Are Police Academies Failing Cops? | Dennis Benigno | Ep. 450

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Episode 450: Are Police Academies Failing Cops? | Guest: Dennis Benigno

Release date: May 27, 2026
Host: Andy Stumpf
Guest: Dennis Benigno, founder of Street Cop Training

Episode Overview

In this rich, wide-ranging conversation, Andy Stumpf welcomes former officer and police training entrepreneur Dennis Benigno. The episode centers on the argument that traditional police academies are not adequately preparing officers for the challenges of modern law enforcement, both in terms of tactical proficiency and constitutional responsibility. Dennis draws on personal experience, three different academy graduations, extensive law enforcement service, and the adversity he’s faced as an outspoken reformer. The discussion also explores the resistance to change found in many law enforcement leadership structures, offers insight into the politics of police training, and highlights the crucial difference between checking boxes and true readiness for the realities police face.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Argument: Police Academies Are Failing Officers

• Box-Checking vs. True Preparation (08:14, 09:44):

  • Dennis describes police academies as modeled on military boot camps, rooted in outdated methods, and designed to check administrative boxes rather than convey real, actionable skills:

    "The whole system of how it's built is one big box-checking. And box-checking costs people their lives. That's a massive problem." (08:14, Dennis)

  • He notes graduates often lack practical skills—especially in constitutional law, safe tactics, and communication.

• Lack of Standardization & Expertise (111:17):

  • Police academies often rely on instructors who are not true experts in their subject matter:

    "I have seen people walk in, take a USB drive, stick it in the computer and just be like, 'All right, so what are we learning today?'" (111:27, Dennis)

• Ongoing Failure to Adopt Proven Methods (72:22, 79:45):

  • Many departments resist incorporating evidence-based, life-saving tactics (e.g., Jiu-Jitsu, better vehicle stop protocols), often until after tragedy strikes.

2. Systemic Resistance, Bureaucracy, and Lack of Accountability (10:23, 13:37)

• Bureaucratic Inertia:

  • Change is hampered by leaders who are "job-holders, not entrepreneurs." They lack incentive or flexibility to innovate or fix problems.
  • Dennis:

    "People with jobs don't innovate, they don't change things, they don't fix things... Most people who are in this game for the reasons you just said would agree with what I just said." (13:37)

• Lack of Accountability:

  • Supervisors/managers rarely receive meaningful performance reviews, while line officers face scrutiny for inevitable mistakes born of inadequate training.

    "How come once you make sergeant, nobody else gets reviews ever again? How come the cops aren't reviewing their supervisors?" (67:13, Dennis)

• False Security in the Status Quo:

  • Departments may be uncaring about lawsuits or poor performance because it’s not their money at stake.

    "They get paid no matter what... it's not their money." (15:54, Dennis)

3. Dennis’s Journey: Outspoken Reform, Political Fallout, and Resilience

• Political Targeting (18:55 onward):

  • After inviting a politically controversial speaker to his training conference, Dennis became the subject of a long, coordinated political and media attack—resulting in professional isolation, lawsuits, and intense personal struggles.
  • The experience ultimately made him more committed to reform and developed his empathy:

    "I guess pain is subjective ... but subjectively, it was brutal." (39:28, Dennis) "Survival is progress. Doesn't mean you've got to be doing things. You don't have to cut the grass, let it grow an extra day. Just find yourself the ability to be here, and you don't have to be present. Just, let's not go that other route." (41:37, Dennis)

• Peer and Public Support (43:28):

  • Unexpected figures in law enforcement (like Sherriffs Mark Lamb, Wayne Ivey) supported him. Most peers, however, vanished in crisis.
  • Dennis takes solace in direct feedback from officers who credit his training with saving their lives or preventing suicide (see powerful conference story, 51:54–57:16).

4. Effective Training: What’s Missing and What Works

• What’s Lacking? (59:32, 63:25)

  • Standardized, actionable knowledge in:
    • Constitutional law (especially Fourth Amendment search and seizure)
    • Tactics truly suited for routine field situations, not demonstrations
    • Emotional intelligence, communication, and de-escalation
    • Compassionate, realistic officer wellness and self-care
    • Physical standards and realistic scenario training

• Successful Models and Solutions (113:48):

  • Dennis strongly advocates digital training platforms that can deliver consistent, expert-led content to agencies nationwide, bypassing local limitations:

    "At some point, it's arguably going to be better to have a digital academy inside the academy... The answer to fix it as we speak is at some point everybody's going to have to agree that it's probably better to play these videos on this big screen... they're flawlessly accurate." (112:40–113:48, Dennis)

• Example: Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) (85:53):

  • Dennis describes FLETC as eons ahead of standard local academies, especially in driver training, modern firearms, and employing true subject-matter experts.

5. Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• On the Value of Non-Permissive Environments:

  "If you think you can make something better, try to make it better. It's not going to be easy to make it better, and you can't always ask permission to make it better. But if it's important to make it better, just make it better." (146:49, Dennis)

• Impact on Individual Lives:

  "...I was going to kill myself. I actually bought a gun just to do it. I wasn't telling anybody ... after I heard you talk on stage, I walked outside and I called my wife, and I checked myself into a clinic ..." (55:54, from an officer's email to Dennis)

• On Officer Fitness & Physical Standards:

  "I've seen cops that are 450 pounds... Because there's nobody else. Because they work in the middle of nowhere... I made a joke in class ... 'what's the worst thing that happens with you guys? The pursuit?' The response was, 'We don't have to run. There's nowhere to run to. We just follow them in the truck...'" (129:22–129:59, Dennis)

• On the Limits of Tools ("Baton" example):

  "The only people who like the batons are the baton instructors, because it gives them some validity in this world because there's really breadcrumbs... If I am wrong, I will submit and listen to the conversation. I'm very careful when I speak." (133:09+, Dennis)

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment / Quote | |-----------|-----------------| | 05:43 | Dennis defines his "space": police training products & thought leadership | | 08:14 | Why police academies use outdated, militaristic, box-checking methods | | 13:37 | On resistance and lack of change in police leadership | | 15:54 | Lawsuits & lack of accountability in admin | | 18:55–36:25 | Political repercussions from inviting controversial speakers; Dennis's personal/professional low | | 41:37 | "Survival is progress..." on surviving adversity | | 51:54–57:16 | Story: Officer saved from suicide after Dennis’s conference | | 59:32 | Shortcomings of advanced/basic police academy curricula | | 63:25 | Deep dive into constitutional law teaching, especially Fourth Amendment | | 79:45 | On tragic consequences before policy change ("death precedes reform") | | 98:00 | Importance of communicating with respect, not bravado, as a cop | | 111:17–114:30| Vision for digital, expert-led, standardized national police training | | 119:08 | Essential life-saving tactics: medical, water rescue, tourniquet anecdotes | | 125:12 | On the necessity and challenge of officer physical fitness | | 130:41 | Amusing but alarming look at NYPD agility test video | | 146:49 | Final message: "If you think you can make something better, try to make it better." |

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Additional Insights & Analysis

The Human Side of Law Enforcement Leadership

• Dennis details the mental toll of isolation—personally and professionally—when institutions and colleagues turn on reformers.

Cops vs. Criminals vs. the Public

• The episode refreshingly pushes for empathy and mutual understanding: both for officers confronting daily risk without adequate training, and for civilians who have their own lived experiences with law enforcement, including historical injustice.

Transparency, Media, and Mistrust

• The conversation repeatedly returns to problems with selective media narratives, the lack of honest—and safe—dialogue between journalists, officers, and reformers.

Technological Tools and the Future of Policing Training

• Dennis is bullish on AI-assisted curriculum development and digital delivery, drawing an analogy to how digital platforms democratize access to true experts—if the system will allow it.

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Episode Tone & Language

• Direct, unflinching, occasionally profane but always passionate and authentic (“Jersey bluntness”).
• Both Andy and Dennis use humor and frank, anecdotal recollections to illustrate hard truths.

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Key Takeaways For Listeners

• The current police academy model is woefully outdated and risks both officer and civilian lives.
• Cultural, bureaucratic, and political inertia strongly resist reform.
• Innovation is possible—often via digital training and outside-the-system initiatives.
• Leadership (true leadership vs. management) and emotional intelligence are at least as important as tactical skills.
• Reform comes at personal cost, but small improvements can—and do—save lives, seen in real officer testimonials.
• The path ahead is not permission-based; positive, entrepreneurial risk is needed to force lasting change.

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For more from Dennis:

• StreetCop.com
• Social: @streetcoptraining (especially Instagram/Facebook)
• Newly developed digital police training platform: StreetcopCommunity.com

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“No storm lasts forever. Hang in there and don’t think you have to be able to do things. All you need to do is survive it. And time is your friend.” (149:06, Dennis Benigno)

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This summary omits ad reads, intros/outros, and non-content sections.

Transcript

[Andy]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to a Wednesday episode. Before we get into today's episode, there was a technical issue on my side. 100% my fault. The video file corrupted. So for those of you who may be an audio video, you know, they want to do both. They want to watch as well as listen. This one, I'm sorry, is to be listened to only. So I'm going to put up a screen grab from Dennis's website so you can get more information from him if you would like. But unfortunately, today, like I said, 100 my fault, we're going to be audio only. That is it. Let's get into the show. Okay, got the red smoke.

[Dennis Bonino]

Sun runs north and south, west of the smoke, west of the smoke. Okay, copy west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on with it, baby. Give it to me. I mean, it cleared hot. Copy cleared hot. Arguably, I just had to revamp that other book. I rewrote the whole thing after they took it down, like, did the whole thing. Took me four days, probably about 40 hours. And when it was done, I would argue it's like a 9.5 out of 10. And my canine case law book, street tax case law book, hands down, is the best book that's ever been written for these guys for canine. And I don't like, dude, I'm telling you, I'm not like, this is just business talk. So I'm telling people this. I'm not like, oh, I'm the best there ever was. I did I fuck up nonstop. And then I was like, oh, Lord, I fucked this up. We fixed this shit really quick. But I was able to do that with the AI and, dude, it's flawless.

[Andy]

Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

[Dennis Bonino]

Like, the table of contents Claude makes for you. We just had. We just had Claude because people like, where's the audiobook? So we ran it through Claude. We actually spent Monday, we started trying to prompt Claude correctly, and then it spit back the audiobook. Then the typecast that you would take and put into 11 labs. I recorded two hours of me talking on 11 labs. I sat there and just read a book for two hours. And so now it has. We. We got it to do what we wanted to do almost flawlessly, and it gets all my inflections and it reads the whole fucking book, but not the way the book's written. We had it rewritten through Claude to be read through 11 labs as an audiobook. Nice. I just had a guy on the podcast recently, was somebody famous, and he's like, yeah, and I'm doing the book now. I'm recording in the studio. I'm like, dude, just use 11 laps. Yeah, it's better than you can do it. Yeah.

[Andy]

It depends on the publisher, though. If you're with a publisher, they may not let you do that shit. Yeah. Because they're going to have a requirement for. They probably call it the talent or the artist, which, whatever. Pick your.

[Dennis Bonino]

Do you like your publisher?

[Andy]

Very much so.

[Dennis Bonino]

That's good. Yeah.

[Andy]

Yeah, they're really cool. They don't do anything. I mean, they make the book, right. They'll. They'll fill you with promises of they're gonna, you know, they're gonna get you onto different platforms and stuff like that. Between my publisher and the agent, what I determined is it's completely on you and not those people. They'll make a lot of promises. But every podcast other than Fox News, a close friend of mine made that happen. Other than that, every one of the podcast appearances I did was a direct text message to the host, just friends of mine. And without that, the publishers wouldn't have had access to those people. And it definitely helped, for sure.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. Yeah. That's like. As we go along, right? We just got to learn.

[Andy]

Yeah. You know, it's like, well, now I know that. And I can also give that advice to. Because now people like, oh, you're a New York Times bestselling author. I'm like, yeah, accidentally.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, yeah. And that. Crazy, right?

[Andy]

Yeah. And then, you know, well, how did you do this? That I'm like, listen, this is what I did. This is what I learned along the way. Do with this, whatever you want to. And also, if you refine the system, let me know as well, too. I have no intentions to write a second book, but, like, let me know,

[Dennis Bonino]

dude, if you want me to show you the, The. The Claude stuff, it's fucking wild.

[Andy]

I use Claude, actually.

[Dennis Bonino]

Have you tried to do what? A book. Like to write a book for you. It's so good.

[Andy]

No, I would never do that, to be honest.

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, I'm.

[Andy]

Right.

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay, so I'm writing. I'm writing law books. Yeah.

[Andy]

No, totally.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. I'm not telling a story.

[Andy]

Yeah. For a reference material. Trust me, it's. No, I use. I use Claude for a lot of stuff. Post production for the show, pre guest interview, research, all sorts of stuff. And again, it's a lot of. It's. The prompting that you put into it will inform the output that you get.

[Dennis Bonino]

Right.

[Andy]

And I just, like, it's plain because I'm not a. I'm not a tech guy. You don't have to be very simple, plain language like, hey, I like this. But like this is hard to read. Change this or make sure you include these type of searches.

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, you're an artist, right? As long as you're an artist and you bring that art over to the platform. Oh, it's so good, dude. Like sometimes like a mad scientist when I get this done, like I'm like, oh, this is so fucking good.

[Andy]

What's it going to be in 10 years?

[Dennis Bonino]

Insane. And arguably I would think that I'm five years comfortably ahead of everybody else in my space, which there is. As weird as it sounds, there really is nobody in my space.

[Andy]

What do you consider your space to be?

[Dennis Bonino]

I never thought I would become popular. I just wanted to train and I always thought, oh, I could. Are we recording? Yeah. Okay. So some of this stuff you like, I just cut out. Yeah, yeah. Like the business stuff. Yeah. So yeah, we could, we could just roll right into. Yeah.

[Andy]

And you're telling me about how you launder a bitcoin and all that stuff. Yeah, we'll leave that stuff out. I'm joking by the way. That's not what you're talking about. Talking about book stuff.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. So dude, like I drop it in

[Andy]

right when I ask you what you think your industry is.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. So you know, I didn't start doing what I was doing because I want to become popular. It was actually what happened because I was doing what I was doing and all I thought was that nobody's trained and I had to self train. And when I self trained I realized I could teach other people the things that I learned along the way that I picked up. So I would like to consider myself somebody who is, who builds and designs police training products and in the same breath has become a thought leader and maybe somebody who breathes reality into modern day law enforcement. How?

[Andy]

Why? Why does the need for training outside of the academies exist to the degree that it seems like it does?

[Dennis Bonino]

I tried to preface this as much and try to be as emphasize as much couth as I possibly could when answering this question. Because this is the question I get asked all the time. This is the question that frustrates everybody. Not everybody, because it's a well known thing, but it's a question that frustrates. The answer will frustrate people who are responsible for the state of affairs that we're in. I went to three police academies. I didn't do that because of bad choices and I got remediated. I went from Jurisdiction to jurisdiction and had to do the academy all over again, which almost doesn't exist as much as it once did because of the need for cops. They're giving a lot of waivers that you don't have to go back to the academy to appeal because they need so much personnel to show up to do the job.

[Andy]

So everybody you're talking about for people who are already certified, certified from a different agency, they're waiving the requirement. Okay. Not like people off the street, like, hey, you don't need to go.

[Dennis Bonino]

No, no.

[Andy]

Okay. Just want to clarify.

[Dennis Bonino]

Oddly enough, dude, what's crazy is there are some places in this world where you go and become a cop first and then they send you to the academy. So they give you like a two week training in inhouse.

[Andy]

What's the argument for that?

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, it's typically in places that are extremely rural. Is there a, is, is there a concern? Yes. Is it as concerning as like maybe being a cop in Philadelphia? No, because it's different. You're going to get a pickup truck and go. I don't know. Whatever they do in the middle of nowhere, police officers, I guess they feel like they give them enough training for that time until a class rolls around where they can enroll in the academy. So that actually exists. But to answer your early question, the training program that most people go through, it's interesting, the history of it, because a lot of it's just a guess and a speculation. How we got here and what the belief is is that somebody somewhere needed to come up with an academy. So essentially this person who was tasked with this first academy or the modern day academy profile was a person who was a military person. So when they said we need a police academy, he said, I believe I've read something about the guy who's a special forces guy. Right? This has nothing to do with you, but the point is he was Special

[Andy]

Forces specifically means only Green Berets, by the way.

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay?

[Andy]

Special operations is the umbrella.

[Dennis Bonino]

Special operations. So he's like a special op guy. And they basically said to him, like, hey, we need an academy. And he did what he thought an academy should look like is what he knew, which was a military boot camp. And so now here we are in modern day policing that you have police academies that are under the impression that they need to be the military. So the whole system of how it's built is one big box checking. And box checking cost people their lives. And that's a massive problem. And people are very romantic with the idea of how it is even when I challenge people on, why do you think this is the way it should be? It's because that's the way they like it. But they take no responsibility of, like, you're failing these men and women the minute they walk out this door. How do we go to a police training academy that may be 6 to 24 to 30 weeks? And they look, they know almost nothing when they leave here other than the fact that you guys checked boxes. And I can prove it. So it frustrates people because they're so romantic. But this is my baby. I work here. This is what we do. We create the best cops, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And if that was untrue, then I wouldn't have a business because now what I have to do is essentially give all these men and women the things that they need to do this job and not get killed and stay constitutional.

[Andy]

Why aren't the academies changing and providing those things? Because what you described, I mean, let's, let's. I don't know anything about the origins of police academies, but we'll operate under the assumption that what you said was factually accurate. Right? So let's say it was started from the military world. Get it? Guy drew from his experience. Totally get that, too. Applied it to the civilian world, and maybe that was the initial, you know, first people through the door into the policing world. But by not updating, I mean, I feel like the officers are at risk. I feel like the civilians that they're supposed to be serving are at risk. I feel like the departments are at risk from a legal perspective. So why wouldn't they change that?

