Ex-Sheriff's Shocking Truth: Law Enforcement's Dark Side | Chris Swanson DSH #673

I brought some props, some things to talk about.

So, check this out.

So,

what do you think that is?

So, this is an iPhone charger, right?

This guy used it differently.

We had a complaint because this guy is caregiver for an autistic kid.

Yeah.

The autistic kid has a younger sister and he uses that iPhone charger, but it's a camera in her room.

So, he'll take the video and the stills, and that's what happens when it comes to the human trafficking side.

Because trafficking is not just ripping people out of an environment and selling them, it's monetizing people's innocence

all right guys we got a sheriff on we got Chris Swanson here today how's it going my man the first sheriff ever in your history I know right 700 episodes right on man I broke a ceiling yeah it's hard to get you guys on and talk about stuff you can ask me anything yeah I love how open you are thank you man I feel like that's pretty rare as a police officer it is actually and and that's Part of what brings us a lot of our problems too is we keep everything in and we think everybody's after us man nothing to hide nothing to fear yeah because right now, a lot of Americans fear police officers.

Yeah.

Well, we've turned that around, man, since George Floyd was murdered by somebody who looks like me.

Yeah.

And what we did in Flint by turning a near ride into a walk-in together that reached 3.2 billion people in a day.

Since that moment, we've been able to redefine.

So I don't call it defund the police.

I call it police evolution.

We got to get better.

I love that.

Yeah, because a lot of cities spread that defund movement, right?

And I think LA cut the funding.

It doesn't win, man.

You have to put the right people with the right training, the right heart, and that's what people respect.

But, man, just like anything else, if there's an industry of people that do good and you have a couple that do bad, it's going to cast a dark shadow over all of it.

And law enforcement is one of those.

So it's my job to do my part.

You know, we talk about people normally love the police, but it's our job to give them a reason why every day.

And when you were climbing the ranks, because you're a sheriff now, but you didn't climb the ranks.

Did you see a lot of that when you were climbing?

I did, man.

I mean, I started the sheriff's office when I was 18 years old, and I started full-time at 20.

So, June of this year, I had 31 years on.

Wow.

I used to get hired.

When I got hired, I'd see people that had 30 years and I thought they were like 100 years old.

And now I'm that guy.

You look good.

Thanks, dude.

But I always seen that generation come through.

Like when I started, we had dudes coming in for the late 60s and 70s.

So I've seen the transition.

And today's policing is totally different.

You just, you can still do your job.

Just don't be a jerk.

Right.

Cause now you, you guys have cameras, right?

Cameras and accountability.

And, you know we mixed you know no-knock warrants and uh you know chokeholds a long time ago but not every police officer and police department chief and sheriff are all created equal so you got to have people out there just setting a good tone and there's a lot of them right what's you got to do it what's a no-knock warrant uh that just means breaking down someone's door without announcing to the police oh wow and that's what happened to breonna taylor that was killed in uh louisville kentucky 2020 i'm friends with her sister dde taylor damn she was an emt her and her boyfriend in there and they hit the wrong house.

It was an apartment, and her boyfriend thought that he was getting raided.

So he fired back, and police fired back and killed Brianna.

Holy crap.

Yeah, and she was totally innocent.

They hit the wrong place.

Damn, that's terrible.

But side note, Dee Dee Taylor, her sister, legit.

She doesn't have any venom towards the whole thing.

She wants to be a change agent.

So she works with me all the time and in honor of Brianna Taylor.

I love that.

Now, you, on the other hand, you're precise.

You don't miss.

You got 100%

conviction rate on your cases, right?

For human trafficking.

Yeah, ghost cases.

Wow.

That's from 2018 when we first started May of 2018.

And it started because I did operations in Haiti and then in Mexico.

And that's what started us and the national human trafficking enforcement movement.

So you've done 200 arrests in what, five years?

Five and a half.

Yeah, it'll be six years this May.

Wow.

It's like 40 a year, man.

Damn.

That's like one a week.

Dude, that's with agencies all over the state of Michigan and in seven states in the nation, including Las Vegas Metro, right here in our home base with you.

That's incredible.

We work a lot with those guys.

They do a good job.

Yeah.

And you just get these leads and then you investigate.

No, we go out there proactively and we start the operation.

You know, we'll put scenarios and, you know,

it's a way to attract those that are looking for underage individuals or vulnerable adults.

Because human trafficking is not just sex, not just female.

It's male, female, and it's also people that are, you know, being exploited for work and wages.

It's just people being sold for money.

That's what human trafficking is.

Majority of it is sex trafficking.

And a a majority of it is vulnerable adults and kids.

And how are they finding these

people to go after?

So think of this as like another world, another language, another

deep, dark web access.

There are people that that's what they think of every single day.

That's all they think about.

