Cops and Writers Podcast
Cops and Writers is a podcast hosted by retired police sergeant and author, Patrick O'Donnell. The podcast provides valuable insights and humor for crime writers who want to create accurate and believable police stories. O'Donnell conducts in-depth interviews with members of law enforcement and civilian experts, discussing police procedures and culture. He also interviews crime fiction writers and writers from different genres, discussing what works in the ever-changing landscape of book sales and publishing. The podcast offers candid stories told with cop humor and technical details about the world of law enforcement.
Cops and Writers Podcast
One Ride Along Changed Everything-America's Sheriff Mark Lamb (Part 1)
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One ride along and a passion for public service.
That's all it took to change everything. My guest on the show today, Sheriff Mark Lamb, walked away from a successful business career, stepped into a police academy in his thirties, and never looked back. He went on to become one of the most recognized law enforcement figures in America. On this episode of the Cops and Writers Podcast, we take a look at how it all started for Sheriff Mark Lamb. Welcome to part one of this incredible story. Part two airs next Sunday.
More about Sheriff Lamb. Mark Lamb is known as "America's Sheriff.” He served as the 24th Sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, overseeing a county the size of Connecticut with over 600 employees. Before entering law enforcement, he was a business owner for over a decade and didn't join law enforcement until his thirties, yet he quickly rose through the ranks. Valedictorian of his training class, Rookie of the Year, Officer of the Year, and Detective of the Year.
He served as sheriff from January 2017 through December 2024, and ran for U.S. Senate in 2024, losing the Republican primary to Kari Lake. He's now running for Congress in Arizona's 5th Congressional District.
No matter what your political persuasion is, I think his message needs to be heard, and I’m grateful he took the time out of his busy schedule for this interview.
In today’s episode, we discuss:
· Growing up in different countries and how that helped him later in life as a cop and person.
· Being a teenager and trapped in Panama during Operation Just Cause.
· His calling to be of service.
· How one ride-along changed his life forever.
· The benefits or drawbacks of being “older” in the police academy.
· His first job in law enforcement was as a tribal police officer on an Indian reservation.
· Being a white man working on an Indian reservation as a police officer.
· The lessons he learned from the natives while he was policing on the reservation.
· An epidemic of missing and murdered women on Indian reservations.
· Why did he run for sheriff?
· His opposition attacking him and his family during this and previous elections through mudslinging, and him taking the high road.
All of this and more on today’s episode of the Cops and Writers podcast.
Visit Sheriff Lamb's website.
Head on over to my website!
What's the craziest thing you saw when you were a cop?
My first week on the job, a guy running at me with a butcher knife. He'd just killed his brother over the last hot dog.
That's chapter 1. There are 33 more.
Police Stories: The Rookie Years just launched - available on Amazon.
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I've always said no political office is worth my honor. So I am not going to disparage somebody or their family. When I run for office, when I ran for Senate, sheriff, or run now, I run off of what I want to do, what my merits and my experience is, and then what I want to do for my community or my state or whatever it is I'm running for. That is what I focus on. And I think that's what Americans want and are hungry for.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the Cops and Riders Podcast. Your host, Sergeant Patrick O'Donnell, worked the streets in one of the nation's largest police departments for over 25 years. Ride along with O'Donnell and his expert guests as they help you navigate the oftentimes confusing and misunderstood world of law enforcement. O'Donnell and his guests on this show do not represent any law enforcement agency. The content of this show is not meant to be legal advice. Do you think you need a lawyer?
SPEAKER_02Hey Cops and Writers, thanks for being here with us today for another episode of the Cops and Writers Podcast. I'm Patrick O'Donnell and I'll be your host for today's show. This show is listener supported, so thanks to all of you who keep the show going. I would especially like to thank those of you who are patrons of the show. Your generosity helps pay for the software, equipment, and my time producing this show. Yes, you too can become a patron for less than a cup of coffee or a pint of Guinness. Just head on over to Patreon.com forward slash Cops and Riders. One ride along and a passion for public service. That's all it took to change everything. My guest on the show today, Sheriff Mark Lamb, walked away from a successful business career, stepped into a police academy in his thirties, and never looked back. He went on to become one of the most recognized law enforcement figures in America. On this episode of the Cops and Writers Podcast, we take a look at how it all started for Sheriff Mark Lamb. Welcome to part one of this incredible story. Part two airs next Sunday. More about Sheriff Lamb. Mark Lamb is known as America's Sheriff. He served as the 24th Sheriff of Pinel County, Arizona, overseeing a county the size of Connecticut with over 600 employees. Before entering law enforcement, he was a business owner for over a decade and didn't join law enforcement until his 30s, yet quickly rose through the ranks. Valedictorian of his training class, rookie of the year, officer of the year, detective of the year. He served as sheriff from January 2017 through December 2024 and ran for U.S. Senate in 2024. Losing the Republican primary to Kerry Lake, he's now running for Congress in Arizona's fifth congressional district. No matter what your political persuasion is, I think his message needs to be heard. And I'm grateful he took the time out of his busy schedule for this interview. Sheriff Mark Lamb, welcome to Cops and Writers.
SPEAKER_01I appreciate you having me on.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I really appreciate it. This is gonna be great. I I've been looking forward to this all week. But first things first, I have to thank the most awesome Steve Murphy for doing the intro. He uh we swap guests all the time. It's like, hey, you know what? Yeah, that Sheriff Lamb guy would be an awesome guest for you. And I'm like, okay, I've got you know X, Y, and Z for you. So we've been friends now for the last couple three years, and he's just such a genuinely nice guy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he really is, and I enjoyed doing his as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it's amazing to me how humble he is for what he has accomplished.
SPEAKER_01I know, I know.
