Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - “Negotiating Isn’t a Science, It’s an Art.” – Hostage Negotiator Ericka Stropka

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

What if your job required you to talk people down from murdering their wife, calming someone down on the brink of suicide, or coaching someone over the phone on how to survive being held hostage?This is the reality for a hostage negotiator - where if their words aren’t delivered precisely the right way, it can mean the LOSS OF LIVES! This week, Alex Clark sits down with Sergeant Ericka Stropka, Hostage Negotiator from Tucson, Arizona. Ericka shares the hardest and the most successful mom...

The spillover is powered by Turning Point USA, and so is America Fest. If you haven't purchased your tickets to this year's biggest party in America, you better do so ASAP before it sells out. I am extra excited for this event because it's going to be here in Phoenix, Arizona, so you can ask me where the best places to go after the show, I will tell you. But mark your calendars for December 18th to the 21st. It's basically the best Christmas present ever, and the lineup is fire. We've got everyone from Donald Trump Jr. to Governor Sarah. Pallin, to Kaylee McInney, and even musical guests like Lee Greenwood and Russell Dickerson, Bradley Gilbert, Ray Lynn, I mean, like, this is huge.

You are not going to want to miss it. Go to TPSA.com slash America Fest like right now and get your tickets. I cannot wait to see you there. It's the spillover. I'm Alex Clark. 2013 was not too long ago. And on January 29th of that year, there was a massive. crime unfolding in Midlands City, Alabama on a school bus. Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old

Vietnam veteran, climbed onto a Dale County school bus just after 3.30 in the afternoon. The man told the bus driver, who was only one year older than him, that he wanted to take two boys. One was six, and the other was eight. The bus driver refused and stood in the aisle of the bus blocking Jimmy's way. Suddenly, Jimmy fired his gun five times, shooting and killing the bus. The bus driver. He then grabbed five-year-old Ethan Gilman, who had autism, and took him off the bus. The rest of the children were forced to climb over their beloved bus driver's body in the aisle to leave. Jimmy took Ethan into a six-foot-by-eight-foot underground bunker he had built on his property. The bunker was filled with homemade bombs and had a PVC ventilation pipe. Once they were underground,

Jimmy called 911 and said that if people wanted to talk to him, they could come up to the PVC pipe and talk to him through that. Quickly, FBI hostage negotiators arrived on the scene to communicate with Jimmy and Ethan through the pipe exactly as he instructed. The negotiators were able to send little Ethan his medication and a coloring book in crayons through the pipe in the beginning of what became a seven-day hostage situation with the old man and the boy. The multi-day standoff ended when the hostage rescue team sought into the bunker with a hidden camera and got a view of Jimmy holding a gun.

The agents threw stun grenades into the bunker and then exchanged gunfire with Jimmy, killing him and thankfully saving Ethan Gilman. All of us experienced stress in our jobs, but the stress of a hostage negotiator is almost unfathomable. It's hard for me to imagine the anxiety and pressure that a hostage negotiator would feel knowing that his or her words,

if not delivered in precisely the right way, could end up with one or several people being killed. The largest hostage crisis in history to date was the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, which resulted in 66 American citizens being taken by Iranian militants at the American embassy in Tehran. 52 of those Americans ended up being held hostage for more than a year. Hostage situations fascinate me, so I knew I had to bring on a hostage negotiator. And I found the perfect person. Today's guest has been a part of the Tucson, Arizona Police Department since 1999. During that time, she's worn many hats from being a bike officer to patrol officer to lead police officer and even detective.

Currently, she's sergeant in the community outreach resources and engagement section and works on the substance use resource team. She also assists as a supervisor with the hostage negotiations unit and, get this, has 10 years of negotiator experience. This is Sergeant Erica Stropka's story on The Spillover. Sergeant Stropka, what made you want to be a hostage negotiator, first of all? Is that something that you always dreamed about? Or did it just sort of happen in your law enforcement career? Well, to become a hostage negotiator, you have to have worked at least three years as a patrol officer. So for me, I quickly realized that one of the things I love to do when I was in the

field was respond to really high, I guess, risk, lots of crisis calls where it required me to be patient enough to actually talk to this person and really delve into understanding what's causing this crisis. And I was fortunate enough in my first squad that I was assigned to our lead police officer at the time, his name is Mike Kasha. He was already a member of the negotiation team. And so we would respond on calls and, you know, me being a rookie officer, he'd come out and check and make sure I'm doing my job right. And he was wonderful because he was the one that said to me, you know, Erica, you really would be good on the negotiation team because you seem to have a knack with just being able to be patient through listening to when people are in crisis. And you don't

seem to get too, you know, riled by it or, you know, it doesn't seem to take you away from being able to, you know, preserve your officer safety and still do the job with a level of respect for the individual that you're talking to. And, And so that got me thinking. And I was like, hmm, hostage negotiation. I'd never consider that. But what's interesting is that I actually have my degree in communication studies. So, well, duh, that's perfect sense. Like, of course I should go into hostage negotiations. What was I, why wouldn't I have considered that in the first place, right? So that really started me off this quest of trying to get in with the negotiation team. And back then, and I hate to date myself because it makes me feel really old.

But, you know, this was, we're going back now 15 years ago. We are a negotiation team that we have trainings every month. And this used to be a thing that was open to any member of the police department. Like if you wanted to come to a negotiation training, you were allowed to come to our training because, you know, we knew that you would walk away with valuable skills that could help you in the performance of your job, whether you're in patrol. your investigations. So I started attending those even prior to becoming a part of the team. And so that really just solidified like, I need to do this. Plus the training we provide, it covers a really vast variety of different topics, you know, to include psychology and yes, of course, communication skills. But yeah, that's pretty much how I got into it. I mean, that's, you know, I had somebody

just recognized like you'd be good at this and then I connected the dots and I was like, yeah, this is kind of what I'm really into communication. So let's do it. So you mentioned some of the aspects that go into hostage negotiating like the psychology behind it and everything. So talk about the training that someone has to go through for hostage negotiation and what the basic rules of hostage negotiating are. Sure. So, you know, if you're going to be a member of a hostage negotiation team for a law enforcement agency. There's a couple different trainings out there, but what's recommended is you attend a 40-hour basic negotiation course. For us at TPD, Tucson Police Department, we actually have a great working relationship with the FBI. Now we're going on year four,

where they will actually come down to Tucson and we do a multi-agency 40-hour basic school. And that's the first step. So once you, for us, we go through a selection process. So you have to put in a memo of interest. You've got to go through an oral board. You go through a practical where they test you just like with no skills or training to see where you kind of fall on that. What are they doing that? So when I went through old time negotiator, been on the team for many years, Fred Cushman, really, this guy really great man. He just had been a cop for a gazillion years.

