Latest / Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement / #115- "75 years strong" with Kevin Lawrence

Transcript

#115- "75 years strong" with Kevin Lawrence · Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Actually, the foundation for TMPA was created three or four years before TMPA was legally formed as an entity.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: And what happened was, during World War II a lot of Texas law enforcement officers, like officers from a lot of states, served in the military and they met each other and these Texas cops started hearing about this thing called civil service and that was a completely foreign concept to everybody except Houston.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Welcome back.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Viewers, watchers, listeners, I'm your host.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Tyler Owen Got the big boss again.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Executive Director Kevin Lawrence.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Man, how are you?
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: I'm great man.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: How about you?
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: You know summertime's a great time of year being here in Central Texas.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: All the water's flowing and there's water activities going on.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Tmpa's super busy.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: But I'll be honest with you, I'm ready for my children to go back to school.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: I cannot believe how many summer camps are going on for different sports and this, and that I feel more tired in the summertime than I do during school.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: But what about you?
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Well, considering I've only got the one 16-year-old at home, still not really a problem for me.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, everything's good man, he's kind of busy with his girlfriend.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: We are here at TMPA getting ready for our 75th anniversary TMPA conference July 25th to the July 28th and we're getting all prepped up for that.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Big plans At the.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Hyatt Regency, 1200 Louisiana Street, Houston, Texas.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Parking may be an issue, but I think we're going to figure it out.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: We have our trust in the hotel and we're working with them to make sure everything goes well.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: There will be parking, yeah, but it is downtown Houston.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is downtown Houston.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Speaking of conference and speaking of field, we have field supervisor, field services supervisor, Mike Gomez, on the phone with us.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Mike, you there.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: I'm here.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: What's going on, you know.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: I heard you mention teenagers at home.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: Or try having two 17 year olds.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: They eat everything in sight yeah, I'm telling you the grocery bills in the summertime for those that uh are there can completely understand the pie.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: It hits the pocketbook yeah, you know, sometimes I bring one of them with me because they're driving now on road trips and they say they want to drive, I want to help, but they sleep 90 of the time.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well, while they're driving.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, do that I wish they would sleep during breakfast, lunch and dinner.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: That would be even like a little skim, little skirmishes here and there.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: But but no, uh, for those who don't know, mike is uh, mike and clint, y'all kind of share the responsibilities and field services with the, the planning of the conferences, and so we want to get you on real quick and give us some updates or some new things going on this year with our conference, such as the live auction.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: We'll be live on, I think, all of our platforms.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: At least that's going to be the standard of which we hit for, but we'll wait and see.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I know we're going to go live on something so people can bid remotely Correct On the items.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Yes sir, We've got some pretty.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: We always have nice stuff.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Thanks for our sponsors, our local president, our local POA associations that bring stuff and, as well as TMPA gathering those items to be auctioned off.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Mike, give us an update on what to expect at this year's conference.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: I know you're a busy man and obviously you're on the road, I think headed to Lubbock or coming back from Lubbock but give us an update on conference bud.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so everything's looking great.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: Everything's coming together pretty well.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: The vendors are coming in pretty steadily.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: Right now I've got some great sponsors.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: Uh, you know, I'm excited to see them and see how that works.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: We're going to have them pretty much concentrated in one room, so, uh, they're all in one spot and then our prime sponsors will be out in front of doors.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: So I'm looking forward to that.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Again, parking is going to be tight.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Vendors will have to be there.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: They'll be sure they can unload and stuff.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: The venue is a great hotel.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: We're going to be eating in different locations throughout the week in the hotel.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: We're going to be eating in different locations throughout the week in the hotel, and I think that you're pleasantly surprised that, uh, you may have to move around a little bit, but there's gonna be a lot of room once you get to those locations well, is there certain speakers or events that are going on that are somewhat new?
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: I know we got lance larusso coming in, kevin's favorite, uh, you spoke very, very highly.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: You know we as a team, uh you know we all kind of collectively always put our minds together man, what's the best out there, what's the best speaker that we can get and deliver at our conferences?
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: And lance larusso has been mentioned, honestly, the last several years, and so I'm super excited to meet him lance is going to be fabulous.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: You know lance is he's general counsel for the Georgia Fraternal Order of Police.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's an ex-cop who got a law degree and now all he does is represent cops.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Good profile he is.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: You know he represented Officer Rolfs in the Atlanta situation a few years ago.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: He just recently won a case in the Supreme Court I think it was in Mississippi.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, On behalf of a couple of officers he's done some very high-profile stuff.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: He's not limited to Georgia.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: He's licensed in several states.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: But he's a fantastic speaker.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: His language can get a little rough, kind of like squadron kind of stuff.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I'm good with that.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Most of our members are okay.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: As you're well aware, big Boss, you know that I sometimes don't have a language for church people, but I'm a cop, cop, true, and through and for any viewers down in southeast texas that know, greg cagle lance is george's version of greg well, like I said, when you, when you start hearing the name repeatedly of of folks that we need to have at our conference to speak, I think it speaks for itself.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: That man and we're finally getting done this year, thankful, thankful to uh I think John Siriga set that up, our uh director of field services.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: He was at a conference.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: I think you two were actually at a conference and got that arranged, so it's going to be a good time.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: We've been working with Lance on this for several years, trying to coordinate the times and everything.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, uh, and I think he's doing a four hour block, yeah.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: That's going to be good.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: It's going to be four hours and very entertaining.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: Very entertaining to listen to.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Well, that's good.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Hey, real quick mention the live auction.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: I know that this is the first year that we've done this.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Let's explain kind of the handbid process.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: For those that have not, I'll go ahead and put the website right down here on the link.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Or if you're listening on Spotify or listening devices, I'll put the link to HandBid in the description.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: But, mike, explain that and kind of explain how we got to where we are now.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, we had an employee who actually used the program as previous job and just talked about it.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: You know we need to look into it, we need to look into it, we need to look into it.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: We dove into it and, you know, pleasantly surprised because it is doing more than we thought it was ever going to do, especially with our registration.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: The nice thing is that when everyone registers, credit cards are taken, method of payments are logged, so it makes it easier for you to go to the app and bid on items from your cell phone and the minute you bid on that item, if you get outbid, you're going to get an update.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: You're going to get a notification that you've just been outbid and what the bid is, and that's going to go for everything that you do.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: So we're pretty excited to try to streamline that and give the opportunity to members who could not make the conference.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Right, I mean to see how the auctioneer handles that.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: That'll be interesting.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that'll be cool man.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: That'll be really neat and and you know, I guess the reality is is that TMPA?