And they're usually consumers of the content or they create the content themselves or they facilitate and they manufacture and they monetize it.

That's That's what you're always looking for.

They are experts in being deviants.

And so you have to go into their world and create a scenario where they come to you.

And at that point, when they come to you, the probable cause has already been done and we ended up arresting them and then we hold them accountable.

And the spin-offs of those is really what really kind of drives it because a lot of these guys will come in with like gruesome child pornography on their phone.

And then maybe if they come to our scenario and we hold them accountable, they had a real victim, not not just the police, that said, now that this monster's been caught, I'm going to come forward.

So we have a lot of spin-off cases that come because of our proactive arrests.

Wow.

Yeah.

But, dude, I got chatters and decoys that are like soccer moms and people you would never expect.

They have to talk for hours to hundreds of these individuals and be decoys.

And they do it because they want to save people's lives.

Yeah.

So you bait them out.

It's almost like Chris Hansen, how he does that.

Yeah, my buddy Chris.

I just talked to him on the way here.

He's going to be on your show.

Oh, sick.

Yeah, when you're in New York.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love that show, man.

He really.

I'll FaceTime him right now if you want.

Let's do it, dude.

That'd be sick.

Can you grab my phone?

For real.

You got all sorts of connections, man.

This doesn't take away from my 30 minutes.

Oh, look at that.

I turned my phone off because I did not want to be disturbed.

This man's got jelly roll on speed dial, Chris Hansen.

Hey, listen, man.

I get it in general all that.

But Chris Hansen, I learned who he was back in the day when I started talking to him in 2020 because of the George Floyd thing, you know, the walk walk moment.

And he asked, if there's ever an interview you do with a, like, a media personality, wait for the last questions because that was the real question.

I get done with this whole thing.

And at the end, he goes, hey, he goes, so what else you got going on with human trafficking?

And I'm like, well, we have ghost.

And that was the start of it.

And since then, we've done operations all over the country.

Wow.

Chris Hanson is the real deal, man.

That's the good thing.

And he's a good dude.

And this guy's put more people away as a non-police officer than any other person in the entire country.

Wow.

With no vest, no nothing.

He puts himself out there all the time.

That is impressive.

Yeah.

I mean, and here's a guy who's in his, sorry, Chris, you're in your 60s.

But you go out there every single day and you're just like, hey, man, we do Crime Con together down.

We're doing Nashville, Tennessee.

You ever heard of CrimeCon?

No, it is a.

It's like Comic-Con, but for people that follow True Life Crime shows.

That sounds cool.

Yeah, man.

So we tag team 5,000 people.

We go over cases and they just, you know, have a seat with Chris Hanson.

People love it.

So we go over these individual cases.

That's awesome, man.

I love how much passion you have with your job.

Thanks, that's rare to find in people it is i love life even in the uh death and destruction that i've seen my whole career my whole life actually i've seen so much death and violence you got it you either go down a rabbit hole never come out or you just turn it for good you know these people didn't die and suffer in vain yeah you want to find out who did it and right justice deserve justice right yeah yeah does that ever eat at you the things you witness it does man because i you know Before I became a police officer at 21, I was a paramedic at 20 and I'm still a licensed medic.

And that started because I I saw a guy at 18 years old when I was doing a ride along shoot himself in the head.

Whoa.

And I mean, he was still alive.

His wife just came back from Burger King.

I could smell the burgers and the fries and she's screaming and his blood's on the wall and he's taking his deep breaths.

And I'm just like, they didn't teach this in high school, man.

And I had to learn how to do it.

So I figured, if I'm going to learn this, I got to go EMT school.

So I went that, then I became a medic.

Then I became a police officer at 21.

And I was on a dope team just three months after the police academy, April of 1994.

I was buying eight ball of cocaine at 21 years old.

I'm thinking, man, I don't even know if this is legal, but when you're undercover, you got to do that stuff.

It was those days and those moments, and all that I've seen since then that you have to turn it off because you see so much death.

I have had hundreds of people, and this is not trying to be dramatic for the show.

I've had hundreds and hundreds of people that I was the last person they saw before they died.

Whoa, that's a lot.

Yep, boom.

There we go.

Did you verify?

Yeah, you made it happen.

Hey, Chris.

You're with Sean Michael here in Las Vegas.

What up, Chris?

Hey, do you mind being on a podcast that has 11.1 million followers?

Not at all.

Happy to do it.

Let's do it.

And they're doing it in New York next month, bro.

Wow, I'm in.

Coming to you.

Did you take the picture?

Yeah.

Okay, good.

I'll send it to you.

Hey, dude, they're like super,

for whatever it is, they're a Hansen fan.

I wonder why the whole world is, too, but

he's been calling me out.

He's like, there's no way you can talk to Chris Hanson.

