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 guest and I witness firsthand the issues affecting our community.
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 community.
Alex Stone here. Welcome back to the ride along. Today's guest, Mark Wells, former Air marshal, former police officer, and has his hands in all kinds of other things. We'll find out that later. Mark, why don't you introduce yourself to the folks?
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Alex, first, it's great to be on the show. I really, really appreciate it. We've known each other, gosh, for what, six ish years now or so. Yeah. And you've been asking me to come here for a while, and I'm busy, and so it's good to be in.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: You are a busy man.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: I'm busy, but busy is good. Yeah. So let's see. Yeah. Mark Wells. I currently work for our downtown enhanced service district called clean and safe. I've been in the downtown area. That's my day job.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: You're fantastic at your job as well.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Well, thank you. Thank you. The best part of the job is I get to work with tons and tons of different organizations, whether it's private security, loss prevention, Portland Police Bureau, law enforcement. That's what I enjoy the most.
It's fun to be around today, to share with you. I would say fun isn't the right word. It's a heavy day. It's 911.
And 22 years ago, I changed jobs. I was working for the government.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: I was doing background investigation. I started off in San Diego on the board of troll.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Well, before we go there.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Yeah, totally.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Today is 911, and we want to remember those who suffered and died on this day. It led our country down many roads. Right. Some were hard to go down. We went down all of them. We're a different nation for it, I think. Mostly better. Right. Where were you on 911?
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And it was interesting last night I was watching some of the old footage from the news, watching it. And it's hard to see, of course.
And you think of those days, like, I remember when Ronald Reagan was shot. Like, was coming home from school. Right. So you remember when the space shuttle blew up. Right. Different things. So I was literally in my apartment in San Diego. I was a background investigator for the government. Was about ready to go out and do field work. So I did pre employment security clearance investigations or updates.
Really cool job.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: That sounds fun.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: I was awesome. I could be interviewing the captain of an aircraft carrier in the morning. Down SEAL teams did a lot of their five year updates, and then a brand new college grad that wants to be a customs agent doing their initial background. So I was literally packing my bags, getting ready to go out to do fieldwork. Phone rang, and it was from my boss saying, all military bases are closed.
Have you seen the news? And I said, no, I haven't seen the news. So obviously hopped on the news and, like, everybody around the country in the world stopped, paused, you know, watched it. And so all the bases, because we did a lot of work for DoD, so, you know, all the bases were shut down. So, yeah, I was in my apartment watching it. My mom called from San Diego, talking to friends and family, and, yeah, it changed the course of a lot of things for a lot of different people.
And I applied for the air marshal service right when it opened up. It was a couple months afterwards.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: And I actually came up to Portland. I took a transfer.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: So did you know you were like, I have to do something?
[00:03:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, it was. Yeah. And it was interesting.
There was. Talk is the first round of hiring for the air marshals was usually current federal law enforcement are people that had a top secret level.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Oh, I didn't know that.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Yep. So the first kind of wave because they hired thousands of people, but. But they had to ramp up really, really fast. So they were looking for people that like border patrol, customs, even some of your specific service. Yep. Anybody that was active or recently separated had an active clearance because, again, you. It was like a lateral transfer in a police department. Right. There's no training. Well, we went to training, but you could go over and do all that.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: Some pew, pew stuff, you know.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: Well, it's actually interesting. We went to Virginia, Reston, Virginia.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: I want to say it was a week and a half of training, which was all firearms related.
And for me, professionally, I did three years in the border patrol. I was a background investigator at that point for, like, two years. My classmates were.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: So. I didn't know that you were border patrol. I had no idea.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And it was interesting, you know, and talking, which I'd love to get into you today, about just the police profession and the challenge of hiring good people and retaining good people.
I got out of college with my shiny little criminology degree.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Very shiny. Yeah. I bust tables at a mexican restaurant in college.
This is a fun story to share with your viewers or maybe people that are starting their journey into law enforcement or people that are already in it. This was. What was this, 1995 ish six? I'm 50, so I forget all these days. Bear with me. And literally, I had my shiny degree, and I started applying to police departments. And I remember I drove out to. I wanted to move maybe to Colorado. So I drove out my parents minivan, the wood siding, drove all the way out there, took the test for Arvada City police department, and I thought, well, how hard can it be? Clean background. I got a bachelor's degree.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Before you arrive, this is. You're thinking this on your way?
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I'm like, how hard? You know?
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Stellar candidate.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. So youth and naivete, right? So I take the test. I go through. I made it through the written, made it through the first round of interviews, got invited back to the second round of interviews, and then after that, I got done. And the sergeant, the recruiting sergeant comes out, he'll say, oh, mister, Will. Snakes. Thanks for driving all the way out from San Diego. And, you know, you've, you know, got a good records, got you, got your degree and everything else, but the applicant, before you, to give you an idea of the people we hire, just got out of the army. He was an army ranger for ten years, has two master's degrees, and speaks three languages. So you need to go back, get into the real world. Volunteer work. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Which I appreciate taking the time. Right. But the interesting part was you'd have one opening in any police department, and you'd have hundreds of applicants.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: Which is what you want.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: The first time I went was actually Washington State Patrol. And I thought, you know, I was officer in the army, you know, had a great background, nothing. Nothing going on there. And I thought, well, this will be easy. I show up and they're hiring for five slots. 220 people are showing up.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: And, I mean, I smoked the PT. I was actually really in shape back then.
I was actually third, me and the drill sergeant for Fort Vancouver, which is now closed. Right?
He came in first. Another guy from there came in second. I came in third.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: And I said, hey, aren't you a drill sergeant? I was like, are you gonna pace me? I'm gonna follow right behind you. And, yeah, 200 plus people showed up for five slots.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: It was everywhere I went. I'd go to hiring, you know, all around southern California in different parts because I could deliver. I wanted, you know, single, whatever. And, yeah, you'd go. I remember the highway patrol was hiring same thing. It'd be an auditorium with. And they say, well, we're looking to hire maybe a class of 30. And you're looking around. Yeah. And that's how it should be. Absolutely right.
So, yeah, I got hired by a huge hiring wave, the border patrol, in 1996. You know, they were beefing up the border patrol, and that was my. Kind of my doorway into law enforcement. Great federal academy in Charleston, South Carolina. It was great. I mean, it was six months. You learn Spanish.
We were one of the last federal academies that still had boxing, which I'll never forget to this day. It was three 1 minute rounds. I've never been more tired in my life. Yeah, it was great, actually. Try not to get into too many rabbit hole stories, but we had our Pt instructors. Like, I had 58 classmates. He's like, all right, who here has never been in a knockdown, drag out fight?
I'd never been in one. So myself and a couple other people raised their hand. He's like, all right, it's fine. Nothing to be ashamed of. And the whole idea of that training was, you know, you're not Mike Tyson. You're not a paid fighter. You use force appropriately, and you win the fight and make the arrest. So. And it was a little old school back in those days. You would sit, this is Charleston, South Carolina. In the summer, you'd sit out in pt in the push up position, wake up in the morning or on your knuckles, and you'd wake up in the morning and have big old blisters in your hand. I remember our spanish instructor, we were taking a test in the morning. We're all writing with our, you know, our pencils like this.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Yeah. You weren't typing.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: No. No.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: You were, I'm old man getting your tablet, you know. No, not quite your actual old tablets.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: No. Yeah, we just moved from stone to pencils, and we're all like this. And our Senora Briones, I'll never forget, she was a border agent, our senior spanish instructor. She's like, senora Wells, what's wrong with your hands? You need to go to the infirmary, the medics. I'm like, no, no, no, ma'am. I'm fine. She's like. And then she's looking around. Everyone's hands are like this, and she's like, what happened to you all? And they're like, well, you know, just. Pt was a little rough yesterday, so she goes storming in to let pt guys off. But the good part of it was, it was a tough academy.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: And, and that was my entrance into law enforcement. I was assigned down imperial beach. We had the ocean destroyed.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Oh, great, bro.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Imperial beach.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. That's a great station now.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Yep. It was very nice.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: And street tacos.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: And actually when we got hired it was. I mean, we had an agent on it. It was called an x. So you'd sit on a line. It was actually pretty boring. You did six months, you learned a language. You were a little ninja guy ready to go. And then you'd see in a truck for 10 hours a day.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: In front of the fence and you get.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Just doing observation posts. Yep.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: Just basically a static, they'd call it an x every now and again you'd be a wild card. You'd float around this and that.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: And this was really before we had technology.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. This was back when the fence was non existent. It was a crappy fence.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: So you had to do observation posts, basically.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Yeah. You literally had to put somebody there to keep people from coming over because that station, which again is 5 miles, you know, before the big higher up. And we got hired, they're averaging two 3000 arrests a shift.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And we got it down to maybe a handful. Right? Because we'd have 30, 40 agents all along the line. Now, the crazy part is we would do details. We'd go out to Yuma, Calexico. This is 97, 98 and wild west. It was crazy. I went, actually, when I got off probation, me and three of my classmates went out to Calexico, Mexicali. And we were used to Imperial beach. We had plenty of backup. You had San Diego police if you needed it. It was still dangerous. There was, I think at the time was a hundred thousand dollar bounty.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: It's more urban, so it's. Yeah, you're less likely to take a shot at you.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Well, we actually had the Tijuana cartel yet, Ensenada freeway and you'd be sitting there at three in the morning. A car would stop and you'd see flash, flash, flash. Yeah. Zipping over you. It was a hundred grand if you could film shooting, abort religion for the Tijuana cartel.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: And we had an agent, he took a round in his eye, bounced out of his head. Survived, but you get shot at or they'd break your windows. But overall, we go to Mexicali and again, I'm 20, I don't know, four or five. Three of my classmates, you know, we're really close from the academy. We go out to Mexicali. No area orientation. They say you know, here's your keys. There's the fence. You're going to be between this area. Never been this city in my life. Don't like we work from six p to 06:00 a.m. six days a week because they were skitting so overrun. And it was insanity. I mean, you'd go through six, seven windshields a night. They'd put these long skewers underneath the fence, pop out your tires, you get out of the car, they'd rock you.
It was probably two incidents in my career where almost had to use lethal force. Thank God I didn't have to, but it was insane. And I'm thinking, here I am in the second largest federal law enforcement agency in the country, defending the southern border, and I'm getting rocked and stoned. And I almost shot a 16 year old kid because he had rocked a partner of mine. He's unconscious, literally. He was code zero on the radio. He's by his car, bleeding, guns in his hand. He's unconscious. And I'm sitting there about ready to shoot a 13 year old kid with a rock.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: And I want people to understand, you know, these stories. We, we tell these stories because it helps us internalize what we did and what we've been through. But what's important for the folks at home to understand is that the border isn't about regular folks coming here to work on a farm. What's going on is he's fighting essentially, what would be the mafia. Right. This is a mafia controlled operation with billions and billions of dollars invested in infrastructure for the. The purposeful movement of guns and drugs and money back and forth across the border. So you're fighting a criminal operation. You're not fighting just regular citizens.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: Well, it's true, but yes, yes and no. A little bit, because that was the hard part of the job is. Is on one day, especially out in Calexico, you'd have 2030 people come over, rock the patrol agent, and then you'd see three people with big backpacks full of heroin, and they'd be, be. That's your organized cartel activity. You'd go further out. Like, I had classmates in New Mexico where, you know, literally, I mean, I had a classmate, you know, he had a bronco, an ar, a shotgun, a whole bunch of ammo, and 40 miles of border. And he would track. He would track drug mules or cartel drug smugglers for days, you know, with helicopters. Whole different job. Much, much sexier than what I did.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: In imperial beast interdiction.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: Yeah, but you're dealing and the worst part were like the human smugglers.
