Serial Killer, Pig Farm, And Police Grit

A chance conversation set Jennifer Hyland on a path she never planned: from late‑20s recruit to deputy chief overseeing major crime, patrol, and the kind of cases that haunt even seasoned investigators. What she learned along the way isn’t the hero myth. It’s a set of grounded habits—judgment, restraint, and relentless investigation—that actually keep people safe and put predators behind bars.

We start with the early years: the culture shock of patrol, the pressure to “prove” yourself, and the moment she stopped performing and started policing as herself. Jennifer explains why rookie placement matters more than tradition, how the RCMP’s one‑size‑fits‑all training falls short across remote and urban posts, and why the real superpower in policing is casework that survives court, not muscle that wins a moment. She walks us through the split‑second call to disengage when instincts say a stop is about to turn, and we compare the very different risk signals created by Canada–U.S. gun laws.

Then we go deep on leadership. Jennifer was pushed into promotion by a tyrannical boss and built her command style in reaction to that harm: show up in briefing, credit frontline work, bridge patrol and detectives, and use bodycam video for learning, not just blame. Her most gripping account centers on Canada’s most infamous serial killer, Robert Pickton. As a patrol officer, she stopped him on the street while he hunted sex trade workers. Years later, her notes helped anchor testimony that tied the stop to a night of horrific violence. The takeaway is sobering: you don’t “win” cases with force—you win them with trust, documentation, and patience.

Finally, Jennifer shares why she wrote Tight Rope. A colleague once told her she seemed “perfect,” and that illusion kept others from stepping up or seeking help. So she broke the spell, writing about the quiet forms of PTSD, the loneliness of command, and the heartbreak of handing in a badge even when the job has taken its pound of flesh. It’s not a tale of despair; it’s a practical call to b

Peregrine.io: Turn your worst detectives into Sherlock Holmes, head to Peregrine.io tell them Two Cops One Donut sent you or direct message me and I'll get you directly connected and skip the salesmen.

Transcript

Format, Guest Intro, Ground Rules

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Two Cops One Donut Podcast. The views and opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Two Cops One Donut, its host or affiliate. The podcast is intended for entertainment and informational purposes only. We do not endorse any guest opinions or actions discussed during the show. Any content provided by guests is of their own volition, and listeners are encouraged to form their own opinions. Furthermore, some content is graphic and has harsh language, or your discretion advised, and is intended for mature audiences. Two Cops One Donut and its host do not accept any liability for statements or actions taken by guests. Thank you for listening. All right, welcome back to Cops One Donut. I am your host, Eric Levine, and with me today, as always, my co-host, Banning Sweatland, and our special Canadian friend from the north, Jennifer Highland. Did I say that correctly?

SPEAKER_04 1:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

How are you, ma'am?

SPEAKER_04 1:05

I'm great. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Hey, no problem. It's easy when it's a bunch of cops, eh?

unknown 1:10

Yeah.

Jennifer’s Path Into Policing

SPEAKER_00 1:12

And you'll forgive me. I still occasionally say a uh that's my northern Michigan roots. I I the military tried to beat it out of me, but every once in a while, and if you start saying it, you're gonna get me in a habit of saying it. So just giving you fair warning. So um if you guys are out there listening and you are wondering how the live stream format's going to be tonight, uh, we kind of found a working formula that we like. So we're gonna make this about our guest for about two-thirds of the show. So do not get offended if we're not reading your comments and your questions right away. We're going to save that for the end, where we can get through and get all the articulated thought out of our guests and what the topics are for today, and then we're gonna go over to your questions. I think that format worked really well last time we did this. Everybody else really seemed to like it, so that's what we're gonna do tonight again. Uh, but without further ado, ma'am, I would like you to introduce yourself, kind of give your your background of what got you into law enforcement, especially um law enforcement in Canada, and then kind of tell us about that path.

When To Start A Policing Career

SPEAKER_04 2:21

Yeah, thanks for having me. You know, um I have an interesting story into law enforcement because I didn't grow up uh thinking I was going to be a police officer. It never actually dawned on me. And I know a lot of police officers that I've met in my career grew up always wanting to either be soldiers in the military and police. It was a very clear trajectory. But when I was in university, I always thought that I was gonna go to law school. I was very interested in the law. And after university, I wrote the LSAT and didn't get the score that with my GPA would have got me into law school. So I went off to Europe and traveled a bit, came back, wrote the LSAT again, did better the second time, but of course it's bell curved. So even though I did better, everybody did better that time. And I ended up with only one point more. And so ultimately I never applied to law school. So I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do in life. And a few months before I got into policing, one of my best friends was traveling in Australia and she was killed in a car accident. And when she was killed, I her parents had gone over and I'd heard the story about how first responders and a bunch of citizens had helped try to save her life. She was thrown from the car, she died in the ditch. Her brother was in hospital for a long period of time. And so it really rattled me how short life could be. And just knowing that there were people out there that would stop and become involved in somebody's end of life was something that hadn't really crossed my mind until it personally affected me. And so a few months before I decided to get into policing, I ran into an old high school friend and he had wanted to go to law school also. And when I saw him, he told me he didn't go to law school. He became a police officer instead. And he had become a Royal Canadian Mountain Police Officer in Canada, the RCMP, which is sort of similar to your FBI. And as I was talking to him about the investigative process about being a police officer, helping people, being part of the community, being there to at the best times and worst times of people's lives, something kind of struck me that it sounded like really what I wanted to do. And it never had dawned on me before because I thought police officers were just big, you know, they broke up bar fights and, you know, they chased down bad guys. And, you know, I was five, six, 120 pounds. And I'm like, well, that's obviously not a career for someone like me. And the way he described it, and he worked with two women. Two women were in his uh police department. I thought, yeah, I can do this stuff he's talking about. He's talking about investigating and interviewing and tracking down the evidence and arresting people. And so, you know, really, it was like one afternoon with him, and I went back home and I immediately started the process of what do I need to do to become a police officer? And about a year and a bit later, I was sworn in and I started my policing career. So it was, yeah, I was 27 years old. I was about 25 when my friend died. And um, so I was 27 years old when I when I started my training.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Okay, so something that we talk about quite often here is what age should a person what age should a person start looking to go into law enforcement? Now, I knew pretty young getting some sort of law enforcement career. And I would have told you at 18 that I was ready. I would have told you, I was like, Yeah, let's go. But I can tell you now, at you know, being 43 years old here pretty soon, um I wasn't ready at eight. I wasn't ready at 25. You know, I I think I honestly was in a good place for law enforcement, probably right there by my 30s, like you, 27, 20, 29, 30, somewhere in there. Now, what is your opinion now that you've had a law enforcement career? What do you think now, looking back, is a good age to start getting into law enforcement?

SPEAKER_04 6:26

Yeah, it's a really good question. Um I worked with people, the youngest person I ever worked with in policing was 22. And I was already in policing, and he got hired about a year and a half after me. So I was I was closer to 30, and he was 22 coming out of training. And I thought he was too young. I thought he was too young for a few reasons. He didn't have the life experience, the relationships, and some of the exposure that I thought they don't talk about in policing, but you realize you use a lot of your life experience in the job to navigate the job. Uh, just the whole idea of going to a domestic violence call, even at 27, I wasn't married and didn't have kids, but some of my first calls were husbands and wives with little kids fighting over money and and and who was looking after what in the house. And I'm like, I have never done what you guys are doing, and I'm here trying to help navigate this sort of emotional shit show that you guys got going on. And I don't have any experience. I mean, I'd been in long-term relationships and all that kind of stuff, but man, that the 22-year-old kid, I mean, he had just like literally moved out of his mom and dad's house. Like, I don't even know that he'd even had a longtime girlfriend yet. And so if you ask me, I I don't like to do blanket, you have to be a certain age to be in.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

For me, there's always an outlier.

SPEAKER_04 7:53

Right. So if if you are, I would say this. Um, I think after 25 is kind of like a safer time. However, I have seen people at 22 and 23 who applied into policing from a broken home, ended up in foster care, had to navigate, worked from the time they were 13 years old, supported their family, supported their siblings, worked and went to night school to get an education. And those people are more mature and often more ready for policing than the 30-year-old who's lived to touch life. And so I don't like to have it as like a hard fast rule, but there's only the average person only gets so much experience in before 25. And so, uh, yeah, for me, I I like you. You think you know everything when you're younger, and then you realize at 27 or 30, wow, like I was really stupid when I was 21, 22.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

When you're 40, you look back when you're 27, you're like, that was really stupid.

SPEAKER_04 8:52

Hey, listen, I'm 54 and I look back when I was 43 and think that was pretty dumb at 43. So I would just say that it there's no such thing as a blanket thing. For me, I would say policing is gonna take a piece of your soul, and you really need to have some grounding and understanding of life before you're exposed to some of this stuff. And that there's it's a sliding scale, but I don't think people are really super, super ready before mid-20s.

Rookie Placement And Culture Shock

SPEAKER_00 9:21

So you bring up a good point, and I want to hit on I want to hit on this part about where they tend to stick rookies. Don't let me forget that. I want to thank Brandar. He gifted five memberships. Brandar, we appreciate you, buddy. I know you could do a lot with your hard-earned money, and you decided to help support what we got going on here. So thank you very much. If you guys decide to support tonight, we really appreciate it. Your money goes directly into the show, it doesn't go into anything else. I don't think banning has been siphoning any of the money off. Um but I I never know. You never know if I'm stuck. But um yeah, to your point about uh having a uh having a touch life. I call them Boy Scouts, having uh a person that grew up that you know had everything provided for them, was very spoiled, uh, never fought, uh had any strife in their life, so to speak. Um and then what do we do with our rookies? What do we do with our female rookies? We stick them in the shittiest place in the beat in policing, and you go, there you go, trial by fire. And I find that I don't like that philosophy. I don't like that at all. I I would rather you uh match your your uh your officers up with the person that they are if you can, if you have that luxury. Like in a city that I'm at, it's a very big city, um one of the largest in the in the nation when it comes to square mileage, just like uh 370 square miles, something like that. It's a huge area. And we've got every type of beat you can think of. Rich, poor, um, you know, hood, uh Hispanic, uh Somalian, uh Middle Eastern, all sorts of things. What's that, Banning?

SPEAKER_02 11:08

I said Asian as well. We have, you know, a lot of the cities I've worked in had a large uh Asian community, and and you have different uh ways you act accordingly in in whatever area that you're in.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Yeah. And and what we do too often is like in my academy class, uh, they just go on score. All right, who scored the highest? You get you get first choice at what side of town you prefer. I don't like that. I want I want an involved instructor that can go, all right, we've been teaching this dude all you know six, eight, ten months, depends on how long your academy is. Ours is like 10 months. Um we've been teaching him this whole time, and we know his background, we know the type of area he grew up in, what he's comfortable with. Um I think he would be a good fit over here. It's gonna take the little more involved instructors, but like me, I grew up in Flint. Put me in a hood spot. Like I'm I'm used to that type of environment. I will shine there. And I understand, I understand how to work that type of area better than I would in a fluent area. I've never been around a rich area. You don't want me in a rich area, I promise you. Let me go get my feet wet and figure out what I'm doing. Now, with a female officer, what was it like for you when you first and I know you said yours is more like FBI. So I I don't know, are you you guys, you know, answering calls, I would assume the same way. How does that work?

SPEAKER_04 12:25

Yeah, no, so so let me so my my initial four years was with uh municipal police department, but even though they are so the RCMP would be equivalent to your like your federal FBI, but they contract at all three levels of policing. So unlike the FBI, the RCMP does federal policing, but they also are like your state police. So they also look after provincial policing in every province, and then they also do city policing. So if the town, so in the province that I live in, the RCMP are the federal across the country. They also police the entire province, so all those small provincial places. And then a city has the right to contract the RCP to be their municipal police department, but they don't have to. So in this province, there's like 16, 17 independent municipal police departments in a lot of big towns and some small towns. The rest are municipally policed by the RCMP. So it's it's it's an organization that does all three levels of policing. So when I was in it, I was like basically been like a city police officer my entire 27 years, just in multiple different uh police departments and multiple different cities. So I worked in three different organizations in like seven different cities. Um, so to answer your question, like first off, I it's interesting that there are a lot of choice. I I never grew up in policing where you got to pick where you went or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

It's a preference. You don't get it necessarily, but if they're like, we have some openings over here, they'll let you get your top choice.

RCMP Structure And Training Limits

SPEAKER_04 13:51

Gotcha, gotcha. Um, so my first police department was just like one big city. So there is no district. It was it was a busy city, but it was geographically small enough that we just went wherever we needed to go. So my first exposure was in patrol, and it was four years in patrol. And there was the rich side of town, the poor side of town, drug central, street trade worker, you name it. Um, we took all the calls there. So there was no picking and choosing what you were exposed to. You went to everything right off the bat. Um in other organizations like the RCMP, I used to think what you're talking about was placements for success. And I watched um police organizations that do have districts and that are a little bit bigger not do a very good job at placement for success. And to your point, it I think everybody exposure to all the different areas of work is good. But what you get exposed to and like you said, get your feet wet in the first six months to a year should be as paired up with AA, a trainer who understands and connects you, has good skills for you. But then, yes, the kind of police work that's gonna build your confidence, make you feel comfortable as a police, it's hard enough to figure out. I remember going out there being like, oh, am I gonna even remember these 10 codes or like even know how to alphabetically, phonetically say the words because all of a sudden there was just so much performance anxiety. Um, and so I think being mindful and removing as much of the stress of that, it doesn't mean that the person who starts out a little slower isn't a superstar. I I I've said this before the kid who was the rock star in in uh hockey at age seven doesn't necessarily make the NHL. And the kid that starts a little later might bypass everybody later on. So it's not a it's not a competition or a race. And I do agree there is a better way to place for success early on in careers if it can be done.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Yeah, yeah. I uh I'm with I like I never heard it put that way. Um, what'd you guys call it?

