Latest / Adventures in Adversity: an inspirational podcast / Ep. 65: Life beyond law enforcement w/retired Officer & Gang Detective Manny Angulo - PTSD recovery

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Ep. 65: Life beyond law enforcement w/retired Officer & Gang Detective Manny Angulo - PTSD recovery · Adventures in Adversity: an inspirational podcast

• 0:00
  All right, welcome back to another episode of Adventures
• 0:04
  and Adversity. We have an amazing guest here
• 0:08
  today. I am very grateful to have not
• 0:12
  only a former police officer, retired police officer who I
• 0:16
  have a ton of respect for, but also the father of my former
• 0:21
  student who is now my podcast editor.
• 0:25
  So lots of super cool connections today.
• 0:28
  Before I start yapping, I just wanted to thank you Manny for
• 0:32
  being here. Oh, thank you for having me.
• 0:35
  I I was pleasantly surprised when Julian said that you were
• 0:39
  going to reach out. In fact, I asked him.
• 0:41
  I said, hey, she hasn't reached out.
• 0:42
  What's going on? You know, he, Julian's keeping
• 0:46
  me busy with all the demands that he has now that I've hired
• 0:49
  him to help edit. He's like, listen, I need those
• 0:52
  thumbnails. And I'm like, listen, you need
• 0:54
  to chill out. No the.
• 0:55
  Roles have reversed. I know I'm like, he's literally
• 0:58
  teaching me about how to actually be a, you know,
• 1:04
  analytics focused, mission focused podcaster with a plan.
• 1:08
  So great job on your end raising a an awesome son.
• 1:11
  We'll get to that. But yeah, I wanted to thank you.
• 1:15
  And if you're new to the podcast, thank you for being
• 1:19
  here. If you've been listening for a
• 1:20
  while, you kind of know the deal.
• 1:22
  But essentially this podcast, we are coming up on almost two
• 1:28
  years and I am blessed to have had many, many guests who are
• 1:33
  have been open to sharing their stories about adversity.
• 1:36
  So the the tagline of the podcast is real people, true
• 1:40
  stories, daily inspiration. And really my goal is that
• 1:44
  anyone listening, whatever walk of life you are in and whatever
• 1:49
  phase of life that you realize you're not alone and you
• 1:52
  hopefully leave this with a few coping strategies or just the
• 1:57
  feeling that, you know, we're all human and we all experience
• 2:00
  adversity. So with that, I wanted to
• 2:03
  welcome you again, Manny. And our connection goes back to
• 2:07
  Julian, former student of mine when I was a teacher 20 years
• 2:11
  ago in Phoenix, AZ. And Speaking of Phoenix, you
• 2:17
  live in Phoenix and have a long history in Phoenix.
• 2:21
  Yeah, I, I grew up here. So I'm native and I grew up in I
• 2:25
  grew up in Maryville. So anybody that's from Phoenix
• 2:27
  or Arizona knows where Maryville's at.
• 2:29
  OK, So it's just out. It's it's in Phoenix, but it's
• 2:33
  on the West side of Phoenix, so. Got it.
• 2:35
  So you're Arizona through and through a. 100%.
• 2:39
  Awesome, awesome. And you not only lived in live
• 2:44
  in Arizona, but you we were a police officer in Maricopa
• 2:48
  County, correct? No, I was in.
• 2:50
  I was in Mesa. Mesa I.
• 2:52
  Started my career with the Maricopa County Sheriff's
• 2:55
  Office. Yeah.
• 2:56
  Got it. OK.
• 2:57
  And so take me through, you know, I think what we're going
• 3:00
  to talk about over the course of the next hour or so is your
• 3:05
  career as a retired police officer.
• 3:08
  But really kind of looking at the whole journey you've been
• 3:11
  through from police Academy to becoming a new police officer to
• 3:17
  on the job adversity, to then transitioning out of serving
• 3:22
  your community and life after retirement into your nonprofit,
• 3:30
  which we're going to talk about as well, Pistol, where you help
• 3:35
  serve police officers who are experiencing PTSD and who are
• 3:40
  might be struggling to to cope. So wanted to just start off,
• 3:46
  tell me a little bit about yourself, about was becoming a
• 3:50
  police officer something that was in your family?
• 3:53
  How did that? How did that all begin?
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  Honestly, well, I dropped out of high school, so I wasn't
• 4:02
  probably the best kid to that you would think would become a
• 4:06
  police officer and I, I did. I didn't like the cops growing
• 4:13
  up. Like I, I didn't want to be
• 4:15
  around him. In fact, we ran from him back in
• 4:18
  Maryville. So I just, it wasn't that I
• 4:22
  bucked authority. I, I understood that there was a
• 4:25
  respect factor there. But to me, they just bothered
• 4:29
  me, you know what I mean? Like we would cruise central my,
• 4:36
  you know, my brother had a low rider and we'd get pulled over
• 4:39
  all the time and whatnot. So they're just a bother to me.
• 4:43
  And then in high school, I played baseball a lot and I was
• 4:47
  fairly good at it. And yeah, I didn't really have
• 4:52
  any other options If I didn't make, if I couldn't make a
• 4:54
  living out of that, I had to find something.
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  And when I dropped out, a friend of mine had said, hey, you know,
• 5:02
  you can get into law enforcement, you just need a GED
• 5:05
  or a high school diploma. And I thought, Nah, you know, I
• 5:10
  don't want to. I thought I, I just don't want
• 5:12
  to fuck with people the way that I got fucked with or I felt that
• 5:14
  I didn't mess with. And I ended up going to like a
• 5:20
  career day in high school and there was a school here, it's
• 5:26
  still around, but it's it's shifted a little bit.
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  But back then it was called Metro Tech and they had a law
• 5:31
  enforcement program. And I went, they had a 12
• 5:35
  program and then an advanced 3/4 program.
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  And I went through that and I realized, oh shit, I had it
• 5:41
  wrong. You know, they, not all cops are
• 5:45
  assholes and they're not just picking on people.
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  And so I went through that one two class 1st, totally
• 5:54
  different. That's where adversity really
• 5:56
  started to set in when I knew something was going to be
• 5:58
  different, right? So when I showed up to class the
• 6:01
  first day, I was late and they screamed at me and I had to do
• 6:06
  push ups. And, and I'm thinking to myself,
• 6:09
  like, in no high school class did this ever take place, but I
• 6:13
  did it. And I did it because it was, I
• 6:16
  was like, who who puts themselves in this position?
• 6:19
  I can just go to class late, barely pass or whatever.
• 6:23
  But I was kind of intrigued. And so I went through 1/2, did
• 6:26
  really well. And then I dropped out of
• 6:29
  school, missed a year, came back for 3/4 law enforcement.
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  And then that's where I met my future wife and my son's mom was
• 6:41
  in that class. And then once I figured out,
• 6:47
  hey, I could do this job and I was relatively good at
• 6:50
  understanding plus where I grew up, I thought, and it's going to
• 6:55
  sound cliche, but I was like, you know, I could probably help
• 6:58
  these young kids and they may or may not listen to me, but I'm
• 7:03
  not, I'm not like the cops that I remember seeing.
• 7:07
  So I just dove head first into law enforcement right after.
• 7:15
  It was like a few years. It was Julian was probably like
• 7:20
  maybe 3 when I really focused on moving forward with law
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  enforcement. And you have you have three
• 7:29
  kids, correct, 22 boys, two boys.
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  Why did I think there was another kid in there?
• 7:35
  I don't know now that. So at what age were you when you
• 7:39
  were in this law enforcement program?
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  How old were you? So when I first went through, I
• 7:44
  was 16 going into 17. Wow.
• 7:47
  OK, so you were quite young. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  And now mind you, when I went through the 1-2 class, I I was,
• 7:56
  I was a screw up, you know what I mean?
• 7:57
  I just, all I wanted to do was play, grab ass with the girls
• 8:01
  and play baseball. I didn't go to class.
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  I didn't go to class at all. In fact, to give you an example,
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  by the time I should have been a senior in my class that I should
• 8:13
  have graduated with, I only had a half credit.
• 8:16
  That's that's how bad I wasn't in school.
• 8:21
  Well, you know, if you look back on that time kind of with the
• 8:26
  hindsight you have now and having raised kids and having
• 8:29
  which we're going to get to your whole your police career.
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  Is there anything that you would would say to your younger self
• 8:37
  if if anyone is listening to this and maybe they're in that
• 8:40
  phase, they have a kid in that phase or their siblings in that
• 8:43
  phase where they're just like a little bit lost around that age
• 8:46
  Well. You know, back then it wasn't
• 8:49
  like now. I mean, now you can do whatever
• 8:51
  you want. Plus, teachers are a lot
• 8:54
  different now. Very true.
• 8:57
  The teachers I had back then, everything was very, very neat
• 9:02
  and precise and the lesson plans were very straightforward and
• 9:07
  you either passed or you didn't. And so now I see teachers
• 9:14
  teaching in a whole different way.
• 9:15
  I don't agree with some of the syllabuses that they have in the
• 9:18
  way they teach, but there's more personable skills that students
• 9:24
  get with teachers. We, I didn't get that when I
• 9:27
  walked in, the teacher said, take out your math book.
• 9:31
  We're doing chapters 123. Your homework is this, this and
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  this. And it's expected on this day.
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  And they, I mean, it wasn't that they didn't offer help, but you
• 9:40
  either understood it the way they taught it or you didn't.
• 9:44
  Yeah, totally. Yeah.
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  Now it's so much more. I feel like just having taught
• 9:51
  the key is like connecting with your student, right?
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  And hopefully influencing them in a positive way beyond what
• 9:58
  they're memorizing in your class.
• 10:00
  You know, OK, so you, you are, you're like realizing, OK, based
• 10:06
  on how I grew up and, and my knowledge of like the community
• 10:10
  and, you know, I think I can really do this.
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  What adversity hits when you're kind of in the Academy, when
• 10:18
  you're ramping up, What comes to mind that wasn't just smooth
• 10:22
  sailing becoming a police officer, would you in your
• 10:25
  experience, was it? Not at all.
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  I mean, if you if you were book smart, you wouldn't have any
• 10:31
  issues. But the adversity began when I
• 10:34
  found out that my wife was pregnant of my, of Julian.
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  So now I had a fire under my ass and I had to go get a job.
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  I had to have insurance. I had to have all these things
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  because now I had not only did I have my girlfriend, but I had a,
• 10:50
  a baby on board. And then I was kind of thrust
• 10:54
  into this world of, you know, shit or get off the pot.
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  And, you know, I had at that point, I had two choices.
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  I could have joined the military or I could have just worked
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  really hard digging ditches because remember, I dropped out
• 11:06
  of high school so it wasn't like I had an education to fall back
• 11:09
  on. And so I did some odd and end
• 11:13
  jobs until I was able to apply for the Sheriff's Office as a
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  detention officer. Then I went through an 8 week
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  Academy. And right at this point is where
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  coping and I guess like determination come into play.
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  Adversity sets in really hard because in that Academy, just
• 11:39
  like the police Academy, if you fail three tests, you're fired,
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  you're out. So it's, I don't know any other
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  job like that, right? Like in that, in, in the
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  detention Academy, in the police Academy, the detention Academy
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  is 8 weeks long. The police Academy is 16 weeks
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  long. And in they tell you you failed
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  three classes, you're out. If they catch you lying, you're
• 12:03
  out. In one of my classes in
• 12:08
  detention, we weren't supposed to leave the Academy grounds,
• 12:12
  even though we didn't live there.
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  From 8:00 to 5:00. That was our workspace.
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  And one of the guys during lunch, he wanted to run home and
• 12:21
  get his. He had forgotten something that
• 12:23
  day and he didn't ask anybody. He just left.
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  He's on his lunch hour and 1 of the instructors comes up to us
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  and he, you know, we're so and so and we're like he went to his
• 12:35
  house to get his uniform or whatever and they were like OK,
• 12:38
  no problem. So they came back and they asked
• 12:41
  him like where'd you go? And he's like, I just went to
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  the restroom and they said OK, no problem.
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  And then they pulled him out of class and they fired him on the
• 12:50
  spot. So I don't know any job like
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  that. Like, I don't know any job that
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  does that. So immediately we learn very
• 13:01
  quickly integrity matters the most.
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  And you had to focus. Like I said, I had a kid.
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  I I couldn't afford to lie and lose the job.
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  But then I was still battling passing and I wasn't the best
• 13:16
  student. Because you're learning all
• 13:18
  these new concepts situations, but it's probably at a very
• 13:23
  rapid pace. It sounds like 16 weeks, Well,
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  the nine weeks versus I mean. Yeah, the eight weeks there,
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  it's like trying to drink from a fire hose.
• 13:31
  Exactly. So because it's, it's policies,
• 13:34
  procedures in the, in the detention Academy, it's some
• 13:40
  laws that pertain to the jails, but you're studying at I mean,
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  my day started at 4:30 in the morning and it ended at 9:00 at
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  night. And that was every day for seven
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  days a week. Do you recall A2 part question
• 13:57
  class that class that you really enjoyed found valuable at police
• 14:02
  Academy and a class or a part of it that you found extremely
• 14:06
  challenging? Do you remember?
• 14:08
  Well, for me, the the challenging part was the
• 14:11
  studying. So after I graduated and became
• 14:15
  a detention officer, I left that to become to join the police
• 14:19
  Academy. So when I got, so there's more
• 14:22
  adversity there. And we talked about this offline
• 14:24
  before we started, but these stages of adversity that people
• 14:28
  have a civilian has in their normal life, like, you know, go
• 14:32
  to school, graduate, get a job, rise the corporate ladder.
• 14:35
  Those are all adversity. Yep.
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  And everybody's going to go through that.
• 14:39
  Some careers have more adversity than others.
• 14:42
  Yep. And you cope with things
• 14:43
  differently. So once I, so I had a secure job
• 14:48
  in the Sheriff's Office, I'd already passed the Academy.
• 14:52
  I could have stayed there 20 years and retired, but I wanted
• 14:55
  to make it difficult and become a police officer and give myself
• 14:58
  more fucking adversity. And so I went to the Academy and
• 15:06
  you know, again, this is 16 weeks of doing that.
• 15:10
  So to answer your question, for me, the hardest part was the
• 15:15
  educational piece because I was never into school.
• 15:21
  And it is 100% college course, high pressure studying that
• 15:30
  didn't count the shooting, that didn't count all the other
• 15:33
  stuff, being on time, making sure that you followed, you had
• 15:37
  to. I mean, there was so much that
• 15:38
  we had to do. And then once we got into class,
• 15:41
  so like the morning of the Academy, every morning we had
• 15:45
  PT. So we had to run, we had to do
• 15:48
  push ups, we had to do all this stuff.
• 15:50
  Then we only had like 4-5 minutes to shower, change, get
• 15:55
  in the classroom, and then study for the next 6 hours, 7 hours
• 16:00
  and you're cramming all this legal stuff, learning the laws.
• 16:05
  You can't memorize that many laws.
• 16:09
  You know, legal concepts, You're learning case law.
• 16:12
  You're going through all of that.
