Two Cops One Donut
We were asked “what exactly is the point of this show?”Answer: social media is an underutilized tool by police. Not just police, but firefighters, DA’s, nurses, military, ambulance, teachers; front liners. This show is designed to reveal the full potential of true communication through long discussion format. This will give a voice to these professions that often go unheard from those that do it. Furthermore, it’s designed to show authentic and genuine response; rather than the tiresome “look, cops petting puppies” approach. We are avoiding the sound bite narrative so the first responders and those associated can give fully articulated thought. The idea is the viewers both inside and outside these career fields can gain realistic and genuine perspective to make informed opinions on the content. Overall folks, we want to earn your respect, help create the change you want and need together through all channels of the criminal justice system and those that directly impact it. This comes from the heart with nothing but positive intentions. That is what this show is about. Disclaimer: The views shared by this podcast, the hosts, and/or the guests do not in anyway reflect their employer or the policies of their employer. Any views shared or content of this podcast is of their opinion and not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything. 2 Cops 1 Donut is not responsible and does not verify for accuracy any of the information contained in the podcast series available for listening on this site or for watching shared on this site or others. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.
Two Cops One Donut
From Beat Cop to Congress: Brian Stahl's Journey
From undercover narcotics operations to revolutionizing firearms training, Brian Stahl takes us through his remarkable 20-year journey in law enforcement and his unexpected pivot to politics.
Brian's career path took many unexpected turns—from scholarship football player sidelined by injury to deep undercover narcotics investigator who faced down drug dealers with guns in his face. Throughout his story, a common thread emerges: communication saves lives. Whether talking down armed suspects or building rapport with informants, Brian's ability to connect with people proved invaluable in his police work.
The conversation shifts to Brian's groundbreaking work in firearms training, where he's helping transform how officers prepare for real-world encounters. He explains why static range training fails officers in dynamic situations and how red dot technology has dramatically improved accuracy rates from a dismal 20% to nearly 80%. Brian challenges outdated training philosophies like "slow is smooth, smooth is fast," arguing that officers need to train at speed to perform under pressure.
Most surprisingly, Brian reveals his current campaign for U.S. Congress. Drawing on his experience in law enforcement, he advocates for transparency, accountability, and better communication between elected officials and constituents. His vision includes judicial reform addressing revolving-door bail policies and greater support for first responders through improved training and equipment.
Through personal anecdotes about family sacrifice, career setbacks, and unexpected opportunities, Brian's story offers powerful lessons about servant leadership and adapting to change. Whether in policing or politics, his message remains consistent: effective service requires listening to people's needs and communicating solutions clearly.
#police #lawenforcement #cops #policemonitor #policeoversight #policeoversightmonitor #bridgethegap #bethechange
Join our Discord!! https://discord.gg/BdjeTEAc
🔗 Visit us at TwoCopsOneDonut.com & https://www.thedonut.tv/
📧 Contact us at twocopsonedonut@yahoo.com
🎧 Subscribe to us on Apple, Spotify, and Amazon Music at “2 Cops 1 Donut”
Donate Here: https://buymeacoffee.com/twocopsonedonut
🔔 *Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe for more insightful discussions on law enforcement and community safety!*
💬 *Join the conversation in the comments below!*
#TwoCopsOneDonut #PublicSafety #ErikLavigne #firtsresponders
Our partners:
Peregrine.io: Turn your worst detectives into Sherlock Holmes, head to Peregrine.io tell them Two Cops One Donut sent you or direct message me and I'll get you directly connected and skip the salesmen.
Ghost Patch: tell them Two Cops One Donut sent you and get free shipping on Flex Shield orders!
Insight LPR license plate recognition technology provides 24/7 real-time insight for homes, businesses and neighborhoods. Protect what matters most! Visit https://insightlpr.com/
Retro Rifle: Official Clothing of Two Cops One Donut. Hawaiian Shirts, Guns, and Pop-Culture! head to Retro-Rifle.com tell them we sent ya
send us a message! twocopsonedonut@yahoo.com
send us a message! twocopsonedonut@yahoo.com
Peregrine.io: Turn your worst detectives into Sherlock Holmes, head to Peregrine.io tell them Two Cops One Donut sent you or direct message me and I'll get you directly connected and skip the salesmen.
Please see our Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TwoCopsOneDonut
Disclaimer Welcome to Two Cops One Donut podcast. The views and opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Two Cops One Donut, its host or affiliates. The podcast is intended for entertainment and informational purposes only. We do not endorse any guests' opinions or actions discussed during the show. Any content provided by guests is of their own volition and listeners are encouraged to form their own opinions. Furthermore, some content is graphic and has harsh language. Viewer discretion advised and Thank you for listening. All right, Welcome back to Cops One Donut. I'm your host, Eric Levine. Today with me I got the one, the only, my firearms friend, Brian Stahl.
Speaker 2:How's it going, brother? It's good man. I appreciate you having me on this. Finally, I know Finally, finally.
Speaker 1:It's been a while. It's been almost a year and a half that.
Speaker 2:I've asked you to do this. Yes, at least, at least yeah.
Speaker 1:But every time I asked you, there just happened to be a recruit, firearms training going on or something. Yeah, we were out of town teaching or something.
Speaker 1:Yes, Exactly so. Well, brother, glad to finally have you on here. You got a lot of stuff going on in your life. I do Exciting stuff, fun stuff, yeah, but I want people that are listening. If you're listening to this, you guys know my format. We're going to talk about Brian. I want you guys to know his background a little bit, where he came from, what drew him to his life of service Because, as we know, everybody's got different reasons, but for the most part there's always like these collective similarities of why people got into service, and I think it's fun to hear that stuff. And then we'll get into your law enforcement specialty which, if you didn't get the hint at the beginning, it involves firearms. That's why I wore my retro rifle shirt today.
Speaker 2:I was just commenting on that. Yeah, it's a very, very sexy shirt.
Speaker 1:It is. I like it. It it's loud and boisterous, just like a barrett 50, that is that is. That is an accurate depiction of a barrett yes, and they're one of my sponsors, so it was kind of a trick statement I love it.
Speaker 1:I wear a retro rifle shirt on every show, so I love it. And then, um, we're gonna get, uh, into the. The educational side that I like to point out is, uh, where is firearms going? Because we're going to get into. The educational side that I like to point out is where is firearms going? Because we're going to talk about your specialty there and the training and all that. And then what's the future hold for Brian Stahl?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sounds good, man, All right guys.
Speaker 1:Settle up, let's go First off. Brian, where are you from?
Speaker 2:Man, I'm kind of from all over. I was actually born in Nevada, okay yeah, man, I'm kind of from all over. I was actually born in nevada, okay yeah, but uh, vegas, no, reno sparks nevada.
Speaker 2:Um, my dad did a lot of things with the airline industry, so we traveled around a lot okay uh, we lived in nevada and utah and california and back to utah and cal to Utah and California and so we kind of just moved all over the place growing up, moved out to Texas 22 years ago, came out here to to. I attempted to play college football out here, okay.
Speaker 1:Actually different breed.
Speaker 2:But yeah, yeah, so no, I read out of high school. I got a scholarship to play football Okay At Weber State University.
Speaker 2:What position, strong safety, all right, yeah. So you had some speed A little bit, all right, yeah, a little bit. Not like speed, you see, nowadays it was different back then. But you know a 4.5, 4.40 is my fastest, so you know it was a different world back then. You have linemen running faster than that now, which is crazy to me. But no, so I did the whole sport thing growing up all through, you know, elementary school, middle school, high school, played all the sports, fell in love with football, got a scholarship to play out there, did a year out there, redshirted for a year. My mom's cancer came back so I decided to move back to California to help out with that and I was planning on transferring to Fresno State University to play. I had a couple friends that were on the team already that I played high school ball with In the offseason. I completely blew my knee out so I tore my ACL, mcl, pcl and meniscus.
Speaker 1:All the fun.
Speaker 2:All of it. It was a good time. I rehabbed for a year at home at a junior college, played there a year at home at a junior college, played there, and then, um, you know, I wanted to try to pursue, to go back to division one football, and um came out to the university of north texas and tried to walk on, you know, sent some highlight tapes and they realized, and I realized real quick, that I wasn't the guy in the highlight tapes anymore. So hard pill to swallow, I bet yeah, but I'd already made the move Right. So I'd already already committed, like I just up and left, like I pulled all routes and moved to to North Texas.
Speaker 2:And once that didn't work out the way I hoped it would have. You know, got as a plan for everybody kind of thing. Yeah, it didn't work. So I started looking around and I applied at several different agencies in North Texas and, you know, eventually got hired on at Irving.
Speaker 1:Oh, you started at Irving I did. I didn't know that did okay. I did slumming it a little bit, that's okay, yeah. I did too.
Speaker 2:I slummed it up in Saginaw Michigan yeah, so no, irving was great man, it was it. It was actually the third agency I tested for, but the first agency that called me back, right, they called me on a Monday and offered me a job, and then Tuesday that another agency called, and Wednesday another agency called and, um, I'd already committed to herping at that point so I think it, you know it.
Speaker 2:Everything happens for a reason. Yeah, I met my wife that way. You know, um, you know I still, I still love you know a bunch of guys over there herping. I've been obviously gone for 10 years now.
Speaker 1:How long were you there?
Speaker 2:10 and a half years you did 10 and a half.
Speaker 1:Oh man, that's a. That is ballsy to leave a department after 10 and a half.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we could talk about why. You know there's a couple reasons. I was, you know you're not the only person that said that. There's a lot of guys that are like man that took nuts it does, it does.
Speaker 1:Okay. So for me separated from active duty Air Force four years yeah, common Like the shit or get off the pot time is about eight to ten years, because you're either going to be a lifer or you're getting out. So you got to kind of make that decision quick. I knew I wanted to be a cop outside, so it was not hard for me, that was an easy decision. Then became a cop up in Saginaw. I was there for a while and then I was like not getting paid enough. I hadn't had any real committed time. But when you combine the years now we're talking eight years it's like I got to make a decision here. I got to find a final place. I got to do that. So I get kind of where you're coming from, but yours is more gutsy than mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially because none of my time rolled over Right. You start from scratch yeah.
Speaker 2:You dedicate 10 years plus of your life to service and then you start over and it's like, yeah, that's cool, yeah, those 10 years don't count. You know, which is fine. You know, everything happens for a reason. So, no, I, I did 10 years in Irving and then, uh, well, while I was there, my a guy that I went to the Academy with Andrew Esparza.
Speaker 2:He, him and I hit it off Like we were like brothers. You know him, and I hit it off like we were like brothers, you know. And, uh, I met his sister, just by happenstance, one day, we were going to pick up his boat and met his sister and and uh, um, you know, we, short time later, we started talking. And who's my wife now, zoe? Um, you know, andrew and I were partners. We went to the academy together, we trained. On every, every shift that we trained, we were together. And then, after we, you know, kind of got cut loose, we were always together, riding two mans, or whatever the case may be. And uh, two years into our career, uh, I had a little bit of seniority on him.
Speaker 2:I had five badge numbers on him, you know so I was able to take time off, go down to san antonio for some vacation time and um, that's when andrew died in the line of duty. So, uh, you know, again, everything happens for a reason. I got to meet andrew and spend the last two years of his life literally seven days a week together with him, and then I got to meet his sister, which is now my beautiful wife and we have three amazing kids. And you know, it's one of those things where, you know, football didn't work out and Irving did. At the end of my time in Irving, it kind of uh was time for a change. So I went to to uh Fort Worth, obviously, and you know, uh started building a career there. But I've been very blessed man, very blessed what made you pick.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean football to policing. It's not the craziest jump. I see a lot of former athletes that's. That's actually kind of pretty common. Um yeah, why did you choose? Why not firefighter? Why not?
Speaker 2:you know, um looking back, I probably should have been a firefighter, right that's what we all say that yeah, we all should have went.
Speaker 2:No so, uh, you know, my, my grandfather had a 30 year career in firefighting. My uncle is a captain on the West Coast right now in California as a firefighter. I have a couple uncles that were in law enforcement growing up, so I always knew that that's kind of the road I was going to go down if football didn't work out. And you know, I was a senior in high school when 9-11 happened, and so I had one of those moments and I'll never forget it Actually, it was I was.
Speaker 2:I was talking from colleges- as a high school athlete, you know, depending on where you're from or skill set or whatever the case may be happened. I went into his office because that school was kind of like a. That day nobody cared about going to class, everybody was focused on.
Speaker 1:You know the tragedy that happened my instructor because I was my first year of college tried to make us stay in class, not because he was fearful of our safety, he's like it's just the news. It'll be there when the class is over, not understanding what was going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, knowing that nobody is focused on what he's saying right now, right, yeah, so it was kind of the same thing in high school, right, which was pretty cool. So I went to the gym and then I went to the coach's office and we were talking and I have family members that were, you know, prior military. My dad's side, my grandfather, served in, you know, several different wars. Um, my mom's side, my, my grandfather, served in several different wars. One was Navy, one was Marines. I was leaning towards Marines and I walked in and I said I'm going to the Marines Like that day. I said I'm out Like I.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of people did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, you know like, you see what's happening to your country and you realize real quick the things that you think matter to you are so small out of it. But he, he, he brought things up and opportunities that I potentially have in the coming months or year that a lot of people don't have, with scholarships and everything right, you know.
Speaker 2:so ultimately I ended up, uh, not going to the military and and decided to go the college football route and yeah you know, tried to make that work and it and it didn't, but it led me to a different life of service, where I am right now. Yeah, a different life.
Speaker 1:You know what's crazy is? I hear in my own, my own dad, which I just did a podcast with him here yesterday. Um, he'll tell me one of his biggest regrets is not joining the military. And I'm like, as somebody who's in the military still, yeah, I, I, I and and in law enforcement, and in law enforcement, as a military member, I understand what you're saying because you feel like there's some level of service that you didn't get to do for your country. But I promise you, more than likely, 99% of people that join the military don't get you get to serve more as a cop and a firefighter to your community and to people that probably means more than as a service member.
Speaker 1:And when I talk to other service members about their service, I'm like, what'm like? What do you remember helping? And they always say the same thing my brothers and sisters next to me. It's not that you were serving country, necessarily. It's just some badasses they have. Don't get me wrong, it's that they were over there serving each other. That sounds really dirty. No, I get it, yeah totally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you get what I'm saying when you're in, you know, when you're in the middle of a, a sandpit, yeah, somewhere in in on the other side of the world, like the only people that matter to you right now are the people standing next to you right americans yeah like we were wearing the same uniform.
Speaker 2:We're fighting the same fight, you know, and it's so. Yeah, that level of service is, um, obviously, you know, a thankless level of service for sure. Yeah, um, but serving, being able to serve the communities that I live in and that I'm a part of, yeah, is a different level of service. Yeah, it's so satisfying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is very satisfying yeah, and it's, you know, just like with this podcast, like I felt I always wanted to be NPO. I put in for it several times, never got it, always got beat and, like you said things, it's kind of the theme for this episode Things happen for a reason. So I never got it. And so COVID hit and I'm like I know there's more ways that I could be helping and I wanted to feel I kind of figured out how I wanted to help. I wanted to use social media in a way, just didn't wasn't sure how. And COVID was a good time to start the podcast, just to try to start figuring it out Right. And I didn't necessarily start out. You know, you're figuring, you're trying to try stuff and I'm like, eh, I don't want to be a dancing TikTok cop, I don't want to do this. I don't want to be a dancing TikTok cop, I don't want to do this.
