
You got one exceptional, you got one ridiculous.

1886
01:53:08,320 --> 01:53:09,560
We still don't know how he got in.

1887
01:53:09,560 --> 01:53:11,960
And then he got about eight people that are about average.

1888
01:53:11,960 --> 01:53:13,760
He said, no.

1889
01:53:13,760 --> 01:53:15,520
He said you still have the one.

1890
01:53:15,520 --> 01:53:16,520
Okay.

1891
01:53:16,520 --> 01:53:17,680
You still got your exceptional.

1892
01:53:17,680 --> 01:53:21,860
But instead of having one weirdo, you now got three.

1893
01:53:21,860 --> 01:53:25,440
Like how did these three people get in?

1894
01:53:25,440 --> 01:53:31,520
And now you got four average people, five average people.

1895
01:53:31,520 --> 01:53:36,160
He said, so just the caliber is just getting slowly squeezed out.

1896
01:53:36,160 --> 01:53:41,400
You used to get eight people that were going to be just good average cops, one exceptional,

1897
01:53:41,400 --> 01:53:42,400
one goofball.

1898
01:53:42,400 --> 01:53:44,560
Now you got three goofballs.

1899
01:53:44,560 --> 01:53:50,000
You got five people, six people, four people, and then one exception.

1900
01:53:50,000 --> 01:53:53,280
He said, so the goofballs are increasing.

1901
01:53:53,280 --> 01:53:57,240
The regular folks are getting smaller and you still got your exceptional folks.

1902
01:53:57,240 --> 01:53:59,560
I guess that's, I hope I said that right.

1903
01:53:59,560 --> 01:54:02,800
Just in generality, that's kind of what they see.

1904
01:54:02,800 --> 01:54:08,020
The average getting smaller, the negative candidates getting a little bit bigger and

1905
01:54:08,020 --> 01:54:10,560
still one exceptional.

1906
01:54:10,560 --> 01:54:15,200
I mean, this just, it illustrates the way that things are happening.

1907
01:54:15,200 --> 01:54:18,880
When I tested for Anaheim, I've talked about this many times, this was the actual written

1908
01:54:18,880 --> 01:54:19,880
test.

1909
01:54:19,880 --> 01:54:24,160
It was a thousand candidates in the conference space that we were testing, a thousand.

1910
01:54:24,160 --> 01:54:28,760
I think there was 30 spots total, two classes of about 15.

1911
01:54:28,760 --> 01:54:35,200
And you hear now, like locally, the city that I live in, I think it was them saying they

1912
01:54:35,200 --> 01:54:37,240
only had three people apply.

1913
01:54:37,240 --> 01:54:41,680
And this is not Anaheim, obviously it's Ocala, Florida, but it's just night and day.

1914
01:54:41,680 --> 01:54:47,520
And what worries me in fire, but even more so in police is like you said, hopefully that

1915
01:54:47,520 --> 01:54:50,360
one weirdo might have been squeezed out in probation at least.

1916
01:54:50,360 --> 01:54:52,240
You would have got rid of him or her.

1917
01:54:52,240 --> 01:54:56,920
But now, lowering standards and then, oh, they have this background or there's this

1918
01:54:56,920 --> 01:54:58,120
reason that we need to keep them.

1919
01:54:58,120 --> 01:55:05,120
I've seen it, you know, doesn't matter whatever the category is, a lot of places because of

1920
01:55:05,120 --> 01:55:07,640
the crisis with hiring, they won't get rid of anyone.

1921
01:55:07,640 --> 01:55:11,100
They might be an absolute shit bag on probation, but they still stay.

1922
01:55:11,100 --> 01:55:13,000
Now that person's behind the wheel of a car.

1923
01:55:13,000 --> 01:55:14,500
Now that person's got a gun on their hip.

1924
01:55:14,500 --> 01:55:19,220
Now that person's a chief, you know, and you think you have problems before.

1925
01:55:19,220 --> 01:55:20,680
So I couldn't agree more.

1926
01:55:20,680 --> 01:55:25,120
I think we are the lowest of the low, but that is a beautiful opportunity to turn it

1927
01:55:25,120 --> 01:55:26,240
around.

1928
01:55:26,240 --> 01:55:32,720
In the fire service where we have struggled immensely is just the ill health of the first

1929
01:55:32,720 --> 01:55:33,720
responder.

