Sibling Revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson - Bishop Omar Jahwar and Officer Ryan Tillman: “Brothers from Another Mother”

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

Kate and Oliver are joined by Bishop Omar Jahwar and Ryan Tillman on this episode of “Sibling Revelry.” Even though they aren’t actually related, the two met and had an instant spiritual connection, referring to each other as “brothers from another mother.” Bishop Omar Jahwar has devoted his career to curbing gang violence and Ryan Tillman is an active police officer and founder of Breaking Barriers United. Together, they’ve been holding conversations about race in our country and working to facilitate honest and open dialogues.Executive Producers: Kate Hudson, Oliver Hudson, and Sim SarnaProduced by Allison BresnickEditor: Josh WindischMusic by Mark HudsonThis show is brought to you by Cloud10 and powered by Simplecast.This episode is sponsored by Babbel (promo code SIBLING) and Sakara.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. September is a great time to travel, especially because it's my birthday in September, especially internationally. Because in the past, we've stayed in some pretty awesome Airbnbs in Europe. Did we've one in France, we've one in Greece, we've actually won in Italy a couple of years ago. Anyway, it just made our trip feel extra special.

So if you're heading out this month, consider hosting your home on Airbnb with the co-host feature. You can hire someone local to help manage everything. Find a co-host at Airbnb.ca slash host. Hey, it's your favorite jersey girl, Gia Judice. Welcome to Casual Chaos, where I share my story. This week, I'm sitting down with Vanderpump Rural Star, Sheena Shea. I don't really talk to either of them, if I'm being honest.

There will be an occasional text, one way or the other, from me to Ariana. Maybe a happy birthday from Ariana to me. I think the last time I talked to Tom, it was like, congrats on America's Got Talent. This is a combo you don't want to miss. Listen to Casual Chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It may look different, but Native Culture is alive. My name is Nicole Garcia, and on Burn Sage, Burn Bridges, we aim to explore that culture. Somewhere along the way, it turned into this full-fledged award-winning comic shop.

That's Dr. Lee Francis IV, who opened the first Native comic bookshop. Explore his story along with many other Native stories on the show, Burn Sage Burn Bridges. Listen to Burn Sage Burn Bridges on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Kate Hudson. And my name is Oliver Hudson. We wanted to do something that highlighted our relationship. And what it's like to be siblings. We are a sibling rivalry.

No, no. Sibling revelry. Don't do that with your mouth. Sibling revelry. That's good. So today's episode's really interesting. We recorded this back in June. My friend Kristen, she connected us with two guys, two men, Bishop Omar and Ryan Tillman.

they call themselves uh they call themselves brothers from another mother yeah they had now we got into that too they're like it's how the episode starts is how they met and their sort of spiritual connection this is a really interesting episode yeah well well ryan tilman okay by the way who um i've kept in touch with uh i'm actually doing his podcast in a few days um he is a police officer here in California, and he also started something called Breaking Barriers United, which invests in youth by going into neighborhoods and implementing relationship building and mentoring programs to ultimately improve police community relations and increase transparency. He's just an amazing, I guess I can call him a kid because I'm 43 years old. He's just got a light,

a bright light around him. I really, really love what he is doing. Really love what he is doing. He has got just great energy and every, every intention that he has moving forward is just good. And Omar, Bishop Omar, I just was like, he was so beautiful. And the work that he's done in his career, I mean, he's devoted everything to, you know, trying to curb gang violence. Travels around the world. And it's like he's a mediator. He resolves conflict and he works with... Yeah, he's been doing it for a while.

He did with the Bloods and the Crips. He was the guy who created the first truce between the Bloods and the Crips, you know? So he has been bringing people together for a long, long time. Yeah, Bishop Omar and Ryan was about to fly to Dallas because they were doing this summit. They had this big panel talking about everything that's going on in the world right now and things that they can do to open the dialogue and, honestly, make things better.

But it was interesting. We got into some really interesting conversations. Yeah, well, Bishop Omar, he's focused right now on this Heel America tour, which is it's a course correction conversation on race, citizenship, and humanity. And I think just overall, we had a really open conversation with these guys. about what's going on in the country right now, police brutality, their personal experience is being black men dealing with the police.

And then how these types of conversations can help create change and more. And I think it's important to say, too, that Ryan Tillman is an active officer. So he's really trying to internally shift the culture and talk about it, be transparent and have open dialogues about it. So this was awesome.

And we got right to talking about the spiritual connection that brought them together. And so I hope you guys enjoy this episode of brothers from another mother. How did you guys meet? Through Kristen and through Journey 8, Kristen and I got to talk. And she was like, oh, you have to meet Bishop Omar. So then me and Bishop Omar did an interview together on Journey 8, which was really, really cool, actually. So then I found out Bishop Omar is like my big.

brother from another mother. And then that's kind of how it kind of be. To be honest, man, just my feeling it was spirit-led because it was such a natural connection. When you guys first started talking with each other on this, what do you think brought you together? I would probably say it's more of like with the climate we're living in, you know, there's a connection that me and Bishop Omar have, which without us even realizing it was a spiritual connection, the deep spiritual connection, and the desire and

passion to change what's going on for the better, you know, whether it's race, whether it's policing. I just so happen to bring a policing aspect because I'm a current day police officer. I got to work today, actually. And so, but Bishop Omar is doing all the, you know, the work he's doing with gangs and just bringing unity to people. I think that's kind of how our conversation got centered. Correct me if I'm wrong on that, Bishop. No, man, I mean, it was that. I think it was what you just described and when you are looking when you are looking for truth

and looking for people who are truth tellers it feels natural when you run into them you just know that it's true you know it's natural you don't have to keep vetting it because see this is a moment where everybody's getting purified your ideas your thoughts

you know everyone is putting a lens on your hot lens on you So it's easy to see the truth when you see it. So when I was listening to that rhyme, I was just stunned at his vulnerability. I said that. I was going to be vulnerable as a police officer, taking off my shells and all of that.

Because I don't get that. I don't get that a whole lot. Most people are trying to hide, but he does not. And so when I'm running into people that's like that, you know, when I'm running into people that's like that, it's just such a natural connection. You don't have to do that and say, okay, finally, we're meeting somebody else.

So whatever the reason we are meeting, I'm okay with. I'm open to it. Well, Ryan, where does that vulnerability come from? Like, how did that manifest itself? You know, honestly, that vulnerability comes from, like, so I had no aspiration to being a police officer, like, at all. Like, I grew up, couldn't stand police officers. I felt like they, you know, if you were a police officer,

you became one because you got picked on in high school. And so you're like, man, I'm about to pick on everybody else. So I'm about to become a police officer. Like, I had some bad experiences with them, because I was either harassed, my family was harassed. And so, like, when it came time, you fast forward in my life, my wife got pregnant with our first son. And, you know, I was like, what am I going to do?

Like, I don't know as far as what I want to do in life. I was selling insurance at the time. And so, you know, my dad's friend was like, you should become a police officer. And I was like, no, I'm not working for the man. I'm not about to be a pig. Like, that was my mentality. But then I was like, you know, let me pray about it. So I prayed about it.

And I said, God, like, if this is what you want me to do, then open the door, if not close the door. Well, the doors kind of flew open, and I wasn't ready for that door to fly open yet. I was like, oh, shoot, I don't know if I want this. And then finally, when I end up becoming a police officer, I was like, okay, God, like, I see you open the door for me, but, you know, why is it that you open the door here?

This is something I least expected. And then that's when I saw, like, you know what, God's telling me, like, hey, I want you to be better than the officers that mistreated you. I want you to be better than the officers that mistreated our family. I want you to go out there and be vulnerable with the people of the community and realize that, you know, yes, you have a, yes, you have a job to protect and serve, but I want you to realize that the servanthood becomes before anything. You know, you have to die to yourself every single day. And so part of that is me realizing that leading

with empathy, I always tell all my guys, like, lead with empathy and lead with respect. You know, if you leave with those two things and lead with love, those three things, you know, you'll never find yourself in a crazy situation. And even if you do, people will be able to see your heart. And so my dad always said it best. He's like, Ryan, treat everybody like, they're your mom, your dad, your sister, your brother, your cousins. And so I take that same analogy and use that in my day-to-day job as a human being. And I think that's kind of where my transparency comes from is like just recognizing that we're all humans, we're all in this together.

I just got a job. Like last night, I took somebody to jail last night for selling drugs. And this guy was, he's probably in his like late 50s, early 60s, and he's still using drugs. And it was like, I told my partner, I was like, man, this was like probably, I love every time I read somebody that's a cool person. Like the whole way down to the jail, I'm like playing music. I'm playing old school music.

I'm like, man, what you know about this? And he's like, he's like, African-American dude. He's like, man, what do you know about this? And I'm like, man, I know more about this than you do. And so we're going back and forth. But then at the end of the conversation, when I had to go book a man, I was like, hey, man, I'm going to pray for you. He was like, man, not at all.

