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Episode 8 | Megan — Proving You Belong in Law Enforcement
199 Plays3 months ago
In this episode of Both Sides of the Badge, Garrett sits down with Megan Heil, a recently retired law enforcement officer with more than 22 years of experience in the profession.
Megan’s path into policing wasn’t a straight line. Early in her career, she faced setbacks that might have ended the journey for many people. After being released during the Field Training Officer (FTO) process while trying to balance a young family, she found herself at a crossroads — with her law enforcement certification close to expiring. Instead of walking away, Megan kept pushing forward and ultimately found an agency that gave her the opportunity to prove herself.
That decision led to a long career that included working in dispatch, patrol, training new officers as an FTO, and navigating the unique challenges of being a female officer in a male-dominated profession.
During the conversation, Megan shares:
- What it was like starting a law enforcement career while raising a young family
- The experience of failing out of FTO and finding the determination to keep going
- The challenges female officers often face trying to find their place in the profession
- The importance of mentorship and training in shaping the next generation of officers
- How the culture around mental health in law enforcement is slowly beginning to change
- Life after retirement and the work she is now doing to help others in the community
Like every episode of Both Sides of the Badge, this conversation focuses on real experiences, honest perspectives, and the human side of a profession that many people only see from the outside.
If you enjoy the show, consider sharing the episode with someone who might appreciate the conversation.
Listen and connect:
https://beacons.ai/bothsidesofthebadge
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Both Sides of the Badge'
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to both sides of the badge. Every badge has a front. What's talked about, what's photographed, what's argued over, and then there's the other side. The part that most people never see and rarely ask about.
00:00:16
Speaker
It's easier to judge it than to understand it. This podcast is about that side. The work, the judgment calls, the moments that don't make the news, but shape everyone involved.
00:00:28
Speaker
This is both sides of the badge.
00:00:33
Speaker
Hey. Perfect.
00:00:37
Speaker
Cool. And we already started the recording. right. All right. Welcome to both sides of the badge.
Meet Megan Heil: Law Enforcement Veteran
00:00:45
Speaker
Megan, it's good to see you. I haven't talked to you in a hot minute, but I'm glad you're here to share your story and let people know what you've been through. You have some good perspectives on things and things that you've done in your career that I think will be a pretty cool for everybody to get to hear about. so of Tell everybody who you are.
00:01:04
Speaker
Who's Megan? Megan Heil. I am 22-plus-year veteran of law enforcement. done a little bit of everything in my career from ah dispatching to civil to SRO, patrol, DRE, um and a lot of stuff in between. So recently retired. In fact, um yesterday yesterday was March 6th, right?
00:01:31
Speaker
Yes. Okay. So that was my one year anniversary since retiring. Just ironically. Congratulations. i Thank you. I knew i it seemed like it had been a little while. Yeah.
00:01:43
Speaker
Yeah. Last year went fast. And now you're doing fun stuff. um Some days. Like we were talking the other day. yeah Some days. It's a different type of stress.
00:01:55
Speaker
ah Totally. um So my husband and I opened up a real estate investment company.
Transition to Real Estate: Challenges and Insights
00:01:59
Speaker
We basically dumped my retirement into something that's called a solo K, which is real real similar to a 401k, but it allows me check writing privileges out of my retirement.
00:02:11
Speaker
So I get to decide really what I want to invest in instead of investing in traditional stocks. um and watching you know the volatility of the market really high and then extreme lows, i I get to find property now that I want to invest in and write a check, purchase a property. We're doing fix and flips.
00:02:34
Speaker
I'd love to tell you that that is a total success and I am killing it. But um I will tell you, there is a deep learning curve and it is working me over right now, but it's okay.
00:02:46
Speaker
It'll work as itself out. It's just not yet. pretty Pretty soon you'll have, you'll have a show like, you know, Chip and Joanna. hope not. I hope not. I really, really did love the design aspect. I i love the, um just the ability to go in and make over a new space.
00:03:05
Speaker
And I'm not talking like colors and fabrics. I'm talking about, like, I can walk into a house and... see somebody making memories there and raising a family. i can see the height chart on the door frame and I can see, you know, the peanut butter fingerprints in the kitchen and the dog bowl in the living room or, you know, whatever.
00:03:29
Speaker
i i just are really, of yeah, I just really enjoy like being a part of helping somebody set roots and In a different way than being a cop, helping somebody in a different way. you you As a cop, you you would see people on their worst day and then doing something like this, you get to actually see somebody's eyes brighten up, especially, i don't know if you're there on like move-in day or whatnot, but when they actually, you know, I mean, we've we've both bought houses. How did it feel for us when we bought houses? That's a great better experience.
00:04:01
Speaker
I think you've arrived, right? You work and you work and you work. Yeah. And that's been so much of my career is like you tell yourself, I'm in a season right now where I'm just going to um bust my butt.
Career Sacrifices and Personal Reflections
00:04:18
Speaker
It's it's grueling. It's hard, but I'm going to get to whatever goal I've set. And sometimes you're successful, you reach that goal, sometimes you never do, and you look back years later and you really have to weigh what it is that you gave up in those quote-unquote seasons that turned into a way of life.
00:04:39
Speaker
And I think if you're not careful, you look back, you can look back on in a really wonderful career almost with regret because it comes with some huge sacrifices.
00:04:51
Speaker
Yeah. No, actually, like we were talking before we we started, you know, hitting the record button and stuff. That's one thing. The first agency that I started at, I spent a really long time there, and i felt like I really did bust my butt.
00:05:03
Speaker
And I just really couldn't move up the chain like I wanted to. so it it took a it took me leaving to realize, one, the reputation I had built. And because i didn't I didn't really know that it wasn't really, you know, in law enforcement, you get some attaboys here and there, but you just really don't know, especially if you grow up in one agency.
00:05:24
Speaker
But then left and shortly thereafter, because of my experience and my reputation and everything I had i had done, boom, I shot up the chain of command. And before i end up leaving my second agency,
00:05:36
Speaker
um That's really small agency, but still, you know, I was third in charge. So I didn't get to do that in one place. And and there are times where I'm like, man, i I kind of do regret staying there as long as I did.
00:05:48
Speaker
But it taught me not to be at this point with the way i guess some things are and maybe it's still kind of a ah poor outlook. to not be agency loyal you know i want to worry about my career and what my family's going to need um and it sucks thinking that way because you want to stay somewhere for a long time but if you want to progress your career especially in small agencies you gotta unfortunately move i i would ah totally agree i totally agree Yeah. I think it's cool that you're doing the the the house stuff now. I actually grew up doing that with my dad.
00:06:24
Speaker
He was a ah contractor doing remodels, um you know, up in, ah well, Vail and stuff like that. So when each house that Bree and I have bought, we kind of walked in and She's not that kind of picture person, but I can because I've done it.
00:06:42
Speaker
So like the house we're working on now, I mean, obviously it's still like a work in progress, but it was terrible when we moved in. And I'm like, wait, wait, I can see it. The bones are good. you know And so we've we've changed it quite a bit, redone kitchen and floors and doors and walls and and bathrooms. And yeah, and now it looks way better. It's it's still small and old, but It works for us. i like I like doing that. It makes me feel good. Like you said, you finished a project and there's actually something to see at the end. It's amazing. It's it's um wonderful to be able to put your own personal stamp on something, anything really. It doesn't have to be a house. It it very much could be a career.
00:07:20
Speaker
But it's something that you've put your blood, sweat, and tears into. And at the end, it's like your legacy. Yeah. Nobody wants to think of of building a legacy, especially when they first, you know, are young and out of high school or even out of college. But once you start hitting, I don't know, it was probably around 35 to 40, somewhere in there. I think the flip the the switch flipped for me and I was like, what am i going to do? Because one, I'm getting really close to the time. I didn't want to do this anymore.
00:07:52
Speaker
ah thought I'd be doing maybe something else. But two, I don't necessarily want to get out of it. And I'm only... so young, like, I still got a long ways to go, so, yeah.
00:08:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Completely agree. Well, where, tell me about young Megan. Where'd Megan grow up? Who was young Megan? Jeez, that's, um,
Air Force Brat: A Tough Upbringing
00:08:16
Speaker
it's probably a pretty interesting story from the outside,
00:08:21
Speaker
So I'm an Air Force brat, so when I introduce myself or I try to describe who I am it comes with a lot of moves.
00:08:32
Speaker
So is it has built me, made me very, I'd say, maybe tough and versatile. The word that i like to use is grit. So my parents were divorced before I ever was old enough to know that they were married.
00:08:48
Speaker
My dad was Air Force. My mom was single mom for a while after their divorce and through a lot of my dad's deployments. So until quite literally my sophomore year in high school,
00:09:02
Speaker
um in a neighboring high school, we moved between my mom or my dad at least once a year, sometimes twice a year. So there were times where I would change schools in the middle of the year or and we we would move to a new house and, you know, a commute to stay in the same school was um pretty incredible.
00:09:25
Speaker
But a lot of a lot of movement. and So i I can tell you, like, the difference between how that built me versus my sister is, like, night and day. My sister is very sentimental. She really values relationships. And it's not that I don't, but I easily can...
00:09:45
Speaker
change situations, and make a new friend. i that That strengthened me. It worked well for my personality. So we did a lot of moving around.
00:09:57
Speaker
My mom and dad both remarried at some various points in life. My dad actually came back from a deployment in South Korea with a wife. I was six years old. She was like eight months pregnant.
00:10:11
Speaker
um And that was that was how I first met my stepmother is, you know, a month a month or two before birth. So there's six years difference between and the oldest and then my brother whose mom is Korean.
00:10:33
Speaker
So ah blended, like i just grew up with um a blended family. and i And I think the blessing is when you grow up and on a military base, like you don't you don't see differences in people.
00:10:49
Speaker
Right. i don't I don't know how to explain it. i If you've grown up on the Western Slope and you've never really experienced life in ah in a big city or outside the area, you know,
00:11:01
Speaker
You don't know how common it is on a military base to see you know ah a black man married to a Filipino woman or um a a white man married to an Oriental woman. or the The combinations are and endless, and it's really so cool to be able to watch that diversity unfold.
00:11:23
Speaker
oh So I grew up in tucson um on the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. That was kind of like my dad's home base. He was in intelligence, basic radar jamming for most of his career, and then later moved into not only designing but installing and testing military security systems.
00:11:49
Speaker
And that's really all I know that my dad did because that's really, that's all he could tell us. Right, right. Yeah. um
Adapting from City to Rural Life
00:11:59
Speaker
But he would he would be deployed somewhere, and then we would he would typically come back to Tucson. So he so I spent a good portion of um my childhood in southern Arizona.
00:12:14
Speaker
Through and through, I would still tell everybody that I am an Arizona girl or Tucson native, although the reality is I've been in Colorado for twice as long as I ever spent in Arizona.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But I'm that way too. I was actually born in California, but we moved out here when I was like six and I've been out here ever since. So, and with the way California is, i don't really want to claim myself to be California, right but, but I've been here since I was six. So Colorado's home. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm a transplant, but yeah.
00:12:49
Speaker
Totally. How was it growing up in Arizona? Was that was that fun different? Obviously. i mean, nice and warm. and easy Crazy. Super warm. And and I would much prefer the 70 plus weather. Like I tell people, I don't really start to warm up until it's 70 degrees. And I am totally fine with 110. Like i I can live there. That's my jam.
00:13:14
Speaker
um This cold stuff is for the birds. I'm not that interested in it. And when I when to tell you a little bit more about my DRE background and my love for drugs, um take that with a grain of salt, I'll tell you that part of my black humor is I'll tell people sometimes that I far prefer have, instead of snow falling from the sky, I think it would be much better if if that would be meth or cocaine.
00:13:41
Speaker
Like, wouldn't that be a lot more interesting in life? That would make life very, very interesting for all of us. Yeah, yeah. It'd be a lot warmer. Definitely. Yeah. I like that. That's funny. Did you imagine? Oh, man, i the the chaos that would ensue, though. ah Okay, but as a DRE, I'm sure you have the same.
00:14:03
Speaker
but when i When I tell people, like, i love drugs, it means something completely different to me than most of the rest of the population. And I let them just think whatever it is that they want. But truly, I i love that chemical interaction in the body. um in It's fascinating to me.
00:14:20
Speaker
fascinating to me. say I can't say ever dug into it that much and was that fascinated by the interaction. I mean, it was interesting just learning the DRE stuff, but guess i i did I wasn't, well, I never became an instructor like you did because I wasn't as interested in a guess as were. That was gluttonous punishment is what it was. Yeah, that's fair. That's all right.
00:14:44
Speaker
that's right So middle school, I went to what they call a magnet middle school, which I later learned was just a really fancy way of saying a desegregated school.
00:14:58
Speaker
And so let me explain that. um The magnet schools were set up to specialize in a certain area, and they called them like pre-collegiate preparatory schools.
00:15:11
Speaker
So I went to ah a math and science magnet school. But really what it was, looking back on it now, it was desegregating a large downtown area school and busing in the white kids.
00:15:29
Speaker
ah okay And these schools received special funding. And they didn't receive the special funding to desegregate. But because of the location of most of these schools, they were inner city.
00:15:43
Speaker
They were rough, rath rough, rough. um So I had an hour bus ride into into school. i I can't say that I had an extraordinary education there um unless we're talking about learning to fight.
00:16:02
Speaker
Yeah, okay. Well, I mean, street smarts are just as important as book smarts. Right. So um that I will only went one year um in middle school, Tucson. 600 kids in my sixth grade class.
00:16:20
Speaker
Wow. I mean, you're talking like a small community college. they they're They're big. Yeah. So we moved to Colorado in 93. was like 12 at the time.
00:16:34
Speaker
um And we moved to old snowmaps. Have ever been up there?
00:16:40
Speaker
Maybe. i don't know. Maybe. I don't know about the area. Right. I don't need either anymore. But if you as you're heading up to Snowmass, it's an offshoot off of 82. You go back up into into the hills a few miles. There's a um an older town, old Snowmass.
00:16:58
Speaker
The original Snowmass. um We lived in a Small, small subdivision. There was maybe 13 or 14 houses. and That was a culture shock moving from inner city to old snowmouse. I mean, we're talking a few hundred people up there versus, you know, 600 people in my sixth grade class. But it was good.
00:17:19
Speaker
It was good to have a slower pace in life and can we just see different side of people, right? Mm-hmm. So. you're up there It's a little, there's a lot more money up that way.
00:17:32
Speaker
ah there There totally is. um Yeah. Because ironically, like, when before we moved out of one of my not-so-fond memories is we were we were living in a an apartment.
00:17:48
Speaker
My mom and stepdad's sister and I were living in an apartment. And you hear choppers one night, probably about 7 o'clock. It's dark. um And the entire apartment complex gets lit up.
00:18:02
Speaker
by these choppers. And my sister and I are poking our head out the window like we took the screen off, like we're hanging out the window to try to watch what's going on. And it is a it's a drug bust.
00:18:15
Speaker
They're literally dropping agents in um to to complete this knock and talk. Sure, knock and talk.
00:18:26
Speaker
yeah Okay, I like it. Yeah.
Community Support in Rifle, Colorado
00:18:30
Speaker
That's got to be an a interesting... How'd that make you feel? um You know, i think I think when you're exposed to stuff like that at an early age, you don't realize that that's not normal.
00:18:47
Speaker
Okay, yeah. I can wrap my head around that. So then when you move to Snowmass, you probably weren't having helicopters drop, you know, cops and agents. next door.
00:18:58
Speaker
So, all right. It it took us a while to become app acclimated. I would say um a funny story. I'm riding my bike around the neighborhood when we first moved and somebody that I didn't know stops their car to introduce themselves and wave um excited about kids in the neighborhood. And I rode my bike back to the house as fast as I could and told my mom that there was somebody that tried to kidnap us.
00:19:25
Speaker
What what'd your mom say about that one? um That people are just different here. That's fair. Probably just trying to be friendly, Megan. Oh, don't know. That's a hard thing to realize when you're that young, that the difference. I mean, you' you've grown up probably...