Speaker 2:I don't do that. Yeah, please don't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I was like, how do I do it? I was like, well, I like humor, so if I could make things funny and educational, I'll try to do that. Share perspective and educate Like just educate is the big thing. I think that's how we bridge that gap with people and 100 percent this started and it evolved and now obviously you're a part of the process and so, yeah, I like this level of service, what I'm doing now, and you always feel like you could do more. But I promise you guys, for anybody out there listening, if you have regrets about not serving your country but you're out there as an EMT or a dispatcher or firefighter, police officer, I promise you you are serving in a much more meaningful way than you probably would have got from the military.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's okay. So you choose policing and you went right when you should have probably went left.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Old school joke. For those wondering, like why do people say left instead of right or whatever at the academies? At a lot of the big police departments the firefighter academy is right next to it and it's usually to the left and the police department is to the right especially in our case.
Speaker 1:But you know you did it right. You went to an agency and then you went to, you know, probably the best agency that's out there that I've ever heard of yeah, for sure. And that's where there that I've ever heard of. Yeah, and for sure, that's that's where you went. And how many years have you been an officer? Total, total, 20, a little over 20, okay. So you're over 20, yeah, and in that 20 years we all get specialties. You guys have heard mine uh, property crimes, mobile field force, use of force, control tactics those are those are the big four, and now it's real-time crime center stuff. So those are my. You're over that right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, buddy, oh really yeah, oh man.
Speaker 1:That's my dream, yeah. I didn't know that I did not know that. Yeah, Good for you. Yep Got off the street and now I'm over there and living the dream baby. So, yeah, that's been my goal. I've been trying to get there since I was a corporal. As a detective, I was trying to create a spot for a corporal there.
Speaker 2:That's such a cool position it is. It's so fun. It is Like the real-time crime center. To me is like next world stuff. It is it changes policing.
Speaker 2:The stuff that they are doing is crazy. When I fly with Air One one you know, and, and when I whenever, because I'm a part of like 20 different you know signal threads and one of them is the the air one thread and all you know all the other ones but there's a real-time crime center one, yep, and like the amount of information like you get, like this call came out and like within two minutes, like real-time crime center has literally painted this entire guy's life picture and vehicles and addresses and I mean every like it's. I'm like how are they doing that? Like it is wild and it's only getting better. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's good for you, man, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:And what's unique with where we're at? Because I'm a. I'm an executive board member for the national real-time crime center association which is a big mouthful, but uh, I get to see real-time crime centers throughout the nation. Yeah, I've been on that for the last four years, okay, so I've seen all these developing real-time crime centers where we're at.
Speaker 2:We're one of a kind yeah, it's wild like one of a you know and I don't have anything to compare it to like you do, but I just know what I've seen. Yeah, working air one and flying around the city in a helicopter and the information that just gets dumped on me while I'm up in the air and I'm like, yeah, you know, you tell the pilot like take a right dude. Yeah, why? Because they're over at this intersection right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, they said they're over here, listen, yeah yeah, and it's funny that you bring up um the threads. You know it's something that concerns me in policing is, uh, those threads in the sharing of information. That is not a controlled method, right, and I think we need to abandon it really into something like, uh, evertel. Have you ever seen that app?
Speaker 1:so it used to be just like signal yeah which is and for those listening officers, a way to listen. Cities aren't going to give every officer a cell phone and all that stuff. So the way that they share information to try to catch bad guys in the act and stuff like that is um, through app services, well, you can't. There's certain information you can't share, right, it's all see, just yeah, protected and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So officers are sharing what limited info they can in any method they can, and that typically is a signal app. Well, it's. I think that it's got litigations going on right now and then it's not going to survive. Uh, the departments aren't you know because you don't know until you know yeah one of those things you're just trying to use.
Speaker 1:The latest and greatest signal is one of those. Evertel was another version of that. Well, evertel got bought out and the company that bought them out like just flipped it on its head. So it's a because of the association I check out all the latest and greatest tech yeah and I checked that tech out and, holy cow, I actually had spencer sitting on a demo. Uh, jason spencer, yeah, fell in love with he's making his team use it. Um, really yeah immediately.
Speaker 2:I would contact air support for sure. Yes, cause they are huge. I bet if I pull my phone out right now, in all of these signal threads I have over 400 messages.
Speaker 1:This will clean that up.
Speaker 2:That are. You know, I mute them all. Right, Like I'm on 30 of them, like I mute them and guys are like oh, I sent you a message on signal and I'm like yeah, yeah, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, check out, you know, yeah, get, get with me after I'll show you EverTel I think it's great and I think it's another one of those apps that's going to kind of change law enforcement.
Speaker 1:It's just you have to you know how it is. When somebody told you about WhatsApp you know and you're using, you know nothing you're like, okay, this is cool.
Speaker 1:And then somebody told you about Signal, you're like, well, I already have WhatsApp, I don't need to look at that, and then you realize WhatsApp's wide open, yeah, and you're like, eh, and then you get Signal and you're like, well, this isn't CJIS compliant and that could be an issue down the road, right, and so I think that's where we've come to now. I think Signal's going to be a CJIS issue. Well, E like next level, yeah, and they're not a sponsor or anything like that. I'm just I think they're one of those things that can change policing.
Speaker 2:So that's awesome, man, yeah it's very cool, I think, I think you'll dig that, but um, how did we get down this fucking?
Speaker 2:I don't, you know. That's the beauty of this, though I know, yes, so yeah, no, let me talk about irving a little bit. So, um, let's back up. So okay, I was. I was very fortunate and very blessed in my career. I got to work with a lot of really great people. I got to do a lot of really cool things. I did almost four years deep undercover narcotics and what a blast man.
Speaker 1:Four years undercover narcotics yeah A white boy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was fun. Yeah, I had the long hair, long beard.
Speaker 1:So you need something, because you look country.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I had my ears pierced, I had this pierced, whatever this is called.
Speaker 1:Okay, were you going like for a Fred Durst type? Look, no, that's what I'm picturing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, it was just one of those times where, like, there was a group of us that came over together and, like some guys would, some guys would, like you know, go like crazy with uh, trying to change their appearance. I didn't go too wild, I, I, you know, I got a my ears pierced or whatever, but, um, that was a blast man. I always thought that that was the greatest job in law enforcement, like by far. Like you get to wear whatever you want, you don't have to shave because you know before you could wear beards. We're talking about 2008, yeah, 2007, 2008.
Speaker 1:Like there's no agencies that allowed beards, no, shit, we didn't get beards until like 2017, yeah, so like you know.
Speaker 2:Now it's like what do you mean? I don't have to shave? Like, yeah, sign me up, you know, yeah, I can talk however I want. I don't have to be professional exactly.
Speaker 1:Actually, it's encouraged. What do you mean? I don't have to shave. Yeah, Sign me up. I can talk however I want. I don't have to be professional.
Speaker 2:Exactly Actually it's encouraged, and you got to use different props and you kind of just had free reign to go out there and go forth and try to combat these cartels and different entities that were bringing drugs in. What was your favorite bust? Oh man, I got a couple. So I've been, I've been a part of a of a few different things. Uh, you know, motorcycle gang stuff was really interesting to me. I I got to be a part of that, obviously because of of you know the way I looked. Um, I was able to a part of that, obviously because of you know the way I looked, um, I was able to to kind of fit in with them that's racial profiling, sir yeah, it is, it is that, that's exactly it.
Speaker 2:But no, you know. So you know it was. I don't I don't necessarily have like a favorite bust. Um, there's a lot of times where you were able to do something and take down an eyesore of a neighborhood. You know, be it a drug house, and you know, as me, as the undercover wearing the mask and all the stuff, because we can't give up our identity. But you're standing next to the SWAT guys who were, you were there, kicking doors and throwing flashbangs and and when the kind of the, the, the dust settles, having neighbors come up and like just wrap their arms around you.
Speaker 2:Thanking you, yeah, thank you Like, finally, finally, you know like cause.
Speaker 1:They're secondhand victims of the violence that the drug houses bring.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know I it's uh, it's one of those things where I've I've experienced it firsthand as an undercover narcotics investigator I had, um, you know I've had some problems with informants and um, you know, I've been shot at several times. Um, going to neighborhoods that I don't necessarily maybe fit into it, you, you stick out and it's almost like when you roll up to a location they are, they're hidden away, like they, they're so fearful of even coming outside and then, once the flashbangs go off and the shotgun breaching goes off, and there's guys, you know, handcuffed in the front yard. You could, I've seen it several times where, as a collective, the community's like, yeah, like they just sigh, like it's a sigh of relief, and then they come up and the burden's been lifted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they start thanking you.
Speaker 2:So I mean that was super cool to be a part of, you know start thanking you.
Speaker 1:So I mean, that was super cool to be a part of you know. Um, so question on that, because it's going to be people listening in law enforcement. They're going to be like how did you get into it? I've always wanted to get into that. Was there a training course that you took to learn how to be undercover? Was there how? Did you step your career into that because you got to take steps to get there.
Speaker 2:You do. So you have to obviously show an interest and you have to. For me, the path was um networking with the narcotics officers at the time before I was over there and, believe it or not, like the narcotics division, especially where I came from, they get so many complaints that they don't have the manpower or the time to to deal with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not complaints on the narcotics unit. They're dealing with complaints in the community. Yeah, like, so a citizen will call it yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. A citizen will call in and say, hey, I think my neighbor is dealing whatever, like whatever. You know Well, if the narcotics division is, they're busy for the next three weeks with warrants and by-bus and whatever. They don't have the manpower to field that complaint. Right, a citizen? You know they will pick officers within the department that they know can go out and kind of investigate that on their free time in between answering calls or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 2:So that's what I, that's what I really did is I networked with the narcotics officers that were before my time and then started making, um, some big narcotics arrests and then helping them out with traffic stops and identifying people. And there's, there's really an art to that, right. So, like when you get a phone call from a, from a narc, and they tell you listen, I need you to stop this car and I need you to just identify them, but I don't need you to tip them off to anything. You know just as well as I do Our generation of officers and our ability to talk to people is different than the current generation of officers, right, right. So they would tell me hey, I need this car knocked off Now. It's my job to find a violation. Like I can't just stop this car because a narc told me to, that's against the law. Right, you have to have a reason to stop this car.
Speaker 2:So then I would, I would survey this car and then I would make a stop, a legal stop, whether it's a wide right turn or, you know, fellow signal a hundred feet, whatever the case may be, and go up there and just play it cool, get everybody's identification. I get to be the good cop. I let them all go with a warning. Yeah, they have no idea that I'm winning. Yeah, my job was just to identify you guys. Like I have zero interest on anything you have in the car, I don't care if you have warrants, I'm not even going to run your name. I don't care if you have warrants, I'm not even going to run your name, I don't care?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because we're, we're, we're moving towards something bigger, yeah, bigger, right, right. So you know you knock, you know you knock this car off, you get that identification, you call the narcotics investigator, you let them know and then you know two weeks later there's something big that happens or or whatever the case may be. So that was kind of the route that I, that I, that I took Right and I and I really enjoyed doing those investigations. I enjoyed the surveillance side of things, I enjoyed, uh, the Intel, the investigative side of things.
Speaker 1:Um, cause you're learning the whole time. You're learning the language, you're learning how they talk to each other. There's a, there's a lot of key components. It is, in its sense, training for that position that you're eventually, you eventually get to. So the point that I want people to take away from the discussion we're having on this, where I'm trying to get to, is you don't go to a class for this stuff. No, are there classes? Sure, but nothing is going to prepare you, like on the job. On the job, training is going to prepare you, yeah, and I don't know that we do that as much anymore. I don't know. I I haven't been in that world in a while.
Speaker 1:Uh, because when I started out, narc was really something I was trying to get into, um, and then, like you said, everything happens for a reason my path started diverting and uh ended up getting more into the, the, the big think, the, the brain side of catching bad guys, right with the real-time crime center stuff and the tech behind that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, yeah. So I mean, it's just one of those things where you, you network with people and and you talk to people, you, you, you offer assistance when you can because you know that they need the help you kiss their ass so they remember you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I guess, if you want to call it that for sure, you know brown nose baby all day. Um, hey, I did it. Yeah, we all do it.
Speaker 2:Sure, exactly, you got to show you're dedicated, you have to yeah and and sometimes, um, it doesn't work out. Because I remember the first time I put in for narcotics, I I didn't get it and I'd had all these arrests and I'd I'd knocked off a ton of it's a huge ego hit man.
Speaker 2:Oh, I knocked off so much narcotics and and, and you know, I put in and interviewed and I didn't get it. I'll never forget um, I won't say his name. He was one of my sergeants at the time, one of my mentors, a great godfearing christian man of faith right he called me to the office and he's like, hey, here's the deal.
Speaker 2:Like it didn't work out and I'll remember, I'll never forget. I was like man, I'm not doing anything anymore. Oh, like I'm gonna go. Like I'm just gonna go, you know what, just send me calls. I'm just gonna answer calls, like whatever. Like I'm done, like I, yeah know, for almost a year I've done everything I could and I've knocked off and I had all the stats at the time, like this, many of this dope and like whatever you know. And and he goes, okay, all right, well, I'm going to pray for you and I need you to go to work.
Speaker 2:And I was like, yeah, whatever, like I was just, I was a young, yep, young thundercat, like ready to go like no and I remember I went and sat in a parking lot for about 30 minutes and I was just like I took 30 minutes to to just basically drink my own tears like I was just right. Oh, I was so irritated the pity train was there, and then I see a car pass and I was like I know that car, I gotta go stop that car, it's too fun. Oh yeah, so you know you're basically denying yourself the fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I stopped this car and end up getting like four or five ounces of meth or whatever out of it and he rolls up and he's like well, I didn't last long and I was like I can't I can't do it, yeah, so I just I just yeah, I mean I felt sorry for myself for about a minute and and then I went and continued to do what I was doing and it worked out on that well, that's a good message for officers to hear out there.
Speaker 1:Like, listen, when you don't get the job because it's happened to me I told you I didn't put him for an npl spot three times, didn't get it, ended up promoting and then I put him for an intel spot as a corporal and I thought I had done everything that you could possibly do, uh, to get that spot and put in. Even my own sergeant was like, yeah, you got it. Like I've talked to people, you got it. I'm like, oh shit, cool, so didn't get it. Yeah, and that was a shit sandwich to eat. You just sit there and you're like, just think, you know, you just reflect inward. What did I do?
Speaker 2:wrong, I didn't do anything wrong?
Speaker 1:yeah, like, and you just you do, you eat it for a little bit, and then what do you do?
Speaker 2:you go right back out and keep doing the same thing yeah, just keep grinding man, just keep working and serving like it's especially if it's fun, if it's a passion like.
Speaker 1:That's why you should be going towards it yeah, exactly, you know the.
Speaker 2:To serve with law enforcement or ems or fire, you have to have a passion and it's it's hard for young officers or people new to experience the road, the road bumps and the nose and the closed doors and and find it within themselves. To, you know, uh, continue to serve. But okay, now I need to call an audible here, like what I did didn't work. That's fine, let's figure something else out. While continuing to serve our people, yeah, you know, um, because giving up is not an option right you know, not serving is not an option.
Speaker 1:If that's the case, then just go find something else to do, kind of thing you know, and that's kind of a tough pill to to swallow, yeah, for some people, right well, we need supervisors to step up and actually lead, and not just sit there and collect a paycheck and hope they don't have to do much in their job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll let you speak on that, because you outrank me by a couple of ranks, so I have my own opinions, but right but a guy like, okay, if I had seen an officer like you. I know you're grinding, I know this is a position. I should know this as your supervisor. This is what you're going towards and it's my job to help you get there. So when you don't get there, the next thing I need to do is pull you aside. All right, tell me how. What do you think? What are you thinking right now?
