A prerequisite to be a sponsor on the Behind
the Shield podcast is you have to bring a solution
to one of our problems. And today's sponsor,
EaseAlert, does exactly that. Founded by the
son of a firefighter, Blake Richardson watched
the impact of sleep deprivation on his father's
health and decided to use modern technology to
address that problem. As you've probably heard
me mention many times, it is pure insanity that
we wake an entire fire station for one crew to
respond. And the way that we're alerted makes
the firefighter stress go from 0 to 100. Now
EaseAlert has a host of solutions. The first
of which is the wearable TAC pod, which alerts
the first responder of an incoming call through
vibration in the wrist. So as you can imagine,
in a communal bunk room, only the crews that
need to respond will be woken up. Now they also
have the bunk alert system, which puts vibration
into the bunk itself. There's LED lighting, a
turnout timer, station automation where you can
program bay doors to close or gas stoves to turn
off. And understanding that sleep deprivation
is behind so many things at ALS, a recent study
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by 169%. So if you want to hear more about EaseAlert,
you can listen to my conversation with Blake
on episode 1168 of the Behind the Shield podcast
or go to easealert .com. Welcome to the Behind
the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James
Geering and this week it is my absolute honor
to welcome on the show British firefighter and
MMA fighter Jason Kubiak. Now, in this conversation,
we discuss a host of topics from his journey
into the UK Fire and Rescue Service, some of
his career calls, the Grenfell fire, his own
powerful mental health story, prioritizing family,
the knife crime epidemic in the UK, and so much
more. Now, before we get to this incredible conversation,
as I say every week, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this podcast
on. Subscribe to the show, leave feedback, and
leave a rating. Every single five -star rating
truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making
it easier for other people to find. And this
is a free library of almost 1 ,200 episodes now.
So 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 introduce to you Jason Kubiak. Enjoy.
Well, Jason, I want to start by saying thank
you so much for taking the time and coming on
the Behind the Shield podcast today. No, it's
an absolute pleasure and an honor. Thank you.
I've been listening to you for a while. I stumbled
across you a few months back, actually, and you've
been a large part of my journey to and from work
for the last few months. So no, I'm really excited
and feel really honored. Thank you very much.
Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you for listening.
You know, it's funny when you Google firefighter
podcast in all the lists that come up, Behind
the Shield is never in there. I don't know why,
maybe because I don't just talk about firefighting,
but it's so weird. Nine years, all the downloads,
all the episodes, and yeah. So the only way people
find this is, I guess, word of mouth, even to
this day. Yeah, I don't know how I stumbled across
you, buddy, to be honest with you. I can't quite
remember. I put some search into, obviously,
the podcast, and it popped up, and then I've
been pretty much hooked since then, to be honest
with you. Good, yeah. Well, there's so many people
on there. I think we're almost at 1 ,200 now.
The guests are just insane. They really are.
All right. Well, very first question. Where on
planet Earth are we finding you today? You are
finding me in a little village called Mixbury
in Northamptonshire in the UK, England. So for
you guys that might not know, pretty much 70
miles north of London, about a 10 -minute drive
from Silverstone Racetrack. Brilliant. Well,
let's start at the very beginning of your journey
then. Tell me where you were born and tell me
a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings. All right.
I was born in 1978 and then again in another
little town called Bletchley. It's now turned
into Milton Keynes. It's a bigger town. I've
got a sister who's four years younger than me.
My dad. was half Polish. His family come over
in a war, and my mum and dad met. He was, unfortunately,
we lost my dad pre -COVID. That's a story all
in itself, to be honest with you. But he was
a plumber and a stonemason by trade. Couldn't
read or write, but he managed to get through
and get work done and stuff. So, yeah, he was
a unique man, let's put it that way. And my mum,
she was an insurance underwriter. You know, she
was born in this country. She was a very different
background. She was like a head girl at school,
a private school, when they met, kind of like
the rough of my dad and the poshest of my mom,
kind of, you know, equals attracted, all that.
And then, yeah, that was that, really. So we
grew up, spent, I've spent most of my life in
Milton Keynes, in and around Milton Keynes and
London, grew up, and then obviously, yeah. My
childhood was pretty good, to be fair. They did
everything they could for us with what they had.
And I still to this day, I'd never change it.
Some of the most important stories or some of
the most important traits I learned from my dad
was the type of man I should be as I grew up
and the type of father I should be to my kids.
So there's some things I'd never change, for
sure. What area of stonemasonry was he focused
on? Because in the book I just wrote last year,
one of the characters... flees world war ii france
and he's a stonemason and that's actually the
the skill that he brings to the uk well no way
so he was um i don't know i'm not expecting anyone
to know who milton keynes is but they him and
his brother did the a large majority of laying
the the marble slabs all the marble cladding
on a lot of the buildings they worked on a lot
of posh um kitchens and hotels and stuff like
that doing all work units and worktops bits and
pieces like that really Brilliant. All right.
And what about, did you say what your mom did
as a profession? I can't remember. She was an
insurance underwriter. So she's semi -retired.
She lives with my sister now. And she's still,
she's selling medical goods, I think, is what
she does now. And a little telesales thing. So
yeah, she's still killing it, bless her. Brilliant.
What about when you were in the school ages?
What were you playing as far as sports exercise?
Wow. Started off rugby. is where I really started
when I was really young. Moved on to football,
soccer, kind of started to enjoy that, that team
ethic and stuff. And then I got kind of pushed
into boxing by my dad and hated every minute
of it. Never liked a training session, never
liked a sparring session. And then all of a sudden
I think I hit, my memory serves me right, around
about 16, 17, just as you find girls and stuff.
But that's when I kind of hit my, I found my
love. for boxing. And then I boxed amateur for
many years and I've kind of always had my hand
in at that. And then I fell into jiu -jitsu many,
many years ago. Many years ago. But yeah, predominantly
football and boxing really was the thing for
me when I was a youngster. What was it that made
you turn that corner between dislike in boxing
and all of a sudden leaning into it? Do you know?
That's a really good question. I think it was
because it was something I was forced to do.
And it was kind of that battle between me and
my dad and that kind of, you know, that loggerheads,
I don't want to do it, him throwing. And then
when I eventually got to that point where I found
it was more for myself and the enjoyment I got
out of it, then that kind of turned, that love
turned. And then I found that, you know, you
learn so much out of contact sports, like you'll
know, James, for sure. just the the you know
the stuff that you learn from from doing it you've
been on time being you know having to set targets
for yourself you've got to be certain weights
and stuff like that there's lessons that that
taught me that i've taken through the whole of
my life so yeah it's probably just when i got
away from it being pushed onto me by my father
i've always said you know when i look back and
i ask people the same thing um when i played
team sports and i played football you know just
super casually but i played field hockey for
college and all that which i always i always
feel i have to justify why i played college uh
field hockey as a man but it's you know it's
quite a violent sport because you get to run
around with a stick um but when you do an individual
sport you have the team element with the team
sport and that's great but when it's an individual
sport you can't blame anyone else Like you have
to look in the mirror and go, I wasn't good enough
to beat them, you know, or I let it be in the
hands of the judges and therefore I didn't beat
them, you know, enough. And so I found that incredibly
humbling and that self -talk became a lot stronger
in a ring or on a mat than it was, for example,
on a pitch. Yeah, for sure. Definitely. And you
go to some real dark places. Fortunately enough,
when I did MMA, I didn't lose a bout. So I never
experienced that feeling of loss. But I certainly
went through it in the gym, that's for sure.
But when it comes to boxing, I got stopped a
few times boxing. And they hurt. They really
hurt. And to come back from something... a loss
in that environment. You know, exactly like you
said with the football, you've got teammates
and stuff. You've almost got people that you
can look at and blame out for a certain moment
within a certain game. But when you're stood
there duking it out with someone, the only thing
you really have to blame is yourself. If you
don't turn up in shape, you don't turn up doing
the right things, you've got nobody else to blame
but yourself, right? Absolutely. What about career
aspirations? What were you dreaming of becoming
when you were in school? I always wanted to be
a firefighter. That is what was always on my
mind. Why, I don't know, because it's nothing
in our family. We've got no military aspect in
our family. No one joined any other emergency
services. So it's just something I always wanted
to do. And I can remember you alluding to on
a podcast way back, you go to the careers officer,
you sit down in front of the careers advisor,
and they're like, what do you want to do? And
I'm like, I want to be a firefighter. And they're
like, you haven't got the grades for that. You've
got to think about doing something else. So academically,
I wasn't great at school. So I had to send myself
to college to sort of get my maths back up to
speed and my English up to speed because I struggled
with the selection process. Physically, I was
golden. But just that, yeah, the psychometric
testing in English and maths wasn't great. So
I got to a point where I was good enough just
to pass the written test. And then, yeah, that
was it. That's history then. I had a few little
bum -end jobs that I bounced around doing before
I got there. But I joined the fire service when
I was just turning 19. So that's kind of all
I've known. Before we progress into adulthood,
we talked before we hit record about some of
the struggles, some of the wrong sides of the
law, et cetera, that you found yourself on. It's
become such an apparent conversation now that
so many of us that put the uniform on have had
things that were struggles when we were younger.
And if they're worked through and addressed,
they can become strengths. It's not a bad thing
at all. If they're pushed down, buried down,
left unaddressed, they can be an addition to
the things that we see in the sleep deprivation
and all those elements. When you reflect back
now with this kind of veteran lens that you have,
were there any elements of your childhood you
think that contributed to struggling later on?
Oh, I think so. I think there probably is. I
think there is for most of us, right? I think
there's moments in time when we see in a household
that... Look, it wasn't until my father passed
away that I realized how difficult a life he
had. And he wasn't loved as a child, if you like.
So he didn't know anything other than what he
experienced and how he would be with us. So there
was times within our childhood where we got the
tough end of the stick, if you like. You know,
it was tough in the household and there was arguing
and stuff, but nothing too... you know, too different
to anybody else. But it was difficult. Yeah,
it was difficult from time to time. Yeah, that
certainly has its part to play, definitely, I
think, as I was a youngster. But as we alluded
to before we hit the record button, I learned
some valuable lessons from my dad and things
that I would never change. And that was the type
of man I should be and how I should treat people
and the type of parent I should be when I become
a parent. But he lived his life with his grandkids.
You know, that's where he excelled. So that's
what I hold dear now, you know. The whole point
of me writing the book, not constantly going
back to my book, but was to also storytell generational
trauma, which is why there's this World War II
element. Because I think if you can look back
and see not only your childhood, but your parents'
childhoods and maybe even your grandparents'
childhood, you see these dominoes that are falling.
And we are simply a product of our friends and
our family. That's it. That's how we're influenced.
So if you can, exactly like you said, you look
back and go, well, they did the best with what
they had at that moment. There wasn't this conversation
about these other things. So there's no guilt,
no shame, no blaming, but just an observation
of the contributing factors to our own struggles.
then you can say, well, I'm not going to let
that pass on to my kids. So I think it's such
an important conversation that we're starting
to have now about this generational trauma because
it's not creating a victim mentality. It's just
observing the things that did set you up for
failure, addressing them, and then not passing
it on. Yeah, for sure. I think as a young man,
Growing up in a household, you're just always
looking for validation from your father. That's
who you want to make happy. That's who you want
to hear them words. Them words resonate. I'm
proud of you, son. You know, that's all you ever
want to hear. And God forbid, my girls, I've
got two daughters. So the amount I repeat that
day in, day out, you know, I tell them that every
day. Probably a bit too much. I get nagged at
by the wife for it. But, you know, these are
the things that you miss out on and you relive
them, don't you? And you try to instill that
and push that on your children to make sure that
they don't feel how you did back in them times.
Absolutely. I'm the same. I hug my son. He's
18 now and I still hug him, kiss him on the head,
tell him I'm proud of him, tell him I love him.
Yes, my oldest daughter is 24 and my youngest
is 14. A lot of them cuddles and kisses are gone
now. You know, them days of hearing a dump out
of the bed and that open your eyes and silhouette
in the doorway and just pulling the blankets
to one side and letting them jump in. They're
all gone now. So them cuddles, it's not cool
to be with dad anymore. Well, you mentioned about
having to go to college, get the grades up before
you got to test with FD. How competitive was
it back then? And then walk me through what the
process looked like. Oh, wow. So back then, look
what, 98, I think it was, something like that.
So I was 18, 19. That was back then, you'd have
to physically go to the fire station and get
an application form. And I was applying then
for a little county brigade, Buckinghamshire.
So I think at the time when I finally got into
the job, I think we had... Somewhere around about
560, maybe 600 whole -time firefighters spread
across five or six whole -time stations. And
the rest were day crewed. But there was people
queuing for blocks, if you like, all the way
down the road, about 2 ,000 people applying for
about 13 jobs. And James, I actually applied.
