#584 - Retired Las Vegas Police Sgt.

We want to let you know that today's conversation may be a bit graphic for some or gruesome.

It's containing law enforcement and some of their involvement just with society.

So if you don't like that sort of thing, you may not want to listen.

Today's guest is a retired sergeant from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and a former crisis negotiator.

He was born and raised in Queens, New York before spending 20 years on the force in Las Vegas where he pretty much much saw it all.

Today's guest is LVPD's finest, Christopher Curtis.

Okay, sitting here today,

retired police officer.

Sergeant.

Sorry.

And is that

a thing with police?

That's faux pas.

Yeah, yeah.

A little bit.

Yeah.

Yes, sir.

All right.

Sir, yes, sir.

Retired police sergeant from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

You did 25 years of service.

Well, I did 21 plus, and then I bought some of the time.

A guy actually bought my time out to go work for him afterwards.

In Nevada, you can do that.

So you can, so if you're a police officer and you have, you still have so many years left on your

lease or what is it called?

To collect your retirement.

Okay, right.

Okay.

So you want to get your pension.

Right.

So you can buy it yourself.

But what happened was I was one of the first people because there was a guy in the private sector.

You ever heard of the company Zappos?

Zappos, the shoes?

Yeah, the shoes.

So the guy, Tony Shea, who passed away some time ago, he was a billionaire.

Yeah, he had one foot in the grave.

That's an old Zappos god.

I won't talk about that anymore.

He was revitalizing downtown Las Vegas, and he was investing $350 million into it.

And he heard about me doing some innovative things down there.

And he, through a friend, he asked to meet me at a bar.

And so we meet at this bar.

And I'm like, this Tony Shea?

Like, this, and he says,

he told me about the project.

And he's like, would you like to come work for me?

I was like, I'm not old enough to retire and I don't have the time.

And he said,

can you buy it?

How much does it cost?

And I said, I have to get back to it.

But I knew it was a significant six-figure number.

And I got back to him with the number number and he wrote the check.

And so at like 21 years on April Fool's Day of 2013, I retired.

So he paid your to so he bought it.

So at a certain, so if you want to collect a retirement, you have to do at least a certain amount of time.

You get vested in the state system.

Got it.

So to make it worthwhile, to make it a significant amount of money, you want to do at least 25 years.

I mean, 20 years, you can do it, but at 25 years and 30 years, the money's pretty nice.

Yeah.

And so to get to 25, at the time he wanted me to retire, you needed to buy it.

And it was six figures.

And he wrote the check.

Wow.

And so within like a couple of days, you were done?

No,

I kind of was strategic about it.

And I planned it out.

And I wanted to see exactly what his process was.

And he was a very, very smart guy and a very forward-thinking guy.

So we kind of planned behind the scenes how to work it out.

And so I had enough time to set everything up.

And then April Fool's Day, I retired.

Wow.

And he paid off.

How many years did he pay off?

So it turned out to be like maybe like

three and a half, almost four years, basically four years.

Yeah.

And at that point, you started working for him?

At that point, I started working for him.

Yeah, so I had my full police retirement, and then I had a significant salary from him.

So that was nice.

Living in Vegas still at that time.

I was still living in Vegas.

I had to because I had to be kind of working in that project downtown.

Can I give you something?

Actually, I brought something for you.

Yeah, sure.

You know, I'm a fan, man.

I really like what you do, and I think you're awesome.

And I figured I could give you something, a Vegas souvenir.

So

open that up.

Okay.

This is is a beverage coaster.

Police managers, supervisors, association, Las Vegas Metro.

Badge, huh?

Now, now open it up.

Okay.

And look at the back.

Ooh.

Gang, boy.

Commemorative only.

Thank God.

Yeah, so you don't go out and start jacking people.

Yeah, I wanted you to have a badge, man.

And so then you can just put it on this little

thing.

Oh, thanks.

And then you can put it in one of your places, man.

You do a lot of really cool stuff, man.

When I came into town, man, and the people I talked to, you know, small group of people, everyone really thinks very, very highly of you, man.

I watched this stuff.

You're a good dude, man.

Well, thanks, Chris, man.

I appreciate you saying that, dude.

That's awesome.

Yeah, because we need to.

You got to put it back in the thing in order to hold it in the field.

Oh, that's fair.

Yeah.

God.

Yeah.

And I worked in zoning for a little bit.

Sorry, that should have made sense.

Dude, that's awesome, man.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, we have a nice little collection of some neat stuff that people have given us.

He's got a badge.

Yeah.

That's very, very thoughtful of you.

Thank you.

Thank you, man.

Yeah, and thank you for for your service, too.

Right on.

Dude, I'll tell you a story.

So one time I'm at the University of Tennessee football game, and some guy, and he was like a drunk guy, and he was like,

you know,

he just kept making sounds like that.

And just like,

and he could breathe, but he wasn't great at it.

You know, he'd put on some weight or whatever.

And he was a sheriff or something, you know.

And I was like, I need to go downstairs and use the restroom.

He's like, oh, well, if anybody gives you any problem, just show them this.

He gave me his sheriff's badge, right?

In a little famphlet.

It comes in like a little wallet so i'm downstairs dude right things start kind of like people start getting weird down there like there's some stuff kind of popping off in a tunnel and so i pull this thing out dude and i show it up in the air right and now there's other police officers come up

and they're looking at each other and they're looking at me right and uh how old were you oh this was probably eight months ago

and then uh yeah and then the lady pushed me up against the wall for having uh uh fake identification being a fake police officer but they didn't know they recognized you?

She did.

She didn't want any bullshit.

I guess she recognized I was not an officiant of the law.

You were just Theo Vaughn with a badge.

Yeah, and she's like, this kind of shit is too much.

So anyway, just be careful where

you use

badgery, you know?

So what did you do for Tony His CA?

Tony Shea.

Tony Hsieh.

So for Tony,

he was revitalizing downtown and he wanted to create like an ambassador, you know, those ambassadors that kind of give out directions or eyes for the police.

And he wanted someone that knew the area.

So I like hired like 60 people and they just walked around the area because it was pretty high crime rate back then.

In fact, what's interesting is I had worked a double homicide on Fremont, like maybe about

six months before he approached me.

It was pretty bad down there at one point for a long time.

When I first hired on in 92, it was like, if you wanted a cop to learn how to be a really good street cop, you would want to work downtown on Fremont.

So basically, to answer your question, it was to

have these ambassador people who wore like yellow shirts, you know, and very welcoming to people who were looking for directions because there was an infrastructure of people that were working and living down there.

And he was trying to build that because he had residential businesses and all kinds of stuff.

And

in not having the police, he wanted to have a civilian group of people that could interact with people and make them feel safe.

Yeah, I guess as like a business person and a connector like him, you think of those types of things and you start to see the value in them.

How did Tony Shea die

so i you know i i'm not very comfortable speaking about it specifically how he died i know there was an incident where there was a fire and he was inside the fire and i believed it was related to something about being inside the building with the fire once i because i wasn't with the company when that happened that was sometime after the company and you know it got to a point where after i retired and i had throughout the years of dealing with so much death and all the craziness on the police department i just tuned everything out i really didn't engage with people if it wasn't a positive experience And then it became a point where I was just like a solitary person.

So I wasn't really very intimately involved in the details to how he died, but that's kind of like the gist of it.

Got it.

So we see how you finished the force.

Then how did it start?

Like, how did it first start that you decided to become, join the force in Las Vegas?

I was a Marine.

So when I was 17, I joined the Marine Corps.

And this was way, so this was 1987 that I went into the Marine Corps.

Okay.

Paris Island, 3rd Battalion, I Company, super hardcore.

And my dad was in law enforcement too.

And I cannot overstate the importance of having a strong male role model in your life.

My father, I genuine fleck to that man.

He died in 2017.

And what I can say is that my dad, I wanted to do everything like my dad.

So my dad was in the military.

My dad was in the army, but I wanted to be a Marine.

And my dad was in law enforcement.

So while I was in the Marine Corps,

you know, there was, I was on embassy duty.

I ended up on embassy duty, which is like one of the best, most challenging duties in the Marine Corps, if you go to the right countries.

And I was in Belgrade.

It was actually when I was in Caracas.

When I was in Caracas, there was a.

And this Venezuela?

Caracas, Venezuela.

There was an economics officer who took a liking to me.

And he knew I wanted to go into law enforcement.

He said to me, he said, in the 90s, the economy in Vegas is going to explode.

Got on a plane within like a couple weeks, flew and took the test.

And then I ended up in the academy in in 92.

wow yeah dude i bet the streets were hot in 92 were they crazy it was the wild wild west vegas was the wild wild west if you you know everyone says that their department is the best i'm going to say that las vegas policing especially in the 90s i call it the golden era era of policing

was just phenomenal.

I mean, you really got to understand the psyche of the human being because so many people come to Vegas to do whatever crazy thing they want to do.

And

you got to interact with people on that level.

And it teaches you a lot about people is it is that more a more fun place to be in law enforcement do you feel like like i know that's a strange word probably to use with policing but is that a more entertaining place it is um

it is because you you deal with everything they deal with in la everything they deal with in new york and then vegas is just this you know they say new york is a city that never sleeps it kind of does i'm a new yorker it kind of does Vegas never sleeps.

Vegas can't sleep because it's coked up.

Yes, for sure.

Or meth.

Yeah.

Coke or meth.

Did meth, was meth a little bit popping?

It is because you know the area commands that you, the area command that you work would kind of define what drug you would deal with primarily.

Got it.

And so there was a time where I was working in the northeast and they used to call them, it was called Frank area now.

They used to used to be David Area.

They call them Frankites or Davidites because they'd be up just tweaking out, doing stuff on trailers and everything.

And,

you know, there was a transition for me in my life because I was a straight-edge guy and I looked down on drugs and I didn't have a lot of,

I guess, empathy for people who were using drugs.

And now I've completely learned the opposite, you know?

Oh, yeah, I bet you because you're firsthand right in front of those people all the time.

I got to see, like, I would go to a single wide trailer at 3 a.m., lady's completely tweaked out of her mind.

And her kids are awake, all nasty, you know, crying.

The neighbors have called spaghetti sauce on the walls.

And I'd be pissed at the mother.

And what happened throughout my career is I ended up seeing that little girl that I was trying to protect becoming the parent of a kid in the same type of situation.

It's just cyclical, you know, and then for the police to be judgmental, I found that to be incredibly

disheartening for me.

And in fact, if there's anything I think back in my life, it is if ever I treated another human being improperly or if I didn't spend time with my children when I could have spent time with my children.

You know,

it makes me get emotional sometimes when I can think of specific situations.

I'll tell you a story, man.

There was one time where I took a little girl from her mom.

And this is in Vegas?

This is in Vegas.

Oh, yeah.

All my police stuff is in Vegas.

There was one time that she was, the mom was completely took out.

She was slamming speed and she was just up and just doing all kinds of stuff.

And the neighbors were at some point called.

Yeah, you're slamming speed.

He's injecting it.

Yeah, he's injecting it.

Okay.

And so

I go there and I remember I had to take the little girl from her mom.

And

this girl was crying in such a way.

I recorded this that it was almost as if someone was literally, though I wasn't, pulling her heart out of her body.

Now, mind you, that's a kid who

loves their mom no matter what.

Yeah.

You love your parent in spite of, right?

And I'll always remember in my mind that I have to learn to look at other people not only the way that I'd want to be treated, but through the experiences that I've had.

That's how I look at people now.

You know, once you get older, you can start to get emotional about just the simplest of things.

Oh, yeah.

Hell yeah.

Jesus.

Most of this podcast is like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's funny, the little things, it'll trigger things that you didn't have or things you admire so much, or even a word sometimes that a phrase somebody will use and it'll just like well you up with emotion.

Well, I do think it's interesting for

people in police, fire departments, those types of jobs where,

yes, I'm sure you develop a lot of empathy, but then also you are put under an unrealistic amount of stress.

A lot of officers are, I would assume.

It seems like to me from the discussions I've had that a lot of people get put under stress that they're not really even as a human equipped to deal with.

So then at that point, it's probably tough for you to engage your best feelings and your best empathy at moments when you're under stress and then you also have to look out for your own survival.

I'm not debating you with it.

I'm just saying I'm sure it's quite a juxtaposition, you know.

When you first started out in Vegas, what are some things that you saw?

Anything that stands out, you know?

So from a crime perspective or from just the culture of policing perspective?

Let's start with the crime perspective.

So from the crime perspective,

drugs are

one of the most, I mean, drugs and alcohol.

Okay, because drugs and alcohol kind of run hand in hand when it comes to the challenges that I would run into.

The drug scene in Vegas was either it was crack or it was speed.

And like I said before, depending on the area commanded you in.

And I would go on Fremont because I worked Fremont primarily the first part of my career, and I'd see these young girls hooked on crack prostituting up on Fremont Street.

Then you would see guys who came into town to party in Vegas.

They, you know, gamble at the casinos downtown, and then they want to come and pick up these girls.

They get trick-rolled.

I mean, it's just this like incredible web of vice that occurred, and it was like Gotham City.

And what's trick-rolled?

Is that that thing where somebody sends you that video or whatever?

No, so trick-rolled is when

a girl, a prostitute, ends up getting you in a hotel room either drugs you or steals your money and rolls you so the guy's a trick and they roll him for his money oh they feel like a person kind of yeah sometimes it's in there sometimes it's with with with some with drugs i mean there are a lot of different ways that that could potentially happen the act of a person commercially exchanging sex robbing or stealing from their sex buying client known as a trick got it i got it Okay, yeah, I thought it was something at a sushi joint, too.

I'm like, damn, I should have like it.

Yeah, I don't know.

Yes, make sure you cook it first.

Like, would you bust into some like wild parties?

Like, would you bust in and people have been up for days?

Would you bust in and people were so bummed that you were ruining the party that ever happened?

You know, the thing was not so necessarily bummed.

It was that the people felt like it was in Vegas.

Like, come on, cop, we should be able to do this.

I mean, like,

why are you, you know, bothering us right now?

Like, not, they wouldn't even be mad.

It was almost like a joke or people who wouldn't want to try to pay you off or stuff like that.

But the funny thing is that when I was talking about the girls doing the trick rolls and stuff like and everything, these people are a lot of times close to my age.

So I would see these, you know,

do you know there's a

guy's name is he was a famous

poker player.

I can't remember his name.

I pulled him over one time

and he was completely cracked out of it.

He's dead now.

So it's not me.

He was driving?

He was, no, he was in the passenger seat.

Stu Unger.

Yeah.

Stu Unger.

Stu Unger.

I pulled Stu Ung over.

He was in the passenger side of a car.

The driver was this dude who I knew was a dealer, completely cracked out of his mind.

And Stu tried to play me as I was standing at the passenger side of the car to try to get me to let him go, knowing that the car was full of all kinds of stuff.

Now,

in Vegas, I can tell you that without telling you, that

on

both hands, I've run into

easily five to 10

BA-less people involved in very, very compromising situations.

And I know that happens in LA, but the Vegas stuff is really super seedy.

It's almost always some kind of sex prostitute drug type thing.

And,

you know, I was like 21, 22 years old, and I was interacting with people who I had no idea that I would be interacting with them on that type of level.

Like, were there times you get called to hotel rooms?

Like, I'm just trying to think of like, take me on, like, a specific call if you can.

So, and, you know, I'm not saying name celebrities.

I don't need that, but I'm just saying like, yeah, take me on like a call where things are like, you know, I'm just kind of curious as to the level of

like just the things you would see because it's Vegas.

Like, you know, it's the craziest place on earth.

So here's a story, and it's a sad story.

Sorry, do I sound demanding about that?

No, not at all.

Okay, sorry, Mark.

I mean, that's kind of why I came, right?

My hearing is kind of sensitive to that, too.

Yeah, I don't know why.

I think I'm just tired, but.

So

working downtown, I got a call once.

So you guys walk the beat down there?

What do you guys do?

That's one of the things.

You don't really walk as much in Vegas.

You know, everyone really drives a car.

And I could talk about that a little bit later because I think foot patrol is kind of important.

But I remember one time going to, there was this movie theater called the Flick Movie Theater.

It was right on Fremont Street.