So I pray for this dude. And he was like, Ryan, man, I'm going to come see you when I get. He was like, I think I'm done with this, man. I was like, yeah, man, like, why I'd be paranoid? And so I just realized, man, we have to be vulnerable. we have to be transparent with one another and recognize that we all are going through, you know, issues, but we got to go through them together. That's amazing.

And, Bishop, and you saw that. I mean, that's an incredible way to sort of approach what you do, given the perception of what policing is, especially right now. You know, how do you get that to infiltrate the entire force? You know what I mean? Like, how do we get someone like you with your. attitude and with the way that you want to go about things leading with love, which is a great, which is just an amazing, you know, way to think. How do you do that, though? It seems big.

Problem seems really big. It is, but for every problem, there's a solution. And so, like, I, before I became a police officer, I had aspirations of going into business. And so what I realized is when God put me in this position as a police officer, not only did he expose to me the things that needed to be changed, but he also exposed to me like, hey, I'm still going to allow you to go into business for yourself, but I'm going to have you go into business where I want you to be directed. And so I started this business, Breaking Barriers United, and I'm actually currently in the process of creating a recruiting platform that is going to be specifically geared towards finding the best quality candidates to infiltrate the system from within, as opposed to trying

to make the changes from outside of it. And so, you know, we're constantly out there trying to identify good qualified candidates, you know, and that could be a cumulative of the things. It's not just say, it's not to say like, hey, you know, you need a college degree. Because there's some people that have college degrees that don't make good cops, you know, but there's some educated people that make great cops. And so, you know, I'm dedicated through my business to try to figure out how we can go out there. And it takes somebody that leads with love and leads with respect and leads with empathy to identify others that can do the same thing. And so I'm out there personally looking for more me. And I'm not saying that in a confident or a cocky way, but it's

just a mere fact of I want somebody to go out there and kind of have that same mindset that I do when they're dealing with people. Amazing. Bishop Omar, you've spent 27 years working in violence intervention, and including gang intervention. You've traveled the world to help resolve conflict. How did you get into this work? Well, you know, my family, of course, has been involved in that kind of lifestyle. My father who has been a pastor for many years, his history prior was that,

had been treats and then my other family members tangential cousins you know all of that and i was the young guy who was coming up and so i always was aware and surrounded by the idea but i was it was almost like but we want you to be different so i was always trying to figure out how i could had this space but uh about 26 27 years ago i started volunteering at a at a youth prison and i would work with the gangs in the youth prison and my role was to find a way that the gangs in the prison could coexist without trying to harm each other. Because if I shot at you and I missed and you shot at me and you missed and we both going be in the prison for the next five years, how are we going to coexist and live civil and then

get out and get out. Because in order to stay in the prison, you got to respect the gang. You got to represent your gang. But in order to get out, you got to denounce it. So it's almost like these young people was living in schizophrenia. But I was was just called to do this. That's just, this is what I do. It's not, I didn't know that I had this gift. But when I started meeting with these gang leaders, it became apparent that that was what I was supposed to do. And then what I found that they were the key, not one key, they were the key in changing the culture, that these guys, that they had, they had an innate ability to transform environments and societies. And so what I began to do, was to take those guys from those prisons because then I started working with the young adult prisons and adult prisons. So I worked with all kinds of gangs and I would take those guys furlorn back to their neighborhoods

and ask them to be my representatives as I talk to young folks about violence because my goal was urban culture should not have a violent tendency because it's poverty and because it's whatever. We should not live as violence as our natural language. And so that is what propelled me to do what I do. So I started companies. I got visionary generation urban specialists.

I have something now called OGU, which I train OGs for 21 days. And then I relaunched them back. So I've been, so I just do it. It's just kind of naturally what I'm drawn to. And now we're doing this deal called Hill America, which is responding to George Floyd and Ahmad Aubrey and Rihanna Taylor, responding to this racial climate and this violent climate. How do we keep it honest, but bring in a concentrated version of greater ideas through spirit and through example?

So I just do it, you know, and it's kind of like natural to me. It's funny. I can remember going into some places where no one spoke English and I'm sitting up talking. And when I got home, I said, well, I should have been nervous. But my brain was like until I got home and said, what was happening? Well, what does it take, though, you know, because when you have two factions, you've got the bloods and the crypts, you have two gangs who just inherently hate each other for, you know, territorial reasons, for drug reasons, you know, street reasons. What is it in the human spirit that you have to sort of find in each of them to connect so then they can sort of understand, wait a minute, what are we doing here? We can actually come together and be civil and non-violent.

Yeah, how do you create that, that space? Yeah. That's the secret sauce. The secret sauce. You know what? And that's what we call it. And I, OG, you're telling me, really, we say, y'all want to know the secret sauce. That's what we do.

So Oliver is an OG. You don't even know he's an OG. I take it. I mean, I've known that. I've known that. I just haven't wanted to say anything, though. I can tell Oliver. I got you.

Yeah, man. So this is the deal. What we tell them, man, like, I do this deal called a box. And in the box, I say, what do you hate? What do you love? What do you feel? What do you need? And I put you inside their box.

And I help them understand who they are. And I say, now, I'm going to create this box for your true identity. But the only way they get, they will allow me to put them in a box is I have to understand their world. So I'm going to tell you, man, one time I made with some bloods. It was about 40 bloods in the pool hall. And I asked the bloods, I said, how? How many of y'all have baby mama trouble? Everybody raised their hand.

I said, how many of y'all broke right now? They raised their hands. How many of y'all dealing with the law? I said, well, let me do an anecdotal diagnosis. What you doing ain't working. It's not scientific. I ain't got no protocol. I just, and I tell them, I said, look, man, if you give me a shot,

I bet I can give you a better outcome than you have. Because there are people getting paid studying you like you, big foot, like you'd have locked this monster like you got zilla and you getting shot being you you have a market advantage but you don't understand your marketability because all the things you see is death and then i would ask them questions like what if you don't die what if you live what what if what if 27 is not like 21 so you got to ask those questions because you're right the human spirit wants to go to self-actualization but it starts at survival and so when you're in survival with your mind, say I can suspend all the rules.

But once you get out of survival and start saying, this palette is no longer survival. It is how I'm living. There's someone has to explain to you what life is like. And then another thing, with the gangs, I would explain to them their gangs. I would tell them what, you know,

what set they came from and why is it? You know, I would go through all of this historical doubt on the gangs because I learned that I embraced it. And most of them didn't even understand their games. So I'm saying, you're willing to die for what you don't understand, but won't live for the family that you say you love. That's something wrong. So let me help

you reorganize. We would tell them get them to zero. Like Charles Madison is like a negative 9. Jeffrey Dahmer, negative 9. Most people are negative 2, negative 3. And they're trying to get to 0. And at 0, you can actively be a part of your own

decision making. So that's my role. I get them to zero and then the human spirit takes over. Then your spirituality takes over. Then your examples take over. And you become, this new creature. Wow. Yeah.

That's amazing. I love that box analogy. That's great. But then you have to get, but then there's a family aspect to it, though. So in a sense, you're almost tearing someone away from their family as far as the game goes, right? There's an identity with the group. And so there's another aspect to it of trying to tear them away from something that they

So remember, remember what I was saying, I took the OGs back and I furloughed them because we were going to meet with real OGs. See, you're right. That's very good perception. So you got to meet with those who they see as family and say, I'm trying to lift a family member. Who is, who, who would want me, who would want to deny me an opportunity to give him, to give him a shot to, or her, a shot to really be at their best self? And we're not trying to infiltrate any of your norms.

we're trying to create a new normal for him because he has a daughter or she has a son or they got a grandmother that's sick or they got potential. So are you saying that we should deny this person on some oath that most of us don't really believe in a way?

So you know, you've got to have OG conversations. It's real. And as long as you are pure and what you are saying, they will allow you the freedom of growth. But see, it's when you're not pure about it. It's not when you start, when you're using it as a cover scheme.

That's when people get nervous about you. But when it's really honest and it is what it is. Like I said, what I meant, Ryan, my brain said, he's the truth. So I released my inhibitions about what's his motive. See, I'm not trying to check his heart. I'm checking his fruit. See, I can't check your heart. I check your fruit.

What are you producing? And then if your fruit, your food is producing, your heart going to be purified because it's going to be too close to the fire. So you can't fake something that you're not, man, in your natural environment. it's going to reveal who you really are. And so how did you guys then link up in that, okay, wait, we have a relationship here. There's something here.

There's something bubbling. How did you manifest that relationship to move forward to do good? Let me say, I'm going to let Ryan talk on this, but man, so I told you, we have this big event on the 24th. I mean, I got Mark Cuban, WV, folks. I got everybody, man.

Mac Man. I got them all, man, in one place. And I said to Kristen and to Ryan, when I saw his spirit, I said, every platform that I am afforded, I need that spirit to be a part of that. Because the more light you get, it drives out darkness. See, it's really simple for me. When I see light, I'm trying to expose that light to dark places, places where folks are afraid to go into those crevices. When you turn the light on, it just becomes real. So it was very, this was not all for me.

