Navigating Privacy and Safety in Modern Policing

Welcome back everybody got another episode of me with me and bj we're gonna get into some topics that have popped up over the last few months hopefully everybody had a good holiday got some traveling got some relaxation time with the kids whatever it is bj i'm glad you're on with me, buddy.

Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Glad to be back. I love it. So we're just going to jump right into it. On one of the last episodes, Mo and I, she asked me my opinion on body cameras and I gave it, but I have limited experience with body cameras and I figured you have been using it longer than I have, and I wanted to ask your opinion on body cameras. Good, bad, ugly, positive, negative, whatever you got.

So body cameras were mostly that when they got introduced, it's I guess you could say double X sword in the sense of, you know, there's obviously some pushback of people using it. Obviously, the public really wanted it, and it does serve a purpose, a very, very good purpose. It serves the purpose of, you know, you have that transparency from the public that I'm looking for, you know, obviously, right now, what actually happened.

And in most cases, in my experience, it's actually saved a lot of people from complaints, from, you know, allegations of misconduct and that kind of thing. And that's one of those things where it's, let's say, if you're not doing anything wrong, then you don't have anything to worry about. And that's true.

But it is, on the other side, it is a little bit invasive because it is always, like they I say it's not always recording, but if the ones that we were, if it always goes back a minute from when it actually starts recording, whether that's through the drone firearm, colonized taser, activating your emergency equipment, if it always goes back a minute, then that means it's always recording, right? It's just always recording, but just not with the sound.

So it is invasive in that sense because it is always on. And now obviously while you're working in in contact with the public you know that that's fine that's exactly what's there for but when you're having those moments where you know you're, maybe taking a private phone call or you know having a private conversation or you know just eating your lunch or you know you need to text messages with your significant other something like that or with the kids or whatever you

know that's does that really need to be on the recording all the time, you know. So that's... The opposite side of it that I can speak to. You know how it is in law enforcement. It is, as we learned from Sharo, Sharo, it is a fishbowl constantly all the time. So I don't necessarily know if people understand what that's like. From the other side of, when you're going to the aquarium, hey, it's really nice to look at the fish, but you get to walk away.

The fish are always in there. Yeah. And everything that they're doing, you are costing you out. So I'm not quite sure if people have that or are used to that. I mean, we're used to it now. It's because that's just the way you've been living and it's a little bit different now. But so I will say it is good, especially when you have those. A lot of things, I mean, it's a good, it is a learning tool as well when you can actually go back and write the reports, but okay, you can sit down and watch

it back, but oh, yeah, that's right. They did say this. Oh, That's right. They didn't quite say this, but said this exactly. So it does help in the sense of you actually have, you're able to go back and look at it and maybe critique yourself, critique your performance, critique how you could be a better cop, how you could speak better or do better interviews. So it does serve a very good purpose in my opinion.

Yeah. I wanted to add something I didn't, I left off when Marla asked me the question is, like with most things, law enforcement gets a new tool, you know, everyone's excited about it, and then it just becomes an additional step that most cops, deputies would ever have to use. In my mind, you know, if you got a body camera going on, let me back it up. Cops spend more time doing paperwork, typing up reports, getting critiqued on reports, criticized for reports.

And it's also hard to explain inflection, posturing. Like there's a lot of things that go into writing a report. My thing is, if you have it all recorded and you see it's all recorded, you might need to do a synopsis like, hey, this is what led us to this, this is why I'm here, whatever, because that might not be on the camera. But the audio or video recording should be the report. That would be a step that you wouldn't have to take.

I mean, I can't tell you how many hours and days I've spent writing reports on, you know, different cases or whatever that you get bogged down in the minutia. And it's like, well, did he say that? Did he not say that? And now you basically have to review the entire incident, look at it, and be like, oh, okay. And then you have to describe what was the environment, what was the setting. I can remember there was a sergeant in Hillsborough who, she came from detective

squad, so she had this thing. And you show up to an overdose call. And you type up your repair, you do the whole thing. And she's like, well, what was the AC set at? What was the temperature of the room? Because I'm like, what? She ever does something that I would say, I don't know. I did not check the air conditioning temp of the house.

And the type of criticisms that you would get where if you have the body cam going, you can walk around, check all the boxes, whatever it is that might be deemed important, and let the video and the audio and the video speak for itself, so to speak. I don't know of an agency that uses it in that manner. Again, it's just like an attachment to the report. So you do it with the incident, you type it up, spend a couple hours typing it up, gets through supervisors, then you add the video to it.

That kind of stuff, I think, is something that law enforcement hasn't explored thoroughly. Yeah, this is something that I, when we found out we were getting it, something that I thought about. So probably one of my first initial thoughts and questions about it was how are we going to house this? How are we going to store this?

Now, again, for the company because now you've got to pay them to keep all the recorders, right? Yep. I do think it is an attachment. I don't know if it should necessarily be just the whole thing. I think sometimes it's easier just to read the report and then unless you go back with it. I mean, yes, I do. I mean, I get your point. And in some cases, it should literally just be that. You know, like the Tony Rohn-A-Polay kind of reports. Yeah.

But as you put it, it is hard to articulate some of the minutiae, like you said, of certain things through text, if you're not that type of creative writer, right? Those guys are not, you know, you and I both have master's degrees, so we've written a lot of papers and understand, you know, language and how to articulate and how to kind of paint the picture. Some things you don't necessarily need to paint a picture of,

you know what I mean? Yeah. You know, like I said, Tony would have pointed a report, you know, you know, assault Batman, arrested Batman and report, you know? You know, she was trying to report like a warrant. You know what I mean? Like, there's really not much to a war report. Like, hey, came in contact with a guy, ran his stuff, had a warrant, taken him to jail. Boom. Simple, right?

