Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Are Police Academies Failing Cops? | Dennis Benigno | Ep. 450

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

Dennis Benigno started in 2001 as a New Jersey corrections officer at nineteen. He moved to the U.S. Park Police in D.C., then to patrol in one of Jersey's largest municipalities. Over fourteen years he made more than 1,500 arrests and ran over 10,000 car stops. He had to self-train to survive the road. When he realized the academies weren't teaching cops what they needed, he started teaching it himself. That became Street Cop Training, one of the biggest police training companies in the country, with hundreds of thousands of officers behind it. He argues that 80% of line-of-duty deaths are training failures. Not bad luck. Failures you can trace back to the academy. We get into why the system box-checks instead of fixing the problem, and who benefits from keeping it that way. He breaks down the passenger-side approach, the traffic stop that ended with a cop executed on camera, and the constitutional gaps most officers never get taught. We also get into the political machine that came after him, what it cost, and who actually showed up when it did.  Street Cop Training:  https://streetcoptraining.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorcJeLaNQvrs9WJ1mgjCfFiYR0JPzLxm8nm6On3DGf8qO0mnWof Drownproof book and Conversation Starters: https://www.shop.clearedhotpodcast.com   

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to a Wednesday episode. Before we get into today's episode, there was a technical issue on my side, 100% my fault. The video file corrupted. So for those of you who may be an audio video, you know, they want to do both. They want to watch as well as listen. This one, I'm sorry, is to be listened to only. So I'm going to put up a screen grab from Dennis's website so you can get more information from him if you will. like, but unfortunately today, like I said, 100% my fault. We're going to be audio only. That is it. Let's get into the show. Arguably, I just had to revamp that other book. I rewrote the whole thing after they took

it down like fucking result did the whole thing. It took me four days, probably about 40 hours. And when it was done, I would argue it's like a 9.5 out of 10. And my canine case law book, Street Tax and Case Law book, hands down is the best book that's ever been written for these guys for K-Nine. And I don't see, like, dude, I'm telling you, I'm not like,

this is just business talk. So I'm telling people this. I'm not like, I'm the best there ever was. Like, dude, I fuck up nonstop. And then I was like, oh Lord, I fuck this up. Let me fix this shit really quick.

But I was able to do that with the AI. And dude, it's flawless. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Like, the table of contents Claude makes for you. We just had, we just said Claude, because people are like, where's the audio book?

So we ran it through Claude. We actually spent Monday, we started trying to prompt Claude correctly, and then it spit back the audiobook and the typecast that you would take and put into 11 labs. I recorded two hours of me talking on 11 labs. I sat there and just read a book for two hours.

And so now it has, we got it to do what we wanted to do almost flawlessly, and it gets all my inflections and it reads the whole fucking book. But not the way the book's written. We had it rewritten through Claude to be read through 11 labs

as an audiobook. Nice. I just had a kind of podcast recently. I forgot the fuck was. Somebody famous. And he's like, yeah, and I'm doing the book now. I'm recording in the studio. I'm like, dude, just use 11 laps.

Yeah. It's better than you can do it. Yeah, it depends on the publisher, though. If you're with the publisher, they may not let you do that. Shit. Yeah. Because they're going to have a requirement for what they'll probably call it the talent or the artist, which, whatever, pick your redact. Do you like your publisher?

Very much so. That's good. Yeah. Yeah, they're really cool. They don't do anything. I mean, they make the book. Right. They'll fill you with promises of they're going to, you know, they're going to get you

onto different platforms and stuff like that. Between my publisher and the agent, what I determined is it's completely on you and not those people. They'll make a lot of promises. But every podcast, other than Fox News, a close friend of mine made that happen. Other than that, every one of the podcast appearances I did was a direct text message to the host, just friends of mine. And without that, the publishers wouldn't have had access to those people.

And it definitely helped for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's, like as we go along, right, we just got to learn. Yeah. You know, it's like, well, now I know that. And then I can also give that advice to because now people are like, oh, you're New York Times best selling author. I'm like, yeah, accidentally.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then, you know, how did you do this? I'm like, listen, this is what I did. This is what I learned along the way. Do it this whatever you want to. And also, if you refine the system, let me know as well, too. I have no intentions to write a second book, but like, let me know. Dude, if you want me to show you the, the, the Claude stuff. It's fucking wild.

I use Cloud, actually. Have you tried to do what a book, like to write a book for you? It's so good. No, I would never do that, to be honest. Well, I'm right, okay, so I'm writing law books. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah, I'm not telling a story. Yeah, for a reference material.

Trust me, it's, no, I use, I use Claude for a lot of stuff. Post production for the show, pre-guess, interview, research, all sorts of stuff. And again, it's, a lot of it's the prompting that you put into it will inform the output that you get. Right. And I just like, it's plain, because I'm not a tech guy. You don't have to be. Very simple plain language. Like, hey, I like this, but like, this is hard to read.

Change this. or make sure you include these type of searches. Well, you're an artist, right? As long as you're an artist and you can bring that art over to the platform. Oh, it's so good, dude. Like, sometimes I'm like a mad scientist when I get this done, I'm like,

oh, this is so fucking good. What's it going to be in 10 years? Insane. And arguably, I would think that I'm five years comfortably ahead of everybody else in my space, which there is, as weird as this sounds, there really is nobody in my space. What do you consider your space to be?

I never thought, would become popular. I just wanted to train. And I always thought, oh, I could, are we recording? Yeah. Okay. So some of the stuff you, like I just, I'll cut out all the news. Yeah, yeah, like the business stuff. Yeah. So, okay, we could, we could just roll out into it. Yeah. And you're telling me about how you launder a Bitcoin and all that stuff. Yeah, we'll leave that stuff out. I'm joking, by the way. That's not what we were talking about. We're talking about book stuff. Yeah. So, dude, like I, I chop it in right when I ask you what you think your industry is. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I didn't start doing what I was doing because I wanted to become

unpopular, it was actually what happened because I was doing what I was doing. And all I thought was that nobody's trained. And I had to self-trained. And when I self-trained, I realized I could teach other people the things that I learned along the way that I picked up. So I would like to consider myself somebody who builds and designs police training products and in the same breath has become a thought leader. and maybe somebody who breathes reality into modern-day law enforcement. Why does the need for training outside of the academies exist to the degree that it seems like it does?

I tried to preface this as much and try to be as emphasize as much cuth as I possibly could when answering this question, because this is the question I get asked all the time. This is the question that frustrates everybody. Not everybody, because it's a well-known. thing. But it's a question that frustrates, the answer will frustrate people who are responsible for the state of affairs that we're in. I went to three police academies. I didn't do that because of bad choices and I got remediated. I went from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and had to do the academy all over again, which almost doesn't exist as much as it once did because of the

need for cops. They're giving a lot of waivers that you don't have to go back to the academy to appeal because they need so much personnel to show up to do the job. So everybody's- You're talking about for people who are already certified. Certified from a different agency. They're waiving the requirement. Okay. Not like people off the street like, hey, you don't need to go to the academy. No, no, no, no.

Okay, so I'm going to clarify. Oddly enough, dude, what's crazy is there are some places in this world where you go and become a cop first and then they send you to the academy. So they give you like a two-week training in-house. What's the argument for that? Well, it's typically in places that are extremely rural. Is there a concern? Yes.

Is it as concerning as like maybe being a cop in Philadelphia? No, because it's different. You're going to get a pickup truck and go, I don't know, whatever they do in the middle of nowhere, police officers, I guess they feel like they give them enough training for that time until a class rolls around where they can enroll in the academy.

So that actually exists. But to answer your really question, the training process, program that most people go through. It's interesting the history of it because a lot of it's just a guess and a speculation how we got here. And what the belief is is that somebody somewhere needed to come up with an academy. So essentially, this person who was tasked with this first academy or the modern day

academy profile was a person who was a military person. So when they said, we need a police academy, he said, I believe I've read it. something about the guy was a special forces guy, right? This has nothing to do with you. But the point is he was like... Special forces specifically means only green berets, by the way. Special operations is the umbrella writ large. Special operations.

So he's like a special op guy. And they basically said to him like, hey, we need an academy. And he did what he thought an academy should look like is what he knew, which was a military boot camp. And so now here we are in modern day policing, that you have police academies that are under the impression that they need to be the military. So the whole system of how it's built

is one big box checking. And box checking costs people their lives. And that's a massive problem. And people are very romantic with the idea of how it is. Even when I challenge people on, why do you think this is the way it should be? It's because that's the way they like it.

But they take no responsibility. of like you're failing these men and women the minute they walk out this door. How do we go to a police training academy that maybe six to 24 to 30 weeks and they know almost nothing when they leave here other than the fact that you guys

checked boxes and I can prove it. So it frustrates people because they're so romantic but this is my baby. I work here. This is what we do. We create the best cops, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And if that was untrue, then I wouldn't have a business because now what I have to do is essentially give all these men and women the things that they need to do this job and not get killed and stay constitutional. Why aren't the academies changing and providing those things? What you described, I mean, let's, I don't know anything about the origins of police academies, but we'll operate under the assumption that what you said was factually accurate, right?

So let's say it was started from the military world, get it. Guy drew from his experience, totally get that too. applied it to the civilian world, and maybe that was the initial, you know, first people through the door into the policing world. But by not updating, I mean, I feel like the officers are at risk. I feel like the civilians that they're supposed to be serving are at risk. I feel like the departments are at risk from a legal perspective. So why wouldn't they change that? Man, there's like 15 answers in that one. So let's talk about the first one. And a good thing of a pen and paper in front of me. The first one is they may not know how to change it. Right.

So like, you know, you're a business guy. I said in a podcast recently, and this may sound very, again, it might sound like it comes out of a place of conceit, but it doesn't. It comes from a place of just a very objective analysis of who I am and what I do. Why was I a cop for 14 years before I became, and stepped into entrepreneurship and then had success in it, and not just this, but other things. And so it really comes down to the fact that, like,

if we really look at what an entrepreneur does is they fix problems. The best entrepreneurs resolve issues. That's why their products are good. I'm very fortunate to be this hybrid of once was a cop, was a good cop, was a proactive cop, was a very eager cop, was soaking things up like a sponge. And then I also have entrepreneurship skills. So I understand how to resolve these issues. I understand what the fix is going to be, the realistic fixes, not just these. oh my God, like, we should do this.

Well, that's not going to work. And here's why. So when I look at entrepreneurship, I have to compare it to people who don't have the skills of an entrepreneur, and you know this because you're an entrepreneur. Most people don't have those skills. So the likelihood of you getting somebody who's an entrepreneur to have those problem solving skills in a position where they can make the right calls is slim to none. So who do you have?

You got people with jobs. people with jobs don't innovate, they don't change things, they don't fix things. As a matter of fact, a lot of these people have such big egos that you can't penetrate their ego to get to them and say, hey, we think we could fix this because they're so romantic with, well, that's not how I would do it. That's not how we do things. And so it continues on in the way that it is. And I've learned one thing is like, you just can't, you can't ask for permission in this profession. You'll never get it. And if you're playing within the boundaries of the square, of the factory of the modern day policing, you will get no permission.

So you must do and hope they like and adopt. Man, I got to be honest, you really painted with a broom there. That was a very broad description that encapsulates a pretty diverse community. It doesn't define well the people I know in law enforcement. Entrepreneurially, you know, it's...

I hate that term, to be honest, applied to myself because I never thought I was going to be in business. A lot of the times what I see is people not constrained by their desires. They're constrained by the bureaucracy. And most of the people that I see, they legitimately want to do the best things possible. And they are trying to solve problems. So I guess I would put that into the entrepreneurial bucket as far as those skills that you would say to find an entrepreneur.

But the people that I know in law enforcement, like the status. status quo isn't good enough for them. They're always trying to move the needle. It's almost as if they're fighting the system itself. Right. But think about who's in charge of the system. There's plenty of men and women, especially ones that support me,

that are completely believe in the movement that I'm making here. So I'm not trying to paint everybody but a broad brush. Yeah. But I think most people who are in this game for the reasons you just said would agree with what I just said.

That yes, there is a lot of us, lieutenants, captains, deputy chiefs. There is even chiefs that are completely about making a change academy directors. They're out there. But the far majority is those who don't want to change anything because they like the way it is. They like getting sued. They don't care. It's not their money. Today's episode is brought to you by me, Andy. For anybody who's been following the show or seeing me on social media, follows me on social media. You know that I wrote a book. It's called Drownproof right here. Eight life lessons to keep your head above water. Surprisingly enough, it did pretty well on release.

It is still on the New York Times bestseller list on two lists. And it made all the other major bestseller categories and lists as well to everybody who made that happen, which for total clarity is everybody listening to this or those who picked up copies. I did not do that. I don't have the words for how humbling it is to receive that level of support. Thank you. If you haven't picked up a copy, I highly recommend that you do. For those of you that have been reaching out to me talking to me about the impact the book has had on you, please continue to do so. exactly why I wrote it. And in addition to the book, I have these. These are a deck of cards.

Drownproof conversation starters. Why did I create these? Well, I didn't want the book to be an end state. I wanted it to be an arrival point. So in here are three different types of cards. There's a reflection, there is a quote, and there is a challenge. Pull one out per day in your morning. Do what the card says. You'll be shocked at the impact that it has. I paired these together. There are more of these things that are going to be on the way. I'm going to try to create one around leadership, maybe for those in business, maybe for those in the military. I don't know if that's the same product. It could be, I suppose. It might be better to split it. But those are the two things that I have to offer for you today. You can find them anywhere you can buy a book or follow the show note link to this episode,

and you can find them both there as well. Thank you again for the support. They get paid no matter what, right? Think about it. It's not their money. They get paid no matter what. Yeah, but that would mean like when their officers perform poorly that they're okay with that. When a citizen loses their life or is constitutionally violated that they're okay with that. They, I wish I could tell you that all these people understood that. And there are solutions out there, not only the ones that come from me, but from other places as well. Because people reach out and like, hey, what do you think? I'm like, it's a great solution.

But the question is, are you going to get these people? who are in charge to adopt this thing. You've got to understand a psyche of what you're dealing with in psychology of these people. And so, well, I think it's a great tool. You've gotta remember one thing about these guys and girls. There's this, this is the biggest strife in the profession.

There are those who care and those who don't. That applies to every profession. Right, but in this one, the problem is, is when you don't care, people die. And that's a big issue. So they try, try to play this game of I'm in charge, may have gotten in charge for some reason

that wasn't the right reason. As you know, it's the same thing in the military space as well. I hear about that a lot. And until the pressure comes down, who's checking on them, right? Who's their boss? Maybe their boss is their friend. So this progression of we need to evolve

can't be left in their hands. It has to be done without them and almost forced down their throat. that like, hey, this is the actual solution. We've got to change this. He's going to say, where does that leave the officers working underneath them that want to do everything they can? It leads them to me. And so I can make a product and an association that's affordable for everybody to come get the train that you need to survive this profession.

And arguably, I would like to believe, and I know for a fact that I've kept names off the wall in D.C. I know for a fact there are dozens of cops who do not stick a gun in their mouth because of me. There's hundreds of cops who asked why their agency doesn't give a shit about them and thanks me for the work that I'm doing. And other people are associated with this organization as well. And so for that, you know, that's why it falls back into the hands of somebody who is seeing it for what it's worth to do versus these other people. Because I don't essentially do this for money. I make money because I do this because I care. I mean, I could have walked away from it when things got extremely difficult, and I chose not to.

