Shelby County Sheriff Candidate Brad Less

This morning, Leo is joined by Brad Less!  Brad discusses the issues faced by the Shelby County Sheriff's Office and how he would address them, given the opportunity.  Memphis / Shelby County has drawn national attention through the Memphis Safe Task Force - a massive influx of state and federal law enforcement on the streets, and uniformed National Guard soldiers on patrol. 

Brad provides details on his vision for policy shifts that aim to support SCSO employees, their families, and the citizens they serve.  From retirement to medical retirement to pay rates, Brad expresses his desire to make SCSO the premier law enforcement agency in the region.

Early voting starts July 17, so get educated on who stands for what and how they plan to accomplish what they claim!

-LEO

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Good morning. It's Leo, and I'm here with Shelby County Sheriff Candidate Brad Les. How are you doing? Doing good. Thanks a lot for being out here. Thanks for having me. So, uh, a big part of my listening base is law enforcement.

unknown 0:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

And being a resident of this area that includes a lot of Shelby County deputies and Memphis police officers. Great. We talked earlier about how many employees between Sworn and Civilian at Shelby County Sheriff.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Right, right, right. And, you know, one of the things that that we look at is the sworn. You've got deputy sheriffs and you've got deputy jailers. So there's a a little bit of a difference in what the powers of either one of those are. With the deputy sheriffs, you know, we're roughly estimated short about three to four hundred positions, heavily impacting both patrol operations and jail security around 201 Poplar. And then there's been 375 correctional deputies, which we're supposed to have a 1,400 force. That's forced between force total, yeah, between the sheriff's office and the jail staff. So, you know, a very large department when it comes time to look at what we do, but the arrest powers of the deputies, a little bit different than having non-commissioned deputy jailers out there that aren't really arrest powered. They're they don't have arrest authority. They're they're strictly incarceration inside the jail. So when it when it comes to looking at retention and hiring, we we have to really do a better job of taking care of our people because just as soon as we hire them, we've got people that have been here for six months to a year or longer that are going, you know what, this place is horrible. We don't want to work here anymore. Command staff sucks, everything's terrible. Yeah, we we've got to do better. And we've got to do better at taking care of our people. So that's that's the thing with the with the hiring and retention and and looking at the sheriff's office as a whole, as a whole entity. You know, I one of my ideas, you know, the the jailers have brought up is why don't we just call us everybody deputy sheriffs? Well, if we do that, they have to be willing to go to an academy and become a deputy sheriff. You're either going to be a deputy. I I don't have a problem pulling deputy jailers out of this jail and making them deputy sheriffs if they're, you know, cream rising to the top candidate. Yeah. I mean, that's a that's seems like a reasonable path. That's an easy pass for me or a path for them to take. You succeeded here within the agency and you're ready to move on. Right. And and you're a high performer and you're doing everything right and you understand you've got that that mentality of being a street officer, not just a jailer. Yeah, I want to bring that person out of the jail. Absolutely, I do. And I don't think that I mean a lot of times, years and years and years ago, the you started off in the jail. Now, that happened not for me because I went straight to patrol. I had patrol experience from MPD when I came over to the county. But talking with some of the older guys that were there, the what I called the old heads, they were, they did their starting of their career inside the old jail. And they spent a year or two there. They they cut their teeth, they learned how to talk to people, learned how to fight. You do. And I did a year in a jail and then you go to the street. Do all that. Yeah. And you go to the street. And then you have a new respect. You got a respect for A, you you cut your teeth, and then respect B, you earned your spot out. And when you earn it and we don't give it to you, then you respect it more. Yeah, I think. That's how I feel. Yeah. So that's that's my stance on it.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

So I'm glad you brought up some of the stuff you did. Uh, because I think, you know, especially the the deputies and their families, uh, who, you know, the sheriff is an extremely powerful position. That's right. And it impacts, I mean, I can't even say how many lives, but we'll we'll talk about the the employees right now. And if the employees are happy, they tend to be retained, which means the citizens are happy because you don't get rookies showing up. So how does that actually look as far as improvements of be they benefits, be they pay, retirement, the the normal gripes that you hear of why people leave pay and retirement? Is that something as the sheriff you actually have a hand in, or is that a budget you get handed that you can't really maneuver?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Well, we have a budget, and you we've got a county commission that's oversight over us. But I think there's so much oversight that the sheriff has his hands tied on getting things done the way I would want to get them done. Okay. So a new commission's coming in. New commission, new mayor, new everything county government. But if the voters in Arlington, Bartlett, Germantown, Carval, Millington, unincorporated Shelby County will get out and vote, your voice is heard, you can make that difference because there's enough voters in the outlying areas that can make the changes that we need to put me in office. And so we can start building, I've already started building the relationships. And some of them I've already got relationships with. Some of them I don't know. And I think that, you know, they'll they'll figure out real quick where I stand on certain topics. And the fact that, you know, I I pride myself as being a friendly guy. I mean, I'm I'm pretty easy to get along with, and I'm willing to listen to stories of how you might think it might be a better plan. I'm gonna preserve, I'm gonna present my idea and then we go from there. And and I'm open-minded to listen to what you have to say. Now, if your idea is total garbage and it's bringing in nothing to the table, well then we've we've got to get away from that project and move on to something that's actually gonna work. And I'm willing to try new things to see if they work. So I hear all the time, I even heard it yesterday, well, that's not how we do it. We've we've done it this way for since 1980.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

That's the most exhausting argument I've ever heard. Yeah. Since 1980, 1970. That might tell you something about it that it needs to change. It needs to go.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Yeah. Yeah. Because here's the thing if that's how we've done it for that long, and you get the rolling of the eyes or the gas of, oh my God, this is ridiculous. You know, that ought to tell you. They're not wanting it. I don't want it. Yeah. So let's why do we try to change something? And it was something as simple as uh, you know, a uniform shirt or or wearing something like a polo or something during the hot summer days to make your detectives comfortable. Yeah. It doesn't change the dynamics of the vision or the work that they do. But I can tell you this if you change the dynamics to where they don't like what you did, then they will slow down their work. Yes. And then you wonder, well, well, I'll just move them out. I'll just get rid of them. Well, that's not a message you want to send to your staff that you don't support them.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