SPEAKER_04 16:01

Uh place for success. Placement for success, yes. Posting for success, yeah. Like finding, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Yeah. I I think we do a disservice to the community when we're trying to grow our officers. Because who's at most at risk of getting in trouble? It's that zero to five year officer. Now, I understand trying to get them exposed to as many different types of calls as we can do, and this is kind of the culture of policing. We try to get them as exposed to everything. And in my experience, banning, you tell me if it's been the same for you, but you you're gonna get exposed to a lot of calls no matter what, no matter where you're at, even if you're on the rich side of town, you're still gonna get there's gonna be things that happen over there that happen everywhere. So you you're gonna get some of the exposure, but I want, like you said, there's so much to know. You gotta learn all the paperwork, you gotta learn the jail procedures, you gotta learn your 10 codes, you gotta learn your directions, where you're at. Like, I mean, you know, they stop the car and the your FTO says, All right, where are we at? And you're like, fuck. You were you've been warned in the academy about that a million times, and they got you. They waited for you to get so.

SPEAKER_04 17:13

You know, I have to tell you, that's so funny because you know, before I got into policing and I was just like a regular citizen, I never realized that the hundred blocks lined up with streets and avenues, like when you were in the eighth block.

SPEAKER_03 17:26

I'm just like, I thought it was random numbers. I had no idea.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

The higher they get, the farther away. Yep, yeah, the farther away from downtown you're becoming. Yep. Um, but yeah, it's uh like knowing stuff like that. So I when we talk about the culture of policing, this is one of the things that we're gonna dive into tonight, um, especially from your perspective. But I see us starting out the gate at a lot of departments where we're not necessarily setting up for what's best for the citizens. We are well, I had to go through this in my rookie training, so now you got to go through it. You gotta go through the stuck and deal with all this crazy shit and get trial by fire. Um Banning, what what's your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_02 18:10

No, it it is the same. And I and I guess training does uh change in different areas depending on how much backup you have. And uh, I don't, you know, I I I started my career at a larger agency to where we had uh uh about 15 square miles and probably 10 cops. So if we needed backup and we we bordered a very large city um and other cities on the other side to where we could make it what we call make it rain police if we needed it. Um and then I retired from that uh about 18 years later and moved out to what we call BFE or Nowhereville, Texas, to where I was the sole person, you know, even though I ran patrol, I still took a shift, and I I patrolled a thousand square miles by myself. Um so I would go to domestics of my own, domestics with weapons, uh for felonies, we would have, you know, occupied stolen vehicles pursuits, and I'd be lucky if a state trooper or a game warden happened to be in our county or close, they heard the radio chatter, and they come join us for fun. Um, but it's such a different dynamic on how you train people as well as based on population. There's so many different aspects of training. And I know Eric's kind of used to he came from a smaller agency to the agency's at now, so he's used to having a little bit more at his fingertips, but I'm sure the agency before you kind of get to learn uh a little bit to get somewhere. So for me, if I need a backup and if I was training somebody, it could take between one and three hours, uh depending on what that call was. And sometimes you wouldn't get backup at all. So I had to change the training dynamic coming from a larger agency uh to the middle of nowhere. So the training does change. The laws all stay the same, but it just depends on. What area of the country are you in and what's your population density?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yeah, agreed. Um now uh in the Royal Canadian Royal Royal Canadian Mounted Patrol?

SPEAKER_04 20:13

Police police, just RCMP, yeah.

Proving Yourself As A Woman In Policing

SPEAKER_00 20:15

RCMP, yeah, yeah. Okay. Um what is the training like?

SPEAKER_04 20:21

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Ooh, I like that face already. What's the training like?

SPEAKER_04 20:26

You know what I'll actually say. Banning just really described a very important thing that I will say about the training when he was just telling his story. The training in the RCMP is standardized. And I don't want to call it lowest common denominator training, but they tried to put together a training program that everybody goes through that satisfies basically wherever you could be in the country. And unfortunately, like I said, because they do provincial policing, small town and big city, there is really no way for your training to actually solve or provide any officer all of the training needs they would need for various postings. So, much like Bowning just described, there are lots of places in Canada where it is a fly-in community. It is, it is a it is a 18 hours away, is your backup, and they got to get on a float plane or a helicopter and be flown in to help you. And you're there by yourself in a remote community, and you got to figure it out. Um, so I would say that the training is very um, very cookie-cutter, and as a result of that, isn't really specific enough to what the needs are. And so for me, when when I was listening to Banning talk, and and this is not necessarily a popular thing to say in policing, especially because I'm a female in policing, but I've and and I may not have said this early in my career where I was like, I can do everything everybody else can. Um, I don't believe not everybody is suited to do the kind of job that Banning was just talking about. And there are also men that aren't suited to be on their own with no backup, but also there are women that shouldn't either. And so not everybody has the skill set, the personality, and and when I say that, I mean the personality for de-escalation and just to manage your way through a critically unfolding incident where you cannot afford to go lights out. Like there's no one there that's gonna back you up, there's no one there that's gonna get you out of it. You have to have the kind of personality, and and not everybody has that. And so for me in the RCMP, it was cookie cutter training, and then people completely unqualified or prepared to go to certain locations were sent to certain locations like that. And they sometimes have tragic consequences, they're just mental health, they can't handle the pressure, the stress, or they're just not the right personality for it. And so um I think when you're trying to train 30,000 police officers for a country, you have to do certain standardized training. But there's never been a siphoning off of okay, these are the people going remote, these are the people going to the city. You kind of show up to the location and hope there's a senior person there that's gonna, like Banning said, walk you through what you need to do to survive in the real world because the training sends you out with the basics, and and that's not often enough.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Dang. Um now, as a female in their training program.

SPEAKER_04 23:34

Sorry, I thought you froze there for a sec because I'm like, uh, you guys aren't talking.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

No, no, no, no, no, no. Um taking it in. Uh I I'm curious from your perspective, you know, in in just kind of what you were saying, me and Banning both know dudes that have no business being in police work. Um and then we know plenty of females that uh should not be in law enforcement, you know, like uh wearing the badge because it makes them look cute versus going out there to actually do the job. Um and we're seeing that more and more. There's more I call them TikTok cops. You'll see a lot of you know dudes dancing and chicks you know trying to look cute in their patrol cars because they got no calls going on at their small ass department. And I'm curious for you when you cause you what year are we talking when you went through your recruit training?

SPEAKER_04 24:29

1998.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

So 98. Um so before before body cameras, uh uh before you know iPhone, iPhone came out in like 07, all that stuff. So a little tougher times for sure. Uh the the the caliber of people that were coming through the academy were better in the in the 90s than they are in the late 2000s. Um but what was your experience like as a female going through? Do you feel like you were coddled? Did they let you through things? Did you have it harder? What was it like?

Street Judgment: Knowing When To Disengage

SPEAKER_04 25:02

Uh I would there was absolutely no coddling. I actually have quite a few stories and sort of female colleagues about um moments where they actually um, you know, I I love the movie G.I. Jane. Have you seen the movie G.I. Jane? Okay. So the whole idea not that part, but the whole idea of that training is to try to break people early on and do things to break them. They want you to quit because they only want people who can sustain it. And my experience as a female in policing was like they were trying to actually maybe even get you to quit. It was no coddling, it was no lower the bar, make it easier. Um in fact, I remember at one point in time I got injured doing some of our combat training, and I kind of pulled a hamstring a bit. And there were three other guys that had been in injured in training that were already kind of like not having to do any more further combat training, and they were just stretching or doing stuff in the gym, and they had been injured the week before. And I went up to say, like, I pulled my hamstring or whatever, and I remember the look on the instructor's face was like an eye roll. So I was like, fine, fuck it. I will continue to do the training. And I remember I did the training all that whole day, and we were doing uh kind of ground attacks. So you had to be the person that threw the person on the mat, and then you had to be the bad guy charging and get thrown on the mat. And I kept sucking it up and sucking it up, and about an hour into it, a guy that was like twice my size, you know, I was the bad guy. He threw me over onto the mat, like over his shoulder and down on the mat. And when my leg whipped over the top of my head, I actually almost threw up and passed out because the searing pain in my hamstring was so brutal. And I got up and I kind of crawled off to the side and I started to cry. And I was like crawling down the gym floor, and I could hear the instructor coming, and I thought to myself, fucking wipe your snot and dry your eyes before he gets to you, because the last thing you can do is see me crying. And I stood up and he's just like, you know, my name was Fraser at the time, my maiden name. He's like, Well, okay, Fraser, you showed you can gut it out, you can go with the guys now. And it was just no one got to say, like, the guys didn't get the break, they just took their word for it. But I had to suffer and show that I could suffer before I was allowed to go. So, to answer your question about what it was like in the 90s, you know, I was one of only 15 women in a department of 120 people. We were there were very few of us. And the last thing you wanted to do was own a spot and look like you didn't have the guts and the gumption to do the job. So there was there was no uh lowering of the bar, I can tell you that for sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

Can you go into the mentality that you felt like you that you felt you needed to have going into a male-dominated career field like this, and then kind of get into how you look at that mindset in retrospect?

Canada–US Guns, Law, And Risk

SPEAKER_04 31:06

Yeah, I the I was the first police officer in my family, and I never knew any police officers. So I was pretty unaware. I would say I was very ill-informed about flying blind. Yeah, what the policing culture was gonna be like. I had really no idea. I just was a 27-year-old, you know, relatively outspoken, dominant female. And the training kind of exposed me a little bit to, and I was like, God, like we're 27 years old, and you're yelling at us like we're a bunch of like 10-year-olds or two-year-olds or whatever. I'm like, this is just so stupid, right? Like we're mature people. Um, but then when I got into the actual after my training, into the police department, and and and don't get me wrong, I don't want to, I really loved the police department I started with. My husband is still working there to this day. Um, but I would say that the experience was like the very first time women started walking into men's change rooms in sport. It was we were entering a place where we were really not wanted. It's not the men's fault. It was a sacred place of where they did their work and they high-fived and they all understood each other. They were on a team, and then all of a sudden, this like weird other gender is there that normally is the gender that's talked about, or you know, you're dating the person or you're marrying the person, they're not your partner on the street. So there's this weird dynamic that women, I think, brought in, certainly still dealing with in the late 90s when I was there, I was by not far not the first female into policing. Um, but we were still struggling with where we fit in, and the men were still struggling with how to treat us. And so generally the feeling that you had was they aren't going to be any different in front of you than they are with their male colleagues. And so there was this pressure and understanding that to survive in policing, you needed to sort of vet yourself of anything female quality that you would normally say and do, and really kind of adopt a male persona to survive. And so you would you you were to tell the rude jokes, laugh at the jokes, be okay with people talking about your body and who you were having sex with or not having sex with. And it was just a very non-female way of behaving in the workplace. And the expectation was is that you learned how to do that. Um, because you'd come into a workplace that was built by men. And if you wanted to be part of it, you had to the expectation was that you you dropped more of yourself, that you didn't bring yourself. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

Yeah. Okay. All right. So now you're getting into this career field. You've got zero experience with anybody in your family, which is a ballsy move, by the way. Um, there's not many people that get into law enforcement that didn't have some sort of draw to law enforcement early, you know what I mean? So those types of stories always kind of catch my uh piqued my interest. Um I've told this on here. I think actually I told you about this uh when we had our initial phone call to see if you wanted to be on. But uh one of my best friends in the academy at the agency I'm at now, uh he went and took the civil service test because his roommate took it. Like they just went, he wanted to go with him. Uh just so he didn't have to take it by himself. He ends up scoring really high. And his his buddy didn't score high enough, so he ended up having to take the test again a year later. Uh meanwhile, my buddy Witten ends up being uh an awesome officer. Like he he does really good i i in policing, and uh he's a sergeant now, he's a kick-ass sergeant, he was a great detective, uh, all from a dude that had he was a bartender. And that's he's one of the reasons I always argue that give me a dude that's like you were saying, that struggled, that that worked a real job, worked services, and and had some world world life experience, and that always ends up being the better officers. I don't I could give a shit less if you have a degree. I honestly think cops that get a degree later in their career, once they're already established, I think they appreciate and pay attention to that schooling a lot more than the kid that comes right out of high school, goes in, gets a degree, and then jumps into being it, and those are the Boy Scout cops, as I call them. And they end up just they either end up being an admin guy, which we all know what the admin guys are like, or you know, they they just have a rough go at learning how to become a cop. And that's Banning, what have you seen with guys like that?

Skills That Win: Investigation Over Muscle

SPEAKER_02 35:44

50-50. I I've had some come in, uh that they got their degree at a young age while in the military before joining, which is a different dynamic. You know, they joined the military, they learn to adult a little bit, uh, same with the females that did the same path, um, and then they would enter. And on the academic side, they would sky through everything. But where I kind of had issues was doing scenario-based training. They've been in college, they've been in the military, they may have had some scenarios here and there. But when you bring it down to actual just police grunt work, and you're putting somebody in that's pretty much been in a classroom uh the entire time of their lives, I we we would have to do, it wouldn't just be a one-and-done. You have to give some extra knowledge to show some things. But my guys came out of high school and maybe went in and became enlisted, kind of like my path, did their four years, and then they came out and went straight into law enforcement. Uh, those guys were hard chargers, ready to go, and then once they got through training and then they had a set schedule, maybe get married, those were the guys that would go hit online school and get their degree, and then you'd watch them walk to the top uh a lot quicker than people that got their degree before. So I I echo what Eric is saying on that. And there's different some different things in there, but I've had issues on both sides. I mean, I've had guys that came straight out of high school, had enough to get hired on, and you you had to write a report, and you needed uh uh freaking Ouija board to figure out what the heck to write on a paper. Uh do we not practice this at all in the academy? And I'm no brainyac, and I can I'm just a Marine, I like to be crayoned. So uh you know, I was I was a special case for about a month to where they had to teach me how to uh write the ones, the offensive, etc. So I was definitely not a perfect candidate to be great at what I did. I think I turned out okay. Um what helped me with it was is the folks that came in on my same path or even on different paths. I got to learn so much stuff. I had a big head full of knowledge and a lot of notebooks and stuff where I could break off and help these guys and gals get to their next step of what they needed in training.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm of the opinion that yeah, and I don't want to make it sound like all of the college grads, it's not all of them. Some of them come out kick butt. Um it's not all of the ones that came in with just their GED or whatever, bare minimum, you know, just like Banning said, some of those guys see the report right, and you're just like, how did you get in? How did you get in? Um but back to the mounties. I I'm I'm going through the process. You get through the academy. Obviously, there's this proving ground. You got to prove yourself to the guys. Because was there any sort of talk that you heard? Locker room talk? Was they was there some joking but kind of semi-serious shit talking? Like, what are you how are you gonna drag me out? How are you gonna do this? How are you gonna take down a big suspect? Was there any of that coming from your coworkers?

