Speaker 1Hi there. Welcome back or welcome to Recovering Out Loud podcast, the show where we get real about mental health and addiction. I'm so glad you're here. If you or someone you love is struggling with drugs or alcohol, please reach out for help. Send me a message on all social media platforms at recoveringoutloudpod or by email at recoveringoutloudpod at gmail.com. You are no longer alone. Thanks so much, Jeff, for coming on. I really appreciate it. I'm really interested in, I think, you know, talk shows, podcasts, radio, it's all about perspective in my experience. And when you're in a situation where you're in a situation where you're in a situation where you're When I started this podcast, I was, the aim was to get a lot of different, as I went on, to get a lot of different perspectives on mental health and addiction. And I think you have a very interesting one from the law side of things. And, you know, I think that we've come a long way. I think you would agree with that. Like, you know, we've come a long way in terms of how we approach addiction and mental health from an officer's standpoint, I guess. I've even seen it just in Toronto. You know, it's funny, the other day, I saw a situation going on in front of my condo building and there was police involved and they were dealing with a mental health, somebody that was struggling with mental health. And I noticed, I hadn't noticed this before, but there was a social worker there and she had like a separate vest on and it said that her title on it, something about, you know, the unit that she was involved in and she was there just to kind of mitigate and, and communicate with the individual. And, you know, you wouldn't have seen that, you know, 20 years ago or maybe even 10 years ago. I could be wrong about that, but I just think that that's cool that we're taking some feedback and implementing it. Right. So you have a book coming out on thin ice. I want to talk about that. And specifically, I guess I'll, I'll dive right into you, you know, you experienced trauma and adversity and that kind of shaped, your empathy as an officer, which, would you agree with that and how you approached it?
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, I definitely would. I, I do believe that it was my experiences growing up and how I was brought up that impacted my ability to maintain objective, my objectivity and not go down that dark hole of them versus us mentality that oftentimes see law enforcement officers go down. You know, my father, he was a university professor, sociology professor. And he actually did his PhD dissertation on the professionalism of law enforcement. So when I, when I actually was intending on starting my PhD program, because I wanted to be professor of criminal justice, follow my father into academia, he strongly encouraged me to go get five years of practical law enforcement experience in a large law enforcement agency. He said, your, your studies will be much more rewarding and I'll make you a much more credible professor. And that's, that's what my intention was when I went out to Los Angeles was to do five years of law enforcement and then go back into my studies and have a career in academia and be a professor just as my father was. But, uh, as life has it, you know, there's different plans for me and I did 33 years in law enforcement. Wow. But as being raised by my father, who was an unbelievably wise man, he didn't speak often, but when he did, it was worth listening to. And he never asserted, um, his opinions on you. He would, he would listen to what you had to say and then he would, he would challenge, not in a critical way, but he would oftentimes say, you know, seems to me some that you might want to consider this, you might want to consider that. So he, he really developed my, my critical thinking skills without me actually really knowing it. So when I had an opinion about, uh, an issue we were talking about, we would oftentimes talk about sociological issues. Um, and I would share my opinion. He'd asked me to articulate the rationale for, for my opinion. Um, and he would ask me to articulate the rationale for, for my opinion and support my, my, my conclusions. And, um, that really was something that I took into my law enforcement career. So I had a different upbringing and kind of a different approach to handling the challenges that are so very unique to law enforcement. Yeah. I love that. Um, it's
Speaker 1so important too, to like, I think one, one thing that really bothers me is when, and it bothers a lot of people, but one of the things is we've always done it this way, right? It's just, we've always done it this way. And I've been guilty of it too. Like I do that with things that I, well, I just, you know, that's the way I was raised and this is the way, well, it's like, why, you know, what, like, let's, let's really think about what's the rationale behind this. And what if we were to do it this way or differently, or, you know, maybe I don't have all the answers to everything, you know what I mean? Maybe my way is not always the right way. Maybe that way is not always the right way. I think, I think it's important. Right. And I've always, I've always said that,
Speaker 2it's not about being right. It's about getting it right. That requires that you bring as many diversified voices to the table, people that have different backgrounds and different opinions and completely different perspectives than you may have. I found as a leader in law enforcement that I, I gained the greatest insight from those who thought very differently than I did. And that's who I learned the most from. And because I was open-minded to the point where I wasn't closed to the potential that I may change my mind about something. If, if, you know, given the rationale and the information too, and that oftentimes occurred. And, and quite frankly, that's, that's a real liberating type of thing rather than remaining in this box that is, that is so, so customary of law enforcement. It's such an insular type of an institution. It was, it was kind of, kind of liberating to have, have people that would challenge my thought process and
Speaker 1actually change my mind. Yeah. It takes the pressure off for sure, because I don't have to have all the answers all the time. Right. Right. So can you walk me, walk us through a little bit what it was like being on the front lines in Los Angeles? I know you served, you know, you, you did you worked over the nineties, right. And there was a lot of like pivotal moments that you talk about. Can you describe what that was like? Sure. You know, I initially, you know, I,
