It Could Happen Here - The Cult of Policing, Part 2

Episode Date: December 28, 2021

We continue our discussion with a former law enforcement officer on the cult-like power structures within policing. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast oh where it's us the podcast that we are it could happen here behind the podcast bad stuff it could happen here yeah it is it could happen here okay yep well part two of why police are a cult thanks garrison thanks for doing the job that is one of our jobs certainly uh but apparently not mine alexander williams back again um alexander

how are you how are you feeling doing good is your life in a radically different place now than it was when we ended part one? Oh, yeah. Like, no. Well, that's for the best, because anything that would change in about the 30 seconds between these episodes probably would not have been a positive change. Oh, man, you're letting the magic out. People are going to know. Yeah, they should know already.

So the next thing you've got here in terms of cult characteristics that you saw inside the police is the group has a polarized us versus them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society. Yeah. And I think this is the one that like, yeah yeah we've all we all kind of saw that one last year are you sure about that one i'm not convinced yeah it was a eureka moment right yeah um i do think it's probably worth a little bit of exploration about like what it means emotionally to be told like i i want to defund or even abolish the police as a police officer like that's that's a um yeah yeah um i i remember the first time that i heard the concept of it uh when i was a cop i think i was about five years away from getting out um and it blew

my mind it was it was like, like, you don't know, we don't have enough funding, like how in the world, but we can't do our job. Because in, you know, in our, in my head, we're, we're the thing holding society up. If we're not here, everything falls apart and crumbles. So the idea of being told, like, we need to defund the police for cops, it's, it's an attack on your values and your role in the world. It's also an attack on, like, your personal life, because... Because your life is police as well, right? And it's like, you've been talking a lot about how the job becomes such a central part of your identity that it's not even just attacking, like paycheck but it's attacking like your essence now as a person it is it's like if you've ever had a debate with uh with an extremely like evangelical religious person it's the same as trying to tell a cop like hey you don't actually hold society up you're not exactly as important as

you think you are um and like i said like we't get, we don't get paid very much. Health insurance usually isn't that good. Our, our unions that we told as being the best are usually pretty corrupt. And they don't really go to bat for us and get us the good health insurance and get us the good pay. They get us just enough. And so when a cop hears like, Hey, we defund the police. It's like, from our perspective, we think what we're hearing is we don't appreciate you we already think you get paid too much we we think of it less about like the structure of law enforcement and we think it personally of like oh you don't think my kids should have dinner yeah and that's uh i mean yeah of course that has like of course it ends the way that we saw it end you know um or at least it continues

the way we saw it continue last year right and it's i think it could help like people like us are on one side of the line and you know the other people are on the other side of the line still and i think it could help people on our side of the of the of the barricades to understand just how willing these guys are to do things and things that they wouldn't normally do things that you would never consider doing on your own, but for the job. And as an order, they'll do it because again, it's part of their identity and it's, it's there, you know, you're attacking me. You're also attacking my family. You're, you're, it's goes back to that Grossman thing of being told a lot of,

no matter what you do, you go home tonight. So no matter what I do on my shift, I go home tonight. It's better to be judged by 12 than carried by six. Yeah. That one gets nailed into your brain. I'm thinking of the police, the riot line and yeah you can see them being like middle-aged conservative dudes they're like look at all these like fucking like gay queer teenagers throwing stuff at me right it's like this specific thing you're like oh you you like

i'm getting attacked by like the lowest of the low of society i'm being attacked by like did like degenerates and like this weird kind of scum i'm actually what society should be the people that are fighting against me are like this weird anti-social thing right that's that's how it is from their perspective um when almost in actuality i i've been i've been slowly kind of appropriating that type of language for when i see a cop do something horrible i'm like wow look look at that anti-social, violent freak. Because you can look at that language because it flips the way