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Uh, again, for those that have never been to a conference, strongly encourage you to make it, but that's our biggest charity event.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Really, for TMPA Charities is our conference.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: That's really the only fundraiser, besides maybe some small ones here and there or if a local association chooses to.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Well, having said that right, now we've got the golf cart we're raffling off.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: That's a big one.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: That is maybe the first really, really big one that's going to be for the Texas Peace Off tomorrow, yes, and so again back to hand bid.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: It's been such a uh, it's been pleasantly surprising of how easy it is to maneuver around and there's not too many challenges that kind of come up.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: So I say this with with with this in mind too if there's a kink or if there's a hiccup, just work with us, try to be patient, realize that this is a new program, that TMPA is rolling out, uh, and we're going to work through it and we can mess it up even when we're experienced.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: So, mike, let me ask you a question.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: This is kind of a teaser, but it's a sincere question too.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: I know we've got the one guitar that's autographed by george trait.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: We've got another guitar that is autographed by kid rock.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: We're going to sell those separately or as a pair?
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I think the highest bidder would determine that well, I think we have to, we have to offer them for well, I don't, I don't know, we'll see yeah, I think we'll see how that goes, I think, oh well, you know, we'll see how generous our uh, our members and our sponsors are that evening.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, go from there, you know well.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: And they always come through, and they don't have to be members or sponsors, I mean, just general public can go online and be right.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Yep, yep, yeah well I know you're busy man.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: You're up in Lubbock, the service is spotty.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: I think you're sitting on top of a hill and you've got your kid on top with some foil outside to try to get signal in.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: We won't take any more of your time.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Greatly appreciate it.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: No, he's good for it.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Put a.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Have him stand on top of that.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, 100 hey, take care, be safe, brother, I'll talk to you soon.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: All right, we'll talk together.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: All right, see you again.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: That was mike gomez, our field services supervisor, uh, for the west side.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Uh, joining us by phone.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: Believe he's almost to love it pulling in now.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: But today's podcast episode is going to be mainly about this.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: It's our 75th anniversary with tmpa, 75 years of protecting those who protect texas, and we had none other than kevin lawrence or, uh, I think, lawn craft labeled you the tmpa historian, uh, and so you've been also going through the last couple years board meetings.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: You've kind of given some updates.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Uh, were you given that directed by the board, or is that something you kind of took on there?
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: it was something that I've been working on for a long time anyway, and at some point the board decided to add it to my list of duties the long list that you've already got.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: But what's interesting is that, sitting in some of those board meetings, it's just fascinating to recognize and realize really the um, the path that tmpa has kind of taken, and it's an honor really to work here and see where it started to where it's at today.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: It's, it's fascinating and it's magnificent and, and, to be honest, it's all it's.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: It's an honor to do what we get to do now and so, um, you're going to talk about the history as far as where we started.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: It's all it's also fascinating to actually go back and try to collect the history.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I believe that because there's so much and contrary to popular belief, I haven't been around for the entire 75 years and I didn't say that, uh, you know, there's just a lot of stuff, like somebody called me one day.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: A current board member called me and said, hey, we've never had a female president of TMPA, have we?
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: And I said, actually, we've had two and they were back to back was back in the late eighties, early nineties, with Nona Holloman from Seabrook police department, who was my Lieutenant and later chief of police in Seabrook was the first female president of TMPA, wow.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: And the following year she was succeeded by Melissa Sims from Waco.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: We've had two female presidents.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the best way to start this off or kick it off is let's talk about how TMPA was formed, why it was formed, what was the mission at the beginning, and then we'll transition into kind of where we are today.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: You know, I have to give you kind of a disclaimer real fast, because it was 75 years ago.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: We don't have a lot of records to count on.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: We can count on some written histories that have been handed down from decade to decade.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: We don't have anybody left that was there at the time.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I think our best source is Bill Elkin, a former Houston police officer, past president of TMPA.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: He started, he became, a member in 1954.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: So but as I go through all of this, I start finding out that there's a lot of things that we have thought were part of the history of TMPA that weren't necessarily accurate.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: You know, the old saying is history is written by the winner.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's well.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we find out that, you know the winner didn't tell it exactly the way it happened.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: And so especially if it's not documented.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I mean you essentially can write your own story at that point and say what you and part of our history includes the split when Cleet was created, before 1975, cleet didn't exist at all and then there was a schism within TMPA about a couple of different issues and a certain group, certain number of members, pulled out to form PLEAT and then there was, you know, over the years, over three decades after that, there were a number of talks about reuniting.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: But because of the split we lost some of our history, you know.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I think it's also important to understand up until 1975, houston, dallas, austin were all part of TMPA.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Fort Worth, they were all part of TMPA because we were the only organization statewide, the only statewide labor organization for cops.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: As late as 1983, 84, 85, 86, houston, dallas, austin were all still part of TMPA.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Then, as they started pulling out and Austin, I think, went first and moved over to Cleet, well, their president was a guy named Jerry Spain.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Jerry was a past president of TMPA.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: His wife kept all of our files.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Well, when he left, he and his entire local left.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: There was some sort of spat about trying to get all our records back from Mrs Spain.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just you know.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Then we had another past president, a guy named Dick Hickman, from Dallas who went to work for Cleet.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: But since he was a past president, he was entitled to certain information, documents and stuff.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: And so then there was another dust up there about should he be provided with information that he could then provide to a competitor that he now worked for?
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: So, like I say, part of our history is we lost our history because of our history.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so we've been trying very hard to recover all that.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so we've been trying very military.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: They start talking about how things are back home and these Texas cops start hearing about this thing called civil service, and that was a completely foreign concept to everybody except Houston.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Houston at that point had some civil service written into their local city ordinances and stuff, but nobody else in the state of Texas had any idea what civil service was.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: And for those of you who don't know, anybody who's not aware, civil service is basically just a structure by which you know in advance there's a system that's going to be used for hiring, disciplining, promoting, firing, and there's a process where you get a fair shake.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: You're guaranteed to at least get an appeal to a civil service commission or an independent third-party hearing examiner.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: That's all civil service is.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: It's just due process for cops and that was a foreign concept to most of them.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: So when these officers come back from World War II they start talking among themselves about hey, how do we adopt civil service like these other states have?
