The Mental Health Crisis Nobody Talks About in Policing

After more than 30 years in law enforcement, Mike thought retirement would be the easy part. Instead, he found himself facing what many officers quietly experience after the badge comes off — the loss of identity, purpose, and the transition into a very different life.

Now he’s working to make sure first responders have somewhere to turn when they need support.

It’s an honest conversation about the realities of policing, the transition into retirement, and why simply checking in on someone can matter more than we realize.

Grab a coffee, pull up a chair, and hang out with us for a bit. We’re grateful you’re here.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

What'd you say? Um well let me turn this up.

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Are you pals with Keith Morrison then?

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Uh he's the one that interviewed me. So really yeah. So he actually brought up and talked about the leader program for the last 20 minutes of our two and a half hour interview. That's cool. But here was the crazy thing about this whole thing with Keith Morrison. So they flew me into New York on like a drop of a hat. Like I was in Greenfield doing a training for my um current job. And then when I got kind of everything, all the stars aligned, um, that was on a Wednesday, and I was on the phone with the producer, uh, the same guy that I was on the phone with today, and he's like, We can Keith is available Friday afternoon. And then I said, Okay, well, how does this work? And he goes, my assistant will get a hold of you and we'll fly you into New York tomorrow, and then we'll do it and fly you home on Saturday. I said, Yeah, okay. So I literally drove from Greenfield to the airport and got on a plane and went to New York, and they put me up in Times Square at the holiday at the Hilton. So I I literally roll in at like 10 at night at the in time, and I've never been to New York, and I'm like, this is whatever. So I tell they have their own private um escort service from the airport. I don't mean like escort, I mean like travel escort, right? So I get there and I go to this. I go to this guy and I'm like, why does this look familiar? I'm like, this looks so dang familiar to me. I'm like, why? I'm like, this is crazy. So I find out we go, and Keith Morrison, by the way, was actually in his home studio in California. So we were actually did a virtual interview. Okay. And when I end up in the Rockefeller Center, it's a setup like this, but a little more elaborate. And just a little, not much. And uh, so Keith and I are discussing all this. But anyway, the camera guy says, Where are you staying? I sent him at the Hilton and Times Square. And he goes, Oh, that's where the CEO of uh United Healthcare got gunned down. I'm like, Oh my god, you know how many times I watched that? I literally rolled up and told the guy, I'm like, Why is this familiar? Because right at the doors of my hotel is where the CEO was gunned down.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

Oh my gosh. Crazy thing to bring up, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:02

So Keith Morrison, anyway, he went on, and I didn't know that his son, stepson, was Matthew Perry from Friends that overdose and yeah. So he wanted to know all about our program that we were doing.

SPEAKER_03 2:13

Oh my god, I didn't know. Oh wow. So I'm sorry we didn't treat you that way. We didn't have you picked up, we were actually late. We didn't have our put you up in a hotel or anything. That's all right. But we do appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

You are feeling close to me.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

You know what you decided.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

All right, ready? We just he is she does it, it's her thing. It's not it's your thing, it's definitely her thing.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

She just collapsed randomly. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

Okay, anyways.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Hi, everybody.

SPEAKER_03 3:08

Hi, I'm Nicole.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Keith.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

Fisher. Thanks for coming. Today we have a special guest. This is Mike Sasse.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Well, good morning. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_03 3:18

Yeah, thanks so much for coming on. This guy is um pretty impressive.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

This guy.

SPEAKER_03 3:25

What you want to start? You want to introduce him?

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Oh, go on, you're doing great so far.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

He's a pretty impressive guy. I was kind of talking to Cammy about him before it started. What I like about him though, and what I like about people, are is the humble side. And Mike is definitely a humble guy. So getting him to actually talk about who he is and what he's done. Um, and I'm not saying like that's always the most important thing about people, but I like to give people a backstory of a person of where they came from and all the wonderful things they've done or hard things they've done that gave them credit to be who they are today. So it might be hard to get it out of Mike, but we're gonna work hard at it. But he has a pretty cool thing going um that we want to help get it out there because it's gonna be beneficial, we think, to a lot of people. And it's in the new phase of it, you would say.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yeah, absolutely. Uh so it's called the Wisconsin Law Enforcement Death Response Team. It's been around since 1999, and our core mission since then has been a group of volunteer individuals, sworn, non-sworn, uh, some in law enforcement, mostly law enforcement. But the the concept is we go to agencies when they have a death within an agency. That's our core mission. And we're not experts, but we just have a ton of experience of the people that are on that, um, on our volunteer core group, let's say, right? So they go to uh agencies when there's a death within an agency. Now that death can uh be caused by any reason, right? Obviously, the most um prevalent that hits the news is a line of duty death, right? We hit a lot of those. Um and I think we've had 150 responses probably since 1999. Uh, a lot of just health reasons, right? Heart attack or whatever the situation might be, on duty, off-duty. Uh, and it doesn't matter, civilian, sworn, whatever it looks like, correctional, whatever it looks like. If there's a call, we will respond. We just don't show up and knock on the door saying, hey, we heard you had somebody that passed away. Uh we get that call, we come in and we don't take over. We come in and say, hey, we've done this a lot of times. A real, you know, we have a lot of experience in helping executives make decisions that are non-emotional. So when I say that, the one of the big key concepts is when somebody loses somebody in an agency, and if it is a line of duty death, there are a lot of emotions that occur. And one of the one of the comments that um uh I'll kind of wrap this up with was uh a response that we had just a few years back. That executive sat down and told me that he had experienced a lot of traumatic incidences in law enforcement, especially critical incidents and death scenes. But this was the first time in his career that he experienced a death within his agency. And that adds a completely different concept and a completely different uh emotional realm to the situation, right? So we were able to come in and say, hey, don't forget about this, don't forget about this. Family trumps everything, right? We got to make sure that we notify everybody in the agency down to the janitor if they want to be notified, right? And to make sure that we don't miss anything, because anytime that you uh as an agency, as an executive leader, miss one concept, it can be detrimental to the department. If we forget to notify the the clerical, night clerical uh individual because they're on vacation in Mexico, that can that can be detrimental, right? So yeah, that's really kind of crazy in a nutshell. And then we go proactive, but we can discuss that in a little bit if you'd like.

SPEAKER_03 7:09

So yeah. Um well let's start from let's start from the beginning of you.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Yeah, yeah. What what is oh this is Keith's question?

SPEAKER_03 7:20

You haven't watched any of our episodes, which no judgment.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

So I'm a newbie, so this is this is this is gonna be a surprise. All right, this is what Keith always asks for putting you on the spot. That's okay. What is your very first memory that you can recollect? Not a memory that is like um like confirmed with a photograph, but like your an actual memory. Can you recall it?

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Like back to childhood?

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Yeah, what where are we going with this?

SPEAKER_03 7:44

He's like, I just isn't some soft, touchy feeling stuff, is it?

SPEAKER_01 7:48

I mean, it can be sad if you want. Oh my gosh. Some people have had some sad ones. Journey falling down the stairs.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Oh my gosh. I don't like boy boy. That's a good one, isn't it? You don't really think about it too often, do you? No, no, it's um just one of those things. I think probably, you know, my dad when I was growing up was a big trapper. So he was um he was a World War II veteran. Uh, came home and he worked for the Wisconsin Power and Light, which was uh, you know, Highline uh expert, right? He did that for 38 years. And he would always take a couple of weeks off in the fall and trap. And and trapping furs was a really big lucrative business back in the day, and there was a big um demand for it. And I remember uh there was, you know, I never was allowed to miss school, but there was always this one point in time where we would he actually uh kept me out of school for two days, and that was the paddle of duck skiff out in the marsh over by uh the big level plane by Mosin 8, and we were trapping muskrats. And you know, back then I'm uh you know, we didn't uh we didn't have a lot, right? You know, I two pairs of jeans a year and no long underwear, so we would put two pairs of jeans, one pair over the other, in my school boots and in, you know, six inches of water with 150 muskrats in that boat, uh, is a memory that that I can share with you that is definitely ranks in there that you don't forget. And then skinning them and then doing that for a four-day, a four-day adventure, right? But he would make literally back then probably$1,500 or$2,000, which in today's that's a lot is a lot. That's a lot, and it took care of our, you know, I have two brothers and two sisters, and that took care of our Christmas.

SPEAKER_03 9:38

Oh, you have a big family, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Yeah, so that's why you're that's why you're yeah, that's why you're easy to get along with.

SPEAKER_03 9:45

I feel like people that have big families would your other siblings go with?

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Uh not on those strips, they may have helped them. So I was an afterthought. So my next closest sister is 10 years out for me. Okay, very cool.

SPEAKER_03 9:57

That's a nice way of putting it. Afterthought. We call that a mistake. But that's sweet. Oh, right.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Yeah, awesome. That's cool. That's good, but probably a good memory, too.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Yeah, it was. It was uh it wasn't so fun at the time. It's fun to look back and to think that that's that's something we shared together, even though I was like uh cheap labor, yeah, right. But that's what kids did, right? Uh-huh. You know, it was either that or probably hauling wood down the stairs. So cool.

