In this episode, we discuss the recent events surrounding the death of a police officer in the wake of the George Vellian Floyd shooting, and how we can prevent similar tragedies from happening in the future. We also discuss the need for more police officers to be better trained and equipped with the skills and equipment they need to be able to respond to the increasing number of incidents involving police officers, and the lack of training that is being done in order to prevent them from responding to them in the first place. This episode is brought to you by Cal State Fullerton's Department of Psychology and the Cal State Los Angeles Police Department's Office of Emergency Management and Emergency Response Team, as well as the Department of Public Safety's Tactical Response Team and the Office of Professional Standards, and The Office of the Chief of Police, as they respond to all types of situations involving law enforcement officers and first responders in the aftermath of a shooting involving a police shooting, such as the death or attempted murder of a member of the public officer, and use of deadly force, by a suspect in the case, and what we can do to prevent future incidents like this from happening again. . We are joined by Dr. Nancy DeBaun, a forensic and Police Psychology professor at Cal State, Fullerton, to discuss the events that have occurred since the Floyd's death and what can be done to prevent more of these incidents in the near future. We also hear from J.J. Willink, a former Navy SEAL commander and former commander, to help us address the problem of training and support the police officers in the field. and how they can be better prepared for situations like this in the way the SEALs have been trained to deal with them. , and what they need more effectively to do their day to day lives. ... and much more! Thanks for listening and supporting the podcast, Joe. Thank you, Joe! Thank you for listening, Joe, for your support, and for being a good friend of the force, Joe and Joe, you're a great friend of mine, and I hope you enjoy this podcast, and thank you for being my neighbor, Joe for joining me in this conversation. -Joe and Joe and I appreciate you, I'll see you soon! -Jocko Willink - Thank you Joe, too Joe, and Joe's words of wisdom and support you, too, Joe's thoughts on this podcast and your support.
00:00:30.000So, as you are watching all this play out from the George Floyd murder to where we're at right now, what has this been like for you since this is your field of study?
00:00:48.000You're kind of, for me, caught in between two worlds, it seems.
00:00:53.000I mean, my job is to take care of police officers, so keep them healthy, keep them well, to make sure that they can do a good job doing their jobs.
00:01:03.000And so the first thing I see is, oof, we got a mess on our hands.
00:01:08.000For me, when I see a lot of the videos that end up on TV, my initial reaction is, well, let's have a look.
00:01:14.000Is there something really to be upset about here?
00:01:16.000Well, obviously, in seeing the video of George Floyd's murder, there's a whole lot to be upset about here.
00:01:40.000Even the police don't want bad policing.
00:01:43.000On the other hand, how do we also take care of our officers who are out there who now have to go out and continue doing their jobs in a really difficult and overwhelming environment?
00:01:54.000Yeah, it's such a strange time because on one hand, you got all these people that are calling out for defunding the police.
00:02:01.000And here's a point of view that Ben Shapiro had when he talked about the protests.
00:02:09.000He said, He said, saying they're mostly peaceful protests is like saying OJ Simpson had a mostly peaceful day when he killed Nicole Simpson because he was only violent for a couple minutes.
00:02:22.000The rest of the day, it was mostly peaceful.
00:02:25.000And he's like, that's a good way to describe the protests.
00:02:29.000I think you could also say the same thing about the police department.
00:02:32.000The police department and police officers are mostly good people doing a good job.
00:02:38.000But the problem is when one, out of all these millions of interactions, when one goes bad or there's a bad officer, people see that, they highlight that, and then they say, this is the cops, these are the cops.
00:03:11.000He goes, if I was in control, they would be trained 20% of their time.
00:03:15.00020% of their week would be spent in training.
00:03:17.000De-escalation drills, safety drills, how to handle things if one of your partners is losing his cool.
00:03:24.000All sorts of drills that they should be doing that they do do in the Navy SEALs that they should be doing in the police department as well.
00:03:57.000Because that would mean 20% of the force would be off training and we'd need that many more officers and that many people on duty, you know, to fill in the active roles.
00:04:05.000You know, while that would be a dream, and I think he's right, all those skills that you need, if you're not actively, you know, if you're not actively training and keeping them up to par, they're going to go away.
00:04:18.000But on top of what he said, the piece where I was like, yeah, but let me come in and talk with you too, is that, you know, he thinks like the warrior that he is, you know, Navy SEAL, super tough guy, talking about firearms.
00:04:30.000The firearms training is probably not enough.
00:04:32.000But what's even more so is Especially in today's world and society is that when you look at the makeup of a police academy training, you know, first of all, it's so short.
00:04:48.000But the content of the academy, you know, by far most of that time in training is spent learning laws, learning that kind of textbook of what it is to be a cop and how to function.
00:04:58.000And then the other parts, there's the physical training and the firearms training.
00:05:02.000But if you look at what happens once a police officer gets out there on the job and what they're doing, a huge percentage of it is in communicating.
00:05:15.000You know the example I think of that comes to mind most when I, prior to being at Cal State Fullerton, I was a faculty member at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
00:05:24.000And so in the city we worked, we did some trainings with the NYPD. We had a contract to do de-escalation training.
00:06:29.000And then we would run them through the scenario and we would keep stopping and starting.
00:06:33.000And this interactive, like, hands-on training, by the end of the day, they were like, I learned more today than I learned in the last two months.
00:06:44.000You know, so that whole constant training and giving the skills, not just the firearms and the tactics and the, you know, how to use force properly, but also...
00:06:54.000The communication and dealing with these stressful situations and distressed individuals because that is what they do non-stop, day in and day out.
00:07:04.000Yeah, I know what you're saying when you were talking about how difficult it would be to actually have them train 20% of the time, but I don't think it's difficult enough that we should ignore it.
00:07:17.000Obviously, I'm never going to be in control, but if I was in control, I would say that's how it's got to be.
00:07:25.000I think they need way more people, way better training.
00:07:28.000And I think there also has to be evaluations in terms of, like, how are they dealing with stress?
00:07:34.000Because it's not just how to de-escalate, how to deal with a situation with a possible criminal, but also how are you dealing with the fact that every time you go to work you might get shot?
00:07:47.000You might not ever come home to your family.
00:07:58.000And all those police officers that see that stuff every day, depending entirely upon, and that's one of the things Jaco talked about, their psychological makeup.
00:08:40.000On the opposite hand, you've got somebody who has maybe a less intense or, you know, a less horrific call, and it just puts them over the edge.
00:08:48.000And, you know, from the psychology side, you know, we've studied this.
00:09:09.000There are some things that we know, and obviously, you know, some of them are really logical.
00:09:13.000If you're in a higher state of stress, if you've already got vulnerabilities going in, you're, you know, going through a divorce at home and unhappy on the job and drinking too much outside, and you've got all these other things that are already, you know, festering underneath, and then you also are put in front of that, you know, it's not surprising that maybe that would push somebody over the edge into a really troubling place.