[Dennis Bonino]

Man, there's like 15 answers in that one. So let's talk about the first one. And good thing I have a pen and paper in front of me. The first one is they may not know how to change it. Right? So, like, you know, you're a business guy. I said in a podcast recently, and this may sound very, again, might sound like it comes out of a place of conceit, but it doesn't. It comes from a place of just a very objective analysis of who I am and what I do. Why was I a cop for 14 years before I became and stepped into entrepreneurship and then had success in it? And not just this, but other things. And so it really comes down to the fact that, like, if we really look at what an entrepreneur does is they fix problems. The best entrepreneurs resolve issues. That's why their products are good. I'm very fortunate to be this hybrid of once was a cop, was a good cop. Was a proactive cop, was a very eager cop, was soaking things up like a sponge. And then I also have entrepreneurship skills. So I understand how to resolve these issues. I understand what the fix is going to be. The realistic fixes, not just these, oh my God, like we should do this. Well, that's not gonna work. And here's why. So when I look at entrepreneurship, I have to compare it to people who don't have the skills of an entrepreneur. And you know this because you're an entrepreneur. Most people don't have those skills. So the likelihood of you getting somebody who's an entrepreneur to have those problem solving skills in a position where they can make the right calls is slim to none. So who do you have? You got people with jobs. People with jobs don't innovate, they don't change things, they don't fix things. Matter of fact, a lot of these people have such big egos that you can't penetrate their ego to get to them and say, hey, we think we could fix this. Because they're so romantic with, well, that's not how I would do it. That's not how we do things. And so it continues on in the way that it is. And I've learned one thing is like, you just can't, you can't ask for permission in this, in this profession, you'll never get it. And if you're playing within the boundaries of the square, of the factory, of the modern day policing, you will get no permission. So you must do and hope they like and adopt.

[Andy]

Man, I gotta be honest, you really painted with a broom there. That was a very broad description that encapsulates a pretty diverse community. It doesn't define, well, the people I know in law enforcement entrepreneurially. You know, it's. I hate that term, to be honest, that applied to myself because I never thought I was going to be in business. A lot of the times what I see is people not constrained by their desires, they're constrained by the bureaucracy. And most of the people that I see, they legitimately want to do the best things possible and they are trying to solve problems. So I guess I would put that into the entrepreneurial bucket as far as those, the skills that you would say define an entrepreneur. But the people that I know in law enforcement like the status quo isn't good enough for them. They're always trying to move the needle. It's almost as if they're fighting the system itself.

[Dennis Bonino]

Right? But think about who's in charge of the system. There's plenty of Men and women, especially ones that support me, that are completely believe in the movement that I'm making here. So I'm not trying to paint everybody with a broad brush.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

But I think most people who are in this game for the reasons you just said would agree with what I just said. That yes, there's a lot of us, lieutenants, captains, deputy chiefs. There is even chiefs that are completely about making a change. Academy directors, they're out there. But the far majority is those who don't want to change anything because they like the way it is.

[Andy]

They like getting sued.

[Dennis Bonino]

They don't care. It's not their money.

[Andy]

Today's episode is brought to you by me, Andy. For anybody who's been following the show or seeing me on social media, follows me on social media. You know that I wrote a book. It's called Drown Proof right here. Eight Life Lessons to Keep youp Head Above Water. Surprisingly enough, it did pretty well on release. It is still on the New York Times bestseller list on two lists and it made all the other major bestseller categories and lists as well. To everybody who made that happen, which, for total clarity, is everybody listening to this or those who picked up copies? I did not do that. I don't have the words for how humbling it is to receive that level of support. Thank you. If you haven't picked up a copy, I highly recommend that you do. For those of you that have been reaching out to me, talking to me about the impact the book has had on you, please continue to do so. It's exactly why I wrote it. And in addition to the book, I have these. These are a deck of cards. Drown Proof, conversation starters. Why did I create these? Well, I didn't want the book to be an end state. I wanted it to be an arrival point. So in here are three different types of cards. There's a reflection, there is a quote, and there is a challenge. Pull one out per day in your morning. Do what the card says. You'll be shocked at the impact that it has. I paired these together. There are more of these things that are going to be on the way. I'm going to try to create one around leadership. Maybe for those in business, maybe for those in the military. I don't know if that's the same product. It could be, I suppose might be better to split it. But those are the two things that I have to offer for you today. You can find them anywhere. You can buy a book or follow the show note link to this episode and you can find them both there as well, thank you again for the support.

[Dennis Bonino]

They get paid no matter what, right? Think about it. It's not their money. They get paid no matter what.

[Andy]

Yeah, but that would mean, like, when their officers perform poorly, that they're okay with that. When a citizen loses their life or is constitutionally violated, that they're okay with that.

[Dennis Bonino]

They, I, I wish I could tell you that all these people understood that. And there are solutions out there, not only the ones that come for me, but from other places as well, because people reach out, like, hey, what do you think? I'm like, it's a great solution, but the question is, are you going to get these people who are in charge to adopt this thing? And you've got to understand the psyche of what you're dealing with in psychology of these people. And so while I think it's a great tool, you've got to remember one thing about these guys and girls. There's this, there's, this is the biggest strife in the profession. There are those who care and those who don't.

[Andy]

That applies to every profession.

[Dennis Bonino]

Right? But in this one, the problem is, is when you don't care, people die. And that's a big issue. So they try to play this game of I'm in charge, may have gotten in charge for some reason that wasn't the right reason. As you know, it's the same thing in the military space as well. I hear about that a lot. And until the pressure comes down, who's checking on them, right? Who's their boss? Maybe their boss is their friend. So this, this progression of we need to evolve can't be left in their hands. It has to be done without them and almost forced down their throat that like, hey, this is the actual solution. We got to change this.

[Andy]

I was going to say, where does that leave the officers working underneath them that want to do everything they can?

[Dennis Bonino]

It leads them to me. And so I can make a product and an association that's affordable for everybody to come get the training that you need to survive this profession? And arguably, I would like to believe, and I know for a fact that I've kept names off the wall in D.C. i know for a fact there are dozens of cops who do not stick a gun in their mouth because of me. There's hundreds of cops who ask why their agency doesn't give a shit about them and thanks me for the work that I'm doing and other people that are associated with this, with this organization as. And so for that, you know, that's why it falls back into the hands of somebody who is seeing it for what it's worth to do versus these other people. Because I don't essentially do this for money. I make money because I do this because I care. I could have walked away from it when things got extremely difficult and I chose not to. Walking away was actually the harder decision to walk away from it, and it was the easier decision to stay because I had to remind myself of these people who deserve the best that I have to offer them. If that's something I can do to make a change, to keep them alive or keep them constitutional or keep them out of jail or free from a lawsuit, how dare I not do it?

[Andy]

When. When you were at that lowest point, when was that? When you were trying to decide whether or not you wanted to keep going or not?

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. So, like, I frustrated a political party in a very political state by having a opposite political speaker come to one of our events. Actually, our first event, which was arguably and still to this day, the best professional week of my life. And, dude, it was fantastic. We had amazing training. And I essentially was, to make a long story short, there was sabotage. Ran on me to try to make it look like we were doing things that were wrong. And it's just amazing how strategically they chose to try to do their best to make it look like we were doing improper things. And, you know, the. The political machine is a very powerful one, and it was. It was very difficult to go through when something was made up about you and lied. And then the worst part is, is everybody had been serving for 10 years every. We trained 90% of the cops in the state of New Jersey. I was left to be crucified without anybody giving any objection. And all these people who were my friends had just disappeared.

[Andy]

What happened?

[Dennis Bonino]

We had Tommy lan from Fox News on top of Marcus Luttrell.

[Andy]

Well, I swear I recognize that name.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, she's the blonde from Fox News. Very attractive.

[Andy]

Laren. Yeah, just. Yeah, I recognize.

[Dennis Bonino]

So we had. We had keynote speakers at the event. We had.

[Andy]

Where was this?

[Dennis Bonino]

At Atlantic City, New Jersey. It's our first street cop conference with a thousand cops show up. It was post.

[Andy]

Okay, I know you're talking.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, she doesn't actually.

[Andy]

Does she still work for Fox? Yeah, she does. Okay. Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

So it's post pandemic. And we had Marcus Luttrell, Dakota Meyer, Tim Kennedy, her and a couple other keynote speakers that come and, you know, each day did their own event where they spoke for an hour. Why did we choose these people? We asked our group. We have a Big following. Like, hey, who would you guys like to see at the first conference? And she was a person at that time during the George Floyd era, an outspoken supporter of police, when half the cops I knew were contemplating leaving because they couldn't handle the pressure to talk those guys off the ledge as well. So when she came on stage, she unprompted, made some political comments, and she told everybody in the audience basically to vote Republican. And I was like, why would she say that here? Like, this is like the. This is like the.

[Andy]

Why would that surprise you that she said that?

[Dennis Bonino]

You know, I was going through a very difficult time in my life. My wife had just gone through some stuff, and there was a lot of things crumbling. My marriage, it was terrible. It was unforeseen. I had married the love of my life. I was dealing with a lot of stuff, and I. I just couldn't think. That whole summer, as a matter of fact, I couldn't think a lot. I was doing my very best to keep together, so it just didn't cross my mind.

[Andy]

And then kind of her jam.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andy]

That's why I ask.

[Dennis Bonino]

Why?

[Andy]

Can it surprise you?

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, no, no, I get that part. But then actually, there was a nice volley back and forth about, you know, Republican versus Democrat, and it was a

[Andy]

good conversation that never makes a headline.

[Dennis Bonino]

No. So the Washington. Don't forget, this is George Floyd era. Right. So, like, we had people because it was anti cop. Like, not that it's not anti cop now, but then it was like, every cop's a piece of. Right? Can I curse on this one?

[Andy]

I mean, it's the Internet.

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay.

[Andy]

I could care less.

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay, I'll try.

[Andy]

Here's the rules I have for my podcast. You're responsible for what you say, I'm responsible for what I say. That's it. So those are the only rules?

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, fair enough.

[Andy]

And how you want to say it, I could give two shits. Okay, see, we can go back and forth.

[Dennis Bonino]

Good stuff. So essentially, where was I?

[Andy]

You were talking. You were talking about the George Floyd era.

[Dennis Bonino]

Oh, yeah. So George Floyd era. So we're actually having people. Like, we had probably arguably 30 to 40 instructors at that time. And so we had people showing up to classes where there's like 65, 70 cops in a class. One of our instructors out there, and they're like, why is this person here? And, like, we're getting cold. Like, hey, there's some fucking reporter in our class. And they're like, what are you doing here? Like, oh, I'm here To watch your class. Like you're not. This is a paid event. You can't come in here.

[Andy]

What if they paid? Would you have an issue with it?

[Dennis Bonino]

So the only issue I would have is think about what they did to me where they took a five and a half day event, put out a three minute video of us cursing. So if it was actually, did those things not happen? They happen. But what happens the other 99% of stuff that happened that week? Sure, right. So if we were going to essentially be at a neutral place, if you wanted to show the bad things, you have to show the good things too.

[Andy]

Are you familiar with the current state of the press?

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, well, I certainly am.

[Andy]

Let me know when you find an outlet that's willing.

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, that actually alludes to your question earlier. Like, that's my point. Are you familiar? Like, so would I let them in? Yeah, like we had a guy from CBS who was like hunting me down, right? And I was like, hey man, we could do. I knew the game he was playing. I'm like, I'll do your interview. That's fine. You gotta do it on my podcast. We're gonna do a live stream to 700, 000 followers and we'll just keep it open. And then, by the way, when we're done, we'll give you the footage, right? We'll give you the footage. You guys aren't going to control that. He's like. And so eventually came on CBS and was like, Mr. Bonino said that he would invite me on his podcast to do it, but I told him that's not what the policy of CBS allows me to do.

[Andy]

Which unfortunate, because that's transparent. Like, if you want to set up your cameras, go ahead, I'll set up mine. We can throw SIM cards on the table when we're done. Like go to town.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yes, but the problem is they're so sneaky, dude, that they do anything they can. Like they went and tried to dig up like two internal affairs complaints that I had in 14 years, but failed to dig up 17 unit citations and meritorious service awards and, and all these other things that I'm known for, Mayor's service, all these commendations. Couldn't find those. Right. Because they're in my file as well.

[Andy]

No, they can find them. It just again, depending on there. Well, journalism, again, it's tough. I don't like painting with a broom because there are what I would consider to be unbiased journalists. They oftentimes don't get the traction and have the audience of people who Go, I mean let's just, we can pull up our phones. It's the most extreme sticky stuff that tracks the person who's in the middle who's like listen, this is what I saw. But I also saw this, this is what was said, but this is the context. That person has four likes the dude who was three piece tinfoil suit like oh, he said this one. This has a hundred thousand shares.

[Dennis Bonino]

Right.

[Andy]

So they exist. It's just tough. My question about having a journalist in the room is more just the concept in general, not like a particular one. But would you have any issue with if you could find the perfect unbiased journalist, would you have any issue with it?

[Dennis Bonino]

No. And to be honest with you, the guy from the. So let me just dial back a little bit. The guy from Washington, the Washington Post had a plan. They paid some cop to sit in there and record and monitor the event. So like three weeks later after the event, this journalist calls me, he's asked me questions and I'm like hey man, you can actually the video of me talking. I'm like yeah, you should come and take a look at what we're doing. But then we did a little research on him and he's just the most anti copy journalists on in the history of like journalism.

[Andy]

So it's a bold statement but I understand what you're saying.

[Dennis Bonino]

All he does is write about anti police. That's all he does.

[Andy]

Yeah, I just don't know if there's a top 10 of anti cop journalists.

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay, fair enough. He's up there though. If there was a, he would be a contestant. There was, yeah, he would be a contestant. Yeah. And so this is what he thrives on is like he's an anti cop, he hates the police and arguably those people who do want police reform should actually be supporting me because I'm the guy. At least one of the major components of police reform because I'm doing the things that they're not doing that you want so badly. But what I've come to realize, like they actually don't want that. They don't, they don't care about. They really don't. They, they just, they don't like the police. The whole theory behind the police makes them angry. So you can't talk to somebody who has pre existing hate and not an open mind.

[Andy]

I mean you can, it's not going to listen. Well, it's tough. I, I, I will try to engage with those people usually through the lens of like listen, what, what are you going to do if you're in the middle of your worst day or you come around a corner and there's an accident, let's say it's involving your loved ones. Are you saying that you are the person that is tool trained and equipped to deal with that? You're not going to call for a higher level of care? And if you are going to call for a higher level of care, what is this supposed to look like? This mythical unicorn pulling a chariot around? Like, who.

[Dennis Bonino]

They're human beings, right?

[Andy]

Yeah, it's so. And most of the time they'll say, or if you ask them, hey, you come across an accident, you know, what

[Dennis Bonino]

are you gonna do?

[Andy]

I'm gonna call 91 1, like five minutes ago, you were just telling me that essentially half of the 911 services, you don't want to be there or to exist. Walk me through this thought process. I don't know if it makes a dent in the moment, but I at least hope that it would spark a little bit of creative thought for them. Or if you're violently assaulted, if you need a higher level, like, if you're not tooled and trained to sort it on yourself, what do you. Are you hop, operating off good, like hopes and dreams? Yeah, because they make good patches. They're saying both of those are bad strategies.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, yeah. You know, well, dude, like, if you think about it, they're unreasonable. And so I could have a conversation with anybody who's reasonable, but there's a lot of people who are just completely unreasonable. I know it comes down to the conversations of, you know, people are very strong in their political stance or religious stance. You're not convincing somebody.

[Andy]

But do you discount them because they might be unreasonable in one aspect of their beliefs?

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, dude, I've had a lot of people on pod, on my podcast who have, you know, essentially expressed where some of their thoughts come from. And I acknowledge those thoughts and tell them, like, the profession is responsible for it. Not every single cop that wears the badge. But, like, I get that in 1993 you may have encountered a cop that whooped your ass because of where you lived and what you look like. But it's 2026, and we have to figure out a way where we can start coming together to recognize that these things do exist. Those guys have passed that burden onto the new guys and they have to wear that now. So how do we start to come together? Because we almost exist harmoniously. And so one podcast, I had a guy and he was really good and. And a lot of people reach out. They're like, dude, that was, like, one of the best conversations I've ever heard people have about that conversation. So I'm not completely deaf to the fact that people do have bad experiences. And. And so it comes back to, like, we could huff and puff about what exists, or we could start to correct it.

[Andy]

Yeah. One of the things I wish would change about modern discourse is you find somebody, usually online, that make seem to be from either one side or from both sides. They're looking at each other, and on a particular belief, they see on the other side of the street what they consider to be an unreasonable belief. And maybe it is. And maybe the person looking back on the other side of the street sees the same thing and they discount the entire person.

[Dennis Bonino]

Right.

[Andy]

And that's. That's a mistake to me. That's why I asked that. It's.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, for sure.

[Andy]

You know, human beings are so complex, and my beliefs on a lot of things.

[Dennis Bonino]

Sometimes not. Sometimes, yeah, yeah.

[Andy]

Sometimes not. But if you. If you're around them long enough, there are very few utterly simple people out there. You know, we're. We are. A lot of our behaviors are informed by our experiences in our life or our morals or upbringing or all of those things as well. And it's just we're in such a world where people, like, if you say anything that doesn't 100 align with what they believe, they just. They discount you as a person. I think that's a mistake.

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, they've been led to believe that's okay because they have people behind them, enabling them. I always tell people, like, just because three other people enable your behavior doesn't make your behavior correct.

[Andy]

No, it just makes those three people.

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, they're. And, like, who rolls together. Right? Like, if you think about it, I mean, I, you know, like, I hate to use this as an example, but my parents were the center of my entire life with my family.

[Andy]

How old were you when you realized that?

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, you know, when I speak to my therapist, maybe about a year ago, she was like, you know, bringing up things, and she's like, oh, well, you have mommy issues. And I was like, I do. She's like, you didn't know that? Have we not discussed that? I'm like, well, I mean, I know, like, what I deal with. And she's like, when did you, like, really stop considering your mother your mother? And, like, just disassociating yourself with the home?

[Andy]

Deep question.

