Latest / Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement / #090- "LRIS" with Rick Poulson and Tony Rike

Transcript

#090- "LRIS" with Rick Poulson and Tony Rike · Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: of Texas that do things a certain way, and then you, and then we have field reps or even members that are in Houston and Dallas, and it's so structured just because of the amount of manpower that they've got, and so we as TMPA that's why we send our field reps to these kind of training seminars is what is the, what is the standard right now across the nation and what are the partners across the nation?
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Welcome back, viewers, watchers, listeners.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, tyler Owen.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: We are doing things a little bit different today.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: We will be joined later on by Field Representative Tony Reich out of the North Texas area, and we are joined with guest Rick.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Don't kill me for mispronouncing your name, rick Poulsen.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Is that correct?
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: That's absolutely correct.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Hey, I nailed it.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: People will be proud.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I have a Tyler Owen dictionary and Tylerism book that I keep close by for me mispronouncing names.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: But, yeah, this is our first time to do a Zoom meeting and so, man, what an honor it is to have you on, and so we're looking forward to talking about some different issues and when Tony jumps on later on, we'll include him in our conversation.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: But for those that have never watched the podcast or are joining us for the first time.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: We generally like to kind of jump off with who the hell's Rick?
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: How the hell are you in part of and intergrained with all this, all the law enforcement stuff?
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: So give us kind of a background of who you are and what you do.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Sure, thanks, thanks, tyler, and thanks for having me on the podcast.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: 100%.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: I really think this stuff is awesome.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: The stuff that you guys do is fantastic and this is part of it.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: And hey, doing it on Zoom is good.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: There's nothing like a pants-optional podcast, so it's OK.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: So I'm from Philly, I'm talking to you from the great city of Philadelphia, so I made a special.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I'm going to move this over and you can see my Philadelphia Eagles hat in the back and that's just a nice little.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: We're going to let that slide.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Gotcha For my friends in Texas and that's all right.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: I got enough losing seasons in my history to try to take advantage of one or two.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: But I'm Philadelphia and LRIS.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I'm the executive director of Labor Relations Information System LIRIS some folks call it LRIS, other folks call it and LRIS is based in Portland, oregon, and I'm based in Philadelphia, pennsylvania, and so we've got kind of both sides of the country covered.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: In addition to my work with LRAS, which we'll talk a little bit about in a bit, I'm a lawyer.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: I'm a labor lawyer, I represent unions.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: I've done it my entire career.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: I've been practicing law since 1997, and I've been representing police officers and firefighters, correctional officers, every year of my practice, and now that's all I do.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: I used to represent pretty much everybody and now I specialize in police, fire and corrections.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: I come to it honestly my pop was a firefighter in the city of Philadelphia and did about 30 years when the cities were burning down, you know the sixties and seventies and a little bit into the eighties.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: And so I grew up, you know, when I I didn't go to law school to, to to represent unions, and I certainly didn't go to law school to represent police or anything.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: I went to law school, like most lawyers do.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I had no idea what to do with my life and so I was like, let me go to law school.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: And when at the time I started hooked on with with the firm I'm with now, willard Williams and Davidson in Philadelphia and I've been here since the late 90s we represented a couple of fire unions and one or two police unions and I got my start working with those groups and it was immediate, you know when I, where I grew up in Philly, lots of row homes, right, yeah, you know there's big, you know, 100 families on a block row homes and there's still a little residency requirement in the city for city workers now, but at the time it was a strict residency requirement.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: So all the cops and firefighters for the most part lived in Northeast Philly, which is about 400,000 people, this big chunk of Philadelphia.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: And you know, growing up, all my friends, dads at the time, were all cops or firefighters and so, and a lot of them went on to become, you know, uh, police officers and firefighters.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: And so when I started working with police and fire unions it was just a natural fit.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: I was like here I am just with my friends, and so I love it.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: But those that don't know what LRI LRIS is you know the average patrolman out there talk about um.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: You know the what, what it is, what you guys do and so forth, because some people just don't know, right, yeah, I didn't know till really far in my career.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I didn't know what they do and what you guys do.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: So explain that to us.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: So LRIS, labor Relations Information System, is a training and education company for public safety, public safety labor groups, and it's not just unions.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: You know we've got a lot of management folks who will subscribe to our various products and attend our seminars, but we got a kind of healthy dose of union support there.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: You know at LRS and what we do and we've been doing it for you know since the 1980s I mean LRS has been around a long time and it started out with a guy named Will Aitchison, one of the best police union lawyers in the country, the extent of attention spent on constitutional rights of criminal defendants and not of police officers, and how the groups that he worked with and the employers were just completely ignorant on the basic rights that officers have not statutory rights, constitutional rights and so he wound up putting on a seminar.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: He sent out just mailers to every police agency he could find in the country and, you know, booked a room in Las Vegas and so we're going to talk about the rights of police officers and about 200 people showed up.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Lo and behold, and that's how it started.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: And you know we still do it that way today.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: So LRS puts on seminars.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: We do five or six seminars a year, either in Las Vegas Sometimes we'll be in Nashville or New Orleans and then we go around and do state specific seminars and we talk about issues of importance in the area of labor relations.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: So what's going on in bargaining?
