From Traditional Policing to Data-Driven Strategies

All right welcome back everybody today we're going to be talking about data-driven crime prevention the pros cons and how it's how it can be utilized effectively and efficiently but also how it's being used to kind of pad the stats so to speak i've got mo and i got bj and what's up baby. What's up?

Mo, I'm going to kind of kick it to you, get it started, because this is going to cover a lot. And I think we all have pretty strong opinions on it. So go ahead. I agree. I agree. I think the first thing is that people got to understand when we talk about data-driven crime prevention, what it really is. So first understanding that data-driven crime prevention is just another law enforcement strategy.

And strategies are just how law enforcement agencies approach preventing crime, investigating crime, how they predict crime, how they want to enforce it, and how they overall maintain public order. Traditionally, people would see those as patrol. That's the most visible way that people see that we use a law enforcement strategy. Another one that's very common is community policing.

It carries various names, they will call it, but it ultimately boils down to sending law enforcement officers out into the community, being involved not on an enforcement level, but more getting to know the community and working with them prior to crime actually being committed. Then another example is routine incident response, where they're going out to the average burglary. Those are still going to be strategies in order to do those, to accomplish those things that we talked about earlier.

And the last one is emergency response. Obviously, critical incident, we're responding out and we're trying to manage that critical incident and figure out how we can further investigate that crime. I came into law enforcement a little bit before you and BJ. We've talked about that. So I've had the opportunity to watch the tail end of the traditional kind of move and morph into more of the data-driven side of law enforcement and crime prevention.

So I started seeing some of the strategic policing, the intelligence-led policing, using data essentially to collect that data and figure out the underlying causes of crime and disorder. I saw the introduction of ShotSpotter, the introduction of facial recognition, using location histories.

When I first came into law enforcement, the idea of having the information as to what happened on the call at this particular address before I got there would only occur if I happened to cross paths with the deputy that responded out to that particular call.

Towards, after I had been there for a little while, we had the benefit of a computer-aided dispatch or a CAD system, excuse me, and that allowed us to have at my fingertips, if I was being dispatched to a location, I could see a good amount of calls for service that we had had out of that location.

Maybe not an entire history, because if we went to the house regularly, some of them would fall off, but it would provide me what were some of the most recent calls for service at that location, what was the disposition when the officer left, if an arrest was made, who were the players that they dealt with at that location.

So it gave me a lot of information to be able to go there with kind of in my back pocket when I got there, knowing who some of the people that I might be encountering if I'm dealing with violent individuals or people who have mental health issues or those kind of things. Facial recognition became a big thing. And I'm sure even the average Joe heard about that because it's been everywhere.

They're sticking in airports and And anywhere that there's public spaces where they can gather intelligence off of who is coming and going in these areas, that's something that law enforcement has utilized. ShotSpotter became a big thing because when you have these high crime areas, putting these computer systems into the area to be able to react based on hearing information. Gunshots being fired allowed us to be able to then target how we were going to do our patrols.

So these were all kind of the traditional examples and the data-driven examples, and I had the opportunity to watch them morph from one to the other and be able to develop an opinion as to how that process actually took place and where we're at now, kind of, and how it affects it. Well, let me ask you this, Mo, because again, you had more time on than BJ and I. What was it like prior to all of that? Let me hold on. Not what was it like. Did you see a significant difference?

How you would police and how you'd respond to calls with the introduction of these technologies, I guess. That's how I phrase it. Or the use of these technology. Absolutely. Let me lay some groundwork. When I first came, and I'm really dating myself, when I came to the sheriff's office, we worked off of a MDT system.

Which basically in layman's terms was like you know the old dos computers that had black screen with the green writing that's what it looked like you had the flashing prompt and you had to manually type anything you wanted the computer to do you had to essentially type it in computer language so if i was running a person it wasn't shut up tyler if i was running somebody typing in the command for the computer to run that person then their last name dot first

name dot middle initial.dateofbirth.race.sex, and you had to know the format to put it in to tell the computer to run that person. If you missed a dot or you missed a whatever, you're going to get whatever information back. You could get wrong information if you misspelled a name. It was also going to be incumbent of you did not want to run somebody who had a very common name because it would lock your computer up for five days.

If I ran a John Smith, it would be, it's done. I'm done for the night. So there was the ability to get some information out of this system, but it was very cumbersome, I will tell you. And it was limited because it was that type of DOS-based system. So probably while about year eight of me being there, roughly, maybe not that far, maybe year six-ish, we started rolling out the first wave of our computer-aided dispatch system.

And that's where we started being able to utilize that location history and things like that. And I will tell you, having the background of working with the system, with the lack of information, with knowing, like I said, if I came in the, it was, we had roll call every day. That was another thing we did. part of roll call was I was going to cross paths with the day shift people.

I was going to cross paths with maybe the shift that was coming off where we would be switching from A shift to B shift. I was going to cross paths with those B shift people so they could tell me or A shift people so they could tell me, hey, just so you know, the house that we always respond at over on, you know, 4th Street, they've been off the chain lately. This guy's been there. This one's got out of jail. So that's how information

was shared amongst law enforcement officers. Or they stuck notes in your box. That was another way. The idea of having a database of people that I could easily at my fingertips type over and be like, who are our homeless people out in this particular area? That wasn't available. It was incumbent upon me, the officer, to go out, meet the homeless people, build my own what we used to call field information reports.

I would create a binder with all of those people's information that I happened to cross paths with. So for the good cops that had those binders and got out of their car and met people, they had a wealth of information with them, but understood that information traveled with just that cop and who they shared it with. So... It was a different way of policing. There were some still some pros to it.

And I will tell you that because we did get out and meet people and we did communicate about what was going on. It wasn't just a blurb that I typed and maybe the context was missed. However, if that person didn't share it, all that information was locked essentially in their brain. The location history files, the additional information, the technology side of it created it so that Monique didn't have that information locked up with her.

I would put the information into a system. Tyler could get it. BJ could get it. Officer Smith could get it. Whoever could have access to that information and hopefully be able to make good decisions when they were responding to calls like that. Now, the other side of that coin I will tell you is because sometimes there was an information overload.

You give people so much information that they become fearful of going to certain calls or they become cocky sometimes going into some types of calls because they feel like they know everything already when they get there. So there wasn't a lot of information gathering once that individual responded because they felt like they already had it all in many cases. I think I had the benefit of... I'm sorry, I was going to say... No, no, go ahead, go ahead.

Coming from the traditional and moving into the data-driven, I had the benefit of blending two different types of law enforcement styles and creating one that I think that was pretty effective.

Alright, we got you. Go ahead, bro. I think we touched on it a little bit on our last episode about the expansion

of technology and how it's kind of affecting the job today. I want you to make a good point about, seeing both sides of it i think when when me and color came on i think it was still pretty pretty new to the point of like obviously we didn't have like maps and data we couldn't just map everything like a geomap we didn't have that just yet but the information but like you pointed out the information for path calls and stuff was was there and i'll say this,

somebody who's who's who's continued on from that point and using it right is that is that like you said, it can, be a hindrance in my opinion because, people have become so reliant on the information of the house for the last two years and we know everybody that's there. I may not necessarily add anything new to it because there's already so much information in there.

If we go into a face-to-face, this is the first or second time, yeah, I'm going to add some notes, some things in there, who lives here, who's lived here before, what's going on. But again, as you start to kind of get further along in some of these addresses that we frequent, adding context to the overall location may not happen. And I think it's one of those things where technology, we were in a strange place. Like Tyler and myself are old

enough. But I didn't grow up. I didn't get a cell phone until I had to. I barely had a baby. So I'm used to talking to people, having to write things down. People get on me now because I keep a hand counted. I'm like, I'm used to writing things down. That's how I remember stuff.

Yeah, so we're kind of in that middle of having the people skills, having the social skills, having the ability to talk to people, gain the information, get contacts from the community, and that kind of thing, interacting.

Whereas I'm saying it with some of the newer I guess I'll say newer generation but some people who are a little bit more reliant on the technology to the point where sometimes I wonder like man if all of this, you know we had for example had like an EMP blast and it didn't work or like the network goes down would you know first of all would you know where you are would you know how to get around would you know how to gain information would

you know how to talk to people without having some of the backstory of location history I think sometimes we're a little bit too reliant on it. Sometimes I think it's more of a crutch than there's a tool.

