This episode is brought to you by Thorne and I have some incredible news for any of you
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Now to learn more about Thorne, go to episode 323 of the Behind the Shield podcast with
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This episode is sponsored by TeamBuildr, yet another company that's doing great things
for the first responder community.
As a strength and conditioning coach myself who also trains tactical athletes, dissemination
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This episode is sponsored by Global Medical Response, yet another sponsor that I have
tracked down because they have a solution to one of the biggest problems we have in
emergency medicine and healthcare.
We often hear the term 911 abuse, but what I love is the concept that this should be
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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing, and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on
the show Air Force Protective Services agent, veteran civilian police officer, and the author
of Hiding in Plain Sight, Doug White.
Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from Doug's journey into the military,
working with US special operations, bomb disposal, terrorism, his near suicide and powerful post
traumatic growth story, and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback, and
leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of well over 1000 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you, Doug White.
Enjoy.
Well, Doug, I want to start by saying two things.
Firstly, thank you to our mutual friend, Nick O'Kelly for making this connection.
And secondly, to welcome you onto the Behind the Shield podcast.
Thank you, James.
It's great to be here.
Very excited about this.
So where on planet earth are we finding you this morning?
I'm about 80 miles due south of you in Tampa, Florida.
Beautiful.
Gorgeous part of the country.
So I'd love to start at the very beginning of your timeline.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings.
Okay.
Well, I was born in Bradenton, Florida, just a little bit further south of Tampa in a big
pink hospital at the time at Manatee Memorial.
We lived there in Bradenton for about the first six months of my life, but we then moved
to Memphis, Tennessee.
My dad was, well, not at first an executive, he was a salesman and he sold building materials.
He imported and exported plywood and lumber and stuff like that from Indonesia.
And moved the whole family to Memphis where I spent the first six years of my life and
picked up a very, very thick Southern draw.
Still I get messed with by family members for that when they recall my youth.
But I have a sister, she's 10 months older than I am.
And we've become much closer as we've gotten older.
She was my nemesis as I was growing up.
So as all big sisters should be.
Mom was a homemaker and a banker later at bank executive and got into mortgages.
And my parents have been married now, I've got to do the quick math, 53 and a half years.
So yes, they live locally about 15 minutes away.
I just saw dad yesterday and hung out with him for a little bit, but family is still
close, all here local.
And when I was six, we moved back to Tampa and we've been here ever since.
Other than my four years on active duty, where I was in Western Washington in the Air Force
at now Joint Base Lewis McCord.
I was stationed out there, came right back home and tested for the Hillsborough County
Sheriff's Office and I retired after 25 years of service back in July of 23.
So 10 months apart, you must have been a big surprise.
Yes.
I was the miracle baby and I made sure I told my sister that all the time.
I wasn't supposed to be here.
I didn't realize at the time that that was not necessarily an accident.
I was hoped for, but unexpected nonetheless.
Yeah, that's still a brave woman though, that close to childbirth to just be like, all right,
let's do it again.
Yeah.
The seventies were a crazy time, man.
A lot of drugs.
Well, speaking of that, talk to me about the longevity of their marriage.
I don't know if you had any conversations with them or if you just kind of now with
adult eyes reflect, what was it that made their marriage so strong in a world where
many of us are divorced at least once?
Urban.
No, I'm kidding.
Absolutely kidding.
I don't know.
I think there's differences across the generations, honestly.
I haven't really given much thought to this from their perspective, but that'd be a great
question to ask them.
I know that I would imagine the communication and love and just being committed to one another
helped them quite a bit.
I know that their marriage, the affection that they showed for my sister and I and to
each other outwardly was a great example for us.
My sister's been married since, oh God, my first trip to the desert, so the summer of
94.
So she's been married since 94.
Two wonderful kids and I've been married.
My second marriage, I should probably give the caveat.
My first one was one of those active duty, I'm away from home and I love marriages.
It was very, very short lived.
I learned a lot in that short time, but I met and married Michelle when I came back
home and we've been dating since late 97, got married in July of 2000 and have been
going strong ever since.
From my perspective, that's a question from Michelle, honestly, we've always had a us
against them attitude.
She and I against the world and everything that we need is inside these four walls to
include our now teen children.
With my own experience in that, it's been communication, understanding, commitment and
a whole lot of grace that I did not deserve.
Beautiful, well, we'll unpack that more because I know obviously the families are obviously
a big part of our journey and our story.
When you reflect back to when you were younger, what were you doing and playing as far as
sports and exercise?
Playing I was played football, American football.
I was not good at European football or soccer.
It was football, T-ball, baseball.
In high school, I ran track, swam and wrestled, played football my sophomore year of high
school, but quickly realized that I hated running.
I took the swim route and I had been swimming competitively since the age of five, club
teams in the neighborhood and stuff like that, YMCA and the like.
Swimming is what carried me through.
I loved swimming.
When I was a kid, I was always outside.
We had the old Atari and Pac-Man and we'd sit around the small TV and play that for
hours.
At some point, mom and dad wanted to play so they'd kick us out.
So while they had the TV and we'd play football and baseball and of course, we'd pick up
our favorite sticks and play guns and army and all of that stuff.
Just an active kid.
I was a skater.
The 70s were crazy, so were the 80s.
I spent a lot of time on skateboards going all over the place.
If there was a sidewalk or a smooth street, we were there.
When you look at the impact of the individual sports versus the team sports, how did that
experience factor into your military and law enforcement preparation and career?
Well, I don't really know that it did as I was younger.
I don't know that that really factored in other than good sportsmanship and dedication,
the discipline it takes to go to the practice and do your best and be part of a team.
I think my military career shaped that mindset for me more than anything else.
I know I always wanted to be part of something special, something bigger than myself.
It was a very patriarchal household growing up.
My father served in the army in the early 60s.
My Uncle Nicky had served.
My Uncle Don, who recently passed, was a Navy veteran.
So I had plenty of military veterans around me.
My mom's side of the family were either in law enforcement or elected officials.
So I had positive images of service.
I think the military was more formative for me than sports were.
If I had to really pin it down, I would have more examples of my military service and being
part of something bigger, just contributing my part.
We're going to obviously talk about the highs and the lows of your own personal mental health
journey.
One of the least discussed elements of first responder mental health is what happened to
us from birth or arguably even prior to birth and when we put the uniform on in the first
place.
When you reflect now with these kind of wise lens that you have, were there any elements
of your upbringing that you think contributed to that?
That's a great question.
I've been paying attention more recently to the adverse childhood experiences and having
heard some of your episodes and some of the others that I listen to, it's very clear.
The evidence is there.
So the adverse childhood experiences, I have been looking back at my own childhood and
I really, I mean, I was bullied as a kid by bigger neighborhood kids.
To a point at that time, it wasn't, I was never thought about lashing out or getting
even or anything like that.
I hated bullies and I despise bullies and I always would take up for the underdog as
far as I was able.
I had bigger friends, so they took care of me and I was still a little buddy, which is
kind of funny to see me now, 6'1", 225 pounds, me being the little guy.
Oddly enough, I'm still the little guy.
You wouldn't think that that was the case, but I was bullied.
Not really, other than my service and wanting to protect people, I think that came from
there.
I've heard the term the ambition of shame and it's one that Chris Free actually used
and one of his friends used actually.
You essentially, you are trying to, for the rest of your life or whatever period of time,
you were trying to earn someone's respect or you're trying to always do more to prove
yourself to someone else.
I think that for me, well, we'll get into that in the military part, but I think I was
always trying to seek someone else's approval instead of my own.
I think that drove me a lot farther than I may have gone on my own.
Of course, when you're following somebody else's approval, you're going to find that
that goal line moves quite often and you're going to find yourself never fulfilled or
at least in my experience.
Keep always going for more and it'll get better at the next thing or the next assignment or
the next promotion.
If you enjoy it for a moment, then it's time to go for that next one because the line has
moved again.
Back to your original question, I can't think of any adverse childhood experiences really
that impacted me, not in a trauma sense or anything like that.
Again, my parents still married, my sister and I had a great relationship, the family
is intact.
I was very lucky, very fortunate.
I can relate to that little guy element.
I was really small.
I told my son, I had my growth spurt at 18 years old.
We graduated school at 16.
I was around men and I'm still this, I don't know how short I was, but a lot shorter and
way skinnier.
I'm not a big guy now, I'm 6'1", 180, so kind of average-ish, maybe on the skinnier side.
Did martial arts my whole life work out at 50?
I would say compared to some of my peers, I'm probably in good shape and better trained
when it comes to combat than a lot of people.
I still feel like the whole world could kick my ass.
It's funny, some of these things, they just never leave you.
One of my Delta friends says he's never heard so much imposter syndrome than the team room
from Delta.
These are some of the most elite war fighters on the planet.
It's a human experience, it really is.
Nothing to be ashamed of when you identify it and realize that these extrinsic things
will never satisfy that internal element.
I think that's when you can exhale and go, okay, it's just there, it's just part of me,
but I don't need to constantly try and fill this void because it's just part of my DNA
and it's fine.
That second part is the tricky part.
I can identify it, yes, it's imposter syndrome, but is there something more I can do?
There's always one more thing.
I was speaking to a friend yesterday and he said, if you're not working anymore, you're
not in law enforcement, you're not in the fire service or in the military, you don't
have a mission to train for, why are you deadlifting 315 pounds?
When are you ever going to do that as a retiree or somebody enjoying the golf course?
I said, I understand that, but what if you're in the gym and some punk is slinging around
and dropping it when you don't have to, doing the big grunts and all that, you're like,
man, I could kick this guy's ass.
What's wrong with the little ego lifting?
I mean, at 51, because I'll hurt my back and be down for three weeks, but I got to show
them what's what.
So to finding that and understanding that enough is enough, that's the hard part, turning
that off.
I think being in the right, being in a team room, my last 10 years of my military experience,
I was around some of the most professional men and women to have ever been in service.
It's all the same thing.
Why is that guy better than I am?
I've got to do something more.
If he's eating two grams of protein per pound of ideal body weight, I got to do three.
It's always got to be that one more to get the edge and I don't know that ever leaves
us.
I hope it leaves me one day and stop hurting myself.
Well, I reframed because I mean, obviously I stepped out to do this and you talk about
identity crisis.
One minute I'm wearing bunker gear and I'm also a paramedic.
The next time a podcaster, some spotty 16 year old.
So there wasn't a little bit of an identity crisis.
I volunteered for a heartbeat and absolutely hated it.
I felt like a medic ride along student.
But then I realized, well, there's a chance of doing the things that I did in uniform
just as a neighbor, just as a member of the community.
And I've helped on car wrecks before I did it.
I worked to code on a plane about a year ago.
You never know where just as a sheepdog, I know that term gets thrown around, but someone
who considers himself a protector in that community or a responder or a rescuer, that
that's why I keep training, you know, to God, what happens if someone tries to cost my wife
or you know, you see someone walking towards a school with a gun or, you know, whatever
it is, those are the moments that I still train for because, you know, they will still
happen.
And if there's someone in uniform around, great, they can handle it.
If there's not, it's on you.
So that's why I'm not looking for one rep PRs anymore, but that's what keeps me training.
The what if the same as when we were in uniform, what if you have that school shooting that,
you know, high rise tower fire with the elevators are out.
I need to be able to get to that level.
But now it's more like, what if I pull up on a car wreck and the car is pinning someone
and you need to, you know, you and a couple of bystanders and pick it up so they can drag
the person out before they asphyxiate.
You know, these are the, these are the things that I train for now.
And then that way it still gives purpose to the workouts because I couldn't give a shit
how I look.
I just want to be able to respond.
No, I love that.
And you're, you're absolutely right.
You know, when I was working, um, I started in triathlon and you know, the longer the
distance, the faster this that and stronger.
And, um, you know, I was training at the time and I had confessed myself that I'm training
that when the day comes, I'm going to be the hardest person that anybody's ever tried to
kill.
And that was, that was my mindset and everything was to failure.
Everything was to, uh, you know, Rabdo.
I mean, that was, it was always because somebody one day is going to try to kill me and I'm
going to be the hardest person they've ever tried to kill.
And now in retirement, uh, you know, if I'm asked, I'm training for life.
I'm training to be, um, you know, the, the 80 year old man during bikini season, that's
just, you know, rocking the Speedos are still competing in triathlon or, you know, yeah,
well, yeah, but I want to be the 80 year old that can still get out of bed without stretching
for 45 minutes.
Um, you know, I want to be the person who bankrupts to stay to Florida with my pension.
Like they're, they're going to send somebody to kill me because they got to fix potholes.
And I've, I've been hanging on 60 years into retirement.
That's my goal.
So, um, yeah, that's what I'm training for.
No, I could, I could give, I could care less about, you know, out repping the, uh, the
guy that's doing half reps in the gym anyway.
Have you ever seen, I think it's usually at Christmas.
Um, yeah, it would be Christmas.
There was an amazing, um, like short film that was on going around social media and
it was this, it looked like someone kind of like Eastern Europe and this guy was training
in his shed and he has this kettlebell and he's doing this weird kind of movement from
like his, the ground to his chest.
And then at the end it's because he's training to pick his granddaughter up so she can put
the star on the Christmas tree.
I think that's the perfect analogy of why we should keep training.
It's beautiful.
I did see that.
I've seen it a few times and I can assure you, I did not cry on any one of those.
Did not.
It was beautiful, but I didn't cry.
All right.
Well, let's walk through your journey into military.
So prior to that, when you were in the high school age, were you already thinking of law
enforcement and military or was there something else?