Like, all right.

And then when he didn't answer, I started to get nervous.

But

hey, we're doing right in the middle of the show, actually.

So I'll let you go, but I just wanted to let you guys connect and you'd be great on this.

Yeah, I'm totally in.

I'm totally in.

So just, you know, reach out to me.

Okay.

And hey, they have this bougie water that when you're out there, it fits your bougie apartment in Manhattan.

Okay.

All right.

See you, brother.

All right.

Bye-bye.

All right.

I accept your apology.

That's cool.

No, you're good, man.

Between you two, you've saved thousands of lives.

So that's super cool to win this.

It's just good stuff, man.

Yeah.

And what he does, and the reason I'm on this podcast, I was telling Spencer.

He's like, thanks for coming out here.

I'm like, man, there's a reason why I took a four and a half hour flight one way.

I'll be in Vegas less than 18 hours to go back because you have such a good platform that I believe what we're going to talk about is going to save lives.

It will.

It will because people don't even know that stuff's going on in our backyards.

Right.

And a lot of it's just awareness.

Just awareness.

You know, I told you, I brought some props, some things to talk about.

So, yeah.

Dude, let's see some of that.

All right.

Check this out.

So,

what do you think that is?

So, this is an iPhone charger, right?

Of course.

Except this guy used it differently.

Nicholas Rodman Lee.

Right.

So, check this out.

Last October,

we had a complaint because this guy is caregiving for an autistic kid.

Yeah.

But the autistic kid has a younger sister who's like barely a teen.

And he uses that iPhone charger, but it's a camera in her room.

This is a camera?

That is what a camera looks like.

Where's the lens?

The original one is in our evidence room.

That is my iPhone charger that I took and brought here.

It looks just like that.

Wow.

And it records audio.

So a guy like that will steal the innocence of a young girl and monetize it.

So he'll take the video and the stills.

And that's what happens when it comes to the human trafficking side.

Because trafficking is not just ripping people out of an environment and selling them.

It's not just going to a sting.

It's monetizing people's innocence sexually and selling the content and consuming the content.

Child pornography, producing, manufacturing, distributing, or consuming and being

a keeper of that.

That's all part of the algorithm.

So a guy like Nicholas Lee, he's a trafficker.

He's just trafficking without her knowing it.

Crazy.

But that's how easy that stuff happens.

How'd you find it?

So the parents had gotten worried about something.

So they were going in her room and they found this plugged right in across from where she sleeps.

So here's this little girl.

And they find it, they bring it to us.

We arrest him, get a statement, and we get his phone.

And we hit him with 30 more charges of child pornography.

Whoa.

They have 249 graphic images of kids as young as single digits being just raped by grown adult men.

Oh my gosh.

And so we wouldn't have gotten that child pornography if it wasn't for doing the ghost case, if it wasn't for parents' due diligence, if it wasn't for doing what we're doing now, educating people what to look for.

Yeah.

Got to be careful, baby.

Sandra was just saying off camera about Airbnbs and other places and hotel rooms, you know.

I don't know if I can dime you out on camera, but you know, you got to be aware of all that stuff, man.

Always be aware of your surroundings.

i get sketched out at airbnbs yeah i don't know if there's cameras in them i know man i know real i know i'd rather stay in a hotel yeah exactly yeah but even hotels there's they're finding sex trafficking there at some hotels listen man it you it's almost like cancer you you have to fight it you can't just give up and not but will cancer be here yeah it's gonna be something that we have to deal with uh human trafficking is no different it's a fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world today wow and american european male are the number one consumers of it in the world.

Insane.

And where are these organizations based mainly?

So

they,

their organizations, especially like in other countries, because they don't have American policing like we do.

So for instance, when I was in Haiti doing an operation there in 2018,

we go there as undercovers.

So this organization that we'd work with would bring, you know, Delta Force or, you know, Marine Recons or SEAL team members, or in my case, undercover drug trafficking, you know, operators that have had history of going undercover and ice water in their veins so we go we play a role of coming into their country and uh wanting to get trafficked kids for a company party and so we work with the traffickers and we set up these scenarios and then when they all come with the traffickers and the kids everybody gets arrested national police take the traffickers away we go back to america that being said we're in haiti and um

The second day of operation, I'm playing a corporate boss.

The owner's coming into Haiti.

We want to get a bunch of people.

We want want a big corporate party.

So we're doing this whole thing and we're setting up the scenarios.

And I remember I even cut a video as I'm coming down the stairs of my hotel to saying, hey, we're just about to go into this thing.

And I just make this claim, like, we are going to stop this because here in Haiti, it's rampant.

And if it's happening here, it's happening everywhere, including the United States.

And that's exactly what we found.

It's everywhere.

Wow.

Everywhere.

