Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a public affairs special focusing on the biggest issues impacting you. This week. Here's Ryan Gorman. Thanks so much for joining us here on iHeartRadio Communities. I'm Ryan Gorman, and we have a few very important conversations lined up for you. Ian just a bit, we're going to
talk to two organizations, Onward Ops and the pen Fed Foundation. We're doing vital work helping veterans with their transition back into civilian life, so please stick around for that conversation right now, though, to get things started, let me bring in Bill Alexander, the CEO of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial
Fund. In a few weeks during National Police Week, fallen law enforcement officers from across the country are going to be honored during the thirty sixth annual Candlelight Vigil in Washington, DC. You can learn more about all of this at nl EOMF dot org. Again, that's nl EOMF dot org. Bill, thank you so much for coming on the show. And for those who aren't familiar with the work your organization does, can you give us an overview?
Ran Firs, thank you, Thank you for taking a few minutes of your time here to help tell the story of American law enforcement and the men and women who die in the line of duty. So you're absolutely correct. Police Week is very fast approaching. It's generally surrounding the date of May fifteenth, which is Peace Officers Memorial Day, and that is very very symbolic for everyone
who has been and continues to be in the profession. I myself retired two years ago from law enforcement and I joined this very unique, in my mind, key organization started in nineteen eighty four by an Act of Congress which allowed for the collection of monies to ultimately design and then build what is now the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial right here in the heart of DC. Every single one of those dollars donated by individuals and some degree corporate partners from across the
country. The memorial was built and continues to exist entirely without a single dollar of local, state, federal money. It has all been donated by men and women from across the country, and the memorial now stands again in the heart of Washington, DC, and I think appropriately memorializes honors, remembers the men and women in US law enforcement who have served in that capacity and ultimately
been injured and killed as a result of that work. And right now today we are in the process of engraving an additional two hundred and eighty two names, and once that is complete tomorrow, we will then have more than twenty four thousand names, the names of heroes, every single one, but heroes who have died in service of us are of their community, of our country, our democracy. Now, as part of the work you do, you cover three different areas. You have the memorial, you have a museum,
and then you focus on officer safety and wellness. Correct, that is absolutely correct. So the memorial is sort of the keystone of our organization. It is the place where we again honor the fall and honor the men women who have died in the line of duty. We also have right here in DC, right next to the memorial is a world class museum where we try to
tell the story of American law enforcement. And it's a place where visitors can come and sort of metaphorically walk in the shoes of a man or woman in uniform, and I might argue, really get a sense of how powerful even a single police officer can be. And of course I would argue, is in the communities that they're serving. And our third and final pillars, what
we refer to as officer safety and wellness. It's where we as an organization try to impart take some of the data related to those line of duty dust that we honor on the memorial. That really does give us a window into the how, where why men and women in uniform are facing too often tragic and fatal outcomes, and then take that data and use it in a way to craft, create, amend, perhaps edit or push out best practices and programs from across the country in an effort to make it safer for the men
and women who are doing the job. We use the phrase here to try to keep names off of the wall in reference to our very safe walls here. I want to step through each of those for a moment, and let's start with the memorial. What is the process like for getting names added to
that? Sure so every single year, of course, tragically in the hundreds historically, there are men and women who die in the line of duty, and the agencies where those men and women work basically submit to us a relatively in depth case packet which includes all of the details that are known to the agency in terms of how, where, why the officer was working, and
ultimately a sustain and injury which led to their death. And so we take all of that information and we packaged it together, and then that information is presented to what we internally refer to as the Names Committee, made up of active or retired police officers and a number of our board members, and they vet every single one of those cases to ensure that it meets our very strict criteria to ensure that the person that we are honoring was in fact employed by
a law enforcement agency, was in fact doing law enforcement related work at the time time that they suffered that injury and subsequently died. So assuming that the case makes it through the Names Committee and has ultimately improved, then we add those names to a continuing queue of names a waiting to be placed on the memorial. And then every spring we begin the engraving process historically right in early or mid May, to be added to again our very sacred memorial walls.
