← Law Enforcement Talk: True Crime and Trauma Stories
Law Enforcement Talk: True Crime and Trauma Stories
Police and Firefighters, Trauma and Recovery
00:40:38
Police and Firefighters, Trauma and Recovery. From Demons to Angels: A Georgia First Responder’s Journey Through Trauma, PTSD, and Recovery. Dennis Pishock served his community in Georgia with dedication and courage, first as a firefighter, then as a police officer. His career placed him on the front lines of some of the most traumatic moments imaginable, from heartbreaking drownings to violent crime scenes.
Loading summary
Transcript97 lines
- [00:00]
A
This is the story of the One as head of maintenance at a concert hall, he knows the show must always go on. That's why he works behind the scenes, ensuring every light is working, the H Vac is humming, and his facility shines with Grainger's supplies and solutions for every challenge he faces. Plus 24. 7 customer support. His venue never misses a beat. Call quickgranger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Ah, DSW Earth. Place of the humble brag here. The shoes are so good no one would ever know how little you paid if you didn't go telling everyone that is. And with never ending options for every style, mood and occasion, all at really great prices, we'll definitely give you something to brag about. So go ahead, stock up on fresh sneakers from your favorite brands or try those boots you always secretly knew you could pull off. Find the shoes that get you at prices that get your budget at DSW stores or at dsw. Let us surprise you.
- [01:01]
B
He's a police officer in the state of Georgia. Used to be a firefighter there on scene where an 8 year old drowned and he struggled for years after that. Not just that incident, but all the trauma compounded took a big effect on him. It was when he got involved in peer support training he realized he needed help. The death by suicide of several first responder friends helps motivate what he does today. Welcome to the Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show. In the Law Enforcement Talk Radio show we are joined by special guests talking about their experiences, their realities of investigating crimes plus those have experienced horrendous trauma. Police, first responders, military and victims of crime share their stories. Hi, I'm John J. Wiley. In addition to being a broadcaster, I'm also a retired police sergeant. Be sure to check out our website letradio.com and also like us on Facebook, search for the Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show. Of all the radio stations in the United States, there are no other shows like the Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show. And on Facebook there's only one official page. Do a search on Facebook for the Law Enforcement Talk Radio show and be sure to like the Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show Facebook page. Joining us on the phone we have Dennis Pichock. Dennis is a law enforcement officer. He's a police officer in the great state of Georgia. He's also used to be a firefighter. I know it's usually the other way around. We'll talk about that in a few moments. And he is author of the book Demons and Angels and his website is pshockbooks.com that's spelled P I S H O C K books dot com. Dennis, thanks for your service. A B thanks for being guest on the law enforcement talk radio show. Both very much appreciated.
- [02:46]
C
Thanks for having me. It's an honor. Thanks again and this is awesome. I appreciate you having me on.
- [02:50]
B
Generally speaking. Generally. And I hate generalizations. Police officers become firefighters probably because the working hours are different. They have more time off, they have secondary jobs or businesses, other things. And we used the standard joke we used to have say is man, they get paid to sleep and we're working our, you know what's off. So you're kind of an exception to rule going the other way around, aren't you?
- [03:14]
C
I am. And I'm ready bring all the jokes here because I hear it all the time.
- [03:17]
B
I'll bet you do.
- [03:20]
C
Absolutely. So yeah, it's funny, man. When I was fireside to you always see the police and they always said all that stuff. They come in like, oh, you guys watching TV again? Sleeping. But worked in a busy area. So we stayed pretty busy. We had a great relationship with the guys too. But yeah, actually mandatory overtime took over probably early, probably 2011, 12. And mandatory overtime was 48 on, 24 off. And that was the beginning of the end. That's when I said it's time for something else. And the wife said we gotta get out of here because destroying the family. So that's what we did and switched over to PDF.
- [03:53]
B
And by the way, the PD walked the police department walk is no walk in the park. And the jokes aside, and by the way we always say this. Our police officers, we made fun of each other. We made fun of other agencies. The Maryland State Police, the Baltimore police. They are always at each other's throats. We all made fun of our police department. But when it came right down to it, we were the same family. Just red and blue. That's the only difference.
- [04:19]
C
Absolutely. Again, I came my department to really big department was outside of Atlanta. Our relationship was phenomenal. PD and fd we ran so many calls. I know you're from Baltimore and they're probably what, six, seven busiest in the world too. So you get it, you have a good relationship. We used to have a nice hockey team that was all public safety in Georgia. And you talk about a riot, man, it was guys from all over and you had the busy and the slow guys. And it was police and fire on the same hockey team. And it was a trip. But we pulled FDNY down here right after 9 11. And we played a game with them there. It was awesome. We went to when the Thrashers were here, we had like 10,000 people come and watch this game, and it was incredible. But FDNY could not believe we played on the same team. They're like, we hate each other. We cannot believe you guys are together. They were in shock. I'm like, no, man, we're all together, and we just caught up and bust each other up 24, 7. And again, they were in shock.