Speaker 2I had grown up in Kent, Ohio, and that's a population of about 24,000 people. And I left home when I was 16 and I played junior hockey in Canada. That's right. The United States Hockey League in Dubuque, Iowa, which was about 62,000 people. So the largest population that I had lived in prior to going to Los Angeles was about 62,000 people. And then there I was at the time, it was about three and a half to 4 million people in the city of Los Angeles. And that in and of course was the largest population in the city of Los Angeles. And so, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the language other than English, where you'd be hard pressed to go to a grocery store in Los Angeles and not hear three different languages. So, you know, there, there was the diversity that I had to get used to and the scope and, and, and size of the city and the diverse communities that I was going to be policing. So that was initially the greatest challenge. And, you know, I grew up rather naive, I suppose, just like everybody. And, and, and oftentimes people will ask me, you know, do you have any regrets? Would you do things differently? Would you go into law enforcement again, if you could do it all over? And, and the answer is yes, but I would say that I do acknowledge the fact that I wish I had some of my innocence that I lost in law enforcement because of all the things you see. And it's in over time, I kind of to having a cup of coffee and it just gets full and you can't fit anymore in the cup. And that's when you start having problems and you get overwhelmed with some sense of like sadness. So it's not always the trauma. Yes, I had incidents where my life was threatened and I was involved in officer involved shootings and things like that. But those weren't the incidents that really caused me to stay up at night, caused me to have mood swings and do some orders with my stomach and things like that. It was the things that were just the sadness of not being able to really impact something. Early on in my career, the biggest incident that I can think of that was so impactful in what I saw was the Rodney King lands. At the time I was an LA County deputy sheriff and the day of the, the announcement of the verdicts, I was out to dinner at a Tony Roma's in Glendale, which is a suburb of Los Angeles, just North of Los Angeles, like by Burbank. And we saw that the riots were breaking out and you hit the corner of a Florence and Normandy. You had a Reginald Denny that was being hit over the head with a brick and I was watching all this happen in real time on television. And back then we didn't have pagers and cell phones. So it was through the news that they said, all law enforcement officers report to your area of assignment. So I went into work and when I got there, loaded into LA County Sheriff's buses. And we're heading down to South Los Angeles to the Firestone Station, which is just to the east. It actually borders 77th Division, which was the flashpoint of the riots. And I was down there for the six days of those riots. And things that I saw, it really was eye-opening. Because in my assessment, it wasn't the verdict of not guilty for these officers. It was not what this riot was all about. It was really about decades of mistreatment of marginalized communities. And this was just the catalyst that boiled over. And oftentimes, people got it wrong where they were saying that these riots are just nothing but criminals taking advantage of the circumstances of the situation. But really, it was your everyday person that was living in these communities that felt marginalized. Because really, all anybody wants is to feel heard, valued, and respected. And the breakdown between the communities in Los Angeles, especially down in South Los Angeles, and the police department had deteriorated so badly that the police were the enemy. And oftentimes, from my experience, what I saw, many of the officers saw the community as, as an enemy. And that was a very difficult type of environment to work in. Because of how I look, people would make assumptions. You know, I would hear oftentimes, oh, here's the KKK hood wearing, you know, racist cop. And that's the furthest thing from the truth. I mean, to give you some background, I was, I was adopted. I was born to a teenage mother who put me up for adoption. And I was adopted by my parents. And they had a daughter of their own, who's my oldest sister. They adopted me, and then they adopted my brother, who's Japanese. And then I had a foster sister who was Black. And I grew up in the 60s and 70s in Kent, Ohio, in the Midwest. So I was very, very keen and insightful when it came to, you know, racism, just kind of quiet discrimination, um, things, things of that nature. I saw things that occurred, how people would respond to my mother when we'd be at the grocery store and things like that. So I was kind of sensitive to all that. But I had a completely different upbringing and experience that I brought to the job that my peers really didn't have. So, you know, at the time, when I was policing down in South Los Angeles, I had a girlfriend who was a deputy sheriff, and she grew up in South LA, and she happened to be Black. And, you know, I'll share with you, I was, um, working with this officer. Um, we worked together just one day. My, my partner, as well as his partner, were both on days off. So we were partnered up for that one day, and we were driving down Figueroa, which runs north and south right through the division. And, uh, he sees a couple, it's a white guy with a Black woman, and they're holding hands. And he says, my parents taught me better than that. And I'm like, well, what do you mean exactly? And he said, my parents, taught me not to have sex with animals. This was about a year after the riots. I'm sitting there going, have we not learned anything? Because the reality is, is that people's attitudes and beliefs impact their judgments and their decisions, which therefore is your actions and your behaviors. So, you know, this was, this, this is what the problem was. So I was in, early on in my career, I saw that we not only had to challenge of working in a very violent society and communities in Los Angeles, but you had this, this rot within the organization that actually brought true a lot of what the, the community members were saying. And you often heard it in, in the lyrics of, you know, rapper's songs. And, you know, initially I would, I would defend law enforcement against those, those lyrics that were, that were hateful towards law enforcement. But as I was on the job longer and longer, I saw that there was some credibility to what they were saying. And that's not to say that law enforcement officers are racist. That's not to say that the vast majority of law enforcement officers aren't wonderful people with the most appropriate motivations. That's what I truly believe. The problem is, is that in law enforcement, we allow this subculture to exist. And it's, it's, it's, it's unfortunately part of the policing, um,
Speaker 1environment. Yeah. And I don't think it's specific to the United States either. I think it happens here as well. Um, I mean, I've even, you know, I've worked in construction a long part of my life when I was younger and, uh, the culture was, was very similar in the segregation and, you know, racism and just inappropriate language and feeling. And, you know, it's, it comes off as, you know, we're joking, but I was, I was always taught that there's truth in every joke. Right. And, you know, you, you, there's some sort of hate that, that if you're fueling deep down, um, when it comes to that. So, I mean, there, there has to be a shift to some degree, but, um, you know, people like you that are, are working toward that, I can definitely appreciate it. And I love what you're doing. So can you walk me through, you know, retiring from, from law enforcement, what made you want to go into the line of work that you do now? And you talk about, you know, um, not just reforming, but you talk about like re-imagining, right. Re-imagining policing. What does that mean to
