Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: I'm Alex Stone, former military service member and law enforcement officer, now CEO of Echelon Protected Services, one of the fastest growing private security firms on the west coast. And this is ride along, where our guests and I witness firsthand the issues affecting our community.
You, I believe our proven method of enacting meaningful change through compassion and understanding is the best way to make our streets a safer place and truly achieve security through the community.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: My name is Ricky Franco. I'm the pastor over our love now ministries at Crossroads Community Church. And I'm so excited just to be joining Alex and loving one another as we're really looking at, how do we continue to support and really collaborate together to serve our community in whatever ways that they need? And so, man, I can't wait to.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Be with you guys.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: So excited to be here today.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Hey, welcome back to the ride along. Alex Stone here, principal of echelon Protective services. We're here for a ride along. Today's amazing guest, Ricky Franco. He's a buddy of mine. Amazing history, but even more amazing present in his life, what he's doing today. Ricky, why don't you introduce yourself to the folks?
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. My name is Ricky Franco. I'm currently the pastor over love now ministries at Crossroads Community Church. And, man, we work to serve locally. Nationally and globally.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: Awesome. I love that. So today, you're here for the ride along.
We went to a coffee. We talked about it.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: So good.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: And it is good. I think that what we're doing, the type of work that we're doing is community transformation, and there's a real bridge. I think we're really doing the same type of work.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. And it starts with those connections, right.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: It does. It's all through relationship.
[00:02:05] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Everything's about relationship. And so one of the reasons I really wanted you as a guest is I think that you, because of your past, have a unique perspective as to a lot of the issues we face, not just as a nation, but as a local community here in the Portland metro area.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, our past connects us to exactly where we're going and what we're doing. Right. God gives us our past for a reason, so we can use that for where we're at and where we're going.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah. We can either fail and fall into a pit, or we can build character, right?
[00:02:34] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: And I think that you chose the character route.
[00:02:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: You know what?
[00:02:37] Speaker B: I'm trying still, man.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: Right. So kind of bring us back in time, young Ricky.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Young Ricky.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: I'm still scared of that.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: I know.
Young Ricky, he's no longer here with us. Yeah, we'll talk about him in past tense. So where did you grow up? What state and what city were you from?
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah, so I grew up in Tucson, Arizona. I mean, I was born in California, but really, what I remember is Tucson. I moved there when I was about five, six, and that was my home for 30 years.
And growing up there was interesting. I mean, we lived in what we called south Tucson, which was technically another little city in Tucson. And it was hispanic 99. I think my elementary school, it was, like, 99.99% hispanic.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: There was one white old veteran who still lived in his house.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that would be it. And the school there was, like, the one white kid and one African American, and everyone else was hispanic, and that's it. So that was my context. Right. I grew up in that. And it was interesting because there was a lot of.
I mean, poverty. Right. A lot of gang life. A lot of that was a lot.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Of zero Gen. First gen immigrants.
[00:03:51] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Right. Specifically from Mexico, Central America.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
My grandma, she was the first generation here. She was illegal coming down here and didn't get her legal status until she was, like, 80 when she was here. But she was working. She was living the life. She wanted her kids to be here.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: And have that life. American.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: That's what she did. Right. And she sucked it up and did it and raised her kids. And we were all raised in that same area.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: It's amazing. So young Ricky is growing up. You're living in a majority hispanic area, and around you, around that community, because the hispanic community, the latino community, is very rich in faith.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: But there's also part of that community that's like launda. It's that way of life.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: It's that criminal lifestyle. Right. And at what point were you sucked into launda? That kind of gang life.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Yeah. I think it's so hard because there's such poverty that is prevalent in that area. And really in that community and really, that culture, a lot of it becomes of what you look like. Like, what are you presenting on the outside? So what kind of car do you drive? What kind of clothes are you wearing? Even though you know you're living in poverty. Right. Everyone knows that they're in the midst of poverty, yet you want to have that show.
To be able to do that. You got to make money, you got to have the staff. Right. And you got to do the thing for us because of the opportunities that we have, or at least we felt like the only opportunities we had because of lack of education. Or wherever it came from. Right. Our own cultural mindset, probably growing up.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: And the homies or the people on the street with the money and the impalas and the cars and the girls, you're all like, well, how do they have that? Yeah, you're 8910. You're like, well, how did he get that? And then someone finally tells you he's doing this or he's doing this dirt. Right?
[00:05:50] Speaker B: They're selling here and they're selling drugs here. They're doing this.
So that was a life for me, my mindset growing up, starting to get into these teenage years and thinking like, okay, what does my future look like? In my mind, there was only two options. For years, there was only two options. Either end up in jail or end up dying on the street.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: And so I knew those two things I was going to do. And so before I reached either of those ends, I'm going to live it up. Right.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: And you kind of made this conscious decision.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: At what age were you? 1213.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: He was probably, like, right in there. Yeah. Like, heading right into those.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Always that age.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: Right where you're right. Yeah. You're at that cusp of that transformation in life. And for us, that was really the only choice, though, in my mind, as I think back.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Were you recruited or was that a choice that you made? Because I was.
[00:06:39] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: I had a guy named Javier recruit me.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: He already had a crew of, like, maybe three or four other kids. And then they introduced me to him, and he was like, hey, he basically said, you're going to steal radios from me.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: And you owe me. Every Friday, you owe me at least two radios.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: Right. And I was like, oh, okay. I got a job. And he would give me, like, $25 a radio. This is the 90s, right? You can buy all the candy you want.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: No recruitment. But it was more of.
That's just who I hung out with, and that's what they did. And I was like, yo, can I just get that? I want to be in that. What do I got to do to be in that, right? And so it was simple to get in. Not easy to get out, right? In our minds, at least, it wasn't easy to get.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: It's so funny in law enforcement, they say, because my backgrounds, eventually, luckily, I was kind of, through foster care and different means, got out of that life. But in law enforcement, we say that it's the hardest job to get and the easiest job to lose, but joining the gang, it really is the easiest job to get. And the hardest job to.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and especially if you're growing up and not having a dad. Right. Same time, right in there. My dad goes to prison.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: He was in that way. He was living that.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: He was living that life. Yeah. He had grown up as a gang life in California and came down and he had a time where he did. He went to the church and he became a pastor at one point. And so that's kind of how I grew up in a church as a young age. And then my dad just went back into it. Right. And he ended up in prison. And so in my mindset, the church wasn't the way for me. That was just a. Hypocrites. I was like, I was just going to end up like him anyways.
Why do that?
[00:08:25] Speaker A: And they didn't have nice cars.
[00:08:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: And they didn't have nice cars. They didn't have the stuff, man. They did not seeing that, I was like, man, that's just where it needs to be. And so it was an easy choice where the home is broken. Dad's in prison. Mom doesn't know where to go with stuff. Right. She can barely hold up herself.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: I bet you even helped her pay bills sometimes.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Yeah. However it looked like. And it was weird because it was like, how do I support my mom? But I don't want to be in there because it's too emotional. Right. I wouldn't have seen it at that point like that. But for me, it was too much in my feelings. So, like, all right, mom, I'm going to keep you up, but I got to do my thing. I can't be here. This isn't a family anymore. And so the guys on the street, so that was family. I knew they would be there for me. I knew they would support me. I knew they would get my back. I knew that if I needed to talk, they would be there to talk.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: That was it. And so to either choose between having a family or not, that's an easy choice for any kid, I think.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Especially because you're vulnerable, you have no protector provider, right?
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: And you're like, okay, I'm twelve years old now. I got to be a man, but I don't know how to do that. So I'm going to surround myself with other people so we can protect ourselves.
Eventually you get clicked in. We don't talk about names here.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Some of our guests have been former shot callers of entire prison gangs.
We've had ogs from different organizations here, and so we don't get into that because we don't want to glorify that lifestyle.
But you get clicked into a well known type of gang.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: And obviously, almost always in the hispanic community, there's always a cartel connection because the drugs and a lot of the money is coming from the top and it's filtering down to the gang, which are really like, kind of like the feeder teams, the minor leagues.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: Oh, for sure.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: For the cartel. They're like building up their reserves.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: Yeah. In our neighborhood, it became that where a lot of the guys that were part of that whole gang, part of the click, there was fronts, there was job fronts and stuff. They had tire companies, they sold rims. They did body shop stuff, whatever it was. Right.
[00:10:39] Speaker C: But really there was.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: We always did. Or the group I was with, we did car washes and then tanning salons. These guys love tanning salons. I don't know. Yeah, they had like 20 tanning salons.
[00:10:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: So you're working for ogs. This is a real criminal operation.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: You're like a teenager.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: And so you're making your money. How are you making your money?
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah, so a lot of selling, I mean, we sold on the streets.
At some point, it kind of morphed into this where if you want to make some real money, then we do some stuff. Where we were right next to Mexico. Right. Mexico was like another part of the hometown right there.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: Yeah, bro. Literally. Yeah. When we were kids, I don't know how old you are, but when I was a kid, we would just drive down like as high school kids and walk across all the time. Yeah, it was no big deal. It was easy all the time. And so you're going back and forth from Mexico.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So we took on that coyote lifestyle, right. Where we're picking up people and bringing them over, and you make a certain amount of head. And it was easy. And right when I got my license, it was kind of like, all right, you're ready to go.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: So you're 1516 years old.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: And you see other people making money. It's a lot safer than narcotics trade, for sure. And so you make the conscious decision to go into human trafficking. That's kind of what it is.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: And as a kid, how do I know?
[00:12:01] Speaker A: You don't know? I have no idea. Because a lot of people think human trafficking has always commercially sexually exploited persons, especially minors, especially with movies out now, things like this. This is the real buz. But the majority of human trafficking is actually for immigrant labor.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And for us in living in that culture, living in that lifestyle, seeing who our brothers were there, and it was really given to us as like, man, we're helping them out.
They have nothing over there. We need to help them out.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Let's go. People are in poverty. They can't feed their family.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: We're going to come bring them over, and we get to make some money at the same time.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: So for us, it was like a simple thing. Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Let's go help our brothers.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: Let's get them over here. Let's get some money.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: So you actually just drove through the border?
[00:12:47] Speaker B: Yeah. But there's a lot of roads that you drive across. Yeah, for sure.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Wow, this is crazy, bro.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: And they know. Yeah, it's an interesting trade. And it's interesting because my brother, now, he does border patrol, and then now he's a police officer, actually, in Tucson.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: I did not know that.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: He's border patrol for a lot of years. And so we talked through that, and he's like, yeah, there's a lot out there.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: It's a lot out there. So tell us an experience that you had with being a coyote, which is. That's a slang term for human trafficker.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Right.
Where you felt like, this is too dangerous. What am I doing?
Why did I make this decision?
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it was not necessarily, like, the danger to myself. I think what began, and now I can see it. I don't think I even saw it then, though. But I think I can see as I look back and why I was like, no.