Speaker 1:see if I can get you to open up. And you know, let it out. You know this is bullshit. I did all these things, this, that person didn't. You know, let it out. You know this is bullshit. I did all these things, that person didn't.
Speaker 1:You know, whatever it is however you took it and then help you swing around to the right way. Okay, take a week, have your pity party for yourself. Everybody needs it, yeah, but you got to get back out there. You got to do the job. And what is it that you want to do? If you tell me now that you still want to do narcotics, that's still like if I were to offer you it tomorrow. Is that something you want to do? And you say yes, well then, the mission hasn't changed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're still passionate about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you're going to have to step up. This is going to show them more than ever that you got denied the position and you still kept going after it. That speaks more than all those stats that you just did.
Speaker 2:So yeah, a hundred percent and having a supervisor that does that nowadays, from what I've gathered, you know, I've been off the streets for a little bit, but it's super rare right, like it's. It is it's super rare and it's really unfortunate. You know, like I said, the, the, the, the sergeant. You know what I'm gonna say?
Speaker 2:his name is his sergeant rick cutler okay um, he was one of the guys that not only uh assisted me with my uh drive to get to narcotics, but once I eventually made it to swat he was he was uh big in that too, um, because he was a swat sergeant at the time. So, you know, he having having a supervisor that believes in you and has your back and wants to continue to um assist you and enable you into achieving your career goals, yes, huge, yeah.
Speaker 1:And and I think that that, unfortunately, may be a little bit of a lost art with uh some supervisors- oh, I'll go out and say even more, 80 of them, yeah, um, I am very harsh and critical on supervisors simply because the military this is the one thing that I really did take away from them they train leadership from day one. When do we train leadership in policing? Once you become a leader, once you become a leader, once you pass the test, it's insane. So are we getting better at it? Yeah, but we're light years behind on a model that's been working because in the military and for those listening, yes, I'll say the jokes on myself, self-deprecating air force, I'm air force. So, yeah, yeah, it might not be this, the same exact military as the marine no, hold on.
Speaker 2:There's some bad dudes in the air force there are. Pjs are bad. Yeah, yeah, come on, I get it, hold on.
Speaker 1:They are A-10 pilots definitely bad.
Speaker 2:I've trained with some of those dudes and you're like okay, they're bad.
Speaker 1:They're there, but I'm a gatekeeper. You come to the gate. I take your ID, thank, you for coming to the gates, I'll act like. Point being is from day one. Military structure across the board is leadership. If you're an airman, basic, a private, whatever it is, your job is to fill in the guy that's ahead of you if he falls in combat or whatever. Right, I'm not trying to be cryptic.
Speaker 2:If they can't do their job. That's reality, though, right yeah.
Speaker 1:So that person's job the one that's above you is to train you to do their spot, and the same for the guy that's above him. So that is how policing should be. I should be training you how to do my job. Now in policing there is kind of a degree of separation, at least at our department, because a sergeant could just be over officers and not have that middle, that corporal position or detective position. But I've just taken that step to kind of show them that detective spot and leadership skills. So I always tell my officers the same thing I'll have, sit down, come in the office. Hey, here's my expectations do your job, make sure that you don't leave your people hanging yeah and be professional and everything else is good to go.
Speaker 1:yeah, my job and expectations for me, for you, is to give you everything you need and that you tell me you need to be successful out there right. Other than that, I don't have anything to do. So if, if you're expecting me to be the type of sergeant like in patrol, for instance that goes out and can make an arrest and take them to the jail and book them in and do all that stuff, that's not me, that's not my job anymore. I gave up that right to do all that. Now I shouldn't be dumping work on you, that's for sure, but we know how this job goes.
Speaker 1:Every once in a while you just get stuck with the shit sandwich and you got to handle it. But I should be out there giving you those tools you need to succeed and you're the one that should be doing your job. I will do my job Right. And if you are upset that I'm not out there kind of doing what you're doing, well, maybe there's something that you need to self-reflect on and what you think leadership is, because I don't expect my lieutenant to be doing sergeant stuff. Yeah, I don't expect a detective to be doing officer stuff right, so don't expect me to do officer stuff. I need to have an understanding your job. I need to be able to explain it for sure let me ask you this right.
Speaker 2:So I know you and I've known a lot of guys that have worked for you since you've promoted. Right, you aren't above going out there in oh no, on the ground I was.
Speaker 1:I was out on the foot all day. That's my point, right.
Speaker 2:So you have. You know, you have a supervisor that is willing to help Yep, knowing that that's not their job anymore, which is great, right, like I've had great sergeants and great lieutenants that will show up on a call and they're like what do you need? Yeah, like that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just an extra hand.
Speaker 2:Right, but that 15 minutes that they spend out on that call, the amount of time and you know from when you were an officer uh, you know when I experienced that and you go tell other people and other people talk to other people and other people talk to before you know it, like now, you have a bunch, a group of solid officers that want to work for this sergeant or lieutenant because they aren't scared to get out there and help when you're. You know you got 65 calls holding or right, whatever the case may be. Right, yeah, and no officer should expect a sergeant or lieutenant to go handle 25 calls. Right, that's yeah, that's not what we're talking about, but the fact that they're willing to do that because, on the flip side of that, you've had, you've, I'm sure you've experienced sergeants and lieutenants where they never leave the office.
Speaker 1:Mm, hmm.
Speaker 2:And it feels like you're drowning out there and you're like if I could just have somebody go get like those four cars information yeah, this wreck, I could be out of here like an hour sooner, yep, and I can go on to the next one, but there's nobody.
Speaker 1:And the benefit. You know, you knew the area that I worked, so you kind of had I feel the sergeants should be out there, yeah, Because it's just so dangerous and you're outnumbered the entire time. It's a bar district, entertainment district, and I needed to have a pulse of how they handled things anyway, right, so I can't learn that from a body cam. It can help, but I can't learn that from a body cam. So being out there, I was able to see kind of where their control tactics were at, where their mindset was at on decision making, and it was a bunch of young, rookie officers at zero to three year mark.
Speaker 1:They hadn't even had babies, yeah they were young, most of them. They hadn't even had babies man, yeah, they were young most of them and watching them go out there in the, in the you know time that I was down there, we were able to drop violent crime by like 37%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you guys killed it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they put an article out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you were killing Jeff.
Speaker 1:Cunningham was definitely a part of that too. So between him and I and the tactics that we used and the training, that's the other part. You know, you can't just look at your guys and be like you need to fix that, I need to give you a path to fix it. Yeah, well, luckily control tactics was my thing and swat stuff was his thing. Well, I kind of knew.
Speaker 2:So, you know, kind of fast forward in my career a little bit to to present day. We'll go back, obviously, but, um, you know we're gonna tarantino this yeah, for sure, no. So I kind of knew that where you and jeff were supervisors at, yeah, I knew that it was going to change. When you guys kind of collectively came down and said, hey, we want to train our people after hours, yeah, right, yeah, which was awesome like we never experienced that at the range and and having having two supervisors like you and jeff that we can trust to like, especially jeff because he knew all that stuff on the range.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, right but, but you know, like not to steal all the bullets, or like not right, yeah, not to leave the range like all destroyed tactically appropriate.
Speaker 2:We don't steal, yeah, exactly right. Um, but no, seriously, in, you know, having those conversations and being a part of those conversations because of my position at the range right now, in, in kind of where I'm at when it comes to the training side of things, I, I was all for it. Yeah, I'm like, absolutely, you know, like jeff's, like hey, I want to put on a carbine school for my people. And I'm like, yeah, got both teams spun up. That's an amazing idea, like you know, and you guys did it at your own pace, which is fine.
Speaker 2:You covered all the things that were required by T-Cole Great, you know, and it, we loved it. Yeah, and it was team building and that's the biggest thing right there, you know, is you're forcing the team to be together to go through training. We're all gonna live through this. We're all gonna do this. Like I thought it was awesome, like I think you guys, you guys kind of set the bar for where I think a lot of different entities within the department should be. Unfortunately, there's not, they're not all there, but it's definitely moving in that direction and you guys were a definite part of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it helps. One thank you for allowing us, because you took a risk, and then two it goes to supporting how.
Speaker 1:I still think the team model is the best model and that is exactly why because you are working together with the same people, you understand each other, how they move and you're going to be less likely to get into a higher use of force because you guys know each other and your tactics and all that stuff. So I really dislike the current models that I see where you're my supervisor for two days, this person's my supervisor for the next two days and I work with half of these people this couple days and then these half of the I hate that, I hate it.
Speaker 1:That's because I've worked on teams and then I went to that and now I'm back to teams. Yeah, it's tough, so it's very. Yeah, that's, that's a difficult part, but um, yeah anyway, let's go back. So you did the narcotics thing. You learned how to do the uc stuff by I did by being out there yeah, I did so.
Speaker 2:I did go to school for that. I did a lot of things at haida. Yeah, haida is yeah, could you amazing?
Speaker 1:can you explain what haida?
Speaker 2:so the high intensity drug trafficking agency is there are they're kind of centralized with throughout the nation, right? So I did the North Texas Haida. It's in Irving and you go to they offer schools and courses and they also have their own entity within the you know crime fighting with the DEA and the ATF and so they partner with them and there's people actually assigned to Haida as task force officers. But my experience through Haida was just training right and it was amazing training like undercover narcotic survival, undercover buys, buy bust, all these you know warrant writing how to write warrants is something that's big right.
Speaker 2:And it's the four corner doctrine, like, if it's not within the four corners of this piece of paper, it didn't happen or I can't take it into account, right. So, learning how to write warrants and, um, you know, learning how to write warrants and you know, learning how to network with judges and district attorneys and to speak with these people. So all the training that I went through once I made it to narcotics was it was amazing, it was a lot of fun, very eye opening, because I approached it as not a police officer. I approached the training as somebody who's out there buying drugs, right. And I learned that from a very senior narcotics investigator in Irving at the time and he basically said, like man, your ultimate goal obviously is to arrest these people, but if you walk in there with the mindset of a police officer, you're going to portray yourself as a police officer and it's not going to work out real well in certain situations, right. And you know, I think there's times where that definitely benefited me.
Speaker 2:You know, I've been in trap houses in different locations in different big cities in North Texas. You know, and it's kind of like who are you? You're right, and the most beautiful thing about narcotics and undercover work is the ability to communicate. You have to effectively communicate because when you're in a house with four or five, six guys and you know I don't however much dope you want to think about their being there on the table and you're there to buy some, yeah, they don't know you. They automatically assume the worst. Yeah, they automatically assume you are the police, which you are, but you can't portray yourself as that. Right like, I never carried any identifying information on me, ever. I mean, I had my fake driver's license and whatever, but nothing police related.
Speaker 2:You know, had to put out assist on buys and the SWAT teams come in lights and sirens and I was able to talk them down and luckily, my partner was able to tell the SWAT team in time like everything's good Stop. He got it under control because when they get there, it's mass chaos. But you have to have the ability to talk to people and understand the situation that you're in. Yeah, um. So, yeah, haida, haida was very instrumental in that and um, I think the approach to it is instrumental too. I've seen several narcotics guys go into narcotics because they they want to do the undercover things and they want to go buy buy drugs and they want to help the communities by sifting these people out, but they can't let go of the fact that they're the police. You know they still wear the. You know I got your six or yeah, they got the Oakley can glass.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like their watch has a thin blue line on it or whatever Punisher tattoo. Yeah, and you're like dude come on, which is great.
Speaker 2:I'm all for pro-police, but sometimes I try to steer towards the most opposite.
Speaker 1:I really do when I'm off, I'm off.
Speaker 2:I don't have any stickers on my truck. I don't have any, as you can see. Star Wars.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're a see star Wars. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're a star Wars guy for sure, but no like.
Speaker 2:so I think, um, guidance with that helped me a lot and having guys that have been down that road for a very long time and kind of guided me, which made me successful doing the narcotic stuff.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I did narcotics for four years, almost four years, the unit guys not actually doing narcotics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, somebody's going to sound clip that. Later he did narcotics. He did narcotics for four years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I don't do narcotics, but no. So I left there and then I went back to patrol for a short stint and then, you know, tried out for SW and and got to play that play that game for a little bit, which is awesome how many years did you do? Swat. Um, so I was on the team for two years before I lateraled to Fort Worth. Okay, yeah, so made the big bucks. Yeah, no, I lost money coming to Fort worth did you really?
Speaker 1:yeah, I took a huge pay cut. I thought it was during that time when they had the big no no, no, no.
Speaker 2:So I yeah, that was wild man. That's why, you know, we earlier in in this show we talked about, people were like, dude, you're crazy because I lost a lot of money but it was time, yeah, like it. Um, it was, it was better for me, it was better for my family and I'm not I'm not here to trash on irving at all like they were a great department. I was super blessed man like I got to do so many cool things over there, got to experience so many cool things. But it's, it's one of those times where it's kind of like I look at it like kind of like barry sanders, yep you know, glad you relate to my team, you know, because I'm a lion's guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, but I love barry sanders. No so greatest running back ever. Thank you um I second that motion.
Speaker 2:You know, barry sanders was like it's time to go and they're like, but there's so much more you could do here. And he's like, yeah, but it's time to go. Yep, it's time to go. Yeah, and that's kind of how I felt. Yeah, you know, like it's time, it's time for me to go.
Speaker 2:I had a couple of things that happened, super minor, like no discipline, obviously, but like with some supervisors and getting getting shunned on some things because they said I was, you know, too decorated as an officer or whatever. That's a thing. Being too decorated, yeah, I guess, but I mean, at the end of the day, like that was just kind of like I already made my decision. Yeah, you know, it wasn't like, oh, that tipped me over the edge, like you know, gotta get out of this place now, like it wasn't none of that at all. It was it's time to go, like you know.
Speaker 2:You know, so I, I then, you know, lateraled over to fort worth and uh, did a couple years over there. I knew a lot of the guys at the I say a lot, I know a couple of the guys at the range, um, before I even came to fort worth. A lot of people don't know that. But, um, like you know, pinky I, we had known each other for several years before I went to Fort Worth through different trainings and stuff, and obviously he's one of the OGs at the range.
Speaker 1:He's a stud, yeah, yeah, he is, and so I'm always happy when I go down I see that he's behind the counter. I'm like I'm going to get taken care of, yeah.
Speaker 2:Pinky's my brother man, he's, he's, he's my dude. So um, no, and then you know, kind of, it was just kind of a one of those scenes where I always wanted to work at the range um ended up putting in, didn't get it the first time, believe it or not. Um got it the three months after. You know, I put in and then somebody else got it and then three months later I was brought over and it's kind of where.
Speaker 1:How long did you do, and were you probably in patrol that whole time? A couple of years? A couple of years?
Speaker 2:I did a couple of years in patrol in Fort Worth and you know, obviously there are some people that are like oh, freaking lateral. Oh, shut up I only did two years and then you get to go to the range.
Speaker 1:Listen, you do what's best for the department and the citizens, not what's best for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, I agree 100%. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:The people that get hurt about that. That's how you're looking at it. You're looking at it about you. You're not looking at it. What's best?
Speaker 2:for guys like people don't realize how tight the range guys and SWAT guys are, because obviously, the SWAT guys I mean their offices right down the the building from us, but the SWAT guys are at the range every day. Yep, every day we interact with SWAT guys, um, and so seeing a lot of those guys that, like Curry and Buck that got to yeah, came in.
Speaker 1:I think he was like a Seattle SWAT guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, like dude, like he's a lateral, but the dude did like four or five, six, eight, however many years on, a legit SWAT team in Seattle Like it wasn't, like you know, a tested team.
