Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 184 - Nelson Grant

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

Nelson Grant is a Sheriff's Deputy and Search and Rescue Team member in the Flathead Valley. In addition to his current duties, he has previous experience on the SWAT Team and Narcotics Task Force. When not on duty Nelson enjoys partaking in just about every activity that Northwestern Montana has to offer. Bowhunting, rifle hunting, river raft guiding, dual-sport motorcycle guiding, backcountry split boarding and skiing, touring, trekking, downhill mountain bike riding, jiu-jitsu, and probably even more that I am forgetting. If there was ever a renaissance man of the Montana mountains, Nelson is it.

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How do you describe Nelson? Well, he's a man of many hobbies. Let's see if I can remember even a portion of these. He's a hunter, bow and rifle. He is a split border, so that would be a backcountry snowboarder, a resort rider as well too. I think he even skis, which is not my jam. Some people's jam, I guess. dual sport motorcycle rider,

snowmobile, search and rescue. Let's not forget he's full-time law enforcement here in the valley. He's the one who introduced me to Jiu-Jitsu. So anybody who is tired of me talking about that or hates when I bring up Jiu-Sitsu, you can just feel free to reach out to Nelson directly and complain to him. But other than that, I think this is actually my favorite aspect of the podcast, being able to sit down and reconnect with friends and have an awesome conversation about things going on in the world. And I value Nelson's perspective specifically and especially when it comes.

comes to the LEO side of the house. I will now shut up and let you all enjoy episode number 184 with Nelson Grant. I'm looking at danger close now. 62% chance they're not Lula Lemon shorts. I didn't know if, uh, I mean, let's dive right in. Canadian. Have you ever worn a pair of Lula Lemon shorts, Nelson? I actually have.

I have two. They're pretty nice. Fine craftsmanship. Canada's got it going on. They are a Canadian company. I forgot about that. Swing that mic in front of your face. Don't make me give you a.

the normal analogy that I'd give to men. And they're like, oh, okay, I know what you're talking about now. We almost made the critical air that I do oftentimes. And that is you start discussing awesome shit before you actually hit record. That's why I stopped us and said, let's talk on the podcast. Yeah. You asked about MSTOA. Which for a long time and so often people will ask me what it is.

I say the Montana State Tactical Officers Association, which is not correct. It's the Mountain State. That is correct. Yeah, there's definitely, it's recently been a lot more out-of-state dudes showing up, like Seattle has a bunch of guys coming down. Not known for their mountains. Correct. But they're known for the talent, so they're here. Talent in what regard?

They're getting reps SWAT team-wise or just patrol-wise? Yeah, and I think it's a big department, so they have a little more freedom to send dudes on the payroll to MSTLA. Yeah, and so a lot of them are agent-instructors. and stuff like that. What did you say, agent? Adjunct. Adjunct? Their extra help.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. What did you guys do there? To whatever level or degree that you feel comfortable talking about? Yeah, no, I can talk about it. So there's several, so MSTUA is sweet.

It's a very affordable training. It's here in, it's at Fort Harrison and Helena. And it's basically a tactical, I guess you would say a conference, but there's different tracks that you can take, some firearms, sniper tracks. This is the one I did the speech at that one year. Correct. Yep. And you did it during the leadership portion. So there's a great timing for me in my personal life. Fucking three weeks into my divorce process. I was like, hey, Andy,

the banquets tonight. You're like, later. I'm like, where'd Andy go? I'm out. Yeah. So, but I was there for Operation Medicine course. And it was taught by Blair Dell. He's got LECC, I think is the name of his company or law enforcement casualty care. Yeah. Man, it was awesome. It was eye-opening. I think everybody in law enforcement should go through it. It's the basics of what to do with wounds, you know, I mean, from...

Where did they start you guys off? His initial brief is about how to use quick clot and tourniquets and blankets and blankets, you know, the basic things he said a lot of times. Blankets for shock? Yeah, for shock. He said that, I mean, this guy, I don't know, is, you should get him on. Blair Dell, he's awesome. Oftentimes it's very much up to the person I'm invited. It's not really up to me to just like handcuff him.

Yeah, totally. Unlike you, I don't have the authority to do so. And put them in the seat. No, Blair's cool. He did a lot of years with Marsock and he was Corman with them and did a lot of, I mean, he saw a lot of stuff. And with that came a lot of knowledge on how to fix people. and he said, I can't remember which deployment, but he basically said that one of the doctors in Ford deployed basically said,

if you can bring me the casualty at this temperature, we can save his life. Right. Yeah. And he said that because back in the day he said you would roll a guy in and your goal as the medic was to get like an IV started and start pumping him full of bags. And he said, man, your bags are cold so their body temperature is going down. and when you have a high, you know, stress environment with, you know, gunshots and stuff like that. He said, man, everybody started, they had a huge survivability after that.

So he said his opinion is if you can use tourniquets and blankets, you're going to save a lot of lives. Do you guys carry Quick Clot? Yes, we do. I may be wrong in this. We used to carry it. But I feel like there was a period of time or maybe the product itself, because I believe QuickClot is actually a commercial name. It's a very specific product.

There are other versions of the product. So what I'm saying QuickClaught, I think I'm actually talking broadly, even though I think it applies to one product. I'm pretty sure there was a time where they said stop using it because from my understanding, it reacts to the blood, obviously.

Coagulates, but there were people getting burned, not just in the wound itself, but if the blood had spread across uniforms or it had gotten on your skin and the QuickClock got on your skin, you were getting burned. Is that still the... No, it's not the issue anymore.

So combat gauze is... Another term. Yeah, that's what we're using. But, yeah, it looked like a granular, like maybe gunpowder would be a good way to describe it. But like with heloes and stuff like that, that's getting blown everywhere. So, yeah, they've come a long ways with it. So now it's a gauze that you can pack a wound. Okay.

And the idea is, let's say you... I mean, Seattle, they were talking about numbers out there. If you have a lot of trauma in the neck area, like a knife wound and you're pack in, you don't want to pack the neck because then it can cut off some stuff in your neck, but put some combat guys in there. Like your jugular? Yeah. Put some combat guys in there.

Hold it for three minutes because three minutes is what it takes to speed up the clot process. And then you just basically put a seal over it and then bring them in. But the three minutes, you have to hold for three minutes to help speed up that clotting process. And honestly, dude, I'm not like the guy on it. I just went through this. It was a week-long course, and, man, it was awesome. It was practical. They had, you know, this really sweet dummy that would bleed if you didn't tighten down the tourniquet winless enough and all kinds of problems.

And it would tell you chest gurgling. So you had to get them on his side. I mean, in the theater of battle, too. So you're working on tactics drives medicine. So, you know, so you're working on your threats and 360 security and all that stuff. But it was good. Almost like win the gunfight before administering. Exactly.

Yeah, self-aid, buddy aid, corminade was the ascending hierarchy of care that you could expect in the old job. And if other people were tasks saturated, meaning they were engaged in a lead swapping competition. You were on your own. Yeah. Maybe drag your own happy ass behind that car and see how it's going. Yeah. Were you serving, you had to have been serving as a police officer before they started relying so heavily on tourniquets? Yeah.

Because there was a phase in time in my career where they're like, dude. You've got one hour. Use it as a measure of last resort. Like right on their forehead and permanent marker. They're going to lose their legs and everything else. Towards the end, they're like, take a lot of tourniquets. Yeah. Put them on.

Did you hurt your fingernail? Totally. And I'm glad. I mean, the battlefield medicine is certainly, it's advanced things, but it changed rapidly. For sure. Yeah, I feel if somebody is still alive and they're going to have a, they, they're bleeding out or something like that, and I come across them in the, even snowmobiling or off duty.

I have the tools that I can save that life. And it's simple stuff. It's not, it's not, you know, rocket surgery, as you say. But turnicets, yeah, before I started or when I started, there was really no turnicates being issued. It was talking. I mean, it wasn't as knowledgeable as what you guys were seeing. Yeah.

But, yeah, it wasn't pushed. But now dudes are carrying two tourniquets on them on the street. Minimum. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I have a couple in my car, but two on my kit. That sounds about right. Yeah.

I would only say make sure your buddies also carry two. Yeah. Because if they don't, you might find yourself rapidly getting two places where you don't have enough tourniquets. Yeah, for sure. One is none, two is one. Yeah, one bad artillery bleed could take out to your turnicates. Most I've ever seen apply to six. Wow.

To an above-the-knee amputation. But with explosives, it's not, we're not talking a surgical blade where there's a very, very, pristine cut it's actually really hard to describe how gnarly and ripped apart it is so yeah i mean some them were slipping off some of them weren't getting as tight as they could be but six is the maximum i've ever seen slash heard of and those leg ones are hard because you're high and tight is what they say so way up you know and and that femoral artery if that's bleeding it's you don't how much time correct and with iads they were saying you'd see a lot of like you wouldn't see blood at first So guys are slapping turnicates on.

