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I'll spell that to you because it's not as you
think, T -E -A -M -B -U -I -L -D -R .com. Welcome
to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always,
my name is James Gearing and this week it is
my absolute honor to welcome back onto the show
former gang unit officer and the host of the
Disruptors podcast, Brian Sanders. Now, what's
exciting about this second conversation is Brian
recently retired from law enforcement. So we
got to have not only a conversation with his
real name this time, but secondly, really take
a deep dive into all the things when it comes
to the crime on the streets, but also areas that
are broken in our profession that need to be
addressed. Now, before we get to this incredible
conversation, as I say every week, please just
take a moment. Go to whichever app you listen
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and leave a rating. Every single five -star rating
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all I ask in return is that you help share these
incredible men and women's stories so I can get
them to every single person on planet Earth who
needs to hear them. So with that being said...
I welcome back onto the show, Brian Sanders.
Enjoy. Well, Brian, I want to start by saying
that I can call you Brian now. The last time
that we spoke, you were a .k .a. B .C. Saunders.
Sanders, excuse me. So I want to welcome you
back onto the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Dude, I appreciate it. And I love going by my
actual name, Brian. And a lot of people were
like, yeah, but the initials are cool and all
that. I'm like, no, I'm good with this. I prefer
this, you know. Yeah. And thanks for having me
back on. It must be weird as well by going by
before Christ Sanders before. Yeah. Yeah. A lot
of people in the police world, a lot of departments,
you kind of have to go by initials, your first
two initials and your last name. And that can
always like make for a very weird combination.
But I mean, you know, when you when you go by
your last name. um people on the street will
just like constantly berate you if you've got
a jacked up last name so i just you know i'm
pretty fortunate it's innocuous it doesn't really
stand out but i prefer to go by brian or as we
say in the south brian Well, we spoke in February
of 2022. So it's basically three years since
you and I sat down. Obviously, a lot has happened
between now and then. We were emerging from COVID.
There was the whole defund movement. But more
importantly, we'll start with this. You transitioned
out of the law enforcement world. So let's begin
with that. Walk me through your journey since
our last conversation. What made you pull the
trigger? And then as we know, the transition
can be very jarring for some people. You have
this tribe, you have this purpose, you have this
identity. So walk me through why you chose to
kind of close that chapter and how that experience
was like for you. Yeah, I was fortunate. I retired.
So there are a lot of people that transition
out at that time with 10, 12, 15 years on the
job. But like I said, I was fortunate. I retired.
My plan was always. to be able to retire and
enjoy life and do exactly what I wanna do. And
a lot of people early on would tell me, hey,
don't make this job your identity. And I'm like,
okay, cool. Well, then I'm gonna actually go
100 miles an hour and get full blown into gang
work, homicide work, and make it the end all
be all. So I lived and breathed it, I loved it,
but also I could just turn it off. And a lot
of that was growing up in a punk and skate scene.
So I was into like punk and hardcore and, and
it was always kind of questioning everything.
So no matter what you do in life, ask yourself
why, and are you, are you being, you know, used
by corporations? Are you being used by the government?
Like you always ask yourself all these things.
So then going into police work, people would
often say, Oh, you can't be a cop and punk rock.
And you know, they kind of want to put you in
all these little categories. And I'm going, ah,
that's actually not what. what it's about. You
know, it's actually about living life without
any kind of set category. So I never really made
police work necessarily my identity in the sense
of when I was off duty, I wanted to be off duty.
And some of the best compliments I would get
is that people would, once they found out I was
a detective or whatever at the time, you know,
to be like, I didn't even know you were a cop.
That's crazy. To me, that was a compliment because
I didn't want to walk around. and have this impression
of what a stereotypical cop was. And a lot of
people know what that is. And sometimes that
is the uptight person in the room who can't really
relate to people or doesn't want to necessarily
talk to people. Maybe they're a natural introvert.
So I don't know. My thing was I wasn't going
to make that my identity. And I always had hobbies
and enjoyed my off time in that sense. So now
in transition, My final year or two in the department
was interesting because, like we had talked about,
we were coming out of COVID at that time. But
when that hit, when COVID hit, in the area I
was in, there were massive restrictions, just
like everywhere else. And it trickled through
government. And it was, you will fall in line
with these parameters or you can't put in for
promotion. Or you can't even put in for a lateral
transfer. So we had officers on a specialized
unit, say canine or gang or SWAT or whatever,
and they couldn't even do a lateral transfer
to another unit, not even a pay grade promotion
because they did not follow the guidelines and
get vaccinated. It was very, just very strange
to me when that was all going on. And I didn't,
I didn't dig that at all. And I also think there
were other things at play there and history will
show us. how divisive things got and maybe why,
why people were aligning themselves in different
ways. But either way, I was a homicide lieutenant
when I retired. And that was like the prime job
that I had. I loved it. I had worked homicide
throughout my career as a detective, then later
as a sergeant. I'd worked intel as a sergeant,
worked gang unit, patrol. uh, FBI task force.
Like I, I did a lot of stuff in the gang work
and homicide world for most of my career. So
I really didn't want, um, there was no desire
in me to keep going up the ladder. I just, I
just wanted to be able to do what I did and kind
of be left alone and take care of my people and
let them solve crimes and, and move about it.
So when I retired, I retired happy in shape.
That's the other thing. So I always love like
how you push. exercise, the importance of these
things. And when I retired, I was in better shape
than I was say 10 years before, you know, because
I started making that a priority and started
realizing, and this is for anybody listening
in any kind of field where you're working very
long shifts at night and you're eating junk food
and we all fall in that habit and you don't get
enough sleep. There were detectives that were
retiring from where I worked and dying within
a year, year and a half. And that's one of those
things that people talk about and they say like,
oh, you know, this study shows that I wasn't
digging the studies. I was looking at real people.
And that was a huge eye opener, too, for me to
be like, you know, this this is a real thing.
This is a small pool of people here in this city.
And two people have already died within a year,
year and a half of retiring. So I was I was pretty
excited about retiring and retiring. in better
health than I had, you know, years before. And
I didn't have a gym membership, by the way. So
I did everything in a driveway and with like
maybe some $10 free weights that I bought at
like Walmart or somewhere. It's always funny
when people are like, oh, but the studies show.
I'm like, let me stop you there. If you're a
military member, even though not every single
person is actually. participating in the VA system
you have a pretty good understanding of what
happens to our service people after they retire
law enforcement fire doesn't have that so what
exactly are you quoting the moment Brian or James
walked out of the police or fire station no one
gives a shit anymore you are done take your mental
trauma take your physical trauma and off basically
it is it is i mean that that term disposable
heroes not that we call ourselves heroes but
that's i've heard that from the military yeah
it's it's true so when people like for example
oh we had you know law enforcement had 102 suicides
this year no you didn't that was just who was
actually in duty whose family had actually said
this is what happened But when do we normally,
you know, when do these diseases and mental health
problems really manifest? I was literally on
the phone with one of my older firefighter colleagues
just before we hit record. And he's struggling
and he's out of any statistical data. So this
is why I think it's so, we got to take a step
back and go, what data are you talking about?
If we don't count anyone who dies or gets sick
the moment they retire, then what studies, you
know, you're talking about when we're in uniform.
That's the tip of the iceberg compared to what
happens to most of our retirees. And that's a
good point. And it is true. I knew this is a
thing, too. I always listened to the senior people.
So he's really squared away, you know, homicide
detectives that I saw work these huge cases as
I was coming up, you know, through different
detective assignments or through different patrol
assignments. But always I was like, OK, that's
the pinnacle. Like this detective, this detective.
So I would pick their brain. And that's a lot
of times that's what they would talk about, too,
is, hey, you know, my buddy retired three or
four years ago. And guess what? Nobody cares.
You know, you just start to lose touch because
really what bonds everybody for the most part
is the job, is the assignment. I didn't work
with a whole lot of people that necessarily listen
to the same kind of music I did or maybe cared
much about reading books. you know, or even were
from the South. I mean, as crazy as it sounds,
I love hanging out with people, but there were
a lot of people that would kind of want to just
watch maybe a football game or, you know, do
their own thing on their off time. So it's kind
of like your bond is work. And then when you
retire, maybe you keep in touch here and there,
but for a lot of people, they don't keep in touch.
And then you start to lose that connection. And
I think that we are learning more and more now,
understanding human connection. and probably
coming out of COVID, people who would not have
really listened to that point of view are now
kind of realizing there is something to that.
And I fully believe that. I do believe if you're
not comfortable in your own skin, if you don't
reflect on the things that make you happy and
the things that you can do to make other people
happy and you don't have that connection and
you build your identity around, say, police work,
when you retire and everybody forgets about you,
It feels almost like a betrayal. So going into
it, I already kind of knew like, ah, I'm going
to miss a lot of people and laughing and joking
and watching the work ethic they had or watching
people figure out how to use certain technology
in order to prove who killed somebody. I mean,
it's incredible. But also in my retirement time,
I speak to very few people that I worked with
like on a daily basis. And I'm cool with that.
I can run into somebody two, three years down
the road, and you know I'm long -winded. I'll
talk all day, and we'll catch up, and everything
will be great. I don't take it personally. As
well as when people retired, I didn't necessarily
keep in touch with them either. So that is something
that a lot of people don't bank on. Or if they
leave the job early, so to speak, maybe they
don't go their full retirement. Even when they
leave after 10 or 12 years. They've still seen
a lot of trauma in police work and fire, like
you were mentioning earlier. And it's this idea
of, okay, you may transition all the way out
of, you know, firework or cop work, and then
you're doing a completely different job and then
something will trigger it or you'll hear a, you
know, a engine or you'll smell smoke, you know,
or gosh, like for you, me and everybody else,
like smell what flesh smells like burning. And
it immediately, it triggers something. I do think
a lot of times if you can stay in the job longer
than, you know, your first year or two, you learn
to adapt and your brain does compartmentalize
and you do push through all that stuff because
you have to. That's what's needed for the job.
And people used to tell me, they're like, it'll
come out one way or another will come out. And
I'm like, yeah, okay. But I'm in control of my
brain. I'm in control of my body. I got, I understand
all that and I'll process it. and it does it
comes out and that's one of the things that that
i do like what's going on moving forward this
trend of people acknowledging it understanding
that you have to deal with it one way or another
and whatever that is can be different for a lot
of people but it's this idea of you compartmentalize
the day of but at some point before it manifests
in different ways address it kind of like you
know Think about it or reflect on it when you're
in that positive mind state or like for me, exercising
sometimes because I like to exercise a lot of
times by myself. At least I did, you know, a
couple of years ago. And it's this idea of just
reflecting on stuff like that when you can, not
when it hits you out of nowhere. You know, like
when maybe you're driving or something like that,
or like I said, you smell. fire burning or something
like that and then it triggers an incident i
don't know that to me that is how i've tried
to deal with a lot of a lot of the stuff that
i've seen it's interesting i just started watching
a show called the pit and it's on hbo max and
i saw i think one of my guests talked about it
and then alex jaber who's a paramedic she's done
a lot of great work with moral injury and death
notification and you know how we deal with that
the finality of a call And she did posted a scene
from it and then did this talk and then actually
talked about the kind of responses they got on
Facebook. But watching the show and I'm just
one episode in and it's I think each episode
is an hour in the ER, you know, and obviously
it would be a. pretty damn busy day if it actually
unfolded like this but it shows the chaos it
shows the overflowing waiting rooms and the people
occupying beds and the fact that they're going
to be there for hours and hours and hours and
these doctors that are you know going patient
to patient while they're mentoring students and
then between the more mundane calls the critical
call comes in and i started welling up watching
and i'm like what is wrong with me and i think
And again, there's nothing we always say that
there's nothing wrong with you, James. This is
an emotion coming out because you were in this
world for 14 years. But it was I think one of
the biggest things is here in 2025, it's exactly
the same. And I was talking to this about about
this with a guest. We are completely reactive.
I think your profession is more proactive. You're
you're in some. branches of law enforcement you're
able to stop catastrophes before they happen
in fire they call us when it's already happened
apart from like fire prevention that's about
it so we have so that revolving door of death
and trauma never fucking ends and i was just
before we hit record i was mowing like well i'm
even mowing like getting the leaves off my grass
and picking up dog shit in the back and i was
like this is the perfect analogy the way we've
done a lot of this in in medicine in america
especially is like grass in someone's home. You
cut the grass, it looks beautiful. Next week,
you need to cut the grass again. You cut the
grass, it looks beautiful. Next week, you have
to cut the grass. It's an, and not that you would
like kill the grass would be the answer, but
that's the kind of, you know, there's no mission.
There's no, how are we going to make this less?
How are we going to improve this? And so I think
that was what this, I'm rambling, I apologize,
but that was what this emotion came from is I've
been out of the profession for six years now.
And here we are, like nothing has changed. And
I think that was it. The suffering keeps happening.
The accidents on the road keep happening. 40
,000 people die every fucking year. The gangs,
the murders. And I think that when you're a first
responder, at what point do you say, when are
we going to turn a corner? When are we going
to actually make this better rather than simply
respond when the radio goes off? So the perfect
thing about doing the work that I did is that
when I was on proactive assignments, like an
FBI task force or gang suppression unit, which
was more like street level, you could see the
problem and you had full reign, like upper command,
sort of. It took us a little while to convince
them, hey, this gang issue is the number one
drive in violence. And this was for years where
I worked. I was in a large... city department
in the South. So people don't think about gangs
and you and I've talked about it before, but
gangs are in all major cities. And throughout
the South, we've been dealing with it for about
25 years now on very, on very high levels in
the sense of a lot of murders and shootings occur
linked to Bloods, Crips, Serenios, Norteños,
Latin Kings, Gangster Disciples, right? Vice
Lords. And we're getting gangs from Chicago,
California. And New York, like branches of those
gangs have formed in New York and come down.