we usually view aesthetics. Because when you see someone do something horribly violent, but they're dressed in a uniform, it has the appearance of being proper. But no, that actually still is anti-social and extremely violent. So I think I've been playing around with like flipping that language but you can definitely

see it on the cops faces when a whole bunch of like young queers fuck people are throwing water bottles at them oh yeah you can't and and the thing to the thing to remember about most cops is their their their ego is paper thin their skin they cannot take a joke they cannot take an insult the the number of cops that i would see and i would argue that i saw some of the worst worst behavior than on the streets because because inside the jail you're you know you're in your own little world you're inside these walls the public can't see you unless you're on camera and pre-body cameras you know where all the cameras are. And I, the amount of guys that like an inmate would call them like the F slur or any

other slur and the cop would just snap, just lose their mind and me and another couple other guys being the only kind of cops that would get in the guy's way and be like, no. And it was never, we couldn't say, no, that's wrong do that it was always no it's not worth it or no you're gonna get in trouble or no you know if you do that he wins man because if we said don't do that it's wrong we may have we may have stopped that bad thing from happening but we have now marked ourselves as being you you know, potential apostates against the cause. So, yeah, that's, yeah, calling them names works. Sixteen Stones do break cops' bones. yes it does work it's not hard yeah uh obviously the next one you've got is the leader the leader is not accountable to any authorities um which the police regulate and investigate themselves

that's one of the most basic ones but it does it kind it does lead to this like it is interesting to think about the way the church of scientology handles misbehavior from its agents and the way that like a police department does, because there's not a ton of daylight betwixt the two. There's not. Listening to the Elrond episodes, anyone who hasn't listened to them, go back and listen to them. They're fantastic. One of my favorites. Yeah, listening to that and the way that their little internalized security system was structured was very, very analog to exactly what happens in law enforcement with their so-called policing themselves BS. Because, God, they don't. They'll do every little thing to manipulate the situation to have the cop come out on top and not be in trouble because who's going to hold them responsible that my own guy at my own department's interviewing me i've known we've known each other since we were kids or i've known his dad or his dad's known me

or his or he's you know related or whatever it never works when the you know the the watchmen are watching themselves it It doesn't work. I don't know how we don't – well, I do know how. But I really wish there was – if we do have to still have law enforcement, civilian oversight with actual power, actual authority to do things. Yeah, that's the thing is that – Everywhere. And a lot of the times where that's been tried to put into a legislator, it doesn't – it's always like neutered. It's always like – and I've seen versions of it pop up in Portland, and it just never does anything. Yeah, and that's – I mean obviously the whole – the question of is to what extent can increasing civilian oversight solve problems?

To what extent is it like papering over them? Those are all things worth discussing. I think I want to kind of keep us focused on the mindset that that inculcates. Because that's the thing that I don't think people get. In part because most people who are part of these abolitionist movements, most people who are on the sides that we are on this um either probably don't know a police officer very well and certainly almost most of them have not been police officers and i'm kind of wondering what are you actually scared of doing as a police officer like what what what are you actually scared of in terms of like the, the, the, the

blowback, the fault, like what, what is it you actually get worried about if it's not pissing off everyone else in the city who isn't a cop, you know? So yeah, what it comes down to is, uh, you know, that the, the church of law, the church of criminal justice and what they're scared of is, so if I get a dirty cop who's not blatantly doing something bad, like he hit a guy too hard or something, it's something that hasn't hit the news yet. But I have to morally, like ethically on paper, I'm required to have an IA division investigate these people. required to have an IA division investigate these people. The reason that in my head, when I was there and being interviewed for these things, it's because you have to hold up the infallibility of the law. It doesn't matter what really happened. All that matters is what's in black and white on paper in our files. If we ever get audited by a federal body and we can say look a bad thing

happened yes we investigated it here's what here were the results and it's all about holding up the infallibility of the law because if it really gets out and cops really get in trouble for stuff like some of the stuff that's been happening where cops are actually being convicted finally for doing terrible things, it erodes the blind faith that the masses have in law enforcement. Because I've heard people here in Utah, which is a very conservative place, look at some of those shootings that have happened where the cops have actually been found guilty. And they've actually been like, oh, wow, I never once thought a cop would do this. And it doesn't sound like much, but in their head, that's that's a seed that's setting in their consciousness. And that's that's the whole point of the blue wall of silence and keeping everything in house is.