I went through the process. Wow, somewhere between
six to eight times I applied, kept going back,
kept seeing the same faces, would smash the bleep
test, da -da -da -da -da. But yeah, just kept
failing at that written test scenario. And it
was the stories that we used to hear, if you
didn't write in black ink, that would be straight
away because so many people applied, that application
would go in the bin if it was a different color
ink, a spelling mistake, stuff like that. We
had to really concentrate on just getting the
application correct to start with, to even get
the call to go and do anything. But yeah, it
took me several, several attempts, somewhere
around about, yeah, between six to eight times
before I eventually got through the door. The
physical aspect of it back then was just, can
you run a bleep test? I think it was around about
11 .6 or something like that. And I could run
for days back then. And that's all I ever did,
football or boxing. It was out on the street,
beating the street. So running was a piece of
cake for me. So that wasn't a problem. From what
I can remember, it's such a long time ago. I
can remember the physical aspect was you put
a breathing apparatus set on and they'd stick
you in a little room, switch the lights off,
make sure you weren't claustrophobic. send you
up a ladder, take a leg lock, and then you'd
have to look over your left shoulder, call out
the letter that they had at the bottom of the
ladder, look over your right shoulder, call out
the letter, and then that was it. It was pretty
much it, I think. Just contrasting that, because
it's such an interesting conversation. I don't
know if you're having the same issues in the
UK that we're having here in America, but you
talked about thousands of applicants for 13 jobs.
I had a similar thing when I was in California,
whatever it is now. 19 years ago um what is the
the level of recruitment interest at the moment
in the fire service in the uk so it's still quite
good it's still quite good the issue is i think
financially um obviously i'm in london now i've
transferred into london so that's a different
fish altogether um you know one of the biggest
brigades in the world hugely funded they moan
about the lack of funding that they're getting
but we've got what's it 5 000 hotel and firefighters
but um There's still definitely still seen as
a unique job and applicants are big. I think
the issue, I say it's an issue, is how we look
at our recruitment, the areas that we go, how
we're tailored it. I think you've spoken about
on many podcasts that we've listened to that
the standards has been lowered so, so far down
that it's getting to a point where we're almost
taking. not the best that we could do because
there is a line I do feel there is a line where
we shouldn't drop below and we're getting recruits
turn up on stations and I look at them you know
I'm twice their age or they're younger than my
kids or younger than my eldest and it's like
you know stomach hanging over his trousers i'm
like how is that even possible how is that even
allowed and it really does grip my shit unfortunately
when i look around especially with new recruits
you know even with some of the older guys that
come into the end of their time we've got we've
got a duty of care to look after ourselves and
look after the people that with us as well as
our community you know well this is this is what's
interesting is in america the places that held
those standards high still had a high level of
recruitment when I was testing early in my career.
And one of the good examples is Anaheim, California.
They would let 25 % of their recruits go in the
first probationary year just through attrition.
There's the bar. You get these opportunities
to test. And if you don't make it throughout
the year, you're already hired. If you don't
make it, sorry, other places are still hiring,
but you're not an Anaheim firefighter. And they
had people lining up around the block, and it
was the right kind of person. I think the Royal
Marines did the recruitment when we were young.
Like 99 % need not apply. And then the right
kind of person said, oh, yeah? Oh, really? All
right, then hold my beer. You know what I mean?
And it worked. All the right people came looking
to the Royal Marines, fire, et cetera. But where
I've seen people lower a bar, the last department
I worked for, perfect example, the bar was in
a trench. Better working conditions as far as
a little bit more time off, better pay, zero
fire, which is a complete turnoff to me, but
I was doing it because I was a single dad getting
forced to do multiple overtimes in my previous
one. You would think that if it was just an easier
life that you'd have people lining up around
the door, but it wasn't the case. It was the
opposite. They were begging people to come work
there. So I think it's such a myth that lowering
the bar will help with recruitment. And I think
it's the opposite. When you keep the bar high,
like you said, you get a lot of people testing,
but the right kind of person. And if someone
is entering the profession with their belly already
hanging over their belt, is that person 10 years
from now going to be able to go 20 stories up
in Grenfell and carry someone down? I mean, you
don't have to be a genius to figure out the answer
is no. Yeah, I mean, I look after myself. I try
my best to look after myself and take care of
myself. Gym's a huge part of my mental health
aspect and stuff. But, you know, not to say that
I'd struggle, but that's what keeps me going,
is that thought of being in that moment where
you've got nothing else, the chips are down,
you've got nothing else left. The only thing
you can rely on is what you've learned subconsciously
and the physical condition your body's in to
get you out of trouble. That and a BA set are
the only things that are really going to save
your life when it all goes to itself, you know.
But you're exactly right. That bar's got to a
point. Why should we not be picking from the
pool up here, you know, if the standard is that
high? I mean, I applied, like I said, seven or
eight times, and I think that actually favoured
me going through that process. And the guys getting
to know everyone, they're like, well, this is
somebody we want. You know, he might not be the
smartest kid in the class. but he's done his
bit to get where he is, and he obviously wants
to do the job. So by keeping that standard at
a certain level, if people fail, we're looking
at people that want to come back, want to get
to that position to be able to get into the job.
It doesn't have to be bloody peak level of fitness,
but to a level where it's decent, not where it
is at the moment. Well, it also just shows that
you have done the preparation before you walk
through the front door. When I was going to the
fire academy, I was working a day job. I was
going to the fire academy because we have to
school ourselves usually here and then go test
for a job. So I was working Monday to Friday.
And then three evenings a week, I was going to
school at night. And then it was one weekend
day as well. On my lunch break, I was going to
the YMCA and strength training. And then when
I got home, like you, I was running usually four
or five miles multiple times a week as well.
Getting to the fire academy early, doing some
combat challenge style training before we even
started our class. So then when you show up at
the front door, you're like, I don't care who
else you're testing with. Like, I know that I'm
at least ready for one of those positions. And
that's the difference between what we're talking
about when you lower the bar and the kind of
man and woman that you get is that on day one,
you're ready to do now. Show me the job. Teach
me your way of doing it. I've got my fitness
down. I've got my skills down. I've got my academic
preparation. Now I'm ready for you to show me
how to be a real -world firefighter. Yeah, for
sure. Our process, once we got to training school,
you got found out pretty quick at training school.
I was really fortunate enough to do my training
course in Evenly, the fire service college. So
one of the largest colleges in the world. It's
a fantastic facility. And we did 20 weeks with
our training course away from home on site. And
I can remember waking up and people leaving in
the middle of the night. they'd pack their rooms
up and go you know it's and that was we still
had that discipline service style of it we'd
get room checked in the morning our rooms would
come in to check our rooms you know if you didn't
have your rooms they'd throw it all about they'd
have you out in the squad line and you're full
undressed and they'd be checking out they'd have
you out and you in the drill yard in your fire
kit checking your boots you know making sure
everything was tipped up and then as the course
progressed people would drop out they'd just
naturally drop out I just found out it wasn't
for them but Oh, go on to a quick story before
I forget it. There was a sub -officer called
Sub -Officer Hookway, and he was like the drill
sergeant. Little moustache, he'd get right up
in your face, screaming and shouting. And we
had these 25 -litre foam drums that were stuck
on the drill yard. And if you fucked up, they'd
go foam canisters into the barrier, so you'd
have to pick up two foam carriers, and you'd
run all the way up to this barrier, and then
run all the way back, get back in the squad line,
50 press -ups, whatever it would be. And as the
course went on, myself and one of my pals who
was on the course with me, Robbo Robertson, we
emptied a few of these out and marked them with
China graphs. So whenever we got a bollocking,
we were the first to that pile of foam canisters
to pick them up. And you'd be running along going,
hey! as you run past the instructors but yeah
sorry to digress but yeah it was it was tough
but do you know what so fun the memories i have
of how difficult it was and how much i enjoyed
it the studying aspect of it you know we got
the opportunity to go home on a friday spend
the weekend with our family but we did all our
exams on the monday and that first couple of
weeks i failed like two exams and like you fail
one more and you're gone And I was like, wow.
So then I just stayed for the whole of the reign
in 18 weeks. I just didn't bother going home.
I just spent the weekend there studying, you
know. It's funny you say that. Firstly, the shared
suffering when the bar is set high forges a much
tighter knit group. And I think that's something
that's lost in the conversation. But my first
apartment, Hialeah. we had the Kaiser sled and
it was on the roof of the, uh, the burn building.
So it was a five story tower. And then it was
on the, on the roof of that. So it was exposed
to, you know, Miami weather. So extreme heat
and these thunderstorms. So this damn thing was
all rusty and you'd hit it and it would barely
move. So we would sneak up just like you guys
sand it down, put WD 40 on it, but you know,
but then the instructor would see, we'd hit it
once and the fricking thing would slide all the
way across to the other side. Really? That's
one of the things. You can't leave firefighters
to their own devices. You leave them for long
enough, they'll find out a way to get themselves
in trouble or you in trouble. So you've got to
keep them occupied, definitely. But going back
to the recruitment, they finished the recruitment,
but the courses itself now are like 11. They
were eight weeks long in London. They've extended
that now for another two weeks on top of that.
But you hear horror stories of the training courses
and where they're at. The hot wares and stuff
that they do, they're not good enough as far
as I'm concerned. That's my personal opinion.
We should be putting people into a position where
you are at the point of dropping to your knees.
You need to experience that before you come to
a fire station. I remember we did something called
a varied conditions drill and exercise, and it
was basically you get paired up with your BA
partner. And it was this place, they basically
just hop -hopped it out with cribs. And it was
little tunnels where you had to turn around,
do the Superman thing to get through. And it
was over three floors. It was exhausting. Your
whistle would go on your set, so you're coming
down to 50 bar. They'd get you to break the seal.
They'd walk you out, take the cylinder out of
your back, put a new one in, turn it on, and
then throw you in and switch you around. And
you didn't know where you was, what day of the
week it was. But that was... So challenging,
and we're missing that now in our recruitment.
We get guys coming to the station. The level
of training that you get in fire -related hotwares
is not acceptable. I'm going into jobs with recruits,
and they're like, oh, it's a bit odd. I'm like,
you're kidding me, right? There's not even any
steam coming off this yet. And again, going back
to Hialeah, that's how it was there. They created
basically an unwinnable scenario, but they didn't
tell us it was unwinnable. And they said that
our jobs depended on it to see how far we would
push. And, you know, guys are thrown up in the
mask and exactly what you're talking about. They
had like a collapse maze. And so you couldn't,
you know, you couldn't DC your mask. So one guy's
breathing through his puke the whole time. Whenever
we're done, people getting like double lactated
ringers, IVs in both arms. And it was exhausting,
but the whole point was it was kind of like that
hell week mentality, like how far can you push?
Within reason, of course. They were very good.
I'll say this, very, very good when it came to
cooling, rehab, all that stuff. But it was the
worst of places that you took yourself. And then,
you know, since then, as I progressed through
my career and I found CrossFit, I also loved
the fact that you were redlining a workout, you
know, once, twice a week. So the last time you
were in a really fucking horrible place was Tuesday,
not Fire Academy 10 years ago. You know what
I mean? So I couldn't agree with you more. If
when you lower that bar, you do a disservice.
Now, you know, someone's stuck on the eighth
floor of a fire and they're freaking out. And
now they pull the mask off their face and they
die versus having that mental fortitude. And
the physical resilience to be like, this is awful,
but I know what awful is like. I've been here
before. I can get myself out. Yeah, I think a
large part of, you know, what we've done in regards
to martial arts and stuff, I think that's been,
that sets a different callus on your brain for
them times when it's tough, you know, or their
moments when it physically, you know, you've
got a second, third or fourth gear, or you've
got that second wind in the tank. There's been
times I've been in the, you know, doing shark
tank before about, and I've been absolutely blasted.
fresh opponent, fresh opponent, fresh opponent,
fresh opponent. And you're, you know, you're
25 minutes into, into sparring and you've got
nothing left. And then all of a sudden you hit
that sweet spot again and you go three or four
rounds. Like you've just walked into the, to
the cage. And it's definitely, definitely what
we need to put people in depression. We need
to put it in that environment where it is controlled
before it gets, before it does become out of
hand, you know? Absolutely. So where did you
find yourself assigned first after Academy? So
I come out of training school and I was assigned
to Bletchley Fire Station, which was literally
where I grew up, where the area I grew up. So
which was quite rare because they never used
to like you to serve in the area where you lived,
where you grew up. So so I ended up on Blue Watch
Bletchley Fire Station. I was there for a couple
of years and then they moved us to what was a.
Classed as like a super station back then. It
was called Great Home, which is in central Milton
Keynes, so one of the central to the city. Multi
-appliance station, had a turntable ladder, had
a command unit, two frontline appliances. So
watch strength of like, I think we had a watch
strength of around about 17, something like that.