So one of the best things about the job is when
I was given freedom to do what we did best, which
was to solve problems. And so at one point it
was a drug corner. So it was one little bitty
corner across from a middle school. And you're
talking about one city block. And in the South,
the cities are big, but nothing like New York
or Chicago or anything. We're just talking about
a small city block. And on one of those, we had
three murders inside of about four or five months,
multiple shootings, like shootings. Nobody seems
to really keep track of. I mean, we do, but,
you know, it's what makes the news. The homicides
make the news. Hey, what are y 'all going to
do to stop it? That's the best part about it.
Is that we know where the origin of the problem
is. It's the 20 dudes that took over this corner
and are selling every day within a thousand feet
of a school. Oh, and by the way, that's a felony.
So every time they make a drug sale within a
thousand feet of a school, that's a felony. The
actual drug sales, the felony. If we can stop
them and recover it packaged on them, that's
another felony. And so what we were starting
to do is go, OK, instead of running in and just
making one quick arrest. And having that cycle,
like you're talking about, you're doing the same
thing over and over and over. Let's set up a
really good surveillance. Let's record it. Let's
know everybody's government name so that when
we see them, we can positively identify them.
We have actual encounters with them. We document
their tattoos so we can prove they are who they
are. And then we watch them and we watch their
patterns of behavior. And we started figuring
out what times they sold and when they were the
most operational. And so that may have taken
a week or two of no actual arrests. And so upper
command, some of them were getting very nervous,
like, oh, you know, you got to produce, you got
to make numbers. And we're like, just we're going
to make the violence, a lot of it go away. Just
let's do what we do. So we would let and watch
this crew. And at the time they were a blood
set, right? And so we would watch them and they
were highly organized. They're making their sales.
And then what we would do is after about four
or five hours of them selling and us stopping
the customers and recovering and proving they
just sold drugs, recovering the drugs, we're
documenting sometimes 20 to 25 felonies being,
you know, occurring within that like six hour
period. Then going in, stopping them, making
the arrest, coming back and then debriefing them
and explaining to them, you have caused a lot
of problems. The violence is going to go away.
And at the at the end of the coming months, no
one is going to be on this block. Everybody is
going to be done as long as you keep doing what
you're doing, because we could get them off the
block. We can stop the shootings. Well, guess
what? Nobody does that. They don't believe us
and they keep doing it over and over and over.
And what we did is we just it was like applying
direct pressure on a wound. It's like, OK, here
we go. Arrest after arrest after arrest until
eventually and you give everybody that same sales
pitch. So eventually towards the last few on
the block, you're like, I don't know what else
to tell you. We've actually done everything to
prevent you from doing this. We told you what
our plays were, and you still went down this
path. And there's a lot more to it. But that
was some of the best feeling that I ever had
and some of my teammates because we were patrol
officers, but we were given the freedom to solve
that problem, and we did it. And there's some
more techniques I don't really want to get into
and bore you. That when you can control that,
like you said, our ability to help solve homicides
and actually stop the guys from shooting one
another, it felt great. So then when the violence
went down dramatically, we could then say, hey,
this works. Let's replicate it in this part of
the city, in this part, in this part. And so
that's all we started doing is just hammering
these areas that they operated. So when the violence
decreased. I actually felt better. I felt like,
hey, we're doing something that matters. So flash
forward a few years later and I'm a homicide
detective and I'm responding to homicides and
I'm going, man, this is the exact same crew or
at least the exact same set of Bloods or Crips
or Orphans 13 or fill in the blank, whatever
gang. Like, man, we hammered them years ago.
What happened? Why are we back in this cycle
again? And that's where you start to learn and
look at a lot of departments, a lot of approaches
went away from being proactive. And so that I'll
say moving forward, if departments focus on mental
health for their officers, exercise, all those
things, look at their shifts, like what hours
they're working and solve that problem. Don't
just say we've always done 12 hour shifts. We're
short staff. That's what we got to do. And then
allow proactive units to address the violence.
It's an incredible feeling like I did not feel
like I wasted my entire career because of the
things that we did in the units that I was on.
Those things actually worked. And so I teach
them now and replicate them in other agencies
and stuff. When people take my classes like this
idea of here's the issue, here's how we address
it. Now, in the fire world, like you're saying,
it's got to be a horrible feeling. responding
to that. And you're like, man, this could have
been prevented if they would have done this different.
Like you're saying, you're in reactive mode and
the police departments can be in a proactive
mode. They have not been in the last four or
five years. That's the sad thing. Everything
went reactive, which is why all the violence
started to escalate in all these major cities.
But guess what? In the next four to six years,
crime fighting is going to be back. proactive
units are going to be back. And I hope for a
lot of departments, pay is better and that they
actually push the investment that the officer
is, that they're not just an employee. It's like,
hey, we're investing in you because you're helping
save the city or suburbs or county, wherever
it is. There are people who... do keynote speeches
in the fire service that thump on the lectern
and say, you got to be into the job. And I always
kind of laughed at that because we were sitting
in a fire conference. Those people already are
into the job. But that aside, what I think that
where we're at now is that the job's got to be
into us too. You know, there's always this, you
need to be a better firefighter cop. You need
to do jujitsu. You need to be fit. You need to,
you know, all the things, negotiation techniques,
whatever it is. But yeah, I mean, we've got the
point now where we've been asked, even when you
talk about sleep, oh, when they go home, they've
got to go to bed early and put water on timeout.
What about giving them more time to go home?
Where's that conversation? So I think this is
a great opportunity now for exactly what you
said, for us to look and say, hey, certainly
when the bar was held high and people were, you
know, it was very competitive in law enforcement
and fire. The people that you've got in your
ranks, they're into the job. You know that they
fall very hard to get that position. So now it's
your turn to be into your population, into your
people and provide an environment not only for
them to thrive, but to also create that line
once again. So you're taking from the very best
and not scraping the bottom of the barrel. Yeah.
And a perfect example of that is like when you
mentioned sleep, one of the worst aspects that
I saw. On every level, I were at every rank in
homicide was sleep deprivation and just going
and going and going. You have to do it like I
don't advocate breaking, you know, only doing
eight hours when when the body hits the ground
and you start running with it. You work until
you've exhausted all those leads or until you
all have hit a wall where people are actually
falling asleep, you know. And that can occur.
Usually as a good leader, you kind of pick up
on that and go, okay, hey, we got a lot of leads.
We're working. We're going to break, get a couple
hours of sleep, come back and keep going. Now,
one of the things that I used to get really mad
about, I was fortunate. I had like a really squared
away captain when I was a lieutenant. And when
I was a sergeant, I had a really great lieutenant.
So I was fortunate when I was in those assignments
working homicide that we were looking at, hey,
the sleep thing is a huge issue. So in my background,
when I was in college, after Army, I went to
college, but I worked for UPS, United Parcel
Service, when I was in college. Incredible job.
And I'm going to come back to leadership and
UPS. But the sleep thing, we were all talking.
We're like, OK, we have our own, our office.
There's two full homicide unit or teams only
units. You have this big office space. And they
work independently. These teams are operating
independently, multiple people in a room. So
it's like, we can just cordon off a section or
find a different location in the division, put
in some cots and it's secured. And guess what?
Like, like right now I got three people running
phones. I got two that are tracking down, you
know, gang members. You go ahead, hit the cot,
get you a couple hours of sleep. Like rotate,
you know, like we need to be able to solve this
problem. What we ran into, was that somebody
in our department years before who wasn't anywhere
in our detective division they were like a patrol
captain or something got jammed up because they
were not they didn't the way the rumors went
were that this person did not actually stay at
home in an apartment or trailer house like they
were using their own office as their house so
they were sleeping in their office after work
and waking up showering in the locker rooms and
stuff and then going to work when the person
got caught they got reprimanded but then there
was a policy written that you couldn't sleep
on duty at all and so instead of just putting
a little addendum in that policy and saying this
excludes whatever homicide unit and let us you
know manage our own people um it was just across
the board hey you can't sleep in the office you
can't sleep anywhere in any of these divisions
so technically you have to release everybody
to go to their residence sleep, and then come
back. And sometimes you're only breaking for
three or four hours because you've got to keep
going. You're trying to actually catch somebody
that potentially is going to kill somebody else
or stop gang versus gang violence. Anyway, the
whole point of the story is use common sense
in a department and allow officers and detectives
like that to solve the problem. We could have
solved it very quickly and very easily. We would
have actually, as leaders, bought the cots. an
inflatable mattress and stuff out of our own
pocket. I don't even expect the city to pay that.
Just change that policy so they don't get jammed
up. Because at the end of the day, you're getting
more work out of the person, but at a safer rate.
And you're actually, you care enough about their
sleep. And I knew that because I had been a detective
working homicides as well as aggravated assaults.
So before I even went to that, to a homicide
unit. I was on a unit that just worked shootings
and aggravated assaults. And the only difference
is the person survives. But we were still getting
called back in. I think the longest stretch I
worked was 14 days straight when these multiple
serenio clicks were going to war. And it was
just like, man, I can barely keep my eyes open.
This is ridiculous. But nobody else was working
it. So you have to kind of push through. But
nobody was trying to solve. How do we get sleep?
Like, if you would have just let me sleep in
the station for a couple of hours, I would have
just gone and gone and gone. You know, I mean,
I was good with that. Now, switching back to
leadership, when you were talking about, you
know, at the conference, they're saying you got
to be into the job. Same thing to police work.
It's like, oh, you got to eat, breathe and sleep
this week. Expect 100 percent commitment. And
it's like, cool. As a patrol officer or a detective.
You also expect that kind of zeal and motivation
from leadership. And if leadership's not trying
to solve the problem, then what's the point?
So when I was at UPS, one of the great things
that I had a guy talk about, he said, man, you
look at it this way. Here's your upper echelon
supervisor, and then they're in charge of. This
pyramid, you know, mid -level management and
then below, you know, the lower ranking management
and then all the subordinates. And he had flipped
the diagram upside down. And he's like, you know,
traditionally everybody works for this, you know,
regional manager where he's like really good
leaders. He flipped it upside down. He's like,
the regional manager is working for everybody,
you know, in this pyramid. Like their sole purpose
is to solve problems and meet the needs of the
subordinates. And I did see in the police world,
there were times where not always in my chain
of command, but within the department, very weak
leaders. And they did not have a crime fighting
background. They never really worked proactive
assignments. They kind of skated along with these
cush jobs after they do a year or two on patrol.
And then as they got promoted up. They believed
that by making sergeant or lieutenant or captain,
they were somehow better and smarter than everybody.
And they stopped listening to their people and
they stopped caring enough about them. And it
was almost like seeing a selfish parent that
doesn't take care of their kids. And they just
kind of sit back and say, yeah, well, I already
know this. And I don't really care about what
you got going on, kid. It's kind of the same
way, sadly. I've seen some of those people even
get in higher positions and sit at meetings and
make horrible decisions, even when they were
told by other people, hey, this is not a good
idea. Let's not take this course of action. And
they disregarded it and made some really stupid
choices. I hope that a lot of that's changing.
I do hope that with the limited amount of people
that want to do the job. that maybe some departments
are realizing you can still serve the public
and you can still be really, really good and
drive your violent crime down if you put the
emphasis on being proactive, if you really stay
selective on your candidates. Don't change your
standards. Don't drop them. You know, when you
drop those standards, you start to get the scrubs
coming in, and then that's going to be your liability.
Now you're going to get more lawsuits filed.
They didn't make the cut several years ago. Don't
let them make the cut now. Just start to be smarter
about how you manage your people. So one of the
greatest solutions I heard a guy say, and he
was like, I don't understand why we have to have
the exact same number of officers on a 24 -hour
cycle when over the last 10 years, we know from
like 4 p .m. to 7 p .m. our call volume on patrol
triples. And what do we do? Well, for 10 years
or however long, you know, we've done 12 -hour
shifts and our shift change is at 6 p .m. and
7 p .m. Like, why are we doing that? And his
logic was have these variable shifts that some
people come in and that's all they work is like
an eight -hour shift, but it's like at the peak
call volume. And so therefore, when it's a Tuesday
morning at 4 a .m., You can get away with a skeleton
crew because historically you haven't had the
call volume to need, you know, 20 officers work
in a district or an area or whatever. But guess
what? Nobody really wanted to listen to him because
nobody had done it before. Anyway, you know what
I'm talking about. Yeah. Well, that's funny because
that mirrors something that I was just made aware
of not too long ago, to be honest. um there was
a study done on the 4896 firefighter schedule
which is pure insanity and yet i'm seeing postings
all over social media i had no idea how many
departments had gone to that insane schedule
the backstory is that they uh it was a volunteer
firefighter that went into the research world
he'd never actually worked a night shift even
i had him on the show super nice guy but he became
a researcher um did a study 2448 versus 4896.