[Dennis Bonino]

No, no, she's my therapist, so we gotta go there.

[Andy]

No, but I mean, like, even. I mean, that's meaning Not. Not like in that setting, but, like, that's an existential. When, you know, when you're growing up, your parents are the center of the universe. Supposed to be. Right? Yeah. And to have that shift where, oh, you're my mother on paper and by blood, but I actually now have to shift the way that I think about you just to another human being, dude. That's tough.

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, yeah.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

And so you find out your later adult behaviors really correlate all back to that stuff, right?

[Andy]

Yeah. But it doesn't happen in a vacuum.

[Dennis Bonino]

No. And honestly, it's made me what I consider to be the best father I can be. And in my kid's eyes, that I am the goat. And. But I work towards that, and I have to put a lot of emotional intelligence behind what that means to be the goat in their eyes, not to go in everybody's eyes. Clearly, their mother doesn't think I'm the goat anymore.

[Andy]

But ex wives have a way of

[Dennis Bonino]

feeling like, yeah, but she. She actually. It's funny because the other day I texted her and I said, we're friendly. We're really cool, to be honest with you. And I was like, man, you haven't gave me a compliment in a decade. She's like, you're a really great dad. I was like, thanks, but what about my ass? And she's like, please leave me alone. But the point is, is I was eight, right.

[Andy]

Damn.

[Dennis Bonino]

That's what I remember when I was eight, and I just didn't like this woman anymore.

[Andy]

That's an early shift in mentality, man.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. So. But, you know, life happens for us, not to us. So what did that do? At that time, I grew up in chaos. If I didn't grow up the way that I did, I wouldn't be able to handle the pressure that comes with the things that I'm doing. I chose to try to fix law enforcement. I've got arguably some anti police sentiment coming from the outside in. And then I have a lot of anti. You're changing things from the inside out. So I've got both that I'm trying to. And then I've got the middle of people who were like, bro, thank you. Like, thank you. I mean, I get that a dozen times. They thank you for your work. Like, thank you for doing this stuff. Thank you for paying tribute to our fallen officers. It means a lot to people, dude. And I just can't turn my back on it. I just can't do it.

[Andy]

What was the fallout from the Atlantic City event?

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay, so Washington Post Writes this article that we had a political rally. And so I can touch because of Tommy, because she said it was a Republican thing. And this guy calls me now. Now it's a different conversation. He's like. I'm like, why would you write this? I had the guy cell phone number. He's like, I want to know why Tommy Lahren was having a political rally for the Republican Party on taxpayer dollars. And I'm like, she said it once and then there was a volley. You saw, sent it to you. And so this guy went and stomped his feet all over our state capital and got people to. I'm going to try to leave a lot of details out of this, but anyway, that group of people who he happened to perk their ears up had to figure out a way to cancel me. And so they ran sabotage. And it was clear as day. And everybody knows that. Even the people who kind of, you know, listen and you know that when you do anything, automatically 20% of people are going to hate you.

[Andy]

I hope not.

[Dennis Bonino]

That's how it goes. Just the way it is.

[Andy]

I'm aiming for a split down the middle. 10%, 5050.

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay, 50, 50. But 20% of people, just because of what you're doing, like literally hate your guts because it's a them thing. It's not a you thing.

[Andy]

I know. I wish that wasn't true. I try to tell people this because they try to be perfect. Like, listen, it's not you can do. Then the people who are going to be pissed at you are the anti perfect crowd. So it's. You cannot please everybody.

[Dennis Bonino]

It's a tough hat to wear, folks. Like, it's not easy doing these things. You do them because you believe in them. You do them because this is what you want that you believe the Lord has called you to do. Really believe that. And. But you know, stinks. Sometimes it really does stink. And it gets very, very difficult. Arguably now it's gotten a lot easier. But what this sparked was, dude, I mean, basically I had the government after me over nothing. And like the New York government or federal government, the New Jersey government, I

[Andy]

always forget that New Jersey is.

[Dennis Bonino]

And dude, like different state than New York. Yes. Arguably not.

[Andy]

I mean, you could throw kind of like a baseball from one. I mean, you have to have a really good arm.

[Dennis Bonino]

But like you can maybe shoot like a. Oh yeah.

[Andy]

T shirt cannon across.

[Dennis Bonino]

I mean the deer swim across the arctic hill. Like it's nothing. So. But yeah. So when you have the government after you on top of that, I had Other everything catastrophic that could happen to somebody between my marriage, frivolous lawsuits, not from the training that we're doing, internal employee stuff that was just made up. All these things happened at once. I remember telling my therapist, I'm like, you know, this is a lot. She's. And she doesn't really curse that much. And she leans into me and says, I've been a therapist for 30 years. Let's just call it like it is. You're getting your ass kicked. And I was like, yeah. She's like, and it's bad, but you're gonna make it through this thing. And I'm like, yeah, but it was tough, dude. It was very. I mean, they're, they, they were working with the media from the first articles. After they dropped this report that we couldn't share came out within hours. And then my PR guy called me. He's like, that's a three week article. It takes three weeks to write that. That's a big article. They were, they had to be working with these guys behind the scene. So it just like we realized that we weren't playing a game we could win at all.

[Andy]

Would you say any of their criticisms were held water at all? Did you make any changes post the. The article?

[Dennis Bonino]

I think the changes that you make is that you realize that once you get to a level, you have to be very, very meticulous with everything that you do because a lot of eyes on you. So while it was par for the course for our organization, it gave them an in to try to criticize. And to be honest with you, we could have done it perfectly. They would have figured out a way to try to sabotage it anyway because of what. So I was held. And dude, believe me, we. I've been doing this for a long time. So I'm 25 years almost in this business. We have. I taught almost every cop in Jersey and I'm not making that up. We basically kind of had all the training locked down in Jersey and people were very frustrated. It wasn't just that once that ball started rolling, these other people who couldn't get traction jumped on board. And I know this for a fact. I don't want to discuss how or, you know, there's things that you get privy to that you kind of just got to take the, like, all right, we won't say nothing but like, what's going on? And it's like, this guy's involved and now this guy's involved and this guy's involved and they're involved and now they're all forming this thing because this one heard about it, then this guy heard about it. So they're all going to come together and you could tell who was a part of it because the sabotage they ran was wild. And they wrote these and, and you know, I'm gonna leave it at this, but if you read the report, we actually didn't think the report was gonna have any impact because it was just, it was so clear. When you read this 77 page report, it took him two years to write on me that it was like we laughed at it. We're like, ah, this is. Anybody reads this and understands it's complete. I mean do people were like, they were calling agencies like did you guys ever take this guy's training? Like, yeah, he's the best. Like we love this guy, he's great. Never makes it to the report. None of this stuff ever makes to the report. So they're just selecting what they want. And they realized that at some point they had to add one thing. So like at the end, in like the fine print at the end of this report, it just says like one agency was contact. And they said it was the best training we ever had. We're appalled by this. So it was just a. And that organization, I'm not the only person they did that to. As a matter of fact, they are in, I think Clarence Thomas just gave him a big beaten on the floor of the US Supreme Court because the US Supreme Court is appalled at their behavior. They went after a pro life group, but the pro life group had the money to continue to appeal them big money to go to U.S. supreme Court. And that was even asked to me like, hey, do you want to go to U.S. supreme Court? I'm like, guys, like we're a million into this thing in legal fees. Like how much more do you think we're going to be going with this? I, I need peace in my life. I don't want to. This is not how I foresee me living my life. I need to make sure cops don't die and my kids have a father. And so those moments in my life arguably were the most difficult moments of my life. And I thought about this today. I'm like, man, I guess pain is subjective, right? There's people who are survived the Holocaust. I don't know if there's any more pain that you could subject a human being to than being a Holocaust survivor.

[Andy]

Be a tough argument for something more painful.

[Dennis Bonino]

So when I think about my pain, I'm like, well, I wasn't a Holocaust survivor. Yeah, but subjectively, it was brutal.

[Andy]

Dude, be careful with that game. Competitive suffering is a dangerous one because you're always going to be able to find somebody who is suffering more, whether it hits historical or modern day. And it gives you an opportunity to diminish what it is that you're working through.

[Dennis Bonino]

Correct. And I'm. And I'm good with that. And I completely agree 100%. And I always tell people, like, you need to consider what you're going through valid and stop comparing to other people's stuff.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

And a lot of people, my closest friends. And you know, you may know this because you may have gone through some difficult things. You will find out who your friends are.

[Andy]

Oh. Real fast.

[Dennis Bonino]

Immediately.

[Andy]

Yeah, it's.

[Dennis Bonino]

It's a scary thing to hear.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

And it's a scary thing to live.

[Andy]

It's faster than you would want it to be. It's almost instantaneous. Yeah. You end up in a room with an echo. Hello.

[Dennis Bonino]

Hello. Okay, brother, I'm going to say something that's profound, that I want to quote Simon Sinek on this, because it's not my line, but it's spoke to me clearly. There's a reel on Instagram about him and maybe you guys want to piece it in because it's really cool. Not many people get to experience the level of that, to like to be on the news for three weeks, you know, and the things that come along with that and then the. The loneliness of that by myself. Remember, I didn't have a wife at this time, at nobody. My. My children brought me much comfort, but I couldn't use them as teddy bears. I had to be their dad still. Right?

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

Now, did we sleep in the same room every night together? They made me feel comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. We, like, we had like camp outs in the. In the bedroom every night. A lot of fun. They're arguably some of the best moments, to be honest with you, because they brought me so much comfort. And I wasn't being weird with them. I was just like, hey, guys, let's watch a movie together. Little did they know that I was

[Andy]

like, they were both at the same time. I know exactly what you're talking about.

[Dennis Bonino]

So. But Simon Sinek talks about this thing where a lot of people won't know that level of that. And he said, you know, there's not many of us who go through something like this. And a lot of these guys won't tell you this, but they're all grateful that it happened now. None of us wanted to ever go through that again.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

Right. One, one time around the horn is plenty. And to be honest with you, I think it really, on the other side of pain like that, you really get a new sense of self and, and life and humanity and what's important. Not that I was too far off, but, you know, I was going through allotment and you don't see things as clearly as you would have liked to. So if anybody's going through something like that, my only advice to you is, you know, survival is progress. Doesn't mean you've got to be doing things. You don't have to cut the grass, Let it, let it grow an extra day. Just find yourself the ability to be here, and you don't have to be present. Just, let's not go that other route. And, you know, there's a lot of empathy and compassion I have now when I see somebody going through something very difficult, and my immediate reaction is to help them. And I'm helping somebody right now. Probably arguably a few people, but somebody in particular, and I just doing my very best to be there for him.

[Andy]

Yeah, I think sometimes that's all you can do. Those moments where you find out who your real friends are, they suck. They suck, but I tell you, they're great. I, I, maybe people won't understand what I'm about to say, but I think it's essential that you experience that at some point in your life. Because the other side of that equation, if you don't, means you never really know who is in your corner for the right reasons, you know, because in those moments where it's pouring on you and the people closest to you who you thought were the closest go find an umbrella and they bail. Versus sometimes it'll shock you, the people who show up without an umbrella and stand there next to you in the rain and get soaked, even though they could go stand under the porch and stay dry. You don't find out who those people are, though, until you step into that

[Dennis Bonino]

absolute thunderstorm, let me tell you, to add to that, it'll be people that you never expect. And so I must give credit where credit's due. And I, and I regard this plenty of times the people that I thought would be there ran for the hills. And I'm talking everybody, friends, family, the whole nine. And oddly enough, the people that were in my corner were Sheriff Mark Lamb, who reached out to me and said, what can I do for you? Like, let's, let's. People are very frustrated about what happened. Sheriff Wayne Ivey of Brevard County. And I knew these Guys because we had worked with them at our conferences, became friends with them. I wasn't. I never needed connections. I don't need to get my cousin on the SWAT team in Brevard County. I don't. I don't those guys. And then I have to give credit where credit's due to Joe Gamaldi, who's the vice president of the fop. He was another guy who was there for me, so he deserves credit for that as well. My friends, my two best friends did not desert me. They were there. They were there a lot. And I'm forever grateful to those guys. And they really proved their friendship. But those guys didn't have to be there. I actually said to Wayne recently, I'm like, you know, why were you there for me when you didn't have to be? He's like, I just couldn't stomach what they were doing. You're the only guy out here trying to make this thing better for. And they've just. He's like, it makes me nuts. He's a great guy. Now, on the surface, do. Do I agree with everything that he does? It's impossible.

[Andy]

But I don't agree with everything I do.

[Dennis Bonino]

Right. Same thing. Right. Do I think and know this man behind the scenes and know what kind of person he is? Yes. Do I know Mark Lamb is behind the scenes? Yes. These guys are solid and they are everything that they lead you to believe they are behind the scenes. And I'm telling you, behind the scenes, like, I spend personal time with these guys. They're.

[Andy]

I know what you mean.

[Dennis Bonino]

They're tits.

[Andy]

So did you change anything about how you put on seminars now after that?

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, experience. So you gotta remember we're in a risk adverse industry.

[Andy]

No, I mean, like maybe different keynote speakers. Maybe brief the keynote speaker before leave the politics.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, well, we had podium. We had Tommy lan again.

[Andy]

Okay.

[Dennis Bonino]

Right.

[Andy]

And did you have a chat with her before?

[Dennis Bonino]

I did. I have it recorded.

[Andy]

And to be honest with you, I think she's. I don't know anything about her, but, like, listen, as somebody who does public speaking, if you give me some boundaries, like, I understand the homework assignment, I'm not there to try to like, not get another speaking job, you know, I'm not there to try to ruin anybody's world.

[Dennis Bonino]

I also wasn't trying to discredit what she stands for. But we did have a talk behind the scenes. And, you know, at this point now, and you know, you've done this, you form relationships with people and, you know, you find out that all these people who are these big names are just essentially people, right? That's it.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

So whether they're good people or bad people, you know, they're just people. So behind the scenes, there's a lot of conversation. I don't really get like the, like, oh, wow, this guy. Sometimes I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ, this guy. Right? Yeah. But, you know, so we had a conversation. She was very receptive to it. She completely understood. And, you know, I've. I'm not saying we're best friends. I'm actually kind of friendly with her husband, as weird as that may sound, because we became friends on Instagram.

[Andy]

It makes more sense to be friends with her husband than with her, to be honest.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. She's actually. Listen, just as a dude, like, be

[Andy]

friends with the husband.

[Dennis Bonino]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, dude, I'm sure everybody tried, you know, like. But he's a good dude. Jace. JP is a good guy, but she, you know, like, she's a decent person and. And that's her thing, right? You got to respect it. Like, that's her thing. People ask me, like, what do you think of this guy? He's doing his thing. Who am I to say anything? This is this guy's thing. It's his thing. I. I doesn't have to agree with everything, but I respect when people are doing their thing and I have to recognize what I'm getting involved in. So we thought we killed it on the 2021 conference with the 2023 one in Nashville. She came back and spoke, but we cr. That was. That event was wild. And I'll never be able to re. Do that again. That was the best. We had Kyle Carpenter come to that one.

[Andy]

Probably tail into Covid too, right?

[Dennis Bonino]

No, 23 was. It was. It was open.

[Andy]

Okay.

[Dennis Bonino]

That was a good one, though. That was. That was the best I was gonna

[Andy]

say, though, like, it's another chance people hadn't been able to get together for a while. You know what I mean? The energy, probably. There was even. Dude, even more from that. Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

It was so good. You have like. It's so good. Now I've got a good side. One minute story. Because I don't want to just rant and rave about this stuff. I'm rarely the guest on a podcast, so I get this chance to explain things and talk. The goal of the New Jersey politicians was to shut down the 2024 conference in Orlando. And they were doing everything they could

[Andy]

to shut down in a different state.

[Dennis Bonino]

Dude, listen, listen. You have like. When you're Met when these people are after you? They are. I would have. I tell people I would have rather dealt with, like, the Gambino crime family in, like, 1987, because I feel like the mafia could at least been paid, right? They would have just at least taken some money instead of wanting to assassinate me. And there were people who I thought were my friends and one in particular who was like, these people started getting very scared, and they were actually contradicting what the things they claimed to stand for were. So you start seeing the true colors because they were panicking on one token. When everything's great, they're part of the cause. But as soon as things get scary. What are you doing? We can't do this. So this whole panic set in. Okay, so one person in particular I will not sully this dude's name was like, I can't believe you're doing this conference. You need to cancel it. It's not about you. Da, da da da.

[Andy]

And for clear. This is three years later in a different state.

[Dennis Bonino]

This was. So they started investigation. I get this wild subpoena. They actually created this entity called the police. It's a crazy dude. Honestly, it's a crazy story. And I've had two documentary makers reach out to me, wanting to do the conversation on it, and I'm like, hey, man, I just want to move past it. Yeah, this is not. I'll. I'll tell the story. I don't want to go into how insane it was, because it's no different than any other insane thing you've seen when it comes to politics. Just insanity. And you can't believe you're like, this guy who's like, oh, my God, the system is nuts. We can't win. We're not even. There's not even a fair game anyway. So it started in 2021. I think we got the speed in 2021.

[Andy]

And that's when the Atlantic City conference was right.

[Dennis Bonino]

21 was the conference. So this following year, that may, in 22, I received some subpoena. And I'm like, what? I don't even heard of this entity before. They made something up to come after me. And then once they were done with me, they basically dismantled it. And so my attorney court would say, like, well, why don't you guys just call it the Dennis Bonito Project? You call it the Police Accountability Project. But to this day, the 150 plus police vendors in this state, my client is the only person who's ever been investigated.

[Andy]

Also, a Police Accountability Project just sounds like a Good idea in general. So why would you.

[Dennis Bonino]

It would be a good idea in general if it was meant to be a good idea?

[Andy]

No, that's what it means.

[Dennis Bonino]

Like, it was. It was a weapon.

[Andy]

Yeah. Taking that aside, just the concept, not way it's applied to you, like, that's not a bad idea. There should be accountability for all entities and agencies. You know what I mean?