- [05:15]
B
I got to say this, Dennis, you are in the Atlanta, Georgia area, but you don't sound like you're from there originally.
- [05:21]
C
Oh, boy. Yep, that's correct. I'm originally from Northstown, Pennsylvania, so I'm a northern Yankee, as they like to call me down here all the time. But wait a minute, 30 years now.
- [05:29]
B
You were a Yankee from Pennsylvania that was a firefighter in Georgia that became a police officer, and you're on the law enforcement talk radio show. Talk about how you got a little screwed up. Well, that's kind of like goes with territory, don't you think?
- [05:44]
C
It does, I think. I think we're finding. We're delving pretty deep already, but I think we're figuring it out pretty fast here.
- [05:49]
B
One of the things that I want to say this. When I retired from police work in Baltimore, I was physically messed up. I had multiple surgeries on my right hand, a bunch of steel plates put in during an act of violence. I was really screwed up emotionally and mentally. I remember being in the academy, and maybe this is a form of question. One of the things that was taught to me was the average life expectancy of a Baltimore police back then was 52. And they. They usually die within two years of retiring. And the older I get, the more I want out of life and the longer I want to be around. Did you hear the same sort of things?
- [06:25]
C
Oh, man, you just hit it. You. You give me the chills, man. FD was the same. And that's one of the reasons I got out, too. Yet all these guys again led to buddy suicides and all that, because, as you know, you lose your identity, and we don't do well with silence. And when we lose that identity, and I've bunch of friends who said, you know, when I retire, man, I'm going to hit the couch and I'm going to watch TV all day. Well, yeah, that's what they did. And they didn't even make it a couple years. I think FD was. It was probably 56, 57 at the time, too. So horrible. And I'm with you. The longer I'm living here, the more people I want to help and the more I just want to get out of it.
- [06:59]
B
Yeah.
- [07:00]
C
Every day, man. It's a gift.
- [07:01]
B
It's like the more I have, the more I want. And I'm not there yet. I'm not done yet. And for some reason, the man upstairs has a plan for me. I don't know what it is. And I'll be honest with you, Dennis. I don't need to know what it is, because I'll screw it up. And part of it was, for me, it was when things got silent. That's when it got quiet. That's when a real problem started. When I was doing my job, when I was in the middle of all the trauma and all the blood and guts, I knew what to do. I was okay.
- [07:27]
C
Yes, we love the chaos. We. We thrive on it. I think I'm still an adrenaline junkie. It's what we do. But that's what I say at nighttime. I talk about, man, when the Demons come at 2:22am, 3:33am there's no hiding, and it's you versus them. And unfortunately, that's where we lose our brothers and sisters. Anybody who does servitude understands that, and it's real. And that silence, we do not do well with. And you'll hear some psychologists and other people say, don't be worried about your first responder at work ever. He knows what he's doing. She knows what she's doing. Be worried when you go away and he's home alone for two or three days. That's when bad things happen with us.
- [08:03]
B
Yeah. Before we get into your story, one of the things I do have to say is there is. I didn't realize this when I was younger. I guess it's a getting older thing, but so many of our firefighters are injured fighting fires, physically injured. The cancer deaths are incredible. They are staggering, and situations even gotten worse as we have more. And I'm not a fire expert, but we have more modern equipment in houses that creates a toxic environment for our firefighters, and they burn really fast. Am I wrong about.
- [08:41]
C
No, you nailed it all. It is incredible. You had your old heavy timber stuff like that. It takes forever to burn. But you got an old city like Baltimore, Philly, stuff like that, too. Up north, different building construction, but, yeah, it can take a while. But this new stuff, man, it just lights up like a. Like a torch. It's incredible and incredibly dangerous, and guys got to train harder, man. That's it. It's a physical job and there's no getting away from it. You can do your death by PowerPoint power DMS all day, but these are physical jobs and you got to get hands on, you got to be in great shape. That's the bottom line.
- [09:13]
B
Before we get a break, Dennis, I got to ask you this. Unless a lot of things people don't realize, our firefighters, let's just say you're on a truck I can't keep. I don't know that I'm saying a truck in the engine or whatever it is, but let's just say you're on truck. Every call that goes out for a sick case, they get sent because the ambulance may not be available. These men and women, our brothers and sisters are red see and experience all the stuff that our police do. And quite often. And this is not a pokey in front of anybody. The police are usually there first, but they don't get a break from this. It's non stop for them, isn't is.