But some of these other things where it's like, hey, I'm doing this interview, and I could just kind of tell through his body language that he was lying or he was being deceptive or he was posturing to run away from me. Like you said, That is hard to articulate in a manner that everybody will understand exactly what you're saying and what you were seeing at that moment in time, right? Correct. If you say posturing, to me that looks like something, to you that looks like something.

You know what I mean? It's hard to catch that in the moment to touch. Yeah. In those cases, that's where the body care... It's important because, you know, that's the kind of shit that you need to do. Like, I can't explain, hey, he bought his fist. Okay, well, did he bought his fist because it's cold outside? I was about to punch you. Like, you know, it's hard to say. You know, so I think, you know, in that case, it's better to obviously have

it. And then again, like, how long are you going to keep the body care for? Well, yeah, and that's another thing because you've got to pay for that. So my angle is more efficiency with your time, especially if you're a street cop. Again, with the understanding that law enforcement, they could take your freedom away. So it should be taken seriously. There should be effort that's put into it.

But two different scenarios come to mind that I dealt with personally is like you'd go to the Walmart right there in Tampa and you'd arrest somebody for stealing. Hey, this guy caught a money outside the store with these items. That's stealing. Done. All right. That report could take you four hours because you have to itemize each. I mean, I remember trying to kind of cheat a little bit. I was like, hey, can you just ring the side left on a receipt?

And that way I could just say, hey, boom, see the attached receipt. That's the item. This was the total amount, blah, blah, blah. Sergeants didn't like that. They wanted to see it in the report, itemized out. I'm like, oh, my God. And, again, we still have to out, you know, the security footage. You know, he ended the sword. I mean, it's so tedious and monotonous.

But then fast forward, I remember another case where I was assisting a probation officer and walk into the house and it was a meth lab. Basically, they were cooking meth in the house. We arrived, a bunch of people scattered. The mom and the father and the mother of three kids, the kids were in the house. And it's like I spent 11 hours of a 12-hour shift on that one case because it's like you got to call DHS.

You got to arrest the parents. you have to call the math lab people to come clear that out because there's there's chemicals and shit everywhere and you have to you have to write all those it took me 11 hours to write that shit and he's like hey man what have you been doing you do have one car the entire shift and i'm like sir do you want some down here and then there was an actually another one where it was like the load of the flies one where we had a rampant you know

petty theft like you know just those shit and it was a gang that well a group of juveniles i shouldn't call them they weren't actually a gang. They were a group of juveniles. And they were basically taking over this apartment complex that was abandoned and they were like running power. There was a shitload of stolen stuff. Detectives can't. I mean, that one took probably 10 hours. We had a bunch of runaways. We had people with runs. I mean, it was just chaos.

And one car took one deputy off the road of the entire shift for one car. It's like, how can we be more efficient with what we're doing? Yeah. So, I don't know. I don't have other answers.

I can't sit here line by line and say, hey, these are the policies we need, and this is how it would fix it, but these are the thoughts I have when using tools that law enforcement has. Small interjections on your part because I think it's different now, especially with the body cam stuff, right? Yeah. Even on the other side of it, in knowing a couple of people who work in the attorney's office and doing some detective stuff and T.U.I.

Stuff, seeing the back side of it, the itemizing stuff, they didn't always have access to our evidence and to our report. The only thing that they were getting was the report. Yeah. And then like you would have to bring the actual evidence to court. You would have to like send them the stuff. Hey, did you get this? Hey, I saw you that saw it back then. I get it. It's because all of my stuff didn't talk back and forth.

So that's what I say. Yeah, you got it. Because we just saying, you know, you know, $500 of the stuff. I mean, yeah, of course, but they still wouldn't see that. They didn't have a way to look at it. So it's a lot better now because now they have, you know, I don't even, I mean, you got to have to talk to the same attorney at all. They can just go and look at it, which, like we just said, it's a lot easier when they can just go look at it because it's there.

Well, that leads into what got me into the most trouble when I started the probation thing, or actually we did until you went to school resource, but whatever. There was a misunderstanding of what was going on. And I don't know how long law enforcement acted under the capacity or the thought that under the assumption, I should say, they thought that whenever they did a probation check, it was going right to the probation officer.

That's what we were told. That's what we did. We filed out of rules. And then I would say, hey, man, I'd go talk to the PL. I was like, I've caught this guy in violation like three times. I've written all these reports. Why haven't you violated him yet? He's like, what are you talking about? What reports? There was no system and mechanism where they were automatically getting those reports. There was nothing in place.

And that caused a whole bunch of strife because I'm like, this is for me. We should fix it. Well, I had to go talk to majors and IT, and basically I had to tell them, hey, what you thought was working is not working. And they're like, who the fuck is this deputy telling me how to do my job? I was like, well, what you're doing isn't working, so fix it. I remember you got your peevee's thing for that one. Yes, I did.

And I remember also saying yeah the system we have is fucked up And the guy was like oh well tell me how it's fucked up And then come to find out he's the one that created the system, Whoops Whoops Yeah I mean I think it's getting better now But I mean 10-15 years ago it wasn't like that Criminals would be like, Yeah, man, I know you know who I am. I'm Billy whatever. You know my whole history.