There was nothing else.
It was, it was military for me.
Um, I was a marginal student because I was lazy, uh, had nothing to do with aptitude
and had everything to do with attitude.
Um, didn't like doing homework.
I wanted to go to parties and you know, do fun things with my buddies.
So, um, college was not a thing for me.
It wasn't anything that I worked towards then.
Um, but military service and I was split between, you know, I think my sophomore year, I wanted
to go to the Marine Corps because the uniforms and well, Marine Corps and, um, you know,
my, my sister's boyfriend, when I was a junior, he went into the Navy.
Obviously she was a year ahead of me, but, uh, so, you know, for me it was all, all Navy
shirts.
I'm going to go in the Navy.
I have no idea what I'm going to do in the Navy, but, uh, you know, seals, that was a
cool movie.
So maybe I'll do that.
Um, then my senior year, it was, it was all army.
Uh, you know, I, I did not know which branch that I wanted, but I just knew that I wanted
to serve.
And um, my senior year, I went to the recruiter's office and you know, I'll show my dad I'm
a man, you know, I'll, I'm going to go join up like he did.
And uh, went into the army recruiter's office and like, man, there's a lot of green here.
It's not really a pretty shade of green either.
It's kind of drab green shirts.
You know, this is like 91, 92 and, um, you know, the uniforms went to khakis, the cool
ones you see now.
But uh, I went in there and the Sergeant was, was happy to see me.
I said, I want to be an MP, but I want to be a Ranger and I want to be a tank paratrooper.
And you know, all the things that, that stupid high school kids say when they go see the
recruiter, you know, this, this dude had me out front on pull up bars and I was, you know,
snatching out the pull ups and you know, doing pushups.
I was all kinds of motivated and he was like, man, I'm going to get my steak knife set this
month.
This guy's going to bring all of his friends in.
And um, he had me convinced, uh, to go 11 Bravo infantry with an airborne option and
a Ranger option.
That's what he told me.
I, I didn't know then that that was a thing and I still don't even know now if that was
even a thing, but uh, I was like, yeah, brother, let's do this.
All right, sorry.
You know, so, uh, went home and told my dad that I'm, this is, this is what I'm doing
and I'm going to go to the processing center and I'm going to list and leave when I, you
know, get out of high school.
My dad just shook his head and he was 11 Bravo.
He was airborne and uh, he said, you know, son, I've gotten a call every day since 1960
and 65, people wanting to hire me to jump out of planes and kill people.
I was like, for real?
Why are you selling plywood?
But uh, you know, the sarcasm was lost on me, but uh, he made his point that if I was
going to do something when I got out, you know, if that's what I wanted to do, then
he supported me a hundred percent, but he was trying to give me a broader idea of if
you decide not to do more than four years, uh, what are you going to do when you get
out?
What are you going to translate to?
So um, I gave that some thought and I still wanted to serve.
I still wanted to be part of a smaller team and something bigger.
And um, I sat on it for a bit and my ASVAB score, I could have done anything in any of
the branches that I wanted to do.
So um, a couple of weeks later I went to the air force recruiter and spoke to them and
I had in there, it was, he was a, an air traffic controller.
I said, Hey man, this, this, these are the things I want to do.
And he said, have you thought about the exciting world of combat control?
I said, no, but combat sounds cool and controlling things sounds cool.
So tell me more.
So he told me about air force special operations as it was the time it was, um, it was combat
control pair rescue and the tactical air control parties, the tech piece.
And uh, man, I was, I was sold jumping out of plane, setting up airfields, you know,
air strikes, this, that, and everything else and scuba.
And you know, I was, I was all about it.
So combat control was the way to go until I took my physical and um, the physical, everything
was fine.
Physically I killed the swim, I killed the run, everything that I was supposed to do
physically was just, uh, it was a layup for me, but then you have to take the medical
physical and uh, they need to make sure that you have depth perception.
And at the time the depth perception was, um, basically you're looking through a viewfinder
in a dark room and um, they have a microscope slide with several lines on it.
And one of those lines is on the opposite side of the slide.
So you say five lines on, you know, close to you and one line on the opposite side,
you have to tell them which line is on the other side.
That's like standing in a dark room, looking at your slider, you know, in the backyard
and thinking, is that spot on this side or that or the other side?
Well, I guessed wrong.
So having no depth perception at night, they say you can't land airplanes, which, which
is a good rule.
Um, so I don't know that I understood the test, but I said, okay, well that's what it
is.
So, you know, here's other jobs you can do.
It'd be a B-52 tail gunner.
Well, air superiority, there's nobody coming after our B-52s.
So that's kind of a job that's not needed.
You know, I looked at, uh, aircraft crew member, I looked at, uh, EOD, uh, survival, looked
at all of these things.
And I remembered, you know, I wanted to protect people and I want to find something that I
can do after four or 20 years.
So security police is, is what I chose security forces, um, that's what it's called now, but,
uh, I'll be an air force cop.
So when I enlisted, that's what I decided to do and spent 14 and a half years doing that.
Yeah, so my, my first four years were conventional law enforcement and physical security.
And then I, I got very, very lucky, uh, as an active reservist to be accepted to a position
at special operations command here at MacDill.
And um, it wasn't the first time I was introduced to special operations forces, but it was the
first time I was able to work with them, uh, hand in hand and to be clear, I was not an
operator.
Um, but I was on the protective services detachment for the command and we were, uh, for lack
of a better term, the knuckle dragging bullet catches for the admirals and the generals
that that were in command and any visiting dignitaries.
And uh, by virtue of that, my team members, there were a few of us that were air force.
We had a Marine, but, um, you know, we had operators as part of our detail that cycled
in during the command tours that were our bosses and our teammates.
We had quite a bit of interaction with Rangers, a couple of green berets, but for the most
part they were tier one operators and it was, uh, it was a whole different world, a whole
different world.
Talk to me about the difference between the first four years and that, cause obviously
we can't get into too much detail, but you know, what, what were the kinds of calls,
you know, if you're talking about civilian world, the kind of responses that you had
in that force for a first four versus some of the threats that you were preparing for
later on.
You know, the physical security side, you know, we would have nuclear security if any,
anything would, would come to the base at the time.
Uh, just regular physical security, um, and force protection for the most part on the
law enforcement side, uh, we would do, you know, mostly domestics and DUIs couple shoplifts
here and there, uh, a lot of traffic stops because there's really nothing else to do
on base because you know, you have a, a smaller community, even though it's a, you know, a
cross section of, of all of America, everybody there knows that if, you know, the police
show up at the door, they already have problems.
There's no, these are my rights and you know, anything like that.
They're already in trouble.
Um, so for the most part, everybody was, was pretty well behaved and contained.
So not a whole lot of exciting stuff there.
Um, you know, there were some suicides that we had to respond to that were, uh, of course,
horrific.
Um, but you know, it was just regular law enforcement on a very, very smaller scale.
Now going to do physical security at the command, it was a very, very different story.
You know, it's a building security and satellite building security.
Um, so force protection on side of a base of a major command was, uh, was a bit different,
but because of the people we had there and the things that were going on in those buildings
and basically being across the street from central command at the time, um, you know,
things, things were heightened.
Uh, but then going into the protective services portion of it where we're doing executive
protection, essentially, you know, the global war on terror had just kicked off.
So everything was a threat.
Everyone was a threat.
Um, you know, we, we went from, you know, ID checks randomly at the front gate to having,
you know, humvees with M2 Brownings, you know, 50 caliber machine guns aimed down Del Mar
highway.
So it was a very big, uh, difference.
You know, we'd have machine gun positions on the top of central command facing the roadways
and ingress into the base.
So it was a very, very different feeling with the physical security side and on the, uh,
executive protection side, it was anywhere we went with the boss, you know, he was surrounded
by, by us.
And if something were to happen, boss gets out of there with, uh, the PSO and everybody
else stays in fights or fights their way out.
So it was, it was very, very different.
And uh, I broke my ankle and didn't get the opportunity to go down range with my teammates
when they first started going down.
And uh, you know, you're doing executive protection in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You're going to these far out, uh, you know, operating bases where, you know, that's where
our operators live and play.
So you're in the middle of nowhere on a helicopter in the middle of the night and you land and
you know, they had their own experiences there, but it was, it was a whole different thing
for them.
And you know, I can, I can only live through their stories and listen to that, but it was,
it was quite a different level of service, different level of mission and a completely
different level of, uh, the whole game was different.
I mean, as, as a young airman or even a young NCO in big military, you are, um, you're charged
with whatever it is your rank allows you to do.
Well, when you're dealing with people in special operations, your rank is just what you get
paid.
Nobody cares.
That's what you get paid on the first and the 15th.
What are your abilities?
What are your skills?
It's much like ICS, the person in charge and the person running the show is the person
most familiar with, uh, with the events that you're dealing with.
So for example, if I was in charge of a movement and one of the details, say we're moving around
Washington DC and I'm my part of the gig is this or this venue.
Well, I may have a Sergeant Major or a, you know, a Lieutenant Commander who's in charge
of the overall deal, but he's going to defer to me on that portion because that's my portion.
And it's all right, Doug, what are we doing?
Well, we're going to do this, this and this.
And that was it.
That was it.
You contributed what your, what your skills were and you were treated as a professional,
which is very, very different than going back into civilian law enforcement or the civilian
first responder disciplines, as you know.
The number of people I've had from all special operations, special forces communities internationally,
they all hold police and fire to the same level as themselves.
Now we don't believe that.
We're not told that.
We're not, you know, held to that standard by a lot of our own departments, but it makes
perfect sense when your favorite Ranger Delta, you know, SAS operator is overseas, who's
protecting their family?
We are.
So this is kind of an interesting perspective that you have.
I, I've always viewed my role in the fire service more like a special operations role.
I've always maintained my physical fitness at the highest, highest level that I can,
that James Gearing can.
I'm not saying I would ever be able to qualify as a special operations, you know, operator,
but in the fire service, so my education, the hands-on training, the physical fitness,
the mental practice, to me, it was all, you know, I mean, lives are at stake.
Like how much more of an important job can you have than police and fire domestically
when people are dying, usually when you're responding to a lot of times.
And so because of that, I've always felt like the way that special operations are led, are
organized is a much better model than, you know, in your, your example, big military.
What is your perspective of that?
No, I agree with you a hundred percent.
You know, I, I want to back up to what you said at first, you know, I'm amazed by this
cross reference of, of military and first responders.
You know, I don't know if it's because we're dismissive of our own contributions.
We're like, Oh man, this person was in the military and that's, you know, they're a veteran
there, you know, that that's so awesome.
And they, they sacrifice so many things and yet, you know, you'll have people in the military,
Oh, first responders, that's where it's at.
And this is why they're better.
And it's, I think it's, it's, it's very cool to have that mutual respect for one another.
And you know, I agree with you.
There is no greater calling than service.
And especially when the stakes are, well, a lot of the times unforgiving, you know,
lives are at stake.
And if you are, you know, if, if you are not at the top of your game as a paramedic, you
know, you mess up the conversion between milligrams, CCs or whatever it is that you guys do in that,
that magic metric mix up, you could hurt somebody, you know, you know, I think being prepared
and doing as much training as you possibly can to, to better yourself physically, emotionally,
mentally, even though I didn't always do that and, and sharpening your skillsets.
Absolutely. That is, that is certainly the best course of action.
I think, and I agree with you a hundred percent, the way that special operations are led, enabling
your people to one feel safe to do their jobs, empowered to do their jobs, trusting your
personnel to do their jobs based on their skillsets, their training and their view of,
of what it is they're dealing with.
Micro managing somebody that's 200 miles away on target, telling them how they're going
to do something when they're seeing something completely different than you.
Well, that's just bad business.
I think anybody can, can see that, but yeah, it's done.
You know, there are people that will say, you know, in my old profession, you know,
I'm going to tell a district commander what they're going to do with their personnel.
Well, you don't know who their personnel, who they are.
You've never met them.
You may know them because somebody told you something about them, but that district major
or captain sees them every day or at least five days a week during, you know, business
hours.
But they have a better, they have a better eye on what it is that that person does and
how they're going to fit in that team.
So yeah, I'm all about empowering people and providing them a safe space, treating them
like grownups.
I mean, if you're a first responder, let's say, I don't even know what starting salary
is now, but say you make $50,000 a year and I'm just using round numbers.
Well, there's an expectation that you're going to provide me $50,000 worth of service over
the course of that year.
I expect because you have a gun and a badge, you're mature enough for me to be able to
trust you with the arrest authorities that you have the training and be able to implement
that stuff as you see fitters.
The situation dictates if I can't trust you to do that, then why do I need you?
Why do I have you?
You should be doing something else.
So yeah, I think the way that special operations treats their people and conducts business
absolutely is a more superior method of leadership and management.
Absolutely.
Well, we talked about this before, you know, when we were on the phone the other day, but
seeing as the kind of door is open now.
I have started to see the true leadership in some of the men and women that are leading
in the fire service that could be at the probationary firefighter level all the way through to chiefs.
But what I've also seen is this kind of glaring cowardice amongst some of them as well.
And I'll kind of use the perfect example.
The firefighters, most of the firefighters in America are working 56 hours a week.
We have a recruitment crisis, so a lot of those men and women are being forced to work
an extra 24, you know, every week, two weeks, three weeks, whatever it ends up being.
So now that's an 80, eight zero hour work week.
We have, you know, people dropping from cancer, autoimmune disease, heart disease, suicide,
overdose, alcoholism, you know, car accidents or deliberate car accidents, depending on,
you know, what's happening there.