You would see little on the Tijuana river and actually out in Mexicali, the river that ran through the city there. Hardest part of it, you'd see moms with little babies on trash bags, little newborn babies coming through totally disgusting toxic water. And you'd go out in the woods or in the mountains and you'd find 30, 40, 5100 people. As soon as the smuggler would hear the helicopter know that we were on them, they would just abandon the people. So it was a mix of, you're dealing with high, like you said, highly organized, very well financed, armed, dangerous criminals with the drug cartel, drug smuggling. Then you've got the human smuggling where people will spend tens of thousands of dollars to smuggle a family member over and they're just abandoned. So we actually had a whole, we.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Had a human trafficker on a buddy of mine, former gang member, cartel. His follow was Cartel died in prison and he basically got out because he had to abandon a family of five in the desert.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh no, it would happen. We had a whole unit of borderlines in bright red uniforms and that's all they did. We had big water tanks. And so you would deal with that part of it and then you would deal with just people literally trying to get across to get to work. And no criminal background. They're not criminals at all. And so as a law enforcement officer, you know, it's, you would deal with all three spectrums. And I was very passionate about, you know, you talk to people, learn their story. I mean, I had one guy in collection. It's kind of funny. I arrested him three times in one shift. And the third time we're driving back to the station and he's like very respectful. He's like, I need to get to work, sir. I'm like, where do you work? He's like working McDonald's. He's like, I'm gonna lose my job if I'm not there. He's like, you know, I got two brothers and this and that and blah, blah, blah. And so the emotional part of it and I, that position in the board of trolling government, very much political law enforcement, very frustrating. You're serving it. I mean, what's more important than guarding the borders of your nation?
[00:14:31] Speaker A: Probably the most politicized. Oh, it's law enforcement agency in America.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: And then you get even worse. You'd have California we like for that. You'll love this story.
So I went, I spent a week at AR school in the academy. It's great.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: That's awesome. Yeah.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: I mean, dpsst, you don't see in it. No.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: Yeah, so, and they're changing that.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: They good. Yeah, but, yeah, you go. So you go through all this and you have your own ar, all shiny. Your m four and m four s this.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: We're changing it for private security.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: We, as a border age in San Diego, you couldn't carry a long arm because that didn't look, that looked scary. Yeah. I mean, even though we're averaging, we average two to three shots fired incidents a month, people shooting at us. And you literally, you had a Beretta or you had a shot, shotgun with a slug, if you wanted to take that 300 yard shot. Now, my buddy, again, in New Mexico and Arizona, you were not allowed to leave the station without the full kit and all that good stuff. Funny thing, after 911, a lot of my classmates were still virtual agents, and I got a text.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: So, same federal agency, but depending on the state.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Of your location. Right.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Or where you're working, like Texas, New Mexico. I might be different now, but you had, you had state peace officer reciprocity. So I'm a border agent. I'm driving. There's nobody else around. I see a drunk driver, I pull them over. I can function as a state peace officer. And we had an, actually, a buddy of mine did a traffic stop, thought he was smuggling folks over this. And that. Turns out it wasn't anything else. And I remember the supervisor said, we had a briefing afterwards and said, you know, just remember, if you pull a car over and there's no immigration or drugs related in California, you're doing that as a private citizen. So you have no state peace officer authority. And so literally in our union, of course, it's like, you know, so it's your call and your judgment that a buddy that worked out in Campo, east County, San Diego, it's real rule. I mean, you know, you won't see a lot of people. He's like, so if I see somebody swerving all over the road, obviously drunk, almost hitting people, and I turn my lights on and pull them over, I'm doing that as a private citizen. I have no. So something goes south and I have no coverage. Yeah, completely different. Very political, stupid. I mean, really ridiculous. And not to mention constant. You know, the average agent in San Diego sector, which was huge, was about two years. I made it almost three.
Huge turnover. And even now they're 1800 border agents short, which kind of gets into that 1800 short. Oh, yeah, yeah. They're always shorts.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: It was an off duty border patrol agent that stopped the synagogue shooting in San Diego, like, five years ago, so.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Well, and great.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Some great folks down there.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so that was, you know, that. That got my foot in the door, the great training. And then, you know, I was up.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: So you're already federal law enforcement.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Yeah. But then I left that. I got. I just got tired.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: And 911 happens.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Well, no, so I left. I left that I was still in San Diego. Then I became a background investigator for the government, which, again, I was telling about one of really cool job. You'd meet some of the most amazing people, and you get to see, you know, when you're doing, like, a five year update for a secret or a top secret, you've got everything. You got their educational records, their resume.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: You're a very thorough individual as well.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, you should. Yeah. And. And. But it was fun because you meet really amazing people.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: And you'd screen out people that have no business applying for that job. So. And so I got tired of San Diego. I called my boss, Ronnie. She was great. I said, hey, get me out of San Diego. I'm never gonna be able to afford to buy a house. Like, all my border buddies drove an hour and a half to Mecula to be able to afford a house. So she called me back. She goes, I got Denver, Portland, Oregon. I'm like, let's go to Portland.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: The beauties of being single, you know, lots of time, money in the bank. Like, let's go to. Let's go to Portland. So I was here. I moved up January of 20, right after 911.
Yeah, 2002.
Kind of fun. Met my wife first day I was here. We've been married 19 years. So that's why I love this city. It's the job I am now. Yeah. Best thing I ever did was move to Portland. Portland. And then I think it was January, end of January, they opened up all the air Marshall slots. I applied, and I think, I don't know, 100,000 people apply. Like, I'll never get hired. Especially for that first round.
Lucked out, got the call, went to rest in the hiring thing, and then got my duty assignment in Seattle. So then I moved up to Seattle, and I did that for almost three years after 911. Yeah. And then was very disenfranchised with federal law enforcement. They went from a strictly anti terrorism job. And it was fun because, again, the people that they hired, I had, like, a. I flew with a New York NYPD detective. I had an LAPD SWAt guy, top tier guys. Yeah. I mean, I would still pinch in myself. Yeah. I mean, luckily I could back then. I'm very rusty now. I could shoot well. Right.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: You have to air marshals, you have to highest.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: They actually change.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: Is it the highest PQC qualification course?
[00:18:58] Speaker B: It still is the original qualification. Qualification. So pre 911 there were 32 air marshals. Right. They bulked it up to around is classified, but like five ish thousand. But the initial firearms training program or the qualification was intense and not. They couldn't get enough people to pass it. So they actually watered it down a little bit. And it's still hard.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: You're basically throwing all, every round, did the same hole.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: It's. Yeah, it's like.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: It's like right here.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Right. Well, let's think about it. If you had another terrorist incident, you know, the fate of commercial, commercial aviation in the United States is basically in your hands. You're at 30,000ft. If you've got a guy that's compromising the flight deck door, you may have to take that, you know, $10 billion shot. So it should be. Absolutely. So, you know, we were in training and did all of that. And then in the first year. Oh, my God, I love it. I'm a huge plane fanatic. I used to fly small planes until I had kids and ran out of money.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: I didn't know that.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I fly RC plane. I love aviation. So here I was working and training with some of the most skilled law enforcement professionals in the country. And then they opened it up, too. Then they opened it up to PD and sheriff's offices after that. So we had a whole mix, which was really cool.
The training was great. All we did was shoot and fight. That's all we did. There was no report writing. I mean, they're a little bit, but because that first year, it was strictly anti terrorism. So the only reason you're deploying is if the flight deck door is going to be compromised. So drunk guy back 25 c, that's not your issue. You did not deploy at all. And in classic government fashion, they hired a new director of the FAM service. He was a retired secret service guy, and he brought a bunch of his retired secret service at SAC, special agent, whatever. And they came in to up their retirement because paid well, knew nothing about aviation security. And we went to general law enforcement. We had to because we, you know, pre this coming on, we would search the aircraft, brief the flight crew, and we had things happening that were not in the news, that can't talk about in too much detail. But there was a reason for us to be on the planes. There was things happening after 911 that justified about eight $900 million program.
And the whole idea, again, is. Right. That's when they made the TSA. You know, you went from terrible private security, running your airport security to much higher quality people. And the whole idea is I'm screened better. There might be an air marshal on the plane. The pilot might be armed. There's a whole armed flight deck officer program.
I don't know. I'm going to go somewhere else. Right.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: I've had multiple pilots go fle to me.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: When you get on, I'm like, no, no, not anymore.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: No. Yeah.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: And I like to fly first class.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Well, I will say I miss. And when I flew with my wife. Because you always carried all your stuff, you get to pre board and do all that kind of. It was, it was nice. But I was in. I was in. I couldn't believe the first year because I got to fly. I sat in every flight deck of every plane, geeked out with all the pilots, the flight attendants. I mean, someone were scared to death to fly. And, and so we served a really good purpose deep undercover. We did intel before the flight, after the flight, you know, search the whole plane. All of that went away.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: So really, that a really hard or a really big push for intelligence, which I did not know. So you are doing a lot of intelligence work, right?
[00:21:58] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, my main job was just to be on the plane. Yeah. Yeah. But you would, you would, you would. You had, you were undercover to where you could have a partner, sometimes flying two, sometimes three. You could have somebody in the gate. And again, you know, you'd search every seat in first class, all the lavatories. You would, you would search the plane. You would do a formal briefing of the crew so they knew if they had an incident, how to get your, you know, all that, that all went away. We had to wear business casual. Everything but a tie. Doesn't matter your flight, your destination, or your airline. So imagine it's July, you're flying southwest seatac to Las Vegas, and here come two guys with short hair in business suits, pre boarding and showing their big, huge credentials that were literally like this big, showing them to the pilot. Because even all armed law enforcement have to show their credentials. And including air marshals. And the last two or three months, you'd sit down and people like, oh, thanks for being on the plane. Where do you hide your gun? All that kind of stuff. It's ridiculous. And you think about it here is the United States government putting two highly armed? I mean, you carried gun, three magazines, knife, all kinds of stuff. You don't need to smuggle the gun on through the catering truck. You just need to pick out the business. Drivers were called finding the fam. Federal air marshal. So who's the fam? And that was kind of my last run. I was dating my wife in Portland, and I said, that's it. I'm done. So I left. Left federal, which. It was hard. I'm still. I love that job. I believe in it so much. And again, I worked with a lot of cops. It was fun, too, the training.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: And you could have always gone to another federal agency.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: I could have, yeah.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: But at the end of the day, I mean, you were in love.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I love always wins.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: And I had a buddy. He was air marshal, and he got stuck in Detroit.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: And after three years, they were supposed to transfer him, and they didn't. He did such a good job. They're like, we want to keep in Detroit.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: And he was like, I'm out.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: He became a sheriff's deputy.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: There was. We had a lot of guys from Portland that were married or, you know, they, like, open up a Portland office, like. No, no. Yeah. That's the thing. The government is, you know, and a big piece that was. And we worked four days a week, so federal law enforcement is 510 hours shifts. It's the funkiest thing in the world. Oh, it's 50. That's if you get off on time, right?
[00:23:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, no.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And so then the fams were four. You got. You got four days on, three days off. Because pre 911, you know, they flew for three weeks. They were off for three weeks, something like that. And they trained for three weeks, so.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Oh, that's.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: That's. Yeah. When you're on duty, you're sharp, you're well rested, you've been doing nothing but shooting, and you're ready to go. We would end up with. Then we went to this new director, came in. We went to five days a week and six days a week. When the threat level would go up, you'd have nosebleeds all the time. Oh, no, you'd work. Sometimes you get a flight delay. In Chicago, I'd log 1820 hours day sometimes. Yep. And you're used. So not only are you not undercover anymore, you're tired, you're falling asleep, and you're sitting there with 40 rounds a sig. It's ridiculous. Right? And actually, if you. If you google disgruntled air marshals, there's a group of air marshals in Denver that went to the local affiliate. Of course, they were all blacked out and this and that, you know, their voices.
Because we were like, a plane is going to go down because of us. They're going to. Someone's going to stick a pen in our eye, kill us and take our gun. And. I mean, the flight deck door is bulletproof. You go into the first class laboratory. It's no secret it's right behind the pilot's head. Right. And you're carrying a. 357 sig round, which is totally inappropriate for a plane. Right? Yeah, because that was the secret Service gun.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: So that came interesting.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: Not to nerd out on that, but, yeah, it goes through. I don't know, they did a test, 20 seat backs or something like that. Yeah. You've got this massive high velocity around in an airplane and a gun that's pretty hard to conceal. But, yeah, you take our gun, go into the first class lavatory, unload your three magazines, you're done. You're toast. So the union got involved. It was all over the media. USA Today was doing a bunch of profile, and thousands of air marshals left. And the border patrol, who lost a couple thousand agents that were smart, they said, we give you a promotion, your choice of duty station. So they all went back. And then a lot of the folks that came from PD's, they just went back. And then a lot of people that stayed. Not all, of course, but a lot of people stayed. Well, making good money. Don't have to write reports. I watched Netflix in first class. That's not who you want to be in the program. Right. So. And it's evolved, and it's a much smaller program now, but. So I left and then came here, got married, then I was a cop down in Sherwood, Oregon.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: Yes. That's when you joined local PD.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: Local PD. Which was.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: So you went from a fed to a fed to local PD. So explain. And Sherwood's a great little town here. I mean, it's. It's a beautiful. It's a beautiful place to live. And there's nothing I could. Nothing bad I could say about Sherwood, but without getting into the, you know, politics in that town, just explain the transition and the difference between. Oh, it's crazy being a fed and then a local.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: Well, yeah, you go from a. When I was in the border patrol, I think it was around 12,000 agents. It's up to almost, I don't know, 19 something thousand. Massive bureaucracy. Right. And then. Same with the air marshals was big. And then you go to the. We were 25 sworn. I think we have two officers on duty in any given time. I think this population was around 20,000.