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: What are we seeing in terms of cases of interest that are out there and we provide a national perspective on it?
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: So we do seminars.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: We've got it.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: We've got our own podcast.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: A first Thursday podcast drops the first Thursday of every month.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Very clever.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: And we'll talk about some cases, you know, of interest.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Usually sometimes we'll have guests on and chat.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: You know we do webinars.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: We have a webinar coming up on December 11th about Brady and Giglio issues Always, like always, important stuff there.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: And we have a newsletter and a database and you want to check it out, lrscom, feel free to do so.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: We do have email.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: We have a free subscription for emails.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: God, everyone wants more emails, like climbing up your box, right, it's not just what you want.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: We send out emails once or twice a week of news.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: It's just news stuff.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: And this is where it gets a little different.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: It's not like law enforcement specific, it's the labor end of it, right.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: So if there's a contract settlement, we're going to cover it.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: If there's a no confidence vote, we're going to cover it, and we look all over the country and we'll share those.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: And there's always things that are interesting and that's the point is to try to be a national voice to make sure people understand, gosh, the issues that we're dealing with here.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: People are dealing with the same stuff all over the place.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: And what's so funny is that people think that just because you take an oath and wear a badge and go out and enforce the laws of whatever state that you're in, they think it's almost like we're supposed to give up our God-given rights as Americans, right, and so it's so interesting.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: And that's even guys that have just graduated the academy.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: And then you had the idea I'm sure it was like this when me and Tony started.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Well, it was, I know.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: For me is that, you know, just because it's your right, let's just say that I get into a critical incident or a use of force situation, I have every right to have an attorney present.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: But the older generation, the men and women who served the 60s and 70s, leading up into the 80s and then finishing their career in the 90s, it was almost like the minute you said that, oh my gosh, it was insulting.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: It was almost like the minute you said that, oh my gosh, it was insulting.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: And so I think we, this new generation, has done a phenomenal job, thanks to organizations such as TNPA, fop, lrs, to inform the everyday police officer firemen out there too that you have rights.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: And just because you invoke those rights or take advantage of those rights.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: That doesn't necessarily mean that you're being disrespectful to your chain of command.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that you're being disrespectful to your agency.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: You may drink beer on Saturdays and get into a critical incident on Tuesdays and those chiefs are like oh my God, I can't believe you're doing this.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: And so have you in your position with LRIS.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Have you seen that transition yourself, and what did that look like for you, up and up and uh where you're at?
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: well, I mean, I don't know that I've seen a transition I think it's been pretty consistent of um with law enforcement.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Now, fire and correction a little different, okay, but law enforcement, there's the critical incident and then there's other stuff.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, there's everything else.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Um, the critical incident is where I really get it the most, where I mean in the you know an instant you're kind of now on the other side.
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: And you're not right and but officers push against that and they're like wait a minute, no, I'm on the team, I did a good job.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: I want to tell everybody what happened.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: You know, and that's where, in my experience, that's where the that's where the association folks, the union folks, you got good training, not just you know, critical incident training in and of itself.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: But how are we going to respond to these things to make sure people's rights are protected?
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: And and we're still gonna, you know, do what we can to put the bad guys in jail, but we want to make sure that the folks know what their rights are.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: And that's where it's the senior guy, you know, or senior officer on scene that says, hey, shut up, you know, I love you, shut up, nobody talked to anybody.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: We're going to we're, yeah, nobody talked to anybody.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: We're gonna where.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Everyone's gonna do what we're supposed to do, right, but we're gonna make sure your rights are protected and that's what my I mean.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: I'm not law enforcement officer, I'm a lawyer, you know.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: I, I my experience, but I, I go to critical incidents and what I do at critical incidents is I say shut up.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: You know, sometimes I say it nicer than that, but I basically go around say, shut up, everybody shut up.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: But there's lots of that resistance from that officer involved or the officers involved.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: You know they want to say what happened because they did the right thing and they worry about what if I don't.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: You know, am I now playing the same games as as folks that we investigate?