So we've got loads of good fun. That was pretty
cool. Risks completely different. You know, the
city, high rises, some more high rises, et cetera.
uh overground trains bits and pieces like that
but yeah essentially started bletchley went over
to great home spent a number of years there but
yeah fans such a fond memory but both them stations
are gone now they're gone they've been knocked
down they've been knocked down and they've built
a super station you know the government timings
and and everything where the uk we had to supply
a fire engine within the first five minutes of
a call and then the second had to be within seven
minutes Because the government wanted to mess
about with statistics and start cutting stations
and stuff, they took that off the table. And
then all of a sudden, two of the main stations
within Milton Keynes have shut and put one right
in the middle. So we were never making times
what we would have done previously with the two
stations, the way that they were parted, you
know. So that was mildly frustrating. That was,
it got really frustrating, to be honest with
you. We had a few new... Group commanders, quite
high -level ranking officers come in, weren't
up for that watch mentality. So they started
moving an officer and several firefighters off
a watch and moving them around. So they wanted
to break that watch culture, which was beyond
me. And that was one of the reasons I ended up
transferring over to London. I've seen that in
quite a few departments. I never understand it.
Oh, we need to break that crew up, you know,
move them around. Or we'll rotate crews through
different stations. Seeing the value of a tight
-knit crew that is really familiar with their
area, with their first due, and they understand
the idiosyncrasies. You mentioned the train.
They know, we can't go down here for this call
because if there's a train going, we're going
to get stuck, so we can go around this way. That's
going to take us over a bridge. We can't go that
way. It's a one -way, or it dead -ends into a
park. Those are so important. And then the people,
the actual humans. Okay, it's probably this guy.
He's homeless. He's got a history of violence.
We've got to be careful. To break that up because
you're threatened by the egos or the strength
of the leadership in that department or whatever
the thing is, it never made any sense to me.
If that crew is working well and they're really
good at what they do and they have a thorough
knowledge of their first due, why would you rotate
them just for the sake of rotating them? Yeah,
I put that down to that senior management and
somebody having to do something to look for promotion.
So they've got to be seen to implement something
within the brigade that warrants a tick in a
box for their recruit, for them going for the
next promotion round to the upper levels, the
seniority, you know. But that was super frustrating.
I mean, it got to a point when I was in Bucks
as well. you guys out in the states i'm not sure
whether it's anything that you do we have our
retained section so which would be our volunteers
that get paid but then what happened was we started
getting um they started coming up with other
different shifts um for firefighters so we'd
have a uh bank shift which would basically be
anybody who was on call could apply for a bank
shift off any other station whether it be a retained
station a volunteer station to come to a whole
time station And then you'd have this resilience
crew. So crews that would only work days, wouldn't
do nights, wouldn't work weekends, but they'd
be expected to go anywhere within the brigade.
So there was one incident. I was driving. I turn
around. I look in the back of the cab. I've got
people that are all on more money than I am.
on different shift patterns. And it was like,
nah, this isn't right. I can't live with this,
you know. And we had a really snotty job out
on road traffic collision. And you've got guys
that are just not experienced enough or haven't
worked with before. And going back to that whole,
you know, maintaining that watch culture and
everybody's strengths and weaknesses. It was
just, yeah, it was starting to get mind -boggling
and I started to get a bit resentful. of the
brigade and everything they were implementing
at the time. Hence, again, the move. Going back
to being assigned to the station where you grew
up, one of the things that I never had to experience
because I always lived somewhere else, worked
in a different place than I lived, but you hear
the volunteers, especially here in America, and
the retained firefighters in the UK, did you
have any incidences where you ended up running
on someone that you knew? Yeah, yeah. I lost
somebody I went to school with, but I turned
up at a road traffic collision, a girl called
Lucy Redmond. We were the first on scene. She'd
been, was basically come in. So where in Milton
Keynes, it kind of like, it's built on the grid
system. It's similar to sort of the cities that
you guys have got in the States. It's like blocks,
built on that grid system. If you ever go wrong,
you just turn right, turn right, turn right again,
and you'll be back where you started, you know?
So dual carriageways. high speed road, 70 mile
an hour we were looking at, but then we had,
because you had these estates, these blocks,
you had people wanting to travel across a fast
moving lane of traffic, double lane, to get into,
to go the way that they wanted to go. And we
campaigned for years to get them cut off, because
the amount of road traffic collisions we were
attending was the majority of our calls at the
time. And she'd just come out and got T -boned
by a big old BMW doing that 70 mile an hour,
flipped her, flipped the car around, was first
on the scene and I remember it didn't dawn on
me to start with because the engine of the car
was out I was on the bonnet just holding sort
of just maintaining her airway and stuff and
it was like somebody switched a tap on just the
blood just started coming out of her nose really
quickly she started ripping around and that was
it she'd gone you know and that was yeah but
it didn't it didn't hit me straight away that's
who it was until we started tidying up the ceiling
the police were doing their thing and then you
go into the whole body retrieval thing you're
like wow wow i used to go to school with you
you know What impact did that have? Because like
I said, when I drive around Orlando, like when
I go to the airport, for example, I always go
past a place where I had a taxi versus two pedestrians.
My first call is a paramedic, standalone paramedic.
But, you know, so I visit the cities and when
I do drive there, I see these things, but I don't
live there. What impact did that have? Because,
I mean, this is something that our volunteers
really, you know, experience a lot and no one
talks about it that much as far as on the career
side. What impact did that have on you as far
as knowing a patient versus maybe later, especially
in London, where the chances of that were slim
to none? It affects me still now. A lot of my
family now have moved out from Milton Keynes,
but there's not a road where we didn't have a
road traffic collision. And unfortunately, what
they get, you go around Milton Keynes, you'll
see memorial after memorial. near the area where
that road traffic collision was. So there's a
constant reminder when you drive in. There's
certain roads that I won't even drive down because
it was so bad and it triggers memories and thought
processes and stuff. But yeah, there's parts,
like you said, there's areas that I won't drive.
There's roads that I won't drive down because
it triggers some memories and stuff with some
pretty gnarly road traffic collisions. One in
particular that I still struggle with, we had
on the A421. Two lorries, car stuck in the middle,
boom, just squished in between. We get there.
It's just nice and slow. There's nothing we can
do. The car's absolutely obliterated. It's down
the back of an Arctic. It's been pushed all the
way down the back of an Arctic. So we were there
for about four hours, cutting, moving, cutting,
moving, cutting, moving, body, body, body. And
then I think there's five people removed from
the car. It was just corseted like the length
of a dining room table. And there was a six -month
-old baby on the mum's lap. And that was the
only survivor of that incident. She was curled
up in the mum's lap. And that was the only person
that survived was that little baby stuck in that
car. And that, yeah, that was a huge one for
us, which I still struggle with to this day.
So that road gets bypassed, unfortunately, now.
Understandably so. This is what drives me crazy
in America. And I don't know, I'm assuming the
British driving standards are the same. But when
you contrast the two, having, you know, been
a 17 -year -old kid that took driving tests in
England, and then as a 27 -year -old took the
driving test here in America, our test standards
are so, so low. And I've been here, you know,
over 20 years now. And not once have I ever heard
a conversation about, well, what are we going
to do to make... You know, to improve the way
that we train our drivers, because they put roundabouts
everywhere here. No one's even had any education
on how to use a roundabout. I mean, it's insane.
So we have, but you're talking about memorials.
All our roads have just memorials everywhere,
little round circles with flowers next to them.
And it's over and over and over and again. And
I hold the UK up as probably some of the highest
standards of driving. A lot of our, you know,
when we were young, everyone was taking them
two, three, four times before they passed. And
our roads are dangerous, obviously, very narrow,
single lane each way, usually the lanes in the
countryside. I wish that the US would have the
humility to say, look, I think we have something
crazy like 6 million accidents a year. We lose
40 ,000 people, 40 ,000 people die every year,
every year. And that's probably hundreds of thousands
with life -changing injuries that survived and
zero conversation about the driving standards.
Yeah, so yeah, definitely. I think here, with
regards, I can... give my personal experience
with with an older daughter you know she's 24
watching her go through her driving lessons etc
and the things that the insurance companies implement
now with the insurances are so high that the
expectation is to have these little black boxes
in their car so they're only allowed to go out
at certain times of the night it flags up if
they break the speed limit so that can increase
their insurances so again that's another method
to keep in them if they don't have that within
their vehicle then their insurance premium is
through the roof you know more like more often
than not the insurance is going to cost more
than what the car is for their first vehicle
so they've got to have this black box there's
that period of time from say 10 o 'clock in the
evening and they're not allowed to drive and
go from six in the morning it monitors their
speed and then they'll get letters through and
all sorts so we yeah i mean i've driven in the
states a few times it's a bit wild it's a bit
too wild for me it is crazy Well, I know we obviously
were going to talk about kind of your mental
health journey. Just before we do, if it lines
up, what about some other career calls? They
don't have to be the nastiest, gory ones by any
means, but significant calls throughout your
career. Oh, yeah. Do you know, James, I think
I probably speak for a lot of people that do
this job, whether they be. you know ambulance
service ems that kind of thing firefighters i
can remember the first fatal incident i went
to and i can remember the last one that i went
to a couple of months back and everything in
between um they don't go away they don't you
can protect yourself as much as you can but some
which are some really significant ones which
really stand out for me um when i moved to london
one of the first incidents we had one of the
first incidents but one of the bad fables we
had we had a ram flat fire so it was a house
had been turned into two two flats essentially
entrance on the side for the upper flat for the
first floor and then a ground floor flat so we
turned up there's smoke coming around the back
of the house and there's guys with suitcases
coming out of the ground floor flat and i'm like
is anybody in there anybody in there they're
like yeah they could hear somebody banging about
so then right that gets flagged up personal reported
we've got every man and their dog turning up
then so we're going under air and by the front
door Tried to get the front door open. It's only
open by a couple of inches. Ramming, ramming,
can't get in, can't get in. Managed to drop my
shoulder and it blasted open the door and the
place was just hoarded like you could never imagine.
You were fighting to get up the stairs with the
amount of paper and stuff that was on there.
You were sliding back down again. And I could
see the glow and the fire licking around the
top on the landing. So we've gone up, we've gone
up to our BA partner, gone straight in. So as
far as we're aware, it's still personal reported.
So I've made a tackle on the fire, started to
get that under control, which was in a bedroom,
fully involved. It was punching out the window
out the back bedroom. And I sent the other guy
to go and search because it's personal reported.
So they're off searching. Soon as I dealt with
the fire. I'm in the kitchen having a search
and I was probably about, it felt like about
a metre off the floor with the amount of rubbish
and everything that was in there. As we're walking
around, I've then radioed and said, look, we're
going to need another crew in here. The place
is so heavily hoarded. We're not going to be
able to do a forest search unless we get another
crew to back us up. As I've ventilated the living
room, I've come back round, found the bathroom
and a guy sat on a plasterer's bucket full of
shit. sat on it naked there's a toilet overflowing
with human shit there's a bath full of piss and
shit and he's he's died on the toilet so I've
radioed down quite clearly he's been dead for
a while way before the fire because as you know
as you touch him the whole of his body's moving
he's rigid so he'd been dead for quite some time
and the fire had obviously started from whatever
happened in the bedroom But I'll never forget
that one. One, because of the scenario and how
bad. It was a registered flat to the Salvation
Army. And this guy was homeless. And he must
have just missed the loop. So that was awful.
But on top of that, I can remember our cultural
review had just come out in the brigade. So we
were getting hammered in the press. And I can
remember an officer saying to me, why don't you
bring him out? I was like, I beg your pardon.
He said, why didn't you bring him out? How did
you know he was dead? I said, look, between us,
the guys that were up there, the amount of time
I'd served and my experiences, I took my gloves
off. I had his head. I was looking. I was fit.
I was like, boss, he's gone. He said, well, you're
going to get asked a question on the back of
the cultural review. Did you leave him in there
because of his authenticity? I said, don't ask
me that question again. I said, if you ask me
that question again, I'll walk off this fire
ground. I said, you won't see me again. I said,
you have no idea the type of person I am or anything
about me. How dare you ask him questions? He
goes, well, it's going to get asked. And then
he goes, we don't play God. You don't decide
whether you leave a body behind. And that really
messed me up for a number of months. That thought
process going through my head, you know, why
did you leave him? We don't play God. I'm like,
he was clearly, he was clearly. But then that
makes you double check constantly then about
what happened. Off the back of that, there's
been a change to policy that we leave no bodies
and no bodies in situ anymore. you know unless
they're going to become overcome by fire so yeah
that was that was quite that was quite messy
but and unfortunately your dark humor and how
you get through it one of the guys actually did
all the calculations to see how long it would
have taken him to fill up the bath some high
level algebra right there oh my god yeah i was
like how did you do it so you take a measurement
and i'll go back to training school when we're
trying to figure out what walk we had in a bloody
lake to to supply but yeah so that that was pretty
that was pretty horrific but it was just seeing
kind of the hard thing with that was just seeing
how people get missed Mental health is such a
huge thing. And in London, there's so many people
which aren't getting the support or are flying
under that mental health radar, aren't registered.
And especially somebody in that position that's
so vulnerable, living in them conditions. People
weren't coming to check on him. People weren't
coming to see him. And hoarding itself is a mental
health, a tiling of mental health issues. And
why was this guy not supported? So that was really
difficult, the conversations coming off the back
of that. But we've had some, I mean, also I've
had some fantastic incidents where we've had
some really, really good outcomes. I got accommodation
in my last brigade in Bucks. We are very different
to London, very different because it's smaller.