SPEAKER_04 38:48

Uh yeah, I mean, everybody always wanted to see how if you could handle yourself. And so, you know, every every day, every shift was a test. And I was just fortunate to be really good at my job. You you mentioned your friend that was a bartender, and I could have told you instantly, I bet you he turned out to be a great cop. I was a cashier in a grocery store for 10 years while I put myself through university. I had to learn how to interact with angry people, poor people, rich people, entitled people, kids screaming in the lineup because they wanted to have a gift, uh people who were stealing stuff and and having to be stopped. And so the job of policing at its core is dealing with human beings of all walks of life, and they're and you're often involved in one of the most critical moments of their life. They're recalled because something's going wrong for somebody else. So if you're good at navigating human emotion and people in general, then I think you're gonna be good at you can be taught the rest of this job. The people that I find that struggle now, we talk about this in um Who Gets Hired Now, like it's all social media. Like they don't know how to talk on a phone, they don't even know how to they everything's emoji and texting, they don't even know how to communicate. So then you throw them into these dynamic situations where they have to use the words and they haven't grown up using their words. And it's like no wonder this generation is struggling with just becoming good cops, right?

SPEAKER_05 40:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 40:14

Um, so for me, I was very, very good at at the job very early on. And um I remember some of the first things I did was know what uh like I was I was happy to always take the sex assault files and the child abuse files because the guys didn't really want to have those files. And so I was showing myself to be of value, uh, but I knew it wasn't what was respected. And so I remember there was a time where I went on a string. I I had a whole series of sex trade workers as informants. And I'll tell you, if you want to know what's going on in your town, you have sex trade workers as informants because they know what the drug dealers are doing, they know who the bad guys are, they know who's sleeping with whom and when you're gonna go and find the stuff. So there was I was able to get loaded handguns. I they would I would just get a call, so-and-so's walking down the street right now, and I would get a loaded hand guy off this guy. I'd find out this was a kingpin drug dealer. I was able to to do the job really well. And I remember, you know, having a couple years of service, and I had taken uh a he was an American citizen, sorry, no offense. Um, but he was coming up into Canada and he was running some of the streets. So he had sex trade workers, he had drugs, and he was known as kind of a kingpin in some of the bars. And everybody had tried to get a handle on this guy, and I stopped him, uh searched his car, found a bunch of drugs, found a loaded uh handgun in his in his vehicle. I don't know if you're allowed to do that in Texas. In Canada, you can't do that. Um, so, anyways, I arrested him. It was a pretty big arrest, right? And and the big bosses had seen it on the arrest sheet and and had really congratulated me on it. But when I was in briefing, I got mocked by a couple of the senior guys, like, ah, we'll wait and see what happens in court if your search stands up or this and so instead of this, you know, when you did good work getting a pat on the back, it was like a mocking me. It was like there was nothing I could do, no arrest I could do, no file I could do. And eventually, after kind of pretending and trying to fit in, I thought, you know what? Some of you can never be made happy. So you can go fuck yourself. I'm gonna show up to work and I'm gonna do my very best and I'm gonna kick ass. And you can either like it or not like it, but I'm I I just hit a stage where I'm no longer gonna try to come to work and impress anyone. I'm just gonna kill it and let my work speak for itself. Yeah, but there was a lot of that kind of like, even when you did a good job, just kind of getting mocked for it, um, was my experience.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

So I'm I'm just curious. Did you think, looking back, did you put yourself in extra danger at first trying to trying to? Prove yourself versus just doing the job?

Promotions Born From Bad Leadership

SPEAKER_04 43:00

Well, my mature 54-year-old survived itself. Uh, would yes, say, yeah, there I can, I can, there's a couple of times um where I realized I had probably overshot what I was doing. And there was a couple of experiences I had where I thought this is not gonna go well for me, and I was actually concerned for my safety, but I was smart enough to know I'd overshot it, and I just kind of did the uh it was a very violent offender. I dealt with him a few times and he was particularly crazy on this one particular stop. I'd actually pinched him before with a loaded handgun, and um his eyes were just darting around me. It was a daytime track, I was doing it by myself, but he was violent enough that I knew better than to stop him on my own, and I was doing it anyways, again, like you said, to just kind of show I know how to handle myself. And he started looking at my sidearm and looking at me and sizing me up, and I'm like, and I I was smart enough and have been trained enough to know the cues, and I was like, fuck it, I I'm not gonna try to work this one out. And I just basically said, you can go on your way, I'm done with the check. And I wasn't, I was still waiting for the data to come back. And then I just kind of backed away from him and got back in my car, locked the door, and he kept walking. And I to this day, it's one of those ones when I think about it, the hair on the back of my neck stands up because I think I think if he'd have tussled with me, I'd have had my hands full with him.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

I I I really appreciate the fact that you just brought up that you were able to back away from a call. I think this is where cops fuck up the most. I think we get we get we feel like we've reached a a point of no return when there's usually always a point of return that we can we can uh go back to. Cops will get they double down, they realize they're in over their head and they feel like they gotta see it through now. It's too late. And that's not true. That that is not true. If if you feel like you are uh outmanned, outgunned, out whatever it is, it there's there are points that you like you said, the hairs on the back of your neck stood up and you were like, you know what? Uh backup is two hours away. Um he's not going anywhere. We know who he is. Uh I can, you know, I can throw this fish back and catch it another day. That takes street maturity that is very hard to teach, and it's very hard to get across to some of these cops out there. Uh we see video after video after video of cops screwing up, uh and they tend to violate people's rights because they don't have the mental maturity to say, you know what, I'm not sure. Let me let me go figure this out.

SPEAKER_02 45:38

Just to add to the Canada versus the United States, obviously there's a lot of differences.

SPEAKER_00 45:42

Yeah, we got a lot of law differences. Yeah, you can have a handgun down.

SPEAKER_02 45:45

I was like, Canada versus the state of Texas, for one. Um, I would say where I was at in my last five years of policing, seven out of ten cars that I stopped had a firearm in it, loaded, or several if they were going hunting. Um, and then we had a lot of rangers out here, so we had a lot of people that had what's uh called approved tax stamps, and they had from uh I guess you'd call it a silencer up there to Colorado, cans, whatever you want to call it. Um, and that was kind of the norm for me. You know, when we go, you you go into a little town here and a lot of people are open carrying on their belt. It's just kind of the normal out here in the in the country, if you will. Um, but I don't think that's the case in Canada. And I don't know, and maybe you can shed the light on that. Is it is it are you able to get a concealed license in Canada if you're not a police officer? Is it a no guns police? Oh hell no.

SPEAKER_04 46:42

Yeah, yeah. It's the the gun and and and then and then this is the whole reason is like I'm not saying that it's unsafe for the American system to have people who are registered and are legally allowed to carry a gun because they go through a process. In Canada, you can't do a concealed carry, you can't have a concealed knife or firearm. Um, my dad was a hunter, so I grew up around firearms, but you so you can have a hunting license, but when you're transporting it, it's locked and secured in your vehicle. There isn't, you're not legally allowed to be able to pick up a gun inside your car and be able to shoot it. Um and so um when somebody in Canada has a gun like that, it's for nefarious, unsafe purposes. It's not a citizen that just because we don't have a culture here where citizens are walking around with their own handgun. So if someone's carrying a concealed handgun, it's because they're gonna be doing something illegal or violent, or they're wanting to have that handgun for violence. So for us, it's a real signal of danger to a police officer when somebody's got them, because you're you don't need to have it. You don't it's they're like breaking the law by doing it. So they're they're in the process of breaking lots of laws and their intent is not peace.

SPEAKER_00 47:53

Yeah. I I can I'm I'm trying to read the comments as we go. Obviously, we're not we're not diving into the comments, but I just know that if nobody's if people are jumping in in the middle and they don't realize that you're from Canada and they're like they're hearing like you're pulling a guy over and taking him out just because he has a gun, like especially if they're in some of these other states.

SPEAKER_04 48:13

The violent offender who had beaten, robbed, shot, and was using the narcotics, and the arming of the gun with him is just the nature of how dangerous he was. So you would still take guns away from bad people like that in the United States. He wasn't some law-abiding church going person that just happened to have a gun and I ruined his Sunday afternoon. That was like that was not the case.

Leading Patrol And Bridging The Gap

SPEAKER_00 48:36

Yeah, yeah. So it's it's gonna be fun seeing some of these comments down the road. He's a very bad person. Yeah, I can already see this going. We're like, it's Canada, they got different rules, guys. Like we're that's not the point of the show tonight. We're not jumping down the you know, the Canada canusa rules over here. So um, but uh okay. So putting yourself in precarious situations until you finally hit that hit that, you know, part of your career where you're just like, it doesn't matter what I do. Uh I'm not going to win this over. Now that doesn't mean necessarily that well, I don't know. I let me ask you, how how were you treated other than some of the snarky shit that you know let's face it, every policing department has the uh the little I call them little bitch boys that just gonna talk shit no matter what uh it doesn't matter who it is, you know, banning could come in with a big collar and be like, that's all you got? Like, really? Oh, welcome to your first day of policing. Uh you're gonna get those guys um in there, but how was your overall experience as you're as you're in that proving ground, that first five years? I mean, uh we call everybody a rookie their first five years, so yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:50

So um, you know, I had a really good my first sergeant was amazing, and um he was uh a real ally to me and friend, and he was the master of ceremonies at my wedding. And he at one point he could sense the frustration I had with it didn't matter how good or what I did, there was always going to be some comments. And he took me for coffee one time, and I was kind of like bitching at him, like like so-and-so doesn't do anything, and I take all the calls and I get this stuff. And and I remember him just with his coffee, just putting his hand up, and he's like, It's not fair, but what does fair have to do with it? It like it is what it is, and and just focus on doing the good job. These guys will be bitching about the next person long after you're gone, and so like stop trying to navigate it like you know, the world was supposed to do you a favor, just do your fucking job, be be good at what you do, and and just don't listen to the nattering in the background. And it was a real gift because it was like up until that moment, um, I I I coach and mentor people in leadership now, and I both women and men, and I I talk about this time in my career where it was like the movie Mulan. So if you ever know the cartoon Mulan, the movie Mulan, okay, yeah. So for those like a dude, yes. Well, basically, she became a female warrior because she was trying to protect her elderly father from going to war. So she takes her dad's place in the army. But in China, that's a death penalty. She's not allowed to pretend to be a guy and go to war. So at through training and everything, she's literally dressing like a man, spitting and hawking and talking like a man, trying to be like one of the guys. But she has this real skill about her if she just lets herself be herself. She's an amazing warrior, she's an amazing mind for war. And in the moment where she decides she finally gets outed, and she just is like, I'm gonna stop pretending to be what I'm not. I'm gonna fully be myself and just do what I think I should do instead of overthinking what I think the guys want me to do. And she becomes this amazing warrior, and it's actually based on a true fable, like a true apparently she really existed. And I describe it that the first five years of my career, I was like Mulan in that war. I was trying to be one of the guys, confused when I would behave like them, but it would be acceptable for them and not acceptable for me. I couldn't get drunk, they could get drunk, I couldn't swear, I could like, you know, it was all confusing. And the whole time I was like, I don't even know who I am anymore. Like, I don't even recognize myself. My friends were not recognizing me anymore. I was having a hard time shutting off the persona from work to home. And at about five and a half years of service, I was like, enough. If if I can't figure out how to do this job being Jennifer Highland and just who and what I am about, and whether I'm successful or not, I'm gonna be me. I'm gonna say the thing, I'm gonna do the thing, I'm gonna support others, I'm gonna support the haters, even if they're mean to me. I know what it feels like, and I'm gonna give you care and support regardless. And that is when it was like the fog lifted, and I'm like, this is this is what I'm meant to do. I meant to be me in this environment and show other people you can actually be successful without playing the game and pretending to be something that you're not. And all of a sudden the job just almost became easier, less complicated, easier, more fun, and right? Like just not trying to be something that I wasn't. And and the people I worked with, they were just getting a fake version of me anyway. So I can't even be mad at the guys that were like not digging it. I wasn't even being myself. They were they were not digging the fake version I was pretending to be.

SPEAKER_00 53:36

Yeah, I I I honestly went through the same similar thing myself, but for a guy, not you know. Um I I was a ki I was the kind of I was I was not the kind of cop I wanted to be or thought I was going to be, because I couldn't figure out like you said, I was trying to figure out who I was in that balance between uh you know, uh citizen me, pri you know, prior to being in the military, prior to being a cop. Um the reason I wanted to become a cop in the first place, you know, like all of those things. It wasn't that that was lost on me. It's that I was trying to figure out how to do the job and fit into the cultural norms around me. And I wasn't being myself. It wasn't I wasn't out there, you know, like I don't I don't want to say I was vi I wasn't violating people's rights or anything like that, but I wasn't policing the way that uh in retrospect now I'm like, God, why didn't you know I wrote several tickets back in the day. I'm just like why like I what was the purpose of why I was writing those citations? Well, I know why I was I was writing them just to show production. I was writing them to show that I was doing something, that I wasn't just sitting idle because that was gonna get me in trouble in roll call if they find out like what did you do between these hours? And then now looking back, fuck them. Uh like I I I could have pulled those people over, gave them warnings, did a little, you know, hey, this area is this is why they want us pulling cars over, just make sure, you know, I look at their history, you know, in that retrospect. You know, and I look back, is it something in my career that I like is going to make me have sleepless nights and regret it? No. It's just I look back and I'm like, man, that's a shitty cop. I like I could have been better. And I wasn't being myself. I wasn't being like the person that I've grown to be through doing the job and then learning finally, where it's like, I don't give a fuck what you guys think. Like I there's a ton of policing to do, and I'm gonna do my chunk the way I want to do it. And that's kind of the fun part about policing, is you get to be your own boss. Banning, what have you what's your experience been on that? Are you muted there, buddy? We had to fart, so he probably muted his mic earlier and forgot. He can't talk, he's trying to find his mute button. Oh, he's typing to people, is what he's saying. Oh. Yeah. You can't unmute your mic. What is happening? Well, I think.