And then those vanes would loosen up again from the, you know, from the blast. Yeah. And then they would be bleeding out because you're not checking turnicates. You're checking other stuff. Yeah. I'm thankful you guys don't have to deal with IEDs. No, for sure. They're not fun to be thinking about all the time, whether or not, is that a dead cow?

Or is that a dead cow with a 105 round or, you know, fucking mortar round, shoved up its ass with the pressure plate. That's fun one. I'm glad I don't have to deal with that either. Did ever tell you the story of the elder IED implantor that was teaching the junior IED implanter on my last appointment? No, let's hear it. It's fucking excellent. It involves us hitting an IED.

And this is 2010. This is A Boole province in Afghanistan. RG33s, which is, I think, what do you have for the SWAT team here? 40 KEL or 40 mic mics. No, not, an RG is a vehicle. What do you have for the SWAT vehicle? Oh, we have an MRAP and a BAT team. And a bear.

It's basically what an RG33 is. Yeah. So it was essentially an MRAP, which is mind-resistant. What is it? Mine-resistant. What is that? What is that? M-R-R-Sand-SPAN for.

Yeah, I know the MR is MRAP. I know there was a lot of drama when law enforcement started getting them. It's a V-shaped hole vehicle. The theory being, if a bomb goes off underneath the V, it is deflected. One way to checkmate that, and we saw this overseas is, you know, so if you have the V-hole and the explosive is normally in the bottom, one, they would bury. 1,500 pounds. I've seen it where they have actually inverted the V. The bottom of the V hole is touching the top on the inside of the vehicle. You can imagine the damage done to the people inside of it. Or they would bury a charge into the ground at a perpendicular angle to the V. So therefore,

it would defeat and go on the flat surface again. So chess, a little bit back and forth. We hit an IED. I was off on a side by side, so I wasn't directly involved in the vehicle. And a lot of times they will put mine rollers in front so they're trying to trigger the pressure plate which is what happened but it kind of nuked the front axle and they weren't going to let us leave they were not going to let us leave it there so we went into a compound that was a couple hundred yards away we had to set overwatch they sent like a convoy we were like can me just blow this thing with an airplane all of that was denied so they sent a convoy to recover it while we were there you know the icom chatter which is the little walkie talk is that they talk on kickoff

they know that we're there the next. Next morning, we're sitting there and boom, and IED goes off just off to the side of the road, maybe half a mile away. I'm like, all right. I mean, that's interesting. There's a moped sitting there, one of their little jingo bikes. I'm like, okay, obviously we need to go over here and check this out. Old dude and new dude. Technical knowledge, protege.

And what we could surmise was that he had activated the pressure plate to the charge. and then like kind of covered it up a little bit. And in the process of trying to show the junior man how to do this, they forgot where the pressure plate was and he kneeled on it because both of their faces and heads were over the top of the charge when it went off. We found them on separate sides. It was awesome. Oh, that's epic.

Yeah. So I think the lesson there is don't do that. Yeah. Self-correcting. It was self-correcting. But you could, and then the locals kind of came clean. They're like, yeah, that's like the senior bomb maker. He probably was teaching that guy.

And like, sweet. Two birds, one stone type thing. Never, never trust a skinny chef. I guess. Yeah, ID threats suck, though. Yeah. I was more concerned with those overseas than anything in the latter years. Just because it had just astronomically gone through the roof.

And anywhere that there was a road, not a good deal. Yeah. Not a good deal at home. So, what I don't. you've been up to you had the MSTOA yeah I was uh you had a busy stretch oh man back to back so I went from there to a search and rescue leadership school um that was basically managing land searches it's really cool they um use statistics and mathematics to show probabilities on when people get lost uh which direction they typically go and where they are and what's the answer to that

so a lot of different things you have all kinds of charts that you follow it depends on the activity from hunting to biking to um you know birdwatching. There's there's an activity for everything and they have thousands of stats built up over the years on what typical people do. But because hunters do things way different. Like if you shot an animal like we so one of our scenarios with a map map problems they call it. So you get a map and you use statistics and this honestly man this is like 95% probability but you always have that you know Murphy. Yeah. It's always there. But most people do this thing most of the time. So for for hunters, The map problem we were working with.

Two guys are out. This is true story. Two guys are out in Montana. They split up down this ridge. They're older, so they're in their 70s. This guy hears his buddy, shoot something right before dark, and doesn't hear from them for hours. Call search and rescue. Well, so a lot of things that you've got to put into that is the weather and conditions.

So it's supposed to like a blizzard was coming in that night. This guy wasn't dressed for it. His age, he's a smoker. So all these things go into your... This is literally the worst-case scenario you could possibly... Oh, this is daily, buddy. This is like Montana. So, and these guys were...

They've hunted this area for 20 years. It wasn't their property, though. So they know they're... So they're going in kind of light because they're like, oh, we know which road to drop out at. Well, they didn't have headlamps. And so... So what you do is, I mean, with hunting...

I'd have to look at the maps again or the stats to determine what this guy does, but normally they go downhill and normally they go to a road system and that's how they ended up finding them and it was like five hours later. But he was walking a road. Yep. And but I mean we did studies on several searches that ended in fatalities where there are 10 day searches and people are dying from you know from lack of food from all kinds of stuff from frost but you know from dying from the weather. So on a 10 day or if they're surviving out there for 10 days, what decision is it that that's the they're making or is it con like are they going deeper into the forest are they like what what mistakes

are they making so you mean for the uh the victim or for the search crews the victim so the victim uh all kinds of things like for we did a case study up at kicking horse where there's it's a ski resort in canada and you ride the tram to the top of this mountain and there's a rope system across the top that says don't go past here and this husband wife drops in and i can't remember the year maybe 2006. They drop in and they go into this canyon because it's a sweet pal. But it's unpatrolled. They drop in there and they stomp out because they're on regular gear. They don't have skinning equipment. They stomp out in SOS. Well, they're there for 10 days. She dies. And eventually a helicopter guy finds him. But this helicopter guy like five days earlier saw the SOS reported to

the RCMP. First he reported to the resort. They kind of did due diligence and looking for it, but determined it must have been kids skinning. Then they reported it to the RCMP, and they kind of didn't do a search. And so we talked a lot about liability. You know, if you get the info, you have to search because it would have been really easy to find these people. Well, they stayed in place.

Yeah, he stayed in. Well, he moved up and down the canyon, but in the snow with no snowstorms, you're going to find these tracks, and it's going to lead you right to the victim. Yeah. So the best thing to do is to stay put if you can. I wouldn't do that,

but it all depends on the situation on what tools you have and what your purpose is for being there. But a lot of people follow contour lines. So regular lost people. We did a case study on a five-year-old, or not a five-year-old, a 16-year-old boy that got lost. They were hiking, I think, in Colorado. And this kid missed the trail when it split. He just was head down, not paying attention. His dad and his other brother were going to finish peek bagging and meet at the truck.

And it was only like a mile and a half to the truck, and they get there, and dude's not there and for five days they looked for this kid. Kid lived. He followed the contour line basically of the mountain where it was like old game trails and stuff like that where he thought he was going along the trail. Realized he was lost about four miles in because he's like, oh, I should be at the truck by now, sat down and sat there for five days and they found him. But now we have this research that we can put probabilities on and we do 50% first like 50% of the time they're going to be inside the zone. Yeah.

So we can send all our resources there. And then we can look on the, you know, what can a normal person hike and what can't. So it's using statistics, but it doesn't work all the time. And we have a high, a high opt tempo for our search and rescue missions, here in Montana. And in the Flathead County specifically in Gallatin County as well. What's the number one thing you guys are getting called out for? It depends on the season, like snowmobile season. It's injuries and stuff like that with snowmobiles, lost sledders, broken down sleds,

summertime's probably hiking and hunting exactly we just had a mission the other day on mount neas a lady was hiking it still snowy she slipped down like 75 feet below the below the ridge couldn't self-rescue she had cell service luckily she was by herself called for help and our air rescue crews went in and snagged her so worked out good but yeah it was it was good training there and then from there I went to Milwaukee and uh was that the helo training you were doing? Was involved in that course? No, it wasn't.

That's separate. It's just been busy. And so then the helo training was before Milwaukee? Correct. All right. Yep. Yep. So I just...

Might as well break that down. What are you doing to do there? No, it's cool. It's two-barre air rescue, man. It's the coolest thing I've ever done in my career. This program's been around about seven years, and it's a privately funded helicopter of Bell 429 that, man, it's like $10 million, or $10 million with a hoist capability. and the infrared.

It's not 10,000. Yeah. Does I say 10? We're starting off by saying it was $10. The number is 1-0, and I can't remember if it was a million behind it. Yes, yes it is. But now it's really cool. It's something that we have a billet in our office to fill.