• 16:14
  Then when you get home, you have flash cards to study because you
• 16:17
  got to learn 100 blocks of the city that you're going to be
• 16:20
  patrolling. Then you've got to learn, you
• 16:23
  know, arrest procedures, internal policies, external
• 16:28
  laws, case law. Then you're working on radio
• 16:34
  discipline. Your gun, you're shooting
• 16:37
  defensive tactics. This is all 16 weeks.
• 16:40
  That's that's a lot and that's it.
• 16:44
  It's it that sounds extremely challenging to me.
• 16:48
  And my first question that came up was, do you think the sort of
• 16:54
  the rhythm and the pace and the discipline of that was a preview
• 16:59
  of what your life would be like as a police, police officer sort
• 17:03
  of the the discipline of that? The Academy was the easy part.
• 17:06
  Right, because that's controlled environment.
• 17:08
  It's controlled and you can study my, you know, my wife.
• 17:14
  By that time she was my wife. She had flash cards, we studied
• 17:19
  100 blocks, radio codes, all that stuff.
• 17:24
  So yeah, you really have that adversity is even though they're
• 17:28
  there to help you, they can't do it for you.
• 17:31
  So you, you're, you have to overcome it.
• 17:35
  And, and they didn't make it easy, which they did and, and,
• 17:40
  and I do get in trouble sometimes, but they have lowered
• 17:42
  their standards in, in most agencies to make it a little bit
• 17:46
  easier because I think we've raised a softer generation that
• 17:52
  are a little bit used to that whole, everyone gets a trophy.
• 17:58
  And again, I'm not saying I'm not complaining or saying 1 is
• 18:02
  better than the other, but the same way that I had what I was
• 18:06
  telling you about in grammar school and grade school and high
• 18:08
  school is exactly what they did to me in the Academy.
• 18:12
  Like there was no, oh, take some time, go over here and study.
• 18:17
  You had to, you had to learn how to deal with adversity period.
• 18:22
  And you either wanted to do it or you didn't.
• 18:25
  You know, now some, some academies, you know, they, they
• 18:29
  give you rest time. They give you quiet time, which
• 18:33
  I'm not against completely, but you're not really setting
• 18:36
  somebody up to to push through barriers in my opinion.
• 18:39
  Yeah. Now, did your did your wife
• 18:42
  become a police officer as well or did she go into a different
• 18:45
  area? Oh yeah, no.
• 18:46
  A lot. No, she's she's got the hardest
• 18:49
  job. She's she's her job.
• 18:52
  I I've always said as a stay at home mom and and housewife is I,
• 18:58
  I would I'd rather get shot at. I'd rather get shot at and I
• 19:02
  have been shot at. So I can still tell you that is
• 19:05
  a hard, that is the hardest job ever.
• 19:08
  A. 100 percent, 100% my mom was a stay at home mom.
• 19:12
  I'm a working mom that works from home and cafes.
• 19:14
  So I don't know, I kind of but like I have a whole support
• 19:17
  system. So but I I truly agree.
• 19:19
  It's a such an important and challenging job, like raising my
• 19:25
  generation. I mean, in all honesty, I think
• 19:28
  any, in any situation for a mom, whether you're a stay at home
• 19:33
  mom, whether you're a working mom, whether it doesn't matter,
• 19:37
  moms are, I cannot tell you. I've I've been shot at, I've
• 19:43
  been cut out of cars, and I still have the utmost respect
• 19:48
  for moms. They're they're amazing, but
• 19:50
  let's. Talk about adversity.
• 19:51
  That's a. But I got to say, I think you've
• 19:55
  been list being shot at and cut out a car that's pretty that's
• 19:59
  pretty legit, which we're going to get to.
• 20:03
  I I I want to hear how you have gotten through some of these
• 20:06
  challenging moments. So you so take so you're you're
• 20:12
  in the police Academy. You OK?
• 20:15
  Take a SEC. Yeah, take a SEC.
• 20:18
  No rush. Go ahead.
• 20:20
  Take your time. Allergies.
• 20:22
  Oh, totally, totally. So so we're at we're at the
• 20:26
  beginning phase where you're pushing through you, you
• 20:31
  complete the police Academy, the 16 week program and after that
• 20:38
  are you in in your career? Take me through what's next?
• 20:42
  Do they kind of did you get a soft landing or were you kind of
• 20:46
  just sink or swim for your first that first?
• 20:49
  Part I mean, so after 16 weeks of the Academy, you've got
• 20:53
  another 8. Oh, I said 16.
• 20:55
  I think it's 18 now. Now my, my 52 year old brains
• 20:59
  for it's, he's 16 or 18. But you've got another 16 weeks
• 21:04
  of field training. So you, you get a field training
• 21:08
  officer and then you've got now you're going to apply everything
• 21:12
  that you learned in the previous 16 weeks to the next 16 weeks.
• 21:17
  And that's a, a whole, So putting going back just a
• 21:23
  second, just when you think you accomplished something by
• 21:26
  graduating the Academy, now you've got to apply all of that
• 21:31
  in real time. So now you're, it's, it's kind
• 21:37
  of like you want to be an actor, but you've never done a show.
• 21:41
  And then you know what I mean? Now you've got to go out and try
• 21:45
  to apply what you just learned. And so to give you an example, I
• 21:49
  graduated the Academy on a Friday and some people, they
• 21:53
  actually started the next day because that's the shift and,
• 21:56
  and the squad that they got, I was fortunate enough or not that
• 22:02
  I started like, I want to say I, I think I started Monday on a
• 22:08
  swing shift like at 2:00 PM. So I had, I had two days off to,
• 22:13
  to be proud of myself that I graduated the Academy.
• 22:17
  So I show up on my first day and when my first day I show up, you
• 22:23
  meet your FTO and he gets everything ready.
• 22:27
  He tells you this is the car, this is our call sign.
• 22:30
  So amongst everything else that I just was high about being
• 22:36
  happy and graduating. Now immediately they're like,
• 22:40
  hey, this is your call sign. You have to remember your call
• 22:44
  sign, right? So I had, I wrote it on my palm
• 22:48
  and you know you're already nervous.
• 22:50
  So that went away fucking fast because I was sweating my ass
• 22:53
  off. What was?
• 22:54
  What was your call sign? My very first call sign.
• 22:59
  Call sign like give me an example of a call.
• 23:01
  Sign so so my call sign, I think my first call sign, so it's it's
• 23:07
  two and then AC, but we called it a Charlie obviously.
• 23:11
  And then 18. So my first call sign was 2C18.
• 23:15
  So that they call you on the radio.
• 23:17
  That's you. Yeah, right.
• 23:18
  So now. Ricky here, yeah.
• 23:19
  Right, so now think you're you've got you're in a so you're
• 23:25
  the first week you don't drive, you just sit shotgun, but you're
• 23:29
  listening to the radio while your FT LS trying to talk to you
• 23:33
  and you're trying to listen for this call sign.
• 23:34
  So we load up the car. I get introduced to the squad,
• 23:40
  he walks me around the station and then we jump in the car and
• 23:45
  we leave the station and we're about a minute out from leaving
• 23:49
  the station and there's hot tones, right?
• 23:54
  They beep. They go.
• 23:56
  To let you know this is an important call.
• 23:59
  All the other calls just get dispatched.
• 24:01
  Normal, OK, right. Yep.
• 24:03
  So and most of your viewers will probably know if they've watched
• 24:06
  like police or fire calls. They know that tone.
• 24:10
  Sure, yes. That tone is to tell every if
• 24:12
  you hear that tone, bad stuff is happening.
• 24:15
  Got it. So I hear the radio chattering
• 24:18
  and I'm thinking to myself, I got to remember my call sign,
• 24:22
  but I'm trying to remember my FTO, what he's telling me.
• 24:25
  I hope I have my policy books. Is my gun loaded all the normal
• 24:29
  shit that you're trying to remember?
• 24:31
  And then as we're like I said, we're probably no more than a
• 24:34
  minute to two minutes out. And then I hear a tone, and I
• 24:38
  remember. First time.
• 24:40
  Yeah, we had just left the station and I remember thinking
• 24:44
  to myself, please don't call my call sign, right?
• 24:49
  And the first thing they do is call my call sign and that means
• 24:54
  we're primary to this call. So you and your you and your
• 24:57
  full time officer. Right now, now my my field
• 25:00
  training officer, he's driving. Field training.
• 25:02
  And the call comes out and it the call is a subject
• 25:07
  threatening with the chain and and it's in our area.
• 25:12
  So the first call out of the gate is a subject threatening
• 25:15
  with the chain. So we, we run lights and sirens.
• 25:19
  So my very first call, we're doing like 70 on the freeway to
• 25:23
  get to where this call's AT. And I, I just remember thinking
• 25:27
  to myself like, this can't be real, right?
• 25:31
  Like there's a guy with a chain and we turn the corner on the
• 25:36
  street that this guy supposedly AT, and there's a guy on the
• 25:40
  ground and there's a guy standing over him swinging a
• 25:44
  metal chain, like trying to hit him, like getting ready to hit
• 25:47
  him. So in that, in that time, in two
• 25:53
  days, I went from being a student in the Academy to now
• 25:59
  potentially staring at, you know, shooting somebody or in
• 26:03
  this violent encounter. And so it, it was that fast.
• 26:10
  Like, you know, it was just my experience.
• 26:11
  It doesn't always happen that way, but it that was it Like
• 26:16
  that was my first call out-of-the-box.
• 26:20
  And I remember we ended up arresting that guy.
• 26:25
  He had to go to the hospital because he wanted to fight with
• 26:28
  us. So we kind of fought with him
• 26:29
  for a minute and then I went with him to the hospital and
• 26:34
  he's secured. And I remember once he was
• 26:38
  secured, I called my wife and I'm like, hey, so we just
• 26:43
  arrested a guy that was swinging a chain.
• 26:46
  Now she was already nervous to begin with, but she was up but
• 26:49
  of. Course.
• 26:51
  Yeah. So do you in that situation, and
• 26:54
  I'm sure you learn over time how to or again assumption that you
• 27:00
  learn coping strategies to calm your nervous system.
• 27:03
  But for anyone early in their police officer career listening
• 27:07
  or considering becoming a police officer, on that first call, do
• 27:12
  you remember like, does adrenaline kick in always pretty
• 27:16
  or is it just. I, I didn't, I, I didn't have
• 27:18
  time. Like I, I think I was so
• 27:20
  overwhelmed with, with training. Like I remember thinking, OK, if
• 27:26
  this guy has a gun, you know, we're going to go to guns.
• 27:30
  You know, we got to take control of the scene.
• 27:32
  Like all that stuff was, yeah, I didn't have time.
• 27:36
  I didn't have time to get scared or or be nervous or or worry.
• 27:41
  I just it it just kicked in naturally.
• 27:43
  You go. Yeah, which will, when we get
• 27:47
  towards pistol in my nonprofit, you'll see how that is not a
• 27:51
  good thing. Yes, so you, you find yourself
• 27:54
  you, you have that first call. Take me through maybe what you
• 27:59
  would describe because I know there's more phases in a police
• 28:03
  officer's, every police officer's career is different,
• 28:07
  but we're going to walk through the different phases of your
• 28:10
  career in the different areas of adversity that you faced and how
• 28:13
  you've overcome that. How long would you say that
• 28:17
  initial in your, it was your 20 year career?
• 28:21
  That initial phase in the beginning is where you're in
• 28:24
  your experience, you're learning the ropes and seeing kind of
• 28:30
  learning the world that you had just entered into.
• 28:32
  So I thought I had beat adversity when, when I, when I
• 28:37
  became a detention officer because I figured I, I went
• 28:40
  through the Academy. How bad can can the police
• 28:42
  Academy be? And then once I went through the
• 28:46
  police Academy, that's when I started to realize like, this
• 28:52
  isn't a joke. Like this isn't a normal job
• 28:55
  where your life is ever going to be the same people either like
• 29:00
  you or they don't like you. And personally, initially you
• 29:04
  start to think they don't like me like Manny, They don't like
• 29:07
  Manny, right. Or they don't like.
• 29:08
  I think you go by Brie, right? Yeah.
• 29:10
  Yeah. So like it it you learn very
• 29:14
  quickly that has nothing to do with Manny or Brie.
• 29:17
  They're they don't like the uniform, right.
• 29:19
  And. So.
• 29:21
  Early on, what I used to not like about the cops, I, I just,
• 29:26
  I forgot that they were people I was running from, you know, the,
• 29:31
  the uniform. So I had to, and this will come
• 29:37
  on later on when I get into my detective work, but I had to get
• 29:40
  into a place where I, I couldn't take it personal, right?
• 29:45
  Because they don't know me. They've never met me.
• 29:47
  They don't, they don't know my background.
• 29:49
  They don't. They just know what I stand for.
• 29:52
  Right. So that's that's one of the
• 29:56
  things that I learned very early on.
• 29:58
  Like I had to understand that even though they spit at me or
• 30:04
  on me or threw or shot at me, they weren't shooting at Manny.
• 30:08
  They were. It was what I represented that
• 30:11
  they didn't like. So it's that that's a part of
• 30:13
  the job I feel like needs to be discussed as somebody who I have
• 30:20
  the utmost respect for our veterans, our first responders.
• 30:26
  That's how I was raised is just like, those are the people that
• 30:28
  you always, always have respect for.
• 30:31
  And do you think that, do you think that that's talked about
• 30:35
  enough? Like the OR is that I guess the
• 30:39
  police officers don't get the respect that they deserve?
• 30:43
  And I know this is a a hot topic, but I'm not afraid of
• 30:46
  bringing it up that I think there's a massive, massive under
• 30:52
  appreciation for police officers and it's something that I just I
• 30:59
  don't really think is acceptable.
• 31:01
  You know what I mean? Like it really bothers me.
• 31:05
  Give me your perspective based on the fact that you kind of
• 31:07
  brought that up that so you face that kind of treatment early on
• 31:11
  as a police officers. Was that just constant?
• 31:13
  Well, yeah, but I think I think sometimes people don't realize
• 31:17
  they're doing it right. Like I had friends that stopped
• 31:22
  talking to me because I became a police officer.
• 31:28
  There's our job is kind of unique.
• 31:30
  Like I remember one time I had a friend of mine and and and this
• 31:35
  might have been pride. He might have been very proud of
• 31:38
  me. But every time we went
• 31:41
  somewhere, he would introduce me by my career and he'd be like,
• 31:46
  Hey, this is, you know, this is man, he's my buddy's police
• 31:50
  officer, like everyone. And so one day, well, I asked
• 31:55
  her, I said, Hey, you know, you don't have to do that, bro, you
• 31:58
  know, And he was like, no, no, no, I won't, I won't.
• 32:00
  And then he would do it again. So one day he came to a party
• 32:04
  and I introduced him and I was like, Ace, my friend, he's a
• 32:08
  plumber, right? And he was like, what?
• 32:11
  And I was like, exactly. That's what you're doing to me.
• 32:13
  Like you're, you're, you're putting me.
• 32:15
  And later on, I'm sure it there's they're, they're very
• 32:20
  proud that they're, they know you just like I would be proud,
• 32:25
  like Julian's proud. That's my teacher.
