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Law Enforcement Talk: True Crime and Trauma Stories
What Is Verbal Judo and Drug Interdiction for Police?
00:39:35
What Is Verbal Judo and Drug Interdiction for Police? A Maryland State Perspective. In modern policing, success is not measured solely by arrests or seizures, but by how safely and professionally officers navigate high-stress encounters. Two critical tools continue to shape effective law enforcement across the United States: verbal judo and drug interdiction for police. Both rely heavily on observation, communication, and disciplined decision-making rather than force.
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- [00:01]
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- [00:31]
John J. Wiley
He's a retired Maryland State Police sergeant. He left a little bit early. He retired due to family stress. Stress on his family, which he will talk about in a bit. Also, some misconceptions people have about police work and particularly the term verbal judo, how he used it to save his life and the life of another suspect early in his career. 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 who 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. If you want to be a guest on the Law Enforcement Talk Radio show, simply contact us. It couldn't be easier. You can send us a message on Facebook, look for and like the Law Enforcement Talk Radio show page or email jetradio.com that's J A Y@L ET radio.com contest from Great State of Maryland, we have Jeremy Tindall on the Law Enforcement Talk Radio show. Jeremy is retired Maryland State Police sergeant. He is also one of the movers and shakers for a nonprofit that you can find on Facebook, Operation Mayday 13. That's Operation Mayday 13 on Facebook. Jeremy, thanks for your service and thanks for being a guest on the show. Both very much appreciate it.
- [02:08]
Jeremy Tindall
Thank you for having me.
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John J. Wiley
It's a pleasure to have you. And by the way, I'm retired Baltimore City Police and he spent most of his career in Frederick, which is a little further west than Baltimore. But we had a running, let's just say some people would turn use the term animosity. We weren't, we didn't have animosity towards the Maryland State Police. We called them names. They called us names. It was all done in fun. But when it came right down to it. We always had each other's back. So I appreciate what you did. And it's a little bit different structure for Maryland State Police than it was Baltimore City. You guys had troopers. You had, I think, corporals and then sergeants. And your sergeant was similar to our rank of lieutenant or captain, am I right?
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Jeremy Tindall
Yeah, it's very similar to a lieutenant in another agency because generally as a sergeant, you're the highest ranking trooper on duty at any given time. Our lieutenants are kind of like station chiefs, so. Or almost like police chiefs for some smaller municipalities. So they're. We only have one lieutenant for every county in the state.
- [03:08]
John J. Wiley
And by the way, Maryland State Police always had a great reputation, regardless of what we called in Baltimore City and what they called us. One of the things that a lot of people don't understand, and I would love to lean on your experience a little bit, is in certain parts of. And I'm using Maryland example. In Southern Maryland, where I grew up, where I spent much of my teenage years, our troopers there, they were full service. They did everything. Certain parts of the Eastern Shore, they handle every call for service. It's not just State Highway Patrol stuff. Was it kind of a mixture in Frederick?
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Jeremy Tindall
Yeah. So most of my career was spent at what they call the full service barracks. I only did one year at what. What we referred to as a traffic barrack, and that was Rockville. But yes, in the traffic barracks, we're kind of more like a highway patrol, and we just focus on highway speed enforcement, accident investigation, stuff like that. But in the full service counties, a lot of times there is no sheriff's office or county police agency or anything. And so we run every single call. So Frederick was kind of a mix of both. We had a good relationship with the sheriff's office there. We basically did all the full service stuff on any state routes or state roads, and the county handled all the non state routes.
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John J. Wiley
Gotcha. And how long were you in the state police?
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Jeremy Tindall
So I was with the state police for about 17 and a half years.
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John J. Wiley
And when did you start? When did you retire?
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Jeremy Tindall
I started in June of 2006 and I retired. They gave me 23 years credit with my military service. I retired in July of 2024.
- [04:39]
John J. Wiley
Now, when I started this, to give you an example of age difference, Jeremy's is a lot younger than me. I started policing in Baltimore in 1980. That's how long ago. And when I started the St. Mary's County Sheriff's Department, I lived at the time they weren't hiring people that didn't have military experience. Maryland State Police was the same thing, and it's a different, different push for different groups, but I didn't fit in those groups. Baltimore City was hiring, and I went there in a flash.
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Jeremy Tindall
When I first started, military service was counted pretty much equivalent to a college degree.
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John J. Wiley
Right.