1930
01:55:33,720 --> 01:55:36,880
And we're in a recruitment crisis and we haven't had a George Floyd incident.

1931
01:55:36,880 --> 01:55:41,680
You know, London Fire Brigade was kind of pulled through the coals over Grenfell and

1932
01:55:41,680 --> 01:55:44,200
they did nothing but heroic actions.

1933
01:55:44,200 --> 01:55:47,960
But you know, the US, we haven't even had something like that in our fire brigade here

1934
01:55:47,960 --> 01:55:49,960
of our fire service.

1935
01:55:49,960 --> 01:55:55,360
But what has happened is to give credit to this young generation.

1936
01:55:55,360 --> 01:55:59,440
They are incredibly smart and they research what are the hours?

1937
01:55:59,440 --> 01:56:00,440
What is the pay?

1938
01:56:00,440 --> 01:56:01,440
What is the time off?

1939
01:56:01,440 --> 01:56:04,200
You know, what is this mandatory overtime I hear about?

1940
01:56:04,200 --> 01:56:05,200
What is the cancer rate?

1941
01:56:05,200 --> 01:56:06,200
What is the suicide rate?

1942
01:56:06,200 --> 01:56:08,320
What does it do to relationships?

1943
01:56:08,320 --> 01:56:11,860
And they're looking at this now going, that sounds a bit shit.

1944
01:56:11,860 --> 01:56:16,760
I really want to serve, but I'm going to go join the military or do something else instead.

1945
01:56:16,760 --> 01:56:20,720
The beautiful thing is there's a revolution that's just kind of started here in Florida

1946
01:56:20,720 --> 01:56:29,240
where departments are realizing, just as you pointed out with PD, we are bleeding overtime.

1947
01:56:29,240 --> 01:56:30,920
So there's your money.

1948
01:56:30,920 --> 01:56:31,920
You're already spending it.

1949
01:56:31,920 --> 01:56:34,360
It's already pouring out of your budget.

1950
01:56:34,360 --> 01:56:39,560
So if you take that and front load it and add another shift, it would be the 24 72,

1951
01:56:39,560 --> 01:56:44,120
we'd call it, a 42 hour work week because no one has any idea that firefighters work

1952
01:56:44,120 --> 01:56:46,600
56 hours a week before mandatory.

1953
01:56:46,600 --> 01:56:48,680
It's absolute insanity.

1954
01:56:48,680 --> 01:56:52,960
Put that back to where you value the health of the individual, put some fitness standards

1955
01:56:52,960 --> 01:56:56,520
back, you know, all these things that you can do, have a higher mental health counselor

1956
01:56:56,520 --> 01:56:58,520
within your department.

1957
01:56:58,520 --> 01:57:01,960
Now all of a sudden these young people go, this looks amazing.

1958
01:57:01,960 --> 01:57:05,520
You know, there is, there is quite a lot of time off now and they take my fitness seriously.

1959
01:57:05,520 --> 01:57:07,600
They take my mental health seriously.

1960
01:57:07,600 --> 01:57:08,960
You revolutionize it.

1961
01:57:08,960 --> 01:57:12,840
And what you're seeing now in Florida is like almost every week I share a new department

1962
01:57:12,840 --> 01:57:16,360
that's going to it or, you know, has gone to it already.

1963
01:57:16,360 --> 01:57:19,300
And that is it, the proactive solution to these problems.

1964
01:57:19,300 --> 01:57:21,260
So that's my profession.

1965
01:57:21,260 --> 01:57:23,100
I'm going to give you that magic wand again.

1966
01:57:23,100 --> 01:57:24,880
You're king for a day.

1967
01:57:24,880 --> 01:57:30,640
How do we turn this around on the law enforcement side to get the young people, including underserved

1968
01:57:30,640 --> 01:57:36,160
communities where there are potentially some phenomenal police officers in there that maybe

1969
01:57:36,160 --> 01:57:40,480
never had the opportunity to do it because either a, every cop they met was a shit bag

1970
01:57:40,480 --> 01:57:44,740
like Chicago when you were a kid or B, there's a financial barrier.

1971
01:57:44,740 --> 01:57:46,360
How do we create this?