And I remember going in and

going to a hotel, getting they would comp us our dinner.

So we'd get a comp and go eat dinner at one of the hotels.

I remember meeting the security guard.

He gave me a comp, I went, ate dinner.

And then I got out.

You're talking about foot patrol.

I got out to walk my food off about an hour or so later.

And I go in the Flick Motel, and

it was one of those kind of triple X kind of movie theater.

And the same security guard that gave me the comp was getting a blowjob from a young guy in one of the back seats in his uniform.

Wow, comp and dinner, huh?

Um,

so he's sitting in the back getting a blowjob?

And what do you do?

Do you go in there?

Are you wearing like a shades and a, like, are you hiding in the distance?

What do you do?

No, no, no.

So what I hated having to do that because I was a rookie at the time and like you walk in there and your boots are like sticky because you know all the kind of disgust which is kind of gross if i don't clean the place up there it is right there oh the flick you can still see the yep that flick yep and were there live sex shows in there no they weren't there was a movie theater but they would want the rookies to walk through it so that stuff like that wouldn't happen but but what was weird was that this guy felt he was comfortable enough to go in in his uniform and get a blow job

you know, in a movie theater.

Like not even take his uniform off and go inside.

And that was like that Wild West mentality.

Vegas, on that same street, maybe a couple of weeks later, and this would happen frequently.

I got a call of a person not answering their door at their hotel room.

Go up to the hotel room, security with the passkey.

Wow.

Open the door.

They opened the door.

This dude was butt naked on the bed,

completely bloated.

He was, we say 419, which is the code for a dead body, completely dead.

I think Rigger had,

he might have started turning purple if I recall, but he was definitely dead.

And he had a picture of his family on the

nightstand.

So fast forward to the end of what happened was this guy came to Vegas on a like a conference or something like that.

He has a beautiful family, picks up a hooker, tries to have sex with her, heart pops, and he dies.

She leaves him and she leaves with all of his stuff.

And then that's the legacy that he leaves for his family.

And it was almost like it was movie-like because on the nightstand, the guy carried a picture of his family and put it on the nightstand.

And then I can see his dead fat body, his little pee-pee sticking out.

And he's on the, and he's, and his kids with his wife's picture is right there.

And you think about that kind of stuff.

Like, see, when we talk about this police thing, I think that death is the recurring theme.

And it gets scary, like, because you see so much.

Like, I would look at a dead body and I'd be like, did that guy realize that that was the last time he was going to put on those underwear?

Right.

Is that the last time that he realized that he was going to do that?

Brush his teeth, put lotion on his limbs or whatever.

Yeah.

Yeah, dude.

That's, yeah.

Sometimes I think like, like, um, I have like a moment each day kind of where it's like,

I, sometimes it is kind of putting on your socks.

You're like, what if this is the last day?

You know, I think, cause that's one of the moments you're kind of suiting up for the day.

I love moments like that.

Yeah.

What is that kind of, I guess if you see a lot of death, how does that change your perspective?

Or do you think it does for officers or even just you personally?

One time I was on a call where a guy hung himself and I was second to arrive and there was another cop in there.

And the guy was there.

He had cut him down, but left the ligature around his neck because he didn't want to make sure that it was

actually a suicide.

And the guy was just dead.

And the cop was there playing with the guys.

Because a lot of people in Vegas have those video poker, little handheld video poker things.

I mean, because this was, people don't do it on their phone.

And the cop was just sitting there.

He was like, just talking to me like, yeah.

And the guy was dead.

And this is, I'm talking about stuff from the beginning of my career more so.

Because I think that that really kind of formulated how my mind looked at death.

And, you know, it's evolved some, but those things stand out in my mind.

And I was like, dang, how's this cop sitting here playing this video game?

And I was like, that's why he's playing the video game.

Right.

That's why he's playing the video game because he's got to sit up here with this guy.

He needs an escape.

Yeah.

Do you want to sit here and look and keep taking the guy's pulse?

Or yeah,

it would be crazy if he's sitting there.

Yeah.

I mean, anything else besides trying to occupy his brain.

You know, that same time period in my career, it also taught me a lot about what we do with our loved ones at the last moment.

There was a recall.

On domestics, you get a lot of recalls.

There was this lady.

Okay.

And on domestics, you mean by people?

Domestic violence.

Yes.

Domestic violence.

And there was a recall, you said.

It's a recall.

A lot of times you end up having to go back to the same address multiple times.

Okay, so that's a recall.

So we got a recall back out to so-and-so.

And I remember it was really, really pretty

kind of.

I'm guessing that, because I was maybe in my early 20s, I'm going to guess this lady was about 30-something, really, really pretty, light-skinned black lady.

And she had some kids, and she got, she had recently been divorced.

And so she got the two kids.

She got was a son and a daughter.

The daughter was about 14, and this son was about maybe nine.

I'm just guessing these ages.

And I remember these kids would like be so mean to their mom because the divorce caused them to pick sides because the mom ended up with the custody of the kids.

And the dad was a pretty violent guy, and she would always call if he was coming through.

And I remember going, and the kids were just so mean to their mom.

After, I remember maybe a third recall, there was a call to the residence.

I was just about to get off on Graveyard of gunfire.

And I showed up, and the mom was laying on the sidewalk, shot in the face by the dad.

And the kids were screaming, my mom, what am I going to do without my mom?

I mean, just screaming.

You can feel that go through your whole body.

But you have to remain professional.

And in my mind, I'm saying,

but but you never said that to her when she was alive.

Why didn't you, you know, why didn't you, I didn't say that to them because these kids are going through trauma.

Why didn't you say that to them, to her when she was alive?

So, you know, when I, when I talk to people about policing, you know, it's nice to tell stories, but is there a lesson that I can learn from this?

If someone watches, that's why I really like you, man, because people relate to you, dude.

And like, there's some kid or someone watching this that's like maybe going through something.

And if they can take that away that, you know what I'm gonna say I love you or I'm gonna hold back yelling and being rude to you just because I'm having a bad day then this you know to me is a win yeah I think it's hard for children to learn that I think one of the things that I think I know I don't have any children I've been a child but I don't have any children but I think one of the things is

Nobody teaches you kind of how, you know, a lot of times to interact, you know, how to express your feelings.

Like, and I think a kid, you kind of feel like they just are going to know those things naturally, naturally you know how to talk to their i mean i think parents probably talk about how to speak to your mother how to speak to your father but i think sometimes there is this missing element sometimes of like how to feel what a feeling is you know like kids may be confused they may think something's anxiety for a lot and it's really just a feeling you know it's like i i think some of that i think there's a missing piece of education there and i'm not even blaming it on parents or anything i think it's just a part of our maybe our culture um that could be more expanded upon and maybe even a classes in school i know it sounds crazy no it doesn't it sounds real yeah but if somebody would have told me in school how to recognize if one of my friends might be struggling right or how to like you know approach an issue if there's some you know some type of thing goes on or if somebody's um you know uh like how i'm feeling about shit i think that could have been super helpful i agree 100 and as we get older i think that we learn how to do it better but there's so many young people suffering and you know i hate to use the word term bullying because it sounds kind of corny but like i don't, I don't like bullying in any way, shape, or form.

There's someone going through something so difficult.

We have no idea how, you know, that saying that says,

be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a very hard battle.

You know, I don't go to Vegas as much.

You know, I go to Vegas a couple of times out of the year for just different things

because obviously I still have some roots there.

But even being a New Yorker, I spent so many years there.

The last time I came to went to Vegas, or maybe it was the last time, my daughter picked me up, right?

My oldest daughter picked me up.

She's amazing.

All my kids are amazing, but my oldest daughter picked me up.

And she says,

We're coming back from the airport, and we drive by this apartment community.

And without even thinking, by an apartment community?

Yeah, by an apartment community.

And without even thinking, I was like, oh, because when you're a cop, you're like, okay, that happened there.

That happened there.

That's all you think about.

And I remember, I said, I said, I'm going to tell, I told her the story that there was this pizza delivery guy.

His girlfriend went to pick him up from work and she rode on him on his last delivery.

And these guys come out from the bushes and rob and shoot and kill him.

I was the first to arrive.

I get there and this girl grabs my arm and she's saying, wake him up.

Wake him up.

And you know, this is by the Bible, there's a story where this woman walks by.

And I'm not saying that I'm Jesus by any shape, but where the woman touched Jesus and he said he felt, you know, he instantly turned and knew that he was touched.

There's power that goes through people when they're going through things.

And like, that's why I feel like being a cop for that long, I don't know that the human psyche is meant to be able to deal with going through that.

It's like you go to work, you're like, okay, give me a conflict.

Okay, I'm done with that one.

Give me another conflict.

All right, I'm ready.

Give me another conflict.

I go to lunch.

Then I go home and got to deal with my own conflict.

You know what I'm saying?

And you have to go to lunch, dude.

What kind of lunch?

goes with a homicide or a burning, you know, like, yeah, oh, yeah, I'll have nuggets after a burning.

Like, but then at the same time, you still have to eat, right?

But it's like, yeah, you see fucking Ronnie's having, you know, eight pack of nuggets.

And it's like, dude, calm down.

You fucking had four drownings this morning and you're out here just nuggeting up.

Yeah, I can't even imagine.

I would be so, it'd be crazy to see a pairing menu for crimes and then different,

you know, I think if there's a couple BEs or whatever, you know, yeah, I'll have a fucking appetizer.

You feel me?

BNE, you mean breaking an entering?

Yeah.

I'm trying to work back at you.

you.

I got you.

I got you.

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No, well, we had a detective on one time and we talked a lot at Nauseum about like

the stress that a lot of officers feel.

He told this amazing story about

he got called to a scene and the mother is in the yard saying, I think my son is thinking of committing suicide.

They look in the doorway.

The guy

takes his own life with a shotgun.

Shoots himself in the head.

Now he has to go back.

Now he's standing there talking to the mother when it happens.

She's saying this.

Now this happened.

So he has this thing with the mother.

He still has to go inside and make sure everything's okay.

Like, is that exactly what happened?

Who knows if somebody's still in there with the weapon?

You just don't know.

He can't get the door open because the body's right there.

He finally is able to get it open, maneuver, and part of the matter from the guy's head falls down the back of his shirt.

Disgusting.

So now he still has to deal with the other.

He has to fill out reports.

It's four hours before he even gets to think about.

And the whole time he has like, well, you know, but yeah, I just, you guys are like the drain of society.

You guys have to be this catch-all in this, you have so many responsibilities.

It's tough.

It really is.

You know, and there's a story that, that story that you just told me reminded me of.

And again, it's a nexus to about how we treat humans.

What does a nexus mean?

Nexus is like a connection to.

So when one thing connects to another thing.

Okay.

So the.

this because the story that you told me reminded me of this story where um i negotiated this guy so i get a call i was on I was a sergeant actually at the time.

So I ended up negotiating because I was part of this

crisis intervention team.

So I go from Southeast Area Command all the way to downtown.

It's Valentine's Day, February 14th.

A lot of people end up tempting or committing,

we'll say 405.

Our term for that, unliving themselves is 405.

Day 405

on these holidays or at

cemeteries sometimes.

But this guy's on Fremont Street, about 14th in Fremont, walking up and down,

and he's got a gun in his hand.

And so they pull me into the scene, they put me in a car, and I'm like, the guy, I mean, the guy was like about, maybe about 12 or 13 feet that way when we first drove my.

I'm like, dang on, bro, you're going to drive me this close to him?

He was so close.

He was so close.

But they end up pulling behind this because it was really kind of a haphazard thing because the patrol officers pulled up on him.

No one called.

I think the guy just, the patrol officer pulls up something, the perimeter was set up kind of weird.

So we pull up and I, you know, I get to a safe distance behind.

And so I start on the PA talking to the guy.

So you're the negotiator.

Yeah.

So I'm talking to you.

You're the responsible.

I'm the responsible, right?

Okay.

And so I'm saying to him, and then I look at the guy, he looks kind of Latino.

So then I start saying, and I said, maybe I say it in Spanish.

So then in Spanish, I start giving, you know, saying to him, listen, you know,

giving him the whole thing, right?

And he keeps starting to raise the fire.

And I keep going like this because all, you know, these these guys, you know, officers with their rifles on him and office.

And I'm like, this guy's going to get, and I can see him talking to him.

And then one time he lifts, they light him up.

So we all just run across the street.

And these weird things happen when you're in a very critical situation like that.

I remember one of the first things I noticed was that his pinky was shot off.

And when I first got up to him.

So we get the scene, calm down.

And then I see also in his boot, he had a Derringer, a little small 22 Derringer.

The gun that he had was not real.

It was a replica firearm, if I recall.

It was a pellet, something like that.

This is what's called suicide by cop.

I don't know if you're familiar with that term.

Now I am, and I totally understand it.

They trick you into shooting them.

Right, because they don't want to do it themselves.

What?

Yes.

Well, some people, because of, remember, for religious reasons, they feel like if they kill themselves, that's the last act that they committed.

Or some people just don't have, I guess, and I don't want to say courage, because I.

It's ballsy to unalive yourself.

Yes, it is.

So 405 is a serious thing.

So those are some replica

firearms.

It was a legit.

I shot a guy with one of those, by the way.

That's a six-hour, right?

I have a six-hour.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I don't, I don't, I kind of prefer a Glock.

Yeah, it's just, it's a personal preference.

You know, I have a few different guns.

My favorite gun is my AR pistol, though.

You know, but I mean, I'm not a big gun person, but I strongly believe in protecting mine from peeps.

Oh, for sure.

That's why I like to live in a state where

you where you can have a weapon too it's nice um so in that instance say you're you're just you're talking to somebody it's a hostage negotiation situation right yes but you know let me just tell you one other part of that story that i'm gonna tell you forgive me yeah no one um so what happened was we had to go to coroner inquest for that and we all go and we get to go to what it's called it's called a coroner's inquest where everyone gives testimony okay about that the same day

no no no it's sometime after because the homicide has to collect them their their information and everything and mind you you know this is some weeks later so this lady where after after all the officers and everyone testify, this lady walks and no one knows who she is.

And she's in like this kind of like plain Jane kind of outfit.

And she walks up to the front and it's almost like a movie scene because it's all quiet because I didn't know who she was.

And she gets up.

They swear in or whatever.

And she says,

I just want you to know that while you guys were on the police side, This person was my brother.

I'm not here to try to defend his behavior.

I just came so officially, you know, that someone loved him.

And then she got up and she left.

Wow.

And so to me, it's like you never know what someone's going through in life.

When you go, you know, with the whole road rage thing or whatever, you know, like, maybe that person, maybe, let me cut them a little bit of slack, you know?

Let me cut them a little bit.

And I mean, I'm raising my hand.

I'm very, very guilty.

Oh, for sure.

All of us are.

I don't think it doesn't sound like we're trying to, like you're trying to exclude yourself.

It's just like, yeah, it's funny.

You get so active and so animated it's hard to sometimes have that control you know yeah and self-control is such a huge thing but god that's powerful moment i just wanted you to know that that somebody loved this person yes it was deep man yeah because otherwise you just see this person a lot of times you don't even get a story you don't even know their story you just pull up somebody's deceased somebody's killed someone somebody's tried to take their own life um

what's that moment when you're negotiating right

and you were, so, or do you have a weapon on the person or you don't have a weapon on?

You're kind of.

No, so, so negotiation happens in a lot of different ways.

That's not, that's atypical way because it's tip from a negotiation team,

they set up a command center, the whole nine yards.

You're very far back.

I mean, sometimes you don't get on the phone for maybe an hour.

You could be two hours later.

That situation was a very critical situation where they needed someone who had training on the scene.

So what's kind of fun that I've been able to deal with those kinds and also the kind where you're in the tactical operations center.

So, you know, another one of those kind of dynamic situations was a guy who was inside, had a gun.

His neighbor called and I was negotiating

and it's called a face-to-face, but it's really, we weren't really face-to-face because we don't do face-to-face.

It's like, it's incredibly dangerous.

But I was actually in patrol at the time.

And I was the first to arrive.

And I ended up getting a rapport with this guy.

And I talked to him and talked to him.

And we, I developed, you know, I want to say liking the guy, you know, and understanding what he was was going through.

