How Has Modesto’s New Air Unit Made a Positive Impact on Public Safety? Part 1 | Ep 372

Welcome back to the Hangar Z Podcast, brought to you by Vertical HeliCASTS, in partnership with Valor Plus. 

In this episode we are heading to Modesto, California, to hear how a brand-new air support unit was built from the ground up, and how it’s already changing the way the department fights crime, protects officers, and serves the community.

Lt Mike Hicks and Lt Kalani Souza were both involved from the opening decision to start an air unit. They share the process and the many challenges involved within funding, airframe choice, acquiring the airframe, and then finding to right crews members.

They also discuss the immediate benefits of air support in supporting patrol operations including a dramatic reduction in crime.

Thank you to our sponsors Airbus, Onboard Systems & Hoist & Winch and Spectrolab.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Welcome to the Hangers E Podcast, brought to you by Vertical Helicast and partner with Vertical Valor Plus. I'm your host, Jack Shanley. With me today for this great conversation is the creator of the Hangers E Podcast, John Gray. John, how's it going?

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Hey, good morning. Like the drawn-out uh pronunciation there. I'm going to do it longer next time.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Creator. But uh yeah, we we've been talking about doing this for a while and it's it's lining up. The stars have aligned, and here we are, and we've we're back to the Central Valley of California, Modesto to be specific. And we're very fortunate to have two lieutenants on today. We this is the first, I believe, John, for the Hanger Z podcast. Two lieutenants as guests, and we've got Lieutenant Mike Hicks. Mike, welcome to the Hanger Z.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Hey, thanks for having us, guys. We really appreciate it. Uh love you guys' podcast and uh running to you guys all the time and excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Thanks, Mike. And we have Lieutenant Kalani Sousa. Kalani, how are you today?

SPEAKER_04 1:20

Uh good morning. Uh happy to be here and happy that uh you guys can could get us on, and it all worked out. So looking forward to it. And hopefully I don't uh fanboy too much over the uh the podcast and uh all the great things that you guys have said.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Oh, fanboy away. We love it. You know, John and I eat that up. We're so glad.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Jack's used to sign autographs, just you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

We're very happy to hear that, and uh that's it's why we do it. You know, we we hope uh that our listeners gain some knowledge, have some fun, get entertained a little bit, but uh mostly learn learn some new things because we do, and we're gonna do that again today. Um there's a lot of reasons we decided to to go to Modesto here for this uh for this conversation. And one of them is that you guys started from scratch uh in the recent in recent history creating an air support unit. And both of our guests, Mike and Kalani, were both involved in this process. And I think that process uh is important to to for units around the country, departments around the country to to hear. Because there's a lot of people that want to do something and they just never do it. And they they're intimidated by it, because it is intimidating. I think uh we'll all agree it's intimidating starting an air unit. But um that that's that's a big reason why we uh want to talk to the two of you today and and learn more about that and how it's changed policing in Modesto, which it certainly has. So, Mike, let's start with you. Tell us the backstory of the idea. I mean, what when did that happen when somebody somebody said, Hey, let's let's try and make this happen and get an air unit going, and how are we gonna do that? And you know, how long ago was that? And what was that that initial uh idea like and forming the air unit?

SPEAKER_02 3:16

So here about five years ago, uh the assistant chief at the time, Ivan Avancia, uh got the idea. He's he's an innovator uh here at the department, and he always has great ideas about new concepts and new ideas in order to uh proactively uh approach how we deal with crime here in the city. And so at the same time, though, you know, uh we're talking around COVID. Um uh cost was an issue as well. And so he had this idea of a light sport aircraft as an aerial platform for law enforcement here in the city of Manesto. And so he actually started researching some some uh light sport aircrafts with some like military grade or uh smaller camera systems on them, and uh which ultimately led him into uh test flying and using a gyrocopter. You guys are familiar with gyros. We we tested a program here in Modesto with a gyro. Uh we did that for about six months to a grant, and it found to be very effective with the limited camera system that was on there, and that's pretty much what built the path to where we are today. There's a light sport aircraft uh that went down here in California in a county south of us, which kind of pumped the brakes on everything for a little while, and then we reintroduced the idea here about three years ago. And the intention in in in the beginning was to go towards a light sport aircraft uh because you know, funding money is always a consideration, and so we're trying to find the cheapest way to get the most resources in the area in order to be the most effective, and so we were leaning that way, and uh that's where we uh started.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

So yeah, so that's it's a long process. Uh and you you actually tested other aircraft. I mean it's it's not easy, is it?

SPEAKER_02 5:15

No, not easy at all. But I don't know. You guys ever flying a gyrocopter?

SPEAKER_00 5:19

I have. I have. I sp I went for one flight, it was exhilarating.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

It's a light sport aircraft. Uh we couldn't ever really the concept was there. Uh however, the camera system for light sport aircraft just couldn't be supported based on the needs. And so um we were actually using camera, a little small uh eight-inch camera that they actually use on military drums. Yeah. So again, there's so many vibrations and so many harmonics that go along inside of a gyro, as you know, Jack, uh, that the stabilization we just couldn't get the stabilization of the camera. And so we tried it rubber mounts, we tried it hanging the thing. I mean, just everything. And so there's a lot of harmonics that go on those things. And so you know, fast forward here at about 2023, um, I get approached. And I I wasn't part of that program, just so you guys know. Okay. I I was not a part of the gyro program until the assistant chief approached me and said, Hey, uh, let's let's push forward this this air support unit. You want to be a part of it? And so I said, Yeah, I'll be a part of it, you know. Uh I and and believe me, I knew nothing about law enforcement aircraft until that point. I I couldn't even tell you what Gipps G88 was or 206 or 407. You know, I couldn't tell you anything about it. And so however, um I'm I'm very interested in everything law enforcement and the things that make us uh better at what we do. And so I kind of jumped in, you know, uh 100% and uh started doing all the research. I called everybody in the industry that would take my phone call.

SPEAKER_03 7:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

You know, and so we started researching, researching. I was, you know, I was calling, you know, uh John Nielsen, great, great, great. Oh yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

John's been on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

We love John, very, very experienced aviator. Yeah, he's been my mentor, you know. Honestly, he's been my mentor in this this whole uh process, you know. Uh Rich Bruckbinder, if you guys know Rich, uh retired CHP sergeant, uh chief pilot, and uh great guy too. He actually helped uh him and I flew the aircraft back from where we got it in Pennsylvania. Yeah, and then uh, you know, just just everybody I could talk to, just coming up with ideas and what we needed to do, uh, what platform was the best for us, and just uh talking to everybody, you know. Uh that's probably one of the most valuable things that we did in the beginning is talk to as many people as you possibly could and get as much information as you can in order to make an intelligible uh decision about what you want. And then, you know, there's there's a lot of things in hindsight that you know I get calls from people all over the world nowadays. And uh, you know, one of the things I tell them looking back, you know, we and and really we stumbled across this aircraft and this camera system we had, you know. And it it's proven to be probably the best and most reliable and best platform for what we do. And one of the things I I tell a lot of people who's starting who are starting their their aviation programs is, you know, first of all, you know, define your mission. You know, what is gonna be your mission? You know, number two, will the airspace around your city or where you're gonna fly support that mission? Uh number three, get the best possible camera that you you can afford, you know. And lastly, buy the aircraft, you know. You know, yeah. A lot of people, when I talk to them about that concept, uh they're a little bit taken back because they want to buy the aircraft first and then whatever money's left over, they buy the camera. You know, I hate to say it, you know, buy the best camera you can first and then find the aircraft.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

So, Mike, you just you just listed about four things there that were 100% on the money. How did you learn those? Was it from all those phone calls you made?

SPEAKER_02 9:29

Yeah, absolutely. You know, so what is up happening is is I I'm talking to these people. Uh I'm talking to you, deputies of rural counties out in the middle of Texas and New Mexico, you know, all over the world, you know. I'm talking to East Coast people who fly in cities, and uh there were some common things that he kept telling me, you know, some common things. Number one, airspace. Airspace is important, you know. Uh camera, camera is important. And you know what's what is your mission? You know, are you are you a search and rescue agency? Uh are you a municipality where you that's not a function of what your uh your uh agency is? And for us, you know, we have a sheriff's department here that has a very established uh air support unit with helicopters and planes and fixed wings, and so they are the the county's uh search and rescue uh uh uh entity. And so we we just didn't need that that function. And so that's what led us into the uh the fixed wing world.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Good, good. I mean that that that may be the most important thing. When you look at the mission first, there's people that get in over their heads or they get into something and they don't realize how expensive it's gonna be, and they they obtain an aircraft that they're never they they don't need it. They don't need that aircraft for what they're going to do. That that's perfect that you said that. That I think that's uh very important point to take away. Kalani, how did how did you get involved in that process? At what point did did uh you get uh drafted or volunteer or voluntol to get involved?

SPEAKER_04 11:02

Voluntold is probably the best way to put that. Um, so uh it's it's funny, you know, uh everything works out for a reason. And uh I had always had an interest in in aviation, and my path just took me an opposite way. And, you know, with my son was big in the aviation world in the military, my grandfather, so I always had that interest. Well, uh as I was promoting, uh, we had gone through some stuff here at the PD, so I ended up being an acting lieutenant for about a month before an official, and I went into my first command staff meeting, and my captain had said, Hey, we're starting this program, which I knew it was coming. You know, I I had uh worked patrol long enough, I knew it was coming. And he said, uh, we want to volunteer for uh for someone to be their first ever air support, you know, lieutenant. So we sit around the room and I'm the junior guy, and I'm not gonna raise my hand as the junior guy, right? And I'm like, oh no, that sounds way too cool. Like they're not gonna give it to the new guy. Well, I think I got I got duped a little bit because the assistant chief was so passionate about it, uh, nobody else w dare raise their hand because they were afraid to uh live up to the expectations and uh face some of the challenges that uh Mike and I ended up facing uh throughout that first year. So my captain looked at me and said, uh, well, I think that would be a perfect assignment for Kalani. And uh that's how I got into it.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

So in fact, my first And you were basically sitting there going, Yes. Yes, I mean you were you were thrilled about that.

SPEAKER_04 12:32

Oh secretly, yes. I I was uh I was smiling ear to ear, and uh I got out of there and called my wife, and I was like, You're never gonna believe what I get to take over.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

That's great.

SPEAKER_04 12:42

So uh yeah, so my first night as a watch commander was actually the uh night we went to city council to get the purchase of the aircraft approved. So uh yeah, so from the approval process, from that day I had a list on my whiteboard in my office and was like all the things that we need to do once it gets up and going. And the the assistant chief called me right afterwards and was like, okay, get get moving. And uh that that's how it started. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

That is that is a great story. Well, congratulations, first of all, because you you in many ways I think you would agree you won the lottery, even though uh, even though you were trying to keep your hand down, even though you wanted to raise it. Uh you won the lottery and you're in a whole different world. And we've heard that so many times from so many guests, and John and I will both tell you, everybody, almost everybody, comes into law enforcement aviation where you just go, I don't know anything. I'm a cop. You know, I'm a cop, what do I know? Unless they were you know out there flying on their own. Uh but to get thrown into it, like both of you did, informing the unit, that is some pressure uh that I've never experienced that that is a lot to learn. A lot to learn.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

But it's fun once you're there. With a lot of new new aviation programs, even existing aviation programs, funding and politics are usually the two biggest obstacles to the inception of a program or the downfall of a program. You obviously had the political side in your favor with the chief, the assistant chief wanting the program to start. Talk about the funding side. And if you were to look back and knowing what you know now, start from scratch and and you know, essentially do what you've done, what would you do different with the inception of inception of your program? I guess that's for the benefit of for the folks that might be in that position now. They're looking at starting a program and can maybe learn some of the lessons that you guys learned the hard way. Oh, we learned from the hard way, that was sure.