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: And, as it turns out, houston was already working on some of that.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: And then some cops from Fort Worth ran into a lawyer who was also a returning veteran by the name of Doyle Willis and they asked him.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: They became friends with Doyle and they said how do we get civil service?
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: And he said, well, you've got to get somebody down at the legislature to introduce a bill and get it passed.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: And they said, well, who do you know the week?
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: And he's like I don't know.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: So they came up with this bright idea.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Probably over drinks one night.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: He said, hey, how about we just get you elected to the legislature and you get it done for us?
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: And Doyle Willis kind of jokingly said, okay, sure, you get me elected to the legislature and I'll do it.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Well, they did.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: They got me elected and in 1947, doyle Willis sponsored a bill to create and they teamed up with Houston and Austin and Sweetwater and a few other agencies Abilene, I think, was involved.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: There were seven or eight different agencies that helped pass that legislation and created civil service in Texas.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Almost immediately, what is now the Texas Municipal League back then it was called something else filed a lawsuit to have civil service declared unconstitutional.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: So those same groups of officers from Houston, dallas, austin, sweetwater, abilene, wherever they come back together and they were like, okay, what do we do now?
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: So they asked Doyle Willis, what can we do?
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: And he said well, you probably want to hire a lawyer to represent you and intervene in this lawsuit, as some sort of you know do amicus briefs or whatever.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: So they pooled their money, created TMPA, hired Doyle Willis to represent TMPA, intervening in that lawsuit and, as we know, they were able to defeat the lawsuit and civil service still exists today.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: But that's where TMPA started, that's why it started and on our website, if you look through our history, there's a I mean to me it's a monumental photo of an older gentleman in what appears to be a beige-type blazer and he's signing a document.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: That's Governor.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Jester signing the civil service statute into law Before TMPA even existed, before TMPA even existed.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: That's when Governor Jester signed that and you will see all the different representatives from Houston, fort Worth, abilene, whatever, standing behind him as he's signing the bill into law.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I believe the first president of TMPA was a guy named Earl Mogmer from Houston PD.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure he's in that picture.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: But yeah, that's where it all, where it all goes.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Well, and I guess because I was an employee, you know I I ignorantly just, you know, even growing up as a cop and I started at at at Jefferson police part was my first initial department that I worked at, you know, you think TMPA and just like a listener and watch a reviewer out there is probably also thinking, is that you just think about Right?
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: But our the foundation was unity for a good cause and it was.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: It was for the legislative.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the foundation of TMP was legislative effort and for the first 30 years of our existence that's what we were.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: We were primarily a lobbying organization for cops and people have to understand why it was necessary, kind of meaningful due process for cops.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: If you go back, there's a book in my office that you're welcome to borrow and read if you'd like to, called Houston Blue, and it's a history of the Houston Police Department and TMPA is actually mentioned in there several times.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: But it was commissioned by the Houston Police Officers Union, which was many years ago the Houston Police Officers Association.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: But HPOU hired some people to come in and do all this research.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: But if you read the section about World War II and the period right after World War II, the city of Houston was kind of representative of most law enforcement agencies in Texas.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: It was fraught with political influence, with cronyism, with even heavy influence from the KKK, because the election process, you know Klansmen would get elected as mayor of Houston every other cycle or whatever, and then every new mayor who came in would completely change the rank structure, the power structure of the police department and the directives for the police department.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: And even though they had those civil service ordinances.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: There it was pretty simple for the mayor to just overrule or to change them, so it was the need for state guidance, something that could be adopted by the voters.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: That the local politicians could not overrule was critical.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: And still to this day, we've got less than 100 agencies out of 2,800 in Texas that are covered by any kind of civil service system, because it has to be adopted by local election.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Still, Wow, that's crazy.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: So we have the history of why we formed 1950, and then walk us through the path of what you found in your research and the history of TMPA between 1950 and, I would say, 75.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: There was a dust-up, obviously, there was a split, but talk about kind of what the yearly operations look like or what you've heard of kind of what that looked like for TMPA.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Well, from those first handful of officers that put the thing together up until 74, 75.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Like I say, tmpa was primarily a lobbying entity, but we grew exponentially.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: I think the organization was up to about 8,500 members by the mid-1970s.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: That's pretty significant, yeah, pretty significant, and a lot of the statutes that we enjoy today were passed during that time frame.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: They were passed prior to 1973.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Minimum pay for law enforcement which, by the way, if you care to go read it, it's in the local government code.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: It says that if you've got a city with a population of less than a number of citizens, minimum pay for officers has to be, I think, $85 a month, and it works its way up to like $135 a month.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: So that tells you how long ago those were passed.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: The longevity pay that municipal officers get, which is $4 per month per year of service, was passed during that time frame.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Several updates were made to the collective sorry, the civil service statute.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Collective bargaining was ultimately passed during that time.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: So, like I say, tmpa did it.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: A lot of the locals that are no longer part of TMPA were involved at the time, but it was TMPA as an entity that pushed all that legislation through.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: It was TMPA that was responsible for pushing to create a statewide regulatory agency.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Up until 1970, t-col didn't exist, t-clos didn't exist.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: It was in the early 60s that TMPA first started pushing for that and I think this is also critical for our viewers to understand.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: This is also critical for our viewers to understand.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Every push to professionalize law enforcement and this applies nationally as well, but in Texas it's particularly true Every push to make law enforcement agencies more professional, more transparent, more responsive has come from labor, has come from TMPA.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Later on, cleat, hpou, dallas Police Association, harris County Deputies, order we have been the ones pushing to make law enforcement, you know, get better training, better standards, better, everything you know.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: The cities and the counties have always fought against us on that and because the chiefs and the sheriffs work for the cities and the counties, they very often have been on the opposite side from us, which kind of I mean I'll call it that stinks, right.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: I think that if we, if we unified and fought for good legislation but I understand theirs is all it's going to be, you know, monetary it's going to be financial rather while they, while they resist us, for example, as of recently with the John Wilkerson situation there at the Capitol with Workers' Comp.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: That's a significant issue and I don't want to dive off from that because I don't want to take away from this podcast.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Right, but it's a great example of exactly what I'm talking about.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: The cities and the counties and the state of Texas to a certain extent.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: They try to provide law enforcement services.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: On the economy plan, they try to do it as cheaply as they possibly can.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: And if you want an example of that, look at how cities and counties operate.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: They always go with the lowest bidder.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Well, sometimes the best body cam, sometimes the best body armor, sometimes the best shields are not being provided by the low bidder.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you need to focus on quality first.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Bitter, sometimes you need to focus on quality first.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: But that's not the way cities and counties in the state are set up to operate financially, and that's why I think we have to push for this kind of stuff and why it's always been labor that has pushed for it.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: So until the early 1970s that's pretty much what we did.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: We were a lobbying entity.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Now we would also lobby at the local level.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: That's how a lot of those cities adopted civil service during those 25 years was that TMPA would go in and help the local push it through and get it adopted at the local level, but it has to be adopted by local referendum.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Was there a membership cost at this time or was it just, basically, if you're a cop and you support our cause?
