Latest / The On Purpose Podcast / Ep. 362 – Rusty Myers: Changing the Culture of Law Enforcement
Transcript
- speaker-0: You are listening to the On Purpose Podcast. What's up, everybody? Welcome to this week's edition of the On Purpose Podcast, where you know it's our mission, our privilege, and our honor to show up with you each and every week and bring you stories to get you thinking, get you reflect in, and get you realizing you're not alone. And that's what I'm excited about. This week, I'm talking with Rusty Myers, a law enforcement professional and author of Tattered when the blue line phrase. His mission is what what drew my attention to him, and it's simple and it's urgent, and that's to help people find purpose in living, especially those in uniform who feel worn down, isolated, or on edge. After facing his own struggles, he wrote his book to share what he went through, what others may face, and to reach the person that might just be sitting in the driveway who needs to know the sun will rise tomorrow. Rusty is committed to changing the culture of our field through honest conversations, leadership, mental health, and realities that too often go unspoken. I just finished reading his book this morning as I prepared for it. I found it honest, raw, very real, and as a former law enforcement officer as well. Too common, to be honest with you. Too common a story that we see in our profession. And Rusty, I want to thank you for. Coming on the show, and I want to thank you for realizing that your story has power and being vulnerable enough to share it so others can learn from it. speaker-1: Well, thank you for having me. I'm very happy to be here and I'm glad you enjoyed it and saw what it was written for. speaker-0: Yeah, I Yeah, I I I I went through a lot of emotions, right? I did twenty one years before I retired and I think you always know your one call away from everything changing. You just hope that call never happens. speaker-1: Yeah, I ironically at one point my son talked to me about going into law enforcement and I had a very open and frank conversation with him. I was like, you know, if I pin your badge on, I'll cry. It'll be one of the best days of my life and I'll look back at it. But I also said, For the rest of my life, I'll worry about you because I know how much luck goes into a a career where nothing happens. speaker-0: Yeah. Did did he follow suit? speaker-1: No, he ultimately chose not to do it. And I absolutely don't blame him one bit. Which is sad. You know, you go to a conference now and they say, Who wants your kid to go into law enforcement? And maybe three hands, five hands go up out of a hundred. People just ⁓ unfortunately it just leaves a bad taste for so many. speaker-0: Hmm. You know, Russ, I'll I'll share like I had similar conversations with my children. If they chose to do it, but the only thing and no my my only caveat was if you were gonna do it, do it a little later in life. Don't come right in out of college. Go get some other experience because I do think that'll help balance out some of the highs and lows. speaker-1: definitely give ⁓ some life experience to look back on and something to equate it to, you know. Yeah. Bad day in law enforcement. You know, but bad day at the office is a lot different than a bad day in law enforcement most of the time. speaker-0: Yeah. All right, Rusty. So now I know you're you're into scuba diving and diving and I can't just throw you into deep water right away without warming you up and stuff, make sure all our gear is ready. So are you ready for your warm-up questions to get things started? speaker-1: I'm ready, sir. Shoot. speaker-0: All right, Russ, here we go. If your life had a theme song, what would it be? speaker-1: Theme song. Wow, that's a good one. If my life had a theme song. I think that it would be How great thou art. Love that song. Every time I hear it, it just in my my spirit, everything in me, it's just that to me, that song has always been like the song. And my church every couple of weeks does just a a grand piano with just the music director playing. And he's done that song a couple of times. And every time he does, I'm so happy I'm there to hear it. So that's that's probably one of my favorite songs in in the world. speaker-0: That's a good one. All right, what's a favorite quote or a quote you go back to? speaker-1: One of the quotes that I would go back to is something that my father has said many, many times, if you're right, you fight. If you're right, you fight. And ⁓ a lot of what I went through, I w I credit my parents with with how I survived. And ⁓ the only time I ever really went away from that was when I got to the end of my story and and kind of, you know, could have sued civilly and done something civilly and it it just wasn't worth it at that point. I wanted it out of my life. I was I know I'd I'd been exonerated, not to give too much away, but I w I was through it and To s sue civilly would have been probably a six year process. I would just now be getting done. Yeah. And just to relive it that many times for the limited amount of money I would have got from the state was was just not worth my time and not worth my mental not worth moving on. ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah. How did your dad take that when you you told him you were gonna just 'cause ⁓ speaker-1: He kind of disagreed a little bit, but he disagreed, but he also said, But I completely understand why you wouldn't want to live through this again. Yeah. So that's he understood. speaker-0: Rusty, what's something you've learned about yourself lately? speaker-1: lately. Well, you know, I I wrote this book and it talks about all these great things we need to be doing in law enforcement and it's made me take a hard look at me, not just as a leader, but also, you know, as a ⁓ as a police officer who's concerned about this stuff and kind of made me realize that I need to be doing more. And I've I've spent my career doing law enforcement, but now now I want to change the culture like you talked about earlier. I want I want us To get a hold of this ⁓ problem of suicide in law enforcement. We can't keep killing ourselves five times as much as the bad guys. That's that's another one of my dad's phrases, totally unacceptable. Yeah. We have to acknowledge why, you know, and part of the reason is the way we've been led. speaker-0: And that's Or how we haven't been led. The inverse. Yeah, ⁓ that's true. What speaker-1: And now I'm part of that leadership, so kind of spitting in my own face on that one. speaker-0: Yeah, I definitely want to talk to you about that later in the show for sure. Staying in the profession after what you went through versus walking away. I'm I'm fascinated on