Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 228 - Scott DeFoe

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Scott DeFoe is a retired Los Angeles Police Department Officer who began his career as a Special Agent for USCS assigned to a DEA TF in San Francisco. His last assignment was as a Sergeant at Special Weapons and Tactics. Throughout his career, he worked in Patrol, Vice, Gangs, Narcotics, and K9. Post LEO service, Scott entered the world of executive protection/corporate security and eventually opened his own consulting company. Over the past 8 years, he has been retained on over 700 police practices/premises liability matters and testified as an expert in the use of deadly force, K9, pursuits, SWAT, Crisis Negotiations, Barricaded Subjects, Protests, (Less Lethal Force-40mm. 37mm, Remington 870 BB Shotgun, Taser, Neck Restraints (Carotid/LVNR, Air Choke)Baton, and OC Spray). Scott has testified/qualified as an expert over 40 times in State and Federal Court. He has been retained on multiple high-profile cases, some involve him representing the Plaintiff who is suing LE, (George Floyd, Marcus Smith, Daniel Prude, Kelly Thomas, Danny Ray Thomas, and many more).

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. You know the best way to start off your morning is actually a cup of amazing coffee. And if you want to support an amazing brand and the people behind it, go to black rifle coffee.com. And make sure you have some time when you do because let me just tell you, there's some options. If you just look across the top, they have a variety of subscriptions from coffee to merch to the E-C-S exclusive coffee subscription, which I'm pretty sure Evan hand-selects. the roasts and beans, stickers, all sorts of stuff, regular coffee right next to that apparel, they have gear, they have an about section so you can actually find out more about the organization. I highly recommend you don't get your news from memes or your information about organizations

from memes, but I digress. Bottom line, couldn't be more proud to support the brand. If you're a fan of brown water, go to blackwiflecoffee.com and get your coffee fixed in. And that's it. My guest today is Scott Defoe. It would be largely impossible for me to try to describe his background. Fortunately, he does a great job of doing so. What I can't say is that he retired from the Los Angeles Police Department. And what I'm going to describe him as is a use of force expert when it comes to law enforcement. worked in a variety of positions, patrol, vice, gangs, narcotics, K-9, to list a few. What's he been doing since he retired from the LAPD? Well, he has been retained over 700 times when it comes to cases involving law enforcement. He's testified as an expert in the use of deadly force, canine pursuits, swats, crisis negotiations, barricaded subjects, protests, less lethal munitions and their implementation.

It's been deposed over 180 times. I think you get the point. I'm going to shut up. Let Scott speak for himself. Episode 2.28 was Scott Defoe. Enjoy. Close now. Yeah, but for guys like Kyle,

and the first time I had met him, I always meet people down at the karate studio just because it's easier. But one of the most positive mental attitudes I've come across was a team leader of mine who did a phenomenal career in the military with, I'll speak for him a little bit, without a scratch.

Little bumps and bruises along the way and then does some contracting steps on the landmine. Oh, no. I'm like the first rotation afterwards. I think one was below the knee, one was above. They might have surgically moved both above the knee after. One of the most positive mental attitudes.

It makes you ashamed of yourself when you wake up like, I'm going to have a shit day. When you meet those people, they're like, life is amazing. Like, fuck. I'm such an asshole. I read that his, his Instagram, whatever his handle is, a chicks dig scars or something.

Or chicks dig scars? I mean, first off, how, How baller is that? Yeah, that's badass. He was quite the guess and really humbling. So as I mentioned, I made all thrive twins at a 23 and a 21-year-old. I'm like, before you leave the house, you're going to listen to this. You're entitled, and before you continue acting title,

and here in Huntington Beach, California, you're going to go ahead and listen to this before you complain about what you're complaining about. It'll re-center you. It'll ground you to what you think your struggles and difficulties are. when you talk to somebody who lived in a hospital for years. Right. Yeah. So I don't know where he is right now, but I hope he's off doing amazing things.

Follow him on Instagram and he's just like traveling the world, living the best life he can. I love it. As you should. That's great. Yeah, agreed. There is no way that I can encapsulate your law enforcement experience. So since I have a feeling we're probably going to be talking about law enforcement specific stuff, do your best if you can to unpack the breadth and depth because it's it was like three pages yeah pretty pretty pretty

uh pretty long and diverse as well so i'm not going to even attempt to murder that i will let you introduce yourself and maybe just hit the high points that you want to that would maybe be germane to the conversation one of yeah that explains a gray hair but um yeah i i um i uh i was introduced to police early on in life i grew up in a house that was fraught with domestic violence and me and my sisters while we waited for Bedford police part small little town in Massachusetts where I grew up but we lived in like a government subsidized section eight housing project that they put in the middle of a colonial town typically single parent families probably 80% of the police response was to we were called the village people we were kind of the outsider so and back then you know my mid 50s

is that you know unless the police saw evidence of injury like saw mom they could they you know they weren't taking them out of the house but they were I always took to the fact that they were always They were always like, take me aside because I was the only boy, older sisters, and kind of too young to really be a protector at that point to really my dad was 6, 3, 275, 280, big guy. Yeah, I've been in and out of prison. So I'd had a unique initial response at law enforcement, you know, Secret Service did the search warrant of the house and cut up. He was involved in counterfeiting some other stuff. How would your dad respond to the law enforcement that they showed up? Well, typically my dad was a big guy, and he had a reputation.

He was from like, you know, back then, you know, he had some connections with people that were organized. He got almost indicted for RICO, which is the federal. Tax and organized crime, like the continuing enterprise type being involved with certain crime families on what he was doing because he went to federal prison. He would in Danbury, Connecticut. And he would, my dad had a drinking problem. So my dad, you met dad on day one, he's passed away. But if you met him on day one and he was drinking, asshole.

Angry, big asshole. That kind of a guy that you would, you know, a fighter guy. Day two not drinking, which definitely wouldn't be the next day, but say six months down the road. Great, great dude. Like good guy. I proud you. Always say nice things. But you know, the drinking kind of ran that ran its course. And so, and then mom had a drinking problem for a period of time. So they were kind of enablers for a period of time, right? When one doesn't want to give up the substance to the other. So that was my first experience. And I remember there's just one police officer named Tom McNini in Bedford Mass. Mind you, small little

Tom, like very similar to Karen Kelspell, reminded me of that as when I, when the Uber driver dropped me off, is that he kind of took me aside and was kind of like, hey, things are going to be okay. And it was always him I reflected back on, like, hey, what I want to do when I, you know, no one ever, my family ever went to college, right? There was college wasn't an equation. My two older sisters, it was kind of like, they did whatever they could do

to get out of that environment as quick as they did, one, six years old or one three. So soon as they were 18 or less, yeah, yeah, southbound through the houses, right? So I'm kind of a last man standing sitting there saying, okay. And then I got bigger. And then it became a point where I kind of would challenge a couple times. I'm like, hey, that's not happening here today. And I remember one time, I said, hey, you know, why don't you pick on me? And he, we lived in an apartment.

So it's like a slide and, you know, a screen door. And he kind of looked left and I'm like, oh, shit. He heard me. So, dude, I've never been accused of being fast. You were in that moment? Yeah, like Olympic speed. I was gone down the street, Southbound once again. My mom said he ran right through that screen door.

My dad never put hands on me, but right through that screen because you couldn't catch me that. He would have that day. Yeah. And she was able to lock it and then call the police. But back then it was in a post really, you know, the OJ Simpson case, even as a young house, unless you saw evidence of injury in the sense of it could connect the dots at the time,

police houses weren't required to take you to jail. Now, if you complain of injury, you're gone for DV type, type domestic violence-related thing. So I get into it. I feel like the balance would probably be better somewhere in between. those two. Yeah, well, yeah, at least do an event, but the law didn't allow them to do much. It was like a battery not committed in your presence. So it didn't really allow you and I, you know, you, you punch me tonight at the bar and now I've got a black eye and now you,

the police come who, oh, it's a mutual combat. They're not going to really do anything. Do you want to press charges? No, I don't. Do you want to press charges? No, I don't kind of one, two, three break and you walk away. Huh. But I, um, I get into Northeastern University undergrad. I figured, okay, I'm not good math and science. So criminal justice it sounds about right. And so I told mom, I said, hey, I got into Northeastern. You know, it wasn't a college plan like it is with my kids, right? You know, pass a class, fellow class. It was like, okay. And back then, Northeastern is $30,000 a year. So I said, by the way, I joined the Army Reserves and on my first airplane ride will be Tuesday when they picked me up

the recruiter over curbside. So that was kind of, so I figured, okay, the Army Reserves offered money for college. Let me jump on that chip. So I did that chip for six months. But I went to Northeastern. They had a cooperative education, which means that you, go to school six months after your sophomore year and if your grade point average is high enough, you can go ahead and apply to be like an intern in Washington, D.C. Either through customs or ATF or DEA, primarily customs and DEA were the two.

So my university, Michigan, Michigan State were the three main schools. So I applied and I got selected and I went down there, I think my sophomore junior year for six months and then I came back to school and we'd go to like North Virginia Community College at night to try to cut down on tuition expense as much cheaper than Northeastern.

and then the second go around, the second six months. And if you do that for a year, you get hired on competitively as an agent. So when I graduated, a guy I worked for in Washington, D.C., like me and this guy named Dan Eckhart, both kind of fit younger guys and wanted that to bring that kind of to the San Francisco office. So I got hired, we went to Fletsey, right after graduation. I went to Fletsey about a month or two after that. What year is this?

1988. Okay. So I went to Fletsey and a bunch of us that I all hung with and drank with and all the guys went to college with, and we kind of did our rabble rousing, doing our stuff back then. We all, about six of us ended up going at the same time, which is cool. So we kind of transitioned that party from Boston down to Glen County, Georgia, where we went. So I went down to Georgia, and then I went out to San Francisco.

And right when I got there, I was signed to Drug Enforced Administration's organized crime drug task force. So they took me, I was employed by custom service as a special agent, but they put me in OSEDA if it's called. It's a multi-adency type task force. Work there for about a year and I'm working with San Francisco major narcotics and I'm like and we're doing these 80 hour weeks now mind you I'm a G S7 making 30 grand a year Surprise you're making that much as a GS 7 and I think that was with cost of living and the whole thing in and I'm still even though the army paid out some of the loans dude I'm still 20 grand in right so we're renting our furniture from court me and this guy Danny from Michigan State We're kind of living in Foster City and barely making it happen. We had a take home G ride which is good for the clubs at the time you could get out and you know date in that thing with the styrogg they'd give us we didn't know how to shoot in the trunk, you know, the kind of stuff as a typical fed.

Well, like, what the hell is that thing? Loaded with bullets and fire, press away. But so I worked Ocededef, and then I realized after like a few months, I'm like, San Francisco major narcotics, like, hey, we're going to do it in surveillance again. And I'm like, really? You know, I want to go with the date. And it's time and a half. You know, municipalities, every hour after 40 or after 8, you're getting time

and a half. So there was, it was money generated. I'm like, and I'm talking to these detectives. Oh, yeah, I made 150 last year, 140, 170. I'm like, that's better number than 30. I'm not smart in math, but I can, I figure that went out pretty quick. Yeah. So worked a case that emanated in, in the Bay Area, money drug, money laundering, drug smuggling type case, ended up in jewelry district downtown in L.A.

Talked to a couple of detectives, major narcotics, did some search weren't down there. And LAPD SWAT had done the warrants. I'm like, wow, I'm pretty enamored with that whole thing, what was going on down there. So I applied to LAPD back in 19, at the end of 1989. So there's only a customer about a year, year and a half. Yeah. But I had to go to their full academy. I was just going to ask you if the Fletsey counted for anything.

No, it didn't count for anything at all. There was me and another guy named John King, and John King just passed away. There was a guy that came from DEA. We came around the same time. John came from the LA office. I came from San Francisco. So we were kind of people looking and saying, why are feds leaving federal service to so-called with a pretty business card and a nice title to go to municipality?

It was money-driven, right? It was really, if you look at it, it was money-driven in the sense where you're going to be working dope most of your whole career. And granted, you can promote and then you're going to Washington. And if you ever want to have a family to bounce around you, as you know, you're going to have to get, you know, to make GS-13 or 14. You may get an out-of-shay job overseas. Some pretty cool stuff if you want to do that. But I was more like if I'm going to settle down, I'm going to want, you know, growing up with a single-parent family, I'm going to want to be at the T-ball games and the AYSO games. I'm going to want to be at all that stuff that no one was kind of at for my

stuff. So that was a motivating factor. But so I went to LAPD Academy first assignment out there. I was my class leader so I could pick what division I wanted to go to. And everyone's like, hey, if you want to really know the score down here, you should probably go in South Central L.A. And back then, 77 division, which that in Watts is called Southeast Division, two main cell central divisions. And at the time, I went there after the six-month training with the Academy, I went down and I worked in 77th. In 77th, it didn't look like the housing project. It didn't have the high tenement buildings. It was manicured lawns.

It was kind of quiet. It was during the day. And I'm working graveyards. At that time, we worked through, you know, eight-hour shifts. We weren't on the 3-12 and 4-10. And I remember loading up the car, like, you know, it was like 1,500 hours, 600, whatever. I had this, I'm like, hey, what was that? He goes, oh, that's automatic gunfire.

I'm like, oh, super. So. No big deal. No big deal. And so that year alone, my first year, there was 172 murders in a six-square-mile division. What? Yeah, 170. And we came in second, mind you.

We're rivaling for a belt buckle. Rampart division, you may have heard. that division. There were some scandals that went along in Rampart, we may get into that. But Rampart division was a parallel division. They had like 172. They beat us by three or four, and some guys were actually like, you know, a sport in the beltbock, one 87 division of the year. Like they won something. I don't know if that's a good title to be competing for. Right. And those are the ones that died. So mind you, every single call. Every single call was, and back then, being from New England, I'm like, wait a minute, I'm thinking colors, bloods versus

Crips, you know, that's what I'm thinking. Right. And you get down and it's like, no, no, no, The two biggest gang robberies are rolling 60s, eight-tray gangsters, both are Crip gangs, both in 20 blocks away, basically, that permeate in that area, Crip on Crip. So every single call, you're going call to call. And it's boy down, boy down, boy down,

drive-by shooting. Back then, there wasn't a moratorium on drive-bys by the gang. So there would be drive-by car to cars. You'd be innocent people. You know, you're seeing these kids, great matter around the floor. I mean, for the first exposure, I kind of looked at myself after a couple months.

I'm like, what am I doing? I went from, you know, kind of house cat to alley cat, like, like kind of overnight. White collar to blue collar real fast. Yeah, real quick. Where you're not looking at the guy up in Marin County that's smuggling marijuana, you know, as you follow him around his porch. In his schooner? Yeah.

He followed him on his porch to and from the, you know, whatever he's going to, to some, you know, to some screaming mom on the side of the street. Yeah. That's, you know, howling because, you know, her boys on the ground right there, right? And nonsensical related violence. So after you. with LAPD didn't have to bounce so they bounced out of the actually out of the bureau so then I went over to the Northeast Division which they'll buy Darjeet Stadium but area so permeated

with gangs not near the volume of what 77th is but they make you leave the bureau which is probably good because if you went from 77 to watts you talk about post-traumatic stress it's going to it's building at that point because this is what you're exposed to especially as you younger you know most these guys are 21 22 a lot of these kids moms so packed them a sacalan's with their name on it now they're working down in in cell central L.A and having no idea of what South Central LA is, right? Yeah, they're building the foundation for sure. Right, right from there.

What could come. Yeah. So went over to Northeast, work like patrol, work gangs, we're special problems, work like a mid-level Mexican mafia task force. We're monitoring like mid-level gang activity, playing clothes type deal. So good gig, a little bit more autonomy to do more investigative stuff. From there, I went over to Vice, which is like a police officer three, like a corporal, which is prostitution bookmaking and gambling over in like the Wilshare.

So picking up prostitutes on the street, working in the Hollywood area, working bathrooms, mail on, you know, that type of environment where you're, you know, you're working in, you know, in-call sex clubs, all of that, that, you know, kind of dark, seedy type stuff that happens after hours that some people and myself included think that maybe not even be, should be criminalized. It's kind of, you know, that contract that you have with the girl on the street. Make the choice that you want to make, yeah. Yeah.

Well, the thing is, hey, listen, I'm going to do something for you for 30, 40 bucks. And it's going to take about me, me taking you to Mortons for dinner and doing all, let's cut to the chase, let's do it in exchange, other than the plight and all of the stuff that happens with that stuff that happens on the streets, right? As long as it is consensual, I don't have an issue with that. Right. I think that if you make a lot of that, what you're talking about, illegal, it's burning up a lot of the bandwidth of officers like yourself at that time period that could have directed

it elsewhere. Right. The point being, though, it has to be at least consensual. If that's what you want to do with yourself, not here to judge, it's when it's, non-consensual, but I have the issue. Or that you live in maybe the area and now you look out your window and you're doing homework with your 10 and 11-year-old in the room and people having a car date in front of your house. Probably not the best.

And then the condoms on the things. So that was kind of the community perspective response and the nexus to drugs, right? So every one of those fraught with either homelessness drugs, pimping was still big back. And then at that time where it was much more structured. And then while working vice got ambush, got hurt. I was out of work for a bit based on the ambush. Thinking once again, playing close, playing car, rival gang neighborhood, a couple guys tagging. They see our car maybe think it's a rival gang driving like a 78 Buick, right?

White dude with a beard, not fooling anybody, right? Kind of thinking maybe a cop, maybe not. And they just open up in the car. So I get in the mouth, get out, return fire, you hit in the leg. Yeah. What caliber? Shotgun around through the windshield, fortunately 32 caliber. So fortunately it didn't, the old glass of a car that hit me at the upper mouth.

A piece of the 32 came in, came up under here. Put a good decent size hole. Cedarsan, I did a pretty good, decent job at it. You know, my vain ass looked in the rearview mirror and thinking, okay, this isn't look good. That's the first thing I'm thinking, this isn't good, right? So rather than do what I should have done, looking back hindsight's 2020, and obviously dealing with that after the fact of, you know, driving. down and recreating this in my head for months after the fact. Instead of driving through that ambush to minimize that threat, I think it's a great idea.

Okay, let me just put it in park, go to the back of the car and then address. Now, I'm just seeing gunfire emanating. We'd be between five and eight shooters, they said, whatever every homicide said. So the car is getting pepper. We get a car hit like 30-something times. So as I'm driving, as I'm going to the back of the car, I realize that the stick shift, upper column, wasn't quite all the way in park. Yes.

It was a neutral. Yes. Yeah, it's great choice. Sometimes cover moves. Yeah, and it did. It moved on me as I'm coming around the back, and the 45 round went right through the middle of my left leg. Oh, shit.

