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The Roles Reversed, My Most Honest Interview Yet.... · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Emerge to Music Podcast.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Aaron, I'm your host, and thank you guys so much for coming back for another week.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, you know, I got a couple emails this week from some very special people.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: That was pretty awesome.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys so much.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I really appreciated getting some emails and just uh some prayers and support.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was really, really cool.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: But hey, let's jump into tonight's episode.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: On today's episode, we're gonna be listening to an interview, and that interview is of me.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: You see, several months back I interviewed a young man named Zach Tidwell.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Zach is a Marine Corps veteran, and more so he is a suicide survivor.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: You see, Zach found himself in a struggle with the battles of life and the hurdles and the obstacles that we all face, but sometimes it becomes too much, and in this case, he decided to shoot himself in the head.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he survived that.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: But coming out of that, he was completely blind.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not only was he blind, he was deaf in one ear.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that gave him a whole new perspective on life.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And during the my interview with him, he tells his entire story.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: The most amazing thing about Zach is not his story, how he got here, but it's what he's done since the suicide attempt.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he's gonna tell you about whitewater rafting and blind, he's gonna tell you about downhill skiing, he's gonna tell you about all these extreme sports and mountain climbing blind, and all these things that he does.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: But more than that, he has taught himself how to write code.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he writes uh applications and computer programs for people with and without disabilities.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're games that people can play.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have a loved one that has a disability, they can play it, and then you can play it also, and nobody knows the difference, and everybody it's just a fun game for everyone.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: You guys know what?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: This man is an absolute genius.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Check him out.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that if you guys want to hear that, that is podcast number 84.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I can't believe it's been that long since I interviewed him, but it's called Going In Blind, U.S.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Marine.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's when I shot myself in the face, where he turns tragedy into triumph.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great episode, listen to a story.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: But here's what here's what else is awesome.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: You see, I got to go on Zach's podcast called Going In Blind, and he interviewed me, and that's what we're gonna listen to tonight.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the stuff you're gonna hear tonight is new information.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: You see, when people ask me questions, I get I have to answer them, and it's maybe things that I've never thought of talking about before.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So there's some new stuff in there, there's some of my history.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: You guys, it's a great interview, and I really appreciate the way that Zach went about the interview.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very conversational tone.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we're sitting across the table from each other having a cup of coffee.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: So take a listen to this interview.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, you guys enjoy it, get something out of it.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: By all means, Zach is an amazing man.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: He did an amazing job.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Go check out his podcast, Going In Blind.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: You can go find him at zaktidwell.com.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you're inspired by him and you want him to come and speak at one of your events, by all means, he is there and the information's on the website, Zachtidwell.com.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Going in blind, found everywhere that you get your podcasts.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Going In Blind.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: I'm your host, Zach Tidwell.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: My guest this week spent 21 years as a police officer.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: He's a lifelong musician, and when he finished his career, he was working as a homicide and child abuse detective.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure we're probably going to get into some heavy waters today, but before we do that, just a couple of quick announcements, as usual.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: If you guys aren't familiar with my personal story yet, if you're new to the show, head over to my website and you can read a little bit about it there and see some of the other stuff that I'm up to and join my mailing list so that you can get announcements about some big projects that I have going on behind the scenes right now when they do start making their way into the world.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: But without any further ado, we're keeping it short and sweet on the intro this week.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: Please welcome Mr.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron Turnage.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron, how's it going?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's great, man.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me on the show.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think it's been I I guess I didn't even realize it until today, like getting everything set up for this.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: It feels I thought it was more recent that we'd connected, but it's been a little bit since I was on your podcast now.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's been a few months, yeah.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's it's weird.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: So it I I didn't realize it had been that long, but I think you know, we've gotten to dig into my stuff on your podcast, but I want to start here maybe with just the simple question of what what drew you into police work.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: I think especially I mean that's a a common thing to ask, but especially today, I think a lot of people I I I hope things are starting to come back around where people are starting to respect the the police a lot more now, but I think hearing maybe what what draws someone like you into that line of work is important for people to hear.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, no problem.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I got involved in I went on my first ride-along when I was eight years old.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was born and raised in Alaska, and uh I was driven.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I had some friends that were police officers, nobody in my family was, but I had seen them.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: They were the Alaska State Troopers, they had a nice, shiny uniform and nice cars.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: At about eight years old, I started looking for uh a ride-along to go on, and they told me no because I was too young and I kept pestering, and finally I got to go on my first ride-along at eight.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: At 13 years old, I joined the Explorer Post, and there was no doubt after that first ride-along that that's what I wanted to do for a career.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in my explorer post, I was there from about 13 to 17 years old.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: I rode about 4,000 hours in uniform as a second person in a police car, so I got exposed to all the stuff you would imagine from car crashes to theft to domestic violence to dead bodies, all of that.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: There was that experience between 13 and 17.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I went off, got my degree in California, and or not California, sorry, Arizona.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then I went back to Alaska and was a police officer in Alaska for about nine and a half years prior to moving down to the Pacific Northwest.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: When I came down to the Pacific Northwest, I lateraled down, meaning I went from one police agency to another, and I was a police officer there for about 13 and a half years, and uh my last 11 years I spent as a homicide and child abuse detective.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And what drew me into it, I think it was just my initial exposure to some of the Alaska State Troopers, their uniform, and just what they stood for.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: They showed up, they had great command presence, which I didn't know at the time what that was, but they came in and they just took charge and were assertive and you know helped people out.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what drew me to it.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's that air about it's that that confidence of someone like you you totally do pick up on that.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I I'm guessing in the academies they probably teach you guys that command presence, like you said, like specifically that being the like the I guess the strategy there.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: But I you mentioned I got uh with like you you had had family friends that were officers, but as a teenager you got exposed to all that stuff as a you said 13 to 17 and like it was bodies and everything.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, correct.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, 13 to 17 is when I was at it with an explorer post, and yeah, I got involved in everything.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: If there was a call that came in, I mean, you know, I went on hundreds or thousands of calls during those four years.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I remember 4,000 hours, so I went on a lot of calls, and I never got left out of anything.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: So all the exposures you can imagine.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I I dealt with my first dead body at 13 years old.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: That was my first death, my first death investigation that I got to be involved in, and by that I mean I got to put on gloves and roll over the body and palpate the body from head to toe to look for defects or injuries or blunt trauma or something like that.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: This body had been laying out in the woods for about seven and a half months before they found it.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: So um that was my first exposure, and that was literally one of my first ride-alongs as an explorer at 13 years old.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_03: Was that that program that that the Explorer program was that unique or is that that pretty common uh across the country or at least in Alaska?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I mean, that it seems like you were in on at least you yourself were immersed in that to uh uh like the umpteenth degree, 4,000 hours in a couple of years.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's crazy for a teenager.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: So like, yeah, did you see other programs even similar to that as you were working as a police officer too?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, so there's explorer and cadet programs all across the country.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: The explorer program is actually ran by the Boy Scouts of America, but it's for both boys and girls, and it's a way for young youth to explore a career field of their choice to see if that's what they wanted to do.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: When I came into the Explorer post, there was no doubt that's what I was going to do, and there was no limits on it.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you can get involved as much or as little, you know.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think your major, I think your requirement was one, you know, meeting a week or one meeting every two weeks or something, but you can get involved as much as you want.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I chose to, you know, jump into the deep end on this and get all that exposure.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: I knew it's what I wanted to do.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoyed doing it.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't, it didn't make me popular at you know teenage parties, but it was at least fun for me to go out and do.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that's I knew this was going to be my career.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're like fucking narc.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Get back.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've still got people that hate me because they think I narked on them as a 16-year-old.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: I could give two shits what they were doing.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: I just uh, you know, I just had my thing, and you know, the people that really knew me knew me the weekends I wasn't with the police.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was out partying and having keggers myself.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, you know, it's just it's a teenage world, but mine was a little bit different.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I guess though with those kinds of people, are those one, I guess was it a small town, and are those people still living in that small town?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's that that seems like that's where that mentality would come from, where you're still pissy about that kind of stuff.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: How you hit the nail on the head, man.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a small town.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the entire Kenai Peninsula had 70,000 people.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: My town had probably eight to ten and uh you know, full-time residents, and yeah, those kids are still, those people are still in the town and they still act like children.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's weird.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, small town dynamics like that are interesting.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's it it's weird to, you know, I I moved all over the place growing up, but uh my first high school was in a little teeny tiny town.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: It was like my, you know, my last two years of middle school and then first two years of high school, we were in that little town.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: And even now, you know, I'm still I see people from that town on social media who are all still there and like no one ever left a little, you know, a couple thousand people town.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just it's I have a hard time understanding that, but I do, you know, I I would get the the lowdown on some of that stuff, even like as an adult.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's just it's strange to me.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: It is this it's like its own little biosphere going on where people get sucked into that little gravity well of that little place and then never leave.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: But it's it's interesting.