Speaker 2:They've been tested a lot. So, um, but to your point, exactly like what's best for the department, what's best for the community, yeah, you know, kind of what's best for the officer kind of comes last right and uh I don't mean like mental health wise or anything like that, but like for the betterment of the department yeah, right, and SWAT it's also who's best for the team, because it's a team concept.
Speaker 1:Swat is not an individual. It's very much, you know, like a Navy SEAL concept. You know what I mean. Like, the people they weed out are the ones that are about themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I heard a guy once say and I think it kind of translates to any team aspect, right, but he was relating it to a selection process for a tier one unit in the military, but I think it. You know, I'm not saying that swat is like delta, that's not what I'm saying, but I'm saying I I think it translates with the selection side of things and he said I can train somebody to be stronger, I can train somebody to run faster, I can train somebody to shoot better, but I can't train somebody to fit in with my guys right character. Like if you don't fit, you don't fit yeah. Like if you fit great and you suck at shooting, I'll make you better at work at that, yeah, but I can't make you fit in with my guys, yeah, and I think that's something that is. You know, that's kind of lost sometimes with people I I've honestly always wanted to do swat.
Speaker 1:I don't have the tactical training, um, and I know that, but I also am not in a point in my life that I could put the team first, and I think if you're gonna do that, that's what your mindset needs to be is that you're gonna put that team first. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:So it would be selfish for me to try to go you know, I don't know, obviously I never did narcotics, uh, the undercover narcotics not. When I say do narcotics, I don't mean like smoking weed guys, like I never did the narcotics unit in fort worth, right, but in irving, uh, it was one of those things, man, where we were working 80, 90 hours a week, whoo, and it was that's why you made a lot of money, yeah. So, um, no, in all seriousness, like we, like my wife and I, we had this, we had we had young kids at the time, so it was, it was, it was easy, easy for you, right, it sucked for her, but it was easy for me.
Speaker 2:Um, like I would literally get home and then she would do two things she would lay out a fresh set of clothes and she would have food ready.
Speaker 2:Oh, no matter what time, that's the best, because I can't count how many times I would get home and I've been in trap houses all day, or buying dope or testing heroin or whatever Change in the garage so you don't have to go through the house, right, yeah, so I would literally change my clothes, get in the shower and my undercover phone would ring and it would be my sergeant and he'd be like we're getting called out and I would get out of the shower and Zoe would be like, hey, you got called out and I'm like, yeah, and there's a set of clothes on the bed, there's a plate of food Like I would be like dressing and eating at the same time and I would like give her a kiss. I've been home for 11 minutes. Yeah, I'll see you in nine hours.
Speaker 1:That's a different life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so like that was, it was very um at that time in the way that the and I've heard that it's kind of changed over the last 20 years. The narcotics game has changed. They 20 years, the narcotics game has changed. They don't. They don't use UCs like they do. Yeah, like they don't do. You know a lot of stuff that we used to do as UCs Right Um it's all CIs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, there's a lot of things that I heard have changed and I don't know I've been out of the game and the narcotics game for so long, um, I've been out of the SWAT game for 10 years, so that's changed too. But you know, going from narcotics and and having that um be normal, yeah, like I got called out every christmas. Every christmas, you know, and when you have kids that are two and three, it's kind of no harm, no foul. They're not going to remember that, right, you know wife remembers yeah family remembers family remembers.
Speaker 2:You know, and it's like you know you, I, I remember literally tallying up the time and I spent three to one the amount of time with my narcs compared to my family. Yeah, and to kind of you know, to kind of bring this out to the to the listeners right now, there was a guy and swats the same way, right swats the same way. Swat gets caught on all the time, like they are constantly on call. You constantly have to plan, no matter where you go, like if you want to go to a range again with your family, you have to plan before that to be called out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you probably are going to be called out in the fifth inning or whatever like yep, you're either taking an uber and letting them stay and watch the game, or you're you got a plan for it right.
Speaker 2:So like I'll never forget this story. And this story actually kind of made me start to think about things differently. And there was a SWAT guy, um, he came into the office and he's like I quit, like I'm going back to patrol. And everybody's like what, what do you mean? You're going back to patrol? He's like I'm out, I'm done. He had a, he hit a wall, well, and so one of the supervisors was like what do you what? Hold on time out? Like time out? Yeah, like what, what? What's going on? He goes.
Speaker 2:My son asked me where I live last night. Oh, yeah, that hurts. Yeah, like, where do you live? Like you're, you don't ever sleep here, you're never here. Yeah, you're always gone. Like can I go to your house? Like where do you live? Wow, wow, you know. And it's one of those things where that's that dedication to, to, to serving, and dedication to the team, it it not only takes a lot from you as the officer, but the amount of it, the amount of strain and pressure and stress it puts on your family, especially families with kids of age. That know, yeah, two-year-olds, they don't really get it yet. Yeah, you know, nine-year-olds, that's tough man. Yeah, absolutely, you know that's tough, you gotta have those.
Speaker 1:And I think what ends up happening a lot with cops that start to go down the you know divorce route, which is high with police, is the dedication to service and the lack of communication and expectation with the family. So if you're not talking to your wife about, or your husband if you're a female cop, about what the job and the path that you're trying to take entails, because you both have to be in it, you can't just decide I'm going to go do SWAT, whether you like it or not, it's not going to or not, it's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. No, they have to know reasonably what those expectations are and I think a lot of officers they get into either new marriages or whatever it is. They that communication side of you know I want to do this job, can I do it? You know, or they tell their way. I'm going to try to put in for this position. Okay, well, right, they don't know what questions to ask.
Speaker 2:They don't know what to expect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you're not taking the time to tell them, you're asking for trouble down the line, for sure. And then what ends up happening? When the divorce happens, or when it's getting close to happening, yeah. And then they start to reflect, like you said, the guy walks in and says I'm done, I'm going to patrol, like that is a tumultuous moment in their life, that they are not right in the head? Yeah, no at all. That's hard. And we hear about officers all the time taking themselves out. What did this whole 22 kill? All that stuff, you know.
Speaker 2:So would this whole 22 kill all that stuff, you know. So it's a that's a huge topic right now. Yeah, it's one of those things and luckily I've been so blessed to have a wife that fully supported everything that I wanted to do my career. But she was one of those people that said, you know, like, for example, when I wanted to put in for narcotics, she said okay, what does it mean? What does that mean, like, what?
Speaker 1:how actually inquired.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how's that going to change? Like, what does that mean? Like what? What are you going to be doing? Like you know, and she didn't I don't want to say she didn't care about that job itself and the dangers that came with it, cause she obviously did Right. But she also has a job too, as a mother and as a wife to a. How can we support this? You know, what do you need from us as a family and me from as a wife? You know, what can I expect from you as a husband and as a police officer? Like there's all these things. Like we literally sat down and like like laid out the pros and cons of this and that's like that's huge, yeah, and being able to do that for so many years and be successful, because you're right, like the divorce rate and then, unfortunately, the you know, the suicide rate of officers that go through these things is far too many, yeah, far too many.
Speaker 1:There's been, I think, at least one every year that I've been a cop. Yeah, places that I know not just like oh, there's a dead officer over here, but like places that I physically, I talk to these places and yeah, like, yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah, so.
Speaker 2:So, communication, communication, communication is key. You know, you have to be able to communicate and be on the same page and, as much as it may suck to hear this, I firmly believe this that if you are a police officer and your goal is to go to SWAT or narcotics or whatever, fill in the blank right, and if that means doing so at the detriment of your family, don't do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Don't do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard. It's a hard pill to swallow because you all want to have fun in our jobs. Sure pill to swallow because you, we all want to have fun in our jobs. Sure, and you know we all have ways that we think we can serve better and do that while having fun. But yeah, don't it's not worth. It's not worth the cost of your family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it will cost to your family, it will cost you your family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, we've seen all too many officers god, I, I can go down the you just look, and what's one of the you know internal cultural jokes that we have, like, oh, you're not a real cop until your first divorce right, and that's why they'll say that to them, like, oh, me and the missus are getting divorced, and they'll drop that line. And I don't think we're really helping when we say that we're not no, and I've been so blessed not to.
Speaker 2:Obviously I've never been divorced, thank god. But um, yeah, you're right, man, it's just like I can't count. I don't, I can't count how many people have you know, I know guys with four yeah, I know 10 that are going through one right now, like, yeah, like, as we speak, they're like going through, like it's wild and um tell my wife and I her and I are an anomaly because we went through the military and policing and haven't divorced.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's awesome, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah but I think, and I don't know, you know, I just I just met your lovely wife a few minutes ago, but I would, I would probably guess that you guys are very, very effective communicators oh, for sure, yeah, and we've been together since seventh grade. Oh yeah, you guys definitely you guys yeah, you guys have got to figure it out. Y'all need to like write books and yeah, I tell people.
Speaker 1:I'm like yeah, well, when we started dating we were roller skating together. So like, yes, that's that's how long we go back. You know you do kid stuff. You know, summertime came, we'd break up, go back to school, we, and we'd start dating again.
Speaker 2:Summertime break up. Typical kid stuff yeah.
Speaker 1:And then, once we got our licenses and vehicles, then we just stayed together, that's awesome Congratulations.
Speaker 1:Thanks, it's been great. But let's get back to you, sir. So you do the NARC, you transfer, lateral transfer, you come over and you get in the range. Now I know you're good with a gun, all that stuff, but can you kind of give people a little bit of what? What does it take to get picked? You have to go through a instructor, instructor school. So kind of tell us a little bit about what instructor school is like. But what also is the um, the hiring process, because I'm sure they put you through some sort of practical test yeah, yes and no.
Speaker 2:So the instructor school uh, it was a week-long deal.
Speaker 2:We've actually kind of revamped it to what it used to be, but it was basically you had to pass a series of shooting tests, okay, um, they kind of took you down the road of of being an instructor and what all that means the liability side of things and you know, the purchasing side, testing side, all all the things that have to do with a larger agency firearms unit, and then, uh, like, uh, like anything else.
Speaker 2:You got to show interest, right, yeah, so I actually, um was very unluckily lucky, if that makes sense so I I blew my shoulder out, had to have surgery, um, and while I was rehabbing they sent me down to the range. So I spent several months down at the range while I was kind of rehabbing, meeting, you know, getting to know the guys being utilized to do kind of the grunt work stuff. You know, take the trash out and do this and do that and kind of earn my keep that way, while I was on light duty status, which was very beneficial, you know, if you don't get hurt and get to do that there's, we're constantly looking for people to come down and volunteer like we're like everybody else in the rest of the country in law enforcement.
Speaker 2:We're hurting for people, we're short stuff. Yeah, you know, um, but coming down and I would go and help out with recruit classes, I'd go and help out with carbine schools, I'd go, and that's all my own time, right, like on my days off I would go volunteer, like I would just go get comp time or whatever, right, and just show interest and and learn the systems and learn the lingo and learn how to do things and learn to talk to the guys and whatever the case may be. So when the you know, when it finally came up to where there was an opening to put in for I was able to able to slide in there.
Speaker 1:Nice, okay, so you do the instructor school, are they? What is some of the things that they can expect in an instructor school for learning how to shoot firearms or teach it? I?
Speaker 2:should say so. You have to be able to not only shoot well, but you have to convey that and teach people how to do the same. And a lot of instructors, especially new instructors and this is one of the things we focus on now, chancey and I we focus on this a lot. We focus on now, chancy and I, we focus on this a lot is so many times people revert back to the way they were taught and how they did things six years ago, eight years ago, two years ago, 12 years ago. Well, it's constantly evolving, right. So, in order to be able to to make people better, you have to be able to convey the information to them, and in a way that they understand it and and they can implement it, not just regurgitate what you're saying.
Speaker 2:And I think for so long as an instructors for instructor schools, you would go and you would say this is how you teach this drill period, end of story. And then that person goes and teaches that drill that way, right, and it's never changed. And I saw a lot of that um coming up throughout my career in law enforcement where, like, you go to a school and you're like when did we start teaching this? And they're like, oh, we started teaching this 17 years ago, like it hasn't changed, right. No, that's just the way we've always done it. Which is the most dangerous thing you can say in training it's all, it's the way we've always done it right.
Speaker 2:So not only do you expect a level of proficiency from people who are teaching firearms, but they have to be able to convey it. So one of the things that we do is we will teach them a block, whether it's pistol, rifle, whatever right. We teach them a block in the morning, in the afternoon, we expect them to teach it back to us, not only teach it back and be able to demonstrate it, to do the demos, but they have to be able to speak on it as well. So we will partner people up, for example, like if you and I are partners in instructor school. We'll get two blocks of instruction. Whatever they are.
Speaker 2:One of the blocks, you're the mouthpiece for it, so you're the one standing up in front of the class explaining everything. I'm the demo guy and it's my job to demonstrate exactly what this drill is okay and I have to match. My demo has to match what you're saying and what you're saying also has to match my demo, because you can't say we're doing, you know we're going to run, uh, predictive doubles, and then I'm up there running a bill drill. People are like those are two totally different things. These guys are not on the same page, right? So on the flip side, the next block of instruction that we get as a team, our roles reverse. So now I'm the mouthpiece and you're the one pressing the trigger the whole time. So we do that multiple times throughout the week, right? So throughout the entire week you are not only speaking to a class, you're teaching, you're also demonstrating in front of the class multiple times a week.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So that's one of the things that we really harp on is the ability to do, because we believe firmly that you have to be able to demonstrate everything that you expect your class to do. You know, there's instructors out there and they are very big-name instructors I'm not going to mention any names but they demo nothing. They're like, yeah, yeah, just go do this, go to the 7-yard line and do this. They speak a lot, but they yeah. So we're, we're, we're kind of the opposite of that, and you have to have the, the ability to effectively communicate what you want done and what you expect. And then you have to have the ability to perform on demand. At any given time you're asked to do it Right.
Speaker 2:And then, on the flip side of that, as you are evaluating the students as an instructor, very rarely do I ever look at a student's target Very rarely. Yeah, you know, I'm watching their shoulders, I'm watching their hands, their grip, their grip tension, the tensions in the back of their hands, the tensions in their forearms, I mean all these things I'm looking at and you get to the point to where you can watch somebody shoot and you could be pretty dang close at telling them what their target looks like without looking at their target, just because you can see how, what their interaction is with the gun right and how the gun is tracking and how they're gripping the gun and how the gun's returning and how they're pressing the trigger and all these different things that you should be able to put pick up on as an instructor.
Speaker 2:Compared to how old instructors used to be, which you know and I know, they would stand behind the shooter and they would just watch the target and, as holes would appear, they'd be like stop jerking the trigger, stop slapping the trigger, right, stop jerking the trigger, and that's has nothing to do with anything, right. So it's really diagnosing the shooter, but giving them the ability and confidence to know what to look for and to diagnose the shooter at the shooter level. Yeah, you know, in regards to what the target looks like, yeah.
Speaker 1:so now you're, you become an instructor, you're going through, you know officers have been cops forever and you're dealing with recruits. Yeah, two totally different animals. Can you kind of tell me what it's like in that training process for a recruit? And then same thing with a salty?
Speaker 2:vet seasoned guy Salty.
Speaker 1:That may be good or may be terrible seasoned guy salty.