He's going through, and they, you know, it's usually like three things, you know, it's a health issue, loneliness, you know, a family loss, and a financial issue or a medical issue.

It's any one of various things.

And he was going through like maybe all of those things.

And I remember talking to him and I'm like, and he says, you know what?

We got to a point where he said, you know, I'm going to come out, but I want to come out and I want to talk to you.

Will you welcome me to the ambulance?

Because I told him he was going to go to the ambulance and get transported.

And I did that.

And I stayed with him at the ambulance.

The ambulance people come out to me and they say, hey, hey, officer, you might want to come see this.

I go inside and inside of his drawer, stacks of kiddie porn.

Stacks of it.

Dang.

Now, mind you, I would talk this guy out of 405ing.

Right.

You talking from out of one alive in himself.

And then now you're like, look what I've done.

You know, it's really.

Is that the thing?

It's like, I kept this person alive.

And it's like you have this really kind of dual, like, this.

It's really.

Like, if I had my choice, if I was able to walk up on somebody in over the Wild West, I would probably.

It's a very difficult, difficult situation to be in.

And you know, when you talk to a person for extended periods of time, it's called Stockholm.

And have you ever heard of Stockholm syndrome?

Stockholm syndrome.

You know, it's breaking up.

Let me read the definition of it because I always hear it and I even say it.

And I thought of it, originally it was people from Norway that got lost or whatever, I think.

But let me think.

It was a banker.

Stockholm syndrome is, what did you say?

It's a bank robbery thing.

Oh, it's a bank robbery thing.

Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response where a hostage or victim develops positive feelings or emotional attachment to their captor or abuser, often as a coping mechanism during prolonged captivity or abusive situations.

So it's kind of like marriage or whatever, but it's like very severe.

And that's just a joke.

But yeah, so psychological.

So that's interesting.

Speaking of like that kind of thing, you hear a lot about child trafficking.

You hear a lot about trafficking.

That is a buzzword right now for sure.

Did you see a ton of that kind of stuff?

Or is some of that, because I'm not saying it doesn't happen.

I know that there's a lot of things like that, but is there a lot,

is some of that just heightened?

Because we hear about it every single day now.

Did you see a lot of that sort of thing?

Or what did you see?

So,

okay,

define child from your definition of child.

That's a great question.

So I guess you would think of.

Right, did you see a lot of pedophilia or did you see, did you see like more like people just trafficking, like prostitution type of that being run by pimps?

Like, what did you see kind of like what kind of...

those things were separate, kind of separate, right?

The pedophilia, you'd see like familial stuff like that, or you would see like that guy that had the pictures inside the room.

It wasn't a person running, you know, females.

One time I was, um, I was actually with the cops TV show and for this, they, in this episode, they couldn't air because we drove, we drove into the desert because a vagrant had found a campsite and there was a person who was living there.

And this guy, and I'm going to assume it was a guy because we never caught him, but all of these pornographic magazines.

This is scary, man.

He cut little kids' faces out of other regular magazines and pasted the little kids' faces on all these explicit

magazines.

So, this is the type of person you think would be like a serial, like kidnapper, rape, like whatever.

Yeah.

And the cops didn't end up airing it, and I'm sure why, because it was incredibly graphic and

creatively weird and disgusting at the same time.

And we never ever caught the guy.

Oh.

Never caught him.

What was the campsite like?

It was just a disgusting campsite in the desert area because Vegas has a lot of desert areas.

So especially if you go like to the

northwest area and vagrants kind of hang out there, kind of a little near Nellis Air Force Base.

Like jugs of pee-pee, stuff like that, like just like stuff like food, stuff sitting around.

It's like somebody just

exactly like that.

You know, old cans,

beer bottles, soda bottles.

There was like a sleeping bag and stuff like that.

That's so bizarre.

Yeah.

So that's kind of like as far as like a perverted type of thing you see.

And it's kind of crazy.

Like it's crazy what happens mentally to people that they

that that becomes something for them, you know, like what sickness happens inside of them, you know?

And a lot of that you hear too is

cyclical, I think.

Right?

Yeah, it is.

And you know, that's one of the things that I saw, yeah, so that the one that was molested ends up molesting.

Yeah, Yeah, is that true?

Let's look up what percentage of people that get molested end up becoming molesters.

And I don't know if that's the right terminology, but you always hear that.

So let me see if I can get a little bit of information with that right now.

Trevin, if you have something.

I just wonder if that's fact or fiction.

I think it would probably be significant.

There is widespread belief in a cycle of child sexual abuse, but little empirical evidence for this belief.

The aims were to identify perpetrators of such abuse who had been victims of pedophilia and or incest in order to ascertain whether subjects who had been victims become perpetrators.

The results among 747 males, the risk of becoming a perpetrator was positively correlated with reported sexual abuse victim experiences.

The overall rate of having been a victim was 35% for perpetrators and 11% for non-perpetrators.

Of the 96 females, 43% had been victims, but only one was a perpetrator.

A high percentage of male subjects abused in childhood by a female relative became perpetrators.

That's interesting.

Having been a victim was a strong predictor of becoming a perpetrator, as was an index of parental loss and childhood.

Wow.

The data supports the notion of a victim-to-victim cycle in a minority of male perpetrators, but not among the female victims studied.

That's interesting that some of them also, having become a victim, was strong,

an index of parental loss, that sometimes you

do that if you lost a parent.

Yeah, that's interesting.

I don't even know why it would happen.

Huh.

Just kind of interesting because you always hear that, you know, that it happens a lot in male.

And then you see that it happens a lot of males, but not as much in females.

In Vegas, yeah, you run across,

you know, everybody's there to have the craziest time.

Yes.

Right.

Everybody's there to have, you know, bonkers times.

And I'm sure, and there's tons of like prostitution, sex work,

girls who are just.

partying for money.

I mean, there's everything there.

The prostitution in Vegas is just off the meter.

A lot of people think that it's legal in Vegas.

It's not legal in Vegas.

It's legal a little bit north in Nye County.

You can go to the, there's a chicken ranch and there's other places that people can go.

But in Vegas, it's illegal.

It's a misdemeanor, but it's still illegal.

But inside the clubs, inside the casinos, I mean, there's tons of girls who are working.

And most of them,

not most of them, a lot of them work for pimps.

Oh, they do?

A lot of them do.

What's that kind of connection?

Would you see that sometimes?

Like, does the pimp come and drop them off?

Does the pimp put them, does he like uber pool pool them or whatever like how do they get the hook the women down to the strip or whatever is the pimp down there so it's there's a thing well pimps a lot of times from a pimp perspective they they have a stable of women and they'll go from place to place to place like they'll go to miami and bring their girls to miami to work they'll bring their girls to um you know new york or vegas or whatever and there's a and these girls are called I don't like the terminology, but they're called carpet holes or holes that actually work inside of casinos and they'll walk inside the hole, inside the casino,

on the carpet, and they'll go make their money, come back and give it to the pimp.

Then you have the lower level prostitutes, which are the ones that work the tracks.

And a track is a place where it's known for prostitution.

And Vegas and every other major city has tracks.

And lower level pimps will drop their girls off on the tracks and then they'll walk the track and make their money.

Then you have the ones that are the call girls who work out of the books and they're the most high-level females that a person can interact with.

The people who drop some off of the tracks,

what kind of vehicles do pimps drive?

Do they still drive like these crazy classy cars?

Do they drive a van?

So, you know, I'm still, I'm retired, so now it may have changed, but I can tell you that in the time when I was working, their cars stood out.

It wasn't like the 1970s pimp mobile type vehicles.

But you would see the nicer, you know, escalades or whatever types of vehicles.

But we would know because, I mean, if you're on a Boulder Highway, which is a really, really kind of seedy area, especially where the track is by five points.

Boulder Highway, it's called?

It's called Boulder Highway Five Points, yeah.

Because it five points of the city intersect at that location, and that's a track.

It's still a track.

Okay, let's see that Boulder Highway five points.

Yeah, because sometimes if I go, I'll drive just to see what places are still popping.

Yeah, sure, brother.

And

a lot of the pimps, are they what types of guys are they?

Black men?

Are they Asian men?

Black men.

It is.

Black males are mostly pimps.

So that's more if it's a black culture.

Black intercharacter.

Yes.

Right.

It's a black culture thing.

It is.

You didn't know that?

I've seen, I've thought that because the pimps that I've met, the pimps that I've met, I've only maybe met three pimps, but two and a half of them, or one of them was mixed, but two of them were full or potentially full black.

But even in rap culture, you can hear people talk about pimp culture.

Oh, yeah.

So it's like very, it's very clear that that's a subculture of I just didn't know if it was also Chinese or Russian type of thing, you know?

Do you see a lot of that Vietnamese stuff?

No, not.

in my career, I didn't see that.

But in New York, I know that the Russians have a lock on a lot of different vices in New York.

That didn't really translate into Vegas as much.

At a certain point, do you let the

women trick?

Do you let them do whatever they got to do out there?

Like, I mean, what do you kind of just want to make sure they're safe?

At a certain point, like, you know, the crime is going to go on, right?

If it's a...

kind of a fluid crime that happens regularly, is there more of a idea like, okay, we just want this to happen safely?

Or is it more of an idea of like, we want to stop this?

So it's a very good question.

So there's only so much you could do, right?

So the

primary responsibility for a patrol officer is to respond to calls for service.

So I'm going to speak to when I was a patrol officer.

And I'm talking about prostitution.

Right, for prostitution.

So, I mean, you see two or three prostitutes walking up and down the street.

I mean, you can only stop one.

But most of the time, they would

if they saw the patrol car, they would just keep walking.

And if I hung out in the area long enough, they would realize that no trick is going to stop and pick them up.

So you could affect it like that, but then you get a call for service and then you got to leave and then they're going to be back doing exactly what they want to do.

Was it a crime that I was really super concerned about?

No, it wasn't.

But it looks bad when I'm part of the responsible party of keeping that area safe.

And you know, if you have a prostitution situation going on, either something else is going to occur, you know, connected to that.

There's either she's going to get beat up or she's going to steal his money.

A lot of times they would do that to guys.

If they felt like they could take their money because the guy wouldn't report it to the police, that would happen for low-level, for people who wanted to buy drugs too.

You would get these kids from the Midwest to come there or they're in Vegas.

Okay, we go down on Fremont.

Let's go buy some whatever they want to buy.

And I'm going to fill in the blank of whatever drug it could be.

And they would just give, they would just rob them.

They would give them whatever and they say, go.

Call the police.

And then what are they going to do?

They're not going to call the police.

And then you got all of this crap going on and it looks bad.

It's like, why are tax dollars paying for the police if we're not going to keep the area clear?

So I think to answer your question, what I would do mostly is I would leave the prostitutes alone with the exception of interacting with them to say, hey, it's time to clear out.

Do officers respond to in-casino activities or do in-casino security respond to those?

So that it's not a public thing.

Right.

So the casino security are pretty high level.

They're pretty well trained.

They handle what they can, but they can't arrest anyone.

So if it's a felony, we have to come and take care of it.

For most misdemeanors, a lot of times they would give a person a warning.

I got called to casinos a lot of times for a lot of different things.

I mean, because, you know, people get drunk.

High.

You know, I told you if we have dead bodies, obviously the police have to respond to dead bodies.

That's crazy.

Oh, yeah.

But, and a lot of times people die

in these casinos.

What do they die?

Overdoses, probably?

A lot of times it's overdoses.

Really?

And is it a lot of times just people doing cocaine by themselves?

Is it what is it you think?

So let me speak to the things I can specifically remember.

So sometimes it's been just overpartying, overexertion of their heart, and it could be a combination of using drugs, trying to have some sex that they weren't capable of doing.

But a lot of times it's an overexertion and trying to put too much in a weekend and thinking that Vegas is going to be the panacea to whatever they had going on in their life back in Minnesota.

And it wasn't.

Yeah.

Was there ever like a murder in a casino?

A murder in a casino.

No, I don't, I've never ever responded to a murder in a casino.

I've responded to a lot of different murders, but in the patrol capacity, a lot of times those murders were either a robbery,

the really sad ones were obviously the domestic violence ones.

But the casinos, they did a pretty decent job of

the ones that casinos that I dealt with, of kind of monitoring their clientele.

They've done the Vegas, because you get issues like that, and then people are not going to come back to your casino.

Vegas is run by money.

And most of the directors of these casinos are people people who were prior, who were cops before.

Oh, that's true.

Yeah.

It's just like,

yeah, people that lobby and people that work in Congress.

Like you're only so far from the other side.

It's like once you know so much about being an officer, at a certain point, the criminals might hire you because you know so much about being an officer.

It's like so many things are kind of simpatico like that.

What about, did prostitutes offer cop stuff a lot?

Does that happen or no?

Yeah, there were some cops that have gotten in trouble for getting some of the, you know, prostitution stuff stuff on the side.

And that's another thing: is that they, you ever heard the term badge bunnies?

So it's not just prostitutes, it's just a lot of times women in general would offer police

sex or sexual activities.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

A lot of the chicks over by, we had a foot locker boss.

A lot of chicks over there was always trying to slurp on the cops or whatever.

One of my attack officers, the guys who teach you when you're in the academy, said,

This badge will get you a whole bunch of coochie, but one coochie will take that badge away.

Damn.

And it's true.

And what

a lot of officers are still like, whatever.

This is part of my.

I had a cough one time.

This dude was super squared away.

I mean, tall, good-looking.

I mean, straight out of central casting.

And I'm definitely not going to say his name.

I had a ton of respect for this guy.

For sure.

In fact, I think he was good enough to almost play professional baseball, if I recall.

I was his boss at the time, and

he goes on a call and this girl, he was supposed to take, I think, a burglary report, if I recall.

And he ends up hooking up with the girl and

realizes that he's screwed up.

And so, and the girls, I guess, having feelings for him.

And so, like, how

he ends up going and putting like a hoodie on and going and trying to buy the morning after pill at a convenience store or whatever, or CVS, wherever you can buy the morning after pill.

And he had called me and said, Hey, I'm not feeling well.

Can I get off early?

And I just, this guy was so sharp.

I was like, Yeah, go ahead, go and go home.

And it, so he, and he tells the girl he wants her to take the morning afterpill.

And then she ends up calling the police, calling police, and then it turned

and he lost his job over it.

And then there's a video of him.

This is like a married guy with a hoodie on going in and buying a morning afterpill.

And it's just, it was that temptation.

Story involving me.

I went on a call, it's loud music call, and it was all these girls that came in drunk from

a party, all really high girls.

And it was like three of us on the call, and we told them to turn the music down.

And this beautiful girl looks at me and she says, and they're like, oh, she got her navel pierced.

She got her navel pierced.

And I was like, oh, cool.

And she goes like this.

She goes, look, and pulled a dress up, no panties on and showed me her navel piercing.

Yeah.

That kind of stuff happens.

And what do you do?

I'm just kidding.

Can you look or not?

Of course.

I mean, she was standing right there.

I wasn't, you know, I just said, no, you know, we're going to leave.

You know, you got to be professional and you got to go.

But you're going to get that kind of stuff all the time.

I mean, there was a time,

I mean, you write people tickets, they track you down, and you want to meet up or connect or whatever.

There are people who just have a thing for police.

Is it hard to say no to that type of thing now at some points?

No, because you get off shift.

I mean, you get off shift and you can, you know,

meet the person after you don't have to try to do it on duty.

Oh, so you could still do it off duty.

It depends on what kind of situation it is.

There were guys.

Now, there are cops who have banged the

wife.

Stories happen more than once where a guy, a cop arrests the guy, the husband for domestic violence and hooks up with the wife.

No.

That's happened more than once.

What's that called?

Is there a felony?

I mean,

a bad business.

I mean, it's just

really bad business.

Damn, yeah.

I was wondering if there's a term for that.

Yeah, it's bad.

It's a very, very bad thing.

What are some of the, I heard you talk about suicide earlier with the guy, guy, or maybe it was drug use where it was Valentine's Day, I guess?

Valentine's Day, guys.

Is that a scary time?

Like, what's like one of the most dangerous holidays?

New Year's Eve.

Really?

And I didn't like working as it because so many people shoot guns in the air and all kinds of stuff like that.

