Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 419 - Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn

Episode Date: August 20, 2020

Officer Daniel Hahn is the Chief of Police for the city of Sacramento. He is the first black Chief of Police in Sacramento history, and is a Sacramento native raised in Oak Park. Officer Hahn is also a graduate of Sac State University. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Support the show by visiting our sponsors! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project podcast, hosted by Mark Bell, co-hosted by Nsima Iyeng, and myself, Andrew Zaragoza. This episode was recorded on August 19th, and it was with Sacramento Police Chief Officer Hahn. Officer Hahn is the first black police chief in Sacramento history, a Sacramento native, and graduated from Sac State. When asked why he cares so much about Sacramento, he simply explains, quote, I'm from here. Officer Hahn was adopted and raised in one of Sacramento's roughest neighborhoods, Oak Park, where his mother was actually a huge part of the community. And he credits her big heart as one of his biggest motivating factors when it comes to all his difficult job. Speaking of his job, we talked a lot about some of the programs that he's seen implemented since being the police chief. Some of the things that

he's trying to do to help, you know, bridge the gap between, you know, police department and community, you know, getting rid of that bridge altogether. We asked him whether or not masks make his job more difficult or not, or spoiler alert, they make it difficult. So we asked exactly how much more difficult it makes his job. We also asked Officer Hunt about the overall morale of the SAC PD right now. There's been the protests and there's been a lot of people saying a lot of really mean things about our police officers, but he credits fitness as being a huge outlet. He's leaned on fitness his entire career, and he credits fitness for essentially saving his life, not necessarily the physical side of things, but the mental aspect of having an outlet to

get some aggression out and just to be an overall healthier, happier person. So overall, a great conversation with a great person that's trying to do their absolute best to help out their community. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy this episode with Sacramento Police Chief Officer Daniel Hahn. Probably wouldn't be productive for your career, you know. Not a fierce idea. You didn't say imagine, would fire me. Cool. So we are live. Oh my God, we're live. Not for this idea. The city manager would fire me. So we are live.

Oh my God, we're live. Yeah. All right. Live here with the chief of police today. Thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. First thing I want to kick this off with,

because I saw you in another interview, and I feel that the temperature of everything that's going on right now is kind of at an all-time high. Things are a little different for the police department. We have a lot of people on opposite ends. You've got some people that are really mad at police officers and the police department. Some people want to defund the police. And you've got other people that are still like, hey, they're in favor of it, and they think that we need it.

But in an interview that I saw you in, you said, you know, we can't have people on opposite sides. You know, we need to figure out, you know, how do we get people thinking in a similar way about the police? And so I'd like to kind of kick it off with that question. How do we get ourselves to, I guess, help people better understand what the police are doing and trying to do and have the police be better understood by society and have society better understand the police and vice versa. Yeah, I think it's just it's really tough to have those meaningful, useful conversations when the emotions are so high because people aren't thinking right. And so right now, it's just tough to have real conversations because everybody on all

sides are so angry and so upset right now. But I would say in Sacramento, we're doing much better than a lot of places. I was just reading some articles in Portland and Seattle. They're on their 83rd day in a row of violent protests. And I watched a video of a community guy driving a truck that just got kicked in the head and they're trying to burn down county. We don't see that here in Sacramento. So that's a good thing.

I think it's a credit to how we've worked our past, our relationship already was at least sort of OK that we're able to weather some of these storms without that kind of violence. But we all need to understand, we all need to change, including the law enforcement, including police department. And we have to have those honest conversations and real solutions. Otherwise, we just keep repeating all the things that we see. And that's not healthy for anybody. And if we come up with some of these drastic situations, it's just going to make things worse. For example,

I've been asked about the defund question. And my answer to that is if defunding means less police officers and less professional staff for the police department right now, we're already way understaffed compared to where we were 10 years ago. That is going to make the very communities we're talking about are going to be less safe. We get most calls from the communities we're talking about. So if we have less police officers to respond to those calls, less police officers to provide assistance, we will be worse off. The people in those communities will be less safe and worse off. And so we need to find, I think I've heard it from a couple different communities that say, we don't need less police. We need better police. And I would agree with that completely.

If there's ways, you know, if we have a shooting, for example, and everybody deems it's legal, that's not where we stop. It might be legal, but is there another way we could have ended this without somebody being shot? Then we need to do that. Even if what we did was legal, legal to me is like a C grade. Like I want to get an A. So if we can end some situation without somebody being shot, we should be doing that. I would imagine that you in most situations. Well, I would imagine that police officers are gifted in different with different scenarios.

So sometimes even being the chief of police, maybe sometimes you're really pumped to see that so-and-so arrived on the scene promptly, right? And sometimes you're probably like, oh, crap. They're not necessarily great for this particular situation. How could all the police end up maybe being a little bit more polished? Are the police officers maybe required or asked to do too much? I mean, you guys are responsible for a lot. And so what do you think is some solutions into that? Yeah, I think just the uniform and the look of a police officer maybe.

People forget that these are human beings. These are fathers, sons, uncles, brothers that wear that blue shirt and that uniform. And part of it is we have an extreme amount of power. We have the power to take your freedom. We have the power to take your life. And so with that comes a little bit of extra responsibility. But we have to remember these are human beings. So there's going to be a wide gamut of abilities and skills and talents. So there's one guy that could talk

to anybody, no matter what the situation. Then there's another guy that's, you know, if there's a fight, you want that guy in the fight because he's really strong, really gifted in that. And so, you know, we're not going to have all the exact same kind of people. Everybody has their different talents. But I think the main thing we can do as a police department is equip our people with the ability, the skills and the training and the experiences so they can work in a diverse community like Sacramento. So I'm not in I'm not one that likes to focus and blame people for their experiences because most of our experiences aren't our doing right? We were born to who we were born to. We grew up in whatever neighborhood we grew up to.