I'll give you the cliff notes. Came away, oh,
the 4896 slightly better on, I think they measured
cortisol and some other things. Well, the fire
service ran with it and they were like, oh, this
must be the best one. No one kind of looked into
it. Like, well, tell me about the department
that you studied. The department they studied
ran one call a shift, one call in 24 hours, less
than one, so zero at night. So the only benefit
they found is that second day when they woke
up in the fire station, having slept all night
and knowing that you probably weren't going to
get a call, they woke up. So they didn't have
to get up at 5 a .m. and drive 70 miles to a
fire station. Well, the takeaway is, A, that's
obviously an insane schedule for anyone that
actually runs calls. And B, if you want to get
that one benefit that study showed, why do we,
the fire service, always start at 7 or 8 in the
morning? So you have to wake up at five to get
there in time when most of us live out of the
city. So kind of adding on to what your colleague's
suggestion was, start at 12 noon. Now you get
to lie in. You get to have breakfast with your
kids and your spouse. They all go off. Then you
go to the station. And the person that was up
all night getting murdered running calls, like
you said, in the peak time, which for us is usually
night. Now they can actually sleep in, maybe
catch an extra hour or two. And so they don't
become a smear on a freeway bridge on their way
home. So genius. But again, why has no one thought
about that? And I think there are a few departments
around the country that have made it. But what
a simple solution to one of the problems, not
all of them. The other one is 24 -7 to make us
work 42 hours like law enforcement. But, you
know, just simply changing the start time and
questioning why the fuck do we get there at seven
is so easy. But again, like you said, oh, but
we've always done it that way. That's not the
right answer. So one of the best schedules I
worked was early on in my career. At the time,
we had a chief who had retired from the NYPD,
moved down south and took over as chief of our
department. completely different perspective,
but was like, I want y 'all out there fighting
crime. You are not an armed secretary. I don't
want you just taking a report. Solve it. You
know what I mean? Like if someone gives you a
lead, run with it. And the shifts that we worked
were 10 hour shifts. And you had this day shift,
an evening shift and a night shift. The evening
shift, we would come in and I think it was at
3 p .m. in the afternoon. You would answer calls
until I think it was seven, somewhere around
there. And then if you were, or maybe it was
nine o 'clock, but if you were caught up on all
your reports, you're taking a bunch of frigging
reports. So if you were caught up on all your
reports, you turning your evidence from your
drug arrest and all this stuff. And then the
rest of the shift, however many hours it was
two or three extra hours, four hours, whatever
you went proactive. So what, in essence, what
you had was your night shift came in earlier.
at like whatever time, seven, eight, nine, somewhere
around there. And they're running calls while
that evening shift, halfway through their shift,
while they're still fresh, they go proactive.
And so I was a brand new officer and I had a
corporal who would go and like borrow this work
van from city sanitation or whoever he got it
from. And we would literally roll around in that
van, do surveillance and then jump out and chase
guys with guns in our waistband, get drugs off
of them. And that's how I started debriefing
people about gangs and stuff that they were in
because I would search them and see stuff in
their pockets. Anyway, but it was this idea of
a force multiplier. And then we actually had
a culture of, damn, did you hear so -and -so
got a gun last night? Or, hey, so -and -so made
an arrest, read them their rights, flipped them,
and actually figured out whatever, helped solve
35 break -ins. I mean, it was really cool. proactive
work. And a buddy of mine, we had actually, I
jumped out on this guy that I knew was not a
blood from this certain area. And I jumped out
on him and I, and he was just moving a different
way. He had a headpiece on or whatever. He's
like a, like a bandana folded up or whatever,
like a flag on his head. Anyway, I started debriefing
him and start to get information that links into
all these murders, like probably four or five
murders across the state. And he was actually
on the outs with his blood set in a different
city. And he came to our city to actually put
in work, to actually shoot somebody, to try to
make his name good. We took the guy back to the
station. I took the guy back to the station and
got my buddy. We sat in there and interviewed
him for hours. We were getting this information,
and then we were following up on it. So we ended
up working all the way into the next shift, and
we were patrol officers. But our sergeant was
like, run with it, man. Like this dude, you're
doing your gang thing. You know, he's giving
you information. Run with it. And to me, that
was that. That was what police work was all about.
Like, I'll go out there and respond to a car
crash or, you know, I'll stop cars and give a
lot of verbal warnings for, you know, seatbelt
violations, whatever they got going on. But let
me do the real work. You know, this is this is
my beat. This is my area. So stuff like that.
that our violent crime was down because we were
so proactive. Then all of a sudden when you switch,
which we did, you go to 12 -hour shifts, you
lose those proactive officers who are not just
responding to calls. They're jumping out on people
and setting up surveillance and doing stuff.
Then you've got to have units doing the proactive
side to keep the criminal gangs in defensive
mode. So that is what a lot of departments do
is they they panic. They see violence escalating
and they scale everything back. So they take,
say, a 12 person or even six person drug unit
and say, hey, you got to go answer calls. You
got to be on patrol, you know, and then you lose
your proactive asset. So now all your all your
gang members and criminals in certain areas are
not seeing the arrest and they start. doing what
they do, you know, carrying guns more often,
getting in the shootings, shootings go unsolved
because you're not rolling people up left and
right. And it's just all that, that cycle. So
the cool thing is like, and I tell everybody,
if you're disgruntled with your upper command,
put in for promotion at every chance, get promoted
and then explain your ideas. And a lot of people
will get mad that maybe hear this or in police
work. And they may say, oh, it doesn't work that
way. You gotta sell your soul to get promoted.
It's like, you don't. Be an asset, be very good
at what you do. So that when you do talk and
you talk about even like shift work, you can
come at it from a logical perspective. And then
if the department does implement that change,
then they fully understand, okay, you're pretty
good at what you're doing. If they don't, guess
what? Nothing's gonna change. So when people
apply to your department, And they hear you got
12 hour shifts that rotate, which that's what
when I left, I wasn't doing shift work. But that
was one of the problems. People were applying
and they did not want to work 12 hour rotations.
You know, they did. They wanted to be able to
pick night shift, day shift, that sort of thing.
So if departments don't listen to the best ideas
coming from their their ground level, just expect
the same thing. If you're not going to pay more.
And you don't change the schedule. You don't
do things to help make lives better for the workers,
the officers and detectives. Don't scratch your
head and wonder why people aren't applying, you
know, a thousand at a time to fill your 200 vacancies.
That's what I had when I retired. There were
over 200 officer vacancies in the department.
And that is, dude, that's not, that's not good.
You can get, but this is the thing, like you
can get away with having. you know, almost a
fourth of your department vacant if you put people
in the right place and you take care of them.
And like you were talking about, you change some
shift work around, but you cannot keep doing
the same thing and watching people resign or
people apply and then tell you, hey, I would
have gone with your department, but this other
department had a signing bonus of whatever, you
know, amount. I'm going down the street because
I'm going to do less work, do one or two calls
a night and get paid a whole lot of money. I've
talked about this a lot and we hit on it before
we hit record. Being an incurable optimist, because
obviously I'm pulling a lot of the problems out
into the spotlight, but with the idea of bringing
solutions at the same time. But if you want to
see an upside of this crisis that we're in, it's
like, well, there's no better time to force change.
you can't bury your head in the sand anymore.
If you're a quarter of your department down,
what message is that sending to the underworld?
It's like, wow, they're weakening. That means
that we can grow stronger. So from the fire side,
which is the world I know, what I've heard, and
this seems to be an absolute truth, the kind
of encouraging thing is the Gen Zs are actually
leaning into the trades because when they have
all this information at their fingertips now,
they Google, oh, what's college like? And like,
well, it's $50 ,000 worth of debt and you get
a piece of paper that won't guarantee you a job.
And this is smart generation. And they're like,
well, that sounds terrible. I don't want to be
a lawyer or a doctor. So let me not do that.
I'm going to go be a welder. So we have a generation
of kids that actually would be the perfect fit
for these professions. The reason why the fire
service has this massive recruitment crisis is
they have refused to adapt to the, you know,
exploding core volumes the uh the things that
were broken right from the get -go they've buried
their head in the sand when it comes to the cancers
and the suicides and all the other things and
now just like you alluded to those holes in your
department i'm assuming are being filled by officers
either signing up or being forced to work overtime
and that's what we have in the fire service so
now an insane 56 hour work week which is bonkers
to begin with now becomes an 80 hour work week
So the people in the government buildings are
saying you don't deserve to work less. These
guys are working double their work week in a
week and they're saving lives. You know, they're
not pushing papers. So to me, on the fire side,
the way that we actually turn this around, because
you want to have a list of a thousand recruits
and take a hundred of them. because that's how
you get good firefighters, good police officers,
is you fix the things that are broken. You proactively
invest. And you think about the millions of dollars
that those 200 vacancies are costing in overtime
at the moment at time and a half. So it's a complete
false economy. So you front load that money.
You put more people, you know, in our case, you
make a fourth shift. You put fitness standards
in. So you're holding people accountable throughout
their career. You put a mental health counselor
in full time. So there's no barrier to entry
for the brand new guy to start processing the
shit that happened before he even put the uniform
on. Now you've created a culture of wellness
and performance. And now you will have people
lining up around the building again. So we can
solve this on the fire side if we actually fix
the things that these young people can see are
broken. They are looking at it. Facts and figures.
That's my perception on fire. Your environment
is a little different. You've probably been pulled
through more coals through the media recently.
What would you add to that as far as law enforcement
so we can turn this crisis around in your profession?
If say I'm a chief or chief or sheriff, get a
frigging piece of paper and write down one through
10 and then go around. at the roll calls on patrol
and ask the officers flat out, Hey, I've got
a list right here. I got 10 vacant slots here.
You tell me things that, that I can change like
that, that I have the power to change that maybe
even can change before next month and fill those
10 in at every roll call. So you're basically
hitting all of your staff and I don't. I don't
care for leaders. If you got to get your ass
up at two o 'clock in the morning and go to a
roll call, that's what a leader does. And when
you get all those items, you go through them,
you're probably going to have, I say 10, because
for the most part, it's about 10 things that
most officers complain about that can be changed
that quickly. And one of the things that we used
to talk about, and I had a talk with, at that
time, the chief, and he was not a great leader.
In that sense, he was an egomaniac. But one of
the things that we were arguing as officers was,
hey, why are we being made to wear a tie in uniform?
This is very strange. We understand wearing a
tie during ceremonies and stuff. Got it. Or going
to court, of course. We're not going to court
in our boots that we're wearing on our beat and
stuff. We wear our shiny shoes and all that.
But if I'm out there on patrol and I'm watching
a dude, touching his waistband numerous times,
looking left to right and all that. Okay, I'm
going to jump out on this guy and my check -in
officer's with me. And I know I'm going to search
him or at least frisk him. Every time I move
my head down, I'm choking myself with this tie.
Like legit, because they were clip -on ties.
So that was the thing too. Like, oh, well, for
safety reasons, they pop off. Well, guess what?
A clip -on tie is like a big plastic knot in
your neck. So I had argued this numerous times,
but hey, what? Why don't we just change the policy
to where if we want to wear a tie, we can on
patrol. But if we don't want to, let's not. And
this goofball says, oh, I understand what you're
saying. I understand. When I was on patrol, I
would just take my tie off at night. And then
if I saw the big saw, I'd throw the tie back
on. I'm like, OK, I understand that, sir. So
basically what you want us to do is violate policy
so that we can be comfortable where all you have
to do is change the policy and then we just don't
have to wear it. And really, that's some of our
biggest complaints. We're searching people and
trying to move our heads around. I don't need
to be choking myself out when I'm checking someone's
ankles or whatever. But if leaders did that and
just had a list of 10 things that they could
change, just like that with a quick policy change,
and do it, then you're actually being a leader
and showing the officers and the deputies and
detectives, hey, I care enough to come, one,
to come to your roll call and talk to you, and
two, If it's something as simple as that, that's
done. If it's something to do with pay, understand
we're going to do pay studies, that sort of thing.
But what can we change now? If it's schedule,
damn, start testing some of these schedules out.
It can't get worse. You know what I mean? And
if it does, then you can articulate, hey, whatever,
Officer Sanders, you had a chance. You pitched
your schedule. We tried it. It was a disaster.
Go back to their chalkboard or whatever. But
that's my thing in both fields, but definitely
in police work. Officers are going out there
because they love the job. Nobody goes into police
work because of the pay. Now, they may go to
a certain department because they pay more than
the other. But the police work itself is inherently
dangerous. It is selfless service. And there
are other things that we do in society. Jobs
are selfless. But it is. But it's because I tell
people I was born with an affliction that I wanted
to help people, that I could not stomach a bully.
I didn't want to see violence occurring in my
city. And I thought, yeah, I might be pretty
good at it. And I loved it. But I did see leadership
sometimes at the highest level screw everything
up. And it was small things like that that they
could have done to change that. And then the
department doesn't necessarily have to worry
so much about money. Officers will adapt to the
money if you pay them a reasonable salary. But
if you make that work condition, things like
that, uniform changes, like in my career, finally,
the department changed to a more breathable material
and vest. Plate carriers and vests instead of
the old school, you know, duty belt and wool
pants and like polyester blend shirts. I mean,
it was it was tough. And you're in the South
and you're wearing this like this material. And
I had buddies that some of them would have to
change their uniform shirt at least once through
a 12 hour shift in like July and August because
they would just be covered in sweat. So small
things like that that chiefs and leadership can
do. As well as put like specialized units and
proactive units and special assignments at the
forefront. Most people that go into police work
want to be able to do the fun stuff. And I watched
my department go from having two full -time gang
suppression unit teams that actually worked together.
You didn't split the units up. They tried to
split us up. We were like, no. There were 14
officers and two sergeants, and it was absolutely
incredible. And even when it scaled down to like
eight members on the team, we still could operate
very effectively. But we knew that the whole
goal was to always keep 14 people on the team.