- [09:50]
C
Absolutely. Again, I was from a very, very busy area outside Atlanta. You run so many medical calls and it's, it's, it's a million times worse today than a few years ago because of COVID People have, you know, basically they're going, they're so into pharmaceutical medications and not getting out and they stayed at home, which is horrible for a person. You know, you got to get out and you're running so many runs nonstop and fire. If I'll just make a quick comparison, you see so much more death than police and police officers understand that. Because if the ambulance can't get there, you know, you're there, you're working that patient. You got to have a, you're waiting on that ambulance to transport. But police, we might have calls holding. We're picking what we got to hit and we're going to another call too. Just very different in that regard. But yeah, the trauma we see and the stigma is still real.
- [10:33]
B
As we're talking with Dennis P. Shock. He is a police officer in Georgia, author of the book Demons and Angels. His website is PI shock pshockbooks.com that's pishockbooks.com don't go anywhere. This is law enforcement talk radio show. We'll be right back. Don't you hate when they do the bait and switch on you when they tell you check out a website and it's free to go there and then there's hidden charges. You won't find any of that nonsense at our website. Letradio.com it's free. It's always been free, and it costs you absolutely nothing. There's no hidden tricks. Letradio.com check it out. Today you can find episodes of the show as available as a podcast after airing on radio. They're always free, always have been and always will be. Again. That's l e t radio.com where it's always free.
- [11:30]
D
This is the story of the 1. As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility, he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority. That's why he chooses Grainger. Because when a drive belt gets damaged, Grainger makes it easy to find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs. And next day delivery helps ensure he'll have everything in place and running like clockwork. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Grainger. For the ones who get it done.
- [12:07]
B
Return to conversation with Dennis P. Shock on the law enforcement talk radio show. Dennis is a police officer in the state of Georgia, originally from Pennsylvania. He's a firefighter in Georgia before that, and he's authored the book Demons and Angels. His website is pshockbooks.com. we'll talk about both a little bit later on. I want to direct your attention, Dennis, to your time as a firefighter. The firefighters get called to everything and there's a situation occurs more down south than up north, and that is the accidental drowning calls. And our firefighters and our police get sent to those all the time. You got dispatched to one, didn't you?
- [12:48]
C
I did. So as you get better in your career, you know, you go to specialty teams just like us. We go to SWAT traffic, wherever you want to go. But for fire, I went to Swiftwater rescue team down here and respond to a lot of drownings and unfortunately a lot of body recoveries. It's what we do. But the one call, I'll call it the break point of my life for sure. That's probably, you know, 10, 11 years into the job there, you're feeling pretty good about yourself. You got your stuff down and we had a call about a girl here. We got a call about a drowning, actually. They said they didn't know where she was. She was kind of on the river, the Chattahoochee down here. And this is a. It's pretty crazy. My buddies, who was my driver, my boat driver, phenomenal guy. He's like, my daughter is going on the river today. And I said, oh, man, it's awesome. He's going tubing. I said, okay. About an Hour later, we get a call for tubing, drowning. So we get out there, we take the boat. They're flowing the river, which means they're generating, means it's moving, man. That water is flying seven, eight miles an hour, which is quick. Again, I tell people, get on treadmill, they'll run seven, eight miles an hour, start sprinting, and now go on the side of the riverbank and try to run that fast and go catch somebody who's in the water. It don't work too well. So we get this call and helicopters in the air, because we're a big department, we got a helicopter too. And they're looking for this kid as well. And all of a sudden we see all these folks on the side of the riverbank yelling and screaming, there she is, there she is. And there's a huge oak tree probably down. It was a. What's called as a strainer. The tree is down and it's got all of its limbs, but they're underneath the water and you can't tell. So this beautiful, incredible day of hundreds and hundreds of tubers. She got stuck in the tree and sucked under. Probably shoot 8 inches underneath the water and it drowned her. So we came up on scene, man, and it was a rough one. We couldn't get to her body. And all we did was stare at her body, staring at us. And it was a rough one, man. And we finally were able to cut her out and we worked her, did cpr, had another county help us too. We had multiple boats again, big departments. And unfortunately she passed. And so we got out of the water and my buddy, the driver is freaking out because he can't find his daughter. So now we think, same age, 8 year old, we think it's his daughter. And thank God, after a couple minutes he was able to reach his spouse. At the time, it was not her. And then I had to watch the family. So a best friend had taken this girl to the water to go tubing. And they had to go call the original parents and let her know that she was dead. And that call broke me. I lost it.
- [15:22]
B
And that's pretty normal. And one of the things I gotta ask you is listen. And there's. There's no. I'd love to tell you something is to make it all better and go away. It doesn't. Right when people died suddenly, especially children, and unexpected accidents or violence, it didn't matter. It had a profound impact on me. And the fact that I have profound impact on you, I'm not surprised.