Rule with an iron fist, yes. Just does not work in reality, does is not.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

So, you know, bringing the the county commission and looking at how the budget works, yes, I'm gonna advocate for better pay and better benefits because that's what's gonna retain the deputy and the deputy jailer. That's going to be competitive because we have people. You can't make everybody happy. Now, well, this is not a beach environment, so you're not gonna wear shorts to work. Right. Okay. I mean, so that'll be something that somebody brings up and you just have to have a hard line against that and just go, no. Sorry, that's not gonna work. That's not gonna work for us. So, you know, you got the beards and tattoos, that was a big thing. You know, and I'm I've I've polled, I think, 500 citizens over the the several years that we've started this. And I said, Do you care what a deputy sheriff wears, what a deputy sheriff has on his face, or if a deputy sheriff is a tattoo on his arms. And they're like, No, I don't care. I just want if I call 911, I need you to show up. I want some help. Right.

unknown 8:50

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

And and I'm on my worst day. Wow. You know, you we don't call 911 because we're having a great day. And then call to say hi. I called because there's something going on bad in my life, and I need the police, the fire, the medical people, or whoever you're gonna send right now for my bad day or somebody else's bad day.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

So should you be the sheriff, that wouldn't be an issue for you as people maybe being a little more comfortable having tattoos, maybe a clean-cut beard, you know, not the Z Z Cheats and Chong beard.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

But you know, we had one that tried that and didn't work out real well. I mean, you still gotta look at the fact that we still have to be presentable to the public because you're in a uniform, you're an authority figure, so you need to look sharp. I I believe if you look sharp, you'll be sharp. So, but you still have to look at the fact that you're gonna have to seal a gas mask.

SPEAKER_03 9:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

You gotta you gotta look at the fact that you're gonna have to not have somebody grab a hold of your beard and use it as a leash.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

Yeah. You know, so I mean, it goes without saying it should be neat and well churned, right? I mean I think so. My old agency, I think they did it well. They said it's a privilege. Like if you misuse it, if you're coming in with neck beards all the time and all this, yeah, it's gonna go away for you, not for everybody. But I thought that was a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah, and that's that's that's a good way to to present it is we the Shelby County Sheriff's Office has always been a heavy hand to one individual causing a problem for everybody. Deal with the individual. That's an individual problem. And it's usually self-correcting. It's usually can be a self-correcting problem if you deal with it correctly. Yeah. You know, so sometimes conversation, sometimes discipline, sometimes you just have to tell that person, you know, shave.

SPEAKER_03 10:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

You know, this is your job, this is your career. Do you want to stay here? Yeah, we tried with you. You didn't work. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Yeah, that makes sense. And man, all the stuff that comes with a lack of retention, the rookie officers that I mentioned, uh having to go through the hiring process of new people. So it's expensive to train people, not just for the training time, but you're paying them to not be on the street and be getting trained. So you're paying for the ammo they're having to expend and all this.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

It's well, you know, training, you can never have enough training. Training should always be. I've been training for 31 years in law enforcement. I go to continuous training. We train to train to train. And you train for that day that you needed the training because that's what you're gonna resort back to in a in an uh moment. You know, wasn't gonna throw that other word out there. In an uh moment, yeah, you you've got to go back to your training. So you're gonna go back to your muscle memory. Where's your firearm at? Where's your taser at? Where's your baton at? You know, do you have to go hands-on? Did you remember how to do an arm bar takedown or a felony arm bar takedown or something like that? So, you know, there's there's things in place that training's important. I would not cut training. I think, you know, whether we're paying you to train or whether we're paying you to be on the streets to do the real job at the real day at the real time, that's important. So I think we have an overabundance of qualified individuals to be police officers in our community. And I don't think we're doing a very good job of tapping into our military resources. I don't think we're doing a good job of recruiting other agencies that have lower pay. That, you know, they there's some people that don't care about the pay, that they're fine making pennies on the dollar. They live their life happily. They're minimalists. They, you know, they got a they got a house, they got a bed, they got a car, and they're they're happy.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

I'm pretty minimalist, but I still want to get paid for my work, especially if you're police in the Memphis area.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Well, of course. I mean, you got the number one violent crime city in the country, you know, and and that kind of moves off into the Memphis Safe Task Force thing. It ain't a good thing. Memphis Safe Task Force wasn't good. We we got it because we were doing bad. Yes, it's good that they were here, but it's not good. It's not good that we needed it initially or something. No, it's not good. There's nothing good about, well, we have to put a task force together to come in and try to drive your crime down because you can't do it. Yeah. And over the last eight years, the last three years, with the people that are in leadership, that ought to tell you right now that they are not qualified to be in that position. If you and I can't put 100% of Memphis's crime on the sheriff or chief deputy because we've got other agencies that are out there that are involved. But let me tell you what, you are the chief law enforcement officer of the county. And if those agencies are not up to par, well, then you need to step in and go, hey, we need to do better. Take accountability. You're well, absolutely. You are an elected official. They are appointed officials. As the elected chief, the highest law enforcement officer of the county is a sheriff, other than the medical examiner. Then you need to step up and do your job. You can speak your mind pretty safely as an elected official.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Absolutely you can.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Yeah. And if that police chief's not doing it or not cutting it, then you need to step in and go, excuse me, let's have a conversation. Yeah. Your county, your area of responsibility, your AOR is not, is being neglected and it's showing, and now you're bleeding it into the county, driving everybody else, you're I say the county throughout the county, and you're driving everybody else's crime numbers up. What do we need to do to help you to fix it? I like it. You know, and how do we partner? How you've got to partner, and you gotta have the sheriff everywhere in the county. Currently, the model is we draw lines. And this is all pointing fingers and drawing lines. We've drawn lines that this is the this is the county, that's the city, that's Germantown, that's Bartley, that's Millington. You know, this is our little area, which is the unincorporated area that we that we're gonna control.