Speaker 2:That may be good or may be terrible. Recruits are 100 times easier to train, 100 times easy. Blank slates, blank slates, most of them, especially nowadays, you know, uh, you probably grew up shooting a little bit, maybe I don't know, with your granddad not pistols, but rifles and shotguns, but you understood how a gun worked Right.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, okay. So you know back when, kind of we started 20 years ago plus or whatever the case may be, most everybody has some experience with firearms. Nowadays it's no. Nobody does Nobody right. So I use a lot of like analogy call me crazy, but like call of duty. Hell, yeah, they all know what call of duty is, you know, especially teaching people how to shoot red dots I use it all the time and which we'll get into that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, so yeah, Teaching recruits. Now they're they're blank slates. There's no bad habits that you have to correct. There's no.
Speaker 2:You know well, I've been doing it this way for 22 years, since before you were born you know, and so teaching recruits, um, is very, very easy compared to teaching uh and in service class with with veteran officers.
Speaker 2:Now I will say this the let the time it takes for recruits to get to a point of acceptable proficiency is a certain amount of time, right? I don't know what it is, because it's different for every recruit. Now, when you have a veteran officer that truly is engaged and truly wants to try something different and try to improve, like you, right, you go from from you know here to here relatively quickly, because you have 20 years of experience to pull from Yep and and whether it's good or bad experience, because both of them teach you something equally right, whereas a recruit, they're kind of like well, I don't really know if I'm doing good or not, yeah, I guess doing better, I guess I'm doing okay, whereas you, you're like, okay, I know, I was here, I'm gonna forget everything I've learned up until this day and I'm gonna do everything that these guys are telling me to do. And at the end of a two-day class, you're here, right, you're like, oh, yeah, I, I've improved, whereas recruits are like well, I guess I'm doing better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know. I went from a, let's say, about a 95, 96 average and then, when I went through you and Chancey, I've always shot 100. Always, every single time, I've shot 100, which is crazy Because I push the envelope every time. Yeah, you're good.
Speaker 2:That's because we're behind you, like go faster, yeah, go faster, go faster.
Speaker 1:Well, you know. And then the old school mindset slow is smooth, smooth is fast. And I think I take that to an extreme now, where I'm just like, yeah, bow, bow, and it's too slow.
Speaker 2:So I hate that saying just as much as I hate the saying of's what we've always done it right. Oh, really, I hate it. Really, I hate it with a passion. Okay, I hate slow, smooth as fast, and here's why slow is slow okay, fair, you're not wrong, I mean slow is slow.
Speaker 2:You cannot define being fast with using the word slow in it yeah like slow is slow and I'll equate it to this because we have recruits, perfect example. We have recruits say I was told slow is smooth, smooth is fast. And I'm like, okay, If you want to get good at being fast, what do you need to do? Not be slow?
Speaker 1:You need to work on being faster.
Speaker 2:Like you need to fail at speed? Yes, right, slow. You need to work on being faster? Yeah, like you need to fail at speed? Yes, right, and I use this analogy okay, when you teach somebody pursuit driving, do you tell them I want you to drive around this track at three miles an hour, because slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Speaker 1:No, you tell them, push it till you wreck.
Speaker 2:Oh really, yeah, oh so you don't tell them to go slow, right, no, yeah, so why do we do it in firearms? Good boy, you know, like it's one of those things where it's like oh, slow, smooth. Well, in reality, in practical law enforcement engagements, there is nothing slow about it. So why do we train slow in pursuit driving when the suspect's doing 140? There's nothing slow about that, yeah, so why do we? Why would we train how to do pursuit driving at three miles an hour?
Speaker 1:fair. Yeah, you know who's really fast, that I probably the fastest. I've seen fucking bryles super quick. Oh, driving, no, no, no, pulling, pulling the gun out like his from holster to shoot oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, joe dude, yes, joe, yeah, yeah super quick. I'm like dang, I wouldn't expect that from you that's all those years of drawing the taser.
Speaker 2:I guess you probably got one billion draws yeah, dude, he's so quick, I'm like he does have fast hands. Yeah, he does not accurate shots, but fast, so she'sosu's all right.
Speaker 1:No, he's good though. Yeah, he's good. Yeah, but no, going through y'all's class, like you said. That old, you know, but I came to learn. I knew. I know I'm not good Like comparative to my peers, but you can be. But I'm good now. I mean, I think I'm You're good, I'm way better than I was before. So but yeah and then. So, as you train recruits, I like the blank slate you know, idea and that they, they shoot really well.
Speaker 1:How? How many rounds are they going through and in in how short of a time period?
Speaker 2:So we have the recruits for initially we have them for one week for T-Cole, okay, so we have to get everything T-Cole related for their state license done in that week. So we have to hit all the classroom stuff. We have to hit the the minimum amounts of shotgun and low light training. Um, it's kind of like really drinking through a fire hose for them, because it's just a plethora of information, right, that we have to give them, but they're only tested on a very, very few things, right, and then they come back for another three weeks. So over the the amount of a month, each recruit is shooting anywhere from 6,500 to 7,500 rounds total each.
Speaker 1:That's so many. I know people may hear that if you're not in law enforcement or been in any sort of job that carries a firearm, that's a lot. That's a lot of ate up fingers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we sold 40 or 50 times 7,000. Yeah, that's a lot. So many bullets we go through for a month.
Speaker 1:But when they get done, what are the average scores?
Speaker 2:So we just changed our scoring system so it's kind of skewed a little bit, but there are in in. Before we change the program to where it is now, the average score for a recruit class was anywhere between 95 96 average. Right, we just hit our 99. For an entire class, the average was 99%. Damn yeah, the first time ever.
Speaker 1:And that was prior to Red Dot than going into Red Dot, correct? Yeah, so we'll talk about that in a second. But okay, so, recruits, that's awesome. That's the type of scores you want to hear, and what's the passing? 85% 85% is passing. These guys are scoring at least 10% higher, and now they're scoring almost 20% higher than what's required. So that's good Boys versus girls. Who shoots better?
Speaker 2:Uh, just curious it, does you know it? I haven't been able to say like with certainty like boys are better or girls are better, and here's why because we've had girls come through class that just rail on dudes, right, oh, they smoke them, yeah, like they, just they lit they. They learn different though, right, like girls learn different than boys, right, they ask a lot of why? Questions, which is fine, guys, you can kind of tell them something and go do this, because I said, and they're like Roger, girls are like, well, why do I need to do that?
Speaker 1:They need to understand behind the scenes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is cool. It's kind of an unfair comparison because predominantly there's more males than females obviously yeah, maybe 20% females yeah exactly right, but I will say this so we do a drill, a walk back drill, and we start at the two yard line and they have it's a like three inch by three inch circle.
Speaker 1:Like a steel target. No, it's on paper.
Speaker 2:It's the white oval of our target. Oh, ok, in the middle. So it's like three or three and a half inch by three and a half inch, however big it is, and they start at the two yard line. And then you know, on the command of shoot, everybody has unlimited time to fire one round. It's just got to be inside that circle.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And if you shoot and you miss, you're out. Okay you miss, you're out, okay. So like king of the king of the hill type thing. Yeah, exactly right. So everybody's in. You go back to the five, the, to the seven, the nine, the ten, the twelve, the fifteen, the twenty five, and by the time you get back to, like the, the 15 yard line, there's a handful of people left. You know, the record holder for our department to this day with iron sights, was a female officer.
Speaker 1:No shit oh, dang, okay yes, 37 yards, holy cow. Oh, so you guys are out the rifle doing that, yeah, 37 yards.
Speaker 2:She made it back to 37 yards before she missed, so that's crazy.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I was always curious because in the military all of our combat arms guys cadres. They would tell us that hands down females shoot and learn quicker, faster in the military, and so I was just curious if it was the same. And that's Air Force what I've heard. So I was just curious if it was the same.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say they learn quicker or faster. I would say that they learn different. You have to approach them different. They're not worse. Yeah, you know, um, you know we've had recruits that are females, that are b for barely like they barely pass right right. But on the flip side we've had good dudes like four or five guys that are like b for barely you know they're like you know they shot 7 000 rounds and they're barely here yeah, now, in the event that they fail, yeah, what is the?
Speaker 1:what? Can you tell the public how that process goes like? Do they get another chance? Is there only a certain amount of chances a recruit gets? How does that work?
Speaker 2:are we talking about recruits, recruits, okay. So, uh, you get three attempts as a recruit, right? Um, if you do not pass your third attempt, then it is recommended by the range that you are terminated okay, that you can no longer continue in training. Now, that's very situational dependent. We've made recommendations before, and they've been honored, to where the recruit has been terminated because they didn't pass firearms, and we've also made recommendations before where it was. We were asked to remediate these people further and allow them to have another attempt.
Speaker 1:So when a person initially fails, you don't just make them step back up and just start shooting again. You guys actually take the time to evaluate them try to see how you can correct it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the way we normally do it is we have an entire recruit class right, and so they shoot their first call as a group and we take the targets down and we score them away from them Privately, yeah.
Speaker 2:Privately, yeah, so nobody knows that they passed or failed. And then we go and we shoot another 100 rounds, just as practice to work on different things. We'll shoot anywhere from the 25-yard line to the 3-yard line, right. Then we give them a break and we shoot another qual and score it privately. And if somebody fails those first two quals, then we'll pull them in and say, hey, here's the deal, the reason we used to do that way in the past, which we went away from and we can talk about later but you would see guys that would shoot 100 on their first qual and then their next qual. They would just try to go, go all out, they would just do dumb stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like they would like I'm gonna do headshots only and you're like what do you mean? Like when were you trained to?
Speaker 1:do yeah, like when did we?
Speaker 2:ever teach you to shoot headshots. Like, yeah, you just went from shooting a 100 to a 62. Like congratulations, you know. So now, or that was the. That was kind of the reasoning behind us grading them, so nobody knew if they passed or failed, right, um, but if you failed the first two, then you would be pulled in by the range master and talked to by the range master and the lead instructor which I had to do a couple of times and say, hey, here's the deal, you know, like yeah you need to pass this one kind of thing, and then you would, um, you'd give them a little bit more training before the qual.
Speaker 2:Would the third qual would, yeah, take place okay you take them into range two or whatever. And yeah, I'll work on a couple of things, just kind of hit pocket real fast, 10 minutes like yep, I think it's fair.
Speaker 1:I that. I think that's a good system. I like that. Uh, okay, so they get through. I'm just trying to help the public understand what that process is, cause you'll hear all the time like there'll be an officer involved in the shooting and they'll like and they find out that their range quals were hot garbage or they all these different things. Cause at the end of the day, when an officer gets in trouble, one of the first places they go to look is you yeah, I know like one of the first three calls that are hap that happen after an officer involved shooting is to the range.
Speaker 2:Yep, by major case. You know like they they call.
Speaker 1:They want to know qual scores, they want to know if they're qualified, they want to all who trained them all that shit, yeah, like everything's getting pulled up, right everything, everything's getting pulled there's a lot of responsibility and, uh, liability that falls on the range guys and I think that goes underappreciated. I don't think people understand like, yeah, there's a lot I mean not just in the event something bad happens down the road during because you get people that have never held a gun and they're like I think mine's broken and they start yeah, you know there's a lot of. You know it's like teaching hand grenades. I remember the day we taught we were learning throwing hand grenades in the Air Force. Yes, we threw hand grenades. So, learning how to throw the hand grenade and everybody wants to look.
Speaker 1:You throw it and you want to see where it landed and you want to see it blow up and they'll tell you over and over and over again like don't fucking look. And they'll even draw, because you throw a dummy one several times before you ever throw a real one. And if you're a looker they'll draw an eyeball on your helmet. So I always thought that was pretty funny. But looking back and seeing all the safety precautions that they had to do, because you'll get people that panic, you'll get people that you know the typical, you know cartoon style, they'll pull the pin and throw the pin and now they're holding on to a live grenade. Yeah, and now the guy in the pit with a mask like grab it throw it.
Speaker 1:Throw them both on the ground or throw them over to the safety pit on the other side, like it's crazy and the pressure, I couldn't do it. I could not for the life of me. So for you, who's on the line with 50 bodies, you know probably what. One instructor per five, maybe, maybe per 10?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it depends on what we're doing. Yeah, you know, if we're doing static line stuff, it's super easy to get away with less instructors. Uh, we do a lot of movement based stuff, especially early on with the recruits, and yeah it's which is new for people listening.
Speaker 1:That's a very, very new um yeah so no, it's.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's not a one-to-five ratio at all. When we're running around the range with loaded guns. No, it's very controlled and structured.
Speaker 1:Okay. So in that, like I was saying, like I said, people do stupid stuff that you're just like, they're just not, they're confusion and they're wanting to ask a question and that, in conjunction with moving parts around, it can be very nerve wracking. I've shit. It's nerve wracking around some officers. If I'm going to be honest.
Speaker 1:I'm like, yeah, bro, downrange, yeah, it happens. Yeah, Okay, so let's. I do want to go back to recruit training cause you guys are doing some things. Yeah, but I also want that comparison so people understand what it's like when you're shooting on the range with seasoned guys.
Speaker 1:So in the seasoned going from iron sights, new firing qualls. You know what do you guys call it? The qualification itself? You guys probably call it. You guys call it the qualification itself. You guys probably call it something Not state of fire, what the hell do you call it?
Speaker 2:Stage of fire. Is that what it is?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you guys have changed the course of fire. That's what I was thinking. You've changed the course of fire. Oh for the actual qual.
Speaker 2:For the actual qual, yeah, the course of fire for the actual qual.
Speaker 1:That's what I was trying to get to.
Speaker 2:What has that been like? Well, we've always changed the qual, so we change it every couple of years. That's how it's always been changed. We changed the course of fire as well as the scoring now of fire, as well as a scoring now in the before time. You could have, uh, 45 rounds in the dark blue or off your designated impact zone and still pass the qual, which is crazy, right right, yeah, out of 100 yeah yeah, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:Well, 45 rounds, no, like you could have 45 points off out of 60 rounds fired and still pass. Like it was crazy. Oh my god, yeah, um, and I'll just say this, and everybody knows it, it's not a secret, you know, you can look it up the fbi. Uh, as a profession, law enforcement, we suck at shooting across the country. As a profession, right, you could argue anywhere from 13% to 18% to 23% hit rate.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So 20%, we'll say. You know, two out of 10 rounds hit meat intended, meat Right, you know.
Speaker 1:Now for those listening. You got to consider too, when we're firing at a person, there's a whole lot of other psychological things going on. Yes, versus firing at the range yes, yeah, yeah I mean, and that's one of the that's.
Speaker 2:But to your very point, right, there is why we significantly changed our training to a more practical side or a more practical approach to training, where that involves a bunch of movement. Yeah, a bunch of movement that involves a bunch of vision barriers and and stimulus visually to try to mimic real world stuff. Because for so long in law enforcement the police officers would train at the five yard line or the seven yard line and it would be like on the whistle draw and fire two shots and then holster. Well, that's not real world stuff, yeah, you know. So we, we obviously we can't shoot at the recruits and we can't mimic real world stuff.
Speaker 2:But we know a couple of things are most likely true in law enforcement. Engagements is like the officer's moving, the bad guy's moving, or you're both moving, yeah, right, and they happen very, very quickly. This isn't slow down and get your hits type of thing. Right, you know, and in law enforcement for so long and I'm guilty of this, right, teaching it this way it's like slow down, slowly, press the trigger slowly to get your hit. Well, in reality, that is the complete opposite of what officers are doing. So I think that we've been failing our people for so long, teaching them one way and expecting them to go out and do the complete opposite in the real world, when real lives and real bullets are being fired.
Speaker 1:The one I hated the most was don't slap the trigger. Yeah, motherfucker, if I'm in the shit, I'm gonna be slapping that trigger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you learn now, after coming through our class, that you can slap the trigger and still get your hits right, it doesn't matter, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, chancy's little demonstration.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly like, as long as you grip the gun the way you're supposed to, you can slap you like chancy says, you can slap like it owes you money, right? Yeah, yeah, one of the for those listening.