that. But let me ask this, what's a favorite book of yours? I always love to hear what other people are reading. speaker-1: My favorite book, well actually right now I'm I'm reading Twelve Seconds in the Dark by The Sergeant from the Breonna Taylor raid. Ooh and it's some of it's emotional 'cause you read through it and then you start to see things that you've done in your career that could have gone bad and it's a pretty good read. And you know, ⁓ but probably one of my favorite books of all time is is Lord of the Rings. I've always loved Lord of the Rings. I've read it I don't know how many times and you know It's it's three inches thick, but I read fast. All right. So I like a book that has substance to it, that has story to it, and my book's not that long. Right. But but I enjoy every time it's just a totally different world. And I enjoy that aspect of being able to just forget what I do and where I am and and be into a fantasy world. So Yeah. speaker-0: All right, one last question for you, Rusty. When you think about the season of life you're in right now, what word or phrase describes it? speaker-1: Old ⁓ I'm feeling my age, you know, I'm fifty six. My knees hurt when I go to the range. I gotta hydrate all day long or it'll take me three days to recover from it. And I watch these young guys and you know, we we we don't just stand on a a line and shoot anymore. We have our our department runs a SWAT qual for all our officers, which is moving, shooting, running and having to do stuff and ⁓ it hurts sometimes. It it hurts. Yeah. But I've also reached a phase in my life where I'm looking back and going, you know I've been in this profession now thirty one years and I wanna leave it better than I than I found it. speaker-0: You feeling warmed up, Rusty? I like that closing there. speaker-1: I'm ready to roll when you are, sir. speaker-0: All right, let me I wanna start with this. Obviously the book and the story you went through was what drew my attention to you. ⁓ and without going through the whole story of the book, I wanna know more about what led you to realizing that story needed to be told. speaker-1: I've seen similar things happen, other departments, other officers throughout my career. But I was in a or am in a unique position, having been a training commander for five years. I spent five years looking for new training. And as a police officer, the toughest calls were the ones where you just walked into it. You didn't have time to mentally get your head set, and you didn't have five or ten seconds, because that's all it really takes to set. Of I'm right around the corner from this robbery, I got this, versus I'm going in to buy a drink and there's a robbery in progress. And and that that little bit of seconds, that reset is why I wrote the book because I've never read a story like that before and I wasn't prepared for it. The whole thing hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn't know what to do, I didn't know who to think about or or what to think about. It was a whirlwind. And the whirlwind was because I walked into it. I had no idea what I was gonna go through. You know, I had no idea the the downward spiral that I was going to be a part of. And as I look back on it, if cops can read this book and understand, hey, this is what happened to me. If you walk into this, maybe you'll be a little bit prepared. for the silence, for that downward spiral, for the the rumors to start to fly. You'll you'll be ready for that because you have seen it in a at least in a book. And it'll give you a chance to respond better than I did. speaker-0: Let me a I gotta ask Rusty on that 'cause you 'cause you did everything you were supposed to do. You did everything you were trained to do, you did everything legally required to do and you still went through two years of isolation, judgment, the rumors you said. I I wanna ask you first about the isolation 'cause I think that's the one that gets most of us is when all of a sudden We're not part of the team anymore. We're not part and we're on the outside looking in. speaker-1: Yeah, it was ⁓ it was a shock. You know, I went from being a team commander making decisions every day to people not answering my text messages. And at first I it was it was gradual at first. It was just I would talk to my admin sergeant, make sure the team was running good, and and then it just it it dried up and the longer it went, the worse it went as far as you know, my office call in or anything. I went like 141 days with no official phone call from the department. And that was absolutely nothing I'd ever planned for. You know, what do you do when you text somebody about a dive mission and you don't get a response? And it's somebody you trusted with your life. And I kind of understand now. You know, I had one of one of the officers come by my office to get his book signed and he he sat there and I said, So what'd you think? And he's told me, he said, I haven't got past page twenty four yet. And I was like, What's up? He's like, Well, I got to the part where you talked about people stopped calling and I realized I didn't call. And I felt bad. And I said, I don't want you to feel bad. Don't feel bad because we don't know how to deal with it. I had a great conversation last night with with a gentleman that's a friend of mine and he was explaining how, you know, we we exercise the muscle of doing stuff all the time, but we don't exercise the muscle of empathy and how to talk to somebody in distress that we know. It's different when they're on the road. We're there with an answer, we've got an intelligent answer, we're we're the calm in the storm. But now you got someone you know that's going through something, and we literally don't know what to say. And I would I would tell you this one of the things I would learn from that, you don't have to know what to say. If you have an officer or a friend going through something, just call them and say what's up. Talk about the news, talk about Ukraine, whatever it is that makes you happy, just talk about something. But that muscle is not exercised on a daily basis in law enforcement. So when it happens, it happens to what all our muscles do. They atrophy, they get weak, and all of a sudden we don't know what to say, we don't know what to do, and the easiest thing to do is just not use that muscle. And so anyone who reads the book, if I know you, don't feel bad that you didn't call. Because in the same situation, what I had been through in my life, I don't know that I would have called you. I get it. I understand why it happened, but living through it's hell. So if you got a friend going through something, you need to give him a call. Check on ⁓ 'Cause I had a few friends who did and that's part of