Walking away was the work, it was actually the harder decision to walk away from it. And it was an easier decision to stay because I had to remind myself of these people who deserve the best that I have to offer them. And if that's something I can do to make a change to keep them alive or keep them constitutional or keep them out of jail or free from a lawsuit, how dare I not do it? When you were at that lowest point? When was that when you were trying to decide whether or not you wanted to keep going or not? Yeah, so like, I frustrated a political party in a very political state by having a opposite political speaker come to one of our events, actually our first event, which was arguably, and still to this day, the best professional week of my life. And dude, it was fantastic. We had amazing training.

And, you know, I essentially was to make a long story short. there was sabotage ran on me to try to make it look like we were doing things that were wrong. And it's just amazing how strategically they chose to try to do their best to make it look like we were doing improper things. And, you know, the political machine is a very powerful one. And it was very difficult to go through when something was made up about you and lied. And then the worst part is, is everybody had been serving for 10 years. Every, we trained 90% of the cops in the state of New Jersey.

I was left to be crucified without anybody giving any objection. And all these people who were my friends had just disappeared. What happened? We had Tommy Laren from Fox News on top of Marcus Littrell. Well, I swear I recognize that name. Yeah, she's the blonde from Fox News. Very attractive. Lerrin?

Yeah, I just, yeah, I recognize it. So we had keynote speakers at the event. We had... Where was this at? Atlantic City, New Jersey. It's our first street cop conference. We had a thousand cop show up. It was post...

Okay. I know you're talking about. She doesn't actually... Does she still work for Fox? Yeah. She does, okay. Yeah. So it's post-pandemic.

And we had Marcus Latrell, Dakota Meyer, Tim Kennedy, her, and a couple other keynote speakers that come... And, you know, each day did their own event where they spoke for an hour. Why did we choose these people?

Well, we asked our group. We have a big following. Like, hey, who would you guys like to see at the first conference? And she, was a person at that time during the George Floyd era who was an outspoken supporter of police when half the cops I knew were contemplating leaving because they could handle the pressure.

They talked those guys off the ledge as well. So when she came on stage, she unprompted made some political comments. And she told everybody in the audience basically to vote Republican. And I was like, why would she say that here? Like this is like the, this is like the. Why would that surprise you that she said that? You know, I was going through a very difficult time of my life. My wife had just gone through some stuff, and there was a lot of things crumbling my marriage. It was terrible.

It was unforeseen. I had married the love of my life. I was dealing with a lot of stuff. And I just couldn't think. That whole summer, as a matter of fact, I couldn't think a lot. I was doing my very best to keep together. So it just didn't cross my mind. It's kind of her jam.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I ask why can it surprise you? Yeah, no, no, no. I get that. part. But then actually there was a nice volley back and forth about, you know, Republican versus Democrat. And it was a good conversation. That never makes a headline. No. So the Washington, don't forget, this is George Floyd era, right? So like, we had people, because it was anti-cop. Like, not that it's not anti-cop now, but then it was like every cop's a piece of shit, right? Can I curse

on this one? I mean, it's the internet. Okay. I could care less. Okay. I'll try to you. Here's the rules I have for my podcast. You're responsible for it. You say, I'm responsible for what I say. That's it. So those are the only rules. Yeah, fair enough. And how you want to say it? I could give do shits. Okay. See, we can go back and forth. Good stuff. So essentially, um, oh, where was I? You were talking, you were talking about the George Floyd era. Oh yeah. So George Floyd era. So we were actually having people like, we had probably arguably 30 to 40 instructors at that time. And so we had people like showing up

to classes where there was like 65, 70 cops in a class, one of our instructors out there. And they're like, why is this person here? And like, it's getting called. Like, hey, there's some fucking reporter in our class. And they're like, what are you doing here? Like, oh, I'm here to watch your class. Like, you're not, there's a paid event. You can't come in here.

What if they paid? Would you have an issue with it? So the only issue I would have is think about what they did to me. Or they took a five and a half day event put out a three minute video of us cursing. So if it was actually a new- Did those things not happen? They happened, but what happened to the other 99% of stuff that happened that week? Sure.

Right. So if we were going to essentially be at a neutral place, If you wanted to show the bad things, you'd have to show the good things, too. Are you familiar with the current state of the press? Well, I certainly am. Let me know when you find an outlet that's willing to do that. Well, that actually alludes to your question earlier. Like, that's my point.

Are you familiar with the, like, so would I let them in? Yeah, like, we had a guy from CBS who was like hunting me down, right? And I was like, hey, man, we could do, I knew the game he was playing. I'm like, I'll do your interview. That's fine. You got to do it on my podcast. We're going to do a live stream to 700,000 followers. And we'll just keep it open.

And then by the way, when we're done, we'll give you the footage. You guys aren't going to control that. He's like, and so eventually came on CBS and was like, Mr. Benino said that he would invite me on his podcast to do it. But I told him that's not what the policy of CBS allows me to do. It's unfortunate because that's transparent. Right. If you want to set up your cameras, go ahead. I'll set up mine. We can throw SIM cards on the table when we're done. Like, go to town. Yes. But the problem is, is like, they're so sneaky, dude, that they do anything they can like. They went and tried to dig up like two internal and Ferris complaints that I had in 14 years, but failed to dig up 17 unit citations and meritorious service awards and all these other things that I'm known for. Mayor's service, all these commendations. Couldn't find those, right?

Because they're in my file as well. No, they can find them. It just, again, depending on their, well, journalism again, it's tough. I don't like Peyton with a broom because there are what I would consider to be unbiased journalists. They oftentimes don't get the traction and have the audience of the people who, will go, I mean, let's just, pie, we can pull up our phones. It's the most extreme sticky stuff that tracks. The person who's in the middle who's like, listen, this is what I saw, but I also saw this. This is what was said, but this is the context. That person has four likes. The dude

who was three piece tinfoil suit, like, oh, he said this. It has a hundred thousand shares. Right. So they exist. It's just tough. And my question about having a journalist in the room is more just the concept in general, not like a particular one, but would you have any issue with, if you could find the perfect unbiased journalist, would you have any issue with it? No. And to be honest with you, the guy from the, so let me just dial back a little bit. The guy from the Washington Post had a plan. They paid some cop to sit in there and record him on at the event. So like three weeks later after the event, this journalist calls me, has asked me questions. And I'm like, hey, man, you can, actually the video of me talking.

I'm like, yeah, you should come and take a look at what we're doing. But then we did a little research on him and he's just the most anti-cop journalist in the history of, like, journalism. So... It's a bold statement, but I understand what you're saying. All he does is write about anti-police. That's all he does. Yeah, I just don't know if there's a top ten of anti-cop journalists.

Okay, fair enough. He's up there, though. He would be a contest. If there was... He would be a contestant. And so this is what he thrives on. He's like, he's an anti-cop. He hates the police.

And arguably, those people who do want police reform should actually be supporting me because I'm the guy, at least one of the major... components of police reform because I'm doing the things that they're not doing that you want so badly. But what I've come to realize, like, they actually don't want that. They don't, they don't care about it. They really don't. They just, they don't like the police. The whole theory behind the police makes them angry. So you can't talk to somebody who has preexisting hate and not an open mind. I mean, you can. The conversation. I don't know. Well, it's tough. I, I will try to

engage with those people, usually through the lens of like, listen, what are you going to do if you're in the middle of your worst day or you come around a corner and there's an accident? Let's say it's involving your loved ones. Are you saying that you are the person that is tool, trained, and equipped to deal with that? You're not going to call for a higher level of care. And if you are going to call for a higher level of care, what is this supposed to look like? This mythical unicorn pulling a chariot around, like who is human beings, right? Yeah. So in most of the time, they'll say, or if you ask him, hey, you come across an accident, you know, what are you going to go? I'm going to call 911. Like five minutes ago, you were just telling me that essentially half of the 911 services you don't want to be there or to exist, walk me through this thought process.

I don't know if it makes a dent in the moment, but I at least hope that it would spark a little bit of creative thought for them. Or if you were violently assaulted, if you need a higher level, like, if you're not tooled and trained to sort. on yourself, what are you, are you operating off good, like, hopes and dreams? Yeah. Because they make good patches that's saying both of those are bad strategies. Yeah. You know? Well, dude, like, if you think about it, they're unreasonable.

And so I could have a conversation with anybody who's reasonable. But there's a lot of people who are just completely unreasonable. I know it comes down to the conversations of, you know, people are very strong in their political stance or religious stance. You're not convincing somebody. But do you discount them because they might be unreasonable in one aspect of their beliefs? Well, dude, I've had a lot of people on my podcast who have, you know, essentially expressed where some of their thoughts come from. And I acknowledge those thoughts and tell them,

like, the profession is responsible for it. Not every single cop that wears the badge, but like, I get that in 1993, you may have encountered a cop that whooped your ass because of where you lived and what you look like. But it's 2026. And we have to figure out a way where we can start coming together to recognize that these things do exist, those guys have passed that burden onto the new guys and they have to wear that now. So how do we start to come together because we almost exist harmoniously? And so one podcast I had a guy and was really good. And a lot of people reached out that like, dude, that was like one of the best conversations

I've ever heard people have about that conversation. So I'm not completely deaf to the fact that people do have bad experiences. And so it comes back to like we could huff and puff about what exists or we could start to correct it. Yeah. One of the things I wish would change about modern discourse is you find somebody usually online that make seem to be from either one side or from both sides, they're looking at each other. And on a particular belief, they see on the other side of the street what they consider to be an unreasonable belief. And maybe it is. And maybe the person looking back on the other side of the streets is the same thing.

and they discount the entire person. Right. And that's, that's a mistake to me. That's why I asked that. Yeah, for sure. You know,

human beings are so complex. And my beliefs on a lot of things. Sometimes not. Sometimes not. Sometimes not. But if you're around them long enough, there are very few utterly simple people out there. You know,

where we are, a lot of our behaviors are informed by our experiences in our life or our morals or upbringing or all of those things as well. And it's just, we're in such a world where people like, if you say anything that does, doesn't 100% align with what they believe. They just, they discount you as a person.

I think that's a mistake. Well, they've been led to believe that's okay because they have people behind them enabling them. I always tell people like, just because three other people enable your behavior doesn't make your behavior correct. No, it just makes those three people assholes. Well, and like who rolls together, right?

Like, if you think about it, I mean, you know, like, I hate to use this as an example, but my parents were the center of bullshit my entire life with my family. How were you when you realize? that? Well, you know, when I speak to my therapist, maybe about a year ago, she was like, you know, we bring up things and she's like, oh, well, you have mommy issues. And I was like, I do. She's like, you didn't know that. Have we not discussed that? I'm like, well, I mean,

I know, like, what I deal with. And she's like, when did you like really stop considering your mother, your mother and like just disassociating yourself with the home? Deep question. No, no, no, she's my therapist. So we got to go there. No, but I mean, like, even, I mean, that's meaning not, not like in that setting, but like, that's an existential when you're growing up, your parents are the center of the universe. It's supposed to be, right? Yeah, and to have that shift where, oh, you're my mother on paper and by blood, but I actually now have to shift the way that I think about you just to another human being.

Dude, that's tough. Well, yeah. And so you find out your later adult behaviors really correlate all back to that stuff, right? Yeah. The stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. No. And honestly, it's made me what I consider to be the best father I can be. And in my kid's eyes, I am the goat.

But I work towards that. And I have to put a lot of emotional intelligence behind what that means to be the goat in their eyes. I'm not the goat in everybody's eyes. Clearly, their mother doesn't think I'm the goat anymore. Ex-wives have a way of feeling like that. Yeah. But she actually, that's funny because the other day I texted her and I, we're friendly. We're really cool to be honest with you.

And I was like, man, you haven't given me a compliment in a decade. She's like, you're a really great dad. I was like, thanks. But what about my ass? And she's like, please leave me alone. But the point is, is I was eight. right damn that's what i remember when i was eight and i just didn't like this woman anymore that's an early shift in mentality man yeah so but you know life happens for us not to us so what did that do at that time

i grew up in chaos if i didn't grow up the way that i did i wouldn't be able to handle the pressure that comes with the things that i'm doing i chose to try to fix law enforcement i've got arguably some anti-police sentiment coming from the outside in and then i have a lot of anti-your-changing things from the inside out. So I've got both that I'm trying to. And then I've got the middle of people who were like, bro, thank you. Like, thank you.

I mean, I get that a dozen times today. Thank you for your work. Like, thank you for doing this stuff. Thank you for paying tribute to our fallen officers. It means a lot to people, dude. And I just can't turn my back on it. I just can't do it. What was the fallout from the Atlantic City event?

Okay, so Washington Post writes this, article that we had a political rally. Oh, because of Tommy? She said it was a Republican thing. And this guy calls me it. Now it's a different conversation. He's like, I'm like, why would you write this? I had the guy's cell phone number.

He's like, I want to know why Tommy Laron was having a political rally for the Republican party on taxpayer dollars. And I'm like, she said it once. And then there was a volley. You saw the video. I sent it to you. And so this guy went and stomped his feet all over our state capital and got people to and I'm going to try to leave a lot of details out of this.

But anyway, that group of people who he happened to perk their ears up had to figure out a way to cancel me. And so they ran sabotage. And it was clear as day. And everybody knows that. Even the people who kind of, you know, listen, Andy, you know that when you do anything, automatically 20% people are going to hate you. I hope not.

That's how it goes. Just the way it is. I'm aiming for a split down the middle. 10%. 50, 50. Okay, 50. But 20% of people just because of what you're doing, like literally hate your guts.

Because it's a them thing. It's not a you thing. I know. I wish that wasn't true. I try to tell people this because they try to be perfect. Like, listen. It's not you can do. Then the people who are going to be pissed at you

are the anti-perfect crowd. So it's, you cannot please everybody. It's a tough hat to wear, folks. Like, it's not easy doing these things. You do them because you believe in them. You do them because this is what you want, that you believe the Lord has called. you to do, really believe that.

And, but, you know, it, yeah, it stinks sometime. It really does stink. And it gets very, very difficult. Arguably, now it's gotten a lot easier, but what this sparked was, dude, I mean, basically I had the government after me over nothing. Like the New York government or federal government? The New Jersey government. I always forget the New Jersey is different state than New York.

Yes. They're arguably not. I mean, you can throw kind of like a baseball from one. I mean, you have to have a really good arm, but like you can maybe shoot like a t-shirt can at across. I mean, the deer swim across the orth the kill. Like, it's nothing. So, but yeah, so when you have the government after you,

on top of that, I had other, everything catastrophic that could happen to somebody between my marriage, frivolous lawsuits, not from the train that we're doing internal employee stuff that was just made up. All these things happened that, I remember to tell my therapist, I'm like, you know, this is, this is a lot. And she doesn't really curse that much.

And she leans into me and says, I've been a therapist for 30 years. Let's just call it like it is. You're getting your fucking ass kicked. And I was like, yeah, she's like, and it's bad. But you're going to make it through this thing. And I'm like, yeah. But it was tough, dude. It was very, I mean, they were working with the media.

Remember the first articles after they dropped this report. that we couldn't share came out within hours. And then my PR guy called me is like, that's a three week article. It takes three weeks to write that. That's a big article. They had to be working with these guys behind the scene. So it just like, we realized that we weren't playing a game.

We could win at all. Would you say any of their criticisms were held water at all? Did you make any changes post the article? I think the changes that you make is that you realize that once you get to a level, you have to be very, very meticulous with everything that you do because a lot of eyes on you. So while it was par for the course for our organization,

it gave them an in to try to criticize. And to be honest with you, we could have done it perfectly. They would have figured out a way to try to sabotage it anyway because of what. So I was held, and dude, believe me, we, I've been doing this for a long time. So I'm 25 years almost in this business. We had, I taught almost every cop in Jersey. And I'm not making that up. We basically kind of had all the training lockdown in Jersey.