Speaker 2you? And why did you get into it? Well, I served for 33 years. Initially I did three years with the LA County Sheriff's department before I lateraled over to LAPD. And I did just over 30 years with the LAPD. And during that time, I had a very unique career. Um, you know, I worked down in South LA as a young police officer. Um, I was a training officer in just West downtown Los Angeles. And I worked the elite metropolitan division, which is like the special forces department, the K-9 and the SWAT and all that. So, you know, I got expertise in the crowd management and control and dignitary protection. Anytime the president, vice president, first lady or any head of state came to the city of Los Angeles, we'd work with the secret service of the state department and work those types of details. Um, and then from there I made sergeant, I went to rampart division. And this was right after the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Rampart scandal, the Raphael Perez scandal. He was assigned to rampart and worked crash, which was the gang unit. And there, these officers were committing bank robberies off duty. They were stealing pounds of cocaine out of evidence lockup and selling it on the streets for personal financial gain. They were involved in officer involved shootings while on duty and planning guns to justify the shootings. And we're, we're talking about the most, most corrupt activities law enforcement could ever be involved in. And I was selected when I made sergeant to go to rampart and, uh, they were putting into brand new leadership teams. And I was a member of that. And while I was there, they then selected me to be the new officer in charge of the gang enforcement detail crash had been disbanded because of the problems citywide. And they created this new structure and model for, for gang enforcement through the gang enforcement detail, where you had a direct line of chain of command to the captain of the areas. And, um, I was the officer in charge of that unit. So for three years, I worked in that unit completely re restructuring and redesigning the entire culture and the mindset of the personnel. And we had different levels, different measures of effectiveness that were very unique. We weren't worried about how many felony arrests we were making and those sorts of things. It was about, um, arrests that were strong arrests. So I looked at filing rates, conviction rates, amount of time of convictions, that type of thing, because that was what was going to actually impact lower and violent gang crime. There's a dime, a dozen felony arrest you can make that are related to gangsters, but they're not necessarily going to make an impact in reduction of the crime because for every guy, you're going to have to make an impact in the reduction of the crime because for every guy, you're going to have to make an impact in the reduction of the crime because for every guy, you're going to have to make an impact in the reduction of the crime because for every guy, you're going to have to make an impact in the reduction of the crime because for every guy, you're going to have to make an impact in the reduction of the crime because for every guy, you're going to have to make an impact in the reduction of the crime because for every guy, you're arrest, there's two or three guys. So I changed that entire model on how we did things. And that became the model to be exemplified. And we were recognized as, uh, got the, uh, meritorious unit citation and were recognized for that. So at this time, I have chief William Bratton who had been the police commissioner for NYPD prior to coming to LAPD. He was the chief of police. And I went, to go work for him after I did my three years running the gang unit. And there, what I did was I briefed him and wrote all of his rationale for the adjudication of officer-involved shootings and lethal course cases that were ultimately submitted to the honorable board of police commissioners who are the ultimate adjudicators of those cases. And then after that, I did that for about three years. And then I went and became the officer in charge of the detective entity that investigates all officer-involved shootings. So I had my hands in over 700 cases and I got a great deal of, of background and expertise in, in all of these areas. You'd be, pressed to find somebody that had such a diversified type of uh career and experiences that i had so with that experience i thought what a waste you know you don't just work your career and it's over it's actually just beginning because with that experience that i can can parlay that into effective change and that's that's what motivated me first to start my company i'm the founder and ceo of law enforcement consultants where we you know we we work with law enforcement agencies to try to implement best practices to hopefully have these critical incidents have the stronger likelihood of an optimal outcome it helps reduce liability and it helps with the efficiency of the operations in law enforcement organizations so that's the type of consulting that i do as well as with my background and use of law enforcement organizations of course i have myself and a whole team of experts that uh handle police use of force cases throughout the country so that's what i do with that with that company but but my book on thin ice it's it's all about my personal background which i spoke a bit about which is quite unique and then my my professional experiences my practical insights into what i believe are the types of things that we need to have implemented for law enforcement to be successful moving forward now the on thin ice there's there's kind of two reasons i chose this one is because i i was a lead hockey player and the experience of being a hockey player impacted how i viewed my law enforcement career but also in my estimation law enforcement is on thin ice and it's i love law enforcement i bleed blue and i want law enforcement to take the reins and control the narrative and to move forward through their own changes rather than having things imposed on them and and that's what this is really all about so it's about i don't i don't for a minute think that i have all the answers it's about creating the dialogue the important dialogue where we're honest about where we've been where we are and where we need to get and it's it's about like i said earlier bringing in those diverse opinions and inviting all kinds of uh of different uh perspectives to the table when you're dealing with making decisions on how to address many of these issues that modern policing is being faced with