SPEAKER_02You would never know. I mean, just a super fast story, you know. We're at a restaurant in Florida with some other cops, and you know, we're exchanging uh you know war stories. I'm talking about Milwaukee, you know, my buddy Rick is talking about Chicago, our friend Marik is talking about New York, and he's talking, he's like, Yeah, you know, the first really big seizure, I don't know how many keys of cocaine in Jamaica, and there's people like next to us trying not to listen, but like looking in their jaws like on the ground, and you know, here's Steve just like casually, oh yeah, you know, thousands of keys of cocaine that I, you know, and I'm like, oh shit, this is hilarious.
SPEAKER_01We uh we are not even close to that, but in Arizona, we know like we'll get some huge seizures, you know, pounds, tons. I mean, not typically tons, but several hundred pounds or 50 pounds or 30 pounds of cocaine, and so we're used to getting some big seizures, but nothing like what he would get. Um, you know, I just this stuff, he's I guarantee you that guy could tell stories for days that none of us could keep up with.
SPEAKER_02So you're absolutely right. But hey, again, thank you, Steve. But let's go on to you, Sheriff. Uh, let's start at the beginning. How would high school or college friends describe you?
SPEAKER_01Probably the same as I am now, you know, just uh a good person, uh, smiles a lot, good friend, you fun to be around, um driven. Uh I I would, you know, you never really think that much about it in high school, how people think of you. Uh, you know, I was pretty dead set on going on a mission for my church, and so I was pretty focused on on living a certain way that allowed me to do that. And so I played sports. I uh was very, you know, did a lot within the church and then at school. So yeah, I don't know. I I don't think too many people would be surprised to see where I've gotten in life.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Now you grew up a little differently than the uh average bear. Yeah, you grew up in different countries. Explain that to us.
SPEAKER_01So my dad was a graduate of Thunderbird, which is an international business school in Arizona, very prestigious business school. And so he just was in love with international business. Doesn't mean we were we weren't wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but he loved doing business outside the US. So I was born and raised in Hawaii, and you know, while people say, well, that's part of the US in 1972, it'd only been part of the US for you know less than two decades. So um, and then we moved to the Philippines when I was 11. We spent some time there, which was very good for us because we learned just how important how special America is and how much you know, we think we know poverty in America. We don't know poverty. They had poverty in the Philippines is a is a whole nother level. And you just really start to appreciate what we have as Americans. And then we moved to Arizona, which is where my dad was from, and my family is pioneers of Arizona on both my mom and dad's side. And then I went to high school while I was in high school in Arizona. My family moved to Panama. And so I spent most of my time in Panama after that. Um, even after high school, I lived there. Uh, spent a lot, a lot of time in Panama. I was there when the United States invaded Panama, Operation Just Cause back in 8990. And uh yeah, so I mean, we just experienced a lot. And then I was a missionary in Argentina for two years. So by the time I was 21, I'd really only lived a handful of years in the continental United States. Um, but um look, I'm a I'm a raised deep patriot and uh love this country, love the founding fathers, love everything it stands for, love freedom. And so I'm blessed to live in the greatest country in the world.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Now, are you sure your dad wasn't in the CIA? Because that sounds like a story that, you know, your dad was a spy of some kind.
SPEAKER_01A lot of people thought that, but I can assure you that my dad was not. My dad was no pro-government guy. Um, you know, we were raised with a healthy distrust for government and uh, you know, a few things throughout our lives where they people do see that. And during the Operation Just Cause, they had taken some Americans from our building that night, and they had taken some people from either the third or fourth floor. We were on the 10th floor, we're the next set of Americans in the house. Who was uh the dignity battalion, Norieegas people? So the Panamanian Dignity Battalion had taken, they ended up finding the guy who they believed to be CIA, which was a professor at the college. They ended up finding him dead in a ditch a few days later, but the power went out before they got they could go up any higher, and we were on the 10th floor. And I'm sure they assumed we were CIA as well, but I can assure you my dad was not CIA.
SPEAKER_02Well, the only reason I say that is I remember when I was back in college, my ex-wife's um, I met my ex in college, her best friend and roommate, her dad was in the CIA, and nobody in the family knew it until he died. You know, he was an importer-exporter. You know, they lived all over the world, and you know, she was fluent in Spanish. She grew she went to high school, I think it was in Puerto Rico, and you know, and she looked like a Barvidel. You would never guess that at all. And I remember we're like in line at a movie theater, and some guys were saying some really lew stuff about her, you know, behind her in Spanish, and she snaps around and she gave gave it right back to them. They're like, Oh shit, you know, yeah, she knows what we're saying, but that was like the family secret. And I'm like, man, what a story.
SPEAKER_01You know, through the years I've realized when I tell this story, I think, man, people's gotta, they gotta think that my dad was CIA, but no, definitely not CIA. Um quite the opposite, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So General Noriega's whoever uh henchmen are coming to scoop people up. I mean, that must have been pretty unnerving. Were you with your entire family, or what did that look like?
SPEAKER_01So you could feel that it was get unraveling through the week, and it was getting close to Christmas. I think it was December 20th, 1989, and they had it, uh they had attacked a soldier and his wife, and there were some other things going on. They had attacked the the rival politicians, and so you could just feel something was going on. And well, one o'clock in the morning, my mom woke me up and she's like, they're bombing, they're bombing. So we came out, we lived on the 10th floor, and it was in this place called Punta Paitia, which is out on the point of one, the other side of Old Panama, so across the bay. And we can just see the bombs just they were shooting tanks and I was shooting stuff off the buildings. They were tracers were bouncing off the ocean. And then I ran to the other side of the building and I could see the firefight where the Navy SEALs were killed on the uh Punta Paitia airstrip. And then I ran to the other side, and you could see, I mean, all four sides. And then I ran to the balcony and I looked over into the carport and I could see a black limousine, and I would I saw a Panamanian guy loading an RPG into the black limousine. And I believe those were the guys that ended up taking the Americans. And um, we ended up having like the power was cut off, so we ate cold beans for Christmas that year, and I had to actually stand guard at 17 years old. I spent four days standing guard from midnight to 6 a.m. every morning, making sure that more dignity battalion and more looters didn't come to our building and steal anything. And so all the people in the building just got together and said we all have to take turns standing guard. And my turn was 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. 12 to 6, and I was 17 years old holding a gun out there, getting ready to defend our building if need be.
