A Career in Blue

Welcome back everybody i'm very excited i've got finally after a long time i'm excited to have frank mo's husband on to do an interview he was a lieutenant with hillsborough county, and so he's going to give us some perspective on that and i can't tell you how excited i am we all go way back and i'm just i couldn't be more excited mo i'm going to take it to you Thank you.

So I'm really excited too, because I know that I know who he is, but I think it's fun to now share him with the world. And I think it's interesting too, because I'm going to get to hear a perspective of his thought processes and things that I've just never really questioned him about. So I'm pretty excited. So without further ado, can I have you tell me a little bit about yourself? Tell me, I know how you kind of got where you were, but if you can go through that a little bit, please.

Absolutely. Well, first of all, I'd like to say good afternoon, Tyler. I'm honored that you asked me to join in, and I look forward to a good conversation today. Absolutely, sir. Thank you. As always said, when kids ask what they want to be when they're growing up, I always wanted to be a police officer. As far back as I can remember, I looked up towards police officers. I thought they were heroes, old-fashioned feelings, old-fashioned thoughts. It was what I always wanted to be.

Even in high school, when some of my friends were getting ready to do other things, I still wanted to be a police officer. And I realized that at 17 years old, nobody was going to hire me to be a police officer. So I decided to go in the military. My parents had to sign me away, so to speak. I was too young to do it myself. My mom cried the entire time, but it was one of the best things I've ever done in my life. It taught me a lot of responsibility.

It taught me a lot of good qualities. and I thoroughly cherish those times. While I was in the military, I joined the Air Force. I was able to obtain college while I was there. I was able to save money so when I got out of the Air Force, I could go to college. And my job in the Air Force was security policeman or law enforcement specialist. Basically, I started out at the front gate of the Air Force base directing cars in, saluting officers.

I then became a patrolman, patrolling the base, patrolling the flight line. I worked every job that you could on the Air Force base. I was the desk sergeant. I worked the armory. I worked in our base jail. I was on the SWAT team for the base. So I had a good time. I got to do a lot of stuff. It was a really, really good experience for me. And I got to travel while I was in the Air Force on my days off, which was fun.

But my goal was to get out of the military after serving four years and transition into civilian law enforcement. So when I got out, I was only 23 going on 24. I'd obtained my associate's degree while I was in the Air Force, but I wanted to get a bachelor's degree just to make my chances for employment that much stronger. So in 10 months, I completed my third and fourth year of college, got my bachelor's degree in criminology.

And then I went everywhere in Central Florida applying, one agency after another after another. And I told myself, whoever offered me a job first is where I was going to go. My first job offer, it happened really quick. It was kind of surprising to me. I was the Tampa Police Department, and I took it. got hired there, went to the police academy, and did really well in the academy. And then I, Served as a patrol officer, child abuse investigator, and I was on their dignitary protection detail.

And I would have stayed at the Tampa Police Department my entire career. But in time in Tampa, in the late 80s, we had a mayor that was not pro-law enforcement. And I'll give you an example what I'm talking about. One day after roll call, me and all my partners are leaving the parking lot onto Tampa Street. And the mayor is stopping each of us as we exit the parking lot. I had no clue what was going on. I waited my turn, so to speak.

And when I got up to her, she looked in my car and she told me that my shotgun, which was secured in my shotgun rack, was offensive to her citizens and she wanted it in the trunk of the car. So I got out of my car. I put it in the trunk, got back in my car and drove off, went around the corner, stopped my car, got my shotgun out of the trunk, put it back where it belonged. And then I one about my business.

But that really soured me on that agency and that city because it showed me that they weren't thinking about safety of their officers. So the very next day, I went to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office and I applied. I also applied for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And I actually got a letter of acceptance from the FBI first. So I took my letter to the Sheriff's Office and I went to the recruiting section and I said, hey guys, the FBI wants me.

They gave me a start date in July. What are y'all doing? Am I going to get hired here? I really wanted to stay in Tampa. My family was in Tampa. I really didn't want to go to one of the big FBI field offices. Those cities are not really conducive to my way of thinking and my lifestyle. So the sheriff's office said, you know, call us back tomorrow. We'll have an answer for you.

Lo and behold, they offered me a job and that's where I stayed for the next 30 years. Let me go back a little bit when you were talking about your military time. And what you did when you were there. So when you went into the military, was it for the goal of you being a military police officer or was there other jobs that you were looking to explore while you were in the military? No, my three goals for going into the Air Force was one, serve my country.

I'm what I call a proud American. I love this country. I wanted to save money for college and try to get college while I was in the Air Force, which I did. And I wanted to be a military police officer So I could have that as a resume saying, I've already been a military police officer. Please hire me in the civilian world. So that was my thought process back then. When I got time to get out, they did not want me to leave. They offered me any available job that was open to enlisted personnel.

I considered what's called load master. That's the person that's responsibility of loading the big C-5s and C-141s, making sure all the equipment and supplies is balanced on the aircraft for safety reasons. They also offered me officer training school, which at the time I would go back to Texas, 90 days of officer training school. I'd come out as a second lieutenant.

And I considered both of them pretty heavily, but it all went back to my original goal, which was to become a police officer in the civilian world. So I declined those two things, and I left the Air Force not looking back. I had a good time. I learned a lot. I grew up a lot, and it's one of my best decisions in my life.

So, Frank, sorry, I just want to jump in. I got a question because I worked with the Air Force a lot when I was in Secret Service, and I worked with the, well, I actually ended up working with the load masters a lot because we would fly on the C-17s, and I only flew on a couple C-7s, I think. But from my experience and also what I was told, the Air Force police, they are considered one of the, it's between the Air Force and the Navy.

They're actually very highly trained, highly skilled police officers as far as looking at it from a civilian law enforcement side. What was your opinion? I mean, I know it's been a few years since you were there, but what was your opinion on the military police compared to law enforcement outside? But we'll keep in mind, I went in the Air Force and went to my technical school in 1979. So I'm dating myself. I know it's been a few years.

It was very rigid. It was very thorough. They taught us everything from how to investigate crimes to riot control. They did not hold back on the tear gas. You had to go into this room and repeat the number as many times as they wanted you to. and we're getting soaked with OC and OSs. I thought it was very effective. I look back and I got to work, like I said before, at every different position on that base as a law enforcement officer.

I started out as a aid guard, started out then a patrol officer. I worked the desk sergeant position, which basically you're taking all the phone calls. You're directing and coordinating all the patrol and ground units. You're listening and monitoring all the alarms that are on base. You know, you have alarms on buildings on all Air Force bases, from the banks to the hospital pharmacy, and we would have to respond.

I then was sent to the investigation section. There was only four airmen in that section. And I went there as a really young airman, which was a good experience for me. So I even, like I said before, I went and worked to jail, which was kind of an interesting proposition. You don't think of people in the military being in jail, but we do have people in jails in the military, and they're just like the regular jails. Not good for them and not necessarily fun to work it.

But I learned a lot. The loadmaster position was very enticing as an airman, as an enlisted person. You got to travel wherever that plane went. You went. But it wasn't quite enticing enough to fulfill my lifelong dream of being a police officer. Well, I like to hear that because— Thank you for your time. Sorry, Mom. I'm sorry. Because Alina, my daughter, is thinking about joining the Air Force as well, and she has a goal of being in law enforcement.

So it's something I didn't know about you, Frank, so it's interesting to see that connection.

Well, let me explain something to you. When I was in there, the security police consisted of law enforcement specialists and security specialists. Law enforcement was the military police. Security specialists basically guarded the alert planes on the alert pad. They guarded the ammo dumps, the nuclear facilities we had on the base. Now they have combined both. It's called security force or SF. I'm not too familiar with what they do now, but it's all combined.

Instead of being two squadrons, it's now one squadron. I got you. Sorry, Mo, go ahead. No, I just wanted to, because you kind of touched on it, but I wanted to get full clarity on the training. So the training that you received when you transitioned over to civilian law enforcement, did you feel like I already kind of got this in the bag because of the training you received from the Air Force?

Well, I didn't think I was overconfident, but all the military training, all the firearms, we had to qualify monthly with your side pistol, your M16 shotgun, since I was on SWAT, M2 or 3 grenade launchers, M79 grenade launchers. Monthly? M60 machine guns monthly. Wow. So you were constantly shooting, constantly practicing, constantly shooting, constantly practicing. And you know how the saying goes, the more you practice, the better you do.