And I'll add on that because some of the stuff you're talking about when I was a trooper in Maine ShotSpotter wouldn't do us any good in most of Maine because it's so rural, and even facial recognition maybe and then I'll flip that in New York, ShotSpotter, things like that When you're dealing with a building that's 70, you know, 60, 70 stories high, okay, you heard a shot in this block. What story did it come up from?

And I can tell you working with NYPD, Chicago, places that have these very, you know, skyscrapers, huge buildings. They still very much use community policing. It's actually kind of interesting. The more populated it is, the less technology actually works for them because they have to know that one or two cops might patrol one building because there's 10,000 people in there. And so it's interesting. There's not one solution that solves all the issues.

I will say the computer history, the computer databases that have location history.

Facial recognition, all that stuff, it's still kind of in the judicial phase i know if it's like a private building they'll use it but certain states don't allow it on their toll roads things like that although funny enough when you work on the federal side and it's involving the protection of a president or vice president all those fucking rules go out the window you could set a fucking a plot you could set a you know an area around your protection zone and i can get whatever information

i want if it has to do with protection furthermore but then you see outside the u.s when you go to london paris some of these other china japan stuff like that they don't give a fuck they facial recognition speed monitors it is the most surveilled population on the planet i think and it's it's to the point now it's it's to the point when i was last there which was a year ago if if you get picked up on it you're driving on the highway you hit one camera you hit the

other camera too fast they'll give you a speeding ticket even though nobody ever caught you speeding and you didn't hit a speed or radar or anything because you you got to the next camera too fast and that's how it works and they don't play also just a side note we'll move on to the next stop but side note in other countries outside the u.s driver's license costs anywhere from i think in london it's like three thousand. In Japan, it's $8,000 U.S. dollars to get a license to drive.

That is so, yeah, it is 100% of privilege. And you get like two or three violations, they could take your license. They don't DUI, throw that out the window. You're done. It is so expensive that it is a business. It's basically a business investment to get your license. So there's some things that I'm like, I kind of wish we would do some of that in the U.S. Because everyone thinks it's, oh, I'm 18 or whatever. I deserve a license. No, you're a fucking idiot.

And you got guys that have had four, five, six, seven DUIs over the course of whatever. And it's like, that shit does not fly overseas. Again, we're talking about, you know, I'm not talking about third world countries or, you know, these are first world country problems, but it creates, you feel safer while you're driving. So when they're like, oh yeah, the Audubon and Germany and France, yeah, they're not fucking around, dude.

Like, yeah, you can go as fast as you want because if you have any traffic crashes, DUI, anything like that, they could take a lot. That's your, for a lot of people, that's their livelihood. That's how they make their money. It's just a thought that I'm throwing out there as we're getting into this stuff. But, Mo, I appreciate that. And I want to get in, but I definitely want to be, I want to touch on these other topics because I think they're great. But what are agencies using data?

Why are agencies using data to prevent crime? And I do like the concept, but I want to not just focus on the bad, but also the good. Yeah, definitely. And I think the main reason that agencies moved away that I could see, and this is just my personal watch, was because they were trying to do more with less. The idea, agencies wanted to reduce their police footprint while at the same time not giving up their ability to do effective enforcement.

Because if you reduce the footprint and then crime goes through the roof, people obviously aren't going to be happy with that. But the idea is to have a successfully prioritize crime, but do it with limited resources. And the best way that they figured to do it, I think, is by using some of the data driven way of doing things. And you touched on it a little bit with when you said, you know, what about traffic crash? Well, they started using everything.

We started gathering data on traffic crashes. Where are we having a ton of crashes? Where are we having, you know, a lot of red light running? And then at that point, now we know where to send our motor use and then target those kinds of issues. Taking from that, where are we having a lot of violent crimes, robberies? Are we having assaults, batteries, those kinds of things? And then knowing how to take that map, essentially, and overlay it over the resources that we have and how to deploy them.

So the main reason that a lot of agencies, to include the one that I worked for.

Started doing it is because they wanted to reduce that police footprint while making sure that they were still being able to give the same effective enforcement and trying to reduce mainly violent crimes, trying to reduce those kinds of things so that people felt safe. And even though they weren't seeing as many cops, that wasn't changing that.

Because the reality, and we've talked about this in several of our episodes, is that the, Police agencies in America are significantly understaffed, and they continue to be understaffed. I always say, and this was the truth, when I started at the sheriff's office, they told us when they hired us, we're 500 deputies short. When I left the sheriff's office, we were still roughly 500 deputies short across the board. You know, including that would have included detention and law enforcement.

But that number never changed. So by allowing data to start driving the decision making on how the people from up top were deploying out their resources, it gave them the ability to target the worst offenders, to make some investigative inroads, to be able to solve crimes quickly when they're conducting investigations, to make sure that when we are targeting with traffic stops and things like that, if we're going after firearms,

for instance, It's making sure the traffic stops in the locations that we're using are well-intentioned, that we are going to actually yield exactly what we're looking for, traffic stops that are going to get guns off the street. So that was kind of like the apprentice behind it, which I think was great.

But like I said earlier, I think there was a breakdown, and we're going to talk about it a little bit, it was rolled out with little training, and so therefore, I don't think it was always done as effectively as can possibly be done. The other reason, I think, is they wanted to make themselves to appear to be more efficient. Or to be more efficient. Sometimes it worked, it actually was more efficient when it's done correctly, or at least to appear to the public that we were more efficient.

And one of the things that I can tell you where that was kind of a not so good thing is with statistically reporting what was happening and what was coming out of all these data driven, because it was the new hot thing when I first started seeing it come in, it was, we started this new process. So we got to make sure that the benefit of this new process is showing.

But again, like I said, because the rollout with the lack of training and the lack of knowing how to do it the right way, sometimes that wasn't actually the output, but it didn't matter. We still wanted to show stats that were right. And sometimes you had agencies that played with those stats to make sure that the numbers were reporting as they wanted them.

One of the cases that when I was online kind of looking into this Oakland Police Department, they had a really big push to talk about how they were using data to make sure that they were making an impact on every level across the board because they were such an understaffed agency. And they started reporting that they were reducing shootings by 50%, homicides by 42%, and robberies by 38%. So those are really big numbers.

And when you start throwing things like that out, you got to know that people are going to check their numbers. And that's what happened. People started checking the numbers and they started realizing that Oakland was reporting stuff that wasn't exactly right. They were doing some inaccurate crime reporting because of the fact of the way they were skewing the data. So those are some of the reasons, but that's, you know, as to what, the reason behind it, I think, was still good.

It was just somewhere down the line, some things might have gotten lost in translation. Well, and we talked about it a little bit before, and not just to pick on Oakland, But famously, New York is doing the same thing. But there's a bunch of agencies that they'll have you arrest somebody for a burglary, meaning they kicked in your fucking door, got in your house, stole your shit and left. That's a burglary. That's a felony. You would arrest them and charge them with a felony.

But for me, I think that's not what I'm saying. Yeah. Well, and then when you write the report, you write it as misdemeanor trespass with misdemeanor theft. And i remember when that rolled out and i was like what the fuck is this and even new york now where you if i if the dude pulls a gun takes your shit and leaves they're like oh so well did he shoot you okay well that's a misdemeanor theft i'm like what the fuck is going on so exactly.

Exactly but bj i think you remember i i kind of want to bring it all together in this because i I think using data-driven targeting of law enforcement, which we're going to get into, But I don't think it could ever actively replace personnel, community policing, and boots on the ground. Because I remember when, and Mo, this predates us meeting you, but BJ and I were in the box.

And at the time, Sergeant Shiro Shiro, we had a spike in robberies going on and violent crimes where what was happening is the inner city kids in the box were robbing the migrant workers when they were casting their checks. So every Friday, we'd see like 20 robberies. Like, what the fuck's going on? Shia pulled us all aside. He goes, look, this is what's going on. They don't have banking accounts, so they're cashing their checks here.

And on their way home, they're getting ambushed, and that's their money for the week. And so what was happening is the migrants were then arming themselves with knives, and some of them had guns, to defend themselves. So what we started doing is Friday, and we hit the streets. We were telling people between these hours, and basically we just flooded that area, and we made sure that they were safe, and we made sure that they felt safe, and we saw a vast reduction in robberies.