Lower calf. So that kind of ended that night. So became a big victim on the crime report that night, which, once again, didn't do well with my personality, probably at the time, and for months or a long time after that, right, as we moved on in our career. So it got laid up a little bit, went to see. And I had some issues with infection because I was wearing jeans.

So I think like maybe a month after I'd got out, my wife's like, hey, you know, I don't know if there should be some green stuff coming out of that hole in your leg. I'm like, that's not good. That's probably not good. So I went over there and they actually like very went up to Loma Linda. We were living at Ranch Coogamonga at the time, which is like 45 miles east of L.A. Because that's the only place you could afford to buy house, right? Yeah. Buy the five bedroom for 160,000.

So we were, so they looked and they went over to Kaiser because I had Kaiser at the time. I'm like, now we need to get you up. Like Code 3 up there. You have some gangrene, some stuff in your legs. So I went back up there. At the time, they'd still have to do some surgeries on the mouth to take their... Because the round still was up there. They wanted to wait until the part of it was cut up the open of the mouth and just drop it into a bucket.

And then the same with the 45 stayed in the leg. But after it had... It festered. They waited out some of the stuff, but they kept it in there for probably like six, seven months. So it worked itself around. Eventually, they just cut. I'm preaching to choir of Herbert. Cut and then they ended up taking it out.

but it was off not a whole long I mean I came back to work still with it was kind of funny because when I came back to work I had a kind of like a cage on my mouth right and and I had you know at the time you know I'd lost a couple teeth in a bar fight back in Boston when I was even my really stupid days of being a bouncer back when I was going to college so so they these things were they had to do some work up there at the time so I had like a temporary So my front grill came out. So great. For prostitute, dude, you pull up and you got no front grill.

They're thinking that's not a cop. Yeah, 100% not a police officer. He has got a dental plan. So instead of saying, hey, show me your junk, take your stuff out, tell me you're not, show me you're not a cop type thing. It was like, hey, baby, what do you want? I'm like, yeah, I have $20. Get on in.

Boom, sex money, overt act, prostitution. You're on your way. Yeah. Right? Because it was good. So did that. The lieutenant that I worked, he was a sergeant at the time was super critical of my shooting, not the fact of me getting hurt.

And that kind of went into roll calls about, hey, Mr. Tactics, Mr. Fitness dude ends up getting hurt, you know, kind of like really saying some disparaging things, but it resonated as a young officer, you know, well with me. It's like, hey, man, because I didn't get any rounds off that night, right? I'm not going to fire. When I went to the back of the car to return fire, I knew where the gun fires in, but it was in a residential neighborhood. Yeah. It was on what. Backrop matters. Yeah. And so I would have been firing indiscriminately into a, my partner, once again, they talk about a lot of times people say police officers are lying. My partner, I didn't even know.

at the time had fired two rounds from inside the car. So over Cedar Sinai and Robbie Homicide back of the day when they, you know, you could come up with, you know, six-pack photos with the picture circled and say, anybody looked familiar to. You know, he's like, hey, how many rounds did your partner fire? I'm like, dude, my partner didn't fire his weapon from inside the car. I'm like, no, he actually did. I'm like, I'm telling you, I bet my house on he didn't fire, once again, going through that. And I'm sitting next to this guy with no air pro on.

And he, you know, fires a couple rounds. He's probably carrying a 9mm, I think, what or 45, whatever he's carrying. and didn't hear a thing. Well, not that I was lying, like a lot of times in these police cases, as I do as an expert. Auditory exclusion is a real thing, especially if the rounds are incoming as well, too,

and depending on the proximity of, I mean, I don't know if people know this, the working end of a rifle is quite loud. Right. I would say even louder than the, you know, by the working end, I mean the end that the projectile comes out of. It's probably louder in close proximity

than the person holding it to them because the explosion is directed at them. Yeah, I could totally see how they wouldn't. Yeah. Or you wouldn't have heard or known that your partner shot. But today, if I gave that statement today, you're looking at perjury charges. I mean, with the atmosphere of the department. Even if you, I mean, even if you're giving your account of what happened and you truly didn't know that your partner shot, they still try to hit you with a...

No, they wouldn't hit you. The department wouldn't hit you. But the media and the anti-police theme would hit you. Hey, he must have been lying. What do you mean you were sitting in a car? You know, I will get into my work as an expert. but, you know, even I've been deposed 183 times as an expert. It means I sat in that chair recently as last week, and that comes up.

Well, hey, wait a minute, Mr. Ruffold. The bar fight always comes up from 31 years ago because that was pretty colorful. But that was part, not when I get my teeth, but that was an off-duty fight when I had like 13 months in LAPD. So I've been part of the system. But as I tell my three young men, I'm like, brother, listen, whatever you do now, it may follow you. It may follow you much more than you want. Especially if there's a booking number associated with it. Yeah.

And you're a sworn law enforcement officer, and it's two months after Rodney King, and it gets in the LA Times. They're going to produce that article at every one of your depositions, which they do. So I've got some, you know, beta mail, you know, never played a contact sport. Hey, Mr. Defoe, you involved in a fight 31 years and I'm like, yes, sir, I was. My roommate at the time was a former recon Marine out of Pendleton. And his three recon guys had just got out. He couldn't get the day off from work. He said, hey, you want a chaper on my buddy?

He's the Marine Corps? And I'm like, that was a $30,000. No. That was a $30,000 mistake because that's what legal fees cost to defend that. So we went out and we got into it. And like if we get in, you and I walk to get coffee after this and some guy squared up with it, we've grown up with both of us. That was kind of the mantra.

Yeah. Try to break it up and got involved in it. And that was it. Took responsibility. Went to my board of rights, except for full responsibility and move on from that. But to get back to the career, I, I, um, because of what that sergeant was saying, kind of disparaging things. I mean, at the time, I would drive, yeah, probably had a couple drinks of me, drive from

Ranch Cucamonga to Washington and Second Avenue. It doesn't mean anything to you, but it's, you know, down north of USC, right in that area over there and drive that route in my Mustang to see if I could have done this, because I was so self-critical, you know, like, hey, could I, because I was thinking shit, I could have got my partner killed. That was the biggest thing. I wasn't worried about myself, but with the trajectory. the rounds. I mean, there were rounds coming right. I mean, a round went through his leather jacket.

Yeah. We were playing clothes. He got right through there. So I, that didn't work well with me in the sense of the stress associated with the comments. Um, so much so when I got back to work within 30 days after that, I had a traffic collision, two actually. I'd never been in one before. In a black and white. Yeah. One on the way to behavioral sciences for the follow up for the shooting getting shot. So on the way, I tell my part, I'm like, hey brother, put us code six, which means put us in route to behavioral sciences on South Broadway downtown LA. So he's the new guy. I'm a training officer now and he's like messing around. So I just say, you know, give me the damn thing. And I go to do

that and I look up the car in front of me, it stopped. Yeah, the entire front end's gone on the police car. That's when I've always scratched my head on when it comes to the texting and driving laws. Not that anybody should be able to do that. But I have driven past many a police officer that's riding a fucking Steinbeck novel on their portable laptop. Paying far less attention than I might might be doing to write back like LOL. Right. Right. Yeah, on my way. Got it. Got it. Good. Lights and sirens in the batch. I'm like, oh my God.

Yeah. Yeah. It's quite the gift. But unfortunately in L.A., we work with two officers at a time. So you're not a single man, like maybe out here or there would have been a lot more traffic collisions. There are often onesies out here for sure. Yeah. So I go back as a training officer now. So I leave vice because I'm not dealing with the sergeant anymore. I'm either going to smash him or something's bad. It's going to happen. I just know my temper.

And so I go back and now I'm training officers out of the kid. So within the first 30 days of being back to work, two administratively disapproved pursuits, which means shut it down, negative. Oh, yeah, I'm going after the person, right? A couple of use of forces, batons, I mean, good ones with impact weapons. The collisions and an officer of all shooting. Shot and killed a guy in an apartment who had taken a gun out of his pocket, the long-drawn-out type domestic deal, came around brandished and had a lethal force,

all within 30 days after it. So probably I can be mindful of what I say right now But probably Emotion driving today And kind of my personal and professional life at that time Over a culmination of period of time I guess over

Was the ambush that you were in your first time Being on the receiving end of gunfire In a situation like that? Yeah that was for other than hearing I mean when you're working in areas like 77 You hear it's in close proximity Are they firing at you? No I know

But in that respect Yeah that was the first time experiencing that for the first time can really scramble people's eggs. Not only the experience itself, speaking from personal experience, it can make you question your own abilities. I totally understand driving back in the car and replaying it through this. I did the same thing for my work-related injury overseas as well. What could I have done differently? What did I miss?

And I've landed on, and obviously after talking with quite a few people, that were there that night. I didn't really miss anything. You know, if you go to Vegas and watch somebody roll a heater at craps, at some point they're going to get a seven. But it, my confidence took a huge hit

when I got hurt overseas. I remember very, very specifically the first door that I entered for real after that. And it was on my mind. Like, I hope I can still fucking do this. So I get it, for sure. I can understand the change in mentality. Yeah, I mean, I remember the first

just the car hearing a car backfire when I first got back to work I'm almost lost my shit I mean I literally was like kind of antsy in that respect and then I was already I know you got me pegged but already a kind of an OCD I wouldn't put me my wife would call me narcissistic yeah that might that might fall within that yeah yeah but so what it came to it to live in it it created that more of a prisoner perfectionism yeah right so more let me work out more let me dry practice more let me go to the range more after me let me look at this more let me and it was always always more to try to offset the inadequacy feeling from that incident. And so, but fortunately, and it was once again, you go to behavioral sciences after the fact,

like all officers do. And they come up and they say, Andy, how are you doing today? Pretty good. You get involved in the shooting? Yeah, I did. Are you drinking? No. Are everything good at home?

Life, everything? Everything's great. Any issues? No. One, two, three, break. You're out the door. Which means that after an incident, either critical incident, you must go. So I'm not going in and saying, by the way, I'm not sleeping.

I drank about 12 Sam Adams yesterday. You know, I'm working out three hours a day rather than two. I'm doing all these other, I'm driving to Washington in second ab at two or three o'clock in the morning. I'm having, you know, all of these self-doubt issues. I want to, I want to smash the sergeant talking smack about me in the roll call setting in front of the people. Now it's getting back to me. They're not asking those questions because you're not giving those answers. Because if you say yes to any one of those, you're a rubber gun squad.

You're on the desk. That's what I was going to say. What would they do at that time period if somebody had said those things? Well, no one would. And if they did come back, and that's the problem with a lot of, you know, officer suicides or officers careers that get worse because of the stress associated with the career, no one grabs them because, and I know behavioral sciences section from LAPD, they try to do the right thing.

They're only going off of what you give them. But you know if you give them any more than what they're asking in the sense of yes, no, no, because that's called a director deferral means you must go after shooting. then you're going to be put on the rubber gun squad, which means you're going to eat a B. And it's not just being put on the rubber gun score, which means you're going to take your pistol and put you an administrative job,

but you'll never get back. It's the fear of not looking good or looking bad. It's that fear that you're going to now be perceived as being weak. If you sit and say, hey, listen, I'm not doing well. What do you mean you're not doing well? I haven't known a dozen guys. I've known a dozen guys that have killed themselves in law enforcement, like personally knew, which is a lot.

I mean, one's a lot, but knowing guys you work with in the question, if you roll back the tape, it all started with something. Yep. You know, because you're going through the divorce. Now you got money problems. You got work problems.

So if you have money, if you have home and work problems, you got real problems. Yeah. If you can balance one of the two, you can balance the home life with work life, you might be okay. But when two are kind of falling apart

at the same time, you've got some, you've got some significant issues. For alcohol to mix with that too. and you had a serious problem on your hands. Yeah, I remember when I was listening to Marcus and Eric Capone's podcast of yours and she said something. I had this crazy beard. I had going on for about a year and a couple weeks ago I listened to an old podcast,

your podcast and they were on it. And she had talked about his behavior at a period of time of the podcast. And dude, I literally stop it out. It's like I'd heard that just from my wife. It was, it was very, it was. Oh, probably him just kind of staring out of the window. Verbatim, not smiling. not laughing, angry, uptight, you know, lining the shoes up, all the stuff that, to the point

of, yeah, being detached is kind of, and that happened, you know, over a period of time, right? So when I heard it, I was like, I was, you know, trying to take that funny beard off my face and I stopped, I literally, like, stopped. I was, foreign, it was an amazing podcast for what they do, but I was like the wow factor of someone, different career, completely different set of experiences, but the parallel was so close of who he was, from what I heard and who I was based on my feedback from people closest to me. Those worlds, I think the world of, one of the things I, it kind of sucks from, it doesn't suck. What would be the best way to describe it?

It's hard for me to deal with sometimes. I'm very appreciative of people who want to thank military members. You know, thank you for your service. And they go out of their way to do so. And oftentimes, I think the first responder, world, that whole ecosystem, whether you are driving an ambulance or working in the back or a firefighter or a law enforcement officer, the worlds are so incredibly similar. And I actually think the first responder world is more difficult because I had a pretty hard on and off time.

Like when I got on an airplane and left the country, probably good to get my headspace dialed in because I'm clocking in. But I got to have a flight home and I could clock out and I could decompress. And some people did to office. obviously a better job of this than others and some didn't do any. But for the LEO world, I mean, it's 24-7. The cops that I know, they're always cops. It's not like if they're off-duty and something happens, they're not going to step in to do the right thing. And the stress and the weight of it, it just adds up, it adds up over time. And I think that, that is invisible to a lot of people. And I don't know why. But the worlds are, they're defined by their similarity.

not by their differences. That muted emotional state, the suicides, you know, in the military are astronomically higher from a mathematical percentage, but they match very similar to, I mean, firefighters have a higher suicide rate as well. I mean, as you know, I don't know. I wish as a society we would put more emphasis into maybe sharing the love a little bit more broader. Yes, it's great to wear, you know, the American flag and the camouflage uniform, but fuck, you're surrounded by people who are serving. your local community every single day, and a lot of the times it seems like they're forgotten. Right.

It's a tough one for me. It's tough. I mean, you've 800,000 law enforcement officers in the United States, right? You got, you know, 17,000 plus law enforcement agencies. If you tell that now, wait a minute, there's 17, yeah, there's 17,000 longs. Ranging from four officers to like, you know,

you look at LEPD to, I mean, New York PD to 38,000 or more. You know, LEPD around 10,000. So there's quite a disparity there. And how many of those, and granted, I work in the police expert side, and we'll get into that, but how many of those do you hear about. You hear about a tenth of one percent. And you only generally hear about them on certain generally use of force. Well, you only hear about it's general use of force when there's a racial

component to it. And I'll get into that in a second. When there's not a racial component to the use of force, I will tell you you've not heard of any of the cases I've worked on. Oh, I would, I would agree with that. Yeah, without having hearing of half. If I had five civil rights attorneys in the room right now and I say, hey, have you heard of this case down in Harris County, Texas? It'd be like, No. Well, the case in Harris County, Texas, I won't mention any names. It's still in litigation, but the worst police, I've been retained on 400 police shootings in the United States. And African American decedent, mentally ill, no call for service with a man with a gun, mentally ill, homeless guy in traffic, the guy who would wash your windows or asked for money, that guy on the medium. Yep. That's the guy. no prior knowledge of this guy being a violent guy, none of it. A guy pulls up to the area of the medium. The guy asks him for money, tells a guy to get away from his truck.

The guy hits the guy's truck, the guy gets out, they're about to look like they're going to get involved in a fight. Officer pulls up, sees that. The guy in the truck drives away now. Now it's just the decedent, the mentally ill guy, and the officer. The mentally ill guy walks towards the officer. Those are your facts, but the facts are even worse now because his pants are down to his knees. Because he's not wearing a belt. He's mentally homeless.

Yeah. So the officer felt that it was reasonably objective to take his pistol out and shoot him once in chess and kill him. Those are the facts. You've never heard of the case. No. And you never heard of the case. And granted, and mind you, the same attorney that had Maddingling's case, the Breonna Taylor case, Ben Crump, is on that case. And that, he's co-counsel.

I've never worked directly for him. but he's co-counsel on that case. That shooting, the officer, is African-American. Now, I don't care about the person's race. I don't care. But that didn't drive the media to now say this was a racially based, racely motivated shooting. It was just a bad shooting. Yeah.

It was a bad shooting. It wasn't reasonable based on totality of the circumstances. If you sat down with 50, use of force experts, and they were honest, and they didn't fly the flag, and said, you saw that video, it's on video, by the way. You saw body one camera. You saw the video. Do you think that officer's actions were reasonable, objectively reasonable, which is the standard. There's a 1989 Supreme Court standard called Graham v. Connor, where my actions reasonable based on the totality of the circumstances, your level of resistance, the severity of the crime. That's typically what it's looked at, right?

And was this incident rapid tense and uncertain? Was it such that that person had to stop that person's behavior based on what they were doing? Right. So the person is just, everyone's good with the night stalker. Richard Ramirez, you see that dude. He comes out of the car and he runs. Shoot him in the back. Shoot him in the back of the head.

We're good with that. We applaud. That's called Terry v. Ohio, right? It's fleeing felon. We're good with that. Why? Because he's going to commit an atrocious violent felony if he gets away. We're all good with that.

We're okay with that. But same guy gets runs out of the stolen car. You don't know him other than the stolen car. There's no weapon because maybe it's one of my three boys. That's with the bad kid that night gets out and runs southbound through the houses because he knows I'm going to put my foot up his ass. And he does not want to get caught by the police. and he runs and he gets shot on the back of the head, I'm going to sue, right?

And there's no doubt, right? As a dad and if any other law enforcement guy says they're not going to sue, they're... As a reasonable citizen, you would. He'd sue, right? So we expect the level of policing to be better than that. But that's the anomaly. That's the one, that's the cases that you don't. That's 800,000 officers with millions of interactions.

And of those fractions of those million interactions, not to say that the officer needs to do better, if in fact there's a gap there. But at the same time, it's such a small percentage. So getting back to the career, I went from there. I made detective. I worked, you know, robbery, homicide, went to narcotics group. Worked as like, you know, plain clothes type thing back, you know, with the goatee that wasn't fooling anybody.

That guy, yeah, slipped back hair and the goatee thinking that you got it pegged. And everyone's like, yeah, you're damn, please. Yeah. Yeah. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah, you're not kidding anybody here. So, and then I made Sergeant, went to East L.A. worked as a watch commander system,

where it's patrol like you typically, you always go back to patrol. And then I ran a gang unit, 16 officer gang unit in East LA, busy, getting taken care of it. I bet. Very good dudes, good hardworking young officers, doing the right thing. Working, you know, East LA, Hollenbeck is permeated.