SPEAKER_04 14:45

Yeah, that that was probably our biggest uphill battle. I think Mike would agree that uh we we got uh many a uh many a butt chewing over uh finances and budgeting. Um and I think and Mike uh correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the biggest thing for Mike and I was we weren't involved in the initial budget planning. It was all put together as part of the the city council, you know, the the presentation uh on projected costs, and uh we severely under-projected on on what we were gonna do. And it that goes back to Mike's first statement of the mission, what the mission was gonna be. We we purchased the aircraft and and we got very lucky with the aircraft and the camera, but we didn't have an established mission until Mike and I really started getting into it and we were like, what is our mission gonna be? And being proactive and the things that we've done, uh we severely undercut our budget and undershot it. So, you know, I would say shoot for the stars and get as much as you can, and then after establishing what your mission is and and really plan that budget and have a budget person that uh will teach you and will will help you grow through that. And uh I did not have any experience with with budgets, you know, just a very small part being a uh canine unit supervisor. So uh learning a budget, learning uh to be a lieutenant, learning FAA regulations, learning every all the things at the same time was an uphill battle. And we had a budget manager who uh was of no help. And uh I can remember being away, in fact, at a management school and not being able to go uh to dinner with some of my classmates because I had to work on a last-minute city council presentation to get our budget increased. So uh definitely establish a mission and then shoot for the stars with the budget. Mike, I I don't know if uh you would agree.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Yeah, you know, one of the struggles too is uh, and I'm sure other law enforcement agencies are gonna share this same sentiment, but you know, uh the police departments in general work at a much faster pace than the rest of the supporting entities within the city, meaning, you know, we're rarely used to getting things done uh right away. And if somebody asks you to do something, you're on it, you're gonna get it done in a timely manner. The problem is that we were working on time constraints with other city employees. And at the time, you know, a lot of these people during COVID were still working at home, you know. And so uh the other thing too is you know uh buying an airplane is is is almost exactly like buying a house. You know how do you transfer the money, you know? Uh it's got to go to escrow, you know. And the problem is a lot of these finance people don't really know how to buy an airplane, neither do we expect them because I didn't know how to buy an airplane either, you know. But the pace at which things occur uh was very, very, very frustrating, especially for Klani and I, because you know, we needed things done right away and we wanted them done at a pace that we're used to getting them done. Right. And so uh one of the things I learned is is uh you know set your expectations and then double them, you know. And the other thing too is is uh educate your finance director, educate your city council, educate anybody that's gonna have to pay a bill or look at it or pay the rent for the hangar and you know, let them know how valuable this tool is and get their buying in as well. And so yeah, we we struggled. I mean, we went uh I I can remember at one point we went five months without paying our bills, and they were getting ready to cut us off on fuel, you know. Yeah, you know, and so because uh people just didn't know how to uh understand the process, you know, you know, you're talking bid waivers, you know, you're you're talking justification memos, you know. And so the way our city works is that uh if I want to buy something from a sole source, I have to be able to justify it through a bid waiver and also through a sole source memo. And so I literally, and Clonnie as well, we we are popping out documents and memos every single day to justify spending any type of money at all, you know? And so know that process ahead of time if you're gonna get into this world.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yes, something you brought up that I think is really important is that relationship with the finance department, how important that relationship is in advance of a purchase, right? I think there's a lot of agencies, a lot of air support units who kind of have a loose affiliation with finance. They might deal with them on a you know biannual basis uh infrequently, I guess is is the point. Uh but we found, and I'll credit Eric Widener once again, uh he was my unit supervisor now as a CEO, COO of uh CNC Technology, but through his vision, he he made a concerted effort to develop relationships with a lot of folks at City Hall, but in particular in finance, the finance director was a big part of that. But also the the regular line level works within finance for the benefit of what you're talking about, Mike, the benefit of when you when you purchase either a large piece of equipment or a new new helicopter, uh they understand what that means and they understand the mission of your air support unit and the dynamics that exist within the program. So what he did was one, we we would host uh annual open houses and barbecues at AirSport and invite specific agencies up. Uh finance was one of those agencies. Yeah. They'd come up, they'd interact with us at AirSport, we'd take them up on a flight, they'd see and understand what the mission was. So that when they're processing our purchase, they understood exactly what it was they were doing. The other thing he did that I thought was genius is anytime somebody went to a conference, AppsCon, HEI, any of those, he would ask us to grab swag, calendars, keychains, anything is that anything that we could bring back, and he'd he'd feed those directly to finance, uh, IT, folks in those positions that we needed to foster the relationships. And I think a lot of us were all our eyes because we've been at so many conferences and conventions, and you you can only take home so many key chains and and you know aviation-related swag. But that goes so far when you when you pick that stuff up and and hand deliver that to those folks in those key positions. Uh so I think that relationship building it goes so far, it's really critical. I think that was a really great point that you guys brought up about establishing that relationship in advance of a purchase.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Yeah, again, you know, we didn't have those relationships. Uh, although I tell you that one of the very first things that we did uh when we got their craft hairs is we we put you know city council members in it, we put the finance director in it, we put the lady who was paying our bills in it so she understands uh the purpose, our mission, and understands how important it is. And so, and we still do that to this day, you know. Good. I I we invite people uh constantly, uh not only from the city, but also from the community, because you know the community support is just as important as uh you know city support in the council and the mayor, uh, because they're all elected officials, you know. And so uh social media is a is a great tool to to reach as many people as you can. We're lucky here because we have a very large social media following. Um I I think and tell me if I'm wrong, Connie, but I think here in the city we have one of the largest city uh social media uh followings. Out of all the platforms. So wow.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Good. And and we're gonna we're gonna talk about that more at some point in our conversation today, specifically, and how the how important that is. It sounds like you guys are doing all the things right. Uh now Kalani said he didn't have any budgeting background. Did you, Mike, have anything uh in any of your positions for budgeting?

SPEAKER_02 22:39

No, I you know, I was at the time I was the uh uh property crimes unit sergeant. You know, most of all our positions around here, we have our our uh primary assignment and then we have collaterals. And so for me, my primary assignment was a property crimes unit sergeant, and then uh this was a collateral. What would ended up happening in the beginning is is this task ended up being my primary assignment and my my full-time job was my collateral because it just took so much time and effort, you know. Oh yeah. I that and uh I couldn't uh you know everybody's listening out there and you're thinking about starting a uh air sport unit, you you're gonna have to dedicate a lot of time. So if you think that you can just do it on a part-time basis, it's just not gonna happen, you know, especially if you want to get off the ground.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Yeah. Uh I mean, it's kind of like uh not only are you getting to aviation, which is a completely different language. I mean, you both mentioned it so far about the FARs and all the different things in aviation, that's a foreign language. Well, so is budgeting. It is completely so you went into two unknowns at the same time uh together and had to accomplish lots of tasks in a language that was very difficult to understand in the beginning. And uh that is a challenge that I'm glad I never had to face. Well done for both of you, because you mentioned accomplished, or we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it. Um but Mike, let me go back to you for a second. You mentioned we're gonna talk about your airframe in detail a little bit later, but you mentioned that you've you stumbled into that aircraft. Give that give the backstory there, how you stumbled onto that.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Uh so uh during one of my 10 calls a day to whoever I could you know one of my last questions I'd ask people is who else could I talk to about this?

SPEAKER_00 24:28

Oh, that's a good question.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

Yeah, I would talk to somebody I said, hey, do you know anybody else? You know. So I'm I'm calling, I'm calling, I'm calling, I'm I'm talking to everybody. Uh I'm searching the internet, and then um I stumble across I was having a conversation, I believe was Jerry Hunter. I think Jerry Hunter's been on here, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Jerry Hunter.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Yes, yep, yes, King County.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

King County. Oh, that's right, Jerry from King County. Oh my gosh. Yeah, we we've talked to him all the time.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

Jerry's a great guy. Let me tell you a little side story about Jerry. I'm on the phone with Jerry, and we're talking aircraft and airframes and camera systems and like that. And uh at the end of the call, he says, Hey, I'm gonna come down to right now and I'm gonna show you what we have. And he did, you know, and I I really appreciate that he took the time out and came and and kind of gave me a visual of uh what the platform, uh you know, a fixed week platform looked like, you know. He flies it, you know, they fly a 206 down there, but uh just just give me that opportunity to see and what it looks like and everything. And so anyway, so uh somebody tells me uh, hey, CNC Technologies is uh uh selling an aircraft aircraft to the uh Pennsylvania Attorney General's office and they're taking in trade, uh Gipps GA8 air van. And uh you need to call them, you know, and so uh I start calling, and uh I ended up calling this this guy by the name of Dave Williams. I don't know if you guys remember Dave Williams from C and C. So he handles all the brokerage side of uh C and C technologies as far as the the intake and the sales of all the aircraft, you know. And so he's he's an aircraft broker, he's out of Florida, and so he has a little company called Skyhawk Aviation, and so he's uh he's a broker, you know. And so I end up calling the uh Dave Williams. He said, Yeah, we're taking this aircraft for trade, and here's what it is, I'll send you all the specs on it, and here's all its pictures. And so I get these specs and these pictures, and I have no idea what I'm looking at. Other than I'm I uh I see a tail number of uh November 187 and you know Papa Golf, you know. Uh I'm sorry, it was AG. It was A G. A G, yeah. Attorney General. So I which I thought was pretty cool, you know. And so then I started asking more questions and more questions, and I start to calling other people. I called every agency in the United States that has a Gipps Arrow GA8 and what their thoughts was. And what I found was is the California Hydro Patrol had the largest fleet at the time of uh GA8s, and so I started calling all their offices and talking to their pilots and uh getting what their opinion was. And then I went uh back to um John again, John Nielsen. I said, Hey John, we think about this this gifts GAA, you know, and so uh I started emailing all these photos and looking at the stats and really learning uh everything you need to know about an aircraft, you know, the log books, you know, the flight logs, the hours, you know, the engine, you know. And then what I did also is as I know that they're flying this aircraft. It was it was in Pennsylvania at the time. And I didn't make sure that there's aircraft would fly in California because we have much hotter weather. Uh the density, altitude, as you guys know here in California, based on the heat, can change dramastic dramatically. And so, you know, GA8 for you guys don't understand what it is, it's a it's a it's a big small airplane. You know.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

It's a good way to describe it.

SPEAKER_02 28:02

Yeah, it's a big small airplane that's very uncomfortable. George Morgan, if you're listening, I'm sorry. And so that's what I did. And uh so Dave Williams, uh the broker for CNC, uh, he gets me in touch with this guy that that's an amazing person. He's very knowledgeable, uh, named Dave Nail.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Dave Nail. Okay, small world time. Small world time. Uh Dave and I are classmates from Pennsylvania Attorney General's office.

unknown 28:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Yeah, Dave's Dave's a great guy. Great guy. Great guy. You couldn't come across a better guy to have to deal with in this situation than Dave Nail. I I'm just I'm just throwing it out there. I've never had to buy an airplane from Dave or anything, but talk about uh attention to detail and understanding of an aircraft and all that stuff. Dave Nail. That's that's fantastic. So go ahead, Mike. You met Dave. Yeah. How did that go?

SPEAKER_02 29:02

You know, I call I call call Dave. I got his phone number. Well, I'm sorry, the broker, it's old Dave and says, Hey, can this guy in California call you? He he he's an idiot, you don't know anything. Dave was so kind and uh patient, patient with me because not knowing anything, you know. And uh he started going through the uh the process with me understanding the aircraft and what they were using it for. And so, you know, this aircraft that we have it was a surveillance platform, yeah, and that's what that's what it was built for. And so uh and they had originally had planned on pulling the camera off. It's got a uh uh 380 HD uh on it, and they were gonna they were gonna pull the camera off and sell the plane separately and just shelf that camera to use as a spare for their new aircraft. You know, Dave and I had a lot of conversations, a lot of talks, and uh he helped his people make the decision, hey, we're gonna sell this thing. We want this this aircraft back into service. It's a valuable tool. And uh the Attorney General's office of Pennsylvania. Um, I mean, we we stole that airplane, honestly. Or we paid up for it, you know. They did us a very big favor by giving step.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

That's good to hear. I'm glad to hear that. Uh because it and they they they was part of uh the AG's office at B and I, the Bureau of Narcotics Investigations. So they like you said, they were that was a surveillance aircraft. They're following dope dealers, you know, all day long. That's what they used it for. It was a it enhanced B and I dramatically. It it served them very well. I know that uh they it served them very well. Dave and I've talked about it. That aircraft got there long after I departed there, but uh uh Dave said, what a game changer. And he was thrilled that it was going to get to continue to be a game changer for Modesto PD.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Oh yeah, it it has, you know. Again, we stumbled across uh even you know, there's there's features on that camera that we find out later that Dave didn't even know had, because when when uh I don't know if you heard this story, Jack, about uh about the camera system. That was actually one of FLIR's demo cameras.

unknown 31:11

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

And a lot of the sensors, there's there's it's got four sensors in it. It's got every sensor and every option you can think of, but a lot of it was turned off, but I don't know why or unplugged. And so we had to go in for repairs a couple times, and one of the funny stories is the guys from uh FLIR call me and they're like, hey, why is your uh SWER camera disconnected? And I said, I didn't know we had a SWER camera.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Well that's great, you know.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

