When the weight of the badge becomes a heavy burden, where do our law enforcement officers turn for support? Join us alongside Mark The Cop and Dr. David, esteemed voices from The Shield Within podcast, as we traverse the emotional and psychological landscape that officers navigate daily. Together, we delve into the harrowing personal stories of those behind the badge, dissect the profound urgency for mental health awareness in policing, and champion the transformative power of courageous leadership.
Navigating the intricacies of law enforcement, we reveal the stark contrast between leadership and management within the ranks. Through personal anecdotes and professional insights, the hosts of The Shield Within Podcast join me in a critical conversation that scrutinizes the status quo of accountability in policing. We address the dire consequences of neglectful management, challenge the misplaced focus often seen in the aftermath of high-stress incidents, and reinforce the indispensable value of nurturing the well-being of our officers. Our discourse culminates in an exploration of how robust leadership directly influences the retention and recruitment of the force, shedding light on the inspiring success stories of departments that have dared to innovate.
As the episode unfolds, we confront the harsh realities and potential solutions to the pressing challenges of police recruitment. Highlighting stories of pride and integrity, we dissect the disconnect between flashy recruitment tactics and the true essence of what attracts individuals to the badge. Moreover, we discuss the pivotal role of supervisory responsibility, emphasizing how leadership can either cultivate or corrode departmental culture. This candid conversation punctuates the critical need for an evolution in policing—a call to action for law enforcement leaders to reignite the pride and preserve the quality of this noble profession.
Join Our Tribe of Courageous Leaders:
Get The Book
Get Weekly Articles by Travis Yates
Join Us At Our Website
Get Our 'Courageous Leadership' Training
Join The Courageous Police Leadership Alliance
When the weight of the badge becomes a heavy burden, where do our law enforcement officers turn for support? Join us alongside Mark The Cop and Dr. David, esteemed voices from The Shield Within podcast, as we traverse the emotional and psychological landscape that officers navigate daily. Together, we delve into the harrowing personal stories of those behind the badge, dissect the profound urgency for mental health awareness in policing, and champion the transformative power of courageous leadership.
Navigating the intricacies of law enforcement, we reveal the stark contrast between leadership and management within the ranks. Through personal anecdotes and professional insights, the hosts of The Shield Within Podcast join me in a critical conversation that scrutinizes the status quo of accountability in policing. We address the dire consequences of neglectful management, challenge the misplaced focus often seen in the aftermath of high-stress incidents, and reinforce the indispensable value of nurturing the well-being of our officers. Our discourse culminates in an exploration of how robust leadership directly influences the retention and recruitment of the force, shedding light on the inspiring success stories of departments that have dared to innovate.
As the episode unfolds, we confront the harsh realities and potential solutions to the pressing challenges of police recruitment. Highlighting stories of pride and integrity, we dissect the disconnect between flashy recruitment tactics and the true essence of what attracts individuals to the badge. Moreover, we discuss the pivotal role of supervisory responsibility, emphasizing how leadership can either cultivate or corrode departmental culture. This candid conversation punctuates the critical need for an evolution in policing—a call to action for law enforcement leaders to reignite the pride and preserve the quality of this noble profession.
Join Our Tribe of Courageous Leaders:
Get The Book
Get Weekly Articles by Travis Yates
Join Us At Our Website
Get Our 'Courageous Leadership' Training
Join The Courageous Police Leadership Alliance
Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
Travis Yates:Welcome to the courageous leadership podcast and I am so glad to join us today. We've got something new for you. I really love it. We have the hosts from the Shield Within Podcast with us. It's going to be kind of a dual podcast. We're going to do this together. It's going to be fun. So first I'm just going to have you, gentlemen, introduce yourself and tell us about your podcast.
Marc The Cop:Age before beauty, Dr. David. Oh wow, okay, start off with an instant judgment All right. What we are, cops after all.
Dr. David Buchanan:We don't pull punches. My name is Dr David. That's my microphone name. I'm a retired licensed professional clinical counselor in the state of Ohio. I retired in 2015.
Dr. David Buchanan:Mark had been my client while I was in private practice and after I retired and moved to Florida, he and I decided we needed to spend more time together.
Dr. David Buchanan:So we got on the phone and we talked and I got to see him a couple of times during the time I was down there and my marriage fell apart. I came up here three years ago and I was here about a month and Mark called me on the phone and said hey want to do a podcast. And I thought, hell, yes, that sounds great. So we started spit balling back and forth and the next thing you knew, we had an idea and a name and we started from there. We had I wrote an intro and an outro. Mark and I got together for the first seven episodes just he and I and then slowly we have added members to the team so that we have six people on the team right now. Mark and I remain kind of like the foundation of the podcast, but others have joined us over the course of the last couple of years and tonight it's just the three of us, mark and me and you.
Travis Yates:We'll just have a good time. And now I know who to blame, because Mark's so messed up and also it makes you. You're not charged us by the hour here while we're having this conversation, we're all good.
Dr. David Buchanan:Huh, we're good man, yeah.
Travis Yates:What about you, Mark? Obviously we have known you for years. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Marc The Cop:Well, travis, I, uh, yeah, we have known one of the three years and I was just talking with David here before we turned to microphones on how long that I've I've been a fan boy of yours. Um I I've been a police officer for 30 years. I recently well recently retired in 2021 after 30 years and retired as a police sergeant Um found myself, I don't know, in the grips of PTSD, and that's when I first became David's client and uh, just navigating through all that, uh went through a horrific event there at the end of my career. Uh, had it. First of all, we had a traumatic event, and my traumatic event I damn near got my whole crew killed. So that's uh was the latest or the last, probably major event with me that uh really tipped a tip to scales.
Marc The Cop:And in 2020, uh, I went through an investigation and during that, shortly after that, came out. That's when David and I got together and I say, hey, let's do a podcast, let's, let's be able to inform people that number one mental health isn't bad. That's not a bad word. Let's try and get rid of the stigma. He and I really had a lot of fun during our sessions. And how do we get more cops involved to be able to be comfortable with going to counseling. And you know cause of my agency.
Marc The Cop:You know you're weak, you know you're fucked up and you know, they would look for ways to get rid of you if, if you went to counseling, which I thought was just terrible. So, having gone through that myself and and talking with other people, uh, around, cause I'm, I'm a pretty good network not as good as yours, travis, but uh, I think I got a pretty good network, you know and some people talking about hey, pull you off the side and say, yeah, man, I'm having problems too, you know, but don't tell anybody. Um, so we, we decided to have the podcast and the biggest thing, the hardest thing about the show was when we're going to call it, which was, you know, we don't know, we. And first we started off with ah, you kind of battered around some ideas. Like I was called the recovery room. Yeah, google that one, you'll get like a thousand hits.
Marc The Cop:So, um, david came up with the name and, um, he was just messing around with it one day and it was like you know, I feel like I need a shield and come up with my shield within to help me get through this. So, boom, he ran up by me. I'm like, oh yeah, that's it, bro. And the intro of our show. If you listen in, um, it's him and I talking with music in the background, and that's also David's work as well. So, the intro and the outro, uh, as David's, where he's very high functioning, very high thinking, unlike me, um, he's very smart, I'm just a dumb sergeant that uh got in a bad way, you know. So, uh, I think that's it.
Travis Yates:Well, it's a great show. Uh, you've got some great folks on there that I think. What I'm impressed by with the most, uh, dr David Mark, is how real it is. Right, we, we were joking before the show that I have 28 John Maxwell books. I read one of them. So I'm good, I love John Maxwell, but there's just so much of everything in this information age, right, I mean it's.
Travis Yates:We live in this weird time where we have all of this information and you name it in the topic, right, and obviously I'm a leadership guy, risk management guy, you guys are, you know, wellness and mental health, all this stuff but there's so much information, it all sort of. You know? This is what I tell people. If you want to be a police chief in a medium sized big city, I can tell you how to do it.
Travis Yates:There's a narrative to follow, there's a road to follow, there's a path to follow and for the most part, you sell yourself, you can't be you, you can't be honest, you can't be authentic. It's the same way in the training environment, podcast environment, media environment. There's a path. If you want to be successful, monetary wise, you have to follow that path, and so we have a lot of inauthentic things out there and it's doing a lot of damage. And I made a choice a long time ago that if I was, if I had this one life to live and it's one career to have, I was going to be real. And that's got my butt in a sling more times than I can think of, but I'm very proud of that. You know I said I told somebody a few years ago that the day I retired. I guess I'm going to tell you a little bit about myself, because your listeners are going to be listening to this as well.
Marc The Cop:Oh yes.
Travis Yates:And they may. They may not know who I am, but I just retired for 30 years with Tulsa police department and had a, you know, an awesome career. I got to do a lot of cool things and I didn't didn't really know. When I got in law enforcement my dad was a police captain enforcement Tharken Saltham and if you'd asked him my goals I've seen about this today as I was coming on the show if you'd asked him my goals in the academy and I was 21 years old in the academy, fred, I shot a college kind of my first real job. I'd had odd jobs here and there, my first legitimate real job. If you asked me on that first day in the academy it would have been my same go throughout my career. I said you know, I want to. I want to be the best cop I can be. Uh, I'd like to be a street sergeant for the most of my career, cause for some reason that just seemed cool and and, mark, you know that's the best job on the planet.