chain smoker. He had a raspy voice. Nothing ever riled him. It didn't matter what's going. And he could talk to anybody. It just said he connected with every one. He was the role player. And the scenario was, I walk into a room and on the table, he's got a pitcher and he's got an empty bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes. And basically, I have to figure out what's going on with this man. Why is he so upset? Why did I get called here as a negotiator? And so that was my practical. I had to like make a connection with them, build rapport. And that's something like I love to share with you and your listeners is that, you know, when you go through the negotiation school, the primary thing that we're learning about and the thing that every negotiator gets on day one is active

listening skills. In order to be able to make a connection with somebody, you have to have solid active listening skills. And any negotiators that might be listening to this podcast are going to know when I say more pies, which is the acronym for the eight active listening. skills, we really drill that in the school. And why we teach that is that active listening is actually is the beginning step of the stairway to behavioral change. And you need to have good active listening in order to demonstrate empathy, which then in turn actually builds rapport, which is that relationship, that connection you get with somebody where they feel like they trust. You know, like when you meet somebody for the first time, you're like,

God, I just feel like a great rapport, really like we just, there was something about this person. I just felt like connected to them. Was a negotiator, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to have that kind of interaction with somebody where they actually trust us. Because if they trust us, then we can actually have some influence and ultimately then that behavioral change. And so that's what we're trying to do in negotiations. And it takes good listening skills. I was one of those people.

I used to think, oh, well, it's because I'm a good talker. No, no, no, no, no, no. You have to be a good listener and you have to have patience. Like, that's a big part of being a good negotiator. The acronym that you brought up, more pies. I know. And I was like, God, why did I do that to myself? Because now I'm, like, stressed out.

I'm like, I'm not going to remember. So M is for minimal encouragers. Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. I see go on. You know, like if nonverbally, you're head nodding, I'm head nodding. Then it's O is open-ed to questions. Because when we ask a person open-end to,

questions, it allows them to vent and go in any direction they want to go. The R is for reflecting or mirroring, and that's just basically repeating back the last few words of what somebody says, like, you know, so are you having a good day? Yeah, I'm having a good day, a good day. You know, so it's like getting the person to continue to tell you a little bit more about what, what, you know, they just said. Then the E is going to be emotional labeling, and that's really training yourself to listen for the emotion underlying what somebody's saying. And I think you do it. I've listened to some of your other podcasts and you really listen to what the person say, but you're listening for deeper meaning, right?

You're trying to, like, identify the emotion underlying what the person's saying. Like, right now, it's like I sound probably a little excited, you know, underneath what I'm actually saying. It's not just about the words. It's about what's underlying the words. And when you emotional labeling somebody's, like, conversation, you are now connecting with them on a deeper level because they're like, oh, whoa, okay. So you weren't just hearing the words that were coming.

you're actually understanding what I'm saying. And so then we go to P, which is paraphrasing, repeating back everything what somebody just said in your own words. And it helps you to clarify that you've got the story straight. That's how we as negotiators also when we paraphrase, it allows us to make sure we got what's valuable to the person. So like, for instance, like if I paraphrase something back to somebody and I forgot something was really important to them, if I've got a little bit of rapport going on there, they're going to correct me or they're going to interject and say, yeah, but also this. Well, that and this is really important to me as a negotiator because that actually is something they want me to know about. Then we go into, where am I at her?

I did paraphrasing of it. I messages. I messages are like and if anybody in your listeners have ever like attending counseling or anything is basically I'm telling you how I feel. Yeah, I was going to say everything that you're describing to me sounds like you would be an A plus relationship therapist. Right. Yeah. I mean, you kind of are. But people are like in a serious, high, strong situation, right? Right. Right. Because most of the situations that negotiators are responding to are a crisis where this person's normal coping mechanisms, they're not working. You know, and it's due to some precipitating events, which typically have to do with loss. You know, loss of a relationship, maybe financial loss, maybe loss of self-esteem or, you know, just feeling disrespect. could be a job, could be their children.

You know, that's really oftentimes what we see is that we're responding to situations where a person suffered a lot of loss. So after I, I'm assuming, then it's E. E is going to be effective pauses. Now, effective pauses are sort of like the silence that you give somebody effective, meaning you're doing it on purpose for a reason. Maybe it's that I'm going to change gears. Like I've let this person really talk for a long time and now I need to tell them something

really important. Like, okay, I've been, you know, I understand, you know, we've been talking for a while now, but we're not going to go away. Like, let's start talking about when you come out what that looks like. You know, so I'm changing gears. I may take a good deep breath so the person knows, like, I have something important to say. And then what was the last one? Yes. S is going to be summary. So you're paraphrasing, but you're also putting emotional labeling into it. So you're you're summarizing what they just said to you, so you're using paraphrasing, but maybe you're saying, you know, it sounds like you're really frustrated because, you know, you lost your job and then you came home to find that your wife wants a divorce and she's threatening to keep the kids from you.

And you're feeling, it sounds like you're feeling really overwhelmed by all of this. And, you know, that's why you're considering killing yourself, you know. And so that's a really a strong summary, but that's something you're going to do after you've started to really kind of get in the flow of talking to somebody. And the more somebody talks to you and the more you demonstrate that you're really listening, then, you know, and they hear your sincerity and your voice, that's where you build that rapport. And it's really, it's the key to how you're able to move the negotiations to really helping this person to see that, like, they can come outside and they're going to be okay.

Like, nobody's going to jump on them and stuff. How often are hostage situations happening? I mean, is this a rare occurrence or is it actually more often? than people would think. Right. So the term hostage situation doesn't happen all that often. Actually, more times than not, we're responding to a non-hostage situation where a person's being held against their will, but they're more of a victim. There's somebody who this suspect or the person that's in crisis is contemplating hurting this individual. It's usually somebody they're in a relationship with, somebody that's known to them. And that's usually what we see more times

than not. The actual hostage taker, that doesn't happen very often. And when it does, the hostages are being used typically for some type of leverage, leverage some escape or money or something, you know, in a true like mind of the hostage taker, they're not contemplating necessarily killing all the hostages because they know that if they can do that, then they won't be able to fulfill whatever their goal was, which in like, let's say, a bank robbery, you know, the person wants to get out of there. They don't want to stay there. So they know if they kill some one of the hostages is a good chance that they're going to get killed. So I mean, that's the, that's the generalized, you know, terminology that we see it on all different spectrums, you know, nothing ever, no two instances are

the same. So you talked about in the beginning with learning how to become a negotiator. there was another officer that laid out the cigarettes and the picture and all that. And you basically went in blind and just had to figure out what his deal was. Right. So is that usually what happens? Like you just go blind and you have no idea what's going on. Or is there a sort of preparation that goes into learning about the offender. I don't know what the correct term is.