SPEAKER_04 14:54

And then we look at each other like, well, who's gonna work it?

SPEAKER_01 15:00

The the crime that occurred is well that started in the city when I was in the county.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Who's who's popped up in Millington, stole a car in South Memphis?

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Whose job is it now? Who's gonna own it? We all own it. It is an is a failure on all of our parts. So, you know, I the one thing that I haven't heard this administration talk about, and they try to put me in the administration, like, oh well, you're you're there now, it's your fault. No, I I'm in middle management. You're a lieutenant investigation, lieutenant investigations. Yeah. So my my responsibility is to go invest, have my investigators go investigate the crime. Yeah. But when it comes to responsibility, if I how can I take responsibility for something that I've made suggestions for and you fail to listen?

SPEAKER_02 15:50

I I get it. I was a sergeant on a medium-sized police department, 600 sworn or so. And yeah, I sent some stuff up trying to make higher level policy changes, and it didn't go anywhere. It was kind of like, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Well, it's not your idea. It's not their idea. Right. It's your idea, it's not their idea. And they're like, ah, well, what is what is sergeant here trying to say? I mean, you know, my my way of doing things not good.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

There was this ego, exactly. We've we've always had a pursuit policy without a way to end the pursuit. We couldn't pit or sop stick, but we could chase. And I was like, this isn't really working anymore. Right. We're having this, but stuff like that. Some stuff just obviously needs a change to it's antiquated.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Well, we have a no-chase policy, period. And there's a few things that you you might be able to pursue for, but nine times out of ten, you're gonna get called off of it. I'm uh I'm I'm I'm not happy with the way that we police. You know, we we have to hold, we have to stop coddling the criminal and start taking care of our taxpayers. Our taxpayers are the ones that need to be taken care of. Those are your voters, those are your teachers, those are your doctors, those are your lawyers, those are your insurance salesmen, those are your people at your grocery store that you see every day. I was about to say Kroger employees. Yeah, Kroger employees. I mean, you know, these are the people that are going to work every day and trying to make it as opposed to coming home to their window busted out and stuff like that. Yeah, or you know, you go out in your neighborhood and I think I saw it on Highway 14 earlier today. Somebody decided to do donuts in the middle of an intersection and leave circles all over the intersection. That makes a lot of sense to me. That's right. Let's go out there and and obviously just slap the the sheriff's office in the face or the Tennessee Highway Patrol. They're flying circles around patrol cars sometimes. Oh, yeah, I've seen that too. Yeah. And I don't know if that was set up or not. I think that you know, maybe maybe it's been that they've tied their hands for so long that they're just not wanting to do work. And I think that's a lot of the case too. So you think there are situations where a pursuit would be warranted? Absolutely and that should be a revamped. Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 18:06

And here's the thing if you're pursuing and there's an accident and somebody gets hurt.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Well, I'm charging the people in the car that hit them. Yeah. And if somebody dies, that's murder. You chose to run. You chose to not stop. You chose to make those bad decisions. And I'm sorry if you spend the rest of your life in jail, make better decisions.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

Thinking of fleeing in a car at 130 miles an hour as a violent crime seems kind of reasonable, right? Yeah. It's a very dangerous movement.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Well, and I and I use the term is the juice worth the squeeze. So, you know, a minor traffic violation or whatever, and it's five o'clock traffic and school's letting out at three o'clock or whatever it is, and there's a lot of cars on the road. Is it really worth going after that person that just didn't stop for you?

SPEAKER_03 19:00

Heck no.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Because they got some weed in the car. I mean, you can't see in the car and you don't know what's in the car, but but their taillights out. Like you can probably let that go. That was your that was your PC for the stop.

unknown 19:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

Well then, hey, you know. Just be responsible enough.

unknown 19:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

Supervisor shouldn't even have to break that off. Even if that's in policy. Is you should be smart enough to go work the squeeze. Is it worth the squeeze? So a lot of the stuff you're talking about, what I'm hearing, and usually each area, major metro city, has a premier law enforcement agency.

unknown 19:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

And it sounds like you want Shelby County to be that. We used to be that. You mentioned wanting smaller agencies to want to go there. Yes. People, you know, the quality candidates to go, I want to go there. Maybe people moving from out of area. Man, Shelby County, how do you uh my thought on how to become that is pay, retirement. You already have a million specialized units. How do you become that? Because that's a big ask.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

There's a lot of agencies in a 50-mile radius. Very simple. Very simple. Because you've got, I just mentioned what, 1,400, 1900 employees. And those people know people. What do you think they're gonna say when I tell them I got their back? I got your back. You will not be disciplined for doing your job. You will not be forgotten when you retire. You will not be in a position that if you get hurt in this line of work, that I'm going to wad you up and throw you away. Let's talk about that. You know? So when you get those things uh in place and the word gets out, people are gonna be like, wow, man, I want to work for you and I want to work there.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

Yeah, I agree. Word has to get out through the actions of upper management. Let's talk about what you just said. Sure. Sam Lilly. Yep. Well-known situation. Yep. Would you mind telling the listeners and the voters what happened and kind of the situation that he and some other people have similarly ended up in?