If everybody realizes that we're just a little weird man behind a curtain, you know, the Wizard of Oz doesn't work anymore. We have to maintain this false image that we are infallible and we know we know exactly what we're doing and we are taking care of you you have to believe that so they'll do anything to maintain the lie wow yeah that makes sense it's bleak but it makes Yeah, it is. It felt bleak being in there. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This ties into kind of the role of like lying, right? And the kind of occult thing you're tying this into is that like cults will often talk about how the the the things the cult is doing are so important that you can do

terrible things to achieve them right you see this in the church of scientology their dirty tricks programs synon had its version of this um and you you've written here we are taught to lie to get what we need it's only true if it's on tape or written down. As long as it looks good, it is good. And I mean, it made me think, among other things, of a guy I used to know who became a local prosecutor and eventually quit because he kept being assured by police officers that like something that they had put in like the charging document was true and then being unable to prove it in court um and it it pissed him off after a period of time um and i'm interested like in the uh i'm sure like

obviously some fraction of people doing it are just like just literally don't give a shit. But how does someone who actually does have a moral compass and believe in the law? How does someone who really believes justify lying to screw somebody over? So as the guy who was there who had morals, which is why I'm not there anymore, I couldn't. And I actually got in trouble on a couple of instances of everybody was going one way on a story and I was going the opposite direction. And without using blatant terms, they use all the little, you know, legal, legal fuckery terms to not say what they're trying to say, but implying and getting it across to you of like, you need to get on the same page. You need to toe the line. You need to, you need to get in here. And, uh, I could,

I could never do it. I just, I, I, I don't know. It's just my moral fiber won't let me do that kind of thing. Um, I once was told by a, a, a Lieutenant that I had, my moral fiber won't let me do that kind of thing. I once was told by a lieutenant that I had, my moral fiber was too high. Like he literally told me, he goes, you can't expect everyone else to live up to your moral standards. And I'm like, dude, we're, we're supposed to be like a little bit above the typical moral standard. We're supposed to be the example of, of how, you know, our civilians, our citizens are supposed to act the example of of how you know our civilians our citizens are supposed to act uh but it wasn't the truth yeah i mean my first i think kind of radicalizing thing very early on was just like the fake drug scandal in dallas was realizing that like on a significant

scale uh local police had been planting shit on people in order to charge them. And people had gone to prison, which happens other places too. But like, yeah. Um, and I'm sure the bulk of the work making something like that happen. Isn't the people who are planting the fake drugs.

It's the people who realize that the department will look bad if it gets out and then dedicate themselves to stopping it from getting out even beyond because you have, you know, X number of people are willing to plant fake drugs on a guy but a much larger number of people are willing to try to cover that up so it's not a problem that's that's the thing i really appreciate about alex your framing of this in terms of like their main or one of their main motivations is not you you know, actually doing the job itself. It's about making sure that their reality, and by extension, what they want everyone else's reality to be, to stay the same. Like, all of the effort into whether that be lying for supposedly,

in their view, like, moral reasons and all this kind of work, it's to maintain the specific version of reality. it's it's it's to maintain the specific version of reality it's not it's not actually for like like it's it's not for like actually promoting what is like the law in the books by any means it's it's it's it's the it's the thing like in hot fuzz it's for the greater good that's that's what that is that is what they're trying to it's what they're trying to do so even if they like as long as their reality is maintained, then, you know,

we have some semblance of like order in the world, whether that be, you know, this nostalgic, semi like proto militaristic nationalist version of, of order. But that's, that's,

that's the thing that is, wants to be maintained. So every, every task, everything that they're doing isn't just a simple task it's all in the overall effort of maintaining this like this perception um and that's a a much more i think interesting way to think about police yeah it really is uh these guys in like in pill talk these guys would take the blue pill in a heartbeat and then they'd arrest Morpheus for trying to deal drugs.