Speaker 1:What we did was I think I was holding the gun, or maybe he was holding the gun and I slapped the trigger. He slapped the trigger. I don't remember how it went, but um, that's the demo like. Is he's showing you that the mechanics of holding the gun doesn't matter how you hit that trigger. Yeah, you can slap the shit out of it, still right hit target.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so now we take a more practical approach, right? So day two with recruits we're moving on the range, we're moving and shooting on the range. That's awesome, like they are running around the range with real guns, real bullets, running towards each other, running away from each other, running up range, running down range. They're running and they're shooting and moving, and all the things from day one because and nobody shot each other yet.
Speaker 1:So that's a plus knock on wood yeah, um no.
Speaker 2:so you know there's so many agencies out there that I know still today, like everybody on the five yard line, Static shooting, yeah Like all right, I want you to shoot five shots in this five inch square and you got no time to do it, and if you miss one then they berate you for missing one. They don't you know, and it's like.
Speaker 1:Oh bro.
Speaker 2:When I go shoot my air force. Qual they think?
Speaker 1:I'm literally it's static shooting at a target that doesn't move.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's a yeah, it's, it's very no. So, yeah, we take a different approach with the recruits now and we've seen a lot of success and we're actually gathering data with major case Chancey's doing that right now, talking to some people in major case and our hit rate as a department is through the roof, really, compared to the nation stuff. That's crazy, it's wild man like it's. We're approaching 80 hit rate with red dots. Wow, yeah, which is insane, which is great. Well, let's get into red dots, yeah, because that's the one thing I've been wanting to talk to you about forever because you guys changed my life.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, red Dots, red Dots, I've been very very excited about this.
Speaker 1:So when our department got Red Dots approved finally and I knew that that was out there I had got with I think it was chancy and was asking him like is this something that I should get, is this something the department's going to give out, or whatever? And he's like wholeheartedly get one. I was like, all right, cool. And then you guys were able to get me into the red dot class and one of the things you wanted me to do was talk about it and get it out there yeah, and that's and I've done it a million times on the podcast talking about how red dots changed my life as a shooter.
Speaker 1:And, as we were talking about earlier, I went from a average 95, 96. Shit, sometimes I'd shoot a 93, 94 if I was really trying to get too fast. But I've always been that type of guy. I know I'm going to shoot like I want to shoot how I think I would shoot in a real situation, which is quick, fast and in a hurry and that gets me a little bit all over the place. But when we went through the red dot course, I went from shooting I got worse before I got better, but it was only a two day class, so I dipped and then I started to doubt and I kept on chancy.
Speaker 1:I was like you, I was like this is not working I'm getting worse and chances just kept saying, trust the process, trust the process. Yeah, I was like all right and sure shit. Last half of the day, on the second day, it just clicked something happened. Something happened and I was like, oh my God, I'm John Wick and I was just shooting everything in a nice tight group and my confidence level went through the roof. It's so much so that after we finished the two-day course, I asked for extra rounds to go shoot some more.
Speaker 1:So, I went and I ended up shooting another 100 rounds because I just wanted to see it for myself on my own, I didn't want people around me and just, and I wanted to shoot a little more controlled and just to see how dialed in I was and all of that and make sure it was. You know, I just keep you know I'm always kind of been a two-eye shooter anyway, but in that, you know, it's just really hyper focusing on that, and it just changed the way that I use firearms, like completely like now, where I used to only be comfortable with the gun that I was issued, like I never any gun I would buy for myself. That was the only type of gun I would get, cause I knew everything about it Right. And now I'll go to the range with friends or whatever and let me see your gun, let me see your gun. And just with the principles and that they had the red dot on there, just planking baby.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fucking fun, but it's awesome.
Speaker 1:You guys had the foresight to try to move policing to the future to progress, and it seems like I mean we're looking at I got my 300 black out here with my aim point. This has been a thing in the Air Force since I got in back in, you know 06 and before that. Yeah, why did?
Speaker 2:that never translate over to a pistol. It was taboo. Well, that's the biggest thing. It was taboo, right? So there you know. Guys have been running red dots on pistols for years. There's videos of guys out of the early 90s running them. Yeah, you know like, but it was taboo.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, they would strap this thing on their pistol, but they'd be railing on their gun. They would just be railing folks. But yeah, no, it was taboo. It was one of those things and I'll be honest with you and I don't think I've ever shared this with you.
Speaker 2:When the first time I ever shot a red dot on a pistol, I was like this is stupid, like this is so dumb right you know, um, being from a uh, you know swap background and having so many years in and shooting experience with irons, and then I started to educate myself and I started to go into classes and started to really understand things and look at things differently and actually actually do what the instructors are asking you to do, because that's very hard to do sometimes when you go to class is to get out of your comfort zone and to change the way you've always done things to a new way while you're in class and I really started to do that. Then I started to see, like the benefits just go through the roof. Yeah, you know the practical side of things, the biggest thing with the department's like.
Speaker 2:So we've set up red dot programs in 22 different states holy shit and you know it's one of the things that's always asked is the big l word when it comes to departments. Right, it's the liability. Well, what if the red dot dies, or what if the glass breaks? Or what if this, what if that? You know, and it's like um, you know there's so many ways to answer that that we combat and in a we could do in five minutes on the range. But you know, there that was a big thing with our agency too. It was a liability of it for so long, for for the first year and a half of us shooting red dots and teaching red or testing red dots, they weren't approved, right, um? I built a, a program, a testing program for red dots that has been utilized by every single red dot manufacturer out there.
Speaker 2:Have sent me dots to shoot and test and torture and and at one time I was under eight different ndas oh my god and um, testing different things for different um entities you know, different companies, different, different, uh, three-letter, and you know agencies that want testing done, um, because you know we're not the biggest agency in the nation but we're one of the biggest agencies and one of the most respected as far as training goes.
Speaker 2:Right, and people recognize that, and so I took that very, very serious, very serious. You know, when I would be asked to do these certain things and it wasn't only red dots, it was actual weapons and holsters and everything else weapons and holsters and everything else, you know, um, like the, the new safari land holster, I have a, you know, a 3d printed prototype that I've had for like over a year yeah, testing that they recently came out with, or like the, there's a new eotech coming out that I can't talk about, but it's it's coming out okay
Speaker 2:um, I've had that in my locker, that I've been testing for almost a year now, you know. So, being able to do that, I take that very, very, very serious, because not that, like, what I say is gospel, that's not what I'm saying at all. But they know that the way that we go about testing things, it's not like we're going to just fire 10 rounds through it and be like, oh, that's cool. Yeah, like they wholeheartedly know we're going to push it to failure. Yeah, like it's, we're going to find the breaking points.
Speaker 1:And then you made us, as students, use those breaking points and show that we could still shoot it. Yes, that was the cool part. So, like we shot through broken glass, we shot through blacked out glass where you can't see through it at all. Shot when the dot was off, shot when the dot was on.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that's pretty much all the different things that we did and I still shot on target, yeah, and, and you know so, there's a lot that goes into the whole red dot thing, but it's such a game changer and for me I you know if I had my way there I think iron sights are obsolete on red dot pistols, really 100 because, like you showed, we didn't even use our iron sights when we were using broken or simulated broken red dots and one of the things like we teach you guys how to shoot with the dot, the dot, feather drills right, the dots turned off, and so we, we give you the different ways of indexing the either the gun or the, the optic housing in reference to the target.
Speaker 2:We give you those things and then we tell you to shoot the gun right. And you ask people at the end of a two-day class because you see people when they go to present the gun and their index isn't there and they're fishing for the, the dot, they're moving the head and the gun. Why don't they just revert to their irons? Yeah, none of them do none, yeah. And you go to simulation training with just iron sight guns and I've filmed it a bunch of times. You've been the bad guy in simulation, I've been the bad guy, you've been the good guy, vice versa, whatever right. So people don't line up their iron sights, they instinctually shoot. That's exactly right. What do they do in the real world? You don't believe me. You look at officer involved shooting videos with iron sights and you mean to tell me they have equal height, equal light on their front sight?
Speaker 2:not at all right. No, they are hard focused on the target muscle memory. They are indexing the gun in reference to what they're focusing on, which is all we teach. And when you do it properly, there's a red dot. That's a period that appears in front of your face. Yep, we'll put that where you want the bullets to go and press the trigger. Yep, you know.
Speaker 1:Yep, and then it's two plus two stuff. You guys changed my grip, that left-handed dominant grip with your left hand, yep.
Speaker 2:So your support hand, support hand. Yeah, all those wrong-handed people out there that she left we don't talk to them.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, you changed the way that I did that. That was the game changer, that was. That's changed my shooting completely. Um, I just death grip with that hand and no, it doesn't throw anything off. But if you death grip with your trigger hand, you definitely throw things off.
Speaker 2:Don't press the trigger with your whole hand, just your trigger finger.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, so doing that that changed my game. But it to your point you said it without saying it and I'll say it for you is that you guys changed the way firearms training is going across the nation and trying solely. It was because of you, chancy pogue and the team that you guys got built up there. Yeah, and people don't know that yet and I'm hoping they get to know, and I hope they definitely get to know it through the podcast, because what I'd like to do is eventually get you and chancy and we just that's it. That's the only thing we talk about is the red dot, and that can be its own little educational piece.
Speaker 2:Oh, we could spend a lot. We could spend hours talking about red dot training.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that could be its own little thing, just to kind of. The purpose behind it would be to wake up police departments to get with the times on that. So I know how much you changed my shooting in that.
Speaker 2:How much change did you see in the recruit class? So, percentage wise, on scores for targets, we went from 94, 95% to 98, 99%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is huge. Yeah, that's crazy. And and quickly, yeah. I think, I think they pick that up quicker than they do with the iron sights A hundred percent Because it's so instinctual, right Like you.
Speaker 2:Just look where you want the bullets to go and index a gun and press a trigger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I think what helped me a lot when I was. People are like well, you said you did worse before you got better. I did worse because my grip was wrong, we weren't talking and your vision was messed up, if I can remember.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, because I've always been a two-eye shooter, right? Yeah, so you weren't looking too you are. You were looking at the whole picture, like seeing red somewhere on the target yes, and not looking precisely yeah, right, you, you.
Speaker 1:You didn't have the visual discipline that you needed initially yes, and so in that, once my grip was changed, that was the game changer. Yeah, uh, and then the red dot itself just kind of fell into place. So, um, where was I going with that? And cough threw me off what we're talking about? The recruits, them going through it, the yeah, the uh, learning quicker, faster. And and then we opened it up to lateral not laterals, but, uh, current officers to get. And how was that transition for them?
Speaker 2:uh, first, for the most part yeah, for the most part it was great. Yeah, because most officers are already doing what we're asking them to do. They just don't realize they're doing it. You know, when we have, when, when they stand on a static line, they revert back to the. Let me close my non-dominant eye, let me hard focus on the front side, let me do all these things right. But when we start having them running around the range, or if they're in it's this ammunition village, they're not doing any of those things, just like they're not doing in the real world. So we put them in positions to where they're going to be performing kind of the same way they would be in the real world if it was to happen yeah, minus the bullets coming at them or whatever. And then they realize real quick, like holy cow. I've been looking at the target the whole time and now what? There's a red dot there, yep, and I just shoot. I'm like, yeah, that's exactly right. There's a red dot there, yep, and I just shoot. I'm like, yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, yeah, I. I remember getting yelled at, not yelled at, but just like told repeatedly close your eye, close your eye, close your eye. We, even in the air force, we you shoot your rifle that way, not your pistol, shoot your rifle that way, not your pistol. And I'm like I can't help. I don't think to shut an eye, I am thinking to shoot the target. So I just always would keep that both eyes open.
Speaker 2:And it's funny how I went from being scorned for it for quite a while to the point where now I'm being praised for it, like yeah, good job, like that's how you should do it. Keep doing what you've been doing. Yeah, keep doing what you've been doing.
Speaker 1:You beat me for doing that. So there's hope old dogs can learn new tricks. Absolutely so everybody out there listening. Red dots are where it's at. I'm an sro fan that's my favorite one me too. Um, it's one of the reasons. This gun that you were looking at earlier, uh, that was really the only option when I first bought that site and I just I feel like I have to turtle more, or really raise that gun up With RMR. With RMR.
Speaker 2:I'll get you an SRO for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'll get an SRO for you to put on that gun.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm down.
Speaker 2:I'll trade you for the RMR. Okay, if you have some crazy attachment to the RMR.
Speaker 1:Not at all, I can't stand that RMR, I'll trade you an SRO for it. I turn into a turtle. I can't get this one like I can the SRO, that EOTech that you got me that one. I like that one too. Clear glass yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not bad. It's not bad.
Speaker 1:Just like the SRO, the sight picture, it's instinct. Just there that one, I got to hunt for more.
Speaker 2:I'll get you hooked up. Okay, it's instinctuous there Like that one.
Speaker 1:I got to hunt for more. I'll get you hooked up. Okay, I like it. All right, sir. So we got into Red Dot. We talked about that. There's two more things I want to talk about on the range, and then I want to talk about some other things that you got going on. You work at one of, if not, the most progressive, forward-thinking range slash village.
Speaker 1:that's in the nation that I know of, and I don't work in the ranges but you get to see ranges all over the nation. How is that range holding up, and can you talk a little bit about what makes your guys' range so unique?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's holding up great. So we have the largest indoor training facility in the nation for law enforcement. So we have four indoor ranges, about 120,000 square feet of total training space indoors, you know, with with one range being 40 lanes 50 yards deep, another range being five lanes, 25 yards, another range being 40 lanes, 50 yards deep, another range being five lanes, 25 yards, another range being 30 lanes, 25 yards, and then 100-yard indoor range, which is 10 lanes wide. You've got them memorized, yeah.
Speaker 1:I've been there for a while. You've been there a minute.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, comparatively speaking, we are extremely blessed. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:But what are the capabilities of that range? It isn't just a shooting lane no, it's endless.
Speaker 2:So a couple of the ranges you can drive into, yeah patrol car right up in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, we do a lot of stuff like that. Swat does a lot of things with, uh, their bear cats. They drive into the range. We we're able to build out, um floor plans for houses in our ranges, yep, for, uh, you know, swat to use training wise or whatever the case may be. So it's kind of endless what we can do. Everything in there is 50 cal rated. Every single range is 50 cal rated. So, um, that means the ceiling, the, the trap yes, the ceiling gets shot a lot. I've seen it. Yeah, um, you know the walls, everything is 50 cal rated. So you know there's nothing that we can't shoot in our range. Obviously, you know we're not going to be shooting any. You know crazy ap rounds or right, um, anything. You know anything like that. Um, no tracers or anything. We want to catch a range of fire, although range has been caught on fire several times. But yeah, um, yeah, so what we can do is is, it's up to your imagination, man, like, what do you want?
Speaker 1:to do because you can do crowd, noise, fog, lightning and thunder yeah, like red and blue.
Speaker 1:Red and blue flashing all over the place, baby screaming yeah it's insane all the different things you can do and I don't think a lot of people understand. It's not just that the range is large, it's not just that the range has the ability to fire rifle rounds inside those are very cool features it's all the other things bringing the cars in being able to change things around, the ability to let your people shoot and move because you've got the space for it and the stuff behind it and then the low light training.