It was light years better from the hiring. You were treated like a professional during the hiring. This is way before the staffing crisis, and I think this is more apt to smaller PD's. But wonderful hiring. I went to. And then I went to Monmouth, the old DPSst.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. Yeah.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: We called it college with guns. It was ten weeks.
Yeah, it was ten weeks, which blew my mind. It's funny, I had a classmate who was a US Forest Service leo fed, and we sat next together, and it was like, week six. He's like, when do they start yelling at us? We did.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Wow, really?
[00:27:14] Speaker B: Oh, it was terrible. We did PT for an hour on Monday.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, and then my other three classmates were right out of college. Brand new, green as can be, Gresham PD. So they're gonna graduate from ten weeks of this, and on Monday be out working the street. An FTAP, you know, field training program.
Yeah. So totally the academy. No, I know. It's much different now.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: Yeah. You're doing jiu jitsu twice a day.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it's light years with PT in the middle of the day, but I still think. Last I heard, it's still the second shortest police academy in the country. Average police academy is 20 to 26 weeks.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: I think we're 16 or 16 now.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: Still way too short and. Yeah. But, you know, Sherwood was great. A great place to be a cop. Was there. And then, actually, I bounced around. Long resume, and then a classmate of mine at DPSST ran the humane agent program for the state. Was a real small law enforcement agency out of the Oregon Humane Society. So we were having coffee, and he goes, I don't know if you're interested, but I need to hire an investigator. I'm like, what? He's like, a humane agent? I'm like, what do you do? He's like, well, you investigate crimes against animals statewide. It's really cool. You write search warrants, work with other PD's.
And I was living in Portland on graveyards, and this was basically, work in your own schedule, work in your own cases. Take home car.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:28:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm an animal guy, I'll admit it.
And we were foster parents at the humane Society. Get a mama cat and a bunch of litter every six weeks or something. So I switched over to that. I was a basic humane agent for a little bit. And then he ended up getting a big job. And so I took his job. So I ran that program for about four years. And it was kind of cool. You were. You were commissioned by the governor. So he had a little card. Ted Kulonovsky.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: Commissioner, I've worked with one of these guys.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: Yeah, you're especially. It's an old statute in Oregon that allows the governor to basically deputize a private citizen to enforce laws that are not being adequately enforced. So you're a special agent? We had. I managed three other sworn investigators, the support staff, and we did everything from your old senior citizen with dementia with too many cats that just needs to surrender the cats all the way up to the hardcore gang member that's fighting dogs all over the country. We worked with us, Department of AG. We did research warrants in different parts of the country, local stuff. Worked with all the different agencies. Then you'd have, like, Yamhill County Sheriff would call you, say, mark, I've got six dead horses, 20 dying horses. What do I do? Then we'd show up, write the warrant, come in, you deal with child abuse, all that. You'd really. It's a tough job because you would see the ills of society in a different way as a street cop. And a lot of what we did is we would train. We would train district attorneys offices and PD's to say, when you go on that neighbors kicking their dog, ask, do you have kids? Can I see your kids?
[00:29:47] Speaker A: The correlation of domestic abuse with animal abuse, it's almost 100%.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: It is. And it was fun because in Oregon.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: That'S why animal abuse is a shall arrest offense, which is one of the very. Only five offense.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Not a lot of cops know that.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: I was a police officer.
[00:30:04] Speaker B: I'm impressed. This is not state reviewers.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: There's only five laws in Oregon that are shall arrest.
[00:30:08] Speaker B: Well, and if you.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: I mean, yeah.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Interview ten cops, I bet you eight don't know that. Animal abuse, even animal neglect, your misdemeanor.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Crimes, even the misdemeanor neglect, you shall.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: See, as you would any other law.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's kind of like that because you want to create a cooling off period. The likelihood that someone else in that home is being abused is literally in the 90%.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And we had not only kids, I had multiple cases where 50 year old tweaker, son or daughter, usually son. We'd go in and it would be a neighbor calling in for a, you know, a dog that looks skinny. Very, very, you know, welfare check. And then I'd hear somebody coughing in the back. Well, who's that? Oh, it's my dad.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: Elder neglect.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And I go back and. Multiple times. So we would go back, work with adult protective services or child protective services. This was the fun part of the job. We, the humane society. Humane agent, would write the warrant for low level animal neglect in second degree. Right. You're not providing your dog with shelter. Right. Then we'd write all these people in the local sheriff's office. And then we did a. Probably my coolest one we did was with the east precinct neighborhood response team years ago. We had. It was the first warrant we ever were ever written for attempted animal abuse. And multiple accounted and. Yep. Because you can beat your dog all day long if, as long as you don't injure it or intend to injure it, there's no harassment for, like, you.
[00:31:19] Speaker A: Don'T want to touch, you have to show intent.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: You have to. Well, as an officer, you have to be able to provide probable cause for intent, which is almost impossible.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:26] Speaker B: Unless the guys like, yeah, I intended to beat my dog.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: Unless he's yelling.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Yeah, deserve. Exactly. So we put a camera in the neighbor who is our complainant. Film this woman coming out with her nine month old baby, beating the living crap out of her pit bull named Rosie. And so I went to Multnomah county, give him a shout out. I worked on a. On a Sunday with a deputy DA, and she's like, you know what I need one scratch, one contusion, one bruise, and I've got all I need. So she wrote the warrant for attempted animal. Animal abuse. We served it with East Precinct neighborhood response team. The boyfriend, known scary guy, neo Nazi, this and that, had all kinds of things. Fighting with the cops, weapons charges, and we knew the dogs were in the garage. We knew the nine month old was there. Child protective services had done, like, twelve unannounced visitations to welfare check on the baby. They never answered the door. They're smart. Some criminals are smart. Just don't answer the door. So, again, we wrote them in the warrant. All right? We knew there was drugs, so we wrote Portland police into the warrant. So Austin, my investigator, who I hired, great guy. Were good friends. He was his warrant. So he was at the door with PPB. I'm back with another one.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: And CPS is out on the street.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: We're ready to go, literally. And then he comes back and forth. Doesn't listen. Doesn't listen. Da, da, da. Comes out with bear spray, yank him off the porch. Then she comes out, fights with everybody. She gets arrested.
We go in, get the dog, and then CPS goes in, child protection services goes in and gets the nine month old. So we got the dog surrendered, rehomed, kid taken out of the custody, and then all kinds of drugs and all kinds of stuff for the police to go in. Yeah. And it was a fascinating job in that you see the full spectrum, and then it's all about kind of like we're seeing now with the shortages and every city's short on police. It's all about partnership, networking, who's got what resources. How can we work together? Because literally putting a team in place. Yeah. And the state couldn't get in there for the nine month old. The police didn't have anything to get in on a drug warrant or a weapons warrant, but we had an attempt at animal abuse.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: I mean, it's really brilliant.
I've run cis and getting those three controlled bys for a drug warrant for a judge. You got to find the CI. He's got to be somewhat. Or they had to be somewhat credible.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: You have to do three controlled bys.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: Like, one or two isn't enough.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: You got another three, and within a period of time, can't be the same day. And. And then you finally get that drug warm. But, man, that's great. Getting in on animal. Attempted animal.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: Attempted animal. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then. And then part of my job, too, is interesting. I was a registered lobbyist, and every year I'd have to fill out how much money I spent or how much money I. Free donations. I was given, like, how many flights to, you know, Hawaii I was taking on.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: I know you like Hawaii.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: No. Every year out at my zero. My zero, I'm like, man, I'm not a good lobbyist, but we wrote, we made it. If you abuse your animal in front of a child and becomes a felony, we got a lot of the misdemeanors changed to felonies if it was in the presence of a minor so that you had more teeth to it.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: Love that.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it was cool.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: I use that a lot, actually.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: And then I.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: What I loved about that statute. So if you injure, if you're committing domestic abuse to adults or committing domestic abuse, and the child is within the presence of that misdemeanor abuse, it gets elevated or aggravated, elevated to a felony crime. Now, the great thing I love about that is the child doesn't actually have to physically see it. They could be in the room and hear the abuse occurring. So the present statute allows for. Really, they could have just woken up if the child was asleep and they woke up because of the sound of the abuse, then you elevate that to a felony. And I use that multiple times, me and our former DA friend.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: Well, a lot of our job would be going to district attorney's office and going to PD's and saying, here's the deal.
There's the rs. You shall investigate animal crimes against animals as you would any other crime. Now you've got a small understaffed sheriff's office and they've got, you know, horse neglect case. And horses are wildly. They don't have the money. Yeah, they don't have the money or the skills. They would call us and say, hey, we need help. And this is my next transition. So we worked a case. I got a call from a wonderful community service officer out in Hillsboro, Pedey, and said, hey, Mark, my name's Don CSO out in Hillsboro P. We've got this woman, she's got hundreds of rabbits.
I need help. I'm like, okay, yeah, no worries, let's go. So we went out, talked to them and had a detective and she had at least a couple hundred rabbits. So they wrote the warrant. We were there to help with the evidence and just to take care of however many bunnies and this and that.
It was the Miriam Sakowitz case, if you ever google. It was a phenomenally. Yeah. So we were there with the warrant, we served it. There was about 150 live rabbits, about 100 plus dead rabbits. She had five refrigerators where the bottom of the carcasses were. One was unplugged.
[00:36:09] Speaker A: Was she eating them?
[00:36:11] Speaker B: She's an animal horse. Yeah. It's a mental disorder, mental health.
And she would feel, and it's very common. And that job was interesting when it was the dog fighter or the dog abuser, then that's where the cop of me would come out because I want you to go to jail. I want your animals, I want you to go to jail. When it's the, the animal hoarder, its mental illness. Right. And it's, it's, these animals are better for me because I take them to the shelter, they're just gonna get killed. They're not mean, evil people.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: So do you do a poh at that point? Do you try to convince police officers?
[00:36:37] Speaker B: Some. You can when you go on scene, if it's.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: And that was. So that's a. Yeah, that's a statute that would allow a police officer to, rather than affect an arrest, to place someone under the medical care of a physician in order to do an observation period to detect how serious the mental illness is. If it's a grave mental illness or if they're escalated to a point where they can't take care of themselves or they're going to be a harm to someone else, then they would continue that care until the person becomes regulated.
[00:37:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:37:07] Speaker A: The police officer holder positions hold.
[00:37:09] Speaker B: And that's a great topic. And we probably need a whole nother episode on that because downtown right now, we. You have to be. You have to be posing a imminent threat of serious physical injury and. Or death.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll talk that to death.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: No, I know that's a whole nother one, but no. So occasionally we would. We would either call PD and ask him to do a poh. If someone was, you know, oh, my God, you're gonna take my dog. I'm gonna kill myself. You know, we would do that, but on this case, she wasn't, you know, suicidaling. But we went in there and it was funny. One of the Hillsborough evidence texts, because each body, each animal is a.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Represent one count. Yeah, of course. I knew that was coming. Hundreds of counts, man.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: You don't want to be humane, AJ, for your next year, next life.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: Well, with the juvenile sex crimes, it's like every act that occurred outside of a certain time frame.
[00:37:48] Speaker B: Yep. It's a. Yeah.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: And you had a count.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: So we had. We had every. Every neglected rabbit, which was all of them, and then every dead rabbit was a separate count of animal neglect. Second degree, first degree, depending on. And so each body had to be opened up and tagged as evidence. And some of the evidence texts were like, puke. It was nasty. These are folks that go to murders. And it was disgusting. So 1213 hours day. And then we leave. And we had. One of the Hillsborough cops had some land, a farm. So we take all the 200 bunnies at the time there.