It began to feel wrong even for the people that I was doing it with. There was a time that we thought we were going to get caught. We pulled over and we kicked everybody out of the car and said, get.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Out in the middle of the desert.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Come in the middle of the desert.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: Just go, scary stuff. People die out there all the time.
[00:13:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: And I was freaked out for my own safety. Right. Just self serving, kind of like, no, you guys got to get out of the car. They took our Friday night, left, and later on, I think back, and I'm like, what happened to those people? What was I doing in that moment? And what really happened to them? I don't know, to this day.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: So no one ever was able to go back with them.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: And I think they did. There was conversation. They're like, we're going to go pick them up. We got this just go kind of thing. Right. And for me, at that moment, I.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: Was like, man, nowadays they have, like, caches with clothing, water, and food, and you can typically geolocate them. You could even give a group a phone and they can find their caches along the way.
How many people were left out there?
[00:14:37] Speaker B: It was about three.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Man, that's tough, bro.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And so I think that began to weigh on me as that kind of like that moralistic concept begins to start weighing on my brain as a young kid, still 1718.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Yeah, your brain's not even fully developed.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: I'm like, what are we doing? That starts seeping into all the things that I'm doing from us selling in the streets back home and all the things I started thinking about, like, man, where's my life going? What am I doing, right? Is my trajectory still either going to end up in jail or going to die? And I'm like, if that is, is that right? Is that what I was supposed to do?
[00:15:13] Speaker A: Is there another option?
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Is there something else?
That's where my life started taking me. Like, what are we doing? And I think it took a while, though. There was a lot of steps to the full transformation of like, I need to get out of this thing. I can't be here anymore. But for me, that was one of the first big steps.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: Like, yeah, well, for me in my journey, it was the guy that recruited me. When I got older, he was killed in his hotel room.
And then I realized just how expendable that life is.
You're literally just a tool of somebody else, and they don't care about you. You're making the money, and if they have a problem, you're just gone. Right. And so for you, you had a crisis of faith. You're like, I don't know who I am. I don't know what I'm doing. I need to figure this out.
[00:16:08] Speaker B: And that's interesting that you talked about somebody dying. I mean, it was the same thing. It was kind of right after that, maybe a few weeks later, a good friend that was in it with us, too, was doing a deal in some parking lot and ended up getting shot.
All those things together. You're like, what are we doing, man?
[00:16:25] Speaker A: So you lose your homie.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Right. And at the same time, you're also starting to date a young lady.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Who's now your wife.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Who's now my wife. Yeah.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: And so kind of explain how you're in this crisis moment where you feel like you should be doing something different, but you're still hopeless.
You don't feel like you have a sense of agency because when you're in that life, you really feel like you don't have the choice to even you don't feel like you would just be grasping for something that's not even there.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:59] Speaker A: And in order to do that, you have to have faith.
It's not like if you grew up in a nice family and your father went to Harvard, and the majority of people who go to Harvard are people, are children of people who went to, like, when there's no path set before you and all you're given is that life, it takes real faith to believe that you can do something beyond that. And so at what point did that faith enter your life?
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: At what point did that idea come into your mind?
[00:17:32] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good. I think in the same kind of crisis of time. And in my mind, I remember somebody asking me like, man, he must have been like an evangelist kind of guy from the church. And he was like, so what are you doing with your life? Where are you going to end up? And the first thought in my head was, I'm going to go to hell, in my mind. And I was okay with it. That's what the crazy thing is. In my mind, I'm like, yeah, they're probably partying there. It's cool, right? That's what I thought. Right. And as I passed, I think back now, I'm like, man, I was lost, man, I was lost when my wife had come into my life. It was when I was about 18.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: So about a year after this moment of Cris.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: And so she kind of got in. I was still in it, doing some stuff. And I remember becoming an Og at that point.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Yeah, because you got young bucks, twelve to 1516 year olds who are running for you.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
And so seeing her and thinking, man, if I'm in that crisis of idea, like, okay, is there a future for something else? Is there a future with somebody else in some other place? And she comes into my life, and I know in the beginning we're trying to talk, and she hated it. She was like, I ain't in this thing. I ain't in that life. Right? I can't do that with you.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: Was she from the neighborhood?
[00:18:46] Speaker B: She was, yeah, she was in the neighborhood for sure.
I hadn't known her. I hadn't really known her, but she knew of that lifestyle. She knew a lot of people in that lifestyle. And she was like, I don't need that. Right.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: So she grew up in that life, and she made a conscious decision not to be a part of that. Yeah, but yet you dated her anyway, right?
[00:19:07] Speaker B: Well, she dated me because I'm pretty sure I tricked her into it somehow. I don't know how that happened, but.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Ricky charm, that's what it is, man.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: Come on. It was probably a good man. I don't know, six months, eight months before she finally agreed, like, all right, I'll go, but you need to stop some stuff. Right? And so in the beginning, it was kind of like, all right, I'll stop those things. I didn't really stop a lot of it, but I try to make a show of it and try to make it different. Right. And seeing that relationship grow, seeing how she lived life, not needing to be in all of that, really begin that changeover for me.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: So you saw the worth and her life development, and you're like, wait, maybe this is possible. So she was actually building a new vision for you as you fell in love with her, her life paralleling yours. You were like, wait, there is a way out. She's doing it.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Yeah. She loved me even through the things that I was going through, because she saw something in me that I probably didn't even see in that moment and who I was. And there was a lot of places where she helped get me out of. I mean, still trouble with the law and still owed a bunch of debt to the city and all these things. Right. Because of decisions I had made. And she decided to still walk with me through all of that.
She was going to school, and she encouraged me to go back to school with her. And so in those moments, as I'm making those changes, I start seeing the separation between me and the people that I was with all the time.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: 100%. Yeah.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: And I had to make a decision at that moment. Like, all right, what am I going to do? Am I going to go and try this new thing that I don't know what that looks like, and I don't know what that means, and that's scary. Or do I just continue to do what I was doing? Right. And so there was a moment where I had to make a decision. It was a decision for her. It was a decision for a new life, whatever that looked like, spiritual, mental, like there was all of these things that I had to choose, and I choose to get out. Right.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: So that relationship bridged a new sense of family.
It brought you to a better place where you could make a decision for yourself, gave you agency, that one relationship gave you family, gave you worth, which led to agency, the ability to make a decision for yourself without outside influence, and you chose to get out. Now, that's very difficult to do.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Explain that process to the folks.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
There's so many different places, especially.
You hear all the stories about getting jumped out or the retaliation that comes afterwards and stuff under God's blessing. It was like the perfect timing, almost like a perfect storm for me to be able to get out from who was currently incarcerated at that moment. Troubles within the whole gang itself, with people dying and going.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: So, yeah, leadership. Leadership was recently incarcerated.
Other leaders had died. So there's a vacuum of leadership.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And so it was kind of like, through the relationship, because I'd been in it for a few years at that point with people, and it was really this conversation, like, man, I just can't do this anymore. And we truly had a conversation. And the homies that I was with at that moment, they were like, that's cool, but then you ain't ever coming back. Just know that. And saying, all right, and leaving that kind of time where we met up and I haven't seen them since. That was it. And that was like, these relationships I had to sever out of my life to say, if I'm going to head a new wear out, then these are gone, and that's it. And that was hard.
That was painful. It was painful.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: When you grow up that way, it never leaves you. There's an imprint that it puts on you.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: No, for sure.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: You have an understanding of a sense of darkness that's occurring in our inner cities.
And it's a very profound understanding of the darkness that a lot of children are pulled into that lifestyle. And so you had this in the back of your head, and so what are you doing now? What are you a part of now that you're reaching back into the community?
[00:23:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. Lord works through all of our trials and tribulations, and sometimes when we're in the midst of them, and then when I was in the midst of a lot of that, I could never have seen a future. When that question came up, what's going to happen next? I want to go to hell. That was just the answer. I couldn't see any other future outside of that. I guess what led me to what I'm doing now is the sense there was a lot of transformation in my life. So that was the first transformation. Like, mentally, I had to decide there's something else other than what I'm living in. So that mental transformation had to occur. That happened a lot to do with my wife and us getting married and having kids, being a father, there was all this.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: And you have how many kids again?
[00:23:55] Speaker B: We have eight total.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: That's dope. Yeah. Take kids now. Amazing.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: And so seeing that as a father and as a husband and, like, all right, I got to learn to be a man. Now, I don't know what that means, but I got to do it right. So there's a lot of mental transformation that occurred. And with that, I realized that I was not strong enough and I was not enough to be, to do that alone. And so for me, I was like, so then what's still missing? Like, I have a wonderful woman. I have kids. I'm starting to do something with my life. I get a job, like, a real job, finally making money and taking care of my family. It was great. But I was like, man, what's missing?
[00:24:31] Speaker A: You don't have to hide your money in a shoebox.
[00:24:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: Open a bank account. What, you got a loan? Okay.
There was a lot of great stuff, but still knowing, like, I'm still missing. Right? And I remember me and my wife getting to a few years in, and she was like, man, we need to go to church. And for me, that brought up a lot, because, again, my dad was in it. Hypocrites. A church didn't come alongside.
It was a lot in me. And I was like, I don't know about it. But again, my wife, she was like, I need us to do this. All right, I'll do it with you.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: So she was a Christian.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: She grew up catholic, so catholic, christian. Yeah. And so she grew up in that. So a lot of it was just kind of like, again, the going, because you go, this is what you do. This is what you're supposed to do. We both kind of grew up in that. You're supposed to do that.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: And so she knew, too. I think she was feeling that, like, we need to go back because that's just what we're supposed to do. All right, great. Let's go make a show for the kids. Kind of in my mind to begin with, like, kids should grow up in it. They should hear this. So we started going, and from that point, we began a spiritual transformation that was kind of that next piece for us. We had the mental part that was starting, and then we needed that spiritual component. And so we started going to church at Calvary down there in Tucson. And just great. Pastor. Pastor Robert started building into us, started really speaking into our lives. Some great people came alongside. So again, when it was there, we started creating these initial relationships that begin to grow us beyond just like, oh, this is just what people do at church. Just read the Bible.
It was real and it was tangible, and it was those one on one relationships that we began to see in the church that really began to change.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: Our minds on kind of intentional mentorship. Yeah, right.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: It was a blessing to be to hear, like, all right, yeah, there's an opportunity to come up and be able to use what I've done. So working from in the church, working for school as a teacher, working as a principal, working for a nonprofit organization, kind of reaching the community and seeing people in a lot of different lights, being able to come up here to work with the Love now ministries, which is what I do now right there. Right.