00:19:44
Speaker
you know, being extremely cautious yeah being, and don't want to quite call it Mayberry, but back then, especially in in that valley, it probably kind of was like everybody knows everybody, their friends, they're nice. So that's a big culture shock. How'd that make you feel?
00:20:00
Speaker
Um, you know, weird at first, like you, you realize that you probably overreacted even as a young child, you get, you, you get that sense. Things are just different. And it almost feels like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. So you got to, you got to figure out what, you know, what what are you going shave off to make this work?
00:20:20
Speaker
And I think that's really a life lesson for us all. We're always doing that. Like, what am I going to, What am I shaving off that I don't need? What's worth keeping?
00:20:31
Speaker
and it's not so much that i so I can fit in It's it how how do I make this season of my life work? oh How do figure this out? It's really no different. I become a little more flexible.
00:20:45
Speaker
ah Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. how How am I going to make this work for me? um how am i going to capitalize on this opportunity What's growable and what's expendable?
00:21:01
Speaker
Interesting. That's a den different way of looking at it, yeah. But that makes sense. So we only stayed up there for about a year, thank goodness, and then moved down Valley. So I've lived everywhere from Old Snowmass to Rifle on the western slope.
00:21:20
Speaker
And it's night and day different. Each each community is slightly different the further west you move. we've We've really made a home here in western Colorado and adapted to to life. And it's a far cry from my upbringing and inner city. and What a blessing, though.
00:21:42
Speaker
What a blessing. Yeah. that you Even that, that move from, well, just so everybody knows old snowmass and snowmass, they're, they're a town that is close to Aspen. Most everybody knows where Aspen, Colorado is. So that's where we're talking about. then rifle is, what would you say?
00:21:57
Speaker
Hour and a half away. Maybe from Aspen. yeah about um Yeah. You go back up through Glenwood and catch I-70 and, about 30 minutes west towards Grand Junction, you you get into Rifle. But even that had to be kind of a culture shock from Snowmass and that part of the valley going to Rifle, especially back in the 90s.
00:22:17
Speaker
How'd that turn out? Yes. um we When we first moved to Rifle, we we definitely did not fit in. In fact, I remember the first hunting season. So we moved to Rifle probably may and come first Rifle season, Rifle fills up. um Obviously, it's namesake. It fills with hunters. And um if you're from here, that's it's ah it's a it's a a welcome sight.
00:22:51
Speaker
It's also very comfortable. It's just a way of life. But i remember my mom telling us that we could not play outside because of all of the hunters in the area.
00:23:06
Speaker
I don't know what she was afraid of. I don't know what she was afraid of i kind of. kind of laugh about it now. And and maybe i I took it out of context being a young child, but I didn't understand the danger. i can laugh about it now.
00:23:19
Speaker
Right, right. Well, I mean, we're Western Slope folks, so hunting is a part of life on the Western Slope. And just firearms in general, everybody's got one. I mean, that's how you treat traffic stops. Just assumes everybody's got a gun in the car. because Right.
00:23:35
Speaker
Especially when you start getting out into the more rural parts, like that's just the way it is with hunting and fishing and camping and and the ranching and the farming. Everybody's got one for some reason or another. so Huh, I wish I did knew what your mom was thinking. That interests me. But I've only ever known hunting, so.
00:23:53
Speaker
Right. No, totally. So put yourself in our position coming from an inner city like you didn't see. If you saw guns at that point, that was a life safety issue. Okay, yeah.
00:24:05
Speaker
So, I mean, maybe that was her perspective as the open carry was was concerning. Mm-hmm. I don't know. How's Arizona with that? I don't know the what they have down there. Do you?
00:24:19
Speaker
ah Open carry, very similar. Yeah. Okay. Very similar to Colorado, but you didn't see that in in the inner city. Right. Didn't see it.
00:24:32
Speaker
Just difference, right? How was your dad in that transition with the open carry, the hunting? what Did your dad have an opinion on that? um my My biological father was, the he what probably would have been Oklahoma at the time, possibly Scotland.
00:24:52
Speaker
um My stepdad, now I can see, is very liberal, was very liberal at the time as well. He also was, it was not it was not comforting.
00:25:06
Speaker
was not comforting. Interesting. Okay, cool. okay cool Well, how'd the rest of Rifle go? Because now you've been there for an extended period of time. Oh, yeah, we've been here for a while.
00:25:18
Speaker
um I jokingly describe Rifle if you haven't um if you haven't been in the area for a while. It's the land of mullets, no seatbelts, and cigarettes. It's like the 90s have never died.
00:25:38
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Right. yeah But good folk, right? Like people that will genuinely give give you the shirt off their back. Neighbors that have known each other for generations. There's something so sincere and comforting about somebody that doesn't know you well, but knows that you're not well, that will check in on you.
00:26:02
Speaker
and and truly offer whatever it is that you need to be comfortable. Yes, and that's something you do get in smaller communities, which is great.
00:26:14
Speaker
It is great. It is great. We've we've been very blessed. um So my my husband and I moved here,
00:26:29
Speaker
so we in that area. So we've been we've been here for about... 11, 12 years. Really, really enjoy just the close-knit community. It's been amazing. So we we raised our blended family here and are currently raising our almost 9-year-old. It's been a blessing. It's been blessing.
Young Marriage and Early Career Balancing
00:26:52
Speaker
Awesome. So how did the rest of growing up go? You know, did finishing out middle school and or high school and everything. Where did you go to high school and stuff? So I went to high school in Glenwood, graduated 99 from Glenwood.
00:27:10
Speaker
You know, that I get that a lot. I get that a lot. um it was It was a pretty good experience, I thought. um I was blessed to be able to you know stay in a school for three years, consistently make great friends.
00:27:28
Speaker
As I was a really good student, I would say that learning kind of came naturally to me. I could sit down and listen to the teacher's lecture and do just fine on the test.
00:27:39
Speaker
like Be material. um pretty consistently without much effort, and I never really super applied myself. um But i I had all the credits I needed to graduate by the end of my junior year. Glenwood doesn't do early graduation. There was some trouble at home. My mom kind of kicked me out.
00:28:00
Speaker
um I know this is going to be a public podcast, so i never really intended for her to hear this, but she she she took issue with the guy I was dating, and she he was very upset that i yeah that I continued to date him, and that was the rift. So my mom asked me to leave the house. I later married him.
00:28:23
Speaker
um Here's the part I didn't intend for her to hear. She was probably right. She had that all figured out and knew exactly where it was going to go and how it was going to end. and So, Mom, you were right.
00:28:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. No, that that that happens. and And I think now that you're, you know, a parent and a mother and everything, you probably have a little, especially now, have a little bit more understanding for where she was at. And especially with her probably being at her wits end and going, just fine, bye, type thing. Because how often do we deal with that? There's been plenty of times where I've wanted to say that to my children even, like, fine, bye.
00:29:01
Speaker
Yeah, don't let the door hit you. Yeah. No, totally. didn Were you guys able to mend that relationship quickly or did that last for a little while? Oh, that took years. Yeah, that took years. um So I i turned 18 like two months into my senior year. my mom kicked me out of house about a week after that.
00:29:22
Speaker
um So i I moved in with my boyfriend. And really, got to adulting very, very quickly. um well a lot quicker than obviously, you know, they my my friends.
00:29:36
Speaker
So by the time i graduated high school, I had been working a full-time job for about 10 months, um plus finishing up school. you i um i graduated school, and even with you know messing around most of my senior year and not taking it super seriously, I i graduated um with more than enough credits, nearly two years college under my belt.
00:30:04
Speaker
and um Essentially, not a traditional full-ride scholarship, but enough scholarship money that it paid for me to go to school for two years and all my living expenses.
00:30:15
Speaker
so Awesome. I mean, I was pretty pretty blessed, but I squandered it. i um I was married at 19, so i'm I'm trying to juggle...
00:30:27
Speaker
um Trying to figure out how to how to even be a wife, how how to even be an adult. Those two things in and of themselves are are difficult.
00:30:38
Speaker
Trying to maintain full-time employment, run a house, like all of all of the things, and and trying to go to school. So i I was a full-time student at CMU, driving every day instead of living on campus.
00:30:53
Speaker
um working, yeah. and Needless to say, it did not work out, and I ended up leaving school early and then revisiting that probably 15, 20 years later. don't don't Don't a lot of us.
00:31:10
Speaker
Yeah, totally. So during my high school career, as I was finishing up school, I i was hired at a retail jewelry store in the old mall.
00:31:22
Speaker
and I loved jewelry. i And not like being adorned in it, but more like I just, I loved learning about the the stones, the elements, the chemicals involved, which would really later kind of fuel my love for drugs as well.
00:31:43
Speaker
Oddly. um and know, right? what yeah How does somebody compare jewelry and drugs? Well, let me. We'll find out. yeah So I kind of worked my way up as a store manager. My then husband and I, we moved to Denver, went through a management training program for this large retail chain. And then after about six months of of training, I came back to Glenwood and managed the store.
00:32:10
Speaker
um sold We broke a million dollars that year. it was a million dollars in sales. It was it was amazing. I loved it. And then he had an opportunity to open up a tow company.
00:32:22
Speaker
um So he he did that mostly during the day, but like he he was really great with the hands-on stuff. So he could look at something and he could mechanically figure out how it worked, to put it back together. and his His mind was really mechanical oriented.
00:32:44
Speaker
He was great in the service injury industry, but It fell on me to kind of manage the business, the taxes, the policies, the employees, the payroll. So I'm doing that at night, managing a full-time retail store and all the employees that come with it during the day. And even occasionally running the tow truck myself at night.
Journey into Law Enforcement: A Self-funded Path
00:33:08
Speaker
And here's where I first became acquainted with law enforcement because it was not even on the radar for me. I was 20... twenty e 2021 and running the tow truck and we would do um DUI in pounds in the wee hours of the night as you as you know.
00:33:34
Speaker
And i I'm not a night owl. And i remember distinctly thinking one day, if I'm going to be up at 2 in the morning, i want to be on the other side of those lights.
00:33:45
Speaker
I want to be on the other side of those lights. There was nothing, even though the tow company paid the bills and, you know, As you know, running you know running a business or trying to make your your own way, it can be very difficult. Like, there's there's months of feasts and there's months of famine. So it it did well. It paid the bills. Like, we did all right.
00:34:06
Speaker
But there was no – had no passion for it. So i kind of worked rick my tail off in the jewelry business and really kind of squirreled away what I knew it was going to take for us to survive while I went to the academy.
00:34:22
Speaker
paid for tuition and had put all of our our money, all of my money aside for our bills. And that took me, gosh that took me three years to do with this goal in mind of like, I'm going to go to the police academy.
00:34:37
Speaker
But I had to had to pay for it in advance. That was before, it was like that was really about the time where agencies started to just initially sponsor. But it was very rare. Like it wasn't super common.
00:34:50
Speaker
right So I put myself through the police academy and I'm i'm testing wall while I'm in the middle of the academy. I had one agency in mind and there was like one agency that I was going to work for in my mind and there was no compromise.
00:35:12
Speaker
So I test with this agency, and the first time I test, I did not pass the physical agility. Like there was there was pushing a car through a parking lot and a dummy drag and just this obstacle course in um in a ah playground, and it's all timed.
00:35:32
Speaker
and And while it serves its purpose, um
00:35:39
Speaker
It was really hard for me to understand why that was so necessary. And of course, this is this is after I fail. Like, I'm i'm pretty down in the dumps by it. And I can't remember the exact number, but it was something like, gosh, I failed by 10 seconds. Like, it it was achievable. So what I did the next day is I went to the fire department and I asked them to borrow their dummy.
00:36:06
Speaker
like their sand dummy. Can I borrow it? And I got the strangest looks. they They let me borrow their old drag dummy. i'm I'm not even sure why, but they let me borrow their drag dummy. And I took it home. And for like two weeks, what I did with that dummy is when I when i get up off the couch, I drag that dummy to the bathroom.
00:36:27
Speaker
And then i drag that dummy back to the you know back to the couch. or if i needed to get it And I did this consistently. in like As soon as I got home, if I moved about my house, I drug that dummy with me.
00:36:41
Speaker
you, I've never slept so good in my entire life. That's fair, yeah. but But the next time testing came around, i passed the physical agility, but I failed the oral board.
00:36:52
Speaker
So that was something that I had to practice and learn because so those are that's a skill you have to possess. So I worked hard to figure out how to overcome that objective. It took me three times before i got hired on with testing.
00:37:08
Speaker
this agency and in my mind, like the best of the best. um And I think what we hear a lot that we, that that baby cops kind of toss aside or don't put a lot of weight to is that fit matters.
00:37:25
Speaker
And i i I couldn't agree anymore. i got hired with that with that agency just a few weeks before graduating the academy.
00:37:38
Speaker
So finally I had arrived. Like i had I had worked my tail off. I got exactly what I was what i was looking to accomplish. I graduated the academy and six weeks into my FTO program.
00:37:48
Speaker
um This agency calls this particular day of FTO or field training, they call it pain day. Because it's the taser and OC day. Oh, okay.
00:38:00
Speaker
yeah Yep, got it. Pain day. So that's Monday morning. I know it's coming up Sunday night. Um, I had not been feeling well and i don't remember.
00:38:14
Speaker
oh i was nauseous that night and I was like, and in the back of my mind, I'm like, I wonder, don't. Yeah. So I took a pregnancy test. I find out at like eight o'clock pain day Eve that I am pregnant.
00:38:32
Speaker
And I'm like, oh, no. Like, I'm six weeks into training. i yeah. So I have to go in Monday morning and tell my FTO and then the patrol sergeant and the patrol, like, I have to explain this a million times. I can't participate in pain day because I'm pregnant. And i have no idea what a taser does or OC does on pregnancy. So I just forego it.
00:39:01
Speaker
which in the end caused me um some rift with the guys, with the department.
00:39:13
Speaker
i I come back to, like, fit is important. But but you also got to remember, like, I'm a 23-year-old. I'm still just a baby, right? Uh-huh.
00:39:25
Speaker
And now, like, I'm just fighting to try to figure out how to finish my FTO before I'm so pregnant that I can't even work the road anymore. And unfortunately, i i and missed the the task list. And if you kind of fast forward...
00:39:43
Speaker
i did not, I got washed from the program. I did not end up making it out of that FTO program. And then eventually was let go because of failure to complete the program. And I was devastated. Like that is in my mind,
00:40:02
Speaker
um my my whole game plan. Like i I didn't have anything else in mind. That was it. And i had been told i wasn't good enough.
00:40:14
Speaker
I couldn't do the to to how How was it taken? You said that that the way you explained it didn't seem like it was taken very well. or Are you digging into that a little bit more? I'm curious. How how did they receive it? What did they do?
00:40:28
Speaker
Was there any support? Was there no support? So we're really... I think to understand the agency's response, um and if you'd asked me this even 10 or 15 years ago, my my response to this question would have been much different.
00:40:43
Speaker
um But a lot of growth and a lot of learning and movement. We're we're early 2000s, the agency that I was working for, there was one other female in the agency. Like, it still was not...
00:40:58
Speaker
like I wouldn't say female law enforcement is commonplace even today, but it's a lot more widely accepted than even it was 25 years ago. So we're early 2000s, and you've got this brand-new female cop who...
00:41:18
Speaker
is the only woman in patrol. So the other the other female in the agency was in investigations and she honestly had been there for 20 years. She'd been there since she was my age. She also ironically was pregnant but and and treated very differently, but As I see it now, like I couldn't understand that in the day, but as I see it now, she had so many more skills and value and asset to the agency to be able to help them outside of her normal job duties that I just didn't possess.
00:41:49
Speaker
Okay, right. um it It wasn't taken well, ah to answer directly. What I was told by everybody in the chain of command was that there was no exception for me as a woman.
00:42:05
Speaker
I was an employee. I wasn't seen as a female employee or a male employee. i was just an employee. And the task at hand was complete training.
00:42:15
Speaker
And it you know at the very minimum, I see that perspective. well But that is certainly not how an agency would do business today.
00:42:26
Speaker
Although it wasn't far from the norm to how business was done then. So I'm told at the time, you'll be one of the guys that completes training or you won't be.
