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.
Hey, Alex Stone. Welcome back to the ride along. Today's guest, good friend of mine, Jamie Worley, former sheriff's deputy, done a lot of other crazy stuff. We'll get into it today. Jamie, introduce yourself to the folks. Tell us a little bit about your background.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Hey, thanks, man. Jamie Worley here, host of the Grit podcast, motivating and encouraging men to become the men they're destined to be. Grit stands for genuine, respectful, intentional, and trained men. One of the things I do is I love to train men on how to become leaders in their home, leaders in their community, leaders in their church, wherever they may be. Because one of the things seems to me that we've lost in this country, a strong male leadership, 100%. So that's what I'm committed to, man. That's what I do.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: I love it, man. Thanks for coming in today.
We're gonna, you know, we have a. You have a vast background, right? You're from Oklahoma.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Boomer sooner.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: I'm from Texas.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: I know. I know. It all started. Here it comes.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: You didn't bring this up.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: I know.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: I got here. You know what this means, right?
[00:01:39] Speaker A: What does that mean?
[00:01:39] Speaker B: It means horns down.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Are the horns broken on that. On that long horn?
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Well, they have been for the last 20 years, playing us.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: All right.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Do you know why birds, you know, fly upside down when they hit the Oklahoma border?
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Because birds don't even give a crap about Oklahoma.
Okay, we'll get past that. We'll get past this.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: But. Okay, but before we. Before we get into your podcast, okay. Okay. Now that you've offended me greatly, my heritage, especially as it comes to boomer sooners, I gotta ask you, what. What is esca, Helen? Is this.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Those are words for literate people.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: What is that, French?
[00:02:19] Speaker A: It actually. I think it is a french word.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: You canadian?
[00:02:22] Speaker A: I'm not actually canadian, no.
Echelon. A lot of people call it echelon. Echelon. This is Echelon. This is the security company. I own it with another gentleman who used to work at a police department, a couple of them in Oklahoma as well. I know. I know, you're just saying your people are strong, bro.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Just saying.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: And so, yeah, that's our security company. And, you know, this, this security company doesn't run the podcast. The. Our media group is called Opsec Media Group, and this is the Ride along podcast. And so. But we kind of talk about what we do in the security world. We talk about what we're doing in the nonprofit world in order to change our culture for the better.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: We call it community transformation.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: It is truly an honor to be a guest on the ride along podcast. Now, I think the hood and the kidnapping in front of my home was a little much, but it is a pleasure to be here nonetheless.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: Well, I had to get you, I've been trying to get you at.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: I'm in Portland somewhere.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's an undisclosed location.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: It is for sure. Yeah.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: So, Jamie.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Yes, sir.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Why did you get into law enforcement?
[00:03:25] Speaker B: I got into law enforcement because I was getting a master's degree in counseling. I wanted to be a professional counselor. I wanted to help people.
And then a semester before I graduated, I had to do what's called an internship. That's where you counsel for free for about 2000 hours or so, and that's required for graduation. And I actually did the work. And I discovered, wait a minute. I don't want to sit in an office 40 hours a week listening to people's problems. Now, why I didn't put that together in the very beginning, because that's what a counselor does and thank God for him. But for some reason, it clicked. I don't want to do that. I want to be out and about helping people. I want to have real authority not to hoard. I want real authority to actually go out and touch lives where they already are.
And my wife said, why don't you be a police officer?
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: And I said, why don't I? Can I carry a gun? She says, yeah. I said, okay, well, let's try that. And so I applied a number of different places. Jackson Hole, Wyoming. They offered me a job.
Been to Oregon I was looking at. But what I really wanted was a small department so that when I got a call, I could be the detective. I didn't have to call the team in.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: You know, so if I came up on a domestic, it's me. If I had a traffic stop, it's me. And I would get to be a well rounded officer, learning all aspects of the job. So that's why I chose a small department. And so I worked for a small department on the coast of Oregon.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Awesome. In fact, I kind of did the same thing.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Did you?
[00:04:58] Speaker A: I looked. I worked and lived very close to the coast.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: About 23 minutes away. And I purposely. I was trying to get a job up in Alaska, actually, because, you know, being from an urban environment in Houston, Texas, I never got that outdoor adventure lifestyle.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: It's cold up there, Alex.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: It is. Just go to New Zealand. And so I got the pot to. And the staff over here. I go to New Zealand for the winter, man, because it's summer. Yeah. I don't even know winter.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Is it hot there in the summer?