[Dennis Bonino]

Like, this isn't a bad concept, theoretically. I agree. The problem is, is, like, who's going to oversee it? Who's going to have the impartial eyes and to push aside the political bureaucracy to oversee something that should be arbitrary?

[Andy]

Maybe nobody. But we still have to do our best effort.

[Dennis Bonino]

Here I am. Yeah, right. Here I am. Like, I can control and change the things that I know I can impact. And I tell people, like, they're like, I hate this guy. They do this, and I'm like, I can't fix them. All I can do is keep doing what I am in control of to fix. And so for that reason, I will do that. But I can't make your captain not a. Like, I don't know what to tell you. I'm not his therapist. I'm not his father who abandoned him or the kids who picked on him in the gym class. I. I can't fix that for you. But what I can do is give you the training you won't send you to so you don't get shot in the face on a traffic stop.

[Andy]

What training do you guys provide? Like, what's the core offerings that you guys have?

[Dennis Bonino]

So basically at the moment, and it just continues to expand. You know, it's fun. You want to come back to that question? You want to do this? Finish up the last part.

[Andy]

Yeah, let's go for it.

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay. Let me write that down because I'll lose it, dude. I have to create some badge. Okay. You know. You got that? Where are we at?

[Andy]

Right before this, you were saying they were trying to shut down your 2024.

[Dennis Bonino]

Oh, yeah. Okay.

[Andy]

I'm like, wow, a conference in 2021 in a different state was trying to shoot you in the foot on a conference three years down the road and way south of where they are.

[Dennis Bonino]

Oh, brother. Like, the story of. Of the things that went on and what they did, and it just. It's so wild. But anyway, they were trying to shut it down. That was their goal. We were told from the inside, this is what they want. They want this thing shut down. They want to stuck victory flag in it, say, we did that. We. They were just anti Cops on top of the anti Dennis Bonino. They don't like the police. That's another thing that's part of that. That whole. Now that that political figure has changed, it's switched. There's a new governor. That whole. Basically, as wild as it may sound, even though they're in the same association, they've switched. They've gone from one to a whole nother set of people. So I'm not trying to frustrate them, just telling the story about what happened. Arguably, I imagine some people in those roles now would maybe even be appalled themselves of what went on. But this conference going on in Orlando, and they were running as much interference as humanly possible. And people who see I'm into healthy competition, but these people who believe they're my competitors in this industry were perpetuating the news. So it wasn't catastrophic until every police training company got on the bandwagon and tried to make sure they put me out of business because they were very threatened by me. Unfortunately for them, they didn't succeed, but they did beat the piss out of me for sure. So there was a whole startup that we were having this conference still after all this controversy, which was untrue, and all these people wrote back like there was nothing in this training that we would have changed. It was so good. They didn't talk about this is a 2021 conference. But anyway, moving forward into Orlando, this person who was on our team, quote, unquote, was doing his very best to try to stop it because he felt threatened about his position and where he worked. My attorney even called me. He's like, hey, man, this guy doesn't stop. He. He is. He just doesn't stop calling me. He's like a maniac. And he is not your friend. He is telling me to tell you to shut this whole shit down. He's like, I'll tell you this right now. Don't shut anything down. I know who you are. I know what you do. I've been on this journey with you for the past two years. You can't stop. I think it's very important that you do it. And I went, you know, John, I'm. I'm not gonna. We're doing this thing no matter what goes on. We've also would have everybody over because we would have filed chapter 11 and taken everybody's money and couldn't repay them. So I was like, we gotta roll with this thing. Because we had already taken a lot of money on it. We already paid the. The venue wasn't giving Me the money back. And if people don't know running a conference is like a half a million dollars up front. Yeah. Well, it's like, it's probably arguably 150, 200 grand up front. And my tickets weren't 7,000 a piece. They're 600 tickets. So we go and had. We kind of, like, limped through that conference. I was a dude. I lost. You said pictures of me. I look skinny. I mean, I was a mess. I happened to just get it together enough to get that thing going. And arguably, for what we had to work with, it came out okay. Was it the 2023 conference? No. Did I have to tell people? Like, this is what was going on. But we put training on, and I did some talks where my soul came out, and I went through getting to that edge and life and why it's beautiful. And I came off that stage, and of course, you know, there's a lot of people lined up bawling their eyes out. And I'm not a therapist, but I care about these people. And they're like, this happened. And you talked about how I know that girl, and she was a friend of mine, and she got, you know, so this went on this one for, like, an hour. And I'm like, all right, guys, like, let's catch up. You know, I had to, like, it's weird to try to dismiss people because I have to run this conference that are sitting there, like, literally, like, waiting to talk to me. Like, listen, we'll get together throughout the week. And so, you know, after the conference was done, I was like, yeah, we did it. You know, we got through it. We'll figure it out in the future. There's a lot of stuff to continue to figure out. And so maybe about 10 weeks later, I received a email from a guy that said, hey, man, I just wanted to talk to you about the 2020 horror conference. I know you're going through a lot at that time, but let me just tell you what it did for me. I was going to kill myself. I actually bought a gun just to do it. I wasn't telling anybody I was going to do it, but I was going to do it. Now, I didn't want to go to your conference, but I got ordered to go to your conference by my chief. I got selected and sent. And after I heard you talk on stage, I walked outside and I called my wife, and I checked myself into a clinic in Ohio, and I went and got the help I needed. If I didn't go to your conference, I would have Killed myself to guarantee. And so I brought it to my staff and I said, I know we've been through a lot, and I'm thankful that you all are still here with me. And I know so and so wanted this thing shut down. And had I listened to this guy, this could be a dead cop. And I said, so I know it was hard for all of you, but the question I have to ask you is, was it worth it? And the answer is yes. Even if 10 people weren't happy with the performance, it was worth it. And this person is a complete, walking contradiction for what they pretend to stand for because they could not see the importance. And that. And that was a very good lesson for me to learn, is that just, you know, sometimes these people aren't giving you advice for your best interests. It's their best interest.

[Andy]

Yeah. Why do you think they didn't try to stop your 2023 conference?

[Dennis Bonino]

The report wasn't out yet. They were. They couldn't. Andy. They couldn't figure out what to do. They were raking through my Fourth Amendment rights like it was going like. I almost had no rights, to be honest with you. And when we tried to emphasize our rights in court, again, I'm not going to go into a lot of details. We had no rights. We. At some point, we realized that we were playing a game we couldn't win.

[Andy]

How are they going through your Fourth Amendment rights?

[Dennis Bonino]

Ignoring the law and just getting having. I don't want to go too deep into this because I really don't want to create more problems, but they didn't have to follow the rules, I'll say that. At all. And when we brought the rules to the people that were supposed to sort the rules, it was clear that they had no interest in sorting them in my. In my favor whatsoever. Just ignoring what the rules were and, like, almost laughing in our face. And I'm like, how do we. How does this keep. Like, some pot. Like, you can't even. You shouldn't be ruled this way. How is it possible? And again, I don't want to go there because I'm not trying to frustrate and go back through that ever again in my life. It is what it is. It happened. I was subjected to it. I've survived. Was the best thing that ever happened to me. As weird as that sounds, I don't want to do it again. Highly unrecommended. Yeah, don't do this. But, you know, it's a biblical thing to go through something like that. But Anyway, so in 2023, there was no report.

[Andy]

Gotcha. It was still in flux.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yep. So it took them arguably years to figure out how they were going to. I couldn't figure out what they were going to do because we, like, we're clean and, you know, everybody was cut. Like they're just doing. I mean, they must have spent a million dollars, arguably of the state's money, trying to fuck with me over nothing. Right. And at the end came up with a 77 page report just to shut me down. That was the goal. They are putting you out of business. And they pretended like they weren't doing that, but it was clear immediately that that's, that was the plan. We were told from the inside their goal is to shut you down. That's what they want you out of business.

[Andy]

Interesting.

[Dennis Bonino]

You're being punished for Tommy Lahren.

[Andy]

Well, they didn't put you out of business. So back to the other question. What are the core competencies? What is the core curriculum?

[Dennis Bonino]

Oh, yeah. So we were teaching a lot of advanced stuff, and I hate that word, and it actually shouldn't exist in law enforcement because there should be no advanced training. It could be specialized, but I think everything needs to be taught. And there's this discernment between basic and advanced that I think is ridiculous because the basic doesn't even meet par. So everything technically that's advanced is actually the par training most people should get. So I don't want to use that word, but we were doing a lot of specialized training, like interdiction work, whatever. But what I realized after this whole thing was, is like, man, these guys aren't even getting the basics right. And what are the basics? The basics are still advanced. So right now, what I've gone back to, which would be considered advanced, is all the things that you should have known and it should continue to know as a police officer. So things like, man, I go for a lot of constitutional law, so how you are supposed to act in the field constitutionally, People don't know a lot of stuff. It's not their fault. That's the crazy thing about this profession is like, I just put a post up the other day on the Instagram that said, like, I find this profession to be very interesting is where you're not taught how to do the job. Then you go out and try to do the job, and when you do it wrong, they bring you in and you get in trouble for trying to do the job that they never taught you how to do and hold no responsibility for just failing to train you. They just magically expect that you're going to know what to do, but nobody taught you how to do this. You're just doing your best. I've experienced it. I thought I was doing a good job one time, and I came in and this sergeant, I mean, he tore me a new asshole. And I was like, I didn't. That's what I thought it was. I like, solve the case on my own. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm gonna get a fucking award. I come in, he's like, yo, tell me why you didn't call detective. And I'm like. My field training was. I drove around to prisoner transports because the guy who was my field training officer was a senior guy and didn't get jobs. He got the transport. You don't want to be bothered anymore. That's what I learned. I don't even know how to use the computer. Like, I don't. You guys didn't teach me anything. I went to an academy where, man, I got to tell you, my right flank movements were sick. My shoes were glowing, but I didn't know what to do if a car smelled like weed. They never told us in six months. They didn't even tell us what to do. Remember, we found out we didn't have the automobile exception. And cops will understand this, but where you can't search a car in the state of New Jersey without a search warrant. We're one of the few. At the time, they were one of the few states that you couldn't. You didn't have the automobile exception. You'd have to go get a warrant from a judgment. We heard it for the first time from a judge. And we're like, what? We saw it on cops is what you're supposed to do. So coming back around right now, constitutional stuff. A lot of tactics, a lot of safety, a lot of what some would consider the basics, but they're advanced. It really is the training you deserved and needed that you never got. Also, with a lot of compassion. And I often remind people, like, hey, we're here as your big brothers. A lot of guidance on how you should behave. One part of my book is like, treat everybody like you treat your mother. Unless it's my mother. But. So we're not just giving, like, law training or tactic training or we're giving people insight about what it means to be communicative, not being a dick, how far that goes. Here's a quick way. Here are five. Just so many things like, here's five quick ways that you'll lose your job. So Just even if you're gonna do these things, bear in mind that 99% of cops lose their jobs when there's alcohol involved. So when you and your boys are hanging out at a Kenny Chesney concert, tailgating, just remember as you're drinking, this is where we go into cop lose job territory. So things like that.

[Andy]

What kind of constitutional stuff do you cover?

[Dennis Bonino]

Really, a lot of fourth amendment stuff, Fifth Amendment stuff, some sixth Amendment, because that's really specialized. It really starts rolling into some detective stuff. But the court system, I mean, fourth

[Andy]

is obviously unlawful search and seizure. Fifth is your Miranda rights. What's the sixth?

[Dennis Bonino]

The sixth is going to be when you're. So you're going to get, you know, you go before a judge, you're going to have the attachment of attorney rights. And so re approaching people once. Those things once in like a formal charge, that's considered actual formal charge. At the sixth, there's a lot of different rules that kick in that detectives absolutely need to know about approaching people after they've already been, you know, formally charged.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

Before judicial magistrate. So the fourth is the most important.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

And there are so many nuances with the fourth that it takes a long time. So my job is to take everything I know about the fourth that nobody ever taught me and try to teach it into a way that it's comprehensive and digestible for people. So I'm trying to get you to understand the principles that when this happens, I need you to remember that, like, oh, wait a second, we can't do this. Oh, wait a second, we can do this. We don't need to do that. We can do this. I just learned this. You don't remember the name of the case. You just got to remember, like, hey, like, I'll give you one. A lot of men and women. The automobile exception allows a police officer to search a car immediately without a warrant when they have probable cause to believe there is contraband inside of a car. Let's call it a canine alert. Stop a car, dog hits, you go inside the car. So a lot of guys will think, and girls will think, okay, let's impound the car. They'll impound the car, and then they'll be back in the impound yard. And they're like, oh, well, now we gotta get a warrant because it's no longer movable. And the answer is, you don't. You don't need to get a warrant. Montana has some weird rules. So anybody from Montana listening to this? There's some weird rules out here. They deviate from the fourth into the Montana constitution. But so this is big thing of like, oh, you know, like my detective sergeant said we needed a search warrant to go back into the car. I'm like, you don't. Here's six pieces of case. All that support that I'm correct. And I'm not trying to fight your detective sergeant. I would urge him to join the street cop community or take our investigator courses that I built out. So they can not look foolish when some seven month patrolman is teaching them about the law and they have 22 years on the job. They should know these things. And so when you say to people you should know these things, it pisses them off because they think they know everything already. I'm not trying to ruffle feathers fight with people here. I made this. I think you should know these things. I'm not holding judgment. I know what you guys get for trading. Just read this, read it, and if you have something that says what I'm saying is wrong, send it back and I'll listen to it. But 25 years, this is what I found. So make sure you do this. Or if people do things that are maybe guys make a mistake, I'm like, okay, well, it happens. Let's learn from it and learn from the constitutional guidelines of what you should actually do next time. How do you get somebody hemmed up when you don't teach them how to do it? It's like magic going to. If I say to you, hey man, take, take these pipes, do me a favor, put a, put a toilet in the next level up. And you're like, yeah, but I'm not a plumber. Figure it out. And I come in and go, hold on a sec. You didn't sweat these pipes. You didn't use a 90 here. You can't use copper on this. You never told me that. Yeah, but you're supposed this. I'm not a plumber. Yeah, yeah, but we. But you know, but you should know this. It's crazy.

[Andy]

How is the liability not fall on the department if to describe this as a lack of training or putting somebody out into the field unprepared to do their job properly? How does the liability not fall into the department?

[Dennis Bonino]

It does, but it's not their money. How do they care if the person in charge of appointing the person who's

[Andy]

in charge, don't they want to do their job well?

[Dennis Bonino]

Nope. You know why? Because in public service, it doesn't matter how you perform. You always get paid as long as you don't violate massive Policy or rule violations. Right. So it really doesn't matter how you perform because the level of contention to lose your job or be held at a. And I'll tell you something funny that really pisses people off that, that, you know, would have to analyze. If these people are doing their job, it doesn't exist. I always tell people like, it's so funny how in this profession every cop on the road gets a quarterly or a semi annual or an annual review. But how come once you make sergeant, nobody else gets reviews ever again? How come the cops aren't reviewing their supervisors? And then maybe there's some entity built in through the state or the federal government that does a review on the supervisor's behavior and knowledge and some of these other things. How come that doesn't exist? And it's clear as to why, because it affects people that make those decisions. They're not gonna put policies like that in place. They put policies in place to control the bottom part of the equation. And in the middle you have a lot of frustration. I'm not saying all of them, but I'm saying there's a lot of them. And if you ask any cop what's the biggest frustration with this industry is, it's the same thing in the military as well. You know, I know a lot of these guys, it's the leadership. And I can't fix that. All I can do is plant seeds and give guidance and hopefully the next crew of people that come along remember how they felt, don't get indoctrinated into the way things we do it here are brave enough to stand up for change and essentially make this profession better.

[Andy]

Do you teach a course that deals specifically with sovereign citizens? Because those are my favorite videos.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. So when you know constitutional law, what

[Andy]

it does, they'll tell you they do. They're going to be the Black's Law Dictionary, Maritime law, It's fantastic there.

[Dennis Bonino]

You know what, they're fun to watch. They're a nightmare to deal with.

[Andy]

Oh, I can only imagine these cops

[Dennis Bonino]

don't want to do this. Like nobody goes to work and wants to deal with these wackos. They're naughty, dude.

[Andy]

And a lot of the cops don't actually seem to know how to deal with them.

[Dennis Bonino]

Again, we go back to what's the level of training. I went to three police academies and I learned just close to nothing. How is that possible? How is that possible that I teach a one day course that essentially is no longer an in person class? It's a digital course for obvious reasons of Wanting to do more for the, for the world. And half the guys in the class come up to me and say, and girls, I learned more today than I did in my whole police academy. How am I able to accomplish that in 8 to 10 hours or learn more between my police academy and my field training in this class today than I did at all these academies? How is that possible? And so what people say sometimes there's this appalling nature of like, oh, their Academy is only eight weeks. Our academy is 24. I'm like, so you rather have eight weeks of nothing or 24 weeks of nothing? What's the difference? You guys are swinging sticks at a bag and screaming, get back. A proven thing that doesn't work. Why are we not implementing jiu jitsu? And arguably, when people want to fight, the jiu jitsu thing, okay, wrestling, right? Like, whatever you want, Judo, just say grappling. Things that work, like, just not karate. But you know, things that work. How come these, we know these things are working. You see the videos of these cops who train and in seconds are in control. And you see the videos, the cops who don't and can't figure out what to do next, and they look ridiculous. So if we see that this works in the field, why is it not implemented? And the answer is, that's not the way we've always done things. We don't want it that way. Or the state mandates this. Stop asking for permission, right? You have to start taking responsibility. Because you may not want to frustrate people because it threatens your job, but then you're the same person at this guy or girl's funeral saying you're sorry, but you're in some sense responsible for maybe a mistake they made. Because you look at the police deaths, and I say this because I with compassion and love. 80% of these things are. Are training failures. Not all of them, but 80%. When you see this, you're just like, why would he do that? Like, why do we have to let a cop die before we change things? Like, how do we not foresee that this could go south this way? And if we do this, it probably won't happen. And I'll give you two examples. Why do I teach a passenger side approach? And then there's a whole process of how we walk around the front of the car to escort people off to the side of the car. And there's a tactical reason why. And my points are extremely valid. And when you come up with a better reason than what I've come up with, I'm listening. But this is what I've been able to tell. This is what we should do. This is the best. This is safe. Does it come with some risk? Yes. Everything we do, here comes. I'm sitting in this office. Somebody could come through the ceiling right now and smash me in the head and kill me. There's some risk even sitting here.

