Heroic Nation Podcast
The ONLY podcast addressing Physical Health and Mental Health for First Responders.
Host:
Anthony Shefferly
-Full time Police/SWAT (16+ years)
-Master's in Science: Psychology
-Tactical Strength & Conditioning
Owner Heroic Fitness/CrossFit Tactical Strength
College Football/CrossFit Regionals/BJJ/Kettlebells
Heroic Nation Podcast
Balancing Politics and Personal Life: A Conversation with Martin Carbaugh
Join the compelling political conversation with Martin Carbaugh, Indiana's 81st District State Representative, as he navigates the intricate corridors of education, health, and insurance policies. Get a glimpse into Indiana's constitutional carry legislation and Martin's balancing act between his political career and personal life as a family man and business owner. Learn about the evolving landscapes of major corporations, ideological shifts, and how figures like Elon Musk and James Lindsay are reshaping educational and political norms.
Dive into the multifaceted world of government regulation, campaign strategies, and the legislative process with a focus on Indiana's journey to constitutional carry. From the nuances of healthcare policy and qualified immunity to the challenges of election integrity, we tackle the weighty issues shaping our society. Explore the dynamics of policing, the impact of body cameras, and the pressures on law enforcement professionalism, all while pondering the future of elections and public trust. Join us for a thought-provoking discussion that challenges conventional wisdom and sparks curiosity.
Yo, welcome back to the Heroic Nation podcast brought to you by Heroic Industries. And you know I'm on social media all the time, more than I should be, that's for sure. But I've been monitoring my screen time and it is improving. When you run stuff like podcasts and sell things like coaching online, it's very, very hard not to spend too much time getting sucked down a rabbit hole as far as just doom scrolling and crap like that. So I was in the process, in the process of uh posting and in the process it's. It's really hard not to get sucked into just watching anything, right? So, like I, I'm really jealous of those accounts that uh have a ton of followers and like one following and that's it. Um, but uh anyway. So I'm watching, I'm watching a video and it's John Cena, and John Cena is promoting uh, some food that boosts your metabolism or changes your metabolism, and and and uh.
Speaker 1:I think Dr Mike from RP posted something on it and and and just tore it apart, and I was laughing so hard because I was like you know, why does, why does, why does? Why do things have to be so complicated in the space and and and, but at the same time, in, like, the fitness space. But at the same time, why do people just talk out their ass all the time? Uh, you know, it's one like. Metabolism is way more complicated than just like. It's either fast or slow, and a lot of times we think about it as I have a fast metabolism, meaning I'm skinny or have a low body fat or small or whatever. Or I have a slow metabolism, aka a bad metabolism, and that makes me overweight, sluggish, slow, physically slow, fat, whatever. That's not exactly the case. Andrew Huberman had a great podcast some time ago with Dr Casey means, who specializes in metabolism, and you have to define it. Metabolism is just the process of taking environmental energy like potential energy and converting it energy like potential energy and converting it, consuming it, and then that converts into mechanical or kinetic energy. Right, so it's just the. It's an energy transfer process. Okay, and in that process she she breaks it down really, really well. So she talks about three ways that that the metabolism can be kind of broken or dysfunctional, and those three ways would include mitochondrial problems, inflammation and oxidative stress, and a lot of the time those things will overlap as well. But just because you have a metabolism that could be causing you issues and you're gaining weight, it doesn't mean that a thinner person that doesn't have excess body fat has a good metabolism. Because they just might be showing it differently. Their symptoms downstream may be different, like I know. I know a hundred percent that I get joint inflammation as a result of metabolic metabolic issues, like. I'm 100% sure of that. So the downstream symptoms are what we end up playing whack-a-mole with and that really needs to be looked at more upstream and that way you can solve the problem. If you're interested in simplifying things like this and looking at things from, I think, a more bigger picture, longer term fix and make sure that you're following on my Instagram at Anthony underscore Heroic Industries Heroic Industries Instagram page. And we also have a free school community. All of those are no cost to you. So there's my short plug. All right On to the episode.
Speaker 1:For today. This was my first foray into Politics, sort of OK. So I talked to Martin Carbaugh. Martin was a member of my gym here in town and is also a state representative town and is also a state representative. I'm going to go through a little bio of him. This was a really long episode and I'm not going to take any more time on this intro than I need to and we'll get started.
Speaker 1:Okay, so a lot of good stuff we covered here, but Martin since November 6th of 2012, people have known Martin as a state representative at Indiana's 81st District.
Speaker 1:At the statehouse, he sits on the education and health committees, while also being a chairman for the House Insurance Committee. Beyond the statehouse and, more importantly, he is a husband to his wife, sally, a father to six children and in November, will be married for 24 years, which is no small feat. I can tell you that he also has regular work that he does. He owns Heartland Insurance Advisors and is a partner at Financial Focus. Through those two positions, he and his partners help to plan for retirement by growing and protecting their retirement assets. So he is a wealth of knowledge, with a lot of things as far as you know, like law, how law is created. We talked about gun laws, specifically the Indiana constitutional carry and how that came about a few years ago, changes since then and, um, you know, uh, other other things as well, like tons of other stuff as well. So, uh, check it out and, uh, let me know what you think.
Speaker 2:Whatever becomes public, whether that's real or not.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like it, and, honestly, that a lot of the stuff that uh that I've seen is like disney related. So, oh, that doesn't surprise. Well, disney abc. So a lot of the uh, a lot of the the stuff that that I'm seeing with with, that is like from like disney news, like entertainment news.
Speaker 1:They're like abc's about to take it in the shorts and disney's at the like, the forefront of all of this, and I was like they need to go like yeah just so, and I know we've we've talked about this for years where it's like, you know, disney versus uh, you know, marvel versus dc, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's like, especially I remember when, uh, when marvel bought spider-man, yeah, and then, or from sony, yep, and then sony screwed them. Remember when they did that and they were like, hey, by the way, we're going to need a whole lot more money if you're going to keep using this character and you were like I love to see Disney lose.
Speaker 1:And at that point I was like why I love Disney.
Speaker 2:And now it's like fuck yeah, you let them have it yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so it'll be interesting to see if anything comes from that, Because that goes all the way to Bob Iger, the CEO at Disney Right, so yeah.
Speaker 2:Who's not a big fan of Elon Musk? I don't think. Right who tends to be on the other side of the aisle now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's so interesting to see how people have kind of evolved over time, because it's like so Elon hasn't always been considered a conservative.
Speaker 2:No, not at all yeah.
Speaker 1:Free market guy, I think, and that's the kicker, where it's like all right, no longer is the left wing considered like a free market, anything Right, like no free thought, no free market. No, like this is what you're going to do and this is how you're going to do it and it's very, it seems very controlling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's where you're seeing more and more of the rhetoric from, especially the, I think, the, the conservative bloggers and, you know, people on the internet and influencers, whatever we're calling these people that we get to see all the time on our timelines and scrolling, you know, accusing parts or most of the left, of the leadership of the left, to be more communistic than anything else. I mean, it just feels that way.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it. I mean ideologically, like you can look at it, and it's like, it's absolutely like neo-Marxist, you know, which is everything that communism grew from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I follow a guy on X, james Lindsay, and he's really bringing a lot of this to the foreground. I'd really encourage him and anybody watching to follow James Brilliant guy I actually got to meet him during session this year. Who, is he James Lindsay. Um, he's Ivy league educated. He wrote a book, the Marxification of education another high recommend.
Speaker 1:I think you told me about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's such a good book. I listened to it. I'm on the road, um, quite a bit more than I have time to sit down and read books, uh. So I listened to books and it's a fantastic study on how our education system has gotten to where we find it today, because the systems that we were educated in are not the systems that exist today. From an ideological standpoint, it's just not debatable. There are definitely people that are conservative that still teach in those systems, but the direction has been bent very far left, and so, anyway, he's really putting a lot of stuff out there right now.
Speaker 2:And he was an admitted Trump hater. He said he had Trump derangement syndrome in 2016 and all that, and so he's probably not in the exact same way of Elon, but he's had this transformation, um, maybe more, uh, akin to um JD Vance, where he was very anti-Trump, and now he's vice presidential candidate, um, and so, uh, james is trying to get the information out there. Like I said, good follow on X, um, cause he's not afraid of anything and he speaks up, and he he goes around, speaks all over the place. I mean, he's called for the disillusion of the un. He's like it should be ended.
Speaker 1:Yeah, united nations well, I think from a, from a more, uh, central or or like understandable standpoint, like that's, that's like a big picture type deal, oh yeah, um, but like you know I'm sure he would be if for like the disillusion or the elimination of the department of education stateside. You know I'm sure like that's. That's something that I remember bob dole talking about back when he was running against clinton and everybody was like what the hell? You can't eliminate the department of education? Why do you hate kids?
Speaker 1:Well, right and then, and then I'm listening to that and I'm like, and I asked my dad, who is a public school teacher for like 32 plus years, Right I said what do you think about this? And he was like I absolutely agree with it as a public school teacher.
Speaker 2:Well, and as a state legislator, you know, yeah, we get a lot of money from the feds but, like any money from the federal government, from the Department of Education, is going to come with strings. And you know the I-STEP that's now called I-LEARN test, that annual subnative test that we have to give all the students that comes from a federal mandate we get, you know, the education, the way the education system is regulated and run. We as state legislators get beat up a lot from some of our public school friends. Some of it can be just general disagreement, like I'm a big supporter of the voucher system. I think parents should have the right to choose. It doesn't matter what your income is. Your tax dollars should go to help support the education of your child. So there are some folks just we just agree to disagree on that. But Department of Education puts strains on us and ties funding to it. Of course it's how they control things that then we have to pass down. Well, we have to pass it down, so we get nailed with it. But at the same time it's like well, there's a billion dollars of federal funds we wouldn't have for schools if we didn't do a summative test like that.
Speaker 2:A lot of the testing that goes on in schools is more local decision stuff. Locals love to put it back on us, but there's really two things that we require when it comes to tests it's the ILEARN that's fed and then the IREAD-3. Iread-3 because our reading rates at third grade level have gone down quite a bit over the last several years and prior to during the Daniels administration. There were programs used that got stopped under Glenda Ritz and then Jennifer McCormick and never brought back, and now we put them back into law. We're going to give IREAD 3 to kindergarten first and second grade I don't know about kindergarten, but first and second grade for sure and then obviously third grade if needed. If a child passes in first or second grade they won't have to be tested. They're already at the third grade level. So there's no more testing there.
Speaker 2:But I mean, if you can't read by third grade, you can't do any of the subjects. I mean math to an extent, but none of the story problems. You can't learn history, you can't learn English. I mean you can't do any of it. So that reading by third grade is such a big deal. We put a big emphasis on that this last session and really want to see those levels come back and putting in some of those early interventions. There's intervention money that comes along with the testing as well. So you know if you're giving that to a first grader and you can see well, this, you know these kids are way behind um in a similar area. Then we can emphasize that for second grade and then see how they progress. And then third grade we better get there Um, and there's some, there's some um. Mandatory um, you know, hold hold back in the summer, basically Um, but we're trying to avoid that with the early intervention. So hopefully nobody has summer school just to learn to read.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um yeah, with. With that, I always look at like, all right, how are? How are people? How are people like gaming the system to get the money? You know what I mean and I know there's always going to be that You're not going to eliminate all of it, but I don't know. You know what?
Speaker 2:I mean, oh, definitely. I mean anytime there's state or federal dollars or local dollars coming, there's a system to be used and gamed.
Speaker 1:So how does it work? So you test it and then money is distributed based on the testing. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:I don't want to answer that specifically because I'm not on the Ways and Means Committee. That actually does the. I mean I vote on the budget, which is a big behemoth. We set up the programs on the education. Yeah, the only reason I ask is like all right.
