Latest / Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement / #041- "Be Relentless" w/ Aaron Slater Part 2

Transcript

#041- "Be Relentless" w/ Aaron Slater Part 2 · Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement

• 0:21
  Speaker 2: On the last episode of BlueGrip podcast the ultimate, that I was in trouble with the police.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: The story is actually not an easy story.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: It's not a simple.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I just want to be a cop.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: In fact, from my viewpoint, that was the last thing I wanted to do.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: He gave me what I'm saying look at me.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: I had my head down.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: He goes look at me.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: So I'm wiping my tears off and I lean up and I look up and he goes do you want this?
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Said I do, and he said there's anything in life that you want.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: There will always be obstacles.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: You go over them, around them, under them, right fucking through them, but you accomplish what it is that you want.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: I said yes, sir, he goes.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: That means you have to be fucking relentless.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: I get out with him, I walk him up, I say it's either, this is officer, so I was about to ask you did you ever see me side again?
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: all the time I said this officer so-and-so and I said and he loves coffee.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: Big cup.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: And she and she would get coffee.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: And she said absolutely.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: And so I'd always tell him.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: I'd say, hey, when you finish that cup of coffee, call me on the back channel and I'll come pick you up.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: And then what I do, I would go to the store and get coffee with cream, because whatever she put in that coffee, maybe she was a crack dealer, because I was stuck on coffee from that point.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, but it was that constant instilling of that understanding of things.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: But that's also creating a new generation to know, masaida, that's exactly right.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: And so now Masaida's kids and you've broke that barrier now.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Well, and speaking of that, give a scenario of understanding right.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Imagine being seven, eight, nine years old, right, living in that hood, and you wake up your dad's in prison, your mom she's a crack addicted prostitute and I used to work undercover narcotics, so I've seen these things in action.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: And so imagine, eight years old, you get up, your mom's still sleeping because she was out all night.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Working.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Working and smoking crack.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: And he goes and gets a cereal box and the cereal box is cockroaches running out of it.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: They have no milk and he's just sitting there in his style watching whatever shitty TV he has in a house not bigger, not much bigger than this room.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: And he's reaching in there and he's getting cereal out while cockroaches are running.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: He's eating it.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Okay, this is what he's got.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: This is breakfast for him.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: And his mom finally wakes up while he's watching cartoons and she walks out and says hey, baby, I got to go to work, I got to go make money.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: And this is the only thing he has in life is her.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: So she reaches down, kisses one of the forehead and tells him hey, don't leave the yard, understand me.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: And he's going to do it.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: His mom says he has nobody else, so she leaves and he gets bored.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: He goes outside and he sees a beer can that someone threw out the window the night before and he goes out there.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: He starts kicking that can back and forth, kicking the can from one side of the house to the other side of the house or yard and an eight year old that grew up in the hood we all know, is a hell of a lot more street smarter than a 16 year old Silver spoon kid.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and somebody will pull up and sit there and say, hey, where's everybody go?
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: And the kid will think about it and sees that there's a lot of cars in action.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: That goes down, two doors down, and he'll say, right there, he'll watch as that car pulls up and somebody jump off that porch, walk down, hand him something and get money out of it and walk back up.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: That intrigues him.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: That intrigues him because he looks at that and understands.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: My mom left to go make money.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: That's what she keeps on telling me, but I see it happening right here.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: I've got a way out.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: So he'll start kicking that can and what will end up happening is he'll kick that can to the point where that dope dealer will watch him.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: That dope dealer will jump off that porch and walk over to him and say, hey, you like kicking that can?
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, kick it here.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: He'll pick it up and sit there and say Do you want to kick a ball?
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he'll say Okay, and he'll kick that can back and forth and he goes Tell you what?
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Next car that comes over here, you take these little rocks, you take it down there, you bring me the money and I'll go get you a ball.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: And he'll kid will do it.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Next car comes up because here's your chance, here's your chance, go do it.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Kid runs down there, nervous as hell, kept looking back.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Walk up, make the deal happen, run back up with excitement because he did exactly what he was supposed to do.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: That dope dealer will get on his knee, pat him on the head, give him a fist pump and that'll be the most love that he's ever seen in his entire life.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: And it's not even love is manipulation, it's complete manipulation.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: And so, from there, what happens with that kid's life?
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: From that point?
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: He wants to be a dope dealer, yeah.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: And what's interesting about that is as police officers, where's he at at 10 years old?
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Breaking into houses, breaking into cars, running from us, jumping fences?
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: We've arrested him a couple of times.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Now he's of age to go to juvie, 13 years old, in a gang running the streets doing just being a terror on society 15 years old.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: The conversations that we've all had is this 15 year old kid we've arrested the day, we've rested him countless times and in the, in the squad room, we're grabbing up the day and we're saying you know, I rested so and so again Somebody else says man, I can't wait to have a little motherfucker turns 17 years old so we can put him as his ass in prison and be done with him.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: And we all cheer on that.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: The one thing we forget is there was a time that we drove by and he's down on the fucking yard wanting to see what our reaction is going to be when we drive by.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: We didn't even wait to him, we didn't even stop, when, in all reality, the best police work that we could have done is get stopped the car, get the fuck out and walk down and say do you like kicking a?
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Can you want to kick a ball, and then you are the one that kneels down and you are the one that shows him that love.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: Completely different path he's started on.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and even if we don't change his life, we've gave him options.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: We've gave him another view.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: We've given another understanding of what police are and not not what his mom had told him, not what his dad told him, not what the society has told him, but what we have showed him.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: And honestly, it goes back to that day that I was sitting at a house and somebody knocked on that door and said you need anything.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: You need anything.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: From that point I kind of took that understanding of things and just kind of ran with it for the rest of my entire career and I probably had the most blessed career that I could ever ask for.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: I worked every aspect of law enforcement.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: I've enjoyed every aspect of law enforcement, almost every aspect of law enforcement, but ultimately I loved it.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: It's cool A lot of people's character or future is molded or navigated by tragedy and you've had you've had tragedy and had bumps and bruises.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: But it's cool that to defining moments that you recognized, because I probably missed a bunch of signs and I've probably missed a bunch of angels that were trying to come up and check on me.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: But you were well aware of two defining moments in your life that wasn't blood, family, that shaped and molded who Slater is, and it was how coming to check on you making you tell you hey, do you know my name?
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: Who am I?
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: Coming to check on you and show some humanity and some love to you.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: And beside a coming to check on you not blood, not family two angels sent to check on you and you were aware enough because I wasn't in my twenties aware of anything to recognize and and digest that and use it.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: Man, that's, that's two things.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: I thought I knew you pretty well and apparently I didn't know shit about you.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: You do.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: That is freaking awesome dude.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: It's awesome.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, it really is.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: In fact, I think what was what was house?