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Jeremy Tindall
So if you had a college degree or military service, you were one of the first to go. And then if you didn't have either one of those, if they had extra spots left open, you could potentially get in as a high school graduate with neither one of those others.
- [05:27]
John J. Wiley
And we've had a couple retired Maryland State Police on the law enforcement talk radio show over the years. And one of the main things that stopped me from joining that agency was the barrack style academy. I didn't want to live in an academy and have somebody yelling at me all the time.
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Jeremy Tindall
That's a big turnoff for a lot of people, but they still do it to this day.
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John J. Wiley
It's a big change. And by the way, we had a reputation, and the Maryland State Police, the reputation was very good. They've handled a lot of high profile cases over the years. And one of the things that I think a lot of people lose sight of, myself included, is that it's easy. And one of the things that I don't think of as being a Baltimore City police, if you call for help, there's help, like right around the corner. If you call for help, you need backup. As a Maryland state trooper, you could be, especially middle of the night, you could be 20, 30 minutes.
- [06:23]
Jeremy Tindall
Absolutely. People don't think about that very often. I was fortunate that most of my career we had good relationships with other law enforcement agencies. So if another trooper wasn't available, most of the time you could get somebody from another agency to back you up. But that wasn't always the case.
- [06:37]
John J. Wiley
No, not always the case. And so your career, you started as a trooper and then you retired as a sergeant. Did you handle. You said you were in Rockville at a certain time. And was that beginning of. Right. Your career? Right. At the academy?
- [06:53]
Jeremy Tindall
No, out of the academy. I actually started at Westminster for two years and I went to Frederick. And then when I got promoted to the rank of corporal is when I got transferred to Rockville and I worked there for exactly one year to the day before I got transferred back to Frederick.
- [07:08]
John J. Wiley
Gotcha. I hear you. Is there a big difference between full service barracks and the. For lack of better words, I forgot the term you used it. But the Rockville barracks were as Traffic enforcement. Did you see a huge difference in your experience?
- [07:22]
Jeremy Tindall
Oh, it was absolutely way different. It's not what I was used to. I was always used to, you know, running calls back to back all day long. Some shifts you didn't even get a moment of downtime to yourself to. Now you're working at a traffic barrack where there's a lot more downtime and pretty much the only call for service you usually handle is accident related.
- [07:42]
John J. Wiley
Gotcha. Now, one of the things, and I want to go in your career in a few moments, one of the things. When I came on in the Baltimore Police Department, we had a lot of Vietnam combat veterans that were experienced officers, and they trained me. Then we had a few Korean War veterans that were command staff, and they had a totally different philosophy about policing. And I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but one of the things and I say almost every episode, one of the things they drilled in my head is you treat everybody with respect until they change the tone of the conversation and then there's no backing down. The other thing that I was always taught is that you. And don't go to your gun first because you go to your largest muscle, use the brain before you use anything. Is that true for you?
- [08:27]
Jeremy Tindall
Absolutely. I know citizens, civilians, friends of mine always want to know police stories and whatever. And I know they're looking for like some crazy, exciting chase story or gunfight. But my favorite story that I always go to is when I was a brand new trooper assigned to the Westminster Barrack. I think I was only off of field training for a few days. We got a call to a alternative school there in Carroll County, Maryland, and it was for a suicidal teenager.
- [08:57]
John J. Wiley
And those can be challenging. We're gonna take a short break. We're talking with Jeremy Tyndall. He is retired Maryland State police sergeant. We're gonna talk about something that's really not talked about much anymore. Verbal judo. How he used it early on his career, how it probably saved his life and the life of a suspect and his Operation Mayday 13 nonprofit that he operates. You can find him on Facebook. 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. This law enforcement talk radio show. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.
- [09:39]
Jeremy Tindall
There are more than 700 free podcast episodes of the law enforcement talk radio show. Episodes are converted to a free podcast after airing on radio, you're bound to.
- [09:50]
John J. Wiley
Find a podcast episode that suits you@letradio.com letradio.com that's letradio.com if you're an H.
- [10:02]
Grainger Announcer
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- [10:36]
John J. Wiley
Return conversation with Jeremy Tindall he is retired Maryland State Police sergeant and he spent much of his career in the Frederick Barracks of the Maryland State Police, which is in just west of Baltimore a little ways. But early in your by the way, he's one of the movers and shakers for a nonprofit called Operation Mayday 13. Look for them on Facebook. That's Operation Mayday 13 on Facebook and you will find them. Jeremy, before we went to break, you started talking about this call for a suicidal person at an alternate school in Carroll County. Continue on with the conversation.