Speaker 1:So like if you what's being reinforced Is doing well being reinforced or just doing poorly reinforced, because if you get more money by doing poorly, maybe you want to keep doing poorly, so you get more money. You know what I mean yeah, no, I don't.
Speaker 2:I mean that that definitely can be the case, uh, and it is something to look for. Um. No, I I don't think it's a more money for do poorly or not or do um better, it's. It's really, you know, money to accomplish the goal. As I understand it. I mean, if there's summer school needed, there's funds there, but there's costs involved with having the summer school too, so it's not like a big boon for the schools.
Speaker 2:The schools get extra dollars for kids with special needs, rightfully so. It costs more money to educate a child with IEP, but so some kids, they're kind of born that way and they're always going to need that assistance to learn. Others, you know, can grow out of that Um. So the the part that sometimes I get concerned with is because there is that extra money for that student and we fund schools by student enrollment and then the demographic, you know, um title one and whatnot. If there's an ability to grow out, I mean, I think most teachers are going to try to grow them out of it, but there is kind of a weird incentive to keep them. Financially speaking, there's a weird incentive to keep them. Financially speaking, there's a weird incentive to keep them where they're at Um, that's not to accuse anybody of doing that but it's it's like any program set up in government, like we want to help um.
Speaker 2:We want to help families out with um meals breakfast and lunch at school Right, because the kids can't learn if they're hungry, and I do believe that. But now it's like so we're taking the responsibility off parents.
Speaker 2:You know at some point we're constantly providing government's becoming the provider, taking stuff off of parents, which it always starts with. Well, there are kids that need this and there are parents not taking responsibility and we can't leave those kids behind. Well, that's absolutely true. It's very easy to support helping those people, and I think as a society we do owe it to those types of people. But when you set up that system, it also sets up the incentive to become one of those people.
Speaker 1:Well, everything is based in good intentions.
Speaker 2:That's clear.
Speaker 1:However, I think that there is, if you break that concept, even just back down to the initial founding fathers, it's parents' responsibility to provide food for your kids. I think we can agree that it's not the school's job to provide food for your kids. I think we can agree that it's not the school's job to provide food for your kids, right, right, but parent doesn't do it, kid shows up hungry. How do you solve that problem? To me and this is going to sound very harsh but a little bit more libertarian it's like the school doesn't do it, right? This is where you get involved with private companies or churches or charity groups. They do it. So we take care of each other outside of the government.
Speaker 1:If the government wants to run schools, they run schools. They don't run schools and programs and social this and food for that and like that is beyond their scope, yeah it. But you have to. You have to have the belief that we will take care of each other and that we won't let each other die in the gutter, right? You know what I mean, and I think that will happen, but everybody's so quick to just throw it to the government. The government should do it, the government should do it it's like no, the government should do what they were designed to do, which is like provide for the common defense, provide infrastructure, infrastructure and like one or two other things.
Speaker 2:You know what I?
Speaker 1:mean, and schools aren't on there, and food's not on there, and health care is not on there.
Speaker 2:So technically schools in Indiana is in our constitution. Okay, actually, the voucher system got challenged based on that because it says we're to provide a public education basically and we are, we do provide it. But where the where the Supreme court came down was is that the dollars are the students to take to whatever school they want to go to. So, um, they didn't see that as outside of the constitution. But you're right federally and I think. But see, this is the difference too.
Speaker 2:If you want to talk original setup and where we are today, uh, you know, original setup was the States, you know, were basically nations and they were the top form of government and we delegated those few common things national defense, those things you listed to this other, you know, unified group that is designed to help all the states. You know, federal government to help all the states. You know federal government. But then the states take care of themselves and you know that that definitely serves my limited government. You know, smaller government, government, close to the people, does a better job, typically kind of mindset. But you know, the federal government has just continued to expand and I think, more than anything, when the US senators stopped being elected by state governments and became a popular vote. That's when we just became one nation. We've always been one nation, but one nation in the sense that we've got a one government that rules us all, as opposed to the states ruling themselves, and we commonality help each other.
Speaker 1:So when did that change? When did the senator vote change? Do you know? I'm so bad at knowing the dates, it's I guess I never knew there was like there was a difference.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so the the, the state governments elected the two US senators, which, if you think about it, makes total sense that you had the people's representative, the popular vote, people's representative in the Congress, and then you have the people's government's representative, the state's government's representative. I bet you you don't get a whole lot of unfunded mandates from the feds to the states if it's the state government's reps voting on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But now you just have people's reps. Basically it's two houses. It's not really a Senate outside of, the terms and the rules are different, but it's just popular vote on both sides. And you know, creating an unfunded mandate doesn't I mean they're not going to get called on the carpet for that because the state government has no influence on the federal government. Yeah, so that's where we get like in healthcare.
Speaker 2:You know, health insurance, specifically regulation. A lot of people don't know this. There's a thing called ERISA. Don't ask me what that acronym is, there's too many acronyms in my world. But the ERISA plans are federally regulated.
Speaker 2:So your self-funded health insurance plans so you know you're around here Steel Dynamics, fort Wayne, community Schools, I'm sure, the police department, the local governments. They self-insure, they take on the risk and then they buy a really large deductible policy from an insurance company. That's kind of their reinsurance at the back end if they have a lot of claims. Those are regulated by the federal government. We as a state can't put any regulation on those health insurance plans. So you're talking about close to 70% to 80% of the population of the state. Their health insurance we can't regulate as a state.
Speaker 2:So you're dealing with Medicaid. You're dealing with individual plans as small groups. Those are really the main and then our state plan, but those are the main ones that we can regulate, but that's such a small percentage. So you know, when we it's a constant thing down chair of the insurance committee down there and we get these bills where it's like let's get rid of all the prior authorization. Prior authorization gets in the way of care and a lot of times it can, although there are some good things involved with prior authorization. But even if we said Indiana doesn't have prior authorization, it affects like 20% maybe of the plans that are out there. So how big of an impact really is it? Because you're still, you know your plan, my plan, well, my plan, state plan, but a lot of your neighbors and friends, their plans aren't affected by anything we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, honestly, I don't think. I mean, you're talking a little bit over my head on some stuff here, and just because I'm ignorant, you know what I mean, and I wonder, like, how much work does the government actually do so that I can remain ignorant?
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Like, does that make sense? Well, i— Like, if you guys do a ton like behind the scenes, like with the insurance and all this stuff, and you know everything that we kind of mentioned, so that everything just keeps turning, all this stuff and everything that we kind of mentioned, so that everything just keeps turning, like if you guys just stopped so say there was like a real long shutdown how would it affect me as an ignorant voter?
Speaker 2:Well, I think being an ignorant voter doesn't take a shutdown to affect you, but I mean shutdowns, long shutdowns. Uh, politically, I don't think it happened. Nobody could let that happen for too long. Um, you get short-term wins and then something breaks, and then you know whatever that's politics, but um it, it's what I'll say. Is this before I got elected, this is my first and only elected office is is a state representative. Um, but you're running for governor right?
Speaker 1:No, I am not. Well, we need somebody better to run for governor. Well, I'm not running for governor.
Speaker 2:So anyway, I have people call me governor and I'm like I don't want that job, I just want to be a state rep. I enjoy being a state rep but I didn't know a fraction of what I know about government now, and it's just because there's intricacies. A lot of it has to do with you know, I don't know even today, like I know little about sewer districts. I don't sit on the committees, it's not a part of my daily life. But government regulates local and state has influence over local because state government created the federal government but state government also created local government. So I always joke with my city council, county council type friends and commissioners you know we took you into the world, we can take you out, although we can't really. But, um, but yeah, the state government, um, that's where I say it was the main thing.
Speaker 2:But there's so much that is done that if it doesn't affect your daily life and as a rep, if I'm not sitting on that committee, it's really hard to know all the intricacies. That's where, when you're down there dealing with those issues, you rely on people you can trust in relationships, other reps that maybe they do that in their daily life. You know we're a citizen legislature in Indiana, which I really appreciate. We're not full-time. I've got a regular job and career outside of being a state representative where other states are full-time. But being that citizen legislator, we bring down our expertise and our life experience and our district makeup into that system to be able to add to the greater picture of what we do. But we do so much it is hard to stay on top of absolutely everything.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's the thing I just um like, I just wanted to make a note, I'll just say it right now Um, like, like, as a as an ignorant voter um, a lot of times they get stuck on the popular issues like abortion, gun rights, um, I mean taxes.
Speaker 1:Right, they'll pick one that they're talking about on on the on the debates immigration immigration is a big deal, yeah, um, like the popular issues versus the boring stuff. So like what should it? So to me, I'm like all right, these social issues which in some ways will never get changed. You know, sometimes like you're talking about perpetual issues between two opposing groups that are so polarized. There's going to be no flex on either side, other than maybe a little bit when somebody gets in charge and somebody changes power or whatever. But like what kind of stuff? I always kind of question like all right, what's getting past that I'm not paying attention to, because we're talking about these big picture things, these popular issues, and where are the shady things, the sneaky things happening?
Speaker 2:Look over here and then all of a sudden, all this backdoor deal's going on over here I would say from state government, and this is going to sound like I'm being too positive about where I serve, but I mean I have not seen much evidence at all of the backroom shady deal thing. I mean, there's been controversy. We passed some regulation on the manufacturing of vaping liquids and there were some security rules that got put into that bill and apparently, you know, unbeknownst to a lot of us. You know that on their face they look like pretty reasonable regulations for a security company that's going to, you know, monitor and monitor the production of the liquids. But it was so. It was authored in such a way that there was only one company currently in Indiana that could actually do the work, and so it felt like to some. Oh, so you just wrote that, so they get all the business.
Speaker 2:That doesn't mean you and I can't start a security company and go do the same thing and fit the rules. So that was one, that kind of Well, you're the lowest bidder. Yeah, exactly, exactly, but you know. So that was one. But honestly, the process is set up in such a way and everyone has representatives down there. You've got a lobbyist as a police officer. You've got a lobbyist as a police officer.
Speaker 2:The FOP is down there. They weigh in on all of our stuff. You know farmers kind of act like we don't have any lobbyists down there. Well, farm Bureau is involved with every farming bill. They do have, everybody does All the social services type groups. They all have United Way. They're all down there representing.
Speaker 2:We all have people down there representing things that we agree with or that affect our lives. We don't necessarily know them, I don't know that. You know the FOP rep that I get to talk to. But those folks down there serve a purpose to let us know. But it also they watch dog stuff that we're doing as much as we do as reps.
Speaker 2:So you know you talk about the opposing views. You know, use 2A right. Second Amendment you know the, the, the gun grabber groups are going to promote everything they see negative about a pro 2A bill and vice versa. If there's a restriction on gun rights, then NRA and others are going to be promoting that right. So there's people always looking over that, not to mention us as representatives. And the process to get a bill passed into law is so cumbersome Some people get frustrated by it At first. In the law is so cumbersome Some people get frustrated by it At first. I got frustrated by it and then, as I see more and more bad ideas considered every session. We do a lot of good stuff, so don't get me wrong. But I'm very appreciative of the slow pace of change within government in most cases, because there's so many angles to things you don't think about.
Speaker 1:Oh my God. And then so many ways that you can inadvertently create a really bad thing. Yeah, I mean, look at 2020 as a whole right, just in general. But if we look at payroll protection, like the PPP that got ramrodded so fast, it was like we need to do this, we need to do it right now. And then all of a sudden, it's like all right, all this money is just like injected into everything and no one's tracking it. Nobody knows where it's going, nobody knows what it's been used for. Then, all of a sudden, it's all forgiven. It's insane.