And I'm like, I don't know shit about you, bro. If you ain't been arrested in Hezbollah, I have no idea who the fuck you are. I have no idea what you've been up to because it didn't work that way. Yeah. Anyway, insane.

So in light of some of the recent stuff going on, the violence, I mean, I try not to get too political on this, but with all the shit that's going on, all the security threats, A lot of people were interested when I talked to Mara about some of the steps she's taken as a parent to work with her school, but you were actually in school resource, and I have some opinions as well on how to better protect our schools. Security measures we could take.

Yeah man that was so it's so funny now that some of the things that they're working on, working work now are you know everybody has access to the keys you go through all of these trainings and every deputy needs to know where the master keys are everybody needs to know how to get in the school there's maps the school the school's on the map stairs you know and i'm like This is a project I was working on, and I literally had the whole action plan for it.

I was like, I think every deputy should have a master key to every school. Yeah. So we're not working on the assumption of like, hey, now I got to go find the keys. Everybody should have at least a master key to the front of the school. And this is a project I worked on when I was there. We took pictures of everything. I mean, so, you know, hey, this is every door. or this is every, you know, but again, the system wasn't created for you to be able to.

Look it up, you know, in the most efficient way. It was there, but it wasn't probably the most efficient way. And obviously, after the whole Parkland thing and all these things that keep happening, you know, not to say that people didn't take it seriously back then, you know, but it is a lot more serious now.

And even when you were there, what we trained on these things are a lot different now. Nobody's waiting to go in, right? So you train on the one-person entry, the two-person entry, you know, whoever gets there first, you're going in, right? Yeah. I'm not cheering on the, hey, we're going to wait for this and do that, and nobody's doing that anymore. So the safety concerns, even when I used to be there every day, I'm like, man, even just from ... I'm 38, right?

So I remember going to middle school or elementary school in the 90s. I recently drove by my old elementary school, probably sometime last year, and I was showing it to somebody. I was like, oh, this is where I went to elementary school. And I'm like, wait a minute, this looks drastically different than when I went there. I was like, when I went there, we had no dates. There were candles open. It was in like a tiny neighborhood. And it was like connected to a county park.

So like anybody could just be in the park, which was like across the field from the school. And none of these schools had like gates. None of these things were blocked off access. Not to say the schools look like curtains, but every school is now... The gates everywhere, everything's locked. And again, unfortunately, this is the way that it has to be because of all the things that are happening.

But that is probably the biggest concern is how do you keep, one, people safe from, I guess, you know, from the community, from the environment. But that's not even like, I guess you would say the scariest part of it. It's the people who already have access, who are already behind the security, if you will. You know what I mean? we talked about this before like how do you account for.

I guess attacks from within right like how are you going to stop or account for a kid who goes to the school who's supposed to be there who has the various purposes that nobody knows about, that's the most dangerous thing not necessarily in my opinion that's the most dangerous thing that you can't because the most dangerous things are things that you can't account for you can't account for that I have to make a call for, hey, we put up these 10-foot walls, and there's cameras outside,

and there's every door locked, and there's panic buttons and all that kind of stuff. But it's the unknowns that are still out there that you have a hard time adjusting for. Yeah, and I was, well, I don't know how to phrase it, fortunate, unfortunate, however you want to phrase it. I did, so the Parkland High School, this was six years after the event. I was working with the Secret Service, and it was a site for Vice President Harris at the time.

And they walked me through the door of the event. I saw the building where everything happened. They walked me through how everything happened. And the chaos and the horror, like you couldn't even begin to express what the families that were there, things like that. But also, in my mind, because I think at that time, I think I'd already gotten out. I wasn't a deputy anymore. I can't remember where I was.

But there was a lot of steps security-wise that they have now implemented that I was surprised hadn't been implemented. And I'm also shocked that it's still not implemented across every school in the U.S. So a few things. So the shooter entered through the building. He walked through the park a lot. The school security, which were, you know, teachers, volunteers, coaches, whatever, on golf course, that kind of a thing, which is how I grew up.

They saw and they recognized him as a student, but he had actually already graduated. And he was carrying something. I heard this was weird and they were trying to, there was a delay in communication. He's able to enter the building externally, walks in, pulls his rifle out, goes to the first floor, that's where a lot of carnage was, but he's shooting into the classrooms. The second floor heard the shots and the teachers locked on the door. Everybody hid away from the door.

And so there were no deaths on the second floor because they could hear the shots. The third floor, because of all the dust, the concussion from the firing of the rifle, it set off the fire alarm, so they thought it was a fire. So they started pouring into the hallways, and that's actually where most of the dust occurred on the third floor. And he basically works his way through the third floor, gets to the end. He's trying to fire out the window. They had hurricane windows,

so they're not bulletproof, but they're ragged. Yeah, yeah. I can't remember the number, and, you know, somebody who knows the ins and outs of this will be like, hey, he fired this many rounds. He fired several rounds. None of them went through the glass. He gets frustrated, drives the gun, and then he walks out, and he's able to just slip in with the crowd. And he ends up going to, like, a McDonald's and later gets caught.

But the way everything kind of went down, the administrators are trying to call 911. Life enforcement's coming. They don't know where everything's at. Hey, they're in building three. Well, that doesn't mean anything to anybody if that's not your area, your zone, your school. You don't know what that means. Very good. So some of the stuff that they put into effect, and they're trying to put it into effect nationwide, which I think is great, is the schools have cameras now.

