Wellness and Resiliency Are Not the Same Thing | Erica Gaines | Ep. 436

Summary

Podcast Summary: Cleared Hot Ep. 436

"Wellness and Resiliency Are Not the Same Thing" | Guest: Erica Gaines
March 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this compelling episode, host Andy Stumpf welcomes Erica Gaines—founder of TacMobility and advocate for law enforcement wellness—to explore the deeply intertwined yet distinct concepts of wellness and resiliency in the police world. Drawing from her personal journey, immersive research, and hands-on work with law enforcement agencies across the US, Erica demystifies the realities behind the badge, exposes cultural challenges, and delivers actionable insight into how officers (and anyone) can build healthier, more resilient lives on and off duty.

The episode is a mix of candid storytelling, actionable advice, and critical analysis of police culture, reform, gender, leadership, and the human toll of such high-stress work. Erica and Andy share both light-hearted moments and heavy truths, creating an engaging, accessible conversation for both those in the law enforcement community and the public at large.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Breaking Down the Use of Force & Public Perception

Timestamps: 02:26–16:53

• Erica’s eye-opening use-of-force trainer experience:
  • She undergoes a domestic violence scenario, describing how overwhelming it is both physically and emotionally—even knowing it’s not real.
  • “I just started crying. I wasn’t choosing to cry. It was just a reaction.” (09:38, Erica)
• Misconceptions around police decisions:
  • Public believes in easy solutions (“shoot to wound”) but those without field experience often wildly misunderstand the chaos and stress officers actually face.
  • Andy and Erica discuss the rapid, imperfect human responses in crisis and how projecting societal biases onto split-second decisions is generally misguided.

2. The Reality of Police Wellness—What’s Missing

Timestamps: 15:33–24:59

• Wellness training lags behind tactical training:
  • Officers spend careers training for rare events (e.g. shootings) but vastly underprepare for mental health threats, like suicide—the number one cop killer in America.
  • “When it comes to wellness, something that you’re more probable to deal with, like suicide… the amount of training is really disheartening.” (15:40, Erica)
• The difficulty of turning off hyper-vigilance:
  • Personal stories of law enforcement being unable to unplug—even at home, with “anxiety rectangles” (phones)—leading to compounded stress.

3. Police Culture, Leadership, and Internal Strife

Timestamps: 51:08–71:44

• “Bulletproof vests: front for the public, back for the agency”—Erica hits on pervasive internal toxicity.
  • “Cops treat cops worse than citizens do, all day every day.” (51:10, Erica)
• Leadership disconnect & generational gaps:
  • Promotions often go to the longest serving, not the most suited to lead in a modern context.
  • Agency wellness may be more about “checking boxes” than true cultural change.
• Calls for police sabbaticals and alternate tenure models to preserve humanity and reduce burnout.

4. Gender, Diversity, and Changing Law Enforcement

Timestamps: 50:16–61:37; 146:03–146:56

• Benefits & barriers for women in policing:
  • Women excel at de-escalation and bring needed skills (communication, compassion) but face exclusion and higher scrutiny.
  • Standards debate: Erica and Andy agree standards should be job-derived and universal, but acknowledge current ones are biased toward male physiology.
  • “If women have Jiu Jitsu exposure, it’s not about strength, it’s about technique and strategy.” (55:55, Erica)

5. Wellness vs. Resiliency—Defining Critical Differences

Timestamps: 79:03–81:00; 167:08–168:14

• Wellness:
  • Ongoing, proactive self-care routines to build a “strong baseline”
• Resiliency:
  • Practiced ability to process, recover, and grow from adversity.
  • "Wellness and resiliency are not the same thing. You have to practice resiliency skills when you don’t need them, so you’re ready when you do.” (167:08, Erica)

6. Concrete Wellness Tools for Cops (and Everyone)

Timestamps: 91:09–104:15

• TacMobility’s stealth approach:
  • “I wanted to be like… you guys need to do yoga. But that word has so much stigma.”(91:13, Erica)
  • So she rebrands it as “tactical mobility” and sneaks proven wellness practices into departments, focusing on practical stress education, breathwork, and mobility exercises.
  • “If you don’t practice resiliency skills when you don’t need it, you’re not going to think about using them when you do.” (97:16, Erica)
• Integrating yoga and mind-body training:
  • Not about “getting stretchy,” but building nervous system regulation and learning to reset after stress.
  • “Successful cops and operators have highest emotional intelligence.” (34:09, Andy)

7. Addressing Police Trauma & Cumulative Stress

Timestamps: 77:32–78:46; 157:43–161:39

• Cops experience hundreds of critical incidents. Agencies rarely offer meaningful long-term post-trauma support.
  • “You will face trauma. Suicide is still the #1 killer. To ignore it is risky.” (87:33, Erica)
• Genuine wellness programs need leadership buy-in and continuous access—not “check the box” PowerPoints.

8. Messaging for Reform, Communication, and Social Media

Timestamps: 127:04–131:24; 142:34–143:43

• Calls for law enforcement to use social media for transparent education about the realities of policing.
• Only sharing “feel-good” posts or sanitized PR events ensures ongoing public misconception—and keeps departments in their own echo chambers.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Cop Cynicism:
  • Andy: “Some of the most cynical people I know are police officers… I can’t blame them for it. The problem is when it becomes unchecked.” (31:20)
• On Internal Police Culture:
  • Erica: “The majority of their stress is not coming from the outside, it’s the inside. The bulletproof vest—front’s for the people out there, back is for the people inside the agency.” (51:08)
• On Gender & Capability:
  • Erica: “It’s not about strength, it’s about technique and strategy. I can wrist lock somebody into cuffs.” (56:36)
• On Practicing Resiliency:
  • Erica: “If you don’t practice resiliency when you don’t need it, you won’t use it when you do.” (97:16)
• On Social Media and Wellness:
  • Andy: “Phones are tools, only as effective as what I use them for. Most people have lost control of that relationship.” (138:47)
• On Small Steps Adding Up:
  • “Small steps done over time, done consistently, create success.” (168:00, Erica)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |--------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------| | Use-of-force simulation & learning curve | 02:26–16:53 | | Wellness vs. Resiliency, why suicide remains #1 killer | 15:33–24:59 | | Adapting military culture in policing, internal stress | 16:53–51:08 | | Gender issues, women in policing, academy standards debate | 50:16–61:37 | | Tactical mobility, yoga as a “Trojan horse” for wellness | 91:09–104:15 | | Long-term trauma, leadership, and real support for officers | 157:43–161:39 | | Critical difference: Wellness and resiliency | 167:08–168:14 | | Closing remarks, journaling for hope | 133:01–136:38 |

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Additional Highlights

• Dispatchers’ forgotten trauma: Erica notes emotional toll and underappreciation of dispatchers, whose suicide rates are much higher than the general population.
• Importance of outside social circles to avoid “self-licking ice cream cone” of shop talk and burnout.
• Transparency & reform: Both call for honest social media usage by agencies, not just PR, and for changes in how officers are trained and led, including sabbaticals and specialty rotations.
• Ongoing stigma—officers still fear seeking help means losing badge and gun.

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Tone & Takeaways

The tone is down-to-earth, funny, frank, and at times raw—pulling no punches about the challenges, but also never veering into despair. Both Andy and Erica encourage questioning assumptions, prioritizing mental and physical wellness, and making incremental changes. The episode ultimately stands as an accessible primer for anyone interested in the realities of law enforcement and for leaders or community members who want to support a healthier, more resilient police culture.

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Connect with Erica Gaines & TacMobility

• Website: tacmobility.org
• Instagram/TikTok: @tacmobility
• Email: [e-mail]
• Workshops, Women’s Law Enforcement Summit: Details on website.

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Final Takeaway Quote (Erica):

“Wellness and resiliency are not the same thing. You have to know resiliency skills. You have to practice them when you don’t need them. You have to learn your nervous system… Small steps done over time, done consistently, create success.” (167:08–168:14)

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Summary by Podcast AI—no advertisement or intro/outro included.

Transcript

[A]

Okay, got the red smoke. Sun run north or south?

[B]

West of the smoke. West of the smoke.

[A]

Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now.

[B]

Come on with it. Give it to me.

[A]

I mean, it cleared hot campaign clear. Not. Why do they call you the knife girl?

[B]

Because they started selling switchblades at police conferences. So I was doing.

[A]

I don't feel like that's legal for a lot of people to carry.

[B]

It is in Arizona, where you can carry just about anything.

[A]

Not on the western border of that. Where you go into California. That's a way different story.

[B]

So like police have different. They have different policies and bylaws because you know what's considered a seat belt cutter? Right. So like there's, there's a workaround with that. So we would go. I mean, I would sell knives. Yeah. In every single state. Actually, one time in New York, I got stopped by TSA and they confiscated all of my knives. And they're like, you either give these to us or you go to jail. I was like, bye. Have them.

[A]

What do you think TSA does with the tremendous amount of things they confiscate?

[B]

Keep that shit.

[A]

I don't think by doctrine they're allowed to, but I feel like there's a really interesting box full of stuff they walk by on their way home every day.

[B]

We were just talking about at police departments, like when they confiscate bikes, they have like 90 days.

[A]

Like bicycles.

[B]

Yeah, like just like whatever. People get taken from police officers. There's like a 90 day holding period. And then where does it go? Whose house does it go to? We don't know. We don't know. A ferry. A ferry, Poof. And it's gone. It's not my business.

[A]

It's not my business either. I could be. That's a slippery slope. I could see. Part of me has no issue with that. And part of me is like, you know, that might be a bad precedent.

[B]

100%. I'm with you. It's a fine line. But at the same time, like, is it just gonna be sitting there not being used? Because then how is that resourceful? How is that respecting the purpose of that thing?

[A]

I want them to donate em all to children.

[B]

I like that.

[A]

Except I think most of them probably aren't children's bikes. So therefore we have.

[B]

You know what though? If they're criminals, it actually might be some little girl's princess bike with tassels that somebody jacked and it was found behind a gas station where they got arrested.

[A]

So you could commit A crime on a bike with tassels for sure. How did you get into what you do now? Your backstory is very interesting to me, specifically around. I feel like having known you for at least five minutes now. But I suspect your optic on things shifted after you went through a use of force trainer that you mentioned in your bio.

[B]

It did.

[A]

Which by the way is something that I recommend as many people as possible try. Because the misconception around decisions and why they are made in those environments is so wildly misunderstood.

[B]

It is misunderstood, but it's also like under lock and key. Is it the amount of times that I had ignorant comments and statements and questions for people that weren't answered because I didn't have this, like, I didn't have the same perspective as after I did the scenario and I was like, oh, maybe I have things wrong. I went into it very light, like, you guys should be shooting people in the leg. Why aren't you doing this? Why? It's a very. But you. But here's the thing is on the

[A]

tv, I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at the concept of shooting somebody in the leg intentionally.

[B]

It feel. But if you don't have any experience with a firearm, I know you hear

[A]

it all the time. Why don't they shoot them to wound?

[B]

Or if you have experience with a firearm but you don't have experience with, you're now dealing with somebody else who you don't have control over. You don't know what they're going to do. And they have their own mindset, they have their own value system and they're gonna, they're hopped up on their own amount of adrenaline. There's no way to understand how quickly things happen. So it's very easy to be like, oh, this is a five minute ordeal. Well, okay, so you know what? I'm gonna aim for the least fatal area on their body. Of course. This makes complete sense.

[A]

Today's episode is brought to you by Montana Knife Company. You're never gonna be able to guess where these things are made. That's right, in Montana, just south of me here in Missoula. And they're getting ready for their grand opening, by the way, in early April. So if you wan check out everything that Josh has built and also black rifle coffee, Missoula, you can do so in early April. The details are on their website. February, though, before we get there, is the month of tactical knife releases for Montana Knife Company. Here's what they have coming up. They have the Mini War Goat. The War Goat. The battle goat, the TF24, the V24, which is actually sitting on the wall behind me here. The dagger, so very, very heavy into the tactical release. I carry I think in my fanny pack, which is of course not in front of me. I have the War Goat. I just do exceptional amounts of combat with envelope and boxes with it. And it's 1100 of the time. I haven't cut myself with the knife yet, but give it time, I eventually will. These things are pretty hard to get a hold of. They sell out quickly. The daggers I said like behind me are one of the examples for the tactical knife. You can head right over to montanaknifecompany.com click on the tactical section and you're going to get a look at what these knives look like. You'll get the weights, the dimensions, the steel, the cut, all those things, the handle. So you can educate yourself and then prepar prepare yourself to be ready to order. I have had a variety of things stolen out of my shopping cart from Montana Knife Co. Because the demand for their blades are so high. And it makes me furious because I don't take my own advice and save my card information on their website. I'll sit there and try to enter it manually and then by the time I hit process, somebody else has what it is that I wanted. So don't be that person. Head over to montanaknifecompany.com February is the month of tactical blades. They're gonna be dropping a huge release this month. Get ready, you're not gonna be disappointed. These blades, these things are sick. Back to the show.

[B]

I didn't have a lot of people that would open up about the truth of it all. So I was sort of left to have my own ignorant statements and comments. And I think that that's where a lot of people are when cops, when there's this wall between, you know, people who are first responders in the police world and they're in it and people who aren't. There's gonna be a lot of misconceptions. So it really kind of took me going through that scenario to realize that there was just more to the story than I had known before.

[A]

What was the actual scenario they put you through?

[B]

It was a domestic violence, the classic dv. It was. Yeah. So like, okay, so right off the bat I'm like in route and I'm listening to dispatch tell me the things that I need to know about the call, like what the person is wearing, who the suspect is, whatever. Could not tell you one Fucking thing that that person said to me. And I'm just like, so already not being able to remember what they're saying. But I'm. I know I'm en route to something really sketchy. It like, kind of amped things up because I felt like I was, like, missing something or like I was messing

[A]

up layout for me. The. So I know exactly what you're talking about. It's audio or audio exclusion. I have a hilarious story about my wife where the exact same thing happened. We went through a use of force to trainer scenario together. We had wildly different experiences, bro, if you're new to it, I'm just like, yes. And she was like, oh, my God, I'm sweating. I'm like, it's not a real gun, but I want to know. So did they have you sitting in a chair listening to that, looking at a screen? Like, what was the setup for the actual use of force?

[B]

So I'm standing. I have a weapon, like, at my side. Everything is holstered. And I have, like, a shock pack on the back of my belt, which is so fucking rude.

[A]

It's real, though.

[B]

And I'm standing. Standing. And they have. It's 320 degrees.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

So it's, you know, all the way from left to right. And so I'm getting, like, this peripheral view of the street or none of the vehicle. And I'm in the car, and I'm listening to dispatch and route. So I pull up to the scene, and it's. It's a. It's a woman at the front door, and she's screaming. And then there's another woman that's coming up on the scene, and she's apparently the woman that was cheating with the husband. And she's got a gun. And there's also a small child that's in. Somewhere in the yard.

[A]

And so just the worst environment. Imagine.

[B]

Right, Right. Totally, like, worst case scenario is happening. And I'm just kind of like, what do I do with my hands? And they're like, you have to start yelling commands. Which right off the bat, right. There was something that. I am pretty liberal. Like, I am not yelling at people. Like, I'm. Could you please do this?

[A]

You know, so, like, you can throw please on the end. Get on the ground. No. Please, no.

[B]

Like that. So that part right there already kind of like, set me. It made me feel very uncomfortable because I didn't know what to say. So there's already a lot of training that cops are getting with, like, how to orchestrate or how to, like, Guide people towards what you want them to do. So I'm supposed to be yelling at this person, telling her to drop the gun, telling her what I want her to do. And everything seems like it's going really well. And then, and then she reaches for her gun. And as she's reaching for it, I reach, I shoot. She shoots back at me, hits me, I shoot back at her and. And then the whole scene was over. So it was like a two minute encounter altogether. And I walked out and I was like, I just started crying.

[A]

It's a lot.

[B]

It was so overwhelming. And I'm a pretty tough girl. I would say, like, I'm a pretty. I think I'm a pretty tough girl. I didn't have. I wasn't choosing to cry. It was just a reaction. I was like shaking all the things and then, and then they were like, cool, now we have to debrief this. I was like, what?

[A]

Everything you just described too is with you knowing that it's not real, you know, that you're in a con, probably an air conditioned room with a screen. It's funny, they put the shock pack on.

[B]

Oh my God, it changed.

[A]

It's like it's a little battery shocker, which is not awesome, but nowhere even remotely like getting shot. And it still changes the way people think about things. Cause of that potential pain response.

[B]

Immediately my attention is going towards this, like, what the fuck is that? And I'm. And so then I'm also still trying to like maintain this attention to, you know, this focus of what's happening in front of me. But I've got this reminder that like, something is happening with my body. So it was really, you know. And then afterwards we're doing the debrief and they're like, okay, so like, what, What? What did you say? And I was like, I don't know. And they're like, what do you mean you don't know? It's like, I don't know. And they're like, that's not. You can't say I don't know. And they're like, we need you to describe exactly how it happened. And it was kind of in that moment that I realized like all these times that I've been asking everybody, like, are you okay? Like, I'm listening to cop stories, I'm hearing all the things while I'm knife girl. And in that moment I'm like, you guys all fucking lied. I just played a fucking video game and I'm having this completely like involuntary physiological response. So like, what the fuck but then I also realized in that moment, like, holy shit. Like, what if what people view as racism or bias is actually human limitation and a trauma response with such little. There's such little control, and it's like, it's so easy to project onto that moment or to that, you know, video that you see on YouTube, all of the bias that you have or the really traumatic stories that we've heard, it's really easy to project that onto that scenario without recognizing. Sometimes there's not even room for that thought to be present. It's all just very. And again. Right. It was a video game, but that was the most overwhelming experience that I had, you know, with violence. Like, violence is not a part of my world.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, racism is real, for sure.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Somebody would be crazy to argue against that. But I land in the same place you do. The decisions that are. Are requested of these people in the short period of time with limited information. Of course, everybody brings their bias in, and I'm sure that there are examples where the decisions were racially based, but the vast majority of time, I don't think it even factors into the equation.