And so there's a selection process and working for SWAT for a bunch of years. I never really pursued it because you just can't wear all the hats. So I just came off the team and waited for an opening and jumped on it. made it through selection and man I've been training the last two months and it's not easy what do they have you do so it's a crawl walk run type thing our chief crew guy his name's will millam he's a study he was a coast guard rescue swimmer worked on a hoist hoist thing and he was in codiac knows barclow pretty well yep uh so he was stationed in codiac i want to say 14 years uh maybe it was longer than that he he claims he has the longest uh

tenure up there in Kodiak. I think Kevin Costner does. Yeah, no. I saw a movie one time with him. Yeah. Which I assume is a documentary. So he's the longest serving. It's a true story.

Of course. If you see it on a screen of any kind, it's likely true. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Much like SWAT the movie. True. So the first day, so basically the first two days was learning about the capabilities of the helicopter. I've never worked around a helicopter until now.

And what a pilot's kind of doing, not obviously flying the bird, but like, like when it's hard for them to fly, like what they're looking at and what they're using us to look at. So as crew members, when we're going in on a rescue, we need to make sure the tail's clear and, like, you know, all that stuff. And it's under nods a lot of times. So the first day it was learning how to con the aircraft over a person. And you're using terms that everybody's familiar with. So everybody's on the same sheet of music. Yep.

But it's, there's a lot going on. So you're throwing the hoist out. So there's three positions in the helicopter that we're trained on. And what I haven't touched now is the camera work. But in the back, there's the RS, that's the rescue specialist, and then the SO, the systems operator. So the systems operator is the, in my opinion, the toughest part. And that's the guy that operates the hoist hook. So, you know, today I was training on the helicopter.

So jump out on the skid, get the hook, hook onto my RS, my guy that's going to go down and rescue the person, swing them out, and then I'm conning, meaning I'm telling the pilot how to fly, because he's going to lose sight of my target. Yep. So he's doing everything from my command. So our commands are simple. It's like forward right 40, and then it's forward right 20. And then from there, it's like 10.

And then five is a countdown so that he can gauge based on your, like how fast. Five, four, three, two, one, or five, four, depending if I called it a little early. Because he wants to hover over the spot. Exactly. But hovering's hard. And if you go into a hover, like, shock, like stop fast, that hoist hook swings out and you want to have like as little pendulum as possible. Yeah. So anyway, it takes a lot and that's what I've been doing with a helicopter, but it's really awesome.

So do they ever hoist you down? Oh, yeah. Yeah, so that's the RS position. So you do all, you will rotate through all three of those? Correct. Yep. And it takes three to staff the helicopter, ideally four with a camera guy. But the pilot and then the two crew members in the back.

So why do they chop an LEO guy to support that? Why don't they just pay somebody to fill that bill? I was curious about why they put a badged officer up there. So search and rescue falls under the authority of the sheriff. And so ideally they want a sheriff's deputy working in the crew for the authority. But I don't know all the technical parts of why that happens, but I'm stoked that I get to be there. You can care last at this point. You're just glad that it exists.

And, man, we're flying all over. We're going to Wyoming and Idaho, so we're not just staying in my county. Yeah, they say 300 air miles, but they'll stop, gas up, and go some more. What type of recall do you have to stay proximal to the airport for that? When you're on call, it's 45 minutes. How far is that here in the valley? How far can you get? Oh, I don't know.

I mean, I live 10 minutes from there. Yeah, I was going to say, I know your house covers it, but you probably couldn't go much past the entrance to glacier. Yeah, no. When you're on call, because, man, they're getting... Wouldn't come down to my house far are you? No. Although they can pick you up in my front yard And they have done that

So if I was and I was on call I just link up with the dudes Be like hey I got my My harness and all the gear If there's a call Just come hover over and grab me Sweet Yeah man it's cool

Then you went to Milwaukee Yes Yep and uh You might as well start with the story You know I'm gonna ask you about Because you sent me a video of it The TikTok video So yeah there we were

We were in an Airbnb How many people? There's three of us and it's a big house so there's like four or five bedrooms uh just that's how our office is doing things now instead of a hotel which is nice you can buy some groceries kind of keep uh keep things on the budget yeah except for the beers in the evening yeah which is of course personal expense yes which falls under per diem it does we're like hey are we close to her nightly per diem it's your turn so um no there's uh two of my buddies charles and matt and we cruised down to do a and all this

training kind of just came together at the same time. It was... You were gone for over a month. Man, it's been busy. But anyway, it ended up being way funner than I anticipated because those are good dudes and we had a good time. And the class was awesome. But while we were there, so towards the end of the week, I was linking up with some buddies

that I had down there and so were they kind of all, everybody was going their own direction towards the end of the week. And this one night, we came back and I'm sleeping on the main floor and those two dudes are upstairs and we have a main door that we've been going in and out of and it's a deadbolt with a like Airbnb code so there's a back door there's a gated yard and this is downtown Milwaukee on a good side but still is downtown Milwaukee so there's a backyard it was like piss and rain the whole time that we were there so we ran out barbecue or anything it turns out that back door going into the house from the yard it was unlocked and it's the next morning I wake up and these

dudes are in the kitchen they're like dude Nelson was rock star in this place last night Like there's cans tipped over and I hear him talking. And so I'd like to stand up to my reputation. I'm like, I would definitely do that, but I did not do that last night. So they're like, as soon as they saw me say that, they could like, usually I'm screwing with people. They were like, huh, somebody came into our house last night because they definitely were. And I was like, man, are you sure it wasn't one of you dudes? And everybody thought it was somebody else.

But the laptops were still out on the counter. So nobody was there like Berg in the place. So I jump in the shower. As soon as I get in the shower, I'm like, that dude's still in here. Like I, it just at dawn, like what I was processing what they just told me. I'm like, somebody came in because they're drunk and they're still here. So as soon as I jump out of the shower, I hear, we got one detained at gunpoint upstairs. I'm like, you're shinned me.

So throw in a towel and run upstairs. I'm like, you good, Matt? And actually it was Charles. and he's like, oh, yeah, we're good. And it was a 19-year-old dude that was being super chill. He was just drunk, and he said he had no idea where he was and crashed around upstairs. And Matt actually had locked his door.

And the dude was like trying to get into his door. And which was odd, I didn't lock my door all week. Yeah, super odd. Yeah. But anyway, Matt thought it was Charles trying to get in because he was so drunk that he didn't realize which room. And Charles said I was drunk because he heard me downstairs. And then, you know, so anyway, Milwaukee PD came down because we wanted to make sure this guy was clean for warrants and stuff like that, just doing the proper checks.

And then we didn't file charges even though it would have been fun to go back to Milwaukee for a little work trip. But I mean, I've, I certainly drank a bit when I was 19, but I don't ever remember thinking that I'll just go into a house that's not mine and continue drinking would be a, like, that's just not even on if there's a. buffet of potential options that would be available. That doesn't even hit my fucking radar. I do have a good story about waking up somewhere you shouldn't. But I'll finish this story. So Milwaukee PD game, they basically just gave him a ride home. They checked with us and the guy was super cool. But in the process, Charles, one of the K9 handlers that I was there with, he has this like following on TikTok apparently. And I don't have TikTok, but. Which is a good thing. Yeah. I mean, I'm busy with. You are an adult.

Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. So anyway, he made a little, like in the first, I mean, we weren't even at training. He had like a one-minute clip out, and it was pretty good, actually. He clipped this thing together well. And it was just entertaining, and Charles was kind of a nerd.

So he made it, like, he spiced it up. And apparently it went across the country because my buddies from Maine were hitting me up. Like, dude, I saw you on Fox News. It made Fox News. Oh, yeah. And I think. Inside Edition wanted to do a report with Charles, and yeah. And my buddies in California were hitting me up, so it went east to west.

What are the rules on that? You mean internal? Departmental rules. Yeah. Because I saw, you sent me the video? We're not really in uniform. I mean, we're not. I actually have no idea.

I don't do social media at work ever. Well, you don't. Many do. Yeah. I don't know if I follow. I'm sure at least a couple people. who are, no, I do, who are police officers, you wouldn't know by what they post. Right.

And then if you go to the search feature, there's a lot of people posting a lot of times in their uniforms. I'm just curious where the line rides on that. So for us. Like the dude who made fun of LeBron James in his tweet. Yeah, and he got fired, right? Correct. But I think he got fired into a book deal.