what saved my life. speaker-0: Yeah, and I love that part of the book and and your reflection that you didn't realize till afterwards that they were very intentional to make sure you were coming to get coffee, that you were going on a dive trip, that they weren't just happen chance. They had intentionally committed to say, Hey, I'm gonna stay involved and we're gonna keep getting rusty out of his house and as you say, out of the driveway. So let me ask you because here's something that that I see talking with law enforcement around the country. With training budgets limited, training time limited, we spend all ninety percent of our time training for external threats, right? The active shooter, the school shooter, the church shooter, the the bank robberies. Yet every statistical data point we've had since I entered the profession in the nineties tells us that we're our own worst enemy. speaker-1: Yeah. The institutional threat is what most officers fear far more than confronting a shooter. We know what to do when someone's attacking. Yeah. We've trained it, we know what to do. But when the when the the stab comes from behind, we don't know how to deal with it. And it's it's not something I don't know that you know, in when I grew up and obviously when you were in the nineties, it was suck it up, bulldog, charge on, and the whole mental health thing was kind of Yeah, we do that. We we do some training on that. And and it would It's entered our lexicon, mental health, wellness, peer support, and proactive peer support, that kind of stuff. But we're not really doing it hard yet. It's just entered our lexicon. And it's still easier. It's very easy to train for what to do for an actor shooter. Yeah. You know, you do this, go in, take care of the problem, remove the threat, and then start saving lives. It's very easy to train. It's easy to hammer it and hit it home. But when you're talking about someone in mental distress, that can be a little bit more challenging. But we've got to start getting our people ready for it because when an institution betrays you it's devastating. Say in and that word doesn't really do it justice. Because you've trusted that, you know. Yeah. speaker-0: You said it's in our lexicon, it's in our vocabulary, but it's really not in our culture yet. speaker-1: No. And culture change is not something that happens overnight. Culture changes are very hard. They take time, they take dedication. And I've been able to meet, since I wrote the book, a lot of people that are dedicated to changing that culture. And you know, you talked about my friends and the way they kind of conspire to keep me busy. The original title of the book was Tattered When The Blue Line Faus. And as I wrote the book, And I realized how many of those friends that I named them in the book. That's the only names I use are the ones that were there for me. I realized I had a retired cop. I had a former cop. I had a couple of current cops. I had a retired military man who beat cancer. And when when I started looking at how many of the people that helped me survive were part of the blue line, I couldn't say it failed. Definitely frayed, you know, because it it got thin. Down to a few strings there at the end. But but I changed the title of the book because I was like, you know, it never really failed. It just really frayed. So that's where the the title phrase came from. Yeah. speaker-0: No, I think that's a great title and I think that's a great great symbolism for what you went through. So what what do you think, Rusty, is part of our culture that's contributing to the mental health crisis that our officers are facing? speaker-1: Well, we're in the midst of of yet another generational change right now. And I I think long term that's good for us because younger officers are much more willing to talk about mental health. And they've been brought up understanding that there's problems there. ⁓ why is it not part of our culture? I think because for years we just pushed it underside. That's just part of the job. It's just part of the job, you know. Shed a tear on the way home, don't tell anybody about it. You you stuck you shoved it in, I call it your backpack. Yeah. Every everybody wears a PTS backpack. There's stress going in there. And every call you go on, put something in the backpack. And that something might not be anything but a grain of sand. But you get enough grains of sand, guess what? It gets heavy. And one of the things I think I think the whole mental wellness stuff is really in the last thirty years is when it's really started to grow. And you know, cops don't change easy. We don't like change and we complain about it when it happens. And we want change and then we complain about it. But ⁓ why is it not changed in our culture? I think it's just because the easy answer is people quit. They don't stick around. They go through something, they have a mental problem, and they quit. And for years and and it to this day, it still happens in some departments. You go to someone and say, Hey, I I need some help. I'm going through some stuff. ⁓ ⁓ well that guy's a problem. Yeah. Yep, promotion process coming up. ⁓ nope, that guy something's not right with him. Yeah. You know? And we've penalized it for many years. And I think we're getting better at that, but we're still in many ways doing that. We still are penalizing people when they do admit they have trouble and they have a problem and they need help. Yeah. speaker-0: No, there's still a stigma to it for sure. ⁓ let me ask you this, Rusty. ⁓ if what would you do or what can we say to young people coming into profession that would change that kind of an output. speaker-1: Well, now I'm part of leadership and I make it very open. Obviously I wrote a book, but before the book, my officers knew what I had been through, knew I had been suicidal, knew that they could come talk to me about anything. Now you're still a deputy chief, you know, and and but I've had some come to me. And one of the things I told them is I'm very proud of you for coming to me and trusting me with your problem. And they stay in my office. Those don't leave. You know, I've ripped off my name tag before and said, Rusty's here, what do you need? And we have to get over ourselves and we tend to worry about everything, you know? And I've more than once if I looked at my chief and I said, Well, you know, we could also have a meteor strike that car and anything could happen. Yeah. Sometimes you have to trust people and if they're coming to you for help, then they that's a good sign that they're coming to you for help. It's not a bad sign. It's not a problem. It's it's a potential solution to keeping a good officer. And when you look at the cost of what it what it is to