Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Larry Turner - Leading From the Front

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Larry Turner is a former Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel, current SDPD Community Relations Officer, and independent candidate for mayor of San Diego. Larry shares insights from his 23 years of military service, leading troops through combat and humanitarian missions, to his ongoing work on the streets of downtown San Diego. Frustrated by the lack of leadership at City Hall, Larry is stepping up to deliver real solutions for homelessness, public safety, and affordable living in San Diego. Tune in to hear how this no-nonsense leader plans to restore dignity to the city's streets and redefine what it means to lead with integrity. https://larryturnerformayor.com/  

What's up, everybody? Welcome back. As usual, today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. I'm going to head to their website right now. Today, though, we're going to go on a little bit of an exploration because hunting season has either started or is right around the corner. And I'll tell you what, on those slow days where you're hunting, one of the coolest things I've ever had happened that just boosted morale is coffee in the middle of the day. But you need some gear to be able to do that. So it looks like the ECS, which they're calling the exclusive coffee roast or subscription, which we all know is. Evans Coffee subscription is caffeine, Mars. Definitely check that out. But I'm going to go right up here first to coffee. And then I'm going to come to product type, and I'm going to switch and check other. Because backcountry, it's all about efficiency.

And so what shows up here, there's some coffee grinds, which I think people use like zins or dip, not my jam. But there's some instant coffee, or just below, there's the Just Black Cold Brew packs. So if you want to get stuff that's portable that can make coffee easily in the back country, I'm going to start you there so you actually have the coffee that you need. And then I would send you down on the gear side of the house.

You're going to have something that you want to drink it out of. Sometimes these Yeti mugs, the Yeti Rambler of 40 ounce, 14 ounce. I was going to say, holy shit, that's small for a 40. Those are pretty good, but just remember it fits into your backpack. You know, you need to make sure that you have room for this stuff. More importantly, though, I would suggest things along the line of these collapsible pourover filters. and then on top of that you can use that with, come on, get to it, the V60 dripper. So if you go that route, you don't want to use the instant.

Then you could just take some ground up coffee. You could grind it out there yourself, but that's more things in your backpack. Again, just food for thought for those coffee aficionados or somebody in your life that you know that loves coffee is getting ready to dedicate to that hunting season. So think about those things. You can go instant or you can go ground just so you don't have to take a grinder. Is it a little bit different? Yes, but let's just take it easy. Something to make it in and then something to pour it into. Coolest cup of coffee I've ever had. Dudley and I, I was laughing so hard, I was almost

pissing myself in the middle of this little, I don't want to call it a valley, it was just a little bit of a ravine near a dried-out riverbed and up in Canada. It's hilarious. But blackriflecoffee.com, they have all of those things that you may need. My guest today is Larry Turner. Larry spent 23 years in the Marine Corps, which we talk about on the episode, so I'll let him unpack that, then became a San Diego City police officer and is now running for mayor in San Diego. I'm not a hugely political person. I vote. I keep my thoughts to myself as much as possible, as I think a lot of people would be better off if they did the same. Interesting to hear his career from military officer to police officer and the ideas he has for San Diego. which is a city that's near and dear to my heart. I live there for well over a decade, split between a couple time periods. But I love the city, and it's got problems. It's not as bad as some of the cities you might hear about in California.

I think a lot of people have probably heard about the struggles in San Francisco. But if things don't change, I think it actually, San Francisco is the horse pulling the cart for San Diego. Larry thinks that it can be changed, and that's the platform that he is running. on. I'll put the link to his website in the show notes, but let's just get into the episode. Episode number 351 with Larry Turner. Enjoy. At the red smoke. Okay, Kathy, west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. The other side hired a, they called them hitmen. And that was the article title in the paper was that they hired hitmen to come after me. So, of course, I read the article.

You know, it was just, but it was like, private eyes that are following us around. There are some weird terms associated with politics. Yeah. And then they wonder when people get shot. They talk about lower the rhetoric and, you know, get it back under control. And the nicknaming thing is a little bit weird. Like what? Everybody has a nickname.

Like right now, who is our current, uh, I know they call him Shady Shady. Shoeh. Who is he running against them? Who's the incumbent? Tester, right? John Tester. Yeah. John Tester is a Democrat.

but even in his campaign, it's all shady she he this. And I don't know either of them by any stretch. But it just, that shit cascades from upstream. Yeah. And I don't understand why we do that. It's so far gone right now, man. It's really crazy. Hold on.

I can play these lights in. Hold on, sure. All right. We're back. Where do you want to start, Matt? I mean, you've lived a couple lifetimes. Yeah. It's your Marine Corps service.

23 years. Why 23, by the way? Most people are like 20 in a wake up. Yeah, I had a, I got, I had like two lives. You were saying multiple lives. And I had older kids. And I had, my oldest boy was playing ball at San Diego State. And it was getting close to his last year.

And so I was, I said I was going to go to every game, even the away games. And for whatever reason, right around that time, ticket prices were insane from Hawaii. And so they went from like $250 round trip on average, sometimes less, sometimes a little bit more. They were $1,500, $2.000. 2000. I was getting crazy. My parents were getting a little older, needed a little bit more help in California. So it was like, yeah, I just couldn't punch out now. They were going to let me stay in Hawaii another three years. That's cool. Yeah, I liked Hawaii a lot. Were you on the enlisted or officer side of the house? Officer, yeah. 23 years, let me see. What's that put you out? I was lieutenant colon.

I was going to say, I was going to guess either colonel, lieutenant. Yeah. Yeah, I found a beautiful spot in Hawaii with there. There's not that many good schools and people don't like going there. Military guys like going there once, you know, but I just really love the community. there. Yeah. So I wanted to stay, found a good school. So, you know, I didn't take jobs. It would have got me promoted, though, six, but I was cool with it. I, you know, it's just, I got, I got some awesome kids. They're all adults now. Yeah. I got little ones too, though. I got a three and almost two. Started all over. I was just going to say, yeah, that's not a choice that I would talk people out of, but I love it, man. I might caution them against being empty nesters and then

fall nesters. Yeah. No. My oldest is 16. Actually, my youngest is 16. Yeah. So I take my middle on to college Sunday. Yeah. My oldest is kind of off spreading his wings. And, you know, my daughter after that, it's odd to think of. Having babies again. Yes. Yeah.

It's cool. And just repeating the cycle. Like, I never had hobbies. I mean, uh, if I was not gone on, uh, military trip, it was, uh, coaching or, or surfing or what with the kids. So dirt bikes really got into dirt bikes. But it was just that was all. I didn't have an old Mustang.

I was rebelled and I was, I was, going to hunt. The classic garage project. Yeah, they were my project. And so it worked out good. I mean, all I do is just spend time with them now also. So there's no TV. There's no time for jiu-jitsu. There's none of that, yeah.

There's always time for jiu-suitz. Well, you know, it's funny. Yeah, well, I'm waiting until this kid gets, the three-year-old gets old enough to our school, let them in out there. But I just started, I wouldn't even, it's a funny story before you get on. But I went. Oh, we're already on.

Oh, okay. It's not alive. Don't worry about it. All right, man. Yeah. So we went out and, friend of a couple cops are instructors, and there's a school nearby. And hey, Larry, come on out.

Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I've been really wanting to get back into it. This is before the three-year-old was born. First freaking day, I ended up finding out I had a calcium deficiency, but I'm just rolling around with these guys. A bunch of dudes like our age. Well, I'm a lot older than you, but how old are 54? You are a little bit older than me. So it was dudes that are mostly in their, some 40s, but mostly.

And a really cool group of like 10 guys, really chill. I thought, man, this is going to be a great group of guys. We all just bullshit for a little while first. And anyway, I was excited. I was already planning out my next decade of taking classes there. We're just rolling around. And a guy about my size, it wasn't like he was a big monster guy, just rolled over. And it's crack, crack, I mean, he's not even doing anything.

He was just taking it so easy on me. And he was a purple bell guy. And he felt really bad. I everybody could hear it. And it was like, how did my bones get to be like peanut brittle? You know, just cracking like that. Which are the worst, too. Oh, yeah.

I mean, it hurt for a long time. I mean, it still kind of does if I'm doing some weird ab stuff. But it, yeah, it was nuts. And then we don't, we don't get put back together again the way that we used to. No, no. I didn't mind being injured in my 20s. Yeah. I dislocated my shoulder not long ago.

And it's not awesome. Yeah. I'm missing those days of probably a 3,000 testosterone level. Yeah. We're wake up in the morning. I'm fine. Yeah. Drink my way out of it.

Yeah. The whole, I had a death in the family. It made me, you know, it was just a surprise. He died in a couple weeks from cancer. Like, he didn't even know he had cancer. And then they were like, hey, you're stage four. It's all through your body. And so he was younger than me.

So I was like, on my birthday, I paid to go get the MRI scan, get the eye all the way up so they can find that stuff. But by the time you get symptoms, it's like it's already really far along. So I went and did that and there was no cancer. It was all good. but the guy who was saying, yeah, you got horrible bone density. I was like, man, I played sports growing up, all this. What do you equate that to?

I don't know, but I just, I remember drinking milk as a kid. I was like my favorite beverage all the way growing up. And I just, all the time. And over, at some point, you know, I just cut back on it. And then I just, once in a while, I'd have a yogurt or ice cream or so. But, I mean, I didn't really drink milk. So they started putting me on a calcium supplement. And, I mean, it's just a couple years ago.

Like I said, those cracked ribs. Have they rescanned you? I'm curious what the supplement is. done? No. Now I go to the VA and they'll just do, they do a hip one, CT scan of your hips. Oh, interesting. Well, your hips, I guess, are the, for body, for bone density, that's where they get the best reading. So, you know, you might break a shin or something, but your, your hips have the most, I guess, pressure on them all the time. So they'll just have you lay down with your knees up and CT scan your, your pelvis area. And then they'll tell you. So I haven't done that. I'll probably go

get another one done. Okay. And I'll let you know. I mean, I would like to think that the calcium would make a difference. I hope so. Otherwise, what are we doing here? Yeah, I know. Well, I'm scared to go roll again.

That was the thing. I mean, I'm hoping, I'm pounding milk all the time. I'm taking those calcium supplements. So by the time my three-year-old, you know, is old enough to go. Yeah. Dad can go with him and, you know, roll around at least with little kids. I have bang myself up a little bit from time to time. And most of it has been for me taking things too far.

Like, just an unwillingness to surrender to a position or a submission. Like little stuff, like little tweaks here and there. The shoulder was the farthest down that injury where I would hold that I have been. It seems like it's going to be okay. It seems like I escaped structural and like tendon and ligament stuff, maybe just some muscular stuff that can grow back. But it's definitely not consequence free.

Yeah. There are stuff like that. I have seen a few people now get hurt completely accidentally where neither party was doing anything wrong. Yeah. A shift, a slip, something like that. So it has to be taken into account. It's weird about shoulders too.

because, I mean, I've seen guys on active duty in the shoulder. So much worse than like a hip or a knee. For like dislocation, you mean? Well, yeah, when it happens, I mean the recovery from it. It like it. I saw guys that never got back to normal. But you'd see guys get rebuilt hips or artificial knee. Yeah.

And everybody's fine. But a shoulder, because you're not even using your arm all the time. I mean, we pick things up, right? But you're walking, you're standing on your legs. You'd think it would be a lot worse. And the shoulder just seems to be like the biggest pain when guys blow one of those. Yeah. It really sucked.

Hopefully you get a full recovery. I mean, I hope so. Yeah. I'm willing to take anything I need to make the shoulder better. Yeah. I immediately got on some peptides to try to help based off of people's suggestions. And I don't have any data because I'd never heard it like that before, but it did seem like it really sped up some of the healing process. That's cool.

I'll have to remember that. Yeah. I know we're always just like one bad sneeze from a horrible injury. I can send you the stuff that they recommended. I think it worked well. Yeah. I think it definitely shortened it. So commissioning source Naval Academy?

me? No, just OCS. Okay. Yeah, nobody in the family had gone to college. It was like, came from like a humble beginnings. And our family did originally. Where at? Where'd you grow up? California, all over California.

We were mostly in Central Valley for one, you know, location. But we were, we moved around a lot. It was almost like we were witness protection program. What'd your parents do for living? Dad was in the car business. Okay. So anyway, he's heard me say that a few times. No, we didn't move around that much.

And I had to remind him. Like, I don't even remember the addresses, but like, from as far back as I remember, I'm like, the house with the pool, the one with this. We had like 28 places we lived. That's a lot. Yeah. And I asked him, why do we do that so much? I know we moved from town to town a lot. He was always trying to buy a car dealership.

But coming from, you know, poor beginnings, it was like you had to, yeah, he was trying to find creative financing with an owner who didn't have like a kid who wanted to take over the business. Like, he was offering his service. He was really good in the business. So it was like, he'd come in, show them they could make more money. and then as that guy got a little older, he was trying to pitch him on, hey, I'll, you know, I'll buy it from you, but, you know, you stay part owner and, you know, that kind of deal. Yeah, we're going to structure a payment plan here that works for everybody. Yeah, so it just, it never worked out, though. So, but, you know, he did really well.

It was a hard worker, you know, and put me through college, and everybody, everybody except my dad had all been in military. And so I wanted to go in the military and, um, were they all Marine? No, only one. Okay. He was, but the coolest dude out of the, the group, you know, um, and, um, he was the coolest dude out of the, the group, you know, had a bunch of, you know, all the other services were there. But the, the Marine was this guy just in insane condition, even as an older guy, you know, still was. But he always thought that that would have been the coolest thing to do is do the Marine Corps after

hearing his stories, Vietnam era guy. Okay. Yeah. What did you study in college? The easiest. The easiest. Polysci? No. I guess second easiest then. Criminal justice. Okay. Well, that kind of probably helps you out for what you do now. Yeah, very little. I mean, that was so long ago. Isn't your requirement now? No, no. I thought it was.

Every, I know, every city, every county, every state has different requirements. So it's like, yeah, some places it's just a high school diploma. And most places is 21, though. You got to be 21. You could go to the academy at 20 and a half so that you're 21 when they hand you the gun on the badge. But, yeah, some places I think San Jose was a bachelor's degree requirement. You know, they like to see some, but you don't have to have it. Okay.

All right. I called up 1,800. Marines off the billboard. No, you did. Swear to God. They had this cool billboard. What year was this? 91.

Did somebody answer? Was it a machine? Yeah. No, no. Somebody answered. They had these two cool. There was one with a black Marine with like lightning behind him. And he's in his dress blues looking sharp.

And there was one of the white Marine with a big wave behind him. They were just on the highway, Highway 99. Yeah. I remember. And I called that. And I just said, I wanted to enlist. And they said, what do you have any college? I said, yeah, I just got my bachelor.

degree and they said, oh, we have to let you talk to this other guy. And then that guy was the officer recruiter. Did you think about going enlisted? Yeah. Yeah. What was the deciding factor for you? The dude on the phone. Really? Yeah. He said, well, you want to be an officer? I said, well, I don't really, I don't care. I mean, it's, you know, I just want to be a Marine. He said, well, if you're an officer, it's kind of like being the quarterback on the football team. It was like, all right. Yeah, that sounds cool. I like sports, you know, and I was a captain on some teams. And, I thought that sounded neat. But that was, yeah, literally it was him.

I found out later on when you go through OCS and you go through your training, sometimes I'll let you go back to your hometown, like on kind of free leave while you're waiting for training. And you go and help that recruiter, like your TDI. I remember this, yes. So I went back to it, and I was working with the guy. And then I find out from him that there'd been a big scandal.

All these recruiters were trying to make mission, right, get their numbers. And so there were dudes showing up with law degrees, and they were enlisting them. And so there's huge investigation happens. and so where if you had one college credit, even if it was in interpretive dance or basket weaving, you had to talk to the officer recruiter first. So he would get you on the phone and be like,

oh, I took a class on auto mechanics at the junior college. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I'm going to transfer you back to the enlisted recruiter. But yeah, if you had a degree, you had to talk to them first. Looking back now and having been in charge of Marines and being able to at least see the illisted experience, yeah, knowing kind of what both paths could have been, Yeah.

Which ones you would you have taken? If you were back in those shoes now, but you had that knowledge. No, enlisted 100%. Yeah. I mean, I missed out. I would be so envious of them at the barracks just having a blast. You know, you'd say on Friday after, you know, we had to secure a little early. And they were just, you know, going out, having a beer and just.

I think the technical term is out of control. That too, yeah. But I was really envious of the troops and that I didn't get a chance to do. I mean, the officers I worked with were like, some of them had famous dads. you know, who were senators or generals and all came from big-name colleges. And I was just a Cal State University guy who, you know, again, I was the first guy going in college and the family, no, no mentors. You know, there's no internet back then, right?

So you couldn't look this stuff up. Like now, somebody listening to this would say, why don't you just look it up on the internet? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they could find anything out about any occupation and any military branch right now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I literally, I remember going to a book at the library that was a book of like a

catalog of colleges. And I'm looking around, I remember reading about the Citadel. Yeah. And I saw that it was, I don't know how much it is now. It's probably 150 grand a year to go there. Back then, I think it's a 20-something thousand. Yeah. And I just knew we didn't have the kind of money to do that.

And back then, Cal State schools were only like $800 a semester. Yeah, in state tuition. Yeah, I'm going to, I didn't know about big, I didn't know that the school you went to would open doors. You know, it's just, no, I got a degree. So that was it. I don't know if it all. I mean, from what I have heard, I have zero seconds of higher education.