Building Better Cases From Patrol Up

SPEAKER_04 56:00

Well, you know, you saying that though, honestly, is it for me, I I I'm not the only one who did it. And I don't think that that's just a female thing. I can tell you that I got to know other male police officers later on in their careers, and my impression of them at a certain stage was very different. And so I think when we talk about that first five years, I don't think that's a male or female thing. I think you're right. It's like it there's this real interesting transition that you go through being, like you said, a citizen and your understanding of the way the world works. And then you become a police officer and you're like, man, like there's some dangerous, ugly, evil things happening in this world that, you know, as a citizen, I was just going on my merry little way. I had no idea some of this existed. And and so I think it there's a process of trying to figure out how you are a police officer and then still a human being, and then you're trying to figure out how your personality fits with all the other people who are also trying to figure out how to be a police officer. So it's actually a very complicated environment. And um, because we get into the job later in life, we've all got sort of personalities that have developed already, and and because the job is so different every single day for every single human being that there really is no way to prep you for what every call will be like. And so you really don't even know, like it be it's a very confusing time, I think, for everybody in policing. Yeah, those first five years.

SPEAKER_00 57:31

Yeah, it's it's one of those things that you know, you know, we'll get people that they they really get down on these brand new officers and they're like, well, they went through the academy, they should know this, they should know that. I'm like, I'm sorry, it just it doesn't. I wish it did work that way. It just doesn't. And and I can't I can't explain it. I don't know how to explain it. Not without sounding like I'm cops planing. That's one of the last things. I don't want to be the guy that's up here cop explaining. Um and so I'm not gonna pretend to. I'm just gonna tell you that there is a growing phase and that zero to five years. Some people learn it faster, some people learn it slower. I think I really had it down for myself within two and a half years. Um I really had it figured out for myself. But I know some people that that just takes a little bit longer. And for somebody like you, you know, the part of what I want to get into, and I don't know if we need to do this later or if we can do it now. You just tell me what fits if there's more to the story that you want to tell. But my impression from the outside looking in for female officers is you have a battle everywhere you go. You have to prove yourself for yourself, you have to prove yourself to every male cop that you work with. Um, and once that's established, it's established. But the moment uh a new person comes to the team or the moment you go to a new team, the clock starts over. You gotta prove yourself again. And then you gotta prove yourself to the public. That's a whole other ball of wax because uh the moment you show up and you're dealing with a big angry guy like Banning that's 300 pounds a country monster, like that's uh that's a whole other ball of wax. Now I have found that small females dealing with big guys like Banning do way better than guys like me. I don't know what that is. Just the overall, general speaking, um generally speaking, they they seem to do better with uh with the big mean dudes. But um you've got proving grounds constantly, constantly, constantly. Even when you reach that maturity of the level where you're like, fuck them, I'm gonna do my thing. There's still a level of like how am I going to navigate this? And it's I couldn't imagine having to be on eggshells in a sense. Like that's kind of how I look at it. You're on eggshells at every fucking turn for years and years and years until you finally reach that point, like you said, um, where you you just finally just say, you know, fuck it, I'm gonna be me and do me. And if it works, it works. If not, like at least you can put your head down knowing that you did it the way you wanted to. So can you kind of go? Is that is it the right time or you want to get into the war?

Culture Change, Bodycams, And Training

SPEAKER_04 1:00:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, um so the very about four and a half years in, I met my first female uh supervisorslash leader, and she was a gay female. She had more service than me, and she was unapologetically herself. She was openly gay. The RCMP had actually taken a run at a whole series of people that there was a time where they actually wanted to find out if you were homosexual or not, and they were gonna take a run at them because they felt that they could be compromised um because their homosexuality being used against them. There's a really dark time in the RCP, and she was just, yeah, so she was just unapologetically herself. And I thought if she could do that, then I could do that. So I decided I became and solidified who and what I was going to be in this job, probably by the time I had about four years of service. But I had 27 years of service and I reached the rank of I was the chief of police of my hometown, I ran a serious crime unit, I was an interrogator for homicides across the province. I got confessions for people who murdered kids, who murdered women. I dealt with a serial killer, I went to court, I put people in jail, I became a deputy chief at the end of my career. And there wasn't a single time in those 27 years where no matter what I did or what rank I achieved, that you didn't have to prove myself at the table every single day. The proving of yourself and the having to be smarter, better, more put together, not, you know, have an outburst, um, never ended in 27 years. I could say the exact same thing in a meeting at a table with a, and I was often the only female in the room, um, that my colleague would have said five minutes earlier, and it was acceptable for him to say, and I was just being emotional or I was being uh unhinged or whatever, right? And so to answer your question, you know, I put my head down at night because I'm unapologetically myself. If I need to say the thing, and and I I I I had to edit a few things out of the book because my lawyer is like, that's just uh, we don't necessarily want to put that experience in writing. So there the book is pretty blunt, um, but there's worse that was originally in there that I took out. Um and and so the experience is pretty raw and never ended. And I don't know what the answer to that question is. I it it doesn't bother me. I understand the male dynamic. Of sometimes it's just hard for certain men to hear that from a female. But I can tell you that when I was in policing, I had people leave departments and follow me to units. Like when I left as a leader, there was a string of people that would come and follow me, and often men, uh, not just women. And so I knew that there was a space for leaders like me. There just wasn't a lot of leaders like me.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:23

Yeah. I I've got um, so we there's several people that we've had on the show that um, and one you'll probably see in the comments, they'll they'll mention a bunch is uh Dominic is always just not a big fan. Uh he doesn't like women in law enforcement, period, very outspoken about it. Um, but yeah, I've seen him say, like there are there's always outliers, and and he'll he'll get into that. Um, so you I just want you to be, you're gonna see that name probably pop up a bunch of times. And uh to the point that I'm trying to get to is that for me, like just like you said, I've got females in my own department that I follow. Um Stephanie Ricks, I'll give her a shout out. I know she's probably gonna listen to this, but uh, she was awesome. Um Brandy Camper. Uh Brandy was she's no longer in law enforcement, she does the reserve stuff for our tactical medical unit. But she was a army medic. Um the god, I can't remember what they were calling them, but like they are notorious for doing like this crazy ruck where they uh just do an insane amount. And males or females just don't do it. And she's one of the few in in the nation that's ever completed it. Um it almost killed her, by the way. And uh, but she did it. And uh she started our tactical medical unit, and she's got more saves than uh than I can count.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:43

Uh she's uh she's got some notable media stuff that's covered, and she's a she's a badass. And I've got to speak, you know, I I love Izo as a person, as a human being. Um, but I've I've met, you know, let's talk about just 20 uh patrol officer females that I've worked with probably in my career, being in a much smaller agency than Eric's at. Um I would say 13 of those are are badasses that can outrun circles around many of the men that I've worked on patrol. And that's that's all I got to say about that. Now, is there some that shouldn't be? Yeah, and you go through that process, you you bring it to your to your upper echelon's attention. Let's get some retraining. If that doesn't work, then hey, what's next steps? But I I've worked with some that that I and I'll be honest, I'll be the one to tell you. I thought, my God, this is gonna be one of those to where they're they can't pull their own weight, and I got slapped like a biscuit in friggin' defensive tactics by that person. So applause to them. They shut my mouth. I mean, I wasn't speaking it loudly. I just, you know, that that uh first impression stuff. You walk into a room and it's oh, here's this new person, and oh, it's a dainty whatever, and and male bravados going throughout the room, and then she's twisted people up like pretzels. It's like, hell yeah, look at this. You know, somebody that's uh applied themselves beyond with the police academy, uh, and it's probably family as well, rallying around, and she had the uh the heart wherewithal and the brain behind it uh to be able to slam people around. So there are some badasses out there, and I'd like to italicize that. Now, are there some but there's just as many men that have no business wearing a badge or being out in public, which we'll we'll say a million times.

Why She Wrote Tight Rope

SPEAKER_00 1:06:31

Yeah, I get I get into the problem of there's always the ass-kicking feature like that that we're gonna talk about. Like, well, can a woman fight like a guy? And more often than not, we're gonna say no. But one of my favorite things that we would do at our academy when I was an instructor, we would bring in a female black belt. And the one that I like to bring in was about 120 pounds and maybe five foot five, about your size. And she we picked the biggest recruit and she would just fucking manhandle them, just uh all over them, like you know, and we had a couple of them that would actually try to pick them up and uh and they they she just suffocate them in the in the air, and it is crazy. It was fun. It's fun that it's a great perspective for these young recruits to see. I'm like, look, you're vulnerable. You don't need you don't know how vulnerable you are uh on the ground or just uh or with somebody that knows what the hell they're doing. Um so this is a good wake-up call for you guys so you can understand how important and how critical to me grappling can be, I think is one of the most important things that we can learn in law enforcement. I think uh you should have a background in it before you become a cop anymore. You know, just like becoming uh a lawyer. When you you you have to have done well in school to even become a lawyer, you can't just jump into it. You gotta have a background. So you gotta do well on the test. Prove yourself to was it called LSAT? Is that what they call it?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:57

Yeah, the LSAT.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:58

Yeah, the LSAT. So you gotta like you gotta do some work to get into it. And I think that that would do law enforcement a better um justification. Uh, what did my cucumber say here? Women having to try harder to prove themselves is as annoying as heck. Culture can lead to them overcompensating. And and you you see that with little dude cops too. You see that with little Napoleon complex cops.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:21

That's amazing totally. And you know, if policing was one-dimensional, um, and there's a lot of careers that are where it's just you have to, you want people that have a certain size and strength and ability to do whatever. But I can tell you that some of the most important things that I did in my job had to do with my ability to do a kick-ass investigation to put a pedophile and serial rapists and very dangerous people in jail. And that had nothing to do with my physical ability to throw the person down on a mat. Yes, that was the point I was getting to. Yes. There are lots of people, men and women, that have no skills. And if your loved one, and the best compliment I got was a series of men in policing that came to me when I finally, when I got my first promotion out of kind of like the investigative role, become an inspector, you kind of become the admin carpet, like you're now looking after human beings in the job, you're not doing the police work. When I got promoted to inspector, I received a whole series of emails from men in policing that said, if anything ever happens to my family member, I would personally come to you to do the funnel because you never give up and you put everyone in jail that ever did anything wrong to a family. Like, so for me, it's like it's not just about the physical ability. There are a million things that women and other men that you know, there are some jobs that I'm not gonna be on an art team. I'm not, I'm not gonna be the person slamming through the door at a drug arrest. And if your kid is sexually assaulted by a fucking pedophile, I'm the person that's putting that person in jail for the rest of their life because I'm getting them to confess and I'm never giving up. And if we don't think that there are room for different types of personalities in this job to solve those types of crimes, um, then we've misappropriated what the job is about. It's about all of those things. Yes. And I'm just not the best person in some of the stuff that banning is, and I will speak for banning's ability to do child abuse files because he's sure he's great at it. Um, but like I don't want me, I don't want necessarily me at the real big tactical some shit's going down. I want banning. I I'm not the best person to be there. And so I just think in law enforcement today there is room for a lot of different uh types of skills.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:53

Yes, I agree. And I think one of the disservices that we do in law enforcement is we force people to have to do a certain part of the job for a certain period of time. I don't necessarily think that that is the right approach anymore. Do I think you can be a badass investigator without having worked at a jail or without having, you know, because that's kind of how the sheriff's departments do it in the United States. Uh, do I think you could be a badass um uh investigator um for child sex crimes and never having really worked out in the streets? Yeah, I do, because like you said, it's a different skill set. And policing is kind of behind that. They're way behind the curve in that my mentality. Like when you become FBI, you're an investigator, right? You don't go out uh banning you. I mean, I don't think so. You don't go out in the streets and take any sort of calls in the FBI that I'm aware of.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:57

No, you can't even go out and make a driver stop in the FBI for a classic.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:02

But some of the best investigators I ever met are straight out of the FBI. I'm like, oh my god. Like, as you know, in me personally, I know about myself. I I could not do child sex crimes. I just couldn't do it. I got to like you're supposed to be able to stay not emotionally involved. I can't, I'm not capable of that. I just know that about myself.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:21

I don't know if you know about me. You know, I did it for three days, Eric.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:24

Um, fuck this out.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:28

I wanted to expand the horizons of what banning knew for law enforcement. I did it for three days, and I was politely asked to leave because they didn't realize how many deer were in the Dallas Fort Worth Metropolis crossing the street when we had an abuser in the backseat of our car taken off from the station. Um and I had I'm not gonna hit the deer.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:47

You know, you've got a brake check really hard to make sure you don't have the deer.