hire an officer, why aren't we spending more on on some type of mental health? You know, peer support doesn't have to cost a lot, but I'm I'm of the mind that it's peer support has almost gotten its own cult following. Peer support is for after the event. We have a critical incident, we're gonna do our debrief, we'll have peer support come in and do that. And it kind of got stuck there. And it's a great start. And if you have a critical incident, it's a great way to kind of work through the incident. But there's more to it than that. And a lot of critical incidents don't happen at work. Divorce is a critical incident. Having a autistic child is a critical incident. You know, being late on your mortgage payment could be a critical incident. And it's all those things are putting more grains of sand in that backpack. And some of those are rocks, some of them aren't grain. Sometimes you throw rocks in your backpack. And one day, if you keep throwing rocks in your backpack, it's either gonna leak out or blow out. From in my case, it blew out. But it could also be a slow leak where somebody just deteriorates. I hate my job. And you were a cop. How long how many times you heard people say, Man, I hate people? God, I hate people. Yeah. And and that's absolutely a lie. People are police officers not because they hate people, they're police officers because they love people. Right. And they want people to do what's right and to to follow the rules and and make the society better. But we've we've all said it at some point in our career, God, these people, I'm so fed up dealing with people. But that's our job and that's why we got into it to help, right? Everybody says, I want to help. You know. speaker-0: Well, I love that you're having conversations because I think that's a great starting point. And what if these conversations were actually part of the culture of hiring, part of the culture of onboarding, part of the culture of the academy training, to where we get away from it being something that ha like you said, it happens after the fact once you're in your career, but we actually give you the tools up front to say, hey, we don't have to end up like this. speaker-1: Yeah, I think that's that's where we need to be headed. There's a study going on right now in South Carolina. They're interviewing every new Academy recruit. It's a five year study. It's gonna take a minimum of five years to get the answers. Because here's the problem too. When we hire somebody, we have records, we know that people that were traumatized in in early life tend to become police officers. So we may be hiring somebody whose backpack is already half full. So that's the study they're looking at is how does early childhood trauma and the people we hire affect PTSD later in life? How is it c how is it contributing to it? And it's not to prevent hiring people, it's just to say, what are we actually doing or what are we getting into? And it's the beginning of understanding is to kind of find a baseline, and that's what they're looking for. speaker-0: Yeah, you'd almost maybe even get a capacity measurement out of it, right? To say, okay, if you come in with so much trauma, this study's showing you only have so many years of additional before your backpack's full to use your analogy. speaker-1: So we need to be we need to be doing something. Right. And like you said, proactive. It's and I don't think it's a PowerPoint. I don't think you can put mental wellness into a PowerPoint. And I've done a lot of training. I've used a lot of PowerPoint, but I find that I don't read slides. That drives me bonkers when somebody just reads a slide. I'm perfectly capable of reading. I throw my PowerPoints up and they're really they're cues for me are what to talk about. So then I can go into the story while they read the slide. I can talk about, you know, the background of it. And that's a better way to use it. If you're just reading the slide, then the people we train can read. And and the you know, it's insulting almost. But I also think sometimes just sitting on a desk looking at a crowd and saying, How you guys doing? My name's Rusty and I spent twenty three years as a stable police officer. I went through mind armor, mental resiliency, NAMI courses. I don't know how many Mental health courses I went through. You know what I did through most of them? I did what some of y'all are doing right now. I played on the phone. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: And then one day I realized I remembered the one slide, they all end with a slide with a checklist. And I realized I checked almost every single box. The only one I didn't check was illegal drug use. I checked every other box, including the plan. Yeah. And I realized that I had not only had a plan, I had an extensive plan. And the only thing I needed to do was fill in a date and time. Yeah. So that's And that's a that's a moment. And then just kinda sit there and let ⁓ think about that for a minute and say, This guy up here was there and was ready to ready to hurt himself. And then let ⁓ ask questions. Let them start and digging into it. And what you might find is there might be somebody in that class that is already at close to that point or they've considered it too. But we've got to start the discussion. And that's that's the reason I'm so open about what I went through. Because if if I can still survive and still be a police officer and still be in leadership after what I went through, you can too. Yeah. Right? The sun will rise, that's a promise. And you need to be there to see it because God knows the thin line is but it's thin enough. We need our officers, we need good officers, we need them to be mentally stable and to understand when they're starting to slide and to to hopefully get help before it becomes a landslide. speaker-0: Yeah, I wanna stay on this topic because you you got it's a perfect segue. In your book you you talk about sitting in the driveway in that moment. What does that moment represent to you and what do you want a person that might be in their own moment right now to know from yours? speaker-1: So what that moment meant to me, that's the moment Where you don't know if you can do it anymore. You're sitting in the driveway, you know, your family's in the house, and you're there with your thoughts of whatever the call was or the incident was, or maybe you're under investigation or something, and you just don't want to face it anymore. You're so fed up with it. You're you're tired of it, the aggravation, the frustration, the the not knowing that stuff hanging over your head, which we all know is just great when you're going through an investigation. And you just don't want to move anymore and and you're just so tired. So tired. And