SPEAKER_03 10:27

So with your law enforcement, um, we'll get into that law enforcement background, but what what was the turning point that made you realize that something had to be done with retired first responders or law enforcement? Like what made you think like there's gotta be more than what we have right now?

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Well, so after 30 years in law enforcement and handling a multitude, and I mean a multitude of of death scenes uh across the state.

SPEAKER_03 10:56

And uh when you worked for DCI, was that what you your you probably worked in different divisions in it, but did you do homicide?

SPEAKER_00 11:05

I did, I did. So um, like I could give you a little progression on how things went. So in 1991, I started uh with the Wapacka Sheriff's Department, and so I spent 10 years there, and I started actually in the jail and dispatch, and back then it was like Mayberry, but we had like a hundred and sometimes 150 inmates on the weekends. It was a lot. That's a lot, a lot, and that was in an old building, you know, they have the big courthouse and everything down there now and the correctional facility. But we had that going on, and um, I did that for a couple of years, and then um worked my way out to the uh a deputy on the road and then eventually a detective sergeant. Uh so I did that, and literally back then there was no social media, there was no, there was nothing, right? We used to get a paper. Um, it was called like the AG magazine, the attorney general magazine. And in the back of that magazine would be job opportunities, right? So I page to the back, working night shift, and there was a position for um in the division of narcotics under the Department of Justice for a narcotics officer, right? They called it DE, the Division of Narcotics Enforcement. So I had did a lot of uh narcotic work in Wapaca and had a really, which I thought was a pretty good background, right? Uh, and I applied via like filling out a resume, hand filling out an application, and sent it in. Uh, there was a lot of individuals across probably the nation that applied. Uh, I was one of seven that were hired.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

And I got into that. That eventually transitioned into the division of criminal investigation, where uh we merged with the division of narcotics enforcement. So I was a narcotics officer for quite a few years. Actually, had a keen uh dirty hairy. He was a black lab that came out of a pound in Milwaukee. Oh we trained him, uh, trained him up, and we had some incredible fines, uh, four kilos of cocaine in a in an airbay compartment in the in the city of Green Bay and all kinds of different things. It was yeah, that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 13:11

So did you pick this dog out?

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Or you know, he was picked out. In fact, um they said, Well, what are you thinking? Like as far as a dog, and I said, Well, I'd sure love a black lab if I could get one, like just throwing a wish list out, right? And lo and behold, like three weeks later, they said, We got one, and uh he's he's a handful. And he was probably nine months old, and they keep their animals like three weeks before they euthanize them in Milwaukee because there's so many. So they get this dog and they're out training them and running around. I go back to Milwaukee and I'm like, oh my gosh, this thing is like this thing, this dog is on meth, right? So we start working together and he turns into just being an incredible partner, and I ran with him for like eight years.

SPEAKER_03 13:52

Oh, that's so cool!

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Yeah, and we were we were, you know, so any agency that didn't have a canine, because it was pretty rare to have a canine back then, could call us, and then I would just travel to that agency in the state and do their search warrants and then go to the next place, or that is if they were doing in some sort of interdiction uh um an interdiction uh detail, uh, we would just go and work that with them and then and then you know move on to the next one. So it was it was a lot of a lot of road time, a lot of traveling. We had a lot of fun, had a lot of great finds and did a lot of cool stuff. And then from there I transitioned uh into the major crimes division, which is uh the Bureau of Uh Division of Criminal Investigation, where I handle a lot of uh the major crimes, right? You know, anything that would come along from uh homicide scenes to eventually that rolled into the new law when that came into Wisconsin for the officer involved death investigations and the transparency of having an outside agency come into your agency. So I did a lot of that. I did uh travel the state on a lot of those uh and then supervised them towards the end. So I had a ton of experience with that. So back to your original question, not knowing what a retiree needs, and Keith can't tell you what a retiree needs because he's not retired. I feel like I'm close. Are you? But it wasn't until I retired that it that I figured out, hey, you know, where are all my resources? Where is everything? I have family, uh, a great support system, great group of intimate friends, right? That um literally get you over the hurdle someday, you know, each day sometimes. Um, but it gets it can get really dark. And to understand now from that perspective of why am I mowing, you know, I'm out mowing lawn and why am I thinking of being in this scene, right? Why am I thinking about um this this winter scene, you know, in northern Wisconsin in this situation? Why am I thinking about this? Or you know, how does that all roll together, right? Um when you mean scene I'm talking death scenes, you know, shooting scenes mostly, right? And the worst of the worst, right? You know, so local agencies would get a call. Let's say Bonduel, as an example, would get a call, uh, and and I don't mean to sound crass about it, but some are more simplistic than others, right? Um, and it might be just something that this Bonduel PD doesn't have the resources to do, or it could be the most horrific thing you've ever seen in your life. Um we were like the 911 for local law enforcement because we could put we could we could pony up a hundred agents if we need to, and we did so in many of our cases, and we'd be there for weeks handling that, you know. So then that would come into either back in the day where I would be a lead invest uh lead agent, or then, you know, come into the management of those scenes. And there's a lot of pressure, a lot of you know, things that come along with not only handling the crime scene, it's handling that agency, the executives, the community, the family, um, the attorney general's office that we worked for. There's always scrutiny amongst all of the channels that come along with that, right? And you have to make sure your I's are dotted, your T's are crossed, and you have to have an answer on why did you do something the way you did it versus another way? Well, there was always, you know, training and experience we uh rely upon. So those types of things. But then back to the still the original question when you get into retirement and all of a sudden you have, you know, for 30 years, we have our social network, we have um our resources that we can rely on, you know, pulling up car to car in the median is is pure support. And and if you want to literally get something off your chest and it's somebody you've worked with for 15 years, what a better way, right? Right? I'm not taking it home and discussing it because frankly you hear it every day, they just don't get it.

SPEAKER_03 17:50

So and kind of like what you and Tony talked about on the last episode is break, having coffee break, how important it was to the old guys, the supervisors in the department saying, Yeah, like a almost like a head check. Where are you at today? Where are you at in the shift?

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Oh, yeah. Part of the reason why we wanted you on is because it's it really meshes well with what we talked about with Tony and with Keith. Uh like you know, that aftercare. Right. You know, you lose that you lose that camaraderie. And Tony said, even him, he's not even officially retired. Oh, maybe is it today? Today. Today, yeah. Uh officially retired, but it's been a couple months since he's been to work, you know. Um, and he's like, My phone stops ringing. Like it used to ring all the time with just guys, and then you you know, talk back and forth, and he's like, I miss, I miss that. Um so I think I think it's good for everybody to sort of open their eyes to the idea of something, some other type of camaraderie after retirement.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Amen. So you hit on something so key, right? So lots of friends, and they're still good friends, but life goes on when you're not there, right? They're hiring somebody or promoting somebody to your position. I say now, I look back, and I wish I would have had sort of this inkling, but everything's really temporary, right? Your police chief job is temporary because you're gonna do something different coming down the road, right? And you're so is your patrol job wherever you were at. It's temporary. So when I retired, my phone was blown off the hook, right? Like literally blown off the hook. I got guys saying, Hey, listen, Sassi, we're going to happy hour, we're gonna catch lunch, let us know when you're you know in Madison, we're gonna go get dinner. Six months, zero phone calls. Now you wonder and start going, what's going on? What's going on, right? Well, what what's happening? You know, right? You don't know, right? You don't know, and it's nothing, it's it's something I can share with you, but I haven't experienced it. You haven't experienced it, and everybody experiences it in a different fashion, right? So all of a sudden I'm sitting there for six months going, This is pretty damn dark. Like this is really dark. I could walk outside and the sun's uh, you know, but it's it's as dark as hell out because all of a sudden it's like here here you go. It's like um my social outwork are gone, you know, my identity's gone, my purpose is gone. Here I was, you know, in a position where I had um some really good high-level executive decision making. Now I gotta figure out what kind of gas I'm putting in my moor. That's the decision I'm making, right? It's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 20:36

Yeah, no, there's truth. And how would you explain it better be premium? How would you explain to somebody? And I don't want this to sound you're gonna be like, well, it's gonna sound that way if you're trying to make it not sound. Every time I say that, you're like, well, then it's gonna sound crappy. I'm trying to make it sound good, not saying like people in law enforcement is superior to other people retiring, but how do you explain to someone that has never worked in law enforcement how it feels different than someone that let's say is retiring from a corporate job? Oh I have ideas of it and how I explain it to people, but I want to hear what your thoughts are, how to explain it. Because I can even I can even relate to that as my parents retired from corrections. Okay, I'll add what I think a little bit. I think because it's you see a lot of dark stuff together, right? You have a lot of dark days, so you there's a like a a deep connection, you end up like a trauma bond. A trauma bond, and there is the meeting at breaks and the the door to door like meeting with cars and like venting, and you're with these people in all the time and it most of the time the worst of people's days. So when that just stops, it's just something something's different.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Well, we came up with a uh a conversation I had with a current boss of mine and And we were just in a discussion about different things. And as ironic as this came out, you know, we're all sheepdogs in our business. And we get in the business to help people. So, so like we call it boredom. And I always say I'm content. I'm never, I was actually never bored, but I'm content that the phone didn't ring. But when the phone rang, it was a new challenge. And we're going to go solve this challenge because we're problem solvers, right? Because we're the sheepdogs. And we have this flock. You have a flock in Bondawell, right? And this is your community, your jurisdiction, and you're going to take care of and solve the problems in Bondewell, right? There'll be a point in time when you retire, you are still the sheepdog, but you don't have this jurisdiction. You no longer have a flock to take care of. And that's how I like to say it, right? So when we're together and we go out and we do work on a day-to-day basis and we go bouncing from call to call to call and handling situations, we have a bond. I mean, I I have to trust you that you have my back. And you have to trust me that I got yours because it's survival of the fittest, and we are on the front lines of uh civility and chaos, right? That thin blue line means a lot. Um and in today's day and age, it even means more, right? Because of everything that goes on. So I made that comment before, and I don't mean to sound crass about it, but when I say they don't get it, they haven't experienced what we've experienced, right?