Oh, there you go. Well, maybe a short-term loss, long-term gain, or maybe it'll go nowhere and it'll just be a long-term loss all the way around. It's, it, I'm just curious. It seems like the departments are very laissez-faire about it until something goes nuclear, then they're like, nah, you're out of here. Well, Charles, with his following, I mean, you walk in the squadron and there are boxes to the ceiling of like free dog food and leashes, because he's a canine handler, so that's his,

I think it's Sheriff Missy, or Misty. We're not going to put out his name. Yeah, but because of that, man, he gets so much swag. and it's filling up our office. And so he'll come in every third day and clean it out. But I mean, doesn't the department pay for dog food and leashes? Not anymore. What?

Yeah, I mean, because of all his freebies. Okay. But no, what I'm getting at. There is a budget there for dog food and leashes. Yeah, for sure. But what I was getting at is Charles does a good job with it because all week I was like, oh, bro, you should throw this on your TikTok. And he's like, dude, I will get fired if I listen to you.

Okay. So he's at least keep in the back of his mind. Yeah, he's good at it. I'm actually seeing it firsthand all week because I'd heard about the TikTok cop, my boy, Charles. Just to be clear, he is an adult male, like in his 30s or the 40s. Oh, yeah. And he's on TikTok. Yeah.

Yeah, it's super normal. Okay. What's the story again about you waking up where you're not supposed to be? So not me, but a buddy, when we were on Denali, after we summited, we were down in Talkeetna hanging out. And we had like four days, I think, before we got picked up to get back to, you know, all that because we summoned it early. So we're in Telkeetna and my buddy, who shall rename Nameless, on our way, he's like, dude, this trip is taking, is costing way more than I thought. Like, I mean, it's expensive to go up there and it's a month of mountaineering. And anyway, we come back down and at first when people were like sauce with frostbite and all that in the bar, that's the first question.

They're like, yo, did you sum it? And we're like, yeah. And so then everybody's buying us around for prime the pump. all of a sudden I see my buddy over there whipping his credit card out like it's on me and the next morning I hear him calling his dad and he's a grown ass man calling his dad hey can you uh throw some money in my account but anyway so we're standing in a hotel right near the bar that we were drinking at in talcina and I go hit the head at the very end of the night I come out and he's gone he was like hanging out and come out five minutes later he's gone so it's like oh he must be at the hotel we were splitting a room so I he's back and I opened the door and he's not there. So I was like, oh, I don't know where he is. Pass out. Next morning. So Talkeen is like a tourist area. He said he woke up in this motor home in somebody's driveway, looking out the front windshield. And there's like a mop bucket next to him, like they're spring cleaning this thing. And somebody was in the house like moving around.

So he sneaks out the side door. And there's this really, um, really. elegant outside like cafe or uh yeah like restaurant yeah restaurant but everybody the train had just stops so there's thousands of tourists sitting there eating and they're like look at him like this this guy that came out i mean he looked horrible because we both did i mean the frostbite and the sunburn and booze and the booze and so he's did the walk of shame back to the hotel from the RV he has no idea how he got into the RV i mean i think he does but he claims he does not but again no charges man And you can't be hypocritical. Like I, uh.

That's true. I have a buddy who woke up on the, in somebody's backyard one time, like in their bushes. We were, you'll meet him. He may or may not be coming up here soon to record an episode. We were at a bar. The hotel we were staying at was across the street. He was so drunk he couldn't find it. Yeah.

I think that the storage. Visibly see where we were staying from where we were drinking. See, both of our stores are similar. I think that this is a nationwide, yeah, understanding. No, we were getting ready to leave the next morning, and he rolls up looking pretty rough. I was like, hey, dude, what's up? And he's just like, fuck. He's like, I slept in this dude in his yard last night.

I was like, what? He's like, yeah, man, I was so fucked up. I couldn't find the hotel. I'm like, we were, I literally pointed. I'm like, we were drinking right there. he's like I know I don't want to talk about it he's like I think I might have a problem like by that afternoon he's like hey man

you want to have a cocktail yeah yeah yeah they're good stories yes and so now you're back you know Milwaukee anyway driving training LEO driving training yeah emergency vehicle operation course it's called evok

what do you guys do there so just actually this was an instructor school to like bring back and teach recruits and our reserves and people like that. Basic driving? Basic driving.

Talking pit stuff or what do we get? No, we did some of that, but that wasn't what we got our certification in. But it was mainly like, oh man, it was pretty cake stuff. It was like Ford serpentine, reverse serpentine, low speed, like parking boxes and basically setting a standard up with like where the cone should be, like the exact feat and how to administer the test to the new guys. So it was pretty, pretty easy training to be in Milwaukee. And all this other than the Hilo stuff, which I know you were doing.

individually here in the valley mostly but the MSTUA and the Milwaukee there were a variety of other what would it's not agencies right what do you guys call them yeah agencies yep from most all over the u.s yeah so Milwaukee was yeah um let's see the search and rescue stuff was mostly Montana yeah and mountain state was probably yeah all guys from all over like the Seattle dudes I was talking about North Dakota was there South Dakota I think South Dakota all over Montana Idaho Wyoming What's the sentiment in those, and I ask because I think we live in a little bit of a bubble to a degree here in the Flathead Valley. What's the sentiment from those other agencies kind of across the U.S.? How are things going? I think you hit it right on the head with our area.

A lot of dudes, I mean, you're going to find it everywhere. Like right now we have a couple guys, like we're short-staffed a little bit, so we have some dudes just feeling like the pressure. and, you know, guys are off for training like me. But honestly, Montana's really good. We have it good here. The community supports us. It's very pro-law enforcement. The other day, I pulled into Chick-fil-A.

And to eat or for a call? Of course, to eat. It's a city call. It's in the city jurisdiction. So if there was a shoplifting, I would ask dispatch to send a KBD officer down there. But some lady paid for, my meal on the other lane, but she used cash. And I was just going to get, I think I was getting a salad.

So I was like, I'm keeping it, you know, light. I'm in the car all day in a water. So the guy, like I roll up, he's like, hey, it's your lucky day. This lady paid. So I'm like, oh, well, I'm going to have a salad. And she had thrown a 20 down. And my meal was like 11. He's like, well, I can't take a tip. So you need to take this money. And I'm like, I can't take them. I can't get paid. Now I'm a criminal. Yeah, I can't get paid for coming to Chick-fil-A on the converse though you know my buddy dustin kb he rolls into chick-fil-a same scenario and he rolls up to the window and the dude's like oh man you are the hundredth person if you pay for the meal behind you the hundredth person in a row that paid paid it forward dustin's like okay and he looks

in his window in his mirror and it's a soccer van full of people he dropped 150 bucks no way oh yeah he's like oh what what's it come to and it was like over a hundred Yeah, and he's like, I was going to get a chicken sandwich. Oh, my God. No, it's funny, man. It's funny. But back to your question. Yeah, how are those other agencies doing?

Not well. In Milwaukee, their struggle, I mean, they had like five shootings every night we were there, and the cops are reluctant to be present and make decisions on some of that stuff. It's just hard. It's hard nationwide. But they were, and, you know, all of them were grilling us about Montana. So tell me. Yeah.

Like, you know, and it's a little less pay out West here, but the lifestyle is good. But, man, we deal with the same stuff, just different frequency, you know, instead of five homicides tonight, we get a couple a month, you know. Seems like it goes peaks and valleys for you guys. I imagine. We're probably trending into your busier season. It is. I would imagine. Yeah, just driving down here, man.

The roads are packed. Yeah, mostly tourism with glacier and things like that. But, yeah, you feel the pressure. But if you, I mean, you were talking about this. with somebody, I can't remember who, but my biggest thing is to have a hobby and have it be outside of law enforcement. Yeah, somebody asked a question one of the Friday episodes. I got that actually, and that got reaffirmed to me talking to 2.0 because he was talking about how he was very thoughtful and intentional about doing that and the impact that it had made for him. And it got me thinking, like, oh, you're right.

You have to have something that exists outside of that because I thought back to early on in my career in the military. I only hung out with the guys that I worked with. So we only talked about work. When we are on work and then off work. But we might as well have been on work. Because it's the only thing that we talked about. Dude, my early years on SWAT, same way.

And there are studs. We had to be the most boring sons of bitches to be around ever. You're around good dudes, but you end up talking about work all the time. And Jiu-Jitsu, super health. climbing, all the things, I mean, there's a lot of things that can keep your interest in, I mean, hunting, really good thing to still use your hunting capabilities. It still helps support your work life. But man, it's hunting east from Montana looking for a big buck or wherever.

Yeah, you've got to have a hobby. How do, I mean, how, if the law enforcement officers are hesitant to interject themselves into those situations, We'll use shooting as an example or violence. How does that in any way, shape, or form help anybody? It's not. It's not the right answer. It's definitely not the right answer. But first of all, like with a hobby thing, if you sign up or say yes, they're always going to take you.