It's fraught with nothing but gangs. There's no break. Like in 77th, even areas with the crime, there's still some nice little pockets, Hollenback corner to corner. It's run, all run by Mexican Mafia. So Mexican Mafia has the stronghold of all of those gangs. over there. To this day.

100%. Run it. The Mexican Mafia runs everything from the prison. So they run all of the street gangs, activity, taxing money collection, all of that from... No shit. It's all done from Incustody. Every bit of direction is done from within custody. It's not done. No, granted, they may Mexican Mafia guys on the streets, but majority of your players are all in Pelican Bay or they're in some major prison where they're going to be there forever. It's all run from the prisons. How do they run it? Do they pass in... Is it letters? Is it just cell phones? Cell phones, correspondence. Yeah. They're...

How those fuckers get in cell phones? By deputies typically or guards, unfortunately. Unfortunately, you read about the paper. Somebody got a nice Christmas present in an envelope. Yeah, the chick fort put it up her, you know what, to come into the holding room. So, yeah, they're running, other than you hear like MS-13, Matasavutruc, the Salvadorian gang that was born in bred in Rampart Division in MacArthur Park in the late 80s. That's the reason why when I mentioned Rampart Division beat L.A. 77 Division in the homicides,

because that's when Matasavistrucho was born in bread, and they weren't going, they were big enough that they weren't going along with the Mexican Mafia's rules on you're going to pay, which means like every shod, every vending cart in L.A., everyone who's selling hot dogs and hamburgers on the streets, especially in the rampart area, all of them, every one of them must pay the Mexican mafia.

They're all paying. They're all, they're all, they're all paying tax. And if you don't, they're going to kill you. There's no, there's no gray area on that. So the guy that's hustling fruit, the fruit stand is paying some scumb bag. Yeah, some scumb bag little. gang member every Friday. Yeah. Fuck. With 100% certainty.

So from there, I went, I was going to grad school at the time. I figured I'd slow down a little bit. And I went inside, worked, left there, went to work for the chief's office. One of those jobs, it literally was like, from my personality. It was good for family at the time. Our twins were born and they were super preemie, a couple pounds, two, three pounds each. And they were in NICU for weeks, breathing issues and had some issues going along the way. with it's typical with premature kids.

Worked the Rampart Corruption Task Force. That was a task force as a sergeant I worked at that focused on. There was a, they thought it was much more widespread. There were officers within Rampart. There were committing bank robberies, murder for hire, planning guns, planting evidence. There's a group of four, and I knew the guys. I worked around them.

They all came on around the same time as I did. And, yeah, they, they, we did a major investigation. LAPD, not a corrupt department. Not like you hear from maybe some corruption, maybe east, maybe like in New York or not bashing any agencies here or Chicago where you hear might be more widespread.

LAPD will use force, as you know. That's a pretty type A, use force, take care of business type department, but if you stole as much as $5, there'd be 50 officers that would go outside to line up against a testify against you. I testify against you. So that's kind of not tolerated at all.

So not to say it's tolerated any other agency, That's kind of LAPD's mantra. So they wanted to make sure that Rampart did not spread any further. They were stealing pounds of dope out of the evidence lockers. They were using guns, planning guns. And it really came down to one supervisor over there was kind of setting the temperament like, hey, Andy, listen, brother, Officer Smith and Jones over there, yeah, they got me a gun last night.

And you didn't. And so if you get me a gun tonight, you'll get to go home at 2,100 or 2,200, time for you to get to the bar, right? But if not, you know, kind of that kind of external pressures were put on people to do things that kind of violate maybe the Fourth Amendment, right? Yeah. You know, kind of like, yeah, probably shouldn't do that. But, and so what happened is it created an atmosphere among some officers is that we're going to do things with impunity over here. Yeah, they were above the law.

Yeah, they were coming. David Mack was committing bank robberies. A blood gang member from the start ran college track from Compton. Those names may come in when you hear about like the killing. of Notorious BIG, the nexus to some stuff about Tupac Shakur. There's some link with Shug Knight. There's a lot of that going on within those mix of people. So there's some connections to some of the gang culture with some of the people from within LAPD at that time.

How did LAPD deal with that supervisor once they figured out what he was doing? They didn't fire him as they should have. And I'm always curious because the SEAL community dispel. dispel some thoughts for people. It's not full of 100% good people. And one of the things that the Seale community is not great at is dealing with the individual directly. There's a lot of instances. And I'm not talking bank robberies.

I'm talking shit leadership. They'll kick the can down the road, which doesn't solve the problem. And it actually can build problems elsewhere. So I was curious as to why, or not why, but what LAP did once they, Well, that analogy is probably what that does, let's everyone else know that you're entitled, right? There's a sense of entitlement now because people can act with impunity

without any consequences, right? So they didn't do a whole lot with him. There was a couple sergeants, him one in particular. He recently passed away. I'm not going to disparage him. But the officers rightfully, and they realized that it wasn't widespread. And the people that, and they actually,

there was an overreach. There were some people, actually, one of my classmates that, you know, accused him to doing some stuff. And literally he was going to go to a board of rights. And fortunately, he had a ticket to Disneyland where he was with him. with his daughter and it's like, boom, here we go.

And it was, but for him keeping his stub, which most of us don't do, he probably would have been in, so there were some people. I think there was, you know, obviously a lot of people fired because we looked at every use of force. And they looked at boilerplate language, like making narcotic arrests. Like typically, Andy was walking southbound.

I saw him reach into his right hand, right print pen's pocket, take out two white off solid rocks resembling rock cocaine, dropped them to the ground, came up, realized they were rock cocaine, place Andy under arrest. Doesn't work out like that. But when every arrest report reads that way, it's like, wait a minute, did that really happen? Like the guy didn't run.

Did he, were they off white solids? Were they white? Were they in his mouth? So we looked at that as a pattern of behavior to make sure that people weren't doing that as well, right? Weren't suspending the rules to justify the behavior. So did that for a bit, applied? Now, all these jobs you have to apply for you. You have to take an interview.

You have to a background, right? Because it might be 50 sergeants applying for one job and you get picked amongst, and you go for an interview and then they do your background. I got selected to be the vice OIC in 77 division. So now I'm back down in the division I started at, and I've got 10 undercover folks and four uniform vice officers that support the undercover mission providing overwatch. And can't we have to stop somebody with people in uniform just because how busy and dangerous is down there.

Did that applied to Metropolitan Division, K-9 platoon, and Metro has swat K-9 and mounted. And they get in the Metro, incredibly difficult, especially when you have my bad days that I took for that fight. that was always the wild card. Hey brother, we loved you. Did great in your interview. Good thing you went to grad school

because that was part of the reason to going because I needed an offset bad behavior with some type of accolace. So I figured, let me go to grad school and try to, you know, actually, I went to see a guy named Chief Parks, Chief Bernie Parks, old chief of police that before he was replaced by Bill Bratton.

I went to see him after I get involved in my deal and I went to see three or four chiefs. I'm like, hey, listen, this is what I did. I took a major suspension. I got involved in a fight, resulted in an arrest, didn't fire me. Today I would have been terminated,

but didn't fire me back then. I gave me my, you know, rid me my last rights at the border rights. I said, what do you think I should do? He goes, get a position to trust, which turned out to be vice,

which worked out, which, you know, it's not easy to get vetted when you have that bad thing. Everything being equal. Andy Scott, Scott, two months bad time, Andy, no bad time.

Andy's your choice. Every time. every time, right? And rightfully so, right? Because that guy didn't go out and be stupid with a bunch of Marines getting involved in a fight. Yeah, yeah. Or didn't get caught.

Or rather, going northbound on Las Siena got and going to the sheriff's territory of L.A. County, he should have went southbound, and he would have been an LAPD territory and no one would have came. Yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, that was called bad driving, being the designated driver that night, so to speak. But so I applied to Metro, which, you know, to get in the metro, there's a PFQ, you know, pull his push up, three-mile run type thing to get in. And then it's competitive.

you may have 60 or so sergeants applying for one space there, one spot. And then most of the guys, 90% of the guys had worked there before. And then as a policeman, now they made sergeant. Because every time you make sergeant, you need to leave wherever you're at and then come back. You can't just, like if you're in Canaan as a canine officer and you make sergeant, you don't stay in canine. You have to go back to patrol, you go back and work another division and then try to work your way.

It may take you five, six, seven, eight years to get back to where you left. That's not uncommon for what you described is actually pretty similar to the military, or at least in the seal pipeline, you'll have to do, you just can't stay at the same place forever. You'll hit a leadership wicket and it's like, hey, you're now going to another team, maybe on the West Coast.

New pool of people, different leadership above you, different leadership below you, different role and responsibility, and then you can come back. But actually, I think it's very beneficial and well-rounding for organizations to do stuff like that.

Yeah, to leave you. Leave you there because if not, there's nepotism and there might be an idea where people aren't going to listen to you because, wait a minute, just yesterday we were peers and now you're the boss. and, you know, go after yourself, Andy, I'm not listening to you. And that may be that the way.

So, well, the diversity of the experience, you take somebody from canine or metro and they go somewhere else, there's, you know, a little bit of paint rubs off in both directions. So they're educating people. They're elevating them. You can learn from them. I think it's actually a really good thing. Yeah, I agree. There's, you know, I do know people who've spent 20 years at a military command and they are the best at the world at some things, but they also struggle to operate inside of the regular military system because they're so detached. So pros and cons.

All right. Yeah, I agree. I agree with you on that. So I applied to Metro, gut in, which is, and I went right to K-9, which once again, another anomaly getting right in. Because they have line platoons. They have two line platoons that work like crime suppression. So they'll augment, you know, maybe in 77th or watch or busy areas and go down there.

You know, it's probably 300 or so in that division. They'd go down there without being tied to the radio, go down there and suppress crime. Really proactive. I mean, really, really assist, you know, really repressing crimes. you part one crimes, your violent crimes. Got into canine. Canine at the time, 16 full-time canine officers, five sergeants, most of all the other sergeants,

but me had worked SWAT before as a police officer. And then they became sergeants and came back. So they had that tactical knowledge of coming in. Canine, once again, there was no marching ban when I got there. Like, wait a minute, this brother never worked canine. Never worked Metro before. Rolls right in as a sergeant, right? So there was no welcoming committee.

I knew guys from being around. So I probably had an okay reputation, but nonetheless, it wasn't like, hey, he's here. It was none of that. It was like, wait a minute, let's see what happens. And then I think in short order, unfortunately, while working K-9, I got involved in another couple of OISs, a couple real drawn-out, couple pretty good long-drawn-out shootings. Not that it, I earned any bona fides by that, but more, maybe a little bit of credibility in the sense that under, he's going to act appropriately.

I think my strength was, I write really well. So in the fact, you okay, you get the domestic violence suspect, you get the rape suspect. And it's just funny how even though we only have a 25% bite ratio, it's just weird how those suspects would get bit. It's ironic by happenstance. I don't know how it happened. But it's just like, hey, it'd be like, hey, Sarge, listen, go to the front of the house. I'd be part of the search team. I'm like, Roger that.

And then, you know, they do God's work back there. And hey, we've got a use of force. I'm like, oh, you don't want you to see it because then you can't write it. Yeah. And then before you know it, you're writing it. and you're making sure all the, you know, the T's across and eyes are dotted and all that kind of stuff. So it was great. I mean, I'm blessed to have work there.

Busy, 70-hour weeks. I mean, great job over time. I mean, at the time I'm a sergeant 2 plus one, which they call it, you make $100,000 in overtime. So you're killing it, right? Take home car, two-hour workouts on duty. I mean, you basically get home. I'll be get home at 3 o'clock in the morning. K950, go 1-1-4.

We have a four-block perimeter in North Valley. And I'm drinking like three speed stacks even to get home. they used to sell those things. I'm like, I'm literally like you, and I know I've got my kids because my wife at the, my was a LEPD detective at the time, and she's going to work. Yeah. So she's like, well, I got three because at the time we had the twins and then Justin, we're not playing parenthood, kind of came about she called me, says, I'm pregnant.

And I'm like, we did in vitro. I'm going on Ricky Lake. And then dude comes out with blonde hair and green eyes and she's Mexican. I'm like, come on. So anyway, that's my college athlete. I fall around the country. He plays across. but um and so i'm i'm um i'm i'm looking in anyway so um i don't know where i'm at right now but

you're talking about the hundred grand overtime yeah yeah so we're killing it killing it but you're also not sleeping you literally it's the busiest most violent dangerous job in law enforcement bar none and i've had a bunch of canine you know cases as an expert but by far the most beneficial life-saving tool that officers have in the field there's not a second one and i know there's been some integration i know actually one guy that left uh la pd canine jim haggerty that worked in conjunction with NSW on some stuff on some of the training. The dogs have saved countless lives. Amazing.

Yeah. And we would use dual purpose ones too, so they could detect and they were also, they were attacked dogs as well. And holy shit, the amount of times where it's like, hey, I don't think we should go over there. Right. Because old Rosco says we shouldn't go over there. Yeah.

For you know, that was the same thing. One of the shootings, that would have been two occasions, we're searching backyard, managed shot, and several people in Newton Division, get called in Sunday. live in Huntington Beach get there you know LAPD is always good about good containment airship you know we have a huge you know our support is amazing you know best biggest and best in the country

supporting the ground setting up good tactics good perimeter we go search and and the dog jit the dog comes up to this back shed he just shot a bunch of several people shot his ex-wife shot some lady holding a baby just arbitrarily a Newton division it's called shooting Newton division and and just as a dog alerts on the door

the dude opens up fire on us and we're an open air environment. We had not covered searching in the backyard for a man search configuration. I was a team member even though as a supervisor kind of a rear guard, you know, a diamond configuration type search pattern. But for that dog, one of us are dead, probably me, because I'm always in the way. It wouldn't have been the three canine officers that, um, that are much more tactically proficient than I was, right? So, and another, on another occasion, a guy had shot at the police at California Highway Patrol. Female officer, Northeast did a great job, established containment. K9 and SWAT, but SWAT were, you

They had not arrived yet. So canine starts a systematic search. Always better use more than one team, right, to work back to back in case, you know, bad guys moving around. And same dog, female officer, Gina Homestrom, phenomenal. Female, she since retired, retired as a lieutenant. Phenomenal officer. We had another one, Linda Travis, too. Phenomenal.

This whole thing about disparity of females can't work in the workplace. Bullshit. Straight bullshit. Both as equally competent as any man I've ever worked around. And I worked with a bunch of great men, fortunately. Dog alerts on a trash can. The guys in most, you know, trash cans like we have now, bigger trash can. And same dog, bark alerts, pull back, position to cover,

and then try to negotiate with the dude. Another sergeant on the other side trying to talk to him. We load up an alleywood slug around ammunition and stuff, ready, getting ready to, you know, whatever. It's on him. Yeah. Level of resistance, right? You come out.

We're going to let you come on out. You can come on out. We've been asking you for 20 minutes. Dude comes out with two guns shooting simultaneously. shoots an officer in the leg and in the arm, and we'd return fire and killed him in the trash can. But for that dog, same dog, you know, you definitely, without a doubt, because someone would have came up on that thing

to clear that trash can and would have, and he was no doubt leaving. He'd been, his two brothers and his dad were both killed by LAPD and shooting. So the whole family, a family full of gang members. Yeah, pretty good lineage. Yeah, pretty strong lineage. Yeah, that situation was only going to end one way.

Yeah. Or somebody misses the garbage can, and the next thing you, you got somebody behind you, or in the middle of your element. Yeah. Yeah, it's not good. No, it ended the way it should have ended because, you know, obviously those are his actions, but the dogs were absolutely amazing.

But at the time, our SWAT lieutenant, Mike Albanyes at the time, wasn't SWAT 20-something years as an element leader, element member, Sergeant, and now the lieutenant, 50-something years old, phenomenal freak show. I mean, just great, great dude said, hey, listen, I might have an opening. I'd like you to come around a crisis negotiation team, which is a part of one of the cadres,

so everyone has a picketet. And but at the time, there's only one other sergeant that had gone to SWAT without being there as an operator. So, and there was 15 years before my time. Since that's all changed. And so I get the call,

and there's 60 full-time officers, seven sergeants, two lieutenants. There was one when I went there. So he asked me, you know, do you want to come over? And, of course, I said yes. So once again, marching band wasn't going out of that time.

You got the guys that had been in, SWAT for 25, 30 years at the time, or 20 years. I mean, guys, and I understand that, I understand the sentiment. So even in K-9, you probably heard three words out of me for the first year and a half. What do you think? And I, once again, defer to the people that knew their job rather than me give any type of unwanted advice at that point, right? It was the same thing with SWAT is that I knew I was coming over, so I really started getting, you know, learning a lot about the negotiation process. I know that I'd eventually, you know, I became our physical fitness coordinator. I was a breaching sergeant. I was a, you know, a negotiation sergeant. So you had different

cadres. You had guys that were, you know, climbers and divers. We have a diving component and a climbing component. I wasn't part of either one of those because I'm not a good diver. I tried. I did the thing at Sport Chalet where you went to the, and the guy told me, the guy told me actually went out to like Catalina Island and he goes, hey, listen, we usually have like a diver two thing after this. Don't apply for that. You're awful. I was like stuck in some kelbush and you know, I'm like, I know my limitations in the water. So that wasn't my thing and then climbing and kind of uncoordinated dude. So it was not really my thing. But I got over there. I worked there. Is LAPD SWAT? Is that a full-time job or is that ancillary duty? Full-time gig. You're figuring 150 barricades a year,

100 dynamic search warrants where there's typically a nexus to barricade and or a shoulder weapon. Busy, busy times. Okay. So you're on standby from typically 1900. Once again, this is my time. I don't know what they're doing now. It's been a long time. 1,900 to 1000 hours. So once again, you're on paid standby during that time. You're self-sufficient in your cars with whatever you're carrying, right? Everyone's kind of given the same thing, M4, Benelli, you know, MP5. That's your typical weapons. They've all, they've all since evolved from that. Clearly evolved. Those are when I was there. Went over there and, and unfortunately, I had two element leaders at the time.

Got named Bob Gallego, senior. He'd been in Swah for 25 years and he was a blessing because he was an amazing reputation. You take me aside. Hey, dude, you're in the way. This is, you know, consurgents make entries, not as a tactical component, kind of at the end you're carrying, you know, you're breaching tools, whatever you're carrying,

bullhorn, stuff that they don't want to carry. And then you're at the end, as you should be, right? You're not an operator. I don't even care if you worked there before, you're not part of the operator at that five-man element. So I was fortunate, him and a guy named Mike Baker, both retire. Both guys who were older, great.

