Chief's Chat #34: First Responders Wellness Week

Wellness in policing isn’t soft. It’s strategy, it’s safety, and it changes what the public gets on the other side of the counter or car door. We sit down with Chief Sizemore to talk about what First Responders Wellness Week looks like at the Cape Coral Police Department and why we’re treating wellness as part of the DNA of the building, not a poster on the wall. That means physical training, nutrition guidance, financial literacy, and mental health support that’s built to meet people where they are. 

We get into how our Peer Support Team works, why our Chaplains matter, and how simply knowing help exists can lower stress even before someone reaches out. We also talk about the long game: bringing families into the process earlier through pre-deployment onboarding, so the people who support our officers at home understand the job and feel included. The goal is simple and serious: do the work, go home healthy, and finish a career able to enjoy what you’ve earned. 

Then we shift to a snapshot of modern police work in motion: a stolen car tied to a burglary, a pursuit crossing jurisdictions, and an arrest that comes together through interagency teamwork, K9 tracking, drones, and a community tip. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:04

Welcome back to another episode of the Cape Copcast Chiefs Chat Edition. I'm one of your hosts, Lisa Greenberg.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

And I'm Officer Mercedes Simons. Together we make up the public affairs office. We have Chief in the house.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Good to be here. Good to be back.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

We're changing it up.

SPEAKER_03 0:19

We got a new setup.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

You said it was coming.

SPEAKER_03 0:21

Yeah, we're excited. It's I love it. Definitely much more I think it's more comfortable. Yeah. But also more refined.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

It's good. Well, it's funny because it's a it's a podcast. So those who are listening don't even know what we're talking about. We got a new table, we got stands on the on on the table instead of the little arms. But I feel like most of the people that uh listen to the podcast watch the podcast on YouTube. I think that's where we get a lot of our basis from. So those people are really the ones that are appreciating that right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Great job. This is really cool. The other setup, you know, we just kind of dove into a podcast and it ended up being like a lounge. And now we look like if you Googled podcasts and it hit images, it looks like this.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

Yeah, I'm excited about it. I think there's gonna be some fine tuning as we continue to move forward. So you might notice some decor or things like that as we advance. But for now, I think it's perfect. Yeah, I love it. It's definitely more comfortable. How's the seat?

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Good.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

Yeah, we're sitting on stools. It's nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yeah, I love it.

First Responders Wellness Week Starts

SPEAKER_03 1:24

Definitely gives the the good feel. Um, we've had a really busy week. We were actually just talking that one of the days this week, we were so busy that we were like, did we remember to post on Facebook today? We know it's our goal to post on social media every day. And we had to like go back and look and make sure we did because we've just been so slammed. It's first responders wellness week. Yeah, so a lot of the stuff that we've been handling, it's internal, uh, had to do with that. I know you've been busy with that as well. There's just so much going on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

On Wednesday, Lisa led a workout for people, and it was awesome. So can I say that you're a trainer? Okay. So Lisa is a trainer at Burk Boot Camp on the side, and she does a great job. I actually started going because you dragged me, Jillian dragged me as well, but it's great. And so you led kind of a similar workout at the police department, which I think is great because it's another aspect of wellness. We not um only focus on mental wellness, we also focus on our physical wellness, which especially for cops is incredibly important. So yes.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

Oh, thanks. You're so sweet. It was a good time.

Wellness As Culture Not A Program

SPEAKER_00 2:28

We did uh the boot camp. There was some Brazilian jujitsu at the training center for our guys. We have um uh financial people coming in for financial literacy. That's another part of wellness. If you're worried about bills or managing money, you know, that we we hire some younger people and it may be their first exposure to real career money, and they don't know how to how to finance it or how to plan for tomorrow. So we provide that education if they need it. Um obviously there's avenues for mental wellness that we do, and we destigmatize it. You know, we talked about the the um NAMI walk, about getting it out of the shadows, and that's what that's what we do in in law enforcement too. I I put out a message to the entire department that 30 years ago when I started, wellness wasn't a thing. And it wasn't an intentional not a thing. It just was so not a thing. You just did the job. Right. It's tough. Dust yourself off, go to the next one. We still do that, but we recognize that that can be damaging, or you may need to talk about it, you may need to debrief. So we have um fully trained real deal peer support. We have, like I mentioned, the financial literacy component, we have the physical wellness component, we have nutritionists come in and teach you how to not have seven energy drinks in a night and think that that's going to be healthy.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Recommend that you should.