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_03: So being all the way up there and in such a remote place, how much of that because it is that I know you said you went to Arizona for college, but when you joined when you became an officer, was it back in that little little town, that little area?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was, yeah.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the police department that I spent most of my time with growing up was uh police department in Kenai, Alaska.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the department that I went back and worked nine and a half years for.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I went back and worked with a lot of the guys that I used to ride with as an explorer, or my mentors as an explorer.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: I went back and rode with them, you know, as a uh as a police officer, or you know, worked alongside them as a police officer.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that had a lot of, you know, that was very, very positive for me.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I had a lot of relationships that were already built and established and trust it was established.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that was good.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it was easy for me to jump right into, you know, one of the things in law enforcement, I'm not sure what it's like in the military, but one of the things in law enforcement is getting accepted, you know, kind of into the fold, into the group.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you show up as a new recruit or a new rookie, and you know, you don't know what you're doing, and there's a lot of question, there's a lot of judgment early on.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Are they gonna be able to step up and fight when they need to?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Are they gonna be able to engage?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do they have common sense?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Are they gonna be able to think through a problem, you know?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh for me, when I went back, everybody already knew what I was made of, so that was kind of nice for me.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_03: Because I mean, you 4,000 hours sounds like I mean it was like a full-time job in your teenage years, essentially.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: So like it's I get that typical kind of process, that timeline of working your way in.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you spent a whole career as an officer.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: Is that how long does is that kind of a case-by-case thing where people tend to work their way in?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I asked this because, you know, in the when I was in the Marines, like in the infantry specifically, there's a certain kind of hell that boots are put through for and you are you are a boot until you've come back from your first deployment, and then you get a new wave of of Marines coming in that you then become a senior marine to.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_03: And it's you know, a year and a half-ish, it was for us at least, timeline-wise, of just you're it's miserable for that first year and a half.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um I mean, you're just getting your dick run into the dirt and haste the whole time.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: So like for what is I know that's kind of a different dynamic, but it's very, you know, it's paramilitary-esque.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: And uh seems like especially out in a remote area like that, it would probably be even a different level of things.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I understand your question.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: The so yeah, there is some of that, you know, when you come into law enforcement, when you're a new guy coming into the police department, um, you're getting put into a world where you're getting put into a world where all of a sudden you're expected to make decisions, you're expected to make the decision of taking somebody's life or removing somebody's freedom, or engaging in a street fight, you know, to back up your partner.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh all of that stuff are unknowns.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And as police officers are seasoned that are out there, we want to know that when that cover car shows up, that the person inside of it has what it takes to send me home to my family at night.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a lot of distrust and I would say guardedness, uh, you know, and there's a field training process and all of that.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: But amongst the officers, the established officers, there's a lot of distrust and just kind of waiting to see, you know, what the product is gonna be.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: We don't really haze and do all that kind of stuff like I'm hearing you say about the military.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: We don't do that, um, but you definitely feel like you're not part of the mix, you know.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And on the agency I was in in Alaska is a smaller agency, so there wasn't so much of it.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: But my bigger agency that I was in in the Pacific Northwest, um, you know, we had 150 cops or something like that, town of 140,000, very violent city, uh, lots of murder, that type of stuff.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in that environment, uh, I would I wouldn't say there was hazing, but there was definitely uh it was definitely harder for the recruits in that environment.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: But dynamics-wise, and I guess work-wise too, because it seems being out in the boonies in Alaska, a lot of that work would probably be out, you know, out in the woods and stuff like that.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: But dynamics wise, what was it like when you did switch to the move down to the Pacific Northwest and why did you switch?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: So Alaska is uh Last Frontier.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're in Alaska, even as a city police officer, you carry enough gear in your trunk to do whatever you need to do.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if that means you need to sleep in a snowbank overnight, then you carry that gear for it.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: You carry the rope, you carry the rescue bags for water rescue, you carry chainsaws to get trees out of the road.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a very um, you know, even in the urban city, it's a very rural way of thinking because even in my city, there were times where my cover, you know, if I had cover, it was an hour away.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you have to be prepared for everything that you get into, from a lethal force encounter to removing a tree out of the road, you know, in four feet of snow.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: When I moved down to the Pacific Northwest, it was different.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, people are people no matter where you go.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And when people have problems, they all react the same way.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Some people are cool, some people are assholes, some people had alcohol and drugs, which make them unpredictable.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, people are people and they have problems, whether you're in a town of 300 or a town of 3,000, you know, it doesn't really matter.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: So when I got down to the lower 48, Pacific Northwest, and started working, there was a lot more folks there.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there was no trees to remove out of the road, but there was a lot of gangs, there was a lot of murder and stabbings and armed robberies.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: In my city in Alaska, we might get one armed robbery every 18 months, two years.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: In my city in Pacific Northwest, we get armed robberies every single day.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that just kind of shows you the dynamics of calls that we would go on.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to be harder faster in the lower 48 Pacific Northwest in my city there than I did in Alaska.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: I learned more in one month on the job in the in my Pacific Northwest city than I did nine years in Alaska.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_04: Was it more engaging and more rewarding being down there in a more dynamic environment?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was different.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it w it was different.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um but at the end of the day, yeah, I think it was more rewarding.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And for me specifically, I was on the road for about two, two and a half years when I went into detectives.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I went into detect detectives, I started working child abuse and homicide almost right away, and that's where I spent the next 11 years of my career.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So my career, you know, took it took a change from chasing dime bags of dope on the street, and now I'm putting away child molesters and murderers, you know, and send them to prison for the rest of their life.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: So um that was definitely more rewarding and fulfilling for me.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it also had a dark side too, you know.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I I'm gonna ask about that next here, I because I'm very curious.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: I want to know about all of it, like what the pipeline is to shifting into that.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: But I was curious, specifically, I guess, with the small town dynamics up there, and probably running into the same kind of people that still have beef with you, you know, however many years later now for stuff that they assumed you were doing as a teenager.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: It is it tough uh as a as a police officer in a small town like that, because you know, where it is, it's people that you know and that you've probably some are very familiar with.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: How does that change your operationally?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: How does that change how you have to do things?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: Is it harder to disconnect from work when you go home?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: Is it do you get stuff that kind of spills over from work into your personal life because it is such a small town?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: Can you speak to that?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so all of the above are true.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, working in a small town, it's you see the same people, you know, and there's a benefit to it.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: When you work in a town of seven, eight thousand people and you're driving down the road, you know what everybody's driving, you know who all the criminals are, you know who's moving drugs, you know who's running guns, you know who the burglars are.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's easy.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's literally shooting fish in a barrel.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, oh, there's is it?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Shag nasty, you know, his driver's license is suspended.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: You turn on him and you get into a vehicle pursuit.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty simple.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you know all these people, and um, that is good.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Small town policing, you know, absolutely right.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of the people that I'm arresting.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: My name, my last name in the community I lived in was big.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was big in the oil field, and he was very, very well known in that community, and we grew up in that community.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up around there.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: So now, you know, if they don't know me, they know my family or my legacy or my my dad.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got all of that.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've arrested my nephew.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so yeah, policing in a small town is definitely different, and the different dynamics are different.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the one thing that you have to remember is that people want to be respected.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care how hard your gangbanger is or how hard your murderer is or your child molester, at the end of the day, these are human beings, and they have made a bad decision or a series of bad decisions that got them cross with the law for some reason.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: But you strip all that crap away, strip away their nonsense that they've done, strip away my badge, gun, and authority, and you're two human beings talking to each other.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the things you really have to learn and what taught me by policing in a small town is how to talk to people, how to get rid of the stigma, the, oh, you're a murderer, oh, you're a child molester, oh, you know, you you just beat your wife, whatever it is.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Get rid of all of that and connect with this person as a human being.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, we're worried about our bills, how we're gonna get our daughter to gymnastics, you know, the what we're having for dinner on Thanksgiving, who's coming over.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: We all have those same thoughts and values and worries.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And when we connect people on that level, now you can make them do things you want.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: In Alaska, if you are, if your cover's two hours away and you got some big guy on the side of the road you have to take to jail for whatever reason, he's not going, he doesn't want to go, you have to be able to talk him into those handcuffs.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: You just can't kill everybody that doesn't want to go with you and go with the program.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to learn how to communicate.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the thing that small town policing, the dynamic that small town policing really taught me was how to communicate, how to be effective in that and get people to join kind of my team and what I wanted to do.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: Was that something instilled into you or something you just kind of recognized and learned over time?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, they they talk about in the academy, you talked about command presence.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they, yeah, they talk about command presence.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's there used to be a use of force continuum, and that's what I'll talk about, but essentially a triangle.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine the top of the triangle is when you show up and the bottom of the triangle.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, the bottom of the triangle is when you show up, the top of the triangle, you know, is lethal force.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: When you show up, you have command presence, you take charge of the scene, you look good, your boots are shine, blah, blah, blah.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: People respect you, command authority, and you can get the job done without using force.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then it slowly steps up to physical force, so on and so forth.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: As far as the communication, they tell you that you got to talk to people, you know, and you need to learn how to communicate.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think for me, you know, I'm a Christian.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've been in church my entire police career, and I think that that there's a lot of core values that I take away from that, just treating people like human beings.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is a me thing, not something they teach.