Yeah. Barely made it through high school. school. Yeah. But some from friends or I worked with who went through the Naval Academy. Yeah. You know, we, and I'm sure Marines did the same thing that, you know, the ring. Oh, yeah. You're talking to them. And it's weird because some of them actually do that. And I don't know if they recognize. I've been in the room where they're like rolling their fingers and you can just hear the bottom of it or the top. I don't think it's the degree. I think it's the people you meet there that are important. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a social club. It's the networking.

Right. Right. Right on. Yeah. Because, you know, it's not always the brightest guys in Gal go to those schools. It's, I mean, you've got to have decent grades, but you, you know, some of them are surprising when you see the ring on them and you know them well. But some of them are like football players, you know, where they really bent the rules on the, you know, requirements to get in. What do you recommend for people, say somebody, they'll listen to this and they see you in the future and say, hey, I do have a college degree and I do want to enlist.

What would you recommend for them other than potentially just doing their own research? Yeah. Like if you're still young. Yeah. I'd say go ahead and enlist for a little while for. even with the degree. You know, and I've heard you talk about it before, too, about the value of a degree. Yeah.

The only thing I think I got out of it was writing skills. I could write a mean essay. Yeah. And it's really helped me throughout my career. I did a lot of writing, right? When you're an officer, you're writing evalves, you're doing some investigations on, on some, you know, different things that occur. Not the wily enlisted folk.

Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully, it was just one of the junior guys and a senior guy. But yeah, you do a lot of writing. And so I would tell you, the four years to just learn how to write was kind of a waste of time. So I tell young people all the time now that if you're not wanting to do something that requires the degree,

you don't go into law school. You don't want to be a judge. You don't want to be a surgeon, engineer, you know. Yeah, just you want a history degree? Read the history books on your own time. Cost you less. Yeah, YouTube, a bunch of cool seminars on different issues. and, you know, become a plumber and, you know, start your own company eventually and just really kill it.

So, yeah, it's sad, though, that it's just such an industry out there to make money off all these people with degrees that are worthless. So my, again, taking my middle Sunday college on Sunday. And I'm still navigating my way through. And thankfully, I know some people were helping me with this. I tried to switch my GI Bill from pre-Montgomery to post-911. Yeah. But as you know, it requires three additional years of service. I had been commissioned at that point, so I didn't care because I did 12 years enlisted five years as an officer, which I really, the best leaders that I were ever around, I'm not going to say they all had prior enlisted experience.

Yeah. But the ones that did really understood the system, right? They know not only where the sausage is made, but how it's made. I think that's important. I also work for fantastic academy officers, OCS. But I'm looking at, and so I made that switch and they got medically retribed. retired inside of that three years. So I didn't realize that it had reverted back. And now I may not actually be able to apply those benefits over to my children. I am being helped by people who are

fire higher up in the food chain than I think either you and I, you know, staffers for some congressmen and senators, thankfully due to contacts that I have yet to be resolved. But even if that, say I can't do that, I still want to figure out a way to get my middle son through college. he's going to go to in-state tuition in Bozeman without any debt. Yeah. Because that lending system, I don't know a more accurate way to describe it other than predatory. Yeah. You and I cannot get a loan under the criteria that they throw money at young people with no ability to pay it back and no requirement to show that they will be able to.

Yeah. Oh, and by the way, if you declare bankruptcy, not with that bottom. Right. Yeah. It's a scam. What do we do it? Yeah. I think there's just a lot of college professors wanting to keep their jobs and they get that system in place, you know, it's, but it is, you know, all the online colleges as well. Yeah. We got to fix that.

We got a, you know, bigger trade school type of a program that's more accepted by people. Everybody feels like they just didn't make it if they didn't get their degree. And I try to tell them like, you know, there's a lot of really good companies now that are going out and just looking at who you are and your work ethic and your integrity. I think that's the way forward. Yeah, okay. That same middle son and my oldest now have all started businesses on their own. Yeah.

at an age where I was not thinking about doing that. And you know where they answered almost all of their questions? YouTube. Yeah. And I'm not saying people should get a higher education through YouTube, but to deny the fact that there are alternative ways to learn. Yeah. And that our children are truly being brought up in that system.

Yeah. I don't know why we can't put value on it. Like you said, the most valuable class you had was English. The most valuable class I've ever taken in my life was for one semester in high school. And it was typing. Yeah. Because I use it every day. Yeah, right on.

And I can still type. Yeah. Yeah. Same. I type really fast and all these younger people will, God, where'd you learn to do that? In high school. Yeah, but it was typewriter class. That's what it was for me too, yeah, on a typewriter.

Yeah. But what skill that I did not at the time, I don't think it was my favorite class at the time. And now looking back. Oh, wow. Yeah. Because I watched my dad like, what's going on here? Yeah. Yeah.

No, you're right. I forgot about that. But yeah. I figure what my- There is value in that education. I just. I think if you look at my, I've talked to my dad about this. The narrative for them was, here's your path, because this is the path for everybody.

You will go to high school. Then you go to college and you will get a degree and then you will start a family. Military service can enter in there somewhere, but there wasn't a lot of deviation from that. It was like A, B, C, D. Yeah. And then talking with my wife, her parents worked in academia. And of course they recommended to her. You will go to high school.

You will go to college. We're in a poor economic time, take on more debt, get multiple master's degrees. And then you will go back and teach in education. I think it's time that we take another look at the value of that. Yeah. I don't want my son saddled with six-figure debt at an age where they're not financially responsible. No. No.

And there's no equation to it getting you more money. I was even a sucker as a lieutenant falling for the night school. For us, that's 03. What is that? Oh, I'm sorry. 01 or 02. It was right around that time. Okay.

Yeah. All the junior officers were signing up with, to work on their master's degree. So I went on and got the master's degree. Hell yeah. Busting my butt. On weeknights taking classes, writing papers. And, you know, it's just been of zero value, you know, other than I've got a master's degree, you know. And if there's somebody that cares about that, but I don't, I haven't found anybody that does.

I think it would uproot a lot of our very. core systems to start looking at it differently, though. It was about time, too. We're in a crazy time now with everything. Why not put everything on the plate? Let's take a look at everything in the way we do it now, because the world is evolving at a pace faster than I've ever seen it. It blows my dad and his generation away.

Let's just take a grand look at everything. Yep. And there's a lot of people who are not interested in that. They've got their roots into it. They've got their claws into it. It's the money. It's the power. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, whether it's school or politics or it's different kinds of businesses we do. But yeah, things have, you know, everything from not just the Internet. I mean, that's old school now, but with AI. And it is time to do a pause and just how are we going to do this in a way that makes sense for the next hundred years? Because just to keep duct tape and bubble gumming on stuff to this rocket ship we're on right now isn't going to work. You know, I had a conversation, Michael and I did a podcast yesterday with the oldest gentleman to ever enlist in the Army. Yeah. Take a guess at his age.

Was with a guard or active duty? Guard. Oh, God. His age when he enlisted? Yeah. 50. 63. Oh, what state was that?

God damn it, Michael, what state was? Somewhere in the South, right? He was a psychologist. Oh, okay. And not like, hey, I'm going to be having trench warfare. Yeah. Even though I did flip the idea of having a battalion of 63-year-olds with like bazookas, I thought that'd be dope.

That would be slow moving, but potentially accurate. Yeah. I remember right. After 9-11, running into these older guys that were like spec fours in the army and be over, forward and they'd be working in some. I was in Intel most of the time. So I'd be in an Intel center. And like, man, these guys are old as dirt.

And found out, well, I'm from New York, but I went to Alabama because they'll let you still sign up in the guard there at like 52. This guy brought in 40 years of clinical psychological work, mostly with veterans. He was working with people all the way from World War II, Vietnam, Korea. everything in between, first Gulf War. And I bring it up, because I think actually the military should be put on that platter as well and looked at through that lens. One thing that he was thinking about or brought up was actually raising the enlistment age to a minimum of 21 because of the impact that traumatic events can have on a brain.

I mean, for men, 25-ish is for the prefrontal cortex is what is agreed upon. women, I think we can all agree mature faster than us, and a degree that is shocking. And I had never thought of that. I'm like, fuck, would that make a difference? Is that a proactive step that we could do up front to deal with some of the issues that we have on the back end? Yeah.

I mean, there'd be a hiccup there because you'd have to have that, you know, that time for it to flip over. But why can't that be on the table too? Yeah. We'd be better. That's a great idea. Are we putting people into a place where they can be more successful in an environment that might expose them to more trauma that they ever thought of because their body is

literally more capable of dealing with it. I don't know the answer, but I like the idea. It's worth talking about for sure. I hadn't heard anybody bring it up before. Yeah. I hadn't either. Yeah, that's a good one. I mean, we've all, you probably got a lot of friends too, the trauma that they had to deal with, you know. Yeah. And some of them, far too many were unable to. Yeah. We also talked with them a lot about one thing that I think is really lost in that conversation about post-traumatic stress. Everybody focuses on the veteran and only what happened when they came in. Yeah. A lot of my acquaintances and friends that I know that have struggled deeply had a lot that they had in their backpack before they joined the military.

Yeah, you're right. And so it's, and it's tough, though. Like, how do you, if that didn't get dealt with and then you add this on top of that and then your life is coming apart. And let's say they fall into the circumstance of ending their life, which we know far too many people who have done that. Can we really pin that on just the military? Yeah. That's a great point. Hard conversation to have.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I have a close friend who was dealing with it for a long time and just took his life three weeks ago. And the guy, you know, I knew he had a really tough childhood. You know, he ran away from home at 15 because of abuse. And so when he enlisted at 18, yeah, he had a lot of history of trauma. How was he as a soldier? Enlisted. How was he as a soldier?

Fantastic. Marsok. I mean, a lot of guys in your, you probably know who I'm talking about, actually. Well, and I think about, I do actually, because I have seen. the social posts. Okay. I've thought about this a lot recently in these conversations with my friends. If you came from an environment that was fucked. Yeah.

If you were abused and you were presented with an occupation that let you go after abusers, if you wanted to defame it that way or prevent that from cascading down and actually going and stopping, whatever you might view it as, bullying, injustice, right versus wrong, you were going to be drawn to that like a moth to a flame. Yeah. But then when that goes away, you have two bucks. that are full. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tough questions. I like, I like that explore in the age increase. I mean, it's... I have no idea if it would make a difference, but I had never heard

anybody say it. And I think it's a fascinating conversation. I would tell you that just from, and not that everyone who has no experience in it thinks that, you know, law enforcement and military are very similar. You guys both were bits. Yeah. Uniforms, boots, guns. But I would just tell you, you know, I've had my heart broken so many more times. just in the time I've been a cop, then what I saw in the military. Really? Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah.

I still, also part of it's being older. Yeah. And I've heard some guys who were like my mentors who, you know, maybe 10 years older. I mean, they would talk about how much more emotional you get when you hit certain age limits over 40. Are you talking about having your heart broken by what you're seeing on the job? Oh, yeah. Yeah, the ugly stuff that's occurred. But here's the thing, though, you guys don't get to turn it off.

Yeah. The job that you, I'm sure we'll get to the transition from one to the other, if your job is anything, like mine. We didn't actually like clock in like the old school movie like time card in. Right. But we kind of did. Like we were training and every once in a while there'd be a horrendous training catastrophe. Yeah. Which is unavoidable and I do actually believe needs to exist. The possibility of that needs to exist in training or you're not training to that level. But then when I went overseas, like I knew when I was like it's game time. And I'll turn this off a little bit or dial

down the stereo once I log out. Yeah. I'm very good friends with a lot of law enforcement. officers. I mean, cool, you can take your uniform off, but you're never turning your brain off. You never stop seeing the people or locations that you respond on calls to. It's inescapable. Right. I think the job of being in the military is a lot easier from a mental perspective than actually being in law enforcement for those reasons. Yeah. And I would say most of them don't even take, you know, take the uniform off, but most cops, the good ones I work with are a cop 24 hours a day. Same to the firefighter or EMS first responder. If you are there and something, needs to be done. Those people are running towards the cell. All those guys, they keep their,

their huge trauma kits with them 24-7. Yeah. Most of the cops are fully loaded up with extra mags and tourniquets all the time just in case something happened at Walmart. You know, they're just everybody's ready all the time. There's a cost to not having that off switch. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. And I don't know how you manage that because that would be exactly the same way. Oh, I don't have my badge on me, so I'm not going to step up in an environment where somebody needs help. Like, come on. Yeah. That's just not who we are. No, it's a good way to put it. I hadn't thought about it that way. But the younger cops that joined right after a short enlistment in the military or right after college,

I don't know how they do it. Because like I was saying earlier, I don't know if it's a psychology thing about being older. But, man, I never cried until, you know, I got older. I mean, it's just... Maybe that's not a good thing. What? Having not cried. Yeah.

You know? You know, but you're just the tough guy and you're... Are we, though? Well, you try to act it. You know what I mean? You watch the Rambo movies and you try to be. be Chuck Norris. For clarity, I view those as nonfiction.

Yeah, yeah. Just with Navy SEALs as well. Yeah, right. Oh, yeah. I love that. Yeah, chapter and verse. No, what was the old bar in Virginia Beach that they filmed that room? Oh, fuck.

Ready room. Yes. And it was a real bar. It was not far from where I used to live. I made too. Strawbridge. Yeah. Yeah.

I was stationed over there for a while. Yeah. I never went in. Oh. I couldn't do it. Oh, I drove by it every day on the way to Lynn Haven Mall. I was so let down by the reality of the SEAL team first that movie that I couldn't go in there and do it.

Jumping off the out of the car over the bridge. Not a single time. I've said this many times. The only accurate portion of that movie was the guy waking up shit-faced in the ocean. Okay. That's it. He was hammered. He's like, where am I?

Yeah. With like a stripper's high heel. Pretty accurate. Yeah. Everything else. The mustache, you know, handlebar mustache is and MP5s. God, I wish it was true. I wish I could tell you that that was true and it's not.

Wow. We could tell all really good stories. wasn't running for office. Yeah. We'll get to that. I mean, so were you probably 03 on 9-11? Yeah. Yeah.

What was your role at that point? So I had a really good friend of mine who got out and was working for the bureau and was loving it. And he was on the SWAT team and he was, you know, saying, hey, it's all the great stuff about the Marine Corps. But without a lot of the, you know, the EEO training and. The term is bullshit. Okay, bullshit. So he was having a blast. My buddy, Mark, he's still in, out in Georgia somewhere.

But he talked me into applying, and I did. And this was right before 9-11. And at that time, they weren't hiring. But I still got hired. It was pretty cool. And I was waiting for the school. I went ahead and resigned my commission. Yeah.

And it was, I'm trying to remember the exact dates. But I was going to get out of the Marine Corps on October. first of 01. And I had a deal made where I could stay in with my unit as a reservist full time. So I still got a check. And I was going to go to the FBI Academy in January of 02. Okay. And I think the 22nd sticks out in my mind. And yeah, 9-11 happens and cancel the resignation. I remember calling the Bureau first. I said, hey, is it going to be okay if I do this? Can I call you guys later on? Oh, yeah, no problem. We know, you know. And at the time, the guy was ahead of the FBI. I'm trying to remember who it was, but I remember him coming out

publicly and saying that the FBI had been overseas too much, and they were going to bring back to just the bread and butter of organized crime stuff, because I had gotten out of hand at that time in America, and we had too many agents off doing, like, counterintelligence stuff. So in my mind, it was, okay, well, the bureau guys are going to be in CONIS, and the best way to go forward to do whatever was staying in the Marine Corps. So I called down. They said, yeah, I have no problem, just give us a call back when you're ready in a few years. And I canceled a resignation and the only orders that the, and I knew the monitor. I don't know what you, detailer, you know?

Detailer, yeah. Yeah. And she said, hey, I only got one job and you got to take it if you're going to stay in. So, of course, like, oh, man. And it was teaching a damn neck. Really? Yeah, which I loved. But it's like, how am I going to deploy?

But I thought, if there's a chance to deploy, it's better being an instructor in a non-deploying unit than being a civilian or being a cop, you know. I don't know if your headspace was the same. Everybody, probably community at large and the SEAL teams thought that the pages were going to just start going off immediately. Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, I forget what day actual September 11th was, but the assumption was likely that the next day we'd be on an airplane cooking somewhere.

Right. It moved far slower than most people thought. Yeah, you were so anxious, though. You're amped up and you thought, man. We also didn't know. Like, this is a little uncharted territory for the modern era. Yeah. And then nothing.

I know guys who drove in and started packing their bags that day. I think they unpacked them a few times before they actually got sent anywhere. So I don't think you actually probably missed much by the time the machine got up and running. Yeah. Well, I was in a hurry and I wanted to go and be in the first wave. As we all were. I had a boss who, I don't know how he did it because our commanding general said, no instructor is going to deploy.

You're going to have to wait to your next tour. We're not going to lose any kind of throughput ability at the schools by giving up. you know, the best and a bride is who are the instructors. And, uh, but this lieutenant colonel I was working for got got me, uh, on like this first wave of Marines heading out there. We weren't even, it wasn't even Iraqi freedom. It was, uh, internal look. It was an exercise we used to do with the Kuwaitis. And so that was the funding line. It was coming out of the first people that went out there. Uh, so I got out there kind of, kind of early. And, uh, and I was all excited about it because, you know, it's, we're just going to go to war. And it's going to be over in like nine months. And so,

And I just remember when it was my time to roll back out. Same thing, the guy going to replace me. It was another instructor, buddy of mine, Scott. And he's calling me out forward and, man, I want to get out there right away before it's over because we're almost, we just took over Baghdad. So it's over, right? Remember the victory stuff and the parades and the, you know, mission accomplished, right? So he was just really wanting to hurry up before the war was over.

And so I even left a little early so Scott could come. could come and replace me. And then it's like, holy crap, man, this thing's going and going. It's dragging. Yeah. And, you know, decades later, right? But at the time, thought it's going to be like a Gulf, you know, desert storm kind of thing. And so it was like, hurry up and get out there kind of thing.