Now, local land enforcement can view those cameras, which wasn't the way it was before. Now they can, so you can see what the hell's going on, what went on, where it's at. You can triangulate. You can guide your officers better. Number two, they're able to externally lock all the doors so you can't come in, but you can still get out. And then there's still a breakdown because it was a conversation. I had this conversation for like two hours with the principal and the vice principal.

I was like, the way the Secret Service handles fire alarms, especially with our protectee, if we're somewhere that's not a secure building, a hotel, an office building, whatever, we don't just rush out because people put fire alarms all the time to cause chaos. We actually will harden up. Agents will go, hey, where's this fire? Working with the fire department. Work with them. Where is this coming from? Assess whether it's a real fire or not, and then adjust from there.

99.9% of the time it's not a fire it's just somebody pulling the alarm trying to cause chaos whatever so these are things that possibly could have you know if these would have been steps would have been implemented especially locking the external bearers. A land freshman able to see the cameras, what's going on, what does the suspect look like? Because it was a carry-outs for days trying to identify a teenage shooter in a high school full of teenagers.

And again, keep in mind, when I grew up, we had an open campus. It was magical. We walked into math campus. People would come and go. There was no real security in that front. It was mostly just trying to make sure kids don't dip out of class. There was no thought of somebody coming on to the campus trying to do any harm. Now, with that being in effect now, again, this is not nationwide. This is just at the school. I did see what you're talking about where they had the box of the master key.

It was in a box, and the fire department and law enforcement officials had the code to get it, and then you could pull the master key and get in. I think that's also a good idea. But so there's all these steps that you could take to secure a campus. Again, you don't have to make it look like a prison, but you need to control who's going in and out. And like what you were saying, you even sometimes have the threat from within. Well, this way, hey, we got something going on.

The local law enforcement agency can switch over to the cameras and see what's going on. Yeah. I mean, there's no way to prevent everything. Every single scenario from happening, you know? Yeah. But, and again, it's, unfortunately, it's a necessary thing you have to talk about. You have to go out there to train for it just because of the times that we live in. It's unfortunate that, you know, you have to, you know, talk to your kids about this, and, you know, that this has to be a thing.

It's concerning, but, I mean, I guess if you don't, you know, you kind of have to prepare for it. Well, people act like it's just the most heinous thing that's ever existed. But, you know, my parents remember having to do inbound nuclear warhead striking when they were in high school. They would sit or hide under your desk. I'm like, well, I ain't going to do shit if it's a new thing. But, again, these were thoughts that they had during their time frame. Yeah.

So there's always something. And, again, schools and our children are the most vulnerable. So it's a great target for creating terror and mayhem. It's also an easy target, unfortunately, or it was, for people who just want to do violent shit. Unfortunately, I think that ties in nicely to technology and law enforcement.

And I think it's especially pertinent today with the drones talk and the types of things that they're talking about with the Secret Service, with armor and robots and drones and guns and the cars and all this other stuff. But my opinion is typically law enforcement is 20 to 30 years behind the power curve from what's actually out there. It's mostly due to cost, but also there's training and you still have to abide by the law.

And I'm going to kick it to you in a second, but I'm reminded when that I remember being taught this and maybe you can clarify it. I can't remember exactly, but it was a great way. They were trying to – this is when marijuana was a big deal and everybody was having problems with grow houses in Florida. And they would use helicopters and they would do, I think, thermal cameras. And they'd say, hey, that house is burning a lot hotter, like exponentially

hotter than all the other ones. They're sucking up power. And that would be enough for them to get a search warrant and go say, hey, what the fuck's going on here? Most of the time it was a grow house, but not every time. And now you've just invaded this dude's house because he's whatever. You know, he's got a garden in his basement. You know what I mean? Not doing anything illegal. So that kind of was taken away as a tool.

Facial recognition. When that started coming out, they were trying to put that on basically every street light, camera light, whatever. And they're like, hey, that's a violation of my privacy. You can't be reading my face just because I'm driving. I'm not a bad guy. Why am I going to be in your database?

So you still need to be able to maintain Law and order But you can't violate people's civil rights Yeah, Yeah You didn't ask me about that I'm very big on that Not being, I mean obviously we all know Big brothers are always watching and listening. It is That's a tough thing To navigate Because like you said, people will have Their privacy And at the same time, when things happen, how come you guys didn't know who this was? Right? Yeah. You didn't know this coming, you didn't see it.

So I'm like, not necessarily give and take, but there is a fine line between using technology and also having it be used against you. Yes. And again, I lean to the side of my privacy and anonymity. And things like that, but at the same time, it's like I get why people probably would want to give that up, you know?

And it's not necessarily because you're doing anything wrong or not, but like you said, it's like I'm not doing anything, so why are you capturing my stuff? Now, I say that to this. I think we're all doing it unconsciously anyway. I was like, if you wear an Apple Watch, if you open your phone with your face or whatever, they already got it. They already got it, right?

Now, whether or not they want to allow the government to use it, to identify people and do certain things, it's like when things happen, it's like, yeah, it's nice to be able to have that.

That option to use it but just on the day-to-day basis i mean i get why people would be a little bit concerned well yeah just from my own opinion i'm like vehemently opposed to traffic cameras and also the bullshit give me red light tickets my opinions on that i think it's bullshit dc with all their speed cameras and they hide them all you know just they're just trying to jack you because it's like all right dude i was going 60 and a 50 trying to go to work at eight o'clock in the morning,

like, really? I'm the guy? I'm the one you're looking for? You know, that kind of shit just drives me insane. But like you said, when shit pops off and you're trying to figure out where the hell this guy is, and the people are like, hey, why don't you find this guy already? It's like, well, we are somewhat constrained because we don't have all these. Technology cameras, whatever, because of your security, you know, your privacy, I'm sorry, your privacy.