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can command presence, but you still got the guy that shows up looking like a sack of shit and can't wear a uniform to save his life, you know, and couldn't command presence in a grocery store.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then you've got people that can really communicate and you've got people that can't.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: You got people that would rather go hands-on and fight or, you know, be dicks or you know, continue to uh chastise the people for whatever they did, you know, because they get all emotional.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta strip the emotion out of it.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And once you strip the emotion out, it allows you to be able to talk, and that is something that I learned just from doing the career.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's interesting, you know.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, you and I have only interacted on a very small uh period of time here, but it's even in talking to you on your podcast, like you seem you strike me as being very analytical and very just kind of matter of fact with things.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: I was curious like and very even keeled, I guess, too.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like even your tone of voice when you're talking about this stuff is very just like it's just it's very level, I guess, the whole time.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: So I was just I was curious about it.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I um also with the that idea that you talked about of of you know, everyone knowing you, everyone you knowing everyone in the community, you also knowing what to expect from certain people, and when you're encountering certain individuals in a smaller town like that.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you hear police officers talk about it's a it's an interesting field and situation that officers are put in, where every person that they encounter typically is someone, it isn't a total stranger.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: You don't know if it's that person on a good day, on a bad day, you don't know if that person is running from something, if they have a warnout.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: There, you do not know what to expect.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: So you are on high alert the every time that you pull a car over, every time that you're encountering someone new because you don't know what's going to happen.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: And when the time that you do drop your guard because someone seems disarming is when that will get you killed.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: Do you feel like having that awareness because it is such a small community?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: Do you feel like that alleviates any of that or like that alleviated any of that for you as opposed to when you were in a bigger city?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think that, you know, no, I I and again, people are people, no matter what size city you're in, small or big.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um for me, everybody that I interacted with, you know, yeah, I was and I am a lot more calm now than I used to be.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: I used to be super high strung before I came out of law enforcement.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's been a lot of change since I come out.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: But when I was in law enforcement, I was a high strung um guy.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, when I'm dealing with people, I'm always on.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always, you know, ready, expecting the worst.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I want to be nice to them, but I'm expecting the worst.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you're right, the people in a small town or people in any town, you know, you deal with them 15 times and they've been great.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the sixteenth time, they're having a really bad day, and all of a sudden this, I'll tell you a story that i literally exemplifies this idea about one day we're great and the next day they're bad.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but no, whether it's small town or big town, dealing with people, it is for me, I always had to be ready, you know.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: I always treated people like people and was nice to them.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um I could be totally nice until it was time to not be nice, and then you turn that on, you gain compliance, and then you go right back to being nice again because this isn't personal.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the way I looked at it, and that's kind of what got me through my career.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's all right.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: I try not to get too bogged out of this.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: Questions uh keep coming up in the south, that always goes, but so I guess we'll shift here into I'm curious about the I guess the pipeline, the transition into becoming a detective.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: But my my understanding is that is a more senior officer typically, but is that is that a natural progression, or is that something you choose to to shift into as an officer?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: And how did that how did all that happen for you?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's something that you choose.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, you can stay on patrol and you know drive a car for 25 years if you wanted, and that and some people are really, really happy doing that.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it's not what I wanted.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: I always wanted to um I always wanted to dig and overturn the rocks.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, one of the benefits of working in that small town is there was no, you know, the idea is there's no call too small.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: So whether you got your credit card stolen, somebody broke into your car, or you know, your wife was murdered, we're gonna do everything we can to solve that.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna throw all of the resources at it, from crime scene to tech to science to investigators to interviews, all of that.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And working in that small town, I was able to do that, and in doing so, I learned how to turn over rocks and look underneath them and chase the leads and follow up and follow through, and ultimately was very successful at closing a lot of those cases.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: But when I came to the bigger city, and when I got to the bigger city, and I I came to the bigger city in in 2010 uh in the Pacific Northwest, and I came here because my son had some medical issues that he couldn't get uh medical care for in Alaska.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we needed to be in the Portland, Oregon area to get medical care, and I was, you know, I needed to keep my career so I lateraled down.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's what got me down in the Pacific Northwest.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: But um, when I got down to the Pacific Northwest, um, you know, I worked patrol for a couple of years, but on patrol in a large city, if you spend time turning over all of those rocks and investigating all of those things, you get bogged down and the calls start stacking up, and your peers hate you because you spend two and a half hours on a you know stolen check case because I'm doing all that investigation.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, I while it was fun kicking indoors and pointing guns and all that kind of stuff and the you know tactical operations, all that was cool.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: For me, I wanted to be somewhere where I felt more effective and at home, and that was in that investigation detective unit.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I applied for it and was ultimately assigned as a detective in 2013.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and so how far into your career was that?
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh 11 years, 12 years, okay.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: Eleven years.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that immediately gets you thrust into homicide and the child abuse stuff?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I started off um, you know, just doing the the small calls, probably the first year I was helping on homicides and helping on the bigger cases, but they were just trying to figure out who I was because again, they don't know me from anybody.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know my you know nine years, ten years of history in Alaska turning over rocks or my interview skills or my search warrant skills or anything like that.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: So getting into this new unit, you're a boot, you're a new guy.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: So they got to feel you out.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then once they started to see, you know, what I was capable of doing and what my history was, then I advanced pretty quickly and within you know the first 12 to 18 months, I was assigned on the homicide team and was leading homicides and uh assigned to the child abuse team, you know, doing child abuse cases, and then that's where I you know stayed the rest of my career.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: I came out of child abuse after about a year or two years, and then uh was pretty much strictly homicide for the next, I don't know, nine years.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_03: What's the toll like working cases like that?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: Specify I'll ask more about the homicide stuff, but uh even how because it d you had a family by this point, right?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, I've had I've had them this whole time.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you had kids when you started working these cases?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I did, yeah.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: My kids were uh well I don't know, my kids were uh ten years old, eight, nine, ten years old, something like that.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: What was that like being thrust into that world, especially having had young kids at the time?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's um yeah, it was uh you know, it was a challenge, but something happened.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: So um I gotta go back to when I was 13 years old.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Talk about that first dead body case real quick, because that'll paint the picture for where I'm gonna go next.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that 13-year-old as an explorer riding to that dead body.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was in dispatch when that call came in.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And when the call came in, it was a body had been found in the woods in a shallow ravine near a creek, and we needed to go to it.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: So my officer came and got me, and we only had about a mile drive before we got to the scene.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: But in that mile drive, my anxiety was high.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was nervous.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never seen a dead body before.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's been laying there seven months.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, is it gonna be maggoty?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: What's it gonna look like?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things were going through my head, and there was this anxiety, stress, and you know, a little bit of fear.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I we got to the call, and as we got there, I you know, I kind of sat in my seat, and the officer said, Hey, you know, you're not gonna learn anything if you don't get out of the car.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we got out of the car and we walked over to the ravine and looked down, and sure enough, there's a body, and he's laying face down.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we walked down to the body, and my officer that I'm with says, Hey, do you got any gloves?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can put them on.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we put them on.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, help me roll them over.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I reached over and I'm still feeling all this nerves and anxiety.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I reached over and grabbed the opposite shoulder and kind of rolled him back to me.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now this guy's face up looking at me, and all of a sudden, all of those feelings that I had were gone.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: All that anxiety, fear was gone.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it was literally matter of fact, what do we do next?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, we need to palpitate the body from head to toe.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that means you feel the body, you're feeling for defects, deformities, blah, blah, blah.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we do that.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we sweeped, is there blood anywhere?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is there gross bleeding?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we do all this stuff with the body, kind of this initial stage of this death investigation.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: We check the eyes, we check all this stuff.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I got back in the car, and that is the first time, you know, hindsight, knowing what I know now, my nervous system shut down.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I stopped processing it, and I kind of went numb and cold.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the first time that ever happened.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: But in the law enforcement world, that wouldn't be the last.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way that I went into all of the calls for the rest of my career.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: I may be nervous showing up, but as soon as that door closes, it's business, it's cold, and it, you know, quote unquote didn't affect me.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whether that was death investigations or child molesters or autopsies or baby autopsies or whatever it is, I went in, it was, you know, a piece of evidence.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing business, we're moving through it.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: We're very matter-of fact, we check the boxes, we make the bullet points, we go back, we debrief, we investigate who's responsible, we find them accountable and hold them accountable and send them to jail.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Discompare mentalize it and move on.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and we move on to the next one.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: So to ask me what it's like, you know, in those with those with my kids and that type of stuff, uh, I didn't think that it bothered me.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I went to work and I did my I did my cases, I was effective at it, I was good at it, and I come home and I'm still a dad and a father, and it doesn't bother me.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: That was on, you know, what I thought.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh unbeknownst to me, it was bothering me.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because all that stuff that I was seeing and experiencing and feeling was seeping in through my cracks and crevices, and it was saturating that internal sponge that I have.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't realize it.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: People around me could realize it.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: That was part of being high strung, that was part of being an asshole, that was part of thinking the world was out to get me, that was part of hating everybody.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you got strong strong.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I just thought that was me, but it wasn't.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: That was all that exposure, you know, saturating that sponge.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, so that was I I guess, you know, how it affected me.