Speaker 2:Obviously you know there's so many places that you know if you're, if you're training outdoor. Like chancy and I, we went and taught a class last summer I think it was, uh, somewhere a little east of here in in texas, and they wanted low light training but they wanted to start the class at like noon and we're like in the summertime, oh like well, we'll get to low light 10 hours into the day, because that's when, that's when it happens, that's when it's low you know.
Speaker 2:So it um having the ability to. You know, just walk to the back of the range and hit a button and make it completely pitch black, to where you can't see your hand in front of your face. And now let's do training. And it's 10, 30 in the morning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know. Yeah, you're not limited. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I like that, okay, and then the last question I had about the firearms and range stuff is what's on the horizon? What are some of the cool stuff to look forward to?
Speaker 2:So we are. We really want to keep pushing out the different pistol and rifle classes for in-service. I really want to keep pushing out the different pistol and rifle classes for in-service.
Speaker 2:For so long we've kind of not provided further training for firearms for our department. You kind of like you got to come qualify and then you got to practice whenever you felt like practicing right, we really want to get to the point to where we're mandating firearms training. I think it's going to be a small step at first, like a four-hour block that it's mandatory you have to go to, but we are constantly implementing new classes in between recruit classes and everything else that we have. So, like we have a pistol, one class, which is the first half, is the fundamentals and then the second half is movement. Pistol two is all movement in the dark because so many officers the only time they get low light training is in the academy, but yet they go out and they work in low light conditions yeah, now can you do me a favor when you do this mandatory stuff, because one thing that I hate that the military does is mandatory training in things that don't apply to that person's job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, like for me, you guys are going to have your hands full if you make it full department wide, but I would say it's more pertinent for that training to be for patrol. And then you know office workers like and I know the argument is like well, these people can be out in the street tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't, I don't buy that.
Speaker 1:I don't like that. Like have that be an optional thing but not necessarily a mandatory thing, because I I think it helps alleviate a lot of pressure and getting as many people through as we have. But at the same time, like you gotta be smart about like you don't want a guy that's been working back office for the last 10 years. Why are you putting them through training that? You know our backgrounds guys, you know what I mean. Like I don't think you should.
Speaker 2:You know what I don't think you know what I like that, so I I right automatically. I thought of okay, so we'll have a, a pistol, one class that's mandatory for for patrol. Yeah, a pistol, one class that's mandatory for patrol.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:A pistol, one class, that's mandatory for detectives and it's all from concealment. Yes, yes, stuff like that, not blue uniform gun belt, because they don't carry that, they don't wear that every day. There's guys that haven't worn that in 20 years, right, but they carry.
Speaker 1:You know, they wear a suit or they wear whatever I like that I'm always appendix or I'm my new thing is a sling bag. I got a sling bag. That yeah it looks like a purse, yeah, yeah, no, I know exactly what it is, but yeah we, yeah, we, we may allow, not on duty we may allow some people to do that on the range other people. It's like yeah, not on duty, I will clarify.
Speaker 2:You know what I like, that I like that feedback. I haven't thought about that. I will definitely take that to them and say hey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because how many times have you been in training? Because I was a trainer instructor down at the academy and you get these guys that are like why am I going through this?
Speaker 2:Okay, let me ask you a question Because you've been a to happen. We don't see a lot of detectives come through pistol training?
Speaker 1:and is it because they don't want to throw their gun belt on um I? I think that's a part of it.
Speaker 2:They want to like just train the way they always, yeah, carry their now we're all different.
Speaker 1:Here's another thing with detectives in training there is. There's some formal standardized training that you go through. Here's how you file your cases. Here's your caseload. Here's how you read through all that. One thing that they don't have is a standardized operating procedure when you go into the field. So they'll be in the office all day long with their little cute badge and a little leather paddle holster that they spent $150 on because it looks good with their suit and they get the matching ones and all that shit.
Speaker 1:I had a and this was just my mindset. I'm like, if I'm going out and I'm going to go try to find some leads on stuff, I got one of those outer padded belts, you know battle belt, and I had my mag, I had my, my gun, I had a most importantly, a place to hold a radio and my badge bare minimum, you know I and cuff I think I had one set of cuffs with me, right. But my thought process was like I work east side, like, right, they see that I'm a cop if I just have this one mag in my my like I'm not ready, yeah, and I'm also not ready to engage as well with a holster that I don't wear that much, yeah, and the detective's holster, for most listening, it's usually just some little leather holster or maybe a Kydex holster, but it's not the same as drawing from your duty belt and stuff like that. So I tried to get as close to that as I could when I went out in the field, but I was rare. Maroney was another one that he would wear it like that.
Speaker 1:I see a couple other detectives, but I think part of the problem getting those detectives down there is there isn't really a set standard of what you wear, how you wear it and what to do when you're out in the field. Yeah, most of them don't even carry a radio, right, and I'm like what are you gonna do? You get an engagement. You're going to hope that you get on your phone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or somebody else calls for you, yeah.
Speaker 1:Have you ever tried to do that? Like it's very hard. I chased a car burglar out of my own house Not thinking, yeah, I had my gun, that was it and my cell phone. And now here I got to like get the phone out, and as soon as I went for the phone, he took off running. What am I going to do? Shoot him.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I can't shoot that dude in the back, you know Right, especially since I already said stop police. Yeah, you know like there's so much training that needs to go for officers handling stuff when they're off the clock.
Speaker 2:All right. So this is what I would ask from you right, come talk to us about it okay seriously, because we're in the process now of adding more things we're actually looking at at. Uh. So chancy and I the four-hour block for the pistol refresher, we did a four-hour block for patrol and we did 44 classes in three months oh shit and we did all hours, like we were there till like three in the morning and it was just a sign up.
Speaker 2:If you want to do it yeah, you know, and guys loved it. They loved it because they got four hours of training and then they got to shoot their annual call at the end of the year and it counted. Yeah, at the end of the class it counted for their yearly call speaking of.
Speaker 1:We're gonna do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I got you um, so they loved it, yeah. And then we went eight-hour block and we saw participation kind of dip Dip, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that it's harder for guys to A they want to go on their work day, which obviously Yep, and it's harder for some supervisors to allow two or three guys from a team to pull them from the streets for the day to send them to training.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So team to pull them from the streets for the day to send them to training. Yeah, you know, um, so we were actually just talking about this. Is is maybe offering more of the four hour block ones, just two of them a day, because I think, as a sergeant, if you're, if one of your guys says, hey, I want to go to this class at the range, it's four hours yeah, you may be gone at the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay, that's cool if you're like I'm gonna be gone all day beginning yeah, yeah, okay, that's cool. I feel like I'm going to be gone all day and you're like, well, this guy's already got vacation and this guy's off, and this guy's already got training. It's easier for supervisors, I think, to allow guys to come down for a half a day. So I think we're going to look at that more. But having the training that is tailored to positions, I like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I positions, I like that. Yeah, I, I think so, and and that's something that the military has actually started to do. That's why I asked like um pt standards. They have a traditional pt standard for the majority, but then they've got other options for people that are in active, like you know, like the cops. The cops have to be in a different type of shape than the dental hygienist. That's yeah, not gonna arm up.
Speaker 2:No, it makes sense. Yeah, it makes sense. So that's just just the idea. But cool, here's the deal. Bring it. I want you to collab with us on that, okay, for sure for you?
Speaker 1:yeah, I can, because I can tell you right now there's a whole course that needs to go to detectives about going out in the field and because, like I said, I've been out there like field operations yeah, field ops, like if you get called out, you're on, you're on callback and you're going to a scene. Yes, there's a bunch of officers there, but you've got your pistol and your your badge. Yeah, that's it. You've got no light, you've got no, nothing, like some may have it.
Speaker 2:I think we can probably collaborate with sean on this too. Yeah, and do some practical stuff in the village. Yeah, yeah, sean Harris, yeah, that'd be cool, I've been wanting to get him on here too, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, make him come up, but yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, excuse me. All right, love it. We got through a lot of the policing side of things that I wanted to get to. Yeah, now we need to get to the future of the Bryan stall. So with your 20 plus year career and your love for service, you got other, bigger and better things coming down the pipe.
Speaker 2:What do you got, buddy? I'm currently running for United States Congress.
Speaker 1:Holy shit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm in the middle of the campaign right now so what in the hell inspired that?
Speaker 2:a couple of things. So I got obviously having a servant's heart in in serving communities for 20 plus years right and doing it in a way that um, encouraged and involved communication. Like we as law enforcement, we can't solve people's problems unless we know what those problems are. And in order to know what they are, we have to answer the call for service and then listen and then provide options or give them feedback or guidance or whatever the case may be Right. So that's kind of how my service and your service is structured, obviously because of our upbringing in law enforcement. So a little over a year ago I became a city councilman and then a mayor pro tem, and so I I got involved with politics that way.
Speaker 1:The hell's a mayor pro tem.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of like if the mayor is out, or if the mayor steps down, or the mayor is out of town and something needs to be done okay I step in as the role of the mayor. Where did you do this? At covington covington.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I never never been there yeah, little, little, little, small town okay I love it, man.
Speaker 2:It's like living in the 1960s. It's great that's awesome yeah, it's super cool, but um so you know, yeah, my kids still like run around until way after dark and ride bikes with all the neighbor kids and I will say you you hid this well, because I never knew any of this until all of a sudden, you're like this is what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:I was like yeah.
Speaker 2:So I got the the political bug um year and a half two years ago, ish, right and then I fell in love with it. Man, I really did.
Speaker 1:I loved that kind of service and yeah that's really hard for a cop to say, by the way, yeah, because cops hate politics. Well, it's.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of people that are like are you crazy? Like what are you doing? You know, yeah, right, um, you're one of them.
Speaker 1:Like, what are you?
Speaker 2:doing. But no. So, man, I loved it. And so I started to look into how I can, how I can better serve the community in that aspect, you know, and how my service from law enforcement translates over to that that kind of service. And then I started looking at the uh, elected officials that we had and, um, that I wholeheartedly believe that we deserve more and we deserve better than what we're currently getting because of the lack of communication, the lack of community involvement, the lack of um, you know, um, but the right way of serving the people I think we're missing. And when I say the lack of engagement with constituents is a big thing, I think if you are serving a large group of people and you are their representative in United States Congress, I think that your sole mission should be serving those people and not yourself and not any other entity, and I think it shouldn't just be a title.
Speaker 2:I think when you go to Washington, you have to go to Washington and you have to have a team that you built, people that you hired behind you, that you can trust yeah, not that we're put there, but a team that you built right and you have to be able to understand what the needs of the people are, and you have to be able to answer the calls and you have to be able to provide them with options and solutions, and you also have to be able to be available for them as much as you can. Right now. If you're in Washington, you're in Washington, but when you're at home, you need to be available for the people. You need to be doing things that involve community engagement. You need to be doing things that involve community engagement. You need to be doing things that involve interacting with first responders and with police and fire. You have to, you have to make yourself available and be able to effectively listen and communicate with those people, and I think that we deserve a heck of a lot more and a lot better than what we're currently getting. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2:So I was down in a County that's in my district and I was talking to a couple of the officers there. Well there's, they have a federal grant, federal grant for a new bear cat. Well, it has been stalled through some process within the city or the county and they're not allowing them to purchase this piece of protective equipment. Well, they've made several phone calls inquiring about this to a representative of theirs to no avail. No phone call back. No, nothing Right. Same place has a fire truck that they need to buy. They had a federal grant for it Got approved. They're not allowed to buy the fire truck, it's a federal grant.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It's not a city grant or a state grant, it's a federal grant Right.
Speaker 1:You would think that money is going to go the community.
Speaker 2:You would think that would be a priority. You know, and you know I get it. Timing matters and sometimes people are getting busy and stuff, but this has been going on for well over a year.
Speaker 1:So there's no excuse.
Speaker 2:There's nothing that this just happened yesterday you know. So I think that my approach to service and how I've been brought up in this service entity when it comes to law enforcement right, I think is something that is um much needed when it yeah in terms of representation in in united states congress yeah, and I think one of the good parts about having somebody with your background is the training mindset and knowing how blessed we are right where we're at.
Speaker 1:Because, like I said, I I've said this for a long time now obviously, doing the podcast, I can't say where I work.
Speaker 1:You guys can figure it out.
Speaker 1:You'll never hear me say it on here, but in that the training that we have is literally it should be.
Speaker 1:The mold like this is where you should. I'm not saying everybody has to do the exact training your police training needs to fit your culture where you're at. But when it comes to being progressive and not in a woke, progressive way, it's not what I mean but progressive, always pushing the envelope, always trying to improve where you're at is such a benefit to what you do. Because when you see these other agencies that are asking for a bear cat and you see that they're lucky if they get to shoot more than just their qual once a year because they can't afford the ammo and all that stuff, you can make a logical and reasonable argument on their behalf to say, like getting this piece of equipment should have been a higher priority because you're allowing them to be safer, not just for themselves right but for the community, because if officers show up without this, there's a highly higher likelihood that a use of force, a serious use of force, is going to happen, versus having the protection sitting back, waiting or whatever.
Speaker 1:But that is what your ability, because I'm in the same environment where we get this higher training level that we can help start spreading that around the, at least around the state of Texas, but around the nation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the things that I'm, that I'm one of the pillars I'm running on, is law enforcement and judicial change.
Speaker 1:right, I want to Like accountability type thing.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, there's, there's a lot of that, right. So I'm talking about the reform and people are like, oh, you know what does that mean? Cause it can mean a plethora of things, right? So when I talk about law enforcement reform, I'm talking about being able to fund them in a way to provide them with real-world practical training and equipment. Yeah, and having that funding not be tied up in red tape, bureaucracy, crap. That happens and we see it all the time. How many times have you heard of things being approved but not funded? Yeah, there's money out there. Yep, you know, there's money out there. When you have agencies that are forced to do things by the state, which they're great, they are Okay, I'm not saying that, you know, we shouldn't have more training, that's not what I'm saying. But when we put the pressure on agencies that are significantly smaller than ours, this is a mandate and they don't have the funding.
Speaker 2:And they don't have the funding, they don't have the personnel, they don't have the knowledge, the instructors, the experience. They have nothing to facilitate that and if they don't facilitate it, they're going to be fined. Yeah, however much money, I think we're failing our people and I think that we could do better, and I know that the federal government can come in and supplement a lot of that with funding. Yep, and I know that. Because, and how about? Instead of spending, you know, 400 billion dollars to ukraine, why don't we take a third of that and put it in law enforcement training in the united states? Right, absolutely of that, and put it in law enforcement training in the United States? Right, absolutely. We would be the most trained law enforcement entity as a nation worldwide.
Speaker 1:We've already. There's working models that we've proven. The defund doesn't work Right.
Speaker 2:We need more funding we need more funding and we need people that can go and speak on that and the importance of that, because I think as a whole the nation and I think both sides really you know, not so much this isn't a Republican Democrat thing anymore. I think it used to be when the whole defund police was really big. I think that's kind of gone now and I think both sides can agree like we need to fund these guys, like they need more training.
Speaker 1:We still have guys that are falling for first amendment audits. Yeah, we still have officers that think, because they were called on scene, that they have the right to your id. Yeah, we need to protect the constitution. So if you start taking away funding and they're not getting somewhere, it's not clicking. With the most basic of training, right, like all this other stuff that's coming down the pipe that's being mandated, they're not going to have a chance, right, because they can't even get the proper training for the fundamentals on some of this stuff. Right, and that's a problem. Like 2025, we should not be seeing officers fall for First Amendment audit stuff when people are on public sidewalks or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Like, let's get back to the constitution. Let's, I'm a huge constitution guy like I. I wholeheartedly believe in that. You know, I had a conversation with a really young guy um a month ago actually, and he said well, what, what two amendments are your favorite?