I don't know that that's necessarily something data-driven, because I don't know that any data would say, hey, this is why this is happening. But that was something that it was boots on the ground. We, I mean, it's kind of sucked for me because for like three hours a night, we were just sitting there on these, these known paths that we would use. And there was a deputy in the cash checking place, a deputy at the other end of the street, and then a deputy kind of patrolling.

And that's what we did until the place closed. And then, then we could go about our business. But that was the effect of that. Do you remember that shit, BJ? I remember that. And I think it's, I think it kind of puts, it brings two things together.

Kind of what mo was talking about it's a way it's a way to so for example obviously you know we have a shift to b shift right so obviously i can read everything that's in the nightly i can read everything that's in the emails or whatever but unless you have somebody to look at the data and then also talk to the people who are out there working put those two things together.

Then you're not really you know it's not going to be as effective if you don't have that so being able to connect you know like you said the the street level stuff that would act with the reality of what's actually happening out there versus what we're seeing on the computer and like okay i can look at this thing and say and see hers you know we had 10 robberies last weekend, and you know in in bravo one okay yeah everybody can see that we can all read

left to right top the bottom we got it you know but what what is the what's the what's what is not being conveyed, contextually through the numbers what are we what are we missing in order to get this thing back to where we need to, and that's where you have to have the people on the street. So you can say, hey, man, what's going on in the street that these things are allowed to happen?

Oh, well, okay, well, that weekend, we had six people off, and one person was at the garage for three hours, and the other person was at, you know, so you can kind of figure out what's what. Okay, maybe that's the reason why there's nobody out there, versus the numbers will make it seem like, like you said, well, hey, we're 500 people short. That's not being conveyed on the numbers. It just says, hey, we had technology. Nobody's putting the information together. No, that's a good point.

And two more points, and we're going to move on to the next phase because I'm excited about this other one. But with technology, bad guys learn how to adapt. And I can remember, again, this is a Shiro thing, when we put in shot spotters in the box area, which is right there by the district in District 1, bad guys learned what that was.

They would then go buy the shot spotter, crack off a couple rounds, dip out so they could go do what they really wanted to do when they knew Cobb was going to flood that area to pull them away from where they wanted to go do whatever it is they were doing. On top of that, BJ, to your point, BJ, were you there for the Lord of the Flies thing where I basically busted up a fucking, I swear to God, it was the Lord of the Flies.

And I swear to God, we had like a 200% increase in like petty theft, retail theft, car burglary, like bullshit. And like the green team, the detectives, everybody was like freaking out, like what the fuck is going on? And sure shit, I get out of the meeting, I go out and boom, I got a fucking Walmart theft. Instead of going straight to Walmart to write the report, I'm like, well, hold on, let me see what the fuck's going on.

I see six teenage kids walking down the road with shit that was reportedly just stolen. So I just, I just stayed back and I watched them and they get behind these woods behind this apartment complex. I'm like, where the fuck are they going? It was a dirt road and I didn't even know this shit existed. I worked in this area for like three years. I drive down this dirt road and it's an abandoned apartment complex. And I called in for backup.

We go in, we surround the building, we go in. I shit you not, Moe, I don't know if I've told you this. There's 15 fucking kids that range in age from like 11 to 19, 20 years old. In this apartment complex, they were stealing cable from like the fucking Waffle House or some shit. They had like an orange electric cord going to the house. We walk in and it was like, holy mother of God. It was like 20 TVs, mountains of clothes. I mean, there was just fucking shit everywhere.

It was a goddamn, you know what? Sergeant Powell was my sergeant at the time. He was like, son of a bitch. Cause they had to call in all the detectives. They called in, seeped in. Yeah. There was like eight runaways. There was like three kids with fucking warrants. It was a fucking nightmare. But I remember I was there for like three hours. I was like, y'all got this. I'm out there like, fuck you, Martin. Cause I was like, and I think, you know what? I think Cole was a detective.

He goes dude i worked on that for 24 hours straight we saw we they closed out like 30 robberies or burglaries or whatever thefts they're like you son of a bitch you're what i was like you're welcome bro you're welcome bro so yeah so anyway so it does all kind of tie in but some of it again i just gotta just reiterate i love technology and we're gonna get into some of it Some of it I even actually did.

BJ, you and I did. And Mo, you were kind of there after I got in trouble and kicked off the task force. Whatever. And it worked very well. But, yeah, there's still that boots on the ground, that kind of using reason logic that I think is, unfortunately, as the old heads move out and you keep having this high turnover of the young head, I just, I don't know how you're going to teach that.

Yeah, I will say, like, one of the things that, when I was talking about why do agencies do this, doing more with less, I think that was the, that's the failure sometimes, is that we try to stretch our resources too thin and rely on nothing but technology. I don't want to set this conversation up to like that. I don't like technology or you or I think that we are all on the same page to say that there is a absolute usefulness when it comes to technology and the law enforcement.

But it's not it should not be utilized to stretch your resources, because like you just said, for all the things that we put together, that puzzle, it's going to require the boots on the ground to then put all the puzzle pieces together.

You can have all the information you want, but if you don't have anybody who's gone out and been like, oh, yeah, I know this is going on over there, you need that to kind of marry it all together and then actually get true and effective usage of it and then subsequently get true and effective stats that come out of it. Let me also say this. You also have to have an agency that wants to fucking listen. Because as you're saying that, I remember, BJ, you were there for that.

Remember King Outrageous? And I wrote a intel report because I worked like four felonies. It was like a robbery. It was like two robberies, a burglary and a sexual assault of a minor. And they all named this dude King Outrageous, who I believe was a blood. I can't remember this point, but he was gang affiliated. I can't remember this point.

And I wrote this intel report which was like it was one of those things where like you hated to do it because you knew the detectives were like this motherfucker but I wrote it up I said hey look this dude who's unidentified at this point has committed all these crimes it sat in a no man's land for a year and then a year later, they said the lieutenant he said who's the old head lieutenant that retired bro I love that motherfucker god I can't remember his name but he's like hey

Martin stand up for me real quick, and I stood up and all the detective unit came in and he goes, these detectives have something they want to say to you. I was like, oh, fuck me. The detective, Mo, I don't know if I told you this, the detective sergeant goes, Mo, Mo, Mo, you already know, bro. And any cop listening is like, oh, fuck. The detective sergeant goes, Deputy Martin, we want to apologize to you. And I was like, oh, son of a bitch.

My head went down immediately. I turned bright red. Deputy Martin wrote an intel report a year ago that's set on uninvestigated. We have closed out 16 robberies, 14 burglaries, and three sexual assaults based on his intel report that he wrote a year ago, and I said, thank you, sir. And I went, God damn it. And I knew, and the detectives all had that rage face on me, and I was like, oh my God. But at the same time, a year ago, I said, hey, yo, this dude might be a problem.

We should figure out who this motherfucker is. They didn't give a shit about shithead deputy Tyler Martin, and it sat, and this dude was out here committing all kinds of fucking felonies in this bitch. I just remember that. BJ, you remember that, Sarah? Oh, yeah.

I think my dentons were in 24 status. here's another time though where you had the intelligence yeah you had the data and no it didn't come to you from a computer it came from you from somebody that's out there doing the job yeah you ignored it yeah correct where i say that the bridging the gap that's where because we're so reliant sometimes on getting the data from the computer that we'll ignore things like that that are just sitting right there for a year

and a half don't get mad at me because you missed it I'm trying to tell you. Oh, fuck. I just remember that shit. Sorry, we got sidetracked. I want to move on to how data used to prevent crime because this speaks near and dear to my heart. I still believe in this shit. Go ahead, Mo. So obviously, like we've talked about, there's a lot of ways that data can be used appropriately. And one of the ways that I can tell you, like Tyler talked about, they did this.

This is something that, and I think we talked about it in the episode, a couple episodes back, but this is something focusing on the offenders that are going to keep re-offending and talking to get dealing with those individuals is a great way to utilize data. The, we know, statistically speaking, people, when they get out of prison, they are going to, their rate of re-offending is pretty high.

So being able to find out who those individuals are and targeting them is going to be a great way to impact your bottom line. Because the other thing we also know from statistics is there's only a small percentage of people, even though we as law enforcement officers feel like they're everywhere, there's a small percentage of people that commit most of the crime. So if we can focus on those people who are committing those crimes, we are destined to actually impact the stats as a result.