SPEAKER_03 23:34

So that's a good way of explaining it.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Your your common, I shouldn't say common, your citizen experiences maybe, you know, three to four critical incidences in their lifetime. We're upwards of seven to eight hundred, right? We can experience three a day in in certain jurisdictions. That's not uncommon. And those are all accumulative um effects, right? That that may or may not expose themselves during, you know, I call them triggering events, whatever, you know, it can be a smell, it can be a scene, it can be um, you know, going past a residence. It can be all sorts of different things, looking at photos. I mean, you don't have to even go to a crime scene. Look at our folks that do open records and look at our folks in our clerical. We can go to the worst of the worst horrible scenes. We document it, we photograph the heck out of it, and then we hand it over to somebody that's not even been trained and say, please black out the uh the face on these so that they can be released to I never thought about that.

SPEAKER_03 24:36

Those poor people.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Isn't that crazy?

SPEAKER_03 24:38

That's insane.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Yeah, we do it all the time, and we pay them 20 bucks an hour to do it. That's sad. Isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 24:44

Yeah, I never thought about that.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

So, you know, our retiree side of the house, the thing that I'm thinking about on the retiree through our law enforcement death response team is to be able to bring resources uh for everybody that's involved in those scenes, uh, in these, in the in the in this profession, public safety profession, and um to be able to have the resources available, but have that connectivity uh because what we do and putting ourselves out there is a calling. There's zero question that it's a calling, right? I went to school and college to play baseball, and that didn't quite work out. And I was two and a half years into it, and I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna make the next step. What am I gonna do? And I looked at my progress summary back in the day, and I'm like, oh my gosh, these grades aren't like I'm pulling them up a flagpole or anything. But I found this A, I got an A in Intro to Criminal Justice, and I said, I'm not kidding. And I said, gosh, that wasn't really that difficult for me. And I'm not kidding you. The last two years I never bought a book in college. I never bought a book in college, I had the last two years, and I flew through that. I'm like, oh my stars. Two two degrees in a minor and rolled on from there, so it was pretty cool. But where'd you go to college? UW Osh gosh.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Okay, and you went to your connection with Todd. Just he was after me, so I forged the way. He's probably like, Yeah, we're brothers. Yeah, I love picking on Todd on our podcast for some reason. He's an easy target, it just works.

SPEAKER_03 26:19

She's like, Cammy's like, who's Todd?

SPEAKER_01 26:22

You'll meet him eventually.

SPEAKER_02 26:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:25

Um, baseball, huh?

SPEAKER_00 26:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:27

What did you want to do with that?

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Well, I didn't know. I I, you know, I didn't have a why are you laughing? What is funny about that? It's yeah, it's uh it's tough. You know, we we didn't have a lot growing up and literally had just a few baseballs. My brothers would just, you know, see how hard they could hit them at me and uh do well. And uh, you know, I got into uh playing locally at it with our Clintonville Athletic Club, the Clintonville A's, and I uh started there at like 15 years old and played for 35 years. But yeah. And then um, it wasn't in college that I started actually pitching. And then when I started pitching, I was I could throw pretty hard and I could throw it where I wanted, and uh it was pretty good. So literally the first year, and this is a little bit about resiliency with me, because uh there would be about 300, 350 uh kids in the fall. I'll call them kids now, uh, that would come out and try out. Little did I know in a division three school, and I had no idea about this, that everybody was really handpicked because there was no scholarships or anything, but everybody was really handpicked uh who was going to make the team, right? So um I got caught the first year, and I was like, what? Right? Like I didn't understand this. I just didn't understand it and came home. My dad was like, I was baseball going on. I'm like, I didn't make the team. He's like, Oh, right. And he goes out and starts working in the garden, like disappointed. But I was like, I didn't get it, uh, which really came back at the the next year, and I'm like, this is kind of like BS, right? Uh I might be a little a kid from Clintonville, but I'm you know, I'm gonna figure this out. So this is what happens, and um yeah, you're gonna love this story. You're gonna love it. So uh I'm kept as the 60th, the last person on the squad, the last person, number 60, to throw batting practice to the starting team, right? So we get inside and we start practicing like January 4th inside the call center in Oshgosh. And we actually had two cages set up, they have mounds set up, and you throw live games to catchers and they hit, and they have a coach in the back saying, you know, calling out the hit. And and uh the first night I'm in there, I'm in there wearing my Clintonville Legion shirt, right? Because they didn't even have like shirts, practice shirts and stuff. But I have a Clintonville Legion shirt, and they said, Oh, one of our guys has a sore arm starting the first night. I'm like, oh, whatever. All right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:53

Like, poor guy. Yeah, I'll throw.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

I mean, like, I don't know what's going on here. So I get in there and literally I threw a no-hitter, nine innings of no-hit baseball in the cage. I don't have any idea, like, I have no clue, right? So about uh, I would say it was probably two, maybe three nights later, same thing happens. Uh, this one of our starters has a sore arm. They come up to me because I'm expendable, right? They're like, Sassy, can you throw? How's your arm? I'm like, Yeah, I can throw. Like, whatever, I can throw, not even having a clue like how this is gonna go. I'm in the seventh inning and with a no-hitter again, right? And these are guys, and and there are guys like uh Gary Varsho back in the time. If you just watch the World Series, his son Dalton Varshow was playing. So Gary and these guys had graduated, and Gary was still playing, and they would get in the in the cage and hit against us because they were still in the majors coming out of Hoshkins. Come on, right? So uh guys like Terry Jorgensen and a couple other guys that that we were throwing to. And um anyway, uh I'm throwing, and uh third baseman gets up and he was division three player of the year three years in a row, and he hits an absolute scud missile over my head, right over my head, just freaking smokes it, right? But it's not a home run, it's a fly ball, gonna be a fly ball to the center fielder. But the the coach who's standing on the bench is actually the son of our real coach, Russ Tiedeman, right? And he calls home run. He yells out, hey jar. I'm like, that's not a home run. I'm like, that's a fly ball, right? But I don't, you can't like you don't disrespect anybody, right? So the next guy gets in the cage and uh Corey Schaefer got drafted by the pirates. In the first pitch, I drilled him right in the ribs, right? So the coach, the assistant coach comes in and says, Did you hit him on purpose? I said, I was like, Sir, that's that was not a home run. Did you hit him on purpose? I said, That was not a home run on the track. So I never finished that second episode. I gave up one hit and I ran for two hours after that. And after that, I was number sixth in the picturing rotation and traveled for three years on uh on the team.

SPEAKER_03 31:01

You kind of have he has a bad baseball player vibe, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Yeah, that's cool. How old of a guy are you?

SPEAKER_01 31:07

I am 58. Why why did it take so long? Uh, because I was gonna throw you a curveball. I was gonna throw you a curveball. No, I don't I don't believe you. I'm gonna run your plates. That's all right. I'll know if you do crazy. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:31

Baseball's such it's one of our favorite sports. We're going to Arizona the end of the month to watch brewer spring training with the kids. We want to travel more with the kids affordably. We can't go during spring break because it's so expensive. Prices of tickets, playing tickets are so we're just gonna take them out.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

To bring them all with. I mean, we could go, but we could go, but we want the kids to enjoy it. That's the whole point.

SPEAKER_03 31:54

Baseball is my favorite.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Yeah, yeah, the kids. I didn't know that the boys are so stoked about it.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

Yeah, so that was kind of a crazy um, and here's the here's here's one thing, really, nobody knows that I had one more year of eligibility left at Oshgosh, not making a team the first year. So look look, you think about how things really play out in life. So I get a call, and knowing that I'm in the criminal justice field, coming trying to figure out what I want to do. My goal was always to work in my home county, be a be a sheriff in Wapacka County, a deputy sheriff was you know a big, a big deal.

SPEAKER_03 32:29

And um was it when you graduate sorry, but when you graduated, was it hard to get a job at that time?

SPEAKER_00 32:36

Oh my god, yeah. You know what? I had a I made uh you know applications to UW Oshgosh and I think Wassaw and a couple other places, right? And you're hand filling these applications out. Police applications, correct, yeah, and you would be filling them out uh knowing that you're going against you know, maybe a thousand different people trying to get this same one job, right? It's not like today, it's uh it's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_03 32:59

Yeah, today Keith's like, do you have a pulse? Yeah, how many OWIs? Right. Maybe we'll take you.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

No criminal convictions.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Oh, top of the list. It's un, it's uh it's pretty insane how that can happen, right? How that plays out. And then I got offered an internship in 1990 at at the sheriff's department working in the jail and doing ride-alongs. And my, you know, back then, old sheriff Bill Mork says you stick around here, you're likely you're gonna get hired, right? That was it. I left in December of 1990 college, graduated.