Yeah, let alone stack the enduring war in Afghanistan on top of that. Yeah. Where did your career take you after that rotation? Oh, yeah. I was still at the school. Actually, I went back. I headed up the schoolhouse there. I ran a school for all of the intel officers in the Marine Corps.

I used to help teach some of the Navy courses. Yeah, you've been there, like, way down on the southern end, like close to Sandbridge. Yeah. Yeah, the building there in Amitzi, Navy and Marine Intel Training Center. I think they changed the name of it. So they used to call them, oh, no, it's still ratings. I was an OS, so I went to the Operation Specialist School on Damnick. Yeah.

And then the IS, intelligence specialist school, which actually honestly was probably that building. Yeah, yeah, it was combined. So a Navy captain ran the school. There was like a Marine Lieutenant Colonel there. But so I ran all the captains going through. The Marine Corps did a little different. you had all your specialties of human intelligence and signals intelligence. And then when you became a captain, you usually kind of became a jack of all the trade.

So you learn a little bit about everybody else and you got a new designation. So I ran that school for a while, taught a number of people who were probably still in and doing some neat stuff. How about after that, where the rest of your career take you for those 23? Hawaii. I kind of really wasn't around the Marine Corps much after that. I was doing agency stuff, different, mostly the national. security agency. And there was a site in Hawaii that I was in charge to all the Marines, kind of in the Pacific that were doing that work. And I had guys in lots of countries.

Were you working with Mr. Russian citizen right now? Was he over there with you? Snowden? Yeah. Yeah. I had two, three guys. Did he come in your office one day? Like, hey, can I borrow a thumb drive? Thumb drives are not permitted in those. Oh, yeah. I know, but I saw the non-documentary where I think he snuck it in his coffee cup. I won't, I won't talk about all the thumb drives and the cargo pocket skiffs and all that stuff that happens. But the, that is the, that's where he was, right? At some point in time.

Yeah, he was there. I had three guys that worked in that building with him doing that stuff. Yeah. So I had guys in lots of countries out there. Some of them, you know, we weren't even supposed to have relationships with, you know. So I would travel around a lot. I love that job. That was great.

Working with different government agencies, other government's agencies and, you know, traveling around not in uniform and doing that whole thing. And it was just a good, good time. Is that kind of what it limited your probably progression up the ladder of rank? That and other things probably too with just not taking some assignments. I just... On our side, you have to hit these mandatory career wickets. But if you do, it...

My description, not the military is. And the way I look at it, there are some awesome jobs to begin with. And then you have to go on this really circuitous path that you may not want to. Doing things you may not want to so maybe you can put like 05, 06 on one day. Yeah. And the people who don't do that, who it seemed like you might be in this category is you find something you really like and you specialize. You do a really deep dive. Yeah.

But then come to the advancement boards and reviews, you don't get picked up because you didn't hit these stupid wickets along the way. Yeah, and they don't see the value of that. So there'll be guys on the board who are infantry or tankers or whatever they might be pilots. And when they're reading those fitness reports, your e-vows of things that... You either did or didn't do. But they, as a commander, general, over infantry or over fighter pilots or whatever, they know what those kind of evals look like. And so when yours comes across, and a lot of times you had a classified... It's redacted.

Yeah, it's redacted stuff in there. All the cool stuff is missing. Or you had a classified fitness report and an unclassified. Well, they only saw the unclassified. And so it sounded boring. They do this with your record. Yeah. And they slide it to the side.

Yeah. So I saw some amazing guys who didn't even make major. I mean, he may go four. Yeah. They were on the human side. Yeah. Which takes, in my opinion, a lifetime to master. Yeah.

To expect that person to balloon out of that career path, to hit mandatory career wicket so they can wear a different color device is insane to me. They're still serving the country, but now they're working for an agency doing it, you know. Because, boy, some of those agencies will just swipe you up when they see how stupid the military was for not promoting you. Well, you've been working in their systems for a long time. You went to school with them. Yeah. You went to all the same schools that they went to. They're like, how about you just switch this for a sport coat and we're totally good here.

Yeah. Also, you make more money now. Yeah, yeah. And it's more fun. I mean, they get to go do some really cool stuff. So I kept the uniform on, but I kept, in different agencies have more or less military people working for them. And so, you know, sometimes I'd be working with only civilians or with, I'd have teams that I was in charge of. And it would be a lot of civilians working for me and me, a few military guys.

And then a handful of foreigners that were working for me that were, you know, usually the Five Eyes guys. So some Aussies and Kiwis and stuff that were working with us. But, yeah, some really neat stuff. But when they see a report, one of the funniest lines I heard was I was a collection manager at one point in the war. And it's a pretty important job. You know, you are tasking all of the Intel collection out there from, you know, a guy on the ground, you know, pretending to be one of them, you know, asking him to be. go find out something. A satellite to take a photo of something, you know, whatever, drones, listed on signals, intelligence stuff. And you're, you're tasking that stuff to bring you

the information you need. And it says, the unclassified reporter, let's say collection manager. And so these general. Well, they're like, what's he collecting? Baseball cards and stamps. Ah, yes. They have no idea what you're doing. So, yeah, you don't get promoted. Yeah, you just get swept to the stand. Yeah, right. But I was happy with it. My rank was good. I was, uh, were letting me stay in an area where I really liked to, you know, I was stationed in Hawaii, and there was only a few jobs out there, and nobody wanted to come to Hawaii. And I loved it out there. I loved the work I was doing. I got really good with a lot of the China and North Korea stuff and worked in North Korea, or not North Korea, in South Korea a lot. Yeah.

But, yeah, I just became smart on that. Once you do, they, you get, you get that brand on you, that, you know, you're the, you're the Korea guy. Well, they need the specialists, but also don't reward people for specializing. Yeah. It's a diametrically opposed to system. They're saying one thing and doing another one. And they expect, what, some random person to figure it out? Yeah. In the middle of their career? Yeah.

Okay. I wonder why there's problems. Most of the time it's accidental how you got there too. You took some orders and then you became smart on that subject and now that's you for the rest of your life. Yeah. They can't replace you at that point. Yeah.

So how many years did you spend in Hawaii? With about a two year living in Korea, but still being in Hawaii a lot because I would fly back to Hawaii. But it's probably about a 13, 12 year period. That's unprecedented for people military-wise. Right. An officer is, at least in the Navy, they're in two-year cycles. They were going to let me stay there longer.

That's awesome. So when you get older and you got older kids, you know, nobody wants to move their kids around high school age. You know, the wives maybe have a job. You know, it's that sort of thing. So nobody wanted to come out to why. Plus, you heard schools are horrible and wise what they heard, which is not the case. My kids had a great educational experience there. The sports are great.

I love the community there. Yeah. You know, you'd hear a lot of people would say, oh, you're going to go there. and all the Howlies are going to get beat up. And it's like, no, no, you're not. Maybe if you're an asshole. Yeah, that was it. That was what it was.

If you're at the DMV line, I think they're just a little bit slower, but it's cool. I mean, it's just laid back and I dug it. I could have, you know, lived there forever. I would have never gotten island sickness or fever. Island times real thing? To a lot of people.

Just dump it in neutral or second gear and just enjoy it. Dude, there would be people there that, they've been on the island like two months. I've already seen everything. No, you haven't. There's all the waterfalls and there's trails. And each. city had different kinds of vibe.

Like one was a little more of this kind of culture, a little more of that, a different wave breaks on the different shorelines or different kind of snorkeling and the spearfishy, just everything. It was an amazing experience living there. I could have stayed there forever. But some people, yeah, within a year,

they were really wishing their tour was over. And they were the complainers about that. And they would get treated bad. And as you should, if I came here, I mean, I hadn't been here before. I'm here just mouthing. Yeah. Yeah, and just talking trash about how people drive and, you know, how that hamburger was messed up.

You know, people aren't going to like you. You're the outsider that came here and you complain about their culture. It's the same thing over there. People complaining about, you know, maybe the DMV was a little slower than normal and you mouth off about it. Yeah, you're going to have some friction. Yeah. How did you land on law enforcement, changing from the intelligence world? I mean, obviously there's an aspect of that in law enforcement, but kind of a career shift.

Yeah, big time. I could have stayed, kept doing what I was doing in the Intel world and had some cool job offers there. But none of them would have been back here, back in San Diego. I almost said back here. I was just in San Diego this morning. No one knows where we are. Maybe we're in. Yeah, we're in San Diego.

So, yeah, I wanted to be in San Diego. And none of those jobs are really there. There's stuff in D.C., some in Tampa, and then overseas a lot. But I didn't want to do that world anymore. And then another part of it was I really. like you asked earlier about the officer versus enlisted, I got really tired of being in the skiff. You know, as you move out, it's up or out in the military.

So you have to get those promotions or you're out. And all that fun stuff was when you were younger, right? A captain or lieutenant. And now you're facilitating really cool life experiences of your younger guys and gals on your teams. And you live vicariously through them. You know, they'd come back from the deployment. So do something in Africa or South America.

And you go out for beers with them afterwards. and hear their stories and make you feel really good because you help make that happen. I didn't hate that possible for you. I secured the funding for that. Yeah. So I really wanted to get a medal for it. So true. So yeah, it was, I wanted to get out and get my hands dirty.

Honestly, it was like I really wanted to, and it was too old to go like federal stuff again. You know, I was talking about the FBI. They had age limit. I was already past that. So a guy I worked with in Hawaii, we had, we had FBI and other DEA and everybody working with us out there too. And the FBI guy was saying, hey, Larry, you should do local law enforcement. I'm like, I'm too old. I'm already 45 at that point. No, man, there's no age limit at a lot of these departments. And so I googled San Diego PD that afternoon. And sure

no, there's no age limit. And I call out there. And so I started the process. And I thought, man, that'd be so cool. And I really wanted to work with, you know, when you're retired and you you have the money, not that it's a lot of money, but you can take a job that normally wouldn't pay what you need. You can make different choices. Yeah. You have a foundation. You have a foundation, is what I'd describe it as. Yeah. Not the whole structure, but you have something you can build on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, perfect way to say it. So I could go and make less money, doing something I liked. And I wanted to go do something with homeless, homeless vets was a big passion of mine. But ended up thinking, oh, on my list, there was this master chief. That's where it really came from.

You know how when you're getting out, you go to that retirement class? Taps. Yeah, they have a senior one, though. That's like for senior officers and senior enlisted. Oh. First off, I never achieved the rank that would be considered senior. So that makes sense. Yeah, well, yeah, because you went the officer's side for a while.

Yeah. This master chief, he had been a submarine or nuke train. And then in his retirement life, he'd done everything different. He owns a PGA golf instruction company. If he listens to this, he'll know who he is. He's the only one in Hawaii at the time. And he had some other companies, the president of the road,

did things totally different than submarines. And he kind of challenged everybody there. Hey, think about stuff that's, don't just keep going down this path. You're going to keep doing the work you did. And I remember saying, hey, write down three jobs you think would be, you'd enjoy doing, regardless of the pay.

Don't worry about the pay. Don't worry about the hours. Don't worry about the location. And just write it down. Then maybe we'll try to fit that into a way you can make it happen. And I remember writing down some stuff with homelessness.

And I wrote down some stuff with a couple other jobs. And I had, you know, that would need to be a cop. You know, and I mentioned that that FBI guy was telling me about doing the local PD thing. So went back and looked at it. So I was teaching high school and coaching was one of things too. And I looked into ways to do it. And I had a couple good plans there.

I figured do the cop thing because I was never going to get younger. So I thought, I'll do that. Maybe I'll just do it for a couple years and then go do teach high school or do homeless stuff. Work with the homeless. The homeless vets. Where did the passion for that company? Yeah, it's just, and it still is.

I'm very passionate about it. It's homelessness in general, but with the vet side was even worse. So just seeing human beings on our streets was something I just felt was kind of unforgivable with our leadership that hadn't done anything about it. But especially on the vet side, I don't, you know, I care about all of them. But on the vet side, there's free money out there. With HUD and VA, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, um, you don't got to worry about the, the, the, the, how you're going to pay for it. There's, there's, there's a lot of federal money you can get your hands on to, to, to, so, and I've, I've even proposed one in San Diego and they just don't listen, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it gets tough because, and I don't have an immense amount of interactions with homeless people, homeless veterans, but some people don't want the money and they don't want the help. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's got to be, uh, uh, uh, um, um, um, I've kind of got a plan on how we're going to take care of.

It's not my plan. It's plans of many experts who have gone before me, you know, and just plagiarize good plans, put it together. I don't care about who gets a credit. That's the thing. Everybody wants their credit, you know, this politician, I have politician come up with their plans. There's so many good ones out there.

And even in San Diego, we got some really good agencies. They're doing some cool stuff, saving a lot of lives, and they're doing it on the cheap, nonprofits. And I've just told them, hey, when I win, get ready to build 10 more of your program will help you with the funding on it, because you know how you're doing it. You have mastered it. You're saving all our lives. I just want to help you continue to do what you're doing.

I don't need to have Larry's plan, you know. But what age you go through the academy out there? I started at 45. I was 46 when I was done. So I was the oldest guy. What was the average age of the class? 20 something. That's like, yeah.

I was the old guy. But it's scary that I was. Old guy has a lot of wisdom. Yeah. but you'd be surprised how, you know, just coming out from the military and just trying to stay in shape that, you know, you're outdoing a lot of the young people. So six months? Yeah, six months. Okay.

You know, it was not a lot of military type stuff. They do like two half days where it's like drill instructor kind of thing. And it's just funny. All the instructors that they've kind of already read your resume. Yeah, you're not really the target audience for those half days. No, no. You've had that experience. Yeah, and they would wink at me.

Yeah. They knew who I was. I wonder how they could tell. Yeah. Well, they already read about everybody. And so I remember there was a gunny in there with me too. We became good friends, of course, and this army sniper who's still in, Andrew. And we still friends.

But, yeah, everybody else was just a bunch of young people. But, yeah, still physically able to do it. But, you know, like we talked about injury prone, you know, you're more, I remember one day trying to, kept trying to come in first, you know, and beat some. some of those studs that were just a little faster or a little bit. And, yeah, I got hurt one time. It took a while to get healed, you know, taking bottles of motrin. Yeah, the old 800 vitamin high.

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, made through that. After that, you're like in a patrol car. Yeah. Assuming you have, what are they called a training officer that comes with you. Yeah, like six months of training officer stuff. Yeah. And then you're not throwing out of the bottom.

Like everybody else. Yeah. And they warned me about that too. I remember the lieutenant who was doing the final interview. He said, hey, we've had some senior people come through from the military. He talked about a couple like 06s that had been, and they quit. They didn't like getting back at the bottom. Yeah, getting told what to do.

I said, trust me. I am more than happy to not get the phone call at three in the morning to just be able to roll some windows down on a patrol car, listen to some Led Zeppelin, and go help people. I am, and I loved it. You know, go go through the drive-thru, get a burrito and just help people all day long. I loved it. I still do, but I don't get to do that. anymore with my current job.

But what are you and now? Well, I'm running for mayor, but I'm still a cop. I'm still a full-time cop, but they have me doing a community relations job where I'm not out on patrol. So something I probably wouldn't have wanted to do, but just while I'm campaigning for mayor, it makes sense. I'm not out there getting in, you know, getting into stuff. Yeah.

How long were you on patrol for? Six years. Yeah, five, six years. I was on SWAT team for a while. I was the oldest guy to go through the their SWAT Academy. I was 48. And luckily, I had a chiropractor who was a friend. No shit.

He had a table at his house. And he was like, there he'd call me whenever you need. So at the end of the days, you know, it wasn't like out of barracks. It was, you know, going home at night, you were just up all night studying and cleaning your weapons and all that anyway. But you're cleaning all your gear. But I could call that guy and he'd go fix me up. continue you up a little bit. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. How long were you on patrol before you tried out for SWAT? Just a couple years. Okay. Yeah. Depend on their needs. How many openings they have. Sometimes they'll...

Is it a full-time job or ancillary job? They do it both ways there. So you have a... I really love that. So they have an SRT that was dedicated, train all the time. They're ready all the time. They got their take-home cars.

And then the other guys are the PRT primary response team. But I love that because you had all the special gear and in your car. special car, but you're on patrol. So when something would go down, you were always the first once there. A few PRT guys would show up. And if you had to go in right away, you went in right away. But if you could kind of just contain it, then contain it and wait for an SRT to show up, which I'd get there pretty quick. But we'd always get there first. So I love that. I still got to patrol, still going to all the 911 calls and taking care of business there. But then, you know, had that extra job of, you know, the pager would go off where they'd call something out over the air

that there was a SWAT mission and you'd just drive to that location and bust open your safe in the back of the car with all the cool toys. Yeah. Is that what they headed in? Was an additional safe back there? Yeah, so in the back of the... Not that anybody would ever steal a cop car, but...

No, no, no. Yeah, but it's... It's got a big vault in the back of certain SWAT vehicles. And so still, you know, you really don't see it, but it's not that it's... It says SWAT on your car. But, yeah, you pop that open

and all the flashbangs and all that stuff is in there. Yeah. What did you like so much about patrol? I mean, I was telling you, I was in a skiff for a long time in my senior years in the Marine Corps. We should describe a skiff for people. Yeah, well, you're in the Intel field, and they have these sensitive compartmented information facility. It's basically like a top secret.