So the department will use you, you know, and there's always overtime. There's always calls coming in for help. When I was in Milwaukee, I mean, we got so many searches going on. And I could say yes to every one of them. and not get to like get that stress relief at jiu jitsu and there's certain ones I have to go to and there's certain ones that you can kind of pick and choose you know what I mean but but as far as law enforcement and and where we're headed man here the culture here in montana in the community I work in and the department I work for we're still saying yes no matter what we're

still making contact with people we're still trying to find bad guys we're trying to hunt evil in the dark, but we have a community where we don't feel the pressure against us. Do you know what I mean? Like a Chick-fil-A, they're paying you to go through the Chick-fil-A line. I actually think that that probably happens, that probably happens everywhere, maybe to a lesser degree. And it's not reported as much as pick your random headline that would potentially paint a certain occupation in a negative light. Right. I think one gets more airtime than the other. I was talking with I was talking with some law enforcement guys last week. And the reason I asked you about the sentiment of the agencies, you know, outside of

Montana, just kind of around the U.S., is they were kind of saying the same thing. Like we, you know, I don't want to go risk my entire career over something that's going to be judged in 10 seconds. And I think, like, okay, I can understand that. But how does that help the people that you swear an oath to, you know, protect and it. But I also don't know the answer. because if you're going to get crucified for doing the right thing or making the best decision that you can in the moment, I don't know what that looks like.

Right. Yeah, I think it's got to be paralyzing. It is. It's that your buddy, the Irish dude that you just had on. He talked about, yeah, how many times do you see the hostage taker with a hostage on a target? Zero. Yeah, it's always confusing. For us, maybe you guys.

I don't know. No, no, you don't. But using that analogy for every kind of interesting. interaction that you have in law enforcement. I mean, even from the simple, like, domestic assault and making an arrest and then having, or whatever the case is, but being judged by that arrest, obviously we, like, I work with pros, and we, my department has really good training, and we have good standards and we're educating guys. And I think the Valley as a whole does as well. I mean, KPD, Columbia Falls and Whitefish, good dudes, male, good guys and girls. But,

it's a culture here to get that training and to want to pursue that and to know like when we're right, you know, and to know how to do it right. But I don't know if I'm answering your question at all, but I'm just, I guess more than anything I'm asking about your take on the path that law enforcement is going to have to walk as an occupation, I mean, you know, countrywide. Because I would agree, I think we live in a bubble here. but, you know, perhaps the Seattle people aren't thinking that they're living in a bubble. Or Chicago PD or NYPD or there's some other crazy shit going on.

And I think as a whole, the law enforcement occupation has got a very shitty path ahead of them for a while. I think it's going to be a while before the pendulum swings back in the other direction. And my suspicion is it's going to take catastrophic loss of life, unfortunately, in an instant an instance or an event that maybe could have been prevented if there had been either additional officers or more training or they had more tools just to get people to realize that and again I'm speaking for myself but when I when I hear people talking about defunding the police I was like I think you have that on on on its head I think you should fund the police even more and give them more tools so they can make better decisions in those moments 100% yeah I think

you know Mike the cop the Instagram page it's it's a dude that he's he's an officer someplace, but he posted some meme of an officer, like with his hands out, or not an officer, but some comedian or something. And it's like the top one was be proactive and get tried by everybody and get, you know, like allegedly violate policy or do nothing, the bare minimum, and it looks the same, you know, on the same dude in both pictures. And it's, so that's the attitude, you know, I think from a lot of people. But also, we sign, like the people. Like the people that are doing it for the right reasons. We signed up to do it for the right reasons. And if we see something that needs to be made, like, if I drive by somebody and I say,

oh, you need to meet me, then I'm going to spin around and introduce myself, you know, so. Yeah, fair. You want to actually do some QA. Yeah, let's do it. I'll probably just put this out on Monday. Maybe this is like a full auto Monday. It's a new one. It's the fan episode. I tried to pick a couple here directly into the law enforcement world, and the third one was actually just quite comical and I'll get your take on it. Subject line, motivation.

I hope this is the right spot to ask a question for Fall Out of Friday. I'm 25 years old and want to work in law enforcement. However, I am fat. He wrote this with three capital letters. I have no excuse for it. I was wondering how to keep myself motivated while working out. It seems like I cannot commit to the healthy lifestyle for about a few days and then I

give up. Do you have any advice? I already qualify. on the physical abilities test, but I feel like being the size I am, I could not perform all the duties of an LEO at 100% capacity. I am 6-2-2-2-80 pounds.

I'd like to get down to 200 pounds. First question, what are the physical abilities tests that would allow somebody? I'm going to assume that this is a softer 6-2-2-80, not a chiseled 6-2-2-80. What kind of tests are we talking about here? Because the first thing I think of is maybe these tests aren't really,

indicative of the potential physical challenges you may face. Right. Yeah. So every state is different. Montana, we have what's called an MPAT, the Montana Physical Agility Test. And it's a decent test, but it takes about four minutes to pass it. Four total minutes. And that's coasting.

I mean, you have up to six and a half minutes. What's the test? It's an obstacle course that you run six times. So you start running across the balance beam. That's not hard. It's like got grip tape. you go around a cone you jump like a little hurdle you go up over some stairs you come back jump another hurdle and the hurdle's like a four foot or five foot gap and then you go over a bar

you stand up and when you go over the bar they say to your front or to your back so you fall to either your front or to your back and it flip-flops every other time then you get up and you run across the beam again do that six times that takes about two and a half minutes or whatever you know like alan he smokes it um and then you come to a wall and you do like you do like a wall and you do like you go you touch both hands on the wall you fall to your back you got to get back up you do that like five times maybe four or three i'm not actually sure the dude's always proctor and me and then you go to a push pole machine and it's whatever the weight is you push it in you got to walk it around six times and then you pull it out and you walk it around six times and if it goes in it doesn't

count so you have to redo it but um it's pretty easy to pass and um where does that test come from I do not know. Man, I'm not the guy to answer that, but I'll tell you when I started, it was the Cooper test. Are you familiar with that? I am not. So it's a mile and a half run and you had like age brackets. I want to say you had to do a mile and I, man, it's been a bunch of years, but maybe around 12 minutes. Then you had 50 pushups, 50 situps, and there was some pull-ups also in there. That was it. That was the, but a lot of people were not passing it. So they had to make a more standardized test that, brought in more people. Let's pause right there for a second because I am identifying what I would consider to be a fucking problem. Yes. Oh, so nobody's meeting the standard instead of holding the line, let's move this standard in a direction that will allow more people to pass. Correct. And in my opinion, what that does is it weakens the, I'd say force in this particular instance, but whatever

community those people are going into, it's, that's the long, slow, beautifully paved manicure road to hell. Yeah. And a lot and in our department it's only an incentive to run it and you can run it twice a year for an extra week off vacation time. Are you serious? Yeah, which is actually not bad when you mold that because it's all union held you know like all the so every department is different. But when you boil down however much a day of vacation costs, it's actually pretty decent because it costs me four minutes to run and I get basically two days off. No, what I'm saying is it's ridiculous that they have to float that out there is a lollipot for you guys to chase after. Oh, totally, totally. And there's a lot of guys that don't do it because, you know, they can't pass it or they don't want to try. But so,

okay. So this, hold on. Let's, another question. Yeah. If they know they can't pass it, what are they doing strapping on a Batman belt and a badge every day? Well, man, this is years down the road. They've passed it once. Sure. They're on the job. Cool story, bro. They passed it once. What I think is cool about this guy's question is he recognizes the fact that he doesn't feel like he can do his duties to 100%. Is that what he said? Yes. Couldn't agree more with you on that. Yep. That's huge. One of the problems is he's passed the test. So now he could coast for his career depending on his department. Some departments make you do a fitness test once a year, however often. I don't think there's a lot of them anymore, actually. Well, I don't think he's actually entered the pipeline. I already qualified with the physical abilities test.

I mean, it doesn't say he's gone through the academy or anything like that. I mean, I'm assuming the academy would probably get him closer to his 200-pound goal. It's going to be physically active. But I think- Depends. Some academies are not. How would you be able to, as an officer, if you were 60 pounds overweight, would you feel comfortable even attempting doing your job? No, no, definitely not.

Would it change your interactions with the people that you have? I believe it would. Because you'd have to be guarding against your limitations. Correct. And I'll go back to when I started doing jiu-jitsu, you don't know what you don't know. And back when I was in my 20s, I was just buys and tries, you know. Swelger. Yeah, yeah. First brigade. And Aaron, you've talked about it a bunch. He got smoked on a traffic stop with a felon that was reaching for a gun.