[Andy]

I don't know if that risk would

[Dennis Bonino]

be considered reasonable, but it's assimilated in the same way. There's always some risk. So people will argue, well, there's risk. Okay. But we're looking at what mitigates the most risk. So this does. Now, there was a police officer who was murdered in the line of duty, not because he knew what my advice was, but my advice was out there for a long time. Whether or not it fell on deaf ears or they even heard it, I don't know. But now that agency has a policy where they're doing things the way that I have been saying to do them for decades. Why did this guy have to get killed for us to change the policy?

[Andy]

What happened?

[Dennis Bonino]

You know, dude, it's a very sensitive topic when you start talking about specificities and people and how impacted they are. And I hate the fact that we have to learn.

[Andy]

I mean, I bet we could find it on YouTube. Not that I want to go search for that. So.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, so I'll. I'll give. If I can try to keep it vague with being. Yeah, for sure.

[Andy]

Yeah. Just the broad strokes.

[Dennis Bonino]

So a police officer is a massive mistake. And. And again, it's a training failure because I can go back to their academy and see where the they failed. Guaranteed, I can go to field training and see where they failed. It's just. It's endless. But essentially, he orders this guy to step out of a car.

[Andy]

What was this stop for?

[Dennis Bonino]

I have no idea.

[Andy]

Okay.

[Dennis Bonino]

I just know the video. And the video is probably one of the top three videos you will see as a recruit at a police academy.

[Andy]

Because they kick on as the cops already out of the car.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. Maybe like a speeding violation or something. Could be. Usually a lot of these ones start with the simplest stuff.

[Andy]

Yeah. No, I mean, the video doesn't start with the officer idea. Out of the car approaching.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. You'll see him on the passenger side. Essentially, the core principles of the video is he's on the passenger side of the car, and he tells the guy, step out. Let me talk to you on the side of the road, which is a constitutional requirement. If an officer has a legitimate reason to stop you, you have to get out of the car in a traffic stop. It's clear as day. It's Pennsylvania versus Mims. And if you refuse to order that, not that they want to escalate it, but they by law, can use force to take you out of the car.

[Andy]

Classic sovereign citizen video argument.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andy]

So I was gonna say that's how I know P versus Mims.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. So. So, you know, without.

[Andy]

So he's passenger side.

[Dennis Bonino]

So he's passenger side, driver to get

[Andy]

out of the car.

[Dennis Bonino]

What he. What my prescription is, and I'm not sitting here and criticizing because nothing could do bring that guy back, unfortunately.

[Andy]

Well, tell me what happened first, and then tell me what you would recommend.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. So he tells the guy, step out of the car, Meet me at the back of the car. So he takes eyes off of the guy, steps out. The dude grabs an ar, Gets out of the car, executes him on the side road, puts a bullet in his head. Right. Right in front of camera. So what was the failure number one rule on a traffic stop? I don't care who you are, is where are people's hands? You don't got to be a psycho, but you got to be ready. And so people get this one confused when I say this. You need to treat all these traffic stops as if you're going to be killed and you'll probably survive. Do I. Am I recommending that you got to come out with an M4 or an AR15 and be prepared for a gunfight? No, but you got to be able to prepare up here for a gunfight. You can't walk up like you're gonna bring the guy for ice cream, that it's gonna be just some bullshit, another ticket, because that's when things go bad, what he should have done and what I've recommended. And maybe, just maybe, had this been implemented in their academy, which I'm sure it is now, because somebody had to die for it to change, is that we want to keep our hands on the eyes on the hands. So on a passenger side of a car, the recommendation is. Is like, don't predict two things that your suspicions what your next move is. So just tell the guy, hey, do me a favor. Just keep your hands on the steering wheel. We can see him. That's cool. That's. It's just a policy that we have on my body on camera. You just got to play that game. Yeah, just turn the car off real quick. I'm not telling you you're coming out of the car. I'M not telling you. I'm suspicious that something's wrong. Not telling you anything. I'm going to walk around the car onto the driver's side. Why do I walk around the car? Because I can see your hands. And so I've had an argument. One, there was this retired NYPD guy that fought with me on LinkedIn about this. He's like, oh, yeah, walk around the front of the car. Because this is very funny. He goes, because they'll just put the car and drive and run you over. And I said, what's your prescription, buddy? And he said, you walk around the back of the car, go, oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. Cars don't come in reverse. So he couldn't achieve it in that way either.

[Andy]

Right, but didn't you already tell him to turn the car off anyway?

[Dennis Bonino]

That's right. So I. And I argue to people, like, because people want to fight back, because their principles are. This is what we've learned is what I know. I don't want to change.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

And by the way, you're an adult. I'm here to deliver the message. If you want to take it, fantastic. If you don't and you die, I'm still donating a ton of money to your family. I'm going to share your GoFundMe because I love you. Even though you may not like me, I love you because of who you are, what you've chosen to do. And that's what I stand for. And my argument back is like, well, you. You're so slow, you can't hear a car starting or see his hands go for the shifter. Pay attention. And what you want to do is you want to walk around the front of the car onto the driver's side, obviously, carefully. And then have them step out. And what if he runs? Okay, but you can see the hands. This is. When I watch these shows, all I think about is. And I don't watch. Like, I'm not like, cop fucked. And, like, I'm like, police work, Right? You know, I'm just like, oh, man, these guys are still a mess. Like, they don't. Like, I cannot believe we're in this day and age. And these guys have no idea what they're doing still. Like, how are we here? And so the answer is like, I'm gonna do the best that I can to get us out of here, into there with the work that I do. And that's what motivates the fuck out of me. So he should have escort him off the car, because then he Would have seen him at least grabbing that ar. He probably would had an opportunity to get his gun and at least engage in a gun battle instead being executed.

[Andy]

Where'd the guy pull the AR from?

[Dennis Bonino]

He must have had it. You know you're in Montana, right? There's states that were. Guy picked me up in Alabama to go do a class in his personal vehicle and he had an AR in the front, like literally in his front seat like a shorty. And I'm like, bro, like, what do you guys. He's like, yeah, now we just everybody rides around like this.

[Andy]

I don't know anybody who rides around like that, however that would be legal in, in Montana. I was about to say California. I'm like, what?

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, dude, my brother in law who's a cop in Arizona, when I met him, he was 17 and he just got his license. And I'm like, yo, where do you guys park? You park at the high school? Where can you park? And he's like, well, a lot of us don't park at the high school. I'm like, why is that? He's 18 years old at this time. And he's like, nah, we park on like the outside of the high school.

[Andy]

Yeah, because they got a rifle in their truck.

[Dennis Bonino]

That's right, dude.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

And I was like, what? He's like, yeah, we all got like ars in our cars.

[Andy]

You can't bring them on school property, dude. I'm like, but we'll just park it in a vehicle that probably doesn't have tinted windows. It's probably invisible display that. I know people who literally, they go with the cup holster. 6. No, no, like, yeah, the Glock, just like, you might as well just have a neon flashing sign that says free Glock here. And then I talk to my cop buddies and yeah, guess what? People who are in the throes of addiction, what do they do when they're like walking around? They're like, there's a gun, I'll trade that downstream and get some meth or whatever it may be. And then it ends up going upstream and they find it in a crime in some other state. Be better than cup holder holster guys.

[Dennis Bonino]

I imagine we're probably close in age and we could both understand why we would make those suggestions that let's be smarter than this.

[Andy]

Well, it's a, it's a tool designed to take life. I mean, maybe we should just treat it like that.

[Dennis Bonino]

I don't disagree. However, it doesn't mean that things are going to change because I've been in people's cars in Florida, I've jumped into people's cars and they got, like, literally, mags on the back of it. Like, I've gotten this guy's Raptor one time in the back seat, and he had, like, literally, like, I had built mag pouches into the back seated. He had, like, 1230 round magazines loaded, ready to go.

[Andy]

Like, Molle system that hanging off the back of the.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, the whole thing, dude. And I'm like. Like, we're in, like, Boca.

[Andy]

My favorite is the people who do that, and then they forget to put their rifle in the car.

[Dennis Bonino]

Oh, yeah.

[Andy]

Just driving around with, like, 600 rounds of ammunition and no.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, look at. I'm all like. I'm obviously a big gun guy, but, like, you know. Yeah, there is some sense that. But that would have been the fix that may have saved that guy's life. And, you know, dude, I go to that. I'm going in two weeks. I don't know when this layer. But taking my kids to the memorial for Police Week this year, for the first time ever, my kids think their dad's cool, which is cool. And they're gonna think I'm really cool when we get there. And they don't know this yet, but I. I have some really cool stuff lined up because I have friends that work down there, so there's some cool stuff. I can't say publicly what they're going to be doing, but they're gonna do some cool.

[Andy]

How old are they?

[Dennis Bonino]

12, 10 and 8.

[Andy]

Nice.

[Dennis Bonino]

And they're all boy like. These are boys. Like, they're not. They're. Dude, the minute they wake up, they're beating the. Out of each other. And I'm like, it's 11 at night, and you guys are still beating the. I don't get involved.

[Andy]

Yeah, right.

[Dennis Bonino]

They come out, they're crying. I'm like, okay.

[Andy]

It's like, just UFC rules. No eye gouging, no lip hooks, and no.

[Dennis Bonino]

You know, I've had to intervene, like, twice.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

But when I go there, I don't know what. Like, I'm going to tell you something about the truth that I think is important. That wall in D.C. is the truth, because which one are we talking?

[Andy]

Vietnam wall?

[Dennis Bonino]

No, we're talking about the police memorial.

[Andy]

There's. Unfortunately, with D.C. we got to specify because there are so many memorials for the subject matter.

[Dennis Bonino]

I'm not saying that I'm not empathetic, and I don't love and support. Yeah, yeah.

[Andy]

Trust me. Wasn't making that jump.

[Dennis Bonino]

Just wanted to clarify. Yeah. So specifically for Police Week, those. And I'll tell you why, and I'll tell you what I did at my last conference. And that's, you know, for now, I'm not doing more conferences at the moment. They were fun, but I have moved on for a number of reasons. But that wall is where the names are etched in. And so for Police Week, what happens is all the families come there. Now, the unity, Is that a nationwide memorial?

[Andy]

Okay.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. So bless you. So maybe about 2,000 police officers do something called the Police Unity Tour, and they ride in from maybe New York. I know a ton of people that do this, and they. They spend, like, four or five days riding from New York on bicycles down to D.C. and they ride into Memorial. It's great ceremony. It's really cool. And the memorial's packed, and there's cops everywhere. It's the only time of the year that I actually, you know, think I'm somebody because people know who I am. And so I, you know, I'm there as an observer. I'm not there to. To. I'm there to show support because I think it's important. And I'm not there because I, like, want you to take a picture with me or I want to be asked to take pictures. I'll take them all day with you guys. But that's not what I'm there for. I want to show support. I want to show that, you know, like, I really do care about this stuff, and I'm not doing it because I'm trying to, you know, trick you that I care. I'm here because I care. And I've been there for years because I care. I've been there my entire career. Let me. Not just. Let me put that on the record, but for the past, you know, five years, I've been going consistently. So they come in and they do this ceremony and do a speech. It's really cool. And then everybody just leaves. And then obviously, they're going to disperse into D.C. and do whatever they're going to do until the bars open up and everybody starts getting festive and they do the vigil. The next night, they open tent city. All this cool. But when people leave, this thing happens. And this thing that happens is the families of these fallen officers. Are there video of it? I nonchalantly videoed what it looked like because I wanted to show people at my next conference what the truth about this job was. And when you walk through there, there's nobody else there but grieving family. Some of them have been. They've Made friends with each other. So they're almost having reunions there. And they all share one common thing, that somebody they loved was murdered as a police officer. And I spend a lot of time there, unfortunately not, not uninterrupted anymore because it's very hard for me to get where I need to be mentally and really feel that because I get approached non stop about like hey man, take a picture. Right? Which is cool. It's fine. And I don't ever say like I'm grieving right now, bro, but I try to remind myself of the pain that I've been through, the people that I've, you know, thought my friends and lost and the sacrifices that I've made and the things I've missed with my kids to be out here doing this work and why it's important. And I always tell people like that's the truth, truth that, that those people there are the truth about this job. Because there's 27, 28, 000 cops have been killed in line of duty doing this. And the most up thing is 80% of them is because of training failures. So what better to fix than the training?

[Andy]

What are the academies doing right?

[Dennis Bonino]

I don't know.

[Andy]

Come on.

[Dennis Bonino]

I don't know. I don't. There, there, there is no central curriculum. What I can say is maybe it's related to some of the things work that I'm doing. Maybe it's not.

[Andy]

Look at the three academies that you went through. What did they do correctly?

[Dennis Bonino]

Let me go back to that and then I'll go to that. What I am seeing is people who are reaching out to me, like hey man, we actually started implementing this stuff at the academy. It's been great. Hey, we took your suggestion about this. We started implementing this next recruit class that I don't live for homage. I don't give a shit about it. I have no. I didn't become this guy so people would recognize me. I really believe that I could do something. And I. There's a lot of stuff you don't know about jumping into this, trying to do something. But it's very noble and I want people to really know who I am and people find out who I am. Sometimes I get judged up front because of my crassness of New Jersey and my Jersey ishness and my, you know, very non fluffy responses as other people, you know, will profess fluff before they say the things that need to be said. It's rewarding to see that the work is being heard and used. What do I think that academies are doing better now. They're implementing passenger side approaches.

[Andy]

They're strip it away from the things that you're teaching. The academies that you went through back at the beginning of your career, what do they do properly?

[Dennis Bonino]

The only academy that did something correctly was the federal Law Enforcement Training Center. That's state. A second one I went to, arguably, and comparing to other academies, they were eons ahead. And people say, well, they have the most funding. Don't disagree. That was certainly a portion of it. But what they had was there really isn't a lot of bureaucracy there, as weird as that may sound for the federal government. The men and women who work there were cops. And I think there's a criteria to get hired as an instructor there. I think they pretty much stick to that. And so they do pick people that are very specialized in what they do. And those guys, I would argue that their driving was. I don't know if you could. I can't make their driving program better. There's nothing like that's fixed. The only problem is there's only one place in this country, arguably, maybe a couple other places, because I know the guys from the Georgia highway patrol and Arkansas patrol could have a fit if they hear this. I know you guys are doing good work, too. But arguably there may be five places in the country like nobody's going from Connecticut down to FLETC to go train driving. They're not doing it. They can't afford it. So what do they do? They stick these guys in a parking lot at a, you know, a supermarket and they put up cones and they call it pursuit driving. It's nuts. That was amazing. They're shooting at the federal Law Enforcement Training center was profound. Move and shoot, night shooting, officer down shooting. They should be modeling that everywhere. But again, we run into this like, well, who's going to teach it? Who do we have right? You're like, it's. You're right. And that's essentially when you look at the problems that these academies face is like, well, we don't have anybody to teach this. You're not wrong. And I don't think just any Joe Schmo should be teaching. Officer down shooting. The principle of how to shoot from a shot position, you need to get somebody who knows what they're doing. And, you know, thankfully, a lot of these special operations guys have brought a lot of that to the police side. And I think it's very important. A lot of times guys are like, I want to get into this. I'm like, yeah, the special Operations guys are really good. Like, they've got a lot of that stuff locked. They've got it. They're better than we essentially are on these tactics. So learn from them. Mold it, mend it. But, like, these guys are very good. I know a lot of these guys. I'm not, you know, probably the same guys that, you know, I think they bring a lot to the table.

[Andy]

You got to make sure you're using it appropriately, though. Different ROEs, oftentimes different tools, different available tactics.

[Dennis Bonino]

Right.

[Andy]

So, yeah, there's a lot to be gained, but it's not a direct crossover. And that has to be respected as well. Too.

[Dennis Bonino]

Fair enough.

[Andy]

Like, cops shouldn't be trying to be special operations guys. Take what you can learn from that world and apply it appropriately inside the constraints of our constitution, please.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yes, yes. There was. There was somebody a long time ago, and I don't want to make the guy feel bad. Where.

[Andy]

This is a paid message from GoFundMe. Meet Juan Naula. When his son was hospitalized for a viral infection, Juan started a GoFundMe to pay for medical expenses.

[Dennis Bonino]

It was 5k to pay the bill for my son, and I need only 22 hours. It was amazing. People really trust on GoFundMe.

[Andy]

How did Juan raise $5,000 in less than a day? He posted a short video on GoFundMe telling his story in 30 seconds.

[Dennis Bonino]

30 seconds. Be specific. Be quick and tell. What are you going to be using the funds for? I was nervous to do it because it doesn't feel okay to ask money. But you shouldn't be nervous. Sometimes you just have to do it and see the results. We were able to save my son's life thanks to gofundme that we still have my son with us.

[Andy]

Start your GoFundMe today at gofundme.com that's gofundme.com gofundme.com this message reflects one person's experience.

[Dennis Bonino]

It was taught that people were injured, he'd be put out of their misery in a massive shooting. And then. Yeah, so this was. I'm talking like this, like a decade ago. Because some agency that.

[Andy]

I was gonna say about 100 years ago.

[Dennis Bonino]

No, no, decade is still far too. Yeah, a decade ago. So it was like, still, like people were still in Afghanistan and things like that. So this guy, he'd come back and he's like.

[Andy]

So just for clarity, what you just described would be a war crime.

[Dennis Bonino]

That's how this. This is what was relayed to me. I don't know if this is what was told to me not by one person, but by many. And this person was.

[Andy]

No, actually executing an injured combatant is a violation of the Geneva Convention.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah.

[Andy]

And would be considered a war crime. Just put it out there.