And because I worked for them, even though they were police officers, I don't make any illusions, I worked for them. I mean, even though the rank structure, I was above them in rank, I directly worked for them. Not that it gave me any credibility,

but people left me alone. They just knew that Bob took me under his wing and really took me and really treated me like I was actually like his son because I'm probably 10, 15 years younger than Bob, maybe 10 years younger than Bob. Just a great guy. And worked there for about five years. Had an issue with my, one of the,

there was brother, new lieutenant came in, had an issue. He sent me a message on my Blackberry. suggestive message commenting how my wife looked in a police uniform she was about to retire i was taking my kids a sock on my three boys i put up my blackberry we had at the time i'm like he didn't fucking just send me that did he we don't have that we don't have that kind of relationship yeah if it was the other lieutenant albanese even there's a new lieutenant there and said hey your wife look you know it looks hot dot dot dot the temperature that is i would

have said yes she actually does thanks for the comment or said nothing yeah i would have laughed it off because i'm not thin skin like that so but we didn't we didn't have that relationship and i may have overreacted looking back now, right? Once again, which I may have, looking back hindsight 2020, yeah, I probably over it because he's a good dude. The lieutenant's not a bad guy. He's a good guy. He's been there 15, 20 years right now. He didn't probably mean any harm out of it. Once again, my emotions drove the day. And so I hit him up on the way to the range. I'm like, hey man, just him and I'm like, we don't never, don't ever do that again. Maybe watch your fucking mouth. Yeah, don't ever do it again. I'm probably going to smash you. And so and then so LEPD

at the time, it sent me to Mumbai India after the Mumbai terrorist attack as the swat. representative to go back and look at what happened with critical infrastructure, you know, that obviously that's like a post-morton. Yeah, but pretty quick. It's kind of terrorism. I mean, we went in there with 10 and came back with eight. And so, you know, went in there to look at what we could do, how we would deal with that from the SWAT perspective of multiple venues getting attacked simultaneously.

Law enforcement's never dealt with that, right? If you look at the 10 venues, sit simultaneously from the LET terrorists over there in Mumbai, how would we respond and deploy to that? So when I get back from that, we went to. Costa Rica. I tried my hand at surfing, which was not a good idea. My wife and boys, I realized at that point that that'll never happen again. And I get back and because I, and before I had left, my SWAT lieutenant, you know, started with some Picayune shit. Hey, remember that SWAT call it from a year ago? Hey, listen, I'm going to give you a comment card for failing. I'm like, brother, I've been

here 10 years as a sergeant. I'm the second most 10-yeared SWAT sergeant here in the division. I got all those funny medals that they give you for the stuff that I did on the job. I never ever took a sick day in LAPD. Even when I was hurt, I came back way early. During my suspension, I came in at work the desks for the two months for free answering phones because I felt what I'd done was wrong. So I took accountability for my actions. And he goes, by the way, we're going to loan you back to K-9 because you can't get along with the lieutenant, which, you know, might be a $50,000. Plus now I'm working. The lieutenant made the comment about your wife. Yeah, because I want, I need to retract. Before I left to India, I sent the captain, not realizing that they always would

protect their last rank. Hey, by the way, I'm not looking to make a complaint. I'm not that dude. But this is what happened. This is the message he sent me. And since then, I've gotten four comment card entries on some bullshit. I'm not looking to make a complaint. Just tell them stop. Yeah. Just tell them knock it off. Do you have a conversation, tell him knock it off? I'm good with it. It's water under the bridge. So I get back, go to Costa Rica come back and say, by the way, you're going to K-9 on loan. For what? You can't apparently get along with the lieutenant here. I'm like, oh, that doesn't work for me. So at all. So I would get the protective league involved. They're like, you can't do that.

And my former SWAT lieutenant had made captain, not the older guy I was telling you about a guy named Steve Zipperman, who was a really good friend of mine. He made captain, I call him like, dude, he's a captain of Southwest Division, which is right at USC, actually. He goes, no, they can't do that. So once again, I filed the grievance through the league, and they basically said, great, for your grievance,

you're going to Kain. And then when I'm about to go to Kain, I said, better yet, we're going to send you home until we figured this out because K9 and SWAT worked so closely together. I'm like, you can't do that. Like you can't. I mean, you can't treat people that way, right? So I fought back as much as I could administratively, went there,

went on loan actually to Southwest for that former lieutenant who took me over there. I was a watch commander and good. And then finally, they went back and filed a personnel complaint for me from a year ago during a training opportunity I had in Costa Mesa. I live in Huntington Beach, just one city north. So I'm not the dude at the end of the day, you know, kids. At the end of the day when I'm done doing what I need to do with you, I'm not going to drink with you.

Now, if I'm in a base, if we're in Pendleton or something like that, I'm good with it. Because I'm not coming home. But if I get kids with homework, my kids are all athletes, my wife's worked all day, and I get to help with the school project. Yeah, once the time cards punch, I'm out of there. I'm done. I said all I can say. I'm not doing that.

My drinking thing ended 20 years before when I did my stupidity. I don't do that off duty. I can see one hand of the times of going out with guys off duty. And I was to be able to retirement. And I'm like, great. Pleasure working with you at one, two, three break. and I'm back home. That's how I was, you know, A, because my wife's on the department and people, you're talking to someone before you know it, you're doing something you shouldn't be doing, right?

Or you're in a space now that I don't want to get into. So, and so basically I went ahead and went over to Southwest Division. I'm like, this isn't going to end well. So they filed a personnel complaint because that training opportunity, I never slept at the hotel. I didn't put in per pardium for it. I said, listen, I'm not going to sleep at the hotel. There's no sense of me doing that. So anyway, they filed a personnel complaint, which is completely retaliatory. I mean, absolutely. And so they interviewed me, and I'm kind of, this is laughable at the time. And basically saying that it could almost be theft, but it wasn't theft.

It wasn't benefit abuse or theft. Long story short, they end up getting a notice to correct of, hey, in the future, next time there's training opportunity you're supposed to. And I took responsibility. Yeah, should I have done that? Because what happens is this particular training sergeants from all over the country go and they want you to socialize, which I'm not going out with the guy from Oakland PD. I'm not hanging out with that dude at night. I'm going home to see my kids. Yeah.

Not that I don't like the guy, just not going to hang with him. We can talk about at the break, and during the 30 breaks we got today, we can talk about whatever we want to talk about. So at the time, a former head of our police commission billionaire guy named Rick Cruz, who's running for mayor. And if anyone's listened to this, he's the only guy that can turn that cesspool, third world country back into a place where people could be civilized. And that's 60,000 homeless people that are fraught downtown, sleeping in rising, and rising. He's the only one. So you want to vote to politics and democracy? Actually, he just reverted to Democrat, and I don't blame him for not doing that because he'd have no chance, even though he probably won't have much of a chance, even though he did that.

But he was ahead of our police commission. He's the one who brought in Bill Bratton. And I worked out of the country with a couple of his kids. They had some billionaire, you know, type get away on his yacht at that time, the 140 yacht over in the Benetti over there. And the Atlantis over there, that over in the Bahamas. So I worked with his kids out of country, he did a couple things with the DA, and he goes, hey, you want to be my VP of security.

And at the time he had a former SWAT guy who was about 20 years old as me on him Al-Pree shot, another legend in LAPD SWAT. But, you know, I think he wanted someone a little bit younger. Yeah, I could go down the water slides at the Al with the kids and wouldn't mind doing it. And so, you know, and I didn't even know Al at the time.

And so I didn't even know Al. I knew of him because his reputation preceded him, but I didn't know he was working for Rick. I just didn't know. And so Rick hired me as a V. and I decided I left, so I left in 2010. How many total years in law enforcement? At that time, about 23 and a half between feds.

How is retirement calculated for law enforcement? Bad, bad money choice. And I'll be accused of doing that once upon a time of my life. But yeah, you can make your money after 30, right? So you're looking at it. Oh, you've got to take it to 30 years. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm looking at about, like my wife left at 20 and out. So they had a thing where you could do 20 and get a pension at 41.

So she at 41 as a, you know, a fit surfer mom with kids was home. getting a pension and rightfully so right i mean but that's the reason why the city's bankrupt because they give healthy 41-year-old pensions for the rest of their life hopefully another 60 years right you know god willing um but for me i wouldn't get a pension until i turned 50 5-0 at the time i was 44 so your pension's considered a resignation because you're not pension eligible but then when you turn 50 you get your pension which you know it's typically 50% of what i would have 50% of my base pay as a sergeant two plus one and i had 10 years in that bonus position so I give you an extra 5.5%.

So you really make your money between 20 and 30. Yeah. If you can do that. But it's time to go, it's time to go. You know, there's time that when it's time to go. And he offered me, and he crafted me a really good number. Yeah. So I had the family, the Gulf Stream, you know, he formed a Navy pilot named John Holtz

who ran all the out of country stuff. And so I, you know, all the stuff that billioners do, travel around the world, Asia, that. And I was able to bring a lot of SWAT guys I work with for part-time work. You know, he'd pay $1 a day cash to these guys to come. to Monaco. We'd be sitting at the St. Regis. We're not doing a heavy lifting. Other than I'm telling them like, hey, listen, guys, I know you're playing on your phone right now, and it's 2 o'clock in the morning.

We're watching all those kids the nine we came with and the nine we need to leave with because you're going back to SWAT on Monday and I'm fired. And my kids need food. I get a mortgage. So get off your phone and that's the that's the object right now. So did that for about

three years. Working for a billionaire runs its course. I had 13 properties like the Grove in L.A. Maricana brand. He owns all those and then he you know I have the family to both travel extended family I had it all so those were 70-80 hour work weeks the number was good but that was my first really job outside of law enforcement and military so I have to like you know once again no etiquette didn't read emily post book in etiquette before I went in there and took the job so I go to the COO like you know four months and I'm like hey man I need about a 60,000 dollar pay raise like completely you know out of school

right and you should never done something like that he's like yeah we'll think about that and get back to put that in the suggestion box. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, once a new car smell wears off with a billionaire, right, you're kind of done, right? You know, you're probably a lot of your friends that work in that realm that have worked there. They don't generally work there for a long period of time. It's about three years. And then they get sick of you, you get sick of them.

He had a great family. Kids are wonderful. You never know. You would know if he worked at the post office. His kids are yes sir, no, sure. The kids, the extended friends that he went to, they all went to end up going to SC. but super nice family. I mean, really, really good person, good family.

But, you know, my actions could have been different on a couple things there, too, the way, you know, once again, going to the COO and, you know, that kind of stuff. So got back into law enforcement. I figured, okay, I'm not getting a pension from another three years. Let me go back in. Two pensions are better than one. I'll join another agency. I joined Riverside County Sheriff's Department as a top step, like, lateral deputy.

Did that for about a year. And I was driving from Huntington Beach to Riverside County, which is two hours on the freeway. Yeah, so then you're going from SWAT sergeant, vice president security, air quotes, to handing out jail burritos at the local detent because I'm working in custody for the first seven months. So that didn't work out. You know, that was one of the things like, okay, I can't do this anymore. Tough transition. Tough transition. It kind of humbling.

Life humbles you at times. But I needed a job and I have three kids to feed. So right around that time, I started looking at the expert work. And before I had left LAPD, I connected, I went to this use of force seminar. and there was opposing attorneys, one civil rights, one police defense attorney. And today, this is what, if you don't want to get sued, these are the things that you shouldn't do. Like if you look at, okay, the reasonableness of your force, there's some things that you can

probably do to mitigate some of the risk mitigation for you and for your department. So I hooked up with this one attorney, said, hey, you want to take a look of shooting for me? I'm like, yeah, I don't know. At the time, I did, originally when I was with Caruso, I didn't want to do that because Ed and of the time. And secondly, he was going to run for mayor. So he had a lot of connections with that.

I lay pretty deep in there. So I decided to take a first case. And so it's against. Now mind you, once again, that's against. Very pro-police, very,

you know, conversion. Against the police. Yes, first case, against. So I look and I'm like, which didn't do well.

So you can imagine the text messages and phone calls I got when that word got out, right? It's almost like, hey, but I heard you just got convicted of rape and you're going to jail. That type of response.

Yeah. So, but the shooting was this. I looked at the shooting. I'm like, wait a minute. You got a young, 18-year-old kid.

who's driving out towards Arizona, wants to see his girlfriend who lives in Arizona. Can't get there, so he steals a car. Pulls over in Chiraco Summit, which is that last base gas station that if you know that most people go to if you're heading to Arizona. I know that because my twins went to college in Arizona

and still do. And so driving out there, and I looked at the shooting, so apparently what the officer says, I won't mention officers or agencies, says, hey, he pulled his car, realized it was stolen. So he deploys.

You know, in the gas pumps, you have the elevated, cement. Yes. It sits on top of them. So he gets up on top of that. And he starts giving this guy commands. Hey, shut the car off.

Shut it off. Takes his pistol out low ready. All good. All good stuff. Right? I mean, I got a problem with him being that close, right? But he's still right up on him at the door. Says that he hears the engine rev, thinks that he's going to be hit by the car and

fires six rounds into the car and shoots a kid three times ahead and kills him. He was going to be hit by a car while standing on the elevated concrete station? My point. No, unless the car levitated in the air and dropped on top of the gas, pumps it was impossible to do that yeah white kid no no racial divisiveness no stuff that madingley was talking about his podcast which is eloquently placed in his book that i just read um none of that it was just a kid from san bradenaena county parents not so i looked at i'm like that wasn't reasonable like that shooting's not reasonable that guy either through subjective fear

wrong sport too much caffeine whatever whatever got him to that space i got kids and if that That's the level of service this person is going to provide. And granted, I don't know the reason why, but that's what happened. So I took the case and literally the fallout from that was pretty significant. Like guys who used to talk to me before be like, hey man, I heard you took a plaintiff's case. I'm like, yeah. Now mind you, every plaintiff's case, every one I've handled, you know, I've mentioned, I had 700 case, not all plaintiff's cases, but 700 cases.

And not one time does a civil case. I don't take criminal cases against police officers. I've testified. In fact, I do them for free. I testify on behalf of the officer for free. I've got a case coming up right now. I'm defending an officer in an off-duty shooting. I also defended LAPD officer at his Board of Rights.

Administrative Tribunal, he was terminated. Got a ton of national attention. I'm going to testify at his criminal hearing, actually criminal trial, pardon me, because of the failure for LAPD to train people while off duty. That's kind of the, and I typically don't take cases against LAPD

because my pension check comes in the mail. I don't want that to disappear somehow. Reasonable. Direct deposit. And they provided me with it. And I stayed. reserve I didn't mention from 2010 to 2017 2016 so I stayed for six years I was a shootings tactics instructor you know reserve officer level one you carry gun in a badge

because I hadn't got my pension yet I wanted to keep the relationship with the you know case I get involved in something off duty I'm going to be under it's going to be within course and scope so you know on so what's the difference between a criminal in a civil case criminal is I'm assuming you go to jail civil is more of financial it's all fine The cases that I will take against are simply civil. I won't take a criminal case. I testified in behalf of a LAPD sergeant, wall off duty brandished a firearm at a sushi restaurant.

This past November, I testified in his behalf. They were looking at nine, like nine charges. And for him, great dude, a 25-year guy, total overreach by the city attorney's office and district attorney's office in L.A. He at a sushi restaurant, family felt threatened by a group of people. maybe could have got up and left but rather than maybe

what I would have done is maybe just got up and left but nonetheless it escalated to the point where he took his pistol put it behind his right leg didn't brandish it didn't point it was no ADW no 417 PC which is brandishing in the state of California none of that so they filed charges but the problem is he worked counterterrorism Middle Eastern guy Middle Eastern descent I believe I don't want to misspeak here

but worked deep undercover for years and LAPD has components of that that do that so what they said is listen you take an angel anger management class will take all your guns and then we'll call it a day he's like not doing that i'm taking it all the way i need to protect my family and i'm like right on so got engaged with that attorney uh there got retained and then i testified he got a not guilty which is good yeah a criminal is typically going to be like in madding's the case if you look at you know they filed they'll they'll file criminal charges on some people right uh it's it's a it's a rarity as it should be

it's a complete rarity um but the civil matter is i've never worked a civil matter where we're $1 has come out of an officer's pocket ever. Even though they're sued, the city or county is picking up the tab. In fact, you're probably on overtime during the court trial. And granted, you may get sued, and rightfully so, because if that was your child, and that happened, if that was your child in the car at the gas station,

you'd sue. I'd probably do something more than that. It'd probably be a little more drastic. But in conjunction with me going to prison for the rest of my life, I would still sue because that's my kid. and that's not reasonable what you did. So, and then for instance, too, I've got another, you know, I also work, I get retained by, like, the Huntington Beach Police Officers Association

for, like, arbitrations. I do those as well, representing officers. I won't take any cases where an officer's going to lose a dime in the sense of being suspended. So I'll take cases for where I testify, you know, the use of force is reasonable. He may get a couple-day suspension rather than a 30-day suspension or 40 or some big hit, like I took when I was during my stupidity times earlier on in my career. The civil cases I'll take. A, the person can't be armed.

A, secondly, an officer can't get hurt. So if the officer gets injured or the person's armed, I turn down 40% of them all week long. I'm like, attorney will call me, hey, this is what I got. I would have shot him 10 seconds for those officers to thank you for the call. And mind you, that billable is crazy high. I mean, you could take that money. The retainers are high. The hourly is a lot more than I should be making.

but it's high. So you could take that. And there's a lot of guys that will. There's a lot of guys. Most of your experts work on both sides of the street. If I'm only providing expert testimony for, I'm no longer objective, right? I mean, I've got to be able to look and see, with the real bad ones, you've got to try to look at and say, okay, if I'm offered that, and I reasonably believe that the officer's actions weren't reasonable based on the totality of circumstances, then that's a case that I'll take a look at. but one case turned into I think as I mentioned about 675 700 cases in that room

I have 30% of my work security cases too so either defending bars so if you and I go to a bar tonight and some guy walks out of you they've got robust security and guy walks up you and punches you right in the mouth knocks you out traumatic brain injury in the head that's a typical case I'll take could the bar have done anything it's called foreseeability could the bar have done anything to be able to stop and mitigate that. Even with the most robust security, no, they couldn't have, right? Unless there were pre-fight indicators. Maybe you and him a chip in all the line.

Yeah. You know, your target glancing, your bladed stance, you're, you're, all those other, you know, things that you may be doing, right? Target glancing, all tightening of the jaw. Those things that we look at from a type A and say, probably going to fight, right? We've seen it a hundred. Yeah. The pre-violence indicates.