Speaker 1:Like it was literally insane. And then you got you know it was designed for small businesses. I didn't go out of business, which is like restaurants gyms are two of the major ones. I get it, you know, um, but man it it. It inadvertently did like not only injected a bunch of cash that nobody was tracking yeah Right, um but it also made me take a loan out from the government. Yeah, and I, and I immediately I don't know if we talked about this or not, but I immediately thought I am a debt-free business that has now been basically backed into a corner where I have to take a loan out from the US government and that technically means the US government owns part of my business. What's that sound like China? You know what I mean. That's how China operates. The government owns everything, including private business, which isn't really private. The government owns it. And I was like, oh, this is as much as it was designed to help. I think it was. I wonder if there was anybody that was like, oh man, we can basically backdoor communism into this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I don't think Trump was thinking that, of course. I mean he was thinking from the business perspective of getting shut down. Yeah, uh, but yeah, I, I'm sure there are people I mean the deep state or whatever. You know, there's definitely people that um who is the?
Speaker 1:have you seen the deep state?
Speaker 2:Like who are these guys? It's beautiful this time of year. If you can visit, I don't know who the deep state is?
Speaker 2:It's uh everybody probably has a different definition Um, I think it. I think, as I think of what could be classified as a deep state, it is a? Um, you know, people, people that are involved, somehow influence influencers in government that have more of a global view than a than a America first view, and I think there's a lot more of that than we realize. That is in the DC bureaucracy. That's the part that I think needs rooted out, and I think everything's done with labels and bumper stickers and you talk about, like with elections.
Speaker 2:You said that an uninformed. I don't. I don't think you're actually as uninformed as you're saying in terms of voting, but political campaigns are going to hit the issues that move votes. So when you say you know, you hear about, you know guns and abortion and taxes, and well, that's because that's what moves people to vote. There's not one message that you see in any political campaign that's run in any professional way that hasn't been tested, whether that's through voter ID calls or issue-based calls or push polls or whatever. You hear all this stuff's going on, da-da-da, and then, all of a sudden, the mail shows up and the TV commercials show up.
Speaker 1:Okay and the text messages come, so that makes sense. So basically they're doing trial-based or they're getting an idea of what to push as far as a marketing standpoint to get people to get out and do what they want them to do, and it's really hard to do that with sewers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nobody gives a shit. Yeah, like I don't care.
Speaker 1:I don't care. Right, I don't care. Just make it so I can flush my toilet. I don't care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:No that, that makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 2:It's the same thing that campaigns are really interesting. Animal Um it's. A lot of people get frustrated with negative campaigning. I just hate negative campaigning and I generally have run most mostly positive campaigns and people usually thank me for that. Um, but the reality is negative campaigning. But the reality is negative campaigning works in many cases, otherwise I wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1:Well, negative emotions in general elicit more of a response, right? So if you even go to comments on YouTube, or whatever.
Speaker 1:one negative comment in a sea of positive comments is going to wreck you, you know, or it can. People focus on the negative way more than the positive, and that's really like an evolutionary benefit, because if you don't focus on the negative or the scary, there's a chance that the analogy one of the best analogies I've heard is like it's nighttime and you hear a rustle in the bushes right, and you assume that there's an animal in there that's going to kill you, or a monster or something, right? That's much more evolutionary adaptive than saying it's probably nothing.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean, because the one time you're wrong, you're dead right.
Speaker 1:So, from an evolutionary standpoint, that's why it works, but it doesn't. You know what I mean In this context. It's just a little different and it feels kind of slimy.
Speaker 2:It definitely can, and I mean, I've been the subject of negative campaigns because that's a tactic too. Generally speaking, you can tell where a race is based on the behavior of the campaign or the two campaigns. So you know, if you go, let's just do the governor's race right now. So you've got McCormick and you've got Braun who else do we have? And Rainwater, rainwater, yeah, libertarian. Who else do we have?
Speaker 1:this is oh god, okay, but we're gonna we're gonna. Rainwater has no chance of winning, sorry to my libertarian viewers here still gonna get my vote, but that's fine, but you got mccormick and braun okay, so I'm gonna keep it just those two.
Speaker 2:If all of a sudden you see just a boatload of negative braun ads from the McCormick camp, she's behind.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, that makes sense, and and and if and if all of a sudden, after after a couple of weeks of that, you start seeing oh, you know, mccormick hates puppies and you know, you know, whatever expelled you know good kids from school when she was a principal Right, then things are getting tight. That means the negative campaigning for McCormick worked and now we got to go negative on the bronze side, okay, and so when you see that back and forth, you know it's a close race. So people are freaking out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not necessarily freaking out, it's just you got to stop the tide. Yeah, you know, because I think you can do too much of it though. A hundred percent you can.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like, so it feels like, and how you do it matters so much. So tell me if this is a good analogy for that. I'm down by two scores and I'm freaking out because my run games got shut down, right, right, and now I'm throwing it all over the world trying to get it back, like right now trying to get it back, like right now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm trying to make something happen right now because the clock's running out. That's right. Right, is that semi-accurate? Yeah, okay, completely. It's like pressure, like I get. I'm getting pressure to make something happen, that's right.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's right and and and and. In elections you win by getting the most votes, right. So you? So the mindset of the average person is is you want to get as many people to vote for you? Everybody has a ceiling. So you know my district has about I don't know how many registered voters, but you know it's going to be about 67,000-ish people in it.
Speaker 2:I'm probably, based on registration can only get, you know, x percentage of voters, let's say 60% of voters based on the registration Republican versus Democrat. If I do polling and all of a sudden I'm at 53, well then I need to get my people out. If I do positive messaging they don't react and maybe it only goes to 54 and my opponent is starting to creep in. Then the only other way to affect an election is to suppress the vote of the opponent. And so then that's when the negative campaigning comes out. So you, so the people who maybe normally would vote for you, but they're like, I'm not so sure about him, but I like this other candidate's messaging so far and I didn't realize some lie about me. I can't believe he did that. I probably didn't. I would encourage anybody on the negative campaigns if you have a way to access the actual candidate, and the closer the race is, the more accessible. Generally, we can be ask them to explain it and that's why I door knock a lot during really tough campaigns.
Speaker 2:It gives me an opportunity to talk to voters one-on-one, and I have people you know your opponent said this isn't this and I'm like, yeah, let me explain and go through it. Man, I'm so glad you stopped by, because that makes sense, you know. But on its face, I mean I wouldn't vote for the person who the opponent's saying it is. But that isn't me. It's just a, you know, a total bastardization of a record or complete outright lies, yeah, so it's got to be harder, or maybe not with as much as is recorded anymore.
Speaker 1:You know, about like documenting what you said, how you said it, like it's gotta be. It got to be hard to say that you didn't say something, but at the same time you can chop anything up out of context and with AI now you can just create it completely just out of thin air. Out of thin air, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the really kind of scary stuff. Not getting outside of elections, the AI, uh taken, I mean, somebody take this voice from this recording and they can make me say anything now. Yeah, or if my kid on social media is trying to be an influencer with his five kids, his five friends at school that watches videos, you know that kind of person well, that video is out there and if it's not locked down, privacy wise, any scammer can get that voice. And you've I mean you and law enforcement have certainly been shown this and trained on this where these people will threaten a parent using the voice of the child.
Speaker 1:I need help, I need, you know, send all this money, send the money because I'm, you know, trapped or whatever, and or they're using it.
Speaker 2:It's not so much parents, because parents can usually figure it out, but grandparents are very susceptible. Yeah, and so they talk about families need to have a safe word. You know, if something like that happens, you know that somebody wouldn't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've heard we we got some, some in-service training or something on that, uh, but I've never like I've never taken a report on anything like that yeah a bunch of other stuff, like old people get scammed all the time I know, you know um and honestly, like some of it, most of it's not even illegal. You know, it's just like, don't do that don't give people money.
Speaker 2:Catfishing, I mean the catfishing scandals. I don't know how Is it illegal to fake a personality and get somebody to send you money, based on a lie At some point, there could be some fraud involved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I suppose, but I mean a lot of times it's like buyer beware man. Yeah, don't do that. That's just stupid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can buyer beware man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't do that. It's just, it's just stupid. Yeah, you can't. You can't outlaw stupidity. You know all of it. Like you can't we try that leads to problems, though it's like sometimes stupid people just got to have stupid consequences like that's just sorry, well, I mean every now and again.
Speaker 2:Burning your hand on something teaches you not to touch it anymore. You learn some hard lessons, yeah yeah, how did you get?
Speaker 1:there's a bunch of stuff that I wanted to kind of backtrack to. But let's go all the way back Like how'd you get into politics? Like why'd you, why'd you even want to do this?
Speaker 2:I get this question quite a bit. I I never knew where I would fit into politics, uh, I. What's funny is I don't come from a political family, from an immediate standpoint. Um, my mom and dad weren't in politics, uh, my grandparents on either side weren't in politics.
Speaker 1:You're not a kennedy, I'm not a kennedy, you're not a.
Speaker 2:You're not a henry no, I'm not a henry. I am not a henry, um. But what's funny is on the carboss side there's uh. My dad's uncle Harry was, I believe, a treasurer for the national Republican party when Nixon was in office. Now that'll probably be used against me in some campaign.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were pro pro Nixon, pro Nixon. Yeah, you support a war game. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, pro Nixon, yeah, you support a war game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, um, but anyway. So, uh and my grandmother just moved um to a new place and my dad's going through things and he found a picture of uncle Harry with Richard Nixon down in Florida. So, uh, I'd always heard the stories. Now we got an actual picture. That was kind of cool, um, but it was actually on my mom's side. My grandpa, uh, I grew up on a family farm. It was his farm and I was out there. A couple of cousins, their families, were there and in the summer times I would hang out with him, help him garden, and he had woe on all the time. And that was back in the early 90s when Rush Limbaugh was starting to climb the mountain yeah, prime Rush, yeah, and really defining what conservative talk radio is, yeah, and so he had it on all the time. So it was always kind of in the background, did you listen to Michael Savage too?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, savage Every now and again, yeah.
Speaker 1:What did he say? Psychological nudity or something like that was part of his beginning. It was a weird deal. I remember the tagline for him was Pinkokami pervs.
Speaker 2:That was a big one for him, savage.
Speaker 2:I just remember that part. Yeah, michael Savage man that's a throwback, yeah, but anyway. So born in 79. So when the first Gulf War happened, I'm like 11, 12 years old. So, like when the first Gulf War happened, I'm like 11, 12 years old, it's like prime time for me. Like got very interested in that whole thing. You know the US is in a war, you know. So up until that point I had read about wars or got taught some stuff in school, but this was experiencing it, so I was captivated by that. This was experiencing it, so I was captivated by that and that got my interest level there. But didn't really get involved until in high school. One of my classmates is city councilman, russ Yale. Another one is county councilman, Kyle Curley. We all graduated the same class from Concordia Go K-dads and they they Russ's family is much more involved in Republican politics here in Fort Wayne and I got involved, really through him and his family, you know, helping out different campaigns. And then he ran for office in 2011, beating incumbent Democrat.
Speaker 2:That was a lot of fun. I was his volunteer coordinator. I knocked on a lot of doors for Russ and makes me a pretty odd person, but I actually enjoyed the door knocking and talking to people and learning about people's issues at the doors and just how to approach people and deal with things. I really liked it. So then the next year, 2012, it was the first election on the new legislative maps and my representative had changed from Kathy Hewer to Wynn Moses. Had he continued to be the rep starting in 2013. And our friend Kyle.