00:09:35.000You know, it's a really hard thing to predict.
00:09:38.000And so instead, we need to be there and be on it.
00:09:41.000And there, I mean, there's so many things I can add in about, you know, how we do that in ways that we're really falling short, which is kind of my passion and where I am these days, in trying to do a much better job of being on, you know, what we would call officer wellness,
00:09:57.000because we've historically done a really shitty job.
00:10:01.000Is there a standard procedure like when someone comes back from say witnessing a murder?
00:10:07.000Is there a standard way that they interact with them across all police departments or is it depending upon the department and what set up the sheriff or the police chief has put in place?
00:10:18.000Yeah, very much depending on the department and what they put in place.
00:10:21.000So when it comes to like the mental health and psychology, the things that we do with departments are, it's very standard these days.
00:10:30.000Like I think the numbers show about 98% of departments do a pre-employment psychological evaluation before they're hired.
00:10:39.000That's what I spend the majority of my time doing, is screening people who are starting the job.
00:10:55.000Some departments require what we would call a critical incident debriefing.
00:11:00.000So some of the agencies that I work with will, if somebody is involved or there's a major incident, every officer who is on scene there We'll come in and do a debriefing with me or with another psychologist to check in afterwards.
00:11:14.000And a lot of that is just, where are they?
00:12:15.000And, you know, again, It varies by department.
00:12:18.000Some of them will then also offer up to four sessions to come back and continue meeting to see them through that kind of early adjustment phase.
00:12:29.000And then if they're still struggling at the point at the end, then we can refer them to longer term for treatment.
00:12:35.000And if everything looks fine, then we say, okay, you know, resume duty or clear to go back.
00:12:40.000So that initial meeting afterwards is mandatory, at least for the departments that choose to do it.
00:12:51.000And then from there, we kind of set the path like, all good, clear, or let's carry on and keep, you know, keep working with you until you can recover.
00:12:59.000Do you support this idea that it should be controlled locally by each individual police department, or do you think there should be a nationwide mandate, like some sort of a standard operational procedure where they treat everyone the same way, train everyone the same way,
00:13:16.000deal with every single murder, suicide, child death, and they have like a protocol that they follow.
00:13:23.000So it's just standard across the country, based on science.
00:14:09.000Let me just go back out there and go to work.
00:14:11.000And the other things that feed into that are, I mean, obviously we know law enforcement, just like military, the culture is very, I'm in control.
00:14:43.000And depending on the psychologist, if they're seeing somebody who is not familiar with law enforcement culture or who is real quick to judge and to jump on the, no, no, we can't have this person out there with a badge and a gun, there's a really delicate line there.
00:15:52.000Maybe he is fine and maybe the guy just has a weird sense of people.
00:15:56.000When you have judgment calls like that, what criteria are they using?
00:16:01.000Are they using just their own personal opinion?
00:16:04.000Do they have to fit a set of guidelines?
00:16:08.000When they say this guy's not fit to go back on the street, he's seen too much, he's too shaken up by this murder scene, how do they make that call?
00:16:17.000So it kind of depends on what scenario you're making that decision.
00:16:22.000And there's two different levels that are most likely.
00:16:25.000So the debriefing is usually – unless the person is completely shaken.
00:17:07.000In the debriefing, we're unlikely to pull into our bag of tests, which, you know, in the other scenarios, big psych evals, we're going to dig into our tests.
00:19:12.000And is it kind of within the realm of what we would expect?
00:19:15.000And do you need any additional supports right now while you're in this sort of immediate short-term aftermath?
00:19:23.000The only times that really I'm likely to say you're not ready to go back are the ones that stand out are when, number one, the officer, him or herself, says, I cannot do this right now.
00:19:49.000Well, total years I've been doing this for about 15, but more recently out here in the last few is kind of what I'm thinking of since I've been doing more than, you know, out of a few hundred.
00:20:04.000Say if there's an officer that can't go back, they say, I just can't handle this right now.
00:20:08.000Maybe they see a horrific child murder or something like that.
00:20:11.000What do they do to get back on track and what assistance does the force offer them?
00:20:18.000So the odds are that even without – in that scenario, if they've been involved in a shooting, and especially being the shooter, they're likely to be on an admin leave anyway while everything's being reviewed because the agency side, you know, the investigations and all the procedures and checks are going on.
00:20:34.000So they're probably not going back out to the street right away anyway while all of that stuff gets cleared.
00:20:40.000They get a few days to – You know, get their wits about them while they're, you know, kind of calming down and recovering from that.
00:20:47.000So, you know, odds are they're not jumping right back out anyway.
00:20:52.000But what happens in that time, you know, if we say, okay, somebody's just not ready, we usually say, let's check back in in a week or two weeks, depending on, you know, I usually will discuss it with them and say, you know what, let's meet again in a week.
00:21:04.000Take the time and then I'll check back in with the agency.
00:21:15.000If they want to come in and continue, if it's an urgent matter, the person's feeling like they might hurt themselves, we're going to continue to see and support and do whatever we need to do to take care of that person.
00:21:56.000That is one of the biggest problems out there.
00:21:59.000I feel like we do an okay job having these debriefings right afterwards because we can monitor, we check back in periodically, and we keep touching base until we're feeling comfortable that the person's good.
00:22:11.000We also, in those debriefings, get to educate them and say, hey, here are, you know, I give them those flyers and say, look, here's what we know.
00:23:40.000So for these cops that are in that situation, so when they say, look, I need to take some time off, you basically just leave them alone and say, if you want these resources, here they are.
00:24:01.000And has this discussion been had, like, nationwide?
00:24:05.000Oh, there's so many good things and pieces of advice and recommendation out there.
00:24:11.000One of the things that's kind of painful right now is, you know, every morning I get a news recap from the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
00:24:20.000They send this email out to all the members of there and they have the psychological services group.
00:24:25.000And so you get these updates and I usually just kind of pass them over.
00:24:29.000But lately with all the police reform, so it's just headlines from around the country.
00:24:33.000And the piecemeal That randomness of this city's doing this and this city's doing this and this city's doing this and it's all over the place.
00:24:43.000That's driving me nuts because I'm like, there's already been groups that have studied and reported and told us what we need to do to help the world of policing rise up and do better.
00:24:54.000That information's out there from wonderful, brilliant people who've come together and have laid it out for us.
00:25:01.000It's there, but yet we don't have that national standard.
00:25:54.000It's hard, I think, to make a one-size-fits-all, everybody must do this, because if you think about it, I think there's about 18,000 different police agencies in the U.S., and I think I read about 50 percent of those have 10 or fewer full-time officers.