Could be like the size of this room, too. Well, no windows. I was going to say, far less light coming in. Yeah. It's a metal box. Yeah. They do studies on it to ensure that it doesn't emanate any radiation. So like if you had a wireless keyboard or mouse that somebody on the ounce,

So I won't be able to sense what key strokes you were doing. I mean, it really go to the nth degree of security on those. So most of the things done in the top secret and beyond world are in a skiffed building. I call them a vitamin D deficient environment. Yeah. During some operations, if you were in one of those, yeah, I mean, your skin would just really start to, you didn't pay, you know, it'd be six weeks of no sunlight. You know, you come getting in it dark, leaving it dark, catch a nap. That sounds horrible.

Yeah, it is. You're getting some really good work done. I mean, there's some amazing things being done. I mean, I could share with you some funny stories too about the things you're doing, but there's things that on that world that's so different than the cool stuff you were doing. But, you know, if you went over there and saw some of that, you just crack up at the silly things that, and some of it fun. I mean, like, I remember being in the meeting with, we have, there was an agency guy.

I was the, they had me in the room because I was the only Marine. And there was only like five or six of us in there. It was just this kind of brainstorming group talking about Psiop's stuff we were doing in Iraq and coming up with some crazy ideas. And I remember in that room we came up with the idea. Remember the deck of cards? Yeah. Well, that wasn't what it was supposed to be. But it was just funny because we were trying to make a baseball cards.

Right? So there's a picture of Saddam and on the back was all his war crimes, not home runs and RBI. So on the back, it was going to be that. Well, we submit it up. but there's not like a format. You know, just kind of typed it up. They sent it back. And they got an agency guy sent back the idea.

And all of a sudden, everybody's got these decks of cards. Oh, that's neat. Oh, yeah, you guys, it was the cards you guys requested. And it got really popular. It was like, no, no. Yeah, but it was supposed to be baseball cards, right? And then it was, you know, I know, it sounds stupid now looking at it. But those are the kind of goofy meetings you'd end up finding yourself in,

especially if you were the only Marine. They would always want to be able to say it was a joint meeting. and it'd be all these army guys. And so I think it was a major around that time. And I'd be all these Army, one stars and two stars. And hey, Turner, yeah, come under this meeting. And they knew I was cleared for everything. So I'd walk into some goofy meetings on some crazy stuff that was going on.

And it's just, I feel like Forrest Gump, just showing up and, you know, just being in some of these discussions on things. Like, how the hell did I get here, right? Yeah. Yeah. But there's some weird conversations and some weird rooms going on right now. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah, there's high-tech stuff. It's, it's amazing the kind of things that go on. But, I mean, there's, most of it were funny stories, though. Like, it would just be the kind of goofy stuff these guys would be talking about. Because a lot of the, a lot of agency people from the different agencies, I don't mean just the agency, but the others, you know, they don't have any military experience. And, you know, they're just some, some of those agencies hire, it's almost like a whip, you know, with the, they'll go for a while just getting a whole lot of PhDs from Harvard. And then they'll come back and they'll get a whole lot more military guys because they realize that they're like. lacking in that and then they realize, well, the military guys are lacking in them.

They come down the middle. Exactly. You have to go to these extremes. Yeah, but it's just, yeah, about every decade, it goes in another direction. So it's either a PhD from Harvard or it's a, you know, special ops guy. So those guys would be the funniest one. So with their, their ideas and I remember, I'm just remembering all these right now. But one time we were getting imagery of the Iraqis were digging these huge holes in the sand and putting MIG fighters in the sand.

and then bury them with the with the, and it was like, what are they doing? What in the hell are these guys doing? Because it's just knowing fighter jets to like, you know, one grain of sand anywhere in there. You got to take the whole thing apart all the way down to those last washer. There's a robust PMS schedule that's going to have to occur. Yeah.

So what are they doing? And one of these guys misinterpreted, put your weapons down when, you know, to show you are not going to fight us. And it was, it came out to like bury your weapons. This is a guy, I got to, I got a million of them.

I got, you know, there's the kind of stuff that happens. It would almost be like a comedy movie we could come up with with all the backroom deals or meetings at Skiffs. Okay. So, so patrol was the opposite of Skiff. Yes. I'm understanding this now.

Yeah. Yeah. So I loved it. And just getting to go out and chase bad guys, drug dealers and, you know, help people that, you know, the domestic violence cases, first aid for people, overdosing or whatever, pulling jumpers off the bridge, off Coronado. Yeah, all that stuff. I didn't realize. I think SFO is the number one bridge in the U.S.

I think Coronado is top three. Oh, probably. I've literally yanked people off there. You're not supposed to, but there's some... What is the policy? You're not supposed to go touch them because there's some psychological thing. They want you to go with them. Yeah.

So most people have that do not self-destruct kind of programming in their brain, and they'll do it easier if they got someone to go with. So a lot of them jump with their animal. I've seen that too, and that's terrible. Really? Yeah. I did not, I had never once considered that. There was this, you know, I talked about the heartbreaking stuff.

I saw this, this gal we, she wanted to jump off the bridge on like a Tuesday. A couple friends of mine stopped her before she got to the edge, took her to the mental health facility. She had a little Pomeranian. I don't even like little dogs. I got, I got mastiffs, you know. But they were like, hey, Larry can come over here and get the dog for us. We're taking her to the hospital to get treatment. We just need the dog taking over to the Humane Society.

yeah, yeah, sure. You know, there's not a lot of calls holding at that moment. And I just drove over the Humane side. Really cute little dog. It was just, like, super loving and all that. And so the doctors are supposed to keep them until they're not suicidal anymore. They keep up to three days. The very next day came into work and just went to line up and here on the radio.

Oh, there's a woman with a dog up on the bridge. I'm like, man, there's no way it's that same lady. A quick turnaround time. Oh, yeah. She was out in like 20 hours. They let her out. And so I'm hauling ass. I was really close to where the bridge was, where we had our headquarters there.

And a friend of mine was watching it as she was driving up. And she's, oh, you know, she jumped. And she didn't land in the water. She landed down on the road. And she mentioned something about her being a red dog. And I was like, man, I had a little red dog. And I just knew it was that same woman. I felt really bad for the woman, you know.

But the dog was just, I felt so, you know, it was just, I was just, I spent a a little of time with the dog because the humane society wasn't open and I had to kind of hang out there for a little bit. And yeah, just, so yeah, I mean, I don't mean to tell like heartbreaking stories, but it happens out there a lot. So she didn't go that far out onto the bridge. No, a lot of times. Right at that initial point where it emerges down in Logan. Yeah. Right. So sometimes they don't, they get stopped before them, right? So a cop car show up. So they'll, they'll start to jump there. How do they know that they're out there to get stopped? Are they called the suicide hotline?

There's, there's, no, there's cameras on the bridge, right? Okay. And so, it's kind of a weird interagency thing. CHP owns the bridge. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's a highway. The one side's Coronado PD and we're the other side. But we have the largest agency and we have the best, I guess, you know, talkers. We have a team that does the negotiation kind of stuff and they'll talk to those people,

try to talk them off. So most of the time, even though CHP and Coronado PD might be on their side, they'll still just let us take over. We're all friends and work together well. So, yeah, they'll see the cop car showing up. And so sometimes they'll just jump right then. And so they'll land down on concrete instead of in the water. I mean, not that either is a great option.

No, but it's just terrible that they're at that point in their life. But, yeah, I had a gal up there, you know, barely holding on. There's like these big bolts or nuts kind of coming up. And her bottom fingers. Yeah, yeah. And she was just holding on barely. And just kind of the friction of her genes against the concrete and her finger. and her fingers holding on it.

That was the only thing holding her. I could see her fingers starting to peel away. And I was trying to get closer to get her. And I remember, you know, she gave me that look like she was just going to go ahead and let go if I got closer. So I just waited and kept talking. But then as her fingers were almost to that edge, then there's that reality. Like, oh, I really am about to fall.

And then it clicks in their head sometimes. They don't want to. But I can see her fingers were still, you know. I mean, that's really far down the rabbit hole to get to the place where you realize you don't want to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I went in and grabbed her. And I thought it was kind of interesting.

I got an award for it, but we were in violation of the rule, right? Because the thing is they think that they're going to grab onto you and pull you down too. Or in your attempt to rescue them, if they have that momentum, it may carry you over the top. Yeah. It's certainly not a low-risk maneuver for sure. Yeah. That's a lot, man. I could see there's no way to avoid heartbreak in situations like that.

Yeah. Yeah. The first one that was the worst was an active shooter we had at a pool party. It was like an upper end kind of apartment complex. And that was the first time where I just really felt like, man, this is so different than the Marine Corps. There was this young group of people barbecuing at the pool. And this guy, he just wanted to kill himself and the police assisted suicide thing.

And he just started shooting people. And he didn't know he was going to stay there and wait to get shot by us. But he's just cooking off rounds. You know what these? And the only girl that died was the one I was doing the first aid on. And it was just heartbreaking because she took a through and through. and her internal bleeding was just really bad.

But, you know, just this beautiful young black girl who was like 27 and just, you know, bikini and just was out having a really good time at a pool party, you know, and just seeing that happen. I remember that was, you know, my wife would probably tell you, like, that comes up every now and then because we do. We drive by those same areas. And everywhere around there, there's a story about something like that. But that was the time that, man, that just really hurt me bad was that. not being able to, you know, help that girl that day. How does, what's the department's current stance on ways to help officers deal with the weight of what you guys encounter every single day? They go out of their way to try to help with that.

And they've got a really good wellness unit. And, I mean, I would just tell you, they spare no expense. Good. But, you know, being around, you know, alpha males and alpha females, you know, that are just going to be too tough to talk about it. you know, that's the thing. They make you go in after shootings and... It's the best type of therapy, forced. Right.

With threat of losing your job, badge and gun. I mean, come on. So you have to go in and talk when you went through some tough things. But if it wasn't, you know, if you don't open up and share what's bothering you, they don't know how much you need. They don't know if you're really okay. And, you know, even as an older guy, and I feel I'm a lot stronger in those K-Gers, than a lot of the younger guys.

And I get bothered by a lot of stuff too. So I know those younger guys. It's bothers some stuff. Yeah, it is. It is. So I know those younger guys and gals, you know, constantly as an older guy and I would say I'm one of their peers, but kind of.

I mean, guys my age are usually the captains and the chief, right, but I came in late and I love, you know, I stayed in patrol with them. So they'll look to me kind of for some senior leadership, but not having to tell a sergeant or lieutenant because I know, you know, I'm just one of them. And we'll talk about this stuff. And they're going through it.

And so I try to convince him to go in and get some help. And especially after the friend, I was just telling you, had taken his life after mentoring a lot of people through that. And me knowing how tough of a guy he was, you know, he just didn't open up about that. I shared with the leadership just a couple weeks ago that, you know, hey, we've got to rethink how we're doing this because, you know, you're relying on that person to open up.

And I know we kind of need that, but there's got to be something. It's also proven not to be very effective. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have the answer on that one. I just know there's dudes out there suffering and gals. And it's something we have to figure out a way to crack that nut that just hasn't been done yet.

But they're throwing resources and they're passionate about it, the leadership. I mean, I couldn't ask for them to do more. There's just a way you've got to like just get that person to open up and share about it. And there is no recipe that works for everybody. No, no. No. But yeah, like I said, I mean, if I know it bothers me, I know it's bothering these younger, younger men and women. Yeah.

So, I mean, that's, again, you have lived multiple lives. But the email I got was about you running for mayor of San Diego. Oh, yeah. Which would be a third life. Yeah. Yeah. Have you been checked for insanity? Because that's the only people that I'm aware of that want to knowingly enter into politics.

How did we arrive here? Yeah. This was never on the plan, man. Yet here we are. I know. I'm kind of, you know, I get a little angry about the fact that I'm the guy having to run. It's, there are leaders in our city who have the resources, financial resources and name recognition and, you know, the community knows them already. They used to be, you know, in higher up positions and run huge corporations.

And there's a number of them, you know, the, the, you know. the folks that know the city is is out of whack and that there's corruption and that there's incompetence. And, you know, we're going off the cliff. We're, you know, there's Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, L.A., and we're not far behind. San Diego. Right down for me, the chessboard as you see it. Like what, what were you seeing and what have you seen that gets you to a place where you feel like you have no other choice? Well, you just see that people dying on the street all the time. The homeless epidemic there, there by crisis level, that we have, every city's going to complain about potholes and, you know, the infrastructure

issues or the park or whatever. This is a different level when you've got the number of people dying that we have, the fentanyl just openly being smoked out there and nothing being done. Well, they'll say something's being done. They're spending millions, right? Politicians who have never been in business or the military, they don't know about having metrics of success, having a strategy. It's just they believe it's a success if they spent 10 million on it.

And then they doubled that. We doubled our efforts. Okay, those are efforts, dude. We're spending. Yeah, that's it. We have spent this much money. We've had these meetings. We had a conference on it.

We had a, you know, just done with your efforts. And I tell them all the time, it's like a quarterback who doesn't matter how hard you're trying, bro, if you're throwing interceptions and fumbling the ball. It's, we got to get a new quarterback. And I really like you. You're a fan favorite. Everybody loves you. You know, you go out and sign autographs.

You smile nice, but you suck at your job. So maybe you could be an offensive coordinator. Yeah. You know, go be a lobbyist, be a consultant to somebody else who's going to run, but you suck as a CEO of a city. There's a big difference between, you know, even at the presidential level, I would suppose if you've been a CEO or commanding officer, command of general, kind of, you know, you are the boss of that organization.

But if you're a city council member, I'm not dissing on city council members or congressmen and women, they, you know, you write some legislation and you vote on it, you got a small staff. You're one of hundreds of votes. Yeah. Or in a city council, one of nine in San Diego. That does not equate to. I can run the eighth largest city in the country. But they think that.

They think that's that resume. Yeah. That I've grown up. I used to get coffee for this Congresswoman. And then I got an intern job with this person. And they just keep, you know, they earn their cool points with whatever Democrat or Republican party they worked for. And then eventually, if they got liked enough.

you know, they're the one that gets picked to run for an office. And then if they, their numbers are still okay, they keep getting, you know, and that's how we end up getting incompetent presidents and governors. And we see everything falling apart that we see is there's just like minor leagues of politicians. And it starts off in the cities at the local level. And the process by which we're just fed these, you know, conveyor belt. And we're just given that candidate. And it's A versus B.

and it's led to a really bad situation in San Diego right now. So on the human being side, though, that's what really got me to where we got to do something about it. And you needed to have done something about it a decade ago, but here we are. It's interesting, at least in my consumption of news through a variety of sources. You don't hear about San Diego from California, but you do hear about San Francisco. I mean, they have a human shit tracking app, and it's fantastic. Yeah. We've pulled it up many times.

It is blinding the amount of things that are on there. And you hear about robbery, theft, assault, homelessness, drugs. I mean, I know marijuana has been decriminalized. It's been a while. It's been a piece since I've been into California resident. Have they decriminalized things like fentanyl? Are they just not doing anything about it? It just not do anything about it.

Okay. So it's still illegal, but there's just no enforcement whatsoever. Right, right. The sales side. I mean, we're trying our best, but we're just so outnumbered. And we're right there. You know, some of the work Texas and other border states have done, it's led to it all coming through San Diego. So like 85% of the fentanyl in the country is coming through there.

So it's very cheap and easy to get. And, you know, you don't have to work as hard to get the money if you have an addiction problem. So that lowers a lot of people into San Diego, too. No, crimes on the rise. Everything is just like San Francisco was maybe 10 years ago. I was going to say, how far behind you think it was? 10, 12 years, we'd be San Francisco if we don't turn this around. Do you think San Francisco is recoverable?

Yeah, but I mean, like, way off in the future. I was going to say, under what, a long enough timeline, I think anything could shift. Yeah, right, yeah, exactly. Because it took a long time for it to get there. Yeah. So I would say it would take at least that long to get out of it, but probably longer. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to take decades.

Yeah. Kind of like Detroit. I mean, you know, at least there, which is more of a economic situation. It's a cultural thing in California. So I think San Diego, I truly believe I wouldn't be doing this, that we can turn this around and in not a really long period of time. We can do this in four, four, six years, have things back to where everybody looks at San Diego and says,

man, how did that one city on the whole West Coast figure it out? And maybe it becomes a program that others can emulate, you know. It's the homeless issue, having lived in San Diego for, man, probably total 15 years, west coast, then east coast, and the back. Yeah, some of that in Coronado. I mean, the first apartment I ever had was a total dump on Fifth Street in Cornado. It's fucking awesome.

Yeah, of course. Base housing a little bit on the Silver Strand. And then Eastlake, where I used to live out, or Chula Vista, depending on you're talking to. If you go to it's Eastlake. Yeah. Stam Zip code, I think, or area code. Homelessness, you know,

I listen to people up here in Calispell, and they're homeless. I think is a struggle everywhere in the U.S. I don't think there's any place that it's untouched. People talk about it here, oftentimes, not always, as a crisis. Because I don't think they have seen what it looks like in other cities. I haven't been in San Francisco in a long time. But even when I was living in San Diego, we're talking full homeless encampments,

like with legit infrastructure sometimes, up in canyons or by overpasses out towards eastern San Diego. My brother-in-law is still a San Diego City. Firefighters are a captain out there. He was talking about at one point in time, they were using the fire trucks. They'd have to get the homeless people to move to the other side of the bridges so they could hose off because there was a HEPA outbreak. Right. Like, holy shit.

Yeah. I mean, that doesn't happen because one or two people are homeless. This is a legitimate issue that I don't think people understand the size and scope and scale. No, they don't. And that's why I'm here. I mean, it really is. is that there is nobody stepping up with the solution for this or the intestinal fortitude to just make the tough decisions

that need to be made. You know, when we were talking earlier about, it's time to just look at every kind of, you know, system we have in the country. Yeah, our political system at that local level. It's probably the same at other places. I thought this kind of stuff happened in Chicago and New York. I just didn't think it was happening in San Diego.