Speaker 1yeah yeah and um so my uh i want to talk about your uh speaking of perspectives and getting other um you know sort of views and models of how people are doing things you i want to jump into you you going overseas to to look at different sort of uh law enforcement agencies and how they handled uh policing and mental health and addiction um but before that um i want to know like just thought just for me personally like what does you know you come in as a rookie cop in you know in la just because you know more about that i would imagine what does that mean for you as a rookie cop just because you know more about that i would imagine what does that mean for you as a rookie cop just because you know more about that i would imagine what does that mental health and addiction training look like like how do they teach or how did they teach officers to handle those situations when mental health is involved
Speaker 2when addiction is involved well when i first got on the job that wasn't even spoken yeah it just wasn't and um you know now yes they have made some progress however i will tell you this that culture eats training for lunch what i mean by that it doesn't matter what they train you it doesn't matter what policies and procedures there is if the culture of the organization is not aligned with that people are going to be driven by cultures and unfortunately there is no alignment like for the city of los angeles they do have a behavioral science services where you can go and and see somebody and deal with some issues you may have now the reality is this i have friends that are now retired that you know they've been diagnosed during their career with ptsd and you know they were told by the the mental health practitioners do not disclose this to your your command staff because the problem is there's such a stigma in a one-year career and and that's that's the truth of overall and and the real reality is that in my career i had four people that i worked closely with that made that choice to kill themselves and that's not unusual i mean the cops kill themselves at a rate two to three times more than the general population and if and if you look at it there's about 200 police officers a year will kill themselves on the average and you're looking at about 60 officers that killed that are killed by a suspect wow what you mean so we'll spend all this time training and to address violence out on the street to protect ourselves from violent criminals which is something we need to do but at the rate that we're losing officers to suicide let me tell you we're certainly not doing what we're doing to protect ourselves from violent criminals because the reality is is they're they're exposed to the trauma every day and it's the chronic stress always being up in that orange or red zone yeah and it's the stigma that i just spoke about that's associated with the access to guns where they have a you know immediate access to those to guns where in a moment they may make that decision and you know the reality is there's limited resources 70 percent of american law enforcement agencies police communities of 10 000 or less they really don't have the resources for those officers you know i i had a great benefit of being in los angeles where we did have behavioral science services so you could go see and talk to somebody if you wanted to but at the end of the day the vast majority of the law enforcement agencies where there's 18 000 plus here in the united states don't have those resources for their officers at least to the point where in regards to the stigma they feel comfortable going into hell and then it's you know and then so then what do we do in law enforcement i gotta tell you i can't tell you how many people i know in laws with their alcoholics because that's their answer because we see things on a regular basis that human beings no matter how tough you are or how resilient you may be we're not designed to process all that we're not designed to process all that we're not designed to process all that we're not designed to process all that so the cultural thing in law enforcement is to to drink it and let's go to the bar let's you know whatever and um so then what what happens when i was in the police cabinet you tell us the three things that'll get you in trouble it's booze broads and bills those are the three things that are getting in trouble and they're really all circular at the end of the day because if you start drinking then you're going to have problems with your relationships and if you have problems in your relationships you're going to have issues with your finances especially if you end up going through divorce you have children you're paying child support you start having to work off duty to make ends meet and you have this just unmanageable life and it's and unfortunately this happens to all too many others i gotta tell you i can't even tell you there's always there's always a a um a trailer parked up at the police academy where an officer was living because they couldn't afford an apartment wow there and you'd see officers living in in the bunk rooms in the stations where they they'd work their watch and they'd go and they'd sleep in the bunker and they lived there that's where they lived because of their circumstances at home going through a divorce or what have you or they couldn't afford a rent so you know that that's that's tough and you know i saw one guy that worked their rampart gang unit with me he uh i actually saw him in the locker room at police headquarters and then a few weeks later he killed himself he was going through the walls and it dealt with the kids and and all that and it's it's just a sense law enforcement we we see ourselves as fixers we're supposed to help people and be problem solvers but then our lives fall apart and we don't know how to help ourselves and um then we're too macho to to ignore acknowledge it or to reach out and ask for help and um you know i i had another i had another officer that worked for me um at rampart i worked morning watch and he and his partner worked for me and we worked uh from 11 at night to uh to eight in the morning and he uh his partner was taking the sergeant's exam the next day so i allowed his partner to go home early so he could get some sleep before he had to take the test and i gave gave the partner an option you can go home as well if you'd like or you can you can work the front desk because at rampart we didn't we didn't put officers out at night on an individual one officer with our violent divisions 140 some homicides a year in a seven square mile block division or not block but seven mile square division so um he elected to go home and when he got home his two young daughters were in bed his wife was nowhere to be found and she turned out she was having an affair so he was struggling with that and i saw him on a wednesday at a training and we spoke and he said he was doing really well he was uh you know working well with his church he had a lot of support there and a lot of support with his father he looked great um he had obviously been working out and he was eating well and he's giving me all the right answers and that weekend saturday he blew his brains out and it's um you know and it's just like wow i just didn't see it coming and it's so you have to you have to understand that you're like wow i wish i could have done something i wish i could have done something but i had i had to be careful not to go down that dark rabbit hole blaming myself for not picking up on this that something was wrong and making sure that he got that help you can't blame yourself in those circumstances where people make that type of a critical decision how did you um manage that like yourself with your