And yet there's a lot of shoulder shrugging from people that work 40 hours, that go to
work, go home, you know, 5 p.m., go back to their families.
So what is happening in Florida, which is beautiful, and Pasco County is one of them,
is now there's this movement, which I've been banging this drum for eight years, and
I hope it was part of the reason.
Now some of these agencies are starting to go to a 42 hour work week, an extra 24 hours
between shifts to give these men and women recovery, which is now attracting recruits.
So now you're filling these vacancies and therefore people aren't being forced as well.
There are like locally, for example, agencies that know all of this information and have
even had outside agencies do a study for them that they were part of, and they still refuse
to change.
And there's only one reason.
This department, for example, has buried four men from suicide in the last four years, and
they're still shrugging their shoulders.
So at this point now, we're talking about cowardice.
That's the only other explanation that you're too scared to advocate for your people because
you're okay.
So it doesn't affect you.
What is your perspective of cowardice?
Because this is a relatively new one that really kind of showed its head in COVID.
We saw the real leaders.
We saw the people that had the courage to stand up against vaccine mandates or simply
talk about improving the nation's health during that.
And then we saw the ones that were just puppets on either side of the spectrum.
So I was so disappointed because these are people that you would assume would step up
and earn, as you said, their salary at that point.
What is your perspective in our profession's plural on cowardice in positions of leadership?
And I think that can include unions as well.
Oh my.
I should have been writing down notes as you went through this so I can get a spreadsheet
together.
I agree with you 100%.
I mean, if they have all the information, if it's been presented to them and they've
done nothing to fix that, then they're complicit in whatever's going on.
I don't want to say you may as well have held the gun, but you're certainly loading it or
you certainly didn't unload it.
Wow.
I think people in...
Oh my God.
Moral authority is bullshit if you haven't earned it.
If you don't have the characteristics needed for good ethical moral leadership, if you
don't have the moral courage to stand in front of everyone and say, basically, not today,
not my people, and take the beating for your people, then I don't know why you're taking
that paycheck.
Oh my God.
I think my garment is going to go off because my heart rate.
Yeah, it's getting up there.
It's an uncomfortable conversation, but it's at the point now where it needs to be had.
It's not uncomfortable for me.
It's aggravating because as you said, what other reason is there?
Back in my day, we did it this way.
First of all, saying that this is the way we always did things, those are coffin nails
to innovation.
You are killing innovation before it even starts.
It's not even to get the light of day.
Besides that, if it was working well the way we've always done it, why are people continuing
to die by suicide?
Why do we have people that spend their entire days off drinking?
Why is the divorce rate going through the roof?
Why are people leaving your organizations in droves for more money?
Well, the grass isn't always greener, but if I'm going to go over there and get kicked
in the nuts, I may as well do it for 10 grand more a year or be able to retire five years
earlier than what I'm dealing with here.
Now I know when I started in law enforcement, the organization that I worked for, that was
the only one that I applied for.
That's where I was going to work.
There was no plan B. It was all or nothing.
When I got there, that was it.
You couldn't have pried me away because I was proud of my organization, I'm proud of
the job we did, and I valued my career and the organization that I worked for until I
didn't.
I think that there is an obligation.
I don't think.
I absolutely believe that there is an obligation for people in positions of authority, whether
they're executives or whatever.
Administrators, I'll call them because not everybody in this position knows what leadership
is about or the privilege of leadership.
But the privilege of leadership to me is meaning that you absolutely have the obligation to
ensure that your people are whole, whatever that means.
If that is, I'm going to come in and work Christmas day as a district commander or as
a fire chief or battalion chief so I can give firefighter Snuffy, the one-year firefighter,
the morning off so they can be home with their one-year-old as they open presents on Christmas
morning.
Nobody's going to make the chief suit up or run a hose line anywhere.
Come on, that's ridiculous.
But I just think the signal to everybody is, hey, look, I'm not any better or worse than
you.
I'm still capable of doing your job.
I know what your job looks like.
I've just been here longer.
Instead of, I'm better than that.
I don't have to do that.
I paid my dues.
What kind of bullshit is that?
I paid my dues.
You're getting paid more than I am, probably double what I'm getting paid and you don't
do the job.
I don't understand that and it aggravates me when people get to a position and they
think that they have it licked.
My job is to sign paperwork and go to dinners and be home by 430.
It's not what you signed up.
When you went into the first responder discipline, whatever discipline it was, and you said,
my goal is to retire with my feet on the desk, which is much gold and as many stars on my
collar as I can do.
Okay, well, cool.
You've succeeded.
But if your job was to make a difference and serve people and serve your people who serve,
then you're failing.
You're failing miserably.
And cowardice, yeah.
Yeah.
That is cowardice that is not living up to your obligation.
Organizations, the culture in your organization is what you tolerate and what you celebrate.
And as a chief executive of an organization or the fire chief or police chief, county
commissioner, whatever it is, it is your job to set that culture.
It's your job to buy by word and by action to show everyone what leadership looks like,
what sacrifice looks like, what service looks like, what integrity, honor, courage.
You are to be the example, hard stop.
You don't delegate that to someone else, to a second.
You don't do that.
You are it.
And you make sure that you communicate that to your people and it's going outwards and
it's going up and down and you can see it everywhere you go.
I mean, you ask people now, what's your mission?
Well, as a firefighter, I put wet stuff on hot stuff and make steamy stuff.
Well, no, what is your mission?
What are we here to do?
What do firefighters do?
What do cops do?
What do paramedics do?
What do military, what do war fighters do?
And how do we do it?
How are we doing it?
Yeah, man, it's maddening and I wish I knew the answer and I wish I didn't get so charged
up talking about this.
But there are people in leadership positions that will never, ever, ever know the privilege
of leadership and I pity them for that.
They can make decisions that impact people, but they're not making decisions looking for
value for their personnel and the organization and their community.
There's a win that can be had all the way around and it's not swinging an ax and lopping
off heads of somebody who was at dinner too late or was late to their shift.
There's reasons for those things.
Look at your culpability in that and find out if you failed or came up short someplace
what you can do to fix that and have that translate into your organization.
I'm sorry that was a rant.
I tend to do that sometimes.
No, I opened the door and stoked the fire.
You're good.
Brother, it pisses me off because you are...
When I was in the military, I had poor examples of leadership, but when I got to the command
and my active reserve time, I had the greatest examples of leadership and I was very lucky
early on as a young airman, as a young non-commissioned officer to see what leadership looks like
and to have been mentored by some of the greats.
By time at the sheriff's office, I had a couple of good ones, but I also suffered at the hands
of very poor leaders and was later used in several capacities to supplant poor leadership
when I started promoting into the supervisor ranks.
I had more examples of what not to do than I had of what to do and that's a sad state.
If I've got to be assigned to a squad or a platoon to overstep a weak sergeant, why does
that weak sergeant exist?
How did they become a sergeant?
We all know the answers to that.
We can even apply that to throw several names to that weak sergeant, to the weak fire officer.
It's sad that that exists because it's not just that decisions are being made slowly
or poor decisions are being made about finance or fiscal issues, but people's lives are being
impacted and you have one, an obligation, but also an opportunity to impact somebody's
life in a positive way.
To me, that's the privilege of leadership, knowing that in 20 years that I did something
for someone that when they are now in a position of leadership, they can say, hey, I know what
this looks like.
I know what it's like to be firefighter snuffy and needing an hour or two to watch my newborn
on Christmas morning.
I know what it looks like to have a wife that's working as much as she can and me doing as
much overtime as I can to put groceries on the table.
Let me get this kid a gift card to help back so he and his wife can have a nice date night.
Little things like that that make a difference that in 20 years from now, that kid is going
to say, hey, I remember this.
I know what leadership looks like.
They may not remember your name, but they're going to remember the example.
To me, that is why you become a leader.
That is the only reason you become a leader, to be able to improve someone else's life
to the one day they recognize that and do it for somebody else.
Anyway, I'm just going to sit back and have my coffee.
I'm off a break.
It's interesting.
A few things.
I'll give you time to sip on your caffeine.
Firstly, when it comes to fiscal responsibility, if you look, I'll take the fire service as
what I know, you look at the downstream effects of destroying your firefighter's health, the
overtime rates, the workman's comp claims, the recruits that you spend tens of thousands
training and they walk out the back door in a year or two years later, it is millions
and millions of dollars, especially if you're talking about a county.
They're screwing the taxpayer too.
They want to look good in a budget year.
They want to do it the path of least resistance and just pander to whoever's pulling their
puppet strings, but that's not providing good service.
It's not taking care of their people.
I always tell people, okay, if we're going to do first response that we do, then where
are the tax refunds?
Where's the money that you're giving back to the citizens?
Say, hey, we used to have four firefighters on engine.
Now we have three and that station's been browned out.
Oh, and the rescues that should be responding to your house, now they're doing into facility
transports for hospitals instead.
So why are we not giving some money back to the taxpayers if we reducing the level of
service?
So on every single level it is diminished and I'm going to address the public in a video
soon and illustrate this because they need to be educated and pissed off and demand,
which ultimately will be a better work week for our firefighters, which would resolve so
many of these issues.
I think just to touch on what you said and I've used the same thing, if what we did worked,
then our first responders would be healthy.
Of course we'd lose one or two to outside influences, whatever that was, but overall
we'd be a healthy community.
Our marriages would be overall intact.
We would still have people lining up around the building to be a cop, a firefighter, a
paramedic, but it's not.
People ask me, oh, well, where's the data to show that this better work week is going
to be healthier?
I'm like, firstly, you're asking me to go do a study and say that a 56 hour work week
is less healthy than a 42.
If you're even asking that question, you're a fucking idiot.
So let's get that out of the way.
We're not even going to start this conversation.
You're an idiot.
Exactly.
So secondly, let's reverse it.
If what we have done has created cancer, suicide, overdose, divorce, pediatric illnesses, et
cetera, then equal and opposite is true.
You start changing these things, there is no way to go but improve.
So this is what's so maddening.
I was at a conference a few weeks ago and I led a panel on the 2472 and I had three
leaders, real leaders from departments that have made this change.
They talked about what the problem was, where the money was, how they did it, the results
they've seen and a chief defended who was the head of the entire, previously the head
of the entire Florida Cheese Association, who I didn't realize, defended the local one.
I told you it's refusing to do anything.
And I was like, so basically these men have shown you, and there's men in this case, how
they did it and you're more focused on defending apathy than you are actually saying, let's
change it.
And this other department is woefully understaffed and has suicides and cancers and all these
other ones too.
So this is the problem.
That's the coward right there.
If you are more intent on defending the status quo that is killing people, that is resulting
in you scraping at the bottom of the barrel or even offering fucking hiring bonuses for
a firefighter, when I was testing against thousands of them back in the day, then you
are the problem.
And so if you're not prepared to actually be part of the solution, then step the fuck
down and let someone with a set of balls or vagina, if you're a lady, and actually do
it.
Let's just say ovaries, inside and outside ovaries.
There we go.
Indian outing.
So, I can appreciate that.
And I thought of something and this may be off base, but when you go to one of these
funerals and they take the flag off the coffin and they fold it and the ranking person that's
there hands it to the widow.
Say they died by suicide or cancer that, of course, one of these days you'll be able to
track it back to work related stuff.
And of course, the state will say, we're not paying that out because one time in 1985,
they didn't go on air when they went into a house fire.
So that's their fault.
However, the medical game is played nowadays.
But for me, if I was a man of character, being a man of character, if I had to lean over
or take a knee and hand that folded flag to a widow and say on behalf of a grateful, you
know, the whole speech, but instead had to say, this was preventable and I could have
stopped this, but I didn't.
I think the conversation ends there.
Are you the man or the woman that's going to tell the widow that you could have done
something about this, but you didn't?
How do you say that?
How do you sleep at night?
You fucking piece of, I mean, since we're cussing here and we're all friends, let me
tell you, buddy, that's just, you know, I've had friends that die by suicide.
I've known people who have had family members die by suicide.
They were in the fire service and in law enforcement, in the military.
I don't even think cowardice is a strong enough word for it, James.
I really don't.
It's just that is weakness on a level that transcends cowardice.
Evil.
I mean, you just, Jesus, what's the damage to you if you stand up in front of, you know,
the whole fire world and say, we've got to go to this schedule?
Not because James Gearing said so, fuck that guy.
We're going to do it because this is what we should be doing.
This is the right thing.
Here's all the evidence and evidence, but damn, let's try it.
What's the worst thing that's going to happen to the person who says that?
They get told no, get put in firefighter jail.
You can't be a boss anymore.
So I mean, honestly, and I, I don't know enough about them.
I mean, I've, I've taught for fire service, but I don't know enough about the way that
your shifts are made up.
But you know, we're reading some of your books and listening to you speak about this, this
new shift in work weeks.
I was amazed at how many hours you guys actually work versus how many hours y'all get at home.
So if I'm at a fire executive and I go to a spouse and say, Hey, would your life be
better or worse if your spouse got an extra 14 hours at home?
I mean, that's, that's a ridiculous question.
I mean, what spouse wouldn't say, you mean an extra 14 hours for my spouse to be able
to unwind to offload some of the allostatic load that they've been carrying for 10, 15,
20, 30 years in the fire service of the first responder disciplines.
And we can give an extra 14 hours a week back to the family, back to my kids to have mom
or dad.
That's just, I don't even, I still, man, I don't even know why this is a conversation.
This is, this is lunacy that is, has not changed.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's infuriating.
This is the thing as well.