Speaker 2:the first two yeah, yeah, right well, and I said well, obviously you know the first and second are obviously the most important, right, I said. But let me throw you a curveball, because one of them is actually one that one of my um issues that I'm running on. So the second amendment's obviously important to me, right? I believe everybody has a right to keep and bear arms should not be infringed. I'm not a big fan of the third right. Okay, yeah, there's a quarter. You're like quartering yeah. It's not really. Yeah, it's not really a thing anymore until it is yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, and then the 10th amendment. I'm big on the 10th amendment. I believe that we need to return all of the rights to the States from the federal government. That should not have any federal government oversight. I think the federal government should do a couple of things. I think it should provide national security. Right, let's make sure all of our borders not just the North and South, but all of our borders are protected, and I think that they should be transparent, justifiable and responsible with the national budget. Because you know as much as everybody would like to say, let's abolish taxes, like I get that, yeah, I do Right, abolish them. Great, but the federal government, if, if they would utilize the money that they get in properly, how much different would it look for us? Right, you know, and I get it. There's things that are necessities, that have to be paid for with tax dollars that some people don't like. But on the other side, look at all the stuff Doge just exposed. You know you're spending $44 million to transgendered animal studies in Uganda.
Speaker 1:I heard about that. What are we doing?
Speaker 2:You know, like all these unnecessarily funded programs in other places, why don't we take that money and dump it into our own people?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I the thing that makes because I don't dip into politics a whole lot. But one of the things that really irritates me with that type of thing is where is the oversight of the money? Yeah, because, yeah, this thing's getting funded, but there's zero to show where that money went. Did it even go to the program that it was supposed to go to, or did it just go in somebody's pocket?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's, you know I can't answer that you know, honestly, but it's, that's such a super valid question but that's.
Speaker 1:But that's the point. That's what I'm talking about. What you're getting to is the accountability.
Speaker 2:Show me, and I want to be able to defend every one of my decisions as a congressman Everyone which means I have to be open and honest and transparent, like one of my plans is I plan on implementing a network through emails, because that's how most people communicate now, especially nowadays. You start with the top city leaders, okay, and every city within your district, and then you, then you, then you take all of of of uh, first responders, right, or public service let's say, police, fire, ems, right, and you build a network and then you also start branching out to your constituents, and this is actually something that I heard another congressman trying to implement. I thought it was a brilliant idea, right. And then you are so transparent to where, when you can, you send them via email.
Speaker 2:Here's all the bills that we're voting on. I may be sitting in Washington DC. Here's all the bills we're voting on. We're going to vote on these in two days, whatever. Give me feedback. Yeah, yeah or nay, like. Here's a quick, down and dirty paragraph of this 10 000 page bill yeah, this is what it entails, yeah I mean, we can use ai to you, can?
Speaker 1:you can use ai to help summarize things exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, you take these 10,000 pages.
Speaker 1:They can't hide shit in bills anymore.
Speaker 2:No, take these 10,000 pages and turn it into a paragraph and AI will do it like that it's over. But take those things and then you push it out and then you solicit response. You ask them hey, how do you want me to vote on this? Yeah, this, yeah. And if you have 600 emails that come back of your, you know, 100 plus thousand constituents, well, if 600 responded and 94 of those 600 say yes, well, guess how I'm voting.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, at least can I justify that. Yeah, absolutely. Now, when I go home to the people and they're like, why'd you vote this way?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Here. It is 94% of the people that responded said yes. I voted yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you can people know. All the ones that are going to vote for you are going to know. Hey, he announced this is what he's going to run his campaign.
Speaker 2:That's how I'm running it.
Speaker 1:So can I throw? Can I throw something at you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, can I throw something at you? Yeah, an idea, throw it.
Speaker 1:Throw it, because while we're sitting here thinking you're a cop, mm-hmm why don't you wear a body cam when you can Show people how you work? A body cam where Doing your job Just like a cop would. If you're dealing with the people, boop, boop, turn it on when you're not dealing with the people, turn it off.
Speaker 2:Turn it on when you're not dealing with people. Turn it off. You say okay, oh, you're talking about in congress.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, okay, I think that, bro, you would stand out. People would be like, yeah, but I may stand up for the wrong way too, though, right?
Speaker 2:no, who cares? People may be like I ain't talking about dude, you're a cop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they can't get around that like I think.
Speaker 2:I think I think that I don't. I'm not, here's the deal. I'm not going to say it's never going to happen. However, I think it would be a game changer. That's funny. However, I think that there's probably conversations that may be had, or may be caught on that, that are Absolutely.
Speaker 1:You know, classified yes, and I'm not saying during that, and having to like what is he? Talking about, but like the day-to-day, you know. Oh, like the interactions with the people and stuff.
Speaker 2:Yes, dude, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah or if you're making calls like if you're like, all right, today I got this amount of emails, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, you've already got a camera all right, here's my emails.
Speaker 1:This is what I'm getting through.
Speaker 2:That is wild man. I've never thought about that in that. Okay.
Speaker 1:So in that aspect I you know what bro I think people would love it and then post it I was just gonna say if you could even live stream it if you needed to yeah, like hey, you guys want to see what I'm doing right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's go live with a congressman yeah log on to this link. This is what I'm doing answering emails.
Speaker 1:Sounds like you need me on your campaign.
Speaker 2:I like you, I love you, you know what I have not thought about that only because you know you. You think of like the everybody's got these, like you know, crazy perceptions about what happens in dc and stuff right and, and I do too because I'm not there. You're not there yet obviously, but you, you think like every conversation's classified confidential, which is that's not, or it's like some sort of like.
Speaker 2:Hey we'll get you in with this person, but you got to do this favor and, oh yeah, I'm sure some of that happens, like obviously, like I'm, I'm new in the obviously new in the fundraising mode and campaigning mode right now and, um, you know, I can honestly say nobody's like yeah, approached me and been like you know, if you do this, then I'm gonna give you, you know, x amount of dollars, right. Everything is so on the up and up when it comes to that, because of the fec filings and all those things. You know I'm, I, I haven't, I haven't experienced that. But again, I'm so new into this I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I don't know if it happens or not. I think it would maybe be a little hard to do it in that way. I'm sure there's ways around it, obviously. But the whole quid pro quo thing like you vote yes and I'm going to give you a million dollars in this briefcase.
Speaker 1:I don't see that. Did you guys see Stahl rolling around in a Lambo? Yeah, weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was so weird. He rolled up in a truck.
Speaker 1:He had a body cam on. We could figure out how that happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you could audit me, you could audit my body, cam Right. Bro, I'm telling you there's something there. That's the first I've ever heard of it and I'm not going to dismiss it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that would be.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to dismiss it.
Speaker 1:Because, if I knew, okay, he says he was in the office and he said he looked at this. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh yeah, I remember the day I looked at that one. Let me pull up my body, cam stuff. Yep, there I did. I read the email. I made calls, at least on my side. You could put it on speaker. You could even put it on speaker. Yeah, bro, it'd be sick. Dude, you know what you would be known as? The guy that's transparent. That is transparency, that is the definition, because I want judges to do that.
Speaker 2:That's another thing. One of my issues is judicial reform.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Right and it's. I have a real problem with judges not being held accountable for reduced bail or no bail or PR bonds or all these things where guys re-offend. Now I'm not saying every single person that gets thrown in jail is guilty. That's not what I'm saying. There's been plenty of people that have been accused of and arrested for murder and yeah, the innocence project.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:And found it not even to that length. Right, the innocent project is great. But two weeks later new evidence comes in and they're like, oh, it wasn't that guy, it was this guy, you know. So I'm not saying that, that's not what I'm saying. All I'm saying is is that if you, you could probably pick between the two of us, we could pick five crimes that if somebody commits these crimes, there is no bond. Right Period, there's no reduced bond, there's no PR, there is no bond. Yeah, because how many times have you seen it across the country where somebody's arrested for aggravated robbery or murder or aggravated assault, aggravated sexual assault, and they're let out on $150 bond and three days later, what do they do? Re? They're let out on $150 bond and three days later, what do they do?
Speaker 2:Reoffend, reoffend, yeah. And who's held accountable? Nobody. I have a real problem with that. Yeah, I have a real problem with that. I think the judges should have to justify it and I think that, if it happens, there should be serious repercussions to that. Now, I get it, everybody's human, everybody makes mistakes, and you can't see the future. I get it. But if you are a judge and you have let out four of these offenders in the last year, maybe you shouldn't be a judge anymore.
Speaker 1:I think that they should have to publicly post summarized judgments online, daily, daily for those things or for anything for for anything really, but it like if they made a decision.
Speaker 1:you know, case, dismissed case, all these like it should be posted on a daily log. Here's what this judge did today on these cases and gives you the. I mean, the technology is there, ai can do it for you as this stuff goes in, sure, but have you know the stuff that they did and what they decided on? And I think the same thing should be for prosecutors, because that's another realm of things that doesn't get checked. You know, as a detective I would get cases constantly like no, we're not going to take this case Right. And I'm sitting there, I'm like it seems, it seems like I got a slam dunk. You know, there's there's times that maybe I'm a little off right, um, where they they'll point if I, if you get lucky and get a good prosecutor, it's like takes the time to explain to you why they don't want to take this one right, um, where I'm like where's the checks and balances on that? Or if they, they dumb it down. Because they have discretion, they can dumb down your case I'm.
Speaker 1:I'm like this dude's been in trouble like 18,000 times and you're dumbing down this. He needs to go. He's a continuous problem, whether it's property crime stuff or it's a violent felony. There's no the checks and balances. There's a lot of checks and balances for cops. There's no checks. There's very limited checks and balances for every other part of the criminal justice system. Right, we are the front and center because we're the ones out there and I'm all for it. Great, I think you've gotten. Policing's continued to improve. But, like what you're saying with your campaign, that I like is that needs to go to the courts, not just the judge, but the prosecutor and our correction system.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, I agree, I mean more, more transparency in, in, you know, maybe not to the extent for body cams for everybody, although again, I different approach man but you're right, ai is there like to have summary judgments on things when it you know you could just hit, have a recorder going in a courtroom and then literally take that recording, upload into ai and say summarize, and it's done transcripts like, literally in 30 seconds, they send out.
Speaker 2:They send it out like the technologies are to do that. I'm all for transparency, I'm all for accountability and being able to justify your position, whatever it is. And I know for a fact, I know, that there's going to be times where I'm going to be put into a position to where I'm probably going to have to make a decision that's not going to be popular for some people.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right to communicate effectively with them and then justify your decision and not hide behind it or just, you know, kind of shun them. Yeah, um, I think calling your, your representative's office or your, you know, your elected official's office, no matter what level it is, whether it's us congress or or state or whatever and having to call 17 to 20 times before you get a response back is crazy to me. Crazy, yeah, you know, and a lot of people don't even know who their representatives are and have never called their office. But the ones that do need the help and the ones that do call should be served Right.
Speaker 1:I don't know mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mine, yeah, I mean a lot of people don't and that's fine, but if you had something that you were, you know, told, hey, you need to let your representative know this. And you're like, that's a great idea. And you called them. And you called them 17 times, yeah, over a course of four months before you finally got someone to answer the phone. And they're like, yeah, we'll get back to you. And they never do, yeah.
Speaker 1:How would you feel? Yeah, I would feel they need to be replaced Exactly. I would want to know what the volume of calls are which you could probably public record Exactly. I would want to know what the volume of calls are which you could probably public record, and if I don't see that that volume of calls is somewhat like what our dispatchers may have to deal with, then I'm not going to give you an hour.
Speaker 2:They are not nearly, I know, you know. I promise you that any. There is not a sitting United States Congressman that has 700 calls for service waiting right now.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, like in in our city or whatever. Shout out to our dispatchers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly Like. Could you imagine if you called the police and you had to call 17 times over three months before you got dispatched? And they're like yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get back to you. Yeah, I grew up in Flint dude?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I grew up in Flint Michigan. Yeah, I get it right. Yeah, yeah, if you ever watched that docu-series on netflix called flint town dude got home invaded or something like that and beat the brakes off of him and he the cops didn't show up for like 48 hours yeah, that's crazy because they were so great crazy yeah crazy.
Speaker 2:But now call 17 times over three months Exactly, you know. But yeah, yeah, I get it. So, yeah, man, that's what I got. You know, campaign's going really good, cool. Yeah, I got a team built around me. You know I always have a campaign manager. We got a really awesome fundraiser. Hell yeah, chief strategist. We have, you know, a bunch of different people around us that are working really hard. Our consultant team is really really good, so we're really excited about that. We're hitting the ground running. That's a lot of. I'm not a career politician man. I'm not.
Speaker 2:Like I'm learning stuff on the fly, but it's.
Speaker 1:You're about to be a retired cop, yeah, but we're attacking it like full steam ahead. Some of the best politicians, though, are the ones that they're not career, the ones that I've always liked they were not career, yeah, so that's pretty cool. You're obviously the first person that I talked to on the phone with friends that is running for anything. I've had some other people that, like manny, I kind of I, I didn't, I didn't know manny like I didn't hang out, talk to him, none of that, but right, but with you I was like what the fuck?
Speaker 1:I was like I can't.
Speaker 2:I did not see that coming, so I love it, man, if all, if all goes well in march, then yeah cool.
Speaker 1:Well, let me know, let's do, we'll do a follow-up. We should do a follow-upup regardless, just to kind of talk about it for any cops that may want to follow down your path.
Speaker 2:Yeah, any questions or anything that they may have, you know I'm sure they'll bounce them off of you and your social media platform.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure I'll end up. I'll make a bunch of clips out of this. Give a little media kit for you so you guys can play with it a bunch of clips out of this give a little media kit for you so you guys can play with it. And yeah, that'd be great with that, and uh, yeah, no, but I appreciate it, brother, you got anything you want to get out there no man other than that.
Speaker 2:You know appreciate the support. Yes, sir, you can follow. Follow along with our campaign. We're on facebook and instagram and, um, you know, we just got a youtube page okay, so where do they got to go to find?
Speaker 2:it. Yeah, stall for congress. Yeah, our website is is stall for texascom. Um, so, yeah, the whole, the whole, uh, social media game thing. We have a couple people running that. I have a couple people running that for me, so they're, they're the ones that are doing a lot of that stuff. Yeah, I got a social media team that I'm building up.
Speaker 2:That's okay care of it. So it's um, I wasn't huge on social media before you know. Like you know, chancy and I were all everybody else tells like y'all need to post things, y'all need to post things, and we're like, oh yeah, yeah, we're too busy teaching or training or we forget. But it's, this is a different world, so we have to to do more and we are doing more and we're getting more of a following, which is great. You know that's that's that's kind of the new age way of reaching people you know um very few people nowadays, I think, have like cable TV right.
Speaker 2:Most people like stream things and see ads on Google and and YouTube and Facebook and whatever.
Speaker 1:So that's where kind of the cream rises to the top. I try to tell people that I'm like. You get on social media and you do it long. The hard part is consistency. You've got to stay consistent. So if you stay consistent, your stuff gets out there and if it's good, not just because you think it's good, but the people will let you know and the people that are in your niche will definitely let you know.
Speaker 1:Right so you know, in the gun game there's, there are a dime, a dozen out there, but when you start showing that you're doing things different, it will rise to the top. Yeah, instantly. Which is why I've been trying to get you assholes on the show, because I know you make it happen. I know you'll make it happen. I know you got something different, but yeah, next time we'll chance you. Now come over and talk about red dots. Hell yeah, brother. Well, I wish you luck, sir. Appreciate you. Yeah, take it easy.
.png)