Meaning of the Minds
Meaning of the Minds
A Life Inside Law Enforcement
How does the intersection of politics and law enforcement shape the daily lives of officers? Join me for a candid conversation with an anonymous long-time friend and former law enforcement colleague who shares his life journey. From his initial steps into the force to the profound impact of mental health challenges, my guest offers a raw and insightful look at the realities of police work. Alongside this, we enjoy a tasting of a few beers including one from Monkless Brewing in Bend, Oregon, sharing our thoughts on their unique flavors.
We dive into the world of military intelligence with a seasoned analyst who was mobilized in the war against terror. Transitioning to civilian roles, we discuss the resilience required to secure a position in law enforcement and the unique challenges faced by jail and road deputies. Our in-depth discussion covers the demanding nature of managing a housing unit and the importance of maintaining tranquility within such environments.
Throughout this episode, we tackle a myriad of topics, including the societal and political ideologies influencing law enforcement, Measure 110 in Oregon, and the role of body cameras in police accountability. We also explore the balance between personal identity and professional demands and the broader implications of government resource allocation. Concluding with a thought-provoking discussion on reallocating funds to social services and the nuances of police accountability, this episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking an unfiltered look at the intricacies of law enforcement.
Would you like to hear what a life in law enforcement is like? On this episode of the Meaning of the Minds podcast, I will be speaking with my friend who I worked with for years in the Minds podcast, the podcast for armchair psychologists and philosophers, and, as always, this is Jason. The friend I interviewed for this podcast requested that I keep his identity anonymous and I will honor that. It's a great interview and we cover a wide variety of topics, such as how he got into law enforcement, politics and law enforcement, misconceptions about law enforcement, and mental health and law enforcement, amongst other topics. To start with, are you ready to try the beer? Yeah, okay, what did we get? This is was it Meet your Maker From Monkless Brewing?
Speaker 1:Monkless in Bend, oregon, which is an amazing place. It feels like a church without any sort of religious. It does Iconography. Is that what it's called? Uh-huh, yeah, it's a really beautiful place that makes some really beautiful beers and it's absolutely gorgeous on the inside yeah, gorgeous, the woodwork and everything is super cool.
Speaker 1:What drew me to this place was its lack of ipas. I know you dig ipas. I know you love them. Well, I'm more of a dark guy, but you accept ipas into your life. Oh yeah, I'll drink them. No, I just, I just don't like that very specific. You just don't like hoppy taste, yeah, but you like the banana-y taste of belgians, oh yeah. Yes, I'm not a huge banana guy, it's not, it's not my, my gig so much. But there are some good, darker ones that I've had that I've really enjoyed in the past, and I've had this before and I've liked it.
Speaker 1:So what is your rating system? For your bears that you were talking about earlier? Uh, use the notes notes app in my phone so you can put little yeah emoticons, emojis in there. Right, and it's a check mark. If I've tried it, okay. It's a thumbs up. If I liked it, yeah. And it's a money sign if I would like it enough to buy it in like a supermarket, good point, okay, easy. And if there's a checkmark and nothing else, like, okay, you tried this, you don't need to try it again. Very simple. And what did you give this when you had it in the past? It got the checkmark, the thumbs up and the money sign. Oh boy. So I would buy this. I would buy this. If I saw this out in the wild. I was hoping that you had not had this, but I'll still be happy because it's going to be a good beer. Yeah, I appreciate it, thank you. All right, let's, let's try it here and see what we think of it. All right, cheers to you.
Speaker 1:My friend, that's good, I like it. Yeah, it's got the initial rich, almost chocolatey flavor when it first hits carmel, carmel, yeah. And then, as it passes over the tongue, there's a little tingle of no, no, this is good for you. Do you get the belgian flavor in this? I don't so much, which is probably the reason that I like it. No, no, no. But I still like sweet stuff, so it is sweet. This is no, but I still like sweet stuff, so it is sweet. This is I get it, maybe a little bit on the back end, a little bit on the finish. I feel like I can taste it a tiny bit at the end.
Speaker 1:I just had some chips and salsa that can be impacting. The Mexican is battling with the Belgian. You need some warning cultures. Yeah, I love it, yeah, I dig it. Man, it's good. No, thank you. And it's got a high abv, which is yeah, it is no, it's courage for discussion.
Speaker 1:It's not a daytime sipper. I mean it can be. You just might not do much with your day. You're sipping up, all right, are you ready? Ready to get crazy on this? Fire away? Okay, so you have a pretty significant history in law enforcement and I think, in the military as well. Yeah, you could choose to engage with that as much as you want to.
Speaker 1:But the first question is just give us kind of the history of why you wanted to be a cop. Like, what is your story of wanting to be in law enforcement and what? What led you to that place of being in law enforcement? It always seemed like a fun occupation, an enjoyable job, not like the drive fast and kick ass. Like 1990s, watching episodes of cops like cool, yeah, cool, but that's not what I was into. It like I, I was a. I was a nerd growing up. Okay, I'm still a nerd.
Speaker 1:I was going to say I enjoy reading for pleasure, fiction or non-fiction. I enjoy solving the puzzle Majored in history in college. What is that? But just reading a bunch and answering an obscure question using a bunch of different pieces of that puzzle. My job in the army was an all-source intelligence analyst Answering an obscure question using a bunch of different pieces of that puzzle. My job in the army was an all-source intelligence analyst and that's pretty much taking different pieces of information, figuring out why they're important, discarding the ones that are not important and painting a more complete picture for my boss. Okay, I'm not, I'm not making recommend or I'm not telling anybody what to do, but I can make recommendations like right, listen, sir or ma'am, based on your objectives, based on your mission, here's what I'm seeing, here's what's going on in your area of responsibility. How did that seeing here's what's going on in your area of responsibility, how did that transfer over into your time in law enforcement? Then, uh, patience in reading. More important, patience in writing.
Speaker 1:I remember talking to a lot of reports and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, yeah, talking to a lot of co-workers like if I had known that there was so much report writing in cop work, maybe I probably would have done it like that. Yeah, it's, sometimes it sucks, like the mandatory ones that are going to go nowhere. There's like, yes, I investigated this, there are no leads, there's no insufficient evidence. Like here are the steps that I did right and we've got to write that out to prove or show that I have done my due diligence for the boxes. I checked on this. We have to check boxes? Yeah, well, we. And why do we have to do that? Because our predecessors before us decades before didn't. Yeah, I was like, oh, and bad things happened as a result of that, exactly, yeah, you know someone's crying out. It's like hey, I was wronged.
Speaker 1:And some assholes like who happens to be a uniform, who was expected to do a job? Like, I don't want to do that? Yeah, okay, well, this is how we get to where we're at today. That makes sense. Yeah, so it that sense?
Speaker 1:Do you have law enforcement in your family? No, both my grandfathers, my mom and my dad's side were in the army. Okay, they only did enlistment, or two Step family had a decent amount of firefighter experience. So there had been a lot of influence. First responders then, yeah, yeah, a lot of influence for service occupations. This is not going to be an easy job, but it is a good job and it's worthwhile. It's worth doing and it's the right thing to do. Maybe not a service job, maybe not a first responder job, but whatever occupations my father, stepfather, father figures, guys in the family had, it was uh, oh, you're doing this because it's right. Yeah, okay, makes sense.
Speaker 1:So you, you feel like it not only this history in your family, but also then your history of being in the military transferred into this profession easily then, yeah, that was part of the reason why I signed up, right, because you wanted to be a cop eventually or or something like yes, some doing some sort of work like that, like I didn't know, like fbi, oh, okay, local law enforcement, yeah, just trying to get into the door. Yeah, yeah, get out of college in 2008. What happened a year before that? You know the world's on fire, right, you know the crash, the whole deal. Yeah, by the time I get out, I've got this bachelor's degree. Applying for jobs like oh, congratulations, you have a piece of paper to show that you were in school staying safe for the last four years, congratulations. I'm gonna take this guy who just came back from iraq. I see this guy who just came back from afghanistan like I am behind the curve for the things that I want to do. I see I kind of did it ass backwards.
Speaker 1:I went to college and then joined the military. How long were you in for? It was the army national guard, so I was in eight years. Oh, you were so one weekend a month, two weekends a year, like the commercial said, plus, and within that eight year time frame I was on active duty orders for two of those years. Okay, so it was like a six-year reserve status and then two years of federal service Mobilization, okay, deployment.
Speaker 1:You say deployment and people immediately think, oh, where did you go overseas? What is the difference? I actually don't know Technically, push my glasses up on my nose. Technically, if a reservist, a National Guardsman, reserve, whatever, gets on federal orders, they're cut from the state's obligations, like each state's governor is responsible for their National Guard, and you get paid directly by the federal government for a federal mission. That federal mission could be supporting the survivors of hurricane katrina, supporting wildlife fires or deploying to a combat zone or deploying overseas just going on active duty service.
Speaker 1:So my first mobilization was to upstate new york. Okay, so I don't like saying, yeah, I had two deployments like, oh, where'd you go? You know where syracuse, new york is. Let me tell you about this place outside of there. Yeah, oh man, yeah, the fallujah was bad. Yeah, nobody, I'm not getting any respect for that. So I was like, no, I was, I was on active duty for a minute. Yeah, you know, doing, doing a job, what did you do up there? So there was a old air force base that was converted into like an Air Force laboratory Okay, that hosted a Navy reservist intelligence unit and I was an Army intelligence analyst embedded in that Navy imagery unit.
Speaker 1:So our customers, our purpose was supporting for deployed troops or units that were getting ready to deploy. Okay, so you're in an active duty unit, you're in a national guardian, whatever. You're in a unit getting ready to go to iraq, go to africa, go to afghanistan. It's those months leading up to you getting on a plane and going away. You're doing the very basic service member skills, like your marines, doing the work in southern california, preparing for whatever terrain environment. You're in the army, getting your mind ready, going through the mock runs of this is what we're going to do if we get attacked on our convoy. This is what we're going to do if we get one of our people gets hit in the field, injured in the field, shot, wounded, whatever. Yeah, so you don't have time to work up on your own intelligence needs and this is where you fit in. Yeah, yeah, like the boss wants to know what's going on in an area that he, she, is about to take ownership for, Sometimes the unit that they're taking they're replacing, we'll be able to provide a pretty robust package of information, and sometimes that unit who's already in place. I'm just ready to go home, so we are supporting that intelligence preparation of the battlefield.
Speaker 1:Is it mostly satellites going overhead and taking pictures and then you take that information and distill it into like a report that is viable for the people that are on the ground? Is that what you're doing or is it something else? There is, or is there a bunch of different aspects of it? Yeah, there are different intelligence disciplines. So that satellite part that would be imagery intelligence. Okay, there's, what was your part? Human, all source. So I'm taking those satellite photos that somebody else has taken, that somebody else has called out like yeah, based on these factors, from this very clear image, I can tell you that it houses this many people.
Speaker 1:It was occupied at this time. Like you, look at google earth, like the stuff that I'm really trying to not break top secret, oh, yeah, yeah, things, yeah, but you, we do this all the time. Look at google earth and look at the area that we're at right now. You can use google earth to see a time frame. Yeah, a slideshow, yeah, yeah, like, oh, three years this part of the forest was completely full. Now it's been cut down and they're building a subdivision here, parked in front of this house, for however many years, and all of a sudden the car is gone. Right, maybe somebody sold it. Yeah, they moved, they finally cleaned it up, who knows. So we're taking some of that. We're taking some of that.
Speaker 1:We're taking a human intelligence reports, so that's people trained to interview local nationals, people like from the country that we're in. I was like what's, what's going on? You're, you're living in a district in afghanistan that is plagued by the taliban. You're obviously talking to me for one reason or another. How can I help you? Oh, you want to get rid of the taliban. When we help each other, yeah, tell me where the taliban live, tell me how they live. Were you ever directly involved in those conversations with people? No, out of country. No, we would advise for some questions that they can ask. But those people were the human intelligence. The humans were really good at their job. We've got the commander's intent, the commander's mission, and from there we're going to develop a set of questions that we're going to ask scientifically, kind of like ask everybody the same questions and we can get enough information that corroborates a pretty consistent message. The nerds that are looking at these reports all day might be able to find something. Yeah, exactly, exactly, perfect, yeah.
Speaker 1:So the first mobilization was supporting forward deployed. And, as I was finishing up this, we left iraq a couple of years prior and this weird fringe jihadist group was really coming into play. They were really gaining traction. They were taking over iraq bases that iraq army had. We, we'd given them this base, we gave them these humvees, and the iraqi army is yeah, cool, thanks americans, we'll hold on to this. And this group just starts rolling through and beheading people. And were they called isis? They were called isis. They were sort of like the islamic state, the islamic state of iraq and levant. Nobody knew what levant was, so it got changed from islamic state of iraq and syria isis. Interesting. So that was my first. That was the ending of my first mobilization. That's cool, yeah, yeah. And the second one was actually going to the Middle East and supporting units that were dealing with ISIS. Oh, interesting, yeah, in what way did you support them?
Speaker 1:I developed target packets for ISIS strongholds, for lack of a better term. Explain that. What's a target packet? What's a target packet? It is uh like a dossier of justification. To focus energy on a building, like there were some people that would make. Uh, some people in the cell or different cells are focused purely on high value targets like I'm hunting this guy, I'm hunting down abu dick bag because he's a bad dude and I know when he goes to sleep, I know when he wakes up, I know if he's smoking three cigarettes in a day, then he's having a bad day. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, when these certain sets, these certain circumstances happen, uh, we're going to call in some sort of strike, oh, interesting. Or we're going to make sure that he's home so tough dudes can bust down doors and put a bag over his head and bring him to justice. Cool, I was mostly buildings.
Speaker 1:So, based on satellite imagery, and what people who live, people like refugees who used to live in whatever village that we're looking at, that we're interested in, are saying? Like we're looking at an auto shop, a garage that got converted into a vehicle, born, improvised explosive device manufacturing site. Okay, v-bed, vb, ied. Yeah, now you see a bunch of scrap metal just hanging out outside for no good reason. That doesn't look like they're part of a car. You see a bunch of fertilizer. A bunch of fertilizer hanging out outside and weird wires, military-aged men walking around with what appears to be sticks hung slung over their shoulders. You know people aren't driving random cars to this shop anymore. When vehicles come out, they look like some sort of weird mad max garbage, just just rolling low writing. Yeah, bbeds, yeah. So based on all of this infantry, based on all of these reports, based on these patterns of life, there's a high likelihood that vehicle born ieds are being made inside of this garage. So automobiles are getting packed with explosives. They're getting additional metal scraps slapped onto the sides so it'll be harder for people on the ground to shoot and disrupt their movements. Like that's the only reason why you're slapping extra metal on the sides of these things. So if we let this garage continue its manufacture, it's going to affect us friendlies in these ways.