So it's a fine line, and again, I don't I'm not sitting here saying, hey, these are the policies we should have in effect. But at some point, you just got to recognize, look, there's drones. People have drones. Bad guys have drones. Good guys should have drones. But there comes a cost with that, right? I think you were talking about the bomb team robots for $100,000. Yeah. For whatever it is. I'm sure there's more expensive, whatever.

But it's like, okay, I'm using this as I'm supposed to, and then it gets blowed up. Well, now we're going to buy another one? How many are you going to keep doing? Sure. you know, sometimes it's like, hey, the class outweighs the need here. And there's training. I mean, there's also additional training. I mean, there's just a lot to it.

Oh, for sure. The technology, brother, it is and again, obviously, me doing, what I do, I probably have a little bit I'm going to say a little bit more, but probably more than like your common person you know, with the drones and the robotics and stuff like that, but it's, It is costly, but it does serve a purpose, especially in what I do. You know, that's a necessary tool. But at the same time, it's not infringing upon anybody's rights, per se. You know what I mean? Yeah.

We're not using it. I mean, even if we use it in technical situations, it's because, you know, something has, in essence, popped off, and now we're here because of that. We're not just using it just to go look over people's fences and inside windows and stuff like that.

But some of these other things where it's like the drones are an interesting thing, and it's essentially because it's like, yeah, I got fences up so people don't walk into my yard, but what do you do about somebody flying with drones over your fence? Exactly. And what are their rights? is where they're at and what are mine.

You know, so it's, but again, obviously, as things come out, as technology develops, you're always going to run into these scenarios or these things that bring up these questions of, you know, what do we do? Like, first, like the body cams, right? To circle back on that with the technology stuff, people want the body cams. Again, I'm not against, I'm actually, I'm for body cams.

But one of my first initial questions was people want these body cams to say, but okay but what happens when you don't want the body cam in your house yeah, because you don't have things out there for somebody to get it if they want exactly so now it's public record this should all be public record yeah I get it but what happens when it is now public record and it's something that you don't want people to be out there and now you don't control it yeah,

anybody can get it if they want exactly so now you now have been brought it to the pitfall so, you know you know, short and funny, again, it's, well, again, again, with the body cams, I'm pretty sure people are going to face recognition to do that, and do all these other kind of things through, you know, through the use of the body cams and whatnot, and it's, so like I said, it's a double-edged sword, and. And people are like, oh, I'm recording this. I was like, yeah,

it's fairly slow. I keep my volume up and my mic is super loud. So everybody knows it's on, right? I don't forget to turn it off. You hear it. You know it's recording. Everybody knows what's up. It's very loud. Well, I'm recording this, right? Yeah, some people are like, I don't want to be recorded. I'm like, well, then I guess you don't want to talk to me then because it's just going to be recorded. Yeah, exactly. So that's what you say. That's what she said. That's what she said.

That's what she said, you know. Not to say that everybody has anything bad to say, you know, whatever, but I'm like, hey, be mindful, because I think people sometimes forget. You actually get into one of the instances where it works, you know, in your favor, and I said, there's a lot of work in it. People are like, oh, well, you know, you violated my civil rights, and you do this, like, did I? No, did you forget what you said? Yeah.

You know, so it works in that case, but But the technology, again, a lot of these things don't come up until the technology catches up. And now we have to talk about, I guess, the issues that it presents and the possible issues that it could present going forward. Yeah, you know, and again, we keep circling back to the body cams, but I remember a call. I was helping a lady. Her house had been burglarized. So she's a victim, and I'm very calm.

I'm sitting under my notepad. I'm taking notes. I'm writing.

And her neighbor well i think like two two apartments down or whatever just come and side tackles me and we started scrapping it up and i ended up i'm like what the fuck's going on and he was basically in his mind he thought i was harassing this lady when i'm like dude she's a like i had to handcuff him calm down like bro what the fuck is wrong i mean you're going to jail like you can't just be tackling cops out here uh he's like he goes while you're harassing that lady

she's a nice lady i was like because somebody burglarized her house like she's a victim i'm trying to help her figure out who did it he's like oh my bad man that like that's how i was it but i'm tied to this repair and my sister's like hold on man hold on hold on hold on what happened i was like he had nothing to do with anything there why'd you arrest him he tackled me like we went to the ground i did not have body camera we didn't have the technology was not the other yet but i was

I kind of, now I'm like, I wish I kind of had it, because sometimes you're like, this is some crazy shit. You won't believe me unless you saw it with your own eyes. Yeah, both. So much of that. Yeah, a lot of that. A lot of it is replaying some story. I shared the love with you about when I, the last time I fucking ate it. I was like, follow that Eric. Yeah. You know, I was actually able to share that whole story with you.

And it's one of those days I was like man if that wasn't on camera not that you wouldn't believe it but at what the. It only adds to the story, right? Yeah. Some of that was like, it's like, man, I wish somebody was recording this. I wish somebody could, because nobody will believe what just happened. Yeah, exactly. Or how crazy that was.

And I mean, and now, and I think too, it's, people can kind of see the, and this will probably kind of start going into some other stuff. But, look, I have, I told you about this one the other day.