00:42:39
Speaker
And like, I wasn't about ready to give up on my dream. So I'm like, yes, sir. I am one of the guys.
FTO Challenges and Pregnancy
00:42:46
Speaker
I am one of the guys. Well, in the end, I was fired because I was pregnant.
00:42:54
Speaker
I mean, that's... I could not... How did the rest of FTL go? Did it seem like it got more difficult? Like, was there air more pressure than there had been? Terrible. Terrible.
00:43:06
Speaker
Some of it was because FTO is stressful and in and of itself. Like, there are high highs and low lows, and, like, you're never sure from day to day if you're going to washed from the program. Like, it's four months of hell, right? And and then add on to that, my first pregnancy, i had no idea what to expect.
00:43:28
Speaker
I mean, by the time I got to my third pregnancy, I could have gone through fto like a champ. I knew i knew what both of those looked like. But I'm in two very brand new seasons of my life and trying to figure out masterfully how to do both of them. And I gosh i i struggled.
00:43:49
Speaker
struggled with both of them. So I got watching the program. And Like we all hear, you hear consistently, right? Things happen for a reason. And when you're in the thick of whatever, you know, said thing is, it's really easy to become resentful. And I i sure as heck did. um that was That was a hard pill to swallow. When you've got a dream and it looks like it's not going to come to fruition and it's something that's like maybe outside of your control, sucks.
00:44:22
Speaker
Right, right. Well, and at this point you've already... tested what three total times, third time you finally got it. And then to get washed, it sounds like you did an amazing job keeping, keeping your, your, your drive going, you know, dealing with the family stuff, getting through the Academy, you know, gunning to keep trying to to get hired there just to to have that, that carpet ripped out from under you. Once again, mean, anybody would,
00:44:51
Speaker
you know, kind of tank a little bit. It's hard to to stay up that high and that positive all the time. Really? Exactly. um In the end, what ended up happening is that, you know, it's ah it's a small community and being washed from FTO is not the end of the world, but no it was really difficult for me to get another job.
00:45:14
Speaker
it was really um It was really hard for me because, honestly, like I'd put in an an application at an agency and I wouldn't even get an interview.
00:45:26
Speaker
oh I'd put an application at an agency or... it just it just seemed like the testing process every time i applied somewhere was um prematurely ended.
00:45:41
Speaker
they didn't They didn't give me an opportunity to express that I could be a good cop. And I absolutely believed that this was something that I was meant to do.
00:45:55
Speaker
totally yeah Totally felt that this was for me. So i I went to work for dispatch for a while. i really enjoyed the fast pace, but it was so hard for me to hear some of those really difficult calls. And, like, this is a common thing with dispatchers anyways. you You hear, you can hear the stress in the voices of the people that you are supposed to be providing service for and and ultimately protecting. right The dispatchers are there to to protect the law enforcement officers.
00:46:33
Speaker
And you can't see what they're dealing with, but you can hear it. And and you you don't actually experience the danger, but you know it.
00:46:43
Speaker
And so it's really hard for the dispatchers to, there's a lot of times where there's no resolution. Like the cop shows up and they they at least get to see how it ends, good, bad, or indifferent, and dispatch never gets that.
00:46:57
Speaker
yeah It's like this cliffhanger all time. um
00:47:03
Speaker
I, I, that was not for me. Like I i could keep up. It was an okay job. i saw the value in it. Those, those men and women of the dispatch center are amazing, but it wasn't for me.
00:47:15
Speaker
And I'm approaching my, by this time I'm pregnant with my second child, and I'm approaching my three-year mark out of law enforcement, where, as you know, your your post expires.
00:47:28
Speaker
And so it's kind of that pivotal moment at this point. I'm like, if this if this is something that I'm going to do, um giving up is not an option.
00:47:39
Speaker
So I applied at ah in a neighboring county. and was was hired three days before the end of my post-expiration. Oh, that's lucky. Yeah, that's good.
00:47:53
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was amazing. I spent 15 years there. um What blessing that agency was to me for the majority of my career, like ah i i can't even I can't even explain it.
00:48:08
Speaker
Well, first of all, the men to women ratio there was significantly higher than any of the agencies in the county that I lived in.
00:48:20
Speaker
and
00:48:24
Speaker
It was almost as if they were just years ahead of policing in in that aspect. And the benefit was is that I had an opportunity to come in and actually show people that I can do this job.
00:48:41
Speaker
um Women do have a place here. And we can contribute to the value of policing just as much as a man can. Right.
00:48:52
Speaker
Well, let's back up before we get into that that next agency that you went to. One, let's back up and and and maybe talk about FTO just a little bit so that people that don't know um can maybe understand. And having me personally also having gone through an FTO program in, well, more like the mid or 2000s, back then it just seemed like there was a different –
00:49:19
Speaker
I guess the only really way to explain it is we're going to try to wash you out. we don't we want to so We want to make sure, and when we say wash out, like we're going to kick you out of the program, you're fired type thing, right? Yeah. And that's what it seemed like was was the theme, and maybe this is just our area, but having talked to other people, um um even outside of the area where you know we started our law enforcement careers,
00:49:42
Speaker
that that was a theme we need to put so much stress on them we need to hound them so much we need to do everything a through z um to make them so uncomfortable that they either fail or they quit and i think now that we've progressed through our careers one thing that i started doing um About four years after i got hired, I actually went and asked to be an FTO because I wanted to change that. I think that's the dumbest way you can look at being teacher because you are a teacher as a field training officer.
00:50:17
Speaker
um You should be there to support them and and teach them and let them fail on their own if they can't make it. And I don't know about your experience, and there's been a few that have gone through where I tried to be really just a good teacher. You know you put that pressure on. You have to. You have to let them fail forward.
00:50:34
Speaker
um and And ultimately, you know, they didn't they didn't make it. But I hated that mindset. and I'm assuming that's kind of what you're describing. um And then a little different and, you know, just even a neighboring county. But right it's it's disappointing that it that it was that way.
00:50:51
Speaker
Well, it's disappointing for our industry that it was that way. And and thankfully, we've seen, you and I have been in the business long enough that we have seen that culture and that mind shift change.
00:51:04
Speaker
Thankfully. Really, when you and I started... And I'm going to make some assumptions, but correct me if I'm wrong. It was like the old school cops that trained us. It was like, you're going to do as I say because I said it.
00:51:17
Speaker
And if you paused for a second to say, well, can you tell me You... oh you you were um belittled, laughed at. and And I don't mean that in, like, maybe just such a condescending way, but that was night and day different. Like, they did not grow up in that era where you had the luxury of asking why. So it almost, and I've had explained to me this way, and it makes sense. Like, i'm not I'm not saying these guys were jerks. I'm just saying that they didn't understand because they were never afforded an opportunity to ask why. You just did what you were told because you trusted in who was telling you why
00:51:54
Speaker
But as society has progressed, like we don't operate that anymore. like that's not that's And that's certainly not you know the the generation that we're we're raising up in law enforcement right now. like They absolutely expect to understand the historical perspective behind what you've just asked them to do. They want to know they want to know why we've come to this is the best case scenario so i mean ah it Knowing the why helps you understand the different avenues you can take. And as ah as an FTO, what what do we always say? You go with an FTO, you get a few extra tools to put in your toolbox,
Reforming FTO Culture
00:52:33
Speaker
right? But that's where you start to kind of be able to learn differences so you don't get stuck in, well, this is the way we've always done it.
00:52:40
Speaker
I think we we grew up as cops in a unique time because we did see a transition from that old school mentality to this little bit more more educational, I guess. I don't know if that's the best way to describe it, but we, we, we did, we grew up, we, we can be old school cops because that's how we were kind of raised, but now we prefer what we've helped change a little bit into let's, let's actually teach these folks a little bit more. So totally that's cool.
00:53:10
Speaker
Yeah. um And so I also, years later became an FTO and that was, that was my mission as well. It's, well, Like it's hard to break from that standard because I told you so, because I told you so. And and from my my FTO's perspective, like had somebody explain this to me years later. it was like when I asked why, they felt challenged.
00:53:31
Speaker
I totally get it. It's a different mindset. um Now somebody is free to ask why. and as as a trainer or a mentor or a coach,
00:53:44
Speaker
I have the um the blessing of being able to fill in those gaps for somebody. And that's really of how I looked at training. It's like I have an opportunity to mentor somebody to be a phenomenal law enforcement officer. And it's not because I'm a phenomenal law enforcement officer. It's because I'm going to give them um tools to,
00:54:09
Speaker
And I mean, I'm only going to give them partial tools because the next trainer is going to give them tools as well, just like you mentioned. But I'm going to be part of building somebody into the best cop that they can possibly be.
00:54:22
Speaker
And i I washed out several as well. and and I remember telling one guy. Poor guy had a heart for service, but he did not. He just did not have the street smarts. like And finally one day it was it was this terrible conversation that you you just hate to have with somebody. that you said you say to them, like, i'm I'm going to recommend that you not go on to the next phase. And and you know that that what that recommendation means is that
00:54:55
Speaker
The chief is going to have to look at that or the sheriff's going to have to look at that and say, like, I don't think you have a place here in your agency. You're fired. um Which is devastating.
00:55:07
Speaker
Right. I've been through that. Sucks. Yeah. Yeah. But I finally said to this guy that I can't in good conscience pass you forward or pass you on to the next trainer because.
00:55:22
Speaker
one day somebody will be handing your wife a flag. And he did not understand the meaning of that statement. And that's what brought me peace. Like the fact that he didn't understand what I was trying to allude to truly meant he, he didn't, he'd never considered the dangers of our career. Yeah, that's, that's amazing. If the, if he didn't get that at that moment, how far along was he?
00:55:48
Speaker
He's probably second or third phase. Pretty far. yeah ah more than halfway. And, of course, he had done some of the phases repeatedly. and And I can say that's the difference, too, is that when you and I went through, like, you had one opportunity to complete a phase.
00:56:05
Speaker
And if you didn't finish it, there was not like, well, let's do this remedial training and let's try to switch you over to a new training. Let's attack it from this point of view. Like, there wasn't that when you and I went through.
00:56:18
Speaker
So I got washed out of FTO. Because in my first agency, because I was short one DUI before my doctor literally says, you cannot go to work anymore.
00:56:30
Speaker
I was one DUI short of of accomplishing. and And please don't hear hear me saying, like, that checklist was done with superior skill and ability because, like, I failed forward so many times. Mm-hmm.
00:56:47
Speaker
It was not pretty. But in the end, before I had to go on maternity leave, I was one DUI short. So fast forward a few years, and that became a passion of mine, is DUIs.
00:57:01
Speaker
Like, you are not going to tell me that I can't do this. like Right. i'm I'm definitely that personality. Like, when somebody says to me, you can't, proverbially, it's like, well, hold my beer and watch.
00:57:16
Speaker
I love it. Here we go. Hold my beer. That's exactly what I was thinking. And you said it. So that's awesome. Now, going back to talking to that, that trainee that you had and him not quite understanding, how did it make you feel, especially having been washed out of a program before? Like, how did, how did that, how did you process that? It's hard not to feel like a failure yourself.
00:57:38
Speaker
It's hard. and I can inform that. but But there's a ton of different perspectives. um So you you could go to ah a wide range of um acceptance here.
00:57:50
Speaker
One like this is necessary and I have the skills and he doesn't. Um, that's, that's pretty prideful, prideful. I wouldn't, I wouldn't say like that was my perspective, but
Trainee Washout Decision: Capability and Safety
00:58:03
Speaker
it's sad. Like you see somebody, cause this guy gave up a six figure corporate career to chase his dream of being a law enforcement officer.
00:58:11
Speaker
Um, and it's not that some cops don't make six figures. It's that that's There's a lot of sacrifice to make that happen.
00:58:22
Speaker
One. yeah Yeah. I mean, you just, you know what it's like to give up an office job making what some cops never make in their entire life or those cops that do. It's because they're, you know, they're working 70 hours a week.
00:58:39
Speaker
Right. Anyways, it was crushing for him. But in the end, i I knew that he was a liability to every officer that he'd ever work with.
00:58:56
Speaker
Yeah, no, and that's that's a good perspective to be able to have, especially as a field training officer, because not only is is somebody like that going to put other officers at risk, it could put, you know, citizens, civilians, innocent people at risk. I mean, totally you just if you don't know how they're going to react in a certain certain scenario or certain situation, especially when the shit hits the fan, that's a liability. I mean, we've we've that things change quick and you need to be able to count on that person. And if can't, then yeah, you you probably need to go find something else to do, unfortunately.
00:59:31
Speaker
Yeah, um I think that's a ah great segue into exactly what I was thinking is that, you know, we talk about a lot in actually law enforcement doesn't talk about the brotherhood or or or the blue as much as i think civilians talk about that because we lived it. so So really to kind of explain that for somebody that doesn't understand what I'm talking about, it's this idea that
00:59:59
Speaker
I'm not protecting corruption. that's I think that's what civilians think backing the blue is, is that I i cover your sin, you cover mine. We don't ever talk about it again.
01:00:09
Speaker
um
01:00:12
Speaker
Really what it is for the people that have put on a badge is I've seen you cry after doing CPR on a baby and having to tell mom and dad that that child's not going to live.
01:00:25
Speaker
i yeah And I've done that myself. So you and I are bonded through that trauma. not not because
01:00:35
Speaker
Not because it's a trophy that we received, but because it's something that you and i understand. You understand my brokenness, and understand yours. And we've we've bonded through that.
01:00:48
Speaker
And there's...
01:00:51
Speaker
When you can look at... somebody else wearing the same badge and not have that connection and not know that they can stand up to those same pressures, that's really that's really hard to build that trust with somebody. and And so that's what I'm looking at when I'm training is not not can you survive the trauma of the job, but can Can you aid in the well-being of this organization?
01:01:27
Speaker
Can you add value to it, or are you a liability? And that's what I'm talking about when I'm about being like a liability. Do I now have to look at you and make sure that you're physically safe,
01:01:43
Speaker
before I can make sure that a citizen is so physically safe and then me physically safe third in line. Right.
01:01:54
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, going back to the the the blue line and the brotherhood and all that, like you were talking, I think one Hollywood has geared everybody to believe that it's let's protect corruption.
01:02:07
Speaker
yeah But you hit you hit the nail on the head is is we go through these traumatic incidents and you always lose that little piece of yourself, but so did the other person that was on scene with you. And like you said, you bonded through that. But at the same time, it's you're working 10, 12, 14, 16-hour shifts together. you're You're doing multiple things that cause trauma that that and or take the understanding that you know somebody's going to go do their job while you're doing theirs.
01:02:37
Speaker
But then you also, and depending on the agency and the way you know, um they kind of integrate everybody. You start to get to know the families. So you literally do become a family because if you and i got called out in the middle of the night and one of our spouses needed some help, they can't call us, but they could call another spouse or another family for some help. And that's where that whole brotherhood family comes in. It's not about... making sure somebody doesn't get arrested because they used
Brotherhood in Law Enforcement: Shared Trauma
01:03:11
Speaker
excessive force. I mean, in all honesty, i we've a probably both, and I don't know about you, I don't want to speak for you, but I brought up excessive force. I brought up you did dumb shit.
01:03:22
Speaker
i I've called it out because I don't want that. The brotherhood to me is just like you said, it's that blue family. It's not just the cops. It's even the outskirts, the spouses, the kids, because we all want to go home at night.
01:03:36
Speaker
Right.
01:03:39
Speaker
So you asked an interesting question in my FTO process or alluded to it kind of like what was the difference with me being kind of a female going through the process.
01:03:49
Speaker
and i And I would say there's a distinct difference between the blue family when you are a female law enforcement officer. Uh-huh.
01:04:01
Speaker
Like, I didn't really have a place. i I was technically one of the guys, and they treated me fairly at work, but it's like the Christmas party. Yeah. A female cop hanging out with the male cops.
01:04:19
Speaker
um there was almost like this weird expectation of dividing by gender, not occupation or support role. And a female cop finds themselves in a very weird place because the wives look at you weird when you're not hanging out with them. and then the guys look at you weird when you're not hanging out with the women. Like it's just, it's this weird, weird place of trying to always prove that you you were one of the guys.