That is scary, man.

Yeah, because the U.S.

has the best policing, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's the most organized.

And we have, I mean, look at all the intelligence that we have, you know, from the federal to the state level.

And yet they still operate.

Yeah.

And they still know that we're out there and we're still arresting people.

The key is you have to keep hammering down.

You can't give up.

Do you have the support of federal agencies?

So we work a lot with the federal agencies, a lot with Homeland Security.

Secret Service actually has a whole division that does with child pornography.

But my main federal partner that I work with is the FBI.

Oh, yeah.

And they do a lot of our intelligence.

So when we do an operation, we'll go into a location, whether it's a house or a hotel or some other location, and we'll set up an Intel unit where that's where all the chatting is done.

That's where all the communication is done.

So let's say we put the bait out there with a scenario, you know, a mother selling her daughter, which happens.

And we'll get 30 people right out of the gate, start hitting like, hey, tell me more about your daughter.

And then when we get down to the age that she's 13, we'll get, you know, 90% of them just flake out for good reason.

But then these other freaks are just continuing to say, well, tell me more.

Send me pictures.

Send me pictures of her feet.

Let me see a picture of her in the tub, you know?

And then you just start weeding them out.

And that's what the chatters are doing, right?

As that's happening, that person's profile is being downloaded and we're getting every bit of information, where they live, where they work, what cars they drive, everything.

And so when that happens and they actually get closer and we have different circles of surveillance,

then we realize that this car showed up.

It's registered to this person.

This is who it probably is.

This is their description.

That information is pushed out.

So it takes a lot of agencies to get all that intel.

That makes sense.

So parents are selling their own kids, you said?

They do, but that's one of our scenarios, do we do the proactive scenarios that our team does?

So when they knock on the door to get that kid, it's law enforcement.

Wow.

Yeah.

That is crazy.

Right.

Holy crap.

Now, some of your listeners or viewers will be like, why would Swanson, you know, say the whole thing about how they do it?

It doesn't matter.

They're still going to come.

Yeah.

And I hope that your show scares people to death that if they were even thinking about doing it, they go get help before they knock on the door and see us.

Yeah, I hope so, man.

Or a real victim.

I really didn't know.

Is this rampant?

This is crazy to me.

I just invited your team, too.

If you ever come to Michigan, I'll do an op with you.

Let's do it.

So you can see it.

That'd be fun.

Yeah.

Now, since you've done so many, are you worried that your undercover will be blown?

So, because I'm a public figure and, you know, like you, you're out there.

You know, I mean, this is your brand.

So I reach about 5 million people a month on social media and media and all that.

So I don't personally go undercover.

Those days are gone.

But I have team members that do that.

And so, you know, we build teams in order to go and infiltrate, just like the fentanyl, you know, trade.

85% of all the fentanyl coming into cities in America are coming on the expressways.

Wow.

So we have different

tools that we use to track all that.

Well, no one agency can own that.

They have to work with everybody.

Right.

So.

Yeah, you worked in narcotics for a few years, right?

I did, yeah.

So you're busting those fentanyl?

Well, back in the day, it was just crack cocaine and heroin, but now it's straight up fentanyl so we we take a lot of that off the street before it even gets to the consumer because if you disrupt the supply chain it doesn't get to the end user but without a doubt fentanyl here's again an example you know flint michigan's got a history of violent crime right but 2023

233 people died of fentanyl overdose and 733 were narcanned back the spray narcan yeah otherwise we'd had close to a thousand people dead imagine if there was a thousand people murdered in any jurisdiction People would be going crazy.

But because it's drug overdose, and most people, and I know your listeners can agree to this, that are dealing with addictions, there's a whole different way of looking at somebody who's truly addicted.

And if people don't have experience in addiction, they look at that as, well, they deserve that.

That's the sad, you know, it can strike anybody at any time.

Nobody is immune to the fentanyl disease.

and the destruction that it leaves.

Nobody's immune.

Dang, I didn't know it was almost a thousand.

That's just in Flint.

Just in Flint, Genesee County.

I mean, you take a, you know, we're a big county in the state.

That, that is, you know, magnified throughout the whole country.

Right.

So it's got to be in the millions if you take the whole country.

Yeah, millions.

That's why Narcan, I mean, I have Narcan in my bag everywhere.

I travel with it.

And here's a guy who's, you know, I've never even tasted alcohol in my life.

Really?

But I carry Narcan in case somebody else goes out, man.

Save their life.

Just nasal Narcan.

It's an opiate blocker.

It saved their life.

Wow.

So you're completely sober, never tried any drugs or alcohol?

No.

Wow.

Good for you, man.

That's rare these days.

It is, man.

I don't know what the reason was in the beginning, but now it's to the point where I can't go back.

But I just find joy

in releasing on other things.