1972
01:57:46,360 --> 01:57:50,960
So diversity comes through mentorship and we can actually create an environment that

1973
01:57:50,960 --> 01:57:57,800
gets young men and women excited to wear the law enforcement uniform again.

1974
01:57:57,800 --> 01:58:04,120
So you can do all the fun advertisements you want.

1975
01:58:04,120 --> 01:58:07,120
You could do all the commercials and that.

1976
01:58:07,120 --> 01:58:17,040
I think your best recruitment tool is your cops in the neighborhoods they serve.

1977
01:58:17,040 --> 01:58:23,640
I think that is your best way to convince people to do this job.

1978
01:58:23,640 --> 01:58:33,080
And when you have a number of cops who are disgruntled and upset and they just feel undervalued,

1979
01:58:33,080 --> 01:58:36,400
they are not advocating for this job.

1980
01:58:36,400 --> 01:58:42,940
So if I had my magic wand, I guess I got to keep like the five whys, like why are they

1981
01:58:42,940 --> 01:58:44,920
disgruntled because of this?

1982
01:58:44,920 --> 01:58:45,920
Why, why, why?

1983
01:58:45,920 --> 01:58:46,920
And I would keep going.

1984
01:58:46,920 --> 01:58:50,280
I would need to make some internal adjustments.

1985
01:58:50,280 --> 01:58:57,360
We need internally to stop being obligatory with our rhetoric and say, thank you for being

1986
01:58:57,360 --> 01:58:58,360
here today.

1987
01:58:58,360 --> 01:59:00,920
Uh, we're going to do this and this and we're done.

1988
01:59:00,920 --> 01:59:04,140
We got a few words from the captain and the captain comes in and says, thank you for being

1989
01:59:04,140 --> 01:59:05,140
here today.

1990
01:59:05,140 --> 01:59:06,840
Uh, let's stay hydrated and let's be safe.

1991
01:59:06,840 --> 01:59:13,360
Like stop with the obligatory rhetoric and start making it very specific and unique.

1992
01:59:13,360 --> 01:59:15,480
When you say, I want to thank everyone for being here.

1993
01:59:15,480 --> 01:59:16,480
Why?

1994
01:59:16,480 --> 01:59:20,800
Cause this is a really tough time to be a police officer, but yet you folks are still

1995
01:59:20,800 --> 01:59:25,720
showing up every day and I cannot tell you how impressed I am.

1996
01:59:25,720 --> 01:59:30,480
If I was in your shoes 20 years ago, I don't know if I would have the courage, tenacity,

1997
01:59:30,480 --> 01:59:31,480
whatever it is.

1998
01:59:31,480 --> 01:59:34,280
Like build them up a little bit.

1999
01:59:34,280 --> 01:59:37,640
Build them up and remind them you're not told enough.

2000
01:59:37,640 --> 01:59:42,880
Uh, you're, you're, you're never going to be told enough, but society needs you.

2001
01:59:42,880 --> 01:59:46,400
And when I, when I try to talk to my own cops, I try to impress upon them.

2002
01:59:46,400 --> 01:59:48,440
The nobility is in the hardships.

2003
01:59:48,440 --> 01:59:51,200
The nobility of this profession is in the hardships.

2004
01:59:51,200 --> 01:59:52,560
It's not when it's easy.

2005
01:59:52,560 --> 01:59:57,600
It's Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill and tomorrow that rock's going to be at the bottom,

2006
01:59:57,600 --> 02:00:00,080
but you're the kind of person that doesn't care.

2007
02:00:00,080 --> 02:00:02,360
And you're going to keep pushing that rock up the hill.

2008
02:00:02,360 --> 02:00:08,680
So I try to impress upon them that this is why you're here because you are the person

2009
02:00:08,680 --> 02:00:09,920
that can do these things.

2010
02:00:09,920 --> 02:00:12,800
So I want to touch them emotionally and viscerally.

2011
02:00:12,800 --> 02:00:16,200
I think we need then we treat them better.

2012
02:00:16,200 --> 02:00:20,360
So we're not going to mandate they work overtime.

2013
02:00:20,360 --> 02:00:23,200
We're not going to hammer them for little things.

2014
02:00:23,200 --> 02:00:29,560
Um, there's a use of force and I got to watch the body worn video and I look at it and one

2015
02:00:29,560 --> 02:00:33,840
officer takes a seatbelt off 30 seconds too soon.