Travis Yates:Best job I can tell you that. And then, right before I retire, I like to make captain because my dad's a captain and I think that I'd call it good. I had no thoughts about podcasting or training or consulting or all these sort of different areas I'm doing. People will walk up to me in a class and go, oh, I want to do what you do. I'm like, well, I got a story to tell you because if you want to do it really bad, the odds are you probably shouldn't do it, right, uh, cause I just fell into it and uh, and so it's. It's pretty strange. And but what I saw in my career is I saw this narrative, I saw this path and I saw people being very successful to this day. Uh, and there's even a higher level of success. I call them those DOJ chiefs. Right, you can really. You can really be successful in the retirement if you become the DOJ chief and you have consultant gigs for the rest of your life and to do next to nothing, to run police departments and communities along the way. And it just made me sick. I can't really take credit for it. It's just what was inside of me. You know, maybe my, my family, maybe it's my faith. I just had this earning to go. I want to do what's right and I want to stand by what's right, and that goes with officers. So when I saw these officers throughout my career getting messed with, screwed with, and as I went up in the ranks, and just to tell you I what I bought my goal was was not what happened. I'd probably be a little happier today if it was.
Travis Yates:I ended up making first line supervisor three years into my career, at the Rapport age of 25 years old. Wow, at the time I was 28,. I was a street sergeant. At the time I was 31, 32,. I was a captain, I was a middle management and I was a commander, uh, in 2003, 2004,. Uh, major, which is right below the chief rank. So you know I I didn't really there was not a secret to that. I just worked hard and tried to do the best I could do and things just fell that way. I would have been perfectly happy with the street sergeant my entire career. That's just what happened.
Travis Yates:But I never really internally changed throughout that and that didn't mow well as I went through the management ranks, because that did not meet oftentimes what was expected of me, and so when I questioned things and when I wonder why we were do certain things, it was interesting, right, it was really interesting, and I was just naive to think that everybody felt like me. They wanted to do what's right, they wanted to tell the truth. They wanted, you know, they wanted to stop people attacking us when they were lying and we would tell the. It just wasn't the case and so I sort of had this burden, uh, dr David and Mark, for the rest of my life.
Travis Yates:My purpose is just to still stand up for this profession. I think one of the saddest things is when people spend 15, 20, 30, 35 years in this profession and they retire, they go, I'm out, I'm out, I'm done and you're not done. You're, god built you to serve right and you need to serve. It may be a different capacity, just like you, gentlemen, are still serving. That really is what I felt my purpose is. I've sort of fallen in line with, uh, really pushing what I would call courageous leadership, which is a weird term, because I see the book behind you. Thank you for putting up there today for me, mark.
Travis Yates:Oh brother, it's always up there but that really that you know that's just a fancy term for great leadership, right, and it seems to be so rare. It's like a unicorn, and the reason it's so rare is what I just described. That doesn't bode well for longterm success when it comes to finances or careers and this and that because it's if you're weak and if you go with the narrative, there's lots of avenues and places for you, but I do not believe in the long run those people will be happy. I don't believe in the long run those people will make any changes. I don't believe in the long run, those people will leave a legacy. And so my go, uh, as long as a good Lord gives me time as to believe in Mark in society the best I can, and so when I'm long gone, that is still there and it's been an incredible journey.
Travis Yates:I couldn't ask for anything more. I'm very, very blessed. I meet people like you every single day and there's a lot of us out there. But they've been stymied right. They've been, they've been beat over the head so much that they have marks on their head right, and so many people give up. They just give up because they figure out. Why do I want to fight this fight. Well, that's because you fight to fight, because it's worth it. The men and women that were at this badge are worth it. The communities they serve are worth it, and I'm just so thankful for what both of you do and all the folks that you have on your show. And that's kind of my short summary story.
Marc The Cop:Well, travis, I I want to go ahead and tell our listeners and for everyone else that's listening to your show welcome and thanks for listening to us. I've known you for a long time and you have left a big mark already and I feel that you've already have left the legacy. Your book is one of the books. Whenever I hear someone that's going to get into management, they I want to be a sergeant and I will buy your book on Amazon and the one next to it there, maxwell's, and hand them two books to those people. And the reason why is because Maxwell kind of gives you the tools to put in line for whatever the law. That Maxwell's 21 is what I'm talking about, and you're right. All the rest of them basically are just, you know, different derivatives of that original book.
Marc The Cop:Not that everything doesn't isn't good. Your book the courageous police leader keeps it real and it, it, it puts a perspective out there that take care of your people. Um, and it's so frustrating that and we've had several discussions on this show as well as others have been guests on that somewhere along the line we stopped taking care of our people. I think it's Ferguson. I think the lie of Ferguson is where management, not leaders management. In this idea of we need to hold people accountable because they weren't accountable in Ferguson, which is we're rated explicit HS, I'm going to say horse on my show. Uh yeah.
Travis Yates:I can.
Marc The Cop:I can swear like a sailor and then, for your audience, I'm not going to do that.
Travis Yates:We're not on the radio.
Marc The Cop:So, no, well, fucking horse shit, throw it out there, and I do I do this LEO round round table podcast and it's, it's streamed on it's on radio and radio.
Travis Yates:And they sent me this email and it said there's here's a seven words you can't say on radio. And I read the seven words and I got about six words into it and I go well, I don't say any of those words I'm not even worried about. Well, I didn't read the seventh word mark, seventh word of shit, and I do use that word time to time and I said it one day and the producer came unglued man, because apparently the SCC takes that stuff very seriously.
Travis Yates:Right, so, yeah, lesson learned. Lesson is this read the entire sentence, Just like attorneys right.
Dr. David Buchanan:Yeah.
Marc The Cop:And when you said that, it reminded me of that bit that George Carlin used to do yes, absolutely.
Marc The Cop:The comedian George Carlin. But anyway, um, in this whole strife of we're going to hold people accountable, it's like I'm all about accountability, okay, but when did you quit taking care of people? When did you start taking this officer that? He's on midnight's? He's endured a lot of stress. He saw a bunch of crap. His wagon is full. He's not going to therapy. You know he's existing on caffeine, cigarettes, red bowls, whatever. Uh, you know he's sleeping four or five hours a day.
Marc The Cop:Now he's starting to make bad life decisions. His family's starting to come apart, you know. So instead of management saying, hey, bro, come here, man, you know we need to talk, you need to start getting your life together. You know I'm noticing some changes in you. You're calling off sick. You know just this, isn't you. So instead of cultivating that guy that which most departments if you're there 10 years, what do you think it'd be fair to say, travis, we have at least a quarter million dollars worth of training in someone If you've been there 10 years, probably more easy I'm just being conservative of the quarter million.
Travis Yates:Yeah, half million.
Marc The Cop:Yeah.
Dr. David Buchanan:Exactly.
Marc The Cop:So let's say a half million. We have a half million dollars invested in this officer. So what's this manager? Not leader? What's the manager solution? That's firing. Let's step him up the discipline because we're going to hold people accountable. Let's just step him up the disciplinary scale and get rid of him. In the meantime, what's our number one killer of police officers is we're killing ourselves, and that's at an alarming rate. Not only are we having line of duty deaths, and Now to compound that and add in the fact that officers are going home and whacking themselves.
Marc The Cop:And back in my day, early days, and probably early in your career, oh, what happened to bill? He was cleaning his gun and shot himself. We all know that was a suicide. I mean, doc, dr David got an aha moment. He's like, oh yeah, I used to hear those all the time.
Marc The Cop:Well, back in them days they took care of people. They didn't want that stigma and Having that attitude. The worst thing in the world, because we're not taking care of people, is Number one. You're in a bad spot. Maybe you find yourself. You know your. Your life has come apart. Your family's come apart.
Marc The Cop:Now your management's coming at you from the back. You know we can deal with the guy on the street. I know the terms there. I can't deal with the guy that's attacking me from the rear and their only thing is is that we need to hold people accountable because of a lie we were told of a national event, and there's several of them and I don't want to get real super political, but I think that we had, and we've had, a vacuum of leaders and there's a difference between leadership and management is Definite, and I can remember standing up in our command staff meetings and saying this is bullshit. You know, we need to be taking care of our people, the road dogs out there that are showing up every day. They're getting used up right now. You know overtime shift after overtime shift. You know well they're just not taking good care on themselves and we need to start having, as departments and as leaders, more empathy for our people that are out there protecting our citizens every day.
Travis Yates:I'm waiting on you, dr David, but you want to point over to me.
Dr. David Buchanan:Well, I watched a lot of your presentations over the weekend the last few days. So far it hasn't harmed me one bit, and you had a goose story that you told to a presentation and I love the goose story.
Travis Yates:And it was. It was a goose, or is it geese? Always getting trouble by the Autobahn Society right?
Dr. David Buchanan:Well, I'm never quite sure. It sounded like it's probably plural, so okay, when I when I looked it up online it was called the goose story, okay, but I loved the principle there of you have a flock of geese flying migration. You have one goose that's Breaking the wind, leading everybody else, and then it's fatiguing, it's exhausting, and somehow the birds know it's time for somebody else to do that now, and so the top guy, the front guy, falls back, somebody else comes up front and it goes like that for miles and miles and miles and miles and they know the direction, they know the purpose, they know the go.
Travis Yates:They're all in it together. They always get to the same place, unless dr David, their police birds. Then they all backstab each other and change directions and they fire the head geese and they bring in the new geese and they get rid of that program because that geese like that program. And it goes on and on right.