Laser range fighter, lay laser pointer, just it has every option you can think of with laser uh camera system, and so it's a great camera. And you know, I've had some great support from Fleur as well. Uh you know, they're they're here on the uh the West Coast as well. And so I've got the camera up there two or three days, and their turnovers have been great and everything, and their their support's task great. And so I can, you know, I call them there's like three Steves there, you know, that I'll call and talk to. And so uh they've been very helpful with our mission as well and helping me understand the capabilities of the the camera system, what we can do, what we can't do, and what our expectations are too. So and expectations is I mean, we could we could go down that road as well and and and talk about expectations too, is what you expect to get out of this camera and what what what your goals are.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

So we we we're gonna go down that road a little bit. Before we get there though, Kalania, I want to go back to you for a second. You you get selected to come in and you're gonna be the unit sergeant of a unit that's being created. You talked about you know the hurdles of the aircraft, but talk about those other the other side of it, the personnel part, the training, the the the stuff that you had to deal with starting this unit on the personnel side. Talk about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 32:55

When I got selected as the the commander, it was uh it was kind of everybody knew, but it wasn't official that Mike was going to be the sergeant of the team and that uh you know it was gonna be him and I. So it was kind of odd uh dealing with Mike on the front end, but then being told like, hey, you have to open up positions, right? It has to be fair, right? That's the the fair word. So uh we had to open it up, and and obviously Mike was selected, and then really it was it was just Mike and I deciding from there who's gonna be the best fit for what we're looking for. We we established that mission and we started looking, and you know, we had talked to a couple people and we had you know the SWAT guys that were were interested. We had kind of the tacticians, you know, some of those those guys that were interested. But we really started looking at what we needed, and we needed somebody who was solid on patrol, that could run a call, run a perimeter, you know, and uh, but also as I call them, you know, my nerd guys. You know, I need somebody that's gonna be tech savvy, uh, that's gonna be able to get in there and do what we need to be done because we need to outfit this aircraft the way we need it. And uh so we we opened it up, we selected our TFOs, uh, not without some hiccups. We we actually had to um everybody that put in, we had to put through the initial training as our uh as our TFOs. Uh and we went with it was a former CHP uh TFO that came in and trained us because of the systems and everything. Right. So we had to waste a lot of money to train a group of people where we were only gonna take four out of, I think what was it like ten of them, Mike, that had applied. Yeah, 10. Wow. But we had to put everybody through the same testing process because it had to be fair and equal, uh, even though we kind of knew who we wanted at the beginning as far as what was going to fit our mold. So we had a very lofty goal. We got the aircraft, we took possession at the end of March when Mike and Rich blew it back. But then we went, uh, we said, hey, we want to be in the air flying by Cinco de Mayo. So we had just over five weeks to uh select a team, get them trained, uh, and get up in the air. And uh that was what we were pushing for. Uh we didn't quite make it. I think our first flight was May, was it May 6th or May 7th, Mike? Yeah, May 6th. May 6th. So we so we were delayed by one day, uh, but that was actually scheduling issues. That was nothing, uh, nothing with us. But uh yeah, so it was just all all the things to get everybody trained. Mike and I both went through the training so we could understand what they were going through. Obviously, Mike took it above and beyond. I have enough knowledge to go up there and uh probably mess the camera up a little bit, but uh I wanted to have I wanted to know what our guys were dealing with up there. That was very important for me, and then uh really to so we could know how to progress the mission and and do what we did. So yeah, it was a lot of things in a short amount of time, and like Mike said, with uh our primary assignments kind of getting put on the back burner to uh to get this program up and going.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

Yeah. What was the priorities of that training? Was there something that you was there a list of priorities where we get this is the the number one thing we want to get these people trained in. This is number two, number three. Did you have a priority list like that?

SPEAKER_04 36:13

Yeah, safe safety was number one priority um for for Mike and I both going into it, you know, understanding not quite understanding, but understanding all the uh different regulations and everything, but just the uh the safety aspects between the pilot, which we haven't even talked about how we identified our pilots yet. So that was that's a completely different process, you know. But but really that continuity between the flight crew was our number one priority and uh the flight crew safety and then the aircraft safety. Those those were our our top two priorities uh when we when we went into this, and then from there it was the technical side of learning the camera, being able to operate the radio system, uh, you know, just learning the TFO station was uh was down towards the bottom of that list. So all the guys that we selected knew how to be cops, they were very squared away, training officers. Uh, you know, they had been in the mix before. So so we knew what we were getting. Um, but it was that just that safety side, you know, we we were Mike and I both were very adamant and on that same page. Like we are not gonna be the the brand new team that uh you know changes the the rules up for for aviation, for law enforcement aviation. We're not going to do anything unsafe, uh if we're we're not gonna fly if we're not ready. And uh so those were really our our safety priorities going in.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

That's that's good stuff. Those are those are the priorities. Uh a couple things that jump out of me here. Number one, the fact that the two of you went through the training, I like that a lot for a lot of reasons. Uh that is really important that you have that understanding of the people you're going to be supervising in that position. You can relate to what they're talking to you about. Uh, you're speaking the same language. There's a lot of pluses there. The other thing is uh I remember when I saw that you got the aircraft delivered. And I remember talking to, we'll we'll talk about Van Diemen here a little later, but I remember talking to Van Diemen, who retired Modesto, and said, Hey, they got an airplane. Man, I hope they find somebody from CHP to help train them. And Dave, Dave uh about two days later calls me back and says, Hey, I was just curious too. They did. That was a great move. Because in California, anyway, that the fixed wing CHP program is outstanding. I mean, it has been for a long time. John Nielsen's a big reason for that, but there are others. I mean, there's a whole bunch of very talented pilots and TFOs within that fixed wing program. So that was a great call to go to them and uh and and get that training well done. Very smart.

SPEAKER_04 38:59

Yeah, and that was all Mike. That's uh, you know, the connections he made uh to get them to come in. Uh and we were we were very adamant on the TFO side and the pilot side. We actually had uh their pilots come in and train uh our pilots, and we're unique because we actually use uh we use civilian pilots. Um, you know, so we don't uh uh long term, Mike and I have talked, our goal is to develop pilots in-house and we're almost there. Uh but we uh we hired civilian pilots that just wanted to come in and give back to the community and and uh you know be uh like a weekend warrior, you know, and and it's funny, some of these guys have actually got a pretty good ear now for the radio and and what's going on and and how to maneuver the plane. But uh we had CHP pilots and TFOs come in and uh we trained to their standards before uh we go in and and give the final blessing. And and as the final final, Mike actually goes up with them and makes sure that uh they're running the plane correctly, they're doing all the things, but then uh again going back to safety, that uh safety is their number one priority. So uh yeah, that was that was probably the best decision that uh that was made. And uh we had to ask for some more money again, going back to budget to uh to complete that training, but uh we were adamant that to have a safe program and an efficient program, that that's what we needed to do.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

Exactly. Because one accident is gonna cost the city more than any training, any airplane, any, you know, it's a common error in law enforcement in not just aviation, where they want to they say, oh, well, we spent all this money on this and this, we can't give you any more. Well, when it comes to safety and operations and flight, uh just one incident, not even an accident, can cost much more than what you're asking for for training. And it's something that, again, the budget people and and um many times leadership, they just don't quite understand because aviation uh is very unique. And just just like canine. I mean, you can both relate to that. Canine, a SWAT, bomb squad, specialized detectives, doesn't matter what it is, there's there's unique stuff that a city manager or budget people or even sometimes chiefs have no clue what they're getting into. So you need to sell it and really prove to them we not only do we need this, but we need this training to be safe. It sounds like you guys accomplished that. Um while we're here, Mike, why don't you walk us through this pilot part? Kalani mentioned it. What what how was that decision made and how's it working for you?

SPEAKER_02 41:45

Well, that was a learning process as well. And so uh I went out to the airport, you know, and and I walked around the jet center, you know, and again, I just started talking to people. You know, as we know, pilots are special people.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

Yeah, oh yeah. Just ask them, just ask us where we are. We are pretty darn special. Yeah, pretty much, John, right? We're special.

SPEAKER_02 42:07

Right. And so uh I went down to the jet center and uh just started to talk to people, introduced myself, and um, you know, we needed to place a store aircraft. So that was the first priority to say, let's get that thing here, let's get it in the hangar, let's get it over to maintenance, and uh, you know, because we flew it all across the country. And so uh I just started to talk to people, and um it's kind of funny because the the way that I met uh probably one of my best pilots was through Facebook. And so I have a friend on Facebook who took a flight uh with this guy named Andrew and uh Andrew Roberts, who's a he's a corporate pilot. And so I I text uh my friend uh Jake, yeah, he's an or oral surgeon. I said, Hey, ask that guy if he wants to fly a police airplane, you know. He goes, What? He goes, Yeah, no, it sounds like a weird question, but we have we have a less aircraft here and ask him, you know. And so uh one of the things I did prior to all this though is uh obviously before we could even fly the aircraft back to Pennsylvania, we had to have insurance. And so I went through pretty thoroughly all the insurance requirements for the pilots in order to make sure that they could qualify, you know. And so when I when I you know, Andrew and I had this first conversation, uh he he well was within all of the uh qualifications. You know, he's a five, six thousand hour commercial corporate uh pilot that flies three or four different aircrafts. And so he really got us off the ground in the beginning. And so and what ended up happening is this uh through him and word of mouth there at the jet center in the airport, uh people started calling, hey, we want to fly, we want to fly, you know, and so I had a corporate pilot and then I ended up with two commercial pilots, you know, who fly commercial aircraft. And uh there's some good and bad there, you know, with using you know, corpor not corporate, but commercial aircraft. Their schedules are so erratic, you know, uh depending on they're on standby or not on standby, depending on what leg, you know, depending on their availability and stuff like that. And so Andrew didn't have those, a lot of those um restrictions. So he flew almost every day for us, you know. Wow. And you know, so I'm gonna step, I'm gonna go two steps back here real quick, Jack. Sure. Please do. One of the things that we identified early on, and Klani and I really talked about this, is we came up with a theme, you know, for our mission. And our theme was is we wanted to be a proactive air support unit.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

You know, good.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

And we we identified what does that mean? You know, that means we're gonna be in the air as much as we can, as long as we can. Uh, and if the pace, the potential is there, we're gonna be in the air. And so uh we came up with this concept, and then if we weren't in maintenance, we were gonna be in the air. And so uh I think it's a new concept for law enforcement aviation that I get calls about it all the time. You know, what does proactive mean? Proactive to us means is I have the same exact computer, uh, the mobile data computer in the airplane that the officer has on the ground so that he can proactively respond to calls without being dispatched or without being told all the radio, you know. And uh we go to calls that officers never have to go to. And so by being proactive, number one, uh it's it's cheaper to keep an airplane in the air than it is to land to take it off all the time. You know, they'll land, you know, a mission for us is you know, three, four hours, you know, and either they run out of fuel or their bladders are full, you know. And uh so uh that was our mission, you know. Uh I get calls about that out all the time. You know, you you if you want to do this, you want to be successful, you have to be proactive. You know, a lot of agencies work off this what I'll call the fireman approach. They're sitting in the hangar, they're sitting in the office, and they wait for the call. We also developed this not only a concept here in Bodesto for our air support unit, but also a concept for everything that we do here. And I I coined it the 128 seconds. Uh we have 128 seconds to get some type of resource on scene, whether it's the airplane, a city camera, an officer, or some other type of electronic device in order to get eyes on to that situation so that we can evaluate it, we can determine what the correct response is, or maybe there is no response, and get eyes on the suspect because we also know that the the sooner that we get somebody in custody, we're saving so much money. The sooner we can get uh evidence recording from either our camera system or our LPRs or the officers or even a UAV or the aircraft, you just save so much money on the back end, you know. We've we've responded and fly for our fire department as well, directing them in against so uh that that's an important concept. I think that if there's other law enforcement agencies out there that are thinking about, you know, entering into this world, that you gotta get out of that that single-minded mentality of sitting in the office, waiting for a call to come. You gotta be in the air and get on scene. You know, we're on scene on a lot of these calls before the dispatcher is even, you know, given the address because we're seeing it, you know. Yeah, cameras pointed there. The other thing too is is uh, you know, we we fly at 6,500 feet. And so we do that for a couple reasons. Uh number one, the slant angle gives us the ability to get anywhere in this city immediately, you know, without having to fly to the call. And so number two, safety.

SPEAKER_00 47:42

Sure. Well, the proactivity. Uh John, how many times have we discussed this with agencies where they they want to be proactive and they're limited, they're not being allowed to be proactive. That would mean it's amazing how many pursuits there are that you will never ever get to if you're if you're being reactive. The fire, the firefighter approach, like you said, Mike, you know, till you scramble out, even if you're sprinting out to an aircraft and you're responding, you're gonna miss out on anything that's big. Most shootings last seconds, most pursuits last a few minutes. But if you're already up, and especially the way you're talking, Mike, I mean, you're at 6,500 feet, you're already up there. Your your crosshairs on that camera can be on something in split seconds. I mean, as fast as you could type in an address, right? I mean, and you're on it. Proactivity is so important in in law enforcement aviation. And I'm glad you talked about that.