SPEAKER_03 33:33

You were hired under Mork?

SPEAKER_00 33:34

Yes, he hired me.

SPEAKER_03 33:36

Okay, so little side trail. We can bleep this out if it's not allowed. But so you were there when his son was shot?

SPEAKER_00 33:48

And I was that was in '85. No, I was in high school then.

SPEAKER_03 33:52

Okay, but that was pretty fresh and very fresh. It's I feel like it's fresh now. It is that story is insane.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:02

How did how long did he work after that happened? Mork, Sheriff Mork. Did he have a hard time keeping his uh stuff together?

SPEAKER_00 34:08

His wife actually, Betty, was uh working and doing the cooking in the kitchen. Uh, and we got along really great because at night shift she'd come in at like three in the morning and start preparing meals for the day. And she would always bring down bacon and eggs or whatever it would be in the morning when I'd be working on at dispatch and doing the jail. It was a combination. And um he worked uh, don't quote me, but I would think it was two terms. Oh, well, I'd say, you know what? I was hired in 91. Uh, I think he was sheriff until I want to say probably 94-ish. Not positive on that date. Okay. But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:46

Okay. So, anyways, you're saying intern. You said more.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Oh, so I ended up doing the intern, and then um um I let yeah, I left uh a semester early. I would have I would have had one more semester worth of baseball left if I would have stayed, but I may not have gotten hired at Wapaca that we would have been sitting here.

SPEAKER_03 35:04

Right. Isn't that amazing?

SPEAKER_01 35:07

Yeah, it never never ceases to amaze me all like the little decisions you make throughout your life and how it you know creates your end result. Oh, right.

SPEAKER_03 35:16

Out of all of your your law enforcement experience and jobs and stuff, what is your most um fulfilling part of your job?

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Besides of like the let's ask three part question.

SPEAKER_03 35:31

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Because I I wanted to steal it as you were spitting it out. Your most fulfilling, the most fun, and the most you're proud of.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Oh, for heaven's sakes.

SPEAKER_03 35:45

Well, why don't we just start with one at a time?

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Yeah, let's do one at a time.

SPEAKER_03 35:49

Like he's always like with playing board games, too. It's always like just one step at a time.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Fulfilling. Let's break it up. Well, let's talk about fun. Let's not take them in order. Let's talk about fun in law enforcement. I think um there was a point in time where uh it would have been back in 2009, 10, 11, and 12 where we had the Mexican drug cartels in our backyard here, and that was uh the large-scale uh marijuana grow operation. We want to talk about fun in law enforcement.

SPEAKER_03 36:21

That was with Sorley, too, wasn't it? Yep.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

And a lot of the Shano guys, Ocano guys, um uh Lincoln County guys, uh Langlade County guys. I don't want to miss anybody, but oh my gosh. Uh Marinette guys, oh my gosh. We talk about the crew of getting a crew together.

SPEAKER_03 36:38

So, how did you guys, since it was in Navarino?

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Well, that's where it started. Okay, and then we ended up in O'Connell, uh, Langlade, Lincoln, um, all kinds of different places, right? Marinette County. And um, you want to talk about fun. That was off the charts, fun. They got full, I got uh to go out to San Bernardino, California, uh, and partake with the uh eradication patrols out there. They had their own air wing just specifically for eradicating marijuana back in the day. Uh, we actually got to climb one of the mountains on an eradication detail and then getting fast uh fast roped. You know, there was a hundred-foot rope on a helicopter and clipping on it, and then going over a 2,000-foot cliff. And and literally it took us uh over a day to get up this mountain, and I don't know, two minutes, three minutes, and we were dropped about 20 feet from our truck on a on a rope. That was fun, right? And then and then doing the doing the marijuana stuff was crazy, calling up the Air National Guard and having choppers come in and literally having the uh the C-26, which was a specialized airplane, like it was so crazy at times. We had the Gulf oil spill at that time, and there were six planes in the U.S. with thermal imagery and everything, this high-tech equipment that was so uh top secret then, which is now on your drones almost, right? Um, we lost our plane out of Truax Field in Madison to go down and fly the Gulf oil spill. So they would thermal image the Gulf oil spill to see how big it was growing and all of that. If I needed a plane, I would call my colonel and they would literally two flight crews fly from New York, land in Green Bay, I'd get on the plane and go fly. Yeah, it was multiple times a week for months that way. It was crazy, like and nobody knew it. And then we did a takedown and having talk about fun, having 200 cops, 200 cops in mountain at the um at the bay at the softball diamond, uh doing a briefing for 200 cops to go out and hit simultaneously all these grow areas, which were sometimes a mile, three quarters of a mile off the road, because they all had encampments and there were there were Hispanics living in there that I had traced that literally came up through the Michigan Valley into Porto Vallarta. Um I'm sorry, I'm not Porter through Tijuana into um Sacramento to the Denver airport and in Green Bay in one day that was the route of travel. And they were told they were getting paid 200 bucks a day cash and they would live out in these mosquito-infested tents and and girl millions and millions of marijuana plants. It was crazy. We took them off and sent them to federal prison, which today's day and age doesn't mean anything, but it was a huge impact for our community at the time.

SPEAKER_03 39:27

That I so I started at Shanoe County around 2012, and so that was I saw all the pictures from Wade Woodkey and Key Sorley. Yeah. Um, right, but so I just lived vicariously through them and their stories, and then I think at um drug school, you guys talked about that whole operation.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

We did a lot of training on it.

SPEAKER_03 39:47

It was it's impressive how much how many hands on deck and to make things run. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

That was fun. What was the next question? Fulfilling. Fulfilling. What's the last one? Pride. Pride? Well, what are you most proud of? I'd say fulfilling. I'd say fulfilling is um, and I'll kind of go back to you know, the locals calling it when they needed assistance, right? Being the 911 call. So uh for whatever reason, I had a pretty amazing knack of putting pieces of a puzzle together, uh, of reading old reports or whatever, and had the ability to put teams together that we solve six cold case homicides.

SPEAKER_03 40:29

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

Yeah. Crazy.

SPEAKER_03 40:32

Is there any cold case homicides that haunt you yet?

SPEAKER_00 40:36

Um uh yeah, there will pack at one, right? The mort? Uh well, morgue, yes, but I think that one is I don't want to say laid to rest. It would have been nice to held someone accountable. Uh, but the double homicide in in from '92 of the Togstead Bumbrew, right? I wish. Um yeah, I don't know if we could have done a lot different if with what we had at the time, right? We we did a lot of work on that. But uh other than there's a couple out there that probably, I mean, they don't uh fortunately don't come to mind as frequently as you would think. But the ones that we solved were, I mean, if we don't uh I'm confident that if we don't build a team and have you know leadership in that team and doling out um duties, if you will, and making connections with families, making connections with suspects, uh and maneuvering around certain, you know, avenues and and yeah, it's uh it's pretty crazy. Some of those were some old cases, like really old, and um putting those together, and I think the fulfilling part of that is knowing that you and this team that you organized actually solved this case, held somebody accountable and really made a difference for that family.

SPEAKER_03 42:03

100%.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

When you have you know that family come up and give you a hug, poof it's crazy, crazy.

SPEAKER_03 42:11

I can't imagine not having closure on something like that.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Right. Yeah. So it was um that's a good answer. That's a it's well, that's what I did, right? It was it was yeah, fulfilling as you know, and then I think about you know, the story I told you about before that, but this area is like like how many cops get to do that? Like how how like um amazing is that that just that you get a chance to do it, that I'm in a position to be able to make that difference, right? It's kind of crazy. That I guess that leads into pride, you know. The pride on that is um, you know, doing that, getting through the uh, you know, the 30 years and and now doing what I'm doing, you know, on the flip side of that, probably making a bigger difference now with the proactive stuff and the stuff um that we can chat a little bit about if you're interested in our law enforcement death response team and making these making this difference for not only those that are still working, but making a difference for those that that are retired and and are looking for that next step, right? So I think um not only getting through those 30 years, I and I don't want to say unscathed, but you know, physically good, right? Um you know, making that I literally have conversations with individuals who I either just meet or are good friends of mine saying, I literally think that I'm making a bigger difference now and having a bigger chance to affect and save lives than I ever did my 30 years. As crazy as that sounds.

SPEAKER_03 43:47

And that's with this thing that you're starting.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Right.

SPEAKER_03 43:50

Yeah, let's talk about that now. All right. Tell me about it, tell me about where you're at with it.