So after four years of that, when I came out and I had to go to the Tampa Police Department, their pistol range, it was really a piece of cake for me. There was no, it was nothing that I had to even sweat about. It was just a normal thing for me. So it worked out good. Yeah, you're touching on some training because I'm like, that sounds amazing, but I don't know how you would do that at law enforcement.

It would be great if we could. That would be awesome. No, nowadays, unless it's changed since I left, you qualified once a year, unless you went out and practiced on your own, which is something I did. But unfortunately, a lot of people would only go the once a year, and that's just not even scratching the surface. No. Go ahead, Mo. I just wanted to piggyback because I know when I was managing one of the academies here, one of the programs that we had was an equivalency of training program.

And in the equivalency of training, if you were a law enforcement officer coming from out of state or you happen to be a federal officer, there were certain positions that you could transition, take a two-week course and transition into being a local law enforcement officer.

And special forces was one of the positions now, the combined one that you were speaking of before, Frank, that people could come from the Air Force and they could take a two-week course and become law enforcement officers, fully sworn in whatever state. But it was, and I will say, our Air Force guys were usually pretty sharp. We didn't have a lot of issues with them.

There were some other branches that struggled when they tried to transition because they lacked some of the training that was necessary to transition? I would say at the time I went to the Tampa Police Academy, I had to go through the whole academy. I didn't have like a two-week training sessions like she's describing. I had to do the entire police academy, which was from April till, I want to say June or July probably.

And then you had a 16-week field training program. So I went to the entire training curriculum that wasn't given any time off, so to speak. Got it. Well, I'm sorry. I got two more things because I'm going to touch on the city police part and then the FBI part. So, but I'll start with the city police because, so, I mean,

I've worked for a sheriff deputy. I've worked for the state police and I've also been a fed, You touched on something that I guess I never thought about it because obviously when you work for the county, the sheriff runs that. And then when you're state police, pretty much the governor runs that. You know, there's a colonel or a chief, however, that's structured. And then the feds, it's real loose. You got like a head, like a director.

But it sounds to me like when you're working for a city police, even a large city like Tampa, the mayor has a lot of pull and sway. And could you touch on that a little bit? Because you mentioned that story, but I guess I'd never really thought about that. Well, some cities have strong mayors. Some cities have non-strong mayors. At the time, Tampa had a strong mayor. And she was not, in my opinion, pro-law enforcement as much as I thought she could be.

During the late 80s and 87, 88, there were riots in Tampa. I don't know what her thought process was. But the way I looked at it, my shotgun was one of my tools in my toolbox. And we would literally have to take that shotgun out where I worked, which was in East Tampa and housing project areas, every other call. It was not anything but another tool in my toolbox. And by putting it in the trunk of my car, it was hindering my officer's safety. And I just wasn't going to have that.

I wasn't going to stay there and jeopardize my safety or my safety of my other officers. Because it didn't mean no good in the trunk of my car. Yeah, and I guess maybe I'm naive, but I could never envision a sheriff or a governor or something like that coming in and be like, I don't like your shotgun where it's at. Like, I just couldn't envision that ever happening. But again, I only worked for a handful of agencies, so maybe I'm naive on that.

She had never been a police officer in her life, so she did not have that perspective. Yeah. And I'll just leave it at that. Fair enough. All right, fair enough. Next thing, because this is a question that I get asked often, and you kind of touched on it. They're like, well, what's better, being a state local police or being a fed? And I'm like, and my response has always been, none's better than the other.

It just kind of depends on what you want to do. Like for you, you said you wanted to stay local. Could you maybe talk on that a little more on what made you choose local law enforcement over being in the FBI? Because some people are like, yo, that's the pinnacle of their career or whatever. But I'm like, it just kind of depends on what you want. I have seen deputies from the sheriff's office where I worked get selected to Secret Service, get selected to the FBI, DEA, and even CIA.

And I would say probably half of them come back a year to two years later and reapply to be a deputy again. And when I've talked to them, they said it wasn't what they thought it was going to be. They missed being a street cop. They did not like the way things were done versus what they had been used to. And for me, I would have gone in the FBI had the sheriff's office not offered me employment.

But one of the big things about the FBI, you had to be able to go anywhere and you know, where they sent you. And I was explaining that you'd go to one of their eight major field offices. And when I asked, where are those? They said, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami. I don't remember the other ones. I think Detroit, Philadelphia. None of those cities appealed to me, nothing against the cities themselves. But, and again, I just wanted to really be close to my family.

I'm a close knit person with my family. And I'd spent so much time away in four years in the military. I wanted to be close to home. And so I was really, really excited. Sheriff's office gave me that opportunity to stay locally. No, that's awesome. All right. Thank you. Go ahead, Mo.

So I know you left off with talking about you took the letter to the sheriff's office and you ended up getting the job with them. Can you give me kind of an overview of your career as you moved through the sheriff's office? I know you were there for a number of years. So talk about a little bit of what you did while you were there. My career at the sheriff's office spanned 30 years. I started out like everybody else as a patrol deputy.

In 1989, I was patrol deputy, and I was assigned to patrol areas in southeastern Hillsborough County and northeastern Hillsborough County, which back then was nothing but country. Open farmland, cow pastures, orange groves. And when I say I could go an entire shift without a car, I'm not kidding. I could. There were days I'd park my car underneath Oak Tree and wax my police car. And I'd have no interruptions.

I would try my very best to volunteer for calls north of my zones in an area that had people, had homes, had subdivisions. And because I was so far away, I would almost always get canceled either by a deputy or by dispatch. So I started out as a patrol deputy. I worked my way through that. I ended up becoming a field training officer, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I enjoyed having a new person come into the car, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and being able to teach them the right way to do things.

There's always different ways of doing the same thing, but I tried to teach them the safe way, first of all. Safety with me was always number one, but I tried to teach them to do it as if we were dealing with their grandmother, if we were dealing with their mother or their father or their family member. How would you want them to be treated? That's the way you treat these people, and I enjoyed watching people learn. I enjoyed watching people pick up on things.

Nobody's perfect, obviously. They'd make mistakes. But I did FTO for quite some time, and then one day I was told that I needed to go to the detective division. I really didn't want to go, but I was told if I wanted to ever advance upwards, I needed to go to become a detective. And this was like around year eight, and I was just having a blast on midnight shift. My zone partners were awesome. We would go out there and put criminals and bad guys in jail, and it was fun.

But at year eight my captain came to me and said hey you need to you need to go elsewhere you know you're you can't stay in patrol forever and I ended up becoming a detective which was at the time called felony property crimes we investigated burglaries felony thefts felony criminal mischiefs it was okay it was kind of a boring job but I did good I was then offered to be an auto theft detective which I really didn't care for because investigating

burned vehicles it was a filthy job I just didn't care for it, to be honest with you. Then went to economic crimes or white-collar crimes. That is where I really enjoyed myself because you had to use your brain, and it was like a chess game, and that's the way I look at it.

It was kind of fun in a way because once you figured out who the players were in your area and you got probable calls to arrest them, you'd call them up and say, hey, John, I know you've been passing these checks at this bank up here. How about coming in here tomorrow afternoon, too, and turning yourself in? And then you might laugh, but nine out of 10 times they'd say, okay. And they would come in and I'd make an arrest. It was very cordial, very polite.

Never did I go out and search for anybody for an economic crime. I would call our free crimes unit and say, hey, this guy is just being a jerk. He's not cooperating. Go out and get him, and they would. But nine out of 10 times economic crimes, they'd come in and turn themselves in. I'd say, hey, figure out what you can do for your bail. If tomorrow's not good, how about the next day? And I learned a lot. I learned how to write search warrants because I wrote a lot of them there. So it was fun.

And then they told me I needed to be a corporal. And I'm like, hmm, I'm not sure about that. I like just taking care of myself. I don't really want to take care of anybody else. But I took the test and I did well. And I'll never forget, I was at home one day washing dishes and my captain, again, the same guy that told me I needed to be a detective, called me and said, hey, you're promoted to corporal. You're going out to District 4 starting such and such state.