Vulnerability, PTSD, And Leaving The Badge

SPEAKER_02 1:12:51

I mean, here's the deal. I mean, it's we always think about what we're out there protecting. And if you have one of those people, and I hate to say it, I understand judge and jury stuff, I get it, but if you have somebody in the back seats that's dead to rights, and now we have to do our job as law enforcement to prove it to a jury, prove it to the state, okay, get them to take the case, and you just want to do an animal instinct on how do we eliminate this person from the world so they never hurt anybody again. You can't do that as a cop. So again, I did it for three days, and then I was placed back in patrol. Um I learned, I I saw that that world was not for Banning, it was wasn't for me. So uh I I happily went back to patrol, you know, kicking doors when needed, um, helping people, dragging people out of cars when they're on fire. Hey, that's great, Banning. That's not Banning's Alley. Um, interviewing people, stuff like that. That's great. Side side street stuff. And anyway, again, there are much more people out there that are more qualified than me uh to do that job because I did get my heart into it a little too much in three days.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:58

Yeah, I don't I and I really want to dig into this. You got a serial killer story, by the way, because I don't I don't know anybody that's ever gotten a serial killer. Um, I got a serial burglar. Does that count? I did property crimes. That's that's my thing, you know. I like I said, I could not do uh Wade.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:17

Wade uh Wade, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:21

I could not do ICAC stuff or crimes against children with any of it. I just I knew that about myself. Um and and kind of to your point, that I I never really kind of paid attention to it until you pointed it out earlier. I felt like a lot of the female officers did tend to gravitate towards crimes against children or the sexual assault cases. Um a matter of fact, my beat partner, um or sister beat, when I first got uh into we call it the hospital district. There's you know, it's a big city, so the hospital district is like five, six hospitals in this one little area. And I'm talking major hospitals. And so sexual assault cases will come in there quite a bit. And I didn't I didn't want nothing, like it's just it's very hard. I don't know, you know, I don't I don't know female the way females know females, and they don't necessarily want to talk to a male every time either. That's another part that's bad about it, and um it just it wasn't it wasn't for me, and I knew that, but I had a female partner, a beat partner, and she was like, I want all of them. She's like, But you take you take my prisoner pickups and you take my uh accidents. I was like, Oh bet, girl, you got it. Now I'm working triple the what she had to work, but work with but she wanted that and she was really good at it, and that was the thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:46

I'm gonna tell you right now, Eric, if if I would have continued down that trail of the three days and I would have been in an interview room and I would have, and I've gone to read interview interrogation, a great school. I know a lot of investigators use that, and I'm like, man, I got a lot more stuff in my tool belt now. And if I would have been the interviewer on the other side of the room of some POS, sorry if that offends somebody, but I can give a shit less when it comes to this subject, sitting on the other side of the table, or I'm using the read interview interrogation, I'm getting closer and maybe touching a kneecap of a male. Hey, and and then they admit something to me that they did something to a juvenile, I'm gonna be the one on the stand. I'm not gonna go into it any further. I'm gonna screw that case up. Right because I understand that a jail doesn't okay, I'm gonna stop right there. I'm gonna let you take it from here, Eric. But yeah, I'm with people, but there are certain people that are much better for that role.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:38

Yeah, there are. And um, to you know, to the point of the the point that you were alluding to and that I was trying to get to as well, is that that's how I look at it is my best partners have always been females because we compliment each other. They make up for what I lack, I make up for what they lack, and we just kicked ass together. Uh I you know, I was out there with Lindsay Stewart, I was out there with um uh Guerrero, if they're listening, they know who they are, uh Eliza. Um I you know, I just had some in my career, I always had kick-ass female officer partners that uh, like you said, they had a role, they were really good at it, and it just put cases together, which that is the point. That's what we need to focus on putting those cases together because great job. You whooped that guy's ass that was trying to fight 14 people, but in it you violated his rights, and the case got thrown out.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:31

Yeah, cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:33

What good did that fucking do? Yep, you whooped his ass, good for you, but now this guy's getting away with it and he's gonna victimize somebody else later because you didn't put the case together right then and there. Um, so that's the important part. I think that was the point that you and I were both trying to really get to is putting them cases together and putting these bad guys uh but I want I want to get to your book, but I want to get to the serial killer part too. But I also want to get to your you going up the ranks. So you get through your part, you go through your rookie phase, you flip your mindset. Cool. I'm giving a recap. This is what I do. Uh you you you're like, uh I'm boss now of my own destiny, I'm gonna do it my way. Uh policing is now fun. I'm getting through it. Um, now it's time to progress my career, and you're gonna go up the ranks. Um, about how long did you wait to start moving up? And then as you moved up, what were the trials and tribulations for you? How did you see policing?

SPEAKER_04 1:18:35

Yeah, I was like an accidental uh leader the first time, similar to how I got into policing. I had about eight years of service, eight and a half years of service, and I was uh experiencing one of the most horrible bully tyrants of a boss, um police officer that was actually I it was the one time in my career where I actually thought about quitting. He was frightening, he was scary, he was intimidating, um, nothing was good enough. And the entire unit, we worked in a child abuse unit at the time, and the entire unit wanted to quit. And we we went to um, I went to see my boss, they're about five ranks up, and begged to be transferred to another unit. And because I was so good at what I did and I was so senior in the role, I'd been doing it for four years. He said to me, There's only two ways you're gonna get out from this unit. You can either retire or you can promote. And I thought, well, like I'm 33 years old, I can't retire. And, you know, so I guess I'll look for a promotion. And so I put in for two promotions into different units in different towns and just to get away from this guy. And um, I got one of the promotions, and I'll never forget the day you're promoted, you should be like celebrating. I I used to pull over the car on the way to work when I had to work under this man, and I would throw up in the morning on the way to work because I was so nervous. Um, like he would actually physically assault people in the unit and stuff. It was horrible.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:15

And nobody nope.

The Robert Pickton Serial Killer Case

SPEAKER_04 1:20:16

We wouldn't uh nope, it was horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible. And I write about it in the book because one of the most brutal experiences I've ever had in policing was how I was treated in this unit by this man. And I was only under his command for about three months, felt like forever. It is it is insane. Actually, if I I had to, the lawyer made me edit some of it out because um people can't really believe the true story of it. All of it is obviously true, but it's like the book is more muted than the reality of it, to um, and even it is pretty raw. So, anyways, I get called into the boss's office, and he tells me I've been promoted, and I'm on my way to court for a sex assault child abuse case, and so I've got like five minutes to get congratulated that I've been promoted. And I'm like, that's awesome. Thank you. I gotta go to court to put a bad guy in jail. And so a few hours go by, and and my husband has been watching me go through this turmoil of this life. And I'm done in court, and I'm walking uh down the street back to the the police office, and I'm I phone him, and he's like, How did it go in court? And I'm like, Yeah, the we got the bad guy, it's all good, or whatever. And then I said, Oh, and by the way, I got that promotion. And he just sighed both of us just sigh to sigh relief. It wasn't even a cheer, we didn't pop a bottle of champagne and celebrate it. We were just so relieved. And so my first experience of promotion was just I did it for survival, not even to like that. I wanted to be the leader. So when I showed up, the I remember the night before it was like my husband was getting me ready to go to the office. It was like he was like making my new kid at school lunch kit kind of, and I'm like, I'm just like an idiot. Like, I'm gonna be asked questions, and I actually don't think I know how to do it. Like, people are gonna ask me questions and I'm gonna have to give them the answer. And he gave me really good advice. He said, You know more than you think you do, just make good, right decisions. And if you don't know the answer, don't guess. He said, You know a ton of people in this job. He said, just pause and tell them you'll get the answer and then go to your network and find the answer. And and I so I never faked it. The people who tell people fake it till you make it in in police leadership. Like, don't do that shit. Like, either know your shit or admit you don't know your shit, but just support your people and find the answer. And so I showed up the first day, and to my surprise, I was like, I actually know the answers to all this stuff. Like, I I knew I there was nothing really confusing to me. And when I didn't know, I had the answer, I had a Rolodeck back in it. We had Rolodexes back with a card thing. So I actually had a roll. Still have it for fun, but I had a Rolodex, and I there was no one I couldn't get a hold of to get the answer to the question. And I remember I was being challenged the very first time I was being challenged as a female leader. They'd never had a female supervisor in serious crime ever at this location. I was the very first.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:11

And we were having to do an unfolding incident to do was really violent domestic violence. And there was some question at another location where in Canada we can either do a search, get a warrant from a judge, which can take several hours, or if something is really critically and unfolding for public safety, you can't charge people, but you can go and secure weapons and things right away without a warrant to keep a family or the neighborhood safe. You just can't, if you've gone in there, you can't charge them with it, but you can prevent the death kind of thing. And um there was some debate over what was happening. It was unfolding really quickly. And I said, no, we're going to get the weapons. So like this is the act where this is the section of the law it is, this is why we're doing it. And I remember there was this guy, and he was like typical, kind of like negative naily, challenging kind of guy. And um, in front of about 10 people as I we were briefing to do it, he said, I don't know if that's the way that law works or whatever. And I remember thinking, just breathe. And I counted to three. I was like, one, two, three, and I looked at him and I'm like, I get your your point. That is what the law is, and I'm the boss, it's my call, and that's what we're doing. And like, that's the end of it. Anybody else have anything else to say? And everyone was like, Nope, we're totally good. And it was about a week later, one of the senior guys came to me and he said, Man, I was super impressed. He was just trying to get you to question yourself, and he said, You knew exactly what you were doing. He's like, We all went for drinks afterwards and talked about you because it was, I'd only been there a few weeks and it was the first kind of challenging me. He's like, We know that you know what you're doing, and we're good. And so um that was my experience getting into it. And then it was just, I every time I put in for promotion, I hate to say it, it was like either had an incompetent boss or I was just frustrated with how the leadership was. And I'm like, you can't complain. It's like voting. You can't complain if you're not gonna vote. And I was like, I can't complain if I'm not gonna put my name in the hat and do better. So I'm gonna put my name in, I'm gonna go for the job. If I get it, I'm gonna do better. And I literally, that is how I promoted up the ranks. It's just every I thought I'd never go beyond sergeant because I loved my job as a sergeant. And then I had an experience with an inspector, and I'm like, oh man, we got to do better than that. Because they were signing budgets and making big decisions that impacted our safety. And I'm like, I'm not good with what you're doing, man. Like, I am gonna go after your job. I'm gonna get that promotion and I'm gonna do it different. And and and then I found myself in charge of a chief of a detachment, and um, and then I left that role and ended up uh in a new organization building from scratch as the deputy chief hiring hundreds of new police officers to get them up and running.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:01

Nice. So, in um in your leadership roles, were you mostly over those specialized, like uh investigative units uh that had to deal with children or sexual assault cases and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_04 1:26:13

Yeah, so my corporal and my sergeant roles were in serious crime. So child abuse, you know, attempt murder, homicide, extortion, like we would do all the files. So like everything serious crime work. Um, but then when I became an inspector, I went back and I was in charge of the patrol division. And so I I had gotten really tired of hearing this specialized units talk about how important they were. And I went back and led patrol, and I'm like, no, we're investing in frontline, and so it was it was all about the uniform officers. And then when I became, you know, the chief, I mean, obviously I was overseeing kind of all of it, but yeah, yeah, I did both. Yeah.

Q&A: Calls, Hazing, Animals, And Writing

SPEAKER_00 1:26:54

One of the biggest mistakes I are I started to realize once I became we call them detectives. I'm assuming it's the same as an inspector. Um uh what you guys have. Um looking back at patrol and some of the things that I would do, I'm like, oh man, I was making a lot of mistakes. Like, this is not helping the case. Like, I should have done, I could have gone a little bit you know, further into the case versus getting the information, putting it on the report, and then sending it up. Um, there were more steps that I could have taken as a patrol officer. And uh having that in retrospect, then I started going to roll calls. I'm like, hey guys, like this is here's what we're seeing as detectives. Um we get your case. I like I know it's really important for you guys, all that legwork you did out there, you want to see it uh come to fruition. You want to see us put your bad guy in jail that you got started. Sometimes we can't do that. And here's like I would show the cases now. I wouldn't call out the officer's name, but everybody knew who it was if it was on their team. I'm like, all right, this is what we're seeing. Here's the work, uh, here's what I need. Can anybody tell me why this case may not go anywhere? Oh, well, yeah, you didn't you didn't tag the the video, you didn't do this, you didn't do that. I was like, exactly. Now I gotta go back and try to find it. I was like, now times that by 15 of y'all. I gotta go through every single one of these and find like I don't have time. So your case is gonna get dismissed or pended or whatever because you didn't take the extra steps that you needed that you should have done. It's your job. You should have done these things. Um, but nobody's taken the time to point that out to you. So you going back as a you know, prior inspector and then going over to patrol, were you able to bring those tools? Was that as was it the same thing in Canada? And did you see that same stuff?