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Last thing, clare to Clare to.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Is there any awards or anything that we give out in law enforcement?
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: And the and his honor?
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: No, I think I'm calling on it, call it what it is now, but I think we need to start recognizing officers, good deeds, and do it in his honor from here on out.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: It could be a TMP, a conference, it could be at any conference, or but to identify just what you just talked about.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: That's the essence of community policing.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: 110% could have kept his ass in the house and drink Miller light and watch football, rather than deciding to come bang on the door and check on the kid.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Because he chose to stop and say something to a 16 year old kid that he didn't even know.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: And look at what we're sitting with now.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Look at who we're looking at right.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: And who does you for being self aware, to recognize it.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Cause they say, well, like when you're 16, 17, you know it all and you don't listen to anything.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: I was like that up until about five years ago.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: Well, I don't think it takes a lot of reflection and self awareness to realize this is a moment that I can digest, process and I can do something.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: There's something tangible here I can do and self reflect and fix and acknowledge what just happened.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: That's, that's not easy thing to do, and especially when it's a stranger, like you did with miss.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: You did with both of them really.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: You kind of wrote it off at first and then something inside you said, well, slow down this, let's go back and reevaluate work the decision and one of the things I do believe is you become a lot more self aware when you become emotionally desperate, because you're opening up for just something, something to change, something to grab a hold and, I think, complete side note.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: cops go through a lot of emotionally desperate times in their entire life, but my career and your Christ career early on, we would never, ever deal with it, we would just cope it, but we never got help.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: We never got.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: And when you're in that manner and you get that, that, uh, that therapy aspect from it, go into an actual therapist, that that we preach and teach today, um, I think those messages they resonate at that point but if we're, if everything's fine in life and we're not emotionally desperate, we don't hear the message, we don't see the message.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Uh, we do it when, when we need the message.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Well, we are listeners.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: You don't have to be religious, spiritual, you don't have to be anything.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: But if you don't clearly see a very detailed picture that's laid out twice first time you're driving around, it actually gets better.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: You're driving around desperate for your mom, somebody, please send somebody to help me and you drive by and how, standing at the grill giving you and you know you probably made eye contact he didn't.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: Your mom wasn't sent to be there for you at that moment.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: It was intended to be how, the next time you're at life when you're freaking angry and you hate the world and I've been there a couple of times where I've been there and somebody God, buddha, whoever you want to call it put Miss Ida in your spot when you were at a point where you hated everybody a little reckless because I lived a little reckless when I was in the angry phase and they sent Miss Ida to you.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: And then, all of a sudden, your picture clears up and things get focused and so you don't like.
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: You can believe in whatever you want to believe in.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: But if you think those two instances are coincidence, they're not.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: I agree, I 100% agree.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: I've always wondered where relentless came from.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: To that, that one touched me in the face a little bit yeah.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: So You're at Rosemarke PD Very successful career, obviously you're.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: You're molding our, our, our new generation law enforcement and, by the way, you listeners that are new generation you need all the molding that you can help and that you need, and thankful that we have guys like you on the force, that we're doing that.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: At that point in time, when did you recognize, or when did, when did, relentless defender?
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: When did that start processing in your brain of like man, I've got, I'm making an impact here in law enforcement and stepping away from law enforcement and having a passion for it?
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: It's hard I just went through it myself but what, what?
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: When did you identify relentless defender and the and the brand?
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: Before we step off in that I was gonna I think it's important to ask with this audience your time at Rosembourg, social media was kind of kicking off.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: I guess it's my space it just ended in.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: Facebook was starting, um, but I grew up in the culture at the department I worked at.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: You didn't share anything.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, we shared nothing, and any with anybody.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: And you literally put Rosenberg publicly social media not on the local map or the state map.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: You literally put it, rosenberg PD, on the national map with the content, with the comedy, with the vulnerability, the sense of humor.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: Where did that come from?
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: Because you literally, you guys literally flipped law enforcement on its head about outward communication to the public.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: What part?
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: Where did that?
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: How did that begin?
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: Because before all the before, it was cool to do like Southlake PD has a massive social media following.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: They do a great job engaging and cutting up.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: But you, you, you literally started that 15 years ago probably.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: I mean when, yeah, it was.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: It was it was in 2012.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: So what happened was, um, yes, I'm a high school dropout, but I actually went back to college and I got my bachelor's degree in organizational leadership.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: And then I was getting my master's degree at Sam from for in criminal justice and leadership.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: And while I was doing that, um, I was doing LCC to leadership command college and I had met a guy from Arlington PD named Christopher Cook he's an officer up there and, um, we were sitting down one day at at lunch and and I was a lieutenant at this time and we were just kind of going back and forth about, like we do at lunchtime you know what is your agency doing, what are we doing and I was just kind of essentially bragging a little bit about what we're doing.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: And you know how we're being innovative and that type of stuff.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: And, uh, chris asked a question.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: He goes, hey, well, uh, how are you getting all that out?
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: How are people knowing about that?
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: And I thought I had a brilliant answer.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: I said, well, simple, what we do is we have an explore program and what we do is we give them flyers and and, uh, we work with a local church or we get a school and we get them to, to do a community partners meeting is what we called it, and we'd go out there and we had the explorers put all these flyers on other doors in the, you know, neighborhoods and those types of things, and we would say, tuesday night at seven o'clock we're going to have this community partners meeting and we're going to be very transparent and you can talk to us and all that kind of stuff.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Right, and I was chest out, explain to this, right?
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: And if you don't know, christopher, christopher cooks a brilliant guy, okay, and he looks at me across the table.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: He goes how's that working?
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: out for you.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: And uh, my thought was how about to show him?
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: you know, he can work with me, yeah, and, and, and I said well, what?
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: do you mean he goes?
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: How many people show up?
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: And I said I mean it varies.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: You know, sometimes we get like 50, 60 people show up and then, unfortunately, sometimes we only get five, six people show up and he goes.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: And I'll bet you, whenever the 50, 60 people show up is because something is bad is going on in their neighborhood and they want to complain about it, and usually speeders and that type of stuff, right?
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: What's important to them is not necessarily real to us, Right?
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: So I said, okay, yeah, I mean that's about right and he goes well, why don't you just use social media?