And then now what do we do?
And then, so we. The humane Society, we got a whole bunch of volunteers together. There's the Portland Rabbit Coalition. Wonderful group of volunteers. We ended up putting them in. That was an old Soloflex factory in Hillsboro, all under lock and key because they're all evidence.
[00:38:30] Speaker A: My twelve year old has a rabbit at the home.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: There's people that have many of these rabbits. So. And then we were there. Now, keep in mind, each live rabbit, right, is evidence. So when you have a gun, like, say, you know, this is. This is the pen that was used in the murder. So I tag it, right, I give you a property receipt and then it goes into evidence, right? And it might sit in that evidence locker for a year before animals can't do that. Right. So we had. We had to organize all the volunteers, feeding them every day. Yep. And then, of course, rabbits. The saying is true. 200 turned into about 280. Yep. And then she actually found out where they were. Broke in with the U Haul, stole a whole bunch.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Miss Akowitz.
[00:39:06] Speaker B: Yes. Took them to you, hauled the bunnies away. Yeah.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: Went up to prison break for bunnies.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: Did she do it on Easter?
Because this should be a movie. It could be a movie, like 101 Dalmatians.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. No, she was checking in the Easter bunny breakout. She goes up. I never even thought it. She went up to just up until, I'm forgetting the town up in Washington about an hour north. And the hotel clerk checking like, she looks kind of, what's going on? A lot of animals and stuff. Googled her name. So then I get a call. So then they sent some detectives and they arrest her, bring her back.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: So she has probably separate charges now in Washington.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And then it was interesting. She was held in Washington and she was supposed to come down on a transport, but they messed it up. So I get a call from Chief Ron Louie of Hillsborough police that time, and he's like, hey, Mark, how you doing? I'm like, I'm good. What's going on? He goes, well, she was supposed to be on transport back to Malta or to Washington county. Da da da da. But the technical snafu, she just posted bail and she's out. And her sister just called me, Hillsborough chief of police, saying, miriam's out, she's got her gun and she's coming to kill me or, no, she's coming to get her bunnies and she'll kill anybody that gets in her way. Yeah, she had a charge for domestic violence. She actually fired a gun off. I tried to get a blow a door off a hinge with a guy. I don't know. She had a history of having a fire.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: You need a poh.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: So. Well, not only that, but so I. And we had take home cars and they were very, you know, logoed up.
[00:40:24] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. I used to work with one of these guys. It was a suv, big suv.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: Well, actually. And the address of my not. Not too super sleuthy here. When you googled my address, it had the picture. The Google street address was my truck of my house. So my three investigators.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: You're not supposed to have that.
[00:40:38] Speaker B: That's hidden information OpSeC issue there, right? I don't know. So I told my investigators, like, all right, trucks stay at the humane Society. You know, da da da. We actually had to put armed security at the humane society. Thankfully, they found her, but so long, this was a massive case. We had to do a civil forfeiture to get the rabbits. Spending thousands of money and fundraising.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: Caper of the Easter Bunny Bandit.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, almost a good.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: If you could turn it into huge humor, it could be a Disney movie. The caper of the Easter Bunny Bandit.
[00:41:06] Speaker B: There you go. There's the script to start, right? Yeah. So hopefully, I don't know the case where she is. Hopefully she got the help that she needed. We got all the bunnies rehomed, and a big part of that is oftentimes you don't go to jail, you just sign a plea deal. I won't own any animals for five years and I will allow human agent to come inspect my property. We did over 1000 cases a year. We may be cited and arrested 20 ish people a year. Right. So transition number 65 of my 550 page resume is. I got to know Hillsborough police really well. And they said, hey, Mark, you want to come work for us? And I said it had been about four ish years. It's an emotional job. I mean, you're dealing with some of the worst people in society. And I said yes. So then I became a cop out in Hillsboro, and that was my last worn job. My wife, we were still living in north Portland. My wife had a gallery and a business in Portland, didn't want to move out to Hillsboro. My sergeant, who I left on very good terms, wonderful Sergeant Gary out of that entire department there, about three of us that didn't live in the city.
[00:42:06] Speaker A: And was that required by.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: No, it wasn't required.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: It was under my pd.
[00:42:09] Speaker B: Was it really?
[00:42:10] Speaker A: We had to live in.
[00:42:10] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of debate about.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: That because they had us on call.
We did a lot of all the death investigations, you know. So anyway.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: Well, yeah, and if you're a smaller agency, you got to be on call. So that was a long commute and I'd been about 15 ish years into shift work and I kind of suck at graveyards and we wanted to have a family. And so I said, you know, let me start looking around. And that's when I transitioned to my longest job to date. I worked as a crime prevention coordinator for the city of Portland.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: And you were fantastic.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: Thank you. No, until they got rid of the program. Until they got rid of the whole program. Yeah.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: No, I was to prevent crime.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Why prevent anything? Prevention.
[00:42:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:47] Speaker B: Well, you know, it's interesting. And I'll go full spectrum back, back in. Oh, I can't remember the guy's name. I even looked it up on Tully space and his name, consumer advocate guy in the big, big. In the eighties, nineties escaping. Anyways, was asking for fortifying cockpit doors in the eighties, seventies and eighties.
[00:43:02] Speaker A: Really?
[00:43:02] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. It was out lobbied by the airline business. Too expensive. Don't really need to do that. And it's funny, so I went from law enforcement where, you know, most cops are dealing with things. You're reactive, right. It's a nine on one call. It happens.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: It's primarily, primarily reactive.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: Yeah. It's very rare that you catch a guy, I think he's about to rob the 711. I mean, happens, but very rare. Right. It's predominantly reactive. So then I went into the crime prevention world. It was an unsworn job with the city, and I loved it. It was awesome. My job was to organize and empower the community to be part of their public safety system. Not just the police, but to work with their whole criminal justice system.
[00:43:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that's how we met, actually.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: That's exactly. Yep. I had a, I had an apartment watch that you had taken over. And it was interesting. Part of my job was doing security assessments.
We had a big apartment complex downtown. I did the security assessment and I said, hey, you're wasting about 15 grand a month on security. I'm a city employee. I can't tell you who to hire. And I had what was called my five questions, five questions on how to vet private security. And, yeah, it's fun for your viewers to know. So they fired that company, and we had an apartment watch that I'd started, and we came back for our monthly training, and that's when we first met. And you changed that whole place around insanely. Right. And fast forward seven years. So that crime prevention job I loved, because it was everything about what I loved about being a police officer, but then being a civilian and seeing that the police are the community and the community are the police, they have to be the same if you're gonna be successful.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: Completely embedded and integrated.
[00:44:23] Speaker B: Yep. And that's when you look at, and this was, you know, way before George Floyd and this call for police reform, which put me, you know, first in the lineup, but. And then a 2019.
Our commissioner in charge said, the police are bad. You can't work with the police. And we had eleven crime prevention coordinators, $2 million program myself, and eight or nine other ones left. I went into private security.
And we are seeing right now, as a city, when you get rid of community policing and you get rid of crime prevention, it's terrible. And in fact, my day job now, we're bringing back a lot of that community involvement, and it'll be interesting how that plays on.
[00:45:03] Speaker A: So let's talk about that. Let me dig in there a little bit.
So really, you know, we're not going to go out in the community today because your current job would kind of preclude us going, we don't want to.
[00:45:14] Speaker B: Well, yeah, we don't want to go.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: Out in the community because there's some dynamics in place. It's best that we don't go out. So we're going to stay in the office today and we're going to do what is more of an after action. Right? So today's 911. We have 22 years since then. So when you look at law enforcement today and everything we've been through as a country these past 22 years, where are we when it comes to law enforcing, Alex?
[00:45:42] Speaker B: That's such a good question.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: The enforcing model, I mean, number one, what about recruiting? You know, our recruiting standards and our ability to recruit? Where are we with that? Yeah, you've been a fed, you've been a local guy. And I'm kind of interested in your thoughts. Like, how did we get to where we are?
[00:46:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great question. And I really worry about the profession of policing and the days of, you know, my uncle was a cop, my dad was a cop. Hope my kids are cops for large municipal policing. Those days are gone. And, you know, like I said at the beginning of your show was, took me two years, right, pounding on every pd to try to get my foot in the door. Now, you know, I'm hearing $25,000 signing bonuses for entry level police officers. Right. That dynamic has changed so much.
[00:46:28] Speaker A: I know that city.
[00:46:29] Speaker B: There's paying that. Yeah, there's. And I, you know, I was writing it down before I came here. You look at some of the cities, it's like Atlanta's 250 sworn short. Richmond, Virginia, smaller department, 150 short. Kansas City, 200. Portland. We're authorized to have 884 cops. We have 803. Right.
[00:46:45] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:46:45] Speaker B: And that authorized numbers, way, way too low.
[00:46:47] Speaker A: It's only. That would only be, if we were at our authorized levels, we'd only be at 40%. The FBI recommended level percent.
[00:46:52] Speaker B: We should have 15. Six. I use this statistic. I'm going actually to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, next month for a best practices trip. They have less population by about 30 or 40,000. They have 1800 cops in Wisconsin.
[00:47:05] Speaker A: Where?
[00:47:05] Speaker B: Milwaukee.
[00:47:06] Speaker A: Milwaukee.
[00:47:06] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah. And now we have 803, which one out of eight. And Portland police is still in training status very, very young. And so part of it is a lot of agencies, and again, I kind of, there's, there's a, you know, the George Floyd part, I kind of break it before that and then after that because there, you know, some larger cities were. And Portland's kind of unique. We enjoy 20 years of very low violent crime as opposed to other similar.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: We were a village.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: Yeah. We were averaging 2025 homicides a year for a city of 600,000. That's unheard of of any other comparable city. That tremendous. And I saw that as a crime for tremendous drug, fuel, property crime. But you were safe relatively.
[00:47:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:47:43] Speaker B: You, you know, person crimes, stranger, very low. And that's why city council, you know, not to get into the politics of it locally, but city council just lowered the authorized number and they could get away with it. And now all of a sudden, we need to hire more police. We froze recruiting in 2009. We froze recruiting in 2020. In my opinion. You never freeze recruiting in a large municipal police department.
And then you look at kind of post George Floyd and that national justifiable call for police reform on top of.
[00:48:12] Speaker A: So definitely justified.
[00:48:14] Speaker B: What's that?
[00:48:15] Speaker A: Definitely justifiable calls.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
[00:48:17] Speaker A: I mean, well, policing has to change. That's one thing that I think people, even within law enforcement, we recognize this. And the, the parallel I like to draw to the need for reform within law enforcement is what occurred in the firehouse. Right. When during the fifties and sixties, when commercialized, pressurized systems were available to put out fires rapidly.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Fires on the rules.
[00:48:41] Speaker A: Right. And factories.
The fire department realized we're not really putting out a lot of fires anymore.
[00:48:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:47] Speaker A: What are we gonna do?
[00:48:48] Speaker B: Spending a lot of money driving ladder trucks to the heart attack.
[00:48:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So they decided to pull the medic unit out of the hospital, bring them into the community, and put them in the firehouse. Right. And they all overnight, every firefighter became an EMT. And so that was a radical multidisciplinary approach.
But it was needed. It was actually needed in order to continue to fund fires because house fires were still occurring. You still need a fire department. But we can't justify.
[00:49:15] Speaker B: Yeah, 70% of your calls are medical. Yeah, yeah.
[00:49:17] Speaker A: How do you justify just having firefighters? Right. And so what does law enforcement have to do? We eventually have to realize, number one, because of all the decisions made by the Supreme Court, O'Connor v. Donaldson, that the primary healthcare worker on the street, the primary mental health care worker on the street is a police officer.
And so when are we going to see those reforms and what are those going to look like?
[00:49:42] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's really. And I think, find me. Portland is unique in a lot of different ways, a lot of great ways. But when you look at the recovery, and I try to always open my mind because I'm so busy with downtown Portland and Portland. But you look at any major american city, and police officers are all dealing with mental health crisis, sentinel crisis all the time. Right. And granted, some states do much better mental health and social services than we do. I mean, we're usually at the bottom. But find me a large city police chief that doesn't have to worry about mental health issues, drug issues, drug addiction issues.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: Even where I worked, which was a small town, I would say 30% of what I did was social work.