SPEAKER_04 1:28:41

Yeah, I mean, when I was in the files, I always knew um, like when I was in patrol, I always worked really hard on my files, and it always irritated me that a really serious file, I would take it, and then I would be told I wasn't allowed to keep it, and I had to send it off to the detective. And I always wanted to kind of be involved in the investigation. So when I became a supervisor in serious crime, one of the things I always did was go back to the patrol supervisor and say, hey, is your interview is your member interested in having a role still in the file? I'd like to include them. And sometimes, depending on resources, they were allowed to come in shadow and see, hey, this is what happens with the rest of the file once you're done with it. Um, but it if they couldn't, I went to briefing every single day, all the way up from the time I never stopped. When I got rank, I went, no matter what job I was in, I was in the briefing room with everybody all the way through my career. I never missed briefing. And I always thought it was important to tell them, hey, you know, that file that you guys did, this is the work that like to give resolution and to always reward the patrol member. I always said that they they were un unsung heroes. More serious files are solved and prevented by the the men and women in uniform than the people who take the file. And yes, they they they shepherd it along through the court process and all the legal stuff. But man, our uniform men and women do some amazing work and they solve a lot of uh they they intercede and solve and save a lot of lives. And when I was in serious crime for so many years, I didn't think that they were getting the acknowledgement. So I went back to uniform as a leader to really kind of bridge the gap so that the serious crime people understood like they want to learn and be better, but we're gonna recognize the the impact that they have by showing up and taking the file in the first place. And so for me, the higher in rank I went, the the more I wanted to kind of like bridge the gap that I saw between the kind of two sides of policing.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:39

And I think I was pretty the feedback was I was I was one of the few people who really recognized it because I toggled my career back and forth between the two.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:51

Yeah. I I think it, you know, it talking about bridging the gap, it's one of the things that we try to do here with the podcast is um it's not that we're trying to necessarily tell the community all these great things police do. We're also trying to improve police work because we screw up a lot of shit. And like we were talking about cases getting messed up, cops being lazy. Uh these are all problems in law enforcement. Bad bosses, like sounds like an assaultive boss, and nobody stepped up. Like to me, that's stuff that stands out. And I'm like sitting there, I'm like, why are we not trying to improve one internally? I think that's one of the big things we need to do in law enforcement is just learn how to treat each other better. Because it's it's it's it's a problem. It is a problem. And you know, because it even me, I'll catch myself seeing somebody who'll start talking about something, and and in my brain, I don't say it out loud because I I I internalize it and I'm like, you're an idiot, quit thinking that way. But I'll hear somebody start talking about something, and I'll hear my brain go, oh, what do you know, rookie? Like in my head, and I'm like, why are you thinking that way? Oh, I know why I'm thinking that way, because it's been beat in my head by the culture of policing. And it's not necessarily a true thing. Somebody can always bring something to the table, and that's the mindset I need to have. But I those intrusive thoughts will come into my head. And so that's these discussions that we're having, I don't want to just I don't want to just talk at um civilian citizens and and think, oh look, us cops are we're all heroes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's not what we're saying. We're saying, look, we're noticing problems in policing, and here's how she stepped up to fix them. She had to step up herself and actually be the solution she needed to see. That's that's the whole reason I got into police work. I didn't like cops where I was at. And and there's a whole background story, these guys heard a million times. I'll I'll tell you offline. Uh they pop my basketball, man. Um so uh but I didn't care for cops that much where I was at. And um I decided to be a part of the solution versus be a part of the problem. And in what you're saying, I think we need to really hammer it home for the cops that are out here listening is remember what you're doing and why you're doing it and build these cases. Do it the right way. If you if you don't have it, you don't have it. Like you said when we first got started. Step away. That is a hard thing for cops to do. Whether it's ego, it's ignorance. Um cops have a hard time stepping away once they got a foot in. And it's like, damn it, just back out. Do it right. Listen, I look in the I'm looking in the camera. Do it right, all you cops out there. Do it fucking right. Um, we're trying to improve policing by having cops come on here and try to tell other cops how to avoid mistakes we've made or talk about mistakes that we've made or mistakes we see and things that we need to fix. So um I think we're doing I think we're doing a pretty good job considering the the the law differences. It is some of the stuff that you say, I'm sitting there like, oh my god, Canada's really different. So um it's fun hearing the differences. Uh and and I respect what y'all y'all got going on over there. Um but uh yeah, there are there's some differences. Banny, you look like you're about to say something.

Final Reflections On Humanity In Policing

SPEAKER_02 1:34:11

No, I just I feel that they they have it harder on many aspects than we do here in Texas. Um it's a different country, but it's it's our neighbor. It's like it's right, it's like here's America and Canada's right there, and it's like we wish that the y'all could have the same. And I know that's not the case. Um I just I wish y'all did, but we're not legislators. We don't we don't make the laws. Um I just, you know, when you I saw the excitement in your eye when you told the story of getting the information that a gentleman maybe may have a gun coming down the street, and that was giving you, you know, what we'd say in America, you know, reasonable articulable suspicion to look a little bit further, you know, to find something else, to make that contact, at least uh, you know, we call down here, you know, uh a consensual encounter uh to speak to somebody and then you could maybe go a little bit further if it was not visible, etc. Because we have so many, even here in America, we have so many laws we have to follow. You break those laws, you're screwed. And then you're you know, if you if you violate somebody's fourth amendment, you're done. You know, in a lot of in a lot of right cases, the badge goes away and you go and rot under a prison cell because you violate somebody's role, you know, or you know, that that law, and that's to be. I mean, that's that's the way it needs to be. But uh, but to see your your eyes truly light up when you got to do that, I know that was a big part of your career, and I applaud the heck out of that because you guys deal with the laws that you have, and that's that's freaking awesome. And then you took the the the notion of I'm gonna step away, I'm gonna get in my car, and like because you knew who he was, you could come back at another time and you could address that matter. He wasn't a direct threat right that second, and you did the right thing. There's so many cops that, and I hate to say this, Neric and I, I think in the past two years both looked at each other like 99.9% of cops are great. And then we start hearing a lot of these stories. We're like, okay, maybe 98.9. And then it's like, okay, maybe now there's a ton of cops that are amazing in all the countries, but there are some out there that are that are busting our chops, making us look like crap, even though we do the right thing, or at least we think we do. Um, but what you did right there is a is a prime example of what a lot of law enforcement needs to look at. I mean, that's that's huge. Um, there's there's a lot of dudes that I know that are in law enforcement 20 plus years that they can't just step back and do that. What you did, I mean that again, that takes a lot. And I applaud you for that. I mean, that was awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:54

Yeah. Yeah. I I that's another thing too that you know, cops that have been around a while. You can see, like you were saying, the the glint in your eye for catching bad guys. Like that's that's a fun, that's a fun spark to see in people. Um, I don't want somebody doing the job because they just want to paycheck. I don't want somebody doing the job um because it helps them score points with chicks, uh whatever it is. Uh I I want somebody that uh genuinely has a desire to go out catch bad people, trying to do bad things to people. Um and you know, or or help, you know, it's it's not always just about catching bad guys. There's a lot of good stuff you can do in the community, things you can help, rescue missions, things like that. Um I know banning probably was a part of it, but I went down to Houston a couple times for hurricane disaster relief. We were catching looters, we were helping, I was saving dogs off the tops of houses. I mean, the the badge has allowed me to help in a lot of different ways that I never really considered before. Um women's safe houses. That's a touchy subject for me, but it it it gave me a passion towards something that legitimately to this day is probably the only thing I really have PTSD about. Um and I didn't even realize I had it until this damn Netflix show came out about uh women's safe house and hurric starting over and all that stuff. Like that that stuff is um that hits home for me. Not my personal home, um, but uh my mom's watching. What are you talking about? Uh but that that type of work, like they just it it allowed me to help in law enforcement in a different way that I never considered before. I never thought I'd be mentoring uh females that were in abusive relationships on how to trust again. Where did I get that from? I don't know where the hell I got that from, but I've got a few women in my life that have uh reached out to me and they're like, You help me trust guys again. Like you help me trust them men. And I I've had actually a couple on the show that they had never told their story before and coming on the show like really helped them out. And now they're out doing seminars and stuff like that, kicking ass. And so the show itself is taking us down a path of helping people that we never really considered. I thought I was gonna be teaching the community, like, oh look, here's how policing is in a different way. And turns out I end up teaching police. Oh, look, here's how we're screwing up, we need to fix things, and here's ways to get better. Uh, didn't see that coming. So anyway, back to you. Enough of me. Okay, so you get up there, get to the top, you end up going over and being a deputy constable chief. How does that what's the title?

SPEAKER_04 1:39:32

Deputy chief constable, yeah, like the second in command.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:36

Okay. And so you're starting uh you start the that up with a few hundred officers over there, and you you get this book going. When how did the how did being the boss and then getting into the book when where did that start?

SPEAKER_04 1:39:53

Uh so the book was something that started years a few years before I retired. And it it came at a time. The the reason why I I started writing the book was I had reached a fairly high rank. I think I was in charge of the detachment, the police department where I lived. So I was a superintendent in charge, but I was basically the chief of police for my hometown. It's about 130 police officers and like about 200 staff altogether, 100,000 people in the community. And uh a colleague of mine that I had been friends with throughout my career, she is a corporal, was having some struggles. Um she had done quite a bit of her career in really graphic child pornography and child sexual abuse, and she'd had a horrible file that she in her organization where she was working didn't get a ton of support for. So she reached out and asked me if I would go for breakfast with her. So I met her and I knew that it was quite traumatizing what she had had to do. And I wasn't sure when she was going to want to start talking. We were at a place for breakfast. So, as part of you know, my training for trauma-informed training and child abuse, one of the things that we would do is if the other person's having a hard time getting started, you as the person will talk and tell story and then you'll pause and see if the other person's ready. Sometimes it's that if you get the conversation going, they don't feel pressure from the silence to just launch into whatever it is that's going on. So here I was really senior in policing, and I thought, okay, I'm just gonna like start talking to her about what's going on. And I was talking about challenges at work and how I was sometimes questioning my decision making as the top leader, and it's lonely at the top. I don't tell a lot of my staff what's going on. I don't really have anyone to confide in because I can't even tell my two and third in command. I don't want them to know some of these things. And then I was kind of talking about struggles at home, teenage kids, and yada, yada, yada. And I paused to see if she was ready to talk, and I looked up and she had her fork in her hand and her mouth was wide open. And I thought, oh, holy shit, I have totally said something that traumatized her. And I'll never forget what she said. She looked at me and I said, Are you okay? Have I have I said something to upset you? And she said, I have watched you for years. You're perfect, nothing bothers you. You never break, you never sweat, you make these decisions. And she's like, I never thought I could do it, go further than where I am because I couldn't be you, because you're so perfect at what you do. And I remember feeling my heart break as she said it, because I thought, holy shit, what a shame. Here I am, sequestering and pushing everything down, struggling in silence, never. Telling a soul, looking like everything is fucking fine, smile on, slapping people on the back, hey, good job, no problem, nothing to see here, which wasn't true. And I've actually ruined other people who think they can't be me because I haven't been truthful about what being me is really like. And I was just like, well, that's gotta change. And so I started doing leadership talks and being vulnerable and saying, like, this is really hard for me sometimes, and it's hard for my family. And I have struggled with being included. And I have other male chiefs that don't include me or talk to me, or they go for breakfast and I'm not invited, and it never ever ends. And so I started talking and sharing and saying it's really hard, but this is how I overcome it because I didn't want people to think you had to be perfect to go into leadership roles. And I thought, like, we're all ruining it because we're afraid, to be honest. And so I started telling the stories and I started writing the stories down, and then I had people say, Will you do leadership training? And then I had a few people say, you know, you should really write a book because no one is talking about this stuff. And so I started writing the book, and of course, in Canada, I don't know if it's the same in the States, you can't publish a book about policing while you're still a police officer. Um, and so the book would go through iterations and I wouldn't write for two years, and then I'd pick it up. And and so the year that I left policing, it was not planned. I left policing at a time where I hadn't thought I was going to be leaving policing. Um and so the first year that I left the profession, I spent that year finishing off and writing the book and really poured all the stuff that we should talk about, but that we're afraid to talk about into the book. And it's not that there aren't police stories in there, but I talked about what it's like to be a wife of a police officer and what it's like to be a parent as a cop, and what it's like for my kids to have a cop as a parent, uh, what it's like to know that you have PTSD and didn't realize that that's what it was because you think PTSD is shaking and coddling in the corner, and sometimes it's just zombie behavior. It's just PTSD as I am taking a licking and keeping on ticking, and it's just like PTSD doesn't look like what people think PTSD looks like. It's sometimes just numb and robotic. Um, and so I wanted to talk about all those things because I thought my friend is not the only one who thinks that that's what it's like. And I thought, how sad. I started paying attention to the suicide rates of police officers, uh, suicide rates of military officers. And they often happened either after critical incidents when they were in trouble for something, uh, was a trigger, or right after retirement. And I wrote the book because I didn't want anyone to feel like they were alone. And I thought I can't go and have breakfast with everybody, but I can write this book and tell people you're not the only one who's feeling this way. And I thought if I could do that, and people would feel seen and heard by reading the book, and it would make them pick up the phone and say, maybe I should go get checked out. That was the reason and the purpose, and that's what I spent the first year doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:31

Um sorry, I was uh responding to somebody. Um the the you brought up a good point about not being able to write books while you're still a police officer. You can start them, but you don't want to release them while you're still out there. That's that's one of the that's one of the okay, so if you look at the podcasting stuff while I'm still a cop, I'm a living example of why. Because I have had more cops come at me, uh, not where I work personally, actually a lot of just about everybody I I talk to at work loves it. You know, whether they they say it behind my back or not, who knows?

SPEAKER_02 1:47:12

Yeah, you never know. I I know a lot of the same people and they like it, so it's uh it's safe to say it's it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:18

But we get I get anyway, I get messages all the time about you know your traitor, you're on both sides. You can't win on both sides, just attacked left and right. Um, you know, tonight we'll get attacked because we didn't bring on somebody that was this was calling. I mean, we are. I I think if people really listen to the story, we are calling out police work in a certain way, but um, they're gonna listen to this and it isn't in the favor of what they wanted it to sound like. And so they're gonna complain at me. And I'm just like when you're doing it while you're still in the career field, it is you gotta be ready for it. It's a beatdown.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:59

And if you would have really how what do you think the reaction would have been if you released this book while you're still I I I take it like we have we're under an oath and an agreement, like that I I don't think I I don't I wouldn't have been allowed under my what would they have done?