It's just, it's going back to, if you listen to anyone talking about nutrition, talking
about exercise, talking about mindfulness, it all comes back to the pillars of health,
you know, eat through the way it was grown naturally, or, or if you, if you're a meat
eater than an animal that wasn't factory farmed and fed full of hormones and antibiotics,
get outside, you know, get your feet and hands dirty in the earth, you know, exercise, have
community.
I mean, they're all such basic tenants and every single person, whether it's the strength
and conditioning world, the mental health world, the nutrition world, they all say the
same thing.
If you are not sleeping, then all that other stuff kind of falls to the wayside.
So all we're trying to do is get back to the fact that, Hey, our cops, our corrections
officers, our dispatchers, our firefighters are awake when you are asleep safely in your
beds.
So all we're saying is can they have the same work week, work week as you?
Ideally, I think it should be even less down the road, but let's just say now 42 hours
a week, you're just saying, can we have the same?
And this is what's so crazy is people look at you and go, Oh, that'll never happen.
Where's the money?
We have a recruitment, you know, it's just, Oh, let me show you why this wouldn't work
rather than second step back and go, yeah, why are we working that many hours when everyone's
asleep and we make life and death decisions?
I mean, we just had a horrendous train versus fire truck accident here in Florida.
And I have, you know, James Gearing, I was not there, but I wonder if sleep deprivation
was part of the poor decision making process at that moment.
It might not have been, it might have been someone that just spent three months on a
massive vacation and everyone was well rested.
But if you look at the impact of sleep deprivation on decision making, it would make someone
maybe make a poor judgment, you know, call with that the same as in law enforcement,
the guy that shoots the kid reaching for his driving license and they vilify that person.
And you know, it was a tragedy, but as anyone said, well, how many shifts did he work or
she work?
You know, when, when did they last sleep?
You know, I mean, all these other compounding elements.
So just looking at the holistic human being in the uniform and giving them the tenants
of health, I mean, that's like, you know, it's like a uniform unicorn shit and rainbows.
Like, oh, that'll never happen.
And this is the problem.
We got to debunk our own mythology about this great shift that we have because we don't,
we do not.
And if it works, we wouldn't have this crisis that we have now.
You know, I have made the joke of firefighters.
They've got the life.
Everybody's got a side hustle.
Either they do real estate or, um, you know, have a lawn service or a pool company or something
like that.
They've got a side hustle.
Those guys that have all the time in the world, you know, 24 on 48 off.
No, they really don't.
And, you know, looking at it from the lay person, it looks like the perfect deal is
like, man, I wish I didn't pass the test for, for being a cop.
I could have been a firefighter, my fallback job.
I've got to take a shot of the fire service.
Nobody else is going to make fun of them, but, but cops and firefighters have that,
have that lifestyle with each other.
Um, but I always thought that that was the greatest, but you know, looking into your
work and what they actually do and having to do a double and force over time.
And, and that is, that's unconscionable.
How can you do that?
Again, you're making life and death decisions.
If you're asleep at the switch or you're a second, you know, too late or second, you
know, too early, it's just bad things are going to happen.
Um, they've done studies and I wish I could remember where I've, I found the research
or heard it, but they've done studies that people that are sleep deprived, um, based
on, you know, working overnight shifts and 24 hour shifts, they are cognitively the,
the cognitive, um, equivalent of being legally drunk.
And I'm sure I butchered that, but the concept is there.
If you're not sleeping and make it worse, you're not sleeping well for years.
Your decision making is not going to be what it is.
I mean, how many responders and first responders and military personnel they're listening right
now.
And I hope there's people nodding their head in weeks when this comes out.
Um, that when they're reading something either for work or something for pleasure, that they
have to read that same page at the same line three and four times because they're just
not getting it.
I mean, I've got sticky notes and stuff all over the place just to tab and keep track
of, of, of what it is that I'm trying to do.
I found myself now that I'm retired, I've been able to, to treat myself better and to
sleep and regulate all of those things.
Um, and I, but there was a point where I was finding a hard time, you know, looking for
words.
Like, I know what that word is.
I know what I'm trying to explain, but I can't explain it.
And you know, I'm telling a story to my wife and she's looking at me like, what?
I'm thinking, God, why aren't you getting this?
I'm speaking English.
Um, you know, of course I don't say that and I try not to have that look on my face, but
you know, I have to explain it several times because I'm not communicating well.
Um, yeah, man, the, the downstream impacts, uh, like you said, uh, the fiscal responsibility,
uh, making sure our people are whole, what they take home to their family, what they
bring into work, the cancers, the suicide rates, the divorce rate, people will be so
much better if they were able to get sleep.
My life has changed.
My health has even changed, uh, by being able to regulate my sleep more and it's still comparatively
what I should be getting it shit, but man, it is so much better than what it was.
Um, in fact, the lack of sleep and not taking care of myself, uh, one not recognizing it.
And then when I recognized it, refusing to get help because I wasn't weak, I can outrun
this.
I could do it by myself.
There was my downfall.
So, yeah, everything you've said is absolutely correct.
And I don't have the answer as to why people aren't taking action.
Well, I want to go back to your entry into the civilian law enforcement side.
And then obviously we'll walk through to 2019.
Um, as you progress through, what was some of the key roles that you held and then what
would be, you know, what we would call career calls that you had?
Well, I first started off as a patrolman.
So we all started and, um, I was very lucky.
I had some very, very good sergeants and corporals, some strong mentors early on.
And I came with, you know, five years of military experience already.
So I was a little bit more mature, even though I was 24 years old, I was a little more mature
than the regular recruits walking in at the time.
And having that experience and a little bit of more maturity, I became a field training
officer at 16 months on.
Um, I picked up things very, very quickly.
And I was very passionate.
I was very aggressive.
And while aggressive is not a good term to use in 2024, it was very active in what I
did.
Um, I loved it.
It was, I was it.
I was all in.
And I think our profession requires us to be all in to an extent.
Uh, again, we're making life and death decisions.
So you have to be paying attention.
So, um, field training is something that I really, really enjoyed those aha moments when
you're, you're teaching recruit, uh, some, you know, the skills that are ultimately going
to save their lives for someone else's to see that that switch turn on and then to,
to get it and demonstrate it.
Um, it's, it's a remarkable experience and I'd loved the training aspect of it.
Um, in, on nine 11, I was recalled to active duty for three years.
So for 37 months, I was away from the sheriff's office.
So two and a half years into my career with the office, I got pulled away for three years
when I came back.
Um, I was, I was reinvigorated.
Uh, I had sharpened my, uh, my learning abilities, my leadership abilities.
Um, I took, I took the entire, um, professional development series of FEMA courses for ICS.
So I taught myself incident command while I was convalescing over my broken ankle post
nine 11.
Um, so when I returned to the sheriff's office, I knew, you know, everything there was to
know about the new department of Homeland security, uh, anti-terrorism was my, was my
thing.
And, uh, now I knew the, the fire service side of incident command, so I could speak
a lot of different languages and it was quite the enigma at the time, especially in law
enforcement.
And uh, I came back to the sheriff's office and said, I want to go back to being a field
training officer.
And they said, you've been gone for so long.
Let's see what you got.
Next thing you know, I'm a field training officer again.
Um, tried out for the bomb squad and made the team my first time through.
And the reason I decided to go EOD or the bomb squad was, uh, I was very, very interested
in terrorism.
Uh, it had been since the early nineties because of my, my role in force protection in the
air force.
And uh, it seemed to be very front and center at the time, you know, post nine 11, even
though we've been having issues with terrorism since the sixties, but let's focus on what
everybody believes is nine 11 is when it all happened.
So I knew that at the time, 85% of all terror attacks, uh, occurred with the use of explosives.
And if I wasn't a bomb tech, I'm, I'm missing 85% of the work.
So I made the team and went to the bomb school and redstone arsenal and it was a bomb tech
on our team.
I was on the team for seven years and the bomb tech for about six of those, um, all
the time that was a part-time bomb team.
So I was learning bomb stuff and, uh, and also a field training deputy and, uh, went
to the training division and ran an academy course, a class through the academy and, uh,
was able to mentor them.
And, um, so yeah, bomb tech field training officer, instructor for specialized and advanced
law enforcement courses.
Then, um, I got a job on the side.
My side hustle was teaching for Homeland security.
So I was a contractor for SAIC and L3 and traveled the country teaching their, their
road shows.
And, uh, you may have gone to or, or known people that have gone to the center for domestic
preparedness and Anniston, Alabama, uh, the live agent, uh, training facility.
I was an instructor up there on my days off.
So I really enjoyed that.
I did that for about eight years and, um, back at the sheriff's office, I started promoting
through the ranks and, um, was a corporal in patrol and, um, had a great time there.
Uh, leadership was, was fantastic because it, it married my ability to, um, to speak
to people and to mentor people and to train people.
It was, it was the perfect thing for me.
It was everything that I wanted.
Um, not from a position, a position of authority position or positional authority, but to be
able to impact folks and be able to use, uh, you know, use that positional authority to,
to positively impact the people that I was working with.
Um, yeah, spent, uh, the majority of my career in patrol and, uh, was promoted to sergeant,
went to the Homeland security division and ran several of the units there in the division
and ultimately made lieutenant and went back out to patrol in the midnight shift, um, had
a platoon here in the Northwest portion of the County.
And it was, um, the best thing that I ever did was the thing I was doing at the time.
I really enjoyed my roles, but, uh, I wasn't satisfied with, with that.
You know, as we said earlier, that, that bar continued to move.
I was looking to fill a hole and I didn't know what it looked like.
I never thought about being in a leadership position until I found myself in leadership
positions.
And, um, yeah, that was 2018 when I got promoted and sent back to midnight shifts as a lieutenant
and it was wonderful.
I had a great platoon.
I had great sergeants and corporals working for me.
The deputies were just outstanding.
And, um, you know, you, you have that team that every once in a while during a career,
you may find it once or even twice.
If you're lucky enough, that one group that just, man, it's, it's it.
That is, that is the place to be.
You wish you could claim responsibility for putting together such a group of people and
it just happened organically and it's wonderful.
And I had that with my teammates.
I had that as a, as a, as a younger deputy and I had it again as a lieutenant and, uh,
man, it was just remarkable, remarkable people, wonderful people.
And I just, I really, really loved being there with them.
So that brings us into 2018, 2019.
So what about career calls during that time?
Did you have any interesting ones as a EOD and then were there any others on the street
as well?
Oh my God.
Um, well, the, the agency I worked for, it's, it's easy.
We've battered around it all the time, but the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office here
in Tampa, very, very big agency.
Uh, at the time it was the 12th Largest Agency and, uh, my last full year we did over a million
calls for service or pieces of activity.
And when I left in 23 in July, we were on pace to smash that.
So very, very busy, uh, as a deputy, you know, the fatal car crashes, um, stabbings, shootings,
fistfights, you know, everything that you would see in a major metropolitan area.
We had it, um, you know, crazy stuff, people going out in the woods because they want to
hunt alligators.
Well bro, you're, you're from Connecticut.
You don't know anything about Florida woods.
So we're going to come looking for you unless you get eaten by a gator first.
Um, just stupid calls, tragic calls.
Um, you know, I wrote about some of the, uh, the vignettes in my book.
Um, some of the ones that were not more impactful, but lessons that I had learned, things that
I wish I had done better.
Um, things calls that we didn't talk about and still didn't talk about until like literally
at one of the cases, the day I retired, uh, you know, 24 years after it occurred, um,
on the bomb squad, those weren't, you know, as tragic, those were more rock and roll and
fun because the SWAT guys were afraid of them.
And the SWAT guys, those are the brave and the bold, you know?
Uh, but they won't be anywhere near you.
If you either have a bomb on your chest or you're, uh, you know, as a breacher, they,
they want you away from, from them.
And of course, if it's a suspicious package, they don't want anything to do with it.
But, um, you know, I've done hand entries, we've done the white powder calls when we
think it's a biological, um, you know, picking up old military ordinance.
Uh, I've disrupted half dozen pipe bombs ish.
It was, it was a lot of fun because it's just you and a suit, um, that they say can take,
you know, a blast from, you know, five pounds of, of, uh, black powder.
But yeah, I don't want to be in it when it goes off.
But, uh, now that would, those were incredible moments.
The, um, you know, to, to make the long walk, to deal with something that somebody left
there to hurt other people.
And, and you're the one that's taken care of it.
Those were, uh, those were some pretty awesome moments.
What about from the concussion side?
Were you exposed to blast?
Cause I mean, as, as we talk before we hit record, Chris free is, uh, is the author of
the operator syndrome element and, and that kind of, you know, subconcussive or CTE or
head trauma or whatever, you know, elements someone has, if you are exposed to some sort
of, um, uh, TBI element as a breacher, as an EOD, as a, as a regular, uh, military member,
that can be the kind of the other elephant in the room.
You're trying to go down these psychological routes and there's a physiological element
too.
Yes.
I'm, I'm glad you brought that up.
I try to work Chris free and operator syndrome into everything that I talk about.
Um, his book was groundbreaking for me in the, in the study, but to answer your question,
yes.
Um, you know, in the military and security forces, um, you know, we, we have heavy weapons
teams, you know, they have the heavy machine guns, the two forties, the M twos, you know,
the 50 cal, uh, the Mark 19 mortar teams.
Uh, we set claymore store hand grenades, the whole thing.
And I never really thought anything about that stuff.
That was just fun because I'm a kid throwing grenades and you know, Daisy chain and claymore.
That was really neat.
Um, you know, everybody wants to shoot machine guns.