Dr. David Buchanan:Exactly, the number one thing I think I've been educated about in the last three years Is how police, law enforcement people fuck each other and they do it in so many different ways. It's like I Don't know. It must take a lot of creativity, you know, because I the, the whole culture seems to have an element and everywhere I go, every way that talks to me about it, everywhere this has whole pattern historically of law enforcement people. Fucking each other.
Travis Yates:It's whether they're not in a fun way. You're not talking about the fun way.
Dr. David Buchanan:Well, not in my a desk. The definition I to kind of get the impression that there are people having some level of enjoyment doing that let's turn other pod, that's right.
Travis Yates:You know I, you know it's interesting, and mark you brought up Ferguson and I actually obviously you know my book. I talk about that because, listen, I think the problem First off the problem is, I think, which what both of you guys have just said is is why it's so valuable, why you do your podcast, because so few people want to actually talk about problems. But you're never gonna solve anything if you don't talk about problems, and I will open up my leadership seminars, sometimes two or three hours, just talking about the problems, because it sets them up for us, talking about the last half a day, the solutions, and that's not for everybody, you know. There's, like I said, there's a narrative. I went in there and everybody feel good and happy, fuzzy, you're the greatest thing ever. I'd be extremely popular out there on the circuit, but that's not doing us any good, right. I mean, there's all kinds of leadership seminars and conferences, quadruple trilogies I'm hanging this on my wall and I ask people because I've been to a lot of that stuff. I've been the FBI in a, in a per for all the East Coast chiefs go to die and ICP, and this acronym, and that acronym of my question is well, where is it gotten us? Where are we as a profession? Is anyone evaluating this?
Travis Yates:And when you look at Ferguson and I do agree that was sort of the tip of the spear of what continued on but here's why I think it happened. You know, when I Hit my first squad through right by the age of 22, my sergeant at the time seemed like an old guy but he was probably in his mid to late 40s Vietnam vet. You know we're talking early 90s here. Vietnam that was running the squad hardcore dude would take care of you if you, if you meant well, he would hurt you if you didn't, if you had intention to do harm. And I thought to myself and I'm sort of embarrassed by it at the time I thought I can't believe this. I went to college, I got this great job and now I'm working for my dad again because my dad was a Vietnam that had that same ideology and I got out of the house out of way for my dad. Now I'm working for my dad every day but I miss him because they're not that they're not around very often.
Travis Yates:And what happened with Ferguson is is that attitude of when we're right, I will defend you to the end of the earth. If you're wrong, you're wrong, I will might hold you accountable, but if you're right, I don't care what anybody says, because people don't understand. These weak, cowardly leaders want to make people think that this stuff is new. Hey, when I came on, mark, when you came on, the media lied about us. The activists talk crazy. They go to city council meetings and talk nonsense. Now, granted, social media is a force multiplier, but these entities were there. Yes, no different. You just changed the name and they're still there today.
Travis Yates:The difference was we let him get away with it. Right, if we did not let them get away with it, I can remember, specifically up to the mid 90s and late 90s, if somebody lying about us and our chief going on TV, basically pointing a finger at them, calling them a liar, yeah, right, and that tender to keep other people from lying. It's weird. Weird how that happens, but what happened in Ferguson is is. We had a lot of head knowledge on leadership, but when that chaos came, we could not Adapt. We cannot own those principles that we saw for so many years in this profession, and we just caved right and chiefs figured out that, hey, if I just give in and cave, I may be, I'll keep my job and we can go on down the road and I can go to this next conference and my pension it's padded because they felt, because they made a choice. I don't care about the men and women behind the badge, I care more about myself.
Travis Yates:Right, and as I said, as I say all the time, man, if you want to be a leader, it's gonna be bloody, it's gonna be gory, you're gonna hurt, you're in the arena, you're gonna get bruised. Yes, it's not some happy, go lucky position you have. You're not, you know and so. But we have a lot of people in those positions that that's not why they're there. They're not there to take care of other people that are there to take care of themselves. And let me tell you something I talked a lot about courageous leadership. There's a lot of great courageous leaders that are unemployed because they did not give up, they did not give in and they got 10 xed out of that room and God bless them. If we had more of them, we would not be in this position.
Travis Yates:And leadership, everything really bad. That it's happiness, profession is because of leadership. It's not because of the city council, it's not because of politicians, it's not because of the media. It's not because of no, no, we did it to ourselves. Yes, we left them lie about Ferguson, a legal, justified shooting that Obama's Department of Justice cleared the officer. Right, we left him lie about Baltimore we left him lie about Breonna Taylor We've left them lie.
Travis Yates:We're so racist, mark and Dr David, they keep stop lying about it, right, right, and we're not a perfect profession. There's no perfect profession. But I would put us up against Chick-fil-A. My goodness, who else will agree to wear a body camera their entire workday? They try to do it to school teachers during COVID and they flipped out, right, yes, that's right, we'll do it. And so my department alone records about 6,000 hours a day, so you can track that around the United States to Millions and millions of hours a day. And I'd say what do they got? What do they got? But nobody's saying that. They're waiting for the next viral moment for some chief to just throw people down. And we're so bad in our profession, guys, we'll let somebody, we'll let some viral moment happen 2,000 miles away and all the chiefs in the country come out and talk about it.
Marc The Cop:Right, well, and they don't know anything about it.
Travis Yates:Right, and they're. They're shameless about it. Now you don't see that in any other profession, like if some school teacher you know Sexually assaults a kid which I don't know. I see on the news every single day in this country. You don't see all the principles around the country going that's never gonna happen. At our school We've implemented this rules and that rule no. I think most society understands that's an anomaly. That's not happening in all the schools, right, but our own leaders have made the public think that one police incident out of 800,000 cops Applies to all of us, not all the leaders. But shame on them. They have done this to us and I and we can either set back and let it keep happening we will continue to see the degradation, the defamation, the defunding of law enforcement and it's not gonna get any better or good men and women can stand up against it and I thank God for both of you men and so many others that are doing that, because there's a lot of us out there.
Travis Yates:Not all that.
Travis Yates:Not everyone has a platform there's a lot of us out there that cares about our communities, that cares about this profession, that is sick and tired of this and I think one of the reasons that Some of the personal attacks come for all of a sudden here is because they know the scams up. Oh yeah, they know, we know, right, we, as we are outing them publicly now. And I I stopped being nice a few years ago because I tried to be nice. That didn't work. So now I'm kind of to shame me at this point. You know I got booted off the stage last week from the Department of Justice lawyer. What oh what? You're upset. You're upset that I said that 14 of the top 20 cities, or the most violent cities in America, are ran by the Department of Justice. Not me saying it, those are the facts. According to the FBI, the top 20 most violent cities, 14 of those are ran by the Department of Justice consent decrees. And you mad about that. I don't know why you're mad. It's true, right?
Marc The Cop:It's true. Now, travis, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that you got thrown off the stage.
Travis Yates:They didn't try to physically throw me off stage. We'll come back to that a little later.
Travis Yates:All right, but the scam is up. The scam is up. We know what they're doing. You can't keep pointing at the politicians and activists saying it's their fault. Same with all the other issues we're dealing with, from retention to recruiting, to morale. Oh no, it's your fault. Yeah, it's your fault. And because it's your fault is actually a good thing. We can control that, right. If it was some third-party entity that we didn't control, I would have no hope. But the truth is I have hope because there's a lots of good men and women Maybe not in chief positions yet that are in our agencies, that are willing to make a change, willing to sacrifice and willing to lead.
Marc The Cop:Amen to that. To dovetail off of that, there is a great amount of good leadership that's there. Like in my agency, I always prided myself on developing that leader coming up, that first-year officer that shows some potential. You know, start taking that person and developing them as leaders. You know it. My former agency you know it was the contract says that the senior guys always going to be the officer in charge and when the sergeant's gone. And I said that's bullshit because my senior guy is incompetent. You know my youngest officer was the leader of the shift. You know I didn't have a hundred officers to manage, you know. So we were. It was four people on my shift. That was a 20-man department. But what I'm saying is is that the youngest, newest officer there had natural leadership ability about them and and to develop that and it took me hell in high water to get a memorandum of understanding past through our union To be a little while it was a while.
Travis Yates:Our culture and David talked about it Our culture is so unhealthy. Yes, yes, they don't want you mentoring those young officers. They haven't earned that.
Travis Yates:They haven't been on three years or five years. You know they haven't deserved that man. Let me tell you something you know, and get back to that goose story. If we empowered the people in our agencies with the talents they had and said, get after, it changed the world. We would radically change our communities. But we don't do that. You may have some rookie officer that knows something, has great ideas, great concepts, great creativity. We mute them, yes, until they earned it. Maybe they have to take their shirt to the drop to get some stripes sewn on their arm, and now they can have a little bit of a say so, but not too much say so, mark, because they're not a captain or lieutenant Yet, you know. And then they get. That was not too much say so. Rank has got nothing to do with changing our departments for the better, exactly nothing.