I think the firefighters and the level of what
we do in the smaller brigades, I think we turn
out better firefighters. Unfortunately, one of
London's... One of London's strengths is also
one of their weaknesses, and that's the amount
of firefighters that we have. So to get to a
level on that cascade of training, things take
so long to do and implement. So we were really,
really good at a lot of things in Bucks. You
know, we were water rescue trained. We were line
rescue trained. We had chemical suits, everything
we'd have on our station. We had all the upgraded...
RTC equipment and everything like that. Whereas
in London, you've got rescue units specifically
for them jobs. So this one particular incident,
we were sitting down, having a cup of coffee
in the morning, bells go down, car in canal.
So I was driving, I was driving this day. So
we got the guys, so we used to take, depending
on the job, we'd take, obviously, we'd take the
chemical suits off the back and they'd put the
dry suits on and they'd be rigging. on route
and now you know what dry suits like it's an
absolute nightmare you know back of the truck
i'm driving they're trying to get fitted up turn
up on scene and there's a car in the middle of
the canal just bobbing around so this old guy
these morning routine he'd go to the coffee shop
just at the bottom of the canal would drive up
and he'd park up at the canal and he'd put his
handbrake on and he'd drink his coffee watching
the canal barges go past just drinking his coffee
and he was he's a disabled gentleman Somehow,
he's kicked the car into gear and he's just gone
boop, dropped off the edge and started bobbing
around in the water. So we get there, we're like,
right, you all right, sir? Everything cool? Yeah,
yeah, I'm all right, I'm all right. Just hold
on a minute. Guys are still getting ready, trying
to get their head through that bloody dry suit,
trying to zip it up. And we've got, there's two
members of public on the opposite side of the
canal. So we're sat there, waiting, waiting.
And you know in them moments, it feels like it's
taking forever, doesn't it, for something to
happen. And then all of a sudden, The car starts
to go, starts dipping down like it does in the
movies. And the roof starts dipping under the
water. So it's starting to go and I'm flipping
out on my governance. So I don't know whether
you do a similar sort of thing in the States
where you have to declare ops discretion. So
when we're going outside of policy to save all
life or to have a dramatic effect on whatever's
occurring. My governor at the time was a guy
called John Carson. He was my mentor when I joined
the fire brigade. Fantastic human, retired now,
still talk. And he's like, you good, Jase? I
was like, yeah. He goes, you're going in? I went,
yeah, yeah, yeah, I am. So jumped in the canal,
swam across, got to the car. Just as it's dipping
under the water and that pressure changed, boom,
managed to pull him out and then swim to the
side. You know, and that was, that was... probably
quite a thrilling sort of incident for us. And
that was, I've got the accommodation up on the
back wall there for that. And what ethnicity
was he and did that come into play? Yeah, he
was an old bloke. Yeah, I know, it's terrible,
right? But, yeah, that was fantastic. So that
was really, really cool. Really cool. You know,
you feel like the shit you get back. It's that
whole tea of medals when you get back to the
station. A cup of tea, pats on the back. You
know, the assistant chief, the ACO, Jason Thirlwall
at the time, comes down, shakes everyone's hand.
Well done, James. You've done a cracking job
under really difficult conditions using ops discretion.
And then you're just like that, aren't you? You're
taking it all in. But yeah, that was pretty epic.
But going back to John Carson, who was in charge,
he was a subbo at the time. He was my mentor
when I first joined the brigade. And I had my
first ever BA wear with him. And I'll never forget
it because it was the coolest fucking thing in
the world. It was a YMCA. I remember second floor,
flat fire. right none of this none of these nozzles
controllable nozzles you can cone up cone down
flow rates it was a what we call an old AWG branch
just a straight jet out of it you know blast
off your feet if you hear We're on the landing.
And I can remember Brent by the front door. And
he's like, you ready? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm ready. So the door goes in. We go in. And
he gives me the branch straight away. He's going,
don't do anything. Don't blast it down the road.
Just lay. Just wait. Slow down. And we've walked
in. And it's his kitchen's going. It's rolling
over like that. And we're sat on this sofa in
this lounge in this YMCA. And he's going, watch
it. Watch it. Look how interesting it is. Listen
to it. Look what it's doing. He said, now give
it a bit of water. And I will never forget that.
That was the best BA I've ever had in my life.
I was sitting there shitting myself. And he's
going, don't put any water on it. Don't put any
water on it. And I'm like, what? Yeah, it was
mega. So yeah, that's, but you know, lots of
stories, lots of, more often than not, unfortunately,
they're not the greatest outcomes. um in this
job you know i think that's one of the hardest
things that we deal with but we've obviously
we're there to rescue someone and we pass them
on to the ambulance service and sometimes we
don't get to hear the end result what happened
i mean whether that would help closure wise sometimes
quite possibly um but yeah oh god we've had some
some incidents over the years james one last
one um we turned up to a house fire A lady had
put around a mental health issue. She put a duck
duvet down around her neck, carried herself in
paraffin petrol and set herself on fire. And
we turned up, gone in through the door. She's
in the hallway, rapid, really hot, burning, burning
all her clothes off of her body, the poor thing.
Everyone's banging around and I'm just like,
rest, just rest, stop. I mean, she had 100 %
full fitness burns to her arms. I can remember
it vividly. And I'm like, look. I think she's
probably gone. I don't think, it was like a movie
scene. It was all in slow motion. And I'm like,
look, look, just stop. I don't think we're going
to need to move her. Don't think we're going
to need to move her. So I've knelt down, put
my, and my torch, just my torch has gone down
and shined. Her eyes have gone, and she's gone,
started to gasp. I was like, oh shit, I've got
to do something now. And what do I do? So I'm
trying to grab her arms. I can't grab her arms.
I had a deep glove that I ought to pull her arms
off. So I'm trying to squeeze under her head
and she's stuck to the carpet. So I pull around,
come around to the front. I'm getting one of
the guys trying to get her back up off the carpet.
And I've like double arm wrapped her legs and
I'm pulling, pulling. And I felt pop. My hammy
goes as I pull her off the carpet, get her outside.
The guys get straight to work with her, get straight
on her, breathe in. And the maddest thing with
this was Hems, so our emergency helicopter, our
trauma doctors turn up in a helicopter or a car,
so they've turned up on scene. They take over,
listening to them, watching what they do. It's
what you guys do is incredible. I'm still in
awe sometimes when I see you doing stuff on the
side of the road. It blows my mind. And Hems
doctor pulls us all round at the end. Once she's
off, gone. It's like, guys, she's got full fitness
burns to her arms, most of her body. If she doesn't
die tonight, she will be gone in a few days from
massive infection from the burn areas on her
body. About two months later, three months later,
we get a phone call from her carer asking if
her mobile phone, if we took her mobile phone
out of the house so she was still alive. They
amputated both of her arms and one of her legs.
And we were like, what the fuck? And that is
beyond me still to this day. I've seen people
and then to see someone that severely burnt and
yet still survive, it's just mind -boggling,
you know, mind -boggling. But yeah, that was
a crazy one. I had a guy, my two departments
ago, and it was a house fire. We were on the
rescue, which is like the fire slash EMS unit.
And as we're heading towards the fire, bunkered
up, ready to, you know. do the actual fire operation
side, the medic that was in that first queue,
their area, is crying out for a second ambulance,
a second rescue. They had a guy come out of the
house fully on fire. He's leaning up against
the fence. I think the neighbors had a hose,
so they hosed him down. So we get there. We got
this guy, again, full thickness burns, head to
toe. The only thing that wasn't burnt on him
were the soles of his feet. And so we end up,
you know, I jump over the fence. We do, you know,
the backboard standing takedown, get him over
the other side. And I wrote about this in my
first book. I'm literally at the head getting
ready to intubate him and almost like reflexively
because we do so many EMS calls. My partner,
who is the original medic, I jumped into his
rig. He'd ask the guy, sir, what's your name?
Now, this guy, you know. without being too graphic,
no nose, no eyes, fingers, everything is just
burnt off. And he answers as clearly as you and
I are speaking today. And I'm literally about
to intubate him. And I'm like, well, shit, I
guess I'm not intubating him now. So we end up
putting an O2 mask on him, just what we call
a normal breather, because he's talking to us.
I mean, he's conscious. It's insane. So I work
on the burns, which is for us just literally
basically putting a dry burn sheet on. The fire
is literally five minutes from the hospital.
So before we know it, we're already there. We
wheel this guy in with a mask on his face, completely
burnt to a crisp. So the ER looking at us like,
what in the fuck are you doing? And we're like,
wait, just listen. And we asked him a question
and he talks. And an hour later, he was dead.
But what was just insane is... I'm not a big
religious person or anything. I'm not a big ghost
hunter person. But I have never seen a clearer
example of a spirit not knowing that the body
was dead. Because anatomically, his tongue was
gone. I mean, there is no way that his airway
or his vocal cords should have been intact. But
he was speaking as clearly as you and I now.
So it's another comparative burn story. insane
but yeah i mean i'm so glad that your woman you
know was able to recover and hopefully the duvet
saved her you know from some of that it's insane
isn't it but yeah um that was what you went to
there where you were speaking to him i can remember
kneeling there my ba sets off and i'm trying
to help the paramedics are in and they're asking
her to move her leg and she's moving her leg
and she's listening she and it's she's responding
i'm like why this does this is insane Absolutely.
The human body is an incredible, incredible piece
of equipment. Absolutely. I want to circle around
to something you said before, because one of
the things that we don't talk about a lot, obviously,
the stories you've just told people like, oh,
well, you know, that would be challenging to
your mental health. But there are so many other
elements. Sleep deprivation, I harp on all the
time. But, you know, the organizational stress
and or betrayal piece is a big part of this conversation
and really what a lot of people struggle with.
Talk to me about what a cultural review is and
then what impact did that conversation about
leaving that gentleman in the house have on you
personally? Well, the cultural review come off
the back of the government implementing it. Once
we have the Her Majesty's come out at the time,
they come out and they inspect the fire brigade
and they see that we had lots of failings. Off
the back of that, the fire brigade then did their
independent review, which they got somebody to
come in. And his findings was there was a systemic
racial abuse, systemic racial abuse, misogyny,
all sorts of stuff. But all the stories and everything
that he'd investigated was from many, many years
ago. And a lot of it was from senior management
in that office environment, the firefighters.
Pretty much it was, look, I'm not saying, I'm
100 % certain that people have been through things,
you know, racism 100 % within the fire service.
You know, I've seen it myself when I've been
on duty, when I first started. Misogynistic people,
I've seen it, you know. But that being released
then to the public, it... We took a bit of a
battering for a number of months. What that did
for us and our relationship with the community
and the people within the community, we were
at points shutting down the fire stations because
usually we have an open -door policy where we're
on shift. The base of the doors are open. If
anybody wants to come in, they can visit with
their children, their family. We'll take them
around the station, do all that kind of stuff.
It got to a point where we were having to lock
the fire stations down. we were getting some
pretty significant abuse from the community members,
and rightly so from the stories that were on
there. But going back to that moment when I was
asked that question, that hit hard. That really
did hit hard at that moment in time because it's
irrelevant. Essentially, what we're going to
do is rescue somebody. Anything else is irrelevant.
Our sole goal, our sole purpose is to be in that
environment, to be there to try and save somebody's
life. And to be told you've made a conscious,
potentially a conscious decision to leave somebody
because of their authenticity or that you've
played God, it was really difficult to deal with
for a number of months. I mean, and it still
grates me now. I wish I had the opportunity to
speak to that officer. we london being so vast
so they just dissipate into the the numbers that
are there you know but yeah hugely impactful
the whole cultural view everything had a huge
impact and we're coming out the other side now
we've done the right things as a brigade that
implemented the right things to improve the investigations
have taken place you know everything seems to
be on the right path now we've got our relationships
back with the community that's for sure kind
of what's the day's is what's the day's news
is soon tomorrow yesterday's you know it goes
pretty quick um but it was a pretty rough time
for the brigade definitely definitely i don't
think there's a profession that demonstrates
how race gender sexual orientation matters less
than the fire service and the reason i say that
when we're in a structure fire and we're in our
bunker gear You can't tell who the black one
is or the straight one or the gay one or the,
you know, the woman. But you can tell who the
shit one is and who the good one is, who the
fit one is and who the fat one is. You know what
I mean? So I've always said the only prejudice
in the fire service is those who can and those
who can't. And that needs to be there. That's
a legitimate prejudice. But the thought that
you're going to make entry to a fire, you know.
Fight your way to the front door, you know, break
your way open through the front door, fight your
way through all kinds of human shit to get to
someone and then be like, oh, turn around. It's
a black bloke. You know, we're leaving. It's
insane. The same way as an American cop pulls
over a car that's got all tinted windows, which
is everyone here. And then, you know, oh, it's
because it was you couldn't even see through
the window. What are you talking about? You've
got no idea who that person was. And that that
kind of messaging, I think, is so. irresponsible
because are there racists are there misogynists
are there all the things yes as there are carpenters
and plumbers and shopkeepers and bankers and
accountants but is it rampant through police
fire i mean from all the places that i've ever
been exposed to the answer is no 100 yeah 100
i totally agree with you that um it's just it
it's just the question that he felt he had to
ask and i said you don't What even gives you
the, you know, where in your mind do you think
that's even an acceptable question to ask at
this moment in time? I was literally covered
in human shit from the searching because it had
been defecating around the whole of the house.
