What TV Never Shows About Homicide Detectives

Brandon Andres Green, host of Good Neighbor Podcast Tulsa, sits down with Detective Jason White of Into the Fire with Jason White to talk about homicide work, crisis negotiation, public speaking, and the real stories behind the badge.

Jason shares how growing up near infamous Los Angeles crime history sparked an early interest in homicide investigation, and how major events like the Oklahoma City bombing helped push him back toward the calling he never fully shook. His path eventually led him into Tulsa law enforcement, where he worked everything from patrol to homicide.

This conversation pulls back the curtain on what people rarely see in crime shows: the paperwork, pressure, waiting, delayed digital returns, court realities, stress, and years of persistence behind a single case. Jason also talks about the honor of working in homicide, the responsibility of serving families, and why real investigation is nothing like a neatly wrapped TV episode.

You’ll also hear how Into the Fire grew out of Jason’s work as a detective, communicator, and storyteller. He explains why the show is built around honest conversations with detectives, survivors, crisis leaders, and people who have walked through fire and have something meaningful to say.

If you care about true crime, Tulsa law enforcement, homicide investigation, crisis negotiation, leadership, or what it really takes to listen well and treat people right, this episode is worth your time.

The badge matters, but the story behind it matters too.

Transcript

Welcome To The Neighborhood

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Brandon Andris Green.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast Live. Are you interested in hearing from a longtime Talta detective who has worked everything from patrol to homicide and now uses his voice to spotlight real stories? Well, one maybe closer than you think. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Detective Jason White, with Into the Fire with Jason White. Hey, Jason, how's it going?

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Good, Brandon. Appreciate you. Thank you for having me on the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Oh, you're so welcome. I'm super excited to learn all about you and your law enforcement career and Into the Fire and really some of these lessons that you've carried from police work into public speaking and podcasting. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey and law enforcement and what led you into detective work in the first place?

Childhood Fear That Became A Calling

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Well, as a young kid, I basically grew up in Los Angeles, and I grew up very close to Sharon Tate's house from the Manson murders. And that was kind of my first exposure to the world of homicide, so to speak. I can remember going up to that house when I was a kid, seeing the corner of it, sneaking peeks in the book Helter Skelter. Now that book hadn't been out for very long. And then, of course, the Hillside Stranglers, who were Angela Bono and Kenneth Bianchi, uh, they ended up killing 10 women in four months in Los Angeles. So, of course, uh, that was a palpable fear that gripped the city of Los Angeles during that period of time in 1977. And from that, I can remember at age six that I wanted to uh, I was like, you know, I want to be a homicide detective. That's what I want to do. And so that just kind of stuck with me through life. And of course I got sidetracked in the medical field, etc. But uh once once I you know there were a few things that happened in the world, OJ Simpson, Waco, uh the uh Waco, OJ Simpson, and the Oklahoma City bombing, because I lived in Oklahoma City at the time when that happened. And that's actually when I was like, you know, I need to get back on track and and uh go after my dream. And even though there was no guarantee, and that's how I ended up actually at the time back back back then in night was going through college, and back then I'd actually went to the Oklahoma City Police Department in fully thinking that was where I was gonna try to get on. And uh due to the Oklahoma City bombing, they'd had like 6,000 applicants, and they just said it isn't gonna happen. That was a different time and where people really wanted to be cops. And so I uh explored Tulsa. Tulsa had a bachelor's degree requirement, which really minimized a lot of the competition. They still have that today. As a matter of fact, we're the only large police department in this country that's a municipal police department that actually still has that requirement. And uh I got hired here with no guarantee that I would ever ever I took a cut in pay from being a surgical tech in in heart surgery to come up here and I sold my house to live in a really old mobile home. I I sacrificed a lot, and then I got on the police department, and then it took me, you know, working in a variety of assignments over the course of 11, my first 11 years. And uh on my third attempt to try to get into homicide, I actually got selected, and that's kind of the story.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Yeah, that sounds super intense, though.