• 32:27
  You're proud like that's. My student, right and I do hear
• 32:31
  the correlation like especially when Julian was on and you were
• 32:36
  talking you're like, oh, that's my student that's my student
• 32:38
  right so I get it. But it was odd to me because I'm
• 32:43
  like, I don't know why you're, why are you introducing me by my
• 32:47
  career? That's one.
• 32:49
  Mention that's a different. Of who you, I mean, I didn't
• 32:51
  know it at the time, but it's probably just, he was just very
• 32:54
  proud. Yeah.
• 32:56
  Yeah, and, and I was, I mean, I don't, I'm not a plumber.
• 32:59
  Julie and I, before the podcast, were trying to put together a
• 33:02
  toilet. I don't like it, so I got
• 33:04
  somewhere. It's such an essential service,
• 33:07
  right? Amazing.
• 33:08
  Exactly. And I wish I had one before we
• 33:11
  were doing that. But but again, that's not
• 33:13
  something we do. But you know, getting through
• 33:15
  that part of it was another, you know, that was something else
• 33:19
  that had to do with adversity. I had to learn how to deal with
• 33:22
  that. I had to learn to accept they're
• 33:24
  prideful and they're being proud of me mostly.
• 33:32
  It's very, I can see where people would get kind of a big
• 33:37
  head like because they're introduced that way, but I'm
• 33:40
  just not comfortable with that because remember, I didn't, I
• 33:43
  didn't want to be a police officer to begin with.
• 33:46
  So it wasn't that I was proud or wasn't proud that I earned it,
• 33:51
  but I just, when I was off duty, I really just wanted to be off
• 33:54
  duty. Yeah.
• 33:56
  But as, as far as what you're asking, as far as respect, back
• 33:59
  then in the late 90s, there was far more respect for law
• 34:05
  enforcement and 1st responders than there is now.
• 34:08
  Yeah, far more, far more. I mean, even within the criminal
• 34:13
  criminal elements, you know that I work some some high profile
• 34:18
  cases and some pretty violent offenders.
• 34:22
  And even they had an unspoken rule like if you don't have to
• 34:25
  shoot at the cops, don't shoot at the cops, right.
• 34:27
  Like you just didn't do that, right.
• 34:29
  It's kind of like we had the same thing.
• 34:32
  Like we didn't. There was no extra kicks like
• 34:35
  excessive force, like they gave up.
• 34:37
  They gave up and that was all said and done.
• 34:39
  Yeah, unspoken rules, I guess. Yeah, absolutely.
• 34:43
  I think, I think it's just, you know, and I said it on the
• 34:49
  episode with retired Sergeant Alfred Brenner and I just, I
• 34:55
  always want to give a shout out because I'm just, I was raised
• 35:00
  that way. And I believe that, like you
• 35:04
  said, that the job of a police officer is unlike any other job.
• 35:08
  It's not a normal job. It's something that probably you
• 35:12
  don't, you'll never understand unless you walk in those shoes.
• 35:16
  We can try to understand, but so you're rolling through that
• 35:21
  beginning phases of your career take me through kind of what
• 35:26
  comes next in that journey. Did you feel like there was a
• 35:31
  point where your mental health started to be affected?
• 35:34
  Was it based on, is it just, I feel like becoming a police
• 35:38
  officer will cause stress, but did you, when did you start?
• 35:42
  I know you've had experiences with PTSD and your foundation is
• 35:47
  based on, you know, helping people with PTSD, specifically
• 35:51
  law enforcement. Was that something that you
• 35:56
  encountered early on? No, no, not at all.
• 36:00
  Well, so after FTO you go solo, right?
• 36:04
  So once you're solo, that's when you really, really start to
• 36:09
  realize that people depend on you who never know you.
• 36:13
  So while you're when you're solo, then you get your, you get
• 36:17
  your own assigned area of responsibility, right a beat.
• 36:21
  And I don't know those people, right?
• 36:26
  I don't, I, if I'm patrolling your neighborhood, I, I don't
• 36:30
  know who you are. I don't know if you're a good
• 36:32
  person, a bad person. I don't know anything about you.
• 36:36
  But while you're living your life, those officers are
• 36:42
  patrolling to make sure that if you need help, they respond no
• 36:47
  matter what. So once you get off FTL, then
• 36:50
  you're handed this beat. And now that's when you start
• 36:55
  thinking, OK, I'm responsible for this entire area.
• 36:59
  Now I work for a big city. So there was in one beat, there
• 37:04
  might be three or four officers assigned to that beat, but
• 37:08
  that's that's us responsible for so many 1000 of people in that
• 37:14
  area, right? So we'll just say it's a small
• 37:17
  beat and maybe there's, I don't know, 66000 people in that area,
• 37:22
  but I had, so I had Fiesta Mall in my beat.
• 37:25
  So now you've got the mall in there, you've got restaurants in
• 37:27
  there. You might have 1012 thousand
• 37:30
  people in that area at any given time.
• 37:33
  Well, I don't know these people. That's one thing that you start
• 37:37
  to really it, it weighs on you like OK, I got to make sure all
• 37:41
  these people are safe, which isn't possible.
• 37:44
  But when someone picks up the phone and calls 911, we don't we
• 37:49
  don't ask if you're short, tall, fat, skinny, white, black,
• 37:54
  Hispanic man, won't we respond to what the what you're asking
• 37:58
  us to respond to, right. So you take on this it's it's
• 38:04
  not a burden. I just don't know the word.
• 38:06
  But you take a responsibility. You take on the responsibility
• 38:10
  that if if Bree calls the police at 2:00 in the morning because
• 38:15
  her husband's out of town and somebody's trying to break in, I
• 38:18
  have to get there to protect you, right?
• 38:21
  And I'm going there with that intention and I'm going to stop
• 38:25
  whatever problem it is. Or maybe it's not that bad.
• 38:28
  Maybe you woke up and you thought you heard a noise in the
• 38:36
  backyard and you're not going to sleep comfortably until we check
• 38:39
  it. Does that make sense?
• 38:41
  Yeah. So you're, you're already
• 38:46
  starting to get into that world of like, OK, I got to take care
• 38:49
  of these people, this community that's 99% of like a police
• 38:57
  officer thinking they're patrolling with that intention.
• 39:00
  Now, given the state of affairs we're in with violence and
• 39:04
  hostility over time, but that's ebbs and flows.
• 39:09
  They're still there to protect the person that's calling may
• 39:12
  not seem like that. Because remember when I was
• 39:16
  growing up, I did not believe that they were coming to help
• 39:18
  me. I thought they're coming to fuck
• 39:20
  with me, right? And when I got pulled over, I'm
• 39:22
  like, you're coming to fuck me, right?
• 39:25
  And but I never gave it much thought that while I was
• 39:28
  sleeping, right? While you're sleeping, there's
• 39:31
  somebody out there waiting or patrolling to make sure that you
• 39:36
  sleep comfortably, right? You just don't know that because
• 39:41
  you don't give it much thought, right?
• 39:43
  You know, and I'd say that's a greater portion of society, and
• 39:47
  I mean, globally, because everybody in the world has
• 39:49
  police officers and that's their job.
• 39:53
  So when you get your first beat, that's a whole nother realm of
• 39:58
  responsibility. You know, and, and you're,
• 40:02
  you're constantly like, OK, when I'm at work, I'm at work.
• 40:07
  I, and this is where I think you touched on it earlier about like
• 40:15
  the, the, the hardships of being a cop.
• 40:18
  So I was at work so much. Well, I not so much, but that
• 40:23
  job takes so much from you. Like I was, I even asked Julian
• 40:28
  when he said that he was doing the podcast with you.
• 40:29
  I'm like, you have to tell me what teacher you're talking
• 40:32
  about. Because in this job, we give
• 40:37
  more to the community than we do our families.
• 40:41
  Because as you probably know, you probably know my wife or
• 40:45
  remember my wife better than you Remember Me because she was the
• 40:50
  one that went there because I had to work, right.
• 40:53
  Parent teacher conference. Yep, right.
• 40:55
  If I was working swing shift and we worked the shitty hours.
• 41:01
  So we worked, you know, Saturday, Sunday, Monday,
• 41:04
  Tuesday, Wednesday. So I, I even asked Julie and I'm
• 41:07
  like, you're going to have to show me a picture because I just
• 41:12
  there's certain. Teachers.
• 41:13
  Yeah. And you're like, who the hell,
• 41:15
  They're kidding? No.
• 41:18
  And but what's interesting, you say that you gave more to the
• 41:22
  community like than your own family.
• 41:25
  And when you're giving by patrolling, like how many
• 41:28
  families are impacted? It's actually quite incredible
• 41:31
  when you think just the fact that it's, it just makes you
• 41:36
  think twice, you know, about like the things you complain
• 41:39
  about. And that's why I'm a little bit
• 41:42
  like bullish about when I see police officers, first
• 41:46
  responders, like I just, you know, people, people don't
• 41:51
  appreciate what we have. And I always want to be an
• 41:55
  advocate for just, you know, always, always showing love to
• 42:02
  our, our police officers. So, so take me through the next
• 42:07
  phase. So you're kind of learning, I
• 42:08
  mean, society's always changing, right?
• 42:12
  Like you're keeping up with, you've got kids, you're growing
• 42:16
  up, you're learning how to be a police officer, you're
• 42:19
  responsible for certain areas. Were there specific tools or
• 42:25
  coping mechanisms that helped you on the job to kind of handle
• 42:31
  the the everyday stress because you never knew what was coming
• 42:34
  your way with a call. So how do you How would you prep
• 42:38
  yourself for a typical day on the job in the early years of
• 42:41
  your career? So that's the problem and that's
• 42:45
  part of why we founded my organization.
• 42:49
  Our organization we got, we got two hours of mental health
• 42:55
  training in the Academy. Two hours.
• 42:57
  Two hours so and now we don't get you don't get you see the
• 43:04
  realm of the worst and sometimes you see the best, but you don't
• 43:10
  nobody, nobody ever called me on the no one ever called the
• 43:14
  non-emergency line or 911 to say, you know, send the officer
• 43:18
  out. So we can, you know, say thank
• 43:21
  you or we had Community Action officers that would go out and
• 43:25
  do the the public events. But for the most part, the
• 43:29
  patrol officers, they're, they're only responding because
• 43:32
  they're it's your worst day. Is that?
• 43:35
  Does that make sense? Like when?
• 43:36
  You're getting a call. It's not good like you're going
• 43:39
  and it's just not. Yeah, like some of the times I
• 43:42
  would get irritated when people would call for loud party calls
• 43:46
  on like a Sunday at like 6 in the evening and I'm like,
• 43:53
  they're having a gathering like it's only 6.
• 43:56
  It's ridiculous. I was still, I was still part,
• 43:59
  you know, I was impartial to the other people as well, right?
• 44:03
  Like it's 6, they're hanging with their family.
• 44:05
  Like that's a good thing right? Now, if it was 10:00 at night,
• 44:10
  now that's different. But like 5 in the evening, you
• 44:13
  know, I'd, I'd, I'd show up and I would tell the people, hey, I
• 44:18
  mean, good percentage of the time we didn't know who called
• 44:20
  because it was anonymous. But I'd be like, somebody's
• 44:23
  complaining about your music. I don't care that your music is
• 44:28
  loud. I obviously I don't live next to
• 44:29
  you, but I still felt a responsibility to let them know.
• 44:35
  Like, hey, I'm not just driving around looking for loud parties,
• 44:38
  right? Like, I'm not, In fact, I think
• 44:41
  you should have loud parties if you're having a good time and no
• 44:44
  one's getting hurt, right? That's a celebration.
• 44:47
  So I tried to be as impartial as possible and let people live
• 44:55
  their lives without hurting people.
• 44:58
  Right, because if you had to sum it up, what is the if, if, if an
• 45:04
  alien landed and had never heard of the word police officer?
• 45:07
  The concept what is a police officer and what is the main
• 45:11
  purpose protection of their citizens is that the is there's
• 45:16
  like a a core mission statement. In my opinion.
• 45:20
  I guess officially and in your opinion?
• 45:23
  I don't know about officially because I think every department
• 45:26
  has a different, they all have a mission statement, right?
• 45:29
  And it's all similar. But I think for me, you know, if
• 45:36
  you were asking me when I got in my patrol car, I would just, I
• 45:43
  took pride in my beat and I wanted it to be as safe an area
• 45:52
  as possible. And I wanted it to, I wanted the
• 45:56
  people to know like we would come fast if they needed us,
• 46:00
  right? But I also kind of made sure
• 46:03
  that the nefarious shit didn't happen, right?
• 46:07
  Because just like anything else, I mean, I just would think to
• 46:11
  myself like I had, you know, Julian was young then and you
• 46:15
  know, obviously I'm at work. So that kind of left my wife
• 46:19
  like a single mom because she's doing everything that a single
• 46:24
  mom would do while I was at work.
• 46:25
  She would have to go grocery shopping.
• 46:27
  She'd have to take him school shopping.
• 46:30
  And I just kind of thought to myself, you know, would I want
• 46:35
  my wife to witness a drug deal going on in front of them,
• 46:40
  right? Or would I want my son to be a
• 46:44
  victim of a crime or my mom or my dad or my aunt?
• 46:48
  So that's what I looked for, right?
• 46:52
  I wanted the, I wanted the moms and the dads in my community to
• 46:56
  feel that they could do what they needed to do and not fear
• 47:02
  danger, right? And, and that's really what I,
• 47:07
  when I was in patrol, that's what my, I thought my job was.
• 47:11
  I felt it was right. And I would, I mean, sometimes I
• 47:16
  would see a man or a woman jogging with headphones on and I
• 47:22
  would run, pull up beside him. And I'm like, take one out.
• 47:27
  Not because I thought bad things were going to happen, but
• 47:30
  they're not going to hear a car behind him, right?
• 47:32
  You're trying to prevent things that you can prevent your
• 47:35
  patrol. Yeah.
• 47:37
  And must. It must have felt really good
• 47:41
  when you helped people like that.
• 47:45
  And really, I don't know that. I don't know, that felt good.
• 47:49
  Sometimes. I sometimes I told myself, like,
• 47:52
  don't do that. It's kind of bossy.
• 47:54
  OK, right. But I wasn't trying to be bossy.
• 47:57
  I was just, I wouldn't want that to happen to anybody.
• 48:01
  Like I wouldn't want somebody out for a run to get hit from
• 48:04
  behind. They didn't hear, you know what
• 48:05
  I mean? Well.
• 48:06
  That's like being a good neighbor too, you know?
• 48:08
  Hey. Would you not say that to your
• 48:10
  husband? Totally.
• 48:11
  Or you say, hey, you got a flat tire, hey your, your trunk's
• 48:15
  open like you open into a random stranger.
• 48:16
  Hey your you know your gas tank thing is hanging out, right?
• 48:20
  Like. Same, same concept.
• 48:22
  Yes, the only difference. The only difference was a good
• 48:25
  portion of the time those people thought that I was just trying
• 48:28
  to be an ass and tell them what to.
• 48:30
  Do yeah. When I really wasn't, I wasn't.
• 48:33
  I was just trying to be nice. Right, totally.
• 48:38
  All right. So you're in the, you're in the
• 48:40
  those you've got to beat. You're patrolling on your own
• 48:45
  and we talked about that. We're going to, we're going to
• 48:47
  touch on the different phases of adversity.