Yeah. So that's a really great question because sometimes we do go in and we have a little bit of the backstory because that's one of the things we're going to look at. Like we're going to ask the question like, who called 911? Was it the suspect? was it was it the victim or was it the neighbor who called 911 and that's where we start typically we figure out what was that initial information and then that gives us a little bit of an understanding what the story is but there are sometimes when we go to a call and we really don't know much of why we're how we got there or what the relationships are with the people involved why would there be sometimes

that you show up to the scene and don't know anything well I mean let's say for instance you have a neighbor that calls it in. And they're like, they hear screaming and yelling coming from the neighbor's house. And they're like, hey, there's a, there's a domestic dispute going on next door. I hear a woman screaming for help. She's saying, you know, leave me alone, drop the gun. We go to that. We don't know what we're going to. So we may run the, oftentimes, actually, I have to say, I know in my, my agency, our officers are awesome. Like, they're already running the address. They're running the phone number associated. They're trying to figure out who, who am I responding to, right? Because

it's an officer safety. We want to know what we're going to before we get there. Do you look at their social media? You know, as negotiators, we do. Absolutely. Like, by the time we get called as negotiators, we're doing a full social media. Have you ever had somebody in the middle of

negotiations with you while they're in the house or wherever they are posting? Yep. We just responded to something like that a couple weeks ago, actually. Yeah, we couldn't get him. This was the call that I'm going to talk about real quick with you was actually an individual, a man who he suffered some untreated mental health issues that he was self-medicating, using marijuana, drinking a lot, actually drinking a lot, not sleeping a lot.

And he owned firearms. And so he had gone outside in the middle of the night after drinking a bunch, started shooting out into the, you know, neighborhood. Neighbors called. This wasn't the first time something like this. that happened. We get there and negotiators start to try to make contact with him. And he starts sending us links to YouTube videos and he sent us some different cartoons and some memes. And then we found him on Facebook and we actually did most of the negotiating through Facebook Messenger.

And the whole time we were talking to him, he's posting things on Facebook. Like acting like things are normal or saying, hey guys, what up? I'm in the middle of a hostage. No, and he wasn't holding anybody against their will, actually. He more or less was suffering like a crisis breakdown. But he was making statements like he wanted to kill himself and there was no reason to go on. And under that situation, you know, we tried our best to really get him to come out, but he wasn't wanting to talk to us as much. So the Facebook messenger is a tricky one because you don't get the tone of voice, right? You can't really have that true connection. But it's not uncommon. When we finally got that guy to come out, he actually told us, because

we, this is something interesting. So on my team, we make it a point that after somebody comes out, we go up and we talk to the person. And we thank them for coming out. We introduce ourselves. We ask him like, hey, what did I say? Is there anything I said that I shouldn't have said? Is there anything that I said that really resonated with you? And we get feedback. You get a Yelp review. Yeah, we do right then. Right then. we get these reviews. So what kind of things do they say?

Well, this guy was interesting is he actually, he wanted to be really mad at us. And he couldn't. He even said, he goes, you guys are really nice. I wasn't expecting this. He goes, I actually feel bad that I put you guys all through this. Wow. And that's really, I'll be honest with you, Alex. Like, that's a big part.

Like, I've been doing the job for a long time. So, you know, that feedback you get after the fact is really what helps you to understand the importance of being respectful of really, really treating people like humans, even when people do some really, really horrible, horrible things. So tell us about the absolute best case scenario for a hostage situation that you've encountered and then the worst. Okay, all right.

So I'll start with the best one. No, I'll start with the worst. Let's start with the worst and end with the best, because you know, that's kind of better. A happy ending. Yeah. So the worst case scenario was actually the first time I was ever placed as a primary negotiator. So I was a brand new negotiator. Just came off the school.

And, you know, I was like so rare to go. And I have to tell you, like, I'm the kind of person where I always want to be the primary. I don't ever not want to be the primary. So what does that mean being the primary? So we have different assignments on the team. So we have a primary negotiator, a secondary negotiator. We have somebody who's recording what's happening during the negotiations. They're using like an actual digital recorder. but they're also taking notes of, you know, what's going on. And we have probably about 10 other, there's a combination about 10 other assignments on the negotiation team. For us, we run a pretty big team. We typically take about 12 negotiators for every time we get a call out. Tucson average is about 30, 35 callouts a year. That's not always somebody being held against their will. Sometimes it's

just a barricaded individual who maybe had committed some type of felony crime or maybe they're, they want to kill themselves and they've access to firearms and we can't just walk away from that, right? So anyways, the worst one I ever had, I was raring to go. I wanted, you know, I was excited to be the primary. And it was an individual who was suicidal. And he actually, he lived in an apartment complex and the call came out from his sister-in-law, his ex-sister-in-law, who was inside the apartment with him. And so here's a good example of like, you ask, like, well, is there her time you go to these calls and you don't know what's going on, you know? So we go, we go to this because She called to say my ex-brother-in-law is in the bathroom.

He's got a shotgun. He wants to kill himself. And just before you go on, describe what does the house look like? What kind of neighborhood is this? Yeah. So it's actually a decent neighborhood, a decent apartment complex on the east side to Tucson. Actually, I think it's a little bit of an older population that lives in this apartment complex. The apartment's on the second floor.

It's near the pool, sort of in the middle of the complex. this was you know came out on this call it was the middle of the night you know when we get on scene the first thing we we do is we make contact with whoever the supervisor is the negotiation supervisor and they start giving us a real quick briefing because typically we're behind the curve they need us to get in positions and start communicating with people and we don't always get all the information right off the bat we'll just get enough of like who's involved and why we got called there usually. And then as we're there, we give out briefings over the radio and then you get more information you fill in the gaps. So, you know, basically get there. It's, it's the middle of the

night and it's a full callout for SWAT and for hostage. So when it's a full call out, it means everybody's expected to be there. And the reason why it became a full call out is because we're in apartment complex where there's multiple, you know, people that are in close proximity of this event and this guy's armed with, we thought it was a shotgun, but was a long, firearm. We didn't know if it was a rifle, but pretty sure it was a shotgun. That's what the sister-in-law said. And so, you know, I get there and they go, okay, Stravka, you know, we're going to put you on primary. And I was like, yes, I'm going to do this. It just came off the school. You know, I'm like, I can do this. I believe in myself. And so I start trying to call this individual. And so we typically will, as soon as we get a phone number, we start calling.