Speaker 2:He reached out to me and was like man, you got to run against Wynn Moses and I'm like I don't know if I want to do that. I mean, you know Wynn had been there 20 years. He was a mayor, he was a city councilman before I was even born. Like he's kind of a. I always look at him as kind of like a Fort Wayne Kennedy, like he just is an institution right and you know.
Speaker 2:But I talked to people in the party, looked at the demographics of the new 81st district and it was a much more 50-50 district where before it was pretty angled towards a Democrat district. It was really hard, it was going to be really hard to ever beat Wynn in the old district. In the new district it was winnable. But they told me you've got to go out and do the work, kind of like Russ go out and knock on a lot of doors.
Speaker 2:And I thought, well, I put a lot of work in for his and enjoyed it, so I'm not scared of that part of it. Um, you know, I'd never raised money for anything, so that part was an interesting thing to get used to, um, and to ask, asking people for money and just getting connected, and Russ helped a lot with that and others. But, uh, you know, talk to Sally and Caitlin, and I was a dad of one at that point. Um, and they were both very supportive of me taking the chance and going out and doing that, and so an oversimplified uh conclusion is we did a lot of work and I won.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember we've talked about the door knocking and I was like you got to do online Like you got to do like Facebook lives. I remember like you're like shut up, you don't know what you're talking about, and you're like, no, you got to go knock on doors and I was like I didn't understand it at the time, but really now, like sitting here listening to that, it makes sense. So. So what you're going for is face-to-face interaction that you're good at right, and then that'll create word of mouth Definitely does yes.
Speaker 1:And that is like, that's grassroots marketing, like step number one is like ask for referrals. Right, so that makes total sense, and every salesperson that I listen to is like door-to-door sales will teach you more about sales than anything else, so that seems to make sense now. Completely yeah, you sold me on it.
Speaker 2:Well, when you want to run, let me know.
Speaker 1:So all right, so like jumping around a little bit. I know we talked a lot about constitutional carry in Indiana. So we transitioned. How many years ago was that?
Speaker 2:Two, three.
Speaker 1:It's only been two or three yeah, so talk to me about that. How did you get involved in that or how involved were you in that, and what are your thoughts on constitutional carry versus handgun permits?
Speaker 2:Yeah well, I'm definitely for it. I voted for it. But not only that. This gets into the process of creating law. The typical way, of course, is you file a bill, it gets assigned to a committee, the chairman hears, the bill gets voted out of committee, gets through second reading and third reading on the House floor and we vote it out, goes to the Senate. Same process. If they don't change it, then it goes directly to the governor. If they change it, it comes back and then I have to decide do I agree with these changes?
Speaker 2:That's a you file a consent motion, you consent with the changes and then the house has to vote on that, because the exact same language has to pass two houses before the governor can sign it, or I can dissent, and then, at a dissent, the speaker sets up a conference committee, which is just, it's a committee. There's four conferees uh, house Republican, house Democrat, senate Republican, senate, democrat to start um for a bill, and then you hash out the details of the differences in the two forms and whatnot. Um, excuse me. And so you have conference committee time. Well, during conference committee time, the rules for what can be in and out of the reports, it's a different set of rules during that process and the Senate and the House have different rules or a lot of similarities, but there's definitely they're much more sticklers in that time period on germaneness. So germaneness just meaning that a bill has to have one topic essentially, which makes us very different than DC in a very good way.
Speaker 1:Very good way.
Speaker 2:Now you know you get bills like the budget. I mean everything touches the budget so anything could be put in the budget, but most bills you know you're not going to have a school choice bill that affects health insurance regulation. It just doesn't go together Right. So I appreciate that as well. But during conference committee you can strip out the language of your bill. That passed both houses in different ways. But I dissented. I dissented on a bill, stripped that out. Now you have to get the signature of all the authors on the bill and you can have up to four authors in the house. But I was the only author. I didn't have any co-authors on that bill because it was like a miwa which I don't know. Anybody really knows what that is, except for people down in Indy. But multi-employer welfare agreement, it's a health insurance thing. Basically it had gotten turned into a study committee which they're already automatically considered for study committee if it gets changed. So I didn't have to pass it into law to have it be considered. So it was basically an open bill that I controlled because I was the only author. So I stripped it out and the House version of constitutional carry is what I put in it and then I actually changed the authorship. So Ben Smaltz from Auburn. He had been for several years kind of pushing the constitutional carry concept and idea and he was the one filing the bill that year. Even it got changed pretty dramatically in the Senate and was not in a place that he was comfortable with or I was comfortable with or anybody really was comfortable with. So instead of trying to work on that bill, we put his version in mine, I changed to co author and he became author and presented it and it got passed into law there.
Speaker 2:Now in that case, you know it's not like I can just willy-nilly do this like super easily. You definitely have to have some leadership buy-in and you and people need to know what's going on and through that process you have a hearing, the Commerce Committee has a hearing. You don't have to take testimony and a lot of times you don't and you hash things out. Now, obviously, on a bill like that, it's going to be really hard to ever get a Democrat to sign off on that. So you do need the signature of all four conferees in order for that bill to be considered in the House and Senate. Well, we start with one Republican, one Democrat on both sides House and Senate. The Speaker and the pro tem in the Senate have the right to remove conferees and put new ones on. So in a handful of bills, every session in conference committee, it'll be four Republicans two in the House, two in the Senate that sign off for it to be considered With a supermajority. We have that flexibility, although it's still really hard, because even within a supermajority it's funny Some of my really conservative uh friends and constituents are like well, why can't you do, you know, fill in the blank of something super conservative?
Speaker 2:And I'm like well, there isn't a super majority of those kinds of conservatives. There's a wide range, as we see in the national level, wide range of people who call themselves Republican, and different parts of the state are different too. You know, northeast Indiana is not the same as central Indiana, it's not the same as northwest and whatnot. So, anyway, so that was my involvement was right.
Speaker 2:At the end I was able to salvage what we really wanted on the house side and then Ben carried over the finish line to put it into law. And my perspective on that whole thing is that and I think we talked about it at the time a permit to carry a gun is a permit You're permitted. How I look at it is we are permitting a constitutional right, which seems weird, correct and something that I can't get on board with, and so that's why I was a proponent of constitutional carry. Ironically so, that bill went into effect July 1st that year and in I'm pretty sure it was the month of July, it may have been early August there was a shooter at a mall down in central Indiana, yep, and a guy who didn't hadn't had a permit, had a gun and he took him out like a pretty skilled shot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very far. I think it was like I want to say a 50-yard shot, yeah, with a handgun, yeah.
Speaker 2:And saved countless lives. Had we not, would he have done it? I mean probably, but would he have felt comfortable carrying that gun into the mall? Maybe not, probably not. I would say but that's the thing.
Speaker 1:A law-abiding citizen follows the law Right, and it's like An active shooter doesn't yeah it's so strange.
Speaker 2:It's so strange how criminals don't pay attention. A lot you talk about ignorant voters. Criminals are really ignorant. Actually, they're not ignorant of the law. You know that. They know exactly what the laws are and they push past them. So that's ultimately where, to me, constitutional right limits you put on that stuff is only going to limit the people who follow laws.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I couldn't agree more. We had guys on on our department I'm trying to do this without saying like departmental names and stuff but uh, um, that that did not want this to pass and went down and I think actually I don't know if it was to gave testimony or just were interviewed or what, what the the process testimony, yeah, um, against it you it and at first I was like all right, I understand, we want to take guns away from bad guys quote, unquote bad guys and without this as a tool, it's going to limit our ability to do that, potentially, potentially, and, as a result, more gun crime is going to be committed, right?
Speaker 1:it's not what the stats say in the other states that's not what the stats say ever you know, and in 2020, like I just talked to um uh, nolan meeks from taxcon armament last week had a really good podcast with him. We talked about this a little bit. In 2020, I had a big shift in how I viewed law enforcement as a whole, like ideologically right when it's not we had a lot of conversations during that time. Yes, and it's not just how many laws can I enforce? I want more laws to enforce.
Speaker 1:And we get so stuck as cops where we think that that's our only role is in enforcement, when really it's a balance between enforcing the laws that are there and making sure that we don't overstep our constitutional rights as police officers and infringe on your rights as a citizen. We have to know where the line is to stop and because much of what we do is solo right, we go to runs by ourselves, we figure this stuff out ourselves, like we're navigating these laws alone a lot of times, like in the moment where we have to figure out in a split second, like what to do and how to act right Based on laws and policy and that kind of stuff. But so because of that, we are more than just an enforcement arm, like we are actually like a protector of the law itself. So if we know where it ends, we know where to stop and we have to protect that just as much as the other way. Right, yeah, and that's where I had a shift with constitutional carry. I was like, in a time where the law books are this thick, we need way less laws like period Right, we should have less work.
Speaker 1:And when you actually talk about defund the police, I think it's actually like make the laws smaller so you don't need us as much. You're not outsourcing your safety and stuff to the cops as much, like that is a good thing, just like what we talked about with education it's your responsibility, not the cops, not the school, right? So should we defund them? Like, maybe, maybe a little bit. Not my stance, no, maybe maybe a little bit, but in a different Not my stance.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, I'm just saying I know what you're saying, though In a different context, like, are we defunding the police? Well, kind of not, really. You know, we're just limiting the scope of what you should do, right? And I think limiting scope of governmental power is always a good thing to examine and be able to look at and say, well, should we limit their scope? And in this case I'd say the answer is yes, like 100%, and we did that, and it was a good move.
Speaker 1:And what we haven't seen is an uptick in homicides, I don't think in the last two years. The only thing that I was talking to guys at work today about was have we had more shootings since constitutional carry has been established? And the answer was been, uh, established and um, and the answer was like, we don't think so, but we might. We may have had an uptick in police action, shootings, and there's a whole slew of like things that go into as to why that could be. If that's a thing, so it'd have to look at it's cause and effect too, right? No idea, um, you know, and correlation is not causation ever, right? Like, just cause, two things are going up at the same time Doesn't mean that one causes the other.
Speaker 1:Crime and ice cream, right? Um, but uh, but yeah. So I think overall that was that was a really good thing. That we have now is constitutional carry and the same people that we were afraid of having the guns like there are a decent amount of, like you know, gang members and stuff that we'll find that will have guns and they'll be carrying them legally. And it's like what are you going to do? Like you give them back to them and say good luck, guys, we'll see you later.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And uh and you, uh. You either wait until they become a prohibited person, which I'm going to ask about in a second, yeah, but or you put together a better investigation that actually uses the gang laws that are on the books to take the guns, then and it takes a lot longer time and it's a lot longer work, but it doesn't infringe on constitutional rights, which is obviously the most important thing.
Speaker 2:Right, and when you're doing it, you're doing it like it's legit. Yeah, it's not just knee jerk Right, yeah, which is important, I mean it's very important.
Speaker 1:Yes, otherwise you're going to, you're going to step on people's rights and again in a time when it's like we need less laws and more individual rights like we, that's, that's the way we want to be trending you know, no-transcript constitution that says if you're crazy, you can't have a gun right and actually like side note, there is often times when, uh, when people with mental illness like they'll get forcibly removed from their homes and stuff and it's like, does that really fit the 24-hour immediate detention?
Speaker 1:Like I don't? You know, sometimes that gets pushed a little too far, right, because they're not going to complain. That's a population that's not going to complain.
Speaker 2:Right. You know Well, and I think it's those scenarios where you see some of the you know, the groups more on the left side of these issues say that that should be a social worker, that shouldn't be a cop. You know they're being forcibly removed, but they really have a mental illness and like they need treatment. Well, they try that.