Lex define smoked. He got into a very, he didn't like a shot. He got into a very protracted wrestling match in the snow. And one of the first things that happened was his radio got thrown for. from his body. So get some by yourself. And Aaron was a capable dude. He was working out at the same gym I was. He was in shape like buys and tries. So when guys heard him on the radio, I mean, he carried himself well. And so when they heard him on the radio not answering statuses, they started to drift his way, but they didn't think, oh, liability going down, like, why isn't he answering? It got to that point. They were like, oh, geez, we haven't heard from him for a minute.

let's get there. But you don't know what you don't know. And when I started doing jiu-jitsu, I was like, oh, didn't matter how many curls I did. I could, like a 160-pound person could have smashed me. Yep. If they wanted to. So that was eye-opening. But you have to have self-discipline to pursue that. And honestly, I run the impat twice a year, so I get more time off. Yeah, but you're also not at risk of not passing it. You're very active. You have more fucking hobbies than any person. that I know, every single one of them is physically based. Bow hunting, riding motorcycles, snowmobiling, backcountry snowboarding, resort snowboarding,

riding bikes with your wife, who's a professional bike rider, jujitsu. Yeah. You're not at risk of failing those things. What baffles me and what I don't understand is that people that are, they avoid it and throw a badge on and think that they're going to be a representative. or, you know, respond in a way that when people dial 911, that that's what they're, like, nobody's hoping that the 300 pound cop shows up when you call 911. Right.

I'm sorry. I'm just, it's just like, it's the way that it is. And I don't know how that person doesn't realize, you don't wake up one morning and are 300 pounds. Right. Unless you went to bed 299 pounds the night before. Well, like 303 and then lost a couple pounds. You know what I mean? It's a slow, it's a slow process into that.

And to kind of tie that into this guy's question, it's a slow process. It's a slow process out of that, too. Yeah. When I owned a gym, I would see people come in and they would want what I will describe as a very aggressive health slash lifestyle slash fitness goal. Some of these people were starting at well over triple digits from where the weight that they wanted to be. And I would ask them, like, you know, well, how long do you think that this should take? I'm just trying to get an idea and an understanding in your headspace. Where's it at?

And they're like a couple months. And I'm looking at them. And I'd have to have a hard. conversation, I would say, listen, what do you weigh right now? They'd tell me. Okay, like, what was the last time that you were at this weight that you're targeting? Because they obviously passed through that weight. And for most people, it was a weight that they really enjoyed being at. They just lost their grip on it. The answer was almost always years. Yeah. You're telling me that it took you years to get to where you are now, but you want to unwind

this in a couple of months. We have to have a conversation about this because you're setting yourself up for failure. You have to have the discipline to stick to it for a long-term plan, which is exactly what I'd recommend to this guy. I just like that it ties into the physical requirements of the law enforcement of the law enforcement world. So for somebody, maybe even this, I'll phrase it to you this way. Maybe this would help this individual find what he's looking for and stay in that healthy lifestyle. Going back, if you had to, if you were training for the job that you had now, that you could go back 10 years and you had the knowledge of what your job is going to be like now, how would you train to be an optimal condition for it?

Well, it's mind, body, it's spirituality. It's everything. I would definitely do, like, it depends on where he's at. If he wants to be on, he's already passed the fitness test, and in like three months he wants to be in the academy. I mean, he needs to do some dramatic stuff. I would definitely do some running or something, some high cardio, some, like, and build up that base because in my academy,

we ran up to 10 miles. and which is kind of rare in law enforcement academies but going through the main criminal justice academy is what we did. I don't know what Montana does but I know they're out there. I train down there teach the students and I hear them out running in the morning so I know that they're trying to sleep. Yeah exactly I'm like guys, quite you quiet down. They're running cadence.

So I know there's going to be running and if you know that there's going to be that hurdle you might as well own it because then it won't be a problem. you can take it like in stride. If you're bad at firearms, go out and get some private instruction before you go to the academy. That way you don't even have to stress about whatever they're going to throw at you. So I would say that. And also teaching at the academy, you don't see a lot of, you see a lot of fire and desire. The guys are there. The guys and gals, they're excited about their future career. They're in the brand new stage of it. And most of them are, if they're not in shape, they're not in bad shape. You know what I mean? I think that

when you see those really heavy officers, it's years of sitting in a car, and it builds up that, it just slowly accumulates, just like you're saying over the years. It's hard, even for me, working day shifts. When I get off after a 12-hour shift, the last thing I want to do is go off for a run

or something like that. But once you start or go to Jiu-Jitsu, man, within five minutes, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is what I wanted. And you're glad you're there. Yeah, 100%. but the shifts where I work out prior to shift, like swing shifts, man, I feel awesome. Like I wake up, have a cup of coffee, hit the gym, and then I'm in uniform.

Those are the best days. But the day shift, man, they grind. Do you think that there should be a weight limit for officers that once they exceed that, they should be taken off the street? Yes and no. I mean, presenting the question like that, maybe. body mass index type thing. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to answer that question.

Here's the second question, portion of that. I would have to say that there has to be a point, whether it be body mass index or you fill in the blank, whatever metric you want to, that the officer becomes more of a risk to themselves and everybody else around them. 100%. But you see those officers out there. I see them all the time. when I travel. Why don't the departments pull them aside and either course correct

or get rid of those individuals? Oh man, because of unions. I mean, you can't. You can't do that. They're protected. It's the same reason they can't just institute forced physical fitness test. Like our department, when they brought it in,

it was an option in it, they dangled the carrot with vacation. And I was like, yes, can we have, I'll run for eight minutes for another week. First off, you're a vacation master. Yeah. Somehow during elk season, you have a lot of vacation. I work a lot of the year, man.

What I realize is you're the swap expert. What I think you do, and this is a hypothesis, is you look at your hunting calendar and you start doing fucking swaps in January and February. Oh, yeah. Banking stuff. That's why I'm texting you early in the season. You're like, why is Nelson talking about hunting now? I'm like, Andy, we've got to dial in this hunt.

What do you think? Yeah. But also those dudes don't want to be 300 pounds either. Those officers, they're probably dealing with a lot of other stuff. too they don't want to be the officer walking around at 300 pounds but they don't know how to jump start the the one like a healthy meal like meal diet over um activity I would say start it's it's in your control and if you change your palate from I don't know what this guy's choice is but like from sugars I mean like sodas to to healthy alternatives there's a lot of healthy alternatives

Rob was saying what I had Rob Wolf on, like liquid calories is a place where a lot of people have no idea how bad it can actually be and they come off the rails. Yeah. So if you can cut that out, the difference it'll make, not overnight, but relatively rapidly is pretty impressive. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And I think instead of mandating a certain body weight or something like that, giving the department more tools to help the officer that is overweight because there's some really good like. smart cops that are overweight and if they could be better shape and a little bit feeling a little bit better they'd be great role models you know have you ever worked with overweight officers I have

did you address it with them I did not why I addressed it with them every day I came to work when they saw how I worked is how I felt good answer uh last thing I'll say for this guy is when it comes to diets is another thing I saw when I was when I own the gym people would go clean for a week and then they would have like a cheat meal and instead of putting some boundaries on that meal, they'd be like, fuck it. All in. They're like, I can't do this anymore and they would completely give up. And so then a cheat meal would turn into a cheat month and then they're starting over and over and over again.

I would say give yourself that outlet of have a cheat meal or a cheat day and don't feel bad about it. And if let's say you end up having a second one in the week, don't throw in the towel completely. try to limit and put some boundaries on how fast the buffet line is interrupting your decision-making process. And then as soon as you can get it back on track, do so. That was one thing I saw often. It was a pendulum that would go super tight, one bad meal. I'm throwing the towel in as opposed to just like, let's get through today. I'll eat like a garbage can and feel like shit for three days.

But go back in the other direction. So small. Good advice. Small and gradual. All right. Here we go. Been listening to this podcast for a long time. I value your insight due to your experience in wisdom, which, as you know, I don't actually

have any wisdom. I have some bizarre experiences and no wisdom. I've had the desire to be a commando since pre-K. But as I have gotten older, I never joined the military due to the pressure to go to college and get a degree. College and I didn't quite get along as well as boxing and girls, and I did. Needless to say, I'm no longer in college. I can't justify going to war and being that commando without a strong why, because, as you

say, if you touch war, it will touch you back. As well as Jocko stating that in order to go to war, you must first have two kinds of will, the will to kill and the will to die. With those things in mind, after much thinking, I will do whatever it takes to help someone on their worst day. The FBI HART has a tactical entry program I aim to enter through, requiring either four years prior SWAT or military experience. I'm working on becoming an EMT, then paramedic, then SWAT medic, to put myself into the position to qualify for that entry program. I chose this rope primarily due to having been exposed to some things firsthand while away at college that gave me true perspective to the fact that there are plenty of assholes that will pray on the week here in our own country. Do you see that as a good route to enter through, or would you recommend military service over SWAT?