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Oh, it's New Zealand. Yeah. Like 90 degrees.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: Really?
[00:05:28] Speaker A: It's like the whole. The whole place is San Diego Disney world combined.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: What?
[00:05:33] Speaker A: Yeah. It's amazing. If you haven't been to New Zealand, check it out. So. Yeah, I don't even, you know, that whole show, winter is coming. It's in head, doesn't come for me ever again.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Ever.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Yeah. But, yeah, so I grew up in Houston, Texas. I wanted that urban, or. I didn't want the urban environment. I wanted to. I wanted to see elk.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Houston's pretty rough.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: He.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, Houston's pretty. Houston. It's pretty rough.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty rough down there. Yeah, it is. It's. It's a legit city.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: So you wanted elk?
[00:05:59] Speaker A: I wanted elk. I wanted mountains. You know, I wanted.
I wanted, like you. I wanted to know the people I was coming out of the chaplaincy in the military.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: I was in the reserves at the time, and I, you know, same thing. I wanted to know the people I was serving.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: I didn't want to be in just some big, random city. I did ride alongs, you know, here in Portland. I did ride alongs in large cities. And they were always eight calls down.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: And it didn't seem like they were really resolving anything. And they didn't even know the names of the people they were communicating with.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: The majority of the time, they're so short handed.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: They've got to get done with this one and get on to the next. They don't. It's like they don't have the time.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: They don't have time because that next call actually could save a life.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Versus worrying about a stolen bicycle. Right. I mean. Yeah. You gotta weigh those. And I don't. I don't put it. No judgment on them.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: No, no.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: They're doing that. They're doing what they can do.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: But I didn't. That's not who I wanted to be. And. And same thing. I had a master's degree.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: You know, essentially doing counseling. Right.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Really?
[00:07:04] Speaker A: And the army and. And so I was like, you know, gosh, I really want to go to a small town. Ended up getting hired in a town of five police officers.
And, yeah, that's what we did. I mean, I was the detective. I was doing juvenile sex crimes, death investigations. I mean, you handle it? Everything.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Everything, yeah. Yeah.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: So you're a cop. Right.
What type of interactions did you have with security companies? What were you. What was your thought of a security guard?
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Well, we.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Good question.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Observe and report.
Paul Blart is basically what would always come to our minds, because you very well know there's a barrier, a fun barrier, though, between police officers and firemen.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: So, you know, they get all the money.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: They get all the money and they get, you know, they get to sit around and wax cars all the time.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Amazing trucks.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Yeah. I told a fireman once, I said, you know why God created police officers?
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: And he says, why? I said, so firemen would have heroes. And so that's just where I stand on that. But that's a friendly kind of tension there between police officers and firemen. But when it comes to security officers, they're seen, by and large, at least from my experience, from a police officer, deputy standpoint, as wannabe cops.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: They are less than. We roll our eyes at them. We think they cause more trouble than good, than do good, and they're just people who wanted to be cops but couldn't make the cut.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: And that's the mentality.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: That last phrase is so important. They tend to cause more trouble than they then they solve. And so what that is such a large in the mind of law enforcement. That is, I would say, the majority held opinion.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: At least that was my experience. Do you find that now?
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Same. Same.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: And so why is. Where did that come from?
Diagnose that for me, please, man.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: I really don't know.
Pardon me? I really don't know.
I'm just going to make a guess here. My guess is that they cease. They've seen some colleagues either get fired as police officers and go become security guards or security officers, or they knew somebody who tried to become a police officer and didn't get hired, so they did the next best thing and became security.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: So they're looked at by officers with a level of pride. You're not at my level. And so I think the real issue here is they look at those guys and gals with pride, with kind of a lording over them. Pride they're better for some reason, when, in fact, that doesn't mean you were better. It could be you just knew somebody that they didn't know, and that's why you got hired. Have you ever seen any police officers who should not be police officers, but somehow they got hired?
[00:09:59] Speaker A: Oh, dozens and dozens of times.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: I was in, when I was in police academy. At this point, there's definitely a lot.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: Of nepotism in law enforcement.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: Oh, 100%. 100%.