All the pre-files, yeah. So, um, if that's a case, then, yeah, maybe there was. Like, for instance, I mentioned, I, I took a recent case, a premises liability case. James Salani, neighbor special warfare, lieutenant commander, I guess started the drone project, worked in support out of Pendleton. He was at a location at a shopping mall. This is all public because the case just got, the case is still in its works. Coming out of a comedy club, him and his nephew, Sean Rafferty, and they're playing like hide and go see. And out of the blue, two African-American suspects walked by, take a pistol out a couple words exchange. No pre-finited

him, shoot and kills him right there. Fuck. Shoots and kills. Yeah. So they sue, obviously the premises, right, for inadequate security. And could he have stopped the shooting? Maybe not, even with the most. But there was no security that was present at the time of the shooting.

There was no visible. If I see this security guard, maybe it's going to modify my behavior. Right. But the real big kicker on this is that there were prior incidents. So you look at those incidents and say, history of it? History. So there's fraught with violence. So with that, did you work in partnership with,

the local police department. Did you develop crime fighting strategies? Did you look at your camera system? Did you do a risk and vulnerability assessment? So I'll come in and look at that type of stuff and say, wait a minute. They didn't have cameras. Cameras were bad or they recorded crimes. They weren't analytic providing like actionable items, you know, information right from the start. There was negligent security. They weren't trained. They weren't where they should have been. It was this particular time. There was a shift change. So they were all at one space. No one was actually on the premises when the shooting happened. And so yeah, that that's a case I'll take. Uh, not, uh, many of my cases have a military nexus to it, many of them. Um, just finished a report

in a case where, um, a guy with post-traumatic stress, I too don't use it as disorder, going through it off his psychotropic medication. So probably 80% of my cases have a mental health component to it. Um, police come, kind of barricaded, um, messing around inside of his house, won't come out. They want to do a 72 hour hole, like 51, 50, 70 hour, danger to self or other type hold. He's not having it. SWAT team comes out. The SWAT commander says,

we're not going to use a negotiation component. We're just not going to do that. And so a question is, having worked in that environment, why? You have throw phones and stuff. Let's try to initiate dialogue, use words, influence, behavior. Let's try to get some type of dialogue between the person, right? He's going through a crisis. Okay, he is a guy who served our country.

He's going through a crisis. So let's slow things down. Let's create some time and distance. There's no rush. There's no one in the house. There's no one declared hostages. There's no nexus to weapons. There's no information he's got a gun.

So, you know, many of these instances are four, five, six hours. But what you can do is you can take the time and use technology and use, once again, there's things you can do. Those throw phones are great. Even if you don't want to pick it up, I can talk to you while it's there, from the outside. They have speakers on them, right? So I can get the negotiation point to at least try. They like, I want two, three break. We're tired of this.

Let's go ahead and advance on the house with the canine. And then they go up there and he has an arrow in his hand. He has a bow and arrow. He's not loading the arrow my understanding is. So they go in there and they they shouldn't kill him. This is, you know, they go in there. He's getting bitten by the dog and he attacks a dog. So no 40 millimeter, no 37 millimeter, no long range impact device with them, right,

to be able to just pepper him up with rubber bullets. Everyone's okay with that. If he does something, he's offensive from a distance, you're good 75 feet to be able to pepper him up to stop the behavior. He needs help. He needs suicidal by cop, ideation. there were some overtures. Yeah.

He needs help. So that's a, you know, that's a typical, that's a typical case. Another, you talk about the criminal, have a deposition actually on Tuesday on this case. You know, qualified immunity. Qualified immunity is something that should, Evipumpuris that are named. Evipumporous. Yeah. Yeah, pardon me.

It was very eloquent in the way she described it is it's, it's New York banned it. New York banned that from the opposite, which is basically your, you're, it's kind of, like your your insurance policy in the sense it just prohibits that you're getting sued based on long as you didn't commit a constitutional violation that you knew existed at the time so it's basically like you know having having insurance some respect long as you're working within course and scope your actions are reasonable they're not criminal of course you should have qualified the idea it means you as the officer cannot be sued correct the department can they can go after the department but not the individual officer it depends now they can go after the department like

many cases I have in like Texas and Atlanta, we'll get into the training part of it, which I think is the most important part of the conversation, is they can show what's called Monell. Monell is a case that would say that you as a department ratified endorsed and perpetuated officer Smith's behavior because you failed to train or you failed a discipline, which means you know that out of many law enforcement agencies, even San Francisco as of recently, don't even have tasers. Yeah. Effective range of a taser, seven to 15 feet, right?

looking to achieve normal muslin capacity. Great from a distance, even though some people say they don't work. They'll work as long as you don't have a heavy jacking on. As long as you can obviously, you've got prongs that are traveling at 27300 feet per second, that if you hit center mass, typically you're going to achieve NMI. Unless there's a clothing issue, unless one of the darts miss, depending on the circumstance. Many departments like San Francisco don't have them. So what's it requiring you to do?

It's requiring you to come up and put hands on people, much more so that you don't need to put hands on people, especially people that have no background and putting hands on people. And that's another conversation. But the case I have, I'm getting deposed on on Tuesday. These are the facts. Mentally ill, naked guy. No weapon on them.

Call for service. Concerning, right? I've got kids. I don't want the naked, ill mental guy in my neighborhood. Yeah. So they approach them. And long story short, they tased them 53 times.

I don't know a lot about tasers, but I feel like that's a lot. That's a big number. Yeah. That's the biggest number anyone's ever heard of, even their expert. So 53 times, typically a taser evolution is five seconds, right? If I activate the taser, unless it's in drive center, I hold the trigger down. It's going to run a five second cycle. Taser now called axon.

They even recommend, dude, after three cycles, not working for you. Transition to something else. Go to OC spray, go to an impact weapon, go to control hole, go to some type of whatever defensive tactic that you need to do to be able to take that proof. Because that's not working for you now. Why? Because you've got exhausted mania. You've got excited delirium. That's the big topic right now that comes up a lot. You've got typically most guys are on a CNS stimulant, right, on methamphetamine, especially those that are mentally awry. Because liberal policies like Prop 47 and 57s cause our homeless population to balloon up to 60, 70,000. Well, guess what they're not getting? They're not getting their psychotropic meds because they're not going through the system. So now they're self-medicating with methamphetamine. Let me just tell you, my buddy's up here who law enforcement officers.

when they tell me stories about the naked guys, which will start here in about two months because the weather is a little bit more permitting. 100% tied to meth. Yeah, clearly. For whatever reason, when you're on meth, you need to be nude. Right. They call it excited later.

It's at high core body temperature. Back in the day, I'm old and you are, but kind of with PCP, kind of at the Rodney King, the high core body temperature, intense sweating, you know, that type of scenario. So 53 taser activations. Between how many officers? Two. Which is another thing you don't do.

So if Andy and Scott have tasers, we don't tase simultaneously. A, it's a reasonable opportunity to comply. So I tase you. Now, mind you, I'm talking probe mode because... Which is skin contact, right? Because I say how many... Probe darts. How many cartridges do they have, though? The X2 has two, the X26 is one, but they were just taking... They were reloading cartridge. But if I have a good contact with you, say I hit both you in the chest or I split your belt line, which you should do. If I fire a taser, front body, preferably back, right, bigger muscle mass can't pull it out. So I can't pull out when the pain. I can't grab it off my back, typically. But if you're going to shoot the front, because of tachycardi issues, you should split the

belt line. So one below, one above. But if you get lower chest, chest, lower abdomen, it should do its job. And granted, once again, there are times that it doesn't and those that will be critical. But it's a tool that you should be trained on and should have at your disposal, right? And so after that, then they transition into a karate neck restraint and for an extended period of time. You know being a Brazilian jitju practitioner, five, seven seconds. If you watch Big John McCarthy on TV, you're out. If I've had cases where two minutes and 46 seconds, you're not out, and now you've broken the hyoid bone and you've killed them, right?

Because now it transitioned from a blood choke to an air choke. Trachea crush, yeah. Yeah, you killed it because the neck has got all the, you know, obviously get some sense of various and it's fraught with bones. So that is, you know, that resulted in a criminal filing, criminal conviction. I wasn't part of the criminal cases. I mentioned I would not have taken a criminal case. But in the civil remedy part of it is that now there's going to be remedies.

It's not if it's how much. The officers aren't going to pay anything because they don't have anything. Most officers are in prison right now for a decade. So do I think that's an overreach? If it's my kid, I don't. If it's not my kid, maybe I'd be a little more sympathetic because I'm pro-police. But if it's my kid, I don't think 10 years is enough, right? It depends on what side of the street you ask, right?

Yeah. Because community expects that you're going to do better than that. That you're not going to tase a guy 53 times. and the comments of the report and in the deposition transcripts, did he ever strike you, kick you, punch you, or do anything harmful to you during any of the time you've interacted with them? No. Daddy.

No. So, yeah. But the big issue comes down to all of this, where I think is really important because these are just war stories, is the department's failure. Everyone talks about the overreach. They talk about the officers at taste, 53 times or the neck restraint cases I have

are the positional fixation. I probably had 50 of those that I've had but what they don't talk about is the department's actions in this, that they ratified and endorsed the perpetuated behavior because they don't train the officers. These officers, for one, practice Brazilian jitia today,

don't do it for one whole year and then go in there and roll. See, how will you do? Don't run today, run once a year, then go jump in the callusball marathon if one exists, you're not going to run well. Yeah. Anything you do, shoot once a time of year. You're not probably going to be a great shot

unless you dry practicing all the time. Anything we do, ski once a year. Whatever it may be, you're not going to get good at it, right? So these are very perishable skills. Most departments, 99% of departments, one time a year on a taser. One time a year on defensive tactics means that one time a year, I'm going to be in a fight, I'm going to be on the ground,

I'm going to be sweaty, I'm going to be tired. I'm probably going to be on lethal amounts of caffeine myself because I'm working two or three jobs. I'm gonna, you're now resisting, right? When you look at resistance, right? People talk about resistance, right? You've got compliance. Andy stand over there, got it, Roger that, right?

Second one is passive resistance. You've got your typical guy, your protester in the street that doesn't want to go ahead and get up. And, you know, you're going to, you know, maybe they're joined at the arms for PET or whatever their drummer is for the day. Active resistance. You hear that all the time. That's tensing, bracing or running away. That's, I come up to you grab your army and pull away. Then there's assault the behavior, right?

Throwing punches, kicks, right? And then there's life threatening. So typically, without using a continuum, your force response should be based on the subject's actions, right? So if the person is passive noncompliant, can you use a baton strike on them? Probably not in most agencies' policies. Probably not, right? If the passive noncompliant, can you transition to a carotid neck restraint, those departments that have carotid neck restraints? My former agency, if you couldn't shoot them, you couldn't choke them.

Lethal use of force. That's a drastic misunderstanding of those two different methodologies. I mean, I don't know. In what sense? Guns are designed to kill. Right. I practice choking my closest friends every day of the week. Optimal, optimal word.

Yeah. You practice. Of course. No, it's an incredibly effective tool that should be used by law enforcement if you go to the ground. And it shouldn't be, and it shouldn't be. and it shouldn't be lethal. It's probably one of the most gentle ways to put somebody to sleep that there is.

Right. And 99% of all departments don't consider an upper body control or carotid neck restraint as lethal force. It's intermediate force, because it should be. It can become lethal. It can, but the issue is the optimal word is training. Is that if you don't train it

and now you're fighting and you're on the ground and now you go back to what your highest level of training and that's the issue. So the issue is, yeah, you're going to hear the anomaly, the cases I just mentioned, those are the anomaly. 99% of the time the guys and girls are doing it right. They're doing it right. They're serving.

They're not doing it wrong, from my perspective. It's the times that you look, even the ones that do transition and break the hyoid bone, they weren't trying to break the hyoid bone. Yeah. He wasn't trying to, they weren't trying to, even the officers who tased the guy, they don't want to kill him.

They don't wake up and say, I'm going to kill a guy and go to jail. That's not what their intentions were. Even if you look at the George Floyd case, you think Derek Schovel woke up and said, listen, I want to live in solitary confinement my entire life and this is how I want my life to end. No, there's no intent there. There's no intent. The female officer who went ahead and inadvertently tased Dante Wright, apologized, moved out of the state, could not be more emphatic about her apology. Is that criminal behavior? Absolutely not criminal behavior. Because if you have medical malpractice insurance and the doctor cuts off the right leg instead of the left, Like, does he go to jail for that? No, he made a mistake. She made a mistake. Oh, she actually only shot him instead of tasing him, right?

She killed him. Yeah, shot and killed him. But the point of it is she grabbed. And once again, you and I could probably figure out the X-26 or the, oh, the pistol grip of my, my kimber, whatever it may be, is going to be a little bit different. Well, they took our tasers away from us. Because they gave us a bunch of tasers and not much oversight. And we had gone through the vast majority of the-on-e- Each other. I'm not going to say what necessarily happened.

I will say it was in an operational downtime and somehow they came back and said why are you guys asking for more of these? Just like they're... Yeah, or Gospads. Yeah. We're using them. They're like, fucking give all those back right now.

I'm like, well, what are we supposed to do with the new guys? Yeah, how do we tase the new guys? They do they work. They took those away from us so fast. I bet they did. It's like, we have an empty Connix box and a box of tasers.

Right. Who are the two newest guys? Get over here. Yeah. The problem with it, they make a lot of officers now go through the academy, actually get tased, the ones that do that, to feel what it feels like. Oh, it's not fun. I've been on a few taser rides, and they are not awesome.

Yeah, yeah, I would pass. But then the other motions drive stun. I think that's a lot of agencies don't really allow that. The problem with drive stun, it seems to prolong the use of force incident because now I get turned your back. And it's great to affect the handcuffing technique if your arms pinned under you and I need to cause you to, you know, displace that your thought process a little bit. But the problem with Drive Stun is that I'm taking that taser with 50,000 volts, even though it's got the amputage of a third of a Christmas bulb, right?

It's not, people think it's much more dramatic than what it is, but it's still going to cause some pain. Yeah, for sure. And with that pain, you're going to do what you're going to respond to the pain. And that's going to be flailing, kicking, doing other thing other than what we need to do. And that's effect of handcuffing technique. So I had another case, a former 20-plus-year-something seal guy down in Imperial Beach, wife and kid drops a six-year-old boy. and his wife up for the beach do what stills do he's gonna go probably for 10 mile run earbuds in whiter than we are not middle-eastern descent no profiling no no no suicide vest

tank top shorts earbuds phone imperial beach met him down there two years ago we did the site visit running calls his wife and says hey these like the CBP customs border protection guys are kind of follow me she goes this kind of weird people run over the area it's an open area they've like a yoga area over there with people that come in and it's the border don't get me wrong it's border yeah there's that pier right there yeah I know exactly what you're talking and so they go ahead and he's running on the beach and so he turns a corner and three customs guys tackle them take him down lump them up handcuff him take him to imperial beach holding station never let him know now he used his psychiatrist been gazillion deployments I think he had 20 plus and and I'm sure you know

his name I won't mention it but um he um didn't give him access to his meds but most importantly to him never told his wife and kid that he's gone like they tackled him say can you call your wife she's on the beach with your six-year-old and now your your husband or dad where his dad at 14 12 14 hours later they let him go after they say yeah they're taunt them yeah you're a real american da da da da da oh yeah yeah nonsense so that happened at the border down there and he you know reached out to some attorneys when he was done and not sensational. Yeah. White Navy guy gets tackled and detained and unlawfully detained, which he was arrested, right?

If I detain you for 12 hours, you've taken that detention and you've now transitioned to arrest, right? It's scope, manner, and duration and intensity of that detention, which qualifies it as an arrest. So he was arrested. He was released, but he was arrested, and walked back home. He lived relatively close to there. When I saw him, he was probably 290 pounds. He's probably a fit 180 when this happened. He felt so taken back by his government that he'd given everything to that treated him that.

And he appealed. A lot of this is some audio on this too, on this, but what he's asking, it's like, listen, I served the country. I'm not what you think I am. This is who I am. My wife and kids right down there. And there were just, it was just guys that did not belong to be in law enforcement. Yeah, it did not. Sounds like it.

Yeah. So that, you know, and it wrecked his life. So that really came to the point where it kind of, it was resolved. They settled the case. I didn't know. I'd not heard anything for like a year and I hit up the. And fortunately, as much as people bash the ACLU and there's times that they deserve bashing, they picked up the case.

And they picked up the case. And then they turned it over to a lot of law firms like Jones Day, Reed Smith. I know those names aren't important to you. But they're big law firms that have to take pro bono work on. So they picked up, you know, the couple of young associates who are on. out of law school, super smart, and Jones Day. I think it was Jones Day. May not have been, that picked up the case and called me.

And I'm like, yeah, that wasn't reasonable. None of that's reasonable. What happened to him shouldn't have happened to him. That's not reasonable. And yeah, I'll take the case. And then we met, we did the whole board, met him, walked and talked to him, apologized for him to him because I was embarrassed, you know, that from law enforcement guy, that he was treated that way based on what he did for me and my kids when we're

at home in Huntington Beach, you know, at the beach or sleeping, whatever we're doing, you know, his level of commitment and service. So those are the ones, once again, for the critics that say, hey, how can you take a case against? There are times. There's times that people just don't belong within that spectrum of being in law enforcement. But once again, that's the super, super minority. I mean, I would assume that just like in the SEAL community,

law enforcement officers know that there are bad apples. in their ranks. Like no selection and training process is perfect. So it's not like they're going to, I'm sure inwardly, if you guys were having a private conversation, they'd be like, yeah, that's fucked up. Those guys were fucked up. So they have an issue when you want to stand with the victim. That's the line that they get pissed about.

They would recognize that what happened was fucked up privately, but they just don't want somebody to testify again. Now, mind you, if you're working internal affairs, you're going to take money from that person because they're going to get suspended or they should be. They should be terminated. For what I know about that case, and I know everything about the case, typically these cases I get,

you're talking 10 to 15,000 pages of discovery material. I have to read for one report that I have to write that's typically 60 to 70 pages, if it's a federal case. If it's a, like I have a lot of cases defending Department of Corrections folks. So I work a lot with the AG's office up in San Francisco. They hire me for a bunch of cases,

defending California Department of Corrections, use of the 40. In one case, you used of a canine. So, you know, they keep me real busy. on defending officers against inmates that have, you know, they had to use force on because they're stabbing each other in the yard, right? So they need to stop that behavior. So what better than a long range impact device? They're not going to go down and talk to them. Probably not, probably not best to go get in the mix.

Not at all, right? These guys will stab you as well. So they pepper them up a little bit as they should be, and it works. It's behavior modification. Everyone gets down. The ones that don't get hit. And then they file a lawsuit because it gets them out of whatever module there end to go. The inmate files a lawsuit. Oh, course. Yeah, the roommate files a lawsuit. So I'm defending the California Department Corrections against the lawsuits. So I get retained by the Department of Justice to work defending the officers that used force. So you really are kind of bouncing back and forth, for and against.