So we've been decontaminated. It's at like 3
o 'clock in the morning, James. I'm stood there
in my uniform, pairing my fire boots because
our decontamination policies and stuff are probably,
I think, slightly different to your guys. So
our kit and everything goes straight away, our
bunker kit, if you like, our fire kit's gone.
So we're stood there getting debriefed. I'm soaking
wet through from head to toe from the sweat from
working so hard. And then to be asked that question,
it's like, wow. Wow. Speaking of mixed messages,
I have heard a chief in two departments ago say
to an orientation class, and we were talking
about, I forget even why it came up, but he was
saying in the UK, the firefighters don't go interior.
And basically the whole thing was how heroic
we are as American firefighters, because we go
in and in Europe, they don't go in. I'm going
to give you the microphone if you want to correct
that statement at all. Well, it's the risk versus
benefit, right? We get that. Look, we have become
risk averse. We have gone. From when I joined,
James, to this moment in time, the brigade has
changed dramatically, drastically in equipment,
firefighting techniques, the equipment that we've
got. Everything's changed, has had an impact.
When I first joined, we'd be going into a derelict
structure fire. We would. We'd go in. We'd go
through the front door. We'd be straight in now.
We'd go and do what we were taught to do. Now,
very, very different. It is very different. The
larger complex, I say complex, but warehouse,
you know, kind of commercial buildings, if it's
not personally reported, that risk versus benefit.
that risk versus benefit you know to save savable
life or what we frame people in there for to
essentially what's a derelict property we will
hand back we will hand back definitely for sure
but there are moments there's still moments when
if we can save that building you know if it's
a if it's a working establishment a working commercial
building we will put we will put people in we
will put people in to to get in there but the
structures and everything is so different to
you guys we spoke about it briefly before i believe
that um you know a lot of ours are brick built
sandwich panels they go on about but it loses
its integrity at certain degrees and temperature
still you know all that kind of stuff but we
do go we do get in there we do get messy i mean
just look at grenfell for example like super
dangerous fire and you had you know so many people
making you know incredible rescues from like
we said 20 plus stories up and we have the same
thing like If you are going to an industrial
complex and there's no report of anyone trapped,
you don't need to send firefighters in to look
for some mythical person that would be in the
middle of a chemical warehouse at two in the
morning when the security guard said there's
no one in there. Conversely, like you said, I
have been to apartment complexes that are boarded
up and I've watched families pull the boards
back, go in, you know, basically pseudo homeless
families and then pull the boards. So there's
that as well. but it's it's same here risk versus
gain but there's there's almost like a narcissistic
element to some you know uh firefighters ideas
of what we're supposed to do that well there's
always a chance you know that could be there
you need to go into every single fire and that's
bullshit that's how you get firefighters kill
you know risk a lot to save a lot risk a little
to save a little so the uk and the us are no
different you've got the same mindset If you've
got a tower block that's covered in petroleum
products, that's, you know, I mean, just every
single flat is being incinerated and you've still
got firefighters, you know, making an interior
push and trying to evacuate people and fighting
fire. That's, you know, that's what you did.
And I think that's what killed me when they started
kind of dragging the fire service, the London
Fire Brigade through the coals over that. But,
you know, again, you know, you've got some surround
and drowned incident. Why would you put some
in? Or every single window has fire blowing out.
Why would you crawl into that? No one in there
is going to survive. So it kills me when we have
this arrogance in the American Fire Service because
we're all doing the same thing around the world
and you learn from each other. But to think that
you're better because of fairy tales that you're
making up about other departments, every opportunity
I get to debunk that. you know i'm gonna and
for example how many people have fought a literal
towering inferno i never have but there's many
men and women in the london fire brigade that
did and it's amazing yeah for sure so um when
i joined london um i joined just after grenfell
and the watch i joined had they were one of the
early pumps onto that incident so just hear their
stories and what they did on that night um to
be completely honest is heroic to the lengths
that some of them push and members of my watch
what they did on that day is just outrageous
you know the amount of work they did the stairwell
was compromised straight away early on in the
incident these guys were under air getting up
to 18 20 stories and then bringing people down
you know the place with the cladding was going
that it was yeah it was just nothing short of
absolute heroes you know um but then seeing the
way that the inquest and inquiry was handled
and pulling the brigade for it and it was a brigade's
issue again that puts in a standpoint against
the community that it was all our fault when
essentially well there was failings there was
failings that come off the back of the cultural
review there were things that we needed to do
better and that was understand breaching and
compartmentation you know going to that go as
soon as we can if that breaching compartmentation
from upper floors goes further than we expect
it to go then we should be getting looking at
full evacuation i mean there's still uh solid
to digress but there's still something like 130
tower blocks in london with the same cladding
on it so it's not a matter of if it's when it
happens again you know uh what the government
are doing is it's just taking too long it's just
taking too long to sort these issues out but
yeah well and again learning from these events
look what happened in hong kong basically a version
of they had plastic netting on scaffolding that
did exactly the same thing and i think the death
toll was what 140 150 people so you know it's
it's if if we're arrogant and we look at other
departments down our nose then we're not learning
anything if we're humble i would hope that everyone
in the us would go to you know look at grenfell
and say all right what did you What did you do
right? What did you feel like, you know, didn't
work this time? And I think the big thing was
shelter in place, wasn't it? And in a high rise,
usually you would because it should be able to
contain it. But you've got basically fire load
strapped to the side of the building. That's
a whole different conversation. So, you know,
the tactics, if not then, the next time, like
you said, have to be completely different. The
moment you get a fire on that kind of structure,
you've got to try and get everyone out right
at the beginning. Yeah. Some of the stories you
hear, essentially, they were going up to the
upper floors and knocking on doors. And think,
these guys have got to live with this. These
firefighters have to live with this for the rest
of their life. Knocking on the door saying, right,
the safest place for you is to stay in your flat.
It's compartmentalised. It should protect you.
But essentially, it just, you know, them guys
are knocking on doors and walking away. And they've
left them families and people in there. And they've
got to live with them decisions, you know. And
that was down to, it is, we had our failings
for sure with how we and training and stuff and
how we look at high -rise fires what we implement
i know a big thing with you guys is wind -driven
fires and your high -rises we don't even touch
anything like that here um but yeah lots of things
have been implemented off the back of that how
we should do it we've been looking out with our
unions whether or not we can go above the fire
floor without going under air Because essentially,
depending on where our bridgehead is set up now,
it's usually two clear floors below the fire.
That's where you'll go under air and then go.
And then we'll have a search sector. But there's
been discussions about whether or not we can
go above the fire without putting our BA steps
on and all that kind of thing. So there's still
discussions going on now. So what we could implement
to get to them upper limits, them upper floors
that you're not going to get to when you're going
under air on the 5th and getting all the way
up to the 20th. Yeah, it's interesting, but it's
terrifying at the same time. It is. I think it
was Tampa. When I was on the West Coast looking
to come back to the East Coast, sadly, it was
right when we had the 08 crash, so no one was
hiring. But they had special operations, and
one of them was helicopter insertion in a high
-rise fire. So they would drop firefighters on
the roof, and they would fight from the top down,
which I thought was amazing. But when I think
about Grenfell, There's no way in hell you'd
be able to do that because the fire was burning.
So you're not going to be able to insert. The
helicopter wouldn't be able to get close. And
if they did, they'd basically be frying the firefighters
on the end of the line anyway. So, you know,
it is such a complex conversation. And I remember
the criticism was the aerials, the ladders, not
be able to reach. Well, that's just a complete
misunderstanding of information by the public
because, I mean, you know, most aerials here
are 100 feet. So you're lucky if that's even
eight floors. Yeah, yeah. And that's the issue,
is the perception of what was laid out, that
inquiry and how we... We dealt with it on the
day. But with the high rise, we've got two new
turntable ladders now, you know, 64 meters. So
what's that? A hundred and something foot that
goes. But that's still not going to get to the
top of that high rise. No. And also the roads
aren't, you know, the infrastructure is not there
for it. The positioning of that turntable ladder
to get the best reach to get to the highest point
in that building, you're not going to get it.
You know, you're not going to be able to service
all of one side of that building with that turntable
ladder. So it's yeah, it's it's it's crazy. Absolutely.
Well, let's kind of go on your mental health
journey, because I know you've got a pretty powerful
story to tell. You know, when you reflect back
now, what were some of the the events or the
beginnings of the downward spiral? And then where
was the lowest place that you found yourself?
Oh, wow. So back in 2009, I was. Personal life
was in a bit of a rough area. I was going through
a divorce, not getting to see my children, etc.
Trying to maintain and be present at work. We
had a particularly horrible incident. And still
to this day, I don't know whether that has any
drive on what one of the guys did after that
incident. But he went home, put a dog choker
chain around his neck and tried to hang himself.
So I can remember sitting at home. that day and
getting a call from my station officer saying
jay she's sitting down i was like yeah he goes
such and such um he's in hospital he's intubated
at the moment he tried to take his own life and
it was a combination of lots of things it wasn't
it wasn't that incident it wasn't that moment
i think it was just where my mental health was
with regards to I was pretty much homeless, sofa
surfing. I was living back at home with my parents,
which is really difficult to do when you get
to a certain age, you know, really hard. And
I'd had a huge row with my pops back then. And
it was just unattainable for me to live in their
house. So I was sofa surfing. I was at a point
I was in a tent. I was staying in a shed. So
I was pretty much homeless. and it was it was
really difficult then I then I just my mental
health I wasn't wasn't right to be at work I
wasn't there I wasn't good enough to be at work
I wasn't in the right frame of mind I had some
time off went back probably too soon broke down
uh broke down in tears broke down crying and
obviously went back to just not existing you
know just living just trying to get from day
to day I was still paying a mortgage in the house
financially I was really struggling and um Alcohol
took a big part of my life at that time as well
because I just wanted to sleep through the days,
wanted to get away from everything that was happening.
I'd do a strip of diazepam a day, you know, to
sleep the day off. And I was in a pretty dark
place, you know, really, really dark place. And
because I'd been off for a period of time, it
sort of hit certain triggers. So fortunately
enough, I gave up seeing further ahead now. Mental
health was definitely... looked at differently
and was really current around that time or starting
to get its currency. You know, people were really
standing up and looking and the brigade were
implementing things. So I got a link officer,
a guy called Terry Ridgely. He's no longer with
us. But circumstances, events happened that completely...
I still to this day, if they hadn't happened,
I wouldn't be here to this day. I got to a point,
James, where enough was enough. I just didn't
think I was good enough to be here. I wasn't
a good enough man. I wasn't a good enough husband.
I hadn't been a good enough father. And I got
a bottle of Orimorph and I just drunk it and
fell asleep. And fortunately enough, it was in
a tattoo studio at the time because I was working
at a tattoo studio. I was doing some tattooing
and drawing stuff. And one of the guys had forgot
their sketchbook, come back to collect his sketchbook.
If he hadn't come back, he wouldn't have found
me. You know, I was shallow breathing, virtually
in respiratory arrest and just slowly passing
away, really. So he called the ambulance. I got
took into hospital. And then that kind of started
to come. all come out there and everything that
was going on. They were going, well, look, you're
depressed. You need to be medicated. And I nearly
went down that route. But Terry Ridgely, this
man, he was like, right, he'd come to see me
every week. He'd come and take my clothes, go
and wash my clothes. He'd take me out for some
breakfast. He'd give me a little bit of money
because I was on my ass. I had nothing, nothing
at all. And he's like, look, we need to get you
back on your feet. He said, you need to find
somewhere to live. A solicitor's letter's coming
through, getting charged every time a solicitor's
letter comes through because the divorce was
a little bit messy at that moment in time. And
I can remember going back to that tattoo studio,
going to lay down where I'd previously just nearly
passed away and sat there in a car and I just
burst into tears. And just as I look up, it's
in this little post called Coffridge Close, just
as I look up, there was a sign for solicitors
and they specialise in family law. And I walked
over, I knocked on the door. This lady called
Wendy's answered the door. And I'm just in floods
of tears. And she's like, you're all right, you're
all right. I said, yeah, I see. I just need some
free advice, some advice. You do a free consultation.
She says, I do. Sit down, let me get you a cup
of tea. True English way, a cup of tea, a couple
of sugars, makes everything better. So I sat
there and she was passing me tissues. I was inconsolable
for a little while. She said, what do you do,
Jason? What do you do for work? I said, I'm a
firefighter. And she went, did you attend a firing
past them just down the road and save some horses?