Speaker 1:We're in this scenario. Where would you get all this information? Like? Where does this come from? How do you gather? We can control a lot of imagery like drones, unmanned drones going out and just taking photos. Satellites is a lot harder to get.
Speaker 1:Human intelligence, human intelligence, so human intelligence. We're looking at refugee camps. We're looking at how does that work? Like, does somebody literally drive into a camp and start asking people hey, on the corner of so and so you know all these motor plays like, is that? Like, how does this work? How does that happen? Do you know?
Speaker 1:So think of um, think of your neighborhood. Yeah, you run away from your neighborhood because gangsters have moved in. You fear for yourself, you fear for your family. They've destroyed your livelihood. They've maybe they've taken over your house. Maybe they've harmed some of your extended family. Who knows you? There's reason for you to have no love. Yeah, for isis, it's shocking for a bunch of guys that cut people's heads off. Yeah, yeah. So where are you gonna go? You're gonna go someplace safe. Yeah, you're gonna find someplace safe that's probably not controlled by them makes sense. That's where we would go. We're assisting the home country that we're in to. You know, get your food, get your water, your aid. If anybody wants to talk about the gangster influence of your neighborhood, come by. So you stop by and like, yeah, fuck these guys. Oh, tell me, where are these gangsters operating?
Speaker 1:Like, I used to love going to this Mexican restaurant, but a couple of months ago they took that over and they meet a couple times a week. Everybody knows they meet a couple of times a week. In the back, the food went downhill really quickly. Everyone sees these guys in there. It's just they're there all the time. Yeah, all of a sudden it's falafels. Yeah, tell me what days. Yeah, but like, what days of the week are they at? Oh, we know that we can't go there on tuesdays and saturdays.
Speaker 1:Awesome, what do they look like? I don't know, I didn't see what they look like. Okay, do you know what they drove? I'll let me tell you what they drove. All right, so does? Does this look familiar to you? Yeah, it looks like you just pulled out a map of my neighborhood. Cool, where was that? Uh, where's that mexican restaurant right here? Oh, okay, good to know. Thanks, good luck, god bless.
Speaker 1:Okay, so then they compile that. Then there's some type of sorting mechanism to be like hey, this guy's in charge of the Mexican restaurant here, so we're going to shoot that information over to him, along with other info, the drone info or satellite info and stuff like that. Is that how that works? And then you compile like a dossier on this place and what's going on there. We are one step back on that description. So people are human intelligence collecting all this information, but they're not, and they're writing their reports Like, hey, I talked to this guy who used to live in this neighborhood and he's saying that the mexican restaurant is now look like this. It ceases to be a mexican restaurant, just nothing but hummus. Yeah, yep, whatever these gangsters are, whatever these gangsters are using, yeah, and so that gets uploaded into a searchable repository of reports.
Speaker 1:Okay, and it's up to the frontline all source analyst to just start searching. You have to make a good query, you have to ask a good question to get good information. Okay, it's either garbage in, garbage out or take your time and get good stuff. So there's just this ginormous database of all this information that's sometimes several huh. Just because we're not, we as the military are not that efficient with, uh, what the government, how we do things, it's surprising. It gets big enough. Surprise. Yeah, like I would.
Speaker 1:My soul would be taken if I lost an accountable item out in the field on exercises. Now, that accountable item is whatever higher up is deeming important, like this. Flashlight is new, it's unique and if you lose it you're dying. You're staying out here, everyone's staying out here, no one's leaving. We're staying in the field until you find this flashlight. And at the individual line level, okay, we learned that. And then you read the news and you know the pentagon loses 800 million dollars, but they're able to find 900 million dollars to fund a special project. Yeah, it's weird how that works. Right, oh, responsibility's a bitch, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So you go through all that stuff and then it seems like you had the initial thought in the back of your head of being a first responder of some type. What made you gravitate towards being police? Then I didn't want to be told where to live anymore, like I wanted to sleep in my own bed for a solid month without having to go somewhere else. So if I went federal, you know, I could have like a wish list I would love to go to seattle, portland and san francisco. I would say, like the fbi, like, oh, okay, cool, well, we really need somebody in tulsa, oklahoma. Yeah, so you're going there. Welcome. For how long? Ask that question after you get there.
Speaker 1:The idea of just having a stable address that sounds terrible. The idea of having a stable place to just no, I am not going to go anywhere unless I don't want to for work Seems kind of like a basic human desire. That that's pretty clear. Yeah, yeah, I think you get used to not having that after a while. Mm-hmm, that's just. That's just how it is, as so many people in the military or in any uniformed service. John was like it is what it is right. I hate that saying like, yeah, so you can make it different, it is what you make it.
Speaker 1:So I tried to get into police for a while and did you apply multiple places? I lost count after a dozen. Are you serious? 15, holy shit, that's something like 15 agencies from the state to the county, to the local level. God, I wish I would have saved it. One city sent me a letter hey, thank you for taking our test. You scored 93%. At this time, we're only taking applicants who scored 93.25% of it, so we appreciate you trying out Thanks.
Speaker 1:So all of this a jail is what gave me a shot. All of the police side of things. A jail like, yeah, sure, come on. And I only applied there because I worked at a coffee shop and, uh, local sheriff's deputy that would come in regularly. Like, yeah, I started in the jail. Like, really, yeah, yeah, before that I was in the air force, so his story didn't sound. It sounded similar to mine, like, okay, I can do this, I can. Yeah, all right, I can do a stepping stone and I applied to one jail and they're like come on, I'll take you. How long were you at the jail then? Four and a half years, and that's where our lives intertwine. That's where I met you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there are a lot of rules and suggestions on how to run a housing unit in a jail. So much of it is individual dependent and I appreciated that for the uh, the consistency needed to keep these people maintained, to keep them from worrying so much that they cause a nuisance for themselves to the other people around them. The discrepancy that each jail deputy had was really really vast and I appreciated that. Quite a bit of autonomy and how you were gonna run your own unit, right, right, like a good day is when nobody gets in a fight. Right, that got a little boring, but you had a yardstick to major success if you maintain that tranquility. Cool, good job. You earned your, you earned your pay, see you tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you can't do that and that's just human nature. One of those kind of basic tenets is like you can't let them get too, too overly excited too, jacked up too, like playful, even like these. These are grown men, sequestered from the world. All they have are a couple of tvs, some phone calls if somebody wants to talk to them, and a bunch of strangers. And sometimes they meet some other people that they knew from the outside, like, oh man, you're in my neighborhood, you're a good friend of mine. Oh, what's going on? There are a million people in this city, hundreds of people in this jail, and you have like four friends in here. What is that saying about your circle? What are you who? How are you living your life? So it's easy to get the horse play. It's easy to get excited.
Speaker 1:It's when you don't have a lot of excitement in your life because you've been in jail for a couple of months. It's easy to get riled up over a game of cards. You're not even betting anything. Maybe you're like betting some candy, yeah, some, some snacks. And if you're not, it's a big thing. It thing. It's a big thing If all your life, if your entire life, is boiled down to the letters you've received from home, some snacks that you've purchased and a couple extra pairs of socks that the jail guard doesn't know you have. You take any one of those things out and like your day is ruined Like that's all you've got things out and like your day is ruined like that's all you've got. Yeah, that's one thing that I feel like is hard to explain to people that don't know the system, like your average joe doesn't really get that. Little things make very, very big differences to incarcerated populations especially live or die sometimes. Yeah, things that other people in the real world would be just shocked or horrified that something had such a unnecessary value for them.
Speaker 1:I've had to send I had to send grown men to a disciplinary unit the whole because they didn't get a brownie on their lunch tray and they didn't like how slow it was for me to request another brownie from the kitchen to come to them. Like your brownie's gonna come. I've called for the kitchen. I have requested your brownie when it shows up. It shows up. I'm not leaving to get the brownie and I'm not gonna force somebody else, some other jail worker, to go out of their way to bring your one single brownie up here right as he's serving hundreds of other people. Fuck you. Everyone else gets a brownie. That ain't fair. Like shut, calm down, calm down, fuck you, I'm not gonna calm down, slams the tray down, like, okay, now you're using that as a weapon. You're done. Here we go, we're, I'm calling my friends and you're leaving. Now, you're not going to get a brownie. Now, your lunch is going to come from a paper bag. Yep, you're gonna get some bologna sandwich.
Speaker 1:I would come home and I'd tell my roommates these stories. And he's a high functioning adult, a normal human being, and he, like you, were saying like he just didn't get it. Like I understand why. He's like what, why would they do that? Don't? Don't they know? They're just get in trouble if they did this thing. That's not the point. If they knew they were going to get in trouble, they wouldn't be in jail in the first place. Yes, if they could make good decisions, they probably wouldn't be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, fairness was such a weird concept to to work with in there. Like life isn't fair, but government has to be. I am the man I got the uniform. I gotta, I gotta be fair. Yeah, I've got to be fair with everybody I treat and if they see anything less, oh, he's got favorites. Fuck that guy. Yeah, like well, you gave this to him. What are you talking about? These guys are just losing it because I cut their shower short and they thought they didn't get enough time in the shower compared to the other guy. Like, I'm watching the clock it. If it wasn't five minutes, maybe it was five and a half. Like, excuse me for someone getting 30 extra seconds in there. Yeah, but if that's all you got, that 30 or seconds like that means a lot, make a difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you said that we could turn the tv on at 10 am, I did say that I didn't expect a guy to have a seizure in the middle of the housing unit, forcing everyone to go to their bunks, go to their cells, get medical staff in here, make sure this person who's having a seizure is safe and get them out of here. That kind of slowed some things up. Yeah, but you said but it's not 10. We could watch TV at 10 am and it's past 10. What are you in here for? Oh, theft, oh, but it's not fair that you didn't get your tv at 10 o'clock. Like you're in here for high levels of theft or whatever. Yeah, you going to tell me about an honor system? Yes, I will. Yeah, yep, yep. Okay, there's limits. Damn it. Yeah and doubt.
Speaker 1:Those were the rules that we had to play. We didn't plan. It was interesting. One of those rules that we, just as jail deputies, really was like just no yelling. The only person who should be yelling was the correction officers trying to maintain order. No yelling, they're just. Everyone's getting jacked up. Everyone's people get excited. Yeah, just no yelling.
Speaker 1:And I would break that rule on one occasion and that was when you would walk into the housing unit Because all the inmates would just look over to you. Yo, shut the fuck up. Jason's here. And you know what? I'd agree with them. They're card games done, tables getting pulled together, people who I would never expect to be sitting together, like white guys with big old swastikas tattooed on their arms, sitting next to black guys with gang signs tattooed on their neck, sitting together quietly in rapt attention as this guy just walks in with a folder. Hey, deputy, you mind if I hang out for a bit, like well, I was gonna go on my break, but this is the calmest I've seen them all week. I'll burn a break for this, absolutely. Do you need anything? Can I get you anything? No, I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good, like. If you say so, man, I'm gonna sit back here and let you run this.
Speaker 1:I've always thought that was so cool. Well, I appreciate it, man, it was awesome. I well, you guys kept me safe the whole time, so sometimes I think that was the easy part. There's always a good reminder that the, the power of your personality can go a really, really long ways, and that applied to me. I think that applies to you guys too. I think it applied especially to you. I can't think of a time where I ever heard an inmate shit talking to you. I'm sure it happened, but it helped that I didn't try to look up their charges. I wasn't ever seeking it out. I didn't want to know what they did. A lot of you guys didn't do that. I would typically know way more about the charges than you guys did.
Speaker 1:It is easier to run the day. Yeah, like what if everyone's got some sort of trigger issue thing that's like, oh, that that's what they're in here for, right, right, I don't know how I could do something fair knowing that about that person. The less I knew, the better. Yeah, it couldn't even be judged from, like, week to week. It had to be day by day. Like you're in a good mood, well, you don't have to be in a good mood. As long as you're not in a shitty mood, we're good. Let's do what I need you to. Yeah, versus like the next day. Like okay, someone peed in your off-brand cheerios and it's just gonna be one of those shitty days, no, and the day after that I can't hold a grudge. I cannot hold a grudge against you.
Speaker 1:What made you finally get to the point where you wanted to make the leap from the jail system into to go to road, because that's a very I don't know if people know that, but that's a very significant leap to go from. Yeah, it's two sides to the same coin of law enforcement, like one is apprehension and one other is detention. They're necessary. You can't have one without the other. Yeah, flip sides of the same coin. Yeah, and it's all in support of pushing through the court system. You know either finding innocence, guilt, compromise of something in between.
Speaker 1:They're very different jobs, like they've got similarities. You know jail and patrol both have to. They wear uniforms, they both use tools. They both deal with people all day long. You have to be difficult people, difficult people. Yeah, it's yeah, customer service at. You know fast food places. Like I said, I work at a coffee shop like. There are people. There are crummy people around the holidays, but there are also some good people too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not so in the law enforcement there are good people that get caught up in bad things. Yes, for sure. We're just not talking to them when they're in that state, right at their at their best. Yeah, for sure, and you can't. You try not to hold that too much against them. But yeah, apart from like, worrying about your own safety and the safety of your, uh, other innocent people around you, you know the jail is a mental marathon. You're constantly getting mind games played against you. You have to be strong enough to push that aside and maintain order and discipline. Control is a different beast of knowing when to flip that switch of yeah, you are a victim of a crime. Yesterday, you are a victim of a crime. Yesterday, you are a suspect of a crime was the triangle? And tomorrow you're going to be a witness. So if I treat you today like I treated you yesterday, you're probably not going to help me out tomorrow when you see something else. Yeah, the patrol is just a different marathon.
Speaker 1:Did you know how significant the difference was before you went to the road? No, no, like it was. I knew it was going to be different. I knew it's going to be uh, more exciting. I knew I would be challenged a lot more. Those are the things that got me interested into it. I was burning through paperback books every month, working in the jail. I was ready for the next step. I was ready for a challenge.
Speaker 1:There's nothing wrong with people who work in the jail. I mean, there's something wrong with everyone who works, chooses law enforcement. But those in the jail I have nothing but respect for those people. I was those. It's a necessary position absolutely in society. Not too easy, incredibly fucking difficult, and also the environment is really tough to work in. Some people say, oh thanks, it can't be that bad, you can't have a gun there. And the other side of that is you have to deal with what comes at you without having a gun. You've got to use your words. If that doesn't work, you're using your hands, you're using the other tools. You learn really quickly what's effective and what's not. It's a hell of a learning environment, that's for sure. Yeah, it was a hell of a learning environment, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah, it was a great learning environment.