- [11:09]
Jeremy Tindall
Yeah, so, you know, we get calls for suicidal people from time to time, and usually there's no enforcement action that we take. But what we our objective is to go there and we generally speaking, take them to a hospital so they can seek some help and get through whatever it is that they're going going on in their life to hopefully resolve that situation without them hurting themselves. So I got a call for a teenager who was threatening suicide at one of the local alternative schools, which it was odd. I don't know if it was a weekend or if it was the middle of summer, but I know it was odd that he was at the school because school was not in session at the time. School was completely shut down and there was nobody in the parking lot or anything. So typically when we go to a call like that for somebody that's suicidal, we don't know if they're armed or anything like that. So usually you don't go to those calls by yourself. You take somebody with you. So they sent me this call, got on the radio and asked for backup and they said, well, we don't have anybody available right now. I'm like, all right, well why don't you go ahead and check with the other agencies where we're close to the city of Westminster and, you know, Carroll county has deputies around, want to see if some of them are available. And they said, nope, nobody's available. We've already checked. They don't. We don't have anybody to back you up at all. Something and whatever. I'm a new guy at the academy. I know what I'm doing. I got this handled. I can probably handle a teenager. It's not going to be a big deal. So I get there, and this teenager is huge. He looks like a grown man, and he's taller than I am. He's very muscular. He's built like, you know, maybe a football player, a bodybuilder or something like that. And he just towers over me. So I park my car a distance away from him, and I get out and I, you know, try to show him there that I'm there with friendly intent. And I wave to him. I'm like, hey, sir, how are you? And he goes, don't come any closer. That's how he started it, right? And I'm like, well, sir, I just need to get close enough to have a conversation. I don't need to get close enough to touch you or anything. I was like, but tell me what's going on. And so in some words, he had admitted that he had threatened to harm himself. So I tried to explain to him. I'm like, look, because of what you told me, I don't have a choice. By law, I'm required to take you to a hospital. I said, you're not going to be in trouble. You're not going to go to a jail. You're not going to get any charges. I just need to take you to the hospital. I said, so we can handle into it one of two ways. I said, you can get in the car with me and, you know, we'll put on whatever music. It's a short drive to the hospital. You can listen whatever you want. On the way. We don't have to talk at all. I said, or we're gonna have to fight and I'm gonna have to take you to the hospital. And he looked at me and he thought about it for a second, and he raised his fist and he squared up and said, I guess we're gonna fight then.
- [13:54]
John J. Wiley
We're gonna plan B. That's not a good option.
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Jeremy Tindall
So now I'm a brand new guy. I'm not terrified to fight this guy, but I am. In the back of my head, I'm thinking, if this me up, I'm never gonna live it down. My guys are gonna harass me and pick on me forever if this doesn't go well. And this kid's huge. So I really didn't want to fight the guy, but I knew in the back of my head that anytime you get on a radio and you ask your dispatchers for an ambulance, if you don't tell them who the patient is and why you need an ambulance, the dispatchers would kind of get a little snippy with you.
- [14:28]
John J. Wiley
Yeah.
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Jeremy Tindall
And demand to know all those. So I knew that going into it.
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John J. Wiley
Funny how. Sergeant, is it funny how they want details?
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Jeremy Tindall
Yeah. They can't just help you. Sometimes when you need to help, they gotta know the whole story.
- [14:42]
John J. Wiley
Right.
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Jeremy Tindall
You know, you're taught to keep the radio traffic short so other people can get on it. So you try to leave it at that. And then they need more every single time, it seems.
- [14:51]
John J. Wiley
And the reason I say that is because we had two types of dispatchers in the Baltimore Police Department. We had officers that were, for lack of better words, due to health issues, whatever, they couldn't work the streets anymore. And then we had civilian. And the civilian ones usually would not know, and they would be sicklers for details. The ones who are officers, they could kind of read between the lines. And what kind of dispatcher did you have?
- [15:18]
Jeremy Tindall
We had the same thing. We had some officers that would do it. And the officers tend to give you a little more leeway, I think. And if you ask for something and they could just tell by the tone of your voice, they wouldn't ask questions. They would just send you what you asked for.