And I remember I went on a call one time.

A lot of it's Mexican people thing.

I'm not saying anything.

Damn white.

Well, the story that I went to is a lady.

What goes up must come down.

Yeah.

Someone shot a gun up and a bullet came down and was right in her in her boob.

Yeah.

So that's a cautionary tale to people who go out and shoot on Valentine's Day.

Of course, we didn't catch the guy, but yeah.

So I didn't, I didn't, and New Year's Eve is just people getting wild and drunk and fighting.

The one time a person spit in my face was on New Year's Eve.

A woman.

What do you do then?

It was tough.

Dio,

I was about to retire, man.

And

this girl was just incredibly drunk.

You know, she couldn't go into the casino.

We ended up getting her into custody.

My officers got her in custody.

And I'm trying to calm her down face to face.

And she just spit right in my face, man.

I'm telling you, it took everything.

You know, I saw my whole career, Mass, and

you know, and it just,

and she ended up getting booked on that because, you know, that's a crime, obviously.

And we went to court, and she was dressed up completely nice.

And they offered her a deal if I would agree to her getting the deal.

And I gave her the deal, man.

Wow.

Gave her the deal.

People get drunk and do stupid things, man.

It sucked.

Not only does the smell and all that other stuff suck, but what sucks is being humiliated on Fremont Street on New Year's Eve in front of thousands of people and seeing people laughing at you for being spit upon.

It sucked, man.

It really did.

But you got to, you know, to me, you got to learn to forgive, man.

Yeah, well, you're out there, though, in moments.

Like, yes, you do.

It's really, it's interesting because I feel like we're at this juxtaposition sometimes in society where it's like, you know, yes, you want to treat people with respect.

Yes, you want

people to,

you know, you want to believe that all people are good.

But then it also, you, it starts to be like,

it feels like the bad stuff is winning sometimes.

But I don't think that all people are good.

I think that we are human that are capable of doing things that we don't even know that we're capable of doing.

I have this thought that if placed in the right or wrong circumstance, a person that you would think would not do a certain thing would do that certain thing.

That's the thing about being human.

That's the beauty of free will to some degree, in my opinion, right?

There's that famous case where someone was giving someone an order like through a wall or something.

Can you find it really quick?

Oh, and they were asking him to shock.

Yeah, I think I know which case you're talking about.

And the person, yeah, they shocked.

Yeah, the Milgram experience.

There it is.

In 1961, a series of social psychology experiments were conducted by Yale University.

Psychologist Stanley Milgram, who intended to measure the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience.

Participants were led to believe that they were assisting a fictitious experiment in which they had to administer electric shocks to a learner, which was another person.

These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.

What about the McDonald's one?

Are you familiar with the McDonald's case, the police case, where the guy...

Craziest thing I've ever heard.

And just because he thought it was a cop, they were willing to go to that degree.

This is the craziest thing that ever happened.

The strip search phone call scam was a a series of incidents mostly occurring in rural areas of the U.S.

that extended over a period of at least 10 years, starting in 1994.

The incidents involved a man calling a restaurant or grocery store, and oftentimes it was a McDonald's, claiming to be a police officer, and then convincing managers to conduct strip searches of employees and to perform other bizarre and humiliating acts on behalf of.

the police.

I'm sorry to laugh, but the shit is unreal.

Yes.

With every hoax, a male caller who identified himself as a police officer would contact a manager or supervisor and would solicit their help in detaining an employee or customer who was suspected of a crime, such as a theft or drug possession.

He would then provide a generic description of the suspect, like, oh, it's a female employee, et cetera, which the manager would recognize, and then he would ask the manager to search the suspected person.

So basically, he just had a guy calling up.

McDonald's.

Eventually, the caller would have groomed the manager to the point where they would do almost anything asked by the caller, such as spanking, kissing, inappropriate touching, oral sex, and even and even sexual assault and rape.

Many of the incidents would last hours.

I'm sorry, man.

This is not funny.

I don't know what I think there's something about it that

many of this is fucking crazy, I think, right?

It's cyclical.

It's crazy.

Okay, good.

Many of the incidents would last hours before either of the participants of the strip search realized the call is a hoax or by the intervention of a bystander.

Dude,

is it even crazier?

This became a form of porn that became super popular.

Really?

Yes.

Where they were having,

they were just filming it exactly like that.

God.

Yeah, I did a deep dive on this whole thing.

Yeah, this thing is fascinating.

Yeah, basically they would call.

They would have the manager.

They would get the manager on the phone and they'd be like, yeah, I'm calling with the police.

We have security camera footage that one of your employees has been stealing.

They would give a description of the employee.

Then the the manager would bring the employee into the back room with the police, alleged police officer still on the phone and be like, okay, yeah, I need you to have the employee take off their shirt, right?

Yes.

And a lot of times the person might have access to the cameras in the

in the McDonald's or in the restaurant.

So they can actually watch this somewhere.

afar, right?

So, but anyway, they'd be like, yeah, now have the person lift up their arms, have them take off their bra or their pants or whatever, spread their leg.

And you have this

fucking crazy.

You have a manager in McDonald's and an employee in McDonald's.

Now they're both

looking at each other's private parts for something.

They didn't even say what they stole a lot of times.

Like, what are they going to say?

And one of them was a husband and wife.

The male manager and the female

is a wife.

That's the best.

Yeah.

The lady was like, oh my God, because she was a manager.

She's like, it's busy today.

I have to get back to work.

She's like, let me call my husband

who I trust.

Yes.

And let him do it.

To come down here and finish this examination of

this female employee.

So now you have the husband of the McDonald's manager sitting there strip searching a female employee who's done nothing.

The whole time there's a cop on the phone.

It's been a couple hours now.

And at one point, they told the girl, the woman, I believe, to blowjob the man.

So now you have somebody who allegedly stole from McDonald's, blowing the boyfriend of a man.

I just, sorry, this is crazy.

I don't understand how they could go that far.

And then at a certain point, the janitor literally gets on the phone.

Yeah, this is the part right here.

On February 2003, a phone call was made to a McDonald's in high.

I'm sorry, man, this shit.

In Hinesville, Georgia, the female manager who believed she was speaking to a police officer who was with the director of operations for the restaurant's upper management, that's who she believed she was speaking to, took a female employee into the women's bathroom and strip search her.

She also brought in a 55-year-old male janitor who conducted a body cavity search of the woman to uncover hidden drugs.

Yeah, it's just crazy.

And then the janitor, and I think it was a different instance, but the janitor got on the phone one time and was like, oh, this guy's just screwing around.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And hung up the hood.

So then people are just standing there naked and like, what the fuck just happened?

God,

this is crazy that this was just such a huge thing that happened.

Can you imagine that?

And it started,

I couldn't believe it was true.

I could not believe it was true.

And it started when you you were saying about the authority, right?

Like just the authoritative voice or thinking that it's a police officer, that these people will be willing to do that.

It's unbelievable to me.

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Thank you.

Yeah.

Can you take me on a call that

kind of baffled you or still sticks with you?

This one is tough, man.

So the call comes out, and this was a swing shift call.

So it's usually right before, you know,

after 3 p.m.

Swing shifts, 3 p.m.

until about 1 a.m so the night hours about 9 to 11 are the hours where things really pop off so this call comes out uh where this these guys are screaming on the phone my brother's been shot my brother's been shot my brother's been shot it happened at the uh at the circle k so i drive up to the address of where it is and these two guys are on the sidewalk just wailing like freaked like you i know that true that's why it's hard for me to watch tv shows but these these guys are truly in trauma and they're wailing.

And I could see the car where they're talking about.

They're like, my brother, my brother, my brother.

And I go to the car and I get to the window and I see this like, this guy had a lot of hair.

It was all matted and mush.

And you can tell that he wasn't moving.

And I open and his face was just, because he had been shot in the head, his face was just mush.

And it was just all this nasty purple blood and everything.

So I close the door and I go and I talk to the brothers and they tell me that they were driving by the Circle K and that someone shot at them.

And I was like,

it just didn't make a lot of sense to me that,

you know, the entry wound was in the back of the head and there's no entry in the window of the car.

What turns out is it was three brothers in the car and the brother in the back seat was playing with the gun and he put it to his brother's head joking around and he pulled the trigger and shot and killed his brother.

And so in that short period of time, the two alive brothers have to figure out a story because this happened very, very, you know, quickly.

And I remember when I, because the brothers ended up confessing to this, is

the trauma of killing your brother and then having to make up a story about it and having to deal with that grief.

One of the most like wild, crazy things, because you do have, it was an accident, but it's negligence.

Right.

But

the biggest crime is that he has to almost didn't deal with this burden

of killing his own brother.

It almost sounds Shakespearean or something.

It is.

And, you know, that's

playing with guns is another thing because one of the first calls I ever had to translate on was because we have AAA.

Well, I don't say we because I don't live there anymore, but in Vegas, they have AAA

baseball.

And they have this AAA team.

This guy had Tommy John surgery and a Dominican guy had Tommy John.

And so he.

partying with his friends and they brought some girls over and he was playing with the gun and shot this young girl in the head she was probably like 19 years old killed her and i walk into the i walk into the i walk upstairs i walk into the apartment and the girl her eyes were open and she was just to the side like this and the guy is just like he's completely freaked out and he's thinking about his career right

and i so i'm he didn't speak english so i'm you know translating to him in spanish and i'm like The stupidity, again, of playing with a freaking gun, you just, this life is done.

You know, I mean, you're done.

your career is what you're thinking about right now how do you live with that don't even think about the legal stuff that you have to go through living with the fact that you took this like 18 or 19 year old girl's life because you wanted to show off and play with the gun so that like there's another lesson it's like do not play with freaking guns and they're not toys they're really not toys oh and so many people do so many people do It's ridiculous, dude.

I would not, yeah, we had a kid in high school and

there was, I guess, kids playing poker together and he was messing with the gun and shot shot himself there were two brothers in our town and one of them they were playing russian roulette together

and they were idiots i'll be honest they were dumb not smart guys

and

one of them shot himself i mean the how but what a weird moment then you're sitting you're the brother you're like what even

we could have played a no we could have played hoops or something You know, just like,

it's heartbreaking, man.

Responsible gun ownership is good, but, you know, when it comes to playing with guns or showing off with guns, I mean,

it's just one of the stupidest things that you can possibly do.

Have you ever been involved in a shooting?

Yes, I have.

And in fact, I was mentioning earlier, yeah, I was involved in two.

And I was a sergeant on nine.

You were a sergeant on nine different shootings.

On nine different shootings, yeah.

So I've intimately.

And a shooting means somebody shot somebody, or it means somebody shot an officer, or it means an officer shot someone.

It can mean any of those.

But the ones I was involved in, the one that I was specifically will reference is this interesting story.

It was

cop buddy of mine,

this mom was taking her kids out and having one of the kids make a commotion, and then the rest of the kids would steal stuff and run out.

So my buddy had a warrant for

at a grocery store?

More like those Target type places.

Got it.

My buddy had a warrant for one of the people in the family, and he asked me to go with him to serve it.

And it was an arrest warrant.

So we get to the apartment community, and he thinks he sees one of the guys involved in this thing.

And the guy I remember, he had on these red cargo shorts, a white t-shirt, white wife beater.

And

he goes, that's the guy.

So there's a thing that we do is called contact cover, where one officer does all the talking and the other one covers to make sure that the person's not doing anything.

Oh, okay.

So the guy up front can feel comfortable knowing that the guy behind him,

his sole purpose is just to see if this dude tries to make a single move.

Yep, it's called contact cover.

And so I'm with the cover officer.

And as I'm looking at the guy, I see in his cargo pocket the outline of a gun.

And so our code for gun is 413.

So I made the fourth, I give 413 to him.

And so my guy sees it.

He's like, oh, shoot.

So the guy was being a no.

So there was yes people, no people, maybe people.

And the guy was being a maybe, maybe person, like, maybe I'll comply.

And that may be people, we want to get them in custody.

So I made the choice that I knew I could tell it was the gun.

So I made the choice that I went and I grabbed it.

And this guy yanked away from me and he got away.

And so the foot pursuit starts.

And he reaches into

his cargo pocket.

And I'm running after him, gun drawn.

And this was around 4:35 o'clock in Vegas.

So it's still very light outside.

And I'm running after him.

And he keeps turning around and looking at me.

And I keep saying, if you pull that gun out of your pocket, if I'm screaming, if you pull that gun, if you pull that,

and then he pulled the gun and I lit him up.

I remember after I shot that, you know, he does a somersault and everyone in this place is screaming.

At the target?

At the apartment company.

At the apartment company, everyone's screaming.

And this place was kind of anti-police.

They were like, oh, he shot that guy.

He shot that guy.

And the guy's mom came out.

She was one of the first people to come out.

He lived.

It turned out that it was a replica gun.

It wasn't even a real gun.

Replica.

It was a replica that looked like a firearm.

It wasn't even a real weapon.

It was not not a fireable weapon it was a replica

what that is even dumber than anything well it makes it actually a blessing there makes sense it makes sense because it makes sense here why so because a lot of those guys will they'll rob people with them oh i see or or if someone you know and he he's a gang member and so a lot of times they'll flash those or if they have the inability to get something that's better than nothing um

but it was just a incredibly and it became a race thing which is really weird because i'm not white,

you know, but the media portrays things a certain way and it flips.

Was it a black perpetrator?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

He was.

He is.

He's still alive.

Wow.

And do you choose at that point?

Are you trying to maim someone?

Are you trying to just slow down?

No, no.

We shoot to incapacitate.

You're taught to shoot center mass.

But again,

do you train running at full speed through an apartment community?

There's a whole bunch of different dynamic that come into play.

Yeah, that's got to be kind of fascinating with a lot of race.

Yeah, there's so much racial stuff surrounding police and policing.

Yeah.

What does that look like from the inside?

What's that?

Because if you were, if it was a black group and you got accused and you're Dominican?

No, I'm half black, half white.

Oh, you are?

Okay.

So you're black and white.

Well, actually, both of my parents are kind of mixed.

So I guess I'm, but I'm considering myself black.

Yeah.

But I speak Spanish because I learned to speak Spanish as an adult.

That was an intent of mine.

I respect cultures.

I think that, and I lived in another country that spoke Spanish, so I felt that if you go into another country, learn their language.

I think that makes good sense.

It just helps you probably too.

100%.

Yeah, and probably help you so much in your service.

Oh, yeah.

Because immediately you can relate with somebody else.

Yes.

On a level that a lot of people wouldn't be able to.

Yeah, what is rape?

What is that profile?

What is that?

Like...

There's so much racial stuff that revolves around the police all the time.

Does that get uncomfortable out there in the streets?

What is it like?

It's really interesting because, you know, a lot of people, being a white cop

is really really difficult a white male cop because so often the default is that you did it because I'm this race and you're white and I was around cops for 20 plus years and

I can't I can only think of one instance one instance where there was an overtly racial thing that occurred and it was a it was a comment that was made in a briefing room

and but as far as the treating of a person because they were a certain race,

I've never seen that.

And I'm, I'm hypersensitive to that kind of stuff.

Like I study that.

In fact, I taught it for a while.

And

what is that called?

So some people call it diversity.

I call my class was called human, and I called it the soul search warrant.

And I think that we all have biases.

All of us have biases.

Oh, for sure.

And I think that you as a comedian know that part of those biases is what makes a lot of comedy funny.

And most black comedians, the first thing that they talk about is how black people are a certain way and white people are a certain way.

I mean,

that's just kind of how we are, but we get along and it works.

But in policing, to default that because one person is one color and another person is another color is the wrong way to look at it.

I mean, this whole thing that happened with George Floyd, I mean,

we're talking billions of dollars and people who were, the cities that were destroyed and all that stuff.

I have yet to see a piece of evidence that derek chauvin did that because george floyd is black i i haven't seen that now can i speak to the tactics i can of course speak to the tactics right but right was race involved or was just a guy maybe who didn't use the best tactics in the moment who was probably also scared who who knows what was going on i don't know exactly what he testified i studied that case you did i did what did he what what did chauvin say so

so i can tell you that so here are the factors and this is a big can of worms for us to open up but I'll speak to some specifics.

Because, you know, there now there's a push that he should be released, right?