And people were very frustrated. It wasn't just that. once that ball started rolling, these other people who couldn't get traction jumped on board. And I know this for a fact. I don't want to discuss how or, you know,

there's things that you get privy to that you kind of just got to take the like, we won't say nothing, but like what's going on? And it's like, you know, this guy's involved, and not as fucking guys involved, and this guy's involved,

and they're involved. And now they're all forming this thing because this one heard about it. Then this guy heard about it. So they're all going to come together. And you could tell who was a part of it because the sabotage they ran was wild. And they wrote these, and, you know,

I'm going to leave it at this, but if you read the report, we actually didn't think the report was going to have any impact because it was just, it was so clear when you read this 77-page report that took him two years to write on me that it was like, we laughed at it.

We were like, this is, they, anybody reads this, understands this is complete bullshit. I mean, do people work, like, they were calling agencies like, did you guys ever take this guy's training? Like, yeah, he's the best. Like, we love this guy. He's great.

Never makes it to the report. None of this stuff ever makes to the report. So they were just selecting what they want. And they realized that at some point, they had to add one thing. So, like, at the end and, like, the fine print at the end of this report,

it just says, like, one agency was contact. And they said it was the best training we ever had. We're appalled by this. So it was just a, and that organization, I'm not the only person they did that to.

As a matter of fact, they are in, I think Clarence Thomas just gave him a beaten on the floor of the U.S. Supreme Court because the U.S. Supreme Court is appalled at their behavior. They went after a pro-life group. But the pro-life group had the money to continue to appeal them,

big money to go to U.S. Supreme Court. And I was even asked to me, like, hey, do you want to go to U.S. Supreme Court? I'm like, guys, like, we're a million into this thing in legal fees. Like, how much more do you think we're going to be going with this? I need peace in my life. I don't want to. This is not how I foresee me living my life. I need to make sure cops don't die.

and my kids have a father. And so those moments in my life, arguably were the most difficult moments of my life. And I thought about this today. I'm like, man, I guess pain is subjective. There's people who survived the Holocaust. I don't know if there's any more pain that you could subject a human being to

than being a Holocaust survivor. Be a tough argument for something more powerful. Right. So when I think about my pain, I'm like, well, I wasn't a Holocaust survivor. Yeah. But subjectively, it was brutal, dude. Be careful with that game. Competitive suffering is a dangerous one.

Because you're always going to be able to find somebody who is suffering more, whether it's historical or modern day. And it gives you an opportunity to diminish what it is that you're working through. Correct. And I'm good with that. And I completely agree 100%.

And I always tell people like, you need to consider what you're going through valid and stop comparing to other people's stuff. Yeah. And a lot of people, my closest friends, and you know, you may know this because you may have gone through some difficult things. You will find out who your friends are.

Oh, real fast. Immediately. Yeah, it's a scary thing to hear. Yeah. It's a scary thing to live. It's faster than you would want it to be. It's almost instantaneous. Yeah, you end up in a room with an echo.

Hello. Hello. Okay. Brother, I'm going to say something that's profound that I want to quote Simon Sinek on this because it's not my line, but it spoke to me clearly. There's a real on Instagram about him

and maybe you guys want to piece it in because it's really cool. Not many people get to experience the level of that. To be on the news for three weeks, you know, and the things that come along with that, and then the loneliness of that by myself. Remember, I didn't have a wife at this time, had nobody.

My children brought me much comfort, but I couldn't use them as teddy bears. I had to be their dad still, right? You had to be sleeping the same room every night together and they made me feel comfortable? Yeah, yeah. We had like campouts in the in the bedroom every night. A lot of fun. There were arguably some of the best moments, to be honest with you, because they brought me so much comfort. And I wasn't being weird with them. I was just like, hey, guys, let's watch a movie together. Little did they know that. We were doing both at the same time. I know exactly what you're talking about. So when Simon Sinek talks about this thing where a lot of people won't know that level of that. And he said, you know, there's not many of us who go through something like this. And a lot of these guys won't tell you this.

but they're all grateful that it happened. Now, none of us wanted to ever go through that again. Right? One time around the horn is plenty. And to be honest with you, I think it really, on the other side of pain like that, you really get a new sense of self and life and humanity and what's important.

Not that I was too far off, but I was going through a lot, man. And you don't see things as clearly as you would have liked to. So if anybody's going through something like that, my only advice to you is, you know, survival is progress. Doesn't mean you've got to be doing things. You don't have to cut the grass. Let it grow an extra day. Just find yourself the ability to be here.

And you don't have to be present. Just let's not go that other route. And, you know, there's a lot of empathy and compassion I have now when I see somebody going through something very difficult. And my immediate reaction is to help them. And I'm helping somebody right now. Probably arguably few people, but somebody in particular, and I just doing my very best to be there for him. Yeah, I think sometimes that's all you can do. Those moments where you find out who your real friends are, they suck. They suck, but I tell you what, they're great. Maybe people won't understand what I'm about to say, but I think it's essential that you experience that at some point in your life.

because the other side of that equation, if you don't, means you never really know who is in your corner for the right reasons. You know, because in those moments where it's pouring on you and the people closest to you who you thought were the closest, go find an umbrella and they bail. Versus sometimes it'll shock you, the people who show up without an umbrella and stand there next to you in the rain and get soaked, even though they could go stand under the porch and stay dry. You don't find out who those people are. are, though, until you step into that absolute thunderstorm. Let me tell you, to add to that, it'll be people that you never expect. And so I must give credit where credits do. And I regard this plenty of times.

The people that I thought would be there ran for the hills. And I'm talking everybody, friends, family, the whole nine. And oddly enough, the people that were in my corner were Sheriff Mark Lamb, who reached out to me and said, What can I do for you? People were very frustrated about what happened. Sheriff Wayne Ivy at Brevard County. And I knew these guys because we had worked with them at our conferences, became friends with them.

I wasn't, I never needed connections. I don't need to get my cousin on the SWAT team in Brevard County. I don't, I don't, those guys, and then I have to give credit where credits do to Joe Gamaldi, who's the vice president of the FOP. He was another guy who was there for me. So he deserves credit for that as well. My friends, my two best friends did not desert me.

They were there. They were there a lot. And I'm forever grateful to those guys and they really prove their friendship. But those guys didn't have to be there. I actually said to Wayne recently, I'm like, you know, why were you there for me when you didn't have to be? He's like, I just couldn't stomach what they were doing. You're the only guy out here trying to make this thing better for it. And they just, he's like, it makes me.

nuts. He's a great guy. Now, on the surface, do I agree with everything that he does? It's impossible. I don't agree with everything I do. Right. Same thing. Right. Do I think and know this man behind the scenes and know what kind of person he is? Yes. Do I know Mark Lamb is behind the scenes? Yes, these guys are solid. And they are everything that they lead you to believe they are behind the scenes. And I'm telling you behind the scenes. Like I spend personal time with these guys that they're. They're fucking tits. So did you change anything about how you put on seminars now after that experience? So you can remember, we're in a risk adverse industry.

No, I mean like maybe different keynote speakers. Maybe brief the keynote speaker before. Yeah, leave the politics off the podium. We had Tommy Laren again. Okay. Right. Did you have a chat with her before? I did.

I have it recorded. And to be honest with you. I think she's, I don't know anything about her, but like, listen, as somebody who does public speaking, if you give me some boundaries, like I understand the homework assignment. I'm not there to try to not get another speaking job. You know, I'm not there to try to ruin anybody's world. I also wasn't trying to discredit what she stands for, but we did have a talk behind the scenes. And, you know, at this point now, and you know, you've done this.

You form relationships with people. And, you know, you find out that all these people who are these big names are just essentially people. Right. That's it. Yeah. So whether they're good people or bad people, you know, they're just people. So behind the scenes, there's a lot of conversations. I don't really get like the like, oh wow, this guy.

Sometimes I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ, this guy, right? Yeah. But, you know, so we had a conversation and she was very receptive to it. She completely understood. And, you know, I've, I'm not saying we're best friends. I'm actually kind of friendly with her husband, as weird as that may sound, because we became friends on Instagram. It makes more sense to be friends with her, to be honest. Yeah, she's actually, listen. Just as a dude, like be friends with the husband.

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, dude, I'm sure everybody, you know, but he's a good dude. JCP is a good guy. But she, you know, like, she's a decent person. And that's her thing, right? You got to respect it. Like, that's her thing. People ask me like, what do you think it is, God?

He's doing his thing. Who might have to say anything? This is this guy's thing. It's his thing. I doesn't even have to agree with everything, but I respect when people are doing their thing. And I have to recognize what I'm getting involved in. And so we thought we killed it on the 2021 conference with the 2023 one in Nashville.

She came back and spoke. But that was, that event was wild. I'll never be able to redo that again. That was the best. We had Kyle Carpenter come to that one. Probably tail into COVID too, right? No, 23 was, it was open. Okay.

That was a good one now. That was the best last one. I was going to say that's another chance. People hadn't been able to get together for a while. You know what I mean? The energy probably there was even booed even more from that. It was so good. You have like, it was so good.

Now I've got a good side one minute story because I don't want to just rant and rave about this stuff. I'm rarely the guest. a podcast. So I get this chance to explain things and talk. The goal of the New Jersey politicians was to shut down the 2024 conference conference. And they were doing everything they could to shut in a government state. Oh, dude, listen. When you're met, when these people are after you, they are, I would have, I tell people all the time, I would have rather dealt with like the Gambino crime family in like 1987 because I feel like the mafia could at least been paid, right? They would have just at least

taking some money instead of wanting to assassinate me. And there were people who I thought were my friends, and one in particular who was like, these people started getting very scared. And they were actually contradicting what the things they claimed to stand for were. So you start seeing their true colors because they were panicking.

On one token, when everything's great, they're part of the cause. But as soon as things get scary, what are you doing? We can't do this. So this whole panic set in. Okay. So one person in particular, I will not sell this dude's name,

was like, I can't believe you're doing this conference. You need to cancel it. It's not about you. Dda, da, da, da. And for clearly, this is three years later in a different state. This was, so they started their investigation. I got this wild subpoena. They actually created this entity called the police.

It's a crazy dude, honestly. It's a crazy story. And I've had two documentary makers reach out to me wanting to do the conversation on it. And I'm like, hey, man, I just. one move past it. Yeah. This is not, I'll tell the story. I don't want to go into how insane it was because it's no different than any other insane

thing you've seen when it comes to politics, just insanity. And you can't believe you're like this guy who's like, oh my God, the system is nuts. We can't win. We're not even, there's not even a fair game. Anyway. So it started in 2021. I think we got the speed in 2021. And that's when the Atlantic City Conference.

was, right? 21 was the conference. So this following year, that May in 22, I received some subpoena and I'm like, what? I don't even heard of this entity before. They made something up to come after me. And then once they were done with me,

they basically dismantled it. And so my attorney court would say, like, well, why don't you guys just call it the Dennis Benito project? You're called the police accountability project, but to this day, 150 plus police vendors in the state, my client is the only person

who's ever been investigated. Also, a police accountability project just sounds like a good idea in general. So why would you... It would be a good idea in general if it was meant to be a good idea. No, that's what I mean. It was a weapon. Yeah. Taking that aside, just the concept and not the way it's applied to you, like, that's not a bad idea. There should be accountability. For all entities and agencies,

you know what I mean? Like, this isn't a bad concept. Theoretically, I agree. The problem is, is like, who's going to oversee it? Who's going to have the impartial eyes and to push aside the political bureaucracy to oversee to oversee something that should be arbitrary? Maybe nobody, but we still have to do our best effort. here I am. Yeah. Here I am.

Like, I can control and change the things that I know I can impact. And I tell people, like, they're like, I hate this guy. They do this. And I'm like, I can't fix them. All I can do is keep doing what I am in control of to fix. And so for that reason, I will do that. But I can't make your captain not a dickhead. Like, I don't know what to die.

I'm not his therapist. I'm not his father who abandoned him or the kids who picked on him in the gym class. I can't fix that for you. But what I can do is give you the training. you won't send you two so you don't get shot in a face on a traffic stop what training do you guys provide like what's the core uh offerings that you guys have so basically at the moment and it just continues to expand you know it's fun you want to come back to that question you want to finish up the last part yeah let's go for okay let me write that down because i'll lose it dude i have the crazy

okay okay you know you got that totally where are we at right before this uh you were saying they were trying to shut down your 2024 oh yeah okay and i'm like wow a conference in 2021 and a different state was trying to shoot you in the foot on a conference three years down the road and way south of where they are. Oh, brother. Like the story of the things that went on and what they did and it's just it's so wild. But anyway, they were trying to shut it down. That was their goal. We were told from the inside, this is what they want. They want this thing shut down. They want to stuck the victory flag and say, we did that. They were just anti-cops. On top of the anti-denis Benino, they don't like the police. That's another thing. That's part of that that whole

Now that political figure has changed. It's switched. There's a new governor. That whole basically, as well as it may sound, even though they're in the same association, they've switched. They've gone from one to a whole other set of people. So I'm not trying to frustrate them.

I'm just telling the story about what happened. Arguably, I imagine some people in those roles now would maybe even be appalled themselves of what went on. But this conference's going on in Orlando, and they were running as much interference as humanly possible. and people who, see, I'm into healthy competition, but these people who believe they're my competitors

in this industry were perpetuating the news. So it wasn't catastrophic until every police training company got on the bandwagon and tried to make sure they put me out of business because they were very threatened by me. Unfortunately for them, they didn't succeed, but they did beat the piss out of me, for sure. So there was a whole stirrup that we were having this conference still after all this controversy, which was untrue.

And all these people wrote back, like, there was nothing in this training that we would have changed. It was so fucking good. They didn't talk about this is a 2021 conference. But anyway, moving forward to Orlando, this person who was on our team, quote, unquote, was doing his very best to try to stop it because he felt threatened about his position and where he worked. My attorney even called me. He's like, hey, man, this guy doesn't stop.

He just doesn't stop calling me. He's like a maniac. And he is not your friend. he is telling me to tell you to shut this whole shit down. He's like, I'm going to tell you this right now. Don't shut anything down. I know who you are. I know what you do.

I've been on this journey with you for the past two years. You can't stop. I think it's very important that you do it. And I went, you know, John, I'm not gonna. We're doing this thing no matter what goes on. We also would have fucked everybody over because we would have filed Chapter 11 and taken everybody's money and couldn't repay them.

So I was like, we got to fucking roll with this thing because we had already taken a lot of money on it. we already paid the venue wasn't giving me the money back. And if people don't know, running a conference is like, half a million dollars. Up front.

Well, it's probably arguably 150, 200 grand up front. And my tickets weren't $7,000 apiece. There's $600 tickets. So we go and had,

we kind of like limped through that conference. I was a, dude, I lost. You've just said pictures of me. I look skinny. I mean, I was a mess. I happened to just get it together

enough to get that thing going. And arguably for what we had to work with, it came out. Okay. Was it the 2023 conference? No. Did I have to tell people like, this is what was going on? But we put training on and I did some talks where my soul came out. And I went through getting to that edge and life and why it's beautiful. And I came off that stage and of course, you know, there's a lot of people lined up bawling their eyes out. And I'm not a therapist. But I care about these people. And they're like, this happened. And you talked about I know that girl. And she was a friend. friend of mine and she got, you know, so this went on for like an hour. And I'm like, all right, guys, like, let's catch up.

You know, I had to like, it's weird to try to dismiss people because I have to run this conference that are sitting there like literally, like waiting to talk to me. Like, listen, we'll get together throughout the week. And so, you know, after the conference was done, I was like, yeah, we did it, you know, we got through it. We'll figure it out in the future. There's a lot of stuff to continue to figure out. And so, maybe about 10 weeks later.