SPEAKER_02 48:42

I got some numbers. Can I share some numbers with you guys?

SPEAKER_00 48:44

Sure. Yeah, please.

SPEAKER_02 48:45

I'm gonna give you some numbers here. The other thing, too, uh, that I wanted to touch on is when you're spending a lot of money, uh you have to justify it. The way you justify it is keeping very meticulous stats. You know, our TFOs are required to do a uh daily report uh that translates into a weekly report, which translates into a monthly and a yearly report because uh you know you you're you're spending a lot of money, and so you have to justify it. So mind you, and in March and April, we had to put a new engine in the airplane. And so uh through July uh we responded to 1,669 calls for service. We're first on the scene 1,152 times. We've conducted 992 searches, no patrol responses, uh 436 calls. And why is that important? That means an officer never had to go that call, and so we were able to use that valuable resource uh somewhere else rather than wasting them on a call that nobody had to go to in the first place. Wow, 266 uh uh assists to other agencies. We did 77 uh assists to CHP. Um we onviewed some type of criminal activity 63 times. We conducted 58 surveillance missions, um 12 pursuits, 17 in custody, others. That's about everything we can't talk about. 986 of the others, uh DOI arrests. That's important. 21 DOI arrests where what ends up happening is we'll get these BOLs, be on the lookouts for not to respond to an area where somebody thinks the citizen calls and reports that hey, there's this drunk driver. 21 times we found that drunk driver got him pulled over safely into custody. And as of today, 58 mrb arrests and 67 felony arrests. So, and you know, like I said, we we had to put an engine in this this aircraft in March and April. So right now we're if it's not in maintenance, it's it's in the air. So and I I give you these numbers because it just explains a little bit to you how important it is to keep these statistics so that you could justify. Um, if I could find another GA8 right now, we would buy it. We'd be a full-time unit, you know. Yeah. For all my CHP friends out there, because I've been bugging them like fairly. Uh I I got a couple phone numbers, I again I got a couple phone numbers to a couple of the assistant chiefs in Sacramento. And uh, hey, when do you guys get rid of your next GA8?

SPEAKER_00 51:12

It'll it's gonna happen, you know. You just keep making those calls.

SPEAKER_02 51:17

We'll be we'll probably fly about a little over a thousand hours this year.

SPEAKER_00 51:21

Outstanding.

SPEAKER_01 51:24

Those stats are so important for so many different reasons. The justification part of it's huge. Developing political capital and establishing the return on an investment that the agency is making in in that aircraft is is huge. My agency, we kept track of a lot of stats, like you, and probably a lot of the same stats. I think some of the most important ones were first on scene percentage. We found that you know when we're up and flying, we're we're on scene more than 95% of the time first. That was ended up being one of our unofficial motto's first on scene. And why is that important? Well, it's important because when you're first on scene, especially within seconds of the call being dispatched, you're locating those suspects, you're getting that person in custody outside of a pursuit or some you know long dry-out investigative process. As you pointed out, saving money. And I remember working patrol, you know, you you get the call to patrol, it's a domestic violence call. By the time you drive to wherever that call is, the odds of the suspect still being there is almost zero. So I get to air support, and almost 95% of the calls that I'm now going on, the suspect's still there. You're seeing the suspect walk out of his house, get into his car, and drive away. And you then, you know, direct ground ground units to his location, get him in custody, the game changer. But that first unseen percentage was huge. We had a stat we call butt force. So the apprehension of a particular suspect would not have happened if it weren't for that presence of the air support unit. And those stats are gold. You know, I think those are a lot of our checkbook uh we call checkbook cases, right, Jake? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:45

Yeah. The checkbook, yeah, where you go and ask for money and you come take the stats.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

Yeah. But I guess you know, all these stats at the end of the day, what they establish again is that political capital so that when we do go to city council to finance to our you know chain of command and say, hey, we need an investment of a new camera, we need an engine overhaul, we need whatever the thing is, a new aircraft. There's no question of well, what is it you provide? Well, we've demonstrated on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis through our activity reports what it is we do. Uh, so I think that you guys are doing such a good job just based on what you've described through that process. When you think of the stats that you collect, what do you think is the most valuable stat that you guys collect and how do you utilize that in your report?

SPEAKER_02 53:33

I would say the first on-seen uh because it allows us to smartly deploy our resources. Uh it allows us to evaluate immediately there's more or less, and it allows us to you know, even if you look at the officer safety aspect of being first on scene, it helps us to identify if there's any safety concerns as well, you know. The other thing too is is you know, as we know, you know, people commit crimes, they usually flee. And allows us to, you know, get get eyes on them, you know, for the whole pursuit mitigation uh philosophy as well. And so that first on scene uh stat to me is really important.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

It is. It is. You I mean you get first and scene, and uh, like you said, there it's multi-layered. There are so many pluses to that, especially officer safety, but absolutely public safety too. I mean you can tell somebody, hey, this is in fact happening, because we all know you get calls where it sounds like, whoa, this is this is wild, and you get there and there's nothing happening. It's just exaggeration. But we also go to calls that are nothing, that are end up being these wild incidents, you know. Uh that first at scene is really, really important. Uh I'm I'm glad you said that because I I agree. I think uh I think it is too.

SPEAKER_02 54:54

And again, you you can't do that if if if you're you're flying like farming.

SPEAKER_00 54:58

No, you'll never you'll be first at scene five percent of the time instead of 95%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

One more stat, just talk about briefly is the the we called them units canceled or our saved stats. I think you you brought that that that up too. Uh when you're able to proactively cancel units' response to a darking barking dog call or you know, a traffic collision or whatever the thing is, like you said, those units are now able to go out and be proactive and look for bad guys, or they're able to respond to higher priority calls and cancel out the calls that are you know the the the parasites essentially for for dispatch and for the officers to to take care of. So I think that the cost savings associated with the deployment of an aircraft for those alone is is huge. I think that the to quantify that's really valuable. So cool you guys are keeping track of that.

SPEAKER_00 55:44

No doubt. No doubt. Kalani, let's talk about early impact. Um just overall, what's your what are your thoughts about that? Early impact when the the it back in that May 6th, you know, it launches and now you're you're flying. Talk about the early impacts to your department. And if there's a certain incident that happened early on where there was a buy-in, where everybody heard about that incident, went, wow, thank goodness we have these guys. What was there was there a moment like that?

SPEAKER_04 56:15

So there was. You know, early impacts that we we had it, it it was a little bit of an uphill battle to get to get guys used to um calling for us. You know, we were we're blessed with Modesto, where 90% of the time the sheriff's office was going to be up and we could call for them, or they'd launch for us. You know, so getting our guys used to always having an aircraft up was a little bit of an uphill battle. You know, the the buy-in from leadership, although we did have the uh the chief and the assistant chief, you know, the the rest of the leadership team was a little more hesitant, you know, with uh lieutenants and captains. And you know, I'm not saying anything that's not commonly known in law enforcement, but everybody battles for their own specific team or their own specific unit at the time. And uh if it's gonna take away from funding that another team could get, you know, you're gonna you're always gonna have those naysayers. Mike and I worked a lot to combat that by having the guys up in the air and doing things. And and the one incident, and uh Mike, I apologize if I stole your thunder hearer, we actually had an OIS very early on where uh one of our officers just happened to be right off of Yosemite Boulevard, which is a Jesus, to our airport, uh, had stopped a guy, the guy fled on a bicycle, and as he was fleeing, actually started shooting at the officer who was chasing him in his control car. Uh we were actually coming in to land, we had just put the camera away and heard it coming off. The TFO, uh, one of our first TFOs, who's just an outstanding flight officer, uh heard the call, was able to uh divert the landing, told the pilot, hey, stay up in the air, click the camera back down, and we actually captured it. So we captured this running gun battle uh as it was going around and throughout a neighborhood just north of Yosemite there, and we caught, I think it was like 96% of that shooting on the camera. And uh, so we were able to get officer or that officer to back off as he was chasing him, give him directions, you know, as he was coming through the alleyways and uh whatnot. And that really changed uh once once that went through, that really changed the face of uh what we were doing out there. And then it was not a uh, you know, hey, uh can we? It was uh, hey, we need you. And uh that that really solidified our impact. And that that was probably the biggest early impact that we had. You know, we couldn't have asked for a better situation. You know, the officer was fine, uh, bad guy was taken into custody, so uh couldn't have asked for a better situation to prove our worth. Uh our TFO that was in there just happened to be the best uh TFO that we could possibly have in there. Uh in fact, he got rep uh recognized by APSA for 2024 for uh fixed-wing TFO of the year. You know, it just everything aligned. And then after that, we really established ourselves as a uh citywide and a countywide asset. Series PD, Oakdale PD, uh the sheriff's office started calling for us because we were up so much where uh you know they fly their helicopter the majority of the time. So uh sheriff's office started calling for us. Uh CHP has been huge, and then just from there, our uh our TFOs made all the connections with that early impact and and not just for our agency, but we started going out of county to uh San Joaquin County, uh Tracy, Livermore, uh Tuolamy County. My son works up in Tuolame County as a deputy as a canon handler, and uh he's buddies with our TFOs, so he would call our TFOs and say, hey, we got this going on. And all that combined was really the early impact that we needed because we spread like wildfire. And uh that really showed all of our executive team like, no, we we can't go back now. There's no there's no turning back. Like you get on get on board or get out of the way because uh air support's coming full through.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:10

Yeah, Mike, add add on to this impact. I know you're thinking of some stuff. Oh, sheesh, man. I mean, where do you start, huh?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:19

Right, where do I start? Uh again, I mentioned this a little earlier, but I you know it's it's cheaper to fly, it's cheaper to keep an airplane in in in the air than it is to land it and take off. And you know, uh and there's another there's a bunch of different reasons. Number one, you are uh, you know, that heat cycling is is where tearing the engine as well. So again, we keep that aircraft in the air. I think our longest flight to date is a little over six hours, you know. And so uh the DUIs, you know, the DUIs are important, you know. Part of the funding that came to purchase this airplane came from the Office of Traffic Safety. And so DUI is important to us here in the city of Modesto because we have so many fatalities that are that are as a result of you know um some type of intoxicated driving or under the influence of driving. And so we'll go out and actively look for you know DOI drivers as well. You know, the other thing too is is the officer safety, you know. Uh if our airplane is at the air, or even if the sheriff's department is in the air, uh these guys know that you know their number one prior priority is containment. And and you know, let that guy bed down and uh contain him, then we'll start searching a you know systematical method where we can use the uh the camera system or to help us out, you know, and identify you know potential dangers and things like that. And so uh it's a phenomenal camera, you know. I I keep saying that, but it is a phenomenal camera. And so just the uh the culture, you know, uh around the culture change, uh and Connie kind of touched on it a little bit, you know, uh the culture change before or after we we got the aircraft changed the way that we're doing business here, you know. Yeah, and culture is an important part of uh law enforcement and how you do business, and so knowing that these guys have the support of the eyes in the sky, you know, uh knowing that uh if I have to, I can get a TFO and a pilot there immediately in order to give them the support. And so it's just an invaluable resource that goes towards that 128-second concept, you know. Uh and it is that hundred 128-second concept isn't just one tool, you know. Again, it's a UAB, it's an airplane, it's a camera. Uh, I know that you're gonna have a conversation with the chief uh here in the real near future. And so uh he's a great supporter, he he's a great visionary. Uh his his goal, he told me the other day, is Mike, uh uh my goal before I retire is have a second aircraft, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:53

Outstanding.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:54

Yeah, I can't tell you don't.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:55

Yeah. I will say one thing that that I think is important, and I think you might not feel like you need to hear this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. That you know, I was part of a unit that was around for 50, 60 years, you know. Don't don't ever live on what you did yesterday. And keep keep uh working with your patrol officers and emphasizing them to them the importance of air support and how to work together as a team. Even it's a little bit easier on a smaller department, but I can tell you that on our department, we'd go from division to division and it would it would vary. I noticed it as a canine handler, noticed it at air support. The the cooperation, the coordination would vary depending on what division we were in the city. And we would go out to them and say, hey, listen, I don't think we're working together as good as we should be. Let's talk about that. What's the issue here? And we'd they'd vent about something, or we would say ask them that. They'd say, Well, you know, this, this or that. And we don't like that you guys are getting there first on a burglary for motor vehicle call because they're gonna start running before we're there. That's an excellent point. So let's do that. Let's do this. You guys don't have to worry about this at 6,500 feet, but in a helicopter, we had to worry about that because they could hear us coming and the guys start running. Well, we started coming in wider and higher, and maybe not coming in as hot till ofcers were on scene. Things like that. So I would just say continue to work with your patrol people, go to roll calls, talk to them, go to the coffee spot and say, what can we do better for you guys? You know, how what are we doing good that you really like? And keep that communication going, especially with canine handlers, SWAT, the specialized people, but certainly your customer patrol. That's my two sets on that. Uh, because I've seen it, you know, where it it can we take it for granted, but you guys are off to the races here. I mean, that's that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:04