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I didn't think it was affecting me, but at the end of the day, you know, ultimately a few years later and ended my career.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_03: And you so how did that come to be?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's as things are reaching their boiling over point, or was it you know, you hear about substance abuse or just destructive behaviors, like what what was going on when it did start to finally become at least apparent to someone that you know, or even to you, maybe that it was something bigger than that, that this was affecting you.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: So um, I moved along in life just thinking everything was normal.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you've got this stereotypical cop in your mind, you know, that thinks they're the toughest thing, and they always got their back to the door and they carry guns and knives on them all the time, and they're ready to take on the world, and they're looking for a bank robbery every time they step into a bank, that was me.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's kind of the that high hypervigilance is the world that I lived in.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, and I always reacted, and this was throughout my career, you know, especially since I came into detectives, but I always reacted above and beyond whatever the stimulus called for.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I would go overboard on my reactions, both emotionally, physically.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: If we got into a fight, I was using 150%, you know, versus 110% that could have got the job done.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: If I I felt like there was always an emergency and I always responded as such.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize at the time that that was my brain being stuck in flight, flight, freeze.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, essentially there's always enough fire alarm ringing in my brain, but there was never a fire.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: So every time, you know, I got a startle, somebody stepped into my cubicle.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, my startle response was to punch them.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many coworkers I punched when they came into my cubicle and put their hand on my shoulder and I spun around and hit them in the gut because that was my startle response.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was normal for me.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: So all these things are happening over a period of years.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm dealing with child abuse every single day.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: For the majority of my homicide career, I juggled between five and nine homicides at any given time.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I always had active homicides.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Cases that you're handling.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Five to nine homicide cases.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: And in those homicide cases, you know, I'm running the entire investigation.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I might have five detectives working for me, or I might have 175 detectives working for me.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we're all, you know, I'm I'm juggling all of these pieces.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, and you can only do so much.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Working a 36-hour day for me was not abnormal.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: I would go to work and work 25, 35 hour days all the time.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: We would work, work, work, work, work, go home, get a couple hours of sleep, and come back because that was that internal drive that I had for the job, that same drive that put me in a police car for 4,000 hours as a 13-year-old.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what the standard that I expected the people working for me to meet and keep up with.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I was burning people out, but I didn't care because all I cared about was solving that case.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: So um, as I continue to do this for, you know, a decade and handle hundreds of homicide cases and hundreds of child abuse cases, you know, and one of the big things was I may be working a case today that we are, you know, an inch away from putting handcuffs on somebody, and then the phone rings with a fresh homicide, and all of a sudden, that case that I was about to solve goes on the back burner and I might not touch it for six months, and now I gotta go do another one.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: So there's never really time for completion and all of that stacked up inside of my head.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got all of this stuff going on.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when I was, well, let's see, 2022, uh, 2023, we are post George Floyd, we are post um all the writing and stuff that was going on in COVID, and during COVID and George Floyd, that took a lot of good police officers out of the career field, especially in the liberal politics near the city of Portland, Oregon.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: The city literally burned for months.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: And police officers let it happen.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: They let it happen, and they encouraged it.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the DA comes out and tells people, hey, you know, we're not gonna prosecute any crimes related to rioting, including assault on a police officer.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: So now it's an open statement to go out and fight with the police, and then we know we're going out there to do this, and then nobody is gonna get held accountable for it.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: So in that environment, we lost a lot of cops, and as you can imagine, the stress compounded um daily.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: And every time we lose somebody else, we've got to do more with less in this shitty environment.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: So all those things are happening, and then in 2022, I get into a fight at work, and um, as a result, uh it was a training and training situation, but as a result, I break three ribs and I went to uh I I didn't go to the doctor at first because they'll heal and I was all bruised up and stuff.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, about four or five days in, I started feeling my ribs, and I could feel that I'm actually missing sections of bone in my ribs.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I needed to go to the doctor.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to the doctor and my blood pressure was 185 over 145.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the doctor's like, hold on a second, you know, what the hell's going on?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we did a bunch of medical tests, and um, we couldn't come up with, you know, anything medical to support it.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, Well, what do you do for work?
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what is your environment like?
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I told her.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you know, I said, I uh I've been a police officer for 21 years.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a homicide detective.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is the cases I juggle.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: I work 35 hours all the time.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: I have nightmares.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: I get chased through my dreams by things that I can't see.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm constantly getting into shootings and attacked in my sleep.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: I get about two hours of sleep at night.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I said my partner was killed in the line of duty in 2002, never really processed or dealt with that.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I've planned my own funeral since 2003.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I go down this whole list and she's like, you have PTSD.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, I don't.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: I said, PTSD is for quitters.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's for losers, it's for people that want to get out of doing work.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I gotta go back to work, I got more stuff, I got more cases to solve.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, if you don't take time off, it's gonna kill you.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: She said, right now you're at stroke level blood pressure, and if you don't do something, you will die.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: So after some arguing, she uh called me, she called my uh hospital, my doc my office and told them that I wasn't fit for duty and that uh I needed to get some mental and medical help.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: So she that's the first time she enrolled me in a counselor, and uh I went to the counselor begrudgingly, and it took probably six, eight weeks for me to, you know, through seeing that counselor and that therapist, um I really was fighting that PTSD diagnosis, and I I didn't want to accept it, so I've got more murders to solve.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_03: Where do you feel that came from?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_03: That because you know, that mentality, I get the high strung, the feeling like, all right, no, I'm not a bitch, but did you view that differently for or was it the same across the board?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_03: If you heard BTSE, you know, if you heard a uh someone who went to war and was, you know, in the heart of of combat and they came back and said that the it like, yeah, hey, I've been struggling with PTSD.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: Was that also you're like, hey, that's bullshit kind of thing, get through it?
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_03: Or was it specific, was it an individualized thing?
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: Was it just police officers that you felt that way?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what was that?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think it was across the board, Zach.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, police officers were, I thought PTSD, you know, back when I started law enforcement, I went through my academy, and you know, you gotta understand I I started in law enforcement 10 years, 15 years before my career started, right?
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: Being around the police department.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: And PTSD was something that your feelings weren't talked about, emotions weren't spoken about.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: You literally wash the blood off and go to the next call.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: And anybody that was, you know, considering PTSD, they were weak, they were less than, um, they couldn't cut it, they weren't man enough, and they were looking for an out, they were looking for an easy out, you know, and they were pussies.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the way that it was bred into me, you know, early on.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that is the same mentality.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, law enforcement, military, it didn't matter.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: I thought PTSD was a joke.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Therapy dogs, are you kidding me?
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: You don't, you know, you don't need a therapy dog.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: That was the mentality that I had.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, and it took that six weeks of feeling this way.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: It got so bad, Zach, that I was I started having like mini seizures.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole right side of my body, they were they looked like strokes.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: The whole right side of my body would go numb and I would fall down and I couldn't feel and I couldn't talk, and my tongue would swell, my lips would swell, and so I got hospitalized with that.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um, they couldn't figure out what it was.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: It looked like strokes.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was an interview that I had with workers' comp people where I had to talk about, you know, 10 things, 12 things that happened throughout my career that were traumatic events.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I started with my partner getting killed in the line of duty, which I was directly involved in, and kind of went from there.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: I went chronologically throughout my career.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: And about halfway through that interview, you know, I am bawling, and I realized that the way that I parent, the way that I act, the way that I talk, the way that I'm a friend, the way that I'm a husband, the way that I'm a cop, everything has to do with something that I experienced in my career.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the moment that I recognized PTSD was real, and I started my healing journey at that point.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I I don't want to drag you into talking about details here.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's not what I'm doing, but I feel talk about anything.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: Your partner.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: So John Watson.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: John Watson, uh, I used to ride with John Watson as an explorer about half of those or a third of those hours that I rode as an explorer with John John Watson.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: So you met him as a child.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: John Watson was actually there when I was uh when I did my first ride along at eight years old, John Watson was working the shift that day.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: Jeez.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: So he was working the shift that day.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: He was a brand new cop.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: Then at 13, I come back.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: I remember him from when I was eight, and he is now a mentor of mine for the you know, four years.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Then I leave and I come back as a police officer.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um John Watson and I, John Watson was one of my field training officers, and then he you know was a shift partner with me.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: So now we're out taking calls together.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it was Christmas, my first year on the job, uh, Christmas of my first year, and I was supposed to work Christmas night, and uh my wife wanted to go to Arizona to visit her family for Christmas.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I asked my sergeant, my sergeant said, Can you can go?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he ordered John to work my shift on Christmas night.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh John didn't want to work because he had 18, 19 years on the job at this point, whatever it was.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was his wife's birthday, and he had plans, but he was ordered to work that shift.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I got to go to Arizona and he was ordered in.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: So he works that shift at about eight o'clock that night.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: They get a call of a suspicious circumstance where it's Christmas night, everybody's having dinner, and this family way across another city, you know, 30 miles away, is having dinner, and this guy, uh, unknown guy, unknown girl, and their dog walk into the living room of their house, and the guy sits down at the table and eats dinner with them while the girl and the dog wait in the living room.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's looking at everybody, like, who the hell is this dude and why is he at our kitchen table?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then after the guy gets done eating, he just gets up, puts his plates in the sink, and then gets his girlfriend and leaves.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: So they're like, Anybody know that guy?