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: There's?
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: It's hard to instill that, but I think we have a lot of supervisors who attend, like I said, our seminars.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: We just did a discipline seminar in Vegas last week.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: 40% of the attendees were management.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, and you know you would still and good managers know this.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: If good managers know the officer's rights, they're going to be the ones you know.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: And if we deal with it up front in a structured way to make sure we know exactly what happens when that critical incident hits, here's what we're going to do.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: We're going to put people and you know we've trained on it, so we know what to do and we're not looking to screw anybody.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: You can go a long way in making sure our individual officers understand that you can protect your rights and still be a part of the team.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: You know that's what I bump up against a lot, you know.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Especially guys want to interview and like I want to go interview tomorrow.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: I'm like no, no, let's take a couple of days.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: You know they're going to give us a couple of days, you know that kind of stuff and they're like no, I want to say what, and I get it, uh, but uh, we just got to tap the LRS and kind of where Texas measures up in relation to across the nation.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: But the difficulty and challenges that TMPA has is that so many different agencies do things so farly, vastly different.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Right, you've got East Texas rule or even Panhandle or these rule spots of Texas that do things a certain way, and then we have field reps or even members that are in Houston and Dallas and it's so structured just because of the amount of manpower that they've got.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: And so we as TMPA that's why we send our field reps to these kind of training seminars.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: What is the standard right now across the nation?
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: What are departments across the nation doing?
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Because it does matter and it's good for us on how we manage the calls coming in and how we manage and kind of sort through the chaos of when we take these calls in, of what actually is going on.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: I know for a long time when I started with TMPA and I'll give you a great example you know ignorantly, some of the field reps we weren't really the guys that were answering the phone were cops, but they weren't exposed to the body cams, right.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: And so we would be on the phone with people who just got into a critical incident some severe, some not but we would be asking them questions about how to send the attorney to there.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: And so we had to do a good job as a labor organization of okay, the body cam's still going, how can we protect our members' rights but still obtain information?
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: And so you talk about shut up Right.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: And so it's funny you say that because we had to do a better job on our end to adapt.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: And I don't think if any association or labor organization out there is adapting to current times, then you're falling behind.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: And but anyway, back to my point about Texas.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Where do you see Texas kind of ranking up across the nation with our labor movement, the labor rights for officers, the members out there?
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: You know we come from Pennsylvania.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: We're not a state, we're a commonwealth.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: We're very special, which means we're a state.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: But Pennsylvania and Texas have a lot of similarities, believe it or not.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: I've negotiated some contracts down in Texas.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: I've done some work in San Antonio and in Austin, and so I've gotten to know Texas' legal framework.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: You know for for bargaining over the last few years, 174 and 143 and all that good stuff, and I was struck by the similarities.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: And when you've got, you know, this mix of big, you know big and boy, they're big in Texas, big cities, and but then you got everything else.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: You got the suburban departments and you got the more rural departments and you've got this huge diversity of job experiences that our officers get.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: And you've got huge diversity and experience.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: And that's where the challenge is.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: I work with departments that are like three or four members.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Pennsylvania's got about a thousand police agencies.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Most of my practice I go all over the country, but most of the time I'm here in Pennsylvania and, yeah, we got about a thousand police agencies.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Most of my practice I go all over the country, but most of the time I'm here in Pennsylvania and, yeah, we got about a thousand police agencies.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Most of them are fewer than 10 members, wow, right.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: And so you know, and there are some very large agencies right, but but there's a lot of small ones and you know there's some similar, some similarities there.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: I think Pennsylvania is maybe a little unique with the number of really small places, but you know, I think that PA does a good job.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: I think that Texas does a good job with providing baseline protections.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: You guys are a big part of that, you know, in making sure that you've got consistent protections out there.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: I think where we fall down sometimes, from my perspective and I guess I'm a little biased because I do training, training is the best part of my job but where where we can fall down is is is police agencies are good on training, you know, I think, getting better, you know, and, and I think in a time when recruiting retention is a challenge and there's so much pressure, it's like lower standards.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: I think Texas has done a good job of saying no, no, no, we got to go the opposite direction.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: We got to increase standards, we got to improve training.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: You know that's what people want.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: You want to recruit, you got to raise standards.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: We don't do that in the labor relations stuff, and that's why we exist, that's why LRS exists, because, just to give the critical incident example, you could train, train, train, train, train, train on all that.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Uh, but a big part of that, of the department's investigation, the department's response, is going to be what does the union do?