Yeah, I don't take any more cases against. I've stopped taking cases against. So I won't even the most egregious ones. I got called four or five times this week. I'm like to run. I'm not taking it. I'm scaling back. Majority of my work right now is going to focus on, you know, I wrote the recommendations post-George Floyd.

So I had the George Floyd case on the plaintiff's side. And all that was, it was going to be if, you know, not if it was going to be how much. Yeah. But the good part of that case, I wasn't deposed or anything. I did a preliminary report. I'm like, okay, that wasn't reasonable based on this. I don't think there's any criminal malfeasance, but I don't think that, you know, I have an issue with duty to intercede.

I have the issue with some other things that I saw that we all saw. If you look and say, that's probably not. But did he intend on doing that? I think there's absolutely no intent at all. That's what I personally believe. I don't think there's an intent to go ahead and spend the rest of your life in jail. But what we did is we. wrote recommendations and a guy named Jeff Alpert and myself that went out somewhere in the

House or Senate. And I think that's the best takeaway on that. Like what I'd like to do is I'd like to do defense work for officers like Dages, Matthew, Matthew Dages, who came on amazing podcast. First round draft choice and law enforcement. They go ahead and they use him as a pawn and they jack his entire career up over the falsifying report over some bullshit to satisfy the media and to satisfy the department. So everyone kind of says, oh, no, it was all him. So they file criminal charges against him. Then they take his career away from him. Knowing from the hiring,

and me and another sergeant, we used to do the APR fit testing on overtime. So, you know, gas mess fit testing. Me and another sergeant from SWAT, Doug Reed, back in 2007, 2008, would sit there and we, you know, we do the fit testing, overtime detail. Out at the academy for the recruits coming in,

you know, big head like me, big APR, right? So you fit test to make sure it worked in a chem biotype type scenario. We'd say, hey, man, what did you do before he came on? And some of us be like, yeah, there's criminal justice major. You know, I was the military. I've always wanted to be it.

I have a heart to serve. Something related to serve. Whatever that service is, they have the heart to serve. Once the bank crisis happened in 27, 28, guys that left countrywide and B of A, it's like, brother, I heard you guys make $100K out to shoot, working three-day work week with benefits and insurance. And you're looking across at a dude who's hips are wider than his shoulders, who's never played a contact sport, who's never been punched in the mouth. who I'm like, and you kind of look, you're like, okay, maybe in Huntington, no, I wouldn't even say that because it's busy where I live. It's busy everywhere.

Yeah, let me stop myself. I don't care where you're at. You shouldn't be in law enforcement if that's the mantra. If that's your, and that's what happened. And those guys that are listening that may listen that are in law enforcement, well, yeah, that guy came on or she came on for the wrong reasons. Last pick for the kickball team, wanted to be a call, whatever their reasons are, they weren't the right ones.

And these dudes, you're looking at you're like, and you can tell right away. It's like, that guy may go. from verbalization to shooting something which is fine in many cases you don't have to this whole continuum I need to taste on it but no you don't if there's a lethal threat to handle that behavior right modify that behavior however you need to do that but maybe an overreaction or subjective fear based on the fact that this person isn't working out and that's another thing that that once they took away from standards right they took away you never see what LAPD and granted Metro

you had to if you've failed a SWAT PFQ you'd 30 days to make it up and then you weren't getting SWAT pay. And even guys had multiple knee surgeries from repelling and fast roping and all the stuff that we would do, like, I can't do this anymore. And they would go work in an sensory duty there at Metro at the armory or working the desk because they would not want to degrade the process. And you talked about the selection process that you don't want to degrade the process. You can't. You can't change the process. That's the way that you crack the foundation visibly that terminates in the house crumbling on everybody inside of it. And everybody raises their hands and says, well, I don't know how this happened.

It's like, it's pretty obvious how this happened. You start lowering the standards. You can't change. You can't change. We had a female LAPD SWAT named Jennifer Grasso. And mind you, no one had ever come through the door of LAPD SWAT. Never in the history of LAPD SWAT. Gina Holmes from that girl tried a couple times.

She would have been a good SWAT operated, but she she shot a tart, did something, had a malfunctioned down a penitent during the shoot house before we get a module training facility up at the Legion Park Academy. Did something where she was good with it. like any other, you know, an applicant. Yeah. She walked to her car and was like, okay, I'm back to it. There was no griping.

There was no lawsuits. One or two girls, I think, had sued, one or two females in LAPD. Jennifer Grasso tried out. Now, mind you, to say that the SWAT community would, I wouldn't say sexist, but, you know, it's inclusive, right? It's a fraternity. Do we want, do we want the, the male swimmer on the female team? It's kind of that to the point. Where's your benchmark on that, right?

So we were, we're looking, saying. okay, how is she going to do? And this girl, I think she played college soccer, something like that, a really good street police officer, smallest to CrossFit Free. Most of our team transitioned from our traditional to PFQ to weed a SWAT operator. That night I was out in 2008, Randy Simmons that was killed.

Him and a guy named Jim Veenster, both element leaders. Jimmy was shot. Randy was killed up in Winnetka. And at that point, some guys are delving into CrossFit at the time. As many agencies did. They realized, okay, the functional pull-ups, push-up, sit-ups, run guys are running a lot of us are running a lot 40, 50 miles a week and

you realize, okay, that's not functional muscles. So we, you know, guys, we developed a shed, guys are kettlebells and pull-up bar and we started doing cross-foot workouts and even our OB course replicated, you know, would tack vest hump, a lot of cross-fit. Well, she was a cross-foot freak show.

I mean, phenomenal. I mean, phenomenal. And she, she didn't pass the process. I'm talking 30 dead hanged pull-ups. I mean, great shot. Yeah. Crush the process. I'm talking like, you know, everyone that's trying out,

I'll say from the male perspective, stud, right? They're coming from Metro. They're phenomenal athletes. They're good, but they know what to expect. It's not like you talk a lot about the ceiling.

You kind of know what you're going to get into, right? You know you have an OB course. You know you're going to go in an interview. You know you have a bunch of stuff that you're going to go through for about two, three months,

a period of time that's going to be part of the selection process, right? During hostage rescue training and exposure preaching, all the stuff that you're going to go through. She killed it. And she came in there. And the best part about the story is, as a sergeant, I'm getting calls all week long.

I'm one of the sergeants taking calls. At CBS News, we'd like to talk to Jen Grasso about her coming on to LAPD SWAT. First Girl to break the ceiling. Hey, Jennifer, I've been talking major players in the news. I wanted to talk to you about your not interested, silent, quiet professional, did her job. She's promoted, I think she's a sergeant lieutenant right now, did a great job. The time I was there, I don't know once I'll speak for a day. You wouldn't know the difference at all.

You see her at the range where I would try to hide because of him a terrible shot. I try to, awful. Yeah, I try to go, especially when you go to SWAT and you shouldn't be there anyways, according to the masses. And so you find that corner range. Yeah. And you have a guy that's, you know, I have an element leader. Rob Cottle actually was killed in combat in Afghanistan as one of my element leaders. He was hit with an IED in 2008, 2009 as well.

Reservist E8, a gunnery sergeant, I think. And he would always work with me and kind of realize, okay, because we had guys there that could shoot better offhanded than I could primary duty hand. I mean, literally guys that would be like, or I'm like, hey, I put the Kimber back together. Do I need these two?

They're like, dummy, get over here, man. I had extra parts for my gun. Yeah, so there was a guys that helped me out. They helped me walk through the process there. But she was great. I mean, she, but to get back to the standards, the issue is the standards, until they incorporate, and it's come up by listening,

I think Rogan brought this up either through Jocco Willink or maybe even your podcast with him, is that until there's a requirement that you're at least a blue belt, you're two, three years in to something that if someone grabs onto you, how are you going to respond to that, right? Yeah.

That you at least know how to strike, that you at least know how to avoid a punch. You at least know how to slip a punch. You at least know how to be able to do those things. You probably shouldn't get hired. I know that might seem extreme, but the money that your agency is going to pay out, or the officers that are killed,

that lose their weapons and weapon retention technique issues because they don't know how to take a hold of someone. They'll talk a lot about de-escalation diffusing, which is great, right? Time and distance, creating words, influence behavior. Let's talk about this, the old verbal judo. The real world doesn't always give you the opportunity to do that. It's right here, right now.

And if you don't, you see some of these awful videos of the guy out in West Virginia by himself that now get taken down to the ground, loses his gun, with it and not to being may putting any fault on him or her it's a good example but it's because they just don't know they don't know what to do or someone grabs on to you they don't know what or equally important they don't create standards that listen if you're overweight you need to pass a physical fitness test i understand workers comp and the whole issue with that but you need to pass

that physical fitness test because when i was a new training officer once again i fall in our sister realm i get that i'm not trying to everyone live in this you know prison perfectionism but But if you shine your boots, you keep a clean haircut, you have a pressed uniform, you talk to people rather than at people, people listen to you. I tell young guys coming down in like 77, my brother, you can't talk to that guy that way. You're coming from Brentwood where you grew up and you still live at home. That's 16-year-old right there, but for you having 15 of us here would beat you to death right now. He's been shot at. He's been brutalized.

You've been talked at the whole time. So if you start out, hey, would you mind, could you? Would you please stand up? It may not work. Please, it doesn't work. Some people get the F over their works. People respond to that. Get the F on the ground.

That works to some people. And being nice, maybe show a sign of weakness. But until they re, and that was part of my recommendations, I put it. Another thing was training, right? I mean, the training, the perishable skills training. There's a defense organization called IPICD out of Vegas or out of Reno. And Institute of Prevention for In custody deaths. And phenomenal training.

So the idea that departments say that we don't have time to train or the research. Well, do you have the resources to pay $30 million for some bad neck restraint case? Or why don't you put it into training the officers to try to avoid that? Because not to say that it won't happen anyway, maybe someone did. But do some things on the front end to maybe try to at least mitigate some of that risk. And that's investing in the officers because they don't do that. They do what they do like a Dejus or they do like they did in with the Brianna-Taylor case is going, one, two, three, break, we're going to, we're washing our hands with you.

You're terminated, you're done. We're not going to support you rather than look and say, if we properly, not to say either one of those cases that either one, someone was not, was untrained. But many of these cases, when's the last time you have a use of force training officer, Smith, four years ago? When's the last time you've qualified with your pistol? I've never had to qualify with my pistol. It hasn't been enough money for ammunition.

So you have where guys need have money for ammo so they can't qualify. Granted, we know they could drive practice. We know there's some extreme ownership part of what they could do on their own. Yeah. But the reality of is that case, even the case with the 53 tasers, four officers on their department. They sit in Deppel, which I agree with. When can you train when you have four officers on a department? Never?

You can't because you're off or on, right? When are you going to have a time for training day? You can't miss a beat on that kind of stuff. So that's, I think, the big issue that the public doesn't realize right now is that the municipalities do not provide the officers, the right training, and the requisite training in some of those things, in BJJ, in BJJ, in martial arts, in defensive tactics. They don't do it. And if they do it, it's once a year. There's another side of that, too, and I'll leave, I'll be as broad with this comment as possible, but I've seen it in almost every area that I've lived in since I've kind of paid attention

to it. The officers who have the opportunity to pursue those things and choose not to. I know cops are like, why the fuck do I need to do jihitsu? I got to. I got to. I a badge and gun. And it's like, what? Yeah. You know, and I went up, it's probably about a year ago now. And I was the, I was the dummy for the defensive tactics trading. And my role, and I know nothing about law enforcement, they're like, hey, the most common thing we deal with is somebody laying on their stomach and they won't give us their hands.

So all we want you to do is we're going to give you one minute with every person. I stayed in there the entire time. Don't freak out, which, I mean, I wasn't going to. but resist. Just resist to the best of your ability. And there were people who showed up to the training so they could sign on the dotted line to say that they were there. Never participated.

Correct. So, you know, there's that other side of the coin too. It's that the department maybe is unable to, but then there's also police officers who will say, my badge and gun are going to do the job. And I actually, that comment was made to me. Well, you're a seal. Like, no, I'm not a seal.

I was a seal fucking 10 years ago. And guess what? We didn't really do any defensive tactives training either. It was very hit or miss. And some people had went down this way. And it was, trust me, I wasn't doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu back then. I wish I was because I'd be fucking people up right now. You'd be a blackmail already.

Correct. Yeah. It's like, God, I wish I could go back in time. But they're like, well, you know, you were kicking our ass because you were a seal. I'm telling them, like, guys, there's nothing that unique about me. And there's plenty of me's out there. So this, my badge and gun are going to get it done mentality. No.

It's, I mean, I get it. This is one of two training opportunities you get per year, but you're literally choosing to not participate in it as well. I don't understand, I don't understand the headspace because from my understanding and talking with all of my buddies who are law enforcement, you touch people all the time. Why would you not train that?

It's, I can't figure it out. It's a understand distance to you're not understanding proxemics. You're not getting that. By BJJR, even like I still box three, four days a week. I still go, I box tomorrow at noon. And that's just understanding how to move. At 50-something years old, not that I'm going to go out and bar fight, but if I'm at the game and someone, I don't throw it's a punch,

I can slip a punch. Yeah. And I can throw, if I can throw if I need to. And I did, I rolled for a couple of years. I did that until I had a couple back surgery. But I can, but I can still along after that. But, you know, I can realize if I get close to someone, I at least understand space and distance.

And if I get on the ground, I'm not going to be helpless. Yeah. I'm going to understand. I have a pistol. I'm going to be able to defend that pistol. But most importantly, I'm going to have the confidence. And that's the big thing. When you think the backup is the gun and the badge, dude, you're in the wrong space.

Because that's the problem. That's when you're talking at people. Because why? Because you're scared. You're probably scared because you realize your own self limitations because everyone should know their limitations. Yeah. And the problem is that even with the fitness part of it, you and I get out of the police car right now, we run after someone. You've been training.

You've been working out. You go to BGJ two hours a day, four or five days a week. You're rolling on. You're staying fit. you're eating healthy, you're doing all this stuff. And we go in foot pursuit. And maybe I'm not doing any of those things because I'm like, I don't need it.

And now you're in foot pursuit by yourself. Well, guess what? I can't separate from you. I shouldn't anyways, right? Many of the cases, many of the officers that are killed in the line of duty is because they separated from their partner out of the line of sight.

Why? Because you've taken the time to get the workout in at 1130 and the partner had not. And the partner had not. And now the partner who's been eating himself to death, who's been eating a loaf of bread before he goes to bed,

who doesn't train, who doesn't care. Because this is a, the problem two is the compressed work schedule. When we went to a three-day work week, it became a part-time job. So the idea of working within that community and being present and understanding what was going on on that, that became, once again, I get the compressed work schedule, less time on the commute, especially people to live outside. I understand that at the 4-10. But 3-2, I've created, you're almost a part-time employee. You might be off six, seven, eight days. So, you know, but the idea of the department not rotating, and Jocka brought up something

where you're looking at least 20% of training. So even though in Calispell, it may be quiet today. You can still run training iterations during the course of the day. You don't need to converge to Starbucks for the third time. I'm not purporting that's what they do, but I can just tell you from police. I can tell you that's what some of them do. So you can get those training iterations. Even if it's using your impact weapon on it, you know, you're striking a bag or even doing situational type stuff. And I know people, like you said, I saw that more times than not. People come to the training. They don't want to roll, especially defensive. Oh, I had a bad shoulder. I have a bad Yeah. They're on their list as attending. Yeah. But you're like, fuck. Well, listen, dude.

Look at the problem. No one wants to address. The problem is that you're 60, 70 pounds overweight. You're not dieting well. You're working two, three jobs. Your stress is high. And you're not the best version of you right now. We need you.

You're a first responder. You're that guy or girl that's going there. Once again, if you show up and you look like you do, you're going to detrit— most people are going to say, no, I'd rather not. I'd rather not. I'm looking at him. He's a type A-looking dude, a square jawed, clean haircut, is fit, big. No.

Yes, sir, I'll stand over there. I'll tell you that's how it worked, but you get the guy who comes out, slovenly boots on shine, uniform looks like shit, you can tell right away, especially you said. Maximum PSI on their belt buckle.

Maximum, yeah, yeah. They're blown, they're on the last notch they have to order an entire new Sam Brown. You're like, sir, did you make that hole in your belt? Because I've never seen a belt to hold that close to the end. Yeah,

all the way in it. That's like you took a Phillips said and did that. For sure. But these parolees, they know that. They go there. Peroles spend their whole time in prison looking at behavior, right?

They do nothing but looking at behaviors. So they'll notice, they'll notice, hey, listen, they'll notice if you happen to wear Cologne to work and you're a dude or a woman that may work that it wears perfume, that when you change it, they know it. So they observe. So now that same guy that's in Pelican Bay or in some prison with these liberal policies is now coming out.

So now he's sizing you up on the street because he's looking at it. You realize that you're not shining your gear. You have no pride of intention. Maybe he's going to take a run at you now. Maybe he's going to not want to go back to prison for that last time. I can probably take him. And now you get some officer by himself in the middle of Iowa somewhere, who now is going to be fighting with his parolee for his life

because of some things that he could have controlled, irrespective of what the department's responsibilities are. Yeah. And then there's the social optic of the job on top of all of that. I mean, it's a working environment. I'm curious, I'm curious as to the type of people in the modern era that's called the last two to three years that are now really, applying for law enforcement.

Would you? No. No. Where with I? That's what I'm saying? Who is? You're getting judged by a two-dimensional camera called a body-worn camera. Now, I think they're good because they did. The people that are chronically complaining. Like I've taken cases, literally, probably a dozen cases where what the attorney told me and what the initial complaint was, now I'm looking at body-worn camera. And I'm like, oh, brother, you didn't say any of this stuff in here.

See attached X amount of money back on your deposit and you can find someone else. else because I've done it at least it doesn't time recently to a guy in Atlanta it's like he told me this I'm like listen I don't take cases with guns I don't take them I just don't call me all day long I'm not taking a case you want to carry a gun I don't care if it's where it's at I'm not taking your case and I'm looking I'm like and as I'm going through the videos I'm like man this guy was armed this guy was armed and so and then it was like once again it was close to when the reporters do so he lost his shit I'm like then you should talk being a liar yeah the body cams and talking again to my buddies they're like listen at first

we thought this was going to be a nightmare, it actually saves us a lot of the time. Every time. Because there's a lot of assholes on camera. Or chronically complained. Correct. That said, you know, Andy said this and said this. And they're just like, here you go. Here's my camera.

Like, go to town. But it sucks in the sense where, you know, the best part of the job is the banter. The best part of the job is the humor. Like the best part of the job. Best part of that job is typically the cop humor. It's like the military humor. It's the banter. It's that stick.