Speaker 1:Patrol is just more. Your attention is more divided, just way more divided. Explain some of the differences between road and I would say, a big, the big issue. Everyone's got something. When they're in the, the field training program, you're put with a coach, you're learning, you've got the journeyman, the apprentice kind of set up, the jedi and the padawan however you want to say it right the knight and the squire. Yeah, did you have a rat tail? No, no, no, I kept my hair short like I was still in the military and a clean face.
Speaker 1:Yes, it was the divided attention with the radio, the computer in the car, traffic, traffic. Some coaches have the primary channel, where everybody knows what's going on, going on in the, the radio in the car, and then have the secondary channel that has specific information happening that not everybody is monitoring in your ear. So there are two different voices speaking not directly at you, but you should be aware of what's going on while you're driving. You should be aware of what's going on while you're driving, either in traffic at 5 pm on a weekday or 3 am in the morning, while you're going 70, 80 miles an hour to a hot call to a house where someone's fighting, looking at a computer, looking at a laptop in the car, driving quickly trying to determine which house is the house that your buddy's at, calling for backup because he's in a fight, and not hitting vehicles that are stopping in the middle of the road because they see lights and sirens.
Speaker 1:The rules of the road say pull over to the right as far as safe as possible when you see an emergency vehicle coming up behind you, and that's all good and well, you're taking a test. But when that actually happens and you're, no one knows that you're fumbling around. Yeah, you're messing with your radio, you're texting on your phone, you're not paying attention at all and all of a sudden you look in your rearview mirror and the cherries and berries are just blaring at you. First thing you do just slam on the brakes. I don't know what to do. Yeah, that causes the first responder behind you whether it's a fire truck, uh, an ambulance, a cop car to have to swerve to avoid you. Do we swerve into oncoming traffic and pray that they see us? Do we swerve into a slower lane and worry about you remembering what you're supposed to do? And you pull out in front, on the right side, and cutting off again. Yep, that's oh. And then your partner. She's saying that everything is calm and you can turn off your lights. Now, oh, cool, disregard. Oh, everything's fine, okay. Okay, I'm gonna go about my day, thanks.
Speaker 1:Report writing not too difficult, I mean initially. Once you know, once you learn the format, okay, I can do that. You know, I've been doing that for a couple of years for academic military no big deal. Then I get so deep into my thought process, thinking about looking at my notes, writing, writing what I'm supposed to write, and then here on the radio, oh yeah, there's a theft happening in Target right now. I didn't hear that. I definitely didn't hear that. It was the Target that's right down the road which I could go to and support. Nope, just Wilson in my head trying to think of what to put next for this sentence and type, type, type, type, type. Hey, hey, new guy, do you hear the radio Like what? No, absolutely not. Why would I be listening to the radio? I'm typing a report. I'm trying to get off work on time. We're 20 minutes late already, as it is. Nope, pack your shit up. We got to go. I don't even know what we're going to. What's happening right now? Yeah, that was that took a little while to learn.
Speaker 1:The radio is weird, I, it's bizarre. I only feel comfortable now when I'm working and I'm scanning, so I'm listening to everything at the same time, which is complex and there's a lot of things that are happening there, but it I something is not right. When I don't have that on, it's really weird. But at the same time, I mean, there's just so much happening. It's it's hard to pay attention. When I'm having direct contact with a client, I'll either turn it totally down or turn it off, even just because I cannot focus. So I don't know how you guys do that. Like you're you're standing there engaging and then you're getting you know, know, status updates from dispatch to see how you are and being mindful of talking to witnesses or directing subjects, and it boggles my mind that you're all are capable of managing that, because I struggle to do that.
Speaker 1:I would guess when you're scanning your passive brain, your system two brain system, one brain as you would, yeah, would be just triggered with words like acting erratic, mentally unstable, unable to control family member running in the street naked. Mental, mental health is the mental health, mental health, mental health. Yeah, you're listening to some very specific things, like when your brain passively hears theft in progress. You're like, I don't care about that. When you hear someone call out a traffic stop, I don't care about that, you don't care about a lot of the things that are happening on the radio, you're worried about some very specific things. It's like the cocktail party effect in psychology basically, okay, do you know what? No, okay, so, uh, it's the phenomenon where if you're at a cocktail party and you hear someone speak your name from across the room, you will tune into that. You'll be like, wait, what they just said, my name over the even if they're not, you know, necessarily speaking about you or whatever. Right, yeah, it's like a known psychological phenomenon. It's because your, your brain, is just exactly what you're saying. It's attuned to very specific things and then when you get a cue that triggers that responsiveness, then you'll be responsive in that moment to it. It's the same thing with the cop side of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have a call sign. Yeah, that call sign is your name for the day. If you're lucky enough, that call sign is your name for the week. The shift rotation you get to know it very well If, for whatever reason, you're working a different shift and somebody has your regularly assigned call sign, or you're getting onto a different shift and somebody else has the call sign that you had for the last rotation. You want to respond when they, when dispatch calls for it's like oh wait, that's not me anymore, that's not my nickname, yeah, that's not who I'm supposed to be. I am this today. I'm this set of numbers and letters. So it's your name. The radio is that cocktail party? Yeah, and I'm ready to hear that name get called, my name get called at any moment.
Speaker 1:And for the agency that I worked at, it was broken down into four digits. The first digit was the agency. The second digit was the shift or the special team. Digit was the shift or the special team. The third digit was the, the beat or the district, the geographical representation on a map which I'm assigned, yeah. And the fourth digit is your personal identifier. So I could have three co-workers in the same beat, the same district, and we might be on two different shifts. So if I'm hearing the radio say agency, then maybe it's. It's the same shift, but it's a different district. Oh, it's on the other side of our uh, area of responsibility.
Speaker 1:Whatever that guy is going to, I'm not going to make it in time, or oh, they're calling for her. I don't even know why I would have to worry about it, because that's so. It's such a far distance like if things start popping off, I better get on a map and figure out where the heck my partner is. I can help her out. But that district number is like oh, you called for my buddy. I'm not worried about things yet, unless it's dispatch saying, hey, you and any of your buddies, can you go to this thing right now? Like, okay, you may not have called my name, but you called my buddy's name and I'm close to that area. I've got to start rolling that way, yeah, or pay attention to see what exactly is going on, start worrying about things. Yeah, just like that cocktail party.
Speaker 1:You and I are having a conversation and my significant other might say my name and I'm a little keyed up, like what's untuned to her. She's good, okay, we're fine. Maybe I hear her voice. She starts screaming because the dog got loose. Oh, oh, hey, oh, I don't know what we were just talking about. I've got to go deal with this. Excuse me, I'll be right back. Hold on a second. Hold on a second. Yeah, did I get your phone number? I gotta call you back. Maybe I'll call you back in 10 minutes, maybe two hours, I don't know. Yeah, but whatever you and I are doing right now has now become less important to what my significant other or, in this case, co-worker got involved in. Yeah, exactly that's how you master the radio. At least that's how you live with the radio. I try every day.
Speaker 1:I had a great time doing special team things. I had a great time doing special team things. I had a great time doing special assignments, additional assignment things. How many special teams are you on? The crisis negotiation team? Mental health team yeah, I did defensive tactics instructor for a little bit. Oh, I didn't know. You did that. Yeah, it was mostly, um, most of my time was spent in the hitman suit Okay, so I was. Yeah, it was mostly, um, most of my time was spent in the hitman suit okay, so I was getting beat on. I was the dummy. Yeah, that was a dummy. That was fine this. And I'd just gone through firearms training firearms to be a firearms instructor. Oh, okay, was that? The most fulfilling part of the job for you was being on the special teams. My mental health one was the most fulfilling. Yeah, everyone's got their niche. Everyone's like you.
Speaker 1:You can go one of several ways. You're probably going to go one of several ways, going into something like, you know, patrol work or jail work, and people really love the, the thinking part of it, the, the solving the cases, the, the deep work, the. This is not going to take one shift to open and close, but weeks, months. You know that delayed satisfaction of I got it. They become detectives, people who are highly trained, highly skilled, proficient, just athletes of the department. You've got to be fairly physical fit to do the job to begin with, all the gear that you're wearing, the physical expectations, and maybe you take it a step or two further. You're tactically proficient. Two further you're tactically proficient, you're physically capable and you go to the SWAT team, the special weapons and tactics and the, that higher elite warrior. You know, if you're not doing the military thing and you're not in the warrior culture, what's the next, what's another one? Well, what's? What's the law enforcement one? You know it's that that guardian side of the or the warrior side of the warrior guardian, yeah, so it's got.
Speaker 1:It is cool that there's a bunch of different, yeah, the types of specialties. I think it would be easy, especially for a lay person, to look at law enforcement as just kind of the singular entity, as opposed to all of these different. You know it's like saying, well, it's a football team, so there's no specialization, right, they all wear in the same uniform, they can all be put in the different positions. It's all the same stuff, right? Exactly, exactly like that's. That would be the same comparison to to falsely assume that, yeah, yeah, you know, and that's what made things so much fun.
Speaker 1:People have a passion for teaching, for educating. Educating for passing on knowledge, for making people get better. They're field trainers, they're instructors. There's all sorts of different specialties, like the mental health part. What did you like about that? Where were you attracted to it?
Speaker 1:It took a little while for me to get into it. I enjoyed being a substitute deputy law enforcement guy that drove the clinicians around. Clinician handler, if you will out in the field, well, you're doing the real work. Just make sure that you get to and from safely. I enjoyed doing it every now and then. I didn't think I would like doing it as a full-time gig and then a couple of people like this would be fun. You would have a good time. You enjoy talking with people. You have patience, like, yeah, I can, I can talk to people. Yeah, sure, the crisis negotiation training teaches it's pretty much, if somebody is in a state of crisis, they're not thinking straight.
Speaker 1:High emotion, low consideration of secondary, uh, issues from their actions. It's like, okay, well, how do we calm them down? How do you calm anybody down? Who's angry, who's yelling, who's out of control? Yeah, time, how do we gain that time? I'll start talking to them. See what's going on.
Speaker 1:It sounds like you're pissed. You're goddamn right, I'm pissed. Yeah, yeah, that sounds like it sucks. What's happening? Now? You don't care, nobody listens to me. Well, I'm, I'm asking you, man, what's literally listening? What's happening? Yeah, then maybe you hear their story. And the longer they talk, the more that deep brain that that stem to starts coming out and, like you know, and that's why I'm having trouble at work, okay, well, thinking internally, it doesn't make sense why you'd kill your cat, but okay, that's your story, you know, and so much of the mental health field was dealing with people who are not high functioning adults, who are not having a normal day. Yeah, this is, or that is, their normal day. Yeah, their baseline is yelling at themselves and having conversations their heads. You know, and I've got, I've got empathy for that.
Speaker 1:I did not think this sounds terrible, to admit. But I did not put a lot of thought or consideration into mental health until I started working in a jail like, even after going through so much army stuff, you know the whole culture I was like you're fine, don't be a bitch, keep it up, let's go. Are you applying this to yourself or to the subject culture, the culture of the people that work in those environments? Yeah, yeah, like the military, it's like, yeah, the army sucks. We're not Marines, so it could be worse, let's go. It could be worse, it could always be worse. Right, like, oh, that's what I've got going on for me, awesome, that's why I'm going to reenlist, because it could be worse, no, and jail actually coming in contact with people who are dealing with mental health issues for their whole lives that's what really turned that light bulb on for me.
Speaker 1:I remember working in the uh, the medical wing and the jail downtown. That was like the sickest of the sick yeah, d, 40, oh, yeah, yeah. And guys just sitting on his mattress. That was like the sickest of the sick yeah, d, 4d, oh, yeah, 4d, yeah. And the guy's just sitting on his mattress playing with his feces. He had already got done playing with his feces on the wall, mm-hmm, and he's just looking and not focusing on anything, moving his head around, moving his hands trying to catch imaginary fireflies, imaginary bugs, mm-hmm, and he has a little bit of a smile on his face.
Speaker 1:And I asked the person that's already been working there for a while, like what's going on? Do we need to go in and get him? I don't want to do this. He has so much poop on his hands. Don't worry about it, he doesn't need it. We're good for a bit. We'll clean out his mattress. We'll get him some clean clothes. We'll get a couple more people in here to keep it safe. We'll shower him eventually. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but he's about on time for the schedule. This makes sense. He's already eaten, so he's good. We'll get to him is a regular thing. We just this is a Tuesday for him. Yeah, you can't stop it.
Speaker 1:So that's when I really started to get an exposure to the 12th and seeing these people suffer Like this is your day you wake up and this is your day you don't. You may not even know that you've woken up, like your brain could just be constantly firing. Mm-hmm, growing up, you're like hot drugs are bad. They. They cause you to look like that, like drugs caused this, get pointed to some unfortunate fuck on the road, mm-hmm. And then grow up and you put on this uniform and you actually deal with that sudden puncher at fuck and like, maybe, maybe drugs cause this, or maybe she is pursuing drugs to calm the effects of that. Yeah, who knows, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:At that point, who am I to judge? Who the fuck am I to judge? Who the fuck am I to judge? Are you able to go about your day in a safe manner that doesn't impede other people Rock and roll? The libertarian to me says cool, go for it. You get to that point where you are adversely affecting the environment for the safety of you and others. Okay, now we should step in, because other people shouldn't have to worry about that while they're eating at burger king, right, oh, taking their kids out, and you're naked, screaming in the middle of the street. Yeah, yeah, you're doing that at home, okay, cool, yeah, at least you're safe, even if you're on the sidewalk. I don't know, even if you were on the sidewalk, like, well, depending on the weather, it sucks, maybe I can give you some pants.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's time and space, as ironic as it is, wearing one uniform or another for almost two decades of my life. I do like to consider myself very libertarian in that sense and I know a lot of people who are. No, I hate the big government. Like you, have been a public employee for 15 years. What are you taught? Like there are so many? Was it ron swanson? Yeah, yeah, like that's it's. It's an ironic character, he's. It's funny and so many of us can relate to that. I certainly can. Yeah, I've definitely been in that position. Yeah, like, how are you getting paid through public funds? And I don't know, maybe we've got the best view of the hypocrisy of some of the things, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:I had a great time doing the mental health thing. It was, uh, it was really rewarding. There's turnover in law enforcement, of course. Like some, maybe maybe somebody will do something bad and they see the wrongs of their ways and they get better, and maybe we'll see him in a couple of months when they get out of jail. Maybe we'll see him in a couple of years when they come home from prison. Maybe they got away and we'll see him in a couple of months when they get out of jail. Maybe we'll see him in a couple of years when they come home from prison. Maybe they got away and we'll see him tonight. There's no less turnover in the mental health game. A lot of my coworkers are. I'm glad you got this job Better you than me. Yeah, that's fair. That's okay. I'm willing to take that for sure. You were good. You enjoy investigating the car crashes because you are really good at math. Well, thanks, man. That means a lot. That means a lot.