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: And I said, well, hold on a second dude.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: I said I, I was a sergeant narcotics right before I became a lieutenant in patrol.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: And uh, I wasn't that same understanding.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Cops shouldn't be on social media, like that's the last place that they need to be.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Uh, with that, my face, stuff, right.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: And uh, he goes.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Well, tell me why.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: And I explained to us that, well, you know, for that reason.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: And he goes well, think about it.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: He goes.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: All the same information that you're trying to get out you can get out immediately through social media.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: It's like having a town hall meeting 365 days a year.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: And it literally stopped.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: And I thought about it.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, you're right, absolutely You're right.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: And so I went back to my agency and uh talked to my chief about it.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: I said, uh, and I had just graduated with my master's degree, because this was right at the end.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: And uh, one of my my uh, master's basic capstone or just dissertation, if you want to call it that, whatever the case, is thesis but to graduate, our paper was on emerging issues in law enforcement and it was social media.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Because I decided, okay, I want to look at social media now and study social media.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: It was social media, fitness and law enforcement and millennials joining the ranks Right.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: And I was like, well, I'm going to be a good teacher, I'm going to be a good teacher.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: And so I got into social media.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: It was social media, fitness and law enforcement and millennials joining the ranks Right.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Um, and I wanted to really understand the millennial generation.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: But what was interesting, the social media and the millennial study that I did, they kind of ran together and uh, so I came back and I proposed to my chief.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: I said, hey, I want to start a social media program here.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Well, first I said I want to start a fitness program here and we did Okay and he goes, but you're going to have to propose all these things to the administration board, which is my agency.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: It was for lieutenants and assistant chief and the chief so, uh, I proposed the fitness deal is back at him, hall around, and that type of thing.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: But it was like okay, anything you propose in law enforcement Now it's your that's your baby, baby to do it.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: So I then I proposed the social media, and you would have thought that that was the worst thing that anybody's ever posed in the entire planet of law enforcement.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: I said I want to start a social media program here.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Every lieutenant was totally against it.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Nope, nope, nope.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Um, none of them liked the idea.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: They fought it.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: And so I'm sitting there at the conference table and my assistant chief at the time.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: I turned him and I said Okay, and already.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: I thought, well, this is fucking gone Right.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: So I turned the assistant chief and I said what about you?
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: And, by the way, my assistant chief and I hated each other, okay.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: To this day.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: All right, um.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: And I said how about you?
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: And he looked, and and he's one of those guys that's brilliant more brilliant in his own mind than everybody else believes and he says I don't like it.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: I said you know, I've heard that from everybody at this table, but why tell me the reason why y'all don't like it?
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: And so he comes up with some Mark Twain deal and he says because it feels like running around in public naked for everybody to see, that makes sense.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: So I sat there for a second, and and, and I wasn't nearly as smart as everybody else in the room and I just said Well fuck, if you look good naked, who gives a shit?
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: And my chief.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: He just kind of paused and and and he just stopped everything.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: And I'm like and he's like, hey everybody.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: And I just sat there and I kind of crossed my arms Like well, this is fucked, and he goes Say.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: I said yes sir, he goes make it happen.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: I said yes, sir.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: And then of course I did my little look around the room like fuck all y'all Cause I look good, so I do and and I move forward with the social media, and the first thing that I understand, one thing that my education allowed me to do, was research before you step into the field, whatever it is, because you might as well get a lot of work done here before you make the mistakes there.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: So what I did is I started looking at different agencies and started contacting different agencies, and internally, what I did was I'm a huge believer that leadership is in bar stars and stripes.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Those are ranks.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Okay, leadership is the people that have influenced within your department.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: That may not necessarily be ranked.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: So what I did is I found pillars within the agency that I could use to build a committee for this social media program, because I already knew I had an up or battle, because every lieutenant, every commander all the way up was against it.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: So you already know what they were doing in their divisions is they were going back saying this is bullshit, don't get involved in it.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: You know this type of thing, and so I literally had to influence even people under the third command that this was the right thing.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: But what I understood was peer influences way stronger than supervisor influence.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: So I found those peers and we we develop a committee and out of that committee, one of the sergeants emerged and him and I just took on the social media deal and one of the things that we started doing was bringing in other people from different agencies that were doing social media and one of the consistent things that people kept on telling us was be very professional and be very sterile, because you don't want anything to come back and bite you in the ass.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: As far as the agency goes and I still didn't have a social media page for a couple months, but I was still directing in that type of stuff so we started a Facebook page and the Rosenberg police force Facebook page and even if every post is still on there and you can even kind of see all the old vids, everything yeah, and you can even see how sterile it was initially.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: And and I call them the funeral pigs where we stand there with a flag behind us very sterile, and those are the kind of things that we were posting, right, and then just very, very sterile posts.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: And one day I just said you know what and it goes back to that whole understand that I explained at the very beginning of this conversation was I said no, we need to be different.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Yep, we need to be different.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: And and so from that I said I brought in his name was Sergeant Salter that worked with me on the social media and I said let's change things up.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: And he goes how?
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: I said I'm going to get it.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: I'm going to open up my own social media page, we're going to work on this together and let's make it happen.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Right, he goes what do you want to do?
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: I said I don't want another picture with another, with a cop not smiling.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: I don't want another picture with a cop looking at the camera.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: I want it candid, I want him having you know, showing that he's having fun, all that kind of stuff.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Why, for that exact reason, the public sees us on every traffic stop With a stern face, robot.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: We want to show them that we're human.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: We want to show them that we're you know, we have kids, we have families, we're just like everybody else.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: And show that side of it.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: Be very transparent, be open, show them behind the scenes of what we are and what we're about.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: And he goes are you serious?
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: I said, yeah, he goes.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: We've already talked to everybody.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: And they said, don't do that.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: I said I don't give a shit, we're not everybody.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: So we started doing it.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: We started doing a lot more comedy and playing with it a lot more.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: The videos were classic, absolutely, and it was.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: It was completely different for the time of that time.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Now it's everywhere, right, everywhere, and so what ended up happening was I would, I would do these, these posts and we would do these posts.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: I should say, and when we were doing the posts, the public loved it.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, they bought into it immediately and they would.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: We started getting thousands of comments, likes, shares.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: It just started blowing up and from that point, the For the first six months of doing this, the public loved it.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: But I'm going to tell you right now, we would get phone calls from other agencies and I literally would get messages on my phone when I'd come to work and, for example, I even called the sergeant in, sergeant Soltura, and I said, hey, listen to this message.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: And it was an officer from another agency and it leaves a message that says, hey, what y'all are doing with law enforcement is a fucking joke.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: I worked for so-and-so and we would never do something like that.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: You're making us all look like a bunch of idiots, right?
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: And I said, look at this shit.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: And so I said, but wait.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: And I called and I'd say, hey, can I be a guy's cell phone number?
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: I said, hey, this is Lieutenant Slater with the Rosemary Police Department.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Hey, I got your message about the social media.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it would always be something to ask the nine like yeah, don't you think that's bullshit?
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: I said, well, hold on a second, let me explain to you what happens here.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: I said, where do you work at?