[B]

Yeah, I. I don't think that you're wrong. I think that it really just helped me see that there's. Yeah. That there's just more layers behind it. There's. There's more to learn here. Which then sort of set me into this trajectory of, like, okay, cool. I have. I've been gaining relationships for the last seven years, just being the knife girl, like, just being chill with everybody. Who can I call? Who can I take to dinner? Who can I ask these really stupid questions to? And luckily, a lot of people were just very hospitable, and they sat down and they entertained a lot of my questions. I started working with Virtra, which is a company that. That creates those. Those simulated trainings. They brought me in, and then I started paying attention to the different police conferences that I was going to, seeing if I could, like, go in and sit on the debrie and sitting in, like, the four science classes and just trying to understand everything. Because my question was, well, what kind of training do you get for that moment? If this is such a fucked moment where you have such little control over what is happening, how are you preparing for that? And then I started finding out, you know, debriefs is a really huge part of it. Right. Learning by other people's mistakes and kind of the 2020 hindsight.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But then there's also, like, fitness components that they're adding into It I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, there's a complete difference between someone running after you with a knife and you doing a burpee and then having to do some kind of, like, shooting qual. There's a big difference. So, like, I just had a lot of curiosities just trying to understand, like, how to prepare for that. How do you lower the risk or the liability there? And yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot. I don't know.

[A]

How do you think you would do if you went through the trainer again?

[B]

I've gone through a ton of them, and I'm not gonna lie, none of them get any easier. But. But also to be fair. But also to be fair, they are kind of. They're also set up in a way for you to. For you to kind of fail so that you can see what the failure looks like. So it. They're not designed for you to succeed. They're designed to show you where the loops or where the holes are in your training or the gaps. So, you know, I've done a lot of them. I'm actually a sim in one of the virtual trainings. So, like, I don't know what I look like, but somewhere you can find my curly hair, like, bouncing around. It's like a little npc.

[A]

You know, most police officers, I'm very good friends with a lot of officers up here, and their stories and experiences track with what I've heard nationally. I mean, almost no officers end up in officers involved shooting statistically. Right. It's obviously, if you get yourself into that, you better to be able to navigate your way out of it. But they train for a career using those simulators and hopes that they can perform in that moment that may never even show up in a career.

[B]

You're totally right. So it's like less than 25% of officers that are involved in shooting. So it's a really, really small number. But when that's what's making the news, it's kind of like how police have this negative bias, right? They're dealing with a very small percentage of the population of people, but they're fully willing to just blanket this. Like, all people are liar liars, all people are bad. Like, you know what I mean? And you're dealing with such small percentage, so we all do it. That that's just the human nature of things. But, yeah, it is such a small percentage, which is also part of why I was going like, you know, I have a very outsider perspective. I'm not Afraid to ask the dumb questions because I don't have anything to lose. So I'm looking at it. I'm going, okay, so wait a minute. So you're training your entire careers for something that is like, very, very low probability of happening to you, but then when it comes to wellness, something that you're more probable to deal with, like suicide. Number one cop killer in America. And yet the amount of training that happens for that is really disheartening. So it's like, that doesn't make sense. If you're one of the most hyper vigilant communities, you're looking for exits, you know, like, where people's hands are. You're always sort of judging environment to see how you can be safe. But then when it comes to mental health, it's like, yeah, we're fine.

[A]

I'm familiar with this type of community. Yeah, well, my brothers in arms, right?

[B]

And there's so much overlap. Like, there's so much overlap of, of. I think that's how we got connected, right?

[A]

Like, yeah. Somebody reached out to me over Instagram and said, you need to check this lady out. And I said, okay. And I was checking out what you're doing and checked out your backstory. I was like, yes, absolutely. We have to sit down and talk him.

[B]

He's such a sweetheart. And there's. There's so many folks that are cops that were in military. It's like, you get out of the military and then it's like, holy. Like, life is quiet. Like, what the do I do? Well, I know what I'm good at. Okay, cool.

[A]

And it looks a big gap between being in the military and being a police officer. I mean, let me just tell you.

[B]

What do you mean by that?

[A]

There's a difference in the ROEs that we had overseas and having tactical experience in a mature theater of war and patrolling and enforcing the laws where you live. Yeah, it's. Some of the solutions we had available overseas will net you in prison here in the United States.

[B]

So do you think that that has, like, added to some of the cultural things that exist within law enforcement? Since there are a pretty decent amount of people in law enforcement that were military, maybe.

[A]

I think it has been largely a benefit because if you look at the policing community, and I'm gonna have to speak broadly because I'm talking nationally, because statistically, their likelihood of being involved in a legitimate ballistic tactical environment is lower when you bring people into that world who probably have, depending on the background, spent a little bit more time, you know, seeping in that pool a little bit with that experience, they can pass that knowledge on and probably level that up. I know equipment has evolved, and there's an argument for and against this. You know, a lot of people don't like how militarized modern police officers look, depending on the role, specifically SWAT and things like that. And it's like, you know, all this stuff, they're tools to be able to do a job. So. And I don't get super dogmatic about how the people look. I care about how they're able to do.

[B]

You're totally. And you're totally desensitized to that world. Like, to me, I'm like, that's.

[A]

No, it's like. It's like a carpenter's hammer. It's a carpenter's hammer 100%.

[B]

When you're not used to that, though. And I think that that's kind of where I was coming from, is like, all of this stuff is so foreign that it is scary. Yeah, it's scary.

[A]

That's how I look at astronauts. I'm like, what are you doing? Why are you wearing that? Your suit doesn't look comfortable. You should check with me on how it.

[B]

You should check with me.

[A]

Why don't you have a zipper for your iPhone? Duh. No, I totally get it. And it can potentially go too far as well, because. Not. And again, I'm not. I think that the people coming from, we'll call it the gwat era into law enforcement, if they can make that transition and level up the people that are around them, two thumbs up for sure. But if they leave that job and they try to turn it into their new job, into their old one, or they view it from that lens, I think that's more of a swing and a miss, because that's not. It's not the same, you know, policing. I was not an expert on law. It wasn't my job to enforce the law. We were very targeted in what we did. We went out looking after people. And largely the decisions were made based off hostile act, hostile intent. If it met one of those two criteria, I could take an action that could end somebody's life. That does not work in the civilian world.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I think if that can be managed. And then again, you can take some of the specialized tactical stuff and work with SWAT teams and look at. Even if it's things like breaching or diversions or weapon platforms or utilization of canines, which actually saves a lot of lives, People are terrified of dogs, as they should be. But that has saved so many People's lives overseas and so many officers lives. It's. It can be positive, but there are examples where it goes a little bit too far as well.

[B]

I guess what I was thinking more of is not so much the tactics of things, but the mentality toward wellness. Because we were talking about that whole, like, I'm fine, no big deal.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I just think about.

[A]

They might bring that with them into their new job.

[B]

That's the thing, like, military conditioning of, like, suck it up, like you have a fucking job to do. Plus however many tbis might be involved with your work.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then you come into law enforcement, which is already, you know, at times, paramilitary. Whatever. How is that. How is that contributing to it? You know what I mean? So I. And I also think to that point, when we look at PTSD numbers is we have to factor that into the equation, is that we also are looking at individuals who have prior military experience, and they're bringing that along with them. It's not just. It's not just your average Joe that got a job or. Jane.

[A]

I think one of the. In my personal opinion, law enforcement has a more difficult job than what I used to do for a variety of reasons. Maybe less tactically dangerous at times. But one of the big things that I think helps military members maybe work through or separate themselves from traumatic incidents is they occur thousands of miles from where they live. And you often. You will have transition. Like, by the time I did my last deployment, they had initiated something called ts, which was third location decompression. So you would go from an active war zone to generally Europe. And I think the goal was to get as drunk as possible for 72 hours straight.

[B]

Effective.

[A]

I love that it was prescribed by a doctor. It's totally fine. No, it's.

[B]

Depression is not following that at all.

[A]

It was wild times that didn't exist in the beginning. And I think they were headed in the right direction. Of course, it could be improved. And then they would have family retreats afterwards. I think actually went to one. I think it was at Disneyland, whichever one's in la. And they bring the families up and they do a lot of combined sessions with the service members and then with family and with the spouses and with kids, too. And reintegration types up, so they're moving in that right direction. But you're still thousands of miles from those traumatic events. I talked to my buddies here. They're like, yeah, that intersection right there was a fatal. I had to scrape a kib off the road. There was a, you know, a Crime. It's everywhere that they go. They have reminders. I don't, I mean, every once in a while my mind will drift back and not in like a negative, like flashback way that a lot of the movies make it seem. But you're like, oh, you remember something that happened and you kind of move on with your life. That's not triggered by literally driving by where I might have seen a teen fatal car wreck and that stuff. To me, where you are working in and around where you live. So that when you're off duty, you're still right where you are when you were on duty. That to me is a substantially harder mentally.

[B]

I think I agree. I mean, I, I think that for sure is there. My husband's a cop and I get to hear all kinds of stories. And I also think too, when everybody is plugged into their phones and those

[A]

are called anxiety rectangles.

[B]

Oh my God. But like, I have to, I have to tell my husband. I'm like, put your phone down. Like, why are you constantly looking at your phone for like all of the bad news? And it's like, like this constant cycle of like, I'm at work, things are really whatever, I'm hyper vigilant, I'm on edge, maybe shit's not popping off. But like, you're, there's still a level of hyper vigilance or like you said, different triggers around the city. And then you go home and you pick up your phone and you're looking at everybody else's traumatic events and like ambushes and all of the up things. And that just continues the cycle. And you go to bed with that as like the last thing that you think of. And then you wake up and just this constant, like you're constantly inundated with like the fucked up things. And I think to your point of when you're constantly dealing with stuff versus being able to go away, deal with it, and come home, that to me is even more reason that wellness is important, but also that, you know, the conversation around what people want from cops, it's not invalid because what I see is a lot of apathy.

[A]

Yeah, I'll add to that too. They spend the biggest piece of advice I have for my friends who are law enforcement is to develop a social circle that has absolutely nothing to do with law enforcement facts. I'm not saying cut your friends out. I'm saying, and I tell them, force yourself to spend time with people that you don't work with, because otherwise all you do in your off time is talk with your buddies. About what happens on your on time and you are in this self licking ice cream cone that spirals nowhere. Yeah. And it's hard though. I get it. Especially the ones who are, you know, they can go all these different departments that are a narc or they're detective or they're SWAT and all. And those things are all amazing and they should be super proud of those things. But I've also been there when it was like the SWAT barbecue and the families are there.

[B]

It's so uncomfortable for the spouses because there's. I have to bro. Everyone is talking shop, so I can't. There's nothing that I'm gonna bring to that conversation.

[A]

Get in there and start making stuff

[B]

up so I can hold my own. But it's still. It's just a conversation about, what are you doing? Well, this is what we're doing. And I was just. So we met up with a girlfriend that works for Kalispell and he immediately just starts like hamming it up with her, talking about, like, what do you guys respond to this is. And they're going back and forth. And I just said to him, I'm like, it's so funny how like you're able to form these like, sort of like surface level relationships with any cop because you can talk about work. And I just think about how much harder we have to work at having genuine conversations about curiosity in the world. And I think everything that you're saying about having relationships with people that are outside of the police community, I think it's so important because what I was saying about when you're constantly interacting with criminals, the tendency to think that that is how everybody else operates and the cynicism that you gain from that. So a little story last night. We're on our way home from Mooses.

[A]

Yep. Did you guys throw some peanut shells on the ground?

[B]

No. I think peanuts are filthy. That's disgusting. Ew, they're so ashy.

[A]

It's an experience.

[B]

No, gross. Pass.

[A]

What does that even mean?

[B]

I don't know. That's how it feels in my mouth. But, like, I'm not. Yeah, their pizza. I'm lactose intolerant. I don't give a fuck. It was amazing. Totally worth it.

[A]

That's a risky ride.

[B]

It was risky. So back to the ride. Right? So we get picked up by our Lyft driver and she's. We get this notification that she's deaf. And so we're like, oh, okay. So we're just, you know, gonna kind of be chill. We get in the Car. She's Vietnamese, and she's. And then she starts talking to us, like, asking us about our trip. And so then we ask her like, you know, how long have you lived here for? And she says 10 years. And she moved from Vietnam to become a nail tech out here. And I was like, oh, that's so wild. Like that. That's a huge change.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And she's like, yeah, there's this, like, online community where you can, like, Vietnamese people can go online and they can look for jobs, and then people who are wanting to hire can, like, ask you to come move to the States and, like, they'll pay for your housing and, like, you get a job. And I was like, oh, my God.

[A]

That's called human trafficking.

[B]

Shut the fuck up. So I'm going, like, I'm just saying.

[A]

That is. You just described human trafficking.

[B]

Not even a fucking thought. In my mind. In my mind, I'm like, that's so generous. Like. Like, genuinely.

[A]

Like, they have a. Oh, you went the other way. You're like, these people care so much.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Do you want to buy any oceanfront property in Idaho that I have for sale? You might be a little susceptible here to look at.

[B]

Oh, there's not an ocean there. Yeah. So. Right, okay. So very gullible. Very optimistic, one might say.

[A]

I would go with the optimistic.

[B]

So I'm just like, oh, my God, that is so sweet. So we get out of.

[A]

And.

[B]

And he. I look over at him and he's like, I'm so fascinated by that. And I was like, I know. Like, I didn't even think that, like, they were putting housing together. Like, that's so. And he's like, that is a money laundering or a human trafficking thing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And he's like, didn't you see, like, the diamond tattoo is like, yeah, like the sparkle. And he's like, no, that's how they identify people that they're trafficking.

[A]

And I'm like, let me tell you how that situation probably played out. So there are websites that exist like that. And what can I say without getting in trouble?

[B]

Mind blowing to me.

[A]

Here's what I can tell you with certainty. In the Kalispell Valley, where you wouldn't think that exists, there is 100% human trafficking happening specifically in that career field. And what ends up happening is, yeah, you. You get a job and then they take your travel documents.

[B]

That's what he said. I was like, why wouldn't they just treat them well and then loyalty will keep them there?

[A]

Because that's not what they're There, that's what he said.

[B]

He's like, they're there to make money.

[A]

I'm like, so they're going to take your travel documents. They're going to stuff you in a garage or a house with about 30 people. They're going to drive you to work, they're going to bank. They're going to force you to bank through them, not through a banking system. So they have control over your movement and your money and your travel documents. That is happening right here in Kalispell. Straight legit human trafficking. Most people think human trafficking is sexual in nature. I've done enough. There's a foundation here called Deliver Fund that is an anti human trafficking organization. It's based up in Whitefish. And I've done enough of it now. I naively thought it was all sexual in nature, of which there is a large portion of that. There is so much more to it than that. Whether where I came from in Santa Cruz, people acting as the go between, between the manual labor people working in the fields and stuffing them all into a house and controlling their paycheck and how they get them, their hotel staff sometimes is something that falls into so up. The nail tech thing is absolutely had no idea.

[B]

Yeah, right. So it's having relationships with people who are not in that world to remind you that there is this other side of life. Even if you think it's silly and naive and whatever. I think that a lot of cops could use that. Right. Because the hyper vigilance, that's your imagination too. I'm just choosing to use my imagination in a way that would call it ignorant or not. Is not. Not allow. It's not making me stay up at night or look at people sideways and whatever. So I do think that it's important for cops to like intentionally look for friendships and community outside of that, everyone having the same mentality, they have to have it.

[A]

Some of the most cynical people I know are police officers. And I can't. Well, and I can't blame them for it because I'll talk to them like, hey, how long you done your job? 20 years. And you know, up here they call them repeat customers. I don't know what you guys call them down in Arizona, but they're like. Like the radio call came out and it's like, I know it's Bob again and I know what the issue is. And they. I describe it more along the lines of like traditional people making tea. You know, they open a bag of tea and they put it in the water. The longer it sits in the water, the darker the tea actually gets. And at some point it's just too much. And that's kind of the world. I mean, I am not aware of people who are calling 911 to report that a birthday party is going really well. Like, I'm having the best day of my life. Can you send an officer over for a high five? Right? That would probably.

[B]

I asked my husband, I was like, can I like say that there is emergency and like bring like have sandwiches ready? And he's like, girl, no.

[A]

Do you have any. I. I feel like the officers would be stoked, right? Jimmy John's totally like, hey. I don't know what their code is, but like, we have to take a break here for a little bit of time. Because that's the rest of their time is the teabag in the water. So I can't blame them for becoming cynical like that. Where it becomes an issue is where I think it becomes unchecked. Because if I can recognize it, they can recognize it. And I recognize that in myself, in my old job a little bit as well too. And if it gets to that point, if you recognize it, it's like my wife saying she's time blind. What are we gonna deploy against this?

[B]

She's doing nothing wrong and I take her side all the time. I don't even know her. But like the cynicism thing, I think it's an important thing to talk about because cynicism, apathy, frustration, anger. I heard a lot of cops talking to me. Cause I would talk about feelings. I'm a very feeling centered person. And they're the first people to tell me that like, feelings don't belong in policing. And I was like, like, what do you call those things?

[A]

I actually couldn't disagree with that more. I think it would make you even better at your job, right?

[B]

But what I see happening is it's okay to have cynicism and apathy and frustration and anger and anxiety. But like, at some point you're going to retire and you're also gonna wanna like have relationships that you can maintain. You wanna be able to come home and not be like your respite. You wanna have, you know, authentic connected relationships that make you feel like you're more than a cop. And when you retire and things get really fucking quiet and all of your house projects have been completed, you're gonna be left with all of those feelings and emotions that have wrecked your body. And now what? You know, so it's like, it's cool. You wanna be an cool. You Wanna be apathetic for what it, it doesn't do you, it doesn't do anything for you. Like it might help you when you're working because then you don't have to constantly involve your feelings and get let down because your repeat customers aren making a different choice with their life. But at the end of the day it's your body that's holding onto all of that stuff. So like keep trying.

[A]

The people I knew in my old job that were the best had the highest eq. It actually, I'm not going to say it saved them, but it gave them a better ability to read people.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think that that would be true for law enforcement. I've spent exactly zero seconds as a law enforcement officer. But your ability to read people and feel their, like, I don't think you should ever try to remove the, like I, I, I advocate for removing emotions from decision making process but not from being a human being. I think those emotions, specifically empathy are probably one of the most important ones we have as a human.