When I heard him and my spirit affirmed it and then I saw his work, I said, my job is to say, what platform can I give him so that his life can shot? You know, I've been doing the work that I've been doing for about since I became a police officer, which was almost seven years ago. And when I started that I've been doing, I've been traveling across the country, speaking at schools, speaking at colleges, speaking of police departments, trying to change his narrative. and it wasn't until George Floyd that got killed that, you know, it's almost, I referred to, like, the commercial with vacuum cleaner. Like, nobody's paying attention to a commercial with vacuum cleaner until they actually need a vacuum cleaner. And that's kind of what happened with this whole George Floyd thing is that when it actually happened, people kind of realized and recognize the work that I have been doing. And so a lot of people came to me. But the reason I bring it up is because we talk about doors opening, Bishop Omar said something right now that was, it's so, like, it's been a story of my life for, like,

last three or four weeks is I've met some really key people that I actually essentially got me to you you guys today. God has just been working and saying, hey, look, okay, now is the time to spread this message out further. And so, you know, everybody that I've been meeting recently, you know, everybody just had this genuine spirit. Bishop Beaumart said, you know, I always, I'm very close, close, you know, closed knit just because I don't know what a person's intentions are. But recently, like, God's been putting in my life some people that I can just see like have genuine intentions that want to change the way we see things i'm curious because you know this all of this intention is so beautiful and i'm i always go to solution when you're

solution oriented like how do you actually implement what it is you're trying to shift and change so for me um there's a few things so kind of just going down the list so i have i i do it all started with me speaking in schools and churches actually. I do this thing called the initiative workshop where I come to your organization and I come tell my story about who I am, you know, why, you know, where I come from, the bad experiences I had, I asked you like, have you ever had a bad experience? And you'll tell me, yes, this is what my bad experience was. And then we, that leads into me going into why I got into police work, the training that I received as a police officer. And then in front of all your friends, then we transition into putting you through

scenarios as a police officer that we deal with on a daily day basis. And that part is the funniest part because now I get to play bad guy. You have to play police officer and then I just have fun with it. But it's a learning curve and we do about five or six different scenarios and we bring it back to, okay, now that you guys know the human side of Ryan Tillman, let's talk about the actual the police officer side of Ryan Tillman that I deal with day to day. So I do that presentation which kind of led me into doing motivational speaking, diversity workshops, talking about, you know, how this, this break in racism in our country and where it comes from, where it stems from, how do we change that?

So that all happened. And then as we started doing that, you know, I recognize that people needed to hear this conversation more. People wanted to hear this conversation more. So that's when I started a podcast about a year and a half ago, two years ago called the It's Needed podcast. And where that name came from is everybody, every time I told somebody what I did, they're like, oh my goodness, that's so needed.

So I created this podcast called It's Needed with his buddy name, well, my buddy name AJ. He's a police officer in Ohio. His Instagram is, oh, no, it's the Popo. And so we created this, we created this podcast. And he's a phenomenal human being. I love that. He's another one of my brothers. And that podcast really just expanded, like really, really quickly. And so that from there, we held a conference locally, which invited out all the public figures of the community. So your chiefs, your mayors, your city managers, your teachers, your students. And then ultimately, that's all led to this bigger, this grand scheme plan, which is what I've been working. It's like my baby is this recruiting aspect is infiltrating the system from within.

So I'm all about police reform. You know what I mean? I think people get afraid of the word police reform because, or officers get afraid because they get this mindset, oh, they're trying to tear down policing. They're trying to take it away from us. No, that's not it at all. We're just trying to find ways to do things better. So I'm all about it.

So for me, I'm like, well, what's the best way to change policing? Well, it's by hiring better police officers, you know, qualified police officers, diversify police officers, police officers that look like the communities that they're policing, that's what I've been working on in the totality of things. So I say all that to say is like, I have, I'm like you get like you get, I'm very solution based. Like we can talk about problems for days, but at the end of the day, what's the solution? Right. So for me, I'm very active and very intentional about the solutions that I, I'm bringing to the table. So that way I can confidently stand on any platform and say, you know, and call a spade a spade. One of my pet peeves is when,

you know, anybody can go on Instagram and put up a half. hashtag, you know, hashtag George Floyd, hashtag, you know, police reform, hashtag defund police. But what are you going to do in two months from now when all this is over and you have the next big headline that's out? Like, what are you still actively doing? And so since I've been doing that work from day one, like I still work a 40 hour a week job. Like as soon as we get off today, I'm going to work and going to go on patrol all while having a wife and three kids at home. And so I will stand on a platform and confidently say, what are you doing to actively change our society and our culture that we're living in? Because outside,

of, you know, being a social media influencer, what actual real work are you doing? And everything I just mentioned is the real work that I'm doing to try to change the narrative that we have today. Bonjour. What's what you do? Oh, bon, bon, bon, bon, yeah, yeah. Oliver's French. Oliver and I know French.

Oliver and I both learned French. I actually took it in high school, didn't retain it much. And then I got back into my back. to learn French. Babel is, it's really, it's an amazing, it's an amazing app. On Babel, there's 14 languages you can choose from. Other than the fact that it would be fun to be completely, you know, at least understand and be able to communicate in a different tongue, it's also amazing for your brain. So Babel can actually help you learn faster than you think. The thing is, is that every time I try to learn in different language,

it's hard for it to stick like it doesn't it doesn't stay in your brain and then when you try babble you're going to get hooked because what it does is it makes it fun it makes it easy and then you start having conversations daily lessons 10 to 15 minutes they start by teaching you words and phrases en francais and espion or wherever whatever language you prefer it you know you'll find yourself having you know actual conversations these lessons are thoughtfully created by over 100 language experts, and their teaching method has been scientifically proven to be effective across multiple studies. They even have speech recognition technology that helps improve your pronunciation and accent. That's what's cool about it, too. There are moments where

your accent kind of sucks, and then they give you, they prompt you on how to say it correctly. So it's proven to get you speaking the language within weeks, which is awesome. As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to start, I've been doing French and French comes easy to me because I have a real sort of foundation in French. But I think I'm going to, I'm going to say right now, I'm going to go on Babble, I'm going to start Spanish. And this is, I'm going to see where I get in the next month. It's available as an app or online. So your progress will be synced across all devices. So right now when you purchase a three month subscription.

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S-A-R-A-R-A-com slash sibling to get 20% off your first order. Do it. Sikara.com slash sibling. Do it. I wonder, just to get both of your perspectives on this, when people are talking about, there's so much, clearly George Floyd, this horrific moment in history has changed history, I believe, that the conversation is at the forefront will continue to be. And the fire that's sort of ignited right now is, I hope, this great opportunity where we will start to see people actually implementing it be. beyond the hashtag. But how far, where do we start? Meaning there's the police, but there's also, you know, the communities.

We're learning about redlining right now. We're learning about systemic racism and things that I think so many people haven't been educated on. Money inside of the police force. How do we really talk about the allocation of funding when we are 20 to 30% budgeted towards the police force. And then so much of that budget could be actually going into, you know, whether it be inner city schools, whether it be health care system, like, how do you tackle these questions when you're talking about such enormous issues?

So that's a great question. I always like to use examples. And I'm a former college athlete. I play college football at UNLV. And when I play college football, one of the things that's, you know, one of the. things that I realized while it was there is like those football programs invest a lot of money into us as athletes and why do they invest so much money into us as athletes is because they know on Saturday when we kick off we better perform to our highest ability so if you go on to YouTube right now and you can YouTube the Michigan University of Michigan's football facility they just got a new facility and it's pretty cool they have this thing called the car wash and as soon as you leave the field you take off your shoulder pads you put them on the rack they go clean them and then you walk through this maze of showers that basically hits you from all angles, and then you go right into a cold pool, and you walk through this little maze of a cold pool, and it's so that way that

cold water should start regenerating your body to heal faster. Well, I don't even know, I don't even want to imagine how much something like that caused, but I would imagine it probably cause a decent amount of money. But then they put that money into it is because they want the University of Michigan to win football game. So when we talk about this concept of defunding the police, on one hand, you have people saying police need more training, which you're absolutely right. If the officer that says, oh, we're trained enough needs to exit the profession because you're stupid to think you've ever arrived. We can always do better. We can always train better. But on the other end of that, in order to train officers, you also need funding to train officers. So I just looked at our budget

for the police department that I work at. And the two top things that our budget goes to is one training and two police salaries. So you have to dissect those two things. Police training, why would you not want the best officers out there that are trained to the best of their ability to patrol your streets? Because at any game of time, they can show up at your door, they're going to have to protect you or your family or somebody else. And I better, I want, I know for me and my family, I want to make sure that I have the best trained officer out there. On the flip side of that is you've got to have to be competitive with the salaries for some police officers in certain places because, again, you won't qualify candidates. So you lower the salary. You may also going to lower the quality candidates that you're going to get into that position.

