141 - From Detective to Clinician: Ian Hobbs

When a cop tries to go to counseling, the counselor typically gets one chance to make a good impression.  Either this is going to go fairly well and the cop will come back again or it won't go well and the cop will swear he'll never go to another counselor the rest of his life!  A growing number of second-career, cops-turned-counselors are determined to make a meaningful connection on that first attempt.  Today's guest is Ian Hobbs.  Ian is a former homicide detective and a Marine Corps veteran who is now starting a second career as a clinician.  Ian is going to describe what he saw in the military and in law enforcement that made him want to change careers and help in a more direct way.

Music is by TrackTribe

Hey Chaplain Podcast Episode 141

Tags:

Police, Career, Counseling, Crimes Against Children, Detectives, Education, Homicide, Mental Health, Stress, Suicide, USMC, Kansas City, Kansas, Missouri, Iraq

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is Vinnie Montez. I want to just give a shout out to the Hey Chaplin podcast. You should be listening to it. If you're not, you're a square.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to Hey Chaplin. My name is Jared Altic, and I'm a chaplain with the police department. The Hey Chaplin podcast is about talking to police officers who say, Hey Chaplain, I've got a story to tell and some hard-earned wisdom to share. The guests on Hey Chaplin come from across the world, from the LAPD, the Scotland Yard, from Thailand to Texas. They are sharing their wisdom so that you don't have to learn the hard way. And as Patrol Chaplain, I think you deserve something positive and encouraging. Hey Chaplain is a free resource for everyone because of those supporters who are quietly helping behind the scenes. If you want to help this show reach more cops, chaplains, and other first responders around the world, please follow the link in the episode description to support the show. When a cop tries to go to counseling, the counselor typically gets one chance to make a good impression. Either this is gonna go fairly well and the cop will come back again, or it won't go well, and the cop will swear he'll never go to another counselor the rest of his life. A growing number of second career cops turned counselors are determined to make a meaningful connection on that first attempt. Today's guest is Ian Hobbs. Ian is a former homicide detective and Marine Corps veteran who is now starting a second career as a clinician. Ian is going to describe what he saw in the military and in law enforcement that made him want to change careers and help in a more direct way. Here's Ian Hobbs. Hello, Ian. How are you today? I'm doing all right. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm glad you're here today. I appreciate you driving over, be in the office with me, and get to be across the table as we uh do the interview, and I appreciate you taking the time out to do that. Tell me a little bit about your law enforcement career.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

I started out at the Johnson County Sheriff's Office over in Kansas. Uh, went to the academy there in 2006, and then uh worked primarily detention until just uh the summer of 2009, went to dispatch for a few months and then uh That's actually a really good base.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

I kind of wish every officer had that. Either working in detention corrections or working in dispatch. Yeah, one or the other. Some agencies require yeah, you have to do one or the other first.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

It definitely set me up, and I don't know if I would have recognized this at the time, but it definitely set me up for my career down the road, because one of the things that used to drive me nuts working in the jail is you know, you're arresting somebody, you have contact with them for like 30 minutes or an hour. If they're all fired up or something, you really like you get to dump them at the jail when you book them, and then you're done. Um, at least where I worked, you were assigned to a module for 30 days. So if you got into it with one of the one of the inmates, you're you're having to interact with them for the remainder of those 29 days. So certainly this balance of being, I guess, firm but fair, and then still being able to relate to people on a professional level and and maintaining boundaries at the same time, but recognizing that you're better off not like damaging these relationships because clearly there's a power dynamic. Yeah. And I think that set me up in interacting with people, both as a detective and a patrol officer when I was a police officer. I started at KCPD uh in January of 2010, went to their academy, um, and then hit the road. I was uh patrol officer at Central Patrol Division, uh, which is like the downtown, uh midtown area of uh of KC Mo. Did that for about five years. Uh, was a CIT officer, then went to investigations. Um so I started out in the special victims unit in the crimes against children uh section, and then kind of bounced around in there in violent crimes for about five years between crimes against children. I went to the Overnight Generalist Squad, which handles anything violent crimes related overnight. So robberies, sexual assaults, domestic violence, any of it. And then we handed off to those squads, went back, did another uh another stint in crimes against children, and then eventually went to homicide uh at the end of 2019, and then was there until June of 22 when I uh left the police department.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Okay. So a lot of experience as a detective. Yes. Uh a good variety of different types of cases, especially those overnight things where you're really taking whatever happens before you hand it off to the appropriate squad to, you know, the where that's their specialty. And so lots of experience in that. All of that after having been a Marine in Iraq.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Yes. So I was in the uh the Marine Corps Reserve, I enlisted in uh 2003, and then uh I have one deployment to Iraq. I was an infantryman. Uh so spent a year in Iraq in 2005 and around like the Fallujah area. Um, we got there right after Phantom Fury, which is the second battle of Fallujah. Uh, so we did a lot of operating outside of the city, can kind of, I guess, what you would call the more rural areas, but then came home, stayed in the reserve, and then continued my law enforcement career.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Okay. Now, through all of this, you're also doing a lot of education. You went back to school and got your your degrees and went on, got a master's degree. And and early on, did you know where you wanted to go with this education?