Speaker 1:I think it was rewarding because so often we're dealing with people who are not victims or suspects of crime, just a shit, chance of circumstance, victim of circumstance. Yeah, yeah, their own poor mental health or substance use or whatever. There are a lot of stories, so many stories. One of the more successful feel-good ones is's like this 17 year old, 16, 17 year old girl steals grandpa's truck and drives off the beginning of the day and I heard from the clinician that I was with that. This girl took like seven or eight cops to subdue her. Jesus, because she was just, she was in her zone, yeah, yeah, she was in her superhuman zone. She had that Marvel magic right, mm-hmm. And when she gets spotted, I think somebody called her in a grocery store. Like, hey, this girl's acting really weird. She's been looking at the gardening section for the last three hours and no one's coming to get her. Oh, what does she look like? And everyone's like, oh, oh, it's her. So I'm working with outside agency. It's in their jurisdiction.
Speaker 1:Show up, put on the gloves. We're all getting ready for the fight, right? Like, oh geez, oh geez, this is going to suck, it's going to be in public. We got to defer that fight for as long as possible until maybe grandparents can show up, until she agrees to come with us. Whatever we got to do, we got to. We don't want to hurt her. It's not her fault that she just doesn't fire on all the cylinders. So we show up. She sees my uniform, sees my clinician. Clinician gets some introductions out of the way, like, oh, perfect, perfect, perfect, hey, what are you planting? What is this? And she's very guarded at first, and then, with enough probing, genuine questions like why are you interested in this? She just opens up and just talks about the different types of tomatoes, the goats that she raises with her grandparents. How, like she, if the apocalypse comes, she is going to be homesteading and she's going to outwit all of us.
Speaker 1:I am thoroughly convinced and it was, it was a thing to note watching my cover officer from that other jurisdiction, that home jurisdiction, that they're on the other side of the aisle just kind of peeking his corner, peeking his head around the corner like waiting corner, like waiting, like we have to fight this one again. I remember the fight from last time and she's just opening up more to me. We're talking more. We're just we're having it, we're having a conversation. We're having a legitimate conversation while the other officers are working their asses off trying to get a little family member it's. It is hard trying to maintain a conversation when you know where the conversation is going, like this has to end. I am not trying to be your friend. I wish you the best in life. I am not trying to become a role model, a big brother for you. Let's go, you know. So you start losing your place in the conversation.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, my clinician just kind of walk up, ask her about the soil. So you've been checking out this very specific type of soil. What's the difference? Like this one looks cheaper. No, you don't want any of that. That's got all this weird loam in it and this is like. So you, you that assistance, you need that support, that secondary set of eyes. What about drainage? Good call, good call. Hey, what about mold? How do you drain these things? No, you just got to poke the holes. That's very similar to like CNU in that way Exactly Christmas negotiation, yeah, and ultimately she gets that guard comes down. It's very similar to like cnu in that way exactly negotiation, yeah, and ultimately she gets that guard comes down.
Speaker 1:Last time she dealt with the cops she had to fight a bunch of. She's talking, she's using a different part of her brain, she's engaged. She kind of forgot that. She's been wandering friend meyer for several hours and grandpa shows up like hey, joe, I heard all about you and how you make goat cheese. You sound like a pretty handy guy. And he's just looking at me like what did she tell? It doesn't matter. Well, looks like grandpa's here, looks like it's time to go. She's just got this. Look like I guess it is time to go. He's grandpa's here. Yeah, all right. Hey, I had a great time talking with you. Take care, bye, see you next time. And she just goes home. That's great, everything's fine.
Speaker 1:You know, we talked, we, we engaged with her for something like two hours, oh my god. And we didn't have to fight her. We'd have to fight her into a cop car. We have to fight her into an ambulance. We didn't have to fight her into a hospital because she was not working within the confines of normal good society. Right, she can't, she can't stay in the grocery store forever. It's got to close sometime. It's a win. Yeah, yeah, that was a win. That was exhausting. It was exhausting and that's part of that. The warrior guardian coin, that's. That's the other part of it. Like, hey, she's fine, we're fine, nobody else got hurt.
Speaker 1:Drive on to the next. Yep, how long were you in law enforcement then? Patrol? Five years, jail, four and a half. So shy of ten, almost ten, yeah, yeah, why do you think someone should be a cop? It's not for the pay. You can do a lot safer things for maybe not as much money, or maybe something harder but less dangerous.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, it was good, I didn't. You can go on some vacations every now and then. Okay, when you could get them off. Yeah, yeah, when I, when I had time to get off, that was I thought I got out of the military. Yeah, you did sleep in your own bed. Okay, I should have saw that coming. Um, because you have a sense of service, you have this weird moral obligation to put yourself in front of danger for a higher purpose, for a higher cause, a better cause. Do you feel like you had that drive? I had to have. I think you did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, whether it was working in the jail making sure you weren't going to get beat up, or working on the road making sure you weren't going to get beat up, like you were a central tool to a very specific problem and I was there to make sure you were going to be fine, just like a cut out MHRT cut out the mental health part of it. Yeah, I am a very specific tool to solve a broad range of problems that other people do not want to deal with. I had a drill sergeant who started off the grenade orientation day. It's like 7 in the morning, real early. Alright, guys, gather around and shut the fuck up. We've got some friends who are waking up right now, who are going to work at best. Buy, that shit is stupid. You're gonna be throwing some grenades now. Listen up so you don't get blown up, and this is just that. That's that idea. Like we could all get a job somewhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, get a job. Just doing things, coming home, it's like, okay, cool, like you're, you're living for things outside of your life, yeah, yeah, you've got to find a passion and a reason to show up for law enforcement every day, because there are so many things that you give up, there's so many things that that suck about it and you you've got to find a better reason than it sucks, less than something. Something like get out because it's it is taxing to the mind, to the body, to your social circle. Yeah. So the opposite end of the question who do you think should not seek a job in law enforcement? People who want power or authority over people, people that are badge heavy, yeah, authoritarian, do it, because I fucking said so. If you want to do that, if you want to have that job, that's a great place to be able to do it for a bit until it catches up to you. And no, it's not, and for good reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you're being an asshole, like there's assholes in every industry, right, it's just really easy to hate on cops because these cops get in your business for things that you think that shouldn't be. Like I wasn't speeding, okay. Well, according to this instrument that measures concepts of physics. This is how fast you were going, like I didn't run that red light. You almost struck a child in the crosswalk. We could talk to that kid and see how he feels. People just going about their day, that thing you can think of that's it. Like. There's asshole football players. There are jerk CEOs. But a bad person who is a CEO, who makes bad decisions, will directly affect her company and her workers, her employees, and may indirectly affect the consumers. You just avoid those products. An asshole dentist is like well, I just won't go to that dentist, fuck that guy anymore.
Speaker 1:Cops, law enforcement, is abound and nobody wants to deal with them until until something bad happened to them. Why should you not get into it? If my kids were to grow up like I think I want to do that, all right. Well, you should do some job shadowing and really dig into it, check it out, see it like with anything, any job, whether it's uniform service or financial sales, fucking food industry, I don't know. It might sound cool, it could be glamorized, maybe that's it, maybe that's it, maybe that's it, maybe it's. There's so much cool stories or cool movies, cool videos, of all the glamor and the cool you get to do cool things like, yeah, and a lot of time you are writing about it, you are reporting it, you are waiting for it to happen. You're like, there's there are fun times and there are times just like what am I doing with my life right now? And that's the same with the military service.
Speaker 1:I mean, you watch a, a recruiting video, a recruiting commercial. They're not showing the sailors who are painting the side of the ship. They're showing the sailors who are flying in the aircraft doing cool. Yeah. They're not showing the marines who are changing the oil to the vehicles. They're showing the marines jumping out of ospreys and hitting boots on ground and kicking ass and doing the mission. Yeah. But why are we showing this? Why are we highlighting this? Because it's fun and it's few and far between. Yeah, of course. Oh, that's the fun part, yeah.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like what you're saying is that it's important for anybody curious about the job to know what you're getting into. There are a lot of things that someone has to give up, someone has to sacrifice to keep that going. I, I had always accepted that it was really easy getting indoctrinated with the military. Yeah, what were the kind of things that you had to give up or sacrifice for this. I missed a best friend's wedding, I missed a couple of good friends' weddings, my grandpa's funeral, countless birthdays, holidays, holidays. A lot of planned things that just didn't align with either the training schedule, the job and that's for, like either uniform. There's just so much that you just cannot get out of. Hey, I, I really want to do this fucking bowling league on Wednesday nights. It's like well, you're in luck because your days off are Monday, tuesday and Wednesday. Awesome, cool, cool.
Speaker 1:Can I take my kids to the park Saturday morning? Well, you're scheduled for Saturdays. For how long Got this scheduled for a year? Oh, so after this year, will I be able to take my kids to the park? Probably not. Well, you just get wednesday, thursday, friday off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I was just saying like I, um, I got to go to my brother's wedding it was on a saturday, very recently and I didn't have to trade shifts with anybody, I didn't have to burn precious vacation time, I didn't have to feign sickness, I didn't have to do any of the little tricks, weird things that people do to be able to get that time off. Do to be able to get that time off like. Nor would I want to have to do something tricksterly dirty to be able to get that time off right like. This is my job, this is my duty, this is my assigned post, and everyone else in a normal life has saturdays off. I'm sorry, grandma. No, I'm not coming to Easter dinner because I don't have Sundays off right now.
Speaker 1:Yes, grandma, I will see you on Thanksgiving. Of course I'll see you on Thanksgiving, and you know what Christmas aligns with Thursdays, so I'll see you Christmas too. How cool is that, grandma? Yeah, I know I didn't get to do that last year or the year before that. Yeah, I know, I didn't get to do that last year or the year before that. So it's the stuff outside of work that you give up.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize how indoctrinated I was when I was on the crisis negotiation team, and part of that is the willingness to carry your work phone and keep it on you and ready and active 24 7. My girlfriend had made a really complicated dinner. I can't remember. She knows she now, you know, knows exactly what it is. I don't know. It was like a chicken carbon. It was something took a couple of hours Labor. Yeah, it's a big deal and I got. I think I just served up and I was just taking those first couple of bites and the work phone goes off. I'm like well, I'll see you later. Love you, bye, went off, it's late at night, didn't get home till early in the morning.
Speaker 1:The problem was, of course, resolved. We're high-fiving. Good guys win, of course, because we do. Good guys will always win. Good guys win. Come home Don't even think anything of it, and then, a couple of years later, she's telling this story. Like yeah, you chose the job, you always choose the job, you will always choose the job. Like, no, no, that's not true. Why would you say that? Why wouldn't she say that I was putting myself in positions to always do the job?
Speaker 1:They had us, they gave us a book at both jail and road academy called Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement. Who wrote that? Dr something Gilmartin, yeah, yeah, gilmartin. Yeah, yeah, gilmartin. It's not a big read, not hard. I read it a couple of times, once at the beginning of jail, once for patrol and then halfway through our time in patrol, and it spoke to me in different stages. Just like you know, you might read a book that you read before and you just pick something up different from it. Yeah, no man steps in the same river twice, kind of thing. Right?
Speaker 1:And joe martin talks about keeping your identity after you put on that uniform. Make sure you've got those hobbies, make sure you're going out and doing those things that make make you, and it is so hard to do those if you are not conscious about it. Yeah, I can imagine. All right. Oh, my days off don't align with my golf buddies anymore. Well, I'll catch up with them later. Hey, john, do you still golf? Nah, I don't have any time for that anymore. It's not like you've lost time, you just lost time, you just lost interest. Yeah, because you're not doing it with that circle of friends.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh, do you, do you still have family game night? No, I gotta work these evenings. Like, oh, do you, do you do anything else? Like I am just so tired at the end of the work week. I don't, I don't want to. I always thought like I'll never do that, I'll never do that.
Speaker 1:But I kept signing up for little things that would mess with my work schedule, that would make me the inconsistent factor in friends or family's plans. So I would have to be doing my own thing, doing my own hobby, doing my own interest, which is fine. It's fine, but it's on me now to make sure that I'm doing them. Nobody else is doing them with me. Do you think that that was just an aspect of the job or were you doing that intentionally? No, I don't think it was intentional. I wasn't trying to hide from anybody. I wasn't trying to avoid friends, avoid family. I know. I know there are a lot of people in law enforcement like I hate crowds, I hate big groups. Yeah, I get that, and there are some who use it as an excuse like I don't want to do that. I got to do that with my family.
Speaker 1:I remember I think it was 2020, covid like mid 2020 everyone's still trying to isolate. They're trying to maintain the six feet. All that's like law enforcement first responders. First responders are like essential workers, like crime's not stopping and we're seeing an increase in all sorts of weird things, and we can't keep people in jail because jail's bad and it's full. It could be full of corona too. And we can't keep people in jail because jail's bad and it could be full of corona too. And the agency had put out a policy to support its workers. Like hey, you're essential. You can't do your job from home. So the last workday of your payday or your pay week pay schedule, I guess you could say you'll'll just have that off and we'll just pay for you to stay home. Oh, because everyone else is getting to work from home, everyone else is getting to stay home. You get to do that too.
Speaker 1:And this was written from the comfort of someone's home because they were in higher up administrators positions. Like hey, cool, you recognize that awesome. I remember sharing this news with a more senior guy. Like how cool is that? We're gonna get paid to like stay home for a day? Like there's stipulations you can't, you have to be on call, you have to stay close in the area in case something happens, sure, so I'm like all right, it's an extra sunday of like yard work and chores, whatever.
Speaker 1:I'm telling the senior guy how pretty, how cool is that? That's pretty sick. He's like no, why, what's wrong? Why are you mad about this? Like I gotta go home and I'm gonna have to stay home with my kids. I gotta be with them. Like I'm at home. As it is, they can't leave. They never leave. Like he was complaining that he had to be with his family? Yeah, god forbid. Yeah, and that guy's now like in a managerial position. Nothing wrong with him, he's a good guy. Yeah, it's just the mindset that just creeps in. You do what it takes to maintain whatever semblance of uh in a law. Do.