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: And he would tell me and I'd say, okay, so you don't work at Rosemary, yeah, well then I don't give a fuck what you think I said, because we live in a world where you have your world, I have my world and I can tell you right now my world likes it.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: And if your world doesn't like it and you don't offer that to your world, I don't give a shit, because when we got into this business of law enforcement, we're here to influence our world, and it's not the world as a big world.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: It's the world that we live, work and play in.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: So every world is a different culture.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: Every department is a different culture.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Everything that we do is based on the world that we understand.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: When, when an officer dies in this country, we all feel it, but who feels it the most is that world?
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Yep, it does.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: So we have to.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: We have the, the, the understanding to influence that world and the responsibility to influence that world in a positive way.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Well, I can tell you four hours away we were getting phone calls of hey, how come you all aren't doing cool stuff, engaging the community, like Rosenberg, and how come you aren't posting funny engaging in all cause?
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: At the time we were still in the closed minded we don't talk, we don't um, and you got to.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: You have to engage your community.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: You're not trying to engage some other agency five hours away or in another state.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: To your point, your world, that's the only one that matters at that point.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: And that's and I went to very clear, uh, with the people that work with me for me that I worked for that type of thing and uh, and there wasn't a still and uphill battle.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: But what was interesting, after about six months of doing this, we were on good morning America, we're in time magazine, people magazine, we're doing news interviews.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: We were everywhere.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: Right, the videos are classic.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: We'll pull them up.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: They're freaking awesome.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: And to the.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: When I look back at it, I'm like which one was your favorite video?
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: So one that, a couple of them that really blew up Um, and and and I want you to understand what I told you about kicking the can with the kid.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: I started sharing that story with everyone, or the guys that worked for me, because, being a servant leader, your job is to mentor, your job is to build, your job is to let them understand.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: Well, one of the one of the videos that really blew up was, um, a sergeant that left us his uh, his dash cam on and a kid was out there just throwing a football up in the air and he stops and it's out.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: He goes, hey, and the kid threw the football and he just throws it back and forth, right, and it was literally like 30 seconds of just throwing it back and forth.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: It was like nothing that all of us haven't done and we've all done it, yeah and uh.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: So, anyways, I get worried that this was on video.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: I said give it to me.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: So I posted up and it goes viral.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: I mean viral, viral, uh and and uh.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: It was almost like the first time anybody ever thought oh, cops can do that.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: And you're like, yes, we've been doing it for decades, we've been doing it for forever, but social media gave us that platform to be able to express it and show it, and the bottom line is is in social media is a world to itself.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: I talk about three worlds and I teach about three worlds, but the fourth world is real.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: The fourth world is social media, and social media gives us that avenue to be able to communicate things that combat what the BLMs and the and and and and the other social justice warriors that are trying to to create against us.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: It's impossible.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: It's impossible if we're not having a mouth for ourselves.
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: Did you realize then well, I guess time magazine and good morning America did you realize then that you were actually changing the mentality in law enforcement of engagement, public engagement and when I realized it was when we started getting phone calls same type of phone calls, but now they're saying how do you do it, how do you do this?
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: And it would be from from patrolmen to to police chiefs, saying we want that same thing, we want that for our community, we want that for our world.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: And the phone calls would just constantly come in hey, can you help?
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: We did.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: We would sit there and explain.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Here's what you can do.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: If you want to come out and check it out, then we'll show you how to do it.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Touch on real quick because you'd be.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: I had a sheriff one point in time that I worked for I don't work for any longer, thank God but he was so narrow minded that he didn't understand the value of social media and it really goes back to really a couple of things.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: One, it highlights our good work that's not seen on a daily basis unless you're in law enforcement or within law enforcement community.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Two, when a bad situation happens and believe me, they're going to happen in law enforcement fuck ups are going to happen.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: We're human.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: It's just a part of it.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Some are more severe than others, but there was a can you reflect back on a situation in Rosenberg itself where there was a bad situation and thank God that y'all had these social media presence to fall back on, because it really negated the fact of what actually happened or calmed it down.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: Now, specifically the, but I can't tell you that there's references that I can make that have done that.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to give them a platform of that first and to give you a foundation of that.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Social media is just a tool and I tell people all the time we need to run police departments like a business, and the problem with running a police department like a business is nobody knows what our profits are, because businesses thrive and are valued based on how much money they make Well, agencies, that's.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: You don't have that same understanding if you're running it like a business, because when it comes down to business, bottom dollars, all that really matters in the business world.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: So if you're looking at the scale and you sit there and say, here's our profit margin, that's a successful business that is continuing this on the rise.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: What we need to do is we need to be looking at it as our profit margins are every single human being that's in our world that is making relationships with the police department.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: So when we start rising up with those relationships being made, when we have a profit, that is when I can tell you you get into an OIS, you get into a critical instant, you get into something that an instant like Ferguson, where the entire community backlashed.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Right, ferguson happened because they didn't make relationships with their community.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: Right, darren Wilson didn't do anything wrong.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: It was because they didn't make the relationships with their communities.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: When you have that relationship, the first thing they're going to do is like wait a minute, let's hear what they have to say, because they've been transparent with us, they've talked with us, they've shared with us that we know these people, we know their names.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: Think about right now, in any, any community out there, in any world out there, how many, how many officers do the?
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Everybody know their name?
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Very few, in fact.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: If we do this, right, police officers should be celebrities in their communities.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and how do you relay that?
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Through social media and then through the personal interaction.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: But when that happens, I can tell you right now, when that critical incident happens, it's not going to have a backlash.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: What you're going to have?
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: You're going to have support.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: You're going to have that.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: You're going to be able to cash in on your profits for that exact reason.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you right now the reason why it doesn't happen in those police officers are not celebrities is because egos get in the way and positions get in the way and certain police chiefs and or sheriffs lose sight of what the real value is there.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: Well, and I think it's for, like our local association leaders, it's important to repeat what you said for profit, companies measure their value in monetary capital.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: They should be measuring their wealth in political capital.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: It's capital, all the same, that you build up, that you may have to cash in at some point.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: You're building capital nonetheless, and if you think there's not equal amount of value in political capital because you just nailed it, when a bad incident happens, they're going to be like well, let's stop and verify, because they we've built cloud credibility, trust in a relationship, rather than okay, yeah, that's that jackass that drives by and can't wave at me.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: That's probably true.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: He probably did thump them, since he can't even wave at somebody's and ask when you have that political capital, they stop and be like.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure.
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: I believe this.