• 48:50
  And obviously throughout the career of a police officer,
• 48:52
  whether you're a police officer for a handful of years or
• 48:56
  multiple decades, I don't know if there would be a day without
• 49:00
  some kind of adversity. Would you?
• 49:03
  Get a day. Every single day.
• 49:06
  Just like, so just like a a civilian, right?
• 49:10
  You have good days and you have bad days.
• 49:12
  Sure. So it's the sometimes there's
• 49:16
  just more adversity in a day of a police officer than there is a
• 49:18
  civilian, because you could probably go a couple of days
• 49:23
  like, well, we'll use your teaching time right Where there
• 49:28
  was there any time in your teaching time where you thought,
• 49:33
  fuck, these kids are driving me crazy like I, I can't.
• 49:36
  Yeah. Well, you talked about, you
• 49:38
  talked about like Julian and Mick had to be get on your
• 49:41
  nerves at some. Point you know what they were
• 49:43
  very honestly they were very respectful.
• 49:46
  Never, it was very never disrespectful.
• 49:50
  Like they would never be like, you know, And so they knew the
• 49:53
  line where I think they, they just had a, there was a baseline
• 49:57
  of respect. But there was definitely days
• 49:58
  when I had to send some kids to the office or like a parent
• 50:03
  wasn't so nice when you're just like, I don't know, maybe I'm
• 50:05
  like not good at this or you start to like, I don't know.
• 50:10
  You know what? Did I handle that right?
• 50:11
  But you can't like, show weakness in front of the whole
• 50:13
  class because you're like and it's already done so.
• 50:17
  And so same thing, but as a police officer, you're, you're
• 50:21
  just, it's, it's magnified by like 100.
• 50:25
  So if, if I did a shift and didn't respond to a dead body,
• 50:34
  then it was, that was a good day.
• 50:37
  I mean, I, I responded to injuries all the time.
• 50:40
  It, it was irrelevant like, but if it wasn't a death, then it
• 50:45
  was a good day, right? No, nobody got killed on my
• 50:48
  shift and and I survived then it was a good day, right?
• 50:55
  And those did happen. Like, you know, there was a lot
• 50:59
  of times it would happen two or three days in a row and you were
• 51:02
  like, yeah, this is good. But you get cynical and then you
• 51:06
  start thinking fucking shit's going to happen on the back end
• 51:08
  here on Friday and Saturday night.
• 51:12
  And so you just get you get cynical.
• 51:16
  But to your, to your question. So I'm in patrol for five years,
• 51:25
  four, I think it was like maybe 4.
• 51:28
  So I learned my beat and I'm a big believer that you need that
• 51:32
  about that many years in patrol before you start moving around
• 51:37
  because you really got to get your, your teeth sunk into
• 51:39
  understanding people. And, and then I, so growing up
• 51:48
  in Maryville, right, I had a lot of friends, some family members
• 51:53
  that were involved in gangs and drugs.
• 51:56
  And to me, pre law enforcement, I, I didn't really particularly
• 52:03
  see an issue with people doing drugs and joining gangs.
• 52:07
  It's their own life, right? And so to me, I was like, if
• 52:11
  that dude wants to do drugs, why fuck bother him, you know,
• 52:14
  right. And.
• 52:16
  Live and let live, right? Yeah, stay out of it.
• 52:20
  So I was like, you know, whatever, but then I started,
• 52:23
  you know, when I got into to law enforcement, when I got into the
• 52:27
  jails and working detention, that's when I realized that, you
• 52:32
  know, those type in that select group of people, they're just
• 52:37
  violent. And I remember the first time
• 52:42
  that I was listening to phone calls, we were, I was working in
• 52:45
  the jails in the intelligence unit and we were listening to
• 52:51
  phone calls. And there were some gang members
• 52:52
  that were trying to orchestrate a, a drive by in a hit.
• 52:57
  And they, the one guy inside the jail that was locked up had
• 53:02
  ordered the hit. And the guy on the outside was
• 53:05
  supposed to do the hit. And they were on the phone and
• 53:09
  the guy calls the shooter and says, you know, did you do the
• 53:13
  job? Or I don't remember what code
• 53:15
  they were using. And he's like, now we couldn't
• 53:17
  do it, man, because you know, the, the guy that they were
• 53:20
  trying to hit was outside with his wife and, and his small
• 53:24
  child. And he's like, hey, you know,
• 53:27
  we, we did, we passed on it because the wife and kid were
• 53:31
  out there. And the guy that was locked up
• 53:33
  said, I don't care. You get that motherfucker,
• 53:36
  right? And at that moment, that's when
• 53:39
  I realized like, all right, all bets are off at this point.
• 53:43
  Like this dude didn't even realize that it was a problem
• 53:47
  that that there was a wife and small child.
• 53:51
  And at the time, I think that the little boy was probably no
• 53:53
  more than two or three years old.
• 53:56
  And they wanted him to spray up the house and hit the target.
• 53:58
  So that's when I was like, Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah.
• 54:02
  Like this isn't just gang members fighting gang members
• 54:05
  like they're crossing lines. And so when I was in patrol, I
• 54:11
  had growing up in Maryville, I had a lot of knowledge of gangs.
• 54:15
  I had grown up around them. OK, like I said, I have family
• 54:18
  members, friends that were gang members.
• 54:21
  I have friends that were doing life.
• 54:24
  So, you know, I, I was like, you know, I'm, I'm going to become a
• 54:28
  gang detective. You know, I was, I was going to
• 54:31
  try to go to the SWAT team, but I'm afraid of heights and they
• 54:34
  do some weird shit from the helicopter and rappel off
• 54:38
  buildings and shit. So I knew where I stood.
• 54:41
  So again. Gang is still pretty
• 54:43
  intimidating to me, but you know.
• 54:46
  But. Oh wow.
• 54:49
  But again, this goes back to and and I I left a comment on one on
• 54:53
  your on one of your podcasts. Yeah, yeah.
• 54:56
  And you know, I think you had said during Julian's podcast or
• 55:00
  one of them that you were saying like, you know, hey, you raised
• 55:03
  your kid good or but again, that's what I was saying about
• 55:09
  teachers, right? If you have a good teacher,
• 55:12
  Julian was fortunate enough to have so many good teachers,
• 55:16
  right And so although we would like my wife, I, I can't take a
• 55:21
  lot of that credit cuz like I said, I was working, but that's
• 55:24
  a that's why it's important it that statement of it takes a
• 55:27
  community to raise a child really means something, right
• 55:31
  Because once we send them to you, we're hoping that you're
• 55:35
  going to mold him similar to your, your core values, right
• 55:41
  learning, building the brain, stuff like that yeah.
• 55:44
  So it's I guess in unspoken rules, it's a team effort,
• 55:48
  right? You got mom, you got dad, you
• 55:50
  got teacher. All these people are playing a
• 55:53
  huge factor in my kids life, right?
• 55:57
  And there was many times that that I would ask or talk to him
• 56:02
  about school and he'd be like, oh, you know, miss so and so was
• 56:06
  like this or she said this and I did not intervene.
• 56:09
  I never countered anything that his teachers taught him.
• 56:14
  Never. The only time that I ever
• 56:17
  probably countered was if I didn't understand that new
• 56:21
  fucking math or whatever it was. Oh gosh, yes.
• 56:24
  And then I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about, just
• 56:26
  memorize your fucking multiplications like I did.
• 56:29
  It's awesome. But other than that, everybody
• 56:32
  was on the same page. Yeah.
• 56:34
  So going back when I was getting ready to apply to gang detective
• 56:38
  now, now you're, you know, and your audience knows that one, I
• 56:43
  was not a student. I, I did not like school.
• 56:48
  And then I take, then I get in law enforcement where there's a
• 56:51
  bunch of tests and learning and shit like that.
• 56:53
  But this was something I wanted to learn.
• 56:56
  So I had an eagerness to learn. So once I was at that point
• 57:01
  where it was time to test, I had to take a test.
• 57:03
  I had to study for the test policies, procedures.
• 57:07
  There was a lot of things, oral interviews.
• 57:10
  So again, I find myself starting over, right because I go from a
• 57:16
  civilian to a detention officer, from a detention officer to a
• 57:20
  police officer, police officer, patrolman to a detective.
• 57:24
  So constantly, constantly evolving, constantly learning.
• 57:31
  So when I was just about ready to throw my hat in the ring to
• 57:37
  become a detective, that's when I started to realize I should
• 57:39
  have fucking paid attention in school.
• 57:42
  And on a side note, this, this is a true story.
• 57:47
  One day my wife and I are at, I think we're at Fry's.
• 57:51
  And I look over and I see my high school English teacher.
• 57:59
  And I was so mean to her, like I showed up late to class.
• 58:07
  I ignored her. I like I was just it was bad.
• 58:12
  You're a punk. And yeah, 100%.
• 58:15
  And I remember I walked over to her and I asked her.
• 58:19
  I said, aren't you Miss so and so?
• 58:21
  And she's like, I am. And I said I was one of your
• 58:24
  students in high school. And obviously you have a shit
• 58:28
  ton of students. Yeah, yeah.
• 58:30
  And she's like, yeah. And I was like, you probably
• 58:34
  don't remember who I was. And she didn't.
• 58:37
  And I said, but I need to tell you something.
• 58:39
  I said I'm a police officer now. And I, I just made detective.
• 58:44
  And I said, and I just made detective.
• 58:46
  And I said I want to apologize. And she's like, for what?
• 58:51
  And I said I should have listened and I should have shown
• 58:55
  you more respect because I got to tell you not not
• 59:02
  understanding school and being a police officer and writing the
• 59:05
  reports that I had to write. I should have paid more
• 59:09
  attention to vowels. Phillip all nouns like it's.
• 59:14
  Important. All that shit, like commas, like
• 59:17
  all that shit I should have listened to, right?
• 59:19
  But I didn't. But I didn't know then, right?
• 59:23
  And you know, I remember, I even, she laughed.
• 59:26
  I chuckled. I said, you know, I didn't, I
• 59:29
  didn't understand what a compound sent.
• 59:31
  Like I didn't understand any of that shit.
• 59:34
  But I do now, right? Because now I have to do this
• 59:37
  every day. The most amount of reports I
• 59:40
  ever had in a day as a patrol officer.
• 59:43
  I think I had 18 reports in one day that I had to write and you
• 59:49
  want to talk about. Those are critical to and.
• 59:52
  Now I'm writing reports with, you know, just everything.
• 59:57
  Adjectives. I mean, one time my sergeant's
• 59:59
  like, do you even know what a fucking adjective is?
• 1:00:01
  I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
• 1:00:03
  Look. I'm just trying to write stuff
• 1:00:06
  OK? Yeah, like it's I should have
• 1:00:09
  listened and I and I apologize and I said I am so sorry.
• 1:00:12
  Granted she didn't know who I was, but I felt that that I at
• 1:00:16
  least odor that right and and I should have listened.
• 1:00:20
  So if your, your audience is listening and you want to be any
• 1:00:25
  kind of professional, listen to your fucking teachers, man.
• 1:00:27
  Like that's where it starts, right?
• 1:00:31
  So as I test for detective, I have to do all that.
• 1:00:39
  I get selected, I become a gang detective.
• 1:00:42
  And now this is where this is like being a detective is like
• 1:00:49
  next level. Yeah.
• 1:00:51
  Right. You're you're you're writing
• 1:00:54
  non-stop, right. So I was there's two types.
• 1:00:58
  Yeah. Tell me if if someone wants to
• 1:00:59
  kind of know, tell me about the fundamentals of a detective
• 1:01:04
  versus well. There's like 2, there's two
• 1:01:05
  types. There's criminal investigators,
• 1:01:07
  detectives, right? So those are the guys that do
• 1:01:09
  like homicides. Yep, burglaries, robberies,
• 1:01:14
  domestic violence, fraud, all that.
• 1:01:19
  That's all criminal investigation.
• 1:01:21
  So like CID, OK. And then there's Special
• 1:01:25
  Investigations, which is like narcotics, undercover work, vice
• 1:01:31
  gangs, organized crime. Got it.
• 1:01:34
  Completely different. Like Hell's Angels?
• 1:01:37
  I read a book on that. Like Hell's Angels?
• 1:01:39
  Yeah, like J Dobbins. Oh I love that book so much.
• 1:01:42
  Love it. So that's so I did not want to
• 1:01:47
  be a criminal investigator, right?
• 1:01:50
  Because to me, the criminal investigator was the nerds, the,
• 1:01:55
  the smart kids, right? They were the smart kids because
• 1:01:58
  they knew how to write good reports.
• 1:02:01
  They were analytical, right? So, and I was not any of that.
• 1:02:06
  Sure, any of that. I wanted to get into the shit
• 1:02:10
  that like nobody wanted to get into, right?
• 1:02:14
  And so I have a lot of respect for those criminal investigators
• 1:02:17
  because their brains function on a whole different level than
• 1:02:22
  mine. Yeah, right.
• 1:02:23
  Analytics, math. If you're if you're a Recon guy
• 1:02:27
  that does accident reconstruction, you're doing
• 1:02:30
  math. Wow, I.
• 1:02:32
  Want no part of? Bowls of Bolt like all the
• 1:02:35
  different Senate right like it's.
• 1:02:37
  Yeah, fascinating. No part of that.
• 1:02:39
  I just want you to tell me to go get the bad guy and I'll bring
• 1:02:41
  them back like. Because the we need those minds,
• 1:02:44
  right? You need those which that, that
• 1:02:47
  to me is very difficult too. Like I just can't.
• 1:02:49
  I can't do that. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:51
  And so it's funny, everything has its place and you should put
• 1:02:55
  the right people in the right place.
• 1:02:57
  And being that I was not highly educated and I probably didn't
• 1:03:03
  know the difference between an adverb and a verb, I, I probably
• 1:03:08
  should not be investigating, you know, fraud crimes.
• 1:03:13
  But that's so I knew where I wanted to go.
• 1:03:17
  I became a gang detective and you know, now my only job is to
• 1:03:26
  find bad people. I, I'm no longer patrolling the
• 1:03:30
  community, like I said before, looking out for the, the average
• 1:03:34
  citizen. My job is to go find the bad
• 1:03:38
  people that do the bad things, right.
• 1:03:41
  So I'm, you know, we're responding to drive by
• 1:03:43
  shootings, We're responding to homicides, stabbings, assaults,
• 1:03:48
  AG assaults. So at this point, everything is
• 1:03:53
  violence. Like I don't just respond to
• 1:03:56
  like in patrol. You can respond to something
• 1:03:59
  from a lost kid to a murder, right?
• 1:04:03
  Right, right. Right.
• 1:04:04
  As a detective, you're very specialized in what you respond
• 1:04:08
  to. Homicide detectives only deal
• 1:04:10
  with homicides and death. Robbery, robbery, that's all
• 1:04:15
  they're dealing with. Burglaries, burglaries, that's
• 1:04:17
  all they're dealing with. So they're, it's like a doctor,
• 1:04:19
  right? You got a primary.
• 1:04:21
  You're all heart surgeries, right?
• 1:04:23
  Or. You've got, yeah, you got a
• 1:04:24
  brain surgeon, got it. So the same.