Yeah, no, correct And there's a lot of things that you gotta be, Mindful of and You know, I read a whole paper On this when Targeting recidivists because you gotta And I draw on a blank It's like dark horsing and like making sure You're not basically. Violating someone's civil rights or constitutional Rights but you know there's There's certain crimes That individuals Who do them will continue to do them. Like burglaries, robberies, car thefts, retail thefts, drug dealers a lot,

you know, gun dealers, you know, people who steal guns. I mean, there's just a lot of money in it. I remember talking to a guy, which was, I wish I still had these names because some of the best stories I ever had. But he had been stealing commercial equipment since the 80s. And he would steal bulldozers, tractor trailers. He'd drive them to Miami and he'd disappear and he'd get like 20 grand for them. And I remember we arrested him for trying to steal a tractor trailer.

And I was just talking to him like, bro, why are you doing this? He goes, man, I've been doing this shit since before you were born. I was like, oh, and there's just certain things that people will do. Now we touch on it. There's some stuff you can't prevent from data, like domestic violence, a lot of homicides, like the concept of serial killer. That's like, again, I don't have the stats. Somebody's going to correct me. I'm sure. But like less than 2% of all murders are serial killer related.

Even though there's so many shows out there people think they're fucking everywhere they're not they're not a lot of them are crimes of passion or crimes gone bad i remember i used to piss off uh. I won't use his name, but we used to call him Batman. He went to homicide and I'd fuck with him. I'm like, oh, he's solving any big murders. Let me guess. A domestic violence case or a crime gone bad. Ooh, they're like, get the fuck out of here. Because that seemed to be what most, most murders are.

And like domestic violence, like you can't, there's nothing, no data you can get to say, hey, a domestic violence is going to occur unless it's like a habitual DV offender or something like that. But all these other things like crimes against children and like the ones I mentioned, you can use data.

And as long as they're on probation, parole, something like that, you can use the rules that govern them to effectively police them, making sure they're home when they're supposed to be home, making sure they're at work when they say they're at work. There are things you can do to target those types of criminals. And I'm going to jump ahead a little bit, but that was something that, you know, I was getting my master's degree. I was learning all this stuff. I thought I was hot shit.

And so I came up with this plan. I thought it was a great idea. And BJ was right there with me at the time. And I was like, oh, yeah, this is so great. I'm going to get probation, tab a PD. Like, this is such a great thing. And overall, it was. It got me in a lot of trouble because old heads, supervisors didn't like it because it was new and I outshined them. Which is something you don't do. Right, BJ? Rule number one. Rule number one. don't know.

Which I did inadvertently and it ended up getting me in trouble in the long run but it did work so it can be utilized effectively, without violating their civil rights and just like oh they're jaywalking you don't need to do that, well let me have some context let me have some context I'm going to do people listening who will take what we're saying in a more literal sense.

In the sense of that, we are just, harassing people and obviously like i said you're asking context to the recidivism numbers right yes like i said this is something i did i also did one of my final papers from my undergrad was specifically drug crimes right so these are like people who have addictions like you said there's certain things you can't necessarily predict obviously crime fashion things like that right but you can look at overall numbers and say hey of all

the people that have been arrested for this particular crime how many of these people have got have been arrested multiple times for the same or similar crimes or crimes that go that are connected to one another right so hey again a lot of burglaries a lot of robberies those kind of things are connected to narcotics and drugs drug use drug abuse those kinds of things so sometimes there's a correlation so it's not necessarily hey you're just doing this this type of demographic

area right or this type of area you're just going after these people. It's like, no, not necessarily. And obviously, a lot of these numbers are leaving out the socioeconomic things that go along with the reason why some of these things are happening. So I kind of wanted to just clarify that because I know people are going to start to eat a fuck on that fire without thinking that we're not acknowledging socioeconomic pieces that go along with some project.

So I'm sorry. 100%. No, you're fine. I just wanted to say also, which piggybacks on what you're thing. The other reason we focus on the individuals that are going to recommit crimes, do the recidivism, is because at the end of the day, people got to eat. And I will tell you where we fail them is we arrest people, we put them in jail, but we don't ever really rehabilitate people.

We don't set them up so that when they come out, that they have an effective way to provide for themselves and their families if they have them. So they go to jail, they serve their time. They come out and they don't have skills. And then they encounter society that we don't want to hire people who've been to jail. So it's kind of set up where certain crimes especially, these people are destined to re-offend because they've got to live is what it boils down to a lot of times.

And we have no choice but to then deal with that. Then there's other people who they are going to recommit the crimes because when you're talking about crimes against children, people who abuse children sexually and things like that, those people don't get rehabilitated in prison. They come out with the same mentality they went in with. went in with.

So in many cases, that's part of the problem too, as to why we are going to have to deal with these individuals again, because there is no way to, in my opinion, rehabilitate people who are doing those types of crimes. But then when you look at some of the other crimes, the robberies, the burglaries, things like that, they come out with the same skill set they went in with.

So now they're coming out to a world that's now advanced beyond where they were when they went in, depending on how long they've been in there.

And they're going to go right back to the other things that they've done because that's all they know you know let me touch on something i'm gonna ask you guys about this and i'd also be remiss bj i don't know if you caught the episode we did with frank because here i am thinking i did something i was hot shit and frank's like yeah we were doing that in the 90s playboy i was like well damn i didn't know i didn't know but mo you're touching on something that.

And again, it's another thing I'm passionate about. The U.S. Is engineered. It's another episode, man. It is. But you touched on something that's near and dear to my heart as well. The U.S. is dedicated to punishment for when somebody commits a crime. And there is a difference. It's case by case.

And it's one of those things they teach you. And if you ever go to criminology or whatever, when you're in basic for law enforcement, and they've kind of taken the decision-making out of law enforcement's hand. But there's a difference between the elderly person who's stealing supplements and food and blankets because they're cold, they don't have money, and they need to try to survive.

And the guy, BJ, I know you were on this one because the guy who's like had a shopping list and was just stealing electronics and bullshit. And he's like, yeah, I've been doing this for 30 years. Play, bro, you do your job, I'll do mine. And there's a difference, and it's not something you can just parse out based on the crime, detailed theft, right? Retail theft is retail theft. But there is a difference in why they are doing it.

And so, again, this is where the court is already overburdened with all these bullshit-ass crimes that people commit anyway. And the time to take, say, hey, this guy needs help, or this person needs help, and this person's just a fucking shithead, it doesn't really get parsed out in the courts. It's not how it works. I wish it did, but it doesn't. Yeah. So they're too inundated with cases to take the time. Yeah.

Let me just, let's just play King for a day, but BJ, I'll kick to you first, Mo, you next. How would you parse that out? How would you differentiate the two and how would you help one over the other? Oh, I mean, I mean, obviously if you had the time to look at every individual case, right? And say, hey, I mean, the question that's overlooked in a lot of these cases is why this is happening, why a particular crime is happening, right?

It's a lot easier to do well when you have a murder, something like that, because you're taking the time to figure out why it's just, what do they do to make them not mad that you want to kill somebody, right? You obviously want to figure that part out. But some of the other things, It's like, I'm just looking at the numbers. Hey man, this guy's stealing shit from Walmart. Well, most of the time people don't really care why that's happening.

So I think if you had the time to look at every individual case, I know we don't, but if we have the time to, you say, Hey, Oh, this guy's, he's stealing, what is he stealing food? Okay. Is there a way that we can, what's your, what's your, what's your,

what's your, what's your economic status like? Hey man, I made, you know, it's like, Hey bro, I make, you know, five hundred dollars a week i got bills i got a kid i got i understand i understand why you're doing what you're doing maybe we can help you get into a better position or get into a better job it's kind of a lot more money that we don't have to do i think that's probably obviously i mean you can't really put a number on this i would i would bet to say there's probably 70 60 to

70 percent of thefts or crime that are in some sort of similar similar place and that's i think that's why you don't see you know hey you don't see a spike in recidivism rates in the hamptons because everybody got money up there they don't need to do that right versus you know in the middle of the bronx hey everybody don't got money so these people are going to do what they need to do to survive.