That's how dedicated these guys are to staying inside this version of their reality. Now, let's move on next to the next kind of cult aspect. The leadership induces feelings of shame and or guilt in order to influence and control members. And you've written down here toxic masculinity and the warrior mindset yeah um do you have any kind of like case examples of how that that actually looks of like kind of using shame or guilt to people who aren't kind of in the this quote unquote warrior mindset uh yeah i mean it happened a lot um there was a lot of monday nighting that would happen, especially with the advent of like cameras and things becoming more popular. Uh, I loved my body camera. That was my little best friend, but, um, we would go, you know, you'd go back and you'd

watch videos of incidents and things. And if somebody wasn't like engaging fast enough, they would get roasted hard, like hazed and, and, you know, made fun of and mocked. And when you're in this, you know, we're a family mindset and you're, you know, we're, we got each other's backs and we only understand each other. And then all of a sudden you're on the outside because you dared to have even a remotely moderate to liberal position on anything, or you didn't jump in on the, you know, the ass beating on some dude fast enough they turn on you fast like the only thing i could compare it to is like you know every 80s and like 90s military movie or or you know nerds movie where people just haze

the shit out of each other and it's that that dude bro everyone's got a barbed wire sun tattoo on their bicep, just rampant everywhere. I mean, it permeated the whole place. It drove me. That was one of the things that really drove me nuts because I've never been that kind of guy. I've always been a more of a de-escalation person and a book reader. And that I think it helps explain a lot why you see some of these videos where it's just like why did they go to zero to ten from zero to ten so fast well because somebody's gonna make fun of them and call them names if they don't go hard enough fast enough on somebody when they do certain things like and yeah the zero to 100 thing also ties into that whole that whole hyper

vigilance thing that always being um a compressed spring and then it ties back into that warrior mindset of like they tell you flat out like if anyone ever attacks you they're trying to kill you it's it's there's there's no ifs ands or buts you need to act like they're trying to kill you because it goes back to the whole i'm going home at the end of the shift kind of thing and once once that's ingrained itself into like your muscle memory and that becomes the reflex, that becomes the thought that passes in front of your mind when a critical incident makes, like that's a green light. That's an excuse that I can end whatever interaction I'm having with this person with violence because they flinched enough where I think, OK, I got this. Yeah.

Jesus. Now, one of the next ones you have here is talking about recruitment, which obviously cults do, but also like it's a job and jobs do this constantly recruiting. I'm kind of wondering, because you've listed here things like Explorer programs, which are like ROTC or the Boy Scouts, kind of these different, one of which Kyle Rittenhouse did, like ways in which kind of people get onboarded. I'm wondering sort of what, how you see, how you see police recruitment as kind of different in a fundamentally cultier way, then, you know, every job has to bring in new people, right? Like, yeah, right. It's, it's, it didn't used to be this way. But I think in the in the 2000s, especially when numbers,

staffing numbers really started to drop, because it's, I don't know if they've just realized it wasn't worth it, or they found somewhere better to get paid. But employment's gone down for law enforcement. And so recruitment goes up in response. But now they have a more active role most places where it's almost on par with the military. They'll go to job fairs. They go to high school career days. They didn't used to do that stuff. And when they do, they'll find someone to pull stuff out of the pop culture zeitgeist.

What cool cop movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. What can we cash in on to try and draw these kids in? Because just like the military, cops are looking to pull in disenfranchised kids who probably aren't going to go to college, don't think it's an option. And here's this job. All you need is a high school diploma.