The police academy was at Western Oregon University, Wu down in Dallas, before they had their own.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: Oh, I moved. Yeah, for sure.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Yeah, that's where I went.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Before DPSST had the complex in Salem.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: I saw three people who were training to be cops hired. Ironically, and this isn't a jab at this city's Portland police bureau, but they were Portland Police Bureau, and they dropped their gun at the range. Time and time and time again. We're all taking cover.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: And it's just like, how did they get in? Like, they've never held a gun before. One guy said, I have a Glock.
What is a. Is that what they call that? He literally had no idea.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: No firearms experience.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: None.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: No training?
[00:10:54] Speaker B: No. No training. I know many security officers from Oklahoma, and I've known some here who are proficient mentally. They have great awareness, they have great instincts, they have empathy.
They would be fantastic police officers, in my view. Now, why they're not an officer, I don't know. The point being is just because someone is a security officer doesn't mean that they are less or they could not make the cut. Prime example. Exhibit a right here.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: Bam.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Exhibit a.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Love it.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: But why that's there, I think it's a. I think it's a pride thing. I think when people feel like they can point at other people in a similar or pseudo profession that's somewhat connected to them, and they can say, I'm better than you because I do this and you do that, I think it makes someone who has a low self esteem, when they feel low, they feel high, they feel better about themselves the more that they can step on top of you. And I really think, I truly do think that that is the nucleus of that whole idea. Now, there are some bad security guards.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Who, of course, all the time, bad.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: Apples, screw things up for cops.
But I conclude that I attribute that to a lack of training for those police officers or for those security officers. And it could be there's some bad apples. There's bad apples no matter what you do.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Are you familiar with the Atlanta Olympic bombing?
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Yeah, a little bit. What was his name? Jewel.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And so they. They. The law enforcement just knew it had to be the security guard.
Right. And they didn't have any real reason to think that. Right?
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: The security guard actually did a great job interdicting that. That. The bomb. Right. That package. But that. That's who they just went after, that security guard.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Because they. And I believe it's because of that mindset. They just believe that that person's gonna make. They're gonna do more harm than good.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: And that makes them an automatic suspect in the minds of someone conducting an investigation.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: So when we started our company, Echelon, we did a deep dive because we both came from law enforcement. And I was a cop, but I was not really. I was not a great cop. Right. My business partner was a cops. Copy SWAT, all these certifications. FTO director. I mean, he did it.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: He was a really great cop. I was, you know. You know. You know, you like Barney Fife.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: They gave you a bullet.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: You keep a bullet in my pocket.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: In your pocket.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: So we can.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: You could. I gotta stop you right there.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: You could have been that bad.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: I don't.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: I mean, look at you. You've got tattoos.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: You got. I mean, you're built like a lager. How in the world could you have been a bad guy? I don't. I just. And I know you a little bit. I just. I'm sorry. Where's the director? I don't see. I don't see how you could have been a bad cop. I'm not. I'm not asking for you to dump your trash here.
I have skeletons, but I'm just. I just don't see that.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: I wouldn't say I was a bad cop. I would say that because I had to leave law. I didn't have to leave law enforcement. I chose to leave law enforcement.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: I can't talk about it because I signed a non disclosure, of course, but it involved being. I was a whistleblower.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: And that made my career short. It shortened my career. And, you know, a lot. There's a lot of people in law enforcement, like, were you a law enforcement? More than ten years. Well, then you weren't really a cop. That whole thing, you know, the whole ego thing.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: And so I'm like, hey, whatever, you know? But getting back to where we started. So, like, we started our company, and we initially came into this and this industry thinking, oh, we're cops. We're gonna. We're gonna dominate.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: We're gonna dominate, right? And we got in here and we were like, wait.
What we know is what we know to be true about law enforcement has nothing to do with security.