I've seen that.

I've seen that.

But you're a police officer.

Are you, you've been a sergeant?

Yes.

You know, you've got to.

So I'll tell you my thoughts on it.

Do you want to talk to that about that?

For sure.

And you're black and white.

Yeah, exactly.

So we can.

All right.

So I'll tell you my, here's my take on it.

Because I have cops who say, oh, yeah, he was wrongly convicted.

He was wrongly convicted.

I say, okay, let's just set that aside for a second.

you roll up on that scene

and chauvin is has his knee on floyd's neck tell me what you're going to do at that point and he's not moving what are you going to do and every one of them says of course i'm going to tell him to get off so i said then we need to start from that point about the sanctity of a person's life let's forget about the fact that george floyd was likely on a very high levels of fentanyl, which was proven and all that other stuff.

But we're the professionals.

Right.

We're the professionals.

Right.

Like at what point do you not, does the governor inside of you not activate or trigger that it's like, okay, I have to go here from policing to

person from to being human, you know?

Why can't policing be human?

You know what I'm saying?

That's yeah.

I'll give you an example, Theo.

Check this out, right?

Judge me on this really quickly, okay?

This is a typical car stop.

I pull you over, Sergeant Curtis, Vaughan Police Department.

Reason I pulled you over is because you were speeding license registration and proof of insurance, please.

Grade me on that.

A, B, C, D.

I would say

B.

Okay, you give me a B on that.

Okay.

A to B.

A to B.

A to B.

Okay.

So now you go to a restaurant.

I come up to your table.

I'm like, hello, Mr.

Vaughn.

My name's Christopher.

I'd like to tell you about our specials today.

We got a chicken, we have

a fish, and we have a new

tiramisu.

Grade me on that as your server.

A to B.

So I'll tell you, I would not give that server an A to B.

And most servers are going to come to you and be a lot more congenial than I was to you.

Yeah, probably.

A little more energetic.

A little more energetic, a little more congenial.

Shouldn't policing be even better?

How about this?

How you doing, sir?

Sergeant Curtis, Vaughan Police Department.

I know this is probably not what you want to be doing right now, but I just want to explain something to you.

We had a little kid almost got hit the other day, and we're pulling people over just to warn them to slow down a bit.

If you give me a license, registration, proof of insurance, I'll try to get you out of here as quickly as possible.

I'm sure that you probably have something else more important to do.

I just want to let you know that I'm here to help.

That was maybe what 30 more seconds of words?

Yeah.

Do you feel date now?

Yeah.

But it changes the whole thing, it changes.

It changes the whole thing.

But this mechanics has changed.

So, what happened with this?

Let's go back to what we were talking about with

Chauvin and George Floyd, right?

When I watched the video,

you definitely can see that George Floyd is having some issue with being claustrophobic and getting inside the vehicle.

Okay.

Now, we're not saying that it's made for comfort.

And if you get arrested, it's not going to be a fun experience.

But can we be a little bit different?

One cop said, I'll put the window down, I'll put the window down.

And you can even see Floyd saying, I'll do the countdown.

Let me count down before I get inside the car.

Is it possible?

Is it possible for us, especially if the person's handcuffed, to reach down into a degree of humanity to another human being and say, you know what?

Take a deep breath.

I'll count with you.

Can we get you in the car then?

Let me tell you my name.

My name is Sergeant Curtis.

I don't want to hurt you.

Look at me in my face.

Look at me.

Take a deep breath, my man.

Okay, I see you're breathing a little bit better now.

You're going to be going to jail and you got to get in the car, but you got to work with me.

Now, granted, I'm talking in an air-conditioned place.

I slept in a great hotel last night and it's a lot easier than being in the field.

But I've been in the field.

You know, I've been in the field and I've made mistakes, but we got to be better than kneeling on a person's neck for that period of time.

So the specifics of what he was convicted for, I know that we could pull it up and look at it.

One of the charges I believe he was convicted for was involuntary second degree murder, right?

I don't believe it was in, I don't believe he volunteered, I don't believe he was trying to kill George Floyd.

I don't believe he's trying to kill him, but could his behavior have contributed to it?

Possibly.

You're still kneeling on a person's neck for that period of time.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting.

And then you're like thinking of, well, what all is going around

the environment at that moment?

If people are, do you get caught in a almost in, because

you're still a human, right?

And if you're, do you get caught in some weird

flight or freeze thing?

100%.

You're 100% right.

Because if you listen to the tape, there's a guy on the side that's yelling at Chauvin.

He's saying, look what you're doing.

Get off that man's neck.

And then what happens is then it becomes a battle between the officer and this other person.

I'm standing my ground and you're yelling at me and I'm the officer here.

And in nine minutes or six minutes or whatever minutes it was is really a mere seconds because I'm locked into this as opposed to focusing on this person.

That's why bystanders, to me, if you want to be a bystander, stand back, record, but don't be yelling.

You're not helping the situation.

That ruins a lot of things, I think.

It does.

But then also, it's like you wouldn't have, you know, it's just, it's so, it's fascinating.

All the things that go on in that moment and how equipped are police officers,

how equipped are human beings to deal with all of that at once.

So now you're being recorded.

You're in control.

You're scared for your own safety.

You

should be scared for the safety of your perpetrator or the person that you're putting under arrest.

It just, it's, I don't know how a human system even figures all that out.

Sometimes you don't.

And we see what happens when you don't.

That's why mental health awareness is so important for police.

It's, It's so, so important.

And not to be stuck in that

just police ecosystem and have other things to do.

Because that's what happened with that.

In my opinion, that's what happened with that chauvin thing.

Is what?

That he got locked into, I'm the officer.

Because police have this thing called ask, tell, make.

Ask, tell, make.

You ask them to do it, they don't do it.

You tell them to do it, then you make them do it.

Got it.

But that model only works sometimes.

There is a model.

So the father father of modern-day policing is a guy named

sir robert peel

back in the 1800s he created the first modern policing in england

sir robert peel known as the father of modern policing for establishing the first modern police force in london that's why they call police bobbies because of after him oh

robert yeah bobby peel um known as bobbies or peelers how did peele perform policing go ahead so what he did was really interesting he created you know this thing where it was the principles of policing that really the policing should be modeled after.

I think that you could probably pull those up, the nine principles of policing.

But one of them that I find interesting and that I've always found, he talks about persuasion, advice, and warning.

I remember because of PAW, persuasion, advice, and warning.

So while modern day police have asked, tell, make,

Peel talked of this thing called persuasion, advice, and warning.

So is there possible I could persuade this person?

And obviously, if it's if it's a dynamic situation and I got to take care of business, then I have Astel Make always in my pocket, right?

I got a big tool belt.

But

is persuasion, advice, warning something else I can put in my belt?

Can I potentially persuade this person?

Because time is often on the police officer's side.

Persuasion, can I give them some advice?

Listen to me.

Sir, listen, if you don't, the other officers are going to come here and they're going to make it more difficult.

Don't you see that I'm working with you?

And we can work together and get this thing done.

We can do this together.

Warning.

If the other officers come and I step back, then they're going to be a lot different than I am.

This is just another tool that the police can put in their belt so that we don't have to get into this situation.

I bet you if Derek was to be able to go back and think back, I bet you he would have done things differently, in my opinion.

Yeah, I'm sure.

You kind of, what did he say?

Did he, what was his testimony?

What were the key points from his testimony from Derek Chauvin's?

Did he have, did he take the stand?

He decided not to testify in his own defense, exercising his Fifth Amendment right.

Hmm.

Wonder why they made that choice.

Because you would think,

oh, I don't know.

But he's got the federal case, the federal case, and he's got the state stuff.

And I think he's run has another case running concurrently for tax evasion as well.

So he had a whole bunch of different things going on.

And I'm not saying that he was guilty of any of all those things.

No, I think you're just looking at what happened.

But it is fascinating how that turned into a racial thing, though, as well.

And I say that all.

Yeah.

Which case had that?

Can we definitely say that it was race?

Which one?

It's very difficult to find that case.

And just because if you call, well, what percentage of officers,

I thought this.

I thought that, well, each police department should have five different races at it.

And you call and then that you get that race to come, right?

Then that way nobody could ever say that again.

Yeah, but you know, I mean, that would be absolutely ridiculous.

But it's like, is that what we should,

is that, you know?

I think that that becomes, I don't agree with that model because I think that that separates us more and more.

But you go to any bar in downtown Nashville and you're going going to find people of all different races sitting around and you might engage with a person.

It takes us back away from the content of one's character.

I don't, you know, what people call racism, I think that it's more biased because

it's much more biased than it is racism.

I give you an example.

I was in the Vegas airport.

This guy is walking in front of me.

His pants are like sagging down and you could see his underwear.

What was really interesting was it was like this really interesting floral print and socks matched his underwear.

And I had a beer or two, so I wasn't messed with the guy.

I was walking by.

I said, oh man, I said, dang, them underwear, nice.

They look good with it.

And he turned around and he was like, who are you talking to?

Like,

I mean, going off.

And then a TSA agent comes up and is like, what's the matter?

And he said, dang, he's talking about my, and I was, this is me in civilian clothes.

He said, he's talking about my underwear.

And the agent, the TSA agent says, well, they do match your socks.

And the guy gets pissed off and walks away.

Now, you can picture this situation happening, right?

Now, when you picture the situation happening, did you think it was a black guy?

I don't know.

At first, when you said pants sagging, I did.

There you go.

But then when you said matching with the, and black people like to match, so I thought that as well.

Floral print, then I started to think maybe it was like a white guy from maybe Milwaukee or something or Toledo or something trying to celebrate.

But the point in the story, and it was a black dude, but the point in the story is that we have biases to behavior.

It wasn't because of the person's skin color.

And then what happens is if we create a squad of police that says, just because you're black, that means you're going to respond to black people.

What if that doesn't necessarily, what if you don't?

Oh, I don't think it'll work.

I'm just trying to think, how do you get the racial issues out of it?

Because, yeah, at a certain point, you do get to like.

I don't know.

I don't see as much racism.

Like, I grew up in the South, you know, when you'd hear some people's dads, they would just sit there and just say the N-word or

and call people f ⁇ or whatever.

And just like,

they would say a lot of racist jokes.

That was it.

You know, that was a lot of what you'd hear.

But I don't even hear that shit anymore, dude.

Like, I'm not saying it doesn't exist.

It's because people are scared to say it.

It's because they're scared they're going to be.

It could be true.

But I think people, I think more people now.

I don't think that there's more racism than there used to be.

I think sometimes there is a fear of some black cultures in areas because I think people probably want to be safe and they fear that some of those areas don't have a lot of safety.

But I don't know that that's true.

And I also don't know,

it kind of, that, that kind of bums me out sometimes because it's like, well, I would like to go support probably more like black-owned businesses and see them in certain areas probably, but I think there's sometimes where I'm just probably afraid.

It's like, I don't want to risk my safety today to do that.

In a predominantly black neighborhood.

Right.

Yes.

Yes.

And that may be an, and that may sound racist saying that.

That doesn't sound right.

Well, I don't know why you, why would that sound racist?

Yeah.

Why would that sound racist?

Okay.

Name me three major cities where you think there's a lot of crime.

Three major cities that have a lot of.

Oh, yeah.

Memphis.

Okay.

New Orleans, probably.

Los Angeles.

Okay.

Some cities have more crime.

Yes.

They do have more crime.

Okay.

How about what about Chicago?

Chicago.

Chicago.

Now, when you think about that crime, do you think of it as black crime?

I think maybe in some areas.

So you probably do, because you hear a lot about Chicago black crime.

You hear that term a lot.

I'll show you something.

Can you pull up

heyjackass.com?

Have you heard of this?

Heyjackass.com.

This is a guy who tracks every single shooting that occurs in Chicago by the minute where it occurs by race and time.

So how does he do it?

I was going to say.

He's like the Santa of bullets.

How did you get it all done?

She said Santa of both.

Or like, how's he doing it all in one?

Hold on.

Before you look, before you look before you look okay

how many people do you think have been shot

just shot shot in chicago i'm gonna get this right i bet i would say uh

41 people 41 people shot in chicago until march right or deceased or just shot just shot oh just shot i would say 71 71 all right take a look

this is cool Oh, total shot, 87.

So for year total, look at year total.

Year today, date, 80, 330 total shots.

So that means 330 people have been shot and we're not even...

How does a mayor have a job if that many people get shot?

Now, look at it by race.

75% black, 18.8% Hispanic, 6.4% white or other.

So there's more shooting between with blacks and Hispanics than whites or of the three black leads, 75%.

And this is only Chicago.

But do you, so why do you think this is, right?

Because you've seen, you've been on the streets.

I mean, this was Las Vegas, which probably has more of a Latino population as well, huh?

It does.

Why do you think this is?

Is it

just a financial thing?

Is it a culture thing?

Is it,

because you start to think that so, like,

the weird thing about crime is it starts to become part of a culture.

So you're saying a lot of very, very interesting things.

And I'll speak to the first one first.

Why do I think it is?

I think it's because,

okay, let me speak to the specific question.

Why is it that it happens in black culture?

Yeah, I mean, I think about it.

It's like, yeah, it starts.

Well, it starts to seem like, well, that's become part of the culture.

And so it's just too risky.

It's like, I want to.

Okay.

I think it's part of the subculture.

Oh, that's a better term.

I think it's part of the subculture.

Oh, yeah, that's what I mean.

That's a better term.

Yeah.

Sometimes I don't know the words.

It's part of the subculture.

It's part of the subculture.

And so I'll tell you why it happens is because not enough people call it out.

It's okay for

rappers

to come and be in places and celebrated

when rap culture has become so

openly violent, not only towards each other and gangs, gang versus gang, but towards women.

And that is not called out.

That's where people who have a voice need to stand up and say, no, young man, that's not appropriate.

That doesn't work.

When I spoke to you in the beginning, I said I cannot overstate the importance of my father being in my life.

But for that fact, I was able to reach the degree of just basic, you know, and I'm not going to say success.

I'm content with what I have.

But but for me having both of my parents in my life for such a significant time, a lot of these kids don't.

A lot of them do not.

And the fact that that's not called out and that, you know, and I don't want to turn this into a political conversation, but I have very strong feelings about the fact that there's so many people in one in a certain group that don't say that is not acceptable behavior

we we're not going to condone that you must act and behave differently otherwise we can't hang here yeah and until that happens that's going to just be a continuous cycle yeah the media i mean you can't you couldn't say that there's a black crime problem you know it's like the media is very there is a black crime problem there is but you can't yeah the media media seems like they never would say that.

And the media is kind of what people absorb.

But I think now you're able to have people who have come out of black culture.

I think there are good leaders out there who are saying it.

I think that hopefully it's going to change too.

Subculture.

Because the shitty part is, it's like, yeah, I had a friend.

And she had the, she had like a hat store.

And she wanted me to come by.

And I was like, I, it's just, that's too, I don't want to be in that area.

I don't want to be in there, don't blame me.

But to be like, I don't want to shot, you know, it just kind of sucks, you know, like shit like that kind of sucks.

Self-preservation is a thing, right?

That's the first thing, and it's the best thing.

It's like, I'm not going to fucking risk my life to get a fucking fitted, you know.

Yeah, I would.

But at the same time, it would be nice, you know, it's like, and that's not everywhere.

And that's, but it's like, yeah, that kind of shit sucks, dude.

You wish that shit would go away because it fucking sucks.

And it makes cities bad, man.

Like,

New Orleans has a lot of that murder over there, a lot of black on black murder.

And it makes you not want to be around certain,

like, it makes you just not be able to relax and enjoy yourself.

300 and some people have been shot, and there's a mayor who still has a job.

So being an officer and being a sergeant,

what effect can the mayor really have on the crime in an area?

So the mayor, so we didn't have a unique situation in Las Vegas where we didn't report to the mayor.

Our sheriff was

an elected official.

So the police in Las Vegas didn't have to worry about politics with the mayor.

The sheriff was almost every single time a police officer before.

And

in fact, the former sheriff who was the governor now was one of my sergeants.

He understood policing.

So the top-ranking law enforcement person understood policing.

And I think that that became in a very effective model where you don't have to report to a mayor.