So that's what we did.
Um, you know, firing rockets and so I was all cool.
But when I got to the bomb squad doing the demo work, I just thought the overpressure
was so cool and, um, naively thought it was so cool.
You know, we would do, um, breaching interior and exterior breaching.
There's a difference in the size of the charge.
You can use an overpressure, but, um, without getting into the science, which is rusty in
my head, you know, you have explosives measured out in grains and, you know, grains per foot.
So everything is very, very, um, it's measured.
It's very precise because you want the door or the entryway to, to breach thusly.
Um, so you don't want to put, you know, a monkey fist of C four and a clump on a wall
and see what's going to happen.
That's just bad business.
But and there were standoff with a shield, without a shield, with a blanket and everything
else like that.
And you know, one of the things that we didn't have, uh, well, hearing pro, we, we got hearing
protection at some point in my tenure on the team, but, uh, we didn't have a tape measure.
So you know, we set up a charge on a door and yeah, this looks like three feet ish.
So you know, you stack up and you blast the door, everybody makes their entry.
It's good.
So, okay.
That's number one of the day.
Well, at number 15 of the day, you know, taking over pressure like that, um, it's like a full
body punch in the nose.
If anybody's ever been punched in the nose before you get that, holy shit, you know,
I just felt my teeth rattle.
Um, that's what happens when overpressure hits you.
And I've been so close to, to breaches that when we're done, you know, we're, we're picking
hydrogel that the adhesive that we use for our charges to stick on the surface, you know,
we're picking that pieces of that off my helmet and off my, my goggles, my shield.
And you know, there was an ant pile on the ground next to the door jam and now I've got
ants all over me.
So if I'm close enough to get ant blowback and, uh, and hydrogel blowback from a blast,
I'm probably too close.
And there have been days where I've left either demo training or preaching training or even
days on the range shooting outdoors or indoors where, um, one particular day we were doing
breaching and, uh, we went through a decommissioned housing project and any door or window that
was in there was gone by the time we were done.
And I drove home.
I don't remember the drive home.
I don't remember.
And this was rush hour traffic on I four and two 75.
I don't remember the drive home.
Um, I don't remember taking a shower.
I don't remember cleaning my gear or even going to bed.
And I woke up the next day feeling like a combination between a truck hit me and a flu.
Um, and I just wrote it off as I was dehydrated as I did every single time I went home like
that.
Oh, Hey, I threw up again.
No, it's because I'm dehydrated.
You know, I never really thought anything about blast overpressures, even though I was
aware of the shearing effects of overpressure on our tissues, but I never, never thought
about TBI until I read, uh, Chris's book.
And then of course later got into the VA system and healthcare and like, Hey, what about TBI?
I'm like, Oh yeah, I did this in the military, but no hard parachute openings.
I wasn't blown up in the military.
None of this stuff.
Like, well, what about your regular life?
Well, yeah, I did all this stupid shit.
So, okay.
Minor TBI.
I'm like, well, what does that mean?
Well, you know, the physiological effects and having read his book, you know, you're
well aware of the effects that that have on our cognition, our sleep, our endocrine system,
all of the systems are connected to the brain.
And if you start getting bashed in the head, you know, or getting choked out in jujitsu,
you're causing damage.
So being unaware of that stuff then, but acutely aware of it now, man, I did some dumb shit.
But you know, the funny thing is I don't know that I would have done it any other way because
it is kind of cool to be standing in a cloud of dust and when the dust settles, there's
a big hole in the wall that you needed to hold to be.
So that was still kind of cool.
I don't know if it's good.
Yeah, I'm not so good at math now, but that was kind of cool.
Yeah.
I mean, I look back at some of the hard sparring I did in the past, you know, there's still
a plus.
It's like, okay, I'm not a giant pussy.
I can at least take a beating, but did it serve me well down the road?
Probably not.
You know what I mean?
I can reflect and not be completely guilty or feel like an idiot.
I'm trying to make biscuits, but I'm reading the instructions five times.
Is it 12 minutes or 13 minutes?
Damn it.
That blast over pressure.
Exactly.
So, well then walk me through the emotional journey then, you know, were there any highs
and lows earlier in your career or did it kind of crescendo around 2019?
You know, not that I was aware of.
Again, man, I was always forward.
Always forward.
What's the next thing?
You know, every day brought promise of something new and something exciting.
You know, what was the next call?
Can I be the hero on this next call?
Can I be an example to another troop?
What's better?
What's the next thing?
So I never really took time to take a knee and take any of that stuff in.
I never, as they say, sat with it.
It was always time to go to the next call.
I was very, very good at compartmentalizing.
I mean, I was the champ at compartmentalizing.
I could turn that stuff off in a heartbeat and just move to the next one.
So much so that I was used as the enforcer.
If a door needed to be kicked, I was the guy.
If there was an armed subject, I was the guy.
You know, bomb call out is an opportunity to get into the suit in August.
I'd get the call and, you know, I would tell the dispatcher, wait 20 minutes before you
call my number two, because that would ensure that I would get there first and get in the
suit.
So it was always go, go, go, go, go.
And I never took time until the wheels fell off.
So early on in my career, I didn't really become aware of it.
I knew that there was something off.
You know, I would get depressed generally around July.
So I completely dismissed the seasonal affective disorder.
Well, it's July is not Christmas time.
So I'm sad and depressed for another reason.
Maybe it's because I need to find another course to go to.
I need to find something to make me happy.
I never, I paid attention to all the things that I should not have been paying attention
to.
You know, the rented admiration that comes along with professional prowess.
I know that's a lot of words, but I was a shit at home because I was chasing a brass
ring that didn't fucking matter.
It didn't matter then.
And it sure as shit didn't matter the day I walked out.
That stuff is rented and they take it back from you the day that you leave.
Nobody gives a shit.
I think that should be the message of this entire thing.
You serve and you do so much and you're looking for the admiration or the attaboy that even
if it comes, it doesn't matter.
It's about what you're seeing in the mirror.
And I've learned that.
I'm still learning that.
You know, I tried to outrun all the trauma, all the physical injuries, all the physiological
things that were going on that I did not connect until Chris Free's study.
That you can outrun all that stuff.
You can keep those boxes closed.
You can compartmentalize, but at some time you're going to be all alone.
And in the quiet, every bit of that shit's going to come back and you're forced to stare
at yourself in a mirror.
And man, if the other stuff wasn't enough to break you, that moment will be.
It will be.
And for me, the wheels had come off.
I had been telling my troops for years, probably a decade, having the conversations that it's
okay not to be okay.
Deal with these things as they come up, come speak to me, come speak to one of the sergeants.
And I did those things in earnest because I knew that people were going to be having
problems with things and as they should.
I mean, these are abnormal situations.
But I always thought that I was stronger than that.
I bought into the stigma.
I'm not weak.
I can control my shit.
This is just a matter of hydrate, take a moat turn, go for a longer run.
I was part of the problem, honestly.
I would listen to you if you came to me and of course I would be empathetic about it,
but I didn't have a problem.
But I was the biggest hypocrite in the room.
I would have those conversations and just subconsciously now looking back on it, I was
praying somebody would raise their hand just to give me an opportunity to talk about myself.
Man, it was an awful place to be, awful place to be.
So yeah, when it all comes crashing down, it's too much to deal with at one time.
Yeah, that brings us into 2019.
What you said about sleep is absolutely correct.
And I don't need a study to tell me that.
I lived it.
When I became a lieutenant, I went to the midnight shift and I adjusted to the midnight
shift.
The work was not an issue or anything like that, but about six months into it, well,
probably about seven or eight months into it, I was starting to feel the effects of
not sleeping and I was sleeping even less.
I was sleeping between an hour and a half and maybe three hours a day.
And that was days on and days off, whether it was the, as Dr. Freeh says, the combined
allostatic load of all those years of service and tried to outrun our movement and not being
able to sleep.
When you're able to sleep, you can fend off a lot of the things that generally that you
experience.
When you're not sleeping, you're not managing shit, nothing.
I started task shedding my administrative duties at work, my household duties here at
home.
I say that I was a shit dad, but shit dads don't say that.
Good dads will say they're shit dads, but shit dads don't even realize they're shit
dads.
They're just shit dads.
So I give myself some grace there.
I wasn't present.
The things were just falling apart, man.
I couldn't manage.
There was no operational shortfall at work.
No one at work had any idea that I was suffering, but I, yeah, nobody knew.
I was very, very good at hiding.
Like an injured animal in the wild, you don't limp because if you limp, then you become
food.
So I didn't act like food.
Everything was still drive long.
But after months of not sleeping and those issues starting to come up, I was having panic
attacks and anxiety attacks several a week at work, at home.
I found myself sitting days on end in my PJs when I got up, just sitting in a darkened
room, no TV, no book, no nothing, just staring at a wall and wondering what was wrong with
me.
Yeah, and I think the point that you're trying to work to is on October 19th of 2019, everything
came to a head.
I was on a midnight shift.
I was still a lieutenant sitting behind a school and looking through my windshield.
It was about three o'clock in the morning and I'm staring at this orange traffic cone
in the middle of the parking lot.
Everything was dark, man.
Hopeless.
I had done everything that I could do, I thought, to outrun and to be better than and to be
stronger than and to be the guy that I thought I was.
But everything had fallen apart and was falling apart.
I felt that I was incapable of love or being loved.
I felt nothing dead inside.
And as I'm sitting there staring at the windshield, I realized that I've got a pistol on my hip.
And next thing you know, I've got this pistol in my hand and I'm staring at this fucking
gun.
And it scared the shit out of me because all I thought was not holy shit, am I holding
a gun?
It's like, I can be free.
And you know, I've been to, like any responder, been to suicide calls, deaths, tragic, natural,
all of it.
And although I understand the act of suicide and I understand where people may have been
during that, I could never reconcile that as my end.
You know, I'd always believed that, you know, it's always darkest before the dawn and the
sun will rise and a new day will be here.
And there's always promise of a new day.
And I didn't have any of that, man.
And it scared the shit out of me.
And I put my gun away and started driving.
And I got home at six o'clock that morning and my wonderful bride was already awake and
she didn't have a run plan that day or anything.
So there was no reason for her to be awake at six AM on a Sunday morning.
And I walked in the house and still had my gun belt on, my boots, everything.
I hadn't undressed and she's sitting up in bed when I walked in and said, can we, can
we talk?
And if you've been married for a day, then your wife is awake and says, can we have a
talk?
You know, that's not going to lead to anything good.
Throw that onto the fact that you had been suffering for the better part of two decades
with what you now know as post-traumatic stress or the constellation of, of injuries and illness
that come along with that massive depression, anxiety, not sleeping and convincing yourself
that the next conversation that you and your spouse have, by the way, one of three of the
only reasons that you're continuing to breathe is getting ready to tell you that she's leaving
because you've convinced yourself that you are a bag of shit.
And for the first time in my life, I dropped to my knees, hands clasped at the foot of
the bed.
And I begged her with tears in my eyes.
The first time I had cried that I could recall in at least 15 years, she had no idea what
to do with any of that.
She was completely blown away that I had had that reaction to a simple request of let's
talk.
And she said, would you go to counseling with me?
Of course, my answer was yes.
Yes, anything.
Yes, we'll do that.
Yeah.
That's, that brings us to October 20th or October of 2019.
So yeah, that was the beginning of the journey.
And again, when you listen to so many of these people's journeys and yours again, you've
got all the things you've got, you know, organizational betrayal from some of the poor leaders that
you were on.
You've got the TBIs, you've got sleep deprivation, you've got the things that we see and do.
And it's this, this video, you know, perfect storm in a negative way.
And over and over and over again, and I'll get to see if this was truly what you were
feeling, you hear about this distorted element, this distorted reality, like you said, you
walk in and thinking she's going to leave you.
One thing I think that's just so sad is our generation when we were younger men, suicide
was cowardly selfish.
How could they think of the kids?
And yet over and over and over again, when I hear stories like this, you hear that the
brain is so miswired that that person truly believes that they are a burden to the very
people that love them.
And so you add that selfless servant, especially one who's got the means of suicide strapped
to their waist.
And at that point, that idea of suicide or the completion of suicide in that distorted
reality becomes courageous and selfless to the unhealthy mind.
It's that they, you know, they want to free their loved ones from the burden of themselves
from the pain that they are inflicting on their loved ones.
The healthy brain looks at that and goes, what the fuck are you talking about?
They loved you.
You're going to, it's going to be more painful for them now.
So talk to me about that place.
Like, you know, what, what were those voices and what was that reality compared to you
now sitting here?
That's still something I'm still trying to unravel five years later.
God, I wish I had a good answer prepared for you, but that's not, I can tell you this and
not to turn this into a spiritual podcast, but my own spiritual journey has come from
this.
But during that time, James, I didn't see God not working in my life, not present with
me, not guiding me anything.
It was black, just dark.
There was nothing again.
You know, I, I set such a high level of expectations and professionalism for myself and my achievements.
And I wasn't meeting those.
You know, I was, I was winning by all outwardly appearance.
Everything I did was a win, but I didn't see it that way.
I mean, I remember even talking to my captain, he was a new captain.
And I said, Hey, look, I've, I'm normally better than this.
You've known me for 20 years.
This is, I'll get a win soon.
And he's looking at me like I've lost my goddamn mind.
And I just, I wasn't, I knew what was going on at me, but nobody else did.
And I didn't ask for help.
I tried to sit down one time and speak to my major and I told him, Hey, look, I hate
to use the word, but I feel like a pussy for even saying this.