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: Let's.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: Let's slow down and check on this.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Well, I've been taking it a step further.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: For the members of TMPA, the that exact understanding.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Your POA is worthless If you don't have that, if you don't run it like a business.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: We're understanding that this isn't about just your members of your POA.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: This is about building that relationship and building that capital with your community.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: So when you do need something that the councilmen don't mean shit, the mayor doesn't mean shit, what you want is the community to come out and sit there and say, no, we don't care what you have to say.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: The police department needs this, the officers we know need a raise, they need civil service, they need whatever it is that we want to give them because we know these people and we've made that relationship with them.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Cities and government does a horrible job of doing that and I can tell you if you know how to do it and do it right there will never be a vote that goes against you Never.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: I agree, never.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: We'll have to check out some of the old vids.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: They're classy Old Rosenberg vids.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: All right, I stepped all over your original question Leaving law enforcement RDA life.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: So, oh yeah, Sorry, I'm, I'm, I'm lost my train of thought.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: I'm still stuck on the social media deal.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: I stepped on your question.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: No, yeah.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: The uh so.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: So leaving law enforcement?
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Leaving law enforcement wasn't a choice of mine.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: The uh.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: So what happened was I was a, uh, the patrol lieutenant uh, and, in our position as a commander, my, my, my chief, um, who I get along with great as you can tell, kind of the scenario I just gave you guys.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Um, he ended up retiring and, um, the police chief opened up.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Well, the assistant chief and I, and then several other outside candidates, we all assessed for it.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: It came down to the assistant chief and myself, uh, planning for the job, or at the final two, and ultimately he won the position.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: Well, after he won the position, the very next day, he calls me in into his office, shuts the door and uh, and looks me in the eyes and says, hey, uh, you're going to need to find a new place to work.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: And, by the way, we had a horrible relationship.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: And I said, okay, explain to me why.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: Cause I'm not leaving and he goes, cause I need people that are loyal to the department, not loyal to a person.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: I said, see, that's what you don't get.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: I said I know every single one of these guys.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Uh, I've hired every single one of these guys.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: I train these guys.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: I know their wives, I know their kids.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: I know everything about these guys.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, you walked down the hallway.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Nobody even knows who you are.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: He was a hidden guy that didn't do anything his entire career, uh, with the exception of policy and that type of thing.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: And, uh, so it.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: It was this, this, this kind of stale, kind of a stillmate that said no, I'm not leaving.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: So, immediately I get back to my office and, um, the email goes out that I no longer have any power.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: All the sergeants, they want him answering directly to him and I, literally for three months, sat in my office with zero to do, no power, nothing at all.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: During that three months, I got investigated three times, never been formally investigated by a ever, but investigated over and over and over again.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Um, blogs were started up, all this other kind of stuff, and it just was an outlaw assault against myself and anybody that supported me in that type of thing.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: And uh, ultimately it led to a third and final investigation where he had terminated me on uh, which was complete bullshit.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: Uh, and your, your followers, being team BM members, can understand a lot of this.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, 100% because in law enforcement, unfortunately, there's a lot of politics involved in, especially the higher up you go, and, um, ultimately I ended up getting fired.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: I appealed it and I got got uh, because even gave me a uh, a dishonorable, dishonorable, and then had to change it to an honorable and it was my first communication with Aaron Slater Was it really.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Yep, you called in for legal Okay, I didn't realize it was you and uh, so, and TNPA was all a part of that as well, going through this whole process and, and, and, and, and, and, because I was a, I was a my POA president for a long time, and that type of thing.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: So I've been working with TNPA since we started our POA back in 2000, 2001, somewhere in there, but uh, but ultimately, uh, I got fired and um, danny, my wife was still working at the PD and um, all about seven days later, I just sit there and, and, and.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: As soon as it happened, I said you know what this is bullshit?
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: I, I put my life, my soul, my heart, everything into this job and in fact, the, the, the vision statement for relentless I mean for, uh, for Rosemar Police Department was the relentless pursuit of police excellence that was all over our cars, everything.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: I used the word relentless for every aspect of that department, right?
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: And was it already there or did you put?
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: that on there, because relentless had been ingrained in you, that's right.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: So everything that we did.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: In fact, if you go into social media from way back, we use the word relentless for everything, everything.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: And then, as soon as I got fired, they stripped it off all the cars, they redid the vision statement and they and they erased that whole understanding of what that was.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: They wanted nothing to do with their insulator.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: As far as administration goes, Wow.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: So, um, about seven days later I started a company.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: I got the LLC, I filed for it and the initial company was was aced, aced assessment centers and evolutionary development.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: I had been trained through IACP to do assessment centers and the evolutionary development was let's take what law enforcement is now and then let's take it to the other levels.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: It's it's development, but, but you know, be evolutionary about it.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: So aced was the parent company and my whole thought was I was getting all these calls every single day about how do you do social media, how do you do this, how do you do it?
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: And I said you know what?
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Maybe I could train people how to do this.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: And so I put a training course together and started selling it and I was going all over the nation.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: Well, initially it was all over Texas.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: My first course I got with a local hotel that that that I made friends with, and he said, yeah, use, use our training room and that type of stuff.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: And I put it together.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: I had made all these social media pages 27 different social media pages for law enforcement because my thought was I was going to do a training company and I was going to just broker instructors and start doing training, and so I had imagined every single niche in law enforcement, k9, investigation, whatever it was.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: I had every a page for every single one of them and a following on every single one of them, and so it was basically like running a stock market run over here posting things and doing all this stuff.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: That was my job every single day.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: And I would do these training courses, but I would probably do one every month, month and a half maybe, and I would pull in maybe $4,500, $5,000, but in marketing expenses because you still got to spend money in marketing and the rent and travel and all that kind of stuff I was probably pulling in $2,000, maybe every class that I actually did, and then that would basically just go to the next class and those types of things.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: So, and then during that time I had some job offers and I kept turning them down or something would happen with them.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: But I really didn't want to get back in law enforcement and we were struggling.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: My wife and I were struggling.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: She was still in law enforcement.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: She left Rosemary PD, a lot of people left at that same time because they were like, hey, we see the right on the wall, let's, let's get the fuck out of here.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: She went to another agency.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: I made good friends with with her chief at that agency and he had offered me an assistant chief job over there, but ultimately it was at a point where I didn't want to go back to law enforcement.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: I wanted to do something bigger.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: I thought you know, my vision and my purpose is something bigger.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: Goes back to those those those fall in the path and I just didn't feel like going back in the law enforcement at that time was was my path.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: I just felt there's something that was supposed to be doing so and I got fired in July of 2014.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: And in going through the struggle, we didn't have any money.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: We're living off basically one income, one cop income and a very little income, if any, that I was making.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: I was still teaching at the police academy on a part time, but imagine just living off credit cards, and it almost took me all the way back, all the way back to my late childhood.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: So I had that feeling of like, struggle had that feeling of like what do I do?