[00:50:16] Speaker B: Yep, 100%. And I, you know, I got out of policing in 2008, but I wasn't.
[00:50:19] Speaker A: Trained to do that. I had a background in.
[00:50:21] Speaker B: I was gonna say, I love chasing bank robbers. I love chasing facing criminals. I did not love going to domestic violence calls and dealing with social service calls. And the mentally ill bipolar person on Cornell Boulevard.
[00:50:32] Speaker A: I got the call. Hey, so and so is down at Safeway, and they're putting. They opened up a bag of flour, and they're putting flour all over their naked body again.
[00:50:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep. And here's a good story. A Portland cop I used to work with years ago, he said, mark, you know, I used to deal with a mental health call maybe once a month. Somebody is acutely mentally ill. He's like, now it's two or three a day. It's like yesterday I had a naked woman police officer hold naked in the back of my squad car, throwing pee all over me. It's not why I became a cop. And so part of that, and it's a great question. I hope more people are asking that question, especially city leaders, police chiefs, sheriffs organizations, because the change is for a while, until or if this country rebuilds our mental health program and our addiction services. If you want to be a patrol officer in any medium to large size city, you need and deserve all of those kind of collateral skills and training because you're going to deal with them.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: You have to have them.
[00:51:25] Speaker B: But, like, I mean, take Oregon 16 weeks at the basic police academy, 16 weeks, you, a lot of departments. It's a ged.
[00:51:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:33] Speaker B: And we expect someone with a high school degree to get 16 weeks of training and then immediately go out on the street. And granted, there, you know, if your viewers don't know you have three or four months of field training, it's not like you're just off on your own, but still you're taking calls, you're in uniform, you're a cop. Right. And now you're supposed to interact with someone in acute mental illness with no resources. There's nobody else to call in. A lot of our cities, and even here in Portland, we have Portland street response. It's building up, but 03:00 a.m. in the morning, most of the times, more than not, that police officer, like you said, you're the first line person. So a big part of it is it's not now. It's in the recruiting. Who do you recruit to be a police officer? You know, why do you want to be a police officer? Do you understand the realities? That's one of my fears. A lot of people that we're hiring here in Portland, other cities, they might be coming under the right intentions.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: They don't understand.
[00:52:18] Speaker B: They don't understand the job.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: They don't.
[00:52:20] Speaker B: And Hollywood's done, as, you know, really well. Anybody that's, you know, you watch Hollywood, I always, I always love that movie. What end of watch great movie because what are they doing? They do paperwork. There's a whole section is paperwork. And I always joke my first chase in Sherwood was like 56 seconds. We had VCR's that dates me a little bit. The little cam, dash cam.
[00:52:36] Speaker A: What is that?
[00:52:37] Speaker B: It's a big tape with a little thing in it. Yeah. And I did paperwork for like two days. Two days for a 57 2nd chase. So it's in the. Answer your question. So it's recruiting. It's saying, why do you want to be a police officer? Yeah, there's some things that are fun and this and that. And there's a lot to that lifestyle that you need. You need organized people. You need type a people. You need people that are confident, right? Not cowboys, but confident. But you also need people that are educated, that have real world experience and that realize that a big portion of my job is not the sexy stuff on Hollywood. It's dealing with people in the worst times with very little, if any, social service backup.
And so you know what you're getting into the job. And then I would say the training part is huge, too, is, you know, the, when I was in college, you know, you remember studying the police professionalism and, you know, cops were always underpaid, very little education requirements. And it shifted, right, what, late eighties, early nineties, a lot of PD's were putting in associates degrees or full time active military. And it's interesting, Portland, you know, PPB used to be a four year degree, then I went to a two year degree.
[00:53:34] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:53:35] Speaker B: And now I believe it's a Ged. Yeah.
[00:53:38] Speaker A: Let me stop you real quick, because you talk so fast. I know, and I don't talk fast.
[00:53:42] Speaker B: I talk.
[00:53:44] Speaker A: So one of the things I learned from my FTO, who did a fantastic job, I'd name, I'd put them out there by name, but I, you know, I don't like to do that to people. But, yeah, I had a fantastic ft, and he became one of my best friends, actually. And what he told me was on the. And I was a reserve. Luckily, I was a reserve for like two years, and I was going out three days a week.
[00:54:07] Speaker B: That's the best job interview in the world, right?
[00:54:09] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And he told me, he said, you know, he asked me, goes, what do you think law enforcement, what, when we're out doing this stuff, right? And we were getting in chases, I mean, I was working, you know, and he finally took me, he took me to a restaurant and he goes, what do you think we're doing out there all these times? And we're doing these chases and we're arresting these people, right?
And I go, well, we're, you know, we're just trying to. We're trying to find out who's doing.
[00:54:35] Speaker B: Concern, protecting, trying to find out who's.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: Doing the bad things and trying to make sure the bad people can't hurt or the people who did the bad things can't hurt any people anymore.
[00:54:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:43] Speaker A: He goes, he goes, let me break it down for you. Make it very simple. He goes, and what I'm about to tell you might shock your conscience, but this is the reality. And he said, the job of law enforcement is to know and be responsible for violating people's civil rights and to know how to do that legally and in a morally and ethically sound manner. Because every time we stop someone, Alex, we're violating their rights, whether they're going 7 miles away.
[00:55:16] Speaker B: You don't hear that. You don't hear that in the police academy.
[00:55:18] Speaker A: I didn't hear this in the police academy. And I thought about that. He goes, there's not a more sacred profession, because the whole purpose of the United States was to grant freedoms and rights and liberties to individuals that no.
[00:55:34] Speaker B: Individuals ever had on the history of the planet.
[00:55:36] Speaker A: And, you know, it was extreme. Right. And it wasn't a perfect plan. Right. There were a lot of mess ups along the way, and different groups didn't receive those for a long time, and some are still receiving them. Right. And. But the job of law enforcement is to actually go against that tenant. Right. And to actually know when to stop someone's ability to have freedom.
[00:55:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And potentially use force.
[00:55:58] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. And I thought about that, and I thought he goes, that's why oversight. We went, we talked about oversight and the importance of. When you write a report, this is why it's important, because you violated that person's rights. This is why they wanted me to wear a body camera and turn it on every time. Because you were in charge of that, of the level of liberty and rights that person was going to have during the moment that you contacted them. You were in charge. Not a judge, not the constitution anymore, you the individual. And you need to know what is appropriate at every moment. You have to know what you know, and you have to choose, make a choice. And I thought about that, and it's. It's very, you know, I don't think a lot of police officers realize that.
[00:56:42] Speaker B: No, it's because it's not formally taught to you, because when you hear that, you're like, oh, my God, that's terrible. We're allowing a government employee to violate people's rights and then potentially use force up to include lethal force. Yeah, that must be wrong.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: No, it sounds really, really harsh.
[00:56:55] Speaker B: And to your earlier question about, think about the weight on someone's shoulders to be put in that position. It's tremendous. And we don't give individuals the training and the resources and the backing, and we ask our police to do everything. Right.
[00:57:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:09] Speaker B: It's always the cop. And so that needs to be, I think, the shift, you know, how do we look at it? It's. It's more of the, it's continuing on that police professionalism movement that's 25 plus years old, but it's taking it to the next level. Right. It's a master level degree. It's a PhD level kind of thing. Whereas where.
[00:57:22] Speaker A: Yeah, like, in the army, as you earn your rank and your time in grade, they should be paying for these degrees. You know, like, I have three master's degrees, and one of them were. Two of them were required for me to have in the military. And these are things that have to be provided to the individual.
[00:57:39] Speaker B: Well, it's good because you never stop. Good cop never stops learning. Right. You're always training and all that, and you're building that and then the retention piece. And I love sharing this story. I had my chief's interview at Hillsborough. It was great. It was chief Ashenbrenner at the time and our two commanders. This was the final, final interview.
[00:57:54] Speaker A: The chief's interview.
[00:57:55] Speaker B: The chief's interview, yeah. And she said, mister Wells, my recruiting and retention policy is this. I, as the chief, hire and try to steal the best cops in the United States. The two commanders here, their number one job is to retain that officer at Hillsborough police for a 25 year career. So what do you think about my recruiting retention policy now? I still feel guilty because I wasn't there. I was there for like a year and a half, but I said this fantastic, and. And it was so impactful to me, because if you as a chief or a mayor, especially chief, you have that. That mentality of not only is it hiring the best person, but what are you doing to maintain and retain that person? Because, as you know, your first year, you don't know squat. Your third year, you kind of know what you're doing.
It's like anything. It's like teaching. It's like flying. It's like surgery.
You need experience. Until you have all those calls and you've dealt with those things, then you. Then you become good. Your five, six, seven year mark. You're really good. You hit your ten year mark. You know, you look at patrol officers that are ten years on the street, they're phenomenal. That's who you want to keep. And we're seeing, and I don't know the exact stat, but large city police departments, I think it's eight years is the average tenure of a large city police department officer. And they're not only not laddering, they're quitting. And I have multiple friends in PPB now that are not cops anymore.
[00:59:06] Speaker A: Only 20% are making it to retirement now in this field.
[00:59:10] Speaker B: And so it's changing that whole dynamic. And I love what you're saying, too. It's gone from that, the warrior mentality training. And I remember you sitting in the academy and you watch video after video of cops getting shot.
[00:59:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:59:21] Speaker B: You know, and in my. I don't however many years. I mean, I got shot quite a bit in the bor patrol, which is a unique dynamic.
But even as a street cop, you go weeks, months, sometimes without having to pull.
[00:59:32] Speaker A: Most law enforcement officers are not in a fatal shooting.
[00:59:34] Speaker B: No.
[00:59:34] Speaker A: They don't get involved in a fatal shooting.
[00:59:36] Speaker B: No. Exactly. And that's good. Keep it that way. Yeah, great. But it does, sadly, could happen any moment. But. But it's changing that dynamic to more of, you know, what is your role? And I think the community has to come in a little bit because the community needs to experience, expect higher level of professionalism, education, training and retention. I mean, my wife's from Virginia Beach, Virginia. I think they top out at like $65,000. I love a year.
[00:59:55] Speaker A: I love albeit.
[00:59:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it's fun. I lived there for a little bit. I like going back to visit. Yeah, very. I like the west coast. I'm a northwesterner guy. But your average cop there tops out at like 70 grand. And the cost of living is less, but nowhere near that less. It's like. So you're asking somebody to make these split second judgment decisions without any support at three in the morning, and you're gonna be starting them off at $48,000 a year.
[01:00:19] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:00:19] Speaker B: Are you kidding me? No way. So that whole dynamic kind of has to change. And with that investment from the community comes that reciprocal accountability and expectation that you will have, you know, the finest people applying and the end and staying in your police department. And the other part, too, is it?
If your viewers have. Can I talk about Robert Peel just a little bit? He's my hero. Right?
[01:00:40] Speaker A: Yeah. But before we do that, I want to get back to those recruiting numbers. So. Yeah, when you had the dynamic of. At the core of what we do in law enforcement is understanding how to violate people's rights so that we can affect arrests, to put people in jail, people that need to be there. Like the lady who had 100 dead rabbits. Right.
[01:01:00] Speaker B: Well, I wanted her to get help.
[01:01:01] Speaker A: But, yeah, when the recruiting numbers are low or when a police department isn't properly staffed. Staffed. Right. It's. It's almost like a seesaw effect. You want to be able. You want to be able to have police officers out doing community work, just.
[01:01:16] Speaker B: Engaging with the community, non call related.
[01:01:19] Speaker A: Even playing basketball, like, I used to go to a section eight housing and take donuts once a week and teach kids how to tie their shoes. This type of engagement, you need officers to do. And as. As we have fewer and fewer police officers, you're almost guaranteeing that the majority of action that's being taken by law enforcement are actions that are violating people's rights.
[01:01:42] Speaker B: And does that make sense? 100%. You look at dispatch calls. I'm a big call for service nerd. Because reported crime, I don't put much stats in reported crime. It's calls for service. And which one. How many of those are dispatched, and how many are self initiated? And I forget the last number, but I mean, your large city, you know, averages, actually, Clackamas county, where I, where I live now, and I'm on the sheriff's advisory committee, they have the 60 40 rule. And so the captain that's in charge of patrol, when the patrol officer is spending less than 40% of their time on proactive, self initiated calls, kind of puts a little alarm goes off. So do we need more deputies in that. In that geographic area?