And so, you know, you say, hey, take all the money. Okay, well, where are the candidates going to come from now? Who's going to actually want to do this job that's qualified to do it? Because we talk about qualified candidates. And so, you know, one of the, there's, if I can sum up this whole conversation and everything I've been doing to one word, it would be balanced. Like right now in society, we're lacking balance. We have two extremes. You have the extreme is, hey, let's defund them.

Let's abolish them. You have the other extreme is, hey, police can do no wrong. There's no balance. Even in politics, we see it. You know, you're either Democrat or Republican. And there is nowhere in the middle. And if you're in the middle, it's like, well, shame on you. So we lack balance.

And it's the same thing when it comes to talking about funding the police is I'm all about reallocation of funds. But at the same time, we can't get this idea in our head to say, hey, look, let's take all the money away from them because the police are a vital source to communities. Right now we're seeing in Atlanta, I don't know if you guys have been paying attention to the headlines. But after they prosecuted that officer, a lot of officers that stopped showing up to work. And so the mayor and some of the other city officials, they called for outside help.

to come help Atlanta and they're in all the outside agencies say hey we're not coming because officers are afraid to go to work they're like hey if I do my job and something bad happens well now I know I'm not going to have any backing and so they they I think the last time I checked they had about a thousand calls hold so imagine you being a person that calls a police because something is going on in your house and dispatch tells you hey we're not coming to your house we don't have any officers to show up yeah yeah I mean that's crazy I guess the question is who wants to to be a cop nowadays you know what i mean no i do of course you do it because you're because you're the man that way but if you're coming in as someone who wants to you know protect and serve

it's a scary proposition i mean what does it look like right now as far as even recruiting goes i mean well bishop omar said it best um just like he was called to do the work my job it's it's a calling you got to be called to do this um and so once you've identified that call And now it's my job to help you get in the doors and help navigate you to be the best officer you can be for our communities. And so that's why I see it as opportunity. You and I talked about earlier, Kate, as far as seeing this is the opportunity, being optimistic about it. That's how I see it. And just, you know, I just wrote, I wrote an article for this, it was Police One and Lexi Paul, these are two different sites.

I wrote an article talking about why right now is the best time to become a police officer. So there was another officer that I wrote an article that said, this is the worst time to become a police officer. police officer and if you're ready it you should leave and then all this other stuff so i wrote a contrary article to that basically saying this is the best time because you know things are changing and we should be glad about that so why not be a part of the change and figure out how we can redo things better as opposed to complaining about it so but again it has to come with balance like in order for me to go get some of the best qualified candidates i got to be able to go out there and say hey look man like i want you to go out there and put your life on the line i want you go out there and handle every

call for service i want you to go out there and deal with mental health i want you go out there take people in jail, but at the same time, we're not going to compensate you. Can I say some moments? I was thinking when you were just asking about the funding allocation. You know, it's like this. If you have right now, people don't buy albums. You know, they buy singles. You know, they just download the single, you know.

We get to that album later. See, the single right now is police brutality. And so when you're talking about funds and how you do it, that's what I've been telling city. officials and others, federal officials who I'm consulting or helping, I'm saying to them, because there is a lot. There's a lot we can say and a lot that we can do when it comes down to justice and violence and violence, but you got to go.

And someone told me that one of my mentors, Buster's the story said, Omar, you need to deal with the single. The single right now is police brutality. So let's figure out how to use the resources and the quality controls that we know and that we can help implement to make. make that piece better. And we're going to get to the album because the album is good because redlining, that's part of the album.

But we won't deal with the single right now, you know. And that is that this is bread out of it. But in order, I'm just saying in order to deal with that single, in order to listen to that single and truly appreciate that single, do you have to hear that single in the context of the whole album? You know what I mean? Like when we're talking about police brutality, We have to understand redlining.

We have to understand, you know, even why the police was even created in the first place. You're right in that if you're trying to get an over, you know, we call it, we say we understand. If you're trying to understand the idea in its complexity. But see, if you've lived it, there's a difference in me being talked in theory about it and understand what the practical applications of it are. So depending on what lens you're coming from, I agree with you that those who want to become part of an activist community

or really jump in, the more you know, the better equip you on. But you shouldn't be paralyzed by, I have to learn it all in order for me to be effective. See, because it'll stop because this is a journey. I tell people all the time that peace is a process, it's not an event. they asked me, you know, because I did a crippling blood piece treat. I said, that's not, you know, that wasn't the end. That would be it been all game was over.

So the process continues because you are ever on this learning journey. So that's a beautiful thing when you start saying, wait a minute, this is. And this is another thing, too, Oliver, watch this. When I learned that two times two is four, that don't mean I disrespect two plus two. See, it's just increasing. You see what I'm talking about? That's an OG statement right here. Yeah, that's OG statement.

So you just, so it begins to build from where you are. And that's a beautiful thing. And it shouldn't cause you to be at all contained in a box. And it's true. So that's why you really can't get to healing until you examine the sickness as thorough as you can. But at some point, you have to say this requires a certain triage. a certain emergency application so that we can get to some deeper levels.

But we do know that that deep level. And like I said, I have something called urban specialists. I've had urban specialists for the last 12 years. Urban specialists, we train OGs, we do violence, we do a lot of stuff. And it's really powerful. And it to me is the key to unlocking these other doors in urban communities, especially as it relates to generational poverty and all kinds of stuff. So I do it.

I have a ministry that I believe in, kingdom worship. But again, at some point, I pull away from my understanding of what I'm doing and try to overstand where people are because some people are passionate. And so you got to become, Henry now and said, you got to become immersed in someone else's condition in order for you to actually give them quality care. So I've become immersed in where they are and try to lead them through ways. that they may not understand. Because if you're walking through a land field,

a field, you know, it has landmines and I know where the landmines are. My role is to say, I'm going to make sure you don't get blown up. And then I can teach you the strategy of how I figured out. But the first goal is let me get you out of this place so you won't destroy yourself. Well, and on that point you bring up something, Curtis. So I went to our city hall meeting last week. And at the city hall meeting, you had a lot of young adults there, you know, from, you know, 16 to 21, 22 years old, and they're there to basically boycott

because this meeting was to approve our police budget for the next year. And so they were all there boycotting, you know, passionate about, you know, defund the police. One girl even said, hey, you know, first we're going to defund the police and then after we do that, we're going to talk about abolishing them. And so here's the unique thing about the whole thing, though, is that, you know, the people that were coming up to speak, they were, you know, some were white, somewhere Hispanic, somewhere Asian. And as I'm at this meeting, you know, some of them were saying, you know, you know, the United States comes from

deep, really rooted history of, you know, slavery and, you know, we got a, you know, it's evil stuff in the United States and all this other stuff and black lives matter and all this other stuff. But here was what, here's the whole irony of it. The irony of it was there was only two people, two black people at the meeting, me and my lieutenant.

So on one end, these people are there talking about, you know, we need to help the, help the environment out and, you know, black lives matter and this, this and that. But on the same exact can, they're basically talking about taking the food off of the way for me to provide for my own family off of the table because now you want to not only take my job away, but abolish everything I have. And so one of the things that you say right now that's kind

of critical, Bishop Omar, is the fact of I'm somebody that's lived it. I've had ex-girlfriends that couldn't tell their family who they were dating because I was black. I've had an ex-girlfriend whose dad said, you better not bring home any inward babies. I've had, you know, I've walked in places and had been followed around because I looked suspicious. So I've lived racial prejudicedness, you know, my entire life. And it was funny because for a while I forgot about a lot of it. It wasn't until the whole George Floyd thing that I start remembering all these experiences that I've had in my past.

And I'm like, shoot, I forgot about all that. And so I've lived it. But at the same time, instead of getting caught up in where my past says and where my history is, I've been so preoccupied with the solution that I'm actually out there trying to be the solution in my day-to-day work. And so why everybody's at this board meeting talking about, the history and where we come from and all the other stuff so they could understand it i'm like you guys should have been if you guys that passionate about it you guys should have been doing this

for years ago and so i get it now you know on the i like you said kate i completely agree the whole george floyd thing is forever going to alter our history as a country for the positive but at the same time we need to become fixated with the solutions as opposed to just raise it like i i really believe that there are people out there right now that are trying to push their own agenda on the hill of black agenda you know what i mean they're trying to use this this race, this whole black agenda, but they're trying to use their own, push your own agenda on the hills of that. And so I'm like, man, I'm so preoccupied with solutions like going to Bishop Omar thing on Wednesday. I'm like, man, let's get, let's get

to it. Let's apply this as opposed to just talking about it. Yeah, it's interesting because the pendulum seems to just be swinging all over the place though right now, you know? I mean, you have the extremes of abolished the police and then it swings all the way over here. You know, I mean, at some point we've got to find the middle ground. I think it's important, though, because I do feel like that there has been a shift in consciousness. Overall, there's a global shift in consciousness. I guess the important thing, though, is how do we keep this momentum? It's like what you said.

Once all the protests are gone and everyone returns back to their lives, how does this movement sort of keep pushing forward? And I guess my question is how integral are white people in pushing this thing through and actually, you know, making sure that we are seeing change? You are asking the right question, brother. The founding documents of America, there's a speech, Frederick Douglass 1852, and the speech is, what is the 4th of July 2? a slave. It's a beautiful speech. It's a speech where he talks in rough terms. It's a rough speech.