Why Homicide Cases Take So Long

SPEAKER_00 3:36

What would you say are some of the myths or maybe misconceptions people have about homicide investigation? I know you've also done quite a bit of crisis work and just some of the everyday realities that detectives face.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Well, I'm you know, I think that uh based on television and movies and stuff, I think that most people just think that these cases get solved in five minutes and and they don't get to see what really happens during the commercial break. Now, of course, we've been on the first 48, which has been uh an exceptional experience to be a part of. And based on that, that's that's created some exceptionally priceless uh relationships with between the police and the public, as far as I'm concerned. And but I but I do think that people they think that it's just all really easy and then it just happens really quick and it's just really smooth, and maybe we make it look smooth. But in reality, uh there's a lot of stuff that happens during the commercial break, so to speak, and that's a lot of paperwork and a lot of stress and things along that line. So uh, you know, I just I I think that I think that most people, especially here in Tulsa, I think they've become accustomed to the fact that here, you know, we we our clearance rate is one of the best, if not the best, in this country. And so just to be a part of that, and I'm not in there at the moment, I'm out on the streets, but to be a part of that experience for as long as I have, it was basically 17 years, and to uh to have worked in that capacity for as long as I did, and I'm still involved on a national level, so to speak, you know, in that realm uh with other associations, etc. And but uh to to just have been a part of it, it's it's an honor. It's an absolute honor. So I don't know really uh if there's any real misconceptions other than the fact that I think people just think that it just comes to us really easy, or you know, I don't know, maybe because they see the conclusion at the end of an hour episode. And some of these cases are really extensive and and there's a lot of work and a lot of delays, and you know, we have to wait sometimes in in some of this in the social media world that we live in, which is a big part of our world, is that you know, sometimes we have to wait over a month to try to get some of that data and and while we're working on other things. So, you know, that's just one of the things, or that maybe it's easy to get to, and it's and it's not, it's a very, very uh coveted position. I think that less than one percent of all police officers that work in law enforcement, and I'm talking about in agencies where they would have a homicide unit or a death investigation unit, about 1% or less actually get the opportunity to work in that capacity. So it's it's it's really a select group of people.

The Story Behind Into The Fire

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Will you uh tell me a little bit about Into the Fire?

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Well, Into the Fire is my podcast, and it's you can catch it on my Detective Jason White YouTube page, or sometimes I live feed it on my Detective Jason White Facebook page. And this was something that came up quite a while back. I mean, it was it was before actually you would see us on TV. We we started on television on the first 48 in we started filming July of 2014. My case was the very first case, and before that, the guy that I used to run around with a lot by the name of Ronnie Leatherman, uh, he was a detective. We used to talk about it. We kind of my patrol car was like our think tank, you know, and we would come up with these different ideas and stuff that we really wanted to do. And one of the ideas that both he and I wanted to do at some point, we wanted to do a podcast. We really didn't know what it would be about, other than the fact that kind of back then as it is today, I always wanted to do something where we were bringing people to the forefront that were moving mountains in the world of not just criminal justice, predominantly criminal justice, because that's of course the industry that we work in. But I really wanted to highlight and showcase individuals that not only in that capacity, but also people that are just moving mountains in other areas as well. And stuff, you know, I want to I want people that are gonna be interesting, dynamic, uh, they have great stories and stuff like that. So uh that was the idea. And then, of course, nothing ever happened with it for a long, long time. And ultimately, what ended up happening from there is that, of course, due to the fact that I had been on TV for you know many, many episodes, I think I've got the second most episodes of any any detective on the show, maybe even the most actual cases that have been profiled on the entire show. But uh because of that, you know, and I and I'm out there, I I teach a lot, I'm I'm very accessible, and uh, you know, I've been asked to be the guest of many a podcast over the years. And so because of that, I happened to be a guest on a particular show that was out of uh New York, and it was called I Detective. And while being on that show, uh, I thought it was horrible. I thought my audio was terrible, but but uh they were like, Oh, that's this is great, you were fantastic. And I'd been on many before this, but they're the way they had their show set up, it was really impressive. And they had different segments and just music, and just it was really cool, it was really set up nice, and so I was man, this is really neat. And and so uh towards the end, I thought, man, my audio was just in and out, it wasn't very good. And they were like, Oh, well, this was great, we're gonna have you back. Matter of fact, we might even have you be a guest host. And I'm thinking in my mind, I'm like, you know, I'm saying, oh, that's great. And then in my mind, I'm like, yeah, I'm never gonna hear from these guys again. And it turned out that actually they had reached out to me and said, uh, probably about five or six months later later, I hadn't heard from them throughout that period of time. And about five or six months later, they they invited me. They wanted to have me have my own show. And uh they were like, We don't, we, we want you, we want, we think you'd be great. And I said, Well, what about having somebody else? They said, We don't care, that's up to you. If you want to invite somebody else to be on there as your co-host, that's on you. But we we don't care about that, we just want you, and but you can do whatever you want. And I just felt at the time it would be it, it was logical to pick kind of my running buddy, my wingman, which was Ronnie Leatherman. I want since we had experienced that, we talked about it many years previous. I thought that that would be the right thing to do. And so we did, and we started it off and and we did that, and I'm still learning to this day. I wouldn't say that my show has necessarily changed much. Uh, I've I've had exceptional guests throughout, but uh, you know, Ronnie did stick around for 29 episodes. I think he was on 28. He was on 28 of the first 29. No, yeah, of the first 29 episodes, he was on 28 as a co-host, and uh then he had a different position as far as a job, and he couldn't he couldn't really dedicate the time for it anymore. And so I went out on my own. And I just had actually last Friday, I had my 100th episode.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