Speaker 1own mental health was there somebody that uh you know was there advice that you got that somebody you know a mentor maybe in the in the department or like how did you navigate your own
Speaker 2mental health through all that well i was very fortunate like i said i had a father that was very aware of what the pitfalls of law enforcement were and he gave me a lot of insight i was able to to speak to him about anything without any judgment um so that was really critical for me but from a personal standpoint i really made an effort to spend my time away from work with people that were not in law enforcement i thought it was really important to be around people that had a completely different perspective than the people i was around every day yeah um i also was very uh you know active in in physical fitness and and and off-duty stuff you know my parents um were very civically minded my mother she was a councilwoman um my both my parents they were the co-founders of the kent environmental council they raised me to recognize that life was larger than myself and that it's about not what you can do for yourself but what are you doing to impact your community in a positive way so i i focused on that i was a big brother in the big brothers of los angeles program um i was the captain of the lapd hockey team and we made an effort to play a lot of celebrity charity hockey games there was actually a hollywood celebrity hockey team a lot of the celebrities cuba gooding jr played oh wow there's a lot of guys but um we would do raise money for like make-a-wish foundation and we would these children that were terminally ill they would come in and we'd give them a jersey and sign sticks and things and you know granted they had they didn't have much time left on this earth but um to see the smiles and the opportunity for them to to interact with us in the way that they were allowed to in that environment really really felt rewarding so it was i made sure that i was doing things that were it's positive for other people's lives which in turn made me feel good about myself and it was very different than the hours that i spent in the patrol car handling you know see the man see the woman radio calls because the reality is this people don't call the police because they want to see you you know you're going you're going into a toxic scenario and you're expected to figure it out and i've always said i used to say this all the time but the greatest actors aren't in hollywood they're in they're in they're in a bad gen uniform you have to go into every scenario and read it very quickly and determine who you have to be to resolve it in the most uh most appropriate manner so that in and of itself can be quite stressful um because you know it's everybody wants to use uh the benefit of you know hindsight being 2020 but at the end of the day it's not the end of the world it's the end of the world the day you oftentimes have split seconds to to make decisions in rapidly unfolding tactical scenarios which can forever um impact you you know the reality is is that like i spoke to you my background and with force you know 36 percent of officer involved shootings involves somebody that's suffering the mental health crisis yeah 36 percent wow yeah 36 that's quite a lot so you're talking about on the average per year law enforcement officers in the united states kill by firearms about a thousand and fifty people on the average so if you take one third of that it's about 380 people a year that their lives are being taken taken primarily because they're suffering a mental health crisis and now that's that's talking about the officer involved shootings and they're suffering a mental health crisis and they're suffering a mental health crisis that actually someone is is struck and killed there's an estimated additional 2500 to 3000 officer involved shootings where the injury is not fatal or the shooting does not result in any hits so if you look at that data about one third of all officer involved shootings are lethal and you know i've had i've had friends that were responded to scenarios one one guy was responded to a radio call and as an older gentleman he had a shotgun and he began to level the shotgun towards the officer and the officer responded with a force and shot and killed him it turned out he was a retired fire captain and it was a suicide by cop the shotgun wasn't even loaded but the officer didn't know that and but now the officer has to carry that luggage for life and like i said your coffee mug can only hold so much coffee and um you know it can it can do a number on you it really can and what's interesting is is you have this armor during the time that you're on the job and then you leave the job and you're not around that environment every day and you begin to realize how susceptible and vulnerable you are to the experiences that you had during your 25 30 year career and it's amazing how many people in retirement that's where they begin having their problems that they're able to hold it together while they're on the job but then afterwards it's it's it's tough i mean you know i personally you know i'm much more reactive to things from an emotional standpoint where i see a commercial of a kid um dying of cancer or something and they're trying to raise money or it's you just cry and would have that been me back when i was on the job no wouldn't it um it's just you find that you're hypersensitive to emotional stuff stuff that impacts people's lives and it's really important to try to understand why you feel that and not just right at all because you know you'll have those days where you just don't want to get out of bed or you get up and just not motivated to do the things that you traditionally did to keep your mind clear i used to i used to get up every sunday morning and run like 15 minutes and um you know i i can't do that now i have two artificial means but um you know it's a long walks now that that i get my best thinking and it's it's about taking the time for yourself so it's you got to learn that early on so you start doing that before things build up so you're dealing with it as you progress through your career rather than being
Speaker 1hit by a tidal wave that's all at once yeah yeah i mean that's uh there's a good metaphor it's like this armor right and i i feel like i feel like you don't even have time to deal with it when you're in it and you're just so distracted by the next event right the next call the next you know case whatever it may be that you don't have time to even think about what happened the day before and it's like you're just constantly being you know berated by by these uh high stress situations like you said um and you like and it just becomes a distraction after a while and then yeah you mentioned it perfectly it's like uh it's a tidal wave at the end of your career and then you're just crying for things you don't even know why you're crying for and doing the internal work uh being really important too um you you talk about I want to talk about going overseas and modeling other, you know, you mentioned you went to England, I believe in France. What did you see there that you think could help North America, United States and our system, how we approach things?