Doing that kind of culminated and brought all of that together. Right. Looking at my past, of what I knew I was in, and in the midst of seeing how I was able to work with a lot of different people and understanding that, man, each one of these people are such an individual. Like, they're so different. Whether it's kids in schools, whether it's people on the streets, whether it's working with government agencies or businesses or churches, there's so much within every single person, and are we going to take that moment to learn about them? Are we going to take that moment to really live life with people? Are we going to take that moment to really love on people? And so coming here and hearing about this love down ministries and their goal to reach the community, I was like, yeah, that's fantastic. That's it.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: It's about building relationships. Right. Providing the type of relationships that can lead to personal transformation, the kind that you went through, and then if you can do that and you can hit a critical mass within a geographical area, then you're about to achieve community transformation.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: Right. And that's really the goal. And that's the goal of the company. That's the goal of our company is. Right. And the nonprofit loving one another.
[00:27:47] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Is to build those relationships and to create a network through community engagement that allows for the entire community to be transformed.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: And that's what I love. When I heard about your loving one another and you guys are talking about, I was like, yeah, that's what we're doing, man. We're creating those connections.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: That's exactly it.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: In my mind, it was like, man, how do we continue to grow in that place where not any one organization company is saying we're going to make the change, but it's, how are we all going to connect to make a big change? Right. How do we start creating a culture shift within the mindset of everybody?
[00:28:23] Speaker A: Has to happen.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: We are all going to do this together. And it's not. They're doing it. And they're doing this. No, we are all doing this together.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: We realized this early on that this wasn't just something a nonprofit had to do, that our for profit company, Echelon.
[00:28:38] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: We operate in six states.
I don't know how many people we have here locally now, probably 60 to 80 in the Portland area. And we realized if this mission is going to work, we have to use the private company to push this mission. And so when our guards are out and all we do is basically security neighborhood trolls. We carry totes, we carry supplies. And I tell my people, I want you to learn two names every day of homeless people. Two names every day. And I want you to engage every single person you see on the street. Ask them how their day is, how are you doing? What do you need? Do you need any help? And if people have real needs, let's connect them to the resources. Let's spend that time making those connections for them or bringing the nonprofit in to finish those connections. Right? And there has been a substantive change in the neighborhoods that we're serving. And so that's kind of why I wanted you here today, because I look up to you.
So I look up to you as someone who could actually come in and assess the work we're doing in inner city Portland. And so that's kind of what the ride along is going to be about today, is you're going to go along with us, you're going to hang out with a guard, you're going to hang out with our nonprofit, and then we're going to get your feedback about that, how you feel about that.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: I love that. And I love the model that you guys are creating, because this is something that I think any business can really see. And when they look at the people that they're serving, to be able to broaden that perspective, to say, okay, how are we also creating a transformation right where we're at? Same thing that churches should be doing and wherever we are, even our own neighborhoods, in our own houses. Like, how am I transforming my neighborhood? Am I just staying in my own little house and not saying hi to my neighbor and closing my. Just going in the garage and not saying hi to anybody or talking to anybody? No. How are we looking out broader, beyond ourselves to say, I'm going to make a change?
[00:30:32] Speaker A: I can't talk to my neighbor. They might be a member of the wrong political party.
We had all these divisions and subdivisions and subcultures within our community now that we've stopped talking to each other.
So we got to cut through all that. Knock all that down and actually bake some friends. Yes. Awesome. Okay, so I love what you're doing currently. What's coming up right now in the future? What do you have coming up in a couple of next week months? I know you're doing a lot of work overseas.
[00:31:02] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: What are you doing here locally that people can join in with?
[00:31:06] Speaker B: Man, I love so much working with our local communities because I think there are so many great organizations doing amazing work. And I love that as a church, we're able to partner with them. Right. And so love now. So one of our main things that we say at the church all the time is because Jesus is real. We're a family of faith, fully engaged, transforming our community in our world. Right? So the transforming our community in the world is really what love now is looking to. And so when we look at into the world, there's a few things that we really focus on. We focus on food insecurity, we focus on foster families. I love that. Yeah. Because there's such a need critical in that area. And then we also look at transitional youth, so youth that are coming off the streets. Right, from homelessness, trying to find a new place, a home, somewhere to live, a job. Right. And so those are three kind of main focuses. Something that lovenow does that we're really excited about is our second Saturday event. So we have second Saturday events that meet, like it said, every second Saturday we meet at the church at 09:00. Now what second Saturday events are, they're times where we come as a community, as a church, as people from wherever and whoever can come and we go and serve our community. That's all around us. So we'll serve organizations right in Vancouver, we also serve organizations in Portland, but we send out volunteers is what we do. We come together. We have usually eight or eight to ten organizations that we'll partner with. They have projects for us to do and then we are able to go out and just go get the work done. Right. Support love on people, build connections within each other as well, which I think really is important. So our second Saturdays, those are some great things that we always have. We also have coming up at the church, a foster Christmas party that's going to be coming up.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: Oh, that's fantastic.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: And so we just support all the foster families as they're able to come and just be loved on, man. We have a party for them. We give them toys. So we have a toy drive that happens right before that. Community toy drive.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Fantastic.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: And then we just support the families and just giving them a great, fun kind of family day where they might always get that, but we give a place for them to do that as well.
[00:33:07] Speaker A: And you don't have to be a member of this church to be involved.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: No way.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: And you don't have to be a Christian, right?
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Yeah. No.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: You can be a jew, you can be Muslim. Anyone can come. Because it's about helping the community.
[00:33:17] Speaker B: It's helping the community. Yeah. We all need to be involved in feeding people and serving the foster families.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: I know you're also helping with refugees. Yes, I know that you give care packages and you meet with people that are refugees from war torn areas that are being relocated in this.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So we work with ukrainian and russian refugees, both coming in. When it first started a couple of years ago, we partnered with LCS Lutheran Community Services, who really works a lot with refugees as they come in. And so we're supporting them in any way we can. We're actually just going to house that. We got a great family that came in. It was a mom and her three kids had nowhere to go, and so somebody from a church came and said, hey, we want to give them a house. We need to get this ready, though.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: What do we do? Goodness.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: So, second Saturday, we had a whole bunch of people go over, got the house ready, painted, just fixed the gutters, did all the things that they needed to do, and now they're in this house and going and needs a little work. And so we're going to go back and continue to support this family. As she's getting a job learning English.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: I'm interested in helping on that.
Let me know about that.
[00:34:23] Speaker B: But anything you just want to find out about love. Now, second Saturdays, community drives. The way that we're supporting our community, you could go to crossroadschurch Netlovenow or crossroadschurch net events, and you can see all the things that are happening at the church, which expand beyond that as well. But those are kind of the best ways you can register to be a part of something. You can see all the different events we have going on every month and just come out and join us, man. We want to join with you. We want to hang out, have some fun, and serve the community.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: Awesome. That's great. So today we're here to do a ride along, and I think that we're about to go into the field. We're going to hook up with bach, who fantastic former reserve deputy for years, EMT. Right. And we're going to go patrol with him and kind of look at this in the field.
What our program kind of looks like in the field. And then we're going to go meet up with our loving one another team.
[00:35:17] Speaker C: Nice.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: And go make some contacts on the.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Love it.
[00:35:20] Speaker A: You excited?
[00:35:20] Speaker B: I'm excited. You don't know until you're in it.
[00:35:22] Speaker C: I know.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: All right, let's hit it.
All right, so we're in the car. We're going to go head out to meet bach. Got it. He had the New York Times with them, but he doesn't have them anymore. He just hadn't gotten to an altercation. He had a pepper spray guy.
[00:35:49] Speaker B: Okay. What kind of training does it take for them to know when to go to escalate to that certain level, like pepper spray or whatever they need to do?
What does that look like for you guys?
[00:35:59] Speaker A: The majority of the people who come to work for us already have stellar backgrounds in other related fields.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: Got it.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Mental health, maybe they did mental health work in like a psych ward. So a lot of them come trained, but we have our own death authority training.
Remain calm and a friendly presence.
All right, ready?
[00:36:24] Speaker C: Hey, Red.
Hey, Red.
Hey, buddy. Can I get you a cigarette? Come on, buddy, help me out.
I can give you a cigarette. Okay, bud, come on. Okay. Can you move for me, bud?
Yeah, I'll be happy to, but I need you to move, okay? Touch me again, you don't scare me. I need you to move, okay. I'm not your enemy, man. Okay?
Come on. Back the fuck off me.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: Come on.
[00:36:55] Speaker C: I need you to move. I need you to move. I need you to back the fuck off. Come on, I'll help you. Fuck off me. Come on. I just need you to.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: Get the fuck off me.
[00:37:02] Speaker C: Come on. I need you to move. Get off me. I need you to move along. I'm happy to help you, okay? Fuck away from me, faggot. Okay. I'm happy to help you.
I'm happy to help you. Happy to help you. You're happy to get fucked up? You spray me, I'm going to fucking come back and shoot you to fucking face. You're not going to cook that.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I will.
[00:37:19] Speaker C: On my kids. You're too nice of a guy.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: On my kids.
[00:37:22] Speaker C: I will fuck you up. No, I need you to move along.
[00:37:25] Speaker A: Fucking shut the fuck up, bro.
[00:37:27] Speaker C: Okay. Get the fuck away from me. I'm up now. Get out of my face. I'm asking you to move along. I'm asking you to get out of my face. Okay, I got up. Thank you. Out of your fucking face now. Property wants. Fuck up.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: Fucking punk ass bitch. Baggot.
[00:37:46] Speaker C: Blue.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Ow.
[00:37:53] Speaker C: Seven oh five. Pepper spray deployed. Ah.
[00:37:56] Speaker B: Out.
Fucking damn it.
[00:38:11] Speaker C: What the fuck?
Deserved it.
[00:38:19] Speaker A: Deserved it.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: I saw it, too.
[00:38:22] Speaker C: Okay.
Would you like some water for decon?
I'll get you some water, my man.
I have it right here. There's. You got some in your. For your eyes. Okay.
Okay. Fuck.
[00:38:35] Speaker A: You're a fucking asshole, my man.
[00:38:39] Speaker C: It ain't personal, brother.
I'm trying to do my job, my man.
You want more water? Baby shampoo?
Okay. Baby shampoo.
There you go.
Don't trip, man. I'd be better if you pulled up your pants. Can you help me? No, I don't want you getting cut.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: Why are you a fucking towel?
[00:39:04] Speaker C: I don't want you getting cut. I don't want you getting. No, I do. You get cut.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: Please don't.
[00:39:10] Speaker C: Please don't. Please don't.
Just have a seat, okay? Let us help, please.
I understand it's frustrating.
Come on, man, you're a bit.
Okay, I'll pour it on you.
I will fucking see.
Stupid.
Can we go away from the insurance, please?
[00:39:40] Speaker A: Fuck away with me.
[00:39:41] Speaker C: Look, man, I'll help you. I don't want anybody's help, especially here. You dip shit. You need to say, well, wait, don't leave yet.
You're going to need clothes.
We got clothes coming for you, buddy.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: What's the response of, like, the business? Is it the community around when something, like, happens?
[00:40:12] Speaker A: Usually no. I'm assuming that he was probably being not a friendly neighbor.