00:26:10.000So, you know, when you've got podunk, tiny little town in the middle of, you know, the Midwest in a very rural county that's, you know, that's a whole lot different than LAPD. Right.
00:26:23.000It's hard to have everybody on the same standard and the same expectations when we've got a lot of different makeups for a lot of different departments.
00:26:30.000That said, there are some fundamentals that I think every department should be held to.
00:26:37.000And one of those is the debriefings after an incident.
00:26:40.000And the one that almost no one is doing, that's been talked about for a while, is regular mental wellness checks.
00:26:48.000You know, at this point, you get a psyche vow when you're hired.
00:27:13.000And that is a scary evaluation to have to be a part of.
00:27:17.000Because then you're going in and, yeah, if the psychologist judges and decides that you are not able to go back out, well, then you're off duty until you can fix whatever that problem may be.
00:27:35.000I mean, there clearly are a lot of police officers that are unfit for duty.
00:27:39.000How do we stop what happened in Minneapolis?
00:27:44.000How do we stop that from happening or at least mitigate it?
00:27:49.000So, I mean, again, I see everything through my lens as a psychologist, as a police psychologist.
00:27:54.000So I'm sure there are things beyond my realm that also answer this question.
00:27:59.000But for me, the things that I think we could be doing different that would really make a difference are the regular annual mental wellness checks.
00:28:10.000From my perspective, when I look at people like Derek Chauvin, the officer that murdered George Floyd, and we see what happened there, I would say, I would be willing to guess, and I don't know him.
00:28:35.000To get hired as a cop, you have to go through what often takes a year-long application process where they are digging and poking into every aspect of your background, your life.
00:28:58.000But the vast majority of departments have a similar process in that you're going to go through the application, you have to pass a written test, there's going to be a background investigation, which really I think is a hugely powerful key part.
00:29:13.000That it should be a well-done background investigation.
00:29:16.000You know, they're talking to people who you know, people from your past, your landlord, your ex-wife, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your whoever.
00:29:22.000They have the resources to do that for every single candidate?
00:29:28.000The wide variety of people that I see that have Past their backgrounds, some agencies I work for send me the most amazingly clean candidates, and others that are trying to hire a lot, squeaky clean.
00:29:40.000But they've all gone through, and it has, you know, gone through this background.
00:29:47.000They, you know, they make you list all your tattoos.
00:29:50.000And, you know, so they're looking for.
00:29:52.000And if there is somebody who is just...
00:29:54.000Flagrantly racist has, you know, been out there toting white supremacy.
00:30:00.000Like they're going to see that somewhere in that digging around.
00:30:03.000So the blatant racist folks are likely weeded out during a good background process.
00:30:10.000Let's say maybe they're not as openly because, you know, we all know that people No better than to admit to such things most of the time these days, and it could be more subtle.
00:30:21.000You've got oral interviews with, you know, police administrators, a polygraph, you know, coming along in there.
00:30:27.000And once they pass all of that, That's when they come to the last, they get their conditional offer of employment.
00:30:32.000So they're basically like, as long as you get through these last two steps, you're good to go for the academy.
00:30:37.000And the last two steps are the medical evaluation and the psych eval.
00:30:41.000So by the time we get them, they have been heavily vetted.
00:30:45.000Poked around, you know, and looked through in their past.
00:30:49.000And we get a pretty clean group of people.
00:30:53.000But then we get to do more digging and we get to ask questions at this point that they're not able to ask before.
00:30:58.000So about mental health and background and psychological treatment and history.
00:31:02.000And so, you know, and then if they get through these evaluations, then they go on to the academy.
00:31:08.000So for us, that vetting process, that psych eval is a really important place.
00:31:13.000And I've had a lot of conversations with other psychologists, you know, in the past few months, like, what are we missing?
00:31:19.000I've had, I taught a workshop a couple months ago for other police psychologists on, you know, some of the things we do in these pre-employments and had someone say, how do we screen out the cops who kill?
00:31:36.000We can't because what we're doing here is predicting the future, right?
00:31:40.000Where we're saying, how do we know who is going to be that person who does that later?
00:31:46.000Predicting the future is incredibly hard.
00:31:50.000Figuring out who may be, you know, subtly racist or biased is also incredibly hard.
00:31:57.000So that said, we do a whole lot of things.
00:31:59.000We've got our psychological tests that we give.
00:32:01.000We ask a lot of crafty questions and we dig as deep as we can to try to, again, weed out anyone who we think could potentially become that person down the road who could be a cop who kills or who...
00:32:13.000You know, is racist and biased and is treating people improperly.
00:32:16.000So, you know, that's one big thing that we want to be very cautious and make sure we're doing a good job of screening up front.
00:32:23.000But I would say, and so much more to say about the tests and the screening, but it gets really nerdy and detailed.
00:32:29.000I would say that the officers who end up having the most problems are the ones who, once they get on, are in a department where that is the culture.
00:32:38.000That is, that those types of behaviors are acceptable.
00:32:41.000So as a young officer, they learned that.
00:32:44.000Have you ever seen the documentary, The 7-5?
00:32:48.000It's a great documentary about Michael Dowd, who has been a guest on the podcast.
00:32:52.000He was a terrible cop and talks openly about how he was corrupted and how his first day on the force he witnessed corruption and was told to shut his mouth and further went on to become a drug dealer and robbing drug dealers.
00:33:10.000You would enjoy it, particularly from a psychological perspective because he's talking about it after having served time.
00:33:18.000Showing the images from the time and telling the stories.
00:33:22.000The culture of each individual department is different.
00:33:28.000There's a great video of Flint, Michigan, where these police officers, after the George Floyd death, they show up for these protests and tell these people protesting, we're going to march with you.
00:33:47.000We are police officers, but we are not the person who did that thing, and we wouldn't do that thing, and we want to show you that we support you and that we're here to help.
00:34:02.000And I think that one of the biggest things when we, you know, how do we prevent these issues is we need to look at the individual officer level.
00:34:40.000Is this somebody who has gone into a dangerous place psychologically that they started out and they were fine when we screened them up front?
00:34:48.000But, you know, over 5 or 10 or 15 years, they've seen so much.
00:34:52.000And, you know, there's some – things happen in your brain that change the way you think and see and perceive the world when you do this type of work.
00:35:01.000And when you get to a place where those processes have really taken their toll and somebody has gone down this kind of dark path – It's hard to come out of that.
00:35:12.000And the way they react to the world and the individuals that they see on a daily basis is going to be very different than what they look like when they were hired.
00:35:20.000So if we're not regularly checking in and seeing who might be at risk for going to that dark place, that bitter and angry place, you know, we're not able to catch them before something happens.
00:35:34.000And that's where, you know, for me, my big platform is regular wellness checks.
00:35:38.000I'm not the first one to come up with this idea.