That mayor

is dealing with politics.

And the police chief has to report to that mayor.

So how do we affect this situation to happen?

It's not the police that are going to fix it.

I mean, in a media, they can put a band-aid on it and put cops on dots and corners and do stuff like that.

But we have to say

fathers have to be in households.

They have to raise their kids.

I can tell you in the beginning when we started speaking, I said,

one of the other things I said that affected me is the times that I didn't spend with my children when I could have, where I was either working or being selfish and doing something on my own, whatever.

Fathers have to be involved in those lives.

Otherwise, those young men are going to continue to do the same exact thing in New Orleans, in Memphis, in Chicago, every one of those cities.

We should be screaming at the top of our lungs when we see that 300 something people were shot in one city.

And that's okay.

How is that okay?

It's not.

But then you'll see people protesting about this or protesting about that and claim to really care about humanity.

But before we're done with this

podcast, there is going to be at least two or three and maybe 10 people that are going to shot across all these different cities.

But you know what?

We don't, you know, there's a saying that says, all men are hypocrites.

Most deny it.

I myself admit it.

And I do.

I admit I'm a hypocrite.

My life is good, Theo.

If I really, really cared, if I really, really cared, and this is an honest admission, then maybe I would, as a retiree, with all the time I have, maybe find one of these Chicago kids and spend time with him and do something.

And maybe at some point in my life, I will.

But I think that we have to call out our own hypocrisy in life and say that we as Americans love our lives the way they are.

These people protest in all these places.

They're getting a latte at Starbucks right afterwards, getting on TikTok and sending out videos and claiming that they're revolutionaries.

They're not revolutionaries.

There are no real revolutionaries right now.

And thanks for sharing, dude.

I know that, you know, I appreciate you sharing.

Forgive me for being a preach, man.

Now, I don't know if we sound preachy.

You know, I think it's okay.

You know, like, like two of my black friends got killed in drive-by shootings in New Orleans, like in the past eight years.

And they didn't catch the guys that did it.

Actually, one of the guys they did, one of them, they did catch the guy that did it.

But just like it was like

just bullshit in the city, just fucking shooting, you know?

And it starts to get sad.

It starts to get like, I don't know.

Like, people ask me now, what should I do when I'm in New Orleans?

And I, you know, I say, you know, these are places to go, but don't go in these areas.

You know, it kind of fucking sucks.

It's like,

but what I was thinking was, we had a guy named Richard Reeves on, and he said, well, one of the problems these days is there's not a lot of young male role models.

There's not a lot of young male role models.

And he said a lot of men used to be teachers.

I don't have a lot of male teachers anymore.

He said a lot of men were Boy Scout and Cub Scout leaders, troop leaders.

There was more,

I guess, more young men used to be involved in the church, right?

So you had, and obviously some of this shit got haywire and some of those people got molested or whatever.

But outside of that, there's just not a lot of

a lot of male role models.

And so it's like, how do we start to become male role models in our community, right?

did you mean just male role models or did you mean black male role models?

I just meant male, I think male role models.

His, his work is just looking at, um, it's the

founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men.

He's the author of several books, including a Boys and Men, Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It.

His was just saying that, yeah, it used to be like, so to become, if you have spare time, to become a baseball coach, to do the Big Brother program, if you can commit the time to it, like, because it takes like a lot of real time to do those things um and it really kind of just put me on notice like yeah how do i create something that's or just give back to like you know since i don't have any children yet how do you be a part of that you know

because i think some of our men too this is something that i believe has happened is our men are still being really young

it's like we don't have to grow up it's true it's very true and i look i'm fucking i'm still trying to not be grown up but i got to fucking grow up dude because if they're coming after me or whatever you know who's coming after nobody is but my my mom's like, What are we doing?

You know, like, are we getting you gonna get a family or what's gonna go on?

Do you want a family?

I think so, dude, because I think I would miss out on it.

You know, I'd like to have a son, be a good dad, make my wife happy or whatever until she gets fucking all the way up.

What's stopping you, huh?

What's stopping you, dude?

I haven't even met my wife yet, first of all.

And I'm gonna be fucking, I got some shit to tell her when I do meet her.

I'll tell you, do you pray for her, huh?

Yeah, I do pray about it.

Do you pray for her specifically?

No, I haven't prayed for her specifically, but I do pray.

It's a good point.

I guess

she's She's alive.

So if she's alive, maybe a good prayer would be, you know what?

Because just think she's doing something right this second.

Just think if you started to fervently pray for that specific person, you'd be building her before she even gets to you, bro.

Wow.

Yeah, it's like creating when you get to make your own person on NBA 2K or whatever.

You know what I'm talking about?

On the spiritual side, though.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, yeah.

I got you.

Yeah, I got you.

But yeah, I made a list of like, you know, things I would like, but then it's like, I don't want to get too locked in.

But I, that's a good call, man.

yeah and just pray that god you know i have been praying that god gives me um the

just the ability to lean more into becoming who i need to be to be in that situation you know i ask you a semi-personal question yeah is the reason why might be holding you back a little bit the fact that you still like dating multiple women or like being you don't want to be able to lock down you kind of really want to experience more well i think you know i've thought about that i like

i don't know it's been hard with work it's like work is my biggest relationship i mean when i have a free moment i'm working i just i like it you know where i'm planning or i'm thinking what could i do and not even just work but like how could i start to do like work that is more um given back to the community like you know but you start to think of like okay well what like what can i create now that could really be part of something cool or help people um and i think we all think like that but but yeah so just any facet of like what can i create while I'm still have some creativity in me, you know?

And then as far as dating, like I try to put myself out there, you know, I'm not on the apps,

but I'll meet girls, go on dates.

You know, I'm pretty brave to be like, oh, let's meet up for a coffee or let's grab a dinner or something like that.

I feel like I'm kind of tired of running around, to be honest.

I think it's kind of leaves out of your system a little bit.

It does.

Yeah.

So that's kind of where I feel like I'm at.

Cool.

And then it's like you get into an age range where you're like, okay, well,

you know

it's kind of tough sometimes some people have children so but then you get but once you realize that you're like okay well i never thought about it if i would date somebody with children you know so um then you start to think about that and learn different little things and stuff with sleeping in the same bed with a person does that bother you yeah that bothers me a lot of times i don't like it that much but so maybe that's something that you could find in common with a person and maybe

your

intimacy comes together in a certain space and you still have enough space to be apart from each other.

And if they have, if on the at the jump, if they're cool with that, maybe that's something that you can start off from that point.

Because some people don't like to sleep together.

You heard of sleep divorce?

Uh-uh.

You never heard of sleep divorce?

No, but I would love if my wife had her own room.

Yeah, sleep divorce is where people don't sleep in the same bed, but they maintain an intimate relationship and then their relationships actually flourish.

And I don't like to call it sleep divorce.

I like to call it like solitary intimacy, like where you're cool being by yourself and you're cool being by yourself when we come together, whenever.

Just some stuff to throw out.

no i think it's neat i think there's stuff like that relationships are kind of evolving and stuff too i think people are figuring out kind of what works for them i think sometimes i've been afraid to maybe even say what i feel like if i'd be like hey i'd love it if my if i could have a separate bedroom than my wife you know and if we wanted you know like then we could have our own rooms i think that that's the most awesome thing possible and that would be fine yeah so but i think for for years you get caught in this idea like oh that's going to be crazy to say to somebody you know but then i think as time goes on, you're like, oh, nothing's really that crazy.

You just have to say it and see if somebody else is okay with it.

You know?

You've talked a lot about like policing and like how to police.

That seems like to be something that you care about.

Yes.

Has policing changed a lot over the years, do you feel like?

Yes.

Because of, you know, technology and the advent of cameras and everyone, you know, when I came on the police department, people defaulted to the police being right.

Now people default a lot of times to the police having questions about the police behavior.

And it's fair because a lot of things have occurred that would make people question that.

So it's changed in the sense that people always have the cameras out.

Obviously, police now all have body cams.

So things are documented and memorialized in a digital format that we didn't necessarily have before.

And I think it's essential when a person can take away a person's freedom or take away a person's life that it's documented.

I got a ticket.

I got a ticket.

First ticket in my life.

I got it in

last in July.

Oh, really?

It was the trippiest story, and it made me realize what people have to go through.

And so check this out.

So in Florida,

I have a house in Florida, and I was riding my e-bike on the beach, just pedaling.

There was a plastic cup.

I pick up the plastic cup and I ride my e-bike over to throw it away.

And I turn around and I use my throttle to go back.

All of a sudden, this buggy with lights and siren comes screeching up on me on the beach.

And this cop jumps out.

First thing he says to me is,

I need you to get off the bike and I need to see your license.

Those are his words as soon as he stops me.

And I don't know if he was intimidated by me or what.

And I was like, oh, you're not going to get any problems out of me?

I said, listen, I said, I'm a retired cop.

I'm cool.

I'm not going to do anything to you.

Oh, there you guys are right there.

That's the cop.

Is that Sean Kingston?

He does look like Sean Kingston, an older version of Sean Kingston.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, he was sweating.

I mean, he really, I mean, he was,

look like, I just can't even explain how stressed out he was over me riding my electric bike on the beach.

And he wrote me a ticket.

And so I was like, you know what?

I'm going to ride this whole thing out because I want to see what it feels like from the side of, because I gave out a lot of tickets.

I want to see what I went to court.

and everything.

I had to go before a judge.

There were people in there for like felonies and everything else.

And I went through the whole process

and paid my ticket.

And it was disappointing to to me that at this day and age that there are still police that don't that the first thing they say to you out of their mouth is get off the bike i need to see your license it goes back to what i was saying to you before about when i just you know told you how i interact i prefer a person to interact yeah why not do that well i think but now in some instances things are manic and the situation has escalated already right like sometimes it's already things are insane like if a guy's shooting or something

sure i mean you're gonna be yeah of course you're saying just walking up person to person.

What is that daily interaction like?

Yeah,

every single interaction from the police should be something that should be

friendly and almost as I'm the servant of, because we are.

We're supposed to be serving.

Even if a person makes a mistake, come on, bro.

Oh, I look, I love that idea.

I love the idea that that's what keeps it, what keeps that from happening then?

Because then you would almost want to be able to check each day: okay, how is this officer doing today?

Are they going to be able able to manage to be out there in this field or do are they getting paid enough to be able to take care of themselves to get um massages or ice packs things that people need though that to de-stress them dude i go get a massage i'll it'll change the way i agree i talk to my mother on the phone it's like I love that concept, you know, but it's like, well, yeah, it seems like we would be able to take care of these people more who are the really the sieves of our society that are like drain, you know, they're the capture they're the catch of the drain you know i like that

analogy you know to me i think it would actually make policing less stressful if the police interaction from the police side is that entree into being so kind and polite from the very beginning of the stop because you're not going to get into that many arguments with people because most people are like dang on it i've written tickets to people they're like thank you you know because and i'm not saying that i was great at doing there were a lot of cops who know how to talk and and act that way and it's usually when you get older it's just that this if you look if you know if everything everything looks like a nail, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail or whatever.

If the hammer is your only tool, then everything looks like a nail.

And that's the only way that you deal with things is hammering it in, as opposed to trying other methods.

Make that tool belt bigger.

Yeah, I mean, I've learned that in my own life, man.

I've really shown up with the hammer a lot of times.

I'm trying to have less of it.

And it's been getting better, oddly.

I just find little moments where I'm like, I've tried that so many times, waiting or wait, waiting for somebody to act a certain way towards me instead of just acting that way yes

that's a fucking I've spent a lot of my life waiting oh I'm I'm just I'm just gonna wait for you to act this way towards me because I deserve that if that's the way it's supposed to be or something and not in like a way of like um

praise or anything like that but just even something simple like a relationship work relationship or even with my with family I'm gonna wait

You know, instead of like, I'm gonna wait for you to hold my hand instead of me just holding your hand type shit, you know?

and that's deep man you know the way that you adjust evolve and treat people and I learned this very interesting story when I first heard on the police department and it's race

incident here I was coming on graveyard this is downtown there's a foot pursuit swing shift gets the guy in custody the sergeant I was an officer at the time the sergeant calls me over and asks me to transport the guy I get there and the guy's leaking And he's a black dude.

He's pissed.

The two officers that took him into custody, white.

One of the officers was a guy who was a senior field training officer and he was about to go to SWAT.

And I'm this rookie rookie.

I come over and the black dude, his eye is leaking.

And they call medical.

And medical comes while I'm sitting there.

The sergeant says, hey, you take him because, you know, he figured the guy would feel more comfortable with me.

Because the guy was saying, oh, they just roughed me up.

So I get the guy.

So this is the important part.

The FTO has his handcuffs on the suspect.

What you're supposed to do is conduct a pat down, go through the whole process, put your handcuffs on the person, and then transfer in the car.

I didn't want to offend the FTO by making it seem like I didn't trust his pat down.

So I put my cuffs on the guy.

I take the guy,

and I'm getting ready to put him in my car.

And the ambulance lady says, he can't go straight to jail.

You got to take him over to UMC, which is the hospital, because they got to sew that up.

Take him over to UMC.

We go there.

The doctor says, I got to unhandcuff his hand, cuff him to the gurney.

And I'm talking to this dude.

And I'm just like vibing with him.

And like, I just, I felt kind of bad for him.

I like his, he just was like, you know, you look at a person that's just dejected, like their life sucked.

And he was being booked for running.

You know, they were trying to stop him.

He was running, right?

Yeah.

And he's leaking.

He's like, this dude was just like, his life was sucked.

So we get down to the hospital.

They sew him up.

I re-cuff him.

bring him to the to the jail, CCDC, the detention center, county detention center.

I get him inside.

Before we get there the guy said he was john doe at that point so if the person doesn't tell us their name we book him as john doe oh yeah the dude says to me he goes you know what man you've been cool to me i'm going to tell you my name he tells me his name i put it into the computer

my computer starts going crazy

all this information pops up and this warrant pops up

The dispatcher says, ask me if I'm clear for the information.

And he's wanted by the FBI murder by burning.

I get him down to

the jail.

Yes, chef.

That's crazy.

The CO is one of my boys, and he goes screaming.

He's like, Chris, what the after that?

He's yelling.

He comes back, this big, huge knife the guy had on him the whole time.

Big, big knife.

You didn't check him.

I didn't check him because I didn't want to offend the FTO.

And the dude says to me as he walks by when they brought him out, because he got booked an additional charge.

He says, he said, you know, if you weren't kind to me the way that you were, I could have done you in in the hospital and I would have done you.

Me being kind and polite to that guy saved my life from that stupid rookie mistake that I made.

Yeah, I'm like, yeah.

I mean,

I don't know what it's like.

I don't know what it's like.

How do you make sure that an officer, when they leave out for the day each day, is in the best state that they can be in to be these liaisons between right and wrong in the world, you know?

And that's what, it's like, how best can we take care of these people?

These, you know, i feel like if we can afford to give money to other places we should give it uh poured into these people it should be expensive it should be a well-paid job and i'm not saying that it isn't but it should be you know i feel like these are the fucking a lot of other shits easy dude you should incent also incentivize officers with more than 10 years to go back to patrol.

Although one of the challenges that happens is you get cops that want to go through the ranks, they get work, go work in specialized units, and then never go back to patrol.

And then on patrol.

Oh, so they get disconnected they get disconnected from patrol and then you don't have young guys teaching young guys and it's usually the older wisdom that is what helps policing because i remember i was in the knucklehead when i was young i know i made a lot of mistakes oh yeah

oh god yeah dude so how do you get it to become a hostage negotiator because that's what you're so you know it became so because so right so that's a special specialized unit specialized training um you can keep your primary responsibility because what happens is you end up being on call and that sucked because you would be in the middle of something and you'd get a call out and you have to go and you have to go because there's not many of you no and you know you need a team to assemble on rare occasions you can call out

um so they'll put out an opening and in every department is different but they'll put out an oh you know there's an opening and and then uh you interview for it and then uh you

how well you're doing the interview, you get selected.

And I was the young, at the time, I was the youngest ever to be selected on the team.

And that was a phenomenal experience.

And so once you're on the team, you know, you get your, you know, your phones, but then you had pagers too, and you get your gear, your jacket and everything, and you just start responding to calls.