I received a email from a guy that said, hey, man, I just wanted to talk to you by the 2020 Hork Conference. I know you're going through a lot at that time, but let me just tell you what it did for me. I was going to kill myself. I actually bought a gun just to do it. I wasn't telling anybody I was going to do it, but I was going to do it. Now, I didn't want to go to your conference, but I got ordered to go to your conference by my chief. I got selected and sent. And after I heard you talk on stage, I walked outside and I called my wife, I checked myself into a clinic in Ohio, and I went on the help I needed. If I didn't go to your conference, I would have killed myself to guarantee. And so I brought it to my staff, and I said, I know we've been through a lot, and I'm thankful

that you all are still here with me. And I know so-and-so wanted this thing shut down. And had I listened to this guy, this could be a dead cop. And I said, so I know it was hard for all of you, but the question I have to ask you is, was it worth it? And the answer is yes. Even if 10 people were unhappy with the performance, it was worth it. And this person is a complete walking contradiction to what they pretend to stand for.

Because they could not see the importance. And that was a very good lesson for me to learn. Is that just, you know, sometimes these people aren't giving you advice for your best interests. it's their best interests. Yeah. Why do you think they didn't try to stop your 2023 conference? The report wasn't out yet. They couldn't, Andy, they couldn't figure out what to do.

They were raking through my Fourth Amendment rights like it was going. I almost had no rights, to be honest with you. And when we tried to emphasize our rights in court, again, I'm not going to go into a lot of details. We had no rights. At some point we realized that we were playing a game we couldn't win. How were they going through your Fourth Amendment rights? ignoring the law and just getting having, I don't want to go too deep into this because I really don't want to create more problems, but they didn't have to follow the rules. I'll say that at all.

And when we brought the rules to the people that were supposed to sort the rules, it was clear that they had no interest in sorting them in my favor whatsoever, just ignoring what the rules were and like almost laughing in our face. And I'm like, how do we, how does this keep like, sympa, like you can't even, you shouldn't even, you shouldn't be ruled this way. How is it possible? And again, I don't want to go there because I'm not trying to frustrate and go back through that ever again in my life. It is what it is. It happened. I was subjected to it. I've survived it. It was the best thing that ever happened to me as weird as that sounds. I don't want to do it again. Highly unrecondent it. Don't do this. But it's a biblical thing to go through something like that. But anyway, so in 2020,

23, there was no report. Gotcha. It was still in flux. Yep. So it took him arguably years to figure out how they were going to. I couldn't even figure out what they were going to do because we're clean. And, you know, everybody was kind. Like they're just doing it.

I mean, they must have spent a million dollars, arguably, the state's money trying to fuck with me over nothing. Right. And at the end came up with a 77 page report just to shut me down. That was the goal. They are putting you out of business. And they pretended like they weren't doing that. but it was clear immediately that that was the point. We were told from the inside their goal is to shut you down.

That's what they want you out of business. Interesting. You're being punished for Tommy Laron. Well, they didn't put you out of business. So back to the other question. What is the core competencies? What is the core curriculum? Oh, yeah.

So we were teaching a lot of advanced stuff, and I hate that word. And it actually shouldn't exist in law enforcement because there should be no advanced training. It could be specialized, but I think everything needs to be taught. And there's this discernment between basic and advanced that I think is ridiculous because the basic doesn't even meet par. So everything technically that's advanced is actually the par training that most people should get. So I don't want to use that word, but we were doing a lot of specialized training, like interdiction work, whatever.

But what I realized after this whole thing was, is like, man, these guys aren't even getting the basics. and what are the basics? The basics are still advanced. So right now, what I've gone back to, which would be considered advanced, is all the things that you should have known and should continue to know as a police officer.

So things like, man, I go for a lot of constitutional law. So how you are supposed to act in the field constitutionally? People don't know a lot of stuff. It's not their fault. That's the craziest thing about this profession is like, I just put a post up the other day on the instant, that said, like, I find this profession to be very interesting is where you're not taught how to do the job. Then you go out and try to do the job. And when you do it wrong, they bring you

in and you get in trouble for trying to do the job that they never taught you how to do and hold no responsibility for just failing to train you. They just magically expect that you're going to know what to do, but nobody taught you how to do this. You're just doing your best. I've experienced it. I thought I was doing a good job one time and I came in and this sergeant I mean he tore me a new asshole and I was like I didn't I thought it was I like solved the case on my own

I'm like oh my God I'm gonna get a fucking lord and I come in he's like you tell me why you didn't call detective and I'm like my field training was I drove around into prisoner transports because the guy who was my field training officer was a senior guy didn't get jobs he got the transport

he didn't want to be bothered anymore that's what I learned I don't even know how to use the computer I don't you guys didn't teach me anything. I went to an academy where man, I got to tell you, my right flank movements were sick. My shoes were glowing. But I didn't know what to do if a car smelled like we'd.

They never told us in six months. They didn't even tell us what to do. I remember we found out we didn't have the automobile exception. And cops don't understand this, but where you can't search a car in the state of New Jersey without a search warrant, at the few, at the time, they were one of the few states that you couldn't, you didn't have the automobile exception. You'd have to go get a warrant from a judgment.

We heard it from the first time from a judge. And we're like, what? We saw it on cops. Is what you're supposed to do? So coming back around right now, constitutional stuff, a lot of tactics, a lot of safety. A lot of what some would consider the basics, but they're advanced. It really is the training you deserved and needed that you never got. Also with a lot of compassion.

And I often remind people like, hey, we're here as your big brothers. A lot of guidance on how you should behave. And one part of my book is like treat everybody like you treat your mother, unless it's my mother. But so we're not just giving like law training or tactic training or we're giving people insight about what it means to be communicative, not being a dick, how far that goes. Here's a quick way. Here are five, just so many things. Like here's five quick ways that you'll lose your job. So just even if you're going to do these things, bear in mind that 99% of cops,

lose their jobs when there's alcohol involved. So when you and your boys are hanging out at a Kenny Chesney concert tailgating, just remember as you're drinking, this is where we go into cop, lose job territory. So things like that. What kind of constitutional stuff do you cover? Really, a lot of Fourth Amendment stuff,

Fifth Amendment stuff, some Sixth Amendment because that's really specialized. It really starts rolling into some detective stuff, but the court system. I mean, fourth is obviously a lawful search and seizure. Fifth is your Miranda rights. What's the sixth? The sixth is going to be when you're, so you're going to get, you know, you're going to go before a judge, you're going to have the attachment of attorney rights.

And so re-approaching people once those things, once in like a formal charge, that's considered actual formal charge at the sixth. There's a lot of different rules that kick in that detectives absolutely need to know about approaching people after they've already been, you know, formally charged. Yeah. Before judicial magistrate. So the fourth is the most important. Yeah. And there are so many nuances with the fourth. that it takes a long time.

So my job is to take everything I know about the fourth that nobody ever taught me and try to teach it into a way that it's comprehensive and digestible for people. So I'm trying to get you to understand the principles that when this happens, I need you to remember that, like, oh, wait a second, we can't do this. Oh, wait a second, we can do this.

We don't need to do that. We can do this. I just learn this. You don't remember the name of the case. You just got to remember like, hey, like, I'll give you one. A lot of men and women. The automobile exception allows a police officer to search a car immediately without a warrant

when they have probable cause to believe there is contraband inside of a car. Let's call it a canine alert. Stop a car, dog hits, you can go inside the car. So a lot of guys will think, and girls will think, okay, let's impound the car. They'll impound the car and then they'll be back in the impound yard and they're like, oh, well, now we've got to get a warrant because it's no longer movable. And the answer is, you don't. You don't need to get a warrant.

Montana has some weird rules. So anybody from Montana listening to this, there's some weird rules out here. They deviate from the fourth into the Montana Constitution. But so this is a big thing of like, oh, you know, like my detective sergeant said we needed a search warrant

to go back into the car. I'm like, you don't. Here's six pieces of caseloid support that I'm correct. And I'm not trying to fight your detective sergeant. I would urge him to join the street cop community or take our investigator courses

that I've built out so they can not look foolish when some seven-month patrolman is teaching them about the law and they have 22 years on the job. They should know these things. And so when you say to people, you should know these things, it pisses them off because they think they know everything already.

I'm not trying to ruffle feathers, fight with people. Here, I made this. I think you should know these things. I'm not holding judgment. I know what you guys get for trading. Just read this. Read it. And if you have something that says what I'm saying is wrong,

send it back and I'll listen to it. But 25 years, this is what I found. So make sure you do this. Or if people do things that are, maybe guys make a mistake. I'm like, okay, well, it happens. Let's learn from it and learn from the constitutional guidelines

of what you should actually do next time. How do you get somebody hemmed up when you don't teach them how to do it? It's like magic going to, if I say to you, hey man, take these pipes. do me a favor. Put a toilet next level up.

You're like, yeah, but I'm not a plumber. Hey, figure it out. And I come in and go, hold on a second. You didn't sweat these pipes. You didn't use a 90 here. You can't use copper on this.

You never told me that. Yeah, but you're supposed to know this. I'm not a plumber. Yeah, yeah, but we, but you know. But you should know this. It's crazy. How is the liability not fall on the department? To describe this as a lack of training

or putting somebody out into the field, unprepared to do their, job properly, how does the liability not fall under the department? It does, but it's not their money. They'll be care. If the person in charge of appointing the person who's in charge, don't they want to do their job well? Nope. You know why? Because in public service, it doesn't matter how you perform. You always get paid as long as you don't violate massive policy or rule violations, right? So it really doesn't matter how you perform because the level of contention to lose your job or be held a, and I'll tell you something funny that really pisses people off, that, that, you know,

would have to analyze if these people are doing their job, it doesn't exist. I always tell people like, it's so funny how in this profession, every cop on the road gets a quarterly or a semi-annual or an annual review. But how come once you make sergeant, nobody else gets reviews ever again? how come the cops aren't reviewing their supervisors? And then maybe there is some entity built in through the state or the federal government that does a review on the supervisors' behavior and knowledge and some of these other things. How come that doesn't exist? And it's clear as to why, because it affects people that make those decisions. So they're not going to put policies like that in place.

They put policies in place to control the bottom part of the equation. And in the middle, you have a lot of frustration. I'm not saying all of them. but I'm saying there's a lot of them. And if you ask any cop, what's the biggest frustration, what this industry is? It's the same thing in the military as well. I know a lot of these guys.

It's the leadership. And I can't fix that. All I can do is plant seeds and give guidance. And hopefully the next crew of people that come along, remember how they felt, don't get indoctrinated into the way things we do it here, are brave enough to stand up for change, and essentially make this profession better.

Do you teach a course that deals specifically with sovereign citizens? Because those are my favorite video. Yeah, so when you know constitutional law, what it does... They'll tell you they do. They're going to be the Blacks Law Dictionary, Maritime Law. It's fantastic.

You know what? They're fun to watch. They're a nightmare to deal with. Oh, I can only imagine. Yeah, these cops don't want to do this. Like, nobody goes to work and wants to deal with these wax. echoes. They're nutty, dude. And a lot of the cops don't actually seem to know how to deal with

them. Again, we go back to what's the level of training. I went to three police academies and I learned just close to nothing. How is that possible? How is that possible that I teach a one-day course that essentially is no longer in a person class? It's a digital course for obvious reasons of wanting to do more for the world. And half the guys in the class come up to me and say, and girls, I learned more today than I did in my whole police academy. How am I able to accomplish that in eight to ten hours? Or I learned more between my police academy and my field training in this class today than I did at all these academies. How is that possible? And so when people say sometimes there's this appalling nature of like, oh, their academy's only eight weeks. Our academy's

24. I'm like, so you'd rather have eight weeks of nothing or 24 weeks of nothing? What's the difference? you guys are swinging sticks at a bag and screaming, get back. A proven thing that doesn't work. Why are we not implementing jiu-jitsu and arguably when people want to fight the jiu-jitsu thing, okay, wrestling, right? Like, whatever you want judo.

Just say grappling. Things that work. Like the school, not karate, but, you know, things that work. How come these, we know these things are working. You see the videos of these cops who train and in seconds are in control and you see the videos of the cops who don't

and can't figure out what to do now. next and they look ridiculous. So if we see that this works in the field, why is it not implemented? And the answer is, that's not the way we've always done things. We don't want it that way. Or the state mandates this. Stop asking for permission, right? You have to start taking responsibility because you may not want to frustrate people because it threatens your job, but then you're the same person at this guy or girl's funeral saying you're sorry. But you're in some sense responsible for maybe a mistake they made. Because if you look at the police deaths, and I say this because I, with compassion and love, 80% of these things are training

failures. Not all of them, but 80%. When you see this, you're just like, fuck, why would he do that? Like, why do we have to let a cop die before we change things? Like, how do we not foresee that this could go south this way, and if we do this, it probably won't happen. And I'll give you two examples. Why do, I teach a passenger side approach and then there's a whole process of how we walk around the front of the car to escort people off

to the side of the car, and there's a tactical reason why. And my points are extremely valid. And when you come up with a better reason than what I've come up with, I'm listening, but this is what I've been able to tell. This is what we should do, this is the best, does it come with some risk? Yes.

Everything we do here comes. I'm sitting in this office. Somebody could come through the ceiling right now and smash me in the head and kill me. There's some risk even sitting here. I don't know if that risk would be considered reasonable. But it's assimilated in the same way. There's always some risk.

So people will argue, well, there's risk. Okay. But we're looking at what mitigates the most risk. So this does. Now, there was a police officer who was murdered in the line of duty. Not because he knew what my identity. advice was, but my advice was out there for a long time. Whether or not it fell on deaf ears or

they even heard it, I don't know. But now that agency has a policy where they're doing things the way that I have been saying to do them for decades. Why did this guy have to get killed for us to change the policy? What happened? You know, dude, it's a very sensitive topic when you start talking about specificities and people and how impacted they are. And I hate the fucking fact that we have to learn. I mean, I bet we can find it on YouTube, not that I want to go search for that. Yeah, so I'll give, if I can try to keep it vague with being specific. Yeah, for sure. Just the broad strokes of what that.

Yeah. So a police officer is a massive mistake. And, and again, it's a training failure because I can go back to their academy and see where the fuck they failed. Guaranteed. I can go to field training and see where they failed. It's just, it's endless. But essentially, he orders this guy to step out of a car.

What was this stop for? I have no idea. Okay. I just know the video. And the video is probably one of the top three videos you will see as a recruit at a police Cadden because they will kick on as the cops already out of the car. Yeah, maybe like a speeding violation or something. It could be, usually a lot of these ones start with the simplest stuff.

No, no, I mean, the video doesn't start with the officer idea of out of the car approaching? Yeah, you'll see him on the passenger side. Essentially the core principles of the video is he's on the passenger out of the car and he tells the guy, step out, let me talk to you on the side of the road, which is a constitutional requirement. If an officer has a legitimate reason to stop you, you have to get out of the car to traffic stop. It's clear as day. It's Pennsylvania versus Mims. And if you refuse to order that, not that they want to escalate it, but they buy. law can use force to take you out of the car.

Classic sovereign citizen video argument. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to say, that's how I know P versus Mims. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go. So, you know, without. So he's passenger side. So he's passing your side. Tell him the driver to get out of the car.

What he, what my prescription is, and I'm not sitting here and criticizing because I, nothing could do bring that guy back, unfortunately. Well, tell me what happened first and then tell me what you would have recommended. Yeah, so he tells the guy, step out of the car, meet me at the back of the car. So he takes eyes off of the guy, steps out, the dude grabs an AR, gets out of the,

the car, executes him on the side of road, puts a bullet in his head right, right and right on camera. So what was the failure? Number one rule on a traffic stop, I don't care who you are, is where are people's hands? You don't got to be a psycho, but you got to be ready. And so people get this one confused when I say this. You need to treat all these traffic stops as if you're going to be killed. And you'll probably survive. Am I recommending that you've got to come out with an M4 or an AR-15 and be prepared for a gunfight?