None of that was our decision. That was our parents' decision or our parents' lot in life. And so, but I am a big believer that if you didn't grow up in a neighborhood that gives you experiences with, say, Meadowview or Del Paso Heights, then it's our job as a community, as a society, and as a department to give you those experiences, preferably before you work there, so you can understand the hopes and dreams of a community like that. And so we do a lot of programs that we get our officers before they actually put the uniform on out in the community, one-on-one with community members, so they can understand, know what community wants before they ever put on that uniform in an enforcement capacity. And so

I think that's a lot of what we have to do is teach our history. How did we get to where we're at? Because we do not know our history in this country. And then better understand the communities and what the community's needs are. Because really our authority comes from the community. A law can say whatever it does, but if society and community doesn't reinforce that law, then that law means nothing so we have to we we have what gives us our authority is our community and so we need to

understand the community community needs to understand us we were mentioned we were talking earlier how we bring uh young people out to the academy part of that is so young people can experience and walk in the shoes of an officer as close as they possibly can so they can understand the challenges of being an officer so they they understand more of what officers looking at and we do the same thing with officers into the community so the officers can understand what these young people are concerned about and fearful of and why they might be fearful of the police officers and when we build that relationship all of a sudden when you're driving down the street the kid knows you as mark hey there goes Mark instead of this robot in a blue uniform. Right now, has there anything that has actually been implemented newly from all the situations

that have been happening and all the ways that people have been calling out for change? Has there anything that you guys have been doing that's new or different to try to make any changes in the force? Yeah, I'd say as a result of what we're experiencing now, there's a few probably minor things. But we've been implementing things because of this before this happened. So like in my swearing in, I said the biggest priority is we need to build a better relationship with all segments of our community. All of them. Because otherwise, we're not as legitimate and we can't help the people that we're supposed to be helping.

And so we've implemented like implicit bias trainings, but not just the classes, but experiences, ongoing experience, because you can't just take a class and then nothing else for 20 years. So we've done a lot of that. We have a Walk In My Shoes program where after you graduate from the academy, we partner you with a community member that is from a community that you're not from and you spend the day with them. But then the next month, that community member goes on a ride along with the officer so they can experience what the officers experience.

Then they come together and kind of talk about what they learned. So programs like that. One of the other ones, as you guys probably know, we lost two very young, vibrant, awesome officers. Natalie Corona was a Davis officer, but she went through our academy. Tara Sullivan was one of our officers that we lost about a little over a year ago in the North Area. Both of them went through our academy. And so Natalie's Academy was the very first academy we started while they're in the academy on Fridays. The academy recruits go to the local schools in the north area and spend time with the kids. And so they build this relationship. So then we lost Natalie. And around the same time, we bought a new helicopter. So in the neighborhood I grew up, you kind of called the helicopter the ghetto bird. And whenever you saw that, it was kind of a negative thing. They're chasing somebody. They're looking for somebody. Can't understand anything that

helicopter says. Sounds like Charlie Brown's teacher. So our air ops guys decided, why don't we have this school that we've been going to every Friday? Why don't we do a contest where they name the helicopter? So they did. They named it Halo. So our new helicopter's name is Halo, and it's named after Natalie. And so now you imagine these kids. These were sixth graders that won. So imagine these kids when they see this helicopter now. It's no longer the Ghetto Bird.

It's Halo, and it has meaning. So these guys are going to be 50 years old when they see any helicopter. They're going to go, I wonder if that's our helicopter, Halo. So it's just changing perspective. It's not like seeking you out. It's trying to keep a watchful eye on the community our helicopter, Halo. So it's just changing perspective. It's not like seeking you out. It's trying to keep a watchful eye on the community. Right, right. And that comes from, we wanted the recruits to get out into the community because we wanted to start having them understand what these young kids wanted and build those relationships.

And out of that came things like the helicopter and Halo and all these other things. So the more we get together, the more we understand each other, the more we care about each other, the more we're going to find solutions to all these things. Is it a bigger challenge now that we are wearing masks? You know, we can't see each other's faces as much and can't see people on the street smiling and so forth. Yeah, I would say this whole COVID thing causes a ton of challenges. I would say this whole COVID thing causes a ton of challenges, but one of them, pretty much all those programs I just mentioned, they're on hold right now because we can't be in person. So, and yeah,

I just think you miss a whole lot just in communicating with each other when half your face is covered. I mean, we seem to forget. I think the studies show, I don't know, 80, 90% of communication is nonverbal. Well, you're losing some of that when you have a mask on. It's just very impersonal. People are stressed out. People are losing their jobs. People are being laid off.

Their rent is still due. Their mortgages still due. Their kids aren't in school. So if you have young kids and you have a job, what do you do now? Because they're at home and you have to be at work. I know there's people that are quitting their jobs just so they can be at home with their kids. So it's just a really stressful time right now. How do you put your personal thoughts aside

to be able to lead an entire police department? Because it's got to be difficult. And you're kind of like, I guess, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, maybe a mediator between the public and the politicians and the law, right? Yeah. In some way. I guess I. I mean, you'd have some of your personal beliefs.

You know, you might not might not be in favor of a particular statue coming down or something like that. But you have a job to fulfill. You have, you know, you have and you have people to lead, you know, through these jobs. So I'd imagine that would put you in a tough position. Yeah, I would say in terms of that, there are times where I have to kind of hold my tongue in terms of exactly how I want to say something. As my wife says, oh, there goes the old part coming out in you. So there are times that I have to kind of moderate the way I say things. But other than that, I pretty much I am who I am.

I, you know, I've been accused of having my personal emotions on my sleeve. But I just think my experiences are kind of unique for this time. I, you know, obviously I'm black and I've had to remind some reporters that, you know, I've been black since the day I was born. It's interesting that way. But I grew up in Oak Park. I was arrested when I was 16 for assault on a Sacramento police officer. I witnessed my first homicide when I was about nine years old in front of my house. My younger brother was murdered downtown after he got involved in drugs. Many of my friends have been in prison. And I'm a police officer for the last 33 years. Never dreamed of being a police officer. It just kind of happened by happenstance. So I think in what we're in right now, I kind of have a unique perspective. And so I try to talk

about it as much as I possibly can, because I do believe we need to get better at law enforcement. I do believe we need to get better in society and in our communities. I do think people are suffering every day because we don't look at the big picture and what really will make things change. And I think I have a unique perspective on that growing up the way I did. You know, if you look at our last officer-involved shooting of Mr. Southern, he grew up in foster care. And I often say in a lot of my talks that, you know, the greatest thing that ever happened to me in my life was when I was three months old,

when I was adopted by my mom and dad. And he's really the reason why I say that, because I probably have a better chance of being him than I am me if I wasn't adopted and I grew up in foster care. And so when we have a shooting like that, I really advocate that we need to be looking at holistically, how could we have prevented him from being shot that day? Part of that is, could the cops done anything different? Could the law enforcement have done anything different? But we can't stop there. How could we have prevented him from being there that day? Might start with birth control. Well, sorry, sorry.