Travis Yates:We have some of the best men and women. This country has to offer awareness, uniform and rank has nothing to do with it. If we empower them, it changes the world. But because of everything, we're talking about these weak cowards, because if you, if you're weak man, you put yourself around other weak people, you're in your, you're intimidated by people that may have more knowledge or whatever it is, and they knew them because they have the control of I, they have the control of power, they have the control of discipline and I think, as I said earlier, we've exposed it because a lot of officers know that, right, yes, and they're looking for that. And let me ask you guys both a question why don't we expose every single Police recruit in the academy to high-level leadership skills? I'm just gonna ask you the question and I'll give you my answer, dr David.
Dr. David Buchanan:They become a threat if educated and trained.
Marc The Cop:I can't say it better.
Travis Yates:Yeah, that's it. I mean, that is that's why they call him dr David, right? I couldn't say any clearer myself. Because let me tell you something, in the military it's complete opposite. You're exposed to how every leadership skills day, one, day one and I talked to a lot of our past military folks that become police officers and their minds explode Because it's such a different dichotomy what they're used to. They can't understand what they're seeing. So people need to understand, especially citizens.
Travis Yates:The law enforcement community, law enforcement profession, is completely whacked when it comes to leadership because they had this hierarchy system. Oh, you went and you passed a test. Oh, yeah, you danced in front of an assessment center and now, all of a sudden, we bless you with a rank that makes you not any Smarter. In fact, you lose brain cells every day, so you're actually dumber tomorrow than you were yesterday, right? So, no, you're not any smarter, you're not any better. Leadership's leadership and man, if we would give this in the Academy and continue that through their career, the, what we could accomplish is unheard of. But that's going to take swallowing your ego, swallowing your pride and admitting that, man, I'm a chief, from whatever rank I am, but there are people around me that are just as capable, less empower them. And let me tell you guys, there's, you know, when you do this job, 30 years there's not a whole lot of clear things you can remember, right, because it all kind of jumbles together, right, let me?
Travis Yates:Let me tell you something the moments in my career and listen, I, I very much, is like most people. You know I, many of the years I worked my agency, did not use my talents. They did not empower me, they didn't put me in positions to use my talents, but there were times they did and my Drive and my motivation during those time periods was incredible because I Recognized man, they trust me to do this job. They've given me the tools to do this job. I'm gonna do the best job I can for, not for me, but for the agency, and I tried to go throughout my career doing that for other people and I saw how it worked. I saw how great it was and, by the way, as a leader, as an administrator, as a supervisor, it made my job easier. Why do I want to be doing everything? Let's find somebody really good at what they do and say man, go change the world, let's get after it, and I would watch them do it, and that's some of the best memories I have yeah, no, absolutely.
Marc The Cop:And if you have a good team that surrounds you, you hit the nail on the head there. Yeah, you don't have to work as hard because you have subject matter experts right there under your nose. Let them do what they're doing. We all succeed when we succeed as a team and as the leader of whatever group, you are Developing those people underneath you and giving them them skills and allowing them to use them. That's the biggest thing. Yeah, it's the same way with my department, travis. Did you know that I was never allowed to be a field training officer, Although I asked for it several times?
Marc The Cop:Yeah we're not gonna have you do that. Why not? When I made the rank of sergeant? You know who the training sergeant was, not me. I've only been training at the state level since 2004. That's you know when, when you and your sergeant came over and visited us and drove with this and I was trying to remember what year that was you came to Ohio.
Travis Yates:Oh, man I was. I'll tell you I was with Jack Hoener.
Marc The Cop:You were having a yeah.
Travis Yates:And we, we, uh, Jeff Eggleston offered us a week there at the facility. Yes, sir, the only thing I remember about that place was it was London right. Yes, sir. The only thing I remember is that seedy bar that Jack would take Right the crowd. That thing spooked me. I don't think still there, but it's scary to me to death. I'm a married guy trying to live by my Lord and he'd take me in that little seedy bar and I was like man. I feel the heave-a-jeebies.
Marc The Cop:Funny story about that Funny story about your visit. There is our driver, our best driver, right. Jack ran him off the track, jack, you know he's incredible man.
Travis Yates:And listen, same thing. I ran that unit but I fully would say, hey, jack and Will. I don't think you guys met Will, but they were two of my best drivers. I said get after a gentleman. I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't affected by that. I took, I took pride in the fact that those guys were so good because they came, I brought them in and I trained them, I learned.
Marc The Cop:I learned so much from YouTube that week when you were there. You know the techniques of how to handle the car and things like that. So can I jump back here real quick. We were talking about these leaders and is there a gauge out there? So, most city, I was a city councilman for two and a half terms and you know, coming from the game, I kind of had an inside track and the police chief at the little village where I was at. You know, my thing is is that, hey, what do you need? I'm going to get you all the money you need to run your department. Is there a gauge out there or someplace where some of these city officials could go to to score or gauge? They have a really awful chief but to them, like my dad always told me, mark, you're always good as what your boss thinks you are, and if the city manager thinks you're walking on water and you're just an absolute moron, you know, is there a gauge out there from any of these chiefs associations that that can rate a police chief?
Dr. David Buchanan:Hmm.
Travis Yates:Good Talking my language.
Travis Yates:Now the answer is no. Clearly, I think you understand why the answer is no. They're the best that ever been in their own head. They don't want anything threatened. But here's what needs to happen, and I'm actually in the process of trying to figure this out, and if any of your listeners have any ideas, I would love to hear from them. Travis Yates dot org. You'll find all my stuff there.
Travis Yates:We are lying to our recruits. We're spending millions of dollars on marketing materials and fancy websites and fancy videos. We're making these departments look like the greatest thing ever when we get them in the door and they get there for six months or a year and they go. Ooh, this was not what I thought. So what we are in desperate need of and the private business world has been doing it for years is we need to rate our agencies, which would be a rating on leadership. So I want to rate leadership in an agency and I'm really close to pulling something off with it and it was going to, it's going to, it's going to be something the effective, because before I do that, it has to be validated.
Travis Yates:Dr David would tell you all this stuff, you want to be able to support it with actual evidence, research driven, and so it's going to be categorized out, but it's going to come from the, from the employees. You can ask 10 employees in the agency and you'll figure out the end of those 10 people, whether it's a good agency or not, right? Oh yeah, not just opinion, but tell me exact examples of what's going on. And so I know they're not going to be necessary rating the chief, but I'm of the opinion that the, the entire chain of command, is a reflection of the chief, because what we see in a lot of agencies is a lot of your supervisors to your middle management, they're all wanting to go to the next rank, oftentimes. Well, they will emulate who's at the top, right, so you may have a bad chief, but what people will notice is is they'll start seeing people around them changing to conform to that bad chief, and that's a that, once that starts occurring, it's very difficult to get that culture back, and so I would love to come up with, you know, a rating system for the leadership of these agencies, which I do I do think will reflect our chiefs and other folks, where our officers will know what type of agency that is.
Travis Yates:And you know that is not been done, and it's pretty amazing to think it hasn't been done with all of the millions of dollars being poured into these organizations, but I think that's going to be extremely important to do. I think unions need to grab on to that Right, like you know, from a health perspective, where your agency is on leadership, because if you don't know, you don't know what to work on, and I know that she's made the chiefs Well. I would personally love it, I would love to be rated every year Exactly, and so I can know what to work on, what to improve on. Most people aren't, aren't that clearly? And but here's how unhealthy that the culture is. Dr David and Mark, do you know of any police chief anywhere that's been fired for crime going up?
Marc The Cop:That's funny. Let's go. Let's go. Look at the city of Memphis that really.
Travis Yates:That really turns into a very sick environment, because our sole mission is in our name. Yes, all enforcement, bam. That is the mission of our profession. Ok, and our sole mission. Not only are we not evaluating agencies based on leadership no one seems to care about crime, but that's the mission. It's like saying. It's like saying McDonald's doesn't care about their cheeseburgers no, they do.
Travis Yates:That's why they're handed surveys to all the customers. They want to make sure they're meeting their mission Right Exactly, and the fact that I have asked. I have put this on social media. I'm trying to find one chief in America that was actually fired for high crime. Maybe it's happened, but up until today I haven't found it. I'll be fired for a bunch of other things that has nothing to do with the mission Right, and so that is not good for our communities. Your community deserves for your police department to be held accountable for their only mission, which is crime.
Marc The Cop:It seems to me that these, the cowards that get up in that corner office, they're afraid to go out and enforce the law and cops just want to do cops. Yet that's why I wanted to become a police officer. I wanted to do some good. I wanted my people to feel safe in their beds at night. And you know, and like in our community, you know they were very appreciative the fact that you know, my motto was as a working B cop was take care of your good people, f the bad ones. And I had these undesirables that moved down to our city because, hey, it's really nice, right? Yeah, so you live peacefully or I will keep arresting you until you move away. And one guy one evening he was crying as I had him in the back of my car. I've never been arrested so much in my life. Well, dude, you know that's what we don't, that's what we do here. We take care of our good people, you're being you, do your job.
Marc The Cop:Yeah, that my job is to convince you to move somewhere where you don't have this problem and they did. But that's such a valid point, you know. If your crime rate is high, why are you still getting this big salary? Get it in my doubt.
Travis Yates:There's a lot of crazy stuff going on in the profession. We can fix it tomorrow, mark and Dr David. And here's how you fix it. You tell every police chief in America if the crime goes up two years in a row, you're gone and you know what they'll do. It's crazy because we know how to how to. We know how to curb crime. We did it all through the 90s yes, lowest in our history. We know the tools it takes to curb crime. You know what those chiefs have to do. They say Mark, go, go, go, curb crime, go do it, they would do it if their job was on the line.