you don't feel like you have anything to look forward to. My instruction to you, when you reach that point, open the door, walk in the house, look your significant other, and if you're not married, then look at your partner in the face and tell them, I'm not okay. Cause we go around all the time, how you doing, man? I'm fine. I'm fine. Well, my guys are starting to learn if they ask that, if they say they're fine, that that's gonna get ⁓ you know, hey, come on in, have a seat. What's going on? You're fine? What are you fine about? But we've got to dig past that I'm fine thing, right? And you need to look someone in the face and say, I don't know. I don't know. And then what I found out when I got into therapy was how much I had suppressed over the years that came out. I didn't know I had PTSD. You know, I'd been through all this stuff. And then after about three sessions of going through the investigation I was under and all that, my counselor just sat back and said, Rusty, there's a lot more here. What do you dream about? And when he said that, I was like, How does know that? You know, 'cause every cop has the gun dream where it doesn't want to come out of the holster or the trigger's too heavy to pull. That that's normal. That's just part of the training and all that we do and that that constant vigilance that we're under. But what I had to do was say, Well, you know, I dream about this. And occasionally I dream about this. And I dream about and then we start digging into all these incidents that had gone on throughout my career that I had basically just shut down because, you know, that's the only training I had was ignore it, move on, go to the next call, go to the next call. And some of those were big rocks in my backpack that I didn't even know I'd picked up. You know, they weren't grains of sand, they were rocks. And then when I threw the boulder on of the investigation, that just blew everything out. And that's when we started working on the fact that I had PTSD and I did we did some the EMDR and then journaling is what really helped for me. Yeah. You know, I obviously I I write now, but I've read my whole life. I've always been an avid reader. And ⁓ when I started journaling, the first thing I journaled about, one of my one of the officers I trained. fourteen years on the job was was killed in line of duty in an ambush basically at an apartment complex that that I responded to. And my whole family knew this officer. You know, my wife went with me to the viewing, my son went with me to the funeral and It hit me really hard. And that was the biggest dream I would have. And back then I was probably having that dream once a week or so. That night we responded to him being murdered. And now I can honestly tell you I don't remember the last time I've had that dream. We have ways to deal with this stuff. Yeah. But you have to say, I need help. That's the key right there. If you just look at somebody and say, I need help, help will come because we have ways to deal with it. I journaled seventeen pages freehand on the night I responded to that to that scene. My hand hurt. I haven't written that much since, you know, college. Right. And I went back in, we read through everything, and you know, the dream star stopped, not completely once a month now instead of once a week. And then it became once every six months. And now I I don't remember the last time. It's been a couple of years since I dreamed about it. And you know, I drive past the graveyard going to work, and I always say hi, I always throw up a salute, remember him. And ⁓ he'd love the book. He was a truth to power guy. Yeah. He'd be proud of it. But ⁓ there are ways to deal with PTSI PTSI is what I call it, because it's an injury. It's not a disorder. Right. It's an injury. Disorder seems to think something's wrong. It's not, it's an injury because every call you go to where you see A baby killed, or Mother Emmanuel, where you have nine innocent people murdered, or the Charleston firefighters, where we had lost nine firefighters, and you know, one of them had married a girl in my squad. I knew him quite well. We had Thanksgiving dinner at the fire station because they had time to cook and they had hypodermics. They could inject the turkeys with butter and stuff. Pretty amazing. All that stuff is building and it's there and and it's gonna come out one day. And you gotta be prepared for and you gotta be willing to say, I need help, something's not right. But those are probably the hardest words in the English language to say for a cop is I need help. But you know, if you ask, if I if I even today, if I was driving by a traffic stop and I saw a cop in a fight, would I jump out of my car and and do my best to help him? Absolutely. What if the fight's in their mind? Officers can't see you when you're fighting yourself. Yeah. So you've got to say, Hey, I need help. speaker-0: Yeah, you said something else. I actually did an episode on this way back when I first started, and that's the the I'm good. Right? When you asked me how I'm doing I'm good. And you know I'm not good or I wouldn't have said that. Let's ask that follow up question. Say, what's really going on? Come give me a second, right? Because as as good as we are as taking care of the public and listening and come up with problems. were awful at applying those same skills to each other. speaker-1: Yep, absolutely. I'm good, I'm fine. Those are not answers to a question, those are invitations to a conversation. And that's what I've been preaching through you know, I talk to people. It's like, look, if someone tells you they're fine, I'm good, good about what? Yeah. Live in the That's not that should never be the end of the conversation. That's the beginning of the conversation. Yeah. speaker-0: I've never come across anybody that tells me they're living the dream that's actually living their dream. Right. speaker-1: That's another one. ⁓ I'm living the dream, baby. ⁓ What does that mean exactly? What do you dream about? 