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, so he's a stranger.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they call the police and give the license plate.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: That city, that car lived in our city.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: John went to go check out the address where that car's registered.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he got there.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was about 17 degrees below zero that night, it was dark, and uh the address was about six, eight miles from the police department, kind of in a rural area.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: And John got there and there was nobody home, so he leaves, and it's a really long road to get back to where this house was, and on the road he passes the car.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: So he turns around on the car and tries to traffic, stop him, and the guy continues on in to uh his house, pulls open the driveway, John gets out, contacts him, and uh John allows the girlfriend and the dog to go inside, and then a fight ensues between John and the bad guy when uh John tries to handcuff the bad guy.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: So um fight ensues, bad guy takes John's gun and uh puts John on his knees and shoots him between the shoulder blades and then shoots him in the back of the head and kills him.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: So at that point, prior to the shooting, John was able to put out, you know, that he needed assistance, and um uh the police officers from the you know city responders, only a couple of them, they responded, and when they get there, they find John's car there, 17 below, John's face down in bloody snow, the doors are open to his police car and the lights are going, and uh as soon as they get there, they look up and they see a male figure in the window holding a gun, and that guy in the house is dark inside, and the guy retreats away from the window, and then they get into about a five-hour standoff, and ultimately the guy uh surrenders.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: Was he mentally ill?
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like the the guy uh so he was, and you earlier you spoke about you know, you meet a guy one day and he's great, you meet a guy and one day and he's you know a turd.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: So uh about a month prior to this, I get sent, it's uh 10 o'clock at night.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: I get sent to a duplex kind of in the heart of our city, and there's a prowler call.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's 10 o'clock at night, they hear somebody moving around outside in the snow and um breaking tree branches and stuff.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I go, and the duplex has a left and a right side, and our target, our potential prowler is on the left side, back left corner.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I approach it from the right.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when I come around that right side, a guy steps out onto his porch and he's uh white male, leather jacket, sweater, gold necklace on the outside of the sweater, like a the kind of a turtleneck collar type of thing.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then um he's like, Hey, what are you doing?
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Oh, your neighbors here say there's a prowler over there.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I'm gonna go check it out.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Well, you're by yourself, you want cover?
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Yeah, come with me.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: So he walks with me.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: So he and I walk around, and there's ultimately a moose on the back side of this house.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we make our way all the way around.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a prowler, and I shake his hand, he goes inside, and uh, you know, we spoke for 15 minutes or something out there, then I shake his hand, he goes inside, we move on with life.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: He is the guy that killed my partner a month later.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: Whoa.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_03: That was supposed to be your shift, right?
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_04: And you'd met the guy a month earlier.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it took me a long time to get over that, you know?
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't process that exact until I was out of law enforcement, until I realized PTSD was something.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it still took me a long time to process that.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot of therapy to understand and come to grips with that whole thing.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of survivor's guilt.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of guilt that he was covering my shift on his wife's birthday and got killed uh while I was on vacation, you know, enjoying myself, quote unquote.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I wasn't there for my team when my team had to respond in and deal with the shittiest call of their life.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't there to help them.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: I showed up after the fact, you know, 24 hours later when I got an emergency flight home.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm there for all the crying.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: But then, Zach, we didn't debrief it.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: We never had a sit-down to say, hey, you know, tell us about every part of this.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't debrief it.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of that not getting into mental health, not talking about your feelings.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: You're familiar with demand that that was a thing.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: No, we they had there was a meeting that I wasn't even invited to, and it was like, you know, for the people that actually responded to the call that night, you know, tell us what you did, where were you?
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is what we did where we're how's everybody feel?
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody feels great.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone want help?
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone want counseling?
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: All right, go back to work.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way it was.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: You said that was 2003, right?
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was 2002, I believe.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_03: That's that it's just it's bonkers, man.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_03: But it's not the first time that I've heard that.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I've had I had another gentleman on here who was you know, he he had to he had to kill someone in the line of duty, and he his name was Adam Myers, and like he same thing.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, Yeah, I killed a woman, and then no debrief, no nothing.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_03: They just sent me home that night, you know.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_03: Once I was clear, they I sent me home in my patrol car in my town, where it was just on the news that I had to kill somebody, no debrief.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's but like uh I feel like you guys losing one of your own and the fact that there was no uh nothing, like is even more insane than that almost somehow.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's what did you realize over the course of the years following that that you on any level did you register that you hadn't processed that and that that was haunting you?
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_03: Were you scared to confront it?
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think that was some of not wanting to face all that stuff?
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I I didn't know that it could be dealt with, first of all.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you got a blind spot, you don't know what you don't know.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't know that it could be dealt with.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize that therapy was a thing and PTSD was something real.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: So looking at it from the lens that you just wash the blood off and move on to the next call, it's kind of the way life was.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it haunted me that the survivor's guilt and all that stuff haunted me.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it haunted me that I wasn't involved in the little meeting that they did have at the police department.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it wasn't because I wasn't there that night, I didn't get invited to the meeting, doesn't mean it affected me any less.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, I just think that, you know, I think I didn't deal with it because I didn't know.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know to deal with it.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: I started planning my funeral within six months of that.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I planned my funeral.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: Who my pall bearers, what songs they were gonna play, you know.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what passages are gonna be read.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: I I had a funeral file my entire career, and as people would change in my life, you know, friends or coworkers, I would change the people in that in that profile to who my pallbears were gonna be, who's gonna be on the front right corner?
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: I literally planned out my funeral.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was normal.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: My therapist says it's not.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was normal.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah, it did haunt me.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it didn't really come to a head until I realized that I had to deal with it in therapy and you know, post-law enforcement, and that is where things really started to come together for me, and I started to get a grip on it.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I think something that's people don't realize a lot of times, and I'm curious to see if this was a immediate fit for you with your therapist.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like, first of all, therapies obviously it's hard, it's very it's it's it's very difficult to first admit that you need help and then to actually start doing the work to confront stuff.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, people also don't realize a lot of times you aren't gonna click with someone.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's it's it is you are developing a relationship with someone, and like you sometimes you have to shop around and find someone who you can work with.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_03: And for you, what did that look like?
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_03: Was this another police officer?
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_03: Was this all through the department?
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_03: How did all that go down?
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so um I went to therapy in 2012.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: 2012, I was having a really bad go at life.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was depressed, and um yeah, in 2012, June 13, 2012, I had a gun in my mouth in the woods.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna kill myself at the final second, it didn't, uh, but realized that I needed some help.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: I went to a therapist then, and it was a crappy experience.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: I go in, I tell this guy everything.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, this is where I am, this is how I'm feeling.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of this session, he's like, you know what, I'm getting ready to retire.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: Your problems are too deep for me.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: You need to find somebody else.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: Go back to your EAP.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: So with that, and I was just, you know, confessed everything to this guy.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't touch therapy for another 20, you know, another 10 years.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: Then once I came out of law enforcement and I was ordered to therapy, that first therapist that I had, he and I, he was great for the immediate crisis that I was in, because I was in crisis.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was good for that crisis.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: But when it came anything deeper than that, um, we really lost our ability to connect.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, at about that 10, 12 week mark, you know, we ran out of things to talk about.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he started asking me about, you know, what kind of gun he should buy for home defense.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, I realized that, you know, maybe we're not doing, we're not as effective as we could be.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I went back to my police department, and at the time there is a lady, our police department has a employee, not employee assistance program, a uh law enforcement, you know, mental health uh program that the peers run.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's a peer-run group.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, the city will pay for some therapy at one of like five different therapists.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I chose one who was, I chose her geographically, first of all, because she was close to where I live.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the city would pay for it.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: She's culturally competent.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: Her husband is a police officer and has been for 30 years.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so she knows the business and she's well respected.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to her, and that was an absolute godsend.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she and I connect.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: We have a relationship, uh, and she, you know, I've seen her I don't know several hundred times, and she has been really my lifeline to get through this whole process.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: A good therapist is amazing.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: A bad therapist can do more harm than good.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you can I could say that if you can if you hook up with one, I'm not going to use the word connect.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you hook up with one and your spidey sense is like, this isn't the right person, we're not connecting the dots, move on and find somebody else.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you find that right one, you're gonna know it immediately, and that is where you're gonna find success.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_03: That's interesting.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_03: I actually I've had the same therapist basically since I shot myself almost, right?