And I'm like, holy moly, this is getting real. I got to supervise people now. I was kind of like decided, kind of like, I don't know about supervising people. But I went out to District 4, and I had a sergeant there at the time. And he said, I'm going to teach you everything I know, and then in 30 days, the squad is yours. I'm not going to do anything. The squad is yours. And he meant that. I found out he meant that. So I had a crash course. I had to be a supervisor in 30 days.

There was no training. There was no formal training they sent you to. It was basically on the job by whatever your sergeant provided or did provide for you. Fair enough. I had to learn how to deal with problem employees. I remember the squad we were on. I had two problem employees, and I had to deal with both of them. And that's something you really have to learn. You try to be nice. You try to be fair.

But sometimes you just have to put the hammer down and write people up to get their attention. So I learned a lot being a corporal. Then one day I found out I got promoted to sergeant. I got sent out to District 1, which you're familiar with. We call it the BAH. Oh, yeah. Out by the University of South Florida area. It's a high crime rate area. I'll never forget when I went in to meet my major at the time.

I'd never been to District 1, so I went in and presented myself in the major's office, and he's talking to me. And you can remember the windows behind the major's office. Oh, yeah. His walk is behind his desk. I'm standing there, and I look outside the window, and there's two guys that pull knives on each other and start to fight. I said, Major, I don't mean to interrupt you, but there's two guys out there fighting. They got knives. Should I go out there?

And he goes, yeah, you can go out there if you want to. Just help the desk deputy. So me, the desk deputy, a couple of detectives went out there and solved that problem. I was what was called a detective sergeant. Basically, I reviewed all the reports that deputies wrote the night before.

I was responsible for determining if they needed further follow-up. What follow-up they needed, I'd have to indicate it on the report. I would assign those reports. I'd monitor the detective's progress. Other cases that didn't have enough for the leads, they would go to wastebasket, so to speak. It was fun, but it was strictly administrative. I never got out of the office. I didn't really care for that. So a little while later, they offered me the position of being the sergeant

in street crimes, which I gladly accepted. And that was fun. We primarily worked afternoons, evenings, and nights. It was for street-level drug enforcement. We kicked in doors. We did search warrants. We arrested dopers. We took dope off the street. That was fun. I was really enjoying that. I could have done that probably for several years, but then I got what you call that dreaded phone call, and they tell you they

need you someplace else. So I told myself while I was on the phone, don't say anything, just listen, just listen. And the deputy chief told me that he needed me in CPIT. CPIT is Child Protective Investigation Division. In Hillsborough County at the time, the kids' abuse and neglect was not investigated by the Department of Children and Family Services. The sheriff's office did it. So I wasn't really thrilled about going there,

but I took it as a new challenge. and I went to CPIG for the next two and a half years. When I was there, I learned that parents do the most unthinkable things to their kids, caretakers, grandparents, coaches, teachers, neighbors. It was all bad. There was nothing good there. I never read a good report. I never looked at a good picture. It was two and a half years of just looking at child abuse reports, child abuse pictures.

It was no fun. Now, the other issue with that is it literally took me out of a law enforcement capacity. I was no longer a cop for two and a half years. I was like an administrator who reviewed child abuse reports. And then told the child abuse investigators, which were all civilians, what they needed to still be done. I would attend shelter hearings, which was all civil in court. I would go to meetings, which all dealt around Department of Children's Family Services.

So it took me out of the world of being a police officer for two and a half years. And I really got kind of behind the eight ball because of that. There was so much changes going on, so much training that you miss in two and a half years that I wasn't afforded because my job didn't require it. But when I thankfully got promoted out of there and went back to the streets, I had touching up for two and a half years. When I left, we were writing police reports on paper. When I came back,

it was all computerized. So I'm like, holy moly, what am I doing? So it threw me a curve for a while. I had to learn how to, you know, do all sorts of other things that for two and a half years I wasn't doing. But I got to be a lieutenant in our district four office, which is in southeastern Hillsborough County. I was what was called the investigative lieutenant. I was over the detectives, the street crime squad, and our intelligence squad. I had a lot of fun doing that.

Our intelligence squad was very proactive with law enforcement, leading by intelligence-led policing. It was very, very useful, very effective. we would go and pick a prolific offender each Monday morning and we would watch that prolific offender Monday through Friday, follow him or her. And the amazing thing is about between 65 and 75, 70% of the time, they would do a crime. They do kick in burglary. They do a car theft. They do this or that. And we'd be able to arrest them.

If at the end of the five days, they didn't do anything, we'd move on to somebody else the next week. It was very, very effective, so I enjoyed that. The street crime squad, it was like me being back in street crimes. They had a corporal and a sergeant, but at least I got to supervise it. So it was a lot of fun. Then I got, I was there actually for a very long time. I was there from 2009 to 2014, which is a very long time to stay in one place.

I got a phone call one day that I was going to the other side of the county, District 3, as the administrative lieutenant. And basically, I thought that was basically handling paperwork, which a good portion of it was. One problem was it was 80 minutes from where I lived. So it was an 80-minute drive to work and an 80-minute drive home from work, which made the 12, 13, 14-hour day even longer. So, but I got to learn a lot of administrative ways of doing things.

I got to work with other lieutenants and I had a good major out there, a good captain out there. So it was a good learning experience for me. The best thing I liked about it is I did not have to stay in an administrative position too long. They put me on midnight shift commander position, which is probably my favorite position I had at the sheriff's office because from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., it's you. You're the sheriff. You make the calls. Do we pursue? Do we not pursue?

Do we do this or do we, you know, call out specialty teams? I had three supervisors, three squads, three sergeants, three corporals, 30, 35 deputies, and we had fun. And I told the deputies at the very beginning, hey, I'm going to show up on your calls. It's not to be nosy. It's not to watch you. It's so I can have some fun out here. And if you don't need a backup, I'll leave one. I realize you don't need a backup. And they learned very quickly, just treat me like another deputy.

If I showed up, just treat me like another deputy. They were surprised that I would do traffic stops or like the other lieutenants we had, they never do traffic stops. I said, well, it's 12 hours out here. I'm not going to sit here and be bored to death. I'm going to do something. So I had a good time. That was probably my favorite position. I was then assigned to. CID, which is Criminal Investigations Division, where I learned a tremendous amount of things. We supervised.

In CID, we had the juvenile detectives. We had the homicide detectives. We had the traffic homicide detectives. We had the violent crime detectives. We had the economic crime detectives. So it was a happy, busy, busy place, very busy. The detectives worked really hard, and I learned a lot, especially in the homicide side. I'd never been a detective in homicide. So I went there the first day to the corporal sergeant.

I said, listen, guys, never been a homicide detective. So I'm going to be asking a lot of questions and I'm going to be asking you to teach me so I can learn. And that's what they did. They taught me. They walked me through things. They explained why they were doing things. And I was able to pick up on it. And I learned a lot. It was very rewarding.

At the same time, it was very, at times, very sad. You see what happens to people that are absolutely innocent, absolutely in the wrong place at the wrong time. I remember one homicide we went to, there was a gentleman in the box in District 1 sitting on his front porch, eating boiled peanuts. He didn't have a care in the world. And then these two dopers on bicycles decided to get into a gunfight in the street.

And one of them shot around his way, hit him in the head, and he was dead right there. All he was doing was eating boiled peanuts. You know, something I'll never forget. I was there for two and a half years then. It was a long two and a half years. And I say long, it was because the hours really were tough. We'd get a homicide and as a lieutenant, I felt a responsibility to be there for my sergeant, my corporal. I didn't want to just leave them there.

So it was long hours. We would get a homicide and we might work it for 12 hours straight. We might work it for three days straight. We had one case that involved a 13-year-old daughter who was killed by her dad. And he then buried her out in the nature preserve. Only through the grace of God, a hiker happened to discover some disturbed dirt that probably wild animals had dug up during the night and she got a little closer and realized that looks like human hair.

So that began about a 40-day, I don't remember exactly how many days, but it was well over a month nonstop working, the detectives did. There was always a detective on the case. There were always detectives working night, day, to solve this, and we ended up making the arrest. That was very satisfying, but I'll never forget when myself and my corporal had to drive to Manatee County and tell the young lady's mom and her sisters, we found her, but unfortunately, she's deceased.

I'll never forget the way they reacted. One family member put her hand through the drywall, hit the wall so hard, put her hand through the drywall. They were screaming, and it wasn't that they were mad at us. They were just the pain they were experiencing. It's something you'll never forget when you watch somebody go through that kind of pain. But I learned a lot in CID.