• 1:04:27
  So now I'm dealing with violent offenders, repeat offenders, sex
• 1:04:32
  offenders, gang members. 99% of the stuff that we did was all
• 1:04:37
  gang related. If it was a gang shooting, if it
• 1:04:41
  was a gang murder, we work with homicide.
• 1:04:45
  And so that's really about the time that that my job became
• 1:04:55
  everything. So that's when I was like, I I'm
• 1:04:59
  going to work, I'm going to work, I'm going to work, I'm
• 1:05:01
  going. So I got even further back,
• 1:05:04
  right, and I think, let me see what grade did Julian, How old
• 1:05:08
  was Julian when you met him? He was 12.
• 1:05:10
  It was 2005, 2006, so he was like 12.
• 1:05:15
  OK, so I so we'll, we'll catch up there two OK, so.
• 1:05:20
  What were you doing when I was teaching Julian?
• 1:05:22
  Yeah. So I became a gang detective in
• 1:05:26
  like 2003, late 2003, somewhere on there.
• 1:05:29
  OK. No, no, it might have been
• 1:05:31
  sooner, but anyways, you'll see why in a minute.
• 1:05:33
  So. So let me give you an example of
• 1:05:37
  like adversity and how you just kind of forget about it after a
• 1:05:43
  while. So I became a gang detective and
• 1:05:47
  I'll say like 2000, end of 2002, 2003 did that.
• 1:05:53
  And then I decided that I was going to start.
• 1:05:57
  Well, I didn't decide, but I got asked to join a newly formed
• 1:06:03
  organized crime Bureau and I had the ability to work with
• 1:06:08
  somebody who I admired completely.
• 1:06:10
  I mean, this guy was a phenomenal detective, phenomenal
• 1:06:14
  cop, and I had the opportunity to go work with him.
• 1:06:20
  And you were asking about like, I think you asked about mental
• 1:06:23
  health and the change. So to give you an example of how
• 1:06:28
  much I had changed in that time period, right?
• 1:06:31
  So when so I, so going back real quick, I got selected for that
• 1:06:37
  unit and then I went in. It was a select few of us.
• 1:06:42
  It was like 6 of us, seven of us, I think maybe six or eight
• 1:06:46
  of us. And we were going to work
• 1:06:49
  undercover and work certain types of criminals.
• 1:06:53
  And so Julian was born in 93. I was not a police officer.
• 1:07:00
  And this is going to touch on your mental health.
• 1:07:02
  I wasn't a police officer. I still have the right emotion
• 1:07:06
  for the right response, right? I'm still somewhat I was, I was,
• 1:07:11
  I was normal, right? So Julian is born in 93 and the,
• 1:07:20
  the, the day he's born, this going to show you the difference
• 1:07:23
  in mental health. The day he's born.
• 1:07:27
  My he's born. I, I, I hold him.
• 1:07:31
  They hand him to me and I'm holding him.
• 1:07:35
  Then I give them to my wife who's with her mom in in the
• 1:07:38
  delivery room and I go outside and I cry with my dad, right?
• 1:07:45
  Because that's the normal response for the normal
• 1:07:48
  situation, right? Happiness.
• 1:07:51
  Sure. Well, now Fast forward almost 10
• 1:07:54
  years now, I've been in law enforcement since 2000.
• 1:07:59
  Like 99, two thousand. I'm a, I'm a gang detective.
• 1:08:03
  I've already been through the Academy, I've already been
• 1:08:06
  through FTO, I've already been a patrol officer.
• 1:08:08
  Now I'm a detective. And in 2004 my youngest is born.
• 1:08:14
  So there's about a 10 year difference between Julian and my
• 1:08:18
  and my youngest Adriel. And when Adriel's born, I'm
• 1:08:22
  working as an undercover detective in, in this organized
• 1:08:27
  crime Bureau. So when Adriel's born and this
• 1:08:31
  is going to lead into your mental health and how it, how it
• 1:08:34
  affects us and adversity. When Adriel's born, he he's born
• 1:08:39
  preemie. So he's already right.
• 1:08:43
  You know, preemie, they're, they're going to have to go.
• 1:08:45
  With. You right, he's all this stuff's
• 1:08:48
  happening he's in the middle of him being born.
• 1:08:53
  I'm negotiating a drug deal instead of focusing on the my
• 1:09:00
  child's birthright. So my son, my youngest is born,
• 1:09:06
  He's born, he's in the NICU and I'm negotiating a drug deal with
• 1:09:11
  drug dealers. Like I didn't have the same
• 1:09:13
  response. Do you see the difference?
• 1:09:15
  Like, yeah, well, you can see where just in the course of that
• 1:09:19
  time, our mental health is it's, I don't know if it's mental
• 1:09:23
  health, but we've we've kind of become jagged or jaded or
• 1:09:28
  hardened, if you will. Yes.
• 1:09:30
  And that job, so you said you were, you were with Julian in
• 1:09:34
  2000? 2005, 2006 like fall 2005 to
• 1:09:39
  like summer 2006, yeah. Right.
• 1:09:41
  So that would make sense because part of the reason I don't
• 1:09:46
  remember you is if I was doing a drug deal when my son was born
• 1:09:51
  in that time frame, I was already on that organized crime
• 1:09:57
  unit and I would have never, I would have never gone to
• 1:10:02
  anything you did with him or. Gone to the school?
• 1:10:05
  No. Yeah.
• 1:10:06
  Like it just wouldn't have, yeah.
• 1:10:09
  At that point there, there wouldn't have been like if it
• 1:10:13
  would have, I was working so much that if there would have
• 1:10:18
  been a parent teacher conference or there would have been
• 1:10:21
  something where I would have met you.
• 1:10:24
  I worked Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and I had
• 1:10:30
  Wednesday, Thursday. No, no, no, no.
• 1:10:32
  Let me. Hold on, I'm trying to remember
• 1:10:34
  my schedule. So we worked.
• 1:10:37
  We worked Saturday. Sunday.
• 1:10:39
  Monday. Tuesday we had Thursday, Friday,
• 1:10:42
  no Wednesday, Thursday, Friday off.
• 1:10:45
  So if it didn't fall in that time period, I, I, I wouldn't
• 1:10:50
  have gone. But you know, it's funny because
• 1:10:53
  Julian showed or I think you posted a picture where he's in
• 1:10:57
  the classroom and I remember him getting ready for that day, like
• 1:11:02
  the the flashback Friday. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:04
  Where he had his braid his. Hair and shit, yeah, I.
• 1:11:07
  May I may have had to have something to do with that one,
• 1:11:09
  but but I didn't go. I didn't get I didn't get.
• 1:11:15
  So before I was a police officer, I can tell you Julian's
• 1:11:18
  teachers names you. Yeah, but after like.
• 1:11:22
  There's only one teacher. I remember and it's sad, but I,
• 1:11:27
  I before, as we move forward before, I have to thank you
• 1:11:31
  because he's one of the teachers you that he never talked like
• 1:11:36
  didn't stop talking about like he was excited to talk to you.
• 1:11:40
  Like that's why it's important. Going back to the impact, you
• 1:11:45
  impacted him just as much as his parents did.
• 1:11:49
  Those teachers, when you talk about adversity, you know, he
• 1:11:54
  still had, he's not good at math, right.
• 1:11:58
  There's there's a lot of things that I would have, you know, his
• 1:12:01
  parents wouldn't have seen. Yeah.
• 1:12:03
  So, but going back to that, I would, I was not there like
• 1:12:09
  between that time frame. I I was, but you know what you
• 1:12:13
  were doing? You were protecting the
• 1:12:15
  surrounding area and trying. To diminish and, and get rid of
• 1:12:19
  gang violence, right? So that our school, I mean, you
• 1:12:22
  were your calling was in service of, you know, protecting the
• 1:12:28
  community that we lived in so that I could safely teach.
• 1:12:33
  Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess you could put that
• 1:12:35
  argument. There, but oh for.
• 1:12:36
  Sure, yeah, but but again, missed.
• 1:12:39
  Out on. Those times like I'm, I did.
• 1:12:42
  Not get and they did. Not get right like your kids
• 1:12:47
  Julian and eight-year old. They did not get their dad.
• 1:12:50
  There. So, and not that, so I, I, I
• 1:12:54
  can't say that I'm complaining, but you know, that's, that's one
• 1:12:59
  of the things that like, I try to, when people ask me, I'm
• 1:13:02
  like, you know, if a police officer shows up to your house
• 1:13:07
  in an emergency, you have to remember his family is, doesn't
• 1:13:11
  have them there or her there. Exactly right.
• 1:13:14
  So during that time I had 0. Adversity.
• 1:13:18
  I love my. Job almost to a fault.
• 1:13:22
  Now you got to tell me you're an undercover.
• 1:13:25
  OK, so, so that tell me what that means as much as you can
• 1:13:30
  share. You were undercover in the gang
• 1:13:33
  unit? Yeah, so that so.
• 1:13:35
  Well, originally I was a gang detective, so I wasn't.
• 1:13:37
  Undercover. You weren't OK.
• 1:13:39
  We were all black and we went out and we dealed with gang
• 1:13:42
  members. And then, and then I got
• 1:13:45
  selected to go to the organized crime unit that they were
• 1:13:47
  starting and I was with, with the officer that I admired
• 1:13:51
  tremendously. To this day, I, I, I mean that
• 1:13:54
  that officer is still to this day like, I know he wouldn't
• 1:13:59
  like me to say it, so I won't say it, but I admire him
• 1:14:02
  tremendously. But so I get selected.
• 1:14:10
  We I go undercover and. We start dealing with.
• 1:14:14
  You know, drug dealers. I changed my identity, which was
• 1:14:18
  a whole nother realm of itself. Wow, that's something that maybe
• 1:14:22
  Julian could answer. I mean, Oh my gosh, I didn't
• 1:14:25
  look like myself at. All like.
• 1:14:28
  I put on a lot of weight. I'm fat now but I think the
• 1:14:31
  camera adds like 30 lbs. I was not aware you went
• 1:14:35
  undercover. This is This is.
• 1:14:37
  This is like, wow. But yeah, so.
• 1:14:41
  So you know, and then. I had to, you know, I.
• 1:14:43
  Told my wife, I'm like, look, if we're out somewhere and I tell
• 1:14:47
  you to leave, you got to leave like there was it's, you know,
• 1:14:52
  I, I tend to say sometimes and I have in the past like my family
• 1:14:57
  and I'm not looking for sympathy.
• 1:14:59
  I'm just kind of put it into perspective, like my family,
• 1:15:02
  like they serve, they serve a sentence for no crime, right?
• 1:15:06
  Because a lot of the stuff they had to put up with was because
• 1:15:09
  of my job. So having them, not only was I
• 1:15:16
  not present, but you know, I, they still had to stop what they
• 1:15:21
  were doing at some point, right? Because I'm like, Hey, we can't
• 1:15:23
  go here, right? Because I, I couldn't, I, it's
• 1:15:28
  not like I could change my identity and be back on Monday
• 1:15:30
  and, and be back in the same identity.
• 1:15:33
  You know, I remember one time my wife will get a kick out of this
• 1:15:37
  one, but my wife was running to target and I was, I said, oh,
• 1:15:44
  oh, I'll go with you. And she's like, no, no, no, no.
• 1:15:47
  And I'm like, what? Why, Why not?
• 1:15:49
  And she's like, well, every time you go fucking, you know, they
• 1:15:53
  fucking follow us through the lot.
• 1:15:56
  You know, security watches us. And so I will say this, and
• 1:16:02
  it's, it's twofold. So I and, and this, this is
• 1:16:09
  something that has to do with adversity as well.
• 1:16:11
  I guess maybe you can connect it or draw the line.
• 1:16:13
  But so when I went undercover, I looked like a gang member, like
• 1:16:19
  100% look like a gang member. And there's something, So what
• 1:16:25
  I'll tell your, your, your, your viewers, which is it has to do
• 1:16:31
  with adversity. But from a different side.
• 1:16:33
  When I went undercover, I realized just how much people
• 1:16:40
  will judge someone based on their appearance, based on their
• 1:16:45
  tattoos. And I, I, I, I never, I'm not
• 1:16:51
  saying I'm perfect, but I grew up on a bad side of town.
• 1:16:53
  So I never saw that part of it. But when I went undercover and I
• 1:16:57
  and I, I can't stress this enough for the people in law
• 1:17:00
  enforcement, you, you, you sacrifice your family time to go
• 1:17:06
  protect the. Greater good which?
• 1:17:07
  Is society. But at the same time, don't
• 1:17:11
  forget, even the criminals that you put in jail are still human
• 1:17:15
  beings and they need to be treated like human beings,
• 1:17:18
  right? Right.
• 1:17:19
  You need to respect them if if they show you.
• 1:17:21
  Respect and they're and they're not.
• 1:17:23
  You you need to respect them, right?
• 1:17:25
  And I'll, I'll give you a couple of examples.
• 1:17:28
  Yeah. So when I first went undercover,
• 1:17:30
  I looked like a gang member 100%.
• 1:17:33
  And I went into a, to a super, to a like a like a quick Mart or
• 1:17:39
  whatever. And nobody would stand next.
• 1:17:46
  To me like I was looking for a. Drink and like everyone avoided
• 1:17:49
  me. Like everyone avoided me and I
• 1:17:53
  was looking for something and I hear this voice and I was like,
• 1:17:59
  he's like, hey, are you looking for something?
• 1:18:01
  And I look over and it's this guy and he's got tattoos on his
• 1:18:05
  face and all over his neck. And I'm like, I'm just looking
• 1:18:09
  for this. And he's like, oh, it's right
• 1:18:10
  here, man. And he hands.
• 1:18:12
  He was the only person that would help me, right?
• 1:18:16
  And I thought that was kind of fucked up, like, and I started
• 1:18:18
  thinking to myself, I'm like, man, did I do I do that shit?
• 1:18:21
  Do I judge? Right?
• 1:18:22
  Yeah. And I'm like, no, that that
• 1:18:24
  shit. 'S not cool man.
• 1:18:25
  Like. That dude was just minding his
• 1:18:27
  own business and he took the time to help me out.
• 1:18:30
  No one else would help me. No one else would help me,
• 1:18:33
  right? And so when I talk about
• 1:18:35
  adversity, it's not just a one way street, right?
• 1:18:36
  It's not just for police or civilians.
• 1:18:39
  Like, I still firmly believe that, you know, you, you wait
• 1:18:45
  and you judge the person. And one of the other, one of the
• 1:18:49
  other things that I learned and I, this will stay with me for as
• 1:18:52
  long as I live. And I struggled with it for a
• 1:18:56
  very long time because I don't know if there's really a good
• 1:18:58
  answer, but I was doing an undercover deal one day and we
• 1:19:04
  were standing outside. It was about 8:00 or 9:00 at
• 1:19:07
  night. And I was standing outside of,
• 1:19:10
  of a, of a target. And you remember the old red
• 1:19:14
  box? The red box like the movies.
• 1:19:17
  Yeah. So I.
• 1:19:18
  Was posted up or I was standing by.
• 1:19:21
  That by that machine and a car pulls up.