And we realized really quickly that there are two basic models. There's that law enforcement, quasi law enforcement model, because like you said, a lot of people retire and go and get management positions, right? And all they know is law enforcement for 25 years, right? So they're gonna run the, their security departments like law enforcement.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: That's what they know.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: And then you have basically the observe and report model that doesn't do anything. In fact, I don't even consider that a security position because anyone can observe and report like a seven year old can observe. Right? And so we came in quickly and we realized, you know, we actually had to look at the dynamics and the internal workings of security and law enforcement. And we realized really quickly things that I didn't even know when I was a copy. And the number one thing that popped out of my mind was I had to ask myself, okay, what is the actual job of law enforcement? Like, what does law enforcement do, right? And I thought of all the awesome things I wanted to do. Oh, I would love to go to all these events and community events and be a spokesperson for the city and an ambassador about public safety. But at the end of the day, when I'm actually doing my job, what am I doing? And it clicked. It clicked in my mind. I'm violating people's civil rights. Wow, right?
[00:16:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: If I had to do a traffic stop, if it's a grandma and she's leaving a temple or a church, right? And if I pull her over because she didn't use her indicator, her blinker, I'm violating her civil rights for a shortened period of time so I can conduct an investigation into that violation. Right.
It dawned on me. It dawned on me. I was like, wow.
At the core of what we do in law enforcement is civil rights violations. We receive our powers from the constitution.
And this is why a lot of people in the minority community and just in the community at large, they want real oversight.
And it didn't really click to me because me, when I wanted to go on law enforcement, I wanted to help people. I wanted to put, I wanted to put the juvenile sex offender or the person who offended juveniles, and I wanted to put the person who was beating up their spouse in jail to protect the community, the person who was robbing liquor stores. Right. With a gun. I wanted that person to be away from the community, to keep the community safe. But I didn't realize that everything it required me to do to get to the point of making the community safe was a gradual process of continued rights violations for legal, ethical, and moral reasons. Right. Supplied by the authority of the constitution to do it.
But that's what it takes to make a community safe.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Well, you know, I never thought about that. Yeah, I never peeled the onion back that far.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Right.
Now you get it, though. You're like, yeah, that's what we do. Right. And so I realized really quickly, well, security companies can't do that. Security companies have no authority from the constitution.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: So security companies can't act anything like law enforcement as soon as you act like law enforcement, because law enforcement is a very standalone institution.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a niche.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: It's a very niche thing.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: As soon as you act like law enforcement, they're automatically going to assume that you're there to violate the rights.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah. They will view you the way they.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: View law enforcement, of course, because associate guilt by association. Sure. And so we realized really quickly, oh, my gosh, we are doing this wrong. We cannot do this quasi enforcement, quasi law enforcement model. We have to figure out what security really can do and how can it best serve a community.
And so what we realized is, well, then we asked ourselves a question, and this is a deep, long conversations like we're having now.
We were like, hey, well, what. What is the security company like? What is the job of a security company? And then we started asking, okay, well, who hires us to figure out that question? We had to ask more questions. Who hires it? We thought, well, we have a historically black church that hires us.
Why are they hiring us? Well, they get threats from white supremacist groups, right.
Jewish congregations hire us because they get death threats.
Property owners hire us. Right. And I go, well, why do they hire us? Well, they want to protect their right to speech. They want to protect their right to practice their religion. They want to. They want to protect the right to congregate. They want to protect the right to own property. Right. And I thought, wow, these are civil rights.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: They're all civil rights.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: These are civil liberties. Yeah, these are civil rights.
And law enforcement doesn't go out and protect those. They don't get hired by a city and saying, hey, I need to make sure that you're protecting the right for that child to be in school today.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: They operate on a whole different system.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Different system.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a different system.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: And so we realized very quickly, we are a civil rights protection agency. We are a civil liberties, civil rights protection agency.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: You know, I find it really sad that Americans need that kind of protection against their own God given civil rights.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: True. Yeah.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: You know, from the, from other people in the community.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Right. We realized that we have to go out, we have to present ourselves as something other than law enforcement. We have to explain what we do as protecting your rights as a citizen or as a property owner. Right. And we, and we, when we go to a community, like when we go to an area that's low income.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: So the hood. Right. And obviously there's, there's an animosity.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: With law enforcement because people who live in urbanized areas are over. Are over policed. Right. Because if you live out in the middle of nowhere, you won't see a cop for a week, two weeks. If you see, if you live in an urban area, you're gonna see a cops 1020 times a day. You're gonna hear them. They're gonna wake up in the middle of night, the sirens. So it becomes more of a pest problem. Like, oh, I feel like I'm being bothered.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: By law enforcement because I see them. They're always around versus I never see law enforcement at all.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: Right. And so in those urban areas that are low income, we go into those neighborhoods and we have a meeting and we say, hey, we're here to protect you.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: We work for the members of this community. We're here to make sure that people aren't dealing drugs on your property, people aren't going to harm your children. We're gonna make sure that people, when they visit here, they're not driving too fast to protect your life again, your right to live. Right.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. The interesting thing to me is that they would be open to having that conversation with you because it has not been security officers or security guard. What's the correct term, by the way, security officers?