01:04:50
Speaker
Right, right. I get that. and i think we ah We've talked about that with Kelly brought that up when I talked to her and and you know even even Megan, you know being in a male you know dominant career, it's a very difficult, very difficult.
01:05:05
Speaker
And um I think some guys, there is a lot of ah that women don't belong in law enforcement period. Totally. But there's there are those those like me, like...
01:05:19
Speaker
um I haven't thought that unless they reach that point, kind of like you said, where now I know I've got to pay more attention to them than I do what I need to do. And that's that's what i would always what I've had problems with in the past is exactly that.
01:05:35
Speaker
Because there's you and I know there's plenty of women out there in law enforcement that you don't have to worry about that. They're going to show up on scene, they're going to do their thing, and you're going to do yours. So... right Trying to change that mindset I think is difficult. But again, that's one of those things that we've been blessed to see in our careers, the change even starting to where law enforcement's behind on everything. But we see in it in the military you know and all these other first responder careers where that that blending is, I think, getting better.
01:06:06
Speaker
Cop work and law enforcement's a little behind, but I do see it getting better. I agree. Maybe you have a different perspective on that. um No, I don't. I think we are turning in the right direction. I think it's slower than it should be, but I'm i'm hopeful that when my daughter enters in law enforcement. Uh-oh.
01:06:26
Speaker
i Yeah. Yeah. when my When my daughter graduates the academy and enters into law enforcement, it'll be about 26, 27 years after I started my career.
01:06:41
Speaker
And i expect to see huge changes in the way that she is allowed to approach her career in comparison to how I was kind of forced to live mine out. And ah and and that sounds like some victim mentality. It's not.
01:06:58
Speaker
it's It's because we're changing. But I'll tell you, who do you think is the hardest on women in law enforcement?
Challenges and Strengths of Women in Law Enforcement
01:07:06
Speaker
Men or women? What do what do you mean, like spouse-wise? No, no. who do Which gender you do you think is the most critical of women in law enforcement?
01:07:18
Speaker
Women? Yeah, hands down. And I would have told you night and day different that that was not the case um until I became a an FTO. And I had to take a step back after training my first female cop because I tried to wash her.
01:07:35
Speaker
And she's a cop now. I stand by the decision to to wash her at the time. She developed the skills later that she didn't have when um when i i made my recommendation to remove her from the program.
01:07:51
Speaker
But really I had to take into context, like, how long did it take me to get to where I was when I was finally training and what skills did I have then that my training didn't have?
01:08:09
Speaker
And so there's some there's some blindness in in how I was seeing the situation. Really, I was comparing 10, 15-year cop to a baby cop and expecting her to have all the same skills and ability.
01:08:26
Speaker
But then also what I'm doing is protecting what I've worked so hard for. so me let me explain. like I had to fight uphill battles at every stage of the game. had to fight in in um the academy. I had to fight in every field training. I had to fight to get jobs, to even get interviews. And so like you're you're proven it's uphill or you'rere you're proving to all the naysayers that you can do the job, that you do have a place at this table, and that you are valuable.
01:08:55
Speaker
And once you've done that, then another female comes in who threatens to wash all of that. to to basically change their perception or be that female that justifies why women don't have a place in law enforcement. And you're fearful of that, good, good bad, or indifferent.
01:09:20
Speaker
So then these women in my FTO program had to prove that they weren't that as well. And that was unfair for them. I was listening to... I was listening to your your interview with Kelly, and I was like, oh, wow.
01:09:35
Speaker
and There were there are times in my career that I was that woman that was trying to wash out, maybe wasn't as receptive to another female, um maybe passed judgment about whether or not they could do the job and in the end. So i I definitely was harder in females than I than i was on their male counterparts.
01:09:57
Speaker
Yeah. And the reason I say the reason I say that one is because, you know, I've had those talks and and two, I feel like I i judged more um along the same lines as you, like you explained, but the the men that I would train like here I am.
01:10:19
Speaker
There you are. You can't figure out how to you know get yourself out of a wet paper bag. We might have a problem. But then on the other end, when it came to training females, it was almost like looking at my sister and wanting to help her out.
01:10:38
Speaker
you know So I was probably a little more, well, I don't want to say lenient, but a little bit more accepting, a little bit more willing to go that extra mile.
01:10:49
Speaker
yeah And the first time that I can remember might not have been the first time, but there was a a female cop that I did make the suggestion that we wash um but for for a few reasons.
01:11:02
Speaker
um But, I mean, ultimately, i stand by it at that time. ah We didn't. um And ultimately, she turned out she had to climb some battles because there's like there's back then there was still that that idea of women don't belong in law enforcement and we need to make it harder on them.
01:11:20
Speaker
She climbed some uphill battles and I feel like she turned into be a a very amazing, amazing cop. And and we're we're friends now and and everything like that. um But that's how I kind of looked at it. So I almost felt like a failure when I did suggest that because I felt like I was trying to give just that little bit extra to her because it was like helping my sister out.
01:11:46
Speaker
My sister and I are pretty close. We're only 18 months apart and we always relied on each other. So so yeah yeah, I totally get that and i'm I'm glad to start seeing it change a little bit.
01:11:57
Speaker
Me too. Hopefully it's it's we're not just trying to put anybody truthfully in a position just because they need to be able to, you know, show that they can do it, deal with the trauma, be able to be counted on, you know, and all that.
01:12:15
Speaker
um But I am glad because we do need women in law enforcement because there's so much crap that happens and just, you guys bring a totally different perspective than men, especially men if they came out of the military or or just even how they were raised, like let's kick some ass and take names.
01:12:30
Speaker
Right. There's been plenty of times where I've had female officers just grab me and go, slow the fuck down. Right. And it it's like, oh, okay. So, yeah. Totally. So i think I think we, and i I'm sure we'd agree on this, there there are some non-negotiables in an FTO, and it's officer safety. Like if if you can't keep yourself safe and have to rely on somebody else to do that for you, that's a no-go. And there's no way to work through that in my book. That's ah that's ah a wash every single day.
01:13:03
Speaker
Some things that... towards the end of my career, i was blessed to actually see is the benefit that each and every individual person that can master the officer safety, they bring something special to an agency.
01:13:18
Speaker
like ah you You and I may not have compatible personalities, but you're going to bring something to a call that I can't. And that diversification is huge. And that's what I like to point out, the difference between men and women.
01:13:31
Speaker
Take a guess how many... fights that I've been in in law enforcement as you know ah as a female um four it's probably a long career it's got to be at least four it's it's got to be it's minimal it's minimal and it's not because I spent a career running away from that is because I, I could show up with my male counterpart who I relied on their strengths and height and just physical presence that I can't bring. I'm like, when I started my career, I was, I'm, I'm five, eight, I was 120 pounds. I put on the gear and it made me like 150 pounds. Like, right.
01:14:14
Speaker
You know what I'm saying? I, I wasn't, I was not, i was not a scary person. Scary presence walking into a bar fight. So what I had to learn to do and what women do really well in law enforcement is that de-escalation piece.
01:14:32
Speaker
Like I had to. I had to figure that out. I couldn't go in and run my mouth. i was going get my ass handed to me. But if I can go in and de-escalate a situation and then help my partner de-escalate situation, like I'm sure you worked with plenty of female cops and eventually they just kind of, they do that shoulder tap where you get that mom look from them and you know that like your time is done and and they're stepping in.
01:14:56
Speaker
And yeah
01:15:00
Speaker
great, great opportunity to de-escalate. I remember in FTO, I was with, I was with the man and the legend.
01:15:11
Speaker
Great, great cop. Super chill. um ah Just a great cop all the way around. and We were looking for a warrant arrest. It was a guy that we knew was going back to prison. He had advised violated like parole or something. This dude was huge. like Not even joking. like He had shoulders that were bigger than my waist. and so we found him in in an apartment complex.
01:15:39
Speaker
And he knew when we caught up to he was going back to prison. Call out his name. And he starts to run from us. We chase him down. we get hands on him.
01:15:50
Speaker
And my FTO, far along in the process, my FTO just watches. Like, he's prepared to step in if he has to, but he just watches. And i get handcuffs on this guy.
01:16:04
Speaker
and he's so big, like, he's the two-handcuffed guy. and I'm getting handcuffs on him and I am literally shaking like a leaf because i know um he can mess me up bad. oh and he recognizes that I'm shaking like a leaf. And Like, this guy's heading back to prison for crimes unknown, doesn't even matter, but pretty serious.
01:16:32
Speaker
And he does the most gentlemanly thing like I can even imagine. He says he says to me, take a deep breath, I'm not going fight with you. I was like... That's pretty cool.
01:16:44
Speaker
What? And so we get this guy hauled off to jail, and my FTO was like, did he really say what I think that he said to you? he was like, yeah.
01:16:55
Speaker
He goes, i have fought with that guy so many times. um he's He's that guy like you bring in reinforcements. You know four or five of you are going to need to take down. And it wasn't because it did anything special.
01:17:12
Speaker
um There are certain things that women bring to law enforcement that men just can't. Yeah. Well, I mean, even even guys that we arrest, they still have some respect.
01:17:27
Speaker
I can't say all of them, obviously, but there is still some of that respect that they learned growing up for their mom. So they still have respect for women and they they they know certain that's one thing that that I guess is brought. Maybe that's a bad way to look at it. but I can't say that in that, if you weren't there, he probably would have fought, you know, bringing that, that different size, you know, maybe he, he knew just in the size difference, like, you know, I've already ran, it's just time to give up. I, you know, yeah I don't know. That's who knows what was going through in his mind. um Yeah.
01:18:04
Speaker
But we need that in law enforcement. I can't tell you how many times, um,
01:18:13
Speaker
And here's what I'm going to say, too, is like we we can't just police with women because de-escalation isn't the only way you can deal with a situation as well. Like sometimes you just need that brute force. There's been plenty of times where I've walked into um to a bar that I, I mean, like you see people roll their shoulders back and you're like, all right, well, I guess here we go.
Communication Skills: The Female Advantage
01:18:33
Speaker
And I knew that I was going to be okay because of the guy that I had brought in behind me. Like you just know, right? Just like they know that I'm going to say something that's going to help them have to, or later they can use to avoid the fight.
01:18:49
Speaker
Same thing. Right, right. No, ah learning to talk to people is is a skill that most men don't have, um especially when they're young, but it is a skill that's built. And I think women are blessed with that skill of gab.
01:19:03
Speaker
No offense, but that is what de-escalation really is, is being able to talk to somebody and get them to... get out of their OODA loop and listen.
01:19:15
Speaker
So it's different. And i greatly appreciate the women that I've worked with that have been able to help me with that. Even that, that trainee that I was talking about, you know, she kept, there was, yes she had like this motherly feel and I'd see it in her reports and we would talk about it. And it wasn't one thing I did take away from her even afterwards was just that little bit more ability to look at the bigger picture, you know, and, and have a little more feeling rather than I just have a job to do.
01:19:41
Speaker
I do need to think a little bit more about what the effect actually is. so you know, I mean, even as a, even as a trainee sitting in, in the driver's seat, while I'm given directions and stuff like that, she was still able to teach me something.
01:19:55
Speaker
so So cool. Yeah. Yeah. um Well, let's fast forward. I want to hear a little bit about dispatch. I think that's one that while I've been around a lot of dispatchers and talked obviously through the radio and stuff to a lot of dispatchers,
01:20:10
Speaker
um You brought up one thing that I thought was very interesting in there's always a cliffhanger.
Dispatcher Challenges and Stress
01:20:16
Speaker
um And I've heard that from a few different people, but let's start with how did that kind of process look?
01:20:23
Speaker
How did you get that, that job? um There, there was an opening. um i knew I made the minimum qualifications. I, you know, I, I knew the other side of the job. So,
01:20:37
Speaker
a it went You know, at the time, it was a matter of convenience. i I've got a baby at home. um i then, like, i as I told you, ah I also had my second child as a dispatcher. um it just It just felt like the next logical step for me to be able to stay connected to something that I wanted so badly. Like, it was...
01:21:01
Speaker
Maybe, and I didn't think of it like this at the time, but maybe it was almost like, well, this is... not the consolation prize, but like this is the only other thing that I can do to stay connected to something that I love.
01:21:14
Speaker
um I quickly realized that Those men and women up there, they deserve some mad respect. Like, that is hard. Managing even just one channel, 15 guys on it in different locations. Where are they at? And you develop a sense of ownership. Like, it's almost like being parent of 15 kids out on the, you know, the playground. I don't i don't want to minimize the...
01:21:43
Speaker
the severity of the situation, but you know you really become like mother hen watching over all of your a little ducklings trying figure out where they're end But you could hear, thank you you'd air the tones to clear the channel because something's going on. It's a foot pursuit, it's a guy with a gun it's i a million different things, right?
01:22:07
Speaker
And you, well, I can't say you feel like the same stress because you're not staring down a barrel of a gun. You know somebody that you you you love, or you respect, you care for um is, and you have a job to do.
01:22:23
Speaker
it's it's It can be difficult because you also don't get that resolution. Like you hope the officer calls back later to tell you play-by-play. Not because you're nosy, but because you want to hear the...
01:22:37
Speaker
You want to hear the success. You want to hear how they overcame. you You want to celebrate that victory with them as well. And then you also want to be there to to comfort on those calls of, you know, the the suicides, the the unattended deaths, the car accidents, the death notifications. Like, you you want to be there to support and comfort as well in all of those areas. And it's it's just difficult not to be able to do that.
01:23:05
Speaker
Right, yeah, no, I mean, you you had brought something up, I think, a little bit earlier in our conversation about the stress in the voice and and and stuff like that, and I know if I'm able to learn just how other cops are on the radio,
01:23:21
Speaker
um ah Definitely dispatchers can also understand that. Like, you know, the tone, you know, the stress levels, you can tell when the shit's about to hit the fan or has, and it takes some learning obviously, but um yeah, dispatchers, they, they, they're the unsung heroes. Cause they're the one that tells everybody where to go. like they have all of the answers, how,
01:23:47
Speaker
can't tell you how many times I've been somewhere and I'm like, hey, I need a phone number or I need this code or call this person because I need them to get down here because I have so many other things going on.
01:23:58
Speaker
So do they, but they also have the ability to kind of hit that phone number real quick, make that call. It's a little easier than, you know, us taking off our person what we're paying attention to. so Exactly. think how did How did, you know, because that's still shift work. How did that affect people?
01:24:16
Speaker
Kids, family. Oh, geez. um So at the time, I'm still married to my the father of my girls, and you know he's running the tow company. So it's very much kind of juggling, because that's shift work too. So it's very much trying to juggle like his work schedule, my work schedule. I have been very, very fortunate to kind of work this non-traditional role in life where...
01:24:46
Speaker
um I have been blessed to to be able to go out and actually do what I love in helping to provide for my family.
Balancing Marriage and Law Enforcement Careers
01:24:55
Speaker
But but traditionally, those have been male-dominated roles, as we talked about, which means the dynamic in home for me and other women cops is different.
01:25:06
Speaker
It means that our... our our spouses are really picking up a lot of the non-traditional roles that that men typically don't do, even 2025, 2026, right?
01:25:25
Speaker
like so i've been i've been very fortunate to be supported um to have two two men in my life that, um although maybe my first husband was a little bit different, like, he he at least acknowledged, like, she loves this, she's good at it, and um really wanting to help figure out how to make that work. In the in the end, it didn't. We could not balance...
01:25:54
Speaker
and Two very young kids, both with our own premarital baggage, trying to make a go of it and then adding the first responder mix onto it all as well. like we just we We could not navigate that in in life and our our marriage ended up in in divorce after of marriage.
01:26:18
Speaker
twelve thirteen years of marriage That's a bummer, but I mean, it's it's a fact. I can relate. You know, I've been on my second marriage, too, and and ultimately everybody asks me about kind of how that, why, and honestly, I think it's a mix of all everything you just said on top of maybe we just kind of um outgrew each other, i guess, maybe, you know, especially because we did get married young, too, and so did you. You know, maybe yeah you you end up just kind of parting ways. It's not that you really...
01:26:51
Speaker
hate the other person or whatnot. It's just your paths went different directions and it does happen. So, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. No, but there's nothing.