SPEAKER_00 43:58

Um Well, how about I take you from my retirement? We talked a little bit about that. It was about two or three months later I got uh approached by a federal grant-funded program that I currently work with right now. Uh so I've been employed with them uh five years. Uh, but about a year after my retirement, I got approached uh by Todd Thomas, who was then the chief of Appleton PD and now retired, who was the president of our Wisconsin law enforcement death response team. If I had an interest in uh becoming the next president because he wanted to pass the torch, and it literally took me, I'll bet you eight months to decide because I didn't know if I could mentally do it. Right. Was I ready to do this? Was I, you know, am I in a position to help others when you know it's so easy in our line of profession to help everybody else, but we don't help ourselves, right? That's a tough call, right? When you think about that, you know, when you think about, you know, that phone picks up, do you have an emergency or your house is on fire, or your kids are in that house. There's zero question on how we're gonna respond and do this, right? Or what we're going to do to try to make uh this problem go away or or or significantly minimize it, right? Um, and maybe we don't get them kids out of that house, right? And then all of a sudden we're driving by and damn it, right? So you think about some of those things, or what does that look like, or how does that play into it? Well, finally, I'm like, gosh, dang it. I'm not sure. I said, I'll do this. Here's what I'll do I'll take in a purely administrative role because I'm good at building teams and I don't lose when I build a team. Like I do not lose. And I said, I will help build this team and we will succeed, but I am not uh going to call outs. I am when an agency loses somebody, I'll send the team, right? They can report back to me because I'm just not ready in that position. It's probably still not ready, right? And when you say you're not ready, what do you mean? Well, I don't, you know, so I went there on a completely different platform. I went there as either the lead agent that was going to handle the crime scene of a fallen, a fallen officer, or managed it, right? So, you know, and you think about that, I use that that um similarity to our open records individuals that look at those photos, right? So you all are officers, and I send you to a line of duty death, and you process that crime scene like I used to do, and you take care of everything and put all that evidence together, and you write your reports, that came to my desk. So not only do I watch all of that video multiple, multiple, multiple times to make sure that these reports are accurate and true to the best that we can make them and transparent, right? So when I talk about that all the time, you don't necessarily need to be on a crime scene to be victimized. That makes sense, right? Right. You can, you know, one of my staff members said you can't unsee something you look at.

SPEAKER_03 47:09

No, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

So, you know, talking about this whole uh our leader team in general is like, okay, I just, you know what, I'll leave it to the folks that can go there in a non-emotional state at the time. We don't leave non-emotional, we build relationships and ties with the agencies and the sheriffs and the chiefs and the line staff and community members, and of obviously 110% the family, right? I'm just not sure I'm there, but I can build a team to make that happen. So I accept that. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 47:38

That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 47:39

So I accept that position. And then I'm we were there, and I'll say maybe a year or two goes by, and I started having conversations with our team members, our internal team, and I said, Well, you know, it seems like it's we're going to a lot of agencies because of a death by suicide. It's four times likely in Wisconsin, which mirrors the national average that we're gonna come to an agency because of a death by suicide than we are anything else. I'm like, what can we do to maybe not go to an agency? I mean, there's got to be something if we and I have always had this. If you do nothing, nothing will get done. Right? So I said, what can we do? So in 2019 and 20, when I was still employed, COVID comes around, but I'm part of a um a training session. It's called um Command College, and it was a command college that's put on in uh by UW Madison and the Wisconsin Department of Justice. They take um like two classes a year, they put uh you know 36 individuals in a room, uh executive leaders, and you're there to solve problems and learn about all kinds of different things, right? And you come out a certified public manager.

SPEAKER_03 48:46

Did you go to command college?

SPEAKER_00 48:48

No, no, so if you get the opportunity, you need to go. It's crazy good, right? There's leadership in police organizations uh to start out with, and then you can uh get into that command college.

SPEAKER_01 49:00

I'd think another FBI lead alone, and that they don't they don't get along.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

Oh just get along. So we get into the uh command college, and the third day, and there are some individuals in there I know, but the most I don't know. The third day, um, as a class, we need to stand up and pick a class project, and then you have to have an individual project. So I'm like, well, what what the heck, right? So I stand up and say, and I'm not in, I'm still working at the time, not in this president spot of leader. I stand up and said, Who knows about the leader program? And let's take a look at revamping it. And like six hands go up that they knew about it, right? And I'm like, holy cats. I'm like, we can do some really, some really good things here. I said, What do you think about? You know, and I laid out a kind of a just right off the cuff, uh, the Rolodex and said, What can you know, what are your thoughts in the class? It overwhelmingly said, Let's do it. So, what did we do? We took the leader program that's been around since 1999. In 2020, we made it a nonprofit. We turned around, we did fundraising, we made a website for awareness, we turned around and um I mean, we put it out there, right? So one of our class members, now super great friend of mine, Chris Tarman, he's the chief of UW Oshgosh. He thinks differently than I ever would and said, Well, I'm just gonna develop an app and I'm gonna make an app, then that can coincide with the leader program. And the app is called the Guardian app. So he puts together the Guardian app, which we still utilize today and have about 6,000 members on it.

SPEAKER_03 50:33

Plug that in for us, Cammy. Boop, OBN.

SPEAKER_00 50:37

Got it. So the Guardian app, right? So in the Guardian app, you can take law enforcement, frontline workers, public uh public safety employees, whoever, we don't care. Everybody in the app is vetted. You can go to the app, you can get on-duty tools for those that work the street, the bond book, the criminal state statutes, whatever you want. You can go in there, we have vetted, vetted mental health workers in there, we have vetted chaplains in there, we have um oh gosh, when am I what am I missing? There's so much going on in there. Of course, the 911 helpline. And we didn't, I'm like, this stuff is just starting to put together. I'm like, wow, is this going crazy? Right. And we get this thing out rolling out in 2020-ish, 2021. And of course, um, I'm attending a lot of the conferences, the chiefs and the sheriffs, and and connected with all of those guys, and we get a lot of endorsement and a lot of backing because why wouldn't we invest in ourselves and our employees, right? So we start making a lot of this stuff happen. And the Guardian app is oh my gosh, it's crazy. Um, there's a lot that we're looking at doing and upgrading it even to an AI platform, um, possibly, um, having a lot of additional resources. So a lot of agencies have peer support across the state. And I'll just take like Green Bay PD as an example, has their own peer support internally. Uh, we've reached out, they reach out to us and say we would like to be a statewide uh have a statewide impact. So we have 400 peer support at the at the line level on the app.

SPEAKER_03 52:11

Is that true? Did Green Bay really do that?

SPEAKER_00 52:13

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, there's a lot of you can go, you can scroll through the app and see all the agencies in and then pick who if somebody you'd like to speak with, right? So, one of the things I think is is really notable with regards to our program is we are a nonprofit. We are also non-politically affiliated to anyone. I'm not affiliated to DOJ, I'm not affiliated to the Democrats, the Republicans. I could care less, right? Doesn't matter. It makes no difference. You can come to us and you can be an individual in a program, not judged by your own agency. Right. And that's big, right? It's important. So a few years back, uh, individual comes to us and says, What are we doing for executive peer support? I had a critical incident in my small town. I sat in at a debriefing and um was told I couldn't be there because I'm the I'm the chief. And he says, What am I supposed to do? Go to an go in my office and cry by myself. And I think it was a homicide of a child.

SPEAKER_02 53:09

Oh dear. Right?

SPEAKER_00 53:10

Yeah. So they said, No, chief, you know you're part of us, come back in. So he brought that concept to us. We put together a steering committee uh in a matter of uh probably less than a month. And one day is time we sat down and cranked out, which is now, and I can't find another program that that mirrors what we're doing, is the executive level peer support in our Guardian app for the state of Wisconsin, right? For the state of Wisconsin. So, Keith, you have an issue and you're like, ah, I just, you know, I don't want to bring it home, I don't want to bounce it off anybody. You can go to the app, scroll through, read the bio of our individuals, and click on their photo and their phone will ring, right? And either professionally or privately, we will be covered under the um confidentiality clauses that are coming out in Wisconsin. Uh, and everything's good. As long as it's not a gray line. If it's a gray line, we're gonna say contact your attorney, right? But the the deal is we are the conduit, we're not the professionals, we are the conduit to the professionals, you know, whether it's divorce support, grief support, financial support, or maybe it's a you know, the mayor hitting you up and and threatening to take your job or whatever it could be, sergeants and on up can go in there and speak freely to anybody in that executive peer support. In 2014 or 2024, uh, we had 2,500 contacts. Now, when we say contacts, everything's anonymous, it's just a check mark. Did you call somebody or were you called is a check mark. 2,500 in 2024. What did we do in 2023?

SPEAKER_03 54:47

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00 54:49

Yeah, you want to talk about craziness. Like, I'm in the app, and I'm like, it's not a big lift to be an executive peer support member. I'm in the app. I haven't had a call in you know two years. Give him a call, Keith.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

Just wait. I I have the app, so I'll click on you. Yeah, click on me.