I went, I did. I attended that incident. I was
on duty. And she went, I've been meaning to give
thanks to the fire brigade since that incident,
but I've just never had the chance to go and
thank anybody. So for that reason, I'm going
to represent you for free. So she sat me down,
went through everything. We started going through
everything. And it was just that combination
of events, which was just, it's honestly, if
it wasn't for that, somebody's definitely looking
down on me for sure. So she started dealing with
all of that side of everything for me. Letters
to the solicitors and it pretty abruptly stopped
because it just so happened, believe it or not,
that the solicitor that was sending the letters
and coming through was trained by Wendy at her.
Crazy. So, yeah, she had a, let's just say she
had a bone to pick with her. So she was really,
really on it for me. And then off the back of
that, I found a little flat, like a little bed
sit. Went to Terry Ridgely, my link officer for
the Firefighters Charity in London, who are,
well, not in London, but the Firefighters Charity
in this country, a fantastic organization. I
cannot speak highly enough of them and what they've
done for me and still to this day what they do
for me or have done for me. And he said, you
need to find somewhere to live. So I found this
little place. And he said, how much is it? I
said, I can't afford it, Terry. It's like 900
pounds. I got the two months rent down. It's
like 900 pounds. And he's like, don't worry,
I'll sort that out. So he literally drove to
the bank. Where he got that money from to this
day, I don't know. Whether it was out of his
own pocket or whether it was from the charity,
I don't know. So we went back and we went, bombed,
paid cash. Next thing, I've got a place to live.
You know, nothing in it. I was sleeping on the
floor, but nothing in it at all. It was on that
airfield. So it was on the drop zone where I
skydived. So there's a really cool community
of people that I got to sort of started to look
after me and got some really strong friendships.
And I was slowly getting back to work. I've gone
to work one day. I've come back home expecting
to just come to a house, sleeping bag on the
floor. And the whole house had been kitted out.
My flat, sorry, had been kitted out. I had a
bed, I had a TV unit, TV cutlery. condiments,
everything. The guys had gone off, gone and donated
everything or anything that they could find to
support me. And that was just like, when you're
down and you're bad and you're dark and you're
in that place and still to this day, it's just
like, wow, people will do that for other humans,
you know? And I can remember just sitting there
and then that kind of all just started to...
Roll on from there. I managed to get back to
work, counselling and stuff. And then we started
to look into all my triggers, which I'm still
trying to figure out now. You know, I still have
moments where things can happen, but I'm getting
better. I'm learning what I need to do for myself
and understanding my triggers and what I need
to do I'm quiet for me and me personally with
my mental health I have to have a quite a rigid
routine so I'm up early in the morning and I
need to do something where it's 15 minutes of
moving a bit of self -reflection a bit of meditation
if I knock out that that's that system then things
start to whittle their way back in a little bit
so I have to maintain that but um yeah essentially
I was back in a flat. Then my kids started to
see my kids again. I was back at work. And then,
yeah, it just went from there. We got to a point
where we talked about medicating me because the
doctors were like, you're just depressed. I'm
like, well, hold on a minute. You know, there's
a reason I feel like I do. Yeah, I'm depressed.
Yeah, it's shit. But hold on a minute. I just
got divorced. I'm not seeing my children. I nearly
passed away. I haven't had anywhere to live.
There's reasonings behind why I'm feeling the
way that I'm feeling. You know, so slowly, one
of the, going back to that, one of the hardest
things I found mentally was I was a trained competitor.
You know, I fought, I fought professionally in
mixed martial arts. And I thought I had a strong
mindset. I thought I had a strong mental aptitude
and I could hold my own, you know, and I could
put things away. But I was completely broken.
Anything I'd learned through that, there was
nothing I could control. The counselors were
like, well, that's exactly the issue. There's
circumstances out of your control. When it comes
to competing in mixed martial arts, I knew if
I trained my ass off and got as fit as I could,
I'd give anyone a scrap. Worst case scenario,
you was going to come out with some lumps and
bruises on you, bumps and bruises, you know.
But not being able to understand why I couldn't
control what was going on in my head was really
difficult. So we looked at some medication and
stuff, and I was like, no, I don't need it. And
then, yes, slowly got back to work, got back
into the rhythm of things. I've had a few blips
along the way since then, but essentially I can
look back now and look in onto that of 2009 and
really see how poorly I was and how far I've
come, you know, how far I've come from then and
how well I understand myself and my own triggers
and stuff now. So, yeah, it's... It was circumstances
of offense, I think, you know, had triggered
a butterfly effect, if you like, which kept me
here and gave me a purpose. My nan always said,
I'm here for a reason and you're here to help.
And yeah, that was that really. So I learned
a tremendous amount of vulnerability of what
I've been through. And I can share that with
people that I work with, you know. But, yeah,
it was a tremendously difficult time and I just
was lucky enough to come out the other side of
it through the right people and the right things
happened at the right moment, you know. I want
to get to the reason that you're still here,
but just... Going back to when you were struggling
immensely, when we see the mental health posters
and the conversations, sadly, usually it's, well,
Jason saw all these horrible things, some of
these calls that you talked about, and that's
why he's struggling. And we're missing a lot
of the conversations about suit deprivation,
about moral injury, organizational stress, et
cetera, et cetera. But on the actual conversation
of when people get to that point of suicide,
the way that - We heard people talking when we
were young was suicide is selfish, it's cowardly.
How could you think of your kids? But then you
listen to people. And in my case, hundreds of
people that have been there, some of whom actually
went through their attempts and they survived.
A lot of people were there and then they had
that God moment, just like you did with the tattoo
artist. But with this. perfect storm of all things
you know the everything from the job then you
know relationship issues etc etc that perfect
storm it's never one thing it's everything there
seems to be a miswiring of the brain where the
people actually believe that they are the reason
for the people that they loves pain and if they
just remove themselves everyone will be happier
did you have that little voice in your ear yeah
yeah i did i did and you know what I'll be completely
honest and vulnerable here. I still get it. I
still get it today when I've had them moments,
but that's something I'm not going to act on.
You know, that was when I look back to that moment,
it was a fuck you. I've had enough kind of moment.
And I've got the tools and the conscious ability
now to recognize before I get anywhere near that
again. But I certainly had that moment. Yeah,
I certainly did, buddy. Well, I think this is
why it's so important because that's a huge red
flag. If we are hearing a voice, if we're starting
to believe that we are the issue, we're a burden
to the people that we love, when a clear mind
obviously knows that when we take our own lives,
we add more pain to our family, it reframes that
miswiring of the brain. So at that moment, in
theory, it makes that act courageous and selfless.
If you truly believe that... if I just go, everything
will be better, then that's a sacrifice. But
obviously, it's a conversation from a distorted
mind at that point. So be able to pull people
back away from that, get them to kind of start
healing, as you said, surrounding them with community
and all this love that you were exposed to. It
quietens that mind again and people are able
to see, well, wait a second. No, you know, my
kids do love me. You know, my parents do love
me, et cetera, et cetera. But it's such a dangerous
voice that's compounded by our profession because
you've already got these struggles. And then
day in, day out, you're adding more trauma. You're
adding more sleep deprivation. So it's chipping
away at this even more. So hearing this over
and over and over again, this feeling of being
a burden, I think it needs to be front and center
in the mental health conversation. So when you
start hearing that voice, that's when you need
to start telling people. That's when you need
to lean into the people you love, because that's
the beginning of that really, you know, crisis
downward spiral by that point. Yeah, for sure.
And I felt like I had nobody to approach, nobody
to talk to. I mean, we're talking 2009. You get
to now how prevalent, how it's... People applauded
for their vulnerability for speaking about their
mental health, which is fantastic. I think that's
definitely, it's incredible. But I felt like
I had nowhere to turn. You know, the Firefighters
charity helped me in one aspect of support, but
I didn't realise what we had there was the mental
health counselling aspect of it, where you can
get a certain amount of trauma sessions, counselling
and all this kind of stuff now. They've got Harcum
House where you can go and have reset. breaks
with them so you can go and spend seven days
and they do a bit of movement you do meditation
you have group sessions there's so many things
in place and it is it is it is current and i
and it is a brilliant thing that we have i'm
hoping now that people have the ability to to
when they feel vulnerable when they feel down
that they have that opportunity to speak to people
and i think going back to the watch culture especially
on a fire station when people when you're when
you've got that click and you've been together
for a long time you can see you can read people
you know when you're self -aware you can see
them when people might not be quite right you
know and you can just check in on them but you
create an environment where people feel safe
and willing to open up when they are feeling
it when they're not feeling right i mean now
especially With the brigade as such, we have
a fatal incident, we get a POS team, they phone
us up straight away, straight after the incident,
we have a critical debrief, then they'll come
down and you're off of counselling straight away.
I mean, that wasn't the case back in 2009, but
it was a combination of lots of things, you know,
not just the incidents. They were an icing on
the cake, if you like, but it was everything
else that led up to that as well. Well, also
your story highlights how important community
is. And if you look even... Recently, I think
there's been studies that have shown that even
just longevity in general, like the ability to
stave off disease, is less about even diet and
exercise and more about relationships. And so
when we were talking, for example, at the beginning,
the high bar that set the front door of the fire
service creates this cohesive team, these relationships
that will be there through your whole career.
Those are the people that not only see if you're
struggling, but as in your case, all those members
of the tribe that came together, surrounded you
and gave you the foundation to then pick you
up. So when we see this kind of divisive nastiness
that's being pumped at the moment, it's no wonder
that we have more of a mental health crisis.
The way that we counter that, whether it's in
our profession or even nationally or internationally.
is that we re -find the very community that,
as the phrase says, it takes a village. If you
look far enough back in time in human history,
we existed in these small groups that were there
for each other whatever we were going through.
Yeah, it was shared trauma, wasn't it? And that's
what we try to do now. There's something which
food, exercise... All of these things are the
huge parts of playing now in my life and my mental
wellbeing, for sure. You know, getting up in
the morning, getting training. But back then
when that disappeared and gone away, you didn't
realise how much of an impact that exercise had.
And then being at station, being around the people
that I, you know, that I cared about. But when
you're not there, you soon become a memory rather
than being pertinent or present in people's life.
People do forget about you. you know um and i
was lucky enough to have the skydiving community
them guys which all clubbed together and did
what they did for me at that time for sure so
talk to me we're switching a little bit now about
um unified against violence yes okay so actually
two years ago today 16th of december was when
we first um we first set the charity up myself
and um miriam martinez we Basically, being in
the position that we're in within London, like
most fire brigades, we're still in a very privileged
position. We're not going to front door. 99 .9
% of members of the community are going to open
their front door and let us in. London itself
currently at the moment, James, I think from
March up to March last year, so 2025, London
itself had over 16 ,300 sharp implement attacks.
So that works out around about 43 a day. So that
would be somebody being held up at knife point,
somebody not, they're not all ending in, you
know, physical stabbings, but there's, there's,
there's sharp implements of pain. That's, that's
horrendous. And then you boil that down to our
borough. And currently at the moment within the
borough that I work in, we've got an average
around about four stabbings a day or four attacks
a day, two shootings a week. It is, it is, it's
incredible. And we're turning up to more and
more of these incidents, you know, because the
LAS, the London Ambulance Service, is so stretched.
We're getting called to incidents where it might
be a road traffic collision, for example. We
get there and it's the gangs run someone off
their bike. Or we get there and it's been essentially
a drive -by shooting with a small caliber rifle
and you can't see the entry rooms and no exit
rooms. So it's really hard to figure out what's
going on. It was really kind of like understanding
what we could do, what we can implement, maybe
to support the community, especially the borough
that I was in at the time with Brent. And I remember
driving around, we'd come past and the truck
would come past the courts and there was like
a defib box on the wall and it had bleed kit
written on it. So I'm like, what's that? So I
started doing some investigation. Basically,
it's a catastrophic bleed kit, you know, tourniquet,
blast bandages, Olay dressings and things like
that. within this box. So I went back to the
station and started thinking about it. Spoke
to my borough commander at the time. He was a
fantastic man called Alan Allmark. And I took
the idea to him and said, look, I want to put
bleed kits and defibs on the front of our fire
stations for public access. And I'm going to
upload them to this Good Samaritan app. And then
what will happen is if you dial 999 and you need
a defib or if you need a bleed kit, it will tell
you where the closest is. Whether or not you'll
get there in time, that catastrophic bleed is
a different, but they're there. And if somebody's
on duty, we will support you. That truck will
come out and help. All right. So all of this
stuff, we then put a training package together
for the firefighters within Brent to start upskill
their training to deal with catastrophic bleeds.
And then essentially that organically grew into
a registered charity, which is now a community
interest charity. So it's a non -profit organization.
And what we try to do is we try to go into the
worst affected boroughs in and around London.