And we are in that process right now again, adding two hundred and eighty two total names to what was twenty three seven hundred and eighty five and will now number over twenty four thousand in your experience. How meaningful is all of this to the families and the friends and the departments of those who have fallen. You know, it's really really difficult to put into words just how meaningful
to see that name etched and inscribed on this granite stone. Is I mentioned before, I myself retired from law enforcement about two years ago to take a role here. During my twenty five years of service with the department just outside of DC, sixteen of my peers, about twelve of whom I knew personally to varying degrees. So I often tell that story to visitors who come here, And I don't say to make the story about me, but I do
use it as an example. I personally am not unique. Almost every single police officer I know knows someone directly whose name is on our very sacred walls. So even a single loss of life in the law enforcement profession, I would argue as a spider web or a shattering effect across the broad law enforcement community that is really really difficult for people outside of law enforcement to really understand.
And it's not just the law enforcement community. I might also argue that even a single death of a police officer, that life, that contribution. That profession is something more than say, a single thread in the fabric of the community in which they live and serve, and to pull away that one thread is causing much more damage and much more heartache and much more grief than
maybe a single thread might otherwise represent. And you know, these walls here mean absolutely everything, not just to the profession, not just to the coworkers, but certainly to the families. Almost every single day I will see someone out looking at the walls, looking for a specific name, looking for their
family member. But certainly during Police Week, when literally tens of thousands of people from across the country and really around the world come to stand here, you can see that this is more than just stone and grass and trees and
statuary. There is something about this place, about this space, which allows, to some degree, I think, some level of healing, some level of catharsis, but also a feeling of redemption and not joy, but certainly recognizing the profession in which these men and women dedicated their lives, and that they gave their lives in service of something greater again their community, this country, and our democers. I'm Ryan Gorman, joined now by Bill Alexander CEO
of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. You can learn more and support the work they do so at nl EOMF dot org. You also give out awards throughout the course of the year. Tell us about that, sure, well. We have two sets of awards. One is our recurring monthly Officer of the Month award, where we try to highlight a story about law enforcement
officers doing the right thing, which so often they are doing. They are in fact out there serving us, finding ways to make our community safer, oftentimes intervening with their own lives to help make us in our community safe, and we try to find those stories and highlight them because unfortunately, far too often the media overlooks those stories, and we try to not only celebrate their heroic actions, but also celebrate the times in which they have done something to
i might say, humanize the professional law enforcement profession, to show that the men and women in uniform are the same as everyone else, they just have a very unique job. So we have Officer of the Month awards that we
do again those monthly. We also have three major Tentpole awards presented and ultimately awarded by our board, and those are an annual Distinguished Service Award, something specific to law enforcement, a Lifetime Achievement Award again something specific to law enforcement, and an Excellence and Media Award, again something specific to law enforcement, where we try to find those really exemplar stories across the nation, for people
who have contributed in a meaningful way to the profession or to law enforcement generally, or perhaps to some segment of our continuing conversation about law enforcement and interfacing with the communities which law enforcement is serving. Finding some way to honor those men and women who are moving the profession forward. Now, let's get to the museum. Tell us about what people can expect to are there in person, and also are there any options available online for those who can make it.
Yeah, ironically, we actually are working with LAKA right now to try to They have done a three D imaging of the interior the museum and we're trying to figure out a way to get that to be publicly accessible. But right now, of course, we do have some sort of still photography, and there are a very few number of videos both on our YouTube page and on our main web page, which you've referenced already, but it's pretty difficult to really get a sense of the inside of this really, I might argue
world class museum. I mean, it really does just an amazing job of telling that story of American law enforcement across the broad stretch of US history over the last two hundred and fifty years, and it really tells the story in a way which I think many people in the country are completely unaware that the stories that you see and hear here you are really unlikely to see or hear anywhere else. And there are stories that really do exemplify the good that law
enforcement has done and is doing. You know, I am a very strong proponent of the idea that law enforcement has been and continues to be just an overwhelming force for good for our country. Not that men and women in uniform can't and don't make mistakes, not that very rarely, thankfully, men and
women in uniform occasionally commit criminal as. The reality is is that the eight hundred thousand plus men and women in uniform today are out there doing the right things for the right reasons, and we try to find and highlight those stories across the last two hundred and fifty years to really give people a sense of how law enforcement has made our society and our country much much better than it otherwise would have been, and that is what they will find here at the
museum. I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by Bill Alexander, CEO of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. You can learn more at nl EOMF dot org.