Speaker 2Well, the one thing that we do here in the United States, I don't know if people really realize it, but when it comes to hiring police officers, we don't have a selection process. We have a de-selection process. So as long as you don't have a criminal record and your finances are in order, you've got a decent chance of getting hired, where it's much different. The entire mindset is different. And it's not always about, people always say, well, it's about who we hire. Yeah, I would suggest that part of it has to do with who you hire, but that can be resolved by how you hire. And like I said, here in the States, it's a de-selection process. Over there, they oftentimes, if you look like the Nordic countries, they go through a two and three year university level undergraduate program during their training before they even hit the streets as a police officer. And during that time, they're being continually evaluated. They haven't been selected for the position yet. You're selected when you're finally done with your training. So what they're evaluating is how open are you to the training that you're receiving? Do you have the characteristics that just about anybody would agree are characteristics that you'd want to see in a law enforcement? Do you have critical thinking skills? Do you have moral reasoning? Do you have self-awareness? Are you a problem solver? All of those sorts of things are being evaluated the entire time. So when it's all said and done, you're, you're taking the people that have demonstrated that they possess the characteristics that we know law enforcement officers need to be successful. I mean, you equate it, equate it to, uh, to professional athletics. Yeah. You were, if you were to have to blindly draft people or you took them based on a de-selection process rather than a selection process, you probably wouldn't have a very good team. And, and that's real. What, what we do here in the United States is, and it's unfortunate because they talk about all these vacancies that need to be filled and that people are leaving law enforcement at unprecedented rates and they're just lowering standards. And, you know, you even see a Dallas PD, they, they lifted their, their academic requirement. They used to require 45 college hours credit to be hired on the department. And they're, they're removing that. And it's, it's interesting because that's completely in conflict to what all the research demonstrates. The research demonstrates that officers that have a four-year degree or better have 40% less incidents of use of force.
Speaker 3Hmm.
Speaker 2I mean, that's significant. Yeah. And, um, so to not take that into consideration and factor that into your hiring process, um, to me, it's kind of negligent, the research is there. That's not my opinion. Um, you know, not only do you have less force incidents, but you have fewer, uh, complaints against you and you tend to be a better problem solver and act more appropriately under critical circumstances. That's the research. It's not really, it's not my opinion. Um, so it's at the end of the day. We in America. We need to, to follow what the research actually tells us. What does the empirical evidence tell us? And then we have to model our systems behind that. And then, and really, if you look at these, these organizations, sir, it's, it's not like a them versus us where it's a swarm personnel, and then you have the civilian, the civilian is, is incorporated into the, to the organization. There should be civilian command staff officers that have the same level of authority as other other deputy chiefs and things of that nature. Because to think that we are going to find within our ranks, people that have the same level of expertise in particular areas is, is naive police. Most agencies, the LAPD, you can get hired with the GED and you know, that's not a, that's not a great foundation to start with. And in a career. Okay. And if you're going to recruiting from people that have that level at the very beginning, to what extent does your organization value education to begin with and are they then going to encourage you to continue with your education? And unfortunately, the opportunities that you do have, you go to these schools and I, I actually took part in it where you go, but you're just there with cops, other police officers. You don't have any diversity of thoughts. So you start having group think when you have these discussions about issues and things. So you're not getting the level of insight that you need to be, you know, truly maximizing your, your academic experience. So I know, unfortunately, law enforcement's little too insular here. The mindset's a bit different over there. They view law enforcement differently. They pay them well and they train them well. And if you just look at the. The studies that they do as far as their favorability, cops are up there at the top of civil servants in regards to their favorability with the citizens that they serve. It's not the case here in the United States, but I would suggest it could be. We just need to make some changes.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. 100%. And it takes time. You know, it's, it's not going to happen overnight, but I think we're definitely making progress. One of the themes in your book is accountability and learning from failure. What can you share a moment maybe in your career where, um, you looked back and you were like, you know, I, I could have done this differently and here's now I'm, I'm where you learn from the experience and maybe change the way you approach certain situations.