And he didn't pick up. His sister-in-law picked up. And I didn't realize it at that. the time, but she was actually in the apartment with him. And this caused some confusion because we weren't sure was she being held against her will, or was she in there because she wanted to be in there? Well, it turned out she was in there because she believed she could talk her brother-in-law to put down the rifle and to come outside. How successful are regular civilians in those situations? Oh, that's a good question. You know, I think it's case by case, to be honest with you. And it depends on what the relationships like, right? So sometimes, you know, you could have a situation where a person draws you in on purpose because they want to, you know,

maybe they want you to see them kill themselves or something. But in this case, that wasn't, that didn't seem to be what was going on. She was more or less checking on him because he had made a, he left a voicemail that sound concerning to her. And so she, she basically was in, you know, went in, went over to check on him. And then he locked himself into the bathroom. And, you know, she knew he had a firearm was pretty sure. It was a shotgun or some type of a rifle. And so my first negotiation was me coaching her on what to say to him. So I was trying to teach her active listening over the phone of how to try to connect with him to help him to put the rifle down and to come outside and that everything was going to be okay. So what makes this such a bad, bad situation for me.

My worst one was that was my first. And then from there, what SWAT team decided they wanted to do because they want to know what kind of firearms people have. right? They have to be prepared for whatever it is the person's armed with. They decided they were going to drill a hole into the bathroom and put a fiber optic camera in there so that way they could see, you know, what kind of firearm this guy had, see what was going on. And so they asked me to move over up to a position in the front of the apartment. So away from what's our knock, which knock stands for a negotiation operation center, which in our case, we have a CP like a command post where, you know, we all kind of group there and we have our.

own separate room where the primary, the secondary, and the recorder sit. So you're in the apartment. Yeah. That's the CP, but we're at the apartment complex. So they asked me to move up to start to give announcements over the PA system to mask and cover up that sound of them drilling in through the bathroom, right? So anyway, so I do. I go up.

I move up. And so I get on the PA and I'm a brand new rookie negotiator. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to do exactly what they told me in the same. school to do, which is like continue the negotiations with using active listening and using the man's name and just really trying to demonstrate like, hey, I really care about you and I want you to hurt yourself. Well, I do all this and probably within three, four minutes of me being on the PA, he shoots and kills himself. And what is that like as you're on the phone and you hear that gunshot go off? Well, I wasn't on the phone. I was on the PA, but we were close enough to the actual

apartment that we could hear it. And, you know, And then hearing his sister just scream, you know, upset and, you know, her coming out and then us talking, you know, she was just a mess. You know, I felt so bad. I still did this day. And this is like probably about 15 years ago. I mean, I really did this day still feel bad for her because she wanted so bad just to help her brother-in-law or ex-brother-in-law. But one of the things we learned after that with the debriefing of it was, which was information I didn't know at the time, was that this guy had just gotten a job at the apartment complex as a maintenance man. as a maintenance worker there. So if you can imagine for a second, like, okay, so I said earlier, you know, sometimes people have loss of maybe self-esteem or, you know, maybe you feel like, you know, you're not doing well enough. Saving face and really saving a person's like credibility and, you know, their ego or whatnot, I just got on the PA system and I just now said, come on, Steve, I don't remember that was his name, just in making that up, but come on, Steve, you know, we all care about you. Please don't kill yourself. Just come out. We can talk to you.

You know, I just now shared all this information about this guy over the PA in front of all of the people that know him. All the people that know him. So that had a forever profound effect. And it has a lot to do with the way I teach now. When I teach a class on how to use the PA and what, and that's one of the first things we think about it is like, and we talk about it. It's like, think about who's hearing what you're saying. Another good example of this is, and this is actually a positive example of PA actually working to our benefit, probably about six years, seven years after that, we responded, this was a sad, this was a very, very sad call where this female had actually broken off a relationship with her boyfriend, and the boyfriend became extremely

obsessive over her, like stalking her and to the point where she, like, had a friend that, that she basically asked her friend if she could stay at her friend's boyfriend's apartment, which was like a duplex, like a single unit that's separated, but single story. If she could stay there temporarily just so he couldn't find her because she was so worried he was going to try to kill her. And the reason why she was really, really panicked about this individual is because he was using bath salts at the time. I don't know if you remember bath salts. Oh my gosh. That was a massive thing.

Yeah, yeah. So he was like addicted to using bath salts. He had untreated mental health illness that caused him to be even more paranoid, more like delusional. And then he was obsessing on her. Well, anyways, she's staying with this friend's boyfriend. And it's like a Saturday night and they're all like hanging out together. And somehow he finds out where she's at. and he actually breaks into this house and he has a rifle and he's got an axe.

And he, they end up getting into the bathroom. They lock themselves in the bathroom. They're frantically calling 911. Officers are able to get their quick enough to break out the window, get everybody to come out the bathroom window. But then at that point, they basically just contain this house. Okay, the officers did. And again, it's like the middle of the night.

We get the call out. It's like, okay, all the SWAT comes out, all the hostage guys come out. And I was one of the first people there. And at the time, we had an officer who was actually had some build of rapport with this individual and was really talking to them. And so while they were talking to them, you know, it's like we just coach, we just coach the officer. That's what we do. Like if it seems like you have good rapport, I'm not going to interject myself because I'm a negotiator. Because obviously, I know, like if you can influence this person, then that's all we want. And our ultimate goal is for nobody to have to use force. We don't want the person to kill themselves and we want them to kill somebody else. We sure as heck don't want to kill the person that we're talking to, right? So at any rate, on this call, long standoff. Okay, this guy's up and down, up and down on these basalts. He's marching around. We could see him in this little, like, house.

It's got a big picture window in the front. How many hours is he marching around? Oh, it was probably if I had to go back to my memory, because it was. started in the middle of the night. It was like 2 o'clock in the morning when we got the call. And when it was all sudden dead, it was like the sun was coming up. It was like 6.30 in the morning, 7 o'clock in the morning because it was like wintertime. And, you know, it was probably, it was a long time. And there was a lot of, it was one of those calls as a negotiator where you're having to try to help this person to have a semblance of reality. But they're so high on, you know, this illegal substance that's really compromising.

their ability to have any rational thought. So at any rate, the PA for us, we were on that PA for hours. Myself, we would switch back and forth, me and another negotiator, Leslie Gallagher, who's actually a supervisor on the team, too, is like myself. And we were just going back and forth, like, just saying to this guy, no real threat of like, oh, we're going to, like, undermine his credibility with neighbors because he doesn't live there. So we were being very much open about his name and everything. And when it was all said and dead, here's what happened with guy and just basically we were talking to him over the robot so we deployed a robot that went up to the front of the house and we had a negotiator on the robot talking to him and he just had an

episode and he just like it kind of snapped and so he leveled the rifle and he started shooting it looked like he was going to shoot out the window well we officers engaged him that way and unfortunately he ended up it was an officer involved shooting and so this individual died and was, you know, it's really tough on those kind of calls because you know that he's not in his right mind, you know. But the PA really worked to our advantage because when we were leaving the scene and we were, you know, basically walking back to the, to do the debrief at the command post, I had a neighbor call out to me and say, excuse me, excuse me, and I go over and I was like, yes, ma'am. And she's like, I just want to thank you so much because I heard what you were saying