Speaker 1:What do you think are some of the bigger mental health issues that officers deal with on their own coming from the job? Not in subjects? Yeah, yeah, what do they bring home Exactly? Yeah, I think a lot of people from the outside think like, oh, she's got to make, she's in control while at work. She likes control, she has to be in control. She probably comes home and controls the household and bosses everyone around. He likes getting in fights at work. You know, he likes getting getting active, mixing it up. He probably comes home and he's just waiting to get off the handle and makes life hell for his family. I saw a lot of the opposite. We are making decisions all day. They're very important decisions that directly affect the people that were working. You know.
Speaker 1:Come home it's like what do you want to do? I don't care. What do you want for dinner? Whatever you want. What do you want to watch? Doesn't matter, just turn it on. What do you want to do this weekend? Do we have to do something this weekend? Just apathy, just you're zapped, just a absolute lack of energy once the work boots come off and I was guilty of it for a little bit until it was brought to my attention do you care about anything like, yeah, I care about also? Oh, I see why you asked oops, yeah, I get that. They talked about that in that book that they gave me an Academy, mm-hmm, shit, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:A lack of that awareness could affect an officer's outside life, mm-hmm. Sense of isolation, because nobody in their thought process, the world, doesn't understand the evils that are happening, the shit that's happening. Don't go to that barbecue restaurant, why not? What are you talking about? We're going out. No, dirtbag works there. What fine, we'll go somewhere else. We'll do this like. I don't want to. I don't want to do that. That's uh. That kind of event is full of nasty people who do these things like why do you know that information? Oh, because I had to deal with them. This is what I found Blah, blah, blah, blah. You're carrying a bunch of cynical knowledge of the world.
Speaker 1:If the officer doesn't live in the community that they're working for, it might be better, it might be easier. A lot of people do that in your field I've noticed. Very few people live in the communities that they police. Why do you want to know the secrets of your neighbors? That's bad enough. Trying to keep what you do away from your neighbors. Either you don't tell anybody shit or you live next to a bunch of other cops. You've got your back because you're all in the same neighborhood. For 10 years I didn't tell whoever was cutting my hair, what I do. It was almost easier just shaving my head at home and going to the barber. Like oh, what do you do for work? Like I, I'm a student. I, I work at a coffee shop. I, I'm a garbage man, I work in an office, whatever. It sounds boring that I don't want to keep talking about, so you lose interest.
Speaker 1:One of our co-workers I was talking to the other day and he said he will introduce himself as a firefighter. Everyone loves firefighters. Yeah, that's why. Yeah, everyone loves firefighters. They're always the heroes. Yeah, shoot, I loved firefighters. Like if there was a problem that required a firefighter skill, a paramedic skill, emt is like awesome, you are the professionals. Like I'll, I'll do cpr until you guys show up so you know what you're doing, like I'm. I know what I'm doing, but you guys have those skills and it goes both ways. Hey, can you get the cops here, because this guy inside this car is very much alive and we don't want to deal with this. You know it's a symbiotic relationship. Sure, I came across this firefighter meme page on social media. I don't know how, I don't know what the algorithm saw in me that required me to put my eyes on this.
Speaker 1:But so much of the humor dealt with firefighters not actually going to fight fires. So many medical calls, so many assist police for welfare calls. I would be curious to talk with a firefighter. I don't really know any firefighters as well, but I mean, it's got to be a tiny proportion of the calls that they go to that are actually fires, tiny like they're. I mean, I see them constantly and I never see them at fire. They're rarely in their fire uniforms. Yeah, yeah, god, when there is a fire, there is an actual fire, and here they're like block off traffic or whatever. Get the fuck out of their way. They are professionals. They've been training for this all month. Waiting, just waiting. Is there anything I can do? No, you were so nice to me at my last call. Whatever, yeah, they're in the zone. Direct traffic they're in the zone. God bless, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:How many times did you have you watched some member of the public call in about something trivial that could have been solved? Oh my god, someone decided that the only way to solve the situation is to call men with guns to show up to the most ridiculous situations you could possibly imagine. There's no other solution to this other than calling a bunch of dudes with weapons to show up and solve this problem. For me. You have gotten to a point where this is where you, where you feel comfortable about this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I went to this disturbance call with a buddy, their co-worker, and it was a neighborhood beef. Where we're in an apartment complex, multi multifamily residential downstairs and upstairs were having issues and neither resident. Both of those residents were fairly new to this country and their country of origin was not the same, so English is their second language. They're arguing with each other about noise trash lending agreements Right, about noise trash linting agreements and get things calmed, get things settled. One guy agrees like yeah, I probably don't need to be stomping around on my floor disturbing my downstairs neighbor when I'm mad at him. The other guy's like, yeah, I should probably not go out of my way to put my trash bags upstairs against his front door. Like we can, we can agree to be, we can be really simple, cool.
Speaker 1:And so, as my partner and I are living with partners like they have nothing better to argue about, they have nothing better to worry their day away, like their brain is consumed, their, their, their being, their essence is consumed with hatred towards the other right now, because there's nothing worse in their life that they have to, they have to worry about. And my partner is uh, he's got a lot of family in ukraine. This is a couple of years ago, like right after russia decided to uh, expand some borders. And so our partner is like worrying about his relatives, like his first cousins, his aunts, his uncles, his, his parents's siblings in western ukraine. It's like me and my family have been here for decades doesn't mean that I'm not worried about my family, that I see all the time. Yeah, in an emerging war zone, their neighbors aren't getting mad at each other, they're looking out for each other.
Speaker 1:It's almost like absurdity is a luxury. Uh, yeah, like this ability to react to a completely ridiculous degree is merely just a luxury of our society. It is an indication that we live in a society where you really don't have to worry about anything else. It's like abundance of different types of foods, right, obesity now from a hundred years ago.
Speaker 1:I know I can't speak about this as much as you could, but like, what is the? What is the history of mental health issues as a as as a population in different societies has it? Is there an increase, like does the literature talk about? Oh, there's X percentage of people suffering from these things compared to the 1800s? Yeah, I mean, the issue is not only the diagnosis changes over time, but also you never really know if the disorder is there and we just don't know about it, or something Underreporting, yeah, yeah, like exactly what is playing into the development of it. But that's meaningful questions, right? Are these children, do these children truly suffer from this Mm-hmm? Or do we just not know how to handle them and we're just going to drug them up and make them good little boys and girls, absurdity as a luxury should be your bumper sticker. I think it's fitting.
Speaker 1:It appears to me that there is a, and you have to understand from my perspective as well. Okay, so I come from a field that is as well. Okay, so I come from a field that is, by and large, controlled by leftist ideology, so much so to the point that college I won't say every incident of it, but most college in my field is basically like finishing school for liberals is the way that I look at it. That's not to say that important things aren't taught, but there is a blatant ideology that controls that. To your former field, where there is a very large number of conservatives that work there, first of all, I'm, I guess I'm curious like do you agree with that? Do you think that there's a lot of conservatives that are police? And if so, why is that? I think there are a lot.
Speaker 1:It seems like a disproportionate number of law enforcement Compared to the rest of society. The rest of different jobs yeah Well, certainly different jobs, I mean, especially in comparison to mine. I mean it's 180 difference. It could literally not be any different. But even as far as society goes, in a sense, like both, both professions are dealing with people right. Both professions are requiring the individual to justify their stance on things like they. They need to have an unbiased opinion to make that argument of whatever argument they're making. But personal beliefs, personal preferences, I mean I don't. I do not believe someone's political ideology affects the person in law enforcement.
Speaker 1:The victim, the suspect, could wear uh, I voted for this person in 2008 shirt. Like, yeah, okay, well, did they? If that's the suspect? Like I'm using this as an identifier because somebody said, yeah, the person was wearing, and I voted for this shirt, like, okay, well, that matches the person that I'm wearing. Right, right, it's not going to have any, um, it's not going to take into account of. Is it more likely than not that this person committed this crime? Yeah, so I don't think a bias spills out into that work, as opposed to what I'm thinking is more on your side of the field.
Speaker 1:Like, do you feel like your field is influenced by political uh, by political leanings? Absolutely, a good example of that is the push for social justice is huge. I mean, it's predominant in my field. That is a blatantly political stance. When you say social justice, you do not mean gun ownership rights and second amendment rights. No one means that, right, they mean very, very specific things. I think those in uniform service. They can have their personal beliefs, but when a decision is made to act as hey, here's the new rule. This is how we're following it. You may like it, you may not like it, I don't care. This is what's happening and this is how we're moving forward, like when I think it was don't ask, don't tell got repealed. The marines were the very first branch to put out hey, this got repealed. Nobody's going to do anything negative about this to any of the brothers or sisters in the corps who express whatever belief that is not going to be tolerated. Like they were the very first ones to say hey, this is the new law of the land. Shut the fuck up if you don't like it.
Speaker 1:More recent example uh, was it measure 110 for oregon, decriminalizing user quantity of drugs? Like A lot of good cop work was done. Through the search of small user quantities of drugs. We could find a lot of bad things. We could tie a lot of people to a lot of crimes. Yeah, it's not illegal anymore, don't worry about it. That is terrible. It's not a good call and we saw the effects of that from the last several years. Whether you want to think it's a good thing or a bad thing, you know that's. That's up to you.
Speaker 1:But I knew a lot of people who like a lot of people in uniforms. It was a terrible idea, but this is now the law, okay, cool. Hey, sir, you can't smoke that here. It's legal. Well, it's kind of gray. You're in public, you're in front of a pizza parlor. Go away with that, get out here. Don't use that. No, ma'am, these are needles full of heroin inside your purse. I'm gonna go to jail. I was like nope, actually, you're not. You're not gonna go to jail, but if you keep using this, you are gonna kill yourself. I pray for you. I hope you're doing, you're gonna do well, you're gonna do the right thing, and this is your get out of jail free card. Literally get out of jail free card. Call this number and try to seek counseling, try to seek help and try to get clean. You're not going to arrest me. Like nope, like yeah, I will not disagree.
Speaker 1:There are a lot of conservative leaning people in uniform. Do you think it is disproportionate? Like it's over 50%? I would not be surprised. I would not be surprised. I would be surprised if it was like 80%. Yeah, I don't know. I don't surprised. I would be surprised if it was like 80%. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I'm curious what the numbers would be.
Speaker 1:I've met a lot of people who were left leaning, both military and local law enforcement, a lot of people who were left leaning. You know, we shared a lot of beliefs, because that's why we're doing the job together. Shared a lot of beliefs because that's why we're doing the job together. But a lot of things were specific things that left-leaning people were. This is morally right. And then right-leaning people like this is not morally right. This is morally wrong. They're still gonna do the job together because they have to yeah, they have to rely on each other. You know, I can agree with you on A, b, c, d, but we will never agree on F. Okay, well, fortunately, f doesn't matter in this situation. So let's do our job Right. Okay, cool, let's do that.
Speaker 1:Do you think that conservatives are more likely to be drawn to law enforcement or do you think that the job of law enforcement drives people to adopt more conservative positions? Conservative is values, tradition, self-governing, self-responsibility, liberals, progressive, open to new ideas, maybe not as communal, but more individual. There's some very basic tenets. I guess you could say that we can agree. Yeah, conservative is more traditional where liberal is more progressive, okay. And I think from there, yeah, tradition means following the rules. Color within the lines. Maintain those standards for the community. Progressive might be more. Express yourself if it's not hurting anybody else. Why would you care if my actions are my own? What does it matter what others think? If that's the case, I guess I'm kind of getting around about way. I can't really answer that question.
Speaker 1:People who are in law enforcement believe in rules. They believe in a consistent system, a fair system. Society needs a consistent, fair system to work. If we didn't have that, that's okay. We're not a society of warlords Whoever's the biggest and strongest gets to make the rules. We're a society of rules to protect those smaller, weaker people who don't have a chance.
Speaker 1:Do you think that they have that mindset mindset and that's what leads them to become law enforcement or do you think they get into the? And maybe it's a false dichotomy too? I'm not. I don't mean to present it in that way. Yeah, how do you defend those rules? How do you maintain those rules? How do you maintain that that structure? Through controlled violence, through the threat of violence, threat of violence through tools to include firearms, through necessary tactics to maintain peace?
Speaker 1:A lot of that doesn't sit well with people. Why would you do that that's not fair, that that's just how they are. Like, okay, well, they can be how they are, and mine to themselves, because how they are right now is wrecking Somebody's small business, is preying on somebody's child, is stealing your car, like you are justifying their actions. Why are you justifying their decisions? I don't know if that's a conservative, more of a conservative mindset than a liberal mindset. If that is the case, I would be more conservative. I'm like no, you're the person committing the crime should not be the victim of that crime. Like, oh well, you know, we got to make excuses for this person who's breaking into cars and stealing backpacks because they had a rough childhood and the school was bad and all of these other environmental factors, family issues, what have you? All of this stuff, all of this has created a product and that product sits before us. Who happens to be breaking into cars? Okay, or this person decided to wake up and break into people's cars.
Speaker 1:Law enforcement is not the morality police, not the arbiter of judgment based on somebody's history leading up to that person. You know cops aren't looking at a holistic picture of this individual's past experiences. That make up the person in front of them that got caught beating up his wife. They don't have the capacity or the time frame to be able to make an attempt and understanding to that kind of degree, anyways, I mean, unless it's maybe somebody that you've had multiple contacts with in the past, where you know something a little bit more about their history, or even so, someone can act the exact same way 99 times and that hundredth time you're like you know what.
Speaker 1:I am tired of the cops coming in and telling me to stop yelling when I get drunk and I'm causing a nuisance in my backyard, screaming slurs at the neighborhood kids and throwing things at dogs. This hundredth time I'm going to show them what's up. I'm going to grab this baseball bat and I'm going to tell them that I am tired of this. I'm going to swing it at the first pig's head. Hey, bobby, been here 99 times. Oh shit, he has a bat. Things have changed. Yeah, we can't. We can't stop and think why does he have a bat? Where did this bat come from? Is he going to use the bat? You have to be responsive in the moment to right the situation that you're the context of the situation that you're responding to, for sure, for sure, and it is very easy to armchair quarterback and go. Bobby just had an extra bad day that day because we he got fired because he showed up to work drunk, but it's not his fault. Because he's an addict of alcohol and he's trying to get into treatment, but he didn't get into treatment this month and blah, blah, blah. None of that matters because this guy's about to swing a bat at your head, right?
Speaker 1:Do you want to go through some of these questions on defunding the police? Yeah, sure, I'm curious what your thoughts are. Okay, if you want me to take the devil's advocate position, I can, in order to explain these things better. Yeah, absolutely no. What are your thoughts on the argument that reallocating funds from police to social services would better address the root causes of crime in society? I won't deny that social services would better address the root causes of crime in society. I won't deny that social services are underfunded, for sure. But it would be very interesting to have a group do a study on all the different police agencies, all the different law enforcement departments, and think you know what? These cats over here don't need that much money. We're going to take that.