- [15:50]
C
Yep. Yeah, there's there's. There's nothing good here, you know, and that's. We can usually find some good. And it took me years to. There's some good in the bed, but there's nothing good on this call. Seeing it all the way through as we did, and. And then, you know, we go into burying everything, and then you start drinking more, you start hating more, you have more anger, and you take it on everybody else. And it's all about you at this point. That's what it is. And there's nothing good on a call like that. Like, I can't find anything good to say about it.
- [16:18]
B
Well, even now, one of the first questions I have for you is one of my biggest frustrations is, look, by nature, being a police officer, and I imagine the same thing as a firefighter is you want to rescue people, you want to help people. And when you can't do anything about it, it is really frustrating.
- [16:34]
C
It is. And you think, maybe should I train harder? You know, we already trained like beasts. You're on a specialty team, so you're constantly training because you're doing more than everybody else. So it's not a training thing. It's just one of those divine things. Unfortunately, this was meant to be. It didn't matter who you were, and there's nothing you could do again. You had a helicopter in the air, you had every resource around in that part of Georgia to assist. And that is something we can't change. And you just have to learn to accept that and move on. But for that day, you know, you have to bury it and you got more calls to run. Nobody cares.
- [17:08]
B
That's the thing.
- [17:08]
C
That's the most difficult part.
- [17:10]
B
The. One of the hardest things was having to deal with really, really heart, heart wrenching stuff and then act as if nothing happened and go handle a domestic or family disturbance or whatever it might be.
- [17:20]
C
Yeah.
- [17:21]
B
And it's not easy. Or traffic stop.
- [17:23]
C
Correct. Exactly. And the police, you know, the same thing. Lots of fatalities, too. And then next thing you know, you're going on a noise complaint and you're like, you are ready to just explode. And people like, oh, it's part of the job. It's what you signed up for. It's not. We didn't sign up for the first part, man. Nobody again. Like you said, we're here to rescue a life. Unfortunately, sometimes we have to take a life. But this is totally different. This is to save. And it's a kid, which makes everything 20 times worse than a normal fatality.
- [17:50]
B
What year was this Dennis Approximately.
- [17:53]
C
Probably 2011, 2012.
- [17:56]
B
All right, so it's fairly recent. I mean, we can go by the counter and say, that was 10 years ago. That was 15 years ago, whatever it was. Still, one of the things I'm getting at is people say part of the problem with our first responders is they have this macho mentality. They're not going to tell anybody. And one of the things I tell people all the time was, first of all, we had a job. We used to have a saying back in Baltimore. Say, you're Baltimore police, so you got a job to do. Suck it up, buttercup. You can lick your wounds later.
- [18:23]
C
Bingo.
- [18:24]
B
And that's really the mindset we had. So. And it wasn't meant as a derogatory thing. They would turn around and say later on. Look, we all have our crosses to bear, and it's not like you, I guess I'm asking you. It's not like you can stop the world from turning and tell everybody, oh, I need some time. What was your mindset after that? Did you reach out for help?
- [18:50]
C
We had none. There was none offered. You know, your CIS and peer support was barely in existence then. And it was kind of a joke. It's just like you said, it's what you signed up for. I think maybe a week later, I had a chief come and say, like, hey, it's a bad call, but this is what you signed up for. Your specialty team guys, what you do. And I was like, I can't believe he's saying this to me. You know, this is it. And you're just supposed to get on with it. And, you know, as you know, you go home the next day or the night, that night, and you have to shut it off. You have a family to deal with, and of course, they. They notice something's wrong, but you don't even go into it. You don't discuss it. And so we're still doing. Today, we're breaking that stigma. And it's okay, you know, it's okay to be human. It's okay not to be okay as well.
- [19:33]
B
I got to say this, so. And a lot of people love the to to I call piling on. And they throw stuff on the fire that they don't know about when. When someone says to you, this is what you signed up for. You got a job to do. I can understand that. But I also understand it takes time to heal as best you can from these invisible wounds. Am I wrong?
- [20:00]
C
No, you're totally correct. The way I sum it up with these individuals and you're always going to get that is you're either in the arena or you're not. It's that simple. So do not even try to judge us when you're not in the arena and you've never had servitude, whether it's a nurse, military dispatcher, fire, police. Our world is very difficult. It's a chosen select few who decide to do this servitude. And again, you just gotta, you gotta ignore the noise. As I say, whatever they say man, you just let it go. I'm like, okay. Because you have your positive energy goes with positive energy and you stick with those pieces. People who understand it as well.
- [20:33]
B
Talking with Dennis P. Shock. He's a police officer in Georgia, used to be a firefighter. He's authored the book Demons and Angels and his website is pshockbooks.com that's pishockbooks.com this is law enforcement talk radio show. We got so much more heading away. Don't go anywhere, we'll be right back. Of all the radio stations in the United States, there are no other shows like the law enforcement talk radio show and on Facebook there's only one official page. Do a search on Facebook for the law enforcement talk radio show and be sure to like the law enforcement talk radio show Facebook page.