I was getting towards the end of my career. I had like maybe a year and a half left, and I got a call to go to the community outreach division, which basically is a good place to go, especially towards the end of your career. You're basically planning the sheriff's offices, main events throughout the year, the ranch run where we raise money for the youth ranches, the sheriff's golf tournament, the sheriff's fishing tournament, doing outreaches to the community.

It was good stuff. It was smiley stuff, fun stuff. People were glad to see you come there for those kind of things. So I kind of felt like it was a thank you from the sheriff doing a good job for 29 years. Your last year, we want to put you in a nice place to go out with good feelings. So that was my career, 30 years in a nutshell. I look back, I look back and I was very lucky to have not been seriously hurt.

When I was at Tampa, I got shot at several times. could not return fire because in the parking lot of a place called the Manila Bar, it's not there anymore. You couldn't shoot at the bad guy because there's 40, 50 people between you and him, but he could shoot at you. Where I thought I would never have a shooting was at the sheriff's office. I just didn't think that happened. But within two years of being there, I was involved in my first shooting there where a gentleman started shooting at us.

It woke my eyes up. You can be anywhere, small town, medium-sized town, large town. I learned a lot and I'm very grateful for my career. Look back, I'm very satisfied with it. And, but I am ready to move on to different things now. No, absolutely. And if you can indulge me, I was taking notes while you were talking. And again, a lot of this stuff I didn't know.

And before I get into these questions, I have to say, you were, I never reported to you directly, but anybody I knew while I was with Hillsborough County, when I told them I knew you, nobody had anything bad to say. You were held in high esteem, at least with the people that I hung around, so I. I will say that I was fair, but firm. There were a few deputies that I'm sure probably disagree with that. But I held people to standards.

You get paid to do a job, do it right. If you're not going to do it right, then you and I are going to have a problem. But on the other side of the coin, if you came to work and you did your very best, I did my very best to protect you. I did my very best to take care of you. There were times where I could have written deputies up for things.

And it didn't really need to happen, but I could have, but I took it as a teaching moment and I think they benefited from that versus me just writing them up on paper. Well, you just got to jump in here real quick and make a comment on two things. People always spoke very well of him, but I will tell you that people didn't like for him to have a red pen in his hand. Fair enough, fair enough. Because he was legit with the ruler and the red pin.

And one other thing I will say, a little background on me and Frank, I met him when I became a negotiator. He was our team leader. And no, there was no, you know, anything going on with us between that at that point, we were both in our own worlds at that point. But when he discussed about being fair, there was a time where I was on a call as a negotiator, and I may or may not have been recorded using inappropriate language.

I remember him distinctly pulling me in, and I used to, my nickname before we started, Dating used to be, I used to call him Lieutenant Greco the robot because he was always so serious. And I remember he pulled me in and said, so you were recorded on this negotiation and you were using inappropriate language. I'm going to make a diary entry on you and I wanted to make sure you were aware of it.

Years later, I found out he did that because he knew that there was a good chance that something could come from before or above and it was going to have to be addressed. So he wanted to make sure that he used it as a teaching moment for me. And he addressed me on the issue, but tried to do it as fair as possible because he knew that I wasn't being malicious. So I'm a little biased, obviously, because now I married him, but he was a very fair supervisor.

Well, I'll piggyback on that. And then I do have some questions for you, Frank. But I remember being a young patrol deputy, and I'll throw his name out there because I love that guy, Shirel Shirel. And he was ruthless on reports, but he could see me getting frustrated. He goes, let me explain something. You're taking someone's freedom away. You should hold yourself to the higher standards before you do that.

And that's about the extent of that conversation. And ever since then, I just go, you're right. And I never actually questioned him again. So I definitely get it. But I wanted to get into a couple of things because it's stuff that I've thought about for a long time and I have mixed feelings on it, but I don't want to bias you. So you were a patrolman for eight years doing FTO, loving it. And somebody told you you had to be a detective.

How do you feel? We said, yeah, no, no, go ahead. Like, that's my question. Like, I don't see anything wrong with one of being on the streets or a patrolman for your career. People see that sometimes as a negative thing, but I don't see it. I don't see it as being negative. Looking back. I was having fun, and maybe I was just looking at it as having fun. I really wasn't goal-oriented at that point in time. I had no aspirations of being promoted.

I had no aspirations of going forward because I strictly was having fun. I loved being a street cop. I loved it. I loved the adrenaline rush. I loved the teamwork. I mean, your squad members are your teammates. They take care of you. You take care of them. I enjoyed it. I knew the streets in and out, back and forth. I knew the players. So I was having fun. And when he approached me and said, hey, listen, you've been on patrol for eight years. You've been an FTO.

You've got to move on. We need you elsewhere. So looking back, I think he was making the decision, A, for the agency and really B, for me as well. Because it ended up being good for me. I got more exposure as a detective. I learned a lot. Every place I went, I learned. I never went anywhere and did not learn. I learned everything, even in child protective investigative division. I learned the civil side of sheltering kids and this and that.

So I think looking back, he was making a decision that he felt was best for the agency and be best for me in the long run. And I would agree that it was a good decision overall for me. All right. I appreciate that. And again, this is something I've thought about. I don't necessarily have strong opinions one way or the other. It's just, it's something I've heard in many different agencies. And I don't know, there's always mixed reviews.

I did want to touch on the white collar crimes because when I became a fed, that's what we worked on is financial crimes. And I was like, oh my God, this is a fucking nightmare. And you go into a grand jury and you're trying to talk about bank accounts and all this other stuff. But you touched on it. And it's something I kind of actually came to enjoy because you're right. You have to use your brain and it could take you. Well, for me, it took me all over the world with people doing stuff.

And you see the devastation that can be caused with somebody getting into your identity or hacking your accounts or draining your retirement. But again, it's not sexy. It doesn't have the appeal. A lot of prosecutors are like, ugh, you want to deal with these financial crimes, but, can you elaborate on what it was like transitioning from the run and gun and burglaries and robberies and domestics and then you're sitting by the computer, but it sounds like you actually learn to enjoy it?

I did. One advantage I had, it was I didn't have grand juries. That's on the federal level. It was easy for me. I had a state attorney, two or three of them who, if I had questions, I would call. If I needed to present the case to them in person, they were always available. I presented it to them and they're like, you're good to go. So it was easy for me. It was like a chess game for me because they were always, the bad guys were always changing their way of doing things.

When we would catch on to what they were doing, they would change it. So then I'd have to figure out what they were doing and then figure out how to get them with their new ways. It used your intelligence. And it was fun. I even had fun doing it because it was kind of humorous. The other detectives in the room, like the other theft detectives and the burglary detectives, they always laugh at me. Like, are you kidding me? He's really going to come turn himself in.

And in the beginning, they thought I was playing games or just joking around. But after a month or two of it, they realized, man, these people are really turning themselves into you. Yeah, they are. Why not just come and turn yourself in at a convenient time? That's good for me, good for them. They know that, you know, I'm going to send street crimes after them and chase them down. And when they get caught, it may not be the best time for them.

So they're making a wise decision. It's saving me effort, saving me time. So it was a good experience for me. I learned a lot. Like I said, that's where I started writing search warrants. Yeah, again, for me, I learned a lot when I transitioned over. I do want to touch on the child protective services because I can remember the first time I walked into it, it was a trailer and there was holes in the floor, animal feces everywhere. I mean, shit everywhere.

And I'm like, oh, I got to save these babies. There's like a toddler and a baby. And I'm like, oh, my God. And I called them and they walked in and they're like, why are you calling us? And I'm like, look at this place. This is insane. And I can't remember forever. They said it's not a crime to be poor. and I was like, check me for a second, but I'm like, there's holes in the floor. There's feces everywhere. They're like, does the child have access to food and water? Are they abused in any way?

And I was like, well, no. They're like, yeah, this isn't a crime. And it checked me pretty hard to my core for that first call. But like, do you remember any moments that you, again, not the awful stuff. I can remember that as well, but maybe just what that process was like for you. Well, it was a learning process for me to begin with because, like I said, Department of Children's Family Services, which is what we were bound to go by, was totally different from what I had learned as a cop.