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: What am I supposed to do?
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: And on January 10 of 2015, danny comes in.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: She had just checked the mail, getting home from work and she's got our tax paperwork for our house and its property tax and we owed $6,566 in property tax.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: And she goes you know that we owe the money and it's due by the end of the month, january 31.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: And I said I know, and anybody knows, that when you have a, a argument about finances with a spouse, there's no winning Because you need a winnie.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: All can change that.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: It's just no winning.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: And so, and as well as things where I'm like I know I get it Okay, and she goes Well, why don't you go back to law enforcement?
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: That's what you're good at, that's what you love.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: And my argument was I don't want to, I'm supposed to do something bigger here.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: And so there was this argument between her and I, and.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: But I knew that the struggle was real and I didn't know what to do.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: And so, ultimately, that night, I just it was one of those give up feelings, one of those give up moments and I just said, and I just broke and I prayed to God.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: I said, God, I don't know what you want me to do.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: I thought I was supposed to make this great.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: I thought I was supposed to do something bigger.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: I thought you were putting me down a path that I thought everything that happened at Rosenberg shouldn't have happened.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: So I thought there was a reason, a purpose for that, and so if you want me to continue doing this training, I'll do it, but you got to give something, you got to break somewhere.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: If you want me to go back to law enforcement, show me and I'll do it.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: Just show me what you want me to do.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: So that next morning I woke up, I went into my office, I learned how to do graphic art because I needed to for the purpose of marketing and, yeah, content and that type of stuff.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: So I learned graphic art by using YouTube, and so I literally sat there and I put my headphones on, like I am right now, and I just sat there and I started drawing and and I came up with a design and it was that the gladiator, him with the blue line through it, right?
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: So I looked at it and I said, yeah, that's pretty cool.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: And so I take it.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: I'm like man, what can I do with that?
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: That's pretty dope.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: So I said, you know what?
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: I've got all these social media pages.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: Let me try something.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: I've seen this, these shirts on Teespring and also.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: So I took that and I put it on a shirt and I put it up and I shared it with all 27 different pages that I had and put it up, and we were going to go to a dinner that night, for vendor bars, for a birthday or whatever.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: So we get ready and we get in the car and there's still the argument, right.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: But of course, when you get to dinner, everything's fine in front of everybody.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: And then you get done.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: You come back home, she goes, does I go back in my office?
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: And I look and I'm like I wonder if I sold any t-shirts.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: I look and I'm like what?
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: I'd already sold over 200 t-shirts in the amount of time that we were gone, which is maybe only about two, two and a half hours.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: And so I started looking at the comments and the comments are verifying that I just bought one.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: It was great.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: You know awesome and this type of thing.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: Now understand something was unique about that Ferguson had just happened a few months earlier.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: So, and not only did Ferguson happen, but the two NYPD cops had just been ambushed and killed.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: And what people don't understand is is when those things are happening, the support for law enforcement rises.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: It actually increases because the silent they may be silent, but they're still supportive they actually become more supportive.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: So the shirts were selling and selling, Was it?
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: was it just that graphic?
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: Did you have anything else on it it?
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: was just that graphic and all like a black t-shirt with that graphic All I put was a relentless bleed blue.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: That's it Relentless bleed blue, right, and it was that graphic on the back and then the graphic on the front.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: And so from there, from there did you have any production that had you already thought of.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: If I sell 50, how am I going to make 50?
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: No, what, I did think of it as a fulfillment center that you're putting this on.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: They do all the selling, shipping, everything, and all I do is do the marketing and pushing, and then what they do is they cut you a percentage of the check and then they give you the check, gotcha, okay.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: So ultimately I'd sold a few shirts and then I kept pushing it every day and everything runs on a seven day campaign and at the end of the seven days I remember going into the bathroom and she was in there with color I mean not color, but curling her hair and I said, babe, she turns around and I said I've got the money for the taxes and she goes.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: And I just remember her pausing for a second, she stops and she goes and understand.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: She met me when I was undercover in her products and she already kind of understood my upbringing right.
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: I know what this is going and she looks at me and, and and we all know body language very well and I look at her and I'm like no fuck, no, it's not the light that she goes.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: What the fuck are you doing?
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Because no one in the right mind would think that a cop, a unemployed cop, could make that much money, that amount of time and without it being illegal.
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: Just so we're clear, danny sitting in here.
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: Danny, your thought was Chippendales right, he was dancing, that was not a thought.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look good naked, I promise you yeah look good naked.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: That was a thought right.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: We need that on a shirt.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: So from there I said come here, let me show you.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: So I took it in there and I showed her and that type of thing and it was legit.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: And one of the I think the question was well, I believe when I see it I'm like no, they've already deposited it in the bank.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: Wow, and here's the understanding of things.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: I owed $6,566.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: In seven days I made $6,568.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: $2 more than I needed to bank pay for my taxes.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: On a whim.
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: Throw headphones on.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: I'll doodle something out with the hell.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: Let's just see if I can sell a t-shirt at the lowest point that I've been in and I can tell you the message I took from that was he's going to provide, he's even going to give him a little bit more than I need.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: But then it reaffirmed what was told to me at the very beginning do something great, do something great with it.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: So that's the reason why I have literally dedicated everything in this business to giving back, to making sure that everything that I've loved the business I've loved the people that got me to this point, the reasons of why we all do what we do that's the reason why I'm so involved in giving back in that aspect.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: And for those that don't know, he does give back so much, quinn, if you want to pick up on that at the I was just going to say.
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: people ask me all the time because a lot of people know how much you give back and they know what your passion is.
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: If, watching this podcast, they don't figure that out, that they're blind, deaf and dumb because you didn't just on a.
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: There's probably people that don't know that are like I was.
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: Slater just got lucky and he built a massive business and he's just a dude that you know always had money or don't know the foundation behind what is into this.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: God bless, dude, it is freaking amazing.
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: So you stepped off.
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: You had two bucks left over to pay your taxes, I guess what was your next step?
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: Oh, should I better get headphones back on and doodle it?
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right, and so so I took that as a message of of do what you keep doing and and keep pushing it.
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: So I did.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: I made a couple more designs, I kept pushing the original design and in three months I saved up $300,000 and three months, three months, good God.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: And by police work.
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: That was never thought again.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: But it was never a thought of getting back in the law enforcement.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: But the love was still there.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: It's always been there and and uh, and anybody that's ever done this job for any amount of time knows that that never leaves you.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: It's, it's, it's, it's.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: People ask me all the time do you miss it?
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: Aspects, aspects.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: But I can tell you, when you get burned, like I did at the end of my career, yeah, you look at and you say I don't miss that.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: No, I don't miss that.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: But I saved up 300,000.