SPEAKER_00 55:09

A month ago, I get two calls in a week. And one guy says, I saw you present and I needed to talk to you. You know, the conduit. And it might just be a conversation. And actually, that conversation led to an individual coming to our conference, which was a mental health and wellness symposium at the end of October, that I'll talk a little bit more about, came to that conference. Uh, we connected, and I'm going down to the that village to do a ride-along yet, uh, coming up here. So that's awesome. That's cool, that's really cool, right? So you just really never know, right? So, one of the things that um if you want me to keep rolling on where we're at with that, so obviously being in the retiree side of the house, you don't know how to experience it's like, and I'm I hate to use this terminology, but it's like losing a parent. Until you lose a parent, you don't know what it's like, right? Like, what this is a whole new realm of either your dad is your best friend or it could be your worst enemy, it's still your dad, and they're gone. Right? It's just like our profession. So we have now we have also retiree peer support, and that was the concept of building. I had a steering committee a couple of years ago, and I was loosely kicking this around. I literally would think about this, waking up, thinking about it. What can I do? It's there's got to be something. We had our last conference in um at the Kalahari in October last year. We had like 250 that that came, which was a good showing, but we had to have 400 in the past. So I was like, God dang it, what can we do to how can I get another thousand people in this audience? Right. And then I'm like, well, you know, why am I trying to trying to separate all this? Why aren't we merging this? Why don't I figure out a way to merge this? So after that conference, I said, this is uh, you know, and I had some really, really good conversations with some close friends of mine that have a ton of clout in law enforcement, a ton, right? And I said, I'm tired of this. Let's figure something out. And they said, let's do it. So that let's do it led to me putting together an action committee. We went and spent uh two days in Fond du Lac. We spent a full afternoon, went out to eat as a group, uh, conversed at the bar where we got a lot of stuff done, which we always do after that, and did the following morning and came up with the Guardians of Public Safety Retiree Program under our leader umbrella. So that is going to take retirees and hopefully bring them into our envelope, public safety retirees across the board, give them resources. Our Guardian app is gonna be the hub for mental health and wellness, grief support, financial support, uh, insurance support. Um, you know, we're gonna pick the top four or five and we're gonna crush those this year. And then come to the Kalahari in October, bring your family, and we're gonna have things for spouses and and and hopefully for kids, if if whatever it looks like, right? Some breakout sessions like, you know, uh, why did this go on in in the last 30 years or what's going on now, right? Because our profession is so unique and so uh closed knit. Um, you know, I hope to answer a lot of questions and be able to bring that in. So one of the things that I was able to do is I called on on um an individual. So my my former boss, my administrator at DCI is Brian O'Keeffe, his daughter, Gabrielle O'Keefe, is like wicked smart in her PhD, you know, uh officer wellness and everything. I asked for an empirical statistical data sheet to stand up what we're doing. And I'm kind of getting a little bit in front of even where I'm at in this program, but our numbers of why we are doing what we are doing are off the charts. Like, you know, I think the average lifespan of a law enforcement officer is 56 years old.

SPEAKER_03 58:54

That's that's insane.

SPEAKER_00 58:55

The average lifespan of a retiree is 66, right? And your cause of death as a retiree, cardiovascular health issues, but another one 42% likely that a retiree will die by suicide than the other uh factors.

SPEAKER_03 59:12

That means there's a lot a lot of loneliness out there, right?

SPEAKER_00 59:16

And there's a lot of things that come along with that, and and um I'm you know, I hate to say, but I'm like excited that we have something together, right? I have a really uh major corporation that is going to assist us in marketing uh and getting this pushed out. Uh we're funded off of donations, strictly donations. Last year I held a bourbon raffle, right? Raised$12,000. We raised$12,000. It was great, right? That's a lot. Uh I have um we had a couple of critical incidences in in the west part of the state, and we lost three officers in a in a month and a half period of time, a couple years back. Those agencies were so small that they didn't have the ability to support mental health resources, right? When I say mental health, like how do you pay for it? It's not free, right? We say, oh, yeah, it, but it not when it comes to family members, right? Like when you're from a three or four-person department, you're usually doing things together, and everybody knows everybody, and it affects everybody. These weren't like these were very horrific line of duty deaths, right? So we were able to uh, in a sense, be a fiduciary through the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association as well as the Badger Sheriff's Association, where we were able to stockpile and I say hold from their donations for us to be able to pay anonymously individuals that were seeking mental health and wellness that were affected by this tragedy intimately, not community members off to the side, but individuals directly affected. I mean, one of the goals that we have is how do we put together an account, if you will, for retirees? Like, can you imagine all of a sudden, you know, Cammy, you're a retiree and you're out. Well, I'll give you even a great example uh after this one, but you're out five years and you're like, I just can't deal with this, right? I can't get this scene out of my head, I can't do this, I can't do that. You know, the old adage back in my day, my sergeant when I got on the road was a Vietnam drill instructor, right? He was a drill instructor because he survived Vietnam and then came back. And, you know, you rub dirt in it and he would call you a bunch of explicit, right? And you get back to your job. And it didn't matter if you're on a drowning or you were in that fire scene or whatever it was, it you, you know, we got a lockout, go handle the lockout, right? That's the way it was back then. So, you know, I look at it as um an avenue, maybe to be able to provide those. You know, I'll give you this story, and it's kind of might put into perspective, and I won't use any names here, but there was an individual that reached out to the Chiefs of Police Association probably two years ago. He sent an email, he'd been retired 30 years and was struggling. 30 years, struggling, right? And said, I need some help. What can you do? So you think about the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association is the biggest association, I think potentially active law enforcement and everybody involved. Said, hey, get a hold of Mike Saucy, right? So I call this guy and he says, Oh, I thought you still work for the state. So he knew of me, right? We made a connection. I said, What's going on? He goes, Oh, I got this going on, I got this going on. I'm like, Are you okay? He goes, and this is his response, yeah, I'm okay now. I'm like, when were you not okay, or when are you not okay? Right. So our organization is able, and our staff is able to take his insurance and and find outlets, mental health providers, and he actually gets some assistance, right? And it takes some time, but he knows it's in the works and everything works. And it's crazy as it is. He hits me like literally last week, says, Hey, I'm cutting through town. Any chance you're around? I'm like, Hell yeah, I'll meet you. Let's go, you know. And uh go ahead and uh uh come up and shake his hand. I said, How are you doing? He goes, I'm good, you know, literally, it's crazy. Yeah, he says, I'm here, you know, I'm doing well because of you. Cool. You know, you think about that. You know, you don't have to save everyone, but everyone can save someone.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:23

And a moment like that makes you know that's your purpose. Like that's why you're here. Yep, it all comes down to that.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:29

You think about that, you know, we're all on the same team. Just because we tire, we retire, doesn't mean we're not on the same team. You know, it's back to the sheepdog, right? You're the same person.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:39

So now it's now it's like you're protecting the protectors.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:45

Well, I use this analogy too, and you tell me what your thoughts on it. So, our entire career, uh, public safety, dispatch, corrections, everybody's got a problem they're bringing to you because you're the person, right? And we're there to problem solve. We solve their problems as best we can. In this arena, we solve each other's problems, right? When that phone rings, it could be Keith, you know, and I hope it is. And he says, Hey, I don't, I'm just checking in on you because I do that all the time. I'm on the road constantly. I'll just scroll through, boom. Hey, check in and I haven't talked to you for a long time.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:18

That's smart. And you mentioned that after talking with Tony, you're like, I'm gonna start calling the guys I used to work with more because it made him realize when your phone stops ringing.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:27

I'm not doing anything. Like, why aren't I doing my part?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:30

And calling with so that's that's very that's it's bringing aware aware awareness, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:36

So one of the things I you know, when I talked about that six-month dark spot, right? I didn't reach out to anybody, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:44

Well, and you're it takes again, you're used to fixing everybody else's problems, you're not used to having problems yourself that you're you know going through or dealing with.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:53

And what's the standard answer? I'm gonna ask you, what's the standard answer? How are you doing? Good, yeah, fine. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:00

Also, what do you say when actually when you're like, I'm just gonna put that where?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:05

In a box. I'm gonna push it way down in another box and shove it way down. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:12

I mean, that's how he handles any trauma. Is he that's that's his response. Super healthy.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:16

I've always had a pretty I I've mentioned this before and she knows this, but I feel like I have a pretty healthy um reaction to stress and trauma, I guess. Um, but when you couple it with okay, personal, you know, like either relationships or finances or other issues that come up throughout your lifetime, like it just the trauma alone is bad enough. But then you add on all the other stressors and issues, and it can be like daunting, you know, like to the point. I'm I'm good now if you're wondering.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:51

Just just checking in. Just checking in.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:54

But yeah, but you're you're 100% accurate, right? It's like um And then everything that's going on in the in the media today, right? It's not like, you know, when's the last time they put a positive no news story out on public safety? You know, you'll get it from the firefighters.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:14

Oh, yeah. Oh, everyone loves firemen. Actually, I think when I was going to school to be a cop, our one of our instructors said, Okay, go down the hall, be a firefighter. Everyone loves you. Right. Like nobody's gonna love you in this profession.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:27

Yeah. But you're right. And then and then it got worse because that was 20 some years ago.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:33

Your his philosophy is after 9-11. He goes, There was this time, Keith says there was this time that there was a level of respect for first responders, like where the world came together, where America came together for real. And it's sad because it was so tragic, but there was this level of respect for everybody. But something, somehow, a lot of things, right, changed. Right. And it got ugly.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:57

And now, and now we're looking at that stack of applicants for a really good full-time job. Right. And they're diminishing. And you it's no wonder why. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:07