Here's the health insurance. Here's the retirement package, which is trash, but you're 17. You don't know that. You don't know how to read all this, but it looks real cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The Explorer stuff. I mean, you're familiar with that. But yeah, they get little kids to go out and be little baby cops. And it's – I mean, it's one of those things. Like some of this is so much deeper than even the individual departments or any choice made by the police because like as a kid, some of the first toys I had were cop toys, right? Like every kid. Same.

Every boy, I think. Yeah. Yeah, some of the first – you're going to get a badge, a gun. You're going to play detective. You're going to be watching cop shows, you're going to be watching movies where cops are the, and that's, I mean, that's a bigger subject than today, but like, yeah. No, that is like one of the most prevalent forms of media that's instilled in young boys, I guess, yeah.

You know what else is instilled in young boys? The love of capitalism and products and services. And specifically his products and services. Find a child and whisper the names of our sponsor into their ears. Preferably a child that's yours, hopefully. No, any child. Any child. Throw something so their parents look away and then lean down and whisper,

Better help. It only counts if you get caught. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know it. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back. And your next point was the group is preoccupied with making money. Which is a huge thing for cults um not all of them there are some yeah like you know there there are some cults that were shall we say pure um but they're nearly all about getting sure like hey man manson you know just uh it was all about the music and the heaven's gate was a heaven's gate was a pure cult. Yeah, yeah, Heaven's Gate. It certainly wasn't just the money for Heaven's Gate. But, yes. It wasn't the moonies.

Cops have civil asset forfeiture, which they just took $100,000 from someone in Dallas, and the person did not get charged with anything. Which is usually the case, yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. um but i mean yeah like you have written here that like the main the main way is just increasing their budget as much as possible which yeah most police departments right now have the biggest budget they've ever had

um specifically in like main cities we have they're they're the most funded department um in in for the whole city there is there's this there's this great gag in the opening episode of a show called uh ugly americans that's about trying to re refinancialize the city's budget and they have like like a social spending and a cop budget and they take like all of social spending and move it over and leave this one tiny sliver and they're like oh there that's better that'll better. That'll solve all the problems. It is a better sketch than what I... Explaining it just like this sounds not funny, but the sketch is actually pretty good. You're not far off, really. But yes, and it is relatively accurate in terms of just moving all the funding from social programs

over into law enforcement. Yeah. So everyone gets their you know, there's the, everyone gets their financing different ways. There's county, there's state, there's their city. But a common thing that would happen was law enforcement agencies would try to take anything that they could under the umbrella of law enforcement. So if it was like, Hey, we want to have more, you know, security equipment at the high school and the cops will will be like no no no no you give us that money we'll give you another uh another officer on campus or they want to hire something for the part you know it's we will install lights the city park to increase security no no no no no you just give us that money we'll make sure our guys patrol it more so they actively try to just like poach money from everybody else yeah i mean and you you can

see this in a lot of towns where like the number one use of public funds is the police i mean it's it's all over the country at this point um yeah that makes sense uh so members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group related activities. Yeah. Cause you have written here four years with no days off, but scored a satisfactory. I was told to put in more time outside of work. Yeah.

So like I said, our evals were always, that sounds so much like MLM shit. It is. It is. They, they, every time you go in for an eval, they neg you like no matter what our,

our scoring system was one to 10. Nobody ever got higher than a six. Maybe I think I saw like one or two sevens in my entire time there. And when I became a supervisor, I asked the brass, I'm like, Hey, I want to give this guy this, this upper grade of like an eight or a nine. And he told me flatly, he goes, no, we don't do that. Like no one's allowed to get higher than a seven. And if you want a seven, you're going to have to like write a novel about how great this person is to get them this rating.