SPEAKER_02Wow. I mean, that's something most kids or most people actually never you know are gonna be doing in their lifetime. But for a kid, you know, 17, yeah, you I guess it depends on level of maturity. Everybody's different, but it's like, holy cow, that that's a lot to ask a 17-year-old kid to do. And you know, how do you think that kind of imprinted or formed you later for what you know you had a career in law enforcement then? You know, it was you're kind of you're the cheap dog back then.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, oddly enough, I'd never thought about being a cop. That had never crossed my mind. I did want to be military, and so for me, this was kind of fascinating because I did want to go into the military when I came back from Argentina in the early 90s. It was there was nothing going on, and we still lived in Panama and we we played softball and baseball with people who were in the military, and they're like, Don't join the military, it's boring. And next thing you know, I I was married with five kids, so I felt like I missed that opportunity. But I, you know, I was a gun kid, I had my own guns and I we hunted a lot, and so for me, it was it was not uh it was not an unfamiliar thing to have a gun in my hand. However, the idea that if somebody would come, you had to be committed mentally to take somebody else's life because they were gonna show up with AK-47s, and I'm holding a 3030 or a or I'm holding some other, you know, very the gun was certainly not on the par with an AK-47, a full automatic. And so I thought, well, I'm gonna at least just shoot at one of them and see what I can do before. Um, but anyway, that that was something that as a kid, I always wanted to be in the military anyway. Me doing law enforcement, honestly, that never crossed my mind until my neighbor asked me to do a ride along at 33 years old.
SPEAKER_02Wow, you know, I have this feeling that you know, with the church stuff being doing missionary stuff, and just what we talked about now, you're a guy who enjoys being of service to others. That's I think that's I get a very strong feeling in listening to you on other podcasts and interviews and seeing you on your um own YouTube channel, etc. Being of service is like one of the number one things I feel that you come across as. And how important is that to you?
SPEAKER_01Well, I appreciate you recognizing that because honestly, that is what drives me. You know, my willingness to serve as a as first as a reservation police officer, detective, and then I went over to the county, and then ultimately I decided I wanted to serve my country at a different level. And so I ran for sheriff and I was able to serve my community again. And honestly, that's what that's what drove me. And then when I wrote decided to run for the U.S. Senate, it was my willingness to serve the country, knowing that somebody needed to run into the burning building. And now I'm running, I was unsuccessful. I mean, I I can't say I wasn't on though, I wasn't I wasn't unsuccessful. I did not win the race, but it was certainly God's uh, it was what was best for our family not to win. And so then I now I'm running for Congress. And frankly, none of these things are fun. They are, they can be, you know, like I'm going through it, I'm getting torn to pieces in the in the public, uh, in the public arena. All my and you know what I did wrong? I I decided to run for Congress. That's it. And so your willingness to serve sometimes comes at a price and a sacrifice, but the only reason I'm doing it is because I want to serve my country and my community and preserve freedom. Because on no other level does it make sense for me to do it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the police stuff, you know, is my wheelhouse. And I would always tell my guys, and I was always thinking it's like we're public servants. I know a lot of people are uncomfortable with that kind of phraseology, but that's what we are. We are willing to, you know, trade our lives for a complete stranger. We are there to be a servant. You know, I'm not working for you, Sheriff Lamb. I'm working for the people. I'm not working for you, chief, you know, whoever. I'm working for the people. I mean, yes, obviously there's rules and regs, and there has to be structure, you know, and somebody's got to lead the charge. I get it. But at the end of the day, we work for the people. And like I said before, if you don't, if you're not comfortable with that, then you shouldn't be a public servant. You shouldn't be in law enforcement, you shouldn't be in politics, you shouldn't be doing any of these things.
SPEAKER_01Right. You know, when we would when our guys would graduate from the academy, we didn't give them a policy manual. Obviously, they're gonna get that along the way. We gave them an envelope the day they graduated, and in that envelope was a pocket constitution. And we would tell the people, you serve the people, and your job is to protect them from the bad guys, and we're gonna protect them from government overreach as well. And I said, We are public servants, and this is your guide. As long as you follow the constitution, you don't have to worry about violating a policy, because if that policy isn't is super uh has tried to supersede the constitution in some way, we're gonna always side with the constitution. So, to your point, our our whole focus was instilling that public servant mindset right from the beginning for all of the men and women that came to work at our agency.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I I can't agree more with you, and I think only good things will come from that. And for those of us who were public servants or are public servants, there is no greater reward, I think. There's no better feeling.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you lay your head down. I tell kids this all the time because you know, some people will ask, Well, would you would you want your children to be in this profession? And I say, Yes, because we still need warriors that will go out and be public servants and protect us and and and hunt the bad guys. We still need that. And how can I, as a sheriff, expect to hire anybody if I'm behind the curtains telling people or my own children not to do this job? This is still a great job. We don't make a ton of money doing it, but when you lay your head down at night, um, along with all the demons that this job gives us, you will you will know that you served your community.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, you're 100% correct on that. I I can't agree with you more on that. Now, what is your feelings about mandatory service? You know, of course, there is not a military draft. I hope there never is. You know, sometimes you know a country needs that, but I don't feel like ever the military is a good fit for everyone, it's not a one size fits, you know, everyone. But I am a huge believer in again, mandatory service. You get out of high school like one or two years, you know, go dig some ditches, do infrastructure work, work for a fire department, work for a police department. You know, it's mandatory. Then, you know, you want to go to college for free to state college. Well, now you earned it, you know. Okay, then that's fine.