Speaker 1:Even here they try, right, a lot of times they'll have local organizations and stuff that will do that. And they still call us out because the people are like no, I'm not going and you're going to have to forcibly do it. So when you have to use force, then they need to call the cops, who are just like basically bouncers. At that point, right, like, hey, I'm going to call these guys and they're going to beat you up if you don't do it. Like that's basically what it is, it's like physical enforcement, yeah. And that's where we again have to be like no, sorry, do-gooding social workers, it doesn't fit. It doesn't fit the statute.
Speaker 1:I'm not taking this person out of their home Even though they are suffering from mental illness. I can't take their rights away just because they have a mental illness. You can't do that. They have to be a threat to themselves or somebody else based on the statute that we have. And the same thing goes for guns. There's oftentimes we get people that are doing seemingly crazy things with firearms and it's like all right, they don't have a diagnosed mental illness, they don't, they aren't you know one of these prohibited things. They're not threatening to kill themselves or anybody else. It's wildly irresponsible maybe, but like can we take their guns for that?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't think so. No, I don't think so.
Speaker 2:No, we can't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but where do you so when you're putting this together, did you have anything to do with the prohibited persons?
Speaker 2:No, so, ultimately, Representative Smaltz Ben, he was the spearhead on that and, and prior to him, um, out of Seymour, representative Lucas, he came in with me and he, this was like his number one issue. Now he's uh, I love Jim, Uh he's, he's a good guy, but he, you know, he um, he's real active on social media and sometimes that's a double-edged sword, Sometimes that's not a great thing, yeah yeah, exactly, so um it's not a great thing.
Speaker 2:Ask Trump, yeah, yeah, exactly. So now Jim doesn't do the mean tweets, but he'll do things that can be taken a negative way, and then you know he gets in trouble for that, but Ben is the one that really ushered that through. So the prohibited persons I mean. The one thing I do know, though, like FOP, you know, law enforcement was not super excited about this bill, for the reasons you mentioned.
Speaker 1:But they should. That's the thing, man, they should be. We should be happy about this. Like every I don't know any cops that are like, yes, we need more gun regulation. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I don't they weren't calling for more.
Speaker 2:They just thought that this was. You know what I mean? Yeah, and they weren't calling for more. They just thought that this was so the number one thing that I heard again, not being on the committee and not being the lead author through the whole thing the one thing I heard was is that when you pull me over with the permit in the system, you know, walking up, I may have a gun, but you also know that I was responsible enough to get a permit Right. And so there was like, if we don't have that, then you know, do we lose that?
Speaker 2:Well, here's the bottom line is, we still issue permits. People can still get permits for reciprocity to other states. We didn't get rid of the permit, we just said that if you're not a prohibited person, you don't have to have that permit in Indiana to carry the gun. Um, but you, you're more than welcome and we took away the fee to get the permit. It used to be expensive and we, we, we defunded over time, um, because we didn't want money to be excused to limit the constitutional right.
Speaker 2:Right, right and when, when we found out that everyone could survive, not you know spending or not collecting all this money for permits, then we did the constitutional carry but the prohibited persons. I know that he worked with law enforcement on that and how that would look.
Speaker 1:I think if push came to shove and somebody really, really pushed that, I think it should be overturned. You know what I mean? Prohibited persons. Well, maybe it should be overturned. You know what I mean, prohibited persons?
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, well, maybe, but I mean, you know, prohibited person, you know, somebody with a felony right Can't have a gun, Isn't that right? Prohibitive person is generally those who can't have a gun.
Speaker 1:Correct Right. Those are the people that can still be arrested for carrying a handgun. Period Period Right.
Speaker 1:So you can't carry a handgun if you are one of these six qualifiers or whatever it is, like you know, uh, like adjudicated mentally ill, uh convicted felon in the last like five years, or something like that.
Speaker 1:And then, like I'd have to look it up, like we literally have to look up every time we find one, just to verify like, yes, this, uh, if there's, um, certain types of protective orders in place, that kind of stuff, Right, but some of those are really, you're like, you're like how does this, how does this dude not fall into one of these categories? And then you end up not taking their gun, or you take their gun and you're like how is this? Okay, you know some, sometimes these protective order things get real dicey and it's like, well, technically there's a protective order in place and you're, it's on file, and even though you're, maybe you're not violating the protective order or, um, you know, like you might, like you're doing everything other than just carrying a gun, which you always have until you got this protective order in place, and now you're going to jail. You know, interesting.
Speaker 2:So there, that's something we can talk about on offline, if there's ways to. I mean, I think if you have a protective order and you're violating it and you're carrying a gun, maybe that's a stronger argument than just any willy-nilly can file a protective order.
Speaker 1:Right, but then you wouldn't need to make it a prohibited person. You just make it an add-on to the invasion of privacy. You know what I mean? Like you're invading privacy with a lethal weapon, basically, or something to that effect.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you wouldn't need to even have it as part of the handgun laws. You just add it to the other law that they're already violating Invading privacy. That's like violation of protective order.
Speaker 2:Okay okay, yeah, we'll have to talk offline because my mind starts turning on. Well, what about this? What about?
Speaker 1:that. Well, I'm saying again, everything is built in for legitimate, good reasons. Like all right, well, we need add-ons for convicted felons and for invasion of privacy or protective orders in place so people don't get in a domestic, you get a protective order put in place against that person and then they come back and kill you. Well, we should just make sure we preemptively take their guns away. That's really a thought process, I think. That's the way it seems to me. But at the same time it's like all right, does this really fit like constitutionality? Yeah, does it Like? I don't know?
Speaker 2:man. Well, it'd be interesting to know if anybody's challenged it on those bases. Yet I don't know. I mean, sometimes that's how the laws change is it gets challenged.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying, like, if I got arrested for something like that, that's where I would push. I would push like this is a constitutional carry state and this is a right that I have based on the Constitution, and you know, the only thing you get into then would be states' rights and that kind of stuff. And where do states' rights, can they supersede the Constitution and that kind of stuff?
Speaker 2:It's like I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I mean, those are all like never-ending conversations, yeah.
Speaker 2:But a lot of times the only way to end them is through a court system, I mean at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:Well, and at this point, the fact that they're already on the books means that it has to go to the court system in order for it to be overturned or taken away or whatever.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I don't for the life of me. I don't understand why more especially conservative right-wing cops that don't want guns taken away from citizens why we wouldn't be like, yeah, get rid of all of it. You know, and I think that's more of a fear base for, like, we buy into some of that same ideology inadvertently, like, well, it's safer for society if these people don't have weapons, like, okay, we'll see and that's yeah, and ultimately like the arguments for the permit, keeping the permit requirement.
Speaker 2:It was all emotion-based and and even after the fact you know, I have a really good constituent. He's a client of mine too and he always puts up a big sign for me for elections, and he was talking, I think I had thrown out there the idea of you know, constitutional care, and he's like, well, you know, I kind of like the permits and I'm not sure we should have done that and I'm like, really why? And he's like I just think it's you know safer and it's it's all based on, um, well, cause, then the people are going to get a background check. Yes, the people that are willing to follow laws, I mean, I wonder how many ever got rejected. Well, there's still background checks when you buy a weapon, and that that too, although although you, you know, like if I sold one to, you right you don't, we're not having to, which is that that's part of what they want to try to push.
Speaker 2:I don't know how you regulate that. I mean, how is? How would you, as a police officer, enforce something like that?
Speaker 1:you'd have to know about the sale. Yes, it's.
Speaker 2:It's one of those that, um, I just think it's impractical, like, even if you put it on the books, I don't think. Think it actually like, how does it work, you know? Or if I inherit weapons from somebody who passes away, you know my father-in-law has a bunch and I think I'm likely, you know my wife and I are likely to get those, but you know so do I have to go through a background check to inherit? You know, like you know, and then how do they know it even exists? And you know, it's just, it's just kind of a rabbit hole when you get into the actual nitty gritty details of things. And that's the thing in serving. That's really taught me like we are fed what's understandable in narrative all the time, whether it's through media or campaigns or whatever. But man, these issues get down to just minute details that make big differences. Yeah, really big differences.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's where I think, a personal philosophy on things that has to be like like, very like, hard line, but broad. You know where it's like no, this is what I believe and this does not fit. This does not fit this. You know at all Um and it's, and even if it is, is good intentioned, you know like sorry, it doesn't fit. You know, like, this is not the government's responsibility, this is, this is your responsibility.
Speaker 1:And it's like you know a lot of the I? W. I would say that that almost all gun laws are a result of fear and people wanting to stop tragedies, which is understandable, but at the same time, we all want to like you can't stop traffic accidents, you know what I mean. Like you can't. You can't do you can't stop death. You know Right, and all you can do is be prepared for it, and especially with gun laws. Like guns are tools and if bad people want to do bad stuff with guns, the same people are going to do bad stuff with knives or their hands.
Speaker 2:Oh, we see that in Europe.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, and yes, and, and countries that they don't have as many weapons available, firearms available. They make other weapons Right they still do bad shit. Well, they make other weapons Right, they still do bad shit, yeah. So bottom line is you still got to be ready for it you know Well, and is it true, that actually a crime committed.
Speaker 2:You don't want any crimes committed, but to think that crime would stop is silliness, right? Yes, so a crime committed with a gun is actually? Isn't that a little bit more easy to track and find versus like a knife? Well, there's more ballistics, that's what I mean. Like there's just so much more, I guess, evidence for lack of a better term that you can find and pin on somebody when a knife I mean, you can do all the damage, walk away. You know there's nothing, you know there's no like ballistics off of a knife, left on the person.
Speaker 1:Well, and you're talking like you know, serialized, like what the weapons are, serialized, everything is like. It's easier to track, that's for sure, than an edge weapon that you can create with a shard of glass and a roll of duct tape, right? You know what I mean, right? Um? So, yeah, yeah, there's more evidence, for sure, but they're also more effective killing tools.
Speaker 2:Right, so it's a trade. It's a trade.
Speaker 1:It is a trade off for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah of course, and then you start getting into, you can get into the psychology of killing and the fact that it is. It is much more like dehumanizing to shoot somebody at distance than it is to kill someone up close with your hands or with a knife or something like that. Like that's, like that's a lot harder to do, uh, even for psychopaths, I think. You know, um, it's exhausting, like you see. You see people that have done things like that and they're just physically wiped out from from the killing, from the physical act of killing another human being with their hands, especially like shooting them is is not as much, that's more of a video game scenario. Well, kind of. So the video games are simulators.
Speaker 1:Yeah right and even when you look back to like Columbine, you know you could see that Like the active shooters like are playing these video games that are designed as first-person simulators.
Speaker 2:So do you think video games are creating a lot of the problems?
Speaker 1:No, I don't, yeah, because before it was video games, it was movies and it was something else, like it was always something. The media changes, but the underlying current of, like you know, like a desire to like look into the darkness or look into aggressive tendencies or, like you know, fighting and killing and that kind of stuff, like that's never going away and it's always been there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, like the media, just changes, that's all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Medieval times kind of shows that it's always been yes absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you can track it all the way back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's interesting it's interesting.
Speaker 1:Um, so, staying with, staying with laws, let's. I want to, I want to ask, and you don't have to answer any of this if you don't want, right, I'm going to give you a pass on it if you don't want, but so like, uh like laws that affect us as cops, right. Um, and this is going back to like 2020 stuff uh, like qualified immunity, right? So what do you feel about? Like, what do you think about that? And then I'll go from there.
Speaker 2:Well, admittedly, my opinion of qualified immunity comes from conversations with you, and I mean because I didn't, you know, I'd never really heard that term until 2020. And, and, um, you know, it was in the news, or considered changes, all these different things, and that's what I reach out to you, and I appreciate the fact that I can reach out to you on anything. I send you, send you videos of police actions and like what, what am I not seeing?