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: You know, I think when TMPA first started dues were a dollar a year, okay, our cause.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: You know, I think when tmpa first started dues were a dollar a year, okay, and uh, sometime I think in the 60s, it was increased to two dollars a year and then and then it kind of went up real fast, right, because by the 1970s it was up to a dollar a month.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: yeah so, yeah, it got really well.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: The lobbying efforts that you know, everybody knows that.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Uh, I forgot how mitch slander rephrases it, but the, the, the amount of money that a a pack needs to have to survive and get less, you know, stuff passed.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: It's significant, and so I'm sure that's why the membership dues increased at a rapid oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, and we didn't have a pack at all back right.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Right, it wasn't mandatory, yeah.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: But I and I will say this that you know the we also, going into the 1970s, came to realize hey, now that these agencies have civil service, now that we have some kind of due process, there's times that officers are going to need to hire lawyers, they need to hire counsel.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Stick their head on that, yeah.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: So TMPA started a fund to assist officers.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: It wasn't a legal defense fund like we have today.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: That didn't.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: That didn't come along until later.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: But uh, there was at least some push toward hey, we need to help these officers in those cases where, if they're going to appeal something to a civil service commission, to a arbitrator, they're going to need to hire, hire lawyers to represent because it's a quasi-legal process.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: So, and what years?
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: What year was that approximately?
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: That was in the 1970s.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Even into the 1980s, tmpa it was a case-by-case basis that if an officer came up and said, hey, I need assistance paying a lawyer to do X, y and Z, they could make a request and the board of directors would vote on that.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Also, until 1985, 1986, tmpa didn't have a state office.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Tmpa was run by the board of directors, a voluntary board, and at that time it was 15 officers from across the state of Texas, but they did all of the work.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: So typically TMPA was being run out of the garage or spare bedroom of the president or secretary or both.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: We didn't open a state office until 1986.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: I believe it was didn't hire our first executive director until 1988.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Damn.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: So mid eighties we formed a plan to create a legal plan and start actually providing legal services to members.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Is that?
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: correct.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: That's also important to understand this when Cleet was formed I'm not trying to give them any kind of kudos or anything but when Cleet was formed they caught fire.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: A lot of officers were not happy with the TMPA board's attitude about.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: You know, good cops don't need lawyers and so they really didn't want to create a comprehensive legal defense plan.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: But there were some other issues that drove the schism.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: But if you look at the dynamics and look at the error, excuse me of that particular thing.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Bob Gorski said it best is that, if you mention having an attorney during some kind of questionable situation with supervisors, it was offensive.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, I agree, right, and so that was the mindset.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: You know, we can go back to even state investigations, talking to suspects and so forth, and so having an attorney In relation to that says what I'm guilty, right, and so I think that that was the mindset of even cops, is that?
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Well, why do you need an attorney?
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: significant things had happened by that point.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Civil service was now becoming, at least for those 60 or 70 agencies that had adopted civil service, they had this arbitration process that you really need a lawyer to help navigate.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: So that was necessary and that's why mostly the organizations that pulled out of TMPA to form CLE were ones that already had civil service and or collective bargaining.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Remember, collective bargaining was brand new, but going to the table to bargain a contract with state and federal laws involved without an attorney was not a great idea.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: So that was a second reason why we really need to start looking at some sort of comprehensive legal plan.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: So TMPA just did it differently.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Then the board of directors and TMPA's membership had dropped.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: From that I think it was 8,500, was the apex.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: It had dropped to less than 1,500 members by the mid 80s.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: And the board of directors looked at it and said, okay, we need to make some substantive changes.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: And one thing is we need to create a legal plan.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: And they hired an attorney out of LaPorte, texas, by the name of JB Williamson.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: And one thing is we need to create a legal plan.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: And they hired an attorney out of LaPorte, texas, by the name of JB Williamson and they said JB, what we want you to do is look at what other states are doing for their legal plans and come up with, you know, pick the good stuff that they're doing, identify the bad things, the things that aren't working for them, and let's leave those things out of our plan.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Let's create the absolute best legal plan in the country.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: And that's what JB put together for him, and the cornerstone of it was this the attorneys don't work for TMPA.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: The cornerstone of TMPA's legal plan is use attorneys that are private practice attorneys who earn their living every day with their skills, and let the members choose.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: I want that lawyer to represent me, and then the attorney's loyalty is to the member and not to the organization, and that was the cornerstone.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: And once that legal plan was created, tmpa's membership just skyrocketed, which is significant.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very significant.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: There was a case that Bob Gorski mentioned and I don't know if it was historic enough for the law enforcement labor aspect to have legal representation, but he mentioned something that whenever he I think it was his first case.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: It might have been Bob, he's just referencing it on this podcast, but there was a Dallas police officer that came home from work one day and it was either a home invasion or a burglary and the officer shot and killed the suspect and during the course of the interview, um, an attorney became present.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Bob may got notified, but do you remember that when that story, what bob's referencing, I I don't remember that specific.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Okay, maybe it was just bob's one of his first case to kind of get intro to the labor union, uh, legal representation aspect.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: But, uh, he mentioned on the podcast and I'll I'll plug that in here uh, on this podcast, but it was, it was, it was significant enough for me to remember going.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: This is a murder charge and the guy didn't have his mindset on that.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Then man, this could go bad, if I'm not talking to an attorney during this homicide investigation when he was off duty, right, and so, uh, bob, again bob, bob mentioned that on on his episode.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, and bob, that would have been back when bob was still with burleson.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Peyton gibson was a law firm.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: He was that, he was with.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: When we first got him with tmpa I was again.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: I wasn't around yet, but when he first became involved with tmpa that was a law firm, he was with him.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: What he formed his own firm later.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Uh, but that may very well have been the first time that the Garrity ruling, which was a federal case out of New Jersey, was applied in Texas.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Until then Texas really didn't pay attention to federal laws.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're our own separate country, right, right, exactly.