[B]

I think that there it's, and again not a cop. But I think it's really difficult to separate those things like emotions from decision making. Like we're the mind, body connection shows us that you can't separate and silo these things. You always have some sort of emotion that's present and when you pretend like it's not, then you never get to understand that emotion when it's present and you have to make a decision that is thoughtful, that is tactical, you know what I mean? And I think things are really changing which is I think really beautiful wellness police culture. Things have really evolved over the last five years that we've been a company and I think there's a ton of contributors to that. But I think now that we're seeing more women that are on like in police departments, think that there is this like balance of people getting exposed to like emotional conversations and emotional intelligence and you know, compassion and things like that. Like whereas they weren't there before when it was more male dominated and you know, I think the more I know some emotional dudes, I love it so much.

[A]

Sometimes we just sit around and have a good cry.

[B]

Some of the tactical guys, so I got my start working with tactical teams. That was like my bread and butter was I just loved those guys because they put off this like they're just so tough on the outside. But then I realized like these are the most like protective, loyal, sweet, caring, just big teddy bear kind of people and they really were open to talking about Feelings and emotions. They were open to talking about their past experiences and how it's impacted them or you know, things that they're having challenges with. Like and you know, that stuff kind of started naturally coming out when we would start doing yoga or stretching, when the body just naturally starts to feel saf and open up and you create this, you know, safe environment where you're normalizing human reactions and responses. Then I started to really get to see just how sweet some of these guys were, which really kind of propelled me into more action of like, these guys are doing these really big jobs, they're on call 24 7, they're doing this stuff. But like they still deserve to be more than that. That like and, and I think that, you know, back to the reform conversation, wanting to change things, I think that that is my biggest takeaway is from the outside when we're wanting so much change to happen and we're not realizing that when we attack a human, they don't go into like this creative open mindset, they go into a defense. And those are different parts of the brain that are working. The more that we can get officers that can practice this nervous system regulating techniques and they can find their own safety, they're going to figure out ways to change the culture on their own. And I think with success we've seen a lot of good changes.

[A]

How did you even start looking at law enforcement and integration with law enforcement to begin with?

[B]

It was just natural because I had been working with cops for so long so it just. So I would have my booth.

[A]

And even before that though, like before you became knife girl, what were you up to? To?

[B]

I was in accounting. So I had two. My ex husband, my ex husband's family. There were two cops and they are like the saltiest guys. Like they were always the guys that were never smiling.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Just always in a bad mood. So it's like I always had some sort of empathy for that world, but it was always just very like whatever, it's not for me. And then one of the brother in laws in that family was an owner of the knife company. And, and so then I started selling knives and then once I started doing police conferences, they were like, hey, can we have the knife girl? Hey, can we have the knife girl? So then I just exclusively started working with cops.

[A]

What were you doing before that? Where'd you grow up?

[B]

I grew up in Phoenix.

[A]

So yeah, I known for really reasonable summertime temperatures. What is like your winter with you people? We're in winter right now. It's like 46 degrees outside.

[B]

It's our winter.

[A]

Yeah. I don't know what's going on in Montana. This is the weirdest winter we've ever had. Bluebird skies, 46 degrees. People at the ski resort just, like, burning things to the ground.

[B]

I had to buy this bright colored sweatshirt here because my two jackets that I brought were not adequate, bro.

[A]

Like, what jackets did you bring?

[B]

I brought, like, a tactical jacket. That's, like, really? I thought it was. It's thick for winter.

[A]

Don't bring a tactical jacket to a snow party.

[B]

I don't have snow clothes, bro. It doesn't exist.

[A]

Any layers.

[B]

I literally said to Josh, I'm like, I don't have a puffy jacket. Like, what am I even doing? I. I need a puffy jacket. He's like, no, you don't need.

[A]

Everybody should have a puffy jacket.

[B]

I know.

[A]

Do you have one now?

[B]

No, but I will after this episode.

[A]

I'll give you guys a few suggestions of stores, where to go.

[B]

I really want, like, a North Face puffy jacket, but I wouldn't have a reason to wear it.

[A]

You need a thinner one. The cool thing about puffy jackets is they are warmer than they may look because of the insulation.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So you could go with, like, on the thinner side.

[B]

I went to Canada to do a training, and it was, like, in the negatives.

[A]

And that's where you need a North Face.

[B]

Yeah. Someone brought me a jacket to work. I was like, oh, I'm wearing leggings.

[A]

That's the tundra. That's a little bit of.

[B]

Basically, it was Nova Scotia. It was cold as.

[A]

Yeah, that's basically the North Pole. You're going to need different attire for there than Montana.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But you need to definitely leave here with a thin. Yeah. Puffy jacket, I think, or vest.

[B]

So in Phoenix, we, you know, we. We just stay inside when it's really, really warm, but then the moment that it cools down. Bro.

[A]

Define cool down. 98.

[B]

Like 80. When it's 80, bro. We're. We're living our best life. We're on the mountain. We're in. We're loving on the mountain.

[A]

Doing what? Looking at rocks, cacti.

[B]

You've been to Arizona?

[A]

I've spent so much time there and.

[B]

Okay, so we're going to, like, this weekend, I'm going to Sedona. For what? We're gonna. Me and my girlfriend, we're gonna do a little charcuterie, like, picnic and.

[A]

Charcutes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

See my wife. You do need to meet my wife. I do do you ever do bathtub charcutes?

[B]

Listen to me. Bath times. Listen. So I. So, like, I made this product at one point and it was called Take a bath. And it was for the copser. It was just like, some of your problems will go away if you just take a bath. Bath. You just need to get in the hot water and just add some bath salts. Add some bubbles, bro. Turn on a candle and just chill out. And they're like, ew. No, I. The only time that he's getting in the bath with me is if there's a potential happy ending happening. Yep.

[A]

That's strong motivation for a guy. You can. I think you can get a man to do almost anything if you throw that at the end of that.

[B]

Like, I got him to move to Arizona.

[A]

Yeah. We're gonna go on a 78 mile hike without any food. But. And they're like, yeah, whatever, let's go.

[B]

I would never say that.

[A]

No, no. I bought.

[B]

We.

[A]

We just moved. We were in a rented townhouse and we're renting a house and has a bathtub. And the first thing I did was get one of those extendable the wood thing. Because in it, they sold me. Instagram knows so much about me. It had a little section for tub Shar. Cute. So I'm like, I have to. There's no choice. Add to cart.

[B]

That's adorable. And like, small act of love that probably just showed your way that, like, she matters the most.

[A]

I would hope so. I feel like most of it is ignored, but it's whatever.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Men are misunderstood. We're so complex.

[B]

So misunderstood.

[A]

God. So you've been in Arizona your whole life?

[B]

Yeah, born and raised. Yeah.

[A]

Have you traveled the world at all?

[B]

I'm starting to. I mean, I've been all over the US for work, but I haven't. I've been to Canada, Mexico, Honduras.

[A]

I know.

[B]

Bahamas, but I haven't been to Europe. So I would love to. Like, I've been talking with agencies in Australia and England, just trying to understand how people are all kind of doing things differently. But no, I've spent most of my life here. I didn't get a chance to, like, go. Like, I was very much contained. I lived a very, like, sheltered life when I was younger. So now I'm like, I can do it all. I want to see everything.

[A]

You should. I highly recommend it. I think I had to get a new passport because my birth date was incorrect in my passport. But I think it's my fourth one and those other three were pretty full.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You're gonna find that the agencies are all defined by their similarities, not their differences. It's gonna. You might have a different uniform, different gun, all this, different tactics. It's gonna be the same root cause of, I think, a lot of the issues that you're gonna find globally, whether you're solving murders during breakfast, cracking cold cases on your commute, or playing amateur detective at bedtime. Amazon Music's got millions of podcast episodes waiting. Just download the Amazon music app and

[B]

start listening to your favorite true crime podcasts ad free included with Prime. I have a hot take.

[A]

Send it.

[B]

So I think. I just think about how men deal with taking care of themselves.

[A]

Alcohol. What?

[B]

Right, right. Or shoving it down. Right. So I think about.

[A]

You have to bury. You have to dig the hole for first, but. Yes. And then you put it in the hole.

[B]

But historically, men have dominated the law enforcement world. It doesn't matter if it's in America or if it's in another country, like I. I used to do. It's called SWAT Roundup, and it's an international SWAT competition in Orlando. And so lots of other countries come in. So I've gotten exposure to other countries and how they work, and they all view wellness or PTSD the same like it is. It's really similar. And I just think about how men who are running departments, you know, how that culture and how that approach to life is going to be woven or baked into the culture. It makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense that there is this sort of like, we've got to separate our feelings and emotions. We've got to keep these things separate. You've got to just suck it up and deal with it. And we're not gonna.

[A]

We're not gonna.

[B]

Gonna. We're not gonna take care of ourselves. We're not gonna prioritize our wellness or. Or talk about the problems that we have. And I just think, like, I don't know, girls are just so comfortable talking about that.

[A]

Where do you think that mentality comes from? Because I was having this conversation a few weeks ago. You know, the greatest generation is often talked about as these just stoic. You know, go to World War II, World War I, and you come back and you didn't say anything. I'm talking to my buddy. I'm like, how happy do you think they actually were? And then you talk to the children of those people and you ask them to talk about their relationship with their dads. How was their dad around? Was your dad drinking much? Was he, like, since the inception of human beings in conflict. I think it's pretty well known that that is either the, the potential likelihood of conflict or. And sometimes it seems as if the potential likelihood of conflict is actually worse than if there is conflict. And you can work your way through, through it. But this is not a new recipe. We're not like creating something new. Yeah, why do you think that that is consistently the standard. Why is it like that when we know what the long term results of that are?

[B]

I mean, I have my own theories. You know, we're in the safest time in all of mankind statistically. Yeah, right. And then if you sort of start going in the reverse direction in history, things are when, you know, back to my point about when danger is present, you're not like, oh my God, I just love this so much and I just want to spend so much time with you. You're not thinking that. Right. You're thinking of survival. So I think as survival or just the presence of danger has really been there. Like now it's more perception. I think when danger was like actually there you have fathers that are raising children, sons, or you have fathers that are gone, that aren't even part of the picture. And boys are looking to media. Right. To decide what it means to be a man. Right. So if you're growing up with Rambo, there's not. I actually haven't seen Rambo, so I don't know if there's a moment where he's like, it's a doctor emotional.

[A]

You could view it as one if you chose to.

[B]

I could not tell you the premise. I only know that it's.

[A]

I can only tell you the premise of the first one, Mike, was he. You're 18 years old. He probably. Have you ever watched? No, I haven't seen God, you're. This is what I have to deal with. I think the first one, he was coming back.

[B]

I feel like you're gonna lose some man points right now in the comments. People are gonna be.

[A]

It's just been a long time. I have seen them all, but it's been a really, really long time. The first one he came back to, I think where he was living and basically got on the wrong side of law enforcement. They tried to come after him and he just wanted to be left alone. Just leave John Rambo alone. He's out in the woods.

[B]

Oh, I thought Rambo was his first name.

[A]

No, it's John Rambo, isn't it? Michael? I thought there was only the Google machine.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That's deeply traumatized.

[B]

Deeply traumatized. Veteran, yeah.

[A]

Was it based around Vietnam era? Vietnam, Yes. I want to say he was a green. Yeah. Former Green Beret. Yeah. Sarah's on the struggle to reintegrate into society that rejects him. You know who started messing with him? The local cops. Bumps. They gave him no choice. And I think in that movie he might have killed them all.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Oh, he. Yeah, he ended up in the woods and was just picking people off. The first one was quite good.

[B]

Yeah. So I think when, you know, men don't have a picture of what manhood looks like, if their dad is present, they're gonna look somewhere for it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think, yeah, some. Whatever you don't know is really your body is afraid of it. It's. If it's unfamiliar, it's dangerous. And I think if you're growing up not feeling comfortable, if your par. If your dad doesn't have a high eq, why would you grow up with it, you know? And then all of a sudden high school happens and there's a lot on the line, right. The social hierarchy. So I don't know where it comes from because I'm not a boy and I haven't researched it, but I just see it happening so frequently. Like the, the level of emotional intelligence that men are willing to have, I think it directly correlates with how close they are to the women in their life, at least from my experience of what I see. You know, could be.

[A]

I have a 17 year old.

[B]

Men with daughters. I was going to say men with daughters, where you are forced to learn a different way of being. Like, I've got a tween daughter and there's no, no telling her what she's gonna do.

[A]

At least we're living the same experience.

[B]

I'm terrified. I'm terrified. My son,

[A]

I have two sons. One's 22, one's 20. My daughter's 17. They've been an interesting and wholly unique experience across the three. My daughter, though, you wanna talk about. I thought that teenage boys were vicious. Oh my God. My God.

[B]

The text, like the text strings that I see of my daughter and her friends, like when they don't like someone, oh my God, it's scary. Which is also something that legitimately scary. That's something that like women police are also experiencing in, you know, in their lives are, you know, there's only a few women that are at the agency and now it's this like you or me. There's this like, sometimes there's this like that same kind of like high school, high school vibe. Kind of thing is, is happening for a lot of women. So I think,

[A]

do you think we need more women police officers? This is a contentious one. A lot of people, maybe not a lot of people. There is a contingent of people that would say women should not be involved in policing at all.

[B]

Yeah, I just did a post about it.

[A]

And how'd that go for you?

[B]

So I was on the phone with this commander. I feel I see a lot of things where I'm like, that doesn't make sense. So, okay, so couple things. As I started to work on wellness and kind of focus and prioritize that, I realized that it's not just about teaching people science behind stress. It's also about recognizing what cultural aspects of policing are contributing to poor mental health. Which ask any cop, and they're going to tell you that the majority of their stress is not coming from the outside, it's coming from the inside. A lot of them say, I wear a bulletproof vest. The front's for the people that are out there and the back is for the people inside the agency. Agency. That's horrible that it is so pervasive, really pervasive.

[A]

Those are supposed to be people that have your back over everything else.

[B]

Cops treat cops worse than citizens do all day, every day.

[A]

Why?

[B]

It is a systemic issue. And I am talking about some of these issues because that's what's contributing to a lot of people's mental health. Like if you're not one of the boys, you're isolated. And this can be, you can be male or female. If you're not in, you're out, out. People are talking shit like 24, 7 and then throw a difference into the mix, whether that be a minority or whether that be a female, and it's amplified. And I think, you know, the discussion of whether or not women should be in policing, you have to look at the citizens, right? Because the government has to be for the people as well. So when we look at what people are asking for in terms of, you know, a police officer and their effectiveness or what their role is, their asking for more de escalation, they're asking for more compassion. And that's tough because going back to it being a heavily male dominated industry, that's not the foremost emotion that's gonna like show up, right? It's gonna be tactics, it's gonna be force. Not, well, not force, but like this is how we're doing it kind of thing. And we actually did. So we had, have, we have quite a few surveys because I want to make sure that I'm not always just saying my opinions. And I was really curious what citizens wanted from cops. Like, we. We have a lot of opinions about the way that things should be, but we have very little evidence and understanding. So I asked. So I created this small survey, and it's so stupid to me how many people have an opinion, but then when you give them a survey, they're like, man, I don't have time. So we have really small survey. I want to say there was like 120 people that responded to it. And I asked them, like, what do you want the role of law enforcement to be? Like, what are you expecting? Like, what should it look like? And then I also asked people what their opinion was on the different levels of force and the use of force continuum and the amount of people who wanted cops to have over a hundred annual hours of training in compassion, mental health for self, mental health for others, and firearms training. I was like,

[A]

what?

[B]

First of all, no one's getting 100 annual hours of training on anything. Okay? And now you're talking about 500 hours a year on.

[A]

Oh, they wanted a hundred of those individually.

[B]

Individually, Right.

[A]

Oh, boy.

[B]

So, right. So. So that just says like, okay, like, you actually don't understand how this works. You're thinking that they're spending the majority of their time training and preparing when really they're. They're getting very little training because of staffing, because of budgeting, and they're out there just working. Right? The. The amount of. There's like 240 million 911 calls a year. Like, they're fucking working. So we asked people like, okay, so communication, mental health for self, mental health for others, that's nearly impossible to do. But then if we look at how women are raised socially, that's something that women grow up with. And if we look at the differences between genders and sort of how they're socialized, we can actually utilize women and these natural skills that they've been raised with to improve different police policies and systems. And there's a lot of research behind how, with the increase of women on police departments, it's increased customer satisfaction and just the overall perception of law enforcement, which is. Is what law enforcement needs. Like, they kind of do need this overhaul of how people look at them. Like, it's not sustainable for a shooting to happen. And then there's 1500 protests and parades that happen, like, nationwide. Like, that's overtime that you're working. That's ptsd. Because it's like, is this George Floyd all over Again, you know, that's, you know, you're working a ton of overtime. There's so many negative things that go along with protesting. So you may not like the way that people want to see things change, but the question is, can you and would it be useful? So I think that the more women that are brought on, I think that will continue to change. Like their de escalation statistics are a lot higher than men are. So it's, there's a lot of evidence out there that it's useful. But I think the challenge is when you bring women in and you don't train them, them adequately, then it sort of, it allows people who don't think that women should be there. It, it's that confirmation bias of like,

[A]

of course, do you think they should have to meet the same standard as men or should there be two different standards?

[B]

Yeah, so I think when it comes to standards, right, we have to, we have to ask our question ourselves. A question like, what is the standard? Right? So like how are we measuring the value of a cop or the success of a cop if we're only looking at, at the academy, which is something, it's a very common thing. Like in, in our comments, we hear a lot about, you know, well, how is a woman going to take on a 200 pound man? She's not. But also who's that, that 5, 6 cop right there? How's he gonna do? Right? So it's not about size. And I think that we can, there's lots of ways to fill those gaps. If women have Jiu Jitsu exposure, it's not about strength, it's about technique and tactic and strategy. And that's going to be useful.

[A]

I wish I could tell you Jiu Jitsu is magic.

[B]

It's not magic, but I want you to think about this. So like as someone that does Jiu Jitsu, if you walk, if you're standing there and someone walks up to you and they have just like a, whatever they have like, just like this look to them. You have a level of confidence in your mind of knowing I'm walking away

[A]

before they get in front of me.

[B]

But do you know what I'm saying?

[A]

You have, I'm like, you're crazy Deuces. I am so anti conflict. I'm like f. You're obviously a crazy person. I'm gonna go get an idea.