It was just, yeah, it was, it was consistently just pinning you down. The four years, no days off. So yeah, I did a four years straight without calling in sick once. Like I took vacations, but when I went in for my eval and he slides me a thing that says, it says attendance satisfactory. And I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, I haven't taken a sick day in four years. You know, I have three kids. How do you think I managed that? Like I've sacrificed to be here that much. And his response was, well, like, but I never see you at barbecues. I never see you at the union meetings. I never see you at the fundraisers for the sheriff's reelection, even though it's blatantly against policy and illegal to do.

And I told him that and his response was, what are you going to do? Tell on me? Who are you going to tell? Jesus. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, who are you going to tell?

Who are you going to go to? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, who are you going to tell? Who are you going to go to? Yeah. And it is, it's also just like it, this, it isolates you from other people. It stops you from knowing folks that aren't cops. And it's,

yeah, it's a lot like what your upline is going to tell you if you're selling Mary Kay. I mean, that, that, that ties into the, that ties into the next point. Members are encouraged to,

or required to live and or socialize only with other group of members. And you say this is like part of the hyper vigilance isolation cycle. But I also see this in terms of like something I get into for fun is I join like a wife of cops Facebook groups just because it's fascinating just to have all of, just to have all of these like cop spouses in a Facebook group. And it's super, yeah, like it's fascinating just to have all of just to have all of these like cop spouses in a facebook group and it's super yeah like it's it's a really interesting like culture of like just

associating with other people on the job you know there's like cop barbecues like you mentioned and all this kind of stuff where it's like we're the only ones that can understand you so we're going to build like this like you know force field around all of us and we can be together as a family and keep out everyone else because we're the ones that really know what's up. Yeah, it seems, I mean, for some people who are really into it, I guess that is, you know, that's how humans socialize in some ways. For people who think being cops is good and enjoy it, I'm sure they have a decent time hanging out with their cop buddies. I'm sure the cop spouse Facebook groups, I'm sure they have a good time laughing about whatever viral video there is of someone using too much force.

Who knows how they actually think about those types of very isolated environments because it's about it's almost like it's extending out into fandom rules where you're associating with other people the same way fandoms work. Which is very similar to how cults work.

So, yeah. Yeah, it's an armed militant fandom and your last point here the most loyal members the true believers feel there can be no life outside the context of the group they believe there is no other way to be and often fear reprisals to themselves or others

if they leave or even consider leaving the group yeah so I put in the note of just self-explanatory but yeah um it's me quitting was weird uh i knew i needed to do it but i i had a massive existential crisis of identity and uh of of logistical things but a lot of it was it was tied to my identity. And it was it was letting go of something that was like a core pillar of my personality. And it really freaked me out. And I think that if I was more inside the group, and I was more like

one of the guys, a golden boy or something like I probably would have never left. If I was getting that constant reinforcement of the good boy feelings, I don't think I would have quit. But after I did quit, that actually kicked off a cascade of people around my same age and within my same seniority level in looking at their job and looking at what it was doing to them psychologically and physically and with their families and thinking to themselves, Oh, I can leave. That is how cult,

that is how leaving cults work. Yeah. Yeah. And so once I left a bunch of other guys were like, Oh, I don't have to do this until I'm 55. I can, I can go start another career somewhere else.

I can go start another retirement plan at a different place. And it felt great to see other people tear away and do that. But at the same time, I know for some of them, it hurt really bad to leave that behind. Because once you are out, you are kind of out. Even if you leave amicably like, hey, I just want to go do something else with my life. You're no longer in those people's minds anymore because you're not part of the team. You're not in the club. You're not in the family anymore. You're that guy that used to be here.

And I guess kind of at the conclusion of this. And this is, you know, when you when the question is like you de-radicalize, get people out of cults? How do you like – no one has a good answer to that. So I don't think we should expect you to suddenly have like here's how to convince everybody to stop doing this because we can't do that for fucking QAnon. Like de-radicalization, 80% of the people who say they're involved in it are fucking grifting. Like it's a big mess of a fucking field in the first place. But I am wondering, do you have some insights into, like, yeah, how the fuck do we de-radicalize these people? I don't think there is, like, I don't think there is a cookie-cutter answer for, like, pulling people out.