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: That may have been the first time that somebody came in and said, hey, garrity actually does apply in Texas.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: And then there's other cases Loudermill that come into play.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: But it required attorneys to bring those issues forward because cops don't know to raise issues like that.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: So that's why the legal plan was critical.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: You mentioned earlier that we had hired our first employee in 88, right 86.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: 86.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Beth Bach was our first employee in 88, right 86.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: 86.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: Beth Bach was our first actual employee, okay, and we didn't have a home.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: Talk about the kind of progression of finding a home, hiring employees and then we really started kind of taking off.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, so, like I say, we hired Beth Bach basically because we had an 800 number for people to call but nobody to answer the phone.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Beth Bach, basically because we had an 800 number for people to call but nobody to answer the phone.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: So instead of having the calls, you know, go to board members' houses, we hired Beth and we opened a small office in downtown Austin.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: I think it was literally one room we rented in an office building there and Beth's job was to keep track of our membership, answer the phone and refer the call to whichever board member was going to address whatever that issue was.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: But literally for two years that's all we had as far as staff.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: So just so I'm clear, let's say that I live in Abilene, I'm an Abilene police officer 1986, 87, and I'm under some type of investigation.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Right, I'd call TNPA's 1-800 number and Beth would answer the phone call.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Right, I called tmpa's uh 1-800 and beth would answer the phone call and at that time she would patch the phone to the regional director and then the regional director would assign the attorney.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Is that kind of how?
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: patching the phone through was it possible in the mid-80s well, you know what I'm saying.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: She would.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: She would hang up the phone then and then rotary dial rotary dial.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: I can actually give you personal experience because by this time I was a cop and a TMPA member.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: I started in 1978 with the Baytown Police Department.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: But I will promise you, in the early 1980s I had no idea what civil service was, Even though I worked for a civil service Me too, Same boat no idea what that meant.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't until I left there and went to work for the Georgetown Police Department and there were some major political issues going on in Georgetown.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: So I called a buddy of mine in Baytown that I knew was on the board of TMPA, Charles Schaefer, T-Bone.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: And T-Bone said well, you know, Sammy Jacobs from LaPorte is the current president of TMPA, you need to call him.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: So I called Sammy and, uh, Sammy the like the next morning was in Georgetown to look around and help us out with that situation.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: So it it wasn't really that you would call the state office.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Normally you would call somebody on the board that you knew anyway.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: But if you did happen to call the state office, that was all Beth was required.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: What she was expected to do was refer that to a board member, to the president, to one of the vice presidents or a regional director.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: So they essentially were kind of like our field reps in today's world of kind of TMPA.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Exactly, that's exactly what they were, and the board was a president, two vice presidents, secretary treasurer, past president and six regional directors, and the regions were based upon the old DPS regions.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, makes sense.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, that does make sense.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: So we had two regions Like even when I got on the board in 1990, we had two regions that we literally had no members in them.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: That's funny.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: So 86, we're rocking along.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: We hired our first employee.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: We got a a or 88, 80, 86, 86.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: We hired beth, opened the office, 88.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: We figured out, hey, we, we need somebody, uh, to do a little bit more here as far as managing the legal plan and, you know, coordinating with, because we need more and more attorneys.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: We need to, we need to, you know, find the turn because most of the officers that we call in didn't have a lawyer they wanted to use and they were expecting referrals to attorneys.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: So somebody needed to start developing a relationship with law firms like Burleson, payton, gibson, like Mike Carnahan down in Houston, like John Culler in Waco, that we could refer members to if they didn't already have a lawyer in mind.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: And when they had a lawyer they wanted to use that we didn't know.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Somebody had to negotiate with those lawyers what it was going to cost us to represent those members.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: So that's when the board decided to hire an executive director.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: That became a piece of drama in and of itself Because, as I understand it, there were like seven finalists in the pool of applicants and the board got together to vote on it and every time they would take a vote it was tied seven to seven Seven for this candidate, seven against that candidate and ultimately, sammy Jacobs was late to the meeting and when Sammy showed up he broke the tie and Jim Lide, who at that time was a lieutenant with the Pasadena Police Department, was hired as our first executive director.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: So there was a little dust-up.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: There was a dust-up Seven out of eight board members didn't want Jim Lide to be the executive director.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, yeah, I can imagine with a 7-7 tie vote.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: How long was he the ED?
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: 12 years.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Jim was there until 2000, and he was responsible for a lot of progress that happened during TMGA's time.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: We went from 1,500 members, I think, to over 3,000 members during it.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: So we doubled membership in those 12 years.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: The legal plan really took off during that time.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: It started out with less than 300 members and by 2000, almost all TMPA members were part of the legal plan.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Legal plan was still optional, like it is today.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Technically, nobody joinsmba anymore without the legal plan.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Right back in the day they did.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Uh, so jim was responsible for that.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: He was responsible for moving the office a couple of times.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: We hired a few additional staff during that time.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Uh, so by 2000 we had five employees in the office.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, and at what point did we buy this building?
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, that wasn't until 2005.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, that was.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Jim left in 2000, and there was some drama surrounding that as well.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: That I don't think we want to go into here.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: But we had already decided at that point we were going to hire a deputy executive director.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Jim had proposed to the board that he needed a number two person to help with all the work that needed to be done out in the field.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: That helped manage the legal plan.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: So we had started that process and I happened to be one of the finalists in that and during that process is when the incidents with Jim took place and Jim resigned.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Um, so we sped up the process for hiring the deputy executive director and I happened to be the guy that got chosen.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: That's cool, I didn't know that.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: But at that point, remember, I'm I'm now a Sergeant with the Seabrook police department.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: At this point I've got four kids at home and I'm in an organization that has just lost its first executive director and I'm wondering is this really a smart career move?