What eventually happened is weaker leaders didn't
make good decisions, and the teams got scaled
back for years to like four officers and a sergeant.
And it was dangerous. They were getting involved
in shootings. And so this idea, I guess, kind
of rippled that, oh, the more proactive units
you have, the more chance you're going to make
a national story because they're involved in
shootings was the opposite. Because we would
always ask gang members, hey, why didn't you
run? You had me. Everywhere I looked, there were
cops, you know, because we would roll so deep.
And it was this idea of after a while, you dealt
with so many gang members, they knew the unit.
And they were like, why am I going to run, man?
Y 'all got us on every block. That's it. I'm
just going to take my charges and go lay down.
Which goes back to your point. Police departments
can break the resolve of criminal organizations.
Gangs, motorcycle clubs can break it. Or you
can embolden it. And you break it, just like
I said. When people move strategically and they
have the support of the police department. And
the patrol officers know they have a chance to
eventually get on like that gang unit and do
like really cool work. It can be playing clothes.
It can be surveillance. It can be working informants.
I mean, it's, you know, you could do all those
things and decimate the most violent gang in
the city and then use that as the example to
the next violent gang. You just go to them. Hey,
you ate Trey Crip. You know, you saw what we
did. to you know donald g you saw what we did
to you know rolling 60s or five deuce hoovers
like we decimated them we really don't want to
do that to y 'all y 'all are pretty cool and
y 'all don't get into a lot of shootings but
you saw what happened everybody's laying on the
yard now is that what you want to happen and
man nine times out of ten gangs will be like
no look we'll we'll control our stuff y 'all
go mess with somebody else so cities can still
have a short staffed police department and get
a couple of heavy hitters like that and really
be strategic and, and drive that down. But, but
a lot of that just has to be that, like you have
to look at what brings people into departments.
I sat in a meeting one time and I talked to the
upper, upper echelon and my pitch was change
the process in which brand new officers can get
on a specialized unit. So somebody comes through
the door and they're sworn and they're on patrol.
And the next day, the SWAT tryout start or gang
unit tryout start, let those officers put in.
And so some of the upper command, one in particular
thought was a terrible idea. And he said, ah,
four years minimum. That's what the policy is.
That's what we're sticking with. Cause that's
how we got to get four years worth of work out
of them. And my argument was, Well, if you're
recruiting and someone comes up and says, I want
to do gang work, what do I got to do? Oh, you
got to do patrol for four years. That's a turnoff.
But if you tell them, hey, day one, when you
graduate the academy and you're off of field
training and you got your own beat, you can put
in for gang unit, SWAT, K -9, motorcycles, bicycle,
whatever. There's no limit on time in grade or
time in service. But guess what? Most people
aren't going to make the cut early on. It'll
be the veteran officers or senior officers. But
it's a great recruiting tool because, one, you
get people in the door, and two, you can steal
the talent. One of the best officers I ever worked
with, and he later became a sergeant, and I brought
him over on homicide. He's incredible. He continues
to do great work. That guy had like two years
on patrol before he came over to our gang unit
and was absolutely incredible. And to the point
where they had changed the policy after he came
over and said you had to have four years on patrol.
And this dude only had two. And we're like, he's
proof you shouldn't have these limits made. So
for departments, change it up. The military did
it. The Army did it years ago with special operations.
And you'd have people signing up four years in
the Army, and the recruiter would be like, oh,
yeah, you can try out to be a Green Beret. guess
what they don't they either they make it and
that great they they get to go where they want
to go or they wash out and go to uh infantry
unit or wherever the army puts them i don't know
but either way the army got somebody through
the door in a four -year uh contract i i don't
know it it did not make sense to me while all
ideas were not being tried when there's that
many vacancies and and you know at like anything
Maybe there was some logic and people didn't
express it to me. I don't know, but I thought
it was a damn good idea. And I knew plenty of
patrol officers that just wanted a shot. They
just wanted a chance to try out for the unit.
And if they don't make it and the person that
does make it is the badass on patrol and the
person who always helps them and they're the
gang expert, then they're cool with it. And they're
like, well, that person made it the gang unit.
Maybe I make it in the next six months or a year.
But I'm glad that person made it because they're
squared away and they were the best applicant.
And I don't know. I could talk for days. I won't
bore you with that. But, yeah, departments need
to switch it up. And maybe they are. I think
we might be in that realm of some departments
being so desperate they'll do it. Well, speaking
of desperate, I saw a advert for I forget which
police department it was now. They had a signing
bonus of $100 ,000. And I'm sure that wasn't
like on day one. I'm sure it was spread. But
regardless, I also was like, OK, so let me because
I talk about false economy a lot. Let me talk.
Let me look into some of these notorious events
that we've had. Columbine. And this was at the
federal level. The lawsuit was $150 million.
So every time corners are cut. Whether it's just
refusing to change and now you're in a recruitment
crisis, now you're just throwing money at people.
I mean, if you told either of us 20 years ago,
hey, one day people are going to be paying you
tens of thousands of dollars to come to this
profession while you're in a testing center with
a thousand other recruits vying for 30 spots,
you'd be like, there's no fucking way. And here
we are. So people say to me, though, when it
comes to the different schedule, oh, would you
have any data? And the answer is, again, no,
no one's cared enough to actually look into shift
work in the fire service and do studies. So,
yeah, no, we haven't. I don't know why. We can
tell you've got tiny little houses and all these
studies on fog nozzles, but nothing on what's
killing our people. But if you flip it around,
then, yeah, there's an unending amount of data.
Do it this way and you will bury firefighters
by the hundred. You will watch families torn
apart. You will watch divorces. You will watch
pediatric illnesses through the shift work of
the parents. So there's your study. Like if it
worked, if it really worked, there would be no
Behind the Shield podcast. I wouldn't have ever
written a book because this is what this whole
thing is. So the only answer is to do things
differently. And if you invest in the profession,
if you invest in the people you already have.
You won't be begging for candidates and throwing
tens of thousands of dollars at them. Yeah, that.
So I know what you're talking about. And in the
name of the department, come to me. And it doesn't
really matter because I'm quite sure that's the
max is like 100 grand. I'm sure there are plenty
of others. I know one locally where I was that
was much smaller than the department I worked
on. And they had around 30 grand for a signing
bonus. Now, the starting salary was less, but.
If somebody's coming through the door and you're
willing to like hook them in with that, but that
hundred grand, that department, I would say they
had probably had a history of really bad decisions.
I don't mean to laugh. I'm just saying really
bad decisions that they didn't fix. So now they're,
they're, you know, throwing this six figure bonus
out there and people are going to take it and
good for them. But I also know that like sometimes
money like that, you're going to earn every dime.
Um, and it may be like one of those, like it's
broken up into your first two years, you get
a quarter of it or whatever, but the, the money
issue to me, money is, that is what kind of draws
the eye. And I, I was fortunate enough to sit
on, um, like every few weeks I would go in and
sit on a board. That sounds stupid. I didn't
physically sit on a board, you know, like applicant.
process. And it would be like three lieutenants
and then like a captain or something. And you
ask these, he's already prescribed questions,
but the applicants you're, you're interviewing
them for the department. Then you have to assess
them. And my thing was like, it was great because
I got to see kind of like what you're talking
about. Like you see Jen, Jen Z coming in, but
you also see people who have retired from other
careers and they're applying for police work.
Cause they're like, Hey, I've done my career
and whatever. You know, I've been an electrician
or I've been whatever. Now I want to try this
police thing. And they're in great shape. And
hey, cool, let's do it. But it was interesting
because at the end, you give them a chance. Hey,
ask us, you know, information. And each of us
would tell them our background. So, of course,
when I tell them, hey, my background's gangs
and homicide, the really like motivated crime
fighters would start hammering me with questions.
And I loved it because I could get it. answer
them like, Hey, this is what the department offers
that others don't, you know, but I don't ever
remember anybody asking about, Hey, how do we
make more money? Hey, how can we, it was always
what assignments can I work up to or how do I,
what's the fast track to becoming a detective?
I want to be a detective. Um, and basically,
am I going to get the best training? You all,
you all kind of, um, your ads and commercials
and sales pitches that you've got one of the
best academies on the East Coast. And so as time
went on and there was a lot more push on that
emphasis through social media and I think recruiting
ads or whatever, the applicants were saying that
like, hey, I like that your academy is twice
as long as other academies. And when it started
clicking, they were sick of seeing news stories
about officers or, you know. TikTok videos and
stuff of officers doing things. And then all
the comments in there are that officer should
have never done that, you know, refer to whatever
Terry versus Ohio with a frisk, you know, he,
he shouldn't have done the frisk, whatever it
is. And so this, that generation is starting
to learn the more training I get, the less chance
of me getting killed or sued or indicted because
I do the wrong thing. And I thought that was
pretty cool. Because there was a time where a
lot of police academies were scaling back all
their training because it cost so much. I was
fortunate. My department was like, hey, we're
kind of hard -headed. We're going to train the
hell out of you. And we're even going to push
it into more stuff, into like simunitions training,
scenario training. But that's a great recruiting
tool if people aren't using it. That's another
way a department shows the applicants, hey, we
care. We're actually spending money on your training.
You know, when you when you go through firearms
training, you're going to get two full weeks,
you know, or you're going to go through scenario
based training with full blown role playing officers
in full gear in rooms that are fully furnished.
And we're going to film it. We're going to study
it. You know, you're going to get shot with some
munitions, but you're going to understand. Shoot,
don't shoot. And then how to react. I mean, just
those are great sales pitches. And that doesn't
have to be one hundred thousand dollar signables.
When I worked for Anaheim in California, they
were revered in the area. And again, that was
where I was testing against a thousand people
that were already certified. Resumes were fat
with all the certs that you needed and then some.
No one ever left. When I moved back to the East
Coast and I did a practice CPAP, which is a physical
test that we do, the guys were dumbfounded. They're
like, we've never met anyone that's left Anaheim
fire before. But I was literally relocating to
the East Coast. So that's why I did. They would
cut 25 % of every class that they hired, academy
class, by the end of the probationary year through
attrition. The bar was there. It's up to you.
You reach it or you don't. And that had people
lining up around the door. They wanted that challenge.
They wanted to be held at a high standard. We
didn't even have fitness standards in the department
because it was a culture of fitness. And we just
we worked out all the time and we played sports
and we ate well. And, you know, that's just how
the whole entire thing, the people that led most
of the trainings were the firefighters and the
engineers and some of the captains because they
were trusted. You know, you were so well trained
by the end of that first year and then it never
stopped. You know, you were just held to that
bar. Conversely, the last place I worked at,
they didn't even put you through fire training.
They didn't do anything to see if you were a
turd or you were a rock star. You went around
the theme park, you rode rides, you filled in
admin paperwork, and then off you go. And they
struggled to find anyone, even when hiring was
still in a good place. So I saw it firsthand.
When you hold that training high and people,
when they see you wearing that uniform, they're
like, oh, that's one of the good ones. When you
show up on a rig and people are glad that you've
arrived, that's what you want. You can throw
money and all kinds of shit at people, but the
real firefighters and the real police officers,
the ones that want to go to the department, whereas
you said they're on a mission to reduce crime.
They're known for, you know, getting rid of gang
territories and certain whatever it is. That's
what's going to draw a real first responder to
the profession. And then you add that to an environment
that supports you, that gives you good training,
gives you time off, gives you a salary. You don't
need a second job. Now you've got the perfect
storm. Yeah. When you talked about the academy,
it's funny. When I was at UPS in college, eventually
I worked my way up to recruiting and interviewing
and hiring. And so because it's a private company,
everything's dollar amount. And so whoever you
hired, they were an investment. So I would have
to weekly, you know, I'm a full -time college
student. And then the evenings I'm working at
UPS. move up in the supervisor role, I'm having
to sit in a meeting and justify every person
I hire for UPS. And at the time, I was hiring
like 25 to 30 people a week. And the shift was
only about 180 people. So they were losing a
lot of money because of turnover. And it was,
without boring you, but there's a template I
had figured out for the right applicant. And
I started killing it when I was hiring people.
Because I was figuring out my applicants coming
in won't part -time work, but they want that
tuition reimbursement. You know, UPS will pay
for a certain portion of your college. You've
got health benefits. So I filled in, I started
filling in that bracket and asking some questions
too that weeded people out. Like when you ask
somebody, hey, what's the hardest job you've
ever done? And they go, uh, I don't know. Like
this would be my first job. And in anybody who's
never worked at UPS, dude, it's a freaking meat
grinder. Like you're in the back of these trucks
that are probably about 100 to 120 degrees down
here, at least in the South. And you're just
moving packages the whole time. But it's a great
job for college, for benefits, all that. But
man, I would find these people that would come
in. I work construction for a year or two. You
know, now I'm in a community college. I want
the tuition reimbursement. All right, cool. And
then they hire them and they're great. So when
I would go in these meetings, I would have to
justify who I was hiring. In the police world,
when I got hired on with a bunch of people, I
think our academy was like 35 people. But they
hire you before the academy ever starts. Your
time starts the day you get hired towards your
retirement. So I had three or four months with
the department before I ever went to the academy.