He's like, bro, what's going on?
And I gave him like wave tops.
Yeah, I'm not sleeping well.
You know, the kids are having problems.
We work at midnight, you know, whatever.
Wife's afternoon and you're always working, you know, stupid shit.
Like if you get a chance, maybe find me a phone a day shift.
And that was it.
I never went in and said, Hey, look, man, I'm falling apart.
I need help.
I wish I had now in retrospect, but yeah, where I wasn't in that point, it seemed like
you said, it seemed like a good idea.
This was the answer.
And then the only thing I think that stopped me was I realized that this would never be
explained.
No, no one knew that I'd been hurting.
I hadn't asked for help.
I haven't even had the signal.
I didn't slow down for any outward appearances.
I don't know why I didn't.
Other than that, you know, my wife that day, she wouldn't know for several months that
three hours prior I had a pistol in my hand and it was in counseling and therapy later
that I said that.
And even more recently, just before my book went for presale, we were talking about that.
And I said, you know, I never asked you this, but what were you doing laying awake all night?
What was going on that night?
And she said, I had been praying every night before I went to sleep for 15 years for you
to return home safely and for you to get healed.
And she said, I was awake all night that night praying.
And I'm sorry, I still get emotional over this.
She said, I was awake all night praying for you to come home safe one more time, looking
for the answer, asking for the courage to help you, to find a way to help you.
And I told her, I said, you know, during that time, I don't remember seeing God.
And before I finished that sentence, she said that it ever occurred to you, you didn't have
to see God because somebody for 15 years had been praying for your safety.
And it just reinforced or enforced the idea that I had that, you know, here I was, you
know, years earlier thinking I was a worthless piece of shit, that the woman that I loved
so deeply was going to leave me and take my kids only to find out and to learn again that
the woman that I thought despised me quite literally paid attention to every waking and
sleeping moment that she was awake and had prayed continuously for my safety and for
my healing.
Yeah, man, I will never be convinced any other way, but my wife for all the wonderful things
that she has accomplished in her life and will accomplish in the rest of her life, she
was born and she came into my life to be there in October of 2019 to save me.
You can present whatever it is you want to present.
You will never convince me otherwise.
And yeah, man, I hope and the reason I'm doing this and the reason I've done the book and
the speaking and everything that I want to do in this new purpose is I want as many people
that can hear my voice and have access to my words and my story, that they don't have
that gun in hand moment, that they don't get that dark.
And I know that's ridiculous to believe and not everybody is going to have the same reaction
to my story, but at least I'm doing my part now as you're doing yours.
And man, it's a shit place to be and I can't explain it.
I can't explain it to people other than it just, man, it's awful.
It hurts.
You get some of these people that just, you know, we're in the most horrific of incidents
and that, you know, that one event again, it's still cumulative, but that one event
is obviously the real corner turner.
But I think for the other 99% of us, it's death by a thousand cuts.
And it's, this is what happens is that people don't know they're drowning.
It's that frog in the saucepan, you know, that they slowly turn up the heat.
Yeah.
I, I, I knew something was amiss, but I didn't have a name for it.
You know, I don't have PTSD because I'm tougher than that.
You know, I'm the guy.
I had to be the guy at everything that I did.
I was the top performer.
I was the man.
You know, I had to prove that I earned the company that I kept and that's what it was.
I was living to someone else's expectation of what a warrior was, not my own life.
And it was never enough.
So I just kept going and until, you know, I hate to say broke, even though it was, it
was a break, a breakthrough, I think more than anything else.
I'm just one of the lucky ones, man.
I can't say that I willed myself through it.
I just got lucky.
I guess.
I don't know.
I don't have any other explanation.
Divine intervention.
Yes.
Uh, the faith and strength of a devoted wife.
Yes.
But there are so many things that go into why I didn't that night or why I haven't since.
Um, yeah, cause it got darker again.
So yeah, this is a whole thing, man.
You're right.
There are people that have that one, uh, moment that, that, that does the men.
And that could be as a result because it was a really, really horrible thing or an accumulation
of, you know, at first childhood experiences, because we all come to this, uh, broken or
damaged I should say, or, you know, carrying our own bucket of shit before we even start
doing this.
So it's, it's only a matter of time.
This is, uh, this is like you said, this is the human condition.
It's going to impact you.
If it doesn't, I have very big concerns about your stability to begin with.
Absolutely.
Well, one common denominator I've noticed from a lot of people that have got to that
dark place is the adverse childhood experience, you know, so you didn't have to be at nine
11 or the Oklahoma bombing, but you add in, you know, that, that fear and lack of security
and, you know, not being wanted as a child or being abused as a child.
And then you put the uniform on and then you carry forward.
And so there's all these different pieces of the puzzle that we've got to pull out the
shadows and unidentify, you know, this is why I think rather than having a psychological
test that you either, you know, you get a check or a cross, you know, on your application,
why don't we start counseling on probation?
Why don't we make it the same as PT?
Because I truly believe, and I want to get into your growth journey that these struggles
become strength.
I think that's the real hope of the post-traumatic growth conversation rather than, you know,
just, oh, it's my identity.
I'm the PTSD guy.
No, I'm now I've found ways to heal.
It's not perfect.
I'm always going to have my highs and lows, but putting that hope into the fact that that
to me, that's really what resilience is.
We talk about resilience training and it's very kind of wordy to me.
It's figuring out what your shit is dealing with it.
And now that becomes that gold glue in the Japanese pottery, you know, it's a scar to
be proud of.
And then other people look at those scars and go, can I ask you how you did that?
Because actually you think I'm fine.
I'm not fucking fine either.
And I'm going through this stuff and people become this beacon of light then.
Yes.
That's the, that's the point of the book, the way forward.
You know, I, when I wrote it, it's, it's become four different things.
And we can get into that later, but it, it started off as an origin story and a journey,
but it's more than that now.
And book number two is going to be more of the way forward.
You know, it's not an origin.
It's a story of transformation.
And like you said, you know, I, I actually had this, this conversation with, with Chris
free yesterday that, you know, I don't want to call them badges of honors, but they, they're
definitely stripes that I've earned.
You know, this is the, there's a cost and a price that you're going to pay.
And on the end of it, you have these things and these experiences that I think are an
indication of a life of service.
Well lived.
Um, you, because of your experiences, you have access to rooms that other people are
never going to have access to.
And I don't know if that's the thing to be proud of, but you're still here.
You know, it, it didn't kill you.
You're still with us.
The growth that can come from that, the, the stealing of, of you, you know, the, the burning
of the impurities, the, the gold in the pottery, those are all things that, um, that you should
be proud of, but again, because you're still here, you know, we, we can talk about our,
our most shameful and embarrassing moments, but what did you do with that?
Um, you know, I listened to the podcast, uh, yesterday that you did with JD Miller and
Chris free and, um, JD made a comment on, on the, on the podcast that I really loved.
And I wrote down and I'm trying to work that into, but resilience, she said she didn't
like the term resilience because it means that you're returning to a normal shape.
But do we ever return to a normal shape or homeostasis?
And she referred to use the word perseverance.
It's like, man, I really, that's, that's power in and of itself.
I mean, we're never going to return to what we are because the, the things that we do
in our life of service, they're meant to change us.
They're going to change us and we can curl up in a ball or we can curl up in the bottom
of a bottle of our choice, or we can stand the fuck up.
Remember who we are, what we've done and lead the way for others out of it.
And for me, buddy, that's the choice.
That's the choice.
Um, that's the only choice that's, that's worth, uh, it's, it's the only path worth
walking.
I mean, we've done hard shit.
I've done hard shit and you have to remind yourself that you're capable of doing anything
and to, to, to be on this mission with other people that are like-minded and pushing in
this direction.
Like I told you before we started recording, I have been so blessed to meet and speak with
some amazing people, just extraordinary people.
And to, uh, to just to be in the room with them, to hear the story, to be on a podcast
with James Kearing.
Are you kidding me?
You'd asked me this a year ago.
I'm like, you know, are you kidding me?
I'd be like, yeah, you guys are full of shit.
That guy's never going to answer my phone call.
And you know, Nick O'Kelly is just, you know, six degrees of separation and here I am today.
But man, I'm just, I am so blessed one to have experienced the things that I've experienced.
So blessed to have persevered and to be here today that, um, it would be selfish of me
not to share this story with others in the hopes that would help someone else.
Um, I'm not smart enough to come up with a new work shift and I'm still baffled by the,
the work split that you, uh, that you're proposing.
Uh, although it makes sense.
I just, uh, yeah, I can't wrap my mind around the bigger problems, but I could talk about
me.
So,
well, speaking of that then, so you're on your knees in front of your wife.
You realize that she's been by your side the whole way.
What are, what is that growth journey for you?
What are the tools that you start using to get yourself out of that darkness?
And that is like sawing off your arm.
It is, it is not easy because you have to backing up Michelle, my wife, she knew that
it, she had come at me with your broken.
You need to get help that would not have landed.
What she said to me was, would you go to marriage counseling with me?
So she wanted to be a part of it.
She knew that I, I felt with her by her side, by my side, I could accomplish anything.
And so for me, I was like, okay, well, this is a nice thing.
I could feel this.
So yes, we're going to marriage counseling, but it was more a lot of crying and yes, yes,
anything, anything.
So we made an appointment.
We went to go see the, the therapist and used the, used our EAP for the office.
And at the end of the hour, she says, well, there's nothing I can do for you.
She says, I don't, I don't treat couples like you, James.
That's what I did.
I went through my hands in the air, head back, said that I knew it.
It's hopeless.
It's over.
And she says, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you misunderstand me.
She's like, you could work on communication and Doug, you can work on setting boundaries.
I can give you some pamphlets to read, but I'm not going to waste your time counseling
here.
You're each other's best friend.
You know, there's, there's nothing to counsel here.
And Michelle's looking at me like I lost my mind because I'm still under the impression
that we're here for marriage counseling.
And so the counselor says, Doug, you know, let me ask you what your mood like, are you
normally low or high?
Michelle says he's low.
I looked at her as like, well, you're not Doug.
What do you know?
You don't know my mood.
And then she says, Doug, how do you sleep?
And Michelle immediately says he doesn't sleep.
He stops breathing when he's sleeping.
He grinds his teeth.
He fights in his sleep.
He cries in his sleep.
He doesn't dream.
And if he does, it's a nightmare.
She says, I've laid awake watching him sleep for the last 15 years.
And it is the most heartbreaking thing I've ever had to witness.
And James then it occurred to me that the woman that I thought despised me, that loathed
the very ground I walked on, had been paying attention to every waking and sleeping moment.
I was amazed, but I was still so confused.
Why are we there?
And she asked me about PTSD and gave me recommendations of somebody to go see at the VA.
And over the next six weeks, I went to go see my primary care, which I was very lucky.
Private medicine had his own practice, but he was a sports doctor.
And I would go see him because I hurt myself and over-trained quite often.
And I told him wave tops of what was going on.
So he ordered a sleep study and he did a full panel of blood work, cortisol, testosterone,
and everything.
My total testosterone at the time was 168.
Oh, yes.
Thank you.
Optimal, they say, is 600, 800, but optimal for me may be more than that.
But anyway, it was 168.
My sleep study lasted two hours and 38 minutes, which was a good night of sleep for me.
And he asked me, he's like, how are you still walking?
I don't know, doctor.
You're the doctor.
You know, you tell me.
So he started me, he diagnosed me with seasonal affective disorder and started me on the low
dose of wellbutrin, got me on testosterone replacement therapy, wanted to put me on a
CPAP.
But he said, you know, with the other stuff that's going on, I want to refer you to the
VA.
And I got out in late 2007.
I went to the VA in 2008.
They told me I had a job and had health insurance.
There was nothing they could do for me, so I left and didn't go back.
Here we are in 2019.
I'm like, yeah, bro, I've been out a long time, but you know, they are the experts,
like you said.
So let me go check them out and get into the healthcare system, which I did.
And you know, some of it worked out great.
Some of it not so much.
They handed me a handful of pills that, you know, ensured that I felt nothing at all,
which is not a good thing.
I did the conjoined combined, our conjoined cognitive behavioral therapy, the CBT, with
Michelle, which was great because she was my safety blanket.
And we went through that together, learned how to reframe things and boundaries.
And you know, I've done the grounding, basically everything that Dr. Huberman says about sleep
and grounding and eating.
I've done all of that stuff.
I've listened to the podcast, I've read the books, trying to take care of myself.
I recently completed a round of transcranial magnetic stimulation, the ETMS therapy, which
by the way, if you are a veteran or first responder in Florida, is now being paid for
free through ETMS Florida by the state of Florida.
It's a grant program.
There's six locations here in Florida and it's completely free.
It's targeted transcranial magnetic stimulation, stimulation, sorry, ETMS.
That has helped with the waves that cause depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, hypervigilance
and increases executive function.
And anecdotally, I've experienced all the positive effects.
And if you look at the EEGs that I've done, a smart person reads them, they'll show you,
oh yes, see this is where it's gotten better.
So there are 800,000 cops on the payroll right now.
There are 800,000 different combinations of ways you can heal yourself.
The key is raise your hand and say, I need help.
That's the barrier to entry to get help.
Raise your freaking hand and say, I need help.
And there's no requisite number of car crashes you have to go to or house fires you need
to go to.
It could be one.
It could be your first day on the job.
It could be your last day on the job.
Just get help.
So that's been my journey, man.
I got so desperate at one point in time in the early days of the, you know, the, you
know, the Iowa Oscar treatments, the psychedelics.