The situation you described with the holes in the wall, we would attack that from hazardous conditions. We would give them an opportunity to fix the hazardous conditions to make them acceptable. We would try to relocate the kids to other family members that had acceptable living arrangements as a last resort. if they weren't willing to, strictly just because they didn't want to. We could shelter the kids. That was a last, last resort. Or we could provide services, you know.

We'll provide the materials if you can, you know, close those holes in the floor. We literally would do things like that. We would provide them funds to go out and buy plywood and nails to fix the holes in the floor so it would be safe for the kids. But Child Protect Investigations was tough. It was just tough to read the reports every day.

And the reports never stopped. And the other thing that was really rough for a supervisor is once a report was received, it was either an immediate response, which means we had to have someone on scene within 24 hours, or a delayed response. And once a report was originated, there was timestamps that had to be met throughout that case file. And if we did not meet him as an agency, the state could find us.

So I would get to work on a Monday and I would have a clean slate only because I would log on at home on Saturday evenings and Sunday evenings I would be do about two hours of work each night reviewing reports sending them where I needed to send them you couldn't take days off if you had to take a day off you had to find another supervisor who is willing to take your caseload and you're talking 30 child protective investigators in addition to his or hers

or you had to take your laptop computer with you on vacation to work on, which I had to do several times. So it was like you never really could get out of the office because those cases were coming when you were out. When you left at 6 o'clock in the evening, 6 of 1, you got three new cases. And you knew that, you know, you get the notification. You're like, man, I got to get these things first thing in the morning. So that was the other tough part from a supervisor position.

The cases never stopped coming to you. But yeah, and again, I saw some horrific things, but again, it was the things that were kind of in the grave for me. So again, I didn't realize that you had done that in your career. And then last one, and then we'll move on, Moe, but I didn't realize you had done the intelligence-led policing because what you were describing sounds very much like something I was very passionate about. I didn't think that I created it out of nowhere. I took other things,

but we were basically doing that. we were targeting recidivist, you know, part one felony offenders. And in district one, they acted like it was the first time they'd ever heard the concept. And we were working with probation officers and other agencies, and we would just go out and just hammer these people for violations on probation. And it reduced part one crime by, I think it was like 35% the first six months.

And they were like, they never heard about it before. But here you are in 2009, you were already doing stuff like that. In my opinion, intelligence-led policing works. Like we said, you're identifying your prolific offenders, the ones that commit the most crimes in your area. You're attacking them. You're putting them in jail, and your crime goes down.

And it surprised me. It blew my mind when we started doing it how many kick-in burglaries during the daytime hours we'd catch kids from high school, skipping school, kicking in houses. We would be parked two houses away in a cool car, and you'd hear, boom! And you knew they just kicked in the door. You'd run and they'd be running out the door by the time you got there with a TV or this or that. And they had no clue where you were. So it was it's it was if it's run properly, it's very effective.

It seems so simple, right? It seems so simple. Sometimes sometimes simple is not something people accept, but it really is simple. You know, you get your crime analysis people and say, give me a list of the top 10 people who this district has arrested the most for part one felony crimes. And you get that list and you go to the first person. OK, where does this person live? All right, we're going to start watching at 6 a.m. on Monday morning.

And like I said, if they didn't commit a crime Monday through Friday, they were off our list. We're done with them. but 65, 70% of the time they'd commit crime or they'd be driving with a revoked license or they'd have a probation warrant or something. And you, you arrest the people who commit most of the crime, your crime rate is going to go down. Very simple concept. It just shocked me that, I mean, again, I didn't think that I created it out of nowhere, but it's like you've been doing

it for 2009. I didn't come in until 2011, and I didn't even start thinking about it until 2014, and there you go. But anyway, Mo, I'm sorry. I just, a little tangent there. No, I love it. I love it, because this is why I wanted to have him on to get the perspective of what it was to be like, a supervisor in the law enforcement world, but also because he has all this wealth of information and knowledge that he had that I thought would be really interesting to share as well.

No, absolutely. You kind of touched already on your favorite assignment, and I want to clarify that you said it was a lieutenant, midnight patrol lieutenant. It happened to be District 3, but I would venture to say it's probably anywhere as the midnight patrol lieutenant. I loved being a midnight shift lieutenant. It was just fun. And I got to, you know, a lot of your deputies, you're young. You got to watch them grow. You got to watch them learn.

I was lucky enough to have good sergeants, good corporals who ran their squads. So I was there if they needed support. I was there to make the decisions, hey, we're not going to pursue that. Or, hey, we need to call out CNT and SWAT. Don't approach the house. You know, secure it. It was a good time. Yeah. And I noticed you use the term, you know, we had fun. And I know going back to some episodes, me and Tyler have talked about those were the times where I felt like we were the most productive.

Is when you're having fun in the job, I felt like you're the most productive as well. So did you feel that way as well as a lieutenant working midnight? I did. Like I said, when I first went to District 3 as a lieutenant, I told these new deputies who, that was on the west side. I was from the east side. It's like two different worlds. It's like Florida and Georgia. So they didn't know me and I didn't know them. I told him, hey, I'm here to have fun. I'm here to support you.

If I show up on your calls, it's not because I'm watching you. It's because I want to have fun too. If I'm not needed, I'm going to leave. I'm going to do traffic stops. Feel free to stop by because if you do a traffic stop, I'm going to stop by. Just make sure you're okay. So the most favorite assignment I had was definitely midnight shift lieutenant. Awesome. Sidebar, I was a west side girl and he was an east side guy. And somehow we met in the middle.

There you go. So you said, I think I know what it is, but your worst supervisory assignment. What do you think? Was it the CPIG or was there something else you think? I wouldn't necessarily say it was the worst. CPIG was definitely my least favorite because it was just sadness. One of probably my most high stress position was in CID, and it was because of homicide. and then we would also have missing persons, missing kids. You know, when you get a report of a valid missing persons or,

excuse me, missing children, everything stops. The world stops. We send out everything to go, you know, find that kid. We take over the house. We set up in the neighborhood. We don't leave anything untouched. And the things that we did would probably baffle some people. I remember we had a teenager who was autistic and she was probably, and I'm trying to remember, maybe 14, 15 years old, but she was autistic. She disappeared from her house.

Came in early that morning. So everybody went out and we started doing everything with humanly possible. We had ponds. We had the dive team out. We brought boats out. We had air service up. We did everything. We stayed at the house. The next day, we made media alerts. We did a broadcast statewide, an Amber alert. We did everything. And we weren't leaving until we found that child. We ended up getting a call from a county north of us. We think we might have spotted the girl.

She's walking northbound on this road. One of the clues or leads that we had followed up was that she had been talking to somebody, I want to say Wisconsin or Michigan, and we contacted the kid and his parents, and we said, hey, have you heard from her? And the kid basically said, I met her online. We've had a conversation, but I don't really know her well this girl decided she was going to walk to either wisconsin or michigan to go see this boy.

So we were doing everything we could to find her but we had some citizen calling we think we see her in the county north and we send deputies up there she runs from us we get her she had cut all her hair off to disguise herself and she explained to us that she had slept the night before in a ditch and her goal was to get to wisconsin or michigan whichever one it was and then contact like that boy. She wanted to see that boy.

So, you know, that's just one example. And then we have other cases where kids come up missing and everything stops. Like I said, patrol deputies flood the area. We search the house inside and out. We get consent and we start checking backyards and everywhere. Just the world stops when you're involved in that. But the most stress probably came through either that or homicide cases. You know, when you have innocent people getting killed because they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And you have to tell a family member, hey, your dad's not coming home, your mom's not coming home, or God forbid your child's not coming home. We don't stop. We, we, we don't stop. We, we keep going, we keep going, we keep going, we keep going. We reshule, we take a two hour nap and we keep going. And, and doing that day in and day out three or four times, you know, back to back homicides, it, it, it's tires you out. It stresses you out.

But I will tell you the group of people, guys and girls that were in homicide when I was there, they were, they were awesome. They, they were professional. They cared and it was personal to them. They wanted to catch the bad guys. They wanted to bring the bad guys to justice. And it was rewarding, but it was definitely stressful. Now, some of the stress came from internal. And you know that with any law enforcement agencies, there's going to be internal stress, some form or another.

The outside stress was easier to deal with than the inside stress. And I kind of used myself as a buffer, you know, between the detectives and people above me. Okay, the people above me want this. The detectives are like, they're on their last breath. Let's kind of, okay, hang on, let's just take a deep breath. Let's figure out what we can do so we can get what they're requesting done and y'all can still breathe. I kind of use myself as a buffer.