But that, you know, the dirty politicians with the, you know, taking the huge contributions to give the contracts out. There's a system there that's in place. And now it's also with nonprofits and not all of them. There's some really good ones out there. But some are just out there to get the check. Some of them are friends of the politician that run them. They get a lot of money and they don't have any metric of success that they have to follow.

There's literally no definition of success. It's just here. Here's $10 million to go out and do good. That's the kind of stuff. They're blowing our money in playing off of people's emotions about really wanting to solve this problem. So, hey, look, we gave $10, $20 million. They've lost $20 million. Just in San Diego, the city of San Diego. Can't even figure out where 20 million of it went. They spent, yeah, the whole state had a, I think it was over, I don't remember how many

billion it was. They lost in the homeless effort at the state level, too. So there's been audits done and they can't, they don't even know where all the money's gone. But the problem's gotten worse. Even by, in San Diego, for example, the city's own numbers, which they cook the books on it all the time. Crime is down and there's less guns on the street. And, you know, it's, it's just is the way that they play with the statistics. It's so much more dangerous and crime is on the rise there. But same thing with homeless. They'll try to play the numbers and what they get away with. The press allows them to do when the press knows better. The press's job should be the whole government accountable. It should be. I love that about, I know, like John Kennedy, one of his things was that was like

the fourth branch of government. I mean, we had to have a robust journalism, you know, program in America. it really kept the other three branches. You know, I don't know. That's why John Jr. went into... Yeah, I think one of the bigger problems, too, is that that mechanism, that fourth tier of government has now become completely behold into an advertising model. Yeah.

Yeah. I was on a podcast Monday with a local one there, and this goes right into that. I just had a nice talk about some things. We're talking about the budget and the city, and there had been some discussion about whether the city was going to have to go bankrupt or not. And we talked about that from a minute. And I just said, you know, hey, I really hope we don't have to do that.

You know, I mean, we're going to look at everything. But like, that's something I really want to avoid. Headline, Turner's considering, you know, bankruptcy for the city. Yeah. It's a better question. They definitely have their friends, you know. Or a better headline would be, is bankruptcy a legitimate option for San Diego? Yeah.

Right? Instead of attaching it directly to your name. Again, let's throw everything out here on the table. Yeah. And see what floats and see what actually sinks. Yeah. Yeah. It's a sad state, though, when you see what's happening in our country,

especially when you've been gone for, you know, all the years you spent in the military, kind of believing that home was being taken care of by some competent people. And one of the things about San Diego that drove me nuts was going into those neighborhoods you don't go to when you go back on leave, right? You go to the beach and your restaurants. And all your favorite places and see your families and friends. And you're not going into the rougher parts of town. But when you finally do and you see how it changed over 20 years,

It's like seeing that nephew or niece, you know, that you hadn't seen for several Christmases, and now they're two feet taller. And it's just a, that's a positive thing. It's a negative thing on the homeless side and the infrastructure side. Just seeing how the city's deteriorated into almost a third world country in some of the neighborhoods. And like I said, San Francisco, L.A., so much worse. I'm not comparing it to that. But we are definitely playing that same sheet of music, the same leaders, the same plans.

They're all branches that originate back from the same root or tree. Yeah, yeah. I mean, California, it's funny to living up here in Montana. Californians are the enemy. Yeah. And I still haven't been able to get from Montanaans a precise answer. Yeah. How Montana is Montana enough?

I've heard six generations. What? Which, like, okay, I'm disqualified. Yeah. I've heard two. I've heard 10 years. I've heard 5, 15, 20. Yeah.

You name it. Yeah. And I understand why. they are concerned with California. I don't think it's the people. I think it's some of the politics. Yeah. Because the politics in Montana,

better, worse, and different, whatever may be, are different. Yeah. One, I mean, Chula Vista has more people in Chula Vista than Montana does in a fucking state. Yeah. I think it's 1,100,000 people right now. Wow. Yeah, if you put it in together like, yeah, Chula Vista and El Cajon, we're well over a million people just right there.

Yeah. So, um, they're more disparate. though. So pros and cons to that. We do have electricity and internet up here, everybody. Even sometimes cable and broadband, not a big deal. Running water. The luxuries of first world life.

And I don't think the people from Montana want to see it trend towards California. Yeah. And having lived in California, it was beautiful. Born and raised in Santa Cruz, loved it. Yeah. Great place to grow up. Oh, yeah. Even better place to leave.

Lived in San Diego, loved it. But I'll be honest. I couldn't go back. I mean, first off, I like high capacity magazines. All right. I take that back. I don't have a problem with them,

I guess I should say. But I actually really would have to take a look at my gun collection before I could go back. You guys be knocking on my door with a set of silver bracelets. Yeah. The tax rate is fucking insane. Yeah, it is. It is, I mean, by leaving California,

you're going to take a 10 to maybe 15% increase in what you take home. Just from the taxes alone. Yeah, you're right. I truly want people to live life the way that they want to, but I don't want to see tax dollars enabling, what I consider to be enabling behavior that is destroying humanity. Yeah. I mean, there's some legitimate arguments.

I don't know if I could go back. One, I don't know if I could go back to a big city after living in a place now where you can just feel, you can feel it. It's just, yeah, it's less compressed. It is less compressed. Yeah. Pace of life a little bit slower. Sundays are ghost town up here. At first, it's a little awkward. Now, like, I really like Sundays. Yeah. It's cool. None of that in San Diego, which I don't think it's possible because probably between L.A. and San Diego County, what, 30 million people? It's a concrete jungle. Yeah. It's into tens of millions for sure. Um, I don't think I could,

go back, but I just can't align with the politics in California anymore. Yeah. I get what you're coming, where you're coming from on that. I've seen a lot of people leave because of that, a lot of good friends. I've decided, you know, I just want to stay and fight. Yeah. And I don't blame either, I don't blame people for either choice. Well, I blame me if you just stay and don't do anything, you know, I just worry about it.

Oh, if you just want to complain and not get involved for sure. Right. And I'm getting a lot of volunteers helping us out, the ones that, you know, they didn't want to step up and do it, but they're putting in money and effort into trying to help us out. So there's a lot of people who are tired of them want to do something. They see an opportunity now to try to do something with a guy who's not a politician and not with a party or anything. So I think we can save San Diego. I wouldn't be doing this in L.A. or San Francisco. I would have moved out of those areas already with my kids.

But San Diego just wanted to be that same place. You know, like the great things that we remember out about our childhood, you know, and, try to get it, make that the bar we try to, you know, jump over. What was it that got you over that point between I'm going to do this because nobody else is? Having my kids. Yeah. Yeah. It was totally, I got the three-year-old and the one-year-old.

And it's, I want them to grow up in San Diego. And I want to have a safe place. And I want to not have to explain to them why, you know, there's people doing drugs right there on the sidewalk. And I want to be able to walk them downtown. You know, just the basic stuff. You want to, in a city. These aren't, like, huge things I'm asking. for. And there's things that there's solutions for. I mean, we've got some great plans

ready to go on day one and going to make the city completely transform. It's, how long do you think that would take? Yeah, on the, it depends on how quick we can get the shelter beds made. So there's been, in California, they got this idea of housing first. I don't have you heard of that. I have, yeah. So psychologists will say that the only way a person will, you know, start to make changes in their life is once they have the dignity of having their own apartment and then they then they'll change and uh that's not true so i have stories yeah from my brother in law of what those apartment complexes look like yeah and also the super fucked up shady business arrangements that the owners of those apartments have and how they advertise nationwide to bus

people in because they get money for every person that comes in bro and then they're not actually trying to help anybody they're trying to get more money per people to come into the bed there's definitely people that make money off of a disaster yeah and We see that all the time. And they are taking advantage of this. They're getting tax dollars. They're getting insurance money, whatever it is. We're talking tens of millions of dollars.

Yeah. I got warned early on in my campaign. I was saying things like how we're going to do a big audit. We're going to bring an outside agency and look at the books and go after all these people who are doing the shady deals and demand money back from the ones. And a friend who used to be in the Intel field had had this big association matrix on his wall. and he calls me over here. Hey, come on over,

got some steaks I'm cooking. Let's have a beer and a steak. I want to show you some stuff. And he's showing me these huge organizations that are getting tens of millions of dollars, these nonprofits. He says, hey, Larry, I know you want to go after these people. And that's great.

Please do that when you win. But I wouldn't listen the rhetoric on how you're going to go after these people. I'm afraid they're going to come after you. And I was, all right, man, cool. And there were three, names he gave. And he was showing how they're related to the mayor and, you know, where they get their money from and the government. He had it all planned out. And he had gone in on freedom of information stuff on looking at where the money was coming from. He had the whole thing done.

So I was like, all right, bro. It's not invisible. It's not impossible. It's not impossible to connect any journalist should be able to do this right out of journalism school. Yeah. I think as a reader, that would be a compelling article to read. Yeah, you would think so. We got one really good investigative journalists in all of San Diego. That guy is breaking stories and putting politicians in jail. Literally. Just got his boot up people's ass.

He is, well, he used to be in politics. He's a good friend of mine now. He knows where to look. He worked in politics for his whole life, ran a bunch of campaigns, worked with a vice president at one point. He knows all the politician, all the dirty tricks in California. And then this newspaper was the first Spanish, it was Spanish and English paper.

I think in San Diego or in the state. But anyway, it was going out of business and he bought it for nothing because he just historically wanted the significance of he wanted to keep it going. And he all of a sudden became a journalist. And he went to journalism school, been in politics, but he has connections everywhere.

And that guy breaks amazing stories. And like I said, there's been people doing prison time because what he does, him and his staff of four. That's what it's supposed to be. Yeah, I know, yeah. But that's not what they're doing. They're so afraid of the politicians. I would just tell you, there's a gal who used to work

for one of the TV stations, and I liked her. She was a reserved. Navy Reserve officer. And she explained to me that when you get the political assignment with the TV news, that it is expected of you to have an inn with the mayor's office. You have to be able to get statements from them, at a minimum, a text from a statement on a story you're doing.

Once in a while, a one-on-one with the mayor or one of his top aides or something like that. You've got to have that. And that mayor's office, our mayor's office, they shut you down. If you do one negative story or something, done, yeah, you're all. And then you lost your job. You are no longer, you might become the weather person, you know, or do sports, but you are not going to be in that political assignment anymore because you burn that. And they're all afraid of that.

And so very few of them will do anything even slightly in an area that's uncomfortable to the mayor to cover. So you don't see that reporting at all. You're starting to see it on the internet with some of the smaller online papers are writing those truthful stories. But, yeah, there's so much corruption there. But I was telling you about these guys that my friend was briefing me on, they're Very next day, I swear to God, very next day, I get a call that I got a lawsuit against me. And the woman is suing me about my residency in the city.

They're trying to claim I don't live in the city. And I live in the city. You can sue somebody for that? Well, she was saying I was violating her rights to have a candidate who was a valid candidate. This whole thing was a scam, though. They had done polling to show that I was the most viable, you know, alternative to the mayor. So we have a primary there. It doesn't matter what party you're in.

It's not a primary for Republicans. It's just the top two vote getters go to the, they didn't want me to be in the top two. So they had this, they had ran a woman as a Republican who they, they picked her, ran her, paid her fees, all that. And then they did, spent a million $750,000 on mailers to Republicans saying Larry's an anti-cop guy. She's Trump's endorsed candidate. It was all phony. to get this woman to take a lot of the right side votes from me, an independent. Then they sent a bunch of mailers out to the people on the left, saying I'm a MAGA Republican

and hiding. They just wanted to make sure they didn't vote for you. Yeah, they wanted me to be third. Yeah. So I easily came in second, but there were a lot of people that spread the vote all around. But even the incumbent didn't even get 50%. So he's very, he's very, you know, he's beatable. Who is the current mayor there?

He's his name's Todd Gloria. And he has been promised, Paul. politics there at the local level. He was a state assembly guy for a little bit. Pals with Harris. If Harris wins, supposedly he's already been told he's going to get a cabinet position. He'll be the next, you know, what Mayor Pete, you know, go straight from mayor to a cabinet position. I'm sure. Man, I am not convinced that our current system of government is survivable unless we start making some drastic changes. Yeah. For reasons, the nepotism involved in that is so, like you want to, you want to believe, like, let's be better. Yeah.

Be better than this. Yeah. And it's just constantly reinforced that there are deals like that. Oh, yeah. I don't know if we don't make some sweeping changes if it's going to survive. You know, having, I started off seeing some of the corruption. I started going down those rabbit holes. There are caverns that just keep going down there.

I don't even go down that far. I've already seen enough that at a nice little town, you know, it seems like a small town even though it's a big city, right? San Diego? Yeah, I mean, it's got the feel of like... How dare you say nice little town? There's millions of people there. Callispell's a nice little town. No, I get you.

But it still has a small town feel when you're there. I'm not talking about the high-rise skyscrapers. Yeah. Yeah, it's a unique... You don't feel like you're in the eighth largest city. Listen, down by the airport, it doesn't have a small town feel. Okay. All right.

We need to work on the traffic pattern down there. I got you. We'll get that fixed. Yeah. And I need the rental car place much closer like it used to be over to the terminal. It's really fucking yep. Well, you just wouldn't imagine, though, San Diego would be as corrupt as it is. You know, and so as I said, I learn about all this stuff.

And, you know, these guys, the games they play, I spent $7,500. I said, I'm not taking money from any buddy who does business with the city. Because those are the people that are causing a lot of problems. And I'm not taking any money from a party. So it's $7,500. We still came in second. They spent $1,750 against us. Where'd they get the $1,750?

Oh, PACs. Yeah. Listen. And that's where it starts getting water, like a glass of water you should be able to see through, but all of a sudden it's completely opaque. Yep. Yeah. Let me just tell you, a mayor or an elected official can choose to give taxpayer dollars to a nonprofit. And that nonprofit can take a lot of that money and give it to a pack. And then that pack spend it on that guy. I mean, literally just there's not even in cutouts there. There's no cutouts. There's just a carousel. Yeah. Well, when I was telling you that this woman sued me, I was like, I recognize the name, the last name. And it was one of those people. people that my friend was briefing me on. It was making a lot of money off of this thing. Are you serious? Yeah. I'm sure it was coincidental. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these guys don't even

go to get, you know, somebody unrelated to them. Hey, mom, can you, can you sue somebody for me? You know, we had a meeting and we're looking for somebody to be the plaintiff on this. I think that's more an indication of how little this is actually being looked into. How little they get away with it. Yeah, so they don't have to hide it. Well, yeah, why spend the extra time to Yeah, exactly. You know, a fall person in there. Like, oh, they're not going to take a look at it so why waste our time and money i tell them all the time that the drug dealer on the street a homeless drug dealer you know a guy who's just make enough money to keep his habit going he has a woman over there with it hidden up in a body cavity another guy who's going to get it from her

another guy gets the money another you know he's got like five different intermediaries there yeah so it's really hard to put a case on you found that low level guy on the street selling fentanyl or meth these guys aren't are far more lazy than the dudes on the street um so yeah it's it's a But again, it's because there's nobody looking into it. There's nobody out there that's, there's no watchdog that's watching it. How long has the current mayor been in office? He has been the mayor there for one, it's a two term. Then you term out.

So he's had his first term four years. Literally, no positive. I'm not just saying it's going to run against him. It's why I'm running against him. I'm not saying it because I want to be the mayor. This is why I want to be the mayor is because the guy, all of he had like nine promises of what he didn't do any of them. He's just, we had people die in our floods there. Most people don't even know about it.

We had 2.7 inches of rain and we had people drowning because of our stormwater system was overlooked. What? Yeah. When did this happen? January 22nd of this year. Where were the drownings? Like what area? Down in the southeast area and Conto area.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. So if you looked and I had just driven around there a couple weeks earlier. I had not heard of that at all. Yeah. People still displaced. So they don't come in and say, sorry.

They don't take care of the problem because lawyers tell them, don't do that because then we're going to have to give more money in life. Dude, do the right thing. You know, man up. Go see you're sorry. You screwed up. You spent money on things you shouldn't have. Our stormwater system, you wouldn't even know it was stormwater system. There were canals that had giant palm trees growing at them that should have been bulldozed, you know, and maintained. They weren't doing that. It's just spend money on their special projects and hooking up their friends with deals. I mean, I could tell you dirty story after dirty story with these. I'll tell you this one in particular that right now there's a lawsuit on it. this agency out of company, excuse me, out of Denver, I think. They build these, their plan is they have a business model to build free sports arenas for cities and colleges. And they build a really nice one.

So one at UTA. I don't like that term, though. Free? Yeah. Because most things that people say are free or not. No, no. Well, it's, well, one of the jobs my grandfather had was he was giving free waffle makers to restaurants. But then you had to buy their waffle makers.

Same kind of thing. They get in the VIGs somewhere. Theirs is they operate the center for 10 years and they get all the proceeds. But your sports team can play. They're free. You don't have to pay rent there. That way, it's not like on the city. Right.

Like Petcoe downtown. Yeah. Beautiful park. Yeah. I don't think it was cheap. That's an understatement. Yeah. It was pretty bad.