Travis Yates:But the truth is your job is actually on the line politically. If they do go curb crime. Listen, here's a quick answer for that. If in the political world, if they're upset that you're actually enforcing the law, it's easy to tell the politicians hey, you don't like me enforcing the law, get rid of the law. You control the law books, you control the ordinances. If you don't want me curb and crime, stop and stop. And these criminals shoplifters, you know, rape suspects, robbery suspects go crimp, decriminalize the law Because as it stands now, you put the law on the books, but then you're mad at me when I use the law and so.
Travis Yates:But nobody's going to stand up and do that because they believe that's going to hurt their job. And let me tell you guys, you can't be a police chief in any major city today by saying your main goal is to curb crime. They will not hire you If you don't start bobbing your head and get that old Bill Clinton, look and go. My main job, my main job is to gain community trust. Gain community trust If you don't say that you will not be hired. And, by the way, community trust has nothing to do with our mission.
Travis Yates:Do what I like to community to trust us. Does that help our job? Of course, but you know how you do that. It's not using TikTok. It's not doing breakdancing videos. You know how you do that. Why do you trust a business Mark? You look like an Apple guy to me. You know you kind of have this weird Southern California vibe going on. You tell me why you like Apple. You trust them because they do a heck of a job. They make a great device. They have good customer service. When you walk into the store you feel like you're going to start smoking weed, but you like the store anyway, right? You're kind of hitting out.
Travis Yates:That's why you trust them. You don't trust them because they're saying whatever you want to hear and they're doing TikTok. No, you trust them because you're providing a great server. So how you build trust is you do a great job. By the way, the last I checked, gallup's been doing the trust ratings for the last 50 years in our professions and law enforcement has been in the top four all 50 years. Yes, the last time I saw it, we had an 82% trust rating from the American public School teachers, doctors pretty much the only ones have been above us.
Travis Yates:The people that are streaming for community trust politicians are around 9% is where Congress is, and the media is at 11%. Yes, so it's the scam. And it's a scam because they'll never tell you. What level of community trust do we need? And, by the way, you can see all of the reforms and all of the changes that are happening across this profession based on that lie. We have to do this because of what? Not because of our mission, not because of crime control. Community trust, it's a metric that you cannot measure. It's 82% now. What could it be? Well, the fact is the data and most of the research will say it's not going to ever get much higher. There's about 10% to 15% of the public that will never like us and I had the data to back that up. I talked about this in my seminar. So quit worrying about the other 10% or 15% or 20%, yeah.
Marc The Cop:What are you making decisions?
Travis Yates:What you're doing, by trying to placate to those folks that never trust you, is you're alienating the ones that do trust you. So, here's how you build community trust. You do your job and you do it well, and people will tend to like that, yes, so we are so far off the reservation, so to speak. We're so far away from that I don't even know what to say about it. We could talk for hours about that, but it's not hard to get it back, Mark. We need to be mission focused in the story.
Marc The Cop:And I think that mission is take care of your people, yeah.
Travis Yates:It's funny. You say that I wrote an article a few months ago called Do they Care, right, and I want to sort of describe that to our folks and you can read my articles on Substack and I can give you that website. But just go to travestiatesorg and you hit Substack and you can plug your email in and get all these articles. But here's why I ended up writing the article. I started getting this thought in my head how important caring should be. So I actually did a dissertation a couple years ago. I would not recommend it, as Dr David will tell you, hell no. And my dissertation was not on that. My dissertation was on how communication affects organizational performance. You're going to say that sounds smart. No, I was just lazy. I knew there was a lot of data already out there and I figured I got to make this thing easier because I'm not that smart, I'm going to get through this thing. So what I found out by studying this topic and it had never been studied in law enforcement before, so it was really interesting to see what happened is, yes, obviously communication affects many aspects of it. It's what the themes of my dissertation show. But when I heard this thing about caring, I did a word search on it because caring I didn't. I did a word search on the dissertation 300, 400 pages dissertation. I did a word search and caring starts popping up because I did interviews with a lot of officers and the quotes from officers. But yes, they were talking about performance. They were talking about people not communicating, but in their quotes they kept saying they don't care about me. It doesn't sound like they care about me, they don't empower me, they don't care. It was all throughout and I had this sort of revelation. I'm like that's it, that's it. All the leadership gurus, all the people out there that are giving you the fancy memes, if we just go to work tomorrow and go, let's care for people more, it changes everything. Yeah, it changes everything. It's that simple. We how? We have messed up the concept of leadership and taking care. I don't know how we've done it, but we've had to work really hard. Just go care for people.
Travis Yates:I'll tell you one quick story about that. I was on the department a couple of years and we had a chief at the time. I'll give him credit. He's a great chief, ron Palmer. He came from Kansas city, young guy when he got here. He's like in his early 40s when he came to my department. I don't know He'd been there four or five years when I got there, but he would ride every month with an officer, just a random officer. He'd show up whatever shift, decked out vest and he'd ride the entire shift. I always thought that was cool. Yeah, I always thought that was cool until one day I got a call from his administrative assistant that said hey, the chief's going to ride with you this month. I'm like what's the odds of that?
Travis Yates:600, some odd officers in patrol is riding with me. I was freaked out. You know, I'm like a one year officer and I play in the car and I'm all nervous and shows up and, oddly enough, that night it couldn't get a lot of backers. I don't know what was going on, but we go. We ended up having a great time. I kind of relaxed. We had a great conversation. It was really fascinating for a young officer to be around, someone that had already sort of had that street cred and he was the chief in the major city.
Travis Yates:We get to the end of the night. By the way, this is how important carrying is. Guys in the audience, it's how important it is. I remember this like it was yesterday. I wrote it in my book. I remember like it was yesterday. I get out of my car. He gets out of the car, he's walking to his car. I'm walking in my car. It says after a evening shift. So it's like midnight and he's walking away and we're about 20 yards away. He says Travis. I turn around and I said yes, chief. He says man, you're a great cop, I really appreciate you, I mean.
Dr. David Buchanan:I'll tell you.
Travis Yates:I'm getting emotional. Telling the story from 30 years ago Very cool.
Travis Yates:Those words, those few seconds he took because he meant it. You could tell he meant it, it was authentic. He didn't have to stop and say that He'd already thanked me in the car, but he stopped me and he said man, you're a great cop, I really appreciate you. Those words got me through 30 years. There were times when I wanted to stop, times I wanted to quit. Those words got me through 30 years. That's amazing. How are we not doing that for others? When I talk about leadership lessons, that right there, surpassed all the seminars, all the training, all the books that I've ever read on leadership. That right there. It's that simple, guys.
Dr. David Buchanan:Yes, exactly as you point out in your presentations. It's as simple as the golden rule Treat people the way you would like to be treated. It's that simple, and I have a client who taught me the silver rule, which I'd never heard before Don't treat people the way you don't want to be treated. And I think, yes, exactly.
Travis Yates:I'm totally stealing that one man. I love it.
Dr. David Buchanan:So it's that simple, it's that elegant. It's that focused and it's also that real. When you do that, it becomes powerful instantly.
Travis Yates:Yeah. So let me ask you guys so we've. I mean, if it's this simple, how do we get it back? How do we get back there?
Marc The Cop:I'll start with this one. Good, you got to be humble. How many leaders out there are willing? So we have to do these things once, twice a year, which I call it a joke. It's called an evaluation. Didn't you hate doing evals travels for you people? Yeah, cuz they were worthless for the most part, absolutely. And so you just always kind of cut and paste, cut and paste. And what do you do?
Marc The Cop:last year, and yeah or the weather, the period of time is, so you milk it down to you. They got a one through five or one through three, or you know whatever some.
Travis Yates:Sometimes if you give a certain number you gotta give documentation. So everybody kind of get down the middle, right, we're just giving down the middle school right.
Marc The Cop:Right, because if the guys the total f up, you're not gonna score him low, because then you have to show what was your, what was your employee improvement program or why is it an f up and what you do? Blah, blah, blah, blah. All right. So if I had to do these for my people, right, because there was Zero leadership training in my department when I got promoted. Here's your keys, here's your stripes. Go do search and shit. How do I do that? Oh, no, figured out. So in order for me to gauge, am I serving my people? And now I'm not the guy standing there directing.
Marc The Cop:My job as A leader was to make my people's job the easiest it could be. How can I serve you and make your job easy, make your job fun, make you enthusiastic about coming to work? So I didn't have a way to gauge that. So I'm thinking why who's who's evaluating me? Oh, it's the guy in the corner office that I never see because we work six p to six a. He works eight to four. So I literally never see the guy. And on council nights, when he's supposed to be there at seven, he never came through the department. He walked in the front door of the city building and just totally avoided it. So my officers never really knew who he was. So who should be really evaluating me? Your officers, bingo. So that's what I did.
Marc The Cop:I read recreated, because we were one through five, which I thought was a fucking joke. So either am I meeting your needs yes, am I exceeding your needs, hopefully or am I not meeting your needs, and if I'm not, I want to know what I'm doing wrong. And I was humble enough to say you know, this is your chance, because the guy up the corner really has no idea what I do here. But from you, if you people, who's the face of this department are telling him, hey, you know, sergeant Mark is doing a great job, I want you to hear that. Or if I'm f'ing something up, I want to know that too. You can't give me a one, which does not mean expectation, because I want details. I want to know how I did that. Enough. I pissed you off on a scene, or I had to get stripe heavy for something, and you're that one time you're mad, I get it Okay, and if you're raw about it, put it in there. But I want him to see that and I also wanted that to be included with my yearly Evaluations from him to see what kind of work I did.