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, to go to work for an organization that is now without an executive director as the deputy executive director and had to move to Austin right, yes, had to move to Austin.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: And so that I, you know, I decided to take the job and then we immediately set about trying to find our next executive director, and I remember I was asked for my advice, decided to take the job, and then we immediately set about trying to find our next executive director and, uh, I remember, uh, I was asked for my advice about who that should be and I, the two people I thought were the best qualified were, uh, chuck Bronner, who at that point was the chief of police for spring branch ISD down in the Houston area, and Chris Heaton um was all.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: They were both past presidents, but Chris was also I think he was a narcotic sergeant at that point and I was the one that called Chris and said hey, are you interested?
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: And he laughed at me and said there's no way I want that job.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: And Chuck was even more vehement that he didn't want the job.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: It took a little while for you know, and some convincing, but Chris eventually came around and he was hired as our, our second executive director In 2000?
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: In 2000.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, late 2000,.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Chris came on board.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: So talk about the progression between 2000, 2010, because I think there was a he's Chris stayed ED for how long?
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: 10 years.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, so 2010.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Yep, but talk about the progression, tmpa, talk about the legal plan and just how significant we grew then.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: The membership continued to grow exponentially.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: I think it actually accelerated at that point and there were a couple of reasons for that.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: One was because we then reworked the legal plan and Chris was primarily responsible for this.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: He got to looking around and saying, okay, what are we missing with our legal plan?
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: And he actually looked at an organization out of California called PORAC, and I know you're familiar with PORAC.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Some of our members may not be.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: It's the it's the TMPA of California.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: That's the best way to say it, but they also represent members in other states too.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: But it's the Peace Offerers Research Association of California.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: I think is what it stands for which is where Border Patrol gets their legal plan.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: Didn't know that until about six months ago.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: A lot of them.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but he found out that their plan was an ERISA trust under federal law and ERISA is the Employees Retirement Income Security Act of 1973.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: And basically what it does is it protects the members in the legal plan.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: It means that they know that they've got a contract with the organization and the organization has to live up to the contract.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: So Chris then convinced the board to let him hire a lawyer that specialized, an expert that would oversee this project yeah, to oversee it and get that done.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: At the same time, before we hired Chris, actually I was in the office, you know, as I was wanting to do once or twice a week and because there was a lot of travel, as you can imagine, being the one and only field rep.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, I get a phone call from the former chief of police from Grand Prairie who we really didn't like very much, but by this point he had gone to work for NHTSA, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, and he called and he was being kind of flip but he said hey, would you be interested in managing some of the Buckle Up Texas clicker ticket law enforcement liaison programs under TxDOT?
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: And I was like what are you talking about, harry and he goes hey, let me just let me come by your office, I'll bring somebody from TxDOT, we'll come by and talk to you.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: So they came by and they basically wanted us to put in a proposal to take over the law enforcement liaison program for all of TxDOT, which handled primarily buckle-up TxDOT ticket-or-ticket.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: And I was like you know what, let's just put a pin in this.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: We're fixing to bring in a new executive director.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: And Chris was actually working on his master's at that point in public administration at University of North Texas and I said I think Chris really needs to be included in this conversation.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: So we then had a follow-up meeting once Chris was in the office and Chris looked at that and said, all right, let me bring it to the board.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: And it took a while for the board to look at all that and figure out that it really was in the best interest of our members for TMPA to be involved in something like that.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't for recruiting purposes, it was just because it was for the betterment of law enforcement.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as a matter of fact, it put limitations on us with regard to recruiting.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: We had to make sure that nobody who worked on those programs wore anything with a TMPA logo on it.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: They couldn't mention TMPA.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: We were barred from doing any recruiting whatsoever with those programs, and it cost us money.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: They called them grant programs, but they're really not A grant program.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Typically somebody hands you a bucket of money and says here, go spend it and just let us know how you do.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: What you have to do with these programs is because it's all federal money, federal tax money that's coming through the state of Texas and, in all honesty, we figured out later they really didn't want us to get this.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: They didn't want us to become managing partners in this deal.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: They were using us as leverage, trying to get a better performance out of the organization that had the grants at the time.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: They weren't happy with them and they just wanted us to put some pressure on them.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: And so the way, the way they do it is, you have to go out and spend all this money and then you submit a request for reimbursement monthly, and that request for reimbursement has to give specific details about all the money that you spent, and there are certain things they just don't cover.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: For example, tips.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: If you've got a law enforcement liaison running around the state of Texas doing all this work, coordinating with local agencies, so on and so forth, and they have dinner somewhere and they tip their server, the state the feds would not reimburse us for those tips.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: So that tmpa is out that money, certain amount of administrative stuff that they just right you're reimbursed, so it costs tmpa a certain amount of money.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: It's just.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: It's just impossible to figure out exactly how I give you a general idea what it is today, but it's impossible to figure out exactly how I can give you a general idea of what it is today, but it's impossible to give you a specific number, exactly what it's costing us.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: But the board decided it was in the best interest of TMPA.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: And then Chris did a fabulous job of putting together a proposal because he basically hired a couple of his professors from UNT you know it may have been at that point he was finishing up his last couple of hours at UT, yeah, and he hired a couple of professors from there as consultants to help him put this proposal together and kind of blew them away.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: We were managing the LEL program for the state of Texas.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Which we catch flack on because some people other competitors like to bring that up that we did it for recruitment purposes.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: But I can't get past that.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: They think that we went out and solicited all that.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: It's not the case.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, the following year, once we had that up and running and that was when Mitch Landry got hired was to be a program manager, and then Tom Gaylor was hired as a deputy director as well, and now we were starting to hire more staff.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: You know, people don't understand.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: When I got hired I was employee number six in 2000 and we now have 75, yeah, employees.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Uh, only less than half of whom were actually on the grant program.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: So tmpa has gone from six to almost 40.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, they work on tmpa Number 32.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: That's one, yeah, throw it out there.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: So the following year we got a phone call from the governor's office, their criminal justice division at the governor's office, and said hey, we're going to have a meeting to talk about VAWA, which is the Violence Against Women Act, and we would like you guys to participate.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: So we did and what we found was the federal government had funds that were available for training law enforcement officers in Texas, but it came with conditions and they couldn't get anybody in Texas to actually take on that kind of training on a statewide basis without limiting it to their own membership.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: So there wasn't any other entity that wanted to do it.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: So they invited CLEAT and TMPA and the Chiefs Association and the Sheriff's Association and T-Close was there all got into a room and kicked this around for several hours and ultimately the consensus of that group was TMPA already manages a couple of these programs.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: We think it makes most sense for TMPA to put a proposal on the table.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: And that is when TMPA developed the SafeFix Sexual Assault, family Violence Investigators course and put that as a proposal to the criminal justice division of the governor's office and the federal agency that oversees that.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: And they were like okay, we like that program.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: Then they came to us and said by the way, while you're working on all that, we've got this problem where it's taking forever to process DWIs in this state.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: Guys and women are getting arrested for DWI or out of jail long before the officers even get back on the streets because of all the paperwork and all the rigmaroles.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Can you guys come up with an idea about how to streamline all of that?