- [21:09]
D
This is the story of the 1. As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility, he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority. That's why he chooses Grainger. Because when a drive belt gets damaged, Grainger makes it easy to find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs. And next day delivery helps ensure he'll have everything in place and running like clockwork. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [21:45]
B
Return conversation with Dennis Pishock. He's a police officer in Georgia, used to be a firefighter in Georgia. He was on scene about an eight year old that drowned in a swift moving river and he talked about the impacts of that. He is authored the book demons and Angels. His website is pshockbooks.com that's pishockbooks.com I want to turn the conversation back and I'm sorry this happened to her family, to her and to the first responders that are there. Trust me, they're always in my thoughts and prayers because that's not easy to deal with. But one of the things was in your journey and I took a similar journey, said we got to start doing something, peer support, all that stuff. Didn't really start until late 80s, early 90s in Baltimore and it's gotten better with age. When did you make the leap? I got to learn some more about this.
- [22:40]
C
Sure. We started CISM or Critical Incident Stress Management or CISD debriefing. We started all that probably, probably 2008, 2010, around there, but so far behind you took it. There was a two day class maybe, but it was veteran based. If you were the guy who ran all the busy calls, they said, okay, you're on the team and now I want you to go. And then, you know, you work for the bigger departments, you can, you can do this a lot too. You can be speaking to a lot of people. But that was okay. But then when I swapped over to PD, probably 2018, that's when things got good with CIT and recognizing that we have a problem here, that was great. And then went to a peer support counselor class. So basically it's the state of Georgia and I can go anywhere around. I can help out my region and go on the bad calls. The ois, the lodds, the.
- [23:33]
B
By the way, these are. And this was the officer involved shooting this OIS Lodd Line of duty death.
- [23:40]
C
Yes, correct. Exactly. And actually, you know, unfortunately I've experienced a year and a half on only in my time at 22,003 with my first line of duty depth too. So you know that that's the bad, but it's the good now because I can speak with that. And you know when, if I talk to either FD or pd, I still have that I can, you know, I can relate to all these guys and it's girls and it's awesome. But anyway, man up. So went through the state of Georgia, went in this class and during this class, day two, they started speaking and I'll never forget the instructor said, some of you in here, we're going to, we're going to tap into your vault and we're going to open up a filing cabinet you don't want to open. I'm like, man, this, this girl's crazy. She doesn't know what she's talking about.
- [24:21]
B
Yeah, right.
- [24:22]
C
I went to bed that night and.
- [24:23]
B
Then guess what happened? She opened there wide open, didn't she?
- [24:27]
C
She opened it up and all the night, all this stuff that I literally blacked out and I buried and compartmentalized with anger, hate, like I said, alcohol, what we do to cope. It was, it all came out and that class was phenomenal for me. And she, she woke me up. She did. And I said, I got a skill here, and I got to start giving back more. The skills. It's through horrible trauma. But now when I speak to people, they're like, they know you have it, man. You got moxie. You got. You can relate to me. And they understand that. So you found. I found the good and the bad instead of just complaining about it and beating myself down, which is unfortunate. We tend to do a lot of.
- [25:08]
B
One of the things that a lot of my guests say, and we laugh about this is. And I'm not saying this is a negative. If you do a career in policing, you do a career as a firefighter, emt, military, nurses, you name it, you're going to get dinged up. It's unavoidable. And unless you're one of those people and there's a few that can go through blood and guts and they're fine afterwards. But the vast majority of people, we'd say this, you know, I'm damaged goods, but I'm okay with that. It doesn't mean I'm useless. It just means I accept what I've been through.
- [25:43]
C
Absolutely. And again, it's breaking that stigma. And we love to say it's okay not to be okay. And we have different levels of being okay, of course. And that's what we do. And again, this is. That's what we're doing this right now. It's for nurses, dispatchers, fire, police, everybody, because we're all doing the same calls. If you work in a cardiac arrest or we're doing an offense while shooting, we throw them in our car. That nurse is so traumatized by this call, too. And we can't forget that the dispatcher, when we're on shooting, is losing her mind too. Worried that the person that she's been speaking to every day on this radio is not coming back and we forget about that. And she's calling out, you know, as you know, you've been there, you're calling out your badge number and they're not answering and is the most horrible feeling in the world. And everybody there is affected. And that's why it's so important when we have a debrief or whatever to get everybody into that, to assist them, too.
- [26:34]
B
I want to go to your story a little bit, Dennis, and you said she opened up the file cabin of all the bad stuff. When did you start realizing that? Hey, things at home, for example, for me and for a lot of us, those closest to us, that take the brunt of most of our stuff. When did you realize that you needed Help.