Like, I said this to some people over the day. I don't know who asked him to speak at that 4th of July celebration, but they got five. You know what the hooking man to do with? He's killing him, bro. I'm talking about he killed him. He's saying 4th of July to a slave.

And he goes into this whole idea about He said, how disrespectful is it to take me into a place of freedom only to make sure that I see it became tasty? You know, he talks about a little girl who's 10-year-old who is walking in New Orleans and she's ripped from her mother. You know, he's just going through these, you know, he's like, so what is it? But then he says, but I don't come condemnatory. I come to say to you that the ideas that have been spoken of by your fathers and your brothers in that document called the Constitution,

we must live up to them and purify it. Make this document live up to what it says it's supposed to be. So how important are white people? I just got my hair cut because I was on this white podcast. Because we need it.

It ain't no doubt about it. We need you right now. I mean, 10 toes in. Because you are right, there is a shift in consciousness right now, man. This is not what it was. So I know a lot of things are, no, it's not, man. This is a shift. And so we now have to say, now we need y'all to help us make sure that every idea that's spoken of lives up, lives up to its most pure, pure moment, concentrated moment.

Now, we may not get there, but we got to take this moment and shift it forward. So then we can at least say, well, we move the needle somewhere. But that's how you get that pendulum and slow down and get out of pace and the rhythm that we can go. Yeah, and that's what I've been saying. That's what I say when I have conversations with my friends. And I also think it's extremely important for white people to all get together themselves

and have these conversations. Yes. Because there's a lot of different opinions when it comes to it. True. You know, when you get into the depth of your friends and you really sort of dig down a little bit, you're like, oh, whoa, you don't see that the same way that I do. And let's have the discussion about it.

And I want to go back, Bishop, to what you were saying about the single right now, you know, police brutality and that when people do like Oliver was saying pick a lane or, but when you actually can focus in on one thing, you really can, you know, infiltrate, make a big difference. And if the single right now is police brutality, what's your, what's your sort of way in there? How are you going to sort of make that the hit single on the album? Yeah. Well, the one thing is before. we identify the single, the one thing that's very, very important is we have to identify what police brutality is. And the reason that's so important is because I think we've been led to believe that every video you see that officers using force on somebody is police brutality when it's not. You know, think about the freedoms that we have, some of the freedoms we have in the country. Well, the freedoms that we have in the United States of America were not always accomplished by a pretty means. And so in law enforcement, there are situations I've shot my gun at somebody before. And for rightful reasons, and I'm not going to get into the story of it,

but it wasn't, I mean, anytime you see any act of violence, anything, it's not pretty. But when we don't get the full context of a video out there, we automatically assume, like, hey, that's police brutality. So I'm going to turn it back over to you, Bishop, over it. But I think it's important to identify what police brutality is. And then once you identify what it is, then how do we work to resolve that police brutality? That's a great point. Very good, man. I think that, you know, we can be very specific. And thank you for that, Ryan.

You can be very specific. You know, George Floyd. You can be specific. Ahmad Aubrey, even though it was not police. Brianna tape. You can be specific now because we have some living examples that have deadly consequences. And here's the bottom line.

The way I've said, the way we do this for police brutality in particular is three things. one, we have to encourage a community-style policing avenue that will look different because it's 17,000 or 18,000 different police operations, you know, locally. So it's not like one policing. It's police agencies, all different. So there has to be tailor-made in a localized sense. But, and like you said, this is a marathon, but that's one thing. So you have to open that portal back up, which will make us vulnerable.

That's going to make folks vulnerable because that means you're going to have to know Ryan. Look, when I did this, and I don't like to tell all these stories, but I'm just going. So when we did this with the, with the Crips and Bloods, right, I made, I had all of the leaders of the Crips and Bloods sit down with the sergeants and the, and the beach staff of the police at a, at this gymnasium. And it was a real conversation, and it was, it was wrong, and it was not made for TV. But it was good because we're going to get this out. Because I'm telling the police, I need these guys for peace. And the police, some of the police were saying,

well, these are the guys we warned against. And we got to a mutual understanding where it was not really at us against. It was a fee, but for the most part, they were trying to do right. So what I'm saying is that kind of community aspect of policing, so it's not as militarized. That's one.

Something else about the policing idea is, We cannot, as Ryan was talking about, we have to de-stress the police environment to where the police has to be a catch-off for everything that's in our community is probably you can't do that. It's irrational for them to be counselors and undertakers and everything that they have to be

just so that they can perform a do. So we have to restructure what that looks like have to do some training. But here's the main thing. This is like, COVID, corona. There's not a cure, but there is a commitment to be all in on the calls. Not a cure, but we are committed to be all in on the calls so that being flatens the

curve. So that means people practice social distancing, folks wash your hands, da, da, da. So me and Ryan, we like Dr. Foucher, you know, we're telling you that there is a way to get through this. Now, if we don't, some of us may die. But if we do this right, we can get through it. And at some point, we will blunt the idea of a racialized environment being a normative and for brutality to be the first order of defense. But that is a, you got to treat it like that.

And that becomes on your individual stuff. And I can give you some examples of what they look like with us and with, you know, all kinds of ways. But to point in, that's the kind of mentality that has to take over. this narrative and then the actions will start following as a natural course and then we'll start seeing changes that's not systemic like one person like in the black community you hear this all the time see man the white folks man the white man see the white and i was like do y'all know where these white folks is because i can go we can stop the whole deal if you just show me where the 15 white people that y'all talking about we can you know you're so right richard more and you know and you know and i was

going to say the last point i'm going to make on that is you know we have to one of the things i've been criticized from doing from day one is we as officers have to be able to call out the ones that are doing police brutality so i've called out officers you know hey man this was not proper policing and it should have been done this way and like the the moment george floyd happened i called it out right away but that wasn't new for me i don't know one police officer that try to stand by and justify that guy's action not one so that right there is proof that we are in the right direction. But what was new for, what was new for everybody else was not new for me and I've already been criticized for it. Because I've actually come out publicly and I do videos on

my Instagram. They're called Tillman takes where I break down police videos and I'll say either it was right or it was wrong. And that's another way in order to continue to move that pendulum forward is by having officers willing to come out and identify wrong when wrong is being done. Yeah. And you haven't always seen that systematically in our profession. What we're talking about is we're talking about what you would say in a workplace is your workplace environment. You know, when, you know, as a business, you know, when you're looking at your business and everything, you wanted your work culture, what is what does that feel like? What does that look like?

And, and one of the questions, I don't, I don't know this information. I'm just asking if you do, Ryan, is have you looked into the allocation of salaries? Have you looked at who gets paid what? Yeah, so kind of going back to the Bishop Omar's point is policing across the United States is vastly different, vastly different, vastly. vastly like that's a problem you know because if I do policing one way here in California but it's done completely opposite in New York we're still painted with the same broad brush and people are now attributing my mistakes of the same in the guy in New York but it's vastly different I will tell you that California we're

light years ahead of a lot of the majority of the country when it comes to policing in many ways in fact you'll talk to officers across the country and they're like man if you're a California cop we look at you guys as being tacticians because we train a lot more from a tactical standpoint as other departments where there are departments right now that you can go to and there's guys walking around their 18 years old with a badge and a gun on their chest that haven't even gone to an academy yet because they don't even have the ability to send anybody to the academy yet because of funding and all this other stuff right but yet they still have a need and so but you come to california you're not going to see that so the reason i say that is

because every department is so different you know you'll have some departments where it's super top everywhere where all the commanding officers make all this money but the low line guys aren't really making that much you'll go to another department where it's pretty balanced and so that's why i say if we talk about reforming the police or reformation of the police we got it i believe we should have more of a systematic approach that's you know federal what federally right that says hey look this is the standard that every officer should be at you know what i mean and that you know if you're an officer that doesn't like that well then you don't need to be in it because we're talking about raising standards which is good and if you raise standards now if a not a situation happens in Timbuk to Idaho, I know that that officer was trained very similar to me. And now we can all say, yep, that was wrong as opposed to, well, what's this officer's level of training? Is it the same that we have here in California? Ryan, you could also look at it as voting, too, in terms of being very involved locally in how you vote. Without a doubt, it's very important to go down to your cities and find out

who your mayor is, your city council members and all the other stuff, because that was created so that you would have a voice and me and bishop obar knows this too is like that's why that's where a lot of our ancestors like martin luther king rosa parks that's why they fought so we can get voting rights so why would they fight for us to get voting rights in some aspects we get we don't utilize the rights that they fought for so you know there's a lot of things that we can make that do police tactics uh vary from department to department across the united states meaning like one department might see this as police brutality and another one just doesn't without a doubt So I can tell you in California, you have the California Post, which is a police officer standardized training.