I had a couple weeks ago where, you know, other guy try to commit suicide and i'm like it is one of those things where it's like man if, i could just say that to you and like oh man this was this was jacked up right but you know it's hard to it's hard to articulate how jacked up it is unless you see it or you have the good to watch it i'm like this guy's just even the circumstances behind it are you know obviously sad you know in traffic because of what ended

up occurring but to actually watch it you see it i I don't think people understand what it's like to watch somebody die. No, it's not normal. That's not a normal thing. And seeing so many times, not necessarily you're disenfranchised to it, but I don't think people would necessarily understand if they didn't have the ability to watch it. And then it's like, hey, you got to work the rest of your shift. Yeah, I know. Yeah, that happened, but you still got five hours on the scope.

Yeah, you still got five hours. And then you got to talk to the family. And then you got to deal like, ah, man, it's like, I don't think people would believe it. Not that they wouldn't believe it, but you wouldn't understand to that degree unless you had the ability to look at it and be like, oh, man, like, yeah, like some of that guy's brain just fell out. Yeah. Yeah. You don't get used to that. You don't get used to that. You know what I mean? And then, so, I mean, it's in athletics.

It's a challenge, and I think that kind of shrugged into what we're talking about. The fit for duty. The fit for duty. You know what I mean? I think obviously the physical part is the part that stands out, obviously, is the most immediate and the most flashing thing that you're going to see because obviously you got to be able to physically do your job. But I don't think a lot of people talk about or put emphasis on the mental and the emotional fitness that you have for this job.

Yeah, and again, this is something that's popped up recently in social media and some of the news outlets talking about poking fun at some of the larger – I think they were poking fun somewhere in Detroit. They just graduated a class of detention deputies, and –.

I mean, to say they're not fit is an understatement. And let me just reemphasize I'm 41 years old and I'm not like a peak physical fitness, but there comes a part where it's like, come on, man, like you got to be able to at least fit your uniform and not have your buttons be an emergency status every time you put your uniform on. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, that emergency status always gives me a laugh.

Yeah, but it is, and I think what people don't realize in that, and again, 38 now, and I started when I was, what, 20, I think 24? Yeah, 24, I think I was, yeah, I mean, my 22nd birthday kid while we were in the county. So, 24, and obviously, just kind of, you know, just going out of college, you know, obviously, you're, you know, young, and they still got your young, young early body.

Yep. You know, but I think the most difficult thing to do over the course of time and of almost 14 years of doing this is to maintain, not necessarily get it, because I think you should have it when you start, especially if you start young. Yeah. Maintain it, right? And also to maintain it while life is happening and life is happening in a different sense of everything is high stress, right? So your work days are high stress.

Half of your time is spent in high stress environments, not to mention the stresses of life, right? So relationships, kids, work stress that come from not necessarily the politics of any job that you have. Life's happening around you. You lose people, you run into different kinds of trouble. Nobody's necessarily immune to it, but with the added stress of job, it makes it more difficult. And it's one thing I've obviously lucky enough to have taken the time to kind of look back at a lot of stuff.

And it's like, man, I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't do this. This happened while I've been doing this.

This happened while I've been doing this. you know again things that not everybody's necessarily nobody's immune to, but all while being able to do this job in a high stress environment is difficult and if you don't look at it and I should let it say this I actually would luck enough to be able to be cognizant of it while it's happening or be able to look back at it and be like oh man.

This is actually going on I think people kind of just go through it not that they just go through the motions or whatever like they don't care, but if you don't know that it's happening, it's hard to adjust things that you are unaware of, right? So it's the changes to your body. You know, it makes you hard to sleep. You know, being on shift, just being on night shift in and of itself is stressful because it's unnatural, right? Yeah.

Doing that for a while will make changes to your body. It's hard to adjust. It's hard to maintain. It's hard to progress. So, again, I think it's one of those things that we don't probably necessarily focus on all that much because, you know, again, cops aren't fucking superheroes. I mean, a lot of us think we are, you know, heroes, yes, strong, yes. I think, you know, we both have our opinions on what men should be or what strong people should be.

But, you know, cops aren't superheroes, right? so you know people and a lot of these things are just not normal per se you know and it, It's hard to point to any one thing, but you're dealing with, I mean, fuck, the Lang Weeks with Hillsborough. I mean, you're doing five 12-hour days, and they're not really 12-hour days. They're more like 14-hour days, and that's if you don't have court. That's if you don't have off-duty. I mean, we work many a 17-, 18-hour day. At some point, you got to sleep.

So learning how to maintain, how to eat right, because that's the other thing. You're also, like you said, night shift. Well, there's only a few things open at night. A lot of it's fast food or, you know, you have to learn how to prep your meal. I mean, there's just a lot that comes with it. The other thing that I, I mean, you and I had it because you and I were buddies, but we would work out together.

And that was great. But typically in law enforcement, you're an island. And, I mean, listen, we're all adults. You've got to be an adult. I get it. But I enjoy being able to work out with a partner or a group setting. Kind of like the team, like football stuff, like you work out with your teammates. It's something that, again, I don't have the answers. I wish we could figure it out, but it would be cool to have a nonjudgmental workout with your squad mates, your team, whatever.

Because typically when you're working out in a large group, law enforcement, it's usually for a test, promotion, whatever, annual fitness. It's high stress. You don't want to be embarrassed. It's kind of a lot that comes with it. And like I think you and I have talked about it before, they typically focus just on running, which always drives me insane.