2016
02:00:33,840 --> 02:00:36,400
Let's not give that officer an action item.

2017
02:00:36,400 --> 02:00:40,860
Let's just make it a Sergeant counseling and say, look, I understand why you took your

2018
02:00:40,860 --> 02:00:42,080
seatbelt off.

2019
02:00:42,080 --> 02:00:45,480
Just be aware these traffic collisions could happen at any time.

2020
02:00:45,480 --> 02:00:49,440
So you took it off about 30 seconds and you guys were still doing 70 miles an hour at

2021
02:00:49,440 --> 02:00:50,440
a major.

2022
02:00:50,440 --> 02:00:53,880
Just how about we wait till that car slow down and then get that seat, but just counsel

2023
02:00:53,880 --> 02:00:54,880
them.

2024
02:00:54,880 --> 02:00:59,440
Don't make it an action item with a comment card and say, per the policy, you shall not

2025
02:00:59,440 --> 02:01:02,520
like, show them that you care about them.

2026
02:01:02,520 --> 02:01:07,120
Not that you're trying to enforce the law or you're trying to enforce the policy.

2027
02:01:07,120 --> 02:01:13,180
I think we need to be a little bit more mature and have a little more grace with how we course

2028
02:01:13,180 --> 02:01:16,840
correct officers and behaviors because they're only getting the seatbelt off.

2029
02:01:16,840 --> 02:01:17,840
Why?

2030
02:01:17,840 --> 02:01:18,840
Because I want to jump out of the car quick.

2031
02:01:18,840 --> 02:01:19,840
Okay.

2032
02:01:19,840 --> 02:01:20,840
That's not bad.

2033
02:01:20,840 --> 02:01:21,840
I want you to jump out of the car.

2034
02:01:21,840 --> 02:01:24,920
I just don't want you to go through the window right before you get there.

2035
02:01:24,920 --> 02:01:28,480
So you know, you could talk to them like that.

2036
02:01:28,480 --> 02:01:30,000
And then, so that's my magic wand.

2037
02:01:30,000 --> 02:01:39,920
I want people in positions of authority and leadership to not look at them as capital,

2038
02:01:39,920 --> 02:01:41,240
like human capital.

2039
02:01:41,240 --> 02:01:44,160
I want them to look at them as human resources.

2040
02:01:44,160 --> 02:01:46,720
Without them, there is no policing.

2041
02:01:46,720 --> 02:01:53,200
There is no, the command staff is, is important, but if all command staff disappears, radio

2042
02:01:53,200 --> 02:01:54,800
calls still get answered.

2043
02:01:54,800 --> 02:01:58,360
But if all cops disappear, command staff ain't going on answer radio calls.

2044
02:01:58,360 --> 02:02:03,120
So let's put that emphasis where it belongs at the cop level.

2045
02:02:03,120 --> 02:02:06,880
Let's treat them like we actually care about them because that's how they're going to

2046
02:02:06,880 --> 02:02:07,880
treat the community.

2047
02:02:07,880 --> 02:02:12,320
If they don't feel like anybody cares about them, they're less likely to want to care

2048
02:02:12,320 --> 02:02:13,320
about the community.

2049
02:02:13,320 --> 02:02:16,040
They look at this more as a job.

2050
02:02:16,040 --> 02:02:24,520
And then I would probably change the way we train our cops.

2051
02:02:24,520 --> 02:02:30,520
Stop training them to enforce laws, start training them to solve problems.

2052
02:02:30,520 --> 02:02:35,480
Because now when they show up to a scene only looking at it through the lens of law enforcement,

2053
02:02:35,480 --> 02:02:40,280
there's a lot of frustration and they feel that frustration.

2054
02:02:40,280 --> 02:02:44,080
But if I teach you to solve a problem, whatever comes your way, whether it's a man with a

2055
02:02:44,080 --> 02:02:52,420
knife or whether it's a neighbor who's working on their car in the driveway that's keeping

2056
02:02:52,420 --> 02:02:55,320
people up at night because they keep different hours.

2057
02:02:55,320 --> 02:02:58,560
Like, OK, they're not breaking the law, but it certainly is a problem.