00:35:41.000It's been suggested by task forces and study groups and people who know a whole lot more than I do for a while now.
00:35:48.000But in reading, there was a wonderful report to Congress that was put out by the COPS, which is Community Oriented Policing Services.
00:35:59.000They sent this, like, 60-page report to Congress I think?
00:36:23.000So my next big thing is to go and explore and do that research so that we can show, hey, this does help.
00:36:32.000If we're touching base and we're getting people in, then we can catch the problems as they develop.
00:36:38.000And before they become a major problem where someone's interacting with the community and they go awry and do something awful.
00:36:44.000Let's take care of them along the way and catch the problems before they become behaviors that are problematic.
00:36:53.000There seems to be a lot of discussion now about police brutality, but there's not a lot of discussion about the psychological troubles and the really difficult path of being a police officer and appreciation for the people that have to do that job.
00:37:12.000All this defunding the police talk scares the shit out of me because I see what's going on right now in New York City and it's a goddamn shooting gallery.
00:37:30.000They don't feel like they get any respect.
00:37:31.000They feel like they have all been lumped in With this one murderous cop from Minneapolis, now they're all bad cops, and there's a license to call them bad cops, scream terrible things at them when they've done nothing wrong, when they're just there to protect and serve.
00:37:47.000A lot of them are good people, the vast majority.
00:37:50.000So when you're seeing this giant uptick in murders in New York City, and giant uptick in shootings, and then you still have that dipshit of a mayor calling for the defunding of the police, like, my God, like, what...
00:38:03.000I know so much of the things they say are just political because they just want to appeal to their base and there's so many people out there that have this very narrow-minded perspective.
00:38:14.000They just have blinders on and their ideas like racial justice, social justice, defund the police.
00:38:19.000It's like this mantra that they have to say with no depth to it.
00:38:23.000They don't understand the consequences of saying such a thing or implementing such a thing.
00:38:28.000Now we're seeing A call for police action because there's a lot of people these a lot of community groups a lot of people that are community leaders that are in these communities that are just Experienced unprecedented gun violence and crime and now they're saying we got to do something about this So they're trying to reinstate some of these policies that they had pulled before I'm hoping That through this,
00:38:53.000what we talked about with training and with funding the police more, instead of defunding the police, train them better, fund them more.
00:39:12.000We have an enormous number of people, and out of that enormous number of people, there is a certain percentage of them that will victimize other people.
00:39:20.000They will steal, they will kill, and if they don't get caught, then you develop a culture of crime.
00:39:26.000And then you develop a thing where you basically have what's going on in Mexico.
00:39:32.000Where the cartels have more power than the police, which is a terrible situation.
00:39:37.000If you have that in individual locations like in New York City, if all of a sudden these criminal gangs develop more gun power, more support of the community, they have more people than police officers, you've got a giant problem.
00:39:53.000And the actual peaceful citizens are the ones that are going to be in trouble.
00:39:57.000And all those people that are out there protesting that think they're immune from it because they're the ones saying defund the police, hey man, they'll fucking rob you too.
00:40:06.000Like you don't understand humans and you don't understand violence.
00:40:09.000And so this utopian world that they're trying to push, like defund the police, we're just going to, we're going to refund, we're going to put that money into the community and everything's going to be fine.
00:40:57.000Like this idea that you can't spend 20% of the time training them.
00:41:00.000Well, if you did spend 20% of the time training them, and there was a lot less crime because of it, and the interactions with people were much better, wouldn't that just be overall better?
00:41:19.000And I bet you could find it Financially beneficial.
00:41:23.000I would say overall, if you could reduce crime that way and reduce the animosity between citizens and the police, wouldn't that be better for everybody?
00:41:36.000I mean, on the defunding thing, you know, I think, and you've had other people say this too, and you know this, I'm not saying anything amazing here, that like, it means different things to different people.
00:42:34.000The anger and the frustration because you're right, we don't need bad cops.
00:42:37.000There's nothing worse than the person you call to protect you and to help you when you're in an emergency doing the wrong thing and doing harm.
00:42:48.000And I wholeheartedly agree that more training and the right type of training and spending that time because I also think that the training gives you Access to see where people are and if they are on a good path or if they are that problematic person.
00:43:02.000You see what kind of character they have too if you test them during this training.
00:43:06.000So if we're seeing them on a regular basis and pulling them out and giving them the tools that they need, then absolutely I think that is an exceptional thing to do.
00:43:15.000That was part of what your podcast with Jocko just blew me away with the way he talked about.
00:43:21.000And the other thing that sort of has gotten lost is this whole idea of You know, the interaction with the community, with community-oriented policing.
00:43:30.000You know, and it's exactly what Jocko was talking about when he was talking about being overseas and I think he was talking about Petraeus and the order of, you know, you don't just roll up in your tank and cruise through.
00:43:40.000You stop and you talk and you humanize yourself and you engage with these, you know, with the folks here and you let them know that you're here to protect and to serve and you connect with them.
00:43:51.000And that helps both the community citizens and the soldiers.
00:43:55.000That's the same thing that we're wanting here at home in this country, that your police are supposed to be your supporters and your resources and the people that you trust and are connected to.
00:44:06.000And that is what community-oriented policing is.
00:44:13.000But we somehow still don't have that going on now.
00:44:17.000It's still, well, what seems like everything in society is now it's us versus them.
00:44:22.000It's the police versus the community instead of we are a community together and we need to work with each other to keep this place safe and to understand what the biggest problems are, what are the citizens' concerns.
00:44:41.000I go to a tactical range where they teach you how to shoot handguns, and the guy who teaches me was telling me, you would be stunned at how inept some of these cops are that come here.
00:44:57.000He goes, they literally barely know how to shoot a gun.
00:45:01.000And I wouldn't believe him, except I've seen so many cops that are so fat and so sloppy.
00:45:09.000And I'm like, how are you going to defend yourself?
00:45:12.000Like, the idea of you serving and protecting.
00:45:15.000Like, dude, if someone throws you on the ground, you're not even getting up.
00:45:20.000How do they not have standards for being able to shoot a gun, knowing how to handle it properly, being accurate, being consistent with your training, and also physical fitness?
00:45:32.000The job of a police officer is dealing occasionally with violent criminals.
00:45:37.000When you have no capacity to defend yourself, How are you able to help people?
00:45:45.000If you're in a situation where something turns physical, if you have no ability to defend yourself physically other than firearms, a situation that could be de-escalated turns into a violent encounter because you have to shoot someone.
00:46:00.000So, a couple of things that come to mind.
00:46:05.000Police officers do get annual firearms training.
00:46:07.000They do have to pass, in most places, an annual physical fitness test.
00:46:12.000And you're saying, you know, already you're seeing people who are out of shape and overweight and physically not in great condition, and you're seeing people who can't shoot well.