Finally, let's get to officer safety and Wellness. Tell us about that part of your program well again, officers are our officer safety and Wellness pillars where we again try to take some of that data related to the line of duty deaths and we try to create and push out programs which we hope will make it safer for the men and women who are out there doing the job.
A lot of that focuses on the major tentpole areas where men and women do face tragic outcomes and fatal outcomes out there on the streets, and those are largely centered on traffic related fatalities and firearms related fatalities. Those are sort of generic terms that to some degree really pull you away from the reality of
being out there on the streets. But you know, every single year plus or minus fifty to seventy men and women are out on our roadways and they get struck by a car and are killed also equally, every single year, fifty to seventy men and women are out there doing the jobs and they are shot and killed. Of course, there's another word for that, that's murdered. So many of our men and women in uniform are out there trying to protect the populace and as they're doing so, they are shot and killed.
And again I think that is murdered. The reality is, even though we do report those numbers of deaths, which do average about fifty every single year over the last ten years, that figure is really masking the true what I might say is the true danger for the men and women doing the job. Our friends and partners over at the Paternal or Replice just released their annual report a couple months ago for the end of twenty twenty three, and almost four
hundred police officers were shot and actually struck in twenty twenty three. And when I say shot, I mean the suspect shot of them and then the officer was struck. Now, of course, just over forty of those ultimately died from those wounds, but still that is a staggering number, and it's the highest number that the FOP has ever tracked since they began recording data, and they have more than fifty years worth of data, So it really does go
to show how increasingly dangerous the conditions are out on the street. And I think the real reason that we don't have even higher numbers of deaths is because of improving technology on the ballistic resistant front, products made by companies like DuPont. These increasingly light and more sustainable fabrics that have the ability to have higher
stopping power for what's coming in towards police officers. And also there's just no question that the medical technology continues to advance, thankfully in a good way, that trauma care continues to advance, and it is in fact saving the lives
of many of these men and women who are shot and struck. Another starting fact is is that that figure of almost four hundred does not account for the number of times that police officers are shot at but the suspect or suspects miss, so it really is I think I could make a very very strong case that the conditions out on the roads for the men and women doing this very very tough job are increasingly dangerous and to a large degree masked by the number
of officers who actually die by virtue of the ones who are saved either through ballistic or technology or just improve traumacare. And finally, with National Police Week just a few weeks away, and of course your thirty sixth annual Candilelight Vigil in Washington, DC, can you describe what everyone who attends can expect. Then, well, first, anyone who is hearing this, I cannot encourage you enough. Please come to a candlelight vigil. If you can't make it
this year, then come next year. It is every May thirteenth. It is open to the public. It is on the National Mall right in the heart of Washington, DC. Every single year we have upwards of forty thousand people attend, and it is it is really really difficult to put into the words the raw emotion, just the tangible feeling of grief, sorrow again redemption to some degree, the celebration of our heroes. If you have not been, please come. Our candidate vigil is the temhole event of all of Police
Week. It's the only major event that's opened to the public and to be standing in the crowd where again you really can feel that emotion, to hear each of the names read most recently added to our memorial to recognize the story behind each of those names. Each of those names is a father, a son, a brother, a sister, a mother, a father, and they were out there doing their job to protect us, and they died as
a result. To be in that crowd, in that atmosphere, to really recognize the service and sacrifice of so many, it is quite something to behold. It really is staggering. It's a special time and special place, and I cannot encourage everyone listening to this please go to a candilight vigil at least once in your life, if not for yourself, do it for the surviving family members who are there. And certainly could use the encouragement of every single
citizen of this great country to say thank you. Thank you, family members for allowing your loved one to go out and serve us and ultimately die in that service. Bill Alexander, CEO of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, you can learn more and support the tremendously important work they do at nl EOMF dot org. Bill, I want to thank you so much for the work you're doing with this organization and for your service to this country serving in
law enforcement. We really appreciate the time Ian Thank you. I am so thankful that there are a few people in the media like you who are willing and able to help tell the story. It's so appreciated in law enforcement certainly appreciates your voice advocating for them and us. Thank you so much. All right, thanks again, Bill, my pleasure. I'm Ryan Gorman here on
iHeartRadio Communities, and now let me bring in our next guest. I'm joined by Brigady your General, Mike Eastman, executive director of onward Ops, which you can learn more about at onwardops dot org. And Andrew mccheron, president of the pen Fed Foundation, which you can find online at Penfedfoundation dot org. Thank you both so much for coming on the show and bringing to your
General. Eastman. Let me start with you, what are some of the challenges veterans face when they return home and begin their transition back into civilian life. I would describe those challenges as falling into two buckets. First, you have the fact that you're living a very structured, regimented environment. Whether you serve for four years or forty, you have a common purpose, a bond, really a sense of who you are and when you leave the military.