I know I'm I hey listen, I love it. And I've got I've got like six weeks already booked out already. So uh that's good. And I've got some great guests and so forth, and it's fun for me. What it is for me, honestly, it's it's not about, you know, it's a healthy hobby, and I like talking about what it is that we do, but really my show is not about us, it's it's more about the guest. That's that's kind of the key. And I tell them that. I said, hey, this show is about you. So if you want to go this way or that way, we'll we'll we'll go with you. So it's been a fun experience, and it's been I've got a great loyal following that are throughout the world, honestly. I've got people that watch from Australia throughout Europe, and and uh you name the place and and there's likely a viewer from there.

Teaching And Speaking Across The Country

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Wow. And so you're also a public speaker?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Yeah, I speak a lot. I've I've been speaking, you know, I've been teaching for I've been teaching since 1989, honestly. I I when I started in the Burn Center, I started as somebody that used in 1988, I started in the Burn Center there in Oklahoma City, and I used to do uh dressing changes and debridments and stuff like that. And I would say that's probably my first time to do public speaking, and that was when I would I would go back to my high school and they asked me to come back and speak at the anatomy physiology classes, and I would start speaking there. And uh I've been speaking ever since. Uh, if I could, if I could, I just enjoy getting up in front of rooms and and talking about what it is that we do. I'm excited about, you know, if it's just something I want to talk about. And uh for the last 12 years or so, probably 12 or 13 years, and I've had other jobs like Crisis Negotiator, where I basically we used to do a lot of teaching at the academy for active listening skills and stuff like that. And about uh 12 or 13 years, I've been speaking across the country. And so I've probably been to, I think this throughout this next year through 2027, just to the ones that I have booked right now. I just got one yesterday, which is going to be Alabama, which I love that. Anytime I can chalk, you know, put a check mark on a state I've never been to, that's exciting for me. But uh I think so far I'll probably will have spoken in 27 states and close to seven, well, probably over 70 cities. I I speak at motherlow. So that's what I do, and I talk about all kinds of different things. And I would say it's kind of a cross between motivational speaking as well as educational and inspiring, just trying to inspire people to do to do more and to be better officers or people or whatever. It doesn't really matter, but of course it focuses on what we do here in the police world.

Treat People Right And Listen

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Is there something that you've really learned from the police world or maybe even the human side of law enforcement, the work you do that you can uh share with our listeners?