SPEAKER_02 5:43

So very early on, no. Um, you know, education was something that was important in my family. Um, so I knew I wanted to go back to I kind of attempted college right before the Marine Corps, and it didn't go well. I wasn't super disciplined. Uh, shout out to my dad who had uh had encouraged me to to maybe go do something else besides college because I wasn't ready. But you know, you're 18 and you know everything. So um I decided to try it anyway, and it didn't it didn't go well. I went to Kansas State very briefly and uh failed out, and then uh the the Marine Corps and law enforcement were at my next chapters. Um so I knew I wanted to go back, um, but at the beginning I didn't know what. So I just like I had all these credits from the police academies I'd been to and from from the Marine Corps that transferred over into some of the local colleges. So I just went back and was majoring in criminal justice, and then I started to develop this interest in mental health and it pivoted that way.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Let's pull on that thread of the mental health of police officers and why it intrigues you, why you felt like you could help, why do you why were you pulled that direction?

SPEAKER_02 6:50

I was like I said, I was I was in the infantry in the Marine Corps, and I I think probably most everybody knows what that means, but those are generally like the guys that are actually engaged in combat operations that are actually, you know, uh kind of where the I I it's hands-on. Yes, very hands-on. Um, so the guys that generally are seeing the front lines of combat. And, you know, I worked at at an inner city police department, and I was struck by the amount of suicides that I was encountering. To this day, I know significantly more people who have ended their lives by suicide than have been killed in the line of duty.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

And like when I say line of duty, I don't just mean murdered, I mean car accidents, like other accidents, even even heart attacks or other like that, like the suicide is still the number one in terms of among your peers, yes, suicide was a bigger threat than work accidents and violence and other things. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

So I was really struck by that. Like here are these individuals that are at least on scene in dealing with these things, really resilient to these these critical situations as they're going on, but then you know, months or even years later are so affected by them that they're ending their lives. And I was just drawn to like trying to understand that with the Marine Corps. We had this is post-deployment. So this is we're back, and I can't remember if I was still in the Marine Corps at this point or if I had gotten out, but there was uh a gentleman who's I won't share his name, but um had that I served with that had had completed suicide that had ended their life by suicide. And I went to his funeral, and having been to funerals of guys who were were killed either in combat or like other accidental means, the turnout was abysmal. The like they they managed to piece together an honor guard, but I the for a myriad of reasons, it was not super impressive. Yeah. And it was just my experience like on a larger scale was that when people would kill themselves, that it was just it was almost like they didn't exist. Like where we have, um, as I'm sure you've experienced as a chaplain, when we have somebody who's killed in the line of duty, it is it's a it's a big thing. Like officers get the day off to attend their funeral, oftentimes a neighboring agency will come in and cover the city.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

A lot of very deliberate effort to honor that person.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

Um and my experience, I I think we've gotten better about this, but my experience, you know, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, was that it was almost like they just never existed. It was it was like we couldn't we couldn't say the thing out loud because then we would acknowledge there was a problem. It was kind of what at least what my individual experience was.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Yeah. I think I think that's really common though, yeah. That that there is this feeling of of we can't say it out loud, we can't name it out loud because it has a almost contagious kind of feel to it. That that if that if we if we say it, if we if we embrace it too clearly, then it would be bad for us. Yeah. And so we're going to keep it at arm's length. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

Well, it's almost uh to a point, I feel like it's also like the elephant in the room. So it's like if we say this out loud, then we have to acknowledge that all of us are susceptible to this.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