SPEAKER_00 1:48:15

You think they'd have fired you? You were the boss.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:18

No, I mean, probably not. I guess it just didn't. I think probably as much of it was as that if I had if I had published the story while I was still in policing, it wouldn't have it wouldn't have been the book it was because uh the end of the book is actually explaining what it's like when you have to like the the profession is so hard to be in. It takes so much of your soul. And yet I was devastated when I left it. And that's really hard for people to understand. It was it it changed my life. It caused me to have illnesses, it is caused me to have nightmares that will never go away. But nothing was more devastating than the day I knew I wasn't going back to work and I wasn't going to be a police officer anymore, and I had to give my badge back. And if I had written the book without that part, that end of the book is where I get messages from a lot of retired police officers saying, I have felt forgotten, and you wrote a part of your book that makes me feel seen and heard. And and for me, I'm like that that's a really important part of the story, is yeah, the process of leaving it, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:49:20

Yeah, I get that. Um it is it it's crazy that the PTSD stuff is still so um stigmatized, uh, depending on where you're at. Where I'm at, I Banny, you tell me. I I feel like we've got a pretty good grasp on it down here in Texas.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:40

It's on the DFW. So I started this a couple years after Jennifer did, and it's uh it's getting better. So when Jennifer started, I was in the the the highlight period of the Marine Corps, and you couldn't speak to anybody on the military side in the United States. Uh it was uh suck up, you know, suck it up, buttercup, here we go. And then I got into law enforcement, they said suck it up, buttercup, and it was I'm used to it. So I I could suck it up and and not talk to anybody. But as you climb that that ladder, and I'm speaking to Jennifer on this, um, you start to get comments from friends that you had since the beginning of time in law enforcement, you know, uh, you know, because I got all the way up to as well, is of the Ivory Tower complex, the Ivory Tower syndrome. And it hurts you when you when you when you've worked your rear end off and you and you've gotten up to a certain point, and ones that you've loved ever since the academy uh sends you a message like that. Ivory Tower, I guess I can't talk to you like I did when we used to work at beat together. And it's one of those you can do one-offs, you can do a meet, hey man, come to my office or let's go to lunch, but you can't cover the entire spectrum of everybody, even in small departments, because if your upper, in my case, I had one upper, uh, looked at that, they could they could not do the domino effect and you could lose everything you've gained. Now, you can get on your personal phone, you can do messages, you can do things off duty, I'm here for you. But it's that weird, there's always a weird tinge between the, and I'm gonna call it the ivory tower because I got to sit up there too, of of the ivory tower versus patrol, just mainstream patrol to sergeants. And when you came into the building and and doing different things, you people acted different. People, oh my god, so-and-so is here, and and and I know Jennifer can highlight that. I I understand in the position that she was in a hundred percent. And and Eric, you're getting there. You're you're at that cusp. Once you go up, well, you're once you go up, even your next rank, you're still gonna have your grasp uh to be able to be in the trenches, but it's how are you gonna dictate your career? Are you gonna remain in contact? Are you gonna do things to be on the ground? And you have to be strategic with it. Yeah, it's you have to because you've you've got different jobs now.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:17

Yeah. If you become too much a man of the people, it's it's they don't let you move up anymore.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:22

Now, I I was looked bad upon from people above me because I remained in contact as much as I could to everybody. If somebody's having a bad day, if I was on an off day, let's go out to eat. Hey, I'm gonna take them out to dinner, we're gonna go do this, we're gonna talk it out. It's my off day, you can't tell me what to do. They may be maybe on duty, and I'm interfering with that 30 minutes while they're on duty on their assigned break, and we're just talking as banning and deputy schmunkatelli, and we're we're talking, and we're we're ironing things out, and always have that open door policy. Now, an open door policy, I I am gonna say this once you get up to a certain rank and you have an open door policy, and people come in just because they've been they were your buddies for years, they've got to be able to, if they if they're coming in wanting change, I'm immediately gonna ask them, I like it, what's your solution? If they come in and just don't, if they don't like the change, hey, that's great. I probably wouldn't like it either in the position that you're in right now. But if you come in to me and say, you know, whatever my rank was at the time, I don't like the change. I think if we did it like this and they have it built out kind of in a business plan, I think all the officers would like it a little bit more and they've actually thought about it and they put it down on paper, then I can I I have something to work with. And people, I mean, people are not gonna lie, well, cops are the worst. You bring in change, technology, uh something else, they've gotten used to it. I mean, any cop that says I like change, they're full of shit. Any cop that says, I don't like change, but I have something with this new technology change or this new order that we all have to do, but what if we did it like this? It's still following the letter of the law of what's been written, but it may be easier, then you're on to something. We may be able to work that to where it's a little bit easier for everybody to operate. So open door policy with the caveat of we we may be able to do this, let's look at it, let's bring it to the uppers, let's let's talk about it as a family, and maybe get it into implementation stage uh to make that better. But what that's what I mean by open door policy. Don't just come in and say, Man, I've known you for 20 years, get that shit out of here, tell the sheriff or tell the chief or tell the deputy chief to pound sand. What we've been doing is working. Well, it's like, okay, dude, it's here, it's passed. If you don't like it, bring me something to show from everybody that this is how we're gonna do it. We're gonna meet everything that's asked for, but we may do it, we may cut the puzzle over here and do it this way to make it uh work for everybody. Then I'm I'm a hundred percent, I can take that to an administrative meeting, and then we can go and and and try to pound with it and try to make it work.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:08

Yeah, I like Brandar's comment here. The things enlisted, the things enlisted hate, the way things are and when they change. That is that's a cop's life right there. They're gonna complain either way. Well, Jennifer, let's let's while we're talking about your book, and we already had one person in the comments said they bought your book. Um, so so look at that. Uh, we are going to share where they can get this. Uh there we go. This is it, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:55:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:38

I do have the right website. Just making sure. Um, that'd be embarrassing, wouldn't it? Um, but yeah, if you guys want to check out her book, it's called Tight Rope. Um, oh, look at that professional picture. Get you, girl. So what's the website all about?

SPEAKER_04 1:55:58

Um, so the website is just basically the book. The book is available on all the online realtors. So Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, Apple Books, whatever. So you can go on those or you can click the link on the buy the book. Um, but I also do uh there you guys are two comments. Yeah. And but I also blog on here. So I I'm on LinkedIn and I do a weekly post on LinkedIn, but the blog is sort of like basically a longer version, more details. I often flesh out some of the stories. And in on the blog, I include some of the things I took out of the book. The book was too long, the editors, it was like 400 pages to start. The editor's like, you gotta cut it in half. So um, yeah, that's me in patrol in New West. Yeah, that's probably 30-year-old. That's 24 years ago. I'm 50, I'm gonna be 55 in February. So that's like 30-year-old me. Um, but so the blog has some of the stuff that I edited out of the book and just uh some more sort of detailed thoughts. And then it's just really about the book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:09

Very cool. Very cool. Yeah, and that's the it's kind of the thing that I wanted to um, and it's at jennyhyland.com.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:17

Jenhyland, no why, Jen Hyland.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:19

Uh, Jen, I'm sorry. And I'll actually put it in the comments here. Jenhyland.com. There we go. Um, you know, I I know like I was telling everybody in in the audience listening tonight that she's done these podcasts. I wanted to do it different. So they can catch the other ones if they want to get the common stuff, but I wanted to go down that that leadership role. I wanted to go down the the the trials and tribulations. We when we talk about ways we can improve policing out in the streets, those are fixes that we can we can all agree on. But we can't start fixing things out in the streets if we don't fix some of the culture that we have internally. PTSD is one of those. Um how we treat our co-workers, uh, you know, creating creating obstacles that they you already got enough. That's kind of the point we brought out tonight. You already had enough fucking obstacles. I don't need my coworkers creating new ones. I don't need that. Um so that's a problem. Uh but yeah, we're we're trying to improve things all around. Um if if they need to figure out how to improve the PTSD stuff and and leadership and whatnot, go check out your book. I won't that's that's what the book's for. But tonight uh we wanted to flesh out some of the the other sides that led you to writing what you wrote. And I think we did a pretty good job of that. Um but our guys have questions. And uh Alan has, I think we're at the uh the questions part. So I'm just gonna start from from the the back of the list here, Alan, and then go up to the early stuff. So um that's not a question. Let's see here. Uh Montero said, yes, it's a problem, but from my time in Baltimore, city police officers in the early 2000s to my time now as a police officer in the state of Virginia, we have improved greatly in this profession. Um, I I agree. I think I think personally policing has continued to improve.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:18

I agree.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:19

100%. Um I think it keeps getting better and better. However, in getting better and better, we're able to figure out more things we're doing wrong too. Technology's gotten to the point now where we can see commonalities in all these videos that people are showing in the First Amendment auditor stuff. I don't know if that's a problem in Canada, um, but in in the states, like you have a legal right to be in a public area in film.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:43

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:43

But it bugs people, so they call the cops. So so they try to use the cops as a pawn. Well, a lot of cops screw that up. Yeah, they don't realize that it's legal, yeah, and they fuck it up bad. So that's my point. I think we've done really well in certain areas, but then new gat new new problems are being shown because technology is improving. So but that's good. That's a good thing. Showing where we're screwing up is a good thing because now we know where to focus on a fix. That's how I see looking at these bad things. So I I I agree with uh Montero's uh point there. Uh I'm looking for an actual question. Um I thought I thought we'd have some questions here, Alan.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:25

I did too. I thought they'd be some questions.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:27

Yeah. Uh Cynthia said, uh, and if they're a badass uh like that, it means they know they underestimated. Oh, oh, I see what she's saying. She said, and if they are a badass like that, it means they know they're underestimated instead of whining about it, they use it as an advantage. I think this is when you were talking about when your hamstring got hurt. And yeah, and you were you you you hit it, kept it, and you use that to your advantage. Um knowing that uh let me see here. Um is there any hazing involved in training today? I'll let you take that.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:04

Uh, you know, there was one I went through, but um, I think there was a probably in the United States it's the same, but and in the military, there's a handful of incidents that at least in Canadian policing, I would say hazing is is not something that you would see. Um, but it was certainly something that I experienced. But the the type of hazing, yeah, it was um, it could have gone really, really bad. It didn't. Um, my hazing, but I know other people, people get hazed in different ways. And so my hazing wasn't sexual or gross in nature. Uh, some other people experience something different, but uh generally I I'm not aware that that's an ongoing issue in law enforcement. I don't know if you guys think differently, certainly not in Canada, it's not something I've I've heard of in the last like 10-15 years, I think is like almost unheard of now. Yeah. There's honestly social media and the iPhone they do all the hate. They corrected a lot of behavior, and so has and I'm a fan of the body cam too, but like the you couldn't film any of the stuff that we did or that we went to. Like, there was no body cams, there was no iPhones, there was no camera, video camera with you. And I think that's changed society and culture in general, and the impact on policing is no different. And I think the impact is positive, but that's I think one of the reasons why some of that stuff certainly I think I think if departments are using. And we've matured, I think we became a bit more professional. We've matured a bit, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:42

Um I think if police are using their body cams appropriately, they should be using them as training tools. Finding out, like, okay, how are we handling these types of calls? What are where can we? improve you know a good sergeant after a really big call should be pulling that body cam footage all right everybody come in we're gonna watch you know we're gonna watch Jen's body cam by uh banning's body cam and Levine's body cam we're gonna see how they handled this call and then let's uh let's um let's talk about the good the bad and the other cool okay cool levine you really handled this part well uh jen had to save your ass here because you got in too deep and then you know banning came in and pulled both you guys out you know whatever it is but uh you can always learn from your body cam footage so I think officers if they're really taking the profession seriously should be using their body cam footage to learn from not just learning from bad cops doing really bad shit that they find on social media that which is where I come into play and show a lot of that stuff. This was a good question. Do you have a least favorite most favorite call minus bad scenes with violence? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:49

You know honestly my least favorite kind of call was always like bank fraud like I'm like for the I don't even know why police officers are assigned to do bank frauds. I mean get an accountant or some mucky muck to do it they they were never it was you never follow the paper trail. They sometimes it was like$10 or$15 fraud at a money mart. It was just like rid I I just hated fraud files. So if it was a bank fraud that's my least favorite um my most favorite call believe it or not and I actually have one of these in the in the book with a photo um like animal calls like I'm an animal lover I'm a dog lover. And so it's like even though it was just like if I could interact or figure out an animal call at work like it was always like a good day but like I have a story about a a pig in a bar a pot belly pig in a bar that I had to get wrangle on a Friday night which was fun. And uh you know I had to help a lady with a dying cat. But like if there was like puppies or dogs or you know when I was in working in one town there was a a bowl that got loose on the highway and uh so I just I anything to do with animals. Those were my favorite. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:05:07

Um I've I've had great calls with animals and then I've had okay so have you ever heard of fire ants I have heard and I I've experienced them before at a park. Yeah it that's they're nasty.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:24

So let me tell you about my first year as a Texas cop. I I go after a Chrysler 300 stolen and now we're out in the sticks of our area. I told you I I work a huge city 370 something square miles I think it is um so there's country area but there's also deep metropolitan city area so I'm out in the sticks and chase this car. It wrecks out into a cattle gate. Now we get the guys do all the things um I'm dealing with the stolen car. That's my job for this event. So I go over there I'm trying to get to the van I can't get to the van to the front so the door is wide open the driver's side door so I'm like I'm gonna go get it from the door. I know that's right there on the side. So I go over there it's nighttime I got my partner with me who he's from Jersey. They stuck us together because we're northerners I guess uh so my partner's from Jersey's last name was Modursky I'm I'm I'm knelt down and I'm I'm writing down this pin number and I'm trying to you know you got your flashlight and you're trying to do one of these and I'm trying to get that I'm like all right cool. So just as I get that I hear Midursky go, what do you got on you? It's all sparkly. He's got this huge Jersey accent and I'm like sparkly and he's hit me with this flashlight. He's like yeah you got glitter all over you look at fuck if I was in a fire ant pile that was it felt like I had sunk in a quick sand it was that big I didn't realize the gigantic amount of sand I had stepped in was a fucking fire ant hill. They were all over me. I didn't even realize it but they had their patient they had coordinated their attack. They didn't bite me or do anything until they were all the way up under my back and got about right here and I felt a a pinch and I was like ow. And then that pinch went all the way down my body in like a straight line and I am doing the chicken dance on the side of the road I am stripped down to nothing but my damn underwear and my socks my boots and because I couldn't get my damn boots off. The rancher shows up because we had to call the rancher because his cattle gate was wide open we we didn't want the cows getting out another weird thing to say he gets there he thinks I'm the bad guy. He goes oh what'd you get him is that him and he looks at me and I'm I'm still just they're off of me but I'm still wiping and looking and uh he goes no that's my partner he stepped in an anthill and he goes what'd you do that for boy what do you want me to do guy so yeah I don't like fire ants so that's my bad animal call uh I do want to give a shout out to Montero dropped uh 50 bucks in a super chat thank you very much said uh love you guys I hope you guys had a great new year banning the beard looks majestic Eric don't bring back the mustache my wife almost left me when she saw that love it I had a military ceremony not too long ago that I had to go to and I had to shave my beard I'm allowed to have a mustache in the military but I'm not allowed to have a beard uh I'm still in the military um so I left the mustache because my wife was like don't shave that that's gonna look even weirder and everybody on here lost their mind because I look like a probably look like a lot of the guys that you go after um so uh so okay I don't want to forget about this so now we got time guys we're asking questions I want to know about the serial killer tell me the serial killer story okay well long story short Canada's uh most infamous serial killer his name was Robert Picton he uh spent many years uh picking up sex trade workers in the area the region that I work in and he would take them back to his pig farm he had a pig farm and he would uh sound like a movie skin and butcher the women and then feed parts of them to the pigs and then him and his brother um would sell the pigs and they like would process the pork and the pigs and stuff so so people ate those pigs I I I don't know that they would ever be able to prove what pigs ate human parts and then got sold but they owned a pig farm they called it the place where they sold it was called Piggy's Palace.