I'd have detectives come and talk to me. I just don't understand this, and I try to explain it to them from a different point of view. I try to keep the train going forward on the track, so to speak. But definitely homicide was probably my most stressful position there while I was at the sheriff's office.

So because of the sadness, the stress from internal and external, those things combined made CID the position that you would say, I won't say worse, but it was a little bit more, it leveled up from CPD then? I wouldn't say it was worse. I would say it was more stressful than any other position I had. It was also a very rewarding position because I learned a great deal there. Like I said, I'd never been a homicide detective.

Detectives. So when I went there, I was coming in there as a fresh rookie, the way I looked at it. And I told the sergeant and the corporal, hey, I've never worked homicide. You guys have worked homicide for years. I need your help. I need to learn. I want to learn.

So while it was the most stressful position, it was extremely rewarding to have learned as much as I did and to be there. Now you touch on a good point. Well, I'm kind of jumping a little bit, but What, because it's basically a move through the ranks, how did it affect your personal life, but what, as you were dealing, not just through the ranks, but just dealing with those things, what, how did that affect you and you?

Personal of you children and if everything else you're going well well as you know Tyler yeah you turn the switch off when you go home it stays with you I can tell you I can tell you to this moment I can remember certain situations like it happened yesterday clear in my mind I'll never forget I was on interstate four one time traveling west into Tampa and there was a wreck in front of me I watched it happen and I saw something fly out the window I didn't know what it was.

It was an unrestrained baby. The baby hung in a car seat. The baby flew out the window. I watched the baby or the object hit the pavement. By the time I got up there, I realized it was a baby and the baby was deceased. The baby's head hit the pavement. It was deceased. I'll never forget that. I had to go tell a lady who had six kids with this gentleman that her husband had been shot and killed at McDonald's only because he stopped in to get some food for his family.

While he was there it was robbed and he looked at them as they were leaving and the one of the bad guys turned on it and fired around probably a hundred yards away and hit him right between the eyes and it killed him i'll never forget going to that lady's house and hit their house it was hot it was during the summer they didn't have air conditioning so she had a big box fan on she had all the windows open me and a victim advocate went there and it just

broke my heart to have to tell of her husband and the father of these six kids was gone. Broke my heart. I'll never forget that. And there are other things. When you go to suicide, it's never about the person. That's a selfish act. But you had to deal with the victims that are left behind, their loved ones. And the aftermath that they have now, the mess that's in their house, if that's where they did it, stuff like that, I still remember to today.

I'm not going to say I don't because I want to be honest. I do. And it haunts you every once in a while. Being a cop is hard enough physically, but it's also mentally. It stays with you. I say I retired and I moved on, which I have, but that stuff, good stuff and bad stuff stays with you.

Yeah, I mean, you're touching on stuff that I'm still kind of dealing with because, again, I've been removed from street stuff for a while, but I mean, even when I was with the Secret Service, I was moving a car, driving it from one city to the next and I came across a truck that had hit a tree and the passengers were still alive but they were trapped and I ended up watching them burn to death.

And that was horrific in itself. But then you see the families, and you're trying to talk to them about what happened and the anguish, it's something that, I mean, it makes me choked up now and this is a few years ago and it's like, that shit's hard to deal with. And it pops up on, you know, it just pops up randomly. I'm like, why am I so upset? No, I definitely get it. Go ahead, Mo. Sorry. I didn't want to go down that. I was trying not to go down that road. Yeah, sorry.

No, I was going to go down that road. You just kind of went ahead of me because one of the things I wanted to ask is, you kept talking about the stress and the awful things between CPID and CID. And I know, being the spouse, this is where it's interesting because I am a law enforcement officer, but I'm also the spouse of a law enforcement officer. So I have watched him go through some things too.

And I remember distinctly, we had our son and the case he spoke about earlier with the girl who was murdered by her father. He left when our son was, at the time, he was probably eight weeks old. He left to go work that case and I didn't see him for like three or four days. And as the spouse, even though I was a cop, I'm at home worried. Is he sleeping? Is he driving on little sleep is he kicking in a door to help these guys because I knew the kind of lieutenant he was.

He was the type that if they had to hit a door and they needed somebody to hit the door with him, he was going to do it. So those were the things that I was worried about. And when he finally did come home, I remember him just cradling our son because I think it was one of those cases that makes you want to grab your kid. And it's just one of those things that I know that It affects him.

And I remember when he got transferred from homicide to crime prevention, him saying, I'm so glad that I don't have to see that kind of stuff anymore because it was time. So those kinds of things, it does affect you. And when you retire, it doesn't always go away. Sometimes you still have the dreams. Sometimes you still have the things that pop in your head.

So that it's still one of those things that we talk about when we were talking about in our mental health episode that I feel like we as a community of law enforcement officers have to work better to take care of our people and address it. And that kind of leads me into my next thing that when you were talking about the high stress of CID and things like that, how did you handle those awful things and having those detectives come to you and talk to you and things like that?

Did you ever have to address anything mental health wise with your detectives because they were seeing such awful things while you're managing them? I did have detectives and deputies, for that matter, come to me. I would sit and listen, first of all. Maybe they at the time just needed an ear to vent. And sometimes I would make suggestions or talk to them back.

A lot of times it was just to listen. There were other times where we realized that they needed to go see someone, a professional, to get stuff out in the open to help them. In the beginning of my career, that was unheard of in 1986 when I started at the police department. If you were involved in a shooting, they gave you a couple days off and you came back to work. My first shooting was...

You know, you're relieved of duty, you go home. I remember exactly what I did, but nowhere did you go see a psychologist or a counselor. Once the state attorney ruled the shooting valid and justified, you were back to work. Since then, you know, you have internal peer support teams that are utilized. You even have outside agencies, which are supposed to be confidential. Well, deputies and police officers still fear, and if somebody says they don't, they're not being honest.

Some deputies, some police officers still feel that if I go seek help, somehow my agency is going to find out. And I hope that's not true, but I unfortunately think it is, because these police officers need to be able to have an avenue to go to somebody and tell them what they're feeling, get it out, work on it, and move on eventually. It may be just one session. It may be six months of session.

But some of the things police officers see and have to deal with, no human being should ever have to deal with these kinds of things. The tragedy and the way people kill people, even car wrecks. I remember on I-75 down in Ruskin, an elderly couple, three people from Michigan, they were in their 70s. We started getting calls that there's a car driving southbound in the hazard lane, and they're just driving about 65 miles an hour.

We're sending people up there, and this was years ago because it just didn't sound right, and they ended up to continue driving on the hazard lane, but when they came to a bridge, the metal embankment, they just drove right into it. And that metal embankment went through the engine block, into the interior portion of the vehicle, and out the trunk. And I remember getting there as a first person and seeing the faces on those three deceased persons. That's something you'll never forget.

So I hope these police officers and deputies seek counseling if they feel they need it. I hope these agencies are providing it and it truly is confidential because if it's not, it's going to get out and then we're going to be back to square one. These people, these officers and deputies are not going to go seek help. And that's what causes some police officers commit suicide. Suicide rate for police officers is higher than the average person.

And, you know, in my career, it takes two hands for me to count the amount of deputies that I knew, deputies that I trained that committed suicide. One deputy that I trained not only committed suicide, but killed his wife, his grandmother. No, excuse me, his wife, his daughter, and his granddaughter. Came up on the radio. I was sitting at a restaurant before work eating breakfast, and he told us what he did. And then he said he was going to commit suicide, and he did.

And we never could find out why, you know. So police officers are exposed to a lot that the average person doesn't realize. And it's cumulative. You keep saying that same stuff day in and day out. It's cumulative. It's going to affect you. We're human beings.

It cannot not affect you. So I hope that people who need help seek help, and I hope it's there for them. Frank, couldn't have said it better myself, man. Yeah, I agree. Go ahead, Mo. Kind of shifting gears a little bit, because I know also, not only did you move through the ranks on the patrol side, we'll say, you also supervised one of our specialty teams I touched on earlier that you were my team leader when I became a negotiator.

So that being a little bit different, obviously, I think you had different things to kind of juggle in that role. What did you like about being a supervisor over that team? Well, first, I was a team member. I was a negotiator. And fortunately for me, I had a couple people on the team when I joined who took me under their wing. One gentleman by the name of Donald Morse took me under his wing, and he taught me a great amount of what I needed to know.