Well, it's a boss.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:10

Right? Well, that's not a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:11

So you hit on something that's really, really important that I didn't touch on it. So within our entirety of our program, we have the veterans woven throughout our entire program. So we have chaplains that are veterans, we have mental health providers that are veterans, peer support, executive peer support that are veterans. We have veterans hotlines available. We have all sorts of different things available, right? Inside of our app in that veteran side that's that's hitting it. And um, you know, I make a lot of, you know, I mentioned earlier that my dad was a World War II vet. He wasn't just, I mean, he was in the Pacific theater with two purple hearts landing on beaches and doing different things, right? As an 18-year-old kid from Clintonville. I have a ton of respect for veterans. They come home, whether they spend a year or four years or six years or make a career out of it, they come home and they're afforded resources the rest of their life. Right?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:12

You're right, you're right, which they should. I get it. But where's for the first responders every day? Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:21

And I said a lot of, and if you heard me start out, and I'll go back to the Vietnam. There are some Vietnam vets that were in for a year, right? And I have a lot of conversations, and I'm not disparaging veterans, I love love the hell out of them, right? But I say, you you know, and I had this conversation with a with a former Milwaukee PD copper, and we're not sitting down not far from here at a good friend's house and having dinner one night, and he's wearing his Vietnam hat. But we get into this conversation and he starts talking about the five shootings he's been in and a couple of fatal uh critical incidents he was involved in, and everything that goes on like that. And I bring up the conversation and I start talking to him about his Vietnam hat. And I said, You have a lot of different bars and symbols on that. And of course, I didn't know, but I was leading into the conversation. What is this for? Oh, this is I was in this theater, I was over here doing this, doing this, doing this. I said, How long did you work in Milwaukee? I was there 30 years, he said. And I said, So let me get this straight. You were in Vietnam one year, and I understand and I appreciate all of your service, but you wear a Vietnam hat proudly wherever you go. You were in five shootings in Milwaukee. Why don't you have a Milwaukee, I'm a retired Milwaukee PD officer hat on with five gold stars indicating every time you were in a shooting? Right?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:41

Well, I think we all know the answer to that.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:43

Well, I but I get where you're going.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:45

But yeah, I know exactly where you're going.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:46

But you know, why is it why is it shameful to be a retiree as a public safety industry?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:51

Why would you have to hide that? Because yeah, no, I I totally, yep, I see.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:54

You know, and I like I said, I respect uh I was making a point saying, you know, don't disparage your 30-year career. You know, there were times when I'd be like, you know, there, you know, what did you do for a living? And I'll I'm in construction. I was in construction. Right? Not anymore. I'm like, you know what? I had a guy looking at my tractor to trade my tractor, and yesterday says, Oh, what do you do for a living? And I told him, I'm like, you know what, right here it is. You know what? I've been 30 years in law enforcement, you know, and the conversations I had, you know, um, and you hit on something too, uh very, very important. You know, we're not off duty. You know, we take that, we swear to that oath. That oath says you're only that oath is only good during your times of on-duty service, right? Did you ever think of that, Keith? That oath is 247, 365 for 30 years, right? It's crazy. So there's a lot to be thought about when it comes into this retiree side of the house to bring those resources to just maybe bring some awareness. And and it's not a uh, I think, you know, education, awareness, uh, recruitment. I'm hoping that I can this summer, this into this fall, I would like 75 more retirees to come forward and be into our program as peer support, uh, to be mentors, to be phony, to be, to be those people that can help the transition of those coming into retirement and say, hey, you don't need the six months of darkness. We can we got people you can chat with that used to work with or across the state if you're not, you know. Um our program has had a lot of recognition. We have the state of South Dakota in a pilot program in our app. Our app is free. Um, our our app is we've trained at the fraternal order of police wellness symposium. We've trained at the concern uh concerned uh officers of uh survivors of police, cops. We've been down in um Orlando. Uh we've been over to the National Sheriff's Association in Grand Rapids, Michigan, presenting to them. I have presented to directors of six regions uh across the nation uh with regards to what we do. You don't have to be from Wisconsin to join our app and to use our real utilize our resources.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:12

Oh, that's that's good to know. Have you heard any pushback from anybody with this? No, all positive.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:18

All positive. I don't know how you don't get excited about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:22

Right. It's impressive.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:23

It is cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:24

Yeah, you know, you want to make a difference. I mean, the difference is when that phone rings, it might not be a scam call. It could be some, it could be some dispatcher, corrections, or cop or whatever that needs help. You know, what was what was really unique, and we were talking with this corporation not super long, right before Christmas, about um what does it look like? What are the statistics? And we have the get help now button right on the top of the app, meaning that if you're thinking of taking your life, you can go to the app and click it, right? In the month of October, 82 times it was utilized.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:01

I was just gonna ask you if it's ever been used. That's insane.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:04

The month of October.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:07

That's sad, isn't it? But great that you have that right, could have saved 82 lives.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:14

You know what? God only knows, which was good, right? Right? The the anonymous aspect of what we do is carried throughout our our program, right? So if I'm working with someone or mentoring somebody or helping somebody or getting, you know, that's between me and them, right? That's pretty cool. And if they want to expand on it or they need professional help, hey, we got it right in the app. If somebody calls in a crisis situation, and I'm really at this point in my in my career in my life, that this is what I'm gonna do, they're calling and looking for help. We can make the conduit to a professional mental health person or a chaplain right now because it's right in the app. Would you please stand by? We'll get somebody on the phone that's trained to, you know, and that can uh help the intervention. So kind of crazy when you think about that. Like who would have thought when they make the baseball team in here? I sit.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:06

Saving lives, right? No, yeah. It's probably your best chapter yet.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:12

Probably is, yeah. Yeah, well, so we're gonna see. I'm gonna get this up and rolling. I would love, I would really love to see when we get this rolled out, and I think this is a great first step of awareness of the retiree side of the house. I would love to see, you know, could you imagine like maybe my 75 goes to 200 next year? 200 retirees to reach out to former agencies. We got a lot of guys and gals got tons of gas in the tank. A ton. But they're not making any more money, and or they're burned out, or they want to do something different, but they still want to help each other, or they still need a purpose and an identity, right? And here you go. Come join us and let's figure out a way to turn a thousand next year at our, you know, and I call it, I kind of coined a crazy phrase of a retiree reunification at our conference, a wellness conference in in uh October 26th, 27th, and 28th, I think in 2026 at our um at the Kalahari. Come and join us. It costs 50 bucks to register, right? And we're gonna get you state rate at rooms and we're gonna take care of you, right? We're not making money on this conference. What we're gonna do, and think about this. So I need to roll into this because this is crazy thoughts I had. Could you imagine I get the Kalahari, the entire Kalahari, you know, that's the biggest venue in the state of Wisconsin. I get that set up outside of our Pfizer and everything else, full of vendors that come there and pay a fee to host our conference, but they're there as a job fair to hire public safety retirees. I love that. It's a job fair. That's a great idea, and it doesn't have to be law enforcement related. Think outside the box, right? I don't care. Right? They want to come in. It could be the Lamer's bus line to hire a driver.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:52

A barista at the mill. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:55

Boom. So there's that option as well. And that's that's a great idea. I've already partnered with another individual that runs uh his own business called Go Law Enforcement. So if you're a law enforcement agency in Bonduel and you reach out to Joe Lebowski, he will go and search and put out and hit your application at different venues to try to get applicants. He has decided that he will um volunteer his uh expertise in helping us put jobs that are out there that may be pertinent to retirees in law enforcement.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:27

I love that. Right on our app. So for anybody listening that is a retired law enforcement or knows somebody that this could benefit, what do you recommend that them to do to get to become a member or to be involved in this?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:40

So we just don't we need to make sure we have a pretty rigorous vetting, uh, right? So what does that mean? That means uh we require a resume, we do an interview, and likely we're calling references, right? So that individual um that comes to us needs to be right for our program, and we need to be right for that individual because the last thing that we need to do is have somebody that has their own ideals on how or what should be applied uh through their own line of thinking, right? Right. We need to have uh a consistent message of what we have, and our message is being the conduit to the resources and the professionals, and to make sure that we we can invite people into um our program, right? So what's the next step? Our website is www.ledr.org. And you can get in there and contact us. Um I'm hoping to hold at least three uh retiree/slash executive peer support uh trainings. It's a two-day peer support training. Um, you come, we'll we talk about issues that are specific to us um and our group and what how we manage it, and then we get you on the app, right? And we kind of roll from there. So it's um, I mean, it's not a huge hoop, but what about somebody that's needing the resources? So inside of our website, you can go to the Guardian app. Okay, right? There's a button there, click on it. You're gonna need to register. Everybody in our app is vetted. We don't have anybody off the street, no media, nobody else in there. Everything is anonymous. We do not know what you click on inside that app or who does. We just know that it has been clicked on.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:31

I like how you clarify that, knowing law enforcement suspicious. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:35