00:47:39.000And when you do, it should be few and far between because there are other ways to manage situations.
00:47:46.000That's lethal force, and then we've got a variety of non-lethal force, whether it's something physical, hand-to-hand kind of thing, or whether it's a taser or baton or whatever else they may be using or having on their hands.
00:48:05.000So hopefully, you know, that the continuum is set from verbal de-escalation, communication.
00:48:13.000When that doesn't work and it's still a danger, then, you know, there are certain criteria.
00:48:17.000And obviously, officers are taught their continuum of force and what needs to be necessary to move up that level with deadly force, you know, or lethal force being the highest.
00:48:28.000So it's so rare that That to me, there's so much else that comes before that, that if we're doing a good job, that almost is never an issue because these other tools work better.
00:49:36.000If you are a master, you know, they like to call verbal judo, if you can talk someone down, if you are a master at de-escalation, You are never going to need these other tools.
00:49:47.000Maybe not never, but you are very rarely going to need any, you know, the less lethal force or the least lethal force because you are managing situations.
00:49:55.000If you suck at these, you need these a lot.
00:49:59.000So for me, because I, you know, deal with communication and deal with, you know, de-escalation and how to talk someone down, how to talk to an individual with a mental illness, how to talk to somebody who's a victim or has been traumatized, how to talk to somebody who's maybe on drugs and not able to, you know, How do we manage those situations with verbal,
00:50:18.000with interactions, with communication, so that we don't have to go up the chain of command of levels of force?
00:50:26.000But that seems to me to be an incredible amount of training that must be necessary.
00:50:30.000And it also has to be constant and consistent.
00:50:46.000And again, I'm sure it depends on what academy they go through.
00:50:48.000Some academies are four months, some are six, some less longer, you know, and the makeup depends on who's running that academy as to like the breakdown of, you know, how much is in the classroom, how much is physical, how much is tactical.
00:51:00.000So I'm not sure what the numbers would be on that.
00:51:02.000Andrew Yang, a presidential candidate, he had an awesome idea.
00:51:08.000He said every person who is in the police force should be a purple belt in jujitsu or higher.
00:51:12.000And I think that is a really good idea because at that level, you have a real understanding of how to defend yourself and how to control bodies.
00:51:22.000I saw a video, I've seen quite a few of them, but one of the more pathetic videos I've ever seen was two people trying to hold one guy down completely ineptly.
00:51:30.000The guy gets up, runs, gets into his car, and shoots both of them, and then takes off.
00:52:25.000So they need to be trained to recognize that that's what's going to happen too.
00:52:31.000And to be psychologically prepared that this is part of what it is.
00:52:35.000I remember the first time I went on a ride along with someone and thinking, This feels so much different than what I thought it would feel like.
00:52:43.000First of all, everybody stares at you and is looking at you and you're just standing out no matter where you go because you're in the patrol car.
00:52:54.000My first one was decades ago in North Carolina.
00:52:57.000I had a police officer for a roommate who took me out for the very first time.
00:53:02.000And on my first ride-along, it was nighttime, just tedious, boring, a couple of low-level arrests, but just the way people respond and react really just felt so much different than I thought.
00:53:15.000And then I went out again a while later and I saw a dead body and had all sorts of weird experiences on that one.
00:53:22.000Just the difference from shift to shift to the adrenaline excitement or something scary or overwhelming happens and then the, you know, just tedious and monotonous shift.
00:53:33.000There's so much unpredictability and uncontrollability that you do sort of need to be alert and on and ready.
00:53:42.000And part of that is what does a number on an officer's mental health.
00:53:47.000I would imagine also the current state of the way people are treating police officers has got to be devastating.
00:55:00.000It's so outrageously awful what happened.
00:55:03.000And to watch that, you know, it was the video.
00:55:05.000We all got a first-hand look at something hideous and scary.
00:55:14.000So I think the video, I mean, you literally saw a man lose his life and that was traumatizing for anybody who saw it.
00:55:20.000I'm sure the pandemic and everyone being shut down and restless and all the, you know, effects of that mentally and psychologically on all of us, you know, just sort of the unrest of that combined with the horror of what happened.
00:55:34.000There's also the guy who got shot in Georgia.
00:58:19.000Did they just said, well, we never thought he was going to kill somebody.
00:58:22.000We just thought he was rough, but he was a good cop otherwise.
00:58:26.000Like, is that how they're looking at it?
00:58:27.000Like, how does a guy like that get to a place where, you know, when you go back and look at his complaints, and this guy was one of the reasons why Amy Klobuchar was kind of tanked as being a vice presidential possibility, because she was in control back when this guy was doing this,
00:58:45.000and they said, well, they were connected to her.
00:58:51.000Obviously, I don't work in Minneapolis.
00:58:54.000I don't know what was going on in their department.
00:58:55.000But just from the things I've read and heard, you know, media, which I always take with a grain of salt because you never know what you're getting, is that he'd had multiple prior incidents, multiple prior shootings.
00:59:20.000That may or may not be enough for me to say, hey, what's going on?
00:59:23.000And that depends on what were the complaints.
00:59:25.000You know, citizen complaints happen all the time, right?
00:59:28.000So just seeing that someone's had a complaint, you know, you could give someone a parking ticket and they think you're an asshole and so they call up and complain they treated me unfairly.
00:59:37.000When you look back at, you know, if there's body cam footage or whatever, and it's a perfectly normal stop, but that person just pissed off because they got a ticket.
00:59:43.000So a complaint can be something very substantial and very real and problematic, or it could be one of these that complaints come at, citizens' complaints come all the time.
00:59:53.000How do you feel about the other cops that were on the scene that were there with him?
00:59:58.000I can't understand how one wouldn't intervene and say, okay, that's enough.
01:00:08.000It sounded like it because I know they said two of the guys were pretty new on the job.
01:00:12.000And the other one, the one that you can see kind of standing in front, had also been on the force for a while.
01:00:16.000But I don't know which of the two had been on longer.
01:00:19.000The way the culture is, the two that were new, if they saw him do that, is that a thing that they can say?
01:00:30.000If you're a new guy, and you've been on the job for a couple months, and there's a guy who's been on the job for 20 years, and you see him doing something, is it your place?
01:00:40.000I understand it's your place as a human being.
01:00:44.000It is a paramilitary environment where if someone is your superior, it is very hard to speak out against that person.
01:00:51.000So that is definitely a problem and something to act out.
01:00:57.000And the culture in the department would be, yeah, if that's somebody who either is a higher rank than you or who's been on longer, especially if they're brand new and that's like their field training officer, you're not going to step in and tell them not to do that.
01:01:17.000So if you are shit out of luck and your superior officer is a psychopath and he's doing something like that, if he doesn't kill that person and there's no complaint, what recourse does that person have?