Everybody in California, if you want to be an officer in California, you have to go through the post standardized training. So in a level in California, we're already kind of doing that standardized training. But you go to the department of department, from some departments, like my department, we're huge in training. That's all we do. And so you might go to the neighboring department where they might not train as much as us. And so you go across the United States, it's going to be vastly different. That's why like anytime I go outside of, I always look at it, like, like this is like when I travel outside of the country as a police officer, they find

that I'm a police officer in Southern California. They look at me as playing division one ball as opposed to playing division three ball because they're like, oh, we know how you guys trained tacticians, you guys, I mean SWAT developed out of LAPD. So they're like, oh man, you guys are differently on your tactics. So let me ask you a question, Ron, when you're looking at statistics then of California versus other parts of the country, is a track record better for California because there is better training? Does that, does that actually reflect in the numbers? so without looking at the numbers and I haven't so I'm not going to sit here and act like I've looked at the numbers but I can tell you though you don't see as many incidents that we see on that are publicized that come from California as opposed to other places now we've had our fair share don't get me wrong because it still we're human beings and we have officers that shouldn't be officers we had recently there was LAPD breakdown that I did where the LAPD officer beat somebody up that he shouldn't have beat up and I called it out so you still that that's a human problem that we're trying to fix but as far as when it comes to tactics yeah Yeah, it's vastly different.

I looked at the situation in Atlanta, and from a tactical standpoint, I was like the tactics were off in that. They should have, I mean, if this guy is, you know, supposedly driving drunk or you believe he's under the influence of alcohol, the first thing you don't want to do is let him get back in that car to go park it. You know what I mean? What you need to do is walk him to the side and somebody else go drive it, for the last thing you want to do is put an intoxicated driver back in the car.

But that's something we teach him and we train that I can't say that's the same after. You know what I mean? The guy that do D.Y investigations to put the guy in the front seat of their police car do the investigation. That's terrible tactic. But, again, other people train differently. We've known for a long time

that there's been so much corruption inside of police, the police institution. And I think now more than ever, people are sort of, it's like a call to action. But then you look at someone like Breonna Taylor and you're talking about the differences of, you know, you know, state. And again, I don't know this information.

Maybe you can help me with. this but like how are those guys walking right now is that because of their unit is that be like how how are these guys not held responsible you know you know let me let me let me some okay because you're hitting on something now and i love ryan yeah i think y'all know that i'm a fan of my brother but let me just tell you just talking about la you know the reason LA has a robust training is because, see, we remember Rodney King.

Yep. We remember that. That was in LA. The reason people to saw Paul is because it was these other officers who watched this man kill this brother. They watched him kill him. We feel like that because

Ahmad Aubrey for months the police officers felt like It wasn't no need in breaking up any charges and stuff like this. So this kind of idea, this corruption idea is real. That's not. Oh, without a doubt.

And like you said, and this is about Brialla Taylor and Etiola Jefferson. That happened in Dallas. And other people, you know, when they are sitting down playing video games and the police officer kills them, or eating ice cream. You know, now here's the. But here's the problem. Now let me, so let me get to the, for me, Kate, what that means. That is a marginalization of black lives that has been brought to bear in our systems, whether

intentionally, or unintentionally, whether, because there is no way any plausible human would say that Ahmad Aubrey, who was ran down and shot and killed, someone would not have said he got to go to these guys got the least get tried when you have someone like and this is not a police officer but i'm talking about the idea when you got somebody like george zimmerman signing skittles packages uh about trevon martin you know so so our brains and then just like right when i was working for the prison i never forget i was driving home and my two and three-year-old babies were in the car and i had some tickets i hadn't paid a ticket police officer stopped me and this guy And my two and three-year-old are screaming in the back.

And I'm going to calm down. I got some tickets I got to pay. And this guy, he has a cigarette. He blows a cigarette in my face. And he says, you're going to jail tonight. And those babies back there, they're going to Child Protective Service. And my kids screaming, because they don't understand. They just see me getting out the car.

And I got in the car, and the guy handcuffed me. And the way my kids were screaming, I remember, this is me. And it's someone who understands the system. I said to that police officer, I'm going to. kill you, man. My mind left. And he started laughing. How are you going to do that? Because I was handcuffed. And then when he pulled out my badge, he saw that I worked for the prison. He said, why ain't you tell me you was one of us, man? And blah, blah, blah. And he let me, he put me back in the car. And I never forget driving home. And my brain had to, my mind had to

say that was him and that was not a them. But if you see too many of him, you start saying that's them. And when you start believing that that's them, them, we have this, the only way that the them can get away with it is they have police immunity, they have, you know, certain unions that kind of sweeping up, you got, you got the cold to silence. There's not that many riot tilts. I know he believes it is, but it's not. No, I know.

It's not that many brothers who are going to be bold enough to say, say, brother, it's corrupt. So that's why it's important that protesters and whites and blacks and clergy and this keep the pressure on so that these systems can't hide under this veil because this is a veil man and this is a veil that we all know and listen to this last statement that you don't have to have been a partaker of the problem to be a partaker in a solution you qualify you qualify because you care yep exactly to ask the question man so let me get off of that. No, no, no, but it leads me to a question, actually, Ryan, like, how real is that code

of silence in these departments? I can only speak to my experience with my department, and, you know, I can't speak to anybody else. At my department, I don't, and that's another thing. So you look at the, like, the bigger agency, like your LAPD, you look at the rampart scandals and all that stuff. That stuff is real. Even L.A.

L.A. County sheriffs had an underground ring of violence that they were, you know, making inmates fight each other. That stuff is real. But you look at an apartment like mine where is from top down, that's not the expectation is, no, we're going to lead with community policing first. We're going to, like, one of our models is you're going to lead the citizen with wild service. So you don't, we don't necessarily experience, I've never experienced that code of silence unless people just don't talk around me. But at the same time, I know what the expectations of the person in charge are from the chief on down. And if you do have somebody that's not going along with that boat, they're not going to work at a police department.

seen that. And so that's where I see the level of hope is, is that if my police department can operate, you know, full steam and know that, you know, have that, hey, we're going to put the customer first. We're going to deliver that while service. I know other police departments can do it. But like Bishop Omar said, I also know the reality is that not every police officer is like me. Just yesterday, and everything that we talk about, I was training somebody yesterday. And just yesterday, we pulled somebody over whose lady was in the front seat. She was pregnant, and almost, you know, she said the baby's doing a couple weeks. They had a child in the backseat, and the guy didn't have a driver's license.

You have a lot of officers that wouldn't care. No empathy at all. Pulled them out, probably, you know, give him a ticket, towed the car, handcuffed and whatever it may be. I said, hey, look, ma'am, are you about to have this baby right now? She said, no, do you have a valid driver's license? Yes, I do. This is what we're going to do. I want you to hop in a driver's seat, and my man, you're going to hop in a passenger seat,

but I'll let you know now you need to go get that driver's license taken care of. Oh, and do it so that way you can legally drive your lady to them from where she needs to go. So then I'll go back and show my trainee and I'm like, look, everything I talk about on my podcast, everything I show, you're actually getting to see this is what I lead the same exact way in the field. And so by infiltrating the system from within, not only are we talking about recruiting or we're also talking about training now. So you start getting these good qualified candidates now training their trainees to do the exact same thing. That's how you start this systematic change from within by acknowledging, hey, look, you know, you got to leave with empathy, you got to leave with the respect,

got to leave with the love, but this is how you actually do it. This is how you apply it. So I know that there are police officers that don't care and that would tell the car and that would do this. And so my job is to expose some of those guys too. Let me speak to the other side now because I talked about the bad officers. But again, remember, I always talk about balance and I think what makes me different is I can see the lens from both sides.

So part of my job, I'm going to give you guys an example. A couple years ago, I went on a dying or drowning two year old boy. call one of the worst things ever kid gets out he gets in a pool and he nobody knows and he basically i we have to give him CPR and all to find out that he passes away don't handle that call and now i got to go respond to the lady who's calling because her next door neighbor's dog is barking too loud or now i pull somebody over who is driving without a license not even realizing that hey i just came and just dealt with this trauma and so we talk about resources we talk about defunding reallocation, you got to understand it's like when you get pulled over by that officer,

your mind, you're just thinking like, hey, why are you treating me like a freaking complete a hole? But not even realizing like, okay, well, what actually ended up happening? I've gone on calls, I kid you not, where a guy ran from me because he didn't want to go back to jail and literally took his life right in front of me, ran in front of a car, got in front of a car, got hit up, tipping the air, and then ran over by another car, and he was dead on impact. I've gone on a call where you got a five-year-old kid that was outside playing, got hit by a car, and now I'm out there seeing him tossing and turning and stuff like that.

And, you know, with phone coming out of because he's about to take his last breath. So those same officers are the same officers that are out there that are supposed to go and handle the counseling calls that are supposed to go arrest to people, take him to jail. And so what I'm saying is it's not an excuse. So I don't want people to think that I'm saying. We actually have a bet one of Oliver's best friends is a sheriff. We talk about this. He talks about that a lot, you know. Yeah.