And they send you out to the firing range to
pick up shell casings or cut grass or file reports
back then, whatever. It's like busy work. Either
way, we all got to know one another through this
assignment, and then you start the academy. And
the last day we were pre -hires before that academy
started, we could hear the recruiters making
bets on who was going to fail. And it burned
me up. I mean, I was pretty mature at that age,
but I was like, So these police recruiters are
hiring people they know are not going to wash
out in the academy, or at least they're banking
on it. And in my mind, I pictured the police
recruiters to be the same as I was at UPS. You
have to go in and tell the chief what a great
applicant you just hired, not, hey, this is some
scrub off the street. But the attrition rate
was probably about 33 % to 40%. And I equated
it to numbers from UPS. I'm like, why are they
hiring people? that they think are not or they're
banking on they're not going to make it or they
don't feel confident. And then I started seeing
the recruiters at that time were not being assessed
on who was graduating the academy. They were
just being assessed on, can you fill this class
with X number of people? So the more people that
were getting rejected, the harder they had to
work. And so it's just one of those things where.
We would see people, and I knew it early on in
the academy. I'm like, there's no way this person
who's having trouble doing pushups right now
is ever going to make it in this academy. So
that should have been weeded out in the interview
process. And so it was like one of those things
where a buddy of mine eventually becomes an instructor
at the academy because all our stuff was in -house.
So like you said, you keep all your knowledge
in -house. So as people learn these trades, they
become specialized. portion of the academy i
would teach just for one day but they gave me
eight hours to teach all the gang this gang stuff
for entry level coming out of the academy but
my buddy became like a cadre member there and
so i asked him like man we're getting killed
out here on patrol why why is it that they just
can't feel the the staff like the um academies
and he said one the recruiters were starting
to be assessed i think as who for who they hire
and held accountable if they wash out. And then,
too, he's like, we don't want more people. We
know that we need to fill 100 vacancies back
then or whatever, 80. He's like, but we want
a solid group. So if you give us only 15 people,
then we'll work on those 15 all -stars. Don't
give us 40 people hoping that they might graduate
and then you know you're going to lose them later.
So it was kind of that. It was pretty cool to
see his. From training aspects, he was saying,
you don't want to do that. Just keep the solid
people coming in. And we'll keep our standard
up here. And if they wash out, they wash out.
But if we hire the right people, chances are
they'll last. So the attrition rate had changed
for a little while there. And then, of course,
around COVID, I think it went through the roof
just a lot of. A lot of people did not want to
adapt to screaming, yelling, physical exhaustion
from exercising all day. Every time you make
a mistake, you're getting punished. But fortunately,
our department never went away from that, even
though everybody else was. It was like, hey,
this works. You've got to inoculate these recruits
to verbal abuse, to making fun of how they walk,
whatever, because people are going to do it on
the street. And then make their body strong.
They're going to be strong one way or another.
And it worked. And like you said, that culture
of it, when you graduate, most of the time people
stayed in shape because you look left and right
and you're like, all right. And even when I started
getting heavy, my buddies would be like, you're
a fat ass. You need to hear that though. Oh,
yeah. It's going to save your life and someone
else's life. That's the point. You're not a plumber.
Yeah. Yeah, I had no problems with my buddies
checking me like that. And they were right. And
man, it's like that slope, dude. Once it starts
going and you're doing shift work and you start
eating terribly and you cut back on exercise
and depending on the assignment. Fortunately,
when I was on patrol or on gang suppression stuff,
usually I was in shape. So you could still catch
people. That was the thing. If you couldn't catch
somebody in a foot pursuit, you'd have to put
your name on this. board that we called the shoe
of shame you know so your name had to go up and
the date that you lost that foot pursuit so like
on patrol you come in and it was a bronze it
was like a spray painted um police boot you know
like the uh somebody i don't remember who did
it but they spray painted it gold and screwed
it into his wooden plaque and then yeah i don't
know in a year you'd probably have a hundred
people up there that lost foot pursuits but nobody
wanted to go on the shoe of shame so that was
kind of like that motivation too like all right
i need to step up my game or you know uh figure
out the shortcuts from this apartment to this
apartment because when i lose foot pursuits it's
always like somewhere in this cut so i'm gonna
start running the cut and training up so that
whenever they do run i already know which way
they're gonna go and stuff it's the games you
play to to win out there but there's nothing
wrong with telling a co -worker hey you're getting
fat and slow. And like you say, like, Hey, if
I'm, if I'm down and I need you to pick me up
and carry me to the car, at least and get me
to the hospital, I need you to do that, you know,
in a serious note, but usually like kind of busting
chops and, you know, telling somebody like, Hey,
put that honey bun down, you know, like, I love
you, buddy, but I don't need you to be, you know,
as big as you are. Yeah. I don't think that's
a bad thing. No. I posted this quite a few years
ago now, but I was doing sled work at the station
and I worked my way up to what our heaviest firefighter
plus his gear would weigh and be able to basically
push and drag that. I would effectively be able
to get that person out of a fire. I remember
making the post saying, I've trained to be able
to get our heaviest firefighter out of a fire.
The question is, would he be able to drag me?
And it's a sobering reminder. Absolute sweetheart,
the person I was thinking of. But physically,
would they? Or you're in gear, you've got stress,
or would you tap out? And now the person that
you love, a brother, now burns up in a fire or
bleeds out on a shooting scene. So there's all
this kind of, oh, we've got to be careful with
their feelings. I say no, that's fucking bullshit.
If you were installing curtains for a living
and you mess up a curtain rod, No one dies. You
know, if you're a barista and you put two shots
of coffee instead of a decaf, you know, OK, maybe
they might have a cardiac issue. But apart from
that, no one's going to die. But when a cop isn't
able to do their job, when a firefighter isn't
able to do their job, they could die. Their partner
could die or the people we went to protect could
die. So you don't have the right to be all like,
oh, that's fat shaming. No, the standard was
set in the academy. There was no fucking. miss
you know mixed messaging about what you're expected
to do this is the gear you're going to wear these
are the number of stairs you're going to have
to go up with hose with air bottles now you're
going to have to chop you're going to have to
do the combat challenge or the c -pat that was
at the front door and in in our profession it's
called minimum standards or certification so
it's labeled this is the shittiest you should
ever be in your whole fucking career and then
you get in And they're like, where are the fitness
standards? Oh, they're trying to take our jobs.
We have no fitness standards. And then you see
this devolution, which results in not only diminished
performance and sometimes hilarious YouTube videos,
but on the serious side, it results in exactly
what we talked about earlier in these people
dying even before they ever retire or within
a few short years after. And that is the result
of this, you know, resistance towards. Making
fitness an absolutely imperative element. And
then I just posted this morning, I think in your
profession, jujitsu, judo, wrestling, whatever
your hands on grappling are is that should be
an absolute essential part of law enforcement,
too. Yeah, that that's probably one of those
things that was was maybe slower to take off,
you know, changing tactics, arrest techniques,
control techniques and. It's amazing to me now
to be able to pick up my phone, pull up Instagram
or whatever, and look at people posting videos
saying, hey, this is how we use a two -person
control takedown. This is how we do this and
that. Also, it keeps people in shape. Back to
the fat shaming and stuff. My thing is I knew
my buddies loved me. That was the difference.
And I knew where it came from. So the same thing
happened in the homicide world. Like I said,
you see different units. So I was like on the
gang unit or when I was on FBI task force. So
one of my buddies, um, and he was my cohost on
the disruptors podcast. I did, it used to be
called the disruptors of BC and ski. Well, ski
and I would actually, we were gang suppression
unit and then we worked FBI task force together.
And when I was on the task force with him or
assigned to him, that was kind of the running
joke. He's like, man, you got fat. And I was
like, yeah, you're right, dude. And so it was
like he picked an exercise every day. And he'd
be like, all right, we got to do 100 squats or
you got to do 100 pushups. And it was like, just
I don't care if it takes five pushups at a time.
Let's knock them all out before the end of the
shift. And this went on just for a little while.
And all I needed was just a jump start. I was
like, yeah, let me get back into it. And so then
in the morning, I'm out running and sending him
a text. And I remember one morning, it's like
40 degrees or something outside. And that's pretty
cold in the South. And sending him a text like,
hey, dude, I'm knocking out to run now. You know,
I'll be in around seven or whatever. And he said,
because I've got an addictive personality. That's
why I don't drink or do any drugs. I never got
into it when I was a little kid. Like, I kind
of knew if I liked something, I want to do it
100%. And so same thing then, like, you know,
just got back into really good shape and for
the most part stayed that way. And you have a
few hiccups here and there. But it's just one
of those things that that aspect can never change,
in my mind, can never change in police work.
There has to be. And I think that for the most
part, because you're dealing with people who
tell you no on the street or people who just
flat out say. I'll put you in the fucking ground,
man. You know what I mean? Like, I will fucking
kill you. Or, you know, I mean, anyway, there
was a case where a prosecutor's father was kidnapped
by blood gang members and taken to another state.
Like, it's legit. Stuff goes on. And it was in
our area. So it's this idea of being very confident
in what you do. and walking the street and knowing
I'm proficient with my hands, my weapons, my
communication skills, like we will be on the
winning end on every aspect of this. And a lot
of that is stamina, physical stamina. Like you,
you heard me talking about like foot pursuits
and stuff. That was the ego thing for us joking
around. Like you didn't want to be on the shoe
of shame. Everybody knew what it meant at the
end of the day, you chase someone and you get
in the back of a cut. Like when I say cut, like
the the short paths that that people will take
between apartment complexes or from a corner
store back to, you know, a trap house or something.
You know, you look at your landscape on patrol
or, you know, on a gang unit or whatever, and
you look where these trails are. And that's the
deal. It's like going into the black hole. You
chase somebody in there and you're calling the
radio. If your colleagues don't know what cut
you're talking about. you're going to no man's
land and it's dark and there's no street lights.
And that's why people take those shortcuts through
there and in the fight zone. And so it's one
of those things where the use of force continuum
is there. You always have to try to control your
emotions, check your ego, but everybody knew
like that's go time and you're, you're going
to survive. Right. And you have to have that
mindset and we joke a lot. And that's why we
joke. was to deal with that. The same way you
watch what one human being does to another in
the homicide world, or even what they do to themselves,
working, you know, suicide to completion, and
you're going, who would have ever thought that
a 12 gauge would do this? You know, we're picking
up brain matter all over the upper floor of a
house, you know, or what 7 .62 does when it goes
through a window and into a four -year -old's
head. And you work that and you're sitting there
for hours and hours and hours dealing with this
stuff. And sometimes you just got to poke fun
at your coworkers. You know what I mean? Like
away from everybody else in order so that your
brain can feel good for a minute. And that I
think that gets misconstrued. And a lot of times
people talk about whatever they call a dark humor,
stuff like that with police, fire and hospitals
and stuff. But our brains will do their best
to protect us. And that that was my thing was
like, I love to laugh and I know I have to be
able to laugh. And when you get knee deep in
this stuff and. You're working a homicide and
if it is family versus family, it's horrible.
And then you're trying to wrap your brain around
violence between a son and mother, which we kind
of saw a spike in that coming out of COVID, which
is a little bit of an eye opener. It's horrendous,
but the brain and laughing and humor. and poking
fun at people that you work with. I just, I want
people in outside environments to understand
that's a defense mechanism. And that's the way
we kind of keep from losing our minds, uh, dealing
with it. And so, yeah, I, I'm the nicest, funniest
guy in the world. I would never, ever want to
hurt someone else's feelings that I don't, especially
like that. I don't know. And if they're friends
of mine, I don't want to hurt their feelings,
but if their coworker is like, It's it's game
on, you know, but but that's love. That's the
way that's the way you kind of get through the
day and bond and have fun with that. So I hope
everybody kind of experiences that because it
can be tough working those jobs and not laughing
and joking or not being able to laugh and joke
at yourself, you know, poke fun or whatever.
I don't know. I just I think humor is is a wonderful
tool that we have and we live. You know, in an
American society where we have freedom to be
able to do that and to pick and choose the jobs
that we want and to pursue that. I think that's
an amazing thing. I giggle and laugh a lot, man,
but I can't overstate the power of humor. And
if people are doing these jobs and they don't
find themselves laughing a whole lot. Like find
a co -worker and laugh, like figure it out or
just realize. It's okay to laugh at yourself
too. I'm a goofy looking dude, so I have no problems
nerding it up and laughing. There was a time
when I saw the motivation in the detective division
really suffering because of other situations,
what society was going through and all this.
I was like, man. I didn't always want to joke
because I didn't know what other people were
going through at the time. And so I just started
cracking a lot of jokes on myself and doing the
best I could to make certain people laugh because
I knew they needed it. And so some people go,
hey, you're a lieutenant. You shouldn't be doing
that. That's kind of like fraternizing or whatever
the word is. I'm like, no, you got no clue. That
dude right there just left a scene where a person
was eviscerated. So he's having a tough day.
I'm going to make fun of my black and white vans
that I'm wearing right now and going to a sock
hop or something. I don't care. Like I'm going
to make a joke and hope that they laugh, you
know, it just, I don't know, kind of rambling,
but I'm just saying there's power in that. And
it's okay to make fun of coworkers. If it, at
the end of the day, it's out of love and definitely
to help keep them in shape. Cause they'll, they'll
thank you later for it. Well, I think that underlines
exactly it. I've talked about this a few times.
The, um, Fat shaming, the way fat shaming is
framed, I think is completely wrong. Yes, there
are some turds out there that mock people for
being overweight, you know, and there's a lot
of, you know, we've seen recently there's been
examples of someone suing Lyft because they didn't
pick them up when they were physically not able
to be in that vehicle. That's ridiculous. But
most of this conversation is coming from a place
of love. When you are a healthy human being,
you realize how someone who is obese is being
robbed of their health, robbed of their lifespan,
robbed of their ability to play with their kids.