I was like, I'm going to do that.
I know what the stigma says because, you know, I was a cop and we shouldn't do that because
it's bad stuff.
But then, you know, you listen to some of the people that have done it, who have taken
these journeys.
You know, Marcus Capone, listening to his story and the successes with the psychedelics
and others.
It's like, my God, I need this.
I mean, I'm not going to go to the Circle K and buy it from my street corner chemist
and take a trip, but let's look into all of these things.
So circling way back to what you first said when we started this line of questioning,
this should be part of like physical training in the academy.
These kids should be front loaded with this information.
Like, look, these things are going to happen to you.
This is a physiological thing.
It happens at the cellular level.
It cannot be compelled.
It cannot be wished away.
You can't hydrate enough.
You can't run enough.
These are things you're going to have to deal with and they are normal.
You know, I think that's very important.
They have to know what's going to happen to them so they can recognize it.
For me, it was a secret for many years.
And then by the time I realized what it was, I wasn't willing to say anything because of
how I thought I'd be perceived.
And even after that, it wasn't until that proverbial gun in the hand moment.
So yeah, I think I over-answered your question, but there it is.
No, not at all.
So talk to me then, we've talked about cowardice earlier.
Talk to me about courage because I've had a lot of people on here that have been to
war that were special operators that were, you know, in alpha profession here.
And I hear over and over again that the bravest thing they ever did was ask for help.
Now, as you mentioned earlier, I feel like a pussy saying this, but I think that we've
got it completely twisted in our generation, as I've pointed out many times, raised on
Schwarzenegger and Stallone and these kind of stone-faced bodybuilders that for some
reason we took as our masculine role models.
But talk to me about that because I think that reframing the fact that the courageous
thing to do is ask for help is one of the things that we need front and center in this
conversation.
Okay.
Well, I'm going to give you the answer and I'm also going to play devil's advocate and
an answer to that.
But first, I want to start with a quote that you dropped on me when we first started our
conversation today was what other people think about me is none of my business.
And I think that's good business.
Wow.
Okay.
So courage.
If you want to save your life, save your family, enjoy the retirement that you've earned over
a life of service, you have to get out of your mind that this is a game of one-upmanship
or I'm better than that or not as good as this guy or that guy.
You're living your own life.
Your experiences, your vantage point, you could have been on the same call with somebody
else and they didn't have a reaction to it.
Was there a locus of control on their end?
Were you in the corner just getting shot at or you were the guy shooting back?
There's a difference in perspective there.
I've heard people say, well, I've gone to three infant drownings and pool.
You got to have at least four because I don't have a problem with it yet.
So you can't have a problem on your first one.
That's complete bullshit.
And I've actually heard that argument made.
I'm like, are you?
That's the most toxic fucked up thing I've ever heard come out of anybody's mouth.
And I've been into some stupid conversations before.
It's like, my God, how can you say that?
Or, oh yeah, man, if I was at that shooting, it would have gone like this.
And I, shut up.
You've never been in a shooting.
People who talk about shootings have never been in a shooting.
So shut up about what you would have done.
This idea of one upmanship or I have to be tougher than, or somebody will think less
of me.
That's all bullshit, man.
That stuff is what's killing us.
That's what's keeping us hiding.
If anybody doubts me or my abilities to handle my shit, that's fine.
If my message is not for you, good.
Good.
Why can't you just suck it up?
Well, you weren't in that parking lot with me.
You haven't had one of those moments yourself and I am so grateful that you have not.
I hope that you never do.
But if you do find yourself in that position, I hope that you find it in your heart to understand
that this is what it feels like.
I hope that you find grace in a way through.
Owning my shit, as you said, I did not do for the first time until June of this year,
late June.
And there were so many points in my growth over the last seven months that I hadn't experienced
in the previous four years of this journey.
Like I said, I got dark.
I did a lot of journaling after I retired.
I convinced myself even as of Christmas of 2023 that the only reason I'm on this side
of dirt is so my family keeps getting my pension.
I had reduced even in my healing years after, had reduced myself to nothing more than a
paycheck.
But finding this purpose and more to the point of owning my shit and telling the story, I
stood up at a, there was a foundation called the Comradery Foundation.
They're here in Florida and they work with veterans and now I've branched out the first
responders to provide transition services and mental health services free of charge.
And they helped me at the very beginning of my journey.
And I met some of them at a, back in May, I met them face to face.
I was like, Oh my God, I spoke to you on the phone.
This is what you did for me.
Thank you so much.
And I'm telling them, you know, my journey is and what I want to do.
And you know, I've got this manuscript that's half-assed completed and you know, and they
said, would you speak at our PTSD breakfast in June?
I said, absolutely.
I want to be a speaker.
I could talk to people.
And I prepared this five minute speech just of my story and what the Comradery Foundation
did to me or for me.
And there was a sheriff from central Florida with a bunch of his deputies and supervisors
sitting at one of the round tables.
And then there's veterans and survivors and all of this stuff.
And Michelle is sitting there too.
And I got called up on stage during this breakfast while everybody's clanking their freaking
silverware and shit.
And I stood up there and took the microphone and James, I said the first words and tonight
the sound of freedom started ringing in my head.
I didn't hear a damn thing that I said.
I know that my voice cracked.
I was very conscious of that.
I'm looking at all these people and I look over at Michelle as I'm telling my story and
the CEO of the Comradery Foundation is sitting in the chair next to her holding her hand.
And I realized that this was the first time Michelle has heard me say all of this at one
time out loud.
And this is the first time.
I mean, 10 people, 100 people, I don't know.
There were lots of tables and they were all full.
I'm telling this to complete strangers.
And here I am up there talking about the most, what I thought at the time was the weakest
points of my life as a man, as a father, as a responder, as a veteran, you know, all of
this, I'm throwing it out there for them to consume.
There's a camera rolling and everything.
There's Michelle, tears rolling down her face, sitting tall and proud and stoic.
And I got done and there was a round of applause and I came off the stage and I had people
come up to me shaking hands, hugging me.
And one guy even pulled me aside.
He was a veteran and he said, man, I can relate to your story.
He says, I still have the round.
I said, what?
He said, yeah, I had the gun in my mouth, pulled the trigger, striker hit the primer
and it didn't go off.
He says, I still have the round with the struck primer.
Like, holy shit.
And I got in the car and she left that breakfast, man.
And I just, I had never felt more powerful in my life.
And I know that sounds, I don't know if it sounds arrogant or stupid or, or what, but
I felt, I use this term, I felt unfuck withable that there is nothing in this world that can
hurt me because anything that can hurt me, I just gave it to a room full of strangers
and um, and then doing hiding in plain sight.
There's there's 200 pages there of my weakest moments and I own every one of them.
You know, if you want to hurt me, there it is.
I gave it to you.
Bring it because I know this, you weren't wearing my boots.
You weren't there.
If you did stand in the arena, your experiences were not my experiences.
Take your shots.
I don't give a shit what you think about me as none of my business, but I know the impact
that it's having from rookies and the fire service and, and uh, um, law enforcement world
all the way up to retired tier one operators, uh, to, to PhDs to clinicians.
I know the impact that it's having and the response that I'm getting from this, I know
that I hit the mark.
I know that this is going to make a difference.
So my advice to anybody else, fuck them.
If people that are following you now think that you're weak because you've owned your
shit and you tell them you need help, you're setting the example for others so they don't
have to stay sick and they think less of you.
That's an indication of their character, not yours.
Drive on just as I always did.
Fuck those guys.
Drive on.
If you think that I'm no longer capable of being a good leader because I've had to take
a knee and said, look, this is a bridge too far.
I need help.
That's not an organization I want to be a part of, you know, and think to yourself retirees
or people that have, who have left service, the people who said shit about you, if they
did say shit about you or if they ever got back to you, one, did they ever say it to
your face?
Chances are no, they didn't because they're not as strong as you.
And having to come to you and tell you to your face, it's like holding a mirror up.
It just shows their weakness and you're an indication of their weakness.
Also, if you've retired, those people that you were concerned about what they would think
about you, how many times did you sit with them over a meal or had coffee?
How many times did they called you since you retired?
If you say one time, you may want to think about it, but the chances are it's been zero.
So again, I refer to fuck them.
It doesn't matter.
They're not paying my bills.
They're not holding my wife's hands.
They're not raising my kids.
They're not with me on this journey now moving forward.
And if you didn't want to be around me when I was broken and healing, you don't get to
be around me now.
So that, hopefully that answers the question.
I'm very good at long form answers.
Yeah.
Well, you came to the right place.
I think this is a point that I've made a lot recently too.
And I think where the stigma really is still embedded is addiction.
And it's funny because we don't usually bring alcohol into the word addiction.
You're thinking about the other stuff.
Obviously it's that social media, narcissism, all these things are addictions as well.
But especially if someone is taking cocaine, meth, whatever they're, the drug of choice,
that is another area where if people are hurting, they don't need more guilt and shame.
They need to be lifted up.
And what I say to people is if you hired someone who was a turd and they've been a turd since
the day they walked into your police department or fire department all the way through to
today, then you should just never have hired that person.
But chances are that trouble employee air quotes, that salty guy, that whatever you
want to turn them as, what were they like five years in, 10 years in?
There's a chance that they used to be an amazing cop, an amazing firefighter.
And so they're spiraling.
This is your giant red flag.
This is your opportunity to actually enact what is supposed to be a brotherhood, a sisterhood
because this person now is a cry for help.
And I've seen it.
I've lost friends that have died from an opioid overdose.
And the way that it was received in that particular department was disgusting.
Oh, did you hear how he died though?
Did I hear how he died though?
Are you fucking serious?
So this is the point is if we're truly going to foster this thin red line, thin blue line,
then when someone is acting aggressively, pissed off, whatever the thing, always in
their room with the door closed, whatever it is, that's our opportunity to reach out
and give them an environment to be vulnerable and ask for help.
And I think this is what's so powerful about men and women that have been through this
crucible and now have written books and come on podcasts and do talks is now their initial
vulnerability opens the door for other people to be vulnerable.
But if you're there like, oh, just, if any of you have any problem, open door policy,
just call me anytime.
That's not going to work because you're on your ivory tower expecting someone to then
be vulnerable.
You yourself have to say when I was a single dad and I was going through paramedic school
and a divorce simultaneously, that was the fucking lowest I've ever been.
That's a great way to now initiate a conversation for someone else who's dying.
But again, if you're like, as you said, you know, well, you have four drownings before
you start cracking, then you are, I mean, like you said, to me, that screams of a guy
that probably drinks himself to sleep every night.
So having the courage to be vulnerable yourself, if you, and I've always said this, not all
of us are hurting all the time.
So if you're that person, which a lot of times was me, because I was, I've said this many
times, I just won some bizarre lottery genetically where I grew up on a farm, had loads of siblings.
I had nature, I had exercise, I had all the things.
So the trauma that I had over and over again, there was an equal and opposite healing thing.
Just by chance embedded into my childhood, which I think gave me, you know, the foundation
that allowed me to process and deal with some of the horrible shit and the divorces and
all the other things in a slightly different way than some of my peers who are no less
of a man or woman than me.
They just had a different upbringing.
Some of them, like we said, were even, you know, abused and what kinds of stuff, you
know, as children, their foundation is just different.
So if you are genuinely doing well, as you said, good for you, then be the fucking shoulder
for other people to lean on.
Lift people up.
Don't look down your nose.
But chances are, if you are looking down your nose, that's a huge red flag that you need
to look in the mirror because you're probably not dealing with your own shit and you're
projecting on other people.
No, absolutely.
You know, I think in a position, if you want to be a mentor or a leader or just, you know,
an informal leader, if you're in a firehouse and you want people to come talk to you, first,
you have to be trustworthy.
Are you the person that I can bring this to?
And then secondly, what are you going to do with that information?
Are you going to use it to help me or are you going to use it to hurt me?
And when I started getting help, the clinician I was working with, he said, you know, you're
never going to tell people what's wrong or that you're getting help, but they're going
to notice the change and they're going to want a piece of that.
I'm like, okay, whatever, you know, whatever doc.
And within two weeks of him saying that, I was visited by seven deputies, five who didn't
even work for me.
And that's a big deal.
I mean, they sat in my office in tears.
I feel like this, I feel like that.
They used the word that I use.
I feel like this and there's no way out.
Well, do you think I'm that?
Well, no, God, no.
Let me tell you my story.
Briefly, I didn't go into it because I fully didn't understand it myself at the time.
But to be able to show that vulnerability and I think bringing that larger lesson that
you just brought up that you need those people standing in the academies.
You know, yes, here's a clinician and they're a white coat.
It's a pretty white coat.
However, this is what it looks like for us.
In starting off with, there I was no shit in paramedic school, getting ready to go through
a divorce and it was awful.
Yes, you're somebody that I can listen to because you're giving me your lived experience
and you're being raw about it.
I don't think anybody's served by just talking to a clinician.
You know, on the cellular level, this is what's going to happen if you experience this because
I was involved in an officer involved shooting and I had to go see the psychologist the day
after and he's telling me how I'm going to feel and why I feel this way and all of this
stuff.
But I don't even know that this asshole has ever been to a range.
Like 24 hours ago, shot and killed somebody and you're telling me that I'm going to feel
angry that I'm going to feel sad that I'm going to feel happy.
All I feel right now is that I want to kick you into a bottomless pit and scream, this
is Sparta.
You're an asshole.
You know, that serves no one.
Certainly didn't serve me, but having people who have walked and lived it, as you said,
to have the courage to stand up and tell that to others, to serve others in that way with
your own story.