And we basically look at all of the... the local
um charities and foundations within that but
which is pertinent to that borough and try to
do and we put together an event essentially get
everybody around so like freshers week at university
or college you know lots of different lots of
different things that are available to you so
we're showing what's available for people which
might have loved ones that are currently serving
in prison but don't have that link officer or
the ability to understand a system or how to
get into into prison to see their loved ones
We started working with a fantastic charity called
Jigsaw, which do conflict resolution. Unbelievable
guys. They do the mentoring and conflict resolution
of these young people. He also goes out and picks
these young people up, which are deemed as high
risk. And he'll go out any time, day or night,
Chris, and he'll go and take these kids out of
these dens and bring them to a safe haven. And,
yeah, incredible work. Yeah, we organically started
to get together and I started to meet some really
interesting people. So I think we spoke briefly,
met a guy called Farron Paul. So Faz Amnesty
runs his Instagram stuff. And this guy was a
former gang member, I think. And he got, I might
be wrong, but I'm sure he got stabbed on two
separate occasions up to nine times. So had to
like learn to walk again, all of that kind of
stuff. And he set up. his charity faz amnesty
so what they do farron paul his name is what
he does is he goes out and he collects knives
from these gang members and stuff but he has
a system where he can contact you you can contact
him through instagram so once he has that trail
of conversation if that young person gets caught
with a knife coming to meet him he can show that
he's going to put the amnesty put in his knife
into an amnesty bin and um Oh, I could be wrong
with the numbers, but there was something like
12 ,000 knives which had confiscated. I mean,
samurai swords, zombie knives, all sorts of stuff.
And then he'd obviously put them back into the
police and then had them into the police stations
within them boroughs. And then we met a guy called
Christian Dippo who runs the Spartan Warrior
Project. They do community workshops. They support
young people by movement. They do all this calisthenic
stuff, break dancing and tons of stuff for the
community. But what was really unique with them
at the time was they were taking the knives which
had been handed in and confiscated and handed
in to the Met Police. They were taking them,
smelting them down. And then IMO, the guys at
Blacksmiths would mount them down and they were
making outdoor gym equipment with them. So they
were making outdoor gym areas. I think they got
one in Brixton, one in Croydon. And then these
guys are going out off their own back, completely
non -profit and putting on calisthenic training
sessions. from kids all the way up to you know
adults and some of the stuff they're doing is
insane so organically met some really cool people
so yeah the charity's been officially up and
running now as a as a registered charity for
about a year and yeah it's just um we're in a
horrible position where we're having to be reactive
because of what's happened for so long how we
stop how we support these young people is um
essentially These kids are groomed and targeted
at a very young age. They're looked at by their
gangs from outside. They're usually from single
-parent families where mum might be working two
jobs. She'll be coming home late, so they'll
be on their own until 7, 7 .30 at night, 8 o
'clock at night, whatever it may be. And they
give them that family feeling that they've...
You know, that they've not had a place of, you
know, a place that they feel like they're part
of a family. And that starts quite simply by
money, buying them things. You know, these are
the things that they can recognize family members
when they're behaving different, coming home
in new clothes and stuff. And that's how they
do it. They just pull them in, pull them in.
And I've heard some horrific stories, you know,
of young people because they target that age
group. They know that if they get caught with
anything on them. by the police. The police can't
do anything because they're so young. You know,
they could get tagged, but they can't go into
a prison or anything like that. They can go into
youth establishments and they can get tagged,
but there's nothing that they can really do.
So I think a large problem why this has been
happening is the loss of youth centres, the ability
for these young people to go out and do stuff.
And I'm a great advocate for sport. i've seen
what it's done for so many people myself and
other young people with boxing mma you know having
that um being present having to be there having
to communicate all these kind of things you know
so that mentor that mentorship thing is essentially
huge and we've got to pull that back or do something
to be able to support these young people but
the issues that we have with that is a lot of
these kids can't leave The area that they live
in, the postcode area that they live in. They
can't be expected to go to a gym if it's within
a certain area or a postcode because they can't
cross that side of the road. And then on top
of that, there's a financial obligation for them
to pay to do this training. So some of these
kids can't even afford it. So it's a really,
really horrible environment to be growing up
in for a lot of these young people. We're in
London, which is supposed to be one of the most
affluent cities. But yeah. There's really signs
of deprived of money, food. We've got food banks
and stuff now. You can see people queuing up
down the road by the fire station, queuing up
for food banks. And this is like, what is going
on with this world? What is going on? But yeah,
that was essentially it. So we grew this project.
We grew this charity. We've met some fantastic
people along the way. And we just try to get
out in the community just to show people what
they can do. what people can do with a bleed
kit, what people can do without it. Unfortunately,
a lot of these young people which get attacked,
the first responders are usually either their
friends or a member of the public which come
past it. And it's given hopefully people a bit
of power, a bit of confidence to interject in
regards to first aid because a lot of these kids
are bleeding out. You know, they're not dying
from the direct stab wound. It's because they're
getting a lack of treatment. We're in them critical
moments of that attack and being able to, you
know, stop that blood flow, that catastrophic
bleed. So we've found a wonderful charity again
called Your Stance. These guys are all from the
Royal Free Trauma Units. They go out delivering.
training free training within the community they
got that or the kit where they can do the arterial
bleeds how to stop it how to use things that
they will have on them rather than a bleed kit
shoelaces you know shirts and stuff but yeah
they're really powerful and it's yeah it's been
really really interesting period over the last
two years and that they're um kind of the friendships
that we've made and the and the people that we've
met i don't remember this being a problem when
I was still back home. So I'm assuming in the
last, I mean, it seems like 10, 15 years, this
has really exploded as far as the knife crime.
When you're hearing conversations about this,
what are the contributing factors that are amplifying
this violence amongst so many young people in
the UK? Financially, financially, it's a huge
part to play. And the fact that these kids are
groomed to the point that they feel like they're
in a family environment, but the financial drive
for kids. So I've had some really, I've had some
really sticky conversations with some, with,
with, with gang members, you know, just wanting
to find out, wanting to talk. Like I'm, it's
just sat there. They were hooded up, ballet'd
up, sat in chatting away. And I'm like, look,
what's going on? Why are you doing what you're
doing? Why aren't you? They're like, what? This
is my family. I'll do anything for them. And
there's three words that always resonate. And
they say, well, you let them get away with that.
You can't let them get away with that. But you're
sat there talking away. The guy's phone, his
phone's going off, constantly going off. I'm
like, go out and get a job. And they're like,
why would I go and get a job? I can earn £500
in 20 minutes on my phone. I'd have to go to
work seven days a week. to earn that kind of
money and they're just stripping in clothes they're
driving around in flash cars and these are you
know they share that car between a group of them
so they all pay for it financially every month
but i think the bottom line falls from mental
mentorship keeping people in school in clubs
where they've got good people around them you
know we talk about that community tribe but financially
it that it's yeah it's really really tough for
some of these young people in the environment
i mean to keep away From that, you know, that
option. Behind that first layer, is it basically
the illicit drug trade that's creating all this
money? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, weed, cocaine,
crack, that kind of things. That's how they run
it around. They're very, very clever in how they
do that. We've heard stories of certain buses.
They take the panels off of certain buses and
they can put firearms in the panel of that bus.
the drugs in the bus that will travel on a certain
route and they pick it all up but yeah um pretty
much it's yeah it's drug it's drug related and
drug driven yeah the older i get the more i'm
educated by all these amazing guests the more
fundamental a lot of answers to our problems
become and if you look at the damage that drug
prohibition has done making addiction illegal
It has empowered the gangs. It has created the
Crips and the Bloods and the drill culture in
the UK and the cartels in Mexico. And the obvious
answer, and you look at Portugal as a perfect
example, is if you take addiction, you take addicts
and you put them in the hands of the medical
community and you fully fund that. So you give
them addiction counseling, mental health counseling,
housing, job creation. and you get people from
being an addict and using government support
to being a healthy taxpaying member of society,
you cut the head off the snake because it's supply
and demand at its most fundamental level. And
prostitution and some of these other things are
all tied into that as well. If you haven't got
strung out young boys and girls, you're not going
to have anywhere near as many people willing
to sell their body for sex either. This is what
kills me is that there are so many proactive
solutions, but they take courage from real leadership
that really would turn this around. And if you
had young people growing up, but selling drugs
simply just wasn't an option because there's
no there's no demand because all the addicts
are in the hands of the medical community, either
healing or getting, you know, sustaining through
medically distributed ability to get their drugs
like methadone, for example. Then you've taken
you've literally cut the legs off the underworld.
And we saw that with alcohol prohibition, with
Al Capone, you know, with alcohol in the beginning
of the 1900s in the US. It was an absolute disaster
when they legalized the alcohol again. Don't
get me wrong. Alcohol is not a great drug. We
all know that. But you didn't see people bootlegging
anymore. Didn't see gangs murdering each other
over. Jack Daniels or Bell Scotch, you know what
I mean? So I think this is a massive conversation.
If we took the power away from the illicit drug
trade, it would have such an immense impact for
the US, for the UK and other places that still
believe in the fucking massive failure that is
the air quotes war on drugs. Yeah, it's terrible.
And I couldn't have said it any better, to be
perfectly honest with you. With addiction and
stuff like that, it usually comes with a mental
health problem. Treat the problem, not the addiction.
The problem is probably their childhood trauma,
things that they've gone through in their life
to put them in the position that they're in.
A lot of these people, don't get me wrong, there's
socially, there's people that are going out doing
these drugs and they're getting supplied them.
But you are right, start treating the people
rather than them having that horrible... kind
of like looked at as a as as an addict that they're
dirty that they're horrible people they're not
i've not met one i've not met one addict through
my life that's a nasty person or horrible person
they're there because of the conflict that they've
had through their through their young life you
know um but that's essentially that's what we
need to do i mean decriminal we've been talking
about decriminalizing weed for for years in the
uk and it keeps getting knocked back and the
biggest thing with that Who's one of the largest
medical suppliers of medical -grade marijuana
in the world? The UK. Oh, really? Yeah, but you
can't get medical -grade marijuana for people
to treat people in this country. It's starting
to loosen up now, but we are one of the biggest
suppliers. That's crazy. It's bonkers, right?
Yeah. It's bonkers. You know, it beggars belief.
It really is. Yeah. It really is, but... Yeah,
it's just, I mean, there's so many... you know
reasons why you should you know what i mean and
you know people ask for studies in the fire service
you know with the sleep research for example
oh can you show us studies and there's a certain
point where it's just common sense like you know
the hours that they work in this country like
okay you got without any overtime at all 56 hour
week and a 42 hour week do you need to study
to show you that a 42 hour week is going to be
healthier no you don't same in reverse Do we
need any more studies to show that drug prohibition
does not work? We've got an 80 -year longitudinal
study that has just got worse and worse. Homelessness,
prostitution, addiction, overdoses, the gang
killings, all of these, the drill culture, that
all stems from empowering the underworld through
the illicit drug trade. And then you have the
audacity of people saying, well, the problem
is these broken homes. Well, why do you think
these homes are fucking broken? Have a look into
the backstory of their homes. It's probably addiction,
alcoholism. So if again, back to the dominoes,
if we stop this generational trauma, then the
next generation isn't going to be exposed to
these broken homes anymore. If we heal this current
generation. They'll hopefully be the loving mothers
and fathers that create this community. You'll
have mentors in the community putting on boxing
tournaments and football games and CrossFit and
all that stuff. And now you've got people working
together and the mentors aren't the dope dealers
anymore. The mentors are the cops and the firefighters
and the teachers and the PE teachers. And now
all of a sudden these kids are going back down
a good path again. But it's so blatantly obvious.
But like you said, when it comes to actually
getting the people that we pay. in the positions
to actually make the change there's nothing but
moral cowardice and it nauseates me yeah yeah
for sure i mean i can only speak for what's happening
in london but it's happening in cities all around
the uk um but uh essentially The issue in London
is this has been going on since the late 90s,
the postcode wars, you know, and nothing was
done then. These communities weren't supported.
Then they started taking away all the youth clubs
and things like that. And then you put a mayor
in place, Sadiq Khan, who we've taken a blueprint
of what they did in Glasgow and Scotland to help
with. this um the youth violence and knife crime
if you like the violence reduction unit so that's
that blueprint from glasgow has come down to
london and we're trying to implement that in
london to reduce drug use add addiction all these
kind of things but what grates me what's grips
my is you've got a you've got a essentially a
government and a mayor that is able to eradicate
a dog breed within months of three or four attacks,
when essentially there's no such thing as a bad
dog, it's a bad owner. And we lose a breed of
dog within a period of time. The financial implications
for that, instead of educating people, taking
these dogs or doing something, I mean, there's
so many options available, either than eradicating
a breed of animal. that money that finances where
is that you know why is that not getting pushed
back into our communities why is that not getting
rebuilding youth you know youth homes and stuff
like that it's just yeah it's it's yeah it makes
me angry it does really grip my mate really does
well using the dogs as an example we had german
shepherds my whole life i was just talking to
ash who i interviewed this morning um yeah sas
what the tier one operator i guess um But that
was one of his lifelines, was his dog. And we
had German Shepherds, arguably people could say
a dangerous breed, my whole life as a kid all
the way through. So there's one sitting outside
my door right now. The only time I've ever seen
an issue is someone, my dad was a vet, a veterinary
surgeon. Someone gave him, I think, I think pudding
was like. a year old so they'd had this dog for
a while they didn't want it anymore they gave
it to my dad and i go up to the fields one day
and there's like four dead sheep lying in there
and the german shepherd had killed them all the
only difference between all the different dogs
that we had in that one was obviously the way
that they were treated in in their early life
it's no different with people We all start off,
you know, if you and me and a bunch of murderers
and a bunch of, you know, burglars and drug addicts
and homeless people were all two years old in
a kindergarten, we would all be laughing and
playing with crayons and kicking the ball to
each other. That's how we all start. It's what
happens to us. And then the mentors, good or
bad, that are surrounded, you know, that are
put in front of us that determine whether James
and Jason become firefighters or James and Jason
end up in prison. It's that simple. So, you know,
the dog is a great analogy of what needs to happen
in the UK. You don't eradicate all white people
because white people steal. You figure out what
happened to the white people that made them steal.