Family Support And Pre-Deployment Onboarding

SPEAKER_00 3:50

There are alternatives. So we talk about how to take care of your body and what does that mean to the listener, to the public? If you have a well cop, somebody who participates in wellness, or you interact with a professional staff member at the records window, or an administrative professional in our investigative division, or anybody in this building, and they are actively participating in wellness, you are gonna get a better product. You're gonna get somebody who's a better listener, uh, a better performer, and that's what you want. So it's us doing maintenance on the machines for the factory, right? Right. It's a very clinical way of doing it, but we're able to better respond to you when we are taking care of ourselves and we are better. And it's my responsibility ultimately or accountability to make sure that the people that I on board, we just brought on, I believe, 12 people yesterday, and I speak to the family and I thank the family for loaning their loved one to me. And I have them for about anywhere from twenty to thirty years, and it's my duty and responsibility to to care and maintain them while they're here, actually care, and then turn them back over to their family at the end of their shift and at the end of their career, not a smoldering wreckage. Right. Yeah. And that's what we unintentionally used to do, and we intentionally now do not do that to make sure that when you go home on um the repetitive day after day or night after night, and cumul cumulatively early, at the end of your career, we turn you back over healthy so that you can enjoy the fruits of your labor.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Yeah. And I think that's one of those things we've started looking at too, is it's not just officer wellness, but it's overall family wellness and trying to get the family more involved, like we had Family Day recently and getting just the family's um different reading materials and things like that on what exactly their loved one is going through so that they can better relate to them, understand a little bit better. Because it's a different law enforcement is a different world. So I think integrating family is the right place to start.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

And we actually formalize that that when new people come in, it's part of our what we call a pre-deployment. So if we hire you like you, you were an officer in another state, you came and you had an abbreviated training to get uh equivalency of training for Florida. If you were brand new and we put you through the academy, you graduate the academy, but both pathways, experienced people and brand new people, meet up at the front door, so to speak, and we do our own internal academy, if you will, or onboarding, and it's called a pre-deployment. We go through everything from HR functions to how to log on to the computer to how to successfully clear a building in a high stress situation before you even get sworn in to begin your field training. Well, part of that pre-deplo pre-deployment program now is an uh introduction to the family to get them involved early. Because if the family's on board and you know that you're supported at home, you're better able to thrive at work, and at the end, it's delivering a better product to the people. So wellness week is awesome. I am extremely proud of what everybody has done. This isn't a me thing. All I did was support it. But you and you particularly were very big in it, and a lot of people at the police department that these are ground up ideas. We should do this. I would like to see this. I've been to a class, other places are doing that, or this isn't even related to police work, but it would be good for the individual, be good for the culture. If it's legal, ethical, moral, and it's not going to bankrupt us, we're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_03 7:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

And we're doing that and we're formalizing it, making it part of the real, it's not a wellness event, it's not a wellness program. It is an overall culture that's woven into the DNA of this building, and I'm extremely proud of it.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

One other thing I wanted to mention about it too is the peer support team that's been developed recently. We've had them walking around the building throughout the week in their green peer support team t-shirts, there to let people know hey, if you need to talk about anything, just a reminder we're here. This is a new thing, educating people on what they do. And these are people, this is a group of people who volunteer to be a part of this team to support their coworkers. So we have some that are officers, we have some that are civilians, for lack of a better word. You know, dispatches.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Administrative people, victim advocates. I mean, they're always there for us, you know, they're always a shoulder to cry on or a hug when you need it. Yeah, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

OG peer support. And our chaplains. Yep. They've been on embedded in our organization since I think 1994. Um, so that's a big part, and we have um multi-denominational, any type of faith. And here's the other thing about wellness programs, and this is for you at home. The fact that you know it's there sometimes is enough. If if you are struggling or going through something, obviously we want you to get all the resources that you want. If you go through a traumatic event and you don't feel it, you're not messed up, you're not broken, you're not wrong, you're not a monster, you you may not need it. You may not need all of the full suite of things that we offer. You may need one thing, you may not need any of it, but one day you might. Yep. Just the fact that if you do need it can make you feel a little bit more comfortable.