Okay. Yeah. So this company comes in, offers this. A group of San Diego's fly out there, leaders in the community. Take a look at it. Check out the numbers. Visit this really nice one at you. T.A. Come back. Tell the mayor, this one guy's gone on the record with the press, with that one

investigative journalist, I said, said, yeah, I came back, called the mayor, said, hey, dude, the numbers make sense. It's a great deal. We need to pull the trigger on this. He says, no, I'm working this other deal with this guy who ends up being his biggest donor. A guy gave him $100,000. And so the city's going to be out like a billion dollars on this new sports arena project. What are they doing? You know where the old sports arena is? Rosecrane lands out by the airport. By the airport? By the airport. No, it's not by the airport, but it's over in the Point Loma area. Right off the eight. The big, it's looked the same. It's been there for... Is it the ice hockey arena right now?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So they tear that down, take all the parking lot, build some apartments in a new sports arena and do all this. And we were getting offered a free one. And the city's almost bankrupt right now. We have a budget that isn't really a balanced budget at all. It's a lot of technicality in there, but it's a phony budget where they use money. They're not supposed to. to and they're putting all of their trust in a one cent sales tax increase to be able to make the budget balance. So it's not really a balanced budget. So this guy, we could have had a free sports arena instead. We're doing this. They've done things like... Are they probably going to justify paying for that with an increase in tax? Yeah, they want to increase taxes on it. Yeah, there's countless deals. We're spent, there was a deal where we rented a, or we leased a building downtown. This company, this energy company wanted to get rid of the building. And we're We were going to turn that into the new city hall.

So we were going to lease it for, I forget how many years, 20 years or so. And it was like a hundred and some million dollars in lease money we were going to spend on it. As soon as they go in and start knocking the walls out of as as asbestos, so the whole building is uninhabitable. So we just blew that hundred and whatever million dollars on the building. We can't get out of the lease. But there was a lot of these little stories about, well, this guy got six million out of the deal. And this guy, you know, people, friends of the elected officials. So the city's trying to break the lease.

the people that own the lease, they sue, say, no, you can't break the lease, even if it did have asbestos, you still owes the money. And so they go and they subpoena all these politicians and all their staffs

to depose them about conversations, about the, you know a lot of things happening conversations that they didn't want to come out because then all of a sudden, it was like, oh, well, we'll just buy the building from you.

They paid them $200, I forget, $250 million for the building. In addition to the lease money. Yeah, so our city is on the hook. We have a bond to be, it sits there. It's like this trophy. of stupidity right in downtown. It's one of the tallest buildings down there. It's empty. Everybody knows what it is. We can't do anything with it. Nobody will even take it off our hands

because the asbestos in there. It's going to cost more to clean the building up and make it useful than it would. So it went from a long-term lease to potential lawsuit with depositions to we'll just buy it to end this. Please, please, no depositions. Three hundred million bucks out and it still can't be used. No, it's just sitting there. I mean, that's the kind of thing that, you know, this is why the city is in so much trouble financially. It is why we don't have the money then to solve some of our problems. Why we've got like third world infrastructure where people are drowning in nice neighborhoods. We actually, you know, actually people drown. People are still living in hotels eight months later now. That's insane. Yeah. Yeah. What, uh, give me the wave tops of your campaign.

What are the three biggest problems that you're seeing in San Diego and how would you solve? Yeah. Homelessness is pretty much like the top three. But after that's, if you get it. I don't know, I may not, but that's number one with almost everybody. But it's, it's also on the safety side. It's the, you know, public safety is a big issue because police are constantly needing to go to homeless-related calls. Like in the downtown area, it's probably 80, 85% of the calls that cops get have something to do with homelessness. If we can get that number down, then cops can go to real calls. So right now people are calling. They're on hold forever.

They finally get through. If there's no bad guy at your house right now, maybe a cop shows up the next day to take the report. With average response time on, let's say it. It just depends on the level of the call, like a priority one versus. Is that baguys at your house? What are we talking? Oh, yeah. We'll try. A couple minutes?

No, no. It's as fast as we can. But the shortage of police officers in San Diego is so bad that if we have one serious incident occurring right now, we can't handle another one right now. You know, like that, if there was a shooting downtown, which happens regularly. We should. We have to ask for officers from other parts of town to come in and handle the burglary that's occurring. Yeah.

So, I mean, we're not getting there fast enough. You know, like they always say when seconds count, you know, we'll be there in a few minutes kind of deal. You're making an argument for my high capacity medicine. I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to fix the crime problem in our city. Sometimes the problem to crime is a high capacity magazine. Personal statement. Well, the police have them too.

It's, you know, it does unfortunately have to come to that sometimes. It's sad, but, you know, we hope we don't have to do it. But sometimes crazy people do crazy shit and you're left with limited skill sets and a little bit of options. And it seems like the number of crazy people is increasing as well. Yeah. But the... So what's the plan for homelessness? How would you attack this?

Yeah. So a lot of excuses out there on why we can't do it. But we have been legally able to do some good stuff about it. I am super compassionate for the homeless. I got a lot of friends out there. We text each other about what's going on. I know what's going on in the different camps the city has. You know, I've helped people get off the street.

Describe some of these camps, if you want, because I was just telling my Uber driver about one of them. Michael, what do you think would be the best Google search term to pull up a camp to give some people as you're described? Yeah, sure. Look up, oh, it'll be the letter O, O lot, safe camping site, San Diego. So this is why I was telling her, we were talking about ice fishing. She said how her sons loved ice fish. And I was just telling her, our city inept's people that have no experience in life, wanted to get a warm tent. They ordered these very expensive ice fishing tents for the homeless people to live in. You'll see a picture of them, their red ones. Very expensive. Yeah.

But they come with no bottom, right? Because you're going to dig a hole. Oh, Jesus, there they are. Those red ones. There's a no. Well, so those were, those are photos when they're empty. I was going to say, they look down. This is, yeah.

Let me see here. What did you put? Oh, lots of camping size, San Diego. They don't look like that with people. Yeah, just scroll down, Michael. Let's see what we can find. Yeah, this is. Okay, see where on the right there's blue tar.

This is where a brochure is. These are pictures for a brochure. So check out the tarps. So they learned right away, hey, there's a hole on top of all these tents. It's because it's for the stove. Yeah. scroll down some more, Michael. And the homeless people are pissed because rats are crawling underneath because there's no floor because you cut a hole in the ice, right?

This is just the kind of advisors. So there. The left one looks like a little bit more. Yeah, you see all the blue because they're red tents, but you see a lot of blue. So they went to Walmart and got a whole bunch of tarps to cover these Eskimo tents. Now you also see these tents all over the city now because the homeless that live there will steal the tent and just go put them on the sidewalk. So these $1,000, $1,000 are all over our city. Click the middle one there. One to the right of where you're at.

Down? Yeah. That's a, that's downtown. Now go to the right-hand side column and start scrolling through those images. Yeah, this is where it'll start. You know what I'm talking about, right? Where like if you click on one of those images, it'll kind of give you similar. Yeah.

Of course, this is not showing you the, it's showing you the pristine version of everything. Original pictures, yeah. And this on the right is a little bit more of what I'm talking about because I want people to get an understanding when you say an encampment, we're not talking two or three people just hang out together. We're talking hundreds. Yeah. They make their own village.

I was going to say my brother I was talking about where they will have to go into calls and they have like little stores. They have like cooking area. Yep. It is insane. Yeah, they'll tap into wires. They break into the city's streetlights. We have a very high percentage of our, most of our streetlights downtown and don't work. So it's darker.

It's more dangerous down there because they've tapped into it through the bottom to get the power to run their own lighting system or cooking system in their tents. To code though, right? Yeah, right. No, these guys, boy, I don't, they put in. so much effort and expertise on electrical work and plumbing to steal water from a pipe and run it into their tents that I don't know why they wouldn't just start a company. These guys have a lot of talent in that regard. But yeah, they'll tap into that wiring and run electricity in there. They've got gas stoves. They're cooking in there. It's definitely like little villages.

And we're finding new ones all the time. I'll tell me that riverbed that runs through town and it's really high grass. City has no idea what I go in there with this. I go in there with this one group of vets and we do cleanups of the river beds and we just do an area like size of football field and we'll have two or three garbage truck loads of just, you know, car batteries and all the stuff people throw into the river. They're not supposed to, right? But there's villages down there too. You'll see these like three, four bedroom plywood and cardboard and tarp kind of mansions in there for homeless guys. I was driving through L.A. on the 405 a couple years ago and I legitimately saw what I think was a two-story tree house.

Oh, yeah. That went down. Right along the side of the road. Yeah. They're not told to move. They just, well, they didn't. Marvelled at the construction. Yeah. No, like I said, some of these guys are skilled. They really are. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a, the city, you have to diagnose the problem properly, right? Just with anything medical, right? Your shoulder or anything. If you don't, you don't go and plant a surgery for kidneys if it's the heart or, you know, or the same prescription pills, you know, whatever it is, you got to have a really good understanding. You got the MRIs and the blood work. You got it all done to where you know what's wrong. They have no idea what the problem is with this. They think there's only like 3,500 or 4,000. homeless in the city of city. It's like 9,000 in San Diego City, not in the county, just in the city. There's canyons there. They have a system where they count the homeless. The last Thursday of the month, they have these set streets that they actually will drive by, and they have the system in place

that cannot change. It has to always be those streets. But just like if you knew all the questions to SAT test, you're going to probably get a higher score. So if the mayor knows which streets get counted, he can have organizations come through and move people to another area. And then they don't get counted. And look, we have a reduction in homelessness downtown. For a few moments, yes. Yeah. They just went into National City or they're over in another part of town where it doesn't get counted. Or they go into the canyons or they go on to Caltrans, right, on the highway area. That doesn't count as the city. It's not city property. So it's huge encampments along the highway because that doesn't count as the city. It's just literally on the other side of a chain link fence.

So just these games the politicians play. And nobody's lives are being saved in the meantime. We're just pushing humans like cattle, just hurting them across an imaginary line, you know, on the other side of that line is the Cal State's problem, or it's national cities problem, or it's on a street, on the other side of the street doesn't get counted the last Thursday of the month. That's the kind of games they play with humans. And that's where I just get so angry about this and just had to step up and do something. So I told you about the, you got to have a diagnosis of the problem. You got to know the people. You got to talk to them. One of the things, Tulsi, when I took her out there, and she talked about how I always ask everybody. I'm friends with a lot of them or even the new ones I

meet eventually in the conversation. I try to build some rapport, but what will it take for you to take my offer on getting you out of here? Like what kind of a program you need? And I hear from thousands of them what it takes. And the kind of system like this that those tents you saw and, you know, there's no, there's no helping hand. There's no, it's just handouts. It's no, you know, hand up for these people. They don't want that. There's, there's a number of special things that different ones need, but with their chemical addictions or their mental health issues, I hear from all. So I, you got to have that understanding too of talking to the actual people. The city government doesn't do that. I think it's probably the same in some of these other cities that are failing here.

And then the last thing is there was a big study done. And it's the one that they all say that the science is settled. They actually use that terminology. I was at a conference last year. The study was done where they sent college kids out with clipboards to interview homeless people asking them like, hey, how'd you get out here? Do you use hard drugs? Do you have a chemical issue? Do you have a mental health issue? Who's going to talk to some college kid with is khakis and a polo shirt tucked in. You don't want to come out. They don't know who he is.

They don't, there's no rapport. The kid's all nervous. He's also not going to go to the ones that look scarier. For sure. He or she are going to go to the ones that look a little more approachable. So that skews it. The methodology is really messed up here. But who's going to also be open and honest about, yeah, yeah, I just met you, but I'm

going to tell you all about my addiction issue. So on the addiction question, I think it came out that 13% of our homeless population has a chemical addiction. Of course bullshit, right? Anybody who's ever walked around and ever encountered these type of people know that's complete. Our mayor and his staff use this study as the, you know, this is the science that they're based on all their strategy on. The other question on mental health, how many of them have mental health issues?

It was like 8%. Again, bullshit, right? And then the other one was... Even more bullshit, actually. The fact that that's a lower number is even more bullshit. Yeah, yeah. Then the last one was that they base a lot of their policies on is how, what was the reason you got here? And it's never their fault, right?

It was, oh, well, you know, I couldn't make rent because the cost of rent's too high. Well, yeah, but you couldn't pay rent. because maybe those first two questions had something. You weren't taking your psych meds. You had an addiction issue, you know, whatever it might be. But those led to you not paying the rent, not that the rent was too damn high. Not with everybody.

And there's a small percentage of people who, that is the case. But with most of them, they're not going to share with a college kid showing up with a clipboard and tell a true story about how you got there. Nobody does that, you know? So this is the data we're going with right now.

Oh, the last one I would tell you is one of the questions was, are you from here or did you come from outside of time? and only 5% said they were from somewhere else. But they actually have a financial incentive to be from there. There are a lot of programs where if you're from there, so they lie about that too. And I'm just telling you, there are a lot of great people who are homeless out there, but there's a lot of lying that goes on.

Every couple probably tell you, you say it was your brother that's out there, right? Yeah, brother-in-law, yeah. The whole thing, brother-in-law, you'll arrest somebody and they've got the drugs in their pocket or the knife or whatever it is, a weapon they're not supposed to have it. I've heard this almost every day. These aren't my pants. that's the line every cop will tell you that they hear.

Hey, oh, yeah, if these aren't my pants. If I didn't live that struggle almost every day in my life, I would believe it. Yeah. The number of times that I put Michael's pants on instead of my eye. Right, right, right. Is exactly zero the last I checked. Yeah, of course. So of course, there's not a lot of truth telling in those situations about those issues.

So that's what they're using as their database to come up with a plan. So they think we just need to build our way out of it, which, oh, by the way, that helps with their contributors to their campaign, the builders. all the builders are donating hundreds of thousand dollars to his campaign because he believes we need to just, you build more, it's going to bring the prices down. It's not going to happen. But it's under false diagnosis of the problem that it was because of cost of living that 90% of them out there are on the street. That is not the case. There can be a case made for a small percentage.

But of all the people I talk to, I break them into three different groups. It's hard to do that, but just generally to make it easier for people to understand. The have-nots, the can-nots, and the will-nots. and that have-nots is a really small group, maybe 5%. And that is more of a financial issue. They just didn't have the extra money to make ends meet. Yeah, something in their life happened and kicked them in the teeth. Yeah, divorce, went out of business, whatever it was.

Bad bills. A lot of them are living in their car trying to maintain a semblance of normal life out of a vehicle. They just need an extra few hundred bucks. Some life skills training, maybe a little bit of job training, maybe a little bit of counseling, but not a whole lot to give them a key to an apartment and we follow up with them. That's an easy one to fix. And most of them get off the street fast because they will take a bed at a shelter right away. They don't care about the rules.

They don't care about a sobriety test they have to take. They want to get off the street. So that's a small group. That big group in the middle, about 85% of them. It's mental health and addiction issues. And it's both. It's almost all of, hardly anybody. It's exclusively one or the other.

There's a lot of self-medication. People of mental health issues are using the narcotics or the alcohol. And people who went out there with an addiction issue end up developing the mental health issues. because when you're out there, you're getting kicked in the head every day, sexually assaulted, robbed. I mean, these guys are walking around with no shoes and they never have their ID with it. They're constantly being a victim of crime. And that's from that third group, that criminal element that hides amongst them. That's the wheel nuts.

Once we can tackle the problem with those first two groups, that group is not going to stick around because the people they prey upon, their customer base, they're dealing death with fentanyl. They're raping, their human trafficking. that that group of people once we have taken care of the majority of them, they're easier, more easily exposed. Right now they're able to hide in those tents. We used to go out and we'd look at the felony warrants in that area and just drive around and, oh, there he is, and go out and get them.

You know, people who were sexual predators, you know, attempted murder, really bad people that are out there. Now they're all hiding in the tents. So we can't do that anymore. That group, once we thin out that herd and move them into programs where they can get the help, we can go and arrest those guys and gals and hopefully put all of them in jail in that group but they'll leave

they'll go to another city that's going to be more permissible of that kind of lifestyle. Yeah they're not looking for the path of resistance and we will be the most resistance and so I'm trying to make it a countywide program all the small cities that I don't I just don't want La Mesa or El Cajon or yeah all of a sudden all the I think La Mesa did a head count of homeless they only had 50 and all of a sudden they have 5,000 because all these people fleeing San Diego because we're getting

serious about it. But I've done first aid on these people too often. I've seen the stabbing's. I've seen, I'm just not going to watch them commit suicide slowly on the street anymore. We're going to make them change their life. So people on one side of the argument would say, you've got to wait until they're ready. Well, I'm going to help make them ready. I think that leaving them in a, in what in their mind is a comfortable setting. They're in a tent, a hundred yards away from a dealer. Drugs are cheap. And they can get food from all these places that were advertising, like you were saying, because they get money for that. That is the lifestyle that they want in their warped thought process in their head.

You and me have said, no, of course they don't want that. They're not able to think straight. And in the same way that if, you know, my dad started getting Alzheimer's and he can't make the right decisions, he doesn't get a saying where I have to take him if I can't take care of him anymore. Same thing with people who are under the influence. We have laws in the books. I don't know about here in Montana, but I know in Hawaii and California, we had, you know, if a woman, for example, had had some drinks at the bar and somebody took her home and, you know,

had, quote, quote, consensual intercourse. Well, the next day she could say it wasn't because she was, yeah, the alcohol. I don't know the rule here in Montana on that. California's very strict on that. So there are men in prison. Yeah, I just don't know what Montana's stances on that. Well, in both of those cases, we've established that whether you have some chemicals on board where you have a mental health issue, you don't get to make the decision.

But yet the police and the social workers have to go out there and get their permission. Please let me take you to a place where you can help fix your life. They're not in the state where they can do that. We're looking at their lifestyle, the way they're at right now, they can't be there. So it's got to be a choice. And it's going to, right now, the only tools we have is going to a shelter bed program. And again, it's not to have them go to that program, and that's where they spend the rest of their life. That's the first step in a healing process to fix their life.