I want to stick to that internal marketing piece for a minute and get some advice from you guys. The internal marketing piece of what we do in in AirSport is so important, and a lot of agencies overlook it entirely. But, you know, when I was doing the weekly and monthly activity reports, I was shocked as a member of AirSupport how many great incidents we were a part of. I'd write these reports up, I'm like, holy cow, I had no idea we were a part of all this stuff. Yeah. And kind of extrapolated that across the country and then the world. I'm like, wow, public safety aviation is doing really outstanding work every day, saving officers' lives, saving lives of citizens. And it was it was shocking to me. So what I've thought through is you know, how do we as an agency internally market that good work we're doing? There's some some good uh pieces of advice I've I've heard from agencies, but from your guys' perspective, how do you market that good work that your own folks are doing?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:57

You know, we used to uh you know we record everything. We record everything, everything gets uploaded into evidence.com. And a lot of those recordings are played back in briefings. Not only sometimes they're just played for fun, you know. You see something fun that happens, but also for training aspects, you know, we have mobile spikes. We you know we can pit cars here and so you know we play the videos all the time and show them the capabilities and it just amazes these officers and they get excited. Every time every time I'll go to a briefing or one of the TFOs, we'll go to the briefing with a with a with a new video. I mean it's it it's exciting to them. The other thing too is the more you could publish stats or the more that you can um put your wins out there throughout social media and through into the public's eyes, uh it builds a sense of pride. It's a huge sense of pride for me. Uh-huh. And Kalani, I know as well. Uh, but also the officers that know that you know this tool is working. Uh it's a tool that they're a part of as well. And so yeah, I got I got asked early on because we we started sharing videos almost immediately. And I had another department call me and said, hey, you guys are sharing those before these cases are adjudicated. Do you see any issues with that? And uh that could be another podcast as well. Um we're selective about it, you know. Uh but 95% of the times we'll show up, we'll put them on there because uh I tell you this last uh fireworks season we used the airplane to identify illegal fireworks. Uh I think that the last total was you know $266,000 in fines. And so we record them and uh we send them a ticket in the mail, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:51

The marketing piece, uh, you know, to John, you kind of asked for me when I first started was really getting the buy-in uh not just from the guys, but from the command staff and the executive team. So it was a lot of going into meetings, a lot of highlighting what the team was doing, what what Mike and the TFOs were doing, you know, looking for opportunities to deploy. I know uh Mike and I were very fortunate. Uh just a few months after purchasing the plane, I actually ended up as the uh up in investigation. So Mike and I, our offices were next door to each other. So we uh we called ourselves the uh the hangar north because uh air support was right there, uh, which worked out really, really well, you know, long-term for for the air support unit. But if we had something going on, whether it was a uh dope buy, some sort of operation, critical incident, uh, I would pull Mike and we would get a pilot and I'd send them up in the air. And you know, just showing that, hey, we're always there. Uh, but really it was just talking about it. But then even before that, it was finding the right people to put up into place uh and not making it about uh, oh well, this person gets everything, or uh, or they just picked him because of this. Like we had to pick people that were respected, uh, and had that street cred, you know, and and having uh both Mike and I going in there from what our backgrounds were and uh being known as always being down in the mix. Uh I think guys knew what to expect and even from the leadership team, and and it really helped with that buy-in. So having the right people in place, but then uh not being afraid to highlight the unit, but for the right reasons. We all know the people that highlight things for the wrong reasons, uh, but we highlighted it for the right reasons to show what the team was doing, and that that really got the buy-in. And uh with the city council that really got it out there, uh our PIO, she really helped us out getting our stuff out there. So it was really a team effort, but uh having the right people in place and the right team with with Mike and the TFOs was getting that buy-in early, and that's probably the best marketing piece that we could have done.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:00

Yeah, that that's huge. I I feel like it's a it's a big uh diversion from a lot of the quiet professional mantra that most law enforcement agencies have when it comes to specialized units. You know, when you're in SWAT, canine, other specialized units, a lot of folks operate under that. We do a good job, we don't have to talk about it, we don't need pats on the back. But in in aviation, it's it's different, right? We have to talk about, we have to promote the work that we're doing. Otherwise, folks don't have no idea. A lot of folks in our own agencies have no idea what air support does. They just know that when they call and ask for us, we can't go because of weather. And it's kind of hard to do a static display at like uh a street fair or something, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:42

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:43

So I I I love that you guys are doing that. Really good points that you brought up. Uh the culture development is really important. And I think what you what you do through the videos is is really cool too. You know, people consume information in so many different ways today, but video consumption of information is I think the primary way that people consume information now. And I think back to those weekly activity reports that I wrote, and I I I slid those across the desk of uh the chain of command every week. And now I wonder how many of those actually got read. Probably not very many. You know, but the videos that you talk about, uh you disseminate those videos, and I guarantee people are watching those because they're interesting. John Nielsen actually was the one we talked about that on on the podcast with him. He talked about creating a highlight reel that they would disseminate through their agency and through the ranks, and you know, it it showed the return on investment and the good work they're doing, but it also uh developed interest in the airsport program from the folks patrol that were seeing those videos. Like, oh, I can be a part of that and and do that. That's that's really interesting. So love what you guys are doing there, and and I will be sure to take some bits and pieces of what you guys are doing and share that in some of the conversations we have in the future.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:51

Yeah, that's good stuff, man. It's uh and it's necessary in today's world, especially. Well, we've been talking about the city of Modesto, the city of water, wealth, contentment, and health. Now, Kalani's going, how does Jack know that? I've known that since 1983, Kalani. Because of Van Diemen. Uh our mutual friend Dave Van Diemen uh was a classmate of mine in LA, and our entire class knew that saying before graduation. Uh so it's just fun, it's one of those funny things that Dave and I still talk about, but uh, and you both worked with Dave for many years. He left LA, went back to his hometown, and retired a captain a while back. But uh so Kalani, tell us about Modesto. Give us the the stats and the overview of Modesto, the city.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:39

Yeah, so uh Modesto, we're centrally located in in the state. We're blessed because uh we're about two hours, hour and a half, two hours from everything. So you go two hours, you're in Yosemite. You go two hours, you're in Sacramento. Go two hours, you're uh on the coast, you know. So we're we're just right right in the heart of California. Uh we're a population of about 218,000, uh very much a farming community. We kind of talk about how we're a big city with a small town feel. That's really really what we are. 46 square miles, demographics, uh a lot of farms. Gallo, most people are familiar with Gallo. Gallo's base of operations is here. So, you know, we have uh one of the biggest wine manufacturers in the world right here in our backyard. Uh in fact, their uh their private hangar is just uh down the way from ours, so which is uh which is kind of neat. So yeah, very nice, unique little community, kind of a uh a melting pot here in the valley. Uh hot in the summer, cold in the winter, uh fog, uh, you know, you you joked and talked about weather earlier. You know, we deal with uh with weather here quite often, uh, but just a very unique community, and we're we're fortunate that we're very supported here. Law enforcement is very supported here within our community. We passed uh Measure H a couple years ago, which is a uh it was the majority of that funding coming to public safety, which is one of the big reasons we were able to uh purchase this aircraft and continue to go. And uh Mike and I now have the uh well, Mike now has the uh very fortunate sense of not being told no very often when it comes to air support because of Measure H. So uh that's just the community support that we we enjoy and goes back to the culture of our department. Uh department wide, we're uh we're a pretty equal representation of what our community is. So uh it very unique little community.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:35

Yeah, it is. And I'd love the I love the saying that it's a a big city but small, small town feel, and it it is that. Uh I've been there many, many times, of course, over the years, either teaching or hanging out with Van Diemen. And uh it it it is, it truly is that that area. So, Mike, let's uh uh switch gears to Modesto PD. Tell us about the police department and uh the the the personnel, mission pro you know, what units, all that stuff about Modesto PD.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:06

Uh you know, it's it's uh Modesto PD is my second agency. I actually started in the Sheriff's Department in Tawange County, which I loved. I loved it up there and then uh I had the opportunity to come down here and work. And so it's a great department. Uh we have great men and women uh that work here. We have a great support staff that supports our mission every single day about what we do, quite protect and serve. You know, and our our mission here is to keep Metesto safe and make it a safe place to work, live, and play. And so that's the culture of the men and women of the Modesto Police Department is that very simple concept is you know, make Medesto safe, you know. We got a great chief, we got a great command staff, uh, we have a lot of great things that going on here that a lot of other agencies don't. You know, we have mental health clinicians built into uh the department to go out with the officers. We have a community health team that's uh sits right here in the department that goes out and deals with all the mental health issues with people, finds, you know, uh tries to identify resources for them so the officers don't have to do that, you know. We have numerous special assignments you can uh go to and work at, you know, and but at the same time, we're a young department, you know, and as you know, uh being a young department, there's growing pains. Sure. And sometimes we just have to realize get back to the basics, you know. We're constantly hiring a lot of us uh who've been here for a long time or uh gonna retire here in the real near future. But it it's just a great place. I have the honor of uh being a day shift watch commander and working with all these young guys, you know. I know I'm not a cop anymore, and I'm okay with that. I was a cop for 30 years and then finally they did this, you know. And the great thing about this position is it lets me serve in a different way where I feel like they can impact more people and make a difference uh to the officers themselves so that again, so that but also a safe place to work and play.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:56

Yeah. How many personnel are you at right now? Uh clowning, what's that number? 212. Okay. Yep. And how how things as far as retention and recruitment, you guys at your numbers you want to be at?

SPEAKER_04 1:17:10

So retention has gotten a lot better over the last several years. Yes. Uh recruitment, you know, we we're in the fortunate position where we've added positions, so that's actually why our numbers uh seem a little low. I think authorized right now we're at 222, so we're only about 10 down. Oh, that's that's not bad at all. It's not bad at all, but so that's sworn professional staff. I think total we're just under 400. Uh is like 383 or so is uh full department size. Okay. But like Mike said, we have a lot of retirements. In fact, we have uh just this this coming week, we'll we'll be promoting a couple new lieutenants, three new sergeants. So uh now we're losing people to retirement, which is the thing that we all want to see. And uh Mike here is uh probably holding on for a couple more years, but uh you know, we we joked earlier he is the uh number one seniority in the uh in the entire department. Um so but uh yeah, we're we're we're doing good right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:07

Good. Good. Well that that's really good. Being about 10 under in a department of 200 plus, you guys are way ahead of the game. There are departments that are would would kill for that number, you know, whether they're 40 down or 50 down. Heck, my old department, they're they're down at they're under 8,500. And they were close, they were close to 10,000 at one time. 8,500. I I look at it and go, how in the world do they even function on a daily basis? I I don't know. I mean, I I don't know. I've even when I asked the chief, you know, we've had Chief McDonald on and he's a friend from a long time ago, and he goes, I don't know how we do it. It's because our people are are good, you know. We have good people that just get the job done and they don't worry about the numbers. And I said, Yeah, but uh the numbers it it it still means something. I mean, I mean, if you're down 1,500 officers and it's not getting any better. So well done, modestos. You guys are doing something right there.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:10

Great thing too is that uh economically, and I don't know that a lot of departments can say this, but we can work and live in the same city uh economically because we get paid well enough to be able to do that. You know, that's important. It's that's a very important thing because you you can work and live and play in the same place. You don't have all that commuting going on. And so I think that our salary uh range allows us to do that. Whereas you know, you look at a lot of other agencies, you can't work and live in the same place because you can't afford it. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:42

That's right. That includes Los Angeles. And but it certainly includes a lot of the Bay Area, the Bay Area departments. A lot of those coppers live in Modesto and Stan Sloss County, don't they? They travel all the way through that ridiculous traffic when they could be going to work right there in downtown Modesto. I mean, yeah, you guys are getting it right uh in a lot of ways. So while we're while we're talking about this, let's talk about something else that Modesto's getting right that's helping with all of this, and that's reduced crime. I will say that one of the reasons that got me rolling to really reach out to to you guys and to have you on wasn't just uh John Nielsen who highly recommended it, but it was in addition to that, it was your chief. I saw uh a social media clip with the chief sitting behind his desk in uniform, looking sharp, talking about crime stats from last year. And I I sat here and watched that and I played it a second time because it was like, whoa, whoever wants to take the lead on this, talk about last year, especially uh about the crime stats and what that means to the department. And then I'm gonna have a follow-up with aviation, but let's just talk about the crime stat reduction from last year and how big a deal that was.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:02