Bad joke, bad joke. Or support for him growing up, right? And so, I mean, it can't just stop there. It has to be a broader conversation of what supports could we as society provided him earlier that he wouldn't have been there that day. supports could we as society provided him earlier that he wouldn't have been there that day so yeah i think my personal experience gives me a little bit of uh insight that probably isn't too normal for a police chief uh i don't know i don't know any police chiefs that got arrested and cuffed and taken to juvenile hall when they were 16 so i mean that's kind of unique and i actually wanted to ask you about that because i you know, if somebody were to get, you know, arrested, thrown in jail and, you know, have that same experience, I can't imagine them wanting to become a police officer.

So what was it that changed where you went from not dreaming of being a police officer to now, I mean, you're the chief. So, like, what happened? So you had to go there. I did. Well, I never wanted to be a police officer. I never even, in my neighborhood, we didn't know any police officers. Nobody had family members that were police officers.

We ran from police officers. I got arrested by a police officer in our living room. But when I was 18, I was at city college and a friend of mine talked me into taking a criminal justice class i think it might have been the only criminal justice class i've ever taken um and the recruiters came by and eventually they had a test at sac high which was my alma mater and i was 18 at the time and so i said i'll go back and take tests so i started passing the test i finally inquired how much it pays. So it was $8 and 14 cents an hour to go to the academy. And I was making $3 and some cents an hour at Florin mall at the time. So my mom raised us to really value money. So I thought

I was going to be rich. I was going to buy a Cadillac and a house on $8 and 14 cents an hour. But my whole goal was to go through the academy, finish college and quit the police department once once I graduated college. So because I was 18, I couldn't be a police officer. So I was a community service officer. I went to the academy right across the street here at the highway patrol facility. And but then I turned 21 a couple of years later and they offered to upgrade me to full police officer, which was fourteen dollars an hour. So now I thought I was going to be doubly rich, called my mom, mom, I'm going to be a cop. And I thought you weren't going to be a cop. And I'm like, well, they're going to pay me $14 an hour.

I haven't finished college yet. So, but by the time I graduated college, I was on the nine-year plan. So it took me a while, a little hard-headed. But by the time, about eight or nine years, I started doing community stuff. I was a neighborhood police officer in Strawberry Manor up in the Heights. And then I taught, got a teaching credential and taught at Grant High School for three years and realized I could do what I love to do as a police officer, which growing up, I just thought police officers drove around in black and white squad cars and arrested people. I didn't know they could do all the

things. I've been a media person. I've been a teacher. I've been in charge of all the undercover people. I mean, I've had also, I mean, you can have like 30 different jobs. And so about eight years in,

I decided I would stay as a police officer. And then some mentors of mine harassed me to take in promotional exams. And now I'm the police chief. So I guarantee if you talk to anybody, I went to high school with, they're like still in disbelief that I'm the police chief. So I guarantee if you talk to anybody I went to high school with, they're like still in disbelief that I'm the police chief. You know, I was wondering like for yourself and the vision you see with the police and the community, what is your ideal of how everything would look in the future a year from now, two years from now? And in terms of trying to get there,

what do you think needs to be done? Yeah, great question. Well, I'll just answer the first part generally. We would stop saying, not because we're forced to stop saying it, but because we just naturally stop saying police and community because the police is the community and the community is the police department.

So I would say when we get to that point, we were successful when people believe that the police department is just part of the community. It's just another, it's like Joe at this corner store, it's police officers. And I would say literally what that would mean, we do a community survey every year and it comes out exactly the way you would think of it you whatever neighborhoods you think have a high uh impression of the police department i guarantee you those are the neighborhoods in the survey that come out with a high impression of the police department the neighborhoods you think don't think highly of the police department those are the neighborhoods the survey says so i think literally we're successful when we do that

survey and people are pretty much the same. Like Del Paso Heights has a high regard for the police department. Meadowview has a high regard for the police department and the police officer. We survey them, too. They have a high regard for everybody because you just think about if you go to a bad call after bad call, you work swing shift in Del Paso Heights. You often will go to a shooting or a stabbing or sex trafficking or drug dealing or gang type activity. You don't go to Miss Johnson's house for milk and cookies. Miss Johnson might be calling you, but she's calling you about this issue in the community that's a threat.

And so just by human nature, say you never grew up there and now you're on swing shift there and you're just going to negative call after negative call, somebody abusing somebody. And just by human nature, you just start going, man, this is this whole community is like that. But you don't know 90 percent of the community, 99 percent of me. So our job is really how do we give a really even look of officers to the community? How do we get them to know Miss Johnson? So they're not patrolling Grand Avenue. They're patrolling Miss Johnson Street. And so that's that's really my goal is how do we how do we get a well-rounded officers with a well-rounded experiences in our community? And just because that guy's dealing drugs doesn't doesn't mean that if we don't solve that issue, he could be a really productive person in this community. I look at my younger brother who got murdered on G Street downtown in 1992 on my mom's birthday. You know, he was a good kid. He didn't get any. I got in more trouble as a kid than he did. And then he went into the military, got out of the military, started using drugs and got on this bad road. If you're a police officer that met Chris when he

was an adult in his 20s after he got out of the military, you might just think that my job is to take this guy to jail because he's a drug user and all the other crimes that come along with it. And that's my job. I just got to take him to jail. He's abusing this community, which he probably was. I mean, that's what you do if you guys support your habit. But when I think about him, all I ever think about is us growing up. We were the youngest, so we always had to share a room.

And he wanted to be a veterinarian. And so to me, it's like, how do we get our perspective? Like, I might still have to take this guy to jail. But really, if I get him off of drugs, if I have some resource that I can give to him and encourage him or do whatever to get him, I might still be taking him to jail. But at some point, we got to get him off of drugs because that's what's driving all this criminal activity that he's doing. And then he might get back on the road to being a veterinarian. Now he's a veterinarian. Now I never have to worry about him. Now he's actually a plus for our community and all those sorts of things. So, I mean, as a society, we got to start looking at it. It doesn't mean they're not going to go to jail, but let's look at what is going on and how do we solve the root of this issue so we don't have to keep dealing with the results of it.