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: And that's when the Leaders Program the TMPA literally created the Leaders Program to basic, but it does.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: What Leaders does is there's like 19 different and I'm exaggerating a little bit here, but there's all these forums that you have to fill out, that have been created by different legislation that's come down over the years, that you have to fill out the same probable causes and same information over and over and over again.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: And Leaders is a web-based program where once you fill it in in one place, it auto-populates it everywhere else and it cut the time it took to process a DWI by two-thirds.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: Well, and it also collects the data that TxDOT uses for their crash reporting systems, for example.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: It does now.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: It didn't at that.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: Right right, right right, but no, it's been.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: Uh, I will, I'll put money on this.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: I think the leaders program the leaders program at the time was the best in the nation and I think other states copied that program's uh situation and then it's expanded nationwide to other programs very similar right that accurate.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: That is accurate and it's also why we kept having text dot governor's office coming back to us going, hey, we got this, other, we got this, uh, so that's how we wind up.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: We've wound up with all these programs because we have been approached by the state of texas and by the federal government saying we would like for you guys to get involved in this, give us your intake, give us your input on this.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, by the way, tmpa now our membership is growing exponentially, still growing at more than 10% per year.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: We were at more than 10% per year average for a quarter of a century, you know, from 1986 until 2010, 2011,.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: Um, to the point now.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, what were we when you got?
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: hired, I want to say we were at 27,000, 26,000.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: How long now?
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: I was hired in 2017, part-time, and now we're at 34,000.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: At 34,000.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: So we're still growing.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, the the rate of increase is not as high because we've got a bigger denominator, but we just continue to grow.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: And I think the reason is back in 1986, 87, 88, when the board said we're going to create a legal plan, we're going to hire an executive director.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: They did one other thing.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: They said we are going to focus on doing one thing, and one thing only, and that is taking care of our members.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: We're going to make sure we take care, we do everything we can for the officers in Texas to make their jobs safer, more professional, you know, and we have stuck with that.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: Well, I agree with you.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Prime directive, I agree with you.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: But I think that what I've seen in the success on my job with the communication side is that I've never not one time, and I'll say this and I'll kind of segue back into it is that typically when a business has an objective, there's some kind of return on that.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: Whether it's going to be a customer, it's going to be somebody that comes to the business.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: Tmpa, as always you said it yourself to the field reps and me included is that I don't give a damn what you do on a day-to-day basis.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: I want you to take care of not just our members, cops.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: Take care of the cops.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: Listen, there's 80,000 cops in Texas.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: We've only got 34,000.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: Over half of them are not TFPA members.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: But we've always had the support of our executive staff and the board of directors to say we don't give a shit what you're doing out there, as long as you're taking care of cops in Texas.
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: That's the mission and it goes back to why the grant program was created and that we suffer that loss every year because it benefits law enforcement.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: Agreed.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Agreed.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: There are limits to that, though.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: The reason I mentioned taking care of members is it's important to understand.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Under ERISA, we have regulations.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: If we have somebody who's not a member who calls us and says, hey, if I join right now, would you give me legal assistance?
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: I can't, and I'm sorry, but the answer is that would be a violation of our.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: I was speaking more of the of the member, the member.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: I get it.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: I understand.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we do.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: We, yeah, we look to to fight for the interest of law enforcement professionals and, by the way, 80 000 is not the total number of potential members.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: We, your, you know.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: Tmpa has membership.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: That includes communications officers, corrections officers, animal control, high D techs, animal control, even firefighters and fire marshals and paramedics.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: We have a lot of folks that are eligible to be either members or affiliate members in TMPA, and they are.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: We are primarily made up of law enforcement officers, but there are a lot of other support personnel that need to be included.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: They're in the same boat as we are as officers.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: The one distinction is and we get hammered for this sometimes by the opposition is that you have to be a full-time paid law enforcement officer in order to be on the TMPA board of directors.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: I ain't got a problem with that Neither do I.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there might be some that do.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: But it's also, I think it's important to understand if there's ever a time that there is a rift between the peace officers and the non-peace officers within this organization.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: We're siding with the peace officers.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's what we are.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: That is our heart and soul, so so anyway.
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: So, uh, 2010 comes and goes after 2010.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Uh, a new executive director was appointed and, yeah, 2010 is when, when chris left, there was a.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: Uh, you know, I I think there's also a natural thing that happens.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: The board of directors turns over on an annual basis, a certain number of them, and by the time you've been the executive director for 10 or 12 years, nobody that was on the board at the time you got hired is still on the board.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: So none of them remember why you got hired to start with, and I think that's part of what happened with both chris and jim is that their relationship with the board um soured over the years.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, which, by the way, if you've, if you've, worked in an organization, you, I think you understand that you know there.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: If, if the people that you're working for are not kept completely informed about why you do what you do the way you do it, they're not going to be happy with you.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: I think that same lesson is true for law enforcement officers.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: How have you been here?
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: I've now been the executive director for 15 years, okay well, good We've.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: we've surpassed the 10 year mark.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to point that out there.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: Well, I think I think I've also got a lot of staff that really help maintain that relationship with the board.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: I think our board is better, is more involved, more engaged, better informed about what we're doing day-to-day basis than they've ever been before, and I think that's helped me in my job 2010,.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: Who was appointed as the executive director Me?