over the loudspeaker, you know, and she says, you guys really tried. You really cared. You really cared about that man and I'm so sorry that you know it it ended this way and I'm like we are too you know but I mean so can they help us too right wow yeah that's incredible I was what I was thinking that when you said you know we're saying this out loud it's the middle of the night I'm thinking if okay if this is my apartment complex I'm getting out of my front porch with the popcorn and I mean that's like I don't know but I'm gonna want a front row seat to what's going on so I wondered if there were people that would be standing around or listening or if you tell people to go in we try it depends if you're within that threat of

of danger. We're going to either evacuate you or we're going to ask you to, you know, shelter in place and go to, you know, the back part of your house or whatnot. But typically we try not to let people just like stand out in the open, especially when there's firearms involved, you know, we don't anybody get hurt. So when you do have a fatality like that, is that the type of stuff that gives you nightmares or are you able to disassociate? You know what? I have to say I hold on to stuff for a long time. I really do. But what I do with it rather than letting it eat away at me, because I really do believe that, like, you know, my attitude is the only thing I can really, truly control. And so it's my job to keep myself, like, good attitude. I take all the situations I've been

through and I use them as a way to learn from it. So I'm always pushing, always pushing to be my best, always pushing to figure out how could I have done that differently? And whatever I come, whatever conclusion I come to, you can ask anybody on my team. I share it with everybody. I'm very brutally honest with myself, but also with my team. Like my team knows when I make a mistake or I feel like I could have done something better, I share that. And so I think that really has a lot to do with maintaining your wellness, you know, and not really letting it eat at you. But I, for me, you know, you asked about my best situation. And I have to say probably one of my best ones was, and I, And I'm sorry there's so many stories.

You probably don't have a lot of time for all these stories. No, give us all the good stories. Well, the one that really I've been talking about for a long time. And if anybody knows me, we'll say, oh, yeah, I've heard her do an incident debrief on this one. Because it was a textbook, like, not, you know, what the FBI would consider a non-hostage or a pseudo-hostage event where a subject was holding a woman against her will. Somebody he knew he had a relationship with her, friendship with her. and he was again very obsessive over this girl and to the point where he had professed his love for her and when she was like, I don't like you like that.

He tried to kill himself by slitting his own throat in front of her. Okay. And so was he successful or is he just, he's alive and bleeding? No, he's alive and bleeding. He goes to the hospital. And then two weeks later, after he gets out of the hospital, he calls her and tells her, my mom is really mad. He's younger. He's the younger guy. And he's like, my mom's really mad because we're going to have all these bills. And, you know, this is your fault.

You need to help us. And she was like a mentor kind of person to this guy. And so she's like, fine. Okay, what is what? What is it you need help with? And he's like, my mom needs us to fill out this paperwork for the hospital. Can you please come over to the house and explain a talk. her and help fill it out. And she, without giving away the, I'm kind of giving way the ending of the story, like a year after this, I had talked to her. I debriefed her a year after the incident because I wanted to know, like, how are you doing since all of this? And she told me, she's like, I can't believe I let myself go over to that house. But for some reason, I felt so bad for what he was going through. And knowing that he had tried to kill himself, I'm like, if I can help you

fill out some medical insurance paperwork. I'm going to do it. I'm going to like come over and help you. Well, what she didn't know is that was sort of like to lure her over there. And so as soon as she gets in the house, he gets really mad at his mom. His mom gets scared, runs out of the house, and then he basically holds her against her will. She tries to run out. He grabs her, throws her down on the ground, strangles her, tells her, you're not ever leaving here. They're going to have to take us out in body bags. And so that was the call to 911 came from the mom saying, you know, I don't know what's going on with my son, but he's trying to kill his girlfriend, he called. That's what the mom said. So that was one of my, that was a primary I was on. And that was about five years after that other call I told you

about. So it was like, okay, I, you know, I'm a person where it's like, I know I can do this. I just need another chance to try to keep doing this, right? So I was one of the first people on scene. And so I had the initial conversation with him. And he was, he was screaming, you know, you're going to have to kill us. We're not, I'm not letting her go. So he is angry. Angry. Seeing red.

And so how do you talk someone down? What are you saying to him? Right. So I'm like, I said, I understand. You're upset. You're angry. You want us to all leave. Because he kept saying, I want you guys to all leave.

If you don't leave, I'm going to kill her. And I said, I understand you want us to all leave. But I want to know more. What happened? How did, you know, how do we? we get here. So it's like it's really a matter of you as a negotiator, just maintaining your own sense of calmness and recognizing that this person's just in a lot of crisis. And in that particular call, we didn't know, I didn't know the relationships of the people involved. I didn't know very

much about this gentleman. I didn't know that he had like diagnosed mental health issues where they'd put him on a cocktail of different medications that weren't really working. And so anyways, long story short on this one. So I talked to him for about three hours and during the course of that, that was probably the hardest one negotiation I've ever been on because when he had her and was holding her against her will, he would allow her to get on the phone with me. And so I would talk to her, but you could tell she was just petrified, just scared, shaky voice, trembling voice. And, you know, I wouldn't ask too much about him. I kept or too much about her. her. I really kept it all about, you know, are you okay? Is he okay? Do you think he can come out? Do you

think you can come out? Because I knew if I asked too much or if I asked two directed questions that put her in a compromising situation, he could take it out on her. He can hurt her. He can't hurt me, right? So to be really careful with that, so that was really a stressful situation for me at the time. Yeah. I like cannot imagine that type. Like everybody has stress in their job. And I talked about this earlier, too, in the beginning of the podcast, everybody is stressed, but the stress of knowing I have multiple lives in my hands, how do you cope with that? Right. Well, it's going back to training, right? So if you're really, do you take your training seriously and you just fall back on your training, I know I need to just connect with this man.

I need him to know that I'm on his side. It's negotiator. That's what you're doing. You're advocating for this person. So everything you're doing, you're taking it to the commanders. And you're like, hey, so for this guy, he, we moved the SWAT team moved up their ballistic armored truck up in front of the residence. And he freaked out.

He was like, oh, that truck. I want that truck out of here. And he's like, basically was threatening. Like, I'm going to kill her. And then at one point, he breaks out the front window and he puts a rifle out. And you could see the rifle, the barrel of the rifle, but you couldn't see him and you couldn't see the backdrop. So on that particular call, they were given the authorization to kill this guy if they had to,

especially since he was pointing us, and especially since he was telling me, I'm going to kill the next SWAT officer I see, or he didn't call him officer, but the SWAT person I see. How do you see? I mean, who is it? The snipers or whatever? Do they just have a scope they can see deep into these apartments and watch their every move? Or how does that work? Well, it depends.