• 1:19:27
  It wasn't, it wasn't who we were looking for, but I was waiting
• 1:19:29
  for the deal to go down and a car pulls up.
• 1:19:33
  And as the car pulls up, it's a, it's a, I'm assuming husband and
• 1:19:37
  wife, but it was a couple. And the couple pulls in.
• 1:19:42
  And so they pull in the parking spot.
• 1:19:43
  They're facing the red box and I'm standing next to the red
• 1:19:47
  box. So they're facing me.
• 1:19:50
  OK, They they pull in and as they.
• 1:19:53
  Pull in the husband. Jumps out and he runs into the
• 1:19:56
  target, right And he he runs into the target and I'm not even
• 1:20:02
  paying attention to that car. OK so I've got a hearing device
• 1:20:10
  on so I can hear the the other detectives, but they don't they
• 1:20:14
  don't know they don't know, right.
• 1:20:16
  Yeah, OK. So.
• 1:20:18
  They're they're there. So there's probably at least 10
• 1:20:25
  detectives, police. Detectives in that parking lot.
• 1:20:28
  Undercover OK and we're setting up this deal and that car pulls
• 1:20:33
  up, the husband gets out, runs into the to the target and that
• 1:20:38
  leaving the wife inside in the car.
• 1:20:41
  OK, And I'm not paying attention to her.
• 1:20:44
  And as I'm standing there, I hear this noise.
• 1:20:49
  It's like it's it's like a hard, hard slap, like a pop.
• 1:20:54
  And I was like, what the fuck? What was that?
• 1:20:57
  Right? Well, now I get it.
• 1:21:00
  So don't judge me. I don't have your people judge
• 1:21:02
  me. But she what she did was she
• 1:21:06
  locked the door on her car because she was right.
• 1:21:11
  She saw you because she saw me. Uh huh.
• 1:21:14
  And I was like. Fuck like, like she's the safest
• 1:21:19
  woman in the world right now with 10 detectives around her in
• 1:21:21
  the park. She has no idea, but she doesn't
• 1:21:24
  know. But she doesn't know.
• 1:21:25
  But she had judged me. Right.
• 1:21:28
  She had judged me by my appearance.
• 1:21:31
  Uh huh. OK by my clothing and at the
• 1:21:35
  time I did not have my tattoos right here.
• 1:21:38
  OK, so I was just. Solely based on.
• 1:21:42
  Just straight up, yeah, right. And I did.
• 1:21:45
  I wasn't I? Not that it would matter, but I
• 1:21:48
  just. Had regular clothes on, just
• 1:21:50
  dicky pants or dicky shorts or something with with a shirt.
• 1:21:54
  OK, right. And I was like, man, that's kind
• 1:21:58
  of fucked up, you know what I mean?
• 1:22:00
  Like, yeah, no, I understand safety, right?
• 1:22:03
  There's no indication that that would be.
• 1:22:05
  Yeah, like it didn't seem I'm. Just like so then I started to
• 1:22:08
  realize like, hey yo. Like what about these people
• 1:22:12
  that are trying to rehabilitate? Themselves later on.
• 1:22:15
  In life, like what, what adversity?
• 1:22:17
  I didn't think it at the time adversity, but I'm looking at it
• 1:22:19
  now and I'm like, that's what they're dealing with, right?
• 1:22:22
  And and what if you're you know he's waiting for his daughter
• 1:22:26
  to. Come come out and get a stuffed
• 1:22:27
  animal and like, you're judged. You're judged.
• 1:22:29
  Yeah, you're just automatically I was.
• 1:22:33
  On clothing alone, I apparently drew some fear in her and she
• 1:22:39
  had locked the door on. And I get it.
• 1:22:41
  I mean, I would tell my wife to do the same thing, but that was
• 1:22:45
  really the first time. Well, I started thinking like,
• 1:22:48
  that was the first time that I was like, man, like this dude,
• 1:22:54
  how many guys did I did I pass in my lifetime?
• 1:22:57
  Or, and I think to myself, like just because he's dressed that
• 1:23:00
  way, he's going to, you know, that's fucked up.
• 1:23:03
  And you could say the opposite too, where just because a guy's
• 1:23:06
  in a suit. And a nice car doesn't mean he's
• 1:23:08
  a good person or a woman that yeah, doesn't, you know, look at
• 1:23:14
  Richard Ramirez. He was a good looking guy.
• 1:23:16
  He's a serial killer, right? Right.
• 1:23:18
  So like, you know. With that, how did you what,
• 1:23:25
  what happened with that particular drug deal?
• 1:23:27
  Like most of the times. Were you able to complete the
• 1:23:29
  mission and how did you get your how did you not?
• 1:23:32
  I read the J Dobbins book Infiltrating Hell's Angels, and
• 1:23:38
  you have to take on that identity, right?
• 1:23:41
  That that's challenging in itself.
• 1:23:45
  And then how do you get your How?
• 1:23:47
  Did you get? Yourself calm or in that state?
• 1:23:51
  And did you have any training or was it just figuring it out?
• 1:23:54
  No, I mean, we had training. I mean, we, we definitely had.
• 1:23:58
  When you're a detective, you go through a advanced detective
• 1:24:01
  school or advanced undercover school but like to assume the
• 1:24:04
  identity of a gang member. You probably relied on your
• 1:24:07
  knowledge. Too right.
• 1:24:08
  Of like, yeah, I mean, I, I grew up around it, so it was a lot
• 1:24:12
  easier for me. Yeah, but you know, I you just,
• 1:24:18
  it sounds weird. But.
• 1:24:21
  You know when I so even before I was undercover, even before I
• 1:24:25
  was undercover when I left, remember when I when I let, when
• 1:24:31
  I became a police? Officer your.
• 1:24:33
  Identity gets kind of stripped from you in a way because I I
• 1:24:37
  went from being at home, I was dad to going to work and I was
• 1:24:43
  officer. Nobody called me by my.
• 1:24:45
  First name, nobody called me dad.
• 1:24:47
  They called me Officer or Sir, right.
• 1:24:50
  So that's already built up. And I know it's a respect thing
• 1:24:53
  and I get it, right. I call doctors.
• 1:24:55
  Doctors because they earned a degree.
• 1:24:57
  Sure, right. Teacher, if you're if you're a
• 1:25:00
  professor, professor, right, I get it.
• 1:25:02
  But I'm sure it's no different for me than it would be for you.
• 1:25:06
  If you know, when I go to parent teacher conference, I'm
• 1:25:10
  respecting you because you earn that position.
• 1:25:12
  I I call you by your last name as a as a sign of respect.
• 1:25:17
  Yeah, right. Because you earn that.
• 1:25:20
  Sure. And, and as a as a police
• 1:25:22
  officer, that's what would happen.
• 1:25:23
  I would leave the house and I would, I would leave dad at the
• 1:25:27
  house and I would become the officer.
• 1:25:31
  So the same was true when you worked undercover, right?
• 1:25:34
  Right. I would leave the house.
• 1:25:36
  And when I would leave the house, it I just, I don't want
• 1:25:42
  to say forgot, but I, that was there.
• 1:25:44
  I turned it off. Yeah.
• 1:25:45
  You make the switch, Yeah. And that's a that's.
• 1:25:48
  Another thing we can touch. On when we get to that point
• 1:25:52
  where what? What fucks you up in the long
• 1:25:56
  run and how our organization started and why it started.
• 1:25:59
  Yeah. So you're in the gang unit?
• 1:26:04
  Now, I grew up in Southern California.
• 1:26:08
  I was born in 81. And so I do remember we would go
• 1:26:11
  to Raider games when I was in middle school because we knew
• 1:26:14
  someone in the ticket office. And so we'd go to LA.
• 1:26:17
  And I do remember driving through some pretty rough
• 1:26:19
  neighborhoods and I remember just being like, holy shit, what
• 1:26:22
  part of Southern LA? First of all, that's what I want
• 1:26:25
  to know. Well, I was from.
• 1:26:26
  Irvine, but we went to LA Raider.
• 1:26:28
  Games back in the day. And I remember I was, I was like
• 1:26:36
  in the suburbs. And so it was.
• 1:26:38
  I remember being in 7th grade and being like, damn, like, you
• 1:26:42
  know, we're not in Kansas. Anymore and I wanted my.
• 1:26:45
  Dad saying, Hey, Bree, look around, you want to complain?
• 1:26:49
  Like being like look around next time you want to complain and
• 1:26:53
  being like, what the fuck? And now I remember like the
• 1:26:58
  Crips and the Bloods, just hearing about that in the 90s.
• 1:27:00
  And like that game stuff in Arizona is in every state.
• 1:27:06
  Are there different gangs? Are there sort of connections to
• 1:27:10
  how does that work? There's some connections, but
• 1:27:14
  it's I mean. Individuals.
• 1:27:16
  My specialty. My specialty.
• 1:27:18
  When? When?
• 1:27:19
  I focus. My focus was California gang
• 1:27:21
  members. I did local gang members, but I
• 1:27:24
  also did prison gang members too.
• 1:27:27
  And so I did a lot of like you say, Irvine, like I I almost
• 1:27:32
  kind of. It's not that Irvine doesn't
• 1:27:34
  have gang members. Oh no, it was very safe.
• 1:27:36
  Yeah, No, I'm saying like when I would.
• 1:27:38
  Drive through it was such a contrast.
• 1:27:40
  To what I grew up. In right, but like and that's
• 1:27:43
  kind of so going back to like and and.
• 1:27:46
  Here's another. I don't know if this would be
• 1:27:48
  adversity, but, you know, going back to what I just told you
• 1:27:52
  about with, you know, judging somebody, right?
• 1:27:56
  I grew up in Maryville. We didn't have the most amount
• 1:27:59
  of shit. We weren't rich, we weren't
• 1:28:02
  poverty stricken, but we definitely weren't well off.
• 1:28:07
  But in more recent times, my youngest, you know, Maryville's
• 1:28:12
  not the nicest area right at all down here.
• 1:28:18
  But my youngest, he has some friends that live in Maryville.
• 1:28:22
  And one of the things that I told him in more recent times, I
• 1:28:25
  said, listen, I'm never going to tell you not to go to Maryville
• 1:28:30
  ever, ever, because his friends live there, right?
• 1:28:35
  And I told him, if your friends are having a party in Maryville,
• 1:28:38
  go to Maryville, right? Because you never turn your back
• 1:28:43
  on somebody just because of where they live or right,
• 1:28:46
  Because I've, I've seen that side of it right when I grew up
• 1:28:49
  in Maryville, but I also saw the side of it when I was just
• 1:28:52
  telling you about right, when I was undercover, you know, So I
• 1:28:56
  would, I would highly suggest like even to some of the people
• 1:29:02
  that watch, like, hey, take a minute when you're, when you're
• 1:29:06
  walking down the street, that that person that has tattoos on
• 1:29:10
  their face or on their neck does not make them a bad person,
• 1:29:14
  right? And just because they made bad
• 1:29:17
  decisions in their lives does not define them.
• 1:29:19
  Just like my job didn't define me, right?
• 1:29:23
  And, and I think it's good that your dad did that.
• 1:29:25
  Like, hey, look. Oh yeah.
• 1:29:27
  But at the same time, it you tell people like, hey, it's like
• 1:29:34
  I told my youngest, hey, you know, it's OK for you to go over
• 1:29:38
  to Maryville. That's where your friends are.
• 1:29:40
  Yeah. But just be cognizant that
• 1:29:42
  there's danger out there. Right?
• 1:29:44
  But there's danger on the nice part of town.
• 1:29:47
  Exactly. So it doesn't matter.
• 1:29:49
  But don't. Don't.
• 1:29:50
  Make it about. You know a bad or good thing
• 1:29:53
  like you can still understand people and not have adversity
• 1:30:00
  with them, right? You you don't have to have
• 1:30:02
  conflict with them because they're from a different class
• 1:30:05
  or tax bracket. Sure, you know so there there is
• 1:30:09
  definitely good and bad of people in.
• 1:30:12
  Every community and they said like, sometimes I feel like in
• 1:30:17
  in some of the affluent. Communities too.
• 1:30:18
  It's like. Dark stuff going on, you know.
• 1:30:22
  Yeah, yeah. And you know, some of my best
• 1:30:25
  drug deals happened in some higher end communities.
• 1:30:28
  Right, right. Oh yeah.
• 1:30:31
  So. But yeah, that was, you know.
• 1:30:33
  At that point, you know, I had, there was no, you know, there.
• 1:30:41
  My job was my job, and I didn't really have a home life.
• 1:30:45
  Yeah, when I was home, I was probably either worried about my
• 1:30:50
  next deal or, you know, I missed a lot of things.
• 1:30:54
  Fortunately, my wife is we've been together 32 years, so she
• 1:31:00
  kept me grounded. It probably wasn't the easiest,
• 1:31:04
  but you know, you definitely in in any career, you need to have
• 1:31:09
  work life balance, right? And I and Julian knows that.
• 1:31:14
  Yep, my youngest knows that. I said, look, my youngest is
• 1:31:17
  going to school. He wants to be a nurse, maybe a,
• 1:31:20
  a doctor or whatever APA. But I told him, look, you can
• 1:31:25
  have your career, but let your career pay for your fun stuff
• 1:31:29
  like photography. Like Julian, he does his music,
• 1:31:33
  but he also DJs, right? That's his fun stuff, right?
• 1:31:36
  Then he's got jobs like this where he helps people out, which
• 1:31:39
  I I think is fucking amazing. So it definitely is in any
• 1:31:46
  capacity. You have to take time for
• 1:31:48
  yourself, right? And and above all, remember what
• 1:31:54
  you want to do as a kid and do it as an adult.
• 1:31:58
  Like that's like the biggest thing that I can tell people
• 1:32:02
  100% that is the inner child. Man, I mean, people want to call
• 1:32:07
  it hokey whatever, but I'm telling you, like the inner
• 1:32:10
  child within all of us, that's where you find the true joy that
• 1:32:15
  I think cultivating that joy, whatever it is, you need balance
• 1:32:20
  for sure, for sure. So you're, so you're into your
• 1:32:26
  years working in the in this, in the gang unit, but then special
• 1:32:33
  sort of you're really getting into your career as a detective.
• 1:32:37
  Yeah. Take me through the next phase
• 1:32:41
  because I know what it comes to is obviously your organization.
• 1:32:47
  So what what else are you encountering before retirement
• 1:32:51
  here as far as phases? So so bringing you full circle.
• 1:32:56
  Up to this part, so. So it rained down, it rained
• 1:33:06
  down here and I got allergies. Take your time so.
• 1:33:11
  Coming. Coming out of.
• 1:33:12
  That not realizing what the career had done to me right over
• 1:33:19
  the years and bad shit. I end up getting diagnosed in
• 1:33:24
  2012 with PTSD and obviously when I got diagnosed it was
• 1:33:31
  severe PTSD and I didn't think anything was wrong with me,
• 1:33:36
  right? I was like, Nah, I'm good, but
• 1:33:39
  obviously there was some significant issues there and not
• 1:33:45
  it's a whole nother podcast to tell you my PTSD journey.