01:02:02.000One of the interesting reforms that lots of folks are talking about in some cities are passing is this requirement for other officers to say something.
01:02:13.000There's a lot of these piecemeal reforms that kind of make me go, like, okay, it's fine, but I don't know if that's going to make much change.
01:02:19.000This one makes me stop and think and I wonder if maybe it will.
01:02:25.000I see it could go both ways where it could be something that's helpful if there's a safe mechanism for people to report.
01:02:35.000But, you know, in that situation, you know, thinking about the George Floyd situation, you know, if two of those officers had said, hey, you need to back off, and again, still, if they're inferior to him, you know, what are the odds that he's not going to tell them,
01:02:53.000you know, screw you, like, I'm superior to you, you back off, and And then tell everybody else also on the force and then it becomes… And then they're the snitch and they're the weasel and whatever else.
01:03:05.000And so it's really these – the idea I think is a great one.
01:03:10.000Let's put this law in place that you have to report it or to intervene if you see something.
01:03:16.000But I just wonder how that will look as it plays out.
01:03:20.000And you can't have a divide among people that you have to work that closely together and you have to rely on to protect you, you know, to have your back.
01:03:44.000The only thought that folks had, especially when body cams were first becoming the thing and tons of departments were You know, we're starting to use them as people thought that kind of, you know, Big Brothers watching feeling.
01:03:55.000You know, if we know we're on camera, we're going to be on our best behavior and that we're going to always do the right thing.
01:04:01.000And I'm sure there is some element of that.
01:04:56.000And one of the things I've heard people talk about with body cam footage is having, you know, sort of that oversight committee to regularly review footage.
01:05:03.000In fact, you'd be reviewing eight hours a day all day long.
01:09:26.000But the combination of the defunding as well as the tanking economy, you know, some of the departments that I work for, you know, the money that comes into that city or that town to support the department, you know, the financial crisis that's going on from the pandemic,
01:09:42.000you know, so a few of the agencies that I work for are like, yeah, we don't anticipate hiring in maybe the next two to three years.
01:09:51.000So, and that's partly, you know, and some, it's not a defunding thing issue.
01:09:55.000It's just, it's the financial crisis from the pandemic.
01:10:08.000So we're all suffering right now because of the financial crisis that's going on from this COVID crap.
01:10:13.000But in addition, then you've got that plus the COVID stuff.
01:10:17.000And I mean, you've got departments who are going to be really strapped for being able to hire.
01:10:25.000And then, like you said, who wants to go into this job now?
01:10:29.000In fact, when I do these, I'm still doing some evaluations right now.
01:10:33.000And the question that I start off is, why do you want to do this?
01:10:37.000Given the current climate, you know, what makes you want to be an officer?
01:10:42.000Just to hear what their thoughts are, you know, and to sort of get into their mind a little bit on what is it that makes you want to do this.
01:10:50.000Because really, you've got to be second-guessing your options here at this point, because it's not an easy time to be a cop.
01:10:59.000What if I gave you a magic wand, or the president did, and the president said, look, Nancy, we've got a real problem.
01:11:43.000If I could just take over and make all the changes.
01:11:48.000Honestly, I would take the advice of the amazing people who have done a ton of work already.
01:11:55.000In, you know, about five years ago, there was a task force put together, you know, recommendations for what should 21st century policing look like.
01:12:03.000And they lay out in a, you know, like 170 page document What policing should look like.
01:12:10.000And this really amazingly brilliant group of people came up with some excellent advice.
01:12:16.000And it talks about racism and it talks about technology and it talks about community-oriented policing and it talks about wellness and all the things that I see that are missing.
01:12:27.000It's been sitting there for five years.
01:12:29.000And not to say that nothing has happened since then, but we certainly haven't enacted what that task force put together and what they recommended back then.
01:12:40.000Take that and all the other great work.
01:13:01.000It's satisfying to say, yes, there's change.
01:13:04.000But I'm also really concerned about whether some of these random haphazard changes are going to make any different for these real, real problems.
01:13:14.000But yet we've had these brilliant groups that have laid out what we need to do, that report to Congress from back in March of 2009 on officer wellness.
01:13:23.000What I would do if I got the magic wand and all the money is I... Again, psychologist lens for me is I would sit down with that and there were 22 recommendations in that report and I would work my way through making these recommendations become mandates across the board.
01:13:39.000And this is a big battleship that's going to take a long time to turn.
01:14:26.000We roll our eyes and then I stop and think and reflect on it and think, you know, If these problems were simple, with all the brilliant people in the world, we would have solved them already.
01:15:19.000There's a lot of problems in this world, and there's not clear-cut solutions.
01:15:24.000And the problem of law enforcement, to me, is akin to the problem of education, in that there's not a lot of money in it, but it's an incredibly important part of the world.
01:15:33.000Incredibly important part of our society.
01:15:35.000But yet the people that do it don't get paid well.
01:15:39.000Some police officers can make a really good living if they do a lot of overtime.
01:16:04.000Honestly, the best description of what happens mentally, how the mental state of an officer can get off track over time, was written in a book.
01:16:45.000When you're on the job and as a police officer, you've got to live in this state of hypervigilance.
01:16:50.000Like you're on, you're alert, you're looking around, you're always ready and, you know, sort of energized, a little bit of adrenaline flowing.
01:17:08.000And then when they come off the job, it dips down.
01:17:11.000But instead of going back into that like middle zone, the normal zone where most of us are functioning, you know, kind of going about normal level of energy, they dip down below because once you've been on that high, kind of that rush while you've been on the job, your body needs to recover.
01:18:31.000It sort of just wears on you over time.
01:18:33.000The other thing it does that, you know, cops are notorious for having kind of trouble functioning at home if they're working too much and they're so into it, that on...
01:19:04.000And so this is—I love Gil Martin's book for this, and I've recommended it to any officer that I've come across if they haven't read it because it really beautifully explains this cycle and kind of what it does over time.
01:19:16.000And he also goes on to recommend, well, you know, how do you—and the long and short of it is at the end, if you stay in that and you lose too much of your personal self— You become that burned out, bitter, angry, going to snap and, you know, and do some make a bad decision kind of place.
01:19:51.000If you have a family and kids, you do things with your children, you have to get back into the real world so you remember that the real world is out there.
01:20:01.000Because if you are only in that state where all you're seeing is the things that cops see, which is negativity and stress and horror and trauma and angry people and hurt people and victimized people, if that's all you're seeing and you're spending all your life in that state,
01:20:17.000you forget what happens on the outside.
01:20:20.000And I think it's really hard to understand from the outside looking in.
01:20:25.000And I've told millions of people this story that I got a little bit, a little bit of a taste of it from my years when I was before I went into the academic route and I was working in the prisons and forensic hospitals.