Yeah, and there's a lot that happens from there. If you do arrest somebody and bring them in, you know, what programs they have in there. And maybe if we can figure out stuff as a community or society before it leads them down that road, you know, maybe we could be better off. What are some things that you've seen maybe implemented in your 33 years of being a police officer in the community that's been really helpful where you're like, you know what, that's totally working. Like this is great for kids. This is great for families. This is really productive for the community. Yeah. Some of the things I mentioned already are some of those like the academy, we call it the VIP teen experience at the academy. call it the vip teen experience at the academy well that came from the youth i was meeting with impact sack and a program called

student voices and um they they came up with like we'd like to go out to the academy and i'm like well you know anytime you want to come out the academy i'll take you out there matter of fact i'll get you up in the helicopter too and i i was surprised because we kind of get programmed like people don't like the cops these kids are when i say come out to the academy they're gonna scoff at me they jumped up and started yelling are you serious and now i'm stuck right like i just made a promise i better keep it now um so they came up with this program they named it they're the ones that named it and now we do like 50 60 people once a month when covid wasn't here and it's just we've done over like 250, 300 students because these youth came up with this idea. And that's amazing.

Like we survey them before and after. So before, a lot more negative or less positive. And then after, it completely flips just because of a three or four hour experience. And now they are doing creating a podcast. So the kids are going to run a podcast. Like a matter of fact, I'd love to introduce Sophia, the main one to you, seeing that you have this really popular podcast. So now they're going to start a youth led podcast where they're going to bring influential

people on and interview them. So those sort of things have, I think, made a difference. But, you know, there's programs around the country, for example, that when you arrest somebody, you take them to jail, and if they have a drug problem, they start, like, drug rehab type stuff in the jail. So they can't go anywhere, so they're going to have to get sober, and then they have certain drugs that counteract the effects of drugs. And then it follows them once they go out of the jail.

And there's been a lot of success. So people like Bridget Dean that we were talking about earlier are researching that. There's programs like that in Arizona. So it's can we bring those here and address the root causes? I mean, we can talk about, you know, if we if we take somebody to jail now, they're getting out in like two hours. I mean, they're not going to be held. So if they have a drug issue and you take them to jail for burglarizing your car, your house and you take them to jail, they're going to get out in two hours. They still have a drug habit that they have to support.

So they're going to be breaking into another. I guarantee you they're going to be breaking into another car or house to support their drug habit. So until we address the drug habit, we're going to have a problem. And so we just got to think more holistically about a lot of these things. And so I think that's a program that I think has a lot of promise and programs that look at not just what you did right now, but what is causing you

to do it and how do we address that as a society. And a lot of times, police officers aren't the people. We might be the very beginning, right? We respond to make sure everything's safe, but there needs to be somebody else dealing with some of these other issues because they're trained and they have the experience to deal with those things. Yeah, my brother was bipolar. He also had a drug addiction.

He's no longer with us, but he had a hard time getting help because he was bipolar. He wanted to get help for that, but he couldn't come off of drugs. And they were like, you need to come off of drugs. He's like, but he's like, I can't. That's the problem. That's what I'm trying to address, you know. And so it can be very complicated. And then we see that with a lot of homeless people.

I see, you know, quite a few homeless people when I'm walking around in Davis. And I, however they act or whatever, I try just to say hi, you know, because I think maybe one of the worst things is just not to be recognized as a person sometimes. But, you know, it's a hard thing to figure out some solutions to you know you would like to say oh you know just kind of let them be and let them do what they want but then you know they might like build a home you know underneath like uh like where the movie theater is and they're on your front lawn yeah right yeah yeah is that okay right and then so where do you draw these lines it just brings up a lot of interesting questions. How do you guys how do you handle the homeless and are there programs here in Sacramento to kind of assist them and so forth? Well, and I think I don't think I answered one of your very first questions, which leads to what you just said.

So there's there's like a lack of resources in at least our County and many other counties. For example, if you walked up to headquarters right now or any police station in our department and said, you know, I have a raging drug addiction and I've, I've hit the point where I'm ready for help. Like I am ready right now. I need to get help. You wouldn't get any, like there's a six month waiting list at least for the county rehab type stuff so like we'd really go that's great sorry if you had money then you

could get help yeah then you go to bedford or wherever right and so if you're like a normal person you could be ready which is important but there's nothing for you. And so over the years, what's happened is, one, in many instances, the resources weren't there anyway. But then after the economy tanked, you know, 12 years ago, and now because of COVID, but more so 12 years ago, a lot of things went away. So when a family is in need, when somebody is in need or needs some resources, and they don't know who to call, and there's no resource or there's no resources there, who do they call? They call us. So the police department has been the catch all for a lot of things that we're not really best equipped for.

And therefore, the things we are best equipped for don't get responded to well either. So, you know, one of the biggest complaints I get is, you know, people that are victims of oftentimes serious crimes, like I haven't heard anything. How come you guys haven't called me and updated me on anything? Like, we don't have very many people to do that. So there's just a lot of lack of resources, and we need to figure out what's the best thing for a best way to respond to a lot of these instances, because over the years, it's really been the police department

has been a catch all, whether it's a homeless camp, whether it's mental health with no violence, they call the police department and, you know, we go out there, but there's not a lot of resources to refer people to. And so they end up just staying on the street and, you know, we go out there, but there's not a lot of resources to refer people to. And so they end up just staying on the street. And, you know, anything that plays out on the street ends up on a 911 call typically. And then what people usually don't know is the minute you graduate from the police academy as a police officer, you still have a lot of training to do. You have field training to do for three to six months. to do for three to six months. But the minute you get your basic post certificate, licensed by the state basically to be a police officer, you have the ability to put somebody on a 72-hour 5150 hold for mental health against their will. And so typically that's, you get handcuffed, put in the

backseat of the car. When I was a young officer, there was a mental health facility on Stockton Boulevard across from UC Davis. We'd take them with mental health professionals. That's not open anymore. So now we take you to the emergency room where you sit in the hallway of an emergency room, the most expensive place we could take somebody. And you sit there for hours and the officer has to stay with you until somebody from the hospital is able to deal with the mental health. And oftentimes there's co-occurring drug addiction and mental health. So the drug is dealt with and then you're released.

So it gets complicated too, because I'd imagine if they needed medical assistance, they may not have insurance. And then, you know, I'm sure everyone knows a trip to the emergency room is a, is a real nightmare, right?