SPEAKER_01You bring up some very strong points. I I'm not for mandatory service because I think we live in a free country where we should be able to choose it. And I think the the strength of our military and our police force are because we have people that chose to do that job. And the majority of them have good intentions in their heart, a few bad apples here and there. But the majority of them have good intentions in your heart. I think if you make it mandatory, you start to really dilute that. And their their allegiance to this country is way, I think, much weaker when you have a uh, but what I will say is there's a chapter in my book when I talk about how great America is. I think where we really many of these kids in this country do not understand just how great this country is, and many adults for that matter as well. And what I've always said is I hate government programs. I think government programs, for the most part, should all go away. But if you had a government program that would be effective, make every child leave this country for one year. Make them go live somewhere else, and they can pick the country they want to go to. I promise you, after one year of leaving this country and living somewhere else, they will all come back and appreciate this country and the freedoms they have. And uh, we should probably encourage more of that with our amongst our children. You know, you you see in Europe, they send their kids off. Not that Europe is a model right now, but they send their kids off, they become very well-rounded. They speak other languages. I always joke, you know what you call somebody who speaks two languages? Bilingual. You know what you call somebody who speaks one language? American. You know, we don't seem to we don't go out and tend to to want to seek other more culture in our lives, and I I would like to see more American youth do that.
SPEAKER_02I completely agree with you. Both my parents are Irish immigrants when they were growing up. You know, no plumbing and no running water. My mom and her sister would have to go to the community well in the morning, and that was the water for the day. And you know, they're telling me all these stories, and I actually saw the farmhouses where they were born, and Ireland was still a third world country when I was there. I mean, my grandpa couldn't afford teeth, yeah. He didn't have any teeth. He uh just the but they were all happy, you know. And then, you know, my my grandpa, my my mom came over with her parents, my dad came over later by himself. But I remember walking around downtown Chicago with my grandpa, he was an elevator operator. That he had two choices be a janitor on an Indian reservation in Arizona. We may have crossed paths. I mean, who knows? Grandpa would have chosen that, but we're Irish and very fair skinned, you know, desert sun is not a good idea for us. So he chose Chicago, and I'll never forget, I was a little kid, and he said, if you can't make it here, you literally can't make it anywhere. He said, This is the land of opportunity, just work your ass off and just be a good person. And I always always remember that. And he thought he was a millionaire and he had no money, you know. And before that, he was a butler for an English for a major in the English army that had a manor in Ireland, and they treated them like garbage, like garbage, and he was so happy to be in America. It just it yeah, I I've had that beaten into me for forever, and it makes total sense to me. So what was your path into law enforcement? You said you went on a ride along, and that kind of changed everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we had a neighbor, and we used to always get together and watch UFC fights, and and uh I had my own business, I was doing okay. What was the business? It wasn't this it was pigeon control. I was just gonna say it wasn't the safest business. I had to climb up on people's roofs. Wash them all off, close off all the areas where the pigeons would roost. And uh because the pigeons can't, you know, they have it, they're nasty, they crap everywhere, they got a ton of diseases in them. Okay, and so we would go in and clean these places, and I would do pretty good on the business, but I just knew I wasn't doing what I was supposed to do. I could just feel this need to serve, and I didn't feel like I was serving in any way, really, for my community or my people or anyway, my country. And so my neighbor says, Hey, do you want to go on this ride along? And I said, Sure, I'll go on this ride along. So we go out and it was to an Indian reservation right next to Mesa Tempi in Scottsdale. And um we went to this call where there was a guy who had found a 20-year-old with his 14-year-old daughter, and they got into a scuffle, and dad runs out the back, or the guy runs out the back, and uh we show up and they let me out of the car. I don't know why, but I'm out there armed with a flashlight and courage, looking behind this house, which was all desert behind the house, and there was an old abandoned travel trailer. And so I walk up to the travel trailer and I look in there, and amongst all this trash and debris and clothes, I see what I think is a quarter size of skin. And so I'm like, I think this guy's in here. So they go in there, they move the stuff. Sure enough, he's there. They grab him, they rough him up, put him in tan cuffs, tased him, I think. And uh that morning I went home, told my wife, I said, honey, I'm gonna be a cop. And six months later, I was in the academy and on my way, and I kind of really found that that filled that gap for service. Plus, I was I was really into mixed, you know, mixed martial arts, MMA and stuff. And so, you mean I could go and do this job where I get to carry a gun and I get to show up to to calls and help people. I mean, it was to me, I I felt like I'd uh really hit a home run. Now, granted, you're capping on what you can make, but there was offered off-duty opportunities. And when you would ask my people would say to my wife, they'd say, Well, are you worried? And she'd say, I was way more worried of him climbing up on roofs, he almost fell off a handful of times. And now we get paid vacation, we get uh a steady salary, so all of these things for and insurance. I had five kids, and so my wife thought it was the greatest thing, and uh, and it worked out to be a great career for us.
SPEAKER_02So you went into law enforcement a little bit older than most people, and I did I I relate to this because I was 30 when I got into the police academy. I was on a waiting list for four years, you know. I went to college, got kicked out a couple of times, finally graduated. You know, I sold cars, I bartended, I did whatever I could to pay the rent until I found a cop job, more or less. And it was it was doggy dog back then, it was really hard. And I finally get the job, and here I am 30 years old, running around with these 21-year-olds, and I'm like, okay, this really sucks. I mean, I could do the push-up set-ups, you know, lifting weights, all that, but the runs, oh my god, they almost killed me. Yeah, these these little teeny boppers running around me, and I'm like, this really sucks. But it was also a different mindset, you know. For me, that's like, oh thank god, this is this is my career. You know, it's I worked this long without paid vacations, I worked this long without overtime pay, without health insurance, without all I never had a job that had two days off in a row until I hit 30 years old when I got in the police academy. And I'm like, they're paying me to do this. I and there's people complaining around me. I'm like, this is the best thing ever that ever happened to me. This is amazing. So, what do you think the benefits or drawbacks of being a little bit older in the police academy? Because how old were you? About 32, 33.