- [15:32]
John J. Wiley
Right.
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Jeremy Tindall
It seems like the ones that haven't worked the road would always want more info exactly the way you're saying. Yeah. And need more details.
- [15:40]
John J. Wiley
And by the way, so you had this guy, and he said, I'm choosing to fight. I want to fight.
- [15:46]
Jeremy Tindall
And we already knew there was no backup available. So luckily, I knew the dispatchers working at the time were not officers, and I knew that they were going to fire back. But that was what. That was the intended goal of this conversation. So when I reached up for the radio in earshot for him to hear it, I said, go ahead and send us an ambulance. And you could see the guy. He was getting confused. He's like, why do we need an ambulance? And the dispatchers did exactly what I wanted to do. They fired back right away and said, well, who's the patient? What's the nature of the injuries? And loud enough for him to hear. I said, I'm not sure yet, but one of us is gonna leave in an ambulance shortly. Go ahead and start them now, huh? And he heard that and he kind of thought for a second and you could see him exhale and it just kind of deflated him a little bit. And he said, all right man, you got me. And he extended his hands out for me to put it, the handcuffs on him so we could transform the hospital.
- [16:40]
John J. Wiley
And all as well. And the reason I'm bringing this up, the verbal judo thing, because we police around the same time, even though it was several years difference, one of the things that we were taught was it was always better to talk someone out of a use of force situation, no matter how what kind of language you had to use to get them to de escalate. Because it's a term that's used quite a bit nowadays. De escalation is a two person process. The police alone can't de escalate. But that verbal judo, a lot of people would say we're going to fought. You're discourteous, you're not, you're not professional. We don't like the way you talked.
- [17:18]
Jeremy Tindall
Yes, sometimes, sometimes you've got to be able to. I was a de escalation instructor and what I used to teach people is that you have to be able to read everybody a little bit differently. If you have to be able to look at somebody, the way they're acting, the way they're talking to you and sometimes approaching them in a kinder, gentler way is a way that you're going to get them to comply better.
- [17:39]
John J. Wiley
Right.
- [17:39]
Jeremy Tindall
And sometimes you need to be more, more stern with them and say, no, this is what's going to happen right now and this is how it's going to go down. And that is another way to get them to back down. But it doesn't work for everybody. Sometimes there is zero way to de escalate a situation. But it's also, there's no one size fits all solution to de escalation. It's situational and individual dependent.
- [18:03]
John J. Wiley
So what was the final outcome with this guy? Did he get the help that he needed?
- [18:09]
Jeremy Tindall
Unfortunately, that's one of those scenarios where we don't have a lot of follow up after the fact. I know that he did willingly go to the hospital with me. We had no issues. Neither one of us ended up needing to get treated for any physical injuries and he was dropped off at the hospital. And because of HIPAA laws and all that, I wouldn't have access to know what happened to him after. But I know I never got a call about him again.
- [18:33]
John J. Wiley
We're talking with Jeremy Tindall. He's retired Maryland State Police sergeant and he spent most of his care in Frederick Marin, which we'll talk about in a few moments. And he is one of the primary movers and shakers for a nonprofit called Operation Mayday 13. Look for them on Facebook. That's Operation Mayday 13. This is law enforcement talk rated show. 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 phone? 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. We'll take a short break. I promise you we will be right back.
- [19:25]
Jeremy Tindall
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- [20:04]
John J. Wiley
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- [20:20]
Jeremy Tindall
Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [20:30]
John J. Wiley
Return to our conversation with Jeremy Tindall on the the Law Enforcement Talk Radio show. Jeremy is a retired Maryland State Police Sergeant. He is also one of the primary movers and shakers for a nonprofit called Operation Mayday 13. Look for them on Facebook. That's Operation Mayday 13. A little bit later on you'll find out more about what that is about. So you got promoted to corporal and you went to Rockville and then a year later you went back to Frederick. And where in your career did you start getting into the drug interdiction process and why?
- [21:03]
Jeremy Tindall
So I really started getting into the drug interdiction a couple years before my promotion to corporal, but stayed with it as a corporal and even a little Bit as a sergeant. I70 is one of the main corridors from western Maryland and West Virginia and all that kind of stuff into Baltimore and Frederick County. Maryland has a great stretch of I70 where I would sit and do a lot of my drug interdiction work.