Yeah. And, and what people don't know is we often get called by medical mental health professionals and doctors to put that hold on people because legally they can't. So it doesn't make any sense to me that somebody with the whole alphabet behind their name, NSW, LCW, all these social work, mental health degrees and everything. They can't put a hold on you. But a police officer at 21 years old can. OK, so don't laugh at me. You promise you're not going to laugh? Yes. Well, so don't laugh at me. You promise you're not going to laugh? Yes.

Well, maybe. Some people say that we should send social workers to when people are having a, you know, marriage, you know, people are fighting, you know, at home. What are some of your thoughts on that? I do think there are calls that we can take away from police officers and give to whether social workers or somebody else. I think one of the, one of the more problematic things that we could do. And definitely one of the more dangerous things we can do is do blanket things like you just said,

send people to a family disturbance that are not police office. One of the most dangerous calls a police officer responds to. And I'll just take us back to a horrific day, probably the most horrific day in my entire career. Tara Sullivan and her partner officers were responding to a call to help a woman get her property. That's what that call was. They were going to go help her get, I think, her dog and some clothes. And she died on that call. So if we think we're going to send just non-law enforcement people to family disturbances, one of the most dangerous calls police officers go to, I think we're sadly mistaken we're going to send just non-law enforcement people to family disturbances. One of the most dangerous calls police officers go to. I think we're sadly mistaken.

We're going to get people killed. But to say that there aren't calls that we can do that with, or if they're there in addition to maybe. Yeah. So I think there are a portion of calls that we absolutely can give to somebody else because every cop in the world has said, why am I on this call from time to time? What's other calls would that be?

You know, a homeless. We get calls right now that like there's a homeless camp across the street from my house. No violence. No disturbance. Just there's a homeless camp there. We send police officers. Right now, we sweep City Hall because there's an ordinance that says after 6 a.m. for the safety of the employees and all that, that City Hall can't have camps there. So people camp there overnight. And then then at six they have to leave.

So we send officers at six to tell them at six o'clock, no problems. People just pack up and they leave. Why do we have police officers doing that? Why not some homeless services group that is good with homeless folks and has that experience doing that? So I think there are calls that we can we can give to another department, if you will. I think the bigger portion is exactly what you said, Mark, is that we get there, we respond with officers to make sure it's safe. And once it's safe, we can make a phone call or a radio, or maybe they respond right behind us. And we're able to hand that off to them and we leave to handle a call that only police officers can handle.

I think that's probably where the bigger group of calls is. But that's what Bridget Dean, the interim director of the Office of Community Response, is researching right now. We're going to probably fly to a few different cities to see how they do. And she'll find a program that works best for Sacramento. But, yeah, I think the partnership is really the way it goes. that works best for Sacramento. But yeah, I think the partnership is really the way it goes. And I don't know that it will lessen the calls

for police officers dramatically, but it will definitely provide a better service to our community and hopefully get people to the help that they need so we don't respond. I mean, there's people and locations we respond to 30 times in a month over mental health issues. And the officers walk back to their car

saying to themselves, something bad is going to happen here one time. And then they get in their car and drive away because there's nothing they can do. Do you think people respond to like a, you know, community, like a liaison, I guess I'll say, because, you know, like,

especially like mall cops, right? It's like, what are you going to do, clipboard cop? You're going to write me up? It's like, I'm not going to listen to you. But then a badge walks in and it's like, oh, straight straight up because it's, you know, this is serious now. Do you think people will respond to something like that? Police officers have this ability to put you on a hold, but really not too many other people do. So we have Bridget Dean that before she was tabbed as the interim director of this new department, she was the manager in charge of our social services division. So our impact team that deals with homelessness, our mental health team that deals with mental health calls.

And she trains mental health in our department. Yet she can't put a hold on somebody. She knows way more about mental health than any police officer does. Yet she can't put a hold on somebody. Only a police officer can. So we're creating a system that requires a police officer to respond, even when there's way better trained and knowledgeable people to do that, solely because we're the only ones that can do the whole. That seems not very intelligent to me with the um the protests after george floyd and all that um it's kind of given people like a just a free lane to say a lot of bad mean things about police officers what has the morale been like for our uh our sac pd well it's tough at the same time we're we're going through changes and we're

trying to become better and asking our officers to go to additional training or do these different programs that some, I mean, again, we're a full, over a thousand members of our department. So you're going to have people from different walks of life and different beliefs. So some buy in fully, some are questionable and some are like, why can't we just do it the way we always did? So while they're going through though, we're doing our own internal changes and trying to be better. Um, at the same time for that one weekend, most of our officers were working like 20 hour days and the whole time they're getting bricks thrown at them. They're getting cussed out. Uh, for example, the the black officers are being called sellouts and Uncle Tom's and just a really. So working 20 hours is a long day, but working 20 hours under that kind of pressure and stress is a really long day.

And then you got to come back and do it again tomorrow. And every single thing you do in response to that is scrutinized. So, yeah, it's tough. And at the same time, you hear defunding and these blanket statements about all police officers. So it's tough on them. But I think we're doing pretty good in Sacramento. What you see in places like Seattle and Portland and Austin, you don't see here in Sacramento. And again, I think that's partly because of the relationship we've been able to cultivate over the years. But I still see a lot of great work being done by police officers every day as the lieutenants and the sergeants fill out the daily logs.

And, you know, sometimes it surprises me that we got officers that still, despite all that, are still going out and helping the community. despite all that are still going out and helping the community. Just yesterday, I went to roll call up in the North area. Three of our officers responded to a call where two cars were basically like road raging and they get there. And during the call, they, the one car they walked to and there's a lady that's just completely

unconscious in the car. And so they check on her and they immediately pull her out. They start doing CPR. They start doing all this medical stuff. Turns out she basically overdosed. And the doctor said had they not done CPR, she'd be dead. So, you know, here's officers that, you know, for a couple months now have been either on the line getting bricks and frozen water bottles thrown at them, cussed out, told that they don't care about the community.

And yet when they're needed, they're there. And the doctor said, had they not done that, she'd be dead. And so, you know, before fire can get there before anybody, the officers are there and they still step up. So I'm part of it. I'm always amazed and surprised. But the other part of it is, and I'm a little bit biased, you know, I've lived every day of my life in this community and I've been on this department since I was 19 years old. The other part of me, I'm not surprised because that's the kind of people that join this department and join this line of work. That doesn't mean we don't have people that probably should have never been, well, not probably, should have never been police officers. We have those from time to time.