You know, we can't bag them in a white van and take them to a hotel uh the only thing i can think of that would actually change the culture is a huge shift in our national culture around like mental health and toxic masculinity and you know wrapping your identity into into your job because it's not just cops that do this there's lots of jobs it's like that is that is america now it is that is like hustle culture that is what the idea of a career is yeah hi my name is phil in the blank and i am a blank like that's how everyone career comes from the word that means like careening like you are going full force into this thing that is that is what you are doing now. That is your existence, is your career.

You're going at it. That is what this whole country is built on. So getting out of that for a lot of people, for just regular jobs, is difficult. Now adding on the idea that you are the thing that holds society together that is that that has a whole other level of complexity like psychologically for the person inside it um because i'm sure like telemarketers if you can get really into it and make money sure that can

be a career but you know you're not holding society together and like that's not a that's not a that's not a dilution that you have and nobody outside shares that nobody has like no one there's there's no yeah sticker on the back of their car there is there is no thin telemarketing line um supporting you so it is it is different for like police specifically even more so than like firefighters or like EMTs, this particular fandom that's developed around police and, and, and like the, the incredible self-importance that they is,

that is cultivated to the, yeah, like the idea of I'm doing this to maintain reality is like a very like big thing to tell yourself and get, getting out of that seems uh challenging yeah it really is it's like it's all it's almost worse than most like churches in a sense because in this version it's so it's so materialized it's it's yeah it's it's it's right in front of you i can reach out and touch it because i'm part of society but if i'm not here and we're not here

you know anarchy the the bad guy the way people think the word means yeah everything's going to catch fire and and the only reason people are good to each other is because the law makes them be that way and all that kind of toxic bs yeah yeah so the only thing i could think of to be like to help de-radicalize people is it's almost like treating someone in your family that listens to too much QAnon is to, you know, if you know a cop or you have a friend that used to be a cop and he ever like reaches out to you, maybe with like kid gloves, kind of be like, Hey, how you doing?

Just small things because that could maybe lead to him putting them, putting something on their shelf. Just like when people get out of religions and things. Yeah. They'll often reach out to people and be like, hey, this is such a fucking. It kind of means something if he's going outside of the group. And so, yeah, maybe recognize that, like, you have an opportunity. Yeah.

If a cop reaches out to you, it's just like someone in a religious institution. They're reaching out to you because they, they feel safe talking to you because you're not going to turn them in. You're not going to have any, uh, immediate impact on their life right now. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, all right. Well, Alexander, anything else you wanted to get into? I mean, I could talk about this kind of stuff for days and days and hours and hours, the whole hypervigilance cycle. And like I said, I've read a bunch of books on it What are you talking about? Which is why I used to, I used to give this book the emotional survival guide for law enforcement. I would, I gave it to new hires and some of those new hires didn't come back and I'm fine with that.

Yeah, that's good. That is the best case scenario. Yeah. Some of them looked at it and were like, no, I'm not signing up for this because you, you really don't know what you're signing up for the real stuff that you're signing up for until you're in it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, also like a cult. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, all right. Alexander, thank you so much for coming on and for sharing this with us. I think it's a useful look behind the curtain that, that folks need. And this has been, it could happen here. You can find Garrison on the internet.

Go, go, go track down Garrison's fake Facebook account. You know what? Go do that. You can, you can. I have,

I have made it possible specifically for this reason. Join a cop wife group with specifically for this reason. Join a cop wife group with Garrison. Join me and Vanessa so we can discuss our husband's careers. Hey, for all you know, you may cause the de-radicalization of a cop.

Yeah, who knows? Or Garrison just gets really weirdly into role-playing as the wife of a career police officer. Okay, all right. Episode is over. We are done. I am pulling the plug.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America.

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