SPEAKER_01I was 33, about 34 by the time I actually got into the academy. And so I immediately the advantage was I was seasoned. I had already had my own businesses. I had appreciated, I appreciated what I was getting, you know, this steady paycheck, the insurance. While I couldn't, you know, there was a limit on what I could make. I just appreciated it. I I loved what I was doing, it was fun. And so I think that I I probably I went up the ranks a lot quicker and I had a lot more success just because I had a different approach to it. I had five kids, I didn't have time to mess around. I had to get to work. I took every off-duty uh extra extra shift I could get. Really, what I took was overtime. I wanted to do when I made extra money, I wanted it to be doing jobs in the community. Like, you know, we had some that we had these housing communities on the reservation, they would pay to have a deputy or an officer come out and do just the housing. And nobody else would take them, but I would take them and I would take extra shifts. And what it made me was better so that I was able in two years, I got on our gang and drug unit. And uh my career just kind of kept really taking off from there. But I think it just gave me the maturity and the and the the drive having five kids and a family. It just made me, I think, a much um I don't want to say better. I just think it just it it really put me on a different path than where they were. And uh I I think it helped me see clearer where I wanted to be quicker.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, it like for me, this was the job that a I could we could start having kids. You know, it's like I I didn't want to have kids until I had a house and decent health insurance. Those were the two things I really wanted because kids are expensive. You had five, oh my god, I I can't even imagine, you know. That's I had none of that.
SPEAKER_01I was like, let's go and let's just roll. And we had five kids, ma'am, ma'am. I had five kids in six and a half years. I had five kids by the time I was 30 or 31 years old.
SPEAKER_02You were fruitful and multiplied, there is no doubt about that. Yes, your poor wife. Oh, God bless her. But um, yeah, so my mindset was like yours. It's like, okay, this is my career. This is, you know, I'm thinking benefits, I'm thinking, you know, insurance. Where these 21-year-old kids were thinking about where they're gonna go out drinking that night, you know, and uh like it was just a different mindset altogether, you know. And I'm like, no, that's no, all the little dramas and romances and all this other stuff that goes on in an academy class. I'm like, I couldn't be further removed from it. So I felt like a little out like an outsider a little bit, but that was fine. You know, I saw I saw what happened when you graduated and you get into this career, and I'm like, oh yeah, hell yes. So your first job in law enforcement, as you alluded to, was on an Indian reservation. Now, how do the natives on the job and the natives you policed treat you being a white guy?
SPEAKER_01Well, they don't particularly care for the white man to come out and police them, you know. And uh I wouldn't think they didn't they didn't have enough of their own members, community members, and they tell you straight out they hire community members first, they hire Native Americans second, and then anybody else after that, and they couldn't fill their ranks, and so um, you know, look, I think they treated us probably the same as they treated some of their the natives that were actually community members, didn't always get a ton of respect because they saw them kind of as traitors sometimes, too. And so here's how you earn respect out there you treat people right, and you you gotta be tough, like you can't be, you know. I never once used my taser out there. If I had to, if we were gonna tangle, we were gonna go hands-on, and um that you you gain a level of respect in the community, and so the way you do your job is really more important than the color of my skin on that job, you know, when I was doing it. And while they may have preferred to have all Native Americans, they weren't able to, but secondly, they wanted people that were there to protect them and and weren't afraid to to to uphold the law, and I think that's what we did very well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, I had very little um contact with Native American people growing up, and you know, here I am in Milwaukee, and I I didn't realize how segregated it was. And I when I'm brand new working midnight to eight, I'm in a neighborhood that's 95% black, and I couldn't be more white. I mean, here's this Irish boy, you know. And yeah, and what I learned too is like you said, you know, it's all about respect. Yeah, you know, it's there's respect and there's respect. I remember our instructor telling us that he says, you know, you're gonna reap what you sow out there, you know. And he was a hundred percent true, you know, even though sometimes it is adversarial, there is this respect if you treat them right, they know when they're done dirty, you know, and it's like if if you run a clean man and you do the right thing, usually, not always, usually, you'll get a very good result. But that's right, you know, the strain between natives and surrounding jurisdictions are a form of friction in popular TV shows like Longmire or Yellowstone, you know. How real is that?
SPEAKER_01Oh, there's definitely friction. I mean, look, they these are sovereign nations, and with all due respect to them, they have the right to be sovereign and they want to have their sovereignty, and so they don't necessarily want the federal government coming in and and continuing to tell them what to do, or they don't want outside communities doing it. So I was always very respective of their sovereignty, they are their own countries within this, and so um I think that's part of the reason why I did very well, even when I became sheriff, there was four NATO, you know, we Indian reservation is what we call them, and people say we can't say that, that's not politically correct. Well, the name of the community I worked in was the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community, and the other one we worked at that was in our community was the Gila River Indian Community, and then the Auction Indian community. So that this is not a word, this is you know, white people back east have decided that we need to change all these words sometimes, right?
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01All the the liberal bleeding hearts who think they're more morally uh uh uh superior than us. The reality is, is they just care that you respect them and their author their sovereignty. And uh, I was always good at that. I think that's what made me successful on my career on the reservation. Then even as a sheriff, as I dealt with reservations, um, we always had a good relationship.