[B]

But you have a level of confidence that like there's so many ways that you can manipulate someone's body into like

[A]

backing the up maybe unless they have cauliflower Ears and then you go wonder what belt he is.

[B]

But I think having that, just having a sense of confidence, walking up to an incident, I think is number one such an important defense that I think that all cops need to have, I think more so for people who are, are that have smaller bodies or have like a softer demeanor. Like there's a lot of men that are cops that do not, they don't like conflict. So I think that it really, really is important to have that knowledge and that confidence of like I can wrist lock somebody into cuffs, right? Like I can control someone's body weight more so than the average person that doesn't know fighting. So I do think that that's really important. Am I saying that women can take on someone that's like twice their size?

[A]

No, neither could, honestly, neither could a cop that's fully trained.

[B]

I mean, and that's Right, right. So it's like when we're talking about like, should we change standards? Well, I feel like there's not an equality there of like what we think the standards should be.

[A]

And so that actually might be part of the solution. So for me, people ask me all the time, well, what do you think? So there has never been a woman who has completed SEAL training. It wasn't open to women until I think it was the late aughts, some somewhere before 2010. And there's a pre training pipeline. I believe I'm speaking a little bit out of school because I'm not incredibly attached to it. I believe a woman or two have shown up to the first day of training, but they didn't make it much farther than that. And if you look at that pipeline, I was an instructor there for about 18 months in the diving phase. So not the initial phase which is largely physically based, but standards in that job were drawn from the real world execution of the job, reverse engineer, from what you are going to be expected to do with this occupation. And I think as long as you do that and that the standard is published and it's adhered to by everybody, I think you're fine. Because people ask me like, what if there's a woman still? I'm like, I don't give a shit. As long as she can meet the same standards that the guys can, I really don't care. Now there are physiological differences between men and women. One of them is upper body strength. Generally you could go get some CrossFit female athletes that would show you different and have greater upper body strength than most men, but that's statistically almost anomalous. And one of the things in, in Bud's SEAL training, like the boats are on your head and your extended arm overhead or a telephone pole that they make you run around with because that happened to them. So they have to do it to you. Because generational trauma should be passed on.

[B]

Facts, bro. You just described so many things in the academy where it's like who the is jumping over a fence?

[A]

Like four people their class did. So therefore you're. But again, you know, the, the upper body strength. Having spent time in that community, I'm like, okay, I understand why that's important. The evolution in itself is nonsensical. To take a telephone pole from waterlogged from the 1940s and run around with it, even though I understand why they're doing it. And if a man and woman can both do that and that's drawn from the real world application of their job, that's great. And that's the key though. It has to be drawn to something objective.

[B]

Facts right there. And I think that in school I wrote a paper on the police academy and how it is the way that it's created is already putting men at an advantage versus women. And my suggestion is to not change the fact that they have to jump over a fence or do X amount of pull ups. My solution would be to expand because there is more core specific activities that you're doing as a cop. Like think about tactically, like no one's kicking indoors, you're using a battering ram. You need core strength for that, right? So if there are more core strength tests or endurance tests or pain tolerance. How does widening that standard include more people versus going like all these freaking women like they can't do a pull up. So we're supposed to adjust the standards for them and we're supposed to lower. That's where we get all these people that shouldn't be cops that are cops now and they're a bunch of pussies and blah, blah. And I'm like adding more tests will level the playing field and it's also going to kick out a lot of guys. So it's like I think that there are a lot of solutions out there, but I do think that women bring this balance to law enforcement that has been really needed, you know, like women

[A]

into the military too, bro. We used women enablers my entire career, actually.

[B]

A women enabler, what is that?

[A]

Like a force multiplier? Meaning they weren't directly. Well, if you think about it.

[B]

No, I love it. Like in the tactical guys love force multiplier.

[A]

That's what they were. I know, it's just if we had 16 people and we go into a village, I can only actually communicate with or interface with half the population. Specifically in Afghanistan, you do not go and approach somebody's wife or daughter water. Unless you want to have a real problem on your hands. So how are you going to do that unless you bring a woman interpreter with you or a woman with you? And that's what I mean by a force multiplier is it allows us. I mean, I can deal with the men, but you want to watch people lose their shit. Yeah, go start, you know, trying to make entrance into a room or especially if it's. You realize you're not in the place. Military intelligence doesn't always work itself out. Just so you know, spoiler alert. And, but you still got to talk with the people. You still have to, you know, have. Be able to write a report on what happened. And all the paperwork that never makes any of the movies. These. Doing that by yourself doesn't work. Some of the best intelligence operatives ever, women, and that's a real easy one. Send a dude into a bar to elicit information and a woman into a bar to solicit information. Equally trained. Let me tell you who's going to come back with more info. And those are just, those are realities. Now the guy's probably going to win a pull up contest. So maybe in addition to that training he. You know what I mean? And this is where I don't know the answer to this.

[B]

Oh, so think. So you were talking about things in the academy that should mimic like their job roles or their job duties. Cops are trained in the academy to do cool shit that they're never going to fucking do. They're responding to six, six generations of traumatic bullshit of like someone's adult son couldn't handle the word no and needs to be kicked out. And they're doing civil standby, domestic violence or dealing with suicides. They're not dealing with like kicking indoors and jumping over walls. And sometimes, sometimes. But that's not the, that's not the average experience. That's not common. So I think if, if we're looking at what the job entails, will it make sense to, to make the academy mimic that? And I also think that it sets people up for being dissatisfied. You watch a cool video on Instagram and you're like, oh yeah, I want to be a cop. Like, yes, right.

[A]

On the outside of an armored vehicle, just right.

[B]

And then you go. And you're just responding to like you said the repeat customers you're responding to, again, you have to Narcan somebody. Right. You're doing cpr. Like, these are things that people that cops are responding to and you. Yet the academy is not adequately setting them up. So then they get into the job, and they're not equipped for that day in, day out. Just like you're dealing with the darkest, biggest traumas.

[A]

And is unhoused the new term for homeless?

[B]

You know, it is.

[A]

Why do we do this?

[B]

Because there were people who weren't homeless looking from the outside in and being like, you know what? They deserve this or that. What it's kind of like when. So it. When you have two communities, okay. You have an outsider that doesn't understand the community, but they're looking in and they're like, oh, that's so sad. We want to make a difference without understanding the people or asking them what they want.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Then they make these, like, rules. Right. So now everybody's gonna call it unhoused, even though a lot of homeless people don't give a about that.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

So it's. It's just what makes people feel good. I mean, why do people get so wrapped? Dignity.

[A]

But why do people get so wrapped up around the axle? The vibrations that come out of our vocal cords. It's like this optional outrage over experience.

[B]

Because we want to matter. Right. If I call, you can matter and

[A]

not get mad at somebody saying, homeless versus unhoused.

[B]

My God, you can. But you can also not get mad that someone's calling it unhoused. We all feel different.

[A]

Don't get mad at either. I mean, be better than the vocal cords.

[B]

Just the human experience. Like, we all want to feel like we belong, and we don't want to of. And this is something that happens, like, even within the copper, which is why going back to the tactical guys having, like, the feelings and like, cops really do care about having a sense of belonging and feeling like they matter. Like, them feeling like most of their trauma is coming from the inside and not the outside. That's about how leadership treats them. That's about being told that you're a family when really you're fucking not, when you're the last person to be thought of. Like, that stuff. Stuff is. It's. It's all contributing to wellness. So, you know, our perspective is we want to teach the science. We want to give people skills to deal with those emotions that come up, because it's not always about, you know, the potentially traumatic experiences. It's also about, you know, your supervisor Humiliates you in the middle of briefing and everybody's looking at you and you're the example of what the not to do. And you've got this huge like, knot in your, your throat or the slump in your throat. You've got to know how to breathe through that experience, not hold on to it so it stays contained. Your body. You go to a call and you snap back at somebody or your wife calls you, or your husband calls you and you say something stupid or, you know, you don't know how to deal with not belonging. So you want to stick your dick in everything, you know, and it shouldn't. There's so many ways that not belonging or not feeling safe show up. And I just. It's. It's a big part of police culture.

[A]

The insidious nature you're talking about, them worried about, you know, the body armor is for their own admin. Yeah, that one is a little surprising to me. That sucks.

[B]

Our most popular posts have to do with internal issues or leadership.

[A]

I don't, I'm not super familiar with how it works inside of law enforcement, at least in the world that I came from. And this wasn't always the case that the right people got the job, but they all grow from the same career field. You just, it's. It's an Excel spreadsheet. If you've been in the military this long, this is your pay. You're eligible for this. You know, I mean, you can kind of ladder up. Are these agencies, are they bringing people from outside of the agency or are these homegrown people that have forgotten about where they came from?

[B]

It's. Yeah, it's that. It's a combination of that and then also laterals that come in from other agencies that potentially see being.

[A]

That's a crazy disconnect. If you bring somebody in and they never walked a mile in your shoes and don't.

[B]

I don't know, because the president was a CEO. So like, the way that I look at it is this has been my argument is why can't a CEO be a chief of police? I'm not saying that that person would know everything, but that's why advisors, managerially,

[A]

they might be able to.

[B]

And I think the organizational component and the culture building that a CEO has versus a police chief is, you know, the cult, the culture is woven into them, good and bad.

[A]

I think they could manage it. I don't know how well they would do it leading it, because those are two very different things.

[B]

But I think that's why advisors matter. Right? Where you have somebody that is a part of your board that's, that's influencing your decisions on things that you don't know. Being able to execute a decision with plenty of information. Why couldn't that go right? Right. I don't know. Curious.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If we elected Trump, why can't we try it with a chance?

[A]

Chief, he's just killing it, doing a good job.

[B]

But I'm, you know what I'm saying, Like it just. Who knows? Who knows? So, so take it easy.

[A]

The Dow's over 50,000. Okay. Nothing else matters.

[B]

Love that.

[A]

I don't. I was like, what did you just say, ma'? Am? Cool. Talking about sexual predators and you won't look at the victims that are behind you. But the dow is over 50. What in the actual. Is happening?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's super disheartening.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

With leadership within law enforcement, it is mostly people who have stayed in the agency long enough who have promoted and some of that is because.

[A]

So they should know then.

[B]

They should. Yeah. And a lot of them do. Like, there's definitely like the good leaders are. I hear a lot of stories about that. When I, when I do post horror stories, I'm always pleasantly surprised to get comments of people that are like, that is not my experience. Like, I love where I work. But it's, it's happening more often than not. And I think when folks forget about, well one one, it's not so much about forgetting about what life was like when you were a patrol cop. Things have changed radically. Radically. And they do with every generation. You know, like Gen Alpha, Gen Z are completely different, you know, versus like the so called boomers. So I think when you're out of touch, when you're not getting consistent leadership training, when you're not going to seminars on how to grow your leadership skills skills, you're going to use your old past experiences to influence a new world and it's not going to fit. So I kind of, I, I did this post where I predicted by 2035 that there would be a police strike. I think that, oh, what would that

[A]

even look like other than almost anarchy?

[B]

But I mean, if you, if you look at the things that cops are saying in terms of how they're being treated, they are screaming at the top of their lungs like, treat us better, pay us better. Like, I just, I just did a post about staffing and recruiting is like a major thing right now. It's really hard to get people to want to be cops. And it's very easy to, to make a blanket statement and say, well, nobody wants to be a cop anymore. And I'm like, is it that? Or the people that you currently employ are making it known that it's a terrible profession because of what's happening on the inside. Like, your recruitment should come from like word of mouth of the people that currently work for you. You're treating those people like. And then you're offering twenty five thousand dollar hiring bonuses for people to come work at your agency. What do you. That's going to communicate really loudly that they don't actually matter.

[A]

So that's leaving out the social narrative that you may have to fight as well, which is power. I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine who his child, he was explaining this kind of got wrapped up in the all cops are pigs mentality. And I asked him had they ever actually had an encounter with a police officer. He's like, no, not a single time. Like, okay, but how does that happen? Then swept up in their social circle and what was 100, the lexicon of the day. You don't think that, that, I mean these. The anxiety rectangle. You want to figure out why it's hard to recruit for people being a police officer. Spend some time online.

[B]

But stories really matter. In the same way that an officer can see someone being shot in a completely different state and feel sad and sympathy, whatever, and they've never met that person ever. That is just as true for them as if it was at their agency. And the same thing as people that hear stories. If there's something, you know, me being black, like, I grew up with a lot of stories. Stories about how I should behave around cops or how cops are going to treat people that look like me. What to be on the lookout for even if I've never been treated, you know, in a, in a super blatantly racist way by a cop. That's in my mind when I get pulled over, I'm like, where's the cocaine? Oh my God. I, I have drugs in my lady. Right? Like that's not, that's not real. But my heart rate and I'm like shaking as I go to give him my driver's license. Because all of the stories that have been woven into my nervous system.

[A]

Yeah, it feels real. Yeah.

[B]

Are real as. And the same thing for cops when they roll up to a stop. It's every, every story they've ever heard, every scenario that they've ever been through, it's happening. They've got to be ready for it. And sometimes that like hinders us from being able to like see what's actually happening. Which going back to why I think martial arts is really important is because you get that practice of feeling like you're gonna fucking die, but you don't die. So you get to learn decision making through fear. So that when you walk up onto a scene, you're not thinking, like, fuck, this person's gonna do this, this and that. Well, maybe you are, but.

[A]

Well, it also goes back to a standard. I don't know of any other occupation other than maybe a doctor or physician or a nurse, where you actually physically have to touch someone every day. And you know, people are like, oh, all cops need to be black belts. I'm like, listen, that's really aggressive. Take a wrap off, right? Like that's 10 years for somebody if they're consistent. Sometimes 15, sometimes 20. How about we say blue belt? Yeah, you just, you had an exposure to grappling. And although jiu jitsu isn't magic at a blue belt level, if you encounter a drunk person or somebody who's never trained, whatever, it's laughable. Obviously treat them with respect and don't bounce their head off the concrete, which you should be able to do if you have a little bit of grappling. So I, to me, I'm like, that one actually goes directly back to real world application of their job. And again, doesn't have to be a black belt. Have them work until they get their blue belt.

[B]

Tucson PD in Southern Arizona, they just started that. So all new police officers have to have a minimum blue belt. And I think that that's incredible. And it's, it's tough because people are like, well, whatever. Like that's not fair and whatever.

[A]

Life isn't fair.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And again, dealing with people who want to do harm to you all day long isn't fair.

[B]

I think past that and I think about, like, how safe do you want to be if, you know, hand to hand combat? The likelihood that you can walk away from an encounter like that unscathed is a lot higher.

[A]

And well, we're also both parents. I don't know about your kids. Mine don't always make the best decisions. What cop do I want my child to encounter when my child is having their nursery and a cop is on their A game? I want the one who can take total control of my son.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Who is experimenting with the volume of alcohol he can drink in his early twenties.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

And deal with that in a manner where he doesn't end up getting hurt. And the most that he is damaged by is his embarrassment and potentially the fine that may come with that. That's the cop I want.

[B]

I think that that's super accurate and I think about how many cops are injured from fights that they've gotten in. Like mental health within law enforcement, there's so many contributors to that. TBIs are one of them. That's why when I say saw that I was like, I really love that tbis but like past injuries and that was sort of like my trojan horse into the law enforcement world was I'm like, chronic pain directly correlates to risk of suicidality. And if you ask a cop, any cop, like do you have, is your back hurting? Are you. How do your hips feel? I meet just in January, I did a training with a guy that's had three surgeries in Indiana. I worked with a guy that had had six surgeries. Like when you had have metal in your body and you're expected to be back on the road after X amount of weeks or whatever, that pain is going to linger. How does you having that injury affect how you view yourself and your capabilities? Like if you can't do a certain movement the same, you're going to start to think poorly about yourself if you can't do the same. Like hobbies that you used to be able to do, right? Like all of those things impact how you view yourself. So mental health is not just about like, oh, I went to this traumatic event and that stuck with me. It's also like, how is the wear and tear of the job impacted how you view yourself and your abilities? And you know what I mean? Like there's more to it than that.

[A]

People should just try wearing a duty belt for a day and then throw some armor on and then get in and out of a car or just stand around for 10 hours wearing bodysuits, armor and they will have a different appreciation. And that's just a day you don't even need. I don't even need you to do anything. Just wear it around for a day. And then they wonder why their bodies are destroyed at the end of a 20 year, you know, shift or not shift, but a career.

[B]

I did that I put on like the whole thing and I'm like, I'm gonna wear it for a whole day. And it was so cumbersome and like my back was arched from like the belt and it was just like all so heavy and then, and then. And that also makes me think like, what about these women who are on their periods and like, you know, we

[A]

gained two pounds when Women shouldn't be cops.

[B]

Get the fuck out of here. Did you know that there are no tactical vests that have the ability for a woman to pump? Like, they have to completely take it off or unwrap the sides. There's not a way for them to zip and be able to pump.

[A]

I had never thought about that. Yes, I know. They're making body armor plates now that are more fitting to the female floor form.

[B]

Right, right. But it's like, you're totally right if you've never put on the thing. Like, you don't know how it feels. But then also, to my point, when I show up and I'm talking to you about wellness and you're like, it's fine. Define fine. Like, why do you think that fine, it means something different to you than it does to me? So there's so many ways that.

[A]

Is it getting better in your experience, working with as many police officers and agencies as you, you have. Because here's the number one thing I hear from officers, and maybe this is older officers, but it is. And there's a variety of ways to say it, but mostly it's this. If I say something, they're going to take my badge and gun.

[B]

So to that I say, which maybe

[A]

that was the way it was historically.

[B]

No, people still think that. Okay, that's still. That's still happening. We hear that all the time.

[A]

There's like 40 different expressions of that. But if you dial in a little bit, that's.

[B]

That's ultimately.

[A]

They're going to take from me what it is. I derive the largest portion of my identity from. Which is actually even another, I think, critical point for people to remember that it can be what you do and not who you are. And that stems from also. Or not stems from. But that. That helps buttress the idea of having a social circle outside.