No, but you've got to be prepared up here for a gunfight. You can't walk up like you're going to bring the guy for ice cream. that it's going to be just some bullshit and other ticket because that's when things go bad. What he should have done and what I've recommended and maybe just maybe

had this been implemented in their academy, which I'm sure it is now because somebody had to die for it to change is that we want to keep our hands eyes on the hands. So on a passenger side of a car

the recommendation is is like don't predict two things that your suspicion is what your next move is. So just tell the guy, hey me, do we favor? Just keep your hands in steering wheel

that's cool. It's just a policy that we have on my body, one camera. You just kind of play. that game. Yeah, just turn a car off real quick. I'm not telling you you're coming out of the car. I'm not telling you I'm suspicious that something's wrong. Not telling you anything. I'm going to walk around the car onto the driver's side. Why do I walk around the car? Because I can see your hands.

And so if I had an argument, there was this retired NYPD guy that fought with me on LinkedIn about this. And he's like, oh yeah, walk around the front of the car because this is very funny. He goes, because they'll just put the car and drive and run you over. And I said, what's your prescription, buddy? And he said, you walk around the back of the car. I go, I'm sorry, I forgot cars don't come in reverse. So he couldn't achieve it in that way either, right? But didn't you already tell them to turn the car off anyway? That's right. And I argue to people like because people want to fight back

because their principles are, this is what we've learned is when I know. I don't want to change. And by the way, you're an adult. I'm here to deliver the message. If you want to take it, fantastic. If you don't and you die,

I'm still donating a fuck ton of money to your family. I'm going to share your go fund me. Because I love you. Even though you may not like me, I love you because of who you are when you've chosen to do. And that's what I stand for. And my argument back is like,

you're so slow. You can't hear a car. or see his hands go for the shifter, pay attention. And what you want to do is you want to walk around the front of the car onto the driver's side, obviously carefully, and then have them step out. And then what if he runs?

Okay, but you can see the hands. This is hot. When I watch these shows, all I think about is, and I don't watch, like, I'm not like cop, fucked in like, I'm like, police work, right? You know, I'm just like,

oh man, these guys are still a fucking mess. Like they don't fucking, like, I cannot believe we're in this day and age and these guys have no fucking idea what they're doing still. Like, how are we here? And so the answer is, it's like, I'm gonna do the best that I can

to get us out of here into there with the work that I do. And that's what motivates the fuck at me. So he should have escrowed him off the car because then he would have seen him at least grabbing that AR. He probably would have had an opportunity

to get his gun and at least engage in a gun battle instead of being executed. Where did the guy pull the AR from? He must have had it, you know, you're in Montana, right? There's states that were, guy picked me up in Alabama to go through a class in his personal vehicle

and he had an AR in the front like literally in his front seat like a shorthy and I'm like bro like what are you guys he's like yeah now we just everybody rides around like this I don't know anybody who rides around like that however that would be legal in Montana I was not to say California I'm like what

well dude my brother-in-law who's a cop in in Arizona when I met him he was 17 and he just got his license and I'm like yeah where do you guys park you park at the high school where can you park And he's like, well, a lot of us don't park at the high school. I'm like, why is that? He's 18 years old at this time.

And he's like, nah, we park on like the outside of the high school. Yeah, because they got a rifle in their truck. That's right, dude. And I was like, what? He's like, yeah, we all got like ARs in our cars. You can't bring them on school progress. Dude, I'm like. But we'll just park it in a vehicle that probably doesn't have tinted windows.

It's probably invisible display. I know people who literally, they go with the cup holster. Six, no, not like, like the Glock. It's like, you might as well just have a neon flashing sign that says free Glock here. And then I talked to my cop buddy. And yeah, guess what people who are in the throes of addiction? What do they do? When they're like walking around, they're like, there's a gun.

I'll trade that downstream and get some meth or whatever it may be. And then that ends up going upstream and they find it in a crime in some other state. What the fuck? Be better than fucking cup holder holster guys. I imagine we're probably close in age and we could both understand why we would make those suggestions that let's be smarter than this. Well, it's a tool designed to take life. I mean, maybe we should just treat it like that. I don't disagree. However, it doesn't mean that things are going to change because I've been

in people's cars in Florida. I've jumped into people's cars and they got like literally mags on the back of the, like I've gotten this guy's Raptor one time in the back seat. And he had like literally like I had built mag pouches into the back seat. He had like 1230 round magazines loaded ready to go. Yeah, like Molly system hanging off the back of the phone seat. Yeah, the whole thing, dude. And I'm like, like we're in like Boca. My favorite is the people who do that and then they forget to put their rifle in the car. Oh yeah. Just driving around with like 600 rounds of ammunition and no gun. Yeah. Look at. I'm all, like, I'm obviously a big gun guy, but like, you know, uh, yeah, there is some sense. But that would have been the fix that may have saved that guy's life.

And you know, dude, I go to that fucking, I'm going in two weeks. I don't know when this layer, but taking my kids to the Memorial for Police Week this year for the first time ever, my kids think their dad's cool, um, which is cool. And they're going to think I'm really cool when we get there. And they don't know this yet, but I have some really cool stuff lined up because I have friends that work down there. So there's some cool stuff. I can't say publicly what they're going to be doing, but they're going to do some cool shit. How old are they? 12, 10 and 8. And they're all boy. Like, these are boys. Like they're, they're, dude, the minute they wake up, they're beating the shit out of each other. And I'm like, it's 11 at night and you guys are still fucking beating the

shit. I don't even get involved. Yeah. Right. They come out. They're crying. I'm like, okay. So like just UFC rules. No eye gouging, no lip hooks and no, you know, I've had to intervene like twice. Yeah. But when I go there, I don't know what happened. Like, I'm going to tell you something about the truth that I think is important. That wall in D.C. is the truth. Because.

Which one? Are we talking Vietnam Wall? No, we're talking about the police memorial. There's, well, unfortunately, with D.C., we've got to specify because there are so many memorials. For the subject matter. I'm not saying that I'm not empathetic and I don't love in support. Yeah, yeah. Trust me.

Wasn't making that jump. Just wanted to clarify. Yeah. So specifically for Police Week, those, and I'll tell you why, and I'll tell you what I did at my last conference. And that's, you know, for now, I'm not doing more conferences at the moment. They were fun, but I have moved on for a number of reasons. But that wall is where the names are etched in.

And so for Police Week, what happens is all the families come there. Now, the unit- Is that a nationwide memorial? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So bless you. So, maybe about 2,000 police officers do something called the Police Unity Tour.

And they ride in from maybe New York. I know a time of people to do this. And they spend like four or five days riding from New York on bicycles down to D.C. And they ride into the memorial. It's a great ceremony. It's really cool. And the memorial's packed. And there's cops everywhere.

It's the only time of the year that I actually, you know, think I'm somebody because people know who I am. And so I, you know, I'm there as a Missouri. I'm not there to, I'm there to show support because I think it's important. And I'm not there because I like want you to take a picture with me or I want to be asked to take pictures. I'll take them all day with you guys. But that's not what I'm there for. I want to show support. I want to show that, you know, like I really do care about this stuff.

And I'm not doing it because I'm trying to, you know, trick you that I care. I'm here because I care. And I've been there for years because I care. I've been there my entire career. Let me not just put that on the record. But with the past, you know, five years I've been going consistently. So they come in and they do this ceremony, they do a speech, and it's really cool. And then everybody just leaves.

And then obviously they're going to disperse into D.C. And do whatever they're going to do until the bars open up and everybody starts getting festive. And they do the vigil the next night. They open Tent City. All this cool shit. But when people leave, this thing happens. And this thing that happens is the families. of these fallen officers are there.

Video of it. I nonchalantly videoed what it looked like because I wanted to show people at my next conference what the truth about this job was. And when you walk through there, there's nobody else there but grieving family. Some of them have been, they've made friends with each other.

So they're almost having reunions there. And they all share one common thing that somebody they loved was murdered as a police officer. and I spend a lot of time there. Unfortunately, not uninterrupted anymore because it's very hard for me to get where I need to be mentally and really feel that

because I get approached nonstop about like, hey man, good picture, right? Which is cool, it's fine. And I don't ever say like, I'm fucking grieving right now, bro. But I try to remind myself of the pain that I've been through, the people that I've, you know,

for all of my friends and lost and the sacrifices that I've made and the things I've missed with my kids to be out here doing this work and why it's important. And I always tell people like, that's the truth. That those people there are the truth about this job

because there's 27,000, 28,000 cops have been killed in line to duty doing this. And the most fucked up thing is 80% of them is because of training failures. So what better to fix than the training? What are the academies doing right? I don't know. Come on.

I don't know. I don't, there, there is no central curriculum. What I can say is, maybe it's related to some of the things work that I'm doing. Maybe it's not. Look at the three academies that you went through. What did they do correctly? Let me go back to that and then I'll go to that.

What I am seeing is people who are reaching out to me like, hey man, we actually started implementing this stuff at the academy. It's been great. Hey, we took your suggestion about this. We started implementing this next recruit class. That I don't live for homage. I don't give a shit about it. I didn't become this guy so people would recognize me.

I really believe that I could do something. And there's a lot of stuff you don't know about jumping into trying to do something, but it's very noble. I want people to really know who I am. And people find out who I am. Sometimes I get judged up from because of my crassness of New Jersey and my Jersey-ishness and my, you know, very non-fluffy responses as other people, you know,

we'll profess fluff before they say the things that need to be said. It's rewarding to see that the work is being heard and used. What do I think that academies are doing better now?

They're implementing passenger side approaches. Strip it away from the things that you're teaching. The academies that you went through back at the beginning of your career, what do they do properly? The only academy that did something correctly

was the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center that's the second one I went to. Arguably, comparing to other academies, they were eons ahead. And people say, well, they have the most funding. Don't disagree. That was certainly a portion of it. But what they had was there really isn't a lot of bureaucracy there. As weird as that may sound for the federal government, the men and women who work there were cops. And I think there's a criteria to get hired as an instructor there. I think they pretty much stick to that. And so they do pick people that are very specialized in what they do.

And those guys, I would argue that their driving was fucking, I don't know if you could, I can't make their driving program better. There's nothing like, that's fixed. The only problem is there's only one place in this country, arguably maybe a couple other places because I know the guys from the Georgia Highway Patrol and Arkansas Highway Patrol have a fit if they hear this. I know you guys are doing good work too, but arguably there may be five places in the country. Nobody's going from Connecticut down to Fletsey to go train driving. They're not doing it. They can't afford it. So what do they do? They stick these guys in a parking lot at a pat at a, you know, a super, market and they put up cones and they call it pursuit driving. It's nuts. That was amazing. Their shooting at the federal law enforcement training center was profound. Move and shoot, night shooting, officer down shooting. They should be modeling that everywhere. But again, we run into this like, well, who's going to teach it? Who do we have? Right? You're like, you're right. And that's essentially when you look at the problems that these academies face is like, well, we don't have anybody to teach this. You're not wrong. And I don't think just any Joe Schmo should be teaching officer down shooting in the principle of how to shoot from a shot position. You need to get somebody

who knows what they're doing. And, you know, thankfully, a lot of these special operations guys have brought a lot of that to the police side. And I think it's very important. A lot of times guys are like, I want to get into this. I'm like, yeah, the special operations guys are really good. Like they've got a lot of that stuff. They've got it. They're better than we essentially are on these tactics. So learn from them, mold it, mend it. But like, these guys are very good. I know a lot of these guys. I'm not, you know, probably the same guys that you know. I think they bring a lot to the table. You got to make sure you're using it appropriately, though. Different ROEs, oftentimes different tools, different available tactics. Right. So yeah, there's a lot to be gained, but it's not a direct

crossover. And that has to be respected as well, too. Fair enough. Like cops shouldn't be trying to be special operations guys. Take what you can learn from that world and apply. it appropriately inside the constraints of our Constitution, please. Yes, yes. There was somebody a long time ago and I don't want to make the guy feel bad where it was taught

that people were injured to put out of their misery in a massive shooting. And then yeah, so this was, I'm talking like, this is like a decade ago because some agency that I said you're going to say about a hundred years ago. No, no. A decade is still far too soon. Yeah, decade ago. So it was like still like people were still in Afghanistan and

things like that. So this guy had come back and he's like So for clarity, what you just described would be a war crime. That's how this... This is what was relayed to me. I don't know if this is what was told to me, not by one person, but by many. And this person was no... Actually, that person... Executing an injured combatant is a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Yeah. And it would be considered a war crime. Just put it out there. Okay, good. It would be a real big crime here in the United States as well. Yeah. So this guy actually caused like this whole... I don't want to say what agency,

because I don't want to bring heat to people. They had to correct it and make a policy that like they had to vet every, like they had to send somebody, it's a big agency, to watch that training to make sure we didn't get anywhere clear. They had to send like two guys

to watch any training they were going to host before they said, yes, we can have it. But what was the question right before that? Shit, what were we talking about? Yes, Andy, you got to fucking watch. That's all right. We're doing good.

We were just talking about like, it's not a good idea to execute people. That's a good starting point. Fletsey shooting. Oh, the crossover between Yeah. Special operations and being a police officer, yeah. I would argue that the federal law enforcement training center,

you know, I went in 2004, so 22 years ago, was eons ahead of the ones I went to 20 months earlier and the one I went to 20 months later. They were horrible. Good guys running it. Like, we had a lot of fun. We did. But like when you left, you're like,

well, I could do a lot of push-ups. We can run eight miles. You could do sit-ups. Did they focus on communication at all, leadership skills? interpersonal skills. You can remember something, dude. I really am under the impression,

and this is just me theoretically, trying to imagine how we end up with the Police Academy curriculum that currently exists some places. Now, other places are eons ahead. No bullshit. I tend to think the guys on the West Coast, like the LAPD and the L.A.

sheriff's, I think they're better. I can't think they're 100% right, but they're better than most of the East Coast stuff. Why do you think that is? I mean, especially a large city. Like, let's say NYPD and L.A., let's say they have an equal budget. You'd say the West Coast guys

where maybe a little bit of head. You can see it. Why do you think it is, though? If the budget and all things created equal from that level, a monetary ability to get training or resources and all that were the same one thing. You'd be mere speculation because both would be influenced by politics. You don't know where that part happened where...

Yeah, but the politics is the same color in L.A. and New York. Is it? Because you could have one guy with this thought here, or a group of people with this thought here and this group of people with this thought here. Historically, they're both very deeply blue. I don't disagree. Just I wonder who the blue was.

Because you could have... I mean, I know Democratic, and I'm not trying to make this political conversations, but I mean, I know people who are Democratic that took the party ticket, but are full-blown police supporters. They need to take the party tickets that one was available, and it's when they needed to use to run on. And they play that game a little bit. So I never paint with a broad brush of, like, Democrat hates cops,

Republicans love cops. I would consider that to be, in this context, a very individualized per person type of analysis, because I do know Democrats that fully support the police, no bullshit. I'm not making that up because I'm not trying to appease anybody. I don't give a fuck. But it would be unfair to say that. So the only reason I know that to be true is because when you watch these videos,

they are very, at least in tactics. The guys in the West Coast are just eons ahead of the guys on the East Coast. They're getting a lot of reps in L.A.S. They're doing something right. Yeah. That they're not doing right on the East Coast. And so maybe that's part of the continued assignment of what I've been sent to do. But is there antagonism, whether healthy or unhealthy between, let's say, L.A. and New York?