It's the levity in the environment. And it's taken away from that because now if you hear, that. Yeah. And even if it's, even if it's, you know, I have a case defending a sergeant in California Department of Corrections, it's a positional case, and he had a nervous laugh at the end of it. The guy didn't die that there's some, there's some significant issue. He hit a nerve. He wasn't intentionally laughing at him, but he has a nervous left, big African American guy works for CDCR, but one of the prisons up there. And, and so the plaintiff, when I'm working against, some being defending the officer, was saying that, oh, he was, you know, even in his complaint,

and so-and-so officer smug and laughed at the, no, he didn't. Because it's a two-dimensional. When you look at that and say, no, there was no intent to laugh. It's just some people, that's the way he emotes. It wasn't bad. It was just the way that he came across like that, but that's fuel to their fire. We tell the jury, they're like, no, that's the physiological, psychological part of the job, right? The responses that happen in a time of crisis.

It doesn't mean that you're being insensitive or anything else. The guy may not even remember that he made those noises. He didn't because he was asked at his deposition, and they had him play that. Or the guys that yell and cuss after being involved in his shooting, like, oh, he's cut. Dude, he just went through a traumatic life experience. It's traumatic.

He didn't want to do that. I cuss my ass off in shootings. Let me just tell you. You motherfucker. Especially if it's after you get hurt, right? You just, yeah, because you're angry, because you should be angry because the person's trying to take your life. And if they weren't trying to take your life,

then you wouldn't be shooting them anyway. Correct. Or perceived trying to take your life. I mean, for us, it was hostile act, hostile intent. But, you know, so, and another thing that's happening here, the Flathead Valley in Montana is not visually shitty. It's a great place to live. There's a lot of people who want to transfer in. And I'm not going to say they're fleeing municipalities that have, because my knowledge of how law enforcement works is actually incredibly limited.

Like, I think I understand the patrol and the type of things that they're going to encounter, but not the higher level bureaucracy and how departments are actually structured. but I'll use the term people who are fleeing certain departments. So what does that leave behind? If the desire is for this exodus, and it seems to be an exodus from the coasts inwards, often, what does that leave the department with? Because I am curious, like, what's the pool of applicants looking like now in the next or the last two to three years

in the next two to three years to come forward? Maybe not those people, maybe not the right people. You look at a guy like Degis, Officer Degis, who they terminate erroneously. and inappropriately, you hear that story, and you're a guy that could do anything else in your life. You've got a supportive wife. You could do anything else.

You could go to school and do whatever, right? You're a smart guy, you can do whatever. If you look at that guy's story, do you want to go back? Do you want to apply for law enforcement? I don't. I don't, right? If you look, you know, if you read, it's 12 seconds in the dark, Mattingley's book.

Yep. If you're, I told you, I finished that on the plane here. It's a really quick, good read. It really, Page Turner. If you read that, would you join the police department, Missouri? You wouldn't, you'd never, you'd never join. You'd never because that's someone who serves 20 years, and that's the way they were treated. You got some bullshit of filing a false report because nothing else happened in the way of the use of force.

The Dejus and La Mesa because the citizens and the community are acting, so you want to cover your ass. I'm not applying for that job. I know I talked to guys in the Huntington Beach because I mentioned I defend guys in their arbitrations and talking to guys because I'm pro-police down there. and and I say how is things morale is pretty good I mean the beach city right they can't live there of course because the housing markets through the roof so they don't have a cool five to six mill

in the bank just a right even though they're making a pretty good pension they're living 30 40 miles out and can't afford much so those guys are looking to you know to come like I with all the BLM stuff and all the nonsense I told my wife said listen got a lot of equity in our place in Huntington we own a couple properties in mammoth

let's sell everything to move to Park City or to Monmouth Montana. We can go to Whitefish. We could cash it all out. She goes, is there surfing in either one of those two places? I said, no. There is riding boards on water. It's just a different media. Yeah, all three. I remember the conversation because I really wanted, I looked at, I was just, I read all of Jack Carr's books and he talks a lot about in Park City. And so actually, I was in Park City. My son's lacrosse playing, played Brigham Young last weekend. So we went up there and we went up to Park City after we, after we lost by one, which is our first. We were number two in the country. I went ahead and needed a beer and something to eat. So she wanted to go cowboy hat shopping, which I wanted no part of. But anyway, we went to Parkinson. We could live right here.

This is bitching right down here. And it's red. My wife, who was born in Mexico, it took her to, like, March to take down her Trump flag. I'm like, hey, listen, they're going to start, they're going to start key in my car out front. So you need to stop. Like literally. And two of my boys are conservative. My one boy who went to film school, one of my twins, Roman, which I really appreciate.

his opinion he's got great insight he's changed my opinion a lot of things because I'm like you know you know he came back we nicknamed him Antifa for a while that was his nickname in the house he became a film student so he came back kind of indoctrinated right into the into the culture down there but he brings a incredibly unique perspective I'm like wow a lot of the cases I'll look at I'll be like what do you think I'm coming I'm like hey what do you think from your potential juror you're super liberal and but he's I'd say he's not really super liberal I see pretty liberal. In fact, so much so we go hike a lot like in Laguna and me and the other boys

we're driving in my SUV and there was a bunch of people protesting against Trump along PCH. We love for PCH and like 21st on there. So he snuckled rolls down his window and it's like giving them the woohoo dude I had a window lock him like he was five years old. I'm like you do that shit again

you're walking the rest of the time but there's no woohooing out of here you're cheering to the wrong crowd so and his brother's like you know his twin brother's super conservative. Yeah. Don't know him to be riddle. And then my youngest, he's just angry. So he's either, he does not have any of it. It's good to have a balance of both of those.

Yeah, they have a good perspective. But to answer your question, I think it's going to have real significant issues in the recruiting process. I think what they've done, there's been such stuff. But I also see by working with juries and working in these cases that there's a polarization now. People have realized that they have accused and they've, and once again, I don't have a problem with the guys that clearly go way right. and someone has to pay for that, the guy who tays him, or the guy who detains the Navy SEAL guy and someone has to pay for it

or the guy who comes out of a comedy club and some venue has to pay because he gets shot and they're negligent security. I think that's good. I think those systems are in place, but they're never going to change unless they realize that that risk and that cost should be put back into training.

If you just pay the tab and you don't either retrain that officer... It doesn't fix anything. Yeah, you don't retrain the officer. Every cases, you know, we're shooting into moving vehicle cases, right? I mean, where there's a girl in the back seat of the car, of the boyfriend. There's no gun in the car. Case in Arizona, 17-year-old, beautiful girl, shot right in the back of her head and killed.

And the question is, you look at some of these cases. You're like, a lot of it comes down to, it's an old San Diego case called Hayes v. County of San Diego. Is it what did your pre-shooting tactics do to put you in that position, otherwise you would have been in a bad tactical position? So did you create the, did you stand in traffic and wonder why you get by a car? Yeah. Right.

So what tactics did you use? So the pre-shooting tactics, I've had a couple cases where I thought the shooting is reasonable. The shooting of a homeowner who was an iron worker, never been arrested, whose nephew was staying in, didn't know he's in trouble with the law. SWAT agent, SWAT entity, not my former, does a search warrant. Should have been to surround a callout, contain and call. There's a lot about no knock that came. And even though the Breonna Taylor case was not a no-knock warrant. Yep.

It was not for those that didn't. They spent longer the threshold than I would have. Oh, way longer. Way longer and way, numerous, numerous, um, various, um, uh, verminus. verbal commands based on what was written in the book. Yeah. But this one guy who's got a boy who's 16 years old with cerebral policy who lives in the front part of the house, this is just east of Los Angeles in the county. He grabs a gun like you and I would because he's got three or four kids in the front part.

His master bedrooms in the back, Ironworker 30 years down in St. Peter area, grabs his pistol and runs to the front of the house. Think someone's kicking in the front door of itself. Well, they were. They were using a manual breach to get into the front of the door. So he's running down the hallway because he hears the 16-year-old, he can't walk, he's considerable policy, significantly disabled, running down there. And guys come in, MP5, light him up, kill him. So they kill him. Reasonable shooting.

It's reasonable. They made entry. The shooting in itself, I think, is reasonable. The guys don't know. Yeah. They're coming down. The officers don't know what they have. They see a guy coming down with a pistol.

So they can, they need to respond. They need to go home. They need to be safe as well. But why would you force an entry in a house where you're looking for potential? murder suspect. Yeah. There's no destruction of evidence issues. It's contain a callout, right?

You contain it. You get on there. You have a SWAT team come out there. Hey, knucklehead. We're not going away. Come on out. Bring everyone out. How many kids?

How many women bring out? And then systematically clear the house. But those... I don't think people realize how much behavior can be driven and escalate. So I had a buddy who was out. We did a podcast yesterday. And somehow we started talking about road rage. and he had he was aware of a story in his hometown where oh it was because there was finally somebody riding a motorcycle like it's getting close to motorcycle weather up here and this guy with like ipro and gloves and no helmet i'm like what the fuck man have you never been hit by a bee in the face riding motorcycle it sucks put a helmet on you it's like ow and and somehow it got onto road rage he's like yeah there was a incident near where he lives where and we were both kind of just talking about how i do my best to not lose my cool when i'm

driving because I have cut people off by accident. And I'm just like, listen, I'm not trying to be an asshole. You're very smart. I'm very dumb. You're very attractive. I'm ugly. Like, I apologize. Fuck. Yeah, you win. And he was telling a story about, you know, motorcycle pulls up and a woman not necessarily sure about what happened, but there's a little bit of a cutoff. The person on the bike kicks the car. She is five months pregnant and wants to get the fuck out of there. Drives off, contact with the motorcycle. I don't even think it was the person on the motorcycle that followed her, but two people on bikes followed her to her home.

And this whole time I'm thinking in my head, what would that person's headspace be? They were in a confrontation that they didn't want to be in. They're now being followed by somebody they don't know. They're going home. So she gets home, calls 911, gets a gun. The two guys get off the bike,

approach, she comes out of the house after this. Two guys on the bike, one of them has a gun. They get a gunfight on her lawn. And she dies. Oh, no. Five months pregnant. Oh, no. And I look at situations like that and like, fuck, everything about that is so

catastrophically tragic. It's the classic error chain. If you would have just break one of those, call 911 one stay in your house, you know? The motorcycle riders, you know, like there was no loss of life. Take a picture of the fucking license plate and give that to the, you know what I mean? And it's just, I don't know if people realize how fast that behavior can ever. escalate and then you end up in a situation where, you know, although the shooting is tragic and I would never follow somebody to their house, but let's say I'm at my house and somebody comes onto the property and produces a weapon, I've got some limited options at that point. And I'm sorry, I'm going to run through my Rolodex options like that. And I don't, I'm not looking to take anybody's life, but it just, it shocks me how that's somehow lost on people. Like it can end up in this tragic, tragic event. But you're also like the officer at the hallway.

I've been in that tactical situation where you're overseas and people don't necessarily know what's going on in the middle of the night. And maybe we're setting a breach or we have a hung breach and we're finishing with the mechanical. And they're coming towards you and I'm under night vision goggles and they can't see me. And they take an action where I'm like, fuck, I have to make a choice. Did they do anything wrong? No, not necessarily. Did I do anything wrong? No, not necessarily.

But it's a tragic incident. You know, it just, I don't know. Many of those incidents end that way. Many that we look at the, like, I'd be far-fetched to think that more than just a small percentage of officers want to get involved in any of these incidents. I think there's some, obviously there's some, just because I know how some people moated when you get involved in the shooting like, hey, that was bitching or something you're looking like. Or even when I get injured, I get back to work. I'm like, hey, you did a dude that got shot? I'm like, yeah, they're like, wow, that's pretty cool.

I'm like, no, there's nothing cool about it, brother. Like, you look and say, like, that space that people are at where they think there's some novelty to being involved in a shooting. There's no novelty of, you know, especially if you have any faith in your life, you know, the last thing you want to do is take someone's life. And even the most egregious ones you hear about at the time, the shooting I spoke about in Texas, the one in the front end. Is that officer a bad, not a bad guy? He didn't wake up that day and say, I want to kill a transit with his pants down to his ankles. It just happened. Like, had he just done something like to break that cause a link?

He just created some distance, got on there, take a look, deploy his taser, drive out of the area. Because, you know, you have an opportunity to do that, right? tactical retreat a lot of times you know officers have a problem with that for some reason like dude put yourself in a better space slow things down and so you're on a motion down too right there's a lot of stuff regarding police pursuits and i have a lot of police pursuits cases and you know that's where qualified immunity comes up the most right is that was it reasonable based on the officers actions well every case that i've i've had it's not the person that they're pursuing that ends up suing i've got a case in baltimore where they're they're they're

They were pursuing a guy 105 miles an hour through a small town like this one for evading. Not evading. Not Richard Ramirez. Not Pablo Escobar. Not the guys you want to capture and potentially or kill. But it's a guy that was evading, which means that you didn't start for me, failed to yield. You know, it becomes a, you know what measuring competition. And so I'm going to chase you with impunity because I'm on lethal amounts of monsters.

Literally. Literally. I'm jacked up, right? Because most guys are. I'm arguing with my wife. I haven't slept. I'm working two jobs. I'm getting the nonsense from home.

I don't like my supervisor. Whatever the numbers didn't add up for whatever you needed to add up for the bills for the month. And so I'm going to chase you until something happens. And that's something that someone's going to crash. With the end of that particular crash, a lady who literally, when you say coming back from church, yes, coming back from church. Baby 18-month stroller. Car flips, hits another car, kills the baby in a stroller. or the case where, you know,

I believe in arrow platform shooting at times, maybe in theater. Don't really think it maybe applies a whole lot. I know with LAPD, very robust, our sniper component would shoot from the helicopters. I mean, you could shoot the engine block? You can do that. You can do that.

Well, and that's a great point. You can do that. And I'm not a former sniper, and I was not one of my cadresles if I don't speak out of turn right now. But LAPD had never used that tactic, even though they trained for it every month, as if they would use it the next day.

Which is great, which is great, right? You want to train because once again, I'm the big advocate of training. And I remember that when I was first at Swan. I'm like, we're doing 18 runs of this again, this hostage rescue training, you know, and with NFDs and all this. Why are we doing it again? I'm not saying it, of course, because I didn't say a word for two years. But I'm thinking it.

I'm like, why are we doing it again? And then you realize when you watch these guys do their magic at two in the morning with APRs on in a tear gas environment doing something, it's seamless. Yeah. It's seamless watching that happen. It's because of the repetitions, right? It's a amount of the repetitions that they're doing. They become.

But, you know, a case that I've worked on, um, bad guy. No problem if you shouldn't kill a bad guy. I'm good with it. Want to take your case? I don't care. I don't care. Carjack someone. Didn't kill anybody, but carjack took a car, dope deal gone bad type thing, bad suspect,

bad victim type thing, but, you know, normally a no harm, no foul type case, right? No real victim. And nonetheless, he goes on the other side of the free rate they pursue, which typically most departments say, oh, he's going wrong way? Yeah. Most departments say, don't follow him because what you're going to, like the Matrix where you're zigzagging out of the motorcycle. He's going to go 70.

You're going to go 70. He's going to go 80. You're going to go 80. Something's happening. And he's going down. He's down on the number one lane, which would be the left opposite side. He's in the breakdown lane, whatever we want to call it, depending on the level of traffic. On the 10 freeway, big of the business is very in the United States.

So the officer who wasn't a SWAT officer, but he was a tactical flight officer, decided it would be a good time to deploy the M4. So he decided to deploy the M4 into the car. which he did. Two, two, three rounds. Mine, you know, three, right, just straight two, two, three rounds. Yeah.

But he peppers a windshield and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, he put his foot on the case, right, right, and he put his foot on the pedal, which is, that's why most departments say, don't shoot into moving vehicles, because, A, you're going to miss. You have a, you have a. train around ballistics and glass is a number of issues. But he did as he went across the freeway in a family coming northbound or motor and westbound, pardon me, 11-year-old boys in a wheelchair for the rest of his life because of that.

So you look and say, okay, what cost benefit analysis? Like you said, do you need to chase the person home and follow them home? Where's that causal link break? And if you look at some of these traumatic injuries, there was an opportunity, I think, in some cases, Remember, if it's rapid tense and uncertain, that's the parameters of lethal force running under Graham v. Connor was objectively reasonable. Then no, it doesn't.

It doesn't call for power a plan. It's right here, right now. We're going to stop behavior. Everyone's good with that. But when you look, it's okay, if I fire into the windshield on the car, what is going to happen? Yeah, we'll kill the guy.

And he was. He was killed. Yeah. But then the vehicle becomes a weapon. Now the vehicle creans out of control, and then you've got a kid who already had preexisting medical conditions is now confined to a wheelchair

the rest of his life. So it's not if you're going to pay, it's how much. And then you look and say, officers trying to do the right thing. They were. They're trying to stop a bad guy that nobody wants in their community. It needs to be in prison. But in California, you'd probably get 30 days and they'd let him out. But nonetheless, if they needed to be in prison for the rest of his life, for even driving on the wrong side of the freeway, endangering those people. But the actions were such, though intentionally we're trying to be reasonable. The result of those actions resulted in obviously loss or in this case, the disability. So.

Damn. What were the recommendations that you wrote after George Floyd? A, that they, you know, everyone talks about de-escalation, diffusing training. It was primarily me on the training component that A, officers are properly trained, that these training happen up there on a quarterly basis.

I mean, most departments have an annual basis. We in LAPD shoot every other month with the primary duty, shotgun four times, three to four times a year. We had a guy named Scott Reitz and LAPD that took upon himself, former SWAT officer to develop training in house literally and took people up to the range up in Angeles range and every month for gang units patrol units you know he didn't really do directly with SWAT

even though he worked as a SWAT operator maybe a dozen years or so well thought of SWAT operator he um he went up there and I can say him himself single-handedly saved countless officers I mean I can tell personally two of the shootings I've been involved I literally had his training right before then he was always on because I was going to go for you with a pistol and he was like all those big muscles like getting on me and like basically un-f yourself, right? But he created an environment that did that. Not, and he did it for thousands of officers. And so without a doubt, you can't measure it.

But if you did measure the people that were saved based on his, just his training alone would be, it would be insurmountable in the sense of being, looking at what he did. So getting back to the recommendations was the de-escalation diffusing part of it, yes. And it's not just the verbal judo component of it, right? You have to realize that like 90% of the people you can interact with have a mental health or either mentally ill or experiencing a mental crisis, i.e. road rage, honor our psychotropic medication under the influence of controlled substance or alcohols.

You have to factor that in. So your tactics need to be part of that factoring into that equation, that you need to consider that. Is this guy gonna respond to my commands? Okay, great. Is he gonna respond to multiple commands? Get on the ground, don't move, put your hands up. Which ones are you gonna respond to?