SPEAKER_03 9:24

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

So that's a that's a way to prove a negative, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:29

Absolutely. Worst case scenario, someone's here, and you hope you never need it.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

That's it.

Yoga And Partnering With NAMI

SPEAKER_03 9:33

Yeah definitely.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

And a quick shout out to uh Vachy later today, she's teaching yoga. I'm very excited. I brought my yoga mat and everything. That'll be awesome. Um, Vachery from Nami is coming. We're gonna do a yoga workout related to um officers wear heavy belts around their hips usually. So I think she's gonna help us to you know reduce some hip tightness, some lower back issues, and she's open up the hips, they go. So great.

SPEAKER_03 9:59

Nice, work on breath work, get everyone nice and relaxed. I know she mentioned that, so that's exciting.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

There's real science behind it. Just a little background on Vachery. Vachery Howard is the executive director of NAMI, and we have developed a relationship with her both on the um awareness and fundraising and participatory. I'm waking up, participatory side of NAMI. It's an SAT word, but she is also the main driver and organizer on the business side that we affiliate with NAMI, and that is CIT or crisis intervention training. So we have a long-standing partnership with Vatry. She's also a yogi, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

And she has offered to come in and teach and and help. So that'll be awesome. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_03 10:44

Have you ever done yoga?

SPEAKER_00 10:45

I have not, but I would like to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:47

Did you bring your mat?

SPEAKER_00 10:49

I'd probably just have to do it on the floor. But I I do stretching.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

It's kind of you know, piecemeal. I I could really use some education on it.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

I really hope people show up for that today.

Robbery Arrest Using Drones And K9

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Yeah, I think they will. That'd be like it's low intensity, you know, it's not it's not intimidating, and I think we all need just a little bit of relaxation, especially since we had a busy week. We made a lot of good arrests. We had a um a robbery this week, uh a very good robbery arrest. Our violent crimes detectives, they work incredibly hard, long hours.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

So what do you know about that?

SPEAKER_01 11:27

You know, I know that I was asleep already when my husband came home.

unknown 11:32

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

I remember that life. No, tremendous work. And something else I wanted to highlight. Now, you got good carbon-based people doing police work, but we also had a good blend of technology that we were talking about deploying, and we have deployed it. We've been uh refining it, and now it's starting to hit. And we also talk about partnerships that we have with our regional uh partners. We we gave the Lee County Sheriff's Office and FHP, Florida Highway Patrol, some love a couple weeks ago. Well, this week there was a uh stolen car that was used by three individuals to do a break-in at, I believe, a vape shop outside of the city of Cape Coral. And we've talked about it before. Criminals know no boundaries, so they did a crime, stole the car here, went to Fort Myers, did a burglary of a vape shop, they were getting caught in the act, and a pursuit was initiated with Florida Highway Patrol and Lee County Sheriff's Office for a following. I don't want to get anybody in policy trouble, but and it came into Cape Coral because, like I said, they don't care about boundaries. Well, neither do we. So they called and said, We're coming over, we're chasing these guys, and we helped, right? We helped with the perimeter, we had aviation support up, and immediately we deployed our drones. So this vehicle crashed, three occupants fled. The first uh the first occupant that was um captured was by uh Lee County, who was in the pursuit. Their canine was in the pursuit. The canine tracked, so that's uh an old school asset that was used. Yep, and then the second was located by one of our drones. So we're talking no jet fuel, no aviation fuel, no danger, um, no expensive insurance for that asset. Um, went up, found it, and then uh the canine was able to apprehend them.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Saw the video, it's pretty cool. I think the canine got two bites that night.

Hiring Promotions And The Magnet Culture

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Yeah. Yeah. And then the third um thought he got away. And then the other component of police work, which is our mission statement, is partnering with the community to ensure the highest level of safety for all. Our partnership with the community came with a tip that said, I think there's a guy you're looking for in this area. We saturated that area, and lo and behold, here he was on an e-b on an e-bike, probably not following our tips of safe riding, and we captured him. So all three caught on a combination of all different facets of police work from interagency coordination, um, good, talented, passionate individuals and animals, and technology, and then partnering with the community to get a tip and all the bad guys wrapped up. And that's just one hour of one day of a very busy week. We onboarded, like we mentioned before, another over a hand. Two hands.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

I think 11 and three three promotions through communications.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Yep. Our communications and dispatch had promotions due to uh people retiring and shuffling up and preparing themselves to be in a position to get moved up. So that's exciting for them.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

Super exciting.