Marc The Cop:And there's other sergeants on my department, so you know, fuck them way. I'm doing that. Why? How do you? And, and, travis, I want to tell you this real quick the best compliment I got was from one of my officers and the poor bastard had to work for me then first six years or seven years of his career and he evolved along and he really grew and, you know, really took on a leadership role and and when I was giving him his evaluation, I Said hey, jimmy, you know, I really wish I had this guy for the past six years. And he says you know what, sergeant, I really wish I had this Sergeant for the past six years, because at first I thought these evils you gave us was bullshit. But you actually read them and when you're doing something we don't like, you changed, he said you really evolved, so that was the greatest compliment I ever had as a boss.
Marc The Cop:But I think, in order to be humble and in is to get that bottom-up view how are you being viewed from the people that you're managing? And I think that's where leaders need to look at their opinion and take that to heart.
Travis Yates:Yeah, you know, I Obviously it's an individual agency basis, but it we're almost at the point to where, unless the guy or gal at the top Brings that humility, endorses that humility, demands that humility, yes, no one is going to even consider that for the most part, right, I mean, you're gonna have those. I was. I don't want to come across in this, in the show, that everybody's bad. Of course they aren't.
Travis Yates:No we have some right now. The bad ones are out weighing the good ones right there being. The good ones are being muzzled. I mean, just look at the data. I'm a big data nerd, right. Look at the data. What's our recruiting like? What's our retention like? I'm in rooms all the time, guys, and For the last couple years I've asked this question.
Travis Yates:So probably a few thousand folks who here know somebody that left their department before they wanted to I'm not talking about you but who here know somebody that wanted to stay 20 years but they left early I want to say 30 years, they left early. Every hand for two years has gone up. Oh yeah, that is a recipe for complete bankruptcy in this profession, yes. And then when you look how we're trying to recruit which is a whole, nother crazy topic how you think some recruiting videos when convinced somebody to become a police officer you know, Washington DC Metro Just won the recruiting video the year about police one. We're at the lowest staffing in history. So congratulations on your video you start looking at that. You think not only are these folks not humble, they're dumb at the same time. You know, because if I have a recruiting problem, I want to find out how to recruit. I don't need a thing I don't want. I just don't want something that looks great, right website, video, this and that I mean.
Travis Yates:There's some companies bringing down millions of dollars because they build websites. They charge nineteen, ninety five prices to these departments and they pay them. I know this because I'm involved in recruiting company and I helped them with some contracts and dude. It's crazy what I'm seeing these agencies are doing and it won't work. It will never work. We know I've seen the data can't the campaigns on our recruiting campaigns. Like we just had a client and they're down a lot of officers. And these guys I work with are just brilliant and they actually can tell you the exact cost it takes to hire, how many officers you need. They look at the conversion rates of applicant to hire and they ask that question and they go okay, you need 50 officers, is going to cost you this. You'll get the people and the department's looking. I think I can't a lot being lied to, because everyone's a bunch of scam artists that are talking to. They're not being lied to.
Travis Yates:I've watched the time and time again right and and there's a department, and they said and they said, well, how do you do this? And they explain. And they said, well, well, you use our video because they're all proud of these videos, right. And we told them like, we'll use your video, but your video won't work. We know from the data in our campaigns but we'll take our four ads that we think will work. Well, a B test those ads and we'll put your video in there. Their video got a point. Oh, three percent engagement. No, my, you know, I mean a video. I mean when we finally showed him that, he goes oh, dude, we have to understand that comes with humility. Mark, what you think you know, you may not know. What you like may not be what recruits like, and We've never had to recruit. Think, listen, I tested with almost a thousand people for nine spots. There were for the duration of my career until the last few years. There were many more candidates than we had openings so that means you're not recruiting, you are marketing.
Travis Yates:You're just making your department look good to try to get the best candidates. But when you lose that, I call it the 80 20 rule. Now we still have 80 percent for the most part that they're gonna come to your department. That's just their people. God call certain people to serve their community. They're gonna try to find a department, do it. But that other 20 percent or, if you're Portland, that other 78 percent You're gonna have to go find him.
Travis Yates:You're gonna have to actually recruit. Well, that's a specialized skill. You don't have any about your department that necessarily knows how to do that. You have people that can go to a job fair and wave at people. By the way, there's nobody there because there's something called the internet, you know, or you, or you can put you know signs up at a bus station. I've heard all these crazy stories there are. It's a professional skill and you're gonna have to humble yourself and go.
Travis Yates:Man, I can't solve this problem on my own, but they're throwing a lot of money at it and it's not being solved in. My fear is a lot of these leaders Just gonna give up and say that's the way it is. No, it's not the way it is and it's, and there's gonna be downstream problems with this, and I want to get you guys opinion on this. A lot of departments this is not every department, but there are some departments. This is gonna sound crazy, but I have seen it, guys they don't want to solve the recruiting problem. Some of the you, some of the unions don't don't get see me an email saying I'm saying everybody.
Travis Yates:Some of the departments, some of the union Don't want to solve the recruiting problem because your biggest cost in the agency is personnel, right? Oh yeah, if you're down 20%, you got a lot of money to play with and they're spending that money in overtime for the officers filling the beats, making a ton of money. But here's the problem with that the mental health side of that. Down the road, exactly, you're taking an Officer that we build and we train for a healthy 2025 year career and by year six they are done. Oh yeah, and we're going to see if we do not fix this recruiting issue. We keep relying on filling the beats and making all this overtime and you roll some. You roll the riots into that. We experienced the last several years that we're about to experience this year more than likely, because you know politicians know the no one game, one game only.
Marc The Cop:Yeah, that's right when you roll that chaos on top of that.
Travis Yates:There's officers, marked it for almost a year, never got a day off in this country during, do I know? Yes, and there, and it was all high stress environments.
Marc The Cop:You can only take that for what?
Travis Yates:those, what that's going to do to those individuals, to their life, to their family, to their health. We do not want to see what that looks like down the road and no one is talking about that Because there's doesn't seem to be this push to actually figure the recruiting thing out. It because they think they have the solution, because they just feel the beats and people work the overtime. That's not the solution. Oh, we'll give them a big hiring bonus.
Travis Yates:Not the solution, that's because they're going to work for your agency on hiring bonus, they'll leave your agency for another hiring bonus. That's not the solution. The solution is to fix it right and and you know there are people that care like we've got a couple clients now that they really get it, they really want to fix it and they're working with us and it's working very, very well. But there are so many others. I had a conversation with the chief the other day and this guy I think he's down 14 officers. It's not a not a hard problem to fix.
Travis Yates:We talked about the processes. We showed our successes. I mean, mark and dr, there's an agency we got. We set 1400 people in one month to them. It's a big age, holy cow, because we know the processes and they've never seen anything like that before. But we know how to do it Right. I mean, we actually have smart little technology. Kids know how to do it. We know how to do it and I say it's not a problem. And we gave him a price that was well below their hiring bonus, by the way, that they're giving out. Well below is one hiring bonus. Oh, and he says, yeah, but can you do a video? I Just told you we were going to solve your problem.
Travis Yates:And you came back and said can I do a video? Well, of course we can do a video. Any 12 year old can do a video. But do you want to solve the problem or do you want a video? I'm not sure. They all want to solve the problem, and that is scary.
Marc The Cop:Well, I think, the best recruiter, because I tell you what I loved being a cop. Would you, would you agree with that, dr David?
Dr. David Buchanan:Oh yes.
Marc The Cop:I ate slept pooped. Be in the Polis.
Travis Yates:Dr David, you got a lot of work off of mark because he loved it a little too much. Yeah, oh yes, that's a lot of available time there at the end.
Marc The Cop:But when I was happy in my job, I was the best recruiter my department yet you know, hey, do you love your job? Oh, absolutely best job in the world. Yeah, I still thinks the best job in the world.
Travis Yates:No, it's a fantastic. It's fantastic. You say that we actually have an affiliate program, which is not a unique concept. Every brand out there you can get an affiliate link and they pay you. So we said, hey, stop, give there's an apartment right now that, given 75,000 our bonus, they can't get anybody to come there. I said take that money, make your officers their recruiters. We can roll out an affiliate program for you and they can put these links out on social media, their friends and when someone clicks, pass the money off the officer. And they're just like can you do a video? I'm like what is wrong with you.
Travis Yates:You know what's going on here, so it's sort of just these. A lot of these leaders think that they can they have the answers for everything. They clearly don't. There's somebody in every department that has a specialized specialty in everything. We just have to empower them and they would change everything.
Marc The Cop:So I'm a big social media guy, you know. I love Facebook, instagram, you know.
Travis Yates:I see the tick-tock dance, don't do that, but that's all.
Marc The Cop:I know you're busting my chops. That's funny. So our department, my boss, comes back from ACP and and puts out a directive that you have whiskey in here, so be careful what you're saying here, Marcus.
Travis Yates:It's just good old die coat.