Well, that uh well, Mike and I were both very fortunate. We were in investigative services the last what two and a half years together. So we were able to see that the drive-down in the crime rates firsthand. But it really was a department-wide effort, and aviation plays a huge part. So I'll I'll kick it, I'll have Mike take uh take the lead on that part. But department-wide, the initiatives that we were able to uh implement, we stood up a uh fourth division within our department, the area command division, and that area command division really encompasses and bridges the gap between patrol and detectives, right? Where there's so much patrol, uh we're all very good patrol officers, we've all been on the streets. Patrol is go there, deal with the problem, and leave. There was no long-term solution. Uh it was just very much deal with the initial problem, arrest if you could and leave. And then you had detectives, investigations, which is the long-term, more in-depth, you know, uh very specialized investigations, but we were missing that gap, and that's what area command did. So uh Mike mentioned our uh our mental health workers, our uh clinicians, all those things. Code enforcement. We took code enforcement from the city, brought them over, and they're in our area command division, animal control, parking citations, our crime reduction team, our traffic safety unit, and that really is what area command is. They look for uh solutions that is going to be a long-term problem.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:27

Uh so we we took that even a step further by our patrol officers and our patrol watch commanders, uh, all being assigned into areas and taking ownership of your beat in your specific area and partnering with those teams in area command. So those were the biggest components. And then on the investigative side, uh Mike and his team, uh, we had a uh rather large ORT grant that we got over the last couple years. And uh we coined the phrase, Mike's team coined the phrase, not in Modesto. So if you come to Modesto and commit a crime, you're gonna go to jail. We don't cite and release, we don't, uh we're not an agency that's afraid of being proactive. Many agencies during COVID, you know, were very standoffish because the jails weren't taking people, or uh, you know, they were afraid of getting sick or just hey, go sit in a parking lot. And we have never been that agency. We we tell guys when they come in for the recruitment process that if you want to be a parking lot cop, then you got to go to a different agency because that's not us. We if we stop you, you're going to jail. Uh, we take zero tolerance. ORT, we took very, very seriously while Mike and I were up there. We had a very good time doing that. We actually, Mike and I both got to feel like cops then again. Um, you know, and that's just a that's a stance department wide. Our violent crimes unit went out there. We had zero homicides during 2025. Uh repeat that, Kalani. Repeat that, Kalani.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:48

Zero homicides for the calendar year of 2025. Incredible. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. It wasn't unusual over the years to be 15 to 25 and even even have numbers beyond San Jose in homicides, and it was zero last year. Wow. Wild.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:10

Yes, it it wasn't uncommon, and and Mike was actually a homicide detective during those years, and I think that's actually where all his hair went was uh during those times. Um we had we had zero homicides for 2025, and and that uh you know it's worth celebrating within our community because that really was a community effort, and we know that not every year is going to be like that. And this year, you know, we've we've had some unfortunate incidents, but uh, you know, that's that's something that's that we're proud of that the community should be proud of. That's absolutely you know, and and even Mike and I were both up in ISD, and Mike, I think we ended up going, it's like 16 months, 15, 16 months without a homicide uh total. And you know, it was just it's one of those things that uh we could celebrate. We know that we're gonna continue to move forward and and uh you know we there's still a lot of work to do, but that's something that we really want to celebrate with our community, is being able to do that. But in addition to that, you look at all of our crime rates, we we just keep dropping our we were number number five, number three, number one at one point in auto theft in the nation uh per capita. I remember those days. Yeah, we're not even we're not even in the top hundred anymore. You know, we've we've been able to drop out of that. Uh property crimes, we see year over year reduction down in the 30, 40 percent year after year for the last three years. Uh violent crime down, you know, historically not just homicides, but violent crime is down. So it really is a collaborative effort between the entire department and uh every initiative that we we take on with aviation, our blue light camera program that we have. We have cameras. Mike, I think we were up to 164 lenses, something like that, uh, cameras uh throughout the city when Mike and I both wrote rotated out of investigations. Just everything that we do, we're really able to drive down that crime rate.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:07

Well, that's something you should all be proud of. And I agree, is not one thing that changed that changes that. You listed a long list of things, but Mike, let's come back to you. What you can give your opinion here, you can give stats or whatever you like. How do you think the air unit uh being still in its in its opening years here is affecting those stats?

SPEAKER_02 1:26:30

Oh, it's 100% affecting those stats. You know, again, being first on scene, uh recognizing uh what crime is occurring, getting that information to those officers. You know, and then the the thing that's occurring when we're responding to uh the calls for service nowadays is they're not just responding uh by driving there, they're responding by checking city cameras, checking LPRs, doing background checks on the house, you know, figuring out who's living there, what's what's the phone number, you know. And so uh, you know, if if you're a a command staff member and you're and you're listening now, being first on scene, like I said, you know, whether it's a camera, a UAB, an officer, or an airplane saves so much money on the back end. I can remember, you know, I was a homicide detector for 13 years, and uh we didn't have these same the same technology. We chased people, and it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to be able to chase these people, you know, and so uh being first on scene with the aircraft, the DOI crash of stuff, getting these people into custody, getting them out of those cars, taking away that potential safety hazard to the rest the rest of the citizens, you know, uh it's it's just enormous. Every aspect of it, uh everything, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:44

You know, the other thing, too, is I'm gonna mention this, is that uh when I was in the property crime unit, uh the philosophy was in the beginning, you know, we're gonna do directed enforcement to uh burglars, thieves in the middle of the night in hopes that we were gonna catch them. And then uh we ended up with this uh ORT grant. And what we found was we threw that concept out the window. And what we do is is we got do these ORT operations where we sit in front of these businesses, you know, the targets, the Walmarts, the Costco's, the the BEMOs, the TG, you know, all these businesses wait for them to steal. Get him into custody where it's a controlled environment. But these are the same people that are stealing cars. These are the same people that are ripping you off at the middle of the night but breaking into your car. They're the same people that are committing homicides. They're the same people that are committing violent felonies and violent assaults. And so we're we're putting these people in jail just a different way. And so we we rested uh I'll give you one story uh during this last week. We do this thing called holiday operations where we go for 30 days around uh between uh Thanksgiving and Christmas where we sit out in front of these businesses. And so one particular night we're sitting out in front of uh Target and uh we get the call from the store hey, these two guys just came in the store, they stole the underwear. Doesn't seem like a big deal. So uh we get them into custody, uh, take them down. Well finds out that they just uh killed two people and injured one over in Gilroy and we're on the run. It's important to know that ORT is a big deal. You know, you want to solve crime in your city, start with ORT. It's the safe and hold them accountable and put them in jail.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:23

What a concept. Unbelievable. I mean, isn't it amazing that that there are so many agencies across this country right now that are not doing that at all? They they've gone into firefighter mode and they're not proactive and they're they're not technology driven, and they're they're just like, oh, well, you know, it'll be okay. No, it's not. It and it works. You guys have just described that beautifully. And and one last thing on this is uh news flash, bad guys know about all this stuff too. They know there's cameras out there, they know there's an airplane there now, they know that the sheriffs have a helicopter, they know that Modesto is proactive and hey, don't go there. I guarantee you there are bad guys right now that are talking about going out and doing something, and they go, yeah, not Modesto. And and why? Because of everything we're talking about. They know about all of it and the deterrence factor of an aviation unit alone, get rid of all the other stuff, aviation alone is is incredible. Can you quantify it? It's difficult, if if not impossible. But we all know, the four of us here know, and everybody in law enforcement aviation knows, that uh the fact that you're present and especially the way you guys are doing it proactively and being up a lot, uh bad guys know it, and it affects where they go to to do their crimes and how often they do their crimes and what they're gonna do. So Modesto PD should be very proud. I mean, Kalani, you said it, you know, we're very we're proud of it. You guys should be from top to bottom. That is a gr that is great to hear. It can you tell that it I'm excited about that because it it proves what I screamed for years. Proactivity is the difference. And I go, I traveled a lot, I can name the proactive departments you know that I've been to, and all of them have similar stories of great crime reduction. But most departments I go to they're they're not in that mode anymore. They they do they just respond, they don't do anything proactively, and they wonder why there's so much crime there. Duh. I mean, you gotta deter it. You gotta let bad guys know that you're doing it. So John, anything to add on this before we get to their backgrounds here? No, no. Mike, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:50

Prop 36 changed things for a lot of people in California, you know. Yep. Prop 36, when we when the citizens of California uh approved Prop 36, and you guys are familiar with Prop 36.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:02

Explain what Prop 36 is for those people outside California.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:05

Prop 36 brought back a lot of the penalties and the charging sections for people committing retail theft. And it brought back uh 666, which was petty theft with a prior. And uh it really, you know, Prop 47 really tied our hands for a lot of these sentences to hold people accountable. What Prop 36 did, you know, Prop 36 in California overwhelmingly passed because people were tired of seeing people steal at stores and nobody doing nothing, and nobody holding them accountable. And so what Prop 36 did is it brought back the the 666 PC section, meaning if you had a number of prior theft arrests, now you're gonna go to prison. Now you're gonna be held accountable.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:49

So funny how that happens. Yeah, Prop 47 uh that that changed everything for the worse overnight. It wasn't unbelievable. My wife was a retail manager for her whole career at different places. Prop 47 happened and it is the reason she got out of it and left. She was tired of dealing with people coming in with bags into an Ulta and taking all the fragrances and dumping them into bags and on the way out laughing at her, you know, because they knew go ahead, call the police, they're not even gonna show up. She had that said to her. I mean, many of the times they turned into robberies where they would threaten her, you know, and she got tired of it, it became dangerous. And uh and sure enough, crime went through the roof throughout California. John, you saw it. We I saw it before, you know, before we got out of it. Thank God the 36 came around and got support. But uh you know, 47 was a bad experiment. And everybody was warned too, weren't they? All of our police departments warned the public don't pass this 47. And of course it's California, and they just listened to their governor and to the AG, and I said, Oh no, this is wonderful. And it was the worst thing to happen to California in my in my time there. Uh so that's good to hear 36 kicked in and is working again. So let's let's shift gears here to the two of you. We we gotta learn, we we've heard about a little bit about your backgrounds, but uh let's learn, take a deeper dive. Mike, you're the senior officer here by by far. I mean, the senior officer in the whole department. Mike, tell us about you know, where where did it all begin for you? How did you get into law enforcement? Uh all that stuff. Give us a thumbnail of uh your background.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:44

Oh man, so I grew up watching cops on television, loved it, waited for it. Uh, I have nobody in my family with any type of law enforcement background at all. Uh early on in my my life, I be I thought I wanted to be a fireman. Graduated high school, uh, went to work for its time, California Department of Forestry, and was a fireman. And what I found was is I loved public service. Uh what I didn't like was sitting around doing nothing.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:13

Sorry, you all you firemen out there.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:15

Not true all of them.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:17

But all of a sudden the recliner's listening right now. Right, right. And so uh that kind of really uh wanted me to be uh served in some type of manner, and so you know, I decided to want to be a police officer. Well, at the time, you know, I was I was married, I had a uh a young child, and I had to work. I'd worked during the day and I'd go to school at night, and and I was able to achieve and get my uh reserve level one certificate. And uh I went to work for the Tuame County Sheriff's Department, and they they gave me a great opportunity, you know, in the Tuame County Sheriff's Department back then, and we're talking like 1992, 93. Uh, you worked as a full-functioning deputy, you know. So I lived a lot of experience. Worked out there in the middle of nowhere, you really learned how to talk to people, and so I decided that I wanted to make the transition. And again, I was just a reserve, and so I would work contracts uh around a lot of lakes and I'd worked patrol. And I decided that I wanted to make this a life-changing career. So I applied for the Monasta Police Department, and I was lucky that uh they would hire me and put me through the academy in 1996, and so I went to the academy, graduated, and then started my career here. Obviously, we all started out as patrol officers, worked at for about five years, became a field training officer, then decided I wanted a furry friend as my uh partner. Good choice.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:44

Good choice.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:46

Uh so I was a canine officer, and uh back then we're using Big Shepherds. So probably, and I'm sure Clawing's gonna tell you the same thing, one of the best jobs I ever had here was a canine officer. Great, great, great opportunity. However, sometimes you know it does kind of just delay your career as well. Had one of the first cross-tained dogs here as well, and uh had one of the first dogs in the special assignment. So I was able to take my canine, his name was Toro, by the way, and uh I uh got uh selected for our tactical patrol unit, which was I think a concept that came from LAPD through uh Dave Van Diemen, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he he brought that that concept here of tackle patrol unit. And so I worked tackle food patrol unit with my dog. And then uh once he retired, I uh had the opportunity to go up and work investigations as a vice officer and uh worked way my way through investigations uh into homicide, uh, where I was a homicide detector for 13 years. Uh great opportunity, a lot of work, didn't have all the technology that we have here today, so it was a lot of pounding the streets, knocking on doors, and writing a lot of reports. Had a lot of great opportunities as well as special assignments, uh you know, collateral assignments as well, and just started promoting through the ranks. Uh promoted to sergeant in 2019. And once you promote here, you you all go back to patrol. So I think it's that way in a lot of departments. Yes. Worked uh the streets for you know a while and then uh was selected for the property crimes unit sergeant position and took on the air support unit and our camera team, and then promoted to lieutenant here just this year and uh back over to patrol.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:35

Yeah. It was like you you made lieutenant the week that I started texting you. Yes, I did. That was that was cool. I because John said, contact uh you know, Sergeant Hicks. And then Van Diemen said, No, that's Lieutenant Hicks to you, Jack. And I'm like, Oh, he said, Yeah, he just made lieutenant. So while we were texting you, I just made lieutenant. I think my first text to you was congratulations, Lieutenant. Yeah, you don't know me, but uh that's great. Well, you've had a long career there, Modesto. You've done a lot of different things, and it's good that there's light at the end of the tunnel, too, uh, for your career. But Kalani, same thing. Walk us through where did you where'd you grow up and how'd you end up uh on Modesto PD?