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like there was I was initially taken to a private hospital, so I had some mental health stuff there, but once I was stabilized and out of the ICU, they transferred me to the VA, and I've had the same therapist since then.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_03: I did not like her at first, but like I didn't have a choice uh but to stick with her.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'd never done therapy or anything until then, until I had a bullet hole in my forehead and had to, and it was but it does like once it clicks, like there is it didn't take long, it took a couple sessions, but like once it clicked, it did.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_03: It is, I mean, it's like when you feel like you've you in any other again, you're building a relationship.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_03: You do you get that intuition of like yes, there's something right here.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great feeling, you know.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: The most I don't know about you, Zach, your church membership is, but the most experience the most impactful times for me in therapy, a lot of times is when I go in not knowing what we're gonna talk about, you know.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: If we have an agenda, then okay, I know we're gonna talk about you know John today.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, if we go in and I'm like, I really don't know what we're gonna talk about, that is for me is when the pure magic happens and we stumble into something and we're like, you know, we uncover those those big epiphanies, it's it's pretty cool.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_03: Do you feel like it's made you guess more aware of things that you do need to work on in your life, and not not even in the context of I need to work on it in therapy, but more aware of maybe maladaptive things that are starting to develop or and and stuff like that.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very aware.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, therapy coming out of law enforcement and getting away from the paramilitary, high speed low drag.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody is a badass, the world's gonna kill me.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: I need to carry 17 guns to protect myself.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: Getting away from that mentality that comes in law enforcement was huge for me.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's not like you can just turn it off overnight, right?
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: Cops put up the shield of armor, we put ourselves in the corner and we protect ourselves and all this kind of stuff.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the way cops do.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it took time to separate from that.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: Once I was able to separate from that and focus on the healing side, um, absolutely, it made me.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: Aware of feelings, first of all, because I hadn't felt anything in 20 years.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and there were I could go into the worst crime scene and see the absolute worst thing involving children.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, hey, can we grab a cup of coffee first?
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because I I really I'm a little parched.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean that's just the way that it was.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's not that I didn't care, it's just that I was desensitized to it.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: So learning how to feel was huge.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: Once you open up the floodgates of feeling, oh my gosh, your whole world changes.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for me, it made me aware of how I was parenting and how I was being a husband and a father.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, those things change slowly over time.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: And everything that we ever see, feel, touch, smell, experience, all of those things are stored in our brain.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care if you're two years old or 200 years old, all that stuff is stored in our brains.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: And through therapy, those boxes slowly start to unpack.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to deal with those issues, good and bad.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in dealing with those things, you know, you said it's painful to work through, it's hard to work through, it totally is.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: But from my experience, I was having to work through all of those, unpack all those boxes and deal with hurts that I had done and deal with wrongs, and and as a result, it made me just more aware as to what my surroundings were and how I was interacting and interfacing with the world.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it has just made me a completely different person today than I was, figuratively speaking, yesterday.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I've got a closer relationship with my wife and my kids and than I have ever.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've never had a relationship with my wife and kids.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've been married to them, I've been their father.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's never been a true relationship, and I have got that now, and it's so beautiful.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think that was because the desensitizing, the desensitization didn't get turned off?
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's not, you know, it's I'm desensitized to everything, not just this crime scene that I'm at, and then I go home and oh now I'm good again.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like you just had a guard up all the time.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it was the I think the desensitized, you know, earlier I mentioned that internal sponge soaking, that internal sponge would soak with all the negative shit in my world.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I just you can't shake that.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you work four or five days in a row, you know, and at the my last case, I was working 150 hours overtime or 150 hours a week.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's only eight, there's only 168 hours in a week.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: I had 18 hours off every week for four months.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're working that kind of pace for 20 years and you're running your engine in the red for 20 years without ever slowing down for an oil change, something has to break.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, it was my tie with my family.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was so focused and dedicating on work and solving the murder and helping somebody else's family that I literally came home, gave my family the shit that was left.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_00: They had to walk on eggshells so they wouldn't set dad off.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I would get up the next morning after four hours sleep and go do it again.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: And in my mind, I'm a hero.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: At home, if it wasn't for my wife, we I wouldn't have a home today.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: If it wasn't for her holding the family together and protecting me and protecting our marriage and protecting my family, I wouldn't have a family today because nothing I was doing was contributing or deserving towards a family.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was literally allowing my family to crumble while I saved everybody else's.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that was because of my drive for doing the job.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the drive for doing the job is a couple of reasons, which I didn't recognize till after law enforcement.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: But the drive for doing the job, one, I repeat what my dad did.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that I'm talking about, the long hours, the eggshells, that was my dad again.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_00: My dad worked oil field, I'm a cop, but at the end of the day, the work ethic was the same.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing is I was, and this didn't come out until uh after law enforcement is when this came out through therapy.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I was molested when I was nine, ten, eleven years old and never told anybody.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it was mail on mail, full molestation rape.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this happened in Louisiana.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: I never disclosed it back then.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_00: I never told anybody.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: I knew my dad and my family would kill him if they knew this guy was uh half a dozen years older than me, 10 years older than me, something like that.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think a lot of my drive for why I did what I did was to be a voice and to validate my victims, like nobody did for me, you know.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, nobody was gonna do to my victims again what happened to me because I know how it affected me.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, and there's other molestation in my family, there's other sexual abuse in my family that came out prior to me being a cop, and there was a ton of personal drive to make sure that this shit didn't happen to somebody else.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if it did happen, those people got a voice and those people got called the victim.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: Adults make themselves victims because they put themselves in shitty circumstances and they, you know, they go to a bar, they leave their car unlocked, they come back out and their stereo's gone.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, don't leave your car unlocked, dumbass.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_00: A child who earns the title victim is truly a victim, and they don't have the voice to speak for themselves.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_00: The dead person is truly a victim and doesn't have a voice to speak for themselves.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_00: When I was nine, ten, eleven years old, I didn't have a voice to speak for myself and nobody else did for me.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: That was my drive for why I did what I did.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you only realize that all those years later.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_00: I obviously knew about the molestation, but yeah, I didn't connect the dots as to what my drive was until uh until my career was over.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_03: What is it that made you what made you finally open up about that to your therapist?
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_03: Specifically if you hadn't told anyone?
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like why I I'm asking, I'm not I feel like that's probably important for someone else to hear who's been through something like that, who's listening right now.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because uh for me, well, a couple things.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um so there's three and there were three important people in my world at the time.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: My wife, my therapist, and my partner at work.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: And my partner and I were very close.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: Her name is uh, well, my partner and I were very close.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: And um I I disclosed, I can't remember who I disclosed to first, um, but it was one of those three.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: And what got me there was that analyzation of why am I the way that I am.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I pushing so hard for this?
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I why did I want to be a homicide and child abuse detective for 30 years?
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, once I'm able to feel, because I never felt the feelings of the molestation or how it affected me, I tuned them out.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_00: I went from being eight, nine, ten years old to an explorer uniform where I don't feel to a cop where I don't feel to a career where I don't feel now.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm coming out and I'm turning on the feelings again, and I'm starting to process these things.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, I had to why why have I allowed my family to crumble for so many years when I go and work 36 hours straight to speak for some kid who I've never met before, or speak for some dead person who I've never met before?
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: Why would I sacrifice my own for that?
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, in that, there's several layers you have to unpack.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but as that came up, I it just really was um put on my heart about my situation and how I never told and how I've been dealing with all these kids for years who had the courage and guts to come forward and talk about what happened to them, yet I'm sitting there in the same room with them, thousands of them, and I have the same story, but I don't tell it.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've never told it to anybody, and I've never recognized the connection that me fighting for them is really me fighting for myself when nobody else would.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that is when it came out.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_00: It started just to kind of uh uh develop, and I'm like, this just makes sense.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um I've been hiding behind my pain through excessive work for others, you know?
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how it came out.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, and it is it's crazy because then I mean you did you that you even as a 13-year-old just entirely threw yourself into that.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like and it but it I mean it makes sense.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's do you feel like getting to a point where you have talked about it and it sounds like probably at least I don't know if that's something you can ever fully process, but have done some thinking through and you know analyzing like that that helped you get to the point where you don't need to do that anymore in turn when when I say that, the drown yourself in work.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean I think that was part of it.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_00: The the me not drowning myself in work part, um that is you know, that there's a lot more to that than the molestation.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's just that's just part of the the equation of the puzzle.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Me not drowning myself in work, uh my work life balance was well, there was no work-life balance, it was work.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and life is what I would come home and walk on and then go back to work.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_00: So coming out and realizing that, you know, I came out of law enforcement, it was very obvious to me.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_00: I came out with PTSD.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_00: When you have PTSD and you have a claim against your city or your agency or whoever, there's dollars and cents attached to that.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if I come out with PTSD and say I was injured as a result of the job, then they ultimately may have to pay out some money.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_00: But in law enforcement, we have this idea, there's a thin blue line.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're a family.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_00: We all hug, we cry together, oh my gosh, it's this big, you know, kumbaya family.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's all bullshit.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Put yourself between the dollars uh and dollar signs and the department.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna choose the department every single time.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_00: The city is going to choose the department.
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_00: They are a business.