[00:40:17] Speaker B: No.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: Yeah, that's part, a lot of part of it.
Sup, man? How's it going, family? You good? It's a beautiful day to be on a bike, bro. All right.
[00:40:27] Speaker C: Seven to free cardio.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: I love it, man. I love it.
[00:40:32] Speaker C: Congratulations.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: So we're here in Old Town.
We had an incident where someone was trespassing. They're obviously drug induced psychosis. A state of excited delirium. Started stripping their clothes down, becoming violent, making threats, refused to leave the property. You don't really want to use force unless you have to. Unfortunately, it appears that this individual tried to attack one of the guards. They used pepper spray rather than going hands on, just because when it comes to use of force, it's one of the lowest use of forces that you can have.
So now we're just waiting for him to recover and then likely going to see if he needs any help, if we can get him any resources. Has he flushed his eyes at all?
[00:41:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I gave him that whole gallon. Came from me.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: Okay. He'll be fine.
[00:41:22] Speaker C: And then the baby shampoo and water came from me, too, and that was full. I've been flushing for constantly.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: Yeah. What do you need from us? How can we help?
[00:41:32] Speaker B: I don't really think anything.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: He has clothes, right?
[00:41:35] Speaker C: You got clothes coming like, they're all wet.
This is what he was wearing along with those pants. But I got the loa train flowing, and we're going to get him a new pair of clothes.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, good.
[00:41:47] Speaker C: And make sure I'm not handing him a weapon.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Did he attack anybody?
Yeah, of course. I mean, anybody inside?
[00:41:55] Speaker C: No.
[00:41:56] Speaker A: All the residents, witnesses?
[00:41:57] Speaker C: The gentleman here with the glasses was a witness.
I haven't talked to him yet, but he's recording it or something.
[00:42:03] Speaker A: Was it stripping inside of delirium or.
[00:42:06] Speaker C: I don't know. He just started tearing everything off.
[00:42:07] Speaker A: He's definitely drug induced on something, right?
[00:42:09] Speaker C: Yeah. The pipe is still over there on the ground somewhere. Unless somebody kicked it and broke it. But it was glass and about that long and a burnt end on it.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
So almost every property you see right now, all of these, that big, tall buildings, all of this, this entire block, that next block, they're all clients.
[00:42:31] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: They all have individual contracts.
[00:42:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:34] Speaker A: So we probably have, like, 60 or 70 clients just in old town.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:42:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: Small and pop shops like the sandwich shop to large industrial buildings.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: What do you think grew the. It started somewhere, and then all of a sudden, all these other started coming alongside and decided to use you guys.
[00:42:51] Speaker A: That was our business model.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Yeah. We intentionally went out and said, hey, we're not going to close one at a time. We're going to invite everyone to community meeting, and we're going to close them all at one time.
[00:42:59] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:43:00] Speaker A: Because at the end of the day, security isn't security unless it's 24 hours a day. And you have to have a level of saturation to get to community engagement, because as the community becomes more engaged, criminal elements feel less inclined to want to make their money in that location.
There's even certain neighborhoods I've told to just hire tour guides.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: Give free tours at night.
[00:43:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:26] Speaker A: Or have enter to win. And then people come in and do architectural tour, historical tour, ghost tours.
[00:43:33] Speaker B: Yeah. You create a presence of the community and people out.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: And then when that dude's on the corner selling dope, he's like, I don't want to sell dope here.
[00:43:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: They're going to go somewhere else. Yeah. Easy stuff.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: See, you understand that because you see that because you've been there.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: Could you imagine standing in the hood and all of a sudden like, people walk. Like they're. This building hit me up at another location.
[00:43:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: So this is really common.
Yeah, I mean, this is a hot call because he tried to attack walk. But we could go ten blocks in any direction and see this same guy.
Right. Completely naked, excited delirium. That's induced psychosis. And there's just such.
[00:44:27] Speaker B: How many people do you have on your blocks? Like, how many security do you guys have? Kind of.
[00:44:31] Speaker A: We try to have one for every 30 to 35 blocks.
[00:44:34] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:44:35] Speaker A: That's kind of what we.
[00:44:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:36] Speaker A: And then we have floating supervisors that float. So Mike would be one of those floaters today.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:44:46] Speaker A: And you can just see how just. I mean, middle of the day is kind of.
[00:44:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah, it is.
[00:44:53] Speaker A: There should be so many more people on the street. If we could just get more people on the street and increase activity levels, a lot of this people just wouldn't feel as comfortable engaging in criminal activity.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
Where did a lot of those donations come from? Like, the clothing and supplies that you give people and stuff.
[00:45:11] Speaker C: What does that look like?
[00:45:12] Speaker A: We have strategic partnerships with government agencies and about 20 other nonprofits.
[00:45:17] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:45:18] Speaker A: And then we actually have buildings, multifamily residential buildings that put donation centers in their lobbies for food and clothing.
[00:45:26] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: But, yeah. It comes from county resources, city resources, churches.
We work a lot with union. Hey, we work a lot with union. Gospel mission. Okay.
[00:45:41] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: We work a lot with Portland. Rescue mission, Salvation army.
Gosh. Anybody?
Currently, the city of Portland is only third staffed for emergency services. Really? Third? Wow. According to the FBI numbers per capita, where they should be nationally, one third staffed.
[00:46:02] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:46:03] Speaker A: I think the other day we had a critical incident. A lady tried to abduct a seven year old out of one of our properties.
[00:46:10] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:46:10] Speaker A: And they only had six patrol units serving the entire central district, which is, like, 150,000 people. Six people on patrol.
[00:46:21] Speaker B: That is crazy.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: And that's insane.
[00:46:23] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:46:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:24] Speaker A: And policing isn't the answer, but it's part of the solution. It's part of the solution.
[00:46:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
Like you said, it's just the presence, right? If you have presence of community presence, police officers presence of all of this, all of that together creates something that's safe.
[00:46:40] Speaker A: But imagine, like, if love now or crossroads or other churches could come down on a weekday and help out.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: Yeah. What would that look like, Greg, if a church was to be like, man, we want to make some sort of difference, right? What would that look like? To come out in here a weekday and do what?
[00:46:58] Speaker C: What would they do?
[00:46:59] Speaker A: So we already do this. We actually do this already with other organizations, including some faith based groups. And they come and they join our team and we go tent to tent, and we work on getting people into shelters. So we shelter. Last month we sheltered 100 and 2130 people.
[00:47:17] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:47:18] Speaker A: Right.
Oh, shit.
[00:47:22] Speaker C: Oh, shit.
[00:47:25] Speaker B: Why?
[00:47:31] Speaker C: Dude, turn the fucking camera off.
Oh, fuck.
[00:47:39] Speaker A: Are y'all from Portland? Oh, yeah. This is pretty normal.
[00:47:42] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: It's sadly to say.
[00:47:45] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:47:45] Speaker A: So we're doing a documentary today about homelessness.
And so we're just walking around.
No.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: Since 2016, this has been the average.
[00:47:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: And it's sad to say, but no. I see this shit at least fucking ten times a day. Dude just broke his kilo a second ago. Yeah. No, there was a mess up on the ground. I saw it and I was like, boom. Smash into bits. It probably is.
[00:48:08] Speaker A: Oh, crazy.
Yeah.
And you all live locally?
[00:48:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I live downtown.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: Nice. Puppy dog.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. He's such sweetheart.
[00:48:20] Speaker A: Cool.
Yeah. Sad situation.
People, they use so many drugs and then they lose themselves. They just come lost from a Portlander, though. You see it so often that you come so jaded to it, though.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: I'm really apathetic to these people because they've seen it so much and I've seen them like, I've seen people. I've had friends like them that've had opportunities to get better and they just choose not to. They've had so many opportunities. Free opportunities to go into rehab.
[00:48:52] Speaker A: Free options.
[00:48:53] Speaker B: All this shit. They ignored it for the drugs.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: So you've had friends of yours that were on the street, living on the street?
[00:49:02] Speaker B: I've had friends. I've lived on street before.
[00:49:04] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:49:04] Speaker B: I've had friends around. I went and they changed way worse. They were okay on heroin.
I hate to say it, but some people are better on heroin. I wish some people were.
[00:49:15] Speaker A: Just stick to heroin.
[00:49:16] Speaker B: Fentanyl turns to a completely different person.
[00:49:18] Speaker A: It's insane.
[00:49:20] Speaker B: Like, hundred times worse than heroin ever.
[00:49:22] Speaker A: Dude, have you ever had a friend that made the decision and was able to get off the streets? Did you know anyone that made a transition?
[00:49:30] Speaker B: No. Most my friends either stick on it or have died.
[00:49:34] Speaker A: Wow. My name's Alex, by the way.
[00:49:36] Speaker B: Niall.
[00:49:37] Speaker A: Niall, nice to meet you.
[00:49:39] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I've seen a lot of people die on the streets because of this shit. And it's fucking sickening. And I piss at the governor. I piss at the governor for decriminalizing all drugs because without it, this shit would not be here when the drugs were still illegal and they'd be arrested for selling and they would be arrested for having over a certain amount and you go into forced rehab users. Yeah, it was way less on the streets. Streets weren't fucking crowded with tent cities.
[00:50:07] Speaker A: Hey, how are you? It's good to see you.
[00:50:10] Speaker B: I can't wave right now.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: Keisha. Mike. Keisha, you good?
[00:50:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm great.
[00:50:15] Speaker A: I'm going to come see you later.
All right.
She lives in a tent over off NATO. Okay.
[00:50:23] Speaker B: Do you guys want to talk to, like, a camp of teen, though, that has a youth camp? Go to 13th in Maine.
[00:50:30] Speaker A: 13Th in Maine. Okay. They might be able to talk to.
[00:50:32] Speaker B: You because they're against. They're also against this fucking fentanyl show.
[00:50:36] Speaker A: Is that at that church? The Unitarian church?
[00:50:38] Speaker B: Yes, right by the Utah.
[00:50:39] Speaker A: Okay, I know exactly.
[00:50:39] Speaker B: Outside in.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll stop by there. Outside in. Yeah.
[00:50:41] Speaker C: Perfect.
[00:50:42] Speaker B: Youth camp. Yeah. A lot of them love to be on the camera, too.
[00:50:45] Speaker A: Okay, cool. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, we'll go there.
Thanks for talking to us. Appreciate y'all.
[00:50:51] Speaker B: How's it going?
[00:50:57] Speaker A: So my keisha has been on the street for, like, a year now. Wow.
[00:51:01] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:51:04] Speaker A: That was my keisha from the other day.
So whenever you use force, even if it's like pepper spray.
[00:51:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: You want to conduct a long enough period of observation to make sure that they're okay.
You can't just use force and leave.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:21] Speaker A: So we're not really following the guy. We want the guy to deescalate, but at the same time. Oh, my gosh. Don't get hit.