'Cause I know some of the stuff I dreamed about, so that's living the dream might not be a good thing, okay? speaker-0: Yeah. No, I think you're absolutely right though. It's like that's how you change culture. It's not a policy, not motivational posters on the walls with eagles soaring high above the mountains. Yeah. It's with c honest conversations and it's with choosing to care about the people around you. speaker-1: And I think part of the most powerful stories we have are the ones we carry ourselves. When you talk to someone and and and say, Where are you at? I understand. I've been there. You know, they teach you as a cop when someone loses a family member, never say I understand. Always just say I'm sorry because you don't really understand where they're at. But this is different. We're talking to a brother or sister going through something that we've been through. And sometimes we can if if we are willing and and have the courage to share our weakness, we can really affect where they're going with their life and what they're doing with their weakness and help them understand that it's not just you. There's other people going through this, there's other people that have that gone through this and beat it. Yeah. And stuck around for that sunrise. And you can too, you know? speaker-0: Yeah. No, I agree. And I just kinda listen to that and I I I'm just replaying different conversations I've had around the country with classes and community groups and organizations. And one of the things that comes to mind is and I'll never forget, ⁓ people say, Well, if we do all that, they're gonna leave the profession. Right? They might leave, they might realize law enforcement's not for them, and they'll go. And and to that I say, Great. If we have honest conversations, it saves a human's life and they go on to have a successful career doing something different, then our profession helped prepare them for that. speaker-1: And other thing is, if they survive, we get a better cop. Because now we get a cop who understands they're not the only one. We make don't you know, we we call each other brother and sister all the time, right? What's up, brother? What's up, sister? How you doing today? Yeah. We gotta get beyond just being words. We've gotta realize that we are a family. And you know, every family's got Uncle Fester. It happens. Every family's got different people in it. Every family's got, you know, people that are different. And sometimes getting to them can be really hard. But you know what? Every other family, every family goes through stuff. And we have to start putting words behind brother and sister, besides just how's it going? You know, that if you feel like police officers are your brother or your sister, if your brother or sister asks you for help, you get it for. If you knew your brother was in distress, you'd you'd find a way to talk to them. If you knew your child was in distress, you'd talk to them. You'd find out what's going on. You'd get them help. Yeah. You know, and we don't do that because it's like, Well, yeah, I I know he's going through something, but it's uncomfortable. I've never exercised that muscle before of of trying to help somebody like that that you know, and he'll get through it. He's tough. He's tough. He's tough. And the next thing you know, you're getting a phone call. Yeah. And that is not a pleasant phone call. speaker-0: No. No. Or even if you don't get a phone call, you end up at a service and remembrance of a life and you're left with, Man, what if I'd have tried a little harder? What if I'd speaker-1: What did something? What did I miss? What didn't I see? Why didn't I say something? And now you need help. Now you've got something you d you're gonna feel guilty about for the rest of your life. speaker-0: What do you think of this, Rusty? And this is just a thought I had. It's almost like cops think, okay, Rusty's going through this thing. If I get too close to him, that's kind of contagious. It can happen to me. So I stay away, right? 'Cause I don't want to have all that stuff. Not not the actual call, 'cause I'll never go on that same call, it's in the past. But all the emotions, all the ups and downs, the the rumors, right? The the words we say, the stigma, if you will. I don't want that on me 'cause I I'm I'm moving, I'm doing my thing. What do you think about that aspect? speaker-1: I think that's part of it. You know, ooh, that guy screwed up. I don't need part of that. I mean part of that. You know, and I don't I don't know what happened, but I heard this and you I I'm just, you know, I don't know. So you're right, there is part of that. It's just that guy's in trouble. I don't want to be in trouble. You know, it's funny to me when an IA investigation happens, they always tell everybody, Don't talk to anyone and then about a week later the whole department knows what happened. Well I was the one under investigation. I didn't talk to anybody and I'm hearing stuff. I'm like, what? When I when I did my interview, I had to I had to preface stuff like, well, Monday I heard this, but I never saw that. But you know and it it puts you in a really weird position of of like, well, who's talking? Yeah. Who's who's the one going out here telling everybody what happened? If everybody's been told don't say a word, it's all under investigation, then why is it never always under investigation? And it every department it it gets out like that. Yeah. speaker-0: And and and I I mean part of it is the culture, right? Because we're we get paid to look for all the wrong in the world. We you know, we go to an intersection, there's a hundred people at a parade, ninety-nine are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing, and join the fourth of July. We're looking for the one that's not doing the right thing. Like we're missing the actual happiness. And yeah, and and sadly because we don't, like you said, exercise that muscle to separate ourselves from it. to decompress, to to remind ourselves of the good in the world, it's easy to apply that same lens to our internal coworkers. And then we start looking for all the things you're doing wrong instead of recognizing all the good you do as well. speaker-1: But it's it's it's tough. When everybody disappears, it's tough. speaker-0: Well, I wanna thank you for your sense of humor and I wanna I wanna thank you for the the energy you bring bouncing back from it. And that's my next question for you is how did you rebuild your sense of purpose after going through all this to still wanna give back? speaker-1: Because I'm a cop. It's what I've been my whole life. And I I was at a conference once and and they were asking a question they asked, When you put your uniform on, who do you put it on for? And I've kind of mic dropped it 'cause I was like, I'll tell you this story and I told him the story and I said, And the day I went back to work, when I walked in the office and Doug Wright hired me on the spot, said, I don't need to hear anything, I've read the file, you're hired. I did not put my uniform back on for Doug. I did not put my uniform back on for my wife and kids, although they, you know, needed the money at that point. I put that uniform back on because I'm a cop and I wanted to be a police officer. I wanted to come back and show the world that, hey, the person I was before the incident is the same person I am now. I'm just a lot smarter. And I'm a lot more wary of what I do and how I do it. Because I don't want someone else