- [21:25]
John J. Wiley
And by the way, in my career, a lot of people know I worked narcotics for a long time. Part of our job was at the train stations. And we would say unknown drug dealers would leave to go to New York, and we'd estimate how long they'd be in New York, come back about when the train was returning and usually stop them. And they would say things like, we would say, you're free to leave. You don't have to talk to us. They would inevitably drop the drugs and run, which gave us all the probable cause we needed. The whole thing with drug and addiction is a little bit different scenario, isn't it?
- [21:58]
Jeremy Tindall
Yeah. So the drug interdiction I did, I don't want people to think that I'm bigger than what I was. I was more focused on getting smaller dealers that were transporting out of Baltimore to their local area and then trying to flip them so I could get to the bigger dealers in Baltimore. So what we mostly focused on is people coming from different areas out west with no metropolitan areas near them that were going to get a load of drugs out of Baltimore area to take them back home and sell them.
- [22:36]
John J. Wiley
And that reminds me of. And I was thinking about this the other night, which I don't think about police work very often, Jeremy, and keep it in the back of your mind if you do or not. But one of the things I thought about was when I worked narcotics in Baltimore and I was dea, one of the things we would do, this is so long ago, we would use clone pagers. So we'd find out the pager that a known suspect lieutenant was using. We would take a pen, register the phone number, find out who was listened to, get the address, all that stuff, put some surveillance on the address. And one of the things that we saw behavior look like drug behavior, we would use a uniformed officer to stop that person a little bit later on. And quite often they would give consent to search and they'd be dirty. And that would be all towards developing the probable cause for search warrants. But the drug addiction on the highway, and this is just part of my experience. I remember pulling up to a 711 and I was going to get a cup of coffee. It was one of those deals. And it was a car sitting next to me that pulled up, came right around It. And it had a Maryland tag, a Virginia inspection sticker, and two guys in it refused to look at me. And I'm like, huh, Something's not right with his car. I don't know what it is. But I followed them, and they committed some traffic violations. I stopped them. And then after a conversation, I said to him, burton, very bluntly and very nicely, by the way, I'm gonna call a K9 dog to do an outside search of your vehicle, or you can give me consent to search. And, like, we got two pounds of marijuana in the backseat. They gave it up right there, right then. And you can. You can take it. And was that kind of an addiction to what you did?
- [24:15]
Jeremy Tindall
Yeah. So quite often, people would. You know, they'd hear the dog come, and they would say, okay, fine. Here's where it's at. But we did rely on our canine to do it most of the time. And I was mostly focused on hero, because that was what the big problem was at the time. Huge problem in Baltimore in the beginning of the fentanyl stuff and all that. But we did it very similarly. If we'd sit in a crossover and we would just watch thousands of cars go by. And when I was at my prime with the drug interdiction, my goal was kind of to come to work every day and only make one traffic stop a day. And hopefully, out of that one stop, I would get what I was looking for. So I would sit there for hours waiting on somebody, hopefully, if they were going in the fast lane with nobody ahead of them, and they would see my car sitting there in a crossover. People have small reactions, and you got to be able to pick that up in the split second when they drive by. So if they're staring straight ahead, they got nobody in front of them, all of a sudden, they go from the fast lane all the way over to the slow lane. You know, that's something that might catch our attention. And then, like, you talked about the West Virginia tags, but they got Pennsylvania inspection stickers right on the window, stuff like that. We'd pick it out. But one of my favorites was whenever we'd stop, guys. You know, you stop a couple guys in a car, and they both look like they're auto mechanics with grease and dirt under their fingernails and stuff like that. And you say, hey, guys, where are you coming from? And nobody would ever want to admit they were coming from Baltimore because they knew that that meant to us, we're probably bringing a load back. And they. They'd look at us and say, oh, we went to the Baltimore Aquarium.
- [25:45]
John J. Wiley
Uh huh.
- [25:46]
Jeremy Tindall
Well, it's not, it's not crazy, unthinkable to think that two guys might go to the Baltimore Aquarium together. But usually two guys that are covered in grease from doing mechanic work or whatever it is, and they're looking disheveled, they just do not seem like the kind of people that would go to the aquarium together. So what I would do is I'd say, oh, that's really cool. My wife's been wanting me to take her there. How much were the tickets? I know how much the tickets to the Baltimore Aquarium were because we had a membership there, but they'd always make up a number. And then I'd just get online and google it real quick to make sure they didn't change their prices. And the price that they told me was completely incorrect compared to whatever they actually charged. So I knew they were lying about.