And that's my focus now.

Super healthy, man.

You're 49, you said?

51, bro.

51?

I know, man.

Dude, you got good genetics or something.

I work hard, dude.

Five Iron Mans.

Five Iron Mans.

Thank you for asking.

Yeah, how long are those?

Those are 50 miles.

Come on.

Are you kidding me?

Oh, my gosh.

It's 2.4 mile swim, 112 cycle, and a marathon, 26.2 140.6 miles holy back to back to back starts at 7 a.m you got to be done by midnight dude that is insane i can't even run a marathon oh my gosh and you got long legs too man you'd be a killer on it if i trained probably you would man i bet you would run a sub five mile as soon as you walked in i think man that guy's yeah

i used to run in high school did you ever break five minute miles yeah i did 440.

How would I have known that?

440.

Phytogenetics.

Yeah.

Yeah, height comes in handy in a lot of sports.

Yeah.

Good for you.

are you six five six five six six with the fro got it that's like fletch the old movie fletch yeah

yeah were you big on sports growing up no man i'm the opposite i've always struggled with weight my whole life what yes yes man i have i have uh i don't have genetics so fun fact i i grew up as i said a heavy kid and uh if if you uh if you just see the way i grew up yeah i mean i was the kid who never wanted to be chosen as skins you know how they used to do shirts and stuff yeah please please lord

me fit skins and then as i grew up, you know, I graduated from high school.

I went to police academy, as I said, 21.

And I was an okay person.

I got cut from baseball in ninth grade.

I never competed for 14 years after that.

And never played high school sports, never went to a football game or nothing.

And it was right around the year 2000.

I had been on the job now for six years.

And I looked at myself in the mirror and I'm like, what the heck?

And I said, this has got to change.

And I've always had a gear.

I'm the youngest of four.

My dad and my grandpa were both Detroit cops and my family has all been, you know, kind of Detroit folks, but I've been a different cat.

I don't know why.

But the bottom line is when I made a decision to switch that gear, that changed everything.

So I said, I'm going to do a bodybuilding show.

So I did my first natural show in November of 2000.

So I did four shows.

And then that led me into doing marathons.

And then as I did my first marathon, because somebody said you should do a marathon, I'm like, all right.

So I did Detroit, Detroit.

I did a couple up north.

And then I started doing some treathlons, some mini ones.

And then my life changed when a guy came up to me, Dr.

Jansen from Genesis Genesis Hospital.

He's an ER physician.

I was working on the road.

He's like, dude, you got to come over and check this out.

So I go over there and he just finished the 2006 Ford Ironman in Panama City Beach, Florida.

And I go in his office and he's got all these papers and he's got his medal there and his picture.

He's like, I can give any medication on the planet.

Nothing is better than when they say your name and that you're an Ironman.

Wow.

Planted a seed.

And so in 2006, November, I signed up for the Ford Iron Man.

I did my first one, November of 07, 14 hours, 11 minutes.

And then I I did some great stories.

If we had time, I'd tell you a bunch of Ironman stories of crashing and flipping and all craziness.

It's not a matter of if something's going to happen, it's about what's going to happen.

So I did Florida, Kentucky, Florida, Wisconsin.

I just did my fifth one last fall.

It's amazing.

Maryland.

Which part of the race is the hardest, in your opinion?

It comes in ebbs and flows, but the hardest part of the whole thing is just going for that long.

Imagine whatever you did at seven o'clock in the morning today, whenever you listen to this episode, till 9, 10, 11 o'clock at night, just non-stop, whether it's swimming or biking or running.

In Iron Man, each leg rotates 35,000 times.

Wow.

Yeah.

Holy.

And then you get off your bike and you got to run 26.2 miles.

So it's the mind game.

It's the mental.

And then that doesn't include all the training to get to that point.

Right.

You probably have to train for six months straight.

A year.

A year?

Yeah.

Six days a week, man.

Wow.

It's awful.

You got good mental resilience.

That's the key.

It takes me to a level that

I could not get without being tested to the limits, knowing I can go more.

Yeah.

And I think that's important to have as a police officer to be able to control your emotion and your mind.

I think that's for everybody.

And I mean, look what you're doing.

Look at the burden that you carry here on this show.

Like everybody's relying on you.

Your show is going to people who are in hospital beds, that are in awful situations.

You've got a big burden.

And if you're not mentally sharp with that burden, if you're not built to take it athletically, then you won't be able to do what you do right now.

And so I think everybody should have a competitive athletic mindset doing whatever they do, raising kids, running their car wash, whatever it is.

Think everything is a competition.

There's a winner.

There's a loser.

You don't have a choice if it's a competition.

It is.

And whatever you choose, winning and losing, it will spill over into every aspect of your life.

So compete and win.