SPEAKER_01 21:09

So prior to the current sheriff, the retirement system was changed to a long-term disability program by a private entity. And they are terrible, terrible, horrible. You're not mentioning words. And one of the things with Sam, you know, debilitating injury, and I was talking to somebody this yesterday, you know, with the sheriff's office, and I hate to even mention this because it's so morbid and speak this way, but you're better off dead than you are alive. Your family will be taken care of. But if you're alive, we've got, I mean, from the day that he had that crash motorcycle accident. On his way to a call, on duty call, on duty, you know, and it was to a mo another motor down. And you don't know, you you're you're wherever you're at, and the call comes out, officer down, you don't know the extent of injuries, you don't know what was going on. I mean, he laid his bike over and he wasn't extremely hurt. But an officer down call came out, and the information was not relayed that it was a minor injury. But Sam, knowing who he was, and knowing who he is and how he operated, he takes care of his guys and he knew he had to get there. So he rolled hard on his bike. He's always trying to get there as fast as he can. And some lady pulls out in front of him and he hits her car, flies through the air, hits a telephone pole, which I believe with his head, and he got a TBI, his heart stops, they give him CPR on the side of the road. I mean, it's it's a lot. I mean, Sam was gone and back and gone and back and gone and back a couple of times. And, you know, now he can't communicate for himself to as a sharp individual that he was to tell everybody what happened or how he's being treated or any of that. I know what he would have said and I know what he would have done for anybody that'd be going through the situation. He would be standing on the rooftops yelling and screaming.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

So what's his status now? Is he still employed? Is he medically retired? He's the county commission. I don't want to pry into his personal information.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

The county commission voted, because I was there for the vote. The county commission voted to continue his benefits, his benefits, until so basically everything that he's got now is as if he were a an employee, still working every day, still doing his job. Okay. Or until we get a new retirement system in place. Now, what's that new retirement system gonna look like? Is it gonna benefit the officer or is it gonna benefit the county? So he's never gonna be able to police again.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

I don't think so. But he cannot medically retire.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

We don't have one. So essentially you go to 60% of your pay for one year and then they clip you from the salary. And that's that's just one example. There's others, this is this has happened. Well, there's another one that we got. I won't mention his name. We could talk about the you know, he's he's trying to work on some things to get himself taken care of, but the department is they he's trying to fight for himself, and they're like, ah, just let just let us handle it. Well, I'm not putting my life in your hands when I know what you're gonna do with my life. So, you know, with him, there is no resolution in place from the county commission. He drops to 60%. As long as your your OJI is open and you're there, he's able to walk, but he walks with a limp. He's able to use his hands and do what he needs to do, but he can't stand up for long periods of time. He can't walk or run for long periods. He can't run at all, but he can't do any strenuous policing activities. So what do you do with a person like that? He's some places you would medically retire, though. Well, and if you can medically retire them, if that's what they wanted to do, but this person gave his freedom of being able to be employed at the place he wanted to be at, to going injured on the job, going after a bad guy. So he's got to live with everything, all the decisions that he made, which, you know, I'm I'm telling you, military, law enforcement, if you don't have to take a life, you don't want to take a life. But if you had to do it, you still have to live with it. Yeah. You were the one that had to pull that trigger. So, you know, I I I've never had to do it. I've been fortunate in my career. I've policed the streets, I've come close. You know, I I've come close. I had a lady grab a butcher knife when I was trying to arrest her husband for murder, and she dragged me to the sink. She was now here I am, you know, 175, 180 pounds, and being dragged to the sink by the 300-pound woman, and I got one handcuff on her. She pulls that knife up and I stick my pistol in her face, drop the knife. You know, and you got 10 seconds to do it. I mean, you know, we're talking milliseconds.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Yeah. Drop it or you're dying now.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

And she dropped it, and I got her handcuffed. We got her in the car. But I'm there's no telling if she decided to do something bad, if she made an affertive movement towards me with that knife, I would have scattered, splattered, smothered, and covered her all over the kitchen sink. Yep. So you know, so those decisions you have to live with. With this other officer, you you don't have the resolution, you don't have the medical retirement to fall back on, and you're only limited where you can work. I would give you a choice. Do you want to stay in detectives? You know, yeah, you you can't go back to patrol, but you can stay. And we've set the precedence on that because it was another officer who lost both legs, and he stayed, he worked with prosthetics.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

So is that something you would work with the county commission on? Is we need to, is that one of the policies that you would like to see changed is a medical retirement option?

SPEAKER_01 27:48

A viable medical retirement option that's going to benefit the officer that had to go through the trouble. I mean, and I'm not talking about your, I got a hangnail and I want to retire. It's like, you know, there's certain things we have to have a board, you have to have standards, you're gonna have where you have people, you're gonna have problems. Yep. You're gonna have people that try to work the system. They're gonna try to work the system. And those people, you you're gonna know real quick on how to deal with them. But if it's written into policy and it doesn't violate the law, I think we can deal with that fairly quickly. If you write it into policy and it's not against the law for what you're writing, and all the legal terms are correct, and you're like, yeah, that's not gonna qualify. You know, your hangnail does not qualify as an on-the-job injury.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

So you mentioned we've talked about pay, we've talked about medical disability retirement. Do you think the standard retirement right now is where it needs to be to be the premier law enforcement, attract people, keep people for a career?

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Absolutely not. Do you want to work law enforcement until you're 65 years old?

SPEAKER_02 28:53

Is that where it's at right now?

SPEAKER_01 28:55

No, I think that's new guys, yeah. You'd have to work until you're 65. 65 in law enforcement. You're gonna have a 65-year-old, and I'm 52. I know I don't want to do this at 65. I mean, because you, you know, even if you're in the best shape, your body's gonna be pretty beat up if you stayed in patrol of 65 years, you know, or if I say up to your 65th year. You know, from the age of where you you probably played sports, you probably got some tendinitis and joint problems and back pain, you're carrying a gun, a gun belt, a vest every day, you're in and out of a car, you're sitting, you're motion all the time, then then we got to look at the one thing that I that I know plays a huge part in police officers' lives, and that's cortisol. And if you think about adrenaline, and every time that siren turns on or that radio call comes out, that you've got to go, go, go, that your body gives you a cortisol dump and your heart rate goes up and you work through the problem because then you're you're able to continuously drive, talk, focus, understand what you're doing, make decisions, and do it too. The problem is when you cut it off at 65 and I drop the phone on the floor and make a loud bang, and you get that cortisol dump, what's that do to your heart? You haven't had that cortisol dump in a while. Here, you're getting it every day. Well, I think it's causing heart problems. And I think that's why you have officers that retire and then die. Quick. Absolutely quick.