to go through what I went through. And I don't want a brother or sister, and I mean those words, to go through it. And if they do go through it, I hope they call me. Come over to the house. You know, we had some I still stay in very close contact. Summerville PD is actually my department's peer support team right now because we're so small we don't really have anybody but me as peer support. And ⁓ it's kind of hard to go to the deputy chief sometimes. So we maintain a relationship with them and they had it was either three or four. Child drownings back to back to back over the course of about three weeks. And one of the one of their officers came by my house one day after one of them, and he I opened the door and he's like, Can I come in? And I was like, Yeah, absolutely. We sat at the kitchen table, we ate some stale pretzels, we drank water, and he decompressed. He'd had an incident early in his career where he had pulled a child out of water. And now he's just the same squad, worked all three of them. I think it was three total. The same squad, same thing, over two or three weeks, pulled three children out of water. And it just got to him. And he came over, he sat, we sat back there and just laughed a little bit. And sometimes just sat in silence. And I think that's something people need to realize is it's presence. Yeah. You don't have to have magic words. You don't have to have the training to say the absolute right thing every time. Sometimes all an officer needs is someone to sit with him. Who understands, who gets it, who doesn't mind sharing stale pretzels. Mm-hmm. And just lets them sit. And I don't know how long we sat, probably hour and a half, maybe two hours. I don't know. We just sat, talked a little bit, sat in silence a little bit. But by the time he left, we were laughing. Yeah. And it's he just needed a decompression done. speaker-0: Rusty, you said something earlier that it stuck with me too and I was like, you know, people don't call because they don't know what to say. They don't check in because they don't want to say the wrong thing. And to your point, a lot of times you don't need to say anything, you just need to listen. speaker-1: Yeah, it's presence. And I talk about in the book today when one of my really good friends just showed up out of the blue. And I I answered the door and I'm like, ⁓ I thought it was a UPS guy. Yeah. And he he's like, You sounded down on the phone. He called me that morning. You sounded down, so here I am. And we hung out a little bit, messed around in the garage, played just but he was it was, you know, one of the guys that supported me that distracted he was just there because he he didn't I didn't sound right on the phone. And that was all it took. And I couldn't tell you what we talked about. I don't remember. But ⁓ speaker-0: But you remember he was there. speaker-1: But I remember he was there. So you don't always have to have the right words. Sometimes it's just the fact that you're a human being and you're there. So presence can be a powerful survival tool. So if you don't know what to say, knock on the door. Just thought I'd stop by. speaker-0: So what would you say, Rusty, if I ask you as leaders, what are some relatively quick or simple things that we could do to start shifting the culture for the people around us? speaker-1: One of the things I'm really big on now is how important internal affairs is. You know, I'm not I'm not about saying bad behavior's good. I believe in accountability. We're in a nation that values freedom. And we are authorized to take freedom away, even a life if we have to. So we should be held accountable and we should be held to a higher standard. But police agencies have kind of misused internal affairs for many years. You know, I I joked when I was internal affairs at Somerville and I said, you know, the toughest job for an internal affairs investigator is when their good friend screwed up and they have to hold them to account, or the guy they can't stand did it right. And too often, NYPD is a great example of this. Sorry, New York guys, but you'll all agree with me when I say NYPD had internal affairs that just went out to hem people up. That was their sole job. When you're a chief The person who's running your internal affairs is the most important. That's the soul of your department. Because they have to, they have to maintain that 51-49 stance. 51% protect the profession, protect the department. 49% protect your officer. Most of the time they align. So 100% of your job is just protecting everyone. But if it's somebody you don't like, you you can't just Let the narrative drift, to borrow a phrase from my book, because I don't like that guy. And I think he did this. You've got to keep your internal affairs has to be willing to tell the chief no. You have to put somebody in that position as a chief that has the courage to look you in the eye and say, That's not what happened. No, I don't support that. And then you've got to understand how important that is because your officers understand every internal affairs case goes out and everybody knows what happened and everybody knows the punishment and everybody knows if somebody got screwed over or not. Right. And it only takes one to destroy your leadership capabilities. Because if you s if you do that, they'll get scared, they'll do nothing, they'll shut down. Yeah. But if they know they're gonna get a fair shake, and they know that when they sit in a chair, that the person listening to them It's not the guy who couldn't do the investigations in in Central or something or whatever they happen to call their investigative bureau. No, this is one of the best investigators in my department. One of the most trusted. This is the guy I want to work my homicide because I know he's gonna do the job. He's gonna do it right. He's gonna catch the bad guy. And too often it's kind of the awkward person who gets stuck in internal affairs. And and that's where the whole, you know, the blue falcon stuff and all that has come about. But when I went to internal affairs, And ⁓ Chief Wright knew it because I'd known Doug for ⁓ thirty four years now. He knew when I went in there, I said, I'm gonna run this my way and he encouraged it. And he ha he knew that if I came in there and said, This guy, he screwed up, this is a mistake, he would he would handle it. But if I came in there and said, There's nothing here, nothing occurred, and I'll go to war on it then he also knew what that meant. So That's that's so important and it's something that I think a lot of chiefs miss because they don't want to think about internal affairs. This is uncomfortable. Why do we discipline? Why do you discipline your children? I don't know if you have kids, but if you