I love that.

Yeah, you got to be able to take the heat too.

Yeah, man.

You got a ton, I'm sure.

Dude.

Yeah, especially in the profession that I'm doing.

I mean, not trying to be a martyr, but, you know, there's a lot of demand on that level.

And the higher you go, you know, to much is given, much is required.

But when it comes to athletics, it's just you.

I mean, you know, this is an athlete.

Like, nobody can run your race for you.

That's a great metaphor for life.

Nobody can run it.

You got to do it.

And with that's going to come sunshine and storms.

The key is don't stop.

I tell people, I just talked to a dude yesterday, runs a huge Raymond James

region, and he's doing his first Iron Man.

He goes, so what's the key?

The key is don't stop.

If you don't stop, you won't quit.

Yeah, I love that, man.

Too many people quit too early in anything they do.

Right.

Whether it's sports, business, right?

Dating, health, too many people.

And especially when it gets a little bit too difficult.

That's when that's that's that's the breakthrough.

That's the way, that's the platform that's going to take you to that next level of growth.

You know, it's like the birthing process.

Yeah.

Just get through that pain, that suffering, and then bam, it opens you up to this whole new world.

Like, man, I made it.

I did it.

Absolutely.

That's key.

And that's how you became a sheriff sheriff with that mindset.

It is, man.

It's not easy, especially that's a big area.

You probably have a lot of competition.

It is, man.

And being an elected official, you know, I mean, you know what that is.

Everybody hears that and they automatically get an us and them, you know, mindset or an either or.

I'm not like that, man.

I, uh, as an elected official, I take care of everybody.

Wow.

And, you know, even though I'm associated with

a party, I take care of people no matter who they are, where they live, what they look like, where they worship, how they're born, where, where they, and how they live their life.

I take care of people, I protect people, I serve people, I unify people.

Beautiful.

And man, that resonates.

Yeah, that's massive.

So you don't let politics get in the way or race or religion.

Yeah, you can't.

I mean, I got great people in my life from all walks of life, you know, just don't get your own perspective because then you start looking in the, you know, start living in this tunnel.

You know, they call it the, you know, the echo chamber.

Just my people.

Yeah, man, you got to look at everybody.

And how do you serve people?

How do you take care of people?

You got to be intentional on that.

You have to compete for that.

Absolutely.

How'd you meet Jellyroll, man?

Jellyroll is,

he's, I'm not kidding you.

He's that guy that you see online in real life.

So fast forward

to

2022 fall.

My buddy, who owns a, not Owens, but runs a big country music station in Detroit said, man, you got to come down to the country music awards.

We're doing this media row thing.

I want you to meet somebody named Jelly Roll.

So I go down there.

And the way the media row is in Nashville is they have a group of artists in the morning and then another set in the afternoon.

I wasn't able to be there till the afternoon spot.

He'd already come in the morning.

So I missed him.

So I kind of planted a seed.

They were trying to say, hey, this sheriff in Jelly World would be a good hit.

So summer of 2020, no, spring of 2023, they ask again, hey, man, can you cut a video?

I'm like, great.

So I sit in my car and I say, hey, what's up, Jelly World?

Chris Watson here, sheriff of Jenny City County.

We're doing a lot of stuff in Flynn.

Love for you to come up and see what we're doing, changing jail culture, educating people, reducing crime, building race relations, man.

You're going to love it, bro.

And I just cut it and I sent it to him.

Well, he was doing a concert.

They showed it to him on his bus.

So he gets off his bus with Bussy the bus dog and sends me a video back.

He goes, we're going to work it out, Sheriff.

I'm going to tell you, I'm going to, I love what you're doing up there.

And I told him about the barber school we're doing and welding class and all that.

Well, fast forward in the fall of 2023, he's starting to land this plane because he's doing a concert December 5th at

Little Caesars Arena.

It's for iHeartRadio.

And the radio station said, man, he's going to be here.

And I think if we put something together, he might even come up to the jail because we were doing a big Ignite graduation.

I highly recommend people look up Ignite, the Harvard study, and all the things we're doing.

It's a game changer.

It's the iPhone release of jail cultures that's going to change the country.

Really?

It's amazing.

Yeah.

Educating people, they don't break the law.

They don't hurt victims.

They don't re-addict.

Just give them a job, give them a trade, give them value, give them hope, and people don't come back to jail.

Wow.

Guaranteed.

I have the stats to show it.

I'll leave them to you.

I brought it from Harvard.

Brown.

Yeah, I'd love to see that.

I'm talking fast, man, because we've got a ton of stuff, hey.

But man, when we started working this whole thing out about Jelly Roll coming, I said, You're the modern day Johnny Cash, man, and uh, I would love for you to just play some songs for the fellas.

And he agreed to play with one song.