Speaker 1:You look at any agency and tell that chief, tell that sheriff, you got to work with 20 less what you had last year. Like what? What are you cutting? You're cutting quality by reducing training hours. You're cutting quantity by reducing bodies on the street Officers yeah, you're it. Maybe there's not even money for overtime, so you're forcing the officers.
Speaker 1:You have to decide. Okay, what am I not going to do? What work am I not going to do If I have less to do with? I have fewer beat partners, district partners. I have more obligations, more responsibilities. What am I going to cut? Well, I'm going to cut the less important stuff, so I'm not going to respond to the less important things.
Speaker 1:What's less important, like the worst day of somebody's life is the worst day of somebody's life. If that's because a loved one died in a horrific car crash, okay that that seems reasonable. If life is pretty good, you haven't had a lot of adversity, and you find out that your car got stolen, that's like the worst thing that's ever happened to you. That's the worst thing that's ever happened to you and that is subjective to each person. To a cop, what's worse for today? Somebody's car got stolen. That happens all the time. Somebody died in a wreck. That happens not as often. Where are we going to spend more time. How did the wreck happened? Is there more evidence at the wreck to point to uh crime, like maybe that person's car is being used for something else and we just cops don't know what's more important at this point? I think that could be a bit more objective. It's the person that got their car stolen.
Speaker 1:Nobody's coming. Why is anybody coming to take my report? Why is anybody coming to take my ring footage that I got from my car or from my house? This is how I get to work. My tools of my trade are inside of here. I am the sole breadwinner for my family. This is the worst thing that has happened to us. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Is anybody seriously hurt? I'm dead from it all. We're probably going to put resources to that instead. Yeah, it might be a while. It might be a while. It might be the next day when Portland was dealing with its social justice riots I have questions about those for you too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it got to the point where they did not have enough officers to patrol their fringe areas of the city, so they were inviting other agencies to come on a mutual aid agreement that those other officers would be patrolling and helping out a little bit. Where's the services for those people who live in a less at-risk neighborhood than those who live in more high at-risk spots downtown, those businesses? What happens if those people are victims of crime? Portland police is not going to talk to them. We're still at a point where, if you call 9-1-1, you're going to be on hold for a while, especially in portland.
Speaker 1:I have watched two groups of people, two groups of males, get in a fight. I called 9-1-1 and I'm waiting, and finally one group separates from the other, one's limping along and the dispatcher's like do you see any weapons? No, they're both walking away. All, both groups walking away. Yeah, all groups are walking away. Yeah, all right. Well, if we get a chance, we'll get an officer to come by and check things out, like somebody just got assaulted. This is a degree of assault, mm-hmm. Yeah, we'll get there if we can See you later. Yeah, wow, wow, welcome to Portland. Yeah, so, wow, wow, welcome to portland.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so do social services need more funding? For sure, there's a lot of good for that. And what else is causing crime? It's not just social services are not going to be the only answer to the problem, like you want to look at, like community policing. What else is causing crime? I think that's what the implication that they're saying is. It's because of a lack of social resources that people are committing crimes. So if we just take all the I don't agree with this at all, by the way, but if we take away the money that's funding government agencies like police, just put that into those social services, then that's going gonna solve these problems. So people aren't going to commit crimes of opportunity by taking that backpack at the bus stop if their social services are adequately funded. I think that is the argument that they would make. What is going to stop somebody who already has a mindset of gaining by someone else's ill fortune? How will that stop it?
Speaker 1:Right, you go to the grocery store and you use one of those carts to put your food in. You take the cart to the checkout aisle, you get the bags, you put them in the cart. You take the cart to your car in the parking lot, you load up your vehicle. Do you return the cart or do you just maybe just like leave it in an empty stall next to you? Maybe you think you're good and you just like put it up on one of those islands with those little trees so it doesn't roll into somebody else's car. But you don't take it to the little deposit area. Yeah, there is no advantage, there's no benefit to somebody from placing the cart where it's supposed to be. You don't put a deposit down to use the cart. You don't get some sort of positive social credit score. If you return the cart, no one's going to pat you on the back saying thanks for being a good person. There's no intrinsic value in returning the cart.
Speaker 1:You return the cart because you're a good person or you make excuses like I'm running late. I'll just put it right here. I'm pretty sure it's not going to affect anybody. Uh, you know it's blocking someone's spot, but there are other parking spots. Some of them are farther away, some of them are closer. It's it's going to be else's problem. You're gonna make that justification of whatever it is to not return the cart because in your mind it's okay, because it doesn't affect me anymore, because I'm driving off. I'm leaving this problem to someone else.
Speaker 1:They pay somebody, the store pays somebody to corral all these things, to grab them and bring them back. Why do I need to worry about this car? All right, now magnify that. I got a job. I don't make a lot of money. I really deserve these sneakers. The company makes so much money off of sports advertisements and full price of things. It's not gonna go broke if I take these sneakers. It can even go to food like yeah, my position in life is so bad and so terrible that it's okay if I do this, this shoplifting, or it's okay if I break into this store. It's okay if I do this shoplifting or it's okay if I break into this store. It's okay to break into this house. They're gone. It's a nice house. It's a much nicer house than mine. They're obviously better off than I am. They can afford it. They can handle it.
Speaker 1:Humans who already have that mental disposition to get up in their way in their life will continue to do that. So removing police is not gonna would take away from this. These fundamental problems of people acting anti-socially in the community is what you're saying. People who are committing crimes of opportunity are going to weigh those out with whatever factors that are presented.
Speaker 1:Do I steal that wallet at the coffee shop? Well, no one's around. Someone just left it there and it's empty. I'll take it. What if there's a video surveillance system at the front door, facing inward watching the patrons. So as I walk out I see that my face is on camera. Someone is eventually going to find out that I am the one who took that wallet. Someone wants to tag the side of this 7-eleven. Just throw some graffiti up, it doesn't hurt anybody. It's just a symbol. It's just some art. It's a plain ass wall anyways. Who the fuck cares? But now there's lights outside and it illuminates that wall and it's going to illuminate me and there's a higher chance someone's going to see me do this crime.
Speaker 1:Is it going to deter all crime? Is it going to deter everybody? No, but these little environmental changes will affect other people and slow them down and make them second guess. That thought like a turnpike system for public transportation you go through, you pay your ticket, one click one. You go through, you pay your ticket, one click one person can go through. If there is a chance that somebody's in that booth watching through that one-way glass, the amount of people that are just going to jump over. That reduces dramatically. There's a crime prevention through environmental design. If I put just a little tiny fence around my small ass yard in my cul-de-sac, the chances of somebody crossing that threshold entering my property decreases by just a little bit, and if it reduces the potential for crime by 2%, is it worth it? I would say so. So you're saying that's what police presence in the community does? Police presence as well as community's efforts, all right.
Speaker 1:Nobody deserves to be the victim of any crime. Nobody deserves to be the victim of any crime. Nobody Nobody's asked for it deserves to be the victim of any crime. Nobody, nobody's asked for it. Nobody should be told well, that's what you get. That's not fucking fair. And we should not be surprised if we leave our vehicle doors unlocked and an iPhone sitting on the dashboard in a neighborhood Doesn't matter, good neighborhood, bad neighborhood, doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:That setup has provided an opportunity for someone who may never have ever thought in their mind like I'm not going to go through somebody's car and rummage through shit. I would never do that. Oh my gosh, the door was left open and I see an iphone. No one's going to stop me. No one can prevent this. I'm going to take it like if somebody really wants to take that iPhone and the doors are locked to a car, okay, break the window, take the phone. We can't stop that. If the doors are locked, the doors are even closed. It forces people to no, I might get caught, I might get caught, I'm not going to do it. So little choices that we're able to make I might get caught, I might get caught, I'm not going to do it. So little choices that we're able to make deter those kinds of crimes. So placing those choices in front of potential offenders helps to reduce the likelihood of criminal activity in the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and increased police presence is one of those things that can do that. Yeah, it is another factor, like if you know this is an area where the cops are going to roll around in. Okay, maybe you're going to do your bad stuff somewhere else and you start doing your bad stuff somewhere else. The community sees this. They react by funding a street light to illuminate that area. People are going to see you. People are going to see you doing your bad stuff. You got to go find another spot. Law enforcement alone is not the deterrence of the communities, because law enforcement can't be everywhere at once. Random control it's not the most effective way of deterring crime, but it also is random and if somebody's like I got a chance of doing this, the cops aren't going to find me because they rarely come over here versus it's pretty busy street and I know the cops come around here every now and then. I'm'm going to have to be on my guard or find an easier target, find a softer target.
Speaker 1:If your living room is on the first floor of any sort of structure and the curtains are wide open and mail is stacking up because you didn't stop it, and the lawn is growing and it just appears that no one's home for a while and everyone's on vacation, the lawn is growing and it just appears that no one's home for a while and everyone's on vacation. And you got a really nice TV, video game system, computers out there. It's inside. You deserve to have a reasonable expectation that people should not be coming into your home and the curtains are wide open. Those things, those goods, are exposed to the world. Do you deserve to be a victim of a crime? No, fuck that guy who tries to break in and steal your stuff. That guy knows that your stuff is there because he has a view to it In a criminal, spidey sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what are your thoughts on the argument that reducing police will necessarily decrease cases of police brutality and use of force Because there's less cops to be engaging in police brutality and uses of force. Uses of force. I'd heard this author, I think a psychologist, talk about a study about social media and how it was consumed by certain people. I think it was during like the social justice intensity, and the study asked how many black males, how many African-American males, were unarmed and shot and killed by police in like 2020, 2021 in America, and the average answer was something like a thousand, a thousand, according to the data, according to mandatory fbi reporting statistics. I think the answer is like 12, and so this educated group who's also consuming social media, who ought to know and agree with facts, hard statistics, data science, right science, it's like oh yeah, well, probably about a thousand. The answer is not even a tenth of that fraction of that. So what police brutality are you talking about?
Speaker 1:There are absolutely instances where people get roughed up way beyond what is needed to maintain control. That happens Just like any other profession. Bad things happen and anybody with a cell phone camera can start recording something that's like oh man, do you see that? They just slammed that guy to the ground? How fucked up is that? But that cell phone camera did not catch was whatever happened. I don't know, you don't know, nobody knows, because we're missing the first 30 seconds of that interaction.
Speaker 1:What led up to that? Was it? Was it nothing? Was it just someone going hey, you come here? Oh, you're not going to come over here. I've got a badge and a gun. Listen to me. Nope, you're going on the ground. Okay, that happened, was it? Hey, I gotta talk to you. Whoa, put the knife down, don't swing that fist at me, let go of my gun. Whatever slam on the ground, we don't know.
Speaker 1:That's so much eyewitness account uploaded to twitter or x, formerly known as twitter. What do you want to call it? You know so much. Stuff is okay. This is not journalism. Where is the full story? If the full story says, yeah, this was excessive cool, that person should be held accountable. Law enforcement professionals should be held accountable. And if it wasn't excessive cool, now you've put that law enforcement professional in undue stress and anxiety because they were doing their job and you cried wolf. That happens all too often.
Speaker 1:That kind of raises the question of police body cams as well. What are your thoughts on that? I worked in a secure facility that was always recording my actions four and a half years, okay. So now a camera's going to be on my chest, cool. Did it affect how I acted, interacted? Maybe, initially when I started wearing it, but after a while you kind of forget about it.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of, a lot of old co-workers like we're going to get in so many complaints, we're going to get so many reviews, blah, blah, people are gonna be mad at us. And people were complaining. And then there were reviews. I was like, oh look, the person we were interacting with was acting like a shithead. Yeah, the officer did tell you to fucking shut up because you wouldn't stop yelling and swearing and that's the only way to get you to listen to him. Yeah, is it kind? Is it nice? No, but the person who is cursing like a sailor to begin with isn't a nice and kind person anyways, and they only understand anger, violence, display of power to verbally control, to be verbally controlled. So, okay, we're going to use that. So it helps to give an objective, at least more of an objective viewpoint, and to protect, kind of, all parties involved. Right, like, not only the subject. Also, I mean, you're going to be less inclined, say, if you're a dirty, quote-unquote officer. You're going to be less inclined to perform a dirty action if you know that your body camera is recording you doing something right, and then it protects the officer as well when you get false accusations placed against you.
Speaker 1:And it's not a perfect view, it is not a bird's eye view, it's not an omniscient God's eye watching everything. Of course it could be faced this way, like I am facing, my shoulders are aligned with my feet and I am facing forward in this chair, but I've been turned. My head has been turned 45 degrees to my right. I'm looking more over my right elbow talking to you for who knows how long. So my shoulders are facing forward. The camera is facing forward. The camera hasn't seen shit. Whatever you've been doing, you could have been flipping me off the entire time. You could have grabbed that knife underneath that monitor and started waving it around. The camera facing forward didn't see any of that. It didn't see your facial expressions. It may have heard you starting to breathe loudly, start huffing and puffing. It didn't see you start clenching your fist, checking to see if anybody else is looking before you grab that knife, making the decision to attack me while we conduct this interview.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the camera's in perfect. I remember watching it footage after I'm having to, uh, deploy my patrol rifle. The strap to that rifle covered the camera the entire time other people were looking at when they're pulling their service pistol, for whatever reason. Camera doesn't see anything. It just sees a couple of arms hands in the back end of a gun. The fight's going on. You think the camera's going to catch that? Like you are body to body with a person, you might hear voices, they might be muffled, they might be clear and articulate. Camera's not going to catch that. Yeah, so it's, but at least it's something, though it's something for sure, but it shouldn't be. It is a piece of information Just like we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 1:Right simply because one person says the taliban live here, isis lives here, al-qaeda lives here. Oh, we need to destroy that place right now. That's working off bad intel. Militaries in all of history have dealt with bad intel. You know the civil war generals were making terrible decisions on bad intel up to yeah, we're in iraq. Oh you, you're saying your, your neighbor is al-qaeda. Cool, we'll bag him, interrogate him. No, your neighbor was just a different religious sect than you. You just believed in a different strain of islam and you were smart enough to go to the cia and go. Hey, I got some information for you.