And it's up to us as an organization to say goodbye to those people. And it doesn't mean that we don't have officers that are good officers, but that make mistakes from time to time. And we have to deal with that. So we're not perfect. We hire human beings and human beings are flawed. And we we have to deal that at time. But the vast majority of officers that I've worked with and the vast majority of officers I see every day go to work and they help people every single day. Do you have the ability to do the ability to every once in a while just like look at someone and say, hey, man, like you need to I think you need to go home. Like it's been a rough couple of days. And I'm sure that you may be able to occasionally.

But do you have enough officers? Do you have enough, you know, like to occasionally just say, hey, man, you know, you're just looking tired. Like, go enjoy your day. You know, go get some lunch and chill for today. You have the opportunity to do that here and there. Well, let me answer. Do we have enough officers first?

No, we have about probably over 100 less officers now than we did 10 years ago. And our city's bigger and have more festivals and more protests and all that. But to your heart of your question, do we have the ability and do we send people home? Absolutely. We have changed so much since when I became an officer, you know, in the late 80s, we didn't have a peer support team. Now we have a full-time peer support team that that's their job is to make sure officers are healthy. There's programs like down in Southern California, we can send officers for a week that has psychologists and all those kinds of people that are experienced in law enforcement and help people through the things they're

dealing with. I mean, if you think about what an officer sees throughout a career or even just their first couple of years, it's not something a human person should see. And they see it over and over and over again. And so, yeah, there are, I mean, usually it's a little more dramatic than just having a bad day. But yeah, there are, I mean, usually it's a little more dramatic than just having a bad day. But, yeah, we will send people home. We will let them have as much time off as they need.

And our peer support unit really drives that. And, you know, we ask them, are they okay? Can they come back? You know, and we just fill it in with overtime. We figure out how to do it because, you know, somebody that's going through that is not going to be the best on the job. We need healthy people to help other people. And, you know, I'm curious about this being an officer for 33 years and also the chief. We've had officers on where we've kind of talked about that because when you see these, I can't imagine seeing some horrible things over and over and over again. It has to erode at the way you look at situations and look at people. Um, so how have you yourself been able

to come through 33 years and still see things so positively and so bright? Well, I think it helps that I'm from here. So I draw a lot of, because I believe in the city and I still basically refer to as second moms. And then being on this police department so long, I believe in the police department. And neither one of them are perfect, but I just believe in that. The other thing is I work out every day. And I do that on purpose because you need an outlet. You just can't, you know, there's times where I'll work many long hours. There's weeks where I won't see my daughters at all while they're awake

just because we had a shooting or a protest. That week of protests, I would go to work at like 5 in the morning. I wouldn't get home until about 2 in the morning, and so my daughters are asleep when I leave, and they're asleep when I get home, and so you got to have some sort of outlet, And so my daughters are asleep when I leave and they're asleep when I get home. And so you got to have some sort of outlet. And so I use mine, whether it's traditional workouts or CrossFit workouts. And probably the biggest thing, though, in my entire life is my mom.

My mom, if you're probably over 30 years old and you grew up in Oak Park, you'd know who my mom was. She was the lady carrying signs out on Broadway, telling the Johns to stop picking up the prostitutes. The corner we lived on was a stroll. We saw prostitutes in front of our house every day, drug dealing in front of our house every day. She was just extremely active in the community, would help anybody, would support anybody. You know, interesting story. When I came, when I was about a week after I was sworn in as police chief back in Sacramento, there was a young man about 15 years old that was killed out by Johnson High School. And the community thought it was a South Area gang that shot him. So not only are the young people, he was a very popular kid. So there's hundreds of kids mourning

in Oak Park, some of them angry, some of them talking about retaliation, all those sort of things. So there's a couple of different vigils, one at Fourth Avenue Park and one at City of Refuge. And so I went to the City of Refuge. I was dressed like I am now in full uniform and walk up and there's this young girl that's just looking at me like, why am I there? Like just burning a hole in my head. And I'm thinking, OK, normally I'd go over there and strike up a conversation with her. But today, maybe I'll just let it slide. And then somebody else walked up and said, hey, chief.

And so she looks at me and she goes, you're the chief? And I'm like, yeah, that's on my badge. It says chief and all these stars. Yeah, I'm the chief. And like half of her anger went away, but half of it was still there. Then the founder of City of Refuge, Rochelle, walks up and says, you know, he's from the neighborhood. So the girl goes, what neighborhood?

I go, this neighborhood. She goes, where'd you grow up? I'm like, about two blocks from here. And she's like, what house? I go, 33rd and 2nd Avenue. And she goes, what house? I'm like, the only house on that corner. The other ones are businesses. And she goes, the yellow house? And I, uh, 33rd and second Avenue. And she goes, what house? I'm like the only house on that corner. The other ones are businesses.

And she goes, the yellow house. And I'm like, yeah, she goes, that's my house. I'm like, my mom gave our house away.

It's probably almost worth a million dollars right now. She gave our house away years ago to a family. She met at church after a couple of weeks and she gave it to, she called my brother and I asked us if it was okay to give the house away. I'm like, mom, it's your house. You can do whatever you want,

but you're going to give it away. And so she gave it to him because she thought they would care for the house. It's a really well over a hundred year old house. And she thought they would care for Oak park. And that was what was important to her. So this girl says she lived there and I knew she wasn't the Hegstroms who my mom gave the house to. So now I'm wondering like, how do you live there? And I go, do you know the Hegstroms? She goes, yeah, they're the ones that give me a room. I'm like, give you a room? What are you talking

about? And she goes, I live there. So I found out that the Hegstroms use this, my mom's house. They live there, but when they have an extra room, oftentimes they will give that room to a girl escaping sex trafficking. And I immediately thought, man, I can't wait to call my mom. That's exactly why she gave him this house. That's the kind of stuff she would have wanted to happen. So I didn't call my mom for like a week and I call her and she was living in Hayward at the time. And I tell her the story and she's like, yeah, no, I knew that. Why do you think I gave him the house? I'm like, you never told me they house girls escaping sex. She goes, I don't tell you everything.