Will it fix all of them? No. But there's some diamonds in the rough out there. And I'm friends with people who are, you know, we're addicts and we're homeless. And they're good friends of mine. They help work on this policy with me. So there's going to be, you got to be. go there. Brother, sister, please let me take you there. We got a good safe bed. We got medical.

I see you're limping. They all have medical issues. We got a doctor there. Let's get an extra of that ankle. You got a lot of them have pets. We'll have vets there. I know it sounds like kind of a Cadillac plan, but it's really not. That group of them that stay together. That's their family. That's their tribe. They don't want to take a bed if they all can't go together. Those are people they've been trusting to watch their back while they sleep or to watch their stuff while they go and get some food. They want to go with them. Fine. You get to bring them to. somebody with a little bit more of a mental health issue where they, I'm thinking of this one guy in particular.

I know he just can't be around other people or trouble will happen. Somewhere he can be a little bit more secluded at one of those locations. But again, that's not where they stay forever. That's just that first step. And we have it all the way up, a great plan where they're wraparound services and they can get all the way out of the program in a great life. Some of them are going to keep slipping back on the road. I get that.

It's not to solve homelessness altogether, but it gets that crisis level of like 9,000 homeless. Down to like 2,000 or 1,500. where then those groups that are out there, we have some really good nonprofits that could handle 1,500 or 2,000 homeless in San Diego. So the thing is, you got to make them go. And there are people that just say, no, it's their right,

they get to go, they get to live how they want, that's just their lifestyle. No, it's not in our city. We're not going to let people die like that anymore. It's got to be, you take us up on this offer. We can get you a ride back home wherever you're from. I mean, we'll look it up. We're not just going to send somebody to Miami.

But, you know, if you're from Ann Arbor, Michigan, we look it up, reach out to some family out. out there, we'll get you back. If you have a support network there, we'll get you there. The other choice is jail. So what's going to happen is I foresee it being about 50% end up taking us up on this offer. And about 50% over the course of a year,

and about 50% move to a city where they can continue that lifestyle. But it's not going to happen in San Diego. Also the spicket will get turned off in San Diego of new people coming in. There's advertising that happens by nonprofits in these other states saying come to San Diego because they get paid more money in tax dollars. They get rewarded for heads and heads. They do. But I'll tell you another way that

most people don't know about when I share this with the politicians, they think I'm lying, but I've seen it. They all have, they're free phones and they all have Instagram and all the social media. Just like with you or I, if I was going to be moving to Tampa, you know, you got those apps where you go on there and check out what taxes are like and how much that house is. And these guys are doing the same research before they come out to San Diego. They're reaching out to people who are homeless on Instagram and making friends. Sure. Hey, what's it like out there? Hey, yeah, we got chocolate chip pancakes on Sundays at this church.

And what are the cops like? What are the cops doing to you? How much time you got to spend in jail when you get arrested for this? How expensive is the fentanyl? All that's happening. Once they start seeing San Diego's taking this for real and you can't live that lifestyle there anymore, we're not going to tolerate it. We're going to help you.

We're going to have one person say, hey, if this plan works, how are you going to keep everybody from coming to San Diego for help? I said, I would love that. If every homeless person who really wanted help came to San Diego, I would love that problem. We're not going to have that problem, though. But wouldn't that be a beautiful thing? If San Diego was known for that, but that won't occur.

It'll be the people leaving that don't want to leave the old lifestyle. What timeline do you think a large difference can be made on? Yeah, it really depends on how quick we can get beds made. So I work with this one group, and I used to work with Bill Walton, really close. He had the basketball player. He's a big San Diego superhero. He just passed away recently, but we were working on a project there that was a lot of very wealthy billionaire types that want to pay for a system like this to be put in place.

They're waiting for a mayor who will implement the plan because you have to have a mayor who's going to tell that chief police, who's the unelected official who works for the mayor, hey, chief, start following this plan. You know, go out there, talk to the people, you know, start building up more of a mental health capability, have a behavioral health unit that's more robust than what we have now, more social workers tied into this. but you've got to have those beds. And these guys are rich business people. They're not just going to go build this unless they know they've got a mayor that's going to use it. So they're talking about $250 million these guys are going to put up, build this program.

It costs like $68 million a year to run it. They're willing to do the operating costs for a few years. They just want to see someone like me win so I can get in there when you can start making this happen. So a lot of it isn't even on the cost side, but it's just having, being able to fast track the permits, which the mayor can. We have a strong mayor. They call it strong mayor form of government in San Diego. They switched it back in 04. What it did was a given mayor, a ton of power that this guy.

You can pull levers if he wants to. Oh, yeah, he runs the city. He's got the city council has no power over him. I'm going to try in the first term is to, I have to take it to a vote, though, to the citizens. I'm pretty sure they're all going to vote to go back to the old way, but go back to a city manager who was a professional city manager who ran most of that stuff. And then had co-equal branches, basically the mayor and the city council were all co-equal votes. which that's kind of, you know, one of our founding principles. I'm more of a fan of that type of aggregated power for sure.

Yeah. You know, what's the saying absolute power corrupts? Yeah. Yeah. All right. So number one, homelessness. What's your number two issue? Well, I would tell you that everything else can kind of trickle down from that,

from ripple effects. But let me just tell you on the crime side, I mentioned earlier, you know, 85% of the calls being homeless related. Yeah. We have not enough cops in San Diego. They did a study many years ago. So we were supposed to have 2,400 cops back then. That was when the population was less.

We didn't have the homeless crisis that we have now. We didn't have ghost guns. We didn't have the fentany-400 we were supposed to have. We had 1,800. They just kept it at 1,800. Now, if you had to compare our city to another city with similar size and crime, Dallas is a good comparison. They got 3,500 cops.

We're slowly approaching, quickly approaching 1,700 cops. We're going down with the number of people retiring or moving to Montana. Yeah, same thing. So we're losing cops. But if we can lower that number of calls that have to do with homeless-related issues, then the cops, maybe we do have enough cops at that point. You can do more with what you have. Yeah, and there's different types of police work that, you know,

you remember we first started doing a lot of humanitarian operations. I remember in the Marine Corps, I was a young, young guy, maybe it was right before you joined. Marine Corps and the Navy were kind of ticked off about it at first. Like, we're supposed to be able to go and break things and fight against bad guys. But we were the only tool the president really had who could expeditiously get out to these countries and help save lives in some of these earthquakes and tsunamis and mud slides and that kind of thing. So people look at the police department that way.

That's the biggest organization you have of just, you know, hammers to go out and solve a problem. They're not the best tool, though, for it. So we need those mental health professionals. We need those social workers. So I want to build up a behavioral health unit that we have a really small one now. I want to do that. Many of the calls we go to, they could go to.

Maybe with police there as a backup. Yeah. Because it gets a little violent. The other thing is we have a job with these report writers. They're basically investigative service officers. They're not a full-on police officer. They don't take as long to train. They don't cost as much.

They can handle all those cases when there's not the bad guy still in the building. So when somebody breaks in here and they're gone, they can just show up to do the fingerprints and the blood samples and the photos and all that. So that frees up the police to just do the regular police jobs. And, you know, maybe we have enough at 1800 at that point. So on the public safety side, like I was saying,

if we handle the homeless front, all of a sudden we have more police-free to handle the crime and the public safety. You mentioned ghost guns. Are you guys actually encountering those? Because I hear about that shit on the news, but I don't know. Well, okay, when you're in a state that you can get the guns you want, you don't have to worry about it. No, the 3D printers out there, they're pumping them out all the time.

How often do you guys running into those? Very regularly. Really? Yeah. Can they tolerate a lot of use or is that more like a one-time use just in case you need the thing? I wouldn't say it's one-time use, but what we'll see is, so most of them on the pistol side will, you know, emulate a Glock type. And they'll actually have maybe some Glock parts you could get at a Glock store. are online. But the pieces that they're manufacturing in a garage are just not quite to the specifications.

So you'll see on the ground, if we show up to a shooting after they're already gone, you know, there's a spent, you know, expended case that's on the ground. And they'll see some live rounds on the ground, too, because they're constantly jamming and racking it. So you'll know it was a... At least they got their EPs down. Tap rack back. No, but you'll see almost just as many live rounds on the ground with the expended casing. So you know that they're not. was on it. It's gotten so bad that we've even encountered some guys who, when they do have a actual, you know, Glock or another gun that's a semi-automatic. They're doing that anyway. They've gotten that muscle memory of racking on every shot that they'll do that even when their gun is not

jamming. So that's how prevalent they are. Do they try to make them look like Glock? Oh, yeah. They just, yeah, they just won't have the numbers on it. It won't say Glock. It'll just be, you know, polycarbonate it or whatever it's printed out of. Yeah, yeah. But probably the more they get fired the more they jam, you know, but yeah, they jam a lot. But they're good enough that... Oh, one shot's all it takes, right? Yeah. Wow.

Okay. Again, I mean, it's something you hear about on the news. Oh, yeah. They're so easy to get. For some reason, I thought it would look like some shit 3D printer. Like, this is obviously cylindrical, but like a white... I don't know. I'm thinking of the movie where Clint Eastwood was the Secret Service agent.

The guy has the... Oh, the plastic gun. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, like this big square monstrosy where it has the double hammers that you look back. I don't fucking know. No, that was a cool movie. It was a cool movie, but damn it, that's what I thought goes. I'm an idiot.

All right. So where does it go from there? Starts homeless cascades down. Yeah, on the, on the, and then on our infrastructure, too. So just the basic things that government's supposed to do. You know, when we were all cavemen and we teamed up with other cavemen for, you know, some, some tribe, right, for safety. Safety is number one. It was all about safety, you know.

So, and then after that, it's infrastructure. I mean, it's, there's other things are important, libraries and parks. And we'll take care. all that too. But really, just getting back down to just the meat and potatoes of what government's about and it's about public safety and about the infrastructure. So we're focusing on those public safety. And when I talk about the public safety, I'll loop in the homeless people too. I mean, they're San Degans where they've been there a couple days or they've been there. It's not like Montana, where you've got to be seven generations homeless before you're considered San Diego.

Like I said, it's wild. I've heard seven generations, seven years, everything in between. How much does the state politics impact San Diego? Yeah, a lot, a lot. Like what if you want to do something and say, good question. Newsom gets elected again. Yeah. Which, whatever. Right. And he said like, you know what, Larry?

No, I don't think so. So one thing I've learned, I mentioned to you doing community relations and I work a lot with the legislation that the city does. Most of these people don't have the backgrounds in the things they are writing the legislation about. These aren't always the best and brightest amongst us who are running for office, nor do they have that skill set in law or, And some of them do. Some of them are lawyers or business people, but not all of them. And they have very young staffs that write a lot of this for them. And I'm here to tell you there there's a lot of flaws in there where if you are not with the party, which I'm not, I don't know with any party. I don't care who's up there. If you're with a party and you want to maintain that relationship with them because you want to become the lieutenant governor, the senator, the president someday, you go along. You got to go along with the team. And if the team is, they have a super majority in Sacramento right now, the Democrats do. I have nothing against Democrat people, voters, you know, but that party in California just keeps giving us horrible candidates. They're up there writing legislation that maybe is bad for San Diego.

The mayor should be standing up and yelling about that, but he doesn't because he's part of that team and he wants, he needs their help. Also, he just goes along with the spirit of that law. Well, we can get some good tax attorneys many times to find where there was a semicolon instead of a comma, or was a shall instead of a should, and find those loopholes. There's tons of loopholes. even at the city level that we can bypass, if we're looking for the loopholes.

I could tell you about a few of them. But make them sue us over it. If there's something that's bad for people of San Diego, then we're going to try our best to shield San Diego from the stupidity of Sacramento. And if legally we can't do it, then we can't. But any chance we get where we can find a way around it, you know, I'll tell you one right now,

you can't give tax dollars in California. Pass the law that you can't give any tax dollars to a homeless, shelter program if it requires sobriety. Those are ones that work the best, by the way. But if it requires sobriety, I can't use any of my tax dollars for it. What's their justification for that? They will tell you that a person needs to, if you're going to take the tax dollars, you just need to house that person

because the person is not ready to be helped until they're ready to be helped. So you can't force it on them. Also, it happens to be that most of those are going to be religious-based organization. I think that has a little bit of the reasoning behind it, too. They don't want to see these Christian or Muslim-based groups get the money. But you can learn a lot from the way these other businesses and organizations do things with multiple corporations, for example. So, you know, perhaps there's multiple corporations in this nonprofit. One nonprofit is the shelter, and that's the one that requires the sober living, right?

But the periphery things they have, their kitchen, their food, their rec center, their, you know, job training. those are different corporations. So I can support those corporations with tax dollars. I just can't support the beds, right? Yeah. So wherever those gray areas are, if it's some stupid stuff, to me,

if it's ethical, moral, it saves lives and it's right, we're going to find any way we can to play their game. They play this game with us all the time on technicalities. We'll find those technicalities.

And even if I lose in court after two years, you know how many lives we save in those two years? It's worth it. So we'll just continually be that thorn in their side until Sacramento finally sees the light because the state is losing people. Left and right. We lost a congressional seat, you know, losing, losing electoral votes.

It's a it's a place that everyone is taken off from it. And it's all been under this leadership. I was just going to say, they're taken off. The weather hasn't shifted. Still one of the most beautiful. It's funny how many people actually think California is only coastline. Yeah. Like where you grew up, not the coastline.

Right. I had a little bit of it. But weather's still largely the same. Yeah. Real estate is just as beautiful. Yeah. The opportunity is to do things outside, whether it's recreate. There's actually quite a bit of hunting in California.

People don't know that. Close to Mexico. It's just absolutely gorgeous. Yeah. But you lost a seat because people are leaving. So if none of those things have shifted, what could it possibly be? Like, let's take a look at this. Yeah.

It's likely the leadership. Yeah. So the elite of California, the big donors to the, the, uh, elected officials, they're the ones that are still running. And in their mind, whether they're still able to make money with their corporations out there from this, or they believe in that type of ideology that's getting pushed out of Sacramento, it doesn't affect them when they're in those neighborhoods with the gated communities. They've got the drive, the armed driver.

Yeah, they're on dry islands. Yeah. Yeah. But they're able to continually fool the folks into voting for those politicians. I mean, it is a majority Democrat registered voters, and God bless them. They're good people. You know, they're just getting tricked by these people that are ruining their lives. If you talk to anybody in California, I don't know anywhere where everyone, anyone is happy with the trajectory.

It's been going. It's been going downhill for everybody. People are not as happy as they used to be wherever you live in Central Valley, San Diego. They feel less safe. The trajectory is the reflection of the leadership in the direction that they're pointing it, which they are and then turn voting for. so you can't bitch about this ship going towards an iceberg when you have your hand on the wheel. Yeah. I mean, I guess you can.

It's just not going to get you anywhere. Well, that's the dilemma then. So are we ready to go with something else? And in my case, I've been a lifelong independent. You know, the friend we were talking about earlier, he actually had his conversation with me a long time ago. Just a lot of things in my life, my background, and the fact that I was a lifelong independent made me, you know, a more viable option for people of San Diego who are definitely not voting for a Republican. Yeah. We're about 25% Republican, 25% undeclared, and about 50% Democrat, and the city limits.

So, you know, are they willing to take somebody other than that Democrat machine endorsed guy with all the unions and the big builders and all that behind him, even though he's not really, the ideology of the Democrats, he doesn't follow that. You know, so I'll talk to people all the time. And I convince him when I get those opportunities. We have these Larry Lissons events. And I'm just talking people to the library or people. backyards and very left-leaning progressive people. And we talk about my policies and his. And I said, well, you know, did you join the Democrat because you like the color blue and the name Democrat or you do for the ideology of, well, of course, it's for the ideals. I mean, these are the things we believe in

with the environment and with the humanitarian type approach to solving homelessness and, you know, a number of other issues. I'm like, well, here's my policies on those. Look what he's doing. You know, he's destroying our environment in San Diego. He has a great plan. Politicians will come up with those climate action plans that they'll never reach, but they get patted on the back with, oh, that was a very bold move making a plan. But they don't, they don't implement them. For a while, I thought Newsom was going to be the guy. Yeah. I thought if Biden dropped out. Yeah, I think a lot of people thought that. I think the only thing that stopped that is that if they had declared anybody other than Harris, they couldn't have used the fundraising money.

Yeah. And then he brings nothing to her because she's going to get California anyway. Yeah. I thought for a second he might be her guy, though, too. I mean, you never know. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how many people know that you're she started her career in California. What I'll say is go ahead and Google how. I'll leave that up for the viewer and listener, her sent through the government system. Yeah.

I'm not trying to tell anybody how to live their life, but let's just, you know, look at things objectively. Yeah. So what do the mechanics look like for you? Where are you at in this election season? Where are things at? Yeah, so we got the same election. Everybody's doing on November 5th.

We're on there for me versus the incumbent. it's it's about having some money to counter their you know dirty tricks i mentioned those ones earlier about those mailers uh to the different sides um what a fucking waste you just you did that was $7,500 yeah i know i know great ROI what all they got to do is get one more vote you know so if they convince enough people uh that i'm I'm worse than them they you know that's the thing everyone knows him so there's some uncommitted voters out there and some of the polling's been done I'm just right behind him among those that are committed, but there's like 25% say they're not committed yet. And when they get the question, well, why are you not?

Well, we don't, they haven't heard of me yet. Or they heard my name. I just want to learn a little bit more. But they all know him. So they're not going that way. So I'm very excited about it. I really believe we're going to win. I just got to get able to reach those people.

And it just, it takes money. And when we're, you know, we're this totally complete grassroots movement because neither party supports us. even some people who want to support us, their bylaws don't let them. If you're an independent, you know, you're not with their party. They can't give any money. So we've got a ton of volunteers out there. And it's really, I mentioned earlier that hit men. You know, they hired a group of hitmen from L.A. to come down and get me.