I had a personal experience with somebody who was close to me on the police department where they ended up in a mental health crisis, and I was in a position to intervene in that. And at the end of it, at the time, I thought I handled it like I felt inadequate in the tools that I had to deal with that.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Now you know, you were in a position to intervene to talk to them.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

And try to get them help. And and to they got help, to be fair. But at the time, looking back, I'm like, I didn't feel like I had the the tools adequately uh to adequately handle it. I I felt at the time like I didn't have the tools to adequately address the situation. Now I can say looking back on it now that with with the the training and experience that I have now, that I think I handled it as best I could with the with the skill set that I had. But a couple of things struck me about that situation, one of which was initially, like even though I was a mess because I was a close to this person, there wasn't a ton of support, at least in the initial 24 hours. Um so they kind of circled the wagons around this person. They took them, took them to get help. And I remember there was a moment I'm standing on the side of the road uh outside this person's house after everybody's left, and I'm just like looking around, and I'm I'm all alone. Nobody had put their shoulder on me and been like, hey, or like this is probably really intense for you. Are you okay? Um, and I just I went home. And uh it was, I think it was about midway through the next day. But somebody from the department who was one of their mental health providers eventually reached out to me. And I don't know what the behind the scenes occurrence of that was, but I have a feeling that somebody was talking to them about this, and they're like, Hey, did anybody check on Ian? And I think they're like, Oh, no, he's still on his days off, so we haven't. So they reached out to me.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

But it's so easy for people to slip through the cracks like that. Yes, yeah. I've been in those meetings where you got the peer support and maybe the wellness officer, and we're like, oh, wait a second, have we checked on so-and-so? Yeah. And no, we haven't. And you know, we go scramble to make sure they have support. But but yeah, that's I've I've been on the other side of that.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

Yeah. I was struck by both of those things. A, what felt like this because there were warning signs with this person. Um, and I had kind of started to raise the alarm a couple of times, and and it felt like it kind of fell on deaf ears. But then also the not recognizing that, like, hey, this probably significantly impacted Ian. And like nobody at the time thought to look at and to be fair, even I internally at that moment didn't think. I think it was after everything, everything had kind of calmed down, and that's when I realized, like, I'm a mess. Like that this was a very intense experience, and I probably need some help.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Yeah, yeah. So you've worked in like I I keep saying you've worked in a variety. I I'm really pleased when I see an officer who has had a chance to sit in all the different seats on the bus. Yeah, and that's just I think that makes for a great career. And you worked in homicide, which a lot of people assume, like, oh, that's super intense. Yeah. And it is in its way. But the the detectives that I've always personally worried about are the ones who work crimes against children. Yeah. And you've done a couple stints in that. Uh, how do you feel the state of the officer's mental health, the detective's mental health was when you were in those units? So do you think they handled it well? Do you think they had good support?

SPEAKER_02 13:29

No. Um You know, I think if they had sought it out that the support would have been there. Um but I think one of the recurrent patterns that I see in working with police officers, or really first responders and even veterans at large, is helpers aren't good at asking for help. And so there's also this sense, um, and it's something I've heard a ton of cops say when I'm working with them, of this belief that they're the only ones that are experiencing this negative emotion. Um, we do a really good job in law enforcement of compartmentalizing, and it's an important skill. It's so important to be able to function in these environments that are high stress, and you're seeing things that largely inherently bad to compartmentalize. No, it's what you do with it afterwards that is the problem. So we get really good at s shoving these things in a box, but nobody ever opens the box up and is like, well, I probably should unpack these and like kind of work my way through this to experience the feelings that come with it. And then eventually the box is just kind of bursting at the scene.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

It's not bad to put leftovers in a container in the fridge. It's bad to have never opened that container back up again years later.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

It's a great analogy. I'm probably gonna use that again uh down the road.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

I just cleaned out the fridge recently. So I was like, what happened here? Why did we never come back to this?