So the hard part is the challenge is, okay, how do we find the officer that's, that they, intentions that are harder just in a bad place and they don't need to be an officer as opposed to the officer that's going through some trauma who needs to be off the street because he's not going to be able to best serve you when he pulls you over right and that's where a lot of departments like my department is on the forefront of that we have this thing called the the peer counseling team we have you know anytime we have a traumatic event whether you like it or not you're coming back to the department you're not going back into the field and they're going to be sit down and talk to whether you want to say it or not but not every single department is doing that

And that's what I'm saying. So police reform is good. I personally believe our police department is on the forefront of doing a lot of these things. We talk about mental health calls. Mental health is one of the biggest things blowing up right now. But at the same time, you've got officers out there that are ill-equipped to handle mental health calls. So what our department did is we actually brought somebody from the Department of April unit and they were staged at our police department. And we worked in partnership with each other on trying to help people give them better resources.

So let me ask a quick question then. Does it seem counterintuitive then to sort of defund the police when we're actually, this is actually, it's more about, you know, what if we said, well, no, increase the funding of police because we need better training, more training, you know, let's take the militarized aspect of the police, meaning we don't need 7,000 tanks, and we don't need our police looking like they're like about to go to war, you know, as far as just an aesthetic, as far as the optics go, but we actually need more funding so we can have better training. So I, and I, that's, I've been saying that from day one. I've been saying that from day one. And again, a lot of agencies out here on Southern California have already done that. You know what I mean? But at the same time, we can't say everybody else is, but we all get the bad rap on. And so there is a whole, like Fisher of Walmart said earlier, like we got to identify certain problems right now. The problem is police brutality. But when you start to unpeel that layer and that onion, you start to see all these deeper real issues. And the education. I tell people, one of the, again, one of the top, you know, I said, I talk about that five lists.

one of the things was go down to your local police department, get involved in Citizens Academies, go on ride-alongs, learn about these people, learn about the job. You know, I wear one of those militarized uniforms, but if you learn about why I wear, it's because the statistics and the science and the medical staff is shown is that when you wear that vest, it's called an outer vest, it actually removes the pressure, takes a lot of the pressure off in your hips where your gun belt is at, and that way it can give you a lot more endurance throughout your career as opposed to your back going out because one of the leading causes of police, early police retirements is people's bat going out.

So you wear it because now it redistributes that weight on your body. So yeah, it looks militarized, but at the same time, that's why we wear. And so if you know that, it's like, okay, that kind of makes a little bit of a sense. So there's so much that goes into it, whether it be education, you know, recognizing the wrong. I recognize the wrong. I know we can do better. But, you know, we've got to be able to have these conversations. As a police officer, though, where do you stand on to defund the police?

the way, I think words matter and it's semantics, this idea that defund the police. I wish there was honestly a better way to say. Yeah, it should be, it should be called reallocate. Exactly what I said is the reallocation, the defunded. It's the connotation is so bad. No, no, no, we need, you need provocative words to get people to listen. And sometimes, Bishop Omar, why are you laughing? I think, I think, I mean, that part of it is, I think it's provocative, it gets people to listen.

And I think saying defund the police has made more people look at really even just how the police are funded. I mean, so. Yeah, but most people think that they're like, oh, you can soften the language. I had to look it up. I mean, I had to look it up. And that's the sad part is, is like, I tell people with influence comes responsibility. And a lot of people don't take that responsibility serious. So when we put stuff out there like that,

most people are not going to go beyond Instagram and find out what defund the police means. Which is why you do, which is why you put it out there and you tell them what it means. Hey, it's so much, I'm laughing, man. Because this is really a brother and sister talking about it, man. And I'm just loving it, man.

I'm just letting y'all go right there, man. And Ryan, you hit, you have a brother's friend. And y'all's going at it, man. I'm the old guy, man. I'm a jump in. Look, I'm just saying, like, I'm very interested. I'm about education right now. I say 70% of people who are hashtagging defund the police don't really understand what that means.

And they're thinking, oh, abolish the police. I mean, I just feel like as far as rhetoric goes, there's a better way to sort of say it. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think that what you do, let me show you something. I did a gang in a venture one time with the Aryan nation, right? These are all Aryan Nazis. And I was sitting in there and they said, we hate black folks and we hate, you know, he was just going.

They were like, no, we don't hate you, sir. It's just what we're saying. I said, ain't no problem, man. Y'all go right here. What I realized was that some people have to get all of that out so they can get to the truth. So you need some people to say some stuff that's wild, but they normally settle in on some true stuff.

You know, because end of the day, I was like, Do y'all want to get out of prison? Do y'all want to stay? Because I can, you know, I can kill. We can stop the meeting. Y'all just go ahead and try to figure out which one of these Latin kings you're going to get killed by in this prison. But that's the point I'm making is that sometimes the rhetoric is provocative because it creates that kind of energy. But you cannot excuse the form for function.

The functionality is where we want to get to. So even if the rhetoric is a little explosive, we have to be the ones that say, I get it. You know, I tell people, because, you know, some folks say, man, these black, right mouth, people need to stop. And they go, I said, hold on, man. When someone loses a child, I don't have the right to say, hey, don't cry that loud.

You know, you guys kind of lie. You kind of get on the fear, you know, you can't. So you don't have some explosive stuff like defund. I mean, that's, that's okay. I don't know, we shouldn't even be offended by it. And I understand what you're saying, Ryan, that people got to have a certain amount of responsibility, but I'm not offended by that.

I'm not offended when they're saying, let's tear it all down. Now, I'll be offended if we, I'll be offended if that's where we stay, but it doesn't matter if that's where we start, because we can move from that and say, that's not logical and that don't make sense. So let's get to some places where it makes sense that.

But I understand people who have to get that out. You know, Bishop, my therapist always says in a relationship, you got to only let one person go crazy in a moment and you got to let him you got to let him go and and then you got to and then you got to try to understand true i mean i mean i don't know who your therapist is but they're right you do man and someone got to someone has to be the grown-up and that's what i do and that's what i'm doing for you guys is like telling the police officers like look like let them do let them do what they have to do like it's okay yeah i mean Look, man, you can't, this is an unprecedented time.

I mean, no matter how sane and righteous and all of that, you can't, you can't look at George Floyd lose his life like that, man, and be the same. No, man, you can't be the same. So you have to let all of that happen. And there's going to be some opportunities that we have to deal with. There's going to be some folks who don't have enough credibility that we have to deal with. But that's okay. It's worth it to get this. right to get to get to get to get to get how we're going to be in our future of policing is worth it's worth

all of the misunderstanding is worth all of that because we it's too much at stake this is a fabric of our whole uh humanity is at stake it's how you treat justice justice is too important to play with because when you lose justice and you lose their ability to see folks uh beyond where they are and can be aspirational, you lose a part of your humanity that if you lose it, it's hard to get back. Because I've seen people when that light is at the eye, and it's very dangerous.

When we start saying, it's a for real doggy dog world, and see, I'm just, how we go? It goes like that. That can harm you. That can put you in a box that it's hard to get out of. Ryan, have you experienced racism within your department, meaning internally?

Well, I would say, I mean, you have implicit and explicit biases. I wouldn't call it racism. I would call it like their ignorance or lack of being able to just relate to other people, you know what I mean, because of their upbringing. Like, for example, like, I've never seen anybody blatant. And again, you're not going to, I'd be crazy if I saw somebody just called me an N-word or this was flat-out racist to me.

But what I do see is that people don't know how to, you know, relate to other people that grow up differently from them in inner cities, you know. And it's more of ignorance and it's more of also implicit biases that we talk about, which is for another conversation, we talk about the systematic racism. I mean, you got to go back to black face days and all when, you know, making people, black people or dressing up as black people and making them look like scary and stuff like that. But a lot of that stuff has been ingrained to the music we listen to, the movies we watch, the way we all perpetuate ourselves.

That's why when I tell young black kids, I'm like, man, stop calling each other the N-word. Stop. Like, I used to use it all the time. But stop doing that because now we're perpetuating a stereotype. And we're also doing something that goes in opposition. what our ancestors fought against. So, again, I have that ability to relate to them. So to answer the question, have I seen blatant racism in my department?