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: I got attorneys, I got a trademark, I dedicated the the the name of relentless defender, and I think that story's already been told.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: But in the defender aspect was what do police officers do every single day?
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: We defend and we defend, you know, we defend righteousness.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: We defend, you know, the community.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: We defend everything that we've already talked about.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: And again it goes back to we do that without stopping.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we do that without whatever obstacles in front of us.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: We're going to continue to do that and it's not going to be something that we do lightly.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: Um that that it becomes who we are and uh.
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: So I rented a small 1600 square foot facility and, um, hired one employee.
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: Uh, ended up ultimately, um, that one employee needs to say he wanted to be a cop.
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: Uh, and um, one of the things that since that time, uh, I paid for him to go to the police academy because he couldn't afford to go for it.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: And then now we have a scholarship program that I have that I put other uh kids that can't afford to go to the academy through my known nonprofit that we have uh through the academies now, uh, but ultimately it went from a 1600 square foot facility and I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing it and uh to where right now is almost 16,000 square feet facility with uh almost 40 employees.
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: Wow, when you stepped off and doodle that first one, come home that night.
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: You sold a couple of hundred shirts.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: Can pay your taxes at the end of seven days.
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: What your when, when, when was that?
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: That was in 2015.
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: How quickly, like in days or weeks or months, did you realize?
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: Should I?
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: I, I think I've just built something.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, was it that night when you saw it was 200, or was it a couple of weeks into it?
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: Cause in, would you say, in three months, you saved 300,000?
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: .
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: Yes, how quick.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: I guess it was a matter of weeks where you realized I've just stepped off into something that is this thing's big.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: It was immediately.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: I can tell you this right now and I've been told when, when I was talking with Danny about it, um, I told her I said hey, I'm, I'm telling you right now.
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: This is it.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: I knew nothing about teachers, I knew nothing about peril, I knew nothing about running a business of that sort.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: You knew the night.
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: You knew that night when you got back and sold 200.
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: No, I knew by the end.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: I knew by the end of that campaign that whatever it was I'm supposed to do, it's supposed to be through this and and.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: And I can even remember praying to God and asking t-shirts, apparel, what is this about?
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: And then I started and every I've never heard a voice.
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: I've never heard anybody.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: You know people sit and say I heard the voice.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: I'd never heard a voice.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: I'd never heard a voice of God.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: But in a way, we kind of do by the understanding of the paths about the messaging that that, uh, whatever it was, and and I've never been a real religious person, the, the, the religion comes and the faith comes from the things that I've actually been through and I've seen it and I've witnessed and I've been that wasn't a cop that knocked on my door.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: It was an angel.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: It was an angel that knocked on my door so I knew, I literally knew immediately and I'm even telling her this, I'm saying hey, no, I'm serious, this is for real.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: And the skepticism from everybody was come on really you have no idea what this is, you don't know what to do with this and that type of thing.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: And I did, and I kept pushing it and I kept pushing it and, honestly, I kept pushing with that same word in mind relentless, relentless, relentless.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: I'm going to do this.
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: So I kept pushing it and, um, so, ultimately, um, the second employee ever heard was Danny, and I told her I said quit your job of being a law enforcement and and and come work for me.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: And then the third employee ever heard was my sister-in-law, which is her sister, who was a sheriff's deputy, a sheriff's detective at the sheriff's office.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: She came to work for me, in fact.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: But what was interesting about that is I offered her the job.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: I said how much you make right now and whatever it was, um, I said, well, I'll give you $5,000 more net, right?
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: And she was like, no, there's no way.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: I don't think that this is going to work out.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: So I said I'm telling you it's going to work.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: So about two weeks later, she calls me up and says I am pissed off at this and if you're still going to hire her, then I'll come do it.
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: So I hired her and, uh, I went to it.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: I still teed, I still taught, I was still teaching my classes and and uh, through POTC public agency training council now cause I didn't want to do the management of it.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: So I was up in Indianapolis and I get a phone call that they're arguing.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: I'm like maybe that wasn't a good idea.
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: But, um, but we just grown from there.
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: I think what is what set you apart, the company apart, is you don't talk to talk Everything you've done, you've walked the walk and you, I can remember years ago you said I don't have a company, I have a family, and you didn't mean that like a used car salesman or somebody trying to sell insurance.
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: It's a freaking family.
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: When, when I ran uh for office and you came down and helped with your campaign, Soon as I showed up, mama's like I'm not going to be a salesman.
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: Mama's like get in here, we're eating lunch together.
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: But I'm like no, no, no, I'm imposing.
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: They're like no, get your ass in here.
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: Everybody sits down and breaks bread together for lunch and everything they do.
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: The, the Facebook page, is a family, relentless family, and I mean it's genuine, it's authentic.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: Everybody now knows where this foundation was built on and why it's authentic and genuine, but it's in it, it's woven into every fabric, Cause when you go in there, it's a family, it's not um, and it goes out into the public and I think the public sees it is why you have people that I credit cracks me up all the time, people fighting over your shirts on there and when you're going to release the next one and uh, we had a um TMP a member in West Texas fires or house burned down and I wasn't there, but some of the field reps are out there.
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: She was upset that she had lost her RDA shirt collection.
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: She didn't have any clothes, she lost everything, but she was a huge RDA family follower and so when we reached out about trying to help get her some clothes, I think y'all went back and started replacing.
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: You were able to find some of the old ones that she was in love with, the older, older collectibles, and then center a bunch more.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: And I'm like man when somebody's house burns up and their first thought is all my freaking.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: RDA shirts are gone.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: You built a damn family.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: I'm going to.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: I'm going to echo on that.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: We had a disc attorney on uh, probably like the second episode where he became an Harrison County.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: We had given him some T shirts and stuff when he came up here and did his podcast and he caught me last week and he said hey, what is?
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: that T shirt deal that you're talking about, this big, small, good looking guy.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: I caught me off guard.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: It was like later tonight I said what the hell is he talking about?
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Dan was talking to my wife and I said relentless.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: He was like, yeah, that T shirt brand.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: And I paused real quick and I said read me, can I make no mistake about it?