For many many veterans, you feel like you're leaving that part of yourself behind, and that's a challenge. At the same time, you're confronting all the decisions that anyone going through a major life change would have to sort out, whether it's getting a new job, or getting a new house, getting new medical coverage, or in the case of a veteran, all of above.
And it's the convergence of all those pressures in one discrete period of time that we have found really benefits from good information and then guidance of a mentor from your community. In some of the interviews I've done on this topic in the past, some other things that often come up. You have veterans who are dealing with PTSD and other issues from the time they served. They're also trying to integrate themselves back into their family life and with friends and all of that.
And then you get to the job front, and that can be a challenge too. It's a lot, and for those of us who haven't served, I think sometimes it's hard for us to fully understand what that transition is like. Is a lot, but I feel like we are being proactive. We are getting ahead, or trying to with your help, getting ahead of some of those negative consequences that come down the road when there's that kind of shell shock from becoming coming back to the community. The Penfet Foundation exists to
empower veterans as they make that transition. So we really appreciate what onward Ops is doing assigning a one on one mentor in a hometown for every veteran that's transitioning, and it has proven successful. So our call to action for all of your listeners nationwide is really twofold. We're looking for mentors. Doesn't have to be a veteran, just someone who has a few hours a week to you know, be there to give some guidance. Think about the times in
your life that you may have made a geographic move. You need to figure housing, a job, maybe schools for your children, medical care. There's a lot going on there. So a mentor is just somebody who's a volunteer, maybe grabs coffee, is there for a phone call or a text from time to time. But we're also really interesting and spreading the word about what onward Ops does to support those transitioning from military service to the civilian world.
I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by Brigady your General Mike Eastman, executive director of Onward Ops, and Andrew McCarron, President of the Penn Fed Foundation. So, Andrea, I want to talk to each of you for a moment about your specific organizations, and let me start with you give us an overview of the work the pen Fed Foundation does. We have been in existence since two thousand and one, and really we're there initially to support veterans at Walter Reed
Medical Center because we wanted to do our part to give back. So we've been around for more than twenty three years now and we have three major programs, Military Heroes, where we provide grants and some emergency assistance and really are looking to make an impact with partnerships like the one we have with Onward Ops.
We also have a very successful service dog initiative. He is not with me today, but I am currently raising my sixth service dog for a veteran first responder or someone else with a disability, and we're really encouraging that as a way for those who may have either psychological challenges or physical challenges due to their service. Service dogs are game changing when it comes to independence, so
that falls under our Military Heroes program. We also are very proud to support veteran led businesses through our unique Entrepreneur program, which is now based in Bentonville, Arkansas, probably best known as the home to Walmart, also a very military friendly community. Major companies there JB. Hunt, Tyson's Foods, four hundred of the nation's Fortune five hundred companies have a presence now in Bentonville, Arkansas, so we thought it was a smart place to move our program where
we mentor and support veteran led businesses. And finally, we're extremely proud of our Afghan Allies program. When Kabo fell back to the Taliban in August of twenty twenty one, we rescued and resettled forty three Afghan women warfighters who served alongside US special forces and were critical in tracking down and capturing Taliban leaders. They are now forty one of our forty three have now been granted asylum in the US. They're all taking English classes, most of them have jobs,
they're learning to drive here. So we are a wide ranging organization, but those are our three priorities, and we could not believe that this is more important than helping with that transition from service to community success. And again, you can learn more and offer your support to the pin Fed Foundation by going to Pinfedfoundation dot org. Brigadier General Eastman, let me turn to you. Tell us about the work that onward Ops does and how your organization first started.