Speaker 2:And I think that we can get back. Uh, I'd like to go to at some point is um, your, I'd like your perspective on body cams? Yeah, Good, bad, good, the good and the bad Cause I think there's both. Um, but on the qualified immunity, I don't know how anybody could do the job that you do without qualified immunity as this exists today. I wouldn't. Yeah, I mean, I, I really don't know. I don't know how that could exist.
Speaker 1:So the qualified immunity that we have is actually very limited, right? So, like, yeah, you taught me that, yeah, yeah. So, like, just to just to make sure all the like, most of the points are here like it's, it's only if I'm acting under the color of law, which means I'm doing my job and I'm following the law. Right, if I do something, that I'm at that point, if I'm doing that, if I'm held liable for something, it is not a criminal matter. Right, it's not a criminal matter. And then you can't take my stuff. Basically, like, you can't civilly sue me personally. You can sue the department I work for, you can do all that kind of stuff, but you can. You can't take my cars, my house, you can't make me homeless and penniless, right, right? Um, now, if I'm acting criminally, that's a different story altogether. Right, then, I'm not covered under that qualified immunity.
Speaker 2:That's, that's why it's qualified which, which, um yeah the word qualified right um, which, in the case of chauvin, I agree or disagree with the result.
Speaker 1:That's basically what they determined. Right, they determined he was acting criminally. Right Now he got kind of railroaded, I think, but yeah, so he was not. That was not found under qualified immunity because he was acting criminally, according to the court.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and that's what people really didn't understand that especially like high ranking politicians like Mike Braun.
Speaker 2:Right, I remember the interview, I remember talking to him afterwards.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's the thing like, like for you know, seeing him run for governor, like he would have to answer the question as to why he acted the way he did in 2020, as to if I mean personally, if I'm going to vote for him or not. You know, and it was like dude, you have no clue about qualified immunity. You were speaking way outside of your scope and having very strong opinions because he's a high ranking politician and you guys do right, which is which is understandable.
Speaker 2:We're required to at times. Well, I.
Speaker 1:I do too and I understand that, but it's like dude, you required to at times. Well, I, I do too and I understand that, but it's like dude, you're talking out your ass, you have no clue and you are completely ignorant and it appears like you are shifting to whatever's popular because you want to hang on to your office. And, uh, it was very vindicating after I had that phone call with him, when he got ripped to shreds by tucker, like that was like I was like that's beautiful, right, beautiful. So he would have to answer that Like why did he have those opinions? How did he come to terms with that? Does he still feel the same way? And that's a pretty big issue for a right-wing, a person that says he's a conservative right-wing guy and it basically is like going to screw all of the cops in the entire state.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And not that you're asking me to defend him or that I'm going to speak for him.
Speaker 1:No, I'm just skewing my thoughts right now.
Speaker 2:I know we had conversations I remember no, but I did ask him about it and I got the impression, based on what he said, was and it did kind of feel like and I don't know if you would agree with this or not, but it felt like that it was moving towards there was going to be some kind of change. And I know that he I've heard him say this about other issues and I know he's a big believer If you're not at the table, you're on the menu, and so as much of what he was trying to do was be at the table, not necessarily make the massive changes that you know, tucker's line of questioning definitely pushed it that way. Right, some of his own words, admittedly, I think pushed it that way.
Speaker 1:Most of his own words, yeah.
Speaker 2:But at the same time, the thing that you know, because that bugged me, I mean just because of our friendship, um, but since then that you know a lot of the uh police organizations in the state have endorsed him. I don't think that they would do that if they felt that that was a true like goal or something that was happening or that, or that what he was doing or saying back then was malicious in any way.
Speaker 1:I I still feel like it was very self-serving. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like I'm not, you know saw a topic to kind of jump on, to kind of like score some, score some bonus points with the other side, you know and and and. I don't like it because that came at the cost to me, especially in that moment when it's like, dude, we need some support here. I'm not saying blind support, right, right, but the qualified immunity one. Educate yourself too, because it's very limited. What we have immunity for, it's very qualified. Well, that's why I called you Right and I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:But if you start looking up the chain, we have the most limited, as far as I understand, like and I could be wrong, right, but as far as I like, our qualified immunity is very qualified. If you go up to a prosecutor, you have more immunity. If you go up to a judge, you have a shit ton of immunity, right, you basically can't be sued, right, if you're a judge. So it's like, okay, why is everyone throwing this hate at us for having some immunity? We are like the lowest level of enforcement here and we have the lowest level of protection.
Speaker 2:Well, but you know why? I mean it was all narrative that the actions that we saw, which everyone seemed to be horrified by, and I mean I was horrified by everything it was. Then the narrative was because you have all this big protection, qualified immunity, right, which nobody understood fully, right? Um, that's why they felt they were, they were, uh, empowered to do all these terrible things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was a whole, like you talk about knee jerk reaction. It was like, oh, people are paying attention, people are like we can jump on this, this and this and start huge fights and no one's going to, no one's going to question anything. Yeah, you know, to go to go to the the, the actions that were horrifying, like you really look at again. Go into killing, like another person is killed by another person. It's an ugly, horrible mess, right. Always. Acts of violence are bad, right, they're never good, they're never pretty, and we talked about this like the shooting that I was in um was a hostage where uh where a kid was going to be killed, right, we can agree that that was probably a good shoot, right, and I was cleared and everything was fine.
Speaker 1:But if you, if you saw it, if you were there, you'd be like, oh God, like this is horrible, right, and um, so you, you can't look at it in context like that. You can only look at it through the lens of the law, the case law, the policy.
Speaker 2:So that goes, I think, a little bit to welcome to my podcast. I'm going to interview you now. No, that goes to that question about the body cams and, beyond body cams, this cell phone cam, because the whole shoving thing wasn't body cam, it was people on the side of the street, right, yeah? So what? Give me your perspective on that, cause I see it as a real double-edged sword. I think it's good that there's more exposure, I think it's. You know, sunshine shows everything, the good and the bad, right. But I also think and this is why so often, when I see things, I have my initial reaction and I internalize it and then send you the video and say what am I looking at?
Speaker 2:Because here's what I think. Yeah, and then you, like you said you got to do the law, the da da da, the procedure, one of the things sorry, I'm rambling now I'm like Pat McAfee, I ask a question like over 20 different things. The other thing is, is that what you see feels like one thing? It can be different. I lost my train of thought now. And there's one other thing.
Speaker 1:I'll start answering and then.
Speaker 2:I'll come back to it.
Speaker 1:So, as far as body cams go, overall it's not bad, right, from a standpoint of like we want to document a potential criminal event Every time I get called to a scene. Like I only have two eyes and my perspective is limited based on the fact that I'm a human being, but I got this recording device now that I wear and wherever I look, I might be looking in that corner at something, but I'm missing something over here but the camera sees everything right. So it documents everything right, which is good. Um and the, the, the downsides of it.
Speaker 1:Um, because, honestly, I'll go back after I make an arrest, right, once I established probable cause, I make an arrest, uh, and then I sit down for paperwork, I'll go back and I'll review that. And then if I'm, uh, if I'm with some other officers or something like that, and say there was like a use of force or or something happened that we, that we did, you know, we could have done better, like, I'll break it down like game film and we'll do that like in real time, yeah, and it's really beneficial for that from a training standpoint.
Speaker 1:I can imagine, um, so so that I love. I love that, um, where, where it it can get. I don't want to say sideways, but like, like what you're talking about and the reason that you send me stuff is because, like, as a citizen, like you, don't live in my world, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't see anything that you see yeah. I remember what I thought, and I think this is what you're getting to is you told me one time that you escalating actually is a de-escalation of a situation many times which is totally foreign to me and I don't think your average person understands all that no, and all right.
Speaker 1:So, like to start with, with, we go into case law, right. So, uh, graham versus Connor, tennessee versus Garner, those are the two case laws as far as like use of force to kind of govern the police in this country. And part of uh, I think, Graham is that it's, it's the objective reasonableness to like, what would a reasonable officer do in this situation? Not a reasonable person, not a reasonable citizen, not a reasonable teacher or lawyer. What would a reasonable officer do? And that's very important to establish, because a reasonable person would not chase cars at 100 miles an hour down alleys and city streets, correct, they wouldn't do it, they wouldn't engage in it, period, right, so, so that doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what a reasonable citizen would do. They wouldn't do anything in this context, and that's fine. But what would a reasonable officer do?
Speaker 1:And that's where all these, like you know, body cameras getting immediately released is great because it shows transparency. It's like, hey, here's what happened, here's the facts Just blanket. Like here's the facts, right, here's the video. Watch and judge for yourself. But if you're not an officer, then you're watching something that you really don't understand and it's like you got to make sure that you're educating yourself on the case law that governs these actions, or you are speaking wholly from emotion and you cannot do that in this context because it's inappropriate, Right, um. And then if you have issues with the laws themselves, that's when you take this process through and you try to overturn it, right, um.
Speaker 1:You know, like that's, that's the thing some of the left has done is like we want to get rid of the objective, the reasonable officer standard, right, that would be horrible, because now you have basically these councils that's kind of what they've done in, like Minnesota and that worked really well where they're having these citizen review boards. Tell the officers, well, you did good, you did bad, and it's like, well, everything's going to be bad because a citizen review board is going to be like this is awful. Well, guess what? Like, this job sucks because we got to deal with this shit all the time, right, and it's ugly and it's violent and it's bloody and people die, you know. And it's like, okay, well, would you rather have no one do this job, you know? Yeah, that doesn't work real well.
Speaker 2:Well, it doesn't go to go to California now with their laws about shoplifting, Right, I mean, what is it? Less than $1,000? They're not even going to care about it.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not that far here. You know what I mean. Was it a $500, $750 loss? It's like misdemeanor stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, there's still something. There's still something. I mean, they're basically asking people to steal things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I saw a video yesterday actually I think it's Benny Johnson johnson he went to san francisco. The one target left in san francisco, everything was behind glass. Everything, like everything, had to be opened up. You basically had a personal shopper if you wanted something like three dollar chapstick. He took a video through the whole thing. The first, the first thing he found that wasn't locked up was uh, uh, super mario brothers, stuffed animals and sonic the hedgehog, like who knows what the street value is of that. Uh, but then I mean sadly. Then he went out on the street and there's like makeshift stores on the on the side of the road of all the stuff that has been stolen from wherever, and then they're selling it cheaper on the street because, no, they don't have any money in it you know, Um, but that's I mean, that's fostered by the government.
Speaker 2:That's where you know. So then get back to elections. Like elections matter, you know who we vote for. To consider all these things matters, um, and that's when people are like I don't really care about voting or whatever, and hope hopefully that becomes less and less over time.
Speaker 1:But well, I'm getting to the point with it where it's like, all right, how much, how much fraud is affecting things. Like you know, again 2020. Like we go to the election and it's like, all right, was that a free and fair election? Like do you, do you think that there was some massive voter fraud?
Speaker 2:My biggest problem. So in the United States, as you probably know, I mean we have 50 elections for our federal offices because each state runs its own election.
Speaker 2:So I mean, it's a little bit like the ERISA health insurance stuff. We can pass all the great laws here in Indiana. We have really good I think we have very good voter ID laws and all that other stuff here in Indiana. We don't affect Pennsylvania. They get to do whatever they want, right, and they get to run their elections however they want. And so you're really you know, then, we as a country kind of be we're at the mercy of how these other states run their elections. Now Georgia has passed some really good laws since 2020 that I think will shore up some things, many of those laws we've had on the books for years.