01:20:39.000And so here's maximum security setting.
01:20:42.000You know, being a young, small female in a maximum security setting, I'm surrounded by offenders who are mentally ill.
01:22:00.000My brain has started to go into a place where, because every day I had to steal up, get tough, be ready for anything, have eyes in the back of my head, because I was working in a really dangerous setting at that time, and I had to protect myself.
01:22:16.000After that, I stopped working in the prisons, and I softened back up and came back to a normal state of functioning where I can turn it on or off depending on if I need to.
01:22:26.000But it really was telling to me to see how much your daily persona can shift when that's your day-to-day functioning.
01:22:35.000So that Gilmartin stuff with the waves and the hypervigilance and the recovery and the more people start to become their police self more and more and lose their personal self, it's a really important thing for officers to be aware of and to track and to monitor.
01:22:54.000The best of the cops that I know, and I know a lot of really good ones, but I think of a few that stand out who I just simply adore as humans and are really wonderful officers.
01:23:17.000They They have a real personal life that they hang onto that balances out what they see and the negativity that comes at them constantly in their day job.
01:23:27.000That's just not something that most of us have to deal with in our daily lives.
01:23:34.000And that's, you know, those mental health checks that I push so hard for and that I really want to get going and to study and figure out how can we do these well.
01:23:43.000Can check in on that stuff and to help stop that cycle, help to get people into a healthier place so that they don't become bitter and jaded and angry and more likely to be the bad apple, as we like to say.
01:23:56.000Yeah, the description of that cycle is so important for people to recognize that, you know, even though some human beings might be better at managing things, it's like there's an actual physical thing that's going on.
01:24:09.000And when I meet with cops after an incident or, you know, if they're coming in, that's the first place I go because it feels so comforting to know this isn't me being weak or me losing it.
01:24:20.000This is something physiological that's going on, you know.
01:24:24.000Don't you think that a lot of these cops are tempted to do overtime just because the money's so great?
01:24:46.000You know, some overtime is fine, but if that's all you're doing, and if you're doing it, this is probably a really important key, if you're doing it to avoid being at home, Because being on the job is the only place you feel functional and alive and good.
01:25:03.000If you're doing it because, you know, you're trying to make extra money to get that, you know, to take your family on a trip, summer vacation or whatever, absolutely, like, do it.
01:25:12.000Get that extra money because that's great.
01:25:14.000But if you're doing it because that's the only place you feel alive and on an alert...
01:25:57.000I'm going to implement nationwide requirements for screening and mental health and well-being.
01:26:05.000I'm going to get Jocko on board next to me to develop training programs.
01:26:10.000I'm going to team up with him and we're going to recreate the world of training together.
01:26:14.000And we're going to do more training, all the stuff that we need, and to get people who are actually Healthy, well, physically fit as well as emotionally and mentally healthy, and well-equipped to do their job.
01:26:31.000And not just on the tactical side, but on the communication side, de-escalation, communication, how to talk to people who are victims, what to do, all those things in a training package so that You know, the academies, they do a good job.
01:26:46.000I don't want, you know, to think that they don't, but that police academies tend to do things in the same way like that the courts do.
01:26:54.000They do what's always been done because that's what we know and that's what works.
01:26:57.000And to have a joint A joint planning of training where it's not just this is what we do, so this is what we'll keep doing, but to pull in the academic piece as well and to say, hey, yeah, but we've been doing all this research and there's actually a better way, so let's implement this now.
01:27:14.000And so just to really update and refresh what that academy training and the ongoing throughout your career training looks like.
01:27:23.000Training, on the job, take care of our officers, and to put in place all of these recommendations, these specific level recommendations on how do we actually get in there and take care of folks.
01:27:39.000There's so much that we can do that could make a big difference.
01:27:45.000And there's got to be something done to push back against this idea that we have right now, weaponized this idea of defunding the police, that the police are evil, that the police having money is the problem.
01:28:08.000And to abandon them or to treat them like anything other than members of our community and very important members of our community is so short-sighted and so crazy and done by people that I don't think understand psychology.
01:28:20.000I don't think they understand violence.
01:28:50.000I mean, when people talk about defunding along the lines of take some of that money and put it into communities, like that piece of it could be, if done well, beneficial.
01:29:06.000I don't know that needs to necessarily take from the cops, but to take to really pay more attention to our communities and what they're needing.
01:30:01.000So they became mental health clinicians, social workers, domestic violence, all of that stuff.
01:30:08.000So if defunding the police means putting money into social services and helping these folks in a way that makes it so that the police officers don't have to do those jobs anymore...
01:30:20.000I'm alright with that and I think most of the cops are because I've spent half my career on this side of police psychology stuff training folks how to talk to people with mental illness so they don't end up shooting them, right?
01:30:32.000I think there certainly should be cops that are designated to deal with those specific types of situations.
01:30:38.000People have found amazing ways around it to work on it.
01:30:40.000We've developed what we call crisis intervention teams.
01:30:43.000You know, this came out of the 80s in Memphis that, you know, this CIT thing where we have cops and clinicians that go out together.
01:30:50.000But I don't know any clinician that wants to do that by themselves.
01:30:55.000So if you defund the police and everyone says, yeah, you know, if it's a domestic violence call, send a therapist out.
01:31:10.000I might go there if there's an armed person with me and I'll try to, you know, to do, but like as a team, but you're going to send me into a potentially violent, dangerous situation where you've got two people going.
01:31:22.000Again, it's a utopian perspective on a very complicated problem.
01:31:40.000Folks that I know in New York, that training program I talked about earlier, the cops that worked on that who decided, you know what, retirement is the right thing for me right now.
01:32:00.000Yeah, it's very unsettling and overwhelming and to see how rather than, you know, trying to come in and figure out how to improve what we've got, it's like...
01:32:11.000It just doesn't make sense to throw our hands up and say, okay, get rid of it, because what's the plan B? Again, it's a politicized perspective.
01:32:27.000I have a friend who got COVID, and when he went to the doctor, the doctor tested him, found out COVID, and said, I don't know what your political leanings are.
01:33:30.000That a pandemic is politicized and that whether or not one would – that a physician would ask you what your political leanings are to prescribe you something.
01:33:39.000That is a place that – I just can't wrap my head around as to how we've ended up here.
01:33:44.000Well, too many of our ideas are being discussed in social media form where there's no one-on-one interaction with human beings, no compassion, no recognizing that the other person's an actual human.
01:33:58.000When you ask that dream magic wand question, my, you know, I gave kind of my practical answer.
01:34:04.000You know, I would take these recommendations and do all of these community policing wellness.
01:34:07.000But my dream answer, in my fantasy world, where I'm an all-powerful being, I would...
01:34:35.000So in my fantasy world where I have all power and I spend all of my existence bringing people from opposing sides together and making them sit like we are now, looking at each other as humans and to say...