A lot of things, a lot of these crimes are, I think, based off of survival and not necessarily because people are criminal in nature.

Let me just jump in and I'm going to kick DMO. Yeah, Hamptons and there's not recidivism there because when those crimes do occur, they're like fucking murders or large-scale embezzlement so they go to jail and they either die in prison or they get out and they're so old they can't commit those crimes again whereas the smaller you know crimes where you're doing maybe one year or three years you can get out and do those

things over and over again but you know you kind of touched on it it is a lot of socioeconomic, driven and there's a it's hard to explain hey i'm stealing this because i'm hungry and i'm cold, i'm stealing this because i can sell it and get drugs or i'm stealing this because i fucking love to steal uh you know most criminals don't tell you why they're doing that shit, Sorry, Mo, go ahead. Queen for a day. Go.

Queen for a day. I would tell you the first thing I would say is that if you look at the amount of money that this country dumps into punishment side of crime, it's astronomical in comparison to what we dump into the socioeconomic side of crime. It's very minimal. So first thing I would say is that we'd have to look at how we are allocating the funds, because I think if we get to the why, you can't impact the when it's happening. You know what.

The other part I would say is you need to trust your officials. What I mean by that is we have cops. They can take people's freedoms away. They can kill somebody legally, but we don't trust them to make a decision on the street and say, this person is stealing because they're hungry. Example, I went to a call where a lady who was stealing formula for her baby that was three weeks old because she couldn't breastfeed. It had dried up.

Her significant other left her. She had an apartment that she couldn't afford that she was going to be able to stay in for probably another month or so. And she had no way of feeding her two-week-old child who was screaming. So she went into the Winn-Dixie and stole formula. Yep. That, to me, was not a enforcement issue.

That was a social services issue. and by the way that the law, the punishment side was laid out, I had, let me rephrase that, I was supposed to arrest her and put her in jail and send her child to child protector services. In my opinion, that wasn't a mother that wasn't providing for her child. That was a mother that was in desperation to provide for her child.

So in turn, I bought the formula for her and then I did a, where she could come to court later on and deal with the situation, even though she didn't technically meet the requirements for being able to be given a court date. She lived technically two counties away or something like that. What was the address on her driver's license? So therefore, I should have arrested her because she didn't meet the requirements.

That to me is a situation where as a law enforcement officer, you trust me to put people in jail and take their freedoms away. You trust me to shoot somebody and make that decision. But I can't make a decision in this situation to say this is a waste of resources for the court system. We should not have sent her through the court system. I should have had an avenue to send her to social services to get the issue resolved.

And that's the avenue that we should have taken. So figure out why are we putting so much money in this side of the house, but not the other side. And then if we have law enforcement officers, we also have prosecutors and we have state's attorneys. When that gets to that level, because like one of you guys said, people don't always tell us on the street why they're stealing, but they might tell their attorney. So if their attorney at a point goes, wait a minute, stop the train for a second.

This is why that crime occurred. We can better handle it this way. We should be able to bail out of the punishment side of the system at any point when that individual that you have put in that position can make a sound decision and be able to do that. I feel like that would be a better way of handling it because especially now you look at nowadays, eggs are costing, you know, how much to buy a dozen eggs?

People are going to commit crimes because things are they're getting things are costing more than they are bringing in even when they're working every day yeah well and I don't think I told either one of you guys this.

Since we're on it might as well i actually got pulled into the office by a sergeant and lieutenant because they were reviewing my case reports this was after i'd already gotten in trouble, and the the question was why i trespassed certain people and arrested other people for retail theft, and they were basically trying but they they were trying to dig into it and again it was a misdemeanor i was told i had discretion over that and in a lot of cases you know they i So in four cases,

I paid for the food that these people were stealing, and I trespassed them. I said, hey, you can't come back here, but I'm not going to arrest you. Two of them were at Walmart, two of them were at Publix. And I guess one of the Publix people, security guys, called and complained that I didn't arrest this individual. And the sergeant at the time, I could tell he was trying to make it a racial issue until he actually looked at the cases.

And three of the people that I paid for their food and trespassed them were black males. Two of them were homeless. One of them was in a wheelchair and the other one was a mom, kind of like what you described, Mo, where she was like, I'm trying to feed my kids. So I paid for their food on a deputy salary. And I said, Hey, look, take the food. I'll pay for it. I got the receipt. I paid for it out of pocket. I said, but you can't come back

here. You're trespassed. She was just like, thank you. I'm sorry. And they left and I didn't have any issues with them. now with that being said i arrested a fucking nine-year-old kid because he was stealing cell phones so it wasn't had nothing to do with with any anything any racial or anything like that for me it was like and it wasn't even the amount right i arrested a dude for stealing a box of condoms and an umbrella i was like nah bro you just fucking crazy but you're going to jail,

yeah i was like hell nah bro i don't give a shit what the amount is fuck that.

So when they dug into it I was like this is my thought process and the only thing the lieutenant said is like I understand what you're doing but you can't save everybody be careful the sergeant was pissed because I could tell and I'm not going to say his name because I still hate that motherfucker, yeah because he's the one trying to make everything I did racial and I'm like bitch anyway but no I mean those are the things that you have to decide on and

I don't suggest anybody go out and start paying for people's groceries I'm not suggesting But I just couldn't, in my conscience, say, arrest this person because they're hungry. I mean, one dude was homeless in a wheelchair, and he's like, I'm cold and I'm hungry. He was trying to steal a steak and a blanket. I'm like, yo, come on, bro. What are we doing? It's outrageous, man. Anyway, I digress. Yeah, so that... Y'all know who I'm talking about. Fuck that guy.

You are digressing. Let's get back to talking about... I'm sorry. BJ, I want to be respectful of your time, bro. I know you got to bounce. Anything you want to leave with, brother? I want to know. That doesn't necessarily get talked about very often, and I think it gets... Like we talked about marrying the information with the streetload and stuff.

I don't think this conversation gets maybe it does maybe it doesn't you know get brought to the higher ups I'm not sure I think it's something that has to be addressed what we make you know we're making a lot of task force for this task force for that you know we're targeting this and like, are we actually being efficient in what we're doing, you know I mean we can make a task force for you know put two people on task force for I don't know I don't know boating licenses like bro is this being

efficient like you said out as if an efficient use of our resources. I would rather have quality over quantity and be able to actually make a dent in some of these things. Like I said, if we're attacking the social economic part, I think we will alleviate some of our crime sets and actually be able to figure out who is actually, just like hard-armed criminals who just like doing it for the sake of doing it and not just doing things to survive.

Couldn't agree more, bro. EJ, I appreciate you, bro. I know you got a bow. Of course, brother. Yeah, yeah. Good talking about it. We'll get together real soon. Alright, brother. Good talk. I will say, to piggyback on what he said, it kind of ties into what we were talking about when we're talking about focusing how to use the data to prevent crime. The thing is, I think you have to set realistic goals, like you were saying, and look at what crimes we need to be looking at.

I understand, you know, like you said, I don't think we should blanket and say retail theft. I think you do need to look at it with a little bit more of a more scrutinizing eye. I know that, and again, like you said earlier, we can't look at this as a way to effectively enforce or prevent domestic violence or to prevent homicides because homicides are typically, they are by nature, they're going to be very different than regular crimes.

But the idea is let's figure out what crimes we can focus on that are going to affect the public and have the biggest impact and understand that while we're into those crimes, the robberies, the burglaries, the car thefts, the retail thefts, we also do need to overlay some of these other things in there too, to think about the why. Because if we can get the why sometimes dealt with, that is also going to help us.

That's the part where data can't fix it. That's where you do need the boots on the ground. Well, and again, that touches on the, we don't call it a task force, but where we were going after people on probation, and this ties into the next phase here, but, you know, how do you even know who's on probation in your area? There was a time when we didn't know and there was no easy way to figure it out.

And I worked with Hillsborough County IT department to put up a map and say, hey, these are in and then. But you also had to work with probation and they had to upload that data because people move around. They bounce around. And, you know, for a lot of people who don't know, there's people who come out of jail that are still on probation or parole. There's a difference that their address is under a bridge or at this intersection because they're homeless.