Because you can run other miles you want But when I catch you I'm going to rip your arm off There needs to be some sort of strength portion to it But just, Who's going to put the handcuffs on. It's something that I wish we could figure out a better way to do it. But, you know, just three days a week. Personally, I think if you're in the training section, there should be some trainer there willing to work out with you seven days a week, whatever.

I mean, however we need to figure it out, just to help work out with. Don't tell me how to work. Work out with me. Like, let's do it together. And, again, I don't have the answer for it. A lot of people are short staff. But it's something that we got to because that ties into mental health, your skills.

You gain 100 pounds on the road The way you shoot, the way you deal The way you process, the way you sleep The way you recover, all of that changes And that has nothing to do And that's with you getting older Yeah, I think it affects The confidence You have to do your job We talked about this with Mo You know that I think it's important because, You want to be be at your best to be able to perform at us, right? Yeah. For your safety, shit.

Not just for the public safety, but for your safety. And I take it a step further. I'm like, listen, if anybody calls for my help, and this is just how I operate in life, right? I actually don't enjoy large, you know, large crowd, you know, moments or whatever, because I'm always like, not obviously for the danger, but I'm like, yo, we can't be in a space where someone's got to be overwatched, someone's got to be watching, someone's got to be the protector for the group, right? Yeah.

I just happen to take that role seriously. I don't want anybody that's around me to ever feel unsafe. You know what I mean? Yeah, correct. And you know that and you kind of know when especially. And again, this is no kind of political thing, but as men, you are the protector

of your household. you are the protector of, you know, people when they're with you, but I never want people to feel like they're unsafe around me, you know, especially in any kind of relationships or, you know, you know, kids around or whatever. It's like, you're not going to be, again, it's not like being overly macho. It's just, that's just the role that I think you should have.

But at the same time, it's like, I think that you're taking a step above when you're doing this job because now, So like I said, people are calling you in their stressful moment. You need to be able to do something, whether it's physically, do whatever, or intellectually. You have to be, I guess, I can say like a step above to be able to do that. Well, it even ties into when you get into those stressful environments because you can't help it, man.

Like your blood pressure is going to go up, your breath, the way you breathe and stuff is going to get increased, get rapid. And if you're vastly out of shape, which let me explain, I probably am 80 pounds lighter than at my worst. And I was a cop at that time. I'd get out and chase somebody down. I was like, God damn, I'm about to have a heart attack myself. Shit.

It hinders your confidence. It hinders your thinking ability because your brain is like, you know, trying to protect yourself and you can't even handle what you're trying to do. So, no, I think it all ties in. And I think it's one of those baseline foundations that, for whatever reason, a lot of agencies have gotten away from. Yeah. I don't know what the overall answer is because you can't, obviously, you can't force people to get in shape.

You can't force people. And, again, we've talked about a lot of these, like I should say, fitness for duty tests. Yeah. Well, I don't want to say the standards are low, right? but the standards are broad and I get why they are that way. If you have it so high, you've got to have anybody to work, right? But it can't be so low that it's impractical. So most of them are practical in a sense of what you should be able to do, right? Yeah.

But again, some of the stuff is like under, not under, and in being in some stressful situations myself, it's like, whew, okay. You look back at it and you're like, man, I wasn't even going to think about this, you know, you know, you have to be able to think, not necessarily just react. And I think that's the difference in being just necessarily just physically shit, right?

Where it's like, oh, yeah, I ran a marathon and I did this, this, yeah, that's all fine, I didn't get it, but when this comes into, again, a step above it, a notch above it, it's like, You know, I mean, we talked about this. I do the box stuff too, but it's like, okay, I got to be able to also think while being in a suit and being under stress and it's hot and it's this and, you know, it's not right because if I get this wrong, this shit can literally blow up in my face, right?

Or you're chasing somebody and now you have to go back and write the report. Hey, what'd you see? Hey, you've now got to articulate everything that was happening. So you have to be able to think as well as perform. And, you know, we spoke about it before, so, you know, you and I both play college ball. It's nothing more difficult than, hey, you're on this ADR drive and, you know, it's been seven minutes and you shouldn't have ever had a break yet.

Hey, now you've got to remember every play, what you do, what the guy next to you does, what's supposed to happen, and the snap count, and it's loud. So, you know what I mean? It's like to be able to do that, you got to be in some sort of, I think, accelerated shape, not necessarily just physically, but also cognitively as well. Yeah. And also, I don't want to come off of it. We shit on people that just run all the time. That's because we're big guys.

But like you said, Shiro, Shiro, he's a runner. He was probably the best. He's a cop's cop. He's a cop's cop. and probably one of the best supervisors slash teachers slash instructors in, that I've ever come across. I mean, I haven't, I mean, I could call him today. I haven't talked to the guy in 10 years and he'd be like, what is best in life? And, you know, we would just start to, I mean, like he, he remembers you. He, it's hard to express that. I'd like to get him on the, on the,

on the podcast though. Maybe at some point, he's got a lot going on. You know, by the time he, he told us he spoke Latvian. Yes. Correct. He hadn't spoken since college. Right now, South man, bro. And he was over doing an interview in Latvian. It's just so crazy yeah just wild but again he's a big time runner but he didn't hold it against anybody it's a mentality I think yeah well.