Speaker 2:In Indiana, you can never say there's no fraud in any election. I'm sure that there's some. Is it enough to overturn or change an election? You want to eliminate it all, but it's a little bit like eliminating crime. You're never going to eliminate all crime, but you want to limit it to the point where it's not affecting elections. 2020, the worst part about 2020 was how states ignored the law and did the, the mailing ballots and the, the absentee ballots and all that. Yeah, you know, it's one thing to have absentee voting and I'm okay with that. You know, I have 101 year old grandmother who's still mentally with it. Um, she should be able to vote kind of hard to get out to the actual voting center, and I'm okay with that. I have a 101-year-old grandmother who's still mentally with it.
Speaker 2:She should be able to vote Kind of hard to get out to the actual voting center, so she should be able to vote People who are of a certain age or condition. If you're going to be out of town, whatnot. Early voting, I think, is okay. It's monitored by both. Both parties have representatives there monitoring those votes. So I'm okay with a lot of that stuff. But universal ballots, universal mail-in ballots, is what the left wants to do. In a lot of cases it's insane Because if you and I died tonight, our voter registration would not be revoked. But guess what If we had universal mail-in ballots.
Speaker 2:Our wives would have votes of active live ballots show up for the election if it was automatic based on the voting roll. So the other thing, because they're individual states and again this isn isn't enough. I don't think to to affect an election. But if, if you move today to ohio, you get re-registered in ohio, that doesn't cancel your indiana registration. Now it's illegal for you to vote in indiana because you live in ohio. Right, but if you do like, how, how? Who's? Who's enforcing who's?
Speaker 2:the cop following that like how's, where's the enforcement? How do we know?
Speaker 1:I mean it would have to be the state police. You know, Correct, Correct, but I mean but again, like they're tracking where you're living?
Speaker 2:No, not even close. Yeah, so you know. Then then some people like go to this like, well, we, you know we need to have some national election laws and basis and it we need to have some national election law, some basic, and it's like, oh my gosh, no, how much worse would it be if it was more centralized.
Speaker 1:So as bad as it is. As 50 different elections it's not centralized Wait, wait, wait. So the centralized government, the federal government, they do a lot of stuff well, like housing, and you know, like I don't think they do anything well. That would be the destruction of elections. I think Completely, yeah, completely. One of the biggest things that I saw in 2020, versus like 20 years earlier, right when we go back to like Gore and Bush right is that Florida was the contested state.
Speaker 1:Hanging chads Hanging chads, yeah, but they didn't shut the place down Hanging chads. But they didn't shut the place down, they opened it up. They were like, bring the cameras in, we're counting all these votes. It was very transparent, it was very open and this in 2020,. It was closed.
Speaker 2:The opposite.
Speaker 1:It was veiled, it was get out of here. Nobody gets to see this. It was very secretive and it was like how can you not think that there's something shady going on? If no one's willing to like, they're putting freaking cardboard over the voting line.
Speaker 2:That's insane, you know that's crazy. It is crazy. And if there wasn't fraud, why do you do that? Right, it's so. It's so counterintuitive to think oh no, there was not any fraud, or there was very little fraud, or just any other election.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's to me, those are the— it's not the behavior of every other election. No, no. And if you want to make some laws like, make it so that, like it's illegal to do that, it's illegal to hide these things, you know, if there's a like, you know, then have people enforce that Right. Enforce that right at least, then people can see with their own eyes.
Speaker 2:Right, you know, and not like, not just guessing, but see in 2020, a lot there. There are a lot of laws where you know representatives from both parties need to be present when they're counting. Well, I don't think that happened in some cases, in some right, and it's not like it's the entire state, you know, it's like certain communities that happen to be. You know very much more you left than right or vice versa, or whatever. But the bottom line is the behaviors were different. The numbers that we saw when we went to bed versus how we woke up are different, and you combine that with the behavior being so weird at the best, to steal a term from Tim Walls weird.
Speaker 2:That's where you can't help but have questions at minimum. You know, and some people, it, you know, is a fraud and Trump still to this day says that he won. And I understand why, based on the behaviors and based on what we saw, there's very it's very hard to prove at this point. I mean, we're four years later. Yeah, like part of me says, just just let it go and let's win this one.
Speaker 1:Well, and as much as I agree, but what's in place so that it doesn't just happen again?
Speaker 2:Well, and that's where I say, like Georgia, I know, has enacted some good laws, which that's a key state. Um, I think Arizona has made some changes. Not sure about Pennsylvania, but you know you got states like Wisconsin. They've got same-day registration. You get registered and vote on election day. You know, for us our registration deadline's coming up, I think the 7th. If you're not registered by the 7th you can't vote. So you know people feel one way or another on that, but it's, you know, it's basically you've had how long, you know I mean, and it even accounts for kids who turn 18 later. So, like I turned 18 at the end of October. You know the year I turned 18. I could register to vote earlier that year when I was 17. No, and I could vote in that primary. My son voted in the primary as a 17-year-old. He's turning 18 in August and so now he'll vote in his first presidential election, general election. So I think I have his vote. By the way, I think I hope.
Speaker 1:Depends. If I was running, my kids would vote against me, Without a doubt. They'd be like no.
Speaker 2:You'd have a yard sign for your opponent out in the yard. Probably a hundred percent vote.
Speaker 1:No, he makes me do the dishes. Oh gosh, that's hilarious. Um, I had something else I was going to ask you and I come, I'm kind of blanking on it. You got, you got anything else. You got anything else for me? I don't think so.
Speaker 2:I think that I think that the thing that I think we talked about too, that I think would be so valuable I don't know how you do it well and you have to have interested people to care to watch but almost like community outreach training for how to watch cell phone videos, body cam videos, yeah, yeah, yeah, understanding what your protocols are versus what my protocols are allowed to be, because if I behaved like a law enforcement officer to certain extremes, I would be in trouble.
Speaker 1:Potentially, yeah, potentially.
Speaker 2:So, and that's that whole escalation to deescalate, which is really, really counterintuitive.
Speaker 1:So let's touch on that for a second. So yeah, I mean, when you look at especially use of force with officers, a lot of times, like people hear de-escalation, it's a very hot topic, right, we need to de-escalate. Well, everybody wants that, right? You want everything to calm.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, I mean that is the goal Especially you in the moment Right, right, so like, but a lot of times you can't deescalate with your words and ration, because we come into places and deal with people that are in a very sympathetic state emotionally, like their nervous system is pegged, sympathetic, like. We see very few people who are in a parasympathetic, relaxed state. Most people, right when they deal with the police, are really keyed up there. They are fight or flight, okay, whether it's with us, against us, um, or with someone else a spouse, a girlfriend, a kid, a, whatever right. We're coming in and we're dealing with people in States where they are not available to access their rational thought. You can't do it, okay, um, you know, and go back to sales. When you sell things, you try to put people in an emotional state in order to get them to do like to buy your product or services or whatever, right. So they're not thinking rationally, they're thinking emotionally.
Speaker 2:So I don't try to do that. I try to use facts and logic but no, but that is sales.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Like that's sales, like watch advertising.
Speaker 1:It's all about the emotion, it's all emotion, yeah, motion, emotion, emotion, right, um, so in. So, because we're dealing with people in that state that cannot access rational thought, you know, uh, it doesn't work to just simply talk. Most times, like a lot of times, and if somebody is dead set on fighting, like the way to deescalate, that is to fight them, right, but it's to fight them effectively and professionally. And in order to do that, sometimes you have to hit people, sometimes you have to put people in arm locks and stuff like that, and you have to do it very aggressive and very quickly and in order, and because of that, you have to use one or two techniques, as opposed to 10 or 11, you know what I mean. Let's say, and then, and the the term ineffective force looks like excessive force when it's like I'm trying not to like, I'm trying not to hurt you, uh, but I'm hitting you a bunch of times in a row, you know. So it looks like rabbit punches and it's like, well, I would much rather escalate and then immediately deescalate, because that's going to stop this fight from spinning out of control and it's going to control variables, Right. So that's another thing, that that that I tell you know, newer officers, all the time is you have to control variables, right.
Speaker 1:If you don't control variables, they will spin out of control, right?
Speaker 1:So, like, if I grab your arm and you're or you're running from me and I grab your arm and I don't take you down right away, there are all all sorts of things that could happen.
Speaker 1:Right, you could start spinning right and we start rotating and all of a sudden I catch my leg on a curb and I hit my head on the concrete and I'm knocked out. Right, that's a variable. Or other way, like dude that I'm trying to take down trips and blows his knee out and I end up having a way bigger injury for the suspect, for the guy I'm arresting, than needed to happen, you know. So all these variables spin out of control the more that you don't control a situation. And if you have to use force, you would much rather have it be the maximum amount of allowable force, right, and that sounds a lot worse than what it is, right. But the but using the maximum amount of allowable force, not going over that right, is going to shut that situation down way quicker and and way more effectively in order to maintain safety and control variables for the person that you're dealing with, as well as yourself and everybody else, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:It makes sense. I mean, you know I hear this and it's certainly not in a force standpoint, but it's similar, I think, to effective parenting with discipline, where you want to use not the maximum amount of force that's the wrong word but the more you bargain, the more power you're giving to the child, right. And you have to be the authority to calm a situation. I'm thinking of like a two-year-old throwing a fit. You can't talk a kid out of screaming bloody murder in a store.
Speaker 1:So what you're talking about is boundaries, right, boundaries are important too and that's part of like, like I call it, like the street street side negotiating. Like all right, so Pennsylvania V-MIMS right, that's a case that that dictates that if I stop you, I have the right to get you out of the car for any reason. Right, tyreek Hill, okay, so the officers— I barely paid attention to that. Well, so the issue with that partly was like Pennsylvania v Mims says, if I tell you get out of the car, you get out of the car, you have to get out, and if you don't, you are now resisting. Right, so that was part of his issue. Is he his window back up and was like, nah, screw off, guys, I ain't doing what you want me to do. Like, okay, well, now I'm gonna open your door and we'll get you out, and if you don't open the door, I'm gonna bust your window out of your Lambo, like that's going to happen, right, so, um, so, so if I, if I tell you to get out, right, and I'm and I'm following giving you a lawful order based like get out of the car, why Get out of the car? Why Get out of the car? Why, well, because this? No, I ain't doing it. Tell me why.
Speaker 1:So it's over and over again. So the boundaries are being violated. So it's like in this context I'm giving you a lawful order. If you do not get out of the car, you're going to be arrested, do you understand? Get out of the car and then you follow through with your boundary right, you arrest them, and if that means you have to use force to get them out of the car, then that's what has to happen. You know, or you pull back and you use force a different way, because you're going to use, like, if it's a physical danger that you don't want to deal with, then you use, you know, barricaded subject, techniques or whatever if that's necessary, but that's all use as a force.
Speaker 1:You know, what I mean. Yeah, but those are boundaries and you have to establish the boundaries as the authority figure, same way you would as a parent. Yeah, yeah, and boundaries a lot of times, or all the times, is not a consequence necessarily, but it's just knowing that this person is going to follow through with what they say they're going to do, you know, and then the person in the other seat decides if they want to comply or if they want to see what the follow-up is going to be.
Speaker 1:You know, honestly, and a lot of times officers don't understand how to navigate boundaries and they end up getting into like bigger uses of force or bad uses of force because they don't establish boundaries you boundaries and that's where sometimes people see the way that I work and they're like you're kind of a dick and I'm like, no, but when I get you out of a car it's for a good reason. And if I tell you to stand right by this bumper and you start to violate my boundaries, then I'm going to put you in handcuffs. And you know that's going to happen, because I'm going to tell you you move again. You're going in handcuffs because I'm trying to maintain boundaries and control variables.