How do you map that right and yeah so we were working together to do that i'm also going to say you got to educate the higher-ups because there's people that are get up to the status of you know lieutenant major colonel whatever sheriff not the sheriff involves himself in these things but major at least because they run the district these fuckers don't know man and i can tell you a real life story when i was trying to put all this together

and effectively utilize the tools that were available to all law enforcement. And it was myself, three probation officers. They were like senior probation officers and the chief probation officer, a couple majors and a couple of lieutenants because they were trying to like put bodies towards this thing. And we started the meeting and I outlined the goals. The probation officers talked about what they were doing and what they needed help with.

And the major, again, the names don't matter, but the major said, I just have one question. Are you guys law enforcement to the probation officer? And they were like, what do you mean? Like, do you guys have guns in a badge? Can you arrest people? And they're like, yes. He's like, Oh, I didn't know. What do you mean you didn't know? Like what the fuck? And then he goes, well, why can't you guys just arrest?

And they're like, we can, we're trying to explain to you that there's only 10 of us and we have 11,000 adults on violent felony probation. He was like, y'all should get more people. I mean, the ignorance was just like, yeah, no shit, bro. That's what we're here for. That's why we're here. What the fuck is wrong with you? But again, whatever. He didn't know. But again, there was a learning curve. And I will say that the goal of it was

to go after what Tom Hillsborough called part one crimes. So that's your burglaries, your robberies, your car thefts. And so that's what we hit. We hit those hard. And we also, as a courtesy to the probation officers, we'd also follow up on sex offenders, things like that, just to help them out. Because like I said, and I'm not joking, and this was 12 years ago now, at the time, they had 11,000 adults on violent felony probation in the one area we were working.

That's not even all of Hillsborough County, just the one area. And i think at the time there might have been i think county-wide there was maybe.

60 probation officers and in the one area we were working there was 10, and wild correct and like how are they supposed to do all these checks so we would ride around with them together i had to learn about probation because i didn't fucking know they don't teach you that shit and you know basics and they don't even teach you that and in college like you what the fuck is probation and the differences between I mean, hey, these people can have alcohol. These people can't have internet access.

These people need to be home by nine. This guy's supposed to be at work, whatever. You don't know until you start getting into it. And that little program was so effective. We had 1,600 arrests and reduced part one crime by 30% six months. Just working with probation. That was it. I remember one guy was on, he was a sexual offender. And we walked in. He was playing Xbox Live, which means what? He had the internet. And he went to jail for seven years.

Wow. Little things like that. And these are things that can be done, but you got to do it effectively and you got to work with other agencies. So yeah, go ahead, Mel. Sorry. And that's not skewing numbers, though. That's real life numbers. That's the thing I just wanted to throw in because you're talking about reduction of 30%. That's huge in the world of crime, but it's real numbers. You didn't have to skew anything. You didn't have to twist or manipulate or mold. Nope.

It was a lot of work. It was a lot of fucking work. Well, Mel, let me just tie into that. Also, deputies were doing probation checks, and we'd been doing them for years. And I asked the probation officer, I said, hey, I've done like 100 probation checks to you. Have you gotten any of them? They're like, no, we had no idea. Because we were told, hey, when you do this probation check, it goes to the probation officer, and they'll do something with it.

We're not getting any of those reports. It was a simple fix. I went to our IT people, their IT people, made it connect. And then all of a sudden they started getting flooded and then they can start violating people who are violating the probation. Right. So these are things like little simple things that you thought for a decade were working. They had no fucking clue. Because there was somebody probably at some point that said, oh, yeah, probation gets that.

And it just got passed down the line instead of actually doing what you did with when you work with the agencies, you've got to game plan it with them. You've got to make sure that you sit down and figure out with their IT department, with their crime analysis, crime analysis, with our IT department, getting our crime analysis involved, seeing, making sure the education piece that, yes, this is what probation is. This is what parole is.

It seems elementary, but for those of us who were cops and never worked in probation and parole, they don't know the difference. And they need to know what does this person here have that they can or can't do? What is this person and how, what is, because there were certain things that there were stipulations, but there weren't things that you could violate them on.

So making sure that the education piece was huge, the training, and to make sure that we have that interagency conversation that needs, truthfully, that conversation needs to take place from the top so that all of our people on the top know what's going on and know what's allowed, what's not allowed. And then subsequently, they would know how we can support each other and make sure that, no, we're not doing probation and parole's job.

That's what popped in my head when you said the major was like, y'all need to hire more people. Well, yes, but obviously there's budgetary constraints and a lot of things like that. So then they need to step up and help. We're not doing their job, but subsequently by helping, we are impacting our job on the back end with real numbers like you just said. Oh, and listen to me. I am not advocating for deputies, road cops, street cops to be probation because there's so much that goes into that.

There's no fucking way they could deal with it. What I am advocating for is they need to be working together.

And it doesn't work everywhere because I tried to implement the same thing in Maine. And I was so excited. I was like, I know this works. I did this for like two years. I know it works. I went in there like, I was like, we want to help. He's like, we got 50 guys on probation. I was like, what? That's it? He's like, yeah, we're good, man. So it doesn't work everywhere. It doesn't work everywhere. But also there's an assumption, Mo, and you can attest. How many times have you heard?

Yeah, y'all know all about me. You must know. You got all my reports. I've been arrested all over. That's not true. That's not, you know, it's not true. I think a lot of agencies are trying to do better. And I think Florida has actually done pretty, they're more advanced than most states with FDLE and other agencies that are trying to make that happen. But no, you get arrested in Tampa. It wasn't always, hey, I got arrested in Tampa. Hillsborough doesn't know that.

Well, I can tell you going back, like I told you, I'm dating myself. But when I first started at the sheriff's office, we didn't communicate. You could go into Tampa, do 8,000 burglaries, and come out to the county, and I would have no idea. And so they dropped a warrant. And so the detectives walked through and did all their investigation, and a warrant was dropped in the system. Other than that, I didn't know. I couldn't pull up any information about you that Tampa had said.

Then we got to where we could communicate with a couple of our agencies, but not all of them. So within Hillsborough County, you got Tampa. You got Temple Terrace. You had the airport. You have the casino, the civil reservation costs. You could cross paths with all of them, and Hillsborough may not be aware of it at all. Later on, as technology started to integrate, those agencies did start to talk

to one another. And so now when I, well, I know when I left, I'm sure it's probably even better now. When I left, if I pulled up a location history and it was something or a person and they had contact with TPD, I could see TPD's information as well, which was a game changer because now I did know this guy who was a bad guy in TPD who was now out in our area. I could say, oh yeah, I can see he was doing this, this, this, and this.

I didn't just have to wait for TPD to drop a warrant a lot of times.

Yeah and you know that goes into education and knowledge because you know like when we talked with meg i was under the assumption because old head deputies would tell me oh yeah the campus police they're just like security guards they're not real cops and then you get to meet with them and they're like no these are fucking cops dude they're like they have more authority than we fucking do in a lot of cases their jurisdictions are smaller and so it's just

you know and then you know god forbid tampa and hillsborough but what about polk county or zephyr hills or tarpon spring you know i mean like these smaller agencies yeah no fucking clue no so you yeah again you're tapping into stuff a lot of frustrations i had and i pissed off a lot of bosses because i'm like this is outrageous that nobody knows this stuff and i've been operating under this assumption but i

will also say just to kind of broaden it out outside of florida you also got to understand states. Because what's ringing in mind to me is we pulled over a guy in Florida. He had a warrant. He had a warrant for murder out of Louisiana. No extradition. Wait, what? Yes. I was, I, I put him in handcuffs, put him in the backseat of my car. And I was like, I want to talk to the fucking detective. You're telling me this guy has a warrant for fucking murder and you will not extradite.

And the answer was no, you know, we will not extradite. Now, fast forward. I was a trooper and in Maine, and I was working with the troopers up there and we were just talking shop. And I told him that story. and one of the detectives goes, oh, I'll give you one better. We got two known pedophiles who actively raped minor children in Maine. We know they're living in Hawaii, but the cost to bring them to Maine is so high, the state won't pay for it. So this is what people are dealing with.

And yet we spend all this time, energy, and effort on retail theft, drug addicts. I'm like, I don't give a fuck about those people. Like, what are you saying? These people are living in Hawaii free, walking around. You know where they are? Walking around. And the state won't pay for it. They're not in another country. They're in our country. Mm-hmm. But because the cost is so high, they won't do it. That's incredible. Yep. That's incredible.