[00:51:27] Speaker B: All right.
[00:51:28] Speaker A: At the same time, we're responsible to make sure that he can see. Because if he can't see. Right.
[00:51:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: He could walk into traffic like he just did. So we have to monitor him.
[00:51:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:51:39] Speaker A: And unfortunately, he keeps stepping into alcoves of our building. So all this entire building is ours. Entire block.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:47] Speaker A: And so he just punched a car window. We don't want him to attack the museum here.
[00:51:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. It's hard to hear that from people that live here that they're like, oh, this is normal.
Yeah. What are you going to do?
[00:52:03] Speaker A: This happens. What do you said five times a day?
[00:52:05] Speaker B: Ten times.
[00:52:05] Speaker A: Ten times a day. Yes. Crazy, man.
[00:52:07] Speaker B: That is crazy.
[00:52:09] Speaker A: So he's getting his clothes on. They got him to put his clothes back on, which is good. So we'll get Bach to talk to us.
Good job. He has his clothes. I think he's calmed down a little bit.
[00:52:21] Speaker C: Calmed down a little bit?
[00:52:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:34] Speaker A: Hey, how many times did you see you?
[00:52:42] Speaker B: Dude was completely, like. I was almost getting annoyed because he was being really mellow, really nice with the guy.
[00:52:48] Speaker A: Yeah, Bach.
[00:52:48] Speaker B: Really calm, trying to get him up and all that. That dude had already. We tried to get him up off our building because he's blocking the sidewalk, making my residence uncomfortable. I got a lot of elderly and disabled in here.
[00:53:00] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[00:53:00] Speaker B: And even my maintenance text made sure he was alive. And the guy said, you fuck out. Figure like that.
And so I called you guys, he rolls up, comes out and he's like, hey, come on, guys, you can't be here. And the guy starts in, fuck off. And then takes a swing. And he's lucky he got him with nice little aerosol.
[00:53:24] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:53:25] Speaker B: Because I carry the gel.
It was ridiculous.
He had his pipe right next to him.
[00:53:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:37] Speaker B: And I mean, I like how fast when you guys rolled up the fence market that was going on right there, scattered.
[00:53:44] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[00:53:52] Speaker B: But no, you were mellow. Very mellow. I appreciate you getting a handle.
[00:53:59] Speaker A: And so you hadn't touched him, you were just trying to tapped him because he was tapping him.
[00:54:05] Speaker C: First time, he was completely unresponsive.
[00:54:07] Speaker A: So I'm like, oh, that's not good.
[00:54:08] Speaker C: Are we looking for. Yeah, I got a smoking pipe and I'm thinking, is this an overdose?
[00:54:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:13] Speaker C: So tap it for responsiveness and then it becomes okay. He's willfully ignoring now.
Let me go get clothes.
[00:54:22] Speaker A: Good talking.
Yeah. So that's loving one another, obviously. Spencer, we got clothes.
[00:54:28] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:54:29] Speaker A: So we can cross the street. I appreciate it, man. Nice to meet you. Good to see again. And we met before for sure.
[00:54:34] Speaker B: I'm the other stone.
[00:54:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, exactly.
[00:54:36] Speaker C: Thank you, Ed.
[00:54:39] Speaker A: So loving one another's here.
Get some supplies, de escalate them, see if he wants to shelter.
So you asked earlier, what did droops do? Walk around and we can get people into shelters. We can call people, get people into tiny homes.
[00:54:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:55] Speaker A: Last month, I think we got around 140 people to transition from living on the street to a tiny home. Detox, a shelter, some other situation where they're in a building.
[00:55:05] Speaker B: That's amazing. Yeah, that's amazing.
It is amazing actually loving one another person. Are they coming? Is that what he's doing? Just kind of driving around, just waiting, see how he can help, how he can support.
[00:55:16] Speaker A: Exactly.
It is, bro, isn't it? I know. I love.
[00:55:20] Speaker B: It's a game changer, man.
[00:55:21] Speaker A: It is a game changer because now they can go and do their job and then he can spend another 2030 minutes, 40 minutes with him, keeping him de escalated, getting to know him. Hey, all right. So you're new. Probably just got out of prison. Obviously, you saw the ink. You look like he's a peckerwood or something.
[00:55:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:55:37] Speaker A: And so Spence will make that connect and see what we can do from there, and then these guys can go do their job.
[00:55:43] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. That is such a great. I love the working together like that of both organizations.
[00:55:50] Speaker A: Wow. Cool. See what I'm saying? Now it's a completely different. We change the social.
All right.
What's up, bro? No, we're with Bach today, man. Yeah, the baconator, the Bacchusaurus jump your car. You jump in with us. I think we're two minutes out from leaving here, probably. It looks like Spencer's got it under control.
[00:56:15] Speaker C: We're going to bounce you. Good.
[00:56:19] Speaker A: All right, cool. I'll meet you at the office. I was going to talk to rob.
[00:56:22] Speaker B: And get us some sandwiches.
[00:56:23] Speaker A: Okay, good. Yeah, he was, like, harassing all the people and sleeping in the doorway, and then he basically attacked the maintenance tech, so they called security. Bach was, like, just trying to talk to him because the guy was passed out, so he just tapped him a little bit. Guy jumped up and took a sway on Bach. So Bach pepper sprayed him and the step back. They watched him out, his eyes out four or five times.
They're not on you, brother.
I got milk coming for him. A big good.
[00:57:00] Speaker C: So we can get his eyes.
[00:57:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
All right, cool.
[00:57:04] Speaker C: All right, man.
[00:57:04] Speaker A: All right. I'll get a hold of all there. You heard there.
[00:57:06] Speaker C: No.
[00:57:06] Speaker A: How you doing?
[00:57:07] Speaker B: How you doing? Well, Ricky, nice to meet you.
[00:57:08] Speaker A: Oh, sorry. Ricky Franco works with love now out of Vancouver, and so Spencer is our.
You're good. We're not telling you.
So we might want to leave because we're escalating, Boyle.
So Spencer will probably talk to that guy and that guy. That's it. That's Terrence.
[00:57:38] Speaker B: Now. I love seeing that connection between the organization. They just jump in, kind of like.
[00:57:41] Speaker A: What can we do?
[00:57:42] Speaker B: We can board them. Yeah.
[00:57:53] Speaker A: Awesome. So we just kind of came off that hot call. Bach, do you want to kind of take 23 seconds, kind of explain exactly what happened?
[00:58:01] Speaker C: If I do 24, is that okay?
[00:58:02] Speaker A: Boom.
[00:58:03] Speaker C: Yeah, do it.
[00:58:03] Speaker A: 23 seconds.
[00:58:04] Speaker C: 23, 24.
Property owner or manager, rather, called about an individual who was on the property. Apparently, they had been smoking narcotics. They asked to have the property cleared and have the individual removed. In the process of doing so, the guy became aggressive, came at me with a fist, and he was pepper sprayed.
Tried to get him some clothing, decontaminate him, and help him comfort and all of that. But anyway, you can't win them all.
[00:58:33] Speaker A: He was yelling at the residents, yelling at the maintenance decks.
[00:58:36] Speaker C: Yeah, there were lots of threats being made and so forth. But like I said, the best you can do is try to help people where they're at. But you still have a job to do.
[00:58:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And so we were able to de escalate the situation. Got them off property. We got loving one another.
[00:58:49] Speaker C: Show up. We got him off the property. We offered him clothing. We've got new shirt, new pants. Got him socks and underwear. We got him resources and baby wipes. We deconned him, calmed him down, and then he's on his way.
[00:59:02] Speaker A: And because of your PI background, you already found video of this guy where he had already been through a whole. Been through prison, been in and out, changed his life, got completely reformed. There's a whole documentary about this guy online. Right. And it's just a really sad situation because it looks like he fell back into drugs.
[00:59:16] Speaker C: I don't know that specifically yet, but it looks like he's been through a lot is what it looks like. I haven't dug deep into all that, but I'm not going to. I mean, his. His thing is his thing, but at this time, from a distance, we just try and love people and help them.
[00:59:30] Speaker B: And you guys handled it so well from being the first time seeing it and stuff like, you guys did so great. It was so good to see all the organizations loving one another come alongside right afterward and stuff. You guys handled it well.
[00:59:39] Speaker C: The continuity of care is really where we stepped in. Right now, it's all of a sudden, I going to have him run away way without clothing on.
[00:59:46] Speaker A: Right?
[00:59:46] Speaker C: Am I going to send him out on the street and just soaking with his underwear? Right. Because he can't exactly put the shirt back on again. So it comes down to me contacting Lois, saying, look, here's a guess at what he's currently going to need. Shirt, pants, underwear, and get him what he needs. Yeah.
[01:00:02] Speaker A: So that incident soaked up a lot of time. We got to go patrol.
[01:00:05] Speaker C: Right?
[01:00:06] Speaker A: So we're going to go hit the west end part of downtown. We're going to hit some buildings. Patrol.
[01:00:10] Speaker C: Yeah. Going to go visit some properties and see kind of do your thing.
[01:00:15] Speaker A: It's holistic, it's community engagement. But we have to patrol and hit all the properties at the same time. Yeah, because it's a real neighborhood patrol.
[01:00:22] Speaker C: Lots of visits got to happen. Lots of things got to be moving around. But, yeah, I need to go out and show people that we're here.
[01:00:28] Speaker A: Awesome. So you're going to jump in with me?
[01:00:29] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:00:30] Speaker A: All right, we're going to roll. Good.
[01:00:32] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:00:39] Speaker A: Love the shorts, bro.
San Diego patrol.
Where's the volleyball court?
[01:00:47] Speaker C: Me, too, bro.
How long it's been since I've pepper sprayed somebody?
[01:00:59] Speaker A: Probably a year or two. I've only done it three times.
[01:01:03] Speaker C: Long time. It's been at least maybe a year and a half, two years. Last time I did it, it affects me.
[01:01:10] Speaker A: It hurts my lungs. I can't do it.
[01:01:12] Speaker B: So you said you hadn't pepper sprayed.
[01:01:14] Speaker A: Somebody for a long time.
[01:01:15] Speaker B: So what got you today to be like, man, that was a need. I need you to do that.
[01:01:19] Speaker C: What happened was he took a swing at me like this. While on the ground, there's no power there. I take half a step back. You don't hit me. Whatever, homie. It's all good. He stands up and is away from me like this. Then turns with a fist, violently, quick.
[01:01:36] Speaker A: And I got to give you half a kiss.
[01:01:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:01:38] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:01:41] Speaker C: All right. And so from here, I'm going to go do my thing. I've got to wait for them, right?
[01:01:47] Speaker A: I mean, yes, but no thumbs up.
[01:01:50] Speaker B: All right, let's go.
[01:02:00] Speaker A: So we got a patrol. We got to make some rounds real quick. We spent a lot of time on that call.
Good. Let's roll.