SPEAKER_04 1:39:21

We actually are valley transplants. My uh my parents moved us out here. I was born in in Hawaii, spent the first uh few years out there, came to the valley by way of the bay. Uh my dad was a uh Bay Area native, so moved back out to the Bay where he became a uh Alameda County Sheriff's Deputy. So that's uh kind of where my law enforcement comes from. Moved out to the valley, so grew up in Ceres, which is just south of uh Modesto, it's our neighboring agency, and actually started there as a police explorer back in 1996. So started as a police explorer, canine runs in the family. My dad, lateral to Ceres PD, started the canine program at Ceres PD. And uh so I started working with dogs at a uh very young age out of uh necessity because they couldn't find anybody to get bit.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:08

So uh, you know, son, go hide in that go hide in that bush.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:12

My uh my dad being the uh the loving father, police officer father that he was, was like, hey, I got a job for you. So started doing that uh right about the same time as soon as I started driving. And uh that really, you know, kind of kicked off my itch, became a police explorer, yeah, worked my way through the ranks as a police explorer. I actually met my wife as a police explorer. So uh her and I have been married now 27 years, but uh yeah, became a uh self-sponsored myself to the police academy back in 2001. Back then, nobody was really uh hiring and putting through the academy. You know, you had to self-sponsor, sorry, self-sponsored, and actually got picked up with Gustine Police Department, which uh most people have never heard of. Uh, if you know where PSoup Andersons is, if you're from California on the five, uh we're about 12 miles north, uh northeast of P Soup Anderson. So uh small agency kind of like Mike, of uh, you know, you learned how to uh deal with people very quickly, and that was either uh that was either with uh your your hands and your skills or that was with your mouth. So uh was out there for a handful of years, got to do the things, gang officer, DTAC, uh, all those things, and made the decision to lateral to Modesto in 2005. Uh my dad was like, hey, don't come back to Ceres, you know, you can only drive up and down uh a small agency so many times, you know, Whitmore and Hatch and all these things, for those that are familiar. Uh we had some friends that went to Modesto and he he really pushed me to come to Modesto and said, hey, that's gonna be a good fit for you. So came to Modesto in 05 and I just really haven't looked back. Done all the things kind of like Mike. My uh most of my time was spent in canine, though. I've been a patrol guy the majority of my career. I was assigned to patrol. I I worked uh three different dogs. I was on uh handler for just shy of 10 years before I promoted to uh to sergeant. But while I was a handler, I got to work with SWAT, got to work with uh our dope teams, got to do interdiction, got to work a lot of things. Uh field training officer, which uh was probably one of the best times of my career as being an FTO. I've seen a lot of uh people through my car that I've promoted now through the ranks. Uh but promoted to sergeant in 2016. Didn't have to go back to patrol because I was already assigned to patrol, so stayed on patrol for a couple more years. Took on the K9 team uh as the uh supervisor trainer, spent uh another seven years with uh with those guys, so uh my life revolved around dog hair and uh and all the all the fun things. But uh was blessed when I became a sergeant. I got to go to uh recruitment, so I was our full-time recruitment guy for several years up until COVID. Was not a cop during that time, so it was very much uh you know, just hiring and all the administrative things that uh we never think about, especially as dog guys. I went from uh ramming and jam into that. And then uh promoted to lieutenant in 2023, got handed the air support unit, uh, which was a uh a blessing, was super excited about that. Went over to investigations a short time later. That's one of the things I always wanted to do, but never got the opportunity to. Uh got to work alongside Mike up there and uh a handful of other very squared-away guys, and uh had a great time doing investigations and came back to patrol recently just as a uh pit stop. And uh actually right now I'm transitioning over to uh internal affairs, so I'm going over and taking over IA. But uh yeah, it's uh it's been definitely a career. I've got 25 years on now. I actually my son works for our department, so he's uh 26, he's on the SWAT team, got out of the Marine Corps as an aviator. He was uh aviation electronics, worked on C-130s, a couple uh deployments under his belt. So uh so he works here. My other son is 25, he's a cannon handler up in Twilame County, so I've got one and one uh doing a little bit of everything. Uh my youngest boy's uh a firefighter, so he's one of uh he's a volunteer and just come down the days so he could turn 21 and do what he does. And then uh my daughter is uh actually got aspirations to become an FBI agent. So boy graduated high school.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:16

So I was just gonna say, I knew that your daughter just graduated from high school. I was gonna say, when does she start the academy, Kalani? And she's she does want to do that.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:25

Yeah, she is actually texting me. Uh it's caught me looking at my phone a little bit ago. She's uh applying to our explorer program right now. So smart, smart young lady. Yeah, so she uh yeah, law enforcement uh very much runs in my blood. I've got cousins that retired from Costa Mesa PD down south that were both sergeants down there. Uh, I've got a lot of my Hawaiian side was either uh cops or firefighters over in the islands. So uh kind of kind of born into it, I guess you could say.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:53

Wow, that's exciting. And now I have to ask you, how many times did your kids hide in the bushes for your dog? Um, so maybe once or twice.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:05

I'm not gonna lie. No, no, no, no need. No, you know, uh actually funny story. We were getting ready for a uh canine trial, under the competitions, and uh we had got some insider info on potentially where the hide was gonna be, and it was in a uh underground grate. Well, uh my boy was the only one who could fit down there, so guess where my boy ended up. Yeah, maybe hiding down in the grate. That is great. So my 25-year-old actually uh he did some work with me, and my 20-year-old actually was a uh force option simulator instructor with me, so we'd go out to the explorer program, and he knew more about that thing than I did. But yeah, so I've just you know kind of been lucky in the way things worked out.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:44

Yeah, fantastic. What a what a great story and great families. So time is flying here, and and you guys are are being very generous with your time. So, Mike, let me come back to you and ask you in the all the years that you've been serving, we we always ask, what's the most impactful thing that's happened to you? And impactful can is defined by you. I always caveat that because it can be uh the the most exciting, the most, the funniest, the the saddest. It can be anything you want, but it impacted you. It's a story that you'll take take to the end and where you'll say, I'll always remember that. It really affected you in some way.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:29

You know, I mentioned it earlier. Uh I was a homicide detective for 13 years. Uh that assignment, it's you know, it it's a burden. Yeah, it's it's a burden to you know do a proper investigation. It's it's a burden to be bringing some type of uh justice to the families. Uh it's a burden to get answers for them that you don't have. You know, I get used to get asked all the time. And I still do, you know, when when people realize I was a homicide detective, you know, how many cases have you solved? I couldn't tell you. I can tell you how many I didn't, though. You know.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:02

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:03

And that impacts me uh still to this day. I still every once in a while think to myself, I'd like to go back and rework that case with the technology and advancement in the DNA and stuff like that. And so but it was a it was a great experience because you know, we we uh we were able to arrest a lot of people, prevent a lot of crimes, and uh do a lot of things for people. And so you know, I've had a great career here. You know, I've I've had a career that a lot of people will never have. Just it's it's a great place. But you know, when when you talk about impactful, uh that unit and that uh that type of work uh really has really affected me. I learned this concept. Uh I use this concept every single day now in my personal life and also uh uh with the officers around here. And I try to pass it on uh to as many people as I possibly can. And it's it's very simple, you know. There may be a reasonable explanation for something, but unless you actually don't know. You know, and I I learned that concept by talking to these terrible people that do very terrible things, you know. And what it does is it allows me my mind to think that maybe you know there is a reasonable explanation, or maybe not what it's done for me too is it's uh helped me listen more. Listen instead of just respond or listen instead of just judge, you know. Plus, uh a lot of times uh as investigators, as officers, just as people, it's easy to uh come to some type of determination and only see the facts or the evidence to support that determination or that result. And by using this concept, you know, it it helps me my mind up. And so I I've cast that on to a lot of people around here. A lot of people around here know me for it too, because you know, I'll do something like this and and they all know what I'm gonna say. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:50

So that's a great thing to pass on. And I I I appreciate what you're saying there. I think I think many times uh when we're talking about how things impact us personally and and our mental wellness and all that stuff, people forget about the homicide detective. And if you're working homicide for that long, I mean, there are I'm sure that you can remember very rewarding moments as well where where it you got a guy that that probably shouldn't have been caught, but you did through great work, and it's very rewarding. But I understand why you said uh the ones that you didn't you didn't solve, you know, those are the ones you remember and wish you had another shot at them. It's a hard job. It's one of the most demanding jobs in law enforcement in so many ways. And it it takes special people to do that. And if you did it for 13 years, that that's amazing uh that you did that, Mike. Well done. And uh wow, that's certainly impactful. Kalani, this is the I'll I'll tell our audience that uh this is the first time I've ever done this where I'm picking Kalani's story. Even though he may have other very impactful stories, a little bird told me that I needed to ask you this. And once I learned more about it, this is an amazing story that Kalani, with his permission, I asked his permission to ask him about this. And when you listen to the story, you're gonna. Understand why I asked. Uh, but Kalani is going to share with us an officer-involved shooting he was involved in, but it's not about the shooting that we're going to spend most of our time on. It's the circumstances of that day, that morning, that roll call. Kalani, walk us through as a field training officer, that OIS.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:41