So, I had this whole floor.

We're a big jail.

So, I took this one floor and I packed it all out.

And I was going to pack the front lawn of the jail.

And six days before he was supposed to come, I get a phone call and it's his tour manager.

And he said, Hey, listen, I hope there's no promotion of people being there, media, photos, signatures.

He doesn't want any of that.

I was just like,

I got to pull this trade back, right?

I said, listen, bro, I respect that.

It won't happen.

And so I had to cancel a bunch of people.

And I just, I honored their, their wishes because Jelly Woll wanted to come there to just talk to the fellas and give them encouragement and be at the graduation.

So

he gets there and he's supposed to fly in at 345 to Detroit Metro.

And I get a call at 3.30 still in Nashville, Tennessee, because then we got to take him from Detroit up to Flint, which is about a 45-minute drive, then back down to Detroit for the iHeart concert.

We got him on scene from Nashville to Detroit, the Flint, in less than an hour and 45 minutes.

Wow.

Fast flight, fast motorcade.

And he walked in.

I'm telling you, I even said

offline, I said, you know, there's a story about what he did behind the scenes.

When he walked in, he didn't look at any cameras.

He went right to one of my returning citizen guys who did 12 years for murder and said, man, it's a nice suit you have there.

And Percy was there.

He turned to Jen L, did 29 years for murder.

Both of them are on staff, the full-time deputies for me.

And just connect with people with no cameras, no nothing, you know?

That's the kind of stuff.

And I say, he's the real deal.

He goes in my office, goes to the bathroom, freshens up, goes upstairs, meets with the inmates that are graduating, came upstairs and played five songs.

Wow.

His first one was Johnny Cash, Folsom, Prison Blues.

Legend.

Then he played four more songs.

And he, midway through, he's like, you know what, Sheriff?

He says, you're a man of your word.

And I'm a man of my word because that's why I'm here.

And you know, it's tough.

So we're coming back, man.

And you can invite anybody you want.

That's because of respect, you know.

Nobody bombarded him.

And then, when he was getting done, this is the coolest thing.

He looked down.

We just graduated to Barber.

He goes, Hey, man, he said, I have a show tonight in Detroit.

Why don't you cut me an edge before I leave?

So, he's getting his hair cut on the fifth floor of the jail with one of my inmates from the barber college.

That's crazy.

He looks over, he goes, Hey, Sheriff, uh, you know what you're missing here?

Music.

And that's when the red flag goes off because I have hundreds of courses, but I don't have a music course.

So, fast forward, he goes, I'm gonna put some money towards it.

And this July, 2024, I launched the Jelly Roll Jailhouse Music Studio in honor of him.

And it's a place where inmates in Genesee County now can learn about how to write and record music to actually write and record the music and then actually record it in a music studio a lot like this.

And they own the material wherever they go.

It's their own

information.

It's their own intellectual property that they can go.

And my main goal is to one day have a hit that was recorded in jail.

I'm sure it'll happen, man.

You know how much talent is in jail?

A lot, especially athletes and music.

Yes.

Yeah, a ton, dude.

And that's cool to see you care so much about your inmates because I feel like that's not common.

It's not common, but we got to remind people that it may not be a big deal to you until it's your kid.

That's true.

And everybody has all been given a second chance, every one of us.

And sometimes the second chance has kept us out of jail, has kept us out of a jam because someone gave gave mercy to us.

So I look at it this way as a sheriff.

How do I keep people from coming to jail?

And that is don't break the law.

And you can't expect them to do that when in jails in America, nine out of 10 of them are coming in addicted or co-addicted.

Six out of 10 are diagnosed mental ill.

Half of them cannot read a menu.

Wow.

Yeah.

And the average math in reading is fifth and sixth grade.

Crazy.

So then you tell them, hey, don't come back anymore.

That's impossible.

I mean, 90% of the people in jails in America are going back to the neighborhoods.

They're not even going to prison.

Only 10% of jail populations ever go to prison.

So how are you supposed to break the cycle of generational incarceration and poverty without giving them a skill set?

Right.

Teach them.

Because a large percentage of people who go to jail go back, right?

Yes.

Yes.

And when you add education, it reduces that return to jail significantly.

And that's why Ignite, you can, I said, Google it.

We launched it September 2020.

And

we just teach people in jail and we've reduced violence in the jail by 49%.

And we've increased math and reading by almost two grades.

And we've reduced return of crime per inmate per year 23%.

Healed race relations.

Wow.

I'm telling you, total transformation.

Gossip.

And this is Justin Flint or it's everything.

No, man.

We've got Ignite programs because when we launched it in 2020 and it worked within 90 days, started showing it around the nation.

And so the first agency to actually do it was Minneapolis, Minnesota, where it all started in 2020.