SPEAKER_02Well, what opened my eyes a little bit was, and like I said, I didn't have a lot of contact with Native American people, was I was a manager of an IHOP in Madison, Wisconsin when I graduated from college. And one of my employees was from an Indian reservation in Minneapolis. He was an engineering student, and he was one of the best employees I've ever ever had. I loved him. And you know, one night we're just you know shooting the breeze, and I asked him, I said, What's it like? And he said, I hate going back to the reservation. I said, Why? He said, First of all, they call me an apple. Yeah, I'm red on the outside and white on the inside. They hate the fact that I married a white girl. They were really I he said my relatives were angry that I married a white girl. And he said, and I'm bettering myself. He was an engineering major. I'm sure he's got some super high speed job right now. He was very driven, he was super smart, and he was just a decent guy. And his wife was just beautiful and just so charming and just nice. And he knew, you know, he says, Why would I go back to a bunch of alcoholics and meth heads? He said, That's what there are. This is before there were Indian reservations, um, casinos. That's before the big explosion of casinos where there was a lot of money flowing into reservations that before there were like mini third world countries, you know, they were they were poorer than poor. And he, you know, he would tell me all these stories, and I'm like, I did not realize that. He says, Nope, I want nothing to do with that area anymore.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that's how a lot of them filled. There are a lot of them that I will tell you, it's uh it's tough because it is a socialism, is what it is. If you want to see how socialism doesn't work, go to a Native American reservation where you can't own property and you know you've constantly have government, way too much policing. I mean, uh, just a lot of things about it I think are are not great. Um, I I respect the sovereignty, but uh, in many ways, those are socialists. They give you free health care, they give you free schooling if you want it. And look, it just doesn't, it's not many of these reservations really struggle. And um, casinos have been the real the only thing that's turned them around. And even then, you can give the people all the money you want. Doesn't always make it, it doesn't always pull them out of the funk, right?
SPEAKER_02Doesn't pull them out of their cycle that they're in, you know. The substance abuse I know is terrible, and yeah, it just so what kind of like calls would you be going to on a Native American reservation? You're this white tribal cop. I know it's kind of different where there are no felonies, only like the FBI is involved with felonies, or what is all that?
SPEAKER_01So there's only misdemeanors. Um, any felony you would have to go through either the state, which in that case you would have to have a non-native on none on native crime, or there's a whole matrix of who who committed the crime on who. But ultimately, to make it simple simple, you if you want to charge somebody with a felony, then it has to be a federal crime. But for it to be a federal crime, there's only the major crimes act, a major Indian crimes act. And so there's only like 13 crimes you can charge. And um, like murder, sexual assault, drive-by shooting was not one of those crimes. So to get the feds to sit to take that, they would have to simulate it to a state charge. So we ended up trying to, when these guys committed crimes off the reservation, we had more success in holding them accountable. Most of them, the max they could do in jail, even if you charged them drive-by shooting on the reservation, it was still a misdemeanor. But at the same time, walking the wrong direction on the street was a misdemeanor. It was all misdemeanors. And so you could arrest people for the dumbest things, but at the same time, crimes, you know, assaults. Um we responded to a lot of gang stuff. I was a gang and drug detective. So you have you have domestic violence, you have assaults, you have drive-by shootings, you have homicides, you have all of that. And it was all in within a very small community. And so it could get really crazy. Most people who are in law enforcement out west think you're crazy if you work on a reservation.
SPEAKER_02Okay, but that's also a great learning ground or a training ground for you. You know, if if you're willing to, you know, roll up your sleeves and kind of get into the mix, you know, the same thing. Where I worked, it was like the highest concentration of violent crime in the city or pretty close to the country. But as a brand new cop, I couldn't have been happier. I'm like, yeah, party on. Every night was a shooting, every night was you know a homicide of some kind, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, there's no better way to learn this job.
SPEAKER_01That's right. That's how I felt too. You know, physical confrontations we had on FTO, I had a bunch of them, and it just never until you you had a rec uh a um a reputation where nobody would mess with you anymore when you showed up on scene, you know, uh, physical altercations, um, you know, having to have your gun out. I mean, just really high tense, high, high intensity situations you found yourself in at an early point. By the time I went to the county, I was far more seasoned on on dangerous, violent calls than the average deputy was. Plus, I had been a HGN certified, tons of DUIs. I mean, just very different. I understood the federal law, travel law, state law, because you had to if you were going to be successful out there.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Yeah, you you mentioned you were a gang detective. What were the prevalent gangs on a reservation like that? And what were the crimes they were involved in specifically?
SPEAKER_01East Side, Los Squad of Bloods, they were involved in assaults. We ended up actually doing a RICO case on them because they were tended, tended to be the antagonist in all of the drive-by shootings where they were shooting, and then then maybe the other gang was more of a retro, you know, just uh payback shooting. So they had drive-by shootings, assaults, homicides, straw purchases of guns, um, drug sales, all of that stuff they were doing. We did a successful Rico case, but we had the East Side La Squad of Bloods, we had the West Side Booth Hill Crips, we had Southside 18th Street. Um, we had there's some Native American prison gangs that come out. Um, Dine, which is actually more for the Navajo, and then Warrior Society. So if they went to prison, they typically came out and they were part of Warrior Society and they would put in work when they got back out of prison. So yeah, we were dealing with there was a lot more gangs than that, but those were the main ones we were dealing with when I was there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for me, when I think of gangs and what I saw in the city was you know, drug dealing and prostitution or anything they could make money off of, really.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's that's so the difference between gangs in a in a normal in a regular community versus a reservation is those gangs typically they're running off of territory and off of drug sales and prostitution, and that's really what drives that gang and and their criminal enterprise. On the reservation, it was born into it. You were born into a blood family, or you were born into a crip family, and it had nothing to do with you know, territory for drug sales. These people would shoot each other in their backyards if two families were of different gangs, and so it was very difficult because this was it was something that these kids grew up with, and it was not based on territory or drug sales or prostitution, it was based on a family identity.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Was there a lot of human trafficking going on when you were there?