Jack, I'll start off by saying thank you because I was have been trying to think of what my most impactful was, and it's easy when you pick it for me. So uh I will say thank you for that. Okay. 2016, end of March 2016, I was a uh a senior FTO, senior guy, had 15 years on. Uh just come back from uh from a school, actually Force Options Simulator, used to force instructor school. And uh Sunday morning come in. I'm a canine guy assigned a day shift as an FTO, one of the the handful of canine FTOs that we actually had at the time. And uh we just had an academy class graduates. We have a lot. I think we actually had probably more brand new people in our briefing than we did officers working because it's a Sunday morning. Come in, I'm getting assigned a uh FTO, you know, so it's gonna be another couple weeks of not being able to run my own car and do those things. So mentally preparing myself, go into briefing. Uh, we all get assigned our our trainees, and uh we make them stand up, introduce themselves, right? So my trainee stands up, says, Hey, this is who I am. So, okay, that's that's my trainee. Never seen him before, don't know the guy, nothing. So finish up briefing. I say, Hey, my canine car is parked out right outside the back door there. You can't miss it. Uh go out there away from me. I'll be right out. Grab my stuff and I'll meet you out there. So I get out there as I'm walking out, and uh a call gets BOL'd. So it's a holdover from graveyards. It is a uh estranged husband armed with a gun trying to kick in the front door of his uh wife's residence. It's the wife, uh, her mother, and the kids are all home. So she called earlier in the night saying he was driving up and down the street. Now she's calling back saying, hey, he's still around. Call has been pending for several hours and says, Hey, he's trying to kick in my door, he's armed with a gun. So I hear the call come out as a good canine guy. I'm thinking, oh, canine use, right? Like we all we all want to do that. So my trainee is standing out there nervously, anxiously uh awaiting my arrival, hoping he's at the right car because there's two canine cars out there, so he's got a 50-50 shot. And so I said, said, Hey kid, I'm Kalani. Get in the car, we got a call. And he just, you know, eyes get uh probably about 10 times the size of uh normal, and he's like, What did I just get myself into? And I said, Let's go, you know, get the car. So get in the car as we're going over there, we're getting updates. Hey, he's driving up and down the street, he's waving a gun out the window. So I said, Okay, we're on route. And uh my partner is coming from across town. He had he had logged on and went the other way. So uh he's trying to catch up to me. And as we're coming in the neighborhood, I I turn northbound down a street, and lo and behold, what uh what passes by the suspect vehicle. So one of those we drive by, we make eye contact and flip around, and the pursuit's on. You know, he he kind of starts baiting us in, digging around, obviously digging around for something, which we learn later, uh, and I'll share that part, but we learn later that he had a uh stage three malfunction in his firearm. So uh he was trying to clear it, is what we learned later on, or what we're assumed later on. But the pursuit's on, he's trying to bait us in. Uh now here's the most interesting part uh of the story. You know, I made a comment that I didn't know this trainee. Uh well, this trainee, this was his first day of field training, his very first call in his very first hour of ever being a police officer. So he knows nothing. He knows that he's got a gun on and uh that he signed up for a job, that he just graduated out of the academy, but he doesn't know anything. As we're in pursuit, I'm given given updates, you know, pertinent officer safety updates, but I'm telling my trainee, hey, turn your camera on, put your seatbelt on, do this, do that, get a pursuit. Long story short, guy pulls over, tries to bait us in. I tell my trainee, no, don't get out of the car yet. Like there's something, something hinky here, something's going on. Uh guy takes off again, we chase, pulls into his wife's driveway, uh, hops out of the car, we stop a little short. So I'm telling him, I'm prompting him as we're doing this like, hey, get out of the car, get your gun up. This is gonna go bad. Like, this guy is doing something. Get your gun up, just be ready. Guy pulls into the driveway, throws it in park, hops out of the car, starts walking towards the uh front of the residence, like he's gonna jump over the fence with a uh gun in his hand, uh, turns around to us, and officer-involved shooting occurs uh with me, my trainee, and then uh a very senior officer, a very good friend of mine, uh Dave Wallace, who who retired a couple years ago. Yeah, so my trainee, day one, hour one, call one, never had any human interaction with anybody in our community as far as being a police officer, uh, had to be involved in an officer-involved shooting. So, yeah, very uh, very interesting morning to say the least.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:49

Incredible. I mean, incredible. When I heard about this, uh, it just it just hit me. And I was like, that's amazing. I've heard stories similar, similar stories in the past, and I've been preaching for years. You can this is a dangerous job. You can get killed on your first call, and I can give examples of that. And you can get killed in in your 35th year on your last call. I remember a chief going out on a call with with somebody to a domestic saying, That's my last day. I'm gonna go out on a call with you, and he gets killed at the front door, and then everything in between. But this is so incredibly unique in that you didn't even have an introduction to the partner in your car, a proper introduction, and you are in pursuit, and you're in an OIS. That you you obviously did a phenomenal job there. So did your partner, Wallace, and so did your trainee. But that is really unique, Kalani. And uh I I just I love I love that you were willing to share it to our listeners because that's it shows it shows so many things about this job, uh how dangerous it can be. And it doesn't, and there's no rules as to when it happens. John, your your wheels are turning.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:10

Yeah, but the the first thing that comes to mind is your famous quote, and I'll let you quote it, Jack.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:15

When the time to perform arrives, the time to prepare has passed.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:22

And and that applies whether you're a first day patrol officer in FTO training or day one TFO, sitting in the front seat with the controls in your hand, trying to figure out how to manipulate everything. You've you've got to be prepared, mentally prepared, to engage in something to that level the moment you step into that role, you know, and it's it's hard to think through. But I think through you, Colani, and in your experience as a canon officer, we talk about how, you know, whether you're in Canon or airsport, you're over almost every critical incident that takes place in the city, and and those reps are what make you proficient at what you do. Had he been with somebody who wasn't as proficient in critical incidents, being a part of a pursuit, and all the things that you had been a part of, that FTO's ability to, with divided attention, you know, respond to the suspect, but also give direction to that to that trainee at the same time would have wouldn't have been to that same level, I don't think. So for him to have you as an FTO in that particular incident was huge. You know, and so I give kudos to you and your ability to both respond to the suspect, but also take care of your trainee in that moment. I think we talked about a little bit offline, but that trainee, where where is he today?

SPEAKER_04 1:58:33

He's an absolute stud. He is currently assigned up uh in our gang unit as one of our gang investigators. Uh he's actually the countywide expert when it comes to all things gang related. He is such a stud, so very uh unique personality. He's got a mechanical engineering degree, so I always tell him, like, dude, what are you what are you doing in this job? But uh what really you know, what really helped him out uh through all that and able to respond uh the way he did was uh his background. So he's got a background in BJJ, he's a black belt. Uh and at the time, that's what he did for fun. He went and fought in MMA fights. So uh that really uh helped him out through that. So as much as uh you know, some sometimes I would like to think it was me, it wasn't. It was actually all him. You know, he had that ability and that training in him. Uh he just needed a little bit of guidance to the cop side of things, and and that's all all that was. But uh he's an absolute stud. He's been here 10 years now. Uh, got pulled up into the gang team pretty quickly uh and solidified his spot as as a gang investigator. Him and I are are still friends to this day. But yeah, it taught uh taught us both a lot of things, and the aftermath of that was really what was more interesting was I had to teach him that not everybody wanted to kill him after that, you know. Yeah. Um you know, being being on FTO is uh, you know, I really had to hone in on uh uh the kindler, gentler side, you know, like hey, you know, have that plan to to do what needs to be done, but we you need to learn how to talk to people, you need to know that that's not the norm. You know, he came in.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:11

But sir, 100% of the people I've had contact with have tried to kill me.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:16

Yes. And oh my goodness. Getting him getting him out of that. And you know, I mean, this was our Monday, so we went on days off after that, and um, you know, having to come back to work after a week and and just make sure everything was good there, and and uh it it was definitely a good experience. It was a good learning experience for me, and uh taught me a lot about myself, about uh, you know, just what uh my leadership capabilities are. In fact, the uh chief at the time I promoted to sergeant just about six months after that, uh, before even being cleared for my shooting. Uh he was putting stripes on my arm, so obviously he wasn't too worried about it. And uh he said in my promotion ceremony that that is what solidified me as a leader, that him watching, because everything we do is captured on PBRS, obviously. And and he said, watching you perform through that with everything you did, and not the shooting, because uh you know, canine handlers were were tried and true, were tested. Um, but he said, not the shooting, but what you did with that trainee to get him to what he needed to do. He goes, that's that solidified your spot as as a leader within the organization.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:18

So no doubt. No doubt. And I I echo what John said. That that was your your experience helped get everybody through that. I know you're you're humble about it, but uh, and giving him credit, and he gets credit, but uh having being able to do both and focus on both things, that's that's canine stuff, that's air support stuff, that's SWAT stuff, you know, that's advanced uh tactics. But uh but in the time we have left, I want to get back to you, Mike, for a question. But I want to ask you one last thing about this, Kalani. Um what was the number one takeaway for you after that incident? All the dust settles, even months later, you look back. What's the number one lesson that you'd want to share?

SPEAKER_04 2:02:00

You kind of actually touch on it just the uh the humility side, just recognizing that it's bigger than you. That that really in the the days and weeks to follow was really about what everybody else went through. Yeah, I wasn't I wasn't concerned. There were some other things that had happened. My wife had woken up early in the morning, which was weird, and when I called her, she was like, Oh, something happened. I know it did. So she already knew what was going on. Um, my trainee, you know, uh everything he was going through. So uh it was really pushing me to realize that the the aftermath, the impacts of that. And I think that's really where I developed that my sense of of people and really caring for uh my teams, and uh that's what's helped me develop over the years, and and really I credit that towards caring for the people in the air support program and and why the air support program has has gone the way it has, because it's not me, it's Mike, and it's the rest of the guys, and being able just to bring them together and and do that. So uh that that was the biggest takeaway for me.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:59

That's incredible what you just said, Kalani. That that that says a lot about you as a human. Uh and uh boy, oh boy, I didn't see that one coming. Well said, and I love it. Very, very nice. Mike, I want to ask you, as you weren't, I don't think you were at that scene, but that that resonated through the department. Obviously, Van Diemen uh is the one that told me about this. He said, Oh, you gotta ask Kalani this. He said, That that's to this day is disgust, you know. What you as an outsider to that incident, what was your takeaway after hearing the story of Kalani and Wallace and his partner?

SPEAKER_02 2:03:40

You know, it was it was uh really a testament uh to Kalani and the type of leader he is, and you know, the courage and the forethought of getting his trainee uh uh ready for battle in a moment's notice, you know. And also it's it's it's truly is, and I think Klani will agree to me as well, is that it's truly is a testament to this department and the uh amount of hard work, the dedication that we put into training uh everybody every single day. This is a great uh training department. And you know, we have we have officers go to other departments and uh shine heads and shoulders above everybody else because of the amount of training, the amount of experience they get. And so we take training very seriously here. And uh we don't just train to train either. We we train real-world topics, uh current trends, crime, and we make mistakes and we learn from our mistakes. And uh, I'd like to think also that we're on the cutting edge of uh training as well, because uh we constantly have to be on top of things with uh case laws and uh de-escalation and when to use force and not force, and so that uh uh we're caring about our people, you know, and caring out about our people doesn't does doesn't mean that we we love them and want to give them time off. And it means that uh we care about their careers as well, make sure they're doing the right thing all the time and uh making sure they have a long, healthy career. And so caring means just a lot more than that, but the training here, you know, and and and this uh one incident and uh and again it it's a testament to uh Kalani and uh his courage under fire and uh the training in the department which helped him get there.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:20

Outstanding Mike. Thank you for that. Uh John, uh wow. I can't believe how the clock ticks on these things sometimes. We I want to keep going, but uh you've been very generous with your time. So, John, closing thoughts for Mike and Kalani here.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:39

Yeah, it's been really cool talking to you guys. It's it blows my mind how similar your agency is to mine in in s in terms of size, population size, everything. Ontario was like you, we were the Wild West in the 80s. A lot of crime was taking place in Ontario. Uh the city stepped up and wanted to create a safe city, so they put a lot of efforts into public safety. And now Ontario is an entirely different city, and Modesto's followed that that same plan, and and it's really cool to hear you guys talk through the development of of that and and how airsport works in through that. It's been really cool talking to you guys and hearing your stories. Uh, thank you for taking the time to to talk to us. You know, both of you are are working. Mike's the actual watch commander, so his his phone's been blowing up and he's asking uh as we've been a part of this conversation. But honestly, thank you guys. It's it's been an honor and a privilege to talk to you guys.

SPEAKER_00 2:06:32

It it really has. I'll I'll wrap up by just saying thanks very much, Kalani. Thank you very much, Mike. We we really appreciate your time. Uh I knew this would be good, but again, we do these all the time, and we're constantly wowed, I mean, at the people out there, uh, the professionalism, the people, the courage, the hard work, the determination. The list goes on. Uh, you're two, both of your outstanding representatives from Modesto PD and law enforcement. And uh it's just it was really fun to learn more about the backstory behind creating this unit and behind both of you. And uh, Kalani, thanks for sharing that that final story. That's very it's incredible, it's unique, and it's a good lesson for everybody. And it it crosses so over into aviation so well. I mean, you've got to be ready every minute of every day that you're up in an in an aircraft to handle something. You don't know when it's gonna happen. Nobody has a crystal ball that says, wow, today's the day I'm gonna have an engine out. Today's the day I'm gonna have a problem with something or whatever it is. Today's the day I'm gonna have a shooting with my brand new probationer whose name I don't know yet. I mean, you don't we don't control any of that in law enforcement. And it's what makes this job exciting. It's also what makes this job very um difficult and stressful and risky. Appreciate you sharing that, Clani. So with that, uh I wish you all the best in Modesto, continued um luck with uh with your air support unit that you've created. It's going places, there's no doubt in my mind. John and I both will talk about this later and say, well, they're going places. That second aircraft's coming. I mean, you're you're proving you're proving how to do it right. I mean, and we talk to a lot of people, and we have our own experiences in this area, and should be very happy with where you're at in the time you've done it. And um, and it's going it's gonna expand even more. So with that, to all our listeners, thank you so much for listening. And our our sponsors, thank you, thank you so much. And we have two of our listeners right here, John, which is really cool. Uh so thanks, Mike and Kaladi, for listening to Hanger Z and for being guests on the Hanger Z. And with that, everybody out there, stay safe. You don't know when the bad things are gonna happen. You gotta stay safe, be very diligent every day, all the time. But stay safe, and we will catch you the next time on the Hangers D podcast.