No. But do I see that there's officers that can't relate to other people that are from other cultures? Yeah, I see that for sure. So, Bishop, what if the first single is police brutality, what are we coming with for the second single? It's going to be. It's going to get brothers and sisters to get along on podcast. That's the EP. that's my second single

How can Buzz and Sisters Connect? No man I'm going to tell you all the man The second thing I think is citizenship. I think that's where the next layer of this

flows up to what the citizenship look like in its best form because right now I think that's where we are in America is that there's a citizenship issue that says there is a group of citizens in America who have been conditionally marginalized and it is taking the life out of this out of this system we call uh it is charged environment right now that that's in the

culture both politically and societally and it's and it's bad so we would have to raise from saying this is the highlight to now let's see what that citizenship so that means schools that means that means finance. That means opportunity. That means, you know, citizenship is the next thing. And so you have to then walk out where you are needed in your citizenry. So that truly means you're going to have to have some personal conversations with people that you love, like you said, your friends. And you're going to have to have some personal interactions with folks that you may not understand. So we can say, how do we as citizens get along in this New America that's coming up because it won't be like it was. I agree. You know, it's easier to repair, it's easier to, I'm butchered this so bad right now, but it's easier to help children in the repair broken men or something like that. And that's where I think a lot of my time is spent with educating the kids and pouring

into the kids. I'm going to send you guys, I don't know, I'll get your contact information, but I'm going to send you an email that I got that was so cool from a kid, a kid's mom actually, and Bishop Omar, you're going to love this one actually. but he comes from a gang family and I went and did one of a presentation my presentations at a school and last week she sent me in an email just saying how she saw I guess because I had a news story that aired last week and she saw she didn't know how to get a hold of me but she found out how to get a hold of me for that

news story and she wanted to thank me because her son you know who comes from a deeply enriched gang family now wants to be a police officer and be a part of the change as opposed to part of the problem and so now mom this is a black kid mom is taking her down to him down at the police station to become an explorer to get involved in the Citizens Academy all that stuff and so that right there was my that's why I do it and that's the proof right there is like I don't need everybody to become a police officer all I want to do is to be able to have real open honest conversations and just talk about the human beings behind you know not just put the badge but just human beings in general I mean that's why the four of us can have a conversation like this and not getting

our feelings I remember going to marriage counseling before we got married and you know being our counselor changing is, hey, look, you got to be able to agree to disagree on things. What's the intent? Like me and my wife, we've gotten a couple arguments, but we'll ask each other. Sometimes I'll ask is like, when I did whatever I did that made you mad, was my intent to make you mad or was my intent to really do good, but I just screwed up because I'm, you know, I'm the screw up. And so when you really look at that, you start looking behind a person's intent, it really

kind of starts to soften your heart and say, look, they weren't trying to do that. And I tell that to the officers, like, look, why is this person strong? got on drugs. You know, because it's so easy to write a month and blah, this is just a tweaker, this is that, like, well, why? And so when you start as figuring out the why aspect, it softens your heart and you start to realize the intent of a person's actions, and it makes you lead a lot differently. And that's why I think I lead a lot differently as an officer, because I'm like, look, I always tell people, I'm not here to judge you. Like, we all got a maker that's going to judge us one day. It don't mean I'm going to stop you

from taking a jail, but at the same time, I at least want to get to know you as a human being because that's my job and obligation to you as a public servant, one, and two, as a Father Jesus Christ. Well, Ryan, Ryan, you know, as a mother of three kids, I always say you lead by example, you know, it's a cliche, but sometimes when things start to feel overcomplicated and you wish you could do so much, it's sometimes nice to remember that even if we're just leading by example, even if we just affect one person, it's, it matters. and you're clearly leading by example.

Yeah, Kate, you're totally right. Real quick, I just want to say that the quote is, it's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. Oh, that's why you're my sister. No, but I was going to say, Kate, it's like what, it's like I totally agree with that because, you know, you affect one life, you know, you create opportunity for one person. You know, there's an exponential sort of component to that

because you can change the sort of legacy and the history of an entire generation with just affecting one person because then that spiders out. Right. Well, it's also, if your intention is for the betterment of humankind, you're going to be walking the right path. I think the things that end up mattering

and that end up actually changing is when we can all, like what we're doing right now, hopefully people are going to listen to this. But the reality is, is we all just affected each other. And that will inspire us to reach out and continue to do the good work. That's pretty presumptuous. I mean, I don't know if the bishop is going to, I don't know if O'R. is going to leave this podcast.

You know what? Oliver Hudson really affected me. I'm just a little upset that Oliver didn't say I looked like John Legend, but it's all of it. You do look like John Legend. You know what, man? You know, we say, Kate, we say one of the things that we tell people is only inspired people can inspire people. That's one of the phrases that we say, so you're right. And you have to choose an inspiration and live so fiercely in the moment that you're looking for that inspiration.

That's, you know, it goes way back to the first question. How did I know, Ryan, was that type because I'm always living looking for it because it's important to have it. And it is an energy refilling. It kind of refills your own source and your own strength. And then I pray a lot. You know, I'm always praying and I'm asking God with all of my steps. Let me make sure I can hear because I want to hear it. And it's in the way that I're trying to say it, not in the way I want to get.

I want to understand. And really, like you said, I will have compassion. So these things are important. And it sounds simple, but it's an active learning and an active, you know, game in your mind. But it really frees you. It will free you up, and you'll be surprised. And you'll say, man, I made a couple of steps, but it was a guy Wilson Good. He was the mayor of Philadelphia.

And I was with him in his program. He did it called Amachi. Who knows what God is going to do through this child. This is the Swahili word. Who knows what's going to happen from this one child? So, you know, you just assume that we go all in all the time. And then, you know, these guys of platforms, they help. These kind of dialogue, it helps.

And you guys help believe that. This is important in the path of how we can figure this out because it's real. This is real, man. You know, this is not, no joke. This is real. But we can be inspiring as we deal with real things. Before we go, I just want to ask what you guys are going to be doing in Dallas. Can you share what this big event is that you're doing?

Thank you. It's called Hill America. We're bringing so many cultural influences, business influences, OGs, regular folks. We're all coming together to have a conversation about how do we purify these ideas of citizenship and deal with race and humanity. So we're going to be really talking about those things from different lenses, but all on the same page that we've got to get better. And then we'll shift into some solutions. So it's going to be an inspirational deal, too. but it will have practical outcomes

like the police reform stuff we'll come out with and some more practical solutions but we're going to really have an in-depth look at it and it will inspire you folks they will leave saying okay this is tough

but we can do this so they can just go to heal america tour hillamericor.com healamericator.com and then Ryan I have a quick question man or just to end just about law enforcement in general

obviously we know you obviously you believe in law enforcement why why should we have faith in in law enforcement and what what does what does law enforcement need to do to be better why do why should we believe in why should we believe in it at this point i should you believe in it is because that email or the the story i just shared you uh with you right now is somebody that at a young age at 15 years old is already affected and saying he wants to be a part of the change uh i have i can go off email after email after email my chief of police actually called me in his office and he told me he said ryan he's like you know what's funny is every over the last year and a half almost every single application that we get at this department is somebody saying that hey the only reason i want to

come work at your department or this department is because i follow ryan on instagram and i value everything that he stands by and what he his mission is to do so if i that's just one place so you imagine if i can just change mindsets by having platforms and different things like that that those are all the incoming people so as we get rid of the old people and we start getting this new generation and these new way of thinking this new mindset that's the hope and the other part of that is we need policing like we need like when my wife stays at home with our three children and the last thing I would want is for somebody to come to our house and victimize my wife and kids and nobody be able to be able to protect her and so we got it like I said going

back to that word balance that we've got to find out what that balancing act is. And what we're doing right now, this is that balance. This is that ability to be able to have an educated dialogue with one another, be able to either agree on everything or agree to disagree on some topics, but also be able to go out there and put the work in with each other. You know what I mean? So I don't see two extremes here. I see everybody else being able to come together as human beings and be able to just have good dialogue with each other and be able to go out there and do it. You know, Bishop Omar is handling on the, you know, on the spiritual end and with this with this congregation in his community, you guys got to put your hope in knowing that there's guys

like me that are inside the profession that have the same aspirations as you guys. And then, you know, you and you and Kate, Oliver, you guys are doing some phenomenal work just by utilizing your voice by having me and Bishop Omar on your guys platform in order to, to share this. I mean, I can't thank you guys enough. You know, that just lends your guys with heart and, two, your ability to realize and recognize that you guys have something that can, you know, ultimately be out for the better cause. So I'm excited. you know, I feel like this is a good friend. By the way, my wife wanted me to let you know she loves your leggings.

Yeah, great. Well, you guys, this was been really amazing. This has been so great. Thank you guys so much. Talk you guys soon. All right. All right, bye-bye. Sibling Revelry is executive produced by Kate Hudson, Oliver Hudson, and Sim Sarn.

Supervising producer is Alison Bresnik. Editor is Josh Windish. Music by Mark Hudson, aka Uncle Martin. Hey, it's your favorite jersey girl, Gia Judeyce. Welcome to Casual Chaos, where I share my story. This week, I'm sitting down with Vanderpump role star, Sheena Shea. I don't really talk to either of them, if I'm being honest. There will be an occasional text, one way or the other, from me to Ariana,

maybe a happy birthday from Ariana to me. I think the last time I talked to Tom. It was like, congrats on America's Got Talent. This is a combo you don't want to miss. Listen to Casual Chaos on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It may look different, but Native Culture is alive. My name is Nicole Garcia, and on Burn Sage, Burn Bridges, we aim to explore that culture. Somewhere along the way, it turned into this full-fledged award-winning comic shop.

That's Dr. Lee Francis IV, who opened the first Native comic bookshop. Explore his story along with many other native stories on the show, Burn Sage Burn Bridges. Listen to Burn Sage Burn Bridges on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. It's a chaotic, chaotic scene.

In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.