01:27:03
Speaker
It's not right either. yeah and And so sometimes marriages aren't meant to work and has nothing to do with being a first responder. But look at the divorce rate.
01:27:14
Speaker
for first responders like it's it's ridiculous and then if you add on top of that um the divorce rate for nurses fire department um emts and cops like it's more likely that your marriage will end in divorce than you'll you'll be married at retirement well i think some of that comes back to um i can't remember if I brought it if it's been brought up yet or not but and I think it has but the job becomes actually I kind of wrote a little bit of a sub stack so I started that little um like blog post page thing and I kind of wrote about you know spouses and whatnot and it it
01:28:07
Speaker
You don't really want cop work to become your identity, but a kind of sneaks in the door that way because it does have to be first because of the call outs, because of the training, because of everything that you end up having to do, especially in smaller agencies, because you can't just shut your phone off when your shift's done.
01:28:28
Speaker
um And I think that battle um with somebody that isn't in law enforcement is at least part of the reason why we we do you have such a high divorce rate.
01:28:40
Speaker
I think it's that need to kind of protect, to protect your spouse from what it is that you've dealt with. And while that's honorable, um and ah And a lot of times our you know our spouses just don't get it. I was fortunate enough to to be married at both times to a um ah first responder who who absolutely understood at least some of of what I had experienced during during shift work. but You know, we we have a tendency because of our protective nature to also want to protect our our spouse. And then what that really turns into at some point is, well, you just don't understand what I'm dealing with.
01:29:19
Speaker
And that that's the reality. But it's because we haven't included them. Yeah. Yeah. So that rift does become wider. it it it does, that chasm becomes deeper and it's really hard to scale. Like you've got to be very intentional.
01:29:39
Speaker
I was thinking about this in kind of preparation of of our conversation today. Like what would be important for me to who really talk about? and and And what is it that I would want maybe a baby cop to understand? and the advice that was given to me upon graduation in the academy was do two things.
01:30:00
Speaker
Protect your back. and make sure you have a work home life balance. And I did neither of them. Yeah. Yeah. I see that, especially because we were so young when we started. You're like, no, I'm invincible. Running and gunning. I got to kick in doors and take names later, you know, type thing.
01:30:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But 18 years in, I had my first back surgery and and then I'm, you know, divorced. So. Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. And, and you know, it's just like the the folks before us that told us, gave us that same kind of advice. Mine was more like pay attention and watch out for the bees.
01:30:43
Speaker
Bills, babes, and boos.
01:30:49
Speaker
Oh, those are traditional law enforcement traps too, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, the the person that told me that didn't use babes, but I mean, you know, i got it it makes sense because it is a law enforcement. it it It happens when you get into it because law enforcement just becomes part of your identity, at least for the first few years until you kind of realize like, I need to actually be better person outside of this.
01:31:17
Speaker
So, right yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that side. I know that's hard. and I know it's hard for me sometimes to talk about it and just to be able to kind of think about where where it went wrong.
01:31:30
Speaker
You know, ah nobody wants to blame any other person because we're all guilty in some way, shape, or form of something. It's not one person's fault or the other. it it takes two to get married. It takes two to get divorced, honestly.
01:31:42
Speaker
Absolutely. I would agree. And... I think you could probably echo this, but maybe your experience has been different. Like there were times in my marriage where I was all in. Like I knew what the issues were and I was fully committed to resolving them and coming out um on the other side because I came from a divorced family and that was certainly not anything that I wanted to put my kids through.
01:32:09
Speaker
And then there were seasons where, um he was all in and I was like, I'm done with this. I, you know, I'm, I'm like, it was just easier to walk away. yeah and so then you know, I've heard several times, like, well, do you have any regrets or would you do anything different?
01:32:32
Speaker
And I've gone through various seasons in my life where I would say well, all the seasons of my life, I would say like, do I have some regrets about my, the um,
01:32:43
Speaker
the the divorce, and I would say, yes, totally. I have some deep-seated regrets about how that all kind of played out and then the following years of of a very tumultuous divorce.
01:32:59
Speaker
But then we get to this question about, like, would you change anything? That's really... It's Russian roulette. Let me explain this.
01:33:11
Speaker
Because...
01:33:14
Speaker
Would I want to make the same mistakes again? no
01:33:20
Speaker
Do I feel like I have the power and authority to play God and change the way that things went? No. oh and that answer has changed in different so at different seasons of my life. Unequivocally, like, I want to know that I'm not the same person that I was that made mistakes.
01:33:45
Speaker
um
01:33:48
Speaker
But those mistakes have absolutely developed who I am today. Uh-huh. And so to say would I change anything, the really hard and and emotionally trying answer to that is no.
01:34:10
Speaker
Yeah, no, i I totally agree with that. I mean, i guess the way I've always looked at it when people ask me that question is – My answer has been, could I have done things better?
01:34:24
Speaker
Yes. Would I change anything? No, because it's made me who I am. It's set me up to be the the father, the the husband, the cop, the brother, son.
01:34:38
Speaker
It's set me up in that direction for what I am today. So it's almost like what we were talking about in FTO, Failing Forward. Could I have done things different? Yeah, I could have.
01:34:50
Speaker
I wouldn't wish that I did because it's made me who I am, but I've learned from all those mistakes, all those things that I could have done different or should have done different. I've learned from them and I do do them different now. And I guess for me that, that it almost feels like, well, the person that I was with before wasn't important enough for me to have been what I am today.
01:35:18
Speaker
but I needed to learn with that person to get there because she's, she's doing great too. You know, like an amazing relationship that's lasted almost as long as my second marriage.
01:35:29
Speaker
So I think, I think they honestly, I got together just a few months after like Bree and I did. So they've been together just as long. And um so, yeah, I mean, that's the way I answer it is I don't want to change anything because that's what's made me today.
01:35:43
Speaker
Could I have done things different? That's the way I look at it. Yeah, I could have, could have. true Yeah, maybe, but. Absolutely. Those marriages that survive are the marriages where two people are willing to be committed to the same goal at the exact same time with the same intensity. Like marriage is not fifty fifty And that's what we tell everybody. Like marriage is 50-50. get 50. I get that equals our And that's bullshit.
01:36:13
Speaker
Marriage 100-100. And on the days where you can't give 100, Bree giving 120. And then on the days where you can only that you have 150 the bank and she only 50, that's what that is. It's not two people giving half of themselves to make a whole person. It's two people giving 100% the time.
01:36:40
Speaker
all the time And somebody willing to cover your deficit when when you just can't pony up. Yeah, yeah. And I think sometimes as being in law enforcement, especially patrol, it's a lot easier when you're in, and and you know we'll get into it because it'll probably be different, like when you're in um like an SRO position, something that's a little more set, or even in my current position as an investigator where my my hours are a little more set. It's a little bit easier to spread that butter evenly, right?
01:37:11
Speaker
um But when you're working patrol or you're working on a task force or even canine, some of those specialties, It's hard to come in and still give your whatever percent you need to give. And I think that's where sometimes that that separation or divorce or whatever might happen comes in because ultimately you look back at it and maybe you only always ever gave your 20, 30, 40 percent and they had to make up for a significant period of time that extra percentage.
01:37:45
Speaker
and you never truly, really respected it. I know that's one thing that I could have done different in my first marriage, and sometimes even in this current one, but she's caught me and brought me back to reality, and it's like, okay, all right, i need to make some changes, which is one reason why I got off the road and took this position so that I could be, well, give more of my percentage.
Impact on Mental Health and Therapy Acceptance
01:38:11
Speaker
I think that's honorable, and I and i think it's accurate. And I think it's easy for us to say to our spouses, like, you just don't understand. You don't understand what I'm going through. You don't you don't you don't get how hard it is um to tell a mom that her child died in a car accident today. um You don't understand how hard it is to see a child to spend physically and sexually abused. Like, you just don't get it.
01:38:37
Speaker
And thank God they don't. yeah But why why are we so blindsided? but Well, I'll tell you why. We're blindsided in our grief, and it's selfish is really what it is. And um i think I think we don't do such a great job in law enforcement, or haven't always historically, of of taking care of mental health and well-being.
01:39:04
Speaker
Like, we...
01:39:09
Speaker
fundamentally put on vest to protect our heart, but that becomes hardened, like quite literally, not just figuratively like a hardened heart, but that vest goes to protect everything that makes us human.
01:39:27
Speaker
And eventually, like, to just survive the job, you're callous, you're cold, you're a shell of who you were. And then we go home and we expect our our husbands and our wives to to just accept that.
01:39:44
Speaker
like It's okay. This is the new not-so-improved Garrett, but it's okay. Well, it's not. Yeah. And Bree had a different perspective. So my first marriage...
01:39:55
Speaker
um we met in high school and went to college. I went through the academy. So she didn't know she She grew with me through that, right? And that's why i I think I look at as maybe we just kind of grew apart, a little bit you know separate you know different paths kind of thing. But Bree, when we met, I'd been a cop for, what, five, six years at that point. She was literally thrown right in the mix.
01:40:21
Speaker
i As soon as she moved out here, um not too long after that, I don't remember, a couple months maybe, um um was my shooting trial. So that, that was her first true experience. But I think in a way that, that helps because at least what she tells me is it was kind of enlightening to her because it it just made her respect it a little bit more. And she's been a lot more flexible, um which I think has worked because now we're 2026. 14 this in, yeah think we hit 15 this fall for like being together kind of thing, something like that. So, yeah.
01:40:59
Speaker
So, yeah. crazy Well, that's a the divorce rate and in this line of work does suck. But I do agree with you that I think a lot of it is is just us not paying attention to ourselves because mental health, shoot, when we started, it was still suck it up, buttercup, rub some dirt on and get back to work.
01:41:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And there was this huge perceived fear. i don't know if it was like this for Like, if I explain that I'm struggling, they're going take me off the road. Like, I'm going to be deemed unfit for duty if I tell somebody that...
01:41:33
Speaker
um that call is causing me nightmares or that because I can't sleep at night, I'm drinking a six pack um just to fall asleep.
01:41:45
Speaker
like And in those I'm fortunate because I didn't struggle with all of that that stuff, not to say that i escaped mental health crisis, but I didn't turn to substances like so many other people do in our career.
01:42:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
Career Transition for Family Support
01:42:03
Speaker
Well, I think again, one of the other things we've been blessed to see in our careers that change, it is shifting, shifting very slowly. Um, then depending on where you're at, the bigger agency, smaller agency, um,
01:42:18
Speaker
it mental health is becoming more important and we are realizing it. Unfortunately, it just feels like it takes so long in law enforcement for anything to change. But what's the saying in law enforcement? Anything that's new, that's bullshit and cops are going to die so But I'm glad to see that we're at least moving in ah in a different direction. and and Agreed. It took some experiences for me that I went through that that weren't very helpful through some of my dark times to really just start pushing it and be more open about it. Like, yeah, I don't really care what you think. Yeah. I'm seeing a therapist because being a cop fucking sucks.
01:42:56
Speaker
And I want to talk to somebody that just lets me talk and doesn't try to fix my problems per se. They just listen. And if i ask for some help on something, then they, you know, you know how therapy is. So yeah emily I'm glad that we're, you know, trending towards that.
01:43:13
Speaker
Me too. yeah Can we take a quick five minute break? Sure, let's take a break. all right so Cool. And now after that little break, some extra coffee because it's just a Saturday morning, right?
01:43:26
Speaker
So let's fast forward a little bit. Not much, obviously, but let's start talking about that agency that hired you on um and you spent a really long time with and got to do a lot of cool things.
01:43:40
Speaker
I did get a lot to do, a lot of really cool things. So I started with that with my second agency in like late 20, or sorry, 2006. um My second child was six months old when I went back to patrol. And i
01:44:02
Speaker
falsely believed that I could do it all. and I could have, you know, I could have my cake and eat it too. I could be mom. I could work shift work. I could own a business and do all the things.
01:44:16
Speaker
I don't know. Maybe I kind of envisioned myself as this superhero, and i i most certainly was not. I last been on patrol for probably six months, and the stress ah on my family and on my girls was... um too much for my continue my my family to continue to bear the burden of.
01:44:39
Speaker
So I'd gone into my lieutenant and I said, like, i I'm really sorry. Of course, i I'm just like a month or two out of FTO at that point. like um I misjudged my ability to juggle all of this stuff, and i can't keep all these flying plates in the air anymore. They're coming crashing down and So my lieutenant at the time offered me a civil position. So serving civil papers, it was more of like an 8 to 5. It worked out really great. was boring as heck, but I learned the geography of the county.
01:45:15
Speaker
that didn't you know didn't stay there for very long. maybe year or two. That was just just what I needed to kind of be able to move on and move back into patrol.
School Resource Officer Role and Rewards
01:45:27
Speaker
i applied for a school resource officer position which was pretty cool because it's it's got a little more stable hours really. um i didn't see myself at the time as somebody that would really enjoy working with kids.
01:45:41
Speaker
and I worked with ah you know K through 12. But it was it was honestly, I stayed there for 13 years, it was it was one of the most rewarding positions that I could have ever imagined. To be involved in the day-to-day life of of kids is yes ah just the most rewarding thing that I could imagine.
01:46:07
Speaker
But it's also the most heartbreaking. Before we dive into the SRO thing, i want to hear some more about being a civil deputy because while I have a general idea because of what a civil deputy is, um i have worked for a sheriff's office.
01:46:22
Speaker
They didn't have a civil unit or division. um Explain that so that everybody might understand what it is you do. And honestly, how scary it can be because we are well aware of how many shootings and and stuff like that that have happened when deputies show up just to serve papers.
01:46:41
Speaker
Totally. um So let me kind of explain the background to this so that um your your viewers understand. in Colorado, there are two statutory requirements of a sheriff's office, and neither of which is a patrol response or like ah a law enforcement response.
01:47:00
Speaker
Those required, are the statutory required obligations is a jail, and a civil service unit. And civil service unit is responsible for serving core papers and at face value you're probably thinking like, oh no big deal.
01:47:18
Speaker
And most of the time it's not. It is the You know, it's the credit card company that's suing you because you haven't made your payments. It's maybe a forcible detainer removing you from your house because you haven't made your rent.
01:47:34
Speaker
um But it's also divorce papers. It's also restraining orders. It's it's basically delivering a packet who somebody who is experiencing some kind of crisis, whether it is financial or um otherwise, like emotional or criminal. It's it's devastating and it's embarrassing to to people.
01:48:02
Speaker
So, a civil service deputy, and my my job was to prepare the the paperwork administratively from when it arrived at the sheriff's office, process the the paperwork, enter it into the system, collect the payment, make sure it was deliverable to whoever it was supposed to be deliverable, and then eventually go out and attempt to serve the paperwork myself.
01:48:27
Speaker
And most of the time, it's pretty status quo. It's it's boring. it's It's no big deal. But a lot of agencies don't staff that position with somebody that is certified. It is a non is typically a non-certified position. Some agencies allow that non-certified to carry, but they have no arrest powers. So my my position was pretty unique because obviously i was post-certified, so I had not only had the powers of arrest, but i
01:49:00
Speaker
was certified to to carry with my agency as well, which alleviated some of the obligation to my agency as as far as I thought. Like, I think what happened is they went, whew, well, now that she can arrest somebody, if she finds that they have a warrant, we don't have to now send one of our patrol guys up to, you know, it's typically BFE, to go make the arrest as well. so You know, she's she's an all-in-one, this is great for us. um Not that they forgot, but
01:49:40
Speaker
they forgot, right? The dangers of actually serving those papers. So imagine if for for those of you that don't have the same law enforcement experience, imagine just somebody's worst day to find out that for whatever reason they're being served divorce papers.
01:50:02
Speaker
I mean it's not just that emotional kick up if you know if we're to call it that. It's okay now my wife is leaving me and I have to divide all these assets, child custody, going to lose the house,
01:50:21
Speaker
embarrassment, like there's ah there's a lot going on there. It's not just divorce papers. And for some people who are already in extreme chaos, this is the straw that breaks the camel's back. This is what sets somebody off. And and i wouldn't I wouldn't say it's often that people act on this stuff, but it's always in the back of your mind, like, is this going to be the divorce that i the the divorce papers that I served today where somebody is going to decide they're they're willing to end it all, not just for themselves, but they're willing to take me with them, or they're willing to take a girlfriend, ah a wife, their children. Like, people do some pretty crazy things when when they hit that desperation.