SPEAKER_02 14:46

I don't know that this is just symptomatic of that that specific unit outside of the fact that the content you're dealing with in that unit is very um intense. It shocks the conscience. The issue, largely, I think broader with police departments, is there's just not a ton of connection with a like mental health professional or uh a support system that's there. That it is it is reactive. You either a critical incident has to occur, something that's really intense has to occur, or the officer has to ask for help. And my experience is, and I've seen this happen, I've seen it happen uh at one of the agencies I work with where an officer went to the department and is like, hey, I'm struggling because of X, Y, and Z. And suddenly they're yanked off duty, they're on modified assignment, they're doing limit, they're doing fit for duties. Yeah. And I understand that it's probably difficult to balance like making sure that somebody who you're sending out into the community with a gun and a badge is in the right mindset with also taking care of them. But I think that that message largely screams like, ooh, I need to not say something to someone.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

It hurts on a couple levels. It hurts that officer to take him out of his uh normal environment, all away from the people who support him, away from the things that he uses to set his identity, and and you're gonna take all of that away from him, and it could hurt him in the moment, but then also it sends a message to everybody else. I will lose what I value the most if I it if I indicate that I need help. Yes. Becoming a member of the homicide unit for a lot of guys, that is their career goal. Yeah. You know, I want to be a homicide detective. That is that is that I will know that I've made it. Yes. When when I can say that is my job at the police department. So you're there, but you're apparently already being pulled in another direction.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

So I'd gone back to school, and this is the same time I'd started to develop interest in officer mental health, and it started out with veteran mental health, and I was saying the same things in law enforcement. But I was in a uh veteran CIT training course, and uh I'd gotten to a point where eventually I facilitated some of those. I can't remember which one of the two it was. Uh-huh. But a social worker from the VA that we worked with regularly named Claude Gidry, shout out to Claude if he's still out there and working for the VA. Um, I'd walked up to him and uh after a class that he'd taught, and I was like, hey, I like I think I might be interested in becoming a therapist. And uh, you know, I was thinking about getting a master's degree in psychology. And uh there are several paths that you can get master's degree-wise to do therapy. But Claude's like, no, you want to you want a master's degree in social work. And I'm like, no, I don't want to be a social worker. Like just thinking kind of classically what a social worker is, not understanding what a clinical social worker is. So he kind of explained that to me, and then that kind of launched my interest in that. And at this point, I had was pretty deep into my uh criminal justice degree to pivot to social work and then try to do what's called an advanced standing degree where I can do a master's in a year. So I just I went ahead and finished my bachelor's in criminal justice and uh ended up getting accepted to uh KU, University of Kansas' social work program at the Edwards campus, and then did a three-year program of that. I graduated in uh May of 2018 and then continued to work at the police department, uh, like you said, went to homicide at the end of 2019 and uh was doing that, did that for about three years and had kind of just reached a point towards the end of homicide, uh towards the end of that time where I had really started to think that maybe my law enforcement career just run its course and I was maybe ready to move on to the next thing. How do you know that? Um, you know, a myriad of things had occurred. Um I was I hit homicide about the time that 2020 happened, um and all the various experiences of of 2020, uh, you know, interacting with with those situations. So there was already kind of this shift where you were experiencing a lot of a negativity. And I I think most police officers saw their social circle shrink significantly during that time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Uh well on so many levels because George Floyd happened uh concurrent with COVID. Yes. I mean, you're isolated on as a cop, you're isolated on every level that you can be isolated.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

And so so yeah, that was that was unpleasant.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

So I that was kind of the beginning of it, and uh just recognizing you know burnout. The the stressors in homicide are very different from the stressors and crimes against children. And you know, for for me at least, crimes against children, the stressor, there's certainly uh organizational stress and crimes against children, but the content is a lot worse than the organizational stress in terms of like with the case material. Um homicide for me, my experience was that it was a lot more organizational stress. There's a lot more like we gotta we gotta clear these murders, we gotta, we gotta get this case cleared, we have to, hey, where's what's going on with this murder?

SPEAKER_01 19:46

There's Are we building this case well enough for it to like ch Status?

SPEAKER_02 19:51

And there's just a lot of moving parts, and there's a lot of high-ranking people, uh, understandably, but there's a lot of high-ranking people in the police department and the prosecutor's office and the city who are occasionally checking on these things.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

And they're they're not interfering. A lot of they're just checking, they're just sure.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

Um, there's a lot of like people looking over your shoulder, and that becomes stressful. Yes. Um, so you work a lot of overtime, like a ton of overtime when you're in homicide, and there's not really uh kind of a spigot to shut it off because you're just so so busy uh that there's always work to be done. Yeah. Having worked as much as I was working, plus I think you know, I COVID probably played a role in terms of limiting social interaction there. So a lot of the supports, but like one of the bigger things that you try to promote to police officers is a life outside of law enforcement.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