[B]

I was gonna say. Yeah. If you never practice that and have that evidence for yourself, you're never gonna think that your identity is anything other than that. Yeah, no, we still get that. Um, it's still really. That it's alive and well. And to that, I remind people, if you're to the point where your agency has to intervene, then you've had years of an issue that you have not had help with. And now that trauma is in the driver's seat. The. The point of. Of wellness and resiliency, because those are two separate things, and that's important to decipher. Wellness is about taking care of yourself. Resiliency is about. About teaching your body how to process through traumatic or surprising events and how to get through that. So if you never. If you never practice wellness or resiliency throughout your career, you will find yourself in a situation where you feel out of control. So the point of wellness is to learn that throughout the career, starting at. Before the academy, right? If. If it's not happening before, it should be happening in the academy.

[A]

Me.

[B]

So I think that there has been a big evolution. And, and the tough part is, like, anytime that you make something mandatory, which we're seeing a lot more mandatory things, there is this. There's almost like this inclination to check boxes, right? We're. We. We're being told that we have to mandate something. So cool. Yeah, we did this. And the tough part about that is now that agencies have wellness units and they have. Have psychologists, they're bringing on a lot of resources without actually priming the officers with the understanding of why that stuff matters and how to integrate that into their lives.

[A]

Do they have examples of the leadership utilizing?

[B]

And that's a big issue. Right?

[A]

Is that one of the biggest shifts? And again, I've been out for a while, but even when I was getting out, I got out in 2013. There was so much more talk about the family unit as opposed to just the service member and counseling and resources and honest and having, Having. I don't remember if they were Sykes or shrinks, but having people that you could talk to. But the most powerful thing I ever saw was not you have to go talk to this person or this, that, or the other. It was a commanding officer talking about the positive experience openly in front of a mixed company, his peers, the people that worked for him, that he had had, and going and talking to that person, if that doesn't open the door to the realization that, like, hey, not only is this okay, but also if you have a level of respect for that person, you're like, you, damn, that guy has his stuff together and he's getting a benefit from. To me, that is more powerful than any doctrine that you could try to put out there or your mandatory quarterly PowerPoint. Make sure you watch his PowerPoint and you pass the test at the end.

[B]

Yeah, they're clicking through that 100%.

[A]

That's what you do.

[B]

There's this child psychologist that my husband and I follow because our children are terrifying. Her name is. It's Ask Lisa on Instagram, and she talks about. About the success of children. It's. It's less important for kids to go to therapy than it is for parents to go to therapy because of the

[A]

trauma that their children put them through. I understand because I support this message completely.

[B]

When the parents can learn skills and understand how to regulate themselves, be able to identify issues that are happening and know how to communicate and like, work, work through those things with their children, that's more effective than the children having resiliency skills. And.

[A]

And then you're teaching the kids resilience too, as you work through.

[B]

That's right. That's right. And so to your point, when leadership has those skills, then we're removing the stigmas, which stigmas are really just about. There's some sort of social risk involved. It. It means something negative if this thing is present. So me saying that I have ptsd, there's a negative reaction that happens if I say that. So if leadership is. They have a high emotional intelligence, if they have high resiliency skills, they're going to be able to walk their subordinates through those traumatic events and there's no risk involved that psychological safety is present. And I to this day work with agencies where I have, have higher ups call me. Hey, we, we need a wellness program. We need this, this or that. And we've got, you know, we've got some EAP resources, We've got a department psychologist and bubble. They're telling me everything they have. And I'm like, cool, do you use those? And they're like, well, no. And I'm like, well, then shut the up. If you don't use it, you are clearly communicating that there's not a need for it or that you're somehow more resilient enough that you don't need it. And that's part of the issue. So we do this thing in our trainings where we bring in cold exposure. So when earlier cold plunges. No. So we actually just bring in like a gallon Ziploc bag and we fill it with ice and a little bit of water. And we team people up into teams of two. So you have the person that's going to put their hand in, and it's for a minute and a half to mimic the length of time that it takes for your body. Body to process an emotion. So it takes 90 seconds for you to feel an emotion. And then if you don't act on it, it goes away.

[A]

90 seconds.

[B]

90 seconds, that's it. Right.

[A]

So positive or negative?

[B]

Positive or negative, 90 seconds, it's gonna last in your body. And if you don't touch it, it will go right. So we give them practice of putting your hand in and there's this, like, onset of pain. There's this natural arc that happens where you're like, oh, my God. But then all of your natural physiological reactions to stress when you're in fight or fluor flight show up. Whether that's auditory exclusion, whether that's emotional numbing, dissociation, you start laughing, you start minimizing, you start being, like, super dramatic or whatever. The thing is, it shows up. And more often than not, what we see is this. Got a guy. His hand is in there, dead ass. Right? So afterwards we talk about it, and I say, okay, so if we're all looking to Jin. Jim. As the standard in which we handle pain, we're tempted to think that it wasn't painful. Jim, was that. Did that feel good? No, I just, you know, I just wasn't happening. Like, I just blocked it out. Right. So if we don't know what Jim's coping skill is, which. Avoidance is not necessarily a positive thing, it might be good in this application. But how does that work out in his relationships? Right. We're not thinking about. About that. We're just looking at the surface and going, like, why am I not that? So when we work with leaders, we remind them that, like, your people are constantly looking to you to decide how should we react.

[A]

Yeah, you're the example.

[B]

And if we are teaching them not to, then ultimately you're telling them, hey, turn into a sociopath. And that's not the goal. When you retire, you want to have your emotions and feelings intact so that you can go on and live that life that you've been counting running down. You got your little. You got your. So many people have, like, a retirement tracker on their phone because they can't wait to quit. Bro. I'm not joking.

[A]

I hadn't thought about that.

[B]

They're not. They. They can't wait. I.

[A]

And then. What's the average life expectancy for an officer post career? It's like seven to 10 years.

[B]

Yeah. I don't remember what the. Well, that there's a major cardiac event.

[A]

Heart disease, I think, is the number one killer. Yeah.

[B]

But if you think about. You made a joke about your. Your resting heart rate being 170date. If you're.

[A]

If I'm gonna be late. Yes. Crippling anxiety.

[B]

I wish I had that feeling. Like, I literally don't care. I'm like, you know what? Like, they're hanging out with me. They know it's gonna happen.

[A]

I'm not introducing you to my wife because we would have a dinner plan, and your husband and I would go out to dinner. And you guys would come two days later.

[B]

No, we'd be hanging out together. We'd be getting ready and.

[A]

Yeah. And then two days later, you'd be ready. So, I mean, that's fine. Yeah.

[B]

You knew that. You both knew that when you.

[A]

No, I can't handle that. I'd be pacing outside.

[B]

So. So that, you know, jokes aside, whatever your heart rate is, whatever your blood pressure is, that is a product of everything that you've practiced or not practiced. So if we're looking at that number and it's seven to 10 years before some major cardiac event happens, that's avoidable. That's not. But if you don't ever. If you ignore wellness.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Up until the last three years of your career, you're gonna feel like this mountain is so huge. It has to start in the beginning. You will be traumatized by something in this career that's something that you're signing up for. There's like 400 or something like that. Critical incidents that the average cop is experiencing. One in seven cops have ptsd. It's happening. Suicide is the number one cop kill in America. It's present. Present. To ignore it is risky.

[A]

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[B]

It's risky.

[A]

I mean what you're taking on is a huge challenge.

[B]

But things are changing. Yeah. So to what you were saying, things have evolved. There are a lot of like incredible people that, colleagues, people that I really respect that are making huge differences in, in the wellness world. But there's still only half the agencies in America have wellness programs. That's still really low. And of those 50%, only 23% teach resiliency skills.

[A]

So is that a budget or a time issue or.

[B]

It's budget and it's interest. Higher ups that are still in, you know, come from a world where you suck it up, don't find the value of putting money towards something. You know, it doesn't seem to spend money on something proactive when you're not used to that, when you're constantly being reactive, it seems frivolous. So I'm, I'm having to convince leaders of why they should be spending money on these things because it actually does it. It might not mean productivity, it might mean loyalty, it might mean longevity. It might mean that your people don't take their lives and we just have to teach people to find the value in that, you know.

[A]

Where'd you come up with the idea for attack mobility?

[B]

Because I wanted to be like, you guys need to do yoga. And they were like, so it was

[A]

a hidden, the whole goal, you were trying to Trojan horse yoga.

[B]

It was because I, in my world, like everything that I was learning when I first got my certification, I'm, you know, I'm doing this and then I go to work and I'm watching guys. The average 20 something year old that I meet that looks like they're 47 and I'm like, oh my God, like, are you okay? Or like, they go to bend over to pick something up and they're like. Like they can't do it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm like, you guys need yoga. And that word has so much social stigma within the tactical world, within the military.

[A]

Like a hippie.

[B]

They're like, I'm not gay. I'm like, how does that mean you're gay? Because your ass is in the air.

[A]

I mean, have you ever seen guys doing yoga? One leads to the other. There's a direct correlation, 99.8% effect.

[B]

I've taken it in the ass. No, you're fine.

[A]

I don't have any studies to support that other than the ones I made up to support my point.

[B]

But yeah, so I had to drop that word. Yoga. I realized that like, okay, ego aside, tactical mobility. So I was like, cool, we'll do tactical mobility. And then I was like, tack mobility. And so now.

[A]

And they like it even more. They're like, yeah, can we get a patch with that on there too? Yeah, let's do some hook pile tape or Velcro, depending on where they came from.

[B]

Yeah, that Molly, dude. Once you do it, you're in molly. You can't help what you love, you know, like some of us love.

[A]

Nobody should love Molly, though. It is the most excessive. Heaviest visually. Like pointing out somebody with a tactical.

[B]

Tactical.

[A]

It's not. It's heavy. It looks cool. It doesn't. It looks.

[B]

You can hook stuff onto your.

[A]

Yeah, like Velcro. Just Velcro.

[B]

I don't understand that.

[A]

Here's a better idea. Be a gray man and don't have anything on the outside. I don't need to know that you're a positive. No known allergies walking through the airport. Take a wrap.

[B]

You have paracord on your keychain, sir. That is the same thing as Molly. What are you talking about?

[A]

So this was from a guest. This was made by an ex French special forces dude. This is.

[B]

I thought it was a ring.

[A]

A SAP. This can go through the airport. And this is designed to grab your keys and hit somebody in the head. Head with. This is about being the gray person. So this can clear.

[B]

What is a gray person?

[A]

A gray person is somebody who understand tactics, but they have them on the inside, not the outside

[B]

Tactics on the inside. I wear my tact. Oh, my God, I love that I wear my tactics on the inside.

[A]

So have you ever seen a 511 bag? Of course you have. Because it says I'm a cop or a dude who is in the military. Like if you take all that.

[B]

Are you wearing BDUs right now or BDUs?

[A]

No, I'm wearing Lululemon pants because I do yoga because Michael and I are gay. Take the 511 bag, strip all the stuff of the outside and make the inside of the bag useful, but the outside of the bag doesn't draw any excess attention.

[B]

Yeah, like vertex, sure.

[A]

There's a good example. That's the great person. That's the person who can navigate through that world and is very tactically proficient, but you're not a beacon of like, look at me, look at me. And that actually that person to me is way more effective and way more dangerous.

[B]

It's like the guys that shake your hand. So shake my hand.

[A]

What are you doing?

[B]

Just do it. Just shake my hand. No, just the finger comes out and I'm like, yeah. Why do you have to let me know how tactical you are with your handshake?

[A]

Like, God, they're, they're guarding the trigger. Well, even on the handshake.

[B]

Oh, it's real. Or they shake my hand and it's

[A]

like, that's not a cop thing, is it?

[B]

My hand.

[A]

Okay, good confirmation from the husband that

[B]

it is happening everywhere. So, yeah, so I knew that I needed to change the words. And so like in our trainings, it's a combination of we teach them the neuroscience behind stress. We teach them polyvagal theory, and we teach them how to understand, like why past events come up and to sort of not be tempted to take their experiences and like make it unique to, to them. We want people to understand, like, these are the textbook ways that stress shows up. These are the symptoms to look for. When you see these symptoms, it's simply information. It's not a reason for you to feel shame or any of those things. And then we show them how the brain's actions or the brain's thoughts result in a physical reaction in the body. And then at the end of the training, we show them different techniques. One, how to breathe. Because oftentimes cops are told to box breathe in a presentation. They're not actually shown. They don't get the practice.

[A]

Oh, it's literally a PowerPoint.

[B]

It's literally. So wellness is PowerPoint. Some recorded. Didn't you have a. Wasn't your wellness thing from Starbucks or is that your bias training? Yeah, bias training.

[A]

I'm sorry.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he.

[A]

One more time, Starbucks, like, sponsored the bias training.

[B]

So it's a pre recorded anti bias training that an unnamed giant agency of more than 2,000 employees will have to watch for Their bias training. But that's what it looks like when you mandate something. It becomes a check the box thing, right? So we're having a lot of officers that somehow get access to a pre recorded wellness training and it's like do this, this, this, this and this. Who the fuck is gonna do that when they're feeling stressed if they, if you don't know how to do it,

[A]

especially if you add to that, if you don't do this, this, this, you can't do this or go back. They're just going to get through it as fast as possible.

[B]

And the way that I explain it is like, does it make sense to give a cop a gun on day one and be like godspeed?

[A]

It depends on what the cop's going to do.

[B]

They would never do. Right?

[A]

Cuz is he guarding a Walmart?

[B]

That's probably where they're going to use it. That's a terrible example.

[A]

That actually is a bad example. I feel like the vast majority of cop shootings are Walmart shootings are,

[B]

it's, it's a risk, it's a liability and yet we treat these like wellness and resiliency skills the same way. Like, oh, I'll just tell them that they need to. I remember I worked with an agency and I was like, so what do you, what's the protocol if somebody has like a major issue like and they need help? She hands me a five page packet and I said so you expect me, if I am in distress and I finally gain the courage to ask you for help, to flip through your fucking pamphlet and do this 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 grounding technique when I've never done it. If you don't practice resiliency skills when you don't need it, then you're not going to think about using them when you do. And it's probably not going to be effective if you only know one or two resiliency skills. There are many different breath techniques that do different things in your body and you need to know that if you're having a hypo arousal versus a hyper arousal, what's the technique that's going to get you moving out of that? So we teach them different skills and then the end of the training, depending if it's a four hour and eight hour, we're doing mobility like we're doing stretches, lacrosse ball therapy so that they can see that it's not gay by the time they're done. Like at the end I go, just so you know, if you're ever wanting to do yoga, that Was it. You've done it.

[A]

But that was tactical yoga.

[B]

It was tactical yoga, yeah.

[A]

Not the same. Go to a studio, watch your ass. Literally, she's gonna complain. I have no experience with yoga whatsoever.

[B]

You don't?

[A]

No.

[B]

You're lying.

[A]

Never. I do not warm up or cool down for jiu jitsu. I put my gi on. First round is, I tell myself, gonna be a warmup. It usually becomes a death match. So then I have to control my breathing and heart rate afterwards.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And my post workout is I put my normal clothes on and go home.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So working pretty well.

[B]

People tend to think of. Okay, so if you're a guy and you think of yoga, like, what are. What's the purpose of.

[A]

Purpose of it to be stretchy.

[B]

But, like, when is it appropriate to use yoga?

[A]

Never.

[B]

So I think when people think of yoga as to be stretchy versus the

[A]

therapy, like you said, it's for proper range of motion in your joints, and you could probably stretch out your tendons and your muscles and it would probably ache less. But, like, whatever, who's got time for that?

[B]

So there was a study that was just released on which athletes have the longest lifespan. Polar archers, gymnasts. Because of the joint health that comes

[A]

from all gymnasts or because gymnastics between men and women are very different.

[B]

This particular study was on men. But that's not a surprise because most studies are male dominant.

[A]

Well, I'd be curious, because male gymnastics, they specialize in one or two things. Female gymnastics, they do across. Across a wide variety.

[B]

Yeah. Because girls have to do everything anyways,

[A]

so I'm just saying, like, is it like the rings? Dude, the pommel horse guy.

[B]

I wish that I could do pommel horse. That'd be crazy. It looks so easy.

[A]

Yeah. You're watching the best in the world do it.

[B]

I know. Just like, why can't you shoot someone in the leg? It just looks really easy.

[A]

Yeah, you can shoot someone in the leg, but it's not as safe as people think. I've watched plenty people bleed out by being shot in the legs.

[B]

That was another thing. What the. What's. Who is a femoral artery? What are you talking about? They're like, die.

[A]

You can bleed out into your thigh and hamstring space again.

[B]

If you don't know, you don't know. So with yoga, I think that's part of the issue is that folks think about yoga as this form of stretching, and it makes you limber. But there are so many case studies about yoga and its therapeutic benefits. Benefits. So when you're Doing Jiu Jitsu, it's increasing your mind, body connection. Probably thinking about, where is my hand? Where is my leg? It's. You're constantly being. How much pressure am I putting here? So yoga is a form of that. You're.

[A]

So I'm already doing yoga.

[B]

You're kind of doing it. Yeah.

[A]

So I don't need to, because I'm doing Jiu Jitsu.

[B]

Except.

[A]

Which is violent yoga.

[B]

Here's what I try to tell people. A lot of folks, folks will use workout as their form of decompression. They're like, for sure.

[A]

That's how I. I am guilty of that, as I think most men are.

[B]

And I don't think that that's wrong. I think that that's really, really important.

[A]

It can be a healthy outlet, but you also can hide in that space too. I know people who. They like the disassociative aspect of Jiu Jitsu, but then they use that disassociative aspect to not do the other things in their life that they should because they're for their health. It's like, yeah, but your life's also falling apart. Yeah. So let's balance the two. Let's make sure the tool is actually serving you the way it's supposed to.