And is the organization to get involved in to affect change in this world? And is this the organization to get involved in, to affect change in this world, and to help people on the their worst day. Wow. It's a lot. So, I know a bunch of HRT dudes, studs. I know quite a few as well. Yeah, good guys. Yeah. But is his question more along the lines of the fastest route to get to this? Maybe most impactful or would you recommend? So if he wanted to go HRT, would you recommend, so his thought is EMT, then paramedic, then SWAT medic, then qualify for the FBI, HRT, NPRT, What I think this person, and I'm going to make a massive assumption here, because he brought this up specifically two kinds of will, the will to kill and then the will to die. He stated that he'll do whatever it takes to help someone on their worst day.

I think he has less, I think the potential thought of killing somebody might be a impediment to this person because he's pursuing the medical route. And I say that because I've had conversations with people who absolutely want to make a difference, but they're like, listen, I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't ever want to be in a position to take somebody's life. But plugging holes is a great alternative to that as well. And I want to make a difference. So I think that's kind of what he's asking. I don't think this person has any level of comfort with the potential thoughts of ending somebody else's life, which I think is, that's totally fine. I think that's a beautiful thing.

what do you think about this route still being involved and being able to give back? Well, I don't know of what HRT medic guys look like if that's what he was thinking, because paramedic is a long, long road. That's a couple years before you're eligible. And then also to get on a SWAT team, unless it's just a medic specific, it's a long road to get on a SWAT team too. He said specifically SWATMEDIC. Yeah, I mean, I do know that some teams take,

civilian medic guys. So like not going through the law enforcement pipeline just become, but it's pretty selective. And so they might be looking for some more experience. I don't, I don't know that. I know for our, for our team, there's a tryout. And where do you guys pull your medics from? Well, it's a new program for us. And again, I'm not on the team anymore. But I've heard that it's from our community and it's going to be a medic standard. And from there, I don't know what the, I know that there's a tryout, so I don't know what it looks like. But it's going to be probably firefighters, mainly, because they're dealing with a lot of stress and decision-making stuff. Let me ask you this.

They make it through to become a SWAT medic. Are they carrying a gun? Depends on the team. Our team is not. Do you know of teams that do have the medics carrying guns? I do. Yep. And the reason why I ask this is that when I first hear this question, and obviously based off the assumptions that I was

talking about, I always want to caution people trying to find their way into these situations, thinking that because I'm there in a medical capacity, that I am never going to potentially be placed into that situation where you might have to be causing the damage that you then might have to treat. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, one of our medics in a recent shooting was primary. Really? Yeah, just the way the chips fell and where he ended up in, and the, you know, the guy goes right, he goes left. And he was presented. with that option. And also tactics drives medicine. So you have to have to have to have to be, in my opinion, you have to be thinking tactically before you're, it's a dual role. And shout out to

all those cats that are doing that. For sure. Because not only are they having to be up to speed on everything that the team's doing and know how the team's moving and operating and flowing, they have to have all that medical stuff. Yeah, they're a portable surgeon, basically. So, my biggest thing in this whole takeaway is if it's not a deep burning desire, if it's just a shiny penny, which I don't want to talk down to anybody or discourage anybody because I'm all about having goals. But what I might say is put that pin in the map and the roadmap for HRT and in the process of getting the EMT and then the paramedic options are going to come open. and maybe take those forks in the road as they present, and you might find that you're in a very happy place in your career and in your life,

but still have a goal that you're shooting for. Yeah. But kind of work backwards from that problem is kind of how I would play that. But also, that's a big commitment, and if it's just a shiny thing or something that sounds cool, it's going to be really hard when it's when it's dicey to make it through. And that's the thing is I don't know anything about the FBI HART tactical entry program. I'm assuming it's the medical contingent that goes along with. What I do know, there's some great people on the FBI HAT. You probably know more of the active guys.

I know some of the older guys. Phenomenal. I just want to make sure when people ask me questions about this, that it's on paper what the role is. Yeah. Versus, fuck, I could give you 30 scenarios on where that paper description is going to start to look like a little bit of mission creep both to the left and the right. And I would just hate for somebody to think that this is a clear-cut way where it's going to be always defined left and right responsibility. And it's always going to be what it looks like on paper to be put into that situation where they're presented with that choice, that could scramble your eggs, man.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, the fact that you're willing to do anything to help people on their worst day, That's awesome. Everything that you listed here is awesome. I'm not trying to discourage you at all either. Go in both eyes open and just realize like, yeah, fuck. You could get more than you bargained for. Yep.

Yeah, well said. How many police officers? This isn't going to be a total. You're going to have to make a wild-ass guess, but maybe you're, maybe you have some idea. I hear and see in the news. OAS right officer involved shootings Yeah Do you have any

I have heard the stat that less than 10% of officers ever actually use their service weapon in the line of duty Or actually maybe even clear leather And present with the intent to use it I think less than that actually end up pulling the trigger And I've heard You know people talking about

The role of police Like they shouldn't have been there in the first place You know they're out hunting people That one I'm just like Are you out of your fucking mind they're off hunting people. But when it comes to being an officer, maybe this can be just in your own personal experience.

How many of them do you think expect to be put into a position where they decide whether or not to take a life? I think every one of them should expect that and should think about it and pre-plan it because it is in the scope of reality in our job. And it doesn't matter if you're sitting at a desk at the Seattle airport as a police officer,

you may have to use deadly force, or you're in the most violent part of downtown New York where you're thinking about it all the time. For me, I've crossed that bridge right when I was younger and got into law enforcement, I knew it wasn't a desire to take life or a desire to engage in deadly force. Do you know officers that do have that desire?

I don't personally. I knew some team guys. Well, it was a very, I mean, profession of arms in the military, was a different execution than law enforcement for sure. Yeah, yeah. But I certainly know people to include myself to some degree that if they saw that threshold or opportunity, it was a metric to get across and measure yourself by, which is a total

mistake, by the way, looking back. I would think and hope that very few, if any, law enforcement officers have that desire to take a life. I would imagine from the ones that I know, it's the last thing that they want to do. Exactly. I know when I was brand new in my career and in the academy, a guy would come in and we all knew this guy just wasn't a violent gun battle. I had a lot of respect for this guy. And it was just out of just knowing this dude went to toes with some evil, and whether it was a homicide

suspect or whatever it was, and came out the winner. And I don't know, I don't know where that is, but I do know for me, every day, I know that line, I know the threshold. And I have to play through that because if I don't ever do the fire drill, like as you're a kid and the fire alarm goes off, without the fire drill, you'd never know which door to go out, never know which field to cross, never know, like, but one time repping that drill, the teacher tells you as students to get in this line, go out this door, wait for the fire trucks to get here, the true heroes, and then clear it. The true first responders. Exactly. Followed by the police, the second responders. Once they brief you on that, you're good to go.

And I feel that way for everything in my job from a person that has a flat tire and you're pulling over to help them. Like, hey, where is my car going to get smashed? Like if I set up behind here to change this tire, what's the biggest threat I'm going to experience? All the way down to deadly four situations. I'm constantly thinking that. And it's not being paranoid. but I think a little paranoia is good for your job. And like a call that comes in anonymously and I want to hang up and it's in this area and another person calls in and said, hey, there's something weird is going on.

Man, give yourself a big, a big, you know, birth a room so that you can handle any problem that comes in because if it is an ambush or if it is something that they want to burn down an officer, you're going to come in in a different way. just like you were talking about with IEDs. Like here's the road that you're going to drive down. So I'm constantly thinking that. It could take any second they could get lucky. But I'm constantly thinking of deadly force situations. And it's not because I want to engage in that. I definitely don't.

I would love to go through my career without that. Yeah. But I've been present on a few of them. And none of the dudes that were there wanted to be that guy, but they all took that oath. I said, here I am. Well, sometimes you get pushed into a corner. For sure.

I mean, if you make me choose between myself or that other person who is being an aggressor, I mean, I'm sorry. Exactly. I'm going to respond. Yeah, the officers that I know that I have the most respect for, they're there to preserve life, not take life. It's a measure of last resort for them. Here we go.

This one has nothing to do with law enforcement. I just, oh, by the way, the subject matter on the last one, here's a question for you, fuck nuggets. I was like, yes, I will read this. Oh, you should have led with that. I forgot. I would have had a whole lot more like HRT boy. Yeah.

No, damn it, I forgot. All right. Here's a little prerequisite context. I'm 24 years old and lived at home and lived at home with my parents until I graduated college and moved out at 21. Growing up, it seemed like my parents were always short on money. I accepted it as, this is how it was. And never really thought about the situation we as a family were in until I moved out. Now that I own my own home.

and do other adult shit. I understand how budget works. I've gone through the Dave Ramsey course and considered myself relatively knowledgeable about finances. Nothing about my parents' financial situation adds up. My mom still seems to struggle to afford the bills every month, even after shedding the expense of my education and feeding me. I've offered to help my mom build a budget

that may find where they can trim wasteful spending, only to be shot down and told that's none of my damn business. After talking to my older siblings, I discovered that my mom had a gambling problem when I was a small child. I've learned that she is at bingo of all places to gamble, a fucking bingo hall, his word, not mine, every single night. And according to her friends, is spending about 75 to 150 a night there. That's a pretty hefty sum over the course of each week.