Speaker 1:Like, relying on one piece of information is going to result in inaccuracies. You're not going to go to the car dealership like, oh, the sticker price says it's, uh, twenty thousand dollars. Well, I've got that piece of information, I better give you twenty thousand dollars. Did you do any research beforehand? Well, no, the sticker says twenty thousand dollars. Oh, okay, well, have fun with that. And it seems like that is really what people are doing, especially when it comes to social media posts about perceived injustices being visited upon people of color specifically. Right, that really is what the intent I guess of the public is is to misconstrue intentionally. People are going to see what they want to see in those kinds of statements of passion.
Speaker 1:I have been racially misidentified my entire life. I am almost with a good pair of work boots on. I'm damn near six and a half feet tall. You're a big boy. Yeah, I have been asked if I am part japanese, mediterranean of some sort, both, uh, north and the south, part of that little body of water, african, haitian, dominican republic? Uh, all sorts of just. You're not just a white guy. I have never been asked. Are you part hispanic? Are you part mexican? Do you have parents from central or south america. No one has ever asked me that. Look at my mom, small little hispanic lady whose entire family was from texas before texas was texas, whose entire family was from Texas before Texas was Texas. Never would have guessed it. No one would ever guess it. I don't know how many times. So, with all that to say, I have had people in jail, misidentify me, like hey, are you one of us? Whatever racial group they're looking like, that's one that's none of your business to keep moving.
Speaker 1:And on the patrol side, like you, fucking racist, you white supremacist, piece of shit, people saying this to you yeah, like how dare you do this thing in your uniform? You have no idea who I am. You have no clue who I am, what I made up of, what I have done. Like I am here to investigate a very specific or maybe several different crimes, or maybe I'm not even here. I'm just trying to calm shit down and figure out what happened. Like no, nope, it's just easy calling you a white fascist pig. Yeah, I buddies who are various shades of white, brown, black. Nope, you're a sympathizer of white supremacy and that's why you're wearing the uniform. Uh, you are upholding the narrative and the status quo. You are a uh traitor to your community.
Speaker 1:Community of what I have more in common with the people I live around than the people I look like. My community is where I'm living and I'm not living where you're living yes, not living in your shitty apartment complex. And if you're in a shitty apartment complex and that's the best you're doing, then, god bless, that's awesome. That is the cool thing about crime. I've been in some amazing homes and some filthy, filthy residences For the same crime, for similar crimes, yeah, for the same issues. Mm-hmm, doesn't matter how much money you make, you're a piece of shit. You're still a piece of shit. Transcendence class for sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, second beer, are you ready? Yeah, wow, so this is the boulevard, kansas city. Yes, bourbon, barrel aged quad cheers, torel-aged quad Cheers to you, friend. Ooh, that is barrel-aged, that's quad. Indeed, that's nice. Ooh, yeah, see, this is my kind of Belgian right here.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, there's no banana-y anything on this at all. Yeah, that's a big boy beer. That's really nice. It reminds me of like a barley wine more than anything. Really, it's very barley wine-y. It might as well be wine. It doesn't need bum wine. Yeah, it's good. Oh, I like that a lot. No, it's really tasty. I give it for sure. Three, six, maybe three, seven Out of five. Mm-hmm, I'm very stingy with my ratings. You've had a lot. You've had a few, that's, I've had quite a few. Yeah, yeah, closing down 10 000 now and you're able to track all that? Well, that's a cool for me, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you ever get sad looking for your favorite beer or whatever beer that you're looking for, and on that brewery closed down? That's totally yeah. How often does that happen? Well, unfortunately, more often than not, we lost modern times, which was my favorite brewery here in portland. There's been some big closures recently actually, which is kind of sad. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Uh, I think bursells have actually declined a little bit in america over the last year. I've heard that, but why? It's not that people have stopped drinking, certainly that's. I don't think that's ever going to happen, but I think it is more like a shifting in taste profiles. They're moving either towards things like cider, seltzer yeah, probably that's popular wine, maybe two, I don't know exactly where everybody's going to, and it's not like a precipitous drop, but no, it is a drop. I remember a few years ago, cider was coming in and taking more taps than other breweries were expecting. What do you mean? You're not going to take my three barrels, you're only going to why? You're only going to take two. Yeah, what is hard cider? And now that seltzer's more and more prevalent, yep, all those skinny bitches drinking seltzers, seltzers, yeah, like five percent seltzer.
Speaker 1:I have some questions. I'm just curious about your thoughts on misconceptions about law enforcement. For example, what don't people know about law enforcement that they probably should know? Okay, there's serious and a joke. Oh good, serious and humorous. Humorous would be. Tv is not real. Movies are not real. I mean, it's not like CSI, that part. Oh, my god, I don't know how many times I would have to disappoint somebody like thank you for your shitty ring camera photo of a vehicle that drove by around the same time that you thought your package was stolen. Maybe you could just hit the enhance button. You guys have that at the lab blurry.
Speaker 1:Yes, we are garbage in, garbage out. Yeah, I remember going to someone called like hey, we found a weapon in the street. I'm thinking, oh man, if somebody found a gun and that's that's rough, that's not a good thing. Yeah, okay, let's, let's go check this out. It was a kitchen knife. It was like a steak knife. We found this in the street on our walk. We can point to exactly where it at. Where it was at. This looks like it's been outside several dust.
Speaker 1:It for prints? Yeah, yeah, like, what do you want for this? Like, I think you should take some cardboard, wrap the blade inside that cardboard and safely put it in your garbage can? Uh-huh, you don't, you don't want this for evidence. Evidence for what? Yeah, we just didn't know if there was, like, a crime that occurred and you would need this, like you know as much as I do. Thank you, no, even if I did want it for evidence, how did you pick it up? Oh, with your hands, technology can do some really cool things. I got to do some really cool things to indicate people and, like, no man, the evidence shows you were using this credit card. It's right there. Yeah, oh, oh, oh, oh. Yeah, wasn't your credit card. It was stolen. No, you're real on video. Yeah, okay, maybe, maybe you're not getting charged with the theft of the credit card. How about the usage of this stolen like? I guess that would be the humorous part of it. Binge watching law and order does not make you a trial and a serious part would be okay.
Speaker 1:Two things one, as with everything in life, things are shades of gray. Intent plays a big factor in so many things. He was clearly harassing me because I am harmed by his foul words. It struck my ears. According to the state definition of harassment, you are not a victim of such. No, I was harassed. He even said it again on Facebook. No, that does not count. No, this is what harassment is. This is what theft is. It's like you are not robbed. You are a victim of theft. You are not robbed. No, I know what I know. This is robbery. Was it taken by force from you? What? What do you mean? This was taken overnight. Nobody knows who did it. This was theft. This was not robbery.
Speaker 1:There's varying levels of that. Not everything is a crime and there's a lot more autonomy in the decision-making process that to the officer in the field. So many people have this preconceived notion of military police just being these jackboots, thugs who just go out. They've got one purpose and they're unthinking and unwavering. Some of the smartest people I've ever met in my life are everyday street cops. Just through their reasoning, their logic, the calmness in which they approach a problem, they're some great thinkers, great minds, just hanging out in this profession, loving it, having a good time. Yeah, I've met several of them, you included. Yeah, you make a brown man blush at a tactical level for the military.
Speaker 1:You don't want the service members questioning orders in life or death situations. The nothing things that need to get done right now won't get done. Hey, you got to go take that hill. Can we schedule a zoom conference to talk about this first? Because I've got some ideas, I'll make a. I'll make a powerpoint. Talk about this first. Because I've got some ideas, I'll make a. I'll make a powerpoint. Talk about this. You've got like three seconds to tell me why you can't take that hill. There's a bunch of ieds right there. I'll get blown up. Okay, well, I need, I need some sort of elevation. Oh, cool, I'll go over on that building. Awesome, make it happen, figure it out.
Speaker 1:Solving problems at the lowest level same with some of any other law enforcement uniform service. It's not just like this blind, absolute devotion to order. Like law says this we've got to do this. I will do like. There are absolutely some things that have to be carried out because of certain circumstances, so much of it can be answered with the phrase it depends, which isn't the answer because it can't be answered.
Speaker 1:An example from my day-to-day is that I am consistently shocked at how few times I have been with officers when they've pulled over traffic and not given a ticket. It is the vast majority of times oh yeah, that we pull people over it's way over 50 that they will never ever ticket someone. I think I was something like five to one. Yeah, it's crazy. And that one time out of those six total, it was like hey, you ran the red light and somebody was walking in the sidewalk they had to stop so they wouldn't get hit by you. Or the person talked themselves into the ticket, like, hey, this is what happened, is it? Are you justified in getting a ticket? Yeah, I'm not gonna probably say that in the in the speech.
Speaker 1:It more for education, more for awareness. And half the time people are speeding on a certain highway, they're like well, I thought it was 65. I'm like, no, this is 55. It's like well, I was only going five miles over. No, you were going 15 over. Like, not the worst thing in the world, still Not really acceptable. So this is what's up. Oh, okay, well, thanks, thanks for telling me about like, yeah, be safe, have a better day. You just drive on. Yeah, cool. So much of it is education. What's what's the point of a ticket? It is a financial incentive for you to not do it again. I'm just even just getting pulled over, like shit.
Speaker 1:My driving was so erroneous that it was bringing the attention of law enforcement upon me. I should probably straighten up. People are kind of swerving into the bike lane like roll up to them. They're so oblivious, they're so into their own world. They have no idea that I'm watching them text and drive. They got to a point where I was just flipping the horn a little bit if no one else was around and startling people at stoplights. I'm watching you scroll on Facebook. I saw you like multiple things on Instagram. Yeah, you had no idea I was here. It's not like I'm hiding. I'm in this giant white SUV with all sorts of markings. Oh shit, the cops are here. The cops have been here, buddy. They've been here since you've been liking these inappropriate photos that you shouldn't be looking at, with your girlfriend sitting in the passenger seat, and is the driver going to be using their cell phone again for a while? Probably not, so maybe the next light after you guys turn off. You know you can only do so much.
Speaker 1:So we talked about what people don't know about law enforcement. What should people know about law enforcement? Your participation in the process can influence our level of interest. Explain that more. If you're calling the cops and you want to report something, okay, we have some questions for you. Please explain some of these questions. I don't have time for this. You just just just just go arrest him like nope.
Speaker 1:You claim that your neighbor poisoned your dog. I'm gonna have some questions. Why do you think this? Tell me about this history. Has your neighbor threatened you with this? Do you let your dog out on that side, like I don know? There will be a battery of questions. No, I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. Okay, I don't have enough to go off of or anything. This is not the 1600s in Salem, massachusetts. I need a little more to go off of it. Cast a spell on me. Stone them to death, I got better. Huh, pass the spell on me. Stone them to death, I got better.
Speaker 1:What do people think that they know about law enforcement? That they really don't know at all? Oh man, the law Kind of goes back to the no. I read this on the internet. When I hear someone like, I know my rights, that is an indication that you are prepared to have an argument. Maybe you are educated about it, maybe you did spend some time to understand the nuances of certain things. But law is so big when lawyers go and get their education, go and get their education there's such a wide breadth of knowledge and into options, disciplines, uh, specialties I guess you'd say criminal law is just so small compared to that fraction of that giant shelf of law books.
Speaker 1:What you're describing maybe against the law, I don't know, I didn't go to law school. But it's not a crime. Like, yeah, she sounds like a jerk. Still not a crime, not illegal. You get that a lot with what this person is. They're crazy. She sounds like a jerk. Still not a crime. Yeah, not illegal. Yep, you get that a lot with what this person is they're crazy. That doesn't work. The best answer although you can't say it in this way, but it is true is it's not illegal to be crazy. No, no, it's not illegal. You can be crazy. There's a lot of people that are crazy. Go to downtown Portland, you will. There's a lot of people that are crazy. Go to downtown portland. You will see hordes of zombie looking people that are crazy and on drugs everywhere.
Speaker 1:There was a guy who's sitting outside of a restaurant like a patio and just causing a scene and the restaurant staff's like he doesn't want to order anything, he just wants to yell at people. We don't want him here. Okay, restaurant has that uh authority to do that trespass. Show up, hey, you're not allowed to be here. I'm in public, I can do what I want. Actually, you're not. You're clearly inside this restaurant's property. Fuck you, I've already killed you in my dreams, you peruvian bitch.
Speaker 1:There's another one. Yeah, I forgot about that. Like that was a very distinct quote. That's a little bit closer. Actually, that was a distinct quote that I had to put in the report. I was like, yeah, I recognized the individual because of the orange cat shirt he was wearing, because I had dealt with him three hours prior up the street. Therefore, I'd already had identified him. Yeah, he called me a Peruvian bitch and he told me that he had already killed me in his sleep before he agreed to walk off, yelling additional profanities. I asked him to go and he left Not illegal, but according to some people. I was harassed. Was he white? I don't know. That's a racial crime. That's a hate crime Against a person of color. Oh yeah, yeah, quite possibly. So you could have got him, could have hooked him. You know he did what I asked and the report was that much shorter, so I'll be okay with not pressing charges.
Speaker 1:There's one that people should know my roommate is a terrible person. He is eating all my food. He's destroying my property. Is it your property or is it shared property? Oh well, if it's my TV in the living room, like okay, now we gotta go down this path. I gotta worry like the dreaded word residency. Yeah, resident, like okay, it teaches everything. Yeah, it's like this is my, my, uh, my husband is taking these things like okay. So you, you say that these headphones are yours. Well, I gave them to him as a gift. But I gave them to him. I paid for him. How long you been married? How long when'd you give them to? Like, this is nuances. Nuances if it's completely like it's a stranger or a known acquaintance, whatever. It's not our domestic partner, whatever.
Speaker 1:I don't want to get him in trouble, I don't want to press charges, I just. I just want him to know that what he did was bad. Like he obviously doesn't care, like I, so you could have told him that before we showed up. Yeah, if that's all you wanted to do, you could have done that yourself. Yeah, like I am doing paperwork without solving this problem because we have really good crimes like this is an arrestable offense, whatever the individual has done.
Speaker 1:But if the victim's like I don't want to participate in the criminal justice process, I will not show up to court to testify that she, whoever did this thing. Okay, well then, we're not gonna be able to arrest this person. That goes with the. I just want them to get help. Right, I don't want them to get arrested, I just want them to get help. Okay, it's like, well, we can't force them to get. What do you think I'm gonna do? You, I'm going to kidnap this person from the road and shove them into the back of the vehicle and then drive them to some magical treatment facility that's going to lock them up against their will and force them Like what do you think is going to happen here? No, that's not. No, that's not how the world works. Like, you are bleeding from the nose. I don't want to get them in trouble. Okay, well, I'm going to leave. You're going to leave them in my neighborhood. You don't want them to be arrested. You're actually going to take them somewhere else. Hey, buddy, you want me to drop you off a couple of blocks away from here? Piss off. I guess he doesn't want to go with me either. Sorry, 0 for 2. Yeah, I guess he doesn't want to go with me either. Sorry, 0 for 2. Yeah, what do you expect? So, yeah, if people choose to not want to participate, they don't want that person arrested, don't be surprised if that person returns and continues to cause trouble for you. Give them loose and muffin. He's going to come back for the rest of that stereo.