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have to train on that.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: You know, we have to make sure that people understand in a critical incident, here are things that are going to happen, and if we can do that in bargaining, um, you know, agency by agency, that's fine.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Or if we can do that a little higher up, you know, that's fine as well, um, that's fine.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Or if we can do that a little higher up, you know, that's fine as well, that's better.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, I think Texas is all right.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: You know, we, there's lots of places that don't have the same rights.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: You've got you've got your interesting mix of kind of places with pure bargaining and places without it.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: But I always think that all that does is it makes the unions a little smarter, actually, because you have to be a little more creative in how to get to those resolutions, that's what I find well, and and and, speaking of the uniqueness, tony reich just joined us.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Uh, he was able to get kind of get get stable.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Uh, tony you there, hang on, I think you're muted there you go about.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: Now you, now you got me?
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Yes, sir.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: So the cool thing is is Tony just attended the LRIS there in Vegas.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Tony, what was your perspective, your region?
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: You know you can go from downtown Dallas, downtown Fort Worth into very much rural Texas and so, from a labor organization side, when you go represent these members, what key points did you learn with the LRH training last week there in Vegas and kind of what takeaways did you get out of it?
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: So you know I think it's really interesting every time we go to one of these.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: You know LRIS or LRIS classes.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: I never have been exposed to it until I went to work, you know, for TMPA.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: But it's interesting in Texas, like you mentioned, how we have such a diverse, you know agency makeup.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I would say anybody that never has attended one of those seminars, everybody should go.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: There's fantastic training.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: I've been to several.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: You know that they offer and I think everybody should go to that, not just labor unions but just the individual officers themselves.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: But you know where I am.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: You know I have I'm sitting in Irving right now who you know large agency.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: You know I have I'm sitting in Irving right now.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: Who you know large agency.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: But you know this week I may be in Seymour, texas, in Baylor County.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: That's got six peace officers for the whole county.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: So you know we were talking about earlier how people do things different.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: I think for the most part people want to try, but where we see the biggest differences is with these smaller agencies.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: You know they just don't know you know what to do with people.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: Last week's class was great.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: You know some of the stuff they talk about.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: You know, we spent some time on the recruiting and retention and it's always good to get into a group of officers that are, you know, from all across the country, to see what other places are doing and then how that's sustainable.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: And then you know, as Richard said, there was a mix of management and officers in there and it's and it's, and it's nice to have that, to see what other people are doing.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: To bring it back home.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think right now, Tony you're you come from from, you know two different, primarily, two primary agencies that you worked at there is such a need for good leadership in our profession right now, I think more than ever, and so it's comforting to see management attend these kind of labor movement classes put on by such professional organizations, because maybe we're turning, there's not a turning point, right, and so it's comforting to see that.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Right, and so it's comforting to see that.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: But what do you think, both of you, I guess?
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: What do you think the benefits of these administr?
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: So the discipline seminar, that's the one that is most we get the highest management turnout, generally for that, about 40%.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: It's interesting how the turnout's consistent and that's usually what we get, and and we generally get about 80% police and then some fire and corrections, but so it's it's.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: It's mostly police, is mostly police management and you know, for discipline, and we have a lot of places that come together and so I'll have, you know, labor and management representatives from the same agency, which is fantastic.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Uh, you know and for I see that in two areas for discipline seminars and for and for bargaining you'll have both bargaining teams come or represent some.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Some part of both bargaining teams come because we do collective bargaining seminars twice, twice a year, and you know what we teach at the.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: At the seminars I think there's a little bit of a.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: I think the managers like to.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: There's part of is oh, we're going to learn the union tricks.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: You know we're going to learn the inside baseball stuff.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: There's part of that and that's okay.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: But what we really try to emphasize and I, I, I speak at every seminar a little bit, usually on the first day, and what I always try to, you know, instill at the discipline seminars that we want good investigations.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: You know we want good investigations and if that means that somebody is going to get fired, that's what it means, right, you know we want a solid investigation that's going to hold up.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: You never want to be in a situation where I'm going to go to arbitration and I'm going to win an arbitration because the investigation screwed up nine different ways.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: That's just no good.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: We don't want and you know who doesn't want that outcome the cops, right, you know the people in the room, they don't want that.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: If someone's a bum, you don't want them working, you know.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: But if?