No. Okay. Now, there's a lot of love, dude. Believe it or not, there's a lot of love. I'm assuming there's a good amount of shit talking as well. I don't think so. There has to be some. I think probably with closer agencies, maybe like L.A. and like the L.A. and like the L.A.

and like the L.A. sheriff's office. Maybe like that could be. Now, I'm not saying that exists, but that would be more reasonable. Like, it's usually people work next to each other. It's not the guys across the country. And again, I'm not saying unhealthy shit talk. I'm like talking about ribbon your friends. Well, there is strife sometimes too.

Sometimes you see these videos of these strifes like this, the detention won't take the city cops, and then the sheriff shows up and the sheriff's fighting with the chief. It's like, these are nutty people because we have to, at a very minimum as human beings, remove our emotion and try to come to an intelligent conversation. We can disagree about stuff,

but we have a job to do together. But unfortunately, people haven't been taught emotional intelligence or how to behave appropriately. Maybe they're not intelligent enough to understand process, what needs to occur. So I try to set an example in that realm too because we need to really start considering. There's a saying by Seth Godin who I very much,

I agree with 98% of his stuff. There's some things about Seth Godin that I don't agree with, but still, I think he's a significant impact in my life. And one of his sayings is, the old saying, I'll try to do it in his voice. The old saying is, don't just stand there, do something. What you should really think about is,

don't just do it, just stand there, don't do anything. And so what that means is if you have knee-jerk emotional reactions before you can think, you're going to make mistakes. So anytime anything happens, we just need to breathe unless it's an emergent situation and let it all calm down, let some dust settle and give it some time.

And then we're going to think about how we're going to respond because when you're activating that fight or flight and your amygdala is punching you in the throat to do something immediately, you're going to make a bad move, a bad decision. I'm not talking about emergent situations where you have to start figuring out what you're going to do, breathe, and go after an active shooter.

I'm talking about there's some criticism coming in. There's this thing that happened. How are we going to address it? And what's the best way for us to address it where we can get to the best solution? How do you, in your curriculum, to teach from a mentality perspective, officers approaching the vehicle,

from an interaction with the people that are inside of it? When you become a cop, it is very hard to figure out who you are. So what's going on in the brain is, well, I'm this person now. So how do I get respect? And your mind immediately goes to, I'm going to have to be this cop.

And when I try to emphasize everybody is, you would think that would work, but it actually works just the opposite. So show me a cop in an agency who's the best cop. You go to an agency and say, who's the best cop you guys got? I could almost guarantee you that that guy's going to walk out and be one of the nicest people you've met in your life. As a matter of fact, not only be nice, but he's probably the guy that's made more arrests or girl that's made more arrests in this agency is an absolute bulldog on the road.

But does it with such professionalism and such kindness and such personality that even when that person may see somebody they may have arrested or prosecuted, they want to buy him a drink because I'm one of those guys. I didn't grow up that way. I mean, in the sense of the police world, I didn't start out that way. I looked at the guys I work with. I thought I should act like these guys. It was wrong. And when I figured that out,

I was able to share that with people. But there is a line that you have to be able to balance between being too friendly. And I'll give you an example. I was field training a guy. I pulled over this dude. This guy had a state warrant, which was big.

You don't see a lot of those. And it was big. It was a massive drug trafficking. warrant and he got out of the car this guy was hardcore criminal um i'm talking about like this guy had done time no question about it big dude just you knew he was a born criminal this is who he was and he was a massive dude is about that life this is him and so i realize this guy has come out of the car and i've got this kid who's 20 i do my my professional hey look dude this has not that deal with me you know what I mean like you gotta come don't start if this is something you don't think it is don't start

catching out the charges here it don't make sense I don't want to fight you he don't want to fight you we don't want to do that there's no reason for it but your name was ran got a what you want me do right I promise you that I will treat you with the utmost respect you're a big guy we can cuff you in the front I just got to search it I don't probably have a belt in the car will put you in the belt no big deal but I got a shackles on you if you want to do the front that's fine I want you be comfortable back this car when we get back I'll get your food like we can get that there we get like burgers and stuff from McDonald's get delivered over to us we need them I'll get you a few things if you're hungry you'll you can take your phone you make as many calls

you want I don't want to fight you you're a big guy and I fucking know that but you know I don't have a choice you're in this game a long time I'm in this game a long time right what do you and he's like all right gets at a card he was he was not happy and I forget him saying like this voice like heron he's calling heroin because of heroin war he's like hair on fucking hair on fuck these motherfuckers talking about, right? So then I bring him to the back. Now we got to fingerprint this guy. We got to take pictures of him. I got to keep it. And by the way, I wasn't putting a show on. I'm trying to get this guy respect, right? We got to get something done. And you're not going to win no matter what because I can call 700 cops if I have to and we'll have to do. Let's not do with

that. It doesn't make any sense. This young guy started getting very friendly with him. He was very new. And to take him outside and I said, listen, I know you see me be very personal with people, but I got a lot of time in this game. Now we have a lot of time. I haven't been sitting under a tree for 14 years. I've been fucking out here. I worked in corrections to start. I did that for, I worked out a maximum housing unit. So I know how to talk to these people. I know what they think like. I've been in this game for a long. These guys know I'm fucking street smart. They know it. I get compliment all the time. Like, you're street smart for a fucking white boy. I mean, compliments for people like, yo, you're the, you're fucking smart, dude. Like, how did you catch me?

And I'm like, nobody's caught me. And I'm like, eh, you know, you learn a few things. And I had to tell this kid like, hey, I get it. I appreciate that you were trying to be kind with the guy, you started fucking joking with the dude. That's a dangerous guy back there. And you're a little dude. That's a dangerous dude. Stay professional, but you can't lean that much further. Boundaries.

Yeah, you got to have boundaries. I'm like, you may see me joke around with somebody, but it's a quick one and we're back. He doesn't have to know that I'm in charge, but he has to know that I'm in charge. And I'm going to give him respect, but we're not getting, we're not fucking friends. And he knows that we're not friends,

but at least he's going to respect the work that we do. And so when I say, the best cops are the nicest cops, it's always that pushback from some people are like, you don't always need to be, you can't always be nice. And I'm like, I know. I get that.

What I'm saying is you also can't always be a dick. Yeah, you have to have gears. So I tell people like, the first thing you should have been told when you went to the police academy, your instructor should have came out, standing there in your position of attention and said, all right, first rule of being a cop,

don't be a fucking dick. Just don't be a dick. And your life, is going to be a lot easier. Because as soon as you're a dick, that's what problems start. You're frustrating people. And when I say to you,

when you walk to a police agency and you say, where's the nicest guy or girl in here? Who's your best cop? I'm sorry, who's your best cop? And they bring this person out and they're personal. They're nice, a professional.

They know their craft. On the ladder, when you say, who's the biggest asshole here? Who do you think's coming out? The opposite. The dickhead. Right? The guy who can't talk to anybody.

The guy ruffles feathers nonstop. And some of these guys live behind that persona where they need to adjust and they refuse to because they like that's who they are. Now, how many of those exist? Very few. I would argue less than 2% of an agency has that level dickhead. Every community does. There is, God, you know, if people make the choice to be a professional criminal, that's your choice. So I get it.

I'm not going to say I respect what you do for a living, but you've made that choice. I'm trying to be a professional police officer. Like, you've made your choices. I am here. I have things that I have to do. And so in that situation, you just described, yeah, I'm glad it went that way. But there's so many things that people can do also to make stops easier. On the other side of, like, the officers being told, don't be a dick.

Like, every parent out there who is teaching their children to drive, please do me a favor. Say the same thing to them. Like, you're trying to enforce the laws. Police officers, spoiler alert, didn't write. write the laws. It's their job to enforce them. Nobody likes getting pulled over. Sometimes I get pulled over. I pull to the side. I roll my windows down. Hands on the steering wheel. Officer almost always comes up. I will take my wallet out of my pocket, put it on the center console, and I wait for them. And they're like, they're like, why did you do that? I'm like, because I know how much it

sucks to walk up on a car. And they're like, okay. And like, be cool. Yeah. Be fucking cool. Some people get that. And while I believe the internet and social media has somewhat in people's minds given them permission to get away with what they get away, behave the way they do. Well, cops have been villainized. Right. And nobody sticks up for them. And it's rare that you have an administration that will stick up for them because they're,

they know, you can even see this with the media. The media knows who they can fuck with and who they can't. You go to Wayne Ivy. He's going to tell you to stick it up your ass. the media, he's got relationships of the media and he's even asked me to speak to the media about my stuff and he gave me like, hey, this guy's not a bad guy. I'm not saying he's

but he's not a bad guy. These other ones are out of their minds. But Wayne will tell you to stick up your ass. But you can go maybe, I don't know, 100 miles away and find the guy who's going to be bending over backwards to appease any public eye and just completely throwing his people under the bus

and making decisions before an analysis of what that person did was true. And you see these cops like, Nothing ever happens to them, but these guys are just pat. They're not leaders. And I always tell people like, stop calling these people leaders. They're not law enforcement leaders. They're management.

At best. And I mean at best, because they're not good managers. So what does it mean to lead? It means that you will, you know, be unafraid to stand up for what you know is correct and right. Most people can't do that. It's terrifying because it threatens their livelihood. I want to be the chief.

I don't want to go anywhere. I want to be the director. I want to be the sheriff. So I'm going to say what I need to say to appease my voters in the public. So I look good because I know what my voters want. But this guy didn't do anything wrong.

How are you doing it to this guy? That's not fair. And that's the world that we live in. Yeah, leaders and managers are two very different things. But again, back to what you were saying is the internet has given people permission. But I want to just reiterate to people like,

hey, 25 years ago, People were assholes then too. Yeah. Maybe more of them now, but like, they were assholes then too. Believe me, I was there. Nobody likes me on the other end of the authority figure power dynamic. But it's like, also, yeah, might have not stopped at that stoplight. My favorite is when this happened to me the last time I got pulled over.

I might have been speeding. It's hard to say. The cop pulled me over, walked up. He's like, do you know how fast you're going? I was like, oh, it's going way too fast to look down at my spenomeroomery. He started fucking dying laughing. We ended up chatting on the side of the road for like five minutes. He's like, just slow down, man.

Yeah, yeah. And honestly, like, we really need to pick and choose our battles as police officers. And there's just, I've always made this argument. People get very frustrated at like, there's a lot of people doing a lot of bad stuff in this world. Let's spend our time on them. And so the best cops have to know what things to ignore because our resources are limited. And so we can ignore things that aren't as a high priority of the things that you should be paying attention to. Well, you leave yourself available for those things that are more of a high priority.

you can't literally stop every infraction that goes on in your presence. You have to learn as a good cop to ignore most of it. And again, this is something where somebody come in and start being critical about that statement. But the best cops in the business would agree 100%. And every time I put something out about that, maybe eight, nine months at a time, people are like, yeah, it's 100%.

It's 100% right. I mean, if I'm out enforcing township ordinances for people, violating the garage sale rules, right? Because those are laws. Tell me about the guy that just dropped off, you know, 10,000 bags of heroin down the street or three miles away, there's a hotel

and there's a 12-year-old being trafficked inside the hotel, but I'm out here dicking off with some garage sale. I've seen it. I've done right along where the computer, you're like, wow. So you're just going to rack and stack and you're just like working them off the list. Oh, yeah. And again, as not a police officer, I'm like, oh, that one looks a little bit more

important than the report of a verbal disturbance at a barbecue. Well, there's only some salute, right, and there's only some solutions that you can get to for the amount of resources that we have. And if you really think about it, it's crazy to think that there's 700,000 cops in a country with 380,000, 80 million people. Probably at this point, yeah. So generally, most of civilization is civilized, for the most part, if you really think about it, far majority of, So thank God that that exists that way because we would never be able to enforce enough laws to keep people civilized. Do things happen? Yes.

Do I think these men and women are trying to do their best? I really do. I'm talking like 99% of them really show up with the intention of doing the best job that they can. They just haven't been given a fair shake and it's fucked up. Well, it's like working in the corrections environment? You were saying it was like the maximum security? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's that world like?

It's terrible. I would hope that the AI inventions come up with a way that human beings do not have to be in there and manage those folks. And the guys and girls who do that profession, my hats off to them, it is a brutal profession. It is arguably the most difficult profession. Let's call it top five because I don't know what else you would throw in there because then somebody will come with me and say, like, what about this? Okay, all right, right. Arguably, top five most difficult professions, it is, absurdly difficult to do.

What makes it so difficult? Is it just the risk involved? You're doing time. It's not even a risk. It's just like you're worth, you're with these people that are just they're the worst, right?

I'm not saying there isn't a few decent human being sprinkled in there for whatever reasons that are maybe act appropriate. This is society's worst offenders. These aren't people that are, you know, rational thinking. They are primitive and they live by a different

set of rules. And when you're inside of that environment, eight, 16 hours a day, you're a human being. You start picking up on the things that you're, you become a product of your environment. And it's very, it's very sad. It's very depressing. I remember going to work one time, I had a convertible Mustang. I had a 93 drop top, 5-0, red with black leather, flow masters. And it was like May, it was like 81 degrees out. These girls pull up now. next to me in a Jeep on the Turnpike. And I remember thinking myself, I'm walking into this climate-controlled hell

on this beautiful day. And I walked through those doors and you're inside and that's it. That's your, that's the, you've missed that whole day. And then on top of it, they were beating the piss out of us with double shifts. You're just getting stuck. You can't leave.

It's a very difficult job. It's very hard. And, you know, you got to give credit to the guys and girls that still do it. Very, very hard. It was the worst job I ever had my life. Not saying I wasn't good at it, and I didn't run it well.

For me, it was the worst job I ever had in my life. I mean, you want to talk about an environment that is just defined by its level of risk? I don't know. I don't know if it's the risk. I think it's more of the mental beat down of being in there because not that

corrections officers don't get assaulted or killed. It does happen. Arguably and statistically, you might have more risk as a police officer. I would think that it's probably a fair statement. And, you know, again, don't hold me to it, but I think it's a fair statement. And I'll go off with just the fact of how many police officers get killed in line of duty every year. Yeah. And how many of those are corrections officers? So it's the mental impact that it has on you.

Don't PTSD ever of my life and nightmares are for me being in jail. Thankfully, they've subsided. I haven't had a lot of them in a while, especially after I've gotten through my brutal political beatdown. But the mental anguish that that job takes a toll on your brain on. It's tough, man. It's a tough. It's a bad, it's a very bad environment. I'd rather be a roofer. And that would be bad for a guy who's fairly gingerish. I mean, they have like UPF protective of clothing that you could wear. I think it would be a lot. Yeah. Bluff and I actually tan quite well these days. It's strange. Not a doctor. Couldn't tell you. In a perfect world, if you had your way, what would you grow your company into and how would, is it, is it ever possible? Do you think that there will

be a curriculum, an academy curriculum that is accepted. Maybe not like the entire academy, but like a baseline curriculum that is accepted U.S. wide? People have asked me, how do you fix it all? And so in order to fix something, one, you have to understand what the problem is, but two, reverse engineer how you fix it. One of the problems is people still have to go to academies. However, I think you should learn from experts. I don't think that anybody should be teaching anything that they are not a complete expert in. And so with that being said, I have been to three academies. I have seen people walk in, take a USB drive, stick it in the computer, and just be like, all right, so what are we learning today? This and just go, like, yeah, so I guess, I don't know,

do that. Right? That makes sense, everybody. And you're just like, there's like a hundred of us in this room. Like, so what do you do in this situation? I don't know. Why would you even do that? Well, that's a situation you run into as a cop. I don't know. I don't have somebody else. This is what we went through. Like, you know, 180 days of this. How do you get an expert into every classroom?