- [26:57]
C
At the end of my fda, definitely, I just started looking in the mirror and I wasn't happy. I was not happy with myself at all. Just staring at my own eyes. I'm like, who am I becoming? I'm lashing out, you know. You know, it is the dumbest things. The chair is an inch out of place and you lose it. You're like, why is. Why is the dishes in the sink? Well, nobody else cares but you, Dennis. That's. That's how really what it comes down to. And you start real. I did. I'm big into self. Self help, self, you know, whatever the heck it is. All that's the word they use.
- [27:29]
B
Mindfulness, Being aware of my limitations.
- [27:34]
C
Correct. And I started seeing. I would definitely notice I was going down a very poor path. And I said, I'm going to change this right now. And it takes. Takes a lot. A lot of people don't have that moment. They continue down this path. And then, you know, you see, our people in our career is on their third and fourth spouse. Because the problem is you, man. It ain't the spouses, it's you. And you got to admit that and just have that moment with yourself. And that's when it happened. And she definitely helped me get out of that during that peer support class. And I realized that, you know what? I'm going to use this to help somebody and use this for good, for a change.
- [28:06]
B
One of the things I use personally is my relationship with my wife is my barometer for how I'm doing spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. And if I'm constantly at odds with her, it's usually a good indicator there's something I'm slacking on. Is that good for you? Is that a good example?
- [28:28]
C
You nailed it perfectly because we use that in peer support, too. Who are you going home to at the end of the day? Not these people. Like, we lose that identity. But your wife, your spouse, whoever it is, is still there for you. And I said it to a guy the other day, I said, think about this. All this trauma we bring home, all this stuff we bring home to our wives, and she still loves us. She didn't volunteer for this. She knows what you're gonna do, but she didn't volunteer for you to come home and talk about this horrible call. Or if you do, and she knows you're down, she doesn't care. She wants you to heal, and she wants you happy. And that is. That's an amazing thing. And you got to realize that, too. And that's my message. To everybody, man. That person loves you and supports you no matter what. So treat them well. And that is a great barometer, man. It really does. It hits home. I love it.
- [29:13]
B
One of the things that I struggle with and it was not my nature, it still is not my nature, but I was angry at the drop of a hat. And you kind of alluded to this. I would get angry at the simplest things and then I would feel guilty for losing it over something simple. And I didn't realize that was a classic sign of someone that was injured.
- [29:37]
C
Yeah, I didn't either. Anger and hate, I would hate to say, is definitely one of our biggest downfalls. And we work a violent job too, as you know, especially police. You're going hands on, you get, you're working with very, you're working against very bad perps. So again, we do a lot of violence at our job and it's something we do. And unfortunately that anger and all that, it carried over for me too. So my wife started noticing. We talked about that barometer. My wife noticed I started having night terrors, terrible dreams. And because of the violence, I'm starting to reach out on my sleep and freak out. Then I'm definitely not sleeping at all anymore. And I'm a black coffee fanatic. And I just increased my coffee intake. That's what I was doing, sleeping less, more angry, more coffee. And it affects everything you do. And again, violence and anger, man, it's a, it's a bad thing. But unfortunately it's part of a law enforcement profession because we deal with bad people that aren't getting too much better either right now.
- [30:34]
B
That's part of the reason why I don't watch a lot of police videos, body cam videos, dash cam videos, because I wind up yelling, hit him. Hit him. And I change physically. We're talking with Dennis P. Shock. He's a police officer in Georgia, used to be a firefighter. He's author of the book Demons and Angels. And his website is P ishockbooks.com that's pishockbooks.com. there's another location online where you can find the Law Enforcement talk rated show and podcast. That's medium.com it's spelled M E D I U M dot com. Medium has 100 million average monthly total users. Look for and follow the law enforcement talk rated show and podcast on medium.com. this is Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show. We're taking a short break. I promise you we'll be right back. If you do any business on social media, creating content is one thing. The trick is how do you turn those people that comment on your social media into consumers? It's a great tool and you can get more information at. Let pops.com that's L E T P O P S.com best of all, you can start it for free. Let pops.com check it out today.
- [31:51]
A
This is the story of the One. As head of maintenance at a concert hall, he knows the show must always go on. That's why he works behind the scenes, ensuring every light is working, the H Vac is humming, and his facility shines with Grainger's supplies and solutions for every challenge he faces. Plus 24. 7 customer support. His venue never misses a beat. Call quickgranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [32:27]
B
During conversation with Dennis Pisoch. He's a police officer in Georgia. He used to be a firefighter. He's author of the books Demons and Angels and his website is pishockbooks.com this pishockbooks.com for some reason, Dennis, it's easier for me to say that that way than is to say Dennis p.shock or pshockbooks.com by the way, tough last name.
- [32:48]
C
We grew up tough.