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: But you do want people treated fairly, and so you know it's really important that there's always going to be some adversarial component to it.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: But we got to remember, you know I don't want to be all like warm and fuzzy, and I'm not but we're all in this together, in these investigations, and so the union folks and the management folks, management folks is not to nail that guy Now that that officer, that's not your job.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Investigate and find out.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Did they do something?
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: If they didn't do anything, that's a win for management.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: You did a good investigation.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: We know what the outcome is and flip side for the union.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: It's not your job to, you know, to to avoid discipline if discipline is warranted.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: Those are the places right where you get a game of gotcha being played internally.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: That's where we have problems.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Once you get it to the point where no, we're just going to do investigations and we're going to follow where they go, that's when you have outcomes that tend to stand up and you don't wind up having as many appeals or arbitrations because the outcomes are consistent.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: That's what we try to instill.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: One of the most unique things that I think right now is we as a profession, because of the community policing influx and I say influx.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: We've been doing community policing for years and years and years but we have officers and I've got friends of mine that will call me so upset because they've been placed on internal affairs because of a simple complaint, right, and it's like okay, listen, we want that.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: We want citizens to feel comfortable to be able to come up and file a complaint if they feel like it's justified and allow that investigation to take place.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: And I think that the younger generation of our profession right now and y'all can stop me and correct me on this I think the younger generation of our profession right now and y'all can stop me and correct me on this I think the younger generation are waiting for law enforcement agencies here in Texas to enact like false report.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: So if they come in and make some outlandish type of allegation, then I can see that.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: But if it's just an officer being rude or speaking differently which is very common within our culture, because most people just don't understand how we need to kind of raise that bar sometimes in elevated situations.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: But officers, the younger generation right now can't comprehend that just because it's a small complaint and you're under quote-unquote an IA, let the process go through, let your association let your legal take its course and fight it.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean it's the end of the world.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: You're not going to get a suspension the next day just for a simple complaint.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: If it's justified, and if it's, if the investigation warrants that, then so be it, we will take it there.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: But this, this young generation right now, is so wrapped up in the fact that these citizens have every right to come in and complain and they don't agree with it.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: And so I think we, as a law enforcement profession, need to do a better job of kind of explaining to the citizens like, hey, this is their right, this is a part of the process, this is a part of us being a cohesive, you know, living together, bringing together type organizations.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: And so it's been difficult on my end.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Have y'all seen that on y'alls, or am I just seeing things?
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: Well, here, here, here's what I think I mean.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: You know, from the union side of it and representing you know what, what we do as far as the legal aspect.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: You know, you have the public perception and then you have us, and I don't care if there's a police incident that happens in Missouri or Minnesota or Philadelphia.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: You know it affects us down here as well.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: We don't want bad cops, we don't want that you know in our profession, you know we don't want somebody that's out there as being racist and you know, whatever they're doing.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: We don't want that.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: It makes us all look bad.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: But what we do want, or what I look for in every investigation, is to make sure that officer has a fair due process, that he can actually you know and and and, like Richard was saying, a good investigation, not one that's done.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: I literally had an officer in Dallas who was in an officer involved shooting and was indicted, like the indictment issued seven days after the shooting.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: There was no, there was no investigation done on that and ultimately, four years later he was found not guilty.