[00:21:32] Speaker A: We don't like to. I'm so glad you asked that question.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: Yeah, because, so, because terms matter.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: I don't, we don't use the word officer.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: Because the word officer comes from the Latin ex officio, and that literally means the king's men.
So when the king, back in the day, during the common era, right.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: The Commonwealth era or the common law period, the king would have men and they were the king's men, and they would go out and they would enforce the rights of the king to, like, not hunt on property or the king's rules. And so they worked for, they were an agent of the government.
So we don't use the word officer. We use that. We use the word guard.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Okay. Okay.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: Or we use other words. You can be a law enforcement agent.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: Legally, we're an agent of the property owner.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: Now, some people, some government agencies, like, you know, the DEA.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: They've started using the word agent when actually, they're not agents technically. They're actually officers.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: They're actually officers. Yeah.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: In the legal term. So there are. Some people prefer different terms. But we. I like the word guard.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: Because we're there to protect.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Well, it seems to me that the history of law enforcement, it wasn't security guards in the past that have misbehaved with citizens.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Very true.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: It's former. It's law enforcement now. This isn't paint all law enforcement bad or anything like that. You know, there's. There. But incidents happen that should not happen. Yeah. I mean, under their watch.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: You can look at the George Floyd incident, the most recent incident. Right.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: But when you think of a security guard, how many times have you turned on the news and, oh, a security guard violated the rights of so and so, you just don't hear that.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: No.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: And so you have a fresh.
I think it's ripe for you and your team to have these conversations with community members because they're going to have an open mind to talk to you, because there is either no history or very limited history of you hurting them.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Correct. Correct.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: If somebody. If a police officer in uniform came in to try to hold the same conversation that you hold with these community members, they're gonna have one ear open. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Or they just won't show up altogether because they don't trust them.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: You had right or wrong. They don't trust.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Exactly. You had to get to break through the barrier and build trust before you can even have the conversation.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: You have an opportunity to build trust with a community that's willing to listen to you. And if they're willing to listen to you. I see you're trying to change a.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: Culture, the entire culture of the industry.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: Not just change the culture of the industry. You're trying to create a culture that has not been created yet.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: Yeah. I went to my friend Jaco, like, probably four or five years ago, and I told him this kind of revelation, and I thought I told him, hey, like, guys like Jaco and Tim Kennedy and Mike Glover, all these awesome dudes, man, who were, like, totally brode out, right. These dudes are always gonna own that tactical space.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: And police officers are always gonna own that police officer space. And I was copy. Or cop. Right. Or deputy. We were officers of the law, and I could try to own that space, but in the reality, there's a whole new thought space that should exist that doesn't. And it's security through community.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: It's. How can you operate your company in such a way that you're protecting people's rights, and while you're doing it, you're building community.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: You're doing community engagement with the intent of creating higher levels of engagement. Like, if you have a dope dealer, he's on the corner selling dope. If you have people out on a architectural tour through downtown and you have 20 or 30 people and they have their cameras out and they're taking pictures of buildings, that drug dealer's gonna see that level of engagement, and he's gonna tell himself or herself, hey, this is not a. This is no longer a good block to sell dope on.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: Too many eyes, too many cameras.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Right. And so as engagement goes up, that criminal element decreases. So our whole. Our whole purpose is not. Not tactical, it's not quasi law enforcement. Right. Which is the entire space right now. The entire thought space. That's. That's right. Right. We're trying to go for that NGO model that oversees NGO community building, nation building in our own nation model.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: It seems like we try to solve the problems by taking care of the symptoms. For example, if you have a headache, you're taking aspirin to get rid of the pain, but you're not really fixing the root problem.