- [32:50]
B
Yeah, I got called all kinds of names because I was a strawberry blonde headed kid with freckles. See, you know the one that was fighting every day? Yeah.
- [32:59]
C
Yeah, we were all bullied back then, especially up north. Everybody fought.
- [33:03]
B
That's just the way it works. And here's why I tell people all the time down there, like you gotta tell the teacher someone's bullying you. No, I'm gonna take care of business. And I might lose that fight. There's a good chance I will. But you're gonna know you've been in a fight and I guarantee you'll never mess with me ever again.
- [33:21]
C
And you go to sleep better too afterwards.
- [33:23]
B
Oh, as a kid I used to go home crying all the time. Dennis. It was. It was ugly. I swear it was so. And your career in law enforcement, we talked briefly about. You realize you need help. The night terrors, all that stuff. Being angry and you think, or maybe I'm catching something. But the peer support training kind of opened up the floodgates for you, did it? Was that fair?
- [33:50]
C
It did. It did. And I started healing. Started doing other stuff spiritually as well. And I'm big into physical fitness. I'm a nut. And, and a box breathing meditation just for that self awareness.
- [34:01]
B
Look, I do that. I do that four square breathing all the time. I pray constantly I try to keep my mind as clear as possible and I use this little thing and it's, it's funny as I focus sometimes on a spot on the wall and say, this is where I'm at now. Or look at my feet. This is where I'm at now. I don't need that. And when I think I'm doing better, Dennis, I'll give you an example. Last week I had a confrontation with some construction workers and it took me literally all day long to get back to what I call my center.
- [34:31]
C
Right, yeah, that's the. But you know, you're doing the right things. The box breathing is huge, especially on stressful calls. I'll do it real quick. On a domestic or possible shots, I'll start doing that quick box breathing and man, it just settles you. Brings your heart rate down and gets you ready to rock and roll. That's it. It really does.
- [34:48]
B
Is this where mindfulness comes into play for you?
- [34:51]
C
Yeah, you know, you talk about, you talked about to the finding the good and the bad, right? Can I tell you a quick story real fast? So, PD side, we had another child like one of those Jumperoo places and basically as a two week year old baby who was suffocated by her mother in error. But anyway, I had a NICU nurse with me at the time and it's just crazy. So we thought, you know, act of God, work together. And we worked this baby before EMS could get there for 10 minutes and we got a pulse pack which was pretty awesome. And the kid unfortunately died, but we got the pulse back. So they got. They had like a day or two, I think 24 hours were they were able to pull the plug and do it on their own time, which is amazing. They had family come from all over the place and say goodbye to their baby. And it's a tragic call. But the good was, man, we gave that family an extra day and this baby was in. It was a pretty neat story because this nurse was phenomenal too. And she's a NICU nurse, you know, pediatric nurse, and, and that was the bad. But we found good and I recovered well because I was recovering there. And I'm like, you know what? I found the good instead of letting this call drag me to the darkness, and I was good with it and that I finally said, you know what? I'm healing. I can actually accept this call because I gave them a chance and let them, they could call this death on their own terms.
- [36:04]
B
And that was an accident that wasn't by an act of violence, was It.
- [36:08]
C
No, correct. It was an accident. It was just one of those places where she was holding her baby tight and unfortunately killed the baby's breathing and terrible man. The mother unfortunately took her kid's life. But again, it's just one of those calls. Nothing you could do. But we did everything we could do and we gave that, gave that family an extra day with that baby, which was phenomenal.
- [36:27]
B
Part of the reason I asked Dennis, some people say there's a huge difference for them between acts of violence and accidental deaths. And for me, really almost as bad as the other. The exception being is when a parent would do something to their child that someone they so called love that I still struggle with.
- [36:50]
C
And I do too. I've had, unfortunately, mothers who drown their own babies and horrible calls. And it's hard. And that's why I tell people they're getting into this profession. It's important that we have these discussions. Spiritually, you're going to fight yourself, you're going to fight your religious beliefs because we're seeing things that we shouldn't see. That's, that's basically what's happening right now. And it's extremely difficult. And you have to have that solid base at home. You have to have your spouse, your kids, whoever it is, you have to build that rock base. But you're by yourself sitting in that basement drinking bad news. You're. You're in for some badness. But you can fix it now, man. It's never too late, so fix it right now.
- [37:27]
B
It really is. It's never too late. There is a permanent solution to temporary problems, and a lot of these are temporary. I want people to realize this. No matter what caused you to struggle, whether it be police work, firefighting, maybe you were a victim of crime, whatever it might be, and you're going through all this stuff and you feel like your world is never going to get better. There's light at the end of the tunnel. It does get better, but does require work. And by the way, Dennis, I don't know about you, but work seems to like be a four letter word and a lot of people seem to be allergic to it.