You know, obviously after training, you start responding to call outs.

And

if anything on the department weighs on you, it's talking to a person for a significant amount of time or listening to a person talk to for a significant amount of time, being part of the team.

And then the person does themselves.

Because costage negotiation isn't really a good term for it.

It's more of a crisis negotiator.

Because most of the time that we do it, it, it would be from a person in crisis, a person that wants to 405, as we said earlier.

That means that considering unalive themselves.

Yeah, take me through a scenario like that.

Okay, so

an actual situation or okay, so

this is

this one was deep, and I wasn't the primary on this one.

And this is a story that resonates.

And they even tell us in the class now, a guy who just, life was horrific.

He had a terminal illness.

He had a, and I wasn't really, when I was younger, I didn't realize how many people have back issues and their back pain is just suffering and they don't want to live anymore.

And so I think what he had was cancer.

He had a back issue that was just causing him severe, severe pain.

And his wife left him because it was a whole bunch of issues and he had financial issues for all these things that he was going through.

So what happens is you assemble a team.

There's a primary.

There's a secondary.

The primary is a person that talks to the person.

They're on the phone.

Their sole focus is to talk to the person.

Talk to the person that's in crisis.

That's in crisis.

The secondary is the person that is monitoring the primary and getting information from the rest of the team.

And the team can vary, but two positions that are really important is the intel liaison, which is the person that tells the background of the person.

The person's this age.

They were married this amount of time, all the intel that you can possibly get on the person, right?

Then you have the tactical liaison person because you have a SWAT team that's assembled as well, because you may have to potentially breach or go inside of the residence.

So, tactically, you have to know: Has this place been evacuated?

Have you, um, is it, does it, are there weapons inside?

Has this person done this before?

So, the TAC and the intel person feed this information to the secondary.

The secondary can write notes and feed it.

Then you have a scribe who scribes all this information.

Okay.

So, the case that I was talking to you about was

this person who had gone through this thing.

He was going through this thing.

And it was a newer negotiator that was on as the primary.

And after all this time of talking to this guy and getting to know him,

the guy says,

I know exactly what you're doing, and you really suck at it.

And then shot himself in the head.

He said, you really suck at it.

That was the last thing that he said.

It would kind of suck, though, if that you're considering unaliving yourself, you get on with the negotiator, and he's just horrible at it.

You're like, oh, God.

Like,

yeah, dude, that's crazy that's a mic drop bro yeah it is and that's and that person had to live with that you know that they're that's their their record on the department is that they were they really good at it though and the person just didn't know it and that because you anybody could say that that could be an asshole move it can be and part of it was that because i mean how is it and what is good right how is it and what is good because i mean i actually brought a scenario that I was going to work through with you if you wanted to try to be a negotiator.

So basically, this is pretty cool man because this is a this is uh i put this together uh which is a composite of a few different negotiator things and i'm gonna be uh i'm gonna tell you you're gonna be the primary okay and uh so here's the situation um you i can read it or you can read it on what the situation is and um actually i'll read it to you like as if you just showed up at the scene that you just rolled up all right okay great all right

uh theo you're gonna be the primary in this one okay you got it the subject's name is michael brady he goes by mike the background intel we have is he's a middle school biology teacher for the last 14 years.

He's a youth pastor at a local Christian church for the last seven years.

He's 47 years old and he's a white male.

He's been married for 18 years.

His wife's name is Carol Brady.

She's 46 years old.

They have one son.

His name is Bobby Brady.

He's nine years old.

Today, Michael was put on administrative leave for school when sexual assault detectives came to the school on an anonymous tip.

He allegedly impregnated a 14-year-old student.

Her name is Pamela Phillips.

Mike Brady is currently barricaded inside the residence.

We got the call because Mike came home, told his wife to get out of the house as she entered, and as he entered an upstairs bedroom and shut the door, he appeared to be holding a firearm.

He is currently barricaded inside the residence.

Your personal observation, Theo, is that as you pulled up to the scene, you see a young boy in a baseball uniform talking to detectives, and he's crying hysterically.

Presumably, this is the son Bobby.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Tactical intel.

There are two known firearms.

There's a shotgun inside, 45-caliber automatic pistol.

SWAT has arrived, and they set up the inner perimeter.

Neighboring houses have been evacuated.

You can ask me three questions, and then I'm going to begin as though I'm Mike, and you're going to talk to me.

Okay, I asked you three questions.

You can ask me three questions to get some information to get started.

About the case.

Yep.

Okay.

Is it based on the Brady bunch at all?

A little bit?

I used that because I knew I'd remember those names.

Okay, fair.

Okay.

Damn, that's one of my questions.

Let me think.

No, that one you can throw us out.

You can ask me three questions that pertain to it, because you're going to go online, and when you go online, it's going to be pretty intense.

Okay, so I'm going to go online.

You're going to be talking to me, and I'm Mike Brady.

Okay.

You're the primary.

Has Mike ever committed any priors?

Prior crimes with young women?

Prior

assault charges?

Nope.

His record is completely clean.

Okay.

How tall is he?

Interesting question.

He's six foot even.

Okay.

And

is he on any medication?

Very good question.

He is, he takes

a sleeping pill to sleep.

He has a sleeping issue.

Ooh.

Okay, sir.

Hello.

Hey, Mike.

Yeah, who's this?

This is Theo, actually.

I'm working.

I'm here today, man.

I really screwed up, didn't I, man?

I think it seems like you've had a tough day.

I have had a tough day, but I mean,

I screwed up this time, didn't I?

I think you're probably going to have to answer some questions, you know, but

I think everything's going to be okay, man.

How is it going to be okay?

This girl's pregnant, man.

I mean, how am I going to face anyone after this?

Well, I think you're going to have to.

Her dad's going to be pissed.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, people are going to be upset.

I'm not thinking about her dad.

I'm thinking about my family.

Okay.

People are going to...

Yeah, it's going to be.

Yeah, man.

It sucks.

It does suck.

It sucks.

But here we are.

Yeah.

I mean, how am I going to face my son?

Your son's pretty upset right now.

Yeah, he is.

Of course he is.

I knocked up a 14-year-old girl.

I'm a youth pastor in a church.

I teach in a school.

My life is over.

give me a good reason why i shouldn't just put this thing to my head and blow my brains out because your son's life is still around

and

that's not what he needs right now

you know you're probably right about that but you know i i mean how could i face him man

i think you call him first

Call him and say what?

What would you say in that situation?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I would say

I would tell him the truth.

I would say I messed up.

And you think that's the answer?

Tell him I messed up?

I know I messed up.

I think it's part of it.

I know you know you did, but he probably doesn't know what's going on.

He doesn't.

Is he out there right now?

Yeah.

You want me to put him on?

Would you?

Yeah.

Okay.

How do you feel?

How do you think you did?

Was that intense?

It is intense.

It is intense.

Fuck, it's intense.

Because you're like,

even if you get to that part, is he just going to tell the son goodbye?

Exactly.

See,

Theo, you are super wise, brother.

That's exactly why we wouldn't put the son on the phone.

Because that's exactly what he would likely do.

He would try, he would likely.

And so this is why we train.

This is why we train.

So a couple of other things, right?

When we said son, that was a good opportunity for you to do what?

Identify his son by name.

Bobby.

Because isn't Bobby different than saying son?

Yeah.

It's different, right?

Yeah.

My wife, that was opportunity.

And I knew that.

I never know.

Look, it is instructional.

You use it instructional.

It's very interesting.

But that's when you say Carol, right?

You get Carol.

Yeah.

And but what I like is that you humanize the situation, right?

Like you,

that's the thing, again, it's where you get the theo, where like

he's talking to a person that he could potentially relate to.

And you create that kind of that air about the situation where you would get other costs and be just completely freaked out or completely militaristic you know and and i like that you kind of humanize the whole situation and this is obviously super condensed but i know it well the fascinating thing to me is yeah when you realize the gravitas of this like you think it's easy and then even this is a placebo even in that you're like I don't have the answer right now.

And if I don't get this right, what happens?

And then I'm starting to learn as I think about it too.

I'm like, well, it's not about you anymore.

It's about your son.

And then that kind of makes me sad.

sad then it's like now suddenly i feel more feelings because i'm like well now i'm doing this really for the son and i didn't even realize that until that moment you know even though like you could be trained for that it's like until that's said and it's a real moment and you can picture the sun and you god dude it's like it's just scary and then at some points you might agree that the guy it might be best if he

Let's God just

I don't know.

Is that crazy to say that?

I don't know.

I don't think it is crazy.

I think it's normal.

So there are a lot of people who, not from, obviously from not from official police, but there are people even in their own mind would say, I wouldn't want to live if that was the case.

Right.

Right.

So I'll tell you a situation that I dealt with.

And I sent some audio for it.

It was

a guy named Michael Chevalier.

This was a big case in Vegas.

So here's what happened.

So the call comes out.

I'm a sergeant at the time, right?

Swing shift.

So it's still light outside.

The call comes out that a lady is talking on the phone to her friend.

And

the friend hears a struggle.

And then all of a sudden, the line goes dead.

She calls 911.

And

obviously, we get dispatched.

And sergeants, when we hear certain calls, we're like, that's something I should roll to.

We don't have to, but that's a call I should roll to.

I happen to be close enough to where the two officers, so it's one of those apartment communities where it's one floor, two floors, and then there's top floor, and then there's an apartment all the way down here.

So the officers, I see my, I pull in the parking lot and I see my officers walking to the door.

Then all of a sudden, I see the door open and the officers pull out their gun and fall back, like to try to get away from whatever was going on at the door.

And I hear them on the radio, 413, subject has a 413.

So he, the subject came to the door with his arm around the female and

the firearm to the female.

I have my car in the parking lot.

And

then obviously code red.

That means only emergency traffic.

All the officers come.

We get into the front of my car and I have a drive race and I'm on the hood of my car pointing out where I want my officers to go and how we're going to deal with the situation.

One of my officers at the time, it's a really sharp guy.

He says, Hey, Sarge, I got my rifle.

In case he comes out, let me go over to this pizzeria right here, and I can engage him if he comes out with the gun.

Great lesson.

If one of your subordinates has a great idea, be very quick to listen and learn from them because it was a great idea.

Because the second that he gets over there, Chevalier comes out and starts shooting at us.

Wow.

We all go down.

My guy engages Chevalier at the door, and and he hits the door frame and all this wood and everything hits Chevalier.

And Chevalier goes back inside the house.

I'm like, I got to call in.

There was no time, no negotiators had not been around, nothing.

Besides, if I call him, he's not going to be shooting.

He's not going to be hurting one.

So I get in and I start having a conversation with Chevalier and we develop a rapport.

Interestingly, I was able to record a segment of this conversation.

I'll play this.

We'll play the conversation and then I will tell you the nuances of the conversation that occurred, the aftermath of it, it, and how deep negotiations can be.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, tee that up there, Trev.

I like to keep my word.

And I know you do, and I remember that you said that once you get back on the phone with me, that you and I can work this out.

Can we if if

we can work this out, we can come to

some type of agreement.

Oh, I see.

And I'm a man of my word.

I think the agreement they will come to will be

release of the hostage, and perfectly

she will be unharmed.

But

I like what you're talking about.

I like what you're talking about.

And that peaceful agreement is the route that we got to go back.

Oh, SWAT team is here.

Christopher, I want you to tell the SWAT team to move away from the front of the door.

Michael, can I tell you what's happening?

Okay, Michael, can I tell you something?

I see them.

Give me a second.

I've seen the letter and I've seen them.

Yes, Michael, that's absolutely.

Come on, listen to me.

Let me just tell you what's going on.

Remember before I...

Remember what?

Remember before I explained to you what was going on?

Remember what?

I'll tell you what.

Michael, Michael, remember before I explained to you what was going on?

I tell you what.

We're going to

call 911 and Michael.

Hmm.

Okay.

So let me give you some background on this, okay?

I still get really amped when just listening to that again because it takes me right back there.

So, Michael and I had been speaking for a while, and the situation seemed like it was pretty much calm.

Negotiators were arriving, SWAT team had arrived, and they were setting up in their position.

At that point, Michael freaked out when he saw the SWAT team

because you see the SWAT team in their greens and their rifles, and you know that at some point, if you have a hostage, that something's likely going to happen.

It's not going to be good for you.

Ultimately, the decision was made to go to condition two.

Condition two is when my job is to talk Michael in front of a window so they can shoot and kill him.

So there is this interesting element to talking to a person that you are talking into their own demise.

Wow.

Talking to a dead person, essentially.

That ended up not happening.

What happened was

through

electronic means, we were able to find out that Michael was doing things to the female.

The decision was made to do an explosive breach into the apartment and then take Michael out because Michael had been raping her.

And I'm condensing this because this is a very long, drawn-out process.

Got it.

And he kidnapped the woman?

Yeah, he did.

She had her door open.

She was out talking to her friend, and he grabbed her and pulled her inside.

Got it.

Pulled her inside.

Yeah.

Ladies just out there talking.

Unreal.

So

ultimately, after SWAT goes in

and kills him she's laying right there

talk about ptsd or what a person has to go through it's absolutely horrific but let me talk about the nuance of language if you watched what michael was saying mind you the team is listening and watching every single word that a person says there's one very very

interesting part of his conversation where he says the hostage now again we would always want to change that to back to saying the person's name but I didn't get a chance to do that.

And I did at other points in it.

But what he says is, she will believe imperfectly, and he stops at perfectly, and she will be relieved, released unharmed.

So, why did he stop it perfectly?

He stopped at perfectly because he knew that he was doing things that she was not perfect.

Our minds and our language are so intimately connected.

And when you get to understand, see where he says release of the hostage?

He says, play that again, that part, just back it up a second or two.

Release of the hostage.

And perfectly,

she will be unharmed.

You see, he stopped and he flipped it because he knew that she wasn't perfect.

He knew he was doing horrific things to her.

And we listen to these types of things because we have to make a decision.

How long do we wait before we go inside?

Like, is he just sitting there or is he actually doing that horrific thing?

Could she lose her life?

Yeah, you have to make choices.

And in becoming a negotiator, even in your own life, you're very, very careful with your own word choice.

And often I'll find myself when I speak to people, there are certain words that I don't use.

I just have excised them from my vocabulary.

And it's about, and positivity is also, like when I said sleep divorce, like I've caught myself because I don't like to attribute divorce to something that could potentially be positive.

I almost,

I don't almost.

I commit myself to utilizing the positive form of speech whenever I possibly can.

And it's incredibly important.

It changes a lot of things, especially when you're interacting with the people.

Give me an example of that.

So

I don't use the word problem.

Like I say challenge.

Because then you look at things as a problem.

Like

who wants to see a problem?

I'd like to see a challenge because if you overcome it, then it's just a challenge.

You can almost always, if there's a negative connotation to something, even when you go out with your mom to dinner, if you think about and listen to the words that you speak, you almost always a positive way that you could could flip it.

Back in the day,

it really is.

It's fun, too, when you think about taking that.

That does seem fun because then it kind of adds a little bit of a challenge to your own how you're communicating.

And the crazy thing is, you know who hears us the most?

Us.

Yes.

Yes.

And it means you care about what comes out of your mouth.

You know, back in the day, I wrote a dating book called MAC Tactics.

Really?

I did.

It was called MAC Tactics.

The science of seduction meets the art of hostage negotiation.

In 2005, I wrote this book, and it it was about utilizing the leng yeah there it is it's about utilizing language in the day

yeah is it helpful yeah how would a hostage negotiator what are you telling if i'm talking to a lady so it's interesting because it was more about so mac i changed mac from from what most people think mac is and i changed it to method action, confidence, and knowledge.

I co-wrote it with my boy Rob Weiser.

Rob is like really the right.

I mean, Rob is the NYU dude, super smart.

He's my boy.

Like, I was the content guy.

And so method, action, confidence, knowledge, and all of those were what we call the pillars of power.

And conversation was incredibly important as far as method was concerned.

And minimal encouragers.

Like, so you know what a minimal encourager is?

And so minimal encourager and paraphrasing are two things that negotiators learn to master.

So a minimal encourager, like when I'm looking at you like how you're like minimally, like shaking your head like that, you're naturally encouraging me to continue on with my speech.