[01:02:12] Speaker C: Yeah, we're good. This is the place here that's usually the most heavily hit.
[01:02:17] Speaker A: So many people have just left? Yeah, beautiful. Just left.
They're done.
Like, this is where the needs are. But there's nothing. No one knows what to do.
[01:02:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:02:39] Speaker A: That'S our property.
[01:02:40] Speaker C: Okay, let me take that property.
[01:02:42] Speaker A: Like, every single block, like 40 properties right here are property. It just keeps going on and on.
[01:02:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:02:51] Speaker A: So he's probably doing a report real quick.
I think, like five or six photos in there. Hey, we just trolled.
[01:02:58] Speaker C: Yeah, copy. Thank you. I'm going to call the ERP now. I don't know what's happening.
[01:03:02] Speaker A: So we're just here on Burnside, man, like, patrolling.
[01:03:04] Speaker C: Hello. It's like a horror movie.
Thank you. He said it's like a horror movie in person. There is nothing I have ever seen.
[01:03:12] Speaker A: In my eyes that take my emotions to what I'm seeing. Portland, Portland itself.
[01:03:19] Speaker C: It's the first time I've ever seen it.
[01:03:21] Speaker A: It's like, where are you from? It's borderline Florida.
[01:03:25] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:03:25] Speaker A: Versus war.
[01:03:26] Speaker C: What you see after. What war? Yeah.
[01:03:29] Speaker B: It's not good.
[01:03:30] Speaker A: It is. Have you been in war conflict areas?
[01:03:32] Speaker C: No, sir.
[01:03:33] Speaker A: It's very similar to that.
[01:03:34] Speaker B: Yes, I see, they're just a bunch of beaten down human beings.
[01:03:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:03:39] Speaker C: May have the help they need, but they don't have the strength mentally to go through and follow through with it.
[01:03:45] Speaker A: Yeah. They have no sense of agency. They can't even make decisions for themselves.
[01:03:49] Speaker C: And this is a great example of a human needs to be protected from themselves.
Freedom is not. We don't need it this free. We need laws and ordinances in place to protect us from.
[01:04:02] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah.
[01:04:03] Speaker C: Don't get me wrong, I love freedom, but we can be too free in my eyes.
[01:04:07] Speaker A: Oh, I agree.
Awesome.
Thanks for the word, man.
[01:04:12] Speaker C: Have a good day.
[01:04:13] Speaker A: Your opinion matters.
[01:04:14] Speaker C: Trying to stay safe, right?
[01:04:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:04:18] Speaker C: Yesterday we had a scenario where, gosh, it's so emotionally exhausting to describe what happened, but it was something like this.
We had an attempted kidnapping. Myself and another coworker of mine go and talk to the victim and the victim's mom. We're talking to child. The suspect is still standing in front of us. And throughout the whole experience, we're trying to call police. We're trying to get everything here and get it coordinated, and at the end, nothing.
Yeah. And now, like, this person who needs mental health services and who's a missing person and whose mother flew in from Arizona to search homeless camps for her.
[01:05:06] Speaker A: Lady living on the streets, mental health crisis believes that this other lady's daughter is her daughter son.
[01:05:13] Speaker C: But something like.
[01:05:16] Speaker A: Kidnapped.
[01:05:17] Speaker C: Kidnapped the child. The child's crying, standing in front of the mother. We stopped. We stopped the whole event.
The father shows up irate. He's like, I've called the police. I've called the police. I called the police four times. And North Precinct, it's been an hour, no longer. And then she leaves. We and Eric go on a ten block walk with her, just updating them where the suspect is and all that. She ends up threatening us, saying, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill everything. Goes over to Pioneer Square, gets in the fountain, starts screaming and making a huge show. The police essentially just, hey, look, the victim said they don't want to press charges. They were saying, we don't have a crime because we don't have a victim. I said, okay, well, what about mental health services? And she says, well, we've got two such and such people that are specially trained to evaluate this. And they say, if we just leave her alone, she'll just go away.
And I'm like, okay. I literally turned to the police officer, said, you know what? I said, you're breaking my heart right now.
[01:06:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:06:20] Speaker C: I said, do you think that's what she needs?
[01:06:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:06:24] Speaker C: We then later found out that her mother's been up here from Arizona searching homeless camps for her. Wow.
[01:06:31] Speaker A: Look.
[01:06:31] Speaker B: And is that what we're doing to a lot of the homeless and people?
[01:06:33] Speaker A: Right.
[01:06:33] Speaker B: Like, if we just forget about them, it'll be okay?
[01:06:36] Speaker C: How many times do people in this town walk up to someone in that societal member of the community and step over them?
[01:06:44] Speaker A: So police officers ask them. The majority of what cops do is called a criminal mandate. They're working with this criminal mandate, but there's a very slim, narrow part of the law that's civil and that's with mental health. So police officers, if someone's a danger to themselves or others, they're allowed to affect a police officer whole, take the person into custody and get them the care they need, and this essentially doesn't happen anymore.
[01:07:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:07:10] Speaker A: This wasn't the first child she tried to abduct.
[01:07:12] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:07:13] Speaker A: The second child in one day.
[01:07:15] Speaker B: Wow.
[01:07:15] Speaker A: This lady is a danger to other people.
[01:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:07:17] Speaker A: Because she thinks that a microwave is changing the face of these children and that that's really her daughter. She just can't see her face. And so this lady is going to continue to abduct children unless she's regulated and put in a situation where she can normalize.
[01:07:34] Speaker B: Well, we're the burden that you guys are holding, too, when you guys.
[01:07:40] Speaker C: Past week has been rough.
[01:07:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:07:42] Speaker C: I walk in at, like, 05:00 in the morning. One of my coworkers went home because he was a witness to a homicide. Looks out the passenger side window. The dude gets shot right in the face, and he hits the throttle. This happened. And you know what? I know the guy, the victim. I've been in touch with that officer. Like, dude, I'm checking in you on you, man. How are you doing mentally? How are you doing emotionally? Where are you at, brother? You're good to go. It's not about that. You're digesting trauma at such a wild bulk.
That last Saturday, there was that active shooter up at Good Samaritan Hospital. We had over five overdoses. Over five in one day by our guys, like, people stepping over. I spend most of my days walking up to people, shaking them on the shoulder, man. Bro, you're all right.
[01:08:26] Speaker A: You're good.
[01:08:26] Speaker C: You breathe in.
[01:08:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:08:27] Speaker C: And then you move on. You're breathing. Okay, good. That's all I have.
[01:08:30] Speaker A: I think a month ago, we Narcan like, nine people in one day, dude.
[01:08:33] Speaker C: It's been outrageous. Outrageous.
[01:08:37] Speaker A: Good.
[01:08:39] Speaker B: What do you think is a big next step to real social change. I don't know. Right.
[01:08:47] Speaker A: I work on an executive level with people in the city, the county, state programs. And my suggestion is that the state of Oregon allows firefighters and EMTs to have a law enforcement mandate that is reserved to conduct a police officer hold so that firefighters and EMTs can actually take people to a manual hospital without the need of a police officer on site. Because as an EMT and bucks an EMT, he's been EMT, what, eight, nine years?
[01:09:15] Speaker C: No, more like 1515 years.
[01:09:17] Speaker A: Wow.
You're trained. And see someone that's in a real psychosis so long term, I mean, there's a lot of good plans in place. We need more shelter capacity.
They've effectively gotten rid of camping, but it's not enforced. Same thing with the narcotics. Technically illegal to use narcotics, but it's not enforced. Yeah, and there's no will to enforce it. There's none of the DA that would want to throw people in jail for using drugs. And I don't know if they even should be. Right.
[01:09:50] Speaker C: I mean. Yeah.
[01:09:51] Speaker A: The main concern is that the drugs that we use now, all synthetics, they lead to serious psychosis where people are out of their minds.
[01:10:04] Speaker C: How you doing, buddy? You're not in trouble? I'm Michael. I work for security. Work for the property.
Can I talk to you for a moment?
Would you like a cigarette? Yeah.
Here you go.
My name is Michael.
Hey, the property manager.
[01:10:26] Speaker A: I'm over.
[01:10:27] Speaker C: Wants to keep the door clear.
[01:10:28] Speaker A: That dude looks like pretty trouble.
[01:10:30] Speaker C: Can you do me a favor, maybe gather your stuff and move along?
[01:10:32] Speaker A: This dude's in trouble.
[01:10:33] Speaker C: I appreciate you, dude. What's your name? You seem like a super nice guy. Yeah, you're Michael, too.
All right, my man.
You stay around here. Do you need resources? You got food and all.
[01:10:54] Speaker A: The south. We always.
[01:10:58] Speaker C: Have is all the food and clothing that they need.
[01:11:01] Speaker A: I'm in Texas.
[01:11:02] Speaker C: And you're good there.
[01:11:04] Speaker A: That's just weird.
[01:11:06] Speaker C: You seem hesitant. Do you have anything you need, my man?
[01:11:10] Speaker A: I thought I'd stay over here. I didn't want to roll up on them.
[01:11:12] Speaker C: You're all right.
[01:11:12] Speaker A: It was already de escalated.
[01:11:14] Speaker C: Okay, so less is more. You know where you can get food regularly?
That's one spot. Yeah. There's also the union gospel. There's also Portland rescue mission.
Okay.
Do you know where you're going to stay tonight?
[01:11:32] Speaker A: The call was narcotics use, but if someone was heavily.
[01:11:35] Speaker C: Because if you need a city team voucher, my man, I can get you one.
[01:11:38] Speaker A: They wouldn't even be.
[01:11:39] Speaker C: You heard a city team? Yeah, they're across the river, right? They do food and they do maybe hit a bowl.
[01:11:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:11:47] Speaker C: Do you want one?
Yeah. You want a city team voucher, my man. I'll hook you up.
[01:11:54] Speaker A: So this is their lunch crop.
[01:11:56] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:11:57] Speaker C: Very.
[01:11:57] Speaker A: A lot less, more business. Not a lot of restaurants we came from.
[01:12:02] Speaker B: It was packed and.
[01:12:03] Speaker A: Yeah, so just when we were over there, no activity because of that engagement here.
[01:12:08] Speaker C: Engagement soon here.
[01:12:09] Speaker A: This is a federal building, actually.
[01:12:10] Speaker C: Give them out enough, okay?
[01:12:11] Speaker A: There's a daycare, but you know, to be there early in the federal building, all their kids are daycare. Right in this room right here.
[01:12:17] Speaker C: City teams, you would think that they would want.
[01:12:20] Speaker A: Bro, look, to stop this activity.
[01:12:22] Speaker C: But, mom, people don't think.
[01:12:24] Speaker A: They don't think that way.
[01:12:24] Speaker C: But if you want, like, help with treatment, they can help you with that, too. Okay, bud. All right. Let me write this up for you. Okay.
All right.