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_00: I got told through this process that I was nothing more than a number on a profits and loss statement, and their job was to keep the profits column bigger than the loss column.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_00: I got told that my job was no more important than the dump truck driver that I was next to on the city employee list.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my union did not fight for me.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_00: There were some issues that needed to be fought for.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: My union didn't fight.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was out of work for 18 months on my PTSD, and I didn't get a call from a single person except my lieutenant who asked me to bring my car back so it could have the oil changed.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Other than that, nobody cared.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_00: This idea of them being a family was bullshit.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So now I have sunk 21 years into this quote unquote law enforcement family to fight for them and to put myself on the line and my life on the line and sacrifice my family and my wife and everybody else for this family and this idea that they have that we're all, you know, doing the God's work.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_00: All that's bullshit.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, I'm nothing more than a number.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what helped me get that work-life balance perspective and to, you know, balance things out and realize I don't have to work a hundred hours a day.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to be performance driven.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to go give a good performance and you know, really knock this case out of the park to get the clack accolades and the claps and the attaboys, you know, my name in the newspaper, and then rinse and repeat and do it again.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: I can find joy other places in life than law enforcement.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is what helped me separate and kind of slow down from the immersion into work.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_03: Who the fuck made that comment to you about the balance sheet and basically your work, not just just being another, yeah, you're just you're like the rest of us.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was our city legal department.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I had asked for an early on separation because it's been going on for my fight with them, went on three years um with uh trying to get a payout.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, Zach, my payout was pennies.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, they negotiated my payout like you would a used car sales uh deal.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're asking$100,000 for the car.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_00: I want, you know, I want$150,000.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_00: We go back and forth until we come at$102,000 and everybody goes home happy.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's literally a car deal negotiation, and that's how my career ended after three years.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_00: But getting to that three years, there were some talks of, you know, can I do this or can I do a settlement and just buy me out?
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to be done with the city.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I need to get this monkey off my back before I can really start fresh because every time I turn around, this thing is sucking me back in.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still tied to this governmental agency.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um, they wouldn't do it.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So one day I'm on the phone with uh legal department.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Legal was on the phone and then also had uh a risk assessment on there.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And between legal and risk assessment, I can't remember which one told me, but they're like, yeah, you're a number on a profits and loss statement, and we would settle for you, but our job is to keep the profits column higher than the loss column, so we're not gonna settle, we're gonna fight you.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So fucking disgusting.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way that it went.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_03: And you know you're not the only one that's happened to not at all.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that's that's fucking disgusting.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, real and that's I I think also these the like dismissiveness of another human being to say that to someone who's yeah, they don't care.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the PTSD, and you know, I mean, you've been there.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_00: The PTSD, the depression, that's literally why you put a gun in your mouth.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I'm out on.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm out on this.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the peers, the the group of 11, 12 people that I worked with every single day, and we solved big shit together, and we were a team.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And like I left on a Thursday, never went back to work.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like that Thursday, I would thought I was like the center of the frickin' wheel.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_00: I thought the world revolved around me because I was, you know, of what I was doing.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And to leave on a and never get a phone call for 18 months.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody called to check in on me and say, Hey, how are you?
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um just went to show uh what a farce it really was.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, so yeah, I don't I don't have PTSD, but the depression obviously I know very, very well.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um that actually I you know, we were you kinda offhandedly mentioned it, and but you were rolling, and I didn't want to stop you, but I did want to ask you, you know, you mentioned being at the point where you almost tried to kill yourself.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_03: What what was it out there in the woods that pulled you back?
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_00: I got a phone call from a coworker.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Phone call from co-worker says, Hey, let's go grab a beer, let's go do something.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what are you doing?
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking about you, just go grab a beer.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Knew you were struggling.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, you know, and I I don't know that he I don't know that he really knew I was struggling.
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was a really a random phone call.
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was a person that I don't talk to much, you know.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_00: People knew I was struggling.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I would go to work every night, and I would sit getting dressed out in my locker room, and there was ten other guys around me coming and going, and I'm sitting there for months on end bawling.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_00: I am like bawling getting dressed out in this locker room, putting on this uniform to go out into the field.
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_00: I go out onto the street and I get into a fight with everybody that I contact, every single person.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you didn't immediately comply, I was kicking your ass.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was abnormal behavior for me.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was pissing off the dispatchers, pissing off our records clerks where they wouldn't talk to me.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_00: I had a record clerk that wouldn't talk to me for two years because I made her so upset.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_00: All this was abnormal behavior, yet nobody, none of my peers would address it with me.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we are so good at covering each other.
• 1:16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's tough.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we're so good at covering each other in the field.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_00: If I call for code three cover, I'm gonna have 20 cops there in a minute.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_00: When there's code three cover needed inside my head between my two ears, people run from that because it's a hard, difficult conversation they don't want to get involved in.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's fucking scary.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_03: And it's you know, it's it's tough.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_03: This is very important to talk about.
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_03: Think, you know, I I'd beat the dead horse on this fucking thing, and I will until someone challenges my idea with something that like set that changes my path here.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not married to this idea, but I'm pretty fucking convinced of it right now.
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_03: I think the warning signs that we are taught or taught, you know, in in our society about suicide are total bullshit.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_03: And it is you just painted that picture of it is changes in the baseline where it is, you know, if someone had really stopped and paid attention, they would they could see that that those there were those big changes in your baseline.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's not oh, you went and posted something about oh, you know, I I really I I'm ready to quit on Twitter or something.
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like that is some people some people do express their depression or their suicidal ideations in that way.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_03: I think those people those I I don't think those people are asking for help.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_03: I think they they might think that they want to die, but I don't think they actually want to die.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_03: I think people who do want to die, and this is where it gets dangerous in terms of not matching those overt warning signs, is that it is those discreet or maybe not even discreet, but they they are more discreet than the outspoken actions or comments around being suicidal or giving your things away or telling, you know, making these comments that hint to people that you're not doing well.
• 1:18:47
  SPEAKER_03: But like for you, it is it is the combination of you have to recognize those changes in the baseline and have that fucking hard conversation with someone when you see that.
• 1:18:56
  SPEAKER_03: And it it's I'm sure you've probably had this conversation with someone before, I'm guessing after having been through all the stuff that you've been through, but like you have to be very direct with someone and just be like, Hey, Aaron, I know this is I I this is an uncomfortable uncomfortable conversation for me to have, and I'm I'd sorry if I'm putting you in a in a bad spot by doing it, but I'm worried about you for the these reasons.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_03: I've noticed you you're picking fights with people every time we go out on patrol, you're starting to ruin relationships within the department, you're crying the locker room every time that we change out.
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_03: Are you going to kill yourself?
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_00: You you have to be direct with someone about it.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you really do.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and what's funny is my partner that uh I ended up being, you know, partners with in detectives, and she and I became very close.
• 1:19:50
  SPEAKER_00: We worked a lot of cases together.
• 1:19:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I have told her all of this, and she and I have spoken about all this, and um, she says, I knew you were having issues.
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_00: She said everybody was talking about it.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody was talking about you crying up there, and everybody was talking about you getting into fights.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she she laid out all the warning signs.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_00: She said it wasn't my place to come talk to you.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a female, it's weird.
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_00: My husband works for the department.
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, I you know, I'm not gonna come talk to you about it.
• 1:20:15
  SPEAKER_00: She said, but I knew all this was I knew all this stuff was going on, and that really sucked because people are willing to bullshit amongst each other going car to car in a parking lot, but not willing to help save my life, you know what I mean?
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like that very well could have obviously I mean you were on the cusp of it.
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_03: Hmm, that bothers me so much.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_03: That just uh so much of this just fucking and it's it like again, people don't know.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_03: I I think we do know inside, but I I think it's one of those things where like, yeah, like your partner convinced herself somehow that that wasn't her responsibility when she sees those problems.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:20:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um I think that's probably pretty common I and in in all walks of life where people see that stuff and you don't realize until it's too late, like fuck.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally, man.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_00: I agree.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think it happens all the time, and people uh we want to avoid it as human beings, I believe, we avoid things that we aren't familiar with or we're scared of, right?
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And whether that can be changing out the you know the doorknob on your house or having a hard conversation.
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't know how to do it or we're scared of it, we don't want to fail, we don't look like idiots, we don't want to, you know, um we don't want to fail.
• 1:21:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we we avoid it.
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_00: We avoid those things.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_00: How often does the doorknob, you know, or the piece of trim on your house go completely unchecked for years?
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not because you can't do it, because you don't know how to do it.
• 1:21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you did it wrong, you don't look like an idiot.
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when we start talking about human beings interacting, you know, people avoid the things they're scared of.
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't anybody talk to me for 18 months?
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not because they didn't like Aaron, not because they didn't love me.
• 1:21:57
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't talk to me for 18 months because they didn't know what to say.
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And they knew that I was out on something they'd never experienced, and it's unfamiliar and it's scary.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore they avoid it.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I forgive them for it.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_00: It is what it is, but you know, as humans, I think it's human nature.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is.
• 1:22:15
  SPEAKER_03: I just I don't know.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_03: It might my help is, you know, the these conversations like this, people hear it and that starts to change the way that they think.
• 1:22:26
  SPEAKER_03: We're like, okay, maybe you know that the this may have turned on a label, been someone's mind be like, you know what, I need to go, I need to go check on Chris.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_03: This is yeah, I've I'm seeing these, I'm seeing the same shit.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_03: I need to go say something.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna go have that call or whatever, or call somebody and you some unknowingly walk them off the ledge because that's they just needed someone to reach out at that point.