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay, good. Would be a real big crime here in the United States as well.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

So this guy actually caused, like, this whole. I don't want to say what agency, because I don't want to bring heat to people. They had to correct it and make a policy that, like, they had to vet every. Like, they had to send somebody. It's a big agency. To watch that training to make sure we didn't get anywhere close. They had to send like two guys to watch any train they were going to host before they said, yes, we can have it. It. But what was the question right before that?

[Andy]

What were we talking about?

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, see, Andy, you got to watch.

[Andy]

That's all right. We're doing good. We were just talking about, like, it's not a good idea to execute people. That's a good starting point.

[Dennis Bonino]

FLETC shooting. Oh, the crossover between.

[Andy]

Yeah. So special operations and being a police officer. Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

I would argue that the Federal Law Enforcement Training center, you know, I went 2004. So 22 years ago was eons ahead of the ones I went to 20 months earlier and the one I went to 20 months later. They were horrible. Good guys running it. Like, we had a lot of fun. We did. But, like, when you left, you're like, wow, I could do a lot of push ups. We can run eight miles. You could do sit ups.

[Andy]

I mean, did they focus on communication at all? Leadership skills, interpersonal skills?

[Dennis Bonino]

You know something, dude, I really am under the impression this is just me theoretically trying to imagine how we end up with the police academy curriculum that currently exists some places now, other places are eons ahead. No, I tend to think the guys on the west coast, like the LAPD and the LA sheriffs, I think they got. They're better. I can't think that they're 100% right, but they're better than. Than most of the east coast stuff.

[Andy]

Why do you think that is? I mean, especially a large city like, let's say NYPD in la, let's say they have an equal budget. You'd say the west coast guys were maybe a little bit ahead.

[Dennis Bonino]

You can see it.

[Andy]

Why do you think that is, though? If the budget and all things created equal from that level, a monetary ability to get training or resources and all that were the same.

[Dennis Bonino]

Mere speculation. Because both would be influenced by Politics. So you don't know what, where that part happened. Where.

[Andy]

Yeah, but the politics is the same color in LA and Newark and New York.

[Dennis Bonino]

Is it because you could have one guy with this thought here or a group of people with this thought here and this group of people with this thought here.

[Andy]

Historically they're both very deeply blue.

[Dennis Bonino]

I don't disagree. Just I wonder who the blue was because you could have. I mean I know Democratic and I'm not trying to make this political conversations but I mean I know people who are Democratic that took the party ticket but are full blown police supporters. They need to take the party tickets that was available and that's when they needed to use to, to run on. And they play that game a little bit. So I never paint with a broad brush of like Democrat hates cops, Republicans love cops. I, I would consider that to be in this context a very individualized per person type of analysis because I do know Democrats that fully support the police. No, like I'm not making that up because I'm not trying to appease anybody. I don't give a. But it would be unfair to say that. So the only reason I know that to be true is because when you watch these videos, they are very, at least in tactics, the guys on the west coast are just eons ahead of the guys on the East Coast.

[Andy]

They're getting a lot of reps in.

[Dennis Bonino]

They're doing something right.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

That they're not doing right on the, on the East Coast. And so maybe that's part of the continued assignment of what I've been sent to do.

[Andy]

But is there antagonism, whether healthy or unhealthy, between let's say LA and New York?

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay, now there's a lot of love, dude. Believe it or not, there's a lot of love.

[Andy]

I'm assuming there's a good amount of shit talking as well.

[Dennis Bonino]

I don't think so. There has to be some. I think, I think probably with closer agencies. Maybe like LA and like the LA Sheriff's office. Maybe like that could be. Now I'm not saying that exists, but that would be more reasonable. Like it's usually people work next to each other, it's not the guys across the country.

[Andy]

And I'm again, I'm not saying unhealthy should talk. I'm like talking about ribbing your friends.

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, there is strife sometimes too. Yeah, sometimes you see these videos of these strikes like this, the detention won't take the city cops and then the sheriff shows up and the sheriff's fighting with the chief, it's like these are, these are nutty people because we have to add a very minimum as human beings, remove our emotion and try to come to an intelligent conversation. We can disagree about stuff, but we have a job to do together. But unfortunately, people haven't been taught emotional intelligence or how to behave appropriately or maybe they're not intelligent enough to understand process what needs to occur. So I try to set an example in that realm too because we need to really start considering. There's a saying by Seth Godin, who I very much, I agree with 98% of his stuff. There's some things about Seth Godin that I don't agree with, but, but still I think it's a significant impact in my life. And one of his sayings is the old saying, I'll try to do it in his voice. The old saying is don't just stand there, do something. But you should really think about is don't just do it. Just stand there, don't do anything. And so what that means is you, if you have knee jerk emotional reactions before you can think, you're going to make mistakes. So anytime anything happens, we just need to breathe. Unless it's an emergent situation and let it all calm down, let some dust settle and give it some time and then we're going to think about how we're going to respond. Because when you're activating that fight or flight and your amygdala is punching you in the throat to do something, immediately you're going to make a bad move, a bad decision. I'm not talking about emergent situations where you have to start figuring out what you're going to do, breathe and go after an active shooter. I'm talking about, there's some criticism coming in. There's this thing that happened. How are we going to address it? And, and what's the best way for us to address it where we can get to the best solution?

[Andy]

How do you in your curriculum teach from a mentality perspective, officers approaching the vehicle, from an interaction with the people that are inside of it.

[Dennis Bonino]

When you become a cop, it is very hard to figure out who you are. So what's going on in the brain is, well, I'm this person now, so how do I get respect? And your mind immediately goes to, I'm gonna have to be this cop. And when I try to emphasize to everybody is you would think that would work, but it actually works just the opposite. So show me a cop in an agency who's the best cop you go to an agency and say, who's the best cop you guys got? I could almost guarantee you that that guy's gonna walk out and be one of the nicest people you ever met in your life. As a matter of fact, not only would be nice, but he's probably the guy that's made more arrests or girl that's made more arrests in this agency. Is an absolute bulldog on the road, but does it with such professionalism and such kindness and such personality that even when that person may see somebody they may have arrested or prosecuted, they want to buy him a drink. Because I'm one of those guys.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

I didn't grow up that way. I mean that in the sense of the police world. I wasn't. They didn't start out that way. I looked at the guys I work with, I thought I should act like these guys. It was wrong. And when I figured that out, I was able to share that with people. But there is a line that you have to be able to balance between being too friendly. And I'll give you an example. I was field training a guy pulled over this dude. This guy had a state warrant which was big. You don't see a lot of those. And it was big. It was a massive drug trafficking warrant. And he got in the car. This guy was hardcore criminal. I'm talking about like this guy had done time. No question about it. Big dude. Just. You knew he was a born criminal. This is who he was. And he was a massive dude.

[Andy]

He's about that life.

[Dennis Bonino]

This is him. And so I realize this guy has come out of the car and I've got this kid who's with me who's 20. I. I do my, my professional. Hey, look, dude, this is not that dope me, you know what I mean? Like, you gotta come. Don't start. If this is something you don't think it is, don't start catching up the charges here. It don't make sense. I don't want to fight you. He don't want to fight you. We don't want to do that. There's no reason for it. But your name was Ran. God. What do you want me to do? Right? I promise you that I will treat you with the utmost respect. You're a big guy. We can cuff you in the front. I just got to search it. I don't probably have a belt in the car. We'll put you in the belt. No big deal. But I can put shackles on you if you want to do. That's fine. I want you to be Comfortable back at this car. When we get back, I'll get you food. Like, we can get that there. We get, like, burgers and stuff from McDonald's, get delivered over to us. We need them. I'll get you a few things. If you're hungry. You'll. You can take your phone. You make as many calls as you want. I don't want to fight you. You're a big guy, and I know that, but, you know, I don't have a choice. You're in this game a long time. I'm in this game a long time, right? What do you. And he's like, all right, get set a card. He was. He was not happy. And I. Forget him. Say, like, this voice, like, heron. He's calling her because it's a heroin warrant. He's like, Heron. Fucking Heron. Fuck these motherfuckers talking about, right? So then I bring him to the back. We got to. Now we got to fingerprint this guy. We got to take pictures of him. I got to keep it. And by the way, I wasn't putting a show on. I'm trying to give this guy respect, right? We got to get something done. And you're not going to win, no matter what, because I can call 700 cops if I have to. And we'll have to do. Let's not deal with that. It doesn't make any sense. This young guy started getting very friendly with him. He was very new. Had to take him outside. And I said, listen, I know you see me be very personal with people, but I got a lot of time in this game now. I have a lot of time. I've been sitting under a tree for 14 years. I've been fucking more out here. I worked in corrections to start. You know, I did that for. I worked at maximum housing unit. So I know how to talk to these people. I know what they think. Like, I've been in this game for a long. These guys know I'm street smart. They know it. They can. I get it. Compliment all the time, the time. Like, yo, you're street smart for a white boy. I get compliments for people like, yo, you're the. You're smart dude. Like, how did you catch me? And I'm like, nobody's caught me. And I'm like, man, you know, you learn a few things. And I had to tell this kid, like, hey, I. I get it. I appreciate that you were trying to be kind with the guy. You started joking with the dude. That's a dangerous guy back there. And you're a Little dude, that's a dangerous dude. Stay professional. But you gotta, you can't lean that much further.

[Andy]

Boundaries.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, you gotta have boundaries of like, you may see me joke around with somebody, but it's a quick one. And we're back. He doesn't have to know that I'm in charge, but he has to know that I'm in charge. And, and I'm going to give him respect. But we're not getting, we're not fucking friends. And he knows that we're not friends, but at least he's going to respect the work that we do. And so when I say the best cops are the nicest cops, it's always that pushback from. Some people are like, you don't always need to be can't. You can't always be nice. And I'm like, I know, I get that. What I'm saying is you also can't always be a dick.

[Andy]

Yeah, you have to have gears.

[Dennis Bonino]

So I tell people, like, the first thing you should have been told when you went to the police academy, your instructor should have came out, standing there in your position of attention and said, all right, first rule of being a cop, don't be a fucking dick. Just don't be a dick. And your life is going to be a lot easier because as soon as you're a dick, that's where problems start. You're frustrating people. And when I say to you, when you walk to a police agency and you say, where's the nicest guy or girl in here? Who's your best cop? I'm sorry? It's who's your best cop? And they bring this person out in their personal. They're nice, they're professional, they know their craft. On the latter, when you say, who's the biggest here? Who do you think's coming out? The opposite. The right. The guy who can't talk to anybody. The guy ruffles feathers non stop. And some of these guys live behind that Persona where they need to adjust and they refuse to because they, like, that's who they are. Now, how many of those exist? Very few. I would argue less than 2% of an agency has that level.

[Andy]

Every community does.

[Dennis Bonino]

There.

[Andy]

There's God, you know, if people make the choice to be a professional criminal, that's your choice. So I get it. I'm not going to say I respect what you do for a living, but you've made that choice. I'm trying to be a professional police officer. Like, you've made your choices. I am here. I have things that I have to do. And so in that situation you just described, yeah, I'm glad it went that way. But there's so many things that people can do also to make stops easier on the other side of, like, the officers being told, don't be a dick. Like, every parent out there who is teaching their children to drive, please do me a favor, say the same thing to them. Like, you're trying to enforce the laws. Police officers, spoiler alert, didn't write the laws. It's their job to enforce them. Nobody likes getting pulled over. Sometimes I get pulled over. I pull to the side, I roll my windows down, hands on the steering wheel. Officer almost always comes up. I will take my wallet out of my pocket, put it on the center console, and I wait for them to. And they're like. They're always like, why'd you do that? I'm like, cause I know how much it sucks to walk up on a car. And they're like, okay. And like, be cool. Yeah, be fucking cool.

[Dennis Bonino]

Some people get that. And while I believe the Internet and social media has somewhat, in people's minds, given them permission to get away with what they get away, behave the way they do.

[Andy]

Well, cops have been villainized, right?

[Dennis Bonino]

And nobody sticks up for them. And it's rare that you have an administration that will stick up for them because they're. They know. You can even see this with the media. The media knows who they can with and who they can't. You go to Wayne Ivey, he's going to tell you to stick it up your ass. The media. He's got relationships with the media. And he's even asked me to speak to the media about my stuff. And he gave me like, hey, this guy's not a bad guy. I'm not saying he's. But he's not a bad guy. These other ones are out of their minds. But Wayne will tell you to stick up your ass. But you can go maybe, I don't know, 100 miles away and find the guy who's gonna be bending over backwards to appease any public eye and just completely throwing his people under the bus and making decisions before an analysis of what that person did was true. And you see these cops, like, nothing ever happens to them. But these guys are just pat. They're not leaders. And I always tell people, like, stop calling these people leaders. They're not law enforcement leaders. They're management at best. And I mean at best, because they're not good managers. So what does it mean to lead? It means that you will you know, be unafraid to stand up for what you know is correct and right. Most people can't do that. It's terrifying because it threatens their livelihood. I want to be the chief. I don't want to go anywhere. I want to be the director. I want to be the sheriff. So I'm going to say what I need to say to appease my voters in the public so I look good because I know what my voters want. But it. But this guy didn't do anything wrong. How are you doing it to this guy? That doesn't. That's not fair. And that's the world that we live in.

[Andy]

Yeah. Leaders and managers are two very different things.

[Dennis Bonino]

But again, back to what you were saying is the Internet has given people permission. But I want to just reiterate to people like, hey, 25 years ago, people were assholes then, too.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

Maybe more of them now. But, like, they were then, too. Believe me, I was there.

[Andy]

Nobody likes being on the other end of the authority figure power dynamic. But it's like, also, yeah. Might have not stopped at that stoplight. My favorite is when this happened to me the last time I got pulled over. I might have been speeding. It's hard to say. The copy pulled me over, walked up. He's like, do you know how fast you're going? I was like, I was going way too fast to look down at my speedometer. He started fucking dying, laughing. We ended up chatting on the side of the road for, like, five minutes. He's like, just slow down, man.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, like, we really need to pick and choose our battles as police officers. And there's just. I've always made this argument people get very frustrated. Like, there's a lot of people doing a lot of bad stuff in this world. Let's spend our time on them. And so the best cops have to know what things to ignore because our resources are limited.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

And so we can ignore things that aren't as a high priority of the things that you should be paying attention to while you leave yourself available for those things that are more of a high priority. You can't literally stop every infraction that goes on in your presence. You have to learn as a good cop to ignore most of it.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

And it's. And again, this is something where somebody come in and start being critical about that statement. But the best cops in the business would agree. 100. And every time I put something out about that, maybe eight, nine months at a time, people are like, yeah, it's 100% it's 100, right. I mean if I'm out enforcing township ordinances for people violating the garage sale rules. Right. Because those are laws. Tell me about the guy that just dropped off, you know, 10,000 bags of heroin down the street or three miles away. There's a hotel and there's a 12 year old being trafficked inside the hotel. But I'm out here dicking off with some garage sale.

[Andy]

I've seen it. I've done ride alongs where the computer, you're like, wow, so you're just going to rack and stack and you're just like working them off the list.

[Dennis Bonino]

Oh yeah.

[Andy]

And. And again, as not a police officer, I'm like, oh, that one looks a little bit more important than the report of a verbal disturbance at a barbecue.

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, there's only some salute. Right. And there's only some solutions that you can get to for the amount of resources that we have. And if you really think about it, it's crazy to think that there's 700,000 cops in a country with 380,000, 80 million people probably at this point.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

So generally most of civilization is civilized for the most part. If you really think about it far majority. So thank God that that exists that way because we would never be able to enforce enough laws to keep people civilized. Do things happen? Yes. Do I think these men and women are trying to do their best? I really do. I'm talking like 99 of them really show up with the intention of doing the best job they can. They just haven't been given a fair shake and it's up.

[Andy]

What's it like working in the corrections environment? You were saying it was like the maximum security.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andy]

What's that world like?

[Dennis Bonino]

It's terrible. I would hope that the AI inventions come up with a way that human beings do not have to be in there and manage those folks and the guys and girls who do that profession, my hat's off to them. It is a brutal profession. It is arguably the most difficult profession. Let's call it top five because I don't know what else you would throw in there because then somebody will come at me and say, what about this? Okay, all right. Arguably top five most difficult professions. It is absurdly difficult to do. What makes it so difficult?

[Andy]

Is it just that the risk you're

[Dennis Bonino]

doing time, it's not even a risk. It's just like you're worth. You're with these people that are just. They're the worst. Right. I'm not saying there isn't A few decent human beings sprinkled in there for whatever reasons that are maybe act appropriate. This is society's worst offenders. These aren't people that are, you know, rational thinking, they are primitive and, and they live by a different set of rules. And when you're inside of that environment eight, 16 hours a day, you're a human being, you start picking up on the things that you're. So you become a product of your environment and it's very, it's very sad, it's very depressing. I remember going to work one time, I had a convertible Mustang at a 93 drop top five zero right red with black leather Flowmasters and it was like May, it was like 81 degrees out. These girls pull up next to me in a Jeep on the turnpike and I remember thinking myself, I'm walking into this climate controlled hell on this beautiful day and I walked through those doors and you're inside and that's it, that's your, that's the. You've missed that whole day. And then on top of it, they were beating the piss out of us with double shifts. You just getting stuck, you can't leave. It's a very difficult job. It's very hard and you know, you got to give credit to the guys and girls that still do it. Very, very hard. I would, I would. It was the worst job I've ever had in my life. Not saying I wasn't good at it, I didn't run it. Well, for me it was the worst job ever had in my life.

[Andy]

I mean, you want to talk about an environment that is just defined by its level of risk. I don't know, I don't know.

[Dennis Bonino]

I don't know if it's the risk. I think it's more of the mental beat down of being in there because. Not that corrections officers don't get assaulted or killed, it does happen, arguably and statistically you might have more risk. As a police officer. I would think that's probably a fair statement and you know, again, don't hold me to it, but I think it's a fair statement. And I'll go off of just the fact of how many police officers get killed in the line of duty every year.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

And how many of those are corrections officers? So it's, it's the mental impact that it has on the ptsd. I've ever. My life and nightmares are for me being in jail. Thankfully they've subsided. I haven't had a lot of them in a while, especially after I've gotten through my brutal Political beatdown. But the mental anguish that that job takes a toll on your brain. On. It's. It's tough, man. It's a tough. It's a bad. It's a very bad environment. I'd rather be a roofer. And that would be bad for a guy who's fairly ginger. Ish.