So these guys and girls are getting what they need when they leave there to have the knowledge, at least a fair fighting chance that they're going to be able to survive this profession? And the answer is, at some point, it's arguably going to be better to have a digital academy. Inside the academy, like, you're going to the academy. That's fine. but, and I make this point, would you rather get advice from investing by watching 10 videos of Warren Buffett

explaining how he invests? Just use that as a baseline there. Or do you think it's a better idea to go to Bank of America where some guy named Pablo is working in the lobby when you walk through his job is to try to sell you a 401K that he has no idea what he's selling you?

Who do you want the education from about how to invest? That guy or this guy? Because you have a choice. So people will say, I don't like online. I don't like digital products. Well, how long are you going to wait to get training that might save your life or save your job?

Because this is instant stuff. If you think you need it now, you can take it now. And I'm a guy who lives on YouTube. I'm going to live on it. I literally live on YouTube and podcasts and, you know, different ones for me. I'm trying to do business development and, you know, personal development as well. So the answer to this to fix it as we speak is at some point, everybody's going to have to agree that it's probably better to play these videos on this big screen because they're engaging,

they're good, and they're flawlessly accurate. Is there always going to be some kind of, you know, maybe there's a thing that needs to be tweaked or clarified? Sure, that happens. But that's the way it's got to go because you don't have experts in the middle of nowhere, nowhere. How do you answer the questions in that setting when people have them? Because you're still going to have probably a proctor or somebody in the class who's firing off that video. How do you answer those questions? questions when that proctor can't answer the questions. Yeah, but just because there's not an answer to the current situation doesn't mean you don't have an answer for the solution. Well, the good news is,

is we're fortunate enough to be in 2026 now when this podcast has been recorded. And at the moment, the AI has evolved significantly. And if you know how to prompt it, it doesn't take a lot to prompt it, you could probably find your answers and pretty, with a pretty solid comfort factor of making sense of those answers within minutes and arguably maybe an hour if you're running deep research Would an academy accept that? I mean, is that it? Remember, just like the military. Why are we the last ones to do anything?

Why are we using typewriters when computers have been out since for 30 years? And so the answer is, is like, slowly but surely, I believe that's where is going to have to go. And through everything that I've been through, the things that I have developed now are the actual things that will be the solutions now. I'm not trying to promote what I'm doing now. But it dawned on me like, oh, now you can train everybody. Because how many people could Dennis Benito train? A hundred in a class from here in Spokane, Washington. And then a week later, I'm in, you know, Sioux Falls, Iowa, teaching 100 people there.

700,000 cops. And these guys are like, yo, when are you coming to Kalamazoo, Michigan? And I'm like, it's not even on the map. So you've got three years to take my class. So this whole digital experience. where people like in-person training, that's fantastic. I like flying private,

but it hasn't happened yet, and it's not going to happen anytime soon. So I'm going to fly commercial. These things are important that we adopt them and start saying, okay, this is better than what we've got, and by far. It may not be exactly what we want, but it's really that much better.

And so it's very exciting for me now. And then the name of the game is going to be, I don't ask permission, here it is, here it is, here it is. Once you experience it, you'll essentially begin to, I had a captain last night in one of our, I released a case law

for investigators course. It's really for everybody, but I try to niche things down to the appeal to people. And this guy actually rocked show it to you after we're done. He's like, man, this class is fucking great. He's like, do you have the attachment for this?

I'm like, yes, yes, it's being uploaded. It's only released two weeks ago. And he's like, I'm like, I just need to once over it again before I put it out, to make sure it's completely, I always have to triple check. things. I know that now. And he's like, this is really good. And so we're able to deliver that

program for $97. And it's 10 hours of training. And it's honestly, arguably, and I hate to say this because people are very frustrated. One, how do you replicate that? And two, I know it's all factually accurate. There's always human error involved in somebody standing in front of a class. And maybe something is pitched to them that may be out of their wheelhouse that they might take a shot at. and give the wrong information. And I'm guilty of it too, brother. I'm not perfect one bit. But what I'm saying is I'm trying my best.

And I know that I'm under magnifying glass. But everything that I do is with good intention and not self-serving. Obviously, I do this for a living too. So I need to make money to survive. I have people that work for me that depend on us to procure revenue so they can have a family

and provide for their families. So there's an element of that too. I'm not sitting here pretending that I'm just this nonprofit guy who spends 90 hours a week working on these products. But I'm also saying like, I'm not asking for $2.99. I'm not trying to pitch anybody. I'm just saying I've figured out a way where I can deliver it where you can't say I can't afford this.

So here it is. If you would like, I made this for you. It's art. This is my art. This is what I make. I've made it affordable. I don't care where you are. Don't tell me you don't have $63 for the year to take 100 hours of training as it sits right now when you're driving around a $94,000 pickup truck that's lifted 16 feet in the air.

choose yourself. You cannot wait to take training in a profession that could take your life tomorrow. It's insane. What are the limits of the online training? Well, right now as it sits, obviously any kind of tactical training. Shoot, like if you're still qualifying with live rounds,

you can't do that on the computer. But when you think about what you can do, there's a lot of it that you can do. There's a lot of at least classroom that you can get done before you've got to go into a physical environment. You can't do jiu-jitsu. to you could explain it, but I really, I'm not a jujutor.

Good look with that in paper. Yeah. You know what I mean? I just don't think you could explain. People are doing it and I'm not knocking it. I'm not saying it can't be done. And honestly, let's face it, it's better than not getting anything. But 80% of the training that needs to get done can be done.

We just had a girl who got shot. God bless her soul. She survived and she like reached out to me and our first aid guy who was a, he was a flight medic and support special forces in Afghanistan. He's flown like 75 combat mission. over there. And the guy was a paramedic in Oklahoma City. So he's doing two gunshot shooting victims a night. And she called both of us and she's like, if I didn't take your class, I'd be dead. I knew exactly what to do. What class did she take? So that was, I don't know the exact name, but it's a life-saving tactical class, basically about like the things that we need to consider when administering immediate

life-saving, you know, first aid care to somebody or yourself. And so what that means, the equipment you need, like a lot of guys carry black gloves in their pouches, they look cool. But, you know, Sean's great about it. He's like, can you get blue gloves? So this woman, you're like scraping and you're touching your partner who's just been shot, you can figure out where the blood's coming from because you can't see blood at 2 o'clock in the morning on a black glove.

So let's just, I know they're cool, but like get white or blue gloves and we'll just call fair. Who gives the shit what you look like? Why it's important have a tourniquet. Don't keep it in your car. You know, like, how are we in modern day policing and police officers? There's videos of this guy in Arizona.

Get shot on a traffic stop, right in the fucking femurial, and has to hobble back to his police car to find his fucking tourniquet in his door panel, right? He's in the mat pocket. And he's lucky that some fucking other cops showed up with a tourniquet on his belt,

deployed it, and saved the dude's life. He's lucky that one worked. That's right. So that's another thing we talk. about like center mass have two available um i'm one of those guys that likes to have everything i'm just like one of those like you go to my truck dude have a lockout kit still in my my personal vehicle i have a throw bag i've got two tourniquets i've got a blood clot kit i keep a medical kit in the car i've got a shovel i've got toe ropes uh you know strap toe straps and i have all like i have everything

have i need it all no the lockout kit you'd be surprised how often i use that for people and i see them trying to get their keys out of the car um so you know hey man if you have a body of water near you, why don't you just put up like a PFC in your car for 30 bucks? And that's another story that I didn't tell it really. Like there's a cop where I taught somewhere. I don't want to say where. And he went in and tried to save kids drowning in a fucking pond and he died. It's not an uncommon story.

And they're not trying to kill you. They're just panicked and they'll drag you down to the bottom. Well, so when we look at the 17 cops, and hopefully that's the accurate number. It's right around there of how they were killed. you'd actually be surprised how most cops drowned in a line of duty in the past decade. But I'll circle background to that and how I fix that as well.

It's very interesting. But, you know, I heard from his people's agencies and they're just like, hey, you know, now we have these things in our police car. I wish you would have told us that before this happened. I'm like, you guys didn't like, no, to take your gear off. But then when I started doing research as to how people get killed in water rescues

or drowning deaths, especially as cops. There are many things that I didn't know. So that I do, I made a program about it. And I'm not trying to insult your intelligence, but how do you think most cops get killed in drowning incidents statistically? Just take a guess.

And I'll tell you what the actual... How do they end up drowning themselves? Yeah. God, I feel like it would depend on the type and body of water because rivers act differently. Lakes are different. Ocean is different with tides and rip currents. I would probably say exposure and exhaustion.

that's some of them. People don't realize that like when you get into the body of water and it's cold. It doesn't have to be winter. It's just cold. It's 58 degrees. You've got about five minutes. Yeah, that's the exposure aspect. Right.

So that's one thing. So you would think that'd be an issue. People don't realize that. There's other factors that you've got to consider about like storm drain rescues and like getting your feet tangled on fishing water. All this crazy shit that goes on and how to get out of it, getting stuck under rocks. All these things go on. But what actually killed most cops, and this is horrible to say, is there.

were flood storms where they were going towards the storm and they kind of sat there while the stormwater was rising and didn't realize that once a water rises up quickly past, I think it's nine inches and pins the door in, you can't get out, your car turns off. And then they're stuck in the car. They drown in their police cars. So now why not Dennis, but you know, do you make a fucking video, which we did? And it's a, it's basically an hour training. that like, okay, you can drive in your car and listen to this or watch it on your off-duty gig at the high school.

Where have you fucking work? The library, fucking best, whatever you work. And now, God forbid, you run into stormwater. You know exact, let me get the fuck out of Dodge as fast as possible because this stuff rises in a minute and now you're pinned in your car. And the car don't start, the car won't move,

and you're going to drown in your car. Yeah. And if you're out of shape, what are you going to do? You're going to punch the window out? You're going to climb out of that car? Can you get out of the car? Are you thinking about leaving your gun behind?

Do you realize you're weighted down? These guys think they got to take their fucking gun into it. I always tell guys like, hey, jump into the water at home in a pool with just your uniform. Don't even put your duty rig on and try to sweat. Just try to tread water for a minute. Let me know how that works out for you. It's a completely different experience. And so we go through like the assessment going in the water.

We don't want two victims. Are we looking for things? What do you have available in the car? Why don't you have a throw bag that costs $27 on Amazon? I'm not endorsing any company. It's $27. You get a 50 foot, 100 foot throw bag. What do you do with that throw bag?

You got to tie it to something on land. You got to find like a tree to make sure you can pull yourself back out. You don't just leave a rope and then go in with this bag in your hand. I get it. There are kids drowning. What's the likelihood of rescue? And I was able to do enough research and make a program and a guide of like how to do this. Did they tell us that in the police academy?

No. Do you think it might have been a good idea to spend 30 minutes on how not get killed in a drowning? Is it going to happen? Unlikely. But hey, good to know. I would argue that's good to know. Better than know than, I don't know. The guy who taught us about health and told us to drink a glass of water at night

and that'll keep you thin. That was our conversation. Drink a glass of water at night. Try not eat too much pizza and, you know, watch your heart rate. You'd be all right. That was pretty much the class. That's what I remember. Do you teach a class for officers not to be out of shape?

Yes. I'd love to see how that one is received. Yeah. And Andy, to be honest with you, like, July 5th of this year I changed my life I wasn't OBE so I went through a lot I came off the Lexa Pro

the whole nine right I got the I got I was just in a tough place I wasn't you know I wasn't like walking around I was just very very difficult to go through what I went through and at some point my therapist

was like it's time to get on the pills I'm like yeah anything like just please I just can't I need to get my life back I can't live like this anymore I'm lost a ton of weight and so

on the four the July, I knew I was getting fat. And my friend, my best friend, one of my best friends who was one of those two guys that was there for me, he came up to me and he's like, dude, you're fucking fat. And I'm like, how fat do you think I am? He's like, I mean, your arms are big and everything still, but you're fat. He's like, have you weighed yourself lately? And I'm like, how fat do you think I am?

I'm like 250 people at my house, my 4th July party, right? So I go, I go to the fucking kitchen and I take out the scale out of my laundry room. I put on the thing, 248 pounds. I'm going to shit my pants. So I said, I'll have lowered the number a little bit. Dude. So I used AI to design and learn more about all these things. And here I am 300 days later as of today.

Down 28 pounds, three pounds of muscle gain, strongest and best shape of my life. And I know everything about, I don't know everything. I know a lot more about caloric deficit, caloric excess, proteins, carbs, fats, movements, meat, all these things, how much you need to lift versus how you should lift. So I've taken all that and we'll program on that as well. It's done. It's actually right now as we speak and I can show it to you. It's just being polished up by our editors.

I feel like that would be the lowest compliance program that you put out. Nobody's going to listen. I don't understand how in that profession you can let yourself slip physically because you are physically required to do stuff every day. It's a highly criticized thing that I address and even with my kids. And I don't care what people think about how I feel about how I raise my kids and what they know about being healthy. The answer is, it is something you can control.

I don't tell my kids, like, make fun of that guy. He's got a big nose. You can't help a big nose. I mean, you can go get a fixed, but, or this guy has a limp, that's, or he has a short leg or anything like, like none of that stuff. Or he's missing an arm. If you are fat, you can fix it. Everybody's bodies work the same exact way.

You need to go on the caloric deficit, and you will lose weight as you move along. More movement, this, any other thing. So I have very little compassion when you tell me you have, you know, like you're your thyroid, all this bullshit that people tell themselves, yeah, your thyroid's off, but you had 2,000 calories for breakfast. Okay? So your thyroid's probably off because you're fat. That's why it's off. You got some doctor who's full of shit telling you put you on meds. How about you just figure out what you need to eat every day and understand the differences between caloric density and the foods you put in your mouth and where you need to be

every single day and stick to it? Some people were like, oh, I'm eating clean. I'm like, you can eat clean and still be eating in excess and have no body loss or any fat loss. So because it's controlled, because you can do it, don't tell me about your addictions and all this crazy.

How could every single person just subscribe to the fact that it's hard and I'm addicted? Okay, I get some of you have, like you shake when you drive by McDonald's. I get that. And so what? You're just going to be fat for the rest of your life?

Right? I was politically targeted nobody stuck up for me. I was left out after all this great work that I did. Everybody I knew left me. And so what? Am I not going to do this anymore? Am I not going to still show if I can help these people?

I'm still going to be here. It's the same thing. So yes, these things happen. Yes, these things exist. But what are you going to do with it? How are we going to hold on to whatever it is you're holding on to that enables that behavior? And so I'm compassionate, but at what point do we stop? having compassion, start taking control of what we look like.

I've seen cops that are 450 pounds. How could they still be? Because there's nobody else. Because they work in the middle of nowhere and there's nobody else to take the job. We had a, and I hate, because I know these people are supporters of mine. I had three cops.

They were made up the entire agency and I don't want to say where they're from, what's called the northwest part of this country. They were 400 plus pounds apiece, the same agency. And I made a joke in class because I just couldn't help myself. And I said, what's the worst thing that happens with you guys? Like, the pursuit? And the response was, we don't have to run.

There's nowhere to run to. We just follow them in the truck until they get exhausted because it was flat lands and they could just do that. And I said, I'm not going here with you guys, but you guys look ridiculous. I mean, they look absurd. They look like what it is. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it diminishes everyone's view of the profession, unfortunately. And so what's the solution? How do you get these people to?

to comply with physical standards when they can't even get human beings to take the job. It's a tough thing. There are some standards in some places and some states, but overall, at this point, especially a place like the NYPD, they just need people who can breathe and write reports. They just need bodies.

That's all that they don't care what they look like. Have you seen some of these physical agility tests they do? Oh, dude, they're hysterical. Like walk up through. Michael, NYPD physical agility test. Yeah. You'll see that they have like walk up five stairs and walk down five stairs. This is true shit.