01:36:39.000You've got a whole group of things here.
01:36:42.000This is the academic nerd in me as I was planning.
01:36:46.000We've talked about a lot of the things on there.
01:36:51.000Is there anything we didn't cover that you think is important that people need to recognize?
01:36:56.000You know, the only thing, like, from my perspective that comes up that I think about is, you know, when we're looking for who becomes a police officer, you know, we as psychologists, we're really important gatekeepers because we kind of give the final seal of approval before someone gets hired.
01:37:14.000And there's been some really interesting discussions about what should we look for in today's culture and with all the issues going on now.
01:38:48.000And basically it's saying the whole premise is if you have these associations.
01:38:54.000You know, if you have a bias like against black folks, then what they do during the test is they flash up like a picture of white and black people and then positive and negative words.
01:39:04.000And you have to respond according to instructions for keystrokes.
01:39:08.000And the notion is if you associate, you know, a black, if you have a negative bias towards black folks, you're going to associate the black faces with the negative words.
01:39:34.000And that's exactly kind of the point that I thought was important to me, because you hear a lot about this and people are like, well, give that.
01:39:40.000I'm like, well, there's some major problems.
01:39:41.000First of all, from testing standards, you can take it twice and you're probably going to score differently.
01:41:16.000But they're trying really hard to implement this into the world of police work because it's kind of one of the only things going, right?
01:41:24.000And for me, I'm not as on this bandwagon yet.
01:41:27.000I need to see a whole lot more evidence that this works because while I have seen research that shows it's possible to change your implicit bias, I have not seen anything that directly applies to police work.
01:41:47.000But the problem that I see that makes me most nervous about it or reluctant to kind of jump on board here is that it takes a lot of effort.
01:41:57.000It takes, you know, desire and practice and effort and to make those kind of changes.
01:42:04.000And I just, you know, you've probably never worked for a company where you've been required to go to a diversity training.
01:42:11.000I've been to probably a dozen at this point over the course of my career.
01:43:37.000I think it's just they try to, or at least a lot of the groups that have put them on, try to make it very broad so it'll fit a wide audience that they deliver it to, but it becomes so broad that it just feels like...
01:44:19.000You know, when I think of the ones that I've been to that were done well, they explained, you know, the process of sort of exploring one's thoughts and feelings.
01:44:29.000It was not so much accusatory, but, you know, here are some of the things that folks who are really interested can do.
01:44:37.000And, you know, you can't, you know, and here are some people who are doing good work and they, you know, show different news stories of people who are You know, who have come along, gone from, you know, being somebody who maybe had problems before with, you know, having, you know, bias or even overt racist acts and that they've learned some things and made changes.
01:44:56.000And so you kind of see someone's progress and they talk about theory behind how people come to identify, you know, With, you know, their cultural background and self.
01:45:06.000You know, we've all got some makeup there and what those sort of stages look like.
01:45:11.000And, you know, much deeper and moving far away from the Just generalizations and stereotyping in this group and that group and all that.
01:45:23.000I just feel like trying to fix that in a seminar or any – it just seems so silly.
01:45:30.000I mean – and if somebody really does want to dig deep and explore and – You know, to move forward in terms of exploring and becoming aware of, you know, it's deep work.
01:46:05.000You know, and in terms of like screening and whatnot like I do, we're in a tough place because, you know, we don't have any tests that detect bias.
01:46:20.000It's almost an impossible thing because these are things that tend to be more subtle and less overt and hard to directly measure in the way we do in psychology.
01:46:32.000What else you got in that paper that we didn't go over already?
01:47:05.000Weird to hear your own voice in your ears?
01:47:07.000Totally weird to hear my own voice in my ears.
01:47:09.000I'm used to hearing my own voice, but more like in a classroom with Students who are hiding behind laptops falling asleep while I talk at them, but talking into a microphone with heads on and a headset on and knowing lots of voices are listening.
01:47:24.000I think the most important thing that we talked about other than the nonsense of defunding the police is this psychological aspect of the pressure and the high stress and then the amount of downtime that a human being requires to sort of come back to normal and that these cops really never get that.
01:47:42.000Yeah, I feel like that is one of the most important things I wanted to share and get out there.
01:47:48.000So, you know, if there are cops out there listening and they're like, oh, wow, I felt that or I'm there, go get that book and read it.
01:48:22.000We've been under stress before, you know, maybe in a not so great place for whatever reason, just the jobs wearing on them or they've been in a major incident and they're still recovering from that and then combine that with just this pervasive anti-cop and all of that,
01:48:37.000that that really could push people into a dark place.
01:48:50.000So the rate, well, in terms of like percentages, it's almost impossible to give a good number because it depends on what your comparison group is.
01:49:00.000I know in 2018, I think there were recorded, known, about 172 suicides.
01:49:08.000And then in 2019, it was up to like 228. And I'm scared to know what 2020 might look like given all the other hardships of the world.
01:49:16.000Well, just suicide in general is way up right now.
01:49:19.000Suicide in general is high, so I can only imagine.
01:49:20.000And there's a little bit of argument depending on what stats you look at as to how much higher it is in the police profession compared to the community.
01:49:29.000So different, you know, people can make stats say a lot of different things.
01:49:32.000It's generally been accepted that it's a good bit higher for police.
01:49:36.000It's one of the professions that has the highest suicide rate.
01:49:41.000So like one of the numbers quoted out there like for the general population it's about 12 or 13 per 100,000 people would commit suicide and for police officers it's more like 17 or 18 people out of 100,000 so We see differences in the rates.
01:49:58.000And again, all that stuff we talked about before feeds into that tough culture, not going to ask for help.
01:50:04.000And one of, I think, the most interesting things, interesting and frustrating for me, is that of the other psychologists I've talked to that have worked with agencies, I'm like, how do we get in there and break down that barrier?
01:51:00.000And that is the biggest problem with officers is that they will suffer in silence and they will go every other which way.
01:51:07.000It turns into depression or they have PTSD or they're using substances to cope with the difficulties and all the other things that compound on there.
01:51:16.000That what's the best way to Get them into the office so we can help them.
01:51:22.000And a great line—and now I'm going to blank, and I'm so sorry for whoever it was I'm stealing this from, but another psychologist said what she's like, you got to be like the furniture.
01:52:11.000So things that have been suggested, you know, have a one day a month, have, you know, the docs in the office there and anybody's free to come in and ask questions or talk.
01:53:02.000And they probably don't want to be police psychologists then because you kind of got to – you got to at least have an appreciation if not an affinity for that.
01:53:13.000There's always been something about it that's fascinating and that has drawn me in to say, you know what, this is just – This is just a stupid hard job.
01:53:23.000And the people who do it work so hard and put so much of themselves into it.