Good to meet you. And if you need. Hey, look, we're friends. If you need anything in the future, you let me know, my man. All right, budy. Hang on there. Thank you.
All done.
[01:12:53] Speaker A: So back to west end.
[01:12:54] Speaker C: 705, I'm clear here, and 710. Are you good to go there or you need hand?
I don't see anybody so far.
Copy. All right, well, I'll head back to west end. Thank you.
[01:13:14] Speaker A: Okay, awesome. We just wrapped up this call. You said narcotics? The guy seems to be pretty coherent, though, right?
[01:13:20] Speaker C: Nice guy.
[01:13:20] Speaker A: Probably smoked a bowl, maybe a joint. Didn't seem like he was on.
[01:13:23] Speaker C: No, but very nice guy. Very receptive to getting resources. We chatted him for a little bit, got him a voucher over for city team ministries. Overnight.
[01:13:33] Speaker A: Love it.
[01:13:34] Speaker C: So he's going to go take a shower, get a night, get a good night meal. I offered him resources and just said, hey, look, if you need anything else, reach out, let me know. Gave him a cigarette. We made friends and parted ways, but I love it.
[01:13:47] Speaker A: So we just got a call.
People walking a doorway, likely narcotics use. We're en route a couple minutes away. All right. My name is Alex, bro.
[01:13:57] Speaker C: I am in the middle of filming.
[01:13:59] Speaker A: Nice to meet you, man. If you see me around, you know, Spence, big Spence.
[01:14:02] Speaker C: Can I call you back later?
[01:14:03] Speaker A: No, I work with Spence. So if you see me or Spence or Terrence or any of us around, bro, please know that we can get you into a shelter, right? Even if it's only for a week or two. Get cleaned up a little bit, maybe some new clothes or whatever.
Living on the streets, bro, is hard man, that's just hard. It'll eat you up. The streets always win, bro. You can't win on the streets. The streets always win.
Feel me?
Hey, are these yours? Hey, my man.
Are these your sunglasses?
He was really nice. He knew Spencer. I mentioned at the end, I was like, bro, we work with this security company, and we just try to talk to people. Like, we talked to you today. I asked him, I said, I'll drive you to city team right now. Yeah, I will take the rest of my day off.
He's like, maybe not today, right? And so basically, I just told him, hey, could you work with us? If you move, then that company that he works for, they won't get any more calls today, and we don't have to keep coming back here.
[01:15:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:15:07] Speaker A: And I was like, I know it's a lot to ask, bro, because when you're on the streets, you feel like you don't have any control over anything. And the last thing you want to do is give up your ability to make decisions for yourself to somebody else, like me. But, bro, seriously, bro, I'm just trying to work with you. I ain't that guy trying to control you. And he's like, no, that's cool, man. I can move. It's not a big deal.
Some yelling.
So hopefully they're going to demolish just three quarters of this block right here.
[01:15:35] Speaker C: Really?
[01:15:36] Speaker A: Pretty much condemned right now. Not this one, but this one up on the right.
[01:15:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:15:40] Speaker C: Doing all right. Hey, do you need anything?
Okay. Hey. Sorry, I don't know how close you were to Wolverine. Were you close to him?
[01:15:49] Speaker A: No.
[01:15:50] Speaker C: Okay.
Yes, sir.
[01:15:53] Speaker B: He died?
[01:15:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
I don't want to block your way, but I want to whisper. Dude, he was shot.
Really? Yeah, this is what everybody's telling me, including the guy who was there.
[01:16:09] Speaker B: Wow.
[01:16:10] Speaker C: Yeah. I hate to be the one to tell you, but I thought you knew. I was just going to offer my condolences, my man.
Yeah.
You remember the shooting recently? Like, a couple of nights ago at the shake shake bar up by the parking lot up there on fourth lot. Easier than him. Yeah. I don't know the story, I don't.
[01:16:31] Speaker A: Know the details, but contact.
[01:16:32] Speaker C: Apparently he got into some altercation with a dude and he got shot in the head.
Happened right in front of one of our.
[01:16:37] Speaker A: I guarantee you, if you got, like, five or ten volunteers, and we went to the pit, two or 3 hours.
[01:16:42] Speaker C: Do you need a cigarette?
[01:16:43] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[01:16:43] Speaker C: I know you got one, man, but I don't care. I'll give you something.
[01:16:45] Speaker A: And we said, like, just feeding people, giving off.
[01:16:47] Speaker C: Really sorry.
Look, you need anything? If you hit me up, okay, brother.
[01:16:52] Speaker A: I bet we would get two people.
[01:16:53] Speaker C: Industry. Whatever you need, we'll do what we can to help.
[01:16:55] Speaker A: That doesn't seem like a lot.
[01:16:57] Speaker C: Yeah, because there's a hundred.
[01:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah, you gotta start somewhere.
[01:17:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:17:01] Speaker B: Every person. Every person's a friend, man.
[01:17:03] Speaker A: Good.
[01:17:04] Speaker C: He's a friend of the dude who got murdered, and he didn't know it. He didn't know he got murdered. I told him. I said, look, man, I'm really sorry. He's like, what?
I had to tell him. I'm like, look, man, I'm sorry about what happened with Wolverine. He goes, what are you talking about?
Wolverine was shot. He's killed.
Yeah. I don't want to be the death notification for somebody, anybody else. But he's like, I didn't know that. I'm like, dude, I'm so sorry. Like, a couple nights ago, he was shot in the head. And he's like, I didn't know.
I didn't know.
[01:17:38] Speaker A: All right, no more calls.
[01:17:40] Speaker C: No more calls. At least not right now. None holding.
[01:17:43] Speaker A: Awesome.
[01:17:44] Speaker B: Hey, brother, you okay?
[01:17:47] Speaker C: Do it again.
[01:17:47] Speaker B: Hey, brother, are you okay?
[01:17:50] Speaker C: He looks like he's breathing.
[01:17:52] Speaker B: Looks like he's breathing.
[01:17:57] Speaker C: Just keep it in like this.
Take a deep breath.
Take a deep breath.
I'm on the phone with 911 right now.
That's a lot of alcohol.
[01:18:23] Speaker A: Yeah. He's also pissed himself. I think I smell feces as well. Yeah, so he's pretty out of it.
[01:18:29] Speaker C: I know he's having trouble reading. Can I get you to stand back, my man? I'm an EMT. Can I get you to stand back, please?
[01:18:34] Speaker A: Hey, bro. Hey, come sit over here with me, man.
[01:18:38] Speaker C: Hey, buddy.
[01:18:40] Speaker A: Thanks, man. I appreciate it.
[01:18:41] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you.
[01:18:44] Speaker A: That woke him up a little bit.
[01:18:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
Come on, budy. Little cern roll, but won't hurt him.
[01:18:50] Speaker A: Come on, budy, bro.
[01:18:51] Speaker C: Take a deep breath.
[01:18:52] Speaker A: There you go.
Is he breathing? Yeah.
[01:19:01] Speaker C: That's a lot of alcohol.
[01:19:04] Speaker B: He is, Gary, an air force veteran.
Any of you are.
[01:19:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:19:10] Speaker C: Hang on a second.
Watch your fingers.
He slumped over forward with these two.
[01:19:28] Speaker A: Boards, and then he went back and boom, hit his head.
[01:19:31] Speaker C: Hey, I'm kind of glad we stopped.
[01:19:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:19:42] Speaker C: There we go.
[01:20:00] Speaker B: Hey, Gary, we're going to get you in the ambulance, and you're going to go to the hospital, buddy, okay? Can you shake your head?
Okay, so you know you're going to the hospital.
[01:20:13] Speaker C: I think you guys might end up needing to tube him.
Yeah, come look.
[01:20:19] Speaker B: Hey, buddy.
[01:20:25] Speaker C: He was found slumped down, face over. We know his name's Gary. Two empty bottles next to him. He's been very unresponsive, highly intoxicated, shallow breathing the whole time. I can barely feel a pulse. Occasionally I get something that looks more than agonial breathing, but here we are.
[01:20:39] Speaker B: Hey, Gary. Yeah, I just did that.
[01:20:55] Speaker C: My name is Michael.
I'm an EMT.
Yeah, pretty good man. How are you?
[01:21:13] Speaker A: Easily could have died. Yeah, he would just roll back through, up, took it on and then died.
[01:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah. It's so easy to everybody just walk by him and not even notice.
[01:21:29] Speaker C: The o two sat measured at 89. Two saturation is a measure of bound hemoglobin in the blood. Hemoglobin binds to oxygen, but it also binds to carbon dioxide, so you have to use that with a little bit of interpretation. 89 is super low. Typical. You and me sitting around, you're going to be 99, you're going to be 99, you're going to be jogging, you're going to be like, 97. You're never going to get that low. So he's not breathing.
[01:21:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:21:55] Speaker C: Wow.
You can offer emergency medical care under good Samarit law until professional medical care becomes readily available.
[01:22:09] Speaker B: Got it.
[01:22:09] Speaker C: Then it stops, which is why when they show up, I immediately give a report and I'm out.
Unless I'm being directed by them to continue by something. Right. Which I can do and I can tell them. And it's like, hey, we're good to go. Yeah, no, he's breathing. Breathing poorly, but breathing. And it looks like it's substance alcohol intoxication.
Yeah, it looks like alcohol. Severe alcohol intoxication.
[01:22:36] Speaker A: Give them a card. Your management should hire us.
[01:22:39] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:22:40] Speaker A: We're the security company. We have, like, looking for security at this hotel. Yeah, I mean, this is like the busiest street.
[01:22:46] Speaker C: Yeah. Cool.
[01:22:47] Speaker A: Thanks, bro.
We do across the street, we have like 50 clients in the area.
Yeah, we'll let Bach wrap up.
So, Bach, let's do a recap real quick. So I was driving.
[01:23:00] Speaker C: Yeah, just basically driving. I mean, normally when we're moving around, I'm concerned about the people that are around me. And so when I see somebody that's down, it doesn't look like things are going so well. We'll usually just shout or look at their shoulder.
[01:23:11] Speaker A: And we rolled the window down, we shouted him.
[01:23:14] Speaker C: There's no response. Then it's like, okay, get me out. I need to do a shoulder shake. I do a shoulder shake. Nothing. And that his feet is a lot, a lot of empty alcohol. And so at that point, then you just jump into full assessment, making sure that he's both breathing properly, has a good pulse, has his airway opened and maintained, and that you get 911 to me activated and getting here quickly.
[01:23:35] Speaker A: What I noticed immediately for a guy sitting in the sun, his skin was real white, modeled his lips, kind of even looked a little purple or blue to me.
[01:23:43] Speaker C: Yeah, he wasn't breathing properly. So when the medics got here, I heard them shout that his oxygen saturation was at 89. Typically you're going to find somebody more than a 95 that's cruising around.