So he mentored me, he coached me, and it was an extremely rewarding assignment, though be it part-time, but it was extremely rewarding. We would go out when people were contemplating suicide. We would go out when we had subjects who were wanted and barricaded themselves. We would go out to hostage situations where one call, we had a man that had went into a shooting range, rented a gun, and then he took everybody in there hostage, and he threatened to kill every one of them.

We had a gentleman who took his two sons hostage. So it was a wide range of things, but I had a good time. I enjoyed it. It was learning. It was one-on-one people skills. If you were not an active listener, you weren't going to succeed in that role. So when I first went to the team, I had to learn all the mechanical equipment in the truck. I had to learn all the audio and visual equipment, all the listening devices.

I had to learn all that stuff first before you ever got on the megaphone, the bullhorn, or you got on the phone with somebody. But I enjoyed it. And one day I was asked to be the assistant team leader, which I took on. That was more of a teaching role. I was a teacher. Coming up with a monthly training curriculum, providing the training, things of that nature. And then one day I became team leader, which was really, in one way, it was interesting and I enjoyed it.

The other sad part was I realized I was never going to negotiate again. And that was something I really enjoyed. It's really challenging, going back to that chess game, where you're in the middle of a busy intersection and you've got a car stopped. The guy's wanted. He doesn't want to go back to prison. He's holding a gun to his head.

It's all surrounded by law enforcement and you've got to talk them into basically excuse me putting the gun down surrendering peacefully and going back to prison so that is a challenge and you have to kind of change their way of thinking slowly and you give them options that are appropriate and you try to funnel them to the peaceful resolution you want we also would respond out to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, and I'll tell you a quick little story.

We had a gentleman out there who was on the bridge threatening to commit suicide. He was literally sitting on the three-and-a-half-foot wall. Long story short, he had physically harmed his son to the point where the son lost his eyesight. What's ironic about this was this gentleman was an underwater scuba diver who inspected bridges, and here he is sitting on a bridge. Because of what he did to his son, his wife divorced him.

And his own attorney had told him that morning, you're looking at 20 years in prison. Prepare yourself. So we find ourselves on the Sunside Skyway Bridge. And I'm trying to talk this man into coming off the bridge. I'm trying to talk him into, you know, not ending his life. And in reality, he had no reason to live. He hurt his son's eyes. His son was blind now. His wife left him. He got fired from his job. He was never going to, you know, see his son probably ever again.

In a moment of despair, he actually threw acid in his own eyes to try to blind himself like his son was, and it didn't work. So he had nothing really truly to live for. And we had been told he was possibly armed. So we shut down the Sunshine Skyway. We got complaints all the way from the governor's office, but we had to do what we felt was necessary to make sure the motors were safe.

After four and a half hours after him taking his watch off and sitting in on the pavement and putting his driver's license on the pavement him telling me by four and a half hours me just pounding at him and when i say pounding it was very cordial it's very polite it's very soft very soft spoken very low-key but working on him for four and a half hours and tyler i would have bet a million dollars he would have jumped

i would have never in my life thought i could have been successful in getting him off that bridge. Four and a half hours later, he decided to listen to me. He got off the bridge. We took him into custody. He was Baker Acted. He ended up getting sentenced to 20 years in prison, just like his attorney told him he would. He got out in 2024. I don't know what he's doing now, but it astonishes me that we were successful.

So from that standpoint, it was a very challenging assignment, both as a negotiator and both as a team leader. As a team leader, you're directing all the activity. Nobody should theoretically interfere with what you're doing, what you're telling your negotiators. There would be a time or two where people above me would want me to do this, want me to do that. I'd have to explain to them, there's no reason we need to take that action now. There's no reason that can wait. We don't need to do that.

So I was like a filter. I knew what course we needed to stay on. And I did my best to make sure we, the negotiators, stayed on. And I'll tell you something else that I was told years later. I told a SWAT operator, a young kid who's now a major at the sheriff's office, the reason we come out, I told him, was to help you save your life. We don't want you to have to go in to get hurt. And the kid, I call him a kid then, never said anything back to me. I figured he thought I was dumb or something.

Years and years later, he's a major. And for some reason, I run into him and he brought that conversation up and I said, well, I kind of remember, but I kind of don't. He goes, well, I remember it. And from that moment on, I appreciated what you negotiators did. You were trying to protect us. You're trying to save us from having to go in and face a bad guy.

So I appreciated that. But I will tell you, Todd, there were other times where, as a negotiator, you had to ask yourself, do we really want to negotiate this personnel? I always remain professional, but that thought always entered my mind. We had a sergeant by the name of Ron Harrison who was minding his own business. He was in a marked patrol car at a red light. And there was a gentleman that night who was mad at the world. He pulled up the Sergeant Harrison, acted like he needed directions.

Sergeant Harrison rolled the window down, and the person shot and killed Sergeant Harrison for no reason, none whatsoever. We found out, the agency found out very quickly where he was at. We surrounded the house. He shot out the window at one of our SWAT operators. And so you ask yourself, do you really want this to end successfully? Well, he dictated what happened that night, so it kind of made it easy for us.

He kept coming to the window, and we did what we needed to do to keep him at the window. And after he shot at us, Swap took him out, and I felt justice was served that night. Some people may think that's harsh, but I think it was appropriate at the time. So it's hard sometimes to negotiate with some people. You know, the guy on the bridge, he did a terrible thing to his own son.

But you had to remain professional. Even the guy that was in the house after killing a police officer, we were professional. I think powers to be made it to where we had to do what we had to do. And it worked out good from that perspective only.

Now, I actually remember learning about that. Yeah. I remember learning about that in training. Yeah. I just had to tease this a little bit because he, I know some of the negotiations he's been involved in.

And I think we definitely are going to have to have an episode to have him come and talk about those a little bit more because he actually used to travel the country and teach a like, case review of one of his because it was that amazing so just a little tease, I'm definitely down for it I've got probably five or six pages of notes Frank so I'm trying to stay on course but we're going to have to have you back man.

I didn't realize you had so much experience it's great but I would be remiss though Matt I don't want to step on your toes but I would be remiss because I think you're the highest ranking law enforcement officer we've had on the show but I, I can listen to cop stories all night And I love it.

And I know people who listen to the podcast love it. But I do have questions just in regards to once you hit that lieutenant side and you're dealing with things like budgets and recruiting and you're thinking you're dealing with stuff that I've never dealt with. I've never been responsible for over. And I just I do have questions about that. But I'll kick it to you, Moe.

Yeah. So once you move into that level of being a supervisor and you do have to worry about budget constraints, how did you make sure that you made that balance, like you said earlier, to have your voice be heard, make sure you were protecting your people while supporting the mission of the agency? Well, I will tell you, you mentioned budget. When I went to District 3, I was told I was going to do the budget for the district.

And I thought the captain at the time, who then became major and then became sheriff, I thought he must have been crazy to ask me to do that. I knew absolutely zero about budget. But I took one of my young corporals under my wing, or he took me under his wing. He's now a sergeant there. And we figured out what the budget was about. He figured out what it entailed. And when I say him and I worked on it for three weeks straight, we did for three weeks straight, 12-hour shifts.

Starting a budget for an entire district from the ground up, accounting for every pencil, every notepad, every piece of equipment, for gas, for vehicles, for building maintenance. The list goes on and on. That was not a task I enjoyed. I'll be the first one to say that. I did not enjoy that. I did my very best. Corporal and I did our very best. It turned out acceptable. The captain, major, and then soon-to-be sheriff liked it. It was a good work product.

But definitely that was not something I wanted to do. I ended up having to do that again once in my career, or yes, I did once more in my career. And again, it was something I did not like. It was a little easier the second time. I learned that I needed to reach out to the other district's lieutenants and kind of work in unison with them. We all wanted to be on the same pages. But it was a tremendous amount of administrative paperwork that I did not want any part of.

So that was something I did not enjoy working for the budget, working doing the budget. Now, as a lieutenant, oh, go ahead, I'm sorry. No, go ahead. No, you go ahead. Go ahead, Tyler. Well, I was going to say, like, so you're working the budget. And, again, I'm not asking you to get into the details of dollar amounts. It doesn't really matter.