Marc The Cop:We'll trust you on that. So you cannot put any image on Social media. This is a policy he came out with. We comes back my ACP, because he's all smart now, because you just been down Rubbin elbows with smarter people than him. So he thinks our badge, our logo, the side of the car, anything that represents the department. So you know, when I was a younger officer, very proud of my job, I was like got a shit, tons of pictures around of me in uniform.
Marc The Cop:And I said and I went into him because you know we were trying to launch our social media at our department at the time had Mark Weaver down. You know he's talking about. You know, thanks to do to get interaction with your, with your Facebook page. And I said what would we come up with this? Why? Why Do you not want it? Because I've always positive on my social media. My motto is face your problems on Facebook. So why don't you want these young officers who damn proud of being the Polis and they want to show all their friends what they're doing At work, why don't you want to do that?
Marc The Cop:He leads back and sharing. He says what's the best practices, act, who's best practice? Well, it's just the way it's gonna be, but who's best practice? Why? I need to know the why. He had nothing other than the fact he went to IACP, he sat in a seminar and whoever that was hosting that seminar says don't let him do this. So now you're complaining. Chiefs, if you're listening, I have a recruiting problem. Well, yeah, because all your young officers and I love what you said earlier, travis was you know, if this person brings someone in, give them a bonus or whichever. Now you've just taken all that away. Go ahead sir.
Travis Yates:Yeah, you know the thing is now. I'm not saying this is me, gentlemen, but you know, as young officers go unmarried, young officers, some of them like to frequent, you know, the hot spots at night where they're maybe looking for the female species or the male species or whatever. And let me, I gotta tell you, man, the game always was what do you do for a living? Right, I'm the police. Yeah, that was beneficial until it wasn't. And I know cops today that will never tell anybody. That's what they do Right, not outside the job and their leaders did that to them.
Travis Yates:Their leaders did that to them. When you take pride away yes, what is the old pig acronym? My dad used to have a plaque pride, integrity, guts, guts, yep, yep. No acrimony is going on anymore, you know, when you take that pride and integrity and then you punish people for having guts.
Marc The Cop:Right.
Travis Yates:Hey, we oughta clip that one right. So let me say it again when you take that pride and that integrity and you punish them for having guts, you've ruined that agency. Because you're right, the best people that can recruit and help with retention are people that love what they do and they're empowered to tell others about that. And I'll be honest, man, I mean I've been so frustrated Sometimes I wake up and I think maybe I'm wrong, like no one else believes what I believe.
Travis Yates:Maybe I'm the crazy one right, because if you are crazy, dr David, you're the last one to know it right, that is great. Maybe I'm the crazy one. Maybe this is right. This is the way it ought to be right. We should fire people for no reason and we should pick chiefs that's never been a cop before in reality and we should make officers scared to actually do their job and then give them so much paperwork to do. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm convinced that the successes that I saw in the first 10 years of my career and just these amazing men and women that were able to do that job in extreme circumstances, I'm convinced they still exist. We just have to flip the switch and make sure they know it.
Travis Yates:The problem is we're in the middle of imposter syndrome, like there's some departments now that if you've got the greatest leader ever at the top, no one's gonna believe what they're being told because they've been beaten down for so much. It's really, really unfortunate. You know, I'm extremely popular with the officer rank because they understand this. But you go up the rank system. I don't get invited to a lot of chiefs conferences, right and so. But I believe that if we can get the message to the line officers, even the first line supervisors, they will be in management and upper management eventually and they can do what needs to be done. I have extreme hope because, at the end of the day, there's a lot of bad issues going on in the profession, but we still have really good men and women to do the job.
Marc The Cop:Oh, absolutely. So, while you were talking there, we were talking about there's people in the ranks and your resignation with the. I call them the road dogs, the guys that's out there every day. And, by the way, midnight crews, if you're listening, we love you, keep doing what you're doing. We like day shifts and evening watch too, but the midnight crews, you know, being a midnight sergeant.
Travis Yates:We're going to still have all the calls holding for us.
Marc The Cop:Yeah.
Travis Yates:That's right.
Marc The Cop:So there's been kind of an attitude, and it was there when I left and you're talking about the body cameras, and my boss at the time said you need to do body camera audits. And I said, okay, why? Well, to be sure the guys are doing the job correctly. Okay, what are we looking for why? Well, then he said, well, you know, body cameras will vindicate the officer. And then he went down this rabbit hole shortly after imploring the body cameras and spending all the money, that means the supervisor needs to spend a couple hours of my week auditing video and if there's a policy infraction I'm to issue discipline. And I said that's absolute horse hockey. The purpose of the body camera is to protect the officer. Correct, yes, they everyone understand protect him.
Marc The Cop:So now we got this mentality that say you got an incident and the lieutenant says hey, sergeant, I want you to go look at this. So some of these people that aren't being shown the way, I feel that let's take care of our person. And so the Sergeant reviews it. So he gets in his mindset that I need to find something wrong, because if I don't get a pound of flesh out of this officer, then I'm not doing my job and I don't want the LT coming after me or whoever's above him. What happened to the day when you know so he said the F word. I can take care of this at my level and have that conversation with the lieutenant or whomever says you know, if my guy did step on his who, who, is it something at my level we need to take care of?
Marc The Cop:Or do I need to, you know, chastise this officer for saying the F word? So I think we've gotten into the mindset. Especially with the body cameras is that where the cops are afraid to do their job because of that? So if I'm out there and sometimes you have to speak the people in the language in which there used to be and talk to, right, I mean, you get somebody from the street who uses lots of foul language or a yeah we should always start with Chick-fil-A and if it's needed, we move up to Delta Airlines, right?
Travis Yates:Yes, that way, yeah, yes.
Marc The Cop:But I think that you know, because of that and taking care of so, the guy did get a little aggressive with someone. Okay, I got that. So tell me the whole circumstance officer. Okay, cool, I can, I can report it up the line. Honestly, you know, I think that the supervisors, from sergeants to lieutenants, and the lieutenants need to be taking care of the sergeants and the captains need to be taking care of the lieutenants.
Marc The Cop:You know, it's not that we're out there trying to hide anything or the blue wall, but I think this attitude and again I'm going to revert back to my earlier statement I think it started around Ferguson because prior to that, I think we took care of people and we had a lot of happy people and when this change came, I knew a lot of the old guys like me were like you know what? I got 25 years in F this place. I'm leaving. And they did. They left. I mean, I didn't want to work past 30 years. It's, this is a young man's game. But, like what you were saying earlier, Travis, it really resonated me with the fact that we're just wearing these people out and they're they're done in six to 10 years. Why do we have to have a 25 year career. Why can't we vest these people in 10 to 15 years?
Travis Yates:Well, I've got a theory behind the pension system. Sure, sure. By the way, there are departments right now that only still exist because they have a pension system. Minneapolis is a prime example. They go from 850. Now they're hovering in the mid 400s and the only reason they're not down to 150 right now in the Sheriff's Department hasn't taken over that city is because Minnesota has a fantastic pension system. So you've got your officers with 10, 15 years on that are holding on for dear life while their politicians are trying to throw them in prison. But I believe when I came on, 20 years was the out. Everyone left 20. That was the standard right and of course the state started incentivized and staying longer. But my theory is is why military is at 20 and fire department is traditionally 20. We were Christian at 20, is somebody somewhere said and that's probably as long as you need to do this type of job? This?
Travis Yates:is a very high stress job, lots of risk, cumulative stress, as Dr Baymore tell you how dangerous that is. Oh gosh, 20 years is probably the maximum right. And then, as they added the incentives, people start staying longer and longer. And then we wonder why our pension systems are so well funded. Well, I'll tell you why when we die 10 to 15 years prior to most citizens, that's why your pension system is well funded, right. And so, as usual, we're making these decisions on our own, and you said something that's powerful and I talk a lot about in my seminars on culture, because it's so important. And if you're working in the agency and you want to know what the or maybe your agency is your story started seeing some things that are weird.
Travis Yates:You're not really down the way of Portland and Chicago yet, but you're seeing some things that are weird seem, some behaviors that are weird. Here's how you can tell that your agency is marching down the road of destruction and I call it the hallway conversation. And you alluded to it. Mark, as a supervisor, as a manager, you know there's a difference in a mistake and an intentional act. There's a huge difference. Right, yes, we've lost that way, because what used to be a hallway conversation, how you pull a guy on the hallway away from everybody and you go hey, man, I've gotten two complaints in the last month on your speed and your speed. Right, man, listen, you can't do that. They care about you. It's dangerous. Stop that, I don't want to get any more complaints from this. Right, pat him on the shoulder, say keep up the good work and let that guy go to work and do his job.
Travis Yates:Those have turned from hallway conversations to full blown internal affairs complaints, absolutely. And if your agency is there and that is happening, buckle up because it's coming. Your culture is being destroyed because you have. You have forgiven the ability of those hallway conversations and that's not some idea that these copters say oh see, you're not holding people. I don't know. Every business in the world that's successful has hallway conversations Absolutely Every one of them. These businesses would not exist, because the private world is different. If you don't have happy employees, you don't get great products and you don't stay in business. Exactly so every business in the world understands the difference between a mistake and an intentional act and they treat it accordingly. When your department forgets that and they lost their way, you're going down that path and somebody hopefully somewhere, will interject and get that back on the right track.