So this conversation is coming from a place of
love, but it's being misrepresented. I want to
shift, though, to what you kind of talked about
as far as this violence that you saw coming out
of COVID. I know we spoke about this a few years
ago. There's this emphasis on why aren't police
doing enough when it comes to crime? There's
no narrative whatsoever as to why are American
streets so dangerous? Why are American schools
so dangerous? Why are American households so
dangerous compared to so many places around the
world? We talked last time about drug prohibition,
and my true belief is that stopping arresting
addicts is going to be one of the ways that we
move forward. Taking a step back even further,
with this long career that you've had, everything
from homicide to, as you said, suicide to the
gangs, what is your perception of the mental
health crisis in this country and how that's
actually playing out in many of the tragic scenes
that you've witnessed? Yeah, we have. You heard
me mention the device earlier. Everybody, and
I say everybody. Everybody I ever encountered
on patrol, or I'm sorry, on Detective Division,
we'll say within the last 10 years, has a frigging
device, a phone, two or three sometimes. And
they've got social media and they can watch the
world's atrocities at the click of a button.
Now take that and then couple it with, sometimes,
and this is the thing. Not all gang members that
I encountered in my area came from whatever,
broken homes or single parents. People would
choose that path, at least here in the South
on the East Coast. They choose that path for
different reasons, and we can get into it later
if you want to. But the mental health crisis,
I do think a lot of it has to do with us as consumers
taking in. images over and over and over of things
that we have no control over. So if I'm very
empathetic, like when I see people, I feel it.
I will avoid certain stores. And my wife is the
same way. Like she and I are about as close as
you can get to being the same person. We talk
a lot. We love exercising. We exercise together
every day. And she and I are both the same way.
If somebody is depressed, a complete stranger,
we read their body language. We feel it. And
then we feel it. And so we don't want to necessarily
take that in sometimes. So in the gang world
or city world where violence is increasing and
schools are becoming, or shit, over the last
10 years, horrible, absolutely horrible. And
I'll explain in a minute why schools are that
way. But you see it on the street. It's like
an environment you can't escape. if you don't
escape it. So when guys stand on that block,
the same block that I talked about earlier, if
guys stand there at 15 years old, 16, 17, 18,
nothing changes their trajectory except going
to prison. And then they come back from prison,
all they've ever known is hanging out on that
block or that one apartment complex, and then
they come back, and then they hang out there.
But usually by the time they're between 15 and
21, They have a few kids by different women.
Now their kids are now growing up in that environment.
And so the current trend you're seeing with 15
to 17, 18 year olds, you know, Kia boys stealing
cars and going on these car chases and all the
videos and stuff you're seeing with like 16 year
olds carrying Dracos and chopped up M4s and stuff
in these cars and just pure chaos in the street.
Is is part of all of that where a lot of times
the parents of that first generation or second
generation of gangs out here in the south and
east coast and in the other cities are now having
kids at a at a earlier age, at a younger age.
And there is because I've talked to gang members
and they'll tell you, dude, if I can get a girl
and have a baby, I got a place to stay forever.
I always got my hook in her. And so that can
go through abusing Section 8 housing. That can
go through having as dudes will be like, I got
a girl out in the county or I got a girl out
in the suburbs. And these dudes will have two,
three, four kids by different women. So they
always can bounce around and kind of live off
of them without really having to pay their own
bills, that sort of thing. So we're dealing with
things now. where kids are getting free reign
to do whatever they need to do, committing crimes,
coupled with the movement of reactive policing.
So these, like I talked about earlier, these
departments going back to stripping back their
proactive units, going back to, hey, wait for
the call to come in of the four guys hanging
out, shooting a gun, and we'll respond. And then
that way, if it's a news event. then we were
just reacting to a 911 call. We didn't go out
there looking for trouble, which is an absurd
way to do police work. Coupled with schools,
a lot of schools, at least that I was being told
about, were being sued by parents. And at one
point down here in the South, there was an area
or jurisdiction that was known for having lawsuits
filed against the school system. In which the
argument was the school was suspending black
teenagers at such a high rate. Therefore, it
had to be systemic in its reasoning or in its
logic. And so what school systems are doing is
they didn't want to have to deal with these lawsuits.
So they were paying out in settlements. Well,
that was being told through social media and
through neighborhoods and stuff. And kids that
were getting in trouble and getting suspended,
rightfully so, their families were filing lawsuits
and then getting money. So it never even went
to court. So what it really does, it starts to
reinforce, hey, this kid got in trouble and suspended,
but it turned into a payday for the family. And
I was told by two different people at one point,
an SRO and then a school security specialist.
And they were fighting that uphill battle. And
they were like, what we have been doing in the
past, these two people would come to the gang
intel meetings that I was part of. And so we
would teach for an hour and then spend an hour
doing crosstalk. And so they were plugged in.
And what they knew in their school was like,
hey, we've got Grape Street Crips here present.
We've got Nine Trey Bloods. I mean, they would
rattle them off. They were doing their job. And
they would work with the principals. And they're
like, OK, we've identified. X number of guys
in the school that are tied into fights. They're
actively trying to recruit. And right now, you
know, whatever, these six or seven kids are filed
for suspension. Then when those lawsuits are
getting filed, they don't get suspended and they
get to stay in the school system and the family
gets paid. Then the school system starts to adapt
and they start to say, hey, we're not going to
suspend unless it's this, this, this. And what
they do is they start to. Let all the small things
slide. And so we saw it in the school systems
where, you know, the school security specialists
and the SROs were saying, hey, the administrators
will no longer suspend for all of these offenses
that they used to suspend for. And what you saw
was suspension early on in the year of very violent
gang members causing problems set the tone for
the rest of the year. And a lot of kids didn't
want to get suspended because that was like social
time for them. But what was happening is the
more they got away with, the more other kids
would give into peer pressure and start doing,
you know, more problems. They would commit more
problems like that or break more rules. And so
the SROs that were locked in would come to the
meetings and say, hey, man, I've got like five
or six dudes that were like basically fast tracking
to be really good students. And now they're hanging
out with said gang member. And now we think they
got in this fight after school. And now we're
hearing that there's going to be problems. They
were doing their job. It was pretty incredible
to watch it. And then to hear, hey, but the administrators
won't suspend. So all this bad behavior is going
unchecked and it only gets worse and worse and
worse. And so that was also coupled with lowering
the arrest age. So, I mean, I'm sorry, raising
the arrest age. So when the arrest age was 16,
For physical arrests, they raised it to 18 for
a lot of areas for states. And I think now all
50 states are pretty much 18 or older. So younger
kids are committing more problems in schools,
not getting suspended, and then joining gangs.
And if you were to overlay the presence of gangs
in schools coupled with lawsuits or that reactive
mode for admin or administrators not wanting
to suspend, It is a recipe for disaster. And
that's what you get. We saw it happen where guys
were coming on the school grounds with guns to
shoot other gang members years ago. And so we
went proactive on all that mess, worked with
an SRO. To one point, I mean, we had guys that
would wear ghillie suits, like full camouflage
in the edge of the woodlands, spotting people
coming on school grounds. so that we can intercept
guns or drugs, or if they have warrants, hey,
you're getting arrested, you're not coming on
school grounds, that sort of thing. You do that
for a month or two, and then the rest of the
school year is pretty much smooth sailing. But
it's this recipe that we're in right now that's
absolutely horrible. And any school systems that
take that shortcut, it only gets worse. And I
do think that probably in the next few years,
there's going to be a lot more movement. of people
leaving public schools, especially high schools
and going into homeschooling or doing remote
school, like talk through modules instead of
dealing with all that. I mean, it's, it's horrible.
I can say that, that most cities when I'm talking
to people and what I've experienced, it's, it's
horrible. Like it should never, ever go like
that. Um, the fights, all of that stuff. Uh,
but that, that is an administrative thing. And
somebody's got to have a backbone and say these
suspensions are not based in anything to do with
race. You can take that category out. Actually,
I don't even know why that is a category. Take
that out. It's the incident. And what I've had
to present in the past is if the gang itself
is homogenous, if if it's a blood set and they
only recruit, you know, black teenagers. and
they are the predominant gang in that school
and they're causing problems, they're probably
going to have a pretty high suspension rate.
If they self -segregate and only recruit black
teenagers, that's who's going to be getting suspended.
But you can take the race thing out. That baffles
me that that would even be part of the suspension.
Who cares? If they were fighting or creating
problems or assaulting teachers like that's happened
in the past and that goes unanswered criminal
charges aren't filed, and that student comes
back into the classroom, that teacher is pretty
much ineffective. And I've heard about that,
and I'm like, that is crazy. We don't do that
with domestic violence. You know, people commit
domestic violence, they get arrested for it.
A student physically assaults a teacher and doesn't
get charged? That's crazy. Or suspended? Nuts.
Our principal of what the school my son goes
to at the moment, she actually, I think she was
trying to break up a fight and she got, I think
her nose broken and she was assaulted. And I
haven't seen what the result was from that. But
I think the level of violence that we have at
the moment, and don't get me wrong, most of us
look outside our windows and we're very fortunate
enough not to see a lot of this going on. But
I had a guest on and he was talking about pre
9 -11. the trauma physicians in the military
were going to LA, New York, Detroit, to get training
on how to treat stab wounds, gunshot wounds,
you know, trauma, basically. And I, you know,
when he was done with his talk, I'm like, just
think about what you just said. That our streets
are so dangerous in certain areas that our military
is sending their medical professionals to train
in those hospitals. Where is that discussion?
And even like you said, with the way you describe
these kind of broken homes, one of those kind
of ivory tower comments that you hear people
say is, oh, well, if, you know, it's these broken
homes, if they just raise their kids, the way
you just described how these households are unfolded,
there is no potential for that child to have
that father figure if that's a dynamic that they
grew up in. And let's take it away from the gangs
for a second. If you look at that, I mean, the
multigenerational trauma, I'm sure that you've
heard from the guests on your podcast. I always
take a deep dive into early life. And, you know,
more often than not, granddad came back from
World War Two and he wasn't the greatest generation
by that point. He was a broken man and he was
an alcoholic and he was violent or whatever the
thing was. And then he had mom or dad and then
they had their issues. And now this person was
born and they struggled. And then they found
their way to the military, to law enforcement,
whatever it is. We have a multi -generational
trauma problem in many, many households. And
I think this is where we need to turn around
as a nation and go, why are our schools so dangerous?
This doesn't happen in Oslo or Reykjavik or Lisbon,
Portugal. There's a reason for that. We're all
human beings. But again, like we were saying
with law enforcement, with fire, the way we've
done it isn't working. We have to change it.
Well, if we have all these issues, we have 70
% of our country obese or overweight, 25 % of
our, we have 25 % of the world's incarcerated
population, though we only make up 4 % of the
world's population. We consume 75 % of the world's
opioids. The way that we're doing it is not working.
And so to point at law enforcement and say, you're
not doing a good job from keeping our schools
safe, from stopping these gangs. You know, we
as a society have to go and demand change. I
think, you know, that the prohibition of drugs
should be removed as far as addiction, not smuggling,
not selling. But the addicts should be put in
the hands of the medical professionals. The law
enforcement fire EMS should be bolstered, as
should our hospitals. There's so many things
that we can do to start curbing this. But if
we just point fingers and then you point that
law enforcement who's trying to do their best
and say, oh, now you're racist. Like, just like
you pointed out, I've worked in Haitian neighborhoods.
I've worked in Cuban neighborhoods. You know
what? Everyone I tried to save was Cuban and
everyone who was a bad guy was Cuban. It was
a fucking Cuban neighborhood. That's what happened.
So, you know, we every single one of us needs
to look at our own household and try and start
raising kind, compassionate kids. And then the
kids that weren't so fortunate to have that household
start mentoring them. That son of a gang member
may be the best fucking detective or firefighter
that department has ever seen, but they're not
if they're only mentors of people slinging dope.
So it's on us as a nation to demand that we finally
turn it around and question why is this happening
in America, supposedly the greatest country in
the world, when there are parts of the globe
where this doesn't happen, where the children
do go to school and they don't have to rehearse
their own murder every three months. Yeah. Excuse
me. I think one of the greatest things we could
do in this country is remove boxes and demographics
on everything. If you apply for a job, no demographics.
If you're a student in a school, no demographics.
Because just like I said, if if you remove all
that. And just focus on each individual who was
suspended. That doesn't matter. I don't understand
why race, I do know why race gets injected. Because
lawyers have learned cities and jurisdictions
will pay money. And I'll get a cut of that money
and so will the family. And guess what? These
schools are suspending a lot of kids. Why? Because
you've got a big gang problem and you've got
kids that aren't even gang related. but are seeing
everything go unchecked and they're doing whatever
they want to do. That's the difference too is
when someone acts away in a class and it goes
unchecked, then anyone else who has that impulse
potentially do it. We see it in society. Here's
a great example. 10 years ago, you did not have
30 people wearing all black, busting windows
in jewelry stores. And just mobbing them, stealing
everything and running out. Now, maybe you did.
I will say like New York has had some stuff like
that in the past, these trends, but nothing on
the level that we have right now across the U
.S. Or kids 50 deep on bicycles, coordinating
efforts on their phones and mobbing like a gas
station or 7 -Eleven and stealing everything
out of store and thinking it's hilarious. You
know what I mean? There are no repercussions.
They're not going to be charged. Nothing's going
to happen. And so the more people see that, the
more they go, I'm going to do that. During the
riots, like BLM riots and stuff years ago, I
had an informant like, you ain't got to worry
about these certain gang members in the riots.