Yeah. So those conflicting commands, Someone who's mentally ill, like this former vet, the case I just turned in the Air Force guy, that if you listen to the audio, that's all your hair. You and I couldn't do those commands right now. The Simon says commands? Oh, and they were different bouncing all over the place? All over the place, all over the map.

That's tough. Someone who's meant, once again, tough if you're not mentally ill. Real tough if you're off your psych medication, you're in a crisis at that time. Real, real, real tough. So that became part of not just getting de-escalation, diffusion techniques to appeal to the media, get that training, but have meaningful training. and make it scenario based training. Part of the recommendations were that training through IPICD.

There was training that can. I have no affiliation at all. Dr. Peters is the doctor-in-charge. Primarily defense, so I'll take his classes on excited delirium and stuff. Is that every department, if you can't afford it, there's opportunities. It should be national-based guaranteed. Agencies that have four, six, eight, ten people that can't support that,

you need to come to a point where you're now absorbing those people into like a bigger department where they can now provide those services where guys can get days off and attend training yeah that was a big component of it um i was anti qualified immunity on that i i they part of the the the attorneys try to push forward i was anti i don't believe i think qualified immunity must exist well with a hundred percent unless there's a constitutional violation and you knew that it existed at the time that being a constitutional violation or the or the actions are so unreasonable based on the totality of the circumstances that a reasonable person would say that behavior is unwarranted.

Driving 110 miles an hour in downtown Calispell for got affiliate to yield, and you kill a lady in the crosswalk. That was foreseeable. Not to say you should go to jail for it, but in the sense of, based on civil litigation. Should you be sued, a department sued based on those actions? Maybe if it's my kid in the crosswalk or my family. I'm suing you. So those are basically it is structured training, ongoing training,

perishable skills training. my focus of those recommendations were predicated on that and obviously with selection and it gets back to who wants to do the job when you let the Degesis go, Officer Dajus go and you let people like that go or you take a guy like Mattingly and you show him the door

a guy who took rounds for your department that permeates throughout the law enforcement community you're going to have a hard time doing that what's the incentive to do that one of my three kids maybe one of my kids would be desirous my college athlete unless it was like an Irvine California in your Huntington Beach, I would sanction it.

Other than that, if he said, Dad, I'm going to go work LAP like you and mom. I'm like, no, you know, I'm going to, you already tore your A cell once. I'm going to do something to you right now to make sure that your knees are notupperable. Yeah, your interview's not going to go well. Sorry. Yeah, I'm putting cocaine. I'm putting rock cocaine in your pocket. There's something happening.

You're having a gun with the serial numbers filed off in your car. I'm calling it in. There's something happening. You just, you know, pointed a gun at mom and you ran out of the house. We're creating some type of bad scenario for it because I just don't want to put you in that place. I just don't want to subject you to that. And here's the different, the deal with all of these pundits and these idiots to talk about, defund the police, I worked in African-American communities.

I worked in nothing but hardcore African-American. There is no one that loves the police more than the African communities. Never ate better. I mean, they come up, give you a hug. I'm talking in Watts and areas where this housing property. They love the police. They don't like it when a fraction of one. 1% gets it wrong.

Yeah. But the people, they are pro police. They want more police. They want better trained police. They want police, obviously, that can come and serve their community. You go to the moms and sell side of Chicago and say, hey, we're thinking about cutting back on the number of police officers in. I know there's 13 kids getting shot off their tricycles every weekend, but we're going to

cut back on the amount of people that are there. They tell you, they go after themselves. That would be the response. So the purple-haired Antifa guy or the liberal socialist beta mail that's on TV, talking about defund the police and protesting until hopefully he gets shot with some type of less lethal projectile. guy that's out there or that girl that's banging the drug that lives in Brentwood, California that never has dealt with the police at all, tell that to the mother of the 16-year-old boy

that was killed down there at 77th and Broadway. Talk to that person. So that's going to be the, until they change and people stop the bashing, I think the lawsuits that are reasonable to only hold, because once again, officers aren't paying lawsuits, until the departments that get that money and say, wait a minute, We need to do better. We need to train better. The money we spent right now could have been spent on bullets,

could have been spent on tasers, could have been spent on long-range impact devices, could have been spent on better training, better selection. We can incorporate physical fitness standards into our thing and make it a must. We can get guys that are down there that aren't signing on the roster.

The dude, you need a blue belt. You need two, three years rolling around and you're going to come do that. Just like you need a back. We don't care about, I have a bachelor's degree in criminal justice. You know what impact that is? Zero.

Zero. It's worthless. It's good on a resume. It depends on who you. But the point of it is, I've a graduate degree in public administration, another worthless degree. If you took that time spent on those worthless degrees like taking sociology and other things that don't really apply to the job, because they don't apply to the job. It helps you get in, right? And maybe help you promote to a level because of all things being equal, especially when you have bad time on the books, is if you took that and said, listen, instead of spending four years at a university and have the college experience, this is what we expect.

you're going to be 21 years old, but we're going to need a blue belt or something similar to that from a sanction, you know, Brazilian jihist's studio, not some, not your buddy in the garage. Bob's garage.

Yeah, Bob's garage, that guy. Yeah, we're not doing Bob, but some, because A, that would be great for the studios to get business. You're connecting with the community there. So, and the temperament. And I'll just say this.

My 21-year-old is kind of a hot head. Big kid, big good-looking dude. As are many 20-olds. Yeah, I think you have a kid around the same age. 18. Yeah, I got 21 and twins, 23. So that, there's a lot.

going on there. So with with Justin he you know I box for five days a week and I and I and I still I I sport for a while I got a couple broken ribs until they realize listen hit dummy in the head from this point on he is a walking ATM machine we cannot have him down so so the point of it is I love Alex Alex Perez and Craig Wilkinson my two trainers but um Alex from a WBC lightweight champion well Alex is a smaller statute guy probably 55 56 not like Craig who's a BJJ I believe he's a black belt or something NCAA wrestling champ, Brazilian,

and a boxer, all that. All that. I'm talking double, double-colored ears. So a good looking guy, Craig, but you look at him right away, like,

no. Not the guy I'm gonna talk about to. Yeah, 4.3.40 I'm right now. I'm at a 4-3-40 right now to get away from you, right? Fear, just like my dad, going back to the dad story. Yep.

But my son, who, you know, kind of edgy, you know, would be an understatement. On the field, off the field. I'm thinking he's now turned 21. He's going to beat the bars in Huntington. And I don't want to pay, you know,

insurance right there's what you have a maximum right so I'm thinking I don't want to pay more than the maximum right now he gets his teeth knocked out because even though he's a big kid size don't mean a damn thing yeah so he came in a box meal with his past summer and not with me but he took him to the gym bought him some lessons and he got to spar with Alex Perez and I said if you saw Alex Perez on the street you know my son's 6-1-190 super fit I said would you saw him on the street what would you think he goes I could smash him I dude famous last year I can't hit Alex only reason it lets me hit him just because I'll come back and pay him that early. They give you like one at the end of the session.

Send you out on a high note. Yeah, a couple. He's moving the whole time. It tempered my son dramatically. Now, I need to get him back in. I told him that a couple days ago because wherever we're at one of the games, he's got two a week right now. I'm like, you let you're, one of the fans was chirping and he went over to the fan group, which are by guys my age. I'm like, don't do that again. Because now I'm going to have to fight and I'm way too old.

And so the temperament is, and the reason why I bring it up is that what that'll do on training guys on the front it'll give them some time it'll respect it allows you to respect all men every man you come across is yes or no sir you respect them because a you don't know the backstory yeah you don't know what they went through you don't know the hardships you don't know that so you're it makes you understand but at the same time you have to understand that you're it lets you understand your own limitations like if you know you're wrong with a you know a black belt today and you know you're gonna you know right away what your strategy is probably going to be run yeah well no even in reality you know your strategy yeah for the guy you roll with your guy who's trained

you, you're going to go ahead and you know your strategy. But you're not going to go typically beyond that because you're going to expose yourself, right? You're probably going to get to a place that you now you can't get yourself out of it. And it's the same thing is understanding your limitations, developing obviously some temperament. So that's what it's going to do. So I agree with that. And then with that, you have mandatory 20% training during your shift.

Is that if you're slow, you're going to rotate through the weight room at the gym. We're going to do some dry practice. We're going to talk about scenario-based training. We're not going to sit and talk about what's not right about the department. And that be your mantra that you're training all the time. I think if you do that and you get in that mindset, I think, A, the public service is going to be much better. Officers aren't going to be killing themselves.

They're not going to be stressed because officers don't kill themselves because of an action that happened off the job or on the job, like the shooting. They kill themselves is because of the internal component of the job. You get to get like the Aegis that gets run through or maddingly, they get runs through the gauntlet of stuff. And they just can't take it anymore. Because when you go through that at work, you're taking that home. Yeah.

You're taking that component home. So everyone around you, you get guys that are moving, Mattingly moving out of his house, pack up and go. Out of the city. The city that he served, yeah. Yeah. And so that kind of stuff. We're telling, you know, tell your kids right now, hey, we're leaving again. We're going somewhere else.

We're leaving and going to wherever, Ohio. They can make no one out. You can go. Yeah. Right. That kind of disruption. So I think that'll help out. And obviously get officers the right mental health training.

rather than the box checking that they all do, right? Get them ongoing mental health training. And I think that's it. How do you think we can recover the narrative that I, it's not the only narrative, but I have heard, yeah, cops are just out there hunting people. And oftentimes that'll be tied to defund the police. And I think a lot of times there's motivations behind the scenes. But right now the social optic on most law enforcement is not great.

You know, they're looking at them through the negative. rose-colored glass as opposed to the, you know, glass half empty versus glass, glass half full. How do you think that could be recovered or flipped? Well, I think the narrative is going to be that if that was your daughter that just got raped or that your bike that got stolen or your car that got stolen or your house get broken into, do you want proactive police or reactive police? You want proactive police. As long as proactive policing is done the right way, I think the broken windows theory applies, right,

if you take care of those small things, the plight, the homelessness, the drug use on the street, those things that permeate mostly every community now, especially with meth and fentanyl. If you do that and you, I think the department will realize it 99% or greater, I think it's a low number, are there to serve. And they're going to mess up. They're going to go right when they should have went left. They're going to make a mistake. They're going to, but they're trying. I think the idea of sitting back and doing nothing and being, which is going to happen, which is happening right now. I know that after 92 riots, I know that after Rodney King, you get LAPD to do it. And, you get LAPD to do it. Initiated self-police work not happening

Unless even now you see crimes in progress do I guarantee you guys are like this No dealing with that one right now going right ahead because I'm not dealing with that that guy's mentally ill He's naked. He's in the street I don't want to touch him. He's fraught with all kinds of diseases and stuff I don't want to deal with them And for what if I do that I'm trying to help them I'm only gonna get criticized when things don't go right by the community Yeah, because you're looking through the video which is you know obviously two-dimensional that being body worn cam so I think it starts with not the public, but until the departments defend their officers appropriately and take responsibility.

Listen, we paid $30 million in that lawsuit. You know why? Because we didn't train you properly. We didn't do what we were supposed to do. We didn't give you the right tools, equipment, and training. We allow you to sign in on the roster and you didn't do the drill. We're not going to allow you to do that. Yeah.

Hey, John, listen, we need you here. I'm not going to sign in because it's Periscable skills training and you need your post or whatever, you know, organization certification you need for your. your respective agency, we're not going to do that. But you're going to do that. If you're ill, sick, or injured, then you need to get that fixed and come back to work when you're better. But we're going to expect you to perform.

We're not going to, we're going to expect you that we're not going to shoot guns once a year and think that you're going to run after selling on lethal amounts of caffeine through a back alley, by yourself, jumping fences with your heart going 130 beats a minute, and now be proficient with that pistol. You're not. So when the errant round goes beyond intended target and kills a kid coming out of the room, and now you're paying $30 million. And what could have, how could we have changed that?

Well, have them qualify. Have them qualify every other month. Have them qualify every month if the rounds. Or just, hey, have an incentive. Have a physical fitness incentive for guys. Hey, listen, we're going to do this. They used to do that before. You could drive California Highway Patrol.

You'd never see an overweight California Highway Patrol ever. Always thin, look great. Even though they're on the free with bullshit winds coming and debris and dirt, those guys are like, wow, those guys always look good. Right, always. I'm like, wow. And now you don't see the same. Like even their standards that was always high. And they have an in living, you know, type academies.

And they're not going home and there's gorgeing all night long, you know. But, yeah, until they do that, I think the department, until the department backs their officers and they get people in positions such as mayor and city council that back their officers, the public's only going off their sentiment. Because think about it, if your own department, like in Degis or like in Harkin back to Martin Lee's case, if they're selling you out and the city council selling you out, and the mayor selling you out, the current chief of police selling you. Because, listen, everyone's looking at their next promotion. That deputy chief, it wants to be chief. The commander wants to be assistant chief,

depending on your rank structure. They're not looking backwards or looking forward. And so until they start redoing that and start protecting the officers and own it, when you're trying to chase someone and the kid gets killed in the crosswalk, say, listen, we're going to do better. We're going to train better.

We're going to do it. You're going to pay. But I think the public would realize and come back and say, listen, when we own it, And we look and say, the shooting, listen, when I get shot in line of duty, the department, and rightfully so.

And I'm glad they did. Because when I became a training officer and even a sergeant after that, I said, listen, guys, if you ever involved in an ambush, you can drive through it, you're minimizing that threat. Don't back up. Obviously, you're in your funnel. And please don't get, if you do get out of the car,

please put it in park. Right? So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that I think that is until they really look and say that is what we need to do as a department and defend the officers that do even when they don't do the long as it's not criminal. Yeah. Nobody wants criminals under the department.

Nobody wants that. But people are going to fall back to their highest level of training. And if they do it wrong, apologize. Say, listen, we did something. We were trying to do a neck restraint. We broke the guys higher bone and he died. We're not minimizing it. We apologize for that.

This is what we've done. We've conned down. We paid the family. Right? because a jury verdict is going to get more incensed when you could have cut a check and saying, we're sorry, we tried, he was resisting. We didn't mean to do it, but it happened, and we're sorry.

Like the female officer that did that, not that it worked, like she should have never been convicted of a crime. Apologize. I'm sorry, I did not mean. She sob, right? You know she was, she's a mom. You know she didn't mean that what happened. But it's okay, pay.

Do you need a, no, and then train better. Okay, everyone's going to go through familiarization and make sure that even at a time of stress that when we go for that, you know, should be the opposite side, obviously. We go for that X-26 or X2. We understand that it's cross-body. We're not going to pull our pistol

because we've trained on that. And we didn't let the guy or girl sign in because it was easy. And we as supervisors didn't allow him to sign in without saying, no, brother, that's not working here today for us. Yeah. Bring your gym shit and get on the mat like everybody else.

Because we need you and they need you at 2 o'clock in the morning. Before you think about eating that bowl of ice cream, realize that you may have, be in foot pursuit tomorrow night, and Officer Smith needs you to be able to stap with him. He needs you to, because when he turns a corner, he has a deadly threat. He may not be able to respond to, but you may be able to. So that's where the extreme ownership part comes on in the individual officer's side. What's the hardest case in the 600, high, almost nearly 700 cases that you've consulted for?

What's been the toughest one for you? Actually, a defense verdict, where there was two trials have been involved in where the defense, The opposite side has prevailed. And it was an officer in a pretty robust Southern California Police Department. A RTC student and a debate student, never been in trouble. Middle Eastern background family. Tried some mushrooms. Fell out of the second story window at his dorm.

Only had a big guy. Got like 6-1, 200 pounds, fit. He had no shirt on. Cut his shoulder, but he was somewhat in a trance from the MDMA. He'd never taken it before. Roommates call the police, called the 911. Ambulance shows up. The fire department there at the agency says,

hey, listen, why don't we get a police officer here? This guy's acting a little bit bizarre. Get here, and now mind you, he's got no guns. He never been in trouble before. He walks at the officer. Officer tries to tase him. I don't know why he tried to tase him, but he tried. I would have been okay with the tasing, whatever.

He didn't kill him. He tries to tase and misses a taser. Takes out his pistol and shoots and kills him. and what he testified to was that the subject was walking in him like a zombie. That was in a statement. He shot and killed him. Now, there was no criminal charges. Now, once again, I'm not a proponent of the criminal charge unless you're stealing or doing something where there's a plot, like the rampart guys that you're doing bank robberies.

I'm not a proponent that you should go to jail, right, unless you've committed a crime. And that's not a bad shooting. That's a thought-out crime. but the 20 firemen, including the battalion chief, testified against the officer. Against. And I sat in court as the expert and talked about the reasonableness and distance and all the things I talk about on tactics planning communication. It's always six or seven opinions up to the fact was a shooting reasonable based on the totality

of the circumstances. And but the thing what struck me the most, for one, I could not believe that once again, this is a money shake. This isn't criminal. This is how much you're going to pay? He's not paying anything he's on overtime But when the jury wasn't there He laughed and joked with defense counsel

Kind of a short The officer did yeah short fat officer Which that bothered me anyways Because there's no reason for that But sat and joked with it And the bad part of the dad Was sitting in court the whole time With a suit on with a tie on

With complete just stoic Just with Chinese shoes every day And sat there with his son His oldest son who was a you know Probably had a national debate champion I mean, amazing career down the road, a Razzi kid, and it was not guilty. And there's only been two cases that have bothered me. Like in this, I don't attach myself to the outcome.

I don't really care in a lot of cases. I don't say I don't care, but once it's, for me, it's done, it's done. The Salani case, the Navy NSW guy down there. That bothered me. Alton Jones case, another one I mentioned bothered me. But that was the hardest one. because the picture of that guy's fate, the dad, because I know me as a dad,

because I'm watching him joke all day long. I'm going to take, you know, I know my temperament. I'm taking it in my hand. I'm just, I'm, one of my kids. I'm, you know, I'd be lying to say that I wouldn't do that. But yeah, that, that, that in itself is probably the hardest one. That would be tough for me too. I mean, the taking of a life is a, even to be put in that situation is,

it's a burden that I'm incredibly grateful that most people don't ever have to be in. But to go in a fucking courtroom where you're on trial and to be jovial about it or joking about it, fuck you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got to get you to the airport. Closing thoughts, Mr. Defoe. I appreciate the opportunity.

I just hope that the public realizes if this gets out to the public, I know your target audience is that until the departments better train their officers until they put the money, time, and training and support to the officers, the results are going to be the same. Yeah.

I agree. Doing the same thing, expecting different outcome, I believe is the textbook definition of insanity. Right. And then unfortunately with some of these sacrificial lambs, like we mentioned earlier today, with taking people and not holding themselves accountable for not putting those officers in a better position to succeed. Well, thank you for your time. Let's get you back on a airplane.