Yes, it is. That's damn near a thousand bucks per week. So that's 50 in change over the course of a year. My little brother and I previously had given my mom money to help with the bills, in quotations. But I can't help but think now that we have been unknowingly funding her habit. she recently bought about $2,000 from my 15-year-old nephew's savings, claiming it was for her taxes. The poor kid is too young to understand how wrong this is and allowed her to do it. This is what I feel has crossed the line, and my siblings and I feel like something needs to be done.

To put the icing on the cake, my dad works out of town as a boat captain and has no idea what the family finances look like. He makes the money mom pays the bills. Is my mom a victim of gambling addiction, or is it a choice? How do we confront her about this and give her? her the help she may need. What do we do if we confront her and she essentially tells us to get fucked? Also a lot in this question. Yeah. I pick this because I feel like you have repeat customers on your daily shifts. Absolutely. And a lot of them, based off my conversations with you

or Aaron or other officers, it's heavily addiction based. Gambling, video games, porn. I mean, what's the line between addiction and choice? Is addiction where you no longer have a choice like you physically can't control yourself from doing it. It's a lot of steps that go into going to a bingo hall as opposed to getting on your phone and looking at a porn site or I don't know shit about drug usage, however they intend to use their drugs. But like I said, the reason I picked this one is, you know, addiction or choice for the people you guys see as the repeat customers?

Are they beyond the point of it even being a choice? Are they consumed by it? Yeah, a lot of the people are consumed by it. How many years has this been going on? He is 24. He moved out three years ago. It sounds like they've been short on money for as long as he can remember. So, yeah, I would say it's an addiction. Yeah. Yeah, gambling. I don't know anything about gambling. I bet you there's some very serious parallels, though, when it comes, I'll talk to you guys about why is there so much petty theft involved in drug usage?

Because they will do whatever they need to do to get whatever they want. So let's say you have a gambling problem and you're out of money. I could see it going exactly down the same. road of petty theft or whatever the fuck it takes to get yourself into that door so you can gamble it away and do the same shit the next day yeah yeah and all of our casinos i mean that's where a lot of our crimes are casinos yeah fucking one-armed bandits Montana casino oh man there's a lot of them here every gas station damn near yeah for sure and if they don't have it the gas station's not making any money so they put one in um bro yeah this is uh you're It's a heavy question.

It is heavy. And borrowing from the 15-year-old borrowing, taking, because that ain't coming back, from the 15-year-old cousin. You could almost use the term stealing. 100%. Although he gave it to her. It was malicious. Is he at an age where he could really say?

I'm sure he would much rather buy a dirt bike. You know what I mean? I like where your head's at. Yeah. I was going to say G.I. Joe's, fuck that. I'm thinking when I was 15, you know, saving up for something. Yeah. And yeah, to get involved, I think that, yes, there needs to be involvement, but understand it's going to come with denial, for one, and abrasive response.

Unless she's 100% ready, she knows, you know. I'm going to say you're going to get probably to the polar opposite of, fuck you, how could you say that? I don't have a problem to maybe even them breaking down and saying, I'm, thank you for doing this. I'm ready for you to help me. I don't actually know about a lot of middle ground in between those two. In my experience, not necessarily around gambling, but interventions that people have had for other reasons. Yeah. And I haven't been around for any interventions either, but I see the after effects. What are you doing next Thursday? A couple of us were just going to have lunch with you.

Yet. I'll be there. Cancel 20 minutes out. Yeah. You haven't been involved in one yet. Yeah, I definitely think that the family should step in. maybe confront the dad a little bit more. There's got to be some indicators, you know. I would certainly involve the dad in the conversation. I would not ambush your mom without at least having a conversation with your dad because his default position may be well to support his wife.

Yeah. Somebody he's been with for a very long time. And I could appreciate that, especially if there's a void of knowledge in the previous behavior. Yeah. So I would involve him in the conversation. And if there is going to be an intervention, obviously that as well. What do we do if she, if we confront him. her and she essentially tells us to get fucked.

One of my favorite sayings, don't light yourself on fire to keep somebody else warm. You have to. To me, family is, yes, of course, there's the genetic aspect, but it's less about blood and more about how they treat you and how they treat other people that are supposed to be family.

Families are fucked. I go back two generations in my family on my dad's side of the house and my dad had a very contentious relationship with his father. And he cut us, he made the decision to make a gap in that relationship. and that relationship but have nothing to do with his dad

because he knew the impact it was having on him and the impact it could have on us. And I'm glad that he did because as I got older and got that understanding of it, it's like, holy shit, we didn't want to be around that. But it's his dad.

Right. Okay. Genetically, you're right. But is he acting like his father? No. Yeah, I think he's got to be ready for that separation. Just know that the truth is going to come.

Like if he brings the truth and she reacts that way, be ready for the same. that response. Yeah. And it might take her years before she breaks down and gets help and she'll thank him for it then. Or hopefully, maybe not.

Maybe she'll never thank them. Maybe they'll never talk again. Yeah. The last piece of advice I would give is if you're going to have this confrontation, just be prepared to hold your ground. Yeah. If you go in there and she gives you the old, your number one. By that, I mean the middle finger, you need to hold that line because going back and

it's just going to refeed that addiction and her inability to be in control. And then you're probably going to have to do it later on down the road. So be sure in the course of action that you want to take before you take it and then hold steady in that conviction. Agreed. Yeah, well said. Smartest man in the room. No, that's not true. I'm sure there's a bag of garbage over there that exceeds both of our intellectual capacity.

Closing thoughts by Nelson. What else is going on? What do you got a plan for the summer? Renaissance Man of the Valley. So, I mean, you're probably picking up canoe whittling and, like, ukulele playing. I have a lot of wannabe hobbies that aren't happening. But I'll be heading to Alaska here in about eight days, I guess, catching king salmon. With 2.0?

2.0, yep. We're going to stay on a, his father-in-law's 55-foot boat and just cruise around, halibut, kings. That's a good time. It's our kind of annual trip now. And then come back to more helo training. we have some advanced rescue work that we need to do. And then I think after that I'll be put on the schedule for helicopter team.

What advice would you give to Elia listening to this about their path forward? Man, a couple things. I think like being in Wisconsin and seeing in Milwaukee and seeing some dudes just down in the dirt, like, bombed. And they're stoked that they were at Evok for a week to get off the street. Two things. one remember why you signed up because there was a honest hopefully there was like a deep burning desire to do the right thing and to catch the bully so to speak to find the evil remember that and keep that cost at the front of you and it's hard when you're department or when an agency you might feel like that you're working for doesn't have your back or the community that you serve but if you do the right thing i mean this isn't for everybody because there are plenty of cops getting strung out but keep charging and with that if if you are several years in and you hate your job and you don't want to be there there's the job that you will love that's out there but it takes a leap i mean you

got to you're not going to have the benefits and the paycheck coming in it's easy to stay but it's not necessarily the right thing it's not necessarily the right thing and in my own personal belief, I choose this job and I choose it with happiness. And tomorrow when I sign on at six in the morning, I'm stoked. I'm going back to work. But if I'm at 18 and a half years and I only have a year and a half left because Montana we have 20 year retirements, 18 and a half and I just start hating my job to the point where I just can't stand it, I'm going to find another job right there because I've never settled for this. My life isn't settling. I'm going to choose. the best route. But it's easier said than done. A lot of guys that that retirement, it dangles

a carrot in front of you. Same in the military. Yep. And you see guys stay on for seven years after they hate, hate things. And then for what? Once you get there, you realize. And nobody's benefiting from that. Either the individual you're talking about or the civilian, you know, populace that they serve. Nobody's benefiting from that. And I truly feel that if, if you are dishearted, like that deep, you know it's something that that you just don't have the passion for this career. It's not an outlier where you're going through something in your family or you have, because that stuff changes and it can affect your performance at work and all that. But if it's deep down, you just don't have the passion and the drive and the vision, choose happiness because you will

find, you will move into a job. I guarantee doors will open. You just have to take the step and that's a big step to let go of a branch before you grab another one, you know. But they call it the sunken cost fallacy. You have so much. time invested in what you've done before that you can't see the potential opportunity in front of you and it attaches you to the past as opposed to laterally lateraling and you can be 10x down the road in just a few years because you're doing something that you love and more enriching and empowering. Cool man. I'll get you back on the back on the road. Thanks for coming out. Right on. Thanks. Thank you again to Gabby for sponsoring this episode of the podcast. Get better insurance with

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