It's the same exact concept. Yeah, it's insane.
And, you know, we have these conversations. I
do a lot, obviously, still within the borough
and our contextual safeguarding meetings. I sit
in with them, with the Met Police, and their
relationship is completely fractured with a community.
That's going to take years and years and years
for them to be able to pull that back. Their
attrition rate with... with recruitment. I mean,
they've got an open recruitment policy. It runs
all year round. And I think the last time I spoke
to a Met police officer, they said within a period
of about four or five months, they'd have four
applicants. So they're losing people. Metropolitan
police, as in the entire city of London? Yes.
Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's because they are under
the microscope constantly. They can't do their
jobs properly. They've got body cams. They're
expected to give you a report on everything they
do. And the communities are in such a state of
array that the smallest thing that they can say
will be investigated. So they can't, you know,
I remember growing up, I was terrified of the
police. I can remember stepping out in the road
once and a police car come around the corner,
didn't put his indicator. And I went, yeah, you
can put your indicator on, mate. Coppers got
out of the car, walked around, slapped me around
the head. Yeah, I'm like, why do that again?
You know, but there's no, it's, yeah, it's difficult,
isn't it? It's really difficult, but. The police
are in a real bad state, a real bad state. So
the LAS really need funding and really need support.
How they do that, God only knows. It's about
bringing that relationship back with the community.
It's going to take them time, a lot of time.
Well, this is circling all the way back to the
beginning of our conversation with where that
bar is set and that attracting the right people.
Because I just was on the phone to someone who's
out of our profession, but she's in HR and she's
married to a... firefighter turned cop here in
the US. And she was, you know, saying, oh, they
said one of the problems is, you know, the kids
today don't want to work. And I'm like, well,
you know, let me correct you on that. The problem
is that most young people today value their physical
health, their mental health, their relationships.
And so when they look at an organization that
constantly throws them under the bus or an organization
that doesn't address in my country, the This
horrendous lack of recruitment and therefore
forced overtime, therefore people are never home,
therefore there's divorces and fractured relationships
with children. This young generation is going,
well, I'd love to be a cop or a firefighter,
but that working environment doesn't look good.
And that organization clearly doesn't seem to
support their people. I'm going to go be a welder.
I'm going to go into carpentry. I still want
to work with my hands. I still want to do all
the things that a firefighter or a cop would
do. I would love to serve, but that's not the
organization. So it's not about looking for different
types of candidates. It's like, well, then looking
in the mirror and go, well, what are we doing
wrong? And having a high bar in London police,
having a fitness standard, having then the support,
the training, the physical training, the defensive
tactics, the ability maybe for different ways
to address the increasing level of violence and
weapons even in the UK. I mean, all these areas.
I've got a friend who was a former armed police
in London. And again, every time something happened,
it was always... pictured as their fault until
they could prove otherwise you know guilty until
proven innocent so the way that you attract young
people back into our professions is the first
thing you got to show that you're actually going
to support them but if you're just cowing you
know cow tailing to every single politician that
sticks their neck out and then you know now you've
got four applicants what is going to happen in
the city of london it's just going to empower
you know the bad people of the city and now the
residents are going to be less safe than they
ever were before Yeah, it's mad. I mean, we get
a lot of, obviously, with the incidents that
we turn up to, the police arriving and the abuse
that they get. I'm like, what are you doing?
How do you think that's appropriate? Where has
that come from? Where is that disdain and that
belief that they're there to do you harm constantly?
I mean, it's been bred over time. I understand.
you know, the backstory to some of it. But you
don't know that individual. They're there to
try and help and support your community on what's
going on and try and catch a bad guy, essentially,
or a bad person and take them off the street.
And you're doing what you're doing to them. You
know, it's mad. It's mad. They have a tremendously
difficult job. I dock my hat to the guys in the
Met Police at the moment on what they've got
to go through, definitely. Absolutely. But I
think it's conversations like this from the people.
on the ground level, you know, that are doing
the job, that are seeing, you know, like now
on the other side of a profession, seeing what's
happening on a more macro level, you know, nationally
and internationally. And there's these common
reoccurring themes that do have solutions, but
it takes courage in positions of leadership.
With that being said, because we've been chatting
for two hours now, I want to be mindful of your
time. I want to throw some quick closing questions
at you, if that's okay. Yes. All right. Yeah,
correct. First one I love to ask, is there a
book or are there books that you love to recommend?
It can be related to our discussion today or
completely unrelated. I'm not a big reader of
books. For me, it's got to be something which
is quite realistic. Something that's happened
or a biography, something like that. I did read
a book fairly recently by Dr. Matthew Walker.
Have you heard of him? Why We Sleep? Yeah. Yeah.
Listen to him on some podcasts. Incredible. I've
thoroughly enjoyed that. And Captain Scott is
something I read quite recently with, it's Sir
Ranulf Fiennes kind of take on their document.
He's Captain Scott's documentation on how they
live. So him being an explorer, him being in
them positions of, you know, detriment and in.
tough times and him applying his knowledge and
his decision making to what he's found within
in their reports and books and that's a pretty
cool book so yeah that's probably yeah probably
the only two books recently a note that i've
read brilliant what about tv documentary or films
oh wow james oh my god we have this discussion
around the mess table and this is a tremendously
difficult question to ask because there's just
too much out there documentary wise um The Last
Dance about Michael Jordan? Yeah. Fantastic documentary.
He's just, his ability to compete, his leadership
style, he's, you know, it was like... If you're
part of this team, you're coming along with me.
And that discussion of who's the GOAT, whether
it's LeBron James or whether it's Michael Jordan,
it's like Michael Jordan's got six rings with
the same team, you know. He pulled them through
some of these players. And then what's sad as
well is the relationships that they have now.
You know, Scottie Pippen and his relationship
with Michael Jordan. That's quite sad to see.
But an ultimate competitor, you know, the drive
and dedication, the obsessiveness that you know
that you have. to be good at anything like on
that level, you've got to be obsessed with it.
And yes, that's a tremendous, tremendous documentary.
Movies, Saving Private Ryan, Shawshank Redemption,
you know, all of them kind of stuff. I still
watch them to this day. So yeah, that'll be the
movies. That'll be the movies. Great films. It's
funny, I was struck by the same thing. On paper,
Michael Jordan obviously has a lot of wealth,
a lot of statistics showing success in his basketball
team. But the same way I talk a lot about what
we do to youth athletes in America, meaning they
go and win high schools or colleges, you know,
games, championships, but then they get hurt
and it's detrimental ultimately to their longevity
and their mental health. It's the same with that.
Ultimately, when you take a step back, what was
more important, winning those basketball games
and being rich or all of the broken or fractured
relationships that you never really had because
the points were more important than the person?
And it's an interesting thing to ponder. It definitely
is. When you watch that documentary and you see
the times he spent on his own in solitude. in
hotels and thousands of people outside, you know,
I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it to be that
focused and to be that driven. I mean, wow. And
then the film, you know, the Nike film as well,
his mum, how powerful she was in the discussions
with Nike and Adidas to get that Nike go over
the line is pretty spectacular too. So yeah,
incredible stories. I wonder if it was ever enough.
We talked about, you know, always wanting to
be told I love you or, you know, I'm proud of
you by a parent or a mentor. So many of us in
high performing, you know, roles, whether it's
in uniform, whether it's in sports, there's a
lot of times there's an element of, you know,
not feeling like you are enough, whether it's
chasing the love of a parent, whether it's, you
know, low self -esteem. I wonder if he ever felt
like it was enough. I bet you the answer is no.
Yeah, do you know what that puts me back to a
clip I watched not so long ago? And it's a journalist
asking Mike Tyson, if Gus D 'Amato was here today,
what would you say to him? And he stops and he
pauses and it gives you goosebumps. Because he
never got to see him be the world champ, did
he? And he said, did I do good? Did I do good?
Did I do right? And just, you know, that man
is like... just in stature, just in aura to see
that and see him break down. And it simply is
that validation from that human being that pulled
him away from where he was going and gave him
what he did. Incredibly powerful, really powerful.
Absolutely. Well, speaking of great people, is
there a person that you recommend to come on
this podcast as a guest to speak to the first
responders, military and associated professions
of the world? so i listened to a podcast not
so long ago with a tier one operator christian
craighead you heard his story if you could get
hold of that guy yeah i haven't i haven't got
a connection with him he was the one that was
in nairobi when he went into that shopping mall
yes yeah obi -wan nairobi um but he incredible
incredible guy um but I think if you want a real
in -depth look in what's going on in London with
relation to youth violence and youth crime and
stuff, I would definitely, definitely put forward
Christian Dipo from the Spartan Project. The
work that he's doing, he's got a really good,
he's got a pretty cool story too. And then obviously
Farron Paul and his FAS Amnesty. I mean, they
could give you a really good in -depth. you know
their kind of point of view on what's going on
and a really detailed picture of of um youth
violence and stuff what's going on in in london
at the moment farron paul he gets all up the
country going up to west mids and everything
to collect knives and stuff so i mean yeah it
got really powerful what they're doing in the
community in and around london for sure brilliant
if you're able to help me with any of those connections
i'd love to get them Yeah, for sure. Definitely.
Definitely. Fantastic. All right. Well, then
the last question before we make sure everyone
knows where to find you and your nonprofit, what
do you do to decompress? Like most people here,
unfortunately for me, it's still the old traditional
hoodie on, headphones on, heavy bag. No time
limit. Just hit it away. Up and down, up and
down. You know, I'm 48 this coming year, and
I still try to keep that fast twitch. My fiber's
going. It's getting harder, but I'm still swinging
in there, keeping it with the youngsters. So
the gym for me. I actually, after hearing you
quite recently, went to the gym and went, I'm
going to do the 343. I just set myself up in
the gym. Boy, you're a fit man. James, I blasted
that. I couldn't walk for about three days afterwards.
Was that the Chad 1000, the steps? No, the 343,
so the 100 deadlifts, the 100s. Oh, you're talking
about the Murph, you mean. Was it the Murph?
Yeah, the Murph, yeah. Yeah, the 100 deadlifts,
100 pow. Yeah. And then the burpees, man. Who
fought that up? yeah no so that was yeah you're
talking about an old was it one of the old workouts
that we put i can't remember now because there's
so many different versions of it but yeah there's
i love those ones because it's you know it's
not about how how fast you did it it's just about
doing it you know so whether it's murph whether
it's chad 1000 whether it's you know some of
these other ones but yeah in my mind i can see
a post in my head of the 343 that we did a few
years ago and it was it was exactly what you're
talking about so yeah yeah those are uh humbling
to say the least Yeah, and sometimes we need
that. I have them workouts where I can go in
the gym and that's certainly one of them now
where I don't have to think about what I'm doing
because sometimes it can be an environment that
can be quite overstimulating. But I've got five
or six workouts I can go in, takes 25, 30 minutes,
40 minutes, whatever it is, blast it out, my
body's up, boom. And I could go and sit in the
sauna and get home, have an afternoon kip, and
then that's it. We're golden. Beautiful. Well,
for people listening then, where can they find
the Unified Against Violence? And then where
else can they reach out to you on social media
or online? Okay, so Unified Violence is on Instagram.
It's unified underscore against underscore violence.
That's pretty straightforward. And then myself.
I'm not mad. I am on Instagram, jcube0067. So
J -A -Y -K -U -B -E 0067 used to be my old brigade
number. So yeah, I'll post on there. But if anyone
wants to chat or reach out, I mean, I'm over
in Florida in May with my daughter for cheer.
So I was going to see if I'm going to stick my
head in a fire station somewhere, which you might
be able to hook me up with for that. And see
some bits and pieces. Yeah, that'd be great.
But yeah, that's essentially it. And I'm on Facebook
as jcube. K -U -B -I -A -K. So yeah, that's it.
But yeah, if anyone reaches out, if there's anything
I can help with or anything of interest, then
I'm all in, buddy. If I can support somebody
or help somebody, you know, I'm there. Well,
I appreciate it, mate. It's been such an amazing
conversation. Again, we've gone all over the
place, which is why I like these long form chats
that we do now. So yeah, I want to thank you
so, so much for being so generous with your time
and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today.
No, it's an absolute pleasure. Thank you very
much for having me, James. Thank you.