But that's who I grew up with. That's the person that gave every car we ever had away, gave all the houses she's ever had away for free, cared for the community. And so as much as I hated that as a kid, and as much as she drug me to community stuff that I didn't want to go to, all I want to do is play football in the street. Probably super embarrassing, right? Yeah, very. Mom, you're so embarrassing. Leave me alone. But it's what's being pounded into you every day. So I have faith. My mom had faith. So therefore, I don't have any choice but to have faith. And I know we can get to a better place. Oftentimes, the things we talk

about are not going to get us there. So my goal for the rest of my career and whatever I do after my career is to talk about things that will change lives for people. We, we have too many people in our communities that are suffering. And I think we see that every day through these protests. Oftentimes we don't know how to channel our energy in a, in a healthy, appropriate way.

And I think a lot of times that comes from a lot of pain and a lot of history. And if we don't change that, we're going to continue down the same path. If we haven't noticed that the protests over the years are getting worse and worse. The protests we had 10 years ago, five years ago, weren't like they are now, but they're getting worse and worse. And if we don't start addressing the well-being of people that live in our community, we're going to continue to get worse and sooner or later it's going to destroy us. So we've got to change that. Yeah, the way people protest is going to be very indicative of what's going on in the community, right? It's going to be a huge part of it. And I see, you know, in some communities,

they will put up like a microphone and like, hey, you know, get up there and, you know, speak, you know, let your voice be heard and go for it. But in other communities where they're maybe a little bit more spurred up, I don't think a microphone is really going to slow them down much. With your mom being such a huge role model and such a huge influence, I would imagine that it probably gave you some empathy towards people that didn't have that. As you were mentioning, the other guy that died, that had the drug addiction, that you could have maybe, you know, gone that way. You know, in your community that you were in, in Oak Park, I'm imagining that your friends would probably tease you because your mom's white,

right? So I don't know if you ever got like, you know, hazed or teased or anything of that nature. And how did that kind of stuff come up, you know, in the community? Yeah, I got, every once in a while, I guess I got teased. But, you know, Oak Park was such a tight knit community. All my friends, parents were friends with my mom. So, no, I didn't really get teased too much because they knew my mom.

My mom was really strict. I'd get teased when she'd walk out in the middle of McClatchy Park and try to yank me off a basketball court because the lights were on and I wasn't home. And they'd be like, oh, yo, here comes your mom. I'm like, got to go. But, you know, that you mentioned my mom and that's really what gives me a lot of hope because so much right now is dividing us. So whether it's black versus white, you know, whether it's gay versus straight or all the difference, you know, poor versus rich and all those sort of things that

divide us. And, you know, my mom grew up on a small farm in Minnesota. She was born in 1939. They didn't really have TVs or anything. The first time she ever met a black person was when she was a teenager because Painesville, Minnesota has, I think I Googled it a couple of years ago. It's got like 2000 people in it now. I think how many people Painesville, Minnesota had in 1939. And my grandfather grew up in that same town and his college from Mississippi, is traveling across the country. My grandmother was a music teacher. So she brings and invites him to the farm for dinner. That's the first time my mom ever saw a black person. Probably the last time until she got to college. And my father grew up very poor on a farm in Nebraska.

I can't imagine in Hamlin, Nebraska, there was any black people. There's probably nobody black there now. Went into the military, went to University of Wyoming, and they end up in Sacramento adopting a black child and raising me in Oak Park. And he died

when I was five, so he never actually lived in Oak Park. So if she can do it, then we can all do it. Like, how is it that this woman decided to adopt a black child when she grew up where she grew up? Like, she just loved everybody. It didn't she if somebody needed help, that's and she could provide it. She was going to provide it.

And she saved my life at three months old. If I had grown up in foster care and bounced around all I to see what, I definitely wouldn't have had the opportunity or chances that I had. And so I just always think about that. And I watched her every day helping whoever needed help. And I'm thinking, if she can do it, we can do it. Because if you think about her, she's the person you would think would never do what she did

growing up where she grew up with the experiences she grew up with. But I don't know what it is my grandmother and grandfather put into her head or her heart growing up. I don't know what that was. But like I doubt anybody would ever think a Painesville, Minnesota girl would live in the heart of Oak Park and be a really big community leader. But she did it. So if she can do it, we can all do it. And we just got to have a little bit more compassion and empathy for each other and open our ears and

shut our mouth a little bit more. Last question here is, do you think that fitness saved your life? Like, do you recall, you know, is there a moment where you were scrapping with somebody and, you know, you had to be strong enough or you had to chase after somebody or whatever the situation might be? Are there scenarios that you can think of where it has saved you on a physical side i'm sure mental side it probably saves you almost every single day but on the physical side is there anything anything stand

out yeah i think mentally it keeps me sane and uh there's days i don't want to work out but i'm like no i'm gonna feel really horrible later today if I don't work out. So I just force myself to, um, I would say a couple of ways. Yes. Uh, physically it probably did. I think one, I think it provides you confidence,

both physical confidence and just kind of the way you look. And I think that probably avoids a lot of confrontations when people just look at you and go, I don't think I want to take that dude today. Um, and then I think when you're in that fight, you know, it's always amazing where you think somebody's in really good shape. But a 10 second fight is a long time. If you can't control your, you know, I've watched friends of mine that box that were in great shape.

And in the first round, they're completely done because they can't moderate their energy. first round, they're completely done because they can't moderate their energy. So I'd say yes, but both by just when you're in shape, I think it builds confidence. And I think that avoids fights by itself. And then when you're in a fight, yeah, absolutely. Like I say, I work out every day. My wife works out every day. My kids are really active. I think just working out, sports in general, they build a lot of confidence. You have to work through challenging things, and it helps you in life a lot, working out and playing sports. You guys got anything real particular you want to hit them with before we go? Well, I did want to ask, you know you were saying that obviously i believe that a majority officer is great people i know that um but there are some individuals there that after a while they

probably shouldn't be there uh situations we've seen recently those officers probably shouldn't have been officers now um i i what we've kind of come to hear from talking to other officers here is that it's kind of difficult to get rid of those people even when you know that they're there um is there any changes there to make that an easier process when you know hey this guy's been doing this over and over and over again um has there been any changes to make that easier because i know that they like i think unions make it kind of difficult to do that yeah Yeah, I hear a lot about unions lately. And I think unions probably get a little bit of a bad rap. Our union hasn't prevented me from doing anything.