SPEAKER_01There's a lot of human trafficking because the cartels and the um they have learned that they can do a lot of this dirty work through the Native American reservations, through the Indian reservations. So whether it's drugs or whether it's human trafficking, what there is is there's a lot of missing and murdered indigenous women in this country. There's a lot of women that go missing on reservations that, you know, that's one of the the gripes I think that a lot of reservations have is they want more service. And hopefully on a national level, you know, if I go to Congress, I can be able to help our Native American reservations, our Indian reservations be able to do something about the missing um in, you know, Indian women that go missing or murdered on a reservation or they never see again. And a lot of other times those folks end up being trafficked throughout the country. And so um I would love to help out there. But yeah, there is there's trafficking that goes on, and there is uh drug dealing and drug trafficking that goes on in the reservation because a lot of times they're a sanctuary, people there's less police, the laws don't apply the way the same way they do on the outside off the reservation, and so it can become complex.
SPEAKER_02Was there ever any like you know, in in the city of Milwaukee, we had you know human trafficking, you know, like task forces with FBI, you know, different alphabet soup of feds working with us. Did you ever have that?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. When we did our RICO case, we actually worked hand in hand with the ATF because a lot of the crimes we were dealing with were straw purchases, and so we were using them to actually take that case federal. And we had a predicate crime of them dragging a woman, a uh the mother of a gang member, a rival gang member, out into the middle of the street, beating her silly to death almost to death, and left her in the roadway. So one of the farm trucks would run her over in the morning. And uh that was the predicate crime we used, and we lumped all the other crimes on top of the Rico case. Um, so yeah, that was uh that was I don't I remember I can't remember what your question was, but that was one of the things I just asked about task forces, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. So we worked with ATF, yeah.
SPEAKER_01FBI takes too long, they want to take too much, and they have this huge budget. The rest of us don't have. Yeah, um, ATF was really good. The Marshalls are phenomenal, but Marshalls aren't really used for investigations, they're more for when we needed to go find somebody. Correct, that's their will use the marshals, and then um DEA was good. Um, I would say we would probably use DEA more now than what we would did back then because DEA we're seeing a lot more drug trafficking from the cartels on the reservation. So I could see that DEA would probably play a little bit bigger role. Um, FBI has people dedicated to Indian country, um, but they just it's honestly they take too long. Their investigations take way too long, way too much money, and we just don't have the resources um or the time that they have. So we use the ATF and we were very successful at them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, the FBI is a wonderful resource for certain things. And what I saw was if you want something to happen quickly, it's the wrong organization because they have to ask permission for almost everything, they don't work solo meal. They they uh they have to go up the chain. It feels like it's like, oh, you have to use the bathroom. Okay, I better ask my boss, you know. I better call Washington, you know. That's that's the the feeling that I got from them. And like I said, they're uh they're a great resource, and there's great FBI agents out there. But as far as what like what you see on TV, it's far from what reality is. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, what lessons did you learn from the natives while you were policing on the reservation?
SPEAKER_01You know, I really learned community. Policing, you had to be community police, and the community was so small, and you could see the impact that your work was having for good or bad. You could see the impact you were having. And while so when I became the sheriff, I realized I could take a lot of that, even though the county was much, much bigger than what the reservation was. You still had a good pretty good understanding of what it meant to get in the community, be part of it. You know, even though you had to maybe arrest somebody later on that was part of that family that you spent a lot of time around, you still were part of that community. It made doing your job a lot easier. And so we took a lot of those same principles that I had learned at the reservation. And we kind of did that when I became sheriff. And I thought I think that's one of the reasons we had so much success with community policing and really bridging that gap in our county.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Well, let's segue a little bit. You know, we touched on you becoming sheriff. Why? Why would you want to become a sheriff? And were you working for that sheriff's department, obviously, before you became a sheriff the sheriff?
SPEAKER_01When I actually made the decision to that this was something I thought I wanted to do was 2011. I was a gang and drug detective. And frankly, it was during the Obama administration, not to drag politics in, but I thought that Obama was doing a lot to really drag a wedge between the law enforcement and the communities. You saw a very couple high-profile cases where they really started to make the police look like the police were in the wrong instead of the criminals. And so I said, you know what? I'm not gonna be just the guy that sits here and complains about it. I'm gonna do something about it. I'm gonna run for sheriff. And my guys were like, You're crazy. I said, No, man, no, I'm gonna run for sheriff. And they said, nah, whatever. Unbeknownst to them, I put in my application, and uh about six months later, I went to the county where I was a deputy for a while until I then I then I had to step down to a reserve and then I ran, I stepped away completely for the last year just so that I could run for sheriff because you don't want them to you, you don't want the actual administration where you're trying to run to do it, but you know, put some uh internal investigation.