Speaker 2Well, you know, really, I talk about one, it was a critical tactical scenario where my partner and I, we made a severe tactical blunder in our initial response to the incident. We had a radio call, shots fired there now, and we responded code three lights and sirens. And the direction we were traveling would place my partner who was driving on the side of the road where the location was. And what had happened was it was a domestic incident and the female involved fled and the guy took an AK 47 and shot her in the leg, she had a count fracture and drug her back up to the porch. And then he was sitting on the steps. Um, that led up to the upstairs unit of the duplex, where he lived in the upstairs unit. And, um, we pulled right in front of the location, which you just don't do. And it was like, for him, it was like shooting, shooting a fish in a barrel and he opened up on us and, um, things could end tragically. But, um, luckily for us, the air unit showed up, it's the police helicopter, which has worn personality and the pilot actually was a Vietnam veteran and they saw the predicament we were in because he was approaching us. And, uh, he came down to about tree level and the observer who was, uh, the one not piloting, but the one that communicates with the officers on the ground, as well as controls the PA system gets on the PA and gets the suspect's attention who then started firing at them. So he, uh, flew northbound away. He followed them up the driveway, which gave us an opportunity to redeploy and get out of there. Um, he ultimately was, uh, shot and killed, um, but you know what, what that incident showed me was that you have to put tactics at, at the highest level of your priorities. And it's not just your tactics, but your knowledge of the job, knowledge of the law. Your physical fitness level, everything has to be, uh, continually addressed to where you're not just competent. You have to be exceedingly proficient in everything that you do, or it could end up in a very tragic scenario. So it was just a split second mistake that could have, you know, could have lost my life didn't happen. But as a training officer, that was an experience that I shared where hopefully my probationary officers that I was training could learn through my mistakes rather than having to make them themselves. But it really came from, it just really underscored how I viewed things to begin with. As a hockey player, you didn't achieve the level of hockey that I achieved by just giving 50% or 60%. 70%. You had to give 100% all the time and you had to be committed and dedicated. And I can't think of a career that's more meaningful than law enforcement, but you have that same mindset because you have to be able to perform. I've always said that we're not paid for what we do on a daily basis. Just about anybody can do that. You're paid for what God forbid you might have to do. And that's when these types of scenarios where it's a rapidly unfolding tactical scenario and you're making split-second decisions under immense stress. And if you're not prepared for
Speaker 1that, then you're not earning your paycheck. Yeah. Yeah. It's a stressful situation. I mean, yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I mean, it really paints a picture. Yeah. And if anything could have happened differently in that situation, right? It's scary. Jeff, what's a vision or maybe your vision for how we can, I don't want to say the word break the stigma, but maybe lessen the stigma around, you know, whether it's how we approach mental health situations or calls and also like how a cop, how a law enforcement officer deals with his own mental health battle. What does that look like
Speaker 2for you? Well, I think it's kind of interesting that they kind of go hand in hand because I don't know how tough you are or how tough you think you are. These incidents will weigh on you. And these incidents that I'm talking about where somebody is shot and killed because they are behaving a certain way when they're suffering a mental health crisis or what have you, that then is going to down the road, potentially become your mental health crisis. So it's really important that your policies and procedures and your training align with not only what is most likely going to result in an optimal outcome for the officers and the person you're addressing, but that long-term it's going to be optimal for the officers because you're not going to be carrying that heavy weight because things ended tragically when they perhaps could have ended better. Now, you mentioned, you know, earlier where, you know, there's the practice of, of aligning law enforcement with mental health practitioners to better address mental health scenarios. And that's great. The problem is it doesn't really work if the culture of the organization is not in line with the de-escalation training that you're receiving, in line with the recommendations and the suggestions that you're getting from the mental health practice. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. Because the reality is that the initial officers that are going to arrive on scene, generally speaking, are not going to be these officers that have the specialized training and are working these mental evaluation units and those sorts of things that have this, this mental health practitioner assigned to them. And, and unfortunately the tragedies already occur before these highly specialized trained people can arrive on scene. So we really need to work with that. If you look at the LAPD, it's been almost a couple of decades since we had a mental evaluation unit and that we worked with mental health practitioners. But if you look at the data, about 36% of our officer-involved shootings are still of people who are suffering mental health crisis. So although we're implementing these practices to help address and hopefully reduce these incidents and hopefully have a more optimal outcome, that's not actually what's occurring. And I would suggest it's because of the culture. You know, I've, I've seen this day and age, people wear body worn video nearly all law enforcement officers wear. And, and what I do is I, I evaluate a lot of, a lot of these scenarios where force is used. And I, part of that is watching, the video and it's, it's astounding to me how officers that you can, you can learn what their mindset is based on what you're hearing them say on video. And you'll have family members that have called you to their apartment because they have a family member that is suffering a mental health crisis. And they want you to assist in getting them to a medical facility so they can be helped. And law enforcement all too often ends up killing the person. And it's, so what is our rush when you have a mother and a father with a son who's having a mental health crisis, the mother and father are outside with the officers and the son is inside all by himself. What's the rush. It's all about creating a dialogue. It's trying to align yourself. And try to find a way to connect with this individual officers need to be asking questions like what is the mental health issue that does this individual take medication? Has this type of thing happened before? If so, what has worked to calm the individual down? All of those types of conversations, you have a wealth of knowledge from people that are there at scene. Yeah. And you don't have anything. That's exigent in regards to having to go protect somebody from this individual. We see this all too often. And then what do we do? We force ourselves into the location and the individual may be armed with a knife, approaches the officers, and then a shooting occurs and it ends tragically. There's a better way. And then we also need to be more aware, self-aware of how our actions, our actions are influencing the people that we're interacting with. When you have somebody that's having a mental health crisis, you have got to understand how you're being perceived, where you have five or six officers in uniform, certain number have their firearms drawn. Another one will have a taser with the red dot bouncing around their chest. Another one have a beanbag shotgun. And oftentimes multiple people are still in commands. Is that really going to end optimally? I would suggest no. I watch these things and when it goes sideways, it's like, really? Who would have thought it was going to end up any differently than it did? Because these officers are so unaware of how they're being perceived by the person who is suffering a mental health crisis. I mean, let's be real. If you or I, we're that individual, that in and of itself would stress us out to a point where we may do something that may cause the officers to respond in a way that could be fatal, let alone somebody that's having a mental health crisis. So officers really need to change their entire mindset, and it begins with the culture. What is your role in that scenario? You first need to have the knowledge to identify your role in that scenario. You first need to have the knowledge to identify what you have, and identify that, yes, okay, this person is exhibiting, demonstrating examples of mental health crisis. And therefore, I need to then shift and address it more in this banner versus our traditional tactics that unfortunately oftentimes result in unfavorable outcomes.