Speaker 1:That's a great mixed analogy. It totally makes sense. Why do you think that some racial or ethnic minorities disproportionately commit more crimes? I think that's where I will agree with the social justice. Uh, what'd you say? Um argument in favor of? They came from bad upbringing, they came from a bad community, they didn't have strong role models, they had unstable family life, everything, like you can guess a list of all the things that has put this person at a disadvantage to the otherwise law-abiding peers. And if you don't feel like the system is working for you because you always find yourself down and out. There's no reason to feel like the rules apply to you. It goes back to that. This person's obviously doing better than me. Life has been rough. I'm not killing him.
Speaker 1:If I take their magma or this person disrespected me. I can't stand this. I can't stand for this. My peers are with me. I have very little in my life. Respect is something that I do have that I can force upon other people, and if this individual in public or a known acquaintance, known associate, has disrespected me, if I don't retaliate like for like or more than then, I will be seen as weak and if I'm seen as as weak, others will come and pray after me. I have to do something about this slight. I have to do something about this disrespect. Is that physical violence? Probably so it could. It could be a skewed vision of culture of uh, what is good, what is right?
Speaker 1:Gangs. I am a man. I am perceived as masculine because of the actions that I commit, and if I don't maintain this code, this very unique moral obligation to our creed, then I will be cast out. This is my tribe, this is my group, this is my clique, this is my gang, this is my family, and if I don't follow along with the rules and the customs that have been established I'm sure that's exactly what they're fucking saying in their head Then I will be cast aside and I'll be a stray. I'll be ostracized and I am weaker by myself out in the world. So that's why I had to punch him in the face, cause he said my gang's colors were stupid, and he said it in public where other people could hear it.
Speaker 1:If I don't defend my gang's colors, that other people will think that we are weak. Does that make sense to me? Or you? In a weird mental gymnastic kind of way, sure Are you going to get in a fight Because I said hey, your gray Nike shirt is stupid and fuck you for wearing it. Nike sucks is stupid and fuck you for wearing it. Nike sucks now. Now you have to fight me for your honor, for your history, for everything you stand for. It's just as dumb. The issues are just as dumb.
Speaker 1:Is that because people who are in gangs are more minority ethnic? What have yous I mean? You know there are a lot of white majority people who are getting in all sorts of shitty trouble in their own gangs as well. It is a combination of upbringing and the environment that they're in, whoever they are, for anything that just doesn't allow someone to grow up and be a part of a normal society, where you live out in the middle of the woods, dodging your taxes and threatening any law enforcement, any governmental agency that comes on your property, or live in the impoverished part of a impoverished neighborhood and impoverished city or anywhere in between.
Speaker 1:Oh, what do you think? I think that culture plays the biggest part in it. We live in a very tribalized society, even though people don't like to admit that, a very segregated society in a wide variety of ways, not just racially racially, yes, but politically, class wise, and that if you have a culture that extols the virtues of misogyny and criminality and drug use, prostitution, broken families, it should not be terribly shocking when members of that culture or community abide by those social expectations and norms that are set upon them by popular media. You're out to get yours and also you got to defend where you came from. I think the tribal something is huge.
Speaker 1:There's always going to be a clique, a class Day shift versus night shift, working on patrol versus working in the jail, law enforcement versus government social services. They all get paid by the same local government entity. They all get paid by the same local government entity. Inner organizational conflict comes from what? Scarcity of resources, disagreement on how to attain official goals. Operational tactics are used that are frowned upon by the other side.
Speaker 1:If the city council has propped up a office to solve problems like crime in a neighborhood or disenfranchised youth, and that money is coming from somewhere else, whatever office, that is somewhere else. Whether it's law enforcement, transportation, who cares? No, the problem to solve this is more gyms and pools, it's more parks, recreational spaces, it's more libraries, it's whatever pot of money that you're taking it from. That you're they're going to argue the hardest. But that government entity, that all seeing government entities, official goals, is to make life better for its community. So it's those inner groups. Yeah, the inner groups are going to be arguing about that. So it'd be silly to think that we wouldn't act like that outside of those organizations. What are you doing? Like taking care of myself? It's like at the expense of what? Who cares? All right, there's the difference. Here's where we start diverging from what is good, what is right, what is moral.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of that political angst is a lack of an ability to agree on some very basic principles of this is unacceptable. Well, no, that's a matter of difference. That's a matter of opinion that goes on both sides of the aisle. Yeah, no, I would agree with that, and it makes it even worse so when the government is co-opted by specific political elements that force their views or use. Legal recourse to redirect norms and expectations towards whatever their political ideology dictates is essential. Are you talking about 2022 or 2018? It could be both. It could be both. Yeah, yeah, it could be. It could be either. Yeah, it could be either. That was a problem. The co-opting of the government by political entities is detrimental when it's controlled by a political cabal. That's a problem.
Speaker 1:I had read some popular history about the presidency slowly gaining more and more power with each passing administration and congress's power eroding a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. So everyone can be focused on oh, nothing gets solved in congress. Now that I did 20 years ago, like we have never had so few legislation bills passed, yeah, meanwhile, like the president's 30 years ago, could enact something. That's like oh my gosh, what are we doing then 25 years ago? It's wait, we're going to what, what? And then, 15 years ago, well, yeah, I guess it would make sense that the president could look at our unit, wait, hold on and just it just keeps going to the point where the president can kind of do whatever they want quietly. There's, yeah, ways that you can certainly manipulate the system in your favor.
Speaker 1:It's especially bad when you if you get, for example, the media on your side to act as a propaganda wing for your to push a narrative of, yeah, of a thousand unarmed african-american people dying at the hands of police brutality. Statistically, that is not the case. You know, it's really hard. I actually was looking up some of these numbers last night and that the number of blacks unarmed killed by law enforcement is virtually impossible to find in google. It's not easy by any means. You can find the number of blacks killed by police, which is a little bit in debate, but it's around 250. It's anywhere from like 229 to 290. What about whites? You find that number too. Those aren't the colors that matter, though in America Sorry, it's a brown person. The number of blacks killed by police 2023. Let's take the guardians numbers, because it's a brown person. The number of blacks killed by police 2023. Let's take the guardians numbers, because it's the highest number and they're super, super liberal, right? So if anyone's gonna like skew it in one direction, it's gonna be them. 290, right? So 290, okay, black people killed. That, what's the lowest number? But what do you mean if that's the highest? If the Guardian's saying that, what would be like a Statista's got 229. Okay, okay, yeah, so the number of blacks that were murdered I don't have 2023 numbers, but 2022, closest right. How many blacks were murdered, not by police? It could include that, but like blacks killing other blacks, white people killing blacks, whatever, it's just black people getting killed, violent, unalived action. Ten and a half thousand Blacks killed by police in 2023 is 290. So let's say that those, let's assume that the numbers are relatively equivalent. Let's assume that in 2023, black murders are similar to that, similar to the ten and a half thousand. Yeah, enforcement. So, proportionally, when you think of blacks being killed and, for example, like news stories representing that, what comes to mind first, more than anything else, it is for sure the three percent that died at the hands of law enforcement, as opposed to the 97%, the majority of which were killed by black-on-black crime. Just like any violent car crash statistics airplane malfunction, deaths, gun violence. Look at gun violence numbers, like how many people died by the hands of firearms in america. Those numbers are often skewed by the media as well because they include, um, firearm suicides. Yeah, that's, that's what I'm saying, just not even being the same thing like suicide. Awful, regardless of how you go. Yeah, why is that number being included? What is the purpose for that number? Too inflated, too intentionally inflated? Is that violent murder? It's violent. Sure, it's self-murder it is. Yeah, it's self-murder, it is. Yeah, that is very easily arguably not the same thing as one person, in an act of passion or desperation or just wanton violence, slaughtering another human being with a firearm. They're completely different. What's the number one choice of suicide? Was it South Korea, beijing, some city, some Southeast Asian city with a lot of tall buildings, a lot of jumping? One of these cities is just yeah, this is how you go out, it's the easiest, it's the most accessible, it's very guaranteed versus many other uh options. Well, especially if you're restricted to firearm access, for example, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, brutal way to go. I wonder if they include those numbers in brutal, violent deaths. Well, I see what you're saying. Yeah, would that? Would that be considered a murder. I seriously doubt that that would fall within that category, isn't that the same? Well, and in those countries they don't have the same political arguments that we do over there. Hard to argue for gun rights when you don't have any in your country. So, after talking about all these things, do you, do you have anything that you would do differently? Regrets when it comes to your history of being in law enforcement. I would have gone slower. I wouldn't have been so anxious to do so many cool things as soon as possible. I think that helped create burnout. Your success early on is measured by your intensity, but your success over the long term is measured by your consistency. For anything Otherwise, as long as you get burned out, whatever hobby, job, I'm trying to be more mindful of, mindful of the time that I have. You are now I am left the field. I never had a day where I woke up like, ah, shit, I gotta go to work. I never had that day. Like there'd be times like I can't believe I'm awake right now, but it was never. Now I have to go. Like people have bad days at work. Yeah, I totally had bad days at work. I never started the day people can call me. I never started the day thinking I really don't want to do this. Um, it's great, same way. Yeah, that's one of the ways that I know that this is what I want to do, because this is the first job I've ever had where I've not felt that way and I let myself give up a lot of stuff. I let a lot of my own time pass like justifying, like no, no, I'm gonna say no to this. I'm gonna not do that. I'm gonna not try. It's easier to stay at home, it's easier to chill out, it's easier to push off this project. I I do a lot of hard stuff. I don't need to do any more hard stuff in my off time, my off days, my off, whatever the burnout that you talked about before, yeah, I'm not making up for it. I am not getting paid to shoot guns and practice and call it training, and I left work a couple hours early today. I'll make up for it tomorrow on my weekend. But it's fluid. If I'm able to do that, I'm able to have my responsibilities and take care of them. If I do it fast, if I do what I'm supposed to do well, I got some time to play, some time to enjoy. If I need to switch things up, I can dictate that to my schedule. I can manipulate my time. There's a lot of power to that. There's a lot of power to that. There's a lot, of a lot of satisfaction, a lot of outside work satisfaction to that. Yeah, it's not like I. I don't hate my job right now. I don't not like my job right now. I'm very fine, I'm very happy. Yeah, it's pretty easy. When I've been dealing with a lot of emergency related issues and people at the office, they might get spun up like, ah, is somebody actually dying? Oh no, let's calm down, let's chill out. Let's talk about this. Sometimes I'm worried that I'm getting too soft. I got to get back into jiu-jitsu. You can always fight man. Yeah, back into jiu-jitsu. You can always fight man. Do you have any? Put all of your reliance on one system and that system doesn't work. Where does that leave you? I can keep that really vague or be very specific, like if you are out in public and you're just assuming that nothing bad will happen to you because you're in a society with rules and laws, what happens if somebody chooses to break those? Yeah, learn how to take care of yourself and others. No, cpr, it's not hard to maintain. Yeah, you don't have to go through the class to get the card, to get the job as the lifeguard of the pool, but just being aware of basic life-saving skills, not be afraid of hey, this is, this is a traumatic event and we need to apply a tourniquet to someone's leg. Oh, I know that I can use a belt because I've been familiarized with this. Well, I told you earlier and I totally meant it that you know I'm glad you're in a good place now and I miss you. I know other people miss you. It's kind of weird because we've known each other for years now at this point and I've relied on you to ensure my safety in multiple situations. I've never considered that. I always try and be mindful of that. You know that my life has been in your hands multiple times and I've never, ever doubted your capacity or willingness or your engagement or anything like that. You're missed and appreciated everything that you've done. If there's one thing that I do worry about is a a legacy of sorts, I guess you could say, or a reputation, after all the that you just talked about, like who the cares everybody at the last job that I just worked at the shit that we just talked about, like who the fuck cares everybody? At the last job that I just worked at, fuck that guy. He was lazy. Nobody liked him. That's not gonna. That should not affect me. But every now and then I do worry, like does somebody think that I didn't uphold my end of the bargain? But that was one thing that would worry me. It wasn't the shit that you go through every day, it was worrying about my co-workers perception. Do they think they can trust me? Because if they can't trust me, they're not going to be able to do their job. If I can't trust them, I'm not going to be able to do my job. I'm just too worried about myself. Yeah, trust is essential in a job like that, for sure. When you're reliant upon other people for your safety is essential in a job like that, for sure. When you're reliant upon other people for your safety, yeah, I think so much emotion can get wrapped up in this profession because of that you. You have heard enough people talk where the lazy, the slackers, those phoning it in like nobody wants to work with them, nobody wants to show up on a call again. Nobody trusts them. Their safety, yeah, nobody trusts them with anything, and that part meant so much to me because that's that, that that tribe, that that environment. It can cause someone to really invest everything to make sure that that mission gets taken care of, that everyone's safe, that everyone's good. When you rely on somebody like that, when you're putting your faith, your trust, your life into their hands, it creates a certain bond and it's very apparent when people don't have that with others. Yeah, well, you're the kind of person I know that it is very easy for you I don't know if you recognize that, but it's very easy for you to form bonds and meaningful relationships with other people, work-wise and otherwise. I think from my personal experience I have whatever you're curious or cautious about from your legacy, from everything I've ever experienced, I have never once had somebody speak disparagingly of you or anything that you've done, and I think that's a testament to the kind of person that you are and the kind of law enforcement officer that you were. I mean it just speaks to your character more than anything else, like who you are as a human being. So I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you. It means a lot to me that you were willing to come out and talk about these things and delve into it. I feel fortunate and almost annoyed that it's taken so long to get to know you to this personal level. Like annoyed, like I should Fuck. I've like missed out on having a good friend for all. You know like I do this cool for a long time, but I feel very privileged to be in a position where I consider you a friend I'm assuming you consider me a friend and that just really means a lot to me. I'm looking forward to getting to know you more and continuing to foster a good relationship with you, because you're a great dude. All right, thank you again. Thank you to my friend that allowed me to interview him for so long and for his thoughtful, intelligent and insightful discussion regarding his career in law enforcement. Thanks for listening and I can't wait to talk to you all again soon. Did it record when I was talking about fairy porn? No, that's the outtake, but we can do a whole. We can do a whole thing on fairy porn if you want to.