[01:02:17] Speaker A: What's going on?
[01:02:17] Speaker B: Right. 60 40. And you're spot on. And actually, going back to your analogy, you're talking about fire department. I call our current policing not just in person, Portland and any of these cities that are understaffed by the tune of hundreds. It's firehouse policing, and it's call for call for call for call.
[01:02:30] Speaker A: You're just taking your calls, your eight calls down, and you're taking them your whole shift.
[01:02:33] Speaker B: Yep. And everyone is losing, the individual officers losing. That's why you see burnout and attrition, because a good cop who wants to solve problems and help people, that's why they came into the profession. You can only do that for a couple years, and then you're like, this is ridiculous. Victims, what do you get? You get an officer that shows up after an hour or 2 hours. They're busy. Da da da da. And I think about, you know, Sherwood, very small. You have a burglary.
[01:02:54] Speaker A: Well. And they're. And every call is about having to decide what level of rights violation has to occur.
[01:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Do you have a crime? Do you have a victim? Da da da. Can I make an arrest? What band aid do I put on it? I go, okay.
[01:03:07] Speaker A: And then you're saying. You're asking yourself the whole set of questions again, and you really want that police officer to kind of, you know what we're talking about? Training evolutions. Get off the street and actually go out and be in community engagement for a week or two at a time where they're not even taking calls. No, they're just going around engaging and helping people, being supportive and helpful in the community.
[01:03:28] Speaker B: And that's the whole dynamic. Well, I'm a cop. I'm going to drive around my cop car. Right? That's not my police officer. No. What about changing that dynamic? No. You're going to spend two years on a walking beat, and you're going to go talk to businesses and talk to residents. And in three months, I'm your lieutenant. I want to go around and everyone should know your name.
[01:03:41] Speaker A: Everyone.
[01:03:41] Speaker B: You should know their name and you should know that. Community policing. Right. And you're spot on because the city did a big staffing survey years ago, and they, I can't remember the exact numbers, but they said they needed something like 580 patrol officers to have a community policing model. That number could be off, but it's. We're at like 260 of our officers that are assigned to patrol.
[01:03:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:03:59] Speaker B: So. And again, it goes back to that. You know, the community needs to understand and then ask for but understand if you want to have officers proactively in your neighborhood on foot, coming to basketball games, doing community related things.
[01:04:10] Speaker A: Things that are not call related.
[01:04:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:04:12] Speaker A: That are not call related or civil rights violation related events.
[01:04:16] Speaker B: Yep. And I, when I did all my. Because I ran our neighborhood watch, business watch, all of our community programs, I loved it. I was in all 95 neighborhoods, worked with all of our 50 business associations. I would be at a living room with, say, 20 households, and I'd say, who here knows even the last name of a Portland police officer that works in your neighborhood? Maybe one hand would come up and it would usually be a neighbor say, oh, Mark, we used to have coffee with Joe. Sergeant Joe. I miss Joe. Right? Nobody knows that. And these are all people that are getting together to start a neighborhood watch that are, for the most part, not all, but for the most part, pretty supportive of police want police need police, and they don't even have a clue who their officer is. And that was. I've been out of that game since 2019. It's even worse. So that's that piece, too. And again, you look at the dynamic. Is it a different role? Because right now, it's kind of. We stamp, right? You're a police officer. You have all these certifications. You do all this. You know, is it. Is it just thinking outside the box? You have police officers. I'm not saying unarmed. I mean, you know, like Portland, we have public safety support specialists everywhere else. They're called, what? CSO's community service officers.
[01:05:10] Speaker A: The Memphis model.
[01:05:11] Speaker B: Yeah. You've got, you got people that are police employees, but they're not armed. They don't have arrest authority, but they take all the low level calls or they're there. It's a customer service piece. So it's looking at. How do you change that?
[01:05:21] Speaker A: See, I think when you go to a CSO model, you're actually robbing the police officer of doing true community engagement. I think you just.
[01:05:29] Speaker B: That's the time they spend most of the time.
[01:05:31] Speaker A: And if you have a bully, if, if you have a bad police officer, and at the same time, every police officer is only taking calls where they have to decide if they're going to use force and violate rights, you're never going to be able to, it's easier to find the bully because if you give someone the opportunity to not do that type of work and to do community engagement work where you're teaching kids how to tie their shoes, that bully is always going to gravitate back towards abuse. Abuse. Does that make sense?
[01:06:00] Speaker B: Well, they don't want to be at a coffee with a cop or to deal. They want to be exactly late at night doing no.
[01:06:05] Speaker A: And I agree, if you don't, if you don't have those different pieces there, then it's even, it's actually harder to police the police.
[01:06:12] Speaker B: Yep. And the big thing which I'm really passionate about is especially, you know, and I always say post George Floyd, but there's been horrible things that the police have done for years. Right. But, but if the community wants police reform and if the community demands police reform, one of the, in my opinion, one of the strategic ways to do that is everything we've just talked about. You hire the best men and women out there that want to be policed for the right reasons, you give them the best training, cutting edge training, you know, and then that support throughout their career. And you know who they are. You're, they're part of your community. And by that, you're right. The bad apples will naturally flush out the culture. Right. And I was pretty fortunate. I had one incident, border patrol, where I saw an agent using excessive force. I brought up a statement, was part of the crew that turned in my, I never saw things other than that, which wasn't horrible. I mean, it wasn't a fatality or anything. And in my PD career, I worked with really good guy. I never saw that might have existed. I don't know. But, you know, part of how you get to real police accountability and police reform is by having all of these measures in place so that it's this us versus them thing which is just kind of going like this comes back. And I told, and I had one of the programs I helped an individual get on city council and I said it was called just one was my idea. I still like this idea. I don't see what your viewers think about is if you live in a city and you want to get to know at least one police officer, that city, I don't care if it's city of 5001 cop or La Portland. They should have a program where you can meet and get to know a police officer in a venue and a form that you feel comfortable with.
And I, as much as I support the police and I'm worried about the profession, you look at your average college now, what they look like compared to even when I was a cop, I didn't have an eternal ballistic thing. I mean, I didn't have all this stuff and you've got all these things and this and that. Some cities have done this where you can meet some cops in a park and they're dressed like this.
[01:07:58] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[01:08:00] Speaker B: And anybody should have that opportunity, especially if they're proactively asking for it so that when, not if, when an officer does something that's egregious or wrong and it's their own police department, they're not going to rush the judge and say, oh, cops are terrible. They're all a bunch of brutal thugs. They're all racist. They're going to say, well, that officer, I don't like what I saw. They better be held accountable. But you know what, I know Joe and Joe's a dad and he skis at Mount Hood. He's uphuman, right. We've lost it. We used to do citizen academies. Even our ride along program, that's something in that evolution.
[01:08:29] Speaker A: Even reserve programs are gone, are going away gone.
[01:08:32] Speaker B: We don't have a volunteer program for Portland. And again, I know that's hard. Some of the other cities staffing, I mean, I appreciate that. But that's where you got to put your investment and your time. Because if you do that right, your natural byproducts going to be accountability and reform and you're changing that culture and that's where we got to get to. And so, yeah, it's an interesting time. I don't know what the ultimate answer is, but I also look at police departments and cities need to hire law enforcement like a company hires CFO's and CEO's.
And it's like, it's interesting. In Hillsboro, again, a long time ago, 2007 ish, when you made it through your background and you were on the kind of list we want to hire you. Tina would call me every week. Hey, Mark, it's Tina. How you doing? Just to let you know, your psychologicals next week. How are you? I happen to notice every week we do a let's check on you. And why did you apply to the Multnomah county sheriff's office? Not that they're bad. I love MCSO. Yeah, she's like, we're the best police department.
[01:09:23] Speaker A: That's our core. That's our core.
[01:09:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And it was impressive. And then, of course, I had my chief's interview where they, and because again, if you do that right as a police administrator, you're going to hire and you're going to retain the best quality people. And if you don't do that right or even you do it kind of half ass at the beginning, that's where you're gonna see morale issues and retention issues and service issues. It's hard work. And that's where, you know, that's where our, the change in evolution needs to come forward and put it. I just, you know, you really good people are not going into law enforcement. And the generational part, I mean, I have a couple people that I know that literally they were, they were 2nd, 3rd generation cops.
[01:09:56] Speaker A: And they're like, I told my employees they wanted to be law enforcement and they were like, I don't think that I want to do what law enforcement.
[01:10:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And I purse, for me personally, the fact of I don't have to carry a gun and I don't have to make that decision.
And I was never a cop when I was a dad. I left policing. I had my daughter. And it's funny you think of all the bad. I went on a child abuse call about two weeks before I left Hillsborough and two young girls. And I think of taking that call as a dad. And I've got a daughter. I can't imagine doing the job as a dad or a mom or parent. But then I love the fact that I don't have to have that weight on. I'm going to work today and I may have to make that decision. Decision.
And then what I want is I want the community, especially people that maybe don't like the police. I want them to understand what that weight is like. And if you've never put that weight on your shoulders, you know, you need to. You need to be open to understanding what that is because if we're not careful, we're not going to have enough people that want to assume that responsibility and that weight on the shoulders and then what are you stuck with? Right. So it's. And I'll connect to my Robert Peel guy.
[01:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah, Robert Peel. Let's talk about Peel and then let's talk about your future, your current engagements. Right?
[01:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:11:02] Speaker A: And then where people can find you and the work that you're doing. So let's get to Robert Peel.
[01:11:06] Speaker B: All right. So I studied Robert Peel. Right when I had a little shiny degree, like, oh, Robert Peel started the London Metropolitan Police Department, 1829. It's almost 200 years ago.
[01:11:14] Speaker A: First individual to professionalize.
[01:11:16] Speaker B: Yeah. The father of the professional police. So he's, so he's termed. And I remember reading it, you know, in college. This is in the early nineties. God, I'm old. Early nineties.
[01:11:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:11:25] Speaker B: Yeah, you are, dude. And now, you know, then it's funny becoming a police officer, then being in crime prevention and then being involved in some political campaigns locally. So if you don't know about Robert Peel, P E L. Robert Peel has nine principles of policing. I won't read them all, but two that I really like. It says to recognize always that. That the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence and actions and behavior and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
[01:11:52] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:11:52] Speaker B: Yeah. The other one. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police. The police being only the members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence. And I love.
[01:12:10] Speaker A: So the power of policing should come from the people and police should be the people.
[01:12:15] Speaker B: 100%.
[01:12:16] Speaker A: Wow, that's great.
[01:12:17] Speaker B: And John F. Kennedy, I love quotes. He said, a community will get the type of law enforcement they demand. Yeah.
[01:12:23] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:12:23] Speaker B: And that's the thing. And the community, in my opinion, have been asleep at the wheel. And it's very easy to critique. It's very easy to say, oh, the cop was grumpy or, you know, something really bad like George Floyd. Oh my God, they're murderers. Right? But if you want a police department or law enforcement services that you want and your neighbors want, then you need to get involved. You need to be part of that. Because you can't have it both ways. You can't demand perfection and demand people work horrible hours, see horrible things.
For most cities, very nominal pay and expect perfection. And you do nothing part of it. You're not part of that at all. You can't have it both ways.
[01:12:58] Speaker A: And to add to that, you can't expect perfection, but then take away the resources, 100% that are necessary for the training in order to get to that level of.
[01:13:09] Speaker B: I had, I used to run a lot of our big community when I was with the city. Big community safety meetings like PSAC. And I find some of those.
[01:13:14] Speaker A: Before, it was love PSAC.
[01:13:16] Speaker B: Yeah, before. And it's city form before. The city said, those are bad. It's really bad for the community, Mark.
[01:13:20] Speaker A: And I privatize that group.
[01:13:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I think a lot of pride in that because, yeah, that was another revolution. The city said, it's not good for police command staff, beat cops, neighbors, community members, and businesses to all get together every month, have pizza, and talk about issues and problems and problem solving. That's a bad idea.
[01:13:35] Speaker A: So we created a nonprofit with Stan Pink and who we love.