Okay.

We have verbal minimal encouragers as well.

Like when a person's speaking, you're like,

okay, yeah.

So when you learn to naturally incorporate those things into your speech, it really encourages a person to open up.

And if you're a good listener, you can hear everything that a person wants to say to you.

And paraphrasing is when you listen to what a person says and then you say it back to them in a slightly different format,

adding positives if necessary, which really shows them that you're listening.

And in dating, that's an incredibly effective method of building a bond between two people.

Really?

100%.

Let's try it.

Okay, so if you, so

how do we do it?

So here's how we do it.

Like, tell me about what your day was like yesterday, a small segment of your day.

Yeah, yesterday I went to,

yeah, I went to watch some music and

I was pretty tired.

Probably stayed up a little later than I should have, but I had a pretty good time, you know?

So when you were going out yesterday,

is it tired because you were having fun or was it because you just didn't have enough rest?

Oh, I see what you're doing.

So you're saying the same thing?

I'm saying back to you,

it shows that I'm listening and that I care about what the outcome was.

Usually men will encourage, I mean, usually.

Right, because then I feel a little bit more, okay, this is nice.

This is fun.

This is worth our time.

Yeah.

And it gives you time to just kind of build a person's.

trust in sharing with you.

Conversation and listening are two very, very important things, not to be overbearing in your conversation and listening to the other person and showing that you're listening.

Negotiators are very good listeners.

So me and me doing that, that exercise with you, I had an idea that you were going to be kind of good at it.

Most people don't even get, first of all, they don't have the confidence to even try it.

I was very pleased that you were willing to try it.

But I had this thing about it because you're like...

Very, very relatable.

I have a thing that I think that you would be a good negotiator.

I think that you have at your core the ability to be a really good negotiator.

I thought about this movie where they call you Mr.

Relatable the primary, where like you it was not even really you it's like a person who was like a younger you that was like a like a person who was a stand-up comic and a guy goes to the show and decides he wants to 405 because he's just done with life but you he just related with you and that you negotiate him out of doing it and the police see you doing it and then you your arc is that you realize that in negotiating with people that how much it relates to things that you've been through in your own life

dude they have that almost sounds like a movie that i bet somebody would not exactly but I bet, yeah, a negotiator and it's they're really channeling things that are going on in their own lives.

It happens to us.

It 100% happens to us.

But most of us don't have the natural

relatability that you have.

Like, I mean.

No, I don't have any need to blow smoke, right?

Like, I really like you.

I think you're dope.

But I'm just saying.

Yeah, I love you.

But your relatability level is off the meter with all races of people, with all genders of people.

I don't know if you relate it to yourself as well as you relate to other people, which might be an interesting element for you.

That might be even part of the element of Mr.

Relatable, the primary.

But there's something there.

And I think that, you know, you could definitely be a negotiator.

The primary.

The primary.

That's a cool name for something.

The primary.

There you go, man.

Imagine that.

You know, you talk the guy out.

Someone gets it on video that you did it, and the police are reaching out to you to handle these high-level negotiations.

And you're trying to make your career work.

You could do it, man.

Thanks, man.

That's some nice thoughts.

And just, so, so,

that's a nice thing you can do.

If you're talking with a woman, pay attention and share stuff that they said back to them to create comfortability.

Yeah, because a lot of times as guys, we don't necessarily listen.

Like, sometimes the music is.

No, in the beginning, especially you're just doing your best.

It's like you're trying to survive.

It's almost like you're treading water.

It's like, I know I'm swimming, but I'm really just, you know, trying to stay alive at this moment.

And open-ended questions.

You know, this is an excellent open-ended question.

And how did that make you feel?

That's an excellent question.

And be sincere about it.

Like this, the stuff that I'm selling is not, I'm not trying to sell it.

This is the stuff that I'm sharing that really matters.

Asking up and like, how did that make you feel?

Like, if the girl that you go on a date with, she's like, oh my goodness, it's gonna be forever to get here.

The Uber driver kept looking at me.

It looked like my boob was popping up.

I'll get it.

But how did that make you feel?

Yeah.

How do you feel about it?

Yeah, how do you feel?

Like, I'm okay with it, actually.

Just kind of reject it.

Because sometimes you need somebody to put you, you get all soiled, or you need somebody to put you back in the pot, you know?

Yeah.

Like, sometimes I'll be frantic and say, but everything's fine.

You're like, yeah, everything's fine.

It's like, fucking, you know, I'll get caught down.

You know, I'll get caught going upstream when I really don't need to, you know?

What else was I thinking about?

Oh, there's that famous case in Las Vegas of the shooter, right?

And the,

you know, there's a lot of conspiracy theories about that.

Was that a real thing?

Oh, yeah, it was real.

I know some of the cops that entered.

And one of my cop buddies got pulled a guy off the street and drove him to the hospital and dropped him off.

I mean, one of my closest cop buddies did that.

And I actually even got a recording of him telling me about that because I used it in a training class that i had but that situation that 100 happened wow yeah that one that was real

yeah that's unbelievable huh yeah that was that was wow man and just to show you you know i wear this thing it says momento mori which means you remember you will die because you don't know when you're gonna die can happen at any time man and that's the messed up thing about cop work is that it's always at either the forefront or the back of your mind that you know you think about it like when i you know what's crazy when the driver picked me up today in the black vehicle and it says cops think like this

I was like, Is this really this guy not setting me up?

Right.

This is legit.

Like, you know, you have this like a paranoia thing that goes around in your mind about like if a person walks into a restaurant, we always sit with our back to the door.

It becomes uncomfortable sometimes.

Yeah.

We're not with our back to the door, facing the door.

So, but yeah, because I guess you develop, it's not really a paranoia as much as it is a

preservation, really.

It is self-preservation because seeing death on those levels, it's a trip.

Um, does doing uh

police work, sergeant work,

a negotiation

work, does it wear down your compassion or does it build it over time, do you think?

Oh, that's such a good question.

For me,

in the immediate,

you kind of build up this

thick skin where you don't, like for me,

Showing emotion is still a challenge for me in life.

I get emotional and sometimes we'll see that there'll be tears that can well well up in my eye, but I don't want to let them fall down.

Oh, yeah.

So it's, it's tough.

But to answer your question, I think that in the while you're doing it, thick skin, as you get older, you become more like

that, you know, I really feel what you're going through.

You know, I wish that I could, and I don't like to say I wish there's a way that I could help you.

My goal is to figure out how I can do that.

One of my lieutenants, I think you guys have the audio on this.

One of my lieutenants,

405,

and there's audio of it.

This is horrific, horrific story.

Las Vegas cop shot wife and five-year-old son before taking his own, before unaliving himself.

Okay.

Yes.

So this guy was my lieutenant.

And you can play the audio if you want.

And he tells everything right here.

And I'll have to give you a little bit of background afterwards.

Okay.

911, what's the address of your emergency?

Hi.

And what's the problem?

Tell me exactly what happened.

My name is Hans Walters.

I work for Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

I just shot and killed my son, Max, and my wife, Michelle.

And I killed her because

she's in such chronic pain from her neck and back

and on more medicines and she's not going to survive.

And we were both seeing

a therapist and a psychologist in Boulder City.

His name is

and

I feel terrible for doing it.

Okay, and

voice out.

Please don't interrupt me.

Please.

I've also set the house on fire and

if the fire department comes to my house

because there's a fire hydrant right in front of my house,

I'm going to open fire on them.

So I have to wait till the house is burning and then I'm going to shoot myself, okay?

So

I don't ask me any questions.

This is real.

This isn't a joke.

The fire alarms in the background is because I set the garage and the bedroom on fire.

My wife's in the bedroom.

I shot her in the head.

My son, unfortunately, is in the living room watching Oswald, and I shot him in the head, too.

And

forgive me for my sins.

Please don't call back.

Thank you.

Oh, my God.

So, Hans was my lieutenant

for a period of time, yeah.

They were my lieutenant for a period of time.

And

he was one of the most soft-spoken, polite.

Every time he would talk to you, he would say, please and thank you.

Total family man.

Wasn't a go-out after work drinker type guy.

Everything in the time that I knew him was about his wife and his son, Max.

I remember there was a time, that's him right there, and that's his wife.

She was a cop at one time.

And I remember there was

when he was my lieutenant, he would go take time off to go take care of her.

And he would put me as to take care of the lieutenant paperwork.

And he was always just very, please and thank you.

And he was just,

just, I mean, it's so weird for me to be able to say that one of the most kind, soft-spoken people to me and to the other people that he interacted with, which was so wild.

So his wife had some significant medical challenges.

And when I was younger, as I said before, I didn't understand how suffering from pain can be so debilitating for a person.

Now, this is what's really interesting.

In this situation, Hans walked outside after he shot his wife and his son.

And

he didn't get shot.

The police didn't shoot him.

And I believe that he wanted it to be a suicide by cop.

And that's the only reason I can muster as to why he would walk outside.

But they didn't shoot him and he went inside and then he 405'd.

What's interesting is I told you, as I listened to the conversation, I listened to the language, what he says is he says, please forgive me.

What would a person normally say?

Would you just say, please forgive me, or would you say, God, forgive me?

But in my mind, I feel like potentially, why,

Theo, you're a negotiator now.

Why did he not use the word God?

Because he'd done some things that were bad that God wouldn't forgive him.

There you go, brother.

See, you get this stuff, man.

You really get this stuff.

And that's why that word did not come out of his mouth.

What a horrific situation.

But let me tell you something, man.

There are some people under those circumstances who don't want anyone else to raise their kid.

Can I speak to why he did that?

I don't know.

But I can tell you that I do have experience with a person who's done something like that.

And I sent you, there's no audio of this, but I did send a...

a file of this case, Timothy Blackburn.

I was a negotiator on the team at this time, and my team got the call out for Blackburn.

I did not negotiate on an FBI agent

who was

connected with Blackburn negotiated.

Quick story of what Blackburn did.

Blackburn committed a robbery of a vault in Vegas.

A million plus dollars.

A million plus dollars he got away with, but he got caught.

So Blackburn, that's Blackburn right there.

Ooh, he's Asian.

Yeah, Blackburn got caught.

Yeah, Blackburn got caught.

What do you think he was?

Blackburn?

Yeah.

Probably white or black.

Yeah.

Well,

so he got caught.

He's in the North Las Vegas, one of the North Las Vegas detention, whatever, because it was a federal crime.

And his wife breaks him out of the jail.

He escapes.

She put a screwdriver in her hair.

They unlit it.

He escapes.

Dude, I love them.

There's a manhunt for them.

Okay.

It was like one of the biggest manhunts in Vegas.

And they kept telling us that

we're going to catch him at some point.

We're going to catch him.

There's a reward.

They find him barricaded in one of those daily suite hotels.

Okay.

This story's trippy.

He doesn't want to talk to anyone on our

negotiation team.

He wants to talk to the FBI agent who arrested him.

This FBI agent said, when Blackburn said, am I looking at much time?

He said, your probation officer hasn't been born yet.

And

so

Blackburn is in there and they're talking.

You know,

the FBI agent can, you know, hear the kids in the background.

And Blackburn, it's like, it was with his family.

You know, he was a family guy.

So SWAT is set up on the house and they're figuring out, you know, whether or when to breach.

You know, time is on our side.

But here's what happens.

A cop I know is on the outer perimeter, patrol officer.

He's got his shotgun.

He's moved from one position to the other, slinging his shotgun.

His shotgun goes off.

Blackburn thinks that SWAT is making an entry.

It was just, the guy had an act of negligent discharge.

Blackburn then summarily shoots his wife, kid, and himself.

SWAT goes in just as he's doing that and shoot Blackburn as he's falling to the ground.

And even in the testimony, it was that the SWAT officer says, you know, I shot a dead man because he killed him because Blackburn was saying stuff like, I don't want to visit my kid through a plexiglass.

And he was of the mindset that no one else is going to raise my kid or be with my woman.

And knowing that there are people like that.

And that is a very,

I have to walk very carefully when I say these things because this is very sensitive information.

I'm only speaking from my perspective and the information that I have in hopes that it could help someone else in the future.

That if you find yourself in a situation, God forbid, where there's a degree of

you feel like you can't go on without a person, you can.

And everyone has a sanctity life and should be able to go on.

It's just, in my opinion, not the way to go.

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to think of all the little pieces of

all the little avenues of things you would never think need to be information or that you would glean from

an officer, a sergeant, a detective, a hostage negotiator.

But the simple fact that you're saying based on my information,

if you are unaliving yourself, you shouldn't unalive other people with you you because it's not, that's not the way to go.

It's just,

I don't even know who else even, yeah, I mean, that's an easy thing just to say, but you're saying it based on information that you've seen, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think we talked, man, thank you so much today, Chris, for joining me, man.

I think a lot, it's like, it's just interesting.

You start to get even more of a scope of like

just what

fills up the minds and the histories and the timelines of

officers, of people that are there to serve, you know, people that are there to protect and how do they manage all that?

Cut people's slack too.

Cut people's slack.

You're driving on the road when you're in a restaurant, you know,

cut people's slack.

You could just really avoid so much stuff by...

taking a deep breath and making a different decision and

not bullying people, man.

And all of that stuff can lead to a person doing some bullcrap, like, you know, some of the stuff that we see when people barricade and want to 405 them, you know.

Yeah, because once somebody goes over the edge, they're over the edge.

They're over the edge.

At that point, you know, the original plateau doesn't matter to them anymore.

You know, the original gradient of things doesn't matter.

You know, when I drive,

I carry something in my center console that will address a road rage situation, and it's not what you think.

I carry a clown nose,

a red clown nose.

And if I see a person driving crazy,

I really do this, deal.

I really do this.

I put the clown nose on myself.

And my only rule is I cannot take the clown nose off because I know that I'm not going to yell and scream at a person while I have the clown nose on.

And if I take the clown nose off, I'm being a clown.

You will not believe how many times that has stopped me from acting like an idiot.

And it's just such a stupid, basic, simple way to avoid road rage.

Because I tell you.

The thing that will get the average citizen in trouble, two things.

One is a domestic violence situation.

And the number two thing is something that they do driving, drinking, or acting like an idiot in a road rage.

Those are the two things.

Those are the top two.

I'm saying one more time.

So domestic, get into a situation, because, you know, domestic is brother to brother.

I've been to so many calls.

One time I went to a call.

A brother got out of the military.

He was on leave from the military.

They got drunk.

They got into a fight.

That's domestic.

You know, it's a mandatory arrest.

So that's an average citizen.

And you lose your right to carry a firearm then.

Wow.

And that's a misdemeanor.

And then the other thing is some kind of driving, road rage, battery situation that a person gets to or drinking and driving.

Those are are the top, top.

So you call it three, because if you want to say drinking and driving or road raging and getting into a situation where you end up, you know, getting into a fight with someone, those three things are the civilian, the civilian things that happen all the time.

If you can control those things, plummet.

Odds are you're going to be super safe.

Yes.

Man, Christopher Curtis, thanks so much for hanging out, dude.

I got to take my mom to eat or I would chat a little more.

No, I'm down, brother.

I mean, I really appreciate it.

It was an awesome experience.

Glad to tell you team is phenomenal, brother.

You got a a really cool team, man.

Oh, thank you, dude.

Yeah, I feel really lucky, you know.

I think we did a good job today of like kind of learning about some stuff.

And also some of it's just like getting into the psyche of seeing what it's like to go through the minds of someone who's gone through your life.

And then, yeah, how do you best try to manage it?

And then what can we even expect out of people, you know, who aren't able to manage their.

their emotions and mental

the fatigue wears on them, you know, and they're not able to manage it, but they're still required to be at work.

You know, it's like it's a huge asking, it's a huge fucking undertaking.

It is, but this is good stuff, and I hope that it helps officers and civilians alike.

Yeah, well, it's just great to have this conversation, man, and we learn more as we go.

Um, Christopher Curtis, thank you so much, dude.

And uh, yeah, I appreciate it.

I love that hat, dude.

Mi serote.

Mi gente, papa.

Ay,

en la lucha.

En la lucha.

Now I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.

I must be

cornerstone.

Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones.

But it's gonna take

a little bit of

time.