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: Very good, and so since 2010, you took it over, Just so we're clear, in case Jimmy De Los Santos is listening.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: I still didn't want the job, but I wasn't really given an option.
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: Well, how many members did you have whenever you started Excuse me, I'm sorry when you were appointed executive director?
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: Dude 17,000, 18,000 maybe, wow, Okay, so it's grown a little bit.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Doubled.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: Pretty close, we're coming up on the doubled, we've doubled.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: John Sariga just stuck his finger in the door and said it was 16,000.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: So yeah, it has doubled.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you a personal question, john.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: You can sit in here if you want to and listen.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: Looking back on your career as executive director for what I consider the best law enforcement association in Texas, do you feel like you successfully hit the objectives that you set out to hit the day that you took over as an ED?
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: No, no, and here's the reason.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: To me, the actual objective of TMPA is to eliminate the need for an organization like TMPA altogether, which John will tell you will never, ever happen.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: But I think we have to maintain that as our prime directive.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: It shouldn't be necessary for an organization to have to go out there and defend officers against their own employers.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: It shouldn't be necessary for an organization to go defend officers against rogue DAs.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: It shouldn't be necessary for an organization like TMPA to provide training that should be provided by the agencies and by the state of Texas to start with, should be provided by the agencies and by the state of Texas to start with.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: If the agencies and, by the way, I've heard lawyers who work for the Texas Municipal League tell this to city managers and county judges time and time again If you will simply be fair with your employees and treat them fairly, you will not have any trouble out of an organization like CLEAT or TMPA.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: They just can't bring themselves to do it.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: So.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: So our objective is to eliminate the need for us all together.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: So to that extent, no, we haven't.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: We haven't accomplished that objective, but we're going to keep working on it well to the member, to the listener out there that's listening to this podcast and does not know kevin lawrence, I would consider you a cop's cop and, however, he is a lot more calm sometimes than I am when I, when we pick fights and man from a communication side, um, we don't, we don't always agree, but it's, it's comforting to me to know that I've always got the backing of you in certain situations.
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: Uh, cause, let's face it, it's kind of it, it changes weekly on whatever we're kind of going against and we've got crazy mayors that are involved with cities.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: And let's face it, if we always agree, we don't need each other.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: That's true, 100% agree.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: We need to be looking at things from different points of view.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Before we take a position, before we make a move, we need to make sure we've considered all options.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what's the biggest in your make a move?
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: We need to make sure we've considered all options.
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: What's the biggest in your opinion, what's the biggest success that TMPA has had and what's our biggest downfall?
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: And you've seen in the growth and even in your history research from 1950 to 2025, what's our pros and cons in that growth period?
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: I think our biggest success is that we have remained true to our mission statement against all odds, against all comers, in spite of there's times.
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: It would have been expedient, whatever it would have been, it just would have been a lot easier to take a different path.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: But we have always, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how much it cost, we've always remained true to the mission.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: So I think that's our number one.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: You know success story.
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: But there's about 60% of the cops in the state of Texas now have some kind of due process, either through civil service collect, bargaining, meet, confer or something along those lines.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: So 60% we've gotten some kind of due process.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Our biggest failure is the other 40% have it yeah that's accurate.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: That's accurate.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: Well, you got any message to anybody out there regarding the 75th anniversary, or a message from Kevin?
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: Lawrence.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: The message from Kevin Lawrence is the same as always is your job is becoming more and more difficult every day and we thank God that there's still people like you who are willing to put on that uniform and put on that badge and go out there and fight the fight.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: Just know that we are here whenever you need us.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: We're just a phone call, an email or a text away.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: Listen you guys take care, Stay safe.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: You've been serving Kevin Lawrence, TNPA Executive Director, about the history 75 years man in the making of serving those who protect Texas and getting a more understanding of how this all evolved, and I love listening to it.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: I love interacting with our past presidents at conference.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: Again, to the people that are going to be attending our conference this year, if you see a past president you can tell by banquet night.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: It'll say past president there on their lapel on their suits or typically it'll say past president on their name tag.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: Stop and visit with those folks, not just for the history aspect, but what's fascinating to me also is the history and the foundation that those men and women built this organization on.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: And it's just, it's an honor, right, it's an honor to see what they've done, what they've built and the continuation of serving those who protect Texas in 75 years.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: There's an old saying that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: I think it's one of the things that our officers today need to recognize is look back at Boston Police Department in the early 1900s.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: Look at the reason why law enforcement labor became a movement at all in this country.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: Read Houston Blue.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Look at what the history of the Houston Police Department was.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: It'll give you a really good microcosm of what law enforcement was and in some cases still is around the state of Texas, and it gives you a whole lot better appreciation of all the battles that have been fought.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: To get you recognizing your job is more and more difficult.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: Get you.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: I recognize that your job is more and more difficult.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine how much more difficult it would be if we hadn't gotten civil service, if we hadn't got collective bargaining, if we hadn't gotten even the written complaint law.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: By the way, I never got a chance to mention that civil service, Chapter 171.4E of the local government code.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: That's not what it was when it started.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: It was 1269M of the Vernon's Annotated Civil Statute.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Oh really, the written complaint law used to be 6252-20 or something like that of the Vernon's Annotated Civil Statute.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: All those things that we were doing, our predecessors were doing, back in the 50s and 60s and 70s, are the things that all of our job protections, all of our due processes are based on.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: So we not only owe them thanks, but we need to understand what they had to go through to get that for us, and we need to be willing to continue to fight.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and continue to thank them whenever you're in Iraq, such as our conference and those past presidents.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: But anyway, man, I appreciate you stopping by.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: I know you're busy.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: See you Traveling You're traveling.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: We'll do this again.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: Listen, you guys take care.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: Again, conference registration is going on right now.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: I'll put the information in the link in the description.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: Very much looking forward to seeing you guys there.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: If you've never been to conference, you've got questions and you want to reach out and get some opinions or get some advice on what to do or how to get in touch with us or just attend, reach out to us.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: Info at tmpaorg.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: We'd love to encourage you to come Bring your families.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: It's kind of become not that it wasn't in the past, but it's kind of developed into more of a family-type conference.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: There's things to do for the whole family, including your spouse.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: So look forward to seeing you.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: You guys take care, stay safe.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: God bless you and, as always, may God bless Texas.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: We're out, thank you.