Speaker 2:You know I don't want to and you're also actually in that moment. I mean, yeah, it maybe sounds like a dick move to somebody, but you're actually giving that person the opportunity to comply, yeah, and deescalate it themselves.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah Right, I'm giving you the opportunity to access a rational part of your brain and just follow what I'm saying to do based on a lawful order, based on case law, not just because I feel like being an asshole.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean, but again, controlling variables. Let's say I don't control that movement, I don't maintain my boundaries, and then, all of a sudden, this person decides that they want to wander into traffic and they're not even doing anything necessarily wrong or trying to flee, but they just take a step too far to the right and get clipped by a truck. Whose fault is that? That's mine. I didn't maintain a boundary here. Am I going to get found like criminally liable, civilly liable, maybe, maybe not, but like, definitely not criminally, but like civilly? Maybe somebody sues and it's like, well, why the hell did that even happen? Well, you didn't maintain a boundary, you didn't give this person an appropriate boundary to follow, and, uh, and then they just did whatever they wanted.
Speaker 1:Um, so, so, yeah, so, like going back to the original thing, like escalate, to deescalate, like I've had a lot of times too, where it's like all right, get out of the car. Why, oh, get out of the car, you're under arrest. Why Snatch them out of the car, put them on the ground? It's like, oh, because you're sitting on a gun. So you and I've had that many, many times.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:Yes, all the time. And I learned that early on, when I was, I think, a year or two on, that exact same thing happened, right, that exact scenario. Guy took a long time getting out of the car and he wanted to argue with me and finally he reached down once and I grabbed his arm and I kind of pulled him out and he decided he didn't want to fight, which was good. I threw him in handcuffs and I look under the car or under the seat and there's a big bag of weed and a Glock and I'm like, oh okay, I understand. Now Don't give people the opportunity to violate your boundaries, because it's really not safe for you, it's not safe for them.
Speaker 1:You know, maybe I would have got shot there, maybe, maybe I see it and I had to kill that guy. But me acting more aggressively, right, actually de-escalated that situation. That could have been a police action, shooting and and that is not, and that's not like um, like uh, a story. That's not common. Every cop that I know has a story like that here, right, let alone nationally, yeah, or Chicago or LA. That's what I'm saying. And another example this is a pretty good example too of how escalation of force actually deescalates a problem problem, right, um, this was this was fairly early on in my career too. There was a, a reckless driver on the highway right bouncing off of the interstate right, real crazy, thought it was a drunk. We got there and it was some. Uh, it was somebody having like a diabetic issue with a handicapped person oh my gosh yeah and it was like, okay, we got to get this person out of the car now.
Speaker 1:So we ended up having to. We didn't have to break the window, but we had to like, like, rip the door open and rip the person out of the car, throw it in park. And they were thrashing so violently and like if you ever see somebody in a diabetic like fit, like they're fighting you know what I mean like they're footing, putting up a huge fight, um, so we had to hit him like twice and that shut the fight down, put him in handcuffs, got him some medical attention and it was over. But it was like if we tried to not fight, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:Then somebody was going to get hit by a car.
Speaker 2:Right, right. Potentially they die and the person that dies?
Speaker 1:Well, and us, we're on the side of the highway. Yeah, us we're on the side of the highway yeah, with 75 80 mile an hour traffic whizzing by right, so it's like we need to escalate this in order to de-escalate this, so nobody gets killed on the highway right you know. So it's like you watch that and you're like, well, those cops just wanted to beat somebody up. It's like, no, we didn't. We really didn't want to beat up people and well like.
Speaker 2:And then that the narrative cops beat up diabetic victim.
Speaker 1:Well, and you know, and and that headline is kind of true, like that would be true here, right, but if you don't understand the full context and like what we had to do in that moment to not get murdered by traffic, like what else were we supposed to do, you know?
Speaker 2:Well, and that's where I think the dash cams, the body cams, help, because a lot of times the cell phone cam doesn't come out until you're beating on him and you don't have any of the context beforehand. Right, yes, so that at least helps. Uh, I don't want to say exonerate, but at least explain.
Speaker 1:Well, it definitely does, and the way and the timing is getting better too. Where it's like the cell phone footage is always immediate. It's always live streamed social media, whatever. Yeah, right, so that's always first, and then it creates an uproar. And then what? What is happening much better now is, uh, the departments are putting their releases together quick and getting them out there immediately, and that almost always shuts it down where it's like no, here's a full story, yeah, and then you see it and you look at it and you watch the video and you're like all right, I guess it makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and the moment that some of the police videos come out to match the cell phone ones, like you're talking about, it's interesting to follow the local media posts on Facebook and then watch all the comments, oh yeah. And to see you know like a lot of times, I all the comments, oh yeah. And. And to see you know, like a lot of times, I mean when it's legit, which is most of the time, a lot of people actually defend what the police did and be like well, why didn't you get out of the car, like they're. You know they're being ridiculous, well, and yeah, and how many times? Sorry, but how many times does it happen where somebody's you know get out of the car, why and they argue, argue you got to pull them out and there's nothing there, and then it's like then what's your thought? And like what you're feeling in that moment they still are the problem because they didn't follow your order, right?
Speaker 1:So there's almost always a reason you know, and it's usually something illegal in the car or on their person, or they have a warrant and they're lying about who they are. Like it's usually something illegal in the car or on their person, or they have a warrant and they're lying about who they are. It's usually that, and it might be for something where it's seemingly like dude, it's just a little bit of weed. We probably wouldn't have even arrested you for it. I don't know why you wanted to fight about it, but they're so keyed up they can't make good decisions and most people, when they're faced with some sort of legal ramification or they just get in trouble, they default to a very childlike behavior of like no, it wasn't me, I didn't do it. There's very few people that'll just be like yeah, man, you got me, I'm sorry, I was speeding. Even people that just run stop signs like I didn't run that stop sign.
Speaker 1:Everybody gets defensive, for the most part, in fairness, they probably were looking at their phone didn't even see it, which is also illegal.
Speaker 2:But it's not illegal to look at your phone. Just hold your right. Yeah, I remember that long.
Speaker 1:Yes um, so so it's a. It's a very like we default to this defensive mindset. So that's kind of like natural human behavior that you really have to work hard to not get into. Now, if you're also doing something that you really shouldn't be doing, or it's kind of a default and grain pattern, or even if you're not doing anything, you still act like that and then you become very, you feel very victimized and a lot of times people are seeking some type of control victimized, and a lot of times people are seeking some type of control.
Speaker 1:I want to control something about my life right now, and if you get stopped by the cops, you really don't have much control. You're kind of at the will of what that officer wants to do to a big extent. So they're trying to exert control in a situation that they shouldn't because it can result in physical harm. Somebody's going to fight, somebody's going to get into shootings, like we don't need to do this, but you're trying to be like, no, I'm in control of me sitting in this car. Well, that's true, but now I'm going to have to be in control of how this thing ends, because it's my job to do that and I'm not going to lose. You know what I mean. So say we get into that, we pull them out like they're going to end up going to jail for resisting and maybe that's the only thing that they did and it's like dude, you didn't even have a suspended license and now all of a sudden you're going to jail for resisting because you just wouldn't get out of the car.
Speaker 1:And it's like all right. Well, they're trying to find some control in their lives to exert because they feel completely out of control. They don't have anything in their lives that they can control except for this one interaction, and they don't understand fully. This is not the time to fight this. You know what I mean. Just get out of the car If you want to sue based on you feel like your civil rights were violated or we did something wrong in the process, which happens right.
Speaker 1:Cops are not perfect, sure, and we make mistakes, and you can probably pick apart any traffic stop and find 10 mistakes to sue for and maybe make some money. But if you fight the cops before it even gets to that point, you're not going to have the opportunity to do it. Or you're hedging your bets that you're going to sue for an excessive force complaint, but that might come with injuries to you or death, depending on how far it escalates and depending on the officer and their skillset and that kind of stuff. And I'll tell you right now, the last person I would want to get stopped by is a weak, skill-less new officer. You know what I mean? Yeah, like somebody that's not physically strong, somebody who doesn't have a big skillset with fighting and shooting and somebody that's brand new and doesn't understand context yet, like that's a nightmare and, if you like, try to like physically challenge them. The only thing that they can do is shoot you. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you talk about escalating when it's not needed or when it shouldn't be needed, like that to me, is like a huge like professionalism issue in our profession is like if you don't have the ability to escalate and you have to jump to lethal force immediately, like you shouldn't be doing this job, um, but that's, that's not where we're at, you know. So that's why I would not roll the dice on that and I tell my kids like, hey, you get stopped by a cop Once you're out of the car. Get out of the car and even if you go to jail for something like, we'll figure it out, you know, but we can't figure it out if you're dead. Yeah, we can't Right, you know, um, so yeah, I mean, is that kind of yeah, yeah, definitely it's.
Speaker 2:It's fascinating the the work that you do and your colleagues do it's I don't, you know. I mean you've got a psychology background, which I think has to be a major asset.
Speaker 1:It. It definitely helps. You put pieces in place. You know, um, like understanding, like like hey, a cop approaches a car right Two o'clock in the morning, let's say, and it's like high crime area, and they're keyed up, ready for a fight, you know, or ready for something bad to happen, right, statistically, like they're not wrong, so they're in a sympathetic state. And what do we already know about sympathetic states? Like you don't have very good access to rational thought. You know and find motor skills and all the things that you need to like effectively do this job. You don't. You're losing access to it the higher you go sympathetic. And then we look at the driver of the vehicle and they're in the same state. And now you take two people in that state and put them together in conflict and expect there to be good decisions made out of that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, like that's insane. Right, that's an impossible ask. So how do you solve that problem? I don't dude, I don't know. Like you know, you have to be like uber professional, which means you have to be an expert at everything as a cop. You know, and then, like, you have to be an expert at talking and understanding people and also fighting and shooting and all the like physical skills and driving. Um, you had, there's no room for error. You know none.
Speaker 1:And uh and like, and especially now with body cameras and 2020 hindsight, which we don't have but, um, you know armchair quarterbacking. Like, you have to be perfect. There's zero room for error. Uh, and then. And then you look at the pay that we get and you look at the requirements to be a cop it's a GED. Yeah, are you kidding me? You're requiring perfection in all these different areas, but you want to pay us 50 grand a year and only require a GED. That's ridiculous to assume that, right? So, again, going to defund the police, like, should we defund? Well, we could probably cut the manpower in half, raise the pay by triple and then expect way more from from the level of of officers.
Speaker 2:That we have Professionalism. Yes, has to go up.
Speaker 1:Yes, so you have to be, you know, tier one military. Like you're going to get people from like high ranking business people or advanced degrees. Like you're going to get the best of the best and we aren't right now. Like we definitely aren't. And you pair that with everything from 2020, where it was like, oh, I see, you want the long game. Like they're trying to like destroy what it means to be a cop so that nobody wants to do it, as dudes like me retire. You're not going to get dudes like me on the back end, right, you know. Or like you just won't. So it's like who's going to do this job? Nobody, so then that creates a power void, you know that's like well, how do we navigate this space now that nobody wants to do this job? Right, so interesting, there's your sociology lesson for the day.
Speaker 2:I I appreciate that Appreciate that Well cool man.
Speaker 1:Well, we've been talking for almost two hours, wow. So, like, is there anything else you want to touch on? Or I don't think so, anything that you have to promote or push or like any elections you want to, yeah well, vote for me on the 81st, when's that it's November? 5th this year. Yeah, oh man Every two years. Dude, this is like an election interview. This is awesome. It is. Yeah, this is my Joe Rogan moment. There you go.
Speaker 2:Nice, all right, well cool man. Well thanks, I appreciate it. Yeah, it's fun being here, I appreciate it, yeah.