SPEAKER_02Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, I get it.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, I left and built my own businesses and I almost didn't run. I actually had been doing, I was had a pretty successful marketing business, and and we were big getting into solar and things were looking really good. And I called my wife and I told my wife, I said, honey, um, I've been reading a lot about this, and this looks like this sucks, first of all, to run for office. And I said, honestly, I uh the business is going good. I think and I was in Utah at the time, which is where a lot of our business was, and she was in Arizona, and so I called her and I just said, Honey, I don't think I'm gonna do it. I think I'm gonna let's wait, maybe we do it in four years. I don't know, let's see what happens. And um I couldn't, I hung up the phone, and for the next two days, I could not stop thinking about being the sheriff, running for sheriff, couldn't get it off my mind, but just could not. And so I called her back to a couple days later and I said, screw it, let's do it. And so we jumped into it. I had no idea how to run a campaign and uh knew nothing about politics, didn't know how to even get into a campaign. And so I had to learn all that along the way. And I was a major underdog, and the way we beat them is we just grinded it out. We got out to the community instead of going to all these political events, we did that too. But we realized that the real votes were in the people that were never gonna show up to a Republican club meeting or any of that. And so we went out and just grinded it out. And I remember people would call me and they say, Man, do you think you're gonna win? I go, Oh, yeah, we're gonna win. And the day before the election, they said, Hey man, you gave it a good try. And I said, Dude, we're gonna win by 20 points. And they're like, Are you serious? You think so? And I they thought I was delusional. Well, the next day the election happens, and we actually won 64 to 36 percent, or 63 to 36, and so yeah, it was uh it was a big blowout, and um I became the sheriff, and so it was but it was a lot of hard work, and I had actually made the decision in 2011, got elected in 2016, took office um July or January 1st, 2017. So it goes to show you if you want something in life, the really good stuff takes time, takes a lot of sacrifice, takes a lot of hard work. Um, but in the end, we were able to achieve it.
SPEAKER_02Now, did you have any mentors or somebody to kind of guide you? Because you said you didn't know anything about. I mean, if somebody said, Hey Pat, why don't you run for a sheriff in Milwaukee tomorrow? I'd be like, bro, yeah. I mean, I'd be asking Claude and Chat GPT and the Google and everybody else because I have no clue.
SPEAKER_01So, what I would do is I would go sit down with people because they would, you know, when you say you're gonna run for sheriff, people want to meet up with you, sure, and I would I would listen to what they said, and you know, some of them would give you good advice, other people no. And really what I did was I just learned from all these different people. I didn't really have a mentor. I and then I would listen to them tell me how to that I was supposed to campaign the way you're supposed to do it, and then I would think to myself, how can I take a marketing principle and apply it to that and gain achieve the same outcome, but do it cheaper, better, and more effectively. And so I just took those marketing principles. Probably one of the best books I read was Sun Tzu's Art of War. Oh, yeah, as far as as campaigning was. Um, so I'm a I like to read. So a lot of it I just read from books. I would listen to when I would sit down with people and take the what I wanted to take out of it, and some of the stuff I just didn't, but no, I didn't have a mentor. Now I've never really been a huge mentor guy in my life. I'd be I basically I come on with you and I sit down and talk to you, and you might say something or have some a quality that I'm like, I like that. Let me take it and see if I can apply it in my life and if it works, if it works for my personality, for my goals, for all that. And so throughout my time, I've spent a lot of time around other sheriffs. I go visit them. I just I really try to glean as much as I can, knowledge, uh, you know, different, different uh programs, you know, people's uh cat talents and gifts. I've just tried to glean a lot throughout the years and piece those together in my life and try to be the best me that I can be.
SPEAKER_02So your wife went along with this willingly? I mean, was she cool with it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, she was cool with it. She's she's my wife's a patriot, too. My wife loves freedom and loves this country, and we want our children and our grandchildren to continue to have freedom. And if we don't, if we're not willing to fight for it or step up and sacrifice and run for office or do things that you don't want to do, if we're not willing to do that, then you know, you're first of all, you're setting, I don't think you're setting a great example for your kids, you know. Like you, you've set this example of public service in your life, and that's what you wanted to do. And you saw one of your kids get into the military from that, and then you see the benefits from it. We're trying to do the same thing, and we want to have we want our grandchildren to have a country and have freedom.
SPEAKER_02And I think if we're at a very critical point in history in this country, if we're gonna be able to maintain that or not, yeah, you know, because I think what people don't understand is yes, you're running for sheriff, you're running for Congress, but it's not just you, it's your entire family. Yeah, you're not kidding. And they, you know, when somebody drags you through the mud or there's some kind of scandal or whatever, they're all long for the ride.
SPEAKER_01Not only along for the ride, they're attacking my wife too. Like they're attacking all of us. And so the the restraint that you have to have, the the confidence and the in the in the mission that you're on is really what you have to be focused on because you know, I joke sometimes, somebody like, how's it going? I said, Well, I haven't killed anybody yet, so uh that's good, you know. But I mean the reality is is it it is not easy. It is not easy to be in the public arena and in and and there is no protection for us. People can say, they can lie, they can say whatever they want, and I have no recourse. You know, um, we're probably gonna file some lawsuits when this thing is all said and done, because this is the worst I've ever been through in politics. And it's exactly why good people don't run for office, and it's exactly why we have terrible, morally compromised people in office because they were the ones that were willing to just throw nasty dirt at other people. I've always said no political office is worth my honor. So I am not going to disparage somebody or their family. When I run for office, when I ran for Senate, sheriff, or run now, I run off of what I want to do, what my merits and my experience is, and then what I want to do for my community or my state or whatever it is I'm running for. That is what I focus on. And I think that's what Americans want and are hungry for. I don't want you to tell me how bad your opponent is. I don't want you to tell me how good you are. You are right.
SPEAKER_02You know, what do you stand for? You know, what are your strengths? You know, how are you gonna change X, Y, and Z? Yeah, absolutely. But what people don't understand is when you become a chair, sheriff, or you become a chief, you you're yes, you're still in law enforcement, but you're more of a politician than anything else. You're really quagmired in that world, good, bad, or indifferent. That's where you are. And you know, you've been a leader for a long time, especially you know in law enforcement. What makes an effective leader? Thanks everyone for joining me and America's sheriff and congressional candidate Mark Lamb. We are just getting started with Mark's career and incredible life. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of this conversation next Sunday. Trust me, you're not gonna want to miss this one. Well, that wraps up another episode of the Cops and Writers Podcast. If you haven't done so yet, you take a minute and rate and review the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. If you have already, thank you. As always, thank you for all of your support, and of course, let's be careful out there.