It all kind of ties in. It's like you have all this technology. You know where these people are, but now it's a money thing. Yeah. And that's where, honestly, that's where the technology is rooted in. Like I told you at the very beginning, let's see what we can do less with more, stretch our resources as thin as we can so that we can give the appearance that we are as effective as we were. And the big piece, again, that they miss is the fact that we aren't more effective.

You're not more effective when you start stressing yourself thin. You're not more effective when you roll out a program of this magnitude and you don't properly train people. You're just not. And there's a lot that goes along when we're talking about, too, this data-driven stuff and how we are applying it.

Because one of the big things that we have to be aware of, and this kind of is going to segue us to the next piece, is when we are rolling these out, whatever law enforcement strategy we use, even if you go back to the traditional ones, how we patrol, if you go to the community policing part of it, how we respond to calls, how we respond to critical incidents.

We train a lot about that because we have to be mindful of how to do things to ensure that we are not violating people's constitutional rights and make sure that whatever actions we're taking are going to be within the bounds of the law. Well, when you start rolling out these data-driven ways of enforcement that is very new, with little training, people are either going to do it right or they're going to do it wrong or they're not going to do it at all.

Because if they are afraid of crossing the line of doing it wrong, they may shy away from utilizing the things that are available to them and doing it at all.

So that's when I was telling you guys at the very beginning, I felt very fortunate with kind of being the in-between era of seeing it both ways because I think it took a lot of that fear out of it because of the fact that I did know how to do regular enforcement and I felt comfortable with integrating these other pieces now that were being offered to us and not leaning all the way in the way some people feel like they have to do.

Yeah, that ties into the education portion and the, I mean, well, I think it's education and experience because I could talk about this shit all day, but until you deal with it, I don't think you really know. And, you know, we talk about a couple of things like homeless initiatives, Baker Acts. I also want to add in like the spring for victims of domestic violence. You know, those are things that are necessarily taught and you kind of have

to slowly learn. I mean, Baker Act, yes, but I could, I mean, I'll just speak about myself. You know, you would get a call where a homeless guy stole something, but from a store, it wasn't because he wanted to steal it. He just wanted to go to jail because he wanted to shower and food. Right. And, you know, every deputy would roll their eyes and be like, fuck, I don't want to deal with this shit. This is bullshit. I want to do something.

There are programs, but you don't know what you don't know. And I know it's a very common, easy saying, but it's like, I don't know what's available until I start tapping into it. So when you would get calls and you had deputies or programs, but hey, you just need a shower, somewhere to eat, man. Let's put that back. You know, let's have him pick you up or whatever. Take you to wherever you got to go. Yeah. And again, it relies heavily on the deputies.

Intuition, because, yeah, there are some homeless people that are just fucking batshit crazy or criminals. and these are drug addicts and they just, you know, they're fucking violent. They're not a good fit. But there are some people that are just shit happens, man. You know, I could tell you a thousand stories about different homeless people and they're not all the same. And until you start talking to them, you don't know. And, you know, it's not, oh, jail is not always the appropriate call.

Sometimes you need to get these people help shelter into a program, just get them a shower, some food and let them on about their way. They're not trying to harm nobody. You know, it's hard to sit here and say, you know, this for this person, this for another person, but it's really until you're there facing it, talking to them, you don't know.

Well, here's the other thing that when you say that, what pops in my head, too, is if we can effectively take that person out of the criminal justice system, now the data that we have that we're inputting is clean. Because right now, the data that we're putting into the system that we are trying to make decisions off of is very muddy because we are integrating the homeless person.

We're integrating the person who is stealing food because they have another social service issue, like they don't have money to pay for food, or the person that is a drug addict and it's committing crime because of the drugs. And if we got them in a drug treatment program, would that?

So the numbers are really, really muddy and skewed because we have all of these people who aren't real criminals that we are incorporating into our data and now trying to make decisions based on enforcement and how to deploy our people and where to deploy our people and things like that,

because we have all this data that's not accurate. it. If we can clean it up a little bit and we can take these people who are social service type things and deal with the homeless initiatives, deal with the person that needs to be bankrupted, figure out what other social service programs that are out there to deal with people who aren't criminals.

Now we're putting crime data in. And so therefore the information we're getting out is going to be more accurate and allow us to be able to be more effective. Yeah. And listen, I was the same guy fucking writing police reports, writing intel reports, writing notes. And I remember going, it's such a waste of my time. I don't give a shit about this, but good data in is good data out. And so the more good data you put in, the better. And of course, it could be overutilized.

Again, I won't name names, but there was a shitbag deputy who I think is a detective now who was trying to create his own gang that was already established gang. But he just wanted to get notoriety. So he was writing all these intel reports and the detectives had to pull him aside and go, hey bro, stop it. Stop it. We know what you're doing. Fucking stop it. But again, for every shitbag deputy, there's 10 more that are trying to do a good job.

And again, most deputies go to work and if there's not a call for service, it is a good night. They're not out there looking to harass people, arrest somebody for nothing. You know what I mean? It's like they're just, they want to go home. They've had a long day. They got a 12 hour shift, whatever the fuck it is. So, you know, that leads into the burnout and the lack of emphasis or caring is if you can start helping people who, how do I phrase this?

Helping people who would benefit from the help or at least want the help, I should say. You can't help everybody, right? That's the fact. You can be more effective and effective with a lower number of personnel. But the way we're doing things now where it's just hit everybody in the head with a stick and we're going to go to a million calls for service every fucking year and it doesn't matter if we have 800 deputies or 1600 deputies, you're going to burn them the fuck out.

Yeah. Yeah, you are. Yeah. Yeah. And they're not, they are, they are going to, when it comes to wanting to look a little bit deeper into the calls, they don't have the energy to do it anymore. No, they don't care. No, they don't care. And it's just going to be like, next call, next call.

Because the other part is a lot of the agencies, because they're trying to do more with less and they're pumping in all of this information and they are telling their deputies, make sure you're checking on this on top of all of the other things. It just becomes, there's an information overload that I think is taking place right now, too. Yeah. And without the ability for them to actually feel, the deputy to feel any payoff from it.

It is just so much information. And even from the higher-ups, they're getting so much information that they are, as a result, creating calls for service, too. Because it's, like you were saying, the probation and parole checks. Well, now we know that if we do those checks that it's causing, it is impacting our bottom line. So now we're just going to start pumping them into the system to create another call for service.

We know this location is a problem, so we're going to create a call for service where we need a deputy to drive by this location periodically. And on top of all the calls that we are also getting. So it's just an exponential amount of information that is coming into it. It also is becoming a bit of an information overload, I think.

Yeah. And, you know, we talk about, you know, rewarding exceptional effort and agency driven and overcoming, you know, we call it all the mentality, but just people who are just, this is how we've always done it. So this is how we're always going to do it.

It's hard to overcome that because in the examples I gave with the thefts, you know, where I made a gut call cause just who I am as a person still got me not in trouble, but you know, it started putting a bad taste in certain supervising mouths. They didn't like it because they see everything is black and white. And I'm like, no, there's a lot of gray out here, but I get even tied into domestics because it's basically like you go to a domestic, somebody has to go to jail.

So, and I can remember a call where a guy was trying to leave. The female was blocking the door and she was, he was like, please move. I'm trying to leave. So he, all he did was he picked her up, moved her aside, didn't hit her, didn't cause her any pain, left with his stuff and drove away. And she wanted to put battery charge on him. I said, no, that's stupid. And I wrote it as such. Sergeant immediately called me and said, you need to go back there and arrest

him. And I said, for what? He was trying to leave. I said, if anything, I'm going to arrest her for false imprisonment. He goes, if you don't go arrest him, I will write you up for insubordination and then somebody else will go arrest him. And I'm like, this is outrageous. Like, it's just insane. Right. You take an all discretion. So, yeah, well, now I just don't give a fuck. Right. But that goes back to what I said when we were talking about the queen for a day thing.

If you give us all this power and now you're giving us all this information, you're giving us two things that are huge. then you've got to also trust my decision-making that comes from it. Correct. So that's where I think we have somewhat of a downfall. Like I told you in the beginning, I don't think data-driven information or data-driven enforcement as a strategy is a bad thing.