So with that being said, you get in there, you're gonna register, our staff members are gonna send you an email back with a code, and you're gonna be able to get inside and utilize everything we have going on. We have a lot of businesses right now, high-end for profit, and that's why I'm sorting through them very rigorously, about how they want to enhance our app and bring more to it. We just need to figure out, first off, we're funded by donations, that uh it's a charitable fund, right? A charitable act. And the second wall, if it's going to be right for our audience, right? Our audience is a state of Wisconsin public safety employees. Think about that. That is crazy when you start looking at. I mean, what's our venue? Is it 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000? Would you imagine that selling the entire Kalahari out with the city?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:23

So you said you did get the Kalahari.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:26

Yes, we're there. Wow. So you know, when we get our rollout ready to go, we have the fraternal order of police that are 3,800 strong um with us, right? They have 1,500 of those 3,800 members are retirees. I estimate with the with the contacts that we have and set up that when we push the send button, I'm hoping that we will send anywhere from 15 to 20,000 emails at a at a send button to make us known that we're out there in the public, right? That this program exists for you and that we're out there. So that's pretty powerful. That's awesome. Yeah, and you're still welcome to call anytime you want, Keith.

unknown 1:20:08

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:08

Thanks, um any advice you could give to anybody in law enforcement, and especially like a supervisor's role for any advice for me. Oh no, like like to to help with their retirees that are walking out the door, like if you know what I mean, like something you could give them a heads up.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:29

Yeah, you know, this this saying isn't uh uncommon in law enforcement, but is real and in the retiree side of the house is that you are not alone, right? So Keith, you you know, you have your jurisdiction and you have your mayor, you have whoever you're accountable. The stressors are there, right? If you're you know, everybody says I'm one bad call away from retiring. I mean, how many times have you walked into an office and it says five years, six months, eight days, 32 minutes, six seconds? Right? Really? Then why don't you go do something now? Right? Why wait why waste five years or eight years, whatever you're doing, right? Why why is that? What I like to say is if you're having those issues, you need to reach out, right? And you and in our platform is you can reach out to somebody that's completely across the state that you don't know, or maybe somebody you've seen someplace, or maybe somebody that you, you know, you want to hit up, whatever the situation looks like. Um, you know, myself, I get I got super caught up into my own self-defense mechanisms, right? Going to crime scenes and and and just seeing the most horrific thing a humanity can do to each other, you know, and going to breakfast and not thinking twice, waiting for the next call, which might be a day or a week later, right? Those things are cumulative, right? And to talk about that, or if something is bothering you, and of course, there's so much. And Keith, you hit it on, you know, relationships and marriages and families and uh, you know, our friends that we used to get to that I would get together with, you know, um, they would always say, Hey, how's it going, or what's the job like, you know. Um, but never would I get into any detail because you know, why expose them to it?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:14

They really don't want to know the detail, they just they want you to say, Good, good.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:18

Yeah, you know, they do you know what? And those were one of those, one of those times where that individual maybe has three critical incidents in their entire life. I show them photos, that's number four. Right, no, right, right, because they're like, What?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:32

You're you're mowing the lawn just daydream is their worst.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:37

So the advice would be um, those old days of rubbing dirt in it or get back in it, you know, butterfly.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:43

I feel aren't the um like tech schools at least, I feel like now they're doing a better job at teaching the new new kids on their way out to more mental health stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:54

What the new kids, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:56

No, but the new like that there's actually, I don't know if there's an actual class for it, but they talk more about mental health and being a good thing. And you said you've noticed that as a supervisor, the younger guys that were and girls that were getting hired, you're like, they care a lot more about their time off. They like value time off and mental health, and he's like, it's a different breed, but you're like, they're probably gonna live longer than us because they they're they're more self-aware at a younger age. And um you're talking like the 20-year-olds now, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:26

Yeah, you know, the culture has changed, the stigma of talking about how incidences, one or multiple, can affect you for the rest of your life, right? Um that has changed, right? That those old the old days are the old days are gone. It's guys like me and retirees prior to me, even you know, um, that are like, you know, those were, I mean, crazy, right? I mean, we didn't have resources in the palm of your hand. I remember when I got a bag phone. I was one of the first ones in the county to have a bag phone, believe it or not, with like two towers. So it was impressive. Yeah, isn't that neat? Isn't that neat? A bag phone, everybody be googling bag phone, right? But uh, but uh you think about that, you know, the advice, um, if something's bothering you, you just need to you need to reach out to someone and and have a conversation. I mean, it's uh I you know, is it I think it's harder for the older generation to say yeah do that. Uh, and that's why I think bringing this uh retiree program together would be like, oh, you know, I had a you know conversation with um another individual and and um it was a it's very similar to the dinner uh that I had spoken about with the Vietnam individual. And uh they have a coffee clutch, right? And they get together and they talk about you know the old days. Well, that hour at coffee is nothing but war stories, right? It's not like, hey, what's going on today in your world or what's you know, how are your kids, your grandkids, and everything else. It's remember this incident, remember way back then, and all those sorts of things. But I think in in my vision of a retiree reunification, there's gonna be outlets to look for employments, there's gonna be outlets to um make connections with other retirees from across the state, maybe of similar interest, uh, bring the family aspect together, um, you know, bring that um that a sense of identity that was lost back to oh, you know, I am with you know, a thousand other individuals that that had similar experiences or whatever, however it rolled out, you know, during their career. So it's a lot. It's impressive.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:49

Anything, Cammy? Can you just give a quick rundown of the positions that you've held within law enforcement over your career?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:57

So I started in 1991 as that jailer dispatcher. Uh in 94, I believe I was the deputy, I went to the road as a deputy sheriff. Uh in I think it would have been 99, I was promoted to a detective sergeant. In 2001, I was uh hired by the Wisconsin Department of Justice at the Division of Narcotics Enforcement. Uh 2014, I was the super special agent in charge of the Appleton DCI office. So I had 22 counties on this side of the state I was running. And then in 2018, December, I was promoted to the deputy administrator. So that would have been, I think, in 2021 retirement in February.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:49

What do you miss the most?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:50

Well, you know, the camaraderie with with my with my people, right? It was, you know, yeah, a lot of it. The camaraderie, being the person that's in the know, you know, when the when the phone call rings, or when the phone rings and you know, you're the first to know, right? Going under the tape, right? That's a big deal for cops, right? Um being able to have a crime scene and you, you know, you're escorted in there to be able to run a crime scene or lead a crime scene or manage it, whatever it is. You know what? That ain't happening anymore, Keith. You're standing outside the tape, and you might say good riddance, you can have it. But there'll be a part of you like, damn it, this happened in Bondwell, and this is my jurisdiction. Oh, yeah, it used to be my jurisdiction. Yeah, right? So there's a lot, you know. Um, do I miss the uh, you know, it's a straight adrenaline rush, right? It's just one after another after another. And I think it takes a lot of time in retirement for the mind to try to get reset to say that's not the norm.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:52

How did you cope with that? Like how did oh gosh any any techniques, any tricks? Uh any any uh ideas.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:01

Not really. You know what? I have, you know, I had so many irons in the fire and things I was doing. Baseball was a good one. Family, our friends, you know, it was like it wasn't. I think there were so many planned and then unplanned events spontaneously, you know, running to my cabin and fishing and doing different things. You know, it was net there's never any downtime because downtime led to problems. Right? Downtime led to, oh Christ, I got this going on, or I got this going on, or I got this going on. I should have done this, or why am I thinking about that? You know, and they're out of your control. Right. So it was, you know, I don't think I have any positive um tricks for you. Um, if I think about it, it was really staying super busy, and then all of a sudden, boom, you know, throw the car keys out the window because we're at a dead stop. Right. And then now it's like, how are we gonna deal with this? Right? How am I gonna deal with that? And and thank goodness I I you know, I transitioned to another role that I can still help law enforcement. And thank goodness I transitioned into the leader um president, right? And thank goodness I'm in a position now to continue that rollout, and maybe that is my coping mechanism, right? I'm not busy handling crime scenes or you know, employee issues or internals or public integrity cases and all of the stuff that comes along with that. I'm now focused on something that's what I like to say is purely positive. So I don't even know if that was a good answer. I think it's a great answer.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:33

Stay busy, keep working on cars. Yeah, there you go. Got it. All right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:40

We'll definitely have you back on and talk, we'll like do follow up with what you're doing. Um and then we'll link everything, right? Um, so people have the I I don't know how things work, so I don't want to say things of Cammy's like, no, no, no. Um so everybody has the opportunity to to use these resources. And if if sure if you're not listening, or the person if this isn't effective.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:04

Maybe you know somebody in your life that could benefit from it and reach out to them and offer them.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:09

Do you are you okay with your info out there?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:11

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:12

Okay, sure. We'll put your info out there.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:14

Yes, please do. And um, you know what? I'm not a professional, I'm a conduit to the professionals. I'd love to, if you're having issues, um, we can get you pointed in the right direction, right? It's um it's not uncommon. Um, we all have our own, so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:30

I we really appreciate you being on here. It's impressive. This is gonna be big. Good doing really good things. Yeah, good.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:36

I'm excited for you for us, yeah. As a retiree, yeah, right for everybody, yeah. Amen, brother. That's cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:44

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:45

Yeah, you're welcome.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:46

All right, we'll see you guys next Tuesday.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:48

Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:49

Thanks for listening. Help me freely walk in your eyes.