So onward Ops exist to bridge the transition between military service and civilian life, and it fills a space. There are certainly great programs across the country at the federal level on both the veterans side and the Department of Defense side to provide resources to our veterans. The gap that we discovered was between the federal and the local and it is where you get to the place you're going
to live where things start to get challenging. So our program has been in existence for seven years now and what we're doing is connecting community mentors with those leaving the military within an ecosystem of vetted and trusted resources. And we have shown over time over the last several years of doing this that that simple human
to human connection really makes a difference. It changes lives for the better, and it doesn't take a tremendous amount of time or energy on the part of the mentor just the ability to answer a phone call occasionally spend a couple hours a month talking to someone makes a world a difference. I noticed you have two options for veterans making that transition back into civilian life. You have a guide for those who prefer to go on that journey alone. And then,
of course what we've been discussing, you have sponsors available. How does the process work for each option? You have the option when you enroll in on a program and either going solo and guiding yourself using our tools and our dashboards, or going what we call co op and signing up for a sponsor or
a mentor right out of the gate. We recommend the individuals select a mentor because we know the power of that, but at the same time, I come from a culture where asking for help is not always something that's easy to do. So we built the solo option to give folks a chance to start planning their transition. And interestingly enough, there's a big red button at the
top of our dashboard that says, I would like a mentor. And what we're discovering is thirty sixty ninety days into this process, when individuals have really spent some time thinking about what they want to do and where they might benefit from some assistance, they are opting from the solo into the mentored co op
version because there's a tremendous amount of power in doing that. I'm Ryan Gorman joined now by Brigadier General Mike Eastman, executive director of onward Ops, which you can learn more about at onwardops dot org, and Andrew mccheron, President of the Penn Fed Foundation, which you can find online at Penfedfoundation dot org. Brigadier General Eastman, I'm curious, do you have any examples that you can offer up of a veteran who was about to make that transition and got
a sponsor and how much that helped them along the way. I have more than we probably have the time for it today, and it really runs the gamut. It goes from the young specialist in Texas who planned to stand in the military for twenty years and unfortunately got injured in training and all of a sudden has to confront a change that was unexpected. And in that case it was let's talk about a resume, let's talk about applying to college, let's
talk about what it means to rent versus buying a home. Working with his sponsor John, in this case, he's now got secure housing stable housing and he's starting a new career. To the other end of the spectrum, where you have a more let's say, seasoned service member coming out of the Navy who doesn't really know what they want to do in the next chapter, but has amassed a huge sort of array of skills and experiences. In that case,
we match this service member up to a sponsor. I think it was Bonnie in this case, go from I don't know what I want to do too as we sit here today, a successful career in finance overseas something that
the service member never even considered because they didn't know those opportunities exist. And Andrea, final question for you, just taking a look at both organizations, how can people get involved who are listening right now and think, you know what this is again the least I can do for those who have served this country. And Ryan, what I love about your program is it's all about
community, and we are building community. You know, in the military, as a military brat, I know there's this priceless sense of camaraderie and mission and purpose. And we would love to give your audience that same sense of mission and purpose, whether they served or didn't serve in uniform this is their opportunity to go to Penfeedfoundation dot org sign up to become a volunteer mentor.
I'm sure it will be life changing. And the other opportunity is whether you are currently in the military and planning a transition out, or if you have a loved one who might be transitioning out, let them know about this incredible opportunity, free of charge, open to all branches of service. I really believe Brian in the inherent goodness of America's Americans. They have huge hearts, they want to give back. This is such a wonderful opportunity you can do
from your hometown. Won't cost you anything. Maybe a cup of coffee, maybe a little guess to get to a location where you're going to meet this veteran, but mostly if you have a phone, you have the opportunity to mentor and make a difference, a profound difference in someone's life. Again. Andrea McCarron, President of the pen Fed Foundation, You can learn more and offer your support at Penfedfoundation dot org. And Brigadier General Mike Eastman, executive
director of onward Ops. You can learn more about that organization as well at Onwardops dot org. General Eastman Andrea. I want to thank you both so much, obviously for the incredible work you're doing, important work, and for
coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Ryan, thank you all right, So again, two tremendous organizations that are doing incredible work that I highly recommend you check out, along with, of course, the first organization we highlighted during the show, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. That's going to do it for this edition of iHeartRadio Communities. As we wrap things up, I want to offer a big thanks to
all of our guests and of course to all of you for listening. If you want to hear previous episodes of this show, run your iHeartRadio app just search for iHeartRadio Communities. I'm your host, Ryan Gorman. We'll talk to you again real soon.