But what I think is that we cannot rely solely on data-driven policing policing or in law enforcement strategies and use those to make all the decisions across the board from an office. And that's what I think is happening in many cases, like that example you just gave. You have someone who was not there, who did not encounter the person, but didn't trust you enough as the law enforcement officer to make that decision. Because we have people who are supervisors and they are fearful.

Sometimes they don't know the law as well as they should know the law because in that instance, someone is trying to leave. He didn't trust you enough to make the decision with the information that you're providing.

So whether you're talking about traditional examples of law enforcement strategies or data-driven examples of law enforcement strategies, we have to be able to empower the people who are doing this job that are out there and encountering it to take that information, whether it comes from a traditional or data-driven situation and then be able to overlay it on this real world example and be able to make a decision and be able to bridge the gap or put the puzzle pieces together like

you and BJ were saying earlier with we have the data but now the person needs to be able to say oh by the way I have this piece that goes with it and now the puzzle is complete. Now I want to say this too Mo and I I don't know if I've already said this on a previous episode or not. I, again, 100% agree with what you're saying. But with that in mind, we still have fucking idiots that are cops.

And I'll give two examples just to outline. There was a, there was a deputy he had, well, there's three examples, but two or one deputy. A drug dealer got tied up. He got, he got tied up, beat the shit out of him and robbed. And the deputy responded because the guy's girl came home and saw him tied up, beaten up and robbed. And he goes, Oh, you're a drug dealer. And he went, a crime committed during the commission of another crime is not a crime. No report. He left.

Oh, wow. That, yeah. That same group that did that to him, went on to do like three more robberies. And then it finally came out that, Hey, why the fuck didn't you?

And he was completely steadfast in his belief like he's a drug dealer who gives a fuck it's like no bro that same deputy hold on that same deputy responded to a dead body the guy had was trying to break into a house fell off a second floor and died no report because in his mind a crime committed during the commission of a crime is not a crime he re-cleared it with notes.

He cleared it with notes No report Fast forward to a different deputy Who I love this guy to death But again you don't know what you don't know Was responding to a teenage girl Had an abortion She got impregnated by her dad And she was like 14 He took the dead fetus And was trying to log it into evidence In a paper bag I'm laughing it's not funny But the evidence tech was like What's going on what is this Yeah. So you still have people that are fucking idiots. So I do think- And you're right.

Yes. Training should be longer and you should be held to account if you do some dumb shit like that. Well, here's the thing though. This goes back to what I said. You're going to trust your officials because you should be recruiting and retaining good people.

That goes back to definitely another episode we talked about recruitment and things like that and not lowering standards and who we need to- you need to be very discriminant about who you bring into this job, not just because of this piece of the puzzle that we worry about how this person is going to take data and how they're going to effectively enforce crime. But whoever you hire has the ability to take people's freedoms away. Whoever you hire has the ability to kill somebody and it be legal.

So that should be something that we should be weighing in as to when we're recruiting people and hiring them, We need to make sure that these people have some ability to be some free thinkers. I can't give you a checklist as a law enforcement officer. So you should be able to take information and make sound decisions. And that should be part of the hiring process so that now I can trust you to take the data-driven information that comes to you and make good decisions with it as a result.

No, I agree. And I'm also going to kick this up to supervisors because, you know, there was a few supervisors and they all left during my time frame that I would call old head supervisors that, you know, they would get a call like. Oh, my God, there's prostitutes on the street corner. We want a deputy to go check it out. And he would get on the radio and go, no, you're not. That's what they do. He was like, you don't need a deputy for that. He would cancel calls.

He would say, no, we're not going to that. It's not like that anymore. Basically, any call that comes in, they want a law enforcement officer, deputy, trooper, cop, whatever you want to call it. They want them to respond. And I will say this is where the feds have it right, where, hey, this is a crime. We want you to investigate it. They'll be like, it doesn't meet our threshold, or we don't have time for that, or it doesn't rise to the level where we need to get involved.

They kick a lot of shit out. there's a lot of crimes that just go uninvestigated on the fed side because there's just so much it's like you want me to investigate ten thousand dollars that got sold from me well i've got three that are over a million.

And with i will say with the federal system that shit takes four fucking ever four years to get a fucking an arrest on a case which i think is asinine but it is nature of the beast right so you know we can kick that even higher and again i think well maybe well i'll get your opinion on it people are getting promoted either based on who their friends are or well look i've been here for 10 years i deserve to be promoted now not unless

you might be a shitbag fucking deputy no you don't now you're gonna make him a quipper or sergeant no like you need to promote based on merit and then there needs to be training because that was the other thing i always had an issue with and i think it's across the board i haven't met an agency that's done it differently the military does it differently but You get promoted from deputy to corporal, there's no training, you're just a corporal the next day.

And then you go from corporal to sergeant, you're just a sergeant the next day. I've yet to hear any leadership training, hey, this is what's expected of you. None of that, all that kind of goes, none of that has ever happened. And it even happened on the Fed side. You go from being a 13 to a 14, 14 supervisor role. It's just a great step, and now you're a boss. Well, do they have any leadership qualities? I mean, what the fuck are they doing?

The sheriff's office has moved towards it. And a lot of them that I know of now, maybe not the smaller agencies, but a lot of the sheriff's offices have moved to now creating some leadership training. And they are, when people are stepping from deputy to corporal, they're bringing them in. They're doing like a two-week leadership training to give them like, this is the expectation.

They're giving them books to read and things like that. But like you said, the problem is, was the person qualified to even be sitting in that class? That's the question. Again, we need to be a little more scrutinizing about who we're making deputies, who we're making corporals, who we're making sergeants, who we're making decision makers. Because these people should be a step above the people that they're supervising. They should be the ones that are, you don't have to know everything,

but you have to be an information seeker. You need to be someone who is constantly open to and available to learn what it is that is the next level. What's going to make me that cut above the rest? How can I evaluate how our agency is doing things once you get to that decision-making level? If we're going to roll out data-driven crime prevention or a data-driven strategy, how are we going to be able to implement it? How are we going to be able to train our people to implement it?

How are we going to make sure that it's effective? How are we going to make sure that it's being done appropriately so that we aren't violating any constitutional laws? So I don't, they are getting better about training them now with leadership training, but I think that it goes back to trusting your officials because you have recruited and hired the best of the best for that position. I agree. And again, we all talk about our favorite supervisors and a lot like her husband was well-known.

I've mentioned Shiro, Shiro. There's been, there's a bunch of others, but again, that's just because it was kind of like that was their personality. And listen, I would strongly assume, and you can attest to it, they read a lot of books. They learned from people who they took things they liked from other people. You know what I mean? Like they went above and beyond their own knowledge and experience to be better leaders. I think Frank talked about it openly on the thing. He was like,

I need to learn. Hey, I'm now the homicide Sergeant. I don't know shit about homicide. Teach me that that's endearing to the people. Anyway. Yeah. All that to say, if you're hiring those types of people and you're promoting those types of people, you give them the ability and the confidence to say, we're not going to that. That's dumb. We don't need to waste my deputy's time. There's other things they need to be working on.

I don't think that's how it is now any caller comes in you gotta go no matter how stupid. And again that goes back to bad data in is bad data out if we're responding to everything and we're tracking everything and we are dumping these numbers these numbers per se into our system then we're not going to be able to get effective numbers back out on the other side which is going to allow us to be more effective and I think.

We data, doing a combination of law enforcement strategies that include traditional methods, I think we still need to teach these people who are not necessarily up for having that personal contact, but we need to teach these new recruits that are coming in, these new deputies and officers that are coming in, how to patrol effectively.

How to get out of your car and do foot patrol, how to community police, how to gather intelligence when you're on these routine calls, and then be able to utilize the data side of it too. How do we effectively use location histories? When do we need to put more information instead of being reliant on, well, it was already in there. How do we use the intelligence that we have to lead how we're going to police certain areas or how are we going to be able to deploy our resources.

Those kind of things all need to be put together in order to come up with a big picture plan. And I think that we are getting there, but I think there's some growth that needs to happen. And we cannot just sit back on our laurels and say, we have all this information at our fingertips, so we're good. Well, I don't think I could say it any other way. I think we We can wrap with that. That was good. I appreciate you. I appreciate you, man. This was good. It was.

All right, Ma. I'll catch you on the next one. All right. Bye.