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: That's not a brand, there's no brand.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: And then entire family, relentless defenders of mission.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to echo on that and say that how I told you to make something great, and I'm looking at a man that's made something great and is continuing to make everything else great in law enforcement.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: And I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm honored to be one of your, you know, friends, Um and I, it's just been, it's just, it's, it's just, it's just, it's just.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: It's amazing to watch you continue to be successful and to continue to have an impact on law enforcement, not just in Texas, not just in Rosenberg, not within their world, across the nation.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: So kudos to you, brother, cause you've made it great.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, dude, it's like a it's you could be stationed out of Waco.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: It's almost like a cult man.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: We got David Kress here and you see people on there arguing about the shirts and when the when, the next, uh, when the next one's going to roll out, and what their favorite ones are arguing over them.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: Like dude, the dude's built a brand, a family of following from hell.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: That's freaking cool and it's it's endeared.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: And a lot of people have a lot of great ideas that are flashing the pain and they last about five months and they die out.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: And you've diversified.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: You've continued to find ways to be effective and relevant.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, um.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: But the biggest thing I admire is it would be easy, cause we've all started out broke.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: It'd be real easy to be like, yeah, I'm just going to start buying yachts and private jet and doing whatever the hell I want.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: It feels like you work your ass off.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: You work as hard to give back than you do to earn it and that's not a neat that you have to be intentional on that, and I know that it's not easy.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: You make it look easy.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: I know it's not easy, but there's a lot of people, a great way to see how people, as characters, give them some money or power and see what they do with it.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: And all you've done is continue to succeed because you work so damn hard to give it back and when people reach out, you never hesitate.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: I make.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: I'm super jaded on nonprofits because A lot of them that I've dealt with are complete scams and continue to scam people, and you don't do it for the glory, you don't do it for you just continue to give back and lift people up, support people when you can and give back more than a lot of people make.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: And that's the probably the biggest thing that I love about Aaron Slater is the passion and the selflessness behind it, and that's irreplaceable.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: Thank you guys.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: Yep, absolutely, and I'm not bullshitting about the Hallow word that that is going to happen.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: I hopefully got to get cleared through some people, but now I think that would be such an honor and such a remarkable award to give.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: But we got some things to shoot at you.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: There's three rapid fire questions and depending on how you answer this, maybe we can maybe get some t-shirts.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: I think you're going to be on the on the T O train.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: Is there anything we didn't hit?
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: No, I think you guys did excellent.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: I really do the hell thing I just want to say I'm on her preview saying that.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's a great it's.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: It's.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you?
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: You know, why wouldn't we?
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: Before I rapid fire, being super raw and real.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: If you're in, if you're, if your life hadn't crossed, intersected with how, what do you think Aaron Slater is today?
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: Say I wouldn't even imagine.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: Probably nowhere near where you've been.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right yeah.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: I've asked this a couple of times, I guess in our 35 or six episodes, but you're, you're somebody I really would like to know.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: What's the highest point in your career?
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: What single things been the highest point?
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: What's the worst day in Aaron Slater's?
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: What's Aaron Slater's worst day and what would you?
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: 45, 46, what would 46 year old Aaron Slater?
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: What would 46 year old Aaron Slater say to 16 year old Aaron Slater?
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: Stay relentless, no matter what.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: Stay relentless, no matter what happens.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: 46 year old Slater would give the exact same device that how gave me when I was 18.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: That's a successful word to successful statement, to give what's Aaron Slater's single best day and Aaron Slater's worst day.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: I had three best days, my three kids Worst day my worst day had a few of those, but ultimately, um, those don't matter, it's the ones that you try to make better.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, very well said, you can.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: You can digest them and move forward, or use them as a crutch and fail the rest of your life.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: I believe in the term failing forward.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: We will all fail.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: We will fail over and over and over again.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: We'll fail multiple times a day, but if we don't move forward from those failures, then you have no idea what the word relentless actually means.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: Trump Last episode.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: We talked about things last episode or the one before and I said this sounds cocky and I don't mean it cocky, but I've told my boys you don't lose, you learn, cause you.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: If you say you lose, you typically want to be a pity party and want about it or use it as a crutch.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: I lose a lot, but I learned from it.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: Trump forwarded.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: I like that All right.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Rapid fire, here we go.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: Those weren't the rapid fire.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: No, no, no no, no.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: Favorite cop movie or line from a cop movie Favorite police vehicle.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: I'm winking.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: And a favorite drink of choice.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: Let me start with the police vehicle, because that's an easy one.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: I take a lot of shit for this because even if you go on my brand, you'll see I brand with it.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: But the crown Vic maybe the most ugly motherfucker out there and I'm going to tell you right now that son of a bitch is a- beast.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: It's a beast, aaron Slater.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: You just moved up on the totem pole with my respect chain.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: Cause this is a big debate, my copidrate here thinks the Chevrolet bodass ugly 94 Caprice, which is a great car, not in the speed you cannot destroy a crown, vic, yeah.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: And in his defense um, I was in high school when that car was out, so I never, I've never, been able to say that I have any experience with that car.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: Those are honestly, I think those now are in the museums on the way back.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: You saw it on the way to the center.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: That's awesome, he pulled it out.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: Oh great.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: The um and give me the other one Give me the lot, lot favorite favorite cop movie, alive from a cop movie and then favorite drink of choice.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: My favorite cop movie is training day.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: Um and and uh.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: I love training day because it gives you in and out, is up and down, and I just think that it shows the realness of things yeah and uh, but it also brings it around very similar to the, the, the explanation of the story that I just gave.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: And then favorite drink of choice.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: Uh, by far the one I would.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I think I'm starting.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: Well, man uh you got a thing else.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: Nope, Great, great movie choice.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: My 16 year old.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: We've been on a Denzel marathon.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: So have we?
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: We literally just watched a equalizer last night.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: Man on fire.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why we're trying to get caught.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: Man on fire is probably one of the best ones.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: I'll equalize it.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: Three comes out, september one or two.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: That's what we're doing we're getting it ready.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: We've been on a Denzel marathon overnight.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: We make dinner, get through like our Google Denzel.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: Whatever movie pops up, we're watching Denzel.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: That's good shit.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: We literally said he is the best actor in our entire lifetime.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: Fall forward.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: We've got a man crush on him.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: He's awesome.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he is.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: You guys stay safe out there.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: Be sure to check out Aaron's relentless foundation and uh, he puts out a hell of a product and he's just a good guy.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: So check out relentless defender.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: You guys stay safe.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: Anything else?
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: You have dates for the uh yeah, the Gala.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: We don't yet.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: Um, we do have a Gala every single year that raises the funds, and what we do with those funds is we try to fill the void of all an officer.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: We do that, but really what our void is is to help out officers that have been injured and and and have had life changing, chaotic kid catastrophes in their life, it could be cancer, it could be a hurricane, it could be a tornado, whatever the case may be.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: And then we also have a scholarship program.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: The Gala is awesome.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: You guys keep keep watching for dates when those come out.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: Maybe the criminal be me and him be shirtless next time.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: Go to the Gala with our, our tuxedo tops on, that'd be cool.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: Just don't it out there, just come back on in time I'm waiting for a response.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: If you're going to do that, at least you jump yeah.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: You guys stay safe out there, as always.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: May God bless you and may God bless Texas.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you.