Yeah, buddy.
That's courage.
That's great courage.
Well, speaking of stories then, so your book Hiding in Plain Sight, what made you decide
to pick up the pen and start writing?
And then did you find an element of catharsis putting it on paper?
That's a great question.
When I retired, I was looking, you know, the off ramp to retirement, what do I want to
be when I grow up?
Because I was 49 when I retired.
Maybe enough to be positioned where I never had to do anything.
And you know, I said, I'll teach undergrad.
I'll be a teacher or professor because that's what I love to do.
Or I'll go work for DoD and be a contractor, you know, do thinking person stuff.
I'll go teach bombs and bad guys.
All the things that people expected me to say.
But as I walked out the door on that last day, I said, I'm going to write a book.
Somebody said, what about?
I said, all of this.
Oh shit, what's he going to say?
And it was a joke, but it wasn't like, yeah, man, maybe I should.
I've had a lot of people when I tell stories and people ask me at parties to tell me something
and like, man, you should write a book.
I'm like, I'm too lazy for that shit.
So when I retired, I started journaling and you know, I was very dismissive of it at first
and for years.
Journaling doesn't work.
Talking about your feelings is stupid.
We're not going to comb each other's hair and paint our nails.
That's all dumb shit.
It doesn't work.
Yeah, it does.
Was it cathartic?
Absolutely.
For the first time, I had a conversation with a blank screen and I found that there was
no judgment.
It was amazing, James.
Like I'm not being judged for the shit that I'm saying.
I don't have to measure words.
I don't think I have to think of how this story is going to be used to harm me or hurt
my career or embarrass me.
Man, it just poured out of me.
I mean, there were days that I sat down with a cup of coffee and next thing you know, it's
five o'clock in the afternoon and family is coming home from work and school.
And you know, I'd put down 10,000 words just pouring out of me.
Things that I had never put words to.
And there were a couple of occasions when I was recalling some of the vignettes that
are now on my book and some that didn't make it into the book that I had to push away from.
I mean, visceral churning and response.
There's one that I had to push away from for six weeks, not a keystroke in six weeks because
I was quite honestly, I was plotting how I'm going to kill this person the day they get
out of prison, not a prison, that they will not see another sunrise.
Man, I had it planned, dreamt about it, wished that I had done it that day.
And it put me in some dark spots, but I was able to, once I did the journal and I had
about 77,000 words into this journal, I mean, that's a 300 page paperback book.
I started reading it to see what I thought about myself.
And here I am looking at this hero's journey and I had written myself as a victim and a
bystander, which is bullshit because anybody who has ever met me or had a conversation
with me would have a hard time believing I've ever seen myself as either one of those things.
And I had to stop and put on my clinician hat, not a clinician by the way, and said,
man, how are you speaking to yourself?
What are the things you tell yourself?
Why are you saying these things?
And I dove into each and every one of those things.
And that was probably January of this year.
And I started diving into and pulling that stuff apart.
So yes, it was cathartic because I had to answer to those things.
I had to own them and see them for what they were, my successes, my shortfalls, and what
was my culpability in these things?
Where did I go wrong?
What could I have done better?
Which led to the ownership of my shit.
And I put that stuff aside in April.
And the end of March of 2024, operator syndrome, the book was released and I devoured the damn
thing.
And it gave me a lot more clarity than just the study did and some of the interviews I'd
heard them in.
And I took that 77,000 words, put it aside and I started hammering away on what became
hiding in plain sight.
And that's 77,000 words.
There's maybe one or two vignettes that actually made to the book.
The rest of that stuff is what I saw and what I own afterwards, how I'm really speaking
to myself.
And understanding that people see me in a very different way than I saw myself.
It's very different.
And so in owning that and finding the way forward, that's what became hiding in plain
sight.
And I did a trip to Scotland, by the way, a beautiful country.
I loved it.
I did a yomp up there.
It's a forced rock march on the Cataran Trail in Scotland.
Beautiful, beautiful country.
And it was for a veterans charity, the Army Benevolent Fund in the UK.
And we were there with Ukrainians, most of them amputees.
I did a rock march behind a guy that had both legs amputated above the knee and both arms
blown off.
And he's doing a 25 mile rock march to the Scottish Highlands.
Perseverance.
Buddy, see that guy.
Anyway, I didn't want to go.
It was through a charity.
So I was like, yeah, I just got to pay for my luggage fee, whatever.
Did not want to go.
I was pissed.
I was like, yeah, I'm not going to meet anybody.
This is not going to do me any good.
I don't deserve this.
I shouldn't be here.
Other people need it more than me.
But when I landed in Germany, I met one guy that was on the plane.
By the time I got to baggage claim in Scotland, I found myself in a group of seven others.
And of the 1,700 people that were on the Yom, we were inseparable for that entire week.
And I'm still in touch with those guys daily.
That's how I met Nick O'Kelly through one of the guys.
And anyway, speaking to those guys on the buses, on the long bus rides to and from the
places that we went to go visit, I started telling some of my stories and some of my
journey and some of the manuscript.
And one of the guys, he's like, bro, this is like a checklist for my life.
I'm like, man, you were a door gunner for the 160th.
You were a night stalker.
You're like, you were a death dealer in special operations aviation.
What do you mean?
You can relate to this.
We had a firefighter, we had a Marine, we had a bunch of guys for the 160th.
And they're just like, yeah, bro, you got a story.
And that gave me confidence.
And then of course, having the talk at the Comradery Foundation, I knew that there was
something there, but the catalyst moment for this book going to publish a young deputy
in comparison to me is a friend of mine, a guy that I knew well.
And I have shared the same last name, but we look very, very different.
He's short and I'm tall.
Every time we'd be around each other, he'd introduce me as Doug White, his brother.
Or we'd say, oh, like Johnson and Johnson from Die Hard, we're not related.
But every time I saw him, he gave me a great big hug.
I mean, like a spine straightening hug.
He was always happy every time you saw him.
Top of the world, beautiful family, just an energetic smile that you just couldn't help
to be happy around him.
He was a human warm hug and he took his own life.
And I didn't understand.
I mean, I understood, but I didn't understand it.
And it was a shock to everybody as they all are.
And of course, I thought to myself, you know, I've got this manuscript and I want to make
it a book, but I'm not.
I know it landed on a bus full of operators and tough guys, but those are guys who kind
of know me.
What happens if I give this to people who don't know me, who are going to judge me,
who are going to think this about me?
I was scared.
I was.
I was scared, you know, is my organization going to be bad at me because I may speak
harshly of them or they may think that I'm speaking harshly of them.
I don't want to draw that higher.
I want to be done with them or, you know, all of the things.
But then I thought to myself, what if I had called him a week ago?
You know, I saw him on social media.
I'm like, man, I don't reach out to him.
What a great guy.
Why didn't I?
Would it have made a difference?
And of course it's ridiculous.
My book had nothing to do with his journey or anything.
But what if, what if my calling him or reaching out or somebody else reaching out to him or
somebody else who had a story could give him something, something to hold on to for just
another day.
And it dawned on me, you know, my story is doing me no good sitting inside me if there's
one person.
So it had to be a book.
And I was having a conversation with Michelle the next morning and she said, you know what,
putting myself in the position of his wife, knowing where you were, and I knew where you
were if you had taken your life that night.
And I had the knowledge that I knew about it and I never took action to help you.
I don't know that I'd ever recover from that.
And she decided, she says, I'm not an author, but I want to write something in your book.
And I said, Hey, I'm not an author either.
So yes, please write it.
And she goes, well, you tell me what to put.
I said, no, what you just said.
And that became Michelle's preface to the book.
And then from that point on, it was, I want this book out.
I want this done.
I want a podcast to associate with the book.
I want to speak.
I want to tell the story.
And fast forward, here I am rambling to James Gearing.
So yes, please.
No, it is cathartic.
Because journaling, again, you're talking to something that's not going to judge you.
You're putting words to feelings.
I put words to feelings that I never had.
And when Michelle read the manuscript, she said, there's things in here we've never spoken
about.
So sweetheart, there's things in there that I've never put words to that I did not know
impacted me.
And yet at some point crippled me for six weeks.
I mean, it's, I highly recommend journaling and more importantly, owning your shit and
being brave enough to understand that while you're sitting on this thinking about yourself,
there's other people out there that, as you said, are going to find permission or at least
find some shade in what you're saying and can step out a little bit into the light.
And the feedback that I've gotten and the opportunities and the people I've met have
absolutely enforced that thought in my brain that this was the right thing to do.
Absolutely.
And this is what's sad is obviously a lot of people write and they should.
I think everyone should write.
But you and I are obviously coming from exactly the same place.
It's not about the book sales.
It's about getting this message to as many people as possible.
And as we talked before we hit record, even with my latest one, my goal is to get it on
the screen, not because I want to be a famous author turned screenwriter.
I just want this message to get as many people because as you said, what if, if it helped
one person that was going to reach for their gun and then they didn't, that a life's work
is worth a single life, which again goes back to our conversation earlier about toxic leadership
and cowardice.
Most of us listening would bend over backwards for a complete stranger.
We'd certainly bend over backwards for our own family or our first responder family.
And so you pour yourself in trying to just, whether it's a podcast episode, whether it's
a book or a blog you put out or a film or a TV show, what if that saved a life?
The ripple effect of that single life.
So I'm so glad that you went on this journey and you put it out because it's going to be
way more than a life.
It's going to be many, many, many lives.
And then that in turn is going to affect so many.
My wife, she lost her boyfriend before me to suicide.
Think about all the lives that that's affected and her to this point.
Think about the multi-generational trauma of families that lose a loved one and what
that does to the kids and the spouse.
So the unseen impact of these courageously vulnerable stories that people like yourself
put out is so, so important, especially in a world of Kardashians and reality shows.
These are the stories that people need to be hearing, need to be present on.
Yeah.
I agree 100%.
You get snapshots of everybody else's life and they curate the things that they want
you to see.
Well, what you've done and kinder and it's just, it's amazing.
And one more light and everything that you've done.
Like you said, in your intro to the podcast, this is literally a free library of more than
a thousand episodes of stories.
And each one seems to be more remarkable than the next.
It's just, man, the power in our stories and storytelling is something that I never understood.
And I began to understand it.
Another part of my journey is I watched a Ted Talk with now retired Lieutenant Colonel
Scott Mann.
His Ted Talk was called The Generosity of Scars.
If you've seen it, it's fantastic.
If you've not seen it, go to YouTube and look at it.
I can promise you, if you don't start watching that on the edge of your seat, you will soon
be there.
But I watched it for the first time and he talks about the generosity of scars, the scars
that we carry, our stories and the power of sharing our stories and the relatability of
our stories to others and the power that it has to give them permission.
Basically through our connective journeys, I listened to it for the first time and not
only was I tearing up, but I was physically vibrating.
And it was right when I had came to the same conclusion that I need to do this book.
And it's like, man, how did I find this?
Why did this just pop up?
Why did the algorithm feed this to me now?
And man, I just knew it.
I was like, that's storytelling.
This is where it's at.
Lived experience and standing boldly, unafraid in front of other people and just being unfuckwothable,
man.
It's remarkable.
It's been a remarkable journey.
I'm so grateful for the opportunity to come here today and speak to you and your listeners
about this.
It's just, it's been an experience that again, if you told me six months ago, I'd be here,
I'd say you're drinking.
Well, for people listening, if they want to buy the book itself, they want to reach out
to you on websites, social media, where are the best places to go?
Not that I want to make Bezos richer, but Amazon is what's driving book sales.
Not book sales.
I don't care about that.
I don't even know how much I really make off of a book, but that's what's driving its visibility
in other places.
And I want this to be everywhere.
So Amazon, just go to Hiding in Plains site, Doug White.
It'll show up.
The easier thing to do is go to dougwhiteofficial.com.
It's my website.
All the links for my podcast tell the story to engage with me, to meet with me, Instagram,
LinkedIn, my YouTube channel.
Everything is all there.
My link tree is there.
I would love to hear from anybody just to be able to share ideas and have conversations
or just to be available to people.
Building relationships and on this journey is, I'm finding, I'm able to parse through
the missionary versus mercenary in this space right now.
And I'm enjoying that because our lives are richer with the relationships we make and
the people that we can bring in and building those strong circles.
It's just going to make everybody better.
So please reach out to me, get the book.
I'm going to start doing the audible, even though James has done his own and has scared
the shit out of me trying to read my own book.
But I don't have to do different accents or anything, so I might be able to get through
it easier.
But I need to get on that because cops and firefighters and vets, well, we don't read
shit.
Our spouses do, but we're waiting for the movie, which by the way, kinder, I'm going
to have to watch that in pieces just like I'm reading in pieces because man, you are
a powerful writer.
It's incredible.
Just incredible, man.
I wish I had better words for it.
It's awesome.
Thank you, mate.
Well, it's just it's raw.
And it's the same with your book and so many others out there.
This is I've said this a lot.
Who is the Jocko Willink of police or fire?
There isn't that voice.
So the more of us that come out and whether it's writing a book or podcasts or like Scott
Mann, writing a play and acting in it, I mean, whatever your thing is, we need those voices,
like you said.
I love that kind of analogy that you gave because I am a lot of times in danger of being
meek, which, you know, humble and meek are two very different things.
And I'm meek and it's like, yeah, OK, well, you're worried about, you know, whatever
the thing is, you don't want to be out front and center too much.
You don't want it to seem like you're trying to do this for money.
OK, that's fine.
But you said ultimately you have some.