[B]

Well, I think about your nervous system. So if you are in an activated state, if you're constantly in fight or flight, and there is this presence of adrenaline, noradrenaline, norepinephrine in your body, you. The way that you balance it is to not add more. So if you're doing a fucking CrossFit workout and you're doing 100 burpees or you're throwing weights around and whatever, there's still a lot of adrenaline that's needed. A lot of cortisol is needed to do these types of things, which. Not bad, but if we're thinking about balancing the nervous system, what kind of activities can you do that don't have that present? So yoga is. You're incorporating the mind body connection. You're learning how to breathe, and it's really about, like, you're learning about how your body feels. So if I tell you to do a pose that is really difficult, you're gonna have to think about, is your body squeezing, like, even something as simple as a lunge. If you have low mobility and you're in a lunge, your whole body is just like, oh, my God. Right? And you have to learn how to relax and to soften into the pose. That's the same thing as when you're in stress, life is really hard for you. Resiliency is about learning how to survive in those moments. How can you learn how to to breathe and to soften your body into that moment and sort of ride that discomfort until it goes. So it's really teaching you how to be present with whatever shows up. Cuz your emotions are tied to your physical body. So you can have a lot of hip tension or a lot of groin tension or pelvic floor tension if you've had a lot of sexual trauma or if you're used to shoving your emotions down. The body's a container for all of your experiences. So yoga is it really kind of puts you face to face with what you've been doing to your body and it helps you get really present with it and then also to decide what you want that to look like. If you don't want to have your shoulders up to your ears. If you're being micromanaged all the time and your jaw has been clenching for 16 hours in the week. Well, is that what you want or do you want to learn how to rewire that? So yoga is, it's more than, than, it's more than being mobile, it's being in tune with the body that you're going to have when you retire.

[A]

That makes total sense.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

How much do you recommend for guys specifically in the law enforcement world? It's like daily.

[B]

No, that's so unrealistic. That was one thing too that I realized, right? I'm coming in as like the wellness person. Like, oh my God, you need to do this and this and this and this. And then I started doing ride alongs and I'm like, I get home at 1am and I'm like, I have to go to sleep because like I've got to be up with my kids.

[A]

Oh, oh.

[B]

This is why we're throwing back shots, is to like shut it down, go to bed because you're right back at it. When I do a ride along, bro, I need to like plan a bath, I need to plan a massage, I need to like do meditation and make sure that my mind is right. And cops don't have that privilege of time like the rest of the world does. So sure, if you can do yoga every day. Yeah. But most people know, I think if you were to do yoga once a week. Week, dude. Incredible.

[A]

How do you like the ride alongs?

[B]

My, oh my God, my body hurts after them. Oh my.

[A]

I'm like, did they give you a gun?

[B]

No. Not even such a liability. No.

[A]

I'm not saying you should have bullets.

[B]

No. I think the only time that that happens is water pistol.

[A]

I mean, come on, we can be creative. Yeah.

[B]

If I had one of the. Or one of those. So cute. It looks so real.

[A]

That's. Yeah, you don't. I don't think you want one that looks real. You need to have a water pistol or something.

[B]

It's so crazy how real they look. Like that was doing right alongs with

[A]

gang units that have lost their lives because of how real they look.

[B]

Oh, did you know that they make like they like 3D print things that go on guns that make them like automatics?

[A]

Yes. You're just now realizing this?

[B]

It was life altering finding that out and that they're teenagers with like not even full brains that have this capacity to those.

[A]

So those AR platforms, if you understand. Actually, you don't even need to understand because at this point, God, how do I talk about this and not give anybody ideas? The inner workings are not that complex. If you knew what part or parts to swap out and there are not a lot of them, you could change the functionality of it.

[B]

That's wild.

[A]

Well, and with the ability, like you said to 3D and it's the. The Internet that is.

[B]

People are hella creative criminals. I'm like, damn, if you were to only put that to good use.

[A]

I mean, that goes with everything. That makes them sound differently to cycling differently. Yeah, it's. It's a wild world out there for sure. But yeah, there. I mean, there's documented cases of people who've been shot with airsoft guns and that's just shitty.

[B]

Yeah. So when I do the ride alongs, I am like acutely aware of like, you guys, we could die. Like when I'm on the side of. It's so.

[A]

Is that what you open with when you slide into the door?

[B]

Dude, I'm not even joking. Like, I'm. This is my personality all the time. I will be like on the side of the freeway and like semi trucks are going by and the car is shaking. I'm like, totally. One wrong move, you guys, like, and we're dead. Like his friend in the academy, like he was two, three years ago. A body was killed by a drunk driver that hit him like on a car stop. Like it's so. And I think putting myself in those situations is an important part of my work because I know that I'm an outsider looking in. I have a very limited experience in the law enforcement world. I've never. I've never put on a gun and gone in and been the one that has to, like, make decisions. I've always been like, waiting in the car until they think it's safe to. And they're like, okay, you can come out. And then I stand there, I'm like, all tough and whatever. I'm like, yeah, that's right. There are these boys that were just fucking around. And I was like, where's your mother? Like, does she know what you're doing right now?

[A]

You know the answer to that.

[B]

And then what about your little. Do you have siblings? What do they think? Do you think that they're looking at you like, oh, I'm, I'm mommying them? Which is also why women, how do they take that? Actually, this particular one, it was, it worked really well. Whether or not they change, who knows?

[A]

But I think it might have also been exactly what they needed.

[B]

I think that it's really important to recognize and, and this is why wellness and, and taking care of officers matter, is because you want them to be to your point, when they're working with someone that is just making a bad decision, right? And you see that they're on this trajectory of, of life. Decisions that are really going to create a universe for them that is so terrible. You want an officer to be able to look at them and to give them guidance and to see them for a human and not just another statistic. You know, somebody that is going to be a gang member or somebody that is not that they don't care. Right? Like, I, I love that part about me and I hope that that part doesn't change. But I can understand why it changes for so many cops, because you see it day in and day out and nothing does change. Like these kids that we stopped. Like some guy, he met a dude in the park that was like, hey, do you want to come over and play PlayStation? They go over, he feeds them, they play PlayStation. He gives him a gun and he goes and hides it.

[A]

What for everyone who solves crime from their couch, knows more about forensics than their own job, and has trust issues with small town sheriff tariffs. Amazon Music's millions of podcast episodes are calling. Just download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite true crime podcasts ad free included with Prime. Huh?

[B]

Where's the stranger danger component here that

[A]

mom never like, did they meet on like Roblox Discord? Like, how did these people.

[B]

I don't know what the story was. We were trying to like, figure it out, but it was like, you know, just talking to them. They're, they're, they're my children's age.

[A]

And it's like a weird escalation too. It goes from playing video games to hide a gun.

[B]

Right. Well, who knows, like, what conversations were taking place. Right. The guy was a felon.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He had some priors, so who knows if he, like, came off as like, you know, this cool gangster guy that, whatever. And the guys, the kids wanted to be more like him. And then, you know, cops or baby mamas getting. She's going to call the cops. Well, oh, this guy's cool. Whatever. This is how you act like a man, right? Because where's dad? You know what I mean? So it's there. There's so many of those types of calls that cops are responding to. So anytime that I see it, I'm just like, wow, there's so much trauma in the world. And then I feel my body just, like tense the whole time. Dude, it's wild.

[A]

I think some of it depends on how the police officer views their job too. I. On Fridays, I'll do Q and A's, and quite a few times, law enforcement people will reach out. And I've gotten a bunch where people are losing their. I don't want to speak form, but maybe the luster of what they thought the job was going to be is wearing off a little bit and the reality is kind of setting in. And oftentimes my advice is you can't think of yourself like Batman, you know, your job is to enforce the law. And I don't know about you, but I have wanted more for people in my life many times, and it is one of the most frustrating. Frustrating?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like you just. And they just keep doing the same thing. And you have to realize that there's only so much you can do for people. And then people have to make their own choices. And it's not for me to judge that. I'm not here to judge everything. And having an officer that can understand, like your job is to enforce the law, you don't. You're not wearing a cape and cowl at night. You're not bad, man. You're not actually out there, you know, I mean, you're. They're there to stop crime if you see it, but enforce the law, and you may not be able to change that. You're driving trajectory for some of these people's life. And you have to be okay. Putting that down a little bit too, I think.

[B]

I think that's a tall order because

[A]

the job is a tall order.

[B]

Well, and. And when I think about wellness and reform, I think that this is an excellent area where there's room for improvement. Sabbaticals or the fact that cops have to stay in their career for as long as they do. So like my thing was because I had lots of conversations with military folks and I was like, okay, so you can serve for five years and be like, I'm out and still get benefits. And you can still maybe. Okay, so it depends going down the road of the maybe, right? So you get benefits five years, you do your work and you're like, not

[A]

a guarantee you'll get your GI bill, but medical, no. Okay, pension.

[B]

What's the GI Bill?

[A]

Educational. So and like when I joined for the first year year, I put in a hundred dollars a month and it was I think $20,000 in educational benefits, which I think then tried to pass on to my kids because I never used them. But you're not getting health care. Well, and again there are, if you are injured in the military, like whatever your, whatever your job is, you get crushed by something and you become medically retired at five years. Now we're talking a different type of exit. But if you sign on the dotted line and the shortest enlistment I've heard of is think three years to start with and the longest was probably six. You get to make your decisions at those points. But at three years or six years or anything really under 20, you're not getting benefits. You can get VA disability associated with the things that happened in your career and maybe benefits associated directly with that, but you're not getting health care, you're not getting a pension.

[B]

So using those things. And also, and I also, do you. If somebody serves for five years and they decide that it's not for them. Them, do you look at them as like, this one's a.

[A]

Hell no. I, I'm thankful for anybody who ever wants to raise their hand and serve something greater than themselves.

[B]

So then I think about law enforcement and the type of work that they do. Five years of being a city cop.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Wild.

[A]

Well, most cops just want to join because it's an easier way to become a firefighter. That's what I've been told. I'm joking, obviously. Savagery, the amount of heat between.

[B]

I'm not touching that.

[A]

Oh, it's hilarious.

[B]

Candy. I didn't say nothing.

[A]

It always depends on the audience. If it was a firefighter sitting here, I'd have been like, yeah, most firefighters just joined.

[B]

No.

[A]

Because they want to become real first responders. You know, I throw it back. My brother in law is a San Diego city Fire captain. God, the crap. The crap that they talk between the firefighters and.

[B]

So cute. Yeah, it's so cute. So the way that I look at it is I go, if somebody wants to be a cop, they're signing up for 25, 30 years.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What? That's wild. You.

[A]

It's no different than the military.

[B]

But it is though, because you just said that five years you can be out. Right.

[A]

So you can quit any time.

[B]

Being a police officer, you can, but you're. A lot of folks that go into it are in it for the benefits they're thinking about like their pension.

[A]

Same in the military. But like I said, you don't get the benefits until 20 years.

[B]

So my point was, what if instead of saying you have to be in the. You have to be a cop for two and a half decades in order for you to get benefits? Why? What is, what are the issues? If we were to like flesh this out with someone being in for 10 years and discussing benefits or why can't we do a sabbatical for every five years where they're taking a month off and they have the ability to, to like, let their nervous system come down, experience life. And like, you know, we see the importance when it comes to clergy, doctors, but yet when we think about law enforcement, somehow it doesn't make sense. So I think.

[A]

I love that idea.

[B]

It makes so much sense in order to keep people human.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And. And make sure that they don't get that like, salty outlook on life. It requires time away.

[A]

Away.

[B]

Like.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's the only solution. Because your nervous system, it remembers everything.

[A]

I also think there's ways that you can re. Not everybody is great for the job that they want to do. Right it again. The fair people. Oh, life's not fair. I'm like, the fair is in Iowa and there's a merry go round and cotton candy and if you want to go to the fair, go there and shoot the balloon with the BB gun. The reality is I've never heard that.

[B]

I was like, oh, it's an Iowa.

[A]

There's a great Iowa fair. Fantastic caramel apples, everything. The whole nine. Not everybody who wants to be a cop is a great cop. Not everybody who wants to be in the military is great at being in the military. But that also doesn't mean that you can't find utility for that person in the ecosystem. So maybe they just glass ceiling out at, you know, like. And they don't want to have a patrolman for 20 years or whatever it is.

[B]

That's really common.

[A]

Yeah. And Maybe that person though there is a way to make them a full force multiplier of some kind where they can still work towards that benefit. But maybe their whole job becomes recruiting officer retention, you know what I mean? Wellness, those type of things. And again, I'm not intimately understanding or have experience in the manning of police agencies like the ones up here are small, right? The sheriff's department is smaller than the PD by a substantial more actually a couple orders of magnitude. Not a lot of cops on at any given time they may not have the ability to do so. But look at at. You know one particular buddy of mine, I've watched him, when I met him he was on narcotics, then he did the swat, now he's doing detective.

[B]

He's done specialties are really important specialties.

[A]

And you want to talk about somebody who seems to be getting refreshed and more impassioned about the job about every three to five years as he makes that rotation. It's cool. And of course that's not the end all be all for everybody because not everybody could do those things. Things I think there are creative ways. Like for me in the military, one of the things I've thought about if you do 10 years in the military, you never pay taxes again, bro.

[B]

This is what I'm saying. Like what do you have to do to prove that you have been committed as to something and you deserve to get some sort of kickback from the government? Like.

[A]

Well, it helps with recruiting too, dude.

[B]

100%. 100%. I could not agree more. And I think like. So you just said something about, about switching up jobs every three to something years.

[A]

Three to five years is what he seems to be doing. But that's on the sheriff side. I don't know other departments if they have the ability to do that seem to been beneficial. And he's actually way knowledgeable about a lot of the different spokes in the wheel.

[B]

Being well rounded is important and there's an argument against that that some cops, once they get into a specialty, it takes that long to really get good at the job. So why do they want to move out? But the opposite end of that is I worked with a guy that was in child crime crimes for 17 years.

[A]

Yeah, the ICAC people, I don't know how they do it.

[B]

Excuse me. We don't think that we should make that like a mandatory certain amount of years. Regardless if somebody thinks that they're good at it, it is not good for their psyche to be exposed to this type of violence. Like it is not good but yeah, I think that specialties are really, really important, which is something that, like I talk about with women is when you bring women in, part of the retention is exposing them to special specialties. Like my husband, since I've known him, has either been narcotic or he's always been canine. And being able to see how happy he gets from the job, I want to see more people get access to those opportunities. And unfortunately, there aren't a ton of women that get introduced to those circles. And, you know, a lot of these positions are who, you know, who you're

[A]

friends with, especially if they're limited in nature 100%.

[B]

So. So, like, the specialty thing I think is like, is really, really important. People seem to be happier when they can find something they can like, lock in on.

[A]

You were saying when you grew up or when you were growing up, you were kind of bombarded with the perhaps narrative anti to what you seem to believe. Now when it comes to law enforcement, how does it go when you have conversations who are with people who are still in that world, who are still being bombarded by them, that. And they don't want to hear what you have to say. It's what they believe. Even. Even absent experience, it's what they believe. Do you even attempt the conversation or do you just let it be?

[B]

I let it be. I have a lot of friends that feel very differently about law enforcement.

[A]

Is it based on experience or what they are seeing online?

[B]

It's consumption, for sure. Sure, it's consumption. It's also, you know, people that they're in relationships who have been treated a certain way. And when people feel that way, there's nothing that I can do other than think about their nervous system. Is it going to help me or them to get like, really upset and to like, target them or say whatever? No, it gets nowhere. And I also realized that, like, change. There's so many different roles when it comes to change. Like, one of my best friends prefers protesting. And I think that that has a place. And if we look at history, I mean, me being a black woman and the platform that I have wouldn't be what it was without protesting from, you know, Jim Crow. And there's. Right.

[A]

So there's a reason why it's the First Amendment.

[B]

I'm telling you, there. There is such a place for everybody's emotions and anger in this. And I think that anger is a big part of it. Like, there's so many things that I've gotten mad at, like, as I've gotten into wellness and I'VE been sort of brought into the culture. I see a lot of the things that are wrong. Did you know that sexual misconduct is the second most. Is the second reason or highest reason that cops are accused or convicted of misconduct? The per capita of police versus general public is higher when it comes to sexual misconduct. So for one for every hundred thousand police versus one for every a hundred thousand citizens, it is higher for police than it is for citizens.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

I mean, there are some major issues that are still present. Like racism is still alive. To think that these things aren't present, to think that, you know, in Arizona we used to have this. The Tempe Police Department, they were called the devil dogs. And it was because after the sun went down, if you were a person of color, you would be expected to be stopped by the police. Right. And that was the environment that my dad grew up in. So I got to hear those stories, but then to think about it. Okay, so in the 50s, right? How close are the people that were making those decisions within the police department? That culture that existed in the 50s, how weeded out are some of those practices in 2026?

[A]

Hopefully very, very, very.

[B]

But what still exists? Right? Like if we look, the broken window theory is something that is everywhere within law enforcement, that in nature has racism woven into it. So it's like to not say that these things don't exist is completely minimizing. Like when I hear cops say, yeah, well, like a few bad apples. And I'm like, let's not minimize the impact that those bad apples have. Like systemically, like when someone that you work with, you know that they arrive on scene and they're gonna just take things up to the next level, or they're heavy handed or they're doing that is directly impacting your safety because it's allowing this narrative to exist. Exist. So, so when people are upset at this stuff that's going on, it's valid.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

It's also not my role to change it. My, my role, I realize, is to help officers feel better. When you feel better, you do better. Whatever that looks like in their context, that's up to them. Because I don't understand the logistics of crime. Crime, like I don't understand violence. I just think that everybody's like doing their best and everybody is out there being a great person the best that they can be.

[A]

You actually think this a hundred percent.

[B]

A hundred.

[A]

God, I wish I could have that mentality for a day.

[B]

Like, I, I literally.

[A]

Mine's different. It's like somebody is definitely trying to kill me right now.

[B]

Back to the Vietnamese woman. I'm like, oh, my God.

[A]

Oh, by the way, how are you having a conversation with the deaf. Deaf woman?

[B]

Right? And that was her question. We're like, so I'm glad you brought this up. And she. Apparently there was such a language barrier that they placed that on her account so that people wouldn't feel uncomfortable with the language barrier.

[A]

That seems a little ableist. That is derogatory towards people who cannot hear. I don't even know if I use that word correctly. I heard somebody say it one time.

[B]

I just grabbed all these words that I hear liberals say.

[A]

I don't know. I don't. People are liberal, bro, Conservative. It's like, I get. I am so not a. Everything has to be my team. I'm like, people ask me, where do I land? I'm like, I don't know. Ask me an issue. I'll tell you. You know what? I'm being put into a box.

[B]

Okay, so I. I wasn't familiar with you prior to. Me neither prior to our mutual friend. And I was looking back at some of your episodes, and I saw one that you recently did on Ice, and I really like, liked how you were trying to maintain this, like, walking and trying to balance that line of, like, you see some stuff that, like, is not right, but also, like, it's such a no.