01:51:16
Speaker
Right. No, I mean, shoot on that ah example, just out on patrol, I had a guy suicide. um He took his divorce papers, put them over his chest, laid down in bed, and then shot himself in the heart through the divorce papers. So, oh yeah I mean, yeah, I mean, it's it I don't know if he was served them that day or what, but but either way, I mean, it's it's a traumatic thing when you're showing up to like you said, it's a packet. Here's your packet of shit.
01:51:50
Speaker
Now you have to deal with it. So yeah. Right. And then on top of that, you're actually entering onto their property. So you're going into their space, their comfort, um, and you're rocking their world with whatever it is that you're delivering.
01:52:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And probably by yourself, 99% of the time. Absolutely. Absolutely. Very, very dangerous job. um Did you run into anything that I guess was, you know, catastrophic while you were um a civil deputy?
01:52:25
Speaker
You know, i don't i don't recall. I'm sure I did. um i know I ran into some warrants. I think the blessing in my particular case is that I came from a patrol background, so I knew what to look forward i look what to look for and what to look out for. i knew i knew those warning signs, those pre-fight indicators.
01:52:49
Speaker
I think I made smart choices, plus I always pre-planned. um And what I mean by that is where maybe some civil deputies don't know the importance of running like a criminal history before you go up. like oh i So, for example, if i went to if I was going to serve like a judgment on or summons and complaint for credit card debt, I want to know the dollar amount. And it's not because I'm interested in in your business. i don't really care what your financial outlook is.
01:53:19
Speaker
But the potential for violence on $1,000 summons and complaint is significantly less than somebody that I'm about to serve a summons and complaint on who went for a $100,000 lien, right? Right.
01:53:36
Speaker
And so I've got to look at that difference. Or, you know, running somebody's criminal history to see, like, while I'm going to serve a summons and complaint on financial crime, or not even a crime, like a financial liability, this person has four prior domestic violence. Right.
01:53:54
Speaker
which tells me that they're more apt to strike in violence than sulk. Right, right. So what's my game plan?
01:54:08
Speaker
No, and that's cool. That's a ah good way to look at it. And I think that's the big difference sometimes in putting civilians in a situation, or not even a situation, a position like that, that they don't think about. I don't know, like I said, I don't know a lot about civil, so I don't know if there's any kind of like field training or especially for the civilians or anything like that that could prepare them for that.
01:54:34
Speaker
um But that would, I think, probably be something important, especially for a civilian in a position like that to at least have a little bit of a different mindset rather than, I'm just serving papers, everything's going to be fine, so.
01:54:48
Speaker
recently what and oh no but i want say Regionally, is what I've seen that I applaud from from agencies is that they're starting to and to put armor on civil service. yeah but It's critical.
01:55:05
Speaker
And then i think i think if you're not also arming them, not just the armor, but arming them, then you're you're basically signing somebody's death warrant. You just don't know the day.
01:55:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And that's the difference, I think, too, is – and I don't know about other states, but I assume it's probably similar – is the sheriff can bless somebody to carry a gun even if they're not a certified peace officer.
01:55:32
Speaker
right Most of them that I'm aware of do still go through the same firearms training, same driver's training, um and some of the arrest control, at least, like like I said, at least that I'm aware of. Mm-hmm.
01:55:47
Speaker
Again, i don't think that they really put them through any kind of preparation training. you know You know what I mean by that? Kind of like yeah just being... Yeah, kind of what you were talking about, being prepared.
01:55:59
Speaker
Yep, I agree. that Putting them in armor is ah is a very big deal. like There's a reason you know law enforcement deaths dropped significantly in, what, the 70s or something because of the invention of body armor.
01:56:12
Speaker
So... Yeah. yeah I mean, why not? mean, I was a below 100 instructor, um and that's one of the things I tried stressing a lot to, you know, even like admin and and detectives and stuff.
01:56:27
Speaker
Put your damn armor on. Like, even if you're here, like something could happen, just put your armor on. You know, you never know when you're gonna have to run out the door and go somewhere. I mean, i know I'm well aware of an example where um a person that was in charge of investigations ended up running to a shooting scene where bullets were still flying and going, oh shit, my armor's in my back seat.
01:56:48
Speaker
So these things you don't think about and you don't think about them sometimes until they become a problem. You know, they're not a problem until they are. Yeah, exactly. Good point. Yeah.
01:57:02
Speaker
Well, let's move back to the SRO spot because that is one thing I want to hear some stuff on. i again, have a general understanding, but I've never been an SRO. And it sounds like you greatly enjoyed it.
01:57:15
Speaker
So how was that a blessing to your career? um Well, initially, it allowed me to to be home, um albeit sometimes late. i was home. Like, I got to be a mom. I got to tuck my kids in. I got to get up in the morning and make school lunches. Like, I just, I got to be more of a normal parent as much as I could be, right?
01:57:41
Speaker
So i but I was blessed with that. But then you become, like the purpose of of an SRO is really to kind of be a liaison between law enforcement and the
School Safety and Active Shooter Response
01:57:52
Speaker
schools. Like that's the practical purpose of SRO. And then obviously you've got the aspect of school safety and security.
01:58:01
Speaker
And then just really helping both systems understand the criminal justice system. So there are plenty of times where i'm dealing with justice-involved kids, I'm dealing, surprisingly, like justice-involved teachers. Like, that's absolutely ridiculous to me, but you wouldn't believe how often that happens.
01:58:23
Speaker
And I would say that, honestly, id make a strong comparison to them and first responders in the and in what they give and what they see. its It can be pretty nasty at times, but all aspects of law enforcement. like i I very often heard, especially early in my career, like the the kindergarten cop reference, or um i'd be called kitty cop as if I was less than a real law enforcement officer.
01:58:53
Speaker
But I'll tell you, i dealt with every... single call type that patrol did except for barking dog. but I never had a barking dog call at the school and I laugh at that but I had domestics, I had rolling domestics, I had car accidents, I had bomb threats, I had i stabbing, i you know we had threats of active shooter, um i had mental health calls, I had drug and alcohol calls, like
01:59:26
Speaker
child abuse, seriously, you name up a patrol call and I dealt with it um without the support that patrol has.
01:59:37
Speaker
So what I mean by that is, like, you you go to a child abuse call as a patrol officer and you can call your buddy to help with the investigation. Like, there are, patrol is going going to show up to help you.
01:59:54
Speaker
You have that same type of call in a school, and I promise you, 20-something-year-old cop in full body armor and a gun is scared to freaking death to show up on school property.
02:00:06
Speaker
like you want You want real fear in a grown man, you ask him to handle a call with a child. but but but Well, think a lot of that just has to do with, and we can get into that. I'm sure we will. It's the difficulty of dealing with juveniles, especially when it comes to potential criminal offenses.
02:00:24
Speaker
Right. The laws. When I first became an SRO, they felt like a hindrance like this. This is a bunch of crap. You guys are protecting terrible kids. And in the reality um The laws are exactly what they should be, in my opinion, after working 13 years of it. Does it work for everybody and is it the best case scenario for society, for every single situation? No. But that's no different than the adult system, honestly.
02:00:57
Speaker
the The reality is is that people in general, not even if we're, I mean, if we put juvenile aside, but people in general, good people, make poor choices.
02:01:09
Speaker
And this is what I tell people often is that after 20 something years in law enforcement, I legit can name the evil people that I dealt with in two hands.
02:01:21
Speaker
Yeah. The truly evil ones. Yeah. Yeah. I dealt consistently and and you did too with People that made stupid choices, like genuinely stupid choices and needed to pay time for, you know, pay their debt back to society because of those stupid choices.
02:01:39
Speaker
But in the end, good heart, good people, good intentions, something went awry. and Terrible, evil people, i i that's less than 10 in 20 years.
02:01:54
Speaker
So I think we forget that as law enforcement officers, because all we see is the evil that people do to each other. But it's not from a place of evil, if that makes any sense.
02:02:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So back to kind of kids is like I watched them make really stupid choices, and I watched some of them actually pay for those choices for the rest of their lives. So, for example, um I had i had a kid that had, gosh, he was Ivy League bound.
02:02:28
Speaker
He had acceptance letter in hand second semester of his semester or a senior year. And he, i can't remember if they were, i think they were his Adderall pills, but he was selling them.
02:02:41
Speaker
And that's a, ah you know, that's a do not pass go, do not collect 200. And I caught a lot of grief on that one for for pursuing that to the fullest extent.
02:02:56
Speaker
And it sounds like pretty dumb choices, but when you hear the gravity and the magnitude of the situation, the intent, so close to being 18, like you're a little bit, I mean, we're not talking about a 12-year-old that's making those choices. We're talking about it, you know, why he was 18 at that point. a adult yeah Yeah. And, you know,
02:03:19
Speaker
Does it suck now, 10, 15 years later, that he's probably... I know that the Ivy League school, after fighting about the criminal charges, revoked admission.
02:03:30
Speaker
Did that change the course of his his life? Yeah. butha Definitely. Can you bounce back after that and and still find you know something productive and positive and and worthwhile? Absolutely.
02:03:47
Speaker
Yeah. Absolutely. Dig into the history of SRO a little bit more. You stated that um you know you kind of got made fun of when you first went into it. And I know when I first started, I can't think of if we – I know we had had one.
02:04:05
Speaker
but we didn't for a couple of years. I mean, I guess what I'm getting at is it's it's fairly new considering, like a newish type topic, and plus with everything that's been going on over the last 15, 20 years, um it's it's been brought to the spotlight a lot more. But maybe you can shine some educational light on what the background is of an SRO and what the true purpose really is.
02:04:31
Speaker
So I think we've got to go back to like the Columbine era in of April of 99. And like I tell this story and it's kind of funny in contrast, we think about where we're at now socially, but um my ex-husband
02:04:48
Speaker
would come to school with a shotgun in the rack of his truck. And we were allowed to do that. Like, that was not ah wast a criminal charge. It was not a policy violation. I remember the the assistant principal, all, like, four-foot-eight of her, would, like, storm out into the parking lot um of the known offenders just to verify that their guns were actually in the rack. And and that was, like, gun in the rack?
02:05:17
Speaker
Cool. No issue. And then fast forward to April of 99, and we we deal socially with that that horrific Columbine massacre, and really thoughts changed. And it wasn't as if school shootings didn't happen before then, because honestly, school shootings on record have been happening since the early nineteen hundreds um They just didn't claim the mass casualties that Columbine did.
02:05:48
Speaker
And so there's this fear. And as a parent, and you you know this now, but there there's nothing more terrifying than sending your child to a place that you know as law enforcement is a soft target.
02:06:08
Speaker
well And that's a school. And... And there's nothing more crippling for an economy. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way. There's nothing more crippling for economy than to target a school.
02:06:20
Speaker
Why? Because if a parent doesn't send their child to school because they're fear they're in fear, they also don't go to work. They also can't pay their bills.
02:06:31
Speaker
Like there's nothing that targets an economy quicker than targeting a school or church. Yeah.
02:06:43
Speaker
So really historically an SRO was more about being a security guard. It's actually physically being present to protect children while they were educated.
02:06:56
Speaker
it It really changed over the years, and I'm thankful for this, because while that should still remain their primary function, like why are why were we not humanizing the badge? Why were we not showing our next generation, like there's nothing to be fearful here?
02:07:13
Speaker
um good people wearing an honorable badge doing good work. like Why were we not making that nexus and helping helping children understand that?
02:07:25
Speaker
Plus, why were we not recruiting? And that sounds funny, but why why are we not sharing the joys and the honor of of being a cop?
02:07:37
Speaker
and And so that was like one of my greatest honors is being able to it was towards the end of my law enforcement career, but like the last five years in a high school, um one of the alternative teachers came up and said, you know, hey, I've got this idea.
02:07:52
Speaker
and it really morphed into, know, um a mentorship So over those five years, and and and funny because I didn't limit it to just the females, but that was the only the only group that ever came up and asked to to for me to mentor them.
02:08:12
Speaker
But they had a school at Battle Mountain High School, or so sorry, they had a class at the high school that encouraged kids to go find an internship. And some did vet, some did doctor, lawyer, teacher.
02:08:27
Speaker
And consistently each year i had a female approach me and say, could I be your intern? And it it there there was clearly some hoops to jump through. They had to be 18.
02:08:44
Speaker
they They couldn't be present as I was dealing with other juveniles because of juvenile privacy privacy rights. But really what it ended up being is that I would spend a few hours after the you know the end of the school day teaching these young ladies what it was like to be a female in uniform. And we'd go out and do traffic stops. And essentially they were a glorified ride-along for six months.
02:09:13
Speaker
and three of those five went on to be law enforcement officers, and two of those five are still in law enforcement.
02:09:27
Speaker
And we don't get to experience like the positive impact that we make on law enforcement. going get a little emotional here. and We don't get to see like the positive things that we do in somebody's life.
02:09:41
Speaker
We get to experience like being yelled at and cursed at, and we get to see what the the dumb picture that media paints us to be, and none of it's accurate, none of it's true.
02:09:56
Speaker
But when you get to stand up at pleated graduation of somebody that has sat in your passenger seat for six months, um with a real desire to learn and more skin in the game than any FTO you've ever worked with and be able to see them succeed, like there's nothing more rewarding than that.
02:10:21
Speaker
That's a proud moment to be able to do that. Yeah, i actually got to watch one of my students um graduate the DRE program last year. that's even more impressive.
02:10:34
Speaker
Yeah. um I've never felt so old. She called me Miss Megan or Officer Megan. That's what the students always called me as Officer Megan. So and um when I attend her DRE graduation as an instructor and a civilian, and she still is referring to me as Officer Megan.
02:10:52
Speaker
but quick did Did you get to teach her in her DRE class? um I got to take a a more backseat role because I just recently retired. i wasn't actually instructing, but I did run the wet lab.
02:11:10
Speaker
Awesome. That's still pretty cool. It's amazing. um yeah You said you know we don't get to often see a um a lot of times the end result of what we've done.
02:11:24
Speaker
And you know it's almost like that cliffhanger from being a dispatcher you know what that you were talking about. And I was talking to somebody just the other day about it. It's like, we don't know what true good we do, but we just have this, you have to, I feel, is my, I guess, my perspective. You have to have just this almost blind faith that you're you're in it for a reason. What you're doing will affect at least one person in a very positive way. that's...
02:11:55
Speaker
that's almost got to be just good enough. But luckily, the longer you do the career, you do hear some or in your case, get to see some actual success stories, which makes all of the tears, all of the fuck yous and fights and night shifts and everything really just worth it.
02:12:17
Speaker
And I think that's a difficult thing for people not in some sort of you know like first responder position or, you know like up close to quite understand.
02:12:29
Speaker
Um, I think one of the most rewarding and it sounds silly. Um, one of the most rewarding days of my career was, um, getting back to my car one day and seeing a note underneath my windshield wiper.
02:12:40
Speaker
And the note just said something about something to the effect of like, thank you for all that you do in the school. And, um helping, it made reference to me changing a tire the day before. And so the back story on that is school gets out, um one of the kiddos has a flat tire.
02:13:04
Speaker
i am amazed after my 12 years of of towing how many people cannot figure out how to change their own darn tire. But fast forward, we're in this exact same situation again, and it's a girl, and she's pretty panicked because she does not know how to change her tire.
02:13:23
Speaker
So I show her how to change a tire in the parking lot. Well, another student is watching, unbeknownst to me, and she sees she sees the interaction. She doesn't make any contact with me or the other student, but the next day,
02:13:43
Speaker
He leaves a note on my patrol car in the parking lot just saying, like, we we see you and we see what you do for us. Well, I find the note right after i had given what i affectionately called the mom lecture.
02:14:00
Speaker
in the parking lot. School gets out and and you know what I'm talking about. School gets out and there is a lack of judgment in the parking lot of any high school as they they peel out. And one kiddo almost hit a pedestrian in the parking lot and I went over there and I lost it. And I said probably some pretty inappropriate things. I asked this kid if he'd ever cleaned up a body with a shovel.