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Well, I mean, there's something that I always talk about when I'm when I'm speaking. I I mention it towards the end of, well, as far as what I've learned about just dealing with people and and law enforcement in general, I mean, I think that first of all, they're a tough audience to talk to because they're very, very they're they're they get bored quick. And and they're gonna be able to detect whether or not you are full of it or not, honestly. I mean, they're they're gonna they're gonna be able to read you pretty quick. And if you're somebody that's getting up there and you're speaking on some things that you really don't really probably know about, they're they're gonna they're gonna see it. And so you better be on your A game. And and if you are, I I can tell you it's helped being on TV, of course. I mean, that that I'm already known in many of these, in in I'm more I've already been seen at least. They kind of know me already. Uh it's kind of funny when I first get there, it's like I'm the new kid in school every single time. Nobody really talks to you, they don't really say much. And then after you speak, then it's like you're their brother from another mother. You know what I mean? And and it's really great. And then you get all that networking and stuff, it's great. But what I have learned about the things that I tell people, when you when you ask to that, I think that the things that I tell people, and I hope that they, if they get nothing else from when I'm speaking, I want them to really remember this, and that is treating people right. Uh my when I when I got into this business, my dad, who was a highway patrolman in California, there were two pieces of advice that he gave me that I always love to tell people when I'm closing at the end. And and the first thing was is to just keep your mouth shut. Listen to people. I mean, when you go to a new position, listen to those that have been there before you. And you'll it's okay to ask questions, but don't go in there as a know it all. You need to ask and you need to try to absorb what they've got to say like a sponge. But more important than that, and the thing that I really, really like talking about, and I've I've told this to my nephew, and uh, I've mentioned it to basically every class I've spoken in many, many years. And I tell people that your badge should be the same size that it was the day they issued it to you, not five sizes too big. And uh, I mean, I just made an arrest of a guy today, and and I mean, this guy's life is his future is probably I if it's not prison, I would be shocked. Okay. And so, you know, I it's just treating people right. I mean, having a conversation with people, trying to put people at ease, and uh, you know, not not not being, I mean, believe me, cops are like toys in a cracker jack's box. We're all different, but there's no need to rub it in or to make them feel any worse than they already are, and and just treating people right. And I think that if people can try to do that, uh, I think that that you know, police officers will get a lot further in in the community and and uh and and so forth. You know, it's you're not gonna get very far if you're not an effective communicator. And that's that's the number one skill that we have as a law enforcement officer is your ability to communicate. And so that's something that is a craft that you have to continually build upon and practice and and so forth. And that's that's uh that's probably what comes to mind when you ask that question.

Where To Watch And Who He Brings On

SPEAKER_00 16:32

And will you list out uh for our listeners one more time your website and YouTube channel? I want to make sure that our listeners are able to learn more about you and follow your work.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Absolutely. I appreciate that. It's easy. You just go to YouTube, type in Detective Jason White, and you'll see my good-looking face there. And click on it. And you click on it, and basically I've got a hundred, I've I've not only got a hundred episodes on there, but I basically, in addition to that, I also have a lot of uh playlists that have extra content that may be a part of a guest that I may have had. Just for instance, uh six degrees of Helter Skelter is is on there. There's a crime scene video in reference to the Wonderland murders that's on there. Uh stuff that I found interesting that I wanted to share with my with the people that come on there. Uh it's free to to to to watch. It's it's something that I appreciate it when people come in there. And and uh I've got some epic people. Some of the guests that you may find on there, uh one of which is one of Ted Bundy's victims, Kathy Kleiner, Kathy Kleiner Rubin. Uh, she was nearly beat to death in the Kyle Omega sorority house. I have some infamous detectives. I'm talking, I'm talking legends in the world of homicide, as well as other disciplines like crime scene and stuff like that, that are just uh extraordinary detectives. Uh I've got just attorneys. Uh I even have an inmate from from prison that that I met actually, that just I was really moved by. And she's on there as well. And and there's another guy that I want to at least mention. He's kind of one of I have some favorites, of course, not to mention Scott Michaels, who does a lot. He's like the the authority of homicide in Hollywood. I mean, he is just an absolute wealth of knowledge. I love him. But uh one guy that that basically was a highway patrolman in California, uh, Kevin, Kevin Briggs, and he is known as the uh guardian of the Golden Gate. And he's retired now, but he is credited with talking off over 200 people from jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge because it happened to be in his beat. And this is a guy that started out with no formal training, but uh he kind of got thrown into it. And he and he got some training along the way after that, but initially he did not. And just the fact that he was able to save as many lives as he was, or at least encourage people to come over that bridge, that railing, uh, is pretty extraordinary. So it's people like that that really I want to introduce people like this that most people, most of your run-of-the-mill people really wouldn't know. They wouldn't know them by name, and they need to. They need to know these types of people uh

Social Media Access And No Wackos

SPEAKER_01 19:21

and so forth. That's good. And then the other sites that I've got, of course, I've got a TikTok page, and I think that's uh Detective Jason White, and then I have Instagram and I have Facebook and Facebook. I interact with everybody that, you know, if people send me questions, uh if if they send me questions, I I try to interact with every single one of them. It takes time, but I but I literally will take the time and I try to interact with with virtually everybody. And the only really disclaimer is is no wackos allowed. I've I've had a couple of those that I've had to boot off. It's pretty, it's pretty rare, but every now and again uh you'll get somebody that comes on there that's not quite nice. But uh for the most part, everybody that that comes in there is just a good time, and it's tough to interact with a police officer. They can ask anything. I get messages sometimes about different cases and