[A]

It's like, I think we should have immigration policy. I think the taxes they were using were dog. I think you should be trained to do your job. That was a bad example of not

[B]

being, you know, like, it's really hard to. And. And that requires safety. That requires self awareness.

[A]

No, that just requires you not caring what team people want you to be on.

[B]

The ability to stand alone and to feel safe with yourself and to really understand, like, how you feel, but also this openness to other people's suffering. I think that all of those things make it possible for you to have an opinion that is walking a line. And maybe you're more on the line, you know, on that side than the other or whatever. But my point in all of the work that I'm doing is, is if people feel safe, if people feel well on both sides, anywhere along the spectrum, then we're more likely to see the other person as a human and try to hear their story and understand the nuances. Like, when I think of people that are looking at the black community and they're offering all of these suggestions or saying that we need to do this or that, and without understanding the nuance in the history and the same thing with policing without understanding the nuance and the history.

[A]

Him in the leg. First off, do you know how hard that would be if they were moving?

[B]

Not everybody's like such a viable.

[A]

Not everybody is a weightlifter. You're like trying to shoot out one of the legs of these tripods. You're like, oh, missed. And hit somebody behind him again.

[B]

No, it feels like it would be like you can. You can even shoot a gun out of someone's hand, like if they're.

[A]

You know what's interesting? If you spend enough time on the Internet, you can actually find examples of that.

[B]

That's what I'm saying.

[A]

There's a great. Have you probably seen this one that shot a pistol out of a guy's hand? He was sitting in a chair and he had lowered it down. I love it too. But I don't know if that's a replicatable tactic, but if we don't have

[B]

any frames of reference, right? If the only things that cops put out on their pages are like the cool, like nice the cops are doing and they don't talk about the realities of what. What things really are, what other reality check do we have? Have? Yeah, we don't. That's another thing that I try to work with agencies on is like, you have to utilize your social media to be proactive on some of these issues. None of them, actually. I would love somebody to like, correct me and like send me to the agency that is. But agencies are not talking about the. The types of calls that they're receiving. So like, like a good example of like a PSA could be. Be. We had examples. So I did a paper on. On a Southern Arizona agency, and I pulled all of their call volume for like 90 days to look at, like, what are the types of calls that people are responding to? And like 45% of it had to do with mental health calls, you know, noise disturbances, like neighbor complaints, things like that. If that's the majority of the calls that you're responding to, and we live in an age where people are eight times more likely to go to the Internet for their adv advice or medical news or whatever, then you have to meet them where they're at, which is online, and show them different skills. If you're responding to generational trauma, right? If there's domestic violence that's happening, it's not enough to talk about the fact that it's happening and talk about awareness. What are the skills that they need to be learning to arm themselves against those things? So it doesn't keep happening. Right. So if there's an, if there's a misconception of law enforcement and how shooting works, works or how use of force, you know, the continuum looks. And you're not educating them and you're only showing them how to put in a car seat or you're talking about coffee with a cop and the only people that are showing up are people that, with the cops, like it's not effective. You're not, you're only making friends in your own echo chamber. You're not making change with the people that really, really need to understand.

[A]

Yeah, that would be a full time job for somebody on social media to try to do that, which they have.

[B]

They're called PIOs, public information officers that run social media accounts that are responsible for putting content out there that help the community feel safer.

[A]

I do, I do like the idea of a call breakdown. I don't think I've ever seen that. But that would give people at least if they wanted to see, like, hey, this is what people are generally responding to.

[B]

Like, you guys want to talk about cops and, and how much, how many shootings took place? Okay, well this is. There were 223 domestic violence incidents. There were this many robberies there. Like when, when reform happened. There was this page that I follow and they started talking about it. It's like this, like this plant shop. Plants are amazing and they were broken into and who breaks into a plant shop?

[A]

Was this a weed shop? Is this a type of plant we're talking about? Talking about?

[B]

No.

[A]

Little horticulture. What do they call it? Hydroponic?

[B]

No, no, this was like pothos plants. Okay, we're talking like monsteras, bro. Like we're talking.

[A]

I can solve.

[B]

You don't have any plants in here?

[A]

No, this is a 52 year old white woman. I could solve this crime immediately. Driving a minivan case calls next.

[B]

So somebody breaks into their establishment and they have these like beautiful door doors that had been like restored and they like broke it in all the, like, it's this staple in, you know, downtown Phoenix. And they wrote this whole post about how cops didn't show up and somebody called them to take a report over the phone and they were like what the. Right? And then I just think to myself, this is a very like outwardly anti police company establishment. What was their position when they were yelling for police reform and the defunding of police. Police. Because when you defund the police, this is the result.

[A]

Prohibit somebody from coming to get your report.

[B]

Yeah, so people need to understand that, like, we are all interwoven. We all need to work together. And in order for that to happen, there has to be some transparency, some coming together and going back to our nervous systems. That doesn't happen if everybody feels, like, attacked.

[A]

If you were a queen for a day day.

[B]

Oh, my God, I love this already. Yeah.

[A]

If you're a queen for another day. And this would be impossible because all these departments are so. Some are connected and some are not, and they want to be contrarian. You know, I mean, they want to do the opposite. But if you could force something into every department, one thing. Where would you start?

[B]

Are we talking, like, anything

[A]

from the outsider, like you said, but who. I'm not even gonna say you're. You got, like, one foot in the bucket and one foot out of the bucket. You have a deeper understanding than most just because of the amount of voluntary time you've spent immersed in the same circles that they're in.

[B]

I've. I think that I'm. I feel that the sabbatical approach would be really important. I do think it's really important for cops to be able to take time away from their jobs and remember the meaning of life and the purpose of it all. I think at the end of the day, my goal in working with agencies and cops is to help them remember and like themselves. Like, I spend so much time contemplating and reflecting. Like, I journal every night. Like, it's really important for me to like myself and to.

[A]

What do you do with the journals you fill up?

[B]

I keep them.

[A]

How many do you have? That's, like, excessive.

[B]

Oh, I have a lot. So right now, the thing that I'm so. I started it last year where. Instead of. Instead of. So I used to just, like, journal, whatever. And then I started this thing last January 1st, where every night I would. I would write a journal entry, but it would be, like, something positive. So whatever it was that happened in the day that I hated or didn't like, I would have to reconceptualize it into something positive. So, like, my child that is testing me, I'll write something like, she is so in tune with her decision making, and she's so wise and she's so open to change, and she's flexible.

[A]

You're lying in your journal?

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

[A]

So this journal is a tool to lie to you?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Because that's all that hope is. It's. It's. It's imagination. It's you lying about.

[A]

Put hope down, dude. Just put it Down.

[B]

So I just started. And then I also like, think about the future that I want to happen. Like, like this podcast. Right. Like being able to. To say on a larger platform that like, you fucking matter. Like writing down like those dreams. So every single night it's something positive. I can't complain. I can't say anything bad. And I've been doing that for. Yeah, it's been a year. And that has completely changed how I go to sleep. I go to sleep with hope. I go to sleep remembering, like who the fuck I am. And, and, And I think when cops don't have that privilege because they're out there trying to make a living for their family, it's really hard. It's really hard to do that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I would lean towards. Towards that, I think time away where you're paid. And also girls. Can we have two rules where more girls need to be hired, but also you need to have policies to retain them.

[A]

Only the right girls, they have to meet the.

[B]

And who gets to decide who.

[A]

Right. The standards of the job.

[B]

And who did that?

[A]

You have to reverse engineer it.

[B]

That's right. We need to change the standards. Not to make them lower, but to adjust what they look like so that more people have the opportunity to work there.

[A]

But then you still have to hold them 100%. Have you ever AB tested this journaling thing just to make sure, like do a week where you only can complain and are filled with hate.

[B]

I would literally never. I don't drink liquid death because I can't put that in my body. I'm not even kidding you. Never in my life have I.

[A]

You want to talk about a water that took over the market?

[B]

I will never. He gave our daughter a sip of it and I said, it's just water. No, it's liquid death.

[A]

That's what the can says.

[B]

But no, I can't.

[A]

What do you think, like, Satan is tap dancing on that can?

[B]

I see hearts. Every. Anytime that I see a heart in a shape somewhere, I'll be like, oh my God, it's a heart. Like, that is. I see hearts everywhere. Like, I like love, dude, but that's my world, right? Where people are actually trying to.

[A]

Like, we need a few more people. I think in that head space, I. You know, it's funny we talked about earlier statistically living in the safest time, but if you have people who get most their information off of a screen, they would tell you it is the most dangerous time it's ever been for human beings.

[B]

I think you're right.

[A]

And we need more people who can put that down and be like, you know, I'm going to see the positive in this because it's tough. And like, for me, I definitely am more. And by that I mean a lot more trend towards seeing the negative than the positive. I just call it being a realist, you know.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So my wife say it's pessimistic. I'm like realist. Very different.

[B]

Like if your algorithm doesn't have like happy stories outside of dogs, mini dachshunds

[A]

is most of my.

[B]

Like, I'll hear him so that I have this rule. And he did not love it at first. But this is just how the house is working. We don't sleep with our phones next to the bed. No, you get out of the room. And for me, I don't, I don't pick up my phone until I've meditated because I don't want my phone to decide for me how I'm going to feel for that day. I want to decide. I want to know. Know what kind of hope is it today? Like, yeah, like how, how am I feeling before I get online and I am bombarded with the latest disorder or the latest news thing or whatever. And I've had to.

[A]

That also depends on what you use your phone for.

[B]

Yeah, I don't. I've had to unfollow a lot of police pages. So like we. When I first started this, when I first started talk mobility, I would get people in my DMs telling me that there I'll never forget it stories. And I had one that like really stuck with me. Like I could not believe that it actually happened. Like, and. And then I was like losing sleep. And then I just couldn't get this image out of my mind. And then that kept happening. Like the more stories that I was getting, I was like, dude, like I'm getting ptsd from my DMs of trying to like help people. Then I had to really realize, like, I cannot help people if I'm constantly consuming material that is making me traumatized. Like, I don't want to have this fight or flight response when I open up my DMs, I want to like remind somebody that like, you're totally worth it if your agency made you feel like that them go find something else. Like, I, I want to have that and I will lose that. And I think if that's one of the first things that I remind officers in our training trainings when we're talking about sleep deficiency is like, well, how is your phone Contributing to this never end. I call it hyper vigilance Porn.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If you're hopped up on police posts, get the out.

[A]

It's interesting. You listen to people say, I'll ask them, like, what's the most important thing in your life? And they'll say, my business. And then if you watch them, first thing they do in the morning, when they pick up their face phone, instead of looking at their bank account, they look at Instagram. I'm like, I thought you said business was the most important thing. You can tell not even. It's a tool. Right. It's just like, to me, like, again, the things on the wall, it's just like, whatever. Might as well be a hammer in a carpenter's belt, like a nail file. I can make them work for me because they are just a tool and they're only as effective as what I use them for. Our phones are exactly the same thing, but we've lost control of that relationship. The number of people. My fitness is, you know, my health and fitness is the most important thing. Why the are you on Instagram, then, as the last thing you do at night and the first thing that you do in the morning? Why do you wake up absently reach for your phone and immerse yourself in that instead of pulling up your eight sleep metrics or your aura ring metrics and look like, hey, how was my sleep? Let's actually live up to what we say is important with our actions instead of our words. It is. The divergence is insane.

[B]

It's really wild, like, how my son was just saying this to me. He's like. He's like, did you know that, like, alcohol consumption has gone down, like, dramatically incredibly? So I was like, yeah, but do you also know how high the isolation rates are in depression and anxiety? Because it was the US Surgeon General that was his, like, main priority was to deal with isolation because of the impacts that it has on our health. Like, it. Have you heard that there was a. There was a study that was done that said that the equivalent of isolation is smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Like, the house. Yeah. So it's like we've gotten so used to being alone with our phones.

[A]

Connected.

[B]

Connected.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I even noticed that, like, the. The lack of motivation that I have to, like, do, like, clean my entire house like I used to, or, like, clean the garage or organize something or whatever, because it's so much easier to, like, sit down and, like, pick up my phone and scroll. I think that cops are. This is happening major, especially when there's overtime Shifts that are available and you're doing, you know, you're on the side of a road, a construction site, and you're there for 10 hours, bro, you're fudgeing, scrolling.

[A]

That's not true. My friends say they watch Netflix.

[B]

Yeah, totally, Totally.

[A]

Yeah. I get all the real spit of what they're up to. They're like, like, yeah, we just door to door up and then one sleeps while the other one is awake. And then we switch.

[B]

It happens for sure.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

Yeah, but it's like.

[A]

Or the fucking practical jokes they play on each other. Oh, my God.

[B]

I could never be a cop. Okay? That is the number one thing that I say when I go into a police department. There is someone's face that has been photocopied with some kind of just fucked up joke and it's pinned somewhere. I'm like, I could never be made fun of that much. Like, I would not make it as long as.

[A]

I mean, there's a place for it. As long as, you know, if it's a good nature.

[B]

Nature. No, dude, I can't. But I also, like, I love that about them. That, like, the camaraderie is so beautiful. And when I was first kind of exploring these conversations with cops, what really intrigued me was how welcoming they were, but also how they treat each other like one cop. The way that they feel about a cop in another state being killed or the way that they feel about another cop is the same thing that black people do. Like, something that happens to a black person on the TV might as well be happening to me. It is the same. We are not different. There's nothing about that unarmed black man that's different than me. Like, that's how we view it because we are a community, like sub communities. You are bonded by these shared experiences or the potential of similar experiences.

[A]

So when does it go the other way when amazing things happen to people?

[B]

Hell yeah.

[A]

You feel connected in the same way.

[B]

Yeah. Like when I see somebody on the streets is black, I'm like, like, we, like, there's just this, like, we can, like, joke. Like there's fun things about our, you

[A]

know, I mean, like, if you were to see something the opposite of whatever somebody getting shot and killed is on social media, say it's a black person. Does that same community celebrate along with them?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Yeah.

[B]

So, like, there's this thing called, like, black boy joy. And it's when you see, like, black boy joy. Black boy joy.

[A]

I'm not gonna lie to you. I've never heard this before.

[B]

So it's when like something. So it's when you see a black man just like having this like very like wholehearted, like joyful experience. And it just looks so pure. That's what we talk. That's what we call. It is black boy joy. And we just. That, that is, that's what we want to see black boys around the world experiencing rather than this like, fear that something is going to happen to their existence. Like, we walked into Moose's last night and we're standing at the bar and he's in front of me and everybody's getting served except for us people walking up to the bar that got there later than us. I'm the only black person in the bar. My. And we sit down and I'm like. And I just kind of whispered to him. I was like, my racist radar was like, like up. And he's like, yeah, mine too. He's like, it was kind of weird that, like, we weren't getting served. So there's these stories that we have. It's the same type of hypervigilance that cops have. And it's, it's what happens when your community has historically gone under attack because of a misconception or misunderstanding or oppression. You project that into your experiences and it's really hard not to. To do that when things look familiar.

[A]

I get that. Yeah, I get that. How can people find your courses?

[B]

Tacmobility.org is a great place. We do trainings all across the United States.

[A]

I was gonna ask you what type of stuff.

[B]

Oh my God. Okay. So on May 21st and 22nd, I'm hosting a two day women in Law enforcement performance summit.

[A]

And I, I feel like this is heavy yoga.

[B]

No, I really wanted women to get exposure to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Yes, Women. Weapons retention, vehicle vehicle searches, criminal interdiction.

[A]

You're talking about. This is for officers, right?

[B]

This is for officers. Yeah. So these are specialties that if. Going back to what I said, if you don't have connections in the specialty world, it can be really difficult because specialties also, you know, if you have to be on 24 7, that can kind of hinder your ability to do it because you have this. Women are socialized and we're expected to go home and have a full time job taking care of the house. Right. So the same things that work for men sometimes don't work for women. So I really wanted women to get this exposure to getting on the ground, bumps and bruises, feeling that feeling of I'm going to fucking die and not dying. I think that's really important. And then I also wanted them to play around with, you know, women are known for our gift of gab. And what if we utilize that on the streets and help them become more proactive in interviewing people and looking for human char trafficking or drug trafficking? And then we're going to have experts on leadership, hormones, nutrition. And then I'll be doing a wellness and mobility component, so also known as yoga. Actually, we'll probably do mobility. Yeah. Because the girls aren't going to be like, oh, my God, it's yoga.

[A]

Like, they're going to be yoga. They're going to be pumped.

[B]

But we do trainings all across the country, so we are. I mean, we're. Yeah, we're a nationwide company and. And if agencies want to bring in block training, we do that. We do conferences, like keynotes.

[A]

Are there a lot of law enforcement conferences? It seems like there's a conference circuit for everything.

[B]

Hundreds, hundreds.

[A]

What do they do there? Do they get together and like talk shop about tactics or equipment?

[B]

Yeah, it's a combination for sure. So, like I was involved in the tactical world and that's like, there's always like a big keynote session where they bring in some kind of like, motivation. Motivational speaker. It could be like a Marine or it could be like a famous cop that, you know, had this insane incident and they get like this, like this, like, hype up, you know, and then they go to classes and it can be just various debriefs. It can be the latest, most modern tactics. Yeah. It can be continuing education on various topics. And they're just multiple days of that. And there are for everything, narcotics, tactical investigations, women like leadership. There's csi.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There's everything.

[A]

All right.

[B]

Yeah. So invite us out. We'll do it.

[A]

What's the most shocking thing or what has surprised you the most once you started working with these agencies? Is there anything that sticks out?

[B]

Yeah. How shitty dispatchers are treated.

[A]

They are forgotten. Often you want to talk about people who are absorbing trauma, who don't really have a way to do anything about it either.

[B]

It's really wild.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The way that cops can sometimes just neglect them and like their role in everything. The way that I kind of. I like to romanticize everything. So, you know, when I'm sitting just sort of observing, you have a caller and they're calling in with the. The rawest version of their crisis basis,

[A]

if they can even get it out. Yeah.