Okay. So, I guess as a manager, would I, on one hand, would I love it that, like, if I'm done with you, I could just snap my fingers and you're fired? I guess part of me would say, yeah, that would be nice. Like, that'd be really good. But I think as a society, that would be very bad for us. We've seen times in our country before unions came about that managers just abused their employees. I mean, the Teamsters came around that, and thensters got too strong and they abused a lot of people. But, you know, so there's nothing that our union has prevented me from doing.

There's disagreements that the union has had on discipline that I have. And there's a process for that go to. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I don't. But that's a process. And I think for the most part, it can be tweaked a little bit, probably in some areas. For the most part, I think that's a good process. Where I do think we could change is is the aftermath. So a lot of people question the accountability of law enforcement because they don't know. They think they know because they don't hear anything that nothing happens. But like, if you just take our department, I think the same manager just released something a few weeks ago when they were protesting his house.

I mean, we've essentially fired well over 12 people in just a couple of years I've been here. But you probably don't know that because the law doesn't allow me to talk about it. So like I could fire somebody and I could tell you that they don't work here anymore, but that's about all I can tell you. So now as a community person, you're like, well, what, they just retire and go sit on the beach, even though I just watched a video that shows some pretty bad stuff. And so I do think some of the changes that could help, it won't solve everything. But I think some of the changes, for example, like if we as a police department anywhere in California fire somebody and they've gone through their appeals.

And so they've appealed it and it's been upheld that we should be able to release that. We should like they're fired. They did something egregious enough to get fired. We should be able to release that. We should like they're fired. They did something egregious enough to get fired. We should be able to release that. And I think that will show people, oh, they did help that guy accountable. But right now we can't talk about it in most circumstances. And so even when we do hold them accountable, people don't think we did. And so and I think that's a disservice to the good police officers. I think it's a disservice to our community. And so I think some of those things might change in the near future, which I think is a good thing. But in terms of the unions, I mean, there's rules. We all should follow rules like you wouldn't want to be an employee of an organization. And I know a lot of times maybe private industry is like that. But you don't want just anybody can fire you for any reason. Like, oh, I didn't like the way you combed your hair today. You're fired.

I mean, so, I mean, we want good employees that do good work every day and can feel comfortable at work. I mean, one of my biggest priorities is, one, build that trust between law enforcement and community, but also create an environment that's very healthy for our members. Because the more healthy and happy they are, the better job they're going to do out in the community. And if every turn I look around, if I look wrong, I'm going to get fired. That's not a healthy environment. And so I don't know that, at least here anyway, maybe some other places are a little bit different, but our union here has, I mean, there's never been a time where I thought, where I wanted

to issue some sort of discipline, whether it's termination or days off or written rep where I said, oh, I can't do it because the union is going to fight me. I do it. And then the union does their job. And, you know, at some times it goes to an arbitrator and the arbitrator decides who they want to side with. And that's our process. And I think it's a, it's a pretty good process. It takes a while, but like, if somebody is that much a concern for our community, we put them on admin leave while the process is going. So, you know, if they're that, if they're, if it's that sort of situation, then they're not out on our streets. I would imagine it'd be hard to get the officers proper training because you mentioned earlier that you have about

a hundred less police officers. And then I'm sure it would make it difficult to manage, you know, who's out on the, you know, out on the streets and who's training and so forth. Do you guys feel like you have enough for people to get continued training? Yeah. Training's a priority. We kind of modify that all the time and come up with either new training, additional training. I mean, we've added a ton of things that our people get trained on, both as new recruits, but also ongoing. So police officers are like teachers where teachers have to go annually to additional classes. Police officers the same way they have to. So our officers go through a whole week of retraining every well not retraining but just training every year and then they also do a bunch of training that they select right if

i'm interested in narcotics i might go to a narcotic school if i'm interested in swat i might go to a swat school but every officer gets the same week of training every year um so you know as we go on i mean i hate to say we enough. We always need more officers, but training is a priority, so we make sure our officers get a good amount of training. And that's a continuous evaluation and additions. We bring a group called Brother to Brother, most of which have spent a significant amount of time in prison but are doing amazing things in Del Paso Heights.

Might be a good person to have on your podcast one day, but they come out to our academy and they talk to the recruits and they talk about their story, how they grew up, how they ended up in prison, what changed in their life to now that they're trying to help the community. And that's good for our officers to hear because you can tend to dehumanize people that have spent their whole life in prison and now they're committing crimes. And my whole goal really was to humanize. These are human beings that have made some really bad decisions that there has to be consequences for your decisions. But, you know, if they've changed their life and they can help our community, then you can't hold that past against them forever.

They've changed, and now they're your partner. Now let's work together. So we bring women that were trafficked out to the academy to meet the recruits and talk about their stories. So these guys can understand the circumstances of what take people down certain roads because at the end of the day, our mission statement is to improve the quality of life in our city.

It doesn't say to arrest 10 people a day, to cite five people a day. So whatever way an officer can do that each shift, that's what our job is. It might not be take that person to jail. And it definitely isn't that way for girls that are traffic that oftentimes start at 10 years old, 11 years old, 12 years. My daughters are 15 and 13. There's this young woman that I've become friends with that started. She's from Oak Park. She's a lot younger than me, so I didn't know her growing up.

But her first day on the street being trafficked was 12 years old. And when I first met her, my daughter was 12. And I'm like, I could not imagine my daughter standing out on Stockton Boulevard with all these men picking her up and doing all those things with her. I'm like, man, I can't even believe you're alive right now. Like, how could you be a healthy person that's helped other people after going through that kind of trauma? And so that's what we all need to understand. And then we can be better equipped to do our job and improve the quality of life of folks in our community. Awesome.

Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. And real quick, shout out to Oak Park. Although I didn't spend that much time there, the first five years of my life were spent in living in Oak Park, 7th Ave. All right. Yeah, yeah. So it's amazing.

Yeah. Anyway, sorry, I just All right. Yeah, yeah. So it's amazing. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. I just had to throw that in there. That might be the best neighborhood in all of Sacramento if I do say so myself. Yeah. Tighten it, right? That's right. Yeah.

Please make sure you guys are following the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram, at MB Power Project on Twitter. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where are you at? And Seema Iyeng on Instagram and YouTube and Seema Yin Yang on Twitter I'm at Mark Smelly Bell strength is never a weakness

weakness is never a strength catch you guys later