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just you know, the these uh kinds of conversations can save lives.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so I just I appreciate you being so open about it all.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I know it's not easy, and that takes a lot of work to have gotten to the point where you can talk about all this, so you know, Chris Zach, I think that um, you know, I've said it on my podcast and I've said it a thousand times, right?
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't think God gives us our pain without a purpose.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And everything that I went through, there was a lot of pain.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Everything you've been through, there's a lot of pain, but there's got to be a purpose on the backside.
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if somebody can take something that you or I have experienced and change their lives, or change or impact the lives of somebody else around them, or save a life, then mission completed.
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_00: It just that's what we're here for.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um we survive it and we tell others about it so they can learn from it because I guarantee you, you and I are not the only people that have sat here and had conversations or had these thoughts.
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I've had other people on here who've opened up about being on the cusp of suicide who hadn't talked about it before.
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_03: It just do you when you you open the door for the conversation and it it does, it it's it can cause huge paradigm shifts for people, and it's it's important, man.
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_03: And like really, like it's what I I don't know in terms of like a uh a self-agency kind of you know taking control or making the most of your situation, and what what is more impactful than being able to use your experience or you know, in my case, my my mistakes to hopefully help someone or you know, whatever hard lessons you've been through, or whatever, you know, it's uh being able to turn that into something that is is hopefully put paying it forward in some way so that someone else doesn't have to do take that same the same bad routes that you did.
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_03: It is it's just I mean, it's kind of the most you can hope for.
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_03: We're supposed to learn from our mistakes, and I think putting them out there for other people to learn from is very, very valuable.
• 1:25:09
  SPEAKER_03: But I agree, buddy.
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um murders to music is everywhere, right?
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, and that is your podcast.
• 1:25:18
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think we actually mentioned that earlier.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_03: I know we've mentioned that you have a podcast a couple times, but uh what else?
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_03: Where where can people find you?
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_03: What else are you still performing as a musician?
• 1:25:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like can people come watch you play right now?
• 1:25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally.
• 1:25:32
  SPEAKER_00: I am.
• 1:25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, murders to murders to music is my podcast, and in that podcast, you know, you've already heard about the murders side, right?
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_00: And we've heard about that since eight years old.
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I talk about that, but the music side is I started playing drums when I was five, and I started uh performing in bands when I was 13, and I've played in bands my whole life.
• 1:25:51
  SPEAKER_00: So murders to music, I go from helping, and then now since I come out of law enforcement, I've opened up a company where I do live music and DJ and lighting and sound production for weddings and corporate events, but a lot of high-end weddings.
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's cool.
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's super cool.
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_00: So now I get to help people instead of helping them on their worst days, I get to help them on their brightest days, and I get to make good memories instead of bad memories.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really cool.
• 1:26:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the Murders to Music podcast talks about the transition, all of the stuff that we've spoken about today, super vulnerable, transparent.
• 1:26:19
  SPEAKER_00: I tell it all, and then I talk about the transition and the healing and the brighter side of life and how you can get to that life on the other side.
• 1:26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And everything is told where you don't have to be a cop, everything is told, no matter what walk of life you're in, you can get some value out of this.
• 1:26:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty cool.
• 1:26:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_00: And as far as playing, yeah, uh, I still play.
• 1:26:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in the Pacific Northwest.
• 1:26:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a band called Double Down, and we play uh all over the Portland, you know, metro area and wherever, but we're all over the place.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_03: That is freaking cool, man.
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_03: Just like such a beautiful way to kind of, you know, again, the coming out on the other side of things, where it is like what happier experience, I guess, other than like maybe having a child, probably is the only other higher, happier day people are gonna have other than their wedding days.
• 1:27:04
  SPEAKER_03: That is just that's so cool.
• 1:27:06
  SPEAKER_03: Do you feel like it that's helped you come out on the other side of it, or were you already kind of there when you started doing that stuff?
• 1:27:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, it totally helped me.
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_00: I started this, so you know, I was talking to another gentleman who's actually a Marine and he has uh some PTSD issues, and he has a therapy dog, and he and I got connected through a mutual buddy.
• 1:27:27
  SPEAKER_00: And at this time I wasn't DJing.
• 1:27:29
  SPEAKER_00: This was back in 2022.
• 1:27:31
  SPEAKER_00: I started DJing when I was 16.
• 1:27:32
  SPEAKER_00: 16 to 20, I DJ'd, stopped DJing when I became a cop.
• 1:27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, in 21, 22, I'm like, I'm gonna get back into this.
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I connect with a buddy of mine, he connects me with this other dude who's a Marine with some PTSD issues, and that's about the time I'm getting diagnosed.
• 1:27:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we kind of connect, and he and I are literally cut from the same cloth.
• 1:27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it worked out well.
• 1:27:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I mentored with him for about a year and then opened up my own business.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, so now we're we collaborate and you know we compete a little bit with each other.
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's all that's healthy competition's good.
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's good, man.
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's so good.
• 1:28:06
  SPEAKER_00: But coming out on that other side, it is just you know, one of the things he told me was, Aaron, he says, I wanted to help people in the military.
• 1:28:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I did it.
• 1:28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I don't know what he did in the Marines, but it was something high speed, low drag.
• 1:28:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, I wanted to help people.
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_00: He says, but when I came out on the other side, I needed to help them continue to help people, but I couldn't do it in the same way.
• 1:28:24
  SPEAKER_00: He said, But I've, you know, DJ'd my whole life.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_00: He says, so I got back into it about 10 years ago, and you know, this is not my company, this is what I do.
• 1:28:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, and now I get to help them on their brightest day.
• 1:28:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that was that resonated with me so much.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, I I I'm so used to being the memory.
• 1:28:40
  SPEAKER_00: When I meet you with you the first time, and I tell you your you know, child, your father, your mother is dead and been murdered, but I'm gonna solve their case.
• 1:28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now I get to help it on the other side where I get to make the memories that you will remember forever.
• 1:28:54
  SPEAKER_00: They will remember the most epic party.
• 1:28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally at their weddings.
• 1:28:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna remember that most epic moments and those parties, and that for me is so exciting.
• 1:29:03
  SPEAKER_03: I love that, man.
• 1:29:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's just that's so cool.
• 1:29:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's a freaking, I mean, heavy but powerful story.
• 1:29:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I just I'm I'm so glad that you're at a point where you can talk about it, man, because I I know you're helping people with it, and I've just I'm so glad we met.
• 1:29:21
  SPEAKER_03: I think if I had to recommend to someone, I know I had checked out one episode of your podcast, and I think it was your wife interviewing you or you just talking with your wife about some of this stuff before I went on.
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_03: So it's been probably five months or so since then.
• 1:29:34
  SPEAKER_03: But it was just I just it's a great podcast.
• 1:29:38
  SPEAKER_03: People need to go check it out.
• 1:29:39
  SPEAKER_03: Google Murders to Music, what else, man?
• 1:29:42
  SPEAKER_03: You got anything else you want to put out there before we wrap this up?
• 1:29:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's it, man.
• 1:29:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you guys uh continue to support Zach and his efforts, uh check me out on any streaming platform, murders to music, uh, all spelled out.
• 1:29:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can email me at murdersthenumbert music at gmail.com.
• 1:29:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to reach out and chat and uh no, just you know, help us out.
• 1:30:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, neither one of us are getting paid for this.
• 1:30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and if we are, it's definitely not a month.
• 1:30:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think I made a dollar seventeen or something on my podcast so far.
• 1:30:10
  SPEAKER_00: I got a hundred and I got 120 episodes, so do the quick math.
• 1:30:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's less than a penny an episode.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're not doing it for the money.
• 1:30:17
  SPEAKER_00: We just want to help people, and that's uh kind of our goal.
• 1:30:20
  SPEAKER_00: So check us out, guys.
• 1:30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Support us and share us with your friends.
• 1:30:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's a lot of work, so please go support him.
• 1:30:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, thanks again, man.
• 1:30:28
  SPEAKER_03: Just this was this was awesome.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_03: I really am glad we were finally able to focus on your side of things.
• 1:30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's cool, man.
• 1:30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for letting me tell the story.
• 1:30:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and thanks everyone at home for listening to another episode of Going In Blind.
• 1:30:42
  SPEAKER_03: Remember, if you haven't already and you've been listening for a while, take a second to rate and review the show wherever you're listening, especially if that's on Apple Podcasts.
• 1:30:49
  SPEAKER_03: That just helps this thing get discovered by more people.
• 1:30:52
  SPEAKER_03: And if you prefer to watch our episodes, these last, I don't know, 10 episodes or so have been on video as well.
• 1:30:59
  SPEAKER_03: So you can go over to YouTube and check us out there.
• 1:31:01
  SPEAKER_03: If you do, then subscribe to the channel there.
• 1:31:04
  SPEAKER_03: And remember, these are important, important conversations we're having here.
• 1:31:09
  SPEAKER_03: So share them around with another curious mind who needs to hear it.
• 1:31:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll see you next time.