[01:13:39] Speaker B: Yes, we do. We do. But I had a woman came up afterwards, and she was so upset at this police officer. He was late. He was rude. He didn't really want to take my report. Someone broke into my car. I'm so frustrated and angry. And I said, well, ma'am, you know, I'm not with the police bureau, and I don't backseat quarterback anybody except Mark Wells in crime prevention. But I said, if you want to file a complaint, I can give you the number, the address. I'd encourage you to do that if you want to do that. But I said, have you ever been on a ride along? It's like, no. What's that? So you get to go out with a police officer, like, four, five, 6 hours. She's like, why would I do that? I'm like, well, do you know anybody, and do you have any family in law enforcement? No. No. Have you ever thought about. I was kind of passive aggressive, facetious. She's probably in her late fifties. Like, have you ever thought about a career in law enforcement? She's like, oh, good God, no. I'd never do that job. I go, so, long story short, she did a ride along out in East Precinct, swing shift. Sorry. The next month, this was when I was running the north peace Act meeting, and she came up to me, and she goes, you know, Mark, I'm still not happy with that officer that took my call. He was not professional, but I rode around with Sean in east precinct. Holy crap. First call was a car crash, and he's doing first aid. And then we got to go over and do this. Then we got to go over there and that. Then it was attempted suicide, and 3 hours, and da da da da. She's like, oh, my. And he's the coolest guy in the world. I'm like, yes, they're humans, right?
[01:14:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:14:45] Speaker B: And even though I catered to a very pro public safety, you know, part of the city, I loved it when I had someone who had, you know, issues or concerns, and I would challenge them, like, go on a ride along, get to know, you know, and. And every single time, you know, and again, I liked that she was still. Was not happy with that service because, you know, you should still get good service. And I had another woman, too. I said, you know, one of the hardest days in my law enforcement career is when I had to get a death notification. I said, I remember, like it was yesterday.
[01:15:10] Speaker A: Those are horrible.
[01:15:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it was the worst day. Yeah. It was worse than getting. Well, not worse, get shot at. That was a little more scary. But I remember going in uniform with my sergeant, telling the mom that her son had just hung himself, and she's grabbing onto me, sobbing. Yeah, sobbing. And I'm doing everything I can do to not cry. And. And I'm like, well, they don't train you for this.
[01:15:26] Speaker A: I had three deaths that I was responsible for in one shift.
[01:15:29] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[01:15:30] Speaker A: What was a teenager who committed suicide.
[01:15:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And. And. And I had a woman, and I explained. I said, you know, for all. And I made this comment kind of, you know, I just said, well, I'm sorry the officer was rude, you know, for tired or whatever, but I said, you know, for all, you know, he just came from a death notification and is having a tough day. She goes, what do you mean? Don't the chaplains do that or the emts do that? Well, depends on the. But no, sometimes you. You as a police officer. And I shared her with this story, and she's like, I had no idea. I said, yeah. I said I had to tell a mom that I found her son dead. I go, you don't see that in the Hollywood movies. You know, and so that's the evolution.
[01:16:03] Speaker A: Tackling the father who's running to the vehicle where his teenage daughter just hit a tree and died.
[01:16:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:16:09] Speaker A: And you don't want that father to.
[01:16:11] Speaker B: See his daughter, that last image. Yeah, yeah. It's story after story.
[01:16:14] Speaker A: It's a tough job.
[01:16:15] Speaker B: No, it's really hard job and people. And again, it's. And I'm really passionate about this, as you can tell. I slow down on my rate of speech.
The community's gotta get involved. The community's gotta demand and expect professional law enforcement. They've gotta be part of that. And if they don't, and the current, you know, the current staffing and challenges that we have, and it's mainly our large cities you go to, you know, you don't see that in the smaller cities, but our large cities, how can crime not go up? How are we not gonna see more recruitment problems and more retention issues when the community is just like, I want you to be perfect and I'm not going to be a part of it. You can't have it both ways. And so it's that evolution all the way around. And again, good police administrators and city managers will prioritize that community engagement piece because even though, like in Portland, we're very understaffed, but we need a police volunteer program. We need a crime prevention program all the time. Anybody in the city of Portland says, I want to help out. You know, when I started in, I was at the Masonic Lodge in Kenton up in north Portland. It was awesome. Two crime prevention staff, me and my good friend, we had two desks and it was a 24 hours break room and report writing for the cops. Almost always a cop there.
[01:17:21] Speaker A: Excellent.
[01:17:21] Speaker B: They rented it for a dollar a year.
[01:17:22] Speaker A: First responder room.
[01:17:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it was part of the whole, there's a, I forget the name. It's a chaplain first responder program.
[01:17:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[01:17:29] Speaker B: Yep. And we had Frank and Janet Tuesday through Thursday, you could come in, they'd help you fill out a police report if you're going on a vacation. How to do a vacation.
[01:17:36] Speaker A: Excellent.
[01:17:37] Speaker B: Yeah. All of that gone. All that gone. So, and that's the low hanging fruit. Right. That's easy stuff. So, so I'm optimistic and we'll see what happens with, with things that go on. But it's, it's definitely, and I think, too, your average person busy, never knew anything about police recruiting. And it takes two years to hire, train and certify a police officer. Now it's all over the media. Right. It's become part of, why can't we.
[01:17:59] Speaker A: Just have more police officers? Well, because it takes five years to develop one.
[01:18:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And my, you know, that's what's fun with my extensive long resume. I used to do backgrounds. People don't understand how hard it is as it should be. Right. And I would say, actually, some of.
[01:18:12] Speaker A: The federal, I filled my first background.
[01:18:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:18:14] Speaker A: I got asked the question. I said, they said, how many physical altercations have you been in?
And I was like, okay, well, I was a, I was a bouncer for five years during college. I worked four days a week. I got into a minimum of one physical altercation a night.
[01:18:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:18:31] Speaker A: So that's four times 52 times 5000.
[01:18:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:18:36] Speaker A: So I said four or 500.
[01:18:38] Speaker B: So you're too aggressive. Yeah.
[01:18:39] Speaker A: Oh. And they're like, okay, well, thank you for coming in. And I was like, yeah. And I told my buddy, who's a, I was already on a reserve.
[01:18:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:18:46] Speaker A: Told my buddy, he's like, yeah, no, you don't tell them that. I'm like, what?
[01:18:50] Speaker B: No, you're like, I tell him everything. I said, yeah, no, I had a buddy in San Diego sheriff's office. He failed the polygraph. One of the question was, is you ever struck a domestic partner? And they. They failed him because they were saying he lied. And I know this guy really well. He's like, mark, I've never even hit a man. I've never hit anybody in my life. I was kind of worried that might be an issue going into police work, and so. But people don't understand, you know, you. Polygraphs in most states, psychological, you know, a 15 year background. Everywhere you've lived, worked, socialized for.
[01:19:16] Speaker A: Oh, I got told by Portland I was gonna join Portland police. I wanna. This is when Leeloff was over on North Precinct. Did a lot because I knew him. I was on a board with his man. Mom.
[01:19:25] Speaker B: Yep. I worked with.
[01:19:26] Speaker A: These are some PPP people. Yeah, some Portland folks. And I did a ride along. I went to the. I got the invitation to, you know, I used to have an invitation to cater an event downtown. And the.
The detective told me, they need to know.
They're, like, giving their spiel. They need to know every single vehicle and VIN number you've ever owned.
And I went out to him later and I said, hey, when I was in high school, I used to go to car auctions, and I would, you know, you can Texas. You could sell five a year. I said, I used to buy because I, you know, me and my friends, we were mechanics and body shop guys, and I would buy. I was one of the guys that would buy the car.
[01:20:04] Speaker B: You legally owned it and that was your.
[01:20:05] Speaker A: I owned it, like, 30, 40 vehicles.
[01:20:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:20:07] Speaker A: And I said, hey, I've owned like, 30, 40 vehicles.
[01:20:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:20:10] Speaker A: And I don't know those VIN numbers. Those records are from, like, the nineties. He goes. He goes, hey, man, you seem like a really great guy. Don't put in for this job, because I'll have to fill your background.
[01:20:21] Speaker B: True story. I applied for. I applied for Portland police first. They told me about a year to get hired.
[01:20:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[01:20:28] Speaker B: I also. I was supposed to give them the name of every person. I was in a significant romantic relationship ever.
[01:20:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Great.
[01:20:34] Speaker B: Is that. Yeah. And now keep in mind, I left the government with a top secret clearance. Been very vetted.
[01:20:40] Speaker A: I had a top secret clearance.
[01:20:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:20:41] Speaker A: I was a reserve. I was in the reserves as a. In the army. And I was currently a reserve police officer.
[01:20:47] Speaker B: Background for that as well. Yes.
[01:20:48] Speaker A: And I went through the Clackamas County Interagency. I like a 250 hours program.
[01:20:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And it was funny, like, first of all, you're not selling me. That's gonna take a year. Second of all, you know, I'll give you names, current addresses, which means I'd have to call, find out somebody.
[01:21:01] Speaker A: And I said, you want me to. You. You want me to tell my wife that I have to call women that I've had sex with and ask them where they live?
[01:21:08] Speaker B: Well, not. And for me personally, it was. I had. I had a high school relationship, went into college. There's nothing bad, nothing emotionally. My heart was broken. I didn't want to have to talk to her ever again. Right, but. But. And it was interesting.
[01:21:19] Speaker A: I can't even have people like that on my Facebook page.
[01:21:21] Speaker B: Yeah, but. And then. And then I got hired by Sherwood in, like, six weeks. Six weeks. Yeah, yeah, and that's the other part, too. And it's changed a little bit. I mean. I mean, PPB and other larger agencies, they've changed the whole. Plus, when you have 100 applicants for one opening, you can be a little more cavalier and not, you know.
[01:21:35] Speaker A: Well, my whole thing is, if these recruiting standards worked, then we wouldn't have bad apples in law enforcement.
[01:21:42] Speaker B: You know, I always. When I went through my psychological twice, once for Sherwood, I had to do it again for Hillsboro. And I. You know, you go through all of that and you're like, yeah, how do you. I know. It's like polygraphs. I know it's an imperfect science, and that's why they're not missable court. But you would think that. You wouldn't see the level. I think it's definitely getting better. But you still see a. I think a level of criminality and just poor decision making in even seasoned law enforcement. And you have to ask the question, so does that work? And that's another part going back to your original question. The evolution is the screening tool. Are we screening out good people? Like, I remember I was going to apply to the FBI. If you smoke marijuana 14 times or more, you could never apply.
So if I smoked pot 15 times, I could never become a special agent with the FBI? That's ridiculous, right?
[01:22:27] Speaker A: I didn't know that. I've never smoked marijuana.
[01:22:28] Speaker B: It was 25 years ago. Yeah. And I smoked marijuana, let's see, six times. I think my last background.
[01:22:34] Speaker A: What?
[01:22:34] Speaker B: Probably background investigators watch, like you said, four times. I don't know, man of the world. I don't think care. But. But that was the, you know, and it's like, do we need to look at that? And agencies have, you know, with, like, tattoos is a good example. Some, like, middle.
[01:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:22:46] Speaker B: But you'll see some cities where no tech tattoos above the neckline. Right. This and that. And so that's that whole evolution of, you know, very paramilitary warrior model to, you know, if you want, again, going back to my man Robert Peel here, if you want the police to be the community, the community police, then guess what? Your cops should look like the community.
[01:23:02] Speaker A: These are great for people on the street. These are great conversation starters.
[01:23:06] Speaker B: One of our best gang outreach police officers in Hillsboro was tatted up, all phenomenal. He could walk into a school, get cred with kids more than I ever would looking like this. Right. But that's the changes, is it should. But at the same time, and this is. I know, you know, and a lot of your viewers do, too, is that's a really tough thing to do, because at the end of the day, there are times, as a police officer in law enforcement, you have to violate people's civil rights. You have to use force. And I think that. And I look at my time in federal law, federal law enforcement. I have a lot of friends that were, like, ATF and FBI, you know? And it was funny. Cause, like, I became a cop, and Sherwin, I went to a domestic call. Literally, it was like, my partner Jeremy, and two toaling cops show up, and I'm used to chasing 30 people in the woods, in the border patrol with a Beretta and two magazines, right? And I'm like, I got four cops.
[01:23:52] Speaker A: This is amazing.
[01:23:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And, like. And then the other guy brings the shield out. I'm like, what the hell is that for? Well, that's domestic. These things can get. You can be really dangerous, you know? I'm like, okay, yeah, totally.