SPEAKER_03 30:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

So there's there's studies out there, and I don't think there's I mean, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a heart doctor, but I think I could convince one that a police officer, a firefighter that gets those cortisol dumps for and the adrenaline pumps for all of the the years that they do the service, and then all of a sudden it stops and then they get it one, they have a heart attack. I think that has something to do with it.

SPEAKER_04 30:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

I think that's a a I think that's true medicine. So, you know, working till 65, I think, you know, most federal agencies, you got to cap out at 52 to 57 mandatory. Yeah, 57 mandatory. You know, I think that we need to be pushing towards that. If it's viable for the federal government to do it, then it should be well for us. And I think that that makes it juicy for folks to come in work and work until you get your retirement and you're government service. You're serving the people. And I think that it shouldn't be hard to convince people that if you're a good officer and you've done good in the community, that you you your pay should be commensuratory to your well, your your retirement should be at a decent rate where you can walk away from here. And if you decide not to work, then that's great. If you decide to work somewhere, you got that extra retirement, kind of like the military.

SPEAKER_02 31:55

So do you think you could actually get through because everything's funded, right? The county commission manages funding to all these places. And I've supervised cops, and I've called the cops when I needed help for different things. And there's a big difference between a two to seven year officer or deputy and a seven to twenty year in the service you get and how they're thinking and how they manage emotions. There's just that's why we have veterans and rookies. Right, right. So, how do you get the county commission or whoever to understand that yes, it benefits the officers and their family, the deputies and their families, but it also benefits the citizenry to have have veterans here. Is that something that you would be ready to fight for and get them to work with you on? And if they say no, we're not doing that, we're funding this other thing, right? Revisit it and be a dog in that fight.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that again, you're getting a new commission. Hopefully, you're getting some people that understand what's going on. I mean, we Shelby County was the premier agency for training interstate interdiction, the area retail law enforcement team alert, which was basically going after the the targets in Walmart people that were when they changed the law, that if you go in there and you steal from a Walmart five, six times, that you've you're now committing a burglary. So it's it's organized crime is what it is. I I think that if we we run across that and it's denied, that we need to keep pressing it, going, hey, you you want us to be fully staffed, you want this to work, you want this, you've got to come off of it. Now, the other side of that is I think that the budget side of the sheriff's office has been under lock and key control for so long that yeah, the sheriff can fight for his budget all day long, but he can't use it. And I think that it's time to revisit how we're gonna get the funds and then get the the the proper decision making to be able, we can do what we need to do, however, we need to do it. The sheriff is an elected official. Yes, the sheriff gets his budget from the county commission, but that's his budget. I don't need to have a vote to learn how to use my budget. You know, if I gotta buy equipment, I'll buy equipment. If I need to hire people, hire people. Need to do what I need to do, do what I need to do. You're elected by the people. I'm elected by the people, and I'm entrusted to do this. Yeah. But now I'm worried about well, the mayor wants to pull $600, the county commission pulls $600, and then it's now $64 million, and now it's $70 million next year. Well, you're pulling it away, you're defunding the police. That's what it is. If you don't fund them, then you defund them. There's not anywhere in between. There's no other words.

SPEAKER_02 34:59

I was I always think it's ironic when people have complaints about law enforcement, and their answer is to reduce funding. It's like you're gonna get worse service in every way, shape, or form. Of course. Expect lower quality people to apply, lower quality candidates. The good candidates, they're gonna go to the premier places. The guys just out of the high-end military stuff. They usually become great police officers. Once they figure out it's not soldiering, it's a different job, they become very good at it.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Well, I mean, you you hit the nail on the head there with with soldiering. You you're training a war fighter, you're training a killer that's not gonna negotiate. You know, if you're a Marine and you're sent to a battlefield and you're sent to go into a theater action where you're gonna go do work, well, you're not gonna negotiate with the person. Hey, can you put your hands up for me? I'm about to kill you, you know. You're not gonna do all that. So, yeah, you're gonna pull those people out, and then you have to give them re-entry into public, and then you get them re-entry into a job. So your last, you know, that that's one of the things the military fails their warfighters on is uh is training. You know, you're you you train to fight, train to kill, train to go, go, go. But when we get ready to turn our le hands loose of you, well, we're gonna give you a bunch of awards and we're gonna stand you up in front of everybody, we're gonna salute you, and then we're gonna kick you out the door. See you later. By the way, VA is over there if you need it.

unknown 36:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

So, you know, it's uh that's not how we need to do a little different there. And that's at a different level than where I'm at. But, you know, I I might be able to help with that in training. If you have a class that has several retired military members in there, then yeah, we might be able to pull you aside and go, hey, we're gonna give you additional training, just you. And it's going to be a a little bit of reconditioning on how you know you can't resort from zero to 100. You got to kind of continuously get to that point.

SPEAKER_03 37:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

So we may have to work on that on the front end, and that way we can get you up to the speed of everybody else that's going to be graduating at this time. So you may have to start the academy earlier. You know, do a little bit more time and training that we can train you and then bring everybody else in, and then they understand, you know, you might be the class leader at that point. So, yeah, there's there's things that we need to do differently for sure. And, you know, the retirement. Yeah, I've got guys that I've seen working that they're gonna work because they're either in a divorce or they're they've had something happen in their life and they can't retire because if they don't have this money, then you know you're only gonna cap it a certain percentage of your salary. You you top out at 82 and a half or 82, maybe 86% at the most of your salary. That's all you're gonna get, and that's in 35 years. After 35 years, you don't gain another penny unless you're just putting in your deferred con. So it's time to go. You know, you need to go, you can go make more money being a Walmart door grader. Yeah. So, you know, there's there's things in place that you know we can do better.