So in this particular case, this guy had this kind of a note. opaque. It was a curtain that was like basically he was behind this curtain. You could kind of see through it. So I guess it wasn't opaque. It was more like a sheer curtain. But you couldn't make out exactly what was behind it. Since we knew he was holding somebody against their will, you know, if you're going to take a shot, you need to know what your target is. Right. So if you can't see what you do. Then you can't shoot this guy, right? So, so basically he was describing, you know, the officers that were pulling up and he was saying he was going to kill them if they didn't move. So I'm like, give me, give me just a couple of minutes. Let me talk to my commander. Let me talk to my boss. Let me tell him what you want us to do. And literally it was that act of saying to the commander like, hey, he wants us to move the truck. Can you move the truck at all? And they said, okay, we can move it back five feet. That's all we can do. And I go back and I say, hey, okay, they will move it back five feet, but that's as far as they can move it back because they want to protect the neighbors across the street. But we know you're serious because that was really important to him. So, you know, a good. negotiator is going to try to go after the fact and review all of the stuff that you've done. And in this case, when he was interviewed by the detectives, you know, he even said, he's like, because they moved the truck, it made me feel like they were listening to me. Wow. So that was like, cool, five feet, may not seem like a lot, but it was enough to demonstrate like we are listening to you and we are going to try to work with you, right? This isn't just me telling you what to do because in a lot of

these situations, people want to feel like they're in control. So you have to, you've got to allow, because they really are. Like, this gentleman, when he was in that house and he had that girl, he was in control. He was in control. He could decide if he was going to kill her, kill himself, or kill one of us. And really, what is, what do I lose out of it? Nothing. I just all I, I, as far as, like, it doesn't hurt my ego if I let this guy know, like, hey, I'm really listening to you. I'm going to really try to help you here. Well, he ended up, long story short. I'm sorry, like, maybe we need to do this in multiple episodes.

I don't know. But long story short, short, she saved her own life. She ended up convincing he wanted to get an order of protection against the husband. She was married. And this was how, like, kind of delusional he was about this relationship. He felt like she was with him. Yeah. And so he was going to try to get an order of protection.

And so she's like, I need to get my driver's license. so they can see, you know, my driver's license. And she came up with that idea. And I heard her say it in the background. So I played off of it. And I was just like, you know, she's right. We really do need to get her driver's license. And this, one of the rules, you asked me about negotiation, one of the rules that we don't do is we never try to lie to people.

And that was one of those one times where I was like, ooh, gosh, you know. Why never try to lie? Like, why is it even important to not lie to people like this? Good question. It's because we want to build trust. So, you know, like for instance, I've been on a negotiation where a guy said to me, his only demand was he wanted to talk to his grandfather. If I was, no problem, I would get your granddad on the, and I try to lie to him and have somebody who wasn't, you know, or in this case, he was trying to get us to get his grandfather in the line. And he kept giving us information.

We'll come to find out his grandfather was dead. Okay. So see now, then what do you do? Yeah. So if I would have gone along with like, oh, no problem. I got a negotiator on the line with your granddad right now. We're trying to get him to talk to you. He would know I was lying.

and it would undermine and it would destroy any of that rapport that I have built. So we never try to lie. Plus, we also know that oftentimes people we talk to are going to have law enforcement contact again. So I'm actually setting it up for the next law enforcement officer to have a good interaction with this person because this interaction they're having with me, the negotiator, I'm not lying to you. I'm treating with respect.

I'm listening to you for a deeper meaning. I'm trying to really connect with you. I'm validating you. and I'm really trying to minimize any of your fears so I can help you to see that like it's going to be okay. So the next time it's not he or she will hopefully not have an issue. But going back to that other call, that call was a really tough one. But she ended up coming outside and we ended up, you know, I got him to come out. But what I didn't know at the time and it really haunted me for a while was that when she was on the phone with me,

he was actually stabbing the couch next to her head as a threat. Yes. Yeah. And so, like, yeah, it was, it was tough. I mean, that poor woman I felt bad for her, but talk about success stories for, like, individuals who have been through traumatic experiences. I mean, she had a few months of not, like, being depressed and feeling like, oh, my God, you know, this, how did this happen?

And just, and then she finally, she said to me, she's like, I finally had this, like, this feeling of like, oh, my God, I had all those people that day fighting for my life. So she went back to school. She picked up, like started majoring in psychology because she really wanted to have a deeper understanding for why somebody would do something like that. That's so cool. I know. Yeah. So have you ever had a hostage situation that involved a child? Yes. I have been on a couple different instances where there have been children involved. Luckily, all those incidents, they've ended with the children being released and allowed to come outside.

Well, when you talked about establishing trust, I mean, what if these demands? are like crazy, like I want a million dollars and they're asking for ransom or things like that. We're going to buy for time. We're going to really, you know, get to the details of, you know, how much money you want, exactly how much money you want. And then it's basically a matter of just trying to help the person see. Do be honest with you, sometimes there are situations and I haven't been on any of these negotiations, but there are situations where you may, the commanders, the instant command may say, okay, well, we'll give them some. some money. But then if they come outside, then there's usually a plan in place to take that person

into custody. Right. I was going to say, like, these people that want this money and then you give them the money, I mean, are they really that dumb to think like, oh, now I'm going to get a life to like spend this money? Well, I mean, you know, if they're in crisis, then anything's possible, you know. But, you know, most of what I've, you know, shared with you today are some of the local, you know, negotiations. I'm sure, you know, when you talk to some of the FBI negotiators who are dealing with kidnapping cases or, you know, ransom type situations. Like, that's a real deal. Like, that, you know, there's something to be said about that. Is there a pattern to the types of people that find themselves in these scenarios? Is there a certain type of person that tends to get in these

predicaments? You know, we really look at what's the crisis. What, you know, what were the precipitating events that led up to this person being in this situation? I will say that most of the negotiations I've responded to have a in it's the majority of been males um you know it's usually men uh i cannot recall a time i've ever been on a negotiation with a woman um but that's i would i would say just for my own experience that's typically what we see but it really has to do with what was the situation leading up to this um and you know that's where we start to kind of unravel that so we can gain some understanding because we really want to know what's the motivation behind this. You know, if you understand. So, you know, like, so what's really kind of interesting? So

when we get new negotiators on, the first thing that they want to do is they want to do the who, what, when, where, you know, type thing. We're all about the why. Like, I want to know why. I want to know what the relationships are with this person. I want to know have they ever done this before. If so, how did they get through the crisis? I want to talk to that person. Who talked to this person? Who did you? Who talked to you and helped you not kill yourself? Are you able to ask those questions in the moment or you have to wait until the case is over? We have Intel. So what we do is we have people who are assigned to Intel and they're digging up all of that nitty-gritty stuff. As the negotiator, the primary, I'm not going to probably know that right off the bat. It's going to be the