[Andy]

I mean, they have like UPF protective clothing that you could wear, not actually

[Dennis Bonino]

tan quite well these days. It's strange.

[Andy]

Not a doctor couldn't tell you. In a perfect world, if you, if you had your way, what would you grow your company into? And how would, Is it, is it ever possible, do you think that there will be a curriculum, an academy curriculum that is accepted, maybe not like the entire academy, but like a baseline curriculum that is accepted? Us wide

[Dennis Bonino]

people have asked me, how do you fix it all? And so in order to fix something, when you have to understand what the problem is. But two reverse engineer how you fix it. One of the problems is people still have to go to academies. However, I think you should learn from experts. I don't think that anybody should be teaching anything that they are not a complete expert in. And so with that being said, I have been to three academies. I have seen people walk in, take a USB drive, stick it in the computer and just be like, all right, so what are we learning today? This. And just go to like, yeah, so I guess, I don't know, do that. Right? Makes sense. Everybody. And you're just like, there's like 100 of us in this room. Like, so what do you do in this situation? I don't know. Why would you even do that? Well, that's a situation you run into as a cop. I don't know. I don't ask somebody else. That's what we went through, like, you know, 180 days of this. How do you get an expert into every classroom? So these guys and girls are getting what they need when they leave there to have the knowledge, at least a fair fighting chance, that they're able to survive this profession. And the answer is, at some point, it's arguably going to be better to have a digital academy inside the academy. If you're going to the academy, that's fine. But, and I make this point, would you rather get advice from Investing by watching 10 videos of Warren Buffett explaining how he invests? Just use that as a baseline there. Or do you think it's a better idea to go to bank of America where some guy named Pablo is working in the lobby when you walk through his job is try to sell you a 401k that he has no idea what he's selling you. Who do you want the education from about how to invest? That guy or this guy? Because you have a choice. So people will say, well, I don't like online. I don't like digital products. Well, how long are you going to wait to get training that might save your life or save your job? Because this is instant stuff. If you think you need it now, you can take it now. And I'm a guy who lives on YouTube. I'm gonna live on it. I literally live on YouTube and podcasts and, you know, different ones. For me, I'm trying to do business development and, you know, personal development as well. So the answer to this, to fix it as we speak, is at some point everybody's going to have to agree that it's probably better to play these videos on this big screen because they're engaging, they're good, and they're flawlessly accurate. Is there always going to be some kind of. You know, maybe there's a thing that needs to be tweaked or clarified? Sure, that happens, but that's the way it's got to go.

[Andy]

Because you.

[Dennis Bonino]

You don't have experts in the middle of nowhere, nowhere.

[Andy]

How do you answer the questions in that setting when people have. Because you're still going to have probably a proctor or somebody in the class who's firing off that video.

[Dennis Bonino]

How do you answer those questions when that proctor can't answer the questions?

[Andy]

Yeah, but just because there's not an answer to the current situation doesn't mean you don't have an answer for the solution.

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, the good news is, is we're fortunate enough to be in 2026 now in this podcast being recorded. And at the moment, the AI has evolved significantly. And if you know how to prompt it, it doesn't take a lot to prompt it. You could probably find your answers and pretty much with a pretty solid comfort factor of making sense of those answers within minutes and arguably maybe an hour if you're running deep research tools.

[Andy]

Would an academy accept that? I mean, is that a.

[Dennis Bonino]

Because remember this, you know, just like the military, why are we the last ones to do anything? Why are we using typewriters when computers have been out since. For 30 years? And. And so the answer is, is like, slowly but surely, I believe that's where it's going to have to go. And through everything that I've been through, the things that I have developed now are the actual things that will be the solutions now. And I'm not trying to promote what I'm doing now, but it dawned on me, like, oh, now you can train everybody. Because how many people could Dennis Benito train? 100 in a classroom here in Spokane, Washington. And then a week later, I'm in, you know, Sioux falls, Iowa, teaching 100 people there. 700, 000 cops. And these guys are like, yo, when are you coming to Kalamazoo, Michigan? And I'm like, it's not even on the map. So you get three years to take my class. So this whole digital experience where people like in person training, that's fantastic. I like flying private, but it hasn't happened yet, and it's not going to happen anytime soon, so I'm gonna fly commercial. These things are important that we adopt them and start saying, okay, this is better than what we've got. And by far, it may not be exactly what we want, but it's really that much better. And so it's very exciting for me now. And then the name of the game is going to be I don't ask permission. Here it is, here it is, here it is. Once you experience it, you'll essentially begin to. I had a captain last night in one of our group. I released a. A case law for investigators course. It's really for everybody, but I try to niche things down so the appeal people and this guy actually rock showed TFS ever done. He's like, man, this class is great. He's like, do you have the attachment for this? I'm like, yes, yes, it's being uploaded. It's only released two weeks ago. And he's like, I'm like, I just need to once over it again before I put it out, make sure it's completely. I always have to triple check things. I know that now. And he's like, this is really good. And so we're able to deliver that program for $97. And it's 10 hours of training. And it's honestly, arguably, and I hate to say this because people get very frustrated. One, how do you. How do you replicate that? And two, I know it's all factually accurate. There's always human error involving somebody standing in front of a class, and maybe something is pitched to them that may be out of their wheelhouse that they might take a shot at and give the wrong information. And I'm guilty of it too, brother. I'm not perfect one bit. But what I'm saying is I'm trying my best, and I know that under magnifying glass, but everything that I do is with good intention and not self serving. Obviously I do this for a living too. So I need to make money to survive. I have people that work for me that depend on us to procure revenue so they can have a family and provide for their families. So there's an element of that too. I'm not sitting here pretending that I'm just this non profit guy who spends 90 hours a week working on these products. But I'm also saying like I'm not asking for 299. I'm not trying to pitch anybody. I'm just saying I've figured out a way where I can deliver it where you can't say I can't afford this. So here it is. If you would like. I made this for you. It's art. This is my art. This is what I make. I've made it affordable. I don't care where you are. Don't tell me you don't have $63 for the year to take 100 hours of training. As it sits right now, when you're driving around a $94,000 pickup truck that's lifted 16ft in the air, choose yourself. You cannot wait to take training in a profession that could take your life tomorrow. It's insane.

[Andy]

What are the limits of the online training?

[Dennis Bonino]

Well right now as it sits, obviously any kind of tactical training, shoot, like if you're still qualifying with live rounds, you can't do that on the computer. But when you think about what you can do, there's a lot of it that you can do. There's a lot of at least classroom that you can get done before you've got to go into a physical environment. You can't do jiu jitsu. You could explain it, but I really, I'm not a Jiu jitsu.

[Andy]

Good luck with that paper.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, you know what I mean? I just don't, I don't think you could explain. People are doing it and I'm not knocking it, I'm not saying it can't be done. And honestly, let's face it, it's better than not getting anything. But 80% of the training that needs to get done can be done. We just had a girl got shot, God bless her soul, she survived and she like reached out to me and our, our first aid guy who was a, he was a flight medic in support of Special forces in Afghanistan. He's flown like 75 combat missions over there. And the guy was a paramedic in Oklahoma City. So he's doing two gunshot shooting victims, a Night. And she called both of us and she's like, if I didn't take your class, I'd be dead. I knew exactly what to do.

[Andy]

What class did she take?

[Dennis Bonino]

So that was, I don't know the exact name, but it's a life saving tactical class. Basically about like the things that we need to consider when administering immediate life saving, you know, first aid care to somebody or yourself. And so what that means the equipment you need, like a lot of guys carry black gloves in their pouches. They look cool, but, you know, Sean's great about it. He's like, can you get Luke blue, you know, gloves? So this way when you're, you're like scraping and you're, you're touching your partner who's just been shot, you can figure out where the blood's coming from because you can't see blood at 2 o' clock in the morning on a black glove. So let's just. I know they're cool, but like get white or blue gloves and let's call fair. Who gives a shit what you look like? White's important. Have a tourniquet. Don't keep it in your car. You know, like, how are we in modern day policing and police officers. There's videos of this guy in Arizona get shot on a traffic stop, right in the femur, right in the femoral, and has to hobble back to his police car to find his tourniquet in his door panel, right? He's in the, in the map pocket. And he's lucky that some other cop showed up with a tourniquet on his belt, deployed it and saved the dude's life.

[Andy]

He's lucky that one worked.

[Dennis Bonino]

That's right. So that's another thing we talk about like center mass, have two available. I'm one of those guys that likes to have everything. I'm just like one of the, like, you go to my truck, dude. I have a lockout kit still in my, my personal vehicle. I have a throw bag, I've got two tourniquets, I've got a blood clot kit. I keep a medical kit in the car. I've got a shovel, I've got tow ropes, you know, strap toe straps. And I have all, like, I have everything. Have I needed it all? No, the lockout kit. You'd be surprised how often I use that for people. And I see them trying to get their keys out of the car. So you know, hey, man, if you have a body of water near you, why don't you just put a, like a PFC in your car for 30 bucks. And that's another story that I didn't tell earlier. Like, there's a cop where I taught somewhere, I don't want to say where, and he went in and tried to save kids drowning in a pond, and he died.

[Andy]

And then it's not an uncommon story. And they're not trying to kill you. They're just panicked, and they'll drag you down to the bottom.

[Dennis Bonino]

Well, so when we look at the 17 cops, and hopefully that's the accurate number, it's right around there, of how they were killed, you'd actually be surprised how most cops drowned in a line of duty in the past decades. But I'll circle back around to that and how I fix that as well. It's very interesting. But, you know, I heard from his people's agencies, like, and they're just like, hey, you know, now we have these things in our police car. I wish you would have told us that before this happened. I'm like, you guys didn't, like, know to take your gear off. But then when I started doing research as to how people get killed in water rescues or drowning deaths, especially as cops, there are many things that I didn't know. So what did I do? I made a program about it. And I'm not trying to insult your intelligence, but how do you think most cops get killed in drowning incidents statistically? Just take a guess and I'll tell you what. The actual.

[Andy]

How do they end up drowning themselves?

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah.

[Andy]

God, I feel like it would depend on the type and body of water, because rivers act differently, lakes are different, ocean is different with tides and rip currents. I would. I'd probably say exposure and exhaustion.

[Dennis Bonino]

That's some of them. People don't realize that, like, when you get into the body of water and it's cold, doesn't have to be winter, it's just cold. It's 58 degrees. You've got about five minutes.

[Andy]

Yeah, that's the exposure aspect.

[Dennis Bonino]

Right. So that's one thing. So you would think that'd be an issue. People don't realize that there's other factors that you got to consider about, like storm drain rescues and, like, getting your feet tangled on fishing wire, all this crazy that goes on and how to get out of it, getting stuck under rocks, all these things go on. But what actually killed most cops, and this is horrible to say, is there were flood storms where they were going towards the storm, and they kind of sat there while the storm water was rising and didn't realize that once a water Rises up quickly past, I think it's nine inches, and pins the door in. You can't get out. Your car turns off and then they're stuck in the car. They drown in their police cars. So now, why not Dennis, you know, do you make a video, which we did. And it's a. It's. It's basically an hour training that like, okay, you can drive in your car and listen to this or watch it on your off duty gig at the high school, if you work the library, best buy, wherever you're working. And now God forbid you run into storm water. You know, Exactly. Let me get the out of Dodge as fast as possible because this stuff rises in a minute. And now you're pinned in your car and the car don't start to. The car won't move. And you're going to drown in your car.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

And if you're out of shape, what are you going to do? You're going to punch the window out. You're going to climb out of that car. Can you get out of the car? Are you thinking about leaving your gun behind? Do you realize you're weighted down? These guys think they got to take their gun into. Like I always tell guys, like, hey, jump into the water at home in a pool with just your uniform. Don't even put your duty rig on and try to sw. I just try to try to tread water for a minute. Let me know how that works out for you. It's a completely different experience. And so we go through, like the assessment going in the water, we don't want two victims. Are we looking for things? What do you have available in the car? Why don't you have a throw bag that costs $27 on Amazon? I'm not endorsing any company. It's 27 bucks. You get a 50 foot, 100 foot throw bag. What do you do with that throwback? You got to tie it to something on land. You got to find like a tree to make sure you can pull yourself back out. You don't just leave a rope and then go in with this bag in your hand. I get it. There are kids drowning. What's the likelihood of rescue? And I was able to do enough research and make a program and a guide of, like, how to do this. Did they tell us that in the police academy? No. Do you think it might have been a good idea to spend 30 minutes on how not to get killed in a drowning? Is it going to happen? Unlikely. But, hey, good to know. Yeah, I would argue that's good to Know Better to know than, I don't know, the guy who taught us about health and told us to drink a glass of water at night and that'll keep you thin. That was our conversation. Drink a glass of water at night, try not to eat too much pizza, and, you know, watch your heart rate. You'll be all right. That was pretty. Pretty much the class. That's what I remember.

[Andy]

Do you teach a class for officers not to be out of shape?

[Dennis Bonino]

Yes.

[Andy]

I'd love to see how that one.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. And Andy, to be honest with you, like, July 5th of this year, I changed my life. I wasn't obese, so I went through a lot. I came off the. The Alexa Pro, the whole nine, right? I got the. I got. I was just in a tough place. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't, like, walking around. I just Very, very difficult to go through what I went through. And at some point, my therapist was like, hey, it's time to get on the pills. I'm like, yeah, anything. Like, just, please. I just can't. I need to get my life back. I can't live like this anymore. I'm gonna. Lost a ton of weight. And so on the 4th of July, I knew I was getting fat. And my friend, friend, my best friend, one of my best friends, who was one of those two guys that was there for me, he came up to me and he's like, dude, you're fat. And I'm like, how fat do you think I am? He's like, I mean, your arms are big and everything still, but you're fat. He's like, have you weighed yourself lately? And I'm like, how fat do you think I am? I'm like 250 people at my house, my Fourth of July party, right? So I go. I go to the kitchen and I take out the scale out of my laundry room. I put on the thing. 248 pounds. I'm gonna shit my pants. So I said, I'll fuck it.

[Andy]

I'm gonna lower the number a little bit, dude.

[Dennis Bonino]

So I used AI to design and learn more about all these things. And here I am 300 days later, as of today, down 28 pounds. 3 pounds of muscle gain. Strongest and best shape of my life. And I know everything about. I don't know everything. I know a lot more about caloric deficit, caloric excess. Proteins, carbs, fats, movements, meat, all these things. How much you need to lift versus how you should lift. So I've taken all that, and we will program on that as well. It's done. It's actually right now as we speak, and I can show it to you. It's just being polished up by our editors.

[Andy]

I feel like that would be the lowest compliance program that you put out.

[Dennis Bonino]

Nobody's gonna listen.

[Andy]

I don't understand how in that profession you can let yourself slip physically because you are physically required to do stuff every day.

[Dennis Bonino]

It's a highly criticized thing that I address, and even with my kids. And I don't care what people think about how I feel, about how I raise my kids and what they know about being healthy. The answer is, it is something you can control. I don't tell my kids, like, make fun of that guy. He's got a big nose. You can't help a big nose. I mean, you can get it fixed, but. Or this guy has a limp that's. Or he has a short leg or anything like. Like none of that stuff. Or he's missing an arm. If you are fat, you can fix it. Everybody's bodies work the same exact way. You need to go into calorie caloric deficit, and you will lose weight as you move along. More movement. This any other thing. So I have very little compassion when you tell me you have, you know, like, your thyroids. All this bullshit that people tell themselves, yeah, your thyroid's off, but you had 2,000 calories for breakfast, okay? So your thyroid's probably off because you're fat. That's why it's off. You got some doctor who's full of shit telling you put you on meds. How about you just figure out what you need to eat every day and understand the differences between caloric density in the foods you put your mouth and where you need to be every single day and stay and stick to it. Some people were like, oh, I'm eating clean. I'm like, you can eat clean and still be eating excess and have no body loss or, you know, any fat loss. So because it's controlled, because you can do it. Don't tell me about your addictions and all this crazy. How could every single person just subscribe to the fact that it's hard and I'm addicted, Okay? I get some of you have, like, you shake when you drive by McDonald's. I get that. And so what, you're just gonna be fat for the rest of your life, right? This, this. I was politically targeted. Nobody stuck up for me. I was left out. After all this great work that I did, everybody I knew left me. And so what, am I not going to do this anymore? Am I not gonna still show if I can help these people, I'm still gonna be here. Right? It's the same thing. So yes, these things happen, yes, these things exist. But what are you going to do with it? How long can hold on to whatever it is you're holding on to that enables that behavior? And so I'm compassionate. But at what point do we stop having compassion, start taking control of, of what we look like? I've seen cops that are £450.

[Andy]

How could they still be?

[Dennis Bonino]

Because there's nobody else. Because they work in the middle of nowhere and there's nobody else to take the job. I saw we had a. And I hate because I know these people are supporters of mine. I had three cops. They were made up the entire agency and I don't want to say where they're from. Let's call it the northwest part of this country. They were 400 plus pounds a piece the same agency. And I made a joke in class because I just couldn't help myself. And I said what's the worst thing that happens with you guys? Like the pursuit? And the response was we don't have to run. There's nowhere to run to. We just follow them in the truck until they get exhausted because it was flat lands and they could just do that. And I said, I'm not going here with you guys. But you guys look ridiculous. I mean they look absurd.

[Andy]

They look like what it is. Yeah, it's, it's, it's. It diminishes everyone's view of the profession, unfortunately.

[Dennis Bonino]

And so what's the solution? How do you get these people to, to comply with, with physical standards when they can't even get human beings to take the job? It's, it's, it's a tough thing. There are some standards in some places in some states, but, but overall like at this point, especially like a place like the nypd, they just need people who can breathe and write reports. They just need bodies, that's all that they don't care what they look like. Have you seen some of these, these like physical agility tests they do? Oh dude, they're hysterical. Like walk up Michael.