And for a year, year and a half, most of the stuff was shut down.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Right. There was no there was no going to you know the bar to hang out with your friends. I don't know, necessarily drinking is the the no, but but any kind of social yeah, restaurants are restaurants are closed.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Everything from restaurants to churches to to to clubs to sporting events, it it it was all yeah limited.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

I don't remember which one it was, but I I think the NFL I think was in empty stadiums and MLB was in like half full stadiums, or maybe the other way around. I don't remember which one it was. See, there was just nothing to do, so there's a lot of going home. I think I watched all of Netflix um DoorDash way more than I should have. That was actually when I discovered DoorDash was during the the pandemic. So there were just a number of factors, and there was also just I had been doing my own work in terms of mental health. I've I've personally been in therapy since I think 2012. And there was just a recognition that this is an emotionally caustic environment to work in. And that that's not a dig at anything at my agencies. It just is the source material.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

It just is like it is you're dealing with everybody's worst tragedies.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Right. And and there is some part of that that attaches to you while you're dealing with it. You you can as it as good as you are at compartmentalization, there is just human beings in general weren't meant. To see as much stuff as first responders do. It's just and it's uh it is recurrent. And uh there's kind of unique differences between that and the military, and individual experiences will vary, but I think there's a complexity to first responder work that is more emotionally caustic in most cases. There again, individual experiences may vary. Yeah, that is more caustic to first responder work. And it's just deployments in the military are you leave everything that you are kind of attached to here in the US, you go to Iraq, Afghanistan, Horn of Africa, one of these places that we're seeing, you know, now at least the mid the Middle East around Iran. And often like you're just in it, you're removed in a completely different environment. And the culture is different, the people are different, the people generally look different than you, they speak a different language, the things that are customs there are completely different. Um, the environment smells different, it's just very different, and then you're engaged in these things, and you're also completely compartmentalized with other people that are doing the same thing. Yeah. And then you come home. And certainly re-integration, I think reintegration is probably the hardest part of the military in terms of coming back and then trying to figure out. Um, and I wasn't married when I went to Iraq, um, but trying to figure out how to reintegrate into a household that has largely adjusted to function without you there. Yeah. Yeah. Versus first responder work, where to this day, still even for me, when I drive around the city, I'm like, oh, that's where this happened, that's where this happened, that's where this happened. And it for me, it's yeah, I'm in a healthy place with it where it's not distracting or, you know, it doesn't really take me out of the moment, but it it's there. And it's, you know, there's not, I don't drive by the place where, you know, where one of my buddies got wounded by an IED, you know, when I'm driving around Kansas City. Right. So there's the and it there's the the added complexity of you go experience one of these things and then you go home, and suddenly you're changing your kid's diaper and you're mowing the lawn and you're cooking dinner and you're doing all the kind of mundane tasks of life, and then you go back to it tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Yeah, and going back and forth is its own interesting thing that we're doing psychologically.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

Yeah, absolutely. Or you're switching kind of back and forth these modes of your brain.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

Yeah, yeah. So you are well on your way to to establishing yourself as a clinician. Yes. Uh, you've done thousands and thousands of hours and you're you're getting all all the boxes checked to progress through this part and start this new chapter of your life. And I'm really excited for you. I think that's fantastic. I I would really like to see more officers thinking in terms of like, okay, what is my next chapter? Because it could happen sooner than what you absolutely can happen overnight. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So so you're you're doing great and and getting that established. What is your big hairy audacious goal with with what you want to do at this next chapter of your life?