Leadership Culture And Facility Pride

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Um, our onboarded new officers are a combination of people from other jurisdictions coming here because the recruitment is strong, the draw is strong, the culture of wellness, like we talked about, valuing our people, the partnership we have with the community. It's a magnet here, and people want to be brave, be best to meet Cape. And we've got existing people, we've got new people that want to get into policing, and it it's a lot of juice for the building. Uh, a little bit of remodeling here uh that spruces it up. You know, this is just one of a few things, and that's an intentional act that we do here, right? It's not just about sprucing up and cleaning, and it it's about an attitude. And I want everybody, you may not care that that the carpets got cleaned in here, but it's just an overall spirit that we care. We're in we are maintaining the taxpayers' investment. But also, if you come to work, you're just walking on the carpet. But if it looked dirty and shabby and you didn't care, that's an attitude that can spread. And and in leadership training, I that's another thing I had to do today. The city does a really cool thing. And the city puts on their HR department, puts on a leadership class for all leaders throughout the city, all departments, emerging, soon-to-be supervisors, new supervisors, and they they harness some talent within the organization to teach. And I was fortunate enough to be asked to teach about frontline leadership. And one of the things that I talk about is culture. And that you have an overall organizational culture. There is in the city, there is an hour building, uh, but there is in your sphere of influence. So if we were a small group, we had three other people, so there's five of you, and I'm the supervisor. The culture that you have every day is driven by me. It's not driven by the city manager or the mayor or even the chief of police, it's driven by driven by your frontline supervisor. And the culture what you tolerate is the standard that you set. And we don't tolerate uh letting the building go into disrepair or dirty or not modernizing. It's an attitude that sparks the culture of the individual workers. And when each individual worker is engaged and bought in from wellness programs to this place gives a damn about where I work and they care about me, it elevates the end product, which all relates back to the people that you're getting good service because we are 360 view of investing into this building.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

I think we've done a good job of making it a home. It's an attitude, it's a community, it's a home. I think we spend, some of us at least spend more time at least during our wake hours, far more time at work than we do at home. So we might as well as make it nice, stay up on things and take care of our people, which I think everybody's really appreciated this week of just pointing a little bit more attention to the things and what we need to take care of within ourselves and take care of the people around us too.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Right. And I also want to mention um in the I guess the season of events, we had a really great recurring event that we do. And last night we did the candlelight vigil that our victim advocates put on. Now we had I think we had teased it last week and the week before. But that's a wonderful event where it it's packed with families that have been impacted in really tough circumstances. Anything from overdose to homicide to untimely death. Um and our victim advocates help navigate them through that process because if you it death in any circumstances is difficult to say the least. But when it's untimely and a surprise and you said goodbye in the morning, and then by the afternoon I have to pick a funeral home, I I I don't know what to do. Our victim advocates can guide you through that. Or if you're the victim of a violent crime, it just ratchets it up even more. I don't know what to do. You can be paralyzed. And what our victim advocates do is take your hand and guide you through that continuum that you didn't really want to be on, and they can help you get through it. So anybody that's been through that process has a unique kinship, and we get together and we celebrate the loved ones and and it's part of the healing process. So they do a wonderful job with it. And uh this is no exception.

SPEAKER_03 19:07

Yeah, they're incredible people, and having something like that, that kind of outlet for our community is really special. And I got to go last year and it was awesome. Yeah, yeah, it was awesome. So yeah, I mean, it's just another thing that we do to promote that culture of wellness and not just here in the department, but within the whole community.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

With the community, yep.

Wrap-Up And Thanks

SPEAKER_03 19:27

Definitely. All right, Chief, anything else?

SPEAKER_00 19:29

That's a lot.

SPEAKER_03 19:30

I know.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

I love what you did, man. This is you like it?

SPEAKER_03 19:33

You're feeling good? All right, good. I'm glad you're comfortable and you like it. I like it too. I think it's cool.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Yeah. All right. Awesome. Without further ado, thank you for joining us on the Cape Copcast.

SPEAKER_03 19:43

We'll see you next time.