[Andy]

NYPD physical agility test.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, you'll see that they have like walk up five stairs and walk down five stairs. This is true shit.

[Andy]

It, this is a warm up or just.

[Dennis Bonino]

This is the test. See if you can, if you can get into the. Yeah, yeah. There's a, like Canada's got some good ones. Put a. There's a Canadian one that was hysterical. I Shared it where it's like, oh, yeah, let's take a look. This one's gonna be funny. They might have now. They've gotten a lot of criticism, right?

[Andy]

Get over the fence. That's. That's real.

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay, look at this one. Walk upstairs and walk downstairs. Look at this. Push a thing, drag a dude. Okay. 80 pounds. Trigger pulls. 15. Can you pull trigger of a gun? Look at this. I don't even. They name this something else. Stair. Stair climb. You're walking up steps and walking down steps. You're gonna have to walk. Work off duty at Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium or City Fields. Trigger pull, victim rescue, pursuit run. Look at this.

[Andy]

What is that thing supposed to say?

[Dennis Bonino]

I don't know, man. Like this. Pursuit run. They're running around cones like that. You got to be able to pull a trigger 15 times.

[Andy]

Okay, what do we got here?

[Dennis Bonino]

Hold your arms up. How long do you got to hold your arms up for? Could you imagine this is. And run. This is it. Look at this, look at this. Oh, let's see. Oh, she couldn't do that one.

[Andy]

Nailed it.

[Dennis Bonino]

Sick, bro. You know what? I bet she was Delta before this.

[Andy]

Possible.

[Dennis Bonino]

Look at this. Could you imagine? This is. This is modern day. No, they don't have a choice, though, because they can't get anybody to take this job.

[Andy]

I don't really know what to say about this. It's outside of my area of expertise for sure.

[Dennis Bonino]

You don't have to be an expert to know something when you see it. And this was designed to get anybody they possibly could through this system to.

[Andy]

She has a weight vest on too. Is that supposed to simulate a work vest?

[Dennis Bonino]

A 30 pound weight vest. What could it be, right? It's not like she's carrying a 100 pound rucksack.

[Andy]

I mean, at least she's going up and down at a couple times.

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay.

[Andy]

Physical restraint.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. This is it.

[Andy]

Power training machines.

[Dennis Bonino]

Look at just. That's about £20, right?

[Andy]

Oh, is that supposed to be simulating pulling on a person?

[Dennis Bonino]

I don't know. But those are 20 pound weights. Now don't look at those dumbbells. Look in the middle ones. They're 20 pound weights. That's tens. That's a ten and a ten.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

Those are maybe another tens. I'm working out a long time. Yeah. So it's. It's like, it's. It's ridiculous. The pursuit one. Watch this one. Really? Pursuits. Look like this. Foot pursuits.

[Andy]

Actually, I can pull up a lot of videos where they do sometimes. Mostly because they're reaching their VO2 max. But yeah, I've seen some low speed pursuits of this on YouTube many times. And so this is just to get

[Dennis Bonino]

even just past the applicant process to

[Andy]

apply for the academy to pass, to

[Dennis Bonino]

get it approved to go to the academy.

[Andy]

I have to assume they do more than this at the academy.

[Dennis Bonino]

No, no. So the NYPD has to put so many cops through the academy that they have three shifts. You actually go through, there's midnight shifts. Academy. So they run three groups of classes through the academy. I think they do it. I don't. They still do, but they do it at Madison Square Garden. Wow. They'll run their academy classes through Madison Square Garden because they have the capacity to put a couple thousand of these guys through at a time. So they'll run like night shift, day shift. So you might be the academy and it might start at 10 o' clock at night and go 10, 10p to 6a. But their academy is. Wow. Yeah, dude, it's. Are there a ton of great guys and girls the nyp, dude, fantastic. I mean, so good. But they would agree as well. Anybody, anything that I say that criticizes the current state of affairs. The best in the business completely agree and they're happy that I'm speaking up. And even to my demise, there are people think about this. I am frustrating the bar. So when the bar is set like this and you don't have to answer to it and I'm saying that's ridiculous. It needs to be up there. You're frustrating people who live at that bar. They love it there. That's all they need to do to get their paycheck and get their retirement and get out and not have headaches. So when you say to people, hey, this is the truth, what you're living is a lie. They play this game of nobody goes to this guy, nobody sees this guy, don't listen to this guy. Because I'm a. Because I recite the truth. If I am wrong, I will submit and listen to the conversation. I'm very careful when I speak. The things that I've talked about today, I've put a lot of thought into for a long time as it sits today. These are the things that I believe in, that I believe to exist. And the solutions that I think are here at this moment. These things change. All I can do is talk about the things that I see. I know there's other things that are. That I, after 25 years in this industry, continually try to address to try to make this job more survivable and to Give the public what they expect in a cop. It made it more difficult when sabotage was ran on me and sullied my reputation. Did it sully the reputation of the people that believed in me? Do I have a bigger following? More than ever. Did it quadruple? Maybe even 5, 6x? It exploded. Weirdly enough. I really don't get a lot of flack from, like crazy people. They're not like the police or 12. I don't. I got that when they were. When they're beating me up on the news over nothing. But it's odd. And at some point I'm like, man, I wonder if these people actually, like, appreciate the work that I'm. They could see it for what it is because it's clear. It's on display, it's on Instagram, it's on Facebook, it's on, it's in the podcast. Like, if I was a person who wanted police change, I would look at the things that street cop training is doing and say, oh, these guys are doing a good job. This is what, this is actually what we want if we're going to find middle ground. Seems like they're, they're making some headway in progress and I have no interest in trying to stop anybody's progress. Who wants to make things better. Am I friends with every police training company? No. Right? I would like to have been, but I'm not friends with them. They choose it that way. But if they're doing their thing and it's making things better and you're correct in what you're doing, hey, more power. I don't like you as a person and your reputation precedes you because everybody knows you're a complete piece of. And that's fine. But if the work you're doing makes a difference, hey, c' est la vid. Do your thing. Just don't undo the things that we're doing. Don't get frustrated because I say the batons are stupid and you're a baton instructor and you live by it. That's how you make a living. So I gotta watch what I say about that. Because last time I said that, a vice president of a very well known baton company got in my ass. And then I had a conversation with him and I again spewed the truth and he was extremely frustrated. And I'll tell you how it worked. Why are you saying the collapsible baton is a piece of shit? I said, well, it's not me. I just made the post. But you can look at the 1400 comments of how dissatisfied this whole industry is with these things. Nobody's got a good story with these things. And it's like a big joke that we use them to, like, hit the call boxes in the Sally ports or, like, scratch your backs or fish, like something out of. Out of water. That's about what they're good for. And then every so often, somebody have a story where it actually worked. Very few. Few and far between. And his response to me was true. Shit. I'm a cop still. I'm the vice president of this company, and I'm very effective with this tool. I said, well, how many guys do you work with? And he said, I work with me in this division that I work in, there's three of us that are very proficient with this tool. I said, well, how many cops are your agency? He said, there's 800. I said, so you're telling me out of 800 people, three guys know how to use this thing? And that was it. The truth had hit him, and he was. Didn't know what to say. I mean, I had a conversation. It was. It was a message. I was making this stuff up. And the response was, it's still, in effect, effective tool, brother. Like, just submit to the fact that this is what you've. I always make a joke. Like, the only people who like the batons are the baton instructors, because it gives them some validity in this world because there's really breadcrumbs. So when you have breadcrumbs, everybody wants anything to teach. Oh, I gotta do something else besides this. I'm gonna be the. I'm gonna be the baton instructor. Batons are great. No, no, they're not. They're. They're probably the. And I gotta watch what I say because there's these other tools that people have called me, and they're like, hey, what do you think about this? Really? About buying these things? I'm like, for what? But I'll also endorse the fact that, like, what's the thing called? I had the guy on the podcast who invented it, the grappler. Have you seen this? So this roofer from Arizona came up with this idea. And what happens is, when these cars are stolen, this $8,000 mechanical arm folds out and it drops this net. And you take training on it, and you slide it under the back tire. It grabs the tire, locks it up, and you have to use. Here you go. You'll see what it does here. And so you'll see this one. I share this one on my Instagram as well. But you're going to see how impactful it is. And dude, this is arguably top five best inventions in law enforcement ever. Matter of fact, it's so popular now because it's, it's so effective and it saves lives and it saves property damage. Look at this. Like that, this guy can't get him out fast enough. You got agencies on two year waiting list trying to get their hands on these things, right? So he drops it on there. They hit this thing. Look at this. It's over, dude. Nobody's dead. They can't go anywhere. It can only. The last time I talked to this dude, you can only install it on SUVs because you need the power to stop a car. So look at this one. This one, they pull the, this one here, they pull the whole. He's trying to escape. It totally yanks that whole axle off the back of the car. This is one of the most impactful tools. And. Yeah, isn't that great? And arguably the Taser is a very good tool. It's just there's too much reliance on the Taser. Too much over and reliance. And I would say Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is, is one of the best inventions for law enforcement. And I, and I wish these guys would take it more seriously. And these girls, when I say that, please understand that I'm not, not including the women. It's obviously Michigan State Police got the cherry tops. And dude, it's, it's like, this is a legit product. This. Now there's a video out that it didn't work. Okay, you got one.

[Andy]

No tool is perfect.

[Dennis Bonino]

People would send people to my classes, right? They'd be like, hey, we sent like 12 guys to your class. They came back, they're killing it. We're sending this guy, he needs a lot of help. My guys, I'm a, I'm a police instructor. I'm not. Jesus. Yeah, I, I can't. You can't. I can't change his, his chemistry of his brain.

[Andy]

It's real tough. Well, I guess it could be front wheel drive. He could have maybe nursed that out a little. Traditionally hard to drive a four wheel vehicle with only two, two wheels left on it.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah. So, you know, this is, these are some of the great tools. And to the drones. Oh, the drones are fantastic. And I, again, I'm not saying like I'm this guy who's this genius. Please don't see it that way. But a decade ago, I'm like, you know what they're gonna have? They're gonna have drones on Top of buildings. They're gonna deploy pods because think about it, we can't be everywhere. You can have as many drones as you want. They're just recharging themselves. And if there's a car crash, let's say I'm in this intersection, this highway, you got a drone, you know, 3,000ft away. Have your dispatcher deploy the drone, because sometimes we'll get a call of, like, car crash with injuries. We'll get. And do. We're going balls to the wall right? Like, now we're doing 100 to get there. We're here and all this stuff. And sometimes we get there. It's not that. Slow it down. Slow down. It's not. So what better. Excuse me? What better to get, you know, somebody who's a drone operator to essentially launch this drone, go and see it, and report back immediately. Hey, that doesn't have injuries or off to the side of the road. Slow it down. Let's not kill each other.

[Andy]

It's just increased situational awareness.

[Dennis Bonino]

So they're. They're a very important tool. They'll save lives. And there's a lot of stuff on the horizon that there's new technologies, new tools that are going to be. Flock hammers are great. They're really good, dude. Fly cameras are. You know, people are arguing facial recognition technology is profound. Again, they get to this Big Brother thing. But you're not, you know, you're forgetting about the importance of apprehending some of the most dangerous criminals in society.

[Andy]

Yeah, but you can't bend the Fourth Amendment because of that.

[Dennis Bonino]

You can't.

[Andy]

The Constitution counts or it doesn't.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah, no, agreed. And right now, as it sits, there really is no Supreme Court decision on facial recognition technology. It's been accepted. Overall, we take out, like, Whitey Bulger, who may have walked past the camera in the 11 years he was on the run, and they would have snagged him. But again, with all good things come bad things. So I agree with that. And I. I could tell you, dude, I'm a proponent of the Fourth Amendment. I live by it. When weed became legal, I'm like, guys, stop considering the fact that you don't like that weed's legal, but then New Jersey made it so that you could smoke weed as a cop, and then everybody loved it. It's fair. Well, think about this.

[Andy]

Gotta apply to everybody, I guess.

[Dennis Bonino]

So they changed the policy where you could. And, like, when that happened, it was just like, nobody knew what to do. These agencies couldn't figure out what to do. And people were just like, yo, I'm going to get gummies. You buy weed now? Like you buy sneakers.

[Andy]

I'm shocked. It's not federally legal at this point. I think at a state level, it's like we're within a couple election cycles of all 50 states having illegal.

[Dennis Bonino]

And dude, by the way, I don't drink alcohol. I don't smoke weed. I don't inject any intoxicants. However, if I know that the number one procurement of a job ending incident comes from alcohol. Well, men, how many jobs do you think ended when somebody smoked a joint and played Fortnite and ate too many Cheetos? And the answer is I can't remember the last time somebody punched their wife because they smoked too much weed.

[Andy]

Yeah, unlikely for sure.

[Dennis Bonino]

If we did an analysis of the New Jersey cops and nobody's going to do this research and how many incidents didn't happen where the statistics went down, where they were involved in something off duty. Now that you're allowed to ingest marijuana, I bet you the difference is stark.

[Andy]

What's there a time? I'm assuming there's a time it could

[Dennis Bonino]

be high at work. Yeah, but you know, don't forget THC attaches to the fatty cells so you can be pissing hot for weed. Doesn't mean you're high at work.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

And so, you know, and honestly, I have never heard somebody saying like, this guy showed up to work high. And I have a lot of friends that are chief still. I know a lot. Obviously I know a lot of people in the industry. I haven't heard of a case like this guy showed up smoking weed or yeah, I've heard from my friends, like, yeah, dude, they're handing out edibles to each other in. In muster and trading them. Like, that's the fun. Like here we are. They're not using it, but like, yo, you gotta try these. But again, it's the lesser of two evils. I don't think it's solution. I don't think you need to run to intoxicants to try to feel better. But I, I take that over drinking any day of the week. I think drinking is just, it's just one of the roots. You know, I always tell people, like, alcohol is my best friend and my worst enemy. That's one of the best times of my life. And some of the worst times of my life with the amount of booze I drank.

[Andy]

Yeah, I get it, man.

[Dennis Bonino]

For sure.

[Andy]

We got to get you on the road to the airport here relatively soon.

[Dennis Bonino]

What time is it?

[Andy]

12:29.

[Dennis Bonino]

Oh, yeah, yeah, we got time.

[Andy]

Yeah.

[Dennis Bonino]

How close is Jersey Mike's to here? Gotta get a sub for the flight.

[Andy]

I think it's racist that since you're from Jersey that you have to.

[Dennis Bonino]

Racist? Jersey Mike's isn't a white man or a black man.

[Andy]

You could get like a Montana Mics.

[Dennis Bonino]

Can I tell you why I'm gonna go with Jersey Mike's? Because I know how to manipulate the sandwich to get about 70 grams of protein.

[Andy]

Yeah, no, once you. Once you can game the system, you go there for sure.

[Dennis Bonino]

Yeah.

[Andy]

If you're gonna go to Jersey Mike's on the way. Yeah, we gotta get you out of here, relatively.

[Dennis Bonino]

No, no, it's okay.

[Andy]

No, it's all right. It's. We've been at it for two and a half hours.

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay.

[Andy]

Anyway, what do you want to leave people with and then where can they find you?

[Dennis Bonino]

Okay, cool. I'll probably think of more things I should have said at the end of this after I leave, as we always do. But, you know, I think a good place to leave people is if you think you can make something better,

[Andy]

try

[Dennis Bonino]

to make it better. It's not going to be easy to make it better, and you can't always ask permission to make it better. But if it's important to make it better, just make it better. Where you can find me [e-mail] and any of our social media channels. Streetcarp training.

[Andy]

Is there one social channel that you may be more active on? Or if people are going to reach out to you, you're more likely to see.

[Dennis Bonino]

I'm kind of addicted to Instagram, but that funnels into our Facebook. So at the moment we have, you know, pretty substantial finding. Yeah, the meta universe, for me, it's a business tool and it's a profound business tool. And honestly, it's a good education system that a lot of people are finding a lot of value in. So I don't use it for hooking up or to sit there and troll people. I do it to use it to create business and also to create awareness, but as an educational tool as well. So, you know, Instagram, if you want to get in touch with me, and you know, the website shriekop.com is where you'll be able to email us if you want, if you have interest in the training tools. Streetcarcommunity.com is arguably the. I'm just so happy with it, dude. I'm just so happy with the product. I. I sit there, I'm just like I tell John, who works with me, my right hand guy. I'm like, john, it's so good. Like, you don't even. And he's like, now become like a fourth amendment expert because he's building the products with me. And I'm like, it's so good. He's like, how do you know? I'm like, it's just. It's so good, dude. Like, I can't. It's so flawless. It's so good. And because we build it in house, it's so inexpensive, it's so smart. And I'm not trying to toot my own horn. I'm just so happy that the Lord brought me along this path. And if I hadn't gone through the things that I was going through and got in the shun or the shunning that I. That I experienced, I wouldn't have been doing this thing. So it comes around full circle. And you know, if anybody's going through very difficult times in your life, just so you know, storms come in and storms leave. No storm lasts forever. Hang in there and don't think you have to be able to do things. All you need to do is survive it. And time is your friend. And you'd be surprised how much time becomes your ally. And as more time passes, life returns back to normal. And it's worth it, because life is beautiful.

[Andy]

It's a pretty good ending.

[Dennis Bonino]

I try.

[Andy]

As far as endings go, I try. It's pretty good. Thanks for making the trip out, man. I appreciate it.

[Dennis Bonino]

Thanks for having me, brother. Of course, we all prefer things a certain way, like groceries. If you want groceries just how you

[Andy]

like them, you gotta try Instacart.

[Dennis Bonino]

They have a new preference picker that lets you pick how ripe or unripe you want your bananas. Shoppers can see your preferences upfront, helping guide their choices.

[Andy]

Because when it comes to groceries, the details matter.

[Dennis Bonino]

Instacart. Get groceries just how you like.