Speaker 1Well said. You know, there's so many parallels that could be drawn across life in any job where it's like, if I ask the right questions and then just listen, I can get a lot of information of how to approach the situation, right? I think that's so important. It's so simple, but it's not easy, right? And like a lot of things in life. And I also like how you mentioned culture too. My dad taught me, because I was a manager for a long time in my career, and I had a team of people, and he always taught me like, culture, is the worst behavior you allow, right? The simple, it's the worst behavior you allow. So if you're allowing this certain type of behavior to continue, that becomes your baseline, becomes your culture. And it's about changing that and not accepting certain things, right?
Speaker 2What's really important in regards to what you just said, is that you shouldn't have to have a negative outcome before you hold people accountable. So if you see behaviors or actions in law enforcement officers that are not consistent with your expectation under a particular circumstance, you should be addressing that regardless of what the outcome is. Even if the outcome was favorable, but the behavior and the actions were inappropriate, you have to address it. And because if you don't, you're sending the wrong message, because you oftentimes, I tell you, I saw this oftentimes in my career, where officers were like, we've done this 10 other times and we were, you know, commended for it.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Because the outcome was a positive outcome. But now we're being criticized for it. You're sending a missed message as management. And that's where we were wrong as well. And that's where you create this culture where they're not doing what they're trained to do, do. But since it didn't go sideways, we're going to commend them because it went well. So you're just reinforcing the bad behavior when it's contrary to what you're actually training. And that's where you get this, this, this conflict in an understanding of what, what is expected.
Speaker 1Amazing. I learned a lot today, Jeff. I want to end with this. If you could go back to your, yourself as a rookie, what would you say to that, to that guy? What would you say to that, Jeff?
Speaker 2I would say that early on in my career, a lot of the stress that I had was self-imposed because I had not learned the relevance and importance of patience. I held myself to a particular standard. And I found that it was not going to serve me well to actually hold other people to that same standard I held myself to. Because oftentimes the standard I held myself to exceeded what anybody else was willing to hold themselves to. And it began even in the academy. You know, I, I, I was taught from my parents to do the best at everything you attempt to achieve. And. I carried that into my, my hockey career. And then subsequently into my law enforcement career. So when I was in the academy, when I studied for an examination, I wanted to get a hundred percent. And I would get ridiculed. What are you studying so much for? All you need is a 70% to pass. And that's, that's not how I view things. And I ended up graduating. We had 157 in the academy class. And graduated 107. So about a third washed out. But. I graduated with the highest academic score with a 98.7%. And then I was number one scores in physical fitness and number two in marksmanship. So I was actually, it was called the honor recruit by my peers and the training staff voted for me to represent the academy class as the honor recruit, the number one recruit of the class. But in that it was, I saw how. My commitment to excellence was not something that was shared by my peers. And that became a, a source of stress for me. And I then, you know, I carried that same level of commitment and continued to see that that wasn't shared by my peers and I had to let that go. And I didn't really learn that until I became a Sergeant and I left the, the elite metropolitan division where that's. The best of the best of the LAPD. And now I'm back out in patrol supervising people that had less standards for themselves and what I was accustomed to. And it was really stressful for me. And I had to learn about patients and that's not only the case in my law enforcement career, but now as a father with a 14 year old son, it's all about patients, what you do, if you don't have patients. Love it.
Speaker 4Thanks so much, Jeff. I appreciate you, man. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Please help us grow the channel and like share and subscribe for more content. The discussions and stories shared on this podcast are for informational and motivational purposes only. This content is not a substitute for professional medical advice, addiction treatment, or therapy. If you are someone, you know, is struggling with addiction, please consult a licensed physician, addiction specialist, or mental health professional. You are no longer alone. Thank you. Thank you.
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