SPEAKER_04 2:09:59

Pigs will eat human bone and flesh and so um my interaction with him was when I stopped him trying to pick up a sex trade worker when I was working the street as a uniform officer. So that picture that you pulled up uh when I was in uniform patrol so that was uh about the time where I and I said that I had uh gotten to know all the sex trade workers where I worked and a lot of them were my informants. So he was in town and we didn't know he was a serial killer at the time and he was trying to pick up a sex trade worker and I stopped him and he had a record of violence to women and so I told him he wasn't allowed to take women from the streets and then he had to leave the town and he basically was like you can't tell me what to do and I just said well I am going to tell you what to do and I'm here every night to just go you're not coming back to where I work and uh so anyways long story short I actually was really active in trying to get a whole bunch of very senior police officers and very I was quite junior I had like two years on the job not even and I was writing reports and I was sending it to all different police agencies and I'm like you know we've we've got all these missing women we keep talking about these missing women there's this really creepy guy he has this pig farm like I I think we should be looking at him and I would write all these memos and it was kind of like uh pat you on the head there there little lady like leave the police work to the big people and you just go keep talking to the girls and anyways it turned out that it was him and he murdered 49 women and fed a bunch of the pigs. He had he had a hair shit and uh I had started uh before he was caught I had started taking uh blood DNA samples and fingerprints and photos of all the women the sex trade workers that worked where I was because I'm like I think he's fucking doing something on the pig farm and so they are like again go take whatever blood you want little lady like leave the police work to us. So I did and it turned out none of the women that I took the blood and and I told them I showed his photo I said don't ever get in the car with this man. And if you see him I want you to call me and so anyways at the end of the day about four years later he got uh arrested and charged with the murder of the 50 women and went to court and and I ended up being called to go give evidence in court and because the only date that they had from a murder was the day I stopped him. He had another woman in the car with him and she was there to help sex trade workers feel comfortable because he was really fucking creepy. Like he's the other guy that made me feel really uncomfortable was this guy. And um she said that he was so mad uh about me he said uh well we're not coming back here because that fucking blonde bitch cop is paying too much attention and I was the blonde bitch cop. So she turned to state's evidence and and reported on him and she was the prime witness and she said the night that that female officer stopped us we went to a neighboring town grabbed a female and Willie skinned her alive and fed her to the pigs that night and and they knew what day it was because I had checked him and had my notes on the stop. So I had to go to court give evidence point him out as the person that I'd stopped um and he was ultimately convicted of the murders so about a year and a half ago he was murdered in prison uh he was in protective custody and he was given an opportunity to clean the bathroom and another inmate impaled him with a broom handle and killed him yeah so he is no longer with us which is perfect he's an evil evil evil person yeah is there so that was my cellar that's my serial cut and they did make a movie about it and they've written a couple books about it or whatever but really yeah yeah yeah yeah oh my god it's so bad it's so bad I know and I don't know who ate the pig stuff it's just like that's the first thing where my mind went I'm like oh my god did they set him for the pink yeah can we the guy that impaled him when he gets out so I can do my dinner yeah I you know what I don't even know if they put in the it was in the news when he was murdered because he is the worst serial killer in Canadian history.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:23

Um I think he may have a record for probably worse serial one of the worst serial killers ever.

SPEAKER_04 2:14:29

Yeah 50 40 no there's some doctor in Britain killed like 150 old people or something like that. Well I'm not saying the the worst one I'm just saying he's up there pretty gross he's pretty he's pretty gross so yeah I don't know whoever it was the that did a somebody a civic service to us all that's crazy. Wow so that's the serial killer story.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:49

Yeah that's like bucket list stuff for cops like this I always wanted to catch a grave robber. Yeah I don't know why I just always thought that'd be cool.

SPEAKER_04 2:14:57

Never happened I never caught one um never even heard of I did see a call for it come up once where they said somebody's doing something weird in the cemetery and I was on that call so fucking fast but it he was just walking through like I had a cemetery file it wasn't a grave robber but it was um I had to cut this out of the book because there's not room for everything but we got a guy who worked for a cemetery uh in um New West got drunk one night and his conscience got the better of him and he came into the station and reported that when he was working for the cemetery they were supposed to store and pay for proper plots if bodies hadn't been claimed and he said uh we buried a handful of people that I don't even know who they are we just dug holes in the back 40 of the cemetery and dumped bodies in there and I don't even know who they were or if we reported it or whatever. So we had to go in with an excavator I remember saying the night we started digging I was like stabbing there I'm at the pile we had to so we found the body and then of course everyone's like well we need a Carlin archaeologist and we were at that scene for like three or four days and they had uh there was charges he they didn't kill them but they were like uh in proper dis improper disposal of remains or whatever it was and there we were and literally in the middle of the night and it's raining and we're digging we're in the cemetery and we're digging and then the body's in there and it's just like super creepy right it's yeah yeah oh man um Ryan asked Jennifer did you ever write and publish any other works before your book was it your job that gave you a lot of experience with writing was there an editor that helped you with your book okay um I never yeah okay so I I guess you could say I had written and I don't know if I'd call it publishing but I had I've been on LinkedIn and I have written a few articles for police magazines and I've written in LinkedIn like short form. So I wouldn't necessarily call that necessarily book writing but I've done short articles and some writing as a result of the career that I had yes in policing. And then yes I would say it was the the book is really mostly about the job but uh the the book is from the perspective of the many hats that human beings in life have so it's just not just the career it's about being a parent and and being the child of parents and it's just the human experience. So the job certainly exposed me it was the the foundation for the book I guess you could say but a lot of other experiences in there like I I I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. That's not really a policing thing but it's connected to my exposure to trauma and weeks and weeks of work with no rest and I developed an autoimmune issue MS because of that. And so I write about that but there's lots of people with MS doing jobs that have nothing to do with policing. And so the book is really more the human experience if that makes sense. And yes there was an editor and so um the first draft the editor took a real run and and basically clarified what they thought I should be cutting out of the book. It could have been probably two books that 400 pages is too apparently too long for a book. So I had to cut it in half and it's 200 pages.

SPEAKER_00 2:18:19

So that's a good problem they have though. Do you have an audio version?

SPEAKER_04 2:18:22

I do I just finished the audiobook before Christmas which I'll have to say did you read it? Yeah I did. And so I I did not want to do an audio book and every everybody that I knew was like oh I don't read books anymore I listen to them in my car and do an audiobook and the book is so personal that it was I was never gonna let anybody else read it. But here's the thing I the audiobook you're not allowed to read the book so it is the audiobook is exactly what's in the book but you are not allowed to read it and what I mean by that is you have to tell the story not read the story and I wasn't really prepared that it had to like the book is to sound the way we have sounded tonight. So the producer is from New York and I'm remote in Canada and I start reading the book and fairly early on in the book there's some graphic stuff that's happening and he's just like stop stop stop he's like that is not how you tell that story and so it's like being coached on you it would have been easy to read it. I wasn't allowed to read it and and I I was able to write a lot of what I put in there and I wasn't prepared when I got to certain sections what it would feel like for me to actually verbally say what I had written. And I had written it and I had read it and I had processed the trauma of it and then when I went to talk about it to somebody on the screen like I just my voice cracked you're not allowed to have cracking voice on an audiobook. So we'd have to stop I'd have to start over and the producer was very polite. He used to say I think there's a bit of a gargle in your voice and that was his way of sort of saying you sounded a little bit too emotional and and so the the audiobook was exhausting and um it's just going through the editing I have to sign off on it but yeah it wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be it was a lot more pumped about that because I'm an audiobook junkie. Well you'll be the one that buys it then heck yeah for sure. Marine Bloody was trying to get verification of that guy's name was it Robert Picton yeah that's perfect that's exact how it is yeah okay so yeah yeah that's Willie Picton Robert Willie Picton the pig farmer yeah you'll type him in and he's super creepy looking like he's fucking gross he looks like a pig farmer sorry if there are any pig farmers out there I don't mean to be insulting but he looks like a creep.

SPEAKER_00 2:20:56

Half a Bannon's family out there in the sticks so that's it no fancy the pigs the poor pigs couldn't help who was farming them oh my god that's insane there's not many people yeah that's him oh yeah yeah oh god oh geez that's insane that is that is that is that's great somebody was asking earlier papy in real life yeah like he is just uh anyways yeah yeah somebody was asking earlier for us to share some sort of like war stories they wanted to hear from you and I was like we'll get to it like just relax I was like when you mentioned the serial killer thing I was like nobody's gonna be able to claim that I don't know anybody that's dealt with serial killers nobody and that is like that's not even like that is that's pro level serial killer that's not even like most serial killers they got like three to five under their belt or whatever the little minimum number is to be confirmed serial killer. That is that's Dexter guy right there. Yeah but I think Dexter killed bad people did kill bad people let's let's be fair but yeah that's fucking funny I bought Dexter beer that's all right Dexter is like the guy who killed this guy in prison.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:13

Yes right yes exactly yeah um all right Jennifer we're we're almost two and a half hours in uh is there anything else that you want to get out there that we haven't hit on yet tonight uh no I just for anybody like your followers I know you said you have um lots of police officers pro police and even people who are you know not so pro-police and and I guess my maybe my message is to them and everybody which is is that police officers are just like human beings. We're just we're your neighbors we're you know the people that you play sports with or your kids have sports with or we're just having a Human experience no different than yours. We've just happened to be a group of people that have put our hand up and said, I think I have the ability to navigate, you know, when people are going through trauma in their life. And we don't always get it right and we're not perfect. But I think the majority of police officers come at the job with a sense of like in your worst moment, I'm gonna have to potentially do things to hold you accountable. But my primary job is to get you home safe, just to make safe whatever it is that's happening, and then sort out the rest of it however it shakes out the best way we can. Um, and we feel very uh not driven, but very in our core, usually like this is our calling. This is most of us that are in the job are in the job because we understand the pain of human suffering, and we've decided that this is a this is a burden that we can that we can carry. And I don't want to make it sound like you know, we walk in the snow uphill both ways. The job is very traumatizing and it's not for everybody. Um, and so I guess part of why I'm on the show and part of why I wrote the book was I'm not saying you don't have bad experiences with police officers, but we're we're human just like you are, and we're good sometimes and bad others, but just know that we come to work every day seeking to do the best for those around us, and sometimes we fall a little short of it. So for those that are not pro-police, I hope that maybe this podcast and things like my book or whatever you can engage with in your own community allows you um to maybe just have a different perspective or be open to uh learning more, and I think that's what this podcast is for. So I really appreciate you having me on and sharing.

SPEAKER_00 2:24:48

No problem. Anytime. Uh I had to mute banning while you were talking because it was like something was scratching at his desk and I was like driving me insane. Um, but no, I really appreciate you having uh the time to come on here, share your story. Uh I I know I speak for for everybody, but you anytime you want to come on, if you if you just want to shoot the shit with us and and do some, you know, some cop bullshitting and watch some body cam reviews. We like to sit back and kind of like pretend we're the officer in the body cam video.

SPEAKER_04 2:25:17

Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 2:25:18

And then yeah, kind of break down what we would do next. Instead of Monday morning quarterbacking, where we're like, oh, the cop fucked up here. You should have done this, should have done that. No, no, no. We're gonna pretend we're the cop. Oh, I love it. Yeah, as the call, we'll pause it when we're like next. This is what I'm looking at. Here's what I would do. Then banning goes, and then you'd go. Oh, I love it.

SPEAKER_03 2:25:35

Oh, yeah, I totally fulfill my need for not being in policing anymore. I I'm I'm all in. That's perfect.

SPEAKER_00 2:25:41

Yeah, yeah, it's it's a good time. Um, we do that, and uh we got some other crazy stuff going on, but no, that's that's all I got for tonight. Um, let me go back to our little triple view here. Uh everybody, Banning, you got any closing remarks?

SPEAKER_02 2:25:56

No, I just I Denver, I just I just appreciate you being here with us tonight. This is a great deal.

SPEAKER_00 2:26:01

Yeah. Uh Alan in the background there. You want to jump in and say anything before we uh we bounce there, big fella? There he is. Look at that.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:09

Hey guys, uh always a Red Raider fan, you know, even though we can't score in the playoffs. Um random. Anyway, yeah, I'm sorry. I it was my hat, it made me think of it. So um no, I appreciate everybody and thank you for joining us from the uh great uh world of Canada, eh?

SPEAKER_00 2:26:31

Hey, yeah, we have some poutine, eh?

SPEAKER_01 2:26:34

I'm from Texas, so I can't say it right.

SPEAKER_00 2:26:37

Oh, if you guys have never had poutine, I highly recommend it. It's one of my favorite comfort foods. So um all right, everybody, uh take it easy, have a good night. Thanks for joining us, and we will catch you guys on the next one. Right for yep, Jennifer, stick around.