In law enforcement. I don't think that they have. It's not that they don't have good people capable of doing that. They don't have the time, and there's expectations. Take this call. Then you've got this call. Then you've got this call. They don't have the bandwidth to do what you're doing.
This community needs echelon to do exactly what you're doing, because you can't just take care. Even if you arrested the drug dealer, and you know this as a former cop, as I do, 80% to 90% of our arrests are repeat offenders. We're picking up the same people over and over and over again. Why? Because we're just dealing with a symptom. We're not helping that person. And so we're just gonna keep picking the bad fruit off the tree when, in fact, bad roots make bad fruits. And you can pick the fruit off all you want, but until you get to the root issues, the fruit will not change.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And at the end of the day, that's what you're doing, what we're trying to do, and I think we're accomplishing that in several neighborhoods.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: At the end of the day, I think you're right. Law enforcement, I mean, it's a critical feedback loop in the, in a system of society you have, if someone's going to murder their child. I went to a murder where the guy chased his wife down with a katana sword, sliced her up, decapitated his eight year old son, and then killed himself. Right. If you're going to have people engaging in that level of crime, they have to be taken away and put somewhere else so they don't kill everyone in the neighborhood. Right.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Or then you get community justice. Posses develop, and you. Then you get feuds and wars. We have a criminal justice system to stop blood feud. Right. To stop the community from creating posses and lynchings and all this craziness. Right.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: And so we have to have it. But for me, I don't want to use the term necessary evil, although a lot. Most, I think a lot of government is necessary. I wouldn't say evil, but it's a necessary feedback loop.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: In the system that says, hey, you know, and you have to remove people.
And the job of law enforcement is not reformative.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: No.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: If the DA wants to give that person the chance to go through a detox program rather than prison or jail, that's their. That's. That's the reformative issue.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: If prisons want to decide. If jails and prisons want to decide to run themselves professionally and responsibly and not allow drugs to be smuggled in and allow sex to occur inside. Inside the four walls of that institution, they can choose to do that. They can choose to make it reformative. But the cop on the street, that's not their job.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: No.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: Right. They have a duty to soldiers, foot soldiers. Yeah.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: And I don't mean that in a derogatory way.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: No, no. They're ground pounders, bro.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: Well, when the DA says, go arrest that person, they don't get to do the investigation and determine whether or not they should be arrested or not. It's. Here's a warrant, matter of fact.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Could. Would you defy a judge's writ? No, it's against the law. No, you can't. As a.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: You. You can't. That's a. At least for an officer, that's at least a misdemeanor. And the loss of a job and your pull of DPSST certification is gone 100%. Yeah.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: You have to do it like this judge is an asshole. I'm not gonna do this one.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: Yeah, good luck with that.
[00:29:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: Find another job. Yeah, yeah. But their job is to do what they're told. Now, there. There are certain discretions they do have in the field, as you well know, but they have to make split second judgments, and sometimes those judgments are wrong. Now, sometimes they can make premeditated judgments.
Being a police officer is very, very difficult. Your career is not even your own. I don't care how long you've been a police officer. Your career is not your own because you've made mistakes. I've made mistakes. If you're an officer, if you're an officer out there and you've made mistakes, even as a rookie, they can pull that mistake and use that to fire you. And don't think that they can't. They can use a collection of all your past mistakes and any. Your career at any moment.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: I was investigating.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: Career is not your own.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: I was investigated for nine months.
You know, I know I came up clear, but in nine month investigation and, you know, one mistake I made. This is kind of funny, actually. I had a DUI. I took the DUI. Stators couldn't catch him in time, so I went ahead and took them. Right.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: Oh, you pulled it. You didn't get a DUI?
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Well, they called it in. The guy had hit the guardrail multiple times.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: So. And he was coming into our jurisdiction, and state or the state police could not catch up to him in time. And I thought, if this guy hits a child in my community.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: And I had the ability to stop him, then, yeah, bet on me.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: How do you sleep?
[00:30:37] Speaker A: I couldn't sleep.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: So.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: So anyway, I pulled the gentleman over. He's at least two.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: I mean, he's definitely. He's well above the legal limit. And I. I put his wallet. His. He had about $800 cash in his wallet.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: I left it on top of my patrol vehicle when I took off to go to the jail. Yeah, to get him to blow the detox. And we got to jail. And I said, hey, I need your id. Blah, blah, blah. He goes, I gave it all to you. And I was like, oh, no. And I said, sit tight.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: Sit tight.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: Famous words of a cop. Sit tight.