- [38:01]
C
Yeah, I agree with you there. But you know us, like, I love my job. Like, I love going out there and patrol, making a difference. Every day it's. And you do make a difference every day. The simplest call. We change people's minds about us all the time. You treat people right, you know, you treat people with respect and they're blown away because they're so used to what the Media has told them or something else. But, man, we are good people and they notice that. And it's awesome. Making a difference. It really is.
- [38:28]
B
And by the way, this is something. And this is a personal thing people love to say. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna butcher what they say. You know, one bad cop surrounded by 100 good cops that don't tell on them. They're all bad. Well, by the way, how do you think they get rid of these bad cops that no one. Everyone talks, everyone does their job. I don't understand this mindset, but that's a. That's a mentality thing that the media portrays. And it's the furthest thing from the truth. And it has been since the seventies.
- [39:02]
C
It's a fact. Like, you take a doctor, you take one bad doctor, well, nobody cares. But you take one bad police officer, wow. Do they blow it up. Your front page news, guaranteed.
- [39:12]
B
I wanted to transition a little bit. Let's go into your book, Demons and Angels. What is that about? And what prompted you to write this?
- [39:21]
C
Sure. It's kind of what we're going into. So to me, demons and Angels. I was doing a hip replacement because he talked about the job has destroyed me. Your body takes a beating and that peer class too. And I said, I gotta start writing my stuff down. And didn't realize how much stuff I blacked out with trauma. I like to tell people you can't go to heaven until you go to. And that's why I started Demons and Angels, the darkness. It took me to go dark and hit rock bottom almost to find the light. And that's why I wrote the book. And it's definitely made for anyone who's done servitude. Like I said, military nurses, fdpd, they're gonna get a good thing about it. And I wrote it to help one person. That was my goal. It was helping me. And now I've had so many people reach out, I save all their messages. Man, your book made a difference in my life. And it's got a couple today even. And it's incredibly humbling. I can't believe my trauma is helping people, but it's definitely my path and I'm gonna keep doing it.
- [40:14]
B
So is it fair to say that the demons beating, the trauma and your reaction to that, name those who helped you through it?
- [40:22]
C
Absolutely. That's definitely one way to explain it. I mean, it's definitely into middle martial arts. It's at yin and yang, light and dark. It's. It's. It's all that the demons are definitely the darkness. We see things again that the human mind can't comprehend sometime. It just can't accept it. And it just led me to study more things. And the light is all those people who are out there that shoot. You don't understand when you're in the darkness that there's people out there. There's good people because you know, you worked out. You work all those horrible calls and there's no good luck in the world. That's what you go home and tell yourself. But they're out there. And the more I get out there, the more I'm finding these people and we're finding our little circle and we're helping people get through all these hard times.
- [41:04]
B
Well, the good news for a guy like me, Dennis is number one. I've forgotten a lot of the really, really bad stuff and I think I want to keep keep it there. Was it buried by trauma? Probably. Could I be more aware? Yeah, for sure. But I'm okay where I'm at and I really appreciate A, your service and both the police department, fire department and B, being a guest on the law enforcement talk radio show telling everybody about it. Both very much appreciate it. Oh, by the way, we forgot about your website, pishockbooks.com. that's pishockbooks.com. can people reach out to you?
- [41:37]
C
There's absolutely. They can contact me there as well. And I'd love to and if you get my book to it, also all my contacts as well. But please reach out and we're here to help you. That's for sure. We're all in this together.
- [41:48]
B
Dennis, thanks so much for your service and thanks for telling about it. It's both very much appreciated.
- [41:52]
C
Thanks for having me. I appreciate you.
- [41:54]
B
You know, we used to have an app and it was very popular app and then guess what? We couldn't hold a candle through our Facebook presence. How many people have the mobile Facebook app already installed on their phones? How many people use it on their computer? Make sure you follow us. Make sure you like us on our Facebook page. Just search for law enforcement talk radio show and podcast and be sure to send us a comment to one of the posts. Best of all, it's 100% free. This was the podcast version of the nationally syndicated law enforcement talk radio show and we are so glad that you decided to join us. Big thanks to our guests for telling her story on the show. Two simple things you can do. Be sure to check out our website, letradio.com that's letradio.com and be sure to follow us or like us on Facebook. Do a search on Facebook for Law Enforcement Talk Radio show and be sure when you see a post that we put up that you like, that you resonate with, that gets your attention. Be sure to share it with your friends. Back in just a few days, another episode of the Law Enforcement Talk Radio show and podcast. Until then, this is John J. Whiteley. See ya.
- [43:09]
D
This is the story of the 1. As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility, he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority. That's why he chooses Granger. Because when a drive belt gets damaged, Granger makes it easy to find. Find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs and next day delivery helps ensure he'll have everything in place and running like clockwork. Call 1-800-granger. Clickgranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.