I kind of want to bring up the last thing before I let you go because it popped up they showed that New York aggravated assault violent crimes has gone up like 145% in the last year now I would say, that's a military There are policies that the state of New York has, which it's funny to me because I've now been through five different agencies, a lot of training, academies, all this stuff. And every academy, they'd say, hey, look, this is how we do law enforcement. These are your rights.

This is how you process a criminal. He goes, except for New York. Anybody going to New York? Yeah, you'll have your own thing. You'll have to figure it out when you get there because they're crazy. And that has been through every academy I've ever been in. And they're not around. It's completely different over there, how they handle criminals, how they treat cops. I mean, for one of the largest, I think it is the largest, it's either between them or L.A., they have the most law enforcement.

Officers, deputies, well, officers in New York, but they'll get treated almost like they're the enemy. So that you see this increase in specific types of crimes in these areas, but have you seen any type of uptick in specific types of crimes?

It doesn't necessarily have to be violent, but what have you been seeing? I don't know. I think your uptick has been a lot more, I guess, way of color, a lot more fraud, a lot more scamming. Because, you know, you're not necessarily, I guess, for the criminal, you're not necessarily putting yourself in immediate physical danger. You know, it takes a lot more time to, I guess, figure out who's doing what and, you know, navigate that from an investigative process.

But even just kind of where on that, I was just telling somebody about this probably beginning of last year. I was like, I've seen a lot more uptake in shootings, which is, which is true. Again, obviously in this job, a lot of stuff that happens doesn't hit the news. So I mean, your normal person would think, you know, this stuff's not happening, but it's happening every day, if not every other day where, you know, the shooting over here, shooting over here, shooting this one.

And like the shootings have brought up, in my opinion, and the white collar stuff, especially the fraud and the scaring. But I mean, looking at, I mean, I don't know if against something not being reported. But you do see a lot of like the juveniles and they're not necessarily stealing the cars per se. I mean, they're gonna steal some of the high-end ones like that.

I was talking to a friend of Myra who lives in Atlanta. I mean, they're rampant with stealing the Hellcats and stealing the cars and stuff like that just because of, I don't know if it's a popular car, easy to steal or whatever, but we're still in a lot more uptick in just trying door handles, right? Because it's easy, you know, most people don't even know that it's happening until the next day after the fact, unless they notice it at all.

It's easy to get out for charging people, not breaking it. So I'm not necessarily seeing a lot of home burglaries, but the vehicle burglaries is, most of those are not necessarily smashing the windows, like felony length type stuff, but unlike door handles, you're going to wind the guards, trying door handles to get in and get out. It's difficult to catch that. in the moment, right?

You know, you can always, you know, this is a reactive job, so, you know, at some point you're going to find out, you know, a fingerprint here, a DNA swab here, you know, that kind of stuff, but it is, you know, but the shootings are the one that, that is the part, is the learning to me. Yeah, so that, the violence, again, I saw that mostly when I was with the Secret Service, with protests and stuff, and the level of violence that they were ready to take on.

Again, it's like they just have no regard for their own safety or the safety of those around them and all that to just get a get a political point across. But I will tap into the fraud stuff because that was something that until I got to the federal side, I wasn't really aware. I mean, I was aware it happened, but I didn't realize the scale.

And I mean, it's coming from Russia, China, everywhere. But the one that I saw with my own eyes and was shocked to see, and you see it on social media sometimes where they're hacking scammers or whatever. You got these people that'll hack scammers and blow up the call center, blow it up, meaning like blow up their spot, not blow it up. Yeah. Yeah. But we went to go do a bunch of arrests over in Nigeria and we're like setting up and doing surveillance.

I'm like, well, where's this going on? They're like right here. And I'm like, that's like a corporate building. Like, yeah, that's the call center. That's where they all, these guys are coming in like shirts and ties and like a name pad, a name badge. They scan and they get in and then they sit it down at a computer desk and they just start scamming Americans. And that's the, you know, hey, you know, we're worth, you know, whatever agency.

And if you don't send us, you know, a thousand dollars in Nike gift cards, we're going to come arrest you or scamming, you know, the elderly on Facebook, whatever. Say, hey, we got little Timmy. You need to send 5,000, you know, that kind of stuff. And then the red knight scams have just gone off the rails. You know, this 80-something-year-old guy is like, oh, this 19-year-old girl wants to holler at me. She just needs to get her green card. I need to send her $100,000.

Hundreds of billions of dollars a year through those types of scams. It's an actual business. It's wild, bro. I'm not going to interject, but some of these scams, bro, I'm just like, I don't understand how you're falling for this. I don't get it. If it wasn't working They wouldn't be doing it Hundreds of billions bro Hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars Being perpetrated through these Scams, scam call centers and stuff,

world. Yeah, man. I mean, I get it. I mean, even just some of the stuff we've talked about over the years and some of the cases and just seen some of the stuff, you're like, not that I would do it, but I get it. I get why they're doing it. I get why they're taking the risk to reward us.

I mean, you got people making millions, hundreds of thousands of dollars and they never have to leave their home or, they're not walking in the bench they don't need to you give them money doing it this way anyway yeah man alright bro that puts you set an hour you got anything you want to leave with, no man it was good to see you it was good to see you for the holiday good to see the kids. So impressed with Alec in this transition in just a short time. But it's great to see Manny's big now.

Just to hear their own people now. And it's wild, though. Remember them from when they were just, as I was saying, you had to a duck to now. It's crazy, man. Yeah, no, they got their own dreams and hopes and ambitions now. Wild. I love it. No, it was good to see you too, brother. All right, man. I'll catch you on the next one. Down the street.