2058
02:02:58,560 --> 02:03:03,680
And let's see if we can avoid this becoming a neighbor dispute that turns into a big fight.

2059
02:03:03,680 --> 02:03:05,040
Let's start solving problems.

2060
02:03:05,040 --> 02:03:06,880
I think I would do those things.

2061
02:03:06,880 --> 02:03:12,560
Treat them better internally, teach them to be problem solvers, and then really value

2062
02:03:12,560 --> 02:03:16,160
them from the inside out, if I could.

2063
02:03:16,160 --> 02:03:18,840
There's a lot of different things I'd add to that, but those are the big three that

2064
02:03:18,840 --> 02:03:23,520
I would put a lot of time, energy and attention towards right off the bat.

2065
02:03:23,520 --> 02:03:24,520
Beautiful.

2066
02:03:24,520 --> 02:03:28,600
Well, we've been talking for two hours, so I want to be mindful of your time, but we're

2067
02:03:28,600 --> 02:03:33,320
going to have to do another episode because we haven't talked on fitness or sleep deprivation.

2068
02:03:33,320 --> 02:03:37,360
So if you're up for it, I'd love to do a second round.

2069
02:03:37,360 --> 02:03:41,440
If for people listening right now, if they want to reach out to you or find you online,

2070
02:03:41,440 --> 02:03:42,440
where are the best places online?

2071
02:03:42,440 --> 02:03:44,440
Yeah, where are the best places online?

2072
02:03:44,440 --> 02:03:46,240
Yeah, thank you for even offering that.

2073
02:03:46,240 --> 02:03:51,400
So I'd run a little podcast, it's just called Policing in America with Sergeant Tom.

2074
02:03:51,400 --> 02:03:55,120
You could find that on any of the podcast platforms.

2075
02:03:55,120 --> 02:03:59,420
And there's also Policing in America podcast at Gmail.

2076
02:03:59,420 --> 02:04:04,240
So you could leave me notes or emails, ideas, questions.

2077
02:04:04,240 --> 02:04:09,440
I would love to come back on, James, and talk about the whole sleep deprivation issue that's

2078
02:04:09,440 --> 02:04:10,920
been the body of work.

2079
02:04:10,920 --> 02:04:15,340
I think that's a major component in policing in general.

2080
02:04:15,340 --> 02:04:20,960
And just to give a little teaser, the trucking, the rail car, the shipping, all these other

2081
02:04:20,960 --> 02:04:23,880
industries have sleep mandates.

2082
02:04:23,880 --> 02:04:27,360
And just think about this, next time you see a cop driving down the street, Harvard Medical

2083
02:04:27,360 --> 02:04:34,440
School says at any point in time, 55% of our nation's law enforcement are operating in

2084
02:04:34,440 --> 02:04:37,120
a chronically sleep deprived state.

2085
02:04:37,120 --> 02:04:42,240
That would be unacceptable if we said that for surgeons, if we said that for air traffic

2086
02:04:42,240 --> 02:04:45,380
controllers, for pilots, we would be outraged.

2087
02:04:45,380 --> 02:04:51,960
But yet, we just accept that cops are running around with guns, batons, hopped up on caffeine

2088
02:04:51,960 --> 02:04:55,720
and dip, trying to solve the complex problems of our society.

2089
02:04:55,720 --> 02:04:58,680
I'd love to talk with you more about that too, in round two.

2090
02:04:58,680 --> 02:05:00,480
Well, we'll definitely make it happen.

2091
02:05:00,480 --> 02:05:04,280
I'm going to schedule that with you in a minute so that we can put the two together and it'll

2092
02:05:04,280 --> 02:05:06,480
be a part one and a part two.

2093
02:05:06,480 --> 02:05:11,920
But for now, I want to thank you so much for being just such a wealth of information.

2094
02:05:11,920 --> 02:05:16,520
We've kind of unpicked some really interesting social side and obviously looking in the police

2095
02:05:16,520 --> 02:05:17,880
officer's uniform as well.

2096
02:05:17,880 --> 02:05:21,740
So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the

2097
02:05:21,740 --> 02:05:23,440
Behind the Shield podcast today.

2098
02:05:23,440 --> 02:05:25,640
It was absolutely my honor, James.

2099
02:05:25,640 --> 02:05:42,240
Thank you so much.