Marc The Cop:Oh, amen to that. It's and Dr David alluded to it earlier. When we're talking about how cops are so vicious to one another and I think we get into that loop of you're overworked, you're mad, you're negative, and now you've got this person above you. That's, you know, just criticizing everything that we do. And this is a high stress, high liability job. And if you're, if you're, a chief, it's high stress, high liability. You know that getting in there and you can't go in there and just think that this job is about you. And I really love when you said that earlier on Travis, that you know most of the chiefs nowadays are doing this for them. They aren't doing it for the department.
Marc The Cop:And I had the blessing of working for a boss that was all about the department and all about every officer. And he would just when he walked through our road room what we call it where we did our reports, you know he would sit down with this couple going, hey, how are you doing today? How's your family doing? And he actually showed general empathy and concern for you and he'd say, hey, I got to get over the council. Hey, take care of anything, my door's open, Just come down and see me.
Marc The Cop:And he would always ask us early on and as a young officer Mark, what do you want to do? What do you mean chief? I want to be the police. You're that already, so it's just like a medical professional. What do you want to specialize in? What drives you? And you don't answer this? Now Get back to me on that, because I'm going to help you develop into the person you want to be, and I like to drive. I'm a car guy. You know. That's how I first met you, Travis. I remember sitting there one night and I'm on your first website. Can we say it? I know you sold it, but no, I didn't sell it.
Travis Yates:I didn't sell it. Still, I just don't do much with it. But yeah, I mean I'm the notes to me in 1999. There wasn't a police driving website up yet. I did put the website up to keep me from being so busy because I was sending this is going to age me I was sending CD ROMs of curriculum to agencies that were asking for it.
Travis Yates:I had this crazy idea If I just put a website up, they'll leave me alone. Oh, when you put the first website up back in the day of a topic, everything then, of course, blew up. It's police driving dot com.
Marc The Cop:Yeah, yeah, and it was just such a great. I was like, oh my God, I think I found the Holy Grail here, so and I still play that with- Microsoft front page.
Travis Yates:I don't think it was that great, but it was 1999.
Marc The Cop:Right.
Travis Yates:So it wasn't much out there.
Marc The Cop:The content was great and I still use your video today when I teach my recruits the from from about wearing a seat belt. So I use that even today. I think I've sent you some snapshots in the past, but anyway, so that's my thing. I'm a driver, you know. He facilitated me going to the federal law enforcement training center. I mean total. I've been down there five weeks, not concurrently, but you know in what I do and I'm also I'm blessed right now to be still teaching. Today we taught 15 officers pursue termination techniques the last day of her class at state. You know, I teach at the basic level, so it's kind of a niche, and my boss was like go for it, man, I'm going to facilitate everything you can do. I'm also a car guy, so he made me the fleet manager.
Travis Yates:I had a blessing of being a hard man, finding people love and plug him in.
Marc The Cop:Yeah, and he did, and I served three years on the four police advisory board. It's like, oh man, you know, I had a really great career and then, unfortunately, god called him home. Okay so, and we gave him an honors funeral, but then things started to change. And the next guy in the door, just everything was the same. And then when he started implementing him, then we started going down to one downhill then the cow we started showing him in the hands of great yeah.
Marc The Cop:Thank you. But you know, and then we're like, hmm, then we stopped taking care of people, then we started over disciplining people and I'm like and I remember being a sewer it's like, is this really necessary? This guy's like we had to wear one of her officers. He was my officer officer of the year high speed, low drag, great arrest, great interaction with the people. Well, he found himself in a bad spot one night and got a DUI. Horrible. The local news media. For some reason, our city is clickbait for the local news media app, so he led in every story because they want a ratings right. So, um, I think a severe penalty for a first offense OVI is 10 days. I think that's heavy handed. I think the estate average here in Ohio is five days.
Travis Yates:Yeah, it always depends on the history, right? They've been in trouble before this and that, yeah.
Marc The Cop:You got to put everything in context. This kid is a model officer Again. High speed, low drag, great guy. That chief gave him 30 days unpaid, yeah, and I went are you kidding me? This is for a first offense.
Travis Yates:Guys, we are man, this, this is fantastic. I can't thank you enough for being here, and I'm we're going to bring this to an end in a minute because we're going to come back on and do this again, but I wanted to end with one last question. Yes, sir, I want us to talk to the first line supervisors out there. The corporals, the sergeants maybe in some departments, the lieutenants the people that I believe had the most impact at their agency can leave generational legacy pouring into the people that work for them. I want first I'll start with Dr David and then Mark, you can take it over what's the one piece of advice you give them? What would you give them?
Dr. David Buchanan:People that are already employed in the long run. Yeah To these.
Travis Yates:To these to these supervisors that are that are having the responsibility of these men.
Travis Yates:What advice would you give those supervisors in the office of everything we've been talking about today? Because they're discouraged, right. We want to encourage them and give them some advice that really helped them, because I don't care how bad it is in your department. If you're a sergeant or or corporal refer, you have control of what 10, 10, 15 people, sometimes four people, five people you get to change their lives, regardless of what's going on. What, what's the piece of advice you give them?
Dr. David Buchanan:I say become intimate with your limitations.
Marc The Cop:Oh wow, I like that.
Travis Yates:I feel like I got a senior check for listening to that one. That's what I'm doing.
Dr. David Buchanan:Thank you, it's what it was, my first lesson of adulthood in my career in my field was to learn. What I didn't know was more important than what I did. Yeah. And. I have to become intimate with my limitations.
Travis Yates:I'm going barefoot right now and I'm grounding right now. I'm just listening to that. That's amazing.
Marc The Cop:That's why we call him master Yoda. What about?
Travis Yates:you Mark.
Marc The Cop:Wow it's. It's hard to follow that up. I mean I'm just still kind of taking that in. First line supervisors, take care of your people. Number one and I know that sounds cavalier Make sure that they got what they need. Don't sit back and want to point the fingers. Be involved, show up to work.
Marc The Cop:All these incidents you talked about Minneapolis. Where's the stripe? Why wasn't our supervisor there? That was an ongoing shit show and I can tell you and Travis and I know, if you were working that day and you heard that radio traffic, you'd have been whatever you were doing. Hey man, I got to go. I got something going. I'll get back with you. Hang the phone up. I'm throwing my vest on and I'm double timing it down to that scene.
Marc The Cop:Any of these brain, if you're a supervisor, be involved. Your people cannot survive out there on the street without your. And don't be that mother hen overshadowing. Find the balance. But when there's time for the supervisor to step in and to take care of business, do your jobs, guys. I mean, I've heard several here in my area, in the Dayton Ohio area, that you know where's your stripe at. He never comes out of the office. Oh gosh, that that hurts me. No, get involved.
Marc The Cop:And I'm not saying being a micromanager, what do you need? You know I'd show up on scene, what do you need? And one time one of my people, the guy, comes over. Sorry, this is no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not in charge here, man, you need to go talk to him, because that's the guy that's going to be arresting you, or not? So take care of him. And when we got down with this, he, my officer, said man, thank you so much for doing that, because that really empowered me, that you trusted me and trusted my decisions. So support your people, trust them, empower them to make good decisions.
Travis Yates:Man, I should have gone first with these. This answer, you know. I want to say something that's a little bit different, I think know the names of your officer's family. Oh, amen oh yes, very good, very good. You know, know their wife's name Absolutely In a good way.
Dr. David Buchanan:No, no, their kids names.
Travis Yates:Yeah, ask them about their family, absolutely. And you know, and I'll be honest, man, if I was a mayor of some city with a police chief I just had to buy my chief I'd make a list off the family members of all their employees and see how many they could list. That's right what. I would know immediately whether they cared for that off for that department or not. Yes, yes, yes, man. What an incredible time. Gentlemen, I really can't thank you guys enough. Do you guys have an outro of your show? You want to sort of give or or, and then I'll give my honor.
Marc The Cop:You guys just play Dr David's great montage before you leave that I'm always telling Dr David he needs to be doinga voiceover work for books. On your next book, travis, have Dr David do the reading.
Travis Yates:That's such a great voice on the outro.
Marc The Cop:You mean how to get a hold of us, or what do you mean?
Travis Yates:I guess we should say that right. So how do you kind of, how do you get contacted, how do you listen to your show, all that stuff?
Marc The Cop:Okay, great. We're on all major podcast platforms audible pandora, I heart. Radio to the shield within podcast. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook. Backslice to shield within our website is wwwtheshieldwithincom. We're also on Instagram, and then course myself my mark, the cop moniker. I'm on X, instagram and all the other good stuff as well. And, dr David, your technology challenged right.
Dr. David Buchanan:It's by choice.
Travis Yates:I love my chapter than we are for sure I love my ignorance.
Travis Yates:Well, same here I'm, all I'm. My podcast is on all the same platforms. The actual podcast website we have is Yates leadershipcom, but really the easiest way, if folks are listening and they want to get resources, articles, podcast our seminars and what we're doing, we're about to roast some online stuff out. You can go to Travis Yatesorg. I'd love to hear from you, and every week we're putting material out, you know, just for free for to help folks, and so I'd love to hear from anybody listening. Gentlemen, I can't thank you enough.
Marc The Cop:It's incredible, it's an honor and a pleasure and definitely we need to do this again, yeah.
Travis Yates:Yeah, we definitely will. Thank you, gentlemen, so much and if you've been listening, thank you and just remember lead on and stay courageous.
Intro/Outro:Thank you for listening to courageous leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www. Travis Yates. org.