do, why do you discipline your children? Do you discipline them because you don't like them? speaker-0: ⁓ there's you gotta understand there's consequences for behavior, right? And you refer and change. speaker-1: But in the poor you're trying to make them better. Why do you make them better? Because you love your children. Yeah. And I'm not calling our cops children. Although sometimes internal affairs you start to wonder We discipline out of love. And if you run your internal affairs from a position of discipline is love, then you will have a much more successful department. Because if they trust the internal affairs process, they will do their jobs better. speaker-0: Yeah, and ⁓ you know, for our audience is not in law enforcement, but is in leadership. Something you said there that resonates and I it was in your book is if you're a leader and you're surrounded by everybody that agrees with you all the time, you're not actually getting the truth. Right. A a good leader, I want people to disagree with me because that means they trust me, they feel safe enough to have a different opinion and it gives me the benefit of getting all the different views of a topic. Verse a bunch of yes people that are only trying to tell me what they think I want to hear and playing that game. speaker-1: We've had a number of sheriffs in South Carolina that were surrounded by yes men and they ended up in the same place. It was a jail where their name was on the wall. You know, and it could be hard sometimes. People that disagree with you can really annoy you. You have to learn to value that. Right. And sometimes when they go, Well, wait a second, there was a case three weeks ago that you haven't heard of yet that this is now, you know, this is a potential civil rights violation. They might be saving your career. Yeah because they disagree with you. And I get it. When you walk out of a s out of a conference room with your command staff, you're one page. You know, you're not you sh you don't talk about the chiefs' bad decisions and stuff. But when those doors shut, open season. Say what you want to say, say it the way I want to hear it. I want I want a hundred percent honesty. Do you think this is a good idea or not? Why? You know, and and if you don't surround yourself with people that'll challenge you as a leader, then you're making a a very foolish mistake. speaker-0: Rusty, what do you hope or want our listeners to take away from our conversation today? speaker-1: ⁓ If you're an officer and you're going through something, whether it's an internal investigation or if it's a personal issue, a divorce or a sick child or something like that, the most important thing for you is to say to someone, I need help. And I would encourage you to say it before you need to say it. If you get a diagnosis that your wife is pregnant with an autistic child, the time to ask for help is now. I'm I'm going through this. Don't wait till the child's born. Don't wait till something down the road. Get the chain rolling. Get the get the get the the peer support people. Get them ⁓ let people know what you're going through. Because you know, we all dress up in pretty uniforms and shine our shoes and shine our brass. And we go to work and we look squared away. And you can have the most squared away cop in the world, and they're in their head it's just turmoil. It's just going around. Don't wait for the turmoil to get to the point where you're collapsing and falling apart and you're making a suicide plan. When you start feeling something's not right in your heart, it's time to ask for help. Ask early. And I've told this on a number of podcasts: if if you're going through something with IA that's just not right, unjust, if you get in touch with me, I will, I will get you a copy of the book. I'm not I didn't write this book for money. Yeah. I wrote this book to save a life. I think I got one. Now I'm now I'm more now I want two. Yeah. And then three because guys were killing ourselves way too much. Five to one. Five to one. Cops killing themselves to bad guys. That right. It breaks my heart. You know, I got a f the officer down feed and it puts it out when it's a suicide as well. And it just every day I look at it, I'm like, God, I wish I'd have known them. I wish I could've got to ⁓ speaker-0: Where can our audience follow along with you and and pick up the book, Rusty? speaker-1: I have a website, rusty dash rusty hyphenmyers.com. ⁓ Y E R S, just one E. ⁓ and the the book is on Amazon, tattered within the blue line phrase. It's on Amazon. It's under Arthur Myers. That's my father's name. It's my real name. And ⁓ I still have my father. I'm blessed to have him at eighty-two and eighty-three now. And I wrote it. And he wanted me to write it, so I honored him by putting my real name on the book, which is Arthur W. Myers the third. But everybody calls me Rusty. That's what I answer to. If they call art, I started looking for my dad. But ⁓ speaker-0: Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure to share your story and and thank you for having the courage to share your story to realize the power it may have in the lives of others and for putting it out there so that we can learn from it. speaker-1: ⁓ I have an email too, tattered readers at gmail dot com. If you're an officer and you're going through it, shoot me an email. I'll put a copy of the book in your hands. speaker-0: Very cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us again, Rusty. It was a true honor to have this conversation. speaker-1: Thank you very much, Jared. speaker-0: Hey everybody, if you've been tuning into the On Purpose Podcast, you already know we don't do a lot of fluff. My excellence on the leadership course is built on tactical coaching that transforms how you prepare, connect, and lead. Whether you're building a business, leading a team, or leveling up personally, we focus on deliberate actions, strategic relationships, and decisions that create lasting impact. If you're ready to lead with purpose and precision, book me for a class or a speaking engagement at teamhardy.net. When you're training with purpose, your fueling can't be an afterthought. That's why I use Never Second, the simplest, most reliable system I have found for staying energized, hydrated, and steady through their long efforts. Their C-Series carbs take guesswork out of performance, no stomach drama, no complicated mixing, just clean, consistent fuel that actually works when the miles get long. If you want to train with more intention and recover without feeling wrecked, check out Never Second. Click the link in the show notes to get dialed in. And remember team, life is far too short to live any other way than on purpose. We will see you all again next week.