They're getting ready to go hit the shoe store.
And that's what they were doing. It was all crime
of opportunity. They could care less about. what
everybody's writing about, they went to go steal
shoes. And I think they hit a jewelry store too,
but, but that trend is going to continue. It's
going to accelerate because people can watch
on a phone and learn and go, damn, if I get 30
buddies and we all wear black head to toe hoodies,
put on, you know, shy cities and go running in
here and just steal stuff, we're going to get
away with it. And what are they going to do?
In California, the message was if you're still
under X number of dollars, you won't even be
criminally charged. So anytime that stuff goes
on where you don't have direct repercussions,
other people or opportunists, they're going to
take advantage of it. And I think as far as Section
8 violations where people are, you know, fraud
and taking assistance from the government. And
fraudulently and that's a whole like underground
movement that's been going on for generations
now. And it won't it won't stop as long as people
are making money off of it and getting more and
more benefits for that. Here's a good a good
way. And I'm sure there are plenty of videos
out there. Dudes don't hide it or people. I mean,
it doesn't have to be guys. They won't hide the
fact. That that's part of any other thing. The
drug world, the fraud world, extortion, whatever.
It's like you can get free housing. You can get,
you know, EBT, SNAP, whatever. You can get these
benefits per child, you know, get tax money back
at the end of the year based on how many kids
you have. That's crazy, too, because the average
person. doesn't operate that way because in the
american society we look at children as a you
got to have a job you got to have a roof over
your head you have all these bills and stuff
that children accrue they're expensive but if
it's the opposite world where you don't have
a job and really no one's putting pressure on
you to have a job and you don't have a whole
lot going on at home and you do link up with
a girl and y 'all can have a baby I think 18
for most states, you get your name on a list
and you get housing, you can get free housing.
And in some cities years ago, they did away with
destroying like the old brick section eight housing,
like these terrorists and stuff like that. They,
they leveled those and moved families out into
the suburbs of the city, or at least in the jurisdiction.
And so some families went from having like a
two bedroom, one bathroom, basically in government
housing to a like two or three bedroom house
with a yard in a neighborhood. And the idea was
to break down that environment, break down that,
that cycle. And so if now you're a family and
you're on section eight, but you're living in
a neighborhood and the house is owned by the
city authority. And instead of them spending
all this money to rebuild these brick buildings,
multi -units, they just bought these inexpensive
houses and put families in them. It'll break
that cycle. I saw it firsthand. I learned it
in college and then saw it in the city. And I
was like, this is pretty cool. This will work.
And it didn't. And sadly, families were tearing
up the houses, tearing up the neighborhood, the
family. But what was cool is the families that
were in the neighborhood, like one guy I met.
And he was a mechanic. And he was furious. And
he's like, I grew up in this certain area. It
was my first beat. And it was mostly just Section
8 housing. He's like, I grew up there. I didn't
like it. I didn't want to stay there. I got a
job. I bought this house. I'm raising my family
away from that mess. And now the city's bringing
it right next door to me. He had a legitimate
argument. I fully understood his frustration.
But I also like the idea that if you can break
that cycle for a family, do it. I mean, nobody
should in America want to have to stay on Section
8 and subsidize stuff if you don't have to. If
you can ably work and take care of your responsibilities,
that's a great way to live because you don't
have to answer to anybody. And I love meeting
people who grew up in that environment and that
were no longer in it. And they're like, I am
a free man. I can do whatever I want to do. I
show up to work. I get my paycheck. I do a good
job. I make more money. I don't have to look
over my shoulder. I don't have to walk outside
and watch five guys lean on my truck or my car.
I mean, so it's those things that you have to
probably go back to. The Clinton administration
was probably the first time I remember as an
adult hearing about like massive budget cuts.
And we're in an era right now where everybody's
losing their mind about cutting funding and stuff.
But if I remember right under under Clinton's
administration, one of the one of his terms,
there was a really a solid push for getting people
off of Section 8 and assistance. And back to
UPS. UPS had a hub, and I think it was in Atlanta
maybe or Chicago. It was one of the larger hubs.
And Jet Magazine did an article back then about
primarily women, but family members who were
able to work at UPS get off of Section 8 and
subsidies and be able to provide for their family
and actually get into a career that they could
go up into management, they could become a driver.
It was opening the door for them. To me, I was
like, that's incredible. And that was whenever
that was, like in the 90s. So flash forward,
you come to now, and I saw it firsthand. So this
is not like a stereotype or something Hollywood,
whatever, makes a movie about. This is legit.
It is a crime that's perpetuated. And I would
probably say 60 % of what I saw was abuse of
the system. If not more, I wasn't in every household,
but I worked enough of it to know now flash forward.
Now we're in this era of, you know, race coming
back around. Like we went through affirmative
action years ago, Supreme court had its rulings
on it. And now we're right back into it. And
I think. DEI would just be pretty much affirmative
action. I don't fully understand the difference.
Somebody may be able to explain it, but everything
I've read, it sounds pretty much the same thing.
And a lot of people just are not happy about
it. And I look at it as the same thing. Remove
the demographics from everything and just let
people go to work and let people be rewarded
and don't get hung up on. or what category somebody
falls into. I mean, it's the content of their
character. What are they doing? Are they hardworking?
Are they taking care of their family? And if
they're not, and if they are on Section 8 and
public assistance, that's what it's there for
if you fall in that criteria. What should never
happen is I should never hear a jail phone call.
with an 18 -year -old girl talking to a career
criminal, and she's telling him, don't worry,
I'm going to get on the list for public housing.
Stuff like that, I can't wrap my brain around
it. This is going on. So anyway, I think that
the problem we're in right now is that you have
school systems that have shifted away from discipline
in the room. They are getting so caught up. in
demographics, that it's almost as if a Twilight
Zone episode is going on. And I feel like it
can't be real when people are getting so focused
on that. Because at the end of the day, none
of it matters. The pigment does not matter. So
then we've got that going on, on top of the complete
divisiveness in America with... People aligning
with whatever political party they want to align
with. On top of now having Elon Musk and this
Department of Government Efficiency or whatever,
Doge, peeling back the paperwork and looking
at USAID. I got no problems with that because
to me, if this is all legitimate money and this
is taxpayer funded, I'm fine with that. You should
be audited. Everybody else is audited. If I get
money, when I got informant funds in the police
department, it was a track. There was a track
record of it. Everything was documented. So nobody's
stealing money. So why in the government would
we ever have money that could not be accounted
for? And if departments are, I don't know, missing
millions and millions of dollars, to me, that's
ludicrous. I don't know how that happens. That
may explain why. taxes go up and why budgets
are blown. I don't know. I just want people to
be common sense. And if everybody stayed in the
middle of the road and didn't go so far to the
extremes, I think we'd be a lot better. Don't
sweat all the categories. Just be kind, work
hard, you know, live frugally if you can. Don't
splurge too much. And if you pay taxes. The government
should be able to explain down to the penny where
the money goes. That's all. Absolutely. It's
funny when you were talking about the mobs going
and robbing stores. It's all about the environment
that allows that to happen. If you could flip
it back to the Capitol building, a group was
empowered to go and basically beat up a bunch
of police officers and go into a government building
where arguably they should have been shot, breaching
that threshold. And then they get pardoned a
few. you know months or years later same exact
thing you're empowering that kind of behavior
i think that's equally as disgusting personally
you dress as a buffalo and you go and you know
traumatize a police department you should be
in a fucking prison cell but um but with the
uh with the auditing as well i've said this a
few times i wish they would audit the fire service
because anyone with a true knowledge of economics
would be like what the fuck are you doing yeah
have you seen all this money that's bleeding
downstream And you've got your people dying?
Have you lost your mind? Like, you need to hire
more people. You need to create an environment
that gets young people that want to get back
into this uniform and proactively take care of
them. And you would save money hand over fist.
Does a taxpayer know that you've got a quarter
of the department missing that might be the person
that's going to get to your teenage son before
they get shot? Do they know that? Have you given
them a tax refund? No. So then this is my thing.
It's like, well, if we're going to do the whole
Doge thing or however they pronounce it. Let's
do the fire service. Let's look at how expensive
it is when a firefighter gets cancer and dies,
when a firefighter takes their own life, when,
you know, the ripple effect and that multigenerational
trauma of a broken first responder family. And
now the son or daughter is driving into addiction
or gangs because mom or dad is never there. Excuse
me, never there. Like if we're really going to
do due diligence, well, then let's look at our
professions, because on paper, the bottom line,
the way we're doing it. Any astute business person
would just laugh them out the fucking building.
Like if you look at Google and Virgin and look
at the UK has just done a study, 200 companies
found that a four day civilian work week was
a complete success. So if we're talking about
the leaders in the corporate space, we couldn't
be further from it if we tried in the first responder.
So if you're listening, Trump administration,
let's start looking at the police and fire departments
and let's put money back into our profession
so we can actually start doing our jobs again.
I think the one thing that there's a lot of stuff
I get frustrated with government culture, but
I saw it in the army and in the police department.
And I'm sure every branch or facet of government
is the same. You get your budget, you get your
allotment of money. And then towards the end
of the year, higher ups will say, hey, we got
to spend up this money. Not always, but, you
know, throughout my life, I've heard it here
and there. It's like we got to spend up this
money because next year, if we turn in a surplus
next year, they'll, you know, decrease our budget.
Such a stupid system. Well, OK, then guess what?
If you've got whatever, a surplus of money this
year and you don't need it and you may not need
it this year, then don't worry about it. You
get your budget next year and then you, unless
something unforeseen happens, then cool. And
that's what happens is that people say, yeah,
well, I don't want to run out of money on the
budget. So I just want to keep the budget bigger
and bigger. So I always have wiggle room and
I've seen people fighting over money and it's
like, I understand what you're saying. Also,
could the surplus roll over to the next year?
I don't know. That's what makes sense. That makes
perfect sense. This year, we don't need it, but
we want to use that money towards next year where
we're going to hire 20 more police officers.
It's not going to be this fiscal year. Why do
I have to buy a bear cat just to justify this
year's financial budget? It's like there's zero
trust. I'm a big boy or a big girl. We're going
to put this on the side because we are going
to invest it next year. Is that okay? Yes. But,
yeah, it's the thing of the culture of it. So
there were times when I would say, hey, we don't
need to do that. That's a freaking waste of money.
Or I'm not going to sit here and copy or make
copies, you know, 100 copies of something. I'm
just going to email it to you. And I've had people
say, that's not your money. Don't worry about
it. Talking about the cities, I'm like, yeah,
but we pay taxes, fool. So if we're paying taxes
and we all have the same idea of just spin, spin,
spin, it's not your money, then the budgets are
going to keep getting inflated. And then politicians
are going to say, well, we need more money, so
we need to raise taxes. And what do they say?
Oh, well, you don't want an unsafe city, so this
money will go to the police departments or this
money will go to your roads so you don't have
potholes or your firefighters. Or school teachers
like, no, y 'all been saying that for my entire
life. So it's not a money thing. It's, it's a
priority thing. It's a, can you balance a budget?
And what is the culture of spending again with
UPS after nine 11, when that happened, UPS had,
it was like operation rolling thunder or something.
They were like, we will not lay anybody off,
but we're also not going to waste any money because
we don't know what's going to happen here moving
forward. And so they're like, Every paper clip
is accounted for every post -it note. And I'm
being serious. We cut post -it notes. You would
write your message on the post -it note on the
side, and then you would trim it. So you had
the rest of that one little, whatever, two by
two post -it note to write more messages. You
didn't just write big, bold letters and slap
the hole because you're not, you're not going
to get another pack of post -its. You're not
going to get paper clips. These are just small
things, but they did that across the board on
every. in the entire operation. It's a global
operation. That was always impressive to me.
Like, okay, their priority is we're not going
to lay people off, but we're not going to spend
money at all. Money will not be wasted. I always
thought that was impressive. If government culture
was that way, like, hey, we're not going to waste
money. We're going to prioritize it. And that
was the culture. Man, that would be incredible.
Because I can say that, you know, What's going
on right now, I think, is such a shock with the
receipts, you know, that are coming out every
day. And it's this idea of like, how is this
going on? What's going on? Well, if nobody ever
has to answer to anything and it becomes a cultural
thing of we can send money here, we can send
money there and nothing ever gets checked or
you don't have to answer for it. It continues
and continues. It's horrible to me. I can't stand
it. I can't stand. anyone uh wanting me to pay
a percentage of my money because i'm i'm frugal
i'm making smart decisions and i don't want to
have to pay 40 of my income or i don't want to
pay 27 on capital gains tax like i no i don't
want to do that not if i know you're blowing
my money and you're wasting it but if you're
actually spending it and you can account for
it i'm cool with that and i'm even good if there's
a little bit of i don't know mistakes made or
whatever so far it just looks like pretty negligent
um in general and i i think there's plenty of
blame to go around on all of that i think that's
the the funny thing is i'm i'm just paying attention
to who's screaming the loudest about them looking
at the books it's it to me i'm like well if if
we're getting audited which we do in government,
why is this such an eye -opener? You have to
account for all the money. You can't. Well, at
least local government, I should say. I think
when you're starting to deal with trillions of
dollars, maybe it's a little bit easier. I don't
know. Or everybody is corrupt in certain situations,
and one Republican helps a Democrat or whatever.
Everybody's... You know, in on the take, maybe.