02:14:29
Speaker
um
02:14:32
Speaker
impactful but inappropriate. and because i you know I'm dealing with my trauma, I nearly saw a kiddo that was a fatality. And so I'm yelling at this driver the kids are near tears and I get back to my car and I find this note and the first thing that I think of before unfolding it is Somebody that you know somebody is saying something nasty. Get in my car.
02:15:01
Speaker
I open up the note, and I see like just this genuine thank you. I see you, and I just bawl. I had been like the most, in it not the most, but I had been fairly inappropriate to a child, and the day before, i was yeah i I'm being thanked for being it an exceptional mentor the day before. like If that doesn't explain law enforcement, I don't i don't know what does.
02:15:32
Speaker
Yeah. that ah I mean, you might have overstepped a little in in your explanation, but maybe it was necessary. And unfortunately, and i mean, maybe you don't maybe you do know, we don't know how impactful maybe that was for him.
02:15:49
Speaker
You know, it might seem inappropriate, and I'm sure we all have those things we wish we could take back.
02:15:56
Speaker
But I'm sure that i guess in in my scenario, that there is sometimes... saying the inappropriate thing was the most impactful. you know I had a girl that constantly ran away. she was she was left with her grandma and grandpa and as long as she was a juvenile, I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt and just talk to her and and mentor her and just try to point her in the right direction and you know do all those things. And no matter what, she would always still end up being a pain in the ass until she finally became an adult and continued to be a pain in the ass became a worse pain in the ass, drugs.
02:16:32
Speaker
you know, stuff like that. And and um I mean, even so much so that she had a warrant one day and I saw her and I'm like, Hey, and she goes, shit and runs. And I'm like, I've known you for fucking 10 years. Why are you running?
02:16:47
Speaker
So when I finally catch her, she's apologetic. And I'm just like, why? She's like, I don't know. I was just scared. I'm like, scared of what? What have I ever, what has ever happened to you truthfully? you know And we talked again, and and you know there's just a few more of those, and then finally one day she just wasn't around.
02:17:04
Speaker
And I can't remember how long after that, but it was, I don't know, for four years, five years. i just get this random message in my Facebook, and i try to hide a little you know on Facebook. We all do.
02:17:18
Speaker
um And it was from her, basically thanking me for everything I did, even as a juvenile and even even treating – you know Even when she became an adult, just a still, one, being understanding but doing what I had to do and explaining that you know she got out of the area, she's doing great, raising kids, and you know it was nice. and That's one of the few that I can think of where I got a thank you for doing something. I mean, it took years, but at least I got some closure.
02:17:48
Speaker
love that. of us just learn something. lower than others. I mean, and I can include myself in that. Like, how many times do I have to to hear no before I realize something's hot?
02:18:03
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I deal with that all the time, too. Are you sure it's really a hot burner? i think I need to touch it again. i think it cooled off a little.
02:18:14
Speaker
Yeah. like Well, cool. Well, what other things did you do as an SRO? What, what, what was some of the most meaningful things that you, you did that you can recall, like teaching kids, I know like both you and I have a passion for mentoring and teaching and trying to make better. Mine was always an FTO and, and with cops, but yours is a whole different perspective dealing with students of all ages.
02:18:40
Speaker
Right. So I think, um, sro ah SRO really opened up the door for me to to be comfortable with that public speaking. Like you put on a badge and a gun and you're in you're in positions where you've got to do that public speaking, but it's more of like authority, like hear me speak.
02:18:58
Speaker
It's not for for content or for information sharing or retention. But as an ah SRO, like I was constantly teaching classes to the kids and teaching parent classes.
02:19:11
Speaker
It really kind of shaped the the remaining years of my law enforcement career because that's kind of where I branched off at. One of my specialties is really developing curriculum, teaching. i've And then that's kind of what opened up the door also with my fascination with substances and and just really my disdain for um substance abuse.
02:19:39
Speaker
Completely different story, but um it really did open up the door for me to be really comfortable in public speaking, and it's changed a lot of things. I mean, it's opened up a lot of doors in my life.
02:19:54
Speaker
Awesome. Um, I know one of the biggest things that really kind of hit home for me, not being an SRO, but being there for one of the, um, one of the lockdown drills, you know, hearing the sounds and everything closed and the school being like a ah ghost town and just hearing things over the, the loudspeakers and stuff like that.
02:20:18
Speaker
Um, and it was, it when I did that, Only one time that I can remember maybe, ah one time that really hit home for me to actually remember, it really caught me off guard because my kid was about ready to go into middle school and it was at the middle school.
02:20:34
Speaker
So like that, almost made me emotional. So what's the, for people that don't know, what's the, because these are new. I mean, they're like earthquake drills that we might've went, well, I did when I was in California briefly. Explain what the purpose of it is. I mean, and how important it is because you and I both know that that having that practical training and practical experience, whether it's just training, prepares you for the ultimate.
02:21:02
Speaker
All right. So if I can come be completely like Transparent, really the purpose of a lockdown is to reduce the targets. It's it's to reduce, and it sounds so gory, but that's the honest-to-good truth. like we are we are moving students to locations in smaller groups to reduce...
02:21:23
Speaker
um potential body count. And that sounds terrible. And that's really where it started. It's morphed and it's become a lot more um sophisticated. That is still the end goal, but how we accomplish that his is being is completely different. But it's it's It's protecting and isolating and groups of kids. it's it's not it's It's doing what you can to prevent the mass casualty that occurred in unsecured library of Columbine the wide open cafeterias.
02:21:59
Speaker
so School shootings has changed everything about education, and we we we want to kind of bury our heads in the sand as parents, but in law enforcement, it has changed school design. Yep.
02:22:14
Speaker
Okay, it has changed ah security features. It's even changed, and I don't want to say, like, teacher credentials, but...
02:22:25
Speaker
What teacher went to school for the love of a child to then stand in front of a gun? No one.
02:22:36
Speaker
But is that the reality? Yep. Yeah. Yep. um So it's it's really trying to reduce some of that um potential.
02:22:47
Speaker
High risk, low frequency. And and we and law enforcement know that those are the most dangerous. High risk because... The potential body count in some of those soft soft targets is astronomical. I mean, like, one to a hundred, but one child hits harder in society than one adult. Like, it's not equal, right? Right.
02:23:14
Speaker
And then you take into effect or you take into consideration just...
02:23:22
Speaker
the the nature of it, like the the innocence, and it's it's catastrophic. but But really those those lockdowns, again, reduce body count and provide an opportunity, like seconds matter in those, um to be able to get law enforcement on scene, boots on the ground.
02:23:41
Speaker
So the schools know, like, they they aren't enduring an active shooter situation for long periods of time. Uh-huh. The goal is how do we keep our population safe long enough to get law enforcement here?
02:24:00
Speaker
Because depending on the jurisdiction that you live in, um realistically, that's at least at least two minutes. yeah But more more likely, even in our smaller towns, you're talking 10 before you've got a group that's ready to make entry into into a school. And so response models have changed. And without going into you know a whole lot of that, it we used it used to be like you need a certain number of people involved. to make entry into a school because we've got to protect us while we're protecting them. And now that mindset has really changed as well um based on some of the the active shooter failures. And we can name some of those. i don't think it's necessary. but
02:24:47
Speaker
um And now it's really like the mindset has changed. if if You've put on a badge and a gun, the community and your law enforcement partners expect that you're going to put yourself in the line of fire, whether or not you've got a buddy behind you or not.
02:25:08
Speaker
Period. well I think we can we can touch on that that particular topic because i was thinking about it. um You know, it's changed even our response. to an active shooter period um because like you said, we used to wait until you had two, three, four, five, you had enough people to go in, but now we are training um and you have to count on it in some of these rural um places where you might only have one or two officers on that single officer response where you're going to just let go.
02:25:37
Speaker
um And you have to have that mindset to be able to do that because you could be saving many, many, many children. um yeah You might get shot in the process because you're going in by yourself, but that I think has, and you might know that that number a little bit better, but that has proven to keep things from getting worse.
02:26:00
Speaker
Yes. So i used to study this in depth. It it got to be a bit morbid, and I stopped researching to the same depth each school shooting incident.
02:26:11
Speaker
But it if I recall right, the stats are like after bullets start flying, there is one bullet for every two to three seconds on average until the shooter is stopped.
02:26:23
Speaker
And for those outside of law enforcement, that that is a... a hard stop. that That is because the shooter is dead. um Somebody that is willing to sacrifice the life of a child, whether they are an adult or a child as well, cannot be effectively coerced into giving up.
02:26:49
Speaker
Like you don't, an active shooter, somebody that is willing to perpetrate some of those mass casualties, research shows they never plan an escape.
02:27:01
Speaker
Like never. They do not plan their, they don't plan a successful life afterwards. They plan to die.
02:27:15
Speaker
Yeah. Either by their own hand or by law enforcement, which... Absolutely. I don't know the stats on that, but it's probably pretty close to even. They end it or law enforcement ends it. Right. I don't know the stats either, there but I guess you're you're accurate.
02:27:28
Speaker
I'm just trying to run a few of them through my head right now, and I feel like there's a couple where, yeah, the cops took them out, and yeah, they took their own life. So, yeah. And that's a hard reality for a lot of people to think about.
02:27:40
Speaker
Right. Right. it's It's an emotional response, and I totally get it. So what i what i would leave my law enforcement career being thankful for is that now that there are people, like I can send my kid to school, and because I know the systems,
02:27:58
Speaker
um
02:28:01
Speaker
I'm secure that my kid is safe.
From Enforcement to Education and Rehabilitation
02:28:03
Speaker
can i Can I guarantee you with an absolute? No. um i can't.
02:28:10
Speaker
But I know enough of what's going on behind the scenes to know that there are good men and women that put on a badge that will absolutely take a bolt for my son. Yeah.
02:28:21
Speaker
And not even know your son. Not even know my son. Yeah. I mean, we all we all would. We all run those. I'm i'm big on that that kind of preparing mentally um just for scenarios that maybe I will never be in, but I can play them through in my head so I know how I'll react. And that's definitely been one, going to an active shooter, specifically like a school or something, especially up where I'm at now and in my current position. It's not a lot of cops on.
02:28:47
Speaker
you know You're going to be lucky if if um you get three to show up um within a reasonable time, which, like you said, could be anywhere from two to ten minutes.
02:28:58
Speaker
That's still not reasonable in a scenario like that, but yeah when you're in a rural spot with not a lot of cops, that's the best we might be able to do. um Yeah, i think about that all the time.
02:29:10
Speaker
you know and All right, well, that's what I signed up for, honestly, by taking the job. I mean, none of us want to die, but we also know that we would for the person. I have no idea who they are.
02:29:22
Speaker
Right, and and no knowledge of their criminal history either. So that's... Like, ah people think that we protect the honorable.
02:29:34
Speaker
And no, i I protect the life. You decide whether or not you're going to, you know, it's going to end honorably. and I don't mean, like, end in death ah based on my contact. I mean, like, how how are you going to change your life around?
02:29:49
Speaker
so one of the things that SRO really helped solidify for me, like, i without going into a lot of detail, like I got to experience some of the throws of people that I loved dealing with substance abuse issues and on on both sides of my family and watching the the ills and the horrors of of what that looks like. And many families can relate. So I entered law enforcement
02:30:22
Speaker
um where that was like my hard stop and my hard line. So i never I never experienced some of the that. i didn't I didn't go through some of the law enforcement addictions and the substance abuse issues that that some cops suffer through.
02:30:38
Speaker
Instead, I came in with a chip on my shoulder. Like, i this sounds arrogant, but honest to God, like, I entered law enforcement thinking, like, I'm going to eradicate the world of drugs.
02:30:50
Speaker
I know you laugh, but... We've all done that, though. Did I believe it? like i Right. Like, it sounds arrogant. I didn't see myself as wearing a cape and a badge. like that that wasn't But I really thought that I could make a difference.
02:31:09
Speaker
Did I? I think so. I have no evidence to support that, um but I didn't make it in how I thought I was going to, by being tough on crime and intolerant of substances.
02:31:26
Speaker
It was actually while I was teaching a a drug and alcoholic awareness class to parents. I'm sitting down with high school parents and I'm i'm teaching them how to spot paraphernalia and substance use in their home so they can deal with it appropriately.
02:31:45
Speaker
And I'll never forget the statement that came out of my mouth. I don't even know where it came from, but it changed my perspective in law enforcement 180 degrees and changed the direction of where I was going.
02:31:55
Speaker
But I said to parents, I said every every offender is somebody's everything. It's a child. It's a best friend. It's a mother. It's a brother. It's, you know, ah a sister. It's a boyfriend. Like, it's somebody's everything, this offender.
02:32:15
Speaker
And as cops, sometimes we look at that person as less than or trash or unworthy. um You can become jaded.
02:32:26
Speaker
I definitely was at this point in my career. Very easy. But I remember so i remember saying to to this group of parents that the chance of recovery was 0% from a pine box.
02:32:38
Speaker
And i watched some parents that were that had kids that were struggling with addiction this early in life just cry. And I remember the impact. Like, <unk> what am I doing to prevent that? Because putting somebody in jail is not is not that.
02:32:56
Speaker
Like, arresting somebody, handing them a citation. um Justice involved is not a guarantee of recovery. Right. So that really hit me hard. Like, what am I doing? If I'm so dead set on eradicating the world of...
02:33:15
Speaker
of these generational curses. What am I doing? and so i it actually started me on the road to DRE instructor and then really using that knowledge to train outside of law enforcement. Up to that point, I trained hundreds of law enforcement, state and national,
02:33:39
Speaker
like i and I had done pretty well is like a side gig, um but it gets real when you actually have to examine like what have you actually done to improve society instead of just talking about it.
02:33:53
Speaker
So I was really fortunate. I had established enough of a ah reputation. i had a rural coroner come to me I don't even know how she got my name and number, but she she called me up and she said, we're having these weird deaths and I don't know what they're from.
02:34:16
Speaker
And she kind of explained them to me. She's like, they're not natural. We know that, but I can't prove otherwise. And so I've had eight or ten of them in the last year and I'm having to put like unknown on death certificates.
02:34:30
Speaker
So we worked through a lot of, I mean, like she, we poured over these case files together and I'm like, this is Kratom. She's like, what? It's what? So I was fortunate enough to be able to develop some curriculum to train rural coroners, doctors, nurses, fire departments, search and rescue, law enforcement, like you name it, um about Kratom or just like overdose deaths in general. But that was that was really cool to be able to have a coroner come to you and say like,
02:35:05
Speaker
I'm supposed to be the medical expert here, but even the doctors, like I'm referring some of this to, have no idea what what is causing these deaths. And we're probably not testing for it. So they they don't find it. works they weren' when When was that? Because, I mean, in all honesty, it's been around for a while, but i even now I know it's it's become way more popular.
02:35:27
Speaker
This is 10 years ago. So, yeah, fairly new. Yeah. 10 years ago. Wow. And you're honest, I didn't know people could overdose on that.
02:35:38
Speaker
I had no idea. Yeah. Do you mind explaining for everybody? um I know just a little bit about it, but do you mind explaining for everybody that might not what that actually is?
02:35:48
Speaker
Use this as our little PSA. Sure. So as we, well, let me back up first. um Drugs have and seasons, drug like popularity. so So for example, we will go through as a society, we will go through an epidemic of drug types that are similar.
02:36:12
Speaker
So for a while, we dealt with cocaine and methamphetamine. Those are central nervous system stimulants. They increase heart rate. they They basically amp you up, right, the high. And then because of that, because there are there are things that even ah ah a user doesn't enjoy about, let's say, methamphetamine. So I've got a meth addict that ah really is trying to kind of beat um the the three days awake.
02:36:42
Speaker
So they're going to find a substance that's going to help basically reduce some of those symptoms. well So that those substance types are central nervous system depressants or narcotic analgesics, so something that's going to slow the body down. So then we will see a shift in addiction to a drug category that is opposite and reactive to the last shift.