SPEAKER_02 38:21

All right. What's your what's your message that you want to send, aside from less is more? We're aware. That's right. That's right. But what do you, aside from what we've covered, we've covered, you'd like to be the premier law enforcement agency, as I think most would. You'd see some changes that you'd like to make. If you want to expand on any of those.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

Yes. The the mic is yours. So let's talk about some of the changes. You know, you're a police officer and you come to Shelby County's jail. You know, you make an arrest at two o'clock, you're not getting done before eight o'clock at night. Correct. I mean, that's just terrible. So we're not doing our police officers any justice. We're not taking care of our people that are trying to take care of our people. So we've got to work on that. We've got to work on more safety. I mean, you're you're coming into the courtroom and you're sitting in the courtroom in an uncomfortable chair watching everybody else's trials going on, and you're there all day and you don't talk to a prosecutor, nobody comes over and helps you, nobody comes over and does anything to help you get through your day, and you're stuck there. And if your off day happens to fall on that court subpoena, then you're stuck there on your off day. And it's terrible. Yeah, you're making overtime, but you're also costing your agency money, you know, because you're sitting there, nobody's talking to you, and you burn out.

SPEAKER_02 39:42

You do that for, I mean, well, you yeah. When I was new, my days off were Monday, Tuesday on patrol. Monday was domestic violence court day, Tuesday was felony court. So if I was doing my job, I was working seven days a week. Yes. And I sit there four or five hours waiting for court, and then it would be dismissed and they'd uh snicker about it. Oh, that's been dismissed. Yeah, you know, I've been here all day. It's not funny, man. I'm off.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Yeah, that's right. And we don't care about you. So there, there's things, I mean, that I would do differently. I would put a law enforcement. We got a lot of people that have a lot of office space, and we've got a lot of vacant office space. I think if we put a law enforcement area in and we had everybody call this one number when you're ready for that person, you know, hey, I need uh ABC 123 to come down to courtroom 15. We got we're we're we're ready for him. And then you immediately get up and go, and we know where you are, and we know that you have access to your computer, you got access to Wi-Fi, you got uh a place to sit down that's comfortable, that you can downgrade your vest for a minute and relax. It's a secured environment, so you don't have to worry about being, you know, stiff as a board while you're in the room, you know, watching everybody, because you're in your back is to the people that you probably arrested. Yeah. And if you're like anybody else and you're like me, that makes you a little uncomfortable. It's not great. It's nothing, it's not a good feeling knowing that the person that you probably locked up might be or their family sitting behind you if they're not in custody, or they're sitting behind you because they put you on the front row. You're sitting there waiting. So, you know, we've got to do better with getting our officers back on the streets. We've got to do better with keeping our police officers of other agencies in their respective areas on the streets. The current situation in the jail is everybody goes in the big mosh pit because they can't keep up with who's who's where. We've got to stop the bleeding in that jail. We've got to stop the uh the deaths, the unnecessary deaths, and we've got to do some serious retraining and re-evaluating of security at the jail. Because right now you've got a strong flow of cigarettes, contraband, uh illegal narcotics, and anything and everything else that's coming through there. So we've got to do better of keeping that out. The amount of phones and weapons in the penal farm is wild. Well, the penal farm is actually the that is that falls under the mayor, believe it or not. Oh, okay. That's not even y'all's. That's not even the Shelby County Sheriff's. Okay. I don't know what county has so many different forms of government and it's split up in so many different ways. So the sheriff's office investigates things that happens at Shelby County Corrections, but we don't staff it. And we don't have any control over their staff.

SPEAKER_02 42:23

Makes it hard to investigate if you're not. Well, it makes it hard to investigate if they clean up the crime scene before you get to it. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, you're not they do that. Yeah, it's hard to have your finger on the pulse if you come in from the outside.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

Right. So, you know, I don't know if the sheriff's the sheriff's office is not in any position right now to pick up the Shelby County corrections and take that over. I mean, we would have to have now if you gave it to the sheriff and then I put an assistant chief over can corrections, you know, I've got a chief jailer and I put assistant chiefs over corrections. I mean, I would almost have to have a chief jailer for uh pre and a chief jailer for post, have two chief jailers if they were to give that to me. But if they're gonna do that, they've got to give me the budget. Yeah, that'd be a good idea. And they've got to give me the major. Yeah, but we could use those people to I mean, the the peel farm used to be an actual working farm. And I know they're saying it's inhumane to grow your own food and to make your own products and things like that. But when you give inmates something that they can have pride in, you know, hey, buddy, you're eating steak tonight. You you work in a cattle farm. Yeah. You're you're growing your own fresh vegetables.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

Just a tangent. The unhappiest people I see are the laziest and most comfortable. Yeah. There's something in, I mean, I can only speak for men, but I guess in people, but there's something in accomplishing something, growing your own food, going out and working, and then having a good meal. Right. We want to just lay around, but it really just makes you feel terrible.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

I know. So, you know, working on some of the failures that we've got in the jail, manpower, making it you mentioned a misdemeanor facility.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

Possibly instead of everybody going in that tally port and sitting outside.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

Yes. Do you think that's actually feasible? I think it is because it's a low-risk facility. Those people aren't going to escape. They're not going to escape misdemeanor incarceration because you're going to get them in and get them out. We're not holding them there forever. You know, we're going to get you in, we're going to get you a court date, and we're going to get you out of there. Now, you know, if you're to the point where we need to hold you, well then we'll have a little more we know where to put you there.

SPEAKER_03 44:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:31

We're going to put you in a more secure facility. You know, a secure part of the facility. But if we built it in increments and we don't do it all at one time, you know, they're they, being certain people in the community, want to build an entire new criminal justice center, system, new CJC, move everything. Attorneys, bonding, jail, sheriff's headquarters, you name it, all the support that goes with it, uh, accounting, everything goes with it.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

You don't sound like you love that idea.

SPEAKER_01 45:04

No, because it's $1.7 billion. Where do you think we're going to get that money? Billion with a B.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

Billion with a B. Okay. Yeah. Billion. Buh. So we don't have that. That's 999 million plus 700 million more. And then let's start with.