SPEAKER_02 25:03

So I'm finishing up clinical supervision to be a therapist uh right now. Once that is like done, once I so I should be done this August, assuming I don't screw up and fail my clinical exam. Um You're fine. You're fine. All right. Once that's done and we hit August and I can individually license, uh, my my goal would be to just kind of launch my own practice and work on treating first responders and and veterans is kind of my target, target audience. Um, primarily treating trauma. But I you know, you can treat the peripheral things there too. Um, but that is really the goal. That's why I got into this was to uh help police officers, first responders, veterans um that don't maybe feel like they can relate to a therapist. Yeah. I personally believe that the clinical relationship is the most important part of the therapeutic experience. Um certain, certainly clinical knowledges, modality, different things like that are important too. I'm not dismissing those, my like you have to know what you're doing once you're involved in the relationship. But creating an environment where these people are willing to share like their worst day with you, where they're already experiencing kind of a public that that pries on them with that sort of thing. And it's not a story that most other people have earned the right to hear. And I'm sure you've seen this as a chaplain, but like the question when somebody meets you and they find out you're a police officer that I've gotten more than anywhere else is what is the worst thing you've ever seen? And realistically, you don't want to know what the worst thing I've ever seen is. It's it's not also thank you for forcing me to relive what might be the worst day of my life involuntarily in this moment while I'm trying to get a soda quick trip. So there's just the there's this conditioning to experience these kind of negative social interactions. And I think for a myriad of reasons, including the one that I I talked about a little bit ago, where you know, I know of a guy who went to the department as like, hey, I need to take some time off to get myself right. And then it it resulted in this really negative experience. You know, what is what is the therapist required to tell? If I tell them that I'm struggling at work, are they gonna run and tell my department? What are the protections in place? Um and I know people who have had really negative experiences with having their therapist records subpoenaed, and uh, you know, whether the therapist chose to fight the subpoena or not was, you know, like a big contingent for them. One of the things that I I really try to honor and take seriously is if if a police officer or first responder comes to me for therapy, my experience is that you really only have one shot to give them a positive experience where they will continue therapy. We're not conditioned as helpers to ask for help. No. And the act of doing that I think is so uncomfortable that if they get in there and detect that there's judgment, this person doesn't get me, um, maybe this person is opposed to what I do for a living just because they're they're they're not super friendly towards law enforcement, then I what I have seen is that what that will lead to is I'm never coming back here again. I've had this negative experience. I tried the opening up my feelings.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Well, I didn't want to do this anyway, and my first taste of it was negative. I'm never going back. Exactly. Yeah. Ian Hobbs, thank you so much for coming in today. Thank you for doing what you're doing, both in your service in law enforcement and military and also in your service as a clinician.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

I want to thank Ian Hobbs for being on the show today, and I'm especially excited to have gotten to know him because I'm always looking for another culturally competent clinician about whom I can feel excited and confident to recommend them. I also want to give a shout out to Jake, the International Security Specialist guy, who recommended Ian and said, You need to get to know this guy. Let me reach out to him for you, make a contact so that you can get him on your show. I get a lot of emails soliciting my show to be like, hey, here's a book that's being written, and we want the author to be on your show. I'm not interested in most of those. If instead I can get a recommendation from somebody that I know, somebody that I've met and that I trust, that's a good way to get a guest on the Hey Chaplin podcast. Identical twins. One is a career firefighter, the other one is a homicide detective. Next time on Hey Chaplin. Steve, how how much do you think there was a rivalry in Kansas City between police and fire? Were they competitive? Were they friendly? What was your perception of it?

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Oh, it was friendly. Oh yeah. I mean, I don't like wouldn't call it a rivalry. Um, we can jack with people quite a bit. Well, I know you guys tease each other. Well, I mean, I can give you one specific that I'd been on, he wasn't on the job yet. I'd been on about two or three years, and I worked up off Quindara Boulevard, and we ran a call one time, medical call down the street from the firehouse. And of course, when we go on to the scene, we pull up in the rig, and there's ambulance with us, and when we get out, we don't shut the fire truck off. Fire truck is sitting there running. Of course, PD showed up because it was a domestic violence call. And um, so we took the patient out, lowered the patient up, and we went back inside to get some gear, and we come back out, and the fire truck's gone. Oh no. So the ambulance has already left, and we're standing there with our bag and door looking around, going, what the hell is going on here? Well, we looked down the block and there's two cop cars sitting there. And I won't, my captain and the driver knew what had happened, you know. So they named that, they called out the two, the one officer by name, kind of cussed him, and we could hear the fire truck circling the block with the siren on. And they even drove by us twice. And of course, we tried to get in the cop car, and they're locked.

unknown 31:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

So the police had taken the open fire truck. They took the fire truck for a joyride, and we're just standing there, we couldn't do nothing about it.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

The views expressed here are the personal views of the host and our guest, and do not necessarily represent the views of any law enforcement agency or its components. Ian Hobbs is going to make a great clinician, but he's not your clinician. The information presented in this episode, including any statements or opinions expressed by our guests, is for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment by a clinician who has actually met you. Always seek the advice of your qualified mental health care provider with any questions you may have regarding your condition and never disregard professional advice or delay seeking it because of something you heard on a podcast. Go see a professional. If you like this episode, please share it with a cop or someone who loves a cop. Thank you for listening to Hey Chaplin. And as always, let's pray for peace in our cities.