I don't know. I do know that fraud investigators
always tell me, just follow the money. It's pretty
easy. I'm like, okay. So I guess they're going
to follow the money. We're going to see what's
going on. I don't know. My feeling is just, I
cannot believe there's that much excess money
going on. It's that false economy. I was talking
to Tulsi Gabbard. And if you look at, let's take
the UK, for example. You have a tax -based, or
what used to be a tax -based, now it's been privatized
and just slashed to pieces, but a tax -based
health insurance, a health system, healthcare
system. So that is such a beautiful model. And
when it was first put in, it was so effective
because the drive then is to make your population
healthy. So they don't need more money. They
just need to be more efficient with the tax they
use for health care, for example. But now you
go to the UK and we're behind, you know, following
behind the US when it comes to obesity is heartbreak
and seeing my people now. And they're wondering
why the health care system is straining. It's
not a bad system. I would argue the best health
care system on the planet. We all chip in and
take care of each and every one of us when it's
needed. But we get everyone as healthy as possible.
So it's not needed very often. So, you know,
when you look at so many things that are broken
in the U .S., we don't need more money for fire
and police. We need to reinvest into the things
that are most important with and we will save
money then. We're wasting money on breaking our
first responders. So this is I think the big
thing is with the sufficiency is that there's
probably going to be a realization that there
was always enough money for all of these things.
But there's been so much mismanagement. So people
have got to stop, you know, getting all like,
you know. bent out of shape about asking for
more money we need to be asking for efficiency
and proactive investment in people you know and
all the all the the issues you know you you have
you decriminalize addiction now you're not arresting
every man and dog that's got a freaking joint
in their pocket you know you start addressing
obesity and now medicare and medicaid aren't
being just drained you know so there's so many
solutions that are proactive But you have to
have, as you used the term earlier, the fucking
backbone to stand up and say, the obesity crisis
is costing us trillions. All these things are
costing us. The money is there. We need to get
people healthy physically and mentally again.
We need to fix the schools. We need to reinvest
in communities to start forging these families
back together. Yeah, definitely. And the funny
thing, I say funny, that's a Southern term. When
we say funny thing, it's not really like it's
hilarious. The interesting thing. is that a lot
of departments did just kind of scale back like
a lot of departments were not going after drug
addicts so to speak so they were not going kind
of like what I had mentioned earlier with certain
operations when you stop the buyer who's leaving
an area so they've bought you know one dosage
unit of said drug you know whatever it is Molly
oxy heroin whatever As they leave and you stop
them and you recover that drug and you confirm
that was an actual drug deal, the focus is going
after the dealer. You hammer the dealer. The
user usually is offered through the judicial
system some type of rehabilitation program. You
know how it is. A lot of people are just rock
bottom. They don't have insurance. A lot of times
they may not even be working. And so sometimes
there can be rehabilitation programs like that.
And sometimes they're never even charged because
some jurisdictions are like, yes, they had, you
know, whatever, one dosage unit of whatever crack
cocaine. That was the big one for a long time.
And any possession of crack cocaine was a felony
no matter what. So in order to go after the dealers,
you had to prove that what they sold was real.
which means the user gets charged so i think
a lot of jurisdictions have shifted away from
that and some states have even changed their
laws to where like a personal possession uh or
under a certain weight of like say crack cocaine
may not be a felony because potentially each
state's you know different it's the same way
what used to be prostitution we would do prostitution
projects And when I say project, there's like
assignments where that's all you do is focus
on that. So you watch an area, you learn who's
doing what. And sometimes we would, you know,
have officers getting plain clothes, regular
clothes. We wire them up. We can observe them
from, you know, hide positions. And then people
come up like, sadly, preachers. We've had army
recruiters, you know, people come up from all
different walks of life and try, you know. to
solicit or to get sexual favors for money. Then
you're arresting the Johns, we used to call them,
right? But we would also, so we would focus on
the Johns for one day, come in the next day and
focus on the prostitutes, the women. And this
was years ago. And our main purpose for doing
that is we were trying to clean up that actual
area. This is stuff going on in front of people's
homes. So every city is different, but at least
in my city, you had houses that were right beside
one another and people were turning tricks in
people's backyards, which gross. So used condoms
are on the street where kids are having to stand
for the bus to come through. This is horrible
quality of life. So our thing on our level was
you've empowered us to help change this neighborhood.
We've got the backing of the citizens. Everybody's
going to jail. If you're the John, you're going
to jail. If you're the prostitute, you're going
to jail. And eventually what happened is it was
the businesses, the organizations, they couldn't
stay there. These women couldn't stay. The men
were getting tired of getting arrested. Sadly,
though, all it does is it goes into motels. And
then you have prostitutes doing stuff in hotels
and motels. But at least it's out of that neighborhood.
That was our thing was like, we've got to get
it out of people's backyards. Like, I don't blame
people. I would not want to put up with that
either. Then when it gets into the motels, though,
the newer strategy in the last probably seven
to eight years has been the term human trafficking
on different levels. And you run the investigation
against whoever the organizers are, as opposed
to the victim. you know, the female that's addicted
to drugs or has a boyfriend addicted to drugs.
So she's turning tricks in order to make money
to feed a habit. The investigators, then the
same way you do the drug world, you go after
whoever's making money off of her and then you
hammer them. And I can remember some of the first
hotel projects or motel projects we worked and
we started focusing on back then, you know, the
term was pimp. That's what people would be and
then brag about it. Uh, and then they started
getting hit with human trafficking and on jail
phone calls, they're trying to coordinate efforts
and, and they're already charged. They're just
trying to figure out what the charge is. And
guys couldn't adapt at first. They're like, I
don't know what this human trafficking thing
is. Like they said, you know, I was running girls
or whatever. And in their mind, it was like,
so what? Nobody cares. And then they're getting,
you know, um, convicted or having to plead guilty
and they're getting like 30 year sentences. And
these dudes then started figuring out, oh, I
don't want to run girls because they're going
to give me just as many years as if I'm out here,
you know, slinging whatever drug on the corner
or in a motel. Sometimes they transition into
fraud or whatever. But it was that idea, kind
of like what you said, as opposed to wasting
money and time making lives worse for addicts
or women who were. you know, sex workers. It
was like this idea of go after people who are
profiting off of them or making money off of
them. I do like that approach much better. And
it's just, you know, units and police evolve.
They get better at their craft and they actually
care. Like nobody likes seeing the things that
we would see on patrol or you talk like there
were girls that, you know, I'll get in plain
clothes. I just dress up in regular clothes.
and get like a pickup truck or a regular car,
whatever. We had a few disposable vehicles at
one point and we were like, what would be equivalent
of a street crimes unit. And so some of these
women were informants. You throw them in the
passenger seat and you just ride around the area
because everybody knows them. So when they see
like me driving the vehicle and they see her,
they think she's just turning a trick. And meanwhile,
I've got a radio on my lap and I'm just calling
stuff in, you know, Hey, so -and -so's out here.
He's got a warrant. We already know that. He's
posted up at this store watching. He's right
near a cut. You know, somebody come in and scoop
him up, make that arrest. And also during that
time, we're having normal conversations. And
I have one source or one lady telling me about
getting beat in the middle of the street. And
all she wanted was the police to come around
the corner and save her. And we got into some
other stuff. She'd grown up in the city and we
knew some of the same people. It's horrible.
I would always ask people that. How did you get
into this? How did you go from hanging out in
whatever town or whatever neighborhood to now
smoking crack and turning tricks with complete
strangers? It's horrible. I tell officers and
I tell at my classes and stuff, talk to people
as much as you possibly can. Learn so that you
can change strategies. You can speak from the
humanitarian side of it and a logical side and
say, hey, we're not going to waste taxpayers'
resources. We're not going to waste our efforts
and focus on certain strategies like this. We're
going to change up. We're going to look at how
we do it. It's impressive to me what some units
have been able to do in the last few years when
they hone in that craft. One of the things in
the war on drugs, And anybody listening who's
ever worked on a drug unit knows, you know, our
term was the kilo fairy. It was always this idea
of I want to get a kilo, kilo of Coke or whatever.
And I couldn't wrap my brain around that because
I knew the most violent guys in our city were
selling very small amounts of crack and heroin.
And then they got into the Molly game and stuff.
But it was like this idea like those guys are
so violent. And they're linked into our shootings
and they're just like just going wild. But here
are these drug charges that we can actually work
drug cases on. And they go away. They go away
for seven years, 10 years, 15 years. And that
actually causes peace in the city. And then other
guys don't follow suit necessarily. And like
I said earlier, you know, if a ranking gang member
goes away for seven years. because they had a
couple of crack rocks in their pocket or they
got caught actually selling, then that has a
ripple effect in the game. Other guys are like,
no, I'm not trying to do seven years for selling
crack or heroin or pick the drug of today, Oxy
or fentanyl or whatever. They evolve. And some
of them are like, I'm going to get into the fraud
game. You know, I'm sorry, but I would much rather
somebody commit fraud than be out there selling
drugs and enslaving people. You know, so. Sometimes
that's a win. When gangs are evolving and younger
guys are like, I'm going to get these free bands.
I'm not going to be out here, you know, twisting
baggies and spitting rocks and stuff for you
guys. I'm going to get in a fraud game. So when
you get in the weeds of it and you talk to people,
and I've worked sources in every gang that we
had in the city, and I was always just a small
talk, too, to learn, to understand those things
and to understand these issues. on different
levels, not just what maybe a textbook would
say in a class or, you know, what the theory
is in police work. And we saw that would defund
the police. So many people were on this theory
of defund the police, defund. And at every turn
I would say, well, okay, I'm, I'm open -minded.
Tell me what, tell me what we got. Police need
to be better trained. They need to learn how
to deescalate. All right, cool. Welcome to the
last 20 years of police work. We've been doing
that, but all right. But at every turn, they
wanted to defund and cut funding, but then wanted
more training. It's like you can't cut funding
but then expect officers to get more training
in it. Anyway, that was all based in stupidity.
It was just a dumb theory or idea that really
got pushed, and a lot of people just started
chanting it. And the people who were not chanting
anything about defund the police were people
living in the neighborhoods that I just talked
about. and grandmothers who watched their grandsons
join a gang and go away to prison, those families
were not chanting defund the police. And when
everything fell on these racial lines and everybody
was wanting to identify with a category and become
closed -minded instead of open -minded, if you
want to interject race into that, you can understand
that every family I was talking about were black
families that grew up in the South, some of them
two, three, four generations. And they lived
through the civil rights movement. And they could
tell me about marching and the organization of
SNCC or SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee. I mean, like this great history and
great examples of how neighborhoods had changed
and how people had jobs and owned their businesses
and got elected officials. And before I ever
even became, before I was ever even born, In
the city I worked in, it was a big city, there
was the first black police chief years before
I was even born. It just blew my mind that through
my whole career, I would watch that cycle of
people bringing up race and interjecting it and
different movements. And I'm going, man, like
y 'all don't get it. The happiest families and
the most prosperous families I met working in
the city. were families that just focused on
the family and they focused on the business and
they focused on raising kids that were kind and
who had a great work ethic and wanted to go to
school and they wanted to learn and they took
pride in their personal accomplishments. They
didn't get jammed up all on checking a block
for a demographic or whatever. I don't know.
To me, that was one of the greatest parts of
my career is seeing that and then when I speak
with people. knowing you're missing everything.
You're getting it all wrong. Get away from the
demographics. Absolutely. Well, I could talk
to you for hours and hours. We've been chatting
almost two and a half hours, so I want to round
it off. For people listening, if they want to
hear you speak, if they want to reach out or
they want to listen to the Disruptus podcast,
where are the best places to go? It's The Disruptors
with Brian Sanders. That's the full title. There's
another show that someone else uses with a similar
title, but that's the full title. It's on Spotify,
Apple, all the streaming platforms. Usually an
episode goes out every week, and I have different
guests, gang members, former Nazi skinheads.
You've been on there. I like to shuffle it up.
I've had authors on. I've had undercover detectives.
People that have worked overseas. So I just I
like interesting things like that. I also have
a live show on Tuesday nights on YouTube, and
it also gets posted on all the different platforms
and audio format. But it's Night Shift with Andrea
Uplate, and that's actually true crime. And it's
my wife and I. She's had the show for a couple
of years now, but she'll go over a case and then
we just kind of discuss it. And sometimes it'll
be unsolved cases or it could be solved or missing
persons. But we go in depth with her medical
background and then my background from homicide
and be able to explain different facets of an
investigation. Or if it's unsolved, why? Like
we can explain some of the things that other
shows can't necessarily or they start to speculate.
And the easiest way to reach me is on Instagram.
The underscore disruptors underscore podcast
or my website for like training. I teach sworn
law enforcement as well as citizens. I do different
types of presentations. I'll tailor make them
for people. So I've had companies hire me to
come and present different government entities,
whatever. And that's the disruptors with Brian
Sanders dot com. And that's probably the easiest
way. And it's got an email address on there because
there are people that. aren't on instagram and
that's the disruptors period bc period ski sk
i at gmail and that's on the website too but
you can shoot me an email with any kind of questions
or if anyone's interested in that type of training
or presentations or whatever i'll tailor make
it i mean my thing has always just been getting
information out to people and i'm i'm long -winded
as hell and i talk forever so you know i am Well,
I want to thank you, mate. It's been such an
amazing conversation, a little bit more philosophical
this time, but I think that's, that's important.
Now you get to reflect over an entire career,
you know, explore some of these areas that people
don't like to talk about. So I want to thank
you so much for being so generous with your time
and coming back onto the behind the shield podcast
today. Thank you for having me on.