• 1:33:48
  But so the long and short of it is during my career, you know,
• 1:33:54
  we we see a lot of traumatic events, but what ended up
• 1:33:57
  breaking me was a drowning of a small child and Kaden was very
• 1:34:04
  young. He's about four or five, and it
• 1:34:10
  was just it, you know, in. Just like in any city or.
• 1:34:14
  State, but Arizona, more importantly, because it's so hot
• 1:34:17
  here, everybody's got a fucking pool.
• 1:34:19
  And it was a drowning. And I was with mom and I would
• 1:34:27
  say probably one of the worst things to do as a police officer
• 1:34:33
  is to deliver a death notification.
• 1:34:38
  If you had to compound a death notification by 1000, deliver
• 1:34:43
  that to a mother of a of her only son.
• 1:34:47
  And so that was the call that my partner and I were on and I had
• 1:34:53
  to be with mom for a significant amount of time.
• 1:34:58
  So for the sake of time, without going too far into it, I ended
• 1:35:04
  up getting diagnosed. I still hear mom scream in my
• 1:35:07
  head. So the screams put me down.
• 1:35:11
  And so when I, you know, when I reached out, there wasn't really
• 1:35:19
  much going on at that time. Like for, for PTSD and law
• 1:35:22
  enforcement, there wasn't a lot, there wasn't a whole lot of
• 1:35:24
  help. And, and even more so during
• 1:35:27
  that time frame, it wasn't something that was well known
• 1:35:30
  about South to me. I was like, man, I, I'm not, I'm
• 1:35:34
  not a, a vet, right? I'm, I'm not in the military.
• 1:35:37
  I don't, I don't have that shit. And it's not that I don't
• 1:35:40
  believe it. I just think I, I just didn't
• 1:35:42
  think that I did enough to get it.
• 1:35:47
  And so in, I got diagnosed in 2013, 2012, 2013 and, and that's
• 1:36:00
  where everything, that's where the wheels fell off, so to
• 1:36:03
  speak. I, I was an alcoholic for a long
• 1:36:08
  time. You know, when you hear a mother
• 1:36:10
  screams, I, I tell people I'm like, you know, you, you think
• 1:36:16
  you know what that sounds like until you hear it, right?
• 1:36:21
  But I also tell people like with homicides or death, I tell
• 1:36:26
  people, somebody asked me not too long ago about homicides and
• 1:36:33
  I told him, I said, if let me ask you if if you understand
• 1:36:38
  what death is, tell me what it tastes like.
• 1:36:41
  And they they were like, what do you mean?
• 1:36:42
  And I'm like if you. If you don't know what it tastes
• 1:36:44
  like. You have no idea, right?
• 1:36:47
  Going on a on a dead body or a homicide, there's a taste to it.
• 1:36:51
  It's not just a smell, there's a taste.
• 1:36:53
  And so like I explained to people and we do speaking
• 1:36:57
  engagements with pistol and I explained, we do, we do spouses
• 1:37:04
  speaking engagements. And I explained to them, I'm
• 1:37:06
  like, you know, if you're a mom, there's, there's, there's no
• 1:37:10
  sound like that. And so to hear that 24 hours a
• 1:37:17
  day, every day, over and over and over and over, you know it,
• 1:37:24
  it'll drive you mad. You know, there comes a point
• 1:37:27
  where you think to yourself, you know, I'm going to drink this
• 1:37:30
  out of me. You know, maybe if I just
• 1:37:33
  fucking blow my head off right now, it'll stop.
• 1:37:39
  It wasn't that we could do anything for the baby, right?
• 1:37:43
  Those things happen, right? Drownings and stuff like that.
• 1:37:48
  But having having that scream just over and over and over and
• 1:37:54
  over again. So when I got diagnosed, I was
• 1:37:59
  struggling with that. And I'm like, Nah, it's not me.
• 1:38:02
  I didn't go to war. I didn't felt that I had done
• 1:38:05
  enough because I would compare myself to the soldiers, right?
• 1:38:10
  And so I had to go through years of therapy, medication.
• 1:38:17
  You know, I was battling alcoholism for a long time.
• 1:38:21
  I would tell, I would tell my wife, you know, I'm not an
• 1:38:25
  alcoholic because Alcoholics deny it, right?
• 1:38:28
  And I didn't, I'm like, I'm going to drink as much as I
• 1:38:31
  humanly can just to try to get sleep.
• 1:38:38
  So I ended up getting diagnosed. I got assigned to a
• 1:38:43
  psychologist, Doctor Robbie Adler.
• 1:38:47
  Tapia was my psychologist, phenomenal psychologist.
• 1:38:53
  She got me through that time period.
• 1:38:56
  During that time period she introduced me to my Co founder
• 1:39:00
  Dave and we created the three of us, four of us.
• 1:39:04
  There was actually four of us at that time.
• 1:39:07
  We created a pistol which is post incident stress.
• 1:39:13
  And trauma in law. Enforcement, I get in trouble
• 1:39:15
  for that shit all the time because I forget it.
• 1:39:16
  It's OK. But so at the time there wasn't
• 1:39:23
  anything for us. And you know, when I was saying
• 1:39:27
  to you early, early in the podcast about my family having,
• 1:39:33
  you know, doing a sentence for no crime committed, you know, my
• 1:39:36
  family took a big, big, big portion of that hit, you know,
• 1:39:43
  being being an alcoholic, having the trauma that you have, There
• 1:39:49
  was nowhere for us to go, right? And you retire and no one, no
• 1:39:56
  one pays attention, right? Like you retire and there's no
• 1:40:00
  support system, there's no nothing.
• 1:40:04
  So we started pistol with the. Intention of helping police
• 1:40:11
  officers who struggle with PTSD. Now, whether they're on the job
• 1:40:15
  or they're retired is irrelevant to us.
• 1:40:19
  And So what we do is it started with just police.
• 1:40:22
  So the goal initially was just supposed to be police.
• 1:40:26
  That was it. That's why it's pistol right in
• 1:40:29
  law enforcement. But then we found that
• 1:40:33
  firefighters were affected by this shit, right?
• 1:40:37
  And we started Red Line that took care of the fire
• 1:40:42
  firefighter part of it. And then working through my own
• 1:40:47
  trauma, dealing with all of that, I had to go through
• 1:40:51
  therapies, EMDR. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:56
  And at the time, so as you can see, what started as just a
• 1:41:00
  normal sense of coping through adversity, Yep, starting in a
• 1:41:05
  police Academy or, or detention Academy, there was nothing to
• 1:41:09
  prepare me for what was ahead of me, right?
• 1:41:13
  But there's really no way, at least in my career, there is no
• 1:41:18
  way to somebody has to respond to those calls, right?
• 1:41:22
  Right there, There's no just like somebody has to teach.
• 1:41:25
  My kid. Right.
• 1:41:27
  I don't want to be in a classroom with a bunch of kids
• 1:41:29
  that pissed me off and I get in trouble for talking shit.
• 1:41:33
  But somebody has to do that, right?
• 1:41:37
  And for for police and fire and corrections and dispatch and
• 1:41:40
  911, I'll be like, somebody has to take those calls.
• 1:41:46
  And so for us. Like there was no.
• 1:41:49
  Preparation. Like I said, we only got 2
• 1:41:51
  hours. That's all we got.
• 1:41:53
  You think I remembered fucking two hours out of 18 weeks or 16
• 1:41:57
  weeks of an Academy like that was at least of my worries,
• 1:42:00
  right? So we started it and I remember
• 1:42:07
  one day I was talking to my Co founder at Doctor Tapia's office
• 1:42:13
  and I said, look, it's going to go one of two ways.
• 1:42:15
  If we start this right, it's going to nothing's going to
• 1:42:18
  become of it because we're the only two crazy motherfuckers in
• 1:42:21
  the world or it's going to blow up.
• 1:42:26
  And so here we are 10 years later and we still are in
• 1:42:31
  existence. We are like, I would probably
• 1:42:36
  argue with you, like with your marketing.
• 1:42:39
  We are horrible at at raising money.
• 1:42:43
  Like we fucking are horrible at it.
• 1:42:46
  OK, not enough. I feel like someone else should
• 1:42:49
  do it. Look, as police officers, we
• 1:42:52
  don't ask for help. So it's.
• 1:42:54
  Very difficult for us to ask somebody to send us.
• 1:42:57
  Money. Right.
• 1:42:58
  We're like, how do we ask you people to send us money?
• 1:43:01
  So, so we start the organization after it was a few years we.
• 1:43:14
  We're not affiliated with. Doctor Tapia at all anymore and
• 1:43:18
  Dave and I have just continued to run pistol and we have a core
• 1:43:26
  group of doctors and clinicians. If you go to our YouTube
• 1:43:31
  channel, you'll see the latest 1.
• 1:43:34
  And surprisingly enough, not that I don't, I don't want hate
• 1:43:38
  sent my way, but all of our so far, all of our clinicians are
• 1:43:42
  women. And they are, I call them the
• 1:43:44
  special operations units of doctors and clinicians, top tier
• 1:43:49
  one women who help police officers and firefighters all
• 1:43:54
  day, every day. Amazing.
• 1:43:55
  And they. Are.
• 1:43:59
  Some of the strongest, most intelligent women I've ever met
• 1:44:02
  in my life. But with with the organization,
• 1:44:08
  what we do is 99% of the money that you donate to Pistol goes
• 1:44:15
  right back to the officers. So we do equine therapy, we
• 1:44:19
  treat trauma, we pay for their doctor's appointments, we pay
• 1:44:26
  for equine therapy. We just recently purchased some
• 1:44:31
  alpha stems to help PTSD. We put together trainings.
• 1:44:37
  We do speaking engagements. If we do a speaking engagement
• 1:44:41
  in Arizona, it doesn't cost you anything amazing because we're
• 1:44:45
  local, but if. We.
• 1:44:48
  Like let's say we were going to. Go to.
• 1:44:51
  California, we don't take any payment.
• 1:44:55
  You just got to get us there. Obviously you got to get us
• 1:44:58
  there, get us a room, right, because we're not going to sleep
• 1:45:02
  on the streets. And then if, if this is a big
• 1:45:07
  if, if you wanted to, you could make a donation.
• 1:45:13
  It doesn't matter if it's a dollar or 100, you make a
• 1:45:16
  donation to pistol. And so that's how we raise
• 1:45:19
  money. And then from that point, what
• 1:45:23
  ended up happening was in 2021, my youngest son comes to me and
• 1:45:27
  tells me I, I never remember my, you guys just heard my whole
• 1:45:30
  story. Yeah, I, I, I all I did was cop.
• 1:45:35
  That's all I did. And my youngest comes to me and
• 1:45:38
  he's like, Dad, you should play this video game.
• 1:45:40
  And I'm like, no, I'm not going to play this video game.
• 1:45:43
  And he tells me I'm going to play this game, which is still
• 1:45:46
  stupid to me is called Call of Duty.
• 1:45:48
  Yeah. And I think it's the stupidest
• 1:45:50
  fucking game ever around. Nobody should play that game.
• 1:45:54
  But I hate it. I hate that game gives me
• 1:45:58
  anxiety and I get pissed off. I, I, I don't yeah, I'm, yeah,
• 1:46:02
  I, I cuss in 12 year. Olds and it's just not a good
• 1:46:05
  section. It's not.
• 1:46:06
  A good situation, but so I played.
• 1:46:09
  My wife tells him look. Dad shouldn't be playing that
• 1:46:11
  game. Find another game.
• 1:46:13
  So I end up finding a game and when I I play this game and I
• 1:46:20
  start to realize that there's something to be said here,
• 1:46:23
  right? So I play this game.
• 1:46:25
  Then Julian gets involved. Now both my boys are involved.
• 1:46:30
  They find some games for me to play Father's Day of 2022, I
• 1:46:37
  believe it was 2022. They show up and I got I got a
• 1:46:41
  gaming computer right now. Now keep in mind, right, like
• 1:46:47
  I'm just fucking dumbfounded by this shit.
• 1:46:50
  And so I get a gaming PC. I'm starting to play these games
• 1:46:56
  now, mind you, I'm still obviously I'm fighting
• 1:46:58
  alcoholism, OK, I'm on medication, I'm trying to sleep,
• 1:47:03
  right? But I start playing these games,
• 1:47:06
  they're showing me how to play these games.
• 1:47:08
  I, I find out that there's this community right in this
• 1:47:12
  community of gamers, of police officers and firefighters and
• 1:47:16
  veterans, and I'm like, holy shit, what is this?
• 1:47:20
  So Fast forward to 2023, and we end up creating this.
• 1:47:27
  I don't. They're streamers that play
• 1:47:29
  video games and apparently you get paid to play video games.
• 1:47:34
  Yeah, Yeah. It's amazing to me.
• 1:47:35
  That goes back to our first my 10 year old.
• 1:47:38
  Like Nathan, you're going to pay me to play.
• 1:47:40
  This fucking video game. Sure they do a fundraiser for us
• 1:47:45
  and in that fundraiser we raised the most amount of money that
• 1:47:49
  pistols ever raised was like $31,000.
• 1:47:53
  Holy shit that's amazing. Play video games and.
• 1:47:56
  So. It it's it's very emotional for
• 1:48:02
  me because it's my boys that got me started in that right.
• 1:48:07
  So you know, now I mean, and those dummies play Call of Duty.
• 1:48:11
  I don't know how the fuck they play Call of Duty, but I just,
• 1:48:14
  it's just too much. But so we do that.
• 1:48:18
  We have a fundraiser coming up in Arizona on November 1st in
• 1:48:25
  Gilbert. It's called Trot Tober Fest.
• 1:48:27
  We have a couple of local celebrities, one one of them
• 1:48:30
  used to be with the Village People.
• 1:48:33
  Cool, a wonderful guy, Chad Freeman, Heather Freeman, his
• 1:48:37
  wife, Virginia McCarthy from Equine Connections.
• 1:48:43
  They do they do a bar crawl for three bars and then they raise
• 1:48:47
  money for pistol. They do it every year.
• 1:48:51
  And so we've been able to help enough officers.
• 1:48:55
  We've helped officers from Canada, Melbourne, Australia,
• 1:49:00
  all the way from LAPD to NYPD. If you go to our, we have a
• 1:49:04
  rumble page, but just all in there.
• 1:49:07
  Yeah, just a few months ago. We provided pistol.
• 1:49:11
  Paid for a service dog for a retired NYPD officer who
• 1:49:17
  struggles with PTSD. What I'll do is I'll tell Julian
• 1:49:24
  to to send you a picture, OK? And add it towards the end of
• 1:49:28
  this podcast. We'll put it like, right, I
• 1:49:32
  don't know, like, right, I don't know, like, right here.
• 1:49:34
  Yeah. So I did have a service dog.
• 1:49:38
  She was a golden retriever. Her name was 6.
• 1:49:43
  She passed. Away.
• 1:49:45
  But I'll have Julian put a picture of her.
• 1:49:49
  Like we'll give her some love here.
• 1:49:50
  Like right here. I can't say anything.
• 1:49:53
  For dogs. Heel, Yeah.
• 1:49:55
  So we if you go to Rumble. You'll, you'll hear me talk
• 1:49:59
  about 6:00 and we did a podcast about it.
• 1:50:02
  But of, of all this and we talked, right, I said it's going
• 1:50:09
  to be probably more like an hour, 30 minutes or two hours.