- [26:25]
John J. Wiley
It, that a lot of it was, it was trying to get people to come up with information that, that didn't match up. And by the way, the, the entire difference, and this is my own thing, I was used to street gangs, street drug gangs and the violence. And, and by the way, back in the day, the heroin addicts, they didn't, they weren't a threat. They were not threats of violence. And we had people with boxing gloves, we used to call them, they've been addicted for so long. And they had tester girls kinds of stuff. But things change rapidly. I policed in Baltimore when we had crack cocaine came in and that changed the complexion of everything.
- [27:07]
Jeremy Tindall
Yeah, when I started in Frederick, the Frederick City guys were amazed that we were always pulling heroin off of the interstates because in the city of Frederick they only saw crack going on in their jurisdiction. So they were always amazed that we were getting heroin off the interstate. And then it was only two or three years later and crack was completely gone from Frederick and everybody had switched over to heroin. So it's funny how just a couple miles away on the interstate, things were vastly different from what they were in the city.
- [27:36]
John J. Wiley
And by the way, I want people to realize this. A lot of times when you see a state trooper, regardless of where state you're in, what term they use, they're on the highway by themselves. A lot of times they are looking for suspicious behavior like this. And it's an acquired skill set. Very rarely does someone come in the academy and they've got a down cold. Was that your experience?
- [27:59]
Jeremy Tindall
Absolutely. One of the barrack commanders that I had, he, you know, noticed all the drug arrests that would come from my work group and from me, and he would find people on different work groups and temporarily assign them. You know, even though these guys were veteran police veterans, they had 10 years on the job, he knew that they were trying to get into drug interdiction. So he would send them to me for a couple weeks to, you know, train them up and learn how to do it. And then they would go back to their groups and share it. And that. That started growing. We got to a point where, you know, every now and then, we'd even get other police officers from other agencies come work with me on the interstate just so they could see how we did it. So it was nice to be able to share that knowledge with some of the other officers and see them then turn and share it with their coworkers.
- [28:47]
John J. Wiley
Something you said earlier that kind of resonated with me, and. And a lot of people have a big misconception about police. I hated traffic. I hated traffic stops. And it got to the point where I didn't want to pull anybody over unless I thought they had a gun, they're a murderer, or drugs, or stolen car. I didn't want to get involved with routine traffic stops.
- [29:07]
Jeremy Tindall
Absolutely.
- [29:09]
John J. Wiley
So much can go wrong.
- [29:10]
Jeremy Tindall
Like I said, I tried to get. My goal to go to work every day was to make one stop. Now, the nickname for the Maryland State Police at that time was the Maryland Stat Police, because they always wanted to see how much. How productive you were being. So depending on which barrack commander I was working for, I might have to go out and stop four or five cars and just write warnings so I could show that I was doing other stuff, too. So I would hurry up and go out in the first hour. I would try and stop four or five different cars. That way, I could turn in five stops for the day, and then I would go look for. But in my favorite times, I didn't have any responsibility other than just to go out and look for drugs. And it was nice when I had a bear command.
- [29:49]
John J. Wiley
We're talking with Jeremy Tindall, a retired Maryland state police sergeant. He's one of the movers and shakers for Operation Mayday 13. Look for them on Facebook. We'll talk about that in a few moments. 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 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. Return our conversation with Jeremy Tindall on the law enforcement talk radio show. Jeremy is retired Maryland State Police sergeant. He is also one of the movers and shakers for a nonprofit called Operation Mayday 13. That's Operation Mayday 13. Look for them on Facebook. We will discover together more about what that is, what they do. That's Operation Mayday 13. By the way, congratulations on making the rank of sergeant. That's not an easy task in the Baltimore Police Department. From what I've heard, it's really not easy in the Maryland State Police.
- [31:00]
Jeremy Tindall
Thank you.
- [31:01]
John J. Wiley
And it's. It's something that, you know, I've been retired since 92. I got hurt, retired young. I was 33 when I was retired and as much earlier than I wanted to be. But one of the pleasures in my life and doesn't happen very often, is when someone calls me Sarge. That's why I called you Sarge, because when I retired that, I never had that terminology at home. My wife always outranked me, no matter what rank I was. She's always one step ahead of me, at least. But people stopped calling me that. So when someone calls me Sarge, I'm like that. They didn't have to. So when I call you Sarge, that means a lot.