[B]

And then you have this call taker or this dispatcher that's answering and they're having to work past that person's emotions to get to. To get information that's really, really important. And they are getting the brunt. Like just, they're being called every book under the name. Like they're getting told to like kill themselves. Like their people are terrible sometimes. Sometimes. And then they're listening to just the audio, right? They're. Your brain can just imagine the worst possible thing. But then they're also trying to balance what are the dangers that I'm hearing that I have to let my officers know about. So then they, then they turn to their offers that officers, they dispatch whoever out and then they're trying to get information across. And then you have whatever mood the officer is in so you can have an officer that has a great relationship. They're super respectful, they get everything that they need to know and that's the end of the conversation. But then you can also get cops that have a attitude and they're just like, you know, they might be going through something, they might whatever. But then they treat the dispatcher like. Or I think of, you know, I go into an agency and they're like, we need to talk about wellness. It's really, really important. Officers are killing themselves and I'm like, where the. The dispatchers and they don't think about them.

[A]

What are the stats like for dispatchers? Is suicide higher than normal statistical rate with them?

[B]

I don't know. I don't know. There's not a lot of research on dispatchers. They're typically kind of like, like grouped in. I. So I was looking at a bunch of studies this last week and they're looking at first responders. And I think the issue is that they're not considered a first responder in many states.

[A]

They should be.

[B]

Right, right, right.

[A]

Oh, this is why, Michael. Oh my gosh, 21% reporting suicidal ideation. With studies showing up to 21% of all 911 dispatchers. That doesn't surprise me. Roughly six times higher than the general population. They are on the receiving. And then again, they don't have any mechanism of being other than passing the information along. You know, at least the. Well, I don't want to say at least, but the officer receiving the information is likely going to be on their way to do something about. About it as opposed to just sitting there with that info.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it's it. I think talking to dispatchers and finding out like what their stressors are and finding out why they think that they're treated that way or how they feel when they're treated a certain type of way is really important. I have one a ride along that's coming up with a dispatching team because I want to know, like, and I have a lot of theories. Like I'm a woman. So of course my mind goes back to, to like what could the reasons be? It's a heavily female dominated field. There's more women in the dispatcher world than there are men for sure. So are women treated a certain way or do men expect a certain thing from them? I don't know. Who knows what's the reason that they would be treated differently? And then there's also just a lot of like negative talk about them being the ones that all the cops are. And you know, there's. They're treated like subhuman a lot of the time and it's really sad.

[A]

Yeah, that sucks.

[B]

And also cops sleeping with each other and like that's a big thing that was surprising is how many, how many like relationships of like cops cheating on wives with co workers. Like it is. I did a post, not that it

[A]

excuses it, but do you think that's based off of the stress and the nature of the job? It's not an excuse for it, but I could see people arguing or not arguing, saying that that in some way shape or form plays into that.

[B]

No, I think that there are plenty of people in high stress jobs that

[A]

don't bang their co workers.

[B]

Don't bang their co workers. The solid point, I think that it's, it's how the like the trauma bond that happens like when you're in, when you spend so much time. I think that that would be. I think that's probably something that really contributes to it is you're with the shared experiences.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Hours throughout the year or throughout the week and you go home. What is that home life? Like, are you in a relationship with someone where you have open communication and you know, you guys work really well together and that is your respite. Or do you go home to somebody and you're checked out and they don't like you anymore and they don't want to have sex with you anymore and then you know, there's like the excitement of fucking around on the job. Like, been there, done that. It's really fun. Don't recommend it. But like it's, you know, it's this addiction to adrenaline and chaos that I mean it could cause somebody to. I don't know. But it's happening a lot.

[A]

I never banged any of the guys I worked with because perhaps Ms.

[B]

Probably because you never did yoga.

[A]

Never got invited. Yeah, they're like, hey, bring your lacrosse ball. Like, why does it have a strap like it's going in your mouth, bitch.

[B]

Oh my God. That was so detailed. I feel like you've thought about that.

[A]

Maybe I have an imagination too.

[B]

Oh my God. I've never heard that. It's really aggressive.

[A]

Yeah. Michael can tell you I go off the rails from time to time. Maybe. Man. What do you guys got planned for your rest of your time here in Montana? You take off tomorrow or today?

[B]

We take off today. Tonight. I think we're just going to walk around. We. We looked at a couple shops. I did a little shopping yesterday and I got a bath bomb.

[A]

Do you know? Okay.

[B]

The forage and floral.

[A]

When we're done, I'm going to send you a couple stores this way. It's called the Toggery.

[B]

The what?

[A]

The toy. T O G E R Y. I believe that also might have only one G. I'm not sure.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

They're going to have a puffy jacket in there for you.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

Walking distance.

[B]

I don't know. I look at him. I'm a grown woman. I can buy my own, but.

[A]

Yeah, but use his card.

[B]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I was like, but what's mine?

[A]

I feel like you could. I feel like it's a write off because you were here for business.

[B]

100%.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

100%.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, we have been at it for over two and a half hours.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

Yeah. What? Where's the best place for people to find you?

[B]

Yeah. On the Internet. On Instagram and TikTok.

[A]

No, no, no, no. Because we're going to reduce our social media usage. Right? We talked about this.

[B]

We're going to meet people where they're at. Okay.

[A]

Can they be at an email address?

[B]

Yes. Yeah, you can go to attackmobility.org or you can send me an email. Ericaackmobility.net and the reason that I say socials is because that's where a lot of people have, have, you know, they're, they're in the middle of scrolling. They're getting their hyper vigilance pouring in for the day, but then all of a sudden my face shows up on their screen and I'm reminding them to take a deep breath or relax their butthole or something like that.

[A]

Same time. Or do you separately?

[B]

Yeah, if you can couple them together, that'd be great. You do store a lot of tension in your perineum and it is really important so right now I want you to do a kegel. So do it.

[A]

Maybe I would have to pee if

[B]

I did a kegel. No, do a kegel. I want you to think about.

[A]

Michael, you gonna join us?

[B]

Yes. Let's all do kegels, no frills. Okay, so I want you to, like, do a kegel, and I want you to pull your pelvic floor, like up towards your throat.

[A]

I know what a kegel is.

[B]

Okay. I want you to hold it for five seconds.

[A]

What? This is exhausting.

[B]

Okay. Just holding it. And now relax it so you don't notice that you have tension in your butthole until you relax it. And then you're like, oh, my God. But they're just like small things. We've heard people tell us stories. Like, I almost unalived myself, myself. But your page really stuck. Our mutual friend, he was like, I was in a really dark place in my life and you were kind of like a beacon.

[A]

Like that to me is why social media should not stop existing.

[B]

I love it so much.

[A]

I have, I have a folder now of over a dozen people who have reached out and have said the same thing about the podcast. And it's. I have, once I hit upload, I have absolutely no control of where it comes shows who sees it. But the fact that in somebody just. Even if it was a random thumb swipe and they were able to stop on that, that to me is the most powerful argument as to why it needs to exist. Yeah. We got to figure out a healthier way to use it because the mental health issues associated with social media are very well documented, but it can be used appropriately. Yeah. That's why I think that stuff should still continue to exist. We can't get rid of that.

[B]

Yeah. So we, you know, along with the cultural things that we're trying to change and the spicy things that I say, there's also a lot of stuff about. We just did a post yesterday or a couple days ago. I had this guy that was. He came up after a conference and he was like, it's kind of embarrassing. He's like, but I feel like a little bitch. Like, I had an OAS and I couldn't stop shaking and I, like, wanted to cry and I was like, my guy. Did you know that like deer who are the most, like hunted and like prey animal, the reason that they don't have long term traumatization and humans do you is because of this tremor effect that happens. It's this mechanism where their body starts to, like, shiver and shake and it's dispelling, like the nervous, like, energy residue that's left behind from a traumatic experience. But we as humans, there's the stigma. What does it mean if I'm shaking or crying? So we hold it all in. We try to. I'm not crying. You know, just kind of like swallow that lump in the throat. When really that's the body's way of physically letting go of the experience. And it's a lot of times it's that, like that, like that resistance to the. To the fear that disallows people to play back the experience that happened because we do have to play back those traumatic experiences. We need to find out why we weren't prepared, why things could have gone too far.

[A]

Prepared. You still may end up shaking.

[B]

What.

[A]

What did he think it was going to be? Well, John Wick. He's just going to go have a martini after that for the movie.

[B]

Movies. See how the movies impact and influence you.

[A]

John Wick also documentary.

[B]

I've only seen the first two.

[A]

He was a sheriff, not a PD though. That's why he's so much more advanced.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, you know, it's just letting people know, like, there's a science to why your body responds the way it does. Like, crying releases endorphins in your body. That's our natural pain chemical. But we're so. But you want to stop the body from doing its natural. Like, it. It. What it naturally wants to do, how it wants to help you. You want to get in the way of it. How about you just. You hold the two things. You hold the. I feel like a. And I feel like I could have done it different and also let it happen.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So we. So, yeah, Socials is a. Is a really great place to interact with us. But yeah, the website, we have a ton of free resources that are available to any. Any position in law enforcement. You can go there. Go.

[A]

We.

[B]

We have nervous system resets. We have wellness challenges. Every August, we do a sober challenge, which has been really incredible.

[A]

Sober August.

[B]

We do. It's called Undrunkest August.

[A]

Undrunkest better than Sober October. Yeah, Undrunkest August.

[B]

And it was. So we did that because I had heard something with Joe Rogan where he

[A]

was like, sober October. Yeah.

[B]

Well, he was talking about wanting to. Wanting to get in touch with his sober self and make sure that he still liked the decisions that he was making. And I was like, holding holy. I want to do that. That's so important. And so we've done sober challenges for the Last four years now, and people have. It's the first time that they've ever not drank in. In their career or drink in their career.

[A]

Yeah. What I'm fascinated by this guy who was so, no pun intended, rattled by the fact he was shaking after an officer involved shooting. What do they teach officers to expect after the ois.

[B]

That's a big thing is.

[A]

So just ride it out. Whatever happens, happens.

[B]

Well, so they can give you a list of things that'll happen that you can expect to happen. But the issue is that they think of post traumatic incident support as immediately after versus when I work with tactical teams or like, I worked with an officer officer that responded to three high school shootings in Colorado. His stress symptoms didn't show up until like six months down the road. So the, the support goes away and all that's left is you can isolate or you can, you know, eat a bunch of shitty food or drink a bunch of alcohol or whatever. So they don't really get like, there's not this, like, continuation of reminding people you were in an incident. Let me keep checking up on you. And it's as simple as setting reminders on your phone that you have to check in with your people so that it's not left up to like, oh, shit, I forgot. You have to be intentional as leadership or the supervisor, the sergeant. If your people experience potentially traumatic experiences, those are the things that end up culminate or accumulating and lead people to ptsd. It increases that risk. So you really have to be intentional about, like, if someone is performing safe cpr. Yeah, it might be a joke, whatever. But what if that was a kid that they did CPR on? You know what I mean?

[A]

A kid from their community, a kid they may know peripherally. I mean, you got to add all of those things into.

[B]

You have to realize that those things add up. So you have to consistently plan out, check ins, you know, that let them off the hook. You gotta let people know, like, hey, it's okay to have a hard time with this. Like, hey, you could be possibly experiencing this in the next couple of weeks, couple months, or like, hey, it's been a couple months. Like, what are some of the things that you've noticed? Normalize the body having a human reaction. And then you'll see kind of like that openness and where people aren't afraid to talk about it.

[A]

I wish I could say that in my old job. If that guy had come to his boss, he'd be like, dude, I got you.

[B]

The military is terrible at this military.

[A]

Well, the reality is, because I love my friend so much, I'd be like, it's because you are a. Oh, don't you have like, a little, like, know

[B]

why you feel like a.

[A]

Because you are a.

[B]

What's that one? So I worked with the Army, I've worked with them a couple times, and I remember this guy telling me about. It's some sort of form that has to be filled out.

[A]

Shooter statement. I'm like, it's just a five W's.

[B]

That's not the one that I'm talking about. Then when. When someone is, like, having, like, trouble with their mental health.

[A]

Oh, that's a different form. I'm so sure. Shooter statement is if you end up pulling the trigger on somebody, you have to document what happened on Twitter.

[B]

Yeah. Not that. Yeah, it's when somebody is having difficulty with something. It was this form and it's like this questionnaire and he's like, on his computer screen and he's entering on all the questions and, like, right in front of the person and he's like, if you have to fill out this form, you're. And I'm like, yeah, but that people know. Also the form that you use to help people like, what the. What are you.

[A]

I think. I think the military is getting better. I want to believe that they are. The community I came from was making very large strides in that direction when I left. I have to assume that the trajectory continued, however, hasn't solved the suicide issue. That's one. I still.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I don't know if there's a good solution for that one.

[B]

Yeah. I think that enough people talking about, like, the different angles in which that happens, it's not just one thing.

[A]

Yeah. I think a reductionist strategy is the. The best people want to take it to zero, like, absolutist.

[B]

It's not.

[A]

It's never going to.

[B]

It's part of the human experience and

[A]

like, we should reduce it as much as humanly possible. Trying to aim towards zero. I get that as the goal, but let's not think we're actually going to arrive at zero because like you said, unless we can solve that for all

[B]

of humanity and the officer, suicide numbers have gone down good. So I think last year was like, in the 170s when I first started this, it was in the high 200-undreds, like almost three hundreds. So there has been progress for sure. It's still. It's still the number one cop killer versus line of duty deaths, but it's. It's making progress.

[A]

Yeah. Are you Ready to unbox your present. Get in there.

[B]

And. Oh, look at the little wrapping.

[A]

So here's the thing. I paracord. Thank you.

[B]

Shocking.

[A]

Well, you have to blame that on the people that made the knife, not me. I didn't.

[B]

Oh, my gosh.

[A]

This knife is now for your husband. Just for clarity.

[B]

First of all, he's not getting shit. Oh, my God. It's so cute.

[A]

All right, Josh.

[B]

It's light enough to go on my Lulu.

[A]

It is. Do not cut yourself.

[B]

Oh, my God. What kind of metal is that?

[A]

It's Unobtainium. I have no idea. Oh, that's right. You're the knife girl. I have no idea. It's black metal.

[B]

That's so cute.

[A]

The strongest kind. Yeah. So Montana Knife Company.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Was founded by a guy named Josh Smith, the youngest master Blade Smith in all of whatever that community is. My God, you got so close to cutting yourself.

[B]

I literally didn't.

[A]

I feel like you did. You're the knife girl, though, so you can do whatever you want to. Just down the road in Missoula is where they are made. Super good quality steel on there. Lifetime sharpening. And it's got the little clasp there on the. Not class. Whatever you would call that thing on the side where it can.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, I just broke the box.

[A]

That's fine. 100% can go through Lulu's, though.

[B]

Oh, my God, I love it. I like the texture on the handle, too. That's so fun. Well, thank you.

[A]

Of course. All right.

[B]

Okay, your turn.

[A]

Better be a knife.

[B]

Ooh, not a knife.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So this is something that I've been saying for a while, because I would change this.

[A]

I would say, it's not the chemicals, it's you. That would be a kind of mug that I would give to Michael because he would be like, it's not me, dude.

[B]

It's.

[A]

He calls. Calls me dog. And I'd be like, it's not me, dog. It's the chemicals.

[B]

And that's the adrenaline symbol. It's not you, it's the chemicals.

[A]

Like, adrenaline is a. Oh, explain the logo. Yeah, it's the Rose Panther.

[B]

Oh, my God. Okay, so everyone wants to be a gangster. No one has self control. That was one thing that I realized is, like, the tactical guys are, like, the first to be like, I'm so tough. But then when I'm like, what's going on with your feelings are like, what feelings? If you don't understand yourself, you're a liability. You're not a badass. So it's really about like, self control is so important. Like, when you have feelings, apathy shows up, anger shows up, frustration shows up.

[A]

Like, how'd you come up with a panther?

[B]

I don't know. It just looks really fun. No, it's like a. It's just like, I like it. Yeah. I just think it looks really, really cute.

[A]

God, I can't introduce you to my wife because she's gonna.

[B]

That's all.

[A]

I just.

[B]

I was like, it's so cute.

[A]

I hate to tell you because this is gonna be her shirt. Because she's gonna see that and be like, where did you get that from? Can I put that in the dryer and shrink it down to my size?

[B]

Well, I was trying to do like, something badass, but then it was like the softness with like, the roses, you know, it's that, like, balance, dude. Like, you can be a badass and also, like, be in touch with, like, your feelings.

[A]

She would agree. She's a three stripe Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt, ex world champion.

[B]

Yeah, I want to be friends with her.

[A]

She's awesome.

[B]

She sounds really cool.

[A]

She's the best. I tricked her, obviously.

[B]

Obviously.

[A]

What do you want to close it out with? Final thoughts for the audience?

[B]

I don't know. I think that. Well, I would say this. Wellness and resiliency are not the same thing. You have to know resiliency skills. You have to practice them when you don't need them. You have to learn these things like the back of your hand. You have to learn your nervous system. You have to know how it works. That's what's gonna make you, like, not impenetrable. Cause that's not realistic, but that's what's gonna make you resilient and like, tough and courageous. Is like, knowing what to do when those things show up in your body. And also that those things, things, they make a really big impact, like, very, very quickly. Very, very quickly.

[A]

Toughest people I know, it took them a lifetime to get there. It's so easy to forget that it's little things over time that add up to that, bro.

[B]

It's small steps done over time, done consistently create success. Like, that is what we tell people every single day. You don't have to do, like these big, you know, grand gestures. They can be like really small things that like, show up in the every day.

[A]

I agree. Well, thank you for making the trip out. You're gonna walk down to the toggery now, select a jack. I would go medium weight puffy.

[B]

Medium weight puffy.

[A]

Medium weight puffy.

[B]

The wild thing is I hope that I get to use it.

[A]

You have the rest of the day. Let's. Let's live in the moment.

[B]

I bought it and then I only used it the one time in Montana.

[A]

If you are going to travel some more you'll get to use it plenty.

[B]

That's true. Yeah. Next time I go to Nova Scotia.

[A]

Yeah. In Arizona not so much. Nova Scotia for sure.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If you get over to Europe a little bit. Yeah. It's going to. It gets a little chilly.

[B]

Yeah. Come on Europe, have me out. Let's do this.

[A]

Or Australia. I think it's cold for a day or two.

[B]

I'll take Australia too.

[A]

Australia is cool.

[B]

I want to go. It's too much of a sissy lala with spiders though.

[A]

Then don't go out where the spiders are. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. All right. Awesome. Thank you.

[B]

Thank you.