SPEAKER_01 45:23

Let's wrap my brain around the facility. Where you want to put him. We're going to put it at New Chicago at the Firestone plant. And there's there's enough benzene in the ground, it's probably going to kill people. You know, it's they don't want it in that neighborhood. That that plant, that ground has been gone for years. Let's put it at Shelby Farms. Why would we want to put that at a Shelby Farms area where that's our biggest urban park in the region? Yeah. Maybe in the end of the country. So we're going to take all our homeless people and move them out to Shelby Farms because that's what you're going to have. You're going to, you're going to basically import homeless to Wanna Grove and 240.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

That's not great.

SPEAKER_01 46:06

No. So, because that's what you're going to arrest and you're going to take them there. You know, and one of the things that, and I'll put this out there too, and I'm not trying to be funny when I say this, but we are the biggest suppliers of homelessness the sheriff's office jail is. If you're homeless and you get locked up and we release you, where do you go?

SPEAKER_04 46:28

Back on the street. Back on the street. How does that work? Why does that work? How is that good?

SPEAKER_01 46:39

It's not. So we're we're not working with our community leaders. We're not building relationships. We're not doing all these great things that they say that they're doing. They're not doing it. Because if we're releasing them back out on the street, the first thing I do when I pull in the in the morning is I look around and there's homeless everywhere. Yeah. So you think there should be what's the solution to that? Well, the solution to that is we need to start inside the jail. If they get arrested and you you cannot provide us an address and you have no family here, then we have everybody in this community wants to help. Where can I, what can I do to help? Give them a resource to not go out. What can I do to help? Well, we got enough vacant buildings around here. Look, we got to train. You have to want help in order to receive it. And you have to know that it's there to get it. If it's not there to get it, we've got too many little nonprofits out there that are trying to do their own thing because they're nonprofit, air quote nonprofit, but they're really for profit. You got so much of that going on that people are like, well, what can you do? Oh, we can't do anything. We're full. What can you? No, we can't do anything. We we can't help you. What can we do? Enough of that. We we have enough vacant buildings that we can make little apartments. And if you get out of jail, hey, we're gonna put you over here. We're gonna make sure, you know, is it the sheriff's responsibility? I've heard that from some commenter on the Facebook. It's not your responsibility to help save people. Really?

SPEAKER_02 48:15

I think it is. And how much freer are your deputies to work real crime if they're not dealing with a homeless guy or mental health insured, or drug abusers, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

I mean, we can make it safe, but we have to be willing to listen to new ideas, try it. If it doesn't work, scrap it and go to something else. Don't just keep doing it. So, I mean, we got enough vacant buildings downtown, okay? I think the criminal justice system needs to stay where it's at, downtown. Every criminal justice system is located mostly in their downtown areas of their major cities. It's established there. People know where it's at. We need to work on rebuilding the trust, accountability, and the transparency of that system. So with that, we start working on being better stewards of tax dollars. We start working on keeping our people safe, including homeless and incarcerated. And and that may be that we treat right now, we're treating stray dogs and cats better than we're keeping stray humans.

SPEAKER_04 49:30

But human life is now shown to be less valuable than an animal's life. And, you know, of course, I'm an animal lover too.

SPEAKER_01 49:44

I've got 'em. I've got dogs, three of them. And and I'm a big proponent of making sure our animals are safe.

SPEAKER_02 49:52

Yeah, you're not putting down animals here, but you are saying we sh we can take care of these folks as well.

SPEAKER_01 49:58

We need to take care of people. Yeah. I mean, we're we're gonna take them and kick them out of jail. You've got your time, you need to come back to court, and you've got nowhere to go. The buses, I mean, jail east, you release a female and they're doing it at 10 o'clock at night or 11 o'clock at night, they got to walk down Sycamore View, no lights, no traffic, no gas stations, no nothing. You're walking basically the green mile to get to a street that has gas stations, but you're not allowed to use the telephone there because they don't want you in there, because you're a criminal, because you just got a lot of kind of jail. So you're a criminal of some type in their mind.

SPEAKER_02 50:34

So God forbid you're getting released and you have a drug problem, an addiction issue, you're walking right through it. Walking down Sycamore View and Macon area. I mean, it's there.

SPEAKER_01 50:43

Yeah. So, you know, we we've got MATA. You know, everybody hates the busing system right now because they're looking at all the money that they've spent. But every time I turn around and I look over that MATA lot that's full of buses. So I call over to MATA at the jail and I have my command staff call and go, hey, I'm about to release 25 inmates. Can I get a bus? And that bus needs to run around the loop, and you should know that you're gonna be let off as close as we can let you. Maybe not at your front door, but we'll get you within walking distance to your house or your family's house or wherever you're planning on going. So you don't have to go stand at Sick More View and 40 and try to ride. Right. We're gonna get you away from that jail and get you set up for success. Because when you get out of jail, you're gonna have a check on you, so you don't have any money. So whatever money you came in with, you're gonna get a check. So we we give you a token. And in that token, you're gonna drop the token in the bus. All right. And that's gonna get you the ride around where you need to go. And then when the bus fills up with tokens, they turn around and they take that box of tokens and they give it back to us, and we can give that token to somebody else. And that's how you get on the bus. And we can ride you around and get you where you need to go and drop you off. You want to go to Elvis Presley and wherever, then that's where the bus will drop you off. And we'll have a list of that route that that bus can take you. I mean, way better than being the bus is already being fueled by government money and and it's already being fueled by grant money, and it's already been fueled by transportation because that's what they got to do, and we're giving back to the community. Man, that's a no-brainer. But we can't do that now. I mean, the bus comes probably once, maybe twice, and you gotta have money to get on it, or a bus passer, you ain't getting on it.

SPEAKER_02 52:33

Yeah, people asking you why, as the sheriff, would you want to serve the community is kind of wild. Yeah. Like that's yeah, why do you want to be sheriff?

SPEAKER_01 52:40

Well, you know, because I'm tired of seeing it fail. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:44

You know, I don't, I mean, I said this yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

If what we were doing was working and everything was grandiose in Memphis, Tennessee, I would not be running for sheriff.