We always say that. We always.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: We do, don't we? Hang tight and sing. Hang out here for a second.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: Hang out here for a second. Yeah.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: So I get in my patrol vehicle. I go back to the. It was a hotel parking lot, and his cash is all over the freeway.
And, I mean, I found, like, $150 of it.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: And I had counted it. It was $800.
And I went back and I called my police chief, who was actually, I believe, hunting at the time, so that's not good.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Called him in his deer stand.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Oh, man.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: I was like, hey, I don't think we have deer stands here. I don't know.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: You guys stalk deer here in Georgia and Oklahoma. We.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: In Texas, we have.
[00:31:52] Speaker B: We sit in tree stains.
[00:31:53] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Same thing in Texas.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: Really?
[00:31:55] Speaker A: We can even put deer lick out or a feeder.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: Not supposed to in Texas.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: I think you can.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: Really?
[00:32:01] Speaker A: On a deer lease? I think it's on private property. It's been a while.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I guess it depends on what kind of property you're on.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So, anyway, so we'll get into hunting later.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: I digress.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you bow or rifle or both? I.
Okay.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: Yeah. I didn't Oregon yet, though. Oh, we should go. Yeah, we should go.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: I've all done all my hunting in Georgia and Oklahoma's whitetail, and.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Tastes better.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: Texas is mealy deer. Yeah. Mule deers are just huge.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: Yeah. I love the white. The whitetail tastes so much better, I think. I don't know why.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: So they always say, just soak it in milk. I'm like, I don't have time for that.
[00:32:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know.
[00:32:37] Speaker A: Put it in the dehydrator.
[00:32:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: Anyway, so I lose his money, my suspects money. I call the chief who's hunting, and I'm like, hey, chief, this just happened. He goes, he said, find his responsible person, call him and release him, and have him sign a piece of paper saying that.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: Give him a ride home.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Basically type something up. Apologizing, saying, hey, I lost your money. You're not gonna sue us. Have him sign it.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:06] Speaker A: And I released him.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: He sign it?
[00:33:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the dude had. I think it might have been a felony. Could have been his third in ten years or something like that.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He signed that quick.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: So that's a huge mistake. I probably could have been fired for that.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: I mean, technically, yeah. But the fact that you self reported. I don't know. I've self reported things when I was an officer.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: And I got beat up for it. Not literally, but, you know, I got. Oh, my gosh. Like, you know, I didn't have to tell you I did this.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: It was a rookie mistake. I didn't have to tell you.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: I hit a rock slide, and I self reported.
[00:33:40] Speaker B: You hit a rock slide.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Yeah. I was looking for a lost dog, and there was a giant rock slide. Anyway, so we can get into that.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: But the stories we could share all.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: Kinds of things off air. Off air, yeah. After action stuff. So basically, you know, when it comes to back to the model. Right. We have the security through community model. So today we're gonna go in the field.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: We are?
[00:34:03] Speaker A: Yeah, we're gonna go for the ride along.
Yeah. We're gonna jump in the van. We drive. Yeah. You can totally drive.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: Seriously?
[00:34:11] Speaker A: Hell, yeah. Yeah. We have a couple sprinter vans. I use my brother. Sprinter van.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: And, uh, because it's more spacious, easier to use. So we're gonna jump in there. We're actually gonna patrol with Michael Bach, who, you know.
[00:34:23] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Michael's coming.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: Is this gonna be like a cops episode or a Columbo episode?
[00:34:28] Speaker A: Well, we. We don't. We don't. We. Good question.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: Right. One more thing.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
We try to save lives. So that's what we're focused on. We're focused on, you know, protecting people's rights.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: Enhancing community engagement and saving lives.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Absolutely love this model.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: So do you want to go on a ride along? And I want to go after it.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: I want to go on a ride along. I've got to see, because a lot of people talk about this. I hear police officers, I hear police departments and sheriff's departments talk about community policing, how important it is. And then a lot of times they simply don't, not because they don't want to.