Now we're in Charlotte, North Carolina, Farghill, North Dakota, Dallas, Texas, Utah, Idaho, New York, Pennsylvania,

all over.

Beautiful.

It is the trend now.

And there'll be a day, I'm telling you, say it on here, that you will not have a jail that didn't know what it was like without Ignite.

Crazy.

It's going to be the standard.

Yeah, because the jail and prison system gets a lot of flack, right?

It does.

Rightly so, man.

Yeah, a lot of people just don't really seem to get better afterwards.

So this is a Tuesday.

The Friday before the show, I was asked to go up to a high-level prison and speak to American Lifers

chapter 1016.

These are lifers that have formed this association around the country, and they asked me to come up and be their guest speaker.

So I spoke to 200 people that are doing natural life in prison.

That's a population that people don't ever get to see very often.

I'm telling you, man, the sadness, the brokenness, the body count that they have, the fact that they don't even, many of those know who that person was that took that innocent person's life.

And they're paying that price.

There's dudes that have done 30, 40, 50, 55 years in prison.

I mean, it was, it was, it was moving to say that.

How do you keep that from happening?

You keep people from victimizing others.

And if that doesn't happen, then people don't get arrested.

They don't go to jail.

And society is a better place.

That's why it's one of my passions to reduce crime by fixing the system.

Yeah, because crime's at an all-time high right now, right?

In a lot of places, not in Genesee County.

I love it.

But, you know,

if you keep trying to treat the symptom instead of solve the problem, remember I said police evolution instead of defund?

That's evolution.

If you arrest a person three times over for domestic, what's causing the domestic?

Fix that.

You're not making a domestic arrest.

You're not having a domestic victim.

You know, fix the person who's stealing.

Fix the person who's, you know, carjacking.

If you can fix why they're doing this, then you don't have to worry about that and that's the that's the methodology oh they don't have any food in the refrigerator oh they have a broken family their addicts their kids you know don't have this law enforcement needs to fix that

the root problem yeah man yeah that's not talked about exactly exactly you fix that similar to health too instead of giving you a prescription let's fix the problem bingo yeah i love that mindset man more uh police officers should have that i think well i think that's a trend that we're seeing now in law enforcement and and that's part of my mission is to be that that voice just like you is to be that voice out there that either challenges other people or confirms and validates they're doing the right thing.

Right.

Now, you see a lot of stuff on social media about these corrupt cops.

How common is that actually from what you've seen in 30 years?

Man, I've fired 26 people since 2019.

Whoa.

As sheriff.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

Cut it out.

If you can't train it out, discipline it out, you got to cut it out, man.

They ain't who we are.

They ain't who we are, man.

You have people that, you know,

not only make bad decisions off duty that bring us all down, people who lie lie during internal investigations, people that treat inmates or arrestees and violate their civil rights, man, I have no shame in holding them accountable because they aren't who I've been trying to be for 30 years.

So the whole blue curtain, the blue line thing, that's to celebrate people who've given their lives, you know, in this profession, not to cover up dirty cop work, dirty police work.

That's not who cops are, man.

And they shouldn't be.

Yeah, it's a shame.

There's a whole social media section dedicated to it.

Yeah.

Dirty cops.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And here's the other thing is once you identify who that person is, they can't just go around and cop shop.

You know, they do it in Michigan.

What would keep them from coming to Nevada and doing it right here?

You know, you change

the landscape, but did they really change who they are?

Most of the time, not.

Oh, so they could get another job if they get fired?

Yeah.

Wow.

That shouldn't be allowed.

In Michigan.

We have a criteria now through the statewide policing that they can't get recertified in Michigan.

But the key is law enforcement has to do the due diligence.

If somebody has been terminated because they had this bad action over here, then it's your due diligence to determine why would I give them another opportunity to violate it again?

And that's that evolution, you know.

Make us a better profession by making good decisions, not just, you know, decisions because you want to hook somebody up.

Those days are gone.

Yeah.

Well, I think just human nature, it's easy to get greedy, right, and abuse your power a little bit.

So you got to fight that.

And you know what?

You bring up a great point because, you know, when you are in a position of influence, it's even that much more important because you have a wider voice, you know, the air on top of the mountain is thin,

the journey is long, but the fall is rapid.

Wow, I love that.

I haven't heard that one before, Chris.

It's been fun, man.

Anything you want to promote or close off with?

Man, let's do another hour, hour and a half on this platform.

Let's do it.

We'll do a part.

I just want to say thanks to you, man.

Thank you for using your gifts, your talents, your platform.

Man, it was worth this

adventure to come out here to Vegas.

Absolutely.

Thanks so much for coming on.

It means a lot.

Appreciate it, man.

Really inspired by you.

Yep.

Have a good one, guys.

See you tomorrow.

Check them out.