• 1:50:11
  This is amazing. This is all fantastic.
• 1:50:15
  I have a really good editor, yeah.
• 1:50:18
  And but ultimately. You know, the, the biggest thing
• 1:50:24
  that I can say, like you, everybody here has heard what
• 1:50:27
  I've gone through. I don't think I'm any different
• 1:50:31
  or police officers any different than any civilian that has had
• 1:50:35
  just as much adversity or more than I've been through, right?
• 1:50:40
  It's survivable. It, it's going to take a lot of
• 1:50:44
  work and it has, right? But it's taken more than me to
• 1:50:50
  get through that, right? I I, you know, for a long time,
• 1:50:55
  you know, I struggled with what I put my.
• 1:50:57
  Family through. Right, and there's not enough
• 1:51:02
  saris in the world to correct those actions.
• 1:51:06
  So really to get through the adversity and, and, and
• 1:51:11
  understanding what your podcast is about is you just don't give
• 1:51:16
  up, right? You, you never, you never give
• 1:51:20
  up. You work through the problem,
• 1:51:23
  it, it's it, you'll figure it out.
• 1:51:26
  You don't quit, right? And so having that time and
• 1:51:30
  meeting people like you and other people that have helped
• 1:51:33
  spread the word about Pistol and what we do remember it, it goes
• 1:51:38
  back to what I was telling you about.
• 1:51:40
  Like Julian, it wasn't just my wife and I or, or just my wife
• 1:51:43
  because I was working. He had teachers behind him,
• 1:51:46
  right? So when we handed the football
• 1:51:49
  off, so to speak, you took charge of that and you guarded
• 1:51:53
  it. You took.
• 1:51:54
  Place you made sure he was taken care of.
• 1:51:57
  So you have just as much stake in what he's accomplished as we
• 1:52:03
  do. In my opinion.
• 1:52:05
  Right now, my wife might say it's it's more of a lower
• 1:52:09
  percentage than her, but but in all reality, these teachers,
• 1:52:16
  right that that he's had, they're part of the reason he is
• 1:52:21
  the man he is today, right. So I have to thank you and pay
• 1:52:25
  respect to you for that because he those teachers for your
• 1:52:32
  viewers or your listeners, you know, these individuals who step
• 1:52:38
  into your life, just like I stepped into people's lives when
• 1:52:41
  I was responding to their calls. They made a difference and.
• 1:52:47
  That's something. That I've seen in this in this
• 1:52:50
  time frame that people forgot about right.
• 1:52:54
  Your views, my views are irrelevant if we're trying to
• 1:52:58
  help each other, OK. And part of the reason that
• 1:53:01
  Julian? Is where he's.
• 1:53:03
  At is his teachers right? He had teachers who kept him in
• 1:53:09
  check. My job and my wife's job was to
• 1:53:11
  make sure that he treated you with respect, that he followed
• 1:53:14
  the rules. Your job was to make that make
• 1:53:18
  sure that he knew how to learn correctly or you taught him a
• 1:53:23
  different way to learn. Sure.
• 1:53:25
  And press Revere through that, right?
• 1:53:28
  Because once he's out of our hands and he's in your hands,
• 1:53:31
  he's going to have. They're in your care for that.
• 1:53:35
  Yeah, you take. Care of my child.
• 1:53:37
  It's actually. Yeah, your physical, mental.
• 1:53:41
  Psychological safety for that period.
• 1:53:43
  I don't have the tolerance to teach them what a fucking vowel
• 1:53:46
  is. You know what I mean?
• 1:53:48
  I don't want to teach them that. Yeah, right.
• 1:53:50
  I just make sure he's respectful.
• 1:53:53
  My wife makes sure that he's presentable.
• 1:53:55
  Everything is fine. He was always.
• 1:53:57
  Your job is to make sure that he.
• 1:54:00
  Understands how to. Read How to Write, how to
• 1:54:04
  articulate, enunciate Hooked on Phonics, all the normal shit
• 1:54:08
  that that my teachers taught me. But you know, that's the that's
• 1:54:13
  the stuff that I think your viewers should understand.
• 1:54:16
  Is that just as important as you look at me is the value that I
• 1:54:21
  looked at you, right? Because while I'm doing
• 1:54:24
  something out on the streets and I'm looking for, you know, I'm
• 1:54:28
  protecting society. You're taking care of my son.
• 1:54:33
  Right and. That means just as much to me as
• 1:54:37
  it does to your husband, who's I'm guarding you, right.
• 1:54:40
  So yeah, it's all the same thing, but with pistol.
• 1:54:44
  Amazing. That is something.
• 1:54:46
  That we, we. Definitely look at right we, if
• 1:54:52
  you wanted, we tell people when you go to Rumble and you watch
• 1:54:56
  us on Rumble, you're not digging in your pockets having to
• 1:54:59
  giving, giving us a dollar. Just watching the video gives us
• 1:55:03
  money because of the ads, right, right.
• 1:55:05
  It doesn't cost you anything, but if you feel inclined to
• 1:55:09
  reach in and send us $5, we'll take it.
• 1:55:12
  Amazing, right? We have meta.
• 1:55:15
  PCs. Huge PC company here has helped
• 1:55:18
  us out. F3 Energy, OK Self Rest, Kavi,
• 1:55:23
  these people have all stepped in on their own accord to help us.
• 1:55:27
  Not to mention Heather Freeman, Chad Freeman, Virginia McCarthy,
• 1:55:31
  all these people. We have donors that have donated
• 1:55:34
  for us minimal amounts for the last 10 years that have helped
• 1:55:38
  more officers than they'll ever imagine.
• 1:55:41
  It's fantastic and it and it doesn't take much.
• 1:55:45
  Right. Even you having me on your
• 1:55:47
  podcast makes a huge difference, right?
• 1:55:51
  So I like I said, I cannot thank you enough.
• 1:55:54
  Not only. For making sure Julian's not
• 1:55:56
  stupid. If I taught him, he'd be fucking
• 1:55:59
  stupid. But for having me on, I enjoyed
• 1:56:03
  it tremendously. I'm so glad you are.
• 1:56:07
  Well, thank. You for your your honesty, your
• 1:56:11
  authenticity. Your for revisiting difficult
• 1:56:15
  times. I mean difficult.
• 1:56:16
  An understatement. I don't want to understate what
• 1:56:19
  police officers and 1st responders have to deal with.
• 1:56:24
  And so I wanted to just as I thanked retired Sergeant Alfred
• 1:56:29
  Brenner and he also is, was, was saying how you know, there's
• 1:56:33
  always people worse off than him.
• 1:56:34
  And I want to thank you for your service to, to our nation, to
• 1:56:41
  our communities. And I'm, I'm so glad that you
• 1:56:46
  enjoyed enjoyed this because it's important to me that.
• 1:56:51
  You know my guess. When you're reliving adversity
• 1:56:53
  and like kind of going through some of those darker times,
• 1:56:57
  I've, I know it's not easy. And so I appreciate you taking
• 1:57:00
  the time to, to come on and just share, share who you are in your
• 1:57:05
  experience. And I know that people
• 1:57:07
  listening, whether they're struggling with depression,
• 1:57:09
  anxiety, alcoholism, whether they're in, you know, civilians
• 1:57:14
  or first responders, I know that people out there are going to
• 1:57:17
  resonate with this. And I don't take it lightly that
• 1:57:21
  your, your kind words and your ability to keep it real, which
• 1:57:27
  is what we need, you know. Yeah, I'm about as real.
• 1:57:31
  Yeah, I I'm about as real. As you can get.
• 1:57:33
  I can tell. Usually they call me an asshole
• 1:57:36
  for being real, but. I feel like fake.
• 1:57:38
  Is more of an asshole to me, like I'd rather just know who
• 1:57:40
  you. Are right away yeah, yeah it it
• 1:57:43
  definitely can get like. I said the same respect for you.
• 1:57:48
  Like I said, teachers. You know, I used to get in
• 1:57:50
  trouble because I would tell my buddies, like, why do you watch
• 1:57:55
  fucking athletes, right? And I was an athlete growing up.
• 1:57:58
  But you know, these athletes and and these CEOs and, you know,
• 1:58:04
  they had to learn from someone. Sure, that's a teacher.
• 1:58:09
  Yeah, right. It's not a police officer that
• 1:58:11
  taught them that shit, right? It's a teacher.
• 1:58:14
  Part of the reason that that Julian or, or these kids can do
• 1:58:22
  what they do is they they have to go.
• 1:58:24
  It doesn't matter whether it's a YouTube teacher, whether it's a
• 1:58:27
  real, you know, not a real teacher.
• 1:58:28
  I want to discredit anything else but but I have to.
• 1:58:33
  Learn. From somewhere.
• 1:58:35
  Right. You're either going to learn
• 1:58:37
  from someone bad and do bad shit, or you're going to learn
• 1:58:40
  from someone good and do good shit, right?
• 1:58:43
  And so ultimately, if, if anyone, and I've said this for
• 1:58:48
  years, there's no way you're going to convince me that
• 1:58:52
  someone who plays basketball or baseball deserves $100 million
• 1:58:56
  contract and teachers don't deserve at least 6 mid 6
• 1:59:03
  figures, right? Because in order for them to be
• 1:59:06
  able to, to, to manage their money, to know that they have 6
• 1:59:11
  figures, they need a fucking math teacher.
• 1:59:14
  You see what I'm saying? It's all.
• 1:59:15
  And that's it's funny. It's funny because Julian.
• 1:59:18
  Me. And Julian are terrible at math.
• 1:59:20
  We're fucking horrible at math. You know what's funny?
• 1:59:25
  Julian has figured out math. Being a business person, he
• 1:59:28
  knows exactly what he needs to do.
• 1:59:30
  Exactly. And again, these are all
• 1:59:34
  teachers, mentors. These people matter totally.
• 1:59:38
  Again, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
• 1:59:42
  I it's been my honor. Oh my gosh, I appreciate you.
• 1:59:46
  I appreciate your family. Your son, actually your other
• 1:59:50
  son is also super supportive following.
• 1:59:53
  Julian's girlfriend's been amazing following.
• 1:59:56
  Like, yeah, I just feel like your whole family and, you know,
• 2:00:00
  good people and. Thank you for opening your
• 2:00:03
  family to me and opening yourself to you're, you're
• 2:00:06
  officially now in the Adventures and Adversity podcast family.
• 2:00:10
  I appreciate it. I don't know if you want me and
• 2:00:12
  your family. No, I do.
• 2:00:13
  I do. Julian, then you're in.
• 2:00:16
  Yeah. Yeah, plus Tammy's.
• 2:00:18
  I love Tammy in hats. Have you seen Tammy in?
• 2:00:21
  Hats, Tammy in hats. Yeah, with Julian's girlfriend.
• 2:00:25
  Oh my God, no. Where's the tango?
• 2:00:27
  It's great. I have not.
• 2:00:30
  Yeah, I'll make a second. Shirt for you.
• 2:00:32
  Tell Julian to send you the picture that I made a.
• 2:00:34
  Shirt of him when he's D Jing Oh yeah, I've I'm he's he's so
• 2:00:38
  talented. I I'm keeping up with all his
• 2:00:40
  gigs and I'm like, where are you going Sunday?
• 2:00:42
  Where are you doing this? Yeah, Sweet.
• 2:00:43
  And then he's like texting me. He's like, here's your episode.
• 2:00:45
  I'm like sweet. Yeah, he's like, you forgot to
• 2:00:48
  send me this stuff. I'm like, cool, right.
• 2:00:50
  I'm on it. Well, remember, he works for
• 2:00:52
  you, so boss him around as much as possible.
• 2:00:55
  He's very. Respectful always.
• 2:00:56
  Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, just boss him around he
• 2:00:59
  needs. It he's he's got a good head on
• 2:01:03
  his shoulders and. He's he's a good dude.
• 2:01:06
  Yeah, I think the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
• 2:01:09
  Well, I appreciate that, but he's probably more like his mom
• 2:01:12
  than he. Is me right?
• 2:01:13
  Especially when it comes to his to his attire and shit.
• 2:01:17
  Oh well, he's always styling. He's a trendsetter.
• 2:01:19
  I think that's Mom. He was back in 2005.
• 2:01:23
  He had the curls. And now that yeah, he, yeah, he
• 2:01:26
  was sad. I don't know why he was sad.
• 2:01:28
  He was fucking. He didn't have a reason.
• 2:01:30
  To be sad. I was like, why the fuck are you
• 2:01:32
  sad? Like I don't understand why
• 2:01:33
  you're sad. I hear him laugh.
• 2:01:35
  He got over it, though. He's a happy guy now.
• 2:01:37
  Yeah, he's happy. He's yeah.
• 2:01:39
  But yeah, so I appreciate it if you need.
• 2:01:41
  Anything. Let me know back at you.
• 2:01:43
  We'll close it out here and Julian, make us look.
• 2:01:46
  Cool. When you edit this and do just
• 2:01:50
  do like an ending part, Yeah. How do we end?
• 2:01:52
  How? Do I end so you just be like
• 2:01:54
  give me? Like a like.
• 2:01:56
  Wrap. Up the episode a little bit and
• 2:01:57
  then be like, we'll talk to you guys later.
• 2:02:00
  We'll talk to you later. Just OK.
• 2:02:02
  So say like just. Recap like how long?
• 2:02:05
  30 seconds. Just like a 30 second thing.
• 2:02:07
  OK, because this is only going to be you.
• 2:02:08
  I'm going to. Cut to you.
• 2:02:09
  OK. Well, Manny.
• 2:02:12
  I wanted to thank you and. Officially wrap up this very
• 2:02:16
  very authentic and super helpful couple hours with you that I'm
• 2:02:22
  grateful to have and again please look in the show notes.
• 2:02:26
  We got pistol Manny's organization where you can reach
• 2:02:31
  him and if you're a police officer anyone struggling, I
• 2:02:34
  know that pistol can be of help to you.
• 2:02:38
  So I'm going to wrap this up and we will talk to you soon.
• 2:02:41
  How was that? No, I made a face shit perfect.
• 2:02:43
  He's going to get it out. Look at that.
• 2:02:46
  I made a face. AI you.
• 2:02:46
  Into some shit I'm learning. Too where I'm like.
• 2:02:49
  I like do something. I'm like oh, and he's like.
• 2:02:51
  No, don't do that. I'm like, yeah, I've been doing
• 2:02:53
  that for a year. Shit, he's gonna edit it out.
• 2:02:57
  I know. Well.
• 2:02:58
  Thank you, Manny. I hope you.
• 2:03:00
  Hopefully we'll meet in person one day.
• 2:03:02
  Yeah, from Daisy, for sure. For sure.
• 2:03:04
  Because I'm not going to California, that's for sure.
• 2:03:06
  No California's. Crazy.
• 2:03:08
  Don't come here. Yeah.
• 2:03:10
  Part of it I, I don't either. Yeah, come back to.
• 2:03:14
  Arizona. I think I might.
• 2:03:16
  Yeah. All right, all right, take.
• 2:03:18
  Care. Thank you.
• 2:03:19
  Thank you. Thank.
• 2:03:20
  You bye. Julian, bye, guys.