- [31:36]
Jeremy Tindall
No, I get it. I appreciate it. I bumped into another trooper, actually, just a few hours ago, and he's like, hey, Sarge, how are you? That made me smile for the same reasons you're talking about.
- [31:46]
John J. Wiley
It reminds me of the old days. It does. It reminds me. And I look back on my career and sometimes, and I guess this is a former question, Jeremy is there. I'm the same guy as I was in my early 30s. However, police work seems like sometimes it was a different person, a different lifetime ago, and other times it's right there in my face.
- [32:07]
Jeremy Tindall
Absolutely.
- [32:08]
John J. Wiley
So you made the rank of sergeant and for a lot of places when in Maryland and Baltimore, when you get promoted, you get transferred to another district. Were you in Frederick already when you made the rank of sergeant?
- [32:22]
Jeremy Tindall
So I was in Frederick, and I was actually an acting sergeant for a while before I got promoted. And you're right, typically in the Maryland State Police, when you do take any promotion, you usually end up getting transferred somewhere else. I happen to get it in at just the right time. I got lucky with it where I got promoted, and they had nobody already on a transfer list to come. So I got promoted and got to stay at the same place with the same group working, doing the Same job. Since I was already an acting sergeant, I didn't have to transfer.
- [32:52]
John J. Wiley
And they knew you as acting sergeant, so that takes care of some of the leadership problems. Did you see a big difference in your role between trooper, corporal and sergeant?
- [33:04]
Jeremy Tindall
Yeah. So the way the Maryland State Police is structured is the trooper is the boots on the ground actually going all the calls. A corporal is kind of that first line supervisor, but they are considered the patrol supervisor. So they're not stuck at an office. They get to go out and they run calls and they just kind of supervise calls right there live and on the scene. And then the sergeant's role is typically to be the duty officer. They're the ones sitting at the. At the police station dealing with anybody that comes in, making sure all the guys on the road are responding appropriately, all the different calls that are going on, monitor the radio, and just kind of overseeing all the operations that are going on in the county at one time.
- [33:41]
John J. Wiley
So when I say in Baltimore, it's a little bit different. We have police officer, police agents, and they were same rank, detectives were the same rank. They had different job responsibilities. But when you made sergeant in that department, anyway, it's the sergeants who made the department go around and the Maryland State Police. Is that true or was it the corporals?
- [34:02]
Jeremy Tindall
It's a good mix of both. The corporals, like I said, are the guys that are out there on the scene of the major calls and stuff like that. The corporals are really getting hands on or eyes on everything that's happening in the field. And the sergeants are kind of reliant on the information that they're getting over the radio or directly from the corporals. So the sergeant is almost a more administrative position at this point, because you are stuck in the building 90% of your time, and the corporals are out there really seeing what's going on.
- [34:34]
John J. Wiley
So when you made the rank of sergeant in my notes, you retired, you did a full career. But part of the reason why you retired, and it's not a negative thing, and I want to say this for people, a lot of times it's because of family obligations. When we say family obligations, we worked rotating chef to work. We had rotating days off, and the weekends that we were not there became increasingly more difficult for our spouses. Part of the reason why you retired was that family. Family stress, for lack of better words, yes.
- [35:07]
Jeremy Tindall
The last several years of my career, I actually got transferred to basically an intelligence unit. And we, from behind a computer screen, helped different police officers, mostly in the state of Maryland, but sometimes even outside of the state of Maryland, we helped them with their cases from behind a computer screen. And that was different because it was a task force unit made up of detectives from a bunch of different agencies. And when I got there, the first couple years, I was on a straight day shift schedule, which is amazing for my family. And then all of a sudden they told me, hey, we need you to move to a late shift, permanent late shift. Which my entire career, like you talked about with the rotating schedule, that's what my family was used to.
- [35:48]
John J. Wiley
Right.
- [35:48]
Jeremy Tindall
If we had, if we had gone to a rotating schedule, I would have been able to make that work because it's just an occasional late shift. But for me to be on a permanent late shift, at the time I had a 7 year old son at home and that meant that I would never get to see him because I would work five days a week, evening shift, 2pm to 10pm and he'd be at school whenever I was off in the mornings. So he had a lot of medical issues going on and stuff like that at the time. And I just got to the point where I was eligible to retire and decided that instead of not seeing my son anymore, it was better to go ahead and retire at that time and spend more time with my family.