[01:24:01] Speaker A: Shield. Yeah, I don't like shields.
[01:24:04] Speaker B: Oh, well, we had everything, Sherwood. Yeah. So. But you. You have to put all those things in place, right? Hiring these people, all these different things so your police look like. But then at the end of the day, you know, you spend enough time in that job, you're gonna have a significant incident. Hopefully not shooting, but still a significant incident. And that's really hard to do. And. And I've heard anecdotally from different departments where I have friends that they'll hire people. First time they get spit on, they quit.
[01:24:30] Speaker A: Oh.
[01:24:30] Speaker B: They get pushed down, they quit.
[01:24:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:24:32] Speaker B: They were great on paper, buddy.
[01:24:33] Speaker A: My sergeant, he got a phone call. I know he took a new recruit out first time the person was writing, did the whole academy, the whole thing. And they went to a. No, they did a traffic stop and, and the guy ended up having a warrant and sergeant had to fight the guy and the recruit did not jump in.
And the sergeant, after he got him in handcuffs and said, hey, when we get back, we're going to have a talk.
[01:24:57] Speaker B: We have a discussion.
[01:24:58] Speaker A: And the recruit goes, yes, please take me back right now. I quit. I didn't know I was going to have to hit someone. They were like, literally, I didn't know I was going to have to use force.
[01:25:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that's the. Yeah. And again, when the force. And that's where if the community understands policing, that's why I love community citizen academies. You go out and you experience it. You know, you go through a con sim thing or you go through these dynamic scenarios and you get to kind of feel that stress and anxiety again, always keep, always highest level of accountability. And. But you're going to understand the split second decisions you have to make and the community is going to be a little bit more understanding of the process and what happens. And then when there's due process and thank God for body cams, there's due process and then you'll be able to say, yeah, you should not have used lethal force. You might be charged with a crime or you know what? Absolutely. And I remember before, right before I left Hillsborough, we had an officer was almost run over. It's a k nine officer, domestic. It'll be real fast. So he was crossing the street, suspect gets in the car, drives right at him. He had no place to go. Fired like eight or nine times. Guy took off and then they couldn't find him that night. It was like a day long manhunt all throughout Washington county. Finally found the guy. He took like five rounds. He had one. It was really gnarly. One in his mouth, opened up in his jaw, and a couple rounds here. I had to sit on him at OHSU because he survived. He survived.
And about a month later, the DA did their investigation. Everything else, no charges filed. Our chief came out. She goes, you know, it's been investigated. The officer's been cleared. You know, it's his second on duty shooting his career. So he's going to take some extra time off. He'll be back and she's like, as far as I'm concerned, seven out of eight rounds on target, moving vehicle at night. That's fantastic marksmanship. Police. Fantastic police work. If you're lawfully present and you're within policy, and someone's trying to kill you, that's exactly what you do. And I'll have your back every single time. Does anybody have any questions? Right.
[01:26:42] Speaker A: Well, in a.
[01:26:43] Speaker B: In a roll call. Roll call.
[01:26:44] Speaker A: That's amazing.
[01:26:45] Speaker B: And I'm like, no, right. So you have that confidence in a really scary thing, and that's the other part, too. Right? As much as we have to ask the right questions and do the investigation. Investigations and not be. I mean, you look at how many police officers have been. Been criminally charged in the last couple of years, and rightfully so. You're committing murder, you're committing assault. You're never better than anybody else. Right. That. That's that whole right thing that's changing. But at the same time, you have to say that officer had no other choice. That officer did exactly what their training was, and you are not allowed to harm or kill a police officer. That's my neighbor, that's my community member.
[01:27:16] Speaker A: So when it comes to, you know, I'm just going to push back a little bit, respectfully. You know, we talked about love debate.
[01:27:22] Speaker B: I debate all through high school.
[01:27:23] Speaker A: Oh, good.
[01:27:23] Speaker B: Okay, bring it on.
[01:27:24] Speaker A: Well, maybe I'm just going to run away then.
So you said that communities need to demand or JFK. You're right.
[01:27:31] Speaker B: You're quoting Robert Kennedy.
[01:27:32] Speaker A: Robert Kennedy. And, you know, communities get the type of policing that they demand.
I'm a pushback. I'm a deal with the story. So maybe four or five months ago, one of my security guards calls me and she goes, hey, Alex, you speak Spanish? Can you interpret for me? I don't know what's going on. And she puts a lady on the phone, and the lady told me she was. I'm not gonna mention the town, but there was a rural area in Washington state where she worked on a farm, a migrant worker, undocumented. And the police were called out because the person who's in charge of the undocumented farm workers was her boyfriend and beat her up pretty bad. And my guard had sent me photos. Her face was black and blue, right. And PD came out. PD talked to the owner of the farm, who is a very large farm, so they pay a lot of property tax.
[01:28:31] Speaker B: You know where I see a correlation between wealth and service delivered?
[01:28:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And so essentially, within a two hour period, one of the PD, one of the. One of these. I almost said the name, one of the officers from this organization drove her to a larger city, put her on a train to Portland, gave her two $5 coupons to subway, and said, you're gonna get on this train, or we're gonna deport you, or you're gonna. If we investigate this, you're gonna be deported to Mexico.
[01:29:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:29:06] Speaker A: So how is a person like that supposed to demand that appropriate?
[01:29:11] Speaker B: No, Alex, I'm glad you pushed back a little bit, because it's easy for me, and I always try to remember, you know, I'm a six foot one, white male ex cop who, you know, have a lot of resources. I've got a good job, and if I have an issue with my police, yeah, I'll go down to my sheriff's office and talk to them.
And so a little bit, when I talked about community policing, you know, the police of the community, the community of the police, part of that, the responsibility of police administrators and city administrators are making sure that they have programs and staff that are aware of that disparity and are doing tangible things to change that. And that starts with going out to your community. I go back, community engagement. Yeah, it's community engagement. Right. And so when I was with the city of Portland, I worked in the Cully neighborhood, and I worked with the county and Hacienda CDC, large, high density apartment complexes. And a lot of those folks were undocumented latino population, and they came from. And not just Southern America. I mean, I've worked with folks from Russia who were scared to death of the police because in Moscow, very much so.
[01:30:08] Speaker A: A lot of my PI work are with Russians because they don't want to contact law enforcement. Yeah.
[01:30:11] Speaker B: Because their experience of the police are horrible, horrendous. Right. And so it was having a good community engagement program, the city's crime range program. I was able to go out, talk to the community leadership and find out what the issue was. We had people who were victims of crimes, some serious crimes, person crimes, and they were afraid that if they called the police, Portland police, they'd be deported. And in Oregon, there's a law that forbids Oregon peace officers from enforcing federal immigration laws. And there's a few carve outs, but for the most part now. Right. So I worked with. And I had colleagues that were. I worked with a crime prevention coordinator who was Mexican American, spoke wonderful native Spanish. And I went back to the office and I said, hey, I need your help. Can we go out and do a. An info session in the culling neighborhood to this group of community leaders? Of course, Mark. Yeah, let's do it. So we went out and we found the community leaders, and you built. You gain their trust and their respect, and they realized we're there for the right reasons. And then you're having those discussions, and then they're going back to the impacted person in their community saying, hey, I'm working with Mark. And this person from the city who actually was born in Guadalajara, actually has some street cred that I don't. Right. And we'd like to get together, and they're going to have a female police officer, detective, come out and talk to you about that. And you will, and this is the law. And we did that all over the city. We did that. And it was interesting when a couple.
[01:31:25] Speaker A: It's engagement, it's empowerment.
[01:31:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's having that system in place to do that.
[01:31:30] Speaker A: But how are you going to do that without the resources?
[01:31:32] Speaker B: It all goes. Yeah.
[01:31:33] Speaker A: So if you keep cutting budgets, you're not just cutting the budget of that police officer that you hate, you saw on tv committing illegal rights violations. You're committing the budget to empower and to train.
[01:31:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you see cities, and I'm not just talking Portland. You'll see cities go on and on about equity and Dei work and this and that. Then to your question, that'd be a great question to ask. So how is your police department right now engaging with people that don't speak English, that came from cities or countries that had horribly unprofessional, brutal police departments are scared to death when they see a police car drive by. What are you currently doing right now? And if the answer is I don't know, well, you should know. It's what you get paid to do, and it's rebuilding those. Because if you, again, just like the recruiting, if you do the community engagement right and you get the buy in. And I went to a couple different parts where it actually was the russian slavic community. We did a bunch of outreach. Their number one ask was, how do we get more of our community members who recently immigrated from Russia to work with and get to know Portland police? That was their number one ask. And then at the same time, I was being told by my commissioner, your programs are bad and racist and commit harm to communities of color. You need to end working with the police bureau. I was literally told that. And ironically, because the slavic and russian community, their leadership, wanted their family members and friends that had recently immigrated understand that a Portland police officer is well educated, well paid, and is a professional. This is not the copyright.
[01:32:51] Speaker A: They're not going to shake you down for money.
[01:32:53] Speaker B: They're not going to. It's completely different. And I appreciate this if you want to feel safe, because a lot of times they're immigrants. They're living in areas. There's lower income, higher crime. They're impacted by crime. And that's the irony, right? Who's impacted most by crime? It's the people that aren't engaged and aren't. You don't have the abilities to demand that source of law enforcement. But they would tell their own community, you need to be a part of it. You need to talk to the police.
[01:33:15] Speaker A: I pulled over someone russian, and there's a lot of Russians up here, and I was going to write them a ticket, and the person was like, I pay now. I pay now. And they started trying to hand me cash. And in my mind, you know, I'm thinking, oh, they're trying to bribe me. But then I realized, no, they're just used to having to pay that and.
[01:33:34] Speaker B: Maybe a little something.
[01:33:35] Speaker A: And it's. So they're not even trying to bribe me. They think that that's what. That's their. They're supposed to just pay me.
[01:33:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:33:39] Speaker A: To be able to get out of.
[01:33:40] Speaker B: This, you know, and not to go down a rabbit hole. But, like, I used to sit, when I was back, my days in the border patrol, t one of cops at the time made like $400 a month.
And, oh, yeah, yeah. The level of corruption and. And we would arrest people, and they were. I arrested two guys from El Salvador. God, it's so many stories. They. And if they were other than mexican at the time.
[01:33:59] Speaker A: Oh, tm.
[01:33:59] Speaker B: Oh, tm. Yeah, there you go. You had to do a whole smuggling program.
[01:34:01] Speaker A: I'm from Texas.
[01:34:02] Speaker B: Now, we spent 8 hours with these two guys, pictures, documents, interviews. Homeland security or, no, it was a special agent came in from ins, and then literally, we didn't have, the jails weren't full for ins. We don't have enough. So we had to give them a court date. And we gave, we drove them in a van to the transit stop at San Ysidro, and they literally were in tears. And thank God my partner was native spanish speaker.
[01:34:22] Speaker A: He thought they were gonna be murdered. Yeah, death squad.
[01:34:24] Speaker B: He's like, he's like, I said, no, here's your coupons, here's your court dates. We gave him a hotel voucher, some food, that, and they start sobbing. And my partner's like, dude. He goes, they think we're gonna shoot him in the back of the van. And one guy's like, why would you spend all that time and you took our fingerprints and asked all these stores and just let us go. I just entered America the largest country, most powerful, and you're gonna let me go. Federal immigration agents. Right. And it. I still remember that. So we literally, we opened the door, we took the keys out. We walked literally two blocks away so we could still see the van and said, we're over here. We'll keep our hands right like this. And they ran off.
[01:34:55] Speaker A: Crazy.
[01:34:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So, yeah, they. That. They've got it again. There's so many themes that you see from recruiting, retention, community engagement, that if you put the. If you do the hard work and spend the money up front, you're gonna see that. And if you stop doing that or wean it off, it's not gonna get better.
[01:35:11] Speaker A: Mark Wells, a man with many jobs, many talents, jack of all trades.
[01:35:16] Speaker B: That's right. There we go.
[01:35:17] Speaker A: Mark Wells. Thanks for coming in today.
[01:35:18] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[01:35:19] Speaker A: Alex.
[01:35:19] Speaker B: Appreciate your brother so much. You too. You too. Thanks for all you do.
[01:35:21] Speaker A: Check us out at the ride along after action. Bye.