This is a warm up or just? This is the test. See if you can get into the agency. Yeah, yeah. There's a, like, Canada's got some good ones. Put a, there's a Canadian one that was hysterical. I shared it where it's like, oh yeah, let's take a look at this one. This one's going to be funny.

They might have, now, they've gotten a lot of criticism. Right. Get over the fence. That's real. Okay. Look at this one. Walk upstairs and walk downstairs. Look at this.

Push a thing. Drag a dude. Okay, 80 pounds. Trigger pulls. 15, can you pull trigger of a gun? Look at this. I don't even, they name this something else.

Stair climb. You're walking up steps and walking down steps. You're going to have to work off duty at Yankee Stadium and Chase Stadium or City Fields. Trigger pull victim rescue. Pursuit run. Look at this. What is that thing supposed to see?

I don't know, man. It's a pursuit run. They're running around Cones like that. You got to be able to pull a trigger 15 times. Okay, what do we got here? Hold your arms up. How long do you got to hold your arms up for?

Could you imagine? This is... And run. This is it. Look at us. Look at us. Oh, let's see. Oh, she couldn't do that one.

Nailed it. Sick, bro. You know what? I bet she was Delta before this. Possible. Look at this. Could you imagine? This is modern day.

No. They don't have a choice, though, because they can't get anybody to take this job. I don't really know what to say about this. It's outside of my area of expertise for sure. You don't have to be an expert to know something when you see it. And this was designed to get anybody they possibly could through this system. Looks like she has a weight vest on, too.

Is that supposed to simulate a work vest? I don't know, 30 pound weight vest. What could it be? It's not like she's wearing a hundred pound rucksack. I mean, at least she's going up and down it a couple times. Okay. Physical restraint. Yeah, this is it.

Power training machines. Look it. That's about 20 pounds, right? Oh, is that supposed to be simulating pulling on a person? I don't know. But those are 20 pound weights. Not don't look at those dumbbells. Look in the middle ones. There are 20 pounds.

That's a 10 in a 10. Yeah. Maybe, no, there are tens. They're tens. I've been working out a long time. Yeah, so it's like, it's ridiculous. The pursuit one. Watch this one.

Really? Pursuits look like this, foot pursuits? Actually, I can pull up a lot of videos where they do. sometimes mostly because they're reaching their VO2 max but yeah I've seen some low speed pursuits of this on YouTube many times and so this is just to get even this past the applicant process to apply for the academy

to pass to get it approved to go to the academy I have to assume they do more than this at the academy no no so the MIPD has to put so many cops through the academy that they have three shifts You actually go through, there's Midnight Shifts Academy. So they run three groups of classes through the Academy. I think they do it. I don't know if they still do, but they do it at Madison Square Garden.

Wow. They'll run their academy classes through Madison Square Garden because they have the capacity to put a couple thousand of these guys through at a time. So they'll run like night shift, day shift. So you might be going to the academy, and it might start at 10 o'clock a night and go 10P to 6A. But their academy is... Wow. Yeah, dude, it's...

Are there a ton of great guys and girls at the MIP? Dude, fantastic. I mean, so good, but they would agree as well. Anybody, anything that I say that criticizes the current state of affairs, the best in the business, completely agree. And they're happy that I'm speaking up, and even to my demise, there are people, think about this, I am frustrating the bar.

So when the bar is set like this, and you don't have to answer to it, and I'm saying, that's ridiculous. It needs to be up there. You're frustrating people who live at that bar. They love it there. That's all they need to do to get their paycheck and get their retirement and get out and not have headaches.

So when you say to people, hey, this is the truth. What you're living is a lie. They play this game of nobody goes to this guy, nobody sees this guy, don't listen to this guy. Because I may,

because I recite the truth. If I am wrong, I will submit and listen to the conversation. I'm very careful when I speak. The things that I've talked about today, I put a lot of thought into for a long time. As it sits today, these are the things that I believe in, that I believe to exist, and the solutions that I think are here at this moment.

These things change. All I can do is talk about the things that I see. I know there's other things that I, after 25 years in this industry, continually try to address to try to make this job more survivable and to give the public what they expect in a cop. It made it more difficult when sabotage was ran on me and sullied my reputation. Did it sully the reputation of the people that believed in me? Do I have a bigger following more than ever?

Did it quadruple, maybe even 5, 6x? It exploded. Weirdly enough, I really don't get a lot of flack from like crazy people. They're not like, fuck the police or fuck 12. I got that when they were beating me up on the news overnight. Nothing. But it's odd. And at some point, I'm like, man, I wonder if these people actually like appreciate the work that I'm doing.

They get to see it for what it is because it's clear. It's on display. It's on Instagram. It's on Facebook. It's on it's in the podcast. Like if I was a person who wanted police change, I would look at the things that street cop training is doing and say, oh, these guys are doing a good job. This is what we want. If we're going to find middle ground, it seems like they're making some headway and progress.

And I have no interest in trying to stop anybody's progress. progress who wants to make things better. Am I friends with every police training company? No, right? I would like to have been, but I'm not friends with them. They choose it that way. But if they're doing their thing and it's making things better and you're correcting what you're doing, hey, more power. I don't like you as a person and your reputation precedes you because everybody knows you're a complete piece of shit and an asshole. It's fine. But if the work you're doing makes a difference, hey, say la Vee, do your thing. Just don't undo the things that we're doing. Don't get frustrated because I say the batons are stupid and you're a baton instructor and you live by it.

That's how you make a living. So I got to watch what I say about that because the last time I said that, a vice president of a very well-known baton company got in my ass. And then I had a conversation with him and I again spewed the truth and he was extremely frustrated. And I'll tell you how it worked. Why are you saying the collapsible baton is a piece of shit? I said, well, it's not me.

I just made the post, but you can look at the 1400. comments of how dissatisfied this whole industry is with these things. Nobody's got a good story with these things. And it's like a big joke that we use with like hit the call boxes on the sally ports or like scratcher backs or fish like something out of a water. That's about what they're good for. And then every so often somebody has a story where it actually worked, very few and a few and and far between. And his response to me was true shit. I'm a cop still. I'm the vice president of this company. And I'm very effective with this tool. I said, well, how many guys do you work with?

And he said, I work with me in this division that I work in. There's three of us that are very proficient with this tool. I said, well, how many cops are your agency? He said, there's 800. I said, so you tell me, out of 800 people, three guys know how to use this thing. And that was it. The truth had hit him, and he was, didn't know what to say. I have the conversation.

It was a message. It's making this stuff up. And the response was, it's still an effective tool. Well, brother. like just submit to the fact that this is what you've I always make a joke like the only people who like the batons or the batons instructors just gives them some validity in this world because there's really bread crumbs so when you have bread crumbs everybody wants anything to teach oh I'm gonna do something else besides this I'm gonna be the I'm gonna be the baton instructor batons are great no they're not they're probably the and I got to watch what I say because there's these other tools that people have called me and they're like hey what do you think about this? about buying these things. I'm like, for what? But I'll also endorse the fact that like,

what's the thing called? I had the kind of podcast who invented it. The grappler. Have you seen this? So this roofer from Arizona came up with this idea. And what happens is, is when these cars are stolen,

this $8,000 mechanical arm folds out and it drops this net. And you take training on it and you slide it under the back tire. It grabs the tire, locks it up, and you have to use, you go, you'll see what it does here. And so you'll see this one.

I show this one on my Instagram as well. But you're going to see how impactful it is. And dude, this is arguably top five best inventions and law enforcement ever. But in fact, it's so popular now because it's so effective and it saves lives and it saves property damage. Look at this thing. That this guy can't get him out fast enough. You've got agencies on two-year waiting list trying to get their hands on these things. Right?

So he drops it on there. They hit this thing. Look at this. It's over, dude. Nobody's dead. They can't go anywhere. it can only the last time I talked to this dude

you can only install it on SUVs because you need the power to stop a car so look at this one this one they pull the this one here they pull the whole he's trying to escape it

totally yanks that whole axle off the back of the car this is one of the most impactful tools and um yeah isn't that great and arguably the tasers a very good tool it's just there's too much reliance

on the taser too much over and reliance and I would say Brazilian jihitsu is is one of the best inventions for law enforcement. And I wish these guys would take it more seriously. And these girls, when I say that, please understand that I'm not including the women. It's obviously Michigan State Police. It's got the cherry tops. And dude, it's like, this is a legit product. Now,

there's a video out that it didn't work. Okay. You got one. No tool is perfect. People would send people to my classes, right? And they'd be like, hey, we sent like 12 guys to your class. They came back. They're killing it. We're sending this guy. He needs a lot of help. I'm like, guys, I'm a police instructor. I'm not Jesus. Yeah.

I can't, you can't, I can't change his, his chemistry of his brain. It's real tough. Well, I guess it could be front wheel drive. He could have maybe nursed that out a little bit more. Possibly. Traditionally hard to drive a four-wheel vehicle with only two, two wheels left on it.

Yeah, so, you know, this is, these are some of the great tools. And, dude, the drones. Oh, the drones are fantastic. And I, again, I'm not saying, like, I'm this guy who's this genius. please don't see it that way. But a decade ago, I'm like, you know what they're going to have?

They're going to have drones on top of buildings and they're going to deploy pods because think about it, we can't be everywhere. You can have as many drones you want. They're just recharging themselves. And if there's a car crash, let's say in this intersection of this highway, you've got a drone, you know, 3,000 feet away, have your dispatcher deploy the drone because sometimes we'll get a call of like car crash with injuries. We'll get, and dude, we're going balls to the wall, right?

Like now we're doing 100 to get there. we're here and all this stuff. And sometimes we get there and it's not that. Slow it down, slow it down. It's not. So what better, excuse me, what better to get, you know, somebody who's a drone operator to essentially launch this drone, go and see it and report back immediately, hey, that doesn't have injuries or off to the side of the road, slow it down, let's not kill each other.

It's just increased situational awareness. So there are a very important tool. They'll save lives and there's a lot of stuff on the horizon that this new technology is new tools that are going to be, flaw cameras are great. They're really good, dude. Flot cameras are, people are arguing facial recognition technology is profound. Again, they get to this big brother thing, but you're not, you know, you're forgetting about the importance of apprehending some the most dangerous criminals in society. Yeah, but you can't bend the Fourth Amendment because of that. You can't. The Constitution counts or it doesn't. Yeah, no, agreed. And right now, as it sits,

there really is no Supreme Court decision on facial recognition technology. It's been accepted. Overall, we take out like Whitey Bulger, who may have walked past a camera in the 11 years he was on the run, and they would snag them. But again, with all good things come bad things. So I agree with that. And I could tell you, dude, I'm a proponent of the Fourth Amendment. I live by it.

When we became legal, I'm like, guys, stop considering the fact that you don't like that weed's legal. But then New Jersey made it so that you could smoke weed as a cop, and then everybody loved it. It's fair. Well, think about this. Got apply to everybody, I guess. So they changed the policy where you could,

and like when that happened, it was just like, nobody knew what to do. These agencies couldn't figure out what to do. And people were just like, you know, I'm going to get gummies. It's can you buy weed now, like you buy sneakers in New Jersey. I'm shocked, it's not federally legal at this point.

I think at a state level, it's like we're within a couple election cycles of all 50 states having illegal. And, dude, by the way, I don't drink alcohol. I don't smoke weed. I don't ingest any intoxicants. However, if I know that,

the number one procurement of a job-ending incident comes from alcohol? Well, man, how many jobs do you think ended when somebody smoked a joint and played Fortnite and ate too many Cheetos? And the answer is, I can't remember the last time somebody punched their wife because they smoked too much weed. Yeah, unlikely for sure. If we did an analysis of the New Jersey cops, and nobody's going to do this research, and how many incidents didn't happen or the statistics went down where they were involved something off duty. Now that you're allowed to ingest marijuana, I bet you the difference is stark. What's there a time? I'm assuming there's a time. Yeah, it could be high at work. Yeah. But, you know, don't forget, THC attaches to the fatty cells. So you can be pissing hot for weed.

Doesn't mean you're high at work. Yeah. And so, you know, and honestly, I have never heard somebody saying, like, this guy showed up to work high. And I have a lot of friends that are chief still. I know, obviously I know a lot of people in the industry. I haven't heard of a case. Like, this guy showed up smoking weed or, yeah. I've heard from my friends are like, yeah, dude, they're handing out edibles to each other in fucking in muster and trading them like that's the fun. Here we are. They're not using them, but like, yo, you got to try these. But again, it's the lesser of two evils.

I don't think it's solution. I don't think you need to run to intoxicants to try to feel better. But I take that over drinking any day of the week. I think drinking is just one of the roots. I always tell people like, alcohol is my best friend and my worst enemy. That's some of the best times of my life and some of the worst times of my life with the amount of booze I drank.

Yeah, I get it, man, for sure. We got to get you on the road to the airport here relatively soon. What time is it? 1229. Oh, yeah, yeah. We've got to time. Yeah.

How close is Jersey mics to hear? I've got to get a sub for the flight. I think it's racist since you're from Jersey that you have to... It's not... Racist. Presid Mike's isn't a white man or a black man. You could get like a Montana mics.

Can I tell you why I'm going to go with Jersey mics? because I know how to manipulate the sandwich to get about 70 grams of protein. Yeah, no, once you can game the system, you go there for sure. Yeah. If you're going to go to Jersey mics on the way,

yeah, we've got to get you out of here relatively. No, no, no, it's okay. No, it's, we've been at it for two and a half hours. Okay. Where do you want to leave people with? And then where can they find you? Okay, cool. I'll probably think of more things I should have said

at the end of this shift or I leave, as we always do. But, you know, I think a good place to leave people is, if you think you can make something better, try to make it better. It's not going to be easy to make it better, and you can't always have permission to make it better. But if it's important to make it better, just make it better. Where you can find me is at streetcop.com and any of our social media channels, street cop training. Is there one social channel that you may be more active on or if people are going to reach out to you, you're more likely to see? I'm kind of addicted to Instagram, but that funnels into our Facebook.

So at the moment we have, you know, pretty substantial finding. Yeah, the meta universe. For me, it's a business tool. And it's a profound business tool. And honestly, it's a good education system that a lot of people are finding a lot of value. And so I don't use it for hooking up or to sit there and troll people. I do it to use it to create business and also to create awareness, but as an educational tool as well. So, you know, Instagram, if you want to get in touch with me and, you know, the website

at streetcop.com is where you'll be able to email us if you want. If you have interest in the training tool, streetcop community.com is arguably the, I'm just so happy with it, dude. I'm just so happy with the product. I sit there. I'm just like, I tell John who works with me, my right hand guy.

I'm like, John, it's so good. Like you don't even, and he's like now become like a fourth amendment expert because he's building the products with me. And I'm like, it's so fucking good. He's like, how do you know? I'm like, it's so fucking good, dude. Like I can't, it's so flawless.

It's so good. And because we build it in-house, it's so inexpensive. It's so smart. And I'm not trying to chew my own horn. I'm just so happy that the Lord brought me along this path. And if I hadn't gone through the things that I was going through and got in the shun or the shunning that I experienced, I wouldn't have been doing this thing.

So it comes around full circle. And, you know, if anybody's going through very difficult times in your life, just so, you know, storms come in and storms leave. No storm lasts forever. Hang in there and don't think you have to be. be able to do things. All you need to do is survive it. And time is your, is your friend. And you'd be surprised how much time becomes your ally. And as more time passes, life returns back to normal. And it's worth it because life is beautiful. It's a pretty good ending.

I try. As far as endings go. I try. It's pretty good. Thanks for making the trip out, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, brother. Of course.