people outside of the knock that are going to be getting all that information. They're going to be like, hey, you know what? His dad was the one last time that was able to talk about of, you know, killing himself. Now, if I'm a female negotiator, which I've been on that call before, that's another call that haunts me a little bit because, well, not just a little bit. It actually is something that I think about oftentimes. You know, is, and that call was with a person who he was wanted by the U.S. Marshals for a robbery that happened in Las Vegas, and they tracked him here to Tucson. And when the marshals went to contact him and it was in a condo, I don't know, we see a pattern here. It's like all these apartments. But anyways, when they contacted him, he pulled out a gun and said, you know,

you know, get away, I'm going to kill myself. And so they backed out and they called negotiators. I negotiated with that guy for like three and a half hours. And after the fact, we found out that he had a history of being suicidal. And it was his dad that always talked him out of it. Well, he actually ended up killing himself. Now, I was on the phone with him when he did so. He actually thanked me. And he was, you know, that's a hard thing to know. Like, you're the last person that somebody spoke to on this earth. You know, I think that's the thing that probably is a negotiator. You kind of have to like make peace with. know that you can't save everyone and it's not my responsibility if somebody ends up taking their own life. But, you know, that guy like forever haunted me. And we do to this day when we're

doing an assessment of like, who do we put as primary, we ask some of those questions. If we have answers to it, like, hey, this guy really does jive better with men than he does women, then we might put a man on instead of a woman. Because I have a nurturing style in the way that I negotiate. It doesn't work for everybody. Like not everybody who wants their mom trying to negotiate with him. Sometimes that's a real big turnoff. You know. Do you ever just close your eyes and sometimes you hear those shots that you've heard on the phone? You know, for me, I have not had to be on the phone when somebody shot and killed themselves, but I've been on plenty of calls where there's been shooting. And yeah, if I close my eyes and hear it, I have to say, I think it's what makes officers like a special kind of person because, you know, I don't think I'm alone on this one. You know, God granted us this. courage to be able to run towards the gunshots and not away from them for a reason. And I feel

very blessed that, you know, like, I do have a real good relationship with God. And I, all the instances that I've been on that haven't ended the way that I hope they would have, I really give it back to God. And I just ask him to just bless that family and bless that soul and to, you know, heal our team and heal all the people that, you know, have been affected by it. And I'll be honest, like, that's my coping mechanism. That's what helps get me. through all those situations that don't end the way I wish they would have or hope they would have. I love that.

I couldn't imagine doing your job and not having faith like that because I just feel like as mortal human beings, we wouldn't be able to handle all of that on our own. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm a huge fan of crime shows. You know this if you've been listening to this. Yes, I do. So I loved Mine Hunter.

I don't know if you ever watched that one. Oh, yeah. We did. Yeah. Well, the first, the show opens with a hostage negotiation scene. And so I don't know if you've seen that particular show or not, but I was wondering, what do you feel like Hollywood gets right when they're portraying hostage negotiations and what do they get wrong? Oh, gosh, that's such a good question. And can I just share with you?

I'm the worst when it comes to recalling movies. Most cops, they know lines for movies. I am the worst. I watched all of mine hunters and I'm like, you just said that. I'm like, I can't remember that. You know, I don't know, maybe the sensationalism of it all. Like, you know, the thing about negotiations is it really is an art. It's not a science. There's a lot of, there's, there's a lot to what we do that you really can't explain. And it's dependent on the person you're talking to, you know. And I guess if anything, it's like, you can't wrap this stuff up in, you know, 15, 20 minutes. You know, most negotiations last about four hours and they go up and down and up and down. So I guess, guess if anything, it's like, I guess that wouldn't make for good TV, you know, because there's

some downtime in negotiations. Just a good podcast, though. Yeah, a really good podcast. Okay, so you also do a lot of work fighting the war on drugs. Yeah. What sort of work do you do with the community outreach resources and engagement section and the substance use resource team? Yeah.

Thank you for asking about that because I'm very passionate about the work we're doing into some place. We actually, we were recognized. by Arizona Haida for our prevention efforts in substance misuse. And really what's really cool about what we're doing is that officers forever have responded to overdoses, you know, in the community. You know, when somebody overdoses, they obviously call 911 and you will get a paramedic, or, you know, fire department or police officers that show up. And sometimes officers are the first ones there. And since 2017, TPD's been, you know, we're all outfitted with Narcan, which

which is the opioid overdose reversal drug. And what's grown in our department is back in 2018, Assistant Chief Hall, he implemented a new policy that allows officers the ability to, rather than take somebody to jail for a usable amount of, like, methamphetamine, cocaine, opioids, which is what we're seeing mostly now, right? Yeah, that's what I was curious about.

It's so bad. The blue 30s, M30s is, you know, oftentimes what they're called or blues. You know, officers can take a person to treatment instead of booking them into jail. So that's starting in 2018. And so my squad, what we do is we go out into the community, we do outreach. We respond to non-fatal opioid overdose cases. So somebody, if there's a case report about it and we have the information, we will go and make contact that person. And what makes us really unique is that we actually give naloxone, which is the actual drug, Opio reversal drug to the person, to their family, roommates, friends, whoever.

We give a tutorial. We're like, here's what you do in the event. We explain the Good Samaritan Law in Arizona. So if somebody suffers an overdose and you call 911, they're not going to get arrested for the paraphernalia. Oh, that's interesting. So how many states have that or is it only in Arizona thing? I don't know. I should have been better prepared.

Oh, that's okay. I mean, I just thought of that question. Is you saying it? No, I don't know all the states that have the Good Samaritan law, but Arizona is one of them. So, you know, and the reason for that is we want people to call for help, right? We don't want them to say, oh, no, I'm not going to call. And then this person dies. Right.

So, you know, we get the word out about the Good Samaritan Law. And we really are going and we're connecting. We have peer support specialists that co-respond. So I have people with lived experience that work in my squad. They actually 24, well, not 24-7, we don't work 24-7 in my squad, but four days a week, 10 hours a shift. I have peers that actually co-respond with my office. and, you know, when we're talking to people in the community that have a substance use disorder, we're actually, if they don't want to, like, they're like, oh, you're a cop, you don't know.