And it was this private eye company that the packs are paying a lot of money to just follow us around. They follow my wife and little kids around. They're taking pictures of my little boy at school. That's super creepy. It is creepy. It is creepy. Yeah, well. Also, I don't know.

shit about the law. Let me preface it with. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know a goddamn thing about the law. Yeah, it is creepy. My wife's, I mean, she's the one going through a little bit harder thing to me. I've been followed in my life at places and I had death threats and that's fine. At one point, these guys put out our home address to the paper. I mean, isn't that doxin? Yeah, but, you know, technically they can't be held, you know, criminally liable on it. It used to be just be judges. Those judges and elected officials have recently California, they made it first responders to. If you do it, first responders, it becomes a crime.

But they listed homes that I own and had rented. And they put them all on there. So, I guess, like, technically, they didn't say that was the one I'm living in. But that was the one I was living in. And a nice little beach house over an OB. Everybody knows I live in OB, so I'm not really giving it away. Yeah. But, you know, it's tough.

My wife and little kids are, you know, she's scared all the time. Rightfully so. Yeah. There's crazy people out that and they have internet connections as well. And in the police business, you know, I've had, I mean, I can't even tell you how many death threats I had. And most of them are just talking trash, you know, but some of them, you know, if they knew where I live, that would concern me. And because, you know, it puts my wife and kids at risk. I can handle it, but they can't.

So, yeah, it's been something where we're really looking forward to this being, this election being over with. And we win and, you know, take over and start changing things in San Diego. Man, I feel like the hard work is going to just start. If you win. I got an awesome team though, dude. I'm telling you, honestly, I truly believe the campaign is going to be the harder part. It's going to be once we can get in there, I've got a superstar team of people that, one guy used to be a city manager there.

I've got someone who had to run for mayor before who knows how the cities. They know all the nooks and crannies and mazes. They were part of the swamp there. They know where the bodies are buried. They know how to clean it up. They just didn't want to run. So they're letting me take the hits. But to them, those are true hits, right?

when you are being attacked, they can say anything they want about me. It doesn't, it doesn't change anything. I mean, they can make up stories about me. If I had something in the closet, it would have, you know, I wouldn't even be running. So, um, they're going to have to make some stuff up. And it's fine. It's like, you know, when you've been through some things that we've been through, it's like, it's just like getting hit with a squirt gun. It's not, it's just annoying. But my wife will still love me. My kids will still love me. I'm okay. If, you know, stories come out that they want to, you know, spread lies about me. That's okay. It's just some thick, on it.

Man, even if you don't, even if you're not successful, you're going to sleep better at night knowing that you threw your hat in the ring, what other people would not be willing to do. Yeah, I could not have looked myself in the mirror and, you know, I get choked up about it with the city. It's such a great city, man. I mean, you know, you lived there. Yeah, I loved it. It just, it's got so much shit on it right now.

It just needs to get cleaned up. And it's not going to be hard to fix. It really isn't. It's just got to be, we got enough people in San Diego that want to see it happen. It's just how many of them fall. for that vote blue no matter who. That's the story that they try to sell to everybody out there. You know, because anybody who's not with our party,

but the party itself is messed up. The Democrat voters are good people, you know. They're just like us. We all got, we all agree on 95% of the same stuff. And that's all I'm trying to do. Safety infrastructure. Let's get humans from dying on the street, get them a chance to better their life.

That's it. You know, my dad's in his mid-70s, and he and I've had a lot of political conversations. He has said, his words not mine, he doesn't even recognize the Democratic Party from what it used to mean when he was growing up up. And somehow... John Glenn.

Somehow he's like they've switched. Like a Republican has become a Democrat, or a conservative has become a Democrat, Democrat has become a conservative. You're right. Then there's, you know, the people who are, and I think this is 80% of the people probably have a foot of each, you know,

left foot in the blue a little bit towards the middle. Right foot in the red, a little bit towards the middle. What scares the shit out of me of the people who are on the far, far extremes of me either. That seems to be, I don't know if it's grown. growing in size, it's certainly growing in volume, but that just could be them being more active

or the tools that they have. But the party shift too. I mean, vote blue no matter who. I don't know what the version of that would be for red, but they're equally stupid. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we just only hear the blue side over there. We get in force fed these Democrat politicians.

Vote red or you're dead. That's probably what it is. Well, I remember when I was a kid, during the Soviet Union, it was always the better dead than red. They would always give that because red was always Red was always the communists, right? Yeah. But, you know, this is just convincing people that we just need to try something new.

And as you were saying with all these other things, too, the age limit on military service or, you know, how we're handling mental health. Just throw it all out there. Yeah. Yeah. So I believe, it might be naive of me because I'm, I'm the FNG in politics, right? I say that all the time. Most people don't know it.

If you win, you can't say anymore, you're not a politician. Well, no, I still can. I'm going to say that. Let me tell you this, brother. In a political office. It doesn't matter. I'm a public servant. That's it.

I am a public servant. I've been a public serving my whole life. I'm just going to continue serving, but in this job. All right, but you're a politician. I will not get that stink on me. I swear to God, watch. I've told my wife, she can kick me in the balls if I start acting that way at all. I would rather resign than let that happen.

I take a lot of pride in how many people are going to come to us with these quid pro quos and how many other than we're going to put in jail. You know, I don't mind wearing a wire 24-7. It'd be interesting showering with one. It would be. I mean, there's some logistical concerns there, but every problem has a solution. Yeah, yeah.

What's been your favorite part about being a police officer? Oh, man, just the helping people all the time. I mean, San Diego's a little different. You know, you lump police officers in the country together. It's totally different. It's like restaurants, you know, going to a Denny's in Florida or Chili's in California. You know, they're all restaurants. It's completely different.

We do things different than they do in Minneapolis or they do in Miami, you know. So very different place and different crowds, different feelings from the community toward the police. we are loved in San Diego. For every... Oh, no, no, I was going to say, I would say for every middle finger I get, there's like 20 people wanting to buy my coffee or buy me a burrito or something.

The guy in front of me in the drive-through sees the patrol car behind him, I pull up, and it's, oh, the guy in front of you paid for your... I mean, that's the kind of love we get in San Diego. And that isn't just from patriotism. It's a relationship that San Diego PD has built over decades. And that's the only reason I'm a cop there.

I learned of that relationship as a military person, there and met some cops and saw, hey, these aren't like those guys in the south. It's not that the North Carolina state troopers that I was used to dealing with or others. It's a different relationship there. And it's something about San Diego. It's the surfing and the lowriders and the skateboarding and the street art and all of that and the fish tacos and the Padres. And everybody is just a different kind of vibe there that I don't have in any other city. And then the beauty of it and everything else, too, the military side of it. It's just this awesome melting pot of some crazy cool culture there.

There's no other place like it. So the police need to police differently there too. We need San Diego kind of police there. And every organization is going to have one or two, you know, bad out. I always want it to be zero. Yeah. But I would say that in San Diego, I'm being honest with you. I probably met like not even five, you know, assholes on the department.

They're still good cops, but they, you know, kind of, not the guys you really want to have a beer with. Yeah. Most of the guys and gals are just really good people. And I love that. And because of that, when we had those protests, the George Floyd protests all around the country, you saw, they weren't that bad in San Diego. Matter of fact, of all the people that showed up, most of them are from L.A. They drove down to be agitators.

We know the same group of about 25 Antifa people in San Diego that are truly anti-foot people. That's the same group. We know who they are. Anytime it's more than 25 people, it's out of town. the people in San Diego support us. It's great. So getting those, not that I live on thank yous, I mean, I don't need that, but man, you just, you love helping people. It does help.

Yeah, I don't know that cops would stay there if that wasn't the case. I think I know to the answer to this probably, but what's the hardest part about being a cop? Yeah, seeing all that ugly. I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, we were talking about before this about the little three-year-old dying research, you know. Yeah. But, yeah, suicides. overdoses, accidental overdoses. You know, people die from fentanyl because they thought it was a prescription pill and

it was, they're making them look just like the pills. The human trafficking is terrible. I don't even bring that up much. We're going to tackle that too, but I don't, there's only so much I think San Yagans can take of the bad news and they don't even know how bad, the human trafficking is in San Diego. If you overload it too much, I think it becomes overwhelming and they, you turn it off. They turn the radio off.

Yeah, yeah, right. You're right. So I'm trying to just stick to those three things. Yeah. But we're going to juggle more chainsaws than that. I mean, we can handle it. There's a lot of things we can tackle, but, you know, trying to bring pro sports back to San Diego and that sort of thing, too. He's going to say, do you still own a Chargers jersey?

No, no. I don't. Fuckers. If they wanted to come back. They did good enough every year that I lived there that I almost considered rooting for them. Yeah. And then those sons of bitches would piss it away at the end. Yeah.

Well, there's still enough people with the lightning bolt tattoos on their head or neck. What do they do with Qualcomm? Did they raise it? Yeah, it's gone. There's a new stadium there that San Diego State uses called Snapdragon. It's smaller. But it's more, you know, even like a college football game. Yeah.

And there's less sideline space so you can actually see their faces through the... Yeah, you're closer up, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because I used to go to San Diego State Aztec games all the time. I loved it. But you were at Qualcomm. Even if you were front row, you were so far away from the action. God, that stadium was hurting from a quality perspective.

It's gone. It's gone. But snapdragons is really neat. They did it on the cheap, but in a classy way. I went and saw the Mexican National Team. team against some African team play there. Soccer, it's a really nice stadium. And a neat thing is they not only got local restaurants to do all the food vending at the

place, but I don't know the guy who runs this for San Diego State, he had all of them send like their chefs down to Mexico to this Aztec area to kind of mix in Aztec spices. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, so your pizza, your burger, everything's kind of got, yeah, it's really cool. I love that whole Aztec football and Aztec sports are awesome over there. So one of the complications with the podcast is that people other than San Diego are going to hear this. Yeah. But they could support you if they wanted to.

Oh, yeah. And I know I got to get you back on a flight here at some point. So let's leave with or end with a portal that people can, or direction where can you point people that they can find out more about you. Yeah, sure. And then people wherever they may live, how could they support you? Or actually, what is the best type of support that you need anyway? So Larry Turnerfor-Mayer.com. That's the one.

It has everything on there. Links to all of our social media. We put videos on there. We're really trying to kill it on the social media side. You know, doing as much on the cheap as we can. Yeah. So, but money is still, even though we're doing it on the cheap, I mean, I told you they spent a million $750 on us and we did $7,500.

You still need $7,500, though. You know, we need those small donations like that. So, you know, we've been turning off all those other larger sums. So the small ones can help. And what I hope that, You know, people from outside of San Diego area, you know, if they listen to this, they hear about it through friends that live in San Diego, is, you know, it's a national city in that, you know, we've got the military there. I mean, just for national security reasons, San Diego is vital to the U.S. And you can't have seals or submariners or anybody deploying and leaving their families in a city that's in disarray.

So I'm really big on helping the military families, even if they can't vote there. They're my constituents as well, but they just, they don't vote. need to be able to make sure that when a wife or husband is home with the kids during the deployment, that they're safe, that it's a place that, you know, dad or mom off fighting our adversaries don't have to worry about that. So, you know, in that respect, and all the military people who have been stationed there who live all over, they have a warm place in their heart for that city and they want to see it succeed. They know how great it used to be. And they see these things like the pictures you all pulled up a little bit ago. which are one of countless. Yeah. It's a place where we can turn it around with just not that much money. If people want to volunteer, they can do it from a distance to with phone calls and emailing and helping us out that way.

Like I said, we're, we become masters of doing stuff on the cheap. It's a guerrilla warfare thing. I always talk about the Mujahideen against the Soviets. You know, the bear went over the mountain book, you know, and that kind of thing. We're using things against them that they, that was normally their strong points. we're finding those critical vulnerabilities and we're just able to do things really on a shoestring budget. And it's been successful. I know we're going to win this thing.

I just, I see it everywhere I go. It's the people who used to throw the fundraisers for the other guy are inviting me over. They're tired of it. They're tired of seeing the city go that way. Most of them know me from the police department and things that I've done to help their community. So they're, they've already known me.

They're just building on the relationship they already had. So anybody who's outside of San Diego area, please, you know, look up the website. And do some research, too. You can click on some of our videos. I'm down under the overpasses with the homeless. I'm in the tents with them. Talking about the drug use, talking about them. I'm on that documentary that Tulsi just shot over there, too.

You can see how bad it is in San Diego. But I promise you, we have solutions to this. It is very, you know, there's hope. I don't think that's the case in other parts of California or the West Coast, but in San Diego it is. And this is the part where people think maybe I'm a little too naive. I truly think that this is something that's going to spread. So if we took the city, eighth-larger city,

and just dropped some common sense bombs on it, that we start seeing that change. That's going to be a national story. Fox and CNN and everybody's going to be out there showing the success of San Diego, that we start filling up our convention center again, that people are wanting to move back into San Diego. Those cops who left for Nashville are coming back.

You know, try to get you to come back to San Diego. Let's not happen. Yeah, I know. I'm ticked in up here. Yeah. Try to get as many people to come back, you know, and reinvest. Get those businesses that are leaving the Bay Area. You know, the Elon Musk, they don't want to be in Texas.

You know, let's be real. They want to be in California. But they're having to leave, right? Because of the environment's being created. Try to shield them from the stupidity of Sacramento and have an old school California kind of an area in San Diego where they feel it's like the old way it used to be. You know, they have people have family in Sacramento or in California.

You don't necessarily want to move far away where you're losing touch. with your cousins and everybody. So really trying to bring the people down to San Diego, show them that we can have success down there and hoping it spreads. And, you know, Chico and Santa Clara and all these other cities, they start saying, hey, we're demanding the stuff we all agree on.

And I saw this on the internet. I still haven't proven if it's true or not. I think I'd probably get bit too much if it happened. But the 100 red ants and 100 black ants, did you ever hear that story? No, and I don't think you should test this. No. Supposedly you put them in a jar and then they don't do anything.

I don't know who did this test. It's a good story, though. All right. But you shake the jar up, right, and then they start fighting and killing each other. That actually makes total sense. Yeah. Well, you know, it's the way they play us on each other. You know, it's the left versus right.

And we all got to focus on those things we all do agree on, and it's 95% of this stuff. We all want our kids to live safe. We don't want our kids stepping on needles in the playground. We don't want our dog. The dogs are overdosed in San Diego on licking the foil that the fentanyl was on. Oh, no. Yeah, the dogs lick everything. God hadn't thought about that.

The dogs are, I mean, that's the life we're living right now. This is unacceptable. unacceptable. So we want to make San Diego that test bed, you know, where, where those billionaires that want to build that shelter system I talked about, the Sunbreak Ranch, they call it, build it there, show that success, and then they can replicate it in other cities, Cincinnati, Denver, wherever, you know. That's the thing I really think is going to be able to happen in San Diego. So I don't want to do anything after this. I promised my wife I was going to retire in a year.

I had 10 years in the police department at that point. I was going to homeschool the kids and travel with them and all that. she was going to do her nonprofit stuff. But, you know, this is going to be eight years, turn this thing around, and we're going to build up some good people with integrity. I don't really care if they're in which party they're in, you know, as long as they got integrity and work ethic, you know, that's the people I want to hand the torch off to, and then I'm done.

I just want to sit back by the fire and smoke a cigar and have a scotch and watch, you know, look on my phone and see, you know, who's, they're running that football and going even further with it for the next couple of decades. Man, I hope you're successful. It's going to happen, man. Yeah. Yeah. What do you want to leave people with?

We'll get you pointed back towards the airport here shortly. Oh, yeah. Hey, it's beautiful here. I really appreciate it. I really think that when we just talked about that flow of people out of San Diego, I'd like to leave people with the stay and fight. You know, I saw decades ago people were leaving California for Arizona, Nevada. And then those states have slowly transformed into something that now they want to move

a little further east or further south or up here to Montana. It's the thing where, you know, we just got a like man and woman up. and, you know, fight the good fight to save what's happened, whether school boards, waterboard, you know, whatever. You know, we got to stay and we got to fight for these things. It's really tempting to go to one of those cities where there's more people like minded or taxes are better. And I get that. But, you know, think about staying and putting your money where your mouth is or put your effort where your mouth is. Stay and put up the fight.

You know, just another story about San Diego real quick that kind of goes to that. We have these elected positions that are called planning groups, and they're elected at the lowest level just in the neighborhood. So we have these like 50 neighborhoods, and each one elects a council. And then they approve and make recommendations up to the mayor's office on how things grow there. This particular mayor, he's disbanded the ones that disagree with him on his ideas on moving his own. Literally, literally, you know. Historically a great policy. Yeah.

Yeah. But disbanding democratically elected officials in our own city. and putting in like puppet organizations to take their place because you have to have one of those. So then he's he's got the city council on a sign of it. That's the kind of stuff that if those people in those neighborhoods just let it go and just say, well, you know, it's just how it is politics now. That's where we are today. It's just going to keep happening, you know, and it starts at those low levels.

We got to fight it. You've got to do whatever we can to make it different. It's tough. We're all in that, you know, that hamster will of life. A lot of people work in two or three jobs to make ends meet and going to your kids' soccer. or practice and all those things you got to do go to church it's tough but we all got to this is the time in our history of the u.s we all got to step up and it's it's time to to really be men and women of courage and you know have that fortitude to stand up against these people who are going to try

to push this on us i dig it man i'll be paying attention to the san diego election for the first time in a long time well come back after we win i'll come visit i know an awesome carnios out of place Oh, yeah. I'm sure you do. Thank you for making the travel up. Oh, thanks, bro. It was an honor. I appreciate it.

Thanks.