02:37:11
Speaker
So we'll go from methamphetamine and then in five years we'll see an epidemic of heroin. And then we'll go from heroin to crack cocaine to um as is a sleep pill, a sleep medicine. So kind of give you an idea of where traditionally substance abuse peaks and valleys.
02:37:35
Speaker
yep So we were coming off of um a meth epidemic. And in Western Colorado, that's never really deviated. But anyways, we were moving into um heroin, fentanyl,
02:37:52
Speaker
carfentanil. We were seeing the peak of all of And... and When and ah heroin or a narcotic analgesic user tries to basically wean themselves off of it, that is one of the substance groups or types that becomes fatal when somebody is trying to wean themselves off of it. But many people try to do that like cold turkey or they try to take control over that themselves.
02:38:21
Speaker
Well, kratom is a substance that is legalized in the state of Colorado that you can buy in head shops, you can buy in gas stations, and people use it similar to a narcotic analgesic or an opiate, for those for those that don't know what narcotic analgesic is. they will use it with the intention sometimes of trying to like reduce their actual heroin use because they act very similar in the body.
02:38:49
Speaker
It is a like a fine green powder and a lot of people will make shakes or teas or bake it into something. But what we were seeing is people carrying up to five pounds of kratom on their person at any given time because the need When you're going through like an opiate withdrawal, it is it is the most painful substance to withdraw from. it yeah I've heard it best described as like um an all-over, like flu. It's a mass exodus of body fluid from every orifice of your body, and it's violent. So it's a violent tyrrhea, it's violent vomiting, it's... ah
02:39:37
Speaker
not, it it's disgusting and it hurts. Like it's all over body aches, it's chills, it's a terrible, terrible withdrawal.
02:39:47
Speaker
So kratom helps to reduce those withdrawal symptoms. It doesn't completely alleviate them, but so people were turning to kratom to either
02:40:00
Speaker
hopefully reduce their intake or because they couldn't get their hands on an actual opiate. Right. So it would, it would stave off the withdrawal for long enough, maybe to get their next fix, or maybe they were trying to do the you know, the valiant thing and wean themselves off. Who knows? But a lot of people were overdosing.
02:40:23
Speaker
Interesting. Now, is it like a synthetic or is it, um, you know, something a little more natural? It is a natural drug. interesting So I cannot remember for the life of me, I can't remember the name of the Indonesian tree.
02:40:37
Speaker
um But it's it's used in that Southeast Asia culture. They just pull the tree off the leaf and gum it.
02:40:49
Speaker
Much like, you know, culturally we would do with tobacco. Right, right. but But they're not using it to the extent. yeah Yeah, they're not. It's highly purified in in um the the form that we are seeing it oh and highly abused.
02:41:09
Speaker
Well, kind of like what what we've been doing with even marijuana. I mean, you you hear all the old timers talking about this. This weed's way stronger than what I grew up with, but we've cultivated it to be stronger. And then we found ways to make it even stronger by turning it into oils and and stuff like that. So, you know, a lot of everybody's like, you can't overdose on THC. I'm like, I don't know. I feel like we have plenty of stories out there just to to show that You might not necessarily die from it, but there are signs of overdose of it. Yeah.
02:41:46
Speaker
Totally. um And I think it's important for us to understand the differences that commonly, like a civilian would say, overdose means death, but an overdose just means the shutting down of your organs. It eventually leads to death, but not always. Right.
02:42:00
Speaker
a lot of A lot of times overdose has a medical, a successful medical intervention, and somebody will overdose 5, 6, 12 times before physically dying.
02:42:13
Speaker
um So there is ah there is a difference between overdose and death. One leads to the other, obviously, but they're not.
02:42:24
Speaker
Well, cool. um Since we're on the topic of of DRE stuff, how did how did that play out for you, especially being being in the school? um Initially, I was told that because I was an SRO, there was no need or value of an SRO being a DRE. And i kind of laughed at that. I said, it yeah after being in the schools for 10 years up at that point, I was like, there's, and we don't want, we don't want to think this. And it this is not a ah a district issue where I was at, or not a district specific. This is just a cultural issue. Like, you want to find drugs? You go to a school.
02:43:06
Speaker
Yeah. And here's how i explain this to parents. um If your kid knows somebody... a student or a young adult that they can purchase marijuana from, they know somebody they can purchase fentanyl from, cocaine from, alcohol from.
02:43:29
Speaker
It might just be one additional phone call, but once you have made yourself known to that group and you've made yourself known as trustworthy to that group, a lot of doors open to you.
02:43:45
Speaker
A lot of doors open to you. And it's not like it's not a school-specific problem. like I don't want anybody to think that I'm speaking ill of of schools. and it's it It becomes maybe um school conflict because where is the largest gathering of those juveniles? It's a school.
02:44:07
Speaker
okay Well, and they're still learning and growing, and they're still experimenting. you know Totally. Yeah. That makes total sense. I mean, I remember high school.
02:44:18
Speaker
I remember somebody tripping on acid one day and I'm like, what's wrong with you? And they told me, I'm like, huh, that makes sense. yeah ah Cocaine in my high school. And I, I mean, i never would have guessed it.
02:44:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Now did it, I guess ultimately once you were able to become a DRE and show that there was that need for it, how was it taken by the agency?
02:44:43
Speaker
um Well, first of all, the school was very leery of it. and They did not appreciate... The district didn't appreciate my new skills because...
02:44:54
Speaker
I became laser focused. So the kid that I maybe didn't know was coming to school high prior to my education, i was certain after my education. And so like that sometimes is a hard pill to swallow when you're when you find out you had a problem you didn't realize you had.
02:45:17
Speaker
um
02:45:20
Speaker
I worked with some really great educators, and they met the challenge head on, and they did the right things at the right time for the right reason. And they really took the the bull by the horns. And I don't mean to kind of suggest that this problem was like every every child, but ah but enough. And the kids, even if it's one kid in school, the other 500 kids know who that one kid is.
02:45:47
Speaker
They know it. um So it's important to to address it and address it swiftly. So really, my day job was SRO, and i spent countless hours after that working DUI shifts. Not that I hadn't prior. It was kind of my love, but I really dug in, and I was doing evals all over Western Colorado.
02:46:14
Speaker
it was It was awesome. Like, there's something so satisfying. Yeah. That's actually how I met Kelly as I was teaching at her DRE school.
02:46:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. um there's There's something so satisfying about being able to put together that puzzle. Like, it's a real Sherlock Holmes. so No, definitely, definitely. I mean, I did it for, i can't remember, six, eight years because you've got recertify every two years, right?
02:46:43
Speaker
um But I reached a point where, because I was always DUI driven like you, but then it just kind of changed for me because I was doing canine at the same time, which it made sense to be deary and canine because what's the point of a dog? You're finding drugs, right? Yeah. But I just got to the point where it just seemed so almost like a pain in the ass.
02:47:04
Speaker
it's heavy i guess I didn't have same respect for it as as you kind of did. um I mean, I did for a little while, but yeah. So it's cool that you were able to bring it into the school. And while you might not feel like you you had any and any effect or at least any visible effect, I can guarantee that some of those classes you taught, especially that one you were talking about where you you brought up the parents starting to cry after, You know, you can't recover um after you're you're in a pine box. I guarantee you changed at least one person's life that day.
02:47:37
Speaker
they they that Just by the numbers, that just has to make sense. so So it actually helped me transition to what I started to do towards the end of my career, which was ministry.
02:47:50
Speaker
I'm a chaplain up at the prison um and really ministering to mostly drug offenders up at up at our local prison. um Some low-level financial crimes, stuff like that. um But to be able to look at some of those inmates, because they've been in the system, some of those guys have been in the system for decades and it not at the same time, but in and out and in and out and in and out. And they've never really had somebody that told them that they are worthy.
02:48:26
Speaker
They never had him tell, they never had anybody say like, you're not your crime. Right. And that's not your identity. Yeah. That's pretty powerful.
02:48:38
Speaker
I think that's where,
02:48:43
Speaker
My faith is strong, and and i don't know where everybody else is at, but I can confidently say, like, that was where God shifted my focus.
Breaking Substance Abuse Cycles
02:48:49
Speaker
He's like, I always wanted you to work with drug offenders, but I didn't want you putting them behind bars.
02:48:54
Speaker
um
02:48:57
Speaker
And not that that's not where some of them need to be. That's not what I'm saying. But I think the fastest rate of recovery is to actually show somebody that they're worth recovering.
02:49:09
Speaker
that they've got something valuable to give somewhere else. Yeah. so that's what I dedicate a lot of my time now to is, you know, the the homeless population that is struggling with substances, the incarcerated that are struggling with, you know, substance-related crimes.
02:49:32
Speaker
um my My real estate business will actually, the the goal is, like, I love delivering the product, but my goal is is to eventually be able to finance um a shelter for women and children.
02:49:51
Speaker
That's amazing. Yeah, that that would be very helpful. Yeah. So good luck on that. Like, seriously, that's, that would be a big thing. i think the thing that a lot of people don't think about when they think of drug offenders, they're thinking of, you know, the, the, the cartels and those guys transporting drugs and stuff. But ultimately it's, it's,
02:50:11
Speaker
it's the people that you have that are homeless and stuff. there's the The everyday users that are just down on their luck or can't break that habit that have some sort of trauma in their life that they just can't overcome. And that's what they're using to mask it.
02:50:25
Speaker
And they just need that little extra help, you know, a shelter where it could give them that and maybe tell them like, Hey, you're worth it. Um, you know, and and and help point them in the right direction. i mean, that's the that's the purpose of our of our whole justice system is to keep people from reoffending, right? Even if it means you did something bad um enough, you've got to go to jail or prison and spend some time there.
02:50:50
Speaker
I mean, the best way I've described it is sometimes we're like glorified, you know, parents, babysitters and whatnot, because, you know, jail and prison are kind of like a timeout for whatever rule you broke, in this case laws, and um we want to keep we really don't want to have to arrest people.
02:51:07
Speaker
We want to make sure that they stay out and they are good people and contribute. That's the main The main thing that most of us further in our career, because at the beginning, it's like, yeah, I want kick some ass, take some names.
02:51:20
Speaker
But once you kind of get through this career after a few years, you're like, I'm sick and tired of arresting the same person. It's like the definition of insanity. you know Let's figure out a different way because obviously putting them in jail isn't working. So something like that would be awesome.
02:51:37
Speaker
That's my goal. That's that's my goal. And it it's funny to look back on because early in my career, um like i I can name the call, um but walking into a home and watching just like the utter filth and disgust, the the child neglect,
02:51:57
Speaker
that rose to criminal abuse because parents were unavailable because of substances. Like that shaped the early part of my law enforcement career like maybe nothing else has.
02:52:11
Speaker
But
02:52:13
Speaker
but i I needed the training and experience and the time on the job, even though I was looking at the problem, through rose-colored lenses. Like, i couldn't solve the problem attacking it the way that I was. And I'm i'm still not going solve the problem, right? um But Think about the general curse the generational curses that are broken when you can provide services to a mom who is drug addicted.
02:52:42
Speaker
Because what happens when a mom becomes, when a dad becomes drug addicted, he goes away. And I'm speaking in generality, so don't like don't shoot the messenger. I know this isn't the case all the time. But mom becomes drug addicted, and then social services gets involved.
02:52:58
Speaker
And then the family is separated. Right. And, ah again, I know those are generalities. It's not how everything plays out. And I'm not advocating for the kids to continue to live in that situation. But what if we can what if we can provide a model, like a real model for mom to get healthy and sober that that her kids can walk through with her?
02:53:19
Speaker
and And be the end of that generational curse. They don't then raise their own children in that environment to to perpetuate substance abuse to the fifth and ninth generation. Yeah.
02:53:36
Speaker
No, I agree with you wholeheartedly on that. I mean, a lot of what we deal with, what is the saying? We deal with 10% of the population 90% of the time, but it's because of that lack of opportunities, knowledge, all of that stuff to keep it, as you said, the general generational, keep it from happening because you were raised one way and that's what you see. And that's the only thing, you know, that's what you're going to fall back to. Just like we do in our training, you know, when the shit hits the fan, that's what you're going to fall back to. So being able to try to break that cycle is a big thing.
Future Goals: Shelter for Women and Children
02:54:11
Speaker
yeah Yeah. So that's, uh, that's my next life mission. I'm really excited about it. I think that sounds pretty cool. Especially, i really like the fact that you're doing the the house flipping thing. i Something I've always thought about, never been brave enough to do. um like totally can like understand the look at something that looks terrifying and horrible and run down and be like, i see the diamond in the rough.
02:54:37
Speaker
Yeah. so Well, I bet you have an old 401k that you can convert. Yeah. This is true. Well, I can't say that I haven't robbed from it a little bit to work on the one I have up here right now because it needed it and ultimately it's paying for itself. So, yeah.
02:54:54
Speaker
I mean, we've dumped time and money into that house and it still has its issues, but I look at it and i'm like, God dang, I hate this house, but man, I really love it. Yeah. So...
02:55:05
Speaker
Well, I think we've been talking for quite a while. um Is there anything you want to leave just anybody with? Knowledge, insight, whatever. I mean, what would you want to say to anybody else?
02:55:18
Speaker
Your years of service were not unnoticed, and the impact that you made was phenomenal.
02:55:29
Speaker
And and i can honestly say it doesn't matter if you spent a year on the job or 35. It doesn't matter. you You made positive impacts that you'll never know about. and this world isn't always appreciative what you do but we couldn't do it without you.
02:55:54
Speaker
So my mentor said, take care of your back and your work-home-life balance. And I laughed at that. And I would say take care of your back and work on your work-home-life balance.
02:56:07
Speaker
I like
Positive Impacts and Work-Life Balance
02:56:08
Speaker
it. Powerful. Megan, thank you for for doing what you did for so long and even having the ambition to keep trying to continue that mission, even outside of of law enforcement. That's a big deal.
02:56:20
Speaker
thank you. So thank you on that. And thanks for sharing your story. I know it's not always easy, but somebody's got to hear it. You know, we may never know how impactful this was for somebody, but if we hit one person, cool.
02:56:37
Speaker
I appreciate the opportunity. So again, thank you. Hope the good work.
02:56:49
Speaker
Alright, that's going to wrap up this episode of Both Sides of the Patch. I really appreciate Megan taking the time to sit down and share her story. Something that stood out to me in this conversation was how indirect her path into into law enforcement was, because it was definitely not a straight line.
02:57:05
Speaker
Like a lot of people in this profession, she faced a lot of setbacks early on. She talked about going through FTO while trying to balance a family and ultimately being let go after not completing the program. For a lot of people that probably would have been the end of their story.
02:57:22
Speaker
But it wasn't for Megan. She kept pushing forward, she kept applying and eventually got hired just before her post-certification expired. That persistence led to more than two decades in law
Roles and Changes in Law Enforcement
02:57:35
Speaker
enforcement.
02:57:35
Speaker
She worked everything from dispatch to patrol, she trained new officers, she was an SRO, she was a DRE, and she built a career that clearly had an impact on people around her.
02:57:48
Speaker
We also talked about the profession and how it's changed over the years. The way we train officers, the role of mentorship, and the slow but important shift towards recognizing mental health in this job.
02:58:02
Speaker
And something else Megan highlighted that doesn't always get enough recognition. The entire team behind the badge, dispatchers, support staff, families, all the people who play a role in keeping things moving when things get difficult.
02:58:19
Speaker
That's really what this show's about.
Real Conversations in Law Enforcement
02:58:21
Speaker
real conversations and real experiences from people who have lived this profession and different viewpoints and angles.
02:58:30
Speaker
If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with someone who might get something out of it. And if you know someone with a perspective worth hearing, whether they were behind the badge, whether they currently wear one or have an impact in the profession in some way, reach out.
02:58:50
Speaker
i always looking for new voices to bring into the congregation. Thanks again for listening to both sides of the badge. Until next time, take care of each other.
02:59:04
Speaker
And the badge, whether they currently wear one or have an impact in the profession in some way, reach out. I'm always looking for new voices to bring into the congregation.
02:59:15
Speaker
Thanks again for listening to both sides of the badge. Until next time, take care of each other.