Well, talk to Brendan, talk to Paul, talk to Eddie. They have lived experience. They can be like, yeah, you know, bro, I was in, you know, prison for this. Like, you know, and now look at me. I can tell you there's hope. And so we use motivational interviewing. We're trainers on trauma-informed care. And we're really trying to meet the underlying causes.

of why people use and not just look at this as like a moral issue or a moral failing or, you know, oh, you're a bad guy because you use. We know this is a disease and the more we educate ourselves and our officers or we're helping to destigmatize what, you know, why people misuse substance. And it's really been a real, it's been a game changer for us in Tucson. What do you think is the biggest misconception that people have about drug addicts? Well, it's just that they're bad people, you know. I mean, when you talk to somebody who has has developed a substance use disorder or has the disease or an addiction, you know, I always did. I'll be honest, since I started law enforcement, I've always asked people like, tell me about

when you're a kid, what did you see yourself growing up to be? When you ask people that question, they're just like me. They're like you, you know, like, oh, I wanted to be. I can't tell you how many times I've had something in the back of my cruiser who's like, oh, yeah, I wanted to be a cop or I wanted to be a firefighter. What happened? Oh, well, you know, my this and that and the other and the other and the, then I started using drugs or whatever. Oftentimes that's what happens is people get, you know, this drug changes the chemistry of their brains. And so it is opioids in, at least in this part of like the Southwest, because that's where we are. Is that the biggest drug problem? Yeah, right now we're seeing a ton of fentanyl, which is a synthetic opioid. It's coming up through Mexico.

DEA, actually, they did a study in all the pills that they've been seizing in Arizona and they found 42% of the pills that they're seizing have a lethal amount of fentanyl in them. Wow. And that is just scary. That is so scary. And it explains why we have so many people who are dying from this horrible, dangerous drug. And you can't, these are fake pills. They look like real pills.

They're not real. But they look real. And they're being mass produced. There's no signs behind how much fentanyl they're putting in each of the pills. I mean, if you looked at two oxycodons together, one laced with fentanyl, the other one's an actual prescription pill, you're not going to be able to know the difference. And if you can't tell the difference, your kids can't tell the difference, your friends can't tell the difference. So, you know, a big thing for us is really getting the word out. Like, it's really important to not just accept any pills from anybody who isn't your doctor or a pharmacy.

And, you know, it's really scary. But that's really what we're seeing is the fentanyl. Let's talk about being a police officer in the current culture and climate. How have things changed for police officers on a day-to-day basis recently? You know, I think that it's really hard with social media. Some of the messaging, it seems like, oh, people are really, you know, they hate us. But I'll be honest, like in Tucson, I have so many people that come up to me and thank me for what I do. I've had my lunch bought for me so many more times now than ever.

Oh, that's good. It's really sweet. People are wonderful. I got to be honest, like I try my best not to really listen too much to, you know, the negativity about it because it does, it's hurt us. Like, you know, you've got to look at our staffing numbers are down. It makes me wonder, just Erica, you know, like I asked myself, like, how many officers are we not getting to sign up because they, maybe they feel like this job is like, you know, people hate you. But I'll be on. honest, like I have so many people that come up and thank me for what I do. It's really, it really, um, I guess it encourages me, you know, that, you know, we're still valued and people know that, like, you have to have somebody you can call for help, right, when there's an emergency. So then this notion of defunding the police has to be asinine to you? Uh, you know, I, I don't know. I think it's, I don't know how you could defund us, like you need us. Like, we're a necessary part of, every community is to have some public safety. So, um, but I'll be honest, like, I'm probably not the best person to ask. So that's okay. I really try not to, I'm, I'm really bad with social media in the

sense of like I don't really participate too much because, um, I really like to keep myself focused on what I can control, which is, you know, just doing the best I can and really remembering that, you know, people, they need us to help them when they're in crisis. And, um, I'm really grateful. I, I have a really good team that I'm surrounded by that really make me feel like my job is important, you know, so. I love that. I have a really random weird question because you are in Tucson. And it's okay if you don't know anything about it. But my fans and I, the cute servatives, I call them, we are obsessed with the story of the Lisa Frank factory. Just the whole thing, like it being abandoned and how it was like a nightmare to work there. Have you ever heard anything about that situation?

at all, and it's okay if no, but I just have to ask. Okay, so I don't know anything about that, but I can say I did work a couple of ships off-duty at her house. No way. Yeah. Tell us, please, what you can. You don't understand. We did a whole, like, docu-series on this.

We just think the story is fascinating because it sounds like nut jobbery in that establishment. Yeah, I don't know anything. All I do know is I love the Lisa Frank folders and all the, like, little stuff when I was younger. It was really so cute. And I got to be honest, like, okay, so I have a good friend who that was her every week. She had an off-duty job. You know, we can pick up jobs off-duty where we, you know, people hire us to basically be security people. And whenever she can fill her shift, she'd call me and say, hey, you want to work at Lisa Frank House. I'm like, yeah, I want to work there. Why do you think she needed police officers? I'm guessing she had threats. I mean, or who knows,

maybe she just felt more safe, you know, she didn't leave, she did not live in a gated community. So, I mean, maybe she felt like she was, you know, susceptible to being, you know, victimized. But it was a midnight shift. Like, when I got there, I think only one time did I ever see her and she just waved to me. But I would have to every hour walk her property. And I'd look in her guest. She had a guest house with like. Was it colorful?

No. But it was like she had a work. workout equipment and then she had this one room with like like very organized. I just remember. She's like, oh, look at all this stuff. She's got everything is organized, you know. This is the conservatee, as I like to say. Anyway, I just had to ask that what you're here. I'm sorry. I don't, you should have told me ahead of time. I could have done some research or something. Oh, this is good. This is the juicy scoop. This is the first hand scoop. I love it. Officer Stravka, thank you so much for coming on the spillover. And thank you for everything that you do,

protecting our community. And of course, I'm a fellow Arizona now. So thank you for everything you're doing for Arizona. Thank you, Alex. This has been a lot of fun. And I really appreciate what you're doing to try to highlight our work. Thank you. Good luck. Erica's just a straight up cool chick. And what are the odds that she did security for Lisa Frank? That is so funny. If you watch my daily show Poplittics on Instagram, we did this mini 15-minute documentary about the Rainbow Gulag, aka the Lisa Frank Factory. If you might, months ago and how the Lisa Frank company was actually a nightmare to work for. Fun fact. So I just had to ask Erica about that since the old abandoned Lisa Frank factory is in Tucson, Arizona, where she

lives. So that's the backstory on that question. But you can find more from Erica's department by subscribing to their YouTube channel, Tucson PDSURT. Subscribe to the spillover on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Leave your weekly five-star review. Keep doing those every single week when you listen. And of course, if this is your first time listening, please leave one then. And make sure you're telling your friends about this show. Just like my show Poplitics, it is so important to me to do things a little bit differently than everyone else in the conservative movement and cover different topics. I don't like talking about the same thing that everyone else is talking about. So that's what I love about this show is I get to really storytell and not even me, but I'm, you know, allowing other people

to story tell. And that's what we need more of is conversations, hearing about different lives, different experiences, different things that people have gone through. Nobody's talking. anymore. So that's what I really wanted. And since the show is free, subscribing and leaving reviews is the number one way that you can help support us and show that you are enjoying the show and that you want to hear more. I'll be back with another episode of The Spillover next Thursday night at 9 p.m. Pacific, midnight Eastern. Love you, mean it. Bye.