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: But still, I mean that was not a good investigation and it was purely driven by political purposes.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, look, unfortunately people care about what you do, right.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: You could work in an industry where people didn't care, but people make their way into this profession because everyone has their that's what I everyone's got their different reason Right and they're different path to getting into law enforcement, to getting into law enforcement.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: But you know, there's always that sense of look, there's a right way to do things in the wrong way and people want to do things the right way, make their way into this profession and people care about what police officers do good and bad, and so, and when we work in the public sector, there's always the politics of it.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: And one of the frustrating things in disciplinary cases is where I know this wasn't a good investigation, it was a political outcome and something happened and somebody needed a head on a stake and and they knew the union was there as a backdrop to get the officer job back.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: And then they'll complain about how rotten the arbitration process is and all this good stuff.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: I mean there's just, there's the political dance of stuff that can be very frustrating and unfair to individual officers, but it is the, it's the process that we have.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: I have had very similar situations with unfair prosecutions and unjust investigations, that, yeah, we can try to make someone whole on the back end.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: I have a case where an officer's coming back and looking at something like seven years of back pay, seven years, wow, seven years, right, I mean, it's never going to be the same, yeah, so you know, that's why we try.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: I'm so pleased when you know and managers, most managers they want to do the right thing, they want to do a good investigation.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: That's been my experience anyway, all over the country.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: You know that most managers really want to do the right thing.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Um, and what we do is try to get in the tools you know to to help do it.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: Hey, Tyler, I'm gonna have to get.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to get off here, Okay, Um, thank you.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Thank you for coming on.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: I enjoy your.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: I love your seminar.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Thank you for teaching us last week.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: I look forward to seeing you soon, thank you.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Thanks, tony.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: We'll see you, bud.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: All right, bro, that was Tony Reich.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: One of our North Texas field reps ended with TMPA and man thanks.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: I've got a lot of respect and love for that guy.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: The the amount of dedication our field reps do, day in, day out, you know, servicing the members of law enforcement across the state, it truly is phenomenal, and I get the unique perspective of kind of getting the bird's eye view of seeing all the legal calls that do come in, or questions or what have you.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: So it's a, it's a testament to what they do.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: So, anyway, hey, richard, thankless job, it is a thankless job it is.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: You know, I always joke around that.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: you know the people that come out.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: You know you're getting it, man.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: You're getting it from all sides.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: You're just getting complaints.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Police, it's your job, you're professional.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: People lie to you for a living.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: You put up with so much already.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Then you add a union rep on top of it and now the officers are complaining to you because they're not complaining to the city, they're not complaining to the town, they're complaining to you.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: Then if you're a first level supervisor, oh boy, now you get it from everybody.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: It can become complex, but you know what's interesting is we're such a big state that the culture across the state is so vastly different, from East Texas, north Texas to the Valley, and so being a part of this organization, you get to see all of that.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: You get to see, you know the different cultures of Texas and kind of what's, what's the norm up there versus down here, and so, anyway, it really is an honor and I'm sure, just like you you know representing and interacting with law enforcement across the nation.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: You probably see that better than anybody of different states and how they do things.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: So, man, I'm going to echo what Tony said.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on today.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: So, man, I'm going to echo what Tony said.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on today.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: If you've never seen our podcast, but you said you admitted that you have seen a few episodes before, even though you were not a cop we've got three rapid fire questions.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: We like to end each episode on All right and I hope you didn't study.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: I did not study.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: It's perfectly okay.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: What is your favorite cop movie, or law firm cop movie, your favorite police car and then your favorite drink of choice when you are relaxing at home?
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: All right, Does that have to be a cop movie?
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Anything with Reno 911.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Perfect.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: I'd say Boot, scoot probably.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: Favorite vehicle Yep, favorite cop car.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: Favorite cop car I like that Ferrari they got down in Miami these days using for recruiting purposes.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Those are nice, all right.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: And then my favorite drink of choice.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: I am the most boring person my favorite drink of choice, but I like myself a nice seltzer yeah yeah, that's uh.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: That's not very texan, but we will, uh, we've got we've got, we've got plenty down here so hopefully next time you're in texas you look us up, hang out.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: We'll go get a seltzer together there you go.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Or even a bourbon or a cold beer.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: But, man, I can't thank you enough for what you do across the nation and for the members here in Texas and for TMPA.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: We are seemingly like every single conference and seminar that you guys put on, and there's a reason for that right.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: There's a reason why we choose to interact, attend and support professional organizations such as LRIS.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: And so, man it's, it's maybe one day I can meet you in person.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I can, I can get out from central Texas and attend some of those.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: So you need anything our way, don't ever hesitate to give us a call.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Thanks a million, tyler.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, come on out to Vegas and see us.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: We have a lot of fun out this summer, for sure, for sure.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Be sure to check out your podcast if you want to name drop or selfless plug.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: LRS First Thursday.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: It drops the first Thursday of every month and you get to hear me talk about boring cases.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of fun.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Well, hey, take care, stay safe, god bless you.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: And, as always, may God bless Texas.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: We're out, we're out, thank you.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: The name Zafira means ''Pure''.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: Religion ''Major'' Religion ''Muslim''.
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: Thank you.