[01:23:55] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:23:55] Speaker C: If you are a cigarette smoker that's habitual, you might get like a 93, you might even get worse. Then you start getting into like, home oxygen problems. But 89, there's an issue that has to be solved. And so given the fact that his pulse was thready and I had a hard time finding it, we maintain the airway, keep it open, put him in the recovery position until we didn't see breathing, then move him back just to make sure he's not vomiting and so forth. But should his breathing had dropped a little bit more, it would have been CPR. Start CPR. Yeah.
[01:24:26] Speaker A: He also eventually he woke up, fell back and hit his head.
[01:24:29] Speaker C: Yeah, I was contemplating my head. Just starting compressions right then, but I'm like, where am I at? Because if you're breathing, you've got a pulse. But he was breathing a little bit more than ago. Is like one of those things that's brain stem. It's not life supporting, and it's like.
And then like 6 seconds go by and then.
So you're not moving enough. There's not enough exchange to sustain life. So glad we did a little shake.
[01:24:54] Speaker A: You were checking a femoral artery?
[01:24:56] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:24:56] Speaker A: Also I think maybe up in the shoulder. Carotid is carotid.
[01:24:59] Speaker C: Yeah. Checking everywhere, see if I could find a pulse. It was so.
[01:25:01] Speaker A: It was slow. It's almost as if it was slowing. Right until the medics got here.
[01:25:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:25:07] Speaker A: Good find.
[01:25:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Good job.
[01:25:09] Speaker A: Yeah. All right.
[01:25:11] Speaker C: Glad he's okay. Glad we stopped. Shoulder shake complete. Onto the next one.
[01:25:14] Speaker A: All right, good talk.
[01:25:15] Speaker B: Good catch.
[01:25:15] Speaker C: Good talk.
Yeah. Right now, after what just happened, we're just going through Alex's medical kit. Some of it's trauma related, some of it's just bumps and bruises and such. Right now, just giving it once over to make sure that it's got everything that it needs. Okay. This is okay. We need to stage this differently. Everything looks okay.
I'm not going to complain about that. This should be in here. Unless you have some other crazy reason why it needs to be in another.
[01:25:55] Speaker A: Spot, we're going to head this way.
[01:25:58] Speaker C: All right. That's good for me to keep.
[01:26:01] Speaker A: We should great to replace the other.
[01:26:02] Speaker C: We should go through that, freshen it up a little bit. I'm looking for chest seals. I'm looking for israeli bandages. I'm looking for combat Israeli in here.
[01:26:11] Speaker A: I know I got it somewhere.
[01:26:12] Speaker C: You have a swat t in there?
[01:26:13] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:26:13] Speaker C: Yeah. And then you've got some quick clot. So we got a little bit of improvement to do, but I've seen worse.
[01:26:20] Speaker A: Thanks, bro.
[01:26:21] Speaker C: Yeah, Miamino. Something's better than nothing.
[01:26:24] Speaker A: Again. That guy. That was amazing, man. You jumped in there so good. That last call.
You just get inundated by the whole environment. How many people do we see passing out all the time? And you took the initiative to stop and actually contact that guy, likely saved his life. He could easily have passed out and vomited. Suffocated on his own vomit. Fixated.
[01:26:49] Speaker C: I tend to think that looking at him, and I think that if we'd have left him alone, we'd had a bad outcome. I really do.
Nobody likes to see people out here hurting like that. I know that's the guy, but I think the culture, the community in general, has to start being willing to look down and lift a brother up.
[01:27:15] Speaker B: Well, it reminds me of that conversation we had earlier, and the guy was just like, wow, this is just normal. This happens ten times a day.
[01:27:20] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[01:27:21] Speaker B: Not even a big deal. And you're like, yeah. And it reminded me, like, as we were going, and you noticed that guy, and I thought to myself, like, man, why? Why didn't I notice him right away? What's holding me back from seeing that?
[01:27:32] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:27:32] Speaker B: And it's because of this place. Like, you just become blocked. Like, no, this is just normal.
And so for me.
[01:27:41] Speaker C: It meant a.
[01:27:41] Speaker B: Lot to me to be able to see how you can watch out for that. And thinking, yeah, that's what we do if we're watching out for the one person, and if everybody watches out for that one person, what a change it can make. What a change it can make in the community and the lives of other people.
[01:27:55] Speaker A: Just during this little patrol time that we've had together, what the audience is just now finding out, which we found out during lunchtime, was that loving one another was actually able to. That guy on the street, Jesse, who actually tried to take a swing at you, he was able to get him into a facility, and so we transitioned him into care successfully. He's under supervision right now at a facility, and it's actually probably the best facility he could be going to. Yeah.
[01:28:26] Speaker C: Right now for what he needs, I think the mental and alcohol and counseling and the services that he really needs, I think, are really going to be found there, and I think he should be able to find himself a grounding to be able to just set some peace and then start to put the puzzles back in, because right now, what had ended up happening is out on scene. We found out shortly later that he was suicidal, and he met all the criteria for somebody who's actively in crisis. And just because he's quiet and not moving doesn't mean he's not in crisis, because the crisis happens here in a. Here.
[01:28:59] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:28:59] Speaker C: It's heart and mind. And if those two things are in a state of brokenness and in a state of pain, then what can happen is if we're ignoring them, then that doesn't get corrected, that doesn't get healed. But right now, it looks like he's in a great spot, and hopefully he can continue that trajectory and heal. Awesome.
[01:29:15] Speaker B: What a great example of just within a few hours at the beginning of a life transition or change that could happen. Then we're like, well, what can I do? Well, just within a couple of hours, this whole change happened, which is amazing.
[01:29:27] Speaker A: It is amazing. So that was the first person we contacted transitioned them into mental health care.
[01:29:32] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:29:33] Speaker A: Someone that was combative. I mean, in the typical scenario, that person hit somebody to go to jail, they get another felony on their record. But now, hopefully, this might lead to a long road of recovery for them.
[01:29:47] Speaker C: Right.
[01:29:48] Speaker A: Second person we contacted, we offered him the ability. We said, hey, I'll take you to city team. I can get you hooked up right now. We'll drive you over there. He was like, you know, that sounds good, but I don't want to do that today. So we made a good contact there. He already knew Spence. He already knew loving one another. But again, that's one more contact. You ask someone 20 times that 21st time, they're going to say, yeah.
[01:30:06] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:30:07] Speaker A: And then the third major contact we had today during the shift was this guide right here. I mean, literally, this guy was 30 minutes away from dying, from passing out, and stopping all activity, breathing activity. Right.
That's a successful day. Yeah, it really is. And you did it all, man. It's up to you.
[01:30:26] Speaker C: It's all you, bro.
[01:30:28] Speaker A: I love it.
[01:30:29] Speaker C: It's not put on any one person, like, we're all responsible for the people that are around us.
I tell people all the time, what is love?
Yes, what is it? And I can tell you what it's not. It's not the feeling of you have the butterflies when you're asking someone to go to the prom. Because love is the devotion to the well being of others without regard to the cost or their response. So being devoted to who needs what. I'm devoted to you. So a fireman running into a burning building, and there's people inside. I'm devoted to your well being. You're showing love. I don't care what it costs me. I'm here to help you. I love you. And so all of Portland really is in a state where there's so much shock and awe and horror and pain, but really it's. Look, who is it that's right next to you that's in a position of hurt and pain so much, where you can actually show love and kindness to them and say, man, okay, maybe this is only a 15 minutes contact, but I'm not afraid of making another friend. How about you?
[01:31:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:31:35] Speaker A: In fact, one of the other contacts we had today was you conducting that kind of death notification.
[01:31:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:31:43] Speaker A: You noticed a guy on the street that we work with all the time. You mentioned to him that his friend had just been shot the other day in front of one of our guards.
[01:31:50] Speaker C: That was really unfortunate. I assumed at the time that he had known about the decedent and assumed, look, you can always make mistakes. Right? And you don't want to be the one who dropped bad news, and you don't want to be the guy who delivers that. But I walked up to offer condolences and ended up finding out that he didn't know.
We're all affected when we have people that we know that die. But at the same time, like, if you need anything, man, let me know. I'm happy to help.
[01:32:19] Speaker A: In an atypical community, you would be getting contacted by the military or law enforcement, a chaplain. And so you're fulfilling that role.
[01:32:27] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:32:28] Speaker A: On the streets.
[01:32:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:32:31] Speaker A: That's a vital piece of communicative role, that role in the neighborhood. Right. And you provided that today. Just that small influence. Being able to take that social dynamic and be an influencer in that dynamic at that time positions you to be able to have leverage in someone's life and be able to speak hope into their life, seek faith into there but.
[01:32:54] Speaker C: For the grace of God, go I. Because, man, I can tell you I've had more than one negative encounter in my life. And I've had more than one time where I felt like I've been down and been kicked and such. And I can remember a very vivid time where people said things that significantly hurt. But it is what I needed to hear. And those moments I will never forget because they changed my life. And I was able to say, okay, look, this is where the boat's headed. It's not directionally correct. I'm not headed in the right direction. And it doesn't matter how long it takes to get to a destination, but if I'm headed in the wrong direction, I will never get there. But if I keep pointing in the correct direction and just keep taking steps every day a step, then you can get from here to seattle on foot. But you're going to run into bridges and construction sites, and you're going to run into rivers and people, and you're going to run into all sorts of obstacles, and you're going to run into needing food and you name it.
But the point is, if you keep yourself directionally correct, you will get there.
[01:33:51] Speaker B: You guys set an example. Amazing example, I think, of when you talk about love, because I know we were talking about love earlier, too, and the idea of what does it mean to love other people? And I saw you guys do that. Giving people water, giving people food, giving people the things they need, giving people even just a moment of your time to just say, hey, I'm sorry. What an amazing thing to take those moments throughout the day, even in the midst of all the other work that you guys are doing, already saying, this is more important right now. This person is so important that I'm going to stop and do that. So thank you.
[01:34:22] Speaker A: Thank you for coming on the ride along, man. I'm excited to have you here.
[01:34:25] Speaker B: That's so good.
[01:34:26] Speaker A: Gosh, we appreciate everyone from everyone here on the team always playing their role and their part. And we're going to have more of these. Check us out online. The ride along podcast, Ricky Franco. Check him out. Love now at Crossroads church in Vancouver. And of course, echelon. Bought from echelon. Appreciate it. Enjoy it. Have a great day.
Got another call.
[01:35:03] Speaker C: No, I'm just upside down and alligators and 25 reports behind. And some of them are going to take probably an hour to write. It's just going to be okay.
[01:35:13] Speaker B: That's what it is, man.
[01:35:14] Speaker C: I want to go take off my body armor somewhere and soak in a tub and voice dictate.
[01:35:22] Speaker A: Someone.
[01:35:23] Speaker C: Jesus, they always spell my words wrong.
[01:35:25] Speaker A: They do. It's just my work.
[01:35:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:35:27] Speaker B: You have to go back and you're looking for every single word.