SPEAKER_04 53:00

I got better things to do with my time.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

But we're in failure. We're at failure. We are at failure mode. And now you've gotten the attention of the president of the United States. You've gotten the attention of senators and governor and all your leadership that has seen enough of what's going on in Memphis, Tennessee. And Memphis, Tennessee was number one, not for great things of sports and being great mathematicians. We were number one in violent crime. Well, that's not something we need to hand out trophies for. So they sent the Memphis Safe Task Force and they developed military and federal law enforcement to come in and go after the violent criminals, the vile junk that we had in Shelby County causing our problems, and that reduced crime by 40%. So what they just showed you was boots on the ground makes the world go round. So we've got to do better to get boots on the ground. We've got to do better at being law men and not activists. Not siding with the activist side of the world. That doesn't work. There are you can be an activist, that's fine if that's what you want to be. You know, follow the rules, follow the law, freedom of speech. I'm all about it. You know, if you don't like something, absolutely tell us you don't like it. Tell us why you don't like it.

SPEAKER_04 54:28

But we've got to do better at making Shelby County a safe place. And I mean we've hit rock bottom. This is rock bottom. I hope it turns around. It will.

SPEAKER_01 54:45

Wins election. So election begins next Friday, July 17th through August 1st is early voting. I need all of your listeners' support. I need all of your listeners to get out and vote and tell 25 to 30 people, card them up there yourself, load your car up, have your ID with you, come in and vote for Brad Les for sheriff. There's other great candidates out there as well for other positions, but for the sheriff's position, I'm it. So July 17th, August 1st, August 6th is the general election. You know, I made a comment that uh everybody re resonates with. I'm not bought and paid for. Okay. But there are people, citizens, good people that are supporting my campaign and have put in some of their finances to help pay for billboards, pay for signs, pay for the different things that you need to run a campaign. Stuff you have to do to be at all competitive. Right. You got to be competitive. So and I've put a lot of my own money in, and it has not reached what the citizens have. My money has been far more than what the citizens have put in. So I think the citizens have put in about 20,000. I put in about 50,000. So we have about 70, 70, a little more than 70,000 in in the campaign. So, you know, there's a few more things, a little bit more things that we need to do to get things going. So if you want to donate, go to the website. There's an and dot link, and uh, you know, put 20, 30, 40, 50, whatever you can put in there. That's great. We'll take it and we'll put it to good use. I am not doing this to profit. I don't want to be your mayor. I don't want to be your governor. I don't want to be an alderman or anything like that or a county commissioner. The only thing I want to do is be your sheriff. I'm not a career politician. So, with that said, I'll do my time as a sheriff, and then I'm gonna fade off in the sunset and hand somebody else. That's and I'm not gonna set you up with that somebody else. That somebody else can do what I did. Put their resume together, be the best guy to the job, and go up there and get it. That's what we need. But when you have this hand-me down, that's what you're getting is a hand-me-down. You're getting somebody else's hand-me down that's failing. Yeah. I don't want a hand-me-down. I want the new. I want the new shiny, not the hand-me-down.

SPEAKER_02 57:14

Well, it sounds like you got some big ideas and the zeal to take a stab at making some changes.

SPEAKER_01 57:18

Well, I hope, you know, if your listeners have any questions or anything like that, I'm very responsive to email. So it's uh electbradless at gmail.com. I've got a social media site. It's a Facebook, Bradless for Sheriff. Go on there. Like, follow, and share with your friends if you believe in my message. If you believe that Shelby County can can be fixed, and you believe that I can fix it, then I need your support. And again, you know, we've all said it before, less is more, and that's the only way we can get there is to get voters to vote. And that's Arlington, where we are now. Arlington has to get out and vote. Germantown, you've got to get out and vote. Your voice is heard, and you can vote, you can vote for the sheriff. Carnival, you can vote for the sheriff.

SPEAKER_02 58:04

I was talking to my parents the other day, and uh I brought up the local politics, and they were they said something like, my vote doesn't, it doesn't matter. And I was like, ah, I think in local it does. Yeah. Because I think a lot of people just don't vote. They just don't show up. Well, that's true. National, I tend to agree with them. It doesn't matter. That's me. But local, yeah, I think I think it does. And the votes are in the thousands, not the hundred million or whatever. Well, I'm gonna tell you this.

SPEAKER_01 58:34

I only have to win by one vote. And your one vote could matter. So if you truly believe that we can fix Shelby County and we need to fix Shelby County, I need your vote because whether you believe that your one vote counts or not, I only need one vote to win. So if it's 50-50 and you're 51, and you vote for me, 51 wins. Yeah. That's a game. That's that's that's the game. That's what it is in sports, that's what it is in gambling, that's what it is anywhere. Is if you're gonna be the winner, you gotta win by one. One point, one vote. So I don't think it's gonna come to that one-on-one vote. I think it's gonna come with, you know, with basic basically what I'm seeing in the community is that I'm getting the support that I need to win this because people believe that Shelby County was going in the wrong direction, and it's under the current leadership. If the current leadership is letting this go this far, this long, and I'm talking from eight years to the last three years under the same leadership, the day-to-day operations guys not doing the job, not cutting the mustard. Sorry, you're not qualified. And again, I wouldn't be running for the position if I didn't, if I thought everything was going well. I mean, why try to change it? I mean, you know, if it's going great, let it keep going. Let it ride, yeah. Let it ride. Let it ride, Clyde, but that's not it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:04

Well, cool. I really appreciate your time today. I know you're busy on the on the campaign trail, and sounds like you got big eyes and big dreams for what could be for Shelby County. Realistic. As somebody that lives here, I appreciate it. And I want a sheriff that has the fighting. Yeah. Absolutely. The best service I can. And some of my best friends are deputies, and I know their families, and I feel for the guys that have been injured and don't have a medical retirement option and are in this weird limbo waiting for a retirement package in the future. And again, I really appreciate you coming on today, and I hope the word gets out.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:42

Well, I appreciate you having me, and I'm glad I got to come in and finally link up with you. I know we've we've had a you know, crossing our schedules up trying to get here. I'm glad we finally got it done. May it work. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thanks a lot, sir. All right, thank you.