But was there anything that you were like you really advocated for because you said safety so you wanted to make sure your guys had the proper equipment or or whatever it might be what were you able to have your voice be heard and making making those adjustments or at least maybe recommendations i guess i i did make recommendations we did come up with things that we thought were necessary some of them were received favorably some we were told there was no a budget allowed for those things.

The budget is kind of like a give and take thing. You've got to figure out your top 10 wishes. What are really your top three wishes and strike for them? It wasn't really my perspective or my position to determine what the budget needed. It was what was there. How do we keep it going? How do we keep funding it? How do we keep gas in the car? are things of that nature. But we did make a few recommendations. Some of them were accepted. Some of them went all the way up and were approved.

But that was more of a limited basis. Yeah, like I've talked to people on the bomb team and stuff like that, and they're like, yeah, we got this $400,000 robot. It's amazing. But they don't ever want us to use it because if it blows up, then we don't have money to buy another one. So I'm like, well, then what good is having it in the first place? But it makes sense. I remember as CNT, as negotiators, we were operating out of a probably 1969 Wonder Bread van.

And SWAT guys would have these brand new fire engine turned into SWAT vehicles. Brand new. New one truck's beautiful. So there was a little dissatisfaction there. But the red truck, as we essentially called it, it worked fine. You could not drive over 55 miles an hour on call outs. I told my negotiators, don't turn the lights on. Don't turn the sirens on. You can't go fast. You're going to look silly on the interstate.

You just go normal run to the call outs there's no reason to race law enforcement's there the area's secure we get there safely now fair enough and i don't want to rush you but we're coming up on time and i want to just hit a few more things but what and mo step on me if you need to but what what changes did you see throughout the course of your career with recruiting training how promotions are conducted things like that because i

mean i can't envision hillsborough anywhere going a whole shift without having a call. That blows my mind. That was in the 89, 90 era when I worked with the area that's called Fort Lonesome, Lithia, down by the Mosaic Mines, down along the Manatee County, Polk County border. There were two days I can remember distinctively where I waxed my police car. I tried to jump calls, couldn't get it. But you had mentioned recruiting.

When I got to the sheriff's office, it seemed like a pretty simple process. You'd go to the sheriff's office, fill out an application. They'd do a background check on you if they liked what they saw on paper. They would send you to a psychologist. They'd send you for a medical exam. You'd have to do a physical fitness test. And then they'd make a decision whether they were going to hire you. Throughout my career, it got harder to find quality recruits.

People were not wanting to be police officers. They were going into more fields that paid them more money, fields that had better working hours, better working conditions. And that's where you saw agencies starting to offer bonuses. Come and work for us. We'll give you a $2,000 bonus. Now it's even higher than that. We'll give you a moving bonus if you come here. We'll pay for your training. We'll pay you while you're in the academy.

So it got much more selective, or excuse me, much more competitive because they just weren't having all these people walking into their office begging for jobs. We would send recruiters, you know, all over the country. I remember one time we had recruiters go to New York City, the colleges in New York City, try to find recruits.

And it wasn't really a lot of success with those trips. So it got really, really hard for not only our agency, but other agencies to to find and attract quality candidates. Yeah. Well, I'm going to kind of combine a couple of questions. So with that being the understanding and kind of the basis for this question, because you've been 30 years in law enforcement, where do you think it's going now? And is it going in a good direction? Well, a few years back, we had riots all over the country.

We had cities defunding law enforcement. We had protests against law enforcement. We had riots. We had riots in Tampa. I think the lack of lawlessness that was allowed made it worse. I think the pendulum, as they say, is swinging in the right direction. Instead of defund, it's now fund us. We need more money. And instead of lawlessness, it's no, we want law enforcement here. We're the cops.

You even have groups that were demanding defunding the police, and now they've become victims of crimes, and they're asking, where are the police? It's much more pro-law enforcement now. I think you have the public speaking out more pro-law enforcement than before. So I think it's getting better. I think it's swinging to where it needs to be.

Yeah, and I'll touch on that much smaller scale, but I remember controlling the box right around the university campus, and there was these four individuals that were like, it was some with the church. I don't know if they were Mormons or just out trying to spread goodwill. I don't remember that part. But they were trying to advocate helping the homeless, low-income, stuff like that. And I remember stopping them. I'm like, what are you guys doing out here?

And they immediately were negative and basically, how dare you stop us? And I'm like, listen, I want you to do all the goodwill you can. I said, but when the lights go down or when the streetlights come on, you should be gone. This is not a good safe place for you to be here. And they called me up one side and down the other, called me all kinds of names, tell me basically I'm the problem. I said, okay, well, I'll leave you about your business.

I think the streetlights came on 15 minutes later. We got a call. They had just been beaten and robbed. And I was like, well, I'm trying to help you. But it just kind of is like people have this concept that cops are the ones that are causing the crime or bringing tension. It's like, that's not our purpose. I don't want to be here. I don't want to write these cases, but I'm trying to help you. I agree. That makes any sense. Mo, I think we got time for one more. I'll kick it to you.

So this is kind of a question that I'm curious about because I've never asked so completely off of what we've been talking about here. So I spoke earlier about not just being a law enforcement officer, but being the spouse of a law enforcement officer. How did you feel with being the spouse of a law enforcement officer? Well, obviously, I was always concerned for your safety and worried if you were going to make it home or not. When you worked undercover, I did not like that.

I thought the way things were done was extremely dangerous. Right. And we'll leave it at that. It's hard when you, for some reason, if I had to go to sleep and you were still out on the street working, you know, when I wake up in the morning, are you still going to be breathing or am I going to call in the middle of the night saying you've been injured or worse? So the same things that you feel, I feel. It doesn't change that,

you know, wife versus husband. And it's, it's hard to be the spouse or even it's hard to have law enforcement in your family. If your son or daughter or aunt or uncle, your mom or dad, you know, everybody thinks the world goes on and on, but the world doesn't necessarily go on and on for everybody. Law enforcement officers are killed throughout the year. You see that you hear the stories and sometimes police officers don't come home.

So I would say my little prayer and I would tell myself that you're very well trained. You have great communication skills. You know how to physically take care of yourself. And I would just say a prayer and that would be that. You know, I didn't think about this, Frank, but we, again, as from your perspective, but when Mo came into BJ and I's world, we were excited. And we've said it many times on the episode, but I don't think we've said it to you specifically.

Mo was like a godsend and she helped us more than I could ever imagine. And we had probably the best year or maybe year and a half. I can't remember quite how long it lasted of our entire law enforcement career. We had a great time, but I guess I, you know, I never sat back and thought about, I wonder what Frank, cause we're kicking in doors, chasing people, chasing people, getting into all kinds of shit, dudes hiding in the woods and coming out and their skibbies and all kinds of stuff.

And we were laughing and thinking it's a great thing, but you know, you touch on it as her husband, That must have scared the shit out of you. Well, just to clarify something, Tyler, you and BJ came into Mo's world. You know what? Just to clarify that. I stand corrected. You are correct, sir. You are correct. You are correct. You're all under her wings. Well, 100% she did, and we're very thankful. I mean, 15 years later, we still talk about it.

But I will tell you, though, once I got to know you and BJ, I was able to relax a lot more. I knew you two could take care of yourself. I knew what kind of cops you were You were good street cops You weren't going to put up with anything And you could defend yourself And I knew the two of you would take care of her Oh, 100% Well, she got us out of a lot of stuff. Would you agree, Mo?

She's pretty reasonable and pretty fun Oh, yeah There were some things that we had to get out of But we were good, 100%, 100% Well, listen, we're wrapping up on time Frank, anything you're going to leave with We are going to have to have you back, buddy I got too many questions, No, I enjoyed talking with you, Tyler. I hope to see you soon. And I'll be glad and be honored to speak again. And I think this is a good idea when you get information out and you get opinions out.

It's good to listen to other people's opinions. You sometimes think your opinions are what's right. But if you take things and you have an open mind, you can learn. And I hope that police officers, deputies who need help after witnessing some tragic things, I hope they seek out help. Don't keep it in. That's not good for you. You got to resolve those images you have in your mind. That would be my last comment. Thank you for having me. No, definitely my pleasure. Mo, anything?

No, I'm very humbled again. And I want to say thanks to my husband for participating with me in doing this. It's something that I was really excited about doing. And I learned a lot about you today, too. Love it. Thank you both.