- [36:28]
John J. Wiley
Well, good for you. Kudos to you for having a long career and making that decision. Decision. Did you find it difficult transition from policing to being retired?
- [36:37]
Jeremy Tindall
I think I may have found it difficult.
- [36:41]
John J. Wiley
Should I ask your spouse? Should I ask her?
- [36:45]
Jeremy Tindall
Yeah, maybe. I don't think so because I think that that transition time I had at that desk job for the last couple years made it a little bit easier because I was already kind of used to not being out and about and doing all that fun stuff on the road anymore. I was used to more of an office job. So it made a little easier.
- [37:03]
John J. Wiley
All right, so then operation mayday 13. What is it about? And is that inspired in part by your police career?
- [37:12]
Jeremy Tindall
So that actually came about by chance. Whenever I retired, my wife and I started our own local screen print embroidery shop. And a few months ago, I guess it was about six months ago now, there was a local officer where I live in, in the city of Hagerstown, Maryland, that got shot when responding to a domestic. And you know, I still hold my police career very near and dear to my heart. And I understand that when you're a police officer and you get injured on the job, you're not making the money that your families used to. So not only are you not getting shift differential or overtime anymore, which most police families are dependent on. You're also not even getting your full paycheck a lot of times because they're give you 66 and 2/3 of what you make, right? That's tax free. So it almost evens out. But most, like I said, most families are dependent on overtime. So whenever this officer got shot, I reached out to him, I said, hey, man, look, I've got this T shirt company. I want to do something to help you out financially while you're hurt. So we designed a custom logo for him, and we sold it on our website with his permission, of course. And my only goal going into it was if we could sell 250 shirts, we'd be able to cut him a check for $2,500 and help him out while he's recuperating from his injuries. And luckily, the local community here in Hagerstown, Maryland, was fantastic. We sold our goal of 250 shirts in about an hour and a half ago in live. Wow. By the time the sale was over, I think we sold about 650 shirts, and we were able to cut him a check for $6,500. After that, my accountant kind of yelled at me. He's like, dude, you can't just cut him a check like that. Like, you need to find a nonprofit to go through. So we tried to call a bunch. Some of them, the way their bylaws are written, they just couldn't help us in this situation or some of the big national ones. I couldn't get them to call me back or anything. So we made the decision. You know, this was very rewarding for me to be able to provide something to fallen injured first responder. So we decided we're going to start our own nonprofit. We named it Operation May813, because in the state of Maryland, a signal 13 is a urgent, urgent cry for help for law enforcement officers. Signal 13 means drop whatever you're doing. I don't care what it is, you've got a police officer hurt. Come now. Unfortunately, your co workers in Baltimore had already taken the name the Signal 13 Foundation. That's the first name that I came up with. So we decided if we threw the word Mayday in there, that also included the firefighters and the paramedics, because that's like the national distress signal for firefighters and paramedics. So we called it Operation Mayday 13. And now we do these types of fundraisers for first responders across the country if they've been injured in the line of duty. And they're going to be out of work for a little bit.
- [40:01]
John J. Wiley
By the way, when I retired, I got hurt and retired. I tell people this all the time. Yes, I got 66 and 2/3, which is great. But the day I got retired, my health insurance tripled and it wound up becoming more than a third of my pension. We're talking with Jeremy Tindall. Jeremy is retired Maryland State Police Sergeant and is also one of the movers and shakers of Operation Mayday 13. Look for them on Facebook. Jeremy, thanks for being a guest on the show and thanks for your service. Both very much appreciated.
- [40:30]
Jeremy Tindall
Thank you.
- [40:30]
John J. Wiley
I'd like to thank our guests for coming on the Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show. The Law Enforcement Talk Radio show is the national syndication weekly radio show broadcast on Numerous AM&FM radio stations across the country. We're always adding more affiliate stations. If you enjoyed the podcast version of the show, which is always free, please do me a favor and tell a friend or two or three. I'll be back in just a few days with another episode of the Law Enforcement Talk Radio show and Podcast. Until then, this is John J. Wiley. See ya.
- [41:06]
Jeremy Tindall
If you like the show, please take.
- [41:08